So this weekend I found a very nice, and quick, Mexican fast food restaurant in Oxford just off the high street.

Two of the things I miss most living in England (having grown up in San Diego) are baseball and Mexican food.

There are a handful of Mexican places around (though nothing compared to what you would find in the states) but no place that you can go get a quick burrito and move on. All the current places are Chillis and other Mexican theme restaurants which are fine if you want to sit for a few hours and listen to recorded mariachi band music and look at sombreros hanging on the wall. The Mission Grill in Oxford was a nice change– some Mexican takeaway finally.

We went there on Saturday night on the way to the cinema. There was a line of university students going out the door and it definitely seemed a popular place with them. I had a chicken burrito and a Corona before walking to the Phoenix Picture House cinema. It was absolutely fantastic. I’m glad someone finally bucked the trend of opening another sandwich shop and did something different.

It doesn’t look like a chain (not yet), so I presume it is a start-up. Here’s the website.

We don’t have professional baseball here, but the Chargers played at Wembley this weekend (didn’t find out about it until all the tickets were gone). I was never much of an American Football fan, but it’s a start. Now, if we can get the Padres over here, I’ll be set.

My best friend growing up was Ted Falagan. We met in the fourth grade and he was my best friend all the way through high school. There was nobody I was more close to (outside my own family) in my formative years. We were into sci-fi, comic books, movies, and television.

He has been making movies as long as I can remember. We used to make little films on a bulky camcorder around our houses growing up. He’s still making movies in San Diego (with a troupe of actors called the Fault Line Players), but now he’s doing it professionally.

One of the nice things about the internet age is that I can see my friend’s movies online even when I am on the other side of the world. While his films regularly appear in film festivals around the states, some of them have recently been put up on Youtube. Most of them can be found here and here.

Here’s one of my favourite movies available at the moment, although there are other good ones: