Overload of Posts

After a week of not even a peep on the blog, I'm going to bury you in a plethora of posts today. That's how all the lazy successful bloggers do it, right? I could just make it one really long blog, but I think this way works better. And it's my blog so there :P

Yes, I just did a 'tongue stick out' emoticon. I'm mature like that.

For my Victoria peeps (or Victoria-adjacent-and-willing-to-travel), Saturday night is Matoto's AGM. Once the AGM portion wraps up (which you are also invited to attend), then we're going to have a celebration because...

*drum roll*

...our school in Kubian, Guinea officially opened its doors on October 5th of this year!! There is more information about our AGM and Celebration Gala on our facebook event page. We'd love to see you out!

From Dublin Culture to Culchie Culture

Obviously, the morning after a pub crawl requires one thing and one thing only: coffee. Copious, copious amounts of coffee. And who can resist when it comes in an awesome to-go cup?

Noted!

And I want these cups in Victoria.

Due to most Irish museums being closed on Mondays, our Tuesday ended up being very, very heavy on the education-front so we started with a wander through Trinity College. What better way to get our learning on than wandering through the hallowed halls of higher learning... hungover?

Perhaps I should have checked out Careers Week while we were there.

Trinity is actually part of the Pub Crawl given that so many of the writers attended school there, but it was nice to come back during the day and actually see it. Like many European universities, it's located right in the heart of Dublin and is open to just wander through the campus.

We did not bother with the Book of Kells at my suggestion. I had done the Book once before and just found it a waste of money when you consider you only get about 10 seconds to view one page of the book. The displays leading up to the Book are interesting but for the low, low price of free you can visit the Cheaster Beatty Library with books just as old and the National Museum of Ireland: Archeology and History* which has even older artifacts and bog men! That's right, BOG MEN! Four of them!

After we finished our coffees, we hit up both the Chester Beatty and NMI:A&H. Sadly, you can't take pictures inside either of them but they were both awesome. Both could easily be an entire day on their own if you're geeky enough (I totally am. Al, not so much) but two hours at either one should be more than enough time to get your fill.

A school group was leaving as we arrived at the NMI:A&H... Best. Timing. EVER!

We had an early night on Tuesday due to an early morning on Wednesday. Wednesday was when our adventure really began with a trip to the rip-roaring craziness which is Monaghan! Monaghan, of course, is where my culchie family comes from. (Culchie was originally a derogatory term for people from the country--ie. not Dublin--but there's been a bit of a reclaim on for the word. I'm doing my part to show those Jackeens that words can't hurt us!) There's not much family left there now but I always make sure I stop in to say hello to the town which I always remember fondly. Thank goodness Armagh isn't that far away so it's not usually a problem.

Perhaps not surprisingly, this is exactly how I remember Monaghan's main street.

Every trip to Monaghan involves a visit to the cemetery where granny and granddad are buried.

This is followed by a trip to the Cathedral.

 

Many a Sunday of my childhood was spent here

After I dragged Al on a whole 15 minute tour of downtown Monaghan (you think I exaggerate but I really don't. We walked the whole length of Monaghan in less than 30 minutes and that included stopping for photos), we said good bye to my uncle (and his inability to hear us) and jumped on a bus to Armagh.

Ten minutes outside of Armagh the skies opened and thundered down. Even though it stopped as quickly as it started, we kind of lost our appetite for actually seeing Armagh and instead just checked out a pub until the appointed pick up time. Hey, look at that! I sat in a pub just like I did the last time I was in Armagh!

My usual Armagh contact was out of town so stayed with the step-side of my family in Blackwater Town. I challenge you to pull out an atlas and find it on a map. No cheating and using goggle maps! To be honest, we didn't even stay in Blackwater Town. We kept driving, crossed into Co. Tyrone and spent the night in the middle of nowhere.

Apparently the middle of nowhere has an intersection!

The rains held off long enough for Al I to go for a walk around the neighbourhood farms and meet the local cows.

Shortly after I made friends with this horse, the rains returned and we had to make a beeline back home. Still, who can complain about a little rain when you're staying in a location other tourists would pay top dollar for? 

Question: Ever stayed somewhere so small and/or remote on your holidays that it's not in the guidebook? What brought you to that location?

*There are four NMI locations with different themes. They're all free and they're all worth checking out. The National Gallery and the National Library are also worth checking out but when you have limited time, you have to pick and choose :(

Things I Think Are Awesome: Part Two

Part two of no segues has arrived. (There will also be no segways. We've been over this.)

1. This Photo

For those of you born without the geek chromosome (oh, how boring your life must be), that's Nathan Fillion, Felicity Day, Simon Pegg, Edgar Wright and Anthony Head all in the same photo! On top of that, the photo was taken in the house of Joss Whedon!!

Throw in a Wil Wheaton, and I would have stolen a car and driven to that party... three days late, but whatever.

2. Sleeping masks

At some point this summer, I noticed that I was waking up really early regardless of what time I went to bed. I started sleeping with a shirt strategically placed across the top half of my head and noticed a huge difference. After a conversation with my mom, I got one of their free-from-a-plane-trip sleeping mask and it's love. Well, lust.

I've noticed that it's much easier to fall asleep and when I wake up, I've actually slept the whole night. I'm waking up at 7:00am (without an alarm clock!) feeling completely refreshed. I'm also not waking up through out the night because of various street noises. I'm attributing this to the fact that I'm reaching REM sooner and staying in it longer because the light from the outside streetlamp is no longer affecting my sleep patterns.

Of course, I'm not a scientist, so this could all just be mumbo-jumbo bulldroppings.

But it sounds impressive, right?

The only downside is that the cheep sleeping mask can occasionally get a little hot and sweaty. An upgrade to a higher calibre of mask is on the horizon (although I'll stick with this one for now).

3. Fernwood Village

I felt it was time I threw a little love at my little corner of Victoria. It's a funky area to live in and I don't always give it the props it deserves. When I first moved to Fernwood in 2003, the NRG was pretty much a non-entity,  the George and Dragon Pub was the site of the worst service I had ever experienced in my life (and I was spat on by a waitress in Paris, so, you know, the G&D was pretty crappy), the dark square and questionable 'residents' meant I never walked through the area at night, and the largest building sat boarded up.

I would tell people I lived in Fernwood and I could see that look in their eye.

Flash forward five years and I'm back into the neighbourhood. The NRG is a sizable organisation which has bought and developed the Cornerstone Building (which houses the awesome Cornerstone Cafe), all available building space has been taken up by independent, locally owned businesses, the Fernwood Inn is actually a decent pub with decent service(!!), and the more questionable residents have been 'encouraged' to vacate, leaving behind the fun, funky artist and Bohemian types who make this neighbourhood so awesome.

As a community, we came together for a day and painted the poles. How awesome is that?

The Cornerstone Building is hiding in the background.

From the annual FernFest to small street parties, Fernwood really is about making the neighbourhood a neighbourhood. It's impossible to walk around the area without meeting someone you know from random conversations in  the cafe, the pub, or one of the restaurants.

I'm so glad I moved back to the area and got to give it another chance. I couldn't imagine living anywhere else.

PS. One of the people who makes Fernwood awesome, is Terry.

4. TARDIS Cat scratcher

Doctor Who!

Cats!

Together at last!

My mind = blown!

Okay, so it's not really the first time they've been together. In fact, if google is anything to go by, most Doctor Who fans must also be cat-owners. But my mind is still blown!

Tip of the Catnip to THR for sending this my way. More pictures can be found here.

5. Bakingdom

I woke up to find this announcement on the Bakingdom facebook place:

I pretty much had to sweep up my mind so it could be re-blown.

Fingers crossed she finds a way to make this happen!

6. Munro's Books

In anticipation of possibly going to Guinea next year, I wandered into Chapter's to peruse their French section. I had two goals while I was in there: 1) create a mental list of the type of French books I'd like to take to the school, and 2) check out the selection of sewing books to gauge if there's any with lots of pictures and very little writing.

While the children's section in french took up a decent chunk of space, it was the same eight books over and over and over and over. Okay, so perhaps there were more than eight, but the point is that there was a lot of repetition.

I mentally noted a couple of books and then headed out to Munro's. It will never cease to amaze me that a book a book store that would take up less than half of one floor of our three story Chapters building has a better book selection. Not only did they have more options for children's books in french, they also had an adult section in French, German, Italian and Spanish.

When it comes time to actually think about ordering these books seriously, you'll find me at Munro's (or Bolen's, love them too).

Also, Chapters, you kinda suck. But that's a different post.

Shoot for the Moon. Earth's Gravitational Pull Will Prevent You From Obtaining Orbit But Maybe You'll Land Somewhere Interesting.

After a fabulous weekend in Nanaimo during which we visited Gabriola for the Theatre Festival, played a total of 11 games of rummy (so, roughly 100 hands), drank a few bottles of wine, drank a few gallons of tea, and discovered I had injured myself, the rest of Summer has flown by.
Did you know it's September 1st today?

I know!

I realised that out of all my plans for the summer, very few of them actually happened but I'm okay with that.

Camping plans fell through at the last minute. Hiking plans never happened due to something else happening pretty much every weekend. Travel to Vancouver and Seattle never materialised for the same reason. I did a lot of running but conflicting schedules and then injury stopped my goal of four-times-a-week.

I did get to catch up with some old friends at Shawnigan. I sat in the gardens at Government House and read a good book. I had multiple BBQs with awesome people. I verbally committed to going to Guinea in December 2012 and teaching the Kubian village ladies to sew school uniforms.

Wait, what?

Yeah, you read that right. But don't worry, go back and reread it just to make sure. I'll wait.

Through the magic of links, I'll remind you of the time I said:

5) MoonDance is talking about going back to Guinea for another dance/drum intensive learning holiday in 2012. Actually, Lynn suggested it a few years ago and then later said it wasn't a firm plan. Tonight Erin and I decided that we're just going to talk about it like it's happening because then it will. So, I'm totally going to Guinea in 2012. You heard it here first.

Erin and I were (sort of) joking but it worked. Moondance is going to Guinea in 2012 for dance and drum lessons. (While I have verbally committed to doing this, I will refrain from saying I'm actually going until I can sit down and do some accounting math and planning.)

Moondance is very closely related to Matoto as Matoto was born out of Moondance's last trip to Guinea. At at working bee last week, we were discussing our school in Kubian which will begin teaching students this October! (very excited about that) when the topic of school uniforms came up. I remembered a project in Tanzania where the local women were taught to sew the uniforms which in turn gave the additional income to the mostly single women.

Why can't we do that?

Except we need someone who sews.

And that, my friends, is how I ended up verbally committing to going to Guinea.

(Actually, I told them that if I am able to make the trip to Guinea, I would teach sewing but that the *if* is quite substantial at this time. They gave me a 'uh-huh' look which clearly states they expect me to fully make it happen. I do, after all , have 15 months to get it sorted.)

Something else I need to get sorted out in that time? French.

Guinea's only offical language is French. While I know that many of our teachers will have some English and many of my fellow travellers will have some French, I'd like to be able to do most of the teaching with as little translation as possible. In other words, I should have started learning French yesterday.

I'm nothing if not ambitious... and slightly crazy.

Mostly crazy.

GBC Book Review: Death From the Skies!

I originally found Phil Plait, Ph. D. through the magic of twitter and have been an avid reader of his blog, Bad Astronomy, ever since. Through the science blogging world that I like to pretend I pay attention to, I heard wonderful things about his book ‘Death From the Skies!’ which deals with the science behind the end of the world so I bought the paperback version in January.

Then it sat on my side table for six months. (I like to think that it was collecting lots of protons and electrons which arranged themselves in the form of dust.)

When I finally did get around to reading it (mainly because I still had a month to go before book five of The Song of Ice and Fire series was released *cough*) I loved it. From the very first sentence in which he asserts that the universe is trying to kill you (but don’t take it personally, it’s trying to kill everybody) to his final summation regarding the odds of these events occurring in our lifetime, the book was a complete joy to read.

Trust him, he's a Doctor. Well, he has a Ph. D. He's not that type of Doctor.

[Source]

While it is very science-y (yes, that is totally a word) and Plait doesn’t shy away from going into a couple of head scratcher theories, the book is clearly written for the layman who has little to no knowledge of astronomy or astrophysics. The theories are laid out in relatively simple English and there is no assumption that you will remember the theory two chapters later (which I really appreciated when I put the book down for two weeks to work on a couple of projects).

The book, while about a very serious subject, is peppered with Plait’s sense of humour. It is not often that I can say a science book made me laugh out loud but this one definitely did. And despite its serious topic, I found the book oddly reassuring regarding the likelihood of meteor impacts and gamma-ray bursts.  (I still feel threatened by the zombie apocalypse but that’s why I’ve taken up running as a pastime.)

I can’t stress how much I enjoyed this book. The only downside is that I now I have questions regarding some of the theories which means that maybe it’s time I finally gave “A Brief History of Time” a go.

Or maybe I’ll warm up with a few simpler science books first.

Now Where's My Pocket Protector?

I was really good at math in school and I loved science class. Some how, I ended up going into the Humanities when it came to University. (In this case, 'some how' means I didn't want to be anymore uncool in high school than I already was so I elected not to take Math 12 and Calculus which was needed for pretty much every science program.* But I did do Chemistry 12 because that's the cool thing to do.)

At any rate, I already had glasses and was socially awkward (still kind of am), did I really need to add a science degree to that?

Nope. Much cooler to geek out over Sweden's role in the Thirty Years' War, how Grimm's Law shows the creation of the Germanic languages from Latin/Greek, and how Goethe's Faust is a bit of a dick. (Wil Wheaton would not like Faust.)

Much. Cooler.

Still, when the science lover and history lover in me can combine in a mutual love it's a beautiful, geeky thing of wonder!

I am going to be such an embarrassment to my future children and it's going to be AWESOME!

*The irony is that I ended up having a spare block during Calculus 12. My friends in the class convinced me to sit in one day because the teacher wouldn't mind. He totally didn't. I loved the class and would ask questions and work on the problems. (In short, I was a better student than some of the actual students.) When I knew the words to a children's poem that no one else knew, he went to the office to list me as his Teacher's Assistance for that class and then gave me an A.

Monty Python Fixes Everything

I came up with this awesome idea for a series of posts I wanted to do. It is educational, it is relevant (to me at least), and it is a topic I love to talk about.

No, not me. History! Although I do enjoy talking about me. 

In my mind, I laid out a tentative idea for a four part series. I was hoping (because I forgot how much time research can take) to have the first part up almost two weeks ago. Then I started researching and writing. I have spent almost 50 hours on this series. I'm not even done part one and it's clocking in at a three page word document.

Part one got too long so I was going to break it up into two parts. Part Three is so much information (which I haven't even gotten to yet), I could easily make it an entire four part series on its own. In short, I bit of way more than I could chew and now I have to do a little re-think.

I'm still doing this multi-part post but it's time to step back for a moment, scratch my head, make a fresh cuppa, and actually think about what I think people actually need to know about this topic. I've also decided that myself imposed deadline of RIGHTNOW! was a little stupid. Perhaps not flip-a-car-set-it-on-fire-stupid, but still stupid. I was stressing myself out about something that's 500 years in the making... it can wait a few more weeks/months to make sure I do a good job.

In the meantime, nothing helps me regroup like a little Monty Python watching break so here it is, my favourite MP scene:

It's all about the "where's the fetus gonna gestate?" line for me. Gets me every time.

Photography That's Out of This World!

(Random Note: I really need a drummer to follow me around just so he can play a *rimshot* any time I make a pun... like the above title.)

I could talk about the Canucks won tonight but there's probably 7,482 bloggers in Vancouver who will talk about that so I'm going to geek out instead because that is just so something I would do.

A few days ago, I came across an awesome picture of the Endeavor docked at the International Space Station (ISS). The following day, Bad Astronomer* posted a link to the European Space Agency's (ESA) gallery of these photos (this link starts a slide show). I took a quick gander through them and then moved onto my next blog meaning to return.

I never did.

At dinner with my mom, I remembered the link and that I had made a mental note to send it to my step-dad as he likes astronomy as well. I returned from dinner, found the link, emailed it, and then really started looking at the photos.

As Bad Astronomer would say: click the photo to spacestationsizenate!

[credit]

As a race, we're pretty amazing. We came out of the plains of Africa, spread all across this globe, and now we're exploring space. Within a year (according to the current schedule) we will have a fully armed and operational Death Star space station for long term studies. Less than 100 years ago the reality of space travel was still a distant dream, now scientists will be living in it. And I think that's much more impressive than a Maxim Lapierre goal (even if the goal was awesome).

Why should we try for space travel? It cannot be a substance of any kind that can be expected to pay. It can only be something intangible, not involving haulage, which is at the same time more valuable. There is something like that: Knowledge. — Willy Ley

*The Bad Astronomer (aka Phil Plait) writes an awesome blog over at Discover magazine online (well, all their blogs are awesome) and you should go check him out.

What We Can Achieve in Ten Days

I keep writing and rewriting this post. It is now 11:55pm and I have been working on it since 8:00pm. There are stories of Tanzania I want to relate, there are ideas I want to impart, but trying to cram it all into a blog post just isn't working. Instead I will sum it up with a personal story and a statistic

• While having a discussion with some men in Tanzania, it came about that they believed they were safe from contracting AIDS because they never sleep with a woman when she is bleeding. It is always the woman who carries the disease because women, I was told, were unclean. That was how God had made it.
• According to a UNICEF report, 79% of Guinean girls between the ages of 15-19 believe it is okay for a husband to hit or beat his wife under certain circumstances.

Beyond just learning to read and write, education helps slow down the spread of infectious disease and teaches girls that it is never okay for a husband to beat you. Eduction is key to breaking the cycle of poverty.

Today is the launch of Matoto's Ten Day Event and I would like to invite you to join us. We have built a school in Kubian, Guinea and now we need to fill it with desks, chalk boards, teachers and students. Ten Days is a deceptively simple idea. We have teams of 10 and each member has 10 days to find 10 people to donate $10. The goal is to raise $10,000 by the end of the event.

There has been a lot of smack talk between the teams about which team is going to raise the most (and by 'smack talk', I mean I've been threatening Team Snow Monkeys with total annihilation) but in the end, the team you donate to is nowhere near as important to me as your donation. Heck, you can even donate for Erin D (Snow Monkeys leader) and her underhanded tactics of cornering the beginners class before the rest of us have sign up sheets, I don't mind. The money will all end up in the same place and that will help educate five villages in Guinea that previously lacked access to education.

Clicking this link will take you to our event page where you can donate either to a specific team *cough*TeamMoondance*cough* or to the general pot.

From the bottom of my heart, I thank you all.