extreme weather alert... or so they say.

It's cold tonight in Bristol - or so they tell me... I must admit that I did find it a little cooler than normal in my house today while I enjoyed my day off work. The heat turns down during the day when people are normally not home, so when it was colder than usual I figured it must have to do with this cold spell that is hitting England which I have been hearing so much about.

I managed to spend the whole day inside as I have normally tried to do in reaction to 'cold and extreme weather' warnings during my last few winters spent in Kingston when at times the overnight drop to negative 40 caused the pipes in my home to freeze. Quite honestly, my staying inside all day had little to do with my fear of the weather and more related to sheer laziness and my desire to work on my grad school application, sip tea, eat jaffa cakes, and watch the occasional spot of day time telly all in the comfort of my living room.

When housemate after housemate arrived home after work with comments like "its freezing out there", and "its bloody cold" and even "the wind is so cold it stings your face", I mustered up enough courage to walk to the shop to buy myself some sandwhich making essentials for my lunch tomorrow... under the advisements of my housemates (and partially for my own amusement) I "bundled up" to make my trek to the store. I was joined by a couple of housemates who needed to pick up a few things as well, so I knew I would not be alone when facing this terribly cold night.

It turns out that its around negative three degrees out (i checked on the BBC weather to confirm), and there is a slight hint of wind... more like a breeze really... it had to be pointed out to me before I noticed it. I decided to uphold my reputation of being a polite Canadian by not pointing out to my co-trekkers that the weather they were moaning so much about is considered balmy by most Canadian standards, and so I just casually walked to the shop with my hood down while my housemates huddled up in their jackets and covered their faces with scarves.

The good news for me is that I've realized that this is as cold as it gets. While out and about on this fair night, I heard familiar sentiments such as "all this talk about global warming, and yet it keeps getting colder every winter" which Canadians normally save for instances when the windchill comes into factor, and I had a good chuckle to myself over the fact that I now know I'm going to have a fairly warm winter.

Get back home and turn on the news - apparently a snow storm of epic porportions has hit just about every part of England except where I am, with a big hit on the north and southeast. I saw coverage of an accident with an upside down car (everyone was safe and uninjured) with a warning of dangerous roads - but what got to me, is that surrounding the accident were relatively clear conditions and there couldn't have been more than centimeter of snow on the ground. In fact I had to squint to see if there was snow at all.

In general there is widespread panic and warnings that in Canada we would normally save for the likes of ice storms and proper blizzards - but I guess its just different strokes for different folks really. Although this type of snowfall isn't that unusual for the likes of England, I assume its not usual enough to invest in building an efficient infrastructure to deal with it, which results in icy and unsalted roads as well as little to no hope for snow removal.

All in all, I've had a good chuckle over the weather tonight, and thought that my amusement would be best shared with my Canadian friends rather than my British ones, although I did get a few comments in. Words like 'windchill' mean nothing to my friends here, and when explaining them the concept of windchill and the idea that the temperature could even be negative thirty, they have no possible way to imagine what that would feel like.

Anyway it could turn out that I have spoken to soon and that I'll find this city submerged into a blizzard of extreme porportions tomorrow morning - after all, the official extreme weather warnings that are being circulated across the nation warn of "frost" and "heavy snowfall" with further accumulation to between two and five centimeters. Good god!

- Chris

christmas...

I'm having a very British Christmas or so it seems...

Being away from Canada for Christmas is not so bad because I am being relaunched into a discovery of everything British. Just when I thought I was starting to get used to the ways of the Britons, I'm here for the holidays and get to see how another country celebrates the seasons... so many wonderful things.

I think the best thing so far was watching the Queen's speech over a cup of tea on Christmas Day... not just because it was interesting to see what the Queen had to say, but because while sitting there I knew that I was centered infront of tele with millions of other British people, who like me were all holding their tea, maybe munching on some Christmas goodies and taking part in one of their most sacred traditions. Over the past few weeks, of the many many Christmas stories I have exhcanged with friends and colleagues, not one of them has left out something centered around the Queen's speech in some way... It's such an icon that apparently, there is a significant and noticable surge in electricity usage across the nation just minutes before the speech as millions of people switch on their electric kettles to prepare their tea. I love it!

Speaking of tea, my favorite gift of all this year was a book that I got on Christmas eve at my friend Liz' house - its a book called "a nice cup of tea and a sit down" and it is really helping me to understand all the little things I've found peculiar or have just plain been unable to understand about tea drinking and all things that come with it. From getting some insight into why people are constanly pushing their personal tea preferences on to me, to finally getting a grasp of the whole biscuit/cookie/cake/cracker division through a very helpful venn diagram - things are beginning to get a lot clearer.

No more will I call a biscuit a cookie, and get looks of dissaproval. Even more promising is the fact that I now finally understand that when, on occassion, I've remembered to use the term biscuit and used it quite proudly, I've gotten the disheartening response "no, that actually is a cookie", and found myself once again mistaken. Phew!

Anyway, its a nice light read and a treasure that I'm looking forward to adding to my cook collection when I get home. The habit of 'a nice cup of tea and a sit down' is one that I have most definitely picked up, so it will be nice to better understand that tradition that I now so often take part in.

I'm posting a couple photos of my Christmas fun below the first is of the dinner I had with my housemates a few days back (the best roast beef I've ever had in my life) and the second at Liz's house for Christmas eve's dinner.


Christmas dinner at my house above - from left to right Jess, Anja, Ben, Rich (not a housemate), Emma. They are opening the Christmas poppers... do you like our masks and party hats?

Liz from Becm and her partner Barney on right (below) Olly on left (also works at Becm)


Right now I'm just enjoying my three days off work (and time away from holiday pirating), but I'm going to get the ball rolling on getting my grad school essays sorted over the next few days. Hopefully I'll get a bit more productivity out of tomorrow than I did today.

Lots for me to think about!

I'm starting to get a bit sad about how little time I have left in England (its looking like only two more months due to visa/work issues), but I'm trying to put that out of my mind so I can focus on some of the fun things coming up while I'm here, and also do a little bit of planning of some of the travelling that I might do after I leave England but before I head back across the Atlantic to Canada.

Merry Christmas, Boxing Day, New Years, etc, etc!

- Chris

speeding ahead...

things are going well for me - after my oral history course, I wisked myself to London to meet my Dad and then spent a few days with him there, before coming back to Bristol and then doing some touring around Devon and Cornwall.

London was really fun, we did a lot of walking and went on the Eye which gives you amazing views of the city - I normally don't like heights so much, but it was an easy trip up and down, the giant structure barely feels like its moving. Also in London we walked over to London Tower and saw the tower bridge (pictures of everything I'm describing are in a new gallery called 'Dad's Visit' in my photo albums)... I also got to walk around Charing Cross which is a street filled with all sorts of remarkable book shops, all of which have rows and rows of antique books and first editions. I got to flip through a first edition of Pilgrim's Progress which I once read for my Children's Literature class - not exactly my favorite work, but it was cool that I got to hold the book and flip through it, after once learning all about how it was written and printed in its day.

We did a bit of walking around Bristol on Saturday, and then on Sunday we rented a car and drove out to the Eden Project in Cornwall. Basically the eden project is a huge biosphere complex that is devoted to environmental issues and education about sustainability and what not - It was a really cool place. I believe the largest bio-dome in the world (but correct me if I am wrong). It was really cool to walk through the different climate areas and see coffee bean trees, sugar cane, fig trees, mango trees, olive trees, almond trees, etc, etc, the list goes on to include things other than trees... all the in same place! (photos included in albums as well)

Went back to work today and things are busier than ever - we are getting ready for our pirate-themed christmas activity week (its less wierd than it sounds) and also Hannah and I are preparing our Brunel project that we got funding for - today we were able to start shopping on Ebay for suitable artefacts and replicas to go in the loan boxes we are designing for schools to use. It's really exciting stuff!!

It seems that the museum is breaking taboos as usual and keeping its reputation as a trail blazer in the community. We recently found out that we didn't get the project funding for the big slavery project from this big grant body which gives us money - unfortunately there is no avenue for appeal as no one has ever appealed their decision... I'm not sure that I should write about it much because a lot of things are up in the air and because the media is covering the story a lot right now, but because a significant about of important people and community members felt the decision was a poor one, the museum has done a great deal of work to bring the grant people back to the table - and so by the end of the week, things could be looking much better. Basically it was a big blow to the museum that they didn't get the money, and the reasoning behind the decisions were not very good. I'll write more later, its all very hard to explain without giving a long story - and i'm not entirely sure how much of the story I can actually tell.

In relation to my internship, I'm learning a lot about how funding works and the politics in the museum world - also just in general, I'm picking up a few good lessons in things like not taking no for an answer.

its going to be a busy busy week at work, but soon enough I'll have a couple of days off on the weekend for Christmas relaxation, and a few more in the new year once our Christmas activities at the museum quiet down.

I should get to bed - I hope you all enjoy the photos. I didn't post much about my travelling with my Dad on here, because the pictures and comments will tell you most of the story.

- Chris

training day

this morning I got out of bed at 4:30 am to catch at 5:40 train that was headed to Dorchester where I was signed up to take a day-long training course put on by the Oral History Society. When I signed up for the course a few months ago I had taken a very casual look at the train schedules to check to see that there were regular trains running from Bristol to Dorchester - but I obviously didn't look closely enough or I would have noticed that my options for arrival times was either 10:45 am (45 minutes after the course started) or 7:45 am (a couple hours before the course started). Luckily for me the trains run regularily outside of the morning hourse, so I was able to catch a train home at a decent time... Every day I hate the british train system just a little bit more.

The best part about my 5:40 train journey, is that unlike the journey home which had no changes - this journey required a change at westbury station (or so I was told by the man who sold me the ticket)... according to my itinerary I was supposed to get off at Westbury and then catch the train to Dorchester 8 minutes later around 6:30ish.... This put a damper on my plans to sleep through the journey, because I was so paranoid of missing my transfer station.

Little did I know, until just one dreary eyed station before Westbury, that there was no change required at all. What was actually the case was at Westbury the train I was on took a 8 minute stop to detach the first two carriages from the two behind it, so that two could go in the direction of Dorchester and the other two to some other little village in Dorset... Bearing in mind that I had no idea that it is custom for trains to split into pieces and go in different directions, this was a very difficult concept for me to wrap my head around this early in the morning.

Picture me, pre-morning coffee, standing on a platform at 6:38 in the morning being told that my so called 'transfer' involved getting back on the exact same train in the exact same seat that I had been desperately trying to stay awake in for a good hour. It wasn't pretty.

In the end I was able to sleep because I thought to set my alarm on my cell phone to nudge me awake minutes before my expected arrival time (something I have been told about British Trains is that the are quite frequently late - they are never early) so I could trust that my alarm would be alright.

And although it was early, I was actually quite happy to get to Dorchester early because it meant that I could do a few hours of exploring and actually get to see a bit of the town before I sat in for the course.... and what a little town it is. With a population capping around 17,000 its certainly not the biggest place but it has some very nice old buildings and picturesques walks - specifically, I chose the 'Thomas Hardy' walk through town which highlights different sights related to the famous authort.

What is most remarkable about Dorchester is its over-the-top assortment of museums... I have started to notice a trend that because England is so easy to travel around to (every little town is close to another little town) it seems that towns, especially those that are within a few hours from London do as much as they can to drive tourists towards them - in Dorchester this takes the shape of the following museums (keep in mind this is a city of 17,000 people)

- The Teddy Bear Museum (reasonable enough)
- The Dorset County Museum (that one's only expectable)
- The Keep Military Museum (that's fair, lots of relevant military history and 'the keep' is a huge military building)
- The Dinosaur Museum (Dorchester is on the Jurrassic Coast of England, but that's stretching it a bit)
- The Mummy Museum and Tutankhamun Exhibit (right now we are getting a little bit outside the realm of British History)
- The Terracotta Warriors Museum - In the brochure's words - "The only museum outside China exclusively devoted to this world famous discovery!" ...referring to the Terracotta Warriors of the First Emperor of China.... (at this point I think you can see where the connection to Dorchester is a bit more than just a stretch)

I am posting a great photo that I took below, which includes a sign directing you to the many many museums... and if you look closely you can see where there was a new addition and they have just added on an extra sign for the Terracotta Warriors. I thought that, especially with the little add-on - the photo really captured the very odd museum phenomena in Dorchester.

Aside from the museums I enjoyed a nice walk, and a great breakfast in the market where I picked up three apples for under 50p... There is an unbelievable variety of apples here, and although its a fruit that I never particularily liked as a child, I am starting to really like them as I taste new type after new type.

Ok so the real point of my post was to talk about my training day! so here we go...

I think in the back of my mind I have always really been interested in Oral History, but until recently after doing some reading of works based around it and working in the museum (Which has a huge oral history library) I hadn't really put all the pieces of my interest together... if that makes any sense. Now, I'm finding that my interests in oral history fits in really well with my more general interest in public history, how the public looks at history, and how the public thinks about their own place in history, etc.... It also connects to the ideas that have been floating around my head about Canadian national identities, and traditional historical narratives - thinking about how communities who are outside the realm of the more 'traditional history' contextualize themselves in the broader story of Canada and in some ways write their own history through exchanging stories (family history, folklore, etc).

What's also nice about oral history is that its a very active aspect of a historian's work - it gets you out of the archives and libraries, and personalizes history a bit more - and the interviewing process incorporates a lot of the aspects of journalism that have attracted me in the past.

Anyway, after starting to get interested in learning a bit more at it, and scouting out some interesting programs in the field in the U.K. (of which we have none in Canada), I came across this course and decided to take it..... and what a course it was!!!!

The day went over everything from how to approach projects, how to use questions and objects to help people reminisce and bring back memories, what questions to ask in interviews, how to deal with sensitive subjects in interview, all the way to getting to use the recording equiptment and learn techniques about microphone use and what not. (A good microphone and a mini-dish recorder and the new items at the top of my want-list)... It was amazing and it gave me sooo much to think about, from about a MILLION ideas I have for projects of my own, to ways that I could incorporate it into the work I am doing right now.

It just seems to be such a fascinating and approachable method to history - obviously traditional historical research comes with it to put the stories into a more factual context, but what I like about Oral History is that the exchange of stories is something that just about everyone is capable of participating in, and the end result is a medium that is entirely accessible (you don't need a high degree of education to understand a person's story about experiencing racism upon arrival in England or Canada, or about their experience fighting in a war).

Anyway, I'm getting increasingly more exposed to Oral History here through work and through different projects that I have been stumbling across, and it seems to me that it is a field that has not been as developed and utilized in Canada has it has been in the U.K. and the U.S. Hopefully that is something that will change - in the past decade or so it has really taken off here, in terms of the field developing and funding being offered for projects.

My partner who I was interviewing was a 60 year old lady who had just bought herself an I-book (apple laptop) for doing some recordings and did some preliminary funding proposals to get practice - and now it turns out she got all the funding she applied for, so she is going ahead with her project - which I think is just fascinating... basically it is based around reminiscence therapy, which is where elderly people are encouraged to talk about their memories as a way of keeping the mind active and just in general getting good feelings from thinking about happy times (its been proven that while in older people short term memory fails, elderly people are increasingly able to remember stories from their long term memory).

Her project is centered around working with groups of people who live in retirement homes who after moving out of their house often don't have much of their former belongings surrounding them - what the project does is brings groups of people who are new to the retirement home together to talk about light-hearted subjects from their memories (first date, summer vacation memories, etc) and then the interviews get recorded and the participants get copies to exchange with each other and to keep for their families. Wow - its such a cool thing!

Anyway, I certainly have a lot to think about... but I need to get to bed for now because I have an early train to catch again tomorrow to meet my Dad in London!

when it rains it pours...

the title of this entry is related to two things - first, that it would seem that I have started to update this more frequently (I think when I'm in the habit I do it more because I'm always thinking of things to post), and secondly it relates to the subject of this post which is Reality TV... more specifically British Reality TV.

Now, those of you who know me well are likely aware of the fact that on occassion I have taken interest in the reality tv phenomenon that has been sweeping across north america over the past few years... now for those of you who don't know me that well, you might not have realized that the previous statement was a bit sarcastic. In truth, reality tv shows in the likes of Survivor, Big Brother, The Amazing Race, and American Idol, are shows that I have enjoyed a little more than occasionally.

Well little did I know before I made my departure for England, that I was in fact travelling to the very birthplace of reality tv... and thus I have been exposed to the motherload. I'm slowly realizing that most TV that I watch in many ways was born in Britian (Most TLC shows are British knock offs - The What Not To Wear girls over here are far nastier than Stacey and Clinton could ever dream of being.... Most reality shows are British knock offs, and most of my favorite comedies, arrested development, for example reflect some of the comedies I've seen over here as well).

Something else that is interesting about British TV is that there are not nearly as many stations available than in North America, but that the main stations all have subsidiary stations whose programming reflects in some ways that of the main station. This will be explained later in relation to reality tv, but for now I'll use the example of a terribly trashy British soap called Hollyoaks. Everyday you can watch Hollyoaks on Channel 4... BUT immediately following that episode you can catch the next day's episode on E4, which is the second channel that is owned by the same company... the trick is you have to pay more to subscribe to the second channel... but if you do you can enjoy either the luxury of being be one day ahead in Hollyoaks, or being able to be efficient in your watching and watch one hour of the show two or three times a week, instead of watching one single half hour every day. Do you follow?

Ok, so that's the basic set up of the channels - basically what Im trying to get across is that many of the main stations have subsidiary stations which offer programs which complement the programming on the main channel immediately following specific programs.

Ok so back to the reality scene.

During my time here I've been exposed to a plethora of reality TV shows including the likes of Strictly Come Dancing (celebs and professional dancers team up and compete), The Match (celebrity football fans compete and train to play a footie match against a team of football legends), and the disturbingly popular Priest Idol where a priest (yes a priest!)has 12 months to increase turnout in his church. But what I never expected to come across is the discovery of what I have dubbed 'reality reality tv'... now read carefully, because its about to get scary.

'reality reality tv' refers to the shows which air on subsidiary channels that offer a 'more real' look into what goes on in your favorite reality tv show. For example The X-factor, a Pop Idol like show where individuals and bands from all age groups from 16-50 compete based on talent to see who truly has the X factor, offers a subsidiary show called The X-tra Factor, where 'behind the scenes' footage is shown to complement the show of performances you've just watched.

Wait it gets worse.

Are you a fan of the ever popular Trading Spouces on Fox? if you are then you can be sure to enjoy Wife Swap, which is the BRitish version - and after a good long hour of watching say, the career-driven-money-hungry-business-mom and the vegan-hippy-stay-at-home-mom switch places and respectively have neurotic breakdowns in their new homes, you can then watch the entire show AGAIN - except, in the next hour you will be watching the reactions of the families who were involved in the show as they were watching the show that you started watching just an hour earlier.

Yes, this is why I call it "reality reality tv". As if watching people's personal lives for one hour was not enough, you can indulge just a little more by watching them watch and react to their own personal lives for another hour.

Now now now... I dont want you to think that I've spent the better part of my time in Britain sitting on the sofa, eating jammy dodgers, sipping my tea, and watching TV because it just isn't so.

I'll admit that I have caught the occasional episode of X-factor and Strictly come dancing, but I have no yet reached the level of following a show week to week, nor have I ever indulged in any of these 'reality reality tv' shows further than the first five minutes. Anyway, I'm not posting this to put my television watching tastes on trial - I do enjoy a great number of more intellectually stimulating comedies, dramas, and *gasp* news shows from time to time as well.

What I would like to discuss are two specfic reality shows that are curiously British (i'm not aware of anything like them in Canada or the US) that I think might interest some of you.

First is a quirky little show called "Honey we're killing the kids" whereby a child health expert takes in a family, investigates their lifestyle, and makes some long term predictions about the health hazards they are exposing their kids to. The show paints a picture of what that's child's life might look like at the age of 40 - and when I say paint a picture I mean both figuratively AND literally... The show will give a description of where poor eating habits and anti-social behaviour might lead a person down the road, but they also produce a consistently hideous digital image of what little suzie and bobby might look down 40 years down the road when in addition to gaining weight and loosing their teeth, they have for some reason also developed bad fashion sense and mullet-ish haircuts. go figure...

anyway, this show basically confronts parents with the image of thier hideous kids at age 40 and their predicted life expectancy, then helps them revamp their lifestyle so that they can make their kids happier, healthier, live longer, and in some cases, look prettier.

as tasteless as it sounds, its actually a very interesting show because it makes you think about the lifestyle choices you are making. I may have told some of you about the episode where the daughter and son were consuming 68 and 72 teaspons of sugar a day respectively. I thought that was bad.... until last week, which featured a ten year old who was a regular smoker. No jokes.

The second show, which just aired yesterday and incidentally inspired this slightly longer than I expected rant, is called Space Cadets - and as mindless as it is, I believe it to be pure genius. Essentially they recruit a bunch of people who are both suggestible and impressionable through a number of physical and psychological tests and then tell them they are going to be the first televised British tourists into space. They then go through the process of flying them to russia, putting them through training, eliminating the weak participants, and then sending the 8 finalists into space for 5 days... the trick, however, is that they actually spend the entire process in a training camp in northern England... they never go into space at all - its just a big hoax full of Russian actors, and simulated space ships. Ha ha ha... oh dear, oh dear.

So that's just about all I've got to say about reality tv at this point. Just thought it would be a fun an interesting update away from details about work and visas and what not.

hope you enjoyed, comments welcome as always

- Chris

fun with maps...

Today I decided to have a little fun with Google earth, which is a program that you can download and use to look at arial photos of most places in Canada, The U.S., and The U.K. just to name a few countries...

While I was playing with the maps, I realized that I could take some screen captures and with a little bit of effort in good old microsoft paint, I've now got some cool maps to exhibit my routes in and around Bristol. Sadly, the maps are not 3D in the sense that the display the many hills that I encounter on my adventures around Bristol, but they do however indicate the height of the land wherever you click - so I've collected some of the ground levels of some most difficult treks.

Enjoy!

The image above shows two routes - the red route is the walk to work that I make every day, and the blue route is my 'shortcut' route if I want to head into the center... although this route is uphill all the way to St. Micheals Hill (right around the Red dot that says Bristol) My House is at about 120 feet above sea level, and St. Michaels hill peaks at 270 feet... its a tough walk uphill, but its downhill all the rest of the way down park street which drops from 170 feet to 30 feet in a distance of about 500 meters. The shot below this one is a view of Toronto from about the same distance away (just slightly closer up) - to help you compare the size of the city.

This shot below is a close(r) up shot of the area surrounding my office including the harbourside where I take walks on my lunch breaks... This walk includes a walk through Queen's Square - a georgian square in the centre of the city and a walk along the harbour and past St. Mary Redcliffe... you can see how the floating harbour runs around the city, and south of it the River Avon, which is the tidal river that takes the overflow from the harbour and runs out to the Bristol Channel.

Last but not least is a shot of my house (highlighted in purple) right across from the Venue Magazine headquarters and Gloucester Road which runs right by my house...

Hope you liked!

- Chris

lovely day

it has come to my attention that I have adopted the word lovely and that I have been using it entirely too much by north american standards. 'Lovely' was one of the first words to strike me as being very british during my first few weeks as its used to describe just about everything from people, weather, food, art, movies, etc, etc... its pretty universal and you hear someone say it at least once an hour if not more.

Originally, every time I heard the word it always took my by surprise because its used so often and made me think of that song from The King and I where they sing "lovely, lovely" over and over again... but I've lost that association because I've heard it so much and because I've picked it up myself.

In unrelated news, I recently saw a deal for the Jamie Oliver Taste of Italy cookbook on sale for ten pounds and so I snatched it up... thought it would be a nice treat to myself, and it would expand my abilities to cook italian since learning a lot about italian food while working at Gusto. I'm currently making a really nice soup with cannelini beans and kale so I'm hoping that it will turn out to be, of course, lovely.

I was put it a bit in a bad mood yesterday when I started to research my options for what I'm going to do as of March 1st a bit more seriously, and for the first time I came to the realization that british visa/work permit laws are extremely complicated. My basic plan was that if I was not going to work with the museum any longer than the six months that I would at least extend my visa for 15 days or so, so that I could stay in the country for the remainder of the time I'd paid rent to (I pay from the 15th to 15th) and that way I would have some time to say goodbyes to people and what not after finishing work... but apparently an application to extend my visa only 15 days could cost me about 355 pounds just to apply, and so that option is looking a little less than likely right now.

I did discover however that if I was serious about kicking around this place and working for a few months or maybe even longer, that I could quite easliy and quite affordably apply for a working holiday maker visa which would allow me to work and travel in england for up to two years... Although I know that I dont want to stay here two years, the work permit is designed to be incredibly flexible so I could easily use it for just the summer or something... the only little snag (and I'm being quite sarcastic in regards to it being little), is that I physically have to leave the country, apply for it in Canada, come back and activate my visa upon entry directly from Canada. Although a friend of mine got around the waiting period by mailing her passport to Canada and getting all the paperwork done ahead of time so she can activate her visa upon reentry at Christmas-time - this still presents the problem of having to buy a plane ticket across the Atlantic just to get the visa activated.

Apparently its going to cost me a lot to stay here either in the form of a visa application or a plane ticket - so I'm not sure its worth the trouble. Its so complicated - mostly by the fact that becase I'm already in England to extend my stay for even a few days involves me submitting the same application form and fee that people who are applying to immigrate or people who are seeking asylum/refugee status have to submit. Arg!!!!

I'm going to have to look into my options more, but for now it looks like I am leaving england in March at which point I'll either come home and spend a bit of time travelling around in countries that aren't england.

anyway, I need to get back to my soup... it should be ready soon.

not a very exciting entry I know, but I needed to rant a little about these ridiculous visa restrictions.

- Chris

work and such

I have been planning on updating this all week, but things got so busy at work and what not so I haven't been able to do much updating.

Time is seriously flying by - I can't believe how quickly things are moving...

This week I got to go down to the photo archives to get aquainted with the department and have a meeting about the work that I'm going to be doing with them. The archives are made up of everything from collections of photos from around the empire, a giant collection of arial photographs of different cities and areas in the empire, an oral history collection with recordings from thousands of oral history interviews done when they were putting the music together, and a big collection of films that were shot around the empire.

I think I am going to start spending mondays in the department working on the database and helping them catalogue and process some of the photos - though I'm mostly looking forward to just getting to see how they process all the photos, and getting to 'play around' on some of the things down there. (the department manager used the term 'play around' when he was talking about my getting to use the 22 MEGAPIXEL CAMERA which they use to take digital captures everything from photo negatives to giant maps... can you believe? 22 megapixels? The also have a scanner that comes with a bill of about 30,000 quid - but apparently the camera's work is so good, they rarely use it.... while I was down there we took a capture of a sheet of paper with some coloured squares on it, and we could zoom in so closely that we could see the small fibers and hairs that were on it.

So that's looking like a lot of fun.

We also had someone come in to do a talk at the museum as part of a series of lectures we are doing, and it was a professor who studies religion in history at oxford. He had a lot of interesting things to say, even making some interesting comparisons between the politics which were born out of the reformation and politics which are springing up in today's america. Both being born out of the idea that the rapture/end of time is upon us... interesting stuff.

I'm having a nice relaxing weekend with my housemates, just hanging around... I'm really looking forward to having Monday and Tuesday off so I can catch up on a few things, do some laundry, clean my room, and what not. I'm feeling a bit sick this weekend with a sore throat and a stuff nose, so I'm taking it slow - my housemates turned me on to something called LEMSIP which is basically like neo-citron in canada only a hundred times better for some reason I can't quite pin down.

I was feeling a bit better today and so I took a walk up Gloucester road to explore some of the area north of where I live, and I found a bunch of nice shops and started to look for my secret santa present for home and work - nothing yet, but I've got some ideas. The streets were so incredibly busy, because its saturday... but even worse because Christmas fever is upon everyone here.

Monday night Liz is having Hannah and me over to watch some christmas movies with her and Barney, and then we are going to another friend from works house to watch Muppet Christmas Carol later this week as well - so Christmas is definitely on its way... I was able to download the old 1987 classic Muppet Family Christmas special where all the muppets and sesame street characters spend christmas together and even the fraggles show up - so I'm going to save that to watch, because I doubt they'll play it on TV over here like they do every year before Christmas on TVO and PBS... not much sesame street here - its all Postman Pat, Thomas the Tank engine, and all sorts of other crazy kids shows that all resemble teletubbies in some way...

anyway, that's all for now... I'm going to get to bed early because I want to get over this cold. one more good sleep should do it I think.

- Chris

three months already...

today, I realized that I have officially been in England for three months - and thus my internship period here is just about half over (just about because I'm staying just one day over six months).

Things are going really well at work - my internship supervisor from Canada visted the museum on Friday and I got to spend the day showing her around and introducing her to people at the museum. It was nice to talk to her about what I'm doing and also hear about what's going on with the other interns... It was also just great to talk to her about what I'm learning and she helped me put some of my experiences into perspective into how they'll be useful in my career, and what effect or value they might have in the Canadian museum community.

In some ways I'm a bit sad to realize my half way marks but in others ways I am also really looking forward to my eventual return to Canada... I say eventual because right now I'm not sure if I will travel for a bit, extend my stay in Bristol for a short period, or what... I have been thinking a lot about what to do next, and although I feel like I could spend some time in England for a bit longer - I do miss things about Canada, and just in general miss the feelings of being close to home. I very much feel at home in Bristol, and have made a lot of friends - but its a bit strange living in a place where you know there is an eventual time limit to your stay. The constant feeling of slight transiency gets a bit tiresome... or at least I should say that I could see it getting tiresome, so I'll have to see how I feel after another three months and then really asess my situation.

I went and saw Mad Hot Ballroom which is a documentary about a public school program which teaches kids to ballroom dance in underpriveledged areas of New York City, and it was a gem. I'd recommend it to everyone, because it was a very uplifting and generally enjoyable film. I saw it after work at the Watershed with Lucy and Liz from work.

Sunday I made a nice dinner for my housemates with some recipes I pulled out of the Jamie Oliver supplement that came with the Guardian, and a few that I had in my head from working at Gusto - it was a nice Italian dinner with a delicious Fig Tart for dessert... It's so nice to have a house full of people to cook with - Jess is cooking a Morrocan Lamb dish on Wednesday so I am excited for that. It's really nice to live with a bigger group of people who aren't students, because when we combine finances we can afford to cook nice meals for each other a few times a week.

After the movie tonight, I decided to take a short cut that I had been eyeing on my map which cuts through the uni campus... it was quicker, but a bit of a mistake because it ended up climbing and incredible hill. I couldn't believe how high I was, and ended up getting a bit lost on some pathways on the campus but found an AMAZING look out spot which I figured was probably the highest point I've ever been in Bristol (higher than the photos I took from Cabot's tower in my albums) because I could actually see the top of the tower from where I was standing. I think that I'll go back one day when I have lots of energy and its daylight so I can really take in the view.

It seems that everytime I climb a hill in Bristol and think I've found the highest slope/tallest hill, I stumble upon an even higher one... Bristol is a very hill city. But I am definitely getting my excercise as I walk just over 3.5 Kilometers each way to work each day including up and down a few hills on the way. Today Liz and I were talking about how we could make a fortune out of an inflatable Bristol map that could be sold to tourists to show them the elevations and help them find the easiest routes between sights. It really is a fine art finding your way around the city and avoiding the hills (or at least the steepest slope)... Right now I'm doing pretty well because when I'm going between two places that are about the same elevation level I can usually plan my trip to avoid climbing any large hills that lay between then... but takes a lot of practice. With an inflatable elevation map it would be a breeze for anyone.

I think that's all I can write for now, sorry I haven't been updating much lately... I have all these ideas backlogged about things I want to write about, I just haven't had the change to really sit down and write. I'll try and get back in the habit though, and it should be easier.

- Chris

in the spirit of talking about Bristol, I'm going to dedicate my random british facts to the Bristle (Bristol) accent and dialect.
Random British Fact #5 - A Guide to Bristol Slang (definitions taken from personal experience/the BBC guide to Bristol Slang)
Lush - Nice/Lovely - Mmmm, That is Lush.
Gert - Really Big/Alot
Gert Lush - Something really nice - you might say, that soup was gert lush.
Coopie Down - Crouch Down
Led Down - Laying down - "I was led down when the doorbell rang"
ark at ee - like check you out - or look at you - "All dressed up for your date, ark at ee"
Innit - Isn't it? That's my jacket innit?
There is a company that makes t-shirts with Bristol sayings on them, if this slang has caught your attention, check out the shirts here

bath and stonehenge

Just updating after spending a few days with my Mom who was visiting on the way back from Bangladesh... it was nice to have a couple days off work, but I got right back into it today with some workshops and some other new jobs.

While my Mom was here we did a bit of sightseeing around Bristol and we also went to Bath and then ended up taking a bus trip out to Stonehenge for the afternoon - it was a really nice time, and I've posted the photos on my photo page. I also got a nice long brown wool winter coat courtesey of my mom as well, so that was an added bonus to the visit. There are a few photos up in my galleries of Bath and Stonehenge so have a quick look if you get the chance.

Tomorrow I am in meetings to go over the Slavery 2007 project all day - I'm really excited but also a little stressed because I'm going to be finding out/negotiating what exactly my role will be in the project. Hopefully, I'll get to do a bit of research as well as some workshop development...

there was another bit of good news today in that a proposal that Hannah and I wrote for a two thousand pound grant which will be used to buy resources for the Brunel education program we are planning was approved, and so we got the funding and everyone is really happy about that... but I realized today that although I worked on the proposal and will work to plan the resource package, I won't actually be at the museum long enough to see it be put to use - so that is kind of sad for me.

we also got a grant from a private agency to but 15,000 pounds towards our bursary fund which is for schools who cannot afford to come to the museum to plan trips - so that was really excited. I believe the amount that our fundraising person applied for as 500 pounds, so a donation of 15,000 was totally unexpected!

also, our Learning Journeys (The publication which displays all our education program) was given an acknowledgement as the best education program manual in a national museum magazine today... so its all good news for the Education department at the Museum.

The museum's new website was also launched today so follow the link to the right and have a browse - there is alot going on this week!

that's all for now, I'm going to get to bed because I've got a looong day of meetings tomorrow.

I can't believe its almost the end of November - time is FLYING.

- Chris

back to work...

Today I ran my first workshop at the museum, it was our "Slavery; interpreting the evidence" workshop where students handle different artifacts like chains, manillas, african art, whips, sugar, tobacco, and other objects associated with the slave trade and investigate, through those objects, the experiences of slaves and the story of the slave trade.

It was really nerve racking, but I am really happy to have done the workshop, as it was the one that I was most interested in running, but hadn't had a chance to try it out since observing other deliver it in the past few weeks. There are a number of the same workshop next week, so hopefully I'll get to jump right in and deliver a few more.

Things are going really well at work and my boss is encouraging me to do some work with the archives department and their digital collection project - I'm going to meet with the head of that department next week, and work out some sort of project which I can take on in that department for about 8 days spaced out over the next few months (depending on the project might be one day a week, or might be in a string). I'm really excited because I've done a bit of work like that before, and I think it will be a good opportunity to see what goes on in another department of the museum...

I'm really happy with what I'm doing, and feel really lucky that my boss is so interested in what I want to get out of the internship that she is letting me work in another department - It seems that in the past and in other internships, the interns haven't had as much say in what they want to work on and what they want to do.

Today I got to do a bit of training in the radio room in the museum as well! The museum broadcasts to a local radio station a few months a year, out of a radio studio that was built in the galleries - we also use in workshops to record debates or improvisational drama activites with students when teaching certain subjects. Today we were editing the "ums" and giggles out of a debate that some school children had in the studio last week about settlers and natives trading tobacco... I'm really excited to learn more about using it and think that training in a real radio and sound studio could come in really handy for a lot of things that I'm interested in.

All in all it feels good to be back to work after my three day holiday... although I will be off for a couple days next week while my mom visits on her way back from Bangladesh.

I think that's about all I can think of. I am making a cake tonight for Liz's birthday at work - about to go get started.

- Chris

random british fact #4 - well this is more of an occurence than a fact, but I thought it was funny so I figured I'd include it here. Today while I was walking home from work I noticed that in the city centre there were unusually long queues for the buses - it seemed that people in line were looking a bit restless and confused as well so it seemed to me that something was terribly wrong. When I walked up around Debenham's (a department store), I realized that all of St. James circle was in a bit of a traffic jam - there might have been an accident but I couldn't quite make out the source of the problem - traffic had stopped on one of the streets leaving the circle, and everything was backed up. What was most remarkable about the traffic, was that just around the corner from the impatient queues of people, were 11 buses which were also all lined up single file in their own queue as they waited to enter the bus lane to come pick up the hoards of people.
11 double decker buses waiting in an orderly queue so that they can in turn pick up the hundreds of people who were also queued up and waiting for their ride home... I'm not sure anything could be more british. Sadly I was without my camera... so I'll never have real proof of this peculiar occurence.

photos

Bridgwater Carnival photos are now in my galleries... enjoy!

random british fact #3 when sending mail, the british system requires that return addresses be written on the back of the envelope, preferably with a label stuck over the seal... but royal mail is aware of the Canadian standards, and so return addresses must be written both on the back and in the top right corner of the envelope for letters going to Canada.

photos afterall

after making my plan to slowly update things, I made the decision to just do all the updating based on the fact that I couldn't sleep, and also I realized that just posting the photos would tell most of the story anyway...

there are three new galleries in my online photos they are

Avebury
London
Cardiff and Oxford (not because the cities are close or related, just because it worked out that way)

Avebury was my favorite place that I went last week, I think because I got a real taste of the English countryside. I think that Kath and I must have called it "quaint" about a 100 times throughout the day, the English would have probably used "nice" or "lovely" which are much more common words, but we couldn't find anything other than quaint. And Quaint it is, and I hope you'll see from my photos - from the thatched roof cottages to the sheep wandering in and out of the circle of prehistoric stones, it is a sweet little English town.

We spent the day there, and the weather was beautiful - so we got to walk around between a few of the major sights including sillbury hill which is a giant man made hill and also west kennet long barrow which is an ancient burial site. The pathways were a bit muddy, but we got around fine and had a splendid day in the small little town.

Avebury was recommended by a few people who thought that Stonehenge was a little touristy, and I'm glad that we made the trip. We took the train into a place called Swindon and then 28 minutes later we were dropped off in a little one-bus-stop village infront of the White Lion Pub and the tourist office - basically the only main buildings in the town aside from a couple of shops, etc. Notably the tourist office is also doubles as a small church and chapel.


Check out my galleries for London, Oxford, and Cardiff as well...

London was a quick but nice day - I feel very aquainted with the city, and think that i'll be able to go back on my own and explore a little more. I got a few great shots in the Victoria and Albert Museum (The V&A), which is often referred to as the nation's attic - where everything ends up - only everything is sort of put on display in a sometimes difficult to navigate manner, so its also a bit like an attic because everything seems just put there, and not really organized.

Cardiff is the capital of Wales, so it was nice to take the train across and be surrounded by everything Welsh. Red dragons everywhere you turn so beware! We went to a few sights including the National Gallery where I snuck a snap shot of a Van Gogh (don't worry the flash was off) (the flash was off for all museum pics by the way)... and we got to visit Cardiff Castle.

Oxford was nice as well - a quaint but busy city. It put me in a better mood for working on my grad school applications, so that was a nice kickstart there - (not that I want to go to Oxford, its just that being in that atmosphere and seeing a University campus again made me think about grad school even more)... bycicles everywhere in Oxford as you'll see from the photos.

the rest should speak for themselves... have a look and let me know what you think.

- Chris

random british fact #2 Where in Canada and America we make orange juice distinctions by noting the various levels of pulp in the product - ie. "no pulp" "pulp" "added pulp" "extra pulp" and "lots of pulp" - those seem to be the one that come to mind. There are only two very bold distinctions here; first, those who do not like pulp may choose "smooth", but more entertaining is the option for those of us who like a little ruffage in our juice - we can choose the option labelled "Orange Juice with juicy bits". Even brands like Tropicana which are American based use "Juicy bits" on their U.K. products.... oh, Juicy Bits. What a delight!

long time no post

well... not that long really, but long considering I usually post a few times a week.

The reason for my blogging sabbatical is that my sister Kathryn has been visiting and I have had a very very busy week, starting last friday which was the night before she got here...

I have a plan to post the photos and details of all the fun things I've been up to on here sporadically during the next 48 to 72 hours, so that I don't overwhelm myself with photo uploads and entry writing - so stay tuned.

I'll start with the old and work towards the new - likely with a bit of random things thrown in as per usual.

I'll start with a short but possibly entertaining rant about Guy Fawkes Day

Well, last friday (That's a week ago) before Kathryn arrived I opened up a tourist magazine I had picked up for Kathryn's visit and discovered that in honour of Guy Fawkes there was a giant lights parade going on in a small little town called Bridgwater just an hour train ride away.

Well it didn't take much persuading before Hannah and I had plans to board the train directly after work and head straight to the kitschy guy fawkes fun. Luckily I had about 5 large containers of pumpkin ginger soup which I had made the day before on my day off (Thursday I had a day off) in the fridge at work so we ate that for dinner and then hopped on the train.

It turns out that the lights festival is the largest of its kind in all of WESTERN EUROPE - in just this small little town, this parade has been going on for 400 YEARS and there are all these ancient Carnival Club which make "carts" (what we would call floats) for this parade.

It was the most amazing thing I'd ever seen... I remember the light parades at Disney from my childhood - but Michael Eisner, eat your heart out - they've got nothing on Bridgwater.

For more info on the parade check out this link

I think the thing I liked most about the parade is that there were some obviously well funded projects and carts which were breathtaking - but there were also little carts and small groups of people who were just families and friends who had gotten together to build something - and despite it being a big corporate sponsored event in many ways, it still had a very strong community feeling to it.

Another funny thing is that the festival is named the "Carnival" and many of the dancers and paraders wore costumes that were much like carnival costumes that might be seen in Trinidad or Rio De Janero... butterflies, birds, animals, all sort - there were even people dancing but instead of animal arms and legs cascading behind them, the costumes they were supporting were designed to look like Tudor houses!

The only downside was that is was pouring rain all night and so we got soaked and were quite cold - but nothing that a quick stop in the pub before the train ride home wouldn't cure. We didn't get home until quite late, which was ok - except that I was getting on a 6:30 am train to meet Kathryn in London the next morning... so I didn't get the best sleep after a cold and wet night out - but it was well worth it for the fun we had.

Because it was spur of the moment, I didn't have my camera with me - but I'll get the pics from Hannah and you can see what I mean about the floats soon!

Guy Fawkes day is huge here, and the Carnival in Bridgwater was a day early - but when Kathryn and I arrived into Bristol the next night, on the actual holiday - we were greeted with a non-stop barage of fireworks being set off all over the city. Seriously. Because of Guy Fawkes the whole country was a giant fire hazard - with people shooting off fireworks all over the streets and everywhere. Walking home I counted about 78 fireworks and that was within about a 3 minute span of time.

The best part is that the fireworks still continue now... days later. Infact it was hearing a firework just now (a whole week past Guy Fawkes) while writing this post that it occured to me that I should write about it. I even heard one on Wednesday morning at about 8:45 am, which makes little to no sense because it was completely light out and it wouldn't have made much of a show. So we both had our fair share of fire works all week, though I am a bit sad that I didn't get to see the burning of either an effogy of Guy Fawkes or an effogy of The Pope (i'm told that the latter is not as common in recent years)... but either would have been nice to complete the British Guy Fawkes experience. sigh.

More to come soon, including photos from London, the Avebury Stone Circles, Cardiff, and Oxford.

I bet you can't wait!

- Chris

p.s. I'm going to start finishing every post with a random british fact/observation - this one will be numbered #1, although I am well aware that it is probably not the first fact of such a description to appear on this blog.

random british fact #1 - at the movie theatre (cinema) when you order Popcorn, you are consequently asked "Sweet or Salty?" which could be interpreted in a number of ways, but is ultimately confusing for someone who is used to hearing the question "would you like butter?", and so when I said "Yes, with butter" to the question "sweet or salty?" I was only greeted with silence. It was only then that I realized that popcorn is very different here - eaten only one of two ways, either slightly sweet OR slightly salty... with butter at no point coming into the picture. When explained to my british friends, the butter system in North America was greeted with reactions of disgust, mainly because they have no idea what butter would taste like on popcorn - nor were they familiar with the concept of a "popcorn" maker at home, or the general idea of ever "microwaving" or "jiffy popping" popcorn, or even the idea of eating popcorn at all in any place other than a movie theatre. Ho hum. What I wouldn't do for a good bag of Orville Redenbaucher.

tesco crazy

So I officially had my first Tesco experience, and I have to say I am almost speechless. I had been to what they call Tesco Metro before, but this is the full fledged store.

Tesco is a bit like Walmart, in that it's a giant corporation whose megastores sell everything you could ever want under one roof, but its a little different because its a bit more grocery focused than a walmart, but a little more department-store esque than Loblaws is.

Also it doesn't seem to be as barrel bottom as Walmart, it's got the class of President's Choice products with the size of a walmart, and walmart's selling power to keep prices lower. It felt like i was shopping at Food Basics because the prices were so low (just 19 Pence for a yogurt!), except the things I was buying were quality enough to pass off as President's Choice... plus I had everything I could ever want at my finger tips. Just a huge smorgasborg of inexpensive, good quality, and convienient shopping.

Yes. that's it exactly.

So anyway, I was very impressed with my visit to what is the biggest Tesco in the southwest. So big in fact, that we all equipped ourselves with our mobiles so that we could text each other should we get separated and lost.

In general, I was pretty impressed with the size of the store - but I did find it a little odd. Its consumerism to the extreme... but not like I'm used to, because in general, better quality stores tend not to go as much for the convenience factor, and stay focused on either groceries or household goods- not both. I guess Loblaws is starting to move towards that, but not this extreme.

Anyway, I am excited to report a few observations that I made, and I am happy to say that tonight, I was witness to consumerisn at its height - witnessing things that if I hadn't actually seen with my own eyes, I probably would not have believed. Things that if otherwise heard from someone else, I'd presume to be overexagerrated observations of extreme shopping.

Here are my two favorite examples of completely unnesscary amounts of convienient consumerism from Tesco

First Men's Business Suits were sold literally only a foot away from the fresh fruit... maybe even just inches away. Seriously. Close enough that you could examine the stitching on a nice pin stripe suit with a careful eye, while testing the melons for ripeness with your hands.

And secondly, where I was once impressed with what I thought was a multitude of crisp flavours in this country, those thoughts have now been humbled as I have finally bore witness to what was a true plethora of seasonings. If I had decided to take up the special offer and buy three large packages for two pounds I would have surely chosen Mango Chutney, Ribs, and also Oriental Ribs - just so that I could try a nice flavour (chutney) and then indulge myself in the taste-test to end all taste-tests and decide which rib flavoured crisp flavour I preferred - regular or oriental.

Oh what an experience it was.

- Chris

vanity/desk reunion

tonight after a long and hard day of pirating, I took it upon myself to go to the grocery store so that I could pick up a few things before heading home and spending a night in and relaxing....

stopping home first to drop off my heavy bag and extra jacket, I walked towards the store taking a short cut which cuts up the small street behind the main road and lets me enter through the back door of the supermarket.

lo and behold, on that short cut I walked passed the front yard of the house from whence came my shabby little desk/vanity just under a week ago, and sitting on the sidewalk were two little drawers lost, cold, and alone - just waiting to be reunited with their proper home.

oh what miracle of miracles!

I've decided that either the drawers had been hidden under other objects that were left out last week, or the person who abandoned the desk took it upon themselves to put the drawers out in the event that the same desk snatcher came looking for the rest of the pieces.

The reunion was a bit tricky, as the drawers were a bit wet from the rain but everyone is now and place, and working happily.

Oh what changes once piece of furniture can make! Now I not only have a place to put my computer and books and sit and type, but I also am blessed with not one but TWO drawers both of which are perfectly suitable to securely house such things as pens, pencils, spare change, post cards, letters, and the many other items which might, in do course, find a home in my room. Finally I don't have to use the pockets of my suitcase as a storage facility... I can just tuck my suitcase away under the stairs and out of my room...

Such a great day. It's the little things that make all the difference on a day like today!

Cheers,

- Chris

fast week...

this week went by really quickly because I was pirating all day, and busy almost every night.

on Tuesday afternoon I was feeling really gross at work and went home a few hours early. I think maybe something I had eaten the night before wasn't sitting in my stomach to well... and then sitting on the bouncy castle with all the little kiddies was not helping much at all.

Back to work on wednesday morning The rest of the week just flew by...

On Wednesday I found what I thought was a desk-turned-vanity sitting in the street on my way home from the supermarket, and I picked it up and dragged it to my room so I would finally not have to sit on the floor or lie on my bed to work on my computer. When I got home and took off the pieces that would have normally held up the mirror (the mirror itself was missing) I discovered that it was actualy just a vanity, rather than a desk-turned-vanity. It had appeared to me that it was a little desk that someone had clumsily screwed tiny shelves and some pieces to hold up a mirror to, to turn it into a vanity - but upon closer look it turned out to be just a clumsily made vanity... either way it was homeless and it fit perfectly into my room.

After taking off the pieces that held up the mirror and playing around with it a bit. I've turned it into a desk... its a definite keeper, despite it having no drawers (the drawers must have been pilfered earlier that day). I'll post a photo of my sad little desk here, and use it as a preview to the album that accompanies this entry in my photo galleries...


if you're wondering the white symbol in the corner is, its a sticker with the Cube logo on it. I figured I needed to add something personal to the vanity to make up for its missing drawers and its generally shoddy state from being broken down to suit its new purpose as a desk.

Thursday night I watched movies with some friends at work, carved pumpkins and made a big chicken and leek pie with Hannah. It was a fun night for all, especially since Halloween is not much of a big deal here, and people very rarely carve pumpkins in England... Everyone was impressed with my carving abilities, though mostly that was because I have significantly more experience doing it than everyone I work with put together. I was wishing I had a photo of my George W. Bush pumpkin from our second year Halloween party... now that was impressive.

The weekend came and went so quickly because I was working all day Saturday. Mostly it was uneventful, except just before the end of the day the sky broke into a torrential rain pour and consequently we all got soaked trying to push the air out of and roll up the giant bouncy castle which we had running infront of the museum. It was a messy, wet and muddy affair...

Today I took a walk around Bristol just to relax a bit and set out to take some photos with the manual camera that my grandmother passed on to me a few months ago. It was nice to just walk around and take some photos, and I think i'm starting to get a better hang of this business of shutter speeds and apertures.

On my walk I noticed that Bristol and presumably England is home to some pretty darn big maple leafs. Canada may have the Maple leaf as its national symbol, but England takes the cake when it comes to the actual leaves in the wild. I took some photos of said leaves, including perspective shots which show you how big they are in comparison to my foot and my head. So if you haven't already decided to view the photos, I know you'll be eager to go ahead now.

That's all... I'm spent and need to get a good night sleep. My nose has been a bit stuffy today (probably fall allergies as all the leaves are falling and i'm allergic to some molds), but I want to make sure I dont get sick because I've been really good and fending off the colds so far.

One last bit of news is that my sister Kathryn is coming to visit next Saturday for a whole week - and I'm getting really excited to spend some time with her here and show her around Bristol. Just have to get through a few more days of Pirates.

- Chris

pirates take two

Today was extremely busy at the Museum, and it looks like its going to be a very long and pirate filled week.

I spent most of the day making treasure maps with kids in the museum, through a map making activity that I put together... I was happy to see it work very well, but after looking at what was hundreds of treasure maps, you can only be so enthusiastic.

I've uploaded some photos to a new gallery called random photos... which is exactly what it is, just random tidbits from around Bristol and other things... most photos will have an explanation when I'm finished sorting through the album.

Hannah is getting ready for an exhibit that she is putting on at the cube during the month of November and I am helping her by designing some posters and helping prepare her press release... something i've done a bit of before doing ORT stuff and other stuff at Queens. I'm excited to see how it turns out. It opens on November 1st.

About to crash and go to bed. The kids really tire you out, and I've got about 7 more days of pirate madness to go!!!

hope you enjoy the pics... if you don't know how to get to the photo albums by now shame on you. just follow the links to the right of the screen.

- Chris

yo ho ho and a bottle of rum

The best thing about working for the museum's education department is that on some days you get to do things like go to the Brunel Archives and research through documents from the early 1800s, and other days you get to dress up like a pirate and play with kids on a giant bouncy castle.... that's what I got to do Saturday, and I'll get to do similar things all week!

Right now the museum is putting on a big pirates week for half-term because kids are out of school for a week and a half. The focus is on pirates from the area, as the south west of England was home to a number of legendary pirates... but mostly its just a lot of fun activities like pirate puppet making, the bouncy castle, etc. I spent some of my Thursday afternoon making up a Treasure Hunt board game which kids will be playing in the galleries all week, which was another fun thing I got to do. I felt like a kid, like when Lindsey and I used to make up our own board games and talk about selling them to Milton Bradley.

Friday was a nice day at the Museum because I got to go out with Liz to a conference to promote our education department and the activities and workshops we offer to early years (5 years and under) students. It was a fun day, and the conference was in Weston-super-mare so I got to go back there and play on the muzzies (amusements) on my lunch break as well.

I'm not really doing any marketing work in my job, but my boss has encouraged me to sit in and volunteer with as many parts of the museum as I would like to while I'm here - so I've made it a point to go on a few conference days to get a feel for how the education department is promoted to teachers and schools. It's really good news all around because I'll get to sit in with the archives and collections to see how they work, as well as getting some experience with our audio library of oral history interviews, and even get to learn how to use the Radio Room which broadcasts to a station called commonwealth fm one month a year - all great experiences to have.

I'm going to post some photos later tonight or tomorrow... they will include some photos from the Cube, some photos of me and Liz at the conference (including one of me holding a giant cockroach from the Zoo) and a few other random photos from around Bristol and things that I have been doing. So I hope you'll enjoy.

I had a nice relaxing day today after working a six day week and getting ready to work another one... I wanted to do a thorough edit of my fellowship manuscript but haven't gotten around to much of it yet... because I'm just in the mood to relax and do nothing. It's hard to find large blocks of time where I can really focus on it... so i'll give it another go this evening.Other than that things are going well... I'm starting to notice that the fall is getting here, which means cool wet morning, but thankfully warm and sunny afternoons just in time for my lunch break - and then cold evenings... but not too cold yet.

Every year I find that fall sneaks up on me... by saying that I mean, that every year it always feels like summer, until one day you have one of those moments where you look around and just realise its fall all of a sudden. As if all the leaves changed colour overnight, and suddenly a cool but comfortable breeze takes you by surprise telling you that summer is over... it's not necessarily a bad feeling, but its also a bit sad to realize that the long hot days of summer are behind you. I had one of those moments this week when I was walking home under St. James circle - there are lots of roundabouts in Bristol, but the major ones you sort of have to take stairs below the street level and then cross underneath. St. James is so large that there is an small open air park in the circle below, and as I was walking down the ramp I realized that I was foot deep in crunchy coloured leaves that were swishing and blowing around my ankles as I walked. All the leaves collected there after being blown down into the circle, and suddenly I looked around and felt that it was fall.

Look for my photos, hopefully I'll get them up tonight.

- Chris

a bit of silliness

Wrote this a few weeks ago in an email... but thought it might be fun to post something silly on here for a change.

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The Battle of the Stationery

So I have officially launched “The battle of the stationery” at work.

At all started a few days ago when I realized that the standard paper size called "A4 paper", is about 3/4 of an inch longer than 8 1/2"x11" paper and about 1 cm less wide. All this time I had been using slightly differently sized paper and I had no idea of the cultural compromise I conceded to when I joined the office world in England.

After this and a number of further startling realizations about British Paper (for example, there is no such thing as Legal sized paper here) I've started a bit of a war on British stationery against Liz who was formerly my food-chat friend at work.

At first the battle was tough, given that I only have one other Canadian ally in the office – but we have made a lot of progress given that the Britons outnumber us at about 15 to 1 inside the office walls.

At this point we have reached a bit of a peace treaty... but in my mind the war still wages.

Here are the differences I am fighting for and a bit background on the battle.

First, I believe that 8”1/2 by 11” is a superior paper size to A4, and secondly that any society without legal sized paper is most definitely archaic and considerably backwards.

Secondly I have set out to prove that the North American three hole-binder and three-hole punch system is far superior to the British two-hole system. The two-hole systems works on the holes being located about 1/3 and 2/3 way down the length of the paper, and hold the paper very insecurely, by allowing paper to wobble back and forth - In my opinion a staple or paper clip has just as much if not more security. Although I do appreciate the benefit of being able to flip through the paper at the top of the binder (there is no hole holding the paper down at the immediate top edge) I feel that this bonus is not enough to outweigh the overall strength and stability that the three hole system provides.

I thought that I had been able to convince my enemy to concede to the superiority of the three hole system by providing an example from Canada and offering a sheet of three-hole lined paper as a sample... but was shocked to return from lunch and find, that very same piece of 8"1/2 by 11" lined binder paper taped to my flat screen computer monitor with the word "WRONG" written across it in red ink.

Something had to be done.

After a thorough demonstration of an actual North American three holed binder, much support was gained (thank god I brought a binder with me from Canada)... but to further support my campaign I found pictures of three hole punches on the internet which could demonstrate how our properly sized paper actually came to be punched at three equally separated points.

Although the Brits were quite shocked and horrified and the bulky nature of these three pronged giants, not to mention the size of the holes in the paper which are notably wider than those made by the weak and puny British two holed punch... full support was eventually gained when I stumbled across a photo of a small and convenient three hole punch which fits neatly into an ACTUAL binder for use on the go or in situations where a proper bulkier punch would not be accessible. This was definitely the turning point in the campaign, and the Britons were thoroughly impressed with this North American invention.

While I consider this to be a win, I must admit that I have had a number of unquestionable defeats.

For example. Envelopes in this unruly country have a far superior sealing mechanism through which two slightly sticky glued surfaces fold together to create a strong bond on contact. No wet and stick, or pulling off of plastic tabs like we do in the Canadian North.

Secondly. The British have an invention called “Box Files” which act either as portable brief cases or file folders that stand upright on shelves - much like our magazine files, only far superior because they completely enclose materials while also securing them safely through a spring mechanism for transportation. They are an example of pure genius. (please see image below)

Between these elaborate box files and a system of paper folders, which fully enclose and protect their contents, rather than Canadian file folders while simply hold paper together when held upright or laid flat... they have quite easily put our standard file folders out of use.

For now the battle is at rest, but I guarantee that as soon as I get my hands on a Canadian Grand and Toy catalogue I will take up arms again.

Still, one wonders where Canada and Britain departed... At what point did North Americans change over to a three-hole system? and after proving its superiority, why have the Brits resisted its implementation? Two countries so linked throughout history have become so divided over office supplies.

One may never know the real source of these divisions or how long they might continue, but still one can still hope and a dream of a day where Brits and Canadians can put aside their stationery prejudices and put their ideas together to build the a strong, nay, the worlds strongest and most efficient empire of office supplies and accessories.

Yes, one can only dream.

- Chris

nice weekend

Had a nice and relaxing weekend which was perfect because the next few weeks are going to be really busy, as I’m working two six day weeks in a row at the museum.

On Saturday I went out to the shops to try and find a few things that I have been meaning to buy, but after a long day of queueing (what they call waiting in line here), I didn’t get very much accomplished. I’m starting to realize that you really have to take a day off to get anything done in this city, because the shops are far too busy on the weekends for errand running. Saturdays in the city center are busier than anything I have ever seen due to the fact that things close at 5 on weekdays, and not many stores are open on Sunday… honestly I’m afraid of what will happen as Christmas approaches… it’s going to be madness! It’s a bit inconvenient to adjust to this difference, but now that I am adjusting and getting used to not being able to browse the stores after work, it does seem a little excessive that malls and stores like Walmart are open until 9:00 or later in North America.

I’ve taken a few pictures of the Saturday queues that I passed during the day, and should hopefully post them soon as we are potentially going to go wireless in my house on Tuesday. (The wireless connection I was picking up has gone away, so we are getting wireless installed for everyone this week).

The queue-system is incredibly orderly here, and difficult to grow accustomed to as an impatient person… it’s not that we don’t line up in Canada, but we certainly don’t do it in the same way. For example, at bus stops there are often straight and orderly lines of up to 30 people or more – where in most of my experiences people sort of randomly crowd around bus stops in Canada, keeping in their head an idea of who was there before them and who came after them. It’s not that important who gets on in what order – because anyone who needs a seat due to old age or ability will inevitably get one or be given one. Also in stores where long line ups would normally arise, we often implement a take a number system so that you aren’t confined to standing behind someone in line and can browse around – I have yet to see such a system here, and so more often than not I find myself standing as person number 27 in line, just starting at the back of the head of the person in front of me, who in turn is starting at the back of the head of the person in front of him, and so on, and so on.

I’m not suggesting that either way is good or bad, I’m definitely developing a stronger level of patience here… I think the difference reflects a very north American desire to have everything as quickly and conveniently as possible. For example in a Canadian Grocery store if the line ups got long they would inevitably open up another cash so that people could move through as quickly as possible… if that happened here, people would just queue up single file and wait out the rush.

After a long day of not getting anything done while running around the busy busy city center, I basically just got frustrated and went home. The saddest part of my day was that when I went back to a clothing store that was having a big sale, the brown pair of cords that I was thinking about buying for work that were perfectly in my size had been bought by someone else. The lesson that I learned is that when life presents you with an £8 pair of Corduroy Pants (only about $16 Canadian dollars), you don’t hesitate and think “I’m not sure if I should spend the money - I’ll come back later” – you just go ahead and buy the darn pants for 8 quid.

On Saturday night my housemate Ben and his friends from work had an extra ticket to a live comedy/pantomime put on by “The League of Gentlemen”… now I was only a bit familiar with these guys after having watched a few episodes of their tv show and having just seen their newly released movie – but since I have pretty much been loving the British comedy I’ve seen on TV - I figure it was worth going, and in the end I was glad I went. Basically The League of Gentlemen is a collection of grotesque characters all portrayed by three men, the show is situated in a small town called Royston Vassey where all these bizarre characters live, and its sort of a sketch-type comedy show.

What was really great about the night is that I got a taste of Pantomime theatre which is a big british tradition, along side a huge dose of crude British humour as the pantomime was very much an overdone parody. It was showing at the Hippodrome, which is a big theater right in the centre of town, so it was also really great to get to go and sit inside such an old theater space…

The Hippodrome (above) and Two Characters from TLoG (below)

It was a hilarious night, and I really enjoyed the humour. I think the show has a bit of a cult following, so it was also really interesting to sit with an audience and hear them shout out funny lines and participate in the pantomime. What was most remarkable was the way that these three guys worked the story so that all the characters they play could be involved in the plot, but organized in a way where they all had time to change in and out of the ridiculous costumes while never leaving the stage empty of at least one character. It was such an amazing show!

If my talk of the show has peaked your interest check out these sites for more details of the hideous characters from Royston Vassey. Here and also here.

Sunday was nice and slow – it started off nice as my housemate stumbled upon a lost little puppy in the streets and brought him in to the house. Much to our disappointment we figured out his home was and so we were able to keep him for more than a few hours (we thought we might keep him a day or two until we found the rightful owner…but that plan didn’t last long)… but it was nice to have the excitement of a puppy in the house for at least a few hours.

We had a full English breakfast on Sunday with eggs, sausage, bacon, waffles (potato waffles not Belgian), and beans… and I made a big lasagna for dinner, the leftovers of which I will enjoy for lunch today. We don’t have a microwave at home, so I’ve taken to planning having leftovers that I can take it to work at lunch and warm in the microwave here.

Well that’s my exciting weekend for you. Its Monday morning and I’m off to work faced again with the usual Monday-realisation that my time in this country is flying by more quickly than ever… and it looks like the next few weeks will be no exception.

- Chris

three successes

Yesterday I took a trip back into the world of academia when I spent the day doing research at the University of Bristol’s archives. I was basically going through their collection of materials on Isambard Kingdom Brunel to survey what materials we might be able to put to use in our workshops for the upcoming Brunel 200 celebrations. It was quite a day, first off it was nice just to step back into the student world and be surrounded by people rushing to class, doing research, and looking worn out from the student life – It made me miss it in a few ways but it was also nice to know that I was there for work and not school.

I was in heaven sitting in the small little archive room of the library surrounded by ancient books on all subjects and completely absorbed into the smell of musty archive collections… I’ve done the archive research thing in Canada, but in some ways this was a completely different experience as the materials that I was handling dated further back than anything I had ever investigated before. Amid searching out drawings of the Great Western Railway from the 1830s and looking for posters and advertisements that we could reproduce for use in workshops, I took some time to peruse through Brunel’s personal diaries that dated as far back as the mid 1820s.

As a self proclaimed history and museum geek I’m aware that handling anything dating from that long ago would be enough to get me going on a intellectual high, but as I’ve done more research I’m starting to get very fond of this Brunel character and so I found it even more interesting to revel in his private musings from almost two centuries ago.

My investigation only proved the many theories that call Brunel an over ambitious eccentric and a genius, but there is nothing like turning through the pages of a diary written by the man himself. My most favorite piece is a letter he wrote in the middle of his first diary in 1829, after four o’clock in the morning after he had been faced with an apparition of an early death. He wrote a lengthy letter to his closest friend, to whom he dedicated the diary for after his passing after realizing that it was probably the only thing he had of value in the world. What a character! It was so fascinating to read, not only because he proclaims himself to be overly ambitious, but because he also obsesses over his own ambition, constantly referring to his building Castles in the Air in planning his entire life… here is my favorite quote I dug up…

“My ambition or whatever it may be called (it is not the mere wish to be rich) is rather extensive; but still I am not afraid that I shall be unhappy if I do not reach the rank of hero and Commander in Chief of his majesty’s forces – in the stream (gas) boat department. This is a rather favorite castle in the air of mine. Make the gaz engine answer, fit out some vessels (of course a war), take some prizes nay some island or fortified town get employed by government, construct and command a fine fleet of them and fight – fight in fact take Algiers or something in that style. Build a splendid Manufactory for gaz engines a yard for building the boats. At last be rich and have a house built of which I have even made drawings”

Funny that he calls his life plans castles in the air, but then has already made drawings of the house that he plans to build upon completing his dreams.

Needless to say I found lots of good materials that we can use in our workshops.

Actually it has been a week of success at work… to celebrate Black History Month the museum designed a trail for visitors to follow through the gallery that highlights the black experience in the empire… unfortunately the first trail was quite wordy and not very family/kid friendly so Hannah and I set out to design our own family friendly trail while still keeping in mind social history and sensitive nature of the issues.

In the end we came up with a really cool booklet that introduces children to black history by investigating culture in Africa and India, and then tracing the different ways that black populations moved (or were moved) across the globe. We came up with some interesting activities, my favorite one is where the trails asks the child to draw a picture of the west African bracelet that a person might wear around their wrist, and answer questions about what it indicates about culture before the slave trade - and then next to it draw what an African person might wear around their wrist after being taken to America (handcuffs from a slave plantation)… this brings up the question of what each might symbolize between the life of a person enslaved and a person living freely.

I’m really happy with it – and the trail was so well received that the museum managers have recommended that the design and style should be followed for all future events and exhibits. It’s nice to have been able to work on something that has a direct effect as most of my work is relating to projects that will not come into fruition for some time – as Brunel would say “What Castles!”

Anyway, I’m starting to feel a little more accomplished at work because I’ve been here long enough to see things starting to get done and I’m starting to feel like I’m having an impact on the work being done here.

On another completely unrelated (but fun) note, I had great success last night as I successfully made rice for the first time since moving to Bristol. I know, those of you who have eaten my food and know how fond I am of cooking are probably gasping at the thought that I was struggling to make rice – but apparently I had lost the skill since receiving a rice cooker last Christmas. It’s not that rice is so difficult to make in the first place, but I suppose having a rice cooker makes it so much easier, that when moved to a new country and left without the “set-it-and-forget-it” convenience of my rice cooker I was complete crap at the job. I guess the laziness facilitated by having my rice cooker made it all the more challenging to do what had previously been a simple task in the kitchen. But after several occasions of eating curry with soggy rice, you’ll be happy to know that I enjoyed a fine meal last night.

All in all it’s been a good week!

- Chris

p.s. photos of my first night volunteer-bartending at the cube cinema to come soon!

hand turkeys

After a few people at work experienced their first Canadian Thanksgiving one the weekend, as the past-past intern who is still kicking around Bristol had a thanksgiving party - the office was a bit buzzing with talk of thanksgiving and holidays...

After liz mentioned that she drew a card with a maple leaf and a moose on it for her hostess, I was happy to inform here that the actual mascot of thanksgiving is the Turkey, perhaps with fall leaves or pumpkin pie coming in at a close second.

What fascinated the general audience of the office was my talk of "hand turkeys" the craft that just about every kid who grew up in North America has been forced to make by teachers at some point in their lives... sure enough a quick google image searched produced hundreds of prime examples including this gem.

Isn't it a beauty? quite a strange phenomenon this hand turkey business is - we even found a strange/funny instruction webpage that jokes about this craft. (check it out if you like)

We've made an office resolution to share all craft ideas pre-celebration for all future holidays (canadian or british)... which could result in some fun times, including a pumpkin carving night in the works for pre-halloween. It might be time to bring out the old George W. Bush pumpkin design from my second year Halloween Party.

Tomorrow is my day off, and I'm excited to sleep in!

- Chris

my un-thanksgiving

I had a great weekend despite the fact that instead of having a three day thanksgiving weekend like I would have in Canada, I actually only had a one day weekend because I worked all day on Saturday. The Museum was hosting a thank you day with guest speakers and lectures for the supporters and friends of the Museum, and so all the staff have to work that one Saturday a year so that the supporters can meet the people who run the museum. It was actually a really fun day because I spent it with my co-workers but in a not-so formal atmosphere, and also nice because I got to work with a lot of museum staff who work in completely opposite parts of the building from me, who I rarely run into in the offices.

A few people from the staff went out afterwards including Liz and Hannah from the education department. My night didn’t exactly go as planned and it ended up being a bit of a mish-mash of events, but it was fun all the same. We had big plans to go to a pub called “the Coronation Tap” which is apparently the best place to get cider in Bristol, but we got there an hour earlier than it opened (I guess we were just a bit too eager) and ended up getting some food at another pub called The Mall until 7:00 when the Coronation opened. Note – contrary to what one might think, “Mall” as in the pub or a shopping centre is not pronounced the way we pronounce it in Canada. Here they say “Mahlle” with the “a” sound like the “ah” in “apple”.

Once the pub opened we headed over and I was given my inaugural half pint of exhibition cider…sold in a half pint because it is too strong to be served in a full pint – but quite deceiving because it actually tastes quite sweet – so that you think you aren’t having anything less innocent than fizzy apple juice. It was ok to try, but I actually prefer the ciders that are a little more bitter and less bubbly – there is a flat cider called Ashleigh Press which has quickly become my favourite.

I didn’t stay at the Coronation long because Hannah was leaving early and I wanted someone to walk home with in the dark, since it was on the other side of town and I was clueless to what route to take to avoid walking all the way into town and then back to my house… but on the way home we stopped at yet another pub called The Hare on the Hill and randomly met some other people from work who were not at the first place we went. Hannah and I had stuffed our bags with leftover cake and cookies from Friends day, so we snacked on those and chatted with friends there.

Finally we left the pub and bum boarded down the hill back down to the main road. Bum boarded means sitting on Hannah’s skateboard and rolling down the hill… (don’t worry there are no cars on the route we were on). And just as we thought our night was over we walked past the Here Shop only to find that it was still open for an exhibition that was being put on in their gallery… The exhibition, called 24 Frames, was being put on in celebration of their 2 year anniversary and featured 24 small photo frames that displayed all kind of art from knitting to collage, all made by Here shop customers and friends. The idea is that each piece of art can be bought for £20, and as soon as someone buys it another goes up in its place… so they literally have hundreds of little frames designed by artists and the exhibition is constantly changing and featuring new art… All the proceeds go to the shop and its galleries.

Hannah made a frame of her own for the exhibit while I browsed the shop. It was a fun way to end the night.

Not much else is going on here… It totally slipped my mind that it was thanksgiving until it was too late to plan anything very festive, though I did make my first phone call home to Canada while the family was all at the cottage making dinner.

I’ve really been enjoying the new Metric album, which I downloaded and have been listening to because it’s not yet available in the U.K. … Its nice to hear some new Canadian music, and I’m a bit intrigued by the fact that they are going to be touring France at the end of November/early December. I’ve talked to my housemates about doing a trip to see them but I don’t know how feasible it would be – depending on affordability we are thinking of planning a trip to the Eden Project, which is only a few hours away if the Metric concert trip won’t work out – so either way, I’ve got a weekend trip to look forward later on.

This should be a good week at the Museum… I’m taking Wednesday off with my lieu day from Saturday to get some errands done and have a bit of a break. It’s impossible to get anything done here because nothing is open after work and everything is chaotic on Saturdays when everyone goes to the shops at the same time – so it will be nice to have a free business day to get things done.

That’s all for now

Happy thanksgiving!
- Chris