Hostpapa, did you kill our dreams like Freddy Krueger?
We’ve been without internet the last 3 days and have come to find our site is down. All of our posts, pages and comments had vanished. It seems our web host, hostpapa severs went down and around the same time we lost everything and our database shrunk to 0mb. Sent an email to hostpapa support and got a response saying “We don’t backup customer files, it’s up to you. case closed”
I have to say it’s pretty shitty customer service from hostpapa.ca No apology, no explanation why the servers crashed, no nothing. The only way I knew their servers went down (which they didn’t admit) is because I have a third party reporting service for outages. Also a friend of ours uses hostpapa and she actually got an email.. where the hell was ours?
Anyways, so we drank our troubles away through many pitchers of BeerLao, pool with the A-Team and many whisky cokes. This morning instead of tubing we nursed our hangovers and got ready to get our dream back up and running again. Lo and behold, I do an upgrade to the newest version of Wordpress and it magically all reappeared like nothing happened.
My guess is that hostpapa realized that killing baby kittens is wrong and decided to make it up with this magic. But really, did wordpress magically have a backup we didn’t know about somewhere in cyberland?
None the less, sorry for the hiccup, we’re now back to our regularly scheduled program starting Monday.
While walking about one night, we ran into an interesting art installation just outside the National Gallery called One and Other, created by sculptor Antony Gormley. It’s located at the top of the empty 4th Plinth in Trafalgar Square, originally designed to hold an equestrian statute which never got placed and has sat empty for years. But now it’s the location for temporary works of art commissioned by leading national and international artists.
Antony Gormely’s premise for One and Other was to have 2,400 people from across the world get their 60 minutes of fame, front and center. With an open concept of “do whatever you want to do.” 35,000 people apply for their chance to take part and were picked by a random lottery. Running 24 hours a day for 100 days, One and Other is an ambitious and quite unique art project.
It was a chance for anyone to show off their secret talents, voice an opinion, start a protest, dance, be naked, teach, advertise, or even just sit up there and talk on their phone while they video tape the people below. With 2,400 individual performances you can just imagine the variety of personalities that were brave enough to share themselves with the people of London.
Although the One and Other project has now been completed, Trafalgar Square has been used and still is a location for a more modern approach to art and making impressions to strangers. From a T-Mobile “Hey Jude” flashmob, to protests and rallies, and even to temporary art installations on the the 4th Plinth. It seems like a happening place in London to see something interesting. (the fountains and lion statues in the square are also nice to look) Even if you are searching for uninteresting things during your travels, your eyes will be please to boredom when you find out what some pale guy and his wife looked like back in the day inside the National Gallery. (with free admission… Yay?!??)
We have shared many vacations with our friends Steve and Karen. From enjoying all inclusive treatments in the Dominican, multi-day stag parties away from home, (Scott went to Las Vegas, USA, I went house-boating in Sicamous, B.C.), renting winter cabins, and even camping together in the same tent trailer or even smaller then that, the same tent!
So you could say we are pretty adapt to each other’s ways and handle small areas for multi days without a breeze! Well, we thought so too until we had to share hostel dorm rooms for 4 in Europe.
Scott has a super power, he can fall asleep like he has narcolepsy but actually doesn’t. Which is fantastic for him, but the rest of us are insanely jealous of it. The other problem is Scott has the capability to snore like a lumberjack and this snoring commences within minutes of him falling asleep. This basically leaves the small dorm room for 4 about 5 minutes to fall asleep otherwise you will be bothered by Scott’s snoring. Best part of this all… he snores louder when he is tired and has been drinking/partying lots. Well Europe has been quite the party and Scott has been snoring the loudest I’ve ever heard him.
For some strange reason Karen and Steve never learned this from sleeping in tents together. But they learned it enough in our Europe travels that we have started to book 2 double private rooms rather then a room for 4. Scott feels bad for keeping everyone awake all night, and Karen and Steve want to get more sleep, so we are all okay with paying a bit extra to have our own spaces. Only problem is what about me?? I still have to sleep with the snoring beast, and earplugs don’t drown it out!
Not our photo, but this our small room at the Generator Hostel in London
One of the smallest spaces we have shared with Karen and Steve was a private dorm for 4 with shared bathroom at the Generator hostel in London. It even seemed smaller then a tent trailer! Our small room in the generator had 2 bunk beds and a sink with about 2 meters wide x 1.5 meters long floor space. Needless to say we all took turns getting ready, one person gets ready and grabs their stuff while the rest sit on their bed and wait their turn.
We are thankful we never encountered a room this small: (however I can’t help but laugh at this random youtube video!)
Anyways, I thank the powers that be for melatonin! It’s my saving grace to get a good night’s sleep. Helps me fall asleep faster and helps me stay asleep until rested, with no groggy side effect the next day. I highly suggest all backpackers to travel with melatonin. It doesn’t knock you out like a regular sleeping pill does. Makes the next day easier or if you take it on a train or something like that you will wake up quite easily if you need to and/or fall back asleep again if you get disturbed.
What do you do when you travel? What happens if you end up in a dorm with a snorer?
