Watch this little mini documentary about it at FutureStates.tv and enjoy your long weekend saturday!

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.

Check out this SKYARTS page to watch videos from the best of the best.

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?!??)

Shared accommodation in the mountains of BC

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?

Jeremy currently lives in Dayton Ohio and is planning his very own “dream” trip around the world, hoping to embark in August 2010 once he is done his graduate research. Jeremy has already traveled to many countries in his life, but still has mad case of the travel bug.

We had a great time answering Jeremy’s questions and wish him all the luck in the world for his trip preparations and upcoming adventures.

Check out the spotlight here at Jeremy’s blog, and while your at it add his site to your RSS. It’s full of great planning tips and some stories from his past adventures. And if your on twitter, give him a follow!

Thanks again Jeremy for the spotlight!! We look forward to reading your future traveler spotlights and would love the chance to talk again about our Asia experiences once we land back in Canada.

While in Dublin I saw this ad and have to say main stream media so far is full of shit. €50 for 350 mins with evenings and weekends? This is $80 Canadian which is almost double what you would pay with Rogers, Telus or Bell. While Ireland In general is expensive, I’ll keep checking prices and services while I’m around.

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” – Mark Twain

“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” – Mark Twain

“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.” – St. Augustine

“For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.” – Robert Louis Stevenson

“One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.” – Henry Miller

“A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.” – Lao Tzu

“If you reject the food, ignore the customs, fear the religion and avoid the people, you might better stay at home.” – James Michener

“Not all those who wander are lost.” – J. R. R. Tolkien

Adventure is a path. Real adventure – self-determined, self-motivated, often risky – forces you to have firsthand encounters with the world. The world the way it is, not the way you imagine it. Your body will collide with the earth and you will bear witness. In this way you will be compelled to grapple with the limitless kindness and bottomless cruelty of humankind – and perhaps realize that you yourself are capable of both. This will change you. Nothing will ever again be black-and-white.” – Mark Jenkins

“Once in a while it really hits people that they don’t have to experience the world in the way they have been told to.” – Alan Keightley

and two runner ups:

“Without new experiences, something inside of us sleeps. The sleeper must awaken.” – Frank Herbert

“I am not the same having seen the moon shine on the other side of the world.” – Mary Anne Radmacher Hershey

Do you have a favorite travel quote that’s not listed here? Let us know and post a comment!

Cats are probably the best (worst?) contender… I even actively seek out cat videos on my own just so I can see what sort of related videos pop up to waste some time. Or for a quick dose I’ll just resort to some good old lolcats at icanhascheezburger.com. Heck, the ring tone on my phone is a song from a cat video! 

Anyways, a great flash mob video was just recently shared by my friend Dave on facebook. The video is actually a commercial created for T-Mobile’s “Life is for sharing” ad campaign. Commercial or not I think the message is fantastic! Check it out: 

Watching this video makes me fall in love with Europe before I even get there! I would of loved to be part of that crowd!! I wonder if we will be lucky enough to witness any flash mobs while we are there or maybe even get to take part of one!