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Hacking and Marathon Training

2008-03-23T13:31:00.000-07:00

Considering that I’ve managed to avoid any semblance of ill health since August, I suppose that it’s my deserved time to get a cold. And the health advice that I’ve received from everyone and their little brother about the best high-octane, 900-proof “cough elixir” has been enough for a journal entry of its own. I’m not really sure if the goal of these brews is to actually make the cough go away, or to slay the patient enough that he forgets he ever had the cough to begin with (or indeed, lungs, or a name, etc.). Intoxicating witch-doctor potions aside, it’s nice just to chill out in my room for a few days, anyway.

I talked to my family back home, and there was recently a snowfall that put 22 inches on the ground in the lower Midwest-Bluegrass region. I’m going through a daily debate with myself about which type of cold is more palatable; the crisp, snowy, way-below-freezing winters that were fairly common in the countryside where I lived until I was thirteen, or the above-freezing, hell-spawned three-month-long gale that personifies Winter 2008 in Maynooth. I thought that giving up ice cream shakes would keep me from getting ice cream headaches, but no! I need but to walk outside in the opposite direction of the wind for a few seconds, and the sensation smites anything a chocolate malt could ever do. I’m told that June here is beautiful, though, and the idea of eighteen hours of daylight sounds really, really appealing right now.

There’s something kind of quaint about this dank weather, too. The roaring fires in the pubs really just accentuate that people here try to make the best of the harsh conditions outside. Or maybe it just really amuses the pub people that my ale of choice is the one that only elderly Irish men drink (which leads me to think: was I born like this?). Whatever the case, it seems that the lesson that I’m learning over and over again is that a person can get through anything when the right people are there with him. And what the past couple of months have lacked in uplifting weather, have been more than made up with unforgettable people with whom to shiver through the demonic wind-gusts.

Case-in-point: I gave a piano lesson this evening to the daughter of this wonderful Singaporean family from my church here. The lesson had lasted fifteen minutes (I was planning for about forty-five) before the parents came in and swept me into the kitchen to this incredible buffet of international food. They told me that they know what it’s like for an international student to live alone in a different country, and now we feast together after the lessons (and I get a take-home bag!). And now I’m not sure if I’m not the one reaping the greater long-term benefit from teaching the piano lessons, when the people are so hospitable. But we’ll see. I wonder if they’ve ever had cornbread?

This evening is the beginning of my Easter Break. I’m using the travel stipend that comes with my scholarship to go to Geneva, Switzerland and Santiago de Compostela, Spain, each for four nights. I’m also traveling up to Northern Ireland with a good friend from my music program to stay on his farm and hang out with his family for a few days. Although I grew up raising llamas for a few years, I’ve never actually stood within an arm’s distance of a sheep, and lo, this languished yearning shall soon come to pass. Not to mention seeing the Giant’s Causeway, the Mourne Mountains and other rational reasons to go up north. School has been great, and my M.A. thesis research has become an absolute dream-come-true, but the break is also more than welcome.

Anyway, the Belfast Marathon training was going better than expected until this lung-bug attacked me. I haven’t endured any running injuries so far, and this may actually be a good rest, if only just to scare away the very thought of shin splints. A canal stretches from Dublin to somewhere in the middle of the country, and there’s a makeshift mixture of footpaths, gravel, asphalt and mud that lasts the entire length of the canal. It’s excellent for running. From my dorm to the canal to the Intel plant and back is almost exactly eight miles, and I need but to run closer to Dublin to go even further. I was pleased to find out that the discontinued (and thus, scandalously inexpensive compared to others) model of the GPS watch that I ordered from the Internet actually works, and tells me how far I run and at what speed. The watch, combined with the GPS receiver I have to wear to get a signal and the Camelback that holds all my water, makes me look more like Darth Vader after taxes than someone training for a race. It certainly seems strange that even in the Silicon Valley of Ireland (Leixlip, with its two major technology plants), people look at me like I’ve grown two heads when I brandish this dorky, high-tech gadget during a run. I thought they would have been envious; two heads would double the amount of computer programming output, after all. Still, I have little to worry about when I run. I’ve learned not to heed the puzzled gazes, and if I do end up with a running injury, I’ll just ask someone for his cough elixir recipe.

A Day During My Visit to Portugal in November

2008-01-10T06:36:00.000-08:00

I wrote this while I was there; and then forgot it. I'll put some pictures up in a few days:

Visit to the Algarve, Portugal

The total cost of this trip was probably above $400 dollars. I found a fairly good deal at a 4-star beach resort in Praia de Gale, which is about 40 km west of the Faro Airport for $40 per night (for four nights). The flight was probably about $150 total, and the rental car was a little over $100. It would have been less if I knew how to drive a stick-shift, but unfortunately the very same people who claim that it’s a right of passage for American males to learn to drive a stick are the very last people to let you learn on their cars, and I never learned how. Thus have I become well acquainted with my little five-door Fiat Punto, with an automatic transmission that behaves more like a stick-shift than anything else I’ve ever driven. Kind of weird, but well worth the rental fee. Because I turned 23 two weeks before I got to Faro, I didn’t have to pay the extra fee for being underage, although it was through TravelRent, a car company I’ve never heard of before.

Driving in Portugal is wild; on the major highway (notice the singular use of the term) that passes through the Algarve, the 120 km speed limit is more or less nominal, and I found plenty of people going 20 km above that with no problem. The back-roads are really scenic; the tile roofs, white-washed villages, orange groves and large hills to the north really make this place all I’ve imagined it to be. I drove from my hotel in Gale to a town to the western inland part of the region called Silves, which is a dramatic little town composed of a steep hill covered with little white houses and protected by a towering, 12^th century Moorish castle at the top. The church next to the castle even had old ladies dressed in all black congregating outside, just like in a movie. I toured through the castle, which was under restoration so that the old Moorish gardens could (after a millennium) again take over the courtyard. After a blindingly nervous drive down one-way streets that were built way before the automobile was ever invented, I continued westward through the Algarve’s hill country.

I made my way through the countryside to Monchique after a considerable climb into the hills. As I parked in the town to talk to my mom on the cell phone, I met an elderly British lady who had been living in the picturesque little mountainside town for a few years, and who pointed me up the mountain to what’s called the Foia of Monchique, an incredible mountaintop view from which you could easily see Faro, and probably into Spain. I sat at the mountaintop café and drank a cappucchino, admiring the view, before making my way down the mountain and westward, along the ridges, until I reached the western coast of Portugal. From there I proceded southward to the town of Sagres, which sits on a cape that composes the extreme southwesternmost point of continental Europe. The very end of the cape is called Cabo de S. Vicente, a gorgeous place to view the sea-cliffs that tower above the ocean for the entire visible coastline.

A few miles from S. Vicente I found a parking lot, and saw path that went down the steep cliffs to a hidden beach. I spent the next hour there, most of it in the frigid water (although the air outside was probably in the lower 70s). Apparently the little cove was so hidden that the families didn’t see much point in wearing clothes there. Those Europeans! I tried not to look (if I did, it would have seemed more like a wild game preserve than a beach, if you get my drift), and made my way back to the road for one final stop, to a Napoleon-esque castle on another cape called Forteleza. The cannons were still in place, although there wasn’t much as far as narratives go, especially since it was probably the place that Henry the Navigator set up his famous seafaring school in the 15th century. What was really neat about the place were two large holes in the ground that weren’t visible unless you almost stumbled into them.When you look inside, you see that they fall maybe 150 into the ground, and you can hear the ocean swell inside them. One of them, you could even see the passageway with the open sea at the end. I had run out of film by then, but I hope I see some more. Were they alternative escapes in the old days? Maybe. It sure must have been really cool to be a soldier back in the days when that fort was occupied.

Southern Portugal in early November was warm and sunny; with temperatures in the 70s and the water just a little colder than I would like. And then there's the nude beaches, which resemble large animal zoo exhibits than beaches, if you get my drift. Those Europeans! The sand is mostly golden-colored, and the limestone rock formations have amazing caves that you an explore on the beach (although some of them flood at high tide). Climbing the rock formations and watching the sunset was awesome. Maybe that's where the bouldering sport came from.

I suppose I've typed enough. I'm about to finish semester one over here; I've got a couple more fun travel stories to post up here in the meantime. Adios.

How NOT to Take a Daytrip to Spain (Or: ...And Then I Stepped in Dog Vomit)

2007-11-04T12:15:00.001-08:00

This entry is not for the faint of heart. If the title grossed you out, I’d suggest not reading the details below. I debated whether or not to publish this little story, but we’ve all been there in some way or not. Anyway, the necessary ingredients for a disastrous eight hours in Andalusia are as follows:

1. Decide on the spur of the moment to drive to drive an hour and a half into the country.
2. Bring no maps whatsoever. Forget your cell phone and assume that there will be some place to buy camera film, as yours is full.
3. Trust dutifully in your abilities with the Spanish language, ignoring the fact that you only studied it for three semesters and that the Andalusian accent is not exactly the same thing as what you learned.
4. Have limited experience with European roundabouts, and none with big-city European roundabouts.
5. Drive a Fiat.
6. Decide to go into Seville (though unaware of this) on a national holiday weekend when all of Andalusia flocks to the very same place you’re going.
7. In the process of desperately fleeing Seville’s horrific traffic, drive to the resort towns that have, though for one day only, become literal ghost towns because everyone without wooden pegs for legs is in Seville (see #6).
8. Still shaking an hour after leaving the city because you just experienced the worst urban driving conditions in your 23 years of existence, jerk the sunglasses from your face as you walk into a rural Andalusian gas station, lose your grip on them, and accidentally fling them into the toilet. Cuss.
9. In the process of fervently looking for a place that’s not closed to buy a postcard from in said ghost towns, pay no attention to where you’re stepping.
10. After not watching where you’re stepping in said ghost town, take off your sandal and wipe sandal and vomit-saturated foot off on the sidewalk in front of you and on the corner of the building next to you. Realize after the fact that you are in front of the one shop in the city that’s open, and that the shopkeeper’s daughter just watched you desecrate her mother’s shop. Pretend not to hear and walk away as angry Andalusian mother screams at you passionately as she mops up the street.

Okay, so I’m in Portugal at the moment. I love Portugal. I’ll use my next entry to describe it after I get back. I’m only an hour’s drive from the Spanish border, and thought I’d brave a day in Seville, since it’s on the list of cities that I’ve always wanted to see. And to this day, I’ve never actually stepped foot in it, and saw the fabulously golden Moorish palaces that I’ve dreamed of touring for years just long enough to grumble that I’d been looking for a parking space for AN HOUR AND A HALF. That’s right. AN HOUR AND A HALF. Finally, fearing for my life because of the traffic (I would've traded it for a hundred Manhattans) and well aware that my nerves were shot for the rest of the day, I decided to drive back across rugged Andalusia to go to a couple of the beaches on the Spanish side of the border. Little did I know that the whole countryside had closed down. Sure, the whole place seemed straight out of a movie; the horses, white-washed towns, idyllic, limbless pine tress, sun-scorched fields. Maybe one day I’ll come back to it with better memories. I never did find that tourist shop, and didn’t get my postcard or film. All I have to show for my day in Spain is a gasoline receipt and a map of Spain and Portugal that I purchased using broken (!) Spanish at the gas station where I accidentally gave my favorite sun glasses a swirlie. I spent all of today in Portugal on the beach, as I should have done.

Pictures from Iceland.

2007-10-26T11:05:00.001-07:00

Birthday on the beach, Vik, Iceland. The southernmost point of the country, with a volcanic black sand beach right next to the little town.

Lava fields with cinder cone in background, southwestern peninsula. This was on the way to the airport. Most of the country is actually really green, except there aren't really any trees.

Blue Lagoon, southwestern Iceland. Exfoliation hurts (and deserves dishonorable discharge). Those crafty Icelanders even put tubs of silica mud on the sides of the lagoon for guests' epidermal pleasure.

More Blue Lagoon.

And more Blue Lagoon.

Skogafoss, in southern Iceland. Supposedly there's a pot of Viking gold hidden behind the falls. Not that it would even come close to compensating for the exchange rate.

Driving the western fjords.

More fjords.

Rural church with fjord in background.

Rainbow, southwest-central Iceland. I saw more of them in three days than I have in the last ten years.

Volcanic crater, southwest-central Iceland.

Geysir, Iceland. The word "geyser" comes from this place. They erupted every five minutes.

Probably Iceland's most famous waterfall. Not that I can remember its name right now.

Another waterfall near Vik, Iceland. I wish I could figure out how to get these pictures to flip.

Free upgrade on the ride. I wish I knew how to drive a stick shift.

Iceland is Nice!

2007-10-26T10:24:00.000-07:00

Forgive me for the cheesy title. I'm going to attempt to post up some pictures from my birthday trip to Iceland, which is the first real traveling that I've done since I've come here. The photos speak for themselves, but I've never raved about a place like this. My friend Colin and I flew to Reykjavik from London Heathrow (and Dublin before) for three nights via IcelandAir, which is one of the nicer airlines I've been on. We rented a car and drove to the southernmost point in the country the first morning we were there, and stopped and saw geysers, waterfalls, a glacier, lava fields and plenty of mountains. The second day we went to church at the national Lutheran church in Reykjavik (the service was in Icelandic), drove along the fjords of the western coast, and spent the evening walking around Reykjavik. The last day we went to the Blue Lagoon, a relatively famous hot springs area that the Icelanders turned into a spa.

All in all, the country is a life-sized version of Rohan from Lord of the Rings; treeless, wild, mountainous, sparse, full of horses and light-complected people. Gorgeous. It was also by far the most ridiculously expensive place I've ever been to, and it took me a week to develop the anatomy to check my back account online to see how much damage I did. Reykjavik is beautiful architecturally on its own, but the surrounding scenery just makes it beyond anything I could have imagined.

In other news, school is going well here. I'm enjoying my M.A. classes, although there's a lot more emphasis on music theory analysis and the conversion of four-hundred year-old scores into modern terms than what I anticipated. It's not exactly easy, but I'm not running around like a chicken with my head cut off like I did in college, partly because I don't have to worry about ROTC here. I have a better idea of what I want to do my thesis on (I'm not going to write the topic on the Internet, obviously), and I think if I can pull it off, it's a really good opportunity for publication; no one's ever worked on is before, and it's a bigger-picture version of what I worked on as an undergraduate, except this will concentrate on Ireland a few hundred years back. If I can pull it off. All in all, the Masters' program is everything I wanted it to be, and I even get to play my fiddle in the Irish Traditional Music Ensemble on Wednesdays.

I'm still trying to get used to the entire country shutting down between one and two in the afternoon, and I haven't exactly been thrilled (oh....the understatements we make) with the computer office at the university I'm at for the utterly, suicidally inefficient, mockingly student-unfriendly policies and Internet settings that enrage me on an almost hourly basis, but I'll let it rest. After all, the rest of the school here has bent over backwards to welcome me (particularly regarding the scholarship that sent me over here), and I've got loads of Christmas gifts to hand out to all the people who have helped me here in the last few weeks.

As for the next few weeks: as of these evening, I'm on my Fall break, which lasts until a week from Monday for me, since I don't have class on Mondays. I'm going to Portugal, the Algarve region specifically, on Thursday via a fairly good deal that I found. I'm also taking a bus to Cork, in the southwest of Ireland, tomorrow, for a couple of days. I'm coming back to the USA for Christmas for two weeks, since the next time after that I'll be back will be in the early part of August for law school, wherever that may be.

And to those of you're coming to visit me: come before it gets warm! You can easily find flights from East-coast cities for under $200 each way; Aer Lingus is your best bet right now. I'm largely waiting on family and friends to visit me so that I don't have to spend the money seeing things by myself and then more on seeing the same thing when visitors come. So book soon, if you're thinking about it.

That's all for this week. Enjoy the pictures, and I'll write again soon.

Of Marathons, Mountains and Moguls

2007-09-26T03:30:00.000-07:00

I just got back yesterday from four days in Dublin. The city's clean, old and gorgeous, and the Mitchell Scholarship perks--such as the 5-star hotel, private tours and the reception at the US Ambassador's house--were nice, too. I was dumb enough to run the Dublin Half-Marathon without having trained for it, but still finished in under two hours. Needless to say, the hiking trip in the Wicklow Mountains the next day was murder on my legs, as were the stairs in the hotel.

I heard somewhere that the US dollar is at an all-time low, or at least getting there. Perhaps the only worse place for an American to be financially right now is the UK. I'm definitely taking a hit, but the scholarship gives a fine stipend. I just need to get over the fact that I'll have to spend money regardless.

My dormitory is enormous compared to most American dorms, and it has its own bathroom. I was telling someone this at the Ambassador's reception for the Mitchells two nights ago, and he threw his head back, laughed, and then said, "That's good to know, considering that I built them." I have his business card.

The downside to living in the dorms here is that it costs about $8.50 to do a load of laundry. I would imagine this might be because of energy/water costs or to discourage the squandering of environmental resources.....blah. But as I wash most of my clothes in my bathroom sink now for free and dry them on my room heater, I can't help be nostalgic for the $1.00 total cost of laundry back at Vanderbilt.

My classes start Tuesday the 2nd. I might try to take a day tour of the Hill of Tara and the ancient archeology sites in this area before then. There's also the possibility of something called the Moo-a-thon in northwest Ireland, Co. Donegal, in which the runners (of the half-marathon) must dress up like cows in order to run the race, which is supposed to be really scenic. I'll have to find a pair of horns somewhere.

Anyway, I'm settling in okay, after managing to sweet-talk the airline out of charging me for 175 pounds worth of luggage and learning the idiosyncracies of the grocery system here, in which you bring your own grocery bags. I'm in a battle with my university to allow Skype on their Internet network, as I have to go to an Internet cafe to call home, and this effectively mitigates the reason (cheap calling) for using it in the first place. If it works out, expect a call from me.

Some unpaid advertising....

2007-09-12T20:01:00.000-07:00

I just thought that I'd post up here that Aer Lingus (www.aerlingus.com) is currently offering $199 airfare from New York to Dublin. That's cheaper than a lot of the flights within the USA, and would provide interested prospectives a relatively cheap way to visit me.

Also, I recently joined the Skype network (www.skype.com), which is a sort of Internet-based phone service for free. Once you create your account (provided that you have a microphone and speakers on your computer), you just log on at the same time as the person you want to talk with, and you talk (vocally) with him from anywhere in the world, without any charge. I'll avoid publishing my Skype address on the Internet, but please let me know if you get it, and we'll be able to talk.

Lastly, I'm beginning to swear by those as-seen-on-tv vacuum-pack bags. They freed up about 1/3 of my suitcase (but didn't make it any lighter). Sure, it probably wrinkles my clothes beyond recognition and makes me feel like I'm traveling to another planet, but at least I can fit my fiddle case in my luggage now.

Will I bleed green?

2007-09-10T19:50:00.001-07:00

If you are looking at this webpage, you've probably received my email directing you here. The purpose of this blog is to share with family and friends all the things I'm involved with during my year in Ireland without crowding their inboxes with obnoxiously long emails.

What you will find here are accounts of the more interesting tales that I will have experienced (I have an uncle who refers to me as "Forrest Gump" for a reason, after all), and nothing overly sentimental, gushy, pushy, political, pontificating or polarizing.

I leave Saturday, Sept. 15th for Dublin, Ireland, from which I will find the most inexpensive way possible to transfer to Maynooth, a little town in County Kildare, on the outskirts of the greater Dublin area. The next nine months, for the most part, will be at the gracious expense of the George J. Mitchell Scholarship, and I will end my studies in June, 2008 with an M.A. in Music History from the National University of Ireland, Maynooth. I plan to return to the USA sometime next summer, just in time to continue what seems to be my new status as a professional student, and enter law school somewhere. As of this past August 16th, I'm a 2nd Lieutenant in the Army, and will enter active duty service after law school as a JAG lawyer.

But for now, I'm packing and bracing for the $50 or so that I'm going to drop for my bags being too heavy. I have visions of myself wearing seven or eight different layers onto the airplane in order to bring everything I need (how does one pack for a year, anyway?), but I don't even like taking off my flip-flops for the metal detectors.

Anyway, please check back every week or two for new posts, if you wish.

Until then.