What do you see on your houses

HPIM0863,
originally uploaded by Glenn Saqui.

Who said you wanted a white wall when you could have this. Gotta love Belfast

Sharing the blog

Rob and I will be blogging together so here is Robs first blog I hope that you all enjoy the next three months of our blogging and I hope you all understand that this will be the first place we will place any info on us.

This is Robs first blog:

Hey kids, its time for me to go. I fly for Delhi Saturday afternoon. It
is a 12 hour flight to Shanghai with a 4 hour layover then another flight
for 7 and half hours to Delhi. When its all said and done I will have left
Vancouver Oct 29 @ 3pm(PST) and will arrive in Delhi Oct 31 0315am (Delhi
time). I am not looking forward to the epic flight at all but hopefully I
can use the time to adjust my sleep cycle. Delhi is 13.5 hours ahead of
PST. My travel buddy and best friend Glenn will arrive in Delhi Oct 31
about 1130 pm so I will be on my own for the first day. Thats ok, being
alone will just make it that much more surreal. Thats what its all about
right? We will be staying for the first few days at Hotel Rak
International. Apparently scenes from the movie Holy Smoke (starring Harvey
Keitel and Kate Winslet) were filmed on the rooftop there. Go to
www.IMDB.com if want the synopsis; it's a good movie but this isn't
freaking Ebert and Roeper here.

Basically the plan is to spend a few days in Delhi, get our bearings, get
over jet lag, check out the Red Fort and eat our faces off, among other
attractions. No, that doesn't mean we will attempt to masticate the heads
of statues. After that we may be heading off SE to Agra where there is some
thing called the Taj Mahal, whatever that is. Or we may be heading SW to
Pushkar to check out a camel festival. I don't know what exactly a camel
festival entails but I imagine its more fun then a home show for example.
After that we really don't know what we are doing, we are just going to kick
it freestyle. Thats how Glenn and I roll alright.

Think about this

Belfast on Saturday night, London on Sunday, and Delhi on Monday. YIKES

Sonja and Glenns Trip to Ireland

I flew to Belfast to meet up with Sonja and we rented a car and drove the northern coast of Ireland. It was really nice and I'm in the process of uploading all the pictures from our trip so soon you'll be able to see our trip pics. Went to Dairy where Bloody Sunday happened. It was crazy to see how divided this city as well as Belfast is. I don't think I could do a good job blogging about it so I don't think I will. One thought that came to mind when we were on our walking tour in Dairy was how rough the city felt. It was surreal to be there this week because while we were on the walkking tour a whole pile of fireworks where going off so it felt like we were in the middle of a war zone.

Every night on our trip we hit the irish pubs. So much fun! It was awesome the irish really do know how to have a good time. Young and old were in the pub having fun. I loved the people and the music as long as you didn't bring up religion.

We went to Belfast for two nights and had a great time in the pubs in Belfast, tons of Irish music and met a bunch of fun irish men and women. We did a tour of the two main districts the Catholic and Protestant. While we were on the Protestant side the protestants were organizing a massive rally and the tour guide thought that it would be a good idea if we left the area. I think he was worried that something might happen to us in that area. Belfast is a crazy city and I hope everyone gets a chance to spend a day or two there to understand their conflict.

Sink stinks

So if you let the water out of our sink it totally smells bad. Anyone have any idea why this might be? Is it as simple as putting Draino down the sink or is there something else that I should try first? I care but its the girls I'm worried about because I'm leaving soon so I hope that maybe I can fix it before they go away. I know a guy who works in the sink business I wonder if he maybe able to help me.

Donnie Darko

Ok here is the real Donnie Darko blog.

This movie is so different from what I thought it was going to be. I won't ruin it for anyone but I thought movie was about an FBI agent or a mob informant. Where I got this idea from I have no idea because I didn't even read the back of the box I just picked it up and decided that I wanted to watch it. My buddy Scott raves about how great this movie and how its so messed up so that should have given me a hint that it wasn't a movie about an FBI agent. So when I got it home and looked at the cover I thought it was going to be a scary movie and it wasn't that either so it was a differnt kind of movie that I'm not sure I would watch again but I did enjoy it a fair bit so I can't complain it just teaches me not to judge a dvd by its name or its cover.

Donnie Darko

Ok to fill people in I've got less then a week until I head off to India and here is a run down of my week.
Monday: Went to Manchester at 5am for a meeting at 10am and was back on the flight for 7pm. YUp lots of time in the crappy airport. Thoughts on Manchester from what I saw from the airport to the meeting at Manchester U. was that it is super ugly there and not worth visiting! Other then that its a nice place. I picked up the latest Economist, if you have never read this magazine don't think that its all about money because you'd be way off. Its short one to two page articles about the things that are going on in the world. The magazine of course has longer articles but it normally has a couple of pages for every continent in the world and it normally discusses the major problems in that area. Its a very good magazine to keep informed. I would suggest it to anyone who would like to keep up to date on whats going on in the world because of the short articles you can normally read it on the bus or if you are lucky enough like myself you can read it at the airport as you kill time before you plane arrives.

Tuesday: Spent the day recording tutorials for a client so that he can watch how to do things insteaad of having to call me, since I'm pretty sure I won't be able to help him from India. My options where either record the tutorials or type out a step by step guide on how to do what he wanted. Being lazy and wanting to use a new tool can actually lead to a better product as I found today. The rest of the day was getting ready to go to india, that meant I watched two movies and didn't run. The movies I watched were Donnie Darko and some crappy britsh thing that we found. Donnie Darko was totally crazy but I think I'll save that for another blog. All I have to say is Scotty I can understand why you like that movie so much.

Wednesday: This is going to be the last day of my work so I'll spend most of the day handing things off to Canada. I have to go pickup my ticket as well as send in my invoice for work over here and get my expense forms in.

Thursday-Sunday morning: I catch a flight at 7am to Belfast where Sonja and I are renting a car and driving around the northern part of Ireland. We plan on hitting Derby as well as the Ocean (hope she can swim) and back to Belfast for Saturday so that I can check out this city. I am really interested in its history of being Protestant and the other side and how it divided a city as well as a country. I plan on getting some pics of the murals that show people with guns and stuff like that...

Sunday morning: Arrive back in London and do the crazy pack thing.

Monday: Fly to India........yikes and yahoo

Brighton

HPIM0632,
originally uploaded by Glenn Saqui.

Near the end of september we went down to Brighton and checked it out. ITs a really cool beach side town. Check out the picks. I've decided to upload everything that I have today

drunkin blog

So its taken me some time before I blogged drunk but here we go:

Tonight Erin and I went out and got super drunk because Sonja has gone hiking wth her friend liz and Tanya has gone to Turkey so it leaves us. I was runninng today and it went re3ally well so I thought might as well have a drink or two. Well it ended up being a piss up. We went to our local pub (swan) drank some beer met a Columbian who told us of another pub that was open until 1 am because like every other pub this one closed at 11pm. So E and I crused over there and met some super old ladies from Kansas who talked about how much bling they had so we headed to get some grub and met up with the most stupid american. Why is it they seem to stand out so much? Is it they actually think that everyone will take american money? stupid americans

g-out

What am I taking to india?

Well some think I'm crazy but here is the official of pretty much everything that I"m taking. It will fit in a forty litre bag and if it doesn't then some of it will be thrown out.

-sleeping sheet
-2 pairs of shorts
-one pair of pants
-two dry fit shirts
-one long sleeve shirt
-north face fleece for cold nights and as a pillow
-7*underwear
-as many running socks as I can fit into the bag
-needles (Rob doesn't need to buy)
-camera (with charger and converter)
-three pairs of contacts
-traveller cheques
-knife for cutting food
-running jacket
-soap, shampoo, razors, toothpaste, toilet paper
-hat maybe buy when there
-India book
-zip lock bags for everything
-travel towel
-pen and paper (for log as well as insights)
-flashlight
-mesh bag to hold laundry
-couple of black garbage bags

Bullying

Bullying
So I have a cousin who is 6' 7" or something very close to that. My old roommate Scotty, best actual room roommate ever, thought himself to be tall until he met my cousin. Now I bring this up because there is a big thing in the paper over here about some kid who is 6' 5" and how everyone bullies him because he is tall. He said no matter where he went he would stand out and he can't stand it. So I wonder if my cousin had this problem as well. Hopefully not because I remember watching the kids get bullied at school and it really has a negative effect on a person at the present time but in the future as well.

They talk about bullies in the work place as well and I was wondering how that is done and what that looks like.

Bullying sucks!!!!

Dundee (I wrote this blog on Monday night)

So I am up here in Dundee (hopefully I can get to the internet to blog) and I went out for the best Indian food that I think I have ever had. I went to Brick Lane in London which is supposed to be the most authentic India food outside of India but let me tell you the quality of food at this place was the tops. So I am leaving to India in 14 days...yikes...so I thought I would give eating with one hand a try. It was a complete mess but it was good practise since I'm leaving soon. I still haven't booked a hotel in New Delhi but I think that is this Fridays activity and making sure Rob and I both know what we are doing and when we arrive in Delhi. I am pretty sure I arrive 11:30pm October 31st in Delhi and I'm pretty sure Rob arrives at 4am October 31st. I was hoping to beat him there but the cards didn't play out. I was hoping to be there before him because I have a little more experience in a totally foreign country and I might have been able to help him out a little bit.

Does anyone know how bad the tv is in the UK? Man it really sucks. I would rather do work then watch TV and thats bad because my normal rule is after 9pm no work should be done unless you have a solid deadline and I don't have a deadline so I shouldn't even be thinking about work but I am. I blame this on two things:
1) The TV sucks so there is nothing for me to do but sit and write emails and think about work
2) The stupid fog in Heathrow airport. Why you may ask? Well simple answer. I now have twenty pages left in my book and I want to save ten for each night that I am here so I have nothing to do. So I blog and write emails.

Internet at home finally

yes I finally have internet at my home. Woot woot! To bad I'm going to bed and then I'm off to Dundee for three days so hopefully I'll get a chance to do some quality blogging from there.

New Roommate

Some of you know that we now have a fourth person living with us now. She has been following my blog and today while I was working away (I was actually trying to figure out what my workout was going to be) she asked me if I had blogged today. I responded that I hadn't and asked if she would like to write something on the blog so here it is from our new roommate Erin:

"Hi I'm Erin and I'm Glenn's new roommate and I just arrived on Friday. I came without job. I'm crazy! I know Glenn and Sonja from UVIC. Sonja and I worked in Residence together and now we live in LONDON! I just can't get over it. Glenn is an excellent roommate. He cooks dinner for all of us every night and he even scrubbed the toilet yesterday. I'm really going to miss him when he goes to India."

So there you have it our new roomate. I can't believe that she moved to london without a job but let me tell you something since I live here right now. I think if you have an education or a skill you'll have zero trouble finding a job in London. There just seems to be so much work in this city it is crazy. Today like almost everyday I was called about going to an interview which I kindly turned down because I wasn't interested in commuting an hour each day to work. Oh ya I have a job and I'm about to leave london in less then two weeks to head to India probably good reasons not to worry to much about work.

Best of luck this weekend

I have a lot of friends and family running this weekend. Good luck to the vikes running beacon hill this weekend. I will not lie to any of you the course sucks and oh the race you ran last week was a few hundred metres short. So I hope it isn't raining and I hope you guys get some good spikes because I know what happens when you have crappy spikes you get these really nasty things on your heels.

My family Michelle, Uncle David, Auntie Sandra-may, and a new recruite to the family Patience (sorry if I spelled your name wrong I'm like your soon to be husband I can't spell) will all be running the half on Sunday. So I hope you all the best on a very beautiful course and I hope it goes well for you. Michelle I'm glad to see you running this course after what happened last time (fainted near the line).

India baby

OK well we've got our tickets, our visas, our money (yes rob I think you have enough), our backpacks (40Ls), and soon our adventure will begin. We have only one plan and that is to meet in Delhi on October 31st. Yup we don't even know where we are going to meet but that will all get straightened out later in the month. Really I'm very laid back when it comes to this trip. I'm totally excited about the fact that neither Rob or I have any solid plans. I want to go north but if we don't go no worries and Rob's only requirement in his words "We see cool shit". So soon we'll be off....yikes

Bus blowing up

OK here is the story. Sonja came home on Tuesday night and told me a bus blew up. She said she saw the roof blown off and that she needed to call her mom and her brother to make sure that they were fine. I tried the computer and only the second time in almost 2 months we had someones wireless connection. I thought better blog to let people know that I'm alive because there could be tons of bombs going off right now and people maybe worried. Well the next day I head to the internet cafe and search the news sites. I mean I hit them hard almost a solid hour and I found nothing. So I don't know if Sonja is crazy or maybe this bus was on show to let everyone know that it could happen again. I don't know. All I do know is it hasn't been in the news over here so I don't know whats going on.

I am alive

there is a blown up bus ten minute walk from my house. Sonja was in the gym when it happened and came out and saw the room of a bus blown off. She as well as everyone we know is ok in london. Freaky! it will make it a long night tonight

later