Lindsay's Misadventures in THE WORLD: 08/01/2006

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

So I've decided that I'm going to seriously make an effort to stay up to date on this blog (and my personal one) with all my free time. I know I've said that many times before but this time I'm serious. Note the new layout :-). So nothing of note has really happened since my last post, which I realize was a bit preachy (and please don't misread my comments on pregnant women--my mate Collette just had a beautiful baby girl on Sunday). Anyways, I'm becoming more involved in the global expat community, which I think is good for me. First, it's giving me extra push to work on my travel book, which incidently got it's first use real use since I started writing it. I gave my mate Steve my chapter on London and he seemed to really enjoy it. I think I'm beginning to realize that in a way I'm trying to cover too much. But I'm just going to go with the flow and see where it takes me. I think in a way it covers a niche market of young American twenty somethings in (or barely out of) college backpacking. I wonder if there's a way to market that to Lonely Planet? I'm also going to get my personal website up and running again. Yes, like the blog I know I've said that before, but I'm finally playing with the images I scanned from my passport. We'll see what comes of it all. It's wonderful living with Matt because he's someone I can bounce ideas off of and someone who I can go to with design and code related questions.

I finally made it down to the Crawford Gallery in town and to be honest, I was kind of disappointed. It has lots of sculptures, however they're all plaster casts. Ironically I've seen almost all of the originals (most coming from the British Museum, The Parthenon Museum and Musee Louvre). That makes it ok I suppose, but really if it's free, I can't complain. Although it's August here, I'm freezing! Already. It's kind of a drag that it's rarely making it above 18 C - 20 C(that's like 65 F- 70 F). I've applied for my taxes back. Fingers crossed there.

Well that's it for the moment. Stay tuned for more (I swear I mean it this time).

Friday, August 25, 2006

So every so often i am reminded that i'm currently living in a very Catholic country. Usually it's in the form of the loads of pregnant women i see waddling around town. Or all of the "Pregnancy Crisis and Counseling Centres" i see dotted throughout Cork. Or even the fact that in United Colors of Benetton one of the manequins has a nice little belly on it. Today however, my reminder came in the form of both a billboard and giant poster reading "Oppose Stem Cell Research" with a picture of a cute little child saying "i'm not spare parts!". I get infuriated with the whole topic when it comes up in America, but maybe because there i feel like i have more of a say there being a registered voter. None the less, the situation here really makes me feel for Irish women and the struggles they go through in regards to women's rights, mainly abortion, living in a country where they don't even have a choice. I think people want to donate un-used embryos for scientific research should be allowed to. But in any event i'm turning what is my "family friendly blog" into political discourse.

On to more Lindsay-related topics, Matt and i have finally booked our tickets and i have them in my freaking hands. Thank goodness. They ended up costing us significantly more than we intended but to make our presence known in all the places it is required we really had no other choice. So the following is our itinerary (up til December 12th).

01.November.2006 DUBLIN (IE) - FRANKFURT (DE) EI 656 K 16:20 - 19:20
01.November.2006 FRANKFURT (DE) - SINGAPORE QF 6 K 23:25 - 18:15+
10.November.2006 SINGAPORE - SYDNEY (AU;NS) QF 32 K 09:05 - 19:30
17.November.2006 SYDNEY (AU;NS) - ADELAIDE QF 759 K 14:20 - 16:00
26.November.2006 ADELAIDE - PERTH (AU;WA) QF 587 K 11:35 - 12:25
06.December.2006 PERTH (AU;WA) - MELBOURNE (AU;VI) QF 768 K 13:55 - 20:20
06.December.2006 MELBOURNE (AU;VI) - NADI QF 395 K 23:59 - 05:40+
12.December.2006 NADI - LOS ANGELES (US;CA) QF 3839 K 22:50 - 13:05
12.December.2006 LOS ANGELES (US;CA) - NEW YORK, NEWARK QF 3047 K 14:50 - 22:55

Yep. That's a lot of flying. Nadi, for those who don't know, is in Fiji where we've decided to stop as well. Other than the 5 hour layover in Frankfurt and the 6am arrival in Fiji i'm pretty pleased with the whole deal.

In the meantime it's much of the same from before. I cook, clean, play video games, i'm doing some website related stuff which should bring a little income in and with any luck i'll get my Irish taxes back soon.

So there you have it, just a quick post for everyone. :-)

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

So another post here we go--

Not much has been happening lately so i figured i'd share my bank holiday adventures with you all. In the UK and ROI they do bank holidays. Why they can't seem to find anything more special to celebrate than random days off dubbed bank holidays is beyond me (i mean really, look at how many birthdays and events we seem to celebrate in the US when we have FAR less history). Anyways this past weekend was a bank holiday and we decided to go camping with our mates Oisin and Caitlin as well as a bunch of Oisin's mates from Siemens.

So Saturday morning we packed up Caitlin's tiny little Ford Fiesta and headed down to Barleycove on the Mizenhead Penninsula, the most southern parts of Ireland. As it was a holiday everyone else and their mothers were on the road so it took us a while to get down there (and with so much crap packed in the car there were several painful scraping sounds). In any event we made it down there only to find the sunshine we left in Cork city was replaced by grey clouds in Western Cork. We met up with the rest of our camping buddies at a pub in Crookhaven and then made our way to Barleycove. Initially the plan was not to set up camp yet as technically camping wasn't allowed. But as we saw another tent already up in OUR spot we decided to do it anyways. We swam, the boys fished (didn't catch anything), flew kites, kicked soccer balls, drank beer and had a BBQ. Around 9:30 we started our bonfire which initially had pretty much everything but the kitchen sink in it. We fed it lots of peat logs and it managed to hold up quite nicely. And speaking of using our natural environment, we didn't bring any ice for the beer, so we decided that the best way to fix this was to put the beer in the ocean. Sadly we didn't have the coldest of drinks but it didn't really seem to matter. After campfire songs (one of Osh's mate's brought his guitar down) we hit the hay only to be woken up around 6am by a torrential downpour of rain. We stayed inside our tent which managed to stay pretty water free (and with an air mattress we were well off the ground) 'til the rain turned to drizzle around 10am and then we headed out.

Some photos...

A Jelly fish in the Crookhaven harbour