Thursday, September 28, 2006
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Facebook.com opened to the public today... after committing myspace-icide, I guess it would hypocritical to sign up (and they're registration page wouldn't open, anyway.)
Wednesday, September 20, 2006
CNN Roundup
CNN.com - Chavez: Bush 'devil;' U.S. 'on the way down' - Sep 20, 2006
Read as CNN vilifies Hugo Chaves with the headline above and the line below. Ridiculous:
UNITED NATIONS (CNN) -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez tore into his U.S. counterpart and his U.N. hosts Wednesday, likening President Bush to the devil and telling the General Assembly that its system is "worthless."
"The devil came here yesterday," Chavez said, referring to Bush, who addressed the world body during its annual meeting Tuesday. "And it smells of sulfur still today."
Chavez accused Bush of having spoken "as if he owned the world" and said a psychiatrist could be called to analyze the statement. (Watch Hugo Chavez cross himself as he tells world leaders he can smell the devil -- 1:06)
"The devil came here yesterday," Chavez said, referring to Bush, who addressed the world body during its annual meeting Tuesday. "And it smells of sulfur still today."
Chavez accused Bush of having spoken "as if he owned the world" and said a psychiatrist could be called to analyze the statement. (Watch Hugo Chavez cross himself as he tells world leaders he can smell the devil -- 1:06)
I <3 Noam Chomsky
And check out this missing link that was put there to confuse us by God, you silly creationist/intelligent design biotches!
NEW YORK (AP) -- Scientists have discovered a remarkably complete skeleton of a 3-year-old female from the ape-man species represented by "Lucy."
The discovery should fuel a contentious debate about whether this species, which walked upright, also climbed and moved through trees easily like an ape.
The remains are 3.3 million years old, making them the oldest known skeleton of such a youthful human ancestor.
The discovery should fuel a contentious debate about whether this species, which walked upright, also climbed and moved through trees easily like an ape.
The remains are 3.3 million years old, making them the oldest known skeleton of such a youthful human ancestor.
And Lou Dobbs comes out against voting machines (below). Thank God! BlackBoxVoting.org has only been ranting about this for five or six years...
But there is additional uncertainty about the outcome of our elections that is intolerable and inexcusable, and which could make the contested 2000 presidential election look orderly by comparison. As of right now, there is little assurance your vote will count. As we've been reporting almost nightly on my broadcast for more than a year, electronic voting machines are placing our democracy at risk.
Across the nation, eight out of every 10 voters will be casting their ballots this November on electronic voting machines. And these machines time and again have been demonstrated to be extremely vulnerable to tampering and error, and many of them have no voter-verified paper trail.
Across the nation, eight out of every 10 voters will be casting their ballots this November on electronic voting machines. And these machines time and again have been demonstrated to be extremely vulnerable to tampering and error, and many of them have no voter-verified paper trail.
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Whoa, New iTunes stuff
iTunes has finally incorporated some better Album Artwork technology. I'm still digging Clutter for displaying artwork on the desktop, finding artwork for me and allowing me to update, but the new cover browser in iTunes is much appreciated. Also, iTunes now allows you to right click and select "Get album Artwork". Sweet!
Thursday, September 14, 2006
Bush Babbling Like an Idiot
Watch and learn as Lauer gives Bush the whatfor on torture... I still wish he'd pressed him a little harder, as Bush just kept reframing the question to babble on about protecting the American people from those who want to "kill your families".
Lauer: If waterboarding... if that was legal and within the law, why couldn't you do it at Guantanamo? Why'd you have to go to a secret location around the world?
Bush: Matt, I'm not going to talk about techniques. And I'm not going to explain to the enemy what we're doing. All I'm telling you is that you asked if we're doing things to protect the American people and I want the American people to know we are doing so.
...
Lauer: Are you concerned that in using these techniques you're blurring the lines between us and the people we're fighting against?
Bush: The best information we can get is from people we take off the battlefield so we can act on it. So we can stop plots before they happen.
Whatever we have done is legal. That's what I'm saying. It's within. the law. We had lawyers look at it. They said, "Mr. President, this is lawful." That's all I'm going to tell you. I'm not going to tell you specifically what's done because I don't want the enemy to adjust. This... We're at war! These are people who want to come and kill your families. And I'm confident that the American people understand that.
Bush: Matt, I'm not going to talk about techniques. And I'm not going to explain to the enemy what we're doing. All I'm telling you is that you asked if we're doing things to protect the American people and I want the American people to know we are doing so.
...
Lauer: Are you concerned that in using these techniques you're blurring the lines between us and the people we're fighting against?
Bush: The best information we can get is from people we take off the battlefield so we can act on it. So we can stop plots before they happen.
Whatever we have done is legal. That's what I'm saying. It's within. the law. We had lawyers look at it. They said, "Mr. President, this is lawful." That's all I'm going to tell you. I'm not going to tell you specifically what's done because I don't want the enemy to adjust. This... We're at war! These are people who want to come and kill your families. And I'm confident that the American people understand that.
Tuesday, September 12, 2006
Bush invokes 9/11 to argue for Iraq war - Yahoo! News
From his speech last night that was "non-political in nature":
If we yield Iraq to men like bin Laden, our enemies will be emboldened, they will gain a new safe haven, and they will use Iraq's resources to fuel their extremist movement. We will not allow this to happen.
Bush invokes 9/11 to argue for Iraq war:
Monday, September 11, 2006
This can't be good...
Situation Called Dire in West Iraq
Don't forget the moment of silence at 8:46am.
This morning Bush called Ground Zero a "fantastic place... of healing". What an idiot.
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Apologies
I haven't been able to keep up with the blog in the last few weeks... 140+ hrs in 10 days at work have me reeling... Here's some news: Iraq takes military reins from coalition - Yahoo! News
Anyone who doesn't recognize this as a farce and a political stunt isn't paying attention.
Monday, August 21, 2006
Arianna Huffington: It's News, Right? - Yahoo! News
I was going to write something about how this JonBenet story wasn't really news and was just a distraction from the real things that are going on in the world, but Arianna Huffington beat me to the punch: Arianna Huffington: It's News, Right?
Then again, I have a job and writing stuff like this is her job.
I'll add this massive conspiracy theory, though: I think that they've known where this guy's been hiding for quite some time and that they just grabbed him and threw him into the spotlight as soon as the news in the Middle East started getting so horrible. The JonBenet murder story is the best media weapon ever devised, why not bring it back into use? I'm honestly a little surprised that so many people still remember the story.
Friday, August 18, 2006
Friday, August 11, 2006
...
I'm no fanatical patriot or ethnocentrist, but a question crossed my mind this morning that, in light of the current situation, I thought was interesting: why aren't there more American terrorists? I mean genuine WASP terrorists?
There was that one guy a year or so after Sept. 11 who was found to have trained with Al Qaeda for a bit, but other than that you never hear about an American terrorist. I'm not talking about American terrorists going out and attacking other countries. The answer to that one is that we have a hugely powerful military that pretty much already beats the hell out of anyone that an American might disagree with. I'm talking about American terrorists that terrorize Americans. Like McVeigh or Kaczynski. Where are all the McVeighs?
What's baffling is that this lack of American self-hatred doesn't seem to teach any kind of lesson to the terrorists in the rest of the world. They probably just think that we're extremely conceited and blinded with power; whereas we just see them as extremely religious and blinded by fanaticism.
I think to myself, "don't they see that we don't hate ourselves for a reason? That we aren't strapping bombs to ourselves and blowing each other up all the time?"
Bush would say that we don't hate ourselves because we're free and that the "evildoers" hate us for exactly the same reason.
In fact, the evildoers probably hate us because they see us as restricting their freedoms (Palestine, anyone?).
Monday, August 07, 2006
India (expanded) Part Deux
I went out with some friends of friends and found out that I actually have a reader or two in the blogosphere. This is for the people out there whose names start with C.
...Continuing:
(I just finished reading "Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation" by Lynne Truss. It's an entire book on punctuation, how to use it and how it's not being used. In light of this recent reading, you'll probably be seeing a few more apostrophes, semicolons, colons, commas, dashes, hyphens, parentheses and even periods than you're usually used to. Trust me, though: you'll feel a lot better when it's all over. Additionally, I do not promise to use this punctuation correctly as it was a long book and I can't go remembering the whole thing off the top of my head. I also can't figure out how to do a dash on the Windows laptop that I'm using (I do know that it's an Apple Symbol and the hyphen on my Mac).)
Now then, where was I? Ah yes; we had just finished day two, which was our first real sight-seeing day in Delhi. Our third day in the Western hemisphere, R and I went to see the Taj Mahal in Agra. I was up at the crack of 6 to get ready for the 2½ hour train ride from Delhi to Agra. Our train was at 9:10 and the ride to the station was about half an hour by cab. Our hotel was right near the New Delhi train station, but this train left from the Hazrat Nizamuddin station, which was much further downtown.
We found our car about 50 yards down and climbed aboard. We were seated across from an Indian family: mom, dad and son. After a half hour of awkward silence, mom broke out some food and gave us a plate. Thereupon we found some pickled whatnot; some stuff that resembled those Chinese potato chips that you put in Won Ton soup, but thinner; some Almond cake; Naan; rice; and something else that I can't recall. All of these things were absolutely delicious and were described to us by the family as being "very typical Indian food." I like to think that they were impressed with my enjoyment of the spicy-pickled-whatnot. All of this eating sparked conversation. Earlier in the ride I'd noticed that both dad and son were reading an English newspaper and it turned out they both spoke excellent English. During the train ride we learned that the son was in IT, like me, but worked more with networks; we got the chance to compare some acronyms: him with his TCP/IP and me with my SQL. They were on their way to a wedding in the town after Agra, which made us feel more comfortable since it meant they could tell us when to get off the train.
That building... you know
the Taj Mahal
Per the Lonely Planet guidebook, Agra is a disgusting hell-hole (I'm using a tad of poetic license in my paraphrasing there). I'll say this: the town didn't fail to live up to its description. Being a stupid tourist, I had assumed that the Taj Mahal was an idyllic place sitting out in a field somewhere right outside the train station two hours south of Delhi. This isn't an entirely ridiculous thought, given that a lot of the castles I've been to in France are surrounded only by forests rather than honking taxis, rickshaws, peddlers, panhandlers, swindlers and cows. But then, the Taj Mahal isn't a castle. The Taj is a mausoleum built for the 3rd wife of Shah Jahan (8th of the Mughal emperors, if I count correctly). The Shah's wife died giving birth to their 14th child and he built the Taj to house her body. Agra was once the capital of the Mughal empire, but has since become more of the hell-hole described by guidebooks. I suppose it's not really fair to judge a city this way having only seen its train station, main tourist attraction and the roads in between, but I feel that, in this case, I have literary sources to back up my criticisms.
The train station in Agra is about 20 minutes away from the Taj Mahal itself and a cab ride to get there seemed like the best way to go. No sooner had our shining white selves stepped off the train than we were surrounded by offers for such. Guidebooks had warned us about accepting rides from just anybody - a common practice being to take tourists to predetermined sites other than their actual destination to try to get them to buy nick-nacks, trinkets, tchotchkes, bobbles, etc. While the book did explain that these detours weren't all bad, we only had one day to see the city and weren't interested in being swindled. To help reduce the possibility of detours, when we got to an actual taxi stand R spun a yarn about us being with a group that we were supposed to meet at the Taj Mahal in 10 minutes. They threw a curveball about there being three gates at the Taj: East, West and South and asked at which one we were meeting them. I pulled out my secret weapon (the Blackberry) and made a fake phone call to confirm that, yes. It was, in fact, the West gate.
The road to the Western
entrance of the Taj Mahal
This may not have been the best choice. Our cab driver dropped us off on a circle and pointed across to an arch with a road behind it leading up to the Western gate. Crossing the circle itself took some courage, but once you get over the fact that there are cars, trucks, cows, buses, cabs and bicycles sharing the road with you, you realize that there are plenty of other people walking around in the street as well.
The road leading up to the Western gate was closed to street traffic after the arch, but allowed for plenty of hocking of wares and offers of rickshaw rides up to the gate. There was a long line of bicycle rickshaws just after the archway with most of their drivers sleeping in the sun while laying on the back seats of their rides. As we came through, a kid who couldn't have been more than 10 rode up along-side us and started trying to get us to take a ride. We knew it was only half a kilometer to the gate, so didn't plan on taking him up the offer, but he followed us almost all the way to the end (just before a big hill that he would have had to go back up) and went from offers of Rs. 20/- ($0.50) to Rs. 5/- ($0.10) by the time he gave up.
The fee for entering the grounds of the Taj Mahal is Rs. 750/- for foreigners and something like Rs. 50/- for Indians. Rs. 750/- is about $17 - which isn't too shabby considering that you're seeing one of the most beautiful buildings in the world and the entrance fee included a bottle of water, free shoe covers and a locker rental. The entrance fee for residents didn't include any of this great stuff. As we were buying our tickets we were surrounded on all sides by potential "guides" vying for our attention. One particularly young skinny kid stood out and shoved a badge in our faces proving his status as a "real guide". The picture was such a cheezy glamor-shot that we had to let him show us around. We talked him down from Rs. 150/- to Rs. 100/- ($2.50) for the tour and he immediately had us follow him to the security line where he started pushing everyone in front of us out of the way.
R and I both failed the screening on our first go around. Actually, R failed first, due to having some chocolate and an ipod in her purse, and I gave up after seeing her fail. There are separate security lines for men and women at most places in India and the ladies always goes more quickly because most women don't leave the house.
visitors walking into the main
chamber of the Taj Mahal
Our child-guide was very helpful in telling us what stuff in our bags wouldn't be allowed in. Apparently Cliff bars are a no-no, cell phones are a no-no, and iPods are a no-no. Video cameras are OK until you're within about 200 metres of the Taj and regular cameras are OK as long as you're outside the actual burial chamber (which is, in fact, a replica of the real burial chamber because too many people where slipping and falling downa flight of white marble stairs.
The North side of the Taj Mahal
The kid who convinced us to let him guide us around had obviously been doing this for quite some time. His whole tour was very routine, but still perfectly informative. He showed us the inlaying of black marble on white on the outside of the structure, explained that the buidlings on either side of the Taj itself were Mosques and showed us the writing of the Quran all over the building. He explained that the four towers or the Taj leaned outwards so that if they ever fell, they would hurt the main building. He also pointed across the river to the site where legend says the emporer planned to build a black marble duplicate of the Taj for his own body.
Like many of the sites in India, there's a strict no shoe policy once you're up on the main level of the Taj. Thanks to the handout of free shoe booties, most foreigners up on top are wearing silly shoe covers and most of the local visitors are standing about in socks. What a great way to single ourselves out. By the end of our trip, I was down with just wearing socks and shoving whatever shoes we had on into my bag.
It's impossible (not just difficult) to talk about the Taj Mahal in words. It really is the most beautiful structure I've ever seen. If I could recommend seeing something in another country, this would be it. Fly into Agra, stay at the Sheraton, see the Taj, go home.
After having the innards of the Taj explained to us by our guide, we took off our booties and sat on a bench while we waited for him to get his shoes back from a locker. When he returned we sent him packing with his Rs. 100/- and sat around in the different gardens that surround the building taking pictures and trying to pick other Western tourists out of the lines of people walking up to the Taj (I counted eight)
Given that it was 114 degrees, we got a little warm and decided that it would be best to leave. Our train back to Delhi wasn't until 6:10pm, so we had about four hours to kill. On the walk back along the road to the circle where we'd been dropped off, we encountered the same rickshaw driving kid who'd followed us on the way in. This time he knew he wasn't going to get anything out of us, so he only tried for a few minutes before giving up and deciding to insult me instead by calling me a lady ("Sir, are you a 'Sir' or a 'Miss'"). I called the kid a Miss back and R scolded me for sinking to his level. It was fantastic.
After seeing the state of affairs between the train station and the gate of the Taj, we weren't about to try to look at some more tourist attractions within the city. Instead, I suggested that we take a vacation from our vacation and go to eat lunch at the Sheraton. At this point, we were both a bit frazzled from culture shock, hot from the sun and ready to experience a touch Westerness. We hopped in a tuk-tuk and had them take us down the road to the hotel. We were dropped off on the street outside of the compound and walked the 1/4km to the front. No one even looked twice as we walked past the five-or-so guards to enter the main lobby. Walking through the doors was just like walking back into the US. Everything was completely westernized; they'd even managed to make the place smell like home. R and I set upon the lobby restrooms immediately. I felt bad washing my face and looking bedraggled in front of the bathroom attendant, but then I feel bad in front of bathroom attendants in the states, too.
The bar area had been set up for the world cup, which was in the Semi-Final rounds. After using the restrooms, we plopped ourselves down in the lounge/bar area and each drew in a deep relaxing breath. It was still pretty early in the day, so we had to satisfy our eyes with news about upcoming matches and senior tour golf (Yes. They show Senior PGA in India. Terrible, I know.).
I was a little surprised to find a complety Western bar menu featuring hamburgers of all things. We decided not to go overboard and stuck to veggie burgers and Indian beer. After lunch, we still had some time to kill and took walk around the grounds of the hotel. Later, we got the doorman (who was in full Maharaja garb) to hail us a Tuk-Tuk and got a ride back to the Agra train station.
Arriving around 5:30pm and our train being at 8:10pm, we waited around a bit in the main terminal where the unreserved ticket counters and the big board showing the track nubmers were located. Once the clock hit 5:45pm and our train number still hadn't come up with track listing, we decided to ask an authority figure about its status. FYI - Authority figures in India wear glasses. Period.
R and I went up to a man sitting at the entrance to the first platform to show him our tickets - which had been purchased through the travel agency that we used.
Being stared at in the Agra train station
Per usual, he grabbed the ticket out of R's hand and held it close to his nose. After looking at it for a few seconds (during which time a crowd had gathered to watch the plight of the white), he handed it to a man with glasses. This man looked at it for a few moments and then made a "shooing" motion with his hand.
I inquired as to what this meant by immitating him and shrugging my shoulders.
"Your train has already left," he explained.
"Oh," I said.
We asked him about the options that we had, given that our ticket was for a train that had already departed. I don't know if I've mentioned it before, but India has a repuation for beauracracy and the filling out of forms; after listing to him explain our options, I started to understand the reasoning behind this reputation. Much like my experiences with the DMV, I was informed that we would need to go to a separate booking office around the corner, fill out a cancellation form, take the form to a refund line, get a refund, go to a reserved ticket line and then buy a new ticket for the Delhi<->Agra Express departing at 7:30.
After waiting in the refund line for 10 minutes and starting to get worried about time, I decided to just give up on getting a refund and spring for the two $7.50 tickets back to Delhi instead. We gave our old ticket and the refund form to a girl who was hanging around and told her that she could exchange it for us.
After we got back on the platform, we met an English kid who was backpacking around the country before attending his hippie-sister's wedding in Goa. Somewhere in our conversation we mentioned having seen a monkey on the roof of the building across from our hotel. He proceeded to tell us about his friend's mother who was mauled and killed by a monkey while on holiday. This is when we decided to definitely avoid the roof in the future.
Just as our train pulled, the girl who we'd given the old ticket and refund form to showed up and had a man with her explain that she needed to get our first names on the form to get the money. We quickly wrote our names and then managed to guess the right direction that our train car would be in. (There is an extremely limited number of staff when the train pulls in and no one available to direct you where to go, so finding your car is a matter of picking a direction and then walking the length of the train to look at the car numbers on the side. There are also passenger lists for reserved seats that are printed out on that old school dot-matrix printing paper with the perforated paper things that you can peel off and bending into an useless paper string. I wish now that I'd gotten a picture of our names on the side of the train to Delhi from Agra and I really hope that that girl got the money for our cancelled ticket.
Agra train stationThe train from Agra to Delhi was disgusting. The journey gave me my first experience with insects on public transportation. I'm used to the occasional rat or mouse in the metros; DC even has its share of cockroaches on the streets; but nothing could have prepared me for watching cockroaches crawling in and out of the seat cushions and curtains the entire three hour ride from Agra to Delhi. This wasn't something normal. All of the locals sitting around us were just as disturbed by our six-legged friends running around. Several of them even pointed out the ironic sign at the front of the car listing "To Maintain an Excellent Level of Cleanliness and Comfort." among the train company's objectives. The bugs started getting braver and braver as the trip went on. They would dissappear at station stops and reappear in higher numbers with newfound bravado when the train started moving again. Everyone was very neighborly and we all took turns watching eachother and brushing the bugs off. I brushed one off my neighbor and he brushed one off me. He also brushed one off of himself which landed on my shoe and I then kicked a row up and into the door. Altogether it was a bonding experience that I would easily rather not have had.
Back at Hazrat Nizamuddin, we refused cabs from anyone else and gave our man Durga a call on the BlackBerry. He had a guy there in 20 minutes and we were on our way back to the hotel room to get there around 11pm and be back up at 6:30am to get our train north to Shimla.
I promise Part Trois will be done this week.
Monday, July 31, 2006
Still working on it...
I'm still hard at work on Part II of the Indian trip summary, but in the meantime you can amuse yourself with these links:
Spirit-of-Truth on Wikipedia
and some even more immature humor here.
Saturday, July 29, 2006
Something you won't see in the West
Israel is overreacting. This is what they're doing to "get rid of Hezbollah" which is, in and of itself a ridiculous idea, given that Hezbollah is more of an idea than a group. And ideas are not easily wiped from the face of the earth. The link is extremely graphic, but something you probably won't see on CNN: The Angry Arab News Service/وكالة أنباء العربي الغاضب
I found this link through Ken Silverstein's blog at Harpers.org
If you were looking for a reason not to go running tomorrow...
Zeno’s Arrow Paradox might be something worth looking into.
Friday, July 28, 2006
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
Finally! Mass Transit on Maps on the Web
There were hacks before for getting to see subway stations on Google maps, but the new Yahoo! Maps Beta goes the distance and gets mass transit for DC up on there too. This is pretty huge, given that the wmata.com site still has no maps showing the street location of stations. As though 23rd and Connecticut has any meaning for tourists or people from Virginia.
Monday, July 24, 2006
An aside on dryer dials
Stupid Dryer.
I just don't get it. More and Less are relative terms. Are they talking about the state that I want my clothes to be in or the current state of my clothes? Are my clothes more or less dry already or do I want to make them more or less dry? Why would I want to make them less dry? What question is this machine posing? Do I want them to be more dry than they are now or less dry than they are now? That doesn't seem to make sense. Of course I want them to be drier than they are right now.
If the dial said "More dryer action" and "Less dryer action", then I might get it, but at this point I'm confused and bewildered. If I didn't know that the dial goes clockwise as the cycle runs, I'd be completely lost.
Blogged with Flock
Saturday, July 22, 2006
India (expanded) - Part I
Note: I've been working on this post since we got back... that doesn't mean it's going to be perfect!
I thought I might as well take the next few days to try to blog our entire trip to India. As I'm paranoid about the internet and the terrible people that use it, I won't be including any pictures that have me in them... so pardon the fact that some of the pictures on the right will just look like postcards.
After leaving H and R Block with the knowledge of what our tax return would be, Rose and I went to an Indian restaurant on 17th and L in Washington, DC to have lunch. The place used to be called the Ascot Lounge, but recently changed their name to the Indian Experience. We'd gotten pretty good news at the tax place: This being our first year owning a home in DC, we were eligible for a first-time home-buyer's tax credit.
Halfway through dinner, one of us (R insists it was her) mentioned that India would be an interesting place to go, especially given that we both loved the food so much. Lo and behold, we were on our way to STA travel in Georgetown a few weekends later to make the arrangements. We'd looked around online, but had used STA when we went to our friends' wedding in Poland two years earlier and found it was just as cheap and avoided the hassles that come along with Travelocity, Orbitz and the rest.
The flight we purchased on Alitalia would take us out on July 1st at 4:30pm and fly us into Milan where we would wait for three hours before continuing onto Delhi, arriving there at 10:20pm on July 2nd. Delhi is nine and a half hours ahead of DC, so the trip would really be only about twenty-one hours door-to-door. Given that neither of us is too rich in vacation time, we decided to limit our trip to only ten days total, and would return on July 9th with a day off once we were back to rest up for work.
R is a planning and packing fanatic and had everything prepared far in advance. This included ponchos, 99.8% Deet bug spray, a mixed ziploc of Immodium and Advil, Neosporin, Band-aids, and everything else we could possibly need. Additionally, R used some of our condo contacts to get in touch with a travel agency in Delhi to get us train tickets to Agra and Shimla as well as a hotel reservation for a night in Shimla all to be waiting for us at our hotel in Delhi when we arrived.
I, on the other hand, focused my efforts on packing various gadgets and the wires associated with them (ipod, camera, chargers, blackberries, blackberry-charger, various adaptors, etc.) While I had alerted management that I would be going on vacation more than four months in advance, my boss decided to take it as a total surprise when I reminded him of the trip the Monday before I was suppose to leave. Never mind that I'd been talking about it steadily for months or that it had been blocked out in the team calendar since the day we bought the tickets. He immediately began trying to make sure that everything I was working on would be finished by the time I left. This meant putting in about 65 hours over the next five days. Thank goodness that R had so much of our stuff packed. By the time I got home late on the last day of June, I was in no mood to search for my poncho.
Before catching our plane on Saturday evening, we had to take the cat up to Bethesda to stay with R's parents for the week that we'd be gone. R's dad was nice enough to pick us up and we took the cat and our suitcases Northward.
Humayun's Tomb
While we eating lunch and starting to think about leaving for the airport, we got a call from STA regarding our flights. Apparently, Alitalia had canceled the second leg of the trip from Milan to Delhi. STA explained that they had tried to arrange something else over the phone, but that the airline had kept insisting that we'd have to solve the problem after we go to Milan. They did suggest, however, that we get to the airport a little earlier and see if we could arrange something there.
Once at the airport, R and I did a good job of playing good cop/bad cop (wherein R shows a lot of emotion and frustration with the people at the Alitalia desk and I come off as being understanding of their position but unwilling to accept what they're telling me). This behaior of ours seems to happen naturally almost every time we get into a situation like this. In the end, we were moved to a flight on KLM that would take us through Amsterdam and then to Delhi and get us in only 20 minutes later than our original itinerary. Even better, the second leg of the flight was full and we would have to be bumped up to business class. The Horror!
I had never ridden in anything but coach until this trip and have decided that I will not enjoy flying very much ever again if I'm stuck back there with the proles. Here are just some of the reasons I discovered for business class to cost more money:
(1) The food is far better
(2) There is much more leg room
(3) There are no screaming babies (I can only assume this is because families have better things to spend their money on than renting a big lounge chair 33,000 feet in the air for 6 hours)
(4) Better service
(5) Only three seats across at its maximum
(6) Better smelling passengers (partly due to the babies, but definitely apparent amongst other flyers as well)
Enough about getting there. We did actually get there and weren't pestered for more than two seconds at customs. Upon exiting the gate we were met by a sea of taxi drivers holding different signs. After running the gauntlet once and not seeing the sign for our hotel, I went back and found one with R's name on it, spelled incorrectly.
Walking out of the airport with the driver was the first moment that either of us really experienced Delhi and lends truth to the idea that you can't count a place on your list of visited places if you've only been to its airports. Trying to recall if it was the heat or the smell that hit me first, I can only assume it was the smell. Heat takes a little while to hit as it has to push all the cool air out of my clothes before enveloping me, but the smell was right there from the moment the doors opened until the moment I was asked to stow my tray table on the flight back home. We would later learn that a lot of the poorer residents of Delhi still use cow dung to heat their stoves and that this is what was giving their city that distinctly sour, musty smell stinging the back of my throat and thick enough that you thought you could wave it away (alas).
New Delhi rom a rooftop
Stupid me had forgotten that Indians drive on the left side of the road. This was another first for me, as I've never been to Japan, Australia or England (except its airports), but I thought I got used to it pretty quickly. While they may drive on the same side of the road as Britons, I can only assume that the driving style of Indians is vastly different. There is very little stopping at any time during a drive. If the brake is depressed, the horn is usually depressed as well. This also holds true for the gas. In fact, from my experience, there are few times when the horn isn't being honked or about to be honked in an Indian vehicle (particularly a Tata).
Per the suggestion of my Grandpa, I took along a little notebook for the trip. Here are the notes I made on our first drive in India while we were going from the airport to the hotel (mind you, midway through this drive R reached out and grabbed me hand, in that "what have we done?" sort of way... the feeling was mutual):
Any street downtown
(1) Ladies ride sidesaddle on the backs of mopeds.
(2) Air quality: questionable.
(3) Our driver has no mirrors on his car.
(4) We're on the wrong side of the road over here.
(5) There is a water buffalo in the highway.
As the driver took us deeper and deeper into Delhi, we started to wonder where exactly our hotel was located. We were staying at the hotel Ajanta near the center of Delhi and it had only cost us $178 for the week that we would be there. The hotel was located between old and new Delhi, North of Connaught Place and the New Delhi train station (not to be confused with the Nizammudin train station, much further to the South).
While the streets around and in front of the hotel were filled with not-so-welcoming faces, the lobby and its employees seemed great. After arriving in the lobby, we were taken into a small office off to the side to show our passports and reservation receipt. The first room they took us to was a complete wreck and we were about to unload our things when the phone rang and the bellman was instructed to take us to a different room - one that more closely matched what we'd seen in pictures online. We didn't even have to complain! Later we would notice loads of other people also carrying "STA" hotel reservation receipts.
While the bellman was doing the whole "show-you-obvious-things-in-the-room-while-you-rustle-for-my-tip" thing, he showed R the bathroom. Upon noticing a large bucket and smaller pouring vessel in the tub, R asked, "What's that?"
To which the bellman replied, "bucket."
The lobby of the hotel Ajanta
I chose to use the shower head rather than the bucket for the duration of the trip and now feel that I may have cheated myself slightly.
At this point R and I were pretty beat and called it a night - finally turning in around 12pm Delhi time. Before we went to bed, however, we both took a melatonin pill. Having heard of this drug's great ability to help one get back on their circadian rhythms when traveling, I thought it was worth a shot. I'll tell you this: it works. Maybe it's just a placebo, but if that's the case it's my new favorite placebo. Bless that stuff. I woke up the next day at 8am feeling refreshed and ready to do some touristing.
The morning of July 3rd, R and I went downstairs to change some money at the front desk. We inquired there about the best way to get around the city and were informed that the hotel had a taxi stand that would give us a driver for the day for 800 Rupees. At 44 Rupees to the dollar, that's under 20 bucks. While we were at the front desk, we also picked up our various train tickets and hotel vouchers for the rest of our trip that had been mailed there by Parul Tours & Travels a great travel agency recommended by our neighbor who was based in New Delhi for the US State Dept.
After paying for a cab for the day, R and I set foot out of our hotel and witnessed India from the ground during daylight hours for the first time.
The view across from our hotel in New Delhi (the hotel Ajanta) "Culture Shock" doesn't really describe the feeling we both had on seeing the area surrounding our hotel. All of India was in the street walking by: cows, stray dogs, three-wheeled tuk-tuks, cars, rickshaws, bicycles, smog, dirt, dust, heat, humidity, men, women (not many) and children. That unforgettable smell was still in the air, but now the heat had been turned up to about 110(F).
Our cab driver was a Nepalese man named Durga, and would end up taking us around each day that we did sight-seeing in New Delhi. A few blocks after we'd left the hotel, Durga stopped and picked up his (much) younger brother. Durga explained that his brother was learning to drive by touring around with him during the day. While listening to him speak over the next week, I realized that Durga had two types of English that he employed, the kind he used when he was driving and the kind that he used when he wasn't. Durga's driving English was entirely made up of short statements like, "Ok, my big boss", "You like India, fifty-fifty?", "Hello police officer", and "where we're going next?" Once the car was stopped, Durga's English improved dramatically and he would talk to us about some of the sites we were seeing and answer all of our dumb cultural questions. I'm dead sure that the only reason he spoke differently when driving is that driving in India is so brain intensive that if he tried to speak in fuller sentences, his truck would be wrapped around a tree. Further proof of how difficult it is to drive there can be found in Durga's brother having to do so many ride-alongs before attempting it himself.
Our first stop on our first day of touring about was Raj Ghat, which marks the spot of Mahatma Gandhi's cremation on 31 January 1948.
Raj Ghat This was this first place where we were required to remove our shoes. We left them with a guy at the same type of counter they have at the bowling alley while we were inside looking at the eternal flame that burns in Gandhi's memory. At first I didn't mind taking my shoes off to see a monument. Later in the trip, however, I would step in a puddle with a socked foot and realize that walking around outside with no shoes on is not the way to take in national monuments. Stepping in water with a sock on is up there on my list of pet peeves right next to poorly stacked cooking pans.
It was incredibly hot by the time we left Raj Ghat and were taken by Durga to see Humayun's Tomb. In the same gardens that house Humayun's tomb, is another tomb for nobleman Ali Isa Khan Niazi. We toured the tomb of Ali Isa Khan Niazi first and were immediately approached by a man who offered to show us around, saying, "I'm not a guide. I work here." This seemed like a fair enough explanation, so we let him walk around with us and point things out a bit.
Ali Isa Khan NiaziAfter tipping our "non-guide" at the nobleman's tomb, we headed towards the larger Taj-Mahal-style tomb of Humayun who was the second Mughal Emperor of India. By this point, we were so thirsty and hot from being out in the sun that seeing the massive distance between a shaded archway and the actual edifice we decided that seeing was believing and it would be best to take a picture, find some shade and find some water.
Finding water is relatively easy in Delhi. Most everyone in the city appears to drink bottled water, so it's avaiable just about everywhere. R and I had heard enough stories about the water before leaving that we were strict to the point of brushing our teeth with bottled water during our stay. I even avoided coffee to a large extent, as one never knew how well the water had been heated. After informing Durga of our dehydrated state, his brother jumped out and came back with two bottles of water. I was surprised to find the bottles were Aquafina, a brand bottled by Pepsi. This would be one of many times that I would notice the complete and total infiltration of Frito-Lay on India. Half of the shops and houses on the side of the road that we would take a few days later from Kalka to Shimla were painted with "Lay's" or "Pepsi" logos. Aquafina was everywhere. I can only wonder what kind of financial interest Frito-Lay has in the water quality in Delhi staying horrible.
I digress. R and I were completely revitalized after each draining a liter of water. Our next stop was the tomb of Safdajung which looked enough like Humayun's tomb that we weren't even slightly dissappointed at having withered in the heat earlier in the day. Up in the tomb area we were once again approached by a man with the same "I'm not a guide, I work here." line. Given the familiarity of this statment and the man's lack of shoes or socks, we both realized that we'd been taken for a ride earlier. The man then asked us if we could exchange one American dollar for Rupees. Now even more assured as to his not being an employee, R and I immediately adopted British accents and left down a staircase.
Safdarjun's Tomb
We had had plans to have suits made while we where there given that it costs so much less to do so in India. With this in mind, we had Durga take us to Khan Market, which had been recommended to us by our neighbor who used to live in Delhi. Billed in Wikipedia as "one of the more upscale and expensive places to shop in New Delhi" we were a little surprised at what we found. We weren't looking for upscale, anyway, so we weren't dissappointed.
Behind Khan Market Alas, we were unable to find the tailor or clothing stores that had been recommended for us. We did, however, manage to buy a bunch more water and some shoes for R.
Plenty tired and hungry, Durga suggested a spot for lunch where we had our first authentic Indian meal. The restaurant was a bit touristy, but there were locals present as well. The food was delicious and suprisingly similar to the Indian food that one would find in the states. Throughout the trip, I found that most of the food that we ate on the trip, whether served in hotels or on the train, was very similar to what can be found here in the states. Of course, there's a little less meat in the food in India, but otherwise it's pretty close.
After lunch, Durga took us back to the hotel where we both passed out from 3pm to 6pm. After waking up from this "nap", we went up on the roof and sat around watching the hundreds of kites being flown from rooftops and being watched ourselves by various people on their rooftops. We also noticed a large monkey across the street on some water tanks, which enouraged us to abandon the roof and see about having a walk around.
Monkey on a RoofWe ended up in the hotel restaurant where I was dissappointed to find out that there was no beer on the menu. After a very cheap not-so-delicious bite to eat we both got sleepy again and decided to turn in, especially given that we would have to wake up early the next day to catch a train to Agra.
Whew! That's the end of Part 1. I'll start typing part II later today and will upload eventually. There's a lot more to go!
I thought I might as well take the next few days to try to blog our entire trip to India. As I'm paranoid about the internet and the terrible people that use it, I won't be including any pictures that have me in them... so pardon the fact that some of the pictures on the right will just look like postcards.
After leaving H and R Block with the knowledge of what our tax return would be, Rose and I went to an Indian restaurant on 17th and L in Washington, DC to have lunch. The place used to be called the Ascot Lounge, but recently changed their name to the Indian Experience. We'd gotten pretty good news at the tax place: This being our first year owning a home in DC, we were eligible for a first-time home-buyer's tax credit.
Halfway through dinner, one of us (R insists it was her) mentioned that India would be an interesting place to go, especially given that we both loved the food so much. Lo and behold, we were on our way to STA travel in Georgetown a few weekends later to make the arrangements. We'd looked around online, but had used STA when we went to our friends' wedding in Poland two years earlier and found it was just as cheap and avoided the hassles that come along with Travelocity, Orbitz and the rest.
The flight we purchased on Alitalia would take us out on July 1st at 4:30pm and fly us into Milan where we would wait for three hours before continuing onto Delhi, arriving there at 10:20pm on July 2nd. Delhi is nine and a half hours ahead of DC, so the trip would really be only about twenty-one hours door-to-door. Given that neither of us is too rich in vacation time, we decided to limit our trip to only ten days total, and would return on July 9th with a day off once we were back to rest up for work.
R is a planning and packing fanatic and had everything prepared far in advance. This included ponchos, 99.8% Deet bug spray, a mixed ziploc of Immodium and Advil, Neosporin, Band-aids, and everything else we could possibly need. Additionally, R used some of our condo contacts to get in touch with a travel agency in Delhi to get us train tickets to Agra and Shimla as well as a hotel reservation for a night in Shimla all to be waiting for us at our hotel in Delhi when we arrived.
I, on the other hand, focused my efforts on packing various gadgets and the wires associated with them (ipod, camera, chargers, blackberries, blackberry-charger, various adaptors, etc.) While I had alerted management that I would be going on vacation more than four months in advance, my boss decided to take it as a total surprise when I reminded him of the trip the Monday before I was suppose to leave. Never mind that I'd been talking about it steadily for months or that it had been blocked out in the team calendar since the day we bought the tickets. He immediately began trying to make sure that everything I was working on would be finished by the time I left. This meant putting in about 65 hours over the next five days. Thank goodness that R had so much of our stuff packed. By the time I got home late on the last day of June, I was in no mood to search for my poncho.
Before catching our plane on Saturday evening, we had to take the cat up to Bethesda to stay with R's parents for the week that we'd be gone. R's dad was nice enough to pick us up and we took the cat and our suitcases Northward.
Humayun's Tomb
While we eating lunch and starting to think about leaving for the airport, we got a call from STA regarding our flights. Apparently, Alitalia had canceled the second leg of the trip from Milan to Delhi. STA explained that they had tried to arrange something else over the phone, but that the airline had kept insisting that we'd have to solve the problem after we go to Milan. They did suggest, however, that we get to the airport a little earlier and see if we could arrange something there.
Once at the airport, R and I did a good job of playing good cop/bad cop (wherein R shows a lot of emotion and frustration with the people at the Alitalia desk and I come off as being understanding of their position but unwilling to accept what they're telling me). This behaior of ours seems to happen naturally almost every time we get into a situation like this. In the end, we were moved to a flight on KLM that would take us through Amsterdam and then to Delhi and get us in only 20 minutes later than our original itinerary. Even better, the second leg of the flight was full and we would have to be bumped up to business class. The Horror!
I had never ridden in anything but coach until this trip and have decided that I will not enjoy flying very much ever again if I'm stuck back there with the proles. Here are just some of the reasons I discovered for business class to cost more money:
(1) The food is far better
(2) There is much more leg room
(3) There are no screaming babies (I can only assume this is because families have better things to spend their money on than renting a big lounge chair 33,000 feet in the air for 6 hours)
(4) Better service
(5) Only three seats across at its maximum
(6) Better smelling passengers (partly due to the babies, but definitely apparent amongst other flyers as well)
Enough about getting there. We did actually get there and weren't pestered for more than two seconds at customs. Upon exiting the gate we were met by a sea of taxi drivers holding different signs. After running the gauntlet once and not seeing the sign for our hotel, I went back and found one with R's name on it, spelled incorrectly.
Walking out of the airport with the driver was the first moment that either of us really experienced Delhi and lends truth to the idea that you can't count a place on your list of visited places if you've only been to its airports. Trying to recall if it was the heat or the smell that hit me first, I can only assume it was the smell. Heat takes a little while to hit as it has to push all the cool air out of my clothes before enveloping me, but the smell was right there from the moment the doors opened until the moment I was asked to stow my tray table on the flight back home. We would later learn that a lot of the poorer residents of Delhi still use cow dung to heat their stoves and that this is what was giving their city that distinctly sour, musty smell stinging the back of my throat and thick enough that you thought you could wave it away (alas).
New Delhi rom a rooftop
Stupid me had forgotten that Indians drive on the left side of the road. This was another first for me, as I've never been to Japan, Australia or England (except its airports), but I thought I got used to it pretty quickly. While they may drive on the same side of the road as Britons, I can only assume that the driving style of Indians is vastly different. There is very little stopping at any time during a drive. If the brake is depressed, the horn is usually depressed as well. This also holds true for the gas. In fact, from my experience, there are few times when the horn isn't being honked or about to be honked in an Indian vehicle (particularly a Tata).
Per the suggestion of my Grandpa, I took along a little notebook for the trip. Here are the notes I made on our first drive in India while we were going from the airport to the hotel (mind you, midway through this drive R reached out and grabbed me hand, in that "what have we done?" sort of way... the feeling was mutual):
Any street downtown
(1) Ladies ride sidesaddle on the backs of mopeds.
(2) Air quality: questionable.
(3) Our driver has no mirrors on his car.
(4) We're on the wrong side of the road over here.
(5) There is a water buffalo in the highway.
As the driver took us deeper and deeper into Delhi, we started to wonder where exactly our hotel was located. We were staying at the hotel Ajanta near the center of Delhi and it had only cost us $178 for the week that we would be there. The hotel was located between old and new Delhi, North of Connaught Place and the New Delhi train station (not to be confused with the Nizammudin train station, much further to the South).
While the streets around and in front of the hotel were filled with not-so-welcoming faces, the lobby and its employees seemed great. After arriving in the lobby, we were taken into a small office off to the side to show our passports and reservation receipt. The first room they took us to was a complete wreck and we were about to unload our things when the phone rang and the bellman was instructed to take us to a different room - one that more closely matched what we'd seen in pictures online. We didn't even have to complain! Later we would notice loads of other people also carrying "STA" hotel reservation receipts.
While the bellman was doing the whole "show-you-obvious-things-in-the-room-while-you-rustle-for-my-tip" thing, he showed R the bathroom. Upon noticing a large bucket and smaller pouring vessel in the tub, R asked, "What's that?"
To which the bellman replied, "bucket."
The lobby of the hotel Ajanta
I chose to use the shower head rather than the bucket for the duration of the trip and now feel that I may have cheated myself slightly.
At this point R and I were pretty beat and called it a night - finally turning in around 12pm Delhi time. Before we went to bed, however, we both took a melatonin pill. Having heard of this drug's great ability to help one get back on their circadian rhythms when traveling, I thought it was worth a shot. I'll tell you this: it works. Maybe it's just a placebo, but if that's the case it's my new favorite placebo. Bless that stuff. I woke up the next day at 8am feeling refreshed and ready to do some touristing.
The morning of July 3rd, R and I went downstairs to change some money at the front desk. We inquired there about the best way to get around the city and were informed that the hotel had a taxi stand that would give us a driver for the day for 800 Rupees. At 44 Rupees to the dollar, that's under 20 bucks. While we were at the front desk, we also picked up our various train tickets and hotel vouchers for the rest of our trip that had been mailed there by Parul Tours & Travels a great travel agency recommended by our neighbor who was based in New Delhi for the US State Dept.
After paying for a cab for the day, R and I set foot out of our hotel and witnessed India from the ground during daylight hours for the first time.
The view across from our hotel in New Delhi (the hotel Ajanta)
Our cab driver was a Nepalese man named Durga, and would end up taking us around each day that we did sight-seeing in New Delhi. A few blocks after we'd left the hotel, Durga stopped and picked up his (much) younger brother. Durga explained that his brother was learning to drive by touring around with him during the day. While listening to him speak over the next week, I realized that Durga had two types of English that he employed, the kind he used when he was driving and the kind that he used when he wasn't. Durga's driving English was entirely made up of short statements like, "Ok, my big boss", "You like India, fifty-fifty?", "Hello police officer", and "where we're going next?" Once the car was stopped, Durga's English improved dramatically and he would talk to us about some of the sites we were seeing and answer all of our dumb cultural questions. I'm dead sure that the only reason he spoke differently when driving is that driving in India is so brain intensive that if he tried to speak in fuller sentences, his truck would be wrapped around a tree. Further proof of how difficult it is to drive there can be found in Durga's brother having to do so many ride-alongs before attempting it himself.
Our first stop on our first day of touring about was Raj Ghat, which marks the spot of Mahatma Gandhi's cremation on 31 January 1948.
Raj Ghat
It was incredibly hot by the time we left Raj Ghat and were taken by Durga to see Humayun's Tomb. In the same gardens that house Humayun's tomb, is another tomb for nobleman Ali Isa Khan Niazi. We toured the tomb of Ali Isa Khan Niazi first and were immediately approached by a man who offered to show us around, saying, "I'm not a guide. I work here." This seemed like a fair enough explanation, so we let him walk around with us and point things out a bit.
Ali Isa Khan Niazi
Finding water is relatively easy in Delhi. Most everyone in the city appears to drink bottled water, so it's avaiable just about everywhere. R and I had heard enough stories about the water before leaving that we were strict to the point of brushing our teeth with bottled water during our stay. I even avoided coffee to a large extent, as one never knew how well the water had been heated. After informing Durga of our dehydrated state, his brother jumped out and came back with two bottles of water. I was surprised to find the bottles were Aquafina, a brand bottled by Pepsi. This would be one of many times that I would notice the complete and total infiltration of Frito-Lay on India. Half of the shops and houses on the side of the road that we would take a few days later from Kalka to Shimla were painted with "Lay's" or "Pepsi" logos. Aquafina was everywhere. I can only wonder what kind of financial interest Frito-Lay has in the water quality in Delhi staying horrible.
I digress. R and I were completely revitalized after each draining a liter of water. Our next stop was the tomb of Safdajung which looked enough like Humayun's tomb that we weren't even slightly dissappointed at having withered in the heat earlier in the day. Up in the tomb area we were once again approached by a man with the same "I'm not a guide, I work here." line. Given the familiarity of this statment and the man's lack of shoes or socks, we both realized that we'd been taken for a ride earlier. The man then asked us if we could exchange one American dollar for Rupees. Now even more assured as to his not being an employee, R and I immediately adopted British accents and left down a staircase.
Safdarjun's Tomb
We had had plans to have suits made while we where there given that it costs so much less to do so in India. With this in mind, we had Durga take us to Khan Market, which had been recommended to us by our neighbor who used to live in Delhi. Billed in Wikipedia as "one of the more upscale and expensive places to shop in New Delhi" we were a little surprised at what we found. We weren't looking for upscale, anyway, so we weren't dissappointed.
Behind Khan Market
Plenty tired and hungry, Durga suggested a spot for lunch where we had our first authentic Indian meal. The restaurant was a bit touristy, but there were locals present as well. The food was delicious and suprisingly similar to the Indian food that one would find in the states. Throughout the trip, I found that most of the food that we ate on the trip, whether served in hotels or on the train, was very similar to what can be found here in the states. Of course, there's a little less meat in the food in India, but otherwise it's pretty close.
After lunch, Durga took us back to the hotel where we both passed out from 3pm to 6pm. After waking up from this "nap", we went up on the roof and sat around watching the hundreds of kites being flown from rooftops and being watched ourselves by various people on their rooftops. We also noticed a large monkey across the street on some water tanks, which enouraged us to abandon the roof and see about having a walk around.
Monkey on a Roof
Whew! That's the end of Part 1. I'll start typing part II later today and will upload eventually. There's a lot more to go!
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