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.