The 5 senses

We come to you as 4 men in need. Life here at our flat has taken a turn for the worst - our light bulb in the kitchen burnt out and we don't know how to replace it... on the bright side, at nighttime the kitchen looks a lot cleaner!! There was a "leak" somewhere in our apartment, which was luckily covered by insurance and we have been recently invaded by legions of ants.

So what am I asking for?? - should we or shouldn't we drop 75$ CAD to go to the biggest thing to hit Europe since Small Pox.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsmv_nvqyQs&feature=related

limited amounts of sleep

alright, so, egypt. I never thought i'd be happy to return to 2nd world hungary but after my recent journeys through parts of 3rd world egypt i'm quite happy to trade one for the other. its not that egypt was bad necessarily, parts were truly incredible (luxor temple at night being my absolute favourite) and should absolutely be experienced by everyone with the means to get there. Its just that its so, so, umm... different? I'm not sure how better to describe it. like, downtown cairo is heavy with car exhaust, traffic congestion, smells of decaying organic matter of various origins. but for all the filth, the people i found were so friendly, and so inviting and not just so they could try and sell me their wares. as an example, when lauren finally flew in, our first egyptian experience was to the Cairo McDonalds (one of many) for a McArabia sandwich (really tasty, highly recommended). We befriended the employees there and the next night we were stopped up the street from the same McDicks by one of the employees who mopped the floor where we sat. I was genuinely taken back, because at first i did not recognize this friendly egyptian and secondly I attempted to ignore him because i thought he was trying to drag me to his cousins shoe store, but he was just really happy to see us again.

that being said, when the discussion was around money, like how much for a cab, how much for dinner, how much for these earrings (not that I bought any, but from how i witnessed lauren operate with the jewelers), how much for this bottle of water, how much for a camel ride, on and on and on it gets really exhausting. tack on top the enormous supply of taxi drivers everywhere all offering rides and stopping and honking and following you down the street, and the same guys offering camel rides, horse rides, felucca rides, and children selling postcards, alabaster pyramids and scarabs and camels, painted papyrus, and carpets of all things (i wonder where the authentic egyptian 1000 thread count cotton sheet store was?) sightseeing Egypt can be extremely exhausting. So, it was really good that lauren and i got the temples and pyramids and museums out of the way and then on to the beach for five nights to relax. incredible.

We finally got to dahab and enjoyed scuba diving (I got my PADI), waterskiing (lauren tore it up so good we got the privilege of riding around in the owners sweet wake boarding boat while this brit did wild flips and stuff to laurens excitement), and i attempted to windsurf (though the wind was quite strong, my sail was too big, my board not bouyant enough for my size so i spent most of the time drinking salt water and drifting out to see until a blue eyed egyptian named Said from an hour south of Alexandria saved me in his dinghy). The bedouin dinner, with a camel ride, a hike up a mountain for some important deep conversation, dog chewed chicken and potatoes which i devoured was at first good, then shitty as we contemplated the safety of consuming bedouin prepared food, then (for me) marvelous when I ate an entire pot of potatoes and chicken and rice and veggies and then a pretty chill ride in the back of an 80s toyota pickup underneath the stars.

all in all: great trip. Interesting country. I don't need to go back anytime soon.

Robbery

I've been robbed. Robbed of one hour of sleep. Daylight savings is over and my biological clock is now in disagreement with the actual time. I got lucky though, because that meant the trams start working earlier, allowing me to avoid taking a rip-off of a taxi ride home. It's 5:10 a.m. right now and I just got back from Club Play. I had heard and read that Hungary is home to some of the most beautiful women in the world. The past four hours confirmed this. In the most objective, unbiased, and serious manner, I can say that Budapest is home to the prettiest women around.

And now, time to get a few hours of sleep.

ATTN: look after your coffee machines

Starbucks is a little coffee chain which originated within dogsled distance from Canada in the Northwestern United States. Some people have toyed with controversial terms such as "cult-like following" and "home away from home". This very tiny, unpopular coffee pourer made a lot of people very rich, very quickly when its stock price like totally went up a lot. Now I am no scientist, heck, I can barely make scrambled eggs, but I still think it is kind of ironic that they have been slowing making alot of people a little less wealthy, one coffee at a time...

I'll just have a coffee thanks.

So what?! it is only a coffee???? - common words for rookie coffee drinkers. I am very sry to blog that we lost a good friend on the weekend. She never complained, always cleaned up after herself and never judged us when we raided the kitchen for a midnight snack. It has been a very hard 3 days, but after a lovely afternoon at Capitalism's greatest creation, we are pleased to announce a new addition to our family.

Strength and honor.

Fifty-one-percent

That's all I need to pass my courses, and that's sort of what I shot for while studying for the three mid-terms I had this week. This has definitely been the least stressful mid-term week ever, and damn it feels good.

In other news, my 10-day trip included visits to Maastricht (4 days with a day in Brussels, Belgium), Bolsward (2 days), and Barcelona (4 days). The former two are in opposite corners of the Netherlands.

Overall, a great trip. I stayed with Ahamad (friend from Queen's) in Maastricht, met my two Norwegian friends and made one more (Norwegian friend, that is!), saw my Aunt and her family, my cousin's cute baby, an Iraqi-Dutch guy at a bar, who was wrongly imprisoned four times and now has psychological problems, and finally met Tristan in Barcelona where we met all sorts of of people, including a guy that happened to work with one of my good friends who was interning at Microsoft.

More interesting coincidences: the guy that owns the hostel and his cousin were Lebanese, and Roland, a friend on exchange in Budapest happened to be in Barcelona at the same hostel we were at.

A happy return home!

Finding your way back to PB in Hungary can be depressing. Just ask Tristan.

I encountered a similar unwelcome surprise coming back home. I WAS LOCKED OUT OF THE FLAT. My deadbolt key doesn't work, and to my surprise, our landlord had come to fix our laundry machine and turned both locks on the way out. With Mike cruising the Nile, Tristan and Rock on siesta in Spain, and the harsh night breeze in my face ... I had to call my landlord to have him let me in the next day. Instead of a putting my feet up in the flat, I had to spend the night in a hostel.

But Ireland was WORTH IT! Great country, great friends, GREEN HOLIDAY.

Here's a brief recap of what made the holiday special for me.

1. Free Titanic Tour in BelfastWe got to see where the Titanic was built in Belfast. Of course, it's not there anymore ... it's in the bottom of the Atlantic. But the guy giving the tour had some great stories - he loved the Titanic more than I love taffy ... and I'm a man who enjoy's his taffee.

2. Partying it up in Dublin.

First of all ... that's not coffee in those cups ... it's SECRET AGENT BEER. Whitty, weren't we? Dublin was an entire weekend of similar shinanagins. We were denied a "free dublin tour" because our group was too large, so Louie (below mark's crazy hat) acted as a tour guide and gave us a surprisingly accurate 2 hour tour of the city before hitting the guinness storehouse. We took over the hostel common room (40 of us, and 2/3/4 ... others), got kicked out of st. stevens green because one HERO tried to crack open a beer in front of a cop, and brought life to every pub we stepped in to. Not to mention ...

3. ALMOST THROWING DOWN WITH A GANG of 16!! year old's outside the hostel on Paddy's day.
8 of these clowns thought it would be great to come from the convenience store down the street (no doubt where they were asking tourists to buy beer FOR their underages asses) and pick a fight with the 8 of us chilling outside the hostel. Pretty sure they didn't know we had 30 odd rowdy mates downing beers inside. Their grand opening? "You guys are GOBSHITES". The last time I heard that was from the old BBC show father ted. (for those of you who have seen the show, I told them to "feck off" then casually sipped my "DRINK!!")

They escalated things, slapping and shoving a few of us, then one of them took a cheap shot to the face on Craig. I'm pretty sure if some cops weren't approaching to break things up things would have gone VERY sour. The only reason we didn't want to engage was that are SMALLEST guy was around the size of their goliath.

Plus we outnumbered them 4 to 1 ... good odds for any GAEL.

Sorry for taking so long to post, but my first midterm was today. When I wasn't procrastinating preparing for that, I was too busy watching the NCAA tournament.

I love Ireland

I love Ireland. Beautiful country, beautiful culture. My belfast experience was republican. I spent time at Kelly Cellar's with Trevor and we had the absolute pleasure of drinking multiple irish beers, conversing with hilarious belfasteners (?), watching Ireland beat Scotland in the 6 Nations cup, listen to real irish folk music from people who aren't paid to play, they just show up, and doing it all in the oldest bar in belfast (est. 1720) where the floors and bar are original and it was the location where Wolf tone and Something McCracken planned their revolt against the english for which they were subsequently hanged in 1798. I heard that one of the reasons the irish weren't so successful was cause many of their revolts and uprisings were planned in pubs.

Dublin was awesome. It was great to run into pretty much everyone in Commerce in a hostel on sunday night. Tristan and i broke off to listen to live music at The Quay in temple bar and peak to some people from around the world. Tristan and i have this tendency to cozy up to little old ladies at bars. haha. not sure why, i guess cause they're just really excited to talk to young men. We did this at legends on St. Patty's day to great success. they all bought us beer and got us pissed. we couldnt' handle the crowds for the parade so we peaced out to Malahide for the day and drank cappucino and talked about one day owning yachts from money working this summer. i left dublin today and took a bus to Galway on the west coast cause my flight to cairo was moved back. I got here, checked into a hostel, bought the Canon G10 I've been obsessing about, rented a bike and travelled all over Galway taking pictures of the countryside, the ocean, the cliffs, and the people out on a bright clear day in usually rainy Galway. I'll upload my favourite shots later. My dad BDAY is today, I think hes like 52 or something incredible like that. I went out and got him a score card from the Galway Golf Club, as requested ;)

You won't hear from me for a while. egypt is coming soon and i cant wait.

Hello from Maastricht

I'm in the land of the dutch enjoying a cold Guinness with Ahmad at Shamrock, an Irish pub. I'm on my Nokia E71 and managed to pick up some free Wifi. It's Maastricht till the 16th, Bolsward for two days to visit my aunt, and then I'll be meeting Tristan in Barcelona on the 18th for 4 nights - no St. Patty's in Dublin for me, thouugh I hope the guys have a blast there.

I am a Dreamer

"It wont be easy, you'll think it's strange when I try to explain how I feel..."

So "whats up" with this Twitter thing anyways, all I keep hearing from these dodgy gossip websites that Mike checks regularly is Twitter me this, Tweeeeter me that... so I joined. Don't worry I am not a follower, nor am cheating on you guys - Twitter is in a totally different area code, so you can forget about writing me all that hate mail. But if you must, plz put "My faather levt me Biliones, I neede yur help" in the subject line, so they go to my special "urgent inbox". I am just doing some "research" on how this silly little backyard operation we call the internet is radically changing the life of lego and lemonade that I once used to enjoy - without virtually telling everyone about it.

So Twitter, "what are you doing" is the potentially life non-altering question it poses to all the brave and noble laureates is has so tactfully recruited. So I pondered... for about 2 minutes, while I was making my instant coffee... who on earth cares about, "what you are doing", why would I ever want to know, or even bother to ask... what a silly question!! - wait, stop the press, hehe, I mean, someone bend the fiber optic cable that sits miles under the ocean, I just thought of something...

What do you say to someone, after looking at the floor, pretending to talk on your cellphone or yawning at critical points has failed you!!! - Oh Hey!! Whats up?? - Hmmmm I was born at night... but it wasnt last night - isn't "Whats up?" interchangeable with "Hows it going?", "Whats shakin?", "Hows life treatin ya?", "Is that spinach in your teeth?" - and if those all equal pi, then pi must be equal to "What are you doing??!!!" - so we have a verdict, mail it in, hehe, publish the post - Twitter allows you to outsource the tedious task of being involved in peoples lives - brilliant.

Tweet. Tweet.

If any of you read this far and are still wondering what is up with that picture... you should have read my Twitter.

Some thoughts on facial hair...

I really really really don't want to write this essay on a presentation I did in The Art of Persuasion. I had to give reasons why Barack Obama's Inauguration Address was of an influential nature. Though I LOVED creating and presenting my findings I can't stand this two thousand word paper I now have to write. Factor in the test for E-Commerce, another essay for Globalization of World Politics, assignments I have neglected to do for Corporate Environmental Management and that I will be taking two weeks away from school to drink heavily in Ireland and frolic amongst the pyramids of Egypt I am much more inclined to write a blog post about this than actually do something about it. My behaviour seems weird to me because of all the e-books I've been skimming over on how to be more disciplined, and focus on tasks, and commit to the finished product, and self-motivation blah blah blah that I'm not able to push myself through, jack myself up, and get this shit over with so I can focus on more important things, like friends and Slovenian blueberry liquor and Jim Rohn videos (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2AyudSJl_s&feature=related). Its not so much that I'm not learning, I am, or that I don't like learning, I do, its more that I don't want to waste time doing stupid stuff. I honestly feel like I gain more out of it by putting it into a blog post. Perhaps this will be homework of the future. Perhaps its not so much the information you retain but how much you let that information shape your opinion of things, your attitude toward life, and the impact of those things you are taught on your feelings that is really important. Really though, I'm just trying to justify writing a blog post when I should be working diligently on a couple reports that will be skimmed over, and marked half-heartedly for a report card that means absolutely nothing.

It took this presentation though to make me really believe in Barack Obama's "Yes we can" gambit. The words in his Inauguration speech were chosen very deliberately to evoke emotions in his audience at home and around the world to the real and imposing challenges facing everyone today. There were many things that, after studying it, I really appreciated but my favourite excerpt would have to be his little bit where speaking of the young age of America, he says, "...in the words of Scripture, the time has come to put aside childish things." To juxtapose Borat: Wa-wa-wee-wa! Obama basically just slandered... no, umm... disciplined the behaviour of the entire American populace and used God to do it. It says more than just You have been immature but that This behaviour is no longer acceptable and will not be tolerated anymore. To me, that's just awesome. It's more uplifting than it is demeaning and I believe it is exactly what the world needs to hear and what it wants to hear. In a world where so much is changing so fast (if you don't believe me, check this vid out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL9Wu2kWwSY) I do think its time for everyone to buck up and grow some facial hair, figuratively speaking (though for the last couple weeks I've taken this literally). I guess you could say he's persuaded me. And for those who might be wondering, the beard is staying.