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I don’t normally go out to cinemas to see mainstream movies, and when someone asked me along to see, Heavy Metal In Baghdad as part of the Sled Island Festival, it sounded pretty interesting.

The synopsis is pretty simple: What’s it like as a heavy metal band trying to get by in Baghdad?

This movie follows this band over a series of years, and combines two worlds we don’t normally associate being together – that of teenagers wanting some outlet to have fun, and the war time stories we typically hear on the news. Bringing them together provides some real insight and a very moving portrayal of a world we rarely think about. Everything seems very surreal, from the young guys talk about how lucky they are to be alive in their mid to late twenties, to the efforts of their families to get them out and keep them out of the country, and the sounds of shooting and bombings in the air at night.

TheKua.com Rating: 8 out of 10

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“A long time ago, according to one legend, the people were driving buffalo over these sandstone cliffs. A young brave wanted to watch the buffalo tumbling past. Standing under the shelter of a ledge, as if behind a waterfall, he watched the great beasts fall. The hunt was unusually good that day and as the bodies piled up, he became trapped between the animals and the cliffs. When his people came do the butchering, they found him with his skull crushed by the weight of the buffalo carcasses. Thus, they named this place “Head-Smashed-In”.

– The story behind the name of this place as described in the Interpretive Centre’s brochure.

Last Sunday, eight of us living in Calgary headed down to Fort MacLeod to visit a well known place where the natives used to stampede buffalo over cliffs in order to find the materials and food they needed to survive the winter. When we arrived in Fort MacLeod, it seemed pretty desolate with winds blowing dust through the streets and, at some point, I thought I might see a tumble weed roll around the streets. Our plan, to stop at the place best known for their buffalo burgers failing, since the restaurant didn’t open on Sundays. We ended up at A&W for lunch instead, the first time I chowed down at this particular fast food chain.

After lunch, we drove to the Interpretive Centre for Head Smashed In, a building constructed right into the hillside and just down from where people used to stampede the buffalo over the cliffs. The centre reconstructs the experience extremely well, with many different scenes reconstructed following a progressive time. A short fifteen minute video continues to rotate through, explaining and simulating the entire experience, with the typical disclaimer, “No animals were hurt in the making of this film.” Instead a computer generated image simulation of buffalo running over the edge finishing off the story for us.

It’s a great destination if you ever find yourself in Calgary, and if you’re ever so inclined, they even rent Tipis for groups of people to camp in to experience the prairie land way of life. Find the photos from the day trip here.

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This weekend, I had signed up to help out Virgin Unite, a charity organisation who were in town for the Virgin Festival. Being the first time Calgary hosted the festival, they wanted a couple of people to help man their tent, signing people up for their quarterly newsletter.

What a hard life it was, with the tent in a pretty good view of the main stage, and with anyone signing up for the newsletter newsletter automatically going into the draw to win a guitar signed by Wolfmother. We had a huge variety of people passing through – those who’d just sign up without even understanding what it was about, those who wanted to win the drum kit instead of the guitar, and those who wanted to find out even more about the charity. I was surprised by the few people who said they didn’t have a computer (and thus didn’t have an email address to enter). I also ran into a few people from my current client as well, having a good chat about the festival vibes.

Although manning the tent was pretty exhausting (trying to explain to people what the deal was over any of the music for six hours straight) we had enough people to rotate around for a couple of breaks. One of the girls from Virgin also gave me a VIP wristband, opening up access to the VIP tent, a chilled out zone with a private bar and less in-demand toilets. Combined with a free dinner from Moxie, I thought what a great experience it’d been already. That was until, they also scored me a pass to get into the Molson VIP tent to see an intimate acoustic set by The Fratellis.

A perfect festival day with plenty of sun, plenty of awesome festival vibes and some pretty gorgeous people, all topped up with some good times fuelled by charity. Sweet. Gallery from the day can be found here.

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Here’s a brief summary of what happened last week:

• Arrived back Sunday to catch up with Ajit and Luca at one of my favourite gastro pubs, conveniently located about three blocks away, The Dovetail. Surprisingly unbusy on the Sunday evening, we had some wonderful burgers washed down by some even better Belgian Beers like Chimay Blu. Unfortunately they don’t have boar burgers on their menu any more apparently because it’s difficult to find any organic suppliers, so I went for a lamb burger instead. What a way to settle back into town!
• I dropped into our office on Monday to have a chat with a number of people including the new Managing Director for our new Swedish office. It was great to catch up with people, and then caught up with Gerrod and Kristy at another of my favourite eating places, Wahaca. Wonderful evening although the tiny table meant both Kristy and I spilt some food at some stage.
• The following day, I headed out to Limerick for the XP2008 conference and had a great time catching up with a number of people from previous years and indulging in decent weather (for Ireland). I somehow managed to return with two umbrellas though that’s a whole other story. The conference ended with a huge dinner at a Castle about half an hour away from the city, before returning to London.
• Quickly unpacking and repacking on Saturday, I also ended up at one of our internal conferences, this time held at Regents College right in the middle of Regents Park. An evening BBQ with plenty of food and drink saw us enjoy the summertime atmosphere surrounded by old friends and colleagues.
• I also managed to catch up with my sister over some Dim Sum before heading out to the airport where we sat for an extra hour because of the arrival of Bush.

A busy yet thoroughly enjoyable week and I look forward to more of it when I return in late July.

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I’m completing Gerrod’s challenge on a rather jetlagged brain. I don’t think it’s too bad either What do you think?

Came back to London last week
Enough for great weather to peak
  To drink some fine grain
  And get on a plane
For limerick in order to speak

I promise I’ll get around to writing up about my time there, though expect the technical stuff to appear on my work related blog.

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Arrived back in London today for a short visit before heading back to Calgary. Something is completely wrong with the picture below being the photo taken outside of my window, and the complete opposite (torrential rain, grey skies) what I left behind in Calgary.

This is not the world I remember! I’m not complaining though.

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Seen in Drumheller…

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This weekend, a bunch of us visiting Calgary from overseas including Megan, Chris and JJ, decided to head out to Drumheller (also known as Dinosaur Valley), located in the Badlands, an area north of the city holding vastly different terrain from the flat, generally brown prairie land that surrounds Calgary. We visited a number of attractions including a mini hike around Horseshoe Canyon, a visit to the world’s largest dinosaur statue, a visit to the Hoo Doos and the world class dinosaur museum, the Royal Tyrrell Museum.

Surprisingly for a Sunday, the town of Drumheller seemed awfully quiet, with many of the stores shut around town despite the small number of tourists arriving constantly in vehicles. Being a dinosaur-themed town, plenty of the visitors had tiny kids in tow, although besides us, I noticed a large number of other non-kid toting groups of people.

The World’s Largest Dinosaur, of course, a T-Rex menaces about the local Aquaplex. Towering at about 88 feet, all the cars look miniscule in comparison. Of course, the sharp teeth also mean it’s pretty menacing if you can’t tell by the people running away from it in the picture to the left. The climb up gives a pretty nice, although limited view of the surrounding area, and almost feels like you’re about to be swallowed whole. We thought a slide down it’s throat to leave would have just made the entire experience.

On to the best dinosaur museum ever, The Royal Tyrrell Museum, a surprisingly modern museum holds a wealth of everything fossil and dinosaur related. Apparently the surrounding area is rich in fossils and keeps people busy uncovering new things all the time. It’s a fairly interactive museum and so well designed it managed to keep the four of us entertained at least for a couple of hours. It’s well worth the entry price, and apparently they even organise sleep overs for groups of kids that it almost makes me want to be back in school (almost!) I have to admit, even though my favourite dinosaur ended up as the massive skull, triceratops, I couldn’t but help but be amazed by the weird creatures they had including the Axolotls (picture from patrie71’s Flickr stream under Creative Commons).

We finished off our trip to Drumheller with a trip to the Hoo Doos, a series of interesting rock formations that look like a bunch of smurf huts. Apparently erosion and plenty of human intervention mean that the formation is unlikely to last for much longer, so I certainly appreciated being able to see them before their demise.

It was great to get out of Calgary and a road trip away from the city. Check out the pictures here.

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