Sunday, October 22, 2006
Pictures II: Killarney Trip
No need to explain these, methinks: Swans, clouds, and crepuscular rays *swoon*
Saturday, October 21, 2006
Pictures!
Working on getting all my pictures uploaded, but it's going to take some time. Here's the first set: pictures of my lovely apartment ;)
P.S. Yes, one wall in each room is painted orange, and yes, my bedding is blue.
P.S. Yes, one wall in each room is painted orange, and yes, my bedding is blue.
Sunday, October 15, 2006
Killarney Weekend
Well, I'm up at nearly 6am for various reasons, so I figured I might as well post about my weekend trip to Killarney with the interstudy posse.
The trip started out on Friday afternoon. I was planning on taking the 3:30 bus from the Cork station, which is a good 30-40 minute walk away from the apartment. Since I wanted to save my poor feet up for the dreaded 7-mile hike, I decided to take the number 8 bus to the city centre so at least I'd only have to walk one street over from St. Patrick's. However, fate did not want to be kind to me. I waited 40+ freaking minutes for that damn bus, and it never came. I was running out of time to get to the station, and I didn't want to pay for a taxi as 5 other groups of people had, so I started walking as fast as I could. Not 5 minutes down the road, the 8 passed me, not even close to full, picked up 2 passengers 100ft in front of me, then sped off while I lengthened my stride to reach the stop. After some rather strong language for me, I started walking again. Halfway to St. Patrick's another number 8 passed me, and by that point I was beyond pissed off, so I walked right by it, pretending my feet weren't killing me. I made it through the crowds at St. Patrick's and got to the bus station well in time... I'd made the minimum 30 minute walk in 25 minutes, and my feet were killing me, as well as my calves.
So, anyway, after that fiasco, the buses were all full, and finally sometime after 4:00 I made it on a bus with two other girls and we got to Killarney in time for dinner with the group. I actually ate lamb (the only other alternative was salmon, so yeah) and it was surprisingly good. The dessert, however... *drool* it was sticky toffee pudding, and I don't think I've ever had so subtle of a dessert taste so good. Anywho, the hostel was decent. Nothing like the hotel back home, but it was fairly clean. A group of 15 year old girls woke us up around 5am, and the girls in my room had some choice words to yell at them, but managed to restrain themselves. We then had the lovely 7-mile hike. It wasn't so much of a hike as a sometimes steep walk. No matter, my calves tightened up pretty badly by the time we stopped for lunch, as in making me walk funny so that I got heel blisters again. While we ate, I kept my feet up on the bench to get my weight off of them, which only helped nominally. Oh yeah, forgot to mention, I'd taken a double dose of ib profin that morning. After lunch, we took a boat ride through the three major lakes of the region, headed back to town, then went out for dinner. At dinner, the star of the show was the cheesy garlic bread...god, I'm drooling just thinking about how good it was.
But anywho, the walk was gorgeous, and I'll get pictures up asap. My camera batteries died on me during the first day, and apparently the batteries I bought at Tesco's there in Killarney weren't high enough of a voltage or something, because my camera wouldn't turn on. I didn't get any pictures from the friary, gardens, and falls the second day, which makes me really sad because it was so perfect. After dinner the second night, the girls all played drinking games, and one of them got hilariously smashed, and I had fun just watching them. Because my legs and feet were sore from the hike, I decided to stay in while they went out. I stretched for about an hour, and apparently I over did it, as when I woke up Sunday morning, I could barely move. Yeah, then we had to walk around the grounds of the Muckross house, friary, and falls, and by the time I was in view of the falls, I was ready to have someone shoot me in the head. Luckily we took cars back to Killarney.
From there, we ate some lunch and then three other girls and I took a fairly early bus back home. Of course, we had to walk back to the apartments from the bus stop about 10 minutes away, after my legs muscles had all cramped up on the bus ride home. Thus, when I made it up to my apartment, I camped out on the couch for several hours, then took as hot of a shower as I could get. Still, the entire back length of my legs are pure murder, and that is one of the reasons I am still awake. I went to bed around 2am, dozed for a bit, but mind wouldn't shut off and legs ache too freaking much.
And the major reason I can't fall asleep: It's amazing how much life, how much your perspective on life, can change in just a single hour. I'll leave it at that for now, but I have a lot of thinking to do. So, I'll leave this humongous post at that, and hope you guys enjoy the pictures when I get them up.
The trip started out on Friday afternoon. I was planning on taking the 3:30 bus from the Cork station, which is a good 30-40 minute walk away from the apartment. Since I wanted to save my poor feet up for the dreaded 7-mile hike, I decided to take the number 8 bus to the city centre so at least I'd only have to walk one street over from St. Patrick's. However, fate did not want to be kind to me. I waited 40+ freaking minutes for that damn bus, and it never came. I was running out of time to get to the station, and I didn't want to pay for a taxi as 5 other groups of people had, so I started walking as fast as I could. Not 5 minutes down the road, the 8 passed me, not even close to full, picked up 2 passengers 100ft in front of me, then sped off while I lengthened my stride to reach the stop. After some rather strong language for me, I started walking again. Halfway to St. Patrick's another number 8 passed me, and by that point I was beyond pissed off, so I walked right by it, pretending my feet weren't killing me. I made it through the crowds at St. Patrick's and got to the bus station well in time... I'd made the minimum 30 minute walk in 25 minutes, and my feet were killing me, as well as my calves.
So, anyway, after that fiasco, the buses were all full, and finally sometime after 4:00 I made it on a bus with two other girls and we got to Killarney in time for dinner with the group. I actually ate lamb (the only other alternative was salmon, so yeah) and it was surprisingly good. The dessert, however... *drool* it was sticky toffee pudding, and I don't think I've ever had so subtle of a dessert taste so good. Anywho, the hostel was decent. Nothing like the hotel back home, but it was fairly clean. A group of 15 year old girls woke us up around 5am, and the girls in my room had some choice words to yell at them, but managed to restrain themselves. We then had the lovely 7-mile hike. It wasn't so much of a hike as a sometimes steep walk. No matter, my calves tightened up pretty badly by the time we stopped for lunch, as in making me walk funny so that I got heel blisters again. While we ate, I kept my feet up on the bench to get my weight off of them, which only helped nominally. Oh yeah, forgot to mention, I'd taken a double dose of ib profin that morning. After lunch, we took a boat ride through the three major lakes of the region, headed back to town, then went out for dinner. At dinner, the star of the show was the cheesy garlic bread...god, I'm drooling just thinking about how good it was.
But anywho, the walk was gorgeous, and I'll get pictures up asap. My camera batteries died on me during the first day, and apparently the batteries I bought at Tesco's there in Killarney weren't high enough of a voltage or something, because my camera wouldn't turn on. I didn't get any pictures from the friary, gardens, and falls the second day, which makes me really sad because it was so perfect. After dinner the second night, the girls all played drinking games, and one of them got hilariously smashed, and I had fun just watching them. Because my legs and feet were sore from the hike, I decided to stay in while they went out. I stretched for about an hour, and apparently I over did it, as when I woke up Sunday morning, I could barely move. Yeah, then we had to walk around the grounds of the Muckross house, friary, and falls, and by the time I was in view of the falls, I was ready to have someone shoot me in the head. Luckily we took cars back to Killarney.
From there, we ate some lunch and then three other girls and I took a fairly early bus back home. Of course, we had to walk back to the apartments from the bus stop about 10 minutes away, after my legs muscles had all cramped up on the bus ride home. Thus, when I made it up to my apartment, I camped out on the couch for several hours, then took as hot of a shower as I could get. Still, the entire back length of my legs are pure murder, and that is one of the reasons I am still awake. I went to bed around 2am, dozed for a bit, but mind wouldn't shut off and legs ache too freaking much.
And the major reason I can't fall asleep: It's amazing how much life, how much your perspective on life, can change in just a single hour. I'll leave it at that for now, but I have a lot of thinking to do. So, I'll leave this humongous post at that, and hope you guys enjoy the pictures when I get them up.
Monday, October 09, 2006
Evil Chinese People
I just got the most terrible fortune ever:
"No wonder you always go home alone."
Evil, evil Chinese food people! *hiss*
Just because it's true doesn't make it nice =_=
"No wonder you always go home alone."
Evil, evil Chinese food people! *hiss*
Just because it's true doesn't make it nice =_=
Saturday, October 07, 2006
Religion
As of late, my interest in religion has been at a high level. Just about every time I have gone online in the past year, I have read some article or another on some religion or another. Religions have always interested me, and for most of my teenage years (about age 12-17), I searched for a religion to call my own. I found so many beliefs and dogma that struck a chord with me, however, no matter how hard I tried, I could not find it in myself to believe in any one religion over another. This both frustrated me to heck and piqued my interest even more. When the DaVinci Code book came out, it reawakened my search for personal meaning in all of the religious jargon. I read website after website, book after book. I lost myself in the world of the early Christians, Jews, Muslims, Pagans, and so on. I read about mysticism, spiritualism, and agnostism. More recently I have been expressing to people my interest in possibly majoring in religious studies/theology. This has incurred many questions regarding my own beliefs, which I have had to answer as concisely as possible, but this has left me feeling like I haven't fully explained myself, either.
In the past, to put my beliefs in the most simple of terms, I have told people I have no religion.
This later developed into me explaining that I am agnostic. If I were to truly label myself, I suppose I must clarify that I am an agnostic omnist. For those of you too lazy to google those two terms, it means: 1) I believe it is impossible to prove or disprove the existence of a deity/deities; and 2) I find truth and believe in the dogma and beliefs of all religions. That is putting it shortly. In more depth along the lines of agnostism, I not only believe there is no proof for or against the existence of any deity, but also the very nature of an omnipotent, omnipresent being is such that it is impossible for humans to even comprehend its existence. To use a cheap analogy, a single cell (if it had thought and senses) cannot comprehend the characteristics, let alone the intentions, of a living organism. I do believe in a unifying presence of sorts... the chances of the world turning out the way it does are just so infinitely small that the sheer number of coincidences are preposterous. Not fate, per se, and not necessarily a deity or deities of some sort, but just, well, something. I know humans tend to search for something higher than themselves in order to make sense of the world, but logic points towards the fact that there is always something higher than any given thing.
Now, back to how the analogy ties in: if there is some sort of omnipresent being, there is no possible way for humans to define it... it would have to be beyond our comprehension. As of yet, humans can barely conceive of huge numbers of objects, let alone everything. We simply cannot truthfully comprehend infinity, and therefore cannot define what omnipresent is, other than "being everywhere/everything". I think that any attempt of humans to define what that omnipresent being is, what its intentions are, and how it effects the world, falls under three categories: sheer folly, need of the security and order such a being might mean, and entertaining fantasy.
This is where my omnism ties in. Although it is impossible for humans to define "God" and all other incarnations of the omnipresent/omnipotent, we still strive to do so. Sometimes we do so clumsily, other times with a profound sophistication. In all my readings on the various religions and beliefs, I think I have found something redeeming and/or truthful in all of them (yes, even Satanic cults). Religion is a human institution put in place to give some sort of order to the beliefs and morals people hold. Humans define religion, humans interpret it. That does not mean that religion is unhelpful or even harmful; it simply means that we have to keep it in perspective. Throughout the ages, people have always tended towards forgetting the fact that dogma is manmade. I think that as religion is an attempt to describe the workings of the world and to define the supernatural, there is some truth in all of it. All the religions are quite equally different interpretations of one another... they all seek to do the same thing, essentially, just in different ways.
To put all this rant into one short sentence, I believe in the statement "We Are One".... many religions, many interpretations, of one truth. But yeah, so I may burn in hell for all that, but it's the closest I've ever come to feeling at peace with my beliefs.
In the past, to put my beliefs in the most simple of terms, I have told people I have no religion.
This later developed into me explaining that I am agnostic. If I were to truly label myself, I suppose I must clarify that I am an agnostic omnist. For those of you too lazy to google those two terms, it means: 1) I believe it is impossible to prove or disprove the existence of a deity/deities; and 2) I find truth and believe in the dogma and beliefs of all religions. That is putting it shortly. In more depth along the lines of agnostism, I not only believe there is no proof for or against the existence of any deity, but also the very nature of an omnipotent, omnipresent being is such that it is impossible for humans to even comprehend its existence. To use a cheap analogy, a single cell (if it had thought and senses) cannot comprehend the characteristics, let alone the intentions, of a living organism. I do believe in a unifying presence of sorts... the chances of the world turning out the way it does are just so infinitely small that the sheer number of coincidences are preposterous. Not fate, per se, and not necessarily a deity or deities of some sort, but just, well, something. I know humans tend to search for something higher than themselves in order to make sense of the world, but logic points towards the fact that there is always something higher than any given thing.
Now, back to how the analogy ties in: if there is some sort of omnipresent being, there is no possible way for humans to define it... it would have to be beyond our comprehension. As of yet, humans can barely conceive of huge numbers of objects, let alone everything. We simply cannot truthfully comprehend infinity, and therefore cannot define what omnipresent is, other than "being everywhere/everything". I think that any attempt of humans to define what that omnipresent being is, what its intentions are, and how it effects the world, falls under three categories: sheer folly, need of the security and order such a being might mean, and entertaining fantasy.
This is where my omnism ties in. Although it is impossible for humans to define "God" and all other incarnations of the omnipresent/omnipotent, we still strive to do so. Sometimes we do so clumsily, other times with a profound sophistication. In all my readings on the various religions and beliefs, I think I have found something redeeming and/or truthful in all of them (yes, even Satanic cults). Religion is a human institution put in place to give some sort of order to the beliefs and morals people hold. Humans define religion, humans interpret it. That does not mean that religion is unhelpful or even harmful; it simply means that we have to keep it in perspective. Throughout the ages, people have always tended towards forgetting the fact that dogma is manmade. I think that as religion is an attempt to describe the workings of the world and to define the supernatural, there is some truth in all of it. All the religions are quite equally different interpretations of one another... they all seek to do the same thing, essentially, just in different ways.
To put all this rant into one short sentence, I believe in the statement "We Are One".... many religions, many interpretations, of one truth. But yeah, so I may burn in hell for all that, but it's the closest I've ever come to feeling at peace with my beliefs.
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