Travelling to Machu Picchu – A How to Guide

Machu Picchu is one of the seven wonders of the modern world, and the crown jewel of Peru’s tourism industry. It is one of the most amazing places I’ve ever seen and there’s nothing else in South America quite like it. I recently traveled to Machu Picchu and organizing the whole trip was tricky so I decided to write a how-to guide on getting there. I have to give a shout out to my traveling companion, Steve Sanyal, who did a lot of the initial research. Keep in mind this blog is for traveling by bus/train to Machu Picchu and not doing the three-day hike in through the Sun Gate.

I think the degree to which you’d want to plan your own trip to Machu Picchu would depend on several factors – budget, level of comfort traveling in foreign countries, ability to speak Spanish, etc. If you’re the kind of traveler who likes everything arranged for you, many travel agencies can help you out. We contacted the agency my family used over a decade ago, and they quoted us $700 U.S. each for transport and entry to Machu Picchu, and a hotel in Aguascalientes (the town at the base of Machu Picchu). Flights to Cusco, meals and hotels in Cusco weren’t included. The value of their quoted services was about $300, so we decided to do this ourselves. 

Top Songs of 2018

It’s been a couple of years since I did this, but I wanted to get back to it since it’s always fun to look back on the year through my peculiar musical lens (and typical me, late as usual). As in past years, there were some big songs that came on my radar but I want to focus on Canadian artists. There probably wasn’t a more impactful song this year than This is America by Childish Gambino and the latter part of the year saw me playing a lot this Morrissey cover. But for the first time, I’m going to put two non-Canadian acts on my list as my top picks.

I made a YouTube playlist here.

The Tragically Hip – Sunday August 14, 2016

Thanks for all the memories. Rest in peace, Gord.

David E. Burga

The last time I saw The Tragically Hip was for Canada’s 125th birthday celebration at Molson Park in Barrie in 1992, a few months before the release of Fully Completely and before they became the biggest band in the country. Twenty-four years and eleven albums later, they are playing their final tour after Gord Downie announced he had terminal brain cancer.

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My Love Letter to CBC Radio 3 On Their 10 Year Anniversary (via 2009) – Part 1

We had to put our dog Emma down today. She was a wonderful, loyal pet. I wrote in this post about how our childhood dog died alone overnight at the vet and I’m glad we got to be with Emma at the end. This post is about a time we got into a bad accident in Chile and I thought we were going to have to put her down. She made it almost 10 more years and lived quite a life…

David E. Burga

Every year since 2009, around this time of year, I think of a particular day when I was living and working in Chile. Since this year marks the 10^th anniversary of the CBC Radio 3 Podcast, I thought this would be a good time to write about it.

Tl;dr – I lived in Chile for a year. I got into a car accident with my dog. A lot of songs from the CBC podcasts of that time remind me of that year. I made a playlist here.

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The Fine – New Flash Fiction in the Lunaris Review

While I was whittling down my manuscript, I had to look at each chapter and try to think of it within the context of the whole. This was a chapter that didn’t make the final cut as it didn’t develop the character (by that point in the story, the reader knows the protagonist doesn’t fit in) and it didn’t advance the plot. But I thought it worked well as a standalone piece and the good people over at the Lunaris Review saw fit to give it a home. Here’s a link to the story:

http://lunarisreview.com/david-burga-the-fine/

 

The Millennial Whoop: A glorious obsession with the melodic alternation between the fifth and the third

This is a great article on a common vocal pattern seen a ton of modern hits.

The Patterning

This week, The Lonely Island released a music video for a song that was cut from their new movie, Popstar. The deleted scene for the song, “Fuck Off,” shows Conner4Real (Andy Samberg’s Bieber-esque teen idol character) joyfully belting out the most over-the-top expression of teenage angst possible.

The song is an incredible parody, not least because Samberg and company have caught onto a melodic phenomenon that has plagued the airwaves for the past several years, which they use to great effect at the song’s 40 second mark.

I like to call this melodic snippet the “Millennial Whoop.” It’s a sequence of notes that alternates between the fifth and third notes of a major scale, typically starting on the fifth. The rhythm is usually straight 8th-notes, but it may start on the downbeat or on the upbeat in different songs. A singer usually belts these notes with an “Oh” phoneme, often in a “Wa-oh-wa-oh” pattern…

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The Tragically Hip – Sunday August 14, 2016

The last time I saw The Tragically Hip was for Canada’s 125th birthday celebration at Molson Park in Barrie in 1992, a few months before the release of Fully Completely and before they became the biggest band in the country. Twenty-four years and eleven albums later, they are playing their final tour after Gord Downie announced he had terminal brain cancer.

The Toughest Workout of My Life with UFC’s Clay Guida

This post gets a bump every time Clay Guida fights, so I thought I’d share again.

David E. Burga

I wrote this about a year and half ago for a friend’s now defunct fitness website, so I thought I’d throw it up here. Clay Guida fights Tatsuya Kawajiri on April 11, 2014 in Abu Dhabi.

One has fists like hammers, the other likes poutine and beer.

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