Amsterdam canal

what's with the sign on the building?

they do the clog thing in The Netherlands

look at me! I'm in Amsterdam!

They sang "Happy Birthday" for me

karaoke on my birthday

Me going to Italy = me eating lots of gelato

jealous gladiator?

at the Trevi Fountain in Rome

Cinque Terre Panorama

pensive me

View from Cinque Terre (Margaret, Molly, Me)

Venice at night

Return to Life!!

Hey friends,

I have come back and returned to life. No, I wasn't dead, but I sure wanted to be. A big load is off my shoulders but there's still more to be shouldered. (har)

British linguistic factoid of the day:
cobblers = bollux = balls (the nether kind)
ex... "He deserves a good kick in the cobblers." What a funny word btw, I can't stop laughing when I say it.

Very little sleep last night which led me to be late to class this morning. No huge deal though, as the prof was doing his usual rant about things on his mind. I feel bad for missing it though, as I have a great quote list from his class that has grown to quite a size. The cobbler thing was from him this morning btw. We once had a discussion of British slang/curses/insults. Entertaining stuff indeed.

British cultural factoid of the day:
Don't extend your index and middle fingers while the rest of your fingers are closed, facing towards you. (think of a peace sign with the top of your hand facing out.)
It's a lot like giving someone the finger, but with a little more history. Perhaps I'll explain it later.

I've continued my lunch specials tour to a new restaurant today. I can't remember the name, but it was another nice Chinese place with a good set lunch. I need to start making sandwiches soon... the specials are cheap... but only relatively.

Oh yeah, I had the entire flat to myself this past weekend. Everyone was traveling. Steve and John went to some fashion show in Ireland, I think. Adam and Phil were in Ireland, "Dublin" their pleasure and "Dublin" their fun. (Adam's Joke, not mine.) Pat was in Paris. So what did I do?

Laundry. 3 loads! Consecutively! Awesome right? I also wrote a paper. A late paper. Doh.

That's all I got for now, tune in soon for more random crap.

Have a blessed day!
Michael

Great googly moogly!

I just realized... I didn't have birthday cake on my birthday!

This must be rectified... even if I have to bake it myself. You just wait for the pictures.

later...Q

That warm and fuzzy feeling

Ok, so I'm reading my email and I'm reading a reply of a reply of an original message.

The whole thing kinda goes like this. I ordered some flowers for my mom for Mother's Day. I got an email telling me later that the "item I ordered is out of stock." So after a little email tag I change my order to something as equally wonderful (read: cost the same) as my previous order.

Anyways, in the email, after confirming my new purchase, the customer service person left me with this,
"Have a blessed day."

Well, I was completely floored by that. It's not like she knows me or anything, but it's just such a great thing to say to someone, someone you're "serving" no less. When I think about it, I guess it really isn't that big a deal.. but it definitely made my day.

Have a blessed day.
Mike

where have I been?

I believe that I've fallen off the face of the earth for the past week...

... and I'm not back yet! I'll say stuff if I have something interesting to say.

in the meantime, you can look at my neat little videos on my webspace. www.nd.edu/~mquisao

I'm working on a major one, so give me a while.

Q

...on my own

Amsterdam was interesting.

Interestingly enough, our flight out of London was at 4:20. Too bad nobody took advantage.

The Heineken Experience was definitely one of the highlights for the weekend. It's a tour that takes you through an old brewery. You learn about everything you would ever want to know about Heineken and you even get a couple free glasses of the stuff. Margaret and I ended up getting more than a couple glasses of it though. Long story short, we went up to the bar and jokingly asked for 10 glasses. He gave us all 10, even though we protested (well not really.) So that was fun.

The other highlight was the Van Gogh Museum. It was really, really exhibit. I used an audioguide and learned a lot more about Van Gogh than I knew before. I bought some prints too, including one of Van Gogh's Hiroshiga "copies," the one with the bridge and the rain.

One more thing. Amsterdam smells like drugs. It really is everywhere.

That's about it. Back to my usual programming. More later, of course.

Cheers,
Michael

Here I Go Again...

Wow, there's a new Pope.

The picture site has been updated with 2nd weeklong break, birthday, and Amsterdam pictures.

Let's see, that email covered 1 and 2 on my agenda, so let's get to numero 3.

In actuality, the week up to my birthday was quite normal, with the exception of the arrival of my friend, Laura, who's been studying in Angers, France, this past year. She got in on Wednesday evening. Sophia and I took the tube, a train, and a shuttle to pick her up at the Luton Airport (this was a little more expensive than I was expensive, to the tune of 25 quid round trip pretty much) This was worth it though. Sophie made a sign in French that said "Looking for Laura;" Laura got a kick out of it. We tried to meet up with some friends at a some club, but we didn't get there until too late, so we went out for Shwarmas. McCabe and company joined us.

Let me just preempt this passage by saying that, though it may not quite sound like it, I did enjoy my birthday, all in all. It would have been a blast to be back home with everyone though. Plus this was the first time I've celebrated my birthday without any of my family around, particularly my mom. She's even come up for my past 2 birthdays. C'est la vie.

The night after that was the 14th, the Eve of my 21st birthday. It was a Thursday. so that meant going to one of my favorite events, karaoke at Callaghans. The problem was that everybody had something else going on. Most of the girls were at the ballet for class, my roommates were kinda AWOL, and well, there isn't really anyone else... sooo I went to Callaghans by myself... and bought myself a drink. Luckily, within the hour, friendly faces showed up and I even was able to get my name in the karaoke list for a song. Eventually some of the girls showed up and later, I went up to sing. Elton John's "I'm Still Standing"

Well, it went alright. The song started off in a weird key, but things turned out ok in the end. Midnight rolled around and Callaghans was closing. It was tough, but I was able to find a couple people to go with me to Strawberry Moons, a bar / dance club nearby. Chris, Lesley, Laura (my visiting friend), and a random Canadian soldier came along. The soldier Canuck even payed our cover for the club. He bought me a couple drinks for my birthday, some nasty shots with Tabasco, I think.

I ended up meeting some girls studying at a Fashion School north of London. They were there celebrating some other girls birthday. Fun times were had. I did a lot of dancing, so I was happy with that.

Ok, I'll talk about Amsterdam in the next blog.

Peace out homies,
Q

THE Pub Crawl Email

For those who haven't read it... here's an email I sent the morning after a fun little pub crawl in Roma. Here it is, in it's *nearly* unedited glory. Bring yourself back to April 6th...

*

I finally have a story from my abroad times.

I woke up this morning and had two somewhat clear thoughts, 1- "holy crap, where are my pants?" and 2- "how the hell did I get home?"

The answer to the first was, "under my loft" and under the second was "a cab," I think. Allow me to elaborate. After a gorgeous day, exploring the Colloseum, the Roman Forum, Palatine Hill , the "secret" keyhole by Santa Sabina, and napping in the Circus Maximus park, I decided to go on the pub crawl sponsored by my hostel. This turned out to be a brilliant decision. I went with one person from ND and ended up partying with a group from Texas A&M, they were good people. We started off in front of Santa Maria Maggiore, by the fountain ,in the piazza. Someone handed me a not-quite-so-cold beer, and I was thinking about you guys, so shotgunning became the quaffing method of choice. I was so successful that my new friend Adrian complained that she didn't have enough time to get a picture in. We felt a little bad about drinking on the eve of il Papa's funeral, but we justified it by saying we were having a "irish wake" and that we were sending off the pope in the only way we could do properly. They had a case of beer for us, gave us free double shots at the our arrival at every new bar, the new friends bought drinks, and I was loose with my wallet, so I don't remember too clearly how I got home. I think we went to a club called "Rockadile." I'm pretty sure I peed on a couple cars.

I also remember making out with the girl I mentioned, Adrian, who I thought had a boyfriend... but she told me that they were in "an open relationship."...
ooh... Apparently, I'm going to be partying with them next weekend in Amsterdam, for my 21st birthday. (update - they weren't able to make it to Amsterdam.)

I also remember drinking the shots I ordered for someone else, because they were "done."

I don't remember how I got in a cab, but I did; I don't remember how much I paid the cabbie, but it was probably too much; I'm not sure where I told him to drop me off, but I vaguely remember stubling home from Termini, the train station.
I really don't remember getting into the hostel, climbing into bed, or when I lost my pants. Can I say that I LOVE Rome?

Everything is shut down today because of the Pope's funeral, so I'm not quite sure what I'll be doing today. I'm pretty sure the funeral starts in a few minutes.

My week in Italy has been lots of fun. We started off in Venice, which is indescribably beautiful and quiet, then went to Cinque Terre, a beautiful group of towns with wondrous scenery. Hiking down to a "naturalist" beach, drinking wine, swimming in the Mediterranean, and a little cliff jumping, will be stuff I'll remember for quite while. I can't wait to post the pictures for you guys.

What surprises me the most is how clear of grammatical and *typographical* (edit) errors this email is, I think.

I miss you guys so much it hurts.

Rock, rock on. Hard.
Michael

*

so ends the message, hope you had a good laugh

Hello friends...

I've got a couple papers to write... so as a major procrastinator, this will probably be the best time to update my beloved blog!

In actuality, I'm going to start updating tonight. But allow me to tell you what I'll be updating you with.

1. slightly edited version of Roman pub crawl email
2. more from the second break itself
3. the week of and including my 21st birthday
4. birthday weekend in Amsterdam (not as crazy as you may hope)
5. the random things that pop into my head and things I've noticed (as usual)

so concludes my blog about future, up and coming blogs

ya'll come back now, ya here?

Cheers (said with a Chicago accent, think John Goodman from his SNL skits),
Q

Ciao Ciao

Well, it's been about 9 days since I've last posted, what a coincidence... that's when I started this week-long break.

It's been a sweet, sweet week. Molly, Margaret, and I started out by flying to Venice. Venice is a picturesque city quite unlike anything I have ever seen. A city without cars is a pretty quiet city. It's also a very clean city (no exhaust from cars). Normally, it's special to go to a cafe that sits on the water, but in Venice, nearly every cafe and restaurant is on the water. It really threw me off. Venice was very much a tourist type of place, but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

We found out when we were booking our train to Cinque Terre that the pope had died. Needless to say, we immediately booked our train over to Rome as well. We were a little apprehensive about how Rome would be, but we put it out of our heads for that time being.

After a few days we took a train over to Cinque Terre. As the name somewhat indicates, Cinque Terre is a group of 5 little towns that are just a short hike's distance apart. The cities in and of themselves aren't too spectacular, it's the areas between them. We hiked between a couple of the cities and took a really steep, fun hike to a beach, which we later found out was a "naturalist" beach. Imagine our surprise to find a "naturalist" sunning himself that afternoon. It was fun anyways. It was kinda cold, but I did a little swimming in the Mediterranean anyways.

Our hostel in Cinque Terre turned out to be more of an apartment, so we had huge beds, a living room, and a kitchen, all of which we took advantage of. We got a lot of sun and Margaret and I did a little bit of cliff diving, which was a blast.

After a 5 hour train ride we arrived in Rome. There was an insane amount of people making their way to Rome. Watching the news that night, we heard a news report informing people not come to the city anymore. "Rome is closed." It sure felt like it.

We did most of the tourist stuff, minus the Vatican. We considered waiting to see the Pope, but the line was 12-14 hours long. Ouch.

Pub crawl on Thursday night...

I had Ethiopian food today and it was pretty good. I'm a little tired right now so I can tell that I'm not being particularly descriptive. I'll think about doing a little more updating when I get back tonight. At the very least you'll be able to see all my pictures soon.

Cheers kids,
Michael