Eppic Thoughts

Calgary Fun

2011-07-03T18:16:00.001-07:00

Canada Day Parking

2011-07-01T19:43:00.001-07:00

Parking the car overnight on the Prime Minister of Canada's driveway by request.

Canada Day

2011-07-01T11:25:00.001-07:00

Rest stop

2011-06-30T15:00:00.001-07:00

New toy

2011-06-20T15:10:00.001-07:00

Testing blogging from my phone.

Actual Food

2011-06-20T06:57:00.000-07:00

This weekend we were trying to get Nate to eat his lunch, but he wasn't interested. Instead he was busy acting out an elaborate portrayal of eating an imaginary ice cream cone, complete with exclamations of how good it tasted.

Me: "Nate, your ice cream cone is imaginary, would you like some actual food? Mum, has some actual food for you."

Nate's face lights up and he looks over to Sara.

Sara lifts up Nate's fork with the same piece of salad on it that has been there for the last ten minutes.

Nate (downcast): "Nate no like actual food."

It's all fun and games until someone does a Hitler salute

2011-06-07T06:25:00.001-07:00

I need to start this post with a disclaimer: Nate often does strange things for which we can find no explanation.

For example, a couple of months back he used to, on quite regular basis, randomly break from eating his meal and announce, "Nate do this." At which point he would commence to very precisely move his arms up and down opposite of each other. What made the behavior all the more bizarre was that he would do it very ... very ... slowly. As a guest who witnessed this pointed out, "It seems improbable that a two year old would do that." (In particular a very active and enthusiastic two year old.)

Just yesterday we were eating supper and he put his foot up and onto the table so that the tips of his toes were pointed at a grain of rice that had fallen off his plate. When told that feet do not go on the table, he replied that his foot was a bird eating at a bird feeder. With admirable lack of laughter we calmly pointed out that regardless of what he was pretending his foot was, it should not go on the table.

This morning we were calmly eating breakfast, everything normal, when Nate stopped, said, "Mom do this", and proceeded to do what appeared to be a perfect Hitler salute. Naturally, being the good spouse that I am, I began to laugh out loud. Nate joined in the laughter and when the laughter had died down stated matter of factly, "This make Dad happy." Oh oh. I just know this is going to come back to haunt me the next time I'm at the playground and bump into that Dad I really don't know.

Future Consumer

2011-05-28T08:52:00.000-07:00

We ran out of orange juice at breakfast this morning. Nate immediately goes, "Buy more!" It's amazing how fast they catch on to how western culture works.

Theological Discussions with Two Year Olds

2011-05-28T08:45:00.000-07:00

Nate unprompted while eating breakfast, "Nate thank Jesus give me two eyes."

"Yes, Nate, that's a good thing to thank Jesus for. Having two eyes is great, because now you have depth perception."

"Nate no eat Jesus."

"Yes, Nate, we don't eat Jesus... well, actually we kind of figuratively... never mind, let's just leave it at not eating Jesus."

Passions

2011-05-19T11:20:00.000-07:00

When Nate wakes up, the first thing he asks is to go outside, either to play in the sandbox or to eat outside. He loves his sandbox. Unfortunately that love can be evidenced by sand strewn in patches across our entire backyard. We've been waging a slow campaign, with little obvious results, to get him to keep the sand in the sandbox. I didn't think anything had sunk in until yesterday.

Yesterday, Nate and I went to watch some construction vehicles doing work up our street. Nate watched for sometime, happily naming and pointing out all the different types of construction vehicles. We watched for sometime, when suddenly he began to get excited about something, gesturing and yelling loudly. It took me a while to figure out what was going on over the din of the construction equipment, but eventually I managed to make out that he was trying to tell the construction workers that the sand they were working with needed to stay in the sandbox. (If only he was that passionate about following rules himself.)

Little Planets

2007-02-05T12:43:00.000-08:00

I find this photo effect completely mesmerizing. Art meets a heavy dose of math.

Stereographic Projections - Seb Przd

How To Eat Food

2007-02-02T06:40:00.000-08:00

An excellent article on food and the American diet. If the article's too long, skip to the end for the tips.

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

Unhappy Meals - Michael Pollan - New York Times

India: First Thoughts

2007-01-09T06:00:00.000-08:00

Ed: For those of you who don't know, I am in India to celebrate Minal's brother's wedding. The decision came last minute and the confirmation that I could go (in the form of a visa and later plane tickets) came even later, so if the fact that I am in India comes as a surprise to you, don't feel bad, it still comes as a bit of a surprise to me.

It is no wonder that Hindus and therefore the overwhelming majority of Indians believe in reincarnation and concern themselves with finding harmony, because to experience India is to experience life. Not life of the individual, as we so readily picture in the west. Not the single path of our existence moving via our own decisions from birth towards death. But all of life, humanity, paths overlapping. In an instant both life and death and everything in harmony.

It isn't that I am in a highly philosophical mood. It is not that I believe in reincarnation, I don't. It is the fact that to be aware at all while in India is to come face to face with all stratus of life and points in them.

To only show you a piece of the larger whole, as I tried to piece that last sentence in my mind, there was a servant mopping the floor at my feet, very probably not literate, while I sat formulating words to print on a computer screen for you to read.

That illustrates a bit of the closeness of life in India, but to try and illustrate the layers I will try to say something of the depth. We are by no means staying with one of the richest families in India and our servants are by no means make up the poorest. To say that someone is not literate in Canada places them at the very bottom of our social hierarchy, in India the hierarchy expands further. I do not know the back story of the cleaning boy, but as Steve and I took a walk during our first day he shared with me a story about the cook. The road we were on was paved, but a good portion of the sides were made up of fresh gravel. As we walked, we would pass by workers, entire families of them. The work was divided by ability, grandmothers pushing carts with tar and younger members doing more of the physical work itself along the shoulder. On either of side of the road were residential apartment buildings, exactly like the ones we were staying in, but at one point a gap of bare ground appeared and in that spot was an entire village camped out. It was the worker's camp and amongst the makeshift tents (a tarp and two sticks) children played. This type of life was apparently the kind our cook had come from. Saved from carrying heavy loads on her head to construction sites by the relative luxury of cooking someone else's diner.

I am describing my experience using broad strokes, but to add finer details I will try to describe the drive we went on through the city on our first night. Describing driving in India is an interesting endeavour, because it is quite different than anything you might encounter in our very regimented West. Perhaps the simplest way to imagine it is to imagine people walking through a crowd. The navigation is seemingly complex, there are no direct paths and specified directions of movement and yet our brain handles the navigation process easily, seemingly without thought. This is very similar to driving on the streets, except for in addition to people walking, you have cars, people pushing tables with various goods to sell, large buses, many scooters, bikes, motorcycles and three wheeled taxis, the occasional camel driven cart, goat herder and goats, wandering cows and maybe even a cripple crab-walking across the street. Now add the sound of constant honking, because this is how vehicles communicate their presence, and you begin to have an idea of what it is like. Driving at night through busy portions of the city, as I did on my first night, intensifies this experience. As we drove, the sights whipping past, the people weaving through, it began to pick up a rhythm. Much like the music of India, seemingly disjoint at first but as the layers built, fitting together and fitting inside each other naturally. The stories of life mimicked this pattern. Couples on scooters and motorbikes, the man staring forward concentrating, the woman relaxed on the back, leaning against the man, sari colourful and swaying in the breeze of their curved and darting trajectory through the gaps in traffic. Sometimes families, the same as the couples, but as the scooter pulls even just before the pass, the glimpse of a young child straddled in the middle, secure between its parents. Here life is full, young and filled with expectation. To the side of the road, store fronts different in colour and wares, some for the very rich, some just a cart sitting on the shoulder. These passed in a regular pattern, constant but changing, but interleaved were occasional fires, warmth in the cool night for those without homes, nearby children grouped, engaged in the various universal activities of childhood. Here life, still full, is connected through a thinner thread. These juxtapositions continued as we travelled and as the parts began to blur in their repetition, India began to take shape. The glimpses of individual lives began to add up into a larger picture of life as a whole.

2006 Lists

2007-01-03T11:59:00.000-08:00

A few random lists for your enjoyment:

Things to do at the end of the year

Make year end lists
Plays games of oneupsmanship, with the Allen brothers, while in a hottub
Celebrate

My Top Albums

(According to Last.fm)

Kings of Convenience - Riot on an Empty Street (True, I overplayed this)
Jack Johnson - On and On (I had no idea)
The Zutons - Who Killed the Zutons? (Was clued in by David and Dan)
The Arcade Fire - Funeral

And the real reason I made this post, I found the following very enjoyable to discover

Most Viewed Flickr Photos

Photo of a Swedish kid's boxers (Context)
Photo of myself in a wetsuit

Yes, that's correct, of all the photos I have in my account the second most popular is one of myself in a wetsuit, which leaves photos such as this one, gathering dust at #179. Perhaps the title, "Wetsuit pose", gathers a lot of search hits. I hope everyone finds what they're looking for in 2007. Have a great year!

In Other News

2006-12-22T06:55:00.000-08:00

I enjoyed the title of the news post from which this excerpt comes:

The nightclub owner appeared totally at home on the dance floor, basking in the admiring glances of his pupils.
...
For "Danny J" is in fact Corporal Daniel James, the soldier accused of spying for Iran while working as intrepreter and aide to General David Richards, the commander of Nato forces in Afghanistan.

The 'spy' who danced the salsa | News | This is London

I'm beginning to concur with Neil Gaiman, who upon learning of the circumstances surrounding the mystery of the Bishop and his missing memory as well as the news articles involving Russian spies and Polonium posioning, had this to say:

... I am beginning to suspect that whoever is currently writing the world, or at least the English bit of it, is starting to plunder cheap fiction for ideas.

Neil Gaiman - Neil Gaiman's Journal: December 2006

Closing the case

2006-12-11T08:33:00.000-08:00

I won't bore you with an outline of how it happened or who was involved, since apparently I was the only one not aware of the facts surrounding Fifi's sudden appearance and then subsequent disappearance (I have even been led to believe that the knowledge was so far reaching that people I have never met, were somehow aware of what was happening). At any rate, congratulations on a prank well executed.

One of the kidnappers has confessed to me and so she will be rewarded with a candle lit dinner, as promised. The primary request of the kidnappers was a photo of myself standing sideways behind streetlight, which I have included within this post.

Standing sideways behind a streetlight

Since I have so greatly enjoyed this whirlwind plot I have been taken on, I'm also including some requested pictures. The two most strongly requested photos by those hearing the ransom demands were a baby photo of myself and a photo of myself dressed as a ninja at Portage and Main (unfortunately the smoke bomb I threw somewhat obscures the photo), so here you are.

A young Mr. Epp

Ninja at Portage and Main

Reward!

2006-12-05T07:03:00.000-08:00

I will be posting pictures from the "C" is for Christmas party shortly, however a much more urgent and unfortunate task demands my attention at present. At some point during the party a daring kidnapping was undertaken and now Fifi is missing. In her place was left this ransom note.

Shortly after the discovery of her dissapearance, an anonymous phone call was made that was tracked to the west side of the city. The phone call left a series of conditions to be met, the nature of which cannot be revealed at this moment, which are feverishly being worked on from this end.

I would like to take a moment and speak directly to the kidnappers. In the short three months that I have come to know Fifi, she has come to mean a great deal to me. Therefore, I would ask that you take great care to make sure that Fifi comes to no harm.

Last photo of us together

However, before I go through with the actions requested of me, I must have assurance from the kidnappers that Fifi is still alive and unharmed. As such, I will need a photograph of Fifi taken beside a green apple, to insure that photo was taken after this request was made. Also, I will need the picture sent via the email address that was mentioned in the phone call, so I know I am not dealing with an imposter who has purchased a replica of Fifi at a store.

To the general public, I am offering a reward if you can orchestrate the safe return or provide information leading to the safe return of Fifi. The reward I am offering is to prepare and serve a candle lit dinner for two, yourself and a person of your choosing*

Little is known of the events surrounding the kidnapping, but I will try to set out what I do know in the hopes that it may be of help. During the party Fifi mingled with guests and sat on her favourite pillow (shown below) in the corner of the room.

The empty pillow

The last known photo of Fifi was taken at 7:56:38 PM. It is estimated that the dissapearance happened shortly thereafter. If anyone has further information pinpointing the time of the event or any suspicious behaviour seen during the party, please contact me.

Last known photo

* You are responsible for procuring the person of your choosing. I would ask that that person also be willingly present (I do not encourage any further kidnappings). In the absence of a second party, I would be more than willing to enjoy dinner with Fifi's rescuer.

Somewhat Random

2006-11-23T07:35:00.000-08:00

Since it's been a while since I last posted, I offer you a picture with a rainbow in it.

Dogs vs Cats

2006-10-17T06:35:00.000-07:00

The dogs versus cats debate is a classic. Here's a story to add to the brew.

After a disabled woman's cat started a house fire, her specially trained dog came to the rescue, then died trying to help the cat still in the house.

ABC News: Dog Saves Owner, Dies Trying to Save Cat

Befitting A Princesss

2006-10-05T21:45:00.000-07:00

Being the pampered pet that she is (not suprising given her heritage), I've always suspected that Fifi lived a fairly posh previous life. Today those predictions seemed to be confirmed, when, upon arriving home, I discovered a pillow complete with tassles and pink sequens spelling out "Fifi" stuffed into our mailbox. Below is a picture of Fifi's honourary spot in her basket atop the fridge, now with her brand new pillow.

Fifi's New Pillow

A New Place

2006-10-05T14:49:00.000-07:00

One of the reasons for my general busyness as of late, has been adjusting to the bachelor life. For those of you who haven't met my new roommates, I'll introduce you.

They are:

and

Adrian

I couldn't have asked for two better roommates and for the few moments that we are in our place together during the day, we are usually distracted from doing anything useful by joking around and having an all out good time. As evidenced by last night's impromptu techno mix down session (think Strongbad's "The System Is Down" times ten).

To inaugurate our place, we had a little house warming party. We were truly honoured to have as many of our good friends as we did come out. Thanks to all of you, it made for a good night. Adrian, Ed and I have officially stopped accepting any more friendships until we can find a bigger place or build an extension to our balcony.

Our Spacious Abode

A Packed Landing

I left my camera lying around at the party so that others could document the events and I put the results in a photoset.

I had the opportunity to thank most of you in person for the wonderful house warming gifts you gave, but there is one thank you I have yet to offer. The Monday morning after the party, I was astonished to find something pink and furry in my suit jacket pocket. Along with this unexpected pet, came adoption papers for a little dog named Fifi. At first I was a little worried she would be high maintenance (judging by the pink boa), but that concern soon became unfounded as I came to realize what a wonderful pet she was. So a big thank you to the anonymous previous owners.

Fifi and myself

Milestones

2006-10-04T12:34:00.000-07:00

It's been a while since I've been able to do an event based post, and a lot has happened since then. One of the biggest things to happen was Stephen and Minal's wedding ceremony. What follows are a few highlights from the colourful reception that followed.

The Happy Couple

The First Dance

Becky and Lizzie's Dance

Geoff and Theresa's Waltz

Payal's Dance

Galina and My Salsa

A more in depth view can be found by checking out the photo sets of Kyla, Sara and myself.

While the wedding of Stephen and Minal was obviously the celebration of a large milestone in their life together, it was also the occasion for a much smaller milestone for Geoff and also myself.

You see, it was pretty much exactly a year ago minus one week from the reception, that found Geoff and myself on the occasion of celebrating his birthday at the Empire. Things proceeded as they did normally for us on such occasions. We got up on the dance floor and acted like fools (Note: Apparently some things never change) and girls, heaven knows why, would come up and begin dancing with us. This time, however, something was different, one of the girls invited myself and, primarily, Geoff to come up and try salsa dancing with her. At any rate the girl had some effect on Geoff and by the end of the night had him convinced to go across the street to Ted Motyka's Dance Studio for drop-in lessons sometime.

Shortly thereafter, Geoff and I made good on our endeavour and showed up for lessons. The prospect was quite intimidating, our ability to make fools of ourselves on the dance floor did not directly translate into being able to master even the basics of latin and ballroom dancing. This disconnect became all the more readily apparent when we danced with beautiful women, specifically Galina, who knew what they were doing and therefore how far we fell short. This, however, made it all the more of a challenge for us and it was during this time that Geoff and I would have a conversation that became quite routine.

The pattern would go something like this. Geoff and I would see someone doing something with ease (with said beautiful women) which was quite impossible for us, and we would then pause and look at the other with the mutual understanding that it was both very impressive and something which we wanted to do ourselves. Then without fail, either Geoff or I would say, "In a year that will be us", and we would smile, partially, I think, because we didn't fully believe it.

Getting ready for our first public dance performances, at Stephen and Minal's wedding, it was then a pleasant surprise to realized that, the week after our performances we would hit the one year mark for our craze of all things dancing. Our progress had shifted so gradually, as it does when you you are a part of it, that I couldn't pinpoint exactly when we left the "that will be us" to "that is us" stage, but none the less it was nice to realize it had happened.

So then, to all of you who dream, and I would hope that would be everyone of you. Hopefully this can be a bit of encouragement to reach out and achieve those goals.

Ed: I blame the length of time since I've lasted posted, for the build up of sappiness. I've let it all out now. Future posts should be relatively safe.

The seeds of an idea

2006-09-15T13:09:00.000-07:00

There is a current art project going on in New York, which is described as follows:

Design Times Square: The Urban Forest Project brings 185 banners created by the world’s most celebrated designers, artists, photographers and illustrators to New York’s Times Square. Each banner uses the form of the tree, or a metaphor for the tree, to make a powerful visual statement. Together they create a forest of thought-provoking images at one of the world’s busiest, most energetic, and emphatically urban intersections.

Urban Forest Project - Project

Some designs resonate more strongly with me than others (both for design and message). What's interesting though, is that because this is a focused project, it's easier to see how the mind of a designer works. Some clearly have brilliant ideas and then use their artistic ability to convey that idea. Others, on the other hand, seem to have brilliant artistic ability and then simply manipulate the idea to highlight their own prowess. And yet others make me feel that those years of being incredibly lazy and too clever for my own good throughout elementary and high school, might have had career potential.

Note: The illustration shown contains the national bird of every country currently at war or in an ongoing conflict. Also, the colours of the birds are made up by their national flags. I'd be curious as to how many you can identify. I'll take the obvious eagle as America off the list. I'm assuming Great Britian is top right and Italy is top left, but I don't know.

technorati tags:illustration

Clean Advertizing

2006-09-15T08:01:00.000-07:00

When I first heard about the concept, I thought it was neat, but when I came across this picture today, I was sold, so I thought I'd share it with you. The artist uses this concept within his ad firm as well. The work is understated and interesting. In a world where advertizing has reached a saturation point, it's refreshing to see work which contributes to the public space instead of taking away from it.

On a simliar note, Banksy has been busy as of late. (See related post)

The Provenzano Code

2006-09-08T09:45:00.000-07:00

Now there's an additional use for underlining passages of scripture.

"The FBI is working with the (Italian) state police to determine whether there are any hidden messages in the Bible," said a U.S. government official, who asked not to be identified.

FBI tries to decipher "code" in Mafia boss's bible | International News | Reuters.com

The Poincare Conjecture

2006-08-23T12:02:00.000-07:00

For all the latest juicy gossip on the world of mathematics, check out kottke.org.

Hamilton contributed over fifty per cent; the Russian, Perelman, about twenty five per cent; and the Chinese, Yau, Zhu, and Cao et al., about thirty per cent. (Evidently, simple addition can sometimes trip up even a mathematician.)

Mathematical politics and the Poincare Conjecture (kottke.org)

Note: Also featuring dissapearing Russians and theories about bunnies being equal to spheres.

technorati tags:Math

Social Enforcement

2006-08-15T13:03:00.000-07:00

Since I find social networks interesting, this article piqued my interest.

Clearly, even this did nothing to deter the plagiarist in question. So what did put the kibosh on this guy's cyber thievery? The rapid mobilization and deployment of a force I hadn’t even considered: the blogmob

technorati tags:Social Networks

Sunset Flight

2006-08-15T07:12:00.000-07:00

Last night I had the opportunity to take a sunset flight up to the Lake Winnipeg area to check out some tornado damage by Gull Lake and in general enjoy a spectacular view.

Oscar on the runway

Pre-flight adjustment

Sunset on Lake Winnipeg

I'll let the pictures speak for themselves, although they too can't quite capture the moment. Particularly the g-force tricks Dave pulled, but also the beauty of flying at night and having the black void defined by pin pricks of light. Of notable mention was also the landing in Selkirk, who's runway is made up of one gravel strip surround by trees (except for the side by the river which includes a convenient set of power lines). It felt like a bush plane landing scene straight out of a movie, I'm surprised tribes people didn't come out of the trees upon our landing to greet us.

A big thanks to Dave, a recent member of the studio crew, for hooking us up.

technorati tags:Flight

Continued Quality Assurance

2006-08-14T13:41:00.000-07:00

As part of the continual improvement and value enhancement initiatives over at Eppic Thoughts head office, it is my pleasure to provide you with our very first desktop wallpaper for your downloading enjoyment.

1280x1024 Glory

Thanks to all those (performers, beverages and fellow participants/partiers) that made Week 1 of Folklorama so enjoyable.

High Flying Gamblers

2006-08-03T06:08:00.000-07:00

I've been reading a neat little webcomic for a while now, called Teaching Baby Paranoia, that mixes clean illustration style with an obscure* historical fact every week.

Raising the stakes

The picture above is from this week's comic, featuring gambling, bank robbers, archaeology, blimps and a dose of irony (click the image to view the comic).

technorati tags:webcomics, history

* It turns out the facts are a bit more "obscure" than I initial thought. The latest strip, which is an obvious political commentary, triggered a warning bell. A little googling supported this premonition. So the sentence may read more accuratly as a made up historical fact than an obscure one.

Update: Cabin Weekend

2006-08-01T11:38:00.000-07:00

Sara has added her photos to the mix of those available and posts:

Audrey, Erica, Ruth, Jon, Matt, Dave, Geoff, Galina and I all went to Audrey's cabin for the last weekend in July. This is a record of what happened....

Audrey's cabin - Sara's photoset on Flickr

This photo set is a lot more all encompassing then mine, so you'll get a feel for the whole weekend

You should check out this photo set, if you'd like to see Geoff running down the beach (a la David Hasselhof), cool b-boys, Ruth with a "whip", ladies on an inner tube, a sand castle, people buried alive or Geoff cross-dressing. Oh there are also nice pictures of sunsets.

technorati tags:Cabin, Weekend

Cabin Weekend

2006-07-31T11:18:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I had the privilege of being invited out to Audrey's Grandparent's cabin. The company, great food and pirate boarding parties all provided for good times, but an event that stood out in my mind was the chance to sleep out on the beach under the brilliant display of stars. (This event may have stood out in others people's minds for different reasons. I don't know what they're talking about. I never heard anyone snoring. I was sleeping too soundly.)

Our Morning View

I've thrown together a few pictures I took. I should emphasize the word "few", we were in good hands to have the weekend photo-documented and I'll try to provide links to those people's photos as soon as I'm aware of them.

technorati tags:cabin, weekend

Ed's Birthday Bash

2006-07-27T08:28:00.000-07:00

This past weekend I had the chance to celebrate the birthday of a good man by the name of Ed Bohncke. For his birthday he had the privilege of having Tuesday Bloom* perform for him live on an outdoor stage.

* Unfortunately no official website link is provided as web search results provide a litany of things Orlando Bloom has done on Tuesday, as opposed to anything by the band.

Tuesday Bloom comes highly recommended by me. While I can't claim to have good musical taste, I can claim to be picky and Tuesday Bloom matches those arbitrarily high standards. Their songs are musically interesting enough to stand up as coffee house acoustic versions and lively enough to work in an open air festival. Beyond their musical abilities, the group's clearly ad libbed conversational banter provides another layer of enjoyability to the show.

Rocking the Grott

After the bands had cleared the stage and we had taken a quick dip in the lake, it was the opportune time for a midnight game of ultimate. Out came the Survivoresque torches to mark the end zones and supply of glow sticks to identify the players. The photo provided below isn't actually a cool camera affect, but a fairly accurate portrayal of what it looked like to play the game.

Ultimate At Night

The red circle is fairly obviously the frisbee (or disc for purists). Blue and green blur pairings represent each hand of a player on our team and orange and red the opposing team. Interestingly enough the apparent domination of the blue and green team (mine) seen in the picture, is also fairly accurate.

Playing in the dark provides interesting dynamics. For one, if a defensive player holds their hands behind their back they can't be seen at all (I may or may not know anything about that). Also, because you can only see lights and not the players themselves, you have no idea who is who. Lastly, although we never really play with out of bounds when playing pickup, if you are playing with a chain link fence just outside the boundaries of the playing area, the boundaries are enforced. As discovered by Adam running full speed into one of them.

Overall it was a great night and a great welcome back to Canada for me. Happy Birthday Ed!

It's Officially Infographic Day

2006-07-21T11:56:00.000-07:00

Since we're talking infographics anyways, here's another interesting one from today.

Independent Online Edition > New Articles

Perspective

2006-07-21T06:56:00.000-07:00

Hey, I'm back in the Peg. Hopefully I'll have time to do some more recap blogs in the near future, but in the meantime a diversion from the journal style.

Discover how you fit into the rest of the world via a neat infographic at Population : One - One Person is One Pixel.

In Between Places

2006-07-06T07:24:00.000-07:00

I`m sitting in an Internet cafe in Rijeka right now, waiting for a night train to Germany. The Croatian leg of the trip is behind us and the final party in Berlin is before us. At the same time the end of the trip looms before me, a short four days away. So while the promise of weekend full of good times lies ahead of me, already the realities of home that I will need to return to are filling my mind.

From this perspective, I can look back on the trip and how fast the time has flown and say that it was truly great. Since I`m feeling slightly retrospective, I`ll talk more about the life of a backpacker rather than a specific place.

We all take our vacation very seriously, so sleeping in is an important part of our routine. By happy coincedance this also works well with partying late at night. Another important part of our day, beyond relaxing and recreation, is eating. I am happy to say that all members of our travelling crew enjoy eating, so this is often a highlight of the day. Casual conversation over meals prepared fresh with an unparalleled backdrop. Europeans, to make a generalization, tend to appreciate their ingredients. For a foodie at heart, this brings joy to even the simplest dishes.

Of all these things, possibly the most unique aspect that I identify with the travelling life is the expectation of the unknown. Each day we go places we have never gone, eat things we have never had before, meet people for the first time and make decisions with truly unknown outcomes. For me this defines travelling and is the feeling which I will miss the most.

Bavaria!

2006-07-01T02:40:00.000-07:00

We are in Croatia at the moment, and are having a blast on the beach, getting tanned, burnt(again), and general enjoying the beach life! Before we left for the beach bum life though, we had some more good times in Germany that need to be highlighted. Monday was both a tragic day for Australia, who were ousted from the world cup, and a celebratory day for Wolfgangs daughter, Laura, who passed a final exam! Salute Laura! We all went out to celebrate that night at a very cool out door beer garden, located in the english gardens.
The Gardens are very beautiful, and we stayed late into the night, drinking beer, and eating giant pretzels. The next day in Munich marked the end of our Bavarian experience for this trip. To end the ocasion, we all went to a local Beer garden which was home to one of the excellent beers from throughout the region. We were not dissapointed. That evening saw us boarding a night train to Croatia, to begin the next leg of our trip. But more later on that.

Ciao for now!

Island Hopping

2006-06-29T03:06:00.000-07:00

Hello all,
As you may have been able to tell, I wasn't able to do a post about the wonderful time we had in Munich (and probably won't be able to do a full one until we get back). We're currently in Split waiting for a ferry to take us to Supetar. From there we plan to take a bus to Bol, on the other side of the island. Buzz on the backpacker information circuit is that it's the place to be.

Croatia is swelteringly hot and humid. I have to concentrate quite a bit to think of anything other than water. Luckily Croatia has lots of it. Clear and blue. Our day long bus ride down the coast yesterday had us salivating as we looked out the window and down the sheer drop to the enticingly beautiful water of the adriatic. When the bus slowed for the corners, we could even make out schools of fish darting around in the water (boding well for Geoff and my planned scuba adventures). Upon arriving in Split and getting a room, our first destination was the water. Wonderfully refreshing.

Split is a neat place with an old Roman fort in the center, but it's the beach life that calls us. So we're off, the ferry awaits.

Take care and thanks for all the supportive comments in our posts.

Whirlwind Update

2006-06-26T04:22:00.000-07:00

It's been a while and I've admittedly been lazily riding off the fact that Geoff is doing a lot of the blog updates. Currently we're enjoying Munich with Karl's relative, Wolfgang. Since he has an unlimited Internet plan, that means I'll have the rare opportunity to do a post accompanied by pictures. So what follows will be a speedy recap with pictures and a few snippets of text thrown in.

Porto

I already wrote a bit about Porto. One of the neat things about Portugal was the colourful tiles used on the buildings, as can be seen on the buildings below.

A typical street in Porto

Porto is of course famous for Port, a fortified wine, which gets its name from the city where it originated. Although created in Portugal, port is a British invention created out of desperation to keep the wine flowing to their country despite the efforts of the French. The result is a very smooth and full tasting drink, which now lives on for its own merits.

Sampling the Port

A Church in Porto

Below is the street festival (mentioned in a previous post) that we randomly came across during our night time exploration.

The Town Square at Night

Monsanto and surrounding towns

Our next destination was with Pedro's relatives

Small Town Portugal

Two Fisting

Cruising with Pedro's Grandpa

After a morning mass in beautiful little church, we spotted an old stone tower on top of a nearby hill. What followed was somewhat inevitable for those of you who know Geoff McGrath. The mission proved to be a very aromatic and picturesque one. Crunching through the arid but beautiful landscape, Geoff and I found our way to the tower, which offered and excellent vantage of the surrounding country.

A Predictable Development

A view from our hike

Lisboa

Lisbon is Portugal's capital and we arrived at the height of the cities summer celebrations.

Home in Lisbon

Earlier I compared the festivities to the intensity of San Fermin, that description may have little meaning for the average Winnipeger. Picture walking from Market Square to The Village. Now transform Portage and Memorial into cobblestone streets the width of a back alley. Fill those streets with young partiers until you can barely walk through them. Turn all the buildings into tall and narrow store fronts, each blaring music to the streets outside. Throw in the odd street vendor, selling food and alcohol of questionable origin. For good measure, make the city a little more 3D and you'll get an idea of what the experience was like. That's the first party area, now copy and paste that, except now make it an all ages crowd and superimpose it over an even older part of the city that feels like you're stepping straight into the middle ages (which architecturally speaking, you pretty much are). It was an amazing experience to say the least.

Scene from a street party

Lisbon has a reputation for thuggery. The amount of people that the festival brings out makes it quite safe, but the old part of town around the castle is essentially a labyrinth and the difference of a block can lead you to dead ends or side streets which are devoid of any company you would wish to share. Below is view of an area in which one would not want to visit at night (even during the day we walked through it at a decidedly quick pace).

A Shady Corner

The castle on top of the "old" part of town is pictured below. I use quotation marks, because by North American standards the main part of the city could be considered quite old as it is. The "old" section, distinguishes itself as being the part the city which remained intact after the earthquake of 1755.

Castle in Lisbon

Striking a Pose

The Algarve

The Algarve is the incredibly touristy section made up by the south of Portugal. The reason it attracted both tourists and ourselves, is fairly self explanatory. Gorgeous beaches at Portuguese prices.

A Night in Faro

The Beach Life

Tagged Tiles

Stuttgart

I think I'll revert back to being as brief as I planned. Stuttgart is a really nice city where we saw our World Cup match.

Fanfest Stuttgart

The day of the match I had the great opportunity to visit with Olga again. It was wonderful to catch up and be thoroughly spoiled by her great cooking. Thanks. For those of you in Canada who remember Olga but haven't had a chance to see her new baby, her new baby is super sweet and quite cute (the photographic evidence is below).

The Hoffmans

At our game

Munich

Staying in Munich has been a complete blast. Our host, Wolfgang, has been so great that, I'm sure that we would have had an amazing time no matter where we met up with him. The fact that Munich is such a great city is simply a multiplier. It's almost three o'clock in the morning here and everyone else is in bed, so I'll try and add a more deserving and detailed post of the past few days tomorrow. For now, a small sample picture.

On the terrace in Munich

technorati tags: Portugal, Germany

More of Germany

2006-06-25T13:48:00.000-07:00

Never let it be said that the Germans don't like to eat! We have been here in Munich (or more properly, Müchen) for three days now, and I am still full from the supper our first day here! We arrived in the afternoon on Friday, and met Karl's local connection, Wolfgang. They are related, but I have not figured out how yet. We dropped our stuff off at Wolfgang's place, and took off to see the city, which is full of tons of old beautiful buildings, made in the gothic style, sometime before I was born. In the evening the street lighting iluminates them brilliantly, but unfortunatly, I had not my camera with me, so you'll have to take my word for it. The city is bustling with activity, especially since there was a world cup game here last night. Taking a metro yesterday, was an event by itself. The trains were so full, that we were jamed to within inches of the doors, with no room to even raise our arms. Our train also had a couple of semi drunk German guys who were very much into world cup football, and Germany, and were trying very hard to spread the excitement. Karl and Jon had gotten into the spirit of things and were ready for action when game time came around.

The city had set up several giant screens for people to watch the game on, this picture is in the old olympic stadium, where one of them was set up. The place was only maybe a quarter full, but it was easily louder than any hockey game I've ever been too! After the game, we went to a local arts festival near by, which just happend to have live bands playing in tented beer gardens. So we got to listien to some local talent, while drinking one litre beers! We found some interesting statues there too, which of course we took pictures of.
Wolfgang's daughter came out later that evening as well, and joined in the festivities. Unfortunatly, she had to leave early, having to study for a exams, but we are looking forward to going out on monday night with her and partying it up before heading to Croatia. This morning we went and visited another of Karls relations, who gave us a true Bavarian brunch. The prime ingredients were, white sausage, pretzels, cheese, beer, snaps, and desserts, with real whiped cream. Needless to say, we came away very stuffed!

The empties, halfway through brunch...

Our wonderful host's on the left, Erich and Borka, Karl, Thomas, Wolfgang, Suzie, Jon, and me in front.

By for now!

Quick note

2006-06-22T01:55:00.000-07:00

Hi all, we are in Stuttgart at the moment, and are just getting ready for our world cup game! We´ve had a blast over the last week at Albufeira, but that´s for Jon to relate. We are staying in a youth hostle at the moment, and it´s pretty awesome. There are lots of young people staying at the hostle, and the atmosphere is really exciting, since there is an even mix of Aussies and Croatians staying there, and the game tonight is between Aus. and Croatia. So far everything has been amiable between the two sides, but you can sense the competition in the air. Jon is gone for the day to visit Olga, a friend in another town in Germany, the rest of us are relaxing and getting ready for the game tonight. The city here is in full world cup swing, they have made over one of the main squares in the town and turned it into a giant viewing area, with three huge outdoor screens and lots of sitting area. The party really got going last night, when after the evening game, about 2000 ausie fans, and 2000 croatian fans faced off, and had a singing/cheering contest. We are off, ciao for now!

Pictures, pictures, and more pictures.

2006-06-19T05:06:00.000-07:00

Here´s some of what we´ve been up to, with photos.

Jon and I went on a hike outside of Pedro´s family´s town, great scenery, and we even found a small fort.

Jon and karl relax in Lisboa

The Wineries of Porto

Another Proximity death...

Yes, this is a foosball table!

That´s it for now, ciao all!

Portugal, for a week

2006-06-18T04:21:00.000-07:00

Wow, what a wonderful week it´s been! Since getting off the plane in London, life took on a different feel; it was traveling time again! I had a monstrous layover in London, and then a short flight south to Porto, where we were all going to meet up, and officialy start our group trip.

From the first night, things took on a different aspect. We all stoped for a light supper at a restaurant close to our hostle, arriving just before it closed. Everything was in Portugues, so we had our native (AKA Pedro) order for us. The food was awesome, apparently the local dishes that Pedro ordered for us were specialties of the city, only to be found in Porto. Possibly the best part of the night though, was when a local fella got up and started singing. We had no idea what he was singing, but it was good, and set the tone for the trip.
When visiting Porto, you must visit the wineries! Located along the river, there is an entire district of the city dedicated to the potent drink, Port. We took a couple of tours, the first of which was by far the better, and picked up a bottle of vintage port, to be opened in 15-20 years by all of us.
We Left Porto, a couple of bottles heavier, went to meet Pedro´s family, who lived in a couple of towns to the east of Lisboa. Upon arriving, we were met at the train station by his cousin, and aunt, who spoke fluent english(having lived in Canada for several years), and were taken to his grandparents house. I need a little back history for this next story, so bear with me for a minute. For a while, Jon and Pedro have been joking about switching identies when arriving in Portugal, and meeting Pedro´s family. They, having not seen Pedro for most of his life(since he was two, if I remember right), were quite in the dark as to what he looked like today. The most recent picture was probably 10 years old too. So, Jon and Pete made up and little plan to anounce Jon as Pedro when we arrived, and see how long it could last. It was even better than they had hoped. When we arrived, we came in two seperate cars, Jon and Karl in one, and Pedro and I in the other. Pedro and I were driven by his aunt, who fortunatly for the situation, drove a little slower than her daughter, letting Jon and Karl get there a little bit ahead of us. Jon got out, and was imidiatly approached by Pedro´s great uncle. Eyewitness accounts differe, but the basic story stays the same. When Pedro and I arrived, with Pedro´s english speaking cousin, and aunt, his entire family was gathered around a very bewildered looking Jonathan Epp, embracing him as their long lost Pedro. Eventually the situation was clarified, and Pedro´s great aunt was holding onto him for dear life, but not before we all had a good laugh!
The time with Pedro´s family was wonderfull, they treated us extremely well, and we all got along great. For lunch on Sunday, they took us out to a very traditional Portugues meal of Eel. It took a little to get over eating these things, but when you did, they were actually really good! On the way to and from the resteraunt, the four of us decided to ride with Pedro´s grandfather, who is a very cool old fella, that speaks french with a heavy portugues accent. He also has a very cool car. This picture is a little deceptive, the car is actually very large... big enough for five anyway! Besides having a slightly overloaded car(hey, most of us are canadian sized young guys, not portugues), Pedro´s grandfather is definatly where Pedro got his driving style from, there were a few corners I thought we were going to take on two weels! Driving around the country in this wonder was definatly the highlight of my time with Pedro´s family!
Eventually we had to take off, and head to Lisboa, where we stayed in a prime location, and got there just in time for the anual Portugual day Celebrations, which is basically Canada day, but Portugues. There was a huge parade and much partying, which unfortunatly for Pedro and I, we missed out on, due to the large quantities of alchohol in our system at the time. Jon has some great video, and hopefully will post some stuff about the night, as he was much more aware at the time. We had a couple of days in Lisboa, and we spent them shopping around, and taking in the sights. We headed south to the algarve on wednesday, and stopped over for a day in Faro, to check out the sights, and the city.

Ops, gotta go, the cafe is closing for a couple of hours, so I´ll come and finish this post in a bit. Thanks for all the comments, and emails, they have been great!

Ciao for now

Eppic blogging just got better

2006-06-14T02:16:00.000-07:00

Quick Post

2006-06-13T06:25:00.000-07:00

Internet connections and time won´t allow me to do anything fancier, but you can see two pictures I upload on my flickr site (http://www.flickr.com/photos/jonathanepp).

Also, I´ve added Geoff to this blog, so you may posts from him in the future.

Portugal, the fifteen minute version

2006-06-13T05:36:00.000-07:00

So we´ve been in Portugal for barely a week and a recap of events is already near impossible. Each day is packed with new discoveries and events I could devote an entire post for. I´ll try and do a quick overview.

We visited Porto, home of the Port wine distilleries, for the first two nights. The city is quite old and beautiful and the 3D landscape on which it is located pulls out the buildings like an elaborate pop-up book to great effect. Beyond the our overwhelmingly beautiful surroundings, it is the little touches that make Europe come to life; the impromptu opera singing stand-off during a late night snack in a local restaurant, the midnight festival in an open courtyard as we walk past, the people, the food.

Having Pedro along as a guide has been great. Not only is his joy for being in his "homeland" contagious, but his memories of foods tried as a child has found us many tasty treats we probably would have never contemplateded trying before and his ability to speak the language has us joking with locals on a regular basis.

From Porto it was off to the region surrounding Lisbon for a get together with Pedro´s family. Before coming to Portugal I had joked that I would pretend to be Pedro, since his family hasn´t seen Pedro since he was quite young. The premise was clearly impossible, to put it simply I don´t look Portuguese. So I was completely dumbfounded, when upon meeting Pedro´s grandfather and family, I was mistaken for Pedro. I was so shocked I did nothing. At first I was sure Pedro had let them in on the joke and they were doing it to try and fool me, but oddly enough that wasn´t the case. I have no explination.

Staying with Pedro´s family was wonderful, friendly people and so more good food than you would think possible. The country side here is very picturesque. Geoff and I had the opportunity to take a hike from the small village where we were staying up to a hill overlooking the countryside. Fresh Rosemary was growing in the fields and we crushed it as we walked, leaving wonderful aroma. As an additional bonus, the smell became infused into my sandals, leaving them pleasant smelling... no small feat on a backpacking trip.

After visiting Pedro´s relatives, it was off to Lisboa, where we´ve only been for one day, but still taken quite a lot in. It just so happens to be that the festival of the saints occurs right when we are here, so the town is in full scale party mode. Last night we saw a parade and attended a mass scale street party, that I can only compare to San Fermin in Pampalona for its intestity.

Anyways, that´s all for now. Hope everything is going well for everybody wherever life finds them.

The Domestication of Jonathan Epp

2006-06-06T05:28:00.000-07:00

There are times in life when it seems lessons are learned at a quicker pace than normal. The parents being gone, is one of those times for me. Sometimes these lessons have greater day to day use, such as the lesson involving the toaster and the butter dish. At other times the lessons have a more infrequent application, such as the lesson I recently learned about how to operate a sewing machine (or perhaps more accurately, how not to operate a sewing machine).

Sewing a test cloth

It was last Thursday, that found me trying to sew flags on my bag in preparation for my Europe trip. The sew by hand method was going quite slow and was of questionable practicality (the flags seemed free themselves faster than the could be affixed). How can one improve any process? By mechanizing it! So it was at the sewing machine that they found me, when Dave (he of the black eye) and Peter (fresh from Quebec) decided to drop by. (At this point in the sewing process I had managed to lose the needle irretrievably inside the sewing machine.) The combined efforts of three men, one an engineer and another in med school with a penchant for cross dressing in church plays (I'm not sure how any of that helps, but it should), proved futile in deciphering the trickery that is the modern sewing machine.

Dave works away while Peter looks on

I abandoned the efforts, but a weekend later, with my Europe trip looming and my bag still unpacked, desperation set in. Let me try to illustrate how far things had gone, I read the manual. You heard correct, in a last ditch effort to complete my project, I read the instructions to the sewing machine and ... it worked. Now the job I did isn't perfect. The look is something more or less I would like to call "backpacker". The craftsmanship, I would like to think, lends a measure of authenticity to the project. Perhaps leading the viewer to believe that the flags were actually sewn on to the bag hastily mid trip. Some flags maybe even after experiencing a prolonged brewery tour and some, perhaps, sewn while running down the streets of Pampalona during the annual running of the bulls. The bag however is ready for Europe and myself, along with my new found skills, am too.

technorati tags: sewing

A Taste Of Things To Come

2006-05-30T13:42:00.000-07:00

I've been a long time reader of Delicious Days. The site needs no excuse to be checked out; great food writing, brilliant photography and amazing design. The other day they posted about their travels to Lisbon, our next major destination, making it somewhat mandatory that I make a post.

I have a feeling they're travelling slightly above our planned budget, but experiencing Portugal's culinary and cultural delights is definitely on the agenda. So be sure to check out the recount of their visit.

The writer and her husband are based out of Munich, where we plan to go, so if you'd like a sneak peek of what we'll be experiencing, snoop through the archives. They also just went to Austria where Karl is currently staying, so you can get an additional feel for that country as well.

Additionally, if you're a fan of graphic design, you would be remiss not to check out the section on packaging.

technorati tags: Food, Blog

Food and Dance

2006-05-29T05:45:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday a few of us celebrated the potential adventure Geoff, Pedro and I plan embark on this summer. For me, it was also celebration of friends. Good people willing to use the simple pretext of our adventure as a launching board to go out and have fun. People I will miss during the few weeks of my travels. Thank you to all who came and made it a grand evening.

Our evening started out at Fude, a lovely restaurant tucked into the village. Fude is fun, as evidenced by the smiles around the table as people read the menus, the even greater smiles as the food arrived and finally slightly smaller smiles (limited by the fact that we were busily eating).

Featuring:

A Table Full of Friends

Glamorous Guests

Buffalo Rib Ecstasy

Fun Fude

Engaging Conversation

Good Company

It should be noted that Pedro, Geoff and I were not the only future travellers enjoying dinner. Both Florence, going to Italy, and Theresa, going to Albuquerque, are planning to travel in the next few weeks and broadened our reasons (in case we need more) to celebrate.

From dinner we went to the Empire to meet up with some more friends for some hot salsa dancing. By hot I mean, that if our plan was to prepare for a Cuban club where the air conditioner had mistakenly been replaced by a heater, I think we would have been well on our way (as evidenced by the formerly transparent windows dripping with condensation). As a confessed dance addict, I had a marvelous time.

Salsa Dancing

Beating the heat

The McGrath Effect

Those that endured

Once again, thanks to those that made this evening so enjoyable. I've included a collection of photos from the evening here.

technorati tags: Fude, Dinner, Salsa, Party

Short dives on a long weekend

2006-05-24T05:45:00.000-07:00

A warning, but to whom?

This weekend I had my first opportunity to do some open water scuba diving. The location was a very cold West Hawk Lake on a very windy and cold Saturday and a calmer and slightly cold Sunday. The weekend featured every variation possible of jokes involving changes to ones anatomy when entering freezing cold water, primarily from the instructors who had dry suits (much warmer then the wet suits we were wearing), and not quite as often but still quite frequently, jokes featuring the untimely demise of dive buddies.

At the surface

I can't really comment too much on what it was like underwater. It's quite other worldly and exhilarating, but I think I was concentrating too much on not freezing to death to really bring my thoughts to focus. After our first dives we headed out to Kyla's parent's cabin at Falcon Lake and quickly warmed up by putting ourselves to use helping them out as they got the cabin ready for the summer. In exchange we got a warm tent trailer to sleep in for our troubles. A worth while exchange. Thanks again for the company, warm place to sleep and great meal!

You can view some pictures of the weekend here

I've also provided a cautionary photo essay detailing what can happen when you lend Geoff your camera to take pictures.

technorati tags: scuba

Re-Post: Too much in Paris

2006-05-18T05:36:00.000-07:00

Original posted on: June 26th, 2004

The four us together in Paris

I'm sitting in an Internet cafe right now just outside my hostel. Karl is madly hunting down a CD-R because we're taking pictures at a faster rate than we can upload them. Kyla's cooking up something in the hostel kitchen and Sherri... well I'm not sure what Sherri is doing. Probably somewhere in between helping and distracting Kyla. We're the complete group now and it's absolutely great. Unfortunately Paris is so filled with wonderful things, we could spend weeks here (if it weren't for the cost and time restraints) and feel we didn't get everything in. I'll do a short recap to fill you in.

Kyla encapsulates our feelings about Paris

Karl, Kyla and myself arrived the day before Sherri and decided to walk the city to get a good feel for it. The city houses so many famous landmarks it didn't take long before we were completely wowed. We had brought a baguette, brie and a bottle of wine along for a simple supper. We found a beautiful spot in the park at the base of the Eiffel tower and set about feeling even better about the city. As a side note, I had been quite worried about costs while staying in Paris after reading our friend Mike's travel blog. However, with the help of a local grocery store we managed to get all our food and wine for about three Euro (I probably don't need to tell you that it was cheap wine).

Eating and drinking under the tower

Afterwards, we wandered the city at our fancy, finding beautiful spots and landmarks everywhere we went. As evening approached, we came out from among the tall classically Parisian buildings to find ourselves looking out across a river at a beautiful sky painted by the setting sun with strokes of colour melting into the tall cream coloured buildings of the Parisian cityscape. Needless to say it was beautiful. Warning: The picture below does this no justice

Kyla on the bridge

The next day, after Sherri arrived in the afternoon, we felt the need to decide for her that she should stay up and see all the same sights we had already seen to fight her jet lag. Well, staying up all day conquered Sherri's jet lag, but the sights didn't hold quite the same amazement the second time and Sherri obviously couldn't appreciate them fully with her lack of sleep.

Sherri enjoys the park by the Louvre

The next day we got a Museum pass and tried to milk the most out of it. We went to the Louvre, which is so incredibly vast you could easily spend a day in it. It was the first place we were confronted by mass tourism. As we neared the Mona Lisa the crowds swelled to mob like proportions. Among the pushing and flashing cameras you really had to wonder whether the Mona Lisa deserved this kind of hype, when every other piece in the museum was equally or more amazing.

Find Kyla in the photo to get a sense of the scale

A photo of the mob... oh ... and the Mona Lisa

To proceed with the description of events a bit more quickly (Ed: Blogging about Paris is only so interesting when it exists right outside the shop window and you've got a night train to catch that evening), we checked out many other museums and sights. The next day we went to Versailles which was big and even more besieged by tourists. If you've seen Sansoucci in Potsdam save your Euros and go somewhere else.

We then returned to Paris were I attended a mass at Notre Dame Cathedral. At first its hard to connect with that level of ritualization within a worship service, but when connected with the original motives for those rituals it can be a powerful event. Later, in the tourist equivalent to a dog marking territory, we climbed the church (Ed: Long lines of American tourists bring out the cynic in all of us. I'm also guilty as charged.). After, the group split again to climb yet another famous landmark while I found a relaxing spot on Saint Germain boulevard to sip a coffee in an outdoor cafe and write a letter home.

Then it was the night train and off to Madrid.

Ed: The title of this post "Too much in Paris", is slightly misleading in that is seems as if I didn't enjoy Paris. I wanted to capture the "too much" of Paris in the sense that there was so much of this great city we could never take in. At the same time Paris was the first city we went to where I really noticed the tourists. Being a complete tourist myself, it was disheartening look in the mirror and see the not so nice aspects of tourism. Primarily large numbers of people blindly following other people with no real understanding why the original people came and saw the monuments and artwork and left so impressed. My break from climbing famous structures to an admittedly equally cliched pause along Saint Germain boulevard to take in some espresso and people watching, was my most enjoyable Parisian moment and gave me a short glimpse of the style and pace of life in Paris.

French Security

But enough introspection, the second thing I wanted to point out in retrospect is the picture above. Many of you have heard me tell the story of the heightened security in Paris because of the Olympic torch passing through while we were there and the conflict of interest for security forces that was the French team playing in the Eurocup at the very same time. I've told the story so many times, I began to think I may have been exaggerating the account, but if you click on the picture above you can see for yourselves, all TVs but one focused on the current football match rather than the Eiffel tower.

technorati tags: Europe, Trip, Paris

Quality Assurance Announcement

2006-05-11T09:55:00.000-07:00

Dear Reader,

Some less sophisticated blogs considered it a mark of achievement or high standing to be able to stir up drama within the comments of their posts. Comments such as those left by a certain individual in a recent post. I will not be one of those blogs, however this event gives me pause to stop and assure you, the reader, of the quality of reporting that goes on here.

The person (I can only assume, since only a name was left), who triggered this, identified themselves merely as "Dave", hiding behind the anonymity of the millions of "Dave"s which populate our planet to launch this underhanded attack. I will not lower myself to refute the multitude of falsehoods perpetrated by this cowardly individual or individuals. For example, the accusation that I was "complaining" about the forced labour that I was required to bear. Can such a point even be raised? I was clearly outlining the facts bereft of any sentiment to which they might be attached. A lesser person might use their blog as pedestal upon which to launch a counter-attack, but I will stray from that temptation and simply affirm that no person should ever have any doubt as to the opinions expressed on this blog. This blog adheres and will continue to adhere to a standard of utmost truthiness (2005 Word of the Year).

Sincerely,

The Management

technorati tags: quality

A Georgian Table

2006-05-09T11:52:00.000-07:00

There are two legends that Georgians tell to explain the creation of their country, and fascinatingly, both involve food. In the first, the Georgians claim that when God was distributing land to all the peoples of the Earth, they were too busy feasting and drinking to show up at the appointed time. When they finally arrived, they were dismayed to learn that all the land had already been given away. They explained to God the reason for their delay, and God, obviously recognizing the value of a people who would rather be feasting than fighting over land, took pity on them and gave the Georgians the part of the Earth that he had been reserving for himself - naturally, the most beautiful part. In the second legend, God took a supper break while creating the world, and became so involved with his meal that he inadvertently tripped over the high peaks of the Caucasus, spilling his food onto the land below. This land blessed by heaven's table scraps was Georgia.

The Traveler's Lunchbox - A Georgian Feast

With this kind of folklore behind the country, I was only too happy to accept an invitation to a Georgian Table. The term "Georgian Table" can be roughly translated as an obnoxiously large feast featuring Georgian food. Our guide and host for our adventure into Georgian cuisine was Sara, who, along with her brother Geoff, had spent several years in Georgia. She can be seen in the picture below organizing ~~the unsuspecting workforce~~ some guests in preparing the dishes.

Sara giving instructions

To illustrate the point about utilizing her guests, Geoff and I never even made it through the door of the house before being assigned our duties. We were to barbeque the meat (it had a Georgian name, which I will choose not to misspell for you). Apparently this was very Georgian, as the meat was only supposed to be cooked by the men and over an open fire. While we didn't use an actual open fire, I can't help but feel that the barbeque's uncontrolled flames added a measure of authenticity to the whole endeavor.

Hard at work

I'm not sure how authentic the rest of the preparation technique was (as evidenced by the picture below).

A little too happy

The meal was absolutely amazing and unending, this is apparently authentically Georgian as well. When dish after amazing dish kept appearing from the kitchen, it soon became apparent why the "volunteer" recruitment had been needed.

The Georgian Table

And as a sign of a truly good party, the fun didn't stop until we had received a warning from the landlord. The offense? Ballroom and Latin dancing in the common square between the townhouses. Although, I think she was just bitter Geoff and I hadn't asked her to go dancing by moonlight.

All in all it was an excellent night. A big thanks to Sara and everyone who helped out.

International Incidents

2006-05-01T05:45:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday was the occasion for two internationally themed events. A "Dance Around The World" party at the studio and a farewell party for Karl (going to work in Europe)and Cathy (off to camp for the summer).

As per usual the party at the studio was grand, with some interesting showcases from a group of Irish dancers, traditional Indian dancers and one Hungarian dancer (superbly represented by our Saturday group's very own Peter Schilling). The rest of the evening was left for us to capture the floor to musical sounds from around the world.

Waltzing Around The World

Of note from that evening is the fact that Geoff and I now know how to properly treat a "European Lady". We were corrected by our beloved instructor, Margaret (ever the perfectionist), and shown the proper technique. Below, you can see us demonstrate our skills.

Two Gentlemen (*cough*) and a Lady

(Additional Dance Party Pics)

After having so much fun it was hard to pull ourselves away, but Karl is good man, so Geoff and I accepted our humble duty and took off to the pub to offer our support at his farewell.

Cathy and Karl

You can see Karl's recollection of the evening at his blog. My fans may want to add his blog to their RSS feeds*, as he'll be blogging as well when we meet up in Europe this summer.

*If you're using Firefox, Sage is a great extension to make this easy

Reverting to form

2006-04-28T09:09:00.000-07:00

I came across this picture while going through Washington Post's "Day In Photos" feature. In the picture, the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives is switching from an alternative fuel vehicle (used for his press conference on gasoline prices) to his SUV. Sometimes you just can't improve on reality.

Making the switch

Unfortunately screen-capped as opposed to directly attributed due to the Washington Post's Flash interface

Viva Fifa!

2006-04-24T09:13:00.000-07:00

The tickets have arrived! In a little over a month, four good friends (Pedro, Geoff, Karl and myself) will be in Europe to watch the FIFA World Cup and, in general, have the time of our lives.

Destination Germany

technorati tags: World Cup

Concept Commerce

2006-04-20T05:42:00.000-07:00

This site made me smile. Click through, for products that are more interesting than they are useful.

ATYPYK

(via Drawn!)

Re-Post: The friends begin to assemble (or Weil am Rhine Part II)

2006-04-13T12:54:00.000-07:00

Original posted on: June 23rd, 2004

After Ulm, Karl and I returned to the Maurer's in the Weil am Rhein region. It was not to be a good day for train travel.

Our train from Ulm to Friedrichshaven Stadt was delayed half an hour in the station due to a derailment further down the track. When we arrived in Friedrichshaven our next connecting train didn't arrive for an hour and half. Luckily Friedrichshaven is probably the most beautiful place ever to have a stop over. We spent the hour and half sitting along the pier which is just outside the train station. It was very beautiful with Switzerland and the Alps filling in the background behind the lake. On the lake little white sailboats floated, enjoying the beauty of the day as well.

The beautiful harbour

In case the beauty proved too monotonous, an irate white swan and a group of unwary school children provided entertainment.

Karl confronts the swan after it has attacked his backpack

After arriving successfully in Haltingen we waited to pick up Kyla from the train station. She was supposed to arrive at 8 o'clock, but numerous checks at the train station and two trips to Basel later she still hadn't arrived. At midnight we had run out of ideas for what to do, four hours had passed and six trains from Frankfurt (her last connection) had come and gone, so we returned home. Just as we entered the door, the phone rang and to our immense relief Kyla's voice greeted us from the other end. She was in Haltingen (the same village as us) and with a guy she had met by the train station named Raphael. We found out later that she had power problems on her train from the Netherlands into Germany. Two hours later in Frankfurt and not knowing German, she got some extremely inefficient advice and added a few more stops to her journey. Needless to say, we are quite thankful Kyla is with us.

Tuesday we headed to the alps. The day started off cloudy and you couldn't see a thing from the top of the mountain we had decided to ascend by tram. We waited it out over lunch though, and by the time we had finished eating the surrounding mountains started appearing one by one. It was an absolutely amazing effect to look down at once was complete white and now was an extremely long and straight drop to the lakes and villages below. As we walked down the mountain the weather becoming increasingly more beautiful until it was a full out gorgeous day. It was one of the most beautiful walks I've ever been on. The trail weaved it's way down the mountain over hills dotted with flowers, through small villages, past farm yards and through pastures where classic swiss cows grazed. The sound of the cow bells carries for miles and creates a soothing yet surreal effect I wont soon forget.

A view from the top

Breathtaking

A small chapel set against the hill

What was previously a wall of white

Our "Sound of Music"esque shot

A random encounter

The cow that fell in love

The valley

Wednesday is today, and I've stayed back to get some rest while Karl and Kyla have gone out with Richard to see more of the Black Forest. Tonight we'll watch the Germany Czech soccer match. Then tomorrow we'll take off for Paris, our meeting point with Sherri (the final member of our travelling group). Then the travels will truly begin. We've been completely spoiled up to now (and we've loved every minute of it) staying with relatives and connections, but tomorrow it's time to actually set off on our own and travel. I'll try my best to keep you all posted.

Ed: As mentioned the trail we took wound its way through farmer's fields. In one of these fields (see shot labeled "The cow that fell in love") I met with a large cow. Since we wanted to walk right in its path, I decided to try and be friendly and pet him. If you click on the picture for the close up you will see the result, the cow giving me a big sloppy lick (I'm not pulling out the cow's tongue, as it appears). Anyways, the cow became my instant best friend and decided to follow me. What made this all the more disconcerting was the fact that we were travelling downhill and here was a gigantic beast following me with a loud clanking sound and its head literally within a foot of my back. I wasn't concerned that the cow meant me harm (it clearly adored me), but the fact is that a cow travelling downhill isn't the most graceful creature. I would describe the motion as periodically checked descent and this, as mentioned, just a foot from my rear. I was quite relieved when we finally entered the next field.

technorati tags: Europe, Trip, Germany

If only he had email

2006-04-12T07:28:00.000-07:00

There are times in our lives where we, much like King Solomon, ask ourselves what is the point of all our possesions.

What do people gain from all the toil
at which they toil under the sun?

ECCLESIASTES 1:3, NRSV

Millionaires24.com, the new email account for the world's discerning elite, encourages us to probe even deeper, "What is the point of a yacht in Monaco... when you are just one out of billions on the Internet?"

Luckily, Millionaires24 has an answer. For the distinguishing price of 399 US$ a month, a limited group of 10,000 people will be able to have web based email with less features than most free accounts. As Ray Smuckles would say, "At this level the market demands non-linear value."

Update: Bomb Squad Collects Power-Ups

2006-04-10T11:54:00.000-07:00

Some brighter news for today, in a follow up to the original post:

Charges will not be filed against six juvenile girls who placed brightly wrapped boxes at several locations in Ravenna on March 31, Portage County Prosecutor Victor V. Vigluicci said today.

Beacon Journal | Girls won't be prosecuted after bomb squad called on art project

In a State of War

2006-04-10T11:31:00.000-07:00

Here's an inflammatory quote for the day*:

Clawson said that he would prefer to rely on sabotage and other clandestine activities, such as "industrial accidents." But, he said, it would be prudent to prepare for a wider war, "given the way the Iranians are acting. This is not like planning to invade Quebec."

The New Yorker: The Iran Plans

The subject is America's plans for dealing with Iran. The New Yorker, as usual, provides a well reasoned and well researched article. The BBC also has some information on the author of the article.

As pointed out in the article, a tactical win through brute force, is not necessarily a psychological win while dealing with Fourth Generation style warfare. It is interesting that with the evolution of sub-state warfare, pacifism becomes not an alternative but often the only viable approach.

*To be clear, the quote is a merely a hook

Re-Post: Ulm Summary

2006-04-06T12:44:00.000-07:00

Original posted on: June 23rd, 2004

Karl and I spent the weekend in Nattheim, a small town just outside Ulm. The town is note worthy for having two stoplights, one school and being the temporary residence of Jan and Olga Hoffman. Over all it was a very low key weekend, but it was really good for me to get a chance to see Olga again. Olga is a young lady who stayed at our place two winters ago while student teaching in Winnipeg. Stephen and I consider her our older sister from a different mother (....and father).

Olga and Jan

I'll briefly summarize the highlights for us:

On Friday we attended the school where Olga was teaching. Due to it being a small town, and the children never having seen a Canadian before, we had instant celebrity status. After showing the kids pictures of Winnipeg from a coffee table book about our city, the majority of kids wanted to move immediately to Winnipeg and live there... poor kids. Also, I was the fastest Grade 1er at subtracting numbers under 20 in German. I finished first in my initial round (knocking Karl out of competition) and then stole the show in the final round with a convincing victory. I was appointed math king for the day and received an official certificate (Mom if you're reading this, save some space on the fridge).

Myself, proudly bearing the certificate

Saturday was Jan's birthday and we celebrated outdoors in the evening. Someone had created an oversized Twister mat, and we had a team competition. Our team arose victorious thanks to Karl's strategic game play and Olga's superior strength.

Awwww, two locally brewed bottles by candlelight

Playing Twister

Sunday, we went to Ulm munster which has the largest church spire in the world. We climbed up the numerous spiral staircases to the top, for a total step count of around seven to nine hundred (Karl counted, I'll get an exact figure later).

The inside of the spire

We then stopped by an Italian ice cream shop, which had the most creative visual designs for ice cream in a bowl I've yet to see, along with a wide range of excellent flavours. Later Karl and I took the Hoffmans out to a Sardinian restaurant they knew of for an excellent supper.

Italian Eis!

...and that was our stay. Thanks Olga and Jan for your hospitality.

Ed: It never struck me until a friend came back from Germany and shared a similar experience of the elaborately created Italian ice cream creations, that this seems to be something unique to Germany. I travelled Italy and while it was no problem to find Gelati, I never came across these crazy "Italian" ice cream inventions. Perhaps it shares a similar story to the infamous Döner, which was popularized by Turkish immigrants to Germany, but differs from its original form to appeal to a German market.

technorati tags: Europe, Trip, Germany

Re-Post: Weil am Rhine (Part I)

2006-04-04T09:29:00.000-07:00

Original posted on: June 19th, 2004

I don't really function by dates, but I guess it would be good to give you some since I'm always posting slightly later than the actual event.

Monday late afternoon on June 14th, we arrived at the one track train station of Haltingen, just a six minute train ride from Basel Badischer Bahnhof. There we were greeted by the Maurers (our hosts) and two incredibly cute grandchildren. After the short ride to their house (essentially three blocks away), we sat outside on the patio for some really good ice cream. If you ever worry about becoming old, come visit the Maurers, they are the most active, busy and entertaining grandparents I have yet to meet.

Tuesday morning we woke up and after a good breakfast, took off for some hiking in the black forest. We drove part way and then climbed up a large hill/small mountain called Blauen. It was a fairly steep hike, but the Maurers never lagged and we were soon to the top. The view was spectacular and when the clouds were replaced by the sun in the distance, we could see all the way to the Swiss alps. From the top, Richard pointed out another large hill/small mountain, telling us he had climbed up with skis and then skied down. Imagining what it would like to accomplish such a feat, I imagined myself undergoing a few weeks of training to prepare or at the very least upon reaching the top, spending a day not moving. So I asked Richard how long ago he had done it. Last year, was his response. Now you may begin to see what I am talking about when I say they are active people.

Hiking through the black forest

Coming out on top of Blauen

After descending the mountain, we grabbed some gelati at little store in a classically European looking little village.

When we returned home we were treated to an authentic meal from the area. For our meal we had Raclette. Essentially cheese on everything, Raclette is an ingenious idea where you melt Raclette cheese in a special device and then pour it over potatoes, tomatoes, whatever you feel like really. You can also throw in onions, peppers or meat in with your cheese on the melting tray to excellent effects. How you Raclette is up to you. The combinations are endless, but all the combinations I tried tasted absolutely amazing. Then to top the meal off, genuine Black Forest cake was brought out. It tasted great, but our host, Richard, looked disappointed. Something was missing. A few seconds later he came out with a bottle of "Cherry Water", alcohol distilled from the local cherry harvest. A light (i should probably put quotations around light too) sprinkling of "Cherry Water" later and we could never go back to the Safeway version of Black Forest cake.

Having Raclette on the terrace

After lunch we biked to two of the garden plots owned by the Maurers. It was a relaxing and beautiful ride that wound through the small town and hilly vineyards to get to the garden plot and small orchard.

At the orchard with Richard

After returning home and relaxing a bit we set off to their daughter's by bike to watch the Germany Netherlands match.

The next morning we took off fairly late (due to me being so faithful and writing posts for you guys) and headed for Basel by car. We walked around the city a bit and saw some of the major sites. Basel is a very beautiful city with small winding roads, many only accessible by foot.

A narrow street in Basel

Shopping for basil in Basel (I thought it was clever)

Walking by the shops you can definitely sense that this is a city for the rich (or at least not the budget traveller). In the evening we watched slides with the Maurers, which at first may sound like a recipe for boredom, but when the slide show is with the Maurers is anything but. Travelling in a foreign country you notice the differences. As Karl and I travelled, we were amazed by the history of the place, the outstanding food and so forth. The Maurer's slides, on the other hand, showed the opposite perspective, what it was like to be a European visiting America. Things so unbelievable they had to be documented on film included, obese people (evidenced by a photo taken in the zoo of the overweight people attending, not the animals) and the fact that dilapidated automobiles were allowed on the road (seeing once such vehicle, Margit stopped on the side of the road to pose by a rusted out truck with her granddaughter).

The next morning was our last of "Part I" (we were to return in a few days to meet Kyla) and Karl and I did a relaxed walk through Basel in the morning and then said farewells and took off for Ulm (our next destination).

Bomb Squad Collects Power-Ups

2006-04-03T07:20:00.000-07:00

Police in Ravenna Ohio were called in on Friday (March 31) to investigate packages looking suspiciously like power-up cubes found in Mario games. I don't know how big Ravenna Ohio is or how much of a terrorist target it could be, but nobody seems to be fooling around over there. The girls may face criminal charges. The website that inspired them has this to say:

To clarify some of the points in the article: this is not a sinister 'game', it is supposed to be a comment on public spaces being routinely used for advertising (billboards, etc) but not for art (these boxes). Also, despite what Ravenna Police Chief Randall McCoy says, the purpose of these boxes is not "just to see what kind of response you get". It is to bring a smile to people's faces, to get them to connect with their neighbours, to bring colour into an otherwise grey urban landscape. Posterchild and myself are both deeply sorry that things are not working out in Ravenna.

qwantz.com - poster child mario question blocks!

It's a sad day when paranoia replaces what could have otherwise made someone smile.

Related Post: Brilliant! - Two ~~subversive~~ additional ways to make people smile

Home Away

2006-03-29T13:46:00.000-08:00

This post is mainly for Olga (my "big sister" in Germany). My brother and I were part of a Christmas drama entitled, "Home Away", this past year. It was set in a homeless shelter and centered around the lives of those living inside. I played young man resigned to being a lifer at the shelter, who offset the fact by never taking anything too seriously. Stephen played a young hoodlum.

A typical afternoon

In this first picture I attempt to convince Ted (left) and George (right) that "It's A Wonderful Life" is the greatest Christmas movie ever by pretending to be an angel and talking in a high pitched voice. Ted was the main character for the drama and George was the character I worked off of the most. We had a scripted love-hate relationship, which was really fun to do and provided a lot of the humour.

Stephen and my confrontation

Here I challenge Stephen using contradictory logic. "I'm not half as tough as I think you are." Stephen, not fully grasping what I said and not wanting to admit it, attempts to maintain his tough guy bravado through the encounter.

The defiant exit

Stephen and I had watched Scarface shortly before our rehearsals began and just for fun he used Pacino as a template for his swagger and gangster drawl in the role. It worked great and everybody loved it.

The Monopoly Scene

At the beginning of the Monopoly scene, I had a great little monologue as I set up the board. In this picture Carmen (far right) has just landed on B&O Railroad. George rejoices that he has B and O, leaving himself open to an obvious joke.

I've also put together a short collection of screen captures I took off of the DVD.

The Revolution Will Have Rhythm

2006-03-27T06:20:00.000-08:00

Last night I watched Good Night, and Good Luck. While set in the 50s, it is fairly clear that the movie is meant to invoke commentary on analogous current events. This message would have been harder hitting for me, if the 50s hadn't been such a cool era. My conclusion? What the world needs is more jazz.

As Ella would say,

Dictators would be better off
If they zoom zoom now and then
Today, you can see that the happiest men
All got rhythm

Giving Back - Part 1

2006-03-22T14:43:00.000-08:00

Day to day I use quite a bit of free software and services to make my life easier. In appreciation and as an opportunity for you to benefit as well, I've decided to give you a brief run down of some of the tools and services I use.

Making a blog

Firstly to make this blog, I obviously use Blogger, a free service run by Google. I host my photos using flickr, also free, but I've caved and gone for the Pro account. Then to bring it all together I use Flock, a variant of Firefox.

Using Flock to edit a blog entry

Flock is really nice at integrating web services into the browser and that bar of photos you see at the top are photos in my flickr account that I can just drag down into my blog entry. They have a clean source editor that doesn't insert line breaks when converting (a big selling point for me).

Browsing the web

For those of you still using Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE)or patiently awaiting version 7, there are three main reasons I would recommend you consider another browser. I'll go from the least convincing to most convincing reasons.

The first reason to switch is security. This isn't too big of a deal if you browse smart and keep up-to-date on the lastest issues, so I won't go into any real details.

The second, is the way the browser renders a webpage. IE is a 90s child, it's stuck in the past. Below is just a small example from a post on my blog.

IE rendering a blockquote

Firefox rendering the same blockquote

For standards compliant browsers (read everybody besides IE), I've added a simple stylesheet markup to add a little quotation mark for any blockquotes. I haven't bothered creating the work-around to do something like this in IE, because it isn't worth my effort for hobby website. Besides, if you're using IE and I hadn't just brought it to your attention, you wouldn't have known it was missing. It's just a little something extra for browsers that follow standards. There are quite a few more rendering setbacks that IE has, that are familiar to most people that build webpages, let's just say that upgrading from IE makes the web a better place.

The third and probably most compelling reason to switch is features. As an example, the aforementioned Flock browser is a pretty slick package, but I still don't use it, because it doesn't quite have all the features I have in Firefox. This might suprise people who are familiar with Flock, because Flock is essentially Firefox with more features. This would be true if I just used the normal Firefox, but the great thing about this browser (and Flock), is that you can add a plenty of extra features and customizations using something called extensions. I use quite a few and there are plenty more out there, however I'll share with you just two. They are pretty applicable to general web use and I couldn't do with out them, now that I've begun to use them.

My Sage Sidebar

The first one I will highlight is called Sage. Most regularly updating websites have something called an Atom or RSS feed associated with it. When I visit a website I would like to keep track of, I simply click the little "Search For Feed" button and it detects any available feeds. From there I add it to my list. Now here's where it comes in handy, if I ever want to check on the websites I'm interested in, I just click on the "Update Feed" button and any websites that have updated since I last visited them will show a little red star beside them. Then I just click on the red star and Sage will show me a summary of all the new content on the site. This saves me from checking twenty different sites when only two of them may have new content since I've last been there. There are other feed aggregators out there, but Sage nicely fits right into the side panel of my browser making it a very handy tool.

The second extension is EasyGestures. EasyGestures is hard to explain but incrediably easy to use. Basically it provides a menu wheel of customizable actions every time you click your middle mouse button. Moving your mouse in that direction then activates the command. It seems simple and it is. In fact it is so simple that I've noticed I now use the commands on a subconcious level. If I have to navigate backwards or forwards using a browser that doesn't carry the feature, I will often find myself wondering why the page hasn't change seconds before my brain realizes that I've already attempted to use an EasyGesture more than once.

I think I'll wrap up here. I've purposefully tried to keep this very high level and not go into too many technical details. If you need help trying to use any of the stuff I've described, feel free to leave a comment in the comments section.

Re-Post: Potsdam/Berlin Summary

2006-03-15T07:00:00.000-08:00

Original posted on: June 18th, 2004

After our stay in Bielefeld, we drove to Potsdam with Karl's cousin Nicki to meet up with Oli, another cousin of theirs. Upon arriving, it was immediately arranged that we grab some Döner (apparently the best in Germany and though I have yet to disprove this, as long as actively trying to disprove this involves eating more Döner, I am by no means through).

We were then given a drive-by tour of Potsdam. Once the home of the Prussian court, most likely due to it's beautiful lakes and nearness to the capitol, Berlin, it is now the home to many German celebraties. Kate Moss, to name one of many we did not meet.

Where Kate Moss doesn't live

Cruising through Potsdam

After our tour, we returned to Oli's place, where we ate a true a German meal (a suprisingly unsual occurance during our stay in Germany) on the patio. Then it was off to an old Russian army barracks turned disco to party the night away.

Hier stept der Bär

The next day we went to Berlin and whisked by all the neccesary tourist attractions, I imagine because it was quite everday for Karl's cousin's. We walked past the many embassies and into the political center of Germany. Here it became very clear the kind of global stability the "War on Terror" was actually generating. Both American and British embassy set themselves apart by completely cordoning of the block in front of their buildings with concrete barriers and patrolling police officers.

Brandenburg Tor

The next day we awoke late as always and saw the palace and gardens in Potsdam. The palace was created to show off Prussia's might and wealth, and it achieved that quite well. It was an awe inspiring sight, even for our day and age, but to think that they created it all with so much less technology than us is amazing (guess that's the engineer inside me thinking). Around the palace, approximately every meter, was a large and unique statue. The time that must have went in to carving each one is mind boggling. It must have been quite a contract, but even then the amount of money they recieved would have been nothing compared to the vast amounts the Kaiser would have had. After eating some more döner, we returned home for another excellant supper. We then "got ready", and headed off to an even bigger disco for the night.

Sans Souci

In the summer house

I awoke the next morning fairly early and took the train into Berlin to meet up with Don and Rosemarie, distant relatives of mine that had been to Canada to visit. We caught up a bit on each others lives, predictably ate Döner, and all around had an enjoyable time. It was only a brief visit, but later in the trip I would have the chance to have a much longer visit.

Digging in to some Döner

technorati tags: Europe, Trip, Germany

Re-Post: Bielefeld Summary

2006-03-09T07:17:00.000-08:00

Original posted on: June 16th, 2004

Coming out of Denmark and back into Germany was an immense relief. We could understand the prices, and liked the way we understood them. We could speak the language passably, which made us feel a lot more in control. (Travelling in a country where you don't know the language, at least for me, always makes me feel slightly out of place). Ed: I can't really agree with that sentiment anymore. Two months later, navigating Greece which featured a Cyrillic alphabet, everything felt quite normal. In fact when, at the end of our trip, we arrived in Scotland, heard everybody speaking English and used their oddly familiar looking money, it end up being discouraging, a reminder that we would have to head home soon and what that would be like. I can say though that being in Germany feels great, in that while everything is foreign you have the ability to pass as a native (which gives you a unique perspective).

At any rate, it felt good to be in Germany. So good in fact, that we decided to start making lots of impulse purchases. Here I get the "Sausage of the day" from a very commercialized looking food vendor, mostly for the picture and the surety that such an enterprise would be sued out of existence in America. I'm loving it, especially the upside down "M".

Mäc Würstchen Walk-Thru

Arriving in Bielefeld, we were greeted warmly by Karl's family in Bielefeld, had a late night snack and then headed for bed. The next morning (it should be noted for our stay with Karl's family this usually refers to what most people would consider afternoon.... ahhh, sleeping in), we took care of business before pleasure and got some drinks. The store pictured here is like a Costco for beverages (especially the German kind, if you catch my drift). We then explored Bielefeld for awhile.

Stocking up for the night

Later that night we decided to go kart racing. As they say, this isn't your grandmothers kart racing, or more accurately this isn't your North American kart racing. It's a whole lot faster and a whole lot more intense. In flash back I realized why, when taking the German exchange students kart racing in Canada, as their first activity here, they were quite obviously underwhelmed. On our tracks you can hold the gas pedal to the floor around the entire circuit, here that would send you flying into a wall at dangerously high speeds.

Don't mess with Karl's cousins

Oli, the exchange student that had lived at our place and who had politely been put through our version of kart racing, joined us, since he lived in the area. As you can tell, this takes a lot out of you. It should be noted that at these speeds, kart racing takes a lot of skill, which I decidedly don't have. Regardless it was a blast.

Oli and me

Afterwards we returned to the Zehn family residence (Karl's relatives) and chilled out on the terrace and took part in a bit of German culture courtesy of Jagermeister.

The next morning (see above definition for morning) we met up with Oli again and went to see Hermann's Denkmal. This statue roughly marks the farthest advance of the Romans before being forced back by Hermann and his like.

Look like any other statues you know?

We also checked out the Externsteine, which are weirdly shaped really tall rocks in the middle of nowhere. Some legends have it that they were thrown down by God when Lucifer was banished from heaven. At any rate it's been used for various cultish practices throughout the centuries.

The stones

After our sight seeing we stopped by in Oerlinghausen, where Oli (und die feinsten chicas) live, for some Turkish food. Turkish food is a mainstay for the Germans and that's just fine by me. Sitting on a bench, in what couldn't have been a more classic German village, we ate lahmacun (a rolled pizza style dish) and ayran (a slightly sour yogurt drink). These are the moments I love the most, relaxing on a beautiful day, watching people go about their business, enjoying a wonderful meal at my leisure. Later I got to see Oli's house and enjoy some excellent Russian Mennonite cooking.

The next morning (morning for real this time) we headed out on the Autobahn for Bremen. Despite going up to 220 km/h it felt like nothing. Probably due to how well the car was designed as well as the fact that everybody else was travelling that fast as well.

Bremen just happens to be the brewing location for Beck's beer, the beer favoured by the all the young people we hung out with. Never ones to turn away a learning experience, we decided to take the tour. Here we are at the mandatory end of every brewery tour. The part where you sample the product line. With us is Nicki's friend who studies in Bremen.

Who saw this coming?

Here the famous statue in the city center. Karl and I rub the legs for good luck.

Der Stadt Musikant

After lunch we visited a concentration camp. Not a fun visit, but definitely something that should be seen once. Perhaps the most startling thing about the whole affair was the size, how mind numbingly vast the camp's layout was, for what was supposedly only a small camp. Coming from a German background, there is also no room to point fingers, just a sickening realization that humanity did this.

Humbling

After returning home and in stark contrast, we enjoyed yet another fabulous meal and went out to a reggae party thrown by the local youth.

Nicki and the DJs

The next morning we said our farewells. It was a great time. Thanks again family Zehn.

Familie Zehn und Karl

technorati tags: Europe, Trip, Germany

Mass Producing Uniqueness

2006-03-06T11:34:00.000-08:00

Josh Davis may not be the one to move the idea to mass market, but it will happen. The modern consumer seeks clothing which will set them apart from the crowd and at the same time, perhaps ironically, fit within a certain range of acceptablity. Hence, the market for mass produced uniqueness. Clothing retailers already push wares that give the illusion of uniqueness or personalization, yet each "unique" item is one of thousands (American Eagle, as a particularily strong example). Which is why Josh Davis' dream is the future.

Davis creates what he calls generative composition machines: applications written with his collaborator Branden Hall, using open source code and Flash to automate his sketches. He plugs in multiple options - say, five different drawings of a tree trunk, 10 types of leaves, seven branches, 15 critters that can live in the foliage, and 12 background colors. Then his code morphs the image from pastoral scenescape into any number of moving visuals - a time-lapse sequence of continental drift, a single frame of anime burning in front of a projector lens, or a Japanese landscape painting rendered as spin art.

Wired 14.03: The Chaos of Joshua Davis

However, if you think scaled social networks will always be better than machines, there is always Threadless.

technorati tags: Art, Algorithms, Marketing

Re-Post: Denmark Summary (or How We Got Daned)

2006-02-28T13:52:00.000-08:00

Original posted on: June 11th, 2004

After our stay in Sweden, we headed across to Denmark to see Copenhagen and visit Legoland.

The town square in Copenhagen

We had our fair share of experiences in Denmark. Enough that we coined a special phrase in it's honour, but I'm getting ahead of myself. Karl and I had just arrived in Copenhagen. Our first goal was to find our hostel, get rid of our bags and proceed to having a good time. Feeling good about ourselves, we decided to walk to our hostel with our packs on. (Kyla had successfully convinced us of the economy of this in Amsterdam.) Besides, the distance in the hostel guide was only 1.2 km, a pleasant stroll. So the two travellers, practically fresh of the plane from Canada, set out to walk to the hostel. We walked. Then we walked some more. We consulted our maps. We walked and then for good measure, we walked some more, four kilometers to be exact. What we had failed to notice was that the 1.2 km referenced distance was from a smaller train system that ran within the city.

Well, we were at the hostel now. The walk was behind us. Time for step two of the plan, dump the bags and head out on the town. Seemed simple enough, but there was one catch. The lockers were incredibly small, barely big enough to hold one of our bags and as a little extra salute to our predicament, they had conveniently located a shelf right in the middle. After walking four kilometers to get here, a shelf was not going to be standing in my way. A little creative redesigning of the lockers (which may or may not have been reversible) and we were finally off.

Excellent, now all we needed was an objective. Karl was set on seeing the Little Mermaid, so this seemed like a suitable goal. We were feeling light without our packs, so we decided to walk it. And walk we did, for quite a ways, which is saying something since we walk everywhere. Then we found it. To really understand this moment you need to understand that as we trekked (endlessly it seemed) through the city to the mermaid, on every other block, we would pass amazingly grandiose statues of soldiers and important figures. The Little Mermaid is well, little, very little in comparison to all the other statues. At this point you may be beginning to grasp how Karl and I drew the inspiration to coin a unique phrase for this country. If you haven't, don't worry, we are by no means done.

The Little Mermaid

It was not all clouds in Copenhagen though, along our trek to the mermaid we met a backpacker from New Zealand who let us in on a budget travelling secret. You see, you can buy beer in six packs in small grocery stores close to a lovely stretch along the pier filled with cafes. This allows you to drink sitting along the side, without paying exorbitant amounts, but more on that later. So we decided to do just that. (Pictured here with us is an Aussie friend we met at the train station, who shared in our adventures for the day).

Sitting pier side

Heading back into the main part of the city we decided to try a pub. Here our Aussie friend, Ross, poses with a beer which cost him 12.50 Canadian. Not wanting to keep you waiting any longer, the expression Karl and I came up with for such a situation is "daned." As in, "Ross has just been daned."

Daned

After our day in Copenhagen we decided to try and head straight for Legoland to keep our costs as low as possible. Legoland is located in Billund but has no train access and no cheap hostels that we were aware of. So we decided to stay in Vejle and go to Legoland by bus. Things didn't quite work as planned. Upon arriving we discovered that of all thing, it was a Danish holiday, meaning practically everything was closed down and we wouldn't be able to make it to Legoland that day as planned. So, to cut our losses we went down to a "beach" close to our hostel. If I was in charge of translation, the term "riverbank" comes to mind as being exceptionally suitable. Regardless we had walked out there and everything else was closed anyway, so I went for a swim.

Swimming in the river

The next day luck was on our side. Which is to say, we missed our bus from the hostel, had to then madly hitch a ride, barely made the bus leaving for Legoland, discovered we would have no where to put our bags, but we had arrived. Denmark couldn't keep us down, we were in Legoland!

Legoland!

As you can see, we were quite excited to reach our elusive goal. To take care of the problem of the bags we took shifts. Legoland was a great flashback to the fun I had playing as a kid with Lego.

Doing the tourist thing

The most amazing part for me was the detailed replication of many famous landmarks as well as a lot of Denmark. Here is a Lego replica of the pier were we drank our beers in an earlier picture.

Lego pier

Denmark, despite my telling of it, was a great place to visit. To put things in perspective, we had incredible luck in Amsterdam and were pampered in Tilburg and Sweden, so the fact that our time in Denmark gave us a harder time shouldn't be surprising. Besides, it makes for a fun story to tell.

Ed: This is the first re-post that I have significantly fleshed out the account from the original. Everything actually happened and I've still followed all the points I covered in the original post, but when I first posted this I was already in Germany and just trying to catch up with all the posts. I posted this on the same day as the Swedish one and it was mostly an excuse to get pictures up quickly and then get off the computer and continue partying with Karl's cousins. In some of the later posts, once I had given up on posting pictures, I opt instead to do more storytelling and for those I will try to keep the same voice that they were told in.

technorati tags: Europe, Trip

Re-Post: Sweden Summary

2006-02-24T09:17:00.000-08:00

Original posted on: June 11th, 2004

After Tilburg (in the Netherlands) we headed up to Copenhagen to meet with relatives of mine from Sweden (Hermann and Birgit Dueck), who live an hours drive away from Copenhagen due to the new bridge/tunnel. We arrived quite late in the evening after a long days train ride and had a brief but enjoyable coffee and tea before going to bed.

The next morning Herman drove Karl and I to their summer house situated close to the coast. There we met Eva their daughter, who helped to show us around. The landscape was uncannily like Grand Beach here in Manitoba and although nothing was exactly the same, it still left me with the feeling at the back of my mind that, at any moment, I could round a bend and discover myself somewhere I'd already been.

A pleasant stroll

Walking back from the beach towards the cabin was a small village that had been moved from northern Sweden to protect if from artillery exercizes.

A traditional village

After our walk along the beach we took a drive up to Ales Stenar, a set of stones in the shape of a viking ship. Here Karl randomly poses with some cows on the way.

Karl and some cows

Here are the stones, experts on the matter haven't agreed on what they're for, so I'm afraid I can't tell you either.

The stones

The view from where the stones were was amazing. The sky was bright blue and the green cliff dropped sharply to the sea below.

Observing the view

After coming down from the cliff we encountered a group of Swedish school children. In America the kids sometimes wear their pants low with boxers. Here a Swedish child appears to be trying to copy the trend, with the exception that he's wearing tight pants and what looks likes kids pajama pants. Always ready to document local culture, we've included this picture for you.

On assignment

Before leaving to return home we stopped back at the summer house for coffee and sweets. The Swedish drink a lot of coffee. According to statistics provided by Hermann (it's been a while, so hopefully I get this right), the Swedes drink the most coffee of any nation on earth and the top five countries are dominated by the Scandinavians.

Statistically normal

The next day we took off to see more of southern Sweden. However, not before posing in a supermarket with Swedish meatballs.

Swedish meatballs in their native habitat

Our host, Hermann, had a great sense of humour. As an example, when asked to teach us some Swedish phrases, the first one he gave us was, "What is the size of the currency reserve in your country?"

In order to bring you this find blog you are reading, we looked around the university town of Lund for an Internet cafe. While there, we decided to view an old church in the town as well. Interestingly, the church was mixed throughout with Christian as well as Astrological symbols.

Inside the church

Not willing to stop our stereotyping with Swedish meatballs, Karl and I visited an Ikea in Sweden.

Nyhet!

Sweden was incredibly beautiful and filled with many old buildings dotting the countryside. As a bit of an exception here is a town they are building completely from scratch to look exactly like an old medieval town, down to the "fortress wall" they were building around it. It was a bit bizarre walking through it.

Nyhet?

No exception to the visual appeal of the country was both the home and backyard of our hosts. Here Karl relaxes in the backyard while journaling.

The good life

Due to the nice weather, we enjoyed many of the meals outdoors. We were spoiled royally through out our stay, and here is but one example of the many amazing meals we received.

A casual lunch

Thanks again to Hermann, Margit and family for showing us such an enjoyable time in Sweden.

Ed: I particularly love that last picture for a number of reasons. The picture captures the bright vivid colours that remind me so much of Sweden. It captures the European style of eating that I love so much. As a bonus the bright yellow umbrella and blue sky are reminiscent of the Swedish flag. For me this picture embodies Sweden.

Oh Google, what can't you do?

2006-02-23T08:56:00.000-08:00

Google just launched Page Creator today, which means 100MB of hassle free file hosting. This combined with their aquistion of KeyHole and subsequent free release as Google Earth, gives me the opportunity to easily do something I've been wanting to do for a while. Put up Google Earth references into my blog (also a free Google product), when posting about my travels.

To get an idea of where all this is going and if you have Google Earth (and if you're running Windows or Mac, I don't know why you'd hold back), this link will hopefully make all that clear.

Pretty much everything I do on the computer, whether that's web browsing, editing office documents, listening to music, posting pictures or even running my operating system, can now be done for free. At one time free alternatives were somewhat shoddy, but today I see no dissentives to doing everything using free products and services. In fact in many cases the free alternative is better than the one you would pay for. As a thank-you, I hope to play advocate in the near future and post a run through of some of the excellant products and services that are out there to be had for free.

Valentine's Fundraising Dinner

2006-02-21T10:10:00.000-08:00

Last weekend I had the pleasure putting together a dinner as a Senior High fundraiser for my church. I posted earlier about some of the planning and advertizing, but a few days ago I had a chance to put all that effort to use. It was great and what follows is a quick summary.

Readying the ingrediants

The day before the actual dinner, Dave Allen (the previous events chef), my mother (the seasoned pro) and I got together in the kitchen and did as much preparation as possible. My mother was invaluable in evaluating the dishes beforehand and offering tips to streamline the preparation.

Mom steaming the peppers

Although sometimes, I must admit, I didn't listen and created more work for myself. For example the red pepper hearts that I wanted to use for garnishing the chicken. The hearts are made up of two pieces each and they need to go on the chicken in the short window in which we are plating them. Common sense would dictate this as extraneous and possibly one of many things that could could make us late in getting the entrée to the table. On the other hand, I thought it would look nice.

The hearts in question

After preparing as much as we could, it didn't take long before it was the night of the event. I had intrusted Ruth Maendal with doing the room's deocrations and she didn't dissapoint.

The table setting

For the final night I had the added help of my good friend Curtis Todd and later my brother. Here Curtis and Dave add layers to the tarts.

Production time

After getting everything successfully in the ovens (an exact fit, we couldn't have fed more than the 64 plates we were preparing), it was time for the serving rush. This is one of my favourite times in the kitchen. The heat of the moment, yelling instructions, making last minute judgement calls to account for the unexpected.

Plating the appetizers

The appetizer

The appetizers went flawlessly. The butteriness and warmth of the three cheese tart was the perfect offset for the fresh salad and tangy vinagrette. I loved the way this course turned out.

The main course was even crazier to get ready and out on time, so I don't have pictures of the production line, but I did manage to get a picture of the finished product.

The main course

I thought the main course worked out okay. The stuffed peppers had mellowed out nicely in the steamer. The saffron infused spiced rice with pine nuts was good, but nothing to write home about. The chicken parmigiana style chicken breasts (Curtis' last minute idea) were great and had a nice depth of flavour. The only exception I took with was the bed of vegetables we placed it on. We hadn't baked them on a grill, so they had sat in there own juice for a bit. This caused the eggplant to come out weak. It didn't taste meaty enough and had the wrong texture. However, there wasn't a lot of eggplant in the mixture and the other vegetables still worked out great, so I couldn't be too dissapointed.

The dessert had been prepared by the Senior High, so after that it was all out of my hands.

The dessert table

All in all it was a great night and a lot of fun. A big thanks to my main helpers as well as all the kids that helped with plating and serving. They were enthusiastic about helping and did a fantastic job.

Mardi Gras Social

2006-02-21T06:12:00.000-08:00

This past summer Geoff and I had talked about getting a group of us to go down to New Orleans for New Years. Sometimes good ideas are just talk, so during a camping trip for a friend's birthday I had convinced myself that as soon as I got back in the city, I was going to figure out the logistics of the trip. As luck would have it, listening to the radio during the car ride back, the hosts began to banter about how New Orleans may never exist as we once knew it. In the course of my short disconnection from the world we almost lost one of the world's most famous cities. It was a surreal experience.

Although things turned out bad, they didn't turn out as bad as they could have and New Orleans is now fighting its way back. Which is all really a long winded ancedote for saying that, although I didn't get to experience New Orleans this New Years, I did get a little taste this past weekend.

Last Saturday our dance studio threw an amazing party. Replete with everything a good party should have, great music, atmosphere, food and most of all people. You can catch a glimpse of that through Theresa's photo album or my photo set.

The Mardi Gras group

Brilliant!

2006-02-16T07:38:00.000-08:00

Nearly 1,000 people drawn by Internet postings and word-of-mouth converged near San Francisco's Ferry Building on Tuesday night for a half-hour outdoor pillow fight.

SAN FRANCISCO / Pillow fight erupts amid shrieks, giggles / Big crowd lured by Internet postings, word of mouth

Social organization always interests me. It's fascinating to watch the way the world is reshaping outside of traditional state boundaries. Or more precisely using the existing structure for its own ends. For example, the way terrorism works and currently flourishes or, in a less negative example, the way Banksy communicates.

Banksy graffiti

Strictly Business

2006-02-14T12:01:00.000-08:00

This past week I had the opportunity to go on a business trip to Tampa Florida. I could definately get used to that style of living, suits and expense accounts.

Exhibit A: The working man

As a Winnipeger, the immediate question asked after leaving during winter is, "What was the temperature like?" Farenheit doesn't really occupy any reference point in my mind, so in qualitive terms it was nice enough that, pretty much every night I would take a swim in the outdoor pool and not feel cold.

Exhibit B: Water which is not frozen

Tampa was at times both a beautiful city with lots of character and a faceless victim of corporatization. On first landing in Tampa, I went scavanging for food along with some guys I met at the hotel. The city's downtown contained many wonderful and architecturally interesting buildings, but many were vacant, some with boarded up windows and not a soul was to be seen on the streets. The downtown is a weekday show, since it was a Saturday that I arrived, it seemed that everybody had retreated to the comforts of suburbia.

Which isn't to say that Tampa doesn't party. Later that night I headed into Ybor City, which is a part of the city that still retains influence from it's Spanish heritage. The place is alive with nightclubs and restaurants of all sorts. I stopped in at a small Greek restaurant with absolutely fantastic food and obscenely loud music. As part of the "cultural experience" they had live belly dancers, which was the reason for said music. Not convinced that gyrating bellies went well with the consumption of food, I ducked into the adjoining room. Adjusting to my surroundings, I quickly realized that floor was heavily littered with napkins and broken dishes. Upon further inquiry, I was informed that this was the aftermath of the belly dancers. For all the restaurant's quirks, though, the food was exquisite. As a small token of appreciation I toasted the meal with a parting shot of Ouzo. Feeling perfectly sated, I headed off into the night.

Exhibit C: The nightlife

The following day was notable in that it was my first chance to watch a Super Bowl from within the United States. What's the difference? The commercials. In the US you get the product of millions of dollars worth of investment. In Canada you get reruns of budget ads by Canadian Tire repeated every commercial break. With good intentions I set out to go and see myself some Super Bowl commercials.

Things didn't turn out as planned. Watching an hour of football to see a few minutes of commercials didn't seem as worth it when faced with the task. So I spent the first half asleep in my hotel room. The third quarter relaxing in the outdoor pool and the fourth with small glimpses of the game while eating dinner in the lobby.

Exhibit D: Watching the Super Bowl

The following day I had no pressing business matters to attend to, so I spent the better part of it exploring the area surrounding Hyde Park. The area is quite close to the bay and features many upscale and fancy houses, so it was to my delight that I discovered many of them flew the Jolly Roger (The ol' skull and cross bones to ye landlubbers). Although it is possible that actual pirates would lead a lucrative life with nice houses in suburban neighbourhoods, the real reason that so many houses flew pirate flags was the Gasparilla festival, which is celebrated at the end of January every year in Tampa.

Exhibit E: A pirate's life

Much of the Hyde Park shopping area is a commercially airbrushed version of what an old shopping district should look like. However, just on the outskirts of this area lies a little house turned tea shop and restaurant. I immediatly took to the place and enjoyed a beautiful sunny day sitting on the patio and reading over my script for a church play. Later the proprietor came out and we had a nice chat. It seems she was having trouble competing with the pre-packaged shops around her, but she was in good spirits and I think if people gave it a chance they would grow to love her little place.

Exhibit F: The tea house

After that it was strictly business for me. You know, drinking wine pier side with a live band playing ("networking" on the expense claim). All in all it was good trip, but Winnipeg is home and I'm happy to be back with friends.

Support Our Teams

2006-02-14T11:51:00.000-08:00

I read this article in Esquire after the 2004 Summer Olympics. In true Chuck Klosterman style, it took a facet of pop culture and made me look at it in a new way and laugh at the same time. With the Winter Games at our doorstep, I thought this was a fitting read.

This is when I realized that the Olympics are designed for people who want to care about something without considering why.

KeepMedia | Esquire: Boycott the Olympics, Save America

(Hopefully the link brings you there without needing a subscription)

An evening at In Ferno's Bistro

2006-02-02T06:01:00.000-08:00

This year Winnipeg is doing a fixed price menu event, where some of the city's finest restaurants are offering three course meals. Last night we took advantage of this event and went to In Ferno's Bistro, a little gem of a restaurant in our city's French district.

Chatting over dessert

The restuarant itself is very unpretentious and quite small. Those of the fairer gender mentioned a few times that the place was "cute" (I don't claim to be an expert on such matters).

The appetizers were outstanding. I had the lobster cheesecake with mesclun greens and lemon thyme vinaigrette. The chef clearly had fun with this one and it's always good to eat something that somebody obviously enjoyed making. The presentation was excellant and they played off of the "cheesecake" idea by offering the lobster cheesecake in a small cake like wedge. The salsa that accompanied it played well with both the lobster and the mesclun greens. An absolute treat!

A good appetizer makes you anticipate the next part of the meal. In this case I was expecting a continuation of the fusion style, subtle touches and interesting pairings, but when the entrées arrived it was clear that they were showcasing some of their more traditional French Canadian fair (both of which the restaurant is known for). I had ordered the lambshanks with maple balsamic reduction and this came with a traditional baked potato and vegetable purée (as did all the entrées). The flavours were very robust and warm and the lambshanks were incredibly tender. I wasn't as amazed as with the appetizer, but overall it was still quite good.

With such a traditional comfort food style entrée, I was glad that the desserts which followed up were very simple and straightforward. Mine was the cappuccino crème brûlée, which was executed well and the perfect end to a wonderful meal.

If you draw any indication from the number of photos that were taken, you will notice that we were all too wrapped up in the great food and excellant company to fully document the event. However, we did take a few.

Capturing the moment

2006-01-30T12:02:00.000-08:00

I bought myself a little digital camera this weekend. One of things that is a necessary part of owning a digital cameras is to do those self group portraits. You know, the ones where you bunch together as tightly as possible, hold the camera out at arms length, point the lens in your general direction and hope for the best. Here's my first attempt.

Attack of the giant snowflake

Having a new camera, will hopefully mean some new pictures coming to the blog in the near future. I'm taking advantage of Winnipeg's fixed price menu event this Wednesday to go to In Ferno's Bistro. Being a self-confessed foodie, I'll try and document some of that. Also, Saturday I'm off to Tampa for a business conference, so between working on my tan and swimming in the hotel pool... I mean doing business stuff, I'll try and take a few snapshots. The flipside is that while having lots to do will leave me lots to document, it won't leave me much time to do it in (Ed: My pre-emptive excuse for not posting in the near future).

On the witness stand

2006-01-27T06:54:00.000-08:00

This should be interesting.

An Italian court has begun the task of deciding whether a priest should be called to face questioning over whether or not Jesus Christ actually existed.

BBC NEWS | Europe | Italy judge considers Jesus case

Trespassing, suspicious activity, car wrecks, lawn jobs and reports of teens running naked through yards shooting each other

2006-01-24T17:45:00.000-08:00

The title is an excerpt from an article in the Cincinnati Enquirer detailing the escalation of Nerf Gun battles around Blue Ash. Besides having no idea what "lawn jobs" are or what they entail (feel free to provide plausible theories), I found this article to be quite an entertaining read.

While my brother and I have yet to draw the ire of the local police department (I make no claims about our parents), we have enjoyed a recent revival of Nerf Gun battles within our own house. Below is a beautiful photo taken by yours truly, wherein I fire a dart at my unsuspecting brother. While the composition and lighting in this photo may leave something to be desired, I think the poetry captured by the dart in mid-air and my brother's unawareness, have a certain quality of their own. That and the dart ended up being dead on, hitting my brother square between the eyes.

Poetry in motion

It should be noted that Stephen and I disagree with the popular gaming comic Penny-Aracade on their first rule of engagement. Stephen has created a set of darts which offer greater speed and range and thus are harder hitting, not that we take this thing seriously.

Re-post: Tilburg Update

2006-01-24T13:56:00.000-08:00

Original posted on: June 9th, 2004

We only spent one day in Tilburg, but it was a great time. Upon arriving in the city, Karl and I tried calling Peter (our friend from Winnipeg who was staying in the city for an international program at the university). Unfortunately only the answering machine picked up. Are pre-arranged plan was for to Peter to pick us up, since we had no idea where he was staying. Not seeing a University on the map outside the station, we head towards what Karl and I believed translated to "art school" from Dutch.

After we walked a few blocks with our heavy packs we realized we had no clue what we were doing. With our packs, walking all the way back to the train station didn't seem to be to appealing, so we stopped at a little shop to regroup and think of what to do. Using our rough ability to understand Dutch for a second time (and to better effect) the little restaurant was named, "The Angel."

The restaurant we found

Fittingly the stores proprietor ended up being an angel to us in the situation. Upon entering the store, we immediatly excercised our incompetence with foreign pay phones. We called Peter's number again, someone answered who sounded like Peter on the other end, but for some reason he could never hear anything we were saying. Later, the store owner informed us that the payphones don't take your money until you confirm you made the right call by pressing "*", allowing the other party to hear you. He was kind enough to give us more money to call again. The food there was also extraordinary. If you ever find yourselves lost in Tilburg, drop by this place it's amazing.

Brodhoodjin mit hete chicken?

Peter showed up and we then met up with Alexi and Michal (roommates) as well as Kyla (who had arrived a day earlier) at the train station. The next plan of action was get from the train station to the dorms using the traditional method of transporation in the Netherlands (i.e. use the three bikes we had). Various combinations of strapping and distributing two heavy packs and six people across three bikes was tried. We'd create a plan of action, move approximately a meter before something or someone fell off and then try again. Eventually we sucked up our defeated and two of us took the bags on a bus while the rest cycled home.

Cruising the streets

It was one of Peter's roomate's birthday, so for supper we had an amazing feast laid out for us. Remarkable to start with, but made even more so by the fact that the feast, consisting of Lasagna and Russian salad, were all made in a tiny kitchen with only a toaster oven from scratch. It tasted fantastic.

For the occasion Alexi (from Russia) brought out a bottle of his country's finest vodka. Vodka in Canada is usually slugged back in shots, maybe it's because we drank it straight out of glasses, but this particular vodka tasted exceptionally good. Here Marga (from Poland) appears to be fantasizing about the bottle, however the bottle is quite empty at this point.

Mmmmmm, vodka

We were also introduced to a crazy French game called "Jungle Fever", here Henri poses with the game from his homeland.

Jungle Speed!

After most of the party people left we took of in the night on bikes in true Netherlander fashion. We headed into the city centre and enjoyed a game of pool at one the pubs.

After returning to the dorm and hitting the sack, morning arrived quickyly and Karl and I rushed off on our bus to begin a full day of travel to Sweden, but not before being offered an absolutely amazing breakfast of toasted bread with assorted cheeses, mushrooms and tomatoes.... Genius!!! (Ed: I stand by that statement, it was one of the best breakfasts I've had)

Dancing with the stars

2006-01-23T08:43:00.000-08:00

The dance studio Geoff and I attend has what could be referred to as a "wall of fame". A series of framed black white pictures line the wall by the entrance with snapshots of famous celebrities who have come to the studio and dancers from the studio competing in competitions. On this wall, there just so happened to be a few frames which had yet to receive pictures. This presented somewhat of an opportunity. Now, if Geoff and I were brutaly honest with ourselves we would have had to reluctantly admit that we are currently neither celebrities nor competition level dancers and therefore our chances of appearing on this wall (through what one might call the "traditional means"), would be somewhat slim. Geoff and I, however, are endearing optimists. Something as simple as facts and proper procedure do not keep us down.

A little help from Google Image Search and a program called Photoshop and we had two excellant candidate photos for the wall:

Disclaimer: My heart felt apologies to the original owners of both photos

Geoff's picture

My picture

And because we are such trusting people, our Saturday dance class was allowed to lock up on Saturday, providing us with an opportunity to stake our claim to fame. For those of you who frequent our studio, you can now find our photo beside some guy named Richard Gere, who appeared in some movie they filmed at the studio.

As a bit of an aside, related to movies being quite frequently filmed here in Winnipeg. The same night we put up the photos, we exited the studio to find ourselves in the middle of an actual movie set. The door we use for the studio exits into a backlane, so the movie crew probably wasn't expecting anybody to come out. Also you can't really see what's unfolding outside the door until you've actually opened it, so stepping out into a fully lit set with cameras and everything was a bit surreal. They hadn't started filming yet, so we didn't end up as Cut#000016: Random confused people appear on scene from doorway.

Eye of the beholder

2006-01-20T06:42:00.000-08:00

I came across this article thanks to the good folks at Language Log. It's a good read, discussing the way truth seems to be shaped in our society. Here's an excerpt from the article that jumped out at me.

We live in a relativistic culture where television "reality shows" are staged or stage-managed, where spin sessions and spin doctors are an accepted part of politics, where academics argue that history depends on who is writing the history, where an aide to President Bush, dismissing reporters who live in the "reality-based community," can assert that "we're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality."

Bending the Truth in a Million Little Ways - New York Times

Memory is parallax

2006-01-19T14:26:00.000-08:00

My good friend Kyla (who co-stars in my Europe posts) is teaching English in Indonesia currently. I've been following her adventures in her MSN Spaces blog. Just recently, I was trying to discover where in Indonesia she was staying so that I could try finding it with Google Earth. Doing a quick web search for Kyla and Indonesia unearthed two interesting results, that if you are a friend of Kyla's, you just might find interesting.

It turns out her two fellow housemates also keep blogs of some sort. Miriam uses the esteemable Blogger and Joey, seemingly the most verbose of the three, uses LiveJournal.

This is cool for a number of reasons. Firstly, because you are now getting three times the coverage. Secondly, because you gain a new perspective of what's going on.

The following is two parallel excerpts about the same situation I found amusing, having travelled with Kyla before. I had read Kyla's story before finding the other journals and here is what Kyla had to say about a day trip she took out into the rice paddies:

At one point this crazy guy comes running up the steep side of the hill carrying coconuts, and said that he saw us walking. He claimed to have been working in the terrace across the valley when he saw us and ran down into the valley to pick some coconuts for us. It was a great refreshing treat; and then he asked for money! It was worth it though.

Kyla's Space: November 5 Bali!

Here is Joey's version of the story:

Kyla and I kept walking with no one around, until suddenly a man with 3 large green coconuts pops out of the grass saying, saw you, and I climb tree, and I get for you! Before we know it, he takes out a large machete and starts chopping them open for us. We graciously took them and drank. Very refreshing after a long walk. I then gave him 10,000 Rupiah and we continued our journey.

joeystud: Trip to Bali

This story just struck me as a classic male-female moment. When I envsioned this story in my head, the man comes up and in what Kyla assumes to be an action a genuine goodwill, offers them some coconuts. He ruins that though by asking for money and turning it into just a cheap commercial money grab. The refreshment is worth the price, but the moment is lost through the dissapointment. On the other hand, to Joey, although seemingly being the one who ended up paying, the fact that he had to pay is somewhat auxillary to the entire event. He's just happy to get some refreshing coconut milk to drink.

Of course, either Joey or Kyla may end up reading this and telling me I'm way out to lunch. However, sometimes reading a story is more interesting than actually being there. Anyways, go check out the journals, for what life is like teaching English Second Language to people in Indonesia. An excellant distraction.

Re-Post: Amsterdam Update

2006-01-18T21:54:00.000-08:00

Original posted on: June 9th, 2004

Here's the first in a series of quick summaries. I'm realizing I can't rely on having pictures with my post and should just do quick written logs to keep you up to date. However we've got good internet access for the next few days, so if I can find the time, I'll try to bring everybody up to speed while including pictures. By the way we're in Bielefeld now with Karl's relatives and having an absolutely amazing time here. ...so yes, about Amsterdam.

Two in a shoe

This one is a random pic, but one that I like. Peter and Kyla in a shoe... I don't really have much to add. It's from our first day in Europe... not quite a full day, so I'll call it day zero.

Day 1:

Our first full day in Amsterdam, Kyla, Karl and myself took off to the Heineken brewery

Sampling the product line

Here we are in "Bar 1" having our first round of beers. The brewery tour is pure entertainment and marketing, but does it look like we're complaining?

The "virtual" carriage ride.

We hold on tight for one of the "rides". The video screen shows you trotting around Amsterdam from the perspective of a horse-drawn carriage and the carriage shakes and sways. There's another ride as well were you pretend you're a beer bottle (just to give you an overview of the type of educational material you receive on the tour).

Bar 2 Panorama

This is picture of Bar 2, the final bar. Here you get "two" free drinks.

America's Ambassadors

The US army guys we met there, however, proved the looseness of that rule. The guy with the camouflage backpack has a dromedary pack in it (one of those plastic sacks you use for having "water" handy to drink when hiking) which the bartender let him fill up with beer. This made him an obvious crowd favourite as he walked around filling up his buddies' glasses. The army guys were based out of Germany and had many funny stories to tell. My favourite is the series of stories from the guy pictured on the far left of how he was always getting kicked out of Spain. These stories compounded by his disbelief at not being able to sneak into the country, "Come on, it's like getting into Mexico!", provided much hilarity.

Karl not drinking

To prove we also indulge in more cultured activities, here is a picture of Karl in the Rjiks Museum.

Returning to our hostel

Our hostel was situated right in the middle of the city and right along a canal. Here Kyla and I hike up to the hostel after one of our outings. (The hostel is the building with the light blue flag that's not fully unfurled).

The brothers

We always seem to meet interesting people on our travels and here are two very drunk, but funny, Dutch brothers who came and began talking to us (for what ended up being very long time). We were chatting on the bench in front of our hostel that overlooks the canal, quite peacefully I might add, when they arrived. Highlights from their visit include, the singing of "Heidi from the hills" in German (upon discovering that Karl and I could speak German). Them mistaking us for French more than once during our conversation (even though Karl and I can't speak a full sentence of passable French). The brother, who ran away to find cigarettes, excitedly telling us how he had to barter with the store owner to sell him the pack because the store was just closing and then promptly losing the pack in the canal.

Day Two:

We dropped of Kyla at the train station in the morning and then wandered along the streets looking at shops.

Frites!

Here I enjoy some fries with a curry pineapple mayonnaise. The shop is called Manneken Pis. Clicking on image brings up a larger image, wherein you may take a closer look at the logo and try to suceed, where we failed, at understanding Dutch marketing strategy.

Upon returning to our hostel, we found that a true blue American had taken Kyla's bunk. We hung out for the rest of the day, and he entertained us by using interchangeably the words "chill", "sweet" and "sketch" in every single sentence.

A brief excerpt from our first meeting:

American to the Swiss travelers in our room, "So where are you guys from?"
The Swiss, "Switzerland"
The American in a stoned surfer voice, "Oh, sweeeet!"
The Swiss, thinking he said Swede instead of sweet, "No, Swiss."
"Yeah, that's sweeeeeeet."
A little more indignant now, "We are from Switzerland, so we are Swiss."
"I know I just think that's sweeeeet."
Reiterate a few more times, at which point I jumped in and attempted explain "Sweet" to the Swiss.

And there you have it, our quick tour of Amsterdam.

Ed: Despite its length, this was a fairly quick post and skims over much of the details we experienced in Amsterdam. Probably the neatest thing about Amsterdam was the atmosphere, people walking and biking everywhere. To give you an idea, the train station had a three story bike parking garage that was over full.
Also, as this still one of my earlier posts, it is still very much point form summary to match potential pictures. Once we realized we couldn't post pictures and we got more used to travelling, the posts started to have more of a story telling aspect.

File under self promotion

2006-01-12T06:26:00.000-08:00

A note to the reader: I've recently been inspired by a friend of mine, who tracks his art projects on MySpace, to do a bit of the same and document some of my own ongoing projects. Those that see me all the time probably already know all the things I'm up to, but then again those people probably hear enough from me and don't need to come to the web to get an extra dose. So to friends and family abroad or to those I just don't get to see all the time, this post's for you.

Two years ago, I helped a good friend of mine, Dave Allen, out with cooking for a Senior High Valentine's Day fundraising dinner. After a year's haitus, the powers that be wanted the dinner back. Dave's a busy guy, so this year I was recruited to play head chef and design a menu for the dinner.

Those that know me well, know that I both love to cook and am somewhat of a perfectionist. So the challenge was to put together the best menu given the constraints that are the kitchen I would be working in, time, money (it is a fundraiser), quality of available ingredients and of course my skill. (Somewhat analogous to an engineering project now that I think of it.) So here's what I've come up with.

Click to see full sized version

The menu had to fit into a church bulletin and it also had to be legible, printed off of a Xerox machine, so I tried to keep the layout simple and I didn't have a chance to play with the white space as much as I would have liked to. All in all, I was fairly pleased with the end results. Update: I've also made some changes since the version you see here. I took the unnecessary period of off the 7:00 at the bottom, fixed up the line spacing for the bottom two lines and created a simple back for the insert.

I've also come up with a few little touches for way the food will be presented, but I'll have to wait to reveal those until the actual night. Hopefully, I can grab some pictures from the night and share them with you here as well. I've got Ruth Maendal recruited for decorating the tables and the room, so I've got high expectations for the night.

It'll be hard to pull off, but I'm actually quite excited about the whole thing. Dave and I are already having a lot of fun with it. For a bit of a promo last Sunday, both of us dressed up in suits and sat behind a little booth. Along the front read, "Panel of Experts", and above us hung a sign saying, "Need dinner ideas, romantic advice?" Then of course for every question, our response would be something along the lines of, "Hmmmm, yes, actually I've got just the solution for you. You see, on February 19th we are putting on a romantic dinner..." Most of the married men seemed to find the idea of two single guys offering romantic advice quite amusing. Although, strangely enough, all the women seemed to love the idea and played right along. I'll let the reader draw their own conclusions. ;)

Fine timing

2006-01-10T06:16:00.000-08:00

I just came across a Guardian article via Lindsey's blog, outlining how US troops confiscated tapes looking into American and British mispending of Iraqi funds. I believe Callum Macrae, the director of the investigative documentary, sums up the appropriate response

We need a convincing assurance from the American authorities that this terrifying experience was not harassment and a crude attempt to discourage Ali's investigation.

Quoted from
Guardian Unlimited | US troops seize award-winning Iraqi journalist

I doubt I'm really "spreading the word" with my current readership, but new linking puts the article higher in search engines and the public eye. I'll try and update this, if new information comes in.

New Years 2006

2006-01-03T06:33:00.000-08:00

This New Years I celebrated in the good company of some great people, the group of people I take dance class with on Saturday.

The "Saturday" group

Naturally, the party was held at the dance studio, which combined a classically elegant building with our group's love of dancing. Table 7 was ours for the evening, which we shared with a young couple who took class on Mondays.

Table 7

Dancing was of course central to the evening and on the odd occasion where one of us wasn't dancing with someone, we managed to get some pictures of others dancing.

The dance floor

Geoff and Nicole Cha Cha with style

Attempting some Merengue improvisation

Highlights of the evening include the Champagne...

Getting the bottle ready for the count down

...and the beautiful ladies who attended.

Nicole, Jen and Galina

As well as a brief interlude before the new year, in which I was paraded around the room as Old Man 2005, and promptly kicked out into a snow bank.

Ted and Margaret lead Old Man 2005

Something, I quite distinctly remember being omitted from the job description, as it was explained to me beforehand. Never fear though, for in a feat worthy of Clark Kent's transformation to Superman, once out in the cold, I tore off the old garments of 2005 (just so you don't get any ideas, I had a suit on underneath) to emerge a younger and spryer man ready to count in the New Year.

The clock ticked 12 and the group erupted in cheers and toasts.

Then in all the gaiety of the newly brought in New Year, we formed a conga line and danced. An event in which I learnt the importance of wearing a belt with your suit. This lesson became clear, when the line accelerated in front of me and the elderly lady behind me, who was holding my "waist" (read pants), couldn't quite keep up.

However, my description of the evening wouldn't be complete without mentioning that it was also the dazzling Marlene's birthday.

Happy Birthday Marlene!

Happy New Year everyone!

Re-Post: ...and we're off

2005-12-16T14:02:00.001-08:00

Ed: This was my first post from Europe, as you'll find out within a few sentences, and I was still very much a travelling newbie at this point. I'll mostly use what I wrote originally with some minor alterations for clarification. It doesn't read terribly well, I was still very much absorbing everything and writing with a timer clicking away my remaining internet time. Anyways, enough preamble, to the post.

Original posted on: May 29th, 2004

So this is my first post from Europe. It's hard to capture everything that's happened in the last two and half days, but I'll give it a shot.

Firstly, Karl and I took off in style from Winnipeg thanks to the absolutely wonderful Mrs. Geisbrecht.

Karl and I enjoying first class

After enjoying the amenities of the first class travel we boarded our next flight without any waiting. We had a row of three to ourselves, so we worked on catching up on much needed sleep. This was a marginal success despite the little kid behind, who continually made really loud observations from just behind my head.

Excerpts include:
In the span of less than a minute while still idling on the runway. "THE PLANE IS STOPPED!" "... OKAY, ITS MOVING AGAIN!!!" "... NO, WAIT ITS STOPPED" "... ITS BACKING UP!" And then with plane section entirely asleep at a very early hour. "I SEE BLUE!!!!" Which of course was all you could make out, flying over the Atlantic at a high altitude.

We landed in Frankfurt and met up with Kyla without a hitch, who had flown in on a different flight, and then waited for our train to Amsterdam. It turned out to be an interesting train ride, just before entering the Netherlands, an announcement came on in German telling us that the we would have to get off at the next stop as a World War II era bomb had been found on the tracks and we would have to continue from there. A few minutes later a second message came on telling us that they had made contact with the police and we could now continue and shouldn't get off at the next stop. Shortly there after, Netherlands police officers boarded our train and checked everybody's passports. Then as we were exiting in Amsterdam, some plain clothes officers escorted a handcuffed man off the train... so who knows what was actually going on. Anyways, other than that it was an excellent train ride. The scenery is beautiful, but there is a suprising amount of graffiti on every available surface, and I mean everything, which looks really odd because everything else looked like quaint images of old Europe.

Upon arriving in Amsterdam we decided to try walking to our hostel instead of taking the tram, a money saving technique. Kyla was on a really restricted budget and the one who convinced us to give it a try. It turned out to be the right decision, as everything in this city is so incredibly close together and easy to walk to. Bikes and pedestrians rule the streets. We found Peter sleeping on a bench in front of our hostel and after checking in he led us around the town. We decided to hang out in Vondelpark for a while because the weather was so unusually beautiful.

Kicking back in the park with a Dutch brew

Ed: As you'll have noticed the post ends off pretty abruptly. The original also didn't have any pictures. One of the things we had counted on before leaving was the ability to transfer pictures to my FTP server, both to create more room on Karl's camera and to compliment the blog posts. As it turned out internet connection speed an USB ports were a very limiting factor. We were probably madly trying to figure how to backup the pictures, hence the abandoned post midway.
Also, a fun fact for you folks enjoying that picture of our pasty goodness (Hey, it had snowed in Winnipeg only a few weeks prior), those brews we're sipping are a Heineken brand that tastes a lot like root beer. Karl's face in that picture pretty much sums up the taste exactly.

A Fresh Start

2005-12-13T07:01:00.000-08:00

I created this blog a while ago with the intention of transcribing the random bits I find while traversing the web. Good intentions aside, I made about five posts in total before abandoning the idea. However, this morning as I was looking through old posts I made in a now extinct blog about my travels in Europe, I found that I quite enjoyed reading through them. From that sprang the idea to repurpose this blog to resurect those old travel posts. I'll still probably post random pieces here, but the main idea is now to document some of my travels.

A big set back in doing this earlier was the ability to include photos convientantly in my posts. With the advent of flickr (lowercase company names are all the rage I hear) that is no longer an issue.

The sun sets in Paris

So there you have it, a picture with a post. This post is primarily to test how the stylesheet works with formatting a sample post. So now that I've got text and an image, I'm all set to start.