"train heave on to Euston, do think you've made the right decision this time?"

Just a quick update, since I'm trying to hit Dublin Castle, the Guinness Brewery, and St. Paul's Cathedral (where Jonathon Swift is interred) before they close today. I had a hell of a time reaching the ferry to Dublin from London. Britrail is all messed up. I had to transfer 4 times, including a bus between two points that should have been served by a highspeed train. I was sort of fine with it, because I got to see some rusty, decrepit English towns along the way, but the other brits along with me were extremely irate. And untalkative. I had one long conversation with a taciturn man trying to visit his sister in Wales. That was it. Everyone else kind of minded their own business. The Irish on the other hand seem a rowdier lot. . .

I'm trying to put up some pictures, but I still haven't found an internet cafe that will let me plug in my USB drive.

the day before . . .

Assessing my luggage, and trying to fit everything into two small bags. Trying to remain mobile, while having enough to actually
conduct business with professors in Japan. Realizing that I haven't prepared business cards, and can't locate my Japanese or French dictionaries.

KST is coming down for dinner tonight. A small reunion of sorts, since I'm not attending my 7th down in Princeton.

pre-travel thoughts: One Hundred Years of Solitude

. . . In the hot parlor, beside the specter of the pianola shrouded in a white sheet, Colonel Aureliano Buendia did not sit down that time inside the chalk circle that his aides had drawn. He sat in a chair between his political advisers and, wrapped in his woolen blanket, he listened in silence to the brief proposals of the emissaries. They asked first that he renounce the revision of property titles in order to get back the support of the Liberal landowners. They asked, secondly, that he renounce the aim of equal rights for natural and illegitimate children in order to preserve the integrity of the home.
"That means," Colonel Aureliano Buendia said, smiling when the reading was over, "that all we're fighting for is power."