Although both headliners, Broken Social Scene and Mogwai disappointed to end each day on an upbeat note, instead playing slower melodic tunes, the rest of the festival provided some awesome goodness including the amazingly enchanting duo, Tegan and Sara. Calgary weather held strong for the two days, with sunshine lasting until extremely late in the evening and the occasional cool wind providing relief from the dry heat.

Although this festival didn’t have any huge names, it provided an opportunity for the local talent to shine. Local band ChixDiggit (shown above) had plenty of funny little jokes and got the audience in on much of their act. Their music, more suited for live entertainment than probably on a CD was a great addition to the festival line up.

Saturday saw the San Francisco based band, Still Flyin’ barely fitting on their stage although their fun music and antics helped to make the festival a success. And yes, that is a person dressed up in a spiderman outfit. Other bands definitely worth checking out include Jane Vain and the Dark Matter\ and The Cryptomaniacs.

It’s great to see Calgary host such a great festival, showing more culture than what it’s probably known for.

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

“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.

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.

• 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.

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.

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

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.

Although they stuffed up our booking, with the result being the four of us crammed on a small table perched a little bit away from the amazing views provided through the window, the company and food helped make it an enjoyable experience.

On their website, their menu lists afternoon tea as:

Our waiter, much like many of the staff around town, was an Australian guy (from Melbourne) and served plenty of tea to make up for the tiny little table. Considering how busy the rest of the dining area was, he did a pretty good job of keeping up glasses of water full, our cups of tea hot and made it a pretty pleasing experience.

Although afternoon tea is relatively expensive at $32 and unlikely to be up to par to many of the London based ones, the dining atmosphere and (potential) views are worth going at least once. Book ahead, and given our experience, it’s definitely worth confirming the details of your booking closer to your visit.