Fantasy football

Not surprisingly, I defeated Andrew last week in our fantasy football league. This week I'm facing a team that is 0-3, so I feel like I have a pretty good shot at having 2 wins in a row.

And you thought you had a strict father...

After making last minute reservations at a local hostel, Andrew and I aimlessly wandered around Galway for the better half of an afternoon while Tom went fishing and hobnobbed with street performers. We were on a deserted side street when I spotted a creepy skull and crossbones carved into a wall. It appeared to be part of some sort of memorial, but the descriptions carved into the stone were faded and discolored, so it was impossible to know what the memorial commemorated. Thanks to the magic of PhotoEditor and the internet, I can fill in the details.

"The Lynch Memorial Window"

As legend has it, this window marks the spot where the Mayor of Galway, James Lynch Fitzstephen, hanged his own son in 1493. His son Walter murdered a Spanish guest of the family, and gave himself up to his dad, Galway's mayor and the town's chief magistrate. Everyone in town liked Walter. When his father convicted him and sentenced him to death, a mob demanded Walter's pardon and tried to rescue him. The Mayor, Walter and the bailiffs couldn't reach the place of execution because of the large pro-Walter crown demanding his release. Enraged, the Mayor took his son inside their nearby house, took him upstairs, tied a rope around his neck, and threw him out the window. Walter hanged to death in full view of the crowd below. The legend (several different versions of which I found online) serves to show that "the enforcement of the law was more important than the bonds of family." Some people believe that the word "lynch" comes from this event.

"This memorial of the stern and unbending justice of the chief magistrate of this city, James Lynch Fitzstephen, elected mayor A. D. 1493, who condemned and executed his own guilty son, Walter, on this spot, has been restored to its ancient site A. D. 1854, with the approval of the Town Commissioners, by their Chairman, Very Rev. Peter Daly, P. P., and Vicar of St. Nicholas."

"1524: Remember deathe, vaniti of vaniti and al is but vaniti"

Cool looking door located nearby

Vatican City, Rome, etc.

In honor of Easter Sunday, I thought I'd put up some pics of Vatican City from our visit to Rome. When I was hunting for them in my Italy folder, I came across some other Italy pics I don't think I ever posted...so consider this a sort of Rome grab-bag.

St. Peter's Basilica...it was rainy and at night, so my pictures of Vatican City didn't turn out all that great. And by the time we made it up to the door, visiting hours were over.

I think that the pope's apartment is the lighted couple of windows on the top floor on the far right.

Caught in the rain.

Caught in the rain again. You can see 2 street vendors trying to sell us roses behind the guy in blue.

In our hostel's tiny euro elevator.

Rome Metro (subway) sign.

In the Termini metro station, waiting for the train. It's Halloween, hence the ladies are wearing masks.

The Colosseo metro stop.

Random street protest. I think they were protesting something about higher university tuition costs or school fees. We also saw protests in Istanbul and I think a few in Ireland. Maybe I'll have to start another category...

Turkish Nights

Seeing the news about the President's visit to Turkey today and tomorrow has caused me to reflect on our weekend trip to Istanbul last November. In past posts I've talked about how amazing Turkey was...how it might have been my favorite trip of the whole semester. One of the best things we did that weekend was go out and sample the nightlife near Taksim Square. Like most great nights out, I didn't even really want to go at first. I was tired or whiny or something.

The main street was packed with a flowing mass of pedestrians. Tons of people were out and about. There was a very relaxed feeling of it all...like everyone was just chilling or hanging out, enjoying the beautiful night. It didn't seem very clubby or pretentious. And yes, they served beer. I thought that maybe because Turkey is predominately Muslim, beer wouldn't be available and/or frowned upon (a scary prospect considering that we had been living in Ireland for two months at that point). That was not the case. Our hostel even had a bar on the rooftop terrace. Instead of trying to describe the scene, I'll put up a bunch of photos and a few video clips that Andrew took.

Oh yeah, another great part about the Turkey trip: Tom was acting up, so I kicked him squarely in the face. It shut him up right away.

London

Before leaving Ireland, I decided to make an impulsive, last-minute trip to London since I had some free time and just enough money to last for 2 days. I figured this would be my last chance to visit London for quite a while, so I should take advantage of the opportunity, however brief the visit would have to be.

When I arrived in London, the weather was foggy, cold, and generally crappy. Here, you can only see halfway up the London Eye (giant ferris wheel). I did not ride the Eye. I generally don't like ferris wheels. Andrew and I rode the sightseeing ferris wheel in Belfast. Needless to say, he and his beloved camera were almost thrown out of our little car (by me) and sent plummeting to certain death for 1. rocking our car, 2. pointing out how the door wasn't closed correctly and 3. generally being an ass.

St. Paul's Cathedral was one of the stop on our tour bus route. Before I left Ireland, I asked around school to see what people would recommend that I see considering I'd be there for about 48 hours and really had to prioritize. People recommended that I do one of the hop-on, hop-off bus tours since that way I'd be able to see alot of stuff in a short amount of time. My general strategy was to just shoot the landmarks through the bus window as we rode by. However, I really liked St. Paul's, and the weather was nice, so I decided to hop-off and take some better pictures. I didn't go inside though...

One of the few places I did go inside was Westminster Abbey. It was really cool...lots of kings and queens, famous people and others are buried in there. I saw the coronation throne and stood where Queen Elizabeth II was crowned. My high school friends will remember that I used to openly profess my dislike of the British Royal Family, as well as NBA basketball and chapstick. After living in Michigan for a winter I have become a seasonal chapstick user, I followed the Lakers playoff run this summer in LA and now I've visited Westminster Abbey. I guess I've gone soft.

I snapped this picture from inside the tour bus.

Here are Christmas decorations on Carnaby Street, near Soho.

I had this picture taken just to prove that I was actually in London.

Andrew's waxing and threading

I was looking at some videos from the Istanbul trip and was shocked to discover that I overlooked these two gems...




video shot by Tom

ole Bessie Lou is sick!

In class on Wednesday, the LCD bulb/lighting element decided to crap out on ole Bessie Lou (my laptop). Basically, about 5 minutes after I start her up, the whole screen goes about 98% black. I say 98% because if I shine a bright light on the screen, I can see that everything is still there. I was initially concerned that I had lost some schoolwork and photos. Luckily, it only seems to be a hardware problem.

Since I am in the law business, I will assess blame for this mishap in percentage of fault.
-) 1% blame - me, for probably dropping or handling ole Bessie Lou too roughly once or twice...
-) 32% blame - Michael Dell of Dell computers because, after-all, his name is on the computer...
-) 33% blame - Andrew, because he and I had a discussion the day before about whose computer is better. At the time, I believed ole Bessie Lou was clearly superior because Andrew's computer is so loud it sounds like a Harrier jet getting ready to take off from the deck of the U.S.S. Nimitz. Also, his computer gets hotter than Daisy Duke in her short-shorts and is liable to burn your lap or anything else it's sitting on.
-) 34% blame - Tom, when he saw I was having computer problems in class, he cursed my computer and play-kicked it. He has weak ankles, so I know the kick didn't harm ole Bessie Lou, but the curse did. Tom was unhappy that I would not publish some of his comments on this blog. I told him that if his comments met the Chapmaster standards of excellence, I'd allow them to publish. He was unsatisfied with this and cursed ole Bessie Lou again.

One of my team of computer experts, (step)brother Chris diagnosed it as a possible loose wire, and sent me instructions on how to open up the keyboard and "wiggle it." I think the chance that I can sucessfully open up ole Bessie Lou and operate on her without causing more harm is about 1%. So I'll just tough it out until I get home in a few weeks. Please excuse any misspellings or grammatical errors because I can barely see what I am writing. The internet says it will cost $0-$300 to fix Bessie Lou, but until then, I have to improvise.

inappropriate?

In yesterday's post, I featured our Irish Thanksgiving celebration. Here's one unfortunate incident from that evening that I feel is my duty to report to everyone. (this is a dramatized version...fact checked by AS himself)

Many people tried very hard to make our Irish Thanksgiving successful...as close a substitute to an American Thanksgiving as possible. Matt and Dan spent virtually the whole day cooking, after having spent the days before Thanksgiving planning and buying hard-to-find ingredients. Other members of the group lent their apartment space, cooked dishes at home, assisted with cooking, or brought other items for the feast. For example, as I eluded to in the first Thanksgiving post, I brought the very popular dinner rolls and soda. At about 8pm, everything started coming together. The apartment was filled with warmth and the smells of a Thanksgiving feast, food was set out on the table...people began realizing that we'd have an actual, authentic, Thanksgiving dinner. There was excitement and jubilation in the air. Everyone's hard work and effort was going to pay off in a cornucopia of holiday deliciousness.

We all took our seats around the table. Someone suggested that we say "grace" and someone else playfully suggested that we all hold hands while doing so. Andrew, who had earlier called and interrupted the cooks about 75 times to get directions to the apartment (before arriving to dinner late and not bringing anything [aside from a free lesson in how to sing show-tunes from "Les Mis" and "Beauty and the Beast"]), stood at the end of the table. Dan, the patriarch of the evening (since he carved the turkey), volunteered to lead us in prayer.

Everyone joined hands, closed their eyes and bowed their head. Dan began with something along the lines of..."Dear Lord, We thank you for bringing us together today and providing us with this bountiful feast...." Just then, during the middle of the prayer, Andrew interrupted, shouted something rather inappropriate. I was confused and taken aback. I opened my eyes to see Andrew peeking his eyes open and smirking...looking around the circle to see if anyone laughed at him making fun of Dan's prayer. No one was laughing. No one had looked up. There was silence. I glared at Andrew and slowly shook my head side-to-side. After a period of more awkward silence, Dan recovered and continued the prayer. The prayer ended and we commenced feasting.

Here is a dramatization of what happened, and what everyone was thinking...(click to enlarge)

After dinner, Andrew discreetly asked me about his prayer-joke. He says that (for some odd reason) he didn't think the prayer was "serious"...that he wasn't actually trying to mock it. Nevertheless, he admitted that it was pretty awful that it sounded like he had made fun of the prayer and/or Dan as he was saying the Thanksgiving prayer. I replied, "Well, that's what happens when you try to be a jackass and make a joke out of everything. Sometimes the class-clown screws up. At least they were nice enough to ignore you."

Andrew nodded...but I'm not really sure if he fully understood what I was saying.

Istanbul

In Istanbul, we stayed in an "old town" area (I can't remember if is was called Old Town, or something else) near two of Istanbul's most prized landmarks: The Blue Mosque and the Hagia Sophia.

The Sultan Ahmed Mosque ("Blue" Mosque) is the national mosque of Turkey as still operates as a mosque today. On our first morning in Istanbul, we were woken up at 5:45am by the booming call to prayer coming from the loudspeakers. The loud singing echoed throughout the streets.

Directly across from the Blue Mosque is the Hagia Sophia. It was originally a Christian church, then became a mosque, and was turned into a museum by Atatürk. The park between the two buildings is the Sultanahmed Square (I think...I'm not real solid on these historical details. I am loosely relying on Wikipedia and my memory). This is also the site of a Roman Hippodrome.

The surrounding square/neighborhood has a handful of ruins and relics from past civilizations that occupied the area. This one had Greek or Roman writing on it.

This was the nearest big street by our place. It had many shops, street vendors and restaurants. Many of the restaurants in Turkey had very aggressive "promoters" out on the sidewalk who tried to get you into their place. We only got pulled into one place, only after they promised us free beer and coffee. Alas, it was the Turks who got the last laugh. That story will come later...

The rooftop of our hostel had a great terrace with a bar and cafe. It also had a great view, overlooking either the Bhosphorus River or Marmara Sea.

Turkish shave

One of the coolest things we did in Istanbul was get a Turkish shave. We were walking down a back alley passing a barbershop, when a barber cutting a man's hair waived us in. After thinking about it for a while, Andrew and I decided to go in and get shaves. (Note: Tom had already gotten a shave separately at another shop, so he just sat and watched. It was funny... a few weeks before the trip to Turkey, Tom decided to not shave, so he'd have alot of beard growth for the Turkish barber to shave off. Unfortunately for him, 3 weeks of not shaving produced less facial hair than most 10 year old boys in Istanbul were sporting.)

The owner of the shop spoke broken English...everyone else was speaking only Turkish. I pointed at my beard and made a "scissor" motion with my fingers to try and indicate I wanted a shave. The assistant barber quickly went to work and shaved my face with a straight razor. But that was just the beginning.

After the shave (and brining me a free cup of Turkish coffee) my barber put some sort of mud mask on my face. My "scissor" motion must have indicated that I wanted a haircut too. While the mud mask was drying, the barber went to work on my hair. He called over the shop owner, as well as another man in the shop, and they loudly discussed my sideburns and something about the back of my head (in Turkish). I realized that this was the most attention anyone had ever paid to my sideburns. Then he went to work cutting, trimming, shaving, etc., seemingly going hair by hair. After the shave, mud mask and haircut, the barber kept me in the chair for another 1.5 hours. He waxed my nose pores, trimmed my nose hair, tidied up my eyebrows, burned off my ear hair with a lighter, put on a Spice Girls CD (the only music in English they had), had the barbershop helper kid run a massager on my arms and legs, put on aftershave, blow dried my hair, put gel in it, reinforced my hairdo with hairspray and doused me with body spray. Oh, and I got another cup of coffee and a cup of tea.

Before and after pictures showing the effects of my shave. Notice the Woodrow Wilson hairstyle the barber gave me.

While this was going on, the other barber was doing pretty much the same thing to Andrew in the other chair. The one exception is that they "threaded" his eyebrows and other hair on his face. It looked funny, seemed to cause him alot of pain, and therefore was really hillarious.

Tom and I discovered (and you can see) that Andrew's face is actually 5 shades whiter without his permanent 5 o'clock shadow.

The whole experience took about 2 hours and cost us about $35 each...it was well worth it. The guys in the barbershop were great. They were friendly, funny and seemed to like having us there. I know this is probably related to the fact that we were "high paying customers," but their hospitality was probably the best part of the trip.

Andrew's Istanbul

Photo courtesy of Andrew Smith

Rome day 2

We began our second day in Rome by going to a local market. It was bustling, full of beautiful fruits, vegetables, spices, wines, textiles and other wares. Of course, we passed up all that stuff and went directly to the guy selling fake watches on top of a cardboard box. Illegal vendors like these keep their goods on small blankets, so if the police come, they can snatch it up in a bundle and run away. I walked away from this market the proud owner of a brand new fake Rolex. I negotiated the guy down from 60 euros to 30 euros. Andrew criticized my negotiating skills, saying that I should have demanded the shirt off the vendor's back and one half of his cardboard box.

This was probably one of the cutest things I've seen in a long time. A bunch of Italian kids were competing, gesturing, and arguing (in a friendly way) about who could get their characture drawn. They all huddled around the gruff old artist to watch him draw pictures of the other kids. They were all so excited and fascinated it was great. An aside: I think one of the funniest things to hear is kids complaining in different languages. It always sounds exactly the same, but with different words.

The police and a street vendor selling crappy jewelry have a "disagreement" as stern looking reinforcements approach. There were lots of police in Rome...probably about as many as in Belfast. I wonder if they were expecting trouble from our visit. It was just a few days before the U.S. election, but I find it hard to believe that was the reason...

Andrew is an espresso impostor. I'm pretty sure sure that the only beverages he'll consume are Coke, Mountain Dew and Kool-aid.

Trevi Fountain

If you throw one coin into the fountain, you will return to Rome. If you throw two coins in, you will fall in love with an Italian. If you throw three coins in, you will get married to an Italian. Here, I am throwing in my second coin.

Street scene

The Spanish Steps

As you can see, it was raining quite a bit on day 2, so after hitting some sites, we headed indoors to celebrate Halloween. The only authentic Halloween celebration I saw was in our hostel's bar...the decorations and costumes were mildly impressive...noting to write home about. But the free candy and drink specials were appreciated.