circumstance blog

pancakes

ok, I have added the two photos of andie and yuri...

andie and RG and yuri

Posted by shannon at 03:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

jumble

I walked into the bathroom this morning to brush my teeth, only to discover this in the sink:

hot and cold running cats

Looked like he was pretty cosy huh? At least until I turned on the tap. In other cat news Spike's brother Ace, who disappeared out a third story window in Amsterdam last summer, has been found by an animal shelter there. We had almost given up on him, and if it wasn?t for the microchip in his shoulder I doubt we would be getting him back at all. He still has to stay in the Netherlands for another 6 months until he is cleared to enter the UK (when are they going to change that law already!), but thankfully some friends-of-friends are watching him for that time. I wonder if Spike will be prepared to share the sink with him. That's ok, there's plenty of room in the tub!

So the mobile phone demo job I have been doing has been extended for another month and half, which is great news. I kind of like doing it, which is odd. I can be quite the sales person when the stuff I'm selling is interesting. I also like travelling around London, meeting new people.

I have a few random photos to post from last week. This is from the anti-war protest, a sign stuck on a post at Oxford Circus.

And this peek of a tattoo from a visitor from Boston:

I have 2 more photos of the visitors, ones of their faces, but I'd like to get their permission first to post.

Posted by shannon at 02:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

we can see you

I wrote this last night but I'm posting it now...

Sorry I haven’t posted in a while, but I’ve been busy! I got a temp job demonstrating a new mobile phone. Its only 2 days a week and it ends next weekend, but it’s been fun. I get to keep the phone during the promotion. It has a camera on it, so I have been messing around with it a bit. It’s strange how people act about being photographed. No one wants to have their picture taken. But if you look around you your picture is already being taken. There is a camera on the corner where I live, cameras on every other corner it seems. Plus cameras in shops, gas stations, highways, office buildings, you name it, someone is capturing your image. So smile! (or at least try not look like you’re up to no good.)

Standing in the doorway in an Oxford street mobile shop. Notice the TV behind me, playing back a cctv image of me taking the photo.

The one day I actually did have to work, and I had to do it on Oxford street the day of a big protest. It was really hell getting home. Not that I can complain too much, since my home was still standing when I got there instead of it being bombed to smithereens like the unfortunate ones in Iraq. But still, the protestors sitting down in the street, the cops getting into their riot gear, and tourists standing around watching it all, I really don’t get what it's supposed to accomplish. I suppose it makes people feel better. I’ve heard all the arguments for protesting, but I really believe there are better ways to show your dissatisfaction and to bring about change than blocking busses on Oxford street.

The rest of my time has been filled up looking for work and riding my cycle in central London and learning to draw and chasing the dog around the park and trying to get back into running regularly and drinking lots of coffee and a bit more looking for work. Plans for tomorrow? Look for work.

Update, more whack phone images:

The inside lens is flat, so when you face it out it easily distorts things...

Buddhist Pagoda

Crowds on Oxford Street as the sun sets.

Outside lens is set back, so outside edges are blurred.

Can you see the rainbow in the fountain?

I love taking pictures, even with a crap mobile phone camera! Its addictive. Maybe I will get better at it before I have to give the thing back.

Posted by shannon at 03:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

ball of fire

Too many words in that last post. My apologies. Enjoy a nice cup of peets Garuda blend. Watch the sun set on the gulf of mexico:

Posted by shannon at 04:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

tourism

When I first moved away from home and went to College, I found out that my hometown was quite a star among my fellow New Jerseyans at Rutgers. At freshman orientation, the first question asked was always "what exit?", which I found quite strange. I found out later they meant what exit on the NJ Turnpike. It seemed that was the way most folks from north Jersey communicated where they were from. And farther south it was the parkway exit. Since I never knew what my exit was, I would just tell them my hometown's name, never expecting anyone to have heard of it. And even though I am from a very small town, they always knew immediately where I lived. Indeed most of them had been there. Their families took them "down the shore" as kids for the summer, their family might have even rented out a bungalow there for the season. Pt. Pleasant is just one of hundreds of seaside resort towns along the NJ coast, but I started liking the fact that people knew where I was from, even though, growing up, I wasn't always happy about the tourists coming down and taking over my town every summer. (The local negative stereotype tourist from NYC/North Jersey was known as a "bennie", people used to have bumper stickers that said such charming things as "bennies go home", although I doubt they still do.) As I got older I realised how much money they brought in, and I knew just how much money by waiting on them in restaurants and bars. It was pretty much the best paying job you could get.

So as I walking on the beach in Sarasota, enjoying a beautiful balmy morning before I had to begin the laborious trip back to London, I wondered why my mother chose to move to such a place, so similar to a town she has just spent over 30 years in, a touristy seaside resort. Why not live someplace quieter and less over run with tourist-based businesses? Well, one of the things I always like to remind myself of when tourism becomes annoying, is that if people want to visit, if must be a nice place. If there's no tourism at all in your town, chances are it's probably a shit hole (sorry!). Hey, it makes you feel a little better when you have to wait for a table at your favourite restaurant. And really, it doesn't seem like there are too many places left that don't have some kind of tourism anyway. Even when I was living in West Virginia, not the most bustling locale, there were little bed and breakfasts and outlet malls that catered to the big city people looking for a quaint county weekend getaway.

But growing up with tourism also means I have a home grown taste of tourist-itis. In San Francisco, they were easy to avoid for the most part (anyone wearing shorts), they stuck to the theme park aspects of the city and rarely strayed. In London it's pretty much the same thing, I don't live in the town center so I'm fairly immune from seeing them everyday. I still manage to run into a family with a cam corder and limited English skills while walking the dog in the park every now and then. I can't say my dog minds being the attraction of the moment. In Amsterdam I hated being mistaken for a tourist, and I tried to learn some Dutch to add a little distance from them, but being that my Dutch was atrocious it didn't work too well.

Its kind of a love/hate relationship most places have with tourism. On the one hand they bring in loads of cash, and keep many industries running. Places all over the world with limited natural resources are beginning to cash-in on eco-tourism. It's very easy to have a cynical view of tourism, because for the most part the majority of people really don't want to travel and experience new cultures and landscapes. They want pictures to take back of them standing in front of landmarks, they want to eat the same food they can get back home, they want to see the sites through the top of an open-air double decker bus. They don't want to have to work too hard while they are on vacation, and there will always be companies that cater to them. But tourism also brings a sense of civic pride, however easily attained, to the citizens of the place visited. The fact that ordinary people want to be driven around your town and see things that you see everyday can be uplifting. People will pay extra money to dine in a crappy restaurant with the same beautiful view that you take in on your morning run can make it all the more beautiful. Maybe that is why my mom is drawn to such places (or maybe the tourism is just a symptom of a beautiful place, as I said earlier), because you only have to live there a short while before you start feeling glad you do. If only there wasn't so many tourists!

I started writing this on my laptop at the airport in Tampa, Fl while enjoying a lovely junk food lunch of taco bell and krispy kreme. I never finished it because when I got home my laptop's hard drive started making loud noises in its final fight for life. Because of that I am now the proud user of a shiny new i-mac*y, as my loving husband couldn't bear to see his beloved go without a pc for less than a millisecond (bless him!). And he also managed to recover almost all of my data from said dead hard drive (bless him yet again! I know there are other reasons I married this man, but right now him being a computer god is coming in quite handy), but since we have decided to "switch" I don't have use of Photoshop (and other software) so I won't be posting any photos until such things are remedied. I didn't take that many photos in Florida anyway, as I was too busy relaxing on the beach getting a nice sunburn.

Posted by shannon at 04:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)