London Calling

We met my brother Nigel this morning at the North Finchley tube station and went to Camden in North London together to look around the market and meet up with my sister-in-law Monique.

On the way, we passed the picturesque Camden Locks.

The Camden Market is a hip place, full of funky clothes and cheap eateries. If your kid was in a band, this is where they would probably shop.  The fact that this used to be an old stables/horse hospital gives it lots of character, and the horsey theme has been used to good effect, keeping the stables-like feel to many stalls, in the decorations about the shops, and in the many equine themed statues throughout the place.

After grabbing a quick lunch, we walked to the nearby Jewish Museum in Camden.  Beyond the obligatory, “What is Judaism” type exhibits, and samples of various forms of Judaica, the museum also has a kosher (meat) cafeteria, exhibits on the Jewish communities of the UK, and a temporary exhibit space, which is currently about British Jews in the entertainment industry.

They made good use of their multimedia resources.  In particular, I found two exhibits quite compelling.  In one of them they included a number of common, but potentially controversial questions such as “What is the role of Women in Judaism”.  For all of these questions, they had short video responses from rabbis representing most of British Jewry including United Synagogue (modern orthodox), Masorti (similar to American Conservative), Reform (somewhere between American conservative and reform), and Liberal (most like US reform).  So you could look at a particular movement’s perspective on a number of issues, or look at one issue and see how the different movements have similar or differing opinions on it.

The other multimedia exhibit I liked was about the communities throughout the UK.  This showed all the towns were Jewish communities were known to have been established and included a brief chronological history of them, as well as photos and drawings when available.   While I always knew that there was (and still is) a community in Belfast, Northern Ireland, I had not realized that there had been a community in Derry also.  In Southern Wales (where Nigel lives) there were many communities during the height of the industrial revolution, all but two of which are now gone.  Looking at the map and reading about the Port Talbot Jewish community, it stuck me that Nigel IS the Port Talbot Jewish community today.

It was a nice day, so we decided to walk across Regents Park. We found ourselves in the rose garden (which had a very pleasing odor!), presenting some nice photo ops.

 

With our various dietary restrictions,  my sister-in-law Ruth very graciously made a lovely dinner for us all. Ruth is married to my oldest brother Andy, and their son Nathan drove up from Nottingham to join us.  He is graduating with his bachelor’s in Zoology in a few weeks and is also avid about music and photography.  Perhaps he can charm animals with his music and then take pictures of them.

It was very nice to catch up with everyone. It is rare that we can all be in the same place at the same time, hence my desire to get a family photo, which isn’t as easy as it might be when you have your two older brothers heckling you.  As I told them, other people pay me big bucks to do this! Thankfully they went fairly easy on me this time.

L to R: David, Kelly, Andy, Ruth, Nathan, Nigel, Mo.

Luas, pronounced like “Lewis”.

After a slow start today we said goodbye to my parents and headed into Dublin’s city center.  After stowing our bags in a shop with a friend of my father’s, we walked to the Natural History Museum which recently reopened after 3 years due to a collapsed staircase.  Known as the “Dead Zoo” to Dubliners, it is a real Victorian time piece and is as much a museum artifact itself as any of the pieces in the collection.  It opened in 1856, but much of the collection dates back as far as 1792. Some of the locations listed as the origin of these items include British East Africa (today that’s Kenya), Formosa (Taiwan), and Celebes (Sulawesi, Indonesia).

Unfortunately because there are no emergency exits from the top floors, part of the museum is still off limits, but about 2/3 is accessible. Plans to build a €14 million annex which would provide wheelchair and pram access, etc., have had to be shelved as there is no money to pay for it.

Dublin has a number of public transit systems.  There have always been buses, although this now includes a network of blue coaches which provide excellent fast service to and from the airport to all major parts of the city.  They opened a new line a few weeks ago that goes very close to my parents house and this is how we got there when we arrived.  Mainline rail has also been around for ever.  the DART is a commuter train that’s a bit more recent, but has  been around for quite a while.  The latest addition was the Luas, a city/suburban tram system with two (non interconnected) lines.  The Red line runs across the north central part of Dublin and eventually winds its way south east to the distant suburb of Tallaght.  What I find particularly interesting is how the addition of something like a Luas line can totally change the character of a city.  Areas of Dublin that were really rather drab, if not almost no-go areas are now trendy and easily accessible.  Of course in an integrated urban development plan transportation is just one part of urban renewal, but it was interesting to walk across the River Liffey from the familiarity of the southside and have lunch in a trendy new development that used to be an abandoned warehouse in a very rough neighborhood when I lived in Dublin.  A sign of the times is that this place is only about half occupied and we wondered whether the shuttered stores were waiting to open, or had just closed.

We hopped on the Luas tram and within about 10 minutes were at the National Museum at Collins Barracks again.  Today we had a bit more time to enjoy some of the collections including a gallery that put the 1916 Easter Uprising and subsequent Civil War around Ireland’s independence in perspective.  We also saw a number of galleries that dealt with the Irish military experience from early days in British armies all the way up to modern UN peacekeeping missions.  There was even a section on the Irish in the American Civil War. 

We will be visiting 3/4 of the so called PIGS economies this trip (Portugal, Ireland, and Spain, leaving out Greece) which are the worst hit in the European economic crisis.  Catching up with my old college friend Eugene and his 3 year old daughter Elaine our conversation turned to the downturn and how it is affecting people.  While the financial services sector is a disaster, ironically the broader economy is doing okay.  Eugene is a University Physics lecturer and said that even though the overall unemployment rate is about 12%, all his graduates are getting jobs.  Housing prices are about 1/2 what they were at the peak, so this is a horrible time to have to sell, but a good opportunity to buy.  My parents told me about someone they know who passed away.  Their children tried to sell what we would call their condominium in a smart part of Dublin which had been valued at €2 million.  All they could get for it was €500,000. Ouch.

With the Irish Government desperate for revenues, new taxes are creeping in. Speaking of taxes – if you thought $4/gallon gas at home was expensive, try paying €1.50 per litre, which equates to more than $8 per US gallon.  This is just one example of how it is expensive (from a US perspective) to live in Ireland.  During the last presidential campaign, I was amazed to see John McCain keep referencing the corporate tax rate in Ireland as a model for what should be charged in the US.  Ireland has long had a policy of keeping corporate tax rates artificially low in order to attract foreign businesses who will then provide jobs to its workers in a country with relative few natural resources.  In just about every other area, Irish tax rates are very high compared to the US.

Eugene met us at Bewley’s (full name Bewley’s Oriental Café), a Dublin institution for generations.  My high school, literally called The High School, was build on a farm Bewleys owned to house their own herd of Jersey cows to produce milk for their various enterprises.  Good tea and coffee, and excellent cake!

We made it back to the shop just before closing time, picked up our bags and walked around the corner to the nearby Blue Coach, which came within ten minutes.  About 25 minutes later we were at Dublin Airport (the old Terminal 1 this time) checking in for our BMI flight to London Heathrow.

Flying in Europe has become much less expensive.  I thing we were able to buy our one way tickets for something like $50 net each, which was a bargain, especially since BMI includes a baggage allowance with the ticket.  Although most of the low cost airlines like Ryan Air, EasyJet, etc offer very low airfares, you pay separately for baggage, which can easily end up costing more than the airfare if you aren’t careful.  So if you are shopping for flights, make sure to take baggage costs into consideration.

We arrived at our friends Michael and Marcia’s in North London pretty late, but looking forward to meeting up with my brothers and sisters-in-law tomorrow.

What was that you said?

Growing up in Dublin, the most cosmopolitan place in Ireland, apart from the British, one did not often see many people from other countries. During the summer months, you might hear some Italian or Spanish when a school group came to practice their English. Before I left for the States, I think I had seen maybe two Black people in Dublin throughout the years. Or maybe it was the same person who just liked to put on a disguise once in a while to confuse the locals.

As the Celtic Tiger roared, people from all over the world came to Ireland, and not just Dublin. In particular many eastern Europeans took the low end jobs that foreign workers seem to occupy the world over. Lots of these went home as the going got tough in recent years and the Celtic Tiger started to look more like a mangy tabby cat.

As Kelly and I walked around today, here is a sampling of the languages we heard being spoken:

• French
• Spanish
• Italian
• Mandarin Chinese
• Arabic
• Polish
• Czech
• Hebrew
• and a few African languages which I could not identify

While a few of these may have been tourists, most of them were not, and I am sure if we tried a bit harder, we could have heard at least another half dozen or so tongues without too much difficulty. There are now specialty shops for goods and/or food catering to Poles, Serbs, and probably many others, although one wonders with some of the emigration of foreign workers if they’ve had to setup a mail order business.

Viva diversity!

Another Lovely Day in Dublin

After being warned last week before we left that the weather in Dublin was cold and rainy, we added some cold weather clothing to our packing, but as it turned out, it has been gorgeous since we’ve been here  Kelly always seems to bring good weather to Ireland, therefore be sure to invite us to join you if you decide to come here yourself!

Looking up “What’s On in Dublin” before we left Austin I found a ton of events, but a lunchtime concert with the RTE (National Television and Radio stations) National Symphony Orchestra jumped out as something that my parents would probably enjoy too.  They purchased tickets for all of us and we headed to the National Concert Hall to hear the following program, which was also broadcast live on radio:

Rossini The Thieving Magpie Overture
Mozart Ein Mädchen oder Weibchen from The Magic Flute
Donizetti Bella siccome un angelo from Don Pasquale
Lehár Chez Maxim's from The Merry Widow
Respighi La Boutique fantasque (The Magic Toy Shop)

It was a fabulous concert, just under an hour long.  The Orchestra is world class and listening to them, the eighty or so members sounded like one organism – absolutely spot on.

After a quick and simple lunch eaten sitting in the grounds of Trinity College (my alma mater), we walked to the Campanile (bell tower) for a quick kiss to remind us that this was the spot we got engaged almost 25 years ago!

From there we did a long walk along the River Liffey  up to the National Museum at Collins Barracks. Along the way we passed through the trendy Temple Bar district.

Dublin is well over 1,000 years old, and as such there are many architectural styles to be seen since its Viking origins.  While Trinity started in Elizabethan times, Dublin is perhaps best know n for its Georgian architecture, which is now interspersed with many modern additions.  But architectural details are to be found everywhere, especially if you look up.

In the heart of Temple Bar is a pub, called the Temple Bar, where we heard live music playing, which is a bit unusual for early afternoon.  Stepping inside we found a musician attempting to set the Guiness World Record for playing a guitar non-stop for 100 hours.  The clock showed he was up to nearly 48 hours and he sounded pretty good!

Continuing along the banks of the Liffey, we arrived at National Museum about 30 minutes before closing time.

The Barracks themselves have a storied past, but today, they are a branch of the National Museum, one of the few free things still available in Dublin, now a very expensive city.  The Barracks are huge, and with some luck, we will go back tomorrow.   I had not been there before, but in the short time we had to look around it was clear there was much to see.  They have a huge collection of decorative arts from historic furniture, porcelain, glass. silver, etc. to contemporary pieces.  They also have an exhibit on Irish military history and much more.

Another  long walk brought us back to the center of Dublin, which is marked by the “Spike”, a rather curious edifice meant to be an iconic emblem for Dublin.  There are a lot of public statues and monuments throughout the city and Dubliners have taken to giving each of them creative and cheeky nicknames . For instance, the statue of Molly Malone, a character in the song “Dublin’s Fair City”, is a buxom lass in a low cut blouse as she wheels her wheelbarrow, per the lyrics of the song.  To Dubliners she’s know as “The Tart with the Cart”.

Art is an integral part of Irish culture from music, dance, theater, sculpture, decorative arts and all kinds of visual arts. Just before we returned back to my parents’ house, we came across this street artist creating this amazing mandala-like image on the pavement.

We got back with just enough time for us to change for dinner and for me to take an environmental portrait of my parents in front of the house I grew up in, and in which they have lived ever since they got married more than fifty years ago.

“The Old Home Town Looks the Same as I Step Down from the Plane…”

With apologies to Tom Jones.  Actually some things do look the same, some are quite different.  In the latter category is the 6 month old terminal 2 at Dublin Airport.

Certainly much more modern and functional than the very old terminal 1, but it seemed a bit cramped on the walk from the plane to immigration where we waited amongst passengers from about 5 other flights to clear formalities – a mere 45 minutes.  On the positive side, we ended up only having to wait about 10 minutes for the new fast bus (30 minutes) to Terenure, where my parents live.

The weather is very pleasant today, and the garden at my parents house is looking lovely.  The ripe raspberries picked off the vine were delicious.

After breakfast, some catching up, and an early lunch, we took a drive to Blessington in the Wicklow Mountains as we endeavored to push through our tiredness after the red eye flight.  The first day is the worst, but by muscling through, I’ve found from experience that we’ll save several days of jet lag.  But we are looking forward to getting to bed early tonight!

On the way back home we stopped at Edmondstown Golf club for a drink, which we enjoyed outside sitting in the sunshine.  Just as we were finishing up, relatives of two of my oldest friends from Dublin showed to to play golf and I got to say a quick “hello”.

The Adventure begins - Ireland Bound

So this is a first for me.   Sitting at 30,000 feet and doing a blog entry.  On previous trips, I’ve generally done real time online blogging.  The few off line tools that I previously tried didn’t really do what I wanted,  But today, I am giving  Windows Live Writer 2011 a spin and it seems to work well (time will tell!)  Can’t beat the price of $0.

Kelly asked me how to transfer images to the computer, so while we waited for our Chicago bound plane, I shot a quick image on my new Olympus Pen EPL-2 and using Adobe Lightroom we imported in onto the Netbook.

It won’t win any Pulitzer prizes, but does give me the chance to test the key feature I found lacking in previous offline blog tools, and that was reliable image control, i.e. the ability to load a photo white not actually connected to the blog.

Our plans are to spend a few days in Dublin visiting my parents, then head over to London to meet up with my brothers, sisters-in-law and some friends and then jet off to the Iberian peninsula to roam around independently.  We begin in Barcelona for a few days, then pick up a car and drive for a few weeks before ending up in Madrid, where we plan to turn in the car, explore the capital for a few days, then head back to Austin.  In between we hope to see as much of Spain and Portugal as time, patience, and treasury permit.  If we are really lucky, we’ll also do some stops in Gibraltar and Tangiers.  Hmmm,  can you say tagine?

2011 Travel Photo kit

Each year when we travel, I find myself torn between two extremes in terms of the photo gear I take.  For trips where I really want the very best, it means bringing a lot of kit and is usually only practical if we have a good way to store or transport it.  Such was the case when we were in Africa and could keep all the gear on our truck.  This included two DSLR bodies, high end point and shoot backup, at least 4 lenses (including a large 100-400mm zoom), camera mounts, flash gear, batteries, chargers, computer, storage devices, and various other sundry items.  This stuff is bulky, heavy, and fragile and is a pain to transport.  As airlines have become much stricter about carry-on sizes and weights, it makes it especially difficult to transport unless you are willing to check some of the gear and/or have travel partners than can allocate some of their carry-on allowance to you.

The other extreme is travelling super light.  For me, this has been a Canon Powershot G series high end point and shoot camera (with RAW image capability), extra battery, charger, media cards and usually an external flash, and batteries and maybe a small camera mount like a Gorillapod.  The benefit of this kit is of course that it is small and light.  Also, there is no excuse not to have the camera with you at all times, which is pretty significant as you can’t take a picture of something if you don’t have a camera!

There are some significant downsides to this setup though, some of which may not be immediately obvious.   Of course, you give up some of the features and flexibility of a DSLR when shooting with a high end point and shoot, especially super wide angle and high end telephoto images.  But these cameras give a pretty good zoom range.

More problematic is low light shooting.  The built in lenses are usually a few stops darker than my best DSLR lenses, but more importantly, because the DSLRs have larger sensors, they are much more usable at higher ISO settings, even using the same image processing technology (Canon’s system is called DIGIC).  On my Powershot G9, I found that anything over ISO 200 was basically worthless, whereas my DSLRs are usable up to at least ISO 1600.  The best of my DSLRs performs better at ISO 6400 than the G9 at ISO 200.  The latest current G model, the G12, is a bit better, but indications are that I’d be lucky to get something I would be happy with above ISO 400. 

The problem is the image sensor size, which is tiny in a point and shoot in comparison to a DSLR.  This also creates another problem/potential benefit at the same time.   Smaller image sensors cause greater depth of field (at the same f/stop setting).  So for instance, a point and shoot camera at f/4 will have much more in focus than a DSLR at the same setting.  For some situations, this is a bonus – e.g. for macro photography a good point and shoot camera used right can outperform a DSLR (without specialized macro lenses).  Also, for most beginning photographers having more of the shot in focus is probably a benefit, especially if you aren’t great at focus control.

However, advanced photographers want to be able to have full range of control over depth of field, including the ability to isolate a subject from its background.  In portraiture this is especially important and virtually impossible to do in many situations with a point and shoot camera, no matter how sophisticated.

So, what to do?  For this trip, I bought an Olympus PEN EP-L2 camera, which uses the micro four thirds system.  In English, this means a few things:

1. It uses interchangeable lenses, like a DSLR.
2. It is very compact, just a bit bigger than the high end Canon Powershot G series point and shoot.
3. The micro four thirds system is an open standard, so lenses are interchangeable between supporting manufacturers.  Olympus, Panasonic, Sony, and Samsung all make cameras and lenses, and there are some third party manufacturers talking about offering their lenses also.
4. These are mirrorless cameras, which means that they do away with the size (and expense, and noise) of a DSLR’s mirror, but in turn don’t have a through-the-lens optical viewfinder.  Instead, most simply use the rear LCD screen of the camera.  This can be a problem viewing in bright light, and also it changes the whole approach of taking photos – shooting at arm’s length vs. having your eye in the viewfinder.  Olympus offer an excellent (but expensive) VF-2 electronic viewfinder, which allows the flexibility of choosing to use the LCD screen or an eyelevel viewfinder.  It is also hinged, so it is possible to shoot comfortably at low angles, or even upside down above one’s head.  Lastly, it uses less battery power than the LCD, so you can get more shots from a single battery charge.

With a lens adapter, the Olympus PEN cameras also allow the use of other lenses in manual or aperture priority modes, using manual focus.  Since I have a bunch of Olympus OM Zuiko lenses from my old 35mm SLR cameras, this was a no brainer for me.  Because the image sensor is a bit smaller than the APS-C sized sensors in mid range DSLRs (which have a 1.6x lens factor) and are about 1/2 the size of a full frame sensor, they have a 2x lens factor.  This means my OM 50mm f/1.8 lens acts like a 100mm f1.8 lens on the PEN camera – great!  My 28mm becomes a 56mm and so on. And it only cost me a $29.95 adapter to be able to re-use these old, but very good lenses.

The camera has a very extensive set of features, including shooting very good quality HD movies (I did a movie project shortly after getting the camera, which pretty much paid for it in one go.)

So, in the bag (my smallest camera backpack) is the following:

• Olympus PEN EP-L2 camera with the standard kit zoom lens.
• Olympus VF-2 electronic viewfinder
• Battery charger and spare battery
• Fotodiox OM to micro four thirds lens adapter
• Olympus OM 50mm lens
• Olympus OM 28mm lens
• Spare media cards
• Misc. cables, lens cleaning kit, etc.
• Nissin Di866 Canon model flash and a few flash accessories.

This last item is also pretty interesting.  I bought it as another flash in my Canon lighting kit.  It has pretty much all of the features of Canon’s 580EXII Speedlite at half the price, but has some extra features too, including a built-in optical slave that can be set for analog or digital mode.  This is important, because today’s sophisticated flash systems (inc. those built into point and shoot cameras) actually send out TWO flashes when you fire – the first is a pre-flash which the camera uses to measure how much light it should put out for the “real” flash it uses when actually recording your image.  These two flashes usually happen so close together that you perceive them as a single flash. Unfortunately, most optical slaves get triggered by the pre-flash and thus do not contribute any light at all to you actual image.  This is where the digital slave comes in – it ignores the pre flash and fires with the main flash.

So what’s cool about this for me is that the Olympus PEN EP-L2 has a built in mini flash (this is one key difference from the EP-2 model).  The mini flash isn’t really useful to me for illuminating any images I ‘d want to take, BUT it does allow me to trigger the optical slave in my much more powerful, and off-camera Nissin Di866.  The flash operates manually, but it gives me lots of freedom in where I place the flash, how much power it delivers, etc.

Hoping to get some good shots with this gear, but in about 1/3 the space of my big Canon kit.