Gullible's Travels

Denmark - Nice country. Tall women!

2010-11-19T15:17:00.016-06:00

Nice. Expensive. VERY flat.

And, thankfully for me, very advanced in terms of transportation technology; I had the kind of experience getting into the city that made me think back to a comment I heard recently - "Oh, you're a travel expert!" - and groan inwardly. I stepped out of the airport onto what I think may be the coolest and most advanced metro train in the world that I have seen (so chic that my first thought stepping on board was "I'll take my martini on the rocks"). My next thought was the realization that I had not printed out the google map my friend had sent to me, showing the walking directions to his apartment (Fabulous). Scratching my head, wondering how I was going to resolve the matter without making a wide detour to find a WiFi hotspot, I saw a notice that seemed to indicate the train had onboard WiFi...woohoo! I'll just boot up, connect, and....damn, need a profile. And...DAMN!...need a Danish postal code. Hmmm, wonder what form that takes? Maybe 5 digits like American? Worth a try...and...Viola! And so it was, by sheerest luck, I found WiFi on the train, lucked out on the first shot in the dark at a postal code, and I'm on my way. Never mind that I must have looked the total retard wandering the streets of Copenhagen's suburbs with my laptop propped up with a copy/paste job of the map open in Word!

For Canadians, spending a little time in the capital fof Denmark might remind them of a visit to Ottawa. As far as cities go, it’s very rich, very clean and very liberal; and, it’s full of very nice, and polite people riding bikes and enjoying the cutting edge in design and transportation technology. As a result, it’s also very sanitized, in that there is little grit that makes so many old cities so much fun…that is, aside from the curiosity that is the unique and ultra-(hip)py community of Christiania. For this reason, I think Copenhagen is a far better place to live, than vacation in.

Strangely, for a country with such a colourful past as the home of the awe-inspiring Viking raiders, there is very little to show for that era – aside from my friend Christian, whom looks very much the Viking in the pre-razor era.

It wasn’t until the 15^th century that the Danes made their presence felt in the areas now comprising Denmark and Scandia (modern-day southern Sweden). Always suspicious of the Swedish kingdom just a handful of miles from Copenhagen, a disastrous campaign in the mid 17^th century spelled the end of Danish dominance and the ascendancy of the French and English power. This turns out to be fortuitous for Canada as, hundreds of years later, we prepare to permanently liberate Hans Island from Danish Tyranny in battle or, more likely, in exchange for a couple of kilos of real bacon for their open-faced sandwiches.

Aside from a few of the prototypical European sights – palaces and castles – Copenhagen is really all about the waterfront and exploring the streets by bicycle (easily done in pancake-flat Copenhagen). The coolest neighbourhood by far is Christiania, a place that is far, far too hip for the likes of me. Hashish sold openly in the streets where young moms push around groceries and young children on the ubiquitous Christiania Bike, and teenagers crowd a local dilapidated warehouse converted to a skate park. A former military base, abandoned post-war, it was taken over by a bunch of squatters whom have resisted eviction for decades; now the site of some of the best under-developed real estate, the viability of the community in the coming years seems to be in question. See it while you can!

Copenhagen is where I spent my 36^th birthday. It was also the 10^th year anniversary, almost to the day, of my first independent travels. How appropriate, then, spend it in the company of my friend Christian (and his lovely girlfriend, Jing) whom I spent time with in Israel and Egypt on that fateful trip. I probably deserve a slap in the head for having a birthday milkshake (the first non-alcoholic birthday beverage since my 18^th birthday, but booze is $$$). We had an interesting night out doing the “Culture Night” visiting some of the city’s cultural centres. The brief symphony sampler was cool, as the new concert hall is a very cool venue. The middle-of-the-night zoo trip was less interesting by far. Those few animals that weren’t asleep were – unsurprisingly – rather hard to see. Penguins excepted. I like penguins. Penguins are hilarious. And (this is the “did you know” moment), they can run as fast as most humans.

After the better part of the week in Copenhagen, the only other stop on the Danish tour was Arhus (‘Orhoos’). Cool Arhus, with its crazy little historic village consisting entirely of old buildings slated for demolition and re-established in a neighbourhood that can take all day to explore. It’s a little like visiting Heritage Park in Calgary except traditional desserts are for the taking and the rooms (example the carpenter’s workshop), look like the occupant has just stepped out for a moment.

Another notable stop was the ARoS museum, which scores points for the most outrageous marble sculpture exhibit I have ever seen, in being both outstanding in the quality of sculpture and the OH-MY-GOD shock factor (see picture, right).

I must admit I didn’t get much into the local cuisine scene. I don’t really get open-faced sandwiches…I mean, *REALLY*, would it kill you to put the other piece of bread on so that its easier to handle? And as for everything else, I didn’t really see anything that stood out as a cultural icon in terms of food, which may explain why we don’t have Danish restaurants in Canada! Hey, Christian, you’ll always have the “Danish” pastry, and that very cool birthday song. Thanks for the great time! Prost!

London Calling No Answer

2010-11-07T15:57:00.016-06:00

I must say the trip started off entirely on the right foot, with a week-long stop in Ontario to see friends and take some pictures of the fall color before heading overseas. I had, on several occasions, an opportunity to celebrate early my birthday with friends from Ottawa and Toronto. Thanks to the gents whom sponsored the, er, *entertainment*...you shall remain nameless for your own protection.

Getting into Heathrow at 6:30am on the morning of October 10^th, I was feeling incredibly jet-lagged, having been up for about 20 hours at this point. I couldn't crash at the hostel for another 6 hours, so I did the absolutely dumbest thing I could have done in this condition and bought a ticket to the 3 hour evening production of Wicked, at the Apollo Theatre. I have been wanting to see that production for a number of years - and it was outstanding - but I nearly passed out twice from exhaustion.

I had planned three days in London for the express purpose of enjoying all of the city's entertainment, but I have already seen most of the sights in years past and the truth is that a good time in London requires that the purse strings be on the extremely loose side. The idea of traveling on a budget in London is a tad of an oxymoron. So, beyond that first night’s excursion, I really didn’t do much else in London the whole time I was there other than wander at random through some neighborhoods I hadn't explored before like Kensington, with its forest-in-the-city Holland Park and sprawling Hyde Park. I was rather surprised with the quantity and quality of greenery in the city, which I hadn't really noticed in years past, and this threatened to change my entire decades-long perception of London as an exciting but ultimately over-crowded jungle of concrete, stone and steel. Strictly speaking, it is still overcrowded in the extreme in the city centre – you are jostling with people constantly – but there are very nice green spaces that one can actually escape to. The problem, and this is why I always have preferred Paris, is that the relaxed atmosphere of the parks doesn’t extend beyond the bordering sidewalks, but seem isolated islands lost in the cacophony of London’s chaos.

It is strange to think that, having come to London to enjoy London, the only thing I'm leaving with is a lack of desire to come back any time soon; if I do, it will be to rent a car and head out of town to explore the English countryside.

Gullible's Travels: Old Man on the Road

2010-11-02T15:31:00.007-05:00

Two days ago I lost my trusty hand-written journal somewhere in Brussels. Truth be told, it nearly bored me to tears to write the damn thing, as I can only write at a fraction of the pace that I can type and it didn’t exactly make for a gripping read. Somehow the blog always comes off better – perhaps because I am writing for an audience and not just reciting the day to to day. I can really do without boring myself into an early grave when I read it 20 years from now. So, I am now fully committed to doing it in the strictly digital medium, though the lack of permanency of it bothers me a little; after all, would we take Moses seriously if he'd come down from Sinai with the Commandments spelled out on a couple of iPads?

For anyone new to Gullible’s Travels, the name is an obvious rip-off of the classic “Gulliver’s Travels”, but with a personal twist that hearkens back to the very beginning of my independent travels and my first day in France. On that day, I was taken for 200 Francs – about $20 – by a con artist and his collaborator “player” doing the ball and cup scam. Being taken advantage of, on the account of gullibility, is a damn shameful thing that you never quite live down. At very least, the experience lent an appropriate title to my journal, which I have mostly kept up the practice over the years due to – get this – reader demand. I have had people claim that they ditched their Lonely Planet in favour of following in my footsteps, and I’ve had positive feedback from all over the world. So lets get into the "Prelude" to this journey.

Traveling – and by this I mean budget backpacking – has changed drastically since I first arrived on the scene 10 years ago this October. Then, good backpacks were expensive and fancy Gortex™ fabrics were out of the reach of most travelers. If you did just happen to be the son of a Sultan and own a Gortex jacket, you usually were not in possession of it for long, as there truly is no honour among the nomadic peoples of the hostels.

Personal electronics were also practically non-existent, aside from an old cassette player or CD walkman; and even these had limited utility as one easily tired of listening to a half dozen CDs in the course of 6 months. Internet access was available, but only in internet cafés or, in rare instances, on a lonely archaic computer on bang-your-head-against-the-wall dialup. Telephone calls were made on public phones with pay cards.

Ultimately, one made his way or her way across the world with a pack, clothing, towel, toiletry essentials, and possibly a couple of handy guidebooks and a novel to read. Reservations for accommodation were rarely done, as web clients simply did not exist for automated bookings by credit card and most people were not willing to send it via email to some unknown party on the other side. You either called from a pay phone when you got into town or simply walked up, asked for a room and, if they were full, moved onto the next place.

Today, about one third of budget travellers, myself a recent addition to this group, carry their own compact notebook computer, and eschew the public computer option for flexibility, security, and backing up of photos and important documents such as passports, tickets and travel insurance. Approximately 90% of travellers also carry a mobile phone, the majority of these either an iPhone or some other variety of smart phone that also serves up one’s entire music collection, wifi access for booking accommodation and transportation on the fly, and provides real-time GPS guidance from the train station to the hostel door. I have no doubt that 12 to 24 months from now, the preferred device for travel will be the ultra light and compact tablet computers that Apple pioneered 6 months ago and are now being rapidly brought to market. Certainly, one do-it-all device would cut down on the mass of power adapters and connectors that one has to bring for the array of devices being packed around the world.

So, traveling has changed substantially in ten years. On the plus side, the digital revolution has made traveling nearly idiot-proof; on the down side, it rather takes away from the adventure element and there are a lot of idiots traveling.

Gullible's Travels: Ireland - And on the 7th day, God created GPS and he saw that it was good

2009-07-18T15:42:00.003-05:00

Holy Jesus, Joseph and Mary!

I have been enjoying my visit to New Poland...er, Ireland (honestly, I think there are more Poles here than native Irish), but there have been some interesting developments...

Can you believe that single phrase, uttered in a public place, can net you a €25,000 fine? Yep, its true! On July 10th, Ireland established an (get this) "anti-blasphemy" law. This development, of course, SUCKS because I probably broke the record for longest continuous stream of cursing in the World thanks to my first few minutes on the Irish roadways struggling to stay alive. I guess the government is pretty needy for cash, as there are a LOT of commercial vacancies visible everywhere and the government is slashing services at an unbelievable rate as the country's debt is skyrocketing.

Surprisingly, driving on the left hand side of the road and shifting with my left hand instead of my right took no time at all to get used to. What did confound me for a bit was the ettiquette for roundabouts (traffic circles). And then there are the incredibly narrow and harrowing roads themselves. In the cities, there are barely enough room for parked and roving cars; in the countryside, every field and every road is lined with 1 meter high rock walls covered in ivey barely 30 cm from the lanes...as you can imagine, this affords you ZERO forgiveness and some of the maneuvering can leave you white knuckled. They didn't flatten ANYTHING in the construction of the roads, just threw down the asphalt over the bog. I'm used to it now, three days later, but the first day was a little nerve-wracking.

I'm not sure what the greatest thing was that preceded sliced bread, but I'm pretty sure the modern day title belongs to GPS navigation systems. I cannot imagine having found my way around the country on its twisty, convoluted and thoroughly confused (and poorly marked) roadways without my folks' TomTom. My God, I'd have driven straight into the ocean without it and wouldn't have enjoyed the driving experience at all. As it is, it practically takes me anywhere I want to go with zero hassle.

Well, I could go on about what I have seen in terms of sights and so on...and they are generally pretty amazing...but its mostly a collection of Anglo-Norman ruins and artifacts from the various Irish rebellions against the bastard English over the years (Cromwell was a bigger prick than I'd ever suspected). Although, I will say that I was suitable impressed by two sights in particular, the Rock of Cashell which is a huge castle settlement on the top of a craggy hill and was the home of Ireland's first High King, Brian Boru. The second was the Hook's Head Peninsula lighthouse; on a warm and sunny day (only one of two so far), and at 800 years and running on an unbelievably picturesque craggy coastline, it puts pretty Peggy's Cove to shame. The camera is getting a good workout with 8GB and counting.

More impressive, by far is to describe what I experience in terms of the people. And man, this country has a SERIOUS drinking problem. It isn't generally apparent during the day, but once the 5:30 work day ends, its almost like half the population undergoes a transformation and are absolutely BLITZED by 9. Pubs are an interesting place to be...in the early evening, good times for all. By closing, you'd best be sporting for a fight. Things get pretty entertaining in some districts, to be sure. Not really a problem with the ladies, whom seem to have their heads screwed on straight in this country, but the blokes are a little out of control. No wonder the past two Prime Ministers have been women.

In Cork for the evening, saw the new Harry Potter movie (Cork isn't that exciting in itself) and comes highly recommended. Off to the West Coast tomorrow.

Gullible's Travels, Ireland: We're not in Kansas anymore...

2009-07-09T17:32:00.002-05:00

But it sure as hell does look like Kansas...or, at least how I expect Kansas would look if I had ever been. But I digress...

So, its July 9th, and my first day in Dublin. I'm so fagged (picking up the lingo already) that I can barely walk, having slept only 10 hours in the last 4 days. But, I have enough still going on upstairs that I can offer a few first impressions of the city.

First, I MAY just want to come back and do a little wife hunting. There is no shortage of raven and fire-haired beauties in this land.

Second, the Irish speak two languages that I cannot understand. The Irish dialect is apparently experiencing something of a resurgence, as it is written all over the city signs and encouraged by every public institution. For on-campus accommodation at Trinity College, apparently the difference between heat and no heat can be your ability to speak the native language. The second language I don't understand here is, apparently, English. The women I can understand for the most part, but the blokes are incomprehensible. I was in line at the local market today for quite some time enjoying the spectacle of a gang of 20-something local boys stocking up on beer for the Oxegen Music Festival (apparently a huge European concert stop that kicks off this weekend) and laughing and shouting amongst themselves. When I asked what language it was (assuming Irish), they all looked at me like I was stoned...I guess that is what passes for English among the boys.

Spent the day touring the University of Dublin (Trinity College), that only accepts 6000 of 65,000 applicants every year. Admired the famous Book of Kells (incredible) and then headed over to Temple Bar district for some live music and wildly overpriced food. Eating in Ireland is not cheap...not if one eats out, at least. I'll be spending a lot more time in the markets from here on in....

Long time comin'- Gullible's Thailand Part Deux

2008-05-24T11:01:00.004-05:00

I apologize to all of my "readers" (HALLOOOO! Is there anybody out there?!). It has been a long time comin', this blog. Things have been pretty crazy since the last entry, when I was about 5 days into my Thailand trip. I was having entirely too much fun in the sun to spend time in a cramped little cafe at a crappy little computer writing about the fun times in the sun. Anyway, Bangkok was fun...to a point. Somewhere along the line I just got a little bored with the scenery, the noise, the rather nasty afternoon smog, and that feeling in the back of my mind that I was ultimately gonna end up on the front bumper of a tuk-tuk. So, in that state of mind, I took a quick day trip up to see the floating market outside of town, which is a market run on longtail boats on a canal. No doubt it would have been fabulous to see in an authentic condition, but with hundreds of camera-toting tourists (ahem) everywhere it totally lacked any semblence of authenticity. Bridge over River Kwai, which was a fairly non-descript bridge over a rather large but non-descript river. But it DID have a sign...and some cool pictures of the nasty history of the forced labour behind it. The real gem of the trip was the Monk-run Tiger Temple, the only wilderness park I've been to where they let all of the wildlife run amok. Deer, wild boar, peacocks, full-grown tigers. Ok, well the tigers that were running around weren't full grown. The little cubs were given run of the place but ma and pa were chained down. Easily one of the coolest experiences of my life, sitting with and *playing* with 300-lb tigers is something to last the ages. The whole time I had a female with her head in my lap, purring (well, it sounded more like distant thunder), I was thinking that all it would take is a bad case of gas for this little mama to work up enough energy to separate me from my entrails. I am happy to report that I got out with both intestines intact and also some FABULOUS pictures of the event.

The following day, I headed north to Ayuthaya, a place famous for the encircling canal and temples. But, having already been oversaturated with temples, there wasn't much to keep me there for more than two evenings other than the evening tour itself. The next stop was Sukhotai, outside the daytripper zone and therefore far more ambitious in its vision. The new city itself wasn't much to write home about, though there are a few cool bungalow-style guesthouses along the canal; the one I stayed in was set around a fabulous garden and had a first rate home-run restaurant. The Old city, 7km outside of town was really fabulous. Aside from being backed by some lovely hills, there seemed to be no end to the temples both big and small, of all styles, to explore on foot and by bike. Actually, being able to tour the whole place by bike (about 20km) is what made the whole day worthwhile...though I nearly passed out from dehydration a half dozen times. I had a great time in Sukhotai.

Last stop, Chang Mai. Great place...AWESOME place. Five times as much fun as Bangkok and 1/10th the pollution. While you might think twice about renting a scooter in crazy Bangkok, it is a truly great way to see Chang Mai and the surrounding area. The downtown core, surrounded on all sides by canals is fun to explore on foot or by scooter. The shopping, especially for crafts, is outstanding in terms of quality, selection and price; the night market alone is the size of a small town. The food selection is excellent and the city is by and large pretty clean, with lots of cheap,very comfortable accommodation. On top of that, Chang Mai is the hub for a plethora of 2 to 5 day jungle treks into the west and north country where the hill tribes dot the landscape. I spent the first three days exploring the city, mostly by scooter, and reading/people watching. The most fascinating experience, by far, was one that happened completely by accident. I was coming home from having taken a number of pictures of the city and,hearing a good deal of commotion in the grounds of one large temple, poked my head inside the gate to discover the fabulous sport of Takraw. Its hard to explain other than it takes place on a court the size of a badminton court, with a net of about the same height. Three players to a side, and played with a plastic or woven bamboo ball. The action is crazy, and best described as what you might expect to see if you took a group of hacky-sack crazy kungfu masters playing volleyball with no hands. It's one thing,and an impressive thing at that, to block and kick a ball back and forth over the net. It's an entirely different thing to watch a guy spike the ball by doing a back-flip handstand kick. BLEW...MY...MIND. CRAZY CRAZY SHIT. And, to think the tournament announcer repeated everything in English just for moi...the honoured and humbled guest.

My last major endeavor in Chang Mai was a trek out to the jungle to visit some hill tribes. It started out as a three-day'er, but I quickly discovered that hiking 6 hours a day exposed to 40C heat is not a lot of fun. So, after arriving at the first village with 14 other young Euro travellers, I discovered to reduce my commitment to two days (all the fun, a whole lot less uphill walking). The village was amazing, practically falling down the steep hillside, and full of *interesting* experiences. It was the first place I ever got the courage up to eat insects (honey bee larvae, to be exact), the only place I've ever ridden an Elephant or seen one put to work, and the only place I slept under a mosquito net to wake up bite free but with a scorpion hiding in my pants. Yep! I discovered the little bugger when I put on my pants and felt something clinging to the inside leg that wasn't familiar. I pulled the pants off quickly, turned them inside out and noticed the little white critter sitting contentedly there. In the dim morning light, under the mosquito net, it took me a little while to even identify him...that was, till he clicked the ol' pincers. I have experience with scorpions in the dessert...mostly finding them in my shoes...so I didn't freak out. However, my bungalow mates made for the door when they found out!

The last day of the trip was the most fun, by far. We swam in the pool of a small waterfall, though I went in rather "accidentally"...meaning fully clothed when I slipped on a rock. Once in, though, I loved it and between spending time under the waterfall and diving off the short cliff, I could have spent all day there. Fortunately, there was some whitewater rafting and bamboo rafting at the far end of a 3 hour hike to motivate us all. The rafting wasn't QUITE as advertised, however, mostly owing to the lack of water in the river. More than once our knees were smacked by boulders, and we spent a lot of time jumping left to right and front to back to get off of shallow shoals. It was hilarious, though more exhausting then it should have been. The bamboo ride was more relaxing. That is, except for when we got beached, when I had to get off the raft to free it, then was unceremoniously dumped onto my face when I was tripped up by the cross member of the suddenly speedy platform. Well, it was painful but the real pain belonged to the Latina on raft whom suddenly realized her passport and Cambodian visa were not safely stored in the jeep but actually submerged underwater in her pocket. Oops! Well, we were able to at least dry out the pages of her passport...they are remarkably durable, but the visas were toast. That pretty much was the end of the trek. It would have been nice to be out for a couple of more days, but hiking in the dead heat of day in Thailand, with the 95% humidity is not much fun.

And, 5 months later, I nearly have this bloody tale done...(I'm posting now because this draft has been sitting here for ages...I think I'm getting very blog-lazy with so many better things to do).

Gullible's Travels Vol.8 Issue 3: Wat Tha Fok?

2008-03-08T04:19:00.005-06:00

Man, I'm only into like the 4th day of my trip and I'm already over-saturated by visits to temples. Wat Arun, Wat Po, Wat This, Wat That, Wat Tha Fok? Certainly, the first few dozen Buddha's were interesting, but aside from differences in scale, there are really only 4 Buddha "types" that I can perceive; sitting, standing, stepping, and reclining. And, amidst these poses, only three or four types of hand positioning; soothing Mara (the serpent upon which he sits) with one hand up and the other down over his lap, one or both hands up (like a traffic cop) to dispel fear (or alternately, calm), and both hands up in the lap (meditating). Actually, I heard somewhere that there is a Hindu rule book that says you can't vary too far from these basic designs; top marks for spreading the faith, but I'm giving Buddhism 2's all around for artistic impression. The Wats (temples) themselves are a little repetitive as well. Some of the more recent designs from the 16th to 19th centuries are more creative, borrowing heavily from Chinese art and colour and, to a much lesser extent, plaster and wood methods from the European baroque period. But, go pre-16th century and it doesn't seem to matter whether it is from the kingdoms of Ayuttaya, Sukohai or what else...aside from differences in what they call the spires ("prang" for Ayutthayan or "Chebi" for Sukhotaian), it all pretty much looks the same to me. Lots of poor quality brick, headless Buddhas (in collections somewhere, I'm sure) and lotus forms. In the absence of any real English labeling or brochures of any kind, I'm fairly hard-pressed to discern one from the other except where I can easily tell an early temple as being more Hindu than Thai (elephant figures are a pretty good hint). Anyway, it doesn't much matter as I'm fairly ruin'd and templed out already; my experience here reminds me of my time in Egypt where after the first 10 days I'd seen all of the pyramids and hyroglyphic-inscribed temples I cared to. Like Egypt, though, I'm hoping for a good outdoor experience once I get a little further north, and then when I'm combing the beaches and bays in the south. Looking forward to mix up my experience, so to speak. That said, I have about 500 pictures of Buddha, so one will make it to the wall of whatever house I buy this year.

My second-last day in Bangkok was spent visiting first the big old Teak mansion of Vaminmek, at Dusic Palace in the north of the city (built by a Thai king with a love affair of 19th century Europe) and the "new Bangkok" of Siam. Siam was interesting mostly for its ability to showcase the contrasts of the new Thailand, which has one eye on its history and one eye on ultra-modernization. Only here can you take a Tuk-Tuk more appropriate for transportation in the 1940's, to get to the most upscale mall I've ever seen (Siam Paragon). Or, watch a recently-released Hollywood flick in an uber-elegant full-digital projection cinema...but not before standing to pay homage to the king before the movie.

Outside the mall and just around the corner is the strangely oasis-like former home of US expat-turned-Silk magnate-turned missing person Jim Thompson. This surprise gem of architecture represents what can happen when a truly inspired mind decides to meld traditional thai stilt houses with Western experience and conveniences. The guy took 5 or 6 of these old derelict Thai homes and brought them together to create what is essentially a large house on stilts with long corridors, big common rooms and unbelievably charming bedrooms...all done in teak and all surrounded by a garden that is more of a micro-jungle. Really, a beautiful place to visit and made that much more remarkable by the fact that it exists within a much larger concrete, steel and glass jungle that fails to encroach on its charm. Speaking of which, I don't think I've visited a city anywhere else in the world with such little thought put into urban planning. There is a huge disparity between riverside neighborhoods (poor, with ramshackle stilt homes) and the more dense and permanent neighborhoods further from the water; and, it seems as though the roadways are set up to keep them separate. Looking at a city map, and then again from on high near the Golden Mount, the city is a labyrinth of short, crooked, dead-end side streets. Getting from one area to the other pretty much requires staying on the few main boulevards until you reach the two or three block area of interest.

Anyway, I had a lot of fun this particular day of the trip with the sole exception of the last hour of the evening. I'd actually spent a good deal of it wandering around with a fellow Torontonian (El Salvador immigrant), whom was pretty decent company overall...until she started drinking late into the evening. And the more she had, the more she wanted to have...to the point that within three hours she'd consumed nearly 3 litres of 6.5% beer (the big beers here are 700mL each). I know I had a pretty serious buzz, but she was way gone before it was midnight and it became a big problem. She went from being this really nice, sweet woman (nearly 40 I think?) to tonguing everyone within reach, to being an outright obnoxious and offensive embarrassment. She drove away the Koreans whom we had been drinking with, when they tried to get her off the booze, then got us kicked out of the restaurant with a rant when I tried the same thing. Sadly, she decided to go her own way after that on the arms of two guys whom she'd met five minutes earlier and could hardly believe their good luck. I'm pretty sure that ended in a threesome with a couple of questionable minutes and a whole hell of a lot of regrets (maybe the excessive drink might serve one decent purpose, at least). Being the (generally) good guy that I am, I actually tried to intervene, thinking she had no idea what she was getting into in her state of mind, but she'd have nothing of it. Ultimately, you can't help someone who doesn't want help; and, as the one asshole put it, "Hey man, its Bangkok". Indeed it is. If she didn't wake up with her dignity, I at least hope she woke up with possession of her wallet and passport.

My last day in Bangkok, I missed my pre-arranged Tour because of a brain fart in setting my alarm, and instead took a river boat north to a place called Koh-Kret; interesting from the point of view that it contains the whole of the local Mon population (great at pottery) whom live on the edge of the Island in the midst of the river. Ok place to take a bike, but there is absolutely no way to hide from the sun and the roaming packs of dogs were pretty aggressive and discouraged getting off the bike for long.

Next up: the River Kwai, my time in the company of Tigers (really close company) and the over-touristed Floating Market.

Gullibles Travels Vol 8., Issue 2: Buddha wear your sunscreen!

2008-03-01T06:12:00.005-06:00

Yah...bad play on words. But seriously, this place is an oven...well, more like a kiln...and a richly overfueled one at that. I find myself looking forward to the "cool" mornings when the scorching midday heat (which leaves me smelling like a worn saddle and tasting my own sweat) eases to a comfortable 27°C. Honest to god, I feel like a Polar Bear that took a wrong turn at Alert and ended up in Cancun. I am way, WAY too well insulated for this kind of climate, and all the high-tech quick drying clothing in the world won't save my fat, sorry ass (though it does dry well overnight in an a/c room). I have discovered that McDonalds may not be great for food, but it sure as hell is great for hanging out to soak up the a/c...just long enough to dry off and stink the place up, of course! I'm not really helping my own situation, though...I really can't keep away from the red-hot Thai spices...its like eating suicide wings when you know damn well your lips will burn off. I swear to God, if you aren't careful with the peppers, your whole plate could go up in flames. But seriously, I don't know how people whom live in a such a desparately hot climate can bring themselves to eat food that verges on thermonuclear. More to that point, I can't understand how the country can have so many people...who would have sex in heat like this? Gross! It would be like having sex back home...but rubbing oneself in bacon fat beforehand...only the bacon fat version would taste better (worth a try?).

I'm also not sure what to make of this Buddha fellow...for such a modest fellow he sure does have his share of golden temples. Catholics take heart; we are not the only ones to waste goldleaf and precious stones on the idolation of our God. Seems like a nice enough fellow, though...I feel a strange connection to him...probably because we're both fat. The only difference being, of course, that people love fat Buddha and people have nightmares about fat Chief. HA HA...oh, so sad but so true. And I can't figure out what the deal is with having to wear long sleeve shirts and pants into the temples, and having to refrain from pointing our toes at the old guy. I was at Wat Pho (Po) yesterday and the reclining Buddha (46 meters in length and about 10 meters high) was practically naked and quite clearly pointing his 3 meter feet at me. HOW RUDE! Today's journey to Wat Arun was far more entertaining...first for having met and spent the afternoon with a "very" cute and chatty 26-year old German, and secondly because the grounds were far less crowded being across the river and all. The Grand Palace was a tough place to get into, as it was playing host the past two days to the funeral ceremonies of the old King's sister, whom apparently died recently. Once inside, though, I was speachless..."Grand" doesn't begin to describe the place. It was 260,000 square meters of plaster, tiny tile and inlaid glass. The famous emerald Buddha in the main temple was only a meter or so high and barely discernable amongst the grandiose statuettes and altar that occupied the 5 or 6 meters below and to each side. If I had only one complaint about the decor, it was that each one of those millions of glass shards seemed to be focusing the daylight straight onto my easy-burn whitey skin.

Tomorrow I head to Siam neighborhood to check out some old teak houses and the ultramodern shopping district with its sky train...a day to relax in the a/c in midafternoon before heading on a daytrip to the River Kwai and Tiger-Monk-Walking-Thingy on Monday. Then, its time to make my way north to Sukhotai and Chang Mai...the arrangements for which have suddenly become much more convenient with the purchase of a cheap GSM phone which I can use on any of my trips worldwide via a SIM card swap. No more searching for change to use in the mostly-inoperable public phones, and at 1 Bhat (about 0.03 cents) per minute, you won't go broke on the long-distance plan.

Cheerio!

Gullible's Travels: Vol.8, Issue 1: Bangkok, Oriental City

2008-02-29T06:13:00.007-06:00

First off, let me say that Murray Head is full of sh*t! Bangkok may, in fact, be an oriental city but there is no chess to be found anywhere! Maybe it went out with the 80's...ah well.

So this vacation didn't exactly start out with all the auspicious signs of a great vacation. I decided to travel the week I left Honda, which is to say, only a few days before I bought my flight. I then realized I was not FULLY up to par with my shots and had not one, but two, Hep B boosters in the span of three days...needless to say, my immunization record is looking a little hit and miss these days and the clinical doctor made sure I knew it. I also had to pay full $$ for the Malarone (anti-malaria pills) that I should have bought while I still had my drug plan...bloody things cost me $8 a pill and I only have 11 (not sure why the clinic proscribed so few...need to try win a few from another 'packer in a game of poker this week, or buy 'em outright). And finally, having ...*ahem* "outgrown" my other cargo pants, I had to make a last-minute purchase of some funky lightweight Tilly pants. So last-minute, in fact, that I didn't have time to get them hemmed and had to rely on Masha's skills with a needle to get me through the first couple of days. Yep, I am well-prepared for this one...

So first off, why Thailand? I decided on Thailand because it was warm and few places this time of year, with interesting culture, are. Truthfully, I have never had any particular "craving" to visit Southeast Asia, being neither a fan of the architecture or culture, but I felt the need for something different than arabesque and european culture. I might have enticed to make the journey earlier, but Thailand has a rep in backpacking circles as being overdone and being given the "Lonely Planet" treatment. That is, to say, it became too well liked by backpackers, whom then wrote for Lonely Planet, which then attracted the attention of tour groups. Its days as a backpacker Mecca was years ago in the mid to late 90's before I started traveling. But, seeing as I didn't have the shots for Laos, nor the necessary Visa for Vietnam, Thailand it is...and a short stay in Cambodia.

The night before I left I was up packing both my bags and my apartment, which needs to be emptied out the day after I get home; the sad result of that reality is that I had barely hit the sack (4:30am) and it was back up at 5:30am for the trip to the airport. As luck would have it, Toronto (and Detroit) was due for a big snowstorm. I thought for sure I'd be stuck in Detroit over night...I always get stuck in Detroit overnight...but fortune smiled upon me and I not only got out of Toronto in the thick of the snow, but also made my connection in Detroit(though narrowly). From here, I thought for sure it was a milk run...straight to Narita airport in Tokyo and a quick changeover for the final 6 hours to Bangkok. Enter Murphy's Law...whatever can go wrong, will, and when you least expect it. I was supposed to catch the 6:30pm to Bangkok and get in just after midnight (still time to sleep) but our brand new Airbus A330 had an engine oil pressure problem (Mike, does Pratt make that POS?) and after 90 minutes of sitting on the Tarmac, we were deplaned. We eventually made it out at 9:45, but that meant hitting the ground at 3:30 am...and by the time I got past customs and into the city (30km away), it was nearly 5am and I'd had about 6 hours sleep over the prior 40 hours. At this point, I would like to thank Northwest Airlines for the $25 voucher they handed out...that made up about 1/3 of my first night's nearly-wasted accommodation charge. Actually, it could have been worse...there was another Canuck I met on the plane who'd lost his reservation because of the late arrival and I was able to rent out the other double bed in my room for the first night. Brad was rather entertaining, actually, bein' just a lad and all and on his first trip away from the Motherland. He made a bunch of newbie mistakes in his first 6 hours on the ground, from letting the customs agent nearly walk off with his passport to trying to speak in colloquial English to the Thai taxi driver whom had enough on his mind just trying to unravel my mangled pronounciation of the Thai address of my guesthouse. Coming from the farm outside of London, Brad had, predictably, packed nothing but jeans to wear, which begged the comment "Dude, first off, you're going to sweat your BALLS off. Secondly, you KNOW that it'll take weeks for that crap to dry, right?". He then proceeded to open the not-so-complimentary complimentary rice whisky, which promptly cost him his first 100 Baht. 'Atta boy, Brad. Well, suppose I made a few SNAFUs on my first outing as well...these aren't called "Gullible's Travels" for nuthin'. :D

Anyway, beyond sleeping the morning away, I didn't accomplish much of anything at all the first day. I did manage to rouse myself long enough to wander around Banglamphu, track down a street-side seamstress and drop off the zip-off legs of my trousers for hemming. Nice, wizened old lady...well, that is until she rather rudely gestured to my groin (while sitting) and cackled something incomprehensible. Then gestured again....and again, until I finally felt self-conscious enough to inspect the area and find my zipper wide open. GREAT. I did a full frontal to a Thai senior at 11am in the morning of my first day in Thailand...a full 6 hours on the ground is all it took to sacrifice my dignity. A new record for me, to be sure.

I did wander down at night to the infamous Khao San road (a shameles collection of trinket hawkers, restaurants and bars catering to the farang [westerner] crowd) for an hour, and stuff my gullet with pork and noodles. Yep, that's right "pork and noodles"...for all of those dozens of times I ate Thai in Toronto, it never occurred to me to actually learn the names of what I was eating (why, when the English ingredients are so much easier?)...kinda would of come in handy here... I was a little surprised to find that gobbling "street meat" is kind of the normal thing in Bangkok, as opposed to eating in sitdown restaurants...doesn't anyone in Thailand eat at home? Ironically, I tend to trust the street vendors a little more than the restauranteurs. At least I can see what's going on with the food preparation this way, and make sure it's served piping hot; what's good enough for the throngs of locals is always good enough for me (traveler's dining rule #1), though I politely decline the glass of "fresh ice water" that is offered straight from the pail (traveler's dining rule #2). I am half-inclined to try the swill, though...I have this fancy new UV sterilizing pen light that is all the rage!

Anyway, before I end post #1, I'd like to say that my first experience sitting in a Tuk-Tuk (motorcycle-powered open-air carriage), in the midst of Bangkok traffic, was a real "experience". As multiple streams of oncoming traffic parted around us, narrowly missing our cart-o'-death on several occasions, I was reminded of that scene from Empire Strike's Back when Han Solo pilots the Millenium Falcon through dozens of oncoming Tie-fighters without a single collision. I was then reminded of Seth McFarlane's "Blue Harvest" episode of Family Guy when, somewhat appropriately, it was commented "I wonder why they call them Thai-fighters" (click here to view)...and understanding dawns. Obviously Mr. Lucas had a similar experience in his younger years.

New Chapter in the Life o' Greg

2008-02-11T23:59:00.001-06:00

Well, I went and finally did it. I quit my job. I decided that I'd had enough...enough of letting my skills languish and my ambition be thwarted at every turn while I waited for something resembling opportunity to be provided to me. And, I'd had enough of 70-80 hour weeks and working like a slave, endlessly, for virtually no reward. So, I'm off to pursue a new career...finally taking the dive into the Family Biz...crossing my fingers that I'll have something resembling a social life and an urban environment reasonably close to Toronto in terms of quality of life. God help me if I'm stuck in that small town for more than a few months. Anyway, I celebrated my newfound unemployment with a 10km ski through some trails and back country in the Halton Hills area with Masha on Sunday...twas a wee bit cold to say the least, but it was an awesome workout. Followed that up with a potluck with a half dozen of my friends in Mississauga; the farewell tour is under way, you might say. I went to Ottawa last weekend to see a few people, and took a few pictures of Liam, Wayne and Sheri's 1-year old. Cute kid...sharp chompers!!! Now, all that is left to do is somehow get all my crap home, whether it be driving (3800km) or shipping it, and to decide on a location for the 4 or 5 weeks I'll have for vacation before starting the new job April 1. More to come on the job later...

Back in Black

2008-01-30T17:46:00.001-06:00

Yo Yo MOFOs! I am BACK! Though, the absence of outcry over the lack of new material makes me wonder if I was truly missed! Anyway, blogging is a little like going to the gym. You really DO have to keep it up, at least once a week, or the next thing you know you've missed three or four posts and its two months out of shape. In my case, my last post goes back to September, but with work being an absolute clusterf**k between Oct 1 and Dec 31, there simply wasn't time or energy to get it done. I was coming home between 9:30pm and 3am every friggin' day and about all the energy I could muster was to stuff some really questionable organic material into my maw. January has been pretty good, which came as a surprise, but I've had a bunch of other stuff on my mind ...my future and all...and given the choice of being proactive in getting my blog done or being completely apathetic and blowing 3 hours a night on my XBox 360...well, here we are, right?. Anyway, you haven't missed all that much to date, as I haven't had any interesting stories or trips, nor any time at all to pick up my camera. That latter point is practically unheard of, which really speaks for how busy I've been. That said, Christmas at home was great and I returned from vacation to find out that I've had one of my pictures published in a online travel guide in the section about High Park. (click here)
First time I've been published in over a year, though truth be told I haven't submitted anything for publishing in that time and the folks at Schmap found me...Yea Me! Anyway, I plan to be FAR more active in coming months (probably said that last time, too) as there are big changes a'comin' in the next 30-60 days. My future is getting back on track, and though not EVERYTHING will be a change for the better, on balance I'll be better off overall. Anyway, stay tuned for this weekend's big news...

Black Sunday

2007-09-05T21:07:00.001-05:00

So, it has been ages since my last blog. Not sure why. Busy, I suppose. Too busy to post my pictures from the summer to Flickr and usually that happens before I do my blog so that I can post the link. Well, also because work has been depressing. I usually refrain from any kind of professional commentary on this site, but I have been significantly affected by it. A colleague of mine whom I respected greatly, and whom was both a revered mentor and trusted friend...someone of exceedingly high principles...was summarily fired a week ago. I do presume to lay judgment on certain people for what happened, but not here. Sadly, many a career falls to the knives of the petty schemes of small and spiteful men. The politics of the Executive is something for which I have a certain distaste, but that I will soon need to come to terms with if I am to play at that game. Holding one's nose while partaking of the flesh, so to speak. Oh well, if anything it provided me with the reassurance that I'm doing the right thing to pursue my education and a different career. What is ultimately depressing is that I gave 120% for 4 years...so many evenings lost to work that would have been better spent with friends, at the gym, with my camera...all in an effort to establish a long-term career and prove my ambition and worth...but that was ultimately wasted. The pointlessness of it all is so crushing. Life, it seems, loves nothing more than to crush one's dreams. Well, I'm going to enjoy coming home at 5 every night, assignments be-damned, to play my guitar, work out, and work on my photos. Hell, maybe even a date or two...(yah, right!!!).

Glenneypalooza 2007

2007-07-07T20:20:00.000-05:00

Dunnville. A town so small they had to beat the cartographer to get him to put it on the map. But, also, the home of Glenneypalooza, the semi-bi-annualish gathering of geeks of the Aerospace variety (and associate geeks). Where the most exciting thing to happen all weekend is the rocket-building contest, and where that particular event happens to interrupt nothing other than eating and drinking.
All in all, a perfect way for Gear Heads to spend the Canada Day long weekend. Well, 'nuff said. The pictures are here, and the video of the rocket launches is below.

A wedding, some camping and Doors of the Open Kind

2007-06-24T11:44:00.000-05:00

Hey Kids,
I'm Back! Back to the Blog, at least...I really didn't go anywhere. Which in itself sucks because I live to travel and I'm not planning any for this summer/Fall (cry). No travel plans is owing to the fact that I was originally supposed to be starting my MBA in the Fall. However, my employer gave me an offer to stick around that I couldn't simply ignore and, seeing as I'd really like to finish my MBA with as little debt as possible and also finish my Pro Photography diploma in advance of that, it makes too much sense to not make the most of the situation by saving up some more $$$ and get a year of "management" experience under the belt. So, it looks like I'll be deferring enrollment for a year, which I'm allowed to do under school policy, and saving coin between now and then. I am not happy about the possibility of not traveling for 2-3 years or more...my backpacking trips is what gets me through the year and I'm positively loathe to give up that up.

Anyway, I'm late with this blog because May was a crazy month. First off was the fact that I had a fair amount of work to do in order to prepare wedding proofs for my first "official" client. If interested, you can find them HERE. At the same time, Masha and I went camping on the week of the 10th of May to Point Pelee National Park, this little spit of land (literally) at the southern-most point in Canada. Spring comes early to Pelee (about a weeks before Toronto), as it is roughly the same latitude as Northern California, so there was lots of greenery and sunny, warm weather to enjoy in early Spring. Also, May is the month of the bird migration, which meant not only did we have a ton of wildlife to observe, but also that Yours Truly wasn't the only geek in the area with 2kg of optical glass strung around his neck. The pictures from the trip, which included a really nice ferry over to Pelee Island (sitting a bench down from David Suzuki of all people), are HERE.

Next up was the Toronto Doors Open weekend, the one time a year when the city's architectural gems both old and new are opened up for tours by the general public. For me, its always a prime example to get into places with my camera where I'd normally be stopped by security. The pictures from that weekend, which included a tour of the National Ballet School and the newly minted Opera House, are HERE.

Anyway, that pretty much does it for the time being. I have another shoot coming up next week after coming back from my friend Kevin's campout, and then its summer festival time! I very much recommend the Beaches Jazz Festival if you're in the area. Until next time (it won't be as long before the next entry, promise!)

SK8R BOI(s)

2007-05-07T20:10:00.000-05:00

Nope,I'm not an Avril Lavigne fan. I just happened to stop by a skate park yesterday afternoon and, having packed my camera for a racing event in Shannonville that I never made it to, decided to grab a few frames of the locals doing their thing.

Oddly, it was mostly a group of ...well, I wouldn't say "geriatric" skaters, but certainly they were not universally young. A good number, in fact, were in their mid to late 40's and the best of the bunch was probably one of the oldest. I was surprised and impressed in equal measure. The pictures from the day are posted here.

Oh, how sad is my life!

2007-05-03T22:07:00.000-05:00

I had always SUSPECTED that my life might be a little on the sad side, at least socially. Then came today, when the senior VP at my employer calls me up (at 7:30pm), clearly expecting my voice mail, and starts out with "you REALLY need to get a life". The fact that this came from a notorious work-a-holic means that I really DO need to get a life. *sigh* Here's to gettin' some at school. Stupid me, I should be taking pharmacy (95% female), not an MBA (75% male). *sigh*

GO Photography is officially launched, and my first paid wedding

2007-04-26T22:39:00.000-05:00

Well, I'd always imagined a greater ...oh, I don't know..."fanfare" with the launch of my photography company, but I'm ultimately a man of practicality (and a huge package!) and discussions with an accountant friend convinced me that sooner was better than later. Sooner than the April 30th tax deadline in fact. After many weeks of hand-wringing over the name of my new sole-proprietorship (having once been incorporated as an engineering consultant) I was both elated and somewhat disappointed that the decision was made somewhat easier by virtue of Canada's taxation laws. Seems as though I have somewhat unlimited rights to use my name or initials for the purposes of establishing a small business (Within certain revenue limitations). So, though its hardly catchy or memorable, the lack of need to register the name (Free is always good, particularly as I'd have to register it again in Nova Scotia in 4-months time)makes it very convenient to just settle on "GO Photography" for the time being. And so, today I officially announce to my friends the launch of GO Photography as a commercial entity. Unfortunately, you've all missed the launch party by 1 year and 115 days, as from an accounting standpoint, it officially launched January 1st, 2006. Yep, its time I got some back of that RETARDED amount of money I spent on studio gear and photography capital for specifically that reason, and the time is NOW as I need the cash for school and I'll be doing this part time while in school to help pay for it. Also, as I just had my first commercial shoot on the weekend, I'm now generating revenue and having to claim the income and associated expenses on next years' return.

Which brings me to the other issue of note, my first commercial shoot last Saturday! Granted, I have shot two weddings prior for family and friends whom either didn't have the money for a photographer (I was already MC), had a wedding day change of heart (I also Best Man), or just plain had a photographer that wasn't up to the task (ok, I might be taking liberties there). It was both better than and worse than I expected, despite all of my preparations and the fact that I had a photographer's assistant at my disposal. Kudos to my long-time friend and ex Masha for doing such an admirable job with only two hours' training. But really, it was both a proverbial zoo and an awesome learning experience. A zoo because it is really, really difficult to try and manage a picture involving cameras, flashes, and reflectors while at the same time dumping memory cards, swapping batteries and trying to keep track of a 12-person wedding party that, while cooperative, was somewhat distracted throughout the whole process. Contact lens irritation, runny noses, somewhat-inebriated groomsmen, a couple of kids and, of all things, a public protest in the park nearby led by a mega-phone wielding Marijuana fanatic who kept calling up to us for some reason. And, on the other side, there was also the "learning" part of the experience. What I learned was that handling the people is 70% of the challenge, and that challenge is best accomplished via good communication with the minister and delegation of wedding party management to the MC or maid of honour (the best man recruited to carry gear, of course!). I also learned the value of KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) in the art of wedding photography. Case in point, though a man can have an artistic vision of the wedding and a 10-page sketch book of poses to go by, ultimately I'm merely a photographer at the behest of a bride and groom that would rather have shots of them getting down to "Rasputin" than posing for shots that are perhaps more suited to a bridal magazine. That is, there is something to be said for just giving up on the artistic vision with a multi-flash setup when running from shot to shot, just putting the camera on "Auto ISO" and "Aperture Priority" and throwing the flash onto the hotshoe in fully auto mode.When there isn't a lot of time between shots, one simply cannot treat it like a studio shoot. Ultimately, some shots came out far better than I expected and a few a little worse; strangely, two of the best came in the last 10 minutes before the reception in a stroke of inspiration. Once I get through them and have a chance to review with Bride and Groom, I'll post a few here and the rest to my Flickr site for everyone to see. Anyway, it all happened about as well as could be expected for a first time out, and I know I'm a bigger critic of my own skill than will by my client, but I'll know how I'll do a few things differently next time. Next up, a studio shoot with a belly dancer and a portrait session with an industry friend. Ciao!

Grade A1 Super Heavy Duty Industrial 4' Ladder

2007-04-16T23:00:00.000-05:00

So today I had one of those moments I'll never forget. Those kind of moments typically fall into one of two categories, 1) victories that are assured to become the stuff of legend 5 years down the road or 2) brutal and pitiful humiliations that haunt you for the rest of your life. I had one of the latter this afternoon.

So, I'm running all over town looking to pick up a few odds and ends for the wedding that I'm shooting this weekend, mostly tissue to clean up the bride, a ton of batteries for the flash and ... a ladder. Yep, a ladder. For nothing is so handy for getting those unique perspectives (i.e not straight on) like a ladder. That is, unless you happen to have a liquid hydrogen fueled jet-pack; but I do not have such a jet-pack.

Right, the ladder. OK, so I'm wandering Aisle 3 of Home Depot browsing the "ladder offerings" if you will, and deciding if I should go for a two foot version or the three foot, in classy brushed aluminum finish or irradiated banana yellow. My eyes spot a smart little four footer and, hefting its ultra light two kilo weight, I'm sold. But wait, what's THIS? "Grade 3: 200 lb load capacity"? But I'm...um...OK, that isn't going to work cause unless my camera has an "antigravity mode" feature buried in the menu somewhere, I'm SOL. OK, move on down the line...oh, here we are, "Grade 2: 225 lb load capacity". Uhhhh...YAH...no good. I guess its straight up to the "Grade 1" version, much to my embarrassment. But NO! "Grade 1: 250 lb capacity". WTF?!?!?!?!?! How is it possible that there are not industrial ladders engineered to bear my weight? Well, as it turns out, there is something even stronger than the Grade 1 ladder and that puppy goes by the very-presumptuous title of "Grade 1A: Super Heavy Duty Industrial". And, it only comes in irradiated banana yellow. I'm sure its a bragging point on a construction site, but it's hardly inconspicuous in a reception hall. In fact, there isn't even a grey aluminum option which makes me think that its specifically designed to say "HOLY CRAP LOOK AT THE LARDA*S!" Surprisingly it IS possible to feel embarrassment at having one's ladder-purchasing options limited in such a manner. Much like one may feel marginalized shopping in the "Extra sizes" section of a clothing store, so might the same individual feel marginalized shopping in the fatties-only section of Home Depot.

So, today's moment of abject humiliation debuts at number 2 on the "Chief's Chart of All-Time Humiliations", right up there behind the little ditty that has held down the number one spot for 624 straight weeks. FLASHBACK, MAY 1995, MIDLAND: A damaged youth of 21 years is sitting at a computer putting the finishing touches on the first engineering report of his year-long internship at IRDI. He's just put the title and author information using this, the first graphical version of Microsoft Word and, hitting the F7 (Spell Check)key is dumbfounded when the first thing that comes up is "Overwater not found in dictionary. Replace with 'Overweight?'". Enraged at this petulant piece of productivity software, he grabs the 30kg 22" screen with both hands and...nearly has a hernia. Luckily, I chose to be a bigger man that day. Ironically, being a "bigger man" is why I find myself in the afore-mentioned predicament. It will be a while before numero uno falls, I think. :D

C'mon Sunshine!!!

2007-04-15T23:38:00.000-05:00

Well, another dreary weekend comes to a close. Man, I'd give my left ...scratch that thought. Nothing is worth the jewels...but I'm wishing for the sunshine nonetheless.
At least I got out for a walk with Masha in High Park. The buds are starting to appear on the trees, but it was pretty much a sea of "blah".
One week to Erin's wedding, and I'm still running around getting little items here and there for the eventualities that could ruin my photos. Too much crying (tissues), rain (umbrellas) and lack of balconies (small step ladder). Stuff that will all come in handy over the years to come, but leaves me running around for days on end. Oh, and of course, the emergency search for a 4GB flash card. My camera eats up 2GB cards in mere minutes (44 RAW+JPG). Poor Masha will be flashing my portable hard drive every two minutes. Anyway, I'm looking forward to my first officially paid event under "GO Photography". Dumb name, yes, but I'm free to use it without registering it and given that I'm leaving Ontario in 4 months, it makes sense. Anyway, I'm a little nervous but thankfully Erin is about as far from the stereotype of the uptight bride as you can get so there isn't much pressure other than that which I put on myself. I think I have another shoot coming up in 3-4 weeks as well. I went down to Myth on the Danforth to watch the belly dancer that I am supposed to shoot in May. A guy couldn't ask for a more talented and beautiful subject, so if I can get a decent setting for the shoot and set up my strobes artfully, it should turn out really fantastic. And then I've been asked by an industry friend do some family portraits which I'll have to find a free day on a weekend to accomplish. Go figure, just as I'm getting ready to go back to school, the jobs start to come in :P.

Confessions of a Caffeine Junkie

2007-04-06T23:34:00.000-05:00

Two years ago, if someone had suggested that in 6-10 months time I'd be an unabashed fan of espresso-derived beverages, I'd have dumped my Fruit-integration Fruitopia on their head. As a self-professed Crusader against the debilitating reliance of the average man on that perpetual symbol of Brownian Motion, I never EVER would have thought I'd utter those five loathsome words "I AM A CAFFEINE JUNKIE". Worse yet, I never would have imagined saying it with such shameless glee! But, here I am. And worse yet, not only am addicted to coffee, but to the most expensive kind...STARBUCKS! (OK, and Second Cup, but definately NOT Timothy's...though Bridgehead is probably the best overall if you can find it...). I mean, it started off innocently enough...a few cups of Timmy's and an occasional sip of that 230°C plasma-like substance that McDonalds delivers with a complimentary skin graft. But, it wasn't long before I graduated to the hard-core junk and lost myself, on an almost daily basis, to the seductive Sirens of Isle de Espresso. Anyway, what began as an occasional band-aid for an endless string of 14-hour work days last Spring quickly developed into a $60/month latte habit. In retrospect, its funny how the more money you make, the less you pay attention to it.

Anyway, now that I'm headed to school (still working on financing assumptions here, but for the sake of argument...), I've had to completely re-adjust my lifestyle. I've gone from eating out twice a day, seven days a week to (over the past two weeks) twice a week. Yep, its been an interesting experience reacquainting myself with the various cooking implements that decorate my cupboards, but it hasn't been all pain. In two weeks, I've dropped 7 lbs and probably saved myself $200 in food. Granted, the hardest part has been migrating back from Starbucks to Timmies then halving my coffee intake, but it makes more sense to cut $50/mo from my coffee habit than cut my $16/mo cable service. I'm a little worried what the brain damage from withdrawal will be with such a cold-turkey solution, but I think I got a hint of it today. While everyone else was on Good Friday vacation and enjoying the start to the long weekend, I spent 12 hours at work trying desperately to get caught up. The mental cost to that little exercise is not yet fully realized, but in the span of 20 minutes, I attempted to use my garage transponder to swipe out of work, my work transponder to get into my garage, and ...sadly...my Mazda's keyless remote to get into my apartment. *sigh* In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have been driving. Good times! :P

Bak to Skool

2007-03-29T23:01:00.000-05:00

So I discovered last week that I made it into Dalhousie's MBA program after all, much to my great relief. Of course, I'm always asked "why Dal?", when there are so many good schools close to Toronto. First, it is no secret that I'm a huge fan of Halifax and consider it the most picturesque city in Canada. Not to mention the amazing people, great sailing and the endless supply of photographic material within walking distance. Oh right, and it happens to be home to the highest student per capita population in Canada...perhaps my best remaining chance to find the wife! haha. Secondly, the cost of the school and of living in Halifax, will end up being about half of what a similar program in Toronto or London would cost. Third, it was also partly a strategic decision to maximize my chances of starting a program this Fall. I first applied in the Spring of 2002, post 9-11 and post dot-com bust, when there was no worse time in all of recorded history to apply for an MBA; ultimately, despite a 93rd percentile score of 700 on the GMAT, I didn't get in and this made me reconsider my strategy. Over the next five years I debated the shrinking merits of a degree program that gets more expensive with each passing year, but offers less return on investment to the student whom now has to shoulder the whole cost. Gone are the days that MBAs led to executive corner offices, and gone are the days that companies paid for them. Ultimately, however, the MBA has become such a business commodity that its not only a matter of wanting to do the degree, but needing to do it if one wants to ever get into an entry-level business-development position and stay relevant. So, with my GMATs expiring this year and my value continuing to climb, I'm at the perfect juncture in my career to get it done. Any longer and it would not make financial sense to go back because the payback time becomes ridiculous (I already make more as an engineer than the average MBA grad so it ain't the money driving me!). And finally, I have been feeling the need for a big change in my life for the past year or so. I have come to accept that there are certain inalterable realities in my life. The first, is that I seem to be incapable of a relationship with a woman that lasts longer than 4 months (try before you buy?). The second, is that I'm 100% incapable of being satisfied with a job/company for more than 3 years at a time. I attribute this particular quirk to an inability to find a company that offers as much opportunity as my ambition and skill are willing to take on. That is, to say that I've yet to find a company (either than the family's) that encourages star talent to run with the ball and is willing to forgo seniority for ability. Stagnation SUCKS and stagnation comes all too easy to a guy that knowingly fills every minute of his day with more tasks than he can accomplish. Life is too short to stand idly by and lament what could have been. Unfortunate for me, this kind of philosophy leads to a persistent feeling of discontent with all things related to life. Its such a challenge to keep things fun and interesting when you stay in one place!!! But,I can't afford to travel every day of my life so I have to think of some kind of long-term solution soon.
Anyway, it appears that I'm off to Halifax in August if I can get the funding arranged. Two years is an intolerable amount of time to put off buying a much desired new digital SLR(groan) and to put aside both my annual exotic travels and my daily photography activities...not to mention I'll be living as a penniless student again (BIG groan)...but perhaps its time to hit the RESET button on my consumer lifestyle. Big changes require big sacrifices, I guess. The hardest will be giving up my backpacking travel...my dreams of another big trip are also on hold, at least temporarily...well, probably until I'm 40 given how much this is going to cost...grrrr! I WANT IT ALL!!! Man, the cyborg kids of the future are going to be so lucky when they can simply download their education to their brains in a matter of seconds, and get on with the business of enjoying life to its fullest. Wasn't that a bad Keannu Reeves movie? Hmph, I guess I'd have to be way more specific than that, eh? Oh well, enough blathering for today! Time to start hunting for student grants!

Depressing news

2007-03-14T22:00:00.000-05:00

So I read an article today that listed Japan as the country with the lowest average occurrence rate of sex...at a mere 45 times a year. This is, apparently, quite distressingly low, and far behind the global average of a 105 times per year. Man, I'd kill for nookie 45 times in a year...that's nearly 4 times a month! oooooh, life as a single guy sucks...especially when you're 32 and the best years are slipping away!!!:P

Welcome to Warkworth

2007-03-13T00:09:00.000-05:00

So, what DOES one do on a weekend to avoid obsessing over whether or not one is getting into business school? You go to Warkworth, that's what! You heard me...Warkworth...as in Ontario and as in the Warkworth Maple Syrup Festival. Its been a helluva long time since I did something shamelessly and stereotypically Canadian and what is more quintessential Canuck that a freakin' festival about freakin' maple syrup? So Masha and I packed the car and made the 90-minute trip to Warkworth, a tiny town of 700 people up in the bush north of Cobourg. Yes, despite what you may have heard, there is civilization north of highway 401. I don't think I've ever been to a town in Ontario that was smaller than that town I came from in Alberta, but Warkworth qualifies as one such town. Though, I have to admit, for a community that has a population smaller than the workforce of the company I work for, there was a surprising number of artisans in the mix. Of the 15 or so downtown businesses, there probably were 7 or 8 stores dedicated to the sale of antiques and/or handicrafts. And I mean, we're not just talking embroidery and quilting (though there WAS plenty of that in evidence); I mean a cool beeswax candle store, a blown-glass gallery and two small galleries featuring local painters and sculpters. This is a big step cultural step up over my home town, where the only sculptures you'd find were made from cow turds (though they too could be an effective medium for the odd farmer with a creative soul). Anyway, it was just a short ride out to the sugar bush (though maple syrup is not the first thing I think of when I hear the words "sugar bush"). Here they had maple syrup brewing the traditional way and the new-fangled way, spun maple syrup cotton-candy, and sold maple syrup at a full dollar cheaper than in-town. Booyah!!! I took a few minutes out to get a swig of the good stuff behind the woodshed before surfing the square dancing mosh pit. Two bucks got us into an antique show at the local primary school and the Town Hall played host to a local craft show. I friggin' hate it when people make soap that looks and smells like fudge...and that's all I'll say about that. All in all, not a bad spot to go...'specially when there is a kick-ass fair-trade coffee shop nearby. Go Warkworth!
Anyway, there are far worse ways to spend a Sunday than to drive out into the middle of nowhere and find a cult-like following for a form of liquid sugar that spawned the most sought-after donut icing the world has ever seen. I gotta find more of these little festival thingies.

Selling on eBay and a review of the Logitech Harmony 880 Universal Remote

2007-02-21T21:23:00.000-06:00

For years I've been a fan of eBay, and have probably spent on the order of $5k in gear, mostly computer, music and photo related. This weekend, I post my first "sale" and I really only hope to get enough to cover the postage and a few extra bucks...more than anything, I need the volume it occupies in my tiny apartment for oxygen. Here is the ad as it is going to be posted...not bad for a first crack and 30 minutes of work...

In other news, a few weeks ago I splurged in typical Chief fashion on what may be the coolest toy I have ever owned...the Logitech® Harmony 880 Universal Remote. To borrow a quote from the movie CLICK it may be the closest one can get to "a Universal Remote that remotely controls your universe".
To put things in perspective, my home theatre setup consists of a Panasonic TV, Harmon Kardon AVR220 receiver, Joytech component video switching unit, PS2, Gamecube, Xbox, Sony VCR and Panasonic DVD/SACD player. And to switch from watching TV to listening to radio to watching a DVD requires only a single push of the "Activities" button. And, if you are like me and happen to lack a digital terminal, you can forget having to ever remember which channel is which by simply programing up to 12 channels into the remote and using the "media" selector button to choose the channel by icon (A little time in photoshop can make it look REALLY slick). So how good is this remote? Well, I don't even own a PS2 remote, which is needed to control the DVD functions on the console, and now I never need to. And if I want to go from listening to the radio to blowing an afternoon on PS2, a single button push turns on the TV (and switches to Vid1 mode), switches the receiver to optical input, moves the digital selector unit to "PS2", and sets the surround mode to digital surround. Hit it again, and everything powers down and leaves me with naught but analog FM bliss. And, with 100% of the functionality web-programmable, every operation for every "activity" can be customized. All you need is the make and model information of each device (Logitech's database is updated regularly), and a little patience to optimize the process. Once the programming is done, you need never worry about what TV mode or what audio channel needs to be set for watching this DVD or listening to that CD. Should fate conspire against you, however, and leave your DVD player on while turning off your TV, a simple press of the "help" button brings up a dialog which steps you through the setup with questions like "is your TV on now?"; simple "yes" and "no" answers will set it straight in no time. This may be one of the coolest devices of all time and it might, just might, just be the ticket to bringing your parents into the modern digital age. $330 ($149 on Dell.ca - occasionally).

Winter has arrived with a vengeance...

2007-02-05T20:13:00.000-06:00

Well, it has been a LONG time since my last entry. Not much exciting has happened since then, as I've been spending many a late night at work and trying to get the hardcover photo book of my Morocco trip put together. I've since discovered that I need an editor since my first attempt was a small book that had some inconsistent font issues. I then bought a larger version with much thicker paper, only to find out the first 6 pages were not printed (after I paid duties on it). The company was happy to reprint the book again at no charge (except duties AGAIN)...but somewhere along the line the fonts on some pages reset to the default (GRRR!!!). As I sit here, I'm actually contemplating having it printed ONE MORE TIME ($100/copy) because I have this burning desire to make it perfect as part of my legacy but even the Perfect Consumer really is challenged to pay that kind of coin again.
And finally, this past Saturday marked my first venture into the world of snowshoeing. My friend Masha and I took up cross country skiing last winter and though we enjoy it greatly, we had some desire to do a little back country trekking. So, this weekend, we wandered out into the woods of the Tiffen Conservation Park using nothing more than the sun to keep direction. Generally, it was a hoot though there were a few hiccups along the way. Turns out half the woods is part swamp and there were a moments when I wondered if I was suddenly going to be knee-deep in water. Then there was that classic moment, immortalized below, as I tried to cross a large log and ended up falling off the back of it. At least Masha got a good laugh out of it.:)

National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation 2

2007-01-04T20:30:00.000-06:00

NOTICE: My pics from Morocco have been posted to my www.flickr.com/goverwater/photos website [click here]

Christmas was anything but "normal" this year. The run up to the vacation was hectic beyond belief, with 14 hour days at work for almost the entirety of December. I was, to say the least, looking very forward to the week-long vacation at home in Alberta. The next morning, it took me so long to pack my bags and gift box that, with the rain-slogged traffic on the 401, I nearly didn't make my flight. When we left the tarmac, I could finally start to feel the stress melt away for the first time in weeks. Little did I suspect that I'd be landing without my luggage, and therefore without my clothes, ski gear or gifts for either Christmas or Austin's birthday. I was not surprised that my baggage didn't make the flight, given my late arrival at the airport, but I was downright livid when, 10 flights later, it still hadn't shown up and Air Canada had no way of knowing WHERE it was. I figured that was what the bar codes on the luggage tags were for, but Air Canada told me that no airline but United scanned bar codes in and out of flights. This blew my mind, particularly given this age of global travel and post 9-11 security. How could you NOT keep track of cargo? I was even more incredulous when, standing AT the baggage counter with a perplexed agent telling me that "no, Mr. Overwater, it hasn't arrived yet...please give it a little more time" I received a cell phone call from mom telling me that Air Canada was going to be dropping my bag off at the house in a few minutes. WHAAAAA!?!?!?!? My GOD, the sheer incompetence is staggering. So, I received my baggage at 2:30am in the morning on Christmas Eve, exactly 5.5 hours before we opened gifts. On my return to Toronto, while I waited an outrageous 90 minutes in Terminal 1 to get my bag, my suspicions about the dumb-dumbs was confirmed when, over the loudspeaker, I heard "travelers of flight ### from Edmonton please check carousel #2 for additional luggage...another container of luggage was DISCOVERED a few minutes ago". OH ....MY......GOD! And these people own and operate AIRCRAFT!!! Well, aside from that monstrous debacle, Christmas was really good. I had a good amount of time with the niece and nephew for a change, and they got along really well with my friend Masha whom joined us for the holiday. Actually, it was like playing with 3 kids as Masha tried tobaggoning for the first time and got an hour-long lesson in road hockey from Dad and I. Masha and I also made it out to Banff for a day of tiring skiing at powder-laden Sunshine Village in Banff. We spent the night at a hostel, which is hardly unusual for me...except that we couldn't sleep because of a couple of loud early-20's lovebirds in the bunk below her. Again, not that sex in the hostel is anything NEW...though being PART of the action is far better than having to put up with others doing it...but the sound of the two kissing was just odd. I think Masha put it best when she said it sounded like pigs eating from the trough...slurping and knocking teeth and all. I'm just glad the guy on the bunk below me was out like a light...I didn't have to put up with the ...er..."tactile" aspect of the session. :) Anyway, the second day in Banff was brilliant...snow and frost on every building and tree, covering the mountain slopes. I got a few good pictures such as shown (click here for additional pics of the Christmas Vacation). Speaking of pictures, if you are traveling downtown via Richmond anytime soon, keep an eye out for a church billboard reading "prepare to meet thy God". I tell you, I saw that out of the corner of my eye and just about swerved off the road as my eyes searched wildly for the sniper on the rooftop.

Self Importance and Getting Hosed

2006-12-12T21:46:00.000-06:00

Wow, I am really getting a sense of self-importance now. Well, I've always had what some might refer to as an "inflated ego" or a "blinding arrogance"...but now it is somewhat justified. I really can't talk about cause my employer might have me "taken care of", but I swam with even bigger fish this week and it was a really interesting experience. Perhaps tellingly, I felt completely comfortable in that environment and I have no problem, self-confidence wise, with operating at the highest echelon. Being the face of your company to powerful people is a bit of a power-rush I'll admit...and I want MORE!!!!

Perhaps the highlight of this week, though, was the arrival of my long-overdue and assumed-lost hand-crafted tile table from Fes. It showed up in one piece, which is a relief, and I am going to enjoy it immensely...although looking at it here, I can't help but wonder if I overpaid for it at $400 Cdn. It seemed like such a deal in Morocco and it's beautiful, but I am half inclined to check what I could get it for on eBay! haha...oh well. I'm looking forward to Christmas, finally. I was totally bummed out for the first couple of weeks this month and just couldn't get into the spirit of it. The commercialism of Christmas seems to bother me more and more each year, and for the first time ever (an extension of something I felt in Morocco), I find myself just a little lonely. The first condition was easy to deal with...I just needed to spend a little cashola to get into the shameless spirit of things. Takes a bigger "hit" to get me in the groove, you might say. :) The other condition, however is more difficult to address. Fortunately its only a fleeting thing every once in a while, but obviously my mind is telling me its time to grow up and grow beyond myself. Unfortunately, I'm an old dog and learning to be UNSELFISH is a daunting challenge! Maybe I just need a certain someone to be exiled from a certain country...have desperation push her into my waiting arms. OH BOY...I AM CIRCLING THE DRAIN...

Rubbing elbows with the powers that be

2006-11-24T12:59:00.000-06:00

Well, Wednesday was certainly cool in its own way. It marked the first time that I've actually walked the "Halls of Power" so to speak. A good portion of my business is conducted in the nation's capital, since I'm the liaison between the government bureaucracy and my company, but this is the first time I have ventured beyond the bureaucrats themselves and into the Parliament buildings themselves to meet with MPs and party policy researchers as a representative of my industry. Unfortunately, I can't go into more detail because the business was confidential, but I must say it was a unique experience. I hadn't operated on the totally political level before and, it was a fun and vastly educational experience. It was a little scary, on one hand, to know that the people who are helping formulate policy that could make or break your industry often really have no clue about the science that they are referencing in only the most peripheral sense, but at the same time you can't be a master of everything and you can only hope their policy advisors aren't pie-in-the-sky never-been-in-industry academics. God, the government seems to be buying those wholesale these days...PhD academics with less time in industry than a kid with a $6/hr McJob...all idealists and no pragmatists...not good at all!

In other news, I'm fighting a pretty brutal virus that I picked up a week or so ago. I've never been sick for more than 36 hours since before I was 18, and this virus is kicking my ass! Not sure what it is...blood test results aren't due for another day or two...but many of the symptoms are similar to Mono and that has me a little worried because I can't afford to be out of commission for weeks on end with so much business travel in December! GRRRRR! I guess I'll just have to wait it out and go for a ninth round comeback.

Gullible's Travels, Vol MCXIV: Tale of an Old, Naked Woman

2006-11-15T21:44:00.000-06:00

Right. So I realize that I'm about three weeks late with this, my last Gullible's Travels post for 2006. Yet, somehow I think I needed that time to reflect on my trip as a whole and get over some of the trauma of the last few days.

After my intimate hammam experience in Ouazarzate, our group traveled the 5 hours back to Marakech, where I was suddenly overcome by the urban chaos of the traffic in the city. Approaching a main intersection, I was stunned to see cars, mopeds and minibuses all weaving through each other in an amazing display of defensive driving that in Canada would certainly have lead to the deaths of at least 6 people. I wasn't much for going out that afternoon, so I took a dip in the hotel pool...a rare luxury in this OH SO DRY country, and chilled in the room to Ghostbusters II (all these years later, I'm still really disappointed in the ending). The next day I was on my own again and spent the better part of the afternoon doing the rest of my souvenir shopping; I'm not a huge fan of shopping, all in all, but is pretty much the national sport of Maroc and I do love the opportunity to haggle. The following day I headed out early to Essaouira, a seaside town a couple of hours west. Now here is a place that I really came to enjoy. The beach is long, shallow and very breezy, which makes for a great windsurfing scene, and the sunset view from the city walls is worth the trip alone. The fish market is absolute chaos in the afternoon when the boats come in with the day's haul, so much so that my $400 tripod was stolen from me when I turned my back for a few seconds to snap a picture. To me, stealing a tripod is kind of like stealing a "blinky"...you know, those blinking road hazard signs...sure, you CAN steal one, but why would you? Well, I was NOT happy with that, but what can you do? On the bright side, it meant I had more room for souvenirs, but I was not looking forward to the cost in of replacing it. Anyway, a couple of days chilling out on the coast was a relaxing and refreshing change to the endless dust and desert of the interior.

My next stop was, for me, the most interesting. Fes is an outstanding example of what happens when cross-eyed architects are given carte-blanche to set up a colony. The city is the oldest walled medieval city still standing in the world, and with Unesco syphoning money into the area and European expats buying up all the old houses to establish fabulously luxurious Riyadh, it looks to be well-preserved for future generations. The market is not as lively as in Marrakesh, but the quality of the goods is very good, particularly the tile for which the city is famous throughout this part of the world. I bought a really nice table (yet to arrive!!!) from the ceramics cooperative and thoroughly enjoyed the visit to the tannery where a number of men stood upon the lips of huge vats of colorful dye, dipping goat hide in a month-long process of permanently coloring the leather. The smell is enough to knock you out, though, so it pays to have some mint handy. From here we visited a couple of old houses being restored to Riyadh, and dropped into a small weaver's shop where the women absolutely would NOT let me leave without buying something...but sometimes it actually can be fun to be sold. Unfortunately, this is when the joy ended for me because when I came back to the Riyadh for an afternoon snooze, I was unlucky enough to walk in to the courtyard and see something that I will never forget (no matter how much electric-shock therapy I undergo). The matron of the place, you see, is a kindly old local lady of substantial...er..."girth". And while this lady's own quarters are on the ground floor, usually sealed shut, it was my particular misfortune to spy the woman sitting on the edge of her 4-post bed....naked...old, gross, and wrinkly naked!!!! Now, maybe she was changing clothes and thought she had the place all to herself, but I was so traumatized by that initial glance that I really wasn't in a state of mind to give it much consideration. I must have absolutely NO credit with the Karma bank. Obviously, God has a cruel sense of humour; not half an hour earlier I had been thinking how I'd manage to get with a girl naked on this trip...but I suppose I should have been more...um..."specific"...in my musings. There may be males out there that get off on that kind of thing...like Jabba the Hutt, for example...but seeing boobs resting on a woman's knees is not really "attractive" in my honest assessment. Looking back on it, I really should have packed a good supply of Suppressitol for the trip. But I mean, C'MON! Who has that happen to them? WHO? WHO?!?!?!?!

Well, that pretty much wrapped up my Fes experience, so it was off for a final day in on the coast in Asilah, just a half hour south of the port of Tangier, where I was to catch my return ferry to Spain. There isn't a whole lot to do there, but it is far more pleasant than Tangier to stay. While I usually don't make deals on accomodation with locals hanging out at the bus stops and train stations, I did this time for the sake of expediency. I ended up staying in the ground floor of a house with little more than a light bulb and a bed. I figured I'd paid too much for that, even, until dinner when the matron of the house served up my first fish tajine, which was one of the most fantastic meals of my trip. I spent the evening having tea at a local shop where I picked out a couple of lamps made of wrought-iron frames and dyed goat skin. I was a little unhappy with the selection of lamps here, but I'd come to realize that Maroc is a nation of artisan communities and when you find something you like, buy it without hesitation because you may not find its like elsewhere, at least in quality. Still, its nice enough, but not as lovely as some of the ones that Essaouira is famous for.
My last two days were generally spent in transit. The first night was spent in Marbella on the Costa Del Sol, strolling the long beach-side boardwalk; it is a place I have been before and more tourist-friendly than Malaga (though perhaps overly so, now). The second night was spent in Milan, Italy, because I had 10 or so hours until my connecting flight to Toronto. I didn't have a chance to do much in Milan other than tour around Staccione Centrale, the city's main train station, but I was impressed with the eclectic mix of old-world and ultra-modern architecture. And the people...man, can a guy feel underdressed here! I knew it was the fashion capital of the world, but I had no idea that the whole of the population had an obsession with it. Definately a place I wouldn't mind coming back to...probably could get just about anyone off the street to do an impromptu fashion shoot worthy of a magazine!
Anyway, that pretty much sums up my trip. It was fun, all in all, though not quite what I expected. I had come expecting to find some monuments to civilizations long gone, but Moroccans aren't ones for architectural permanence. The food did manage to live up to its reputation, though I was surprised to see that the offerings as a whole were rather narrow in scope. Between Tajine, Pastilla, Kebap and a few varieties of pastries and soups, that pretty much sums up the extent of variety. The difference lay in the quality of the ingredients; the fresh fruit, the pungent spices, and the tender meat. Ultimately, Morocco is all about the people and the seemingly endless dichotomies that exist within their culture. It is a society of conservative Islamic citizens that tolerates prostitution. Having casual romantic relationships are still frowned upon in all but the urban population centers, and most marriages are still arranged despite having the highest average divorce rate in the world. Fields are still plowed by mule, even as the mule driver talks endlessly into a cellphone that is still months away from hitting the North American market (3 megapixel camera phones???!!!). And, perhaps, most strinkingly, there exists a glut of people whom are content to survive on as little as $100/month, while daughters of doctors and Engineers study in Europe and vacation at one of two or three homes that they own by the time that they're 22. Never in my life have I ever had such a hard time putting my finger on the pulse of a nation and its people...but maybe it is this challenge that makes Moroccan culture is so interesting. I would recommend Morocco to anyone willing to spend 50-$70 a night on very comfortable accommodation and whom wants to have a good time eating, shopping and trekking through the lovely Atlas mountains (do it in Spring!!) and camping out in the sand dunes of the western Sahara. Just don't do it during Ramadan!

Until next year...

Gullible's Travels: Camel Love and Squatter's Rights

2006-10-21T15:16:00.000-05:00

Yeah, so like after the second disappointing sunrise in the desert (hazy, grey), I'm kind of losing the will to get up before the insects...which, I must say have disappointed me because I haven't spotted a single Scorpion so far and have had to settle for a few oversized dung beetles. So anyway, back on the bus and off to Merzouga via Rissani. Rissani is noteable only for its "local" souq, which is little more than a huge open air market for everything Moroccans need for their daily lives. Unfortunately there isn't much in the way of waste disposal encouraged, so you are constantly stepping in rotted fruit, animal byproducts and black plastic bags (they only come in one colour here for some reason). I was able to avoid the few hustlers that we encountered by staying a few paces behind the english women whom were practically giving away their money. I snapped a few great shots of the locals coming and going and proved out an earlier theory that people only figure you to be taking a picture when you have the camera to your eye. Shooting from the hip, its harder to get a reliable composition, but I had no trouble shooting unfettered by the odd local whom equates photographs with soul stealing. Totally rubbish...though if I'm ultimately proven wrong then I'm at 224 souls and counting!

Merzouga is a fair sized town just on the edge of the Erg Chebbi, the sand sea that is the western most extension of the Sahara. Seeing the dunes from a distance, rising high above the town, was really impressive, but what I found the coolest about the Erg Chebbi was the fact that aside from the sand sea itself, there were huge random piles of sand randomly distributed on the plain of cracked mud . I couldn't help but feel as if I were walking in the sandbox made for a god-child whom had carelessly spilled a little here and there from his huge sand pail. Unlike in a mud and clay desert, trying to make headway on foot across a dune is seriously hard work and I learned early that souvenir hustlers exist even in the endless expanse of the desert (like seriously...what the hell?). I didn't make it 500m and I was the proud owner of a fossil tray that I'll probably not be able to get back into Canada. Our accomodation was very cool, however, as we each had our own desert tent to stay in. The things are much better than synthetic tents in the desert heat as the loose weave of the canvas allows air to pass through but blocks the sand and most (though not all) rain. I slept on the carpets outside of my tent the first night while some others dragged their sleeping mats into the surrounding dunes. Having slept in the desert before, I preferred to be within arms reach of my shelter from the morning flies, which are even worse here than in Tazzarine. By the time the sun is fully up at 7:30 am, the buzzing from the thousands of flies is unreal. The constant pestering from the insects is the primary reason that the desert folk always wear full-length Jalaba robes; for those of us in shorts, the experience was distinctly unpleasant. They disappear by nightfall, but are replaced by a hundred different species of moth, creepy crawler and these very strange, somewhat large white grasshoppers. Although they tend to mind their own business, one of the latter jumped into the soup of one of the ladies and the night's dinner of vegetarian tajine was vegetarian in only the broadest sense within a couple of minutes of being served. Our second day in Erg Chebbi was quite interesting, as I walked to a nearby village to check out rural Berber life and then met up with the group to take in a Gnawa music performance, which was the first truly "musical" experience of the trip and drew heavily from its southern African roots in rhythm. Enroute to the village, I was reminded of the dangers of being caught out in the desert sun at midday as the single kilometer's trek across the mud and sand dunes exhausted my legs and an entire litre of water. There is nothing quite like being alone in the desert during the hottest part of the day to remind you of the fragile nature of life and, in particular, one's own mortality. A subsequent trip to the peak of the area's highest dune later demonstrated the value of camels on such trips, stubborn and awkward as they may be.

By and large, aside from a little surprise diahrea here and there, I had largely been unaffected by the very robust and alien stomach bugs in Morocco. Well, the following morning was my turn to become ill and the timing couldn't be less fortuitous as we had an 8-hour cross-mountain trek back to Ouazzazate. Between 4am and 9:30 am, I went to the bathroom exactly 13 times. Somehow, between the lunch break and the sunset stop at a shop in the Valley of Roses, I was able to make it to our hotel without a single road-side stop. Maybe it was the 4 Imodium I took enroute to plug up the drain, or the Gravol which I had taken to settle my stomach but practically knocked me out for the entire trip. Nevertheless, by the time we reached the hotel, I was at 21 trips to the Loo and counting. Given that most of the toilets in the High Atlas are of the Turkish squatter type, this made for a pretty serious leg workout. I crashed pretty early that night, with a serious fever and the chills, but woke the following morning feeling like a million bucks. For some reason, I never feel sick for more than 24 hours...its been like that ever since that dangerously powerful drug, Accutaine, which I had taken for acne way back in University...me and my crazy immune system. Well, I was happy to get through it so quickly because I was eager to take in a hammam in Ouazzazate. Ever since my first experience with a bath in Turkey, I've used every trip to Turkey, Hungary and elsewhere to enjoy the hammam experience. For those of you that haven't tried an authentic spa experience, it involves a bunch of sweating, a mildly-painful exfoliating scrub and massage by a somewhat sadistic attendant armed with coarse-grit sandpaper (or so it feels). This was the first time I'd had a guy put me through some stretching exercises and as he straddled me and bent me backwards like a bow, I couldn't help but think that he'd learned his technique from watching too much TV wrestling. Interestingly, the call for submission in Arabic sounds coincidentally similar to the submission call in English ("UNCLE! UNCLE!" will pretty much do it). Oh yeah, having a strange man bath you and reach down your pants without managing to touch the jewels is quite the experience and not worth missing! Sadly, as fabulous as my skin felt when I left, a lot of my tan had been scrubbed away as well. Little did I know that this would be the most intimate I'd get with anyone on this trip...

Gullible's Travels: One Tajine Too Many

2006-10-18T12:04:00.000-05:00

After nearly being bankrupted in Casa, I took the 5 hour train to Morocco's hottest destination, Marrakech. For the first time since arriving, I see more than a handful of tourists getting off the crowded train in Ville Novelle (what they call every new part of town). This is where I meet up with my group for a 10-day excursion through the central region Morocco where most of the interesting sights are (Sahara, High Atlas Mtns, Berber Villages, etc) and where travel is a bit of a challenge. I noticed shortly after arriving that I didn't pay close enough attention to the details of the excursion, which marketed itself as a tour for "solo travelers". To me, I thought this meant like a bunch of backpacker types traveling alone; in fact, it was a bunch of middle-aged Brits looking for a good time out and perhaps a little romance. So, unless I was totally going to throw away my pride and make some lady's post-menopausal wet dream, I concluded that I was not going to get any this trip *groan*.

The first day, in Marrakech was spent checking out one of the city's gardens, followed up with a guided trip through the souq (market) with a stop at an apothecary where I bought a bunch of spices and essential oils, including Rose Oil and Saffron, both of which are retardedly expensive in Canada. I plan to purchase a lot of goodwill from friends and family with that horde! Our second day was a long van ride up into the High Atlas mountains through the Tizi 'n Tichka Pass. The mountains are nothing like you'd find in Europe or North America, at least in the High Atlas region. Most of the faces are barren of any life outside of a very few trees and some very small dried-out brush. I probably should have come in Spring when things are reportedly much more lush following the rain, and when the Rivers and flood plains actually show evidence of water and wild flowers are blooming. Right now, the surrounds are very arid, with little to experience other than heat and dust. Some of the river gorges are pretty impressive and its hard to imagine that water comes rushing down out of the mountains 20 to 30 meters deep; but, having encountered more than one bridge completely washed out, there is no doubting the truth of it. Our first stop in the mountains was the Berber village of Telouet, which has an interesting half-ruined Kasbah (castle) and is THE place where serious trekkers head off into the mountains for a week or so with guide and mule. There was a very nice, large carpet shop there as well, run by a very funny Berber by the name of Ali. After having passed up multiple opportunities to by a fine carpet in both Syria and Turkey, I couldn't pass up on a similar opportunity to buy one this time. I let the Brits serve as the low-hanging fruit, so that I could establish a baseline price for my purchase and make sure I was dealing with a tired-out merchant, then set to haggling like crazy with him. In the end, I paid about 30% of the asking price for my carpet, which was far and away the best deal of the group and not something he was terribly pleased with. But, you know when he lets you walk away, paces the room, then comes saying "Canadian, you are robbing me blind! You are not being reasonable! Why do you not like Abdullah?", you probably got a pretty good deal. Its a rare kind of carpet too, dyed in Oak and richly embroidered...over thirty years old I understand, so we have something in common. :) Unfortunately, the one downside from this experience is that I became the go-to guy everytime somebody wanted to buy something...and that happened A LOT because Morocco isn't anything if it isn't a shopping Mecca (not the pun...Mecca...Islam....whatever!). At some point, it was just easier to give the Chief's Notes short seminar on "How to Avoid Getting Raped During Negotiations". The five principle rules of which are 1) think of negotiation as more of a game, and less as confrontation (merchants EXPECT you to bargain and respect you when you do), 2)Establish a baseline price by observing other people buying similar articles 3)never, ever, fall in love with something in the store or you have ZERO leverage, 4) know all the product's faults (scuff marks, missing fasteners, patches, discolouration, when you give your first price and use those to whittle down the price, and 5) always walk away at least once. If you've been too much of a hardass, you can always go back...but chances are he'll come running after.

Next destination was Ouarzazate, which isn't much of a town for anything, but somehow garnered a fairly good tourist industry as a travel hub and because of its movie studios. The set of Ridley Scott's "Kingdom of Heaven" (poorly headlined by Orlando Bloom...damn him for ruining that movie), is still mostly intact a few hundred meters off the highway. The only thing of note here, for me, was the hotel pool, which was a welcome respite from the blazing heat. Oh, and the old man "musician" who played incessantly at the hotel on some home-made guitar-like instrument until we paid him to stop. The next day took us to Riad Du Sud, a Berber Riad (Guest house) built with exquisite detail and care that is a destination until itself. My room was the top floor of the tower, and had a balcony which I slept on and from where I watched the sun rise the following morning. The food was fabulous, and I definately would say that Tajine stewed with prunes is the way to go. Our one excursion out into the surrounding desert (of mud and clay), was a rather painful one, as it involved 4 hours of driving over rough ground sitting on wooden planks in the back of a windowless van that made you feel as though you were traveling inside a vacuum cleaner with all the dust that seemed to get sucked in from just about everywhere. I was literally caked with it when we got to the Palmarie where we had lunch among trees with 2 inch thorns (I have a puncture wound in my thigh as a souvenir). Thank God I brought zip-lock bags for my camera or I'd have had to send them for a very expensive cleaning when I got back). Anyway, that day was a bit of a dud overall except for a trek to a nearby town where I somehow managed to collect a gaggle of tiny children. At first, I wondered if it were simply gravity that attracted them to me, but it seems that they figured me for a giant walking punching bag because they all were eager to try out their kung-fu moves on this strangely soft foreigner. They showed me their one-room school and then made sure I arm wrestled every boy before I was allowed to leave. oh, the joys of being the stranger in a strange town. :)

Alright, I've been totally rambling on, so I'll pick it up from there tomorrow or something...Yellah!

Gullible's Travels: One Night in Casablanca - Part II

2006-10-16T18:11:00.000-05:00

So tonight's entry is going to be a short one...its 11pm, I have a 6am bus to start 9 hours worth of travel tomorrow, and I'm still pissed from having had my very expensive tripod stolen today. Helluva Birthday, no? hehe

Anyhoo, so here I was, feeling nice and cozy in this very cool piano bar, a bottle of red wine pumping through my veins, a room hazy with the pleasant smell of sheesha 'smoke', and in the company of two very nice ladies. Things got more interesting when they came back from the ladies' room all decked out in chic night gear. Dahli in particular looked fabulous, having traded her head scarf and jalaba for a long braid, earrings and a tight-fitting, low-cut blouse that left just enough to the imagination (and I have a hell of an imagination). Man, Optimus Prime was not half the Transformer that this suddenly hot girl was. On top of that, Dahli likes to dance...and by dance, I mean bellydance. The girl was not afraid to move those lovely body parts sitting or standing and I nearly suffered vertigo as a result. Whether she was interested in me, or just testing out the power of her charms on a westerner is debatable, but either way you wouldn't hear me complain. There was enough said in the eye-contact that I was happy to let it be. Anyway, I was about as content as anyone could hope to be on a night out on the town. Music was great, the ambience was fabulous, and I was sharing a Sheesha with a very lovely young lady. Unfortunately, all this fun comes at a price in a place like this. Prior to arriving, dinner had already cost me 300Dh (about $40...a good value)...the wine was an additional 170Dh and I ended up buying some of the fab Maroc mint tea for myself and two Red Bulls for each of the ladies (another 150Dh). At the club, I had another mint tea, the ladies had another three energy drinks each (which goes to prove you can't OD on Red Bull), and we shared a sheesha for a couple of hours. Total for the lounge...800Dh...or about $78. I nearly shite my pants from the sheer scale of the bill...was that Red Bull or liquid gold they were quaffing all night...and then I nearly shite my pants for almost not having enough to cover it. Of the 2000Dh I'd left the bank with today, I had only 50 left in my wallet...barely enough for the cab back to the hotel. That's 1400Dh ($200) spent since dinner...OUCH!...easily the single most expensive night of any of my trips at any time. I actually was not expecting to pay for everything at the club, but I could tell from the manner of the women that they weren't intentionally stiffing me, this was clearly some cultural thing I was unaware of. Too bad it took until the next afternoon to find the relevant passage in Lonely Planet. "you will be expected to pay the way for any woman you befriend". Damn, wish I'd read the small print. Well, its easy to understand why the law prevents a man having more than one wife unless he has the means to support them.

Anyway, it might have been over the top, expense-wise, but the night was about as cool as it gets...easily one of the best that I've had in years.

And thus ends my short adventure in Casablanca. Next on the agenda is my 10-day excursion with Authentic Moroccom which starts the following day in Marrakech and ends up with a journey through the High Atlas and Erg Chebbi Sand Sea.

Gullible's Travels: One Night in Casablanca - Part I

2006-10-15T19:02:00.000-05:00

It has been nearly two weeks since my last entry, through no lack of trying. Simply put, I've been on the move pretty consistently for the past three weeks criss-crossing across Morocco through areas that still don't have internet (and you find it in surprising places) that I haven't had time. Anyway, I believe I left off way back in Tangier with a couple of prostitutes that Juan and I happened to accidentally pick up at the Ramada. Hey, that's not a knock on the Ramada. Every hotel in the area is apparently frequented by the local sex merchants and at least the Ramada had the class (probably the only time "Ramada" and "class" will ever be used by me in the same sentence) to have good looking and charming whores. This is where I made rookie mistake #2. I ought to know well enough by now that I'm not the kind of guy to catch the eye of most girls (and fortunately, even fewer guys), but I'm a blond-haired blue-eyed pale-skinned foreigner in a country of olive-skinned folk and it has happened before. None-the-less, I caught the young lady's eye on my way past the table she was sharing with her friend and me being my friendly self, I invited the two over for a drink with us. Now, the most tragic part of this whole night is that it took 2 hours and 300 Dirhams ($40) worth of drinks to figure out that these two were not with us simply for our social graces. In our defense, we had a bit of a communication breakdown which hampered our ability to determine the nature of their interest. The girls spoke only French, Juan spoke only Spanish and a wee-bit of French and I spoke only English and very spotty Spanish...so something was inevitably lost in the translation. In the end it was the "you want focky-focky?" and the hand on my ...er...lets just say "thigh", that lifted the veil of ignorance (among other things). It was at this time that I thought back to the time in Corinthos, Greece, when I stayed at a hostel that doubled as a brothel. Then, as now, I found myself in the company of many well-intentioned, charming and engaging young women who just happened to have a coincidental interest in being roommates for a night. And now, as then, I was not particularly interested in taking home a gift that keeps on giving. The question then becomes how do you back out of the engagement gracefully...especially after having tickled the girl's back? Well, you don't....it was just plain awkward. But, its just par for the course where I seem to be concerned. :)

Next stop was Rabat, the nation's Capital and by Far the cleanest Arabic city that I have ever visited. I liked the place from the moment I stepped out of the breezy Train station onto Avenue Mohammed V (incidentally, every city has an avenue named for the current King as well as the past King, Hassan II...I guess Hassan I and Mohammeds I through IV were royal duds?). People strolled in the streets at an easy pace, men and women arm in arm in a manner that is not typical of Middle Eastern cities, and with nothing but smiles and greetings for everyone. The city itself was not particularly fascinating from a tourist point of view, but the general lack of tourists was welcome as, like flies to shit, where tourists are found one also finds annoying hustlers. I spent two days in Rabat strolling the streets around the Royal Palace and seeing the few sights the city does have to offer, namely a well-preserved Roman colony and 13th century fortified Arabian necropolis. This is where I made rookie mistake #3. I departed the hotel with a litre of water, which I thought would be sufficient for the afternoon outing. At 3pm, I was down to about 200mL and an hour and a half walk from the nearest open market. I've said it once, and I'll say it again; traveling during Ramadan sucks ass from a personal health point of view. To get water meant walking the 8km around the city walls...coincidentally devoid of any shade in the 34C heat...and down into the valley where the city's only supermarket can be found. By the time I got there, I was exhausted, overheated, delirious and for the first time in my life in serious danger of collapsing from dehydration. I bought 500mL of carbonated cola, 2L of water, 500mL of yogurt and a 0.5L of orange juice and drank just about all of that with 2 bananas and a half pound of almonds and dates under a tree behind the store where I wouldn't be observed shoveling sustenance into my maw. Fortunately, this was enough to restore me to my robust self and sustain me through the rest of the day. Unfortunately, it was a 5 km uphill walk back into the inner city. Ah well, lesson learned...never carry less than 2L with you in a sun-baked city during the month of fasting.
The next day, after a quick foray into Rabat's Andalusian-style Medina (old town) down by the shore, I took a morning train to Casablanca. Emerging from the Train Station, I can't say that I was terribly impressed by what I saw. My hotel was nice enough and just off the shopping district downtown, but a two hour walk around the environs revealed Casa as a grossly polluted, dirty, stinky city the likes of which I haven't seen since Cairo (which at least had the Giza pyramids, however over-rated). Inexplicably, there was polystyrene packing literally everywhere in the streets, as if the city were the garbage dump for all the world's electronics superstores. At 6:30pm, the streets were deserted as the city's denizens retreated indoors to break the Ramadan Fast, the big chunks of packing blowing across the eerily-quite streets like so many synthetic tumbleweeds in a modern twist on the old spaghetti western flick. The place couldn't have been more devoid of life if an H-bomb had detonated in the city center. Needless to say, Casa hardly had the charm I had expected (and given what I'd read, my expectations were pretty low). But, what a difference a day can make; the next day I went down to the Mosque Hassan II, built on prime ocean-front property to commemorate the late King's 60th anniversary ten-odd years ago. Now, I'm always impressed by giant Cathedrals and the like, particularly ones that took 600 years or more to reach their current state. To say that I was that much more impressed by this particular construction is a vast understatement. Take ten thousand of the countries most celebrated artisans, work them 24-7 for six years on a facility that can easily fit St. Peter's Cathedral INSIDE (and has a chic public hammam and Sky-Dome-like 1100-ton retractable Oak and Gold Leaf roof to boot) and you have the third largest Mosque in all of Islam. I guess a few dozen people died during construction, but that wasn't in the tour literature (go figure). Anyway, impressive place to say the least. After the tour, I took a cab up to "Miami Plaga" (Beach Club) for the afternoon. I was sick and tired of the bloody hot weather already and in deep need of a swim and cooldown. There was a McDonald's outside (thank God), which is the one guaranteed source of 24-7 sustenance. Strangely, the place was not only NOT deserted during the afternoon, but it was completely overrun with the children of obviously-privelaged children (only the rich can eat at McDonalds). At first I thought "Is this where the refugees from Ramadan gather for communal support?" (I was later informed that Ramadan excludes young children...um...DUH!). A milkshake and a McArabic later (beats the hell out of the Filet-o-Fish, by the way), I was chilling down at the beach club enjoying the cool ocean breeze and this chill artificial lagoon formed by a breakwater wall on the shoreline. Every time a wave breaks on it, it sends up a huge spray and floods the lowest ledge that extends from the sandy shore to the wall...Neat-O. Of course, the day at the beach gave me something else to ponder, because I've absolutely been confused to hell with Morocco. On one hand you have all these women walking around covered head to toe as one would expect in conservative Muslim countries, and on the other hand you walk onto the beach and find all of the local hotties spotting the skimpiest bikinis you could imagine. Morocco seems to be a little like Turkey in this regard...two extremes in one place...but where I got a good feel for Turkey almost instantly, Maroc continues to confound me on a number of levels. The one thing that is obvious is that the greater the wealth, the greater the degree of social liberties that the citizenry lay claim too. As I would soon learn, the social conservatism escalates rapidly as soon as one moves out of the urban hussle and bustle and into the countryside.
After 4 hours of sun-worshipping (with no sunscreen I might add), I escaped from the beach unscathed by Apollo to walk the Boulevard Corniche in the upscale neighborhood of Ain' Diab. Here is where you'll find the only joggers in all of Morocco (that I could find, at least). Strolling the huge beach, I befriended an expat Moroccan visiting from Orlando that kindly offered to relieve me from my lame efforts at self-portraiture. After photographing the sunset over the shallow beach, I invited Soumia for dinner in exchange for some company and local lore. She took me to a great little restaurant ornately decorated in the traditional style for a buffet-style meal. We hung out here for drinks and some belly dancing while we awaited the arrival of her friend Dahlila (sp?). When Dali arrived, she was dressed quite severely all in black with only a little makeup and her hair covered in a plain black scarf. Unfortunately she only speaks French (and Arabic of course) which made communication kind of difficult at first without Mia's translation. Luckily, somewhere along the way I drank a bottle of "Sahara" Moroccan wine, which somehow made things a little easier (apparently my slurred English is a rough approximation of French). Dali had apparently received very little exposure to western men over the years, so it was not hard to make her blush, linguistic challenges or no. Eventually we meandered over to a local club in search of some sheesha pipes and found ourselves being seated by a tuxedo-clad gentleman onto the very comfortable cushions of a very chic blue-lit lounge rocking filled with the smells of spiced tobacco and the sounds of one of the country's better-known 7-piece little big bands. This is where I made rookie mistake #4, "always" read the guide wherever social customs are concerned or you're in for an expensive night with two Moroccan ladies on your arm at one of the poshest clubs in the most upscale neighborhood in the country's most cosmo city. And that's where I'll leave it for tonight...more to come on this spectacular night tomorrow....

Gullible's Travels Part Trois: The Rookie and the Prostitute

2006-10-03T18:02:00.000-05:00

I must be getting old or something...well, rusty at least. In the past few days I have made some pretty rookie mistakes for a well-seasoned traveler who has spent 13 months of the past 6 years backpacking the world. First I forgot my Imodium at home and (American Express eat your heart out) that is the one thing besides your passport that you never leave home without. Truthfully this is the first time that I have ever needed it, but again that is probably age related or due to my rather soft life in Hogtown. Thirty years from now, I will probably be saying the same thing about Depends. :)

Next, I just naturally assumed that there would be a dozen trains leaving from Malaga for Algeciras, the Spanish port town only few hundred kilometers down the coast, near Gibraltar, from which I was to make the 13km hop across the Straight. Actually there were exactly two and the first had just left and the next was 6 hours later at 2:30 which would get me into Algeciras at 6:00 and Tangier at about 8pm (actually 10pm local as Morocco is 2hrs behind Spain). Seeing as the bus terminal was clear across the city and I am not a lover of Malaga, I took the first train headed in the right general direction in the hope that I would figure out the rest on the way. Ultimately I had to drop anchor in a little shite-town called Bobadilla and wait for another train to come through. It was a queer little place, laid out in a perfect 4 block by 3 block grid, with flawlessly paved roads and every building looking exactly like the next. The only feature of note: a tiny roundabout with a fountain. Very strange for Spain, a country typically notable for its colourful and unique architectural style, chaotic urban planning and twisty little streets.
Eventually I did hitch a ride out on an express train no less (apparently the RENF ticket lady didn't know about that one) and got to Algiciras with time to burn. I me an Argentinian expat along the way and between Juan's halting English and my halting Spanish (and no shortage of wild gesticulations), we agreed to share a double room at the Tangier Ramada...which being right on the beach and pretty swank was no bad deal. Of course, there was that inevitable awkward moment when our porter let us into the room and we found two single beds pushed together. But, as men do, we looked at each other for a single moment(no words were necessary) and quickly proceeded to separate them as far as the room would allow. It was great to have access to a pool, and we took full advantqge of it to cool off...though with the increasing number of Moroccan women gathering on the patios of their surrounding apartments to look down at us and wave, it was a little unnerving.
Later that night, after some tasty bbq chicken down by the port, we went back to the hotel to hang in the piano lounge where we watched some leather-clad Arabic-idol wannabe sing what I gather are local classics without ever appearing to blink or move his lips. Needless to say, very entertaining. Then again, I can barely distinguish arabic music from the call for prayer or a public announcement of an incoming airstrike. Actually, it isn't nearly so bad and I have the illegally copied (but legally purchased) cassettes from Jordan to prove it. Eventually, though, we'd had enough and headed for the more civilized patio. Now, the only reason we were at the hotel the whole night is because high end bars and hotels that cater to tourists (and Moroccans whom take the Quran with a grain of salt) are the only places that one can really drink in public (aside: oddly enough, liquor can also be found in the big supermarkets, which is not the case in our own liberal society). Anyway, this is where we hooked up with the whores...and that is where I will leave it for the time being. It is midnight and time for me to hit the sack if I am going to make to the Hassan II Mosque tomorrow in time for the laser light show! A culture of extremes and contradictions, Moroc is.

Gullible's Travels Part 2: The Best Diet in the World

2006-10-02T17:32:00.000-05:00

Well, this is just a short message to let you all know that I'm OK, although I have lost a bit of the ol' body fluids the past 24 hours. Nope, I'm not sick...its just the result of a huge shift in diet...that is, from cheese burgers and coke to Tajine and Tea. That is, when I can get food at all. You see, when I booked this trip, I had no idea that Ramadan was in October this year so I came completely unprepared for that. First of all, having not traveled during the muslim holy month before, I really was in the dark about what it entailed, and I still am to some degree. For non-muslims, the changes are mostly superficial...half the stores are closed for a good portion of the day and there are even more ...how shall I say..."loud speaker events" than normal (if the call for prayer 5 times a day isn't enough for you). The big change, though is the fact that you literally cannot buy food or drink from anywhere but a market or supermarket between sunrise and sunset. In simpler terms, it just means that every cafe and restaurant is closed during the day hours.So, if you're like me and rise at about 8 am, this means you've missed the early breakfast, and you're either striking out for the Supermarket, or not eating at all. Since arriving here on the 29th from Spain across the Straight of Gibraltar, I have had exactly 3 meals (all in the evening), two loaves of bread, three bananas, a half-litre of yogurt, a handful of locally-grown dates and almonds, and a couple of carefully-washed plums. Incidentally, most of these items were consumed over two meals...one in my hostel room and the other in a dark spot behind the supermarket. Why so sly, you ask? Well, you see there are two challenges regarding food when it comes to Ramadan. The first you already know; the second is actually getting a chance to eat the food that you buy. I have learned very early that it is extremely bad form to eat in front of a mass of people whom are basically starving themselves, and doing so gets you looks like you were devouring someone's newborn baby. So, I have had to seek out quiet little spots to gorge myself. It hasn't been too tough to date because the first three days in Spain and Morocco involved a lot of plane and train travel. No movement = no need to fuel the body. Today, however was my first full day in one place (Rabat, on the coast), and I went for about a 15km walk around town to check out the Royal Palace (from as close as the gun-wielding guards would let me get) and the ruins of Chellah and Sala Colonia (a combination of 2nd century BC Roman ruins and an 8th century muslim necropolis). By the time I left the ruins, I was sweating profusely from the 30C heat and exertion (The sun here is relentless and punishes fools like me whom only bring a litre of water for the day). I hadn't eaten anything but a banana since 9am and I was all but out of water by 4pm, and the 3km hike to the supermarket was very strenuous as I was suffering from minor dehydration (diahrea in the morning and lack of water) and hunger. Well, anyway I obviously didn't bite the dust, but it took a cold bath and a helluva lot of food and water to replenish my body. Tomorrow I will be more careful from the outset. Anyway, I'm being pushed out of the cafe so I'll just say this...consider them words of wisdom...never, ever travel during Ramadan unless you know the location of every souq and supermarket in town, unless you want to be the victim of the Ramadan Diet. I may not be Muslim, but I might as well be for all the unintentional fasting that I've been doing! Signing off...

Gullibles Travels Episode I: A New Hope (for my life...my career....)

2006-09-28T01:22:00.000-05:00

The day has arrived. Not just any day...THE day. Not the day I get married...that will be "the day".... This is the THE day, in reference to the long-awaited start of my highly anticipated vacation...the sun poking through the clouds of recent months. Ok, so maybe its not that bad, but I nearly lost my sanity at work this past four months and in my books, that's a reasonable approximation. By this time tomorrow, I should be....uh...asleep somewhere over the Atlantic, actually, but ultimately closer to my destination than I am right now. I chose Morocco as my primary destination for a number of reasons. Its exotic, its out of the way, and its just a little risky with the current state of the world today. Last year's trip to Czech and Croatia was wildly successful from a social perspective (I spent about half of the time well lubricated), but the cultural experience was found lacking...Europe is just too well-traveled to provide a real "authentic" experience until one gets way outside the tourist circuit and that is difficult to do on a 15 day trip. This year, I'll hopefully get a little more culture, Berber-style, and still manage to meet some interesting locals and travelers. I don't suspect that I'll get "any"...but that won't stop me from flirting with the local girls whenever their husbands and fathers aren't looking. :)
Whenever I go traveling, probably the question that I get most often is why I travel alone. People always assume its because I have too (being single and all). In reality, its the only way that I'll travel for any length of time. In my considerable experience backpacking, I have always found that people traveling as couples or in groups are considerably less open to meeting other new people. Traveling solo forces one to open up, be engaging, and seek new friendships. Another reason is that I do not like to compromise. When you travel alone, you get up when you want, go where you want, and do what you want at any time that you want. When you travel with someone else, compromise is inevitable in just about every decision you make and compromise means that noone is 100% happy with anything 100% of the time. Maybe that's OK if you're on a Contiki Tour, but it sucks Arse when you have taken a multi-month slice out of the pie of life to discover the world on your own terms. Anyway, it wasn't how I started out, because Kevin Glenney was supposed to accompany on me on my first trip before bailing for his job in Minneapolis, but it turned out to be the best thing that could have happened because I became even more independent, self-reliant and adventurous as a result. There is something special and thrilling about heading off to the unknown with only your own resourcefulness and your own wits to rely on. When going solo, the whole IS the sum of the parts, no less and no more. You get all the glory, and eat all of the shame. Its independent living at its purest and I'd have it no other way.

So, about the trip...its real basic. Fly into the Costa del Sol (Spanish Riviera) to a town I've visited before, "Malaga". From there its a couple of hours by train to Algeciras near Gibraltar and a high-speed ferry ride over to Tangier. The next four days will be spent slowly making my way to Marakesh at the base of the Atlas mountains, where I will join up with a group of 8 or 10 other solo adventurers for a 10-day trek through central Morocco. I'm not usually one for group things, but with such a short lead on my planning, it guarantees me a certain amount of sight seeing and socializing while saving me some effort planning. I have a week on either side to do my own thing. Unfortunately, I'm going during Ramadan, so store hours are reduced and guides aren't generally available for Treks into the High Atlas Mtns (being half starved, dehydrated and all), but I'm taking my basic camping gear anyway (no tent, tho), in the hopes of tripping over a bored Christian mountain guide or something. You never know, but I've learned never to go unprepared. Extra gear is a pain to carry, but I've gone much more high tech with my clothes, which are light and quick-drying. I'll carry less clothing and more gear...including my stupidly heavy tripod. No idiot in the world other than a photo nut would attempt such a thing but when you need a tripod, you need a tripod. I somehow managed last year, so I'll manage again this year. Whatever. Anyway, I'm looking forward to a night out on the town in Casa blanca and getting lost in the souqs and medinas of Fes. No beers on my birthday this year unless I can get some under the table, but it shouldn't be a problem finding sheesha cafe's...even if they do tend to be sausage parties at night when the women go indoors. I just hope to somehow avoid the whole hand-holding thing for the three weeks...there is something slightly off with a society that is violently anti-gay yet endorses the holding of hands between men. *shudder* Should be a good time! : )

So stay tuned for future updates...with luck I'll find a computer here or there to share some recent experiences and funny stories (a la the Gullible's Travels of old).

The Blog Nazi

2006-09-24T23:17:00.000-05:00

Alright, alright...so its been a few weeks since my last entry. It certainly isn't for the lack of wanting, that's for sure. Just ever since I decided to take my trip abroad, I've been running around like crazy buying some new gear, finding whats left of my old gear (inevitably I lose something every trip) and trying to get as much of my work done as possible so that I have a job to come back to. As luck would have it, I needed a booster on every vaccination under the sun and that came out to a cool $300...and I still have two Hep-B shots to get on Wednesday (I leave Thursday). So yeah, not a lot of time to spare recently. I'm still wrestling with the thought of taking all my camera gear again this year...the 70-200mm lens and the tripod add 8lbs to my total load....aaaahhhhhh!!!

Well, time for bed. I might not even have made this entry (instead waiting until tomorrow), except that a certain Blog Nazi that shall remain unnamed in this sentence came knocking with a vieled threat to remove my link from her site! The NERVE!!! Ha ha...just kidding, Antonia. Its true, I shouldn't let it go more than a week at a time. Well, as you can see, I've been busy...4 days working in California can be exhausting.

Countdown to Gullible's Next Great Travel Adventure

2006-08-30T23:08:00.000-05:00

OK, so I'm TOTALLY pumped about my impending vacation. I managed to squeeze in 25 straight days of vacation, starting September 28th and ending October 23rd, without so much as raising an eyebrow at work despite the fact that I'm the only person filling a rather critical role. Oh well, I'm dropping off the radar completely this year (leaving an "emergency" email address with my boss last year was a bit of a mistake), and couldn't be happier. I was actually starting to get a little worried that I wouldn't be able to go to Morocco, this years destination of choice, because of lack of affordable flights to nearby airports. Mom and Dad were offering to send me on Airmiles for my birthday gift, but there weren't any flights into either Madrid or Lisbon available and the next closest airports were in Rome or Paris. So, though I have to personally bite the $800 bullet, I was at least able to find a Alitalia flight from Toronto to the seaside town of Malaga, on the Spanish Riviera (Costa del Sol). Malaga itself is nothing special in my assessment, having been there before, but its only a couple of hours bus ride from Algeciras, where I'll be catching a 2-hour fast ferry to the Moroccon port of Tangier. From there, I'll be spending two or three weeks meandering through the medina in Marakesh, carousing the clubs of Casablanca and hiking the High Atlas. If things get boring, I'll head back to Spain for a few days and some Flamenco in Sevilla before flying back via Milan where I'm stuck for 15 hours. Surprisingly I wasn't able to find a single cheap and reputable hostel in Milan, fashion and conference capital that it is, so I decided to treat myself for a single night in a downtown 4-star (for $117...which goes to show what you can accomplish with enough persistence!). Now for all you hopefuls out there, don't go thinking the Chief will find some romance on this trip...I'm not holding out too much hope for this particular destination. Still, I'm hardly the type to kick a fetching Berber girl out of bed for eating hummus! And failing that, if I budget carefully, maybe I'll have just enough left over for a half-decent Italian prostitute on my last night. Just kidding! hahaha.

Well, that's about all for now. I just finished cooking one of Chief's famous Lasagna's for this weekend's cottage party. It is, I admit, shamelessly adapted from Troy's Famous Lasagna (itself copied directly from an old Better Housekeeping cookbook)...but its ridiculously good. Unfortunately, with my tiny kitchen, it took me just about as long to clean the place as it did to make the lasagna. Not sure how it turned out, given that I haven't made one in over two years, but seeing as 1 lb of Ricotta, 1.2lb of Mozza and 0.5lb of Romano found their way into the two pans, it can't be all bad. I just hope everyone fills up on fibre before the weekend...and that there is more than one toilet in the place.

For a hilarious read, check out Antonia's wedding blog ...everything that could go wrong, did...but it was a blast nonetheless. Two of my very best friends married off within a month of each other...crazy! Maybe if I can ever get my head together, I'll take a trip down the aisle myself one day. But having just watched "Before Sunrise" and "Before Sunset" the past few weeks on the advice of a fabulous Turkish girl I lost my heart to over 5 years ago in a manner that makes me wonder if the movies were made ABOUT me...I realize I have a long way to go before I'm ready for the altar.

Quagmire

2006-08-16T23:47:00.000-05:00

Yep, Quagmire. And I don't mean the sociopathic sex addict from Family Guy. I mean Afghanistan, as in our troops in Afghanistan. So I'm reading in the Toronto Star today that Afghanistan has had a bumper Agricultural yield this year, with an annual increase in production of 40% over 2005. The problem? Its all poppies. And poppies are used in making heroine. Given that Afghanistan produces 90% of the world's heroine supply, this represents a global increase in supply of roughly 36%. Now aside from the plunge in the street price, which has GOT to rile the pushers, there are some real problems posed by this narco bumper crop. Foremost among these is the simple fact that nothing grows in Afghanistan half so good as poppies and while its hard to fault destitute farmers for scraping out a living however they can, the funds are being used by the Taliban to fund the insurgency. However, destroy the fields and you starve out a population with no other means to feed themselves...thereby fueling the insurgency. That is what it means to be caught between a rock and a hard place, or as the American Media so like to call it, a quagmire. And our troops are there, cleaning up the mess that is American imperialism in the 21st century. Do we stick it out and fight for the struggling sapling of democracy to the bitter end, or leave the masses to their unenviable fate and bomb the crap out of the Taliban from time to time from orbit? Perhaps I'm being facetious, but that's what it'll all come down to at the end.

On a lighter note, I was thrilled today to find that my photo gallery recieved its 1000th "view". To be fair, the more pictures I post the likelihood for more views. But I think it is also a reflection of the benefit to my upgrade to a pro account yesterday and the reorganization effort I put into it tonight. And the great quality of the pics of course!;)

Well, its time to go to bed. I gave myself a leg workout tonight unlike anything I've subjected myself to in the last five years. I would like to get back into recreational fencing this fall or spring and to do so requires that I lose some weight and get my leg strength way up (fencing is nasty for the knees). Unfortunately, where I used to do hundreds of lunges each and every practice without blinking, a few dozen tonight is likely to leave me hobbling around like a cripple tomorrow. Not looking forward to it.

Always Buy Fish Insurance

2006-08-15T11:43:00.000-05:00

This post has taken a little longer than anticipated because I've been working diligently to finalize my pictures from the Chinese Lantern Festival down at Ontario Place, which I took in last Tuesday. It might have been $25, but its rare to see that kind of thing and if the marketing is to be believed, it is the first and only time the festival has been outside the borders of the People's Republic. I have posted most of my pictures here.
In other news, I ate my first live fish on Saturday. It was Brian's stag (Antonia's fiancee) and there was much drinking and revelry to be had. Unfortunately, I was so tied up in my conversations with a certain charming and buxom Greek bartender that I neglected to pay attention to the rules of the raffle that I had entered. So, you can imagine how my elation at winning a very nice and expensive poker set suddenly turned to revulsion upon learning that winning said raffle implied that one will swallow a certain wriggly minnow. This situation might have been avoided if I had purchased "fish insurance"...but as I said, I had other things on my mind at the time. Now, normally peer pressure washes off of me like waves on a stone, but insert a lot of rye into the equation and a chant of "FISH! FISH! FISH!" and common sense soon takes a side seat to manly pride and bravado. At 31, I'm not yet prepared to be labeled a "wuss" or "pansie", e-coli be damned! And anyway, as cruel as it might seem, I was actually doing the barely-moving fish a bit of a favour in hastening its end after a few days in less-than-perfect living conditions. After all, most carnivores take their first bite while the meal is still on the run, right? My real concern had more to do with the less-than-transparent water in which it was swimming...in hindsight, I probably should have dropped it in Vodka. Cruel or not, one cannot argue that it was certainly disgusting in principal and it will be the first and last time that I ever swallow a live fish.

Zombie

2006-08-11T22:04:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure why I'm even bothering to write an entry today...a beautiful day as far as the weather goes, but more than anything it was the conclusion of a week that from a professional standpoint was a dud. My decision in March to take back my life, which actually didn't start until June, has had mixed results. On the positive side, I've been leaving by 5pm most days, and getting to the gym two or three times a week where I'd only been once in 3 months before. I've also been able to get out and enjoy the summer evenings more often. On the negative side, I get paid for my overtime and so I'm looking at a pretty serious hit to my income. This was anticipated, so its not such a big deal. However, the increase in my stress level while I'm at work has been substantial and was not anticipated; the boat is leaking so fast now that the workload has become completely unmanageable. My original decision to cut back my overtime was driven by a desire to get my life back, something I'd sacrificed the past 18 months in a bid to get the management position that is rightly mine by any measure of ability or merit. But, with no promotion in sight despite assurances that I'd been recommended for one "immediately" (6 months ago!), there appears to be no reason to continue killing myself. So even though I really enjoy the people I work with, and despite the fact that I love the product, my career has very visibly stagnated and I'm simply too exhausted to try and take my performance to a new level without a significant and guaranteed payoff. And that, it appears, is as likely as me winning the 42 million in this weekend's Lottery. It's now just a matter of trying to survive each day and tolerate my condition until the time is right to make a more significant change. And so, I focus on my camera work, try to get out onto a patio every other evening, and just do the things that I like to do. In retrospect, I'm kinda peeved that I gave up my spot in the racing crew because of work in the Spring, when now I have so much more time to be out sailing. GRRR!!! Hopefully the next entry will be more positive. Lots happening in the city this weekend with Taste of the Danforth, the Dragonboat World Championships and a Stag Party, so it looks promising at least. :)

My long overdue first blog

2006-08-08T21:17:00.000-05:00

OK...FINALLY, my first blog entry after two months of wanting to get around to it, but never having the time to do so between a stag, a shotgun wedding, a trip home and a few eventful weekends spent entertaining and running around.

OK, so where to start? How about my best bud's shotgun wedding announcement over the May long weekend? Yep, an event 10 years (exactly) in the making, and less than 60 days in the execution. On one hand, I was honored to be Wayne's best man (though I had threatened him with bodily harm several times over the years if he didn't)...on the other hand, it took him two weeks to tell me and that only gave me two weeks to make the arrangements for a Stag and Doe. Over the next 10 days, between running all over downtown TO looking for a venue, making phonecalls from airports as I traveled back and forth across the country, and successfully enlisting the help of two enterprising friends (the Richards!), I managed to throw something together. The day was spent golfing with a few of the boys while the girls enjoyed a few hours at the spa. Dinner was at the very chic Sultan's Tent and Cafe Moroc on Front St., which featured a private "tent" and excellent bellydancing show . Evening activities included a good number of drinks down in the Distillery.

Fast forward a few weeks to the wedding day itself. I hadn't quite finished "the speech" when I arrived in Ottawa Thursday night, and I was back at it first thing on Friday morning putting the final touches on it. I figured Wayne wouldn't go for the whole tear-jerking emotional approach...nor did I think I could actually pull it off...so I stuck to a lighter approach and went back into the annals of my mind for a few good stories. At about 10am, 3 hours before we are to make our way downtown to the Courtyard (to give us PLENTY of time to get ready), I decided to take my very-recently-pressed and oh-so-carefully-packed suit out to air out. I was not very happy, obviously, when I found it to be rather wrinkled despite my best attempts to the contrary but I figured I could iron them out. That was, until I found out that Wayne and Sheri's ironing board was a tiny one suited more for bachelor apartments than a massive new house. It took me all of 10 minutes to figure out that it was NOT going to work and go all freaky. Fortunately, we were able to track down a dry cleaner in Orleans...but unfortunately, I had to take a conference call from work on my Blackberry at 11am. So, while I chatted with colleagues from LA and Toronto about how absolutely annoying government bureaucrats can be we dropped off my suit, picked up Wayne's tux, picked up the wedding cake and bought batteries for my flashes. My Honda Brethren were more than a little amused at the constantly changing background noises and door bells as we walked from store to store, even as Wayne was berating the guy at Circuit City to shut the hell up as he tried to ask me repeatedly if I "would like a bag". By the time we finished up and the girls got back from their pretty-making process, it was already far past 1pm and we were closing in on 2:30. Kevin and I drove separately into Ottawa from Orleans, picking my suit up on the way...only to get a call as we reached the city that Sheri left something behind...shoes to be exact and "could we go back?". That kind of sucked ass because we were a good 20 minutes from the house and another 30 minute drive back into the city. All the way back, I swore whatever speeding ticket I got was coming straight out of the wedding gift :)...but we lucked out on that count, at least. By the time we got back into the city, parked, and bee-lined it over to the Courtyard with suit bag, camera gear and tripod in tow, there was only 5 minutes to spare. So, instead of a comfortable hotel room, we were forced to throw everything on in the small restaurant bathroom. We were joined shortly after by one of Wayne's buddies ,whom came in looking like he'd just spent 10 minutes in a sauna in his suit; after trying in vain to dry out a drenched dress shirt, he soon gave up and ran over to The Bay to buy a new one. As it turned out, it was nasty hot upstairs in the room and though noone fainted, by the end of the ceremony I was paranoid to take off my jacket for fear of "wet t-shirt contest syndrome". (UGH!) On top of that, I didn't get my first drink until nearly an hour after the ceremony as we rushed around trying to take some pictures so they'd have a decent start on a wedding album! Bear and Deutsch provided some added photography firepower, which was helpful.

OK, I'm starting to experience blog fatigue, so the recounting of my visit with my cousin Brenna from Alberta will be brief. Needless to say, though having company was great and we had an eventful week, hosting someone in my tiny 1-bedroom apartment was not as easy as I thought I had anticipated. On top of that, my poor cousin was not at all prepared for the Toronto scene, having no desire to try the huge variety of cultural food, the clubs, the theatre, or the various galleries, museums and such that the city has to offer. I should have had more realistic expectations, though, given that I grew up on the same diet of roast beef and potatoes, and was less than worldly in those first couple of years. My cuz is a fab girl, but I think the Big Smoke was just a little too far out of her comfort zone for her to enjoy the city thoroughly.

Finally, this past weekend was fabulous. Somehow I managed to take in the Caribana Parade, enjoy a 26km bike ride along the waterfront, smoke my fabulous waterpipe, enjoy some time on a patio, and bike my way from winery to winery in Niagara with my friend, Masha. There is something to be said for physical exercise that is rewarded, at regular intervals, with high-quality alcohol!

Well, that does it for my first post...the future ones will be much shorter and more frequent, I promise! Thanks for stickin' in there.