One Long Vacation

Photos

2006-06-05T15:59:00.000-07:00

All photos are now here.

End of Days

2006-05-30T18:12:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow, my vacation comes to an end.

Thank you to the 5 people that have read these pages, the 5 people that have managed to result in some 1000 hits, some 600 unique visitors. I am both bewildered at the response and humbled. I hope I haven't bored you too much. I may even have a post or two left on my thoughts about returning to work, we'll have to wait and see.

I broke down on Monday and called to order an internet hook-up at home (again). The time was set for today between noon and 2. The last time they couldn't figure out where the line into the building was. This time I missed the call by being in the shower. I guess it just wasn't meant to be. I suppose I may try again in a few months, but I just wasn't ready to make a commitment to a new appointment today, so I remain sans Internet. C'est la vie.

I've been on holliday now for 4 months, and like all things, this too must pass. My emotions on returning to the quotidian of my everyday life are very mixed. My dream of being laid off will apparently not come true, so if I choose to leave the decision will have to be my own. While my dream of running from this life is definitely palatable, it will not be: I will not run from anything, but I will run to something. I just have to figure out what that something will be.

It may even be the case that after a few months back at work, I will come to terms with the banality of life as a programmer once more, and settle into an uneasy tolerance for the work, as uninspired and uninspiring as it is. Wild fantasies of living life as an actor, or writer, or journalist, are just that: fantasies. Tomorrow I'll go back to the real world. The infinite curse of the real. The end of a vacation is depressing, well, perhaps that is too strong a word.

Realistically, it isn't depression, it is a sadness and a mourning for what may have been. This is, I think, the discontent and angst of the approach of 30: it is the mourning for a youth that must pass; for decisions left unmade; for paths left unexplored. This is the curse of growing up, a maturity as inevitable as time, and just as unwanted.

The D.C. Pub-Crawl

2006-05-30T17:56:00.000-07:00

We took the Amtrack from Baltimore to DC for $20: Penn Station to Union Station. After some wandering with a duffel bag that seemed to grow heavier with time, we managed to discover that the Hostel International that we planned to stay at was full. After a quick phone call, though we managed to find another Hostel for $20 on the other side of town. Unfortunately, we had to go through the ghetto to get there.

After settling in (read: losing the heavy luggage), we made for the mall, those several city blocks that encompass innumerable museums, congress, the white house, and more monuments than one can count... okay, well, maybe not that many.

In a bizarrly ironic twist, when we stopped to take the first photo of the day at the house of congress, I discovered that in our day in Baltimore that we dubbed "The Day to Recharge our Batteries" I forgot to recharge my digital camera batteries. The very digital camera I bought specifically for taking photos of, say, monuments and such in DC. Fortunately, we were hungry, and after a brief walk to Union Station for a bite to eat, I was able to buy one of those disposable cameras. Fortunately, even though they tend not to take such good photos, photoshop fixes most exposure issues.

It's easy to see how easy it is to be patriotic in America when there are this many symbols of greatness, from the giant phalic symbol dedicated to George Washington, to the somber Lincoln memorial with it's several-storey high engraving of the Ghettysburg address. Say what you want about American politicians: they've got a penchant and understanding of rhetoric and speech that goes beyond the pale.

Museums like the Smithsonian and the National Air and Space Museum join ranks with museums of art and political institutions. If one were to choose a location to base some of the arguably most powerful decisions and decision makers, it's hard to think of a more imposing locale.

Being memorial day, the Vietnam and Korean war monuments took on a particularly reflective mood, especially when joined in your reflection by groups like Rolling Thunder and their assorted Vietnam Vet motorcycle clubs.

After passing away from the intimidating power of the mall, we made our way past the White House towards M Street, on our way to Georgetown. This resulted in what we like to call "The M Street Pub Crawl," also known as "The Georgetown Pub Crawl." While it was interesting enough to hob-knob with preppy university kids from as far off as Yale and Harvard, the highlight of the trip by far was chilling for drinks in the lounge of the Watergate Hotel and listening in to journalists tell war-stories of interviews with the Clintons and Bushes of the world, and compare notes on their opinions of opinion makers and world affairs.

Somewhere around 3am we found ourselves back in Georgetown trying to hail a cab that would take us to our hostel. It turned out that most cabbies were unwilling to go there. A smattering of excuses not to drive us there included:
"I have diabetes."
"I don't know where that is." "Nope, sorry, I don't know where that is."
"No. Forget it. Not gonna happen."
"I'm picking up someone else."
"I don't speak English."

Eventually, we found someone who had no problem with making the trip, for a price.

After a long sleep, we made our way back to Union Station, and BWI airport somewhere between Baltimore and DC. For future reference, the Amtrack is not the most price-friendly method for making this trip. Try the MARC train or one of the many busses and light rail options.

And like that, our trip was over.

5 Days on a Boat: An Illustrated Journey

2006-05-27T00:10:00.002-07:00

So Brad and I managed to find our baggage and get a train into downtown Baltimore. Of course, we had to have a few drinks at the Airport first, and then again once we got into the Harbour area.

Soon I managed to buy myself a new Camera, and a pair of Sandals, and quickly we were able to head for the terminal where we would meet up with the ship.

Priority one upon arrival was, of course, to find Richie and get another round. From now on, who needs beer when we've got umbrella drinks? Awwwwww yeah! I think I'm going on about 36 hours without sleep at this point. We both managed some napping, but does that really help much?

Before we left port, we had to attend "Boat drill." Can you spot anything that's different with the 2 guys in the middle? Hmmm, what's different here.... hey, wait, how come everyone has a life-jacket except for us? Oh, well, we can probably swim.

After much drinking and lounging by the pool, we finally arrived in Bermuda, where we rented scooters. It was the eve of Richie's birthday, so obviously we set out in search of a bar.

Finally, after much travelling, and remarkably only 1 stop at a bar along the way, we arrived in Hamilton. Scooters are so widespread here, that there are specific parking spots set aside, so it was pretty easy to park and begin looking for another beer.

Eventually we managed to find one, and after a quick return to the ship to drop off the scooters and get changed, we were back in Hamilton for dinner and, well, more bars. Unfortunately, on the way from bar 3 (4? 5?) to bar 4 (5? 6?) we lost half of our group.

Midnight hit while we were waiting, so we had to celebrate Richie's birthday with a round of Jager Bombs without them. to Richie!

Fortunately, everyone wandered past soon enough. We only managed to work in 2 or 3 rounds before they showed up.

We were a little hung-over the next morning, but we didn't consider that a valid excuse for not going to the beach.

Unfortunately, because we were a little wait rising and shining, we couldn't stay there too long.

Now, though, we had food, rest, and sun. It was time to head back to the ship for some more drinks... and perhaps some midnight shuffleboard?

Sadly, our time on the boat was running out, it was soon time to say goodbye to new friends, in the traditional Vampire style.

Brad, ever vigilant in his stance against tradition, ignored the traditional method, and swam for shore.

The hangover after 5 days of partying, though, was pretty damn rough. Especially since we were up and out of the room by 7, and off the boat by 11.

After a while we managed to find a hotel in Baltimore and catch up on some much needed sleep. Now we just have to figure out what to do next.

Round trip back to Baltimore

2006-05-26T23:55:00.000-07:00

So it turns out that a cruise isn't much more than a party that lasts several days, and travels about. There's not really much that you see or do, other than, well, party. I remember once waxing on about the difference between the journey and the destination: a cruise is really all journey and no destination.

Don't get me wrong, sitting around and doing nothing while taking a break from drinking and socializing is always fun, but it's rather empty when that's all that you're doing. Sure Bermuda has nice beaches; sure sitting by a pool with umbrella drinks is relaxing. In the long run is it anything more that couldn't be accomplished by staying at home? I have to wonder.

Still, at least now I can say that I've been on a cruise, and that I've been to Bermuda. And let's face it, a 5 day party is still a 5 day party. I couldn't see myslef paying full price for a cruise, though. Kinda like Vegas, I guess: I can go to a party at home, and I'll probably meet a lot more people that I'm likely to see again.

It sucks making new friends when you know that the end of the trip is the last time you'll see them.

Of course, Friday turned into a recovery day. I guess that 5 days of partying is about the point when a solid day of recovery is required.

In Baltimore

2006-05-21T05:05:00.000-07:00

I arrived in Baltimore on time, unfortunately I can't say the same for my luggage. With all the travel that I've done over the past few months, through Africa, Europe, to and from North America, I had to travel to the United States to lose a bag. Ooops.

Fortunately, this seems like it should work out well: Brad gets in at 9:17, and my bag is supposed to arrive at 9:30. It got stuck in Chicago when I moved on. I can understand it's desire to stay there: O'Hare is a nicer airport than Baltimore, a nicer place to spend the night.

I managed to grab a few hours sleep on a bench. Compared to Dublin, this airport is definitely a nicer place to crash out for a bit. I also had a chance to look over some maps and things, and chat with a Dental Hygenist on leave from the US Millitary in Turkey. I forgot how many women served in the US army. They also prefer to travel as nondescript as possible, ie without obvious signs of being in the millitary, such as guns, uniforms, and olive drab duffel bags. Who knew?

I didn't realize how close this airport is to D.C. It's almost closer to go to Washington D.C. than to Baltimore itself. Wacky! There's a plethora of trains and busses and such that connect this airport with everything from Anapolis to New York. With an infrastructure like this, you could mistake yourself for being in Europe, except for all the accents.

There are two things that I need to do before getting on the boat (ship?) this afternoon -- besides getting my luggage, of course:
1.) Buy a point and click digital to replace my SLR that I lost in a very expensive game of Frisbee Golf through Kitsilano late one evening -- long story that I might post later. Actually, it's not really that long, but internet access in the airport is $6/hour. Note to self: don't take your camera home unless you're dead sober. Leave it at a friend's place where you can get it later.
2.) I need sandals.

The Economics of Water

2006-05-16T15:56:00.000-07:00

I was sent this article about the difficulties of finding water in Africa. Since this is my blog and all, I have no problem with sharing my opinion.

This article touches on what I think are the three corners of what is needed in Africa: Health, Education, and Infrastructure. This is what Africa really needs to move from "Undeveloped" to truly "Developing." The great thing about these three items is that they're auto-catalytic.

Health allows for Education and Infrastructure. An unhealthy individual -- one that is under-nourished, dehydrated, or sick -- has little interest in learning to read and write, let alone mathematics, engineering, etc. Though, I would imagine, they would definitely be interested in learning a little medicine.

Education allows for better Health through learning about hygene, sources of infection, the ability to read more complicated warnings about water, food, etc. An understanding of how to plan for droughts, and methods for avoiding them. It allows for engineers that can build infrastructure, and doctors, nurses, farmers, and other professions that improve health.

Infrastructure provides needed supplies for Education and Healthcare, but also provides clean drinking water, and removes disease-carrying garbage. It's hard to get Education into the rural areas of Africa, primarily because of Infrastructure. How does one attract an educated person to teach in a place without water, electricity, and so on? How does a rural area, where individuals survive on subsistence, how do these people provide a surplus of food stuffs, clothing, and so on that would support a specialized profession such as teaching without an Infrastructure to bring in supplies or allow a more complex economy based on trade?

Africa has water problems, it is one of the more difficult aspects of life in many countries there. Kenya, and Sudan, and other countries that border on or contain the Sahara desert have water shortages, but so do areas of North America: Nevada, Arizona, southern California for example are not exactly lush. The unfair reality of the Earth is that resources are not equally distributed, some places have more water, some places have more indiginous plants, animals, minerals, or oil resources.

How should these people solve their water crisis? Is the answer more wells that will pull water faster from the ground, or would that lower the water table and make it more difficult to dig new wells and springs while drying up existing wells? Is the answer developing desalinization and building an infrastructure network to deliver it half a continent inland? This would require research affordable and necessary only to the United States -- which finds it easier and cheaper to pipe it in from Canada and the Pacific Northwest. Maybe oil-rich and water-poor states of the Middle East will perfect this technology, since they do use it. At the moment, thought, it is still prohibitively expensive for countries with a GDP smaller than most western cities.

The shrinking of Kilimanjaro's glaciers is a contributing factor for Kenya and Tanzania's drought. These glaciers feed the rivers of Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda. While global climate change gets all the big funding these days, local climate change is as or more important, especially for Africa. It is widely believed that this shrinking is the result of deforestation on the lower slopes of the mountain. This in turn changes the moisture content of the air, resulting in less snowfall on the glaciers on the peak.

The solution would be to stop deforestation, but the people need fuel to cook with and boil water. Rising global oil prices are making alternatives to wood hard to come by. Wood is cheap, and relatively easy to get, while cooking oil and gas is expensive. These are not wealthy people.

Canada has a water surplus, but if we were to fill tankers with it and export it, how would that affect our local climate? What would we charge for an oil tanker filled with water? How would we pay for the fuel required to ship it, or the infrastructure to distribute it on the other side of the world? Would the local change in moisture lead to a problem similar to that of Africa? Glaciers are the rechargable batteries of water supply, they melt during the summer, supplying us with water and refill during the winter. If we remove nearby fresh water supplies for export, could this change the local moisture content of the atmosphere, reducing precipitation and leaving us in a similar situation to Kenya, Tanzania and other African nations? Is this a solution or simply a new problem? No one knows, or at least there is no consensus.

This is the real economics of global water: It's complicated, it's difficult, it's highly technical, and no-one has any good answers. While the appeal to emotion of a personal experience is helpful from a rhetorical standpoint -- it gives us a personal story that makes us feel sorry for the person that is presented as the victim -- it boils the topic down to simplicity without offering alternatives.

Unfortunately, this article doesn't provide, hint at, nor call for solutions. It simply makes us feel bad, and this is the problem with appeals to help developing nations: most often they're depressing and present little or no hope. Eventually, we all just start to tune them out.

Intelligently Designed Drunk Monkeys

2006-05-16T15:17:00.000-07:00

So it turns out that drunk monkeys are analagous to drunk people. Take that, Discovery Institute! Of course, I suppose their argument would be that the monkeys were a first draft of humans, or maybe the Designer was testing his drinking blueprints on "lesser life forms." I just think it's funny. Monkeys are always funny.

In only a few short days I'll be flying off to Baltimore. Why would anyone go to Baltimore you ask? I don't know, I answer. But more importantly, this is really signifying to me that I only have a few weeks -- days, really -- left before I have to return to my soul-less corporate life. Man, I really hope I get laid off.

I still haven't accomplished much. Although, I've noticed that Season 6 of The West Wing is a big improvement over Season 5. I also have come to the conclusion that the 40km bike route that I ride -- the one that runs from my place past UBC along SW Marine Drive -- takes an hour and a half. Also of import, and closely related, is that an hour and a half on a bike is more than enough punishment for my ass, and I don't really need to bike any longer than that in a day.

Oh, yeah, and if you're taking Translink anywhere, it's cheaper to buy a daypass than 2 tickets for 3 zones. Cheaper by about a buck.

Preparations for Phase 2

2006-05-10T01:24:00.000-07:00

Let me summarize the past couple of days since the last post:

First, Cinco de Mayo (aka May 5) was a lot of fun, kudos to Chewy for an awesome BBQ on Friday.

Saturday was the exact relaxed Saturday that I was looking for. Relaxed, calm, and not a whole lot went down. There was some rowing, and some socializing with my rowing folk, but that’s about it.

Sunday? Well… Daven and Jenny’s housewarming (which was also merged with Jenny’s going away – Have fun in London!) was a lot of fun. Let’s face it: this is the first weekend that Corona’s were bought, and the meaning should be obvious. The first buying of Corona of the year means that summer (or a reasonable hand-drawn facsimile) has arrived.

From Sunday’s adventures, the rule of thumb remains consistent: at any time, when one takes a day that you think will be relaxed, and at some point you insert Jager Bombs (a shot of Jager dropped into a half bottle of Red Bull) you will see the sun come up that day. At least, this is the new rule that I’ve come up with.

Rule is a sort of a strong word. I’d say that it’s more of a superstition, like hockey players not shaving for the playoffs, or football players not washing their jock-straps.

Moving on, I have only what, 3 weeks left of freedom? I’m at the point that I want to go back to work, but more for the everyday schedule than for the work. I think I might know what it is that I want to actually do, but I’m second guessing myself since I’ve thought the same thing so many times before and been disappointed – how does one break into the “Idle Rich” industry? Is that a reasonable career choice?

I’ve bought my ticket to Baltimore. For those with long memories: my good buddy Richie (or Ritchie, or Ritchy or Richy, it all depends I suppose on how you feel you want to interpret it) works on a cruise ship, and May 20-something is his birthday. Brad and I will be flying into Baltimore, meeting the ship, and going on a little trip down to a place that they call “Bermuda.” I’ve heard that it’s nice there, and I’m really looking forward to chilling out on the Vespas. The great joy in knowing someone on a cruise ship is the $10/day that they charge for the trip as opposed to whatever the other suckers get stuck with.

Today I bought my ticket into Baltimore. It was $600. I actually managed to find a better deal online than Flight Center came up with. They managed to beat the deal, but only after I pointed that out. This shows – at least in part – the importance of shopping around.

Besides assorted little side-errands that I ran around performing, I hung out at the beach, drank a few frothy pops, and grabbed dinner at Nevermind before watching some “Kenny vs Spenny” back at Brad’s. It was a rough Tuesday afternoon. I’d have photos if I didn’t leave my camera at Brad and Rose’s happy home, but these photos would be of Brad and Richie. Others will, I’m sure, appear during the cruise. At least I remembered to bring my bike home.

Speaking of bicycles. Today I also had my cycle tuned. The fine folks at “West Point Cycles,” not only sold me the bike, but they also cut the “Major Tune-up” cost down to a “Minor Tune-up” cost. Unfortunately, one of my tires and tubes needed replacing (after 2 years this would make sense), and the grand total was a little more than I expected, but only about 10 bucks more than the cost of a major tune.

If you have never seen “Kenny vs Spenny,” this is the first reality TV that I actually think is a pretty cool (read: original, entertaining) idea. Here’s the layout: 2 best friends (Kenny and Spencer) are room-mates. In each episode there are competitions (ie “Who does she like the best” or “Who can win a court battle”), and hilarity ensues. I think it’s on Showcase or something, it’s a CBC joint production.

Apparently there are no hostels in Baltimore -- Stupid Baltimore -- At least, none that will be opened when we get there. We’ve checked hostelworld.com, hostelinternation.com, hostelusa.com, the list goes on. It’s unfortunate, but we don’t really need the hostels in the rest of the Atlantic Northeast (I like that better because it’s like Pacific Northwest).

It turns out that we don’t have the time to do the West Wing tour. This will be something that will have to be planned out in a trip to follow. It’s a shame, but it’s part of the reason that Brad is unhappy with his job. Unhappy in a different way than I am with mine, but in the long run, welcome to the land of Middle Class Problems.

Segueing into the Middle Class Problems, I stopped by “Lens and Shutter” today to replace the battery door on my camera. They can’t fix that there, but they pointed me to people that could. I called ahead, and I’m looking at about $20. Tomorrow is all about getting that taken care of, oh, yeah, and I have to stop by Stanley Park and do the whole “rowing” thing.

I also discovered in the past little while that Photoshop can be used not only to fix the colour of a photo (for instance, taking a photo under incandescent light and finding true-colour) but also to make your teeth whiter. My teeth look so white in all my photos of me. Everyone else is on their own, though. I hear those strips work.

2 Wasted Weeks

2006-05-04T21:23:00.000-07:00

I’ve been back in Vancouver for 2 weeks now, and I’ve gotten absolutely nothing accomplished worth mentioning.

After getting over my bout of post peregrinor depression, I promptly began suffering my post peregrinor cold. Without fail, 7 days after arriving home, I always get a cold. I’d say it was from the flight, but I never seem to get a cold when I fly to someplace, it’s always when I return.

I think it’s the shock to the system… African bugs, European bugs, my immune system just kind of goes “Bring it on!” But as soon as I get back to that heartland of infection, Vancouver, my immune system is all over-run with deadly germs… like the common cold. Either that, or it was the weeklong party for no real reason.

So, I’ve noticed a couple of things since I’ve returned, some of them have been pointed out by people, some of them I’ve figured out on my own.
• When a woman moves into Kitsilano or Downtown, the city issues them a pair of Lululemon pants and a small dog that can easily fit into a purse for ease of carrying.
• Transit in Vancouver is atrocious, unless you are traveling within Vancouver, or some place directly along the Skytrain route.
• Is it just me, or does everyone in Vancouver come across as being sad? Maybe it’s just the expressions on their face, but it definitely seems that everyone is sad, even when they’re smiling it’s like there’s a sadness that they’re trying to hide.
• My theory that traveling doesn’t really change you has been confirmed. Sure, you try to fool yourself into thinking that there’s some big change or realization that you’ve come to, but you’re really just trying to justify the expense to yourself. The truth is you’re the same person, but maybe your perspective is slightly shifted by experience. You do get some cool stories out of the whole deal, though. That can help make you a better conversationist (I think I invented a new word!) at parties.
• It’s hard to get by in North America without a car. It can be done, it’s just hard. I think the problem is that everyone is in such a hurry that the extra 15 minutes you save comes across as being worth the enormous expense. Going hiking and to things like that is pretty tough without a car, though.
• It takes 1 hour to walk from the rowing club in Stanley Park to my apartment. That’s not a complaint, in fact, that’s not too bad in my opinion.
• Sitting on your ass for a week doesn’t maintain your fitness level: it’s a fact!
• Canadian Guiness is not worth buying.
• There are a lot of TV shows that I’ve never heard of before, and very few that I actually am willing to watch. I’m not missing anything not having cable.
• It’s way easier to meet new people when you’re traveling.
• When you lose 30 pounds you also lose strength. I don’t remember the boats at the rowing club being that heavy.

Almost immediately upon return, I fell into the trap of watching DvDs. Goddamn my TV! I went without for 2 months and didn’t miss it. The first thing I do upon my return? Oh, yeah, park it on the couch and veg out. It’s time to be more productive, so I at least have something to post here so I don’t lose the interest of the 5 people that actually read this.

Hell, I haven’t even gotten around to posting my Europe photos online yet. Jeeze, I’m such a slacker I should be wearing flannel and living in a coffee-shop. Oh, wait… except for the flannel….

I guess it’s easier when you’re traveling to find things to do: you’re motivated. You’ve got a deadline: “I only have this many days in this place, and I need to do all these things.” Instantly, you’re up and about, out there doing it. When you’ve got all this time, it’s easy to say “Ah, I’ll do that tomorrow.” I still haven’t gotten around to fixing my broken equipment, like the battery door on my camera.

So, now that I’ve played the “I’m a vegetable” game for two weeks, it’s time to get off my ass and get stuff done: I’ve only got a month of Vacation left! I’m thinking about a couple of bicycle trips. One of them out to Langley (Why Langley? Why not?), and another one to Whistler, maybe do an overnight if there’s a hostel there or something. Actually, I’ll probably have to overnight in Whistler regardless. I should wait until after my bike tune-up next Tuesday, though.

In the meantime, tomorrow is cinco de Mayo, and Sunday there’s a BBQ. Let the good times roll!

My life is so very hard.

Africa Photos

2006-04-25T21:29:00.000-07:00

I've managed to get some of my photos of Africa online. I had to spend a whopping $30 to get a pro account so I could get these online. I hope you 3 people that read this appreciate that.

Here are my photos from Kilimanjaro.

Here are my photos from Zanzibar.

Here are my photos of Tanzania other than Kilimanjaro and Zanzibar.

Here is my new desktop wallpaper:

Statistcs

2006-04-20T14:01:00.000-07:00

I have about 1500 Shillings, 2 Euros, and 4 dollars until payday, mercifully that’s tomorrow.

It took 1 hour to download all the photos off my iPod onto my laptop.

I’ve been sorting my photos for 2 hours, and I’m only halfway through Africa.

In the past 2 months, I’ve taken 7 flights on 4 airlines.

I was escorted by 3 jet fighters, I was under armed guard for 10 hours.

I hiked for 6 days and climbed 5800 meters.

I spent around $2500 USD, not counting flights.

I visited 2 continents and 6 countries, I have passport stamps from 5 countries.

I traveled halfway around the world, crossed 11 time zones.

I lost 1 carefully built up travel playlist when I tried to sync my iPod.

I lost 1 car.

I broke 1 camera lens, and 1 lens filter. I also broke the battery cover on my camera.

I sent more than 10 postcards.

I posted I don’t know how many blog entries.

I filled 1 and a half notebooks with notes and ramblings.

I was sick 5 times.

I took 39 malaria pills, 5 altitude sickness pills, and 10 Immodium.

I met countless people.

I spoke 4 languages… all of them poorly.

I don’t remember where I put my wallet before I left.

I traveled by airplane, 4WD, bicycle, foot, ferry, bus, train, and taxi.

I was bitten by an infinite number of mosquitos.

I had 1 voice mail, 1 text message, and more than 20 missed calls (my phone only tracks the last 20 calls).

I was away for 47 days.

I have 4 loads of laundry to do.

I lost 20 pounds.

I returned to 1 home.

I need to buy many groceries.

I want to leave again tomorrow.

Requiem for My Car

2006-04-20T14:00:00.000-07:00

In 1999 I bought a new car, rather, it was new to me: 5 years old, a gorgeous deep red, metallic skin. The interior was tan leather. I loved to drive it, I loved to drive.

I’d driven it on my mini-vacations: Seattle for coffee, Whistler for coffee, the top of the local mountains just to see the view. I was much younger then, intellectually, emotionally.

I loved it as much as you can love a material thing. When I bought it, I was in a bad place, and it made me feel good about myself in that western way that owning beautiful things helps fill a hole in our immaterial lives. It solved nothing, but it was a nice thing in my life -- a grounding wire to absorb the lightning strikes.

On New Year’s Eve in 1999 I was visiting dear friends in the Okanogan. Driving it for the first time in snow, I had an accident. I lost control going painfully slowly and slid into a fence. There was almost 9 thousand dollars in damage, but it was all surface damage. The imperfections of the body-work were like Marilyn Monroe’s mole: they only made me appreciate it more.

I drove it on my friend’s wedding, I chaufered the wedding party. I drove it on so my camping trips, an infinite number of commutes to work. It was a part of my life for 7 years.

Yes, it was getting old, but I couldn’t bring myself to replace it. I thought about other cars, maybe cars that were cheaper to maintain, maybe cars that were cheaper on fuel. It was only conjecture, I wasn’t quite ready to part with it yet.

Accidents happen, that’s why they’re called accidents. If we knew about them ahead of time, if we saw them coming, then they probably wouldn’t ever happen.

I loaned my car to my parents while I was away, I wasn’t going to need it. My mom was turning left. She was stopped, waiting for a break in traffic. The Saturn was speeding, following a pickup truck that blocked the view of the road. The truck changed lanes to avoid the left-turning, deep metallic red BMW. The driver was going to fast, there was no way the Saturn would stop in time.

It didn’t. The Saturn was almost completely crushed. The wonderful German engineered crumple zones did their job and absorbed most of the impact. My mom had minor whiplash, but nothing more. The damage to my car was too much for ICBC. They cut me a cheque instead.

I miss my car. I was looking forward to driving it again, to the freedom that my car would proved me once I returned home, but in the end it’s just a thing, thing that can be replaced, or not. At least my mom is okay.

Sometimes, we need to make a decision. Maybe it is something that we have, or something that we do is not something that we want, or something that we want to do. Often these decisions are coloured by emotion, and we become locked into not making a decision at all. Sometimes we need these decisions made for us, and this is where fate, chance, some higher power, however you choose to look at it, sometimes that’s where random life steps in and makes that decision for us.

Maybe it’s for the best, maybe it’s not. In the end it doesn’t matter. My car is no longer, that’s a fact and not I nor any other soul can change it. It’s just a thing.

Home Again...

2006-04-19T19:43:00.000-07:00

I woke up at the usual time this morning, which is to say around 9-ish. After breakfast, a freezing cold shower, and checking out of the Hostel, I was on my way back to Schipol Airport by 11:00 or so.

Here's the thing about the automated check-in... where do you put your luggage? Stupid non-intuitive crap. I wandered the airport and found a couple of books for the flight: another book by Michel Houlbecq called "Atomized." While it's still pretty pessimissic, it's still lighter than "Possibility of an Island." The other book was a Michael Cricton book that I hadn't read yet.

It struck me several times during the flight: This is it, my vacation is over now. But it was a fleeting feeling, it came and went.

We chased the sun halfway around the world, running from sunset. We arrived in Vancouver only an hour after taking off from Amsterdam, but in that hour was compressed half a day. A day within a day.

I watched as we passed over the snow covered fjords of Greenland. From 30,000ft you could almost see the flow of the rivers of snow, the static motion of glaciers. I watched as we passed over the broken ice of the arctic ocean, and the frozen desert of northern Canadian tundra.

There were still 2-3 hours before we would land, but it already felt like my journey was over. It left me a little sad.

We approached Vancouver, it is raining, of course. We slipped into the cloud cover and suddenly it wasn't an airplane: it was a lost angel flying through limbo. Nothing existed beyond the wing-tips. Here is an example of faith: faith in the instruments. These are the eyes that don't see and the ears that don't hear. Telling us which way to the safe landing in Vancouver, trust in a device.

We landed, I'm home. I'm jet lagged. And while I was away my car was written off.

Back in Amsterdam

2006-04-18T01:53:00.000-07:00

So here it is, my last official day of being away (I'm not counting tomorrow, since I leave tomorrow to go home). I have a huge urge to just blow off my flight and say "so long suckers!" Book another train somewhere and just keep going, but I know sooner or later I'll run out of money and/or pages in my Passport.

Amsterdam. Amsterdam. What the hell should I do with a single day in Amsterdam? Hmmm... I hear the Heineken Museum is nice (and has free beer)... maybe I should check that out?

Sleeping again at the Dublin airport at night was perhaps not the best of ideas. Between the plane ride and sitting in the airport, I figure I got about 4 hours sleep, broken up over the entire night. Maybe I should have taken the first bus of the day (1am) which would have brought me in at about 4am, the time I would have woken up anyhow. I was concerned about if I missed the bus, then I would have missed my plane. Hilarity would have ensued -- but I would have gotten more sleep.

I'm beginning to wonder if Dublin airport is ever open. I've been there (only) twice (granted) but both times it was entirely shut up. Silly Irish.

So I used to like the Irish accent. Now that I've heard how Irish people talk, I'm beginning to reconsider. Sure they can make good beer, but seriously, do they need to talk like that? Gah, it's almost as bad as those damn cocknies. Why can't they just develope a smooth refined accent like mine?

The world may never know.

Last Day in Galway

2006-04-17T05:59:00.000-07:00

Easter was very relaxing. It was the quintesential lazy Sunday, with good food and a nice walk through a small town. I had the oppurtunity to catch the Easter Sunday rememberance of the uprising, which it seems has become an oppurtunity for general protesting of, say, the Iraq war and such.

So what they say about Guinness in Ireland is true. It really is a hell of a lot better than in Canada. I actually dropped the pint glass I was so surprised!

I also blew through "The Da Vinci Code" pretty quickly. It's sort of a cross between a Michael Crichton novel and "The Celestine Prophesy." The story was good, but the writing not so much. At least Michael Crichton doesn't try to fill his writing with all sorts of attrocious and unnecessary drivel. Still, it was entertaining enough, but I don't see what all the fuss is about.

Unfortunately, I can't find a hostel that I can only book for 1 night in Amsterdam... I guess my backup plan if I don't find anything when I arrive is simply to go back to the Airport and crash in there and wait until my plane leaves. Meh. Stupid Amsterdam.

Tonight at 6pm I catch the bus to Dublin, where I have a 6 hour or so wait to catch the plane to Amsterdam. It's weird thinking that in only 2 days I'll be back in Vancouver. Anyone up for drinks at Elwoods in 2 days?

You know what chaps my hide?

2006-04-15T11:03:00.000-07:00

Do you know what chaps my hide? I'll tell you: 8 hours on a bicycle while wearing jeans. Ouch.

We tried to find a pub last night, unfortunately, we ran into the problem of it being Easter Long weekend. No pubs were opened. We couldn't even get off-sales. Doh! Oh, well.

This morning we left Clifton at about 9:30 and headed a northern roundabout route past Kylemore Abbey. It was a long, rather looping route that would eventually take us back to the main Clifton-Galway "Highway."

We left Clifton by what's called Sky Road. It's a small road that leads along the coast and through a number of small villages and old castles and such. It was very scenic, but it took us an hour out of the way, and it involved a lot of up and down hills. (There's a reason the town is called Cliffton) In all, the scenery was worth the trip, but it was a little much considering how long we would have to go.

We finally hooked back up with the "highway" and followed it through more of the desolate landscape of green rolling hills, devoid of trees. We made good time to Kylemore Abbey, where we stopped for lunch. This is a very beautiful location and a very beatiful building with a rather sad past.

From there we continued on back to the main highway to Galway, and turned left. It was more of the same "mountains" that we had seen before: green covered hills that were actually rather tall. Fortunately, we only had to go between them, not over them.

The thing about long distance/long time cycling, is that hills are not so bad, but the wind is what kills you. With a good headwind, you can feel like you're pedallying up a hill for hours, even on the down-stretches. With a good tailwind, even going uphill can be a breeze (pardon the pun).

Unfortunately, from Kylemore Abbey back to the main-road we had a head wind almost the whole way. Almost an hour and a half. It was rather disheartening.

Once we linked up with the "highway," we made good time heading east. From there it was only three hours of cycling to Galway city itself, of course by that time, even the 10 minute ride accross town was almost unbearable. Let me just say that standing up, off the seat, was the most pleasant thing that I have ever experienced.

We even managed to get my rented bike back to the shop before it closed! Amazing! (This was very important, since the shop would be closed on Sunday and Monday for Easter) We pulled into the shop to return the bike at around 4:45, we had been on the road for a solid 7 hours! Okay, so we took an hour off for lunch, but still.

My legs hurt, my ass hurts. Stupid bicycles. Advice for those who want to do cycle touring: keep the actual cycling under 4 hours/day if you want to stop and enjoy the places you're travelling through. Also, 60-80km/day is a lot more feasable than 110-120 or so.

This is a map of Connemara. Galway is located where the road along the bottom, and that main-looking thouroughfare that cuts at an angle south and to the west meet. We cycled strait west along the road at the bottom, then headed north to that main road, meeting it at Maam Cross. That took us to Clifton at the end of the road on the coast. From there we headed north to Kylemore Abbey, then back down to the main road, back through Maam Cross, and then on to Galway.

I have now changed my return ticket to Vancouver to depart on the 19th of April instead of the 17th -- all the times are about the same. Unfortunately, I had to call the godless Dutch, since all the KLM branches in this part of the world were closed for -- you guessed it -- the Easter weekend.

I just booked my flight to Amsterdam on Aer Lingus from Dublin. Unfortunately, if I didn't want to spend €199, I had to leave at 6am. Ouch. I leave 6am on Tuesday. I guess I'll spend Monday night back in that fantastic airport in Dublin. Now I see why so many people were sleeping there. I would have booked with Ryan Air, but it turns out that they don't do flights into Amsterdam, in fact, neither does KLM.

I guess this means that I'll be pretty tired on my one day in Amsterdam. Oh well, I'm sure I'll survive.

I'm pretty sure tonight we'll be able to find a pub that's open and finally get the Guinness that we were promised in all the brochures.

The Emerald Isle

2006-04-14T13:23:00.000-07:00

I slept not so well on the floor of Dublin airport. It turns out that tile floors are both cold and uncomfortable, even when wearing a fleece and using your luggage as a pillow. Nonetheless, I managed a solid 5 hours of sleep -- check that -- I managed 5,..what's the opposite of solid hours? Mushy hours? I managed 5 mushy hours of sleep.

I was woken up around 6am by the newly begun business of the departure terminal. Everything else in the airport was closed until around 7am. When the bookstore and Change Bureau opened, I was able to both get enough cash for the bus, and pick up a couple of books. I finally broke down and grabbed a paperback copy of the Da Vinci Code. I suppose I should see what all the fuss is about. I also gabbed that "Blink" book. I think I'll read that one first.

The bus to Galway rolled out of Dublin airport at around 8:05 am. Finally, I was back on the way to visit Luke. It took about 5 hours to reach Galway, I rolled into the bus/trainstation on the other side of the country about 1 am, where I finally hooked up with Luke.

We walked through Galway back to his "flat." It's great to be back in a country where they speak English... at least where they sort of speak English.

Ireland is the first place that I've found that reminds me of North America. The towns, the architecture, even the people, look like they could be dropped from any place on the east coast of Canada or the northeastern United States. The only thing that's obviously different is that they drive on the other side of the road here.

We ended the night by going to an "authentic" Irish pub. I suppose in Ireland, aren't all pubs authentic? Unfortunately, my lack of sleep kicked in, and I had to crash by 10 or so.

This morning, we rented some bikes and began to tour Connemara, the "authentic" Irish county where people still speak Irish Gaelic. We planned on leaving at 10, but after messing around we finally got out about 11:30. I needed to look into changing some flights, and grabbing more cash.

The thing about a Catholic country, is that not only do they have a lot of fancy churches and statues and things, but they also shut everything down at Easter. And I mean everything. At least I have a Visa card.

We rolled into a town called "Spiddal" for lunch. We continued along the coast road, passing what seemed like a single endless village, but was in fact a series of villages, all merged together. It was about 3:30 or so that Luke got a flat tire. Fortunately, we were right in front of a coffee-shop/B&B that was in the middle of no-where. We were able to patch, grab a cup of coffee, and get back on the road after less than an hour.

The rest of the trip was rather eventless. We pedalled through the rolling green hills, past sheep farms and those low stone walls and over ancient stone bridges. We pedalled through the "scotch"-like smell of peat-burning fire-places and stoves, and the bizarre flowers that smelled like coconut, or what first came to mind: sunscreen. The roads were insanely narrow, with little shoulder to pedal on. Cars and trucks and busses would come screaming past us.

We followed the coast road about halfway, then turned north and joined up with the main Galway/Clifton highway for the rest of the trip -- we just weren't making good time to make it into town by nightfall (which is amazingly at around 9pm here!). We finally pedalled down the hill into Clifton at quarter to 8. We were checked into the hostel, showered, and ready to hit the pub by 8:30.

I still haven't managed to change my return flight to Vancouver. If I can't get through to KLM tomorrow, I'll have to fly to Amsterdam sunday night to make my Monday flight. That would be a huge degree of suck.

What time is it? It's Guinness o'clock!

Cleaned up the last post

2006-04-14T13:22:00.000-07:00

I've edited the last post to clean up most of the typos and add more details. I was pretty rushed at the airport.

Sidetracked...

2006-04-12T17:51:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wondred what would happen if someone wrote "There is a bomb on the plane" on an in-flight magaine?

Let me tell you a story...

I left the Hostel in Paris with what I thought would be enough time to make the bus to Beavais. I misjudged. The Porte-Maillot station was rather confusing, and it took me some time to find the bus depot. If anyone is in the same boat, look for the Hotel Concorde La Fayette -- look way up, it's the tallest building in the square. Go there, the bus is directly accross the street on the left hand side of the hotel when you're at the entrance facing away from the building.

I got there about 5 minutes late, just as they had shut the door. I was given a rather curt "You should try to be on time," but then 4 or 5 people showed up behind me, so I didn't feel so bad.

When we finally got to Beavais, I noticed a lot of school kids were on the plane but whatever, a minor inconvenience. The departure lounge, by the way, is a rather odd sight. It has a plastic sheet for a roof. By 1:37pm, Ryan air FR25 had left Paris for Dublin we had taken off and were on our way to Dublin.

Once again, the unmistakale drawl of an aussie -- this time as the head steward. Seriously, where do they all come from?

All in all, the flight seemed rather unremarkable, until we were supposed to land -- a holding pattern. I have never been in one before, but that was what it was. I noticed one of the crew kept looking out the window to the rear of the plane. I'm guessing he was watchig the Tornado fighter that had taken up escort. One of 3.

It was at that time that the Captain announced we were diverting to Glasgow for "minor tchnical reasons." It was 2:00pm, about 10 minutes after our scheduled arrival, and about 30 minutes after "Prep for landing."

Shortly before landing in Glasgow, the pilot came back on and told us there was a bomb threat, rather vague -- it may have been in the airport or something -- but then, shortly before 3 we landed. Hot and fast, the sort of landings you would expect in a war zone. We came in fast, very fast, the plane shimmied on the runway, then full reverse throttle and stopped at the end of the runway. A dead and fast stop.

About 70 of the passenters on our flight were the school girls and their techers. Many of them were inconsolable with fright, from the first mention of the word "bomb," no matter how light the Captain made of it. This, I imagine is not an entirely unreasonable response to the possibilty of firery death.

Shortly after landing, the crew started a "sterile search" moving 3 rows at a time forward, and searching the passengers and seats. This was an incredibly slow, and in my mind, entirely illogical proces. From the window, fire rescue could easily be seen keeping maximum safe distace inside our security zone.

The flight staff tried to remain calm and professional, but they were visibly flustered. It is rather frustrating, being in anairplane as an hour and a half flight drags out to 3, then 4 hours and not much in the way of informtion is provided. People were forbidden to use cellular phones -- uhm, I mean mobile phones -- but they did anyway.

Until I pointed out that they could concievably accidentally trigger a bomb with electronics. I would have pointed this out before one of the teachers said "I don't see why we can't use the phones, we're not in the air." But I didn't really feel concerned, I just foundthe students on the phones annoying. I had a blessed phone free zone around me after that.

At about 4:00 one of the Stewards began handing out drinks to the passengers. Quite a concession on a no frills airline renowned for its stinginess, but it helped to lift the spirits of the passengers noticably. There was less crying, of course, that could have been out of exhaustion.

The captain kept coming on the air every few miutes to tell us that we're not being permitted to leave. He obviously sounded as frustrated as we were. Finally, busses arrived at about 4:40, and we were aloud to take the stair-ramps off the plane. The relief was palpable.

The busses rolled past the security perimiter: fire rescue and police cars with lights flashing, arranged in a ring at about 500 metres from the plane. We left the busses at one of the service entrances under armed guard, and walked down a corridor of police officers, many about a third of which wearing riot gear and carrying MP-5 submachine guns with fingers on the trigger.

We arrived at a check point with plainclothes officers that photographed us and wrote a number on our hands in magic marker. Ryan Air doesn't assign seating, this --I thought abstractly during the landing -- would make it diffiult for them to ID my body. Sure they could get dental records, but try and match the Canadian on a plane of Frenchmen, Aussies, Kiwis and Irish folk.

Eventually, I was interrogated. They kept us in two pens: one for those that had not yet given a statement, one for those that had: all under armed guard.After the interrogation, I was passed on to be finger printed and DNA swabbed. This was completed by around 7:35, delayed by two things: 1, the police not having enough memory cards for the photos (at the checkpoint), and 2, not having whipes for the fingerprint ink.

The finger prints and DNA were destroyed 10 minutes later when they were deemed unnecessary. Apparently, enough interviews had been conducted that they decided testing finger prints and DNA of the passengers against the note would not provide anything useful.

The police, I must say, were professional, polite and helpful. Two of them helped me in getting in touch with Luke and figuring out how to make long distance calls, and the hospitality volunteers from the airport were indispensible. Unfortunately for many of the French smokers, Scotland had just gone "Smoke Free." We were under guard for a good 6 hours, and many of them were jonesing pretty bad.

Finally, the bomb squad and dogs gave the plane the okay. At 9:45pm (almost 8 hours after we were supposed to have arrived at Dublin), the plane was given the OK. The passengers all had a chance to get some sandwhiches, pop, coffee, and make phonecalls, thanks to the helpful volunteers from the airport.At 10:45 we were finally in the air, on the way to Dublin.

Irish TV reported that it was a student that had left the note, but according to the police that I spoke with that was not the case. The note was likely left by someone with a very poor sense of humour on a previous flight.

The landing was not particularly good, but the passengers cheered -- very loudly -- nonetheless. I finally cleared customs and got my bag around midnight, then I set off to find out about that bus to Galway.

It turned out that the last bus to Galway left at around 11:15... far too late for me, and the next one wouldn't leave until 8:15 in the morning. I was due to spend a night in Dublin airport, an airport that had pretty much shut-down for the night. Nothing was open, no Change Bureaus, no, coffeeshops, no bookstores.

About the only thing that was open was the row of car rental agencies, but when I inquired about renting a car to drive to Galway I was told it would be 150€. Uhm, I'll pass.

Apparently I'm not the only one who had the idea of spending the night in the terminal. All the good spots were already taken. This will be a long night.

Last Day in Paris

2006-04-11T08:34:00.000-07:00

I took the metro to Place d'Itlalie and walked down Avendue de les Gremelins. I don't know what the deal was, but I thought it had kind of a strange name. Eventually I made my way to the Pantheon, the "Cathedral to the secular" as they call it. It's sort of a monument to how the French kept going back and forth between republic and empire, and finally settled on republic.

Faucult's Pendulum was very interesting, as was the artwork on the inside. I also had a chance to visit with Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rouseau, the Curies and several other notables in the cryptes of "Les Grands Hommes."

Unfortunately, I could only walk past La Place du la Sorbonne, the Gendarmes had closed it off almost completely, they were out in force. I guess they're trying to keep the protesters from coming out or something. I had to settle for having my lunch in a cafe called "Le Sorbon."

I found the graveyard without too much trouble, and even managed to find the graves of one or two notables within it. It's very interesting considering the mix of the very old graves, with the monuments crumbling, and the very new and shiny. A very surreal place.

I went to the catacombs, but the lineup stretched around the block, so I decided to pass on that one. I walked to Champs Elysee, past the fantastic and fantastically huge Louvre to browse the boutiques. It turned out they were mainly the standard American fare like Quicksilver and Le Gap.

Apparently, I somehow managed to pull off looking European in the past week. I have no idea how, but people have been approaching me and speaking to me in French. For example, today the following conversation took place:
Girl: Bonjour
Me: Bonjour
Girl: [some long sentence in French that I noticed had the word "France," not Francais]
Me: Uhm... Je ne comprend pas.
Girl: [another long question in French, this time I thought she said something like "Are you from Paris?"]
Me: Je... [deciding to answer what I thought she said or just throw in the towel]... Je ne parle pas Francais.
Girl: [in near perfect English with just a touch of French accent, sounding a little dissappointed] Oh, okay, so you don't live in Paris then?
Me: No, sorry. [and I meant it]

I also solved the riddle of the French smokers. It turns out that yes, almost all French people smoke, but you don't notice it. It's like a Zebra's stripes, or a leopard's spots. A cigarette is just part of a Frenchman. You really have to look closely and carefully to spot it.

So it turns out that I didn't get a chance to stick it to the French by eating at McDonalds and going to Euro-Disney after all. What a shame. It's just as well, though. Although the French definitely have that whole arrogance thing going on, it turns out that it's my kind of arrogance, or at least it grows on you. It's really not so bad. I think I'll miss 'em. Sniffle.

Tomorrow I have to take the Metro to one of the "portes" and find the bus to take me to Beauvais airport somewhere on the outskirts of town. Apparently, Ryan Air does offer Uber cheap flights around Europe, but never to a convienient airport. (Except for Dublin)

I coincidentally read 2 books by French authors in the past week. One of them was from Quebec, the other from France. I've been meaning to read these two books: "The Possibility of an Island" by Michel Houlebec and "Life of Pi" by Yann Martel, for quite a while now, and I stumbled upon them at a bookstore in Amsterdam.

One of the two books was life-afirming and optimistic, the other one was cynical, even bitter. One of them made you love the hero, made you feel proud of him and his ability to overcome adversity, the other one... well, when you weren't disgusted with him, you felt sorry for his inability to find something worthwhile in his life.

They were both excellent books, extremely well written, engaging stories. But guess which one was by the Frenchman, and which one was by the Canadian. I'll give you a hint, "Life of Pi" was the optimistic one. And before you ask, the cover wasn't the only reason I wanted to read "Possibility of an Island," I also read a review when it was first published in French. I'm shallow, but not that shallow.

I spent the first night in Paris in a differnt Hostel, near the Eiffel Tower. I spent several hours in the bar, chatting with a Swedish girl that was passing through. Somehow, during our long conversation, the topic came around to "Theme Songs," as in "Do you have a theme song?"

Coincidentally, we both had iPods. Her theme song, it turns out, was a memorable ditty called "Kinky Boots." Put on the spot, I threw out "Hey Man (Now You're Really Living." To be completely honest, I tried "Different Names for the Same Thing" first, but that one was rejected out of hand.

Since then; I've been thinking about what I really would call a theme song. I've come up with a list of candidates:
"What I Got" by Sublime
"Euro-trash Girl" by Cracker (that song still cracks me up)
"El Scorcho" or "Beverly Hills" by Weezer
"Blonde and Blue" by Headstones (Note to self: at some point, start staying away from Blondes.)
"Scooby Snacks" by Fun Lovin' Criminals
"Italian Leather Sofa" by Cake
"The Official Ironmen Rally Song" by Guided by Voices
"Circles" by Soul Coughing
"Sing me Spanish Techno" or "Use It" by The New Pornographers
"North American for Life" by Matthew Good

This is pretty much a preliminary list, and I can't decide on any one of them really. I don't know if it has to be just one or not; maybe I'll put it to a vote? I'm also open to new suggestions.

Natalie: your French postcard is one of those doodles that are supposed to make sentences dillies. I'll translate it for you when I get back.

Musee du Louvre

2006-04-10T14:25:00.000-07:00

The Louvre is for people that don"t mind line-ups and crowds. The Mona Lisa? In a word: disappointing. You'd think that a famous work of art would have something that differentiates it from all the others around it, but not so much. Taken out of context, sure, maybe it deserves it's fame, but nestled in the Louvre, it is nothing special.

It's not particularly large, nor is it particularly small. The subject is a rather plain-looking woman with an overly smug look on her face. There are far more interesting paintings nearby, both in the subject matter and in the works themselves.

Still, the tourists come in droves. A flow of people, an unstoppable tide, they flow through the corridors, walking past the beauty that lines the walls, heading strait for this one, rather unspectacular example of a portrait: a portrait that could be a masculine woman or an effeminate man. They flow in, they look, and they flow away, this time heading for the Venus de Milo; another not exactly unique example amidst other spectacular examples of sculpture.

Maybe it's Dan Brown's fault -- there's even a Da Vinci Code walking tour that I saw advertised -- but I somehow doubt it. I think this fame may be along the same lines as Paris Hilton's fame. Fame for no other reason than being famous. Still, it gets the masses into a museum, I suppose.

The sculpture doesn't really do much for me. Certainly it's skillfull and beautiful in it's own right, but it's so static, so monochromal. The paintings, on the other hand, seem to come alive with thier colour, as if the very subjects themselves are simply there on the other side of a window. The sculpture just seems dead.

Of course, the paintings can get repetative. How many meditations on the theme of "La Vierge et l'enfant" (The Virgin and child) are necessary? Apparently only slightly more than "Le Mort Christ."

Observation: Why do people need to take photos of themselves in front of things? Is it to prove to others that they were actually there, and didn't simply say they were going to Paris when they were actually going boozing in Mexico? Or is it some egotistical thing where they can associate themselves with something larger and greater than themselves? Or am I just being mean because I won't trust some stranger to take my photo?

The Louvre is enormous. It's almost impossible to describe: it is 4 stories high and covers 3 city blocks. In all, there are litterally hundreds of thousands, if not hundreds of millions of square feet of floor space covered with artwork that covers most of human civilization. From Da Vinci to Hammurabi, from Liberty leading the revolution, to the laws of the land engraved on a stone tablet. To call it impressive or humbling doesn't do justice to the experience.

I entered the museum shortly after it opened, and I left at closing. In all, almost 8 hours was I in there and I saw --maybe-- 15% of the exhibits. And that was because I picked up my pace after lunch and stopped reading each placard one by one and trying to translate the French from the little that I know and could put together.

It turns out that my French is about as good as my German, which is to say, I can barely get by. I had huge pangs of regret as I wandered about today, to know that I spent so much time studying both languages, and have let my knowledge lapse so much that I had trouble putting together "Une billet pour la musee, s'il vous plait." I want to learn more languages, but I know that they will just drown on the river of time: where would I have the oppurtunity to practice them?

I keep seeing all the street signs: Rue this, Rue that. The thought "Rue Le Jour" comes to mind, and it always brings a smile to my face. I've been thinking about that since I first started walking through Paris, and the thought comes back every time I see a street sign. It's not a particularly funny joke, but I like it nonetheless.

Interesting fact: Swedish women think that Swedish men act far too feminine. Apparently the whole "metrosexual" thing has spread to a too high percentage in that nordic land.

I am staying in a section of Paris called "Montmartre," I'm not sure what "Arrissement" that is (spelling?). Perhaps it's 18? Maybe it's 17? In fact, I don't get the whole Arrissement thing at all. Maybe it's like the whole left-bank thing (thanks for clarifying that, dad). It seems like a pretty swank part of town, but honestly I haven't found a part of Paris that didn't seem swank. Even Pigelle (that row of sex shops) managed to pull off a sleezy version of swank.

Highlights of tomorrow's plan: Foucalt's Pendulum (how I can make fun of Dan Brown's readers, and want to see this because of Uberto Eco only my deluded hypocrisy can manage), Le Sorbonne, Cemetiere Pere Lachaise (to visit Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison) and if time, those catacombs.

Ah, Paris

2006-04-09T09:00:00.000-07:00

The Paris Marathon was this morning. It was interesting watching all the runners, the look of pain and determination on their face, the look of satisfaction from each drag off the cigarette in their hands as they ran... Ah, Paris.

I'm only joking, I didn't really watch the marathon.

So there were 2 prejudices that I had about Paris. The first one was of the standard French person sitting in a coffeeshop smoking. It turns out that there are about as many smokers in Paris as in Vancouver, at least that I've seen. I have no idea where the massive numbers of cigarette butts in the gutters come from, though. I find it strange that there were so many people smoking in Berlin, and here there are so few.

The other cliche about French people being rude? Yeah, that one's pretty dead on the money. Here's a typical exchange with a waiter:
Me: "Bonjour."
Waiter: "Bonjour"
Me: "Uhm... boisson... Cafe... et... Poulet..."
Waiter: "Non, mon petit idiot. Speak in English." Waiter flicks an ash from his cigarette in my face.
Me: "Oh, okay, the chicken."
Water: "Oui, mon petit idiot."
Me: "I can speak a little French, you know."
Waiter: "Non, mon petit idiot. Vous ne parlez pas Francaise." Waiter flicks another ash in my face.

So I'm exagerating a little. Seriously, though, the French aren't so friendly. It seems like we're inconveniencing them by being here. They want us to know about everything France, and to appreciate and lionize them, but please, please, don't come visit.

I walked past the Eiffel tower yesterday, but I didn't go up. Instead I went up Tour Montparnasse, an office tower whose top is about level with the observation deck of the Eiffel. This means you get the same view of Paris as you would get from the Eiffel (almost) with one important exception: you can see the Eiffel tower from there.

As I walked around town, there was one thing that I noticed: there are a hell of a lot of places to get your haircut here. Seriously, there's a hair place on every block. I don't understand: do Parisians have some sort of genetic anomoly that makes their hair grow super fast or something? There are too many hair places for the population of this city, that's for sure.

Today I hit all (most) of the big sites. I walked past Sacre-Couer, Moulin Rouge (I thought it was just a crappy movie, turns out it's also a place in the middle of the sex-shop part of town), Arc de Triumph, Grand and Petit Palais, Place de Concorde, the Louvre and Notre Dame. I ended up by checking out the National Museum of Natural History.

If you ever want to get creeped out, you should check out the Comparative Anatomy museum at the Museum of Natural History. Besides being filled with skeletons of everything from Giraffes to Human Fetuses, there are also preserved specimins of disected animals, and animals born with birth defects. Weird.

Tomorrow I think I'll go see what all the fuss is about with the Louvre.

Auf Weidersehen, Berlin (or however you spell that)

2006-04-07T11:01:00.000-07:00

Well, this is it. I'm waiting for my train to Paris. I can't believe it's been 4 days already. It seems like I only just got off the train from Amsterdam. I saw so much here in Berlin, and I barely even started. Imagine spending 4 days in an area the size of the downtown core of Vancouver, but that has so much history and culture that you could spend months and not see everything.

Maybe Vancouver is like that too, and I just haven't noticed.

Some notes on Berliners:

* Berliners are so polite. It's like the jokes I used to hear about the British being so polite, and reserved and high-strung to the point where they were terrified that they might do something that would come accross as offensive, that's the impression that I get of Berliners.
* See above... except for the youth. The youth (and I mean highschool kids) are the same as they are anywhere in the world: self absorbed and wrapped in their own egos, oblivious to the world around them. You can be standing in a museum, reading the little placard and they will step in front of you and start a conversation with their friends.... uhm... for example. Of course, as I said, this is the same as high-school kids the world over. See second example of kids from the UK doing the exact same thing 15 minutes later.
* Don't mention the war, as the line by John Cleese goes. Of course, they do mention the war, but there's an important minor point that I've noticed. It's never 'WWII was started by Germany,' it's always 'WWII was started by the Nazis.'
* Berliners (and I would imagine Germans in general) are rather embarrassed of their history, at least the last 100 years or so. They don't wanna talk too much about the cold war (unless you wanna talk about German contributions to the end of it) and they definitely would rather pass on WWII, even WWI. But Thomas Mann's name gets dropped pretty often, as does Professor Einstein... uhm, should I mention they both went to America because Hitler got elected? Nah, I'll let that go.

I do like Berliners, they are completely not arrogant, they are humble but at the same time proud. They are friendly to a fault, though they definitely have some issues about their past: apparently there is still some collective work to be done to work out a way to forgive themselves. I wonder how many monuments and museums it will take in a city that is already crowded with them?

I suppose subltey differentiating the difference between Germany and the Nazis does help alleviate some guilt, maybe even make it easier to talk about it. The problem is that in a democracy, the public is responsible for the actions of the government, especially when a government is elected. It's like saying that America didn't go to war in Vietnam, Kennedy did. (They love Kennedy here, by the way, I think mainly because he declared himself a sandwhich or donut or something -- "Ich bin eine Berliner" actually means "I am a donut" or some sort of baked good or other)

I went to the Checkpoint Charley museum yesterday. It was very interesting. They had all sorts of devices that people used to escape on display. The ingenuity both of the escapees and escapee helpers, and the vicious ingenuity of those that built the wall were quite amazing. No wonder these Germans are known for their engineering.

I found myself unable to relate to the escapees -- willing to risk my life to leave behind everything: friends, family, home, work, and start over from scratch on the other side of the wall. I suppose it's hard to imagine life under a repressive regime like that. There aren't many left in the world that we see from day to day. No wonder we get spoiled and allow our leaders to toss around the word 'freedom' as if it meant 'and.'

There's something about the cold war that really captures my imagination. I wanted to come to Berlin because of the wall, because of it's cold war history. I sat in Cafe Adler, the cafe that was in view of the wall, for lunch yesterday. The entire time I was there I looked out at where the checkpoint would have been and wondered what it was like for the people waiting here only 20 years ago. Waiting to see if their loved ones, friends, or colleagues would come back out of 'over there.'

I don't know why it is that the spies intrigue me so. Maybe it's because I can't relate to that form of honour, that modern version of the knight templar: warrior of idealogy. It's these people that risk their lives for some abstract concept, a concept that they believe in so deeply that their willing to allow their morality to become maliable for the greater good. I have to wonder if this is the same level of belief that you find in religious faith. Is it even similar?

Today I took a break from questions of morality, politics, and history. I stepped away from the darkness of history and into the simple, easy answers of distraction. Today I went to the Zoo. The actual Zoo that Zoo Station is named after, and also the aquarium.

It's amazing how many pictures you take when you go to something so simple as a Zoo. Once again, I am amazed at the things that they have in this city. To call this Zoo world class would be an understatement. Still, I felt a little sorry for the African and Tropical animals that were in the outdoor enclosures. I felt cold, and I was wearing fleeces and a jacket. Sure the Zebras and lions have fur coats, but come on! They came from Africa!

I bought a pair of jeans today. A word to the wise. Don't do your shopping in Europe if you come from North America. The prices here are all the same (e.g. jeans cost 100-ish) except that it's not $ it's all €. Damn, add 30%.

The stores are amazing, especially after being in Africa for a month. Instead of a tiny kiosk with clothes hanging on a fence, there's a huge store crammed with all sorts of useless crap covering 4 floors. I'm amazed at how much junk we consume and think that we need.

I've also noticed something else about our cities: there's a reason they're so clean (besides the obvious garbage collection infrastructure): we pave everything where there might be dirt. The concrete goes from the edge of the river, across the street to the wall of the building, up the wall, across the roof, down the other side and continues to infinity (or to the next construction site). There are trees and plants, sure. They're strategically placed along the streets to provide the best possible aesthetic impression.

It's 8:30 pm now, and my train to Paris leaves in an hour. I wonder what I'll find in this new city? I don't know of much cold war stuff happened there, so now I don't even know where to start. I guess the cliche stuff, or maybe I'll see if I can trade in my ticket for one to Moscow, Krakow, or Hungary? Nah, that'll screw up my flight to Ireland.

Too many museums...

2006-04-05T11:48:00.000-07:00

Okay, so seriously. This city officially has too many
museums. Hell, there's a place in the city called
"Museum Island." (Well, I actually translated the
German name into English)

It turns out that most of the historic buildings and
things in Berlin are in what used to be the Eastern
part of the city. I guess when the Russians stopped by
they decided to take the center of the town.

There are a lot of those pre-fab buildings that the
Soviets were famous for around here, but there's also
a lot of construction and re-building going on. Not
only do people not particularly like the drab
architecture, but also because the DDR wasn't
particularly on the game about updating and upgrading
things like water mains and gas lines. Go figure.

They're currently in the process of tearing down the
old DDR headquarters to make way for a new hotel. The
only difference I could find other than the
architecture is that unemployment in the East is
higher than in the West. Also, I've been told that
people from the west think that people from the east
are lazy, and people from the east think people from
the west are arrogant.

The museums are pretty fantastic. I spent 8 hours
today looking at very old things from Egypt,
Byzantium, Assyria, Greece and Rome. Seriously: I see
why people think that ancient Greeks are all either
gay or paedophiles. Have you seen their pottery? Woa.

I think I mentioned I'm staying in a place in what
used to be East Germany. It's a neighborhood called
"Mitte." It's about a 15 minute walk to Alexanderplatz
with the giant soccerball tower, TV tower, or whatever
they call that ugly thing that looks even uglier than
the ugly tower in Toronto (If that's possible). I'm
also only about a half hour walk to Museum island.

On the walking tour yesterday I saw one of the still
standing sections of the Berlin wall. Ironically, they
have a fence around the wall to protect it. I also saw
checkpoint Charley and the little coffeeshop next door
that the CIA used to meet in. I'm gonna go back and
check that out tomorrow.

I also saw the old Luftwaffe headquarters that has a
huge Soviet-era mural on the side of it portraying
your standard Communist propaganda with smiling
workers and clapping children. It was offset by a
photograph of the uprising that was crushed in the
50s.I also saw a lot of bullet marks in the old
buildings. Some of them have been fixed, some of them
have been left. Stone and brick have a pretty long
memory.

The hollocost memorial was kind of interesting, but
it's one of these new modern-art type deals that's
really just a bunch of geometric shapes. Okay I guess,
but I think that the Frederick the Great memorial is
actually better, it's a statue and it's obvious.

Tomorrow I'm gonna check out the Checkpoint Charley
museum, and a couple of other things that I missed
today. Then maybe go for a bit of a walk about town or
something... I'm pretty sure I'll figure something
out. I'll also have to try the beer... and try not to
mention the war of course, thanks for the tip, Darrin.

Oh, Darrin, you'll be happy to know that there are as
many Starbucks in Berlin as there are in Vancouver.
Oh, and the coffee in them is still crap. I've been
grabbing my morning coffee and bagel from a coffee
chain called "Balzak."

The best thing that I've found so far? Hot showers.
Hell yeah. By far.

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"Ich bin ein...errr...Berliner"

2006-04-04T03:43:00.000-07:00

Okay, seriously: how is it that before I even open my mouth people talk to me in English? Why do they then ask "You are from America, ya?"

"Nein. You are Austrian, ya? Or maybe Swiss?"

I got the same thing from some Aussies before I left Tanzania. I just asked them if they were Kiwis.

It must be like the architecture, there's something about me that I can't see that just screams North American to them. Their English is amazingly good, for most of the people that I've talked to, it takes a few sentences before I can tell that they're not native speakers. They have very good accents.

I walked through Berlin today, walked around Brandenburg gate, saw a lot of bridges (some of them with scars that like like they were been made by machine gun bullets, oh, say 60 years ago or so), and ended up back at Zoo Station. I bought my train ticket to Paris here for the 7th, it cost €113. The train leaves at 9pm and arrives in Paris at 9am. Fortunately, I don't have a problem sleeping on trains.

It's goddamn cold here. I have two of my fleeces on. I think I'm gonna have to buy some clothes, a pair of jeans and a sweater or something. A golf shirt and khakis are just not cutting it. But if I feel cold, imagine how the Zebras I saw in the zoo must feel! (I didn't go into the zoo, I just walked past it.)

I'm waiting in a "Dunkin' Donuts," of all places, directly accross the road from Zoo Station for a walking tour of Berlin that starts in an hour. Coincidentally it has an Internet Cafe, where it costs €1/hour, roughly what it would cost in Tanzania. Now if only I could get used to this weird kezboard lazout. Damn y where the z should be.

This was the first place where I ordered in German and the person behind the counter responded in German. That was until I asked how to use the computers and she responded "Would you prefer I answer in English or Deutcsh?" "Uhm, ja, Englisch, bitte."

Everyplace else, the conversation would be:
My stilted German: "Wie viel für ein Ticket für Paris?"
Clerk: "Paris? On what day, please?"
It's probably easier this way, anyhow.

My German is very rusty having not practiced it in almost 15 jahr or so, but strangely enough the German that I hear people around me speak sounds very familiar, almost comforting. I find this strange considering how alien I found people around me speaking Dutch in Holland. I definitely don't feel the culture shock that I felt in Africa. I almost feel at home here. It's nice not to have people staring at the strange white man.

The Germans that I've seen seem very reserved, stoic, I even saw two women out for a jog this morning: they were keeping in step with one another. I find this kind of strange given the world renowned Prussian sense of humour. This country is famous for it's commedians: Schopenhaur, Goethe, Nietsche, etc.

Another thing is that everyone here smokes. I've seen an unbelievable number of people smoking, in coffee houses, on the street, in restaurants, in convenience stores, everywhere. I always thought that it was the French that were the big smokers, I never imagined the Germans smoking. I always thought it seemed too, I don't know, inefficient or something.

I guess I have the prejudice that all Germans are these incredibly professional types, so it's difficult to picture them smoking, but then there they are, standing around smoking away.

My plan for now is to do this walking tour today, and spend most of tomorrow and the day after checking out museums and things. My last day here, I'll make that up as I go along. I've got a Berlin travel guide that I picked up today, I'm sure I'll find some suggestions in there.

The one thing I like about the German keyboard? How easy it is to type "Über."

Achtung Baby

2006-04-03T11:28:00.000-07:00

It's strange being back in the west, the "developed
world." At some point, I don't know when, but we
stopped using the term "third world," it must no
longer be PC. We don't even call them "undeveloped
nations," we call them "developing nations." Another
example of the psychology of names, I suppose.

Leaving Africa was strange. Unlike leaving Vancouver I
didn't feel the sense of newness, the sense of change.
Rather there was the numb feeling of facts. I have
left Moshi. I have left Africa. I have landed in
Holland.

There was a slight moment of brevity when the plane
landed in Dar es Salaam to let out and pick up
passengers before returning to Amsterdam when a hard
landing jarred loose the oxygen masks. For the
briefest of moments I thought this was one of the
infamous losses of pressure, but of course it was not.
That made it funny in a dark sort of way to see the
masks drop.

The same song played as my last time taxiing in AMS:
"Save the Last Dance for Me." An interesting sense of
Deja vu.

I stored a bag at the airport, and bought a ticket
from the airport to Berlin. A nearly direct trip with
a 4 hour wait at Amsterdam Central station for the
Berlin train.

Amsterdam was strange, the two biggest things that hit
me right away were the cleanliness of the streets and
the street-lights. There was no dust, there were no
piles of garbage or farm animals roaming the streets.
There were lights lining the streets filled with
bicycles, cars, trains and busses. There were not many
pedestrians.

I also noticed those white headphones, a symbolic
envelope of seclusion erected to keep away the people
that we pass in the street. To paraphrase the Dali
Lama (something Natalie pointed out the other day): We
in the west will travel around the world to meet new
people, but we won't walk next door to say hello to
our neighbor. I am as guilty of this as anyone.

It is so expensive here! I bought breakfast in
Amsterdam: a bagel and a cup of coffee (I may perhaps
be one of the few visitors to Amsterdam that has
visited a coffeeshop for the first time to drink
coffee) and paid 7 Euro. That's 3 full meals in
Tanzania. The train ticket to Berlin was 97 Euro --
for a similar bus ride in Tanzania I would pay maybe
$22. The Hostel is costing me $20 a night, the cost of
a nice hotel in Tanzania for a bed in a shared dorm.

The train was strange: it is almost silent, and it
glides with a motion almost imperceptable except for
the terrain sliding past. Even here, one can see the
houses of the poor, and the plenty that they have here
compared to those in Africa. Satalite dishes abound,
there are back-yards filled with toys, playground
equipment. There are cars and bicycles parked in the
drive-ways of fairly nice houses, though perhaps not
as nice as their neighbours.

There is a strange "European-ness" to all the
architecture. I can't put my finger on precisely what
it is, but I coudln't picture these buildings anywhere
else. Of course, Ikea looks like Ikea anywhere in the
world, but these houses, even office-buildings have a
Je ne sais quio that make it hard to imagine them any
place else.

The closest that I've seen are buildings in New
England, but they are still not the same. Maybe it's
the brick, or the tiled roofs, but I think it's more
those tiny features that are invisible to the
untrained eye.

There is a subtle difference as well between the
buildings in Holland, and the buildings past the
checkpoint (at a station the train stopped and the
Polizei walked through the train checking passports --
unfortunately I didn't get a new stamp for Germany)
were suddenly looking more "German."

The train slid imperceptably past wind-power stations
turning slowly in the breeze, past the steam-spewing
nuclear plants that made sure there would be no power
rationing here. I moved quickly through beautifully
manicured farms, past the european cars driving
through the rain. Past midget ponies and horses on
what must be hobby farms. I moved silently past only a
few fat cows grazing.

As we moved further into Germany, I began to notice a
new change. This would be where the now-defunct East
Germany one existed. I glided past Soviet-Era
buildings rotting, long abandoned beside the track.
The homes began to look a little less bright and
cherry. It seems ten years hasn't completely swallowed
the last scars of the Soviet era, though I wonder if
the difference is only cosmetic, or if it does go
deeper.

In homage to U2, I disembarked in Berlin at Zoo
Station. I splurged 16 Euro and took a cab to the
Hostel. I was just not in a mood to mess around trying
to make my way through a strange town.

The Hostel is located in what once was East Berlin,
the land that lived behind the Berlin wall. The cab
took me through (actually past, you can't drive through) Brandenburg Tor, the gate whose name
sounds like something Captain Kirk might have
muttered, but means nothing more mundane than
"Brandenburg Gate."

Tonight I will rest, and grab a bite to eat with a
fellow Vancouverite that I met in the hostel as I
struggled with a German keyboard that has swapped the
'y' and 'z' keys. Tomorrow I will go for a walk and
see the things that I was most interested in seeing in
Berlin: the cold war remnants of Checkpoint Charlie
and Brandenburg Tor. Perhaps trz to find remnants of
that infamous wall.

The difference is still obvious in Architecture
between East and West Berlin, but again: I wonder if
it's only cosmetic?

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Last Day in Tanzania

2006-04-01T23:31:00.000-08:00

My flight leaves this evening at 8:20pm (20:20). In the meantime, however, I had to check out of the hotel at 9:30, returning at 5:00 to get the shuttle to the airport. That seems a little rediculous to me, but whatever. It's 10:45am right now, that means I have 6 hours to kill still. Weee. Hurry up and wait.

I've been keeping an eye on these protests in Paris. I'm hoping that they've died down by the time I arrive in 4 or 5 days (or is it 6?) but whatever, if they're still going on then it'll be that much more interesting.

I tried to book a train ticket to Berlin for tomorrow, but I couldn't do it online for some bizarre reason. I guess after I get off the plane at 6:55 or so tomorrow morning I'll have to head to the TGV station and buy a ticket. I find it amazing that I could book my hostel online, I could book my flight from Paris to Dublin online, but I could not book a train ticket. Bizarre world.

There are a few things that I need to keep in mind for when I come back here to do proper volunteer work:
1.) Learn more (some) Swahili! (At least enough to communicate basically)
2.) Make sure that I've planned enough to keep busy.
3.) Be more prepared mentally.

Back in the Shadow of Kili

2006-04-01T05:36:00.000-08:00

I'm back where I started one month ago today: in Moshi in the shadow of Kilimanjaro. At least I would be if the clouds weren't smothering it again.

It's strange: a month ago I thought this was such a dirty, dusty, hot little town. Now I look at it, and compared to the places I've been in the past month, it looks clean, even lush with tiny greenery poking through the brown dirt. Even the shanty-town doesn't look as shanty as it did on my first arrival.

I'm back at the same hotel that I stayed in when I first arrived. It seems so luxurious, even with it's 6ft long beds and power restrictions. I've surprised some of the staff with Swahili responses to questions: I guess the tourists that arrive here know even less than I do.

I don't want anyone to get the wrong idea: it's not that I didn't enjoy my trip, it was just a little overwhelming. I wasn't fully prepared for what I was confronted with.

I came here with the expectation that I would do a little volunteer work after my Kili climb, instead the missionaries gave me a tour of about half of the country, the part that very few tourists see. Perhaps it was a side effect of the malaria medication, perhaps it was a starvation of my Calvinist work ethic (I wasn't really doing much), or perhaps it was because it really was so intense, but that three week tour was pretty overwhelming. It was an insight into what wealthy, middle class, and poverty really mean. They exist everywhere, and they are on a very sliding scale.

Here in Tanzania, there are people who drive BMW's, and Mercedes, or have chaufered Range Rovers, but they share the roads with hand-carts, bicycles, and many, many pedestrians. The middle class, say a teacher, earns $200 dollars a month, and probably lives in a brick hut with a tin roof and a concrete floor. The people that live in poverty live in a poorness that we cannot fathom.

Things like computers, iPods, Cameras, Cars, Washing Machines, Refridgerators: these things are luxuries that make our lives easier, but they are things that we in the west "want." Here they are things that people do without, they are too busy concentrating on need. Where is my water going to come from. Will it kill me if I don't boil it enough? How will I boil it with no electricity and the rising price of kerosene?

I was lucky that I could affort the malaria pills that I brought, there were 3 people that I was travelling with or that I visited that came down with Malaria since I met them. To paraphrase and provide the antipode to the Tragically Hip: I'm certain that the parasites are thrashing in my blood as 500 men drowning in the water might. I can feel mild symptoms, but the pills are keeping the little bastards in check. The pills cost more than a teacher here earns in a month, in a country where more people die of Malaria than AIDS, and HIV infection runs close to 20%.

I wonder what it will be like in 2 months when I have to return to my uninspired job making uninspired products for an uninspired and frivolous consumer base.

Out of Africa: What's next?

2006-03-30T00:39:00.000-08:00

First off, I'd like to apologize if the tone of this post is a little depressing.

I'm leaving Tanzania on April 2nd, this gives me only 2 more days before I have to return to Moshi to organize leaving the country. I'll be arriving in Amsterdam on April 3rd, very early in the morning. From there I will try to make my way to Berlin, and eventually to Paris. From Paris I'll be flying into Dublin to meet up with Luke.

Africa was interesting, but it was also exhausting intellectually and emotionally. There is a lot that I've seen that I've "filtered" for these posts, both to keep my parents from panicking and to maintain my own stoicism: I've managed to put a bit of a rose-coloured tint of optimism on everything, but the effort was exhausting.

It's easier to be exposed to poverty if you try not to think about the everyday of, say, living in a hut composed of nothing but mud, twigs and palm-leaves. How do you wrap your head around what life is like when you're 8 years old, both your parents are dead of AIDS and you'll soon see them again?

This same kid goes to a non-boarding school where tuition is $100/year that he doesn't have, but the friars that run it look the other way for him and the other 25% of the students in a similar situation, while struggling just to keep the school open. This kid eats the one meal a day that comes from the school: lunch, and disappears back into the streets of Dar es Salaam when the school day ends.

Then there's another kid from Malolo. He spends 12 hours a day studying, he knows the value of his education. His family is too poor to pay the $450/year tuition at this boarding school, so he's found a sponsor. A nun who has taken a vow of poverty can somehow scrounge up the required funds to sponser him personally in order to keep him from returning to a life of hard labour in the fields: there are, apparently, different levels of poverty. She does this because she knows that this is education that may give him an oppurtinity he otherwise would not have, and at the very least, perhaps he will bring something back to the community, like a knowledge that HIV/AIDS is not caused by witchcraft.

How do you confront those people in the west who are so righteously adamant about closing down those "sweatshops that only pay $5/day" when you've met people who are desperately trying to learn "tailoring," but can't afford the <$2 a month to pay for lunch for an almost fully subsidized school? What do you say to these people when you've met the reason this woman is sitting behind a foot-powered sewing machine, and that tiny reason is sitting on the floor in front of her and playing with a stick of bamboo, his only toy?

How do you respond in a country where 100 people in the largest city have come down with Cholera in the past two weeks? A city where the government has just announced it will shut down the water for 3 months. It's not like these people can afford Evian. This is a place where Typhus, a disease that for $70 in Canada I was immunised against, is a deadly killer. It's hard, though, to afford the vaccine in a village where your family earns perhaps $40 a year above and beyond your basic subsistence.

Then there's the rational behind those 5 foot high brick walls topped with broken bottles, and that security guard with the machete in one hand and the shotgun slung over his shoulder. To quote one conversation: "It's better here than Nairobi: here they hurt but they don't kill; in Nairobi they kill."

This is a country where people don't call the police when they catch a criminal. It is not hyperbole here when they say the police are corrupt, or that the justice system won't solve anything. Here the people believe in street justice. Here a lynching isn't a racist undertaking, it's an attempt to restore justice in a society where corruption is a very real problem, and not a n ethically obscure scandal that lives in the news for a year and a half. Here it is a fact of life.

The reason why most beds aren't more than 6 feet in length is pretty simple: when your diet consists entirely of boiled maize flower, malnutrition will make sure that some average heighted Canadian will appear too tall.

I need a week of frivolous European touristing before I can be sociable again. I'll try to make my posts from Europe sound happier. I'm sure that will be pretty easy.

Tanzanian Living

2006-03-27T05:06:00.000-08:00

Life in Tanzania is much like life everywhere else in the world. One sleeps, one eats, and one works. The difference, however, is in getting used to a certain aescetic that fills the gaps in between.

The beds here, the ones that I've seen, have been short. They are short enough that at 6 feet, I can bang both my head and my feet if I'm not careful. The matresses are little more than 3 inches of foam, though because of the warm weather, blankets are not a necessity. The only place that I've found with a European/North American style bed was the Clove Hotel in Zanzibar, which is run by a Danish woman.

Food here is very plain, and there is little variety. Rice and Ugali (a sort of cake made from Maize flower and water) are the main dish, usually served with a sauce made from vegetables, fish or meat. That takes care of lunch and dinner: lunch tends to be the largest meal of the day, at around noon, dinner tends to be later, around 7 or 8 o'clock. Breakfast is a rather simple affair, consisting of Chai (tea) and pancake-like rolls with jam or butter.

Meat is usually goat, beef and pork are more expensive. Fish tends to be just that: a fish, cut up. Watch out for bones, and the head and such-like. The food is also rather bland, the main spice that tends to be used is salt, though occasionally one will find Indian influences of curry and Zanzibar influences of the spices found there. If one is a stickler for variety for food, this is not the place to be (Except maybe in Zanzibar or the more touristy areas). Fortunately, I don't really mind so much.

Water is a tricky thing. From the tap it comes out cold, and in many places, as a sort of muddy brown. In a few places that I've stayed there has been a proper shower -- by which I mean a showerhead in the bathroom. The floors are mostly concrete everywhere, and in the bathroom there is a drain that allows the room itself to serve as the toilet, and the shower-stall. If there is no shower-head, there is usually a bucket and a spout. One fills the bucket and then uses a smaller bucket to shower oneself. It takes some getting used to.

Hot water is a rarity. There is cold water, and there is "warm" water provided by storing cold water in black plastic bins on the roofs of buildings. This doesn't really warm the water very much, though, to the extent that it doesn't seem to do much at all.

Washing clothing tends to be done in the sink or in one of the buckets. It seems to be a good chore to merge with showering. Fortunatley, with the warm climate clothes dry fairly quickly when their simply hung in the air.

Air conditioning is a luxiury I've found in few places, and telivisions are not very prominent, although radios are everywhere. Power is unreliable, however, often with outages that last all of the daylight hours. Internet Cafes, too, are unreliable, and often where the internet works, it is slow or certain sites (like my bank) don't work.

People, however, are exceptionally friendly and hospitable for the most part. There are are few who's livelihoods seem to depend on finding mzungo (white person or foriegner) and trying to convinve them to give them money for trinkets, but for those that do not, they are as I said, exceptionally friendly.

Meals are a big deal here, to eat and share food with guests is a big part of the culture. I had the oppurtunity to share two of these meals. People gather around shared food in the center of the table (food as I've described above), often with sodas at the ready -- and don't try to refuse anything, they'll simply give it to you anyway.

The meal begins and ends with washing your hands. A bowl is held beneath your hands while warm (properly warm) water is poured over them. Then you help yourself to the food provided in the center of the table while the conversation moves around you.

This is perhaps my most difficult trial in Tanzania: the language barrier. Communication is at best jilted, even among those fluent, or nearly fluent in English. I find myself using simple constructions and phrases that I usually don't use, and when I fall into my usual speaking I find myself having to explain so much. While people in the cities tend to be more likely to be able to speak english, those in the more rural towns do not. Often the conversation simply floats around me, while I am nearly oblivious to it's direction.

I can catch a word here or there, and I can respond to certain key phrases, but otherwise I am lost to content. Of course I can recognise from body language a joke, teasing, polite questions, and serious discussion, but other than that I am almost completely lost.

Yes, life is definitely different here, but I would hesitate before calling it worse or better than our North American lifestyle. It is not as luxiourious, maybe not as comfortable, but the people are friendlier and seem more relaxed. I haven't seen anyone hurting for want, and I have seen fewer beggers in my entire travels than I see in a day in Vancouver. People seem to take more time to appreciate the more human aspects of their lives: sharing food, meeting or making a friend, and even day to day chores. Music is everywhere, people often sing while they work.

There are things that I miss: good coffee (not instant), hot water, and the ability to speak easily. I'm reminded, and not for the first time on this trip, of the song by Death Cab for Cutie "Different Names for the Same Thing":

And I knew no words to share with anyone
The boundaries of language I quietly cursed
And all the different names for the same thing

Fortunately, I brought my iPod along, so I can take refuge in my own culture when it seems a bit much.

Mbeya

2006-03-27T04:51:00.000-08:00

On the western side of Tanzania, about an hour's drive from the borders of Zambia and Malawi, sits the small town of Mbeya. It sits nestled at 1800m, nestled in a valley surrounded by mountains. These are not, however, the mountains that I am used to from home. These mountains are much older, rounded, worn by time to resemble very large hills. It is reminiscent of the Okanogan valley, complete with farms that stretch forever.

Here, though, it is not grapes nor apples nor peaches, but maize that they grow. It is the staple throughout Tanzania: maize and rice. It is a pretty town, green surroundings, clean streets, friendly people, and it is small. Perhaps the best feature, though, is the temperature. The air here is dry, and the mercury stays in the 20s as opposed to the 30s if not 40s of the lowlands that I have come from.

The most interesting thing about this farmland, though, is the smell. It does not smell like the industrial farms that I'm used to. The air is clean and fresh, there is no need for excessive fertilizer to grow the towering maize, or the sunflowers that poke up between them. Even the livestock pens have little odor to them, just enough to remind you that animals do smell.

It is quiet here, peaceful. It is a good place to relax and follow the culture of Tanzania, the Pole-Pole that seems to pervade everything. A sort of relaxed, devil-may-care laid-backness that I've seen in few other places. Even in the industrialized world, the sort of laid-back folk that one comes across still bear that deep-seated urgency that they can't entirely be rid of.

They may rise before the dawn here, but once they are up they are not in a hurry. There are things to do, but there is plenty of time to do them.

Tanzanian Highways

2006-03-27T04:23:00.000-08:00

Before the sun rises to throw it's fire down onto the cool morning, you are on board a wheeled monstrocity decorated in brilliant colours and with images of eagles, torches, lions, and the occasional logo for a European football club. As the bus leaves the town (sometimes city) and passes past the tiny wooden shacks, or lines of stone and brick shop-fronts you pass into an entirely different world. Away from the clusters of tin roofed huts and buildings, the instantly recognizable canopy trees of Africa, and green fireworks of the palm trees march down to the sides of the road.

Even this early in the morning the streets have people. There are bicycles weaving on the road, many balanced with all sorts of cargos: timber, sugar-cane, bamboo, and timber that is taller than a person, all strapped onto the back and balanced with a fine degree of control. There are hand-carts, both empty and loaded with all sorts of things: sacks of fruit and vegetables, cases of soda, or even passengers. Then there are the pedestrians, not as plentiful as mid-day, but enough to keep the streets busy. This land gets an early start.

No longer enclosed by the habitats of humanity, the huts become sparse clusters that dot the road-side. Between them you see the sort of wells that feature prominently in advertisements to draw money to assorted campaigns, along with the strange, almost Mayan pyrimids of the brick factories, steaming in the early morning cool. As the sun finally rises over the African wilderness, the warmth begins to rise. The slivers of mist that hang between the forests begin to disappear back into the dying night.

Travel in Tanzania is almost exclusively by bus, and relatively cheap. The journey from Dar es Salaam to Mbeya -- a journey of around 1000km: clear across the country -- costs around 20,000 Tsh, or about $20.

The busses are fast. The drivers must think that they're in some sort of endurance race. They careen down the narrow roadways in excess of 150km/hr, flying through the landscape. The only place where they slow down is for the enormous speedbumps at the occasional small community along the roadway, or as they pass through a national park. Parks where you can see herds of Giraffes or Elephants grazing in the distance. Often baboons watch the vehicles pass with disgusted looks on their face. Annoyed at being hurried from the road they had been relaxing on.

There are two predominant types of vehicles on the road. The plethora of busses, and the plethora of trucks. There is the occasional car or 4wd, but most bear the markings of some official capacity.

The trucks travel mostly with tarpolan covered loads, often with passengers perched atop them. They travel very slowly on the road compared to the busses, and on a long trip they can be seen crashed in a variety of gut-wrenching poses off the side of the highway. This is the "Tanzam" highway, the main route across Tanzania and into Zambia.

Each time the bus slows there magically appear people with baskets, selling all sorts of things to the bus through the windows. They appear in the streets of Dar es Salaam when traffic slows. They appear at weigh-stations in the middle of no-where. Where they come from and where they go to I will probably never know.

When the bus finally arrives at it's destination is when the real confusion begins. It seems almost every bus station is filled with people anxious to "help" you with your bags. With Taxi drivers looking for an over-priced fare and with touts trying to sell you something. Shuffling through the barriers of language, it is an exhausting experience to determine that you are in the right spot, to retrieve your bags, and then to extract yourself to determine your next move.

I never thought sitting still for so long could be so exhausting.

More Reasons to Hate Dar

2006-03-20T01:00:00.000-08:00

So I returned to Dar for a short trip -- this city is
still dirty and the air tastes like diesel and other
burned things.

I was walking on the street about 10 minutes looking
for an internet cafe. In that time I caught 2 people
trying to open my backpack before I started carrying
it in my hand instead of on my back. I hate this
stinking city.

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Malolo

2006-03-20T00:56:00.000-08:00

I spent 3 days in the tiny rural village of Malolo. Malolo is about 3 1/2 hours drive west of Morogoro, on the highway that runs through Mikumi national park. An hour or two before the town of Iringa is the turnoff for Malolo. It is a 20 minute drive by 4WD down this sandy dirt road, through a combination of semi-arid desert and lush Jungle.

Malolo sits in a lush, flat valley, surrounded by tree covered hills. The village itself is a loose collection of mud and brick huts with a combination of roofing styles: in some cases thatched, and on a few homes, there is corougated steel with brick and rock to hold them down.

One of the largest challenges to life here is the remoteness. It is far from the closest major town, Iringa, and has neither electricity nor telephone communication. There are no land-lines for the telephone, nor are there cellular towers close enough for reception. The meager electrical supply must come either from solar power, or by generator. Communication is either by short-wave radio at set times of day, or by individual messages carried by those that make the trip in and out of town from time to time.

Beyond the remoteness of the place, there are two other items of interest: the secondary school that opened its doors to the first class of students this January, and also the Japanese built dam that supplies water for irrigation.

The Secondary school is a catholic school run by the Sisters of St. Joseph. It is still incomplete, having only enough room for the Form 1 students. Secondary school here is organized much the same as highschool in Canada, with Form 1 the equivalent of Grade 8. The goal for the school is to grow as the students advance through thier grades, advancing with the students to add Form 2, and so on each year.

Teaching in the school is in English, as it is in most secondary schools in Tanzania. There is a class called "Pre-Form" that teaches those whose English is not yet at a level appropriate for general studies. Primary education in Tanzania is in Kiswahili, often with classes that teach English in preparation for Secondary school.

There are challenges that the school is trying to overcome. The library is short on books, having only the text books required for the syllabus. The lack of power makes the idea of using computers only a vague dream, and the well cannot pull up enough water to adaquately supply the existing students, let alone once the school expands. There is also a shortage of qualified science teachers.

There is also, as always in Africa, the problem of obtaining the funds needed to complete each new phase of the school: the next phase will complete the boy's dormatory and add the necessary classrooms and laboratories for teaching the more advanced courses and the sciences. That is, of course, if they can find teachers that have training and education in science. That too is a problem here, as most that can teach science prefer to live in the towns and cities.

The Dam provides the true lifeblood of Africa: water. Though the valley in Malolo is damp enough to provide a breeding ground of Malaria and Typhus, there is not enough water to adaquately tend to the crops: the river that runs through the valley has cut too deep into the valley floor, leaving many of the fields high and dry. The dispensary set up by another group of Catholic Sisters can provide for most problems Malarial and Typhoid, but to the problem of irrigation, a larger solution was needed.

That solution came in the form of an aid project from the Japanese government. Using local labour, Japanese expertese and equipment, a modern dam was built that was able to raise the level of the river to that of the valley above. From here, irrigation canals were constructed that could supply irrigation water to the villages of Malolo and Mgogozi.

For a fee of about $7 US/acre/year, farmers gain a supply of water that allows them to cultivate Maize, Rice, Tomatoes, Onions and other crops that can be used both as a source of income and as subsistance. The majority of the funds are used to support the dam itself, providing for maintenance and for security (the plaques commemorating the opening had to be removed for fear of theft). The irrigation canals themselves must be cleaned by the farmers using them, and to this end, the outlet valves are preiodically closed for 3 days for the farmers to do just that.

Issues do persist with maintenance, however. The dam does become clogged with the high grasses, and it does not appear that the cleaning has been as thourough as it should be. I am not, however, a civil engineer so my observances may not be accurate.

There are three pillars for development hope in Africa: Health, Education and Infrastructure. Between the school, the dispensary the first two pillars are at least rudimentaly covered. With the advances in infrastructure provided by the dam, the slowly improving road, and the vague future promise of a cellular tower, there are increasing reasons for hope in the beautiful, peaceful valley.

Zanzibar, Dar es Salaam, Morogoro

2006-03-15T01:47:00.000-08:00

Stone town in Zanzibar is a maze of narrow streets and alleys. You can look up, and see the spires of a building you would like to see close-up, and then get lost wandering through the streets, all the while within only a few blocks of the building that you are looking for. Perhaps I should have brought some bread-crumbs to leave myself a trail.

I was searching for the Museum of peace, on the outskirts of Stone Town near the polo grounds. Unfortunately, this being a Sunday, the museum was closed, and many other shops and restaurants didn’t open until late. I did have a chance, however, to watch cattle grazing on the soccer pitch across from the museum, and to take a few photos of the remarkable architecture of the building, including the massive carved stone doors at the entrance.

I visited St Monicas, the Anglican church that stands on the site of the old Zanzibar slave market, and I visited the museum that they have on site with the cramped and claustrophobic slave’s quarters beneath. Strangely, the information that they had posted on the slave trade was mainly concerned with the West Coast African slave trade to the Americas and not the East Coast trade with the Middle East and Asia.

I also visited the “House of Wonder” museum in the old palace near the waterfront. This museum was a lot more in depth and discussed Swahili culture and talked about the amazing thousand years of “globalization” from the trade of dhows traveling the monsoon winds from India, Persia, and all throughout the Indian ocean. What would the university protesters complain about with this form of globalization I wonder?

This was also where I found about the history of the East Coast Slave Trade that was mostly concerned with trade to the Middle East and Asia. It was, in fact, the English that ended the slave trade and constructed the cathedral on the Slave Market site in order to ensure its demise.

Walking about Zanzibar, I’ve found that the papasi (Swahili for “ticks” it’s what they call the street folk that try to sell you things) are much easier to deal with. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been in the country for a while, or perhaps they really are less aggressive here, I’m not sure which. Zanzibar also has some nice shops, custom built for tourists with marked prices so that one does not have to haggle if one doesn’t want to. They also have some of the more fine carvings and such, including some amazing handmade silver jewelry. The shops do serve one other great purpose, though: you can duck into them to lose papasi that you just can’t shake.

I tried my hand once more at haggling, and I’m still not very good at it. I bought a small necklace from a Maasai street vendor, but I started too high and ended up spending $2 more than I wanted to. Ah well, live and learn as they say.

I started walking after lunch, hoping to see a building that I had read about as having some very nice details. I was walking behind a very attractive English Girl, and I accidentally missed my turn. As it turned out it was very fortuitous, because it left me much closer to my hotel when the sky exploded, and all that water that had been laden in the air fell out of it at once. In seconds the streets became rivers. I managed to make it to the hotel quickly enough, but I was soaked through by the time I got there. The rain lasted only an hour before the sun was back out.

I left Zanzibar on Monday morning for Dar es Salaam on the 10:00 ferry. The ferry terminal in Zanzibar is in the midst of an active freight dock. One has to thread ones way between stacks of containers and around cranes to arrive at the small fenced in pen where passengers await the ferry.

The ferry itself is a catamaran, and does move very quickly. The crossing of 70km took only around an hour and a half. We passed many dhows under sail, and several that were under power.

About an hour into our journey, we were flagged down by a 30m fishing skiff crowded with 14 crew-members. Apparently they had run out of gas far from either the coast of Zanzibar, or that of mainland Tanzania. After some brief maneuvering, and an exchange of fuel, we were back on our way to Dar.

Entering the Dar es Salaam harbour, we passed beautiful beaches, fishermen, fishing boats, and even some ocean-going boats being rowed back into harbour like the dragon boats from home.

Dar itself is a large, ugly city. It is very busy, and much faster paced than the slower going in the areas that I have visited already. It is also much less touristy, though there are still many people that speak English. It lacks the charm of the pastoral honesty of Moshi, and it lacks the exotic flavours of Zanzibar.

There are some nice buildings in Dar, but the majority are the same sort of quickly built concrete monstrosities that you can see in any booming city. And there is no doubt that Dar is booming. You can see construction everywhere in the city. At first glance it seems so chaotic, there seems to be neither rhyme nor reason to any of the activity: construction or otherwise.

I stayed at a hotel that was very western today. It was very much like those that I was used to from home: telephone, television, Air Conditioning. I even ordered room service! The hot water was still lacking, though. That is one thing that I still haven’t found anywhere in Africa. I am starting to get used to cold showers, which now doubles as my washing machine.

I bought a bus ticket for Morogoro for Tuesday morning, and I went for a walk through the city. To the east of town there are some nice parks, and some nice landscaping. This is also where the hospitals and WHO are located, as well as some other government buildings. This is also where most of Koch’s work on Malaria took place at the turn of the century.

Traffic here is very crazy, but for the most part the majority of the rules of the road seem to apply. Perhaps it is because the traffic is on the other side of the road from what I’m used to that it seems as chaotic as it does, or perhaps it really is that chaotic. The British influence is definitely apparent in the way the roads work: not only is driving on the left, but there are also an abundance of traffic circles; something that I’ve found throughout my travels in Tanzania.

Supermarkets here are very different. The cashiers are rather rude, and require exact change for most any transaction. I found a similar problem with the bus depot, but not on the part of the cashiers. Barely had I received my ticket (I had not yet been issued my change for the 7500Tsh ticket) when two souls pushed me out of the way in order to get to the ticket counter. The teller politely ignored them until she had my change ready, and then held it out for me through the two that had pushed me out of the way. Cities suck.

Dar is also the first place that I’ve found where it’s difficult to use traveler’s cheques. I was rather surprised at this. Neither the banks, nor the money exchange bureaus accept them, though the hotel did. I’ve found that it’s usually the other way around with the hotels requiring cash and the banks and exchanges taking traveler’s cheques.

I left Dar es Salaam Tuesday morning at 10:00 on the bus to Morogoro. We traveled through rainforests, past coconut trees and shanty-towns until finally, after almost 4 hours we arrived at the foot of the Uluguru mountains. Morogoro is a very rural township, mostly concerned with agriculture.

This is very far, now, from the tourist areas. Much fewer people here speak English, and there are very few people on the street that will actively try to sell you something because you look like a foreigner. There are no lack of street vendors selling all ranges of things, from shoes to belts to clothing, all arrayed on the sidewalk.

It does not seem like there are many white people that come through here: I get a lot of strange looks from people on the street. There was even a kid that came up to me to practice his English and wanted to get a photograph taken with me.

I have met up with the Carmelites here, and found that Fr Shabas is as friendly and as enthusiastic as he was in our e-mail correspondence. I’ve also been introduced to many equally friendly and welcoming people who have showed me around some of the town and provided me with some truly fantastic lodgings.

The town of Morogoro itself is rather small, with one main street and a few small offshoots with the traditional, and ever-present traffic circles. As with most every other traffic circle I have now encountered in the country there is either a monument or a clock sitting directly in the center.

I met the night guardsman at the Carmelite College here. He is an older muslem that carries a rifle and a machete. Both, I think, are older by far than he is. Apparently, some time back there was an incident where marauders had broken into the mission and stolen many things. Though that was some time ago and it’s been quiet ever since. He was a very nice man, and we had a conversation in his good but broken English. He kept asking me about my tribe, I just translated the word to mean “country.”

Like the power, the internet here is not exactly reliable. It is at times up and down, slow or fast. At times it can cut out while you are in the middle of your time and not come back for a long time, if at all.

Zanzibar

2006-03-11T23:13:00.000-08:00

Zanzibar is as exotic as the name sounds.

It seems there is a lost chapter in the story of Alladin, or in the 1001 Arabian nights, and that chapter is called "Zanzibar." Zanzibar island is also called "Unguja" to differntiate it from Zanzibar town and the Zanzibar archipelago. As the song by DCFC goes: They're different names for the same place.

Even from the airport, it was cear that this was a whole world away from Moshi. There are forests of tall palm trees here, instead of the very "tree" like trees in Moshi. The Persian/Arabian/Ottoman influences are hard to miss, from the pinched arches in the architecture to the muslem dress of both men and women. I half expect to walk around a blind corner in stone town and meet Scheherazade herself.

The air is cooler here, with a light breeze off the Indian Ocean, but the air is so much damper than Moshi. I feel like if only I could get a good grip on the air, I could wring the water completely out of it. The same, slightly sauna-wood smell lingers in the air, even here in Zanzibar town.

The flight on Air Tanzania was uneventful. The unmistakable drawl of an Aussie came over the intercom as the plane began to taxi. Aussies are like grains of sand after a day at the beach: they seem to be everywhere and they get into everything. The flight itself was very short, we had only enough time for the small jet to climb to altitude before it was descending over the water and into Zanzibar International Airport. I find they are not so stringent about turning off your iPod and putting the chairs and seat tables into a locked and upright position on this airline, and designated seating seems more like a suggestion.

On the drive in from the airport, the taxi had to ford a large flood in the road. We were joined in our attempt by bicylcles, motorcycles, other cars and trucks, and even pedestrians. We drove past beaches that, in the sunset, could have passed for those at home. Replace the volleyball with football, and the Lazers and fiberglass sailing dingys with dhows, and this could be English Bay.

Stone Town breathes with it's age. The streets are narrow, barely enough room for one car, let alone two abreast. They are more like alley ways than streets, perhaps even "corridor" could be more appropriate. Eventually, the taxi must stop and I have to walk to the Clove Hotel where I will be staying these two nights. The streets are now so narrow that when one of the pletiful scooters passes the pedestrians must push themselves into the walls. Scooters and bicycles would be much better forms of transportation in this town, I think.

I go to dinner at a remarkable restaurant called "Kidude," a short walk from my hotel, on the recomendation of the very helpful dutch woman that runs the Clove. It is a spectacular dining room, decorated with Arabian lamps, Persian rugs and couches. Even a hookah in the corner. The food was outstanding: fried fish with cinamon rice and fruit. One would think at first nod that cinamon rice sounds odd, but no: It is quite good.

Here, too, the power goes out from time to time. The power was cut at 8:00, and the city continued as normal. There was something magical about sitting in the rooftop terrace and watching the city plunged into darkness except for the candles of the rooftop restaurant down the street and the candles in the cafes in the small plaza below. The sounds of revelry drifted in on the night wind, with the moon making up for any lack of light overall.

At 9:00 the power came back on, and thus ended that magical hour. There were even sounds of cheers from the westerners at nearby bars, but I think it is only because we are so used to power. It is like we don't know what to do in it's absence. Thoughts of the pen, paper, cards, conversation: so many things that we have lost in the electronic age are right there, but when we're presented with them we just don't know what to do with ourselves so we freeze in the headlights of the unknown. When the forced oppurtunity to do something else expires it is with relief that we acknowledge our complete hopelessness and return to our arms-length interaction with others through internet, telephone and television.

It is, after all, easier to deal with the tought conversations over e-mail, when the person is so far away as to be almost non-existent. Is it no wonder, then, so many people suffer from neuroses, fearing comitment and intimacy: we can't even manage the small intimacies of everyday conversation, let alone the big ones.

It is had to get used to this night sky. Orion sits high above, almost at the zenith. So alien to where I'm used to seeing it, peaking uncertainly above the horizon. Zanzibar is a romantic place in all the meanings of the word.

Last Days in Moshi

2006-03-10T02:55:00.000-08:00

I went to a restaurant in the suburbs of Moshi called "El Rancho." The suburbs are much nicer than the town itself. The town is little more than a shanty town, with some businesses in the downtown core and a marketplace. It is dry, and dusty, and immediately surrounding the town are mud huts and shacks.

The suburbs, by comparison, are lush and the inhabitants are much more well off. You see more cars and SUVs on the road (as opposed to the town, where it's mostly foot-traffic or bicycles).

El Rancho itself is a ranch-style house with a large patio that wraps around the outside. This is where they serve you. The food itself takes a very long time to prepare since, according to the menu, they start making it from scratch when you order. The menu is Indian and Chinese.

Myself, and a couple from Calgary that had also hiked Kilimanjaro were invited along by a very friendly group from Seattle that we had met on the mountain. Dinner was very good, for 5000Tsh (about $5) each, there was more food than I could finish.

The food situation is sort of strange: I'm still trying to get a handle on it. Apparently I've been eating local cuisine and just haven't known it. It's very European.

I've found a lot of strange influences on the way the culture has evolved here. Obviously, there are the tribal influences, but also many European, and even a strong Indian influence that I've found, with a Hindu temple, and many indian restaurants in town. It will be interesting to see how much, if at all, this changes as I travel around the country a little more.

Throughout Tanzania there is currently power rationing, so you never know when the power will be shut off. One of my wake-up cues is when the fan shuts off in my room: there's a good chance it's the 7 o'clock power outage. The power is usually off for most of the day, coming back on only around sunset. Often even internet cafes in town have no power unless they have a back-up generator that they can turn on.

The hot water heater is also electric, and you have to turn it on. There's a little switch next to the bathroom light for the hot water heater. If you forget to turn it on, and there's a power outage, you'll be stuck with a cold shower; I find it's easiest to just leave it on.

Walking through town the street-vendors are still a pain in the ass. Most leave you alone after one or two "no"s, but some will follow you for blocks, no matter how many times you say no. Even when I've switched from "hapana asante" to "hapana, hapana, hapana, no, no, no," a few of them just don't get the hint. So I just walk on, and if they want to waste their time following me, then that's their problem. The secret, I've found, is not to stop on the street, and only to buy things from shops you can step into. If you buy things on the street, soon you're surrounded by vendors who also think they can sell you something.

I said good-bye to my friends from Seattle and Calgary, as they have gone off on Safari today. When I booked my ticket to Zanzibar it was with the expectation that I would be down off of the mountain yesterday, not the day before.

I think I've spent one day too many in Moshi, because I'm ready to leave now.

Here are some things that I came up with while wandering around on the mountain (You have lots of time to think when you're trying to climb up a very large hill):

* If I'm in a foriegn country and corresponding with home, does that make me a foriegn correspondent or do I need credentials? Can I start introducing myself as a correspondent?

* "Polle-Polle" (pronounced Poe-ly-Poe-ly) is Swahili for "Slowly, Slowly" or "Take your time." It's what the porters tell you when you're moving to quickly up the mountain. I think that's good advice in just about everything: mountain climbing or personal life. How many times have I been burned for moving to quickly?

Kilimanjaro Journal

2006-03-09T00:20:00.000-08:00

March 3, 2006 -- Day 1

Rose early for breakfast and to meet the tour group. I met up with Bo, a 60 year old Swede who was also travelling alone. If only I am as youthful and in such good shape when I am 60!

We had been paired together to make a group. This is a good thing because it means that tips will be cheaper in the long run, and we'll need less porters and such than if we were each travelling alone. Our guide was a very professional man named Thomas who spoke rather good english. I'm constantly amazed at how many people from around the world speak english.

We crammed into a land-cruiser-type pick-up truck. Bo and I with the driver in the cab, with the porters and gear in the back, and drove about an hour from Moshi town to Machame gate. At first it was throught the same sort of dusty African landscape as Moshi, but eventually it became more lush and we were travelling through banana plantations at the base of Kili. Machame gate itself sits at about 1800m above sea level, which knocks a good chunk off of the total height we will have to climb.

When we left Moshi it was 40C, at Machame gate it was already down to 32C, much more comfortable.

We started on the trail at around 11:15, and hiked for about 4 hours to Machame Hut Camp. We walked mainly through rainforest very similar to home. Except for the monkeys that we saw jumping from tree to tree, and the lack of evergreens it easily could have been. At around 1pm we stopped for lunch, and shortly afterwards it began to rain. I did mention that it reminded me of home?

We arrived about 3:30. Already the temperature is down to 15C, and we are now about 3000m above sea level. At 5 o'clock they served us tea and popcorn,and shortly afterwards the rain stopped. They brought along a dinner tent for us to eat in, which was a bit of a surprise. In fact, the food in general was a surprise: it was generous and good, quite unlike the freeze-dried food that I'm used to when hiking and camping.

I thought that I was in good shape, but the mountain kicked my ass today. I was warned how tought the West Coast Trail was, and after how easy I found that, I was dismissive of warnings about Kili. I should not have been, I should have taken things more seriously. Being my stubborn self, I wanted to pull my own weight, carrying all of my gear. Big mistake. I'm beginning to see the light of Kiwi Pete's argument about light gear.

Thomas suggested, as I stumbled up the last 10m, that I repack some things that I won't need during the day into another bag to let the proters help. I think that is a good idea.

I feel guilty about not pulling my own weight: not carying any of the food, tent, or doing any of the camp chores. This is the problem with my stubborn insistence on self-reliance, I suppose.

March 4, 2006 -- Day 2

Breakfast was as excessive as dinner. We were up at 7, done eating by 8, and on the trail by quarter past 8.

We gained 1000m more today, passing Shira peak at 4000m before descending another 300m to Shira Cave camp at 3700m, arriving around 12:30. We've been travelling too fast, I think, keeping up with the porters. They say you're supposed to ascend very slowly.

We climbed clear of the rainforest today and into the moorland, or heather or whatever you call it. There are new and interesting looking shrubs and plants now, so it no longer feels so much like home -- except of course for the intermittent rain. There are fields of these small shrubs that are such light green they are almost white. It looks very amazing among the dark volcanic rock.

Today was much easier than yesterday. While I can't claim victory, I think I held my own, due in large part, I am certain, to lightening my bag a little and giving some of the weight to the porters. My bag now weighs only 20-30 pounds. I feel more guilty now, though, because I'm am pulling even less of my own weight.

The porters are amazing. They are built like marathon runners, and easily out endure we fat westerners. They carry not only packs, but large bundles of gear balanced on their heads, and practically run up slopes that we are picking our way carefully along. It is truly humbling to witness.

Thomas says that he can not even count the number of times that he has climbed the mountain, but he has been working on the mountain for 4 years, and averages 3 climbs a month or so. Easily, over 100 times. That really puts my climb into perspective.

Enjoying a respite from the rain, I wandered around the camp-site a little, taking some photos. After a brief sojurn I sat on a rock and watched the slow, sensual dance of sky and ground as the clouds moved gracefully around the nearby ridges.

March 5 -- Day 3

Woke at the usual time with the usual breakfast. Broke camp at 8:45, heading for the Shark's tooth lava tower and then on to the next camp. The Shark's tooth is at aproximately 4600m, Barranco camp is back down to 3800m. This is an important day for acclimatizing oneself to the altitude.

At around 11:00 the rains returned with a vengance, blowing with a storm force wind across the bare rocky terrain of our ascent. We lunched at the Shark's tooth in a respite from the wind, and began descending along a river that flowed from the arrow glacier. Unfortunately, all day we walked through the clouds and could see very little. Even the glacier was hidden behind the mily whiteness.

I saw the first snows of Kili up close today, as the peak popped in and out through holes in the cloud cover. On the descent from the lava tower the snow was falling from the sky! That didn't last very long, soon it was back to rain as we made our way down to Barranco.

I have a headache, now, one of the symptoms of altitude sickness, but more worryingly I also feel stomache sick. I am worried that it may be the severe form of altitude sickness and I may have to descend. I was jogging a little on my way down from the lava tower: that may have been a mistake. Over-exertion is not a good idea at altitude.

Near Barranco camp, the terrain is very alien. Bizarrely shaped trees poke from the rocks and low brush. The clouds close in all around: it is like being on another world.

I feel sick, tired and cold. The damp pervades everything, all of my clothes, my sleeping bag. No precautions seem to be enough. I was ready for the cold, but not the rain.

March 6, 2006 - Day 4 "Hell Day"

They say if you come through the other side then it can't be hell. This had to be close.

I was still very sick this morning. I barely ate last night and the thought of food turned my stomache this morning. I choked down my malaria pill and my altitude sickness pill with some biscuits, and downed a little water. Decided to push on for Barafu anyway, I believe I mentioned I'm stubborn?

We left camp at 8:30 and began to climb a wall that must have jutted 900m strait up out of the valley. The path was etched back and forth over the rocks and we made our way hand over foot. I had to stop several times to stop myself from throwing up. The trail ran alongside a cliff that disappeared into the clouds below, and the rain and damp were miserable.

When we finally made it to the top I could hold back my stomach no longer, and I evacuated it's contents. Almost immediately I began to feel better. Perhaps I am lucky, perhaps this is not altitude sickness after all!

I was beginning to wonder if this mountain ever saw the sun, when it finally poked it's head out for 15 minutes or so as we crossed the first valley. In that 15 minutes I managed to get a sunburn.

We climbed up and down into two more valleys before finally making Karanga camp where we stopped for lunch. We are now at 4200m, and there are only 400m more to go before Barafu: the last stop before the peak. It has been a very long day.

I choke down a few biscuits and drink a lot of water.

The final ascent to Barafu seemed an eternity. We walked through the clouds where you could not see where you were going, nor where you've been. The rain was ever present, my batteries were completely drained from not eating, and from being sick.

It is nearly impossible to judge distance through the fog. What seems right in front of you is miles away, what seems miles away is right in front. Willpower and distance got me the rest of the way, along with the mantra for my footsteps: 1 foot forward, 3 inches up.

March 7, 2006- Day 5, Summit Day!

We woke at 11:30pm on the 6th, and left camp shortly after midnight, using our headlamps to find our way along the trail. The air is so thin here, but for the first time the sky is so clear! The stars are outstanding.

It is surreal to see the big dipper, but to follow the pointer stars and find only the horizon. I can see more stars than I have ever seen before. They compete with the meager stars of Moshi below and Moshi pales miserably alonside their brightness.

The headlamps carve little pools of light on the rock, it is nearly impossible to see much outside their meager space. We judge distance by the headlamps of hikers above us and below us, but that is an impossible way to judge where you are or how far you have to go. Breathing is so difficult, the air is so thin up here. We have to stop to rest often on the rocks.

As we climb, the snow begins to appear underfoot. At first spotty, then permanent. The clouds begin to roll in as the sun rises, and the wind picks up. We reach the crater rim, Stella Point at about 6:30 in the morning. We are at 5685 meters now, and strangely we meet hikers giving up. Bo is ready to give up, but I tell him he's come so far, how can he give up now?

We continue through to blowing snow another hour to the peak. Other hikers appear like ghosts from the haze, then dissapear just as quickly. We finally make the peak at 7:30, marked by a large sign in the blizzard, and take our photots. Then we begin to make our way down.

I have the song "Celebration Guns" by the Stars stuck in my head. The lyrics don't really match, but the pounding of my heart in my ears definitely sounds like celebration guns -- or at least drums.

I don't think I fully recovered from my illness yesterday, because I find I have little energy for the descent. We drop below the clouds and into the high mountain desert where the sun now beats down on us. For the first time, I find myself out of water.

We are a mere 300m from camp, I can see it, but I have no more energy. I sit down and wait, wait for enough power to get myself back to the tent.

We make it to the camp at around 10:00, drink some pineapple juice and power-nap for two hours. I have the most bizarre dreams.

We awake at 12:00 and have a quick lunch. At 12:45 we begin our descent to Mweka camp, the last camp before we leave the park and the mountain. I have much more energy now, and we head down quickly. Within two hours we are at the emergency camp where injured and sick hickers await evacuation. We have a brief rest and buy a Coca-Cola from the hut. I am amazed at where you can find this damn drink. All I want is Gatorade, I've been craving it since the summit. I will kill for Gatorade.

We continued down another two hours to Mweka and walked past two stretchers being brought up. It makes me feel better to know that this really was a challenge. It was difficult, but anything worth doing is. My stoicism, tenacity, and willpower are the only things that got me through this day. I am relieved to be reminded that I can accomplish anything that I set my mind to.

Mweka camp is at 3000m, all symptoms of altitude sickness are gone. My stomach cleared up yesterday, I think perhaps it was food poisoning, since throwing up made it go away.

March 8. 2006 - Day 6

We woke at 6:30, had breakfast, and were quickly on our way down the mountain. It was a quick descent through the same rainforest as day one. Once again the monkeys were jumping in the trees. I tried to take a photo using my telephoto lens only to find that it had fogged up in the descent. A true pity.

We made it to the end at 10am, and took our taxi back to town. I think I can now cross this mountain off of my life's "Todo" list.

I had a boss once that used to tell me "Get in over your head, otherwise you're not trying." He was always a smart man, and I think those are words to live by.

Kili and Me

2006-03-08T01:26:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, at 7:30am local (or 8:30pm Monday in Vancouver) I was standing in a snowstorm 3 degrees south of the equator.

I've lusted after Kili for a long time, ever since I read her described by Hemmingway. It was more of a schoolboy crush at first, like a moviestar or something. It wasn't until two or three years ago I seriously started considering pursuing her.

A month ago I started my courtship, and pretty quickly things were seriously underway. It was grueling. She tested my limits physically, emotionally and intellectually. She threw tantrums, at times fridged, at times like a furnace. In the end, she was mine, and will always have a special place in my heart.

I'll post my full journal tomorrow sometime.

Moshi

2006-03-08T01:24:00.000-08:00

March 2nd, 2006

I went for a walk through Moshi township today, just to do some exploring. I ended up buying a plane ticket to Zanzibar on the 11th, when I get back from Kilimanjaro. I figure I will spend a day there looking at Zanzibar town, then ferry into Dar es Salaam, and make my way into Morogoro.

Afterwards, I continued exploring the town. I was thouroughly accosted by the street-vendors. I was completely unprepared for that level of aggressive salesmanship.

I did manage to make friends with a couple of them, and they gave me a guided tour of the local market, and some of the more interesting parts of town. Moshi is a very small town, I have no idea of the population, but it can't be more than 20 or 30 thousand.

I shared a Coca Cola with my local friends, Steve and Rasta, at a small local shop on a dirt road surrounded by the small mud huts that are the local's homes. They taught me some useful Swahili:
mambo -- how are you doing?
jambo -- hello
asante -- thank you
hapana asante -- no, thank-you (very important when being accosted by street vendors and such)
karibu -- welcome
baadaye -- later

The money thing takes some getting used to. 1000 Tanzanian shillings is roughly equivalent to 1 US dollar, so it's useful to simply think of it in those terms. I think I'm getting the hang of it now. There are money exchange shops everywhere, so converting US dollars into shillings is no problem at all.

Moshi is very dry, despite all the heat and humidity. The dust gets into everything.

Walking back to the hotel, I watched a group of men bang pots out of steel with hammers outside of another shack.

An interesting thing that I learned today: The Maasai have to kill a lion before they can get married. Yeah, I know. I thought dating was hard for me. Yikes. Here's your spear and your lion. Uhm, thanks, I'll choose a life of celibacy, thank you.

First Day

2006-03-01T22:15:00.000-08:00

When the sun rose at 6:30 am, I rose with it and the birds outside my window. It's strange: I'm used to the clocks and telephones that provide alarm clocks and wake-up calls, but the birds seem to be more efficient.

There is no hot water, so I shave and shower with cold.

Now that I can see the world around me, Kili rises impossibly out of the flat horizon, disappearing into the haze in the sky above. It is huge.

The fist of fear is clenched in my gut again. Travelling is definitely easier when you're not alone.

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Halfway Around the World in 24 Hours

2006-03-01T22:11:00.000-08:00

Feb 28, 2006

Flying always amazes me. Whether in the intimate enclosure of a small plane, or the impersonal claustrophobia of a pressurized bus, it is, as the poem goes, to slip free the surly bonds of earth and touch the face of god.

I rise in my seat into the ocean above, and Vancouver passes beneathe me. I first see UBC, then Kits laid out beneath me, finally downtown appears to the east as the plane turns north.

The whispy whiteness intermittently obscures my view, then permanently as the I pass above Cypress, shrouded in it's virgin viel. Now I know I have left.

***

It is embarrassing to say, but for a moment I forgot what country Amsterdam, the destination where I'm changing planes, is in. Rather than attributing this to the most likely culprit: my own foolishness, I'm going to say that it's because I just watched the sun both set and rise since I last slept.

I watched "The Family Stone" and "Pride and Prejudice." I'm feeling thouroughly emasculated, and I regret wasting my time watching those movies and not reading more. Or sleeping. I can never sleep on a plane, I don't know why. I managed to sneak in a couple of power naps, but that was it.

I've travelled through space for 8 hours, and time for another 9.

Floating past mountains of puffy cotton, suspended above another world by nothing but the laws of physics and human tenacity. Below the spotty clouds, I can see the lights of oil platforms and ships in the North Sea. As the sun illuminates more, I can see the specks of white ice on the green-blue water, looking impossibly shallow from this height. We're descending into Amsterdam

As we taxi the runway, bizarrly the radio comes on with "Save the Last Dance for Me."

***

Amsterdam, a bizarre airport where no-one speaks in English but the signs and the airport staff.

***

My day is 1/2 over. I don't even know how long I have been awake, but I am very tired. It is 11:00 in Amsterdam, and we are still on the runway. Even the airplane itself is disorienting. Everyone is speaking languages that I can identify, but not understand: French, German, Dutch.

It is snowing in Amsterdam, and the plane finally begins to roll.

***

Even from 30,000 feet and at nearly 1000km/hr, the alps are amazing. Raised lines of intimidating rock blades, a symbol of the power of the earth. They are mountains, much like any other.

***

We pass over tiny islands off the coast of Italy with impossibly perfect beaches punctuating amorphous blobs of land. The Med is a perfect blue with evenly lined waves, compared to the North Sea it is surreal.

***

The sheer size of the Saharah, the sheer enormity is most easily appreciated from the air. So high up, and in all directions nothing but sand-dunes. Moving so quickly and it takes hours to cross. Through Lybia, over Sudan, nothing but desert. I watch my second sunset of the day, it is 7:00 in Africa. I am 11 hours worth of time zones from home, halfway around the world.

***

Landing in a small African airport at night is an experience. There are no lights, no way to determine how high you are, and you are dropping. I watch the monitor as we pass 6000m, the height of Kili. It is -25 C outside the plane. We are still dropping into an ocean of black.

Suddenly the ground appears, dirtty and treeless, reflecting only a little of the landing lights of the plane. There are no runways to see, and only the occasional light in the land below. Then the runway appears, and suddenly we are on the ground.

***

Stepping off the plane was like stepping into a sauna. It was hot and humid, like Toronto in the summer, but the smell was what reminded me the most of a sauna. That smell of sweet sauna wood. It is everywhere, I still smell it now. I think I may have flown into the world's largest sauna.

It is very dark as we drive from the airport to the hotel, there are no street-lights, and the few houses and shacks are barely lit. The driver performs strange communication rituals with oncoming traffic. A flash of the highbeams, then answered. Signal indicators used as we pass not to indicate a turn or lane change, but to indicate what side to pass on.

Finally I am checked into the hotel. I am tired and disoriented. I don't know what I've gotten myself into, but the fun is getting myself out.

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Stupid Flights

2006-02-28T12:26:00.000-08:00

So apparently my flight out of YVR has been delayed by an hour. At least they've got these "Internet at YVR" kiosks for me to kill time in. La la la.

I'm feeling kind of jittery. I wonder if it's because of the coffee, the malaria pills, or because I'm going away for 2 months? Meh, whatever.

Last few hours in Canada!

2006-02-28T07:49:00.000-08:00

So the clock says 7 am, but I'm pretty sure it means 7 pm. Tanzania is 11 hours behind... or is it ahead? Whichever.

I just updated the last of the numbers on my iPod and changed my phone message. I really hope no-one leaves me a voicemail.

I'm going through my iPod and freeing up some extra space -- just in case. I probably won't need it, but I know I'm not going to listen to half of these songs anyway. I mean, seriously, I haven't listened to De La Soul in 6 months, I'm probably okay to lose that. CCR can stay. I've had "She Lies to Me" by 54-40 stuck in my head for the past few days for some reason, and if I don't listen to it I'll probably go blind. Death Cab is so staying.

In theory, when I get on the plane if I then sleep for a couple of hours I should automagically be jetlag free. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

I can never sleep on planes. Stupid airplanes.

Postcards?

2006-02-27T22:38:00.000-08:00

Hey, if you want me to send you a post card, send me your addresses.

Leaving on a Jet plane

2006-02-27T22:04:00.000-08:00

So I finally got around to getting everything done today. I think.

I've packed and copied all my travel documents. I've even saved important info onto my iPod so that if I lose my other stuff I've got it there. Handy little toy, that.

I got my haircut, my remaining pills, packed. Yup, even got my keys to Daven so he can house-sit and I'm crashing at my folks place so I can get a ride into the airport (and because my Dad really wants to borrow my car while I'm gone).

I'll leave a copy of all my docs with my folks, and take a copy with me along with the originals. That way when I lose both the originals and the copy, I'll have someone to call to get backups.

I am so tired of talking about this trip. It's a good thing that I'm leaving tomorrow. It was starting to get silly:

Q: You're going to Africa?
A: No, Idaho.

Q: How long are you going to be there?
A: About 2 hours, I'm just changing planes.

Q: What are you doing there?
A: Gonna start a civil war, you know, the tourist thing.

Have you ever sat next to a hottie on a plane? Why is that in movies all the time? I've never had that, but I've always hoped.

If whoever I sit next to is not a total hottie, then I really hope they aren't all chatty.

I'm pretty tired. Am I done yet?

Dumb

2006-02-27T03:08:00.000-08:00

So I had tea with the uber-intense Chad tonight -- which was good, and then set out to - ostensibly - have dinner with Brad. Had dinner and got a chance to see Janet (Janet = Rad) who I haven't seen in 3 years.

Unfortunately, Janet's boyfriend seems pretty cool. Otherwise I would have had to enter into a conspiracy to destroy him and make Janet mine. As mentioned, Janet = Rad.

Again, unfortunately, it turned out that Brad and I ended up drinking until closing at Elwoods. (With the waitress that keeps giving me the eye - 14 Aristotlean falacy: Waitressiam non amat) We had some drinks at the Fringe Cafe and headed to Elwoods. It turns out that Tracy (a girl we met at Elwoods who was hanging out with Daphne) works at the Coppertank and remembered us from last night. She wasn't our waitress last night, but she still remmembered us.

We're good at shenanigans.

It was a fun night, but I have stuff to do tomorrow (Today). Hell, it's my last day in Vancouver, and I need to finish packing, get a haircut, and find 16 more Malarone. Fortunately, Janet, bless her gorgeous heart, has offered me her unused anti-malaria pills.

I think I mentioned that Janet = Rad?

The Day After Tomorrow

2006-02-26T18:33:00.000-08:00

I’ve smoked too many cigarettes the past few days, now I feel like ass. Cigarette hangover, ugh. That’s the problem with being a social smoker and having the majority of your friends being actual smokers.

Who was the first clown that thought “Hey, I know: I’m gonna roll this weed into a piece of paper, light it on fire and then inhale the smoke.” He’s either got some serious issues, or he was real bored that day. I’m just assuming it was a guy, I can’t see a girl doing something that foolish.

It’s strange: I’ve been surrounded by friends for the past several days, but I feel more lonely than I have at any time in the past few years. I suppose if there was someone else that I was planning and preparing for this trip with it would be different.

Did I remember everything? What did I forget? What else do I need? I’m sure it doesn’t matter too much. I know I have all of the important things.

I need a haircut.
I need 16 more Malarone (malaria pills).

I leave the day after tomorrow. If I don’t keep myself distracted, I think I will probably start to panic.

Good Times

2006-02-26T15:03:00.000-08:00

Thanks for everyone for coming out to the party last night. I hope everyone had a good time. Although, all that really matters is that I had a good time, so there ya go.

I suppose it would have made more sense to take the picture of everyone when everyone was still there, but hey, I was drunk. Whatever.

This last one is the one that Darrin said I had to post. Darrin, me and Brad. Darrin looks confused.

Oops

2006-02-25T17:49:00.000-08:00

I thouroughly intended to go to rowing practice this morning. Unfortunately, I didn't wake up until after it had already started. I wonder: maybe it wasn't the best idea to play Balderdash and other drinking games with Brad, Rose, and Charlene last night.

It's so difficult being me.

It turns out that Balderdash is a lot funnier when Dennis is playing. When he's not playing everyone actually tries to play instead of just trying to come up with the most bizzarre answers possible.

On the topic of something or other, did you know that tonic water is anti-malarial? It contains quinine. Medically speeking, I believe it would be in my best interest to have a few Gin and Tonics. Purely for health reasons, of course.

Gah

2006-02-24T19:38:00.000-08:00

Rose: "Gah! I have to do everything!"
Mark: "Yeah, that's because we're drunk. It's good to have a floating excuse for everything."

What the hell is with EA? They used to make good games,

2006-02-24T17:58:00.000-08:00

Hey, EA, what the fuck is up with your fucking confusing ass games, where you don't tell us what to do.

Trying to play Need For Speed with a buddy, and I can't figure out what the fuck I'm supposed to do. And the manual? Two steps back from useless. Yeah, good shit. Just as good as SSX 23: On Some Tour or Other. What the hell is this bullshit? Learn how to make a game that someone can actually play. Ever hear of the K.I.S.S. rule? Look into it, jackasses.

Jack Bauer, Turbo Super Ninja Spy Agent Man Guy

2006-02-24T10:42:00.000-08:00

So Darrin loaned me the first season of 24, and I’ve been making my way through it. They say that it’s a show that happens in real time, where each episode covers a full hour. Ostensibly, then, you’d watch 24 hours of television in the entire season.

The thing is, though, that that’s really only true if you include the commercials and credits. There’s only actually about 42 minutes of show per episode. They should probably call it “16.8,” since that’s how many hours you’d actually watch in a full season. There are 24 episodes, though, so I guess there is that. But hey, it’s just a gimmick. The show happens in 24 hours, that’s where the name comes from.

It’s okay, I guess. The first half of the season was pretty intense, but after that it just started stretching the boundaries of believability. I mean, it’s so much of a soap opera that someone even gets amnesia after a car is parked too close to the edge of a cliff falls down into the valley and explodes after they were chased from a safe house where all the agents protecting them were killed by the Serbian mafia.

Man, I really hope we find out who killed J.R.

Garibaldi photos from last year

2006-02-23T14:22:00.000-08:00

I just uploaded the Garibaldi shots from last year to my Flickr account. They're here. So Pete, Dom, Brandon, you can stop hastling me to put them up there.

Evils of the Dentist

2006-02-23T13:34:00.000-08:00

So I just went to the dentist, and had 5 fillings re-drilled. I have this habit of grinding my teeth while I sleep. I've avoided getting the stupid mouth guard for when I sleep since I was 16, and the result is that I've worn down my teeth so that they're more suseptable to getting cavities. Anyhoo, the 5 fillings he re-did required freezing my entire mouth. Talking sounds funny. Or should I say "ta'in sow's fu'y?"

I like my dentist, he's got some skills. Unfortunately, he works in Langley, so I need a passport to go see him.

So since I'm in Langley anyways, now I'm gonna go get my Hep A & B booster. Yee-haw! More needles! This is so much fun! Someone's gonna find my dead body, and see track marks on my left should and be all like "Why was this junky shooting up into his shoulder?" and the other cop will be all like "Dude, you're way too fucking cynical. Clearly he was just retarded."

Going Away Party

2006-02-22T19:42:00.000-08:00

So my going away party will be this Saturday at 8:00 at the "Coppertank" on Broadway. I think I let everyone know, but if the 3 people that read this were missed, then there ya go.

The cool thing about books written by athletes is that they're hella easy to read. I blew through "It's Not About the Bike" by Lance Armstrong in less than 6 hours yesterday. It's a pretty good read, it covers before and after the cancer, all the way up to the 2nd Tour de France win. It's a very human story, very inspiring.

The thing with a story like that, it reads better when it's easy and quick, unlike say another book that was written very simply: "Freakonomics." If ever there was a book that needed to go more in depth, that was one. It just kinda leaves you with a "Yeah, interesting hypothesis, but what about...?" Anyhoo, I digress....

Yeah, so party, blah, blah, blah. Now I gotta go to "Hell's Kitchen" for another party.

My life? Yeah, so very hard.

Russia sucks!

2006-02-22T14:01:00.000-08:00

So Canada loses to Russia. That is so lame. Hey, Pavel, you look like a 30s Gangster. That look went out 70 years ago. Yeah, I'm not bitter. Jerk.

I'm now totally not interested in the Olympics until rowing in 2 years. Well, maybe triathlon, that'll be cool too.

Hey, thanks for the free intraweb and coffee, Darrin. And sorry I broke your intraweb Brad and Rose. Oopsy, my bad. Who knew that plugging my computer in would break it? I vote that shaw sucks.

T -6 days and counting

2006-02-21T17:36:00.000-08:00

I crossed the last item off my to do list today, and that was after I added a new one: It turns out that I didn't have a decent carry-on or walking around bag, and I wasn't about to use my smelly gym bag. I mean, that would probably violate an anti-terrorism law or something.

So I'm all done with shopping for trip stuff, I think. I also took care of all my banking stuff today. My wrist is killing from all of the signing for the damn traveller's cheques.

And hey, what the hell is up with you chumps not calling me back? I called like 4 of you! And I owe you money! That right there? That's my biggest pet peeve. I mean, come on: I'm bored here! Entertain me! That's so bushleague.

Okay, so it's not really my biggest pet peeve, but it's in the top 5. my biggest pet peeve is when the coffeeshop's damn wireless goes down. I mean, come on! I ordered decaf! You gotta know I'm not here to drink decaf!

I'm getting really good at running the seawall. Because that takes a lot of skill, running. You basically put one foot in front of the other until you're done. Yup, hella hard. Now I just have to decide if I'm gonna keep up my gym routine for the rest of the week or blow it off. One day at a time, I guess.

I got that song "Laid" by James stuck in my head today. I dunno why, it's not like I've gotten any recently. Sigh... my life is so hard.

Last Week In Vancouver

2006-02-20T18:07:00.000-08:00

It’s been 4 days since my Yellow Fever vaccine, so starting tomorrow I should be looking for “mild flu-like symptoms.” If I’ve had nothing by the end of the week, I should be clear. I had one reaction to the many vaccines that I’ve had so far. It was a bit of a rash that passed pretty quickly, and yes: I’m pretty sure that it was a reaction to the vaccine, smart-ass.

I’m still freaking tired. I wonder if maybe this is a reaction to the 80 or 1,000 vaccines I’ve had lately?

My mom, bless her insane heart, bought me some going away presents from a tourist shop. I now have a Canada sweater, a zip-log bag full of Canada pins, and a Canada keychain to give to my brother when I hopefully see him. I’m pretty sure I was adopted.

I’ve crossed several items off of my “To Do” list today. Small stuff like backup batteries and the first dose of a 2 dose Cholera/ETEC vaccine.

For the rest of the week:
* Power Adapter
* Mosquito net
* Prescriptions for altitude sickness and stuff
* 2nd dose of Hep A & B next Monday, the 27th
* 2nd dose of Cholera/ETEC next Monday, the 27th
* Traveler’s cheques and US dollars
* Packing

I really hope I’m not forgetting anything.

Since I’ve been asked a couple of times, I guess I should do a going away party. It’ll either be at the Copper Tank or Nevermind. So there, I’ve just told the 3 people that read this, of course it could be someplace else. At this point, who knows? An excuse for a party is always something that you…uh...need an excuse for? No, wait, that makes no sense. Bah, whatever.

A friend of mine told me recently that my writing seems emotionally withdrawn. I suppose that makes sense since I actually am pretty emotionally withdrawn. I find that “fake it ‘till you make it” works in my personal life as well as my professional – well, most of the time, anyway. I’m pretty good at simulations of “anger” and “disappointment,” I find those can be useful in almost any situation.

Usually, I try and guess what someone wants me to say and then say it. It seems to work, though from time to time I misread things too far one way or the other. I guess I’ll have to start faking emotion in my writing as well. I’m not sure how the hell I’ll do that, not being able to read what someone might be expecting me to say.

I’m both angry and disappointed about that.

Just a Walk in the Park

2006-02-19T16:03:00.000-08:00

To see all of the images from this trip, check out my Flickr set here. James's photos are posted here, and on the previous several posts.

Kiwi Pete had a plan. His brother Andy was visiting, and Pete wanted to show him camping in Vancouver. Though it was February, he knew three people who were just crazy enough to join him.

I woke quickly on Saturday morning, more quickly than I otherwise would have, being somewhat sluggish from the pub Friday night. We organized the cars, and headed for the Seymour parking lot. After leaving our cars, license plates, and return times with Guest Services, we set out on our hike.

We brought shovels, not tents. We intended to dig a snow cave for the night, and for this reason we had a plethora of fleece, thermal underwear, gloves, and socks. Rather, I should have brought a plethora of thermal underwear and socks. Unfortunately, I wasn't as quick as I perhaps should have been that morning.

From the left: Andy, Kiwi Pete, James, Brandon, and me.

Vancouver is a rather poly-cultural city. As is the norm, none of us were actually born here. We had two Kiwis, two Ontarians, and me: born as far from here as you can go and still be in Canada. It was a good thing too, because that meant that three of us had a lot of experience in shoveling snow, and Kiwi Pete (I don't know him by any other name) claimed to have experience camping in the snow. By experience, he meant that he had done it once, and had been supervised.

We hiked parallel to the ski run, along the snowshoe trail. The repetition of sun followed by cold nights had served a convenient purpose. It had created a hard-packed surface that made the use of snowshoes unnecessary.

We climbed to the top of the ski lift, and turned left. Wandering the ridge, we found ourselves a spot that both offered a view of the city, and shelter from most of the wind. Also, it served the purpose of offering a helpful escape route: we were only an hour's walk from the cars, and that hike would be well lit by the ski-hill lights. This would be important if we lost our nerve and needed a quick evacuation to warm beds and cold beer.

A snow cave is exactly what it sounds like: it is a cave in the snow. To dig a snow cave, you dig a trench 6 feet deep, 10 feet long and 4 feet wide. Then the cave is dug into the side of the bank.

Inside the cave, another trench is dug, then a sleeping platform is carved out about 3 feet above the level of the entrance. The sleeping platform needs to cut into the snow another 7 to 8 feet and be wide enough to fit 5 people lying side by side.

The packs would sit in the inner trench and cover the entrance, acting as a door. There is enough room inside to sit up comfortably, with one's head just clearing the snow-bank that forms the roof, but there is not room to move around much while one sleeps.

It may not sound like much, but that is a lot of snow to remove and throw far enough from the entrance not to block it. We arrived at our site at about 2:00 pm, leaving little daylight for the work that we needed to do.

After completing the first trench, which resembled -- rather unnervingly -- a grave in the snow, we were already exhausted, and not even half done with the amount of snow we needed to move. We stopped for tea, water, snacks, and of course rum, whiskey, beer, and the like before continuing.

The sun marched relentlessly towards the horizon, and we began to wonder if we would be finished in time. The initial trench was complete, but still the work inside the cave was not proceeding as quickly as we would have liked.

We set up a relay: two people inside the cave digging, one person in the trench throwing the snow out, and another tossing that snow further away to make space for the large mass that was still to come. This 4 man rotation allowed for shift work: one person would rest, and we would rotate in and out.

As the sun went down, the temperature followed it. Excepting Kiwi -- who on every hour of a rain-soaked, seven day canoe trip claimed that "It will fine up in 15 minutes" -- we worried that we would not finish. The shadows marched across the snow, and the bleeding of the horizon tinged the snow in red. We worked on, still unsure if we were courageous or foolish in regards to the threat of failure.

When the sun finally slid behind the silhouette of Vancouver Island, we were still digging. The cave was large enough now for three of us to work inside, but we had to dig on using our headlamps. So close were we to being finished that it was no longer necessary to clear the snow that we removed, this allowed us to continue our 4 man rotation.

It was too cold outside now to rest, so the fifth man organized the bags and gear so everything would be quickly made ready to to prepare dinner.

We leveled the sleeping platform as best as we could and punched the air holes through the top. The platform was then covered with a tarp that we had brought and we spread out our Thermarests and sleeping bags. The marathon against the sun was close, and though we may not have won, at least we placed: we finished the cave within as close a margin as was necessary.

We breathed a sigh of relief and set to making dinner on the small platform on our outer trench that we set aside for this exact purpose.
Candles and headlamps now provided our lighting, and the temperature fell through 0 Celsius. Very soon the thermometer we had brought indicated that it was -8 degrees.

Now was the time when those changes of gloves and redundant layers of fleece saved the day. Of course, this is also where I realized that extra thermal underwear and wool socks would have helped to keep the chill out of my lower body. Luckily my feet and legs remained dry, so the chill was merely uncomfortable.

For the first time the rest gave me the chance to dwell on the fact that soon I would be sleeping in a confined cave, covered with hundreds, if not thousands of pounds of snow. My claustrophobia would definitely be put to the test.

If there is any wonder what 5 adult men would discuss while testing their metal against the a chilly peak in February, one need only look at the choice of activity for a holiday. Just as it is mostly children that play in snow forts, the topic of discussion was appropriately immature. It was all fart-jokes and gay-jokes. Occasionally, someone would mention what their S.O. was up to; almost always it ended with something similar to "girl on girl action."

Dinner was a rather interesting affair. As one can imagine, certain things freeze when the temperature drops below freezing. Things like bagels, M&Ms, water bags, and people named "Mark" all freeze. Likewise, a can of beer can be better described as a beer flavoured Slurpee.

Fortunately, some things: like crackers, kerosene, whiskey, and rum do not freeze. Kerosene is very useful for heating up the things not named "Mark" that do freeze, and rum is helpful for heating up the things that are named "Mark."

With dinner and drinks served, we set out to explore the area, and appreciate the view that Mt. Seymour offered. The lights of the city, now the brightest lights visible, were truly spectacular. Though we could see from the Lion's Gate Bridge clear to Surrey in the day, the view at night was amazing. Every light that we could see represented humanity, all spread before us in the trials and tribulations of their Saturday evening. Basking in this glow we could not help but joke about taking a pee in front of 1.5 million souls.

The lights of our neighbour, the top of the ski lift on Mt Seymour, waved at us from the next peak over. This glow, mixed with that of the city itself provided enough light on the white ground around us. We could wander around with ease, requiring our flashlights and headlamps only for the detail work of adjusting cameras, and finding our way down the spiral staircase into the snow-cave condo that would be our home tonight.

It was about 9:00 pm that we turned in for the night. We all crawled into the cocoons that we had brought along, and someone made a comment about wanting to listen to some music. When Andy started playing Jack Johnson and Dave Matthews on his cell phone, the gay jokes reached an all time high. Roughly around that time, so did the fart jokes.

Sleeping in a hole dug in the snow for the first time was an event to remember. I could feel the weight of the snow above me, and though I was mummied in fleece and sleeping bag: the cold intermittently stabbed through. I managed to sleep, but even as exhausted as I was, the sleep was not the sleep of the secure. One does not sleep in a snow cave for comfort, but for the experience and the challenge.

When morning finally broke, it broke cold and clear. We expected from our early retiring, that we should be up with the sun, but the quality of our sleep left us sluggish.

I woke as quickly as I could and pulled my pants, now freezing cold, over my thermal underwear. My boots were equally chilled, and the laces were frozen stiff. Tying them was a chore, but when I stepped outside and saw the morning view from our humble hut, the word spectacular was well defined.

I've heard it said that you can't appreciate the peaks without the valleys, and likewise it is both effort and risk that makes accomplishment worthwhile. It may be this alone that made the views of the night before, and the panoramas of this morning so spectacular, but truly I doubt it.

I paced about the outside of our cave to try to get my blood flowing again, and get a little warmth back into my limbs. I contemplated the wisdom that I had picked up from the past, the mutterings old wives that I had heard from time to time. It came to my mind that Whiskey was supposedly the cure for most anything, if mixed with the proper ingredients. Having a dose of the next best thing, I found that a slug of rum was an adaquate antifreeze the morning after a cold night on a mountain.

James, who awoke before all of us had trekked purposely down to the lodge in pursuit of a breakfast of eggs and bacon, and this set us in motion. We gathered our things and packed our belongings onto our backs, setting out to follow him back to the civilization that litterally lay just over that hill.

We began to walk through the morning, and quickly noticed the lack of skiers on the hill beside us. Realizing that we had both tarps and rain-covers for our packs, the realization came about that we could easily allow gravity to be our hike, and we could slide down the ski runs to the parking lot below.

Unfortunately, it turns out that tarpolans and rain bags do not the best crazy carpets make, and so, in our ever-inventive state, we hiked to the next rise, loosing the shovels from our packs.

The shovels proved valiantly in thier roles as sleds and in little time we were back in the parking lot, hoisting celebratory plastic water bottles that were filled with something much more resilient to freezing than water.

The shovels were far better than walking down the trails, excepting, of course, James' stories of the pretty girls on the snow-shoeing tours that he passed. With the exception only of that, the shovels were better in all respects: They were faster and more fun. On the question of safety? Well, I don't see how that really enters into consideration.

What day is it again?

2006-02-18T02:53:00.000-08:00

My visa for Tanzania arrived today. All the big things are now done. It's time now for the little details.

I've finally hit the point where I had to ask what day it was. You know it's a vacation when....

The pub crawl was fun, but I have to wonder: was it the best idea before the day we hike the back side of Seymour? Only time will tell.

Where the hell are we?

2006-02-17T04:00:00.000-08:00

M: "My life is so hard. It's 11:00 and I'm drinking and watching hockey."
B: "My life sucks. I'm drunk and it's before noon, and I should be at work."
M: "Hey, why aren't you at work?"
B: "Oh, I told them I wasn't coming in."
M: "That actually works?"
B: "Yeah, why? You haven't thought of that?"

How many beer for a mulligan?

Backswing so bad it alters time.

Four hours? How many holes did we play?

First in a sandtrap? Me, I owe highballs.
Longest yard winner? Brad, I owe shots.
Overall winner? Damn, I also buy the pitcher.

Okay, may as well go to the bar...

You know, 11:00am until 4:00am can take a lot of effort.

How to spend a Wednesday in Vancouver

2006-02-16T00:28:00.000-08:00

Good tip if you own a digital camera and an iPod: There’s a device you can pick up for about $130 CDN called “Media Reader for iPod” from Belkin. It will read compact flash cards and load them onto the iPod. It’s a lot cheaper than buying the extra cards, and it seems to copy from the card faster than my USB connection for my laptop – at least it did in the tests I ran on it today. I’ve now got an extra 7 Gigs of memory for the camera, and an excuse to bring tunes for the flights. I didn’t even have to delete any songs from the ‘pod. I figure 7 Gig ought to be enough, yeah?

Checked out 3 DVDs this week: “Broken Flowers,” “Waiting,” and “Four Brothers.”

“Broken Flowers” is one of these Bill Murray movies where he’s the sad old man. I’m not sure if I liked it or not, it was kind of slow and there isn’t much in the way of standard plot or resolution. Still, it might be interesting if you’re into that sort of thing.

“Waiting” was kind of funny, but it was no “40 Year Old Virgin.” That movie was damn hilarious. Ryan Reynolds is usually good for a few good chuckles and one-liners. It was a bit over the top in the same vein as “Van Wilder,” but it kind of reminded me of the good times when I was waiting tables, so extra points there. I’ll leave it to you to figure out which parts were hyperbole and which were not.

“Four Brothers” is pretty standard action, whatever. You can turn your brain off and just veg right out. Marky Mark plays the same role as he does in pretty much all of his other movies, so if you like that, it’ll do.

Also of note: Watching the dude at Yuk-Yuk’s mime porn while humming the theme to Super Mario Brothers made it all worthwhile. And he was one of the first comics… how do they know how to put the funniest ones last?

Things to do, starting in 10 hours: Yellow Fever vaccine, Canada vs Germany hockey, followed by UBC Golf Course + Golf Carts + Beer = No way we're not having fun.

Now I just need to remember how I feel about "bimbos with big boobs." My life is so hard.

Hey, Man, Now You're Really Living

2006-02-15T14:17:00.000-08:00

I land in Kilimanjaro International Airport on March 1. I wonder if I should be worried that the initials are KIA? From there, the tour group that I've arranged things with will take me into Moshi.

I've got 2 full days in Moshi before I head out. That should give me time to get aclimatized and time-oriented before setting out on the 6 day Machame route to Uhuru peak.

When I come back I've got another day in Moshi to organize travel and such onto Dar es Salaam. I'll spend maybe a day or two there before continuing on by bus to Morogoro.

I picked up the latest Eels CD yesterday, "Bright Lights and Other Distractions." Like most every other of their CDs, there is one song that I just keep listening to on repeat until my ears bleed. So "Hey Man (Now You're Really Living)" has joined the ranks of "Last Stop: This Town" and "Novocaine for the Soul." That man named E has got some skills.

Right now the only reason I'm on the laptop is so that I can watch the Play Count climb in iTunes. Anyone know if there's a number bigger than infinity?

I still need to figure something out for storing photos. For the first time the whole digital camera thing is getting actually inconvenient.

Courage, My Word

2006-02-15T10:15:00.000-08:00

In “All’s Quiet on the Western Front,” Erich Remarque wrote that “…terror can be endured so long as a man simply ducks – but it kills, if a man thinks about it.” We may not live in the trenches of the First World War, but the sentiment still holds. We live everyday with our own personal fears and terrors.

There are few things that I have done, and that have mattered to me, that I have not feared. I wasn’t afraid that day when I was 17 and I signed the papers at the recruiting office, but I was terrified when I thought about it afterwards. The relief when a medical technicality let me off the hook was enormous, and I’ve regretted it ever since.

I fear rejection, I fear the first date, the first kiss. I had terror that day, now long gone, that I thought I might become a father. When things played out as they did, I was left with so many new fears about relationships in general. Fears of pain that only another person can cause. With every mistake, with every experience, we can be afraid of finding something new to fear.

Fear is the curse of having an imagination, and allowing it to fill in the details of the unknown, but it is also a learned response to unpleasant stimuli. Fear can hold us back, it can stunt our growth as people. However, our fears are not insurmountable unless we allow them to be. The things I fear are a part of who I am, but they are not all that I am.

Our fears have a place. There is a reason that evolution has set them up inside of us. They slow us down when we move too fast. They keep us away from the things that would hurt us. But while they make a helpful servant, they can become a most tyrannical master.

I am again endeavoring to try something that is new and unknown. I am going to travel to a place that I have never been. It is something that I have made so huge in my mind, and something that has become almost commonplace in reality. By what measure should I determine success or failure?

In my mind I know that everything will turn out okay. In general that seems to be the way of the world. Things may not work out exactly as you would like, but in the long run things end up for the best. This doesn’t stop the fear, but it helps me work past it.

I know the probabilities of success, just as I know those of failure, and of worse. I know that the likelihood of something bad happening is very small, but there exists that chance, and that chance is all that is required for imagination. It is the crack in the dam that allows the river to rage through.

My mind knows, though fear, in my experience, is a beast of the heart. It dwells in my chest, and in the pit of my stomach. My mind has had little success in keeping reign on my heart in the past; I doubt it should do so much in the future. If our minds were masters of all, how dull life would be.

It is easy to act. Our brains are wired to measure perceived risk versus perceived reward. In that fraction of a second we weigh the risks, we weigh the rewards, and we act as best we can. The difficulty comes with the perception of what we risk, and of the size of the reward. The issue becomes even more complex when it is not a fraction of a second, but much longer.

Once we act, it is done. That famed “fight or flight” response triggers briefly, dumps those chemicals into our blood, and it is over. But what happens when it is not brief? When the response drags out for days or weeks? What if the perceived risk keeps us from acting, and by so doing keeps us from experiencing those very things that make life worth getting out of bed? This is dwelling on the terror: this is the tyranny of fear’s fiat.

This is where the reward might justify the risk, where we must push through the fear by sheer force of will, and to attempt that which is important to us. This may be the accomplishment that will allow us to grow. This choice becomes the battleground where our inner demons and angels fight for our very souls, where we reach for that which is just within our grasp. Perhaps it is that thing that will push us into becoming human, and not merely lowly animals acting from instinct.

It is not enough to simply do only those things that we are not afraid of, to do so is not courage but cowardice. Courage is shown in the act even with the fear. In pushing through to accomplish the goal we set before us. It is the sheep going among the wolves, not without fear, but in acknowledgment of it: not exactly embracing it, but accepting it. Know that fear, too, is fleeting, and the rewards shall last the longer.

Ernest Hemmingway, even with all his faults and his unfortunate end, had his own way of addressing his fear. “Do everything,” he said, “One thing may turn out right.” In this, perhaps, is the greatest wisdom when it comes to fear: the act. Duck, but don’t think about it. Pride may come before the fall, but courage comes after the act.

A Rock on the Beach

2006-02-14T13:23:00.000-08:00

The wind may chill, but the lonely sky is scarred by few clouds. It is February - the air is crisp, it feels like spring: It is a perfect morning for a walk on the beach. Not surprisingly, there aren't many people on Kitsilano Beach this Tuesday morning, even if said skies are scarce.

It is quiet. Now - here, where they're found thoughtful - those few pockets of humanity enter a state, a place to wonder serene. They wander the beach and they find a softness where something is absent from the week's end, and argue how it's absent serene.

The ever present dog walkers and runners thread the trails and paths at varying speeds and varying degrees of randomness. They are joined by the folk who scour the beach with their metal detectors. Intently they focus on the sand that might surrender that next small piece of treasure.

But it's not just any day of the week. Today is, of course, the day that marks the beheading of St. Valentine. Sprinkled among the quotidian, a man leans on a log. In his arms he is clutching an enormous bouquet of flowers. Trying desperately to look relaxed and at ease, he waits patiently in the cold sun.

The volleyball courts, so busy during the summer, stand as abandoned posts in this desert. Without the nets that hang between them they are forgoten quandaries, lost, as if purpose aborted. They stand over the cold sand, and wait out the few remaining months until they're seen again, called to station, and found the focus of so many.

Around the corner, into Kits Point and Vanier Park, the grassy fields before the Burrard street bridge open up. Runners rest briefly in the view of the city, as rowing crews rock up and down False Creek. Sailboats pull down their sails and enter the harbour under power. Still, many wonder alone.

The dog walkers cluster and release, each finding mutual comfort in their companions and also in the companions of the dogs they see. Around the point, and then back. Past the Maritime Museum and the bug-like submarine that sits behind a building housing something that belongs in a harbour.

Across the sand, pocked by the footsteps of those that walk on two legs and those that walk on four. Past the birds that bob on the waves. All pass under the watchful gaze of the red-hulled sentinels that patiently await their turn at the Vancouver docks.

Walk back past the salt-water outdoor pool; it is closed now, and empty of humanity. Anthro- pomorphic ducks frolic on its still surface.

At the foot of the stairs I will use to climb back up towards Cornwall stands a woman on a rock. She kneels near the rock and tucks some pretty, bright yellow flowers into a crevice.

She says a few words to the rock, then lifts her glasses and wipes her eyes. Still crouching, she looks out over the city scape on the other side of English Bay.

She doesn't see the runners, she doesn't see the dog walkers, she doesn't see me, walking quietly on the beach. She sees only her son, who is gone from her now. She comes here in the morning, when the beach is quiet, when it's dignified. She talks to her son, she knows that he can hear her.

I walk by quietly, but later I will come back, and I will read the small memorial that is drawn on a rock on the beach.

Olympic Games

2006-02-14T13:09:00.000-08:00

The quote of the day is from Hesiod today:

Best is the man who can himself advise,
Good to is he who hearkens to the wise,
But who, himself being witless, will not heed,
Another’s wisdom is worthless indeed.

I thought I would get that out of the way so it wasn’t hanging there, all sword of Damacles-like, where you know it’s coming and just want it to be over.

Moving on….

Sometimes events conspire and the only solution, as a rational man lead by logic and reason, is to get drunk on a Monday night. It’s a good thing the Copper Tank is close by. Oh, no, wait, the sign said Tatlows. Those crazy pubs and their crazy names….

Being the season of the Olympics, the topic of discussion was obvious. We’ve come up with a simple rule: if it requires subjective judgment, it’s not a sport. For instance: ballroom dancing, figure skating, diving, these things all require skill and a certain level of athletic ability. They’re not sports, though.

On the other hand, certain things shouldn’t really be in the Olympics, but they are sports. In events like Luge and Skeleton, the “athlete” is basically just ballast. They’re still sports, though, because there’s a clear way of determining the winner. Likewise, Nascar achieves sport status.

This leaves the problem of what to call things like figure skating. They’re sort of athletic arts. After much deliberation, I throw my hat into the ring and dub them “Sparts.” Let the term be spread all throughout the land. Thus spake Markathustra.

On a final Olympic note, to resolve the curiosity from last night, 2008 will be in Beijing.

I don’t know what the deal is, but I just can’t sleep in. Discounting last Friday, I’ve been waking up before my alarm clock every morning. I turned off the alarm last night intending to sleep in, but sure enough, 8:00 rolls around and I’m wide awake. No wonder my energy level drops suddenly at around 10 pm. At least I’m getting things done during the day.

Something I learned yesterday about priority courier: it’s damn expensive. Overnight courier by Canada Post to Ottawa is $26 each way. At least the visa stuff is out of the way now. It’s hard to believe, but I leave 2 weeks from today!

I swung by Chapters and picked up a couple of books yesterday. One of them was a Vancouver tour guide. I think it will be fun to play the role of tourist in my hometown.

I’ve been trying to learn why we throw up when we exercise too much. I’ve asked a couple of Doctors this question now, and neither had an answer that they were comfortable with. This isn’t to say that they aren’t good Docs, it may just be one of those things that no one has really looked into. The search for important knowledge continues.

Stay tuned next week when we learn how socks can lose so much lint in the drier without actually getting smaller.

Kili update

2006-02-13T13:29:00.000-08:00

I had several replies from tour groups doing Kili treks. It's looking like the cost will be closer to $1200-1500 USD, which is better, but still awfully steep. Ah well, let come what may. I should finallize something with that this week.

It's finally sunk in!

2006-02-13T12:27:00.000-08:00

So it took a week, but it's finally sunk in: I'm on vacation!

All last week, it still felt like I was somehow not on vacation, but then on Friday, something just clicked.

Preparations for Tanzania are going well, though it's going to be tight. I finally got the address that I needed for my Visa application. I'm going to fire that off this afternoon. They say that it takes 2-5 business days to process the visa, so with an overnight courier post each way, I should still be ready to rock by the 28th.

That leaves me with the Yellow Fever vaccine that I've been masterful at procrastinating.

My baby brother Luke is encouraging me to fly to Galway in Ireland. I was sort of hoping that I could convince him to come out to meet me, but I'm sure we'll figure something out.

Some things I've learned this weekend:
* Snowshoeing is kind of fun, and it's not that difficult. At least that is the case when you're walking around on Cypress mountain on trails that have already been walked on so that they're hard-packed.
* When you're doing tapping drills at the end of coal harbour by the seawall, sometimes people will take photos of you thinking you're on the Canadian Olympic team because your oars look like the Canadian flag, minus the maple leaf.
* It is possible for all 4 people in a quad to lie down after being exhausted by 4 back-to-back 1km race-pace pieces.

(That's me in bow seat; photo by Robin, one of our coaches)
* Also, if you wanted to stop at "The Flight" for a beer, you should bring your wallet, and a rope to tie up the boat. Knowing that will come in handy next week.

The two quotes of this weekend are both from Thomas Mann. They both came to mind after a conversation on Thursday night.

"Deep is the well of the past. Should we not call it bottomless?"

"A man never knows beforehand how he will behave in his own story; that is revealed only when the time comes and he finds out who he is."

No Heart

2006-02-09T12:38:00.000-08:00

Watched "The Edukators" a couple of weeks ago with Dennis, Brad and Rose. I can't remember if Natalie was there for that or showed up afterwards. Regardless, there's a quote in it that we had all heard before, but we couldn't remember where. I found it today on the mighty web:

If you're not a liberal when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're not a conservative by the time you're 35, you have no brain.

This was attributed in many places on the intraweb to good ol' Winston Churchill, and the intraweb is never wrong.

Turns out it occasionally contradicts itself, though, since apparently this is not true. I'd still like to know where it actually comes from, or at least who said it. In the long run, it probably doesn't really matter. It seems pretty salient.

Okay, enough slacking. Time to go do stuff.

Sometimes, I am hating the Intra-Web

2006-02-09T12:01:00.000-08:00

The words "Reliable" and "Technology" should never be placed immediately next to one another. The should always be seperated by words such as "never," "rarely," "occasionally," or on rare occasions "sometimes."

The coffeeshop that I usually use for accessing the intraweb hasn't had properly working access since Monday. I was able to get a really weak connection on my lap-top to a local open port, but not today. This is what we in the biz call a pain in the ass.

I was planning on wardriving all the way to UBC where my helpful status as a part time student would save the day. Instead, I stopped at Think! a coffeeshop near where my brother used to live that usually has internet access. The day was saved! Hooray!

Yesterday, I feel like I got so little accomplished. In regards to my trip, I managed only to get the money order for my Visa. I still need to get the address from Tanzania so I can complete the form. Hopefully, the mission in Morogoro will get back to me soon (I just e-mailed) and I can get this Visa application mailed off. The visa takes 2-5 days to process, plus transit time (you can bet I'm using overnight courier each way).

I did manage to get in to the dentist yesterday. That was exciting. After the flouride I felt like I was going to throw up all day.

Went and hit a couple of balls around at the driving range with Brad. It turns out that even though it's sunny, it's still strangely cold. I thought my fingers were going to freeze and fall off. Quote of the day from Brad: "If cold was sexual liberty, today would be Paris Hilton."

Oh, I also bought groceries yesterday. I thought you'd like that.

Worship the banal!

Fact of the day: Trying to plan a wine tasting without knowing anything about wine is difficult. I'm going to ask one of the many wine-shops in Kits to give me a cheat sheet so I can pretend I'm smart.

Advice of the day: Often tickets for events need to be booked in advance and can't be simply pulled off at the last minute. You should book in advance, it's less work. (See fact of the day)

Also, I just sent off e-mails to a bunch of safari organizers regarding climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro when I fly in. It looks like it will cost me $1500-$2000 USD. Damn, maybe I should take that off of my "Life to-do list." Nah, you guys will just think less of me. (Yeah, as if that would matter.)

The Cost of Travel

2006-02-07T14:34:00.000-08:00

So I'm booked for my Tanzania trip. I fly out of Vancouver on KLM on 28 February, arriving in Kilimanjaro airport on 1 March. I'm returning from Tanzania on 12 April, and staying in Amsterdam until 17 April, when I fly back into Vancouver.

Total cost of flights? $2594.00 CDN.

Now that I have the dates, I need to apply for my Visa. To get a Visa application to Tanzania, you need a passport photo, $75, and the dates of departure. That's the next thing to do.

Where does the time go?

2006-02-06T17:05:00.000-08:00

I had a fantastic plan today to get so much stuff done. I was going to go to the gym, do some banking, and look around at booking my plane ticket. Yeah, I went to the gym.

I did get a chance to work on my Resume and Cover letter for applying to coffeeshops. And I finished filling out the Starbucks application form. I'll start dropping this stuff off tomorrow. Thanks to Adrian, Darrin and Bob for being nominated as references. That was so nice of you guys. Oh, BTW, Adrian, Darrin, Bob: I'm using you guys for references. :-)

Things I learned this weekend: Don't drink a really, really large coffee before going to the gym. Especially after 3 days of partying.

Quote of the weekend: "Yeah, man, you should really get hardwood floors." "Yeah, for whenever you come over." Context: my brother just tossed a beer at me, and missed.

Important things to know about superbowl pools:
1.) In all likelihood, if you're not actually taking part in the game, you are unlikely to be the MVP.
2.) If you put down Jesus for most drunk at half-time, and are really good at arguing, you just may get points for that.

First Day!

2006-02-04T17:40:00.000-08:00

This was the first official day of freedom! Woooo!

There was a hideous windstorm in Vancouver that closed the Lion's Gate bridge for the first time since 1960-something. A good omen if I ever heard one! The wind also kept us from going out on the water at the club for the first time since I joined. We worked on some boats, then I went for a nice light jog around the seawall.

It turns out that the seawall is slightly longer than I thought, weighing in at 10km. I thought it was 6km. I puked at the 8km mark, but I still finished in 50 minutes, so I'm cool with that.

Then it was back to the clubhouse for beer.

I think my drinking team has a rowing problem.

Now it's off to watch the game at Darby's and begin the Groundhog day festivities. I believe I mentioned "Woooo?"

Surreal Friday

2006-02-03T19:49:00.000-08:00

Today was very surreal. It was my last day at CF for a while. It was very strange. It didn’t feel like a last day, but in a way it did.

Fact of the day: Hep A & B vaccines don’t hurt too much with the needle (I didn’t even feel it) but about an hour or two later it feels like either I did too many exercises in the gym, or someone’s been punching me in the arm repeatedly for an hour (seriously, Adrian, that wasn’t funny).

It turns out yesterday didn’t leave me in a Groundhog-Day time loop. For this, I’m grateful. As I mentioned, this would have involved a degree of suckage.

One suckage of note, however, was that my team-mates left for my going away lunch without me (seriously, Adrian, that wasn’t funny). Jerk.

Regardless of whether I had taken this time off or not, this would have been the last time that I worked with the team that I was on. Sniffle: I’m gonna miss those guys. Here are some quotes that had been said by some members of the team (and myself) over the past 6-8 months.

Spagetti like cluster f-ck of ideas.
That's not banned. If you can find it on the internet you can say it.
There are no windows in the god forsaken place. (sitting facing away from the floor to ceiling wall to wall window)
Put that on the back of the box.
Stop holding my hand.
It's not a clever contest.
Don't write shitty code. (Yelling)
Anything we can do cheap we should do a lot.
You haven't looked at the other end of the rainbow.
1- Should we start dropping bread-crumbs? 2- Not if it makes it easier for the Minotaur to find us! (Lost in Metropolis parking lot, aka The Labyrinth)
He did one f*cking thing for me, and then he f*cks it up.
Well, at least they are now reading the same book. (answer to if "They were on the same page")
Are you being a smart ass or....
It's like a puppy covered in chocolate, it's cute and delicious.
You're hand waving, you're not giving me an actual answer.
Don't say that infront of the L-i-t-t-l-e bastards.
The world would be a much better place if I had a Tazer.
You can't just randomly say TeaBagging and then giggle.
1- You worry me. 2- Wait till you get to know him.
If I'm gonna get murdered, I'm gonna get murdered; at least I don't have to work on that anymore. (after a prediction of murder)
No it's real, there are even sites on the internet. (about rock-paper-sissors tournaments)
Why don't you go play some frizbee you big goon, and maybe sing some songs.
Put some clothes on you pervert.
Watch me set this one up.. Hey man, what do you do when you bring girls home?
1- That's a stunning syllogism. 2- I have no idea what that means but I hear Jism in it.
Punish and humiliate the developers with features.
I've been lying to women for 30 years, how hard can it be? (about his future interview at starbucks)
That's bushleague.

I also learned today that yet more smart people are leaving the company, joining those that were involved in the [insert several meaningless corporate double-speak jargon words here that all mean down-sizing].

This seems to be continuing a trend that I noticed a year or two ago. If my observations are correct, then all of the smart people are leaving. This means that soon, all of the smart people will be gone, and CF will be composed entirely of Clusters and only Clusters. This does not bode well. Further deduction implies that the smarter one is, the sooner one leaves. Those left behind, therefore, will be increasingly dumb. I’ve stuck around, ergo I am dumb. Depression sets in and I swoon.

Nunc est bibendum!

So long e-mail to co-workers

2006-02-02T17:02:00.000-08:00

Hello! Bonjour!

As many of you know, as of the end of the day on Friday, I'm taking an extended vacation from [work]. Currently, the idea is to return on June 1st. During this time I will be pursuing a number of projects that I have put off for far too long.

Because I won't be around [work], [work] contact e-mail will be next to useless. If you would like to get a hold of me, I will be checking my personal e-mail address at least once a week. I'll also be chronicling my adventures on the blog I set up just for this purpose. We'll call this the "home game," feel free to play along. (http://onelongvacation.blogspot.com/)

Currently I'm planning to get a nice minimum wage job at some place exciting like Starbucks or something. I'm also planning on travelling to Africa, spending some time in Washington DC doing the West Wing tour, and stopping off for some umbrella drinks in the Bahamas. At this point, who really knows what could happen? It's like reality TV, but without the annoying host and scantily clad contestants!

Oh, wait, never mind.

If you have any cool ideas, or if you feel like grabbing a coffee or something, drop me a line.

Catch ya on the flip side,
Mark Harris Evans

Groundhog Day!

2006-02-02T11:40:00.000-08:00

It still hasn't sunk in yet that I'm going to be gone for 4 months. I know it, I just don't get it.

Preparing for a trip to Africa is supposed to be a big thing, but I haven't really done all that much. Tomorrow morning I am finally getting my vaccinations. They say that you're supposed to do this 4-6 weeks before you leave, and I've been meaning to get around to this since September. Strangely enough that's also about how long it takes for me to get around to getting a haircut. Fortunately, I'm one of the world's best procrastinators.

Strike that, I would be if I ever got around to it.

Things to do tomorrow:
1.) Drive to Langley, get vaccinated against strange diseases like diphtheria and typhoid.
2.) Go to "work." Snicker.
3.) Finish clearing out desk.
4.) Send e-mail to friends at work letting them know my contact info.
5.) Send separate e-mail to friends outside of work that might do something embarrassing like "reply to all."
6.) recommend that HR change it's initials to CF
7.) Figure out if I have a job to come back to.
8.) Either way, start celebrating!

At some point this weekend I have to drop off my resume at Starbucks and other coffeeshops near my apartment.

I'm really hoping that today doesn't turn out like the movie. Otherwise, my vacation will never actually come, and I'll be stuck in work limbo forever. That would suck.

An old room-mate and I have a tradition of watching this movie and playing the Groundhog day drinking game that we invented. Our invented game is far, far better than this one that I found online. This one is Bush-league. Unfortunately we're not playing until Saturday, so if I was stuck in a Groundhog day time loop, it would suck that much more.