Avast ye scurvy bilge rats!

Aye, it be that day yet again - International Talk Like a Pirate Day!

 

So hoist the mizzen and scuttle some limey curs.  If ye have nae idea what to say to your landlubbin' mates, try here.

 

We be havin' a pirate party for the occasion, and to bid farewell to our resident cap'n from PEI. 

 

Yo ho ho and a bottle (or two) of rum!

We should be dancing, yeah

I'm going away for the weekend, hooray!  Knockengorroch for a celtic blues/roots/dance festival.  It involves camping but the sun is shining after yesterdays constant downpour so I am feeling positive about putting my tent up in the swamp.  Yeah.

I am really looking forward to dancing around in the mud in my new Croc gumboots, which after a saga of epic proportions (I have been waiting for the correct shoes/size/matching pair to arrive since July) have finally arrived, an hour before departure.  Yay!

Also, I have been a little negligent with my sending of greetings (and also been a little more than poor), so Happy Father's Day to my dad and Happy Birthday to my brother, cousin and mum.  And Happy Birthdays to all my friends with birthdays in September.  You know who you are, you probably got a text message.  Woohoo.

Finally, sorry for all the exclamatories following my sentences.  W00t.

High Street Hostel / Home Sweet Home

After a couple of months of insanity I decided that my long-suffering, extremely generous flatmates could stand to have their place back to themselves so they could finish creating a home.  It coincided well with a chat to the manager of my old hostel (who needed a receptionist) and also visitors to the flat who I was going to move out for for logistical reasons. 

Now I'm all moved back in to the hostel, in my old room (one of anyway), working hard at changing beds again, about to start on reception and it feels like I never left (also helped by the fact that I already spent a considerable amount of time here during the last two months).  So much so that people were surprised to hear that I was moving back in - "Where did you go?". 

Err, contrary to popular belief, I haven't lived here for the past two years. 

"Oh ..."

The Fat Lady is Singing

It really is going to be virtually impossible for me to completely catch up on the goings on of what has been the absolute best festival season of my four festival run. I've only just caught up with my personal notes (and that took me half a day), and am not even close to finishing processing it all in my head.

I've met so many people, seen so many different shows, experienced the epitome of randomness, witnessed nearly every sunrise and virtually not seen my very understanding flatmates for three weeks.

Anyone who has ever done an intense season of performance in a show or play may have an idea of the flat feeling when it's all over. All the work, preparation and thrill of an audience is gone. For me, obviously it wasn't a performance, but I did watch as many of them as I could. Free entry to shows, discounted drinking until 5am and friends to share it all with led to average bedtimes of 6.30am. For three weeks I had somewhere to be almost every day, and if I didn't there were always options. Waiting for pubs to open again at 6am wasn't unusual either.

Thursday was the first night I didn't need to be anywhere. It was a strange feeling. Although having had two hours of sleep each on the previous two nights, I ended up asleep by the late afternoon and up again around 4am. The last three nights I've been in bed before midnight and actually awake in the mornings. I cooked a proper meal yesterday. The normality (state endorsed normality that is, not my own) is freaking me out a little.

The closing fireworks are tonight, weather permitting, and hopefully by then I'll be coming to some sort of closure. The feeling that I might never experience anything like this again is a little sobering.

But I have been promised work if I'm back again next year...

Back pouring pints for the public

I just got home from my first shift at my new bar job.  It went really smoothly and everyone there is loverly.  It was a smallish function, 50th birthday party, so perfect to ease me in.

Naturally, they love me, and the assistant manager is stressing about trying to find hours to give me so they can keep me around.

I'm pretty happy with whatever though, the handful of money I got tonight was almost what I got paid to do the whole website for the restaurant.  And at the moment that feels like a fortune!

Blip eliminated

I rearranged the posts below and added in Episode 4 and Episode 10 for your reading pleasure.  Of course all the time stamps are wrong now, but they all should have read "too late" anyway.

I haven't written any more just yet.

On the plus side, I've found a great fringe venue that is employing me as a bar wench for the festival, so that will happily combine earning some pocket money with staying up ridiculously late and maybe even getting to watch some free shows.  Hoorah.

Also, I'm going to the beach tomorrow, yay!

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Episode 10: In which she is not from Japon

Location: Everywhere!
Date: All the time!

Apparently it is perfectly acceptable for Turkish men (we didn't see that many women) to just randomly say "Japon! Japonya!" as a greeting, in passing, as a general statement.

Neither Ineke or I tended to respond to the comments, but they were noted every time.

I wish I had been able to say "Kurd! Armenia!" but I'm just not that rude.

FYI: I'm Chinese. Or Kiwi. Both, actually. Not Japanese. Also, I love Japanese people. I think they're awesome. I'm just not one of them.

Episode 9: In which there is no (dam) road

Location: Atatürk Lake
Date: 25.05.06

We were told by the guy who rented us the car that there was a bridge across Atatürk Lake, the huge man-made-money-spinning body of water that lay in our path.

There is no bridge.

None.

Luckily the mechanic who we had to take the car to gave us directions and general information about the ferry we needed to take instead. Apparently the road or bridge had disappeared with the creation of the dam (and the) lake.

While we were waiting for the very helpful mechanics to check over the car (something wrong with the the gas intake valve), I noted the slightly pimp maroon curtains all the way around the black towncar that was parked in the driveway next to our little Mermet.

After they charged us a miniscule 20YTL (approximately 20AUD (the NZD is too unstable) or 8GBP) for the adjustment and oil top-up, we were on our way. We weren't sure of the way at a fork in the road - the map wasn't helpful and we didn't know which town we were aiming for anyway - so we stopped to ask an old man squatting by the side of the road (this is a reasonably common occurrence). He had no idea what we were talking about, even though Turkish for ferry is feribot, not that hard to understand for either party.

So we picked a road and crossed our fingers.

A few hundred metres down the road, we noticed a car coming up behind us, fast. Thinking it was just another crazy Turkish driver, we pulled over a bit to let them go by. It turned out to be the curtained black towncar from the mechanic's, being driven by the mechanic himself. He told us we were going in totally the wrong direction, so we did a u-turn and made the ferry on time.

We passed back through the intersection where we made the wrong turn, and wouldn't you know - the old man was squatting just metres from the sign that said "Feribot"!

Episode 8: In which she refuses a "taxi"

Location: Mt Nemrut
Date: 25.05.06

After an ordinary dinner, we headed to bed. We were feeling ambitious enough, or masochistic enough, to try and be up for the sunrise. This required us to leave at 4am. Huzzah.

The gossamer-thin air burned the back of my throat more harshly than it had done the night before, and I thought something would burst before I got to the summit. Meanwhile the sun was climbing faster than I was.

At exactly the instant I wanted to collapse in a heap, a man appeared in front of me leading a donkey.

"Taxi?"

It was tempting, believe me. But a misguided sense of ego and the backpacker instinct to spend as little as possible combined forces and made me say no.

The man didn't move. Neither did the "taxi". He asked again. I still said no. Damn.

The sunrise was entirely worth the effort, thankfully. The crowd was different to the previous evening, a lot more Turks than foreigners, and mercifully there was no inane cheering.