Thursday, November 1, 2012

July 2006 posts



July 31
I must say that my recent addition of photos has certainly increased the readership of my blog this week. Last week, I only had 26 hits the whole week, and Sunday alone, which was yesterday, I already had 11!
What I kept forgetting to write in my other last two posts was two things. The first is that many people thought this travelling bit would cure me of my desire to travel for a while. It has done nothing but fuel the fire. I can't say I would go for another 4-month stint again, necessarily, as those opportunities may never present themselves again, but I would gladly be off on another plane in a couple of months if I could do it. The fact is that I have found travelling to be like learning: the more you learn, the more questions you have because you realise how little you know. The more I travel, the more I want to travel because I realise how little of the countries I know. I spent only one week in one region of Germany, for example. There are many other cities and places with much different atmospheres in that country, and I have barely touched the tip of the iceberg--is that how the saying goes? I was never good at idioms and slang. In any case, I love learning about the history of the countries, about their royalty, about wars; it tells me about their people and current society. It makes life even more alive. I remember thinking, when I was in Montreal and going to a museum of one of Canada's founding fathers (sadly and embarrassingly, I forget his name just now) that it made Canadian history so interesting to be able to go to this musueum. It would have made Canadian history much more exciting for me if I had been able to go to such museums and see how people lived and thought in Victorian Canada and before. The visual can be so significant.
The second thing is that keeping this blog and knowing there are people out there reading it has really helped to improve my own enjoyment of my experiences because in a sense, this venue is the place where I was able to almost share all of those experiences with someone. While I stayed with friends and family pretty much everywhere, I was still on my own for a significant amount of time, and I found that being able to write my thoughts and stories here helped me to feel like I could share my trip with people. It's certainly not the same as having someone right next to me, but I know I would have had many stories saved up by the end of my trip had I not had this blog, and then there would have been no way to relate them all at the end of the 4 months.
I do thank you all for being on my journey with me!
5:35 AM | Permalink | Travel
July 29
I've finally added my Barcelona photos. I decided to put my Dalí ones in a separate album as there were so many of them, and this way, if you don't want to see them, you don't have to. I was able to get some of the titles of the Dalí works. The titles are sometimes just as bizarre as the paintings themselves! Anyways, I hope you enjoy these photos.
6:58 AM | Permalink
July 26
Pittsburgh to be exact. I returned to Pittsburgh on Monday, which is where my return ticket to London was bought from, and it's good to be on my way back home. I spent my last day in London in Brick Lane, which is this very alternative place to buy clothes from local designers, flea market stuff off the street, and see local artists featured in small, rented gallery spaces. I like it a lot and was upset that I forgot to bring my camera. There are so many interesting people walking around there.
Anyways, I suppose my blog entries will begin to pare down now as there will be little to update you on, and most of you I will be able to see in person regularly when I am back in Edmonton as it is. I return to Edmonton specifically on August 2. I will put up a couple of updates once I get my pictures up for those few that require explanations, and I will likely have some deep thought here and there that I feel the need to post.
I spent my last few days trying to do as much sightseeing as possible without dying in the sun. I was able to see some of the Roman ruins that are exposed in the city centre. However, it seems that there is probably a fairly elaborate set of Roman ruins beneath much of the city of Barcelona. It's too bad these all can't be exposed, but I think that would involve destroying a significant amount of the city itself. In any case, there are old tombs that line what used to be the road into the city and a place where you can see a few of the columns of the old temple. During these last few days, I also tried several times to go to the Picasso museum, but there were so many people in queue that I decided not to wait for what looked like a wait of at least an hour in the hot sun. I'm not even such a huge fan of the guy anyways. It's still something I would have like to see, but few things are worth waiting in line for an hour. I did manage to see their Arc de Triomf, which had very nice bat gargoyles on it, and then I tried to find a flower market further up the street, which as it turns out, no longer exists! It wasn't a complete waste, at least, as the walk up to the place where the market was supposed to be is actually one of the touristy zones and is also line with my favourite shops, Escada, Versace, Prada, Louis Vuitton, all the places I would not like to shop in, but then mingled among these shops are some apartments designed by Gaudí. They look so out of place in a way, but I'm starting to gain an appreciation for the guy.
My final day, I decided to just walk as much as I could, take some pictures of my beloved beach, and do whatever else I could think of to do. The water was particularly rocky and wavy that day, so it was just beautiful to walk on the shore and have waves of cool water crash against my legs. After walking for a while, though, my feet became tired, so I decided at that point that since I was so near the pick up point for the city bus tour, I would just hop on one of those and see a bunch of other places. It allowed me to work on my tan, and I got to see some very interesting spots, like the Barcelona football stadium (although I was too tired by that point to go in), and the park that Gaudí designed called Parc Guell (pronounced "gway"). That was quite the site. There are so many windy paths that lead to all over the place. One thing I really like about Gaudí is all the mosaic work he did. On the Sagrada, there are mosaics of all kinds, including words such as Excelsis and Hosanna. I love mosaic work a lot, and it's a medium that I would like to work with myself. Anyways, it was a great day to spend my last day in the city. I haven't had a chance to download the pictures yet, but hopefully I will today or tomorrow.
2:18 PM | Permalink | Travel
July 19
You may have noticed my pattern of updating my blog every 3 days recently, but I won't have time for a really good update until several days from now, maybe not until I'm back in the US. So don't worry that I haven't written anything. I haven't dropped off the face of the planet :o)
10:21 AM | Permalink
July 16
Friday night, I wandered around the touristy area as there is actually a lot to see there. I wanted to find this Gothic cathedral I had heard about that was near there. I finally got a city map for myself, which up until now, I hadn't been able to find. (You can buy them, but the tourist info booth gives out free ones). This map really made a huge difference in being able to find things! Anyways, I continued wandering for a bit and learned that the cathedral is not well-marked like some other tourist attractions that have signs pointing you in the right direction. As it happened, it began to rain, so I headed for cover, which turned out to be this huge food market. It was beautiful and colourful and filled with people. A very fun place to pass the time! The rain finally ceased, so I continued walking and eventually found the cathedral. I happen to love Gothic architecture, and I would like to say that this cathedral was beautiful, but I can't because I still don't really know if it is. It never fails that when I travel somewhere to see a monument or structure of some sort, it is always in the midst of repairs and is partially obscured by scaffolding with wire-mesh walls to protect the workers from falling. In this case, the main part of the building I would have wanted to see was completely covered except for the cone-shaped point at the top of the steeple. The rest of the building is surrounded by other buildings, so it's not easy to get a photo of it because you can't get any distance. Well, so much for that.
The whole area is filled with Roman structures and things from during the time they ruled the area, so I just walked around to see what I could see. I happened to come across the Salvador Dalí museum, and although I have never been a fan of Dalí, it seemed like something I should see just because it was there and also to avoid all of you asking me why I am crazy and did not see such a thing! The museum is excellent, just a huge collection of his works, that apparently Dalí himself arranged. I ended up taking tons of photos there, which is actually allowed in this museum. Some of the photos I took are just to try to give you an idea of how many of his works are there. I must point out, though, that although it is a vast collection, many of the pieces are actually limited prints. This means that the artist made several copies of a work, which are all exactly the same. This is often done by making a template of some kind and basically stamping it on several sheets of paper. So, there may be several other vast collections of the sort as he often made 200-250 prints of one work. Outside of that, the museum gave me an appreciation for Dalí that I had never had before. Previously, I had only been familiar with his most famous works, paintings of sagging clocks and elephants on long toothpick-like legs. Not that exciting for me. However, in this museum, there was a large collection of watercolour paintings, which I found to be beautiful. The subjects of the paintings, of course, are still very strange, but the colours are bright and the lines fluid, and I really like them. On my way back to the metro, I happened upon a choir singing from the 1st floor balconies of two buildings across from each other. They were singing southern gospel music while their director stood on the street itself and played guitar accompaniment. It was really great. I always love a good choir.
Yesterday morning, I went for a swim as usual but was greeted by some most unexpected guests: schools of fish! Normally the water is completely clear and fish-free. At first, there were just a few of these little sardine-sized ones with a thick black line just before their tails and black eyes. I followed them around for a while, and then all of a sudden, there was this flash in the water, and there were literally hundreds, if not thousands of these tiny, tiny fish swimming so fast. I tried to put my hand out in front of them several times just to feel them swimming against my hand, but they are so fast they easily avoided my hand each time. While following them around, I ended up being encircled by them completely. It was really cool! I felt like a little kid chasing a butterfly. I also remarked at how there are no seagulls on the beach here. I saw some flying in the distance one day, but the only birds on the beach are my favourites: pigeons. They look about as natural at the beach as a fish does perched on a lamp post.
Finally, as I was walking to the beach the other day, I started thinking about all the things I didn't know as a child and what things children know today. It reminded me of the line from Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World" that goes, "I hear babies cry, I watch them grow, they'll learn much more than I'll ever know." I started pondering that line and wondering if it was really true. You can share with me your thoughts on the subject. You hear many people today saying that kids are smarter today than they were back in my day, or some such thing. But I wonder if that's really true. There are different sets of knowledge that kids have today because those sets are more valuable for our society than other sets, but then people that have other knowledge from other generations know things that our modern kids don't. Technology today has made certain things obsolete, such as the need for those old washboards, let's say. How many kids today would know how to wash clothes with one of those, for instance? Even with computers, we think kids are smart because they can use them, but--hackers aside--the average kid can use computers because they are made to be user friendly. Our family had a computer in the days of DOS where you had to type in every command using the keyboard, and you had to know what all the commands were. There was no mouse for the most part. I doubt most kids today could figure that out, and my brother and I were using such a computer when were were younger than 12.
The information super highway has made accessing knowledge a lot easier for kids, that's true. But I guess that if they do know more, it's because this is what our society values. In my estimation, though, we may see an increase in declarative knowledge (knowing about stuff), but a decrease in procedural knowledge (knowing how to do stuff). Back in my mom's generation, for example, it was still fairly common that women would learn how to do embroidery and knitting and things like that. I think it's a great skill to have, and a great art, and my mom and grandma and aunts can make some really beautiful pieces. How many girls do you know today that can do this, at least in Canada, for example?
It may be true that kids today are smarter, but I'm not yet convinced. I think the type of knowledge required for our society is simply different from what was required in the past, and so it seems that kids today are smart because they know things we didn't know when we were growing up. While knowledge today, in general, is really the sum of all knowledge up until now, it's not as though kids are really building on knowledge of things past in the sense that they not only know what we knew as children and are adding to that knowledge. They are simply gaining new types of knowledge. By anology, an African bushman would not be considered very intelligent in our society, never having gone to school, probably not having a written language and so perhaps illiterate. However, how smart would we seem trying to survive in the bush given the same resources as the bushman? It's really about context, is it not? It makes me think that we are each smart enough for our context and that comparing knowledge across generations may be a little less relevant than we think.
1:51 AM | Permalink | Travel
July 13
I hope there are other ignorami out there that have never heard of the Sagrada Familia or the Spanish artist Gaudí, who was actually from Cataluña here in Spain. Well, it so happens that Gaudí decided to embark on a giant endeavour, which was to build this massive cathedral using only materials that were donated to him. People could apparently donate enough gold for other cathedrals to look as beautiful as they do, but this poor guy couldn't manage to get the building finished before he died! Well, I really don't know why it took as long as it did, but I'm thinking maybe people weren't generous enough. Who knows? As for its history, you can read a little more of it on this web site: http://www.barcelona-information.com/sagrada-familia.html. The site is still under construction, and I heard that they have hired a Japanese architect to help finish it. Apparently he is quite efficient and is really making significant process in contruction.
Sadly, I didn't get a change to go inside last night, as I got there too late to get in. But from what I heard, there is not too much to see inside anyways as most of the interior is still under construction. The exterior is simply amazing. Those of you that are familiar with my mild obsessive-compulsive tendencies know that I like symmetry as a general rule, but this is asymmetry at its best! The piece is certainly more artistic than any other building I've seen, church or otherwise. It is a specimen of architecture and artistry one would need to see on a regular basis, not only to catch up with the latest developments, but even to appreciate what is already there. I'm sure if I passed it on my way to work every day, I would see something new each time. It reminds me of the Heaven Tree Trilogy, a set of novels by Edith Parteger (aka Ellis Peters). In the first of the three novels, the main character, Harry Talvace, is a master stone mason that builds a church for a lord, and it is apparently incomparable in Wales. Harry has this ability to use stones and stained glass to create beauty and reflections of light. There is little light on the subject at the Sagrada, but the description of Harry's genius is how I would describe this work of Gaudí. I took several photos of different angles of the exterior, and I think you'll enjoy looking at them. There are gargoyles like I have never seen, of lizards, snakes, komodo dragons (at least I think that's what they are), and even the fearsome snail! Is stone masonry becoming a lost art?
On a completely different note I would like to point out as per my last entry about grammar, there is no need for you to feel like I am analysing your grammar if you write to me or speak to me. In informal contexts, I have no concern about grammar or anything related. It is only in formal and public situations in which incorrect grammar concerns me, such as at these public museums and such in England, or in publications and what not. I sometimes let myself loose in informal contexts as well. In my opinion, my enthusiasm for English grammar is about as sensible and exciting as someone that enjoys doing math problems :o)
I would also like to point out that apparently people are getting directed to my site after typing in certain words into MSN's search engine that may think I am running an adult site. All this talk about people wearing no clothes and stuff. I hope not to witness any more of these atrocities, but if I do and feel the need to write about them, I will be careful how I word things. I can check to see how many people have hit my blog, and sometimes, it shows me a referring address, meaning that person somehow linked to my blog from another page. I clicked on one of the referring address, which was a search engine page, which is how I realised someone had typed in certain words that brought up my page. It's kind of disturbing to me in a way!
5:17 AM | Permalink | Travel
July 10
I'll get the good stuff out of the way first, and then if you want to read further about my grammar rant, you can go on.
If the nudity at the train station in London hadn't been enough, I saw the one that beats all today. I've seen enough topless women on the beach, which as I said before, is a non-issue here, but as far as I know, it isn't acceptable in Spain for a man to walk around stark naked in the tourist zone. He was wearing sandals and a backpack, nothing else. I should say that I saw this guy walking around this evening, but it would be more accurate to say that I was accosted with the sight. It's not that he was in bad shape or anything, but it's just not really something I want to see while trying to take a pleasant stroll down one of Barcelona's main harbours. What was amusing, however, was people's reactions to him. Many people were laughing behind his (bare) back, and many had a look of disbelief. I think some people tried to say something to him as he ploughed through a large crowd of people because I saw him waving his arms as if he were trying to wave them off. A tourist bus was stopped at a red light, and one of the guys in the bus tried to take a photo of the man, but he was walking at quite a clip. One guy seated on a bench with his friend even applauded the man as he went by. It was quite interesting to watch all these people! Is this man "famous" like the Naked Cowboy? I don't know what his name would be, though, as he hasn't a gimmick of any kind. I guess if you're that bare, you needn't have a gimmick.
And now for something completely different. I remarked on several occasions in my wanderings around England that there were often blatant grammatical errors in tourist areas. This really bothers me because so many of us look up to the Brits as the standard for proper English, and yet they set such a poor example in the most public places. One example is in Warwick Castle where they used the contraction "it's" when they should have used the possessive "its" on one of the placards explaining some artifact. I didn't write down all these examples as I haven't completely lost my mind yet, but I think it's shameful. Yet these errors have not concerned me the most in recent months.
What bothers me even more is the incorrect usage of superlatives. I think this disturbs me because the problem is not due to ignorance, such as in the case of incorrect possessives and contractions, but due to laziness. Still, it makes no sense as to how the incorrect usage can be any easier. If I want to make a comparison, I could say the following:
Some people at the beach look scary. There are some people that maybe think I look scarier. The naked man walking around was the scariest.
This would be the correct use of "scary" in its superlative form. These days, I'll often see:
Some people at the beach look scary. There are some people that maybe think I look more scary. The naked man walking around was the most scary.
Sure, there are some adjectives for which we cannot add the -ier and -iest endings, but most of those adjectives don't end in the letter y, such as beautiful. For instance, we can't say "beautifullest," we have to say "most beautiful."
Now you may ask me something like, "What if I said, She walks quickly. It doesn't make sense to say She walks quicklier than he does." Definitely it doesn't make sense, but that's because quickly is an adverb, not an adjective. You would have to say that she walks more quickly, and in this case, the use of more and most are correct.
Further complications will arise when people use sentences such as the one I stated above:
...as to how the incorrect usage can be any easier.
When used incorrectly, someone would say:
...as to how the incorrect usage can be any more easy,
The most frightening problem is this. Many people will make the mistake of writing anymore easy, which is completely incorrect because "more" is supposed to modify "easy," not become part of the expression "anymore." Does this concern no one else but me? Most probably, the answer to that question is a resounding "YES, I am the only weirdo that thinks about this!!!"
I've read examples of incorrect superlatives in the news, in magazines like The Economist; politicians and famous people are quoted using incorrect superlatives. I don't pretend to be perfect in grammar, and I'd like to think that I know my superlatives, too, but with all these wrong examples going around, I've caught myself using them a few times! It's embarrassing for me. I've staved off using "gotten" even though it's now in the dictionary, so I hope I'll last through the coming age of what will become yet another metamorphosis of standard English, but in this case, a change I'd rather not see.
July 08
I'm not referring to Humpty Dumpty. I'm sitting to write a brief update while sipping a cup of tea and wearing a change of clothing. That's right, I finally got my bag! How everything transpired is much too long to relate--although that has rarely stopped me before!--but it took me a week to finally get the thing. After waiting around for days with no word, I finally called KLM to find out what happened, and apparently someone came on Wednesday night to deliver it, but no one was home. They could have called, but that would just be silly. Anyways, to make a long story short, after further troubles at the airport yesterday what with not having remembered my passport to get through security, since the lost luggage counter is behind it, I ended up having to go back today and finally got my bag. I won't mention the running around I had to do again to get it, but I did get it, and I'm so happy. Why the tea is significant is that I brought a stash of tea with me on my trip because it is my comfort food, and of course, being that it was in my delayed bag, I couldn't even comfort myself with a cup! I actually looked in the grocery store for some the other day, but being that Spain is not really a tea-drinking country, the pickins' for good tea were rather slim.
I hope this colour combination isn't hard to read. My intent is to try to give you an idea of what colours I'm seeing in the water at the beach. I've already made it to the beach twice in as many days, and sometimes when I go a little further out of the city, I get to take a train that passes along the seaside. It's absolutely beautiful. It's hardly surprising that many of the impressionists painted water in their sceneries. There's something about light reflecting off the water that is exciting and joyous. I haven't the foggiest how to capture that type of light in a painting, no matter which medium I use.
Someone had told me that the sea changes colours depending on what time of day it is. I have found this to be quite true. When I was at the beach yesterday, it was as if the sea was filled with sapphires sparkling beneath the midday sun. Today, it was back to its turquoise self, which is how I came to know and love it. Sailboats abound on the horizon as the beach nearest to me sits adjacent to a huge marina. I guess that's why the metro stop nearest to me, which happens to be the nearest one to the beach, it seems, is called Marina, now that I think about it. I'll have to take a photo at some point, although I usually don't bring my camera there since I don't want to leave my stuff by itself if I want to wade through the water and leave the stuff on the sand.
Anyways, I'm going to go off and try to find a place that's showing the match tonight, the one of Germany and Portugal. It will probably be more interesting to me than the final tomorrow as France and Italy were 2 of 3 teams I did not want to win, so now I have no one to cheer for. If anything, I at least need supper. Am I doing better at being brief these days?
11:39 AM | Permalink | Travel
July 05
I wish I could have the patience of John Burrough's speaker in his poem "Waiting" (http://www.dwblog.net/?p=1056). I have been in Barcelona since Sunday night, and have yet to see hide or hair of my bag. I managed to squeeze everything into my one large backpack--in case you didn't believe I could travel light--for the 3 weeks I'll spend here, but so far, I don't even have that much with me. Somehow, my backpack didn't make the connection in Amsterdam, which is pretty sad, considering there were about 4 hours in between flights. After waiting for 2 days, I checked KLM's web site, and the thing has finally arrived in Barcelona, but of course, they can't tell me exactly when it will be delivered, so I have spent all day just waiting around. I have done precious little in the time I have been here on account of waiting. I figure I have a lot of time here, at least, so hopefully I haven't lost out on seeing too many things yet. I'm sure I haven't.
The place where I'm staying is walking distance from the beach. For those of you not so geographically inclined with this part of the world, as I'll freely admit I wasn't, this beach is on the beautiful Mediterranean Sea. I love this body of water because it is rocky, which gives it more character, and it is several shades of turquoise and green, which is pleasing to the eye. So I'm quite content to be here. I used to not be so attracted to the beach until I went to Cancún, where the beach was not only beautiful, but contributed to my getting a deep tan that lasted several months. I hope to reclaim my Spanish status as "la morena."
I'm going to some sort of a Pirate party tonight on the beach, so I hope that's a lot of fun!
6:31 AM | Permalink | Travel
July 01
I first would like to point out that I added 2 new pictures to the London album.

OK, all the photo albums are now complete. I deleted a few albums from outside my trip here thinking I was having storage space issues, which seems not to be the case, so I will repost those when I get home again, at least the one of my grandma's birthday
.

As for the Malaysia pictures, Subang Jaya is a municipality just outside KL, and that's where my aunt lives. So I didn't really go to a far away city or anything. I took more general street shots just to give you an idea what it looks like on any given day out there. Taipan is a business centre that is really close to where my aunt lives, almost across the street. That one little girl at the bus stop was ridiculously cute, and I wish I could have got her full faced rather than her profile so you could see her doll features, but it wasn't easy to do. Finally, the picture with the fresh fruit, you see some hairy, colourful fruit at the forefront of the stand there, and that is rambutan. You can sometimes find it in Chinatown at home, but it is always brown on the outside. This pic shows the way rambutans should look, like colourful sea anemones. Very tasty, and not scary like the brown ones at home.

Last night, Carmel, Harpal, and I went to a Canada Day celebration they were holding in Trafalgar Square. It wasn't too bad, actually, although I can't say I'd heard of any of the bands and musicians they got to perform. They had a group of First Nations people from Northern Saskatchewan dancing, and that was weird, though. The guys themselves were ok, but they mixed some modern dance with it, and the dancers that they had weren't really good nor did the style of dance complement the Aboriginal dances in any way. Outside of that, it was quite nice!

You will also have noticed the addition of my blog, poetry, and fiction lists. Because they are not linked in blue, it may not be obvious that many of these titles or authors are actually links to web sites where you can buy the book, read the blog or the poetry. So just pass your cursor over the titles if you're interested.
1:23 AM | Permalink | Travel

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