Cheftastic

Who said college kids can't cook?

Or make a decent Ham & Irish Cheddar Garlic Wrap?

The Wonders Of Body Wash

(For those of you with little time on your hands or have disposable income, feel free to ignore this blog).

For everyone else, let me explain.  Body wash is some great stuff.  It makes showering simple and there's no more dropping the soap.  It comes in many distinct scents and leaves your skin smooth and moisturized.  What's the catch?  Say you can't have too much body wash in your life?  

It dawned on my one day while I was brainstorming ways to to laundry without actually doing laundry (5 euros for wash and dry isn't cheap).  Well in my bathroom there is a sink.  Now I'm not sure how to emulate the pulsating and rotating environment of an industrial washing machine in my small sink, but as long as the water, soap and clothes mix together, I am not complaining.  After a few hours soaking, I scrub my clothes, rinse them and hang them in the shower.  Just a small amount of body wash saved me 5 euros.  This has now become an almost constant process, since the load size is limited and I don't have a huge amount of clothes with me.

This got me thinking, as I was deciding to clean the toilet bowl with the provided bowl brush.  Well I could buy some huge concentrated bowl cleaning liquid.  However another glance at my trusty body wash and the label tells me it is "engineered with odor-removing cleansers."  It's even the same color as the real toilet cleaning stuff.  Another victory in body wash usage.

Of course I had stratified my past uses to come up with new, innovative ways to substitute body wash for what seems an approximate clone.  These new avenues of body wash utilization include dish washing and shaving cream (For now I have a decent supply of dish soap and shaving cream so I'll save the body wash for other purposes).  

So if you find yourself dirty, unshaven with no clean clothes sitting on a less than desirable toilet with dirty dishes by your side, don't panic.

Scotland

I got back to Limerick yesterday after a short trip to Scotland with 2 of my friends. Having not done too much planning for the trip other than booking the flight and hostel, I wasn't going to fret about planning things to do there. Call it lazy, I like to call it stress-free. (Not that I didn't see a fair share of Glasgow and Edinburgh). We flew Ryan Air, the cheapest (1 cent flights) and largest airline that flies to all of Europe. They use smaller airports outside of large cities to cut costs and use their almost monopoly at most of these smaller terminals to their advantage. Anyway, we took a train from Prestwick Airport into Glasgow, and then took the underground to the Blue Sky Hostel in the West End, a vibrant college area in the city. The staff was very helpful and the hostel had the typical hard beds and cold showers, but it was a bargain. Using the city map I picked up, we chose to utilize the 25% off TGI Fridays coupon for dinner. We then walked around the area near our hostel a bit. I decided to check out some things to do the next day and used the free computer to Wiki some good tourist spots. So on Wednesday we walked only a kilometer or two down the street to the Glasgow Botanic Gardens. They had two enormous and elegant metal greenhouses filled with more plants than one could ever imagine. I took a lot of pictures, but I could have easily spent a week there looking more in depth. After we walked down the main road into downtown taking in the sights we grabbed some Pizza Hut lunch. Walking out of Pizza Hut I was asked to take part in a taste test for new flavors at KFC across the street. Good thing I had saved just a little room. After sampling three new prototype flavors of highly fattening KFC chicken I kind of wanted to buy a treadmill and a home gym. We met four girls in the hostel from NYU studying in London for the semester and went out with them for dinner. I decided going to Edinburgh was necessary so I planned on that for Thursday. We hopped a bus for an hour ride to Edinburgh and was immediately impressed with the Georgian/Medieval Architecture visible everywhere. We hiked up the hill to Old Town to see Edinburgh Castle. The word panorama was coined by a photographer in Edinburgh, and it was clear why the view of the city was such a great example. Unfortunately the castle was closing; I was looking forward to seeing inside the massive walls surrounding the castle. We took a look around a few other Cathedrals nearby and then headed back into the New Town. Friday our flight wasn't until 6:30, so we had a lot of time to kill. I had wanted to go up the Glasgow Tower (40 stories) to catch a good view. We took the subway across town then waited in line in the Science Center where they sold tickets. Just our luck, the tower was closed due to high winds. From there we grabbed food and headed back to the airport. I had checked in online and therefore making us priority passengers and no need to check in, yet on the flight to Glasgow the passes wouldn't scan correctly. Turns out only EU residents can use the online check-in, so on the way back we had to check-in (which is not free on Ryan Air). A few blinks later we were landing and I was happy to breath again after being surrounded by babies, one of which kept saying "daddy" to me.

Ok so here's this week's panoramas:

Glasgow Botanic Gardens:



View of Edinburgh from Edinburgh Castle (Where the term panorama was coined)

Motion In Contrast

Most of the time, people are on the move. Yet what would happen if a group of people froze in a busy place, such as Grand Central Terminal in New York? Is motion more powerful than stillness? Something to think about.

Ireland album (January 20th-March 1st)

Photobucket Album