Steamy feet

When she isn't sending me blogging grist from afar, my ladyfriend often comes and falls in step with my life for a week or two at a time in the land of Ire. After gleaning immense enjoyment from our two weeks of being tethered together, the operating conditions of our long-distance relationship has sharply snapped back to 'famine' from 'feast', so I'm starting to think about this poor, neglected blog of mine for the first time in 2010.

Since my ever-patient girlfriend makes a point of making me do stuff I wouldn't normally do, the past two weeks have been eventful, but haven't quite left me feeling as though I've two weeks' worth of blogging to catch up on. But to quickly summarise:

We went ice skating! [Pictured: my post skating foot]

We went to see The Lion King on the West End!

We stood in front of buildings in a fashion befitting that of a lowly tourist!

Most importantly, we survived The Big Freeze™ with only minor disruptions to our hygiene practices!

Now that my girlfriend has gone back from whence she came, I can relapse back into the cantankerous bloggering bastard who tries not to subject his four readers to too many holiday slideshows. Here's to a miserable 2010!

New York With a Vengeance.

Since my rushed trip planning had left me with an obscenely (and unnecessarily) long layover in Newark airport, I decided I'd have to venture into New York, New York to somehow glean some enjoyment out of the sucky part of a trip to see the other participant in a long-distance relationship.

A few days before the end of the trip, as the ladyfriend was piloting her car through some heavy snowfall on the way home from Chicago, I decided to let her in on my ulterior motive for venturing into Manhattan.

"The first time I went to New York, I made an album on Bebo, and I called it: 'New York'".

"Makes sense."

"So when I went the second time, I made a second album on Bebo, and I called it: 'New York 2: New Yorker'"

"Oh-kayyy..."

She seemed more concerned with the slippery road than my clever Internet antics, so I decided to step up my pitch.

"So do you want to guess what the next album is going to be called?"

"Nope. No idea."

"It's going to be called..."- I paused for effect -"...New York With a Vengeance!"

"Why?"

"Because it's clever!"

"No - it's pretty stupid actually."

That was the day I learnt that making allusions to the Die Hard Quadrilogy in front of my girlfriend would only serve to amuse myself (not that it'll impact on the amount I do so).

Back to the story - after a painless train journey, I arrived at Penn Station in New York - the starting point of a previous (wider-eyed) trek around the big apple.

I decided to restrict my wandering around in the rain to 180 minutes, which would leave me 3 hours to return to the airport and get my flight (overcautious, I know), and since I wasn't feeling particularly ambitious about making it up to 112th Street for my Seinfeld pilgrimage, I figured I'd plod around the tourist hotspots and take some crappy pictures on my mobile phone to show that I'd been there.

On the way towards Times Square, I stopped to look in the odd electronics shop window at their dodgy wares:

It's the small differences - center, color, shuffel

Since it was still pissing rain by the time I got to Time Square, I decided to stop into Toys 'R' Us for a gawk.

Cool! There's Superman holding up a truck!

A dinosaur! Neat! Now what?

After a photoless trip over to Rockefeller Center in a half-assed attempt at finding the Nintendo Store, I wandered back towards Times Square, hoping to find a public restroom along the way.

On the walk over, I managed to pass a young, moderately attractive woman dressed as a toilet dancing outside a building without investigating further, so I decided that now was the time to launch a full inquiry.

Charmin, the purveyors of quality toilet paper and animated arse-wiping bears had a building taken over and filled with toilets for the purposes of staging day-long poopenannies. After negotiating your way past the dancing toilet into the main door, you're greeted by the door-lady who is dancing along to the Charmin theme-tune, then ushered onto the escalator ride, in which you're subjected to posters displaying playful puns on defecation, whilst trying not to dance along to the infectious piped in music yourself.

Once at the top of the escalator, we were funnelled along the (empty) queueing lane, passing the excitable staff who were asking things like "Who's excited to go poop today?".

Eventually I got to my own stall, which was quite the well-stocked lavatory - it had four types of Charmin toilet paper, quality paper towels, and an iPod that was blasting out the Offspring's Smash when I entered.

I flicked through most of the iPod's offerings of contemporary rock and pop songs - trying not to think about the amount of e coli that surely lay on the buttons - then I settling on Billie Jean as the song to relax my sphincter to.

"Right" - I psyched myself up - "let's get down to business." I removed my jacket and turned to the door, expecting to find a coak-hook (a much-appreciated staple of US restrooms), but found none - how could the Charmin Restroom engineers, when designing toilets to grant the greatest end-user experience, decide to include an iPod but not a coat-hook? I was going to give them quite the critique when they asked me about how I found the process..

What's wrong with this picture?

Once I had left the confines of the cubicle, I was invited to rate my level of satisfaction. Now was my chance! Give them hell, O'Sullivan! I was shown a touchscreen computer, and instructed to touch one of the cartoon bears on the screen. After realizing that none of the bears depicted were puzzling over where the coat-hook was, I sheepishly hit the cartwheeling bear and shuffled along. The game was rigged.

Dotted around the path leading to the exit were iMacs encouraging users to log onto Facebook & Twitter and discuss their experiences. Internet and toilet access without having to part with cash? I normally have to lie to get either most places I go. These Charmin guys are a progressive people.

Before leaving the building, I was quite troubled by the last room - essentially a studio with a glass door, labelled "Canfessional - Share how you enjoy the go". I can only imagine it's used as a perverse human aquarium for the enjoyment of sick voyeurs with fecal-fetishes, but it was sadly unused on the day I visited:

After leaving the Charmin restrooms on Times Square, I dawdled little before getting back for my train. All in all, it was a worthwhile sojourn into the city, but it was another saddening example of me venturing into a foreign city chock-full of culture and arts - only to spend my limited time checking out the local crappers.

Aid the ailing Irish Tourism industry...

...one yank at a time!

Things like this cause me to reflect on how great the internet is. Just a few moments ago, I received the following message on Facebook:

Hello,

My name is Francesca. I was trying to find something helpful on facebook about Ireland because I will be going there this August with my boyfriend, and I happened to stumble across your profile and saw you were from Limerick and also happen to live in Pittsburgh!

I know this is completely random, but neither of us have gone to Ireland before and I can definitely use all the insight I can get.

We're flying into Shannon and that's all I have for plans right now, haha. But if you have a moment to shoot a random stranger a message on fun places to go, stay, or drink, that would be amazing.

Thanks for your time and I hope to hear from you.


-Francesca

I hate it when foreigners ask me questions like this, purely because it exposes my ignorance - I didn't start taking any interest in any of our fine tourist traps sites until my (foreign) girlfriend got a fit of impetuousness at the prospect of watching DVDs for a solid fortnight and decreed that we had to take pictures of ourselves in front of some lush scenery.

Mission accomplished!

Sorry about that, but now that I've got your attention again, perhaps you can chip in? Do you know of any spots that ought to be recommended? It must be the boredom speaking, but I want to be genuinely helpful to this woman, rather than sending off a reply consisting only of hyperlink.

Obligatory Sight-seeing Blogging

UPDATE 01/12/07 : Just realised that 'Chicago' is not mentioned once over the course of this blog entry! Sorry about that!

Right - now that I'm done with the vent-fest that was Belgium Week, it's time to resume your scheduled programming!

The purpose of the trip was to meet up with my buddy Mike, who was visiting his girlfriend Holly, but it afforded me a chance to meet plenty of interesting characters, sample the different culture, and do the obligatory sightseeing nonsense that these study-abroad experiences are expected to be riddled with!

I arrived on Thursday evening, and went out to a Disco Bar type setting, which was a fairly typical night - had no problems getting in with my poorly faked ID, and I spent the evening conversing with random friends of Holly. Amazingly, for the first time since I got here, I met two Irish lads, one of whom was studying abroad in the States for a year, much like myself. The similarities didn't end there though, his tongue was loosened from a fairly successful night of drinking, and we found out we had a lot in common, most of which was the eerily similar tales of our respective American girlfriends... As if there's only one formula that all these yanks use in order to secure themselves some hot-piece-of-poor-'th'-sound-pronouncing-man-ass! My similarities with my new friend ended when later on in the night I witnessed him urinating behind a mailbox while his friend screamed drunken obscenities at some large looking men... Those fightin' Irish!

On the freezing cold walk back, I learned that Dunkin' Donuts was still open, so of course we had to stop in on the way - and in the process stumbled upon a freestyle rap battle! Basically there were two black kids against four or so white boys, and the white guys got schooled. My initial speculation that the black guys had a list of insulting rhymes pre-learnt so they could rattle off was disproved after they took what the white kids said and turned it against them. I was a little disappointed that the black kid kept everything at 'ghetto' mentality - talking about selling crack and smoking dope, when he seemed to be not be doing so poorly, judging from his 'fly' clothing. After knocking the uppity white kids speechless, they embraced as a show that the entire affair was in good humour, which was a relief that nobody was in fact, going to get capped in their pasty white ass. Sadly, I had no camera on me to document this fascinating ritual, but it's definitely something that you have to see for yourself.

Friday was the main day of sightseeing - Mike and I walked the 'Miracle Mile' - which is basically a lot of nice shops, as we made our way towards the Sears Tower, stopping into the Library along the way to avail of the bathroom facilities (not that you needed to know that, but it's technically another thing I saw). The closer we got to the Sears Tower, the more 'Caution - Falling Ice' signs we saw. When we were within a four block radius of the tower, we began to see this ice we were cautioned about, as the brick-sized lumps hurtled towards the ground at a startling pace. Amazingly, despite a couple of near misses, I didn't see anybody get hit.



The observation deck on the 103rd floor was closed for annual renovations, so we went to the 99th floor... (just doesn't seem as impressive, does it?) Here we were mesmerised by the falling ice as we waited for Holly, her brother and his friend to meet up with us. Despite the mist, the view was still pretty impressive, and from sitting around for a half hour or so, it at least felt like better value for money than my time atop the Empire State building! (and watching ice fall to earth and speculating how many people it killed made for a fun game)

That blur to the top, just left of centre is a chunk of ice hurtling towards someone's skull

Here's Scott and Kevin demonstrating how tall this tower is. Cheers lads.

This post is getting long, so I think I'll finish the rest later, but here's some more pics and info!

Mike and I went to a mall where they were recording a Christmas Movie with Vince Vaughn!

The End of the Road(Trip)

Maggie, her brother Jordan and I arrived in Ocala, Florida last night shortly after 6pm. Jordan drives a pickup-truck with a very small cab, and the six hours or so was a tight squeeze. Seems Jordan is a knowledgable chap, and he seemed to know plenty about pretty much every major geographical feature we passed... Still didn't take my focus away from the buttaching, but it helped! We did stop about four and a half hours into the drive, and that inital moment of my feet hitting solid ground was sheer ecstacy; the pleasure shot up through my body, starting with my feet, and ended with the involuntary smile on my face... I looked like quite the pillock.

Today was fun; we went to Silver Springs, and rode around in glass bottomed boats, looking at 'gators, and other 'critters', while I took a load of nature-footage on my camcorder (which you won't be seeing for at least another three weeks, since I decided to leave the gadgetry to put the footage on my laptop behind... probably a blessing)!


This photo was taken on our way out, so it's darker than all the others, but it's nicer than the photo I didn't take going in, so feel free to settle for this one.



The Alligators at the park were pretty cool and pretty dull at the same time; they'd lay perfectly still, hoping not to be noticed (let's ignore the fact that they're in a friggin' enclosure), and watch you with their eyes while not moving a muscle. I was offered the chance to go "'Gator huntin'" with Jordan, but that didn't work out, which didn't upset me too much, as I'm not sure how I'd have fared with the 'boom stick' part of the operation, where after tiring out your prey for a few hours, you finally drive what is essentially a stick with a shotgun shell on the end that explodes on impact into the reptile's skull. I'm pretty sure I'd have set my moral compass aside and done whatever was expected of me, just for the purpose of exploring this bizarre sub-culture.


This picture shows Maggie pouring me a half-glass of Egg-Nog; that strange substance I hear so much about from American TV shows, but know little about... Being the curious type, I thought I'd give it a whack.



This picture right here says a lot of things. It really captured the moment. For some reason, as soon as the ridiculously viscous, sickly sweet 'nog entered my mouth, I instinctively began chewing, so discombobulated were my senses. I'm pretty sure that the look shown here on my face is the exact moment I was thinking "On my next bowel movement, I'm going to crap out a cake!"

It was one of those things I had to try, I suppose - the rather paltry 100ml or so that I drank is still repeating on me, but I also put away an ungodly amount of Ribs earlier on (I like the southern cooking). I should also point out that I also got to eat quail while at Maggie's aunt's house. Unsurprisingly, it tasted just like chicken, maybe a little more chewy. My vigorous gnashing at this white meat prompted a warning from Maggie's stepdad; "you should be biting down very gingerly on that; you don't want to break your teeth on one of the pellets we shot it with!" I wouldn't even dare describe it as an acquired taste; it tasted like cheap, chewy, crap chicken, but of course, that's not the point - it was a great taste of culture!

Speaking of which; I'm going to end this post with another look at the culture here down south; in case you hadn't noticed, Maggie's family seem to have quite the interest in hunting, or as they call it; huntin'. Well, I'm sure this deer feels honoured that his sacrifice served the following noble purpose this Christmas.


"Ho ho ho" indeed.

Where the heart is?

Seems October is shaping up to be my slowest month, blog wise, with a load of random warblings that don't necessarily relate to what it is I'm up to here in the U.S, and I do apologise for that, and I reassure anyone who's interested that I do still intend on writing about the Steelers game I checked out (which was an awesome experience) and all the various other stuff that's been going on that I haven't had time to write about. The problem is because my time 'management' consists of overloading my social calendar, desperately trying to squeeze in some academic stuff, and if there's time after that, throwing a blog entry up for the world to enjoy...

So anyway, I spent this past weekend in Niagara Falls, (Canadian side), and as much fun as I was having, and as cool as the whole thing was, I was really looking forward to going home. Which lead me to wonder; what is 'home' for me?

I've spent a lot of time away from my house in Ireland at this stage, with the co-op debacle in Belgium (that I haven't discussed here, but I may well one of these days to blow off steam), and the few weeks I've been here in Pennsylvania without really communicating much with my family, save for the odd phonecall.

While I was looking at the falls, I was thinking "That's kinda cool". But there was no overwhelming sense of awe, or amazement, or that I was doing anything incredible by being there. Hell, it was smaller than what I was expecting. I really only went there because I felt obliged to. What person can go on an exchange and not poke around the tourist attractions? If the arrangements hadn't been made for me, I probably wouldn't have gone. Same goes for most of the stuff I did in Belgium - I just went places for the sake of it, and after a day or two I was looking forward to going home.

So what is home?

To be honest, I still haven't quite figured that out. It's not Ireland - I know this because I can happily exist elsewhere. It's not my family or friends (both of which I do miss a pile, by the by),and I don't think it's the place where I grew up, or keep my clothes, or get my laundry done for me because I'm a lazy git.

If I would have to explain the strange 'homing instinct', I would say it tells me to return to my base of operations; where I have to be at any given time to achieve my latest objectives.

To sum it up? Home is where the computer is.