Tag Archives: other travel

travel

Paradise Lost

Leave a comment

Back in November, an old friend from my Woodstock School days invited us (and several other people) to join him for Thanksgiving on his gorgeous property on Gouverneur Bay, St. Barthelemy. We’d visited once before for his 2001 New Year’s bash, but didn’t get to stay at his place then, and in any case he had made quite a few changes. The estate is quite literally a paradise on earth, as the photos below will attest.

But now we are exiled from Eden: he’s sold the place. So I wanted to share these photos to commemorate it.

You might also like:

Getting in and Out of St. Barth’s Oops Default ThumbnailDawn in St. Barth’s Default ThumbnailEarly Tourist in Nepal
about me

The Twitter Diaries: January 2009, Pt 1: Italy, Ireland, UK, France

Leave a comment

back from New Year’s celebration with friends in Piemonte, back to work (in Dublin and Grenoble) next week. Not ready for vac to be over! 8:54 PM Jan 1st from web

“Apologizing” for Fascism 10:31 PM Jan 1st from web

@robinbloor thanks for the tip- Stanza looks like an app I’ll use! 10:54 PM Jan 1st from web in reply to robinbloor

hmph. Dublin hotel booking form requires me to be a Mr., Mrs., or Miss. None of the three is correct. 9:35 AM Jan 2nd from web

@deirdresm since I retained my own surname on marriage, Mrs. is simply dead wrong; there is no Mr. Straughan in our family 9:47 AM Jan 2nd from web in reply to deirdresm

@deirdresm I need a crash course in Irish – how to pronounce Saoirse? thx for the Far Side re-enactments – brilliant! 10:14 AM Jan 2nd from web in reply to deirdresm

must… face… the wardrobe. If nothing fits, the sales start in Milan tomorrow. Not that I can buy much in Italy. Wrong body shape. 10:19 AM Jan 2nd from web

Ross on her re-entry to small-town Italy: “I didn’t know so many Italians are racist.” 7:36 PM Jan 2nd from web

…and her friend’s 23YO ex boyfriend just died of a drug overdose. No, Italy is not quite the paradise Americans fondly imagine 7:39 PM Jan 2nd from web

@mmcallen I have [had Amazon ads on my site] for years, to VERY small returns. Classic, I think. 11:21 PM Jan 2nd from web in reply to mmcallen

couldn’t be happier that Terry Pratchett got a knighthood, unless they also found a cure for his Alzheimer’s 12:01 AM Jan 3rd from web

@deirdresm don’t know anything; in spite of my name (which has nothing to do with my ancestry), this will be my 1st visit to Ireland 10:34 AM Jan 3rd from web in reply to deirdresm

had a day in which Italy did its best to remind me of all the things I do NOT love about it 11:36 PM Jan 3rd from web

@deirdresm thanks, but doubt I’ll have time this trip. Just there Monday afternoon to Wednesday morning – this time 11:42 PM Jan 3rd from web in reply to deirdresm

what I miss about Italy 9:58 AM Jan 4th from web

@Roam2Rome Mexico will be a lot cheaper. Italian dentistry is so expensive people leave the country for treatment 11:10 AM Jan 4th from web in reply to Roam2Rome

the Vatican reaffirms its medical ignorance 1:12 PM Jan 4th from web

@tara_kelly yup, according to the Vatican’s chief of medicine, the birth control pill causes male sterility. 1:24 PM Jan 4th from web in reply to tara_kelly

Ross’ way of making up with me after a fight: “You can take this makeup of mine to use on your trip if you want. Just don’t lose it.” 10:55 PM Jan 4th from web

@trine you have to go through horrible teenage tantrums before you get that kind of treatment… sometimes 3:46 PM Jan 5th from web in reply to trine

in Dublin, about to film Michael Pryc on IPS package manager GUI. Any particular requests for what he should cover? 5:04 PM Jan 5th from web

the menu of Sun’s employee canteen in Dublin includes a “potatoes” course. And steak & Guinness casserole for lunch. Yum! 12:17 PM Jan 6th from web

@deirdresm it was good, though they gave me way too many potatoes (if such a thing is possible) 2:12 PM Jan 6th from web in reply to deirdresm

I wish cut & paste from OpenOffice to Roller worked the same on the Mac as it does on Windows 3:54 PM Jan 6th from web

good day of filming in Sun’s Dublin office yesterday, followed by a nice dinner, then total collapse. No time to see sights, unfortunately 9:41 AM Jan 7th from web

I hate multilingual websites that assume that my country is also my preferred language 9:43 AM Jan 7th from web

in a hotel in Grenoble with a very shaky wifi connection. Argh. 6:50 PM Jan 7th from web

Italian train graffiti 6:58 PM Jan 7th from web

Words of Wisdom from Irish Taxi Drivers 8:07 AM Jan 8th from web

at Sun’s Grenoble engineering center, can’t yet see the towering Alps that everyone assures me surround us. Better weather this weekend? 11:04 AM Jan 8th from web

filming over for the day. Got some great stuff on Amber Road aka Sun Storage 7000, OpenSolaris desktop, Java RTS, and more 5:27 PM Jan 8th from web

I love the location of this Ibis hotel in downtown Grenoble, but the wifi sucks royally 7:40 PM Jan 8th from web

time to hit the icy streets of Grenoble in search of breakfast. Wish I could find some fruit, but the hotel buffet is sad. 8:02 AM Jan 9th from web

wrapped the second day of filming in Grenoble with an interview with a campus ambassador, in both English and French 5:25 PM Jan 9th from web

hubby not going skiing, so we plan a day of sightseeing and shopping in Grenoble. Ate amazing foie gras last night, with Burgundy 10:31 AM Jan 10th from web

best purchase this trip: album from The High Kings (at Dublin airport) http://www.thehighkings.com/ 6:10 PM Jan 11th from web

humor: The Italian Adam 6:52 PM Jan 11th from web

have packed a much smaller bag for tomorrow’s UK trip. Hate lugging stuff. 8:26 PM Jan 11th from web

@davest 1-1 in a coffee house – I like! 5:49 PM Jan 12th from web in reply to davest

@italylogue [who provided a playlist of Italian songs, with links to my translations for some] get I should get cracking on translating the rest, eh? ; ) 7:07 PM Jan 12th from web in reply to italylogue

@plasticbagUK thanks for the LOL! It’ll be interesting to see what kinds of ads you get instead, though. 7:13 PM Jan 12th from web in reply to plasticbagUK

just used Final Cut Express semi-seriously for the first time, not quite as hard as I’d feared. Now to figure out the compression 7:49 PM Jan 12th from web

@lbridenne76 thanks, was using Roxio VideoWave before! 10:17 PM Jan 12th from web in reply to lbridenne76

at Sun’s Guillemont Park office, which reminds me of a very nice shopping mall. Lots of bright open spaces. 11:48 AM Jan 13th from web

@tara_kelly nope, in the UK this week, back to Italy for the weekend, back to Colorado on the 21st 2:57 PM Jan 13th from web in reply to tara_kelly

a foggy day in London town 9:23 AM Jan 14th from web

filming at Sun’s Customer Briefing Center just over London Bridge 11:54 AM Jan 14th from web

…and next door to this [the London Monument, below] 11:55 AM Jan 14th from web

img_5661

last day in England, for which I am thankful. This damp cold gets into my very bones. Unfortunately, Italy may not be much better 1:36 PM Jan 15th from web

@lbridenne76 In my book, that’s a no-brainer: customer service/experience IS marketing, and the most important part of it 5:18 PM Jan 15th from web in reply to lbridenne76

pensiamo di andare ad Abano Terme (o altre terme) questo weekend (20mo anniversario). Qualche suggerimento? 8:07 PM Jan 15th from web

is the horrible hold music almost over? and can we all learn how to use “momentarily” correctly? 9:07 PM Jan 15th from web

@Hellyski hope to make it Saturday [to a social/new media podcamp in Boulder] if not dead with jet lag 9:16 PM Jan 15th from web in reply to Hellyski

woke up at 3:30 am to get to my 6:30 am flight in Luton. Which turned out to be too early. 11:50 AM Jan 16th from web

started a new blog to aggregate and tag Sun video (at least the portion of it that I have anything to do with): http://blogs.sun.com/video/ 5:37 PM Jan 16th from web

You might also like:

Paradise Lost Default ThumbnailThe Twitter Diaries: November, 2008 part 2 Default ThumbnailWords of Wisdom from Irish Taxi Drivers Oops
funny signs, Italian culture

The Italian Adam

3 Comments

This week I was in Grenoble, France, filming for Sun. Enrico drove over from Lecco to join me on Friday, and we spent the weekend there together. It was too cold to do much roaming around outside, so we went to Grenoble’s fine arts museum, which features a small but impressive collection of paintings, arranged by date and country.

Even as I approached it from a distance, I knew this “God Chastising Adam and Eve” had to be by an Italian painter, using Italian models.

I mean, just look at that Adam. His entire expression and posture are eloquently Italian, a cross between a shrug and Che ci vuoi fare? E’ stata lei! (“What do you want? It was her!”)

Yup, sure enough: Domenico Zampieri, aka il Domenichino.

picture source: Wikimedia Commons

You might also like:

Geek Humor Default ThumbnailHurry Up! Unkind Cuts Default ThumbnailSummer Fun, Italian Family Style
bio

Words of Wisdom from Irish Taxi Drivers

1 Comment

Taxi drivers the world over are usually gregarious and interested in people (it’s more or less a job requirement). I even met one, years ago in the US, who told me he was driving a taxi to gather stories for a novel he wanted to write.

I’ve just made a flying (in all senses of the word) visit to Dublin, which required four or five taxi rides between airport, hotel, and office, so I had ample opportunity to learn that Irish taxi drivers are more garrulous than most, and wise and funny with it.

The first one, who took me from the airport to the Sun offices the day I arrived, upon learning that this was my first visit to Ireland (yes, tick another “country beginning with I” off the list), told me:

“There are two things you should never do in Ireland: never touch another person’s beer at the pub – that’s sacrilege – and never call an Irishman an Englishman.”

He then reeled off a list of “stupid questions you should never ask,” attributing most of them to Texan tourists:

  • “That’s a beautiful castle, but why did they build it so close to the motorway?” (A real Texan probably said “highway”, not “motorway”.)
  • “Why is the grass so green here?” – Answer: “We paint it for the tourists.”
  • “When will I see a leprechaun?” – Answer: “After your 14th pint of Guinness.”

After giving someone else on the road a piece of his mind, this driver also explained to me that the Irish swear a lot.

“But it’s not necessarily bad. If someone tells you to fuck off, that’s bad. But if a man at the pub asks a woman ‘Do you want to fuck off with me?’, that’s a compliment.”

…

Of course everyone’s talking about the global economic crisis. Another driver told me: “The economists say it’ll be the worst off we’ve ever been. But that’s only relative. This was a very poor country 10-15 years ago.”

He grew up in a family of nine children, whose sheer number entitled the family to a “medical” card. This meant that, when their father’s weekly paycheck ran out on Thursday, the driver (the oldest boy in the family) would take his mother’s shopping trolley to the “stew house” where he was given a big pot of stew and one of rice to tide the family over until payday (Saturday). “I had two older sisters, but they were ashamed to be seen going to the stew house.”

“Now I own a four-bedroom villa in Torquay, as well as the house I live in here [in Dublin]. If I have to sell the villa because of the crisis, how badly off am I, really? I hate to say it, but maybe this crisis will teach people to tighten their belts. We’ve all become too greedy.”

You might also like:

Default ThumbnailThe Twitter Diaries: 2009-05-24: Lawrence, KS The Twitter Diaries: January 2009, Pt 1: Italy, Ireland, UK, France Default ThumbnailThe Twitter Diaries: November, 2008, part 1 Default ThumbnailRubber Ducky