here's to you

i was just in galway couch surfing of all things! it was another canadian i met the week before, her and her partner were in kilarney traveling. they are both from toronto. anyways, turns out this girl had a spare mattress in the living room and her roommate, three irish guys and another american girl, didn't mind that people stayed over. so i had my first couch surfing experience. it made a difference having a contact in the city i was traveling to. someone who knows the ropes and places to go and cites to see.

my first hour involved meeting a drunk in a bar. he told me that i was doing well by getting out and traveling around. at least that is what i assumed he was trying to get across to me, he was quite drunk. he invited me to another pub to by him a beer after the barlady told him he had had enough. i politely declined saying i was happy here, but that he should enjoy himself away from me. he said in restless dreams I walked alone Narrow streets of cobblestone. know who said that? simon of garfunkle.

later that day i stopped at a pub that said there was live trad music. i chatted with a man leaned 'gainst the wall. small talk about life, the universe and everything ... mostly about traveling though. the music came on shortly after he left, almost like they were waiting for him. the music played in the background as another man entered the bar and took up residence in the spot my old friend had vacated. he spent too much time talking about other people passing by behind their back in a manner that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that he wasn't trying to talk behind their back.

the barman brough him a sandwich and he thanked him politely. he told the next man, behind his back but not really, that he wasn't thanking him because he did nothing for him. the same goes for you he said to the man that passed by next. the sandwich came with a tea and he sipped on it quietly, but only because he mouth was otherwise occupied.

he turned to me and caught my eye. before i had turned away he snapped at me what are you looking at paul simon ? hu !

to the bar's delight he performed, as he apparently usually does, a poem he made up on the spot. it was about barmen named brian and the sandwiches he made and about christmas, fiddles and the like.

later that evening at a live performance the band closed with Mrs Robinson. i think someone was trying to tell me something. the next day i went to church and thanked God for peter and art and the wonderful music they made, and for making people see them in me.

killarney

i took a trip to killarney and toured the ring of kerry.

then i took a trip to galway and toured the cliffs of moher.

both were beautiful. both were worth seeing. both were done from a bus

both were out of focus. both were grainy. both were in low light.

both will be seen again from the seat of a car when they are in focus, well lit and summery.

sweater and shirt

packing for paris was scant i had to carry my machine*, which goes with me everywhere, which leaves little room for much else. three shirts, the pair of pants i was wearing, underwear and socks to last five days (3 of each), a book, a camera, a journal and a pocket full of dreams.

(some dude just dropped his smokes on the floor)

my sweater, the sweater, was not on the list. it was on the list until the pack was too heavy and i took the sweater off the list. i should have just lightened my load by first not writing the list on granite rock and, more importantly, subsititing the list for the sweater it's self as it wears substancially less than a list written on granite rock. i wouldn't have done it if simon birch hadn't sold me on the idea, highlighting the versatilty of the product.

(some dude won't listen to me get his attention so he can have his smokes back)

not having the sweater meant that i wore my winter coat everywhere with just a couple of t-shirts underneath, which was fine except that i was hot on the street and cold in the shops. i should have packed my sweater, the sweater.

(some dude the third notices the smokes and i throw a thumb in some dudes direction)

as i was checking out of paris i made a few last friends at the terminal while i went through the scanner system. to get through the scanner system i had to my carry-on, keys, wallet, change, belt and my coat even. i successfully set off the scanner and was then subjected to that test they do to see if you're magnetic. the wand didn't stick to me as they waved it around and i was free to go about my day. i suppose i am thankful that they do these tests because i wouldn't want magnetic people getting on the plane and messing with the controls or causing my wallet cards to demagnitise.

i hadn't thought about it that morning, mostly because i don't register thought until about the noon hour and morning had somehow found me at around the 6:30 mark, but i had really dressed to impress. i hadn't noticed until i had successfully fooled the magnet detector and moved towards my gear to reassemble myself. i felt an arm on mine and was turned around and thuroughly examined by a french (female) guard. she looked at me and smirked a bit and kind of did a little jig. i kid you not, a jig.

smirking, she called to another guard. french french french she said, to the best of my knowledge, to her. french french french came the reply. the french (female) guard did her jig again this time singing what was written on my shirt. she then asked me what it meant and carried on doing the jig. by this time i had assembled myself, with left over parts for some reason but that always happens with things you assemble yourself, and was awkwardly moving towards my nearest exit.

as i smiled to myself everybody poops, everybody poops, everybody everybody everybody poops followed me down the hall.

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

it's the jazz baby!

was what roy kept saying for weeks before this past weekend. it's the jazz baby, everything changes.

well, what the biggest build up to a weekend i've experienced since i was eight and watching the 1990 new years countdown on City TV, turned out to be somewhat overrated. i can remember telling my dad how i was SO excited to watch the countdown and how devastated i was to find out that the biggest event on television was nothing more than a series of crappy, lying television ads. he smiled in a way that only a father can, and the only way that a son can recognize years later, he realized that his son was just as observant as he wished and could hope.

this is my blog and i'll be as nostalgic if i want to. as far as i am concerned i am unbiased. in fact, i am the most unbiased, so there.

in effect the jazz was another excuse for the staff to get overly stressed, pissed at each other (which at the time felt not so much like each other as it did me) and, at times, reduced to tears immediately following brad having stacked the empty kegs in such a way that:

it pissed me off - so says steve the manager.

and then as i went back upstairs to the bar with a case of corona he tossed at me he cried and threw kegs around the cellar. at the end of the night he looked at me over his pint of gin and tonic and looked at him over my cup of carlsberg and we stared each other down. i said steve. he said yank. i said are we still friends. he said no no we aren't, i am not friends with yanks.

it was then i knew that we were still friends and that we would always be friends. at least until the next jazz, or until the next time we worked together.

at the end of it all the cork jazz couldn't hold a candle to the Toronto jazz festival. that is a bit too harsh. the jazz fest wasn't what i expected it to be because it wasn't to much a jazz fest as it was an excuse for Guinness to monopolize beer sales and for the population of Cork to expand ten fold for the duration of 72 hrs and for everyone to get so drunk that they get sick everywhere in their new bathroom.

what i mean to say, is that the weekend wasn't really about jazz. sure the bands played jazz, a bit of jazz anyways, but it was more about being out in mass amounts and doing mass amounts of drinking. but it's the jazz baby, and apparently the jazz baby is all about working ridicules hours for little pay and tricking yourself into thinking that it is all worth it.

what i did learn is that this trip is not about work, i'd rather be traveling and the first chance i get i'm getting out of Cork and going to galway for a few days. and maybe to france after that.

how rude

cross cultural conversations can create certain ... circumstantial chaos.

take the term toilets.

(enuf with the alliterations)

at home we say " i have to go to the bathroom/washroom/restroom/pee/poop etc...". with exception to the last two in that list, these are all acceptable ways to communicate to someone what your intentions are without actually telling them what your intentions are. going to that particular room communicates the need to address an issue that can be solved with the amenities that exist with in a room of that name. here people say they have to " go to the toilet". i have had considerable difficulty explaining why this would be rude to say at home. a person simply does not draw attention to the particular bit of the room they intend to use because it is communicated through a mutual understanding and the knowledge that the person you are telling has experienced what you are experiencing at that moment.

i still have trouble saying toilet. i think this has to do with the way i was raised.

as kids, by that i mean when there were four of us ages six and under, we would not say "bathroom" and mom couldn't, for the life of her, get us to say the proper word. in an effort to fix it she wrote on a piece of paper "i have to go the bathroom" and posted it on the fridge. when ever we told her we wanted to go pee she would wordlessly point to the fridge and we'd correct ourselves.

i suppose it worked. but mom didn't expect the peice of paper to affect other people entering the house. on occation we would have visitors and on occation they would come into the kitchen and on these occations they would usually reciet out loud in a sort of question what was written on the paper. mom grew to enjoy this quite a bit and would usher the new arrived guest to the bathroom.

english 101

today marks the day that i no longer reside in a hostle. Sheila's has been a ... nice spot to hang my hat, had i had a hat, but i am happy to be moving to a more permanent spot where my hat, had i had a hat, can be hung with more consistency.

the new house is located right near a pub i was at last night, as well as right near the house of a canadian girl from toronto named sue. sue from toronto is half my height plus a foot, four inches and can make her way away from a bar with the greatest of ease which makes up for the difficulty she has getting to the bar. equilibrium is always maintained.

we were at the pub to see an italian friend play the drums at nine thirty. we arrived promptly at ten to discover that he arrive promptly an hour and a half later to never play. he played wonderfully, had he of played, and was invited back again next time they have a jam night that they need a drummer not to play.

on a return trip from the toilets i overheard a conversation i wasn't listening to. A girl whose name was soon to be forgotten said to a girl whose name was soon to be known as amanda and a boy whose name was soon to be known as devin "i wish i had of brought my coat to cork". This particular comment caught my attention because of two very important notes that should be noted:

1. people from cork don't wish to bring coats with them because they are already in cork
2. people from cork don't wish to bring coats with them in an american accent.

i asked the girl whose name was soon to be forgotten where they were from and i was told wisconsin. they told me i would spell it wrong and i agreed. i told amanda i would remember her name because i had a sister named leanne who has an older sister named amanda. devin then asked if i played the fiddle (he didn't really, i just needed his character to move the story along for me) and went on to tell me he had a father, or uncle .. i can't remember .. , who toured around ireland for two year collecting irish tunes with his fiddle. he will be visiting this christmas with devin's brother and suggested that i meet them and bring my fiddle.

everything is turning up millhouse at 723 evergreen terrace!

some good news

yes. lets talk about something that involves good news.

- i sucessfully avoided spending €400 on a camera that i really wanted but new i couldn't have. this might be the first time i've avoided a purchase such as this one. i don't know if that means i am growing up, learning what money actually is or simply enjoying the luxury of eating too much.

- one of the glengarry cast, pete, offered me a job in washington dc as a bartender in the event that my travels were to take me there. i never once thought that being a bartender could take me around the world, but now that i know that ...

- i went dancing after work on saturday night with the glengarry crew. they left the following morning, so this was a sort of goodbye party from me to them that i never told them about. i didn't know that the golden compass was set there; that certainly is magical and i am excited to see what's in store there.

- we get our house on friday pending my ability to get to the office and file the paper work. having a bed of my own that i don't have to move out of every few days will mean the world to me. elliott is looking forward to spreading his stuff out all over the room. him and i have decided to bite the bullet and take the single rooms because they'll be cheaper.

- since i've added the clustrmap to the side bar there have been 268 hits to salutmaman from four different countries, with over a hundred of those from southwestern ontario. thanks for tuning in, i only hope i can keep you entertained.

shit happens

yes it does. bad days happen. yes, they do. last night i broke three glasses and tried very hard to break a third, at which point, had i been successful, someone likely would have been severely injured.

today is a good day. i slept until two. put on sweat pants. had grilled cheese. drank a few cups of tea. wrote this post until half three. yesterday was not a good day

somehow, last night, being told that shit happens didn't make me feel better. so i had half a cigarette.

boy, was that ever dumb. this morning i feel as though a porcupine has taken up residence in my throat, two accountants on adding machines are pounding away in my head and all the while Gord Downie is flailing away on stage, kicking over his mic stand doing a classic freak out except instead of a stage it is my stomach. not to mention the memory of the guilt i felt gripping the fag as it burned a hole in my soul the previous night.

but let us start at the beginning. yesterday i worked twelve hours. this was unbeknown'st to me until i calculated it at the end of the night. had i have known that i may have been able to pin point the cause of my angst and work towards a more rational solution. but i didn't and i did what i did because at this point doing anything is entirely impossible.

i broke the first glass taking it off a shelf. i broke the second rounding the inside bar. i nearly broke the third using a wall mounted pourer; the glass fell behind a lower row of pourers and stayed there as i closed my eyes and collected my thoughts and calmed the beast that was about to guide the head of the person who just told me that shit happens through the wall on which was mounted the shot pourer that was at this moment the bane of my existence. having sorted myself out i completed the list of drinks that my american friends had ordered, smiled politely, and died inside.

after last orders the barmen all went outside. it knocked the socks off colin the scot when i asked for one. it is curious how smokers react when someone who doesn't smoke asks for one, like there is pride in getting a new recruit. i had three or four drags over the course of ten minutes and quietly tossed it away. the beast had been neutralized, but not by nicotine. all that was needed was minutes away from demanding stares and week long drink orders.

not to mention i would have enjoyed my break a lot more without listen to my fathers voice in my head telling me how terribly bad this was and how terribly stupid i looked right now.

creatively yours

as of tuesday, today i would have been homeless. i wasn't too worried, matt might have been a bit more worries however he solved the problem by leaving me for kilarney for the weekend ... jerk; but i wasn't worried because i could couch surf courtesy a few of my new found friends.

as of yesterday evening i had a bed again thanks to a new found friend behind the desk. a polish girl, asia pronounced asha, who has been named war lady by two Swedish fellows because she was to be their land lady. having never heard the term land lady they got excited thinking it meant she was a person of power - i thought it was because she seldom smiled. turns out that's just how she roles.

work is the only excuse i have. however you will notice that i have back-posted a few stories from this week. i wanted to conserve space, as well as your attention span because reading too much in one post is overwhelming - and i know that every word doesn't get read either. for what ever reason digital text doesn't catch a persons eye as much as hard copy text. most people do it, and i thank you for taking the time to read what followed the bolded text more closely as that was my intention.

in short my week has been largely dominated by work. monday brought some welcome visitors, and those visitors lead to making more friends and new contacts, which lead to a delightful night out and the rekindling of old friendships. i took it upon my self to solve a problem, in fact a couple of problems, and i even rid myself of an unwelcome guest.

that unwelcome guest was Decision and I am happy to report that he has receded almost beyond knowledge of ever having existed. a few times a day he will pop up and remind me, but were enjoying our not so trial separation. there doesn't seem to be a need for therapy.

723 evergreen street

we have a house. five beds, €1500/ mth. we move in next friday.

not a moment too soon. hostel life is exhausting.

the really good news is i have two french roommates. they are cute [yeah] but with partners [boo]. the good news out of that is that they know french and are willing to share that knowledge in exchange four hour noledge ov inglesh. this should be grand.

matt the ozzy is our fifth. his name is matt. matt is an ozzy. he is our fifth roommate.

we think we will rechristen matty as Elliott. he is excited about that because he's called that at home. i made the obvious reference from Berg's E.T and it was the first time anyone had done that ... ever. and that is no joke. that's just how we role.

...

in other news i made a mail bag. i couldn't find one i liked aka didn't want to pay €65 for so i went to a sally anne and paid six euro for an old pair of pants, one euro for an old belt and another 4 euro for some sewing supplies. 15 man hours later and i have my self a mail bag. matty elliott thinks it lacks several things that make it a male bag - namely that everything about it lacks anything male. i said he was spelling it wrong. he said how could that be, we're having a conversation.

i like it and i think i am the most talent me there is. deal with it.

glengarry glen more

the cast came in again. this time i invited myself for pints with them tomorrow night. i have been thinking about the play a great deal and telling everyone who wants to listen about it. it made it easier to understand since don explained it to me.

i like knowing people in the bizz. makes me feel important.

glengarry glen friend

today on my way to work i wished the cast of glengarry glen ross "break a leg". after the show they all came in for a pint, ... and then several more. it is great to know people in the bizz; makes me feel important.

several split shifts coupled with late nights, working behind the bar as well as holding it up on the other side (a few times, i must admit, that the bar was doing more of the holding up), has made for one exhausted bear. i did get a few cultural treats though. monday brought some welcome visitors. Don and Anne Melady, friends of the family, were in the country and came to Cork to visit dear old me.

They carried with them a speacial little package that i hope to get more use out of. My fiddle is now touring with me, and while i am very, very, very rusty with it i do hope to get much, much, much better with it.

Don and Anne were in a mood to walk around but that only lasted for half a block because we walked past a billing for Glengarry Glen Ross, a production put on by an american acting co, a play that he studied at school and had always wanted to see.

the show is difficult to perform. the dialogue is written so as to resemble how people speak in the real world. to understand what i mean pay close attention to your next conversation, particularly to: how often thoughts are actually completed; the number of times you interupt/are interupted; the number of times the converstion jumps between topics. there is a movie as well, which is good apparently, but if you get the chance see the play.

we had pints at my pub afterwards. it was all grand.

that's corny

Blarney Castle Grounds - €6
bus to Blarney - €5.25
apples and juice - €2.41
late night coffee - €2
internet/hr - €1

spending the day as a stupid tourist/mountain goat - €16.66

... and so worth it.

Blarney, apart from being a quiet breakfast spot in Stratford, Ont., is the name of a town north west of Cork City, Ire. It is also the name of a castle. I am not sure why it is named as such mostly because I can't remember all the placards I read this afternoon during my walking tour of the castle grounds.

Kissing the blarney stone wasn't as exciting as i expected it to be. the creepy old man, whom i had heard so much about from several girls along the way, wasn't as creepy as i thought he would be. however that might be because i lacked the proper equipment because the two the Kiwi's, who where visiting from Dublin for the night (partly to visit Matt and I and partly because because their hostel was booked up for the night) where going off about how he, the old man, was with them. Teresa (who's name i spelt wrong previously and i apologize for and celebrated her 20th birthday on friday) was convinced that the old man ... very much enjoyed having helped her lean, very awkwardly, backwards and downwards to reach the stone. Earlier that day I had told Chelsie, who you will remember i described as being bubbly and full of energy, that she was not allowed to kiss the stone.

The stone, legend has it, gives the gift of gab to everyone who endures the difficult task required to kiss it. I learned a bit more about the lore behind the stone, how it got there and other neat things which to your benefit I am unable to recall, however I will share with you what i learned about the word blarney.

One of the kings or princes or someone who resided in the castle at sometime before it was named Blarney was a bit of a political flip flopper. A queen or duchess or someone involved in the story before the castle was named Blarney said that the king or prince or someone was "all blarney, none of what he says holds true"

A placard later on said: blarney is asking a woman her age so as to know the age at which women most beautiful. Baloney is telling an 81 year old woman she looks 18. In other words:

blarney ... to lay a compliment thin enough so as to be enjoyed.
baloney ... to lay a compliment on so thick it is sickening.

touring the grounds uncovered a vast array of twisted trees and inviting rocks that made me and my out of practice climbing legs where able to let loose for the afternoon. i might make the trip back to the town just to get that work out again. matt has some pictures that i might get to post to my flicker, but he'll have to faceblast them first.

i named my rash

life has been rather quiet the past few days. i have been taking it easy because of an unfortunate run in I had with a rash. i am not sure where i had this run in, but the evidence of this run in is unavoidable. so unavoidable that i've given him a name: Decision. Decision has moved off my face but is holding ground on my neck and chest. and BOY is Decision making his presence known; visually and .. itch-illy (?). fem doc from emerg put me on some meds and cremes, very masculine to be applying this twice daily, and hopes that i'll be on the mend in a few days. the "good news" she had for me was that it wasn't to be worried about; bad news being that she wasn't too sure what it was that i wasn't supposed to be worried about.

hmmm... perhaps try another semester at school and then get back to me on this. as soon as possible would be nice. i'd rather not come back if this treatment isn't working.

my first lunch shift went off quite well today (pause in typing to scratch my chest), allegedly it wasn't as busy as it usually gets and i had it easy today .. which is nice to know since i was running my a** off. for a first day with it i hope i did well.

i met the owner, or as he was introduced to me the man-who-pays-me. i said hello to Phil twice, the second being more enthusiastic because it followed the whopaysme remark. Phil was grand as owners usually are the first time you meet them and before the first time you severely screw something up. i'll let you know if Phil and I still get on in a month or so after i've spoiled a lunch dumped a pint in his lap.

all is well. take care of yourselves.

quartet

it was only an hour into scarface when i began feeling guilty about laying around watching a movie instead of enjoying an irish afternoon. true, i am here for a year but if i keep saying that sept 15th, 2008 will be on my doorstep saying time's up, get out of here, pack up and go home.

so after an hour of scarface i went out for a walk. st Patrick's street hill is just around the corner of the hostel i am staying at. to climb it takes 10 minutes and puts a considerable ache in a persons calves, but it's worth it for the view and sense of accomplishment. looking out from the crest of the hill reminds me of looking out on Huron County from the top of the corn silo. the city scape of cork lies, for the most part, in a valley. this makes Cork City appear to be contained in a bowl. The landscape beyond the city is spotted with developed farmland and hills and trees and houses ... but mostly green. green is what inhabits everything around me.

at the top of st pats hill is a dogless dog park save for the two school girls playing with their dog. i know it is a dog park because dogs have their own way of telling you it is their park when they are not their. after finding a spot that a dog had not claimed, or at least appear to have not claimed in a while, i had a seat and just sort of looked. ahead of me is St. Anne's church, to the left is St. Finbarr's Cathedral and to the right of St. Anne is another Church whose name escapes me mostly because I never knew it. To the right and to the background up on another hill is Christ Church.

to my right is a barbershop quartet who are warming up for their practice. Scarface can't hold a candle to this afternoon, neither can his little friend.

i've nine mintutes

lets see what i can get accomplished.

8 now.

last night at the pub was a great deal more fun than the night previous. i was starting to get my bar legs back again and moving around got easier as i remembered where everything was, had to go as well as what the hell everyone was saying to me. - the Cork accent is a hard one to understand.

i don't know if i've said that already, but it is and bears repeating.

7

we might have a house. it isn't likely though because 25 other people also think they have a house.

6

i finished reading there is a house. it was about a house and a guy that had a drinking problem. he was a writer and couldn't write anthing more than the words there is a house. he was a very entertaining writer.

5

i spoke with a girl from ireland just now who lives in france and is back here travelling. (4) she has a friend who lives on the coast who lives in a bus converted to an appartment on wheels. he is a grown up camp councillor (not the therapy kind if that is what i spelled, nor the gov't kind either). she has her undergrad in arecheology (terribly spelt) (3) and wants to do her masters in heritage management.

very cool.

2

time to go, love you all. talk again soon.

1

paragraph four, section 3

the interview would have gone well had i have gone and i would have gone except i didn't want to. the reason i didn't want to is because my BC friend informed me that the job was to be a door to door .. or person to person .. sales associate. which wouldn't have been so bad except for the traveling, unpaid, from city to city and never knowing where you'd be. which would have been so bad except for the product i was pushing and the product i was pushing was make up. my BC friend had a good little laugh as we all speculated on what the response from home would have been had i have taken this particular placement. matty was especially excited to know how dad would have reacted, and the rumors that would have started about how i went over sea's to find myself and eventually come out of the closet.

regardless to say i have not taken the job, but i will be bar tending in a few hours and that should be great. i'll send out a few more CV's and try for something else ... perhaps a coffee shop or internet cafe. i'll keep you posted.

the place i visited today reminded me of grandma connelly's old place except bigger and containing people who mostly spoke a version of english that wasn't as much english as it was french or german. the whole place has carpeting (which puts me in mortal peril considering dust has a personal vendetta for me and causes my asthma to fly off the handle) so i don't know if we'll take it. it's cheaper to stay in the hostle, and the hostel is closer to the city centre ... but it would be nice to learn a little french from the new flat mates. count them .. 4 (+ matt and i). but it's not like we're strangers to a situation like that.

because, you see, matty and i went to school together for four years and for three of them we were roommates. in first year we lived in residence together in an apartment room with 4 other guys, one of whom, dan, went on to live with matty the year after while i was still in residence. the year following that i moved into a house with matt, dan, and three other guys (total of six) and that remained relatively the same for the year after that, save for a complicated moving about of people that is best explained by not explaining it at all.

in fact, if you're still reading i commend you because you have absolutely no reason to have made it this far, and i imagine you would have only been reading every other or every tenth word. i invite you to re-read the above statement because you are likely to laugh rather hard. if this is your second time through please continue on to what is below which shouldn't be much more, but i haven't decided yet.

or rather i've completely forgotten. although i would like to thank dan for pointing out that my first post had matt's birthday wrong, and being a good friend he cleared it up politely. thank you dan. what is important is the members of the house i lived in while at brantford. the team included, in addition to matt, dan and i: josh, steve, tommy, brandon and adam.

i know that equals eight, please refer to paragraph four for a complete explanation.

this is post number two of today. please read post number one by clicking here or reading it below.

leaf tossing championships

last night matty and i had dinner at our BC friends house. her and another girl made us chicken and other vegetable stuff and we polished off two bottles of wine. we then toured out to a pub and found more canadians: a couple from Ottawa who are licensed chiropractors looking for work in that field, and another girl from Toronto who also is a chiropractor but not looking for work in that field. We all shared a pint or four and laughed over the pop culture game that was going on around us. Had we have known what the server had said when she came up to us offering the game for us to play we might have joined in, but as it turned out we hadn't a clue that what she had said was english so we politely declined and proceed to regret that decision soon after. it didn't seem as though the game was about answering the questions but rather who could have the funniest team name. we decided to go back again next week with a name prepared and a proper answer prepared for the server: yeathad be grand. the name we're toying with is "George Bush is our neighbour, not our leader; the kind of neighbour you'd though your leaves over the fence to".

it's a work in progress, and the other names shouldn't be recorded in any kind of blog.

before it got too late i had to get matty back to bed so he'd be up for work this morning. he got up, i didn't.

aka the irish talk a lot

at least this particular irish man i was chatting with last night. the conversation was 44 minutes too long and i was aware that this conversation was going to be too long for me to continue to enjoy it just over a minute into it. needless to say (because you can do the maths*) that it was three quarters of an hour that i would rather have been watching the trad session going on in the pub, mostly because i was more interested in the fiddlers who were moving faster than i had ever seen before which was pretty fast when you take a moment to consider that it was the slowest 45 minutes of my life to date.

don't bother doing the maths because your head will likely explode.

regardless, i have found a pub that will feature trad sessions regularly, which i am excited about, and i have found a pub that wants to give me a shot at pouring pints of guinness, murphy's and beamish for the locals. they are not the same pub, which is nice, because if they were i might be required to get a bolt through my lower lip. and with dad coming to visit eventually i'd rather not have it pulled out upon his arrival.

*maths is how they say math

BORING!!!

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.

that image is the arc de triumph. i didn't take it, but it is pretty much the same image that i would have taken a picture of. i found this image through a search engine. i took a lot of pictures, or at least i started to take a lot of pictures of buildings. However pictures of buildings are boring and I quickly stopped. i realized that i could do exactly what i just did, that is search online, and i'll come up with enough pictures to create a 3d model of most monuments in paris.

of course, i don't know what most of that last sentence means either, nor do i have the time to learn what it means, explain it and then carry out the task that it likely instructs me to do. instead, we can discuss how many pictures exist of any given tourist attraction.

take Notre Dame for example. as i walked around the building i admired every bit of it, and took a few pictures too. it has flying buttruses, which is both cool and complicated and explaining either would take up too much time and use too much of your valuble attention. instead, watch disney's hunchback and search flying buttruses on your favourite search engine or encylopedia series for the proper spelling and meaning. it'll save us all a lot of time.

as i took my pictures i came to the realization that i wasn't alone. a quick count told me fifteen others were doing the same. then i looked back at the shot i had composed and wondered ... why? what makes this shot i'm taking so much more interesting? why am i bothering to take it. it is hardly worth €0.25 in developing to see a picture a few clicks can find for me. so i took a picture of another person taking the same picture and put my camera down. i could have run through eight rolls in an hour with all the action around the cathedral. so i started to wonder ... is it possible to know how many pictures of Notre Damn there are?

i got bored and didn't want to finish this thought. paris was great. and i can't wait to go back because then i'll get to see the coast.

and now for something work related

waiting on an employer to get their schedule together so that i can know if they want me to trial is currently the biggest annoyance known to this man.

in other news, i revieved a phone call from another company who is interested in an interview. i had applied online just this morning and the call came this afternoon via my new mobile phone (they call them mobiles ... that is mo-bye-ul ... not cell's) through the head set i was listening to irish radio on. what a concept eh!: make the phone a radio.

none of them are job offers yet, but they are a start.

... in other news i'm back on face book. please forgive me.

Disney will bring us together

the one thing that all the travellers around the pub table had last night was their memory of childhood cartoon movies, and the ability to regurgitate mass amounts of useless knowledge that can only be used in situations like the one we all found ourselves in last night.

i didn't notice when it began but once it got going it was hard not to. we were in the pub that i'll be trialing (having a try out) at next monday, enjoying a pint of Beamish (a knock-off version of Guinness that the locals drink because it's cheap and brewed in the city) when i heard a familiar tune. i put my conversation on hold and turned my attention to the rest of the party. there were two girls singing a song that i had heard before ... in french ... ... or at least i thought it was french. as it turns out one was singing in french and the other was in spanish.

the german girl i was speaking with before the musical number broke out joined in ... in german. the three of them were singing as much as they could between laughs ... ...

and then it hit me. the tune that was so familiar was originally performed by Baloo the Bear in The Jungle Book. So matty and i joined in too. we only knew the chorus so we kept singing that over and over again. after it was all said and done there were five languages layered together one of which i knew was a language and no bit of the song could anyone not at the table make out. french, spanish, german, english and swedish. all together. all singing our hearts out and laughing our throats dry.

love, and now disney, will bring us together.

landed

we've arrived in Cork after a grueling four and a half hour ride from Dublin, we enjoyed a pint of Murphy's stout (b/c the locals don't drink the Guinness) and shared a pint with a new friend from BC. Angie, our new friend, is the first Canadian we've met who speaks more than English. in fact she speaks Spanish and Japanese too! our party grew as the night wore and soon included a few Swed's, Spaniards, French and I think an Auzzie, but I never got talking to him.

today is the first day of job hunting, and that means getting together a CV, or resume as we call it at home.

wish me luck,

cheers,

godfather me

the weekend before i departed my parents and sisters and i visited my dad's brothers house, mark, and his family ... as well as gran and pop murray, aunt mary, aunt marilyn and cousin devin (dad's brother allen's son) and we had one of the first murray family jamm sessions. i was quite proud to be able to teach my cousin carolyn the first few notes of John Lennon's Blackbird (the only song i know completely) but proceeded to be humiliated by my goddaughter, and cousin (showed in the image to the right) Josie, who turn six that weekend, on the drums. t'was all in good fun and proved to be a wonderful warmup to my trip to come. we may have to look into getting that kickdrum loaded ... into the backseat folded down.

the pub crawl i spoke of earlier showcased the type of jam sessions, simly called sessions, that can be found in small pubs around ireland. i haven't found one yet that did appear to be packaged for the tourist gaze, (i'll explain the significance of the bolded words in a later post if i can remember it ... thanks prof hennebry and cs 403), perhaps Cork will have more to share.

matt and i head for Cork City this afternoon.

there are a few pictures up on my flicker (link found in the side bar), they come care of Nat, my french friend, and aunt mary from the north.

cheers,

--(bb)b

serendipitous

last night we went on a musical pub crawl, which was awesome, and we found out a bout it from two girls from ten minutes outside paris, which is also awesome because not only will we have a place to stay in paris when we go we might also have some visitors to ontario too. they are pretty excited to speak to my four sisters who are fluent(ish) in french!

but enough about the girls, back to the story of the pub crawl. the group, about 40 tourists, gathered at a pub called oliver st johns something something, met our guides, a fiddler and guitar/drum/singer player, and set out around the city stopping at traditional irish pubs. well, we learned that the second pub we stopped at, and the pubs that followed, were traditional and the first one, olivanders (or whatever), was not at all. it is the kind of pub we (the tourist group) would find in our home countries. it seems that "traditional" irish pubs do not have fiddles on the walls, guinness posters on the walls or sells shirts that say the leprechauns made me do it.

at oliver's we got to chatting with a few of the folks with us, a couple from texas who wanted their picture taken and i was happy to oblige. another girl, who i was happy to realize soon into our conversation that she was from Mississauga and we had a common acquaintance from laurier brantford, a couple from a little town outside new mexico called Los Alamos of which he said, and i kid you not, "you might know us from when we bombed japan".

matt and i laughed for a good fifteen minutes about that. "who says that?" was all matty could say.

the crawl came to a close around 10:30 and then headed to another pub where some real trad music session was happening. it was great fun, grand as they say here.

today we had lunch with matt's dads bishop connection who paid for it all too. it was nice to speak with irish natives, and what's more he gave us some connections in Cork to call when we get there (which is set for monday). and of course, being as this is dublin, pop. 1.5 million, who shows up at the same second story restaurant at the same time as us?... but the texan couple from the night before! i went to their table, they hadn't seen us yet, and started speaking ... she looked up with the expression of a woman who was getting prepared to speak to a waiter ... i told her i'd be happy to take their picture again if they'd like.

we had a good chuckle over the whole situation, and then i wished them a happy lunch.

matt's party for tomorrow night is growing in numbers. the two kiwi's i met a day ago are coming, norm from edmonton, and jaka from italy ... the two french girls can't make it cause they travel tomorrow morning which is especially disappointing seeing as the one has the exact same birthday as matty - day and year!.

that's all for now, cheers!

--b

kiwi and other fruit

matty and i meant to get to the guinness brewery today, but we slept to late and as it turns out they don't let people through the doors past 5 pm. we had our orientation in the morning (wihch we did make it to, but only b/c our american friend woke us up). i lost matty last night, but as luck would have it he found some locals irish and they took care of him. he turned the wrong way coming out of the bar and walked the distance to the hostel we were staying at, ... just in the wrong way. luckily at the spot he expected the hostel to be there was a mcdonalds, and where his bed was to be there was a bathroom. all ended up well!

tonight we're going for a few pints with a couple of girls from seattle, matty is packing a map to ensure he gets home.

matty made dinner tonight, and it was grand. our first home cooked meal since we got here - that is, the closest we can get. we cooked beside a Kiwi who was really full of energy and gave me hell for giving her cooking secretes away to a bunch of other girls. (you may have noticed by now that there are very few boys in my stories .. but that's just cause there are very few boys here!) The Kiwi's buddy, Tresa (TREES-ARE-GREEN ... but leave off the RE-GREEN) offered us some of the cheese because, and i quote, "we have a f*** load of it".

oh, and i lost my voice last night singing at the pub. it's back just in time to be lost again.

cheers,

--b

day one

matt sleeps like a bear. he doesn't move. and just sleeps there. i can move the metal drawer from under our bunk, of which he has the lower bunk, which lifts the bunk considerably, without him so much as moving.

this does allow me to leave a beer cradled in his arms for when he wakes up.

in other news, dublin is grand. everyone walks fast. very fast. and there are pubs everywhere. apparently, a radio station was giving €100 to anyone who could plot a path that avoided passing by a pub. the winner said that any path would do, simply enter everyone along the way.

we had a pint of stout this morning at some pub, i don't remember the name but that hardly matters, we had our pint anyways. our new american friend, TJ, whom we met in the terminal at Newark, who heading off to Belfast tomorrow to coach basketball, enjoyed a pint with us. we were all very tired after that, and rightly so ... stout is heavy on a tired stomach.

that was three hours ago. matt is still napping with his beer.

oh, and we're in a 16 bed dorm room tonight. HA. and better yet, in three days we'll be in a 24 bed dorm room. anything to save a buck.

cheers,

--b

t minus five days

over the past week i have been forced to arrive at a startling reality: everything in the world does not revolve around me.

let me explain.

I leave on the seventeenth, only five days, 23 hrs, 34 mins, 33 seconds ... approximately. Yet despite this fact, which is common knowledge to everyone everywhere, some of these people still find need in scheduling events that will occur after my departure. Until recently I had thought that I was somehow being unclear to the rest of Ontario that they needn't worry about things like that becuase i wasn't going to be here.

then it hit me. even after i am gone the rest of you will continue to function quite normally, barely pausing while i fly overhead. this is a very tough idea to grasp. i wish it was easier for me.

i was just called for supper. i'd better go. because there is only five more like these left for me until a year from now. tonight will be the best supper i've ever had ... until tomorrow.

and introducing ...

... brad.

Hi Mom and Dad! and thank you mandy for letting me share this space with you. i don't know if i'll be able to be as witty with my writing as you are ... you're one heck of an act to follow: like hearing John Lennon sing Imagine followed by a live performance from Art Alexikas of Everclear.

perhaps that is a little esoteric. so, onward and upward.

Irlenad is quickly approaching, nearing the one week count down. Matt and I depart on Sept 17th to arrive in Dublin the morning of the 18th. I beleive our first act of buisness will be to find where in the world it is five o'clock and toast a Guinness to them.

Matt is the brains behind this opperation, has been a friend of mine for over four years and a roommate for three. I jokingly made a remark about my wanting to go to ireland after school back in Dec of '06, and when we came back from Christmas Holidays in January he asked how serious I was. Matty has been the one to get the ball rolling with the trip with his constant badgering (that I beleive has been fueled by his mother's constant badgering) and unrelenting drive to get to ireland to celebrate his birthday (on sept 21st). Thank you Matty, we'd still be in the planning stage if you didn't step up.

The realization hasn't completely set in that we are going to be in Dublin, Ireland within a fortnight, and I am told that it won't until the plane is in the air, but what has set in is excitment and fear, occasionally knocking me over for the dog to pee on me.

Unregardless, thanks for tuning in.

cheers,

--b

edinburgh to belfast, ireland

so, we had a great time in edinburgh because it was such a student town and the night life was out of this world.. there were tons of things to do during the day and it was awesome..

we took a flight from edinburgh, scotland to belfast, ireland that lasted 15mins.. we were up most of the night before partying and whatnot and i was planning on catching up on some sleep on the flight and i only slept for about 5 mins when the pilot said we were landing. my ears didnt even pop.. we didnt get up very high before we had to come back down.. no wonder it was such a cheap flight. haha..

so, we arrived in belfast, ireland (still on the pound which was 2.5 times the canadian dollar and 1.5 times the euro) and it was STILL cheaper than living in paris and buying things in paris. we were shocked that drinks were cheaper in scotland even with the conversion than they were in Paris..

we were planning on renting a car in belfast so that we could drive around Ireland. we got to the car renting place and they told us that they cant rent a car to anyone under the age of 22 and the driver (jordanna) was 22.. so, we walked around to the different stations to see if anyone would rent the car to us. we found one but it was going to be almost 6 times more expensive for us to rent this car than we had thought.. we had a huge discussion about it in the airport trying to decide if it was worth still getting the car.. and we decided that it was. so, Vivian (our car's name) was to be ours for the next week.. and I'm SOO glad we got the car because there were so many things we wouldnt have been able to do had we not had the car..

highlands and Nelly

we went on a tour of the highlands and the loch ness area on our last day in edinburgh. it was absolutely breathtaking. the highlands is a huge area in the south of scotlands where they have millions of mountains and lakes. it was gorgeous. we drove around in a bus and stopped at a few places throughout the day to take pictures. Everywhere you turned, you felt like you were looking at a painting. If you turned in a circle the scenery changed so much. you would have mountains on one side, a valley and then a huge lake on another side. it was gorgeous.

we went to where the loch ness monster was supposed to have been seen a billion years ago. Unfortunatly, we didnt see nelly (or nessie, eh!??!?).. i really thought i was going to get to see her so i stood watching the lake for a while assuming that the monster would appear. it didnt. and i was crushed.

so, anyways, the tour was fantastic. i didnt realize that scotland was so beautiful. i had always heard that ireland was gorgeous but scotland is as well.