rocksmysocks

Seeking Aspiring Fortune Cookie Copywriters Part-Time Opportunity

2008-12-22T21:54:00.000-08:00

Spent yesterday on a freaking long walk through Chiang Mai that took me along the river Ping to Waroot Market where I wandered through random stalls and shops. Went through a huge display of hair clips and found myself in what appeared to be some kind of beauty store that for no good reason had a bunch of plastic wallets made from anime comics on a shelf including a stack made from one of my all time favorites "Spirited Away". The nextdoor shop sold everything from Ovaltine to school supplies and I indulged in one of my favorite shopping experiences in SE Asia, reading the copy on notebooks. I don't know who comes up with this stuff, maybe someone somewhere just drops a block of text into a translating tool, but it's amazing, sometimes it's bizarre translations of lyrics or just news copy that has nothing to do with anything and sometimes it's pithy truisms that read like Buddhist koans and have nothing to do with anything.

Some of my favorites from yesterday.

"Whenever I have any problems they come and stand beside be"

"Welcome to the lovely rabbit world you'll happy and sweet with me"

"have your wine salted"

"Happiness is the meaning and purpose of life, the whole aim of human existence"

"Knowledge, in truth, is the great sun in the firmament. Life and Power are scattered with all it's beams"

"love is blind and lovers cannot see the pretty follies that they themselves commit"

"Bad things have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss."

" 'I want to eat the best local food.' I'd like to place an order."

Guide seeking guidee; likes long walks through the jungles of Laos at night, drinking lao lao, and freaking the hell out of foreigners.

2008-11-03T04:34:00.000-08:00

Dear SFTFTHOO, having you as my guide was an experience I'll not soon forget.

Honestly when you offered to take me with you to the local village to "get" some sticky rice I assumed you meant "get" as in "acquire and return to my lovely resort with" to enjoy the lush jungle setting in comfort. I did not realize you meant take the boat (board with motor on it) to a local village to make sticky rice at your friends house, then enjoy said sticky rice with friend and his house chickens (chickens that are allowed in the house and try to steal the sticky rice), to then consume buffalo soup (tasty), buffalo salad (raw meat?) and lao lao (paint thinner sold as a beverage in Laos) and to play tic-tac-toe until it was dark.

The romance of being in a foreign country, in an unknown location, with near strangers has so much mystery and romance ... in books. Since it was dark I again ass-out-of-u-and-me'd that we would take the boat back, imagine my surprise when you suggested we walk and led me off the road onto that little jungle path. Those steep hills flowing down to the river must look so pretty in the light I remember thinking to myself while slipping and sliding through the mud almost losing my shoes. Oh and the leeches! My gracious how I shrieked when I saw that first one on my ankle (you know, I thought it was a bit of leaf because I'd never even seen a leech before), and then I kept thinking I felt them on my ankles, though really it was just the two, ha ha ha! Oh, and the snakes (dangerous), and spiders (not, but huge), and the slippery little bridge made of three sticks of bamboo with the sheerest coating of mud, and me clinging to your hand the whole time (except for when you tromped ahead) because you had the flashlight and I couldn't see a thing and had no idea where we were going.

You were so assured that I followed you without too many protests. Though honestly when after a half hour of flailing through the mud you confessed that you were lost, I was vindicated, I mean, relieved. Luckily we were able to walk back to the village and take the main road (which was substantially less dramatic being even and leech free) all of the three kilometers back to the resort where I collapsed on my bed breathless from the excitement.

I have never experienced any thing like it.

Don't call me.

Yours truly,

Freaked-out Foreigner

Things to buy in Laos

2008-10-27T01:51:00.000-07:00

the Dark

2008-10-27T01:00:00.000-07:00

You don't know you don't know something until you know it. I remember a conversation (argument?) I had about contrasts and whether photographs stole a piece of your soul by fixing you in time at a given moment and somewhere in there was the point that in order to know something you must have a contrast, a before and after, e.g. for something to be hard there must be something soft or softer at least. Point being that you understand something through the things you have already experienced, the things you already know.

I've been in rooms with the lights off, under covers, in blackouts, in basements, in closets with my eyes closed, I've covered my eyes (no peeking), worn blindfolds, been on dark streets, in dark theaters, and even in caves before and I thought I knew what dark was. I was wrong.

In Vang Vieng there caves that go kilometers into mountains, the mountains are black volcanic rock knife edges that leave scratches on the sky, inside the bottoms of the caves are covered with a soft sandy mud that is carried on raindrops through the rocks and which acts like soundproofing. Between the entrance of the cave and the outside daylight is sorted into levels of shadow; at the very edge I peered in thinking "Wow. That's dark." In actuality I was only looking at an intermediate layer. Beyond what I could see as dark was the real dark, the whole dark, and walking in I traveled through that initial dark and looked back and saw the outside light and then looked forward and saw a dark as much darker again. I did that at least three more times before I was far enough in that I couldn't see the daylight or even where the daylight came from and there was the real deal, the Dark.

Things that go bump don't belong here because there is nothing to bump, only silence, and soft sandy mud underneath to smother footsteps, so moving forward feels like falling and vertigo reaches up and grabs my hand pulling me down to feel that there is actually something below me. I started to giggle from the fear and excitement. It was like being on a roller coaster of waves of emotion; relief when I stepped forward onto something solid, terror when I missed a step, excitement at the sensations in my feet. I felt like I had been swallowed by the mountain, the floor was soft and cool, the skin of some huge underground pachyderm or cetacean with bones of stalactite and stalagmite, I was Jonah without the sea. There were musical ribs and cool pools and quietly sighing holes that appeared out of nowhere, they didn't yawn because this was no sleepy goodnight dark. This was the staring "did you hear something" dark, the dark of life sentences or teen angst, the inky pit that leads you to examine your life and soul and give yourself bad tattoos.

You know, The Dark.

I may have possibly figured out how to add photos!

2008-10-01T09:05:00.000-07:00

yayayaaaaaaaaa! it worked! more to come.

Bananas and Rocks

2008-09-29T23:22:00.001-07:00

Ever get a gift and when you first see it you think "what the f*&@" but later it turns out to be the coolest most useful thing and you never would have thought to get it for yourself?

I was going to Ninh Binh on a local bus full of guys smoking and drinking and sleeping in the aisle and thought that since my ticket said Ninh Binh "someone" would poke me and tell me where to get off, fyi Vietnam doesn't work like that, when I finally asked someone where I was, I was already in Hanoi; it was six am and already feeling a little grumpy before they pulled my dripping pack from the baggage compartment, when the smell hit me I got way more grumpy. Having never smelled fish pee, I can only imagine that it smells like a mixture of fish and pee and therefore that must have been what was dripping from my bag. I had planned to get right back on a bus for Ninh Binh but there was no way I was going to carry that stinking mess anywhere; instead I got a hotel and ended up hanging out for five days in Hanoi.

Five days that included: discovering Lamingtons (one of the tastiest confections my mouth has ever had the pleasure of), cake enrobed in chocolate and covered in coconut which must be served warm for the full effect; meeting a couchsurfer who took me out to a lovely temple on the lake and was able to explain the finer points of Vietnamese Buddhism, thereby answering questions I have been puzzling over for months (it's a mix of pure land, ancestor worship, and animism, duh); finding new sandals, that are stylish cheap and only slightly uncomfortable in black AND silver; discovering the cultural charm of water puppet theater, which is nowhere near as cheesy as it sounds and should not be missed; meeting a US pilot and having my view of the types of people who choose to serve in the military challenged, again; taking a walk into the slums with new friends and meeting a Vietnamese tea seller and her family, being invited to a lunch which included chicken on the bone, intestines and blood pudding all of which I ate with gusto, then we sat around and drank rice liquor and watched videos; and, best of all, met the people I traveled to Ninh Binh with.

An Irish community development worker, a Canadian student and part time mahout, two computer programers ((one american, one from the UK), another candian who is nineteen and traveling alone through southeast asia, and a jack of all trades who is off to teach English in Spain in between his diving, rock climbing, and band.

It was rockin! I don't even really want to talk about it because it's one of those wonders found by accident, tourist free, and so beautiful all I could say was "wow". So thank you universe for getting those fish to pee on my bag, I never would have gotten that for myself.

Barnyard in a bowl

2008-07-30T02:30:00.000-07:00

It’s taken me quite a while to settle in the madness that is Ho Chi Minh but now I feel I’m finding my stride. The place I’ve living is right in plonk in the middle of downtown, which is in the middle of a consumerist explosion. Marc Jacobs and Chloe both opened new stores just around the corner and there are more places to buy pearls than pho but it’s still Vietnam and so there is great food tucked into little corners and alleyways and sometimes sitting in plain sight.

Today it was the xoi ga (sticky rice with chicken) place just two blocks over. I’ve walked by this place a lot and it’s always busy at lunch and I’ve wanted to try it but I have a place I go to that has really tasty cheap xoi ga and delicious che (sweet soup: a drink made with coconut milk and jelly bits and mung bean paste which tastes way better than that sounds), the xoi ga is in the form of nuc mam fried chicken and it’s delish. So faced with the decision of the known, tasty, and cheap vs. the unknown there just is no contest , … until today

And the title of best xoi ga and che goes to old faithfull., Che Xoi. However I may need to create a new category for xoi ga with eggies. Eggies are eggs before they’ve left the chicken and honestly I wouldn’t have eaten them if I’d known that but I didn’t so I did. Tasty little nibblets too. Though now I might have more trouble chewing through the membrane that connects them.

The eggies and sticky rice were snack sized and I was curious about a soup I saw someone order that looked like it had blood pudding in it. So I ordered what turned out to be crab soup. Crab soup with shrimp to be exact, and chicken, and fish, and pork. Banh canh cua has a weird gelatinous texture that I will never be totally at ease with but this was quite tasty with none of the mud flavor that can sometimes accompany seafood streetfood and there was a little piece of blood pudding after all. And there is something so Vietnamese about a soup with five distinct types of meat, though pork is really a vegetable here.

If you happen to be in Ho Chi Minh. The eggies place is on Nguyen Trung Truc and my favorite che place is at the end of Bui Thi Xuan. Enjoy.

Mixed media: cotton, stainless steel

2008-07-24T01:27:00.000-07:00

Doctor's appointments abroad are always interesting since non-American doctors have their own perspective on professional behavior.

I went in for a gyn check up (annual exams are an important part of maintaining your health) and it so happened that I was wearing a dress. The doctors response was unexpected, instead of having me undress and put on a robe she told me to remove my underwear and lift up my skirt!

This would NEVER happen in the US, it's far too informal. In the US you must put on the paper robe. Even if you're wearing a miniskirt so short that strangers can admire your brazilian, you must disrobe and done the appropriate clothing to transform yourself from person to patient. In Vietnam there is no person/patient barrier. They'd give you a colonoscopy on a street corner if they could find one that wasn't already populated with a cafe, a soup stall, and a barber. So I guess my doctor saw the skirt and thought "well now, isn't that convenient, save me a paper robe to boot."

Side note here on the nature of underwear. Underwear has weight and significance that other clothes lack. If you see a guy in shorts with his shirt off that's one thing, see the same guy in his tighty whities then you've "seen him in his underwear". Showing someone your underwear is fraught with significance and can change the course of a relationship so you have to considering the implications. Aside to my aside, one time I was on my way to sushi with T and A and we passed some underwear lying on the road and I swear to god A said she would chew the waistband if I would spring for sushi. Casual-T wouldn't let us do the dare because he said he wouldn't be able to eat. Would he have had the same reaction to A chewing on t-shirt? Would it even have been suggested?

Point is that you can't just leave your underwear lying around and once my panties are off I have to figure out what to do with them. There are these little hooks on the wall next to the examining table where one might hang ones' clothes with the underwear tucked discretely underneath the other clothing ... but I am still wearing my other clothing. However, my doctor and I seem to have a pretty casual and intimate relationship; I'm about to hike up my skirt and doctors must see loads of underpants, so okay fine, I will hang my underpants on the wall. (Hands off post-mods, I'm already planning a whole show) The underpants are a bit, ahem, not-newly-purchased, this is why the french always wear nice underpants because you never know who is going to see them, especially if you are french. But there is no time to consider the ramifications of not being French and my not-newly-purchased panties are hung above the examining table.

Vietnam has a la carte health care and following the exam the good docotor asks if I'd like a sonogram. (Would you like a side salad with that? Very good.) I figure why not and I ask if I should "get dressed". No need she assures me then she leads me out of the room, points me toward the reception area, and to my surprise waves another patient, with whom I do not have a casual yet intimate relationship, toward the room where my not-newly-purchased, weighty, significant post-mod piece is still hanging on the wall. Flustered I mumble just a second and step back in and grab my panties off the wall.

Standing in reception, naked under my clothes, and holding my panties, my next thought is "put underwear on". That's it. No details about "go to the ladies room" or "maybe not here" and distracted by trying to come with a catchy name for my art show that includes references to underwear that aren't puns I step into the first leg hole. Mental alarm bells start going off triggered by the pain ripping through my thigh. I suddenly remember that I had a motorbike accident and can barely lift my legs. All thoughts of my show immediately evacuate my mind as I realize I'm in a reception area with multiple doors, hallways, a stairwell, and an elevator opening directly onto where I'm standing with one foot in my underpants. My response is panic. As I rush to put my other foot in my underpants without wrenching my recently damaged hip further, the leg hole catches on my flipflop.

So there I am; bent over, knickers around my ankles, trying to free them from my flipflop when the receptionist walks back in. What can I do? I look her in the eye, pull up my underpants, un-tuck my skirt (I of course tucked my skirt into the waistband of my underwear) and sit down to wait for my sonogram with as much poise as I can muster.

In life I have found that how you do something is as important as what you do. If you can manage to pull up your underpants in the middle of a waiting room, looking a total stranger in the eye, and still maintain your dignity, then I think you probably managed not to almost fall off the couch laughing when you sat down.

If All Your Friends Stuck Sharp Pointy Things in Their Ears, Would You?

2007-12-31T02:04:00.000-08:00

Middle child, middle girl between two brothers actually. So I have eaten worms, grasshoppers, and dog food; I've sat on a fire ant hill while counting to five; and I've hung on to the outside of a merry-go-round at full speed with my legs flying out behind me.

I used dares to prove that I was just as tough as my brothers. More so in some cases, though not many because one was older, one seems to have about half the usual number of pain receptors, and both were less risk averse. What is it about testosterone that makes boys unable to do simple math; me+hill+riding with no hands=broken bones? Maybe I discovered that some things weren't worth the moment of "oh yes I can!". After the merry-go-round incident I had a doctor picking gravel out of lower lip and chin for what felt like forever. On the plus side there were sometimes gnarly scabs and pus but not always. Even though I began to developed a sense of self preservation we still dared each other to silly things: to drink six raw eggs, to eat what's in my hand without seeing what it is, to let go of the swing for just one swing. Sometimes the dares were just implied because the first rule of dares is that once a dare is spoken you either do it or you're branded, as long as it's not said out loud you can still say whatever the dare is is stupid and not be a chicken.

I still have difficulty backing down. There was the time I decided to drive through the mountains around Shasta at 1am and ran out of gas and then had to make my way up a washed out dirt road with ruts up to my axle on my 350 Honda motorcycle, simply because it was suggested, out loud, to me by my then-boyfriend. On the plus side my inability to back down is why I learned to ride a motorbike in Ho Chi Minh and why I decided to travel on my own through India with a broken clavicle. But sometimes I find myself doing something that seems so ridiculous, so dangerous and ill-conceived that I wonder about my own testosterone levels.

In Vietnam there are these guys that are street barbers. They have a really basic setup right on the side of the road, usually just a chair, a mirror, and a tarp to keep off the sun. They cut hair, shave faces and, get this, clean ears. It's scary to see because they use these loooooooong metal tools that look like what you would use to scrap tarter off of a crocodiles' back teeth if you wanted to make sure you still had your hands at the end of the procedure. (Not that crocodiles need tarter scraped because they are carnivorous and also they have a symbiotic relationship with these little birds who clean their teeth. Honest. Look it up.) Anyway these guys, on the street in Saigon, just stick these freakin' long skinny metal things right into peoples ears which, to my American eyes raised by the "never stick ANYTHING in your ears" school, looks like the worst idea ever. Punctured eardrums, deafness, staph infections that travel to your brain or eyes and make you blind or insane or, even worse, blind AND insane so you have to imagine the hallucinations you would otherwise be seeing (Does it work like that, do you suppose? Do blind people imagine hallucinations. Okay, hallucinations are imaginary to begin with but do blind people imagine that they SEE hallucinations?) Anyway, I always said never, never, ever was I gonna let some random guy stick metal things in my ears to "clean" them.

Then today I decided to get a massage with my friend L. After the steamroom, the body scrub, and the facial, there they were. Three little barber chairs and men in white shirts and bow-ties, who looked more like they wanted to get me a drink than dowse my ears for god knows what. I looked at L, she looked at me and asked "Are you gonna get your ears cleaned?" What the hell was I supposed to do? She said it, said it right out loud and she has an older brother too, so she knows what it means when you say it out loud. Of course, when I casually said "sure" and looked right at her she couldn't back out either.

No broken ear drums but he some how managed to trim the hair inside my ear! The implications are too frightening to ponder in depth but it's clear that at some point today contrary to my AMA upbringing, I stuck something pointed and SHARP in my ear.

Christmas Saigon Style

2007-12-27T16:44:00.000-08:00

It's the holiday season and so of course I'm thinking of friends and family and missing home. Though Christmas here was lovely; there were Santas and Reindeer and fairies and disco balls and bunnies and butterflies, because the Vietnamese don't go for all that low-key American Christmas cheer and figure why not break out ALL the good stuff. The children dressed up in little santa suits complete with faux fur trim and hats, despite the fact that the nights here are in the eighties, which I think supports my theory that the Vietnamese have a lower body temperature than the usual 98.6 F, and now the kiddies also have to wear helmets over their hats because Vietnam has a (gasp) HELMET LAW! So the streets filled with helmeted families on motorbikes, mini-Santas riding right up front, going out to see the myriad lights and decorations erected by the city in honor of birth of Christ, or the wacky flying white guy and his flying horses with horns who breaks into your house and leaves things, depending on if you are Catholic. The traffic jams were incredible.

For me it wasn't "just like the ones I used to know", there was no cranberry at the markets, I had to make do with extra sugar in my tea in lieu of candy canes and cookies, and while there were plenty of fires they were mostly the charcoal kind used for roasting the various parts of animals. So it's not exactly like home but still, it was Christmas after a fashion, a disco/early eighties fashion. An aside here to note that satin, always a favorite of the Vietnamese, has crested to new heights on the back of the eighties revival and I have to say I have never seen anyone look good in a mono-color satin pantsuit not even teeny smoking-hot Vietnamese chicks. Same goes for any fitted satin dress not made for the wearer seconds before dressing so as to flatter the body shape of right now not the one from three days ago before your boobs/butt/belly changed size /shape due to the lunar cycle. It's nice to see that some things are the same the world over.

Now I'm staring down the barrel of 2008. January first has a funny status here because the big New Year celebration is Tet and that is still a month away, true there may be parties and countdowns and perhaps even high shoes involved (another fashion aside, I've been living in flip-flops and can't understand what I ever had against them. I know they are not actual "shoes", more like a way to go barefoot and not have your foot lacerated, but in their capacity as foot-laceration preventors they are amazingly effective and comfortable) but all the really big dealio stuff is still to come. Though, as they say in AA, every day is a new beginning right? So maybe I will celebrate the first day of the rest of my life on January 1 and get dressed up (still debating about the flip flops) to go out and order a mocktail.

Cheers and Happy Holidays everyone.

PS it occurs to that the proximity of the AA reference and the mocktail might suggest to some that I am a recovering alcoholic, I'm not it's just that alcohol makes me hurl.

Know thy self.

2007-12-22T02:23:00.000-08:00

In 2006 I did my yoga teacher training and it was an incredible experience, I learned so much, not only about yoga but about myself as well. One of the things I learned was that I was prone to anger and cutting remarks.

I know, shocking, right? Whatever.

Okay, I knew that I had a temper and that I was reputed to have a sharp wit but I thought it was just that. You know, some people like wine, I like cutting remarks that are well timed with deadpan delivery.

Turns out few people found it entertaining or if it was entertaining it was only when it wasn't directed at them and people close to me found it annoying, frustrating, and hurtful. So I undertook a program of self examination and even read "Non-violent Communication" (great book by the way, real eye-pryer-open). Though lots of people doubted my intentions at first, many remarked on the change and thanked me for my efforts later.

But when you're on vacation programs of self control tend to fly out the window, you start off saying yes to dessert and a second buffalo curd and next thing you know you can't fit into your pants or, in my case, open my mouth without some barbed piece of repartee zipping out and heading straight for a major artery. This goes on until something brings it to your attention. In the case of the pants maybe you catch your belly fat in the zipper, in my case someone wrote a song. Because he's British and I'm American it's supposed to be a western prairie kind of ditty.

I wish I was a hillbilly, happy on moonshine
Senseless would be better than hurtin all the time
what have I done to Teletha? I am in the dark
Like a drunk who's stumbled into a trailer park.
Always when I talk to you, you have a quick retort,
Often it is witty but sometimes it just hurts.
Fast wits are a blessing, don't let them be a curse.
Were you hurt sometime, now have to get in first?

Chorus
Life's full of opportunities, we miss them every day,
this goodbye's the saddest kind of yippee ya yay

I am just an Englishman, I don't know your right and wrong,
but I pass my counsel on in a secret song.
I shared with you my secrets, you just had a laugh,
I wonder if you are an inadequate psychopath?
I think you're good at heart, why do you play this game?
Is it that your parents gave you an awkward name?
It is because I care I correct what you do.
You'd be happier with more; sorry, please, thank you.
So kindly let manners be your queen and king,
Do you have time before you go to take a spanking?

Chorus
Life's full of opportunities, we miss them every day,
this goodbye's the saddest kind of yippee ya yay

Thank you Jim-the-Englishman for letting me know that my mouth was making me look like a big ass.

Of course, having said that, Jim is a narky smart-ass himself. Takes one to know one.

Oh and I love that, without knowing anything much about me, he included a trailer park and moonshine, the yipee yay ya was the treacle on the curd.

Modern Pilgrims Take the Bus

2007-12-11T03:16:00.000-08:00

Adam's Peak is "the most famous physical feature of Ceylon ... its surrounding group of mountains called the Wilderness of the Peak, is so extensive in comparison to the bulk of the other mountain groups that it appears to form a nucleus of its own, separate from the others. It is about 7500 ft high and, though it is the second highest peak in the land, its position in relation to the topography is so dominant that it stands out above all others." Also at the top there is huge footprint said to have been left by Adam, Siva, and St. Thomas by the Muslims, Hindus, and Christians respectively.

So we set off with one injured back (not mine), one pair of flipflops (the only shoes I brought), one pair of socks (not mine either) and no hats or gloves despite the temp reputedly dropping to 0 at night, no guide book (too much weight), no plan to speak of, and only the most limited idea of how to get there. In fact our entire plan consisted of each of us believing that the other one seemed calm and unworried so they must know what they are doing. When we discovered this nine hours into a "seven" hour bus journey, the destination of which was a guesthouse we weren't even certain was open, we had a good laugh, which made me feel a little less carsick for about fifteen minutes.

All told it took us about twelve hours each way by bus but, once I accepted that I wouldn't be able to drink anything until we arrived back in Tangalle (no bathroom breaks), the bus trips were amazing. The peak is surrounded by tea plantations and hills that rear-up lifting bare rock crowns toward the sun, the whole thing surrounded by mist looks like a Japanese brush painting. We saw hundreds of huge bats flying over the rice paddies at dusk, they looked from the distance like flocks of birds; towns and Buddha statues; rivers and small cities; crazy traffic and lots of locals. Stopped for lunch on the way up and had the real deal rice and curry which was so hot that it made my lips puffy.

And the climb? Well turns out that flipflops are all the locals wear so I had a very "real" pilgrim experience and while my knees didn't hurt (couldn't crash down, no cushion and no traction) my calves were shaking and sweating like pretty new pledges at a frat kegger. However when my travel buddy asked if I would do it again I said yes, the peak is lovely and the thrill of doing the climb outweighs the pain. Besides the locals have calf muscles to die for. Next time though, I'm calling ahead and going in season so I can see the footprint. Oh didn't I mention? Turns out it was closed. The view was amazing though.

Another Day in Paradise

2007-12-06T01:09:00.000-08:00

Planning a trip to Adam's Peak this weekend, so called because it is claimed that the footprint on the top was left when Adam paused and looked back into Eden for the last time. And it's true Sri Lanka is beautiful and being a tourist I get to see all the best parts and have been having a chill time, but sometimes I get these little reminders that I don't live here and that if I did my life would be extremely different and so would my experience of this country, this paradise.

Today it was the way all the locals gazed impassively at the the ak-47's sported by the 100+ soldiers at the roadblocks and on the buildings around town, posted there for a visit by the presidents wife, and the way those same people didn't cringe away from the snub-nosed stares of the machine guns in the windows of suv after suv full of additional soldiers. My fear was the fear of the unknown and their calm was born of familiarity. I've never had a machine gun pointed at me before and certainly not one that was loaded and manned, the thing is it wasn't even pointed at me it was just pointed in my direction, I felt insubstantial and powerless and realized in that moment my own frailty in the face of thing that doesn't judge right or wrong but is just an action. Shoot.

Got online and discovered that 15 people were killed in a bombing in the north yesterday.

Leaving next week but have a lot to think about.

ooo la la, there is no beast like an angry french woman

2007-12-01T23:46:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we finished our post asana breakfast of fruit and buffalo curd with a drizzle of palm syrup and ... no wait, before I go on I would like to salute the noble water buffalo: their efforts have transformed nations, shifting mud and water to create verdant rice paddies; their dung is burned for cooking fuel and for warmth; upon their yoked necks travel every item imaginable from vegetable to mineral; but in their nobility they have bestowed an even greater treasure (or we have stolen it, either way it's the best) and that, their milk, has been transformed into manna, known in Sri Lanka as curd. I'm not a nutritionist but I claim that buffalo curd is not only a complete food but also the tastiest damn thing to be produced from teat juice, ever! Dude, I could eat that stuff all day and sometimes do. I'm starting to smell like it and that is only bad because I stand around sniffing my sweet curd-y stink and it makes people look at me funny. Though admittedly people are always looking at me funny here but I finally figured it out, it's not becaue I'm doing something rude or freakish (except in the case of sniffing myself) but because I'm a novelty, like a small child in an office or a trained monkey, and everyone feels the need to speak to me with exaggerated facial expressions and say hi and ask me how old I am and what my name is and ask me to say their name and then wave goodbye with too much enthusiasm. I figured this out as I was doing all these things to a little Sri Lankan girl, I got a moment of deja vu and realized that the situation was eerily familiar but the perspective was different. But I digress, both generally and now specifically, the main point is that curd is yummy and should be available everywhere in it's little earthen crocks with paper on top. - anyway, post-brekky myself and two other yogis set out for Uda Walawe National Park.

Uda Walawe has a reputation for having lots of elephants and we had a day off of practice, so we decided to expend our extra energy on a little half day safari, in an effort to have a more "local" experience we also decided to take the bus, not even the air-con bus but the most local of the local buses. Buses in Sri Lanka are like buses in India with fewer people; loud, bumpy, crowded, and not to be missed. I always feel like I see more when I ride a bus and I meet cool people sometimes, like the super helpful guy in Colombo who took time out of his day to direct four tourists to their various buses, trains, and hotels and,in my case, to spend thirty minutes helping me purchase a phone card and find an internet shop, or the guy on the way to Trivandrum who I talked to for two hours about travel and books and then failed to exchange emails with because he almost missed his stop and his traveling partners had already disembarked with all the money, or the woman I met and ended up sharing a room and trip to a police station with or ... well trust me the list goes on. The bus was grand, we entertained the locals by trying to request directions for the bus to the park (this involved elephant impersonations by yours truly) and imitating meerkats foraging and guarding (this was purely for our own entertainment, as I mentioned before foreigners are a bit of spectacle here and we decided, since we had everyone's attention anyway, to do a little improv), we found our bus connection and the proper stop, and got a recommendation for a lunch place where we were able to hire a jeep and have yummy rice and curry at the same time.

Our driver informed us that there was an elephant orphanage very close by but that if we waited a few minutes we would be able to see the babies being fed, so we decided to take a little stroll. It was about here that we met "the French Lady". It started off innocuously enough, fellow tourists making conversation, and when our driver showed up she asked if she could come along. Okay, really she kind of invited herself and asked if we would be able to cover her costs because she didn't have enough cash but she did it in a way that made it sound more like a request than a demand, though that may have just been the accent or the little "no?" on the end of the demand. "You will loan me the money, no?" Whatever. We were in a hurry and the orphanage was free, so she hopped in and we all headed off. The orphanage was fun, lots of babies being fed by bottles, pushing each other around, running around in their baggy trousered hides (they really do look like Charlie Chaplin impersonators from the rear), and the sound of someone going on and on in a french accent about the cost of things and being robbed by the locals.

Travelers are generous people, loaning each other tiger balm or the use of a phone or fan, directing each other to good food or hotels, not thinking the worst when you snap and start to freak out (as you will) about costs and being ripped off, because they've been there too. But sometimes the generosity is misplaced. You loan someone your phone and they call home, or someone starts going on about "being robbed and cheated by the locals" and they aren't freaking out they are just like that. So we overlooked her price paranoia at first and tried to reassure her that we weren't being robbed blind, that this was in fact what we had been told was a fair price. But when we got to the ticket booth at the park and she argued with the staff for fifteen minutes over 100 Rs (split between four people, mind you, which is 25 cents and even I, sadistic penny pincher that I am, thought that was going too far) and then called the rest of us, who just wanted to get into the park before it got dark, selfish and rich, well, we took her suggestion and got tickets for three. And we had a blast. The park was lovely and green, the mountains in the distance were suitably misty and blue, the breeze showed up and was fresh and light, basically the park decided to show us a good time. We saw elephants, spotted deer, a crocodile, wild water buffalo (or "blessed producers of curd" as I call them), monkeys, and lots of birds; crested serpent hawks, peacocks, kites, hornbills, myna birds, and parakeets. It was grand. At one point an elephant decided to run toward us and even though I flinched I knew somewhere in my heart that the most fearsome beast in the park was back at the visitor station trying to get a ride back to town and arguing over the fare.

"Twenty rupees, ooo lala, that is very expensive, no?"

it's a small small world

2007-11-21T04:28:00.002-08:00

Went to see "Om Shanti Om"while I was India and fell in crush with the lead, a tasty bit of man flesh named Shah Rukh Khan. He's 42 and convincingly played a 30 year old. I know, I know, he's probably had work done, but that skin, those lips, those eyes, oh holy moses! However, the thing that really got me was the swooning fits he was able to produce in the mostly male audience. I've never seen anything like it. Grown men shrieked when SRK got all flashdance during one of the dance scenes, and it's true he does have quite the six pack and was all covered with water and glistening but really, they shrieked. I got a little caught up in the testosterone.

So anyway I have a crush and on my last night in India I decided to indulge it and buy some movie and lifestyle magazines and tear out photos since I couldn't figure out a way to fit a full size movie poster in my bag and had even less of an idea where I could hang it.

Got some dinner and proceeded to pore over every page and lo and behold on page 44 of the November 2007 issue of Spice (Indian lifestyle mag not the US porn rag) what do I find but a half page article on Oakland metal sculptor Michael Sturts and his bio-diesel custom-crafted Die Moto he's taking to Bonneville. Not only that but there is a photo of the bike and emblazoned on the side is the web address for the Crucible!

How much does Oakland rock my socks? So much I still feel aftershocks in India.

Oaktown, shout out to my peeps.

ot

2007-11-21T04:28:00.001-08:00

I had to pee

2007-11-15T00:00:00.000-08:00

I pick up change. You know how you walk along and you see a penny and you check to see if it's heads-side up because then it's lucky? I don't do that. I pick up change: all change, from where ever I see it, and when it comes to change my normally myopic vision, which prevents me recognizing people who are more than five feet away, allows me to spot pennies half buried in dirt across the street. In fact my dear friend and shopping partner, A, once had a conversation with her husband regarding how small a denomination I would deign to remove from the top of a dead rat in a gutter if the rat looked like it had been struck a car and the corpse was in no way punctured or oozing. They thought the denomination was very small and it's worth mentioning that at the time I was a bit of a hypochondriac and they had factored that in.

I say "at that time" because I am currently in India and I think it's fair to say that no actual diagnosed hypochondriac would ever come to India of their own volition. I have seen, touched, and even eaten things that previously would have required disinfecting whatever body part had come in contact with the offending object. At this moment I am on a public computer using a public keyboard in a country that still has leper colonies, plural. The only reason to have leper colonies plural, unless armadillos are the current must-have accessory, is because someone didn't get the memo that's it's freaking contagious. But here I am, still typing and intending to do so again in the near future, probably after I go get lunch and use the same soap that has been used by countless strangers to wash my hands, before sitting down at a table that has been wiped with a rag the waiter has just tugged out of his dhoti, while watching a cockroach bigger than my thumb (not including antenna) leap off the bag being carried to the curb and head back toward the kitchen. See, "at that time".

Anyway the restaurants are nothing on the bathrooms, trust me I have been in them. Just take a moment and let your imagination wander as you consider what that means. Remember that Indians don't generally use toilet paper, reflect on the a country who's idea of garbage disposal is to take it outside and that's it, then let me add one piece of information. You know those disks they use in urinals in the states to keep the smell down? In India they put them in the sinks.

Okay, still with me. Let's put it all together: I pick up change; people have postulated that a dead rat would be a mild deterrent due to my hypochondria; I am in India and have apparently overcome the worst of my hypochondria; and finally, I use public restrooms in India (do you see where this is going?).

I just picked up TWO Rupees off the floor in a public bathroom in India!

Dude, if you see a dead rat that looks like it was disemboweled post-mortem you can be sure that someone told me they saw it swallow a nickle.