Feeling really stupid...

Hiya again
Have you ever felt really stupid because you confused two things? If not, go away. If yes, you might want to read on.
I spent a weekend in Edinburgh and was really looking forward to staying at a lovely, new Guest House in the New Town. I checked my handwritten booking notes at home and made a note of the phone number, just in case. When I arrived at Edinburgh Waverley station I got a taxi to the Ben Cruachan Guest House on MacDonald Road. And stood outside a closed door, closed windows, no lights on -- nothing. Nonplussed, I waited for a moment, then called. Answering machine. I left a message, hoping someone would call me back. Nothing. I walked up and down the street to make sure I was in the right place. I was. Called again, left another message saying I considered our contract null and void seeing as they were not open. And went to one of the much cheaper but also much naffer B&Bs next door.
I was upset, but one is not one to mope, and I found other ways of making a good weekend of it. And if my eyes were insulted by the décor and "decorations", at least the bed in the cheaper place was really comfy, with a good, firm mattress. And I actually had one really, really good night's sleep there, the first in months!
This evening, I get a phone call from someone asking me whether I was ok. I was rather surprised -- it's not every day that a perfect stranger asks me that question, much less on the phone.
Well, it turns out that this very pleasant man is the owner of the Queens Guest House, also in Edinburgh New Town, and within fairly easy walking distance of the Ben Cruachan. And it further turns out that he was holding my lovely room for me for the two nights that I had booked with him.
How I could have made the confusion I will never know. How I didn't write down his establishment -- I have not a trace of his place, neither in my memory nor on my notes for the whole weekend -- I will never know.
All I know is that, whichever of the two it would have been, I'd have had a far better couple of nights than in the other place, and -- in the end -- a cheaper time of it. Because not only did I pay a hundred quid for the two nights and breakfasts at the B&B, I am now also having to pay -- of course -- for the room held for but never used by yours truly.
Might as well have tossed the money out the window, eh?
Reminds me of another time when I was seriously sleep deprived and lost my ticket at Vienna train station one very cold Easter Monday evening. I didn't realise and ended up having to pay a full single fare from Vienna to Bern, plus a penalty for being on the train without a ticket.
It also reminds me of a time in my three-month stay in Spain. I had come down to Barcelona from a two-month summer residence course in the Pyrenees, during which I got a maximum of four hours' sleep a night. One morning I waited at Barcelona train station for a friend who had come all the way from Switzerland to join me for a couple of weeks of travelling about Spain with me. But I had got her arrival time wrong (German/Spanish, like German/English, turn hours backwards/forwards). Nor had I, as promised, sent her my phone number and she ended up waiting for me at the station for a whole day. I looked all over the place for her, but not for long enough, and went back to my house to wait for her call which, of course, never came -- and she travelled back to Switzerland that same evening. I still mourn that friendship, some thirty years later...
So, I suppose I need to re-learn the lesson that, a) I'm not infallible (which, of course, I think I am -- almost always) and, b) that I need to find a new home where I can actually sleep as much as I need.

In case you were wondering...

In case you were wondering, no, the Oban Gaelic Choir didn't win any trophies in the Royal National Mód last Friday. I think the best we did was coming 4th in the whole-choir Puirt a Beul, so-called mouth music consisting of two linked-up and very fast songs (a Strathspey and a Reel) with very silly content. I found it very challenging to learn all the words, and learn to say them as fast as required to make the songs danceable.
We were facing a number of excellent choirs, some 16 or so of them, so coming 4th is no mean feat.
The Ladies didn't do too badly, either, singing two lovely songs, but we didn't win a prize.
If you're interested in all the results, click here.
And the whole choir must have been tired by the time they went on mid-Friday afternoon for the big, televised event on the main stage because they came second last of eight or nine choirs. As I didn't sing in that one (each choir was only allowed 30 singers on stage, and there were 33 of us), I decline any responsibility ... ;)
It was very disappointing to be asked not to sing, but the up-side was that I was able to listen to all the choirs. There were some fantastic performances and some wonderful voices. Some choirs have lots of very young voices, excellent Gaelic speakers, great dynamics, great stage presence. I'm afraid Oban will have to shape up in a big way to outdo any of them.
For me the best moment came last, with the great Massed Choirs event on Saturday morning. Corran Halls car park was packed with people, some 600 singers maybe, and a lot of onlookers. We sang six or seven songs, each conducted by a different conductor/conductress, and that was a fabulous experience. The sun was out and warming our heads if not our feet, lots of people had stood along the parade route from Station Square to the Corran Halls, cheering the winners, the also-rans and the losers, and the town felt fantastic.
All in all, well worth it!
Yesterday, I gave myself some time off by joining a group of women from Oban Walkers. We went down to Tarbert, took the ferry over to Portavadie on Cowal and did a lovely circular walk there, rounded off by a pot of tea at the spanking new Portavadie marina, a very elegant place that would make a perfect conference venue. I do hope they can generate the kind of business this sort of place requires. I felt right at home there -- need to find me a wealthy sailor, I suppose, to be able to return on a more frequent basis...
The day started inauspiciously, with rain pouring down in bucketloads, but by the time we came off the ferry, the clouds had lifted and we had just five minutes of smirr, perhaps, for the rest of the day. Absolutely lovely, and exactly the right temperature for walking. No midgies, either...
Now that life is "back to normal", I'm trying to catch up on all sorts of things. Hoping to get my accounts sorted for the past financial year before I take off for a longish networking weekend in Edinburgh.
Oh, and I am looking for a new house. My flat is lovely but there are new young neighbours and I'm exhausted by their comings and goings all night, especially on weekends. And the downstairs people are still making my life a misery, especially by leaving their dog alone on weekend nights. Last Friday/Saturday I didn't get any sleep at all until 5am! It's making me depressed and only just barely able to function properly. And the flat has several shortcomings (lack of sound insulation, very narrow hall, small kitchen and bathroom) that I'm hoping a new house won't have.
It feels overwhelming at the moment -- I was hoping to stay here for several years, not merely some eighteen months, which it will be come November 8!

Greenpeace and Spencer Tunick have done it again

Hiya

Remember my post on a Greenpeace/Spencer Tunick co-operation on the Aletsch Glacier in Switzerland in July 2007? Well, they have teamed up again to try and save the vineyards of France.

The following is based on information gleaned from the Greenpeace website on the subject, some of it in French (my translation):

On Saturday, October 3rd 2009, in a vineyard in Fuissé, in the South of Burgundy, 713 individuals joined together in a militant artistic installation organised by American artist Spencer Tunick to highlight the impacts of climate change being felt all around the world. In France, they are already affecting the wines and the vineyards. If we don't act here and now, humankind and its cultural heritage will ultimately be condemned.

For more than 15 years, Tunick has staged mass nude installations all over the world. His collective landscapes always question humankind's relationship with its environment.

Under a magnificent sun and in a wonderful ambiance, Tunick achieved four different installations, two of them involving all participants, and one each involving only the women and the men, respectively. The participants and the Greenpeace team were all very happy to be part of an event relayed to most TV stations in France and to many international agencies.

In July 2007 I participated in "a large living sculpture, [to] be a part of a body landscape expressing humankind's vulnerability to climate change." Why? Because, with all those other people, I believe that "Another future is possible." (Greenpeace)

Another great photo from the Aletsch Glacier is on that site. It brings back some magnificent memories ...

Talk soon! Peace.

My last visitors... for now

Hiya again
My latest visitors are on their last few hours in the Oban area. They've not had much luck with the weather, unfortunately; good job they came by rental car, which at least provides some shelter. However, we saw a few rainbows, …… did a bit of exploring along the Esplanade, …
… they got to hear me sing with the Oban Gaelic Choir at Oban's Skipinnish Ceilidh [say kAYlee] House…
… and we all had a brilliant day on Lismore yesterday, with gorgeous sunshine and a lovely breeze, despite a rather poor forecast. Picture-book perfect it was, just as the website says, "Easy to reach by boat from Oban, Lismore is a lovely location to get away from it all."
As things go, we also learnt a few lessons along the way.

The crossing promised better things that the Scotch mist that greeted us at the ferry pier.

The sky above Port Ramsay, on the north-west of the island, was gorgeous when we arrived there in the early afternoon:

View from the top of the now defunct limekiln at Port Ramsay.

The defunct limekiln pots at Port Ramsay are being abused as rubbish dumps -- what a shame!

Bright red mushrooms grow all over the meadows – these we found at the limekilns at Port Ramsay.

We found the island uncommonly quiet all day, with just the three of us in the beautiful Lismore Café and Visitor Centre at 3:30pm, when on previous occasions I've always found it jumping with visitors, especially on a Saturday.
On our way back, we paid a visit to Tirfuir Broch on the east shore:When the 6 o'clock ferry didn't show we began to realise why there were so few people.
That's when we learnt lesson number one: getting off the island by car may be a bit tricky when the CalMac ferry has a problem. That was the case: the "Eigg" had broken down and didn't do any of the afternoon or evening runs from Oban to Lismore or back.
Being stranded on the island on a Saturday is a very interesting experience and you learn lesson number two: you call Caledonian MacBrayne, the ferry company, only to find that maybe you're talking to someone based in Uig on Skye who has no idea what the setup in Oban/Lismore looks like.
The person at the other end of the line gives you a local telephone number but when you call it, at round about 6:25pm on a Saturday, the Oban CalMac office is closed.
Everyone is really friendly, and getting to speak to a real person is a lot quicker than if you call BT, SouthernElectric or Scottish/BritishGas, but help is not forthcoming, nor can anyone tell you when a ferry might run again.
What we did learn, however (lesson no. 3), was that the Lisiachs, as the islanders of Lismore are called, are uncommonly helpful, generous and hospitable -- and quietly angry with CalMac for letting their visitors down.
There were five of us trying to catch the 6 o'clock ferry back to Oban, and as many locals gathered round at Achnacroish pier chipping in with ideas: a lady who offered her B&B at £35 per person for dinner, bed and breakfast, which we might have gone for if she had been willing to take a credit card but she insisted on getting cash. There was a gentleman with a largeish car who offered to take four of us to Point, the northernmost tip of Lismore, to catch the pedestrian ferry that goes over to Port Appin. By the way, that ferry is operated by Argyll & Bute Community Council!
Finally, someone who is sort of an official taxi driver for the island, was called in and, when he arrived, offered to take all five of us to Point in his station wagon. We deliberated and waited for news and were hoping that there would be a car ferry at 8pm, as per information passed down the Lismore grapevine (obsolete but also on my answering-machine when I got home much later) but the lady on Skye was clear: there would be no ferry, even though the "boys" had been working their socks off all afternoon. She did assure me/us that the ferry would be worked on into the night in an attempt to sort things out.
Lesson number three: CalMac would have to foot the bill for the journey up the island and down to Oban by taxi. That made it easier for us to decide that we wanted off the island because my visitors were taking a plane out of Edinburgh first thing Monday (i.e. tomorrow) morning.
At least we would all be back in Oban and our own quarters with landline phones and e-mail access and buses and a train or three to get eastward. We therefore left the car at the Achnacroish car park – if the worst came to the worst, someone from CalMac would simply have to get it across to Oban and thence back to Edinburgh or wherever.
The Lismore taxi driver took us to Point, stopping at his house half-way along the journey, where his wife was waiting with tea and the freshest, crumbliest home-made biscuits I've ever tasted – bless them! It was lovely to sit in a warm room by a lit grate, sipping tea, munching her delicious custard creams and blethering away in comfort until it was time to catch the 8:15pm ferry from Point to Port Appin. Lesson number four: island hospitality is unbeatable!
We were expecting a big taxi from Oban to take us "home", but it was a normal sedan waiting. My mistake, I suppose, for not speaking up when the question of taxis from Port Appin was discussed by the locals (lesson number five).
It was already half-past eight, anyway, and our stomachs were rumbling, biscuits and tea notwithstanding.
So, the three of us …… decided to change plans yet again and have dinner at Port Appin Pier House while we waited for a cab to run up from Oban.
The meal was delicious if a bit on the pricey side, the room very warm and cosy, and the taxi collected us a little over an hour after we sat down to eat – just right.
We got in at about 10:30pm, well tired, and not a little worried about whether the ferry would run today.
At about 9:15 this morning, a call came in from CalMac to tell us that the ferry would sail from Oban at 11AM. My god-daughter is coming into Oban on the ferry with the car (a very rough ride) as I type these lines, while S. has just got back from a guided tour of the Oban distillery. It is bucketing down and windy.
Still, all will yet be well and my lovelies will be able to catch their plane first thing tomorrow.

However, they've had to change their plans considerably as they originally wanted to leave Oban very early this morning to have time for a visit to the distillery at Aberfeldy before making their way to Edinburgh, where their hotel room is waiting for their last night in the country.
Ah well, when you travel, I suppose, you have to be flexible – and that is the biggest lesson of all.

Passion flower – one of many – at Lismore Café.

21 Sep 2009: Wake-Up Call on Climate Change

Wow, what a day! Even Oban contributed to a wake-up call sent to the world's leaders to take effective, binding, fair action to mitigate climate change. The Oban Times of 24th September has an article on p. 2 with a good photo (better than mine, above); ForArgyll.com has an interesting article and follow-up on their news site. And, of course, the Sustainable Oban blog, Sustaining Oban, has some information.

Click here for a video put together and published by avaaz.org, the organisation that launched this particular boat. Avaaz comment on the video page:
"On 21 September 2009, at more than 2600 events in 135 countries across the globe, we joined together to issue a deafening wake-up call to world leaders on climate change. The breadth and creativity of events is breathtaking, and our message broke through to leaders and international media."

And in a message to those who signed up, Avaaz wrote:
"The Wake Up call was covered by hundreds of major news outlets and made the evening news everywhere from Germany to New Zealand. Europe's environment chief praised 'the mobilisation of so many people by Avaaz.org', and the Spanish environment minister called the action 'extraordinary'. After a deluge of votes and phone-calls from the UK, Prime Minister Gordon Brown became the first major world leader to agree to our demand to go to Copenhagen, taking a phone-call personally and saying that with 'the pressure that can brought by organizations like yours...what people think is impossible can become possible'.
"World leaders have heard us. But as Tuesday's UN summit showed, one day of action won't be enough to get real progress on climate. We need to come back again and again, louder and louder, until we get a fair, ambitious and binding climate treaty.
"We'll keep the pressure high through the TCKTCKTCK campaign until Copenhagen, with another global day of action on October 24th, and start planning right now for the LARGEST CLIMATE MOBILIZATION IN HISTORY ON DECEMBER 12th, in the final days of the Copenhagen negotiations.
"Avaaz is now 3.6 million members strong in 14 languages, in every country of the world. On Monday, our movement took a huge step forward -- we showed that we can not only send millions of messages to leaders or donate millions to worthy causes, but that in just a few days we can flood the streets and crash phone lines from Mexico City to Mumbai.
"If we stick together, anything is possible.
"With hope and excitement for the future,
"Ricken, Ben, Paul, Milena, Alice, Luis, Brett, Taren, Margaret, Iain, Pascal, Graziela, Paula, Benjamin, Rajeev, Veronique, Raluca, Julius, Yuri, Saravanan, Vladimir, Tihomir, Sam, Emma and the whole Avaaz team
"PS - the video above was made from over 10,000 wake up call pictures and 600 videos uploaded to Avaaz in just 24 hours! There were many tears among people making the video as we saw the amazing dedication of everyone, from the Avaaz community to our TCKTCKTCK campaign partners to people joining the first climate action of their lives. Click here to see the video of this amazing worldwide movement in action."

Way to go! Let's get ready for another global day of action on 24th October!

Allow me a wee smirk

Hiya

In the course of my work I sometimes get to edit translations into English. Many of them are very good already and just need a bit of tweaking. Sometimes, though, it's almost more work editing than if I had been given the original text to translate from scratch. That kind of job often sends me on research sprees across the World Wide Web – a great way of frittering away hours and hours, if you're not careful.

It's in this context that I have just come across the "Official Promotion Portal for Argentina. Tourism. Culture. Sports. Education. Science. Business." Not sure the English version of this website is the bee's knees of translations. See for yourselves -- my favourite in the gobbledygook below is the sentence beginning "There were 7000 guests, including president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner (who was absent), …" – was she there, or was she not?

***

Economy And Business, May 13, 2009

Open a new mall in town

7000 was invited to the festival opening Dot Baires, in the neighborhood of Saavedra, with celebrities and fireworks. The shopping haves 189,000 m2 divided into four levels and 160 local. The last was opened 10 yeasr ago.

Buenos Aires has its 15th shopping. Yesterday, in the neighborhood of Saavedra, who opened the event with Dot Baires fastuosa as reminding those openings of shopping malls 90. There were 7000 guests, including president Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner (who was absent), the Head of Government of Buenos Aires, Mauricio Macri Groba Malala and his girlfriend, Karina Rabolini and Beatriz Nofal, by the National Agency of Investment Development. Attendees were the first to travel the 160 local shopping now largest city, with 189,000 m2 divided into four levels. The last thing the Abasto was opened, 10 years ago.

[and on, and on, and on, as good as unintelligibly...]

***

Maybe one day I'll write to them suggesting they get a professional to revise their English language content. It would make for a good project for a translation student, perhaps.

Cut 10% in carbon emissions during 2010

Hiya

A message from the Low Carbon Communities Network inspired me to explore the campaign to cut carbon emissions called 10:10.
Here's what I found:
****
Everyone's looking for something to do about climate change. What’s needed is something straightforward, immediate and meaningful. I think I've found it.

Today I joined thousands of individuals and organisations from across the country to unite behind one simple idea: that by working together we can achieve a 10% cut in carbon emissions during 2010. It’s called 10:10, and everyone can be a part of it.

Cutting 10% in one year is a bold target, but for most of us it’s an achievable one, and is in line with what scientists say we need right now. By signing up to 10:10 we’re not just promising to reduce our own emissions – we’re becoming part of a national drive to hit this ambitious goal country-wide. In our homes, in our workplaces, our schools and our hospitals, our galleries and football clubs and universities, we’ll be backing each other up as we take the first steps on the road to becoming a low-carbon society.

To find out more and sign up go to www.1010uk.org
To read coverage of the campaign from the Guardian go to www.guardian.co.uk/10-10
***

Peaceful majority and the Cost of War

Hiya

After a few posts in which I celebrated an almost hedonistic indulgence of wonderful food, here's something a bit weightier.

One of my favourite people has forwarded to me an essay about why the peaceful but silent majority doesn't matter when it comes to extremism and fanatic killers.

The essay is thought-provoking and most of what it claims is quite true. However, there are several problems with the text, starting with the author: a one-minute search of the Web tells me that the essay, actually written in 1997, is not by Emanuel Tanay but by Paul E. Marek.

Looking a little further, I found Marek's blog. He is actually a duo that presents itself as "A Father (Paul) and his Canadian Forces Son (Junker) blogging from the Right side of the aisle." While Marek & son don't paint the world in black and white, they certainly seem to have no time for a critical examination of the massive failings of our, i.e. Western, society.

And that's what bothers me a whole lot more than the false attribution of authorship in the forwarded message, which in itself is bad enough. The essay fails to mention the horrendous exploitation by western "explorers" and their backers of huge swathes of the rest of the world. Not a word is said about the obscene amount of money that our governments (especially the US and UK govts.) are throwing at the people they claim to "protect", not in the form of food, education, infrastructure, health care, but in the form of guns, bombs, destruction, death, rape, murder. Click here to watch the dollars being wasted on warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001 --- the mind boggles!

It's not as though that was a recent phenomenon -- it's been going on at least since Christopher Columbus first set foot on what he thought were the shores of India in 1492.

The constructive, positive things that could have been done with this money! Misinformation, greed, vengefulness, lack of justice, lack of education, lack of prospects push young people into the paths of fanatical leaders -- it was true in Germany, it is true now. How about supporting peace work and teaching people how to resolve conflicts in a non-violent way?

There's a debate raging over here (UK/Scotland) about the cost of human lives. One of the latest news headlines is about ministerial aide Eric Joyce, who quit Gordon Brown's cabinet on Thursday in protest. The Brits are getting itchy to get out of Afghanistan because to date 212 British soldiers have lost their lives in combat there since 2001. That is 212 lives too many and my heart goes out to the families of these mostly young people. However, it pales in comparison to the loss of civilian lives in Afghanistan -- tellingly, no-one has been keeping a tally on that number.

Might I also remind everyone of the loss of lives to famines, disease, misguided or blatantly absent health policies, and, to bring in a killer of the first order in the western world, road accidents. For example, in 2008, 272 people were killed on Scotland's roads, 2,535 were recorded as seriously injured and 12,756 suffered "slight" injury (source: The Scottish Government website, accessed a few minutes ago).
Exploring the reasons why this number is so high would merit another hour or two of thinking and research.

Nuff said for now -- I bid you a very good night and a wonderful weekend -- wars and death and wanton destruction notwithstanding -- and look forward to your comments.

PEACE!

Another scrumptious meal

My lovely young visitors from Switzerland have continued northward on their journey, taking the midday ferry from Mallaig to South Uist. I would imagine that they will soon be exploring South and North Uist before they make their way towards Skye and Harris. Here's wishing them pleasant travels under blue skies.Yesterday evening, Reto prepared another lovely meal. This time we had freshly caught mackerel from Loch Awe -- a true delicacy -- on a bed of summer salads with tomatoes and avocado, sprinkled with fresh herbs, and an eye-catching nasturtium blossom that sent a crispy flash of heat across the taste-buds. Absolutely delicious. What's especially wonderful is that, except for the avocados and the lovely rosé, all the food was locally sourced and most of it organic. We like it.

It's nice having a chef visiting...

The other evening, the young man visiting here with his partner, another friend of mine from a different circle entirely, cooked up a wonderful storm -- the most delicious green Thai chicken and shrimp curry I've tasted in a long, long time. It was reminiscent of the gorgeous food served up by what used to be my home away from home in the Muesmatt area of Berne, the Mues@matt Restaurant. Sadly, the manageress/wine specialist and her Thai husband moved to a different area and changed their opening hours, which didn't suit me.
Ret0's dish has inspired me to try and emulate Thai cuisine with whatever ingredients I can rustle up in Oban. He used the freshest of runner beans, which tasted a lot like okra -- yummy!