Numbered Accounts

40. Potty Training

2005-05-20T01:18:00.000-05:00

Fig 40-1: Guidelines for Being Gentlemanly

Other than having similar origins in printing terminology, both stereotype and cliché are potentially dangerous offshoots of trying to immerse yourself in a new culture, as sometimes it’s easier to make simplified generalizations to explain cultural differences, rather than trying to understand where those differences come from—and let’s face it: racial stereotypes are so cliché these days.

Stepping into the Western Style bathroom on any Indian Railways train, then, it’s refreshing to see that some stereotypes extend beyond borders. What kind of stereotypes would those be, you ask? Well I’m talking—of course—about gender stereotypes.

Fig 40-2: Rules For Best Practice

While I’m not one who likes to encourage the accepted clichés about toilet seat positioning, you have to admit that it’s a damning piece of evidence in the ongoing debate when world’s single largest employer—1,583,614 people, in addition to transporting 4.2 billion people annually—finds it necessary to stencil gender-specific instructions for toilet use (see Fig. 40-1) on the bathroom wall.

For those of you looking for any further instruction on toilet-use conduct, simply refer to Fig. 40-2. These guidelines, as far as I can tell, are applicable to both sexes.

Fig 40-3: Compliance Isn't Without It's Rewards

39. Rest and Relaxation

2005-05-07T07:48:00.001-05:00

Fig. 39-1: Overview of the Uncontrolled Research Environment

You know that calm, relaxed, and contented look that people have after spending extended amounts of time on the beach? After a recent five day stretch of hands-on research conducted between Om Beach, Half Moon Bay, and Paradise Beach on the shores of the Arabian Sea just outside of Gokarna, I’m beginning to think that these hallmarks of well-tanned people are simply a combination of sunstroke, complete physical inactivity, and a near-complete lack of mental stimulation.

As the saying goes: "Those who can, do."

Fig. 39-2: A tan Louis-Philippe suspiciously looks away from a book for fear that stimulating information might harsh his vibe. He instead concentrates on a bottle of water, which promises to provoke no thought.

Fig. 39-3,4,5: Louis flips me off for using the above caption
(click bottom photos for detail)

38. On How We Are Brats:

2005-05-04T05:04:00.000-05:00

WE LEFT THIS:

Fig. 38-1,2,3: Bhairon Villas Guesthouse
(click bottom photos for detail)

FOR THIS:

Fig. 38-4,5,6: Hotel Meghsar Castle
(click bottom photos for detail)

ON ACCOUNT OF THIS:

Fig. 38-7: We Heart Television

When trying to explain to the manager of the first guesthouse why we were leaving his somewhat expensive (though thoroughly television-less) property (See Figs. 38-1,2,3), the only justification that I could offer was that we were really tired, and we just wanted to be entertained.

We had chosen the original guesthouse—formerly the residence of the Maharajah of Bikaner and his four wives—due to it’s central location, the promise of ease and comfort, and the assurance of both air conditioning and cable television, after a long couple of days spent on camels in the desert. The truth is that all we really wanted was a television, and that’s exactly what we got by relocating to the second, more run-of-the-mill guesthouse, on a noisy street north of town (See Figs. 36-4,5,6).

In the end, all we had to do was forfeit the more conventional beauty of the first location, for a situation where the beauty was a little more subtle—by which, I mean, the availability of HBO.

Sometimes sacrifices simply have to be made for comfort, though that doesn’t mean that I felt any bit less ridiculous when trying to find the words to explain this to the manager of the first place.

37. Seeing the Desert for the Sand

2005-05-04T01:55:00.000-05:00

Fig. 37-1: Visualize a Parkscape (Either Ignore the Goat or Pretend that it's a Dog)

Repeat a familiar word for a few minutes and it will lose definition, stare at anything totally familiar to you for long enough and it will eventually lose its context, but oddly, if you stare at the most unfamiliar of terrain, it will eventually become familiar.

Sitting out the hottest hours of the afternoon beneath a shady tree in the desert while on a camel trek (about 40 miles to the east of Pakistan), the landscape began to look like a sprawling parkscape that you might find in a major western city, with hills that lead towards the horizon, and trees and shrubs spaced at appropriate intervals—the only thing that you have to neglect is that it is unbearably hot and the grass has been replaced by sand, though that ceases to be apparent after an hour or two.

Fig. 37-2: Your Pretending Produced an Actual Dog. Your Parents Were Right—You Clearly Have a Good Imagination.

36. File Under: Additional Skills

2005-04-27T11:39:00.000-05:00

Fig. 36-1: Pilot

I can now drive a camel. If that's not a marketable skill, then I have no idea what is.

Either way, this is certainly going on my resumé when I get home.

Fig. 36-2: Piloted

35. Cute, Bored, and Dangerous

2005-04-21T09:10:00.000-05:00

Fig. 35-1: Cute, Bored, and Dangerous

There are cows everywhere in India.

Short of being worshiped, as is their reputation, cows are more or less just left to their own devices—which is to say that they walk around, eat plastic bags and food scraps alike, sip at puddles, and generally go where they please and do as they like, within the bounds of society continuing to function in their presence. When they’re not sticking their noses in things, cows just tend to stand around, and in the process of doing so, manage—at least partially—to block the flow of both human and vehicle traffic.

While a cow in the road seems generally aggravating to drivers, the relationship is pretty much one of mutual indifference, as the organic nature of traffic simply assimilates the cow as yet another thing to navigate around, and the car’s large and threatening nature seems to be a sufficient deterrent to any act of frustration on the part of the cow.

Pedestrians, however, don’t have it quite as easy—while humans are clearly smarter than cows when it comes to the use of common walkways, there is a serious deficit in the human-to-cow size differential, and the placement of a large-enough cow in a small-enough old city street is enough to completely hold up traffic, not to mention that on occasion, cows will charge at people as they pass.
The fact that cows occasionally attack shouldn’t be blown out of proportion, however, as it’s far more common for people to hit cows than the other way around, and cows don’t tend to budge until a hand (at the very least) is raised.

Also, to do justice to the cow in this scenario, it is far more often that people jump skittishly out of a cow’s path than a cow will actually show any sort of aggression, though the implication in the public’s reaction to passing cows is that there is a very rational justification for this fear.

After watching this pageant play out over and over again, however, I got a firsthand lesson in what the hesitation was all about one hot afternoon in Udaipur, when I just barely managed to avoid the business end of a cow’s horns, as it saw fit to come charging after me for no discernable reason. This attempted charge was startling, and certainly vindicated the caution that I felt when passing random cows, but it was nowhere near as disarming as in Jaisalmer, when I absentmindedly turned from a sign that I was attempting to read, to run head-on into a cow that was just standing in the middle of the narrow street, attempting to mind its own business.

At first, I felt a little weird for having so blatantly hit one of these supposedly sacred animals, and perhaps even a little guilty after I had spent so much time questioning the intention of every passing cow, though I’ve since decided that it was simply my way of evening the score, despite the fact that this conclusion simply means that it’s now my turn to watch out for what the cows might do next.

Fig. 35-2: Cow on Cow Violence is the Saddest Kind of Violence

34. Waking Up Just to Go Back to Bed

2005-04-13T12:39:00.000-05:00

Fig. 34-1: Indian Railways:
Good for Traveling—Bad for Sleeping

Though waking up early is rarely easy, there’s a certain comfort in getting out of bed to do something early in the morning, if you know full well that you’ll be able to return to bed at some point in the morning in order to resume sleeping.

Tasks that require this sort of half-hearted investment in being awake include—though are by no means limited to—taking someone to the airport to catch an early flight, waking up to let a pet out, or on some mornings, it might just be an important feature of a classic false start to the day. Traveling, however, requires the addition of certain things to the above list, such as waking up early to catch the afore mentioned flights, sleeping in thoroughly unfamiliar beds, and arriving in totally new towns at the crack of dawn by way of overnight train.

While the overnight train’s ability to conserve valuable travel resources—such as precious daylight hours and the cost of a night's lodging—is by far one of the most brilliant components of traveling in India, arrival times vary greatly, and train sleep is generally a rigorous undertaking. Waking in the predawn hours of the morning, then, only to be faced with the task of dealing with the cadre of overanxious hotel touts and pushy rickshaw drivers that lie just beyond the train door while still suffering the effects of a difficult night’s sleep, provides one of the singularly most daunting challenges of constant relocation.

No matter what the reason, when you wake up too early in your own bed, there is comfort in the fact that, although you must separate yourself from its familiarity, it’s always the same bed that you’ll be returning to whenever you accomplish whatever it was that you woke up to do. For all benefits of travel, the excitement of constant movement means that no matter how much one guesthouse might resemble the next, it’s never the same bed that you’re returning to when you do eventually arrive at your destination and get to go back to bed.

Fig. 34-2: You Can Never Sleep in the Same Bed Twice
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CONFIDENTIAL TO JECCA

Fig. 34-2

you

33. The Art of the Chase

2005-04-10T09:15:00.000-05:00

Fig. 33-1: One Half of a Hopelessly Flawed Metaphor

Last week in Bombay, as I walked along a very nice part of town, just behind the famous Taj Mahal Hotel, though closer to where I was staying—the less renown, though just as well known—Salvation Army guest house, I saw a sparrow chasing a cockroach across the sidewalk the same way that an overexcited dog would chase a squirrel through a park. Though the action was more frenzied than your standard animal-chasing-animal routine—cockroaches don't so much scurry when moving across uneven marble as they wobble, and far from providing a smooth chase, sparrows are given to hopping instead of running—it was still worth stopping a moment to watch the drama play out.

It is both accepted and expected that dogs chase cats and cats chase mice, while birds are supposed to poke around in the grass, and wait for cats to pounce on them, so that they can effortlessly fly to the branches of some nearby tree. These relationships are all based on the idea of the chase, though they're ultimately centered on the all-important act of not getting caught.

In fact, these chases are so storied that they're clearly clichés at this point—and for good reason: it seems to be human nature to identify with the idea of things being just beyond our reach. Like the cat that goes sliding into the wall as the mouse stealthily slips into its hole, people seem to take comfort in the fact that whatever it is that they pursue is just beyond their reach—especially when they find themselves crashing into the wall as the chase comes to a conclusive end. The entire metaphor has a tendency to supply meaning to failure, and who doesn't like a little meaning in their failure?

Perhaps accounting for why this mini-drama involving the sparrow and the cockroach made me laugh so hard, or maybe just giving justification to why that this sort of chase will likely not go down in the annals of hallowed metaphor, is the fact that when this chase was over, the sparrow actually flew away with the cockroach clenched firmly in its beak.

Then again, perhaps it has something to do with the fact that sparrows are not that cute, and cockroaches are downright disgusting.

Fig. 33-2: Cat and Bird Defying Cliché

32. Having a Wrestle in the Shadow of Love

2005-04-08T02:48:00.000-05:00

Fig. 32-1: Having a Lunchtime Wrestle

I didn't want to let this picture go to waste, and since it has outlasted its use as a placeholder in the previous post, I'm giving it's own post, though it's really nothing more than a picture post of Taj Mahal employees having a friendly lunchtime wrestle in the shadows of the world's greatest monument to love.

Just for the record: the guy on top in this picture (in white) dominated this matchup, though I had my money on the other guy.

31. Reading Between the Recipes

2005-04-06T13:21:00.000-05:00

Fig. 31-1: Meditation for Idiots (The dot is in the lower left corner)

Team India took cooking lessons last week in Udaipur, and while we all now know how to make masala chai, a nice chutney, samosas, palak pakora, malai kofta (see Fig. 31-2), dal fry, chapatti, and parathas, the real fun in the exercise came in the form of taking notes on the sage advice that our instructor dispensed as he taught us these delicious recipes in his kitchen. The notes, transcribed, are as follows:

Fig. 31-1

Spinach

dandruff

Freckles

No College—No Knowledge, No Wife—No Life

If I were going to pick a theme for these embedded lessons, it would have to something along the lines of How to Never Go to the Doctor, though if you asked a doctor what the theme was, he’d probably say that it was simply a recipe for Iatrophobia¹.

Fig. 31-2: Mmm, Malai Kofta

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1. Iatrophobia

30. Say Yes

2005-04-05T08:53:00.000-05:00

Fig. 30-1: The Famous Shot of the Famous Taj Mahal

We did our duty as tourists in this country, and it was thus that we found ourselves in Agra a couple of weeks ago, and while the Taj Mahal truly is beautiful (see Fig. 30-1), the constant flow of tourists seem to have spawned a strain of shop owners and rickshaw drivers that are thoroughly resistant to standard methods of refusal to their constant offers of good bargains that you are clearly not interested in.

In response to this stepping-up of their game, I determined that the internationally standard No refusal had been rendered useless, so in place of it, I started to reply with Yes to every single thing offered, as I continued walking straight ahead as if I had said No.

At first, nobody figured out how to respond to this new technique, though after doing this sucessfully for an entire day, some little kid delivered a bit of karma (in the form of a small rock) into my back as I walked away from him, after enthusiastically telling him that I wanted to look his selection of postcards, never once looking at him or breaking my stride as I walked past.

The thing is, I couldn't really get mad at him because that's exactly what my response to me would be if I were in his shoes. I just laughed and kept on walking, assuredly saying Yes to everything that everyone offered me the rest of the way back to our guesthouse.

Fig. 30-2: The North Indian Shopkeeper in His Natural Habitat

29. Hot! Hot! Hot!

2005-04-01T06:43:00.000-06:00

Fig. 29-1: Tea + Milk + Sugar = Chai

Facts For the Traveller:
Properly boiled liquids are not as likely to get you sick, and thus preferable to lukewarm or cold liquids, but when a pot of chai is visibly steaming in the searing hot midmorning Rajasthan sun, it is also likely to burn your tongue.

This might seem obvious, but somehow it's a lesson that must be learned over and over again.

Fig. 29-2: A Little Teapot

28. Moustache!

2005-03-31T08:37:00.000-06:00

28-1: The State of Things, From the Ear Down

I have a moustache.

I don’t know if I should be proud or ashamed, but let’s just say that if I were a bunch of doctors, it might have been said that ‘a bunch of doctors thought that it was impossible for me to grow a moustache’, so I’m actually sort of attached to the thing.

All this means, really, is that I spend a fair amount of time trying to decide what the best angle is for it to follow down from the cleft in my lip and what the proper distance should be between the bottom edge and the top of my lip. Though it is at all times a work in progress, the current state of assessment and reassessment has resulted in a thin—perhaps even tapering—affair, as if a caricature of something French, though it is either too thin, or to lightly colored, to look very dramatic or pointy.

Add to this my new rash of aggressive haircuts, and you have the reason why I'm not actively exposing anything too far above the ear in pictures.

At this point, I think that it’s necessary to point out that this is actually the sort of look that I was going for when I set out growing this moustache nearly two months ago. When Jecca and I were trying to give a name to this style while it was still in the stages of infancy back in Calcutta, she diagnosed it as a School Pictures look. At that time, though, the moustache was more wispy, and the look largely consisted of a children’s sweater vest featuring a fluffy gray dog leaning on a pink book worn over every shirt that I own, in addition to a denim hat with a too-short brim, which for some reason, had a label sewn onto it that read Reebok-INDIA-Nike, and I thought was hilarious.

In some ways, the current state of things might actually be considered a success: while it's now too hot to wear sweater vests, and the hat looks a little too Village People with a full moustache, it is true that I currently look a lot like I walked right out of my 9th Grade school picture.

Mostly, I suppose that I'm doing this because I can, as it ultimately really doesn't make much of a difference what I look like while travelling here—everyone is going to stare, one way or another. The philosophy behind the School Pictures look has more to do with trying to make people laugh whilst they stare, as long as they’re bothering to stare—a sort of ‘See, I'm in on the joke, too’ approach to things.

Yesterday, on the bus, someone told Louis that I looked like Leonardo Dicaprio, and though I know that this isn’t really true, it sort of makes it harder to shave it off—keeping in mind that I usually only garner comparisons to Robin Williams—though if I don't cut it now, I'm going to come home with a funniest tan line that anyone has ever seen.

27. Our Canadian

2005-03-29T06:49:00.000-06:00

Fig. 27-1: The King of Pants

Introducing Louis-Philippe: We first saw him in Darjeeling, we met him on a trek to Tsongu Lake in Gangtok (Sikkim), and we've all been traveling together since the train to Varanasi.

At first we were pretty sure that he was French—though we were wrong—and in the time since we met him, he has proven that the Quebecois are truly the Al Newman of the international travel scene: this kid can spit filthy lines in German, chat coyly in Korean, and speaks English just as naturally as he speaks French. On top of all this: he's funny and he cuts our hair—of which mine is currently in a funny state, but that's a story/picture for another day.

It's been nearly a month now, and we're pretty sure this one's a keeper.

To anybody who's keeping track: please say hello to Louis-Philippe.

Fig. 27-2: Jecca and Louis Humor Me by Pretending to Enjoy a Pretend Dog Fight in Varanasai

26. A Good Price on Bitter Medicine

2005-03-28T04:09:00.000-06:00

Fig. 26-1: The Loneliness of the Long Distance Cycle Rickshaw Driver

Sometime around senior year of college, there was a period of time when I felt like I was getting away with too much in my day-to-day life, so perhaps as an answer to this, when I would go to bed at night, I would have these really involved dreams where people would tell me off severely. Though everything about these dreams seemed bad while I was dreaming them, they had the odd benefit of making me feel better when I woke up in the morning, as if a tension had finally been alleviated between what I was dishing out, and what I deserved to get back.

Anyone who is feeling a similar sort of tension in their day-to-day life, and needs to feel some sort of guilt in order to feel better, can achieve this same effect—though this one will cost you about the U.S. equivalent of about fifty little cents (and one international plane ticket, naturally): try taking the human-powered cycle rickshaw between Siliguri Junction and New Jalpaguri Station with your gigantic backpack, and sit helplessly as you watch the man operating the rickshaw pedal himself to a point somewhere near collapse, as he struggles to get you the 5km between the two stations in order to receive the 20 Rupees that you bargained him down to.

As I am not feeling the need for any more guilt than I already feel as a traveler, upon arrival at my destination my completely mortified conscience got the better of my thrifty side, and I tipped him twice the agreed amount.

25. Easter Egg Hunt

2005-03-27T07:27:00.000-06:00

25-1: Easter Egg?

Yesterday was a Hindu holiday called Holi, in which the arrival of Spring is welcomed by throwing bright powdered pigments at anybody that you pass on the street, though being a tourist, you tend to get the worst of it.

Just think of me as your Easter Egg.

25-2: Our Attackers

24. Following Rules

2005-03-26T10:44:00.000-06:00

24-1: The Setup

24-2: The Pose

24-3: The Detail

23. Correspondent in the Field of Dreams

2005-03-26T10:07:00.000-06:00

Fig. 23-1: Not Iowa

You know that spring must be coming when, in addition to popping up in the headlines and satire of those headlines that make use of childhood toys, baseball starts creeping into you tourism experience in India.

Exhibit A would have to be the three ring circus that the Major League Baseball steroid hearings have become, Exhibit B would be this recreation of the festivities in New York using Lego figures (courtesy of Bat Girl, via Kyle and Anna's watchful eyes and dilligent use of the Friendster Bulletin Board feature), while Exhibit C is the above photo (see Fig. 23-1), taken in the building just to the east of the Taj Mahal.

Am I simply suffering from Spring Training fever, or do the two pieces of marble laid out give the impression of that they might be, say, side-by-side home plates, as can be seen in bullpens throughout ballparks everywhere? Although I’m sure that these were laid out as a part of a restoration project more so than as a place to warm up pitchers, the coincidence in appearance is undeniable, and was only made more mysterious by the fact that there were no corresponding home base shaped gaps in the surrounding stonework.

The Taj Mahal itself is supposed to represent the link between the earthly world and the paradise of the afterworld, though at the moment that I happened upon these two slabs of marble, it all seemed to be lending itself too easily to that cliché of “Is this Heaven? No, it’s Iowa,” made popular by Kevin Costner’s last watch-able movie (that I can recall, anyway)—except that this Field of Dreams is much farther away from home than The Hawkeye State.

Fig. 23-2: In the Field, Gathering Information with a Rake?
Photo and Photoshop-ing courtesy of B. Alec

And while I'm on the topic of Spring Training, keep an eye on the Sunday Baseball website for taunts and updates on the coming season. Who knows? I might just be there for Opening Day—provided the snow lasts until June.

22. CONFESSIONS: Part 3

2005-03-24T03:57:00.000-06:00

Fig 22-1: The Chicken Maharaja Mac Value Meal

Everybody knows that fast food tastes good—even if it is only true for that brief period before the grease makes for a feeling in your stomach that approximates regret. This lesson, however, must be learned again and again, if the visits to McDonalds or any of its compatriots are far enough apart.

Last week in Delhi, I learned this lesson yet again for the first time, and although a Chicken Maharaja Mac is by no means a Big Mac, after not seeing a McDonalds for over two and a half months, it tasted just fine to me—even if the gratification it only lasted until that feeling of regret started to settle in.

Confidential to Ronald McDonald: See you when I get to Bombay.

21. Full Power, Twenty-Four Hours

2005-03-23T08:11:00.000-06:00

Fig 21-1: Sunrise over the Ganges

Part of the fun of going to any given place in India that large groups of people go to is fending off the armies of children that are dispersed throughout the crowd in order to sell you things. These children offer products ranging from postcards to hot glasses of chai, while still others wander the crowd searching for handouts of coins or writing utensils (school pens!). Kids often seem to be the chosen method for marketing these products, most likely on account of their undeniable cuteness and the low-to-nonexistent cost of their labor, and although the work seems to make these kids pretty cynical, in the end, they are just children, and this has the charming side effect of a sort of playfulness in the tired old sales transaction.

None of this changes the fact that I usually won’t buy anything from people who employ almost expressly annoying marketing techniques (such as begging and pleading), although certain kids make these interactions funny, at the least, when they become exasperated, and the sale is slipping away from them.

One of our funniest dealings with the child aged sales force came a few months ago in Goa (see N^o 06. The New Slang), when a kid sitting in a shop stall blurted “I am Full Power!” out at me as I passed by him yet another time without buying anything. At the time, I had no idea where such an ingenious phrase could have come from, though last week, as we sat watching the nightly puja on the banks of the Ganges in Varanasai, one of the little salesmen (who was trying to sell us votive candles to float in the river) got frustrated and inadvertently completed the mysterious phrase when out of desperation, he muttered “Full Power, twenty-four hours, no toilet, no shower.”

Fig 21-2: One Person's Puja is Another Person's Marketing Opportunity

It’s nice to think that these children might all have a common language when it comes to expressing their frustration with the stinginess of the tourist population, although I’m sure that this saying is born out of a tourism-industry-wide sentiment rather than some sort of 12 and under collective consciousness. Ultimately, I think that this particular kid thought that he was saying something rude to us, though if his aim was to offend, then he picked the wrong group of tourists: all we did was start laughing and beg him repeat himself, to which he obliged us--although unlike the puja happening behind him, watching this actually cost a few Rupees.

Fig 21-3: Adult Swim

20. March Showers

2005-03-22T10:10:00.000-06:00

Fig. 20-1: Storm Front

Old Cities are usually called Old Cities because they've been around a while, and most of the time, they're quite cramped because they were built before a time when cars needed pass down their narrow streets. Varanasai's Old City is no exception to this model, and while it makes for very atmospheric and charming (if not claustrophobic) surroundings, it also means that there aren't many places to go when you need to jump out of the way of the people, bicycles, motorcycles, carts, cows and dogs that people the neighborhood's five-foot-wide streets.

The walking here is precarious, when trying to dodge stubborn cows, pedestrians, motorcycles, and mopeds while at the same time trying not to fall into either a tourist-trap silk shop or (much worse) one of the many piles left in the middle of the road by any given cow that happens to be wandering around. After spending a couple of good long days navigating this maze of crowded and cow-pie covered streets, an out-of-season rain storm chased us indoors and onto the rooftop restaurant of our guesthouse to watch as the storm front rolled in (see Figs. 20-1, 2).

The level of delight that registered with most of the tourists that had gathered to watch the storm's arrival was probably two-fold, as the appearance of the storm was sudden and stunning, while at the same time it seemed to promise to bathe the streets of the filth that we all spending so much energy trying not to accidentally step in. However, when I emerged from our guesthouse the next morning, I learned that things don't always work here as they work in clichés that involve rain washing all the scum off the streets, and the downpour had not cleaned the streets at all. On the contrary, it simply dispersed what had previously lay in inert clumps, and made for a thin layer filth that there was no way of avoiding by way of careful stepping.

Gross? Absolutely—though add this into the equation: all that any of us have for footwear these days is sandals. Ick. Let's just say that we're not afraid of shit, although I can tell you that there was much foot washing when we got back from a long day of walking around.

Fig. 20-2: March Showers Bring April Flowers?

19. No Running Starts on Rooftops

2005-03-21T12:02:00.000-06:00

Fig. 19-1: The Competition

One afternoon in Varanasai, through the haze of allergy medication, I tried my hand at the popular Indian sport of Kite Flying, though I quickly found that I lack any sort of natural talent for this variation on, what for me, was a childhood hobby. The Old City here is so cramped, that all recreation within its boundaries is limited to that which can be undertaken on its rooftops. It's in this environment that, for a very long time now, people of all ages have been taking to the air with kites whose lines are dipped in a mixture of crushed light bulbs and glue, and try to assert air dominance in their particular part of the elevated neighborhood by cutting down any nearby kites with this sharpened string. The effect of having all of these kites whipping around the sky is a little bit ridiculous at first, but the competition is nothing short of dead serious.

Kites here are smaller and simpler in appearance than those of my youth, though they proved much harder to get airborne than the ones that we used to buy as kids at the gas station, as there are no running starts on rooftops, so air resistance has to be achieved through a rapid succession of jerks on the line, alternately pulling the line in, and letting it out with a judiciousness that I simply couldn’t comprehend.

On top of this, the market-bought kite of a western tourist would be a hotly sought-after prize, and a few kids on nearby rooftops told me as much when they tried to get me to just give them the kite instead of having to wait for me figure out how to get the thing in the air before they cut me down.

Suffice to say, I did neither: by the time I was done trying to accomplish the first of these two tasks, my kite was trashed to the point where it was no longer airworthy, let alone trophy material.

Fig. 19-2: Liftoff over the Ganges

18. New Habits

2005-03-11T09:22:00.000-06:00

Fig. 18-1: "He's not dead Son, he's just sleeping"
I'm always up for something new, and ever since I bought a new mechanical pencil in Calcutta, my new hobby appears to be drawing sleeping people on overnight trains. I know that this might seem like kind of a weird thing to do, but nowhere on my ticket does it say that I cannot draw my fellow train occupants¹, and people who aren't sleeping tend to be so much more inquisitive about what you're doing than the sleeping kind. I have to admit, though, that my conscience does edge in when I think about what it would be like to wake up and find yourself the unwitting subject of one of these portraits.

On second thought, maybe drawing people on trains is a creepy thing to do.

Fig. 18-2: Woman on Train (Not Sleeping)
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1. Even if there was a rule against this, I've always been one to follow the examples set for me by authority figures, and apparently Indian Railways employees can selectively choose which rules they adhere to, as we learned last night on the overnight train from Darjeeling to Varanasai, where the conductor saw fit to charge us full fare for two seats that we had already reserved and paid for once, on account of the fact that we weren't able to pick up the ticket from the travel agent in time, although the rules outline a 25% surcharge for a lost ticket. Oh well.

17. Fingernail and Big Cheese University

2005-03-02T07:14:00.000-06:00

Fig 17-1: University of Cochin-Santa Cruz

This picture goes out to the absurdly long list of people that I know who have attended, are currently attending, or may someday attend the University of California-Santa Cruz.

What is it about Santa Cruz that attracts the kind of people that I'm acquainted with? I hesitate to speculate, but I can only guess that it has something to do with the school's longstanding reputation for academic excellence in all areas. If, by chance, it had something to do with the way that the school's name sounded, then you all might want to consider saving some money, and direct your grad school applications to the humble Santa Cruz College (Fig. 17-1) in Fort Cochin, Kerala instead.

Not-so-confidential to Big Cheese and Fingernail:
If you really want the double major, you're going to have to convince them that you've left your party animal ways behind. If that doesn't work, then I say it's time to let me pull some of the Don King maneuvers that I've promised with your academic career; we'll get you the fight that you want.

16. Footnotes to the Foothills

2005-02-28T22:43:00.000-06:00

Fig 16-1: The State of Indian Door Lock Technology

Outside the window this morning, there is a horn tooting¹. Outside the door, there is a dog barking². Across the room, Jecca is blowing her nose³.

This is Darjeeling, people, and it certainly is quaint, but it is also very cold. Although two hundred meters lower than our previous perch in the southern hill station of Kodaikanal, it is nonetheless colder and more beautiful, perhaps due to the fact that it is lodged way up in the Himalayas--essentially between Nepal, China (Tibet), Bhutan, and Bangladesh--and not some tropical southern latitude. Rumor has it that if you hike to the right spot, at the right ungodly hour of the morning, you can see the sun rise behind Mt. Everest (8848 meters), just over the shoulder Mt. Khangchendzonga (the runner up in the Ms. Himalaya Contest at 8598 meters). I'm sure that I'll report on how beautiful it is if we ever get up early enough to see it.

-----

The Horn: The horn that toots belongs to the "Toy Train" that you can take from Siliguri Junction Station in New Jalpaigari, up the side of the mountain, into Darjeeling. Truly, this is as cute of a train as the title implies, with a real coal burning Thomas the Tank Engine look to it, although it takes a staggering nine hours and 300 Rupees ($7.50) to complete the same task as the bus that we took for a mere three hours and 60 Rupees ($1.50). The only catch with the bus, however, is that there is no hopping off at the station to use the bathroom, so if you didn't use the bathroom in New Jalpaigari, and you drank a lot of water on the night train from Kolkata, then odds are good that you weren't really able to take in all of the scenery, and even the abbreviated three hour trip was far, far too long.
The Dog: Darjeeling, like the rest of India, supports a healthy population of feral dogs who live in the streets (or on beaches or paths, regional geography permitting) and do charming things such as eat garbage and run around barking at each other all night long, and occasionally thrashing one another within (at least what sounds to be) inches of their lives. Now, don't mistake my intention here; I like dogs running about, and while some are old and beaten looking, there are plenty of cute little puppies, and even more cute crotchety old dogs lying around. Some have homes, some have collars that would imply homes, and some are clearly of the urban wilderness, though all seem to be surviving regardless of their circumstance. Actually, this being a country that (largely) holds all life as sacred, even the street dogs, the most part, are all fairly well taken care of, and generally good natured when it comes to the presence of passing American backpackers.
The Sniffles: The movement from hot beach to cold hill station to hot city to freezing mountain outpost has been tough on our health, and both of us are sniffling and sneezing and covered in so many--though never enough--blankets. Perhaps due to my delicate constitution, I've been sick for a week now (I was done in by the cold nights in Kodaikanal), while Jecca, either being more hearty than I, or due her readiness to wear a winter hat at night ("Your head is a chimney," she keeps telling me) has only been sick since the tail end of our time in Calcutta. Either way, what we both have seems to fall under the general heading of having a cold, and doesn't generally impede our daytime activities, but rather, it translates into a lot of sniffling and sneezing when we're trying to sleep, just between the hours of the night when the feral dogs start barking at each other, and whatever hour the Toy Train starts tooting its horn again in the morning.

15. Continuing the Great Tradition of Following White Rabbits

2005-02-28T06:14:00.000-06:00

Fig 15-1: Electronic Rabbit Photohunt (Leopold Cafe, Mumbai)

TOWARDS A NEW TERMINOLOGY IN TRAVEL:

White Rab•bit (hwIt 'ra-b&t) noun:
1. a fellow tourist in India, often distinguishable by the paleness of their skin.
2. a useful reference point when trying to navigate between locations generally frequented by tourists.

Alice followed one into Wonderland, Keanu Reeves followed one out of The Matrix, and while traveling in India, we follow them when we don't know where to go.

The fact is that there are only so many white people in this country, so odds are good that any given white person that you see is a tourist. Likewise, there are only so many places in this country that tourists go, so if you're ever feeling lost, the presence of fellow tourists is not only of particular comfort, it also happens to be very useful: if you don't know the exact name of the exact town in which you're supposed to get off of a bus or train (typically this happens when the towns are very small, and it's necessary to stop there to switch to another bus or train), all you have to do is follow any white rabbits that might be around.

At best, the result is wonderland, at worst, you learn the truth about reality and that you are the only one who can save humanity from its evil robot captors, although most of the time it simply means that you get where you're going without too much hassle or second guessing.

14. I'm Lovin' It

2005-02-18T05:35:00.000-06:00

Fig. 14-1: Where is Waldo? (Botanical Garden, Bangalore)

From the beach to the mountains: we've arrived in Kodaikanal and it is beautiful. As for the above picture? I'm not so sure that commentary is necessary--this is just one that simply needed to see the light of day.

13. The Beach is a Beautiful Place

2005-02-13T03:45:00.000-06:00

Fig 13-1,2,3,4: Sunset on Repeat
(click bottom row to enlarge pictures)

I wish that there was some way to upload the covertly shot video footage that accompanies the above still shots of a woman dancing to the sun setting over the Arabian Sea.

Jecca and I stumbled upon her one night, during the most beautiful sunset that I think either of us has ever seen, and there she was: a normal enough woman, wearing a skirt and a bikini top, listening to some sort of cd or mp3 player, and celebrating the setting sun by doing a confused sort of modern dance consisting of the repeated motion of bringing her hands together near her heart, and then fully extending her arms out to her sides as if she might miraculously rise into the sky, over and over again. This woman seemed determined to dance until the last bit of light had left the sky, and the catch here was that whatever song she was listening to wasn’t long enough, so she would have to halt this celebration every few minutes to stop, rewind the song, and then start flinging herself around again. If your religion is the setting sun, and your hymnal comes in the form of one song, religiously repeated, then don’t you think you would owe it to yourself (and to the sun, for that matter) to figure out how to use the repeat function on your cd player?

There have been fleeting moments when I look around at all of the white kids with dreadlocks, all the OM symbols or pot leafs embroidered onto clothing in all seriousness, or people engaging in these sorts of religious routines, and forget that I don’t fit in. These usually only last a minute, and this particular event certainly wasn’t one of those moments. Lest we forget, if even just momentarily, we have reminders like these all around us: we truly are surrounded by hippies.

Fig 13-5,6,7,8: Sunset at Varkala Beach
(click bottom row to enlarge pictures)

12. CONFESSIONS: Part 1 and Part 2

2005-02-10T06:46:00.000-06:00

Fig. 12-1: Self Portrait with Christmas Lights, Varkala Beach

PART ONE:
1. I wear sandals everyday. If I'm not wearing sandals, I'm wearing flip-flops. If I'm not wearing sandals or flip-flops? Odds are good that I'm in the ocean, or else sleeping.

2. I wear my key to our padlock (our only door lock in most places) on a piece of string around my neck. Jecca informs me that this makes me either look like a frat boy or like I’m in the army. I found the piece of string in the sand somewhere between our beach hut in Palolem Beach, and the ocean. It could have come from anywhere. Clean? If it ever was, it's not anymore. Sharp looking? You better believe that it's not.

3. I wear linen pants most of the time. If not, then my pants are light cotton or (in a major city) blue jeans. Regardless of which pair of these I'm wearing, more often than not, I roll them up way too far, giving off the unmistakable impression that I am wearing clam diggers. Clam diggers. I'm not kidding, nor am I proud, but it keeps the cuffs from getting wet, and I am on vacation, so what the hell.

4. I am nearly incapable of taking my own advice when it comes to both itching bug bites and dealing with peeling sunburn. This is simply one of my deficiencies as a person, and I can accept that, even if my poor shoulders cannot.

5. I forgot to take my Mefloquine on Monday. I took it on Tuesday instead. To my knowledge, I don't have malaria yet.

6. Sometimes I forget to keep my mouth shut in the shower, sometimes I forget to keep my eyes closed in the shower, and one time, I accidentally brushed my teeth with tap water. I have yet to get sick, which means that I am either hearty, lucky, or both. I do not want to get sick, but I will more than happily write all about it when I eventually do. If I’m too ill to do it myself, then I’m sure that Jecca will do me that justice.

7. It can be assumed, by the way that bars and restaurants here name themselves, that the tourist industry here either doesn’t have a handle on subtlety, or doesn’t trust the intelligence of its clientele. This means that, in pursuit of things to do after the sun goes down, we have subjected ourselves to the following not-so-subtly named places:

The Laughing Buddha, Palolem Beach: The name says it all, really: you couldn't turn anywhere without making a friend (the kind of friend that they taught us to avoid in D.A.R.E.).
Pub World, Bangalore: This over-stylized watering hole boasted four unique bars under one roof (a Wild West Saloon, Manhattan Cocktail Bar, German Beer Hall, and English Pub), though it came off more like a forgotten T.G.I. Fridays of the future, and in the end, just seemed like a normal bar with a badly confused interior.
The Funky Art Cafe, North Cliff Varkala Beach: Possibly winning the award for the worst name, considering that it’s not a horrible place; we’ve spent a couple of nights here watching the lights off fishing boats way out at sea, though it’s exciting name seems to have made it the hotspot in this little beach community. It packs tourists in at such an alarming rate some nights that we’ve mostly opted for other more nameless places along the cliff.

8. We haven't been anywhere but this beach since February started. Yesterday, we redecorated our little room so that now there's a table set up in the middle of the room for playing cards and Scrabble, under which we can stack the pile of books that we're working on reading.

9. If I don't leave the computer right now, I'm going to miss the sunset.

PART TWO:
1. There isn't really a part two: I just liked the title. Shout out to Usher.

11. Please Do the Needful

2005-02-09T07:02:00.000-06:00


Fig. 11-1: Letter of Introduction
* * *

Hinted at, alluded to: Jecca and I spent big dollars on my birthday. Eveyone would have been proud. The food was good, the three people operating one boat on our behalf for just over fifty dollars apiece was good, but in all honesty, the boat did not move that much. $cam Artists.


Fig. 11-2: I Got a Sunset For My Birthday

10. Life on January 31st Road

2005-01-30T10:24:00.000-06:00

Fig. 10-1: January 31st Road

Cramped into the corner of an air conditioned back room of a store called SHOP'N'SAVE in the town of Fort Cochin, somewhere on the southwest coast of India, I am preparing to celebrate my 26th birthday. In some ways, this is like home (wood-paneled walls and exposed fluorescent tube lights feel Midwestern to me) and in some ways it's not (it certainly doesn't smell like home), but either way, the differences between this birthday and past ones is not lost on me.

Counting backwards, I can recall Craig putting on a birthday party in his Downtown St. Paul studio space (that now lives on only in memory and may or may not be a condo by now) in the absolute cold of winter, a series of hazy-but-warm memories from the year previous at the Turf Club (which ended with me throwing snowballs in the middle of some residential street in the Midway for no reason), and dashing from London to Glasgow the year before that to simultaneously visit Jesse Cain and see Clinic play. This is not Downtown St. Paul, though, this is not London, and this is by no means a Clinic show: this is India and this is different.

In India, personal victories are harder fought (we found a restaurant serving vegetable lasagne for dinner tonight and it had real cheese!) and the rewards are quite often smaller (seriously, this was a huge: lasagne with real cheese that tasted not like Indian food, but lasagne, followed by real cake that didn't taste like bland bread). Being as far from home as I am, and this being India, there will be no gathering of friends tonight, no birthday drinks, and no waking up tomorrow thinking that 26 feels a lot like a pounding headache. Instead, tonight will consist of a call home to my parents, a walk home through a sleepy little town, and trying to get below this unbelievable humidity (in January, no less) with the aid of a cathedral-like room, a wonderfully efficient ceiling fan, and a copy of The Autograph Man by Zadie Smith.

Different? Yes.
Bad? Absolutely not.

Tomorrow: The backwaters of Kerala for 24 hours in our own hired houseboat. Pure birthday luxury.

Fig. 10-2: Houseboat

(actual pictures to follow)

09. Haircut!

2005-01-27T03:57:00.000-06:00

Fig. 9-1: London Hairdressers (Photo by Jecca)

A couple of weeks ago, I was desperate for a haircut, so I took a chance on a place called London Hairdressers, though it was no more in London, than I was going to pay more than a dollar and a half for the haircut, so I decided to split the difference and give it a try. The result? Well, Jecca has gone from telling me that I looked like Peter Brady to saying that I now look like I've gone AWOL from the Army. You can't win 'em all, but I prefer the side of that spectrum that I now find myself on; at least I'm getting Robin Williams comparisons again, instead of George W. Bush (I totally deny that one anyway).

Fig. 9-2: "Self Reformation is the Greatest Service of the World "

Confidential to AARON: I may be a little late on this one, but I'm voting haircut. Haircuts may not last as long as tatoos, but that can be a good thing, too.

08. A Lifetime of Cold Showers

2005-01-21T23:30:00.000-06:00

Some mornings, while I'm still lying in bed, the breeze through the palm trees sounds just like rain, and on these occasions, it's enough to get me up and peek outside, but I've so far been disappointed every time to find that just another bright, cloudless day in India. In the three hot, sunny weeks that I've been in this country, I've seen clouds just two times, and the only falling water has come from the shower spigot, not the sky. Just like the rain, though, the water that comes out of the shower is seldom anything other than cold.

It has been nearly three weeks since I've had a shower with any degree of warmth. It's not that warm showers don't exist--they do: they're called Geysers, and they come in the form of a tank on the wall, which heats the water, and must be turned on well in advance of the actual act of showering if you want the shower to be more than lukewarm. Likewise, whereas they do exist, not that many people have them, as they are largely the territory of those who have money. If you are without one of these contraptions, your option is basically to heat a bucket of water, and as you're pouring it over your head, pretend that it's coming out of the wall.

My last warm shower (I never remember to turn the Geyser on with enough advance notice to warrant a hot shower) was in Bombay, where we stayed at Jecca's cousin's wife's parents' flat that was the Bombay-equivalent to a Park Avenue condo, overlooking the city's main green space, the Cricket Oval. In addition to being two of the most impressive people that I have met in India, or otherwise, these people were definitely not wont for money or hot water heaters, and even they had to throw a switch in the wall in advance of showering if they didn't want to spend the entire time shivering. I know that this way of heating showers is common in Europe, but the difference would seem to be that the people who don't have money don't have hot water, whereas I have been in some pretty crappy places in Europe, and some especially crappy garden-level (which is a euphemism for below-ground) flats, that certainly had hot water.

Regardless of whether this is good or bad (it is warm here; hot water for showering is not a necessity), the fact remains that, in absence of warm water, I am not only getting used to daily cold showers, I am starting to like cold showers. I'm beginning to understand the nuances of cold showers (for example: there are there are different ways to lead into a cold shower, and different ways to deal with the water once you have immersed yourself); the details that I always missed when I was busy thinking of cold as the lacking end of the shower spectrum, with all points above it differing by increasing units of warmth.

Of course, it also doesn't hurt that every morning, when I wake up and look out the door, it's always 90 degrees and sunny outside, without a cloud or a drop of rain in sight.

07. Happy Birthday, Lawrence

2005-01-20T11:58:00.000-06:00

Though I am admittedly out of the loop when it comes to current events as of late, the fact that G.W. took the oath of office today has not escaped me, and while I somehow held out hope that wouldn't really happen much the way a kid hides underneath their sheets so as to become invisible to monsters in the dark, it looks like there's not much chance of things happening any other way.

That said, this day is never a complete loss, as on January 20th , 1981, in addition to Ronald Reagan swearing that same oath, my little brother Jon was born. Since I can't be there to help him celebrate, anyone who can buy him drinks and sing to him on my behalf will be greatly rewarded with all sorts of low-quality souvenier gifts from the great country of India.

Confidential to Jon: Since I can't be there to sing to you myself, I'm going to make believe that the children in this picture that I took on a rural road are really excited because it's your birthday, singing Happy Birthday to you, and that plaque that they're holding is announcing your 24 years. Happy Birthday Little Brother!

06. The New Slang

2005-01-16T11:25:00.000-06:00

People in India ask tourists lots of things. Sometimes it is about "some smoking," other times it is to come into their restaurant, and yet other times it is the (not so) siren call of the transportation industry, as every turn in the road seems to offer men asking "Taxi?" or "Autorickshaw?" (see figure 1).

Fig. 1: Autorickshaw: A small taxi-like vehicle, often powered by something that sounds like a lawnmower engine, carries 2-3 passengers, and costs less than a taxi, due to the fact that each passenger is willfully risking death in order to save a few Rupees.

In Palolem Beach, the last place where we stayed, the most common question that we heard, though, was that of the people sitting in the shop stalls that lined the main road off of the beach, asking if we would like to come in and look at their shop ("Looking is free!" they insist).

After a few days of walking this same strip of shops and refusing their invitations, a few kids in hippie-crap-selling stalls that clued into the fact that I'm an American, and in an attempt to engage a potential customer (these kids are good), they started to talk like California skater kids. The best attempt at this? When I matched one kid's "What's up, dude?" routine, he replied, "I AM FULL POWER!"

I don't know if he actually heard this phrase somewhere, or if he made it up, but as far as I'm concerned, this should be added to the book of American slang, post haste.

05. Upside Down

2005-01-15T06:07:00.000-06:00

The computer that I’m using tells me that it is 12:55AM on Tuesday, January 1, 2002, which clearly means that I am writing from the past, and let me tell you that the first 55 minutes of January 2002 (if you don’t recall them that well) have been unseasonably warm and sunny, considering both the time of year, and the time of day. Has the world turned upside down? Yes, in a lot of ways, it has. It still doesn’t escape me that anyone reading this is probably sitting in a very thoroughly chilled Midwestern city (sitting at work, perhaps?), almost directly on the other side of the planet, and thus either you are sitting upside down, or I am: it’s your pick.

My two cents? That would clearly be that I am upside down, while you all have remained right side up.

Just to describe: I am writing this from a computer in a corrugated-metal shack with small windows, just thirty feet from a very beautiful beach, where I am sitting next to the cell phone that connects all three of the computers on this relatively small, 3-computer network, to the internet. This network, like almost all of those in paradise, runs off of this sort of cell phone connection, with the addition of a few largish car batteries backing up the power source, due to the regularity of brownouts. This, plus the fact that Hotmail seems virtually inaccessible from these cell phone networks, means that I have thus sent one solitary email in the last two weeks, the lucky recipient of which were my parents (Hi Mom and Dad).

Things here are well, though I can't say that I've grown accustomed to it yet. In fact, just trying to sum up the multitudes of information and experience that I've taken in, in just short of two weeks, gives me something akin to what I imagine an anxiety disorder must feel like. Combine that feeling with a very slow Internet connection, and viola: I've grown incapable of being useful on the Internet. That means no reply emails, short blog posts, and a need to sit and do nothing for a while afterward. The solution? Often it has just been to go to the beach, which coincidently, is about all that Jecca and I have been doing for the last week and some. Initially, this made me feel really uncomfortable, just sitting around, followed by some more sitting around (aren't we in India, after all? Shouldn’t we be looking at something?), but let me tell you: that must have just been because I was reading the wrong book (an F. Scott Fitzgerald Biography written by Andrew Turnbull), because since I've started reading White Teeth by Zadie Smith (giant thank you to Nichole), everything is feeling much more natural. The beach was fully taken on today, with very few reservations, and perhaps to such an extent that I am looking a little pinkish-red. Oh well. It’s been just over a week now, and between the beaches of both North Goa and South Goa, I think that we’ve succeeded in airing out the exhaust and grit of Bombay, chasing away the sickness that comes of getting over jet lag while getting used to malaria medication, and becoming accustomed to a lifestyle that will likely not be comfortable, except in small and placid moments.

As for the future, I think that we’ve decided that we’re taking a sleeper bus (whatever that means) to the town of Hampi this coming Monday night, to engage in some actual sightseeing that actual Indians go so far as to recommend. If you’re wondering what actual Indians say about Goa, it’s something along the lines of some flip comment about parties, some misty-eyed reference to youth, or if you’re actually in Goa, speaking to absolutely anyone in the service industry (I am talking about buying a drink at a bar or a candy bar at a shop) they say something like: “you want some smoking?” Yes, we’ve essentially been in the equivalent of some combination of Cancun and Amsterdam for the last week, and once we figured out how to shake free of the hippie/rave scene, it’s been just fine.

One of these days, I have every intention of posting something more particular about our experiences, but for right now I’m going to bask in the fact that this may be my longest post to date, and leave it at that. Also, stay tuned: it’s very likely that the next post will come from somewhere way off in the future.

04. Learning Curve

2005-01-14T05:00:00.000-06:00

Okay, so that last post was pretty smug, but it came at the conclusion of a long day spent pacing out a death-defying four hours of rural backroads between our sleepy (but somewhat isolated) guesthouse on Morjim Beach, and the Lonely Planet's promise of fast internet in the town of Vagator. As it turned out, though, the Lonely Planet was serious when it warned us against taking its map too literally: what appeared to be a pretty direct 2km slowly unravelled into a much less direct, and much more time-consuming jaunt than we had planned for, and while the backroads of Goa are by all accounts beautiful, they suffer a blight of tourists riding rented motorcycles and mopeds at unadvised speeds, and unadvisedly close to any tourists (us) who have decided that walking might be more interesting way to get between Point A and Point B than taking a cab or a bus.

From here on out, I promise to be on my best behavior when it comes to commenting on the suffering of the world.

On another note, I've also decided to cease to wait for the secret of India to reveal itself to me before I really get these blog posts rolling, as it would appear that there is no unifying factor which makes this country make sense; instead, where this unifying truth should be, seems to be a cultural learning curve that would appear to have no upward limit, where each lesson learned seems to simply become the platform upon which a new lesson plays itself out. And to think: we've yet to leave the beach.

03. Connexions

2005-01-11T06:16:00.000-06:00

Who knew that 56K dial-up connections still existed? Apparently everyone in beach towns in India.

If the internet was always this slow, I would refuse to use it. I now believe that I am starting to understand the suffering of the people of the world.

02. In Summary:

2005-01-05T00:15:00.000-06:00

Two days ago, I went to the Middle East for the first time in my life. Then, I went to India.

Yesterday, I et a shark and went to a Bollywood movie which I didn't understand.

More to come later, as Intertron 5000 is making me dizzy right now.

01. Riding In the New Year(s)

2005-01-01T19:34:00.000-06:00

...

I finally beat jet lag. Ask me how, and I'll tell you that I can't tell you, but anyone sitting with me at the Turf Club on Wednesday night could probably tell you. I'll just say that I proudly slept through the first leg of my Minneapolis to Iceland to London flight and showed up chipper in London at noon.

Having declared this, though, I also have to admit that I proceeded to boldly waste this accomplishment by not only celebrating the Greenwich Mean Time New Years countdown, but also the--though admittedly much hazier--Central Standard Time countdown. Anyone who missed out on my drunken phone calls around midnight CST can surely look forward to more in the future: last night I only dialed the phone numbers that I knew off hand, whereas I now have everyone's phone number recorded into a single (and very accessable) place. I hestitate to really consider the full possibility for hilarity when I next move these phone numbers into a cell phone in India. Did I mention that the time difference between India and home is eleven and a half hours? That means that I will be going to sleep when the Midwest wakes up, and vice-versa, so I'm just going to appologise in advance for all of the possible suprizes that such a time difference will certainly bring about.

Time differences aside, New Years Eve was spent with Dave Schelesinger, his girlfriend Anne, and the shocking last minute guest appearance of one of my favorite people: none other than the Little Rock born, and fellow-can't-stay-putter, Ginny Sims who is currently teaching English in Barcelona, and a few of her friends who live in London. The night started at 5:00 in front of the Natural History Museum, and wound a path that stopped for pints in a gay pub in Earl's Court (oops) where we weren't overly-appreciated, an excellent dinner at The Troubadour complete with New Years resolutions and party poppers, a countdown at a somewhat annonymous pub in South Kensington, and then hours and hours passed and bottles and bottles of red wine consumed at the house/studio of a pretty well-known sculptor friend of Ginny's in South London, where catching up with Ginny was more like a supervised visit than old friends talking, and where the three of found more common ground as we rounded out the second, more Midwestern, New Years Eve countdown, before finally giving in to sleep. I woke up under a very thin blanket, on a sturdy (though not particularly comfortable army surplus-style cot), in the middle of a room full of plastic-covered sculptures.

In summary: I am tired.

Also: I forgot how much I like this.