Below are the 17 most recent journal entries recorded in caleboo's LiveJournal:

Saturday, August 19th, 2006
10:34 pm	For the last two weeks one of Miwa's friends from Japan has been here, Yuri. I met her when Miwa and I were first dating. Its been nice to have a third person in the house. Miwa can relax and be Japanese for the first time in a while. The two of them also did the housework while I was at work :) The cat likes her too. That's when you know its good people. (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Saturday, August 5th, 2006
11:10 am	I'll jump on the quiz bandwagon (hell, I jumped onto the blog bandwagon... late) http://www.bitpit.be/ I got 76%, it said I was a Genuine Ultimate Gamer or something. Current Mood: gamey (Comment on this)
Monday, July 31st, 2006
2:15 pm	Mi and I went to the coast this Sunday. Rockport is a little touristy destination for those Bostonians who don't want to handle the traffic and prices of the Cape. Halibut Point State Park is based around this old granite quarry that has filled in with water. The quarry, with its "NO QUARRY SWIMMING" signs posted every 6 ft, looks like one of the nicest places I could think of swimming! Definitely the nicest for cliff diving I've seen. A fellow there informed me that all the times he has jumped in, a guy would come out of the bushes within 3 minutes and kick him out of the park. I did swim there, but in the ocean not the quarry. The rocks made an ok swimming point. After I got out I was sitting and idling admiring this brilliantly red rock patch when I realized the red was coming from my bleeding foot, which I had cut on one of the rocks. Current Mood: bleeding (Comment on this)
Friday, July 28th, 2006
9:17 am	audio books I have a 50 minute drive every morning and evening to work, and it was really boring until I started listening to audiobooks during the drive. Right now I'm listening to The Wheel of Time. Whats fun is listening to Uno's cursing ("flaming" this! and "bloody" that!). Its much more real than in print :D comical! (Comment on this)
Tuesday, July 18th, 2006
11:18 am	Well I'm back in Boston now, and ironically I saw my first Lamborghini in traffic the day after I got here. Here are some highlights from the trip, in no particular order: - Venice itself: Its an amazing city. Just hangin out is almost a magical activity. My recommendation is just cruise around the city and soak up the old world atmosphere. - The statues in Piazza Signoria: This is the square in front of the Ufizzi Museum in Florence. The square used to hold Michelangelo's 'David' until that was moved to a nearby museum. It now holds a bunch of huge statues, including one of my favorites, 'Perseus' by Benvenuto Cellini. He is holding a sword in one hand, and Medusa's severed head in the other. - Climbing to the top of the Duomo in Florence: Its not too bad of a climb, just enough to feel like you've achieved something. You can see the inside painting of the dome up close, and get a huge view of the city at the top. - Italy winning the world cup: Watching those guys jumping off the bridge into the canal was fun. Almost as funny was watching the female tourists crowding around to take pictures of the dripping, almost naked, guys. - San Marco's Basilica in Venice: The most disgustingly rich church I've ever seen. In addition to the amazing mosaics, architecture, and other art, it also has a real otherworldly feeling, like it exists in all dimensions at once. - Going to museums: Its hard to say which museum experience was the best for me. Almost all of them had some highlight I really enjoyed. -- Georgione's 'Tempest' and Titian's 'Pieta' in the Academy Museum in Venice. -- Botecelli's 'Venus' and Leonardo's 'Annunciation' in the Ufizzi in Florence. -- There was this great statue of David by Donatello in the Bargello museum in Florence. It was right out of a shoujo manga. Also there was a graphic statue of 'Leda and the Swan' there. -- I really liked seeing all the different pictures of the Annunciation. Don't know why, but its one of the only Christian themes I really enjoyed. Take the angel from Leonardo's and Mary from Fra Angelico's and combine them for the win. - Highlights from church paintings: George and the Dragon from Scuola di San Giorgio, Venice. Mosaics in San Marco's Basilica. Lots of others. I had lots more highlights. I'll post them if I get more energy. Caught a cold on my last day there. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 12th, 2006
3:16 pm	OK ok I like Florence again. It sure does have all the art you could want. We went to the Uffizi museum today; called the best collection of renaissance paintings in the world. I am certainly getting my renaissance education taken care of. Leonardo finally appeared with a few amazing paintings. I really like his Annunciation, done when he was younger. http://www.join2day.net/abc/L/leonardo/leonardo37.JPG We also went to Miwa's father's friends house last night. Her father worked in Florence for a year 35 years ago, and still keeps the friendship. We had an amazing dinner: yummy raw fish, pasta, honeydew melon with prociutto (really good). (Comment on this)
3:14 pm	Got back to Florence yesterday. Oh my god its so noisy after Venice! I can’t see how people can live with all these cars! I yearn for more simpler times. Florence has one redeeming feature over Venice however (over and above the ninja turtles and other various mutant animals). In Venice there is a steady stream of beautiful, scantily clad, women. In Florence this becomes a river. They are everywhere! And I hardly know where to look, except for at the, uh, Ooooh look at that church! (OMG that skirt is so sheer I can see everything!). And look at the, um, fruit stand.. (really everything!) (Comment on this)
3:12 pm	Going back to Florence today. But lots to say about Venice. We watched the world cup finals in a few places: mostly standing from the outskirts of a bar. They, along with about 6 other bars in the square, had a TV facing the outside so that people could watch. Spent the first 90 minutes there, then in overtime, we retired to our hotel and watched from the common room. The 2 experiences could not have been more different! From the bar, of course, the crowd was full of crazy football watchers, with horns and flags and face painting. At the hotel was a handful of middle aged tourists from different places around the world who asked me questions like, “how many quarters will there be?” Had to laugh. After Italy won, we went outside to enjoy the revelry. It was really muted considering 2 things: 1) there are no cars and no scooters, and so no horns to honk (except the odd air horn and boat horn) 2) the tourists outnumber the locals by about 5:1, so there were actually relatively few ppl in the city excited about the win. Mostly it was Italian tourists from other cities. Across the water on another island, where more locals lived, things looked pretty crazy. But we went out anyways and walked to one of the more famous bridges. There lots of ppl were gathering, and guys started stripping down and jumping the 8-10m off the bridge into the canal (yes, the polluted, disease ridden canal). 3 guys in particular started the jumping. They were really drunk and ran around and jumped off the bridge again about 6 or 7 times. It was good times all around. (Comment on this)
3:11 pm	Venice is at its most beautiful in the evening. It is really quiet. You can hear the water against the shore, and the gondolas swishing through the water, and ppl laughing. You can buy a glass of wine and drink it outside by the canal. Also it is of course nice and cool. We went out in the evening to see San Marco’s Basilica again. I would recommend seeing it in the evening. It, and the huge square in front of it, are well lit. There are famous café’s arrayed around the square, all of which have live gypsy or classical bands playing outside. The square is large enough that 3 good sized bands can play and not interfere with each other or dominate the space. We wandered around to listen to each. But I could only look at the basilica. I’m not sure if its architectural, or age, or wealth or some metaphysical reason, but the basilica seems rooted to the earth in a way that I’ve only seen once before. It seems like its foundation reaches down to the very center of the earth, such a solid feeling it gives. The other buildings in the square, by comparison, seems like they should be floating away, and when I was they I thought that they could not last long. I said that I have seen this once before. I got the same feeling from an old church about 40 minutes outside of Kyoto. Looking at it I expected to see lighting flash at any moment (and maybe a voice proclaim “ONLY THE PURE OF HEART MAY ENTER!“). It looked like it had been there from when the earth began. The basilica gives the same impression. (Comment on this)
3:09 pm	Its been awhile since I could connect to hte internet, so I'm just going to put the last few days in the next few posts. We spent most of the day going out to a few small islands. One famous for its glass, one for its lace, and one for itself. The last is a very small island, Torcello, which is the birthplace of Venice. In the 1200s a plague wiped out just about everyone there, so the city was moved. The is an old church there, founded in the 700s, which has some amazing old mosaics in Byzantium style. It was worth a look, although the island was really hot without much shade. Recommended reading: The Sarantium Mosaic. It’s a historical fiction about a mosaicist who travels to Sarantium (Byzantium) to do a work for the cathedral there. He ends up getting involved in the politics there and doing heroic deeds for kings and queens. Its probably my favourite book in the world (well 2 books), which is saying a LOT, and its by a Canadian author, Guy Gavriel Kay. I’m going to read it again as soon as I get back. (Comment on this)
Sunday, July 9th, 2006
3:10 am	What you may not have gotten from my previous entries is that I really like Venice. I mean really like it. I think its my favorite city in the whole world. The lack of cars is key, because there is no car stink and no car noise. Its hard to imagine what this is like if you haven't seen it before, but it feels like camping in the middle of the city. You have everything you ever liked about the city: good food, entertainment, shopping, interesting ppl and performers, but with the fresh air and quiet of the mountains. It has some problems, of course. The Italian culture, while its not bad, is not perfectly suited to me, there is also massive flooding every year. The biggest problem is the amount of tourists. They swarm like bugs over the most interesting places, bringing the tourist parasites with them (I swear I'll snap if another guy pushes a rose into my face, which means sometime this evening). I mostly haven't minded other tourists in other places, but here they are a real eyesore, and they force me to avoid the best places in the city. (Comment on this)
Friday, July 7th, 2006
11:42 am	Today was a hard core sightseeing day, even though it was thunderstorming. We saw St. Marco's Basilica, the grandest church in Venice, as well as the Ducal Palace and Peggy Gugenheim's collection. St. Marco's is not as big as the Duomo in Florence, but way way more detailed and richer. All kinds of gold and silver items, and mosaics covering everything. The cool thing about it is that it was made over several hundred years, and the artistical styles are completely different in different parts of the church. Apparently whenever Venice plundered another city, like Constantinople during the crusades for example, they would bring all the treasures back and use them to decorate St. Marco's. The Ducal palace was also nice, with lots of famous art everywhere, and very cool gothic architecture (and cool prison, where Cassanova was kept at one point) but we were really tired once we got out of that place. Went to see Gugenheim's collection anyways. It has some paintings by Picasso and Ernst and others. Neither Miwa or I are modern art lovers (me not being very knowleagable about art in general) but I found that after looking through that collection I was quite refreshed. I think the proportions and colours represented there must be very pleasing to the eye. Also perhaps because the museum itself was very bright and simply laid out compared to St Marco's and the palace. There was this sculpture of a roaring lion I really liked, and also the famous 'guy on a horse with a stiffie' (not the real title). (Comment on this)
Thursday, July 6th, 2006
4:49 pm	Got into Venice this afternoon, haven't done much but walk around. The coolest thing, of course, is that there are no cars. The air is really fresh for a city, dispite the smell of pee on every other wall. But the lack of noise pollution is the best! The evening air, sans car noise, is eerily quiet. I could really get to love it. The best thing I saw today was a pile of poo. The great thing about this particular pile of poo was its location: exactly the middle of the busiest bridge in the middle of the city. It was one of the few bridges which cross the grand canal, and the one closest to the major shopping centers. Thousands of people walk across this bridge daily, and it gets busy enough that you can't look where your feet are stepping very well. The poo had already been stepped in several times when I saw it. I don't know how dogs decide where they are going to poo, but I know that they seem to be particular about it, often holding until they find the right spot. I would just like to see into the mind of the dog. Why did he choose the exact center of that particular bridge? Did he/she actually have a dastardly plan to 'get' as many people as possible? Was it just by total accident? Was it just the nice cool breeze flowing through the middle of the bridge? ... (Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 5th, 2006
4:10 pm	Florence has been really nice. Its a beautiful city. I ddin't know anything about it before I came, but now I know its famous for its art ;) The coffee is great. I knew Italians like their coffee with sugar, and I never have, but the coffee here is different, and it goes really well with sugar. I had a coffee drink with irish cream shook up with ice, and it was one of the most refreshing drinks I've ever had. The locals just stand at the bar in the cafe, mostly, because it costs more to sit down. The tourist have money, so they sit. I had a kind of epiphany moment, like the first time I saw the grand canyon, when I saw the Duomo (cathedral) in the city for the first time, and realized how much more incredibly grand it was in real life above pictures. Its huge and every inch of the front is incredibly detailed. The inside of the dome is all painted (heaven and hell represent. one devil is enthusiastically shoving a flaming spear up a naked guy's anus) and we could go up this tiny winding staircase (463 steps) and see it up close (the hight was really scarey and one girl had a complete panic attack and had to go down the up stairs). But the most stunning thing to me is the casualness of how art is displayed here. In museums in any other city a painting by Raphael would be in the place of honour and kept locked tight. Here today I went to a museum which is (or was) a private collection where I saw 11 paintings by Raphael and could have easily reached out and touched them. Statues by Michelangelo and Donatello (and other ninja turtles) are casually displayed in museums about the city. Soccer has also been a highlight, because Italy beat Germany last night and are going to the finals. The whole city went completely bonkers and partied (which means honking the horn on your scooter) until the wee hours. We're going to Venice tomorrow and will see the finals there. I'll bet we will be able to find a big public square where they are showing it. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, July 2nd, 2006
5:30 pm	florence Miwa and I are in Florence now. We arrived last night after a Loooong day. We left friday evening, slept for about 2 hours on the plane, and spent 10 hours in Frankfurt before flying to Florence in the evening. Frankfurt was great. I really like it. The people there are pretty normal, except they talk funny, and every so often you come across a guy who, if you put him in furs, would look perfectly normal in an Asterix and Obelisk cartoon. And every so often a woman who, if you put her in black plastic, would look at home wielding a whip and yelling at you to shut up and lick her boot ;) I don't know anything about that though. Oh and brazil was playing against france on that day in frankfurt, so it was crazy!!!! no violence, but a lot of singing and waving flags. and drinking of course. Current Mood: artistic (Comment on this)
Sunday, February 19th, 2006
12:13 am	In Boston now, there are lots of interesting things going on, and I might write them down... (Comment on this)
Thursday, June 16th, 2005
10:17 am	I saw this great article in the Vancouver Courier about historical fencing. Its basically a no holds barred European fencing style which is as close as possible to the real old style European dueling. They learn advanced technique by studying manuals of greats like Cappo Ferro. There is a school of the style here in Vancouver called Academie Duello http://www.academieduello.com/ Where a couple of instructors who have been learning for around 20 years are teaching a group of about 50 students. They have close links to the Society for Creative Anachronism, as you could imagine, and often fight in tournaments with society members. Current Mood: want to duel! (Comment on this)