Tourism = good or bad? Me = tourist or traveler?

Tourism, in my opinion, is both good and bad. However, I believe there are more good aspects than bad ones in tourism. Tourism is bad when it is poorly managed, but it is just like anything that is poorly managed. Tourism is real bad when tourists are bad. I hope people when traveling remember that they somewhat represent their country. 

Before I made up my mind whether I am a tourist or a traveler, I looked up the words in dictionary and asked whether friends at works and friends outside of work think of me as a tourist or a traveler. According to my dictionary, tourist is "a person who is traveling or visiting a place for pleasure" and traveler is "a person who is traveling or who often travels". It seems to me that traveler is a broader term that includes tourist, which means, travelers travel not only for pleasure but also for other purposes such as religion, work...ect. Well, if that's the case, I am a traveler. When I asked people I know in Dublin this question, it at first occurred to them I was kidding them. After thinking about the different connotation behind tourist and traveler, most of people I asked said I was a traveler. And that really pleased me...yes. I think my 10 week experience is quite different from one week of intensive traveling around Ireland. It is the lab work experience, the local people I work with, and the local people I hang out with and listen to their stories. It is a small apartment that I call home for 10 weeks, and a near by supermarket that I go for food. It is an art gallery that I spent hours getting lost in it, and a small cafe that I enjoyed 2 latte for 3 hours on a lazy Saturday afternoon. It is the public transit and streets that I get to know, and even show some tourists how to get around (for this, I am quite proud of myself since I'm normally not that bright at direction). I even got a Dublin Public Library card. There are lots of things that a tourist miss out and I get a chance to experience. And for all these, I'm glad to say I am a traveler. But like I said earlier, traveler is a broader term that includes tourist, so no matter what I am, I try to be a good one. 

As a traveler, I obviously enjoy traveling, and my definition of traveling is living in a country for at least a few months to a few years. And I plan to do nothing but just that.

Traveling around Ireland

Ireland is a beautiful country, but I have to say Canada is no less beautiful. It's also a small country that driving from east coast to west coast takes only 3 hours. This really makes traveling around so much easy and simple. I took a few trips, one to the southern Ireland -  the city of Cork, and one to western Ireland - the city of Galway. The cities are quite small and everything is in a walking distance. Another great thing is that I travel with a couple of other interns from other countries, which makes the experience much more fun and memorable. Enjoy some of my pictures.

We went to the countryside where the road is so marrow that only one car can go through at a time. So if, another car is coming in the other direction, either one has to yield or to really slowly squeeze through. 

Ireland is very green because it has  a lot of rain and sun. Luckily, the weather has not disappointed us all at during all those trips. 

                                                                      Cliff of Moher, a very popular destination in Ireland. 

Galway at night - A small city, but so alive. 9pm on a Saturday night, the sun still did not want to rest, and neither did those young people in Galway. Girls dressed up beautifully. They sang, danced, and drank. LIFE IS GOOD. 

The picture is a corner of a pub/club where they played live rock'n'roll. Pretend you heard Sweet home Alabama, Twist and shout, Hound dog, and many other Irish rock'n'roll songs. 

2nd assignment - Dublin City University (DCU)

Lighthouse at Howth - a beautiful and peaceful fishery town near Dublin.

A tower at Power House garden near a town called Bray.

So, first week is done and I start getting into my daily routine. The first three days were pretty hectic. There was a day that I had to go to Tesco (like Wal-Mart) three times because oop, I forgot to buy toilet paper, and then oop, I forgot the creme for my coffee. Actually I couldn't find either light creme or half and half creme. So I have had milk with my coffee for that last week and it's good. The first three days here, I was kinda tired, probably because of the jet lag. I went to city centre with a group of new friends in a bus and fell asleep. Some time along the way, the bus stopped abruptly and I bang my head onto the seat before me (yay, so embarrassing). The second day, our program coordinators organized a dinning out, I had exactly 1 and a half glasses of wine and I was so tipsy that I eventually slept in the restaurant for about 15 mins. My third day in Dublin is my first day at work. I was given a big book to read while waiting for my experiment, and I could barely opened my eyes to look at the book. Finaly, my mentor told me I can go home 1 hour early. 

A view of a  street of Dublin from second floor of a double-decked bus.

WORKING

Project: To develop an antibody to cardiac Troponin T protein - the first step to design a chip for diagnosis of cardiovascular disease (I'm being too technical now).

Location: Applied biochem lab at DCU (10 mins from where I live). DCU is a medium-sized university in Ireland, about 12 thousands students with a slight focus on science and performing art. It is quite quiet in the summer since there is no summer school. 

People: The lab itself is very similar to any lab at York except it is a larger group of students ad researchers. There are about 30 people, very nice and friendly, that I am still trying to remember all of their names. 

I work closely with a PhD student and she is a such nice and understanding person. 

LIVING:

I live in an apartment with 3 others. It is 10 min from where I work. We share a kitchen and a living room, but have our own bathroom...YES. 500 Euro a month. 

Everything here is expensive (to Canadian standard). We have Dollar store, they have 2 Euro store here. I bought a USB (cheapest one) for 40 E 

To be continued...

Dublin - so cool

Yeah, it is so cool and it is very cool. There are so many cool things around and the weather is cool 14o C. A few things I have noticed about Dublin:

- Much smaller than Toronto, and obviously older with a lot of nice architectural buildings. 

- Lots of streets with the same street names like in Toronto (King, Queen, College...)

- Very green

- Lots of tourists

- No homeless people around

- Lots of bars and lots of drinking. If you like drinking, you would definitely love this city.

- Double-decker buses are "cute"

- Food is expensive

And more ...

There is another Canadian student from McMaster who works here as an intern. We happened to find a Tim Horton here and that was like an eureka moment...would you believe that???

What is my culture?

What is my culture? I used to think of culture as something very specific to a country. So I said things like Vietnamese culture or Japanese culture. However, in Vietnam, there are many ethnic groups who believe in very different cultural values an practice very different cultural traditions. Therefore these terms like Vietnamese culture  and their associated ideology may not necessarily be the reflection of all cultures in a country or not even the common values of those cultures. The terms like this often describe the popular commonality of culture of one or a few major ethnic groups in a country. An example is how Chinese couples organize and celebrate their wedding day. Some celebrate in old traditional way with all those beautiful Chinese costumes and truly value those traditions.  Some may choose to celebrate their wedding day in a Catholic church with a  limousine, a beautiful white dress, and champagne probably because they believe in something else. This example just shows how different we are culturally, in terms of both things that are visible and things that can't be seen, even though are defined as from the same culture. 

Having said all this, I believe culture is something very personal and specific to a person if I have to define my own. I grew up in Vietnam and absorbed lots of Vietnamese cultural values, but not all. I also picked up a few thoughts here and there (mostly through reading and watching Chinese and American movies) that are not typical in Vietnam at all. After I came to Canada, there was so much to absorb but I didn't absorb all. Like someone told me, our brain is a really good filter for things we see and experience. Every day I pick up something but not other to put into my own set of cultural values that is like no one else. 

My culture is all the things I have believed in and have acted accordingly. 

Learning this Blogger

Before I can write about the question of what my culture is, I have to learn to be a blogger. So far I have not been a good blogger at all. I created an account and couldn't even log in the day after for not remembering the username and password. I took me a good half an hour to read through the screen late at night and finally was able to log in. This time I really had to write down my password. I used to believe in my good memory, but not very much recently. I suppose my brain just got "saturated" after the exams. 

Let's see if this first post works.