a new home

with my recent relocation to china comes my blog's relocation to my more permanent home on the web: http://www.meganeaves.com. from now on, you can read about my brand new life in china (again) at the brand new gypsytracks.

"wrong on so many levels"

i must admit it. i LOVE anthony bourdain. lately i have been spending all my free, waking hours (of which there are surprisingly few) watching chopped up episodes of 'no reservations' on youtube. i fucking love it.

the man is slowly making his way up my list of heroes and people i would like to sit down with over a beer and a meal. he just has the right outlook on life, and beyond that, a fantastic turn of phrase. and well, let's face it - the man knows food.

in truth, i basically envy his job. he writes. he travels. he eats. and he gets paid to do all of those in an unendingly sarcastic tone and with a helluvalotta humour. where do i sign up? i've eaten weird stuff! remember all that bamboo back in anji? or how about the pork brain hot pot. or the scorpions!

the more episodes i watch, the more difficult i find it to choose a favourite. what about the one in japan where he eats himself out of house and home with twin comics that force him to do karaoke? or the one where he takes a boat into the jungles of borneo and is greeted with an axe for slaughtering a pig? the one i watched today was pretty good - he was running around uzbekistan with zamir, the crazy russian, and that brings me to the romania episode, in which zamir also featured, and also included a rather amusing incident with a bad tourist castle on halloween night.

bourdain just knows. he'll tell you to eat without fear, something that all people have trouble doing on some level. he approaches each culture he visits with a clean slate - no preconceived notions or tales of "well when i was in hong kong, they did it THIS way. screw you uzbekistanis."

so i will leave you with a quote and a link and encourage you all, if you haven't experienced the wonder of 'no reservations' to immediately drop what you are doing and spend the rest of your day on youtube.

and remember, if you're ever in iceland, "when packing a picnic, keep the booze on your person."

"Rachael Ray does to food what Hitler did to Poland." - AB

mom, me and 10 counties

it seems like all the recent freelance writing i've been doing has begun to suck me dry of any possible topics to write about for this blog. i do tend to have these moments of inspiration where i come up with these great ideas that just have to be blogged about. but unfortunately, said moments generally occur at three possible times:

1) whilst riding dublin bus
2) whilst walking down o'connell st.
3) whilst grocery shopping

needless to say, not so conducive to pulling out the ole laptop and word-vomiting right then and there. i know i know, if i were a real writer, i would carry some sort of nerdy miniature notepad, into which i would quickly jot all of my ideas as they come to me, or worse yet, write the entire blog then and there. no, not me. i am too addicted to my technology for that.

it has gotten cold lately, as the dawn of my second winter in ireland finds me curiously satisfied and ill-at-ease, at the same time. one last moment of autumnal bliss was to be had while roaming around the country with my mom, when she visited for my graduation ceremony not two weeks ago (that's right folks, i'm degreed).

we managed to cross through 10 counties in 5 days - a feat that would have most irish people reeling. but we americans? we are drivers.

let's see, there was kildare, where we stopped to see the irish stud and ogle some handsome stallions.

then there was laois, which we passed through on the way to tipperary, where we stopped to admire the rock of cashel and buy cups of tea from middle-aged twins.

after that came cork, an overnight stop that proved heinous because of the bucketing rain, which led us to eat soup and dink pints in our hotel (not too bad).

next day, we set off through the rest of cork (with a brief stop at the ballymaloe house, where mom and the family visited in 1983 when i was nigh but two years of age) and around the ring of kerry before sidling into killarney for a night of bad tourist food, followed by a very good trad session in buckley's pub.

day three we left kerry and ravaged our way across county limerick as quickly as we could, with only a brief stop to get lost (and heebed out) in limerick city. not my favorite place. onward to clare where high winds greeted us at the cliffs of moher, while twilight fell over the burren. that night, we found out that doolin is more or less a crock of shit - no real irish music to be had there, but the hostel in lisdoonvarna was sublime anyway.

day four, we left clare and headed to galway where, as regular readers of this blog will note, my favorite part of all of ireland lies - connemara. after a brief stop for irish coffee and wool sweaters near killary fjord, we journeyed onward to kylemore abbey and clifden, after which a very shrill wind brought in dusk and eerie, magical colours over the rocky coast.

day five, i was hitting the roof, ready to be back in dublin (and out of the damn car). guess i'm turning a little irish after all.

click here for pictures of the mother-daughter journey:

Ireland with Mom

and here are a few long overdue photos from belgium:

Belgium 2008

and the pendulum swings...

after emailing my vote in yesterday morning (irish time) and staying up 'til 1:30 am over a glass of wine to watch the states turn colours on CNN.com with bill, i woke this morning happy to see that we have a new president-elect, and it's not john mccain.

herein lies the end of my political dialogue. i have thought a lot about this today and decided that, although i have oft been loathful of my americanness in the past, there is no reason why today should be any different from any other day. the fact is that the united states is a divided country, and i stand one one side of the divide. this year, and for the succeeding 4, we will have a president and a state who lead the way i want them to lead (more or less). but there is no less history in any election before this one, as the pendulum swings left, so shall it again swing right sometime down the road. from kennedy to nixon and ford to reagan to bush, to clinton to bush to obama. every four or eight years, the same pattern has repeated itself since april 30, 1789, when george washington took office as the first president of the united states of america.

phew. it feels good to know we're not really making history, doesn't it? anyway, i think obama's cool and his name is fun to say and he doesn't have a personal collection of oil companies and bombs. plus!


in other news, bill and i recently embarked on a new life together as roommates in a very small basement apartment in rathmines. it's going very well. we also went to brussels (and bruges), despite the fact that we are actually poor.

for more news on my career as a groovy travel writer and high powered intercultural trainer, check out my real website...

http://www.meganeaves.com (the "lowdown" tab gets you news)

money or life?

it's 6:47 pm. i am sitting in havana tapas bar on georges st. eating a spanish omlette and dousing myself with a glass of chilean cabernet, my third this evening. i've spent the greater part of the afternoon here, drinking wine and working on writing projects and generally pondering my recent decision to do freelance writing full-time. i am too broke to afford this meal; in fact, the mere buying of this meal may actually mean that i can't pay my rent on october 16, but i am not unhappy.

my latest forays into finding a "real" job in dublin have been unsuccessful three times over. the lowest point of recent times was actually applying as a checkout girl at Lidl. for those unfamiliar, Lidl is the european grocery equivalent of wal-mart - dirty, crowded and cheap with bad, VERY bad lighting. i actually become ill whenever i go into Lidl (which i do a lot recently to buy the cheap bread and €1 frozen pizzas that i'm currently living off of, spanish omlette aside) from the crowds and "ethnic smells" and general mayhem inside. (i can get away with saying "ethnic smells" because i am a degreed interculturalist now). what's worse? Lidl hasn't even called me back. i can't even get hired for Shit-Checkout-at-Bad-Immigrant-Grocery-Store-Job.

i love freelance writing. if i was really honest with myself, that is what i would want to do full-time, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (okay maybe 8 hours a day, 5 days a week).

i do not love being broke. first of all, i am a wine drinker. i need wine to function (that might be a stretch) and my boyfriend is also a wine drinker. a good 13% of our conversations actually revolve around wine, and it's a good thing he actually has a paying salary because we like to go to wine bars and buy nice bottles of wine. often. being a wine drinker in dublin is not cheap, mind you. ireland is not a wine culture - people here prefer the pints. so, we spend a lot more money on wine than one would in italy or france or napa or even new mexico. but we like our wine.

i am also a traveler. the better part of my writing skill and inspiration come from traveling. being broke does not lend itself to traveling, either. i would kill to be in spain eating an actual spanish omlette right now, rather than the dublin, havana bar version of it (which is actually quite decent), but alas, i am not. at the moment, i could not afford a plane ticket off this rainy island if i wanted to. here again, i am lucky to have a boyfriend with a real salary who will gladly foot the bill to places like brussels, to where we are going in 2 weeks time.

there is also that pesky business of a residence-or-work visa hanging over my head. the other day, i spent nine (count them 9!) hours at the immigration bureau along with loads of africans and indian families with crying babies trying to get my student visa changed into an "i'm a desperate american looking for work" visa. after 9 hours, my number wasn't even called, so i gave up and went back 2 days later. now i've got 6 months until march 19 when i will be unceremoniously kicked to the fuckin' irish curb, if you get what i'm sayin'.

so, i'm optimistic! these things work out, right? seriously people - if you ever want a reality check and a blow to your dignity (not that you would???), i've got one word for ya: emigrate.

leprechaun in alabama?

this really deserves it's own post.





i'm really not sure what my favourite part of this video was. the "amateur sketch" was certainly a highlight. i had to concur that the lady's conspiracy theory that the alleged leprechaun was actually just a misguided crackhead was probably pretty accurate, given that the event took place in the hood. but probably the best part was the guy in fatigues showing off his magic flute, passed down through 1000's of years from his great granddad.

"i want da gold. gimme da gold. i want da gold!"

excellent tv. excellent.

meganeaves.com

who'd've thunk it, but i went and got a website.


http://www.meganeaves.com


what say you?