3 Days Left in Canada!

A few people have asked for more specifics as to my trip so here goes:

Scheduled departure: Sunday May 1 at 11:55pm (yes, PM)

I will be arriving in London the next day (May 2) at 5:10pm local time. From there I'll be taking another flight to Basel, Switzerland and will continue on through Austria, Czech, and Germany.

Below is a list of the major places I plan on visiting:

London: Monopoly board run
Was thinking of making this a pub crawl, but I doubt I have enough time, stamina, or cash to sustain a 26 location pub crawl.

After two nights in London, I'll get on a plane to...

Switzerland:
Basel

Austria:
Salzburg - Mozart!
Vienna

Czech:
Prague
Cesky Krumlov

Germany:
Neuschwanstein Castle - Inspiration for Sleeping Beauty Castle in Disneyland
Dresden - Amazing architecture
Sachsenhausen - Concentration camp near Berlin
Berlin - Hop on a flight to back to London before I come back to Canada

Scheduled return: June 2 at 3:25pm Vancouver time.

The above list is all the major cities I plan on visiting, but what I'm most looking forward to is visiting the smaller towns. We'll see how this goes.

Site mechanics update

Enabled comments and fixed up the RSS feed (http://motivity.blogspot.com/atom.xml). Now the entire post should show up in your RSS aggregator of choice.

Update on my trip planning is coming up later tonight.

Pre-Europe Trip Update

First, I would like to thank everybody who replied for their advice suggestions. It was great hearing from all of you and it really helped me. Second, quite a few things have happened these last few days to play havoc on my proposed Europe trip:

1) My parents, in a showing of overzealous protectionism, offered to put $10,000 towards my future car purchase... provided that I cancel my trip. Backpack through Europe or $10,000 off the purchase of a car? Either way, I win... or is that lose.

Resolution: Go on the trip anyways, quoting flimsey appeals of integrity and skyrocketing gas prices as justification.

2) Poland and Hungary, among others, require your passport to be valid for 6 months AFTER your intended departure from the country. My passport expires in October and even applying for a new one won't help as Poland also requires that your passport be valid for 3 months PRIOR to your arrival.

Resolution: Rehaul my travel plans to exclude these countries, unfortunate casualties of impromptu decision making.

My revamped itinerary now follows a path revolving around a Eurail Selectpass instead of an European East Pass. Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia, Germany, and Czech form the base of my list now.

3) Related to the two items above, I've had to shorten my travel time. Instead of the 40 day trip initially envisioned, I'll be cutting that by a week. This means I won't be able to devote a week to each country. I know I said it would be a "whirlwind tour", but I was hoping to take a little more time

Resolution: Further tweaking of my travel plans. With about 10 days left, I'm sure I'll go through quite a few more revisions.

EuroTrip

With my SFU carreer over and done, I'm making an impromptu whirlwind tour of Eastern Europe.

Preliminary Itinerary

• Czech Republic (Prague, and thinking of Cesky Krumlov, Brno, Olomouc)
• Austria (Vienna)
• Slovak Repulbic (Bratislava? Just because it's on the way to Hungary)
• Hungary (Siofok, Budapest)
• Poland (Krakow, Warsaw)

It looks like I'll be flying through London and Berlin, spending at least half a day in each.

If anybody has any input or advice, let me know before I take off at the end of April!

bruce.h.nguyen(at)gmail(dot)com

For all you RSS people

The RSS feed attached to this blog only sends the first paragraph or 255 words (whichever is shorter) of each post. So for anybody reading this through an RSS feed, visit the site (motivity.blogspot.com) to view my posts in full.

It's about perspective

I've discovered the readership of this blog is larger than I had thought, unknowingly caused by my own actions. I guess this means that I will start putting more time and effort into each post. Yes, maybe even enough time to write short posts instead of long ones.

*****

Watched an episode of Angel (Season 2, Episode 6: "Guise Will Be Guise") where he meets with a Swami in order to learn a bit about himself and heal some psychological wounds. Turns out the Swami was a fake, but the false wisdom imparted still had a good deal of merit. With controversy revolving around the validity of religion (**cough**Mormon**cough**) and other beliefs, perhaps what's more important than the validity of the source is what you can learn from it. A glib response may be "so the end justifies the means?" Well, no. It doesn't. And I'm not trying to imply that. What I'm trying to say is you can find value in any and everything, it's all about perspective.

To unilaterally dismiss an entire argument due to one particular attribute is foolish. It's not all or nothing, black or white, good or evil. At least, not necessarily. There can be shades of grey, shades of brown, or even a rainbow of colour (or texture! Texture is the new colour, don't you know); it all depends on your perspective.

"No" Means "Yes" in Poland

MISA's annual Alumni Night this last Thursday, with yours truly as the MC. Ever get the feeling that people are too polite or kind (or scared) to tell you what they actually think? Oh well, that's not really something I want to write about right now. What I do want to share is a couple of quotes I picked up.

"If you were a hot dog, and you are hungry, would you eat yourself?" --Paul Cyr

Behind this SNL quote is a metaphor to self-sacrifice. When put to the task, how willing are you to sacrifice yourself for it? There is only so much that you are able to give; you have to find your passion.

This goes hand in hand with a quote from later that night:

"Make your no's mean no and your yes's mean yes." --Jason McIvor

Too often people will say "yes" or "no" according to what they think the other person wants to hear, or because they feel it is expected of them. Reaaly, by doing this you are showing that you are afraid of the consequences of telling the truth. And while there may be consequences, they are most likely small compared to the consequences of being caught in a falsehood.

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On a different note, my mood nowadays is too easily swayed by music. Or is it that the kind of music I listen to is influenced by my current mood? Either way, I have to stop playing this melencholy shit.

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Back to Alumni Night, the BILLION DOLLAR MIS CHALLENGE was a blast... although I had a brain fart and let Paul win the acronym challenge with "FTP". Honestly... FTP? WTF?