04/03/2003 - 12:25 (17:25 GMT)
27/02/2003 Had breakfast and checked my email. I'm dissapointed at the lack of emails I'm recieving! Lol only joking! We parked up at Malden again to get the T-Line into Boston. We got off at "Prudential" stop, where there are huge tower blocks housing such companies as Apple and Prudential, obviously. The Prudential Building is Boston 's 2nd tallest building with 52 levels. There are lots of shops and restaurants there aswell and the whole enclosed mall is completely climate controlled, which they seem to be impressed by. I'm not sure if that means they can get it to thunder and lightning, but it would be cool if they could. Hehehe. We bought some tickets for the Beantown Trolley Tour and went to get a cup of coffee before we boarded. Across the road, attached to a huge Hitlon hotel, was a cafe called Boodles. Well I'm not one to pass up a cup of coffee at a ridiculously named cafe, so in we went. And Dad was right, it was a pity I didn't have a Poodle. I ordered a cappuccino, but some idiot had turned off the machine, so it took ages to warm up. We were getting stuck for time, so the waiter took it off our bill and we payed for Mam and Dad's coffee only. Then the cappuccino came, so I got it for free. Bargain! We got on the trolley tour and travelled around Boston, passing such names as The Cheers Bar and Boston Reserve Bank... thrilling. However, the driver was a sad man named Joe and he kindly informed us that on a US $1 "bill" there is a letter on the left hand side next to George Washington. This letter represents where it was printed. "A" means it was printed in Boston. I bet you feel like a new person for knowing that useful information. We also passed the John Hancock Building, which is the tallest building in Boston with 60 levels, 8 higher than the Prudential builiding just in case you can't count.
As we all know, people can be stupid occasionally, and none moreso than the Americans. For instance, when the John Hancock building had been built, whole windows kept popping out and crashing to the floor, from many levels of the building. Luckily noone was hurt, but the John Hancock Insurance Company decided to sue the glass company who fitted the windows only to drop the charges 3 days into the trials. Why? Because the glass company they were sueing were insured by... The John Hancock Insurance Company!
We went to lunch at an Italian restaurant, and then went back to Malden to visit Walter "Killer" Kowalski and spoke to him for the first time. He's a really big guy, even though he's getting... well, less young than he used to be. I'm paying to start wrestling on saturday and so I stayed and watched again. Before it started I got some kneepads from this huge sports store called Decathalon. I walked about 100m to the wrestling pads section and back to the tills to pay. When I got back in the car, I took them out of the bag, opened them up and realised they didn't sell knee pads in pairs, so I had to go back and get another one! This made us late and when I got back they had already started. Some of the warm-ups were the same as tuesday, but they did some different grapple moves like suplexes. They started another 4 Corner Tag Team match, and asked me to ref. It was OK once I got into it, but was difficult to start off with. They also didn't tell me anything, so I didn't know if I was meant to DQ anyone, especially when Wags started to beat someone with his trainer!! But it all went well until the end, when I noticed that the guy who was pinning Slyk had his feet on the ropes for extra leverage. I shouldn't have noticed it! It was good fun though and I just can't wait for saturday!
Afterwards, I caught the T-Line to Downtown Crossing for a trial run to my new house, where I was supposed to change for the Red Line to Porter. However, I was so busy writing down all the stuff I'd done in my little book so I can put it on here, I missed it and had to get off at Chinatown. That was OK, I don't mind being stupid some of the time (!), but I had to go out of the gates and over the road, down into the station again and through the gates so I could go the other way. Except you have to pay each time you go through the gates, unless you have a pass. It's $1 per entry. So I blagged the English tourist and got passed the gates without paying anything, went back to Downtown Crossing and along to Porter. I left the station, tried to work out which way to go and headed off in the right direction (luckily). I met up with Mam and Dad who were suspiciously sitting near the house in the car on a dark, freezing cold night and drove back to the hotel, grabbing some food at Chilis on the way home.
28/02/2003 Got up, had breakfast and checked my email. Unfortunately I didn't have enough time to put in a diary entry, so that's why this is such a long one! We left for Boston and tried to find a parking spot at the station, hysterically called Wonderland... The Americans are such bad parkers. Some of them can't help it, because they have such huge cars, but other's are probably so fat they have to take up 2 spaces just so they can open the doors far enough to get their lardy arses out of the car! We got on a train to Quincy Market and went inside an imitation of the inside of the Cheers bar, from the TV show, Cheers. I got served a pint of Samuel Adams, or almost a pint, using my "photocopy" (and not scanned and changed) of my passport. After, we went to get the Trolley Bus to Boston Common. We grabbed lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe and then went to the orginial Cheers bar at Beacon Street. It looks nothing like the bar inside and it's really small, but worth a visit just to say you've been there! I learnt a very funny fact about the Boston T-Line. A bit after it first opened, the mayor of the city anounced that he was going to raise the prices to 10 cence for every trip. The Boston people weren't very impressed and refused to pay. So instead the Mayor announced that he was going to charge 5 cence every time you got on and 5 cence to get off again! And guess what, they agreed!!!!!!!!
01/03/2003 I moved into my new house this morning. I'll get the address posted on the contacts page as soon as I know what it is! We then went and got some lunch and food shopping and unpacked it before having to leave to go for my first wrestling lesson! Mam and Dad dropped me off and headed to the airport. Its sad to know I'm not gonna see them again until mid May, but I know it'll go really quickly. The lesson was excellent, even though I was a bit late. Slyk took me aside and taught me how to exit the ring over the 2nd rope, backwards over the 2nd rope, over the top rope and then backwards over the top rope. Then I learnt how to fall properly. You've gotta land flat on your back and make sure your feet hit the ground at the same time as your back, with your legs tucked. You've also got to slap the mat with your arms at the same time so it makes one noise and not loads of little noises! You've gotta hit the mat with the palms of your hands so you don't hurt your elbows and you have to keep your chin tucked. It's so much to think about as you're somersaulting through the air! We then did some Schoolboy Takedowns. This is used if you're behind your opponent or he is close in front of you. You put one hand around his/her waist, step round them and turn, grabbing the inside (not too far inside) of their right leg and pulling them over for the pin. We did this enough times so that everyone had done it on each other. Slyk demonstrated one on me. He's heavy and i could hardly breathe when he was pinning me!Slyk had to leave because he had a match that night, but one of the other new guys took me aside and showed me some grapples he had learnt. It was really good fun. I went back to my new home and met a Swedish guy called Frederik. He's cool and seems quite clever. I heated up the remainders from Mam's dinner at TGI's that she couldn't eat and ate it myself. Then I went upstairs to get things sorted and to rest and relax after my first wrestler. I half fell asleep listening to the radio and decided to go downstairs, watched a bit of TV then went to bed.
02/03/2003 I woke up at about 7am, then again at 8:15 and then got up at 10! I brought a whole new meaning to having ICE cold milk on my cornflakes! It turns out my fridge is set a bit to high and the milk had almost completely frozen. Luckily there was a bit that hadnt so I could actually eat my cereal! I had a look at the fridge and noticed that it was broken, so I cant turn it down, or up. Whatever way you look at it, I can't make it warmer. So I'm gonna have to put up with having ice on my cereal each morning! Ingo, a German who lives there and Frederik were going to a coffee shop and invited me along, but just as we were going out into the rain, Mam and Dad rang to say they were home safe. I'd have loved to talk for longer, but I couldn't. Hopefully they'll ring again soon. Aah, how sweet! I went up to the coffee shop, grabbed a hot chocolate, talked and read a bit and then went back to the house to grab my gear and go out wrestling again. It was tipping it down, but luckily I had a hood on my coat so I didn't get wet. I was late getting to wrestling, but not too late and Slyk turned up a bit after me. To start with, I was shown some grapple moves. First I was shown the hammerlock. This is where you get your opponents arm "locked" behind his back so that he can't get out ;o) lol i was shown how to get out of this impossibly escapable lock aswell. There are loads of ways, like breaking the lock with your right arm and then pulling the opponent in front of you and grabbing his arm. After learning a few of those moves, we went into the ring to do some proper warm-ups. First we'd all run through the ring one after another, over the 2nd rope, backwards over the 2nd rope, etc. Then we'd have 2 people in the ring. One person would Irish whip the other (pull opponents left arm with yours) towards the rope and turn to his right to fall frontwards onto the mat. The other person would jump over him and run towards the opposite rope. The guy on the ground gets up (to his right) and jumps over the running guy, then goes back down onto the mat. We usually do this 5 times, but for some reason it was only done twice. The "old timers" did some combos of moves whilst the "young guns" practiced landing properly. For some reason I wasn't doing as well as I was yesterday, but I got it again towards the end. 2 little kids, who know Slyk and some of the others kept annoying him and so he had a proper wrestling match with them. It was quite amusing. I got the T-Line back home and made up some chicken noodle soup. By made up, I mean opened a tin and heated it up. I decided to make it a bit spicier by adding salt and pepper and put in too much pepper so it wasn't as nice, but ok. I'll learn. I watched a bit of TV, had some brownies which Eve, the lady who owns the house, made and went to bed.