Blame it on Riga

I think its safe to say that I have never prepared for a trip with less of an idea what to expect. Like many Americans, my knowledge of Eastern Europe and Asian geography comes from a Risk board. I knew that Lativa was somewhere around Ukraine and thus a total pain in the tookas to try to defend.

And if you asked most of my friends to put Russia, Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia on a map, we’d get at least 25% of them right. But I did a little research before leaving and was quite pleased to see that Latvia was on the coast of the Baltic Sea, near Finland and Sweden. Now to me the words Baltic Sea, Scandanavia, Russia, and late October conjure up images of bone biting cold and army troops on skis, so I checked out the weather channel before I left and discovered it would indeed be cold – somewhere between 27 and 40F.

An aside – I think it really is something about this civilization that not only can I fly to Riga today, but I can check the weather report from my desk at home. Just a random note there.

The Liverpool to Riga Express makes two trips back and forth a day, starting at 7:00am. Liverpool is roughly the distance between Seattle and Everett, so we needed to awake at 4:00am for the 5:00am cab to the airport. Security to travel to this former Soviet Bloc country was easier than flying from Seattle – San Francisco, so we had a few minutes to sit in the gate area and watch with astonishment the group of 20 or so English guys, ages 18-48, laughing and enjoying their pints of beer at the airport bar. Yes, you read that right. 6:30 am and these guys are swilling pints. It made my stomach hurt just to watch.

Everything else went off without a hitch and we were Riga Bound.

Now as I mentioned before, I expected it to be chilly. I bought gloves and packed appropriately. I was mentally and physically prepared. But when I stepped out the plane to descend the stairs to the tarmac below, the first thought my brain could manage about this strange land was, “Holy Fargin Christ it’s cold.”

As you can imagine from the fact we deplaned to the Tarmac, the Riga airport isn’t much larger than say, the Pyramid Alehouse. But there is a very distinct thrill when you get into a terminal and see signs in Russian and Latvian (coupled with a small disappointment when they are in English as well.) Then you listen and hear some strange combination of letters that don’t even really exist, forming a language you could not possibly understand. And that’s when the thrill of being in Latvia kicks in.

The fear of being in Latvia kicks in seconds later at Customs where the most stoic and cheeriless figure I have ever encountered stared at me in a drab green uniform and asked for my passport. Of course, he could have been asking for a stick of chewing gum for all I know, but I went with the passport thing. That’s when you get that little shiver – did I take the steak knife out of my bag. Is ibuprofen considered an illegal narcotic? But of course, I went unchecked and I was able to successfully smuggle in 42 pairs of Levi’s jeans.

Vittorio and I shared a cab, while Eugene (the one guy who speaks Russian) took a cab with Lillian and Irene, because while we knew the Chinese girls would be kidnapped eventually, we thought they deserved to at least see a little of the city first.

Before we got into the cab Eugene had gone through a fairly extensive negotiation with the cab driver, and a price of 5 Lats was agreed upon. (Roughly 1 Lat = 1 Pound). This negotiation had gone on quite some time, before Gene left us and the cab started moving toward Riga. So Vittorio and I were quite surprised when the cab driver looked back and asked, “Where go?”

This was the first in a continuing series of humorous moments provided by our Russian speaking tour guide. I cannot even fathom how he was able to go through the whole negotiation without once telling the cab driver the name of the hotel, and then forget to think that might be a piece of information Vittorio or I would find useful. Boggles the imagination, but the more important issue was that we were now driving aimlessly as far as 5 Lats was going to get us, without a way to contact our friends.

I remembered the term “Old Town” which at least gave us a direction and worst case scenario. I attempted meekly, “Hotel Sauvin on Marketa Street,” which received a response of a grimace, shake of the head and a grunt. The good news was that the International Russian Roaming activated on my cell phone, so for what I am sure must have cost $30-$50 I was able to text Lillian and Eugene. The bad news is that neither Lillian or Gene’s worked at all so I might as well have been texting you guys. Vittorio and I could text all day which would have been slightly more helpful if we weren’t sitting in the back seat of the same cab.

Eventually the cab came to a stop in a pretty safe looking, tourist filled area and the cabbie made indications that it was time for us to get out. I attempted a few more street names ‘ “Marleta” Maektla’ “Markela” and at Markela I received a “OH Markela. Dsgdj sgdhdjkds asfdhjkdkl One two xzxsdsf (hand signal right) hdhjdkfhy xvzcxfsg cdvdsbgd. (Smile)"

Long story short, Markela St was two blocks down and the hotel was found and our friends were confused about why we were late, and we all decided it was lunchtime in Riga and time to find a little cafe.

We wandered out of Old Town to find a more traditional place and the patrons of the smoke filled café we found seemed quite amused at this little collection Chinese, Italians and Americans who looked helplessly at the menu at the wall. But we all enjoyed large plates of things like fried cheese (which we thought was going to be a cheese steak, pork chops with sauce and mushrooms, sodas and coffee, all for about 12 or 13 Lats total, which was quite pleasing. If prices stayed this slow all weekend, I’d have to invent new ways of using this play money for fear of getting stuck with it at the airport. (Alas, prices did not stay so low and money was spent with the kind of recklessness of a woman at a shoe sale.) Plus, the restaurant was nice enough to provide all the cigarette smoke we wanted free of charge.

I don't think Latvians see smoking as a hobby, it's more like breathing. You see Latvians walking down the street taking a breath of fresh air and they grimace like, "There's no tobacco in this air. I must find a pack of smokes." And at .70 Lats a pack, no wonder. The government not only fails to tax these things, it appears to subsidize the whole industry. I don't understand, but this may have been my favorite part of the trip, because these things sell in England for 5.50 a pack. I brought back 2 cartons to sell here, so I can probably net about 55-60 pounds on this thing.

I think now it’s best to let some pictures do some talking, because between the 5 of us we must have snapped 400 photos. I’ll add more as I get them, and spend some time on the headers and such, but this will have to come in good time. Consider this the Latvia appetizer.

Like I said, I didn’t know what to expect – anything from large communist style apartment buildings to 10th century temples would have seemed appropriate. But safe to say, Riga is absolutely charming and attractive in that old European way, and adds a considerable amount of edge to the mix. Later I decided it would be a fineplace if I ever needed to hide. I think I said the same about Scotland, but Riga has that “Russian mafia’ thing about it where the streets are clean, people are friendly and you never know if the guy you are talking to is moving a shipment of AK47’s to Albania.

I’ll get to more posts about Latvian women, Urmalla, food, music and other fun stuff. But homework calls now.

Scotland - Glengoyne, An Then, and Mr. Executive Class

Ok – last Scotland post. Finally.

So my Venezuelan buddy Raymond wanted to see a distillery, and planned the whole trip out. I just went along for the ride. After I get to Glasgow, I do the math and ask Raymond, “Are we really spending 4 hours on busses and 2 hours in Glasgow for a 90 minute distillery tour?” And he answers, “Yus, Ahndy. Eet was reallee de only way we could make sure we saw a deestillllllleree.” And I said, “Raymond, you’re my kind of traveler.”

Anyway, if you've been to a winery, you know the drill. To their credit, they start you off with a nice generous helping of 10 year old Whiskey as you walk in the room, and if you turn your head a 2nd one magically appears just as fast, so I give them style points for that. And really, two glasses at scotch is two more than you need before noon. Glengoyne’s claim to fame is that their 17 year old Single Malt is the most recent winner of the World Series of Scotch. So, in a fit of extravagance, I bought a bottle, egged on by the fact that if I managed not to lose all the paperwork between now and then, I can get a check back for the 17% VAT when I return back home. That probably will only make the bottle 40% more than I would have paid in the states. But hey, I had to bring home a souvenir.

This also means that anyone who comes over for dinner the first time I reacquaint myself with my house and have people over will likely enjoy a mighty fine glass of Whiskey. Look at me bribing people to hang out with me when I get back…

I only saw a piece of Glasgow (which doesn't have the same flair as Edinburgh) but have one funny story. I said earlier that Scotish accents are even harder to understand than English. We stopped in a Burger King (I know, I know) at 10:45am because we had a few minutes before the bus left for the distillery. I asked the girl behind the counte, "Are you serving breakfast or lunch now?" Her response was, "An Then.” I stared for a second, turned my head and looked at Raymond, who simply shrugged his shoulders with a look of, “Don’t look at me, it’s your F@#$%^& language.” So I turned back and tried again. “Are you serving Breakfast or Lunch?” And she said again, "An Then.”

It became quite clear that we could do this dance all morning, and tempted as I was, we did have a bus to catch so I started trying to decode. Did she want to say, “Eleven?” “Eating?” “And then you can order?” After about 15 seconds of an American, a Venezuelan and a Scot staring hopelessly at each other in a Glasgow Burger King, I ventured, “Did you say I could have ‘Anything?’” And she said, “Yeah, An Then.”

Last thing - I have picked up a nickname. Whenever I travel with my group and make hotel of dinner suggestion, I now get back, “Oh, I see Mr. Executive Class has found a nice expensive place for us.” Which frankly, I really find hilarious. I’ve been called a lot of things, but I don’t think “free-spending” had ever been one of them…

Ok, Scotland is in the books. I could talk about being a 32 year old guy living in a 20 room castle/hostel for 2 days, but frankly I’m still trying to erase the memory, so we’ll just leave it at that.

Scotland - Loch Ness

A quick note. You CANNOT see all of Scotland in 3 days. For comparison, here’s what we tried to do in Pacific Northwest terms.

- Take a train from North Vancouver BC to Seattle on Friday.
- See ALL of downtown Seattle on Friday by foot.
- Take a bus at 8am to Lake Chelan Saturday morning and come back that evening.
- Take a 9am bus to Tacoma Sunday morning to transfer to another bus and see a distillery in Enumclaw. Return in time to take a 6pm train back to North Vancouver.

So the great Loch Ness adventure was 5 hours up through the Highlands, 2 hours around the Loch and 5 hours back through the other side of the Highlands. Yeah – too much bus for one day.

Quick story that we learned – Way back in time there were the McDonaldand Campbell clans. As you can tell if you check out the pics, the Highlands are quite rugged, so there’s been this thousand year old tradition called Highland Hospitality. It basically says that if anyone traveling needs help or a place to stay, all they have to do is knock on a door and the owners are obligated to take care of them with a drink, food, place to stay, whatever.

So the King of England (I think) hires all these guys from the Campbell family to go collect taxes from the Scots, but not tell anyone they were Campbells. The Campbells and McDOnalds never got along anyway, but the McDonalds extended their “Highlands Hospitality” and let them stay there for weeks. Then in the middle of one night, a signal was given and the Campbells hired by the King started murdering all of the McDonalds. Bastards.

Then, a few years ago, an American guy named Campbell was vacationing in Scotland and stops at a hotel owned by a McDonald. The American guy didn’t know anything about the past history, but the McDonald wouldn’t let him stay in the hotel when he saw what his name was. So apparently the clans still resent each other.

Back to Loch Ness…

There’s no question this is a tourist trap, but the guy who owns the boat and takes you on tours of the lake (for 7 pounds – another bloody rip off) REALLY believes in this thing. He swears to have seen it about 8 times. His boat is all decked out with sonar and radar stuff. Though, it’s not like he has a giant net or spear gun on the boat, so I’m not sure what he plans on doing if it does saddle up next to him one day. I guess just wave and take some pictures.

Can’t really tell too many more stories about Loch Ness, but the Highlands are beautiful so if you go up there, make sure to spend a quiet night in Inverness or up on the islands off the Northern Coast. Or another thing to do is cruise from Loch Ness to Aberdeen because there are about 123 distilleries it’s basically the Napa Valley of Whiskey – which would make for a fun day.

Warning - Humorless Post Ahead. Strictly for Those Interested in the Academic Pursuits

I thought a more extensive post about my actual learning would help counteract the assertions I’ve been getting from people that I’m on a 12 week vacation. Now if you wanted to argue Business School overall was a 18 month vacation from reality, I’d be hard pressed to put up much of a fight. And there’s no question that the 2^nd year of business school is far easier than the first. But that’s also because the sheer volume of work in the first year is crushing. 2^nd year you have more chance to work on things you actually care about, which makes the work more pleasurable and more in tune with your everyday life.

So, I’m been quite pleased with how my assignments and projects have laid out. So this report just for the people interested in my academic progress along with geographic tracking.

Of most interest is the import/export project I’m working on for the MBS Incubator and Start-Up Business Consulting Class. I mentioned the company, Martin Conquest in an earlier post so I won’t go on and on about it. But here’s a project that has potential to turn into a real consulting gig down the road.

In a similar ilk, my Entrepreneurship paper is all about comparing and contrasting funding options for SME’s in Asia, Europe and the U.S. This research is helpful for figuring out where one might find early or later stage capital.

Over in Strategic Retail, we’re building a Market Segmentation for the UK’s largest computer retailer, PC World. For obvious confidentiality reasons I can’t go into too much detail here, but it actually afforded me the chance to feel like a grownup again today. We booked a meeting with PC World’s research firm, which is based outside Oxford. So I threw on my little shirt and slacks, took the train down 3 hours to Oxford, had about 3 hours of meetings with my group, PC World and the Research Firm, and am now back on the train heading to Manchester. For seeing different parts of the country, train rides aren’t bad. So I didn’t mind the long commute. Plus it gave me a place to concentrate on things I had to do – like study for my exam, finish up the mBalmer and write meaningless blog entries.

I know I have another class….Oh yeah. Marketing in a High Tech Environment. Very interesting class taught by an old IBM exec. For that class I need to finish up the business plan I needed to write for our little idea, as well as the UW Biz Plan Comp. So it’s a good place for models and charts that help the plan come along. Also, we are working on a group project regarding Nicholas Negroponte’s $100 laptop that he’s trying to get built for kids in the 3^rd world. It's a really interesting story, one of those market changing events if it works. If you want to read up on it, we’re putting our paper together from a blog at http://mmtle.blogspot.com so we can see what each person is working on. You won’t see a whole paper there but you’ll see some info and links we’ve collected and starting to pull together in paper form.

Plus, I don’t think I can understate the eye-opening experience of dealing 1:1 with people from 10-15 different countries. There was a debate on the UW MBA Mailing List the other day about how some first years felt the International Students “slowed them down” when doing group work. I had to laugh because it’s possible I had similar views last year, but this quarter every group I’m in has at least 3 different nationalities, and sometimes it’s 4 or 5. You’d think that would slow us down even more, but the reality is that back at UW, the International students aren’t the problem. It’s the U.S. students trying to force them into their structure and not asking how they’re used to doing projects. Anyway, I’m off on a soapbox and need to come back…

So that’s the Academic side to this little savings-account clearing adventure. This would turn into a great story and nice investment if the import/export thing turns interesting.

Ok – long boring blog all taken care of.

A Brief Interlude

Ok, I have to put you through a little time warp here and bring you back to the present.

Augustin and Guillaume have two friends in town from Paris for the week. So now we've got 4 Frenchies and an American in this flat (but I'm still pretty sure I could take them all in a fight).

Anyway, last night I'm writing papers all night while these guys are drinking wine and catching up on old times. Then they notice the poker chips I've not so subtly left up on the kitchen counter for a few weeks. So, all of a sudden they want to play poker.

These are guys who have never played Texas Hold 'em before and I'm trying to teach them. I need you to try to imagine midnight in an apartment. 4 French guys and me. The 2 visiting guys don't speak English as well as Gus and Guillaume. So I start explaining things like "Burn the top card and then deal the flop" and you have 8 set of drunk bloodshot eyes translating the sentence into French and just not coming up with anything that makes the least bit of sense int heir head. So we go through everything at a tedious but hilarious pace. We have to discuss why we just flip one card at "Le Rue Quarte" but three card during "Le Floppe."

Oh, then I bring up knocking and you would have thought I was trying to describe how to castle a king. Great humor. I hope they figured it out and keep playing. That could be a nice source of income for me...

Scotland - Nightlife

Now I don't want to say the Scots are drunks, but there are A LOT of place to go out in Edinburgh. And they all look cool.

First off, this was going to be an easy night because we had an 8:00am bus to go catch teh Loch Ness MOnster in the morning. And I'm not good with hostels or long bus rides, so a hangover was not going to help.

I should mention we had 12 exchange students on the trip, a merry mix of Chinese, French, Venezuelan and Americans that certainly stood out in any crowd of Scots. But my aversion to spending any waking minute in the hostel, by default I became the leader of a two person recon mission to find a place to start the night.

I can't remember if I mentioned the complete inability of this group to make any decision. This is an absolutely great group of people, but their one flaw is that you honestly have no chance to get them moving unless you tell them exactly where you will be. Then they feel an obligation to find you. They may complain about it when they get there, but they'll stay there a while until they can muster the energy to think about someplace else to go.

I'm going to be brief because it doesn't translate well, but Edinburgh has so many of the coolest little bars with the perfect amount of people and unthreatening crowds. There's always 1 person in line ahead of you for a beer, and enough people to feel full without being crowded. That may have something to do with the 2,000 pubs.

But we found everything on Grassmarket entertaining and visited a ridiculous monster of a place called Espionage. This is a bar on a hill where you walk in at ground level and see an unassuming lounge that holds about 50 people. You snoop around a little and go down a staircase to a lower floor lounge and a few more people. Walk through there and get to another staircase which takes you down to a bigger bar with a huge dance floor. But follow the staircase down and you get to floor 4, with a huge dance floor playing R+B hits. If you lose your mates here, you're likely never to see them again.

Quick story: Raymond (the Venezuelan guy) and and I took a quick detour to an Irish place down the street because he had never heard Irish music and I thought that was a crime. When we came back, I saw Guillaume smoking a cigarette at our table with some weird drunk guy who must've wandered over. Guillaume absolutely doesn't smoke, so that seemed odd. It seemed odder when I looked back over and saw the drunk guy face forward down on the table, passed out. I went over to the bouncer and said, "Yeah, I think there's some guy we don't know passed out at our table." The bouncer chuckled (you don't see that often in Scotland) and the problem was eliminated.

Anyway, being that we really couldn't drink that much and I REALLY didn't want to go back to the hostel, Raymond, lillian, Guillaume and I set out on a long, long, long walk around the city that took us from Old Town to the West End, back down through New Town and back up to the castle hostel. We walked by 100 bars on the trip, so I feel like I can speak with some authority on this subject.

Moral of the story - if you have some time and some good mates, Edinburgh would be a tremendous place for a summer weekend of golf and going out.

Scotland - Edinburgh

Ok, well I'm going to try to fly through these things so lets start chronologically.

Edinburgh (pronounced Edinboro for reasons I can only imagine) is the capital (I think) and the crown jewel of the country. I can say this with some certainty because the crown jewels of Scotland are actually in the BIG FREAKING castle up on the hill.

The city is split into a few districts, and the train station drops you right in the middle of the main two sections - an old one with tons of ancient buildings and the new one with all the modern business district. In a rare example of British efficiency, these are actually called "Old Town" and "New Town" which made me like Edinburgh immediately.

A trip up to the castle is a tourist necessity, but this was actually pretty cool. Aside from the ludicrous entrance fee of 9 pounds and the afroementioned 40 degree wind and rain, it's a neat tour. If youa re into irony, then easily the funniest part of the tour comes where you see the impressive cannons pointing out at the ground hundreds of feet below, and you think, "Damn, I'd hate to try to attack this thing - those cannons would destroy me." Then the tour guide says that "Those cannons weren't actually here. In fact, they didn't fire cannons from the castle." WTF? That's like an old building in Philadelphia having a statue of Franklin, Washington, Jefferson and Adams playing poker with the inscription, "Here's what it would've looked like if any of these guys played cards or had ever stepped into this place."

But the castle is huge (see pictures at shutterfly) and there's a touching memorial where every Scottish soldier killed in any modern battle is memorialized (I got a dirty look from the guide when he added, "Even the recent Iraq conflict.") Plus there's an interesting prison where they took all the American sailors who were captured in the Revolutionary War. Boy that must've sucked. Your boat sinks, they throw you on a British ship and send you several thousand miles and months away to a cold and damp jail on the top of a mountain in Scotland. You gotta figure the war was over for at least 6 months before these guys even heard it was over and then another 12 months to get them back.

For the most part, from a tourist perspective Old Town consists of the Royal Mile which extends from the castle down to the current home of the Scottish Royal Family when they are in town (probably the 2 or 3 days of nice weather in July).

One fun stat and then we'll move onto a new subject. At one time in Scotland there were 70,000 people and 2,000 pubs. Yes, that's 1 pub for every 35 people. Which is probably a good segue.

Soctland - Intro

I'm going to cut the Scotland report into a few different posts for a few reasons. One, Scotland is going to be a pretty long post and I want to be sensitive to those with 4-5 paragraph attention spans. More importantly, I said I'd have something posted Monday morning and want to hold to that. Basically, I would like to condition everyone so that if I say, "I'll put up my first Latvia post Monday at 9am PST," and Monday at 9:01am there's no post from Latvia, I hope your 9:02am thought will be, "Hmm, if I had to, I wonder how I would go about getting Marines dispatched to Riga?"

So very briefly....There's a reason you do not hear travel agents promoting Autumn or Winter trips to Scotland. It's cold, rainy, windy and generally the sort of weather that forces you to head into a warm living room, light a fire and watch the entire season of Arrested Development.

That being said, I need to give the Scots some credit for two things. First, somewhere along the train tracks between Manchester and Edinburgh, common sense comes back into existence. If you missed the point I made a few weeks back about Manchester girls, if you see a picture of 4 or 5 of them together in their "going out clothes" they could be in Hawaii, Greece, Fiji, Northern Alaska, Chicago or Manchester. Tank top, skirt, boots. Doesn't matter how rainy and cold. (In fact I kid you not - I saw a newspaper ad for "Micro skirts" which I assume is the smaller version of it's prudish cousin, the mini-skirt.)

But the Scots see this dreadful weather and say, "It's bloody miserable. I best bring my umbrella and put on a pair of jeans before getting a wee bit snokkered."

Also, for a miserable climate, they are generally a happy bunch. They are stuck in the Arctic end of a country that has spent the better part of human existence conquering and murdering their people. They don't really have their own governement, and I'm sure at least some of their tax dollars go to support a royal family whose ancestors killed theirs. But at the end of the day, they just laugh and say, "Yeah, but we've got Whiskey" and then kind of wander off happily.

Plus, walking up and out from the bowels of the Waverly train station in Edinburgh during the gloom and rain is actually a pretty exciting way to spend an October Morning. It's like the founding fathers said, "Out of all this flat land, let's build the town on the hilliest, most unwalkable part. Surely the English will leave us alone then." (But alas, they did not.) So you come up these stairs to Princes Street, look up about 1,000 feet to the left and see the 1400 year old Edinburgh Castle. And over on the other side is the 1200 year old Edinburgh Cathedral. And just as your standing in the street getting lost looking at the old buildings, a huge red bus honks its horn and forces you off the busy thoroughfare that you now notice is also lined with every modern clothing store on the planet.

So, that's the intro. As I get pieces of homework done throughout the day, I will add some stories of Edinburgh Castle, the Loch Ness Monster Hunt, Edinburgh Nightlife, Hostels, Scottish History and language, and a Glasgow Distillery, along with hundreds of pictures.

If all goes right...

In the business, we call this a teaser....

So I'll be offline a few days up north, with the Loch Ness Monster, Scottish castles and I hear there are 1 or 2 distilleries. I don't believe the distillery part so I volunteered to check it out. I *should* have plenty of pics and stories since 12 of us are going up there and sharing a hostel like we're 18 year old Young Lifers.

Then after a few days of school work, I'll be off in Latvia for four days the following weekend. Why Latvia, you ask? Well, it nails a couple of the Boyer Rules of Travel.
1) If someone asks you to go someplace you've never even thought of going before, always say yes.
2) If you can go someplace for less than $150, and the rest of your life the same trip will cost $1000, say yes.
3) If you are thinking about going someplace ridiculous, take advantage of the opportunity if someone knows the language (in this case Russian).

The week after that is a lovely 5 day tour of Ireland, starting in Galway and slowly moving east to Dublin.

And if all goes according to plan, London after that.

So again, if all goes right, there should be some interesting stories and pics up here (and I've been quite frightened to learn people actually READ this thing. Yikes!!! The pressure!)

Now, a lot of things could go wrong. And since you know me, some of these are more realistic than others:
1) I could miss the bus in Loch Ness and be stranded in Northern Scotland.
2) I could be confused for a fugitive Chechnyan rebel in Latvia and get kidnapped.
3) My wallet / passport gets lost and I have no money or ID.
4) My Chinese travelling companions get confiscated in Latvia and I have to empty out my savings account to save them from a life of Eastern Europian prositution.
5) Since the Latvians don't actually like the Russians (a nice piece of information to have been told BEFORE booking tickets, and which by the way makes Boyer Travel rule #3 COMPLETELY MOOT), having the Russian guy on board could cause some kind of huge bar brawl, in which I have to gather all of my fighting skill, survey the situation, and run as quickly as I can, fleeing the city like a conflict out of a donut shop to hide in a tree for 3 days.
(Actually, as I think about this, Latvia seems a lot more dangerous than Scotland...)

Anyway, if you don't see a new post up here for a week or so, please get worried and start calling embassies. Since I have an 8 hour head start on you, you should see something up here your Sunday or latest Monday. If not, contact Haggis Tours in Scotland and come save me..........

Also for you UW guys, look for the next issue of the mBalmer soon...

Manchester Radio

I threw in a couple of links to Manchester radio for you. It's a good listen and gives you a pretty good sense of the Music scene here.

Slow Postings, School and Other Nonsense

Well, it's been taking a while to get stuff posted, what with all the hectic school work and such....

I should give a little insight into my actual class schedule.
Tuesdays 1-5: Marketing in High Tech Environment
Tuesdays 5-9: Start Up Business Consulting
Thursdays 9-5 for 5 weeks: Entrepreneurship
3 weekends Thurs, Fri, Sat 9-5: Advanced Strategic Retail Management

I think I'm just adding this to make it sound like I'm doing tons of work, but we also do two pretty major projects for UK companies - one is a Market segmentation for PC World (large computer retail chain in the UK) and then there's a US import project for an interesting company called Martin Conquest. Check them out and tell me what you think - http://www.martinconquest.com. They are adapting BMW motorcycles for handicapped bikers, so that people with injuries below the waste can still ride. Interesting idea and they see Arizona and Florida as potential markets.

We don't have many actual exams, so most of the grades are all based on our huge papers. But, in order to be able to travel on weekends, I have to work on these papers done on Monday and Wednesday. So, it's not all fun and games.

Last weekend however, was ALL fun and games, with a trip to a pretty ridiculous dance club called Tiger Tiger. 2 giant dance floors and thousands of people. (Go ahead and start making fun of me now, but the English clubs are fun, and I actually like going out dancing here...) Then the Italian guy, Vittorio, wanted to cook 3:00am Pasta and we had 10 people at the flat eating pizza, spaghetti and drinking wine until 5:30am. What a mess. I'll get the pictures up there later this week.

This weekend should be a blast with an early Friday train to Edinburgh, returning Sunday. We'll get one day up in the highlands and a trip to see the Loch Ness Monster.

Sorry I don't have anything funny to say, but hope to have some good stories from Scotish Distilleries.

Two Sad Things

Nothing to do with Manchester....

First of all, I was extremely displeased to be walking down the street listening to my iPod on "Shuffle" when I was suddenly bludgeoned in the ear drums by a Sheryl Crow remake of Sweet Child of Mine. What did Axl Rose do (besides the drugs, booze and women) to deserve this? I can imagine David Geffen sitting around pissed at GnR and saying, "How can I get back at Axl? I know - I'll take his most popular song and turn it into a girlyfied piece of crap." Exactly how this crap found my iPod is another thing that needs immediate attention. I need to immediately replace the 3MB of pain with something less offensive, like an alJazeera broadcast or sounds of screeching cats.

Secondly, and of much more import, I was very saddened to learn that James Juhl passed away this week. You may not know Juhl, but you know some of the characters he wrote gags for, including Kermit, Fozzie, Gonzo, and Miss Piggy. I would argue that the old Muppet Show and Muppet Movies - especially The Muppet Christmas Carol - are some of the most clever scripts out there. It's an amazing accomplishment to write a show about a bunch of puppets hosting a variety show, to the point that the viewer enjoys the variety show and forgets he's watching puppets. Farewell Mr. Juhl.

If I Can Make it There, I'll Make it Anywhere

It’s taken a while to get this posted, but let me say for an afternoon of leisure and delight, I cannot more highly recommend anywhere than York, England.

I don’t even know what to write to make this funny, since York is a delightfully lovely little place about 2 hours by train, where you feel like you could knock on any door and Mrs. Doubtfire would invite you in for tea and crumpets.

Of course the reality is that York is a giant tourist trap, and all of the classic old English buildings are filled with multi-national businesses. But after a month in Manchester you are quite willing to forgive this small detail and just be happy to see a town that you once imagined all of the UK looked like.

In brief, the main showpiece of the town is the Cathedral, and neither words nor pictures can accurately describe how big this freaking thing is. I generally walk into an old classic architeural wonder and go, “Cool. What’s next on the list?” But this thing blew me away. It was built in stages over about 1500 years, but it all looks like it was done at the same time.

There are 3 or 4 different chapels, tombs, tunnels, and things I don’t even know how to describe. You all know how cheap I am, and it was impressive enough for me to spend 25p a piece on postcards, just in case my pictures looked like crap. I even looked for Christmas cards, but the only ones they had didn’t do it justice. I thought it was quite a pity that in the entire gift shop they did not have a single picture of what the place looks like all decorated for Christmas. It must just be splendid.

The rest of the town is all walkable – the whole place can’t be more than 1 or 2 square miles. It’s England, so there’s a pub on every corner, and I found two, “The Hole in the Wall” and “King’s Arms” to rank amongst my favorite watering holes of all time. The King’s Arms, especially made me smile, as it is a little place seemingly carved out of stone on the edge of the river. While I was reading my guidebook (not as easy as you might think because the only one we have is in French) I sat next to a table of about eight 60 year old gents telling old stories and bragging about their kids. It was a Sunday night and the lads were out busting balls and swilling pints like they were 17. It was great.

I have some pics up on the shutterfly site.

Based on the York experience, Oxford is definitely on the list, and I’m desperately trying to round up a party to Wales this weekend because I hear great things about it.

Painting a Broader Picture of Manchester

Manchester Picture

So, I'm on a train headed back to Manchester after an impulsive day trip to York, England (about 2 hours Northeast). Since I have time to kill and working laptop, I thought it seemed proper to try to paint a more complete picture of Greater Manchester. Now that the initial shock has worn off, the city is beginning to look like any other you would live in, and maybe I can effectively relay some of the pictures by way of words.

I was reminded that this blog could be made funny after stumbling on a copy of Bill Bryson’s excellent “Notes from a Small Island.” It’s a brilliant read and I hope all of you will give it or another Bryson book a good read soon.

But let’s talk about Manchester for a bit. Without meaning disrespect, I should say that Manchester is possibly the filthiest city I have ever been in. Mancunians have a general disdain for garbage cans. However, the cans themselves are in pretty short supply, so you might surmise that the city governors know that the public would just turn them into projectiles and just saves the middle step in the process. But regardless, a Manchester street can offer anything you might normally find in a rubbish bin, plus a little bit more.

In a related note, Manchester men seem to set a certain standard on a proper night of drinking. Basically, if you haven’t thrown up yet, you are still sober. Throwing up is the official beginning of “the buzz” and then the inability to speak English constitutes “drunk.” Mancunian English already requires a certain level of concentration, and a drunk Mancunian might as well be reading Polish backwards. You have to look for the glimmer in their eye and cock-neyed smile to determine if the strange assortment of consonants, vowels and various made up letters form a friendly "how do you do" or an invitation for a brawl.

The added effect of random hordes of drunk Mancunians wandering the streets is their ability to find bathrooms. Well, to be clear they don’t find bathrooms as much as create them, usually in doorways of some of the finer buildings in town. Doorways here seem to be created as either 1 or 2 person loo’s.

So, let’s be clear that the constant rain in Manchester is quite a blessing. If we lived in Tucson the town would smell like the deep recessess of a neglected pig farm. So the rain does a suitable job of washing the waste into the street, But a general rule of thumb is never step in a puddle in Manchester. You have been warned.

But, that’s not to say the city doesn’t have its charm. Like I said before, we’re talking about 80,000 students or something in a town of 500.000, so there’s a pretty heavy college tilt. But you can escape about a mile north and a few miles south to more yuppie areas of town that freakishly resemble Belltown and Fremont respectively.

The primary difference in the bar scene is that it pretty much runs Monday – Saturday, with Sunday being reserved for pubs and football. Every night the short skirt brigade is out in full force. Ironically, as girls are allowed to walk into bars nearly naked, on weekends almost every bar has strict dress codes for men. No tennis shoes of any kind, jeans are discouraged at the good clubs and at one particularly posh lounge we were advised we needed to “dress smarter” if we wanted to enter. I suspect he did not mean we should go buy oxford polos and horn rimmed glasses, so I need to figure out exactly what “smarter” means in terms of wardrobe.

But, I respect that bar. Optimistically, it appears to be a place where guys wait to throw up until after returning home, or possibly not at all. If I owned a bar, I’d probably want to have some pretty tight controls on which Mancunians I was willing to risk my liquor license on. So this week we need to go get some “smarter” clothes.

If you look at the Google map and type in M15 6PB, find Oxford Street and just consider that the vertebrae of the city. Everything falls off of that. The whole city seems to be on a triangle grid system, which makes navigation tricky. For example, near our house Deansgate is about a 5 minute walk from Oxford. But then a little further north, Deansgate intersects with Oxford. Plus, they like to change street names in mid stream, which is generally ok since street signs are either completely hidden or placed on the 45^th floor of the building closest to the corner, so you rarely know where you are anyway.

But I digress. Follow Oxford North, when it turns into St Peters. At Deansgate, St Peters turns into Quay (pronounced key). At Deansgate and St Peters, a left turns sends you to a younger set up yuppie bars and a right turn sends you to the older set of yuppie bars. But if you only follow Oxford as far as Portland and hang a right, you reach the southern edge of the main shopping district. Then you can head left and get the full Arndale Center experience – a combination of outdoor and indoor malls that threatens to tire out even the most ardent American woman.

(Side note – I may not be very smart. But I’m on a train and was facing forward the 1^st half of the 2 hour trip home. I haven’t changed seats, but now I’m facing backwards. Someone explain to me what happened, because I know my stop is the next one.)

But like I said, the town is not without charm. Head outside of the city centre and you see the rows of English houses made famous by BBC documentaries. There are still English pubs on every street corner and and people and their goofy accents still make me smile.

And later, I'll write about my Sunday afternoon jaunt to York, and post some pictures. York couldn't have been lovelier even if the whole city had a giant red bow on top of it. That post is next, so stay tuned.

Watching Baseball in the UK

I was emailing with a friend bout this issue and others might find this interesting...

Not a single sports bar in Manchester carries American baseball. They look at us like we're crazy. Sky is the big satellite network out here and we were told that some bars have the additional NASN (North American Sky Network). But even those who can show the game WON'T show the games because absolutely no one cares about baseball, and there's a football match on just about all hours of teh day. It's like walking into Sport in Seattle on a Sunday afternoon and asking to watch cricket.

And Sunday was a HUGE day in MLB. I was going nuts not being able to watch any of the games. So we had to set up a laptop and watch the games today over the Internet. 2 Canadians and an American sitting in the school cafateria type area switching between the Yanks/Sox, Indians/Sox, Phils/Nats and Astros/Cubs. Pretty funny experience.

But once the playoffs hit, all the games are going to start at 8:30pm ET, which is 1:30am ET out here. Not sure how we'll deal with that. Maybe we'll try to record them on a giant hard drive somehow.

Man City vs Everton

So it took 2 weeks, but I finally made it to my first English Premier League Match. (pics will go up in a day or so).

Like I said before, this wasn't necessarily a classic. Everton is near the bottom of the EPL and headed towards relegation. But it is close to Manchester so there's a little rivalry.

A few interesting tidbits made this a kind of unique experience either way. First off, the match started at 11:15am, which is unusual for EPL and takes away some of the adrenalin you'd see from a fan base that hits the pub at noon for a typical 4:00pm match. Also, most of my Exchange classmates (who are NOT British) care about the EPL as much as you do. So getting them to drop £33 (about US $60) was a tough sell. So I ended up with two of my quieter Chinese classmates Song and Li. To summarize, if you're looking for a story about how me and 4 blokes sat in the pub for 4 hours before a match and then sang songs for 90 minutes in the middle of the Man City Supporter Section, you'll have to wait for another game.

BUT, it still was a blast. Some things of note:
* So I was worried about my Chinese friends wearing the wrong colors and getting heckled. Man City is blue, so I through on my navy blue shirt this morning and headed out. It was Song who wasembarrassedd for me, asking me why I was wearing Everton navy blue instead on Man City light blue.
* They have a pretty efficient system of getting everyone to key points in City centre then bussing everyone the mile or so to the stadium. Imagine an entire bus made up of Man City supporters headed to the game. Then Li, a small Chinese girl, announced very loudly to me that she loved arsenal the best and didn't really care who won between City and Everton. I think the Brits were still sleeping, because we made it off the bus unscathed.
* There's really not much of a pre-game show at these things. People wander in slowly and it wasn't really filled until kickoff.
* All Everton fans were seated in one section starting behind the goal and ending in the corner. You could tell where they were because on each end of every row, there was a stadium security person sitting there. And at the top of each staircase that led to those sections, there were 5 cops. All the potential chaos was organized into one little packet.
* American Stadium music guys have nothing on the Man City music team. They pumped out a little "What's the Story Morning Glory" and "Wake Me Up When September Ends" during the pre-game. Nice choices for a 11:15am game on October 2.
* Here's something you would never see before a Mariners game. Just before player introductions, they did about a 3 minute ceremony for a long-time supporter who had passed away that week. They brought the family on the field and the crowd game them a standing ovation. It kind of gripped at the heartstrings that the team cared enough to do it and the crowd felt that they had lost one of their own.
* There are no food or drink vendors roaming the stands at anytime. Very odd.
* One of the players got hurt so I jumped out to grab a quick bite, and all but one of the stands were closed. This makes sense I guess since no one leaves their seat while the match is underway. But why not turn them into vendors? Wouldn't that make sense? What do the concessionaires do while they wait the 45 minutes for halftime?
* Here's another thing that's important to know - you can't drink any beer in the stadium part, you have to be out in the concourse. I wandered around during halftime for about 14 minutes and then grabbed a beer to take back to my seat. I got to the tunnel and only then was I told that the beer would not be joining me.
* In case you are curious, both beers and burgers are £2.75 ($5.00). So, it sounds like stadium ripoffs, but beers are usually £2.00 anyway and the burger is about £2.50 so they really don't try to screw you as much as they do in the U.S.

On to the match.....It was not unlike a Seahawks vs Arizona Cardinals game. You know the Hawks are going to win, so it's hard to get too crazy early. Then neither team scores all half, but you still know you'll win. Then about 10 minutes into the 2nd half, you get all fidgety and nervous. You start getting angry at the players for not getting on the board. Then finally in the 76th minute you get that 1st goal on a brilliant play by the person you least expected, and the place erupts into pandemonium. Then you get to celebrate the last 14 minutes (but not with a beer at your seat) - and they reward you with another goal at the very end. Everyone walks away happy and then hits parking lot gridlock. Just like the states.

In a nutshell, very comparable to a decent NFL game, but the soccer fans sing more. And they don't have as much rhythm, so when they do the classic chant "Go City, Go City, Go City" after about 3 or 4 chants it just becomes Oh ity oh ity oh ity. But there's a side subculture of pre-game bars and restaurants that I missed, but I'll try to get back down there. Who knows, maybe one weekend I'll just head down for the bars and restaurants part...Also, this wasn't City vs United or Chelsea vs Arsenal so there wasn't quite the venom. But mark it off the list - One English Premier League game in the books.