Reported by Typhlosion on Wed 26 Oct 2011 22:44:38 UTC
Last updated by Typhlosion on Thu 27 Oct 2011 13:03:46 UTC
Section: PKMN.NET Meet-Up

All paths lead to Peter!

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It's the 26th October, and we've spent all day travelling the globe from West to East and back again to celebrate Happy 22nd Birthday Peter Day!

You see, I had a bizarre dream last night. A mysterious woman came into my bedroom, robed in beautiful cyan... well, robes. And she whispered that Peter himself is integral to certain aspects of Pokémon. To be more specific, he (pretty much) directly links to certain Pokémon, ones which he happens to find the most adorable. So to test this theory, we woke up, kicked aside the cyan robes which had fallen out of my wardrobe (erm, moving on), grabbed our passports and set off on the first ever Peter Quest!

We started off with the lovely Oshawott, of course. In fact, this deserves a repeat of an image used for my own birthday news update:

Lovely stuff. Oshawott, whether in cute, cuddly, sweet form or cake form, has the National Pokédex number of #501. So to start off with we headed straight to 501 Queen, a streetcar route in a Canadian city called Toronto, which is in Canada. Riding the 24.43 km (15.18 miles) long route we pondered closely over what this might mean. 501 Queen is such a strange name is it not? Then it struck us. The next clue which fate had cleverley left us was staring us right in the face.

Queen should need no introduction and on the flight back we listened to all of their hits. Well, the ones we could remember anyway. It gets a bit difficult after you've gotten all the obvious ones out of the way. But why had fate sent us Queen? We soon got our answer, in the shape of possibly their most famous song of all. We Are The Champions happens to be one of my most favourite songs ever, and since Peter loves his puppets, we needed a group of puppets who had performed the song. Step forward Avenue Q.

After a good old sing-along, we landed back in London. Quite fitting really, as the place we all discovered Avenue Q and the next clue. We wandered the streets of London. I wished I could go back to college, Peter was debating the uses of the internet with Joeno, who reminded him that he would ruv him forever and that all this too-ing and fro-ing was only for now. The trail was starting to look cold until by coincidence we ended up at the headquarters of Cadbury, in Uxbridge. And as everybody knows, if the clue is Cadburys, you need to visit Cadbury World. Since New Zealand was a bit too far away, we reluctantly traipsed north to Birmingham.

A fun time was had by all. But eventually we found ourselves walking back, lost. It was then we solved it. The very academically-gifted Peter was drawn almost magnetically to the nearby University, where we realised he was teaching in another form. Dr Peter Searle (PhD don't you know) had been found, and the path given to us by fate had been reached.

We were all buoyed by our discovery, but the challenge was only half complete. Next up was Audino, National Dex number #531. Like all educated people, we immediately realised that 531 is a Harshad number. Joeno, remembering an ancient text he had read shortly after being born, knew that they had been initally defined by Dattaraya Ramchandra Kaprekar, an Indian Mathematician. And so we set off on the first flight to Maharashtra in India, to find Pune, the place of the man with the long name's studying.

This was a slightly most tricky visit. The weather was hot, all signs pointed towards the Taj Mahal and the food wasn't as nice as the stuff back home. We walked around the markets and despite three offers to trade the (very quiet) Rex for a cow, a packet of Skittles and 472 Jaffa Cakes, we decided to stick together and keep going. Just as we were starting to give up, the (also very quiet) Rob spotted a sign. "Pune - The Oxford of the East". We knew we had to set off immediately back to good ol' Blighty, to Oxford.

While Peter's magnetism once again drew him to the University, Joeno and myself headed for a quiet drink at the famous QI Building. We quickly realised we'd found the next clue, especially given Peter's love for the show (he's been to see it recorded. I am not in the slightest bit jealous). So after finding the giant University magnet and turning it off (that's next years story), and the light of the day starting to dim, we sat down to watch an episode of QI, hopeful that we were close to solving fate's second path to Peterdom.

Stephen Fry is one of Peter's biggest fans

We watched and we watched and we watched. But as we headed back to the car (that had conveniently appeared from nowhere) for the long journey back to the Admin Castle, we were ready to admit defeat. Car. Car. Carr. Joeno had it. We'd watched a lot of Jimmy Carr in those QI episodes. Could he be the missing link? A quick Google lead us to an image of him. And what was the website this image was on? Right on the front page of Peter Searle.com. We had done it once again!

So remember people, all roads ultimately lead to Peter. As we have found out:

Oshawott -> 501 -> 501 Queen -> We Are The Champions -> Avenue Q -> London -> Cadbury -> Carbury World Birmingham -> The University of Birmingham -> Peter

Audino -> 531 -> Harshad number -> D.R. Kaprekar -> Pune, India -> "Oxford of the East" -> QI Club -> Jimmy Carr -> Peter

Hope you enjoyed the day Peter, and the upcoming celebrations. You've got roughly 20 minutes left for presents and eating now. Think of those Air Miles though.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY PETER!

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