Please allow me to introduce myself...I'm a man of wealth and taste

He's baaaaaaaaaack

Wed, 09 Mar 2005 00:39:23 GMT

To mark my return to livejournal world (my god, has it been 2 months???)...

Ten things I've done that you haven't

1. Fractured my skull playing baseball and played the next day
2. Watched live as Matt Cooke tied up a playoff game with less than five seconds left....twice. (okay, Jas has done this too)
3. Drank myself silly in Franz Kafka's childhood home
4. Birdied #14 at Furry Creek (made famous by Happy Gilmore)
5. Eaten five lobsters in a single sitting
6. Participated in a sweatlodge ceremony
7. Given two graduating addresses
8. Spent a night on the streets of Florence, trying not to get raped and murdered (not necessarily in that order)
9. Been to every city over 50,000 people in Canada
10. Danced with the devil in the pale moonlight

My role model is three years younger than me

Thu, 13 Jan 2005 01:27:14 GMT

When I was 17, I went to Saskatoon for the National Debating Championships. Why? Because I'm a big geek. When I was there, I met a lot of amazing people. One of the people I met was Jamie Furniss, who at that time was a 4 foot tall 14 year old from the Yukon that never shut up. I thought he was fantastic. Turns out, I was right.

As the_tlg wrote last week, Jamie went off and won the World Debating Championships in Malaysia this Christmas. That's a huge achievement, as no Canadian team had won it since 1991. In the finals, he and his partner faced a couple of very close friends of mine (yay Mikey and Jo!), of whom I am extremely proud.

On his way home, Jamie took a detour. I'll let the Globe and Mail finish the story: Jamie's Story

The real reason I'm writing about this is because Jamie made a post on the debate-geek message board that has really affected me. I wish I could be more like this, and I hope his experiences will change the way I react when things happen in a far off corner of the world. Please read this, if you can. Some parts are quite graphic, it is unfortunately not for the faint of heart.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Hi everyone. The following is an extract from a yarn I did up, stream of consciousness-style, for someone back home. Much, much more to say, but already it's so long. pardon if it's half delirious - long hours + meds for tropical illnesses. It's 2:30 am now.

Following that is a brief email I sent to EDS debaters about fundraising. It's just a little thing you know, but I thought maybe a few ppl would be interested. If anyone is looking for somewhere to give money, I can vouch for this stuff in Langkawi and provide contact of a canadian woman who is collecting money for us.

[...]

So I left my climbing and diving gear in KL and booked a ticket for Phuket. I had no information and my only contacts were in Bangkok.

When I arrived in Phuket I headed straight for the main disaster relief coordination centre. there I met a Canadian volunteer coordinator named Al who said that they didn't really need many ppl right now and that perhaps I could do some data entry of information about ppl who had been reported missing. I said I would be happy to help, but couldn't believe there was no more pressing need. Further inquiries lead me to speak to the regional health director of Pang-nga province, north of Phuket, which was the worst hit. he told me that at Wat Yanyao, a temple, there was great need for volunteers, but I needed a special police permit to travel North, as no foreigners were now being allowed. Impossible to get the police permit that nite of course, and I reckoned I wouldn't have much more luck the next morning.

So I loaded up with food and water in order to be self-contained and showed up at the crack of dawn the next morning at the volunteer centre. There I convinced a swedish medical team to take me along with them using a combination of bluffing that I had the police permit and agreeing that if there was any problem I would get off on the spot and make my own way back (and I had the food and water necessary to do it).

We headed north. By about 10 am we were well into the "prohibited area". At one stop I met an English speaking thai woman. She was headed to Wat yanyao and offered to give me a lift. Turns out the lift was with the police themselves. Instead of stopping me, that had me pose with them in photos of a massive police boat that had been swept over 1 km in land and now rested up on a hillside. They smiling delivered me to the Wat with profuse thanks for my willingness to help.

At the entrance to Wat yanyao they gave us masks. You could already smell the decaying bodies from there. We entered and offered ourselves as volunteers. They immediately, within 5 mins, had me suiting up in a hazardous materials suit, taping on double layers of gloves, putting on thick rubber boots and a mask, etc. I was then lead into the wat where I was greeted by a dutch Disaster Victim Identification team. the team leader was holding a kitchen knife with an 8" blade and sharpening it on his steel. Under a tent they had about 60 bodies lying out, with walls of dry ice around them. the dry ice was giving off that sprawling, creeping smoke and envelopping the bodies. That was the first time I saw a dead human being. At first I didn't recognize them since they were so grotesquely bloated and black. Later on I realized that all the tables and benches around, the doors on the latrines and the cutting boards at the IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) camps were made of coffins. that's because they bodies of westerners, larger than thais under any circumstances, were just too bloated to fit in the boxes. But some woodworking shop just kept turning them out by the hundreds and so we unloaded them and stacked them in various places.

We all wore masks and you would work all day with ppl. but only see their eyes. You see only their eyes. Some eyes were calm, even strangely smiling - those are mostly the professionals who do this for a living. But even they were saying this was the worst they had ever seen. I remember one girl from the states - her eyes were so wide and frantic. I think she must have been very afraid. And also she was anxious because she was going to study medicine and she had this tremendous urge to already possess all that knowledge and to be able to do more than she could. She will be very driven I think, but I hope she won't forget to enjoy every moment in her rush to become a doctor. She taped her email address to the inside of my suit (I couldn't touch anything) but it fell off from all the moisture. I can't imagine what my own eyes looked like. I think they must have been a cold, steely blue. I think my gaze would have pierced you. My teeth were gritted the whole time and I could feel the line of my jaw and the tense muscles all along it. I think I must have been squinting a bit, as though I didn't want to look on but knew that I must. One time we stopped and all took off our masks and drank. I could see the ppl's faces. We spoke and my voice was firm and I spoke about the Yukon and about some of our problems with the porcupine caribou herd, that is threatened, and with first nation's communities, and other issues. I hadn't felt that kind of firmness and conviction in my voice for a long time.

I was only there I think 4 days, but that felt like an eternity. There was no day I looked forward to going back there. They had me doing so many different things. We
would take a piece of rib for DNA testing using a
box-cutter and metal shears, then brush it off with an
old tooth brush and some blue liquid. We exhumed bodies that had been buried to get
them out of the sun, but now needed to be sent back to
the forensics center. At least they were in bags.
the foreigners we had to keep, but some thais were
cremated. the crematorium busted because too many
bodies, so they would just pile old tires on the box and
light it. I was reminded of the cremation of sam McGee, though that is a rather light poem... "and the greasy smoke in an inky cloak when streaking down the sky"...it was exactly that. We were digging with that overhead and the heat was always so oppressive
because you wear layers of gloves, suits, etc. At the end of the day I would pour the sweat out of my boots. You can't take your suit off at all or touch yourself, so you must get someone else to wipe the sweat from your brow, or more often just let it run in and sting your eyes. And you drink so much to avoid dehydration, so you must use the toilet. But you can't unless you have the whole suit cut off with scissors, so once we were working so frantically that I couldn't stop and just have to urinate in my suit as you would do when scuba diving (if you're a diver you'll know what I mean) and it runs hot down the leg of the suit, which is waterproof of course, and pools in your boot until later when you can dump it out. But urine is sterile, unlike what was around us.

Anyway, it was too gruesome and intense in thailand to
keep going day in day out that I just had to leave to get a break. What did it was finally one morning it Thai National Children's day and I got to go visit some kids. I've done some other work in Yukon, Costa Rica, Chile, with kids and youth at risk, so I really like to hang out with them. That just drove home to me that I would rather help the living than the dead. Very
frustrating all the resources being spent on
identifying bodies. Maybe I am just a simple-minded
Yukonner, but I reckon there comes a point where we
should just return to the earth in peace and silence.
anonimity would be more dignified than what is going
on up there now.

So I came back to KL and at least got some vaccinations I needed, including cholera. I had heard of some boats sailing from Langkawi in Malaysia to Aceh. I telephoned and got myself on a crew list. NO qualifications, except that I have sailed since I was 15 and work hard. In times like these and places like this, that sort of thing is enough. I mades straight for Langkawi and met up with capt. Hugo Crawford. He pilots one of those massive boats that when you're in Juneau (Southeast Alaska) you go down to the harbour with your binoculars to gawk at. The owner uses it a couple weeks a year and the rest of the time it sits iddle, awaiting his command. The Sikh Community in KL has been amazing and has put together aid 10 times faster than it can be transported to Aceh. Hugo asked the owner of his boat if, since it wasn't being used, he could transport some things out to Aceh with it, to which the owner promptly said no. But he wasn't deterred and began organizing an effort to use other boats that were available for the job. 3 boats had sailed by the time I arrived. With literally 2 or 3 other key ppl, all with stories much worse than mine about where they were on the 26th and what they had done that day, we banded together and started trying to get this thing really moving.

I am only a small player, but every day we set up an office at the yacht club and plan, plan, plan. It's all about logistics, logistics and money. So we work on that. Then every so often I have to run down to the port and inventory a container or something like that. This morning we started at 7:30 - just me and one journalist who needed to help out to earn his was on the boat that was leaving later that day. We opened a 40 foot container to inventory it and boxes fell out on us, it was that full. But it had to be done so we just starting unloading. that is a massive, massive job to do by hand. Pretty soon some curious indonesian sailors came over and we got it across that this was aid for Aceh. Before you know it they were all pitching in and had a forklift running. We loaded 21 pallets by hand then had to run off to 10 am briefing. From 10-4 pm it was all office stuff: trying to get a webpage, sorting out charts for the boats, printing weather reports, tide info, cruising info, strategizing, etc.

At 4 we put out a call on the radio that we needed volunteers to help load our ferry that was going out to Aceh (Pulau Weh) that night. We had over 10 tonnes of cargo to load and every single individual bag or box must pass by human chain from the dock to the ferry since there is no crane or anything. Spontaneously, 20 or so ppl turned up and we worked like mad from then till about 10:30 p.m. After that I composed daily reports and emailed info to prospective donors and now I'm writing to you.

I don't know if I'll sail to Aceh, and I still sure would like to. I like the physical work most and I am at home on the water. I also like to see the fruit of my labour and would be so happy passing boxes over the ship's rail to ppl out there. In some places it is so bad that they are swimming out to any craft that comes near. We are afraid of going there as it would endanger the whole mission. This is necessary, but isn't it a sad and bizarre irony that because their need is so great that they will do anything for relief, that is precisely why they receive none. However, other groups are going there with navy assistance, etc, so those ppl are not entirely left.

There is more I could say but I must go. We really desperately need donations here because private ships are ineffective and too few. We must pay to use the ferry, and buy its fuel. The rate is discounted, but still costs money. I can't ever remember being so energized by what I am doing as I am now. At the moment I can't imagine any other life. It absorbs you totally. After the verry first day in Thailand I rang up my uni to get the month of January off - I knew I couldn't go back. I would stay forever if it weren't for the fact that I must have a common law degree to begin my job in June.

I think it is so heartening to see all the volunteers here and to know that an enthusiastic, self-motivated and hard-working helper can be of use anywhere.

+jamie

Hey guys, hope all is well. The uni gave me January off to keep volunteering, so they're not all bad I guess. I have to make up the credits, but what the hell.

Is the EDS or any of the members involved in or interested in starting a fundraising effort for the tsunami? We collected a significant amount of money at worlds that was very well used.

I am involved in a relief effort based out of Langkawi, Malaysia that is shipping aid to Pulau Weh (island north of Banda Aceh) and then moving it down the coast from there to areas that have received nothing so far since they have no road infrastructure or airstrips. I can vouch by the 17 hours I spent loading boats and preparing for a successful navigation of those waters that the work is being done. Today we loaded over 10 tonnes of cargo by human chain, piece by piece. We are all volunteers so money would goes only to purchasing supplies (what is not donated) and buying fuel and chartering vessels to carry it. There are 10 million + USD yachts in the harbour and they are unwilling to make them available to carry supplies, even though in most cases the owners are not on board and only use them a few weeks per year.

But I can sincerely tell you that I have rarely felt so energized about anything in my life. It is so heartening to see so many ppl who care and are willing to help. Many have nothing but time and a pair of good arms but are willing to help us labour all afternoon and long past dark.

I just thought I would mention it in case anyone is interested.

The shit in Thailand was super-intense. Even the ppl who make their living travelling around the world identifying disaster victims were saying it was the worst they've ever seen.

If you are thinking of giving, wherever it might be, it can make a huge differenc.e I know in thailand they needed money more than anything. One day i went to visit some IDP's (internally displaced persons) in a camp up in the hills away from the sea. They had a mountain of clothing there but were lamenting their situation: we have tonnes of clothing but no boats or nets or homes. Food was everywhere in Thailand, they fed all volunteers for free and had armies of cooks. But that won't sustain ppl after the aid effort pulls out. They need to be self-sustaining and won't be if they can't rebuild. They need many things in order to rebuild, but mostly just money. The thai gov. gave each person 2000 baht which is like 50 bucks or something - gets more mileage in Thailand than in canada, but sure won't buy a boat, probably not even nets.

I am posting something from an email a friend sent:

Yesterday I went with Mimi to a site where a lady gave 80 tsunami victims B 1000 each. All I had on me was B 5000 and I added that. The people need some direct aid and some money that they can use as they see fit. You should have seen their faces, they were so happy. One man had cuts all over his legs and showed me pictures of his dead wife and child. All I had left at that moment was B 500 and I gave it to him. He started to cry. At that moment I would have gladly given $ 1000 to all of these people. It is too bad Dennie left today for Bangkok, I am not sure when he will be back and I don't know how to get to these villages on my own + I can't talk to the people. I am a little frustrated at the temple, there are so many people and so many resources, but it does not go to the isolated villages. I want to work with the living, not with the dead, so I feel ready to move on to a different place. So pls. if things sound good in Malaysia, let me hear and I will sure be over there.

+jamie

Dayum

Wed, 12 Jan 2005 05:09:00 GMT

So, I got my last three marks back today. Here is the final tally:

(I'm not doing this to brag. Honest. You'll just have to take my word that I would have also posted these if they had all sucked. There just would have been more sobbing and attempts to take my own life.)

Crim: A-
Torts: A
Constitutional: A
Law, Legislation and Policy: A
Property: A
Contracts: B+

WoooooooooooooohooooooooooooOOOOOO!

The key will be to keep this going for next semester, but it will definitely help my summer job prospects to have these marks in the bank. I'm absolutely flabbergasted by the LLP mark. That's the exam I thought I bombed, which is worth 100% of my grade in that course. I keep looking at the little sheet of paper expecting my mark to change. As of yet, it hasn't. There's still time. =)

!!!

Fri, 07 Jan 2005 00:00:52 GMT

Law 104 - Criminal Law Process

Goal mark: A-
Expected mark: B+
Class average: 72 (B/B-)
Actual mark: 82.5%, A-

Law 108A - Torts

Goal mark: B+
Expected mark: B
Class average: 70% (B-)
Actual mark: 88%, A

Maybe I can do this after all....

Constitutional comes out tomorrow, and the rest will be next week, presumably. Fingers crossed!

Refusing to get overconfident,
Greg

PS: I loooove this little guy's "giddy" face.

We're all getting older, and life is beautiful

Sun, 26 Dec 2004 09:13:17 GMT

There it is.

I've finally got the feeling. I'm sitting with the fire going, SNL on in the background, a comfy new sweater keeping me nice and warm, flipping through a new book and munching on a Toblerone the size of my fucking arm. And I feel happy.

I always get this feeling on Christmas...almost without fail. It's a steaming helping of satisfaction and contentedness, with little bursts of giddy thrown in. Maybe it's the family time, maybe it's the presents (I'm a good little capitalist I am), maybe it's the turkey. I was worried about this year, because the feeling was late in coming. I found myself crashing out after exams, and as soon as I woke up from my three day sleep I had to start and finish my Christmas shopping. Though it's embarassing to admit, I've been having recurring nightmares about getting bad marks on my exams. Even the typical Christmas-y things that get me in a happy seasonal mood (Stanley Park train, watching little kids open presents) weren't working. Did law school actually stamp out my ability to be happy?

Nope, the feeling is back. I still love my life.

I won't subject everyone to a blow by blow recap of my vacation, but there are a few highlights that I'd like to share (for posterity more than anything, I like writing about things that make me happy so I have something to read when I'm feeling sorry for myself...nobody has the right to be sad with the wonderful people that I have in my life).

The past week brought annual "dressy" dinners with Jaz's friends (though I'm happy to consider a large number of them my friends as well) and my friends (who she is quite happy to keep as "my friends" instead of "our friends). These dinners always make me feel old and mature, in a good way. It's been fun to watch the progression from costume party to legitimate outing. The first dinner with my friends was in 1997, and it was clear to anyone watching that we were just a bunch of punks dressed in cheap suits and prom dresses. Now, it *almost* seems like we belong.

Dressy dinner reminds me that I have a caring, wonderful and hilarious group of friends. It also also allows me to take stock of where they are in their lives, and where I am in mine. This past year has been a big one in many ways. Aaron is in a (gasp!) functional relationship, and has a "real" job with an engineering firm in North Van. He'll probably be moving out and buying a car in the spring. I'm very happy for him, and I hope that Michelle and his new job will make him happy. Chris is back in school, and the top student in his program to the surprise of everyone but me. When you drop out of university and spend 3 years working construction, drinking and smoking, it's easy to surround yourself with people who have no idea that you're a genious. I'm proud of him for going back, and I'm glad that the last three years haven't ruined his booksmarts. Michelle and Alison are moving in together next week...I hear the liquor store near their apartment is adding a new wing. Rob and Sharon are still together (2+ years now?), which is great for both of them. I like couples that bring out the best in each other. Sharon is studying to be a legal assistant, and she seemed to like my idea that we open our own firm together. Allen and Mah. Sounds great, no? Kaitlyn is living in Vegas with her boyfriend Jon, and applying to grad schools. She'll likely end up at Tufts or Columbia, having pounded the GRE into submission earlier this fall. She's going back to Vegas in February, and I bet the next time she comes "home" she'll have a ring on her finger. Evan brought his girlfriend Robyn, who seems very nice. I'm even willing to forgive her red hair (Evan dated a red-headed hose beast a couple of years ago, and I've been forever scarred).

I also love the World Juniors. Hockey is like crack fucking cocaine, and I've been having withdrawal fits for months. Everyone is talking up this junior team as the best ever. I'm not so sure about that, they've got a long way to go to beat the 1995 Red Deer team. That team was absolutely dominant from beginning to end. They didn't just win, they crushed the other teams....breaking their will in the process. This team looks pretty good, but they had a sloppy game today against the Slovaks. If there's any benefit to having a Sutter coach the team (and that is debatable), it's that he won't stand for sloppy play. Expect them to blitz the shit out of the poor unsuspecting Finns on Monday. This tournament is also special because I get to watch Sidney Crosby. He's the fastest guy on the ice, with the best shot and a vision on the ice that rivals some of the greatest players in history. Fun, fun, fun to watch. It's not fair to throw comparisons at him (though he passes like Gretzky...shhhhh...), but I get the giddy feeling that I'm watching history when I see him play. And not shitty "look how good Eric Lindros is when he's pushing around 5 foot Belarussians" history, but "that Bure kid is going to change the way we play the game" history.

This year was Peyton Michele Robinson's first Xmas. That's Jasmine's niece. It was very neat to see her marvelling at her new gifts (she's only four months, so it's likely just the colour of the paper that gets her). Better still, I got to see Geraldine and Ryan fawn over her for the last two days. They're really great parents. I particularly like to watch Ryan...something about a dad who really loves his little daughter gets me every time. He made a DVD of Peyton's first Xmas for Jas's parents, it was very cute. I really, really want kids.

Xmas dinner was a family and friends affair. My aunt won the prize for stupidest comment of the night, when she was talking to Jasmine about Jasmine's family heritage, and then pulled out: "I went to Bali once. All the beaches were dirty, cuz...y'know...it's a third world country." She's not Indonesian. Not even close. Funny, nobody has ever heard that my family is from the British Isles and responded with "I went to Denmark once".

My cousin Katherine brought her new fiance to dinner, who I hadn't met before. She's only 20, and is on fiance #2, which is a pretty big red flag. The last one was a spoiled rich little sociopath. This one, however, is a keeper. She played varsity volleyball at Ole Miss before moving to a school in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Before leaving Ole Miss, she was smart enough to get involved with Chris. They've been together for two years, and he proposed earlier this week. Chris seems like a special guy, very soft spoken and affectionate, and impossibly polite (he calls people "sir" and "ma'am", just like the movies!). And, I can talk football with him. He's the starting center for the Ole Miss football team (think Eli Manning), which means he knows a hell of a lot more than me, but he's kind enough to dumb it down so I can feel like I know what I'm talking about.

And, my extended family apparently managed to make it through an entire dinner without making a stupid or ignorant comment about the fact that he's a) American or b) black. There were some comments about how everything is all fucked up "down there", but he seemed to take it in good humour. My family isn't racist or close-minded at all, they're just pretty sheltered in the way they view the world. It's also largely generational too...Jas and I have talked for hours about the way her "Asianness" is dealt with by my grandfather, my parents and my sister. They all love her and treat her well, but it's interesting to watch how the varying generations treat cultural differences.

Last but not least....the real kicker that made me so smiley was the fact that my friend Colin in Halifax is engaged. He proposed last night (the smooth devil), and I just got the email today. Colin moved to Halifax in 1996, so it sounds goofy when I say that I miss him being a regular part of my life, but I really do. Tasha must be an amazing girl for him to voluntarily hang up his spurs (the notches in his belt have notches in them). And it's a Cape Breton wedding!!!! Destructive alcoholism, here I come!

Merry Christmas everybody.

Fin.

Wed, 15 Dec 2004 20:15:54 GMT

The plan for the rest of the day....shave, shower, sleep, shitfaced.

And while I have your attention....
http://home.comcast.net/~aurulieus/rockpapersaddam.htm

It's about time....

Thu, 09 Dec 2004 20:01:21 GMT

Today is the kind of day that makes me happy to be a law nerd. I'm extremely happy with Martin's reaction, too.

http://www.cbc.ca/story/canada/national/2004/12/09/scoc-gaymarriage041209.html

The SCC's decision on the reference: http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/samesexrights/2004scc079.wpd.txt

Stress is when you wake up screaming and then realize you haven't fallen asleep yet

Wed, 08 Dec 2004 01:53:22 GMT

That's my friend Kirsten's MSN name. She goes to the University of Ottawa. Ain't first year law grand???

In all honesty, things are going much better than when I last posted. Topaz is home and fine, if a little drugged up. My second exam went fairly well, so I'm feeling my mojo again. Tomorrow morning is criminal law, and I've got a bitching outline ready to go. Today's been really productive, even though my study buddies are in love with our prof and keep allowing things to go off track. For example, I received this email from my friend Emily today:

"I think you’re right about the quote from iocobucci….but that’s basically what the whole thing is about. Some judges are more about the “repute” of justice. As Professor Ben said in our last class, the justice system must be SEEN to be doing justice. But on the other hand is Iacobucci’s statement that we must uphold the ends of justice no matter what. Nonetheless, in Professor Ben’s web exercise on exclusion of evidence he includes the seriousness of the crime in his list of factors for part three. And so I will too. =)

When Professor Ben and I get married, should it be a spring or summer wedding??? What should be our theme colours?"

Fantasmic.

PS: The little emotion dude doesn't look rejuvenated at all. Not one bit!

What a day...

Sat, 04 Dec 2004 05:28:23 GMT

1) I'm pretty convinced I tanked my exam this morning. Time will tell, and I'm trying not to worry about it, but I screwed up the entire third question and half of the second question on a three question test. It wasn't stuff I didn't know, it was just situations in the facts I didn't pick up. Even worse, they were simple fact patterns that in hindsight seem completely obvious.

Oh well, at least this was only a) the only exam that counts (it's a one semester course), and b) worth 100% of my grade.

2) On the home front, my dog was hit by a car this afternoon. Apparently it just clipped her, and she should be fine, but I'm really worried. She's staying at the vet tonight with a couple of broken toes and some cuts and bruises. She's always had bad hip problems (all golden retrievers do), and I really hope this doesn't make them worse.

So I've spent my entire post-exam day napping, rehashing the test in my mind, thinking about Topaz and generally feeling sorry for myself. All in all, a fantastic way to prepare for the five exams I have in the next 12 days.

12 days....6 exams...300 pages of outline. Apportez-ca!

Thu, 02 Dec 2004 10:18:32 GMT

In two weeks, this will all be over.

I will have a normal life again, if only for 21 days.

I will have either received validation that I can in fact do this, or I will have an excuse to go back to Starbucks begging for my old job.

I will never have to take Law, Legislation and Policy again.

My mind will never again be troubled with such burning questions as: do mushrooms count as vegetables?

I will stop whining. Promise-womise.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Check out Jasmine's conference! www.ted.com

She's either working on a huge conference featuring Bono, the Governator and Sarah McLachlin, or she's spending 32 hours a week with a guy named Ted...and going to California to "do Ted" in February. (shudder)

It's the little things...

Mon, 29 Nov 2004 09:54:59 GMT

Something neat happened today. I like neat things, so I'll write about it.

LLP (Law, Legislation and Policy) continues to be the bane of my existence. The exam is in five days, and I've been having a hell of a time working through the material and coming up with a sensible outline for the course. So, this evening I was in a foul mood as I read through the Ontario Mushroom Co. case for the fifth time. This case involves a 20 page decision determining whether or not mushrooms qualify as "vegetables". 20 pages. And I'm paying $4,000 a semester for the privilege of reading it.

So I was grumbling and snarling to myself, when Mike came online and started talking to me. After a couple of minutes, he asked if he could call me (mr. high and mighty with his free long distance). To put this in context, I don't think I've talked to Mike on the phone once since he moved to Toronto a year and a half ago. He called and we talked for about half an hour. It wasn't particularly deep or spiritually uplifting, but it was exactly what I needed at that time. Even though we basically just yakked about mutual friends and the softcore porn series that he and his roomies are obsessed with, it made me very happy. He's one of my favourite people. Best of all, I could bitch and moan about law school to my heart's content. Being a second year law student, he's the wizened old man who can answer all my questions and allay all my fears....which is funny because he's about 12 years old.

I just remembered that Mike actually reads this thing, so now I feel like a blubbering twit. I suppose I'll retreat back to boy world, where affection is shown solely through manly slaps on the back and even manlier noogies.

Thanks Mike. (slap) (noogie)

Jas starts a new job tomorrow. It's a big one. She's managed to fill the wedding lull in the winter with a four month contract position at a corporate events firm. It's the perfect job for her right now, and it's great for her career. I just hope that they treat her well. The company sounds great, if a little sketchy. They told her they would be sending her a contract last week, and have now decided that she'll get it when she reports for duty tomorrow morning. If this is their way to sneak a $6/hour wage under her nose, I will not be impressed. Having worked in corporate events before, I'm overly suspicious of everything this company says. I guess that's natural when you worked for a company that knocked the monthly wage down by $400 at the interview and ended up working you so many hours that you were making $4.51/hour by the end. But that's okay...I made it all back in the box of pens I "liberated" on my last day. OCR, baby, OCR!

I think the reason I've been so hesitant to write in this journal is because my life feels so mundane and routine these days. I miss Jas...I miss my dog...law school is hard...Victoria is growing on me...my housemate annoys me...I like tea...poker is fun. That's it. That's my life. But, I think I've finally come to grips with the fact that nobody has to read this if they don't want to. It's my journal, fuckers! So I'm going to post every useless, mundane event in my life. Ha!

Me too! I totally have gigantism

Wed, 10 Nov 2004 00:58:51 GMT

The comedy is flowing again. Check out Kim Jong Il's livejournal. The man himself. The illinator.

There have been a number of experiences and developments in the life of Greg since last we talked. This law school thing doesn't leave me much time to take stock of my life and how I'm feeling, so hopefully livejournal can act as my Dr. Phil. I apologize in advance for all of the navel gazing and self-referential bullshit that you may be exposed to by reading this stuff.

The election.

What can I say that hasn't already been said? I really, really thought that Kerry was going to do it. This is possibly because Tim , one of my most politically astute friends, had predicted a Kerry win. Well, it turns out that Tim's "gut instincts" are worth about as much as his future degree from UBC Law. Nothin'.

As I've said many times, I didn't really become vehemently anti-Bush until recently. It rarely bothers me when political leaders make decisions that conflict with my values, unless they go against particular values that I hold to be important. Instead, I more often find myself upset by political leaders who make decisions that don't make logical sense. This is the arena that the Bush administration has plunged into over the past two or three years. After September 11th, nobody really knew how the US was *supposed* to react, so everyone just assumed that Bush's reaction was legitimate. Little did we know that Sept. 11th was going to spawn a series of policy developments that (surprise!) had nothing to do with Sept. 11th. What the Bush administration is doing and will continue to do makes no sense. That should be the greatest indictment of their reign in power. It makes no sense, and it's counter-productive.

Want to stop terrorism? Let's invade one of the few countries in the Middle East that does not actively sponsor terrorism (talk about pinning the tail on the wrong fucking donkey), and in our hamfisted handling of the country afterwards create enough fear and anger to spur on a thousand terrorist organisations in the future. Want to protect your own people from nuclear attack? Let's create a giant (untested and inefficient) missile defence shield, and in doing so withdraw from one of the few agreements that actually regulates nuclear weapons in the world. Want to unite the country? Let's create a fusion of politics and religion that infuriates half of the country and causes the other half to vote for you based on "core values" that shouldn't even be in the political arena in the first place.

It's just all so ridiculous, so theatrical. I'm tired of "modern politics". I'm tired of the bullshit trite campaign slogans that get repeated ad nauseum until they are taken as fact. I weep for the fact that political discourse has been taken down to the lowest common denominator of the dumbest voter. Perhaps it's an inclusionary tactic designed to involve everyone in the political process, but more likely it's because nearly every election is decided by the uneducated and the uninformed. It drives me crazy that the military record of a war veteran was openly questioned by a guy who spent the early 70's doing cocaine and dreaming about the day he could run the Texas Rangers into the ground. It scares me that the Republicans seem to have a monopoly on both security and family values, which are likely to own the American political landscape for the next 40 years. It's laughable that the people voting Republican on the basis of security are the same people who live in Bumblefuck, Montana and will never even see an Arab person, let alone a terrorist. It's sick that the Karl Rove strategy involved Cheney going around the country scaring the shit out of the people, and Bush offering them safety....if they elected him.

With all of this being said, I still believed that Kerry was going to pull it out up until the last votes were counted in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. Now he's got to go back to the crypt with his fellow zombies, subsisting on a diet of brains and ketchup for all eternity.

For a moment of levity in this rant, I refer you to the Onion:

Liberals Return to Sodomy, Welfare Fraud

BERKELEY, CA—No longer occupied by the 2004 election, liberals across the country have returned to the activities they enjoy most: anal sex and cheating the welfare system. "I've been so busy canvassing for the Democratic Party, I haven't had a single moment for suckling at the government's teat or no-holds-barred ass ramming," said Jason Carvelli, an unemployed pro-hemp activist. "Now, my friends and I can finally get back to warming our hands over burning American flags and turning kids gay." Carvelli added that his "number-one priority" is undermining the efforts of freedom-loving patriots everywhere.

Chef Tony

I loooove cooking. I really do. Last Saturday night was the weekly family gathering here in Victoria, and I had volunteered to cook. Things went well, even though it took me five freaking hours to slap together the meal. We had chicken and lamb souvlaki, homemade tzatziki, greek salad, pita, roasted potatos and peach cobbler. Everyone managed to make the requisite cooing noises about the food, and nobody keeled over at the dinner table, so I think it went well. After dinner we had a rousing game of Scattergories, where my large vocabulary and complete lack of scruples led me to the win. I now completely understand those cheesy board game commercials, where everyone is crowded together in the living room, making stupid faces and taking everything too seriously.

It was also an important weekend from a "family issue" perspective. I have a cousin with Asberger's Syndrome, which is best described as a high-functioning form of autism. As you might imagine, he has a lot of challenges dealing with people and fitting in during social gatherings. Some people were getting upset by his behaviour at these weekly gatherings, and the (completely fucking ridiculous) proposal of not inviting him anymore was discussed. Thankfully, more reasonable heads prevailed and everything worked out well in the end. Particularly in my current living situation, I find myself having to be more and more defensive of him. That sucks, because I feel that the people making comments should a) understand that his behaviour is not necessarily voluntary and is certainly not his fault, and b) suck it up and deal with it. I feel as though some people are trying to force him away because it would make the gatherings easier for the rest of us. While it may be "easier", the idea that people would take that as a sufficient reason to stop him from coming really saddens me.

Lizzaw Schizzool

Overall, I've really been enjoying my time so far at U Vic. I've managed to find my groove socially, and met some really amazing people. I find the work interesting and engaging, and the vast majority of my classes are well-taught and well-structured. I used to feel like I had a natural affinity for the law, which has been tempered somewhat by the last few weeks. I now feel like I have a real interest in the law, which is less helpful than a natural affinity, but will definitely help to keep me focused over the next two and a half years. If my undergrad proved anything (and I highly doubt that it did), it's that I can't give 100% if I'm not interested by something.

My only concern with law school so far is....how shall I put this?....the workload is killing me. Not stressing me out, not causing me problems....actually killing me. I always feel like I'm on the edge of sick, I'm losing weight because I forget to eat, I'm not sleeping well during the week and I'm barely awake on the weekends, I dread the time I spend in Vancouver because I don't get any work done, and my new Legal Research and Writing assignment makes me want to jump off the biggest skyscraper in Victoria (for reference: it's two stories). It's largely my own fault, because if I had a picked up a book or two during undergrad I would be more prepared for the reading. I was always a proponent of "work smarter, not harder", which is no longer working! I'm sure I'll adjust, it's just a pain in the ass right now.

This bitchfest has been brought to you by UVic Law and the letter F.

TEH OLD!!!!!1111!!

Oh yeah, and I turned 24 last week. Huh.

Watching history

Wed, 03 Nov 2004 00:47:10 GMT

The next four hours will irrevocably change the world.

Of Curses and Dreams

Thu, 28 Oct 2004 05:04:16 GMT

So I just watched the Boston Red Sox put the finishing touches on their first World Series title in 86 years. 86 frigging years. It's a hard number to forget, especially since the Fox announcers were repeating it at every possible opportunity. The thing that struck me most during the last two weeks of watching these games (other than the fact that A-Fraud is the biggest cancer in team sports) is the ridiculous passion of Red Sox fans. It's a level of commitment and devotion that spans generations, and goes much further than any of us probably imagine.

To get an idea of what I'm saying, give this a read.

Now that they've won, do they become just another team? Do they cease to be special? Do their fans go back to eating chowder and watching Cheers reruns? What does a World Series championship won by 25 guys they've never met *actually* mean to these people? There are pointy-nosed pinheads around the world who look down on people who allow sports teams to become a large part of their lives. Why? Some of my most jubilant moments have come through watching a group of 20 guys I've never met skate around on an ice rink. It's not something I could ever possibly define, nor would I ever want to try and put it into words. It's a feeling...a belief. You allow yourself to have hope in something that is bigger than you.

This, of course, leads into a discussion of my beloved Canucks. I'm pining like you wouldn't believe for hockey right now, and the only way I can dull the ache is by thinking what it would be like if the Canucks ever won a Stanley Cup. Though they aren't a 100 year old institution bordering on religion, like the Red Sox, a Cup would do amazing things to this city. Bandwagon fans or no bandwagon fans, there is NO place I'd rather be in April than Vancouver during a playoff run.

But will we ever win one? What if the Canucks are cursed? This is Don Taylor's theory. It makes more sense than you think. Before they ever even set foot on the ice, a lottery was held between Vancouver and Buffalo to determine who would have first pick in the draft. At stake was Gilbert Perrault, a can't-miss prospect. The lottery, in classic 1970 fashion, took the form of a spinning wheel, with the numbers 1-20 written on it. The Canucks got 1-10, the Sabres 11-20. When the wheel stopped, the Canucks GM immediately jumped up screaming, thinking it was stopped on 1. Turns out it was 11...Sabres get Perrault...we get a stiff named Dale Tallon...and the curse begins.

And, since then, we've had:

10 winning seasons in 34 years
Harold Snepts' broken stick
Bertuzzi-Moore
Libor Polasek
Cloutier's Game 7 collapse
Mike Vernon's glove
Joel Otto's skate
Neely for Pederson
Niklas Lidstrom
Nathan Lafayette

They have to win it before Trevor retires. They have to. Or else it will never, ever mean as much.

So I have this plan...

Tue, 26 Oct 2004 04:19:50 GMT

This whole crazy law school adventure has landed me in some serious debt. By the end of it, possible co-op notwithstanding, I'm going to owe the government about $24,000. If I'm lucky. Two unhappy little events conspired to cause me this financial distress: 1) law school tuition went apeshit about two years ago, causing the cost of my education to jump from $12,000 over three years to $26,000, and 2) the grant program (where you get free money on top of your student loans) is dead. Why oh why did they kill the grant program? I want free money! Give it to me! I'm a middle class white male with a sense of entitlement! Give me my money!

But fear not, because I have a plan. Each week, a group of guys from the law school get together for a poker game. The buy-in is $5, and there's usually 6-7 people in the game. So....if I soak each and every one of them, each and every week, it'll only take me 800 weeks (16 yrs) to pay off my student loan through poker winnings! I'm already well on my way...two games have netted me $14.65 in sweet, sweet profit.

As a related aside, I've met some amazing people in the first two months here. Everyone is very smart, which is intimidating at first, but the first year class as a whole seems very open and accepting. It's actually LESS pretentious than UBC Poli Sci, which is fantastic (though admittedly, few things in this world are more prententious than UBC Poli Sci). I can't quite figure out why...I suppose it's based around the fact that people here are confident enough in their own abilities. As such, they don't need to engage in intellectual pissing matches and try to use big words that they don't understand in an effort to please the profs.

Archiving...

Sun, 24 Oct 2004 23:11:52 GMT

One of the reasons I created this journal was to find a permanent spot to place all of the confused ramblings from my trip this summer.

This is a Picaddilly line train, bound for....Cockfosters.
The adventure begins in London. I'm staying at my friend Angela's place in the bustling borough of Barnet, a few miles north of the city.

Last night we went to the Maple Leaf, the Canadian themed bar in Covent Garden. I had been out of the country for 10 hours, so I had almost forgot what warm Sleemans tasted like. Okay, that's a lie. We went to meet up with Adam (my travelling buddy for the rest of the trip), and watch the Flames-Lightning game. It was a surreal experience, watching hockey with a bunch of decked-out Flames fans in the middle of London. Despite the change in scenery, I still wanted to set them all on fire. Not just for ironic effect, but because I'm still bitter. I wish I could just adopt a Toronto philosophy...if the Leaves get eliminated, the playoffs stop. They just don't award the cup that year. It gets put in a warehouse and locked away to await the next time the Leaves are in the playoffs (tm Crossman).

Not many funny stories yet... Okay, there's one.

As I left the plane and started navigating my way through Heathrow, I heard a Canadian guy talking to the poor British guy who he obviously sat next to for the last 9 hours. I've transcribed the conversation as well as I could...

Canadian guy: So I hope you enjoyed your tour of Canada. The next time you should take a tour of Victoria and Vancouver Island.
British guy: Yeah, I'll definitely try that.
Greg's reaction: (muffled laughter)
CG: If you go to the island, you have to check out Parksville. It's beautiful there.
BG: Yup.
GR: Parksville? Parksville!? Nice tour guiding, buddy. Don't mention Long Beach, Tofino or Clayoquot Sound. Parksville. I think they have crappy mini golf and cheap motels in England, too.
BG: I would like to, but there's so much to see, it's hard to fit it all in.
CG: Yeah, I know. But the Orientals come and they see the whole country in seven days.
GR: ....

A wonderful ambassador, to be sure.

Hope all is well back home. Email me if you get a chance.

Greg

"It´s like a candy bar, with a donut inside!"
Buenos dias!

Phew...it´s been a whirlwind few days. I´ll try to recap as best I can. If I miss some stuff...well...nobody else will notice! Ha!

When I last left you, faithful reader, I was in London at Angie´s flat. We went out the next night with Thomas, her cool flatmate. His total coolness even overcomes the fact that he´s from France. It was actually pretty neat, I got to test-drive my French with him. To my surprise, he wasn´t mortally offended by my backwater redneck Quebec French, so that was a plus. We spent most of the night talking about soccer, and boring poor Angie to tears. I think Thomas was so excited that I knew a lot about soccer and could talk about it in French that he didn´t mind so much when I slagged the bloody pansies on the French national team. This left numerous opportunities to attack the likes of Marcel Desailly ("il joue comme une vache") and Sylvain Wiltord ("il aime foquer des chiens").

The following day we met up with Adam and Katie (travelling buddy number 2) in Victoria Station and made our way to Gatwick for an EasyJet flight to Madrid. Oooooh Madrid. Spain is incredibly fun. It´s so fun that I even enjoyed my first few days in Madrid despite being in the grip of a death flu. This should surprise absolutely nobody who has travelled with me before, as I have a tendency to get the odd death flu whenever I leave my usual life of Canadian water and bland food (just look for a post at the bottom where Jasmine says I´m delicate...it´ll be there in a few hours). Nevertheless, I was honoured to be given the responsibility of spreading SARS from the night markets of Hong Kong to the flamenco bars of Madrid.

We did embarassingly little in Madrid, preferring the patios and the tapas bars to the cultural and historic sites. Pffft...culture. We did happen on a "Museo del Jamon", which translates to "Museum of Ham". I´ll just leave it at that. We also had breakfast in "Maestro del Churros", which was a restaurant entirely dedicated to churros. Read that again...ENTIRELY DEDICATED TO CHURROS. I love this country. That´s where the subject line for this post comes from, as Adam chowed down on a chocolate covered churro for his breakfast.

From Madrid we went to Seville, where I sit right now writing this entry. Seville is great, but the 38 degree weather is keeping us indoors until a more reasonable hour. We went to the tourist info place today, which was an entirely unremarkable experience except for the fact that I got to use my French! The lady spoke no English, but she did speak French. After our conversation, she asked me: "tu es canadien, n´est-ce pas?" Even though she probably made the inference because of my awful Quebecois accent, that certainly put a hop in my step.

The trip so far, in numbers:

Number of pickpocketing attempts against us: 1
Estimated number of times the two pickpocketers have bathed or shaved in their lives: 0
Terraces visited in Madrid: 6
Cultural sites visited in Madrid: 1
Bottles of cheap wine bought to drink in the hostel: 2
Percentage chance that we accidentally bought vinegar: 65%
Number of sips before the wine was doomed to "el sinko": 3
Games of pinball the weird hostel lady has played while I wrote this: 4
Angry looks I´ve received for disturbing her pinball: 4...wait...5

(posted by Jasmine because Spanish computers stink. And, yes...Greg IS very delicate.)

Gee-braltar
Hey everyone,

I´ve figured it out. Women in Spain are like magic eye puzzles. They look elegant and beautiful from a distance, and it isn´t until you get closer that the horrible reality is revealed. Once you are within a few feet, you realise that their faces are pockmarked and lined by years of sun and smoking, to the point that their face looks like a relief map of 1916 Verdun.

The past few days have been a hectic series of comings and goings, interspersed with the best coffee in the world. I´m completely addicted, and I have no idea how they make it or how to re-create it back home. Some Starbucks alum I am, eh? Adam and Katie left a few days ago for Lagos in Portugal, where they have presumably been swimming, surfing and living the ex-pat life. Angie and I decided to give the beach thing a try, and we headed to Cadiz on the Costa del Sol for the day. Cadiz is a beautiful old port, but not much of a beach town. We were unfortunate to be there on a gloomy, cloudy day, which sucked (for Angie...I was perfectly happy to wander the streets). We did happen on a very cool Diego Garcia exhibit in one of the old fortresses, which brightened up the day a bit...and it was free!

Yesterday I parted company with Angie and went south to Gibraltar. I was absentmindedly reading my book on the bus and wondering how far we had left to go when I looked up and saw a big fucking rock about 300 metres away. I guess I reared back or something, because the old Spanish dude across the aisle from me thought it was hilarious. Gibraltar is amazing. Because it´s a British colony, it´s got all of the trappings of a small English town with some Spanish sunshine and a big ´ol rock in the middle. It´s also completely populated with pasty British vacationers who wanted to get some sun but couldn´t bear the thought of leaving their warm beer and Cadbury´s chocolate for any length of time. Never before have I seen so many sunburns...it´s hilarious.

They also have monkeys! In the 1800´s, some British soldiers thought it would be a good idea to bring some Moroccan macaques across the Strait as pets (think Maggie from TSN). They bred like crazy, and now they roam the rock and pose for pictures.

Okay, this is expanding Alex-style. I should wrap it up. The next stop is a rendezvous with Adam and Katie in Portugal...the bus leaves in a few hours so I´m killing time (again) in Seville.

Let me know what´s going on back at home!

Greg

Kicking it, vieux-école
Hey everyone,

Much has happened since the last update. I happily left Seville for Lagos, Portugal (not to be confused with Lagos, Nigeria, which would have been a much longer and much wetter bus trip). Lagos is amazing. It's a little tourist trap for pasty Brits (sound familiar?), but I absolutely love it. The day I arrived was Adam's b-day, so we did the obligatory drinking and swearing while watching Game 7 of the finals LIVE in a Lagos bar. It was a great night. It had it all. Drunken Irishmen talking to their drink and bristling when I asked "so what part of the UK are you from?", a chatty girl from Victoria who kept turning to me and yelling "it's our time!"...presumably talking about Calgary.

Lagos is a beach resort, so on the second day we headed to the beach. Just so everyone knows, I am no longer "whitey". I am now "off-whitey". Hopefully after some more time in the sun I can move up towards "eggshell". My goal is to leave Europe looking sickly, which will be a huge upgrade on my normal look of near-death.

I'm struggling to remember what else happened in Lagos. We explored some amazing seaside grottos, ate a bunch of food and drank some of the local green wine (green wine?). We took a day trip to the historic town of Sagres on the Southwest coast, and found no bars so we turned around and went home.

Yesterday we came to Faro, which is the capital of the Algarve and the home of three Euro 2004 matches. The city is alive. They even have a "fun zone", which is way more fun than you're all thinking. They've laid green turf out over the beautiful old streets, I guess so we can pretend we're playing in a soccer match while we walk past the McDonalds. Trust me, the turf is super fun.

More later...gotta run!

With these plastic bottle caps, we can really start some shit
In the words of Dave...so much to say, so much to say...

The past few days have been a whirlwind. We left Faro for Sintra, a small town outside of Lisbon. I highly recommend Sintra for anyone that comes to Portugal, it's absolutely beautiful. The town is carved into the side of a mountain, and you can see almost all of Lisbon from the summit. We arrived in Sintra with no idea where our hostel was, just a small map telling us it was on top of Old Smokey. So we took a bus up the mountain and got off where the tourist information bandito told us to. There seemed to be a road leading from the main road up to the hostel, so we walked to where we thought it was. No dice. However, there was a small (by "small" I mean about two feet wide) path leading up into the middle of nowhere. Being the adventurous type, Adam and I decided to take this path. After 15 minutes of crashing through the underbrush like a couple of backpack-laden rhinos, we found the hostel.

While checking e-mail at the hostel, I found out that our tickets for England-France had fallen through, which was a bummer. This should be no surprise to anyone that knows Gord, the guy through which our tickets were "organised". Gord is pretty unreliable and a bit of a liar, so I had always taken the ticket plans with a grain of salt. Regardless, Adam and I took the mindset that going to the game would have made our trip a lot better, but not going to the game wouldn't make our trip any worse. As it turns out, the game was still amazing to watch, but more on that later.

The Sintra hostel was the first place where we've really been gouged because of Euro 2004. The hostel organised a mandatory bag lunch for 8 Euros, which was pretty crazy. But we paid, because there was nowhere else to stay and we didn't want to get pushed off the mountain.

Our night in Sintra corresponded with the first night of Euro 2004, and consequently the Portugal-Greece game (along with Spain-Russia, which was much less interesting). We watched Portugal play in a little basement bar filled with Portuguese people. It was incredibly cool. The bar had a promotion where every big pint you bought came with three stickers. Five stickers and you got a free bottle, ten stickers and you got a free t-shirt. Never ones to back down from a challenge, Adam and I proceeded to get nice and lit up. The t-shirt fits Adam perfectly, which means it's a little small for me (he has the physique of a slimmed down Trevor Wong).

Those of you who watched the game already know that Portugal shit the bed mightily, and lost 2-1. The first Greek goal was 7 minutes into the game, and as soon as the ball went in the net the Portuguese guy next to us started staring at us. I think he was looking for the slightest touch of celebration or happinness, so he could take us out into the street and murder us. By the end of the night, it was mass suicide time in Sintra. The game definitely took the air out of the city.

The following morning we met one of the funniest guys I've ever ran across. His name is Albert, he's 43, he's from Chicago and he travels with a big Canada shirt. Not just a shirt with "Canada" over the pocket or something, one of those massive tacky CAAAANNNAAAADAAAAA shirts that you see at Niagara Falls or at Whistler. Within a few minutes of meeting us, Albert had already told us that he is an auditor for the government and he has six people (six people!) working under him. His job is so important that he flies everywhere, which gives him tons of frequent flier miles. That's right...the guy was bragging about frequent flier miles. I'd bet good money that he drives a Dodge Stratus too. (now...who understood that joke?)

Albert was lamenting the fact that "the first domino falls this summer", meaning the first of his 10 college buddies is getting married. I repeat, the guy is 43. He then went on to blame the women's liberation movement for him being single. I shit you not.

After Albert toddled off to fulfill more stereotypes, we continued on with our new buddy Pete from Toronto on towards Lisbon. Having no tickets to the game didn't turn out to be that bad, because we went to the "Fan Park", which is a huge complex in Lisbon set up for Euro 2004. The security at the Fan Park was, to put it mildly, a little bizarre. The first time we came in, we had our big bags and they let us all through. Adam had a Swiss Army knife, Pete had a whole sandwich making kit which including a massive fucking scimitar-like knife. Then Adam and I left to go reserve some tickets on the train, and when we came back in with our little backpacks they put us through the business. We had bought a bunch of water bottles, and the security dudes unscrewed all of the plastic caps and threw them out. So I was standing there with three open bottles of water. They took away a mug Adam had bought and his sunscreen (his sunscreen!?). It was so random that it was almost funny. My mental image is of the security guys hassling someone about sunscreen bottles while people pour in behind them carrying huge cartoon-like bombs.

Apparently showing up without tickets is common, because there were several thousand English louts dressed to the nines in St. George's crosses who also watched the game at the Fan Park. It was ridiculous. Soooo many English people, and about 50 poor cowering Frenchmen. I learned dozens of new songs and chants, the best of which I will repeat here:

"Who let the Frogs out? Who? Who? Who?"

"Thierry Henry...
Who the fuck's he?"

"You can stick Thierry Henry up your ass,
You can stick Thierry Henry up your ass,
You can stick Thierry Henry
You can stick Thierry Henry
You can stick Thierry Henry up your ass!"
(to the tune of "If You're Happy and You Know It...")

"We hate the French!
We hate the French!
We hate the French!"
(sometimes simplicity is the best)

And my personal favourite...by FAR:

"If it wasn't for the English you'd be Krauts,
If it wasn't for the English you'd be Krauts,
If it wasn't for the English
If it wasn't for the English
If it wasn't for the English you'd be Krauts."

English fans can turn anything into a football chant. In between games they had the "Fan Park dancers", who were basically scantily clad women dancing around with English and French flags. At one point they got three women from the crowd to come up and do karaoke to "I Will Survive". Halfway through the song, I noticed the crowd wasn't singing along. Instead, they had started their own chant...

"Get your tits out...
Get your tits out..."

A classy bunch, those English.

The game itself was amazing, I hope most of you watched it. When England scored the first goal I got a pint of beer splashed all over my legs and I ended up in a very smelly headlock, but it was worth it. The end of the game I won't even talk about...I just can't address it rationally. Maybe later. Maybe when the French are out.

Right after the game we raced to the train station and caught the night train to Madrid. The original plan was to catch a 9:45am train to Barcelona, but today is "everyone takes a train across the country" day in Spain, so all of the trains are booked until 7pm. But that's okay, because there are still many terraces yet unexplored and many beers yet un-drunk.

Hope all is well at home!

Hmmmm...
Going to the absinthe bar instead of having dinner? We'll file that one under "bad idea".

This is how crazy people get started...
When I last wrote (not including the "oh geez my head hurts" post after the absinthe bar), I was just leaving Portugal to head to Barcelona. There was a slight problem in Madrid before I left, however. We were trying to call the hostel in Barcelona, and our phone cards weren't working. So, I decided to use my credit card, because we really needed to get through. Credit card goes in phone, credit card stays in phone. Chomp.

Aaaaaagh!

Not having all that much faith in Spanish technicians, I decided just to cancel the card. Who needs a credit card when they're travelling anyways? If I get stuck without cash, I can barter with my good looks and shapely legs, right? Right?

We got to Barcelona and crashed out for the night. The next morning we met up with Nikki (the next in a long line of travelling buddies) and hit the town. Barcelona is amazing. We walked down La Ramblas (spanish for "the ramblas"...hehehe), and checked out some of the shops in the old town. They have magazine stands everywhere, with a selection of magazines from around the world and more pornography than you could ever possibly want. It's very bizarre. Who decides that they need CD of strange Hungarian porn when they're walking by the Barcelona cathedral?

That night involved boozing in the hostel, watching Germany-Holland (haha, Tim) and going to the absinthe bar with our three new friends from hostel land.

After Barcelona, Nikki and I took the night train to Paris. On the night train, we met Ensar. Ensar is from Toronto. Ensar likes to talk. Ensar has a hostel and a restaurant recommendation for every single city in Europe, and he's very insistent that you follow his advice. Ensar loved Nice because there are "naked Scandinavian chicks all over the beaches". Ensar was headed to Amsterdam, because he had to cleanse his system of all the alcohol he had been drinking with some hash. As I was about to go to sleep, Ensar decided to spend 10 minutes telling me about his favourite movie (Boondock Saints). Ensar soups up cars for a living in Toronto.

As we continue on the trip, the legend of Ensar will grow and grow (like Peterborough Guy or Ted Seto).

Paris was great, much less coated in dogshit than I remember. Nikki got to see all of the tourist attractions, and I got to see England pound the Swiss. We also spent two nights hanging out with my friend Ian from Toronto, which was tons of fun. I didn't know Ian all that well before this trip, but he was in Paris and he spoke English, so that was enough to search him out and meet up with him. Ian is one of those insanely brilliant people, and highly entertaining.

After Paris we came to Nice, down on the south coast of France. Nice is nice (hardy har har), but the hostel we're staying in is absolute shite. We were put in "the chapel", which sounds really nice until you realise it's basically an open air room with a roof and 23 beds. Wonderful security, to be sure. At least it's only costing us around $30CDN a night. Ack! However, it's not the worst hostel I've ever stayed at. That honour would go to a hostel in Woody Point, Newfoundland, where some creepy hippie tried to chase down and kill me and Alex for not eating the pasta he had offered us.

Yesterday we took a day trip to Monaco, which was just ridiculous. Sooooo much money in such a small place. There was a 105 metre yacht moored in the harbour, which we went up to and were promptly shooed away as the riffraff we are. We also went up to the Monte Carlo casino, which we didn't even try to enter. It's a neat place, filled with super fancy cars and super fancy people. At the casino we had great fun playing the "trophy wife or high priced hooker" game. It's like shooting fish in a barrel, because every pudgy old rich guy comes accompanied by a hot, tanned woman. If I ever have money that I don't want or don't need, I'm going to waste it in Monaco.

We hatessss the government workers....
My new goal is to take down the European train infrastructure by taking blatant advantage of my Eurail pass. 22 hours of train travel in a 28 hour period. From Nice to Paris, and then from Paris back through Nice to La Spezia (Italy). Look at a map...it's a fucking long way.

Let me explain.

Before I left, I pulled a "smart Greg" and put my passport through the washing machine. Not a fantastic idea, although it did come out nice and clean. It was kinda mangled, but all of the information was still legible so I thought I could pull it off. To be sure, I went to the Surrey passport office and asked what they thought. The guy there told me not to worry, that I could travel just fine on the passport.

The customs lady at Heathrow had other ideas. She said she had half a mind to send me home, and it was only by her goodwill that I was getting in the country. As an aside, do they actively search for assholes to be customs agents, or does the job just turn you into an asshole? It's one of those chicken and egg questions for the ages.

Once I was in the EU I was good to go, but leaving the EU would prove difficult on the passport. Since the travel plans include Croatia, I decided to have it replaced. I went to the embassy in Paris, and a super nice lady told me she could have it ready for Monday (yesterday) as compared to the 10 business days it normally takes because every single government official has their heads firmly planted up their own asses (guess which part I added...).

Going back to Paris from Nice on Monday didn't work because all of the morning trains were booked, so I went on a night train (missing the England game in the process...ack!). I arrived on a mission. The consular services dept. opened at 9am and I had to catch a 9:34am train to make my connections and get to Italy tonight and meet back up with Adam and Nikki. I got to the embassy at 8:50, all bright eyed and ready to see my government in action. I was at the consular services reception desk at 8:59am, and it wasn't open. That's cool, I thought, it'll be open in a minute. It opened 16 FREAKING MINUTES LATER! 9:15! 15 minutes late! So I got the passport, raced back to the train station and missed my train by 6 minutes. I hate my government.

*NOTE* Hating my government doesn't mean I endorse the absolute atrocity of a conservative majority government. What the fuck are you people thinking? I leave for three weeks and this happens? Stephen Harper has evil eyes. Evil, evil eyes.

All was not lost, however. I got back to Nice and realised that there is a train to La Spezia (where Adam and Nikki are) leaving here at 8:25pm and getting into La Spezia at 2:06am. So it'll be a late night, but at least it saves me from a random sketchy hotel somewhere between Nice and La Spezia by myself.

The hobo's ball
It's been an unforgettable few days...

At the time of my last post, I was just about to hop a train to La Spezia, where I would arrive at the ungodly hour of 2am, meet up with Adam and Nikki and crash for the night. Or so I thought. Turns out Adam and Nikki didn't get my email in time, and their hostel had a 1am curfew, so even if they got it in time it would have done no good. So, I arrived in La Spezia at 2:45am (grumble grumble Italian trains) with no place to stay. I also learned something new and interesting...in small towns, hotels CLOSE late at night. Who knew? So I started the night in a local park, and then fear of getting knifed led me back to the train station, where I enjoyed a surprisingly comfortable 3 hours of sleep on a chair.

In the morning, I met up with Adam and Nikki, as well as Adam's friend James. James had randomly met an American girl named Jennifer, and she was at the hostel when I showed up. Let me tell a couple of stories about Jennifer. First of all, she was on a 9 day European trip, with the goal of seeing every major site in Europe. This means that she spends an average of 2 hours in each town, and then hops on another train to the next place. She was also sleeping in parks and train stations, which would be hypocritical for me to criticize now, but is...shall we say...unadvisable.

The best story, though, happened before I got there. There was a bar in La Spezia named "KKK Bar", with three conspicuously white figures enjoying a pint on the bar's sign. Jennifer was appalled. "I would expect to see stuff like that in Germany, but not here." Uhhh....where is the KKK from again? Sigh. Ammmmericans.

I was a bit worried about doing the Cinque Terra (5 beautiful villages connected by a 12km trail) on my three hours of train station sleep, but I also really didn't want to miss it. I'm SO glad I went. If I were to make one recommendation of all the places I've been so far, it would be there. The villages are amazing, and the trail takes you from sweeping ocean views to vineyards and orchards in a matter of minutes. We took a thousand pictures, so I'd be glad to show you folks when I get back. In between the fourth and the fifth villages, we took a wrong turn up the mountain, and decided to stick it out rather than backtrack and take the easy ocean-side trail to the final village. I still can't figure out if that was a good or a bad decision. On the good side, we saw some amazing sights and we escaped the hordes of tourists that plague the "regular" trail. There were some beautiful little chapels and old monasteries hidden along the trail, as well as some great ocean views. On the bad side, it added three hours and 12 kilometres to our day, a large chunk of that being straight up the mountainside. Overall, I'm pretty glad we took the detour, although I was in a different frame of mind when we were going up.

Once we got back to the last village (Monterosso), we found a little restaurant to have dinner. Little did we know at the time that it would be one of the best meals any of us have ever had. It's impossible to explain just how good it was. The awesomeness of the food was likely influenced by the fact that we were tired and hungry, but it was amazing.

At the train station to go back to La Spezia, James struck up a conversation with an older Australian lady while we were waiting. Turns out she had been invited over to some old guy's villa for the night, but he kicked her out after a few hours. Sketchy. To make things sketchier, she started to hit on James. Apparently there's an Italian card game that she learned where the name of the game roughly translates to "fuck" in English. As she told James, she's pretty good at that game, but she's *much* better at the other fuck game. Eeeeeyikes.

I left La Spezia on Thursday morning, headed for Milan to see Nikki off. We enjoyed Milan, but only had a couple of hours so we didn't really get out of the center of town. Nevertheless, the duomo (cathedral) was very impressive and the gelato was phenomenal. I hopped a train to Florence, intent on finding a place to stay and parking it in a pub to watch the England game.

Little did I know at the time, but June 24th is the Festa di San Giovanni, a huge festival in Florence. What does that mean? No room at the inn for me. I must have asked at 40-50 places, and each one was "completo". I also ran across the Florence homeless shelter, which in hindsight wasn't a bad idea.

My search for shelter took two hours, so I missed the first half of the game. Resigning myself to another train station night, I found a bar showing the game and sat down. I ordered a beer and started chatting with a Portugal fan sitting at my table. In his halting English and my halting French, we figured out that I was an England fan because I'm from an English colony, and he was a Portugal fan because he was from a Portuguese colony (Guinea-Bissau). For some reason this pleased him to no end, so he bought me a beer. Woohoo! After the game, I must have looked very despondent, because he bought me another beer and told me to cheer up. Keep in mind that I hadn't eaten in 9 hours at this point, so I was officially starving, homeless and hammered.

My thoughts on the game:

1) Sol Campbell is the master of the disallowed winning goal. Anyone else remember 1998 against Argentina in extra time?

2) When you are watching the game in Florence, comparing Beckham's penalty to Roberto Baggio doesn't get the uproarious laughter it would get anywhere else in the world. It gets you dark stares and muttering.

3) It was a fantastic game.

4) Owen Hargreaves took a great penalty. I was worried he'd fuck it up.

4) England will win the 2006 World Cup. You heard it here first. Get two more years of international experience on the likes of Gerrard, Rooney, Terry, Lampard etc., capitalise on Owen and Beckham in their prime before each starts to break down, find a benevolent higher power to strike down both Nevilles and they've got it made.

5) It sucks having England knocked out, but at least there are still some exciting teams left in the tournament (Holland, Portugal etc.). Watching Germany and Italy is like watching your own death played in slow motion.

The night didn't turn out to be all that bad. I hung out at the cathedral until about 4am, and there were always people milling around so it felt pretty safe. At about 3:30am I met an Egyptian guy named Assan on the steps of the cathedral, who tried to teach me Arabic. He promised me it's easier to learn than Italian, and all of the waiters in all of the restaurants here are from North Africa, so they'll speak Arabic. I don't know if I believe it, but Assan is a waiter and I might get free wine when I go to his restaurant tonight if I can remember anything he taught me.

I relocated to the train station at sunrise, and slept surprisingly well (again) in an upright chair. This ability to get restful sleep in any situation encourages me, because sleeping in train stations has become a disturbing trend of late.

I think that's it for now. Good god this is a long post. Sorry!

Yeah it´s Slovenia...
Happy Canada Day everyone!

This keyboard has the y´s and the z´s switched, which is way more of a pain in the ass than you might think. So if there are some goofy looking spelling mistakes...I´m verz sorrz.

It´s been a long time since the last update, so this might take awhile. Florence was great, particularly when I had a place to stay and didn´t have to fight the hobos for the most comfortable piece of floor at the train station. We did some museum-y things, including the Uffizi Gallery and the Museo del Bargello. Outside the Uffizi, they have a huge courtyard with statues of various luminaries in Florence´s history. These statues include Galileo, Machievelli, a couple of Medici guys, Amerigo Vespucci and three ninja turtles! That´s right, I got a picture of Leonardo, Donatello and Michaelangelo. Raphael gets no respect at all. Maybe it´s because he quit on the team during TMNT2: The Secret of the Ooze. Stoopid Raphael.

After Florence we went to Venice, which was all kinds of cool. I had heard it was crowded and filled with the stench of fetid canals, but I didn´t really find either to be true. The canals weren´t exactly filled with crystal clear spring water, but it wasn´t that bad. On the first day we went down to the Plaza San Marco, the huge famous square in the center of town. The Plaza is amazing, and incredibly difficult to find. There are signs on virtually every corner of the city with "Plaza San Marco" and arrows. Some are clearly put up by the city, whereas others are spraypainted on plastic or handwritten on cardboard. Most of them send you the wrong way. It´s rather frustrating, but it´s also hilarious. I think I´ll start putting up bogus "Stanley Park this way" signs in Vancouver. It would be kinda fun...directing huge numbers of confused tourists towards the Downtown East Side.

Venice was a great experience...James (of Cinque Terra fame) met up with us again. We enjoyed the wine, the pasta and the gelato...all to gross North American excess. Mmmmm...

After Venice, the true "off the beaten track" part of the trip began. Adam and I took a morning train to Ljubljana, Slovenia, and began the tour of Eastern Europe. All I knew about Slovenia came from my friend "b", a crass loudmouthed ass from Burnaby. b is like a fine wine...it takes time and experience to truly appreciate him. I was expected everyone in Slovenia to be exactly like him. Bearded, swarthy and round, with the amazing ability to spew obscenities and shave his back at the same time. Interestingly enough, it wasn´t anything like that. The people are fair-haired, attractive and friendly. Who knew?

Jokes about b aside, Slovenia was one of the most striking places I´ve seen on this trip. More than anywhere else, it reminded me of home. The train ride from Venice was filled with evergreen forests, beautiful rivers, fields and mountains in the distance. It reminded me of the stretch of the #1 Highway through Abbostford and Chilliwack, only without the cowshit smell and the overwhelming sense of suck. Since I was starting to feel a little homesick for beautiful BC, Slovenia was just what the doctor ordered.

Ljubljana is a cool little town...much smaller than the average European capital. We had a fantastic dinner that seemed expensive in ridiculous Slovenian currency but turned out to be cheap (150 SIT = $1 CDN). Afterwards, we ate gelato (the obsession continues) and walked around the town. The end of the night featured two separate wine bars and a few glasses of top-notch Slovenian wine. Of all the wine I´ve drank on this trip, Slovenian wine is actually my favourite. It´s better than french and italian wine, and drinking Adam´s urine would be better than Spanish wine.

Our second day in Slovenia was spent in Bled, a little mountain resort about 2 hours north of Ljubljana. Trying to fully capture my feelings about Bled would require an epic Alex-style essay (sorry Fro), so I´ll try to keep it short. The town is situated on a mountain lake, with two medieval castles nearby...one on an island in the lake (on an island!) and one on a rocky crag overlooking the town. After walking around the lake, we took a hike up to the Vintgar Gorge, about 5-6 km northwest of Bled. The gorge was a beautiful little hike, and truly made me pine for the beauty of home. We ate baguettes and nutella (breakfast/lunch of champions) overlooking a huge waterfall in the middle of nowhere...I think I´m in love (not with Adam).

After returning from Bled we hopped a night bus down to Split. Although it´s only 450km from Ljubljana to Split, the bus company managed to make an 11 hour ride out of it. Good ´ol eastern european efficiency. Regardless, we arrived safe and bleary-eyed at 6am. One of the neatest things in Europe is the army of old women that meet you at any bus stop, hocking the spare rooms in their house as a great place to stay the night. With no accomodation booked and desperately needing a nap, we chose the least sketchy of the old women and followed her to her house. It turns out to be a pretty sweet deal, as long as hot water showers aren´t a necessity.

Tonight will be dedicated to watching soccer and drinking to celebrate the 137th birthday of our country. We´re hoping to find some other Canadians, or at least some Aussies. They´ll drink to anything.

Greg

Europe with $16.31 in the bank
Hehehe...

Never go on a trip where your finances are even partially reliant on:

a) Untrustworthy people who owe you money
b) Unreliable organizations that owe you money

Thank god for Adam "sugar daddy" Bower who is helping me out until a term deposit gloriously reaches term tomorrow. And he hasn't even asked for sex in return...yet.

Greg

Croatia...or was it Kosovo?
Hey everyone,

When I last left you, Adam and I had started our grand Croatian adventure in Split. Nothing much happened in Split, although we did do a lot of walking around and lamenting that the spots described in our Lonely Planet didn't exist. Turns out we were just morons. We happened on the old cathedral, the tourist info centre and the market area at around 6:58pm...they all closed at 7pm. Oops! Seasoned travellers, we are. Well seasoned.

We took an early morning boat from Split to Hvar Island, one of more popular Croatian islands. We had made a reservation to stay at a guesthouse, only to find out when we got there that it was just some dude's house. His name was Luka Zakaria, so we spent our first two hours in Hvar walking around and asking his name. Everyone we ran into was extremely nice, and extremely helpful in their own way. I say "in their own way" because none of them had any fucking clue where he might live, but tried their best to give us directions anyways. Two old ladies had a little conference, and send their son/grandson along with us to point out the house. We came to a guesthouse run by a kindly old German lady, who told us in no uncertain terms that she was not Luka Zakaria. So, we walked down the road away from the German lady. We came to another place, and they told us it was back the way we came. We turned around and walked back towards the German lady's place, stopping along the way for more directions. Here, a shirtless man in a Speedo (there are startling amounts of this in Croatia) gave us very detailed directions....right back to the German lady's house.

In the end we found the place and went off to explore Hvar. It's an amazing place...with a castle on the hill overlooking the old town, numerous bars and clubs and miles of rocky beaches. A great place to spend a couple of days and do absolutely nothing.

After Hvar, we went to Korcula Island, further south down the coast towards Dubrovnik. The only option was a late afternoon ferry, which meant that we didn't get into Korcula until quite late in the evening. This gave us just enough time to find a reasonably un-sketchy place to stay and sniff out a bar to watch the Euro 2004 final. Greece, baby...Greece! As an editorial aside, losing looks good on the Portuguese. I have no problem with the people or the country, but their soccer team is a bunch of whining, crying, diving fucking babies. Having watched a large portion of their games, I was getting tired of them flopping around all over the place, pulling jerseys, diving in the penalty box and then celebrating when it was all over. Everyone but Figo should be rolled into a giant canvas bag and drowned in the Mediterranean. The shot they showed at the end of the game when Ronaldo was crying into his jersey made me want to dance a jig.

Korcula looked incredible, but we didn't really have time to explore it because the next day we were off to Dubrovnik. We arrived in Dubrovnik in the early afternoon, and asked at tourist information where we might find our guesthouse. The (later to be proved) moronic lady circled a spot on the map, and we dutifully followed it. Like Hvar, we asked some of the helpful and interesting local people to point out where the guesthouse might be. Again, we got sent around in circles, back and forth on the same street by eminently helpful people that didn't want to admit they didn't know where the place was. It turns out we were 1.5km away from the correct street, because the tourist info lady had her head completely up her own ass.

Dubrovnik is one of the most visually striking places I've ever seen. It's an ancient walled city on the banks of the Adriatic, with amazing views from all sides (think Quebec City, but on a larger body of water and without the Rene Levesque statues). We walked around the city on the first night, stopping to sample some of the local beers at a patio or two. At one point, we were passed by a major parade sporting the sign "Canadian Croatian Folklore Federation". The parade basically consisted of a large number of Canadian teenagers dressed up in traditional Croatian garb and looking none too happy about the whole deal. We followed them to the square in front of the old cathedral, where they put on a performance of traditional Croatian dancing. It was really neat, even though all of them were from Ontario. I was hoping at least one or two of the groups would be from BC. The thought of Denis Curman or Ivan Pocrnic dancing a traditional jig in a church square still makes me giggle to myself (sorry to those not from North... a little high school humour).

Dubrovnik was a great experience, but it was definitely the scariest place we had stayed up to that point. The lady had a voice low enough to qualify for the mid-1980's East German women's swim team, and a beard to match. She didn't speak any english, which was cool...but she knew a strange variety of little phrases. "Do you want juice?" was her favourite. The room wasn't all that bad, but the bathroom was what really topped the place off. It was a dank little room with about 2 inches of indeterminable biomass on the floor. You could tell it hadn't been washed since Tito was in power, and you felt that it would have been easier and healthier to wash off in the filthy Adriatic. But, it pales in comparison to what would come in Budapest...

The other story I have in Dubrovnik involves my Quixotic search for a Visa. I had lost it, careful readers will remember, in Madrid about a month ago. I had been playing telephone tag with the Visa people, and eventually settled with them that it would be sent to Dubrovnik on July 5th, the only night we were staying there. When I arrived at the place, it wasn't there, and I couldn't really explain to the lady what I was expecting in the mail because my Croatian was limited to "good", "thank you" and "beer, please". So I phoned them at around 7pm on July 6th, right before we left on our night bus to Zagreb, just to figure out what was going on. The best part of the whole story happened when the guy tried to figure out where I was:

Visa guy: Are you still in Venice, Italy.
Greg: No, that was a week ago. I'm now in Croatia.
Visa guy: Pardon me?
Greg: Croatia.
Visa guy: Sorry sir...where is that?
Greg (dumbfounded): Uhhh...it's part of the former Yugoslavia.
Visa guy: Ohhh...is it Kosovo?
Greg: Yes. I'm calling from Kosovo. I've been bartering cigarettes to the KLA in exchange for my life, and I'm running out of money...so I really need my Visa.

(okay, I *might* not have said that last part)

I never thought Croatia was such an obscure and unknown place. Either Croatia is much further off the beaten track than I thought, or that Visa guy is a complete fucking tool. I think it's door #2.

After being passed over to a superior with opposable thumbs and a decent knowledge of the world, I found out that my Visa had been dutifully sent to Dubrovnik...28 hours late. It arrived at 5pm on July 6th. This was all well and good because I was still in Dubrovnik, but if I had already left I would have been right pissed. Nevertheless, I went back to the guesthouse to pick up my bag and found a brand new Visa there as well. Now I get the sweet thrill of buying things on credit again. Mmmm...credit.

We took an 11 hour night bus from Dubrovnik to Zagreb, which was entirely unremarkable except for the fact that we got to see US Marshals in Croatian and we had our passports checked twice for no discernable purpose. Then, it was a 7 hour train trip from Zagreb to Budapest, which was hella cool. We had our tickets checked 5 times, including 3 times in about 15 minutes. Oh Eastern European efficiency...and I wonder why the west won the Cold War.

Budapest is a great city, very close to what I expected and yet very far away. Today we went to "Marxim", a communist-themed bar close to the centre of Buda. It's filled with old communist memorabilia and kitsch, including an "iron curtain" between each table. Very cool stuff. Tomorrow we're doing a walking tour of Budapest designed to show you what life was like under the communist regime. It features a visit to a flat built in the soviet style, a "spirit tasting" (mmm...) and a visit to the famous statue park on the outside of town. Basically, after 1991, the new government decided to uproot all of the ugly communist statues that used to be all over town and toss them in a park a few kilometres away. Now it's one of the most popular tourist attractions in all of Eastern Europe. I'm very excited...I've seen some great pictures from this particular park.

This is getting embarassingly long, so I'll close with a quick little anecdote about our accomodations in Budapest. When I had said that Dubrovnik was the worst place we had stayed up until now, I had Budapest in mind. It's muuuuuch worse than Dubrovnik. We're staying in a student residence, but I pity the poor students that have to live here year round. I would be doing the old concrete nosedive by October. The room isn't all that bad, but I don't feel safe touching the floor in bare feet. The hallways are long and dark, with the interesting combination of no lights and exposed wiring. You figure that they'd have one or the other, but not both. What are the wires for if there are no lights? The bathrooms are beyond description, and the showers are open pits with no curtains or changing areas. Wooohooo! As much as I may complain, it's actually not that bad. It's very much a part of staying in Budapest, and it completes the "cultural experience" of the place. They even gave us free towels. Adam saw a miniscule little spot of something brown and declared that his had blood on it, but mine was fine. I shined his glass slippers and took the pea out from under his mattress, and he seemed to be fine. =)

Ich bin ein Berliner
This is going to get a little disjointed, because I haven´t yet written about Prague and Budapest. But, having just spent an unforgettable evening in Berlin, I feel compelled to write about it now before the memory fades. I´ll be writing about Prague and Budapest when I get home in two days (two days!!!). However, a favourite story from each place:

Budapest: On the last day we were in Budapest, Adam and I walked up Andrassy Blvd (apparently famous, though you coulda fooled me) to the Heroes Park in the North end of the city. They had some sort of stage set up in the park, and I left Adam taking pictures of random crap as I sniffed out a nice little spot in the shade of a tree to take a fantastic and much needed nap. When I woke up, a pair of performers were onstage... The female performer was doing her best take on Alicia Keys´ "Falling", albeit with a heavy, heavy Hungarian accent. The male performer was beat-boxing in the background. Beat-boxing. In 2004.

Prague: We took a night train into Prague, arriving at the frightening hour of 5:33am. As with all things, this had an unexpected silver lining, as we had the city almost to ourselves for the first few hours. I sat in the main square surrounded by beautiful buildings and monuments, as Adam spent time with his new friend Vyacheslav (it´ll all make sense when I explain it fully...I promise). Prague has a series of ceramic cows all around town, each painted with a different mural. It´s very similar to the moose in Toronto. In the main square sat three or four cows, and one of them had a large mural on its side commemorating the Czech Republic´s gold medal winning hockey team in 1998. As I sat in the square, two guys who were obviously either finishing up a late night or starting an early morning walked by me and the cows. They stopped at the hockey cow, and one muttered under his breath in very clear English "fucking Czechs". I figured that they had to be Canadian, so I started up a conversation with them. The guy who had just lipped off the cow saw my Canucks hat, and immediately followed up with this:

"Why didn´t Marc Crawford put Gretzky in the shootout? We would have won! What the fuck was he thinking?"

I had no response.

Okay, on to Berlin. It was such a wonderful experience taking a German train for the first time on this trip. Particularly after two weeks of Eastern European transportation, German-run trains are a gift from God. If the booklet says you arrive at 6:35, you arrive at 6:35. You don´t arrive at 6:35:04, and you don´t arrive at 6:35:09. For these unforgivable breaches of efficiency, they shoot the conductor.

I arrived in Berlin under grey skies at Ostbannhof Station, the old main station of East Berlin. Berlin is an easy city to navigate, because the Soviets erected a 368m television tower in the middle of the fucking city for no reason at all (how big of a tower do you need to broadcast one channel?). So, no matter where you are in the city, you can navigate by the tower. I was lucky, because my hostel is located right next to the tower, so I knew exactly where to go.

Coming out of the station, I decided I would walk to the hostel, because it didn´t seem that far at all. If Alex still reads this, he should be shaking his head right now, because we made the exact same mistake in Toronto four years ago ("Look, the CN Tower is right there...it can´t be that far of a walk!"). Nevertheless, I set my sights on this giant Russo-Germanic penis and started to walk. It didn´t turn out to be that bad of a walk, and I managed to see some of the "sights" of old East Berlin. I walked most of the way along the main drag of East Berlin, Alles Karl Marx. It was very cool, because most of the buildings on the street are the same buildings that were there 25 years ago. Compared to the opulence seen in the rest of Berlin, it´s something to behold.

After checking in at the hostel, I raced to get to the East Side Gallery before nightfall. It was 7:30pm at this point, and I knew that the gallery wasn´t lit after dark. The East Side Gallery is the largest remaining section of the Berlin Wall, and after the wall was breached it was turned over to artists from all over the world. It was one of the neatest sights I´ve ever seen... The emotion in the artwork was palpable, I was very impressed. Adding to the impact of the art was the fact that the Gallery runs alongside a drab looking highway with drab looking buildings. I kinda regret that my camera had no batteries, so I couldn´t capture any of this for posterity, but I´m also happy that it´s a memory I have all to myself.

Once I had finished at the East Side Gallery, I walked through some of the rattiest sections of old East Berlin. There was one building which looked like it had never been rebuilt after bombing in WWII, which I found strange. Either that or it had just fallen over from years of neglect and Soviet building standards.

At the end of the slums, I found myself surprisingly in the museum district. There are some fantastic museums in Berlin, and I regret that I won´t have time to see any of them. Most of the museums are housed in original buildings that survived the devastation of the Second World War, which sets them apart from almost every other building in Berlin. The museum district led me to Unter den Linden (Linden!), the main street of Berlin. If anyone is interested, #16 Unter den Linden is a Lacoste store...y´know...the little alligator shirts. I had to check. I´d like to think Lacoste is French for "Stanley Cup Champion 2005", but I imagine it´s closer to "the cost".

Unter den Linden has some amazing sights, including numerous museums and the Bebelplatz, home of the first Nazi bookburning in 1933. At the end of the street is the Brandenburg Tor, a massive gate left over from Berlin´s days as a walled city. The Brandenburg Tor is also just a few metres from where the scariest part of the Berlin Wall once stood. This was the famous "death strip", a boulevard of loose dirt and land mines between the two sides. Most people didn´t even get a chance to scale the wall, because they didn´t make it past this strip.

I sat down to eat salami sandwiches in quiet contemplation of the death strip, and then a guy on a saxophone started up right next to me. Upon seeing my Canucks hat, he played the Hockey Night in Canada theme song! This immediately changed my planned contribution from "fuck off you old man" to 4 Euros. I chatted with him for a while and found out that he lived 14 years in Etobicoke, during which time he was a (shudder) huge fan of the Leaves.

After the Brandenburg Tor I walked down to Potsdammerplatz, which used to be the busiest intersection in the entire world before WWI. It declined a bit between the wars, but was still a bustling place of business before the death strip ran right through it and the platz was filled with landmines. As you might expect, this stemmed the flow of business and passenger traffic just a little bit (what if we put landmines in Metrotown? Be still my beating heart...). After the wall came down, major architects from around the world were invited to design buildings for the new Potsdammerplatz. Now it´s busy again, and ringed with some of the more impressive buildings in all of Europe.

From Potsdammerplatz I took a random sideroad towards Checkpoint Charlie (to be explained in a minute). It took me a good 2-3 minutes before I realised that the ratty looking wall on the south side of the street was actually a large surviving section of the Berlin Wall. Crazy. This one wasn´t decorated with beautiful murals, but rather had the angry graffiti of thousands of East Germans all over it. It had a large metal grating in front of it so people couldn´t chip off souvenirs, and couldn´t add to the graffiti. This street was a little creepy, as it was also right next to the Topography of Terror, an open air exhibit on Nazi war crimes housed in the old Gestapo building. Though that may not seem like much, it´s very very creepy to walk by it in the dead of night when you´re all alone.

The final stop on my random Berlin tour was Checkpoint Charlie, which was a famous point of communication and movement between the East and the West portions of Berlin. This was the place that the two occupying powers would do their prisoner exchanges, and where most of the stories about espionage and general Cold War era excitement come from. The real Checkpoint Charlie was destroyed long ago, but they reconstructed a couple of guard towers to give the impression that it still somewhat exists. Now it´s populated entirely by souvenir stands hocking fake Russian and DDR stuff, which still looks incredibly cool regardless (fluffy Ruskie hat, anyone?).

Right next to Checkpoint Charlie was a little curry house that was still open, despite it being quite late at night. So, I got to see the name of this place displayed in all of its neon glory...Checkpoint Curry. Even thinking about it now, I´m still giggling. It´s funny on about four different levels. I always thought that "Curry in a Hurry" at the PNE would be my favourite humourously named curry house, but now I think it has some serious competition. I´m going to need to give this some thought in the coming weeks...I don´t want to make a rash decision.

Sorry if this one was long-winded and boring, I had such an interesting night that I wanted to record it in very specific detail. This was more of a selfish entry, but ha!...you read it anyways!

As a random aside, as I sit in the lounge of this hostel listening to the conversation from the couches a few feet away.... Are there more American travellers than any other nationality, or are they all just so fucking annoying that you just THINK they´re everywhere?

Wow...
Accessing my blog is now forbidden from this computer, because I used the word "Gestapo" in my last post. I guess it makes sense in Germany...but wow.

How much do I hate my Law, Legislation and Policy class?

Thu, 21 Oct 2004 18:46:46 GMT

I spent most of the class setting up this journal, and trying to restrain myself from launching my coffee cup at the prof. No point and no structure make Greg...something something.

Go crazy?

Don't mind if I do!!!