Croatia Sailing - Eat, Sleep, Swim.

It is about time that I tackled my European adventure posts.  I am still pouring over the 2000+ photos that I took on my two months abroad in Portugal, Spain, Croatia, France and the UK and I am still not done.  (Sigh, life is hard.)

With this daunting task ahead of me, I thought I should at least attempt a blog about one of the countries I've visited.  Croatia wins as it is where I took the least amount of photos.  There are two reasons why I only took about 200 photos on this leg of my journey.  First, I was paranoid about getting my camera submerged in water, and well, when you're on a boat, that fear is constant and real.  And second, I was asleep on the deck of my sailship for most of my time in Croatia getting an awesome tan.

I was literally glowing from the amount of sun in the Adriatic.

Croatia didn't start off all that well.  My flight into Zagreb from Barcelona was delayed and by the time I got into the alphabetically last of the world capitals, it was 10pm and the sketchy bus from the airport took me to an equally sketchy bus terminal in central Zagreb.  I'll be honest, daytime Zagreb is just as meh as nighttime Zagreb.  I was warned about this from several friends who've been to this Balkan country that the capital is nothing to really write home about.  What I did appreciate was the Viennese architecture that was prominent throughout the city.  When the Balkans were absorbed by the Austro-Hungarian empire, the Archdukes used their influence from Vienna to try to mold Zagreb in the same fashion.  Having lived in Vienna in 2005, it brought back some nice memories of my strolls down Mariahilfestrasse - it was the only way to brighten up my opinion of the Croatian capital.

Really cool clock at the Zagreb Cathedral.

Perhaps I'm being too harsh, there are some highlights like St. Mark's Church and the town centre, and the best museum I've seen in a while called the Museum of Broken Relationships.  My official travel opinion is that Zagreb is good for a pitstop, one day is good, two max.  Anymore than that and all you'll find yourself doing is drinking.

It was tough to get through the huge tourist crowd at St. Mark's Cathedral.

An exhibit at the Museum of Broken Relationships.  I want this clock.

The real reason I decided on Croatia as a destination on my European adventures was that I booked a sailing trip along the Dalmatian coast on the advice of my friend Sandy.  She has always wanted to do a cruise in Croatia and suggested the Busabout tour to me.  After a lengthy train ride, which included a four hour delay due to a fire on the track (which we then went through after the fire was put out and got me to thinking how safe the track was after it had been on fire for four hours...anyway) and an amazing conversation with Pavel, a seminary student, 34 years of age, (we talked about politics, the church, and reality TV for eight hours nonstop), I got into Split.  Pavel was kind enough to show me where my hotel was in the city and without his help, I would have been seriously fucked because this place was so well hidden that I needed to solve the Da Vinci Code to figure out where to go.

My cruise took me on the following itinerary:

Split -> Hvar -> Mljet -> Dubrovnik -> Korcula -> Macarska -> Omis -> Split

Finding the boat on the first day was quite the task - there's a billion fucking ships in this harbour.  Being the competitive person that I am, I turned this into a mini-The Amazing Race challenge and ran around with my luggage trying to find my elusive boat.  I finally stumbled across the Busabout boats out of sheer luck and was covered in a layer of sweat from the 15lb backpack I'd been lugging around. Resting in the air conditioned cabin, I had a chance to meet some of the other people on my boat including Jacinta, who happened to be the person I ran into on the dock and gave instructions to on how to find the boat.  (She later explained that she was a bit freaked out over the fact some random Asian man was directing her to her boat just on first impressions.)

The beautiful Split Harbour. 

The underground market in Split.

Our first stop was Hvar, known as a party destination for all Busabout cruises.  Having docked in the early evening, we didn't get a chance to wander around much.  That evening, we all went out to drink at a bar where they specialized in lemon vodka shots that were prepared by the patron putting on a helmet (worn by countless thousands of others and had never been washed) and the bartender slamming the shot glass on the stupid patron's helmet causing mild concussion.  I had two and I wasn't sure whether or not I was drunk or suffering from double vision.

Hvar Harbour at Sunset. 

Hvar at night.

Mljet was a nice break in between Hvar and Dubronik.  Everyone was nursing a bad hangover except for us old farts (we called ourselves The Breakfast Club because we were the only ones who showed up for breakfast everyday.)  One thing I would never want to experience on a boat is a massive hangover as the only recovery would be to hang your head over the railing and puke the entire day.  Mljet had an amazing national park which surrounded a large green salt lake but getting to it was about a 25 minute hike.  Naturally, we were all gross and sweaty from the hike and as a result, jumped into the water as soon as we were done with our photo shoots.

Turquoise waters.  I wanted to stay here forever.

Dubrovnik is really a must see city.  Walking along the old fortress walls provides the best view of the coastline and the entire Venetian inspired city.  The terracotta tiled roofs provided a cool colour contrast between the blue waters of the Adriatic.  We happened to be here at the opening of the summer festival in the city and as some of our boatmates found out the unfortunate way, they stumbled right into the middle of a school performance as the stage was just the village square they just so happened to walk across.  The were booed.  The rest of us found this hilarious as we were all hammered from the 3 litres of house wine at dinner which cost less than the bottled water.

I'm not sure where I am...

A coastal city in Italy?  No, it's Dubrovnik.

We were then off to Korkula which I'll be honest, I was glad we were only there for one night.  There really wasn't much to see and the only interesting part was that we were taken to an old castle turret that was turned into a bar.  Now the climb up to the top was interesting as it was up a narrow ladder that girls, if you decided not to wear underwear that night, you'd be giving everyone behind you quite the show.  If you didn't get a view climbing up the ladder, the view from the top was fantastic - as you can see from the sunset photo below.

The Croatian sunset - this was about 10pm. 

The Castle Bar.

Markarska left quite the impression because I had the best lasagna of my life here.  Down the main strip near the beach, there is a restaurant called Orca - it was well worth the 20 minute walk to get there, I really should have ordered another slice.  After our meal, we descended into the Rave in the Cave - a club called DEEP.  The inside of a cave was turned into a bar and filled with all sorts of neon lights.  It was a cool experience, but because of the intense heat, you were literally dripping in sweat after five minutes on the dancefloor.

Ravers in the Cave.

Omis was our last port of call before heading back to Split.  To be quite honest, at this point of my trip, I was starting to look forward to Paris.  I was tired of the boat and needed to be on land 24/7.  And I was running out of laundry.  In Omis, we woke up early (cough, 7am early) to climb to the fortress.  40 minutes of climbing resulted in several people puking along the way (they raved too hard in the cave the night before).  This was perhaps the only day I saw more than 7 people at breakfast - when we returned we were all starving for food.

The view from the top. 

Yes, I conquered this hill.  Still super dark.

Our last night in Split was pretty tame.  The group of us that hung out together were not in the mood to get wasted and all decided to have a good meal, walk around the city and bring some drinks back to the boat and have a good chat before we all went our separate ways.  I contemplated staying up all night as we finished our talks at 1am and I had to be up at 430am to get to the bus station to catch the early morning shuttle to the airport.  I implore you - if you ever have an option of taking an early morning flight out of Split, DON'T DO IT.  The bus station was super sketchy as drunk people filtered out of one of Croatia's largest clubs - Imperium.  And if it wasn't the drunks, it was the homeless people.  Thankfully, I made friends with a couple of Americans who were of the same mindset to gang together in order to make it to our bus stop that was down an alleyway with no lampposts.

Regardless of how it ended, I had a blast in Croatia.  While I wouldn't recommend a tour like this to people of my age, I would certainly say that if you have a wealthy friend with a yacht who invited you on a cruise along the coast of Croatia, that you should take them up on the offer.

As a follow up to this story - it was only a few weeks ago that Anderson Cooper was vacationing with his boyfriend along the coast with their friends Kelly Ripa and Andy Cohen when news broke that Anderson's BF was photographed kissing another man in Central Park.  That must have made for a very awkward boat ride.

Croatia from the port hole in my room.

One thing I do miss is the Croatian sunset.

The Beauty that is Chinese Characters

Week Two of Mandarin school and the fun continues.  I'm amazed by how many characters I've learned (and memorized) up to this point - my last count was approximately 200 characters (silent happy dance and Woot Woot).  However, there are things I discover about this language everyday that make me wish that I had not abandoned it so quickly as a child.  One of them, which I continue to unravel as I absorb more and more characters, is the artform in constructing a Chinese character.

A brief lesson on the history of the written Chinese language.  Chinese characters evolved from pictograms, simple words like fire, man, female, wood and field all came from what the word looked like in nature.

Fire - looks like a bonfire.
Man - looks like a person walking.
Female - looks like a person with wide hips.
Wood - looks like the branches of a tree.
Field - looks like how rice paddies are organized.

However, throughout what was China at the time, each kingdom and territory had their own written and spoken form of Chinese.  It wasn't until the Qin Dynasty in 200 BC that the Emperor decided to standardize the written language so that people from one end of China could communicate with people on the other end, regardless of what dialect they subscribed to.

Since standardization, the base words have been used to create new words and characters.  These base words - 214 characters also known as The Chinese Radicals (which a friend of mine remarked would be an awesome name for an indie band) - would be used in different formations to create other characters that would represent other things.  It's in fact how I've been able to memorize so many characters - is by breaking them down to their basic meaning and remembering what order they appear in the word.

Take for example the word for "to speak":

To Speak (shuo in pinyin) is made up of the characters for Words, Points, Mouth and Man.
The words are coming from the points leaving the man's mouth.

Cool, right?  It's similar to word construction in languages that use alphabets, but there's something more poetic to written Traditional Chinese.  Each pen stroke has meaning (which I have yet to master) and each character contributes to a canvas of different elements to create a beautiful picture.

Here's another cool example of "dormitory" (two words):

Dormitory (su she in pin yin) is broken into two characters.  Su is made up of Roof, People and Hundred.
She is made up of People, Shield and Enclosure.  Many people living under a shielded enclosure - not that hard to memorize.

Finally, my favourite (albeit personal) interpretation of a Chinese character is the word for "love":

Love (Ai in pin yin) is a character you likely recognize because millions of non-Chinese people have it tattooed on their bodies somewhere.
Surprisingly, I find that the character is made up of the radicals for Claws, Cover, Heart and Follow.
While the latter two are logical (follow your heart with love), the first two are quite comical - love would certainly claw at your heart, so you need to have some sort of cover to protect it.

Again, the latter interpretation is purely my own personal thoughts on the word Love (not that I am at all bitter at the concept of Love).

If you're interested, here are all 214 radical characters:

The first time I saw this sheet, I nearly crapped myself.

When I stumble across more words that are of comical note, I will make sure to share with you all.

Celebrating Three Anniversaries that Changed My Life

There's something refreshing about the beginning of September.  It's the beginning of the school year  and having been a geek all my life, it was always something I looked forward to.  It's the beginning of fall, my favourite season, especially in North America; the air is crisp enough to wear a jacket (I have an unhealthy obsession with jackets) and sleeping with the windows open requires that extra blanket so you don't catch a cold.

This September marks some important anniversaries in my life.  One involves gaining independence, one involves a loss and one involves a journey of discovery.

It was ten years ago this September that I packed up a minivan full of my possessions, drove down the 401 past hundreds of farm fields to a small city called London, Ontario.  Here, I would attend an amazing university, the University of Western Ontario.  Here is where I would gain independence - no one was accountable for my grades, my bills or how I lived my life except for me.  While there's not much of that Orientation Week that I remember (most likely due to the copious amount of alcohol that was consumed), I remember meeting a floormate who would turn out to be my roommate for the remaining three years and still an incredibly good friend today.  More friends were gained along the way, some were lost, but overall, I was lucky enough to meet some fascinating individuals, some of whom I have had the great fortune of traveling with on my trip around the world.

It was two years ago this weekend that I talked to my grandmother for the last time.  Having battled lung and bone cancer for over a year and a half, she died shortly after collapsing on her way back to her room at the hospital in Los Angeles.  Luckily, I was fortunate enough to have planned a trip to visit her that Labour Day weekend and had a nice chat before she passed.  It was my grandmother that really encouraged me to reconnect with my father's side of the family.  It could have been guilt from all of the mean things that were said and done during my parents' divorce, but her one message to me throughout the entire time she was battling her illness was that I needed to patch things up with my dad.  If it wasn't for her urging and what I believe is her continued guidance on the matter, it wouldn't have led me to where I am today.

And it was six months ago today that I quietly sipped on a gin and tonic while watching Toronto disappear from my window as I sat on my midnight flight to Taipei.  Half excited, a quarter drunk and the remainder anxious, I had no idea what was in store for me in my year off.  I had left a comfortable life for the unknown and having always been the person with a plan, not having one made me feel empty and lost.  It never occurred to me that I was pretty empty and lost all along, even with my plans.  What I was missing was family and having had the chance to be with my dad's side of my family 24/7 for two months made me realize how much I needed these people in my life.  It also marked the start of an incredible journey that would take me to new places I had never seen before like Tibet, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Portugal, Spain, Croatia and Scotland.  I've experienced some great moments like celebrating with thousands of Spaniards on La Ramblas after their Euro Cup win or taking a dip in Loch Ness while the sun blazed down on us sipping whiskey on the beach.

This weekend has certainly been a time for reflection - this perfect storm of anniversaries have made me appreciate that saying, "everything happens for a reason."  Within the last six months, I've learned a lot about my strengths and weaknesses - these next six months will be about how I take that knowledge and determine what I want to do moving forward.  May more eureka moments occur, and may more truths shed light on paths that need to be followed.

Alas, Tiger Student, I am not.

This is my small break after six hours of prepping for my second week of school.  After what seems like a lifetime of writing and repeating Chinese characters over and over again in my practice book, my right hand has cramped into a claw-like form.  I might as well be half velociraptor.

I must admit, this week was quite the roller coaster of emotions and experiences.  From the anxiety of the first day and seeing if I was actually placed properly into a class of my skill level, to the frustration of hours upon hours of written homework to improve on my writing abilities, and finally, to the joy of completing my first exam without feeling like I bombed the entire thing - I'm very glad this week is over.

I enrolled in the program at the advice of my father.  In spending so much time here in Taiwan, it would be a shame not to learn something in the process.  Having left Taiwan before entering elementary school, I had limited exposure to reading and writing Chinese.  Most of my ability remains in speaking the language, and even that sometimes is more Chinglish than actual conversational Mandarin.

So it was a shock when I got my placement exams back and they placed me in the level 7 section (of which there are 10 levels) of the program at National Taiwan University.  I immediately thought they had made some sort of mistake; nonetheless, I would go and try it out, see where my comfort level was and hopefully fit in with the other students.

After six months of not having a daily routine, it was nice to get back into one again.  Normally, I would wake up at a late hour and laze around the house, go to the gym, write a couple of paragraphs of a short story at the local S-bucks and head to dinner with the family.  Now, I am up every morning early, having breakfast, heading off to school to do a couple of hours of studying before my class starts at noon.

My class is an interesting mix of people - three Japanese, one Indonesian, one American and me.  We are all at different skill levels in reading, writing and speaking, but within the same level of comprehension of vocabulary and sentence structure.  Each of us have our own weaknesses, but we have found a nice groove helping each other out during group exercises and conversational breaks.

Our teacher is a lovely early 40s woman named Mrs. Shen.  She's what you'd picture a teacher to be - patient, happy and always eager to help you learn something new.  I've asked her for extra work (in an attempt to try to catch up to writing at a proficient level) and she's more than happily obliged, even helping me out with my phonetics, which is in dire need of assistance.

As an eager beaver student, I quickly rush to the library after my three hour class is over everyday to re-write all my notes.  It's my way of memorizing the vocabulary that we learned that day - you have to keep re-reading and re-writing the words in order to memorize the characters, there's really no other way to learn.  I'm there for another three hours as I take the extra step of teaching myself the bo/po/mo/fo phonetics technique and reacquaint myself with how to determine the intonations again.  

All this preparation is done because we are tested at the beginning of every class on the previous class' material.  If you don't do your homework or at least review what was taught the day before, you're totally fucked on the dictation quiz.  I've been doing pretty average on these quizzes so far, even with the hours of prep time I've been putting in.

By mid-week, my brain is spinning from all the new words I've learned.  This chapter is all about things around the house and while it is great to learn how to read and write this vocabulary, it's not so practical if I ever want to use it in business.  The phrase: "Put the bowls away because the kitchen is smelly," is likely not something you'll throw out in a meeting.

It felt like an eternity, but once Friday hit, I felt like a sack of Chinese characters had landed on my head; my noggin was about to explode with how many new characters I had absorbed in just that one week.  Our week-end exam was almost an hour long testing our reading comprehension, writing skills with a full composition section and a question and answer section with our teacher.  I walked out of there knowing I didn't fail miserably, but probably scoring around an 85.  Tiger Student I had hoped to be, alas Tiger Student I am not.

Having said that, this experience has been fun.  There are "aha!" moments where I know exactly how to write the words by piecing together the root words.  There are also "it's all coming back to me now" moments where I feel like I've resurrected a memory of Chinese school in Toronto from the deepest darkest recesses of my mind.  Then there are the "wow, I did it!" moments - something I haven't felt in a while when it comes to learning something new.

This is just after one week, there's eleven more weeks of this fun.

Now back to more vocab - there are 35 new words and phrases to remember for my test tomorrow.  Aiya.  

A week in Tokyo

Japan has always occupied a parking spot in the curiosity section of my brain.  I have snippets of memories from when I've lived and visited the Land of the Rising Sun before but they are incomplete snapshots of what I am sure were incredible experiences.

I've been to Japan twice in my life.  The first, was when I was four and my father was studying at Yokohama university.  During our year there, I picked up on Japanese pretty quickly and it was a shame that I lost it all when I immigrated to Canada and English quickly trumped both of my previous languages.  That was also the first time I went to a Disneyland, met Mickey Mouse and bought his alarm clock, of which still functions to this day (a clear testament to Japanese engineering).  The second was back in 2005.  At that point, I was still a pissy little shit when it came to dealing with my dad after a decade of having a shaky father-son relationship.  He treated me, my stepmother and aunt to a trip to Tokyo and Ito, of which I sulked most of the way through because I was with my father.  When I look back on that trip now, I wince at how I ruined the trip for myself and likely for those who went with me.  This also shows that when you're 22, you still are not mature enough to act like an adult sometimes.

So when my uncle offered me the chance to go with him to Tokyo last week to help him out with some business he had to do there at the Do-It-Yourself Trade Show in Chiba (just east of Tokyo), I didn't hesitate to say yes.  With only a few days of commitment to the trade show, the rest of the time, I had to myself to wander the streets of Tokyo.

Just when I think I haven't gotten enough of temples and palaces, there's always room for more.  Senso-ji and the Meiji Temple were both on my must see list in Tokyo.  Both are Old World Japan monuments nestled in the hearts of Tokyo's busy neighbourhoods of Asakusa and Harajuku, respectively.

Senso-Ji Temple.

I've been to Asakusa before on the trip back in 2005 - a charming little district with the Senso-ji sheltered by the Kaminarimon Gate and a long path of small souvenir and snack shops leading up to the temple.  These tiny stores sell anything from cell phone cases to those annoying dangly cartoon characters that hang off said cell phone cases and one of the weirdest items, and ear wax picker.  The food is fantastic - mochi cakes and waffle biscuits are all made to take the form or the large lanterns that hang from the gates leading to the temple.

The temple is a hive of activity.  People stand in front of the large incense burner and wave the smoke that billows out of the furnace all over their body for good luck.  There are fortune cabinets all around the exterior and interior of the temple.  Give the metal tin a good shake and a stick with a number comes out.  That number matches a cabinet holding your fortune.  As with all fortunes, the user should really try not to buy into every word - I will apparently have good fortune at my current job and love life...neither of which I have at the moment.

Shake the metal tin, get your fortune stick
and get your fortune out of the
matching drawer.

The Meiji temple is a slightly different experience from the hustle and bustle of Asakusa.  This temple is surrounded by an expansive park with walkways the size of boulevards and trees as tall as apartment buildings.  On a sunny afternoon, it is the perfect escape from the blazing fireball in the sky.  (In fact, the weather during the week I was in Tokyo was so hot, I thought I was somewhere in the tropics.  It truly lived up to the promise of being the Land of the Rising Sun.)

I had the fortune of listening in on a performance of the Tyko drummer in the temple - with each strike of the large bat (I swear it was larger than a baseball bat) on the vat sized drum, the boom reverberated in your organs as it spread out across the courtyard and out into the gardens.  I wish I could share with you some photos and video of the event, but I was quickly stopped by a security guard to let me know that no pictures were allowed - quite the surprise in a land where everyone has their camera on them at all times.

Moving away from a taste of the old world to a completely new world attraction, I headed to the SkyTree communications tower to take a look at the tallest structure in Japan and the second tallest in the world - opened just in May of this year.  From the base, it looks like a microphone for Godzilla to sing karaoke into.  As much as I wanted to go up to the top to look at the skyline, there was an hour and 20 minute wait for it as a shipment of mainland Chinese tourists got there before we did.  I shook my fist in anger and decided to save it for another trip.

The Skytree.

I ended my adventures around Tokyo in the shopping district Ginza.  On the weekends, the street turns into a pedestrian thoroughfare, so it's neat to walk down one of the busiest streets in Asia or sit on one of the many tables and chairs set out for tired shoppers.  Ginza is the Land of the Rising Department Stores and luxury goods as far as the eye can see.  However, due to the recession, some mainstream brands have entered including the ever popular UniQlo which takes up a 12 story retail environment that made me slap down some cash when I really shouldn't have.

Finally, a trip to Tokyo is not complete without some delicious Japanese food.  I really just gorged myself on noodles and sushi the entire time I was there.  I did make it to some restaurants, but nothing beat the $8 - $10 CDN you can spend and get a feast at the local supermarket.

All this from the supermarket for $8 Canadian.  That's some good eatin'.

So with all of these fun experiences, I plan on heading back to Tokyo in December with my friends Shelley, Marc and Jean to check out the nightlife the city has to offer...and also to get up early the next morning to see what the world famous fish market is like :D.

Olympics "I Believe" Song on repeat

I remember the first time I knew anything about the Olympics was in 1992.  I was in the 2nd grade and our gym teacher had us run around the gym pretending we were Olympic athletes.  Being the precious kid that I was, I decided being a spectator was my contribution to the "games."  

Even as a young child, I wasn't much into doing anything really physical.  I couldn't even dig in the sand without distain.

Then Lillehammer 1994 happened and I paid more attention to these games as Canada actually medals in the Winter games.  This was the year that Elvis Stojko unleashed the dragon and made figure skating two shades less feminine than it really is.  And my grandfather was very much into hockey, so I watched the tournament with him, and even though Canada won Silver, it was one of my favourite memories of childhood as I was able to spend so much time with my grandpa.


Through the years, Atlanta, Nagano, Sydney, Salt Lake, Athens, Turin, and Beijing were always fun to follow, but I never really LOVED the games until Vancouver 2010.  This time Canada was the focus of the games, and I was determined to go and experience the fun.  I was lucky enough to get tickets to the Gold Medal Men's hockey game, gambling on the fact that Canada would be in the finals.  The country was slow on the medal count, but the games finished like a fairy tale ending.  An overtime goal by Sidney Crosby to capture Men's Gold, the Canadian Olympic Team set an all time gold medal record by a host country at 14 gold medals, and some incredible tales of triumph from athletes like Joannie Rochette, who lost her mom before she was to skate, made you tear up like a 40 year old single woman watching Titanic for the fourteenth time on a Friday night with her cats.

Going buckwild after Canada wins in overtime.  One of my best moments of life ever.

I'll admit, for a time after Vancouver 2010, I was in a funk.  I wanted to turn on the TV to watch ANY sport that involved three medals at the end.  It could have been Olympic speed knitting and I would have watched.  I was so obsessed with the Olympics, I had the Nikki Yanokovski "I Believe" song playing on repeat on my iPod as I walked to work and pretended to move in slow motion like the people in the montages on CTV.  It made for a slow walk to work.

Just in case you haven't had enough of it...

So, when London 2012 crept closer, and I realized that I would be in Europe for the summer, there was no question that I would stop by this city to enjoy the games.  Thankfully, my friends Alex and Sandy have conveniently moved to this city, so free accommodations mean cheap Terence can spend more money on booze.  (And trust me, I have).


The Opening Ceremonies
After a day of walking around the city with Sandy and our friend Laura, we went to Canada House in Trafalgar Square to see what it had planned for the athletes.  We were disappointed to find that all they had for us were pins (we took them nonetheless) and they directed us to the Maple Leaf bar in Covent Garden.  We were joined by Alex, Phil (another friend from uni) and Phil's friend Jamie and we celebrated the Opening Ceremonies with at least 400 other Canadians crammed into the bar.  There were several moments of SHHHH! to try to listen to what was happening.  Other moments of laughter at the British sense of humour including:


- Free health care promotion (an obvious F you to Mitt Romney who was visiting and made some rather silly comments about the Olympic games)
- the Queen jumping from a helicopter with James Bond
- Three dozen Mary Poppins flying into the stadium


And of course, cheering for the countries as they marched into the stadium.  We cheered the loudest for Canada and Team GB, but as we got drunker and drunkier, we started clinking our glasses for Team Swaziland and Uzbekistan...haha...who comes up with these names?


Speaking of drunk, one of the highlights of the bar, was this couple from the West Coast.  The wife got hammered and started hitting on Phil and Jamie.  She tried with Alex, but Sandy shot her some Asian cuteye and she backed off.  They still stole our seats that we had occupied since 5pm.  Lesson learned, don't be nice.


However, we were unceremoniously all kicked out right before Sir Paul performed and people were losing their minds.  Very unCanadian like behaviour was displayed and we all went home with a bitter taste in our mouths - or perhaps that was from the vomit after nine pints of Strongbow.


Day 2 - 3m Women's Syncronized Springboard Diving
Our only ticket to the games was to the diving event at the aquatics centre on Sunday.  We were lucky enough to get seats to this event - little did we know that we'd be watching Canada get it's first medal.  It started with Canada doing really well, and in true Canadian style, we lost the lead and China, being the powerhouse they are, won Gold.  We were sitting in the nosebleeds but I truly believe our cheers reached all the way to the platforms 4,000m below us.

This is with 55mm zoom.  We were still super far.

Alex, Sandy and I wandered around the Olympic Park afterwards and it's massive and quite impressive.  The weather was bipolar, so we got waves of sunshine followed by a lightning show and a downpour back to happy sunny skies within a matter of an hour.  Mother Nature must have been watching the Joannie Rochette story with her cats.


The Olympic Park is located in London's East end, notorious for being the shady part of the city, has been refurbished to be the most sustainable Olympic Park ever.  The stadium, Aquatics centre, Velodrome, football and hockey fields are all located in this park.  A big wildflower field also serves as a live TV venue for those coming in and out of other events.  Alex wore his Union Jack and I wore the Maple Leaf flag.  The spirit of the games made the Olympic Park into a grown up version of Disneyland where everyone was smiling and greeting people with "hello, how are you?" or a "woot!  Canada!!!"  The Olympic volunteers were so happy, I think they inhaled a bag of happy gas before starting their shifts.  Here are some selects from the Olympic grounds:

Wildflowers are present all around the park.

The orbit - telecom tower and observation deck.

Very Polka Dot Door.

The Velodrome.

One Eyed Monster Mascot.

The Stadium.

Jump for the Olympics!

We don't have any more tickets to any of the other events, but with the controversy of the empty seats at the venues, we might get another chance to go!  If not, anyone up for Sochi 2014?

One bite at a time - Eating my way through Europe

There's a scene in the movie Eat, Pray, Love, where Julia Robert's character, Liz, makes a simple Italian meal for herself and plants herself on the floor of her Roman flat, where she spends an entire afternoon just savouring each bite of her food.  This scene is significant to me for two reasons - the first, is that I just finished reading the book on my European travels (Sidebar: did anyone else find it really hard to get through the India part of the book?); and the second is that I had several of these EAT moments in Europe.

Don't get me wrong, I really liked the movie, but I can see how people were pissed that so much was missing from the book.  Definitely a rental.

From my acorn-fed jamon in Barcelona to the lasagna I had in Markaska, Croatia, to the (several) cheese and wine combos in Paris, I've gained two new friends - I've named my lovehandles "Carbs" and "Consequences."  (Those "C" twins are so evil.)

I stare at this photo when I'm hungry.  It's the way of encouraging myself to write a lot of award winning books, gain the income to hire the chef that made this award winning lasagna, and hire a trainer to work off the weight I'll gain from eating this for every meal, everyday.

I've had a great time in Europe so far - besides the excellent food, I've experienced so much in the past five weeks that have opened my eyes to the fact that I am still as not as well traveled as I hope to be, that there are still things I need to work (cough...communicating my feelings...cough) and that I can really get used to this life of just wandering from place to place and not doing anything.  Now if I can only find a way of making income out of doing nothing...


Traveling has also given me a couple of story ideas to tinker with and hopefully that will result in the income that will allow me to travel some more, which will result in more story ideas and more income...you see what I'm getting at here?  Sigh, it is hard not to get ahead of yourself when you have this much time on your hands to just dream.  (Insert the Bob Sinclair Love Generation song from the Lotto Max commercials here as I dream about my next vacation.)


There are several highlights of this trip (besides the food - wait, I said this already) that I can't wait to start blogging about in my following entries - they include:


- celebrating Spain's Eurocup win in Barcelona on Las Ramblas and watching people drunkenly climb the lamp posts and praying they didn't fall to their deaths, 
- meeting a seminary student on the train from Zagreb to Split, Croatia and talking to him about everything from politics to religion to Croatian reality TV for about four hours as our train was delayed by a fire on the track (no, not dangerous at all),
- waking up every morning to the sound of the Adriatic waves splash against our boat and then jumping into the clear blue waters after breakfast on my Split - Dubrovnik cruise,

Life is hard when you have to jump off a boat everyday.

- the most random Sunday I've ever experienced which included a Tim Burton-esque circus exhibit, followed by running into a random Brazilian drum band and random carnival rides that made my friend Lindsay and I sick.


Each place I've visited in the last five weeks have left quite the impression.  Portugal was a friendly destination where surprisingly everyone spoke English with you, because they are probably tired of foreigners butchering Portuguese or speaking to them in Spanish.  Spain was incredibly hot and a great place to meet interesting characters on our Trafalgar tour - including some older Aussies and New Zealanders who insisted that the Spanish speak English.  Croatia was relaxing after three weeks of bus tours and an eclectic mix of young Australians - there were only Aussies on this part of my travels, I was quite the minority as an Asian Canadian (or Canasian).  And well, Paris, it was all about living the life of a Parisien, so much so that I was even getting annoyed with the tourists and saying my "Pardon!"s with an annoyance that would make any local proud.


What makes life so great at the moment is that my European adventures are not over.  There's still the London Olympics and Scotland and all of its foggy glory left to experience!  


It's not hard to keep saying to myself - fuck, I'm so glad I decided to take this break.