Alexandra and Darse

New cool video

2008-11-27T18:09:00.004Z

Here is the link for a new cool video about how economy works. In 20 minutes everybody can understand why the system is broken. Don't be fooled by the fact that the most waste comes from production. Every little thing counts so don't give up on recycling. Also, when you can make such choice, buy stuff produced locally and/or in a sustainable way (green).

Watch The Story of Stuff at http://www.storyofstuff.com/

Food for thought

2008-11-19T17:44:00.013Z

Last few months I was immersed in a learning project. After I made the calculations about the Oil and Coal reserves using Dr. Barlett's formula, I realized that these figures mean something that we should worry about. I did further research on peak oil and the state of the planet.

The UN published the report 2008 State of the future. It tells how bad things are and, of course, that there are ways out of this. The headlines in the news were: ‘2008 State of the Future report --we may not be doomed’ and ‘The Future Isn't What it Used to Be! (It's Going to be Better)’.
You can check or download the summary for yourself at:
http://www.millennium-project.org/millennium/SOF2008-English.pdf
and see yourself how better it can be.

It is very clear that peak oil is happening. It is hard to believe it and the consequences are that we have to change our lifestyle. In short, consumerism is not possible anymore. We will have to get by with less and less useless stuff. Since oil and natural gas is in everything --agriculture, transportation, infrastructure, plastics, heating, etc -- we have to rethink our food supply, our transportation, and our energy resources. It won't be easy to change most of the infrastructure with less energy and troubled finances. The time factor is also against us. We should have started long time ago to adapt to the new situation. If you want to know more about it, just google 'peak oil' and you will have a wide selection.

I was reading Freakonomics and, besides the fact that I am largely unimpressed by the lack of accuracy of the studies, I found an article 'debunking' the peak oil. I expected it to be bad but it turned out to be sadly hilarious. It was written just before the soaring price of oil reassuring people that nothing is going to happen. This is why economists should listen to engineers sometimes.

http://freakonomics.blogs.nytimes.com/2005/08/21/peak-oil-welcome-to-the-medias-new-version-of-shark-attacks/

A very good website that shows in and understandable way what is wrong in our world is Chris Martenson's website. His Crash Course is easy to grasp for anyone. In his lesson about money he is centered on how US financial system is, but it still help you understand why compounded interest is not a good idea.

http://www.chrismartenson.com/crash-course

Chris Martenson focuses more on money and resources. I could add that the free market mechanism works great to make money for some. Markets work best with private property and things that have a price. Its goal is to produce goods as cheap as possible, otherwise companies will disappear. When it comes to ethics or environment or future generations, it fails utterly because these things don’t have a price. Economy will chew up everything that is for free or cheap to make products that you don’t necessarily need, but you are convinced to buy. Trees, animals, fish, land, water and even human beings are only part of the game if a profit can be made. If those things disappear, oh well, we will just move onto other resources and other products?! Basically, we are trapped in an economic model whose only goal is to make more money or die. As you can see, it is a life or death situation. What if you have money but there is nothing to buy? It would be a good question for economists.

I lived through such times in communist Romania, during a period that can be compared to post oil economy. What is coming is simple: food rations, gas rations, less heating, blackouts, water on and off, other products to be found sporadically, black market, etc. Forget about traveling, or an over-abundance of products. No more painful choices to make when you buy mustard. ;-)

I warmly recommend the documentary “What a Way To Go: Life at the End of Empire”. It addresses the problems we are facing and tries to find their roots. I recommend watching it a couple of times. It is very dense information-wise. It can be shocking and most people react like they have lost something dear and go through stages of grief. It will be unpleasant but necessary.

What a way to go trailer

I’ve spent many hours reading and looking for a solution, or maybe a proof that I am wrong. With every article, book, documentary and news piece, I am more and more convinced that it is happening and there is no coherent solution out there. Every time I see an article saying that there is no reason to be worried, I hope that it will convince me. And every time I am disappointed by its shallowness. It breaks my heart when I see the hugely disproportionate coverage of political and financial issues, when the fact that a quarter of the mammal species are threatened with extinction doesn’t get any headline at all. A quarter of all species! Isn’t that some kind of unprecedented mass murder? Shouldn’t that sell newspapers?

The answer to these problems is total mobilization and cooperation at a global level. Citizens, governments and corporations all over the world have to work together toward the same goal. Hmmm. How likely is that, given the short time that we have? What chance do we have, knowing that the goal of The Market is to make more money, not to sustain life? How much can our leaders do if they only think about the next election and how to return favors to their campaign contributors? There is certainly some progress, especially at lower levels, but a few billion people have a lot of inertia. Just think about the Kyoto Protocol to realize how useless the politicians are when fast decisions have to be made.

Our only friend (and at the same time, our biggest enemy) is us. We are on our own. We can only brace ourselves and start preparing for what is coming. We can start asking questions of our leaders, spread the word, ask for better planning of the cities, downsize our consumption, start building communities, localize the production of critical goods, becoming energy and food independent, or… we can just party while we can. It is our choice to make the world a better place or to let it be transformed into a Mad Max world. The edge between these two possibilities is so thin…

Czeslaw Milosz – On the day the world ends - a beautiful and sad poem

"The only rational response to both the impending end of the oil age and the menace of global warming is to redesign our cities, our farming and our lives. But this cannot happen without massive political pressure, and our problem is that no one ever rioted for austerity." George Monbiot

There are interesting times ahead, whether we like changes or not. It can be our opportunity to build a more ethical, fair, and fulfilling world. At the same time human kind could slip into a painful dark age once again in its history. We are at an unmarked crossroad and the best path to take is not known. We have very hard problems to solve. If only everybody knew that there IS a problem. That would be the first step in solving it.

Trip to Kinsale

2008-11-10T18:46:00.006Z

At the end of October, we decided that it was time to visit some of Ireland. We booked three nights at a B&B near Kinsale, a charming town on the South coast of Ireland. We chose it because it is claimed to be the food capital of Ireland, it is a transition town, and it had a jazz festival happening that week-end.

On our way, we stopped and visited the Rock of Cashel (an ancient castle) and Cahir Castle (pronounced "care", a modern 12th century castle). Saturday was a downpour all day long so we mostly played games. After sunset the rain stopped and we were able to visit Kinsale by night, eat, and listen to some "jazz" (actually it was genuine blues, and even some country and western -- it felt very strange to hear American music in such a traditional Irish environment). The food was great every evening, living up to the claims.

Next day, sunny and shiny, we did an abridged version of our rained-out itinerary. That is, some coastal driving, see Drombeg Stone Circle, visit some smaller towns, see Blarney castle, and then head to Cork. The small towns like Clonakilty and Brandon were very quaint and the people very warm and friendly. Cork looked austere industrial and the major jazz festival that weekend made it very busy. Too bad we didn't have time to visit more of it but I am sure the countryside was more worth visiting than the big cities.

The last day we saw Kinsale by day and visited the two forts that once defended the harbor. James Fort is much smaller and it is not open for visiting but you can have a nice stroll from Kinsale Marina to the top of the hill/peninsula from where you can see all of Kinsale. Charles Fort is a huge impressive star-shaped fort with layers of history and layers of vegetation fighting to conquer the ruins. The grass will prevail in the end!

Here are some photos from our trip:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/darxan/sets/72157608814703524/

Update

2008-10-14T21:43:00.003+01:00

It’s been a while since my last post. A little update wouldn’t hurt. So, we attended some parties, some sight seeing, we moved from the house into a penthouse, I’ve finished my first course, Darse worked, again, long hours, and we kept an eye on the financial turmoil developing around the world. Ok. This is the abridged version of what happened last two months. I will develop.

Parties rocked! – This is everything you get about parties, and maybe some pictures.

Oh, and we went to see a show during the Fringe festival. It is called La Clique and it has all the possible seasoning: circus, fun, outrageous, inspiring, sexual, beautiful, amazing, and even uncomfortable. You can look for glimpses of it on YouTube.

Thanks to Morgan and Diane we finally went out to visit some of Ireland. We visited Powerscourt Gardens, Killiney/Dalkey Hill, Glendalough and this weekend we visited Irish National Stud (;-)) in Kildare. I hope I will have soon some pictures posted on Flickr, not only Morgan’s but mine as well.

Darse had a post about some of them. Here are some of my thoughts.

From the top of Killiney Hill you can see all Dublin South. The hill is a big park that has built paths and a monument on top. I can see it from my window and even though it is only a couple of hundred meters high or less, sometimes it is covered in clouds. It’s like a mini mountain, if you want.

Sunday, it was a beautiful weather in Dublin. I checked the forecast and there was no rain over Ireland, so I figured out that we might be lucky to have a nice day anywhere. Kildare is a commuter town at 40 km of highway from Dublin. Here there is the Irish National Stud, Japanese Gardens, Saint Fiachra’s Garden and the horse museum. I didn’t have very high expectations but it turned out that it’s very rewarding if you are a romantic type. The Japanese Gardens are very interesting too. Both grown ups and kids will enjoy it. The colours of autumn were wonderful, even though, when we arrived, the place was wrapped in mist. Actually, it made things more interesting, like the grass and spider webs were full of water droplets. There we found out that the most expensive stud does it once for 75,000 euro. Wow! I don’t think humans reached that record!

The move:
So, we moved from Shankill in a newer development close to Darse’s work. Moving is never easy and involves a lot of work: finding the place, do all the formalities and changes of address, pack and unpack, clean the house and clean again before moving, and so on. Thank you Diane so much for helping me. If it were for Darse, we would have done everything a day before handing over the keys. Luckily Darse was very busy that week so I could plan things ahead.
Now Darse doesn’t have any reason to whine every evening that his bus is late. We would have liked to find a place in Cabinteely village which is only two or three bus stops from here, but at the end, we preferred the sea view, bigger rooms and balcony, and the convenience to be close to the office.
Of course, moving meant a disruption in Internet access. Hopefully, tomorrow somebody will come to install it. The wireless is good for small browsing, but when it comes to movies and pictures, it is pretty slow.

Learning:
I ended the fist course of the two that I intend to take. Initially, I signed up for a psychology degree, but since things changed a lot lately and I found more and more disturbing news about the future of the planet, I’ve decided to do first these courses that can count also for a certificate in sociology. Even though many times I did not really enjoy this course, I’ve learned a lot from it. Incidentally, many of the issues were part of my understanding about economies and how the world works. Plus, I had the chance to practice essay writing and test my ability to learn in English.

Learning about the world was… traumatic. I will talk about this in my next post.

seeing things

2008-09-14T23:06:00.004+01:00

We've been seeing more of Ireland since Morgan and Diane moved here. They give us an extra reason to get out of the house, and later i can just point to Morgan's photo album, instead of doing a real blog entry. :) Maybe Xan will post some of her photos as well.

A few weekends ago they accompanied us to Powerscourt Gardens, in Wicklow county (about a 30 minute drive from our place). These gardens were built some 150 years ago on the estate of Lord Powerscourt (who was some sort of high muck-dee-muck with a lot of moola for building big impressive gardens). Not quite as spectacular as the reclaimed quarry of Butchart Gardens in Victoria, but still plenty beautiful. I saw many kinds of trees that i'd never seen before. Love the trees.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/heraldk/sets/72157607038517428/

Afterwards we climbed Dalkey/Killeny hill, for a nice panoramic view of South Dublin. (Morgan doesn't mention it, but the castle at the base of Killeny hill (looking South) is Enya's humble abode).

http://www.flickr.com/photos/heraldk/sets/72157607279465300/

Last weekend we drove to Glendalough, via Sally's Gap through the Wicklow "mountains". Glendalough is a national monument and popular tourist attraction. Its claim to fame is being *twice* as old as just about everything i see on a daily basis (that is, about 1600 years old instead of merely 800 years old). Beyond the hallowed grounds are some nice walking trails with a tremendous variety of fauna. After climbing up to the waterfall, we took the low road back, descending to the lakes and walking along a raised boardwalk through the marshes and bogs. We saw lots of glens and loughs. Hence the name.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/heraldk/sets/72157607283752602/

spiders

2008-08-24T14:09:00.003+01:00

We've got spiders. Lots of spiders. Lots of other insects and greeblies too (and lots of birds that feed on them), but Xan is kinda freaked out by the population of spiders in our yard, and occasionally in our house. The nooks and crannies outside of the house quickly get filled with webs, and de-webbing the car is standard procedure before driving somewhere.

One day she told me that she opened the bedroom window and got scared by a very large and very fast spider. She said its body was the size of an almond. Uh huh, ya ya, sure sure, no exaggeration there at all, i'm sure. She's a big fraidycat. So i opened the window to see if the big bad scary spider was still around, and AGHH!! Holy Crap! THIS THING WAS THE SIZE OF A WALNUT!! And OMFG was it fast! It freaked me right out! Fortunately it went back out the window and dropped to the ground. Given its size, it probably landed with a thud.

Yesterday we had people over for games, and Xan called me into the kitchen. On the floor near the sink was a *huge* fast spider. Not sure if it was the same kind, but maybe. The body was the size of an almond (segmented like a wasp), and its leg span was about 8 cm (3 inches). I trapped it under a translucent cover, and slid some paper and a cutting board underneath. One guest urged me to kill it, but why would i want to kill such an awesome creature? I walked to the grassy field across the street and let it go, sprinting back to the house before it could chase me down. :)

Today i looked it up. There are thousands of varieties of spiders, and looking at the Wikipedia article on spider taxonomy made it clear that this wasn't going to be an easy task. So i took a different tact, googling "big fast spider", and in one of those "gotta love the internet" moments, the top hit was a youtube video of our spider:

Spider ... it's Big it's fast.. but what is it???

Now, youtube comments are generally among the most utterly retarded tripe on the intertubes, but lo and behold, some non-idiots answered the question, leading me to:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_house_spider

This is the fastest "true" spider in the world, clocking speeds of over half a meter per second (20 inches/sec). With it's sleek body, this truly is the Lamborgini of spiders. I was glad to read that they are entirely harmless to humans, so i can sleep a little easier.

photos of dublin and bray

2008-08-18T00:12:00.008+01:00

In lieu of an actual post, i offer 101,000 words in the form of photographs:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/heraldk/sets/72157604577994423/

These are from Morgan's interview back in April. (If you've seen our wedding photos, you already know that Morgan is an excellent photographer).

It's a pretty good sample of some of the things we've seen in Dublin (including our 10-day stay at The Beacon when we first moved here). Xan and Diane toured the nearby town of Bray and the charming Dalkey area of town. Then we all did a tour through the downtown area.

Don’t blame the Chinese

2008-08-03T16:33:00.011+01:00

For the last couple of years I have been following the unfolding of history with concern. Now I am scared. After the movie “An inconvenient truth” I thought that the world is in a difficult situation. I learned more about how it is possible to overcome it and the only way would be a shift in human consciousness and awareness. Human will and cooperation are needed at all levels to solve environmental problems before it’s too late. How likely is that? I believe it’s very unlikely.

Few days ago I had the proof that humanity is in an even bigger jeopardy. I am not talking here about the regular problems like energy crisis, financial crisis, or other wrongs like war or bad education. No. It’s about what could lead to the End Game. The main character is overpopulation leading to resources depletion. Oh, so boring, so many have cried “Wolf!” before. It ain’t gonna happen! Not in our life time. Well, I hoped so too, but you should see this video by prof. Albert Bartlett and think about the implications.

It is a video explaining the consequences of exponential growth. It’s very easy to understand it and he gives relevant examples. He pinpoints the real problem that we are facing, that is, overpopulation. Right now we have a lot more problems than that, and all the problems are hard ones. Pay attention especially to the bacteria example and the mathematical truth that the amount needed for the doubling is bigger than the sum of all previous steps.

Video 1 Video 2 Video 3 Video 4 Video 5 Video 6 Video 7 Video 8

It is also important to remember what he says: “We cannot trust other people to do our thinking for us”. So I started to think. These assertions are quite scary and were made a few years ago. Dr. Bartlett also said “Don’t take my word for this – check my analysis, do the math!”. So I did the math, and it wasn’t too hard at all…

I found the statistics from 2007 and made some calculations to see where we are at. I used the global figures because we are in a global economy.

Exhausting time is: Te = 1/k * ln[(k*R/p)+1]
where: p = consumption/year, R=reserves, k=growth rate

And tada! The results:

I was shocked! OMG! He is right. Certainly, the future doesn’t look rosy.

If we look at the World energy usage chart, it is obvious that a lot of work has to be done. 85% of the energy is obtained from fossil fuels. Have you noticed the sharp increase of coal consumption to replace oil? It doesn’t help avoiding global warming, for sure.

Now I understand why there is an energy crisis. It is not because Chinese bought over a million cars or because there is war in middle-east. The reason is that we are running out of gas…

There is some good news too. First, Europe is a leader in decreasing the usage of fossil fuels. Last year was a modest 2% decrease or so, but exponential growth works the other way around too. Second, USA knows about this problem. They have a report about it (Hirsch report – Feb. 2005). I don’t see too many signs of action, though.

Actually, the Americans are still arguing about when the peak oil production “will” occur. They also don’t realize that peak oil production is not the middle of the journey, but the last mile. It’s important to grasp the mathematical fact that half of a finite resource is consumed during the last doubling.

If all the nations stopped increasing their fossil fuel usage right now, and started decreasing it a little every year, the time needed to achieve independence from fossil fuels is the following:

How likely is that, considering world population growth and developing countries with huge populations like China and India? Is it possible to go from a 2.6% average growth to at least a 2% decrease, so that the transition will be smooth enough? Europe shows us that it can be done. Is there enough political will for this in the rest of the world?

If you understand that the extraction of fossil fuels won’t increase exponentially and will end abruptly, then you will understand that many years of crisis are ahead. I am telling you: over the next years, things are going to get a lot worse before they get better.

This is it. It’s the biggest challenge for the human race. We are at 30 seconds before high noon. What are we going to do? Go shopping to appease our anxiety? Tune out the dreadful news and tune in to the next distraction? Or take the problem seriously and get prepared to face it?

Mission accomplished!

2008-07-17T18:19:00.008+01:00

And we’re back in Dublin. Our trip was totally successful. We achieved the two main goals: get the Canadian Citizenship and beat the humans in Las Vegas.

Long trips are always hard to plan and when you think you figured out everything you have to change the plans because, for instance, you cannot find flight tickets three weeks in advance for the planned dates. Because we postponed buying them for three days, we had to fly the last day possible, that is, 30th of June. Basically we had only one day and half for visiting family and friends. Sigh!

My Citizenship ceremony was scheduled on 2nd of July, the day after Canada’s Day. We were worried that I won’t find any store open to take my passport pictures, so we decided that it is better to have them done the day when we arrived in Calgary. That means if you check my new passport photo you’ll see me trying to keep my eyes open. Oh well, I’ve had worse pictures in my documents … Time was very tight. The ceremony was at 1.00 pm and the flight for Vegas was the next day at 7:30 pm. I don’t even have proper photos from the ceremony because we didn’t stay for the reception afterwards. And since we didn’t have enough problems, just before the ceremony I realized I forgot the flight tickets at home, which are essential to get an express passport (in 24 hours). Luckily, the passport office is in the same building that the citizenship ceremony was held, which is close to the central library. We ran to the library to have our flight booking printed and after some complicated procedures that involved also a library card, we did it! It is so strange that the government building doesn’t have any internet for the public, just in case anybody needs to print their e-mail that they forgot at home. ;-)
Back to the passport office, my batteries were already running low. Jet lag and stress made everything look unreal and I wasn’t feeling very smart. For instance, in the rush, I forgot to ask about our situation of having two addresses, one in Canada and one in Ireland. The problems started when the officer said ‘Could you wait, please, while I contact your two references?’ When she came back she was very upset. Se told me that one doesn’t know me and the other one said I live in Ireland. So here it goes, me, trying to explain how people actually don’t know my first name because I use my second one, plus, I’ve just changed my last name by marriage which makes things even more confusing. What was I thinking when I didn’t contact the references first to tell them what to expect? Anyways, we had to think fast about other references but most of them couldn’t be contacted or were in Las Vegas already. The salvation came from Jason. Thank you, Jason. After more than two hours I finally got my receipt saying to come and pick the passport the next day at 2.00 pm. Yay!
I want also to thank Eileen, Darse’s mom, who gives us shelter and support every time we come to Calgary, and especially on that memorable day when I became a Canadian citizen. It was very comforting to have family assisting and not many immigrants have this luxury.
The next day we woke up early (still jet lagged but also excited), we finished our suitcases and solved other pending problems. We decided that it worth a shot to see if the passport was already done, so we headed downtown almost an hour early. The pick-up office was very quiet and cool, a working heaven – not too much work to do, though. I approached the officer telling him, with big innocent eyes, that I have a passport to pick-up at 2.00 but the bus came early so here I am, one hour early. He smiled and said ‘We can’t fight public transportation. I’ll check if it’s here.’ And it was. Hurray! I’ll be able to fly tonight with Darse to Las Vegas!

Las Vegas
At the beginning of the year, I told one of my friends ‘I think the first trip after I have my Canadian citizenship will be to Las Vegas.’ But back then I had no clue that this would actually happen the very next day after I got it.

The Rio

All this tight schedule was due to the second poker man-machine match, which was held in Las Vegas. Interestingly, the match didn’t have as much media attention as the one held last year in Vancouver at the AAAI Conference, even though it had much more relevance than the first one. I leave Darse to write about it. I only tell you in short that the machine won and Darse was right once again, saying that poker bots can become better than all human players. Another point for the humans who invented the machine.

Darse, Matt and Polaris

Vegas is a strange city. Everything is in excess: distances, size, light, heat, even air conditioning. After seeing the movie ‘21’ I expected Vegas to be a party city but in reality people don’t look very happy. Maybe because they don’t have comfortable shoes, which are mandatory for the big distances, even within the same building. The locals don’t seem happy either because they don’t smile and they rarely joke. I had a feeling of competition and shattered dreams. Who knows, maybe my expectations were to high.

It happens that we were there for the 4th of July and we were invited to Phil Gordon’s party. He lives outside of Las Vegas and we hired a stretch limo to get there because we were too many to fit in a cab. Hiring a limo for the 35 minute trip was not all that expensive and we checked it off our to do list - check. It was a nice party although it wasn’t that easy to start conversations with people. I don’t know if it was a cultural barrier but we couldn’t mingle very much. Except for Darse, of course, who found an acquaintance he’d known for many years on the Internet, Jim Geary, but had never met in person.
It was a warm evening and we sat by the pool sipping our drinks, listening music, and watching others playing some games and the RoShamBo competition. Then we watched the fireworks, which could be seen in all directions. Around eleven Jim and his wife were very nice and drove us at the Rio hotel. The rest of the crew (Aaron and Christine, Diarmuid and Berina) was located at Mandalay Bay so it was easier for them to take a cab.

If you go to Las Vegas in the summer, the best time to go outside is during the night, when the temperature is below 30 degrees Celsius. During the day we were busy with the competition anyway, or at least Darse was. In one of the evenings we went downtown to see the old style casinos and the Fremont Experience. The screen over the street is a clever idea. The first song we saw was ‘American Pie’, which worked really well, but the next one was disappointing. Because of the 4th of July, it was some sort of patriotic music which didn’t fit well with the city of sin and parties. Oh well, at least we had fireworks the day before. Fremont Experience – check.

Downtown pics
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Shark tank with transparent water-slide inside

The next evening we went to celebrate the victory with the CPRG at a fancy restaurant, and then to see ‘O’ at the Bellagio, a Cirque du Soleil show. I enjoyed the artistic show we saw in Edmonton much more, but this one was more circus like. I wonder if all the shows have the same type of music which I, personally, don’t consider very appealing. Anyway, Vegas show – check. Then we had a stroll on the Strip waiting to see the fountains which didn’t show up. Traffic is crazy on the strip and there were many pedestrians, tourists from all over the world. The Strip at night – check.

Then we had a day off, wandering around the Rio while Darse was talking to Terry about work and poker. Actually we were tired of being in crowds for most of the time and looked for quiet spots. In the evening we bought a bottle of wine and watched the city from our 15th floor hotel room.

The last day, we met with the CPRG people at the Flamingo where, guess what, they have flamingos! They seemed a lot healthier than the ones at WEM. They also had black swans, and huge koi fish, and other critters. From there we left for a walk on the Strip in order to visit fancy casinos and see the lame free show at the Treasure Island. We saw The Venetian, complete with fake cracks and fake cobblestone, The Wynn, which is very stylish, The Mirage, warm and friendly but the zoo was already closed, Caesar’s Palace and the Forum Shops, with it’s magnificent fake Roman streets and fake sky. The fountains looked more realistic, and the aquarium was cool. It was so strange to walk on this Roman street which is actually a consumerist shopping mall – what a contrast! As a general trait, every casino has something specific that you can’t see anywhere else. Vegas by day – check.

At The Flamingo
Big fish Darse and birds

Waterfall Swan ballet

The Strip by day

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Inside Wynn

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The $5,000 slot machine

The Forum Shops

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Bellagio Garden & Pool

The Venetian

The only thing left on my list unchecked is gambling. We went to Vegas and didn’t gamble! I guess it didn’t come up. [Liar! It came up, and I vetoed it, scribbling it off the list vigorously –drb]

Of course, we couldn’t visit everything but maybe this is the trick, to make people come again. The idea is that there are so many attractions, shows, rides, displays, etc. that you can feel like in a superstore where you have to pick only one mustard and one ketchup from an endless aisle.

That’s all. It was interesting and eye opening. Now we are back to Dublin, back to work.

viva, las vegas

2008-07-14T00:45:00.012+01:00

I haven't posted much lately 'cuz words scare me. Here are some pictures instead (somewhat poor quality because i set my crackberry to low-res).

The CPRG took our poker program, Polaris, to Las Vegas, to battle against some very good players, including the best heads-up Limit Hold'em player in the world, Matt "Hoss_TBF" Hawrilenko.

And we won! (enter "Polaris poker" into Google news, or go to http://poker.cs.ualberta.ca/man-machine for more info). The program held its own against Matt, and beat some of the others very convincingly. Based on the post-match analysis, it might even be claimed that Hoss is no longer Boss.

It's been a long road (16 years!), with lots of kudos along the way, but we've finally accomplished a major milestone. I believe this was a defining before/after event in the history of poker. The unbelievers won't believe it yet, but then the gap between perception and reality has always been very wide in the poker world.

[and now this buggy blogging software won't let me add the photos... more later]

Again, about ‘The Fountain’

2008-06-10T22:13:00.001+01:00

Last weekend we watched the film ‘The Fountain’ for the fourth time. This time we had the director’s commentary, but we couldn’t help ourselves and ended up watching the finale again.
Our friends must already be bored by this subject. Only it’s hard to ignore the topic when there is no justice for this under-appreciated movie.

The commentary isn’t very explicit. Darren Aronofsky isn’t very generous in solving the puzzle, but he gives some clues that made us think and discuss the film once again. And once again, it was different, and deeper. Now I think I can explain why. It is a gem with many facets. It is a poem about love, life, and death. It is a masterpiece. It is constructed to blow your mind and senses. It has many levels – rational, philosophical, spiritual, mythical and psychological. Every detail, every line and every symbol counts, because it makes the connection between planes. They are like pixels on the screen, only they don’t form a two-dimensional image but rather a multi-dimensional one, and not in space but in meaning.

It is not by accident that this movie wasn’t well received by critics and some of the public. First, it breaks all the rules. They weren’t even able to find a category for it. Second, it’s not easy to make sense of all the details at first. I guess people just categorize it as ‘Beautiful but it doesn’t make sense’ and then go on with their lives. And third, the theatrical trailer was totally misleading in suggesting reincarnation. THERE IS NO REINCARNATION WHATSOEVER! IT’S A STORY ABOUT A BOOK! It is a story about a man who loves his wife, and the way he copes with her death. It’s a spiritual journey.

I just hope that one day, when people are ready, ‘The Fountain’ will be rediscovered and Aronofsky will be recognized for inventing a new kind of cinema. Again.

More images

2008-06-10T21:51:00.007+01:00

We bought a new game named Magnetix. It's made of magnetic rods and metal balls. You can build all kind of structures and it glows in the dark. It is quite addictive.

A funny picture downtown Dublin.
Even the statues commute.

Brady's of Shankill The Library in Shankill

Foggy afternoon Sunny rays

Cleaning the spider webs...

2008-06-10T21:26:00.010+01:00

Well, it's been a while since the last post. It's just that things are happening and before they get transformed into a blog entry, other things happen. I am going to catch up with some pictures.

We had an interesting trip to visit a tower on a nearby hill. After visiting all the ruins from the map (or not -- some were on private property), we discovered that the tower is actually a chimney from an old lead mine. It looks cool though, and the real adventure was driving through tunnels of vegetation not much bigger than the car. Luckily the only traffic was a lady on a horse. From the top of the hill we could see all of Dublin, but there is not much to see because Dublin is quite flat. There are some proposals to build higher structures, but they don't receive approval from the municipality.

Hoping we are the only ones on this road

Up, up, through yellow bushes

Majestic trees Finally, the chimney
Defying gravity ;-) Dublin from above

Two full weeks

2008-04-25T11:16:00.005+01:00

Last week went too fast. Morgan and Diane visited us and, while Morgan was at the office with Darse, I showed Diane some of Dublin. Since the weather is constantly changing here, I tried to show her as much as I could as long as it didn’t rain. Apart from a strong wind, we caught a beautiful day. We walked at least 10km along the coast. The sea was agitated and here and there made big splashes on the rocks. We started in Bray, the town south of us in Wicklow County, and then took the Dart to Dun Laoghaire (where I hadn’t been before). There we saw the shopping area, the harbor, people’s park, and had lunch and Irish coffee in a pub. Then we walked more or less along the coast to Dalkey. I had seen this area last year with Christine – actually we visited the “castle” where four actors showed four tourists how things were back then – but walking through Dalkey made me realize that it’s an extraordinary charming village/town. Too bad that I didn’t have my camera with me but Diane took some great shots. The day ended with dinner at Dali’s restaurant in Blackrock where we saw people parasailing and wind surfing.

Next day I wasn’t feeling so good so we just went to see how the big stores look. I showed Diane Cornelscourt, which is a good place for all shopping needs. Saturday we met them and other friends downtown, went to the well known tourist hotspots, and then visited a couple of pubs. After a nice dinner, the boys went to play some poker at the casino and the girls went to a nearby club, Café en Seine - beautiful setting, very crowded and the atmosphere reminded me the one at the castle for New Year’s Eve.

Sunday was income tax day. Unfortunately we couldn’t finish them, so this weekend it is mandatory to submit. As you can see, we didn’t have much opportunity to use our new car.
Actually, with the car parked in front of the house people ring my doorbell more often than before - usually service providers for gardening or charities. The good thing is that now I don’t find anymore notes in my mail from utility companies saying they came by and I wasn’t home. Now they actually ring. Talking about utilities, here you have to pay 160 Euros/year TV license if you own a TV. Otherwise you pay a fine of 634.87 Euros – I wonder how they came up with this number. In Romania it’s the same thing but it is not actually enforced. Here I’ve already received four letters about this. Finally, I called them and I will have to sign a declaration that I don’t possess a TV.

This week went by too fast, too. I am so thrilled to start learning again. The Open University is a UK long distance learning university. It is one of the biggest in the world. No wonder they are very well organized. Their website is so easy to use and has so much useful content. It seems that they thought of everything. I spent my time reading course preparation materials. It will be exciting to try creative learning instead of repetitive learning. It makes so much sense. The rule is: put the main ideas in your own words and challenge everything you can, and then recombine everything. Also, I’ve learned how to learn (most of it I already knew ;-)) and how to write essays for social sciences. Once a month I will have tutorials on Saturdays where I will meet my tutor and other students. They also have a list with students who, even though they cannot attend tutorials, would like to meet other students for learning and discussing purpose. They are called learning groups.

Next weekend is a long one. I am going to try to plan a small trip and hope for good weather.

Slow motion and fast forward

2008-04-15T17:09:00.007+01:00

It is still spring in Ireland. It looks like the spring will never end. There are still trees without leaves, cherry trees are bloomed, and tulips and narcissuses are everywhere. It is spring in slow motion and I feel like doing something to speed up the process. I guess I can’t push the sap in the buds. That’s nature’s role.

On the other hand, it’s hard to believe that nature invented slugs and snails that eat big, soft and beautiful flowers. I had a slug attack on my petunias! They ate all the petals. Yum, slug delicatessen! Then I spread some blue chemical chips on the ground and the next day there was a snail cemetery in the flower bed. I couldn’t believe how many there were!

The other news is that we finally bought a car -- a 2001 Honda Civic. We picked it up from the dealer today, and we both got to drive it on the way home.

[Darse: We had been waiting for weeks for an advertised 1.3 litre Corolla to arrive from Japan, but when we finally got to test it out, we much preferred the 1.5 litre Civic. I was actually a bit unnerved driving Aaron and Christine's 1.0 litre Yaris, as it seemed somewhat under-powered when i needed acceleration the most -- like merging onto the highway, or turning in the middle of an intersection with double-decker buses coming at me in both directions... The 1.3 litre Yaris we test-drove was much zippier, so i thought the Corolla would be everything we'd want. But it didn't really have a lot of zip either -- maybe because it is much heavier than the fly-weight Yaris. The Civic isn't like my little sports car, but the it gives me much better piece of mind when it comes to evading all the crazy drivers! It is also in *amazing* condition -- it only has 36000 km, and has been impeccably well-maintained.]

The car is comfortable to drive and has lots of space inside. I think we made a good choice and can’t wait to see the Irish countryside now that we have wheels. Now we have the fast forward option for getting around town, too. We still intend to use the public transit system for convenience, especially to commute and to go downtown. The Luas LRT and Dart train systems are very good for that purpose. They don’t need 20 minutes to cross half of city center.
[Darse: the insanity of driving in downtown Dublin would require a full blog entry to itself. I fully intend to avoid it -- forever.]

Steps towards a better world

2008-03-28T20:31:00.005Z

Lately, I’ve been studying a little about the financial and real estate markets. There are many signs to be worried about so I am trying to prevent any catastrophe that could happen to our personal savings and investments. I was looking for some funds that contain less banking and equities but they are not very popular. There are some about innovation, technology, health or education, but they are not doing very well. Actually, they never did. For some reasons people invest their money in real estate and banks. No wonder those have been thriving. And I can’t help thinking: what if people invested more in research, health, education, and especially in alternative energy? Wouldn’t it be a better world?

Recently I watched Jill Bolte Taylor’s TED Talk: My stroke of insight.

Video (http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/view/id/229)

It’s an inspiring and eye-opening story. It’s also some degree of personal relief. My grandmother lived many years unable to communicate – speak, read, write – or walk, due to a stroke in her left side of the brain. She was imprisoned inside her body for so long, and yet, she might not have had a terrible life all that time.

There is so much in our brain. If only we would be taught how it works and how to train it. I am not thinking only about activating the right side of the brain, but in a general way. We are so vulnerable, spend too much energy, and live with so many wrong beliefs, because nobody told us how our brain works. It’s not easy to figure out by ourselves. Many scientists spent years of research that can be synthesized in a few sentences. But once aware of their conclusions, everything starts to make sense -- we are stronger, and even healthier. What if children would be taught about their brain like they are taught to write? Wouldn’t it be a better world?

Too busy

2008-03-28T19:17:00.005Z

It’s been a while since my last written post. Many little things have happened since then. Our trip to Canada was very busy – delayed luggage, trip to Edmonton, citizenship exam, meeting friends and family, shopping, fighting with jet lag, etc. Back to Ireland, back to work. Darse at the office, me dealing with a thousand little things like finding a car to buy, dealing with banking, shopping, and other appointments, registering for the Open University, gardening, writing, trying every day to paint… Oh, so boring for you to read!

Holidays passed quietly. We had a long stroll the Sunday before St. Patrick’s Day in Bray. This is where we took the pictures from my previous entry. At that time there was a “fun fair” on the esplanade. Darse was amazed by the fact that all of the swinging/shaking/spinning rides were unfolded from semi truck trailers. It made sense because it was a traveling fair. [It makes those rickety rides extra scary -- there's actual risk involved! -drb] The cleverness of the folding was fun to study but the final result was a tacky spin machine to make people sick.

I hope you enjoyed the six-eyed alien from my pictures. Actually Darse was wearing my sun shades under his glasses because of a headache induced by the bright sunlight. Hopefully he won’t have this problem anymore when he gets his new glasses that darken in the sunlight.

We went to a games party (video games, Chinese poker, and trivia) before Easter where, most likely, we beat a world record. We had the longest Trivia Pursuit game of all time: about 5 hours or more. And then we had more trivia at Rockfield Pub this week with Darse’s colleagues where we didn’t finish last. Yay! (Pub quizzes have lots of questions about football, UK and Ireland whatnot).

The weekend forecast is rainy and windy so again, it won’t be perfect for strolling or pictures. There is always stuff to do at home too.

Maybe we'll go to see some cars. One funny thing about looking for a car is the inventiveness of sellers of pink Toyotas. There are dozens for sale, and they are rarely defined as pink in the ads. They are "purple", "blue" (?), "metallic purple" or "red". They stretch the definition of pink to "twilight rose" and "metallic salmon". Actually, they all look like this:

[If we ever did buy one of these, it'd be from the guy who called it "PINK!". -drb]

Beautiful Sunday

2008-03-17T00:48:00.011Z

Our regular visitors feeling at home

Bray esplanade and sea walk

I'm an alien... I'm a Canadian alien

Bray seen from the sea walk
The cliffs of Bray Head

Trying to catch the train

More sea from above

heathrow sux

2008-03-10T11:46:00.003Z

London Heathrow airport is an interesting and enriching experience that enables one to better appreciate all things that do not suck nearly as much (which, to a very close approximation, is all things).

After the usual 10-minute bus trip between terminals, we had to traverse the entire length of Terminal 1 three times. We got to the entrance of the departure gate only to be told that we had to go back to the beginning to get a biometric scan. I'm not talking about the usual indignities, like seizing our terribly dangerous four-ounce bottles of water, or making us strip off our belts and shoes, or submitting to the random anal probes -- that's all old news. No no, this is a new one, where we get digitally fingerprinted and retinal eye-scanned. Think of all those high-tech security scans in sci-fi movies, like "Total Recall", "Minority Report", "Gattaca", "Code 46", and others. Now add in the Voight-Kampff test from "Bladerunner". Well, it's here, folks! We then had to register the digital fingerprint scan again back at the departure gate, just to make sure that we hadn't sneakily changed our DNA identity during the 15-minute walk. Sheesh.

The wing we're sitting in while waiting for our flight to Dublin is disgusting. I am actually experiencing full-on disgust and revulsion as i write these words. There are plenty of negative associations already built-up with this place, since we've been stuck here twice before -- domestic flights are routinely delayed (occasionally due to high winds, but usually due to general incompetence).

The terminal we're in is reminiscent of the inside of a large tin can turned on its side. The walls are concave corrugated aluminum, making it just about the most austere inhospitable dehumanizing soul-crushing decor a sociopath could ever conceive. The fabric seats are filthy beyond words. There is hardly any ventilation, which is just dandy, given the thousands of exhausted gamey sweaty travelers that file through here every day. Without wanting to belabour the point, let's just say this is a fine centerpiece in the Orwellian dystopia that is Heathrow airport.

[Did you see "Children of Men"? I'm certain the fascist Fortress State of oh-so-near future England was modeled on Heathrow. This place is the germ where the epidemic began.]

Oh well, one has to take the good with the bad, and this is the price we pay for a lovely week spent in Alberta. We were there primarily for Xan's Canadian citizenship exam, but it was also an opportunity to take care of some chores (like taxes and banking) and catch up with people.

It was nice to gorge on some of our yummy healthy comfort foods. After a big grocery spree, we had a bonanza of wholesome goodies to choose from. We both went for the nectarines first, but the 3-colour cole slaw and real yoghurt weren't far behind. [Right now i'm snacking on a distinctly Albertan delicacy: tasty and nutritious roasted Wheat Crunch (Cool Ranch flavour:).]

Despite the nuisance, it was strangely enjoyable to stroll along the crazy Tim Horton's line-up that ran out the exit, wound through tunnels and into the adjoining office tower. The journey didn't take too long, and it was well rewarded with the magical elixir that is genuine TH coffee. There are many more food-related anecdotes from the trip -- suffice it to say that i overindulged in that particular aspect of home.

However, a much greater pleasure was visiting with people, especially those at the U of A (the poker group, naturally, but also the Hex guys, the Netflix team, and a dozen other friendly faces). It's only been four months, but that's a long time when you're used to seeing them almost every day. It is enough time away to gain a bit of distance and a fresh perspective, and my conclusion is obvious and unequivocal: the people there are awesomely awesome. It's especially evident in contrast to Heathrow, where the people are often discourteous, uncooperative, passive-aggressive, and thick as a brick. [Not a fair comparison at all, of course, putting cool computer ubergeek elites up against the proletariat rabble of Oceania, but i can't help noticing the dramatic difference between these ultra-gentle and ultra-hostile environments.]

Okay, i'm gonna stop raggin' on this grotesque aluminum cesspool, and focus on something more positive and constructive -- leaving this hellhole!

Colours

2008-02-24T16:24:00.002Z

Daffodils
Daffodils, planted a long time ago and now spread unevenly on the banks of roads, brighten the landscape. Yellow and green for many kilometers. I saw some pictures taken in our neighbourhood during the summer, and it seems that it will get much greener than it is now.
By the way, my daffodils are still in shape after almost a month, and there are more bunches coming into bloom. Now I understand why there are so many bulbs planted everywhere. They require little maintenance and last for so long.

Red Luas
The Red Luas is actually purple, just like the Green one. Actually it’s the red line and the green line. You would think there must be a reason for these colours, but they could also be randomly chosen -- like the bus numbers, which have no apparent logic or meaning. Plus, I couldn’t find route maps anywhere, just general sketches. Google is much more helpful than the official bus website because Google has the bus stops. (Bus is actually pronounced like boss and it’s funny when you ride the boss ;-)).

The names of the train stops are sometimes intriguing like: Museum. And you wonder: what museum? The mystery vanishes when you see the entrance to the National Museum of Ireland two meters away from the door of the train.

Downtown, the train goes on narrow streets, 1.5m away from window shops. Between the train window and shop windows, pedestrians walk minding their own business on the sidewalk. It’s dazzling when the landscape is so close to the train. I had the feeling of a metro going through a tunnel of buildings and walls.

Downtown it is always crowded, no matter where you are. Citizens are told by the Luas announcement lady in a sweet and reassuring voice that they should watch their belongings, as pick-pockets may operate on the train. After all, Dublin is a tourist city.

thotsam and jetsam

2008-02-24T13:30:00.008Z

I was very leery about getting a cell phone. I've resisted becoming a gadget guy, like so many of my friends, because i treasure simplicity (i deal with extraordinarily complex systems every day -- i don't think more complexity is really something i need right now). But now i'm becoming just another degenerate addict to my Crackberry.

What this means to you, dear reader, is that i can now capture random thoughts for later blogging, with only 22 times more effort than scribbling a note on a piece of paper with my Fisher Bullet Space Pen. Tidbits that would normally pass like the wind (and rightfully so) can now be captured electronically, and added to the detritus and debris of virtual e-flotsam and e-jetsam, for the rest of eternity.

Let's think about that for a moment. Nothing is ever lost on the internet. Whatever lame-brained idea or stupid metaphor i come up with will still exist, in perfect condition, a thousand years after i'm gone. There will be a huge cache of information about my life, without the slightest hint of degradation -- an archeologist's *dream*. And what's more, absolutely _no one_ will care!

Anyway, on with the timbits. Er, i mean tidbits. Mmmm... timbits. Oh how i miss Tim Horton's coffee. I actually saw a woman carrying a Tim Horton's coffee cup, and immediately got terribly excited -- "Huh? What? Wait, whazat?". It seems the franchise has made it's way across the pond. We can, in fact, buy TH doughnuts at the local grocery store in the village. However, my informants tell me that the hard-to-find coffee places don't actually have genuine TH coffee, just the usual local rotgut in a TH paper cup. Sigh.

Where wuz i? Oh ya, i was talking about cars. So, we went to a couple of car dealerships yesterday in the Motown district of Dublin. That was an interesting experience. I've never seen so many men in dresses. [If you're lost and bewildered, that's exactly how i felt.]

It seems the Nation's Cup of rugby is in town, with the day's marquee match-up between Ireland and Scotland bringing loads of excitement and thousands of people into the downtown core, many of whom were wearing Scottish kilts. We learned about this later, by overhearing a conversation between two middle-aged women discussing the finer points of the game (which is interesting, because the smash-mouth sport only has crude points). 40-ish moms here don't talk about knitting. They talk about what formations our boys can use to try to stop France's monster, Didier, from breaking through the line. It was of the utmost urgency for these ladies to get to a pub to catch the remainder of the game.

The pubs here are awesomely great, by the way (to continue the stream of semi-consciousness). They are cavernous and warm, and full of ornate woodwork and fiddly bits. Pubs are the counterpoint to the cold and imposing concrete churches, and they are equally pervasive and central to communal life here. They are also landmarks -- at least one will be referred to in any detailed set of directions for getting somewhere. There is no grid system, so directions are of the form "Well, you go down the N to Ballycrotch, pass the Red Lion [pub] to Crinkbreaughlenlaough Lane, and it's three hoofs from the Stighgowainliangein". Uhh, right, got it, thanks. Everything makes perfect sense, provided that you and your ancestors have lived here for a minimum of 720 years, and you have an encyclopedic knowledge of every pub in the city -- which is taken as a given, naturally.

So far, the only thing we've really needed a car for is to go looking for a car. It was an hour and half journey, first by bus North to city center, then by Luas LRT West and way South again. The direct distance would be about a quarter of that. But the trip was enlightening, because we had never taken the Red Line of the Luas before. We got to see a bunch of new areas of Dublin, including some poorer run-down areas, which are a much better facsimile of the way things have been here for millenia, before the Celtic Tiger economic boom of ten years ago. We must have passed a dozen different unfathomably complex environments, each unlike anything i'd ever seen before. But i was able to shrug it off with my highly developed North American apathy and nonchalance.

One of the things i love about the Luas is listening to the bilingual announcements of station destinations. Irish Gaelic is a truly bizarre (and yet strangely beautiful) language. It sounds like a song (perhaps a traditional folk song), but it looks like some sort of strong encryption system. I've designed an algorithm for generation of pseudo-Gaelic. You take normal English words, rearrange and mutate a few letters, and then randomly insert extra vowels with roughly a one-third probably after each letter (with a particular bias toward i, a and u). Then you liberally sprinkle in some circumflexes, dots, accents, and whathaveyou, the way a chef would add herbs and seasonings to her latest creation. Voila, serve with a language soup, a syllable salad, and a nice Chablis.

I think i'm starting to get a handle on the lingo, though. One of the destinations announced by the Luas lady sounded something like "blaah-course", with a thick Irish lilt. That was the English version, mind you -- the Gaelic version was incomprehensible gibberish that went on for about thirty seconds, but it was very pretty sounding, like an onomatopoeic poem. Now, with my newfound experience in Irish word formation, i deduced that the actual destination was probably closer to "Blaughoarse" (with the usual almost Arabic haughing/hacking sound). When we arrived at the next station, the sign read... "Blackhorse". It was next to a big yellow pub with a big black horse imprinted on the side.

So, we test-drove a car (no big deal this time) and looked at a few others. Before embarking on the long journey home, we ate at a Subway. The North American corporations are moving in big time here, but i have to confess that i'm somewhat ambivalent about it. It's tragic to see the loss of yet another ancient culture, along with so many possibilities for truly edifying experiences. At same time, that familiar submarine sandwich from home was unquestionably the highlight of my very eventful day. Sad, isn't it?

Okay, silliest blog entry evaar, but it will have to hold you for an indeterminate period of time.

swedish meatballs (lack thereof)

2008-02-22T09:14:00.006Z

Okay, i have been totally delinquent in blogging. I'll bet i'm the first one ever.

I tend to get busy on things, and when i focus on something, other things fade away completely and utterly. That's why you, dear reader, will have to endure long absences. I did jot down some notes along the way for future blog entries though. Maybe i'll write them up at some point.

I've still been working 10 and 12 hour days. I'm making progress, but i'm not very organized yet. You could say that i'm getting things done but not Getting Things Done, if you were clever with words, and knew the backstory.

This morning we have to go to the bank. Yawn, no big deal, you're thinking. Wrong. In this country, getting a bank account is a Very Big Deal. It's been five weeks since we applied for one, and it still isn't operational. That's why we're going to try another bank. Wish us luck.

We were also without broadband internet service for a month. Poor Xan called that useless company a dozen times, trying to get some resolution to the problem. We would have punted them if they weren't the only game in town (unfortunately, they know that, and abuse it).

These aren't the only examples of things not working. Far from it. I was warned about the poor service here, but wow. After living in a country like Canada, nothing prepares you for this kind of neglect.

While trying to understand the reason for our annoying split taps, Xan stumbled on a blog entry from a Swedish couple living in Ireland (Sweden parallels Canada in many ways, apparently). It has so many insightful observations on the differences in cultures that i'd like to recycle it for today's blog entry. Kindly read their article, replacing "mincemeat" with "fruit-bottomed fromage cottage". Thanks, Sven and Kari!

Impressions of Ireland (http://www.rosvall.ie/Intryck_eng.html)

Spring

2008-02-12T16:58:00.000Z

It is totally spring in Dublin. Buds are growing, trees are blooming and spring flowers are coming into blossom. Actually it is very interesting how vegetation grows here. It is almost continuous and very slow. For instance the trees started to bloom two weeks ago and they are not yet done. The daffodils in my garden did the same and, to my joy, they last much more than the ones in a vase.
I went for shopping in the morning and I couldn’t resist stopping to smell the sweet fragrance of the flowered trees and feel the gentle sun beams on my skin. Too bad that I caught a little cold and I can’t stay longer outside.

Home

2008-02-11T16:36:00.000Z

I am home again. Home… I lived in six cities and four countries. Where is home? I visited Romania, the country where I was born. So I was home and then came back home? And when I’m going to go to Canada, it will be again, home? Some would say that home is where your heart is but what can I say, my heart is big.

For me, home would be where I feel safe and comfortable. It is just a matter of getting used with your environment. When I moved in Canada, everything was foreign, different from what I knew. It was easy there, though. The society is built in order to accommodate newcomers that is, everything is well explained. In Ireland, things weren’t that simple anymore. Everybody knows this and that, if they lived here forever. But I think they are catching up with North America because the newcomers group is significant now. I was really surprised to see how many foreigners are in Dublin. In both cases, after three months I started to feel safe and comfortable. The longer you stay in one place, the more you get used to your environment.

Now, after almost four years, I visited Romania. I was amazed how familiar was everything I was experiencing, and yet, I was detached, observing and having fun of things that in the past would make me frustrated and angry. I guess my attitude was due to the fact that I knew I will leave soon. In a way I was disappointed that things didn’t change much. On the same token, I knew this will happen, that’s why I left in the first place. In a sentence I would say: the private business and property exploded whereas the public services and government duties are extremely disabled. I wonder when the elected leaders will realize that they have to work to improve people’s lives, not only their own pockets.

The time was short but I was happy to see my family, old friends, taste foods that are hard to find here, remember how it feels like to walk on streets with many loose dogs, and travel with crowded means of transportation. The weather wasn’t very good either, overcast and foggy, melting snow and lots of mud. Next time I’ll go in a better season. :-)

And above all, I was happy to return in Dublin, not only because the streets are always clean but because here is Darse and most of my heart is where he is.

"The Meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything"

2008-01-31T09:51:00.000Z

I’ve been thinking a lot lately. A friend of mine asked a hard question: what makes life worth living? Or in other words: we are born, we live, we die. Is that it?
Being such a hard subject, I couldn’t answer quickly. I have this habit of thinking a lot before answering hard questions. Also, it’s embarrassing, at my age, to not know this already. The problem with the meaning of life is that it is something very personal and it changes over time, like everything does when new data are gathered. I am going to try to find a general answer, though.
Let’s see. The things that matter most in our lives are the things that are there for the duration of our whole life. Such constants are: oneself, others, the Earth, the Universe. Further, I will try to explain why these are the constants, why we should focus on them, and how we should treat other important things as variables, including family, career, passions, and possessions.

Oneself
We must live with ourselves all our life, whether we like it or not. So we better like ourselves, or change into somebody that we like, in order to live happily ever after. But do we really know ourselves that well? To create a healthy life-long relationship, we need a deep understanding of the other person, to be able to love and accept him or her with all their virtues and faults. The same is true of ourselves. We have to understand our body, our mind, and our feelings. If we know how they work, we are able to shape them. Thus, we can prevent, avoid, and diminish pain. Controlling pain leads to less fear. We are in charge now.
It sounds selfish, but it is a simple fact that we are the most important person in our life.

Let’s take some time to know ourselves better.

Others
Our lives depend on others. Here I also include other life forms. We cannot live without them. We ought to treat them like ourselves; that is, learn about them, listen to them and understand them. We can transform hate and indifference into respect and gratefulness. Just look around! Every little thing in our life is produced by something or somebody. There is no way we can make most of these things by ourselves. Isn’t it uplifting knowing that we can cooperate to survive? Cooperation is the only way that everyone can win – without it, someone has to lose. Then why are we threatening other people and other species? Is it because we don’t know, or we are indifferent, or we are scared of the unknown?

Let’s take some time to understand others.

The Earth
I guess you already know why the Earth is important in our life. Yes, it is the only home and spaceship we have. Our lives depend so much on it. Recently, we started to listen to it. Let’s hope we will understand what the Earth is saying before it is too late. It is unlikely that a miracle will happen, so we better prevent further damage. Do we really know what is going on and what can we do to help?

Let’s take some time to learn about our planet.

The Universe
Apparently, there is no “reason” for anything in the Universe, yet, if you look closer, you will find that everything is interconnected. There is a flow of causes and effects, unforeseeable emergence of complexity, ultimately leading to life, so that the Universe can know itself. Knowledge is the new toy, and it will be developed until it reaches the point of a new, unpredictable outcome. On a universal scale, it is very likely that we won’t find out what’s next in the grand scheme of things. Regardless, our purpose is to expand knowledge and limits. We already know a little about the Universe, but the real challenge is to touch it in order to know far more. Maybe our destiny is to reach the stars. We’ve been dreaming for millennia about it. Before leaving home we have to pass the maturity test: can we survive in our own world before trying to survive in a foreign one?

Let’s take some time to dream.

And Everything
Now, that the constants have been described, perhaps you’ve already figured out what the variables are - family, career, passions, possessions, etc. I call them variables because they can come and go, and in many cases there is not much we can do about it. Obviously, if we rely entirely on them, sooner or later we’ll be hurt by loss. Spending some time developing the constants will reduce the impact of variance. For instance, if we know and trust ourselves and others, then shocks like a divorce, or getting fired, or losing wealth, etc. will be less disastrous and recovery will be faster.
Although subject to change, these things are invaluable because they give us the opportunity to experience and discover ourselves and the world. However, we should take care that we do not identify ourselves with the family, career, possessions, etc. A somewhat detached point of view should be maintained so that we control our lives, not the external factors. When they do so, we feel trapped and thorn. Detachment is hard to achieve, but the result is to see things as they are.

Let’s take some time to see our lives from other perspectives.

Our life is a ship sailing on the sea of constants. Variable wind and waves are the events that make the ship struggle, stagnate or go forward full speed. It is up to the captain to make the right decision in order to reach the shore. Is the sea his friend or his enemy?

-- --

After reviewing the text, I realized that this is a super-condensed version of my thoughts and it would take many pages to express my ideas fully. I hope I didn’t jump to conclusions without a good explanation, and in any case, I plan to develop the topic in future posts.

Ghosts and movies

2008-01-17T23:04:00.000Z

If you are expecting me to talk about movies with ghosts, I tricked you. The truth is that it is just windy, again. So I am thinking that howling and moving curtains looks exactly like people usually describe ghost sights. No wonder that they were seen so often in UK and Ireland. It means that it is not windy but ghosty! ;-)

OK. We do have some movies in the menu, too. I recently saw two good movies: Amazing Grace and Blood Diamond.

I was eager to see Amazing Grace even though the subject looks lame at first. It is about the abolition of slavery. Unappealing, huh? But I read Wilberforce’s story in Wikipedia and it seemed inspiring. My expectations were way surpassed. It is a very well done movie (much, much better than many recent block busters) with well defined characters, very well told story and a good flow in action. Did I use too many “well” and “good” words? I guess I really liked it. Also, it is a movie for the whole family. Guess what: no killings, no violence and no chase scenes!

On the other hand, Blood Diamond has everything. Violence, killing, mutilating, chasing, suspense -- all the ingredients of a modern movie. I found it a little too violent for my taste but after all, this is the reality in Africa. They kill each other for no apparent reason. Of course, leaders are manipulated to play the game of those who want cheap resources. It was even a joke in there: “let’s hope they don’t find oil in Africa”. It is sad, very sad. Apart from the violent side and some very long time-outs in the action to build up drama, the movie tries something good: to make you think (;-) about the nature of people and life under the gun for years and years. It is a story about true events and was made, unfortunately, many years after the conflict was settled.
In conclusion, I didn’t expect much from these movies but they turned out to be very good. Life is full of pleasant surprises (if you don’t count the bad ones)!

adventures in mundania

2008-01-09T20:35:00.002Z

Moving to Ireland is not one major change -- it's a million little changes.

I could list a few, or a few dozen, and it wouldn't seem like much of a big deal. I mean, does it really matter if the yogurt here has less than 5% protein and is made with whipping cream? Not so much. But when it's *every little thing*, it keeps you perpetually off balance. It's hard to get into a flow state, because flow requires ignoring everything except the one thing you're immersed in. I miss having the real world fade away for hours at a time...

Even things that are the same are different. For example, Xan bought the exact same brand and type of hair colouring she always buys, but discovered that the chemicals and the instructions were completely different. I walk down the aisles of the grocery store, and not even 5% of the brands are familiar. Sometimes it feels like i'm living in a totally foreign country!

We miss a lot of things, it's true. Especially in regard to the extremely healthy diet we had in Canada. Oh what i'd give for a big bowl of 3-colour coleslaw with diced dill pickle and creamy cucumber dressing. I had that almost every single day at home, but *none* of those things exist over here! But then, there are just as many new things that provide ample compensation. Nevertheless, the constant need for learning and adjusting and improving solutions gets to be a bit of a drag after a while. (Listen to the whine of a comfort junkie).

Xan neglected to mention who our first dinner guests were -- the finest of the fine, Aaron and Christine. Our transition would have been thrice as hard without them having already figured out the hardest things.

Mundane things

2008-01-09T18:43:00.000Z

It’s been a while since I last posted. Darse is to blame. He stole all the hot subjects so I am going to tell you about the dull ones.

During the past days I was busy with mundane things. We bought some office furniture that I had to put together, we received a new leather couch for the living room and I arranged the guest bedroom. I also spent a lot of time looking for things on Internet like where to buy things, ordering some IT stuff and finally, booking my flight for Romania.

Yes, after almost four years, I am going to Romania for a week. It is the second time since we met that we are going to be apart for more than two days. Tough days are heaving at the horizon.

The great news is that (hurray!) we have all our papers issued. It is very funny that Darse has an immigrant card ;-). They didn’t give me one too because I am an EU citizen. We had a very long day because of that. We woke up at 6AM to beat the rush at the office but it turned out that there was no rush at all, at least there wasn’t before 9:30 when we left. It was a very short night, and on top of it, we received a call at 1AM from the Credit Card Company to confirm some shopping that I did yesterday. Crazy!

Sunday we had the first guests since we moved. It was a nice evening with good wine and good talk. I really enjoyed it. It seemed too short, though.

Things are getting even better. Monday I received the treadmill. I can walk and even run for however long I want in spite of the wind and the rain. I strategically positioned it in front of the big window facing the garden and it is like being out there but sheltered from the elements.

Life is very good!

PS: I attached some pictures taken during the New Years Eve in Dublin and Charleville castle.

Dame street, Central Bank

Ceilings in Charleville Castle, Tullamore

have fun stormin da castle

2008-01-06T13:57:00.000Z

We had an interesting New Year's Eve, attending a formal masquerade ball at Charlesville Castle in the heart of Ireland (www.glimmerball.com).

First we strolled through downtown Dublin, viewing the light displays along Grafton Street (a pedestrian mall near the cultural hub of town), en route to the departure point for the coach. After a 90 minute drive in the dark, finishing with a narrow road through some ancient woods, we arrived outside the walls of the castle. "Yup, that's a castle" i astutely observed. The smell of kerosene torches confirmed that we weren't in Dublin any more.

We quickly determined that the castle was genuine, being rather cold and draughty in areas away from the hearths (soulless corporations like Disney would never allow that!). After checking our coats in the catacombs below, we climbed the stairs toward the grand hall and adjoining parlour rooms.

At least 90% of the guests were decked out in fancy regalia -- we were among the few without costumes or masks. The outfits were fabulous and ornate. All of the costumes fit the theme of the evening (with one notable exception). There were noblemen and gussied-up ladies in beautiful gowns, squires and wenches, wigged lords and mysterious women in red hooded robes. Top-hats and tails, and slinky sequined golden gowns. Feathered masks of black and red were the norm. There were druids and friars and monks, and more than a few pirates and buccaneers (including Captn Jack, and a buxom shameless hussy pirate in red who was my pick for best costume). There were 1920s flappers, and fictional characters from Mary Poppins, Zorro and the Phantom of the Opera who all fit in seamlessly. And then there was one very conspicuous guy wearing... wait for it... a bright red Mr. Incredible suit (complete with fake muscle-padding and flashing insignia). Eesh, he so much did not it get. (But hey, he diverted attention away from the costume-less party-poopers, so there's that).

As great as that sounds, i found it to be rather cold as a social event. Early on, no one was dancing, and there wasn't much mixing -- just a lot of posing. I've never liked poseurs, so i felt a bit out of place, since this was clearly an event designed for poseurs. I found the general attitude of smug superiority to be rather amusing (being entirely smug in my superiority). At $500 per couple, i guess there were a lot of high-falutin self-important people there, many of whom came across as being rather insecure, even desperate. Whatever, i was content to play the role of anthropologist, observing the curious behaviour of the monkey-apes, and their trajectories as they got progressively more liquored-up.

And hooray for the disinhibiting effects of alcohol -- things did indeed warm up as the evening progressed. A subset of the guests exhibited some of that heartfelt down-to-earth friendliness i'd been told about the Irish. One lovely lass struck-up a conversation without any pretense, and upon learning that i was a non-American North American, was delighted to bequeath her native knowledge of the best places to visit in Eire. (The Cliffs of Mohr are a must-see, of course, but i was told of lesser-known unspoiled areas that are at least as impressive).

By midnight the place was rocking. The new year was greeted with a boisterous count-down on the dance floor, followed by bedlam resembling a mosh pit.

Amusingly, the high-light of the event may have been the ride home. In stark contrast to the trip out, the bus was packed to the gills, with singing, laughing, mingling and cavorting. High-spirited would be an understatement, but without anyone getting unruly or out of hand. A bunch of people disembarked at near-by Tullamore, and the din gradually diminished down to silent slumbering. Dublin was still hopping with people and taxis, and it was about 5:30 AM when we finally arrived home.

All in all, it was a novel experience that we enjoyed, but wouldn't necessarily do again anytime soon.

winter winds

2007-12-29T22:06:00.000Z

Wow, what a howl. The winter winds were howling like some scene from a cheesy horror flick, and they went on and on all night long. Low howls from the wind curling around the walls, high-pitched whistles as it blows past the window sill cracks, whorls blowing over the chimney playing it like a beer bottle, and more. I'd never heard anything like it before moving here, but it's becoming fairly routine now. This time it persisted for about four days. It keeps Xan awake at night, but i just feel even more secure, all snuggled and protected from the elements. It can huff and puff all it wants, it isn't going to blow my house down, being made of brick and stone.

The occasional patches of rain sounded like sand hitting the windows. I haven't tried walking in that yet, but i'm pretty sure it won't crack my top ten list of favourite types of rain...

I have, however, had to walk against the wind on some mornings. It isn't too bad, really, provided you have solid footing, and put your shoulder into it. Of course, that makes it trickier to dodge the flying debris from construction sites. [You might think i'm exaggerating -- unless you're from here, in which case you might think i'm using understatement just to be funny.]

driving in a parallel universe

2007-12-23T17:58:00.001Z

Yesterday and today i drove on the left side of the road. That was both not as bad and far worse than i ever imagined.

It isn't that everything is backwards. No no, nothing as simple as that. It's that exactly *half* of everything is backwards. For example, at an uncontrolled intersection you still yield to the guy on the right, not the left. The gas pedal is on the right of the brake pedal, but the signal light is on the right side of the steering column instead of the left. If i told you how many times i turned on the windshield wipers by mistake, you'd giggle.

Today we drove to the near-by town of Bray to do some grocery shopping. I soon realized that i'd made a huge mistake. Two days before Xmas is not the best time to be learning how to drive on overly-congested narrow streets.

So i'm trying to deal with all of these flipped variables, but on top of it there are all the brand new events -- things i've _never_ seen before in my life! Like, i'm already getting totally stressed out coping with 62 randomly jumbled variables, when a guy coming the other way veers across the road to grab an empty parking spot on my side. [Somehow, i had failed to grok the significance of the fact that 52% of all parked cars are facing in the wrong direction. I guess i naively assumed they were doing that when the road was clear!] He proceeds to do some hybrid front-in ass-rotate parallel parking maneuver right in front of me, forcing me to brake to avoid a head-on collision, while hoping the guy behind me is one the 17% of drivers who are actually paying attention to the road. The doofus merrily shimmies and shammies into his spot, not caring a whit how long i have to wait. And i can't go around him, because oncoming traffic has instinctively read this as a premium opportunity to *go much faster*.

Little did i know how much worse it was going to get... I could write several pages on this hair-raising experience, if only i had hair. Suffice it to say that we aborted our plan, and i was thrilled and relieved to get back home with my feet back onto good 'ole terra firma.

While walking to the local grocery store, still a bit frazzled, i had to be wary of more crazy drivers flinging themselves around the round-a-bouts with completely indiscernible angles of exit. Xan mentioned the signalling rules that i'd learned the day before, but i just laughed -- as if *anyone* here would actually follow those conventions.

One thing is certain, however: if you see a car coming your way with its windshield wipers on, duck for cover!

on big numbers

2007-12-22T10:43:00.000Z

A friend at work pointed me to this terrific essay on big numbers, and why they are not trivial.

It's a pretty good summary of introductory theoretical computer science, but it has even more value for those who generally eschew mathematics. If you think math is unimportant, have a glimpse at how much larger that universe is than yours, puny human! :-)

http://www.scottaaronson.com/writings/bignumbers.html

green

2007-12-22T10:29:00.000Z

Winter? Not so much.

It's really more like cool autumn weather, at worst, and some days are still in the mid-teens. Having spent every winter of my life in Alberta, it looks like this will be my first year of winterlessness.

Everything is still lush and green, burgeoning with life and health. Kinda like Vancouver in the summer, or Alberta roughly never. Maybe 30% of the trees and bushes are leafless, but the grass is still greener than the lawns in my experience have ever been.

Ireland is green -- that is not a myth.

Christmas Party

2007-12-18T22:54:00.000Z

Finally, it is Sunday. The girls had been planning all details for at least one week. They spent a small fortune on new gowns, shoes, accessories, hair dressers and manicures. The boys spent about half an hour to remember how to tie their bows. And here they are, sparkling in the crystal chandelier light, sipping from their glasses, making conversation while waiting to be noticed how good they look. From time to time, camera flashes add more brilliance to the scene and save memories about the event.
Cocktails, conversation and poker games are the keywords for a couple of hours. They help to build the necessity of the coming perfectly balanced gourmet dinner. Everything is so well coordinated, like an orchestra playing a symphony of tastes. The wine is poured in bounteous glasses - you drink, but the glass never gets empty.
Then, a DJ takes control of the scene. The room is flooded with colors reflected in the hundreds of glasses on the tables: blue, purple, yellow, red…All these colors come only in a set with… dancing club music. Talking becomes obsolete. It’s SCREAMING TIME!!! After a few hours of bouncing, men and women look for more comfortable attire. Jackets, ties and high heels shoes are little by little abandoned.
This is a story without an ending. We can infer that they still dance and drink and have fun because we didn’t see the end. But then, what we can’t see doesn’t exist, does it?

songbirds

2007-12-18T22:07:00.000Z

When i leave the house in the morning, i'm usually greeted by a passel of songbirds.

These little balls of fluff are no bigger than a walnut, but they have an amazing array of songs. In the space of a dozen paces, i hear a dozen melodious phrases. Since there are many types of birds, which elude my rhino eyes, it sounds like the trees are singing all around me. The overlapping trills sound like something Aphex Twin might have created, if his genius extends that far.

I'm not cynical about songbirds.

2007-12-15T10:59:00.001Z

Life is good.

Our new place

2007-12-14T16:29:00.000Z

After seeing a few places and walking in selected neighborhoods, we decided that maybe it is better to give up some convenience in order to find a nice place. Darse accepted taking the bus to work each day, instead of being close to the shuttle. I remember Darse’s first trip to the University by bus after so many years of walking or driving. He came home pouting because he didn’t get a seat on the bus!!! I compare that to the time when I was traveling by bus in Romania and you could consider yourself lucky that you managed to get into the bus and you still had your wallet after the trip (I am exaggerating a little but there was a high probability of such things happening).

Coming back to the subject, our house is in an absolutely charming district, full of stone architecture, lush green grass, trees, hedges, bushes, and chirping birds of all descriptions. There are still bloomed flowers here and there and we saw a bloomed cherry tree too. We are close to the sea, away from the chaos of the city, and only about 15 minutes from Darse’s work (half by bus, half by a short walk through a park, very healthy for so many hours spent in front of the computer). “An awesome find by Xan” says Darse, but I guess we were lucky too because I browsed the rental availability a few months before coming here and there weren’t many detached houses in nice areas or in our rent limit.

It is a good-sized two-level three bedroom house made of brick. I took a few pictures in the area to give a better image of the surroundings. I am especially thrilled with having the small back yard with lots of plants to take care of, and big windows very suitable for potted plants. But I guess I should start by decorating the house a little to feel more at home before I think about gardening. Plus, it's still winter -- not that you can really tell!

When you rent an older place you find a lot of things in the cupboard like pots, dishes, glasses, and cutlery left by previous tenants. They are quite useful before you assess what you need to buy and find something that you like. The selection is not as vast as it is in North America; stores are very small in comparison, and they cannot hold too many types of the same item.

And wow, I have to walk to the stores! First because we don’t have a car yet, second, the parking is limited. There are a couple of grocery stores, a post office, a hardware store, two restaurants and a few take-out places within a 10 min. walk. There is also a good bus link (the Quality Bus Corridor) to the nearby shopping centers and downtown. One day we went downtown, and coming home, Darse reaffirmed his joy and relief that we live so far away from the noise.

Last weekend we went to the local Irish pub. It has an absolutely lovely old-style décor and has good food. The atmosphere is very different from the city center -- or maybe the warmer environment makes people act differently.

I am very glad that we found this location. It is much friendlier than other places I’ve seen, and people even say hello to you on the street. Well, at least some.

View from front door

View from the bedroom

My garden from the dinning room

The Cubes

2007-12-14T16:28:00.000Z

Have you seen the movie The Cube? If you didn’t, it is about a bunch of people trapped in a cube-like construction made of cubical rooms and square doors. The trick was that the rooms would move, and some had various deadly traps. Hard to escape.

Anyway, The Cubes and The Edges are apartment buildings in the Sandyford area where the shuttle from Darse’s office comes. It is in the same area as the Beacon hotel so we started to look for an apartment there first. We walked around to see how it feels, and I wasn’t very convinced that the place is hospitable to life. There were enough pluses (close to stores, LUAS (LRT), work shuttle, and all brand new) to at least have a look at the inside. Well, I think the architect who designed those apartments hates humans. He might be looking toward the future when those apartments will be inhabited by cyborgs. Even Darse’s worst-case scenario of hard, cold surfaces was surpassed.

The other thing is that you could get lost so easily. The buildings were all the same, and because of the surrounding construction sites the paths were sometimes closed. Many times we found ourselves in with no known way to get out. We were joking about the movie when we were wondering what The Cubes would be like, but it turned out to be no joke!
REJECTED!

The Beacon

2007-12-14T16:26:00.000Z

We stayed nine days at the Beacon hotel in Sandyford. The style is trendy, almost extreme, with hard surfaces and weird decorations. The lobby and the restaurant are fancily decorated but not especially functional. There are things that can bother you every day but it seems to be a sacrifice for the sake of style. [Darse was driven insane every minute.] Example: every time you want to reach the elevators from the entrance, you have to either jump over the armchairs or make a big detour. Another one: the elevators are upholstered but constantly smell like fried fish; and in front of the mirror there is a frilly lamp that blocks seeing your reflection.

The rooms are very edgy, both figuratively and literally. They have many sharp edges and corners that assault you. The bathroom walls are made of glass (!), the desk chair is sharp and totally transparent, the garbage can is made of sparse wires (no bag, of course, to not spoil the decoration), no clock at all (!!), and many other details that in the long run drive you batty. Plus, there is a bush at the back entrance that will knock you down if you aren’t watching. I’m serious, it happened to me and I got big bruises on my knees!

The only place that looks human is... the underground parking! It is extremely clean, quiet, has some soft music and it is not windy. After some walking in the windy, rainy weather and noisy traffic and construction sites in the neighborhood Darse said “At last, the warmth and cozy comfort of the underground parkade.”

The business class

2007-12-14T16:24:00.000Z

We flew business class with British Airways from Calgary to London and then Aer Lingus to Dublin. Uneventful flights, but some long delays due to high winds. What I want to describe is the business class feeling. As a first class traveler you get priority in boarding and luggage check in, you spend your waiting time in nice shiny clean lounges with all kinds of facilities, you have a lot of room in the plane, the meals are almost restaurant quality, and other unimportant details. I don’t know if these extra comforts are worth five times the price of an economy class ticket though.

Anyway, I was sitting in the lounge in Calgary airport, sheltered from all the chaos happening outside, in a perfect controlled environment – temperature, noise level, food, beverage, technology - and I was thinking “Hey, I could get used to this!”. Everything was almost perfect, even the view was great, towards Calgary downtown. Then, something struck me. People who use first class -- usually wealthy people who make decisions that affect everyone -- can lose perspective very easily. They live in a cocoon where everything is comfortable. It doesn’t take much to forget that the majority of people live in a totally different world, hence they think and act differently. My question is: how can someone who lives in one world decide for someone in another? It is like someone from another country making the laws for yours. I think one of the main enhancements in decision-making is to use everyone’s voice -- and it is so easy to achieve, now that the Internet is becoming more and more accessible.

Engage!

2007-12-14T15:18:00.000Z

OK. I guess it’s time to start the blog. I promised everyone, but it seems that the first article is the hardest. So, here it goes. I am writing it.

First of all, I hope you’ll excuse my left-handedness (;-) in written English. You already know the cause and also you know that I do my best to overcome it. Darse’s supervision is not easy to get and I'd rather publish our adventures while they’re “hot” than to wait forever for him to have some free time. This is another reason why I postponed the issue of the blog and why some posts are a little outdated.

Secondly, this blog is intended to substitute multiple e-mailing and to allow us practice writing down our thoughts. The comments are not enabled; whoever wants to say something about our posts is welcome to write us to the known e-mail addresses. We’ll be happy to hear from you.
[Edit: okay, maybe we'll try it with comments for a while.]

Now that we are all set - we have rules and framework – we have left only one thing to do: “Engage!”