Austin Blind Cafe

...duplicated from blog.dustinkirkland.com...

Kim and I experienced something truly unique, and entirely perspective-changing a couple of weeks ago...

Accepting an invitation from our friends Christian and Julia, we attended the first presentation of the Blind Cafe in Austin.

I had heard of something similar in London, where several of my colleagues attended a "team building" dinner some time ago.  But as far as I'm aware, this was a first for Austin.

We attended with a big group, I think there were 10 of us in our party (of which Kim and I only really knew one other couple).  We spent a few minutes in anxious anticipation in the hallway, and received a few instructions from our hosts.

Eventually, we were led through two ante-chambers of darkness by our blind guide, toward our seats in a banquet room, completely and absolutely devoid of all light!  You could open your eyes as wide as you could, and strain as hard as you wanted, but you would see absolutely nothing :-)  It took quite a while to get used to it, even after the immediate nervousness subsided.

Kim managed to put her hand directly into someone's salad as we made our way to our seats -- oops :-)  She sat on the end of a table, and had the security of a wall to her right.  I sat on her left, with the rest of our new friends to my left and across the table.

Eating in blindness was a distinct, unique experience.  Most of my friends and family know how much I hate salad, but here I had a huge salad sitting right in front of me :-)  Under normal circumstances, I might have been able to pick through and eat the "good" parts.  But here, I couldn't :-)  And I couldn't really tell how much I had left to eat.  I think that was the longest salad of my entire life!

Now the salad plate was already served for us when we sat down, but we had to help ourselves to the main course -- rice and curry.  We immediately dropped the rice serving utensil on the ground, never to be found again.  And so we improvised, with each of us sort of grabbing a handful of sticky rice, cupping it against our forks.  The curry was a little easier to serve, as thankfully we didn't drop that spoon.  The food was good, if a little bland for my tastes.  Everyone was served the same thing, which sort of necessitates a lowest common denominator of accessibility, so the food was vegan and not very spicy.  Dessert, though was absolutely delicious!  Vegan cuisine is exceptionally good at chocolate and dessert :-)  Mmm.

Okay, food aside, the experience was second to none.  It was particularly disarming in that most of our conversations were with people whom we had never really met (friends of Christian's and Julia's).  This was really interesting, talking and listening, without the aides of reading or displaying body language.

After dinner and still in the dark, we were treated to an excellent concert, mostly led by the organizer/producer of the Blind Cafe, Rosh.  He has sort of a John Mayer style, with a great voice and an acoustic guitar.  The additional acoustic instrumentation -- a pair of violins, a cello, and a viola, really filled out the ensemble.  As a musician myself, it was engrossing to listen, and only listen, to the music in the room around us.  With no visual distractions, the music just seemed to pour through me.

At the end of the evening, Kim said that she really didn't want to leave.  She was having a great time, and was still in the process of absorbing the experience.  The organizers lit one, lone candle in the middle of the room before we left.  The revelation of the room around us was mesmerizing, finally being able to "see" how the room was arrange, how big the space was, how far (or near) the next table was, and where that damn rice spoon went! :-)

Listen, if you ever get a chance to attend a presentation of the Blind Cafe in your town, don't hesitate -- do it!  Proceeds benefited charity and help with blindness awareness, and you'll enjoy an experience that will perhaps change your perspective entirely.  It seems that the event has been held in Portland OR, Boulder CO, and Austin TX so far, and there are events on the calendar for Cincinnati OH and Seattle WA.

:-Dustin

A Week in London in March

On my way back home from Cape Town, South Africa, my flight itinerary had me stopping in London.  I decided to carry that layover and spend a week in London.

I worked from Canonical's home office at the top of the Millbank office building, and I stayed with one of oldest, best friends, Kyle, who's been living in Greenwich for almost a year.

Millbank is easily the tallest building on the Parliament side of the Thames.

And as such, it offers fantastic views of the city.  This was my view from the temporary cube I used for the week. 

After coffee with the crew...

...I spent my mornings commuting like a million other Londoners, taking a train from Greenwich, transferring onto the tube, and then walking past Parliament...

...Big Ben...

And then up 27 stories, back to the nice view.  I spent Monday - Wednesday working on a little project that benefited from some face time with a few of my colleagues in London, and then I took Thursday and Friday off for some sightseeing around the city.

I visited St. Paul's Cathedral.

And then spent pretty much all of Thursday by myself, moving very, very slowly through the British Museum for a good 7 hours.

This is a piece of the Sphinx' beard.

And, of course, the Rosetta Stone.

About half of the reliefs of the Parthenon from Athens is actually here at the British Museum.  There's plenty of politics about whether or not the artifacts should be here in London, or returned to Athens.  In any case, I enjoyed seeing them, as I was in fact in London and not Athens at the moment.  I will probably feel differently when I visit Athens some day :-)

This is one of the Easter Island statues.

And a Buddha from Korea, several thousand years old. 

I do of course enjoy my Byobu.

The mummy exhibition is pretty incredible.  Hundreds of mummies are on display.  Again, not quite sure how I felt about this.  Part of me kind of wanted them back where they were originally put, at rest in their tombs.  Anyway, I took these pictures for Kim, of mummified cats.

Kyle took Friday off and we spent the day sightseeing together.  We started our morning off by catching a boat, rather than a train, from Greenwich to downtown London.  This clipper can really move!

We had unusually nice weather, and really enjoyed it.  The views of London from the Thames are particularly striking.

I've still not yet ridden on the London Eye, but it's always there, and inviting.

Near the London Eye, we visited the London Film Museum, which has a history of movie making in London, and lots of props on display, such as this one from Alien.

The highlight of the entire museum is the real set of the Tantive IV, from the very first scene of Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.

Always a Simpsons fan, this was a fun picture.  I have to figure Homer is about 7' tall, as Kyle, here, is 6'4"!

Fortunately, I was able to rescue Han from the carbonite, and he joined us for the rest of the tour.  A little picture shy, I couldn't get him to pose for one with Kyle and I both.  (Should have left him in the carbonite).

This is the shirt used by Robert Patrick in Terminator 2, as Arnold unloads a volley of shotgun slugs at him, and he just absorbs them.

And this is Kaylee's jacket from Serenity (which was on sale for 700 GBP).

Here's the animatronic Medusa from the original Clash of the Titans.  There was a great exhibit along with it, explaining how that scene was filmed in painstaking detail, manipulating the snakes on her head frame by frame.

After the film museum and a meal and a few beers at Kyle's favorite Belgian restaurant, we met the rest of the family at the British Maritime Museum back in Greenwich.

This museum is just awesome, housed in the old Royal Navy College.

I had talked earlier that day about the guy who ran the London Marathon in full SCUBA gear, so I was quite surprised to see his outfit on display at the museum.

After the Maritime Museum, we hiked up the hill to tour the Royal Observatory, which is the official keeper of Greenwich Mean Time.

Here I am straddling the GMT parallel.

From the top of the observatory, a creepy green laser shoots miles and miles through the London Fog, noting the GMT line across the sky.

After a long day of touring, we sat down and threw back a couple of pints at Greenwich's Mean Time pub.

And later that night, we took in a bit of culture, seeing the two-person, psychological thriller, In a Forest, Dark and Deep, which starred exclusively Matthew Fox and Olivia Williams.  I didn't know anything about the play going into it, but I certainly knew Matthew Fox from Lost, and Olivia Williams from Dollhouse, so the opportunity to see them both on stage, in a 2-person play seemed like a good idea.  Tickets were very expensive, but our seats were great.  The playhouse was excellent -- certainly becoming of London.  And the play definitely did not let us down.  We really enjoyed the deep, dark story.  There was an interesting interplay of building and releasing tension, but consistently stepping up the drama of the situation.  I'd say a bit of the story was a little predictable, but still, it was well worth our time and money.  I enjoyed it a great deal!

And to finish the night (and my trip off), we of course overpaid for beer and burgers at London's Hard Rock cafe.  At my dad's urging, we toured the Hard Rock vault under the office next door, where we saw the Hard Rock's greatest treasures.  Considering how much fun Kyle and I have had listening and playing hard rock music over the years, it was a great way to conclude the journey.

I left London the next morning, arriving in Dallas by way of Houston.  Kim picked me up at DFW, and we spent the night in Dallas after attending the wedding of our friends Vanessa and Rip (we made it to the ceremony just in time!).

This was, perhaps the most complicated itinerary I've ever traveled.  To recap:

• I left Austin on Thursday February 24, flying through San Francisco, and arriving in Santa Barbara, CA, where I worked for one day
• Later that night, I drove from Santa Barbara to Los Angeles, where I spent two nights, and spoke at the SCALE 9x conference
• I left Los Angels on Saturday afternoon, arriving in London on Sunday morning, and spent all of Sunday in a Heathrow lounge
• I left Heathrow on Sunday night, arriving in Cape Town, South Africa on Monday morning, and worked from Cape Town that Monday through Friday
• I left Cape Town on Sunday night, arriving in London on Monday morning, and worked from London Monday through Wednesday, taking Thursday and Friday off for a little touring
• I left London on Saturday morning, arriving in Dallas on Saturday afternoon, attended a wedding
• And finally, Kim and I drove from Dallas to Austin on Sunday morning

Wow :-)  Now that's jet setting :-)

Cheers,
:-Dustin

Driving around Cape Town and Cape Point, South Africa (Part 3)

Several people have asked about how I felt about my safety while I was in South Africa...

Honestly, I felt perfectly safe for my entire journey.  That isn't to say that I wasn't warned.  And I think I've been rather travel-savvy.  There are do's and dont's.  And you have to use your head.

Anyway, I did find it little humorous and confounding when I checked in, and I was giving this motley of keys.  There's a remote, with 4 different buttons, to open the gates, and the front and back doors of the lobby.  The long, ancient looking key operates the bathroom lock.  The tiny, roundish key arms and disarms the alarm system (which I think I set of myself every single day I attempted to set it).  The roundish key locked the metal bars on the sliding glass door.  And the boxy key locked the sliding glass door.

I needed to review them a few times with our darling hostess Elizabeth to get it all straight :-)

I can happily recommend the Kolping Guesthouse, if somehow, somewhy you ever find yourself way out in Durbanville.  It's a very comfortable, warm, inviting place.

I was "shocked" to see energized, electric razor fences around some of the apartments in the neighborhood.

And equally puzzled by the adverts for "Halt Armed Response", with a logo of dude with a spear leaping over a very angry wolf.  Or something.  There's going to have to be some bad sh*t going down for me to call those dudes.

Anyway, I had an odd predicament on Sunday, as I had to check out of my hotel around 10am, and my flight wasn't until 8:30pm.  Moreover, the guest house was a whopping 30 miles from anything particularly interesting.  So cabs to and from Cape Town, plus a cab to the airport, plus lugging around luggage all day wasn't particularly appealing.

As the strangest things often do, an interesting solution presented itself, as my cab driver drove me (for the second time) yesterday back to the guest house.  Basically, I hired him for the day.  He would pick me up at 10am on Sunday morning, drive me around for the entire day, and dropped me off at the airport around 6:30pm.  All this for $120, which as quite a reasonable price (assuming you don't get mugged, kidnapped, or killed).

Well it was an absolutely wonderful day.  I got to know Addy, my driver, and he got to know me.  Brothers from different mothers, he said.  I thought that was very nice :-)

We started the day with a stop at Camps Bay, for a little bit of time walking around the beach.  It was yet another perfect summer day.  It was still early morning for most beach bums, so it was mostly quiet.

Here you can see a bit of Signal Hill, from a very different perspective my previous day's hike up Table Mountain.

And this was the Blues restaurant where we had eaten earlier in the week.  Quite a different feel during the daytime.

Addy, on the right, and I had a couple of coffees and a pastries for breakfast.

We stopped at a little fisherman's village (sorry, I've forgotten the name), where I bought a couple of souvenirs, and spotted this jellyfish swimming around in the water below.

I think this is one of the better pictures I took on this trip, of a mess of docked sailboats creaking and bobbing among the morning fog.

We made our way around the bay to the far side of the harbor, and started working our way up Chapman's Peak.

Looking back at the harbor, I could see quite a few impressive homes nestled in the hills.

The clouds were rolling in from the south and east, cold air and moisture sinking below these impressive, powerful peaks.

I thought this blanket of clouds hundreds of feet below was just beautiful.

Winding our way up, and around to Chapman's Peak...

The views of the mountains below got more and more dramatic.

This bird of prey was intently staring at something far, far below us.

These clouds were pouring, like a liquid into a basin, from the ocean on the left to the harbor on the right.

The rock overhang overhead here was pretty impressive.

Addy stopped at one of the local surfer playgrounds.  These two gals were just one their way out to the water for the afternoon.

There was a good dozen or so surfers riding some decent waves.

I watched until the clouds overtook our position and we couldn't see the water anymore.

Not that I needed one, but we stopped a huge outdoor clearing house with literally thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of sculptures -- from elephant sized, to hand held busts such as these.

We also stopped at a nearby ostrich farm for a couple of pictures.  I did see one ostrich running through the national park, in the wild, which was cool.  But I got to get a lot closer to these domesticated ones :-)

This guy strutted right over to me with enough confidence that I back off of the fence several feet!

Speaking of feet, ostriches have the weirdest feet I think I've ever seen on any animal.  They look almost like dinosaurs (I guess?).

After that, we made our way into the Cape of Good Hope and the Table Mountain National Park.

Immediately upon entering the park, a wild baboon streaked by our car.  I only managed to snap this one crappy picture, but oh my, wow!  I mean, a baboon just on the other side of my window!  It didn't look very happy, so we didn't stalk it for another picture.  Addy expected that we would have seen more baboons, but alas, this was the only one.

Entry to the National Park was surprisingly expensive.  Addy says that he takes his family here once a year for a holiday, but he agreed that entry was quite pricey.

Throw these coordinates into your map, or look up Cape Point in Google Maps, and start zooming out.  I'm betting that's a very, very long way from wherever you are right now...  Boggles my mind.

So this is an old light house at the very top and tip of Cape Point.  When I took this picture of myself, I was originally quite pleased that I managed to get myself and the lighthouse perfectly in the picture.  Upon further inspection (when I got the picture loaded onto my computer), I noticed that there is a HUGE wedgie falling out of my right ear :-)

I did not hike down to this secluded beach, but it did look quite inviting.

Even with the fog and being among the clouds, it was really, really bright, and hard to open my eyes without sunglasses on.

I hiked up a couple of hundred feet to the top where the lighthouse was, and looked down at some pretty violent breakers.  You wouldn't want to swim down there.  Oh, and the Atlantic is ice cold down here.

It's hard to tell from here, but that's hundreds of penguins on the rocks!  More on penguins later...hang with me...

That's the Atlantic Ocean behind me, and roughly 10,000 miles in that direction is my home in Austin, Texas.  Surreal.

So I finished up my time on Cape Point and our next stop was a little beach along the Cape that's full of ....

Penguins!

Of course my association with Linux necessitates a love of penguins.  But come on, these things friggin' adorable!

I mean, they'll waddle right up to you...

And look you right in the eye.

I got a kick out of their feet too.  Scaly with big honking claws.

Their little wings were cute too.  It had an interesting looking texture, but I dared not touch it, as their beaks looked really sharp.

This mama penguin was sitting on an egg.

Yeah, check that out, a veritable penguin egg.

And what comes from penguin eggs, but penguin chicks :-)

They were quite playful, waddling around the rocks...

Taking a swim, and then cleaning themselves off.

This guy was just too cool for school.  He was done with all of that waddling and settled into a prone position.

Waddle waddle!

Peck and clean!

Play in the water!  Okay, I'll stop now.  I took hundreds of pictures :-)

On a more serious note, I guess it's hard to talk about Africa without talking about some its social issues, of which it has had plenty.  We drove by Khayelitsha, with over a half million people living in this "shanty town".

My driver, Addy, and I talked extensively about his 40 years in South Africa, the various changes that he's seen in his time.  I answered, as best as I could, his questions and curiosities about America and the United States.  Somewhat quirky, he was absolutely obsessed with Chuck Norris and his character Walker, Texas Ranger.  I fed him as much trivia as I possibly could about Chuck Norris and the real Texas Rangers :-)

Next, we visited a cheetah rescue farm.  They have about 20 of these enormous cats on the premises.

There was a handler there in the cage.  I was pretty blown away by how affectionate the cheetah was with her.  It purred as loudly as a small gasoline engine.

For 30 Rand (about 5 bucks), you could spend 10 minutes in the cage petting a cheetah.  Seven years in, I'm still not a big fan of Kim's cat, so I didn't bother :-)

Attached to the cheetah facility was an extensive exhibit with 75+ birds of prey.  In fact, there were a few pictures of Mark Shuttleworth on the wall.  It seems he's quite the celebrity in these parts.

There was a sleepy Anatolian sheep dog napping in the field.  It made me miss my puppies quite a bit.

The birds of prey exhibit was really incredible.  This vulture looked like something out of a cartoon.

And this "secretary bird" was bizarre too.

The polka dots on this bird's chest are quire quite distinctive.

This black eagle was pretty suspect of my intentions.  I'm not sure, but I think it might have looked directly into my soul.  Yikes.

This bird almost looked like a Jim Henson puppet.

This African fish eagle looks a lot like American bald eagles, with a bit more white on the head.

You would not want to tangle with these talons.

I accidentally deleted the video (bummer!), but these two owls would dance when the handler played music on his cell phone.  Totally hilarious!

Closing out my day, we made one final stop at a nearby vineyard.  There's nearly a hundred vineyards in the area, but exactly one that we could find open past 4:30pm on a Sunday.

So we made our way over to Peter Falke Wines.  Not Peter "Faulk" Columbo, but Peter "Falke".

The tasting room was, like Groot Constantia, a Dutch style farmhouse.

It had a very modern, progressive vibe on the inside.

But the weather was glorious outside.

So we had a seat in the shade.  At my urging, Addy joined me and had a juice while I tasted the estate wines.  He tried olives for the first time, but really didn't like them :-)

I made my way through several whites and a rose'.

And made my way onto the reds.

 

I enjoyed every wine I had from Peter Falke, and was really disappointed to learn that they didn't export to the States.

My time in South Africa had very rapid come to an end.  I talked my excellent driver, Addy, into taking a picture with me.

And I gave him my Ubuntu lanyard, as a very small remembrance of our excellent Sunday together.

Without reservation, I hope to make it back to Cape Town sometime soon!  I know that Kim would enjoy the beach and wine country, surely.  I'd love to get out a bit further into the countryside, perhaps for a safari.  It's a wonderful country, with very hospitable people, beautiful landscapes, and interesting cuisines.  I do you you get a chance to visit some day too.

:-Dustin