Systema Traincation

The last couple of years I've been going on "Traincations." Where I go off somewhere and immerse myself in something, a facet of awareness/movement, "mad skillz", if you will. Essentially a retreat.¹

Last year, I trained with the wonderful Paul Linden in Columbus, Ohio. For a week I worked on conflict resolution and bodywork, plus some Aikido classes in the evenings, with him, all the while I staying at his dojo. An off-kilter veering from my typical day as an engineer (he says with a hipster's smugness).

This year, I was back in North America, and this time it's personal martial. I came to Toronto, the second home of Systema (also called "Know Thy Self") (from the site):

[...]  the authorities quickly realized how viable and devastating the original combat system was and reserved it just for a few Special Operations Units. 

 The body has to be free of tension, filled with endurance, flexibility, effortless movement and explosive potential.

The spirit or psychological state has to be calm, free of anger, irritation, fear, self-pity, delusion and pride.The combat skill includes movements that are powerful and precise, instant and economical, spontaneous, subtle and diverse, the signature of a true professional. 

So there you have it a martial art, reserved for the Russian military elite. In a word:

Hardcore

In practice a mixture of wrestling, groundwork, strikes, weapons and multiple opponents; the whole shebang. I had gone to a few classes of it since September here in Belgium, but I couldn't go as regularly as I'd like because of the travel time.² It frustrated me quite a bit, and some of the guys at the school here in Kortrijk told me that people often go to Toronto and train for weeks, sometimes even months, at the source as it were. Given my obsessive bend, that piqued my interest...

And off I went. The first week at Systema Fightclub, and then second week at Systema HQ. And you know what? It is the tenderest, most compassionate, heartwarming and honest ass-kicking I have ever experienced!

It struck me more as a personal development course in the guise of a martial art. Sure, we're going to: step on each other... Push and shove... Lock and grab... Hit... Gang up on... Even use sticks, chains, whips and training knives... but it's about building each other up, leaving us greater than we were before. Give no more than the partner can handle; gradually expanding the comfort zone; handle punch with care.

That's the idea.

Working on the edge of the comfort zone, is by no means easy; I was covered in bruises and at times annoyed by the skill difference between me and the guys I trained with... It's particularly confronting since I've been doing martial arts for over 20 years. I mean, I should be better at hitting people for heaven's sake!

Luckily everyone was open to helping me. Giving me tips and pointers.

There is one class for everyone. There are no forms to learn; it's bare bones: principles of alignment and minimal effort, breath control and helping each other.  It doesn't matter if one has been training 1 day, 1 year or 20, the exercises are scalable enough that all benefit from the neophyte to the seasoned,  just a question of how deep/far one can go. In the partner work, we collaborate to get the most out of it, it's not competitive. We're given a great deal of autonomy; the teacher explains and demonstrates. He watches over us, but we investigate and explore, if we're not sure or need more guidance, we can. From the get go, we're encouraged to figure it out for yourself.

There is a wonderful emphasis on ease of motion, investigating different approaches and effects of handicaps (go to and get up from the ground while keeping one leg off of the ground, hands behind the back, etc.). We're invited to notice where tension, anxiety, fear or anger arises and working with it, relaxing using movement and breathing, and feedback/support from your partners.

Contrary to the typical image of martial arts, humanity is acknowledged and embraced in the training, it is not denied, as if we were cold automatons following a program or "real men"; that we get frustrated, have emotional responses to attacks and attacking. The context is martial arts, but the guys you meet and work with strive to integrate it with the rest of their lives.

Every class ends with massage work, some peaceful nurturing contact, balancing out the more violent prior work. The fighter is reminded that he can do more than harm. I found this profoundly special, because generally we, and men even more so, don't get enough caring physical contact. I read two pointed articles on this: Touch as Nutrition, by my good man, John Tuite; and  Touch Isolation: How Homophobia has robbed Men of Touch at the Good Man Project. The former looking at the dirth of touch in general and the latter about impact homophobia has had on how male friends express their friendships, and the consequences of being so starved for contact. For no other reason than allowing people the breadth of types of contact we can experience, these classes are powerful. And of course, who doesn't like being able to massage people well? :)

Manny, head teacher at Systema Fightclub, who spent hours outside of class  generously sharing his thoughts and experiences on the art and its broader scope, talks about Systema the martial art being just 15% of what Systema can do, that there is also the Systema of the family, the workplace, and the world at large, and can we apply the principles there that we cultivate in Systema the art.

I presume this level of integration is because of its military origins, where there is a need for a state of sustained vigilance and emotional resilience, so that neither acts of violence nor fear nor eventual aftermaths get you.

The kung fu I practice touches on this idea of calm and well-being, but I haven't experienced the class structure committing to it so effectively; quite often, training kung fu, I feel like I am carving an intricately fine statuette on a pin, using a microscope. Whereas the handful of days I got to spend in Toronto felt more like painting a mural on a wall in the middle of a city; both are works of art and passion, but one is scope and exposure differ.

Pushing the personal development and well-being lark aside, I'll wax pragmatic about the direct application of the training. As I mentioned the classes are made up pf simple (not easy) exercises to improve suppleness and strength in the body, and breath control. It eschews the more esoteric trappings of martial arts, with even sparing explicit mention of a stance, let alone forms and techniques. There are things that are worked on here, that other martial arts cultivate as well, but what impressed me the most is, the economy and efficiency of the Systema approach to training, where partner collaboration is central. The communication between the partners and the cut-down nature of the exercises means the desired effect is clear and the partner will say if it is off the mark. There are epiphanies fleeting or otherwise, that I have had in my own training in the years gone by, that in my opinion, would have been be more quickly arrived at in these classes. Content-wise, something I find singular is their approach and handling of multiple attackers, in any given class, there are even odds that we'll be worked over by two or more people in some capacity. This builds a comfort and familiarity with extra people and, I think, reduces tunnel vision in fights, because there are few things that discourage tunnel-vision more than trying to hit someone while getting kicked from behind by another. Segueing back into the personal development work... in day to day life, it's rare we have the luxury of focussing and acting on a single thing without other things looming; really isn't there always something kicking us from behind while we are trying to live (Imagine I am a cheesy reporter, finishing up a schlocky human interest piece...)?

At the end of my visit, when I was leaving, Vlad, gave me a warm handshake and hug. His wholehearted gratitude for taking the time to come and train in Toronto was incredibly touching. Ultimately, despite moments of vexation the likes of which I haven't experience in a year or too, this was a fantastic experience, that I hope to revisit many times in the coming years. :)

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¹The typical image of a retreat is going off to nature, camping or staying in a Wigwam or something, but that is just too mainstream for me. Following the idea of Campbell's Hero's journey as a template for what retreats are: the environs thereof, are not critical to the process, but stepping over the threshold into the unknown is; going away from the familiar, from friends and family and diving into something alien.

²I wouldn't have any trouble attending because of the time travel.

New York

I hadn't been to New York before.

My friends that have been have raved about it.  I arrived just before midnight in JFK. I had printed out the travel details to get to my billet in Chelsea Hostel in Chelsea. All I had to do was get onto the E train from Jamaica station by the airport. The city was already winning brownie points for having the underground run all night. It did lose some for me having to talk to a crazy¹ guy for ten minutes while waiting for the train. He shared his experiences during the flooding - the hotel he stayed in and was no longer welcome in, his sugar momma, how his faith was going to save him from the forthcoming rapture and his calls of abuse at an overweight man on the platform.

When I came out of the station, I found myself walking around poorly-lit empty streets, covered in a light fog. It was like being in Vampire in Brooklyn starring Eddie Murphy. I tried to find the street and avenue where my hostel was at, but the street names/numbers didn't make any sense. I gave in and got a cab. Sitting in the back of the taxi - a real NYC taxi cab, guys! - and watched the map on the screen in front of me... Not knowing the train stop sequence, I ended up stepping off early in Queens at Court Sq./23rd st. According to my directions, I had to wait until 23rd in Manhattan island before stepping off.

The whole trip, I was surprised at how accurately so much of America and Americana is portrayed in TV and film. It was very much contrary to how poorly they usually emulate everywhere else. I mention this now, because the Chelsea Hostel, was the platonic ideal of low-rent building; exposed hot water pipes, uneven stairs, aged linoleum flooring and a bare bedroom with a tiny metal-frame squeaky bed. After being spoiled with all you one can eat pancakes, oatmeal and fruit, the choice of a bagel (brown or white), a single fruit (apple or orange) and a bowel Corn Flakes, didn't leave me particularly satisfied. It didn't help that it was 10-15°C colder than in California.(lower temperatures lead to less trustful judgements - I'll take liberties and extend it liking a place)

I made my way off to the Broadway district. walking up 7th avenue. It took 30 minutes, but the time passed by easily; New York is a much denser place than Los Angeles. Outside of Hollywood blvd, the walk between points of note had little to offer. Now, New York cit-ay on the other hand… the streets were full of people. Everyone walking around, going to work, making an audition, coming from yoga, the gym, running or on their way to/from shopping. such an eclectic mix of people to gawp at! One evening two teenagers walked past me, rappin' at each other, one would bust out a rhymes and the other would fire one back at him. Wrapped up in their own little world. I thought it was a pretty cool moment.

When I was walking through Central Park, I got to see an street performing group that I'd give two thumbs up for showmanship and entrepreneurial spirit. These guys were tight.² Near the end of their set, and had gathered up a crowd of 30-50 people. They'd just picked three people from the crowd - two lovely ladies and a hapless man. They flirted with the women, teased the guy. Before the last big trick, they started their money collection.   They called out people that didn't offer much or had just walked away at the mention of a contribution. They celebrated or acted something in harmony whenever someone gave in ten dollars or more. They'd ask them where they were from and in every case, they had a group-piece for the US state or country - either all of them saying something at the same time, or a rapid-fire back and forth between them, or in the case of Brazil, some of them sung and some of them gyrated something that might have been Samba. Then they would call around to the people from NY to represent, or if some big tipper had been already singled out [a guy from Boston in this case], they'd ask him if he was going to take that? I think they toed the line between persistence and entertainment darn near perfectly. If I had any more than the few dollars I had already given, I would have happily have given it over. There wasn't any passive aggression or guilting in how they wheedled the money out, it was all very entertaining. So, to cap it off, their most athletic member jumped over the three volunteers. I still grin thinking about it.

Other than strolling around the streets I did a couple of other things.

I visited the 9/11 memorial centre, which was pretty intense. It's a beautiful place, the foundations of the towers are water fixtures with chest-high walls holding the names of the civilians, fireman, paramedics and police officers that lost their lives.

I decided that I had time for a Broadway show, and went with Wicked!, thanks to the first season of Glee, which had one or two songs from it as well as Kristin Chenoweth, I had a passing familiarity with it.³ It was a great production, the dialogue was funny and there are some nice dance sequences and acrobatics dispersed through-out.

But the highlight of my NYC trip was my physical activities!

I went to Chelsea Piers for three days and followed beginners gymnastics class, parkour class (Parkour!) and breakdancing class. The teachers were all very good, encouraging and praising without coming off as condescending and they gave me a lot of ideas for my training, which has changed my hand balancing work quite a bit in the last 6 months. But, my goodness!, was my body in bits after it.. lying down, getting up, standing up, reaching up, bending over… my back and ass hated it all! Here's the link for it:
http://www.chelseapiers.com/new/fh/drop-in/adult-gymnastics-classes.cfm

The gymnastics and whatnot was a real high-note for me, and if anyone is interested in doing something physical for a day or even a couple of days, while in NYC, I'd highly recommend it, because the classes are drop-in, no appointment necessary and in the beginners class, they cater for the level of who ever turns up. By the end of the session, I was up to doing unspotted forward somersaults (tweaked my ankle on the landing of one :/ ) and spotted backward somersaults.

To literally cap off my trip to NYC, I got up at 05:30 and ran the Central Park circuit. I jogged up from Chelsea in a hoody and tracksuit bottom. Once I got up, switched out to my shorts and t-shirt. I got a few odd looks from runners as I went along, since most of them were carefully wrapped up. After about 30 minutes I started feeling the chill and after about 45 mins it had gotten cold in enough to hurt. Running back towards Broadway, I saw a big data screen with the temperature on it: 23°F or -5°C. So, naturally, for the home stretch, I covered myself up, hoping to rekindle some sensation. It took a few minutes to pull up the zip of my hoody, since my fingers were numb. But I eventually got it done! The run was a big deal since I am a fan of USA's Suits and the main character, Harvey Specter, apparently does the same circuit.

In terms of food, the highlights were: the Glasshouse, which is a popular pre-broadway show restaurant; and the Shakeshack, which does really nice burgers - the shakes aren't too bad either though.


1. Crazy is a bit harsh, but he neither endeared like an eccentric nor amused like a quirk.
2. Am I using that right, guys?… Guys?
3.  I now remember that I read the book it is based on… I should have led with that and not mentioned watching Glee. My street creed is toast now, yo.

Doc [in] Hollywood

The highlights of L.A. and Hollywood were:

1.     The service, breakfast and tours organised by the hostel

2.     The Warner Bros Studio Tour

3.     Salsa dancing in Santa Monica

4.     Craig Ferguson Show living taping

Breakfast in the hostel was all you can eat pancakes (make them yourself), fruit and oatmeal. I thought the pancakes were a wonderful touch, it was the first time that I went to a hostel where there was complimentary hot food for breakfast. The oatmeal (even the “original” flavor) wasn't great; I am used to high-grade, un-cut O, with no additives.

The hostel organised a guided tour of Beverly Hills. The guy that gave us the tour was a local, and a skinny-jeans-flannel-jacket-and-horn-rimmed-glasses-wearing-vegan-bagel-eatin’ dyed in the wool hipster.  True to his kind’s disdain for “mainstreaming”, we went by public bus. On our way to the stop, he pointed out a huge Great Dane sitting in an open-top pink Cadillac. He freaked out, about it as much as a hipster is permitted and "Instagrammed that sh*t". I think his under-expressed enthusiasm about this slice of Americana was representative of why I got a kick out of him; it was like he had taken the 0-11 measure of intense emotional expression and scaled it down to something feasible in the limited range of motion afforded by skinny jeans and knitted caps. He had timed it so that we had a moment to get a coffee before the bus arrived. He came out of the place with a bacon and egg bagel, but a vegan version, which he ate without irony. The tour stops weren't memorable, but I had a great time listening to the guide go on.

Later that day a group of us booked a spot on the Warner Bros Studio tour. The customer service through-out the tour, including buying the tickets was exemplary. When we got there, we ended up paying individually, there were 9 of us and three paid with credit cards. The clerk remained friendly for the 10-15 minutes it took for our payments and worked around problems with two of the credit card, all while the last-minute queue for the tour was snaking out behind us. In Belgium, one would have been told to get the hell out of the shop, since no money was worth hassle. The tour guide, Brad, was fantastic as well, passionate and knowledgeable about TV and film. I saw the sets for the Mentalist, which was a big highlight for me, particularly seeing the couch where Jane sleeps.¹

The dancing highlight of the entire America trip was a salsa party in Santa Monica. The teacher, Cristian Oviedo, is the current world bachata and salsa champion, and an absolute gentleman. The live music, the standard of dancing and the people were wonderful. I was sorry it didn’t go on longer.

I heard about the party via Internations, which I highly recommend becoming a member of, because it has communities in most major cities and the people are generally very social and open to newcomers even if it is just for a short time.

Before I went to the Salsa party, I did some training on the beach near Santa Monica Pier. It was warm and cloudless, but a bit windy. There were lots of people working out in the outdoor gym that was there – some even doing youtube worthy stuff. I trained as the sun set, which took forever. But it felt pretty cool to practice kung fu with an uninterrupted view of the sun setting..² It was also possible to take Trapeze lessons on the pier, which I would have done, if they were cheaper or I had time to do a couple of days of them.

The one thing that I did arrange before getting to the States was a ticket for a live taping of the Craig Ferguson Show. He’s easily my favourite talk-show host. He’s easy going and irreverent, there doesn’t appear to be any rehearsals at all, and the back and forth between him and his assistant Jeffery Peterson the Robot Skeleton has a very natural rhythm to it that sets it apart from the fake, a-bit-too planned feel I get from the other late night talk show hosts. Watching him is like sitting in the pub and havin’ a chat.

His guests were Billy Connolly and the girl playing the ghost in the SyFy version of Being Human. As far as I can recall, we were sat down in the studio about 30-45 minutes before the recording would begin. And we were introduced to Craig’s warm-up act, Chunky Steve – Ostensibly the best warm-up act in the business. As far as I can gather, the warm-up act is there to whip us into hysterics, so that we will laugh at anything. He spent the duration lowering our threshold for what was an acceptable joke. He picked on a couple of audience members, a blonde and a teenage boy in particularly, since they are such easy targets. Any time we didn’t laugh, he would chastise us and saying ”When I bust out the LOLs (the index and thumb of each hand making “L”s), you gotta laugh like what you heard was hilarious. Remember, mediocre comedian here.” He was like that friendly uncle with the dirty sense of humour that was strangely charming. It easily became the habit to laugh loudly at any joke. An example of mass hysteria, if ever I’d heard of it. A phrase he kept coming back to was “being part of TV magic.” The tone and reverence he gave the phrase was downright religious, much like when my Beverly Hills guide had something to say about the obscene wealth, scale, weirdness, or grandeur of celebrities and their lives. Anyway, as I said, we, the audience, dived right into the zealotry. Our laughter was what we left on the altar.³ You can see me below... I think.

Finally, Craig came out it was I expected. The chatting between himself and Billy was warm and familiar, with jokes thrown in all over the place. We laughed when we were supposed to, as hard as we could. I don’t know about the rest, but I was happy to oversell how funny a joke was, because I like Craig Ferguson and his show.

After Hollywood, I made my way by public transport to New Port Beach. Virtually no one uses public transport in California, car travel is so cheap that it is almost exclusively very poor people that use buses. To the point that my contact in Internations for the salsa party didn’t even know if night buses from Santa Monica back to Hollywood existed and my friend in New Port Beach didn’t know even it was possible to get there from LA just with trains and buses. I stayed pretty relaxed on the trains, but the buses made me nervous, since stops are rarely clearly indicated and bus drivers can forget that you’ve asked them for a particular stop. But Google Maps saw me through.  :)

Hanging out with my pal in New Port Beach was excellent. It was our first time seeing each other in 7 years. As it turned out, both of us were a bit worried that it would be an awkward mess. We ate out at a Crow burger (Gourmet burger “joint”), a Mexican restaurant where I ate Quinoa for the first time and had delicious guacamole. During the day, when she was at work, I did some planning for the New York and Boston legs of my trip, very fruitful kung fu training, and went to Road Runner to get fitted for some runners (trainers in American). On the last Friday, we went clubbing, most of the music sucked, but I did hear Thrift Shop by Mackelmore for the first time, which I came back to Belgium declaring the song to watch out for.

That Saturday we drove to San Diego Zoo, which was great fun. We did just one tour – the Animal Man tour, led by an improve comedian who’s done shows on HBO. We got to see pandas and a baby Giraffe (already over 1.8m tall… baby my ass).

1. No, that doesn’t sound weird at all. No sir-eee.
2. I’ve seen a couple of uninterrupted sunsets in Ireland, but either because this was in Santa Monica in California and it would be my only chance to see one this far West for the foreseeable future, or because the sunset is qualitatively better closer to the equator, this one is a special one.
3. I’m trying to sound like the guys from Top Gear, when they say something profound about a class of car being discontinued.

Wicky Wild Wild...

In January, I made my triumphant¹ return to the States. I gave myself 3.5 weeks to savour it.

• 10 days in California (6 days in LA, 4 in Newport Beach)
• 7 days in New York
• 5 days in Boston

Being an avid fan of American television, I’d been entertaining thoughts of heading out West for a couple of years now. And as luck would have it, a friend of mine was living in Newport Beach in the OC. So it was two birds with one stone flight. New York was obvs/tots a must; one of my favourite TV shows² is filmed there aaaand I wanted to see a Broadway show, plus walk-in gymnastics classes! Boston was a natural port of call because being Irish, having connections in that city are as certain as Molly having a sassy comeback for anything I might have to say.³

Getting on the plane in Dublin, I was away in Lala-land and I ended up taking the wrong seat. The guy, whose place I usurped,⁴ was very easy going about it and we swapped designated seats. Considering I was seated beside an wailing child, whose mother did not buckle him in even when directly instructed to do so,⁵ I think he came away the better in trading places.⁶

As a result of the 5 hour stopover in NY, I flew⁷ was flown across the US of A after sun down. There was zero cloud cover, which meant I could see the lamp lit lanes and car headlights down below.⁸ Like a nervous system laid out. I thought it looked fantastic; lights twinkling across a dark expanse, the street lights steady and the car lights moving along in between.⁹

I flew into LA Burbank, and despite it being January, it was still mid-teens with no wind worth mentioning. I ended up getting a taxi to the hostel because the public transport system was too intimidating to consider after being awake 20 hours. Cars are cheap, LA roads so wide and locations dispersed out, that few people use the bus. The bus system is what I would technically call a shambles. The stop at Burbank didn’t have a timetable that I could see. A couple of days later in Hollywood, I did spy a tiny timetable that read: “Early morning and late night 2 times an hour, during the day 4 times an hour”… or something to that effect. What time of day this actually referred to and what time in the hour, who’s to say? Most of the locals I spoke to didn’t even know if there were buses that went from one place to another, at a push they would allow that it was possible.

I stayed at Hollywood Hostel because it was just off Hollywood Blvd, which I figured meant most of what I wanted to see was in walking distance. The lovely lady that handled my check-in was named Charisma… She very much lived up to that name on two levels. Firstly, very warm, welcoming and unbelievably genuine. Second of all, her name was Charisma for crying out loud! She was from California; she had that hippy/surfer’s Zen air about her.

Being checked in to a place with such a comfortable and positive Californian stereotype was a good way to start the trip and certainly helped me sleep easily that night. :)

To be continued…

****

1. Ok – “triumphant” is a bit of a stretch…
2. Person of Interest (this one is up at the top alongside Breaking Bad, Sherlock [BBC version with Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch], Deadwood and Mad Men), which gets better and better; I’m actually getting a rush just thinking about how awesome it is; Humour, action set-pieces, witty repartee, strong leading men, lovely leading ladies, gold standard story development and, possibly most importantly, its oft tongue in cheek, but respectful homage to 80s action cinema.
3. Christmas 2011, she said something at dinner that I thought was too harsh, and I looked to Mummydearest and said “Now you are stuck with a daughter.” Molly noted the barbed comment, eyeballed me, and said rather menacinglyⁱ,”Ehhh, Máirtín… your friends in… Belgium [the syllables dripping in distaste] think that you are weird. [pauses for dramatic effect] Does that make you feel angry?”
4. Game of Thrones is back!
5. The disregard for the flight attendants instructions rankle more than the wailing. Certainly now on reflection.
6. I wonder how many pop culture references around New York I could fit in… I’ll try that in my New York post. Doing it here would just be “cray-cray”.
7. I wish I could fly...
8. I googled for information about the distribution of traffic volume during the day, specifically the difference in pattern between USA and Europe. I don’t recall noticing so much traffic when I flying over Europe at night. Given America’s “24/7” culture, it sounds reasonable to me that there would be more traffic at “off-peak” hours, because there is more likely to be someone getting off work at a given time. I called of the datahunt after 2 hours or so because I wasn't getting anywhere fast, and all I wanted was a by-the-way in a foot note.
9. 7 years ago, when I was in Florida, I had a couple of lectures on human physiology in aviation with a guy named Villiers. He also happened to be a flight instructor and told us that the semicircular canals in our ears can only track movement in two dimensions at a time. For the instrumentation exams that he oversaw, he would fly with them over the big farming states (e.g. Iowa) at night. At a certain point he would ask them to reach back behind the seat and get something out of a bag. When they did that, he flew them upside down. The twisting back and then looking down into the bag masked the sensation of being flipped. When the student turned back around, most had a very vitriolic response to the change – Screaming, freaking out, often threatening violence; the sky and ground were almost indistinguishable because the scattered lights of farmhouses between corn fields mirrored the starry sky, so there was a very strong sense of disorientation. The test was to see if they could use their instruments to right things again, and not "fly by the seat of their pants".

*******

i. Reminiscent of the malicious glee with which Mads Mikkelson plays Hannibal in the so named series

A commuted Dutch lesson

4 months down in Antwerp now.

It is coming along well - cashiers and servers don't automatically respond to me in English now. The entire process is really helped along by being in a native region.

As a language, it is really growing on me, it's very expressive, almost like a pantomime. This exchange below is a perfect example of it. It was like public performance art...

A couple of weeks back, some of my fellow commuters - keen to see me progress, surely - listed useful phrases for me. It was like a role-play that we would have done for our Leaving Cert. languages.

Women A: Mag ik hier zitten?
Women B: Nee.
Women A: ...
Women B: Mevrouw! Ik heb gezegd dat je niet hier zitten kan!
Women B: ...
Women A: Mevrouw! Je hebt mij met jouw krant geraakt!
Women B: Mevrouw! Ik heb gezegd dat je niet hier zitten kan!
Women A: Ik kan zitten waar ik wil. Ik zal de politie bellen.
Women B: Bel! Bel!
[...]
Man A: Mag ik hier zitten.
Women A: Je mag! Je bent hartelijk welkom.⁰

This woman (Woman A) regularly gets the same bus as me. She's is not a morning person. She storms down the aisle, directly for the seat her mental game of Russian Roulette picks for her. The bus was not full, maybe 20% of the seats were free. Even the seat she picked was one of a quartet (two facing two). She just had to sit facing the direction of travel, even though the woman declined her request and the two seats facing away from travel were free.

After 5 minutes of bickering, sniping and misty-eyed nostalgia at "that time you hit me with your newspaper", things died down. A Stranger gets on the bus and asks to sit in one of other two seats. The entire bus could barely keep it together.

Naturally, despite the blow-up, neither woman moved until it came time for them to get off the bus.

Were this Ireland, I would be convinced that this charade was, well, a charade. However, since I have previously noted the mysterious mechanics of Picking Your Seat On The Bus In Belgium, I'll allow it. I can imagine how Sandra Bullock's character felt about getting on public transport after the whole debacle she went through. Of course, the bus didn't have to move for us for "It" to go off.¹

********

⁰Woman A: May I sit here?
Woman B: No.
Woman A: [The woman sits down]
Woman B: Madam! I said that you cannot sit here.
Woman B: [Hits Woman A on the leg with her rolled up newspaper]ⁱ
Woman A: Madam! You have hit me your newspaper!
Woman B: Madam! I told you that you could not sit here.
Woman A: I can sit wherever I like. I am going to call the police.

Women B: Call away.
[The bus reaches its next stop]
Man A: May I sit here?
Women A: Of course you can! You are more than welcome.
¹Oh no he didn't!

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ⁱClearly an avid follower of Jason Bourne.

BYOK

I arrived in Antwerp somewhat later than originally planned...

Here's my advice about flying to Antwerp airport: Don't.⁰

It is a dinky little thing; From Dublin, there are no direct flights, I had to travel via Manchester. Unfortunately, the arriving and departing flights were in different terminals, and I arrived minutes too late to check in. On the upside, the airline and airport helpdesks were really helpful. Respectively, they had me on the first flight the following morning, and gave me directions to a reasonably priced hotel.

My temporary residence is palatial- from office through the hall into the living room there is a a 50 foot stretch good enough for lunges and leg work, but the hallway is rather narrow, so I can't do any jumping or hopping drills. :'(

It is just off the Belgian equivalent of Grafton st., de Meir. It's got all the mod cons, except for an Irish standard...  I had been cautioned during my cross-culture program that there is a large coffee culture in Belgium; an unforeseen consequence of this is that coffee makers are standard, not electric kettles. Fear not faithful readers, I bought one.¹

[At the risk of causing narrative whiplash, I am going to switch focus somewhat]

Coming out of my third weekend in Belgium, I have cobbled together some observations.

• On the buses, which have 2-person seats that don't fit 2 averaged sized males and face-to-face seats that are knee-caressingly close, the locals aren't going to make room unless you ask/gesture for some, but they do so without grumbling. Additionally, I've seen numerous strangers sharing an open chuckle about something or chatting idly.
• The public transport around Antwerp is super; imagine that they have timetables at all the stops that are accurate for the stop. The bus drivers themselves are generally pleasant.
• They are open, and welcome discussion about things; they want to be sure that all the options have been addressed and there is a consensus.
• Everybody speaks English, as well as Dutch and French. Comfortably. They are so blase about being polyglots² that I feel a bit silly having a sense of accomplishment in being able to speak Irish and English.
• The Flemish have a similar sense of humour to the Irish, I think. They like to poke fun at themselves and everyone else; pan-depreciating, if you will.
• The shops are closed on a Sunday - that took some adjusting.
• Walking around, I have either to focus on the sounds being said, to start training my ear for learning Dutch, or tune them out. When I choose the latter, there is a bit of a lag before I realise I am hearing English.
• Dutch reminds me of Japanese and Chinese; it emphasizes vowel sounds more so than the consonants - which is more common in other European languages [In my opinion, at least... it is certainly the case for English - where text speak contracts words to strings of consonants]. Every now and again, my ear catches syllables that I can parse into words I recognise from German or English, but for the most part I hear mysterious ululations. My Dutch lessons are due to start mid-February, which I am really looking forward to; I asked for directions is Dutch yesterday and the guy responded in English as if it is what I had spoken.

So far, the only practical advice I can give a body leaving Ireland for Belgium is: bring your own kettle.

----

Postword: I had sat down to write a bit more, but I got sidetracked doing the kettle experiment. :/

***

⁰Most people bound for Antwerp go to Brussels, since it is 30-45 minutes by rail or highway.

¹There is a kettle you can put on the hob. But the heat transfer is abysmal:

1. I put the same amount of water in each kettle
2. I let the hob heat for 5 minutes before hand
3. To make it more exciting, like a race, see, I started them at the same time.
4. The electric kettle goes off automatically, so I assumed it was calibrated for 100°C.
5. For the hob kettle, I opened the top and stared down until there was persistant bubbling ["nucleate boiling" to give its technical description; film boiling is when the surface is too hot and a film of vapour forms at the surface and further evaporation; and a reason that you can dip your hand in liquid nitrogen, if you're into that kind of thing - in technical gobble-dy gook it is known as the Leidenfrost Effect]
6. The heat transfer area for the hob kettle was the bottom of it, so I measured the diameter with my handy measuring tape.
7. For the electrical kettle, I cut strips of paper and stood them around the coil, holding them close to one of the coil's sides and added together the strip lengths. I got the coil circumference by wrapping a strip of paper around the coil an measuring its length. Working in the confines of kettle with my clown hands was a tad annoying though - if only I had some kid at hand to stick its hands in the kettle...
8. I figure the results are good to within 10% of the actual values. The main sources of uncertainty being the coil area, the starting temperature and my judgement call on when boiling was in the hob kettle. Even based on time-to-boil alone the hob kettle sucks, it might be able to compete if it was a gas hob, but that is not an option.

Here are my calculations:

From the trouble with mairtin...

From the trouble with mairtin...

²Related to this is that one of the people helping me find a place to live told me about her experience learning some Japanese to get by on a trip there. She complained that they were just these meaningless sounds that she had to memorise. Between French, English, German and Dutch she's grown up seeing a set of languages that are related to each other in some way or another; a situation where the fallacy of noises having a fundamental meaning can easily arise.  To me, learning Dutch language is like her experience with Japanese.

The "E" word

The Irish have been doing it for a long time - Potato famine, economic recessions, boredom, warrants... any reason will do.

My great granduncle and a friend of his went out to Canada- to the Wild West, Eh- and bought themselves a 256 acre plot of land. Back in those days you got nothing just the land and it was a race against time to have the cabin ready or die of exposure come Winter. They drove 400 mule from Montana up to the plot. The venture didn't really work out; in the first Winter they had to eat a couple of mules.⁰ He packed it in after that, but his mate struck oil shortly thereafter. Literally.

As a young man, my grandfather lived in Canada, working as a mechanic with the Trans-Pacific Rail and for a uranium mine operation. Later, himself and my grandmother lived in the States. Of their children, 8/10 have lived or are currently living abroad.

Emigration isn't such a big deal now.

I am not going into a infrastructure-less wilderness with my life in the balance. The world is a tiny place now; it takes less time for me to get from Antwerp to Dublin than it does from Clare to Dublin. 

These days the biggest change caused by emigrating is who gets your taxes.

Besides, I've seen the worst that moving around in Europe has to offer thanks to Jason F*cking Bourne.

***

⁰I think "woof" is the technical term.

Railroaded

I went back to Clare last week. I booked the tickets on-line, an 0700 Thursday train down. The perfect plan.

In other news:

We had a fantastic Christmas Party on Wednesday night. I dominated in the inaugural Daniela Baum Bake-Off .ⁱ I made a marbled, cocoa and plain, madera cake replete with raspberries and blackberries.ⁱⁱ I partially covered it in chocolate. My reason being that some berries were still visible on the surface- albeit sunken like... um... like a pock marks on a plague survivor- and it seemed wasteful to hide the Technicolor delights under a bushel-not an actual bushel- of chocolate. After our dinner, we scampered/swayed to Whelan's. It was a good laugh, better than last year's party by far.ⁱⁱⁱ It was after 0430 when I got to sleep.

Already, I can hear you saying: "Hmmm. Going to bed at that time is not very responsible, given your early start, Mairtin." I can even see you peering over your horn rimmed glasses at me to complement^iv that disapproving tone of yours.^v

I awoke with me alarm clock in plenty of time for the train.

A couple of hours later, I awoke of my own accord, in negative plenty of time for the train.

In hopes of clemency, I rang Irish Rail. Bluntly was I informed "No Mercy" was the order of the day.^vi I got over it and acquired one of the nifty 10Euro train tickets - plus credit card charges.

Cue Rant:

The online bookers must choose a train time and get designated a seat. For everything to work out hunky dory, fewer casual users- commuters, people without internet/credit card, otherwise disadvantaged or disorganised bums- can alight than there are unbooked seats.

This could be ensured: if there was a bouncer that stopped the commoners coming on before VIPs,"Sorry folks, regulars only today." Or the computerised turnstiles could be programmed to prevent more casuals than there are free seats getting on the train at the beginning of its route (It could beep something rude like R2-D2 at them, Morgan Freeman could tell them,"Now just isn't your time, son/girl [please select gender]"^vii, or Kanye could interrupt their scheduled promenade to the train with,"People that book on-line are the best train users ever. You should leave.").

This reminds me that most of the stations I have gone through don't even have these turnstiles, which brings us back to the labour intensive bouncer option. For interim stations, does the train only stop for people that booked tickets? Do the bouncers travel with the train. We could have a scanner on the door and it could trigger countermeasures against the casuals that try to get on the train- that would do great for the flagging Funniest Home Movie franchise.

I smell a calculus/algebra problem brewing at this point, no longer are we interested in when Train A will meet Train B, but whether Sally can get on the train in Athlone if there is a football match in Naas that has a connection on Ballina.

Alternatively, they could just stop looking for seats and train times. Otherwise it just sounds like they want to get everyone to use automated methods and reduce the number of positions required in the running of Irish Rail Services.

End Rant.

ⁱThere were just two entries :/ "Though we try, we can never match her"

ⁱⁱSimilar to the "berry" special cake I made for some young lad's 21st a while back, but this time I got to eat it :)

ⁱⁱⁱSorry, Gleb and Julia, the truth/subjectivity can be a cruel mistress

^ivAn easy way to remember the difference between complement- to complete a pairing or group, e.g. "that tie complements that shirt" and compliment- to praise, etc.- is the first "e" in complement matches with complete [no booing!]

^vYou know who you are!¹

^viAdmittedly, I am lemon-coating the response to my request. That is right, I lack the emotional maturity to accept the consequences of actions, despite having clearly ticked the box that says I accept the T&Cs.² Do you have a problem with that?

^viiI'm sure the budget could stretch to getting him in, it would certainly take the sting out of being treated like second class citizen

¹At least I hope so, since I don't

²link

I wonder did this ever happen to Indie...

Myself and Brian arrived in Zurich without ado. In short order, we were settled into our seats on the train, gazing out the window at sun-kissed locals frolicking in Zurich lake.

To pass the time, I opened my laptop to work on my hitherto incomplete presentation ["very little left to do," he promised].

I plug in my portable hard-drive. Said hard-drive whined like the little buzz-saw that couldn't, ultimately rattling to a halt. My Mac kindly supplied that the drive could not be mounted... even after turning it off and back on again.

In college, I heard many, many, many people emphasise the importance of back-ups of back-ups of back-ups. I am certain, I have pontificated about it too. For reasons unknown,* I neglected to create even the first back-up in the redundancy chain.

I took stock of what I had to work with, since I imagine myself a "cool customer" not given to panic.

Problem Statement

1. I had no presentation or presentation content on my person
   
2. It was Sunday, my presentation due 10am on Wednesday

Solution

1. Mark had a week-old draft
   
2. Unprocessed data were in Ireland and Barbara was a call away
3. The software I needed for processing the data was available at the conference
   

I gave Mark a text to check if he still had it. I called Barbara to apprise her of the situation and her impending role in it. Bless their cotton socks, they came through for me. Particularly Barbara since she had to follow my directions to find files scattered across 4 computers in various folders.

In my free time I was able to complete the presentation. The nicest nuts-and-bolts thing I learned was that Quicktime Pro. can convert a set of images to a movie. I finished the presentation with about 6 hours to spare.** I grabbed some shut-eye. Before going down to breakfast, I did a bit of meditation to ravel my frayed mind.



All in all, I was very pleased with my performance. I consider it my best work since the end of the Fas Science Challenge.

In the past few years, I did not give enough thought to presenting my work, it suffered for my dalliance, I think. But Brian said this one was the first time he understood what was going on in a crystallization slideshow. Boo Yeah!

In summary

1. It is good practice to make back-ups of back-ups of back-ups
2. It is good practice to check if a external hard-drive works after being dropped
3. It is good practice to solve problems instead of worrying about them
   

_______________________________________________________________

*I have no idea whatsoever as to why I did not have copies scattered all over the place. I would idly think,"I better copy that onto my laptop since I will be using it to present" - "yeah, you really should do that." Without result. If the incident were a film, there would have been a dramatic flashback to Saturday night. To the moment the hard-drive fumbled from my grasp after I unplugged it from my computer with the latest slides. At the time I stared at it for a moment, prehaps to allow the audience of the Mairtin Show to appreciate its significance. - Admittedly my cognitive biase weighs heavily on the recollection, and it always sounds good to say,"Deep-down-inside, some part of me knew things were going to get hairy."

**My memory of anything beyond the slides is very fuzzy for closing moments of completing the presentation

Holiday in Morocco: episode 4 The Phantom-green Menace

The Desert

Our last morning in Merrakech, our driver Mustafa collected us to go to the desert. A friendly chap, he was speaking to us with little difficulty for 10-15 minutes before he stated he could not speak English, only French, Berber and Arabic. Disliking being monolingual at the best of times, hearing someone poo-poo his good command of English was salt on the wound.

The drive took us through the High and Low Atlas Mountains to Mhamid. It was hard to decide which was the nicer to look at. We saw some “old skool” Kasbahs. Since they are made with bricks of local soil, they had to be pointed out to us. They were like- like... Ninja Buildings!

The next day we left Mhamid- where the guest house was- by camel to go to an Oasis. Our guide was called Nin. Born and bred in the area. He led us along on the camels like a pair of kids getting pony rides in Blackpool. His English was not as strong as Mustafa's, so while he could talk as well as I could in German for my Leaving Cert, he was not comfortable saying much more than,”Are you OK, my frends? Not tired? Not hot?”

Some authors comment on the rhythm of horse's gait and that it is important to go with it for maximum comfort [minimum discomfort, really]. I think they say it to show off how much they know, not that they are wrong. To being rubbed raw and bruised by the camel's cadence, I pretended I was strutting to “Feeling Good” by Nina Simone, only that I had an ass and hips the size of a large house.

On our way to the oasis, we stopped for mint tea and philsophising with a nomad called Abdu. Around his hut, were lots and lots of stones. They were arranged in a grid. It reminded me of this xkcd strip. He said two great things. The first was about being in the desert, no one for miles, no lights for miles,”Just you, your God and the stars.” That he said your God, spoke well of the man, a real spiritual maturity that almost all Christians lack... one in particular. IMO.

The other thing he said was even better,”Our reality is too small for the world”

It is the most Zen thing I have heard. Abdu and the rest of the nomads we met in the desert have a simple and elegant perspective on life, I am convinced there are on their way to enlightenment.

That evening, we watched the sunset from a sand dune, while wild camels plodded along the blasted flats in front of us. The next day, we ate breakfast in the Sahara, not in a tent or building. A low table, two stools and our food, dune to one side and rising sun to the other. I felt like I was in a music video.

After a few more hours on the camel, we changed to 4x4 again. This time we sped through small dunes and dried out river-beds. It was very exciting, it is the only time I have been interested in being able to drive, feeling the jeep sluice through turns. We reached the dunes of Inshigaga at 3 or so. Some of these over-important piles of dust are 300m tall, the same size as Estonia's highest point! We went for a walk on them. That was rather tiring. On top of that, everywhere we looked was stunning, everything looked like it was photoshopped. Everything looked like a professional photographer had organised it for an Apple desktop background. We labelled the idea “i-Dunes”

After dinner we were treated to a quintet of Nomads beating a drum to traditional chants and songs, again, fantastic stuff... you probably had to be there. I managed to record some of the songs on my mp3 player and on my camera [To follow next week]. I played a recording for one of the nomads. He was so impressed that he asked me to email the recording to him. His email address was xxxxx.nomad@hotmail.mor. It was the Ronseal woodstain of email addresses.

By evening the following day, we were thoroughly jaded by the natural beauty. I gave up taking pictures, to pick one sight was to miss another 10. When we got back to Merrakech, the hotel Sherazade had provided us with a twin room [I opened that door with great trepidation], with an actual wall almost completely splitting the sides of the room.

The Undeparted (imagine it as the white on black writing preceding a scene in Frasier)

[...Somewhere in the depths of rural Ireland, there is a pub. In this proto-irish tavern, poorly lit and inky with shadows, the straight lines of the bar are interrupted by a lump. The lump has tweed jacket and a tweed cap. To its right there is an untouched pint...]

It was an overcast morning when we went to the airport, our first poor weather for the holiday. We had to wait for the check-in desk to open. They were running late. Going through the security screening, Gleb gathers in a breath and says,“Take. That. Murphy!”

[...the lump stirs, as if kicked. It says: “Sin é.”]

We just about made it for boarding of our flight. We sat near our gate waiting 30, 60, 120 minutes passed. Nothing happened.

[... the lump snickers darkly...]

We were told Ryanair cancelled their flights from Merrakech to Luton AND Bristol. 200 people left in the lurch- the next Ryanair flight to those destinations being in 7 days time. 3 hours later, after queuing and going through passport control, we discover no other airline cancelled. Easyjet's flight to London is 230GBP and rising.We opt for the road less travelled by and that made all the difference. We went with Morocco Air, lined up for 20 minutes, spent less money and got a flight to Paris, while the queue at easyjet's booking desk lasted over 5 hours.Considering that the trip included Valentine's day, it is fitting that it would include an overnight stay in gay Paris. And so that is how I ended up spending my first night in Paris sharing a bed [yet again] with Gleb.

[...Murphy leans back on his bar stool, a look of supreme satisfaction painted across his mug, and takes a well deserved draught of his pint...]

Showtime

During the flight we could not escape how marketable our misadventures could be as a movie. The running jokes of inuendo. The odd couple vibe we had for the trip. The stunning photogenic settings. The formulaic progression of it all. Scripted by the Gods, directed by Gremlins. I figure Ben stiller can be play me, and Rowan Atkinson as Gleb.

All in all a successful holiday.

Holiday in Morocco: episode 3

Merrakech is an old city. It has been around in one form or another for nearly 1,000 years. There are miles and miles of stalls, they offer leather bags, jewelry, herbs, spices, perfumes, dyes, crepes, canes, swords, seats and bath tubs [almost everything and the kitchen sink]. Where Assouaria evoked Jason Bourne, this place was very much the remit of Henry Jones Jr. The atmosphere and surroundings would fit seamlessly with himself shooting a scimitar wielding thug. It is known for one other thing.

Before telling you what it is, I shall digress. If you are going to get a laugh out of the same shtick over and over again, there needs to be an element of escalation to it. Take things to their logical extreme. For the first half of the trip Gleb maintained an accelerating stream of innuendo.

For reasons I am not aware of, I became more homophobic with each day.* Gleb took sadistic advantage of this for his own entertainment. The cad!

Merrakech is known as a Pink City.

When we stepped into the room we were sharing, I began looking to the left of the door, peripherally aware of Gleb's laughter. “Hmm.... Large room, seating area, bathroom... where are the beds?... Oh.” Gleb's source of mirth was that there was a double bed.

In the market, we grabbed a fabulous dinner at a place apparently endorsed by Jamie Oliver- at least there is a picture of him with the staff. Afterward, at my insistence we hit a Gelati. He grabbed a mint tea. I ordered ice-cream. I watched the man prepare the ice-cream from my seat. He put a spoon on the saucer with the bowl. He cast a glance at our table. Without missing a beat, he put another spoon on the saucer. Gleb suggested we sit closer together to stay warm. The bastard was enjoying my discomfort immensely, with good reason.

The sleeping arrangements for Merrakech involved what Gleb labelled the “Chastity Pillow” to ensure no undue contact occured in the depths of the night.

*After the fact, Bob observed that by, Gleb being the instigator, I was pigeon-holed in the role of straight man for the skit [The Steve Martin to his John Candy- of Planes, Trains and Automobiles]. Had I... erm... rose to the occasion one-up-manship could have followed. The “Gay Chicken” featured in Scrubs between Dr Cox and the character played by Brendan Frasier springs to mind... As rationales/justifications go, this is a great one. I think I will stick with it.

Holiday in Morocco: episode 2

Essaouira

It is known for its Medina. Orson Welles shot scenes of his version of Othello in and around it. Jimi Hendrix wrote Castles Made of Sand here.

I had no idea how flaccid and lifeless Agadir was until I stepped inside the Medina walls. Stalls, populated by friendly chaps offering their wares at a steal. Narrow, high-walled alley-streets... it feels like there is equal chance of a street rat rushing by one step ahead of the breadline or would-be assassins falling under Jason Bourne's boot.

Since the Lonely Planet Morocco guide planned most of our trip... granted Gleb read it... when we got off of the bus, we could ignore all the people handing out cards for various hotels.

Despite the bustle of the place, it is easy to relax and forget about things “Up North”. The Riad had a rooftop terrace overlooking the sea and a mosque. Gleb felt compelled to point out its romantic ambiance and suggested putting the beds together.
____________________________________________________________
The Real Hustle

Our success with the magic boxes purchase bolstered our confidence in our bartering skill. It is said:”Pride doth come before a fall.”

A Bedouin shopkeeper stops us in the street. A rapid exchange of words outside his stall and [flash & puff of smoke] we are in his back room. He shows us pictures of a Sahara tour his family runs; camels, dunes, the works. We told him we would consider it. He stops us from leaving,“Do you not want tea?” We falter... In the garbled moments that followed Gleb was wrapped in scarves of indigo and I was shown “family made” jewelry.
On a scarf, Gleb got them down to 100Dh. Haggler 1 agreed to it, but insisted it was such a good deal that Gleb should give him the price of cigarettes too- “not profit at all, friend, just for cigarettes. Nothing more.” That was a 20% mark-up.

I got a ring. Haggler 2 insisted on getting Irish money as a souvenier,”I have a big collection. Even a 500Euro note”. 1 Euro coin. A 5% mark-up on the ring.

During the shafting:

• They got home field advantage [“Step into my parlour,” said the spider to the fly]
• They called us friend
• When asked a price they said- “There are only democratic prices here, Friend” forcing us to make the first offer
• They talked about everyone being happy with the deal

And most importantly...

• Changed tactics as soon as one failed

In Going Postal, Terry Pratchett describes hucksters superbly. When Moist Von Lipwig, a conman himself, meets Reacher Gilt, the villain, he marks him instantly as a kindred spirit because of his trustworthy smile and firm handshake. An accurate appraisal, in my humbled opinion.
Afterwards, Gleb and I marvelled at their skill. They had our measure from the moment we ambled gormlessly past their stall. Whether or not the jewelry was made by the family, the selling of the jewelry is certainly a family business. “While you are in the college, I have learned in the school of Life,”smiled Haggler 2.

At this point, further score keeping would be embarrassing...

More to follow after these announcements from out sponsors.

Holiday in Morocco: episode 1

Itinerary

We flew into Agadir with Aerlingus. Agadir is a very quiet beachside Moroccon town. We stayed at the Hotel Sindibad. The twin room, ensuite, cost 15Euro per person. We ate our dinners at the 1,001 Nights restaurant adjacent to the hotel. By and large this place gives you no feel whatsoever for the offerings of Morocco. I recommend staying here a day at most, if at all.

From Agadir, we travelled by bus to Assouira. Another beach side town, although this one has more to it. We stayed in the Riad Nahkma. The riad had a rooftop terrace and deals on baths and massages. The twin ensuite cost 20Euro per person per night. It is possible to ride horses and camels on the beach. There are a good choice of restaurants and kiosks to eat in.

We left Assouira to Merrakech by bus. Here, we stayed in the hotel Sherazade. The room cost about 25Euro per person per night. Like the other places we stayed in, the breakfast was extra. It is a much larger town, with miles and miles of markets to see and haggle in. The square is also full of places to get everything from orange juice to soups to full dinners, tented in the open air.

From Merrakech we bought a tour package from Sahara Services. 4X4 to and from the desert. One night in a guest house. Travelled by camel to stay a night at an oasis and then by camel and 4x4 to stay at the feet of 40km of large sand dunes. We returned to Merrakech by 4x4 via a different route through the Low and High Atlas mountain ranges. All told, the tour cost 320Euro each. It was supposed to be 385, but we were given a student price, at least that is what they said.

We were booked our return flight from Merrakech with Ryanair. Going by way of Luton, England.
_____________________________________________________________________
The Trip

The question, I'm sure, on everyone's lips was “Where is Mairtin?”... at least it was the one my mother had [face scrunches in consternation].

I was in Morocco with Gleb. We booked the tickets back in November, with my usual aplomb, I did not note we were away for Valentines day... the interim months were replete with tawdry gay jokes.

The Arrival

Arrived in Morocco without much ado. Taking in the savanaesque landscape called the Lion King theme music to mind. That was fleeting. After passport control, People kept grabbing our bags, so they could get a tip, I fell for the cunning ploy. You win this round Morocco [shakes fist].

Morocco 1 – Foreigners 0

We got a Taxi [a battered early 90s Merc, of the vintage featured in 3 Kings] to our hotel. After fruitless seconds looking for safety belt buckles, our taxi driver told us you don't have to wear them in Morocco. He sounded strangely smug. The road was full of pedal-start motor bikes, beeping, goats and finely choreographed traffic, it reminded me of China. When we reached our hotel, the taxi driver said,”That is two hundred- Two hundred and fifty.”- Clearly a sly bump-up... we let it slide.

Morocco 2 - Suckers 0

Agadir

The restaurant we ate at gave us a free refill on our bread basket without us asking.
2 – Wisened Travellers 1 [Although it only happened the first night, the second night, she remained pointedly empty]
Next morning, Gleb observed that he knew I was awake because I was not snoring.
Walking through Agadir, a man beckoned us to his stall. Knowing no better, we went over. He sold us magic boxes- a box with a hidden locking mechanism. He said that if I could open it that I would get it for free. Once I openned on the first hidden compartment, he took it from me and opened it himself, the bastard. On the upside, we got them for under half price... on the downside I didn't want one. We'll call it a draw.

Stay tuned for more mishaps and madcap antics, same chem-time, same chem-channel.

Coming Soon...

Welcome to Morocco, you can check out any time, but you can never leave.

Conferences and Calamaties

Got to the airport 100 minutes before the scheduled departure time. A forlorn looking Barbara greets me with "Mairtin, you are going to kill me...".
It turned out she had forgotten her passport.
The wayward article was in the engineering building. We took a shockingly slow taxi trip to UCD.
Barbara's mother does not use a mobile phone. She had to collect Barbara's office key from her [Barbara's] boyfriend, Daniel. Daniel was supposed to be in work- he wasn't.
She rushed in to a nearby Starbucks roaring: "someone please help me! My daughter is going to Holland this morning and has forgotten her passport. I need to use a phone!" Someone was kind enough to provide one and the twain met successfully, and all was well.
Got the passport [and a camera] and made it back to the airport in 20 minutes from UCD, there was a shakey moment when Barbara's mother drove down the wrong way on a road, I calmly told her this was the case and once more all was well.
5 hours later...
We got to the conference centre to register. Last week I was asked if I had sorted out the accommodation for the ISIC conference, I glibly retorted that it was included in the registration fees. The closer we got to that desk, the more I doubted that this was so. Nonetheless I hoped that the receptionist would finish her piece with "...and here are your accommodation details". [Hands us keys to suites].Despite staring at her expectantly after she had given us our bags and coupons, she did not say the magic words.
"Bugger..."
[Time passed]
We were in the StayOkay Hostel by the river, and all was well.

Had a waffle and whipped ice-cream in town. Maastricht is a pretty buildinged, old and institutionally sedate town- very reminiscent of Bruges, of In Bruges fame.

The Chinese Wedding

My brother got married in China at the beginning of August. Here's an account of the trip

Dramatis Personae

Mairtin: Me
Eimhin: The artist (His animated short has been selected for a film festival in LA), 195cm tall. at least 20cm greater than what is usually seen in China.
Diorraing: The kid. Does not really like chinese food...
Cillian: The Groom. A mathematician.
Jin Xi: The Bride. Generally our interpreter.
David: The Best Man. Astrophysicist. 199cm, 100Kg, can dead lift double body weight; a monster.
Jin Xi's Mother: Encourages Diorraing to eat, giving us a battery of medicines at the slightest indication of a cold, rumour has it prices drop by 20% when she walks into a shop.
Jin Xi's Grandmother: The family matriarch. The Hardy Old Lady. Master haggler.
Jin Xi's Grandfather: Happy man. Missing a middle finger. Delights in telling us stories when we won't understand (always). Looks like he he should be a movie star/celebrity, reminds me of Beat Takeshi.


T-minus 12 days
Went to zoo with younguns.
Molly was particularly taken with the apes and monkeys.

The flight leaving before us at our gate was full of annoying teenagers returning from a language course, I slept on the ground for a while..
In Amsterdam, Eimhin caused his usual delays going through security for our connecting flight to Chengdu, too many pockets and too many things in his bag don't you know...

T-minus 11 days
Arrived in Cheng Du without further incident.
Got a lift from a friend of Jin Xi's family from Cheng Du to Pengzhou not as hair raising as the car trips in Quanzhou in 2005.
Went for a walk around the town, were stared at and had people roar "Hello" at us- as it happens few tourists come by this part of China, well except to see the Panda Reserve... I'll get to that later.

T-minus 10 days
We went to the local park for a stroll.
The crickets/cicads were extremely loud, I'd wager pretty close to the threshold limits for exposure to sound in an industrial setting... Fed some coy/goldfish/carp, beasts of fish! Most were at least a foot long, dropping food into their pond led to the bubbling feeding frenzy generally reserved for piranhas in cartoons.
Jin Xi brought Diorraing skating on the outdoor Roller Disco, here we were subject to more staring, surreptitious camera phone snap shots, ultimately leading to posing for pictures like sideshow attractions... demeaning? Of course not! They were particularly awed when we told them that Eimhin's shoe size is Wŭ Shi (50 European).

T-minus 9 days
Got up early, went to see the Pandas (Xiun Mao). Giant ones and Red ones.
Giant Pandas give birth to twins 45% of the time in captivity. They are shockingly cute and useless, I mean really; Black and White, feed solely on Bamboo (only 27 of the 60 species that they could eat), kids are not independent of their mothers for the first 18 months, take another 3-4 years to reach sexual maturity, stacked odds...
The red ones look like foxes and actually move, I even saw a couple of them scrapping... "Skidoosh"
Continuing with a tradition of large-scale eating, Eimhin and I finished off ten courses at a family dinner, the locals were shocked.

T-minus 8 days
Made my first wantons and jaoza today, jaoza should look like fans or some such- of course mine looked like tied sacks. We made 100s of them though!
Stomach took a beating from the previous night, so I did not have much for lunch... I'm getting too old for this shit.
Learned how to play Mahjong, of the two variations they mentioned I'm not sure which one I know.
Bought 2 bottles of orange juice, 2 of grape drink, 1 of peach drink, 1 of pepsi, 2 of water [all 1.5L volumes], plus some snacks for less than 100RMB, less than a tenner... wow-wee

T-minus 7 days
Played Mahjong for a bit. Lost. Went to see a man about a suit. My disproportionately long arms were remarked upon. In the end, got a suit, shirt and tie for less than 60Euro... Hot diggity. Went shopping again, Eimhin bought imported raisins that cost a quarter of the total shopping bill, a shockingly high ratio considering it was such relatively small amount of it. The bitterest irony of it was that the raisins were shipped from Dublin 15. If he had gone domestic then the price would have been at the most a tenth of it.

T-minus 6 days
Got up early. Took train from Cheng Du to Cha ning, strangely the train is less comfortable and takes two hours longer than the 5 hour bus journey... Went for the first of many hosted 15 course meals.

T-minus 5 days
Went shopping in Chaning, well browsing at least. More open gawking and staring to be had by the locals. Another big fancy meal. Went to Karaoke, all the chinese people were shockingly good at it, at least three of them were classically trained in singing. I thought it best not to partake...

T-minus 4 days
David arrived. Had dinner. A snippet of the conversation during dinnger:
Jin Xi's Grandmother: [unintelligible Chinese]
Jin Xi: [Unintelligible reply]
Cillian: Did she just call me "that foreigner" again? Remind her my name is Cillian!

Oh! How we laughed and fell about the place, the offspring of "Meet the Parents" and "Lost in Translation"

T-minus 3 days
Got up early, went up... and up... to the Bamboo Forest. It was amazing... the first day going outdoors that I was not slick with sweat... I mean the sights were great. All along the cliff faces in the bamboo forest there are carvings from the Three Kingdoms era. People stared as much at Eimhin and David as they did the statues in the area... One asked for a photo with them [Eimhin and David, I mean. They weren't asking statues for photos]

T-minus 2 days
We found out that the locals have been calling us "Wei Go Ren" ["Foreigner" or some such]. Thought it fair to start saying "Zhong Gua Ren" in response.
Went to the local gym. Taekwando and Wushu is taught by a guy named Qibo. Cillian introduced me to him. We did a tiny amount of pushing hands, then light sparring. fast little bugger. He kept kicking me in the stomach, I have 20Kg and half a foot in height on him, so he kept bouncing off of me
I obliged Qibo in a gloved bout of fisticuffs. He got me with a delightful hook that made a good contact on my jaw, it clicked for the rest of the day. I kept stepping on his lead foot, by accident, I assure.
Went for another multi-course meal and then some more karaoke. There were no uber talented singers so I brought the thunder, did some renditions of Britney Spears [her golden age stuff of course].

T-minus 1 day
Went back to the gym again. Played around with a Jian this time, tried butterfly kicks, failed. Did sanzhan for Qibo, realises why he was so out of breath during sparring yesterday, while i was hale and hearty. Got to palm one of his round house kicks.

W-Day

Kidnapping and Making Away with a Brother's Prospective Bride

Aside: Context aside, the wedding day is representative of the The Siquan trip, flying blind with last minute instruction or miming.

Got up early, had a shave. Put on a my "Sunday Best", Spirit Level cuff-links are a must.
The wedding started at 0830Hrs. Irish contingent, with compulsory interpreter [xi-xi, the bridesmaid] were talked through the in-and-outs of chinese wedding traditions accrued over the course of centuries.

1. We have to push open the door of the Bride's home a crack.* 
2. Once opened, we throw in red packets of money, to buy admission for Cillian. 
3. He promised to wash the dishes and love her, etc.** 
4.  Jin Xi was won over by the promises and left the home, with red silken veils hiding her face.
5. Cillian piggy-backed her down the the four flights of stairs as far as her palanquin awaiting in the apartment block courtyard.
6. The groom's family and friends stand around the palanquin ensuring that Jin Xi does not pull a runner before we can get the wedding started.
7. Cillian mounts a mighty steed.***
8. We paraded a circuit of the town, a marching band in tow.

The only point of note was that the horse fell under Cillian's weight about halfway through the parade, david and I had been staring at its kinking rear right in fascination for quite a while.

*At a combined weight 350Kg we had to take care not splat the troupe of slight Chinese women against a wall.
**Well we assume so, since he was parroting phrases from Xi Xi
***a horse not that much heavier than he.

Receiving The Guests
Once we arrived at the hotel for the wedding actual, the palanquin was jigged for a while so that the palanquin bearers could get more money*. The impendingly happily married couple went up to their suite. The Irish milled around outside aimlessly, forgotten. Within, Cillian removed the silk veils** with his teeth. They were left to change from traditional Chinese red robes to a Western white ensemble. Only just remembered, Eimhin and I were left at the mercy of the Women Relatives, subjects of the size of our family, marital status, tastes in [Chinese] women and Eimhin's height were discussed.
The couple and their righthand-people stopped the guests at the hotel door, forcing sweets and cigarrettes onto them- seeing as they seemed to miss the 2m tall white guy with a tray.

*Probably a tradition based in mercenaries extorting additional money for the acquisition of a nubile woman
**Representing the Red Sack of Pillaging of yore, I reckon

Two Become One
After about 2 hours of stopping guests the ceremony began. They had a 9 tier wedding cake.* The two walked up the middle of the dinner hall, showered in sprays and streamers, Cillian's carefully styled hair was devastated. A cabaret singer was mistress of ceremonies. David gave a brief speech. The crowd went wild when he opened with "Ni Hao", like a rock concert. Some candles were lit and rings were exchanged. Jin Xi's grandmother [her father's mother] gave a lengthy speech. The richest women in town gave a speech too. JIn Xi's mother gave a speech. The two drank tea at her feet, presumably as an induction into her family. Next there was food. Here the Hardline Mrs Doylian Philosophies took a monstrous turn, Eimhin and I were forced at glass point my pushy Chinese person after pushy Chinese person to drink, one old chap made us have some kind of rice liqueur which burned my throat.

*"9 is forever!", Jin Xi informed us

T-Plus 1
Were woken up early for a trip to the "Siquan Karstic Geopark". Being from the "Gateway to the Burren" I thought I knew Karst regions, this was pretty cool though. There were some limestone structures that looked like pigs and bunnies. The cliff faces have holes in them where coffins were placed, sometimes they were hung on the cliff face. Then, the heavenly cavern. A gigantic cave that you can take a slide down to its lower level. Steps lead you to a very fancy looking stalactite/stalacmite area called the heavenly fairies [or some such]. Some more anthropomorphized rock formations, with a 2mx8m skylight 80m or so overhead. We went into a really really really dark cave, armed with flash-lights; no mole-men or morlocks to be found. The final stage in the heavenly cavern is traversed by a paddle boat across an under ground pond, I saw an eel in it. My local pride was injured by a little known attraction in China being orders of magnitude more entertaining than the tiny Burren equivalent, the Allwee Caves. Had one last dinner and did some shopping. Haggle master #1 stepped in and got us knock down prices, although I was worried that Cillian and her would come to blows over who was going to pay, Doylian to the core.

T-Plus 2
Got a surprisingly comfortable bus back to Cheng Du followed by a cramped van ride back to Peng Zou. On the bus, Jin Xi's Mother's Mother gave me a measuring look an eventually decided I was worth waving good bye to, Ice cold!

T-Plus 3
Got a comfortable trip into Cheng Du airport. Paid 10Euros for a banana split, with 3 standard sized ice-cream scoops, not even particularly tastey. Unimpressed.
On Plane: watched Kung Fu Panda [fantastic!] & Iron Man [Yay for Robert Downey Jr!] & Batman Begins [Ready for the dark knight]
Got back to Ireland. Tired.