The Suburbians @ The Hideout (Indie Week 2011)
Darryl Hurs, The Founder of Indie Week and the Program Director introduces last years Indie Week (Ireland) winners, The Suburbians at The Hideout in Toronto, Canada. Check out their music here!
The Boxer Rebellion @ The Horseshoe
This is the 2nd show that I have been to and as usual it was amazing. I was kinda disappointed that they were playing at the Horseshoe (they played at the Mod Club the first time) but it actually turned out pretty good. The band brought their own lighting system (thank you!!!). The Boxer Rebellion played material from their latest record “Union” and they also squeezed in couple new and old tunes. I can’t wait for another stellar release. You can check out last years photos here and you can check their music out here. I couldn’t get any drummer shots because the smoke from the fog machine was killing the image! Enjoy.
Day 3- London
The second day that should not have existed.
I woke up at 5am (hey this is getting easier) and saw that my Athens flight was still on. I made my way down to the airport via Gatwick express. Where I and hundreds of other people gathered. Some have been here for days…!
I checked in…went through security and sat there for an hour and a half waiting for the gate number to be released. I was supposed to fly at 9am… then time continued on and by 1pm they announced that the flight to Athens had been cancelled.
Ok. You know… i’m ok for money, I worked all year and my parents are helping me out… but WTF. Now i’m paying extra for shit I wasn’t supposed to be paying for. The trains alone are expensive… 16 pounds one way ride. hostel 24 pounds a night…. shit just adds up… it’s so ridiculous.
Anyways, they told us to head to this desk in the airport and I did… and I hung out with many Greeks. It was fun. I talked to a few… and I talked to an old couple that were going to Crete… but now they had missed their connecting flight AND they also had a cancellation to deal with.
Then I walked by this late twenty looking girl and she smiled back at me… “you and I are supposed to meet” I thought… I started talking to her. Her name was Vicky and her boyfriend was George and they were from Athens…and they at first thought I was Greek.. I thought that was hilarious. Anyways in the next 3 mins we became close friends. …the service desk told us that we had to wait here until someone could escort us out down to the baggage claim. We were going to get our bags and they strictly told us to GO HOME.
So my new pals and I kept talking and I explained how I am not Greek but I love the culture etc… showed them my mati. They were thrilled and they laughed.
Before we grabbed our luggage we had to go through customs. YEAH. Ass backwards right? The next step was to go online and rebook another flight with easyjet. I told my friends that they can use my laptop to log on and they can rebook their flight. Easyjet was telling us to GO HOME and use the internet there. ha ha. Malakas.
Anyways… we got on.. and the next flight was already booked, and so was the next one… and the next one… and the next one… actually the next flight to Athens was on the 11th of Jan.
There was NO way I was going to hang out in London for that long. I came here to Experience GREECE not THE UK. I can do London ANYTIME. So my friends and I went to the easyjet desk to get our refund, which isn’t one until you write them a friggin letter. At the desk we met several more Greeks. At this time I wished I could speak Greek and understand it… because I know they were cracking jokes! Easyjet, Malakas, Easyjet, Malakas, Easyjet, Malakas! Just hanging out and listening was good enough for me. I was happy.
We exchanged numbers and I told them if I was in their area I would call them and we can hang again… we parted …and I traveled back to London.
On the train my mind was reeling on what to do… then my friend Karen rang. Her brother who is in Holland is a travel agent. He was going to help me!
Brilliant!
So I got a call from her bro and he told me the deets. Olympic Air Tomorrow at Heathrow… sounds good to me! My easyjet ticket will almost cover for this one anyways, so i’m happy! Thank you Don! You rock!
So I came back to London and went to the same hostel again… the guys there couldn’t believe that I had been cancelled for the third time. I got into my room. No one else here yet. Excellent. Shower, meditation, power up my laptop.
Then people came in. 2 Asian girls. WITH NO ACCENT. holy christ! Canadian flags on backpacks…
You have NO idea how happy this made me. They are both really nice too! They are also from Toronto… so we shared stories of Toronto and also horrible airport stories. Seems like I am not the only person having a bad day. Then an Aussie popped in. She was really cool as well! Everyone clicked so we went to the supermarket together and bought food. Cooked food in the kitchen dorm and we hung out. Pretty nice ending to the day I think.
So now i’m just thinking about the day. What a whirlwind of a day but an important one. …and of course the greeks were just good fun and it was a nice pre-greece thing. I miss listening to the accents and the language!
Tomorrow Athens.. if not. i’m walking. 
London – Day 2
This day was not supposed to exist. but it did. I did not want to welcome it. But I did.
I woke up at 5am… ate breky and for some reason I wanted to check my email. I was just planning on leaving… but I checked it. Lo and behold I received an email from Easyjet saying. “yo, sorry but your flight has been C to the ancelled. Please try again”.
There was a heavy snowfall overnight and since Gatwick is an hour south of London… they got more snow. Surprise, surprise.
I was pissed. I wanted out of this country. I’ve been in this country for 5 months and I have also been dreaming about Greece for 5 months. Well, more than that… more like 2 years.. but thats ok! I’ll just wait another day.
Like a rug being pulled underneath you, I tell ya…
I decided to not go back to sleep. I stayed up and watched the BBC put fear in every Uk’ians eyes about the storm.
I waited till the trains were off peak (9:30am) and I went out about my day. I went to buckingham palace first. I forgot about the changing of the guards that was at 11:00am. But as I showed up after 11 they started changing the guards and all that fun stuff.
It was alright. I mean I think my newer ways of thinking has turned me off of anything government or anything that avoids equality as a whole. I just don’t care. I liked the building. But the officer screaming orders out like Michael Jackson. Come on… give me a break.
I kind of hung out there for a bit just walking around in the parks and stuff. That was cool.
By the time this was happening it was getting super cold out and it was snowing heavily. I ate lunch at the Hard Rock Cafe. That was good times. Then I went underground because it was freezing. So I just got on a train and got off at a random stop… Leicester Square was the choice. Got out and went into the National Gallery. There was a lot of cool paintings. soooo many. Then after that it was already 4pm… so I headed back to the hostel.
Read my book on Greece whilst checking email then at 7:30 went out in search for Greek food. Naturally. …I found this great place called the The Four Lanterns that was a couple streets down from the hostel. Best Greek food so far in the UK. BEST Avgolemeno soup in the UK so far. I also had really good lamb. I was reading my Greece book in there as well… and the owner came up to me, as a curious Greek should do, and asked if he could read the book (jokingly) I told him he probably already read it. and he looked at it.. and was like… “haha… no way… Greece?”…”yeah I kinda know that…”. I told him that i’m flying to Athens tomorrow and he was impressed.
He told me to say hi to the Parthenon for him. I told him I would, I said yasas and left stuffed with good food in my belly.
Well that was fun. Lets try something else.
How about, lets go to ACTUAL Greece now. Come on weather… i’ve been nice to you… why can’t you be nice to me?
Day 1 – London
My day began at 5am doing last min checking and packing… and then 7am came and I said goodbye to my flatmates. I will not see them when I come back because they are finishing their schooling in Holland. So… my good buddies will be gone when I get back and i’ll have two more people in my flat. 
…and just when my Dutch started to come together…. haha. I have an excuse to go to Holland now though.
Anyways, I hop in the cab and immediately the cab driver was like, “you do know that several flights have been canceled or delayed?” …no I didn’t know Debbie downer.
The scots freak out when snow hits the ground. I think maybe it snowed 2 inches.
My flight was ok though. It was on time. Great. I had an hour to kill. I looked around at some shops before going through security. Nothing good. Went to security.
Now as a Virgo. I’m a perfectionist. I make sure every time I go through security I have nothing metal on me. but this time was different… even though I did… it beeped. Maybe it was my happiness? whoops… a glitch in the Matrix! They patted me down pretty good and gave up. I still don’t know what it was… maybe it was my Greek Mati? No clue.
The Flight was alright! It was only an hour flight or so.
I got off the plane and was debating taxi or train… since it was already 12:30pm… I wanted to get into the city ASAP because the sun started going down at 3:30pm… that means I only had 3 hours or so. I checked out the taxi… it was going to be 100 pounds. F U TAXI MAN! … so I took the train for 16 pounds….30 mins. Not bad.
I managed to find my hostel and it’s a pretty big place. 5 floors… kinda like an apartment building. The dude at reception was like …”JANZEN” …”WITH A Z… thats sooooo alternative man…” …. hahaha…. ok…. whatever you say bud! …. i’m going to steal that line now.
I threw my luggage into a locker and went out in search for the Marbles of Greece. If you didn’t know. The Parthenon got raped in 1803 by some bastard Lord Elgin. Half the friggin Parthenon is in The British Museum. For year and years the Greeks have cried and fought to get them back.. but the damn brits just won’t have it! One day Greece… one day!
After the Museum, the sun the seriously setting already. I was going to go to Buckingham Palace… but getting on the train at 5 would be impossible because it goes into “peak” times… and I have an “off peak” ticket. and it would have been dark. Another time I guess. You need a good week to explore London pretty good. I only had 3 hours. What a shame.
Now i’m just writing this blog in the hostel and waiting till at least 7 to go to bed. I figure I have to get up at 5:30ish… and I only got about 2.5 hours of sleep last night.
Tomorrow will be a relief. warm weather and sun and great friends.
Day 5 – Culloden Battlefield and Home
The last day of the trip had come. We ate breakfast and mr. fancy pants paramedic man was in the kitchen at the same time so we talked some more and then we parted. The weather was complete shite again, although I wasn’t complaining because it felt like I was in Canada again.
We ventured to Culloden Battlefield that was slightly outside of Inverness. On April 16th 1746 the final clash between the French-supported Jacobites and the Hanoverian British Government in the 1745 Jacobite Rising occurred. Culloden dealt the Jacobite cause—to restore the House of Stuart to the throne of the Kingdom of Great Britain—a decisive defeat. It was the last battle ever to be fought on British soil. Over 5400 Jacobites took part in the Culloden Moor battle and around a 1000 died that day at the hands of the Hanoverian troops who were merciless and brutal. It’s a very haunted place… especially on April 16th.
The Battlefie
Day 4 – Killen and The Flat 5 Blues Scale
We woke up and found our car covered with another 20-30cm of snow. We wanted to get the hell out of Harry Potters cupboard… so we quickly ate and watched the BBC.
The BBC was saying that the entire country of Scotland was under a Severe weather warning and that people should only be driving IF they have to. I wondered what their definition of “Severe weather” meant… and as a Canadian…I thought it was pretty funny. I told my flat-mates that in Canada we all have snow tires and that’s the end of story right there…and weather can be handled no matter how bad it got. But apparently it is illegal to have snow tires in the UK because these tires wreck the roads. …
… SO that’s why Canadian roads are complete SHIT and full of holes that looked like asteroids had hit them. Now it all makes sense. I can die peacefully now.
I went outside to clean off the car in good Canadian fashion and I managed to talk to a local about the snow and weather conditions… in good Canadian fashion. He told me that he just dropped off his son in a nearby town… the journey usually would take 20 mins there and back but it took him 2 hours. …hmmm ok… either the snow is really bad, or people just don’t know how to drive… or both.
He advised me to NOT take the road on the coast because we will get stuck and it was in the middle of nowhere. My Canadian heart was going…. “come on… we can take it… come on, come on…” but the flat mates decided to not go and so we started making our way back towards the east coast to visit the Black Isles in a town called Killen.
On the way we saw a bus and a semi pulled over, we wondered why and then we realized that as we went down the hill there were several other cars and trucks that could not get up the hill/valley. There was NO way our car was going to get up the hill either… it’s pretty small and it had no power….or illegal tires….so we hung outside waiting. This moment turned into a mini adventure within an adventure. Some cars started to try and climb the hill. Before anyone could blink I was already behind a car pushing it up the hill… I love that shit!
I think in total we pushed up 3-4 cars…everyone else just didn’t have the right car to get up the hill.
We walked down to the middle of the valley and we started talking to an off duty police woman, she called the police and they were on the way. The police finally came and checked out the situation and managed to get ploughs to the scene in 20 mins. We were stuck there for about 2 hours and we managed to get up the hill after all. Happy ending!
We carried on our day which was already ending because of the sun…we stopped in Killen and went to the beach! I have never been to a red sand beach. I felt like I was in the Arctic or something! It was pretty cool.
It got dark and we retreated to the road back to Inverness and stayed in the same hostel as last time with the old granny cat. Except this time we met a cool Irishman. That day I learned that Irish folks pronounce their th’s oddly. They don’t say three… they say tee. funny.
Anyways he was an interesting character. He currently was a high end chef but was changing careers and was going to become a paramedic. He was staying in Inverness to complete his training. He said that he was on his 5th. He was explaining that each day some more people would be told to leave as there was only 1 job available. He was explaining to me that the other competitive dude in the camp was from the military and that this guy was being an arrogant prick.
I told him not to worry and to be just himself and that his personality is what a paramedic should be about and that he has the right heart! The people judging will see right through the military guy if he’s playing with the wrong intentions.
And all the while he and I were having this conversation he was playing guitar… and while our convo ended he played the blues scale. Now… as a new composing nerd I said …”hey nice flat 5″ (music theory nerds will know what I mean) and he was like …. “holy christ….!!!! are you a musician??”. So we talked music for a while.
It was a fun night and it had to end because I needed sleep. I wished him good luck and that he shouldn’t worry about tomorrow.
Day 3 – Thurso, Dunnet Head & John O'Groats
We woke up to about 20 cm of new snow and had a very lovely breakfast and talked to the lady who owned the B&B. We told her our intentions and where we were trying to get at for today. We said we wanted to go to Thurso, Dunnet Head and John O’Groats and then we would drive back to Wick to see the distillery…then we had planned on driving to the north western coastal area. She laughed and said… “you ain’t going anywhere today… maybe Thurso… but thats it”.
We headed to the Castle of Mey first because the Old Pulteney distillery in Wick wasn’t open till noon. The Northern portion wasn’t that bad with snow yet, it was just really really cold. The snow stuck around the Northwest portion of the country for now.
The Castle of Mey was built between 1566 and 1572, possibly on the site of an earlier fortification,[1] by George Sinclair, 4th Earl of Caithness. The castle is reputedly haunted by The Green Lady, ghost of the daughter of George, 5th Earl of Caithness, Elizabeth Sinclair. Having fallen in love with a local ploughman, the unhappy girl was imprisoned in the castle attic by her angry father and, in a fit of despair, she threw herself from a window. There’s a fun fact for you.
Then we went to Dunnet Head which is the most northernly tip of Scotland and it was bloody fecking cold… cold enough to knock the balls off a brass monkey. haha. I have NEVER been in such a windy place before. I tried to research the speed of the wind that day but I can’t find anything… but if I had to guess it would be for sure 62-74 km/hr … it was indeed gale force winds. What made it REALLY sketchy was the fact that there seemed to be patches or pockets of wind. So one moment you were flying away and then it would stop and you would fall because your weight against the wind would be disorientated. We probably looked like we were drunk as we stumbled across the land. I remember leaning back and the wind seriously was holding me up… until the pocket of wind stopped for a mere 5 seconds and then I would fall backwards haha. It also was hailing in the beginning… and lemme tell you… I have had baseballs hit at me at 60km/hr …and that was nothing compared to having tiny 1cm hail being whipped at you at 60km/hr. It felt like I was in a horrible paintball game with no armor. The hail stopped after a while and I managed to drum up enough courage to get close to the edge of the cliff. I will not tell you how far away because you people will kill me.
After the exhausting Dunnet Head we traveled to John O’Groats. John O’Groats is definitely something of intrinsic value to me. Since becoming a fan of Ewan Mcgregor & Charley Boorman’s motorbike adventures around the world, I always wanted to see the place. John O’Groats was the starting point for their adventure to Cape Town, Africa. It’s very famous for the start of a journey for most as the name John O’ Groats has a particular resonance because it is often used as a starting or ending point for walks and charitable events to and from Land’s End (at the extreme south-western tip of the Cornish peninsula in England). Although there is really nothing there to see, it was still nice to go to. I would like to grab a motorbike one day and start at John O’Groats and travel south somewhere. The roads are VERY fun to be on if you are a biker… oh the curves of the road! One day I will be back…but on a motorbike… guaranteed!
We decided to head back to Wick for the distillery. Although there wasn’t a tour going on, we wanted to go and see the place. Actually thats a lie, I just wanted free alcohol. Is that bad? …well I got my free alcohol and it was very good! I will be buying some when I get back to Canada!
After the whisky business we drove to Thurso where the roads started to get bad because of snow conditions. We made it to Thurso and stayed at this hostel that was owned by a fish and chips place. That fact alone should have sent up a red flag… but maybe we were a little tipsy from the whisky??? Anyways the room we stayed in was like living in Harry Potters cupboard. We arrived pretty early and had to distract ourselves until bedtime with witty banter and me dancing very terribly.
Day 2 – Wick
We left Inverness and started to make our way to Wick, which is in the north eastern part of Scotland. We realized that with only 6 hours of daylight, we could only do so much in a day… and by 3:30 it was dark. …and it’s not like we could get up super early to beat time because the sun didn’t rise till around 9am. We first stopped at Dunrobin Castle, which was The Duke of Sutherland’s Keep. The Sutherland’s were one of the wealthiest families in the UK. The castle was pretty impressive. It was situated on the coast and the “backyard” was pretty impressive. According to Wikipedia there are 189 rooms within the house, making it the largest house in the northern Highlands.
By this time it started getting really cold and the snow started to fall and I swear every 5 mins more north we went the worse it got. We drove through a “white” road on the map, which meant… 1 track road…in the middle of freaking nowhere. The snow made everything pretty cool (literally) looking and at point we stopped at some one point to just walk around. As the ham of the group I decided it was time to show off my horrible dancing. I hope I bring some humor to the table.
The reason why we took the white road was because we wanted to try and find some of the old standing stones.
I have some beef with Scotland for it’s lack of road signs. We were constantly missing things because they didn’t have signs, even in the city they have a lack of road signs… getting lost or missing shit was annoying as hell… but we managed to find one area of standing stones. It was just up a path. We met some nice horseys along the way.
This area was called the Hill o’ Many Stanes. (from Wikipedia) Hill o’ Many Stanes has about 200 upright stones, none more than a metre high, set out in rows running approximately north and south with the incline. The rows are not parallel, however, and they create a fan-shaped pattern. This arrangement is believed to be a relic of Bronze Age times.
It was hard to see the stones because of the snow but nonetheless it was pretty cool! We then set off towards Wick and stopped at another site called Cairn o’ Get which is a horned and chambered burial cairn of Neolithic date. It looks like this in the summer time: http://www.flickr.com/photos/iorusandbela/3576549582/sizes/m/
We got back to the car and Ilse realized that she lost her keys at the site. You have to realize… it was now almost dark, and you had to walk a good 10-15 mins to get to the site… so finding the keys was going to be based on pure luck.
She did find the keys… i’m not sure how but we are lucky bastards! Since it was dark we headed to Wick and found a nice bed and breakfast to stay in for the night. We watched X-factor and called it a night.
A nice handsome gentleman!
Isles of Scilly Porth Hellick
The Highlands: Pre-Journey, DAY 1
Pre-Journey
I am finally done this first term. Even though technology was trying it’s hardest to mess with me, I still made it happen. Because it needed to be done, as I am leaving for Greece on the 5th and have no time for nonsense school work.
I am glad that half of the term is over. I am really glad that I don’t have to see that school till Feb 1. I am really really glad that i’ll be in a country that has better food. My body is thanking me for taking this break…for it is needed.
As I said in my previous post…my flat mates and I were going for an adventure up to the highlands. This journey has been a success and I took today to recover, edit photos, write blogs and eat christmas chocolate. Shall we begin?
Day 1
We first drove to Loch Lomond. It was starting to get cold at this point… but it wasn’t snowing yet.
The following pictures are just random areas that we stopped in while making our way to Inverness for the night.
We arrived at Inverness in the evening. We didn’t book a hostel because we wanted to be flexible. We went to the first one that Lonely Planet provided (Bazpackers) and luckily there was room. It was a pretty nice hostel. Nice kitchen, nice showers, bedroom was alright. There was a nice cat and a wood burning stove. We sat in the common room all night drinking tea and trying to figure out what we wanted to do for the second day.
The road trip of INTUITION
Hello everyone,
Tomorrow I leave for the highlands! I am tres excited. It will be a lovely change…as I have just finished up my term. It feels great to be done the first half. Time flies. I have learned a lot. A little about school but a lot about myself, which I think is more important.
My flat mates and I head to Inverness for the first night. This is the road trip of INTUITION. We are going to decide each day where to go. You know what? You really NEED to go on intuition in this country because of the poor weather! We will be hiking as much as we possibly can. I can’t wait. We will be making a giant loop and hitting all the spots we want to see. I’m glad we have a car.
Today I said goodbye to my Canadian friends. The next time I will see them is till Feb 1st… which is really weird to think about… we pretty much hang out everyday. Pretty rad guys.
Anyways, I should go and pack. I have a lot of emails to send out and phone calls to make before my departure. I will be back on Monday, probably at night. I shall report back then.
Love and Light!
-Ally J
I’m glad I won’t be seeing this room for the next 46 days!
Konaki Taverna
I just got back from a lovely day in Glasgow. I’m beginning to love that city more and more every time I go. It certainly beats Paisley. Paisley has no life while Glasgow breathes on it’s own.
We did some Christmas shopping and went for lunch at this over-priced sushi place. The place was cool because of its conveyor belt that went through the restaurant. Basically the food are packed onto small different colored plates. The color determined how much over-priced sushi you wanted to pay. …I’m sorry guys… but… £3.80 for 2 pieces of a Dragon Roll???? Unacceptable. I can get a 8 pc (min) back in Canada for like $10cnd.
The place:
I hope to find a sushi place that doesn’t require me to sell off body parts in order to pay for a meal. yeeeesh.
After sushi we went to see “Men Who Stare At Goats”. Ewan Mcgregor, George clooney, Kevin Spacey.
It was alright! here is the trailer:
After the movie we walked to the west end to Konaki Taverna. A nice little place indeed.
I had dolmades, garides saganaki, pastitsio and you just can’t leave until you have Baklava…so I did. The food was pretty good. Not as good as Thea Thea’s cooking or Yaya’s…! It was nice to watch Greek t.v for a bit too. The Aek and Paok game was on. I thought of Papou when Aek won… and now I have been informed that yaya was not happy because Paok lost… haha… poor Papou!
I guess there’s another greek place just south of this one and the greek orthodox church is pretty close too. I guess this is the Greek area of town?
Some pictures from the day:
P.S these are not taken from my DSLR, so the color is off in some.
Pass the tits yo!
Glasgow
I went to Glasgow today with my American/Canadian buddies from school. It was a fun day. We got there by train (first time on the train)…. all I can say is…. Veeeerrrrry niiiiiiicceeee. Beats Toronto anyday. It was friggin cheap too. £3.30 for round trip. Takes like 8 mins to get there. I’ll be using the train way more than the bus. Bus takes about a good 40 mins to get there.
When we got to Glasgow, we all looked at eachother and asked… “what are we even doing today?” … haha. So… we just picked a direction and went with it. We found a Starbucks in the first 2 mins and we all grabbed a coffee. ….man. It was NICE. I usually get my Vanilla Soy Latte everyday back in Toronto… This was the first one in over 70 days! The guys were glad to have a good black drip coffee again. Although Anthony has been importing coffee beans since we came here.. he still appreciated it. haha.
We marched on in random directions. Found a music store that didn’t have any regular brands, all knock offs… and a crapload of Behringer pieces of crap. I definitely miss L&M back home!
It was lunch time so we decided to go to the Drum & Monkey and have some lunch. We all had some type of Scottish Ale Pie and damn was it good. Grade A stuff mate! We still are constantly daring each other to eat Haggis. I don’t know if we will ever accept the challenge… but my stomach turns just thinking about it. Who the hell wants BOILED meat? eh’??? when you have meat… you gotta BBQ that stuff…not boil it. Ick. We were content with a bacon free meal and we decided to go back to Paisley.
The weather was ok today. We had a semi cloudy/sunny 8 degree weather day. …until the end of course… where it started pissing with rain again. I’m pretty sure not one day goes by where it doesn’t rain.
School has been a bit boring. I only have a monday class now, and it’s about law and copyright… not exactly an exciting course to take, but the profs make it alright. I think we only have about 3 weeks left… then Christmas break 
We finished recording the punk band Shotgun Fury a week ago. We just have to mix the tracks and then we are pretty much done. It’s nice to get a big project out of the way. The only other big project that we have is the film. We finished the ADR (The profs told us it would be hard… nahh.. you kidding me???) and now we are in search for a shotgun mic so we can finish the foley… which would easily take a couple of hours to do. I say easy because we have 2 drummers in the group… Anthony and myself included… foley is a piece of cake for drummers because they have the rhythm and can synch the picture with sound pretty good. Some of the best foley artists in toronto are drummers!
I think next week my Dutch friends and I will rent a car and drive down south to Galloway Forest Park to stargaze. Galloway is the biggest park in the UK and is considered to be one of the “darkest places on earth” and it just grabbed the title of being a “Dark-Sky Park” a week ago. There are only 18 places around the world that are considered “Dark-Sky Park”. 3/4 of them being in Canada. More info on Galloway Park here: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/science/space/article6887233.ece
That’s all for now. Here are 2 pictures of my friends. Anthony is from North Carolina and Ryan is from Toronto… I always saw these guys at school in Toronto, but we never really talked because they were in a lower term than me. It’s been nice getting to know them, really cool hard working peeps!
Anthony!
Ryan and Anthony!
Song at the moment: a song that reps me! 
Love the video too. 3:27 is EPIC! Sets my heart on fire!
A Paisley Christmas – The Countdown begins
There’s one thing that my friends and I have noticed about Scotland. It’s that these people LOVE fireworks. I swear they make up random holidays JUST to make an excuse to set off fireworks.
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The Jacobite Train…aka The Harry Potter Train!
Ok.
This is my 4th attempt to write on this blog. Something out there clearly does not want me to write about the experience I had… for the computer has lost it not once but on 4 separate times. The only thing I will say is… my experience was a life changing experience and it conquered one of my bad habits and i’m this closer to happiness. Yay! Woot!
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