Icelandair flies nonstop from Halifax to Reykjavik on B757 aircraft. We left Canada at 10pm and arrived in Iceland around 5:30am (4:30 in flight plus three hours time difference). During the flight, we saw some videos telling us how to fill out US customs forms on arrival (?), and we were served a hot meal in the middle of the night. Never mind that no one in eastern Canada nor Iceland would have been eating a meal at that time. (I suppose it kept us full until lunch.)

It's a solid 30 minute drive from Keflavik airport to the capital city, and most of the drive looks like this:

You begin to understand why NASA spent some time in Iceland while preparing for the Apollo mission. The place is weird! Endless lava fields, in various stages of reclamation by arctic mosses, cover much of the land. Iceland owes its existence to the Mid-Atlantic Ridge astride two tectonic plates. Earthquakes and volcanic activity are commonplace. It's incredible that the Vikings managed to settle here. Their descendants, the Icelanders, have harnessed the boundless geothermal energy to keep the roads ice-free and the hot-water-heater salesmen out of work. (And it's turned into a tidy growth area for power-hungry industries in the EU, courtesy of the Kyoto Protocol.)

It's also the home of good old Leifr Eiricsson, the guy we know of as Leif Erikson. Leif most certainly discovered America hundreds of years before Columbus, but the Vikings weren't much on follow-up. They were too busy founding the world's oldest parliament and writing sagas. A surprisingly literate bunch, no? Today's Icelandic schoolchildren learn how to read the ancient stories, which is a lot easier than us trying to read Beowulf, as the Icelandic language has scarcely changed from Old Norse. Check out the original saga parchments at the Culture House, then go down to the waterfront and get a hot dog from Bill Clinton's favorite hot dog stand. Or get some puffin, if you feel adventurous (I did, but won't be next time). If you come to Reykjavik in the summer, you can drink Viking beer all night and the sun will still be up when you leave the bar at 3am. I didn't participate, though I did have a glass of Viking (mediocre) with my lobster calzone (better) at dinner.

Okay, enough about the city. Let's go on tour number one, shall we? This was a bus trip to Jokulsarlon, the lagoon at the foot of Europe's largest glacier, including a boat ride among the icebergs. I am so impressed with the Icelanders that they would even plan something like this, as it is at the limit of my travel insanity. I'm sure we wouldn't have gone at all if there hadn't been a tour bus going, fooling us into accepting the idea of this as a "day trip". You see, Jokulsarlon is at least five and a half hours from Reykjavik each way. It's almost one-third of the way around the entire country!

I'll spare you a recounting of the obvious discomforts that 12 hours of tour busing will supply. Here's some scenery:

Past the Mid-Atlantic ridge

Westmann islands

Skogafoss

Arctic terns on an iceberg at Jokulsarlon

The Jokulsarlon glacial lagoon (click on this one for a panoramic shot)

And to top off our trip on the way back to the airport, tour number two: a trip to the Blue Lagoon. It's the best known tourist attraction in Iceland, and surely the most popular power-plant outflow in the world. Yes, that's right: they took the wastewater from their geothermal power station and made it into a spa!

Bathing in hot water under the arctic sun: that's Iceland for you.

On a related note, I've been keeping busy learning New Testament Greek, as I said sometime last year. I basically know about half of the words in the NT. Which actually makes it very readable: most of those words are used multiple times, so actually close to 96% of the content is a word I (should) understand. Grammar is a different story -- I don't count myself a Bible scholar just yet!

Let's see, what else.. oh yeah, visit my band LongFallen's MySpace, or that of my other, sometime band spectropulse.

If you've never been to thegreatness.com before, I'll give you the short tour. Click on the box to the right if you want to go to the donair pages. There's a donair map of Canada, reviews and store info from across the country. If you have a place you think I should feature, drop me a line at chris@thegreatness.com. I plan to make the site more interactive in the near future.

The rest of the site is part blog, part "the web didn't have anything like this, so I added it". The "Projects, Poetry, Prose" bar along the right of this page is a menagerie of things I put my warped mind to. Try not to be scared.

The Culloden Cairn

Students of history may recall that the Battle of Culloden was a dark, dark day for Scotland. Scottish Highlanders rallied around their choice for the British throne, Bonnie Prince Charlie, and gathered to fight for him on April 16, 1746. Arrayed against them were the more numerous, and much better equipped, British army, supporters of the Hanoverian King George I. Sadly, it was no contest. Charlie lost and fled to France, the bagpipes were outlawed as a weapon of war, and George's grandson royally screwed up with the American colonies. It's all on Wikipedia.

What you probably didn't know: some of those Highlanders resettled in New Scotland. It's likely they considered this move an exile; they never forgot what happened at Culloden. Nor did their descendants, who erected a memorial cairn next to their graves. You can see it in Knoydart, down a forested path along the road from New Glasgow to Arisaig.

Written on the cairn: Let them tear our bleeding bosoms Let them drain our dearest veins In our hearts is Charlie, Charlie While a drop of blood remains

Ballantyne's Cove, Secret Stronghold of Sushi

Okay, probably too much alliteration in the title. But this fishing village on the north coast of Nova Scotia really does hold an epic position in the industry of sushi, and nobody knows about it, even most Nova Scotians. You see, the water off Ballantyne's Cove is the place for fishing giant bluefin tuna from September to November. Some 200 boats will be there this fall, luring those 600-odd-pound creatures to hooks. Boat and fish will fight, often for hours, until somebody gives up (guess who?). The struggle makes the fish overheated, so the fishermen will let him swim around a little longer to cool down. Then it's curtains for the beast. Just one giant bluefin tuna will net the lucky boat thousands of dollars from the buyers on shore. These buyers, by the way? Almost all Japanese. This highlights two cruel ironies of Ballantyne's Cove:

1. It's a sleepy town the rest of the year, with nothing to show for their autumn drama except the modest, sparsely attended "Bluefin Tuna Interpretation Centre." I didn't see too many Japanese names in the visitor logbook. Yet across the water in Prince Edward Island, thousands of Japanese tourists are maxing out their JCB cards on Anne of Green Gables paraphernalia. I smell rotten marketing.

2. The delicate toro sushi, so beloved by Japanese and heartily consumed throughout the country, is made exclusively from the fatty portions of the very tuna that is fished from the waters of Ballantyne's Cove, Nova Scotia. Yet all of it ends up on airplanes at Halifax International Airport -- I can't get the stuff in town!

Oh well. It's a pretty place, at any rate.

When Sinclair Discovered America

It's a law of publicity: everybody wants to be first, or, failing that, at least to be perceived as having been first. Nationalist sympathies often work to the advantage of fraudsters, since pride of place somehow gloms on to the reputation of all who hail from the same spot. Which explains why the Brazilians still get worked up about the Wright Brothers. And why this guy got so much press for saying the Chinese discovered America. So, then, it's surprising that the Sinclair story is so little known, especially with its currently trendy Dan Brown undertones.

Here's a summary: According to an apocryphal document published in 1558 and credited to the Zeno brothers of Venice, a certain Prince Zichmni traveled across the Atlantic in 1398. Johann Forster, a naturalist of Scottish descent, speculated in 1784 that this Zichmni was none other than Henry Sinclair, Earl of Orkney, sometime Templar Knight, and grandfather of the architect of Rosslyn chapel (which allegedly contains carvings of maize and other North American plants made prior to the Columbus voyage). Supposedly Sinclair traveled to Nova Scotia and made landfall near Guysborough on the eastern shore, where he dazzled the Mik'maq Indians enough to create legends of the white god Glooscap's visitation. He might also have built the Newport Tower, buried a knight in Massachusetts, and done many other weird and wonderful things in North America for the first time.

It's all a bit too Flat Earth for me, but maybe you can appreciate the narrative board we found in Halfway Cove (click to enlarge, and then read Brian Smith's rebuttal). It was accompanied by a large piece of granite with a plaque to "present the claim" and a self-referential monument "to the loyal and dedicated board of the Prince Henry Sinclair Society of North America Inc. ... without your support this simply lovely monument would not be here as a testimony to the story." The signage from the road was very good. Maybe somebody in the Nova Scotia government has Sinclair sympathies?

Those not in the know about ancient Greek pedagogy (which, I figure, is most of you) may not be aware of its profoundly statistical style of teaching, a pattern common to several other "closed" knowledge systems. For example, when I was studying music composition at JMU, I had points taken off an exam for writing a Bach chorale which, while not breaking any rules of the Common Practice period, nevertheless was something Bach himself had only done three times. This judgment did not seem fair to me, but I remember being impressed at how precisely they knew Bach's work.

Learning NT Greek exposes you to even more precision. As in: anaginosko ("read") and its forms are used 33 times in the NT, but only once in Revelation. Not sure what the present form of ecenodoxhsen ("showed hospitality") is? Don't sweat it; it never appears in the present tense, or in the aorist, imperfect, or optative, for that matter. If you memorize all of the words that occur more than 30 times, then you've got over 80% of the NT down cold. True, there are a lot of verb tenses. But take heart. Once you've learned how they work regularly and with the handful of irregulars actually found in the NT, you're done. That's all there is because there won't be any more Bibles written. Sure, you might have to hit the books again to read Xenophon or Homer, but maybe somebody's made a word list for those, too.

I passed a major milestone in this work by reading a whole book of the New Testament. Okay, so it was Philemon, a mere 25 verses. But you try it and see how far you get!

Go read The Independent Scholar's Handbook by Ronald Gross. You will be inspired and possibly exhilarated.

That is all.

No, February had its moments. Like when I took The Sweetness to the circus for her birthday. And when I saw Mercury, Venus, Saturn and two dozen Messier objects on the same weekend. And of course, when I found out just how rich I was: rich enough to be caught in the US government's web of double taxation and global financial surveillance.

Since my web stats unequivocally show that most of my visitors are American, the rest of the world will just have to bear with. This post is really for Usanians, especially those who want to know just how much America will go to bat for its citizens when abroad. Which is to say, not much. America is not the new Rome, generously lending its aegis to all who call it home. Really, the only thing vaguely Roman about my treatment by America as an "overseas" citizen is that, like the early Christians, I, too, must spend a lot of time in the catacombs.. of the Government Printing Office. (If it sounds like I'm overly nitpicky in the following, remember that I am merely dwelling on the only problems in my life, fabulously wealthy as I am.)

Let's start with double taxation, shall we? I will translate for my American audience. In Canada, you don't get pay stubs until near the end of February, so that's when I get the tax paperwork started. I got two T4's (the U.S. W-2) and one T4A (1099-MISC) this year due to my change of employers and of status; now that I'm a Canadian immigrant, I have to pay into the Canada Pension Plan and "premiums" for Employment Insurance. As a new immigrant, I am not allowed to collect unemployment unless my wife pays it back, but let that pass. I also am expected as a Canadian resident to report all worldwide income on my T1 (1040). So when BellSouth sends me dividends on a 1099-DIV, I have to report such earnings (properly converted to CAD) on T1 line 121 and attach Schedule 4.

As it happens, the US government has a tax reporting policy on all of its citizens, regardless of where they reside. This is a relative rarity among nations of the world, but then we've always been elite. So after I've figured my Canadian tax, I then sharpen my pencils to handle Form 1040. This isn't too bad, really. You use the IRS's official exchange rate for the tax year to convert your wages into US dollars and report that on 1040 line 7. Then you fill out Form 2555-EZ, on which you report every day in the tax year that you were present in your home country. (This doesn't directly affect the calculation, by the way, which makes you wonder what they use it for.) Then write the result in parenthesis on 1040 line 21 and write "2555-EZ" next to it. For most people filing 2555-EZ, the rest of the form is a handwriting exercise (write "0" on line 37, 38, 41, 43, etc.)

But as we all know, I am not most people. I am a magnate, a captain of industry. I have for many years received as much as $600 in filthy, unearned stock-market dividends, reportable on 1040 line 9a. As a Canadian resident, I have to report them in Canada as well. Under the principles of avoiding double taxation, a tax treaty should specify in which country I must pay and in which country I am entitled to a foreign tax credit. In principle, the Canada-U.S. Income Tax Treaty does this. However, the U.S. government reserves the right to tax its own citizens irrespective of the provisions of this treaty. Perversely, this position is called the "saving clause". I can assure you, no savings accrue to my benefit from this clause!

The IRS tells me, though I am a Canadian resident, that U.S.-source income is taxable in the U.S. and I should claim a refund of U.S. tax paid when filing in Canada. Except that I didn't make enough money in the U.S. to pay any tax. So I can't very well claim a refund of tax I didn't have to pay. Maybe in the end it doesn't make much difference; I would have had to pay somewhere, it might as well be in Canada. Still, the whole process is byzantine and doesn't seem altogether fair (and if you can stomach reading Article X of the treaty, you'll see it's obviously not fair in several other cases).

"All right, Greatness, quit belly-aching about taxes. Tell me about the global surveillance part." Sure thing. Have you ever looked at 1040 Schedule B? It's a trip. I especially like Part III:

There are so many things to love about this schedule that I will have to restrain myself. For one thing, you generally don't have to fill it out unless you have over $1,500 in dividend or interest income. The only reason I've ever seen this form is that the threshold used to be much lower. Good thing I was aware of it, because Part III applies to me. It looks like I should say "Yes" on line 7a, because (duh) I have some bank accounts in Canada. However, if you flip to page B-2 (oh wait, you can't flip to it, because it's not attached -- it's in the instruction package), you learn that unless you have more than $10,000 in such accounts, you should say "No" despite the plain language of the question. I assume that would be my alibi if they wanted to get me for making a false statement. This procedure also guarantees that anyone who has to fill out Part III has to read all of the miscellany around the question before answering, whether any of it applies to them or not. Really, IRS guys, this screams out for a redesign.

But anyway. This year, for the first time, "Yes" is the right answer (thank you, joint accounts!). So what must I do? From the venerable page B-2: "file Form TD F 90-22.1 by June 30, 2007, with the Department of the Treasury at the address shown on that form. Do not attach it to Form 1040." I haven't decided whether this is the tax man being nice to the boys in Treasury or just closing ranks. You see, this part of the schedule has nothing to with taxes. Part III is to remind all red-blooded Americans of their duty to comply with the Code of Federal Regulations Title 31, Part 103. Treasury form TD F 90-22.1 (supplied by the IRS) looks innocuous enough. They just want the bank name and account number of every foreign asset under your control, whether it's your money or not. Why, exactly?

What patriot could argue with that reasoning? How about this one.

I'll have pics later this week, but right now I'll just sum up the end of the trip. Last stop in Christchurch was the International Antarctic Centre, home base for the U.S., N.Z., and Italian Antarctic programs. Jen and I survived a ride on a genuine Antarctic all-terrain vehicle and a simulated "Condition 1" Antarctic storm (though, really, I've gone grocery shopping in Halifax in similar conditions, so it wasn't all that impressive.) Still interesting to see the "last stop" before Antarctica, however.

Then later that night, we flew to Rarotonga in the Cook Islands, arriving 19 hours before we left. It's on our side of the Date Line, you see. Our host picked us up at the airport and showed us our room for the trip, which turned out to be more spartan than either of us had expected. And noisy! I swear, there must have been a dozen roosters within a mile of us, all crowing in unison from 4am on. Welcome to paradise, I guess. Rarotonga was very warm and humid, and one of our two days there turned out to be a public holiday so nothing was really open. I'm not sorry I went -- it's beautiful, and outside of the big resorts it's not at all touristy, which is what I wanted to experience. They say the Cook Islands are like Hawaii was 50 years ago, tourism-wise. Jen and my sober judgment: we'll come back in 50 years.

From there it was back to Auckland, to catch a flight to Fiji, then to Los Angeles and a visit with Jill again, then to Toronto and finally to Halifax, yesterday at 1:30pm AST. After three weeks, six time zones, and goodness knows how many air miles, we're back. And we're beat -- but it was a memorable trip!

So, starting from Wellington: we got on the Interislander ferry on the 27th to head across the Cook Strait. After a fairly uneventful ride between the islands and through Queen Charlotte Sound, we arrived in the port town of Picton. Not that we stayed long: we were on a schedule to pick up Jen's friend Kirsten from the Nelson "International" Airport. We stayed in Richmond, just outside. I don't think it was really much like my hometown, really. After all, one cannot see the Southern Cross from there. While in Nelson/Richmond we checked out the "Centre of NZ" (since recalculated by GPS to be in the harbor, actually) and went to a winery that sold several cases of their wine to "The World". Google "The World" for some more details about this opulent ship. We felt like the wine must be pretty decent, so we got a bottle.

Then it was on to Franz Josef. This was a very satisfying (and scary) part of the trip. You see, we trekked on a glacier, wearing ice crampons on our boots and everything. Silly me, I thought a glacier was flat. But not at the face of it.. we had to go up 200 meters of melting, moving ice/snow. And back down. I felt like we were living up to the extreme billing of NZ. Also took a trip to Lake Mathison so we could see Mt. Cook in reflection; but it didn't work out like that given the clouds. Still cool though.

This morning we headed across the south island through Arthur's Pass, a trip which has been rated one of the world's most scenic. I think we must have taken 60 pictures between the sea and the 900+ meter pass. Some of the Lord of the Rings was shot here (really, was there anywhere in NZ that wasn't in the pic somewhere?). Then it was on down the mountain, through the Canterbury plains to the town of Christchurch.

And that's where we sit tonight. Happy New Year everyone, ~18 hours early!

So we are actually in Wellington right now. Merry christmas everyone!! We are actually almost through Boxing Day, and it will hurt coming back to the other side.

So we spent Christmas here in Wellington as well. Went to the big Te Papa museum yesterday, for pretty much the whole day. It was the only thing open and it was pretty interesting as well. Today we went to the Observatory and the Gardens by riding the cable car.

Taupo went well, we saw Craters of the Moon ( boiling mud is pretty wild) and the Huka Falls. Not really that high a falls, but lots and lots of water force!

Before this ( I seem to be journaling in reverse order) Chris became a Zorbanaut.. which can really only be explained by googling the word 'Zorb'. He said it felt like taking a shower, except on a waterslide, with his eyes closed.

Christmas in NZ is a surreal thing. No "Winter Wonderland" carols or trees to be seen, except in some of the bigger attractions. I suppose since everybody is taking vacation with their kids (it's summer break, after all), nobody has time for the Christmas spirit. We tried to have our own little Christmas anyway ... in space!

Went to the Waipu Museum yesterday, about the Scottish people from Nova Scotia that moved to New Zealand. Over 900 of them came... on a five plus month boat ride. Their leader was 70 at the time, and they had lived in St. Anns, NS for 23 years. Wow, things must have been pretty tough for them to make such a decision. (We missed Mr John Hamm, former Premier of NS, by a few hours; we were told he was in that morning.)

Today we saw a live Kiwi bird (about the size of a chicken) and we went down the glow worm cave in Waitomo. The boat ride through the cave was like looking at the night sky in some alien world.

Pretty night to work with so far and we have gone grocery shopping so we can avoid eating out every meal -- that's part of the reason to camp, after all. Weather is cool, with rain sometimes and then a bit of sun. Way better than snow! It's the longest day of the year in the Southern Hemisphere. Maybe that's why we've seen so few Christmas decorations..

Tomorrow we're headed to the volcanic central area of the north island (Rotorua and Lake Taupo). We'll tread carefully.

"We Made It!

The Greatness and the Sweetness are offically in New Zealand for their visit. After months of planning and hours and hours of flying, we are here.

Flights over we actually pretty good all things considering. No snow in Halifax meant no delays, which was good as we had no extra time in Toronto. Sweetness was running for the gate but we both made it in time ( security decided she was the lucky one to be searched 15 mintues before the plane was suppose to leave). Hung out in LA with the Greatness's sister ( thanks J for the sight seeing tour and for lunch, see you again in a few weeks).

We both actually slept on the plane a bit to Fiji and arrived tired but hanging in. Just from the air and the airport, Fiji looks really, really nice...and it is really, really expensive. That $3.50CAN ice cream drumstick we had between the two of us was good, but wow.

The last flight actually found us in NZ. we reached the hotel about 3pm NZ time and let the parents know by phone that we had made it. We had a three/four hour nap and woke up to eat supper and try to stay away until 10 pm to work into NZ time. Supper was great at a Chinse place here in downtown Auckland. We walked around a bit and went to bed at ten. Woke up at four...but didn't really get up and around until 5:30 ( which seemed like lunchtime to us). Today we have spent at the Auckland Museum for the most part.

Observations so far,

Everything ( food at least) is expensive!

It's nice to be in a foreign country that still speaks English."

Drum Lesson with Neil Peart