LiveJournal Project - September 2002

I've been working on this most of the night - just want to get through 2002 and then I think I'll take a break.

Date: 2002-09-07 01:41
Subject: vacation time...
ibiza, here we come.
i'll be back on the 17th, hopefully full of nifty thoughts and kick-ass pictures to share with y'all.

better go make sure all my shit is packed.
Music: Paul Oakenfold - Live in Ibiza
Mood: awake

Date: 2002-09-17 21:05
Subject: i'm baaaaaaaaaack!
yeah, i've returned from my balearic adventure. a full report and a bunch of pictures will be coming shortly. but for the moment i gotta eat.

what they say about "post ibiza depression' is indeed true, though. i'm sitting here listening to a CD that i picked up while over there, and it's reminding me very much of the last night before we left for the airport when the vibe was just overwhelming. anyway, yeah, food. more later.
Music: Madelyne - Beautiful Child (Hiver and Hammer Vocal Mix)
Mood: hungry

Date: 2002-09-18 13:42
Subject: ibiza photos....
here ya go, by popular request, a photo view of my ibiza trip...
actual review and diary to follow when i have more time to write....
Editor's note ... I actually have all my old photos from this trip, and I just went back and looked through them. Virtually the photos from inside the various clubs we hit are horrible. The outdoor ones are OK, but I see no point in posting a bunch of those. Anyway, just for posterity's sake, I'll post one from Amnesia and one from a hike I took.


Music: Blank & Jones - In Da Mix 06/02 DI Exclusive
Mood: content

Date: 2002-09-20 01:20
Subject: it's been awhile...
psylence is doing it, so why can't i?
It's quiz time... -Ed.
Quiz name: Something about brain dominance
Results: Whole Brain Dominant, leaning to the right
You like flexible structure. You use your deep insight and logic to solve problems. You enjoy experiencing many new things. You have at least one area of expertice that allows you to demonstrate your creativity.

Time: 02:47
Subject: ibiza review, part 1
please note that as you're reading this, it's written in a sort of diary format, and was written over the course of several days, so if it seems to not make sense at points, that's probably why. instead of trying to write one big spiel upon my return and likely forgetting a lot of stuff, i tried to update on a regular basis so i could just copy and paste it all in here. so yeah, this is the story of ravyn's mad adventure.

day -1: (phoenix to calgary): so it's about 10 am and i'm getting ready to go to calgary, and i really don't want to go on this trip. strange, i suppose, that i wouldn't want to go to ibiza, of all places, but perhaps it would be more accurate to say that i'd rather be going with someone else. hopefully when it's all said and done i'll be able to say that it was better than i thought it'd be. more updates later.

almost noon, now, and i'm en route to denver. i'm not really sure what's going on here, but i feel like i'm going to have a panic attack or something. it feels like my heart is racing and i've got a horrible case of nerves. ugh. hopefully whatever it is that's bothering me will go away soon. onto the next flight... the inflight entertainment is showing a rerun of this year's belmont stakes horse race. i've seen this same shit on the last three flights to calgary over the last couple months. can't they get any new material? you'd have to have been hiding under a rock to not know that war emblem made a run at the triple crown this year but ended up losing the third race. anyway, they then showed some special feature on christie brinkley and her mansion in the hamptons. once again, who cares? she's old, washed up, and not worth another banal human interest piece. what i find really recockulous is that they showed a scene where she's testifying before congress on some environmental issue. how is it that celebrities always seem to have the ear of the elected officials? oh yeah, i forgot... campaign contributions. bleh. another hour to go before i get to calgary. happy happy joy joy. not.

day 0: noon on sunday and so far things seem to be going ok, except for the fact that i'm getting sick. i woke up friday morning with a small scratch in my throat and didn't think anything of it, but now i'm congested and have a full-on sore throat. blah. hopefully, this is just a short-term thing and i'll be better by the time we actually get to ibiza. i've not had to deal with chantal's mother or the little blond gremlin much at all, and chantal and i seem to be getting on ok. it still feels a bit weird, but it isn't as bad as i was expecting. flight leaves in nine hours for london. i'll probably have more to say then.

it's now about 11am london time, i'm on the plane with about two and a half hours to go before we land and i feel like absolute shit. the pizza that i ate for dinner last night which i really didn't want has come back to haunt me, creating massive pockets of gastrointestinal gas but so far it has steadfastly refused my attempts at egress. i'm sure you really didn't want to know that, but oh well. my cold seems to have gotten worse, and i've not yet had a single moment of sleep. this is not an auspicious beginning for what, in theory, is supposed to be a mad fun trip.....

so now we've almost made it. we're sitting in the barcelona airport watching people get off the plane that we're going to be getting on. at this point i'm far too exhausted to be able to think about anything except getting to the hotel, hopefully with my luggage in tow and fully intact, and getting some sleep. hopefully tomorrow i'll feel better and be ready to unleash the insanity.

arrival in ibiza...day 1.
i am ravyn's angry bunghole. so we finally got here and got settled in and already the shit is starting to go wrong. our room is reminiscient of london, where we only had two single beds instead of a queen or something. i think i'm getting sicker, as i believe the cold has started to spread to my lungs. maybe i'll have full-on pneumonia by the time this trip is done. and to top it off, i'm woken up at 5am this morning to the sound of water. not rain, mind you, but water dripping into our room in three places from the room above us. after spending a good five minutes trying to explain this to the front desk people, we get the manager to come up with us to check it out. it turns out that the guy above us has fallen asleep from drinking too much, but before going off to the land of Z, he forgot to turn the tub off and flooded his whole room - no, actually the moron flooded a good portion of the 3rd floor. great. anyway, they moved us into a new room for the night, but tomorrow we'll be back aboard the ark. hopefully the front desk people who work during the day have a better grasp of the english that they're supposed to speak.

day 2:
things have so far been much better today. i'm still sick, but i found a farmacia - that's pharmacy for us on this side of the atlantic - and got some cold medicine, so i think i'm starting to get a bit better. we went down to the front desk and they moved us to another room, this one with a queen size bed instead of two twin beds. this room is dry and not moldy, either, so this is a good thing. our day didn't begin until about 3pm this afternoon- since neither chantal or i were able to sleep on the flights over here, we crashed out hardcore last night. anyway, after dealing with the front desk staff and finding the drugstore, we walked around for several hours down by the port, checking out tons of shops and such. i picked up a cd, pair of shoes, and a pair of nifty pants- gotta look spiffy for club outings and all. the style of dress out here is much different than back home, especially where women's fashion is concerned. the girls out here seem much more stylish and dressed up, even if they're not going anywhere special. there are a lot of people out here, though, who try to cover up their aesthetic imperfections by the use of clothing - i guess what i'm saying is that there are a lot of ugly people (well, nice bodies, but a face that would scare the dead) that are quite good at diverting your eye toward a different part of their presence. anyway, i'm really curious to see what the clubbers like to wear. we're going out tonight to pacha for the perfecto closing party with paul oakenfold and pete tong. it ought to be interesting, to say the least. hopefully i'll be able to sneak my camera in and get some good pictures. more later.

ok, the club was pretty cool, and i got some good pictures of the djs and some of the people and managed to get a pretty good groove on for a little while as the club got more and more packed. the pictures probably speak for themselves. i do have some things to bitch about, though. first of all, the list of djs that i'd gotten before we left was incorrect-paul oakenfold was supposed to be playing but he wasn't there. pete tong headlined the night and played a great set, so i can't complain about that. well, yeah, i can - because we paid 50 euros each to get in, thinking we were going to see paul oakenfold. 50 euros is pretty damn steep to begin with, but to be screwed out of a DJ that you were hoping to see and still pay that kind of money? fuckin' christ. but what was beyond recockulous was the price of water. 8 euros for a small 150ml bottle of water. and you can't fill it up again in the bathroom because they salinate the water to make it undrinkable. money-grubbin' bastards! 8 euros, which is about 8 dollars, is more than you pay in a vegas strip club! i wonder how many people die every year from dehydration because they were rolling, dancing, and didn't have the money for another bottle of water. ah well...

about 4:30 and we're back at the hotel. my overall impression of pacha is that it's ok - somewhat snooty and not that spectacular - at least not what i was expecting in terms of ibiza hype and all that - kinda reminded me of something i might see in south beach, miami, or some other such place. but hey, there was a cute girl eyeballing me at the club, so i can add +3 self-esteem points. i suppose i should also make mention of my chemical adventures - i dropped a total of 4 pills over the course of the evening, and magically, i don't feel sick anymore. no congestion, no stuffiness, no general feeling of blah. forget the nyquil, give me some E. =)

day 3:
we slept. yeah, that's really about all we did. probably a combination of rolling and illness. had dinner around 10pm and it was quite good, although it didn't seem to agree with my stomach and i had a bad case of montezuma's revenge. hmm, ok, montezuma isn't spanish. cortez's revenge doesn't sound as funny, though. at least it wasn't the water. =)

day 4: thursday
it's about 7am and we're waiting for breakfast - it'll be nice to actually be awake during the day so that we can go diving or poke around the island on a boat tour or something. yeah, i suppose that's wishful thinking, since all we actually tried to do was find the post office, and we were going the right way but stopped 50m before we got there and turned around. doh!!! so, for the people i sent postcards to, this probably explains why you still haven't gotten them. =/ anyway, we made our way back to the hotel and it seems that i'm more or less feeling better, but now chantal's getting sick. we napped for a bit and then went out to find a restaurant that the hotel front desk guy suggested. we didn't find it, though, after about 45 minutes of walking in circles, and this ultimately leads chantal and i into a pissy fight. we're pissed off at each other, and she goes off to the hotel restaurant for some dinner while i'm lying in bed thinking "fuck it, i want to go home." i end up deciding that i'm going to go out tonight, with or without her, because i want to see tall paul and tiesto. in the end, we both go - after grabbing some more money from an atm so that i can fork over insane amounts of money for water, we hop in a cab and head out to amnesia. another 50 quid each to get in, but this time it doesn't seem like quite a rip off. this place is light-years better than pacha - better music, better lights, better vibe - much more like what i was expecting out of ibiza. people were a lot friendlier, too - we sat down at one point and a couple of british guys just came up and started talking to us, so we had friends for the night. all without doing anything. anyway, the four of us are out on the dancefloor shakin our asses and just having a grand ol' time when chantal's fish dinner decides that it wants to be set free. about 4am and she's not feeling well at all, so she goes back to the hotel and i stay at the club to hear the rest of tiesto's set. both he and tall paul were fuckin' great - and one thing that i'd been noticing is that they were all playing tracks that i'd NEVER heard before. i guess we just don't get the really good shit on this side of the pond. anyway, about 5am and i'm pretty tired, so back to the hotel. grab some breakfast, get some sleep. one thing i've noticed, as far as chemicals go... i've rolled twice this week (tues, thurs) with 4 pills each night, and these have got to be the cleanest pills i've ever had. a nice 4-5 hour trip to happy-land, with no harsh comedown, no feelings of being cracked out, no depression or weird moodiness -- nothing. just roll, end, and go to sleep - then get up the next day like nothing happened.

day 5: friday. another sleep/recovery day, and chantal's full-on sick now. we didn't do jack shit, really. i asked the hotel people about places to go diving or boating, and they told me that there weren't any, because summer's over. what the fuck?! these people are on crack. a couple days ago they tried to tell chantal that KFC was a "nice restaurant that serves chicken" and now they're telling me that there are no places to go out and have some water fun? morons. i really think they like to fuck with tourists around here -- we asked about directions to another restaurant and they sent us to burger king. fuckin' christ, if i wanted burger king, i'd have stayed home! =/

this update's long enough, i'll finish everything in another entry.

Date: 2002-09-22 04:04
Subject: as if we expected anything different?
Quiz name: Do you give a fuck?
Results: Not sure, but I think it's "you totally do not give a fuck"
What's it mean? Obvious, don't you think?
Music: DJ Skott - 3.7.01 Power Trance

Time: 11:47
Subject: hell yeah!
surfing around usenet and what did i find? somebody recorded tiesto's live set at amnesia while i was there, listening to it live. sure, it may not sound the same on my little computer speakers, and there're no laser lights scanning the crowd or mad people with their hands in the air, but if i close my eyes, i can still remember it. =)
Music: DJ Tiesto - Live at Cream Amnesia 10-09-02
Mood: happy

Date: 2002-09-24 20:15
Subject: (no subject)
why is it that people who know very little about me or my life seem to think that they automatically understand the problems which come my way and know how i'm thinking and what i'm thinking and the way my thought processes work?

fuckin' christ!
Mood: pissed off

Date: 2002-09-26 18:17
Subject: monitor goodness!
my new monitor came today.

it's one of these

happy happy! yeah, ok, so i can be a dork sometimes.

Date: 2002-09-28 19:18
Subject: i am the attack banana.
Quiz of some sort. Not even sure the name, but I guess the result is that I was the attack banana.
i really wonder what freud would have to say about this one.

in any event, i'm not supposed to be home right now. but someone who was supposed to be here almost an hour and a half ago has still not showed up nor has the phone rang to inform me of a delay or change in plans. and i'm freakin' hungry, dammit!

Date: 2002-09-30 18:38
Subject: the rest of the ibiza review
as you can see, i've really taken my sweet time in getting this done... anyway, the last two days of the ibiza trip, and conclusions...

day 6: saturday, about 7:30 in the morning. i'm wide awake, chantal's in bed sick with whatever illness she came down with. i'm really thinking that the rest of this trip is probably doomed, since she doesn't even want to get out of bed to get some food. so many things that i'd thought i was going to be doing on this trip, and so few of them have actually happened. it's quite depressing. anyway, she decided to stay in and sleep, so i went out exploring the island on foot - at least as much as could be done. i went down to the post office, mailed some post cards, and then headed down to the beach. i ended up walking quite a bit - all the way down the coastline to some old tower and then by the airport before turning back around. spent some time sitting on the beach reading a bruce lee book and noted that the europeans truly have no shame. more hairy, fat old men in speedos and old women with their boobs down to their ankles than i could've imagined in my worst nightmares. of course, there were some really cute girls that took full advantage of the topless nature of the beach, but they were offset by the "ewwws!" that passed by my field of vision. got back to the hotel around 2 in the afternoon and decided to take a nap. despite the "do not disturb" sign on the door, this is the third day in a row we've been harassed by overzealous housekeeping staff wanting to clean the room or give us some towels. fuckin' christ - what part of "no molesten por favor" don't you understand? yeah, so we got some food around 11 and then thought about clubbing but didn't. what else is new?

day 7: sunday. spent some time with chantal down at the beach since she was feeling better, and i got quite roasted under the ibicencan sun, but at least we were out and about doing stuff, and that was a marked improvement. we didn't go to space for "we love sundays" with sasha and a bunch of others, big surprise. yeah, so we fucked around all day doing a lot of nothing, and at this point i have to say that i'm ready to go home. i spent a lot of money on this trip and it wasn't at all worth it. anyway, about 2am monday morning and we decided that it would be absolutely pathetic if we didnt go clubbing one more time, so we got in a cab and headed over to san antonio for the judgement closing party at eden. met a couple of british kids in the guest-list line whose friends didn't show up, so they invited us to go with them, thus saving us a bunch of money on entry fees. we talked to them for about a half hour waiting in line about our experiences so far and they gave a bunch of suggestions for a future trip (they also happened to live on the island, so that helps, i'm sure). anyway... we got into eden, knowing that we only had about 2 hours before we'd have to leave and go catch a plane back - but we made the best of it. i remember one point in particular when the whole trip just turned around - i was standing there, dancing to judge jules' set, and for a moment i stopped and just stood there, and the music and the lights and the vibe just overwhelmed me. suddenly i didn't want to leave. it'd taken me all week to find the magical vibe that i was in search of (note that i'm completely sober this night, too) -- when everything just clicked together and that euphoria washed over me. those of you that have been to raves and done ecstasy and taken that feeling and recreated it while sober would probably have a good idea of what i'm talking about. that indescribable sense of "life is fuckin' great and i'm having a blast and i'm going to dance because this music just r0x0rs my s0xx0rs!" yeah. =) unfortunately, that feeling was short-lived, as we had to make our way back to the hotel, shower and get to the airport for the flight home.

overall... well, up until that last night i wasn't terribly thrilled with this trip. i felt like i'd spent a lot of money for nothing - got a hotel which really sucked and didn't live up to its advertising. the illnesses, well, yeah, those were problems outside of my control, so i can't really blame anyone for that, and i recognize that i'd probably have had a much better time if we'd both stayed healthy. but as i look back on the trip, i also know that i did experience about an hour of a purely magical feeling, and i know that there was much more of that to be found on the island. so i definitely want to go back, keeping in mind the lessons learned from this trip.

• we stayed on the wrong side of the island. all the crazy europeans stay in san antonio, which is where we should've been, instead of staying in the much quieter ibiza town. the goal of this trip was to be massive nuttiness and party mayhem for a week, and i think that if we'd been surrounded by other people with the same idea, that would've helped.
• not enough advance planning. sure, i spent a bunch of time on the ibiza-spotlight message board and thought i had all sorts of stuff figured out that i wanted to do, but somehow when i got there it didn't seem to help.
• and the hotel... fuck that hotel. their website talks a good game about how they can help you organize all sorts of shit - tours, diving, whatever - and how they have a multilingual staff... well, fuck them. i'll say it again. fuck the hotel royal plaza. their staff could speak english, sure, but they couldn't understand it too well when it was spoken back to them. and they were no help at all as far as organizing stuff to do.
• need to go with a larger group. clubbing in general isn't fun with only one person - but if you have a group of people who are all set on having a good time and getting crazy and whatever else, then it makes for a much better experience for all. that, and if you have people who want to do different things, having a larger group means that people with like interests can go do whatever without having to worry about the other people in the group.
• stay longer. a week just isn't enough.

anyway... next summer i'm going back. hopefully with a bunch of friends this time. so anyone who thinks that a couple weeks in ibiza sounds like a good time - well, start saving your money and next year we'll show them how it's done, desert style. =)
Music: http://www.di.fm - Digitally Imported
Mood: content