Author: Milan

In the spring of 2005, I graduated from the University of British Columbia with a degree in International Relations and a general focus in the area of environmental politics. In the fall of 2005, I began reading for an M.Phil in IR at Wadham College, Oxford. Outside school, I am very interested in photography, writing, and the outdoors. I am writing this blog to keep in touch with friends and family around the world, provide a more personal view of graduate student life in Oxford, and pass on some lessons I've learned here.

Back in Oggs-Ford

Minko: the cat portrayed above, is a member of the Ellan family. For many years, he has also been dubbed ‘My General’ for reasons long forgotten. Of all the non-human creatures I am hoping to see in Vancouver, Minko tops the list.

I finished Joyce’s Dubliners while waiting for my plane today. It was enormously more comprehensible than other pieces of his I have read, but not particularly engaging. While it was interesting to see so many street and place names from my recent experience, these short stories weren’t quite to my taste. All told, I am enjoying my Wilde anthology more.

Returning home, I found more than forty emails in need of responses, a collection of letters from the student loan people, my official (free) Ubuntu Linux CDs, replacement scans for the Scotland photos, and other things besides. As always, returning from even a short break means rapidly lengthening to-do lists. For a trip as excellent as this one, it is naturally well worth it.

Last Dublin meal

Having just returned to a rainy Wadham College, after a journey as effortless as the outgoing one was tedious, I feel I should relate the last things that happened to me in Dublin. I decided to spend my last few minutes before the airport trek having an early lunch at Gruel: an informal restaurant at 68a Dame Street, near Dublin Castle and the Guinness Storehouse. It is also my favourite spot to eat in Dublin, having gone their four times in the last week for their atmosphere and reasonably priced and excellent vegetarian food. Those who visit should have a look at the seating downstairs, as it is non-obvious and quite comfortable.

In this case, I had their fresh orange juice and a large combination of their four delectable salads of the day – topped with a kind of sweet pesto dressing that complimented it nicely. As I was leaving, the manager said that the meal was on him, “for a friend of the house.” Call me a friend of Dublin, also.

Final, literary, Dublin day

I tried to make my last day in Dublin as literary as possible – the bits not spent traveling back from Galway, at least. I finally found a decently priced copy of Joyce’s Dubliners and an assembly of Wilde’s more political works. This happened within a few minutes of my return to Dublin, a city that seems enormously grimier after having spent a day in Galway and another on Inis Mór.

Books in hand, I wandered to Merrion Square. Beside the grotesque statue of Oscar Wilde in one corner, I read his Ballad of Reading Gaol. As an appreciator of Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner, I saw the many thematic and poetic semblances. That said, I think Coleridge’s theological position – based on the virtue of appreciating all living creatures – is rather more promising that Wilde’s despairing hope that God will set it all right in the end. God as a balancer of worldly injustices is very appealing, since it saves us from the need to ever fight for our beliefs, insofar as that means forcing them on others. When we no longer have that conceptual crutch, difference becomes much harder to deal with. In any case, I had to use my hostel earplugs to reduce the strain from a massive throng of talkative Spanish tourists on my ability to appreciate this most sonic poem acoustically.

I had dinner at a place called Cornocopia, on Wicklow Street, recommended as an all-vegetarian restaurant. I had a kind of sweet potato curry dish and their red pepper soup, both dishes I was likely to appreciate, but found both uninspiring. The service was curt, bordering on sharp, and the general atmosphere was one of hasty expulsion for the milking of new customers. Vegetarians in Dublin should steer clear; try Gruel, on Dame Street, instead.

After dinner, I read half of Dubliners on the grounds of Trinity before attending quite an excellent performance of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot at the Player’s Theatre, within that campus. It was an emphatic, emotive, and effective production. P.J. Dunlevy was especially effective as the bald-headed and over-emphatic Pozzo. At several points, he struck the exact expression of the despairing mayor from The Nightmare Before Christmas. I had never seen the play before, but the interplay between Vladimir and Estragon reminded me both of the drama of Steinbeck and Tom Stoppard.

All told, it was a worthwhile day of additions to my Dublin set of memories. I might be able to squeeze one quick final visit in before my bus to the airport tomorrow, but that depends somewhat on my ability to fight of the demons of sleeplessness for another morning.

I should be back in Oxford late tomorrow.

Final Galway adventure

As I am in the mad world beyond the strange world beyond tired, I can only summarize. I left the hostel in search of traditional Irish music. This, I found in a place called The Spanish Arch. I was drawn in by an attractive combination of voices and instruments and remained there for the entire set. The band was called CuChulainn and, on the basis of both their songs and my conversation with them afterwards, I endorse them wholeheartedly.

Walking along after that, I saw a young man playing a guitar and a young woman with red curly hair singing along: buskers on one of the commercial streets. I engaged the young woman in conversation to the point where she eventually disengaged from the young man and led me to a multi-level pub with a beer garden, somewhere across the river that divides Galway. After hours of conversation there, I was further led to a bohemian residence reminiscent of the dirty house, where there was discussion of travel, ecology, the India period of The Beatles, and much else.

Recognizing that I need to be awake to catch a bus in less than five hours, I politely begged my leave of Roisin (the young woman who I met with the busker), and promised that I would pass along certain songs and poems mentioned during the night’s discourse.

An excellent concluding night in Galway, regardless of how many new holes have burst open in my much abused brain. I will try to describe it better when time and brain cells are more ample.

Inis Mór

Those visiting Inis Mór, the largest of the Aran Islands, take heed: with alacrity, you can improve your visit considerably. As soon as the ferry docks after the forty-five minute crossing, make a bit of a dash for the shop off to the right from the end of the pier, with ‘bicycle rentals’ written in huge letters on the side. For the reasonable price of ten Euros, you get a bike for the whole day (there is also a ten Euro deposit). If you go quickly, you will get one of the nice bikes I saw when I was returning mine in the evening. If you dawdle, you will get a bike several sizes too small and a bit creaky around the edges. I was reminded of the massive water-fights that used to take place in my neighbourhood when I was a kid. Borrowing a bike or a super-soaker of some variety was common, though a good fit in the latter case may not have been.

Over the course of today, I saw both ends of this 11km island (also called Inishmore), and much in between. The bus ride was spent aslumber, trying to make up for the stretched sleep schedule of the past few days. The ferry ride was scenic but unstable. I spent my first half-hour or so on the island profoundly seasick – a condition that is always much aggravated for me when I am tired.

Setting off in a random direction on my diminutive steed, I found myself winding up to the highest point on the island. At the top, there is a tower which you can pay to visit. For free, you can explore the circular fort Dun Eochla. Carrying on in the same direction, you will find a nice sandy beach, then another climb to the fort Dun Aonghasa, which is really quite amazing.

Located at the edge of a 90m cliff atop the crashing waves, this ancient fortress certainly seems as though it would have been easy to defend. I admire whoever has ensured that no fence or railing obscures the view off that great ledge. It is odd, I suppose, how cautiously people treated it. We walk along lethal edges all the time – 10m or so will do it – but when people are presented with something visually stunning, they become much more deferential. In several cases, I saw people lie on their stomachs with their heads about 3m back from the edge, then flop forward until they could see downwards to the rocks and breaking waves.

From Dun Aonghasa, I doubled back to the ferry terminal and then off to explore the other part of the island. Because the way the island consists of a series of hills, riding across it is an alternation between climbing gentle slopes and then coasting down the other side; it makes for a nice mixture of exertion and aesthetic appreciation. 99% of the tourist traffic of cycles and mini-buses goes in the other direction. As such, the northern part of the island is good for getting your fill of fields full of cows and sheep, horses and rabbits, and all other manner of grass-munching beast.

Before leaving, I picked up a very warm and sturdy pair of woolen hiking socks, made from the fibrous coats of the aforementioned sheep. I strongly considered buying one of the excellent looking sweaters, but decided that I wear insulating upper clothing so rarely that it would not be worth the (quite reasonable) price.

I am being hastened off the internet by six pairs of piercing eyes (those of fellow hostel members). Putting up the photos from today will be particularly gratifying, I think. Early tomorrow, I make my return to Dublin.

PS. If someone could find a few photos of those forts and link them as a comment, that would be wonderful. I would do it, but have not the time.

Cabin Fever 2 correction

Due to a scheduling error, it was previously announced that the retreat would be taking place from September 10th to 12th. In fact, it was meant to take place during the weekend before that: from Friday, September 8th to Sunday, September 10th. Please revise your schedules.

I really hope the change doesn’t cause problems for anyone. For those who are working, going on the weekend is clearly preferable. For those, like me, who are not, it doesn’t matter enormously much. That said, it is not quite ideal that I will be vanishing for three days within 48 hours of returning to Vancouver.

PS. Tristan has a post about this, also.

Galway

I must be brief in summarizing today, since this is a free hostel internet facility and many people are waiting. After an early start, I spent three and a half hours on the bus from Dublin to Galway. The woman beside me had two children on her lap (every seat in the bus was full). Actually, the smaller of the two children was predominantly on my lap for most of the journey.

The Galway Sleepzone is an unusually nice, if unfortunately named, hostel. The dorms have en-suite bathrooms, there seem to be decent kitchens, and there is both a good overall feel and the provision of free internet access.

I spent the later part of today wandering in Galway a bit. The port was worth a glance, especially since it led me to the attractive and free city museum. There, you can find a collection of fairly good local art housed in a very modern structure: all glass, polished wood, matte white walls, and atrium lighting.

From there, I wandered up along the river that flows through the town towards where the museum is (I know not the name right now, and my guidebook doesn’t cover Galway). Beside a particularly nice stretch of bank, I finished the Booker Prize winning novel The Sea. I enjoyed it less than Sweetness in the Belly, as well as the last Booker Prize winner I read. I suppose it is always difficult to have a narrator who is fundamentally unsympathetic. I shall, in any case, write more about it upon my return to normality.

Tomorrow, I am going to the largest Aran Island by the earliest ferry, and returning by the latest one. My intention to visit one of the smaller islands was scuppered by the fact that the latest returning boat from them is at 4:00pm. As it happens, I will be spending more than eight hours on that much-praised bit of rock.

Even in the age of the CCD, there’s a tender place in my heart for film

From a nice hostel in Galway, let me write for a moment about film before I head off to find some dinner. People in Canadian cities that include a Lens & Shutter location (just Vancouver and Victoria, I think) should feel rather lucky, as they stock my two favourite films at excellent prices. While Kodak High Definition 400 is simply unavailable in the British Isles, their black and white T-Max 100 and 400 films are only available here for about ten Euros a roll, plus the unusually high cost of processing an ‘unusual’ emulsion.

If you’ve never given much thought to the kind of film you use or where you get it processed, you might find it worthwhile to spend less than $10 on a roll of one of the films mentioned above. For that price, at Lens & Shutter, you also get processing and either a CD of scanned images or a set of 4×6″ prints. All my photos from Europe in 2004 were shot on one or the other kind of film, and I am clearly fond enough of them that I have been hunting for somewhere that stocks them since I arrived here. I had my mother bring a batch of each for the Malta trip (though many of those photos were taken on my point and shoot digital camera).

Perhaps next year I should join some kind of photo club in Oxford and start doing my own developing and printing. The danger, of course, is darkroom hypnosis; once, when I was in tenth grade, I found myself leaving the Handsworth darkroom after 2:00am, not realizing at all how much time had passed since I wandered in after a quick dinner of Coke and Gobstoppers.

I suspect I will do better than that in Galway tonight.

Manuscripts, horses, and Evensong

Another great day has passed, in and around Dublin. After Brunch at Gruel (see the earlier entry where I describe it), I went to Dublin Castle and the Chester Beatty Library. You rarely see such an excellent free museum: packed with venerable and beautiful manuscripts, and boasting an attractive roof garden. It provided welcome solace from the driving rain.

The weather was so bad when I finally left that I decided to scrap my plan to go to Howth. Instead, I went into the nearby Christ Church Cathedral for an Evensong ceremony. This, I will admit, was quite uncharacteristic of me. Aside from one wedding and one first communion, this was the only time I ever attended a church during a religious function. Even though the hymns were entirely unfamiliar to me, it was a worthwhile and rather beautiful experience. Knowing how Claire is now part of an Oxford choir, I thought of her during much of it. Despite the size of the cathedral, the number of people in attendance was less than the number of people in the choir. Perhaps that related to how most of the church was closed for a television taping.

As I left the Cathedral, there were rays of sunshine hitting Dublin pavements. Despite it being after 6:00, I decided to take the half-hour train to Howth. It would prove a very wise move. The ride itself, in the evening light, offered an attractive transition from urban centre to countryside. Once I arrived, I walked a photogenic arc out one of the stone and concrete arms enclosing the harbour, pausing beside a small lighthouse to watch the birds floating like kites as they pushed against the incoming wind.

The hills overlooking the town seemed a good place to visit, to I took to trekking up road by road as far as I could make it. A man who I asked for directions when I reached the top of one such proved much more helpful than could possibly have been expected. Named Jim Kilroy, he is a retired architect, and he owns some of the land in the area I was exploring. He told me a bit about the history of the place, showed me his three beautiful horses, and directed me to a cliffside trail that follows the circumference of Howth (which is a kind of bulb-shaped peninsula). Further evidence of how open and friendly the people of Ireland are.

By the time I reached the much larger lighthouse a few kilometres around winding cliffs, it had become full dark. Another stranger who I asked for directions proved exceptionally helpful. She said that she was heading in the direction of the train station that was eluding me and offered me a lift. I am glad I accepted, because it was a much longer and more complex journey than my crude understanding of the layout of the place suggested. She is a veterinarian, specializing in horses, and apparently knows Mr. Kilroy. I expect that’s normal, in such a small community.

Now back in Dublin, I am to meet Mark Cummins from the Walking Club at some later point. I should be mindful, of course, of the early morning bus ride tomorrow and the low probability of a good night’s sleep tonight. That said, three hours on the bus will offer a bit of time for recovery.

I think I can say with confidence that Ireland is the friendliest place I have ever been. While it isn’t fair to compare with places where I don’t speak the language, the sheer number of strangers who have engaged with me and treated me with kindness here is staggering. Nowhere in North American or English-speaking Europe has been comparable. I even got into a conversation with a young woman from Dublin who happened to sit beside me on the train back from Howth. This is a country that I need to visit again and, next time I meet an Irish person somewhere else in the world, I will do my best to help them however I can.

From Russia with love

Thanks to my newest set of dorm-mates, I am now wandering the foggy paths on the far side of exhaustion. I came home late last night to find the entry to the dorm physically barred with some massive object on the other side of the door. After pushing and knocking, I heard people shuffling around. I left for a few minutes and then opened the door to find my departed medley of backpackers replaced by seven huge tanned men, each wearing only a small slip of leather.

For the entire night, this cabal of Russians talked, and yelled, and laughed, and snored in anti-harmony: sounding like a collection of gas-fired saws all grinding around on rusty bearings. Thanks to their decision to wake up at six and spend the next four hours talking loudly in the room, I honestly got no sleep before having to vacate the hostel. And tonight is Saturday… The chances of my having enough presence of mind to manage the trek to the Aran Islands are not perfect.

PS. Unable to find a hostel in the Aran Islands that can take me for less than forty Euros a night, I’ve decided to book a place at the Sleepzone in Galway. I don’t particularly want to spend a lot of my time here calling and emailing various hostels, anyhow. From there, I will hopefully be able to do a daytrip to the Aran Islands on Monday. I will learn from the ticket office there how feasible that will prove.