It is so hot in St. Maarten. I don't think I've stopped sweating since I've gotten here. The weather's been nice, except for the hurricane warning yesterday. I was supposed to hit at around 2-3 am, but I guess it must have passed just north of here, since I don't see any overturned boats, or trees falling on cars.

It did knock out the electricity at Jon's place for the night, which made sleeping very uncomfortable without the a/c.

So far, I've done nothing except walk around a bit, and sit on the beach. I'm thinking of renting a scooter for a couple of days and cruise around the island.

I'm almost out of here.

Today I went on a spree buying up toothbrush, toothpaste, advil, film, small stuff that I always forget that I need. I really think I need to travel lighter, maybe I'll dump off some stuff in St. Maarten.

My week of doing nothing was great. I went to the gym almost everyday. Hey, 3 out of the 5 isn't bad. I read some more, walked all around town, and watched as Benny kept on whining about how much work he has to do.

One more month of free time for me, then it's a full time job.

Is there something I'm forgetting? Tickets, travel insurance, money (there's never enough), what else?

The current plan is to spend a week in St. Maarten, a week in the UK, and two more going around Budapest->Vienna->Grunau->Cesky Krumlov->Prague. Hopefully the money situation holds up. Having to pay for an apartment for two months while I'm away is really cutting into my budget.

So, today is my first day of doing nothing, and I actually did a bunch of stuff. I got my return flight booked from London to Toronto, bought some travel insurance, ate lunch, bought some Drano, cleaned around the apartment, worked out, ate wings for dinner, and sat around watching TV at Matt's place.

Tomorrow will really be a day of doing nothing.

I think I'm stuck in the four month university life cycle. Towards the end of every semester, my organization skills get gradually worse. First it's the tables that get cluttered, then it's the clothes strewn across the floor, followed by the unwashed dishes, which all lead to me piling everything into boxes as I move out. This has become the case at my apartment, except I'm not moving. I just have no energy to clean up, and the more I don't, the more messy it gets. A vicious cycle in the making.

Hopefully next week I'll have more time to clean things up.

If the page doesn't seem to load properly, just click on the refresh button while holding down the Ctrl key.

This summer, due to laziness, I decided not to get a TV, cable, or internet at home. As difficult as it is to believe, the only annoyance I had was recently, when I couldn't figure out some css formats, and had no where to look them up (it turned out that I just needed single quotes).

The other difficulty I had to learn to live with was eating without TV. For the past 5 years, almost every single meal I've eaten at home have been in front of the TV. Not until now had I realized how difficult it is to read, or god forbid, do nothing, while eating. My main reason to get a TV when I get back is to watch something, anything, when I eat.

At the beginning of the summer, I subscribed to the New York Times, and read the paper both on the bus to and from work, and at home. It's hard to keep up with the paper, there are so many stories. I eventually just read the headlines, and the op-ed pieces. I also took the photography course, which occupied my Monday nights.

Recently, I cancelled my newspaper subscription, since I'll be going on vacation soon. I almost feel sad, not having yesterday's news in my hands at 8:15 am every morning. But I'm sure I'll get over it.

Another thing I did a lot this summer was read. I've almost completed the Chuck P library (with Survivor, Fight Club, Choke, and Lullaby), made quite a dent on the Coupland collection (Girlfriend in a Coma, Life After God, and Shampoo Planet), started on Dan Brown (Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons), read some short stories by Chabon (Werewolves in Their Youth), and am now on one of my favourite authors, Alexandre Dumas (The Three Musketeers). I have saved for my trip a Murakami (Hard-boiled Wonderland and the End of the World) and the interminable and drab Tolstoy (Anna Karenina).

A weekend of general debauchery, involving parties, dressing up, and needing another weekend to recover from this one.

Friday was Matt and Katrina, and by a bit of a stretch, Cormie's combined birthday parties. We turned Matt (and Ben)'s apartment upside down, and they spent the next day cleaning it, again.

Saturday was a themed party experience. I don't think I've been to a themed party before, but as the theme was the love boat, we all donned sailor hats, and had a group theme that involved the text in the title. The party was a little "older", but still fun regardless.

After two restless nights, Sunday was a day of rest. As per usual, we didn't start anything until 4pm, and even then, all we did was drive to the beach.

My new favourite show is Entourage. It's hilarious, and has Anna from the OC.

It's always so sunny. I wish I wasn't working so I could be ouside doing stuff.

I am taking a course this summer in the basics of developing black and white prints. This has involved taking a lot of pictures, going in every week, and getting 2 or 3 sets developed.

It's been a good experience, from getting out there and taking pictures, to developing test strips to determine the development time and contrast setting, and finally making the print, with the semi-regular dodge and burn here and there. I will definitely need to continue this afterward, either by renting hours at some local darkroom, or looking into investing in my own equipment.

I love going in, and looking at other people's pictures. It sometimes gives me inspiration on what to shoot. I think that when I come back from my trip, I'll have to buy some books of photo collections, and look at what other people have done, and maybe take up more courses on technique and development.

Black and white photography is also very different (some might say simpler) from colour prints. There's no red, yellow and blue to work with, but different tones can be vividly adjusted using different contrast filters. It also gives the setting a more sullen, stark atmosphere, making the technicoloured world around you more lively, more exciting, more youthful.

Heather is travelling there, during the Olympics nonetheless, and needs a place to stay. Anyplace.

Welcome Jessica, and welcome back Kevin.

It's about time they did this. Now you can MSN anyone, anywhere, as long as you have a windows OS and a network connection.

This seems to be in beta mode, but I tried it, and it works for me.

Today a thread about sea-fair quickly turned into discussions on capitolism, and Seattle drivers.

San Francisco pictures.

I need suggestions on where to go, and what books I should get for Europe.

I've been thinking about going north (but not Norway/Sweden north), and hitting countries like Germany, Poland, and Hungary. I have roughly three weeks, so maybe 4-5 countries.

Advice on safeness/places to stay/places to see/places to eat/how to get around/good travel books/anything else is appreciated.

Please leave short advice in the comments, and email long advice to me.

I am now thoroughly convinced that Microsoft interns will be the future spammers of nonsense. They won't be out to make a profit, they will spam just for the sake of spamming and getting their puny little self-satisfying narcissistic voices heard.

Today, one person emailed to say that he got his car towed for parking in a handicapped spot on campus over the weekend. 100+ emails later, people are still calling him names, complaining that the rules are meant to be bent, interofficing him 50 cents at a time to pay off his towing charges, arguing that parking in the handicapped spot is like/not like going to the handicapped stall in a bathroom, copying and pasting the first chapter of Great Expectations into the reply, and discussing the lengths of such books as Lord of the Rings.

This was on top of a thread two days ago about how some intern was propositioned for sex by an older woman (with arguments of how old she really was) that probably broke every HR email rule in the books.

Sometimes I wonder how these people got their jobs.

There was an article about the biking habits of the two presidential candidates in the Sunday NYTimes. It shows Bush on a $3000 Trek mountain bike, and Kerry on a $8000 Serotta road bike. With the quote

a study posted recently on a New Zealand biking Web site suggests that downhill mountain-bike riders, like Mr. Bush, score considerably higher than cross-country riders on something called the Sensation Seeking Scale. (Road riders, like Mr. Kerry, are comparative wussies when it comes to sensation seeking.) Downhill riders are also more likely to drive a car too fast, and to have had a brush with the law.

Not that I disagree, but downhill biking is significantly different from regular mountain biking, and even at $3000, Mr. Bush's Trek would probably not survive a couple of trips a downhill bike would go on. That and the fact that he has toeclips on a Fuel 98. TOECLIPS.

Update: I (think I) found the study that the reporter was quoting here. As you can see fairly quickly, the study was on cross-country and downhill mountain bikers. It had nothing to do with road biking. Cross-country and downhill are two categories of mountain biking, and is completely separate from road biking. So the survey was in fact comparing two subcategories of mountain biking, and not mountain biking and road biking. The comparison in the article based on the survey is wholly unmerited. Journalists should really do better research.

Friday night, fearing time was running out, the cab pulled up to my building at 7:15 for our 8:30 flight. So much for arriving 1 hour early, good thing Seattle is barren, and there was no lineup at security. But the taxi did cost a pretty penny. I blame Cormie.

We were also lucky that the Avis agent at SFO did not look carefully at Cormie's Manitoba license, which expired during our rental. He was the only one old enough not to get extra "under-25" insurance. Friday night ensues. We ended up at a bar in North Beach, where lots of people were dancing, and some of the bartender's friends were dancing on the bar, and conveying drink orders between the customers and the bartender. A curtain of tight jeans separating the provider and the consumer.

Saturday, we broke our do-nothing-until-4-pm rule. We finished breakfast at the Polk Train Station by 1 pm. Then we went shopping. Well, only for Ben, since he was also unaware of the possibility of cold weather in California, and only brought t-shirts. Following our escapade in the largest menswear store I've ever seen (they have a separate, 5 story Macy's building just for men, reserving the much larger main store for women), we walked all around the city. Some attractions included the Lombard winding street, the aquatic park, and walking on the Golden Gate Bridge. I don't understand how it could be so cold in San Francisco.

That night we went to RNM (or is it RMN) for dinner. Voted one of the trendiest restaurants in San Fran by citysearch. I had the rack of lamb. It was good. Afterwards we proceeded down Haight to be entertained by belly-dancers and smoke an apple flavoured hookah. It was decided that none of us know how to smoke, and hookahs are cool. Night continues at the Marina district, first at a black bar that seemed the exact opposite of SeeSound in Seattle (with the addition of curtained niches), then at HiFi, and ended again at North Beach.

We got up early (by our standards) again on Sunday, and checked out of the hotel. The evil corporation was heartless, and would not give us the extra two hours of parking that we requested (this was after paying $$$ to park at the hotel lot for 2 days). Then, seemingly out of spite, we drove the car around the city, going to Golden Gate park, up to Berkeley - with lots of frisbee tossing on their campus complete with wet and high retrievals from streams and trees, driving across the fog covered Golden Gate Bridge, and finally arriving back at the airport at a respectable time.

Of couse, after going through security, we discover that the only fast food place was outside the gates. So Matt and I drop anything metallic out of our pockets, and go back outside to the self-serve Burger King (most inefficient fast food restaurant ever), and get back to our gate just after they start boarding.

I'm going to stop spending money now, until my vacation in 4 weeks.