A Very White Christmas

So this year was a year in which my family tried a new thing. We’ve decided that every two years, we are going to try and meet up and have Christmas together. I think it is a good idea. It assures us that we will meet up and be together at least once every two years. Which if you knew my family wouldn’t be that much of a shocker if it was only that often. But that is a different story, for a different day. So this year, the most logical place for the inaugural version of this would have to be with the ones of us who has just bought their first house together. We spent our Christmas in the wonderful Montreal at my sister and her husband’s place. This will have been now the third time I’ll have visited Montreal and for some reason, I still haven’t figured out to visit in non-winter months.
 

Now before we go, Rebecca and I joked with my sister that we would just bring all of our warmest cloths and say to hell with any semblance of caring what we looked like, but my sister was adamant that the weather wasn’t that bad and there wasn’t even snow on the ground. We really should have gone with our first thought. In the waning days before we before the flight we got a message from my sister that we could stop the snow dance anytime now, as the snow had come in full force. Hmm, warning. Whatever, we are committed at this point and really snow isn’t the end of the world. Next, knowing that we were going to have to fly out of Heathrow airport on the Saturday before Christmas, we figured that it would be chaotic, so we would have to go early. Look at us, organized to a t. Well, maybe I should write, look at Rebecca, organized to a T. That’s more accurate. Upon after arriving at the airport we got our first of three shocks. The airport wasn’t busy at all. I mean it was still Heathrow so it had people in it, but nowhere near manic. So we leisurely found our check in desk and got in line. In the line only a few people in front of us was shock number two, our friend Reuters. He was on his way to Toronto to meet up with his wife who was already there. So we chatted and found out that he was literally going to be on a plane an hour ahead of us going to the same first destination: Newark airport (You might want to take note of that airport). But as he was ahead of us and needed to be at his flight soon we said goodbye and went to our check in counter.

We get to our check in counter and that’s when we get shock number three. It’s there that the agent tells us that we are only going to have our bags checked to Newark and not Montreal. Wait, why? Oh because your flight to Montreal is out of LaGuardia. Now let’s go back a bit and go to when we originally booked our tickets. Here we were faced with two options. One, fly through O’Hare with only an hour and a ½ or fly through New York with 3 ½ hours. That’s an easy choice, Chicago is a nightmare of an airport and 3 ½ hours is much more then 1 ½ hours. That’ll teach me. Those fine print details are important. Who knew? So we are switching airports, better do some research on how to get from one airport to the other. There has to be a train or a bus, or something direct between them. Apparently not true, especially if you are on a time crunch.  So we found our boarding area and waited. First, the airplane was late. This meant that we didn’t even board the plane until an hour after we were supposed to leave. Next, for the first time in my life, I witnessed the plane take over an hour to board. What had happened was there was a school trip on our flight and each of the students had a backpack and a full sized suitcase as their carry on. We’ve all seen it done, and hell I know a bunch of people who regularly do it. But when you have 50-60 people doing it, shockingly you end up with an airplane full of people standing around with loads of carry-ons in their hands looking bewildered. This led to announcements 4 or five times telling people they needed to sit down as the plane was supposed to have already left. Not the most helpful thing that I’ve seen.

Waiting for our plane to take off - a common theme

Thankfully we make up some time in the air and get to Newark okay. Our bags are even pretty quick at getting delivered off the carousel. So we go out customs (through a minor detour because my lovely wife is too honest and filled ticked the box that said she was carrying fruit/food/vegetables/meat because she had a chocolate bar in her carry on) and to a cab. We got ourselves a good one. It took us a few minutes to open the truck as it was messed up, he enjoyed travelling numerous miles with his turn signal on and to top it all off, he had to stop for gas and left the meter running during this time, even after we said we were late for a flight. On the plus side, we made our flight anyways. Trusty Air Canada came through and didn’t let us down. Our flight was easily 2 hours late.

Landing in Montreal we were hit with a terrible discovery. Apparently, in 5 layers, we weren’t wearing enough clothes and were frozen. With a terrible smile my sister coyly told us that the cold had just come in that day. I honestly thought about turning around right there and going back to the UK. I don’t do cold and if I’m bad, Rebecca gets cold at the thought of being in a cold place. It was good however; we saw the new house and promptly crashed for the night. The next few days was a trickling in of everybody and getting to see everyone again and eating. Dear god, eating. Apparently my sister has really taken heart this marrying into a Slovenian family. She may have baked enough to feed a family of 15 for the time we were there. I’m not complaining as it was all quite tasty, but it was just interesting. Christmas eve even had some elements of Rebecca’s tradition. Since she has had roast beef and Yorkshire puddings every Christmas eve since she can remember, we got to make that for everybody. I don’t really want to get into the events of the cooking, but we will just say that in the end everyone ended up enjoying the meal. Sure there was some smoke, cursing and mild panic, but that just adds to the enjoyment. Think of it like dinner and a show.

Cooking dinner - I think the smoke had dissapated by this point

 

The day that Christmas actually arrived I may have started the day a little rough. Apparently, I forgot to tell Rebecca that in our house, stockings were allowed to be opened as soon as you got up. So me and Rebecca getting up last like we always did, didn’t let Rebecca get her picture of the stockings all hung from the chimney with care. My bad. By the time we got down, KJ, Marya and Paul had already obliterated theirs and Mom was patiently sitting with hers waiting to be last.

Since KJ asked for mostly gifts of cash for clothing this Christmas, the next day brought about Boxing day shopping! Better yet we got to go to Carrefour Laval, the largest shopping mall in Quebec. This wasn’t the best plan we’ve had, but seeing as the weather was supposed to take a turn for the worse. It was a better plan then waiting a few days. Originally, it started as KJ would go to the mall, then me and Rebecca thought that as we needed to pick up a new computer for her we would take advantage of the exchange rate. Then the parents decided that they would come along as well to get out of the house So off we go to the supermall. Before the mall is even in sight, we run into the traffic for it. It ends up taking us over 45 minutes just to get to the parking lot. Then from there another who knows how long to find parking. Then to top things off, the supermall doesn’t even have a technology store. No Best buy or anything. We find out that the nearest one is about a 15 minute walk away and thinking that the mess of driving was bad enough once we would make the hike. We are just full of terrible ideas. Two people living in England should never be out in the cold when it is near -25C with wind chill. As for a 15 minute walk that had been quoted, not a chance. The only reason it would be 15 minutes is because you were so cold that you ran it. We took the other approach as walked and slowly turned into popsicles. It did work out well in the end as we did get a good deal on a computer for Rebecca and with the savings bought her an Ipad as well. In the end we decided that there was no way that we were walking back and called in the vehicular support. Even in the utter chaos of the shopping place, I would still give the day a resounding success. Especially considering what happened the next day. The next day we awoke to the sight of a nice looking snow storm. By the afternoon, we were looking at a nice snow storm and by the evening, you guessed it, a nice looking snow storm. All in all, Montreal was hit with 45ish inches of snow in about 12 hours. According to the news it was record levels. Oh joy… Better yet, Paul had to go out for the day and so by the time he was supposed to be coming home you wouldn’t have been able to get an ATV in the driveway let alone his civic. Top that off, my dad decided to start shoveling it for him and seriously, I can’t be upstaged by my dad. That just looks bad, me sitting on my ass and him shoveling 4 feet of snow. In the end it was all good thought because Paul had just assumed we wouldn’t have done anything. Ha, show’s him. I’m only a jackass some of the time.

Montreal's absured level of snow

 

Continuing into our trip we met up with Steph and Greg, two friends from London in Montreal who we hadn’t had a chance to see in quite a while. It’s kind of a sad indictment if the only way Rebecca and some of her work friends can meet up is to be on a different continent. We then went and explored the old port of Montreal. It was nice, but I will admit, when Marya showed us where the fireworks and the celebrations would be for new years and that at night it would be colder than the -25 ish it already was, Rebecca and I were shockingly not as interested in seeing it anymore. It’s funny how that can happen. caccent I read tire, as in wheel. Not what I’m going for. “tire” is pull in French (and to the alchy ‘s, no we aren’t talking about taking swigs from bottles). You boil maple syrup until it is quite thick and then pour a strip onto fresh snow. Then as it freezes, you roll it up onto a Popsicle stick. It’s a sugary, sticky, delicious mess and a Quebec tradition. We also went to the Biodome and the Stade Olympic. Come on, you think we are going to be in a town for more than 8 hours and Rebecca isn’t going to have us do all of the touristy things possible? It was good fun thought, other than the constant fear Rebecca was going to try and get her hands on a penguin and bolt for the door. If it’s a fat, cuddly animal that waddle’s Rebecca’s all over it. Add in a Disney movie, we’re done. Alas in the end we had ended up having to go back to London.

Rebecca looking coy as she attempts to steal a penguin.

The sugary, sticky mess - Tire

 

 The trip back home was less eventful than the trip over, but barely. We still originally had to do our transfer across New York, but at least this time we were prepared for it. This was all for naught thought. When we got to the airport we checked in (to both our flights) and started our way through security and customs. In the 30 minutes that took, trusty Air Canada struck again. Our first flight had been delayed by almost two hours and we were now no longer going to be able to make our connection. To Air Canada’s credit, they acknowledged this and put us on a different plane. They were even able to put us on a plane direct to Newark. Sure we were now many hours early, but really who’s going to complain about that.  As we board our plane, things are going smoothly. We sit and things are taking too long. Just as Rebecca and I look at each other to say something the captain comes on and announces that they had an odd smell when they turned on the AC, so they would have maintenance come check it before they took off. 15 minutes later… Well, the mechanics are here and they know what the issue is. We should be ready to depart in 30 minutes. 45 minutes later… well, it seems to be a bigger problem than we thought. Everybody is going to have to disembark while we find a new plane. We sit and wait until we get a new plane and around 4 hours after our original plane to London was supposed to depart, we begin boarding again. All boarded up again we begin to wait for movement. Again, we are sitting and thinking that this is taking too long. This time, as I’m saying to Rebecca, this is taking too long the captain comes on and says, sorry we just have a small thing that we would like to have maintenance look at before we can go. SHIT! I’ve heard this story before and I really don’t like the ending. 15 minutes later… mechanics are here now and we should be ready shortly. Sure.. and I’m just going to prep my stuff to get off another plane, for no reason thought. I trust you… 30 minutes later… Thank you for your patience, we are now ready to depart. Try as they might we still ended up in London late, but only an hour or two, even if they left many hours late. It’s impressive if you think about it. How much faster the plane can go when not economizing fuel. Oh well, we made it home and had an excellent, albeit frigid time in Montreal with the family.

Sean the Oblivious

So, I thought that I would give you a quick story today. The other day, I was racing to get to my train home, running a little late. Oblivious to everything I must have step in something, but nonetheless, I made it to my train on time and got myself a seat. I took off my coat, scarf, back pack, sat down and crossed one leg under the other. From there I sat and played merrily on my phone. During this train ride I notice some strange glances at me, but I don’t think anything of it. About an hour into my train ride, my leg is starting to go to sleep from sitting on it so I start to maneuver myself about when I finally notice something on the floor.

Oh dear god!! Someone has smeared dog poop all over the floor! What the hell, what kind of asshole would do something like that! That’s vile! Then I look at my pant leg. Shit… figuratively and literally, shit. All over the bottom half of my pant leg is covered. Then the smell hits me. Holy hell, how did I not notice this earlier? The most vile and foul smelling scent strikes my nose and I almost audibly gasp. This has to be why all these people have been looking at me. Looking at my shoes, it’s becomes painfully obvious that the ass was me.

What am I going to do? Well, there is only ten minutes left on my journey. There is no way that I’m going to be able to clean this. I mean this is going to need industrial cleaning. Do I get up and move? No, that will just draw attention to this mess. I decide I should do the only sensible thing. Sit and pretend there is nothing wrong. Of course, now that I have noticed the mess, the smell is unbearable. My eyes are watering it takes everything I have to survive the last ten minutes. I get to my stop run off the train and then it gets more interesting.

I’m now at a large tube stop with thousands of people and a shit covered pant leg. At least the smell and the majority of the mess is at least leaving with the train and I don’t want to think about the poor souls that have to take that exact train out of London later that night. I decide that the easiest thing to do is walk with my headphones in and head down and make haste for home. First a busy tube and then a busier canary wharf and finally home and directly to the washing machine. In the end my thoughts took me back to Morenci and the personality profile that they made me take while there. Apparently they were right; I have almost zero attention to detail. 

Sean vs Deportation

I know that I should probably write something about the Olympics. I mean, they were in London, I saw a few events and they were in general a bit of a big deal. But here’s the thing. I really don’t want to write about them and it has been stopping me from writing anything else. So here is the story, Rebecca and I went to some things. It was good and fun was had by all. I want to however, talk about a different story. This particular story starts in August. It was a cold, blustery day and there was an ominous feel. Okay, that’s a lie. I have no idea what kind of day it was, but it’s my story so you have to go with it.

So on this warm sunny day in August I have a meeting with human resources. They are concerned. It’s come to their attention that my work visa is going to expire in October, the 17^th to be precise. The biggest reason for concern was that they had just hired an American to work in HR and they were still awaiting his visa many months after applying for it. The concern was the expected wait time was told to them to be a minimum of 14 weeks.  Thankful for their concern, I reassured them that all would be okay. Not only was I applying for a spousal visa, one of the easier ones to procure, but I had a big city lawyer working on the case for me with personal attachment to ensuring my success. Additionally, because Rebecca at the time was in France, it would make applying a lot more difficult until she was back in the UK in September.

A few weeks later, I was asked if I could go to Sweden for work during the middle of September. Shit, well, my passport was going to be away for my visa so this is getting more complicated than I would like. Add to the fact that I was hoping to go to Munich as well for some festival about Oktober or something… but sure I’ll go. Time continues and I go to a wedding in Vancouver, while there I use some super powers, and register for a visa appointment using an internet connection in Montreal and all is going well. As the middle of September approaches, another meeting with HR is set up. This time, there is more concern, as well as a warning that without a visa soon they are going to have to fire me. Personally, I think that this is a bit obvious, but what do I know. On top of that, a pool starts to develop about if I will be deported or not. Sometimes I really wonder what I have done to have so little faith in me. Oh well, I’m not going to worry about it.

Finally, after much preparation, almost entirely done by my wonderful wife, I have a binder full of the required documentation to get my visa. This isn’t some small thing. This is a binder the size of a printer. I mean, I was worried about dropping it as it may crush someone and deal grievous bodily harm and if that happens I’m sure that wouldn’t look good on my visa application. So we pack up and head to our 1 pm appointment. As we are leaving I ask Rebecca if she has something to do while at the government office, but she’s confident that since we have an appointment, she won’t need anything to do. Rookie mistake! We arrive and she seems to be right. We walk in the door, wait a minute and then get directed to an x-ray machine and metal detector to be scanned for security. Then since we have an appointment, we go directly to the first counter were we sign in and get our number for the day. Directly after that we go to the next counter and pay the fee. Again, no waiting and I’m thinking that Rebecca may have been right and the UK system may just be very efficient. While, paying my number gets called to go to the desk to start my actual application process. At this point Rebecca is looking very smug. However, upon arrival at the first desk, things start to turn to what I had expected. At this counter, we are faced with an elderly gentleman who has been tasked with taking the details from our paper application and inputting them into the computer. Sitting beside him is a since young lady who proceeds to tell us that she is training the guy and please be patient. I little confused about why you would bother training someone who was already very near retirement age, I simply said ok and let them get on with it. They didn't ask for anything other than the application that we filled out, so we sat and watched the gentleman attempt to type in our details.

After what honestly, seems like decades. The guy finally said something to us. Which I promptly didn't understand a word of, and had repeated to me by the trainer. Simply put we were to go sit and wait to be called to be photographed and fingerprinted. So we waited, a quick wait to be fair, and I had my necessary identification taken from me.  At this point, the guy said to sit in a certain in a certain area and wait, assuring me that the wait shouldn't be long. The time should be noted that this was at 1:30 pm.  Me, having prepared for the worse, pulled out my phone and the book I was reading on it and began to read. Time passes, I chat a little with Rebecca, read a little and people watch a bit, it’s going slow, but it’s going.  

I must say, it becomes a little frustrating as you don’t really have a clue what’s going on. The numbers are called at seemingly random and then on top of this, unlike every other system I have ever seen, there is no board showing what place in the queue you are. Instead you have two very large TV displays that are just flicking through advertisements for types of visas you can apply for. Seriously, you’re a little late. If I didn't know what visa I was applying for before coming here, I don’t think that the ads would be helpful now. So I'm starting to get annoyed. Rebecca on the other hand, she’s not doing well. Around the 3:30 mark, Rebecca is seething. Hate is flowing from her eyes. Seeing this, I ask what was bothering her.

“Counter 19.”

“What about counter 19?”

“The useless woman there has not had a single person at her desk for three hours! How can she be that inefficient? And that guy at 15, he’s doing mailed in applications. Why is he wasting an open spot to do those there? Couldn't he do those in the back and then someone else could be helping the people here?”

At this point we decide we need to ask someone about the wait and possibly what food may be available.  I make my way to the customer service desk and ask. The responses were just what I always wanted.

-Hmm, it does seem that there are still quite a few applications in front of yours.

-Wait, you close at 5 and you haven’t even looked at any of my information!

-Oh no, we won’t leave until all customers have been served. Also, there is a café upstairs, but it only accepts cash.

-Ok, well is there an ATM in the building?

-Nope, sorry.

- Ok. Well can I leave the building and come back?

-Unfortunately if you leave you will be considered to be withdrawing your application.

Wonderful, there are still many applications before mine and while there is food available, I am unable to purchase any and I have to go back and tell Rebecca this. Great… I go back to Rebecca and let her know the situation and we continue to wait. And we wait, all the while noticing a bit of a trend. People who had a lawyer with them seemed to somehow all end up being seen and getting to go before those without. It may have been a coincidence or just that we noticed those with lawyers, but it was still a bit unnerving. In the end there is nothing that we could do about it but continue to wait.

Five o'clock rolls by and then someone starts doing sweeps of the people still left. At this point they ask, “Have you handed your documents to a case worker yet?” No, I haven’t even seen a case worker, my rather large binder of documents is still untouched. This seemed to worry the lady, but nevertheless, she continued her sweep. Six o'clock rolls around and the sweep lady comes by again and asks the same question and much to my dismay, I am forced to give the same answer. “So you haven’t seen anyone since having your biometrics done?” a simple head nod and the sweeper doesn’t even continue her sweep just goes straight back to the counters.

This leaves me with some mixed emotions. First, I'm rather optimistic that I might finally start getting somewhere and second, I'm 95% sure, they completely forgot about me. Focusing on the first thought, Rebecca and I perk up and start waiting with vigour  Oh how hope is a cruel mistress. 6:15 – no movement. That’s okay; they probably needed to finish what they were doing before they could help me. 6:30 – Still no movement – Okay, well; there are still a few others up here. I’m not the only one that needs to be finished. 6:45 – Movement, What the hell?!?! More people are coming in to the waiting area. This has got to be a cruel joke. 6:50 – the sweeping lady return and simply says, go upstairs to seat 64 one of our fast people will help you out. 7:00 – You’re all done sir, have a good day.

Wait what? I've been waiting for six hours for something that took you less than ten minutes. Furthermore, of the library of documents that your website said was required you looked at 3 of them. Now, a rational person would take this as a sign of good fortune and thank their luck for being finished at this point. What do Rebecca and I do? We sit there and ask over and over if they were sure they had what they needed? After being told for a third time that my visa would now be in the mail and delivered in a week we walked left. Still flabbergasted, we left the building, found food, and then began our trek home. Next time, I think I can safely say, I won’t be the only one with a book.

May 2012

So, it would seem that when I don’t have a 2 hour train ride every day it takes me a lot longer to sit down and write these stories. So here it goes, may would have to be considered one of the most ridiculous months of my life. Not my recent life, my life.  From April 27^th to June 5^th, the longest I was in one country was 4 days, which oddly enough was actually in the Vancouver and I was in 8 different locations.  Now, because, until the end of August (since the end of Feb), Rebecca is in Paris and I’m in Stowmarket, I always knew that there was going to be a lot of travel.  I’m also not complaining about it. It was some of the most fun I’ve had. It was simply a bit nutty. So, I’ll run down the list:

April 27^th – May 1^st  –      Anniversary trip with Rebecca to the Loire Valley, visiting Chateau’s and tasting wine. Really, it was the good life.

May 2^nd – 4^th -                    Company trip to Sweden.  If I told you any more I would have to kill you. Okay that’s a lie, it was just a lot of going all around Sweden for meetings. Not exciting. 

Wandering around Stockholm

May 5^nd – 7^h -                     In Paris with Carla. Musee D’Orsay. Look at me, all classy and the such.

May 8^th – 11^th -                  At home in Stowmarket.  Ahh, downtime.

May 11^th – 13^th -                Euro Disney with Rebecca, Sarah and Garret. 

May 14^th – 15^th -                Back at home.  Hmm, looking at this doesn’t make seem too bad.

May 16^th – 20^th -                Vancouver, seeing family and attending a beautiful wedding.

May 20^th – 21^th -                To Iowa, so that I can visit one of the Climax plants. My boss, figured that Iowa was on the way back to England from Canada. I could just pop by…

May 22^th -                            Stuck in St. Louis for a day. Well, it wasn’t a bad place to see. Good BBQ and I didn’t know that you could actually go up the arch. You need to be under 5 feet to do it comfortably but you can do it.

May 23^rd – 26^th -                Fuck it, if I’m going to be on the east coast (yes, Iowa is the east coast. I’m from BC, east coast is everything east of the Rockies. If your water goes to the Atlantic, east coast!) I’ll go visit North Carolina and see Lance!

May 27^th – 28^th -                I’m back in Paris. I think Hannah and Luke are here. I could be imagining things thought.

May 29^th – 31^st -                At home in Stowmarket.  Ahh, downtime.

June 1^st – 4^th -                    Paris one last time. This time, both because of Rebecca, I end up seeing a bunch of boobs and then going to a French Police station. Get your head out of the gutter. We went to see a show at the Moulin Rouge and then she had to get a criminal record check.

So, that was my month. Like I said, a bunch of places were seen and enjoyed. But since there are a lot of things that happened I’m just going to recount my favorite stories for the month, which no offence to the wonderful wedding (and a very loud and enjoyable rendition of “Red Solo Cup”, Euro Disney or the National Monument, was  my last night in Raleigh.

Although it was relatively quiet, looking back it was still a good story. The night starts with the local delicacy of Chicken n Waffles. Which as odd as it sounds, and to be honest it sounds less odd then it looks when delivered in front of you, it was quite delicious.

\

Then goes from bar to bar to bar, where we drink knockouts, a great tasting drink that was apparently extremely alcoholic, get hit on by ugly, nasty things, danced up on one of Lance’s friends husband and then finally meet up with Ashley who proceeds to ask what was up the last night we saw her. Apparently because Lance of out of control loud… Wait what? Lance wasn’t loud; I actually thought he was pretty normal.  Oh well. The night continues on as any normal night would and as ends up at some quality food establishment. I think it will always confound me to the ability of Lance to be such a foodie during the day and then to see his standards drop to astonishing levels while drinking. (yes, I’m looking at 50 chicken nuggets). Back to the story, ah yes late night food. Every town has something that you eat late at night you shouldn’t. Vancouver for me was always pizza by the slice, Phoenix was the mystery burrito, London it’s kebabs, and in Raleigh, it’s the Gypsy Diner.

So we go to the Gypsy Diner for food.  Now in the diner, it’s still relatively early so it’s decently quiet. Me and lance take a seat and drunk dial Peaches. As one does. Meanwhile, a couple site in the booth beside us and are obviously trashed.  Now, before I go any further, there is something that you need to know about Lance. Almost as if it’s divine intervention, Lance always ends up meeting and befriending all the friendly crazies in the world.  So, I think Lance and Peaches are on the phone at this point, I’m pretty sure they are talking about how the Mayan calendar ending and the Rachel (Peaches’ wife) getting pregnant can’t be a coincidence, when the lady beside us starts talking to us about PHD chemistry.  Apparently, the woman’s husband is some sort of big shot in the chemistry world. So, with Lance doing his PHD in chemistry we began conversing. She tells us that they had just come from the secret underground bar.  The foundation as we knew it since we had been there earlier in the week. So we continue chatting. Realizing more and more that, A they were plastered, and B that there was all kinds of chemistry bonding going on. (Oh victory, science pun!) , the discussion started to get more and more … exuberant.  Out of nowhere, we get shouted at to be quiet, people are trying to eat. No, if that came from an elderly person, a family or something of that sort you kind of expect it and yeah you quiet down. Was that who called us out? No, it’s a 20 something white guy in a wife beater, sweatpants, and a sideways baseball cap. Needless to say, not quite what was expected and considering that the manager of the diner was sitting beside us and seemed to be enjoying the Lance and drunken lady show, I was less then worried when the lady beside us started talking louder and told them to shove it. All in all, it was a good night and as always amazing to see Lance again. But as with all last night’s somewhere,  made me hope that my adventure brings me together with the people who make each adventure epic again soon. 

Portugal

So, just before moving house, more on this one at another day, Rebecca and I decided that we should go on holiday. The rules were simple, no long flights, had to be somewhere we both hadn’t been and had to be warm. We ended narrowing the decision down to Portugal and Morocco, but with my lack of desire to see more deserts, Portugal was the absolute winner. We decided that we would go and see three different places; we would go to Albufuria on the south coast, Lisbon and then Porto. At first we planned to only go to the first two and skip Porto, but after reminding Rebecca that Porto was the home of Port. I was able to convince her that we should go there as well.

The trip started roughly. Usually when going to a place we would look up at least the basics in the language so that we would be able to get by, but this time, mostly because after going to France and Holland where English was spoken by everyone, we didn’t even think about it. So, we got there and were quickly shocked that the only language spoken was Portuguese. Now, reading that you go, Sean you moron, of course they speak Portuguese in Portugal. Trust me, I felt like an even bigger moron there. Trying to act out that you would like to purchase gas without being able to speak the language has to be one of the things I never want to try again in my life. But, after quickly learning the word Cerveja (beer) we were able to fumble our way through it all.

The Beach in Albufuria

This became even odder when we arrived in beautiful Albufuria. We stayed at a resort right on the beach which was lovely. However, we only arrived in time to eat at the hotel restaurant and then go to bed. The next morning we realized that Albufuria was not quite what we expected. We started the day with some beach time and then slowly made our way into town looking for some good Portuguese food to eat. Yeah, that wasn’t happening. While the weather and the major language proved otherwise, I would have sworn I had travelled back to England. If I wanted to get a steak and ale pie or fish and chips that wouldn’t be a problem. Cheap, crappy fake Italian, yup no worries, anything remotely Portuguese, no chance. After some time however, this began to make a lot of sense why. While there, we didn’t see a single local there other than working in the shops. The only people there other than us were retirement aged Brits and North Americans getting shnockered on the beach. Needless to say, not quite what you would be hoping for, but the weather and views were nice so there was nothing to complain about. So we did as was expected and drank with the random other tourist and watched the English league cup football final.

After a couple days down in the south we traveled north to the capital of Lisbon. This was where Rebecca was most excited to go see.  It was the place with the laundry list of things to see and do. And to be truthful, we did them all, and they were good. But the best parts of Lisbon for us ended up being the unplanned things that happened in Lisbon. First, of all the places that we ate, some recommended, some researched, the best meal we ate ended up being the first place in Lisbon that we went to. Not the acclaimed Fado music place, not the restaurant on the side of the tiled pedestrian street. Nope, tired, randomly wandering the streets in an unknown area of the capital we stubble upon an amazing  small Portuguese restaurant. Isn’t that always the case? We ended up eating “Portuguese” style steak in this great little place and if I’m honest, it’s probably the best food I’ve eaten in the past month. The only problem is that I doubt that I could ever get back there or even what its name was. From there we ambled back to our hotel where we ended up passing a little shop with a painting in the window. Odder still, both me and Rebecca really liked it. So, what does one do when in a foreign country and sees a full size, four-foot long painting that they like. Obvious isn’t it? Because we are flying a budget airline with zero baggage allowance and notorious for ruining bags, we bought it. I mean it was on sale and you need to live in the moment and not worry about the problems of tomorrow. So we go into the shop and talk about how we want to buy their painting.

Me and Rebecca must have eaten our
weight in these suckers. 

 Excited, the shop keep gets the painting and asks us how we are getting it home. Mentioning that an airplane was involved the shop keep who we now realize is also the painter was a little anxious so the painting ended up wrapped in all the tissue paper they had, some random Christmas wrapping paper that was lying around and some cut up plastic bags. It was glorious. Let’s go back and remember that we were slightly/really lost. Yeah, now we’re lost with a large painting and still have all of our time in Lisbon and a whole other city to visit. While walking around looking for our hotel, it definitely crossed my mind, I really need to start writing down all the terrible decisions that I make and try to learn from them, but then again, what would I have to write about if I did that. From that first night we then went to go on and do all the list of things mentioned earlier and honestly, outside the Pastis de Nata which were recommended by a friend and were fantastic (Thank you Ross) the rest was unremarkable. I know that’s a bit harsh, but I don’t know, I simply wasn’t too fussed about it. Still, the painting, the first night’s meal and the Pastis de Nata still made Lisbon worth the visit.

From Lisbon we then continued north on to Porto. Although our GPS (Maya (yes sis, it’s named after your cat, I figured it was the only other thing I have ever encountered that after my first time dealing with I will distrust forever)) decided that it was going to be a major bitch and continually try and make us use a tram bridge instead of a car bridge to get across the river (even making us take back alley dirt roads to get to it) Porto completely made up for it. And while the rest of Portugal was good, nothing amazing and I’m happy to have seen it the once, I would go back to Porto any day. Sitting on the bank of the river you could sit and eat a really good meal and look across to all the port cellars all lit up.

View from our restaurant on the first night in Porto

 Then actually going to the cellars and doing their tours pushed it over the top. On the first full day we had in Porto, we decided that we should go see three port cellars. In Scotland we saw three whisky distilleries and we felt three gave a good spectrum to feel you have seen the lot. Also, from our experience in Scotland, we decided to spend the extra 10 euros and get the enhanced tour where you got 5 ports to try. That may have been an unwise decision in retrospect. We go to the first cellar, and because it’s off season, we were on the tour all by ourselves. This was nice because it meant that we could ask a lot of questions and actually feel like we really learnt how port was made. Then at the end of the tour the guide would tell us to sit and they would bring us our samples.  Expecting 5 small tasters we sat eagerly, but as they arrived we both realize we may be in trouble this day. With 5 very large glasses of port placed in front of us we realize that, at around 20% each, we have a lot of booze to drink. Not wanting to be disrespectful and because we both found that we really like port, 

Our first set of Ports to taste

we drank it all like any good guest should do. Slightly intoxicated, food would have to be in order before the next one, so we sat and ate before moving to the next cellar. This process repeated itself for the next two cellars and if I’m to be entirely honest. Walking back to the hotel was going to be a bit of a problem. Thankfully, we weren’t walking to the hotel at that point. Nope, we were going on a river cruise. The nice gentle rocking of a boat to ease the stomach after filling it full of alcohol, that sounds like a good idea, right? Yeah, as you can expect, it wasn’t the best of plans. However, while it wasn’t the easiest things to sit through it was still really nice to do the river cruise of Porto and if the only complaint you have visiting a city was that you got yourself too intoxicated to really fully enjoy the boat cruise (also because of a bit of better planning could have resolved this) then you know that you have had a good time there.

In the end, we got back to London, painting as well (with only minor damage marks from both the airline as well as the Gatwick airport baggage system)  and crashed before the big move the next day. 

Hopping about Europe

So, I haven’t really written about anything as of late, but in all honesty, not much was story worthy. So, I thought that I would write about my three mini journeys around Europe in the last little while. Recently, I have had the pleasure of going to Pit Lochry in Scotland, Aix-Les-Bains in the French Alps and Rotterdam in Holland. While none of them were too terribly exciting, I thought it would be a good short story.

First, back in December I was given the opportunity to head up to Pit Lochry and visit two whisky distilleries. The first was Edradour, the world’s smallest whisky distillery. It only has 3 people who make the whisky and it is all done by hand and shovels. One of the more interesting parts was to get there, you really did feel like it was a tiny distillery because you had to navigate down long, one lane (and that’s generous) paths to get to this little distillery nestled in the hills. While there we ended up waiting it their lounge and the group I was with became quite enamored with the fact that every time you purchased a tea or coffee you got a free full sized mug. This meant that we had people going back and buying coffee after coffee for a collection of mugs.  Later we went to Blair Athos which is one of the biggest single malt distilleries in the world; oddly enough, one that you most likely have never heard of. That’s because it’s actually not sold as Blair Athos. It’s used as the major component in Bell’s whisky, the number one whisky in the UK. I will attest, after testing the unblended version I can easily see why they blend it into something else. Whew. There we saw the same set up as the first, but in a much larger and more mechanized way. In the end it was a good trip and interesting to see, but, I can easily say that once you see one whisky distillery, you have seen them all and the only thing different is the type in your glass at the end.

Next, in February I ended up on a work trip off to southeastern France to visit one of our raw material producers. So, to start I had to catch a flight from London City Airport to Geneva and drive down to Aix-Les-Bain (Near Albertville, where the 92 winter Olympics were). Before I go into the actual trip, might I say, flying from City is amazing when you live where I do.  I made it from my front door to my gate in 35 minutes. How is that for great? Add in the fact that my flight was as long as my daily train and I could really get used to this. We visited the plant and it was ridiculous. Here we are surrounded by pristine ski mountains and down in the valley, there is a silicon metal smelter with 5 furnaces. I mean it was a little out of place. I would have to imagine it is much like how Henderson and Climax are in Colorado.  The trip was great though, I have to say that I think that I could easily spend a lot of time in that area. One thing I did learn was that, it doesn’t matter where in the world you are, you can always find an Irish bar and if you are in a small town in France, an Irish bar with Crown Royal (which is extremely rare in Europe).  I would easily say that the highlight would have to be me chatting with one of the guys I went on the trip with about the drinks that I will regularly drink. So here I go, with beer, gin and tonic, whisky, whisky/coke and not really thinking I say, and occasionally if I’m at a good place I’ll have a martini. To which, I get the following events:

The Martini of Doom

The guy asks “Martini? What’s that?”

I reply “The James Bond drink, gin, Vermouth and in my case a twist of lime.”

He then tells me that he hasn’t ever had a martini and that I should go get one. Obviously, me having drunk most of the night by this point I have forgotten I’m in a dingy Irish bar and accept the offer and go get one. Let’s start with, the bartender only spoke French and my French after drinking gets really bad, so that was already a clusterfuck. Then when I did explain it, he had never heard of the drink before, apparently he was an artist moonlighting as a bartender.  Thankfully, (or not really, depending on how you look at it) we were the only ones in the bar so the bartender gives up saying, hop back here, make your drink yourself. So here I go, and I quickly start to realize how bad of a decision this was. First there is no cocktail shaker so I am mixing in a beer mug. Then I have to use essentially a butter knife on a lemon (I still can’t believe they actually had the ingredients. I mean they didn’t have baileys and it was an Irish bar). Finally, I had to stain it with my butter knife into a different glass. Surprisingly it wasn’t terrible, and I drank it letting the guy who had never had a Martini taste it only to mention that he doesn’t like gin… I really wish I was smarter then I get when drinking. Why is everything a good idea?



The Small Town in Holland I visited



Finally, in late February I was able to travel to Rotterdam in Holland to visit the molybdenum roaster. That trip was my very first time to visit Holland (My mother’s native country) and I will say, that while I did love seeing the small amount that I did, I am going to hold off making any opinions about it as I know that I will be going back someday. Hopefully soon.  The people I met were really nice, and I had to laugh, because while visiting the plant I got the chance to talk to one of the Americans that was working there and he offered to me his impression of the Dutch people as nice people, but extremely logical and rigid in their lack of desire to “just see what happens” in any situation. Apparently, I don’t have roots to my heritage in that manner then. Winging it has always been the best way forward. But alas, as I said, the biggest thing I took from that trip is that I really want to go back (also, preferably when the temperature is above freezing without a killer wind). Oh well, at least it’s an adventure for the future.

Secret Cinema

 Guardians, a mourner will be awaiting you on the corner holding flowers. Bring a flower to identify yourself during these difficult times. Be sure to arrive before 1 pm as you it would be to be on time for Harry’s funeral.

Laurence P. Williams, Provost

Department 426

With that we received our last communication before secret cinema. So far we had been shown some random pictures, sent on a hunt for ice flowers in London, and told to dress in appropriate officers attire as to not stand out like a sore thumb. But how may I ask was this supposed to help us decipher what we were about to see.  I will tell you that I didn’t figure out what we were seeing until the movie started and the title came across the screen. Apparently I don’t know movies.

Some of the Area

So, still racking my brain, Rebecca, Carla and I met up with flowers in hand at our designated meeting space. Now, I don’t really know what happened next but I will go on record now and say I messed up (See, I’m learning this married thing well :-P) and instead of going with a group of officers to a funeral, we strolled along the streets with the high society folk going to an authors talk about the contemporary novel. 

These were just people attending,
People get all decked out

Oh well, here we were strolling through Vienna (London dressed up with actors and the such) chatting with this lovely lady as she explained all about how she was an actress and that Vienna was just the most wonderful place and even thought there was still work to me done repairing after the war, it really was no problems in Vienna.

Harry's Bed with all the Flowers

After a short stroll, or jog if you consider the pace that our leader was walking at, we arrived at the hotel and the international zone of Vienna. There after getting a quick drink in the bar we met up with the housekeeper. He told us that Harry had been staying at the hotel and that he saw the whole accident where Harry got it by a car. Right in front of the hotel, but if we wanted we could go to his room and leave our flower.  By this point the flower was starting to be annoying so we did that then went and explored. The level of detail around the place was ridiculous, it was about the size of a small London block, but just wow. So in the middle they had some street vendors selling Vienna type food amongst the rubble that was still around and all along the outside there was a hotel in one section,  the Casanova bar in another area, A children’s hospital, a police station and a mock up train station and café. 

Look EVIDENCE!

Being as we were dressed up as guardians, we decided that it would be best if we went to the police station and see what was about.  There we are shown more clues and we meet the chief of police for the British sector. He tells us that there is a ring stealing all the penicillin, diluting it, and selling it to the sick at a profit. He thinks it has to do with the sewers but hasn’t found the evidence yet. As guardians we were to go investigate further.

As good officers what did we do? Got food and sat in the café. What can I say, I’m not cut out for police work. Then we went to the top floor and were approached by another guy. This time he asked if we had been to the sewers and if we wanted to make some cash. Again, being great officers what did we do? Sure, we’ll help you smuggle penicillin. So there we were, dressed in officers outfits carrying burlap sacks of penicillin through the international zone, best yet, we were told watch out for the police and if you see them, run… great. As we were doing this, everybody was watching us very suspiciously. 

Smuggling, Pre Faceplant

I wonder why and then we got to the sewers and started taking twists and turns in efforts to lose people. It ended up working so well that I missed the fact that we had to cross a plank and fell straight on my face. What can I say, must be karma for being a terrible officer.  Oh well, we did the task and were then rewarded with a nice new fake Austrian passport. Hmm, wonder what that has to do with anything. Oh well.

At this point we decide that we should probably take a second and get something to drink and wash myself off with. So we sit down again with our newly acquired goods and more antics ensue. First one guy was chasing another calling him Harry. Wait, wasn’t the dead guy Harry? I’m sure he was… oh well, need to clean up. 

A few minutes later the one being chased is caught and we get a mini show from the top of the area.

“Have you ever seen any of your victims?”

“You know, I never feel comfortable on these sort of things. Victims? Don’t be melodramatic. Look down there. Tell me. Would you really feel any pity if one of those dots stopped moving forever? If I offered you twenty thousand pounds for every dot that stopped, would you really, old man, tell me to keep my money, or would you calculate how many dots you could afford to spare? Free of income tax, old man. Free of income tax – the only way you can save money nowadays.” Then Harry guy jumped down and said:

“Don’t be so gloomy. After all it’s not that awful. Like the fella says, in Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love – they had 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock. So long Holly.” And ran off, chased shortly thereafter by a group in white biohazard suits.

Then we were told that the lecture on the contemporary novel was about to start and we should make our way to that. There the film started. And if given what we had seen you could guess what it was, you know movies better than I do because across the screen the title of “The Third Man” came up and an audible “oh!!” came from the crowd. 

Even if I didn’t ever figure it out, I will say that it was amazing fun. I went to it with really high expectations and I was not disappointed and will be going again. Hopefully next time I do a bit better figuring it out.