Scotland July 21 - Glasgow

Glasgow Tour Bus ***

We decided for this trip to try out a tour bus that made circuits around some tourist spots and allowed you to hop off and hop on wherever you like. They also had a track that played throughout the ride giving you tidbits of information about the part of the city we were in. I liked this feature, but later on in the day (when we were just using it as a glorified taxi back to our parking garage) we had a live operator on an intercom and that was much nicer and had a bit more personality as well.
We rode the tour bus around the city once then jumped off to wander the streets.

Ruthven Lane *

There was a set of vintage shops that we stopped at that were pretty cool. There was a craft fair going on and we bounced around all the different shops, taking a bit longer in a costume shop where we tried on all manner of strange period clothing. Frankly though, the prices were a bit inflated.

Cafe Nardini ***

We stopped off at a little place on the corner that looked like an old-fashioned ice cream parlour to have our first proper bite to eat. We both enjoyed our food thoroughly, but were once again confounded by the process of ordering and receiving food. That or I was impatient from being jet-lagged.
Janet Dreamcrusher happened to like the waitress’ hair, and since something about extended periods of exhaustion make me immune to shame, I was the foreign ambassador who asked for it. I think we made her day though, because she was gracious enough about it as I asked the Dreamcrusher about the angle she wanted.

Necropolis ***

The Necropolis in Scotland is also referred to as the “Merchant’s City” or the “City of the Dead”. It is a hillock upon which several of the ‘merchant kings’ of Glasgow were buried often astride of monuments of themselves dedicated by their surviving relatives/friends/children. It'll take a fair amount of time to walk the grounds, especially if you like taking pictures like us. The views from the top of this huge graveyard are breathtaking and wonderful, definitely something to stop at and take a walk through. After all, how often can you say that you tread over the graves of the 1%?

St. Mungo’s Cathedral **

The Cathedral beside the Necropolis is beautiful and also the site of once of the coolest things I read on our trip, a little quote from Rober Louis Stevenson - “I never weary of great churches. It is my favorite kind of mountain scenery. Mankind was never so happily inspired as when it made a cathedral.” Inside is the tomb of St. Mungo and several incredible tombstones and crests that decorate the ceilings and walls. Cathedrals and churches always have some mystical feeling to them, and St. Mungos supplements it with an epic feeling of vastness.

High Street **

High street is bustling and easy to get to, has plenty of places to grab a bite and shop, and the major mall and car park are right there close to the center of town. It’s an easy place to drop off the car for the tour buses or just putz around and explore some high end clothing stores or just people watch.

Clanadonia - Tribal Music Dudes **

We happened upon a drum and pipe band performing in the street and had a seat. As with most drum circle kind of bands they really are meant to be seen live, and watching them and their infectious playing was a lot of fun. They played very upbeat music and the guys look like they genuinely enjoy what they do, so give them a listen if you get the chance.

Hanoi Bike Shop ***

What can be said about Hanoi bike shop besides “wow”? Nestled around a corner in an unassuming bohemian section of the city, our Frommer’s guide had highlighted it as delicious but we hadn’t really planned dinner out. We went there more on a whim than anything else, and after moving off the balcony due to cold temperature and winds made our order.
I got a sweet potato curry and a jasmine rice while the Dreamcrusher ordered pho. Before our food came in we were given an oil that we were warned was extremely hot and could be used to up the ante on our meal. I’m used to people being a little delicate when it comes to describing heat but something about their manner made me second guess myself and I only dropped a teaspoon into my curry when it arrived, for science.
Thank. God.
Just a teaspoon was a much bigger kick than I expected, and if I had gone with my first impulse to slosh half the cup in I’d probably have died on the bikeshop floor clutching my throat and begging for water.

Botanical II **

We shot back over to the botanical gardens to burn off the last of our energy and checked out the local vegetation in the upper gardens and played around on a children’s playplace. Unfortunately the plays and such weren’t running on Sundays so we missed out on that, but had they been that’s where we would have parked it in the grass and trees.

Scotland July 20th - Glasgow

Scotland!

“Wait Chris, didn’t you just go to a land of some sort right near there?”
“Why yes, I went to Ireland last year.”
“Well, what made you go to Scotland?”
“I just had to try flying over a small expanse of ocean in a plane powered by fan blades!”

It was myself and Janet Dreamcrusher off on another adventure in a celtic nation. Oh yes, the trip to Scotland was a whole different beast from my trip last year.

Aer Lingus x2 ***

I don’t know if we were doing something wrong or just being too cheap, but we ended up with a layover in both directions. I’m not sure if it would have been easier to fly into London and drive up to the land of the Tartans, but we just swallowed our pride and took the two layovers in stride. After all if we stopped over in Dublin then we’d have ample time to pick up some Jameson Truffle chocolate bars (this line of thinking will be important later).
Our first flight is straight to Dublin airport from JFK at 5:30p Friday night. The flight is simple enough, but try to patiently board a second plane at 6am in a foreign country without losing your mind and get back to me. If you think that’s too easy, try taking a bus to the plane which is about the size of… a bus with wings and two giant fans glued on.

 

I mean, what you really want when you’re in a hollow metal tube six miles into the atmosphere is two giant explosion tubes to propel you across the earth using invisible fire

Getting into Scotland we faced our next hurdle: this year we decided to pick up the car immediately.

Alamo **

As if switching planes after not sleeping for a full night wasn’t bad enough, we also had to wait on line for our car rental as children slept crashed out on the waiting benches. They looked how I felt, but much more at peace with it. Everyone was helpful though, so there was that.

Glasgow - Where is our hotel? *

We learned from Ireland that the signpostings for the major cities from the motorways would be pretty dynamic and fit our needs fairly well, unfortunately the cities in Scotland weren’t laid out as simple as Ireland. We probably spent a good hour in the area of our hotel while being unable to find it, going so far as to ask around 6 people. We made slow progress until someone grabbed a “Glasgow A-Z” book that pointed out the general area of the city we were supposed to be in. Another half hour of searching got us there - a half hour fraught with wrong turns and tizzies, but after we got it once we never made a wrong turn again.

We had a rocky intro - it was around 12 and we were looking to see if we could get in early. It was then that we were told that our check-in time was an hour later then it was on the website (3pm). That would have been okay except we’d been awake for 18 hours and were pretty exhausted. We went back into town to search for things to do in the meantime.

Botanical Gardens ***

The Botanical Gardens run multiple plays during the summer weekend in the greenhouses, which many people were taking advantage of and having a good laugh at a Shakespearean comedy. Unfortunately we agreed if we’d sat down for a moment we would pass out and wake up looking like well-dressed and under-equipped backpackers, so we decided to continue a garden tour.

Walking through the gardens we were able to swing around to the lower paths which led us along a river walk with outdoor body-weight workout
equipment. It was fun for a lark and made me wonder if that sort of thing appears anywhere in America. After getting through a rousing circuit we continued on to a well-deserved rest at our hotel room.

The Belhaven ***

Despite the introduction, we made it back around 3p and got to our room on the second floor. It was awesome! Huge vaulted ceiling and a view of the streets to die for. We had what we referred to as the ‘Balcony Room’ because we were situated over the entrance of the hotel which had a small overhang. The room was beautiful and was nicely located to give us a quick trip into the parts of the city we liked.

The breakfast was nice and easy without any huge surprises, which made for an easy introduction. The last thing you need getting into a foreign country is an early-morning introduction to some foul foods you'd never even consider eating at home like blood pudding or something... :)

We often grabbed our morning fruit to go as a mid-day pick me up, which made for a nice snack as we made our way around the city. All in all once you find it the Belhaven is great coming and going.

Book Review: The Ocean at the End of the Lane

The Ocean at the End of the Lane - Neil Gaiman

I'm struggling to find a way to properly characterize this book. Perhaps Neil himself said it best: It's an adult story told by a child. It's very hard to talk about this book without going into great detail as a literary criticism because the story really lends itself to that. I attended the release/book signing of it at Symphony Space in Manhattan, and it was an interesting night, to say the least.

I'd like to say that Neil is an absolute doll and I would do it again anytime as long as I could get a seat in the first 10 rows. Book signings take quite a while.

Back to the book itself. It's a story told as a memory back to when the narrator was a young boy and chronicles a short period of his life. During this time he sees a lot of terrible, eerie, supernatural things, and defeats them with the help of a friendly young girl named Lettie Hemstock.

The book is masterfully written, with just the right amount of everything. The introduction with the adult protagonist falling into memory, the thoughts and concerns of the boy, the change in him as things get more dire, and finally the disjointed ending as everything comes together. You can tell that Mr. Gaiman poured a lot of himself into this story and created something that you are meant to view as an allegory.

Because in a review you can't really dig deep into the storyline itself and I'm dieing to do a short critcism of the work, I'll be publishing a link to another post right after this. As far as the review goes, however, buy this book, read it, and really think about what is happening. This story happens on two levels, and it would be a shame to miss either of them.

Becoming an adult

This one goes out to Josh, because he asks me this from time to time.

So, occasionally a friend of mine asks me what made me realize that I was an adult. My first answer, back when he asked, was socks. I bought my own socks, and that's when I realized, 'Wow, I'm an adult'. Because I was burning my disposable income on a quality of life item like socks instead of something strictly entertainment purposes. I'll admit It was a goofy answer and only half-serious, but it remained my answer almost six months later when he asked me again so I suppose it stuck.

But I had a thought on the way home today while I was mulling over a few songs I'd been listening to. There's one song in particular - "Car Radio" by Twenty One Pilots - that really caught my attention. In the song the singer has had his car radio stolen and he's stuck driving with only himself for company, no music to distract him from his own life. His thoughts run away with him, and he wants to replace it just so he can stop being forced to think about his life on every car ride.

I'm going to be brutally honest right now - no matter how put together everyone appears to be on the outside, we're all just a genuine invitation away from a complete stranger away from bursting out with every fear and misgiving we're dealing with in our lives. Some people do it in journals, some people do it in drunken conversations, some people do it on blogs using thinly veiled allusions, but we all want to get it out.

That brings me back to our protagonist, the radioless man. He's locked away inside the car he's driving, nothing to distract him from the dissatisfaction of his lot, and he's wrecked by it. He talks about his pride being on his sleeve, the dreams (his own) he's killed and says 'I could just pull the steering wheel.'

The french have an idiom for this - "L'appel du vide" or the call of the void. 'I could just pull this steering wheel'. Terrifying, horrifying even.

Back to being an adult.

We're all scared, we don't really know what to do. This is our lot, of course. For the last few years I've always thought I knew how everything worked. I was under the impression I had it all figured out, if I was just a bit better at translating the runaway train of thought and transferring it to paper I could quantify the words that would make it okay for everyone.

I know that I was wrong. I couldn't write it then and I can't write it now. It's certainly not socks. Truly, I may only have just become an adult on this 'car ride' myself.

Because the moment I realized I was an adult was the moment I accepted that I would never know what it meant to be an adult, that I'd always be scared of something. That finally having everything together was always just out of reach. That no matter how much we think we know, there's still something more to be learned.

But hell, what do I know?

Knowledge and Understanding

There's an old rather depressing remark that comes out whenever someone is lamenting their lot in life and it usually goes "It never gets any easier". It is said in many ways, tasted in many flavors, and pokes an already sore nerve.

Oddly (or not so oddly, one supposes), it turns out that as you get older you really understand it. When you're a child and you are tired of going to school, it never gets any easier. When you are an adult getting your first job and working 20 hours a week, it never gets any easier. When you go to college and have more exams on tougher classes, it never gets any easier. When you work your 40 hour weeks, do your own laundry, cook your own food, and pay your own bills it never gets easier.

It's funny how this phrase - so simple, so effectual, can be lost on us at every step of the way, every moment, such that it may always be a hindrance to us on reminder. We know it, we've lived it, our lives never become less complex. It is only in the barest moments of self-reflection does the realization come to us, and then is gone until we complain beside a witty friend.

There is a saying in Buddhism, "Don't mistake the finger pointing at the moon for the moon." It is a fairly simple idea and explains the flaw in our spoken language. We tell each other, explain to one-another, the wisdom we have gleaned and expect transformation. People will always say that things never get easier because it is simple to say it. But those words are not enlightenment, we have done nothing more then point at the moon while the other person looks to our finger.

This is also the logic behind meditating on koans and focusing on experiencing life in the moment. We are trying to teach ourselves to see the moon rather then watching for the fingers that point to it. We want to be a part of the reality of things rather then the representations that are before us.

So when you are told something, or something is explained to you, think on it and ponder the thing that is being spoken of instead of the words that are being used to convey it. Listen mindfully to those ideas, and understand them. Knowledge is simple, understanding is complex.

Amber Alert: 100 Day Meditation Challenge Disappears at 35 days old

So I was burning up to write something - anything - about the meditation challenge since I'd let it slip off. There's always a mix of shame and relief when it comes to failing at something. You no longer have to give it your all, you no longer have to answer to yourself when you fail. No one enjoys that gentle slipping away and that feeling of 'not quite right' that settles in when you know you've given up on this day or that day. Giving up can sometimes feel too easy, with a seductive quality.

Years ago I was horribly overweight. Not just a little bit with a beer belly or anything, but unequivocally morbidly obese. I still have flashbacks of embarrassment from that time in my life, the way I treated friends and family. I was 280 pounds, and I'd stake myself depressed for a majority of it. It was no one's fault but my own, and even now I sometimes struggle with admitting that and try to blame others for it.

I reveal that because it goes hand-in-hand with the breakdown of my attempted challenge. I am no longer morbidly obese and maintain a fairly healthy weight of around 180 pounds. There was a period of my life, about a year and a half during which I worked tirelessly at fixing myself. So much so that I became fixated on those things, I endangered my health and well-being chasing self-image.

I actually spent a period of about two months in a state of constant malnutrition. I survived (barely) on egg white omelets on the morning - 75 calories, a protein shake at lunch - 400 calories, and an egg white and broccoli omelet at dinner - 175 calories.  650 calories is not enough to support a thin guy, much less a fat guy losing 5 pounds a week. All this while doing a near daily gym regiment of a 3.25 mile run and an hour of weightlifting a night.

Did I end up better for it? That's a good question. I certainly look better. Who knows what sort of havoc I subjected my body to during that period. During that time I learned a lot about myself and the way I deal with certain things. I have an obsessive nature which I can channel: In the times I wasn't starving myself and working out constantly, I also started learning to play the guitar, was regularly writing again, went out for rock climbing every week, started reading again, and had completely blocked out video games and television from my routine.


But I persevered in that mode for months, rarely eating out of step and generally being a simpleton with my nutrition. People think I have incredible willpower, I was just obsessed and berating myself for every misstep. I took my self-hatred and channeled it into a self-destructive whirlwind behind a mask of self-improvement. I was ashamed of my progress every step of the way because I knew it had become an extension of the worst part of my personality.



The meditation challenge was, and still is, something I wished I could have kept up with. But I can't let that guy who obsessively follows his whims be the driver; I was generating a lot of self-doubt and frustration from my failures and that's a quick jump to 'looks good from the outside but is a mess within' territory. It's also counter to the purposes of meditation and Buddhism. I'll return to it and continue my personal research into the eightfold path, writing about it when I find something that I can be proud to share with the people around me. Until that time comes again, I'll try to be more active on this blog about the things I'm passionate about. Thanks for reading.

100 Day Meditation Challenge: Week 5 Retrospective

Week 5. I have a feeling this will be a short one.

I had the same issues remaining constant. I lamented it back in week 1 and I'll continue it here, I need to be doing this in the morning before I've danced with the day. I'm just tired when I get in and antsy, and I'll waste away my evenings on silly things and try to cram it in at inappropriate times.

The singing bowl is an asset because the sound is calming, but it also became a toy during a particularly difficult session and such things are warned against in many books I've read. I'll need to be careful of this device lest I let it draw my attention away from my purpose.

The finding of a Buddhist Temple near my home has intrigued me but I have no idea how to go about visiting it. Their website appears to be in Thai! I'm also quite busy throughout the week with writing, working out and visiting the girlfriend, so I'm not sure where I'd find the time. I'll have to make a plan.