Time Immortal

This is the third entry in a series in which I am transcribing my diary from the 21st World Scouts Jamboree into something “a little more readable and a little more descriptive…and, of course, a lot less ‘pen and paper’.”

Previous entries: July 24th | July 25th | July 26th

Eggs again

[thumb:4209:r:s=1:l=d]I got to sleep in a bit today (about an hour, in fact), owing to the fact that I didn’t need to be on the Faiths and Beliefs site until 10 AM. I think I’m going to make a habit of getting up earlier, though, as the lunch selections were a bit…ah…”picked over” by this hour of the morning. The usual mix of eggs, bacon, sausage, and stewed tomatoes was again offered for breakfast, and I’m beginning to wonder if there’s anything else they even plan to serve us for the first meal of the day.

Time will tell, I suppose. Not that I’m complaining all that much, mind — it’s all reasonably tasty, especially the sausages and bacon.

Come, let us wax…waxfully?

[thumb:4207:r:s=1:l=d]I got to the Faths and Beliefs area just a bit before 10 AM, and made sure to sign up for the activities I wanted to work at the most — the Catholic area, obviously, with the Orthodox display being a favourable second option. I then went back to the blocks of wax. Romaine and Anne-Laure joined me in this, and with their help things seemed to go much more speedily than they had the day before.

[thumb:4218:r:s=1:l=d]That might have had something to do with how we re-thought our strategy of dealing with the wax in the first place, with two people working the saw and one person bracing it in place. Some other people came to help for a while — in fact, Anne-Laure and Romaine brought in a number of their compatriots from the Swiss contingent — and we also had a number of people helping us in the morning to break up the larger chuncks of wax we were sawing off of the blocks into smaller, more “melting pot”-friendly sizes.

[thumb:4223:r:s=1:l=d]The last block of wax was especially quick to break up, owing to the fact that it was also quite brittle — we dispensed with the sawing entirely and had at it with axes and hammers, which was also pretty good for killing off stress. Periodically, I stopped to take photos, and (coupled with all the pictures I’d already taken of our travels to the Jamboree site, and more recently of Writtle) had finished off my first 2 gigabyte flash card by the end of the day. My first 1 gigabyte card came into use at that point.

[thumb:4226:r:s=1:l=d]That end of the day came at around 5 PM, at which point I swapped contact information with Anne-Laure and Romaine — it’s funny, and yet somehow blessed, how fast a friendship can form during a task which involves physical labour. I felt a bit bad, because they handed me a Swiss contingent patch, and proper badge-trading would dictate that I offer a Canadian contingent patch in trade…except that I forgot mine in the campsite this morning. I’ll have to bring some tomorrow, assuming we’re all working in the same area again. In the meantime, I gave them both some Alberta pins as little “thank yous” for their help, which was very much appreciated I assure you!

Pins…apparently, or so I learned today, pins are a rather North American obsession. They are not common at all in most other parts of the world, at least not as things that Scouts will normally hand out or trade for. I didn’t know that, but I suppose it makes sense. Not that other Scouts will turn down a pin if it is gifted to them, of course…but most won’t trade for them.

Dinner and Hygeine

[thumb:4238:r:s=1:l=d]I headed back to the adult sub-camp and met with Matt and Robin for dinner. Along the way, I stopped to grab a few shots of the participant sub-camp near to where the adult sub-camp is. More and more kids are arriving all the time, and what was yesterday an empty field has today become a veritable miniature town.

[thumb:4239:r:s=1:l=d]Colin, Ian, and Adam Eliason joined us later, and after we had eaten I sat down with Adam for a quick pint. Having exhausted my desire to sample the “brand name” beers available at the one bar, I tried a pint of bitter from the second bar, which featured beverages from local breweries. The bitter I tried was called “Courage”, and it was — I have to admit — really tasty. It was served warm, but not in the sense of “warm to the touch” — it still felt cool on the tongue. And what flavour!

[thumb:4243:r:s=1:l=d]More members of the 59th, and also the 193rd from Calgary, joined us after a while, and I wound up having a bit of a chat with one of the site guests, who in “real life” is a stage manager for an opera in…some German city, the name of which now eludes me. Apparently, people can visit the site if they have a relative who is a volunteer or participant…although that doesn’t really mean much when one’s relatives are on the other side of the Atlantic, I suppose.

After a while, I decided to end the day with a shower, and made my way to the shower house. The arrangement of showers was effective, but certainly there wasn’t much room for modesty. Still, it felt nice to grab a hot shower.

Picture woes

With the 2 gigabyte flash card full, I’m down to my two 1 gigabyte flash cards, plus the assorted smaller “holdout” cards that are my emergency reserve. I’m going to have to figure out what to do regarding picture downloads, because at this rate I’m probably going to run out of photo space by day seven.

Phoning home

I tried to call Grace, but she wasn’t home — not really surprising given that when it’s 10 PM here, it’s only 3 PM back in Edmonton, which would be right in the middle of one of Grace’s shifts at work. I’ve drawn up a little schedule for myself that will hopefully help me spotlight good times to call, and fortunately she has changed her phone message to include a fairly detailed summary of her working days.

But the “call time” windows are pretty narrow. It would appear that my optimal choices for when to call home are 3 AM, 1 PM, or 3 PM local time. Curse being the better part of half a world away!

[thumb:4250:r:s=1:l=d]There was something going on at the bandshell — a DJ spinning tunes, I guess — and I stuck around for a bit before heading off to bed. I tried to take a picture of the rotating lights projected on the clouds above, but the long shutter speed meant that I came away with something even more interesting: a mandala.