October 14th, 2007, No Comments »
I got into Toronto last night and had an extremely satisfying evening. I ordered fish and chips from room service, and watched Hockey Night in Canada to stave off the jet lag. Happily, the Leaves [sic] lost and the Canucks won (Trevor Linden, I love ya buddy, but maybe it’s time to hang them up?).
Today I did some work, wandered around downtown doing some random minor shopping in the Enormous! Shiny! Malls!, and then went and saw the aforementioned Once.
And I’m a little chilly! Excepting recent dips in our increasing icy pool, I honestly haven’t been cold since late May. Not even a little chilly. It’s 13°C in the Centre of the Universe, and so I’m reveling in the very slight discomfort of being cold for a change.
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October 7th, 2007, 15 Comments »
Just a quick note to say that I’ll be in Toronto next week for a speaking gig and some meetings. Plans include:
- October 14 – I’m having a geek dinner with Will Pate and other Toronto luminaries. Will hates all sports, so I trust the conversation about how much the Leafs suck will be brief but florid. Location to be determined.
- October 15 – In the evening, I’ll give my 1100 Stacies talk another crack at Third Tuesday Toronto(or Facebook, if you prefer) meetup. Curiously, that’s a Monday. Thanks to Joseph for organizing that. It looks like the event is fully booked, but maybe Joseph can squeeze you in if you ask himi nicely.
On October 16, I was supposed to speak at the 2nd annual Word Up conference, but I was notified a few days ago that they were changing the date (I gather the website has not been updated). That was disappointing, as it was a major reason I was coming to T-dot. I’m unsure why the date was shifted. I’ve helped run dozens of events over the years, and we’ve never changed a date. It is, I think, the most sacrosanct part of the event planning.
Free Time for Work and Pleasure
So, I find myself with a day or two of free time in the Canada’s biggest city. If you’re a Torontonian who’s interested in the same stuff I am, let me know and we can probably have coffee.
By the same token, I’ve spent almost no part of my adult life in Toronto. I plan to see The Hockey Hall of Fame and The Art Gallery of Ontario. I have no interest in the CN Tower. What else do you Central Canadians recommend?
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September 4th, 2007, 5 Comments »
This weekend we visited the Ä gantija temples, the world’s oldest free-standing structures. The older of the two date back to 3600 BC, predating Egypt’s oldest pyramid by about 800 years. From Wikipedia:
The temples were possibly the site of an Earth Mother Goddess Fertility Cult, with numerous figurines and statues found on site believed to be connected with that cult.
In the Maltese language, Ä gantija means “belonging to the giants”. According to local Gozotian legend, the temples were built by the giants who resided in Gozo during ancient times. It is said that the temples themselves were used by the giants as watchtowers.
Contents
Interestingly, it took a Brit to first excavate and protect the temples in the 19th century. I find this is often the case with archaeological finds–they often require foreigner interest to preserve them.
You can see a few more photos in this Flickr set, and here’s an aerial view for some context.
To be honest, the idea that these are the oldest buildings in the world was more powerful than the experience of seeing them. They are essentially neatly organized piles of crumbling rubble. There is a sense of history about the place, but I didn’t feel the way I felt at, say, the Theatre of Dionysus or even in old growth rain forest on the West Coast. Those places seemed to have a far greater spirituality for me.
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September 4th, 2007, 5 Comments »
The folks at Lonely Planet pitched me on this, and I actually thought it was pretty cool. They’ve launched a new service called Pick & Mix (currently only for Mexico, South America, Central America, and the Caribbean, so I guess it’s in beta) which enables you to buy individual chapters of their guidebooks. From the email I received:
To give people a chance to try Pick & Mix, the first chapter from each guide is free. Also, because we know how important it is to travel with current information, chapters are available prior to the release of the book. Right now, the new editions of the Guatemala and Baja guides are available via Pick & Mix in advance of the book release.
This is a pretty smart approach, because I often end up hauling around guidebooks and only using a small portion of them. For example, we bought a Hungary guidebook for our recent trip to Budapest (there were no Budapest-only books available on Malta). We barely left the capital on our trip, so eight-tenths of the book was just dead weight.
How Much Does It Cost?
I was checking out the Pick & Mix books, and noticed that there were some significant differences in price. Some chapters cost about four cents a page, while others cost as much as ten. I asked my Lonely Planet contact about it, and he said:
We considered different models, including iTunes-style flat pricing, but it just didn’t seem fair to charge the same for a 10-page chapter as for a 100-page chapter (our longest chapter, believe it or not, is a 244-page monster). So in the end we opted to base chapter prices on the price of the book, and the length of the chapter.
So, a long chapter with more information costs more than a short chapter. And a chapter from a $30 book costs more than one from a $15 book (assuming they’re a similar number of pages). About 80% of chapters ended up costing between US$2-4.
Is this a more environmentally-friendly option? I’m not sure. The printing industry no doubt has some efficiencies which means that the cost of printing one book is less impactful than printing out a hundred pages on your printer. But then you do avoid the resources expended on printing the cover and gluing the book together.
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August 30th, 2007, 10 Comments »
This is my desk in Malta:
It’s not what you might expect from your average geeky tech professional. I’m missing the parallel 30″ LCD monitors, the fancy split keyboard and the Herman Miller sitting-on-a-cloud desk chair.
I sit at a converted table, and it’s a tad too high. There’s an old, boxy 17″ monitor (rented for a song from the local computer guy), a cheap keyboard made in China for about 17 cents (with ‘Bck’ and ‘ForWard’ buttons) and a very non-ergonomic straight-backed chair.
I mention this not to look like a corporate martyr, but because lately I’ve been thinking about comfort.
When I tell people about our living abroad, they sometimes say:
“That sounds great, but I could never do that. I’d miss my television (or bed or cat or Frappuccino) too much.”
They’re mostly joking, but there is truth in what they’re saying. Moving to new places means a sacrifice in creature comforts.
I’ve said this before, but when I first thought about living abroad, back in 2000 or so, I thought I knew what the tricky bits would be. I thought we’d get tripped up by driving on the other side of the road or dealing with a foreign currency.
A Thousand Subtle Things
In fact, it’s a thousand subtle, little things that are trickiest. A bunch of these have to do with changes in comfort level. The bed is a little short for my 6’1″ frame. The water pressure in the shower upstairs is, as my friend Joe once remarked, like a 12-year-old peeing on you. There are plenty of new and exciting bugs and lizards to catch, kill and/or release.
Most days it’s easy to justify the sundry unfamiliarities and nuisances. After all, you get to experience the thousand thrills and subtle pleasures of discovering a new country in a new corner of the world.
Occasionally, though, I do think fondly of my ultra-modern Yaletown apartment, with its cleaning service, huge computer monitor and instant access to everything. I’ll be cured of the travel bug when those days of longing for familiar create comforts exceed the exciting days of discovery and new pleasures.
After all, I’m young enough to know that, in the future, I’ll live somewhere long enough to justify acquiring the wall-sized monitors and the Back Massage of a Thousand Virgins desk chair.
I’m also old enough to know that possessions are fleeting, and so is both comfort and discomfort.
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August 22nd, 2007, 6 Comments »
You know, after 33 years on this spinning orb we call home, you’d think I’d understand how my body works:
Candle – Both Ends = Probable Illness
And, to augment this particular equation:
Candle – Both Ends + Many Hands Shaken = Certain Illness
I had to bail out of BarCamp Vancouver at about noon, because I was wrecked and could feel the aforementioned illness coming on. So, I flew home to Malta all hoarse, feverish and plague-ridden. It was unpleasant.
Mind you, I didn’t end up on the floor sucking oxygen from a tank, which is what happened the last time I got sick while flying across the Atlantic.
In any case, I was disappointed to miss much of BarCamp, and not to have another shot at giving my 1100 Stacies talk. I really must employ more discipline the next time I visit Vancouver, and pace myself accordingly. By all accounts, however, the day was a raging success.
I’m currently wading in self pity:
Illness + Jet Lag + Heat Wave = Meh
Things should return to normalcy around here in the next couple of days.
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August 11th, 2007, 1 Comment »
The following are a few things I didn’t realize I missed about my hometown:
- The sound of seagulls.
- Big birds in general. The largest bird I’ve seen on Malta are largish pigeons.
- The rain. I haven’t seen rain in more than three months. I still haven’t, actually, but there’s a chance of showers this weekend.
- Tall buildings.
- The city-ness. Lots of cars, people and businesses in one place. It’s a bit odd, being the country bumpkin coming into town from a village of two stores and three restaurants.
- Diversity of people. Most days, it feels like our village is populated exclusively by old women in house dresses. It’s nice to see people of all different shapes, sizes, ethnicities and ages.
- Mountains and islands, and the palette they make as these overlap in the distance. These two photos show this in action.
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August 1st, 2007, 3 Comments »
We just returned from our brief overnight trip to Comino and our stay at the Comino Hotel. The hotel is a bit old-school and tired–think the hotel from Dirty Dancing, except it’s 1970 and nobody’s done any upgrades since the big dance number. Still, it’s totally adequate for a couple of nights.
Interestingly, the guests seemed to be 80% German. I’m not sure why this was, because that’s certainly not true of the tourists I see on Gozo–the majority of them seem to be British. Happily, the hotel only seemed about half-full, so there were no ugly incidents involving sun loungers.
This morning we got up at 7:30am and walked over to Comino’s famed Blue Lagoon. We had the place entirely to ourselves for about an hour, until a few Maltese folks came by to set up a brigade of sun loungers and umbrellas. It was quite remarkable to be in this beautiful spot alone. The water is as clear and crystal blue as it looks in the photo.
But that’s been the trick on Malta. Get somewhere before 10:00am, and the place is empty. This has proved true at other famous locales like the Azure Window, as well as cultural and historical sites. After 10:00 AM, though, the tour buses and boats start rolling up.
We didn’t stay, but during the rest of the day the Blue Lagoon gets assaulted by tourists–these two photos give you a sense of just how many people and boats turn up.
I’m a travel snob. I like to explore when (and sometimes where) people aren’t. It’s nice to know I can still do that if I’m willing to get up a little early.
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