Welcome to Brunei. It's a wealthy country, owned for all intents and purposes by the Sultan, who is one of the richest men in the world. It's standard of living is relatively high for the region and a good deal has been put into the Bandar Seri Begawan's cleanliness and architecture to ensure a pristine look about it. Brunei and its people are welcoming and friendly, trying hard to ensure you have a good time, a place to stay, and good food to eat. A tour guide, we met just as we were leaving the city was telling us that the [View Full Entry]

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My travel day has been a long one, three in fact, if you add in the international dateline. Dan was kind enough to drop me at the airport today and was all set. As I stood in line, I lazily looked at my watch, which read March 20th. This was problematic you see because I was supposed to fly out of San Francisco on the 19th. A looming sense of panic began to settle in as I recognized the perilous mistake that had been made. I was so sure I was supposed to leave on Wednesday. Maybe I had calculated wrong. [View Full Entry]

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It's been nearly six months since I've made an entry, mostly because I haven't much traveled anywhere. But I've been thinking lately that Calgary is still quite an interesting place to be for would-be travelers, especially ones looking for jobs in this labour-starved market of an oil-slick boomtown. I love Calgary. It's my home, I'm biased, but there's great things about the town, which I shall get to in a moment. I do have to complain that Calgary is terribly spread out. As the largest city by area in North America, it is the poster child for what a town affected [View Full Entry]

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I'm a bit late in sending this off to you, but then again, given the server failure that happened with Travelblog, I'm fairly certain there was a reason in the universe that I couldn't quite muster up the necessary desire to type this blog up. It is in fact the last blog of my 13 month journey, and perhaps it has more to do with my unwillingness to admit that it has come to a close. But with all good things, they eventually give way to other chapters that hold new adventure and that creative spark we call life. Farewell America, [View Full Entry]

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California: "Got Crabs? We Do" Derry and I began our trip, as I mentioned, to the tune of Highway to Hell by AC/DC, leaving Palo Alto in the heat of the noonday sun, and soon found ourselves driving through the chilly western part of San Francisco through the typical summer fog that often envelopes the city during the summers. But it wasn't long before we were back into the heat typical of the rest of California. As hunger gnawed at us, we decided to pull off in Hopland to have lunch at the oldest brewpub in California, and the second oldest [View Full Entry]

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Healthcare (which interestingly enough is considered a spelling mistake in America - I kid you not - type it into your spell checker) plays a prominent role in my discussion of my final week in the great state of CA. This is partially regarding my recent, and certainly expensive, though yet-to-be-billed-for, experience on Tuesday, Michael Moore's new movie Sicko. But what I would really like to start this blog off with is a comment that was written in response to my first blog entry on California. I said something referring to California as be [View Full Entry]

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It was time for a mini-road trip after being in one place for so long, and so it seemed the perfect opportunity when Derry offered a few weeks ago to join him and his pals for a jaunt up to Reno, "The biggest little city in the world." This is, of course, a self proclaimed title, and I'm dubious of it simply because of its lack of measurable qualities. But no matter, Reno believes it, so who am I to stand in the way of mini-Vegas, perhaps a more appropriate moniker, although not as popular with those that live in Reno [View Full Entry]

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Trail of Beers A good deal of the past couple of weeks has involved drinking, not a great volume at any given time, but there each day seems to have an event that has had drinking involved as one of its central tenets. It is not a great volume of said liquid, but it has been a consistent consumption pattern since I arrived here. The beer's just so good. This all may not come as a surprise, especially at the end of this year, and I'm sure many of you may question whether I've become an alcoholic. The true answer [View Full Entry]

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Sunny San Francisco? One of the favourite sayings of San Franciscans belongs to that famous American humourist Mark Twain, who once said wryly: The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco. There's a good deal of truth to the situation as well. San Francisco is blessed and cursed with its unique climate. The spring and autumn are gorgeous, sunny, and temperate, but for the most part, the summers are terribly cold and foggy. This is owing to the heat of the valley. As it heats up, the air rises, leaving a bit of a vacuum. The air [View Full Entry]

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My Kind of Town Palo Alto is my kind of town. It's a college town, with Stanford University, my Alma Mater, right there. Which makes it one of those great places to walk around. Walking down University Avenue, the main street running through downtown, you hear such things said as: "Well, that depends on how you interpret Socratic thought," and "I always have trouble singing in that key," and "Sir, can you spare some change." Okay, so the last one's not that unique, but the other two make me glow with excitement as I stroll down the sidewalk littered with cafes [View Full Entry]

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