havelock jamboree

at the havelock jamboree i packed an assortment of shirts, yet i only wore one. somehow, unbeknownst to most, i managed to unpack my entire bag into the entire campsite. Greg spent an entire hour once pointing to different spots where i had left clothes.

i'll explain who greg is some other time.

i had a blast. walking around, talking to people making new friends with my favourite shirt ... sometimes my shirt took more of the credit for making the friends. midway through the weekend i came upon a group of people who shouted "hey everybody-poops, do you know what time it is?" turns out we had all met the evening before and i had lectured on how no one in our generation wear wrist watches anymore and to prove my theory we asked the next ten people what time it was. everyone of them. EVERYONE of them said wait a second and then fished around in their pocket and pulled out their cellphone. i dismissed the class and said we would reconvene at the same time the next day, which was just then and i had absent minded-ly stumbled into the right place at the right time. i had given them a homework assignment to ask people they met what time it was and count the number who wear watches, which no one had done but everyone produced proof of having done it.

i think i'll be a teacher... no, not a teacher but a university professor.

at the end of the weekend i left the shirt sitting on the hood of a truck; it was waiting for me at work the next day.

four shirts to choose

canada day long weekend was spent at a cottage in bayfield, ont. most events that weekend where of the genres of hammer-whacking, hammer-hammered, wedding-going and street-walking. another genre, one might want to include in the list is bathroom-going, however that is not all that special considering that is, more or less, the story of my life.

there were a few points, of which i will spare you, that could be noted, but i won't, that would set those string of three days apart from the other (approximately) 8910 days . those events, needless to say, inspired one of the street-walking expeditions to include a novelty shop, of no particular note, to become a stop, for no particular reason. four of us purchased a shirt that had a picture of a stick man seated on a toilet with the caption everybody poops. we were going to get our names on the back with the number 2 but ran out of time, money and attention spans.

the wise man, upon seeing the shirt adorned by his only son questioned my reasoning for wanting to wear it out in public on a saturday night to a community party where people would see me in it and question the reason my father let me leave the house dressed like that. mandy, upon seeing after having been asked to give a second opinion, stopped laughing around tuesday.

the shirt has since become a bit of a conversation piece, like a coffee table book, and has helped me make a vast amount of friends. a few times it has even sparked language lessons with the backpackers of Cork.

all in all i am very fond of my shirt, and i always bring it with me when i go on extended day trips.

my stupid mouth

has got me into trouble again. at least it did, or rather threatened to.

i know french. that is to say i know enough french to know that i don't know enough french to say that i know french. but i know french.

a math teacher i had in high school once said that he knew enough piano to know that he wasn't very good at it. that applies to my knowledge of french (if someone want to tell mr. ort that he was featured here you are more than welcome to).

i was in a shop in france and i was looking at a hat. a ball cap, a nice one ... but that is rather relative because i have a lust for all ball caps. this one had a patch on it that i couldn't make out. so, being the brilliant man that i am i turned to the shop keeper and said to her

esc scuuz eh moi, kesk keu say?

and i straightened my back and smiled a big grin and felt good about myself. for about two seconds. because after my sense of accomplishment passed i realized that i wouldn't have a sweet clue what it was she said to me explaining what it was the patch meant.

and i didn't. so i bought a different hat.

the view

atop the arc was where i found my most favourite view of the city. the climb was worth it, although at the time i wouldn't have thought so. 242 (or something, should have brought kim with me she would have counted them) stairs later we, laurel and the auzzie girl, arrive at the top which turns out to be a bit of a museum which turns out to not be as much open as it was closed for updates ... which all turned out not to be the top at all and was just a resting spot for the final ten or twenty stairs.

atop the arc was where i found my most favourite view of the city. yes, that does bear repeating. the viewing deck (if that's what it's called which it may or may not be i don't pretend to know what i am talking about) allows for climbers to enjoy a panoramic view of the city, in my case was the night skyline, with all the lights and cars and sparkling towers of effiel and glowing notre's of dame and the people moving around down below and cars jockeying for position in the chaotic roundabout that surrounds the arc's base. *note* there are no cross walks by which to get to the arc, one must follow the underground path that ducks below the chaotic roundabout laurel took a video of a traffic jam and if i can convince her to post it to the web i'll link it here (btw ... did you watch that other video linked here a little while ago! funny stuff. thanks dan!).

i have a love of taking panoramic shots of skylines and upon seeing my most favourite view of the city i knew i had to get one here. so after i felt comfortable there was no guard around i climbed atop the rail that surrounded a viewing platform in the middle of the deck ... no where near the edge, not to worry mom. i turned from my left to right, composing shots and working the shutter over time and just as i got the last of the shots i heard the sound i had expected to here before my photo shoot: something yelled to me in french by someone who was an obvious authority figure. i climbed down, apologized in english and found my fellow climbers. they had found the traffic jam that would eventually become a video that will hopefully be posted for you to see.

... and after all that, the photo's didn't turn out. it was too dark. as much of a professional i felt i was balanced atop the view platform rail, i really wasn't and that is that.

the arc

i meant to get out to the coast for the remainder of my days in france but apparently the public transportation staff would rather spend the last three days of my trip marching through the streets of paris, hanging off each other while yelling vive la france and drinking one and a half times their body weight in expensive french booze. however, because of the strike i was able to spend some actually time around the great monuments i had rushed over the past few days. and instead of viewing paris through the lense of my camera, i enjoyed them the way most of the people around me weren't ... sober.

[the next bit of this post was going to discuss counting the pictures of notre dame ... but i got bored and didn't want to finish it. if i got bored, you surely wouldn't have made it through. i except your thanks, chocolates can be sent to my home address in Cork; if you don't know it please ask because i want those chocolates. read it here, if you dare, but you will be bored - i promise.]

that image above is the arc de triumph and was built by Napoleon to honour his troups. Just as Roman soldiers marched home under an arc after a victory, so too would Napoleon's men. However, the arc wasn't finished until thirty years after it's intended date and thus the men did not get to march home following their victory.

... there's more, but i'll be late for work. take care!

nothing draws a crowd better

the mona lisa painting was the size i thought it might be, as i was told, and so might you be told, that the painting isn't the size you'd expect it to be. but if you were to be asked what makes a person more allert in the morning, an apple or a cup of coffee... what would you answer? the crowd around the mona lisa was much larger than i expected it to be.

I was on a bike tour the day before; well, two actually. they went all sorts of places, highlighting all sorts of buildings and telling me all sorts of things that may or may have registered because i was happier than a pig in poop to be back on a bike. i hopped on my beach cruiser named johnny depp and beached cruised the asphalt shores of paris missing most of what the tour guide had to say.

back to the bit about the louvre ... which i suppose i haven't mentioned yet. the Mona Lisa is hung in a room in the Louvre Museum, Paris, France.

on the bike tour the day before i met four canadians, the tour guide dubbed us Team Canada later that night. we ended the trip on a boat at night with a gaggle of Boston women who were entertained by yours truly for a good hour and a half after yours truly consumed a good one and a half times my weight in cheap french wine. it was while we consumed the remainder of wine that the guide gave us our name.

a girl from Chatham, Ont. was also on the trip and i am sure we would have bonded over the fact that a wise man i know once worked in that particular city had i have been able to remember then names of people he worked with. there were a pair from BC, and another guy from St. Thomas Ont.

that following morning the two dudes from BC and i made our way to two closed museums. to celebrate the fact that they had ruined the last day of their european trip they treated me to lunch for which i paid my share. I was pleased that the nice man sitting next to us chose to share his cciggarrette with us. i thanked him for the opportunity to which he replied i'm gonna eat your soul ... not give you a tip ... stare at you and make you feel uncomfortable if you don't shut up now. I thanked him for his time and he told me I was number one. I shrugged my shoulders to let him know i didn't know the proper way to respond back in sign language.

while walking to the closed museums we were stopped by laurel, whom you know as Chatham, Ont. who was on a walking tour. While at the louvre later that afternoon, by myself because the BC boys were still cornered by the angry cciggarrette smoking man, i was enjoying the end of a da Vinci Code tour that i had paid too much for, my arm was grabbed by Chatham and i was dragged through the louvre again with her and an australian she met on the walking tour and then later climb the Arch de Triumph - which was beautiful and well worth having my arm removed.

paris isn't that big right! everyone runs into people from southwestern ontario ... three times ... when they travel there.

Murray's Law states:

the metro is organized very well. this became apparent to me several days after my first. on my first day the metro was a terrifying french place and i was in no way prepared for what followed following my little friend. as he led me through the labyrinth beneath the city we passed by buskers and bag-people and other characters that seemed to have jumped from the pages of a neil gaiman novel. Little Friend jumped and wove through the crowd and before long we came upon the great gates of the subway world: the turnstiles. a friend of mine took me on the toronto subway ... rather he took me to the toronto subway ... he left me with a bit of wonderful advice:

turnstiles are bad

and to this day that still runs through my head every time i come by one. he told me this because going through a turnstile means you are leaving the system and i'd have to pay to get in again.

to make this story shorter than it will be if i don't take evasive action i shall abbreviate it by highlighting the main points, appropriately enough, in point form.

• he had a metro membership. i did not. he used his to get me through. and used mine to jump over the turnstile.
• we took a train for a bit. in the end i didn't want to get off. i was happy, didn't want to leave and was perfectly content.
• we changed trains.
• please see point 2 for how i felt about train 2
• after train two and said our goodbyes Little Friend and I were at station 3, still very much at a loss for the inability to communicate. An American was near by and heard our difficulties and came to my rescue.
• as American was helping me along I was very much unaware that Little Friend was no longer at my side; alas, I did not get to thank him.

my stop came two trains later but brought me about as near to my bed for the evening as a person is near to discovering which end of the garbage bag they are holding is the open end. Murphy says it is never the first end, and then goes on to say that it is always the first end just never the first time you try it. I walked to both ends of the street and spoke with several people few of whom knew of a hostel on that road, all of whom felt i was heading the right direction and none of whom could agree on how far i should walk until i might catch it. my favourite was the woman working at a real estate agency who told me to go 500 m up the street and then ask someone who turned out to work across the street from the hostel i was booked at. i was told this 500 m up the street by the someone i asked.

i dropped in to tell her where the hostel was so she could be of more help to the next person but she no longer spoke english.

my little friend

i was standing outside an opera house that was circled on my map with a strong desire to be back in the airport where i felt strangely at home, and after my german friends had walked away i felt as if i may not find somewhere that could feel like a home for a few days. so i did what anyone in my situation would have done.

i walked up to a strange little man who had been standing on my corner. i did this reluctantly, i might add, because this corner had become my corner after everyone i knew on it had vacated it.

i was happy at this corner.
i didn't want to leave.
i was perfectly content.

but because the strange little french man was not carrying a backpackers bag that he had borrowed from a friend back home he was the perfect candidate to show me where i was to go. but when i went up to say hello to my little french friend he reacted in a way that i was not prepared for.

he spoke portuguese - which was fine, i wouldn't have known had he have spoke french - and french but very little english. enough to let me know that he didn't speak any english. and after several failed attempts to show me/tell me/pantomime for me he threw his hands up in the air (throw your hands up - in the air ... ha, now your singing), said something and walked away from me. i stood there with my backpack and murse and map and wondered what i had done to deserve this.

***

before university i went to australia for three weeks. i learned a lot and now plan my trips to have more direction. however i didn't realize how much i had learned until i returned home. one particular day before a shift at the pub i worked at i was at a shop developing pictures. i left the shop and a little man came up to me and asked in broken english something that resembled a bit about phone cards. without missing a beat, and knowing that anything i said would be lost in the lack of translation, i motioned for him to follow me and took him back into the store. i asked jeff at the desk (because i knew jeff at the desk because i gave jeff at the desk pints of moosehead after work) for a phone card and he pointed to next door. so i took my new friend next door and he thanked me for longer than i stood there to listen.

***

my little french/portuguese friend turned back around and looked at me and it was then that i noticed he wasn't walking away and that the Something that he said was not something said in disgust ... he was preparing to take me to the train and get me to my hostel. i looked around my corner and decided that we had had enough time together and after realizing what i had done to deserve this i prepared myself to leave the airport for the second time.

this is not france, but it is still funny.

jig'ity jig

it wasn't until i landed in France that i learned how much i didn't like change. as far as i was concerned i was able to deal with change with a fluid, adaptable patience adjusting to my environment like a chameleon. i was concerned that far, that is, up until a week ago.

mandy, only a short year ago, one year from my adventure in fact, set out for France on her own and it is becoming more apparent everyday just how difficult that must have been for her. as i left the arrival terminal in france it became very much apparent that i was not in a place that i could get around easily, however, being that adaptable person i though i was i quickly became comfortable with my environment. so comfortable, in fact, that i felt as though i could have stayed there long enough to catch my flight home six days later. perhaps i could pick up a job helping that man out over there sweeping i would say to myself.

i was happy at the airport.
i didn't want to leave.
i was perfectly content.

but the man with the broom directed me to a man at a desk who knew a little english, who directed me to man at a desk outside who knew a great deal of french. Desk Outside told me something that wasn't in english. I purchased a ticket from Desk Outside because Desk Inside told me to do so.

with my ticket in hand i got on the bus that the other two people at the stop got on to and it took me to a big place that my map told me was an Opera house. I knew this because Desk O had circled it in english; i'm not sure what i would have done had he have done this in french. At the opera house i lucked upon asking a pair of German tourists who had clearly arrived on the same bus as i and who were clearly at more of a loss than i because i don't believe they found a German Desk Inside. I knew this until they politely told me they didn't know how to help me and confidently parted ways with me in a way that left me standing staring at the large Opera house that was circled in english.

i would have liked to stay at the airport.

my goodness

i have to run to work shortly, but i would like to make a quick mention that a photo i took at the guinness storehouse in dublin was posted to kenneth's blog uncommonphotographers.net. they are taking a picture of the inside of one of the barrels the stout is brewed in. the barrel was two stories high and was an interesting photo op; however i couldn't help myself and took advantage of the photo op you see. in my excitement and rush to take the picture i never took one of the popular subject they were all capturing. matty might have one of it from the bottom up, i'll check with him.

cheers ken, thanks for posting my picture. i am honored!

--b

he knows best

have you ever watched Harper on television, especially when he is addressing the camera? i haven't seen him in person, there's always been a sizable buffer between us, but i am sure he is quite similar. it almost seems like he's not quite comfortable in his own skin. a wiser man than i once said that he looks like he knows he's supposed to smile but doesn't now when smiling is supposed to happen. i think dad he is onto something there.

our tour guide yesterday had a similar style. matty turned to me part way through and asked if i could see any strings controlling her. i laughed and then stopped because that smile was directed at me. not in a please serve me a drink canadian bartender kind of way, more of a i've been waiting a while for a drink and i might eat your soul ... not give you a tip ... stare at you and make you feel uncomfortable if you don't come over here now kind of way. she did earn points though when she battled an american over the definition of filtered. in the end she was wrong, but it was the way she told the american that if he wanted to guide the tour he was more than welcome step into her shoes and go visit the jack daniels distillery and sip on inferior whiskey. in the end, like i said, filtered does not mean the same as diluted but as that wise man also once said to me

it does little good to prove yourself smarter because in the end you'll look quite stupid.

matty got to ring the old bell that tolled when lunch was to be eaten and bosses where avoided. having done this he was awarded the honor of tasting the difference between american whiskey (distilled once), scotch whiskey (distilled twice) and the wonderful magical irish whiskey (distilled thrice). there was a local guy about our age (on his fourth tour of Jameson) who faced off against matty for the challenge. he was there as part of his warm up exercises for work that evening. lucky for him his buddy was driving, which meant that he would get to his destination safely as well as enjoy the shot of whiskey that the driver would have consumed. that wise man would have had a few words for Irish Taster as well.

we ended the day with a pub crawl down main st. Midleton and caught a bus home. matt got food poisoning and has taken the day off work. lucky guy had a four day weekend; unlucky guy didn't sleep last night.

slainte!

it is also raining

i'll be in france on saturday and i'm pretty excited. mandy, as you will remember, spent seven months there this past winter and this week marks one year of having departed from cananda. i'm going to try and make it to the pub she worked at and say hey to the staff although i am sure they will all be too green to know who mandy is/was.

matt and i tried to tour the beamish brewery (again) this mornnoon marking the third time we've been to see the guard at the front entrance. this time he told us that the one weekly tour ended five minutes ago and we'll have to wait another week until the next one. it was useless explaining to him that this was information that would have been useful yesterday because he wouldn't have cared, nor heard me either as he had already started into his afternoon session at the pub across the road. next time we'll try the back entrance and make a tour of our own.

we're set to travel to Midleton this afternoon to tour the jameson distillery. hopefully we don't have to make three trip because the trip resembles one from seaforth to mitchell.


View Larger Map

matt will take pictures and i'll share them with you.

tips and tidbits

new rule. when i make a tip i'll use that tip to get on the internet. today i made nearly €4 in tips. that'd give me four hours, but really .. who needs that much time to get over new emails, facecrap, upload pictures, faceblast, new blog post and change my status on foolsbook?

apparently me.

so it's november, eh! my goodness how the time flies. i have to start saying i've been here for a while instead of a few weeks, as well that i am staying until august, not for a year.

i've posted a few pictures that i've taken over the past several weeks. most of them are from the guinness storehouse and i promise to explain why i went trigger happy capturing images of the tourist practicing their gaze, but for now simply enjoy the candid shots, appreciating them for what they are: the tourist in it's natural habitat. as well, take a few moments to explore my favourite photoblog - photographing the photographer.

matty has supper ready, so i'd best be off before he eats it all. he's pretty excited about it too because he's been marinating the pork bits for two days.

can't wait! mmmmm

as well, stay tuned for a happy story about the jazz weekend. i feel i owe you something less morbid after the last post was so upsetting. it'll be about the Bartenders Ball and how the past few days have shown just how much fun i had. until then i leave you with a picture of the dogpark a top st patricks hill.

slainte,

--b