Song of the moment: Wide Open Spaces - by Dixie Chicks

Who doesn’t know what I’m talking about
Who’s never left home, who’s never struck out
To find a dream and a life of their own
A place in the clouds, a foundation of stone

Many precede and many will follow
A young girl’s dream no longer hollow
It takes the shape of a place out west
But what it holds for her, she hasn’t yet guessed

[Chorus:]
She needs wide open spaces
Room to make her big mistakes
She needs new faces
She knows the high stakes

She traveled this road as a child
Wide eyed and grinning, she never tired
But now she won’t be coming back with the rest
If these are life’s lessons, she’ll take this test

[Repeat Chorus]
She knows the high stakes

As her folks drive away, her dad yells, “Check the oil!”
Mom stares out the window and says, “I’m leaving my girl”
She said, “It didn’t seem like that long ago”
When she stood there and let her own folks know

—————————————————————————————————————

I first heard this song back in college (final year), basically the same time when I first discovered Dixie Chicks. Whenever I play my Dixie Chicks playlist, it always brings me back to my thesis days. Their songs kind of inspired me and made me keep going, along with the Japanese dramas (‘Orange Days’ and ‘Honey and Clover’, among others) that I was watching in between experiment and thesis writing days.

I haven’t internalized the lyrics of this song until now…

She needs wide open spaces
Room to make her big mistakes
She needs new faces

Growing up with my grandparents, I felt like I have always been sheltered from the “cruel” world. I remember how my grandma wouldn’t let us go out most of the time when we were kids because she’s so scared that we’d bruise our knees, so I’m almost always just playing at home with my brother (which was a good thing in a way). I even remember playing guns with my brother and later on, WWE and Mortal Kombat on playstation. And when I started high school, that’s when I stopped playing (and being a child), I guess. I’ve grown to be that nice, boring person until I finish college. Now I realize that I regret the fact that I haven’t done so much when I was an undergraduate. I was all focused on my academics (not really focused, but that was all that I was worrying about). I haven’t even gotten myself into any shenanigan of any sort.

After the board exam, I decided to move to Europe. It was a big leap and I’ve passed up a couple of job opportunities because of this. But moving with my family turned out to be good…for a while. But then I wasn’t growing as a person and everything was always the same and felt like being inside a box with boundaries. I believe that the world should be borderless in all aspects. So after a year, I was convinced to take the slot at a university in England, one of my spontaneities where I didn’t know a thing about the place and didn’t even had an accommodation prior to my arrival. Now I know that it’s a crappy place up here, but as a friend said, it’s not about the shittiness of this place but how you make the most of your stay. We should not dwell on its flaws. Instead, we should use every opportunity to meet and learn from people, which I did and am still doing. The good thing about this place, especially the university, is its being multicultural. The university prides itself in having students from over 100 countries, mainly because of its Peace Studies programme. You’ll occasionally meet people from Latvia, Lithuania, Pakistan, Egypt, Libya, America, Ireland, Germany, Spain, France, Italy, Poland, China, S. Korea, Japan, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Brunei, Philippines, even people from Nepal and Ethiopia (I’ve never met anyone from these countries before), and a looot more!

If it’s a good thing or not in general, I don’t really know, but I always want/need new faces and a new environment every time. You really learn a lot from people and places. I can’t say I’m a changed person, maybe a slightly improved one.

Fish and chips and by the sea

June 15, 2011

Because we’ve got nothing better to do, we went on a 9-hour long road trip along the British East Coast (North Sea, Yorkshire and the Humber), stopping by four small towns — Whitby, Scarborough, Filey, and Bridlington — to eat, take pictures, and just get a breath of fresh (sea)air.

First stop: Whitby. You can’t say you’ve been to the UK if you’ve never tried Fish and Chips! Typically, a Briton would argue that “chips” is not “French fries”. It IS chips. Period. There’s even racism in food! Well, “chips” are technically thicker strips of French fries. They also have straw fries, the less popular one, which are thinner strips of French fries. Although this wasn’t my first Fish and Chips, I figured it was still worth taking a picture. This is me impatiently waiting for my cod and chips with mushy peas at Quayside, the top Fish and Chips shop in Yorkshire in 2008. And when our plates arrived, whoah were they massive! But gluttons that we are, we managed to finish them all. No sweat.

The main attraction in Whitby is the Whitby Abbey in ruins. An abbey, by definition, is a Catholic monastery led by an Abbot or an Abbess. Whitby, including this abbey, is said to have inspired Bram Stoker in writing Dracula.

More pictures at the port of Whitby, showing one of the two lighthouses of Whitby’s twin piers.

An exhausting walk to the top of the lighthouse, scaring ourselves to death.

And who rule the (seashore) world?? Seagulls! They’re everywhere — from Whitby to second stop: Scarborough.

At Scarborough and third stop: Filey.

Fourth and final stop: at a closed fair in Bridlington.

Lucky for us, it was not a bad day (like it always is in England). It was alright, nice and sunny, but not too warm. If you fancy the seaside, these places would be awesome to go to, especially during a proper summer. Not as lovely as the beaches back home, though.

Donauinselfest 2011

Literally the Danube Island Festival, it is Vienna’s annual summer (music) festival. I’ve never been to this event before so I decided to just take a peek last Saturday. It wasn’t that heaving (at least not as I expected it to be) probably because it was still too early and the weather wasn’t that good.

There were a lot of activities for families and for kids like wall climbing and beach volleyball, among other things. Definitely loads of food stalls AND beer stalls couldn’t be missed. Some of the popular foods in Austrian fairs and festivals are Wurst (here, Grillwurst or sausage BBQ) and Langos, a deep fried flat bread made of a dough with flour, yeast, salt, and water (more like a massive flat doughnut).

Feeling pathetic being by myself, I treated myself to a pint of Ottakringer and spent the rest of the time watching a game at ÖBB’s (Austria’s national train company) booth. I would have joined the game because the price is a summer train ticket throughout Austria all summer long!! But before you can actually play the game, you have to play the air guitar first for a good 30 seconds or so. For me to do that, I’d need to take 3 pints, I guess. :) So anyway, the game’s quite straightforward. You just need to NOT answer any question with a “yes” or a “no” within 1 minute of the host’s questioning. Maybe it’s harder than it sounds because not many people won the game.

I enjoyed it, but it could have been better if I weren’t on my own. LOL, lesson learned re festivals.

Singing big

I haven’t been to the choir since Manami left and that was 3 weeks ago. I’m kind of missing it. Since joining the choir November of last year, we’ve been attending practices almost every week and sang at their Christmas concert two weeks after joining the choir. The choir is called the Jubilee Gospel Choir, which is organized by a Christian church but is basically a community choir in Bradford. This is a picture of us singing at last year’s Christmas concert. It was a black/red-themed concert, so we had to wear something black with a splash of red.

Here’s Maria, our lovely choir coach and conductor from Liverpool. :)

And this is me, passionately singing a song. :)

Imagine how we had to learn and memorize the lyrics of more than 10 songs in two weeks, considering that the choir was the least of my priorities back then since it was just a form of relaxation for us to channel academic stress into something productive. Obviously, we weren’t able to learn all the songs so we just hummed, smiled, and pretended we were singing in some parts. :) That’s one good thing about singing in a choir, moreso in a laid-back one like our choir. Mostly it’s just about having fun singing in a group. At 9-ish in the evening, we always walk home with big smiles on our faces after the practice.

Travel Light

This is the third time I’m flying home since I came to Britain. If not for my cheapskate-ness, I would have travelled more comfortably every time. Hell I always had to take the coach (7-hour long drive!) to London Gatwick airport. Considering that it only takes me, what, 2 hours from London to Vienna. I just never get to find flights at a reasonable price from Leeds-Bradford airport to Vienna. And whenever I do, it’d be a 14-hour long flight with 2 stopovers. Sick!

Watching “Up in the Air” a few days ago did me good. George Clooney’s character in the movie referred to Asians as light and efficient packers (though this might not be true for most Pinoys). Ergo, I’m out to prove him damn right. It wasn’t easy. I woke up 5-ish this morning to pack up all the things that I thought I could fit into my backpack. Make no mistake, they didn’t fit alright. It was the “survival of the fittest” as I start to take the only pair of jeans I wanted to bring, my shoulder pouch, my flip-flops, and my humongous wallet out of the bag. Ok so who survived? Basically my laptop, chargers, lunch box (with grapes!!), lecture notes, and a few items of clothing did survive. Then off I went to the coach station.

Today’s itinerary:

7:10 – 12:25 (Bradford to London Victoria, coach)

13:00 – 14:25 (London Victoria to London Gatwick, coach)

16:55 (London Gatwick to Vienna, plane)

I’m always right on schedule, but there were 2 things I failed to anticipate this time: the heavy downpour that started an hour before we even reach Victoria and the traffic jam (it’s either due to the rain or it’s just normal London city traffic). We were 30 minutes off schedule and I almost missed my coach to the airport. I got on the coach barely 2 minutes before 13:00. Not bad. The best thing was that I didn’t need to check-in any luggage and I’ve already printed out my boarding pass in advance. And the coolest thing in airports now is that you just need to scan the barcode of the boarding pass to get in to the departure area. No more queue hassles.

My ideal “travel light” would be me travelling with just my phone and Visa card. :p

Taste of Cambridge

June 1-2, 2011

Definitely a long day’s walk. I wonder why we didn’t bother to rent bikes in this city of bikes.

Cambridge, being a student city, has that youthful and peaceful atmosphere. But it took me overnight to appreciate Cambridge. It was a warm, sunny Thursday, enough reason for the city centre to be quite packed. First attraction of the day was a group of African street performers — a taste of Africa in England.

Here’s Manami buying the CD. :) Their live performance made us buy their album for 10 quid (the cheapskate that I am, I normally wouldn’t spend my 10 quid for a thing like that). They’re street performers, but apparently they have an album! They just looked sooooo genuinely happy with all the singing, dancing, and instrument playing. Even if I didn’t understand what their songs were all about, watching them made me wanna do something meaningful in my life, like make a difference, contribute to world peace or just be a better person.

Ruta then showed us the pub where, according to some legend, Watson and Crick discovered (or announced their discovery of) the form of the DNA. This is the The Eagle pub. Ah, the British drinking disease — definitely contagious!

As pseudo-students of Peace Studies doing the peace sign at the Fort St. George pub near Midsummer Common park, having drinks with Ruta’s friends.

The streets in the city centre are typical narrow, pedestrians/cyclists-only zone European streets. They look like the streets in York. Cambridge is a small city, but it has quite a number of large green areas/parks. From our hostel to the pub, we passed by 4 relatively massive parks. And under the sole dried out tree at a park called Jesus Green we had our picnic lunch. Cambridge is also basically all about churches and colleges of the University of Cambridge. The upper right photo is the Great Court of Trinity College, considered the most aristocratic of all the Cambridge colleges. The lower right photo shows the back view of St. John’s College, where some of the Harry Potter scenes were filmed. I don’t really watch HP, but oh well. The building’s all engulfed in greens. The colleges were closed for visitors on this day because of exams.

To call it a day (and the whole trip to Cambridge as well) barely 2 hours before my train trip back to Braddie, we went punting on the River Cam (Thus, the name CAMbridge). Here you can see our gorgeous punter, Sam. :p This reminded me of the gondola rides in Venice. It was just a 45-hour ride to see some of the colleges. We saw some random students having drinks and fun after exams. :) I can imagine how AWESOME and uber COOL it is to be studying at Cambridge Uni! How I wish I were a smart ass and/or filthy rich!

Here’s Manami on the punt with King’s College on the background, Noris and Ruta (the happy couple) on the punt, me with the always-smiling Manami by the River Cam, me with goofing-around Ruta by the River Cam, and Ruta with King’s College on the background.

The most convenient thing ever on this trip was using my phone’s crappy camera. I didn’t bother bringing my humongous dslr. It’s all about the fun, anyway.

After this trip, I would absolutely have to work my ass off both at uni and at work! But Manami chose to spend her last days in England with me and Ruta, so it’s all worth it. “So cuuuute” (Manami Goto, 2011). I will definitely miss my travel buddy, Manami!

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