Art in Dublin: two generations challenging national identity and Terry Winters at the Irish Museum of Modern Art
It’s rare, but much more interesting, to find serious museums who are willing to take a focused look at art of particularly local interest rather than seeing yet again the same handful of artists who are fashionable at the moment throughout international art circles. I saw fascinating exhibits in July at The Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane and Project Arts Centre of two generations of artists whose themes are Irish national identity (not individual identity, as was of interest to Americans since the 1980s) during periods of change. Timothy Hawkesworth The Sower at Night 1986 While much of the work would stand up to international viewing it all concerns specifically Irish questions that would require footnotes elsewhere.
Making Worlds: Transnationalism, Nation States, and Representation at the 53rd La Biennale di VeneziaThe title and theme for the 53rd La Biennale di Venezia is Fare Mondi : Making Worlds . Since its inception in 1895, the Biennale has always had an international focus presenting a forum where artists and curators can celebrate their shared and divergent voices and nations can promote their cultural strength. Much like the World Fairs that served as somewhat of an inspiration and model for the original Biennale, the Giardini became focused around 30 national pavilions.
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Making Worlds: Transnationalism, Nation States, and Representation at the 53rd La Biennale di Venezia
This trip to Syria isn’t just about the charming locals, I’m also interested in the former inhabitants of this lovely place : the Assyrians and the Romans – fascinating folk, both of them. Picking up some ancient goodies would also be nice, there’s nothing like an artefact or two in the drawing room to impress one’s friends…not that I have a drawing room as I live out of a rucksack, silly me! I’m starting with Damascus, and of course, I’ll be staying in the Old City, which is right in the middle of town. I know in a few weeks I’ll be staying in a bedouin tent and milking goats – probably smelling and looking like one…SO I’m pleased to be staying at the Beit Al Mamlouka – a very cool 17th century “palace” in Old Damascus which is now a boutique hotel. At $150 + for four-star digs and five-star character, it’s very reasonable
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SYRIA – Notes from Damascus
Jump to the full entry & travel map Las Vegas, Nevada, United States where it’s 39 degrees and you can sit on the loo and watch the telly built into your bathroom mirror! Ok, so the pilot didn’t actually say the last bit, but he could have. It’s 5am now, day 2, and the kids are all laying on their huge bed in the Flamingo hotel, looking at the view from our 19th storey window. As Cian put it, “Vegas is still on!”
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Day 1; Welcome to Vegas ……. – Las Vegas, Nevada, United States
Jump to the full entry & travel map Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam Up at 5.15 to get the bus to HCMC, managed it ok considering we had a few beers last night 
At the bus station you fill in immigration cards when you get on the bus you give your passport and card to the bus guide so he can check everything before we get to the border. The journey was ok, closed the curtain over, put the seat back and slept!Like the bus from Siem Reap to PP a little packed lunch was provided – not very good one but hey ho… Just before the border crossing the coach stopped, we got cash out of the ATM, bought fruit and water, had a little walk round and then got back on the bus to go ooo the 100 yards to the crossing
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day 14 tuesday 23rd december – Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Jump to the full entry & travel map Montevideo, Uruguay Woke up today in another country. Took another overnight bus – this time from Retiro in BA to Montevideo, Uruguay. The challenge at Retiro was something else that will be described here soon in more detail. The most eventful part of the bus ride was when we stopped all of a sudden and wondered why. It turns out that we were at the border, and the bus attendant collected all of our passports to take to the customs/immigration people (sounds kind of sketchy now that I write this, but at the time, I had just woken up from sleep and didn´t realize exactly what was going on). He returned a few minutes later with all our passports in hand, and new stamps in them…and then I fell back asleep. Uruguay is the smallest Spanish-speaking country in South America, sandwiched in between Argentina and Brazil. Like its larger neighbours, the country has a rich history in fútbol and was the first to win the World Cup. The capital, Montevideo, is like a much smaller version of Buenos Aires (with its own uniqueness), one that is quieter and more relaxed, on the other side of the Rio de la Plata… We´re staying in the Ciudad Vieja , or Old City, surrounded by ocean on three sides. It’s just under a half hour bus ride from the bus terminal. Most of the city’s sites are within walkable distance, the closest being the port, the Museo del Carnaval , and Mercado del Puerto , a market where you can get tons of meat grilled in front of you..
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Another day, another country – Montevideo, Uruguay
Jump to the full entry & travel map Houei Xai, Bokèo, Lao Peoples Dem Rep Today was by far the most emotional day of the expedition so far as the group tearfully bade farewell to ‘Archue’ the groups guide whilst we had been in the Akha hill tribe. The tension reached its zenith with Nick manly embracing the pentagenarian in a tearful man-hug. Our departure from the Akha hill tribe was delayed, however, when a choded English woman who was sharing our lift to the bus station refused to leave until she had had her breakfast
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Day 10: Crossing the river into The People’s – Houei Xai, Bokèo, Lao Peoples Dem Rep
Jump to the full entry & travel map Hanoi, Vietnam I made it!!! But first came the 10 hour flight to Korea and 4 hour flight to Vietnam – not so bad given the number of movies to chose from and the yummy meals – Asiana fed me three times! Felt like all I was doing was eating! Had a quick stop in Korea. Was certain that I landed on a runway – and not a plane runway – every woman was decked out in the highest fashion cruisin the airport stores. Men had WAY better hairstyles than I did…I did fancy the free laptop/Wi Fi oasis I discovered…almost didn’t want to leave the airport… Upon arrival in Vietnam, the anxiety level slowly decreased as I easily made my way to retrieve my Visa. A number of grumpy Immigration officers looked my documents over, and stuck my Visa in my passport. Phew! Still not sure if any of them had teeth, as no one smiled…Once! Once past customs, I paced anxiously for my luggage to cruise by on the conveyor belt. Thank goodness! What would I have done…. Finally, exited baggage claim and there was my driver! Oh thank you Creator! Had horrible thoughts of being abandoned and fighting of taxi touts! Was reviewing a few kickboxing moves in my mind! My driver was a young, skinny Vietnamese boy who appeared to enjoy laying on the horn – even at times when a car wasn’t in sight…I thought, oh this could be a fun game…decided to count how many times he honked the horn before arriving a the hotel…stopped at 88, figured that was a good number (my birth year, and all…wink, wink). Amazingly, he wasn’t flipped the bird once! Most drivers lazily moved out of his way, not even turning to glare in his direction. Clearly horns serve another purpose here..
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14 hours, 88 honks and 210,000 Dong later… – Hanoi, Vietnam
Jump to the full entry & travel map Gulf of Alaska, Alaska, United States So the flight is scheduled for eighteen hours and change total, fifteen from LAX to Taipei (TPE) and another three and a half from TPE to Bangkok (BKK) after a two-hour plane change and layover. Two hours is likely too short to be looking for the kind of “stinky tofu” that bested Andrew Zimmern in his Bizarre Foods episode on Taiwan, but we’ll see
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2. South Side of the Sky – Gulf of Alaska, Alaska, United States
Jump to the full entry & travel map San Blas Islands, San Blas, Panama Where to start? At the beginning I suppose! We set sail from Cartagena, Colombia on board the good ship Fritz The Cat, a 49ft catamaran captained by an Austrian mad man, in the early afternoon of Tuesday the 7th of July bound for the San Blas archipelago on the Caribbean coast of Panama. After a lovely lunch of Wahu or Mahu or something (some kind of fish or other – I’m getting better, it was certainly meaty but a lot whiter than the tuna that is usually my pescine limit) prepared by Fritz, a former chef and restaurant owner, we weighed anchor and set off on our two day crossing on the open seas. Conditions were lovely, with a sunny sky and calm seas bidding us farewell to the continent of South America
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Land ahoy! Its Central America! – San Blas Islands, San Blas, Panama
Jump to the full entry & travel map Tupiza, Bolivia Getting out of Salta was quite straight forward. The best bus we could get was a Semi-cama and, because it took 7 hours to reach the border town, La Quiaca, we took the midnight bus, we would have the full day to get where we needed to go, Tupiza, still have time to take a look around and try to book a tour of southwest Bolivia. We did just that but the sequence of events was more of an uphill struggle than we had imagined… The bus to La Quiaca arrived an hour early causing some commotion on the bus among tourists as to whether we were actually at the final destination or whether we did indeed have another hour before arriving.
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Thr route into Bolivia…… – Tupiza, Bolivia
Jump to the full entry & travel map Dayton, Ohio, United States In fashion to my other blogs of my international travels, here begins the extensive coverage of my Gap Adventure’s Egypt and Jordan Adventure in August 2009. The outline will be in chronological order and will include the Gap Adventure’s description of the day in bold for the days that cover my Gap tour. In the description from Gap, included meals are represented by (B), (L), and (D). I am departing on August 4th from Dayton, Ohio and will arrive in Cairo on August 6th, 2009 after a 12 hour layover in Athens, Greece on August 5th. The Gap Adventure’s tour begins the first day of sight seeing on August 7th and ends in Amman, Jordan on August 21st, with the departure day of the 22nd. I will be leaving at about 1am on the 22nd flying directly to New York City where I will have an 11 hour layover before returning to Dayton late in the evening on the 22nd. Day 1: August 4th, 2009: Dayton, Ohio Depart Dayton, Ohio at about 1pm with layover in Atlanta, Georgia and will arrive in Athens, Greece at about 10:30am on August 5th. Flying with Delta. Day 2: August 5th, 2009: Athens, Greece Planned sites are the Acropolis and ruins in the general area, and finding an authentic Greek restaurant to eat at before going back to the airport to catch an 11 pm to Cairo, landing at about 1am. Flying with Aegean Airlines Day 3: August 6th, 2009: Cairo, Egypt Waiting until morning in the airport to catch the public bus to the general area of the hotel. Dropping off the bags and hiring a taxi for the day to go to Saqqara and Memphis, while ending the night at the Pyramids and pre-tour meeting with Gap Adventures and meeting the tour mates.
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Itinerary: Egypt and Jordan Adventure ’09 – Dayton, Ohio, United States
Jump to the full entry & travel map Siem Reap, Cambodia So the internet here is so terrible that it makes it so that I can’t really see what I’m doing, so let me apologize in advance. Also, I’ve uploaded more pictures from Ko Chang, and plan to keep doing so, so go take a look from time to time. So today we took off from Thailand for our next adventure, Cambodia, and the adventure part started before we even cleared immigration! We shopped around quite a bit for the best price to take us from Ko Chang to Siem Reap. We were quoted prices from 1000 Baht down to 650 Baht, which is what we paid. This was supposed to include a pickup from our bungalow, the ferry ride, a minibus to the Thailand/Cambodia border, and a bus from the other side of the border to Siem Reap. We read online that some people get really scammed, and don’t ever get the bus on the other side, and we also read that getting your visa on arrival in Cambodia can be quite tricky. Needless to say, we were both a little apprehensive
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Back in Texas….I Mean Cambodia – Siem Reap, Cambodia
Jump to the full entry & travel map Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam Making it out of Cambodia was MUCH easier than making it in! We left our guest house in Siem Reap around 6:25 yesterday morning by touk touk which took us to the ticketing office for the bus to issue us a real bus. They told us that the straight through bus hadn’t made it back from Vietnam, so we would be required to travel through the capital of Pnomh Penh, and change busses for the Ho Chi Minh bus. This was mildly annoying, but we had been warned by numerous travel sites that we check when going to new places. We then took a shuttle bus to the bus station where we boarded our bus bound for the capital. This was quite an experience. First of all the bus was pretty full, much more than we are used to, although we were relatively comfortable. The first interesting thing was that people kept loading their motorbikes into the luggage area (it was a double decker bus with all the seats on the top). The next interesting thing was that people were bringing roosters on the bus, 3 in all. During our ride, which was pretty uneventful, it was tough to sleep with the Cambodian children screaming and running around, with the occasional cry of the roosters which seemed to come in spurts. And all this was on the “VIP” bus that was several dollars more than the other option (although we only paid $20 each for the trip). After a while the bus stopped off for people to run and get snacks, although ewe opted to stay on the bus since we didn’t know what we were doing. Then the bus stopped for lunch. The options were fried grasshoppers or some rather sketchy looking Cambodian soup with “chicken” and noodles in it. We opted for the soup, although I’m not sure if that was the best choice, haha. In the end we haven’t gotten sick from it, so I guess it was ok, though the 6,000 riels seemed pretty expensive for it.
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Much Easier this Go Around – Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Jump to the full entry & travel map Hanoi, Vietnam I can’t say that Cory and I did too much to celebrate American Independence, but we had a decent enough last day in Hanoi. We slept until around check out time in our really beautiful hotel (which had still only been $10) and packed our things up to return to the first guest house we stayed in during our time in Hanoi. When we finally checked out and made it back across the street, we were told that there were no air conditioned rooms left, and we were offered the same fan-only room from the day before. We declined that, and asked about the hotel we had just come from, but were told that it was booked solid already. So we decided to leave our packs at the guesthouse and go searching around. We must have gone into around 10 hotels and guest houses looking for an acceptable place, the prices ranged from $9 up to around $55. In the end we opted for a place very close to where we stayed the previous nights in Hanoi for $12, which was a private room with two beds, hot shower, AC, and free internet downstairs. After check-in we decided to go find the mini-bus pick-up point for our trek to the airport the next day, and have lunch at a Vietnamese fast food restaurant called BBQ, which is known for the chicken dishes. It was recommended to us the night before by an American we met who is working for the government in Korea. Our guest house generously provided us with a city map (like a real map, not a photocopied sheet of paper) and showed us the location on the map of the mini-bus and the BBQ. We made it to the mini-bus location in short order (about a 10 minute walk from our guest house) and looked at the times. It looked like 6:30am was going to be the best option for us (turns out it wasn’t, and we had to catch the 4:30 bus). We also found out that the ticket cost was only 25,000 VND (Cheaper than the $2 USD we paid on the way in from the airport). After checking out the mini-bus situation (which is across from a large Vietnam Airlines office, for reference of anyone looking for it), we headed down the street to BBQ.
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A Lazy Independence Day in North Vietnam – Hanoi, Vietnam
According to an AP article by Nicole Winfield and Alessasndra Rizzo , both the UN Chief and UN Secretary-General strongly criticized the Group of Eight for not doing enough to curb the practices that result in harmful climate changes. They report the UN Chief “rebuked” the group “for failing to make more commitments to reducing climate change in the near term, saying they must do so if the heavily polluting developing world is to follow suit.” UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also weighed in on the subject saying “industrialized nations must come forward with financing for poorer countries to change their carbon-heavy growth patterns and adapt to the effects of global warming.” The discussion about climate change is part of a meetingof a ” 17-nation group called the Major Economies Forum , which has become the G-8’s main forum for climate issues.” Want to know more? Read what BlogCatalog Bloggers are saying about the G8 Summit: Key Climate Meeting Looms at G8 : http://www.nigerianbestforum.com/blog/?p=17889 G8 Message 2009: “People First” – G8 Asks for Online Public Comment : http://vitalvoicesonline.org/blog/2009/07/08/g8-summit-message-2009-people-first-g8-asks-for-online-public-comment/ Climate impasse at G8 leaves nations mired : http://www.president-obama.org/climate-impasse-at-g-8-summit-leaves-nations-mired G8 sets Iran Deadline for Nuclear Talks : http://updatedfrequently.com/g8-sets-iran-deadline-for-nuclear-talks
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Strong Words About Climate Change at G8
Every morning, I check my Twitter , Google Reader and Facebook for my social media breakfast. They’re the best ways to get the most relevant news based on who I subscribe to and because of this, I trust shared links even when they don’t correspond with my immediate interests. One of my favorite wielders of social media is NPR —especially effective on FB—and they had posted a new story on applying for jobs in our digital age
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Social media, get over yourself
To all travelers to Cambodia, do your part to punish the evils! e-Visa project was first launched in year 2006 . The original Team is a w eb design company in Malaysia , who also donated funds to build schools in Cambodia . The team worked hard day and night to improve, to fund, to market and to support the system till it became a valid and trustworthy site and received overwhelming feedback from customers , friends and even other web developers .
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The Evils of New e-Visa Provider
Food for thought from my literary crush: I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it
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An addict’s words of wisdom
Cambodia hopes to become a leader in the development of bio-fuel in the face of increasing global oil prices, say government officials. The development of bio-diesel produced from Jatropha curcas, a plant native to Cambodia, has drawn attention from investors, said Sat Samy, deputy secretary of state for the Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy during a workshop on Cambodian bio-diesel held recently in Phnom Penh. Bio-energy industries are present in a number of countries, said Secretary of State for Ministry of Industry, Mines and Energy Ith Praing, adding that European Community (EC) countries will increase their use of bio-fuels from 15 percent to 20 percent of the total by 2020 with the intention of reducing green gas emissions
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Cambodia hopes to develop bio-fuel sector