rest in peace mr. ramsankar

i just found out, via the magic of facebook, that one of my teachers from junior high school (grades 7 and 8) at alexander forbes passed away. mr. ramsankar was a tough, but fair teacher. he taught me science. one of his notable quotes was: "open your reminder ... [30 second pause] ... binder." loved it. oh and before tests and quizzes: "please get a blue or black ink pen."

mr. ramsankar was a superb teacher. he really put a lot of thought into teaching and genuinely cared about his students. i think many of us who had him for a teacher regarded him with affection. he will definitely be missed.

beyoglu, modern istanbul & some edumacation

16.08.07:

today S and i were going to meet G in his (much cooler) nabe. where turkish people actually hang out, and not only to sell you carpets. S & i met up at the blue mosque, which is sort of halfway between our two places. G and i actually went into the blue mosque another day, but i will tell you about it now. because you need some culture in your life.

HISTORY LESSON NO. ONE

the blue mosque is called the blue mosque because it is one of a few mosques that are adorned with blue tiles on their interior walls. it was built between 1609 and 1616 (and man does it look it) (haha), during the rule of Ahmed I. why was the mosque built? read on ... basically it was built to appease Allah because of a few embarrassing defeats. the blue mosque (which officially is known as sultan ahmed mosque) was the first imperial mosque in over 40 years. because ahmed was a sultan-loser (i.e., he hadn't won any notable victories), he had to use money from the treasury to build it and thus provoked the anger of the ulema.

the mosque was built on the site of the palace of the byzantine emperors (take that!), facing the hagia sophia (pronounced hi-ya sophia) and the hippodrome, a site of great significance apparently (and also a place i walked past without realizing it about 14 times.) like any contractor, the sultan had to buy and then have torn down a bunch of other palaces that were already on the site. this would be one of the first usages of the eminent domain doctrine.

in a move that would be emulated by many important public figures throughout time, the sultan came down to the site to break the first sod in august 1609. he intended for the blue mosque to be the first mosque of his empire. the organization of the mosque was immaculately detailed, with many to-do lists. the opening ceremony was held in 1617, although the building wasn't finished (because contractors were just as unpredictable and unreliable even back then) and the accounts were signed by his successor mustafa I (who must also have inherited a huge deficit).

so there you have it.

S and i met at this historic place and trod the soil that the great man himself walked on. we took the tram to the bottom of the hill leading up to the galata tower.

HISTORY LESSON NO. 2

the galata tower is located north of the golden horn (you have to look that one up yourselves). it's huge, cone-capped, cylindrical and dominates the skyline on the galata side of the golden horn (have you looked it up yet?), which isn't saying much because, well, the area isn't known for its skyscrapers. so get this. the tower was built in 1348 (making the blue mosque modern architecture) as a fortification during an expansion of the genoese colony in constantinople (this is obvs ripped off of wikipedia). there was also an old tower of galata, but that tower was destroyed during the fourth crusade in 1204. during the ottoman period, the tower was used as an observation tower for spotting fires.

in 1638, turkish dare-devil, hezarfen ahmet celebi, used artificial wings (made of gossamer, one wonders?) and flew from this tower over the bhosphorus to the slopes of a mountain over on the anatolian side. for his feat, he was awarded 5 goats and a hudson bay company blanket.

as of 1960, the tower has been open to the touring hordes. there's a restaurant and cafe on the upper floors and there is also a nightclub up there!

okay, back to our riveting tale. we got off the tram and began our steep ascent to the galata tower, where we were meeting up with G. we then meandered our way through a series of musical instrument shops and a few cute-looking cafes (geared toward the tourists going to the tower). we then came to a huge promenade, which is the main strip of beyoglu. i wish i could remember the name of the street and i'm too lazy to look it up. it's the happening area. no matter what time of day you go there, there are tonnes of people milling about. to give you a sense of the area, here's a description.

imagine a large promenade like the champs elysee, but imagine breaking off from it numerous streets and alleys, who then intersect with one another using small streets and alleys. so you have a main artery down the center and then on both sides of it, you have smaller veins running into one another. i think viewing it from above (next time, hot air balloon ride) would be really neat. the main street has mostly shops and restaurants like mcdonald's, starbucks, turkish eateries, some turkish chain cafes, topshop, benetton, etc. G's hotel is just off of the main drag. many of the smaller intersecting streets seem to be themed, like cheap beer alley, tavla-cafe alley, restaurant row, music venue street, etc.

we wound our way down to the modern. the istanbul modern is istanbul's new contemporary art museum - inaugurated in 2004. it's located inside a converted warehouse in the tophane district on the bosphorus. it's the first contemporary art museum in turkey. the location has it's pros and one HUGE con. the pros are the funky industrial/warehouse area is a great venue for a modern art museum and the space is really well used, i thought. the big CON is that giant cruise ships dock basically right beside it. so the awesome view of the bosphorus that you would have is marred by a princess cruise lines floating hotel. ick. lucky for us, the entire ship didn't disembark and come to the museum.

to get to the museum, we walked along a pathway through a bunch of turkish cafes & places with narghile (or shisha or waterpipe or whatever), which was vastly overpriced due to the proximity to the museum i guess. the museum was great. it features a permanent collection on the top floor of turkish artists. with visiting exhibitions downstairs. on thursday, the admission was free. but i would have paid to go in. that's saying a lot.

some of the pieces i really enjoyed are listed here, so you can look them up if you want. or not. or if you are thinking of something awesome to buy me for my birthday. i listed the names of the pieces where i know them. for those of you working the law firm cocktail party circuit, these are sophisticated names to drop the next time pretentious partner X stops by the circle of great conversation you were just having which abruptly halted into awkward silence. it sure beats listening to someone talk about the last time they went fox hunting.

* turan erol (ararat mountain, 2002)
* balkan naci islimyeli (straitjacket, air-water-earth-fire-ash I, woman in black)
* bedn rahmi eyuboglu (self-portrait, 1964)
* ergin inan (self-portrait, 1996)
* burhan uygur (kapi, 1987-89)
* cihat burak (the death of the poet)
* fahre inissa zeid (my hell, 1951)
* monica bonvicini
* bakim noktasi (pitstop I, II and III, 2007)

the big visiting exhibit was andreas gursky photographs (hong kong shanghai bank, 1994, montparnasse, 1993, pcfi paris, 2003, kuwait stock exchange, 2007, times square, ny, 1997, madonna I, 2001, may day V, 2006, chicago board of trade II, 1999 - these a few that i noted.) gurksy hangs at the MoMa too, so some of the pieces were familiar.

there was a super cool photography exhibit - a young turkish photographer named ahmet polat. the exhibit is called kim sin set? which means who are you? polat is the first turkish photographer to have won the "Best Young Artist" award from international center of photography (the place i took my digital photography workshop, not that i'm winning any awards for my stuff). anyway, the istanbul modern's website is a little too flashy for lo-fi me, so i am giving up on mining it for more information about polat. the exhibition consists of 82 photographs on various issues, immigrants in transvaal, homeless in tilburg, the 1999 marmara earthquake, turkish ghettos in the hague, etc.

the other really neat thing (that i would like to do in my home if i someday own one) was this cool faux ceiling of hanging books that the museum had in its education wing. super cool. the installation was created by richard wentworth.

so after our fill of amazing art and i of the gift shop, we stopped off for tea/drinks at one of the cafes we had to wind our way through to get to the museum. there were some other foreigners sitting near us. one of them, a blond woman G said was british, was like a melting together of posh spice & britney spears. in the worst possible way. they were icky. anyway, the place we stopped for tea had these awesome barbapapa looking beanbag chairs. the chairs actually resembled the blobby shape of the barbapapas!

after tea, we took the funicular up the hill (the funicular is really clean & really air conditioned & thus really super-fantastic) to grab some lunch. S was leaving istanbul to go meet up with some friends from school whose parents lived somewhere outside of istanbul. sad. i really like hanging out with her. hopefully, we'll see one another again, either in ny or in korea. we found a great place for lunch and i had an awesome shish tavuk in a pita. we then dropped S off at the bottom of galata hill. G and i walked back up, again winding our way up to the main street in beyoglu. we stopped by G's hostel to do our business (not dirty business; just WC business, but apparently the front desk guy thought that G had once brought S back to his room for some sexin' because he said that they could only stay in G's room for 5 minutes. anyway, there are a lot of things to say about that 5 minute comment but i will refrain because this is a PG-13 blog.)

we wandered off in search of internet. found it. and then came the best part of our trip. we found an awesome place to get tea, smoke narghile & play tavla. it turns out that on our first time there, we were at one of the cafes and then subsequently we were at a neighbouring cafe called viva cafe. we only realized this on my last day in town, when the guy we thought of as "our guy" told us that he actually worked at a different cafe. so this was the second time i played tavla. at first, i was on a total winning streak. major beginner's luck. people at other tables were amazed by my prowess, but then the inevitable happened. as quick as was my meteoric rise was my tumultuous fall to the abyss of tavla. G is a super teacher though. i feel like i am armed with some good moves and that i have a great foundation for occasionally winning. never again did i reach the amazing summit of such victory. but something to work toward.

we set off post-tavla to search for a place called peyote that i read about in my guidebook. it's supposed to be a cool place to hear indie music. we walked around and around and around the intersecting veins of beyoglu. we were on a mission. even the 7500 restauranteurs trying to woo us with their yummy smelling foods were not enough to tempt us to abort the mission. we did finally find it. but what an anti-climax. we don't really know how the place is since we walked up the stairs only to be told that they were full. but on a positive note, G did get a WC break out of it. so all was not lost.

we then went and grabbed some dinner. i had turkish pizza. it was delicious. post-pizza, i head home on the funicular and then the tram. ah sweet home.

i got huge blisters on my feet. blisters like winnipeg mosquito bites. blisters like blood suckers. blisters like covering the entire ball of my foot. ouch.

just for deannabanana

newsflash:

smoove r has competition on prospect place! how does smoove's alter-ego, RM, handle the heat? with her sharp tongue (no, not that way). read this exchange:

[on the way back home from the brooklyn public library]

RM (your humble blogger) walking eastward on prospect place, spots a few males loitering (aka skeeve-y guys, or SG) outside a building, doing the stoop-hanging-outing thing. paying them no mind, RM continues down the road homeward bound.

SG are checking RM out. RM can just tell. she doesn't even have to look in their direction to know that they are in awe of RM's beauty and her gazelle-like grace.

SG (they are all interchangeable) says: "hiiiiiiii beautiful" in the voice you imagine smoove r speaks in. a sort of sing-song lilt. and then: "hiiiiiii sexy."

RM retorts with nary a glance in their direction & with the same tone: "hiiiiiii creepy. hiiiiii weirdo."

his SG friends erupt into gales of laughter. RM continues down the street, with a spring in my step.

it's really a shame ...

... that more of you aren't commenting. i'm pouring my guts out on the interwebs, risking possible future-employment related repercussions, battling my short-term amnesia to put things down with at least 65% accuracy. so c'mon. wake up. is your work really that important? are your social lives really that thriving? are your thoughts really so depraved that putting them down here would result in a life-time ban on using the internet?

don't you miss me. even a little bit?

even mean comments are welcome. but you'll have to live with knowing that you made me cry.

oh yeah... fenerbahce won 1-0

can't believe i forgot to give the score. i was delirious with the thoughts of the hottt boys! ooops.

go fenerbahce -- rah, rah!!

15.08.07

met G and S in the morning at the new mosque. i got there early so i poked around the spice bazaar. great sights & smells. i ended up buying some dried fruit & almonds. i am crazy about dried strawberries, so i bought some of those. and also dried kiwi (weird!) and apricots (the grandaddy of dried fruit). anyway. delicious. the process of buying the fruit was entertaining. there were tonnes of people in this little spice stall. and they tried to sell me "the sultan's aphrodisiac" - when i looked faux-miffed and said that i am the aphrodisiac. they laughed and said i should get it for my friends. i wasn't feeling gag-gifty. so none of you are getting the sultan's aphrodisiac. just put on some axe like everyone else.

the three of us also scoped out the grand bazaar, which is a maze-like (indoor -- yay!) marketplace with lanes that sell specific items. for example, we accidentally strolled down leather-dead cow lane. the thought of leather jackets in 35 degree weather was nausea-inducing. we wandered around and i found a neat jewellery shop, with a lot of felted jewellery and some wickedawesome hats (of course we tried them on). the general feeling in our group was that pushy sales techniques make us want to never return to a stall, where as north-american style ignoring the customer is what we do respond to. yes, i want to have to chase down the salesperson. having someone leap upon you the minute to look in the direction of their wares is a little irritating. i need to contemplate in silence. there was a market outside the grand bazaar as well. G bought a jersey for the football match we were going to later that day. it was a wise move as it endeared him to many, many turks (and by extension, S and I too.)

we all split up for nap-time, second showers, etc. we were to meet up again at our new mosque meeting spot around 6 pm. i went back to my hotel, took another shower, walked around in search of some internet. realize now that i had walked past a bunch of internet places that i didn't spot. i got to the meeting spot insanely early. so i walked around some more. i found a street with (new) bookshops. wandered in and out of the bookshops and the stationary stores in the area. meandered my way back to the meeting spot.

the three of us took the ferry over to the stadium. the stadium and fenerbahce's base is in kadikoy, in the (surprise, surprise) fenerbahce district of istanbul. the stadium is an interesting story in and of itself. it's called sukru saracoglu stadium & inaugurated in 1908!! according to my friends at wikipedia, the stadium is the first one in turkey designed according to official football regulations and standards (it was renovated between 1999 and 2006). it's been selected to host the 2009 UEFA (Union of European Football Associationg) Cup final. the total capacity of the stadium is 50,509. kinda cool.

so, we follow the wave of blue & yellow striped jersey to the ferry and from the ferry to the stadium, stopping to grab some dinner. the match was between fenerbahce and a belgian team, anderlecht (i took to calling them anderblecht). the match was important (and now i remember) because it was for advancement to the champions league. and fenerbahce needed to win. the air was thick with excitement and anticipation. the stadium filled up (not to capacity, but decent) with waves of blue & yellow striped fans. i filled my belly with turka cola, a coke rip-off that was actually quite refreshing (that's a huge statement from someone who refused to drink generic coke and would rather go without.)

the game was super exciting. we were all really into it. we asked the group behind us (mixed group, adults & kids) to teach us some of the cheers. the crowd was doing chants in support of fenerbahce. and S and i were keen to know what the cheers were.
the guys sitting behind us wrote them down in my notebook.

here they are with loose translations:

oooooh sampiyon fener [fener are the champions]
en buyuk fener, baska buyik yok [fener is the biggest team; nothing else matters]
burasi kadikoy buradan, gilels yok [this place is kadikoy, there is no way out from here]

pretty cool.

what's also pretty cool are the two hottt turkish guys (definitely dual citizens of hotttistan) who were wildly cheering. and seriously were the dreamiest boys i have seen in a long while. S, on her way back from the washroom, had to pass by them. they stopped and chatted a bit. it pays to have a hot japanese lady in your group! then we kept looking at them, and them at us. i took some crappy photos of them. seriously, super duper couldn't get them out of my head. even now, i'm smiling a goofy smile at the thought of them. okay. crazy.

post-match, we followed the crowd out of the stadium (talk about bottleneck at the gates). G's awesome jersey got us props again. we boot it back to the ferry, but we're going separate ways. S and i are heading back to sultanahmet and G is back to beyoglu. S and i take the ferry back to the area around the new mosque and walk back together.

a perfect day.

gotta note how awesome G was in planning out an agenda. i could just go along with it because he planned everything i wanted to do. total travel mind meld. love it.

more information courtesy of wikipedia:

fenerbahçe Spor Kulübü (Fenerbahçe Sport Club), commonly known as Fenerbahçe (IPA: [feneːɾbatʃe]), is a professional sports club located in Istanbul, Turkey. The team is based in the district of Istanbul named Fenerbahçe. The name of the district and the sports club derives from the lighthouse located in the district ('Fener' in Turkish means lighthouse, 'bahçe' means garden). The most popular branch of the club by far is the football team. The club also competes in basketball, volleyball, rowing, boxing, sailing, athletics, swimming and table tennis. Fenerbahçe's football branch currently plays in the Turkcell Süper Lig. They are nicknamed the Yellow canaries and play their home games at the Şükrü Saracoğlu Stadyumu in Kadıköy. Fenerbahçe is celebrating its centennial year, as of 2007.

my first evening in istanbul

so. we head out from my hotel, G, S and me. S is meeting up with her turkish school-mate friends later. we head to the area of the new mosque, where we will have our meeting place with them. we decide to sit in a cafe and have some tea while we wait. on the walk along cafe row, we are barraged by offers to drink tea at the establishments of numerous friends. we opt to go to the top of the little hill for our tea. G is stopped 70 times. he actually stops when people try to talk to him. S and i walk on past. i give my sweet-sounding, polite, canadian "no thank you" with an amazing, dontcha love me smile to each of them, thus breaking hearts in my wake.

for the time that G and S have been traveling/wandering together, people have hilariously assumed that G is a frenchman traveling with his hottt japanese gfriend, S. S is korean. konichiwa, say all the turks to S. konichiwa (in the most girly voice i can manage without barfing) is the motto for our hangings-outs with S. konichiwa, S. wherever you are (probs back in korea).

turkish tea is addictive. G was on some 6 times a day kick. i was less addicted but i'm sure after a few more weeks there, i'd be hooked up to an IV. we met S's friends -- 3 sisters, two of whom study in korea. when we met up with them, their mother was there too, so we got motherly turkish hugs (3 time, cheek to cheek) awesome! we had dinner at a nice place nearby - they chose the dishes, and they were all delicious. the company was great & so was the food. they (especially the eldest sister (very beautiful woman) who didn't speak much english and hadn't lived outside of turkey) were very inquisitive and curious about canada, our thoughts on turkey, preconceived ideas we had about turkey, etc. they were so open & warm right from the beginning. and so generous. the eldest sister had paid for the meal! of course, i protested, but to no avail. as in india, mehman is bhagvan -- a guest is a gift from god. and are thus treated well and shown respect. i actually noticed quite a few similarities between turkish culture & indian culture. not surprising, but cool to see.

the sisters asked me whether i had a boyfriend -- i said, nope. they were genuinely surprised at my boyfriend-less, date-less situation. and said they would find a nice turkish boy for me. to that, all i could say was inshallah.

post-dinner, we all split our separate ways. S, G and i were walking in the same direction. well, G went out of his way to make sure i figured out my way home. we split with S around the blue mosque area and G walked me back to my hotel. there is a bar at the intersection near the hotel. G and i stopped there for a beer & a game of tavla.

tavla = backgammon. G is really, really good at it. he taught me how to play and i very quickly became a tavla junkie. with...drawal. so much fun & such a great way to let time pass by.

collapsed into bed.

IST arrival part 2

i get out of passport control and emerge in the main hall. while i was waiting in the passport line, i had been called to the information desk. my hotel had arranged for a ride from the airport to the hotel, and someone was supposed to be waiting for me with a sign that said "MR. MANGAT." i can't believe my dad is such a follower that he couldn't even arrange his own, original vacation. but whatever! so i hustle to information (not tourist information, where i went first by mistake) to say that i had been paged. ok, p.s., i love walking out of the baggage area of the airport knowing that someone was carrying a sign with my name on it, like i'm a VIP or something. the information desk calls the driver over. we hug. seriously. the guy hugs me. maybe he was trying to cop a feel. maybe he was just delighted to learn that i hadn't been abducted and brutally attacked on his watch. i like to think it's the latter.

we are waiting for another couple who are heading to the same area for their hotel. they are a lovely portugese woman and her irish husband, who lives in lisbon and has fallen in love with it. i love how inter-state europe is. people from one country move and live in another, fall in love with the place or with a local and stay forever. it's my notion of romance and love of border fluidity brought together. while we are waiting for the couple to get out of the baggage area, i spot two familiar things. an ATM for citibank, my bank. and starbucks. i tell my driver-friend [p.s. EVERYONE in istanbul is my FRIEND. i feel like norm on cheers] that i'm going to head over to Citibank so that, for the first time on this trip, i will not be paying an additional $2.30 to take out my very own money from my very own account.

we drive (like madness) to the sultanahmet area, where the touristy hotels and hostels are. i wish i had known that i could have stayed in G's area, beyoglu, which is where turkish people actually hang out. the sultanahmet area is where the blue mosque and haiga sofia are, but also where 10,000 australians and germans are. but lesson learned. next time i'm in istanbul, i will stay in beyoglu.

i check in, take a shower. i had arranged to meet G at my hotel that evening. post-shower, i get a call from the front-desk saying that my friends were waiting for me. i go down to meet G and his travel friend, S (he met S on his other travels in turkey.) S is a lovely korean woman, who has friends from turkey (friends who are going to university in korea). friends we will meet up with later. anyway, not only do i greet G and S, but i mistakenly think the front desk guy (who i had just met not an hour ago) is one of their friends. after introducing myself and shaking his hand (quelle embarrassment), i ask G quietly if this other guy is part of our group. G says no, he's the front desk guy, you fool. we head out from the hotel. i now vow to greet him everyday as though it's the first time we're meeting.

before signing off this post, a word about my room at the hotel. it has (!!!!!!!) a four-poster bed. i have always wanted one. i am delighted. the room is nice and quite spacious. it has a very nice hard-wood floor & wardrobe. the mattress leave much to be desired though. as i'm sure i will mention several times on this blog, the mattress feels like sleeping on hangers, with the pokey-outtie side all randomly dispersed, so you can't even predict where it might jab you in the solar plexus. but anyway. i don't care because i am in love with the four-poster-ness of the bed. being a neat freak, i carefully inspect the bathroom. it's clean. nice. big enough shower (by european standards). i am overall pleased as punch.

it's all istanbulous -- arrival part 1

hello peoples. apologies for being way overdue blogging about istanbul. way way way overdue. i've been jet lagged and it's been hotter than missile fuel in new york. a disgustingly humid 35 degrees C yesterday. i think i might have lost 10 lbs in water weight just walking from my room to the bathroom for the 3rd daily shower. disgusting. oh, how i miss pleasant northern alberta summers.

ISTANBUL!!

14.08.07

this morning, i arrived back at schiphol airport via paris, picked up a camera battery charger & some much needed internet time (to communicate with G.S.) at the airport, then boarded my flight to istanbul.

while waiting at the gate for the flight, i noticed a woman carrying a tote bag with the logo of my employer on it. so i asked her if she worked there. she was haughty. oh yes, she's so precious. she'll be working at one of the branch offices. ohhhh. small f'ckin' world, isn't it. not small enough, clearly, since it manages to hold all of her attitude and entitlement. anyway, her boyfriend seemed okay but clearly must have been a tool to be putting up with miss priss.

the flight is otherwise grand. well, except for the part where my purple pen exploded all over the KLM food tray, leaving giant pools of purple ink that has probably permanently stained it. fortunately, i didn't get any of it on my clothes, just all over my hands. hopefully, istanbul border control will believe it is a pen explosion and not the preparation of my on-board torture other passengers device that has stained my hands. oh. at least they aren't blood stained.

the plane lands without incident, otherwise.

i have to get my visa at istanbul airport. the visa process is a money-grab & a joke. the guy i get my visa from barely looks at me, takes $60 USD from me and puts a sticker in my passport. he doesn't even ask me if i'm in istanbul for work or for pleasure or for nefarious doings. all he wants is $60. discrimination alert, however. for a canadian to get a visa to turkey, it's $60 USD. for an american to get the same freakin' sticker, it's like $20 USD. that's completely ridiculous. and backward. i mean, last time i checked, canada wasn't threatening the region, except maybe with subsidies for our maple syrup imports. jeez louise. if anyone should have to do 40 backflips to get into the country, it should be my haughty, annoying american friends from the departure gate in schiphol. after paying $40 overcharge for the visa, i proceeded to the line for passport control/border control. this is the first sign that you are entering a country with a foot in asia.

the passport line is divided into two sections - people with turkish passports and people with all other passports. no problem. that's the norm. everywhere passport control in europe is divided into people with EU and people with non-EU passports. the line moves like molasses. like snails manufacturing molasses, if you can believe it. and you can, because i never exaggerate. not at all. the organization of this line is such that once you get to the "front" of the part that has the zigzag formation, there are numerous shorter lines in front of each border agent. but of course, people don't move to the ones further to the left. why do that? it would only make the process faster and streamlined. just as i get to the front, a major bout of crazy shouting erupts at the front between a potential visitor/resident of turkey and the border agent. i can't see what's going on, but we're all craning our necks to see if someone is going to get the turkish security smackdown and be sent to turkish airport prison. the shouting continues, india-style. but after 10 minutes it sort of defuses and i never figure out what happens. i like to think that it was a fellow canadian who was outraged at the thought that he spent $40 more than an american to get into the country. i am not really over it. even now. i may never get over it. i am thinking about writing a letter to the ministry in charge in turkey, but i should first do research on what turkish people have to do to get into canada. maybe they have to deposit a lung as collateral to be recouped when they exit the country.

so, i get to the "front" of the zigzag line. there is an american woman in front of me (i consider asking her for $40 USD or at least splitting the difference.) anyway, she is trying to get past world's biggest as*hole to get to the other left-hand section of the border agents so we can actually get through the passport area before the end of the week. dude is not going to move. i tap him on the shoulder and say excuse me sir. he completely ignores me. i do it again. again. completely ignores me. i put on my NY superwoman costume and say "if you have no interest in getting through this absurdity before the end of the day, that's your business. but you need to get out of my way." he looks at me and smiles a cruel smile (a la cruella deville) and points to the fact that he can't really move anywhere (yeah, except to the left where there are lines at least half the size of the one he's so committed to.) so i do my patent-pending shove past move, taking my american friend with me. in the process i give as*face a sharp elbow and step on his heel. and say as i walk past, "some of us actually want to get out of here today." about 10 people follow me, all of them giving loser-head some love as they walk past. he looks annoyed when he sees that we've merged seamlessly into the half-empty queues and are now way ahead of him. apparently as*hole is a universal language because he only understood me when i resorted to speaking it with him. there are times when i love being an aggressive american, and this was one of them.

i got through passport control with barely a blink of the agent's eye. welcome to turkey. enjoy your stay. oh i will, my friend. i will.

home before dawn?

today is the moment of truth. will i make it back to new york on 22.08.07 or not. i am currently at schiphol airport (my new most favorite "it" spot in all of europe) waiting to board a flight to dublin. aer lingus, my sketch airline du jour, was having some labour dispute issues earlier, with pilots threatening to strike. apparently, it's resolved and we're back on. but some flights on from dublin to new york have been cancelled and/or rescheduled. as of yet, mine is still a go. but who knows. anyway, the people at lastminute.com (where i booked my cheapas* flight) seemed to think i'd be okay. i agreed. so either i find my way home, or i lose myself in the streets of dublin. where the streets have no names? dunno.

p.s. cute boy alert -- two hotties from spain? portugal? italy? hotttistan? just sat across from me with their laptop. too bad i only have 12 more minutes of internet time.

paris [take 2]

so a while back, i wrote about paris & my time there with L.G. (11.08.07 - 13.08.07) so that was part 1 and now here's part 2.

so yes, after the debacle at BT, seeing L.G. was the thrill of my lifetime. honestly. i don't think anyone who hasn't wandered around 2.5 floors of the BT can understand the sheer horror of the experience. the 6th floor of the BT is part restaurants (vastly overpriced - i had miso soup for you don't want to know), part tourist kitsch (also overpriced schlock) & the wedding floor (stepford couples holding hands gawking at dresses & invitations - barf triple barf). but i digress.

so here's some stuff about the place we stayed at. it was in the chinatown area, near the belleville metro stop. sort of a slightly dodgy seeming place but nothing terrible or worrisome. of course my street skillz have picked up considerably since traversing franklin ave. on a daily basis. the place we're staying in is the apartment of a post-hippy hippy. she rents out one of the rooms to tourists for cheap. L.G. found the place. the price was right, near the metro. we're cool. two slight glitches. the place has cats. i'm not positive but i think L.G. is allergic to cats & so am i. but the room we're renting is cat free. also, like all other parisians, our landlady's lungs are dripping with tar. but the room we're renting is smoke-free. we figured we weren't spending loads of time there anyway, so the cat- & smoke-ness of the place wouldn't be a big deal.

and really it wasn't a problem, but i still want to tell you about two really gross things about the place >>

^ the cat litter was right beside the toilet. uncovered. smelly. with cat crap on the floor. suffice it to say, it was a shoes on all the time sort of situation. and yes, i know, being allergic to cats & never having had any pets of any sort whatsoever, i'm overly squeamish about such things. but really. is it necessary for me to see & smell & potentially feel cat poop in the intimate act of performing my own bodily functions. maybe that's the normal situation of cat litter. normal doesn't mean it's still not gross.

^^ this was both gross & creepy. the bathroom (where there is a sink & bathtub/shower) was a cesspool of disease. firstly, there was (i swear to you) mold growing on the ceiling. a humid environment, no ventilation. really bad idea. i am quite certain that i will develop a respiratory problem within the next 6-8 months as a direct consequence of this woman's bathroom. but if you think that's the only weird / gross thing about this bathroom, you're wrong. as many of you know, i have really really really poor vision. really poor. so there i am showering away in the tub o' death, staying as far from the mold as humanly possible. when out of the corner of my blurry visioned eye, i see something fuzzy/hairy & black & sort of long. for an instant, i think it's one of her hell cats (i was warned by the landlady not to touch one of them & by L.G. not to touch the other). seriously this weird hair thing looked like some sort of small animal of some sort. quickly finishing up in the shower, i put on my glasses to inspect the object. it is a weave. i repeat. it is a weave, a la black women. why does a blond woman have a black hair weave? one can only speculate. she moonlights as a diana ross impersonator? she is trying to work out white guilt? she doesn't yet know that she's not a black woman? who can say. but both L.G. and i are seriously weirded out by the development.

oh, i just remembered two more things about the living situation i wanted to tell you >>

^^^ the lightbulb in the bedroom we're renting is possessed. possessed. i'm not kidding. the first night, we couldn't actually turn the light off. we could only dim it as much as possible before bed. the second night was really odd. the light kept flashing on & off like a freaky disco light. really strange. i was not impressed. & frankly, the problem was with the light, not us. i know some of you might be thinking that somehow we weren't able to figure out the light switch. let me disabuse you of that foolish notion. we have traveled far and wide & operated switches of many variety. trust us. this light was possessed. so L.G. did the most brave, selfless & charitable act i have ever encountered. she stood on a chair in the middle of the room, and with her BARE hand (covered with a towel) removed the light bulb. i warned her not to do it. she is a young, beautiful, intelligent woman, in the prime of life. she has so much to live for, so many dreams to fulfill. but she, foolish, brave woman that she is, put it all on the line for our sleeping comfort. and come what may, L.G., i will always love you for that.

^^^^ an odd moment with our landlady deserves mention here. we were on our way out of the building when we ran into her coming in. she stopped to ask us how we had slept the night before. something like: "did you sleep well? i hope you weren't on top of one another." [pause] she awkwardly says: "well actually, that's none of my business." [awkward pause; silence; she scurries away; i look at L.G., L.G. looks at me]. what a weirdo. apparently she told L.G. that there was a good french restaurant nearby run by "gays". dis.turb.ing.

anyway, L.G. and i had big fun wandering around. we had awesome sorbet. saw notre dame, other sights. we saw the movie "two days in paris" in english/french. quite possibly the two most unlikeable characters i've seen in a movie in a long, long time. my favorite area to wander in was the 4eme arrondissement, marais. this neighbourhood is jewish/gay/alternative (what isn't alternative though). anyway. cool area to putz around in & i went back there on monday (13.08.07) when L.G. went off to meet up with some friends. sunday night, we found a cute wine bar / bookshoppe, and got a drink there, while having odd conversation with the bartender. it wasn't odd interesting, just odd. i seem to have a knack for bringing out the whimsy in people (that's L.G.'s take on it). then we walked across the street for a night dinner. can't remember the name of the dinner place. it was quite delicious.
we ended up wandering the champs elysees and the virgin megastore! yay.

monday was also wonderfully low-key. we left in the a.m. for wandering, shopping. L.G. was heading off in the afternoon to meet up with a couple of friends in town (one from toronto who was going to be in paris & the other who had just returned home to paris). i walked back to le marais and went to this store that i had wanted to check out. i ended up eating lunch at le pain quotidien. in paris. i'm such a weirdo. like i couldn't go to one of their 40 nyc locations. whatever. now i'm a transcontinental patron of le pain. we planned to meet up around 5:30 at the BT. we figured we knew it like the back of our hands, so we might as well do that. & then we could wander around and shop there too. i gave up my search for internet & for camera battery & got there early. i found a couch near the soon-to-be wed & promptly started dozing off. when L.G. and her friend got there, i was practically catatonic. i must have looked really out of it because L.G. started apologizing for being late. i wasn't upset at the time; just having come in and out of shallow sleep. so we shopped around there, looking at mad crazy expensive lingerie. we then went back to the champs elysees & the arc de triomphe (so L.G.'s friend, who was in paris for the time, could check it out)
it's educatin' time:

+ the arc honours those who fought for france, especially during the napoleonic wars & it also includes the tomb of the unknown soldier. the monument was designed in 1806 & stands over 51 metres tall, 45 metres wide, making it the second largest triumphal arch in existence. the north koreans took the piss out of france when they built a slightly larger one in 1982 for the 70th birthday of Kim Il-Sung. the french then retaliated by banning the consumption of kimchee in france.

tuesday morning, i bid L.G. a sad goodbye (i miss her super lots!) and headed out unbelievably early to catch the metro to the RER to CDG airport. i didn't spot a ticket booth for the RER ticket. i thought maybe my metro ticket would get me on the RER to CDG as well. well no one checked. but i had to jump the turnstile at the airport stop. i am rebel.

yenı gonderı

means +new post+ ın turkısh. ı could hunt and peck the i on thıs keyboard but ı wont and probs no punctuatıon eıther. anyway. ı am ınterruptıng your regular programmıng to gıve you a heads up that my ınternety-ness ıs spotty for the next few days. ın other words ı wıll keep you guessıng untıl ı get back to amsterdam and ı stıll have to fınısh off parıs. but ı am takıng fastıdıous notes of all goıngs*ons and full report wıll be swıft and mostly accurate. ı know thıs ınterruptıon ın the bloggıng ıs a horrıble development and one that wıll be morally debılıtatıng to many of you. take heart. the perfect way to exorcıse thıs pent-up energy ıs to make comments on old posts. yes, lıke a good epısode of frıends, my posts are avaılable ın syndıcatıon rıght here on thıs channel. they never get old or tıred. hopefully back to regular programmıng soon.

p to the s. ı am havıng a super duper lucky duck of a tıme.

paris in a nutshell [part 1]

this is a quick write-up of the weekend [11.08.07 through 13.08.07] in paris with L.G. paris deserves more, i know, but i'm writing this at schiphol airport and i don't have much internet time left. besides, paris would have gotten more play on this blog and the fact that it didn't is really paris' fault.

two things about paris. where are the camera stores (so i could get a battery charger or a new charged battery for my camera) & where is the internet? i looked high & low for both those things (since my camera battery died fast & furious just as i was about to snap my seventh night shot of the eiffel tower). & i needed the interwebs so i could touch base with G.S. about istanbul. jeez paris. bienvenue to the 21st C.

anyway. paris was a comedy of errors in a sense, and not only because my stephen harper accent en francais was on display.

L.G. arrived the day before me. we arranged to meet at galleries lafayette (huge fancy department store) on the 7th floor, where a fashion show takes place on tuesdays at salon opera. we neglected to indicate a time. neither one of us noticed this oversight. but i figured she meant around 4:30 or so since i arrived at charles de gaulle airport at 1:30, had to go drop stuff off at the place we were staying at (a place leena found, renting a double room from a woman named M who lives in the belleville section of paris), get keys & get myself to galleries lafayette (hereinafter known was the "bermuda triangle" or "BT").

i get to BT and see that the 7th floor is (like a portal to john malkovich's mind) in existence only when that fashion show is on and at all other times, disappears. the door to salon opera was closed with everything interdit written on it. there was no other way to go to the "7th floor". there was a terrace on the 8th floor. which i went to. not there. i waited on the 6th floor where the tourist crap & food is. not there. i walked around and around and around looking for the 7th floor. it was not there. as you continue upstairs from the 6th floor, you get to a landing which is apparently the "7th floor" and then it continues up to the 8th floor terrace. so i waited there, looked around, bought myself a lego keychain on the toy floor, waited some more, had vastly overpriced miso soup (5 f'ckin' euros) & sushi (don't ask). then decided to go read my book somewhere else and just catch up with leena later. back at M's place. went to the louvre, sat around in the jardin there, read my book (a autobiography of helmut newton --- fascinating life!), kicked around. checked my blackberry. L had found le seulement cafe d'internet in all of paris and sent me some messages -- the last one said she'd be at this french restaurant on the left bank (st. germain area) at 8 pm. i could make it there. i wasn't too far off. [please note that in my desire to wander confusedly, i decided not to have any maps of the city with me except for a map of the metro that i got at CDG airport from the info desk, but it was in portugese. anyway. i was just as lost as the lisbon contingent.] i made my way to the restaurant. but was thwarted by the metro randomly stopping one stop shy of notre dame, and then having to transfer to a bus to get further in the austerlitz direction. the bus took 1/2 hour to get between those two stops because of a car accident on blvd. st-germaine. goody. anyway. i ran to the area, started asking around for rue haut-feuille (which L had been told was a "main street". HA) and in my horrible stephen harper accent asked people for that street, no one knew what i was talking about. finally, i found it on my own and was barreling toward no. 5 (the restaurant) hoping L hadn't given up on me. suddenly, i hear my name being called out. it's L. she's across the street at a vietnamese restaurant. the restaurant we were supposed to meet at is closed because it's august and paris is fermee. tous est interdit, especially eating good food. so we embrace. and weep with joy. turns out we were just walking around the BT & missed one another for 2 hours!! phuck.

okay, i have to do more of this tomorrow or later since my flight's going to leave for istanbul. anyway, i'm sans laptop so will check up as soon as i can.

a bientot.

friday went boom

10.08.07

friday was the last day of classes. & the day we got our awesome certificates of attendance. this one is definitely going in my father's fire-proof filing cabinet of important documents. i can just feel it. but the day was fine. and a bit hectic, since people were leaving & i had to pack up my crap. on thursday night, i had spent the entire time hanging out with H, the austrian guy. we made tentative plans to meet up again on friday evening, along with some other people who weren't leaving the hague rightaway. but first i had to go to amsterdam with P, A & C, and P's new flat-mate to be (when C leaves), E (canadian!). why did we have to go to amsterdam?

because P is obsessed with (OBSESSED WITH) boom chicago, an american improv comedy troupe that performs in amsterdam. P loves it. he's seen every single themed show about 40 times each. & he takes everyone he knows there. anyone who comes to visit. so of course we had to go. the highlight of boom chicago was the table of irish drunk-as*es who were the butt (butts) of numerous jokes & displayed their charm and wit by shouting out an answer to a question that one of the improv guys was supposed to figure out. to which we all responded (at the count of three) with f*ck you. it was awesome. also, the table beside ours was full of women out for a "hen party" - visiting from manchester. they were very decked out in sashes & bunny ears and other things. they were doing awesome interpretations of amateur hookers. the amateur part, anyway. but i digress. oh before moving on to the rest of my awesome evening, i have to mention that A said about 4 times (within earshot of the hens) that they were super old. as a future hen/cougar/grumpyoldlady, i thanked him for my future humiliation.

we left amsterdam right after boom chicago since C was leaving for italy early in the am from rotterdam. & i had told the peoples from the course that i'd hang with them. i got in touch with H and it turned out that the whole plan fell apart with the others. he was just kicking around by himself. C insisted that i had to hang out with him (and i wasn't really going to argue since i am a geriatric cougar & he looked like dinner). so we met up at central station & walked over to a "coffee shop" (a green cafe, but for me, no green) - just some vin rouge. the place was packed & actually very interesting looking. but realizing that it was now way past den haag's bed time and we were out of places to go, we took an auto-rickshaw (how romantische!) back chez P to continue making googly eyes at one another. anyway, a lady never tells. so i'll leave to your imagine what happened next (suspecting that your imagination will do much more for my reputation than the truth would).

and the next morning, H dropped me off at the train station, helped me with my bags on the train & bid me adieu. and i head off to paris.

chockoblog of days

08.08.07

school was fine today. nothing new to report, really. the lectures are winding down and this is the mid-point of the last week. tomorrow we have a big party thing at the same place we had the last one (bonjour tristesse) but it will be nice to have a last huzzah as we promise to stay in touch & network & send along photographs. but that's tomorrow. today is today.

the major event of wednesday is that i went to visit C & P at the ICC. the ICC is located way far out of the centre. well not way far out, but not easy walkable distance which means way far out to me. i got sort of lost getting there, not realizing that the tram i was taking wouldn't get me to the transfer point for the bus i needed to hop. i did get there eventually & only half an hour after i told P i'd be there. no worries. P is no bastion of punctuality.

part of the point of visiting P & C at the ICC was to see where they work. the other point was to meet up with P's boss, F - who used to do the big firm thing and now does the prosecuting allegedly bad allegedly guys, allegedly bad guys. & girls. chatting with her was great. definitely got some inside scoop, which is happy. i need to know the inside. & somehow maybe get there too.

the ICC is a really weird looking, quasi-office building. it kind of reminds me of the deposition center in houston. & that's not a good thing. anyway, the cafeteria is apparently price-y & not that great. i had a coffee there from a machine & it was fine. it beat the pants off the peace palace / hague academy coffee. so in a battle royale over caffeination, the ICC takes it. but the peace palace has a super awesomer library (no offence to the very nice library lady at the ICC.)

and. later that day, post-ICC, i was going to meet up with some class-mates. but my phone died so after a brief moment of mourning, i just stayed in and watched bad english tv with dutch subtitles. shows that i've never even heard of. though ugly betty is starting up here in a week or so. super cool. i love that show.

09.08.07

school was fine again. we had the usual complement of lectures & an ICC speaker in the afternoon. i had to mail myself a box of some documents & books that i didn't want to lug around. luckily, the peace palace has a TNT post-office. excellent. i go in there with my stack of stuff to mail. it's staffed by one woman, but that's okay because i'm the only one there. after chatting briefly about my needs, i quickly assess that what looked to be a relatively easy situation was probably going to take 30 minutes minimum. as it turns out, i got out of there in about 37 minutes. the mail lady was a lovely woman originally from the dutch antilles. we had a bit of a communication issue between her broken english & my (what's more broken than broken) extremely insufficient dutch. in the end, my box was as ready as it was going to get for shipping. the post-office did not have any packing tape. so the box is held together with scotch tape. i'm quite certain that the label she gave me back is actually the one that was supposed to go on the box. & i was slightly disconcerted by the fact that she seemed to think that my box would get to NY is 7-10 business days -- not the time itself, but the fact that it takes dutch "business days" -- i joked that i should expect the box in new york by november. at least she laughed once i explained that the dutch workweek looked to me to be tuesdays & alternating thursdays from 3 pm to 4:25 pm, except on bank holidays & birthdays of the royal family, in which cases only tuesdays from 3:30 pm to 3:55 pm. i thought it was funny. she laughed out of politeness.

this is a plea for you to urge whatever deity, principle, spirit, substance, etc. that you believe in to keep an eye out for my box. i would be thrilled if my box could make it to new york before october 1st. keep hope alive. one might wonder why i would continue to send this box given the unlikeliness of it's successful appearance in the destination. good question. not sure why i went ahead with it; guess that's just how i roll.

after the postoffice, i went to "bagels & beans" -- a coffee shoppe in a bookstore (sort of like the barnes & noble of the hague) in the shopping passage-way aptly called "passage". i had a bagel with butter. delicious. i also had a hot chocolate. which was a piece of chocolate on a stick to mix in with a cup of steamed milk. definitely on my top 5 of hot chocolates.

later that night was the beach farewell party. i had a really good time. i spent most of my time talking to my new austrian friend, H. i was practicing my flirting moves on him. & i think it worked. after we closed down the venue for the farewell party (at a rockin' 12:30 am), we moved over to a pub-dance place called "the king & arms" or something like that. it was smoky, loud & sort of annoying. but i stayed there until about 2:30 and then hopped a cab back home, only to wake P up at 3:00 am since i didn't have a key to let myself in. we haven't gotten around to making a copy of the keys. i tried but i couldn't find a place to have a key made.

on the way back, the cab-driver, who was moroccan, asked me if i know who amitabh bachchan is. of course, i said. then he seranded me & D (a woman from brazil who lives very close to my place who shared a cab back with me) with lines from a few bollywood songs.

bollywood is the ultimate form of diplomacy.

where do i go next?

sadly, the course will end on friday, august 10th. so what do i do next?

august 11-14: paris with L.G.
august 14-20: istanbul (maybe) with G.S.
august 20-22: probably amsterdam/rotterdam

august 22: return to ny! yes, i got a flight ticket back to new york. & it didn't cost me more than the price of one healthy lung. so not too bad. i fly on the irish airline - aer lingus - & am routed through dublin.

no justice like [yawn] justice

08.08.07

today was busy. loads happened.

pre-school:

1. i almost missed my bus this morning. i am supposed to hit the stop button when i see the spire of the church (that's where i leave my beloved no. 18 bus & transfer to the no. 13, which drops me off right at the peace palace). i saw the spire of the church but maybe 30 seconds later than usual. so the bus driver pulls over to the side (ahead of the stop). he's grouchy already & my actions sure didn't help. so he says something to me in dutch (my guess: "get off my bus you freakin' non-dutch ignoramus & i hate you like i've never hated another passenger before in my life"). i say "i'm sorry" in the cutest way possible & then flashed him my awesomest smile. he did not smile back.

during-school:

2. the french lecture today was really tough. my translator machine was broken, so i just took it off and tried to go without it as an additional challenge to my brain cells. i swear that one sentence sounded like -- "it will not rain on the supreme power but it will win many trees." i'm serious. i can't figure it out when the words are all blurring into one another. i'm barely able to figure it out when people speak painfully slowly. anyway. you heard it here first.

3. & there was one time when the professor said "parce que" so forcefully that i thought he might drown the front row with spit.

4. selling hague academy thongs probably not a good idea.

5. met 3 new people, D from italy, P from poland & H from austria.

post-school:

5. at lunch-time, i decided to be scholarly and go do some printing of cases at the library. the peace palace library is an amazing repository - pretty much anything international law you want to read will be there. super cool.

6. while chatting with D in the library (we were trying to figure out how to print stuff out), i found out that there was a visit to the ICTY organized by one of the italian students. he invited me along. i was going to actually do some reading, but that seemed like a lame idea when i can read anywhere. so i tagged along.

7. i had a great time at the ICTY. we had been given access to the public gallery for a hearing -- the milutinovic hearing. once our group cleared security (there were about 30 of us), we entered into the public gallery. it was quite interesting -- the layout was a bit confusing, but i think:

panel of judges at center back of room
in front of judges a group of clerks (i think)
witness in front of them, facing panel (obvs)
to the left, defence counsel (2, one standing & pleading, other one sitting)
to defence counsel's left is the prosecutor
behind them were a group of other attorneys (not sure how they were connected -- maybe more clerks?) at the extreme left seating was a row of older gentlemen, and it was unclear to me who they were. they weren't wearing robes, so non-attorneys, i guess. people with some observer-status? not sure.

anyway, the hearing wasn't exactly riveting. the witness was an expert (but i wasn't able to figure out on what -- i think he was an expert on yugoslavian law.) anyway, he seemed pretty indignant at times, especially for an expert witness. the judges asked many questions of him directly & also through his counsel. more of a civil law/common law melding. so some aspects of the hearing were really interesting. for instance, definition of legislative provisions of the yugoslavian law of the army was key (at least at the portion of the hearing we saw). another issue was semantics -- the witness was using the word conclusion & the judges were prying into what he meant by a "conclusion" (a decision? a resolution?) anyway. read on for the hearing highlights.

highlights:

> of a group of 30 of us from the course, i saw 4 people dead asleep (all at the same time!)
> co-counsel (not the one pleading, the other one) was checking his gmail during the hearing. his computer screen faced the gallery and i could see him checking & replying to email.
> another lawyer sitting behind the defence counsel & the prosecutor was checking his blackberry or his cell phone repeatedly.
> BEST -- the chief judge is asking the witness about a legislative provision - judge says that presumably because subsection 2 was a separate section, set apart from the subsection 1, it must have been intended for it to have a particular meaning in the context of the legislative scheme. witness says he is not sure that the provision as the exhibit is the correct version / official version / final version. chief judge asks defence counsel to look into the issue & confirm. defence counsel starts fumbling around in his document binder (i can see it directly & it is sort of a mess). the translator usually cuts out right after there is a break in the proceedings, but sometimes there is a time lag. this time there was a lag. we could hear clearly defence counsel say to his seated co-counsel something like: "... this is all f*cked up..." public gallery starts laughing its ass off. security guard (who does not wear translation device) asked me what happened. so i told him. & he grinned from ear to ear.

non-law related thing:

i finally had bitterballen. sounds dirty, right? holy gutterminds! but really, bitterballen are a savoury dutch meat-based appetizer/snack. it's a deep-friend ball, typically containing a mixture of minced or chopped beef, broth, flour, parsley, salt, pepper. once firm, the filling is rolled into balls and battered and deep-fried. they're usually served with mustard. moutarde. anyway. i had them for the first time (after being told by a dutch guy in the program, that they are a dutch dining must do). they have a very strange consistency -- like mashed potatoes but really really really really more liquidified. sounds delicious, right? don't all email at once for me to bring some back.

xo

monday

a few quick notes before i launch into monday.

english translator for the course: the man who translates from french <--> english is an english guy with the most un-animated voice in the world. voice modulation seems to be contrary to his lifestyle. and he has a very stiff voice anyway - even his . . . s & uhm . . . uhms are oddly inactive. & also he sort of slurps. slurps. ick.

lyrics: J & M & I were talking about the frosty the snowman lyrics. even though frosty (as illustrated) has a carrot nose, the song says his nose is a "button nose" -- "frosty the snowman was a jolly, happy soul. with a corncob pipe & a button nose & two eyes made out of coal." very strange.

more lyrics: when i was in berlin walking along the east side gallery, i heard a cell phone with the tune of "young folks" by peter, bjorn & john. it's been rattling around in my head ever since -- the tune is addictive. seriously addictive. so in order to purge it from my brain, i'm writing the first verse out here (to inform J & M, since i did such a crap job of singing the song to them & to do the exorcism):

if i told you things i did before
told you how i used to be
would you go along with someone like me
if you knew my story word for word
handled all of my history
would you go along with someone like me.

would you?

accents: so i have a really annoying habit (yes, not just one, but i'm talking about one today) -- i have this weird subconscious thing where i take on a variation of the accent of the person i'm speaking with (only if they have a strong accent). the first time i noticed this was when i was in grad school. there was a woman in the program from a caribbean island with a very nice, lilting accent. of course i adopted my own flattened, alberta version of it. & of further course, she thought i was making fun / teasing her because of her accent. and now it's happening again. at the course. i have to try really hard not to mimic. i'm SUCH a freakin' follower.

so 06.08.07:

today, we had two new professors, profs. gowlland-debbas & kranz. they're going to lecture on the security council and sovereignty, respectively. i like both of them -- organized, concise & they have objectives for the course. yippy skippy! prof. daudet, the secretary general of the hague academy, gave prof. kranz the world's longest introduction. seriously. and as part of it, prof. daudet said something like "he was a professor in krakow" which i heard as "he was a professor in a crackhouse." i think i need to start taking double shot lattes in the morning. when kranz got up to lecture, he took his jacket off (and he was wearing a button down shirt, short sleeves -- LOVE it) and said he was going to take his jacket off since he's been told that "the temperature rises during his lectures." does that make any sense? what? weird.

post-school, i went up to schveningen beach just to wander around and take advantage of the fact that it was sunny today (was being the operative word since i got drenched on my way home - i am the rain curse for this city. if i bring my umbrella it doesn't rain. if leave my umbrella at home, it will rain. with vengeance.). the beach was fine. it's a very sandy beach. the north sea is about as inviting as it sounds. after walking around the beach, i ducked into the pathe cinema and got in just in time to see "i now pronounce you chuck & larry." it was really a conduit for popcorn, but the movie did make me laugh. only me. this is becoming a disconcerting trend.

got back home & drenched in the rain. am now sitting on the couch, drinking tea with C, who is watching friends on dvd.

oh, this feels so nice.

small world moments

two it's a small world after all moments:

1) cafe in copenhagen, me & S stop to get a quick caffeination. we're sitting beside two women, a bit older than us probably. they were speaking danish. S & i were having our own chat. then i heard one of the women mention cheesecake & new york. i had to interject by saying "excuse me. are you talking about junior's in brooklyn?" she said yes. then we bonded over junior's cheesecake. it turns out she's from brooklyn, married to a danish guy, been living in copenhagen for 15 years, but used to live -- get this -- on sterling place between franklin & classon. we were neighbours! funny. her brother still lives in crown heights. pretty bizarro.

2) just now on my way back to the hague from london, i was collecting my baggage at the airport in amsterdam. i walked past a large package wrapped in kraft paper, with a big fragile sticker on it. it was just propped up by itself, against a pole. as i walked past, i glanced at the package. double take. it was either addressed to or from M.T., someone my friend S.L. knows from montreal. crazy, right? weirdness. anyway totally blows my mind, these small world moments. ** UPDATE ** it turns out that the package is some art that M.T. purchased in macedonia. it got lost somewhere between belgrade & toronto, but has now been found. it is sitting in the baggage area of amsterdam's airport. and i found it! what a sleuth i am.

sundry day

today was a lovely, lazy, hot & steamy london day. we woke up & puttered around the house. watching tv about how to become a real estate developer & cheesy uk high-school drama shows (nothing as kwality as "edgemont" though -- the ship that launched a thousand careers.) eventually we ambled outside, to realize what we suspected - the weather was hot peeling blister. anyway, i will take that over needing to add layers of fleece to my wardrobe only to peel them all off 10 minutes later (the hague is already a fond memory for me.) anyway, our plan was to head to the muji store in covent garden (which i always think of as convent garden). when we got out of the train station at charing cross, sitting right outside were three ladies having some food & a chat. nothing extraordinary about that. but but but. one of them was pure money shot. her ass was hanging out of her pants. i'm not talking plumber butt here. after all, plumbers have decency & decorum. this unfortunate soul was fully & completely baring at least 1/3 to 1/2 of her buttocks. her derriere was being aired. okay that was bad. but still. and so of course (with some but not much prodding from J), i took a photograph, feigning that i was taking a picture of J. M decided to walk far away from us as quickly as possible, lest he be associated with the likes of us. anyway, i was 75% tempted to tell her. J thought she HAD to know. after all, butt cheeks in the breeze, that is all we are. at the last minute, i decided not to tell her. after all, she might have been tanning it. the rest of the day was fun. we went to the muji store. they were selling clothing on sale so i bought a t-shirt & a jacket. then we went to a store for men's clothing. i flirted (for practice) with the security / sales guy. then M bought a funky shirt he probably wouldn't have chosen for himself. but it looks great. then we left that place & went to wagamama for me to have my lupper or dunch or whatever eating at 3 pm is. we then had to go home so i could pack up my new purchases & then head back over to london city airport (p.s. i'm at the airport right now, and i cannot suggest any more strenuously that if the price is not terribly more expensive, consider flying into london city. it's in the city, attached to public transportation & very easy to navigate, get your boarding card, etc.) so J & M brought me to the airport like the sweeties that they are (and they each carried one of my bags all the way here!! super nice!!) and then i checked in, cleared security and am now sitting here waiting. thinking about how too too too too short this visit was. don't worry J & M, i will come back to blackheath / greenwich and stay forever.

this time it's thursday

02.08.07

so i was caught up on blogging for exactly 2 minutes. so now i'm backtracking to thursday. thuuuuursday. c'mon memory, find those thursday brain cells.

ah, thursday. there you are. elusive, elusive.

so, i present to you ---- thursday (ta-da!)

so, i just found out that apart from seating in the lecture room, there is a live feed of the lecture upstairs in a seminar room, which is for late-comers so they don't disturb the lecturer and the translators. but most importantly, you can eat & drink in the upstairs room. no more downing my latte in the lobby and feeling very dissatisfied with the experience. no more griping about how it's prehistoric and barbaric not to permit even water in the lecture room. in a plastic bottle. with a secure lid. seriously.

anyway, the upstairs seminar room has a little club of semi-slackers. people who did make it to class, but just couldn't be bothered to get there on time. but seriously, this room is going to revolutionize my morning lectures. the only negative is that there is no simultaneous translation of french into english. sux.

in a bizarre mind-meld moment, prof. reisman gave us a hypothetical situation which closely mirrors the russian action of planting flags in the seabed of the arctic and then claiming it as their territory. the hypothetical is funny ridiculous, but is also just purely awesome. and a total law school finals question. if you have a demented professor. in the best possible way! have i mentioned how much i am loving his classes.

after class, i went to the gem / den haag foto museum which is not too far from the peace palace. they have an exhibit running - yoshitomo nara's first solo show outside of japan. the exhibit was very well curated with an amazing set of installations -- little club-house/tree-houses that you can walk through, inside which nara's pieces are displayed. tremendous. the other thing that was super cool was that they had a dvd on exhibit -- playing on three screens - triptych style - each of them was playing a loop of undulating waves. i couldn't tell if it was three sets of waves from one body of water, or if they were from three different sources. anyway. it was unbelievably cool and you felt like you were actually swaying. the other main exhibit going on is of three australian photographers (tracy moffat, anne zahalka & bill henson.) the other main photography exhibit going on is koos breukel, a photographer from the hague. the exhibit shows about 55 photographs breukel has taken of his contemporaries, photographers & artists. accompanying breukel's portraits is one work by the artist being photographed - something that breukel finds inspiring or beautiful. breukel curated the exhibit himself and so got to choose works that he just plain ol' liked.

after art, i went home to pack up for my overnight trip to delft to see S again. i hopped the train and missed the station! missed the station!!! i went wayyyyyy past delft centraal (where i was supposed to hop off, which is like 15 minutes from den haag centraal). i went really really far past, past rotterdam. so i had to get off the train, call S, explain what a moron i am and backtrack. finally, i made it to delft. fortunately for me, the ticket checkers weren't on my train or in my car during this debacle. i'm sure they would love to know why i was traveling past delft on my cheap-ass ticket only to delft and no further. lucky lucky. i think they fine people immediately on the spot. & if you don't have the money, they throw you off the moving train! so when i hopped off to go back in the direction i had just come from, i was tempted not to buy a ticket. but i decided there's no need to be a badas* hero, so i bought a ticket. and lucky i did. because 2 minutes into the train ride, ticket checkers came around. whew!

once i actually got to delft, i had a lovely time. S and i walked around delft and i got to take pictures this time (my camera was all charged & ready). i saw the view of the old city gate that vermeer painted (which i saw in mauritshaus in the hague). we also went by the old church, where vermeer is buried. we wandered through beestenmarkt, where as late as 1970, animals were being bought & sold in the square. you can still see the posts for the pens the animals were kept in. we also saw the new church, where the statue of grotius is (you can BET i took pictures of him). and we went through to see a nunnery/convent (never been exactly sure of the distinction) which was the former home of william I of orange, and sadly for him, the site of his assassination. sucks to be him.

anyway. post exploring deft & eating at a non-mexican mexican place ("mexican" but not really, still tasty though), we went back to S's place and watched the movie "the prestige" - it was gripping. i thought i'd fall fast asleep, but i didn't (yay! how novel!)

the bed was super comfortable, i slept well and the next morning hopped the train back to the hague, and then on to the peace palace, without incident.

bed & breakfast & activities

03.08.07 - 05.08.07

[excerpted from the mangat guide to english inns]

J's & M's Ye Olde Englishe Inn-it?

service par excellence. at j's & m's ye olde englishe inn, every guest is given special, pulitzer-academy-grammy-nobel-prize winning, treatment. the rooms are laid out with all necessary amenities and special touches: clean towels (bath + face cloth) (no b.y.o.t. here), comfy terry robes, scritchy-scratchy (colourful local parle for sponge-y bath thingy (for improved lather-ation in the shower (yours to keep!)), laundry basket (with three compartments for easy sorting), a map/guide book to public transit & a prepaid mobile phone. bed turn down service and back scratches upon request. immediately upon entering the inn, you will be offered a refreshment: various types of bevvies are available (including pomegranate juice), and your correspondent opted for a hearty stout.

after hopping in the shower to pep myself up (and availing myself of a number of beauty products available in the washroom, including a laudable collection of exfoliants), i emerged from my room refreshed and dressed for dinner. the innkeeps had provided a delightful home-cooked mexican feast, with home-made guacamole far surpassing any other that has crossed the threshold of this reporter's lips. dinner was delicious and the company superb. dessert - a minty chocolate concoction bearing more than a passing resemblance to a drumstick - was offered. it was a delicious compliment to the spice-acity of dinner. post-dinner, the three of us had a bit of a tipple -- dirty dirty triple-x dirty martinis, j-style. made to perfection.

after dinner and conversation, i retired to my room. the room is well-appointed, simply furnished and tastefully decorated. the theme strikes me as vaguely japanese. in my absence from the room, a carafe & cup for water had been placed on the bed-side table. it's lovely little touches like this that make j's & m's the kind of place that one returns to time and time again. i had been told at dinner that the inn offers laundry service and that guests can also be referred to a dry-cleaner in the neighbourhood. j & m offer guests as much privacy as sought and seeing that i had no firm plans for the morning, offered to show me to the local exercise facility, only a few minutes walk from the inn. among the activities offered there is pilates & i signed up for the morning session.

ah blessed sleep.

ah sweet morning.

my hosts provided breakfast (well definitely for the first morning of my visit & maybe even for the second). actually, they also provided lunch. but more on that. yummy TOAST w/ lemon curd on one piece & strawberry jam on the other. post-breakkie, we headed out to pilates, which is down the street. J & M live in blackheath/greenwich SE of london/SE london (i'm not sure how best described). and they live near gorgeous greenwich park. we walked past the park on the way to pilates. the class was pretty tough. lessons learned: 1) my career as a gymnast is officially over. 2) my hamstrings, hips & lower back are unbelievably tight & inflexible. 3) even if there are layers of blubber on your body, there still are muscles underneath it all, and mine are suffocating. 4) really flexible people annoy me. all in all, class was good. it made me feel like i have started to make-up exercise-wise for all the eating i'm doing.

post-pilates, we walked into the arches area, where there is a weekly market on saturdays. J had bought an awesome zipper bag there and i wanted to get one too because i am a copier-catter. so we wandered around the market. i made a few purchases, including a zipper bag (different from J's.) we had stopped in at an organic coffee shop to get some caffeination while we walked around the market stalls. we returned for lunch, since the food looked really yummy. and it was. i ate absolutely everything on my plate. that's rare. unless french fries are involved. then eating is a false expression - it's really more like inhaling.

[i just smooshed a bug on my laptop screen. a moment of silence, please.]

we walked back to J's & M's through greenwich park, which is a very lovely, huge park. it is one of the royal parks of london & the first to be walled in (in 1433). it used to be a former hunting park -- poor deer! and it's a whooping 183 acres big. there is still a smaller enclosed area for deer. the deer are cute: fallow deer & red deer are the two types of deer they mentioned on the sign telling me about the deer. cute. another notable notable about the park is the statue of james wolfe, a gift from canadians circa 1930. if james wolfe hadn't defeated the french in the pivotal battle on the plains of abraham (known in some circles as the battle on the hills of abraham or the battle for quebec), then i would speak french fluently & practice law in montreal. though i wonder if my dad would have emigrated to "canada" (or whatever it would have been called) in the first place. anyway. in wolfe v. marquis de montcalm, wolfe won and now he presides over greenwich park, a hero. more on greenwich park later.

we got home and bummed around. showered. changed. J & M were invited to a birthday party for their friends' son, D, who turned 8 years old. the party was in greenwich park, which is conveniently located across the street from ye olde englishe inn. we packed up beverages & a blanket & cameras and walked over to the party. we ingratiated ourselves to the group by promptly picking up plates and serving ourselves all the yummy food they had. it was the perfect day for a picnic in the park: sunny, warm but not crazy humid-ass hot.

1 funny thing: while a game of soccer was going on in our group, J & I saw in the distance a little boy running with an obvious destination. he had what looked like possibly a diaper or a pair of underoos around his ankle & he was running & it was hilarious. J took a picture and we zoomed it up and it really did look like equal parts underwear (of the tighty-whitey variety) or a wayward diaper. poor kid. funny for us though.

while M was busy with the kids, J took me to go see the prime meridian passing through the royal greenwich observatory in the park. pretty cool! i took 100 pictures of it. & of the greenwich mean time clock. also really neat. the views of london from the vantage point of the observatory are great. J showed me where she works, and we saw the "gherkin" - a pickle-looking building which actually looks like a phallus. and the O2 - formerly, the millennium dome, now a large entertainment complex. actually very cool looking in a futuristic sort of way. the gift shop at the observatory is a must-do. i am very happy with my postcards, pencils & especially this cool prime meridian t-shirt i bought. yes yes. the trappings of tourism, i fall right into them.

we came back to the party site and lounged around for a while longer. everyone was super friendly and nice. & the cake was yummy. D's dad, B, used to play soccer semi-professionally and it showed, not the semi part, the professional part. & M showed off his moves too. basically, it was nice to be around normal people. somehow J & M have perpetrated a fraud on these nice people, fooling them into thinking that they're "normal" too, or at least normal enough. i love J & M.

back home, we did intend to go back out again. but i fell asleep and J & M were also just kicking around. by the time i got up and ambled into the living room it was around 9 pm. & we decided to order in pizza. we ate yummy pizza, hot chocolate & watched a program on british romance films through the ages. or at least some of them. i thought it was interesting. J & M have only 5 channels but they make up for it with wi-fi. anyway, we switched between that and law & order: svu. until i finally conceded that i'm geriatric and needed to call it a night.

g'night me.

oh, i wanted to tell you about "the story of tracy beaker" -- a tv show that aired here from 2002-2005, which airs in syndication (maybe?). it's about kids who grow up in a group home and comes from the perspective of one of the kids, tracy beaker. the children's home is affectionately called "the dumping ground" - anyway, i think it's a very cool concept for a children's program, to show that there are different family-structures. & J is a social worker who works in post-adoption - & it's cool to hear her insights into the system for adoption here.

comments!!!

you know what. i'm getting no love from you people in the comments arena.

you know you want tooooooooo.

wednesday week

01.08.07

oh what a letdown when the battle was finally won
one little breakdown and then it was over and done
i wish i had your confidence
it's love and not coincidence
do you say these words to everyone?
you're fantastic, you're terrific
your excellence is almost scientific
you took the words out of my mouth
you put the tongue in my cheek
but i'd better lose my memory by wednesday week

thank you, elvis costello

wednesday was regular regular. class was good. long day though. we didn't finish until 6. for lunch, i went out with new person i met today from austria, E, G (from the u.s.), M (from egypt) and my bestie, O. post-lunch, G and i went to get me a smoothie at smoothie company (the guy at smoothie company convinced me to sign up for a smoothie card, which i thought i would get on the spot, but it turns out that it will be mailed to me. in new york. apparently, smoothie guy didn't see that this would be a problem.) anyway, i had my usual smoothie -- berry + lime. then G and i went to the wednesday outdoor market. but it wasn't as good as last time. so there wasn't much to see. we stopped for coffee/tea and by then it was time to get back to school. after school, i walked home. hung out with C until she had to go to dinner with a friend. and by then A came home and then later P was home, and we hung out on the couch chez our place and goofed off.

and i'm finally caught up with blogging! yippy skippy!