You can catch Ross tonight (Saturday May 19th, 2012) and me with my feet a stomping at Pat’s Pub and Brewhouse at 403 E. Hastings St. at Dunlevy Ave in Vancouver. Show starts at 9 pm.

Curious as to what Ross sounds like?  Here is my favourite youtube video of him:

Tonight he will be playing with his new band, which I am very much looking forward to hearing.  The band includes Karl Gans (previously from Ross Neilsen & the Suffering Bastards) and Young Will Pacey (the new band mate).  Speaking of which I am a little overdue sharing Episode 3 of Ross and Karl’s Great Bass Search (for Episode 1 & 2 , click on the links), so here are the fools themselves:

Really, how can you not love these boys with classy videos such as that.

Hope to see you at the Show tonight.

Kisses,

Emme xoxo

A photo tease from that first day in Hurghada …

From the Golf Course at Steigenbreger Golf Al Dau Beach Hotel:

Our Wanna Be Golf Pro: Daniel Noll of Uncornered Market

The Actual Golf Pro looking on with concern.

Teeing Off

What Erica was checking out while we were golfing ... the local plant life.

Daniel showing off his form. (Note: the golf ball is still on the green.)

While Parasailing:

Speeding across the Red Sea

Erica in Full Flight

From Al Dau Beach Hotel:

Relaxing on the Red Sea

A Little Roamancing on Hurghada‘s Streets:

Roamancing Hurghada

From Day 2 of our Egyptian holiday and a fascinating day trip to Fayoum, here are Lucy Duck and I, from the fabulous tub at the Fairmont Nile City Cairo:

A few pics from the day and a tease of what’s to come from some more involved posts on Fayoum on Roamancing:

Fayoum City of the Dead

The City of the Dead

Into the Desert

Wadi El Rayan Protected Area

Wadi Al-Hitan ~ The Valley of the Whales (A UNESCO World Heritage Site)

Fossilised Mangrove

Lucy chilling by the fossilised spine of a whale that swam her 40-million years ago.

Wadi Al-Hitan ~ An Ancient Seabed

Fayoum Pottery School in the Village of Tunis

Hard at Work at Fayoum Pottery School

Kids hard at work at Fayoum Pottery School

Qasr Qarun, the Ancient Town of Dionysias

Entering Qasr Qarun

PS. In Full Disclosure: As always, the opinions and thoughts shared here are our own and honest ones. We are bought out by no one. In the spirit of disclosure, it should be noted that on this trip, our expenses were paid by Egyptian Tourism, as a guest to the country and the UNWTO Media and Tourism Conference.

Yes, it’s true, life is rough, and work this week has taken my digital tales to Egypt to demonstrate some ‘real’ time digital storytelling for the UNWTO Media and Tourism Conference: Partnering with Media in Challenging Times in Egypt with Daniel Noll and Audrey Scott of Uncornered Market and Lucy Duck and Erica Hargreave of Roamancing. You can read more about it on UnCornered Market and Ahimsa Media:

• Off to Egypt: A Little Bit of Work & Play
• #WeVisitEgypt ~ A Digital Travel Tale

Would love for you cats to join in the fun by:

• Share what we are doing in Egypt and the #WeVisitEgypt hashtag to your media channels;
• Follow #WeVisitEgypt on your social networking channels and retweet content that appeals to you;
• Interact with us on our adventure at @UMarket, @Roamancing, @EmmeRogers and @EricaHargreave; and
• Share your own photos, video and blog posts from Egypt with the #WeVisitEgypt hashtag (and we will do our best to retweet them).

 

Cairo Sunset on the Nile

 

*Blowing Kisses* of thanks for the smiles and support you all give me.

Emme xoxo

PS. In Full Disclosure: As always, the opinions and thoughts shared here are our own and honest ones. We are bought out by no one. In the spirit of disclosure, it should be noted that on this trip, our expenses were paid by Egyptian Tourism, as a guest to the country and the UNWTO Media and Tourism Conference.

We should all spend our lives dancing.

Thanks to all the great dancers at Ashby Ponds for the smile.

~ Emme xoxo

Personally I think the boys are doomed bastards after giving a voodoo doll at boot.

It was funded by Tourism Ireland, yet at Central Station in Sydney, Australia to gain attention for Riverdance in Australia.   To make this even cooler the members of Riverdance worked with local Australian school children to put this dance together, and it was all organized and coordinated by the Sneaky Steppers, who I recently saw at Hamilton Place with the Hamilton Philharmonic and Cherish the Ladies.  Love this sort of collaboration for both the arts and positive, fun marketing.

Idiots!  But rather loveable and endearing ones.

Courtesy of Model Mayhem

Picked up the newspaper yesterday to see that a striking woman, by the name of Jenna Talackova, had been kicked out of the Miss Universe Canada Pageant after being selected as a finalist.  Normally, this would not be an article that would be of particular interest to me, but this woman is transgender, meaning she started out life biologically as a boy, but felt like she was meant to be a girl, so underwent the hormone therapy and gender reassignment surgery to make her a woman.  So forgive me if I’m wrong, but I suspect Jenna has been kicked out of the competition by some very narrow minded people when it comes to defining gender.

The statement that the Miss Universe Canada issued last week is that “Jenna will not complete the pageant, because she didn’t meet the requirements to compete, despite having stated otherwise on her entry form.”  I ask Miss Universe Canada, which of those requirements did Jenna not meet? If it’s that she said she’s a girl, well from the reports in the media, she is, having gone through hormone therapy from the age of 14 and gender reassignment surgery at 19.  In fact, I’d harbour a guess that Jenna has thought a lot more about what it means to be a woman than those of us that were biologically born as such.

‘She was dishonest,’ said Denis Davila, the director of Miss Universe Canada, referring to the fact that Jenna wrote on her application that she had been born a female. Denis – I suspect in Jenna’s mind she was born a female, otherwise she would have never gone through such a surgery. Gender is more than just your biological bits. Jenna has already been through more challenges than most her age, yet the Miss Universe Canada Pageant wants to penalise her for that?  In my mind, that is not an institution that should be penalising someone with embracing being a woman.

Clearly, based on this video from Miss International Queen in Thailand last year, Jenna is not trying to hide anything, as far as her gender is concerned.  Jenna appears at 8:08 minutes into the video.

That is my opinion though.  I am sure there are other opinions out there.  Feel free to weigh in here or to sign Jenna’s petition, which maintains she was disqualified from the contest solely because she was born male.