The last few weeks have been hectic, in case you were wondering if I'd dropped from the face of the Earth. I haven't. Despite my best efforts, I can't leave the planet. Not even achieve low earth orbit; I did manage to clear the rim of my basketball hoop once it was set low enough though. In addition to that feat, I also left Saskatoon for a short trip to Calgary. John and I actually took off there last weekend to see Franz Ferdinand and, in his case, Death Cab for Cutie, which vies, in my mind, for the title of "Most Self-Consciously Ridiculous Band Name Ever". There is some stiff competition, of course, from bands like Pretty Girls Make Graves (maybe if they hadn't gotten in that death cab), !!!, and Eagles of Death Metal. Speaking of bad band names, I recently saw Run Chico Run when they passed through town, and was impressed enough to buy their latest album, Slow Action. As my cousin informed me, they were once a four-piece, then became a three-piece, and right before they left to go on tour, became a two-piece, and rather than cancel the tour they went and learned the other parts. So they both play all the instruments and switch around fairly often, multitasking as well - sometimes one guy is playing drums, keyboards, and singing all at the same time. Anyway, I'd definitely check out their music over at NewMusicCanada or else my favourite song of theirs is on Episode 3 of the community podcast I'm hosting at the moment; Sportscars for Everyone. They remind me a little of the Unicorns, very quirky but not death obsessed. But I digress... on to the Calgary trip.
John and I left for Calgary just before 11 AM on Wednesday, picking up some wine and beer for Steph, who was gracious enough to tolerate our existence on her floor over there. After picking up those various items and some velocity, we made the trip in five hours. Though I think John was a little frightened. He kept biting his nails and looking about nervously. We got there in plenty of time to stop by Steph's, drop off our stuff, hang out a little, and head to the concert which started at 7 PM. We got there early, figuring we'd secure for ourselves a good place on the floor near the front of the stage. Well, it turns out that the presale tickets I'd gotten didn't specify where we were sitting when I bought them. And it was in the farthest possible seat from the stage. Really. We were in the absolute top row on the opposite end of the Stampede Corral. See how the concert looked from our seats in the picture on the right. I wanted to sneak down - I'd been watching the security guys and found a hole in their pattern that I thought we could exploit to get to the stage, but John (probably wisely) didn't want to risk it. I guess I didn't care as much because I'd seen them already in London and had pretty much gone for his benefit plus a fun time in Calgary, though obviously I enjoyed their show enough in London to want to see them again.
The opener band they'd used in London, The Cribs, followed them out here. They're not a bad band, certainly tight, but they have no sense of dynamics in my opinion. Their songs are very similar sounding, and so when their drummer stands to play drums on his stool as he often does, you're left to wonder what prompted it, rather than thinking, "Oh yeah! This part rocks!". Then Death Cab, who bored me as much on stage as they do on record. I'll admit they had some good songs, but their singer seems a little self-obsessed. I tried my best to get into them because by this point I was feeling rather low energy and starved. Neither John nor myself had eaten since breakfast, almost twelve hours ago, and we were sure feeling it. Especially coupled with a day in the car. The spaces in between bands was interminable. I think that bands today have forgotten the initial intent of a warm up band. To get the crowd into it. Nothing pulls the crowd out like 30 mins waiting for them to change equipment and soundcheck quickly.
They didn't soundcheck though, or did a really rapid one, so when Franz came out, the sound was bad, but that corrected itself a few songs in. They really WERE high energy and brought even the bored-looking Calgarians to their feet on several occasions. Even from our distance, we really enjoyed them. Particularly the encore. And particularly The Outsiders. Man did they tear that song apart. It started with the guitar part alone, then Alex walked up to the keys and started playing the melody and built it into this massive wall of noise. Then he slammed his hand along the keyboard, killing the noise and walked to the microphone to start singing. I found a video of how they played Outsiders on our tour, but it was much better in Calgary - Part 1 / Part 2). At this point, he had once again become my stage-presence hero. As the song went on and broke apart at the end, the roadies brought out some extra floor toms and sticks, and there were five people playing drums, another on keys, plus Franz. They could've played that song all night so far as I was concerned. A great show, both John & I were beaming and we can only imagine how it would've been if we'd been up in the front.
Starved, we left the show and went to a lounge to grab a bite. I had a nice baseball steak and a few beer that really hit the spot. John partook of the stirfry, I believe. It turned out that a bunch of staff from The Keg here in Saskatoon were out in Calgary as well, and it's too bad we didn't see them. The pub they went to, they were soon joined by Franz and Death Cab, that would've been cool. If nothing else I could've given them heck for not stopping in Saskatoon - though their manager was kind enough to write me back at least. Though I probably would've instead been gushing over The Outsiders and how great a name "Death Cab" was.
The next day was beautiful, plus 22 or something. John & I wanted to spend some time outside, so we drove to Banff and what a great idea if I do say so myself. We hiked up to the top of Tunnel Mountain, which was a perfect way to get some exercise, did a little shopping/walking around in Banff town, and also hiked down to the hoodoos. I'd been to Banff many times and never gone to see these, nor even heard of them, so it was great to actually get there and see these things. We also grabbed a few wings before setting on the road back. The plan for the evening was to take Steph out to a nice dinner, but she wanted to watch the Flames game (and heck, so did we) so we instead went to a little bar just off 17th (aka The Red Mile) and did that with a bunch of her friends. We also ate dinner there, and low and behold, guess who forgot to pick up Steph's tab. Yeah, I'm an idiot. We just kinda left in a bit of confusion and it completely slipped my mind. D'oh! We wound up going over to her friend's apartment, which was pretty darned nice if I may say so, and then out to Coyotes, which was less nice, but you'll have to ask John about that.
Friday, we tried to get tickets to the Flames game on Saturday, though after seeing how it went, I'm sort of glad we didn't. It's almost like they intentionally threw the series. Oh well, I can always cheer for Edmonton. We had Chinese food which I _did_ remember to pay for and then went shopping downtown. I saw a beautiful Canali jacket which I was very tempted to buy, but it was a little out of line with what I was willing to spend given that I'm still paying off travel debts. OK, who am I kidding, a lot out of line. At Steph's insistence, we stopped over at the Metropolitan Grill on Stephen Ave at 4:30, after I picked up an Alfred Hitchcock anthology (I've been meaning to see some of these movies for a long time) in order to catch the after work crowd. Very nice in there, but I didn't think there was anything especially unique other than a good location. Then off to John's cousin's house in Chestermere for a delicious BBQ. We stopped off in the wine cellar, a very nice store, and grabbed a couple bottles of Beaujolais, and made our way there. They were all very cool, Tara had some delicious Chilean wine as well, and was quite a martini maker - best vodka martini I've had, actually. The bbq and food was great, and we watched Montreal lose another disappointing game before heading out, then came back to find Steph was not in. So we went out for the evening, I was already driving for John since he'd had a few, and we wound up at Melrose, very nice lounge/club, with some nice women to boot, but John took a sip of beer and was instantly ill, and we were both tired anyway, so back home we went.
Saturday, John & I spent the afternoon exploring Chinook mall. I didn't find much I liked, and the one store I did was lined up quite a bit with women for the change room. I don't have the patience for that, so I left the only store with stuff I liked that was unique empty handed. Probably better off, anyway. I did pick up a few books from the store, but otherwise, nothing else. One of which, Freakonomics, I pretty much finished in a 24 hour period, a very interesting book, I enjoyed it quite a bit and would certainly recommend picking it up as an interesting read. Anyway, we made it back safely and watched Serpico before calling it a trip. Then, this week, my sister took off for London to start her trip through Europe to Greece with Contiki, so I was helping her to get ready for that. I think I may have scared her instead. She left Wednesday and it certainly feels weird to think she's over there alone and wandering the streets of London. Well, by now she's in Paris, I guess. She has a blog too, so check it out: larissa.katsiris.com. Living vicariously is highly underrated.
Well, I made it home. I woke up in London plenty early for the flight and since I'd used Air Canada's internet check-in, I even had an aisle seat (you can pick your seat assuming the plane's not full already). Just before 1:00 London time, the wheels lifted off and my stay in Europe ended. The movies being shown were Charlie & The Chocolate Factory, which I'd seen, some black and white movie where the guy from Spiderman and Reese Witherspoon enter this TV show (called Pleasantville) and introduce emotion (and therefore colour) to the characters, and Fantastic Four. A pretty good lineup, Pleasantville wasn't as bad as it sounds, and Fantastic Four wasn't as good as it could've been, but I already had heard that so it was good to see it free on a plane.
That said, I don't know if I'd use Air Canada again for a transatlantic flight. There were no problems, BUT from what I hear almost every other airline in the world (I believe Virgin was first) has personal TV and you can choose the movies, pause, etc. Nevermind looking around the stewardess to try and make out the charactersin a show you don't really want to see anyway. But I suppose I made it home safely and with the only mishap being further damage to my backpack (they broke a zipper) so personal TV's aren't really that important in the scheme of things.
Well, that's not quite true. They also changed my connecting flight from Calgary to Saskatoon. It was supposed to leave at 4:00 leaving me to arrive at 6:05 in Saskatoon. However, I'd not memorized the details and when I got to the gate and saw that the flight was leaving at 6:15, I just remember the 6:05 and thought it sounded right. With the time change, I reasoned, one hour difference, plus a 45 minute flight, that should be about right. Of course, it didn't occur to me until I was on the plane that the time change was an hour in the opposite direction (I seem to have problems with these time zones, don't I?) and too late to alert anyone in Saskatoon that I'd given them the wrong time.
Nevertheless, when we got home (my cousin Gus and his family was on the plane home from Athens as well) everyone was waiting and had eaten so I didn't feel AS bad. And it sure was nice to see everyone again. It IS nice, I should say. Aside from the fact that I wake up inexplicably and uncorrectably by 6 AM everyday, and occasionally am tired by 10 PM, there's not much jet lag to get over. It was a little weird to look on a map and see myself back in North America again, but things really haven't changed much. The restaurant's been renovated (again), there are a few things different around the city (HEL is closing, the College/Circle interchange is coming along and they've started digging for the new cinema) but otherwise, things are seemingly as I left them.
Oh sure, my car wouldn't start (I replaced the battery and it's fine now but I think it's running a little strangely), my old 373 phone number has been given to an old lady (who I feel sorry for this week), my cell phone doesn't exist (I'm going to get a new number today), the cabin is sold, my room was clean, Mariah is twice as tall, Nicole has moved out, and various other bizarre phenomena, but things are still the same.
I've spent the two days here running errands, getting replacement cards, a new license, sorting out papers, bills, and so on, and getting life back in order. I start work again on Monday, and then I will be back to where I was when I left almost exactly 7 months ago.
Now, so far as this site goes. A few things. First of all, I've finally gotten around to picking out my Favourite Photos of 2005. Check them out and please feel free to vote for your favourites so that the best come to the top. Or go through all the photos and pick out your own favourites. You may have noticed I added a link on the left hand side called "Site Feed". If you have a news aggregator, use FireFox, or have any other means of subscribing to feeds, then this may be something for you. It basically lets you know when I update the blog so you don't have to check. In FireFox, if you add it as a Live Bookmark, it will also tell you what the latest 'headline' is.
Which is where I'm going to leave it this time in order for a nice segue into my next post about a site you've probably heard about (it starts with a 'g' and rhymes with 'zoogle'). Meanwhile, I'll be working on getting everything done I said I would, more photos and so on posted, and other more Christmas related stuff. If I don't see you before then, Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and all the best. Thank you for sharing this past year with me.Read More...
Manchester was a great time, I finally got to meet Mike (aka Mike1) and visit with him. As has been the case with everyone I've met here, he was a very generous and great host and I definitely appreciated the place to stay and taking me around Manchester. I got in at about noon and after some food, we went back to his flat to drop off my backpack. Then, we headed out, by now, probably around two or three o'clock. And we went to the boulevard of a street, where a staircase was located, and went down into a place called The Temple Bar. Ironic, a little, considering that this was the place in Dublin that precipitated my loss of property. However, the experience was much more enjoyable, with all sorts of good music on the jukebox and various European beers at our disposal. Interestingly, the place used to be one of those under-the-street-washrooms. Don't worry, you wouldn't have guessed.
Anyway, with the music flowing the beer was not far behind. Yes, it is still mid-afternoon. There was a gig that night (of course, it's a Saturday after all) and so we left there a little later and went to see The Wolf Parade and some other bands, but the sound wasn't so great. Or perhaps my ears were clouded considering it was 8:00 and I'd been drinking with Mike since about 2. In any case, we stayed for them and the next band, which wasn't too bad either, and then I'm sad to say that I became quite drowsy. I can't keep up with these Brits, what can I say? Or perhaps it was jetlag from, you know, the lack of time zone change from my early morning flight from Dublin. Actually, I had had a late night and early morning, so that probably factored in, Anyway, instead of going out clubbing in Madchester, I wound up at their flat, fast asleep, halfway through a Family Guy episode. I woke up again at about 2:30 AM and watched some TV before Mike and his roommate came in. We hung out for a while, they filled me in on what I'd missed at the club, and then, since I'd already slept quite a bit, I watched some tv, read, and watched a movie before going back to sleep.
The next day, we went out to a pub again and watched a couple soccer (okay, okay, 'football') games. It was kind of cool to be sitting in a pub in Manchester watching a really great game between the famed Manchester United and the less famed Everton. It started, 50 seconds in, 0-1 but that was tied up in the second half and then Manchester took the lead. A great game, as I said. We all hung around (we were there with a bunch of Mike's friends), got some groceries for dinner/breakfast, and that was that.
Another night in Manchester and before I knew it, I was headed for York via train. The ground was covered in what looked to be frost but was actually snow. It took a while before I realized it was snow at all. I said goodbye to Mike, stopped in a bookstore to read a guide, and decided York was a good idea. So on the train I went. Leaving Manchester, the skies were cloudy and maybe the odd snow flake could even be seen if you looked long enough. But 10 minutes out, it became a full flurry, snow falling down like it was Christmas Day or something. I never imagined I'd see that in England. The ground and trees were covered, so clearly it had been snowing for a good spell. I also sat next to a nice old man named Dennis who talked with me about the UK and other things and the trip really did speed by.
I got to York around noon but it was a bitter cold and while I did walk around, even to the famous York Minister (which was closed, sadly - it is Europe's oldest gothic church and home also to the world's largest stained glass piece), but it was just miserable out and the snow was falling mostly as rain. I ate dinner and hung around in the hostel, then went out that evening for a bit before calling it a night. York is a nice town, though, and I was determined to see the rest of it before departing for Oxford the next day.
The next morning, I met Marci, a Vancouver business/tech journalist staying in the same room, who actually looks like a shorter Minnie Driver quite a bit. We both went around the town together and, after I discovered there were no available beds in Oxford for that evening, I decided to go to London instead and take a day trip out to Oxford. It turned out that she was actually also London bound and that there was an embassy party she was invited to. She managed to get me on the guestlist through a friend of hers at the embassy and so that was settled. We did explore the rest of York first, the old Viking tower, castle, and a bit of a walk through the Shambles and a free museum. Then, we picked up our backpacks, took a look around at the railway museum near the station (it is usually home to the famed Flying Scotsman, but it was out on loan and apparently actually in use again for a short time). Even so, there were some very impressive and massive old steam engines, if only I'd had a camera for grandpa. There was a particularly big Chinese one that for all I know is still in use today. They also had a replica of the Japanese bullet train.
Chugging along, after looking at old trains, we got on a new one bound for London and off we went. The timing was tight and her London flat is quite a ways out, so we just went to the hostel quickly and got ready there. Then, after a cheap dinner here that wasn't too bad considering, we went off to the party. It turned out to be a cabaret of sorts, first a comedian, then a pianist (she was originally from Saskatoon and good though her songs weren't exactly what the party called for), then another comedian who was spastic and annoying at which point it was time to leave. The party wasn't too great and there really wasn't much mixing going on for a party whose intent was supposed to be to meet other Canadians abroad. The MC, Craig something, was the only good point of the party, he was bloody hilarious. Well, that and being able to say I went to an embassy party, I guess. We hung out at an English pub for awhile and called it an evening.
Ah yes, the title. Well, first of all, there was that whole Temple Bar Manchester thing. Then, of course, my return to London, my final stop before going home, 7 months after arriving here in May. And finally, walking to the embassy, we happened to pass Russell Square, and more specifically the Royal National Hotel, where I first stayed when arriving in London 4 years ago. Not to mention a red phone booth I have a picture in and the pub where I tried (and hated) my first Guiness. Yes, many circles have been drawn this week, and I guess there'll be a few more to come yet.
In any case, the remainder of my time should be fairly active. I'm going to take a day trip out to Oxford, I have managed to get some tickets for Franz Ferdinand (there's another circle for you: I was going to see them in Dublin before I lost everything (which is why I left Belfast that day). I just missed them in Manchester. And now, finally, I'm set to see them). I'll probably go see a musical while I'm here, and I will be meeting some friends on Thursday and Friday. I can't believe that the days remaining are now in single digits. Quite likely I'll be reporting my final stories in person. See you soonRead More...
No, no, I'm not raging against quasi-recent indie-rock media darlings Franz Ferdinand (whose debut record is well worth the heaped praise). Nor, surprisigly (and thankfully), am I making some sort of obscure geek related hex-based joke. Instead, I'm here to tell you about my recent trip to Canada's playground - Banff.
We left for the mountains around 9 or 10AM. Of course, before this, I had to sort out what was making the trip with me. So, without further ado...
Vital materials:
Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - I'd been meaning to read this for almost a decade now, and I finally did. If only Douglas Adams were still alive so I could aspire to meet him. I'm now about halfway through The Restaurant at the End of the Galaxy which is equally fun. I'm going to try to track down the original BBC radio shows someday. Maybe 10 years from now. Incidentally, they're making a movie about this starring Tim from The Office as Arthur Dent!
Captain Beefheart - A friend of mine (thanks, Andy!) from the UK sent me two Beefheart albums to - Clear Spot and The Spotlight Kid. Blues with a twist. Not sure I can get into it, but I'm gonna spin it a few more times.
Beulah - I brought along my recent Beulah acquisitions (thanks, Dutch!) to listen to in earphones. Yoko is a fantastic album, as is The Coast is Never Clear. The rest sound much better in headphones, too.
Futurama - After years of denouncing the show as unfunny, I now own all four seasons on DVD. Thanks to a DVD player in the car (how much would I have loved this as a kid?!) the drive flew by.
Raising Helen - Well, I didn't pack it, and I didn't choose to watch it, but it wasn't a bad movie, I suppose. Though the 15 year old girl needs to be strangled with a lead pipe. Somehow.
Mariah's Gameboy - The only thing better than watching TV on the road is helping her finish the dreaded world seven in Super Mario 3.
Other stuff - You know, the clothes, ski stuff, toothbrush/paste, and all the other stuff not meant for the actual trip but for the destination. Oh, and swim trunks for sitting in the hot tub/pool and/or visiting with various attractive female cohorts.
As you may have guessed, the trip up was relatively quick although it's still surprising how a person can get bored even with all the gadgets to play with. I don't think science will ever cure the "are we there yets". Although now that Mariah's older, she just asks "how many hours". We got into Banff around 5, checked in, shopped a bit on Banff Ave, and went for dinner at the Balkan. I don't know why we go there, the food has never been very good, though it's better than Mykonos I suppose. I forgot my wallet in the hotel and got ID'd. Yeah. In Alberta, where 18 is the legal age. In other words, I looked 17 or less to this guy. I understand where he's coming from, but come on! I guess I shouldn't have shaved. He felt bad afterwards and brought me a caraffe of Coke and then noticed my iron ring. I'd be one hell of a 17 year old to have an engineering degree. Turns out I'm just a rather ordinary 24-year old, though.
We skiied the first day in Sunshine, which really did live up to its name. The sky was an unspoiled blue, the temperature was a balmy -6, and the snow was actually decent as well considering the warm weathe. All said, some of the best ski conditions I've ever had. On the gondola ride up to base, a really cute girl from Sweden sat with us. She had about the coolest eyes I'd ever seen; a deep blue surrounding a brown starburst. Seemed like a very nice girl, too, I think her name was Olsa or Osla or something to that effect, probably with those little dots on the O. And spelled completely differently. I don't remember the name of her town (it started with an H, I think, and had about 500,000 people) but she told me to visit. And being the clever person I am, as well as being surrounded by family, I did not get or give any other information that would allow further contact other than that she works at the Aurora. Which I couldn't really visit on my own and certainly not with my parents. I'd hoped to run into her later on my own, but naturally everyone in my family saw her again except for me. I did, however, run into Lindsay and Jordan.
Anyway, it was Mariah's second or third time skiing, so she was in lessons and I stuck to skis in case I needed to help her. We skiied mostly green runs because that's what my family's comfortable on. I brought my camera so I'd ski ahead or them and take pictures of the beautiful scenery and so I really that bored. Dad's knee was hurting so he took the camera from me midday and I did a black run or two with Larissa, though our last black run was pretty wild. Glare ice and straight down. We came around the corner and about 10 quite advanced skiiers were stopped and looking down. Turned out to not be too bad once you got past the wall of ice, it was aptly named Waterfall. Additionally, they removed the Wawa t-bar and put in a chairlift which was nice. That used to be a long t-bar run. The end of the day came and we took the skiout, which is more or less a blue run now, except with extreme bouts of cross country. Not the end of the world except Mariah had no poles, unwaxed skis, and obviously wasn't developing the kind of speed needed to clear some of these parts. I put her between my legs and used my poles to propel us, and then on the downhill parts I'd hold her arms and we'd ski down together. That was hard on the legs as I had to keep us both slow and couldn't turn too fast or I'd run over her skis (so I had to do a really wide snowplow). It was fun though.
The hotel that we stayed at (Banff Park Lodge) was pretty nice except for the pool/hottub, which were small and rather disgusting. We met some people from Winnipeg who knew the Redls and Dave Gillespie. Such a small world. Anyway the suite was huge and really nice with granite all over and a shower with four nozzels and a really leaky door. The only complaint was that for such a large room, the TV could've been a little bigger. Or a lot bigger. We went out to Melissa's Mis-Steak where, again, the food was really so-so. But I did get a couple pints of beer without having to have my ID, so that's something.
Lake Louise the next day, but by the time we got there, it was 11:00. I ended up skiing again, which was okay because Louise has lots of little tree paths adjacent to the green runs, and I also did quite a few blue and blacks with Larissa. The weather was again perfect, though it was pretty icy at Louise. Larissa got a little more daring today and was doing pretty well, and I also showed Mariah some turning on the mountains. She did alright, then she had a lesson and did great coming down. She really improved over those two days. We skiied the backside, which was probably my favourite trail, and stopped at the chalet for hot chocolate and a cookie. Dad didn't ski today because of his knee, but we took the Bow Valley Parkway home for him instead. It was a long drive (1 hr+) with not really great scenery in my opinion, but now I know, I guess. We ate at the hotel, which had a seafood buffet with a chocolate fountain and lots of nice fruit. I thought it'd be sketchy, but it was pretty good. Note to self: Go to gym.
We drove home on Saturday after a few hours in Calgary's Chinook Centre. I finally picked up Wilco's Summer Teeth, the Futureheads' album (I heard they're coming to Saskatoon this spring), Futurama season 2 (now my collection is complete!), Sid Meier's Pirates! (so far, hopelessly addicting), SimCity Rush Hour, and a pair of dark stretchy jeans I quite liked. Larissa looked for (and found) a grad dress, and Mariah got a build-a-bear. The ride home was rather fast, though that's largely thanks to the vital materials. Anyway, it was lots of fun and I hope to get my snowboarding down a bit more so I can do that next time.
