Opposite land

Last couple days I have successfully driven in opposite land. But it sucks. If I was in a normal small car it would be much better, everyone knows how I feel about SUVs.

Had a Pot Noodle a couple days ago. Discovered it's an actual brand name, not a generic description. And it mostly lives up to its reputation (as described on red dwarf).

Cork-it

When we finally get to the hotel at the end of the day, it's usually mid evening and I just feel like doing nothing. No processing data, no reporting on what we got done that day, no blog, no going out for dinner or looking around, just don't have energy to do anything. Which is stupid, cause I actually do pretty little throughout the day. But forced inactivity seems to drain energy.

I think some good sleep would help too. Last night it was the drunks returning to the hotel at 4 AM shouting and slamming doors and knocking over housekeeping carts and stuff. Couple nights earlier it was the crying screaming baby next door all night.

When I manage to make myself go out though it's usually rewarding. Just walking around makes me feel a bit better. Yesterday I thought the highlight was when I recognized from her accent that the chinese take-out girl was not chinese but was actually japanese, and we chatted for 30 seconds about how she ended up in ireland. Another highlight came soon after, as someone asked me "d'ya have a fag I can buy?" Walking around a bit more I found lots of segments of really old wall and some towers, but they were all fenced off. Later, found a pub playing traditional irish music and hung out there for a while. Decided to try a "smithwicks." No surprise on how that was, but I figured I'd try.

That was Waterford. Now I'm in Cork. Another day in the south, then we'll be heading up northeast somewhere. Somewhere around 10 days left.

I forgot to mention a few days ago someone "released the hounds!" Not really, but we had pulled to the side of the road, and the from villa on the other side of the road a couple hundred metres away we heard some barking and the dogs were heading our way. Took some time for them to finally reach the road, they were coming from so far. Then they stood there across the road barking, we didn't dare exit our car, and the dogs calmed down a bit, but we didn't want them getting smoked by anything coming around the corner. But as soon as we started moving, they got really excited, ran out into the road, almost got smoked, and then were almost getting under our wheels. Stupid dogs. Seems like most dogs are off leash here, walking in the road even in urban areas. Guess the rules are more relaxed or the people less responsible.

Haven't done any driving yet, but will probably have to start soon now we've reached a town where we can add my name to the list. Was feeling fairly confident about it, but about 10 seconds of moving the car in a parking lot today crushed that confidence. Now I just have to hope that I'll adapt and get more comfortable very quickly.

Ok not thinking of much else I wanted to mention.

Emerald Isle

So far Ireland is not going too well. Mostly work, driving around narrow country roads in the wind and rain. And work's kindof sucky, the whole project's pretty unclear so we're making it up as we go along. How are we supposed to do this? Is this good enough? What are we really trying to accomplish? Would have been really nice if we'd been provided with the necessary equipment. My coworker is nice enough, but I expected more as he should be more familiar with this type of work. Not much feeling particularly irish (even the countryside scenery hasn't been that special yet), except when we get to interact with people. Listening to a guy in a restaurant talk about how everyone (government, cell phone, electric co) are robbers was pretty fun. Overall things are improving a bit, even had some time to walk around last night, and plan to stay in this hotel two or maybe even three nights. First day was worst, was really long and I hadn't slept cause of the flight.

Personal Objective 1: meet an Irishman named Seamus: complete.
Work-assigned Objective 1: drink a Guinness in Ireland: complete (glad that's over with).

Rollin rollin rollin

when's the last time you rolled down a hill like a little kid?

Got a churning stomach, grass on my clothes, scratches on my arms, and a smile on my face :)

Vast and Sundre

The worst part of the whole experience was dealing with budget rental, screwed me on picking up the vehicle so I missed an appointment, screwed me again on returning the vehicle so I missed a meeting. If you don't have something or can't do something, just say so, don't lie to the customer about it and make them suffer as a result.

Driving a gigantic pickup truck is more stressful than any other driving I've every done. Looking down on minivans is ridiculous. And have you ever tried to fill one with gas? It just keeps going and going and going...

Was good to have a sample of other field crew work though. Set up some reflectors monday (since the previous ones had been stolen from the side of the road), sat around and watched them, and took them home. Picked up some remaining ones from the woods on wednesday. Damn heavy things. We finished just in time, 5 minutes before the lightning and pouring rain and hail.

tmnt

The teenage mutant ninja turtles theme states, "when the evil Shredder attacks, these turtle boys don't cut him no slack!"
Imagine what it would be like if they did...
"Shredder's tearing up the town again, let's get him!!"
"whoa, hold on, cut the dude some slack... he's probably had a tough day at the 'foot clan' training acadamy, and just needs to blow off some steam..."

Opportunities and conflicts

They seem to go together...
So my schedule shows me in calgary for the summer. So I'm doing dragonboat, steering and paddling. But that schedule has ended up taking my sunday, monday, tuesday. That kindof messes other stuff up (eg sailing lessons) as they're usually M/W or T/R, neither of which is available. If I do the wilderness survival course I was considering, that means no Lethbridge festival (though that's maybe not a big loss) and a few missed practices. Sandi's reception and Victoria conflict. Edmonton's out for all-souls and the start of Yellowstone. I expect we won't do Kelowna. That doesn't leave many races left, just Vernon and Calgary. Don't know what my future schedule holds, if San Francisco in october is an option (and would I spend several hundred to go)?

But now work has other potential schedule changes... Sounds like someone needs to go to ireland to collect some ground data in late June. Not sure how long, but if I'm there I think I'd want to stay a little longer. Another potential job would be to go down to australia to take a part out of the parked plane, again wouldn't want to spend a few days on a plane and not stay there longer. But now both of those situations would interfere with plans/commitments here in calgary. Hmmmm...

Guess I'll just wait until I know more details, and then make a quick decision.

P.S. if I do go anywhere cool anyone want to join me?

Despite being cold and wet

Today seemed to be happier than normal.
Temple in the morning, dragonboat through the afternoon, dinner with the young chinese crowd... discovered we know some of the same people from my HKSA days. Unfortunately their practice time generally doesn't work well with my schedule so I might not get to hang out with them much.

City Chase 2008

Regular partner J was away, so I substituted J-son.

What a 'miserable' weather day though. But actually it wasn't too bad, didn't rain hard. I just like wearing less/lighter clothes and not swinging from cold to hot and back.

Each year's a bit different, gotta say the first year was still the most fun.

Overall this year was much quicker than previous years. With a 5 easy items scavenger hunt instead of the usual 10 difficult items, and with 22 chasepoints instead of the more limiting 16 or so. Didn't have to travel as far, activities were quicker, we were an hour and a three quarters faster than last year despite barely running at all.

With an asian teammate, there was no concern about having to eat something gross (actually the hot dog with weird toppings was pretty good!). Also discovered the consequences of failing a task can often be quicker than trying to do the task right. None of the tasks were ultra-fun though. I was surprised this partner didn't want to run much between points. Also, looking at the clues and deciding which to go for was also almost entirely up to me. We didn't do the calgary tower stairs this year which is one I actually look forward to for some reason.

A friend got injured today and doesn't plan to do this again in future years, that's too bad.

Had a long time to wait after the finish line before the door prizes, but I invited over a couple people we met on the race while waiting for our hot dogs, and we hung out with them a few hours. Really enjoyed chatting and laughing for quite a while, but then somehow things seemed to change, and by the time I got home I was feeling far worse than I have in a really long time. A little hard to explain why.

First Aid

Monday/Tuesday did standard first aid and CPR-C at St John Ambulance. It was okay, learned stuff, but was mostly just lectures and some practical, not much discussion or interaction. The class size was way too big. A far preferred the rocky mountain adventure medicine course a took a couple years ago.

What I did discover is that sometimes I can stand the sight of blood and gore, but sometimes I most definitely can not. During the amputation video, I was almost having my own medical emergency, head on the desk while sweating and shivering and completely blurred vision, I'm really amazed I had such an extreme reaction. Normally I just feel quite uncomfortable but am physically fine.

Downsides of last rotation

By far the worst part of this last rotation is that my swiss army knife disappeared. :( Sure it can be inexpensively physically replaced, but it was a gift.

The second worst part of it was seeing all the fat-asses cruising around Wal-Mart in their fat-ass-mobiles. America at it's worst.

I'm expensive

I just realized my company spends far more on my ancillary costs than on my actual salary. In 6 months, my expenses are pretty closely matching my salary, and that's not including all the flights around the world which are a good chunk of change! With all that I wonder if I can consider myself a six-figure employee...

Visions of paradise

Decided to have a shower right away. But I had just made some noodles. The result was inevitable... eating noodles in the shower! An awesome new concept.

But I bet there's some rich asian businessman got me totally beat. I bet there's a hot springs in a natural setting with a swim-up fresh fruit smoothie bar, and he's surrounded by a bunch of hot asian bikini girls, and as many floating noodle bowls as he wants. Oh my god what more could a guy want!