galleries
delicatessen
die erste strasse LINKS
atl sessions
across the line have finally put some stuff online for your streaming pleasure here. some of it is worth a listen.
rocket science
tonight in accounting class dr. weinstein (yeah, like einstein) used the old adage, "it's not rocket science," reminding me of my structures classes at queen's with mr. sloan. to be fair dr. weinstein was right. it wasn't. but with mr. sloan he would always apply the phrase to some abstract mathematical derivation which would always lead me to think, 'yeah well it's not far short!,' and to ponder, 'what do lecturers in advanced aeronautical engineering classes say?' "it's not brain surgery, you know!"?
after rereading this entry i'm urged to consider the benefits of using capital letters. perhaps i will be forced to resort to a more classical interpretation of english grammar at some point in the near future.
pride and prejudice
i posted an article about the cultural identities of people from northern ireland in the stuff part of the deli. i wrote it for a newsletter to be published by jcu's centre for global education
the republic of california
the other day i saw part of the movie the mask of zorro, in which some guys wanted to purchase california and start their own nation. i'm starting to think that it's like a different planet altogether. i mean, we all had a good chuckle when arnie became governor, but now i've discovered something even more alarming- the list of courses offered by the university of california at berkeley! they include Appreciating modern pop art music through Radiohead, Approaches to Reading Harry Potter, Family Guy: Education of the Masses, and my personal favourite, The Simpsons and Philosophy. no doubt these classes are all fascinating and would prove very useful for the purposes of leading a church youth group (we've all used music and cartoons for this purpose!) but are they really suitable for credit towards a university degree? i dunno. maybe they are. check out the list here.
porridge
well i'm back to classes at john carroll now. so far seems like it should be an interesting semester, with the possible exception of accounting, which may also prove to be my most difficult class, but probably a beneficial one.
on monday night i got back from abbey and john's wedding in michigan. (bertie behaved impeccably, but continues to use a lot of oil.) it was a fun weekend, and a bit of a northern ireland reunion. i think there were 35 of us in total! the wedding itself was one of those "beautiful" fairytale weddings where you can "feel the love" and everybody cries. the church was beautifully decorated, as was the barn where the reception was held. you can see photos from it, and my various other activites of the last month, here.
jacqui and i stayed the weekend with a couple called butch and (not snatch, but) donna, who were pretty incredible people. the kind of people who really put us mere mortals to shame. they had spent time working as missionaries in arizona and in addition to raising their own three kids, had adopted an american-indian boy and looked after a total of 30 foster-kids! wow.
gigs
2004 is looking good for gigs in cleveland; fono, neil young, damien rice and martyn joseph (pittsburgh) are already looking good, but i'll have to be picky for the sake of my finances. actually fono is looking in doubt now, much to my displeasure. they've removed tour dates from their web site, probably as a result of the san diego fire which destroyed their stuff and masters for the new album, which really sucks.
george and tony
watch this video if you want a laugh.
bertie's odyssey continues
on saturday we made it to rochester no problem and stayed in another palacial home with another very welcoming family, the birchers. i just have to mention the fact that we went bowling on sunday (ten-pin, not lawn, as you might imagine) and i cleaned up with a 155- almost certainly my best score ever. anyway, on sunday night we set out on the last leg of the journey back to cleveland. the snow was coming down hard around buffalo and we couldn't go much more than about 40mph. we were thinking it might be prudent to stop at a motel when bertie intervened and made the decision for us by cutting out (in a mercifully undramatic way.) the illumination of the oil light led us to believe that... maybe we were out of oil, which would truly have been our fault, not bertie's, given that we were aware of his unquenchable thirst for oil. of course, we didn't have any extra oil with us. a stroke of good fortune then befell us. a police car pulled up and called for a AAA tow-truck on our behalf. that's twice we've made use of them now. lucky i got the AAA-plus membership. the ordinary one only allows up to three tows a year! anyway, we lit candles to stay warm while we waited for the truck to arrive (see, we weren't totally unprepared) which was kind of eerie. ironic, given our close proximity to erie, pensylvania, and our number plate which includes ER33Y. anyway, the tow truck arrived in pretty good time. the guy already had someone in the cab with him, so he lifted up all four of bertie's wheels onto the back of the truck... with us still inside, and proceeded to drive us 50 or 60 miles! surely that can be neither safe nor legal! anyway, he took us to an exit where we could buy oil and lo and behold, bertie was re-resurrected. the remaining hundred-odd miles to cleveland were fairly uneventful. i'm sure homer never had this kind of trouble! now i just have to count on a safe passage to michigan on friday night for abbey's wedding. fingers crossed!
"collecting frost on whiskers"
seriously though, i actually was doing just that today in boston when i breathed out. it was below zero... farenheidt! felt like zero kelvin. it was the kinda cold that stops you taking pictures because your hand would drop if you took your glove off long enough to take one! joking aside, don't expect to see many photos of boston! so anyway, needless to say i've had a safe, if not uneventful journey so far. i was in new york for a day- long enough wander round the met (metropolitan museum of art), which was outstanding, and also find a place to sell me a proper kebab! well, it was across the street from my hostel. formerly the largest hostel in the world apparently.
i got the bus to boston on tuesday. don't believe the rumours; the greyhound was ok. plenty of legroom. so i met up with grainne and annette as planned at a hostel, along with their friend maeve who was visiting for a week, and a rather out-of-sorts bertie. nursing him back to health pretty much occupied us all day yesterday. driving through boston is not my idea of fun at the best of times, but when your car is making nasty noises, your rear hazards aren't working, and you're trying to locate a wee mechanics' workshop, it's definitely not to be recommended. bertie needed new brake pads and rotors, as well as some minor bodywork to pull the front wing away from the tyre. anyway, he should be good for at least a few hundred more miles now. (i hope to buggery that he is- patience is starting to run at a premium!) on the up side, we've spent the last couple of days at annette's uncle jack's house. him and his wide rossa have been very good to us and we've had some craic playing with their four kids. tomorrow the plan is to drive to andy's house in rochester, new york, to split up the drive back to cleveland. watch this space...
hectic happy new year
apologies for the lack of updates folks. two weeks at home just isn't long enough to see everyone, sleep in every day and keep up with important things like finding places to sleep, never mind updating a web site. needless to say i've really enjoyed being at home, but tomorrow (well, today really) i leave for new york. i'd like to be able to recount my time at home here, but i need to get at least some sleep. given that the next two weeks will also be pretty hectic and access to computers may be limited, the foregoing events may evermore remain a mystery to history. anyway, counting airports, in the next two weeks i'll (dv) be in belfast, dublin, london, new york, boston, rochester NY, cleveland, detroit and grand rapids MI... and after tomorrow night in new york i don't know where i am sleeping til the 16th! and i only just found out where that'll be! but it's not as bad as that sounds. i have an idea of where, just not exactly when in each place. mind you, for now i'm working on the principle of meeting grainne and annette "in boston." i hope it's not too big a place...
"it's good to be back"
well guys i'm safely back in the homeland. the journey was reasonably uneventful. got a great view of manhattan as i came in to land in newark, where i had four hours to kill. i thought a couple of pints of sam adams might help me sleep, and it seemed to be working, but unfortunately the effects wore off before the plane actually took off, leaving only the unfortunate side-effect of needing the bathroom while stuck in a window seat beside two children. who admittedly behaved better than i did! 'fraid i can't say the same for the babies in the seats in front of AND behind me. incidentally, i have received word from miami that the girls (and bertie) also had a safe passage. *phew!*
so anyway, you turn your back for four months and what happens? O2 put txt messages up by 2p and dad grows a beard! which i think makes him look like prof. h. johnston from QUB school of civil engineering. apparently he hasn't had one since he was about my age! maybe he's trying to cultivate the retired, would-be creative writer look. but other than that it's been great seeing the folks and friends. kinda feels like i was never away. settled into the same routines- same bars, same wine & cheese evening before christmas eve midnight communion, same trouble with the rearview mirror coming off in the fiesta! it has been fun to drive a manual again, and mercifully i didn't have any trouble readjusting to the left side of the road. needless to say that santa was good and so was christmas dinner, morecambe and wise etc, blah blah. must get to bed. another big day of doing nothing ahead of me!
"tonight we fly!"
this morning at around 7am i awoke to the most hideous sound- a sound like a terrible thunder storm. 'the kind of thunderstorm that could ground planes?' i wondered. maybe i'm just getting paranoid! but it was a very strange storm. one that raged for ten seconds and then died completely, and then raged for another ten seconds. my curiosity was sufficiently aroused for me to grab my glasses and look out the window. turns out it was the sound of a snow plough scraping its bucket along a concrete path. quite uncalled for at that time of the morning if you ask me. ("call mr. plough, that's my name, that name again is mr. plough.")
so anyway, this weekend hasn't been nearly as bad as it might have been, thanks to andrew, joe and dan for taking pity on a poor lonely soul and keeping me entertained.
finally, thanks to dad for sending me this terrible joke: Q. Why did Tigger have his head down the toilet? A. He was looking for Pooh.
made me chuckle.
orange
from bbc online: "The US Government has raised the nation's terror alert to its second-highest level. Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge said the move followed a substantial increase in intelligence reports about possible threats. Information indicated that extremists wanted to carry out attacks to exceed or rival those of 11 September, Mr Ridge told a news conference. And he warned that aircraft could be used, as they were in 2001."
not really what you want to hear the day before you plan to fly home via newark.
half-way
i'm pleased to report that my finals are all done now and passed off without major incident. the scary implication of which is that i'm now half-way through BEI. the time has seriously flown in. it's been a great semester- met a lot of cool people, been a lot of cool places, learned a lot of cool stuff, and had some... interesting adventures with the car! (speaking of which, bertie's back to health, at the expense of our bank balances' health, and if everything went to plan last night, he is currently somewhere around washington dc en route to miami.) but having said all that, i can't wait to get home on tuesday! sounds to me like a much more attractive proposition for christmas than miami. i just hope the flights are going ok as it has been snowing like it's going out of fashion this week. i think i would just cry in the airport if they told me it was cancelled or badly delayed. partly because this weekend is the most hideously long and boring weekend in the history of mankind.
yesterday afternoon there was a flurry of activity as everyone moved out to go home for christmas. i, on the other hand, had to move into a room in a different building with no tv, computer or fridge! (well, the window sill works as a makeshift fridge.) so anyway, after the flurry of activity the place suddenly died. it's like a ghost-town on campus now. so don't be surprised if i update the site about five more times this weekend 'cause there is nothing else to do. although, i suppose that in itself precludes there being anything interesting for me to update it with! for instance, last night i was so bored that the highlight of my evening was walking to the grocery store to get some provisions for the weekend (as the cafeteria is of course now closed.) i then took to reading for a bit and going to bed early. but i needed to catch up on sleep anyway. on top of this, i think i'm getting a cold :-( but i'll not complain too much; i've been pretty lucky all semester. a couple of weeks ago the whole campus seemed to be dying of flu.
go on ulster!
i see from the trusty bbc website that ulster beat edinburgh at murrayfield today 27-21 to become the first winers of the celtic cup. yeahoooo! pity i couldn't actually watch it, but hey what can you do?
bored?
here's something you could do to amuse yourself for a bit. go to www.google.com and type in "weapons of mass destruction" and/or "miserable failure" and then hit the "i'm feeling lucky" button. it's good for a laugh. thanks to dmc and pj respectively.
i knew we should have got a manual
on sunday, bertie, (as the van has come to be known,) died on us. or at least took a serious turn for the worse. so at least i've got my money's worth out of aaa's towing service! (US equivalent of aa or rac.) timing could scarcely have been worse, it being finals week and what with grainne and ryoko planning to take him to miami for christmas! so, against the better judgment of many of our contemporaries, we decided to just pay the unholy amount of money to get the transmission rebuilt. given our lack of time we thought that looking for a new car wasn't really a sensible option since registering it and having the title transferred and stuff was such a pain first time around. besides, we'd almost certainly end up with a car in even worse condition. this way the transmission is guaranteed for 12 months or 12,000 miles, and coupled with the fact that we put new tyres on too, we'll be able to sell the car for a lot more as a result (or so i keep telling myself.) worst case scenario: it'll be a good story to laugh about at some point in the future when i work myself out of bankruptcy.
RISK on speed
don't worry i haven't taken to getting drugged up before playing board games. i mean, instead, that last night i was playing a new futuristic version of risk called RISK 2210 in which you can go to the moon, take to the seas, and do all kinds of other crazy stuff. jonny would have loved it! it was great, but had the major disadvantage of taking all night. we started at 8:30pm and i wasn't defeated until 2am. that's right, five and a half hours later. the game wasn't even done then, but i wasn't haging around for the exciting conclusion. no, i was off to bed.
further congratulations
as you've probably all heard by now, many congratulations are due to rhiannon and johney who recently got engaged. they're too good at keeping secrets. i was totally convinced that weddings were not on their minds, but apparently it's been in the pipeline for a while. shows what i know. anyway, i am very honoured to be johney's best man. email ideas for a stag night here ;-) (no suggestions from rhiannon, please.)
"we are not amused..."
a couple of nights ago the fire alarm went at 3am and again at 3:30am. i'm told it actually went three times, but i honestly only remember hearing it twice. however, i was so tired i may have gone outside in the cold for all three and totally forgotten. needless to say i had an 8am class the next day.
...but on the other hand, i am very amused
many, many thanks to the peet carson christmas band, (neal, greg, wally, dave & bruce (with contributions from andrew mcnair & bubba)) whose debut EP, lonely this christmas, arrived in my mailbox today. (email clarry for booking info.) it was very very funny and much appreciated. it must have taken a lot of time & effort to put together, (perhaps suggesting that they all need to get out more?) it even sounds like some talent was involved too! i wonder if it is the first release from the newly equipped dmc studios. i'm slightly concerned about the artwork though. it may need to be edited before being released for general sale. all i'll say is that previously the only irishman i was aware of appearing naked on an album's artwork was adam clayton on u2's achtung baby... (actually i'm not even convinced he was irish. always sounded a bit english on it to me. maybe he just jumped on the bandwagon.)
justice. do it nike.
time to be serious again for a bit. i just got back from a presentation about the use of sweatshops by nike given by a guy called jim keady, who spent a month trying to live in indonesia on the wage of a nike sweatshop worker. the story sounded familiar; turns out he was mentioned in a book i read, no logo, by naomi klein. those of you who know me will know (i hope) that i've been concerned about this issue for a while, but every once in a while a reminding kick in the ass like this is a good thing. they showed a film called SWEAT. see it if you ever get the chance.
anyway, i learned a lot tonight. first, as i rather suspected, people who tell you that sweatshop workers should be glad of the economic opportunity and get paid a good salary relative to their cost of living are full of SHIT. pardon my french. second, boycotting nike and other brands, a strategy i have heard from many and employed myself, is not the answer. workers would be even worse off if no one bought the shoes etc, although i don't think there's much danger of that happening to such an extent anyway. and finally, and this is what really pisses me off most, nike could triple sweatshop wages for the cost of 2% of their advertising budget, or by paying people like tiger woods a measly $80 million a year to wear their stuff rather than $100 million.
i could go on and on, but i won't. go read more for yourself at nikewages.org and vent your righteous anger by writing to phil knight, CEO of nike. just do it.
"sport sport sport sport sport sport sport sport sport"
i found a v interesting (and slightly amusing) article on stocki's website.
"...didn't you think he was a little, 'festive?' "
yes i've had a very festive weekend. not only has the snow now arrived with a vengeance but i've been at various seasonally themed events. starting with friday, i got a call from joe saying he managed to score tickets to a university-funded trip to the hard rock cafe and to the ohio theatre (apparently the second largest theatre complex in the usa, and very plush) to see dickens' a Christmas carrol. it was simply marvellous, darlings. we even got limos (well, mini-bus type limos)- the full works. then yesterday i went Christmas shopping and got a pleasingly large amount done. last night was Christmas carroll evening (yes carroll with two 'r's and 'l's- think about it) which involved a concert of Christmas music by the various college ensembles followed by the lighting of the Christmas tree, community mass (yes i went to mass, but don't worry- i made up for it by going to churches of the protestant God twice today ;-) including a baptist service of nine lessons and carols in the evening) and then a midnight breakfast. ok in retrospect this is an entirely uninspiring, uninsightful and mundane update. my apologies. i must be losing my touch. or my mind. too much study. good thing i've only two weeks left (woohoo!)
risky business (for jonny's benefit)
it's not just tulsa. it seems risk-fever is gripping cleveland. well, a guy called justin bought the board game and seems keen to play 24/7.
new links
nothing exciting to report, just that i added a few more places to the links page.
thanksgiving
just as planned, i kept up the emerging tradition of guys from belfast visiting krystal in minnesota, especially at thanksgiving. it was a lot of fun and a good chance to relax after a lot of weeks of work. photos are here, but don't just go straight there without reading the waffle!
the first place we went after the airport in minneapolis was the mall of america, which is the biggest mall in the universe or something silly like that. i found that quite believable though. they had a rollercoaster inside, and you could even get married there. that's just not right. anyway, i didn't purchase anything noteworthy which was a small personal triumph. after that we drove out to krystal's house in cottonwood, about two and a half hours west of minneapolis. i thought the house was very pretty, and the mohns were all laid back, friendly and welcoming. minnesota was a lot different to anywhere i'd previously been in the states. very flat and rural, and the highways were just one lane each direction. i've noticed that people descended from the same country often tend to live together in small communities here, and minnesota was no different. there seemed to be a lot of norwegians ('nor wee gin?) in the area, notably the mohns of course. getting back to transportation, there were also a lot of railroads, and seemingly dangerous railroad crossings! the ground was covered with snow, but i guess not that much. it didn't snow while i was there, and it wasn't as cold as it could have been which was nice. having said that, one of my first observations was, "the snow here is cold." this may seem to be stating the obvious, but what i meant was that it wasn't soft like "warmer" snow often is at home.
anyway, i found it interestng that people there seemed to build and renovate houses for fun. krystal's uncle had almost completed a very nice, large house on the lakeshore and very excitingly, he had used composite timber i-beams, very similar to those studied by yours truly last year for my dissertation.... not that any of you care. anyway, it fuelled my pipe-dream that i would love to design and build a house sometime and live in it myself. however, several significant obstacles seem to stand between me and realisation of this dream, namely that i lack the money, knowhow, patience, money, skill, perseverence, time and money that would be necessary.
i'll get back to the point. thanksgiving dinner was great. kinda like Christmas dinner, only with pumpkin pie. there were six people there, which i guess isn't many, but is as many as i would be accustomed to. it was a privilage to be there and share the experience. i also got to try snowmobiling, which was a lot of fun, despite there not really being enough snow.
on saturday we drove up to minneapolis, as i had an early flight on sunday, and stayed with krystal's great aunt. minneapolis seemed like a really nice city. you could walk around the whole downtown at first floor level (second floor for you americans) via a network of skywalks (i was a jedi for one night) connecting a lot of the major buildings, which was quite the novelty. so anyway, next morning was a lovely day for flying and the view i got of the city and a bunch of bridges over the mississippi was quite spectacular. passage back to cleveland was smooth and when i got here there was snow here too! it's the first time there has really been any significant snow here since i've been here, but i still haven't seen any actually falling. maybe they just ship it in and spread it on the roads when everyone is asleep. i knew you couldn't trust this government.
oh! i almost forgot. i found out that i was wrong about the origin of thanksgiving (thankfully, no pun intended.) turns out it is something about a coming together or peace-making bewteen the pilgrims and indians. ok so it's not a very full account, but it's not meant to be a history website!
white stripes
...not content with all that, i had to go out last night to see the white stripes. they were playing at a place called the agora theatre, which was a real dive- i liked it. i also liked the gig. a lot. meg really redefines the whole "less is more" school of thought. and no, they don't bring on a bassist or any other extra musicians on stage. the two of them managed to make a very full sound on their own.
AIM
finally, those of you who use aol instant messenger wil be glad to know that after months of failed attempts i managed to register a screen name while in minnesota. i came up with the very imaginative pcarson07, so add me to your list.