Monday, February 28, 2011

February in Bute Park

The great unnamed wart hog





in the 'hood



View from rail bridge looking to invisible hills north of city

Boys playing football (soccer) in street



Local constabulary
 

Their cop shop
 

My 'local' pub


The butcher's
 


Cathays Library, nearby branch of the now-infamous Cardiff library system.
A beautiful building with mind-boggling hours. They close for an hour at lunch every day.
 

The street where I live


how to spot a Canadian in the U.K.

They would be the person standing outside a Spar convenience store, taking a picture of Timmy's advertisement -- a sure sign of home, sweet, home.

Sorry to say though that the mocha on hand is machine coffee and tastes nothing like the lovely brew that has all of us Canadians brainwashed and addicted. However, this outlet is only a block away from my flat, and it has hit the sweet spot several times. Just seeing the cup makes me feel good!

blogging issue, update

Those of my friends and followers who visit Facebook are aware of my continuing frustration with the Cardiff library and the inability of their IT team to fix their Google sign-in problem.

I was back again today and spoke to yet another librarian about the situation. Apparently people haven't been able to sign in to their Google e-mails either (glad, that doesn't affect me.)

So, in order to rescue what remains of my patience, I am forking out a precious pound at my neighbourhood computer shop and putting some posts out into the blogosphere.

Wednesday, February 9, 2011

blogging issue, part deux

Well, I left work, walked over to the library, and what do you know? I've been able to log on.

Go figure. Aww, sweet technology.

bar soda at the lava lounge

At the end of January our hotel had its Awards Gala evening, which was actually our Christmas party. The Harris' were able to join me as my guests for the event, held at another major hotel in the city. Our hotel reciprocates by catering the other hotel's dinner, which was held last Sunday.

It was so nice to get dressed up, have a fancy meal with good friends, and dance till dawn. The Harris' had to leave relatively early due to their babysitter, but I was glad they were able to join me.

Well, I guess I actually only danced until 12:30 a.m. when our gala ended and the music stopped. But a group of us, including my two top supervisors, went to the afterbars. My first time hitting the Cardiff night life!

We went first to Sodabar. Not impressed. It is quite the 'poseur' place, and everyone was sooooo young and soooo trying to make an impression. A few of us found seats on a lounge couch and watched the action, trying to figure out what made a second level nearby worth the 'special entry' accorded it. One of the women I was with braved crossing the lower level dance floor, jammed tight with bodies, to use the 'toilet', or 'loo' as they say here. She came back saying women were fighting in the loo, throwing shot glasses over her stall at each other.

After about 45 minutes at this scary venue we went on to the Lava Lounge, which turned out to be my kind of place. Mostly young students danced with abandon, lost in the music and the fuel. The dance floor was accessible with room to move, but many just danced wherever they were. This was a Sunday night and I was amazed to see both bars packed.

We saw the lights come on at 4 a.m. with closure and I shared a cab home, making it back by 5 in the morning.

Gooooood, goooood night!

blogging issues

Whew! I haven't been able to sign in to blog since mid-January. This is actually a test, which seems to be proving my point, that the problems lie with the Cardiff library and a security update they did last month. Their system is so secure I can't log in to work on my blog from there. And it's been where I've been working from since I arrived in Cardiff. Main selling point has been that it is free.

Right now I've been able to log in to a computer at work that is available for us to play around on. However there are only two of them in the canteen and they are mainly used for people checking Facebook and not conducive to writing or downloading photos. Though, obviously, it is working in a pinch.

At least I can go back to the library now and let them know Google sign-in works fine.