Iceland/France/Italy Day 3: Reykjavik Part 2

May 1, 2011
Iceland Day 3: Reykjavik Part 2

Norm is here! I was up and chatting with an Australian girl in the hostel about her trips and then Norm arrived from the airport, hooray!! We chatted and I caught up on the details of her crazy airport experience, it sounded insane. We had some breakfast in the hostel and then headed right to Hallgrímskirkja church. It was awesome inside and I took a bunch of photos, and then we went up it and all the bells went off when we were at the top! It was loud and fun.

We took a walk through town after that, I was looking for an Icelandic Sweater. We wandered to Icelandic Fish & Chips which was not open yet, so I got another Pylsur and tried on a few Icelandic sweaters. They were too itchy!!!! I was sad because they look so cool and I'd love to get one, but they were wayyyy too itchy. Maybe I'll get an Icelandic-style cotton sweater instead :) The 66 degree North hoodies look cool, they are kindof expensive and not as typical Icelandic looking, but they are pretty nice too.

After the failed sweater purchasing attempt, we headed to a grocery store to buy a LOT of Skyr (Icelandic yoghurt). I also got a weird Egil's Maltextract water/sugary/beer soda stuff, it was gross!! Fun to try it though. We went back to the hostel after that so Norm could sleep and I could catch up on my journal.

While Norm was sleeping, I wandered around Reykjavik some more, it was amazing. There was lots of slush on the ground and I hadn't packed for snowy weather so I wore my shoes with some thick socks. I saw some cool alleyways and street art, and lots of cats wandering around. Reykjavik Harbour was very desolate and cool and had a chill vibe to it, I chilled out on the rocks there for a little bit. On the way back through town, 66°NORTH and ICE WEAR were both closed, and I decided not to get a sweater.

Back at the hostel, "Brennivin" the cat was there!!! What an awesome cat!! Apparently his real name is "Almost dark" or "Almost midnight", (maybe "Dusk"?), but Ernesto the caretaker at the hostel calls him "Brennivin" after the Icelandic liquor. He looks quite a lot like Norm's cat Benjamin, so we've decided to call him "Brenjamin". Haha. He is awesome. I got to give him a treat and now we're buddies.

Norm and I headed out for a late dinner at 8ish and saw some cool Graffiti Art along the way. We headed to Icelandic Fish & Chips and it was super good. I got Cod with Rosemary Oil Potatoes and it was fantastic. I wanted the Raspberry Skyr for dessert but they were almost out of it! They gave me a bit less "at a discount"!! Haha how funny. They were very nice there and helped to suggest some choices of "Skyrronaise" dipping sauces for us. We headed back to the hostel after a tasty dinner and had a quick Video Skype chat with Mom and Dad on my iPhone! Amazing to have that technology so handy, it rocks. We then had an early bedtime to prepare for tomorrow's long day trip.

Norm is here!

Me at Hallgrímskirkja church in Reykjavik

Hallgrímskirkja

Hallgrímskirkja up close

Organ inside of Hallgrímskirkja

Roof inside Hallgrímskirkja

Pews look like the church itself, nice touch!

Close up of the organ

Amazing photo inside the church of people praying at the Western Wall in Jerusalem. They had some photos showing several different religions there in the front gallery.

Photo 1 of Reykjavik from the top of Hallgrímskirkja

Photo 2 of Reykjavik from the top of Hallgrímskirkja

Photo 3 of Reykjavik from the top of Hallgrímskirkja

Photo 4 of Reykjavik from the top of Hallgrímskirkja

Polar bear with a rain jacket

This store had a slide in it!

Wall-E in Icelandic

Cars ("Bilar") in Icelandic

This is the bar I went out to the night before

Icelandic sweaters

Lots of tasty stuff for lunch. Also bought Egil's "Maltextract" - a sort of hoppy sugar water, like beer soda?! It was gross but fun to try.

Tons of Skyr, Icelandic yoghurt-like amazing food

A few kinds of Smoked Salmon

Hairspray

Wandering in Reykjavik

Try to pronounce this one!

Solon, the place I went for dinner the night before

Reykjavik Harbour

A new concert hall that is being built

"Baldur's Gate" :)

Brennivin the cat!! He is a neighbour of the hostel but comes to hang out sometimes. Apparently his real name is something like "Almost midnight" or something, but we called him "Brennivin". He was super awesome.

Amazing street art in Reykjavik

Whooaa

I like this one

Fish, Rosemary Potatoes and Skyrronaise sauce at Icelandic Fish and Chips

Skyr with raspberry sauce for dessert, so good

Iceland/France/Italy Day 2: Video

Arriving in Reykjavik to some unexpected snow, and livin' it up on a Sat night with some great live music, followed by a legendary Icelandic hot dog at Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur.

Iceland/France/Italy Day 2: Exploring Reykjavik

April 30, 2011
Iceland Day 2: Exploring Reykjavik

I arrived at KEF (Keflavik) Airport in Iceland to a bit of a surprise. It's a very small airport which appears out of nothingness - the plane got just passed the clouds to a small strip of barren landscape and suddenly, we were in Iceland! My surprise arrived once I got off the plane - I had orchestrated an Inception-like staged arrival time flight plan for this entire trip for my various family members and my sister Norma was supposed to arrive in Iceland 20 min before me despite us leaving from totally different locations. Perfect timing, right? Well, I got my luggage and noticed the sign said Arrival from Seattle (me), on-time. Arrival from Toronto (Norm), expected 9:30am. Crap. Well, guess I'd have to grab a coffee and a Skyr and chill at the airport for 3 hrs and wait for Norm, not a big deal. Then I exited customs and saw the sign again, and it said, "9:30am... and CANCELLED!" Double Crap!!!

Oh traveling, why you gotta always gotta throw a couple of curve balls even at the most prepared? :) Anyhow, running on no-sleep, I lumbered over to a payphone with my pile of stuff and it looked like the Payphones had no power attached to them. Oh right... Cell phones. This is where the CDMA Verizon iPhone choice bites me, because Iceland has no CDMA connection. So my phone doesn't know it exists. Darn. Next, it looks like the airport has internet, so I figure I'll try that. I can always call Mom and Dad in Canada through Skype if I need to. I bought 1 hr of internet and figured there would be a message from Mom explaining what happened - trusty Mom... as expected there was a frantic email explaining the whole thing. Thanks Mom :)

Apparently Norm's plane left Toronto and had some buzzing engine issue like 1hr into the flight, and they had to turn the plane around and go back to Toronto?!?!? Crazy. Anyhow, Norm was safe and back in Toronto, and this info gave me the go-ahead to just head into Reykjavik without Norm. I bought a Coke Light (?!) and told someone my story and they gave me some comforting eyes which was nice.

Heading onto the FlyBus transfer bus, I started yapping with some folks on the bus about how cool and weird Iceland looked so far. As we drove away from Keflavik towards Reykjavik, the land was SO barren - no buildings, no roads, no trees, no office parks, no car dealerships... nothing. Matt had told me that landing in Reykjavik felt like landing on the moon, and that was a really fitting description. As we drove into town there were some strange apartments that looked like dorm-style homes, very unusual architecture and everything was grey, including the sky.

I got to my hostel ("Our House"), which was super warm and inviting, and dropped off my stuff. There was a kind welcome note waiting for me and I went up to my room. I met a girl named Tegan from the US in the kitchen who was super nice and suggested I should sleep and then it would be a "new day" after I woke up. I tried to sleep with no luck, half worrying about when Norm would arrive and half way-too-excited about being in Iceland. I made a quick change of plans with the tour companies and switched around our tours so that Norm wouldn't miss out on the day trips due to her late arrival. After getting that sorted, I went out to explore.

As it turns out, downtown Reykjavik is quite small! I saw lots of random cool stores, but most things were not open yet at 11:30am. Some folks at the hostel suggested the Flea Market, I went there and it was... meh. Mostly used stuff, garage sale-y, and lots of the gross/weird food/animal parts that you don't want to try. Haha. So I peace-d outta there pretty quickly and headed to the famous Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur hot dog stand in Reykjavik, where Bill Clinton had gone to eat when he was in Iceland. I ordered 2 "with everything", and the tangy Remoulade and funky Pylsur mustard sauce stuff were both super good, as well as the hidden grilled onions under the hot dog. Fun!

I wandered by a place called the Laundry Cafe and it had a nice vibe to it. I got a big hot chocolate in there and then the jet lag started to hit me, hard. With some warm hot chocolate and tasty Pylsurs under my belt, I headed back to the hostel to get some much-needed sleep. I passed out almost instantly and slept from 1-6pm.

After waking up and feeling like a "new day", I wandered downstairs and met a German guy and 2 Canadian girls from UWO!! So awesome!! Exciting to find a hometown connection across the world and finally awake from the crazy amount of jetlag and travel, we chatted it up a bunch. It was great to chat.

Exploring the hostel, it had everything, including a super fancy sauna downstairs. Hitting that up for a bit really woke me up, but it was super hot in there so I had to chill out and have some water and a slow cool down afterwards. That definitely helped get rid of the jet lag though! Good times.

Alex and Riley, the girls from UWO and the dude from Germany suggested a sit-down dinner place which sounded great to me and I was psyched to try out the Icelandic fish right away. I ordered the Fish of the Day with a baked potato and some veggies and it was amazing. We had some great chats about travel and it's always fun to meet new people along the way. After a great dinner we headed to Bankastræti to find a cool bar there.

The bar had some great live music and they were playing a bunch of Canadian music which was super solid (Spin Doctors, Bryan Adams), yes!!! It didn't take long for us to get up on the floor and tear up the dance floor, London, Ontario style :) Bringing our skills to the dance floor (haha) encouraged a bunch of the local Icelandic folks to bust a move too, and in no time we had made some Icelandic friends. The music was great and super fun!!! In between dance-offs we chilled out and it was really solid to chat with some friendly and nice people on the first night of my trip... what a great start.

As I'd read in Lonely Planet, eventually the live-music venue turned into a club and we hit the dance floor and stayed for a bit longer before heading out to take part in the classic Reykjavik tradition, a hot dog at Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur! Apparently people go strong until 7am or so on weekends in Reykjavik, but we were pretty done by 3ish so after the Pylsur and some Powerade, it was back to the hostel. I arrived back in my room, happy and energized from a great start to the trip and new friends, and got an email from Mom saying that Norm's flight had left as scheduled the next evening and was expected to arrive the next morning. Perfect.

"When you land in Iceland, it'll feel like you've landed on the moon" - advice from a friend. And... that's exactly true. No trees, no houses, no buildings, one road, and the most unusual landscape I've ever seen. AMAZING.

Desolate, quiet, overcast... what a cool, moody welcome to Iceland :)

Weird/awesome SmartCar I found while wandering around downtown Reykjavik

Kolaportið flea market

Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur, the famous Reykjavik hot dog stand where Bill Clinton ate!

Canada represent

New friends from the hostel, out for dinner

Please pass the Smjör

Awesome catch of the day fish dinner and potatoes. Sooooooo good.

This was super weird, the bathroom had 2 toilets in it. Not 2 urinals (that would have been fine)... 2 straight-up, full-on toilets. Directly beside each other. I don't think there is any chance I would want to use this at the same time as someone else. :)

Alex and Riley (the Canadians!) getting ready to bust some moves on the dance floor

Viking beer

Then the live music place turned into a club

Out for hotdogs at Bæjarins Beztu Pylsur at 3am after being out on the town, a true Reykjavik tradition

Iceland/France/Italy Day 1: Off we go

April 29, 2011
Iceland Day 1: Off we go

And off we go! It's been a very busy and exciting time at work lately, busy busy right up until the last minute. I did just a quick pack on Wed night and then on Thurs night I watched my usual favourites on TV: The Office, Parks & Rec and 30 Rock. After the usual glorious night of Thursday comedy, I packed up any last minute stuff, ready for an early wake up.

Today (Friday), I got up super early at 6:30am. The SuperShuttle was awesome and even a little early, which was fantastic. They really are super organized, I pretty much only use them now as they've been very reliable. I headed off to SFO and they booked my bags right through to Reykjavik.

After security, I sat down at a bar inside the terminal and had an egg breakfast while watching the Royal Wedding. I struck up a conversation with the dude beside me, we were commenting on all the stuff going on and joking about how tall people's hats were and how British everyone looked. We then very obviously gave each other the "whoa, she's hot" dude-glance as Kate's sister walked by on the screen. The guy's comment was hilarious, "Whoaaa, look at her sister!! There's still a chance!"

In all seriousness though, it was a super awesome wedding. I was surprised to see it televised so heavily in the USA! I was really hoping to see it but figured I'd have a better chance if I was flying from Canada, but it seemed to be everywhere. Everyone was into it at the airport bar, like 30 eyes all affixed to the big-screen TV, men, women, all ages. Everyone loved it. :)

I flew to Seattle and was really impressed with Alaska Airlines. They seemed very organized and their inflight magazine inspired me to want to visit Alaska someday with photos of some impressive glaciers. On arrival at SEA I had about 4 hrs stop-over so I used my iPhone to see if I could pull off a quick trip out to Pike Place Market, somewhere I *really* want to go visit. My iPhone gave me a very clear answer - 52 min trip one-way. Whoops!! I guess that'll have to wait for another time.

It was funny that I was already through security but still needed to check in for my international IcelandAir flight. I had so much time that I decided just to check out and back in again so I could find some more places to eat. Once boarding the IcelandAir flight, it was pretty straightforward - nice service and nice flight attendants but pretty minimal in-flight snacks and stuff. You got a free soft drink but all snacks and food were to purchase. Oh well, the flight price was pretty hard to beat!

I watched Simpsons and the Sigur Ros documentary "Heima" on the in-flight TV. That was fun and jazzed me up for the trip. I bought a sandwich and got an "Egil's Appelsin" (Icelandic Orange Soda) to try. It's always a good idea to try the local choice - "it's good!" the flight attendant said after I ordered it, and she came back to check up and see how I liked it. "It's good", I answered, "but I can't read anything on this label!" I am super excited for the trip, and the Heima video showed me that there are hoodie versions of the traditional Icelandic sweater, I should try to get one of those!

Egil's Appelsin, famous Icelandic soda

TEDxIB@York tickets now available

http://tedxibyork.com/

TEDxIB@York 2011 tickets are now available through this website for the Nov 18th event in Toronto. If you can't make it to the event, the presentations will be taped and posted.

Home from Europe

I'm back from Europe! It was an awesome trip and super fun to share the experience with the whole family. I have a bazillion photos and once the jetlag is gone and my bags are unpacked, I'll start with the usual trip journal postings. Good times. :)

Reykjavik's Lonely Harbour

It is so awesome here.

Ferrari Traffic Jam and Muir Woods Photo HikeWoods

Finally had a chance to look through photos from the Muir Woods photo hike I took with J.Rose a couple of weeks ago. On our way towards Muir Woods we stopped at a city lookout and found around 20 Ferraris there!! Looked like a Ferrari Owner's Club and they didn't mind us snapping a bazillion photos.

Golden Gate

Goin' Biking

Sweet reflections

My other car is a Ferrari

Pick your poison

Ferrari Club

Great expression!!

Ferrari Traffic Jam

Rock and roll

J.Rose

Muir Woods

Sarah's goodbye party

Our good friend Sarah is leaving the bay area. We're all super sad but excited for her new adventure too. To celebrate/hang out, we hit the beach yesterday and got some kite flying and bean bag throwing goin on.

I'm doing a TED talk!

I have super crazy news. I'm doing a TED talk!!!!!

I'll be speaking at TEDxIB@York in Toronto on Nov 18th. For anyone who won't be in the area, I believe it will be Simulcast on their website and also available on YouTube and TED.com after the conference.

My talk will focus on my goal to work at ILM from a young age, and planning and working like crazy to achieve it. From there I'll talk about what else I'm up to and what I'm planning, and offer motivation to the kids in the crowd to find their passion early and work like crazy, too :)

My Bio is up on the TED page now:
http://www.ted.com/tedx/events/2395

Exciting!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Seder dinner

Mmm... Gefilte Fish :)


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London Central Secondary School - Backstreet Boys "As Long as You Love Me" Music Night Chair Dance

Another high school video gem from the recent Hi8mm tape->digital conversion.


Hahahaha... amazing. Doug, Paul, Tim and Me bustin' some late '90's moves at a Central music night event. The music video for "As Long as You Love Me" featured similar chair-dancing, but ours was clearly better.

Movie Review: Waiting for 'Superman'

Just saw "Waiting for 'Superman'", a documentary about the American public school system by "An Inconvenient Truth" director Davis Guggenheim. There are some incredibly heartbreaking moments during it, and the footage during the lottery system was terribly hard to watch - the lucky kids were being plucked out and given a much improved chance to achieve college - all by random chance. The other not-so-lucky kids seemed near-doomed for failure, despite parents who care about them and their future so deeply, and their own hopes and dreams to learn and achieve in life. That was rough.

I get a few major take-aways from this film:
1) public education is not just an issue in low-income areas, it affects other demographics, too.
2) there are some truly innovative and amazing individuals like Geoffrey Canada who saw the problem, desperately wanted to find a solution, and created a solution which circumvents certain union requirements.
3) (from my limited view based on the film), it sounds like teachers unions in America are not keen to change the current state of tenure setup, for pretty clear reasons. The film argues that not changing the status quo comes at the cost of keeping tenure for bad teachers, thereby not allowing public schools to run like any reasonable business - where good performance is encouraged by a better paycheque, and bad performance will get you fired.
4) in case there was really any doubt (and there really isn't!), I am clearly very interested and passionate about education.
5) Jeff Skoll scores yet another point in my "you are a huge inspiration" book. Not only is he Jewish, Canadian, and an amazing business success (founder of Ebay), but he exec. produced this movie. I read an article about him several years ago, saying he founded Ebay and then cashed-out to follow his original boyhood passion - to create thought-provoking and socially beneficial movies. He's had a hand in a huge amount of important films over the last several years and he knocked it out of the park again with this one. What a cool guy.

This movie was amazing. But don't just take my word for it. I suggest checking it out, it's not available on Netflix Instant Watch but you can rent it from Netflix, looks awesome on Blu-Ray. Check out their website here: http://www.waitingforsuperman.com/action/

PS As an aside - I just went to the website and it's really cool. There are a lot places to join the conversation and also see what you can do to help. What was really awesome is that Edutopia (the George Lucas Educational Foundation) and 826 National (where I volunteer) were both listed and linked to from the Waiting for Superman website. Awesome.

PPS Another link on their site was to here: http://motionmathgames.com/ Very interesting stuff. A mobile games company focused on educational research and learning app development.

Ignoring all the politics, and the fact that just because a school's teachers are not unionized doesn't necessarily add up to better teachers or test scores... (there are of course many more factors at play), I think a good takeaway from this movie is that volunteering is good. I can definitely get behind that!

Digitizing Hi8mm tapes from high school

Last year, I digitized a bunch of old VHS tapes and projects from high school - student council election videos, video yearbooks and so on. That was super fun and great to see all that old work and projects.

This weekend I hooked up an old 8mm tape player that I borrowed from someone at work (thanks, Joey, you're a champ) and I've been digitizing all the raw footage. There are some pretty amazingly bad "B-roll" moments here... wow. :)

Despite all the amazingly awkward teenage moments, it's funny to see this sort of  "slice of life" from waaaaaay back in Grade 9 and 10 (this is nearing 14-15 years ago... whoa). What's pretty hilarious and strange is how many people are surprised about someone carrying a camera around, some people are naturally really keen to be on tape but the majority of people are either camera-shy or just really surprised to see a camera. Hilarious to think about being uncomfortable being "on the record" given how now most people have a pretty functional video camera in their pocket (iPhone). Filming a "slice of life" has become an entire industry (reality TV) and recording just what you see and experience and posting to YouTube is so commonplace. It's really amazing to see this footage now and realize how it's really another world, things have changed so much technology-wise, and of course we've all matured since high school, but it feels like there is an element of social change and further acceptance of film technology in our casual day-to-day experience. Interesting.

Google Exodus

Happy Pesach.

This is hilarious!

Mission Cheese grand opening

Getting some tasty Mac and Cheese and a French press coffee at the brand spankin new Mission Cheese on Mission and 18th!



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Wise Son's Deli in San Francisco

WOW WOW WOW WOW this looks AMAZING.

http://www.savethedeli.com/2011/03/23/wise-sons-takes-san-francisco-by-storm/
http://wisesonsdeli.com/index.html

That pastrami looks glorious. And those bialys look amazing too, kinda like a cousin of a bagel. I am defffffffffinittely gonna have to check this place out.

SF Moma

Went to the SF MOMA this past weekend and had a great time. Some cool exhibits, especially the one about the launch of the California wine industry. Took a few random pics with my fancy new iPhone Camera+ App. The image stabilizer was very helpful for the places where we weren't allowed to use a flash.


Metallic stuff


Zoopraxiscope from the Eadweard Muybridge exhibit


The famous Chateaux Monthelena wine that won the competition described in the movie Bottle Shock


Cool wine bottle exhibit



Bottles


I liked this label


Haha, Matt Parrott would have liked this

New website coming... sometime soon... ish :)

Hi friends,

Thanks for your continued interest in my blog over the past 6... (wait, really?!) years, and I hope you are all enjoying the change of focus over time. It's funny - this blog started as an easy way to keep my family and friends back home in Canada aware of my day-to-day life while on an internship at Pixar back in 2005. Since then, it's turned into a place where I post a huge amount of travel photos along with my thoughts and any unusual or exciting experience I have while exploring. I've also started re-blogging cool tech videos and interesting articles about 3D Animation, photography, and art.

With my changes in interest and general maturity of the blog over time, I'd like to announce a new look for mikejutan.com... at some point in the near future. :) One of the (very) long-term projects on my iPhone ToDo list is to re-design my website, and I recently changed the style of this blog in preparation. I have a lot of new things I'd like to post, and I want to take my website from the recently-graduated student to a more I'm-now-an-adult vibe.

Most importantly, I want to highlight my world-travel experiences and future plans. I want a more directed/serious/forward-thinking "life statement" - like an artist has an "artist's statement", I want to outline where I see my place in the world now that I'm further towards figuring that out. I want it to be clear from my website what my passion is in life, examples of how I've worked like crazy to get where I am, and how I plan to work like crazy to achieve the next items on my to-do list. I'd also like some awesome RSS feed-action linking my blog to the website, and it desperately needs a Web 2.0-ifying and some 70% grey and white text in combination.

Please kindly send any design thoughts or suggestions, I'd love to hear them. You can expect a more modern-looking and connected website sometime this year. 'Till then, I better learn some HTML 5 :)