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Bonjour. Just stepping back in time a bit here, these are my photos from France:

It was the first time I’ve ever filled my camera memory card, 260 photos. So be ye warned, I’ve pared them down a bit, but there’s still a pretty substantial volume to sift through. I recommend starting off with 5 minute shifts, and building up your immunity, before trying to tackle the whole thing in one go.

I’ll be going through the few South African photos I was able to take. Most of my time was unfortunately taken up with work, and since the sun goes down there around 5:30, there wasn’t a lot of time to go sightseeing. But what I did see was pretty great…

So I’m here in Cape Town South Africa, sitting around wondering where all my little trainees went. It seems that 2pm is the time of ‘The Disappearing’ or something, I’m not sure. I sat down for lunch, and when I was done everyone was gone. Mind you, that’s alright with me as training isn’t my favourite activity in the world.

So far Cape Town is great. This Tabletop Mountain that I’d read so much about really is very spectacular, towering over the city with nice tree lined sides. The city is nice enough, perhaps nothing to write home about architecturally, but better than say .. Vancouver. The view from my room is also great, looking out over the Bo-Kaap, a traditionally muslim area filled with multi-coloured houses. Beautiful, but apparently not the safest to walk around in by yourself. All that said, I haven’t had too much time to have a look around on account of my working. I swear, they pay to fly you around the world and the expectations just go through the roof! Hopefully this weekend I’ll get a good look around the Cape itself. Photos to follow..

I will say this, the people here are freakily friendly. Not just polite, and they don’t just smile and carry on their way, they actually appear to be really interested in what you’re doing here. I was on a first name basis with my waiter last night. I’ve been to at least a few countries in my time, and I’ve seen nothing like it. Mind you, it could just be the shock of coming from France, where we were basically asked to leave the restaurant because after sitting there for 15 minutes we helped ourselves to a few menus, mostly so the kids wouldn’t die of hunger. ‘This is not fast food!’ Apparently so. But it’s easy to forgive the French their excessives as they make such lovely cheap wine…

A little late, but here’s some photos of our trip to the Giant’s Causeway with Kylie, Matt, and Makena:

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I’ve also got photos of France! But since i filled my memory card (about 260 photos) some editing needs to be done. So it’ll have to wait til I’m back from South Africa. France was excellent, and the wine is very cheap…

Heading off to France for a week tomorrow, and when I get back I’ll mostly likely be heading off to South Africa for a week. Top that!

Ok, how bout Jesus vs Noah in an all out brawl…

I’ve realized lately, as I look out the window at the grey grey sky, that I’ve been here almost 10 months now and I can’t think of anytime there were more than 3 days of sun strung together. (Watch the video below now for dramatic effect.

And I think there’s probably only been once, maybe twice, that there were three days of sun. As bad as this is, I console myself by remembering that the weather has been worse in Vancouver.

I’m hopefully going to Ted Leo and the Pharmacists tomorrow night. If you aren’t listening to them right now, you should be. Heed my words…

Matt and Kylie have come to visit. They were over in England visiting family. “Come to Ireland” we said. So they did, and it rained so much it flooded. A few days in, we said “go to the aquarium on the Ards peninsula, Makena will like it, so they did, and it rained so much it flooded. Clearly it’s their fault.

Some moderately exciting news today as I passed my driving test. It was my second go at the test, my first taking place here in Belfast, my second in the slightly remote more Lisburn. I only mention this as Belfast (Balmoral road) only has a 38% pass rate, which apparently drops to around 20% for first time drivers. Not too surprising since I failed for, among other reasons, dry steering my car during a 3 point turn. That’s a full fail for that by the way, I could have done everything else right (which I didn’t) and still failed. This is especially tough to swallow as our car doesn’t have power steering, and the roads here are very narrow. I feel like Austin Powers trying to perform this manoeuvre correctly.

Lisburn clocks in at a whopping 47% pass rate, which isn’t actually the reason I went there. I booked myself in to that particular testing center as you have to wait only 2 weeks to fail in Lisburn. It’s about 2 months in Belfast, and I needed to pass before August 1st when my Canadian license is no longer valid. So, mission accomplished! Let’s roll…

In other weird news, try and make sense of this comment, as quoted when discussing the ethicality of wine coupons for repeat customers:

He told MPs it would never use loyalty cards to promote tobacco or baby formula but it would send out “wine coupons”. (slightly edited for accuracy)

So to summarise:

Wine = good
Tobacco = bad
Baby formula = bad

What am I missing here?

Not much going on here, so I’ll recommend this article written by a guy watching Star Wars for the first time. I found it amusing. I also like the warning at the top: Warning: This story contains plot spoilers, as if there’s two people out there that haven’t seen the original movie…