My European Adventure*, Day 15

Sep05
by berry on September 5, 2014 at 10:23 pm
Posted In: Uncategorized

*Museums are closed on Mondays! Or are they? Duh Duh Duhhhh

TL;DR: Last minute sightseeing! Closed museums! Open museums! Flights! Delayed flights! And Zagreb!

Running out of time in Dublin! Ahhh! I really hope they win the 2019 WorldCon bid so I have an excuse to come back (not that I really need an excuse, it just makes planning easier ;)) and see the rest of the country. My plan, before meeting up with Mihaela and Bernard and heading to the airport was to view the Book of Kells and visit the Science Gallery at Trinity College. When I got to the Trinity Old Library (where the book rests), there was a line up of about 100 people 15 minutes before it opened. Ack!! I decided I’d go to the Science Gallery instead. It doesn’t open on Mondays. Ack!!! I returned to the library and the line now held 300 people. Aaaackkkk!!!!!! I sighed and queued up behind a bus load of Spanish-speaking tourists. Thankfully, the line shuffled through the gates like a roman legion on forced march, and I found myself in front of the book within 20 minutes. The interpretive area had many informative panels, completely blocked by bus tourists standing around chatting. Oh well. In the library upstairs, another 300 year old collection waited for me, beckoning with its musty air (um, no, it was actually quite fresh), its creaking tomes (um, no, I couldn’t actually touch anything), and its stern-faced guardians (both the busts that lined the shelves and the guards that were unimpressed with people’s unwillingness to turn the flash off on their cameras).

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Bookshelf aspiration (Trinity College)

Not having the Science Gallery to go to anymore, I ended up at the Little Museum of Dublin, which promised a 29 minute visit. They were right on the money. There was three floors of exhibits depicting the life of the town from the visit of Queen Victoria to present, including a U2 room. They even planned for the future.

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Stuff that hasn’t happened yet

After that I met up with my friends and we cabbed it to the airport. They were on a different first flight, but we would be flying together again from London to Zagreb. We parted ways and I started my personal journey of delayed flights. I’m glad I had three hours between flights at heathrow, as I had only just boarded my plane in Dublin at the time we were supposed to land. It turned out to not be that big an issue though, since the flight from London was also an hour late.

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Grand Union Canal. I walked along this every morning.

I met up with Mihaela and Bernard and Irena, who had the misfortune of an early flight from Dublin and the same late flight to Zagreb.  She had endured 10 hours in the departure lounge with none of the side effects commonly seen in yours truly (headache, sore neck, unusual urge to run screaming through the terminal). Good on ya, Irena!

Heathrow, as you may or may not know, plays coy with its departure gates (at least in Terminal 1), and ours stated it’d be announced at 19:10. So at 19:10 Irena and I rushed expectantly to the board, hoping that it wouldn’t give us the most distant gate. It gave us something much more sinister: “please wait”. Uh oh. Eventually that changed to “Flight delayed until 20:20” swapping with “Gate opens at 19:35”. Then at 19:35 it stopped saying anything over than the flight was delayed. Was it stuck? Was the plane being boarded? The horror of not knowing crept over each of us in our own private ways. On the upside, I thought, it would give me a chance to try out the capsule hotel in the airport. Ever the optimist, I.

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My actual mood when my flights were delayed…

I had reached the point in my unease that I had asked someone where I could find the info desk, and that act seemed to spur the info board into action as it gave us a gate. Whee! As I mentioned above, the flight got off the ground after 9, and it was empty. There were maybe 40 people on plane, if that. I was talking with someone after the fact (I’m writing this the next day, of course) and he mused that maybe they were trying to see how angry people would be if they didn’t bother flying at all. Well.

Irena helped me out by giving me a lift home (thanks again!), and I stumbled into bed at 1am. Blarg! Of course with all the boys here and none of them in cribs, there was a shortage of beds, and I shared mine with a K1 who woke up and realized I had arrived and then woke me up every hour on the hour to tell me how much he missed me. The sentiment was shared, of course, even though the timing was less than appropriate.

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My European Adventure*, Day 14

Sep05
by berry on September 5, 2014 at 10:11 pm
Posted In: Uncategorized

*Wow, two weeks of coming up with something to put on this asterisk.

TL;DR: I went to an excellent Writer’s Workshop, and I hit the programming, hard. Then I hit the bed, hard.

Despite taking off from the party at the unseemly hour of 11pm the night before, I had a terrible night’s sleep, waking up several times and not getting back to sleep for a while. Of course my internal alarm went off at 7am regardless, and so I woke, groggy and feeling like I was ready for a bad day. I lay in bed for another hour or so, debating whether I could actually function as a human being. I wasn’t hung over. I wasn’t sad or anything. I think I had just started to reach my limit. But hey! I had a writing workshop to attend, bucko, so I had no choice but to drag myself out of the comfy, comfy cocoon I had made and spread my wings once more.

Breakfast was a harbinger. I ate a plate of stuff, and had mixed my coffee and cream to a delightful tongue-tingling quality. Hm, thought I, a bit of pastry would offset this quite excellent coffee quite excellently. So I popped over to the pastry table (it’s a buffet) (I accidentally wrote biddet there, and autocorrect fixed it properly. Go autocorrect!), grabbed a chocolatine, and made my way back. 18.9 seconds had passed. My table, cleared. My coffee, gone. A single tear rolled down the cheek of my soul. Of course the apologies came as fast and as furious as a new cup, but I didn’t get the mixture right, alas.

The writer’s workshop was wonderful. Lora O’Brien presented it, and she went over several topics, including how to generate ideas, how to put yourself into a creative mindset, things to do if you have too many ideas, and then she ran through how to get through the long and trying process of writing a novel. How she explained it was through the use of a modified snowflake methotrexate (um, no, autocorrect, no. Just because I praised you earlier doesn’t mean you get to pull that kind of shit…) METHOD WITH iterations of character building interspersed throughout. I’m familiar with the snowflake method (as you can tell because I know its name even though Lora never actually named it in the workshop), and I’ve used it successfully (to a degree) with TWTUD. Follow this link for an in-depth discussion of it, but in short what you do is write a sentence that describes the essence of your novel, then write a five sentence paragraph that expands on the first sentence, then a paragraph for each of those sentences,  and then flesh each of those out until you have about a page for each paragraph. This is your outline that you can then describe scenes that will carry the story through each part. It WORKS, mate!

After this, the meat of the workshop, she touched on (because we began to run short on time) editing, getting betas, finding people to guide you when you are in uncharted territory (SMEs, I mean), and how to comport yourself when dealing with the norms. She said a couple of things that I found worthy of underlining: “Everything we write is practice for the next thing.” and “Writers need lots of useful people in their lives” and  “writers are literally shaping the world.” This last one in regards to how people take what they read and apply it to their lives. I think this is more aspirational than otherwise.

After the workshop:

Connnnnnnnn!

Despite the whole “no sleep, feel lousy” of the day, I ended up with a full platter of panels that I not only stayed alert for, but that I enjoyed thoroughly. This included: Fiction – Beyond The Novel; Fairytales Across Europe; Can’t I just Google It? How To Research; Project Gutenberg – liberating classics or killing them?; and Science Fact: Animals in Spec Fic.

Of all of them, I have to say that my favourite, one that I actually wasn’t originally going to attend before Irena convinced me, was the Animal in Spec. Fic. panel. Go figure. The day caught up to me, though, and instead of heading off to the closing ceremonies, I crawled off to bed, where I stayed for the most of the night. I woke up after 2 hours of napping, but I watched TV rather than dead dogging it (I did pop down for a bit, but couldn’t find anyone I knew, and I wasn’t in the mood for introductions and all that). I watched a Gaelic Football match, and a T20 cricket match, and I slept.

 

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My European Adventure*, Day 13

Sep05
by berry on September 5, 2014 at 9:45 pm
Posted In: Uncategorized

*unlucky!

TL;DR: Visited the Guinness Storehouse before everyone else, the Museum of Ireland, and got my Capaldi on. And I drank odd things…

Saturday I woke up with a plan. Bernard, one of the people I’ve chatted with and Mihaela’s husband, informed me that if I pre-purchased early-bird tickets for the Guinness storehouse, not only would I beat the line but I’d save €4 as well. He had me at line. One 45 minute hike later, I started my tour at 9:45. Nothing shocked me on the tour. They don’t, for instance, make Guinness out of treacle or prunes (or syrup of figs) or anything silly like that. It’s just beer. One thing I did learn was that they use a combo of malted and roasted barley (umm, maybe the roasted barley’s been malted too? I don’t remember) which gives it the brown colour.

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A Very Happy Engine

There was one other excellent part, ok, two. No wait, actually there’s three. The first: the steam engines used to cart the barrels from point a to point b. The second: the pouring academy. I poured my very own personal pint of Guinness, and then drank it. Mum, you can now be proud of your boy. Third: at the top of the storehouse they had a bar with panoramic views of the city and the surrounding countryside. I say panoramic, but I didn’t bother taking a panorama. Maybe it was the fact I was drinking at 10:30 in the morning.

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Hills!

Once I finished my pint I stumbled down to the gift shop, losing my pouring academy diploma en route. No matter. I walked around exercising my self-control. The real control was knowing I didn’t have anywhere to put anything I bought, which made it easier. My goodness!

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Nothing Like a Beer at 10:30am

On the prompting of Gillian Polack, I went to the Museum of Ireland next to check out their medieval display. Well worth it!, says I. I came over a mite peckish while there and didn’t want to roam around looking for something to chew on, so I hit up the museum café. Well worth it!, says I! (Note I’ve now twice used the new piece of punctuation called the commabang.) I had a boxty and an elderflower drink I like to have when I go to the UK (but had managed to miss it when there, so thank you Ireland!). There’s an Irish pub near my office that serves boxties, but they are nothing like what arrived at my table. Both instances are delicious, but this had an array of textures and flavours that puts the Ottawa one to shame. I’ll have to go back to Paddy’s (the Ottawa Pub) to compare and contrast.

After that, the con!

wifi as everything’s a blur!> I’m leaving this note in, because it’s now over a week later and when I looked at the con schedule to remind myself where I’d been, I had a huge blank spot. A blank spot full of Doctor Who! Wheeee! Second time I’ve managed to see a series opener at its original broadcast time! Dun duh dunn dun duh dunn! etc!

 

At any rate, I went a little light on the programming Saturday, but still managed to go to Peaceful Science Fiction, Spock’s Beard, Retro 21st Century or Ours, and “This is all true because it rhymes”. All good, all with entertaining panelists, some with a bit overbearing moderators. You know who you are.

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I eventually ended up at the international fandom party, where free booze was the phrase that pays. I wandered around for a bit, getting a glass here and there, and then ended up finding a table full if people I knew! I invited myself to sit, and chatted for an hour or two while accepting dares to drink random things. Funny, because everyone made a big deal of it, but there wasn’t anything _that_ bad. I had pine tar soda, and chili vodka. As I said, not too bad. The pine tar actually tasted like the smoke from a campfire, and the chili vodka like heartburn. I managed to secure a lift home (well, ok, to my father-in-law’s home) and I suddenly realized that I needed to go to bed, stat, again. It’s funny how that happens. Though I did had a reason: a writer’s workshop in the morning! But that’s a story for another day.

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A brief service announcement

Aug29
by berry on August 29, 2014 at 2:20 pm
Posted In: Uncategorized

I suffer both from jet lag and con crud, and as such don’t have the sitting-in-front-of-computer capability required to post my last few entries for my European Adventure and have them be even mildly choate. I’ll get the last few up when normalcy returns, whatever that is…

 

meanwhile, a photo to placate you:
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My European Adventure*, Day 12

Aug23
by berry on August 23, 2014 at 5:41 pm
Posted In: Uncategorized

*I’m beginning to think this is a lame name. Shame it’s already 11 days old…

TL;DR: I checked out the cathedrals and libraries near the hotel, and conned it up!

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View from my hotel window

Ah, morning in Ireland. I top-o-the-morning’ed myself, got ready and headed down for my first Irish breakfast. It seemed a lot like a full English breakfast, but with added blood pudding. My next quest was for the laundrette. There isn’t one near the hotel, and the hotel itself, being swank, charges through the nose for laundry (€4.50 per pair of undies, for instance (Hah! I just double-checked that since it seemed so outrageous, and it’s actually €4.75@. Yikes!)), so I found a place that was a 15 minute walk away and found it closed when I arrived. Fortunately, I’d passed another moments earlier, and that one was open! Free of my burden, I made my way to town.

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One power bar to rule them all

I meant my first stop to be St. Patrick’s Cathedral, but on my way there, I passed a sign for the Marsh’s Library, a public library founded in 1707. It’s virtually unchanged since then, to the point of not having new books added (with rare exceptions) since 1745. There’s a strict “no photography” rule there, otherwise I’d have a million pictures trying to capture the atmosphere of the place. They had a special exhibit entitled “Imagining Japan: 1570-1750”, looking at how early western writers viewed the country, despite its seclusion. All works had been taken from the shelves of the library. Ditto for their Lublin to Dublin exhibit, featuring Hebrew texts. As I was on my way out, I heard the door open and the docent (erm, maybe she wasn’t a docent, I don’t know) ask where the newcomers were from. Croatia was the answer. I turned the corner and saw Irena and a few of the other Croatia group that have come to Shamrokon. Heh. Small world.

We chatted for a bit, then I headed on to St. Patrick’s, quite an interesting cathedral with several layers of rebuilding done to it. It has the feel of several different buildings because of this. I arrived at the time of peace prayers, so I was able to hear the Lord’s Prayer in irish.

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Some awesome flooring (Christ Church)

After that, at the prompting of the Croats, I went to the Chester Beatty Library on the grounds of Dublin Castle. There they had an exhibit called “The Art of the Book”, showcasing block-printing and calligraphy and illumination and all the things that made medieval (and later) books so brilliant to behold.

Then, Christ Church Cathedral. By this time I was alliterated out, and I took the place at a jog, wanting to get back to the hotel and in the room for my first panel. It was quite pretty inside, and had the best floor eva.

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Can you see what’s wrong with this picture?

I had a full dance card the first day of the con, going to four talks and the opening ceremonies. Briefly, here’s what I thought:

  • European Focus: Missing Medieval Women
    • This was an amazing panel. I find that there is more and more exposure of the lack of women in medieval settings. I can think of several books that suffer from this problem, and the panelists brought up many fallacies in the popular perception of the middle ages. Afterwards I had a talk with Gillian Polack about the talk and medievalism.
  • European Focus: Celtic Gods
    • The point of this panel was to compare celtic gods with their counterparts on mainland Europe. While they did talk about this, the panel travelled far into the realm of cultural cross-pollination as well. Jim Fitzpatrick, one of the GoH, seems to have a limitless depth of knowledge on the subject.
  • Opening Ceremony
    • It was an opening ceremony. The con got opened.
  • Colloquialisms & Cultural Idioms, Its Funnier in Swedish?
    • Translation! Mostly funny stories from the front lines of translation, given the issues outlined in the title.
  • Science Fact: Living In A Cyberpunk World
    • This turned more into a Living in a Dystopian World. The most interesting thing about this was Charlie and Chuck getting into it about whether we should trust governments or corporations more. I thought it would be obvious the side Chuck would fall on, given he was wearing a Galt/Taggart ’12 t-shirt.
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real perspective. This is the hallway to my room. One reason my step count is so high

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Forced perspective (from Harry Potter Experience). If only my corridor was like this…

After that, I spent some time in the fan village talking and drinking beer until I remembered that I would turn into a pumpkin if I wasn’t careful, so off to bed I went, visions of dystopian futures dancing in my head.

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