Living in Luxor(y)

After a brief cabbie argument and a brief one hour flight from Cairo, I arrived in Luxor, formerly Thebes, early yesterday morning. Since it was still early, we headed straight to the Valley of the Kings, where the Pharaohs and their favorite queens, consorts and courtesans stored their mortal remains (and earthly treasures) away from the tomb raiders of Cairo, so that instead they could be plundered by tomb-raiders of Thebes. You know, spread the wealth around a bit.

(The opening shot, although out of chronological order, shows you the view from my hotel. Not bad for $60 a night eh?)

There's no doubt in my mind I could spend all day poking into all 65+ tombs here. Although each one follows a similar patterns (each departed soul must past through 4 serpent-guarded gates) each one is unique in build and detailed decoration. As it was, I only had time for three: the Tomb of Rames IX, Ramses IV and Ramses VI. You can find detailed descriptions and maps for all the tombs here. It was easy to see why the limited access, the air inside the tombs was incredibly humid (and dank!) so I can imagine it stripping the paint in short order. And this is off season...

Moses visits the Valley of the Kings

Note the pyramid like mountain in the background of the VoK. You never stray too far from your first love...

From the VoK we headed to the Deir el-Bahri, (the link has better pics than I do) a giant temple set up against the nearby mountains. Multi-storied and richly decorated, this was the great monument by the only female to rule ancient Egypt. Her imagine was later obliterated from the scene by a scornful follow-up, but he couldn't erase all the depicted deeds painted on the temple walls. It's darn impressive, especially from a distance, but it didn't take too long to explore the whole thing. This is also the sight of the 1997 massacre of many tourists, prompting the security measures now in place. (The same group of thugs would go on to greater fame four years later...)

From the Temple, you have a good view of the green band created by the Nile:

You hold the camera still in 100+ heat

Most amazing to me are the fact that many of the original painting remain intact and colorful. Yea, but it's a dry heat, so it's easier to imagine the place in full splendor.

Early Egyptian Toilet Ad

This shows the Egyptian depiction of the night sky, with all the stars shining:

Insurance image proving the upstairs toilet leaked

Some of the better preserved statues inside the temple:

Sadly, Coptic squatters removed Lisa Lopez's condom eye

Both places and more comprise the entire area known as the Theban Necropolis. There were many many tombs up amongst the hills.

...From a Hole in the Ground

The most annoying bit of all this were the locals trying to make a fast buck by 'helping' you any way they could: fanning you, pointing out the obvious ('better color here!'; 'ramses, ramses, osiris...') jumping into your pictures, posing as mummies etc. I tried to confuse them by switching from English, Spanish & German every sentence. Nothing slows them down, so you just have to ignore them and do things on your own time.

On the way out, we stopped by the twin collossi of Memmon that used to guard a temple that Ramses I built. (Note: don't build things you want to last forever in a flood plain. Especially one that floods every year). Lots of legends have grown up around the statues across the years, and Greeks and Romans have their own stories regarding them, which is why they are named the way the are.

Hrm...I've already used toilet twice...

From the VoK, we took a boat across the Nile to my hotel, where I got a much needed nap-break (still on the jet lag thing...). That evening we went to the Temple of Karnak Sound and Light Show. Maybe it's good for a campy laugh or two, but it lasts a bit too long. It begins with trumpet heralds and rolling drum build-ups then moves into plucked harp music. Lights shine on various statues and columns and overacted voices read pretenious poetry ("across the Nile, to the city of the dead, where the Beyond Begins!"). Most Ninetendo 64 games have better effects. In fact, the whole thing reminded me of a prog rock album from the 70s. All that was missing was a guy in a cape playing two keyboards at once.

Tomorrow we're going back to Karnak, for which I'm really glad. The columns, statues and obelisks all look pretty impressive, so I can't wait to see them in daylight.

I Was Dining by the Nile....

What a day, what a day, what a day. Today a lot of hard work by a lot of people paid off, and none too soon. For me, the day involved a meeting with the Commanding Officer, a talk to the scientific crowd and more personal chats with selected scientists. My mantra throughout these meetings was to let our lab be the screening stage for new diagnostics, that when we came with something, to have faith that we'd done our homework and take our assays into the field with confidence. Without today's exciting results, I can imagine those words looking a little hollow. Oh sure, the science was sound and we'd done all the testing we could do, but the cat ain't dead til you open the box, as my pal Schrody would say. Here's a note to you tech-taskmasters: 1 prayed-for positive trumps 50 predicted negatives any day. Any time techs are excited about an assay, you know you're on to something good.

The new virology leaders here are Ce & Ca, a husband wife team from Argentina. Ce runs the lab whilst Ca does a lot of migratory bird collections. Ce has one of those infectious personalities that everyone ends up being drawn to: everyone on the compound waves, smiles and says hi to her, the ground crew bring her flowers etc. She's been a real treat to work with the last few days. This evening, after all the work and meetings were done, she and Ca took us to the Grand Cafe in downtown Cairo to have dinner by the Nile (Ca has mastered the Cairo driving rules in record time). It was awesome to finally get a good look at the city. We drove past the Citadel, the City of the Dead and through the nicely watered and expensive living section called Maadi. There we dined at the Grand Cafe and watched the sky slowly fade to dark as fishing boats and sailboas swung by. Despite the fact that I have meetings both tomorrow and Monday. I declared work-time officially over and ordered a nice big ice cream. Yum, nothing like ice cream to take the heat off whilst sitting by the Nile.

Mars' Observed Rules of Driving In Cairo

1) There are many road signs, lane markings, traffic signals and various other flashing lights and objects d'guidance that will try and distract you. Do not let them, focus instead on moving forward at all times.

2) There will be many confused pedestrians (CPs) in the middle of the street that need guidance to move to the other side. Try to gently nudge them in the right direction. Much like a sheep-hearding dog might nip at their heels, a small tap will help their motivation. Bonus points for using English spin.

3) When the police officer turns his back to you, it is his way of saying "it's OK to go" even if he just told you to stop. Do so as rapidly as possible. Remember, body language is more important than verbal cues, so ignore his cries. NOTE: Under no circumstances should a PO be mistaken for a CP. You've been warned.

4) Prior to merging onto another car, give two short horn blasts as a signal. Do not bother using your signal (see rule #1). The spaced sound effect will allow the echolocation system of the other drivers to properly calculate your incoming trajectory and adjust accordingly and simultaneously curse you properly. (thanks Doug!)

5) By the laws of physics, any car more than 20 yards away has absolutely no chance of hitting you when you pull out in front of it, regardless of it's velocity. Go ahead and zip on out.

6) If your car dies, move it under the overpass. The sand will soon cover it. A new car will be along shortly, just like in Spy Hunter.

Mars Rules for Riding

1) Pray. You might want to try Allah since your on his turf.
2) Always look straight ahead, especially when merging into oncoming traffic.
3) Keep score and cheer your driver when he helps a CP cross the street. One loud yell will not be confused as a merge signal.

Just for Fun: Anytime you see 5 cars abreast in three supposed lanes yell "punch bug!" and slug the nearest person to you. Explain before hand the rules to any Afghani visitors that may be riding along with you.

Kairo Arrival

That's the view from my hotel window at dawn (well you would see it, except that $14 worth of internet doesn't get you uploading tme...) . Yup. Dusty dirty and sandy. It smells like burnt rubber. For the flight from Frankfurt, I was seated in the middle section, which was nice for stretching, but not for viewing. My first good look at the city came as my driver took me to my hotel...I had been trying to imagine what was I was in for, a cross between Mexico City and Los Angeles if the guidebooks were to be believed. My first impression was Beijing, where the modern day gleams near where the dishelved past decays. Everything looks like it's waiting for the final touch, for that stack of bricks and debris nearby to finally be added on. Or like it's been eroded away, like some more famous edifices around here...

Things have been going very smoothly, all thanks to the hospitality team from NAMRU3. We're staying in a fabulously swank hotel next to the biggest, most bustling mall I've ever seen, with a driver to take us hither and there. If it sounds a little sanitized, it is. We're in Heliopolis, which is sadly somewhat removed from downtown. The new metro line hasn't been completed yet either, which limits excursion options. I may just have to be accept a more touristy trip this time around.

oh, and everyone knows I'm a sucker for dark hair and dark eyes, so this place is something else. A paraphrased Sugar Hill Gang raps around in my head all day:

Damn sly girl
I'm in love wichyou
that Cleopatra legend
Musta been true

There's no mistaking why the Egyptians were so fascinated with the eyes.

oh, and my nose feels right at home.

Off to Egypt

I'm heading to Cairo to meet up with some fellow demi-gods. We'll probably spend the whole night complaining about this upstart Monogod fellow. Kids today. Anyhoo, I hope I can post from Egypt, we'll see.

The above is a random street scene from TO. What's a guy in a bag got to do to get some attention?

The Limits of Mars

As if the day on the island wasn't enough, AnOs and I headed over and up the CN tower for some pure tourist action. Had to be done, although the lenght of the wait ensured that I'll never do it again. That and the fact that I found out I'm terrified of glass floors that are very high up. I almost passed out when AnOs tried to shove me over onto the glass floor. I spent the rest of the time wiping my clammy hands on the windows and other schmucks stuck in line. Who knew?

All good from behind glass. and a few feet back.

Still, a pretty darn good day, topped off by some cider of course. As AnOs said "and I thought we were going to end up in a farkin' Shoe Museum"

Best. Sport. Ever.

TO View From A Bike

The last day was a gorgeous mid-western sunshine fest so AnOs and I decided to head out to the island in Lake Erie. We rode around the entire thing on some dodgy bikes, had some food and then went to check out some commotion we were hearing. I'm so glad we did. There were some dragon boat races going on, some real D&Ders beating each other up with fake swords, and a local Tug-Of-War competition.

Canada Conquered by D&D Club

Look at All That Tension!

This was a pretty good warm-up, especially since they had world's oldest (and only) tug-of-war fan announcing the whole thing. I've never known anyone to get so excited about tension before, but after reading Savage Love I know anything is possible. The guys above kicked ass and took names all day. They had a very precise and methodical style and could look their boots and hold out all day.

But the main event came at the end of the dragon boat races: The Wife Carrying Competition. Now to make things interesting and ensure all types of folks participated they came up with the best.prize.ever: Your wife's weight in beer to the winner. That's right, 100lbs of beer (easy!) was on the line. It wasn't easy either, you had to run a good distance with your wife on your back, go out into water up to your waist, around the maker and haul ass back ot the starting point. The winner ended up getting darn near 4 cases of beer. I thought they should have given a consolation prize to the women who spanked her husband's ass like a mule the whole time, she was the highlight. Pure Comedy Gold Baby!

The 'Over the Shoulder Grab 'n' Go' Method

The 'Dunk Your Woman and Slap Her Face Against Your Ass' Method

I'll have the videos up on You tube soon.

Best Swag Ever

Being an influenza/public health meeting, one of the freebies that came with the ever present meeting back-pack was a tube of Lysol, which can supposedly kill the flu virus. It came in real handy as there was a Yu-Gi-Oh tournament going on at the same time. Although not as bad as a full blown Magic: The Unwashed or D&D convention would have been, there were still a few ripe ones in the bunch.

Free Gamer Bane!!!

Later on that night...

After leaving the Distillery district, we headed out with a full crew. We tried going to some new bars, partially to get food, and partially to get some more exposure. Sadly, we ended up getting surrounded by some not so upstanding Germans at a bar with a totally kick ass beer selection (go figure). In a matter of minutes, they had managed to Eik into a corner (although, not sure she totally minded, but the male chaperones were on edge) and hand away $30 of Kampai's hard earned cash. I stepped to prevent some violence and recovered the cash. The bartender said he thought it was a tip. Right...

Oh, some of you were wondering where AnOs was in the last shot:

AnOs Mounted

Go ahead and make up your own mexican/border joke. He said it's ok.

Anyhoo, we exited and prepared for the last day of the conference. The ending session looked like this:

Bueller? Bueller? Anyone?

This after the opening session had to find a room to video broadcast the opening remarks as the 1500 seat auditorium was full. This is why you don't want to give a talk during the last session. As I told several conference noob: it's an endurance test and you have to finish out strong, despite the decreasing amount of sleep and increasing amount of hangover you have each day.

Also, as my friend The Badger knows, whoever collects the most business cards win. I did pretty well:

Ok, so the Hooters Club Card Doesn't Count

Beer, Beer, Beer, Beer, We Like Beer
--The Asylum Street Spankers
(and Me)

As if taking us to Niagra falls wasn't good enough, the conference organizers decided we needed to blow off a little steam and drink down a few brews. As AnOs said "way ahead of you". Still, not wanting to perpetuate the rumor that our group can be a little anti-social, we hopped onto one of a dozen buses that took us to Toronto's reborn Distillery District. Seems like a lot of towns are rediscovering their forgotten local brew sites and re-imagining them as havens for upscale drinkers who might have a few too many and take home some ritzy art or a Prada handbag that caught their beer-goggled eyes. That being said, the place was a welcoming all brick, sunshine filled plaza where free food and drinks were handed out like candy. The Hawk found some high-brow Sam Adams drink-alike inside the actual bar, but I was pretty happy with my Canadian stand-by Sleeman's. Good stuff. They used to have a billboard in Windsor that said "What American's Take Home in Their Trunk". Damn straight!

Whilst there, we met Eik, resident Army Epidemiologist. Yes she has red hair. Yes, I tried not to stare (staring inversely proportional to BAC). She was a good addition to our crew. i.e. she knew how to have a drink and talk science such that neither is out of hand.

Hawk and Dove

Our crew also involved Wallace from Kenya. Wallace was with a couple of other folks from Africa. One of them was looking a little sickly. As it turned out, he had malaria. Wallace took this along the lines of someone getting your drive-through order wrong: it happens from time to time. However, having malaria at a public health conference is a bit like being the hot chick in the engineering class: everyone wants to talk to you.

The Hawk owns up to a few Hooters visits

Leaving Stylish District in Style

HT To AngiO, whom I stole photos from, since I wasn't bright enough to remember my camera.

I Am So Proud of Myself

Game, set & match back pain!

Finally! My back pain has ended. I tried two types of painkillers, heat etc. etc. Nothing works like good ol booze. Since TO I've been wanting some cider and the Fox hit the spot. One bent spoon and I'm the only bartender I need.
I'll finish the TO spots this week.
Yum!

War Rants

Things that are pissing me off:

1) Dorks that take pictures of every slide being shown during a talk. Hey, how about paying attention instead of blocking my view there r tard? Bad enough that they knock you out of the way so they can get 100Mega pixel shots of posters to recreate all the fun at home, but now I have to put up with flashes and fake camera noises whilst I'm trying to follow a presentation? And god forbid the speaker should use a lot of animations. The poor bastards can't keep up.

2) The current US-Canada exchange rate. OK George, this week dollar thing has gone too far. Now I'm not saying we need the glory days of when you could get $1.40 for your greenback dollar in the Great White North, but the usual $1.20 rate would be fine. They were offering 3 cents to the dollar at Niagra falls. Why even bother? 3 cents? Canadians better be buying a lot of our crap for this outrage.

Thing That Cracked Me Up:

Some poor bugger asked a question in million-syllable-per-second psuedo English following a presentation. Despite the rapid rate, the dude took a good minute and half to spit out his query, and was answered only with a hostile-sounding "WHAT?". It was the same tone you might expect if your father found out you were preggers in high-school, or that you had wrecked his car. AnOs and I struggled not to laugh too loud, and would repeat the shout at others all week long. Later on, a more polite speaker would simply point out that he couldn't understand the poor fellow. Anyway, if you're keeping score at home, the correct meeting manner is to reply "I'm sorry, could you repeat the question?" and act like his mike isn't working too well. If this fails, simply say "Yes that's a very interesting question, we're working on that right now, so maybe at the next meeting we can answer that."

The FallsTwas a pretty good thing following the wild Tuesday night, that Odin's Day was only a half day at the conference. The second half was a trip to Niagra Falls. I know what you're thinking, yea it's touristy, but when else you gonna go? Also the trip included a free ride on the Maid of the Mist, which I was looking forward to. As it turned out, the weather was perfect, as you can see. We headed for the boats as soon as we got there, as 1000 people from the conference had signed up. We wanted to beat the rush. Another added bonus, free parkas!

Plastic People, Get to the Boat

Like Viagra with a N, Niagra Has Lots of Flow

Heck we even got a rainbow, and you know what that means. I just learnt that at the Pride festival here this week in TO. Wonder if the Irish knew about that. Oh and, I'm not the diety they are speaking of, I enjoy rainbows for the natural scientific phenonmenon they are. Not that there's anything wrong with the alternate, but I'll stick with the original rainbow connection.

God Buggering Around Again

We Kinda Use 'Sorry' As Our Hello

The scientific program of the conference began on Monday. AnOs and I found the rest of the NRD-herd, The Hawk and Kampay, and also added AngiO, The Hawk's counterpart from AFIOH. Although we're a true team, we sometimes split up to make sure we had both concurrent sessions covered and to cover our differing interests. The conference schedule is pretty brutal, with only short breaks in between long sessions that run from 8:30 AM to 6PM. The endurance race begins...

Monday night was the first of two poster sessions and the one during which AnOs and The Hawk presented. AnOs managed to ask Nancy Cox whom she was whilst holding a beer in one hand. I figure this cost him the poster contest although he claims he recovered. Nonetheless, his poster was pretty well received and we had all the questions that people asked covered. Go Team!

After the poster session we went to a local pub to have a few pints to round out the evening. It was there that The Hawk saw a poster for Sonic Playground. One look at the lead singer and the Hawk decided we'd be coming back. So after the poster session on Tuesday, we headed back to the same tavern. We also added PosterGirl, whom we'd met at the previous poster session, to our team.

Now I'm the first to say that if you're going out to see a cover band, there's something wrong with the music scene or your priorities, but I have to admit Sonic Playground were enormous fun. Their songs ranged from 70's funk to more modern sounds (negative: they didn't know the Pixies!) but all done well yet not in total copy-cat fashion. Their 10-minute medley of Superstitious/Play That Funky Music/Turn This Mother Out really got the crowd in a good mood. After their warm-up set, they invited audience members to participate:

Oooo-wee-ooo-I-sing-just-like-Rivers-Cuomo

We were at this pub for quite some time and the Strongbow Cider was flowing. In fact, you can monitor the changes in the NRD-Herd with respect to time in this following series, which goes from early evening, to later on:

Could Possibly Still Discuss Science

Able to Discuss Possibility of More Drinks

Unable to discuss much

You can see in the above photo how we're starting to interact a little with our bar neighbors, as AnOs almost knocked the guy on the right down for his two-second two-step with AngiO. (That went over way better than The Hawk's stealth stalking picture taking.) Well at some point, our neighbors started to interact with us, as depicted below:

AnOs declines to give the man a hand

In this photo, we see AnOs in flight after being prodded with the strange device this member of a rugby team (yea, go figure!) used to drink from. Now I've seen AnOs running around the bases at softball and during flag football, but you've never seen the man move until he turns around and realises he's just been poked with a penis-shaped cup.

The photo at the top? Yea, we managed to go to a ball-game after the second poster session. We had good seats to heckle the Dodger bull pen from, but they still won 11-1 or something like that. I mean it's baseball, you can't really expect me to pay too much attention.

Somehow the rest of the AFRIMS crowd that joined us managed to escape having their photos snapped, at least by me. Wallace was amongst them and his grin was as large as ever, having just been taken to his first ever Hooter's restaurant. His grin said it all: Democracy! Whisky! Sexy! So much for Sea World...

The title quote comes from local native PosterGirl and a discussion on just how smashingly nice Canadians really are.

Let's Make a Deal

Too bad Professional Eater is no longer checking in, she would have loved the reception spread: which included putin sauce and all the beer you could drink. AnOs and I were joined by Meg from Chapel Hill and Wallace, who works for USAMRIID in Kenya. Wallace has one of those infectious-sized smiles that all Kenyan’s seem to carry. He had just been to San Diego for the GEIS flu meeting we hosted at NHRC. His biggest thrill: Sea World. He spent seven hours there and thought it was the greatest thing ever. It was so refreshing to hear someone describe it without a hint of sarcasm, there was real joy in his eyes. His dream is to bring his kids back to the place and I hope it works out for him. Meg is doing some really cool culture based assays with influenza at Chapel Hill. I’m hoping we can work out some sort of collaboration and get some infectivity data on our strains. Wallace and I also worked out a new proposal for GEIS over a few beers. Since The Hawk hadn’t appeared yet, he couldn’t put a stop to our handshake to seal the deal. Networking Score:2 and the conference (Here) has barely begun!

Yes, still no sign of the Hawk and since it's really not like him to miss free food and beer, we're starting to get worried.

Camera one, closes in, the con-fer-ence begins…

Today the fun started. I managed to run into AnOs near the convention center. We went and had lunch at the Queen Mother Café. Now your Mars receives the vast majority of his pleasure aurally (read it again friend) and has never been one to near orgasm over culinary delights, but the food at the Queen Mother’s was exceptional. I had the Khao Soy Gai and let me tell you, I will never have it again, because you don’t’ mess with perfection. YUM! Served with a pint of Strongbow Cider, your Mars was indeed pleased. AnOs had The Beafeeter and was quite satisfied as well. We got served well again at the reception to the conference later: yummy potatoes with real putin gravy along with fresh served roast beef and turkey. Also, with free beer flowing we said 'ok, just one more' at least three times. Your Mars managed to snag the last Keith's Pale Ale before it was boxed away. Thank god for all that Beerfest training.

The opening speeches at the conference were what you would expect: we need to work together as pandemic influenza is a global problem, we need better communication, we need better coordination etc. etc. I did like the Canadian Public Health guy, he manged to quote Pasteur, Benjamin Disreali and George Bernard Shaw in his introduction. The fact that he spoke French isn't so impressive since he's Canadian :)

Oh, turns out that little ‘band’ thing that was going on at King’s St. West. That was the Much Music Awards. AnOs and I watched little Avril Lavign at an Irish pub dancing around mere meters away from where we had walked earlier. Canadians are so cute, but someone needs to tell them that no matter what, playing the fiddle just does not grant rock god status or merit the moves.

Tomorrow the real fun begins!

"One Great City!"—The Weakerthans

I did my best to go record shopping today. All the vinyl that used to be has moved on… Now Sam’s was never my favorite record store, but an ‘end of an era’ sale means big discounts, and who am I to pass that up? I scored the 90’s box set “Whatever” (a 7 CD set by Rhino is a steal at $35 canadian) and a few other obscure albums (Josh White’s “Empty Bed Blues” and Oscar Brands double disc set of all 4 military services albums). “Whatever” meets the high standard of everything Rhino despite the side step to include a lot of ‘non-rock’ radio hits on the set (i.e. Hip Hop). In my opinion, some of it works (who could deny Sir-Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby Got Back”) and some doesn’t (Me Shells "Was that your Girlfriend?"). Still, there’s lots of songs on here I wouldn’t bother with any other way ("Diz-Knee-Land", "Sex & Candy"). Guilty pleasures are still pleasures. Musing: Whatever happened to Monie Love? Where she at?

Trips to other nearby CD based stores were met yielded only a Twilight Singers single. Towards the end I headed down Queen St West were I found a nice Soul/Funk/Techno shop that had scored a number of picture sleeve 7”s. 10 for $15 Canadian. Your Mars was in Valhalla dear reader. Heck I even took home a tiffany 7” picture sleeve to round out the second set.

Some sort of video shoot was going on near the TV station:
(pics to come)

I heard their sound check and decided to move on :/

I had planned to check out the tribute to a local cowboy named Ned in the same area later this same evening. There was some sort of benefit for him, as he had passed nearly a decade ago. Since it sounded kind of country (odd for Toronto imho) I wanted to check it out. Sadly, when I got there around showtime (10:30) I learned I’d already missed the greater part. So I went out in search of some beer and a real wireless connection. Seems my hotel wireless doesn’t allow me to connect to blogspot.com or many other useful sites. I found Sotheby’s Deli, which promised both boons, but only brought the beer (Alexander Keiths India Pale ale Yum!). After the third one, the wireless just seemed like it would have only been icing anyway. The real icing turned out to be the cute & kind waitress who brought some tonic water when I managed to mustard myself.

Tomorrow the rest of the NRDL nerds show up and the conference starts. I’m thinking we have to sneak in a Blue Jays Game at some point…

“I went back to Ontario and my city was gone—“
Paraphrased from the Pretenders

Today was a sad day for your noble god dear reader. I got in rather late, but I still managed to snag a swift stroll along Yonge St. and look for some old familiar sites. Sam the Record Man was closed, but I can smell a going out of business sale a mile away. The easy indicator was the ‘20% off all marked prices” sign I could see through the shuttered shop doors. This combined with Toronto Trevor’s tale of the final days of the folky record store that used to exist upstairs along Yonge (It breaks my heart to think of boxes of records hauled outside like trash and labeled ‘free’) weighs heavy on me. Alas, times change and all things must pass, but to go out with such loss of dignity…the very store that provided one of the Greatest Record Finds ever, (it would seem m pals dav's immortal site is now gone as well :( In an act so gracious that it could only come from Canada, the Mr. Gin Gin album was GIVEN to my pal Dav after he inquired about the price of the unmarked album. Yes all those stories you’ve heard of ‘nice’ Canadians aren’t fairy tales, they’re true whispers of a better way. Mr. Gin Gin has livened up many an alcohol injected evening, at least for Dav and I. Wives and girlfriends don’t seem to bear the same tolerance we have for multiple repeat playings. (Mainly because we only really care about, and play, the leadoff track.) I mean the whole thing is in French, except for the accent-heavy “She’s too fat, much too fat, much too fat for me” ramblings toward the end of the opener. Ah…such high entertainment gifted to us by the Canadian people. The last time we listened to it, I was driven to such an altered state as to bite one of Dav’s limbo LPs in half. That’s the power of Mr. Gin Gin. and lots and lots of beer.

If you’re keeping score at home, all the strip clubs are still intact. Some things never go out of style :/

“I Wanna Go! I Wanna Go! To Ontario” – The Posies 'Ontario' from “Amazing Disgrace”

I’ve discovered the hardest part of blogging a blog called ‘wanderinwargod’ is that its really hard to blog outside of the wandering experience. There’s lots of wandering that’s been done since the Vienna/Croatia/Ljubljana trip (jaunts to Ohio, Whale Watching in Guerro Negro but outside of an internet connection, it’s just hard to keep up. We’ll see how I do here in the Great White North and I’ll try to catch up after that.

In any case, I’m excited to be back in a real foreign city, and by that I mean one with a non-'merican (Canadian is far enough away!) speaking population, cosmopolitan culture mix and public transportation. As the first foreign soil I ever set foot on, Toronto holds a special place in my mind and heart. It’s been nearly a decade since I’ve been here, so I’m really curious to see what’s changed. Sadly, I won't have any gorgeous grad students to guide me around this time, so I’ll have to rely on my own wits. hrm…

What's up with all the orange?

One thing I noticed in Vienna: They love the color orange. Not the macho burnt orange of the terrific Texas Longhorns, but a bright uh....what's the word I'm looking for here...more wussy flavor of orange. It was everywhere. In any group of 5, there was guaranteed to be at least one person wearing the color. I'm not sure what the connection was, if it was the official color, or just made that way by populist actions, but it was different. Maybe that's the key.

Cheese's apartment

Several shades of orange for the bedding

The Metro

Cinema Ceiling