Alexander 6, V71.

It is one of those days that I can't call either as busy, or idle. It was something in between, but surely my mind was busy with other tasks. Went well so far, despite my wake-up at 3:00 am with a severe pain and diarrhea, again.
I started my day with the radio as usual, and suddenly, it was one of those rare times when something you really like is played on air. I wonder who would listen to rap or rock at 6:00 am? C'mon guys!
The song was "Bad Day" for Daniel Powter. It is not an old song I guess, but I do love it and for quite some time, I didn't think about this song or the words in it. Just this morning I got its spark...



It is a unique song to me because of the simplicity of words, and yet the big meaning in it in the same time. It reminds me of those damn Mondays specifically, and made me walk on with my days until this very moment. Not only that, but it did in fact inspire to write something close to that meaning, but I had to "steal" the rhyming scheme somehow (that is a-a-b-b-c). I called my piece Pigeons and A Crow. It reminded myself of some days when people look differently and strangely at you just because you are left-handed, clumsy, not the sport type, your body shape, and even the shape of your nose or what car you are driving. People can be cruel and silly in the same time... this is for sure.

The last piece was not written completely in one time, but on separate times, as I had to go out of work for some time to receive my new ID card. Boy, that was a place. But inspired me a bit to complete this piece actually. It was a crowded place with people that you don't know if they were real people, and you would walk and everyone might knock you off and walk away just like nothing happened at all, and needless to say about the hot weather and the walk from the car to that building. Not a place to work or to go in general, unless you are squeezed for necessity.

I finished adding the new words so far, but this is not the end of this chapter of work. We still have a list of "adds" and "fixes" that must be done to the pre-existing words added in the dictionary from the previous chapters of Alexander's story. This addition and fixing requires more attention even. Needless to say the fixes on the main text body that was already finished just few days ago.

Been working and checking some photos from Ireland last year and I've just discovered one image that I didn't work with at all, despite the fact that I've prepared its Radiance files (or HDR files in .hdr format, that is). It is a picture of the coffee house on the Inchagoil island, in the lake of Lough Corrib. I don't think I've managed to make this image before, specially before I know the PTGui. At that time, I always had problems with Photoshop for photomerging this image together. The image is tiled (several columns, everal rows) and I remember I've shot it without a tripod even, which made some slices of it a bit shaky. However, I can say the general look was fine, to my eyes at least...

There is still more digging to be done with my pictures from Ireland still...

In the meantime, I'm concerned about the receipt I'm supposed to receive from GoIreland.com for my booking by the phone. I don't like to start doing the visa procedure without having this receipt and printing it out first. I shall go for the tickets later. Beside this concern, we have the damn car that got into the second month now with June beginning, without any news about fixing it. I didn't pay the installment for May yet. Not for a purpose, but I'm just too sick for going there at the moment. I might shorten my day tomorrow by going there and pay.


_________
1681. Alexander wandered for some time between the bushes
1682. and found himself on the top of a hill above a valley
1683. he walked down there while his Cadid is still up and tied
1684. then he saw the trees which Biryári talked about
1685. and he tasted these fruit and they were bitter
1686. while out of sudden the Cadid on the top of the hill
1687. started to howl like a wolf would do so high
1688. Alexander moved little bit to check the Cadid
1689. but suddenly felt the ground to shake slowly
1690. he stopped to check and thought it is only his imagination
1691. but the ground started to shake more and more
1692. and the howling of the Cadid increased and been more high
1693. and weird sounds he heard of something huge
1694. something was approaching so close to him
1695. and from one corner of the valley he noticed
1696. how some trees fall down for unknown reason
1697. he looked carefully while the ground shakes hard
1698. while the dust appeared in the air from afar
1699. and from the moving dust he noticed a huge body
1700. it was but moments then he realized it is a horde
1701. it was a hoard made by group of similar animals
1702. three horns each one of them had and spikes on the back
1703. they were moving so fast in his direction face to face
1704. and the hero was paralyzed for few moments in his place

Interior Design...

Today, I decided to give myself a little vacation (adding one day to the weekend already). But it was not a real vacation anyway since I had plans for today. I was planning since the last night to go and make my attendance with the fingerprint machine and then leave by the ferry to Failaka island and then from there to Miskan island, since I've been told that there are some special boats specified for taking tourists up to there. However, my plans did not go as I planned, because by dawn the gates of heavens opened up and the rain started to hammer down. It was a bit dangerous to go on for a cruise even if such rain stopped later on, because you wouldn't know when it's going to rain again.
Since my plan to go on the ferry was not achieved, I decided to go on and complete some cleaning tasks that I've started yesterday, but stopped with the excessive back pains. Later on, I went on back to my work place to do the fingerprint again, and it was so damn thick and dense and jammed place and got myself even stuck in the wrong entrance and had to go all the way back on Reverse. I think I spent like 30 minutes to reach the work place, while I took around 15 minutes to reach home after leaving the place. But this is nothing for now, for the real jam will start by tomorrow by the arrival of GCC leaders into the country and cops had made their own preparations for diverting some roads to other places, thus despite the fact that the ferry times are good for tomorrow and the day after, but I just don't want to risk my luck with it, since I have to get back and do the damned fingerprijnt check up again.

Taking some break from the pictures taken from Ireland now and now working on some pictures that I took for the house from the inside. It is a trial to check if I can make the ordinary house that I live in by everyday, into something new for the eyes by photographs. However, it can be only a play with my camera as well.






I'm in dilemma as to what to order first for my camera, I need so many tools that I don't think it is a good idea to order all at once. Maybe I should concentrate for the time being on getting a suitable dedicated flash, and a neutral density filter.

The activity for now with my translation is of course null, since I did not go to my office today. But I might spend much more time doing it by tomorrow...

Inchagoill (Inis an Ghaill)

Today, I went by boat to the marvelous and "mysterious" island of Inchagoill. I was supposed to go yesterday but, although the weather came out nice later in day, it was cloudy in the morning, and later on my host told me that it was good that I didn't go yesterday because despite the fact the weather came out good later on, but the air was active and there was some current in the lake.

However, I went on today in almost one hour journey to the island which was thick with trees and bushes, thus from afar you'd see only a green spot on the surface of the water. I got some pictures on the boat and there were other small islands and some of them contained houses as well! It was just beautiful. I had to catch most of the photos using Tv (shutter-speed mood), because of the shake along the way, and seems the Photoshop CS2 is not as good as CS4 with aligning the images together, thus I will keep this hard work for later. Lot of photos are waiting to be processed back home.

We reached the island, and according to my guide, he said the island is now mainly not inhabited, but it was mainly populated by the Sullivans, and another family I can't remember its name (but it stards with C and got V in the middle and Y at the end!!). We walked in narrow slippery pathways and reached the church or the monastery first. It was cool and peaceful, and you would still meditate in that old hard-rocky building. You can still see the avatar and the place where the font was kept. There, I couldn't resist to run a 180 degrees shoot (with no tripod) to the hall. But there is a question that always kept me puzzled: why the entrances of such old places were narrow and sometimes even small so that you have to lower your head down to get in?!

Some steps away into a little fine height out of the monastery there was the grave yard. It was a small yard and few gravestones were showing, and some of them were dating back to 1988. Some of the stones were legible but most of them were washed out, and the weird thing is that according to my guide who is a frequent visitor to the place (and I think he works to the government to check the island and its habitat), he said that in his 21 years life time he never heard of someone buried in this island, despite the fact that one of the gravestones read clearly that this lady who was 37 years old when she died, was dead on the 27th of May, 1988. She was a Sullivan as well. On the back of this row of grave stones, my eyes captured a weird type of gravestone and obviously it was ancient but I can't really say how old is it. According to brochures, this island should have a grave stone for St Patrick nephew, so I wonder if this grave stone is for him;

There was a chamber made of hard stones few steps away from the grave yard but I couldn't really tell what so special about it and why is it there. It could be a chamber for the graveyard keeper maybe? Who knows!

During my observations for the gravestones, my guide left me for some minutes to go somewhere, where he heard some sounds of chainsaw as we came into the dock of the island. However, after his arrival and we started to leave the place heading to a place called "The Coffee House" or "The Café House" (could not hear my guide clearly when he said the name several times!), we passed through some timber that was cut and organized in the shape of a pillar! My guide laughed and said to me that he made it that way when the two men who were cutting them moved away from the location, and they would get back and see this and think there is a ghost in the island! We couldn't stop laughing at the trick!

After some long slippery way and raising on some hill, we reached the Coffee House. It was a small place, but because the gate was so close to the trees, I couldn't get back enough to take a full image of it, thus I had to resort to the old trick; Panoramic shot. There were some stuff inside, like a coat maybe or a jacket and trousers forgotten by some people! The graffiti was all over the walls inside. At the back there was a stairway that lead to the top of the building (and of course everything was made of hard rock) and from the top I got a spectacular view of the lake and the trees, and here I went on catching a panoramic shot as well. The most significant tree that you can see almost every where in the island was the scotch fir as my guide called it. It is straight and high tree and almost bears no branches with the greeny part being on the top of the tree, just like one big broccoli!

When we got down there, my guide showed me also a small door that lead to the chimney and it was so small and dark that I could barely see anything inside. Finishing from that we had a long walk on a hill and some slopes down to reach the dock again. I took some pictures along the way for some trees and my guide showed me a fir tree that was, according to him, the oldest in the island and the hugest. You cannot wrap your arms around its trunk. From the looks of it, I do believe that it is something like a thousand years old!

Still the surprises were not over yet, on the way to the dock, my guide got deep into the forest at some point and called me to join him, and he showed me a house that is forgotten and not attended. It is also built by rocks and the plants grew every where on it that you can hardly notice its walls. Of course the roof was long gone. My guide said that he would notice the government about this house, who might be forgotten maybe mainly because it has nothing special about it except that it would be a good example of how people lived in this island in the 1800s or 1700s even, as some chambers were obvious and the structure for the chimney was obvious, where a special room to keep the cattle was visible as well. My guide said it is most probably was inhabited by the Sullivans, who were farmers and most of the island were like farm lands (and his own father worked on potatoes harvest on this island long time before) before the government decided to make it a tourism attraction and planted the trees and made the forests we see now.

Just before we leave the island, there was a little spot of clear land among the trees which was a place for BBQ parties as my guide said. The traces of burnt tree trunks and the benches were like they had been used no more than 3 days I would say. My guide said that there is no danger for fires here since the soil is damp and full of green mostly!

We left the island on a long way back home, and I was so exhausted that I slept for 30 minutes on my bed while I was typing this entry of the blog and the laptop was on my lap (duh!) while I was lying down. 1 day is left for me here, and on the 14th I have a long way back to Dublin. Tomorrow will be a busy day for me sort of. I will be packing and checking that everything is fine. I have my fears with my luggage weight though...