Homework: get skype

alright readers, here's today's assignment. go download skype! if you have dial up you may want to think about not doing it, but for all those who have a faster connection, get it! i can call you for free, FREE, if you have it. so get it.

that is all.

As if I needed another reason

So, the main reason I started that last post was because I wanted to share with you something my host in Napoli shared with me, but only because his dentist-student friend felt that i bore a striking resemblance to a local pop icon named Jovanotti. I met the Dentist on my second last day in Napoli and for the entire night he kept prompting me to get up on stage, or start singing or shouting "you dance. you must. you jovanotti." Well, judge for yourselves.



Really, what this means is that I have added to my list of reasons to keep my beard. Let's review:
1. I look like Jovanotti
2. I don't have to shave
3. Missing my mouth when drinking no longer matters

Tomorrow: the cons of a beard (if I can find any)

[the song's title is Fango, which means mud]

Il 141 Aprire

In Napoli my host was a Med student, in his fifth year of how ever many he needs to do. In september he's going to Istanbul to study and learn Turkish; not because he needs to know how to be a doctor that speaks Turkish, in fact the classes are all in english anyways, but simply because he wants to speak Turkish. I've met a fair few people who have similar goals.

Like my host in Roma and how he was a tour guide simply because he wanted a job that had him speaking english. And his roommate, an american guy, who went to Italy nine months ago to visit and found a job teaching english; he stayed because he wanted to learn italian.

"I've already learned french, this was the next logical step" he said to me as we sat one night watching The Matrix in Italian.

There's my two roomates in Cork who came simply to learn english, that french guy who asked me one night why I would work and live in Ireland. "you speak english though" he said to which i had no reply.

After I've thought about it a bit I suppose my reasons for Ireland are simply because I wanted my animal house life to never end. Ireland is notorious for having a drunken environment and I wanted to have a taste of that fun.

Don't get me wrong. If I did it all again it would have been the same, but I know now that experiencing a countries culture is much more rewarding than the animal house life.

Because really, am I ever going to see a hilarious screen play come across my desk with an offer to star as my self in the motion picture?

... well Dan, will I?

patronizing

st. francis of assissi is the patron saint of tourist shops, or so it would seem. never before had i seen more shops with more of the same junk than i did the day i went to assissi; however, as luck would have it, that is not all that happened.

the morning i woke up, the morning that i was going to go to assissi, where francis is from, was a sunday, which, at the homefarm would have meant a morning of rushing and toast, missing shoes and car horns, and an afternoon at grandma and grandpa's house with eggs, bacon and more toast, however here, in Cortona, it meant a short train ride and a baptist mass in italian.

***

an hour and half later i am on a train heading towards the city of assissi, where francis was from. he was a modest man, lived simply and before he passes away he left his last testament saying that "all [his] possessions are to be preserved behind glass and shown to the public and small trinkets are to be made and sold in every shop of the town that i lived modestly in". we know this because his last testament is also modestly kept behind glass.

getting off the train in assissi had me waiting a short time for a bus. getting on the bus had me sitting next to a woman from kentucky of about 65 and has spent the last ten years in italy. she offered me a seat next to her.

she liked italy because they used to use wheel barrows, now she likes italy because it isn't america. we chated about farming and globalization and italian culture and learning languages. we chated about all sorts of things until we, the bus and i, arrived at the stop that was to be mine. i knew this because my new friend told me so after i asked her which was my stop. she told me to look past the tourist shops and to behave myself. i told her i would try for the first part but the second part was no problem because I had been to church that morning.

juggling juggling

we hitchhiked again two days after our trip from Trento to Lago Di Garda but after two hours of waiting, a lunch in a park-like area and another our of juggling at the bus stop while a young girl did all she could to ignore us we were hardly much closer to Cortona, where the farm was, than when we had started that morning.

but we did have the train ride to entertain us. we had a lot of fun making grayson seem like he was many people, experimenting with lights and watch the scenery go by.

we arrived to cortona, juggled some more and took a bus up the hill and around the corner where we juggled some more and waited for Margarite to find us.

and then when she did she thought my name was chuck, which was not out of the ordinary as we would soon discover.

time spent

so ... instead of spending time writing a post i spent it updating different online profiles, writing on walls and generally exhausting my eyes by viewing a back lite monitor until the wee hours othe morning. those wee hours might be a little be less astonishing as they may have been a year ago at this time, meaning that days no longer worked on the 24 hr clock, but instead on a newer, more contemporary system that involved 120 minute hours, thirty two "hour" days successfully converting the standard week (72, 7 by 24 is 28 plus 140 is 861 ... 168hrs ...) into a period that existed over two and a half days.

when abouts did i lose you?

i have arrived safely to a farm in the province of Calabria near the city of Costenza. the couple living here are in their mid fifties (born in '54), they have two daughters (neither are here) who are married or studying depending on their amount (or lack) of children.

in conclusion it is now half past one on the morning of the 27th and i hope that i haven't missed
anyones birthday. i am now going to bed.

ciao,

pane

randomly random

I don't have time for a full post, but i had access to my host's computer and felt like typing a bit. I wanted to share with you first a video I found when I searched the web for the spam I got a few days ago. It was posted to Type For You by pedro. You can watch the video on your own, it's at the end of this post.

Rome has been great. I had a very random moment that'll I'll share later, and a few other not so random moments that I may share later, and I may not. If I don't share them it is likely that in being unrandom they aren't entertaining. I once knew a guy who told me he hated it when people used the word "random" because most of the time when they used it, it was at the wrong time.

"we went to the mall and a like bought a new purse and then we found another store that had the same purse and it was like so random"

no he would say that was not random and don't you ever say that again.

i agree with him, but i use it in a very appropriate way, i assure you. but you'll have to wait for me to explain it with a story.

enjoy the video.

hitch'n another ride

part one

"This will happen from time to time where you're forced to keep hitching and hope for the best"

So we hoped and we hoped and were given a german couple about half an hour later. They liked us so much they dropped us 15km past the spot they were going to stop at; not just their turn off, but thier bed and breakfast. He gave us his email and offered a couch for the both of us for Oktoberfest!

"just make sure to tell all your Canadian friends that Germans aren't all that bad"

we waited awhile at Lago De Garda and had a beer and discussed life and other things.

We got another ride from another guy, but I mostly stared out the window. We would be arriving in Garda shortly and from there it was just a short walk to our host for the evening. My first day hitching had been exciting and fantastic and addicting. I didn't want to stop, I wanted to put my thumb out again and again and meet more and more people. The sorts of people who stop and pick you up are the sorts of people I want to meet. They have stories to tell and are genuine and kind and considerate and understand what it's like to hitch. But even though it was exciting and wonderful it was also exhausting. The ware that came from a day spent on my feet, waiting patiently, thinking everytime I said goodbye and thank-you to a ride that it will be the last ride we saw that day was showing. we also needed to eat.

a polite good-bye, a thank-you and a short walk later we arrived on Guiseppe's doorstep and juggled until he got home from work. His parents watched from what they thought was an unseen window, offered us water and cookies and did what they do in the garden and kitchen.

hitch'n a ride

on what was our last morning in Trento we didn't set out as early as we would have liked. Grayson was somewhat anxious about finding rides, but if worse came to worse we wouldn't in too bad a position if no one picked us up: we were only a stones throw from the train station and it only cost five euros.

"you want to do this eh? i've never hitched with just another guy before, i don't know how this is going to go"

"damn right i do! you're leaving in two weeks and i won't have the caurage to learn to do this on my own."

so we hauled our rucksacks to a spot that felt right and made them look small. we held out our thumbs, smiled large and watched the people pass by. 

this is it. i thought this is what i've been craving. i'll be just like Sal Paradise and Gray will be Dean ... and we will be on the road.

Cars passed by, as they do most often, and we waved politely and smiled so they could see we were pleasant travelers. It must have worked because after only ten minutes a small red pinto pulled to the side. Luca was 27, worked with troubled teans and was an ex junkie. He talked and talked and told stories of traveling and bad people in Amsterdam and his bad ex-habbits. He liked that we were hitching and spoke decent english. He dropped us off in a small town next to anther trainstation, wished us luck and sped away.

Our next ride came an hour later, cinqua minuto before we were going to give up. A man was driving his mamma who had "just had a few McBiers and wanted someone to talk to" he joked about wanting someone to talk to her that wasn't him. They both laughed and then turned to us for a response that we couldn't give because they had been speaking italiano. We didn't get to have our laugh until nearly a half an hour later when we had decoded their italian and come to the end of our ride. The dropped us in a small town with no sign of a train station anywhere.

"This will happen from time to time where you're forced to keep hitching and hope for the best"

part two

fame ill ear words

today i have the day and the house to myself. my host family left for Milan and will be gone for the night, the following morning, afternoon and early evening. I hope they're back by then because by that time I'll be very hungry.

"you can do as much, or as little, work today. it all depends on what you feel like. there's food in the fridge and beer in the cellar. don't kill the goats but if you just hope on a train and don't write. any questions?"

"nope" says I "see you in 36 hrs.

So I settled down into a long afternoon filled with coffee's and photo accounts and writing and eating. For a while there I lost their dog and I was a little worried.  Turns out I needed to either look farther than the front stoop or wait a little bit longer; I chose the latter and had him in the house long enough for his smell to linger for an entire hour after kicking him out again. He's safely outside somewhere likely making fun of the goats (I assume that because that's what I'd be doing).

Uploading photo's got me itching for some random writing. So I created some. It started out rather hoe-hum and mundane, but then I started having fun. Enjoy!

Things that interest me: 

photography, writing, languages, cycling. violins, guitars, and digital cameras. 35mm picture drawers. starting up forgotten computers and finding lost treasure. a freshly printed essay. rucksackers, the beatnik life and hitchhiking. pianos, wallet sized photo's kept in wallet sized wallets. mailbags made of old pants. using a new word correctly, ewe sing fame ill ear word sin weigh snot ewe sid beef four. self made postcards, waiting for pictures to develope, seeing pictures develope instantly, not being sarcastic, contradicting myself, and writing a novel.

 ... but that's just a start.

Signor Pane

Here's a few things about Italian pronounciation, or at least as far as I've learned. It's fairly staright forward because the language is fawnetick (unlyk inglish) and once you know how the letters opporate you'll be well on your way. mostly this is to help you along with reading my future posts about Italy because I'll be throwing in some Italian words that I learn along the way.

Oh, and you remember that theory I said I had? It turned out to be true. There is no word in Italian for spelling because they don't have that problem. A word is written exactly as it sounds and therefore there's no need to communitcate a misspelling. Neat, eh!

 The Vowels:

 a - short a

 e - long a

 i - long e

 o - short o

 u - oo

 and that's that. come si scrivre is then read like com-eh see scree-v-ray. to help you out I'll be putting Italian words in bold like I did above.

 Some Other Things:

 ci - makes a ch sound

 ch - makes a k sound

 r - rrrroll up the rrrrim to win

 j - there is no j

 g - for the most part doesn't get pronounced, except in cases where it does

 all others - pronounce them as you would but with an italian accent.

 Young Elliott has been having trouble remembering/pronouncing my name. It's not Italian so the sounds are foriegn to his ears. However, he has, like others before him, discovered the similarities between the name Brad and the word bread. He has, along with the rest of the family, taken to calling me Pane (sound it out in Italian). There was a discussion at dinner tonight to perhaps name me a specific kind of bread (such as Bagel or Bagget or whole wheat ... that was my suggestion) but in the end Elliott had the last word and would still call me Pane.

 There is a saying in italian that says buono come pane which means good like bread. I couldn't agree more.

11 am; venician park

 the farm is great. we've had a blast being here, grayson and i. before i get too much into that, however, the how of how i, and we, got here needs some explaining.

 for this story you can picture me seated on a bench in venice. it is a small park and behind me, out of view, is the bus station i just came from. beside me is my rucksack and i've my arm around it. around my waist is the uncomfortable jab of a traveler's "thingthatkeepsthemoneyandpassportsafe" (that's not so much as important for the story as it is a reassurance for dad to know that i am wearing it this time around*). in front of me is the city of venice with all it's boats and canals and sinking buildings and tourists, and here is me on a park bench wondering what it is i am supposed to do.

 beside me is also a map of the city with a circle on it telling me what park i am in; the lady who sold it to me spoke enough english to draw a circle. you might also notice that i wrote bought a map which to those who have travelled or have been a tourist in any city might be thinking what the hell are you doing buying a map, let alone paying tre euro for it (i hadn't told you the price yet although i am sure most of you could have improvised a bit and carried on as if i had). this is an odd thing, buying a map in a tourist city, because the people in the city like you to be there spending your foreign money and make it as easy as possible to get the information you need to spend the money you're carrying in the stupid thingthatkeepsthemoneyandpassportsafe.

 grayson and i had exchanged a few txt's earlier that morning, the latest informing me he was en route. i had nothing to do but sit and watch the boats go by, the tourists spend money and the old lady crawl onto the park bench across from me. she didn't bother me, and i didn't want to bother her. after all, it was her city, and for all i knew it was her park too; who was i to make any suggestions.

 a month ago i was looking into flight costs to istanbul and athens when i had found a flight for 0.01 euro, so i booked it. turns out venice was in italy and grayson was too. little did i know i had arranged for us to meet up after having been simultaniously exploring the continent for the past six months. you see, we were supposed to be in ireland last spring at the same time and would have been had it not been for my dragging of the feet and the need for some money and a certian wedding i wanted to go to.

 so there i am: on a park bench in italy, waiting on a friend whom i was supposed to meet up with a year ago and still not really knowing what i was supposed to do. do i get a boat, or a glass of wine or take out my camera? i felt like asking the old woman, but she looked so peaceful sleeping there that i just couldn't bring myself to wake her. so i did what i hadn't been able to do for a long time; i read.

 however just as soon as i fished out my book from the bottom of my rucksack another rucksack was dropped nexted to it and the top hatted dude who had done the dropping was standing there waiting for a hello. so after a hug and some stories we set off to explore the city, which is what i was supposed to be doing after all.

 

*when i was in auz i had my wallet stolen just a few days into the trip. i'll try and tell that story another time

chow mama

so, here we go. at this moment i am sat at the table with an esspresso, the house is settling after sending thomas, 7, to school and grayson is still snug in his cocoon below. little elliott, 5, has grown tired of convincing me that mom put the video game on the top shelf in the kitchen because she wanted [him] to play with it and has resorted to helping me scrivre home.

(i have now poured myself a tea because the esspresso lasted no longer than it took to write the word down)

mom, margaret, having spent the morning running her hand through her short hair in unconditionally frustrated love, is now out feeding her kashmire goats and chasing the chickens out of her garden. echo's of this morning's chaos slowly fade as the chores wear on.

where's your homework, thomas? she asks the bedroom.

it responds in italian.

no, it isn't. i packed your bag. what did you do with it.

elliott smirks at me and i smirk at him. 

"come si dicie hi mom, elloitt?" 

"chow mama." 

"gracia. come si scrivre?" 

"c-i-a-o  m-a-m-m-a"

(the word for write and for spell are the same. i don't know why, but i have a theory. i'll ask around and find out more before i share this theory lest i sound like a babbling idiot)

lost

i've missplaced the update that i was going to write out. i wrote it out this morning, kept it in my back pocket the whole day and promptly lost it before sitting down just now.

i trust that it will turn up, but until then i will have to work on more.

i am doing well. grayson leaves tomorrow. i am at a farm in tuscany and will be for another week.

i miss you all,

--b

landed

i landed in venice today. there are boats and tourists and old friends. i love it, the language and the photo's of photographers that i can take.

i miss you all.

--b

watching all the people

i want to go see jay-z
great i will go with you
really?
no. not really. i'm from the country, and i like it that way.
hmm. too bad. it's going to be awesome. it's going to be sold out
really. how are you going to get tickets? hey, do you want to camp out over night?
no.
i thought you wanted to go?
i do, but i'm not stupid. besides, you're the one that doesn't want to go.
i'm not stupid either. and it's not about the show, i just want an adventure.
you can go on your own and have your adventure.
that won't be fun.
neither will camping out over night. i wouldn't camp out overnight if i was ... camping.
nice one. oh, and ron white called. he wants his joke back.
tracy byrd called, he wants his song back.

the next morning came around and my alarm clock went off. why i ever let him talk me into waking up at eight to go wait in like for his tickets is beyond me. at least i had, or he had i can't remember, roped sarah into waiting with me. however, one look at my phone confirmed my suspicion that it was eight am and that i wasn't going anywhere until sarah told me she was already there.

the call came soon after. where are you in bed where are you in line you langer, get up.

she was waving me in as i scanned the crowd. not in the way mom gets your attention during the christmas rush at the mall food court, but in a way that said she was where she was and i needed to get there immediately. i called matty.

right on dude, is the line long.
not bad. but dude, it'll be you and most of mrs murphy's ninth grade class.
young crowd, eh.
yeah man. ha, no. i'm just taking the piss.

we bought the tickets, sarah told me the ticket girl was hiting on me and i told her that if it wasn't for her company, sarah's that is, that i would have had a date later that day.

langer.

so we sat for an hour just beside the master ticket because we were too tired to go anywhere else and watched all the people, living happily. we talked about life, relationships, love and travel. we made plans to do this when i returned from italy, and to do it once a week. i said it wouldn't happen because her beloved chris would soon be there and we were likely to never see her or him ever again. i'm not that kind of girl, ... and i believe her.

last night

my italian roommate, who had a party last night for his graduation, has photoshop on his computer and he's been nice enough to let me mop the floor and use his computer all afternoon. i am sure that if he was consious he would be apreciative of the floor having been mopped and my usage of the computer, however until he is revived i'll have to assume he would.

i'll bet he's dreaming of a way to get into our french roommates room without using the key that was lost last night at the party she wasn't at. here's hoping the landlord that doesn't know the italian graduate is living here doesn't mind giving us a new key for the room. although i'm sure he's dreaming of the pink dress he wore last night.

matty and i met our first neighbour last night, although the meeting would have been more enjoyable had it not been five in the morning, he not had his phone in his hand threatening to call the garda or had he have been sober.

there's an older man at the door, says an italian boy. he wants to know who's in charge. matt and i exchange looks and decide that it would be better for allan to deal with this one.

go wake up allan, says i. he'd know what to do. the italian boy stares blankly back with the expression of someone with enough apathy to leave out the back door, regardless of the dificulties that he might face, yet with enough empathy to continue staring at me until i decided that waking allan up, after him having been passed out for several hours, would not make for a well recieved conversation with the man at the door. fine, says i. i'll go talk with him.

i rounded the corner seperating the kitchen from the entrance and found several other italians speaking with the irish man whom at this time was holding his sober quite well. or prehaps, in hindsight, appeared more sober in his present company. somehow i convinced him not to call the guards and instead to tell me that he had a 14 year old daughter asleep inside and he had lived there for six years and some other things that i missed because i was holding back a question about him being as drunk as he was at five in the morning when he had a 14 year old daughter asleep inside. i was in the wrong, and so was the rest of the party i had with me, so we parted ways, him and i, likely never to ever speak again.

not a good first impression, perhaps i'll run into him again and have a better experience to tell about.

i did end with an appology to him and the house emptied quickly after he left. they all left for another house party a little ways away that didn't have daughters asleep next door. matty and i put the house back together and settled down to watch some march madness while we reminised about life at 141 and the craic we had. somethings never change.

spelling bee

i had the biggest headache yesterday. it was one that lasted the entire day. what a heck of a way to spend my last day off of work.

no, not that i'll never have another day off work - it's that today, rather tonight, is my "last" shirt at the shel. my "last" because i quit on the 14th, but i was kept on because i am just so darn good.

also, there was no one else.

but what the heck, right? what's another few hours, few friends, few euro's gonna hurt? i even have a few more happy customer stories except by happy i mean cutting off and by stories i mean encounters because what happened wasn't a story because stuff just ... well, happened with no outcome that means anything in any context.

first, two american girls sat, drank and wrote on their arms. i think they were twenty-one but i didn't check so who knows. turns out the one was keeping track of how much she had drank with ticks on her arm. that way when i wake up in the morning i'll know exactly the why of how i feel.

you have a serious problem that i can't even begin to discuss with you because we haven't the time nor do i have the interest i said to myself because i had had enough of speaking with her.

second, some langer went up to two women seated near the door which was handy for him becuase had they not been there he would have walked up to no on because there wasn't a hope in hell of him making it any further. i wouldn't have stopped him, his centre of balance would have. he then came up to me and had the adasity audacity to ask for a drink and the gull to have a confused look on his face when i told him the answer. he got over the rejection rather quickly and returned to the women at the table. i joined them quickly for a short while because that was all it took to convince him that following me and my beconing beckoning index finger out the door was a better idea than ... doing whatever it was he didn't know he was doing.

come here.
confused look.
no, no. come here.
confused follow
[outside the pub]
you should head home
confused look back into pub and one confident step towards the door again
no, no. don't go back in there.
look of understanding and step in the right direction

third, there is no third. i wish there was, but there isn't. perhaps next time i'll have a third and make the post complete. perhaps tonight during my 8-c i'll have a third. perhaps, for now, i've exhausted new words i can mispell.

monday morning i fly out to venice, italy. i'll be there for a week, maybe ... maybe longer, who knows. matty's not coming with me because he spent all his money on Jay-z tickets.

oh, and sorry about that last post. i had that headache i talked about and after an hour at the computer i could no longer think. i meant for it to be a series of more childhood memories, but i've now lost the direction the rest of the stories would have taken. hopefully they'll come back to me, but until then you'll just have to wait. in the future i'll try and make the posts more relevant to travelling too - unless they are making sense to people and you feel as though they are part of the greater context of the life of brad. please, let me know so i know how to write to your reading desires.

cheers,

--bbb

i am ...

i am seven and grandpa has taken me to a weekend hockey tournament. he has gone to the bathroom in the diner we are at, leaving me at the table to wait for the food.

i don't want anyone else to eat our food on us so you keep watch, he says. i
smile back.

the food arrives while he is away, but i am hungry so i eat.

growing up on the farm meant large, fast meals but fast in that we consumed all of it faster than the food could be passed around the table.

keep passing food around until everyone has some on their plate, dad would
say.

a statement which we would immediately ignore. we wouldn't ignore it on purpose, it was only because the food we were spooning onto our plate was more interesting than listening to something we'd heard everyday at every meal. we were more interested in eating, which, had it been explained to mom in that way, might have made it easier for dad to get us to pass food around first. we were really complementing mom, not ignoring dad.

grandpa returns from the bathroom and finds the table occupied by empty plates and a grandson. the server arrives at the same time with the bill. she is about twenty, brown hair in a ponytail and chews gum. the whole time i am sitting quietly watching them both.

did the food already come to the table?
yes
where's my burger then
he ate it

grandpa looks down at me. i look up at him, smiling and he starts laughing.

well, better order me another one then

I'll be at my local too

matty and the girls where out doing their thing. the girls, having skipped work, were at the brog (shoe) because it wasn't the shel because the shel was too close to work. matty was too close to work because he didn't want to miss some of his training. langer.

i had met up with brian at the shel and we left from there in a car of steven's because he was heading to a different part of town, but mostly because that's just the sort of thing you do for friends on paddy's day, which is to say everyday of the year. upon getting to the KLM we met terry and the regulars and the pool table named john. we made a point of making plans to go back to a pub near the shel because that's just the sort of thing that happens when you make plans three weeks prior; things change. this also meant that when the girls and matty took a notion to walk our way we'd likely pass them on the road.

a few phone calls, text's and several hours later we still hadn't left the KLM for the pub near the shel at which the girls and matty had been waiting for ... well, several hours. the phone call came in and i answered it and gave it to brian.
'i'm not talking to her'
'wat d'you mean?' asked a bewildered brian 'who's this?' he asked the phone. his face changed from one of a person in control and having a good time to that of a young child who had just been picked up by his father aftering pooping his pants. with eye's wider than most people would have thought possible he passed the phone to the only person who could protect him at all: his mother. who, need i remind you, has been in the pub since noon, which it is now several hours plus a few after.

mama brian delt with the situation the only way she new how which meant not dealing with the situation at all but pretending that she was speaking to a friend of hers whom she could hardly hear through the cell phone's reception which, ironically, was exactly what she thought was happening. brian turned the phone rightside up for her and moments later terry took the phone and gave directions.

the girls and matty turned up some time later and stayed for a bit, but my time has run out and i'll have to complete this again some other time.


[i hope you had a wonderful paddy's day! i posted some pictures on my flicker page, feel free to check them out.]