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| author | luxagraf <sng@luxagraf.net> | 2023-07-28 13:43:36 -0500 |
|---|---|---|
| committer | luxagraf <sng@luxagraf.net> | 2023-07-28 13:43:36 -0500 |
| commit | a30c790edea652494e7481f6798047a3bc1fd4ea (patch) | |
| tree | b0936860abd6767716f56c68e305d8f5e0e38bd4 /bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11 | |
| parent | 9a620cf42bf1fe6977e378bd834b41ff4a593dde (diff) | |
added a backup of old pages that are no longer live
Diffstat (limited to 'bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11')
34 files changed, 6407 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/anjuna-market.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/anjuna-market.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..cf9f0ab --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/anjuna-market.amp @@ -0,0 +1,180 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>Anjuna Market</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/anjuna-market"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1,minimum-scale=1"> + <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"/> + <meta name="twitter:url" content="/jrnl/2005/11/anjuna-market"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="Earlier today I caught a bus up to the Anjuna Flea Market and can now tell you for certain that old hippies do not die, they simply move to Goa. "/> + <meta name="twitter:title" content="Anjuna Market"/> + <meta name="twitter:site" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:domain" content="luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:image:src" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2008/anjunabeachmarket.jpg"/> + <meta name="twitter:creator" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:site:id" content="9469062"> + <meta name="twitter:creator:id" content="9469062"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content=""/> + + <meta name="geo.placename" content="Anjuna Beach, India"> + <meta name="geo.region" content="IN-None"> + <meta property="og:type" content="article" /> + <meta property="og:title" content="Anjuna Market" /> + <meta property="og:url" content="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/anjuna-market" /> + <meta property="og:description" content="Earlier today I caught a bus up to the Anjuna Flea Market and can now tell you for certain that old hippies do not die, they simply move to Goa. " /> + <meta property="article:published_time" content="2005-11-24T00:58:15" /> + <meta property="article:author" content="Luxagraf" /> + <meta property="og:site_name" content="Luxagraf" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2008/anjunabeachmarket.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/colvabeachcows.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/colvapara.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/tightrope.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US" /> + + +<script type="application/ld+json"> +{ + "@context": "http://schema.org", + "@type": "BlogPosting", + "headline": "Anjuna Market", + "description": "Earlier today I caught a bus up to the Anjuna Flea Market and can now tell you for certain that old hippies do not die, they simply move to Goa. ", + "datePublished": "2005-11-24T00:58:15", + "author": { + "@type": "Person", + "name": "Scott Gilbertson" + }, + "publisher": { + "@type": "Person", + "name": "Scott Gilbertson" + "logo": { + "@type": "ImageObject", + "url": "", + "width": 240, + "height": 53 + } + } +} +</script> +<style amp-custom> +body { + font-size: 1rem; + line-height: 1.73; + font-family: Georgia, serif; + background-color: #fff; + color: #333; + padding: 1em; +} +nav { + font-family: "Helvetica Neue",Helvetica,Arial,sans-serif; + max-width: 60em; + margin: 0 auto; +} +main { + max-width: 60em; + margin: 0 auto; +} +main footer { + text-align: right; +} +a { + text-decoration: underline; + color: #c63; +} +nav a { + text-decoration: none; + text-transform: uppercase; + color: #222; +} +h1,h2,h3,h4,h5 { + line-height: 1; + font-weight: bold; +} +h1 { + font-size: 1.5rem; + color: #666; +} +h2 { + font-size: 1.125rem; + color: #555; +} +h3 { + font-size: 1rem; + color: #444; +} +h4 { + font-size: 0.875rem; +} +h5 { + font-size: 0.75rem; +} +h1 a, h1 a *, +h2 a, h2 a *, +h3 a, h3 a *, +h4 a, h4 a * { + text-decoration: none; + font-weight: bold +} +code { + font-size: 0.875rem; + font-family: "Courier New",monospace; +} +pre { + white-space: pre-wrap; + word-wrap: break-word; +} +blockquote { + font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif; + font-size: 0.875rem; +} +blockquote * { + font-style: italic; +} +blockquote * em { + font-weight: bold; +} +blockquote * strong { + font-style: normal; +} +hr { + border: none; + border-bottom: 0.0625rem dotted #ccc; +} +.hide {display: none;} +</style> +<style>body {opacity: 0}</style><noscript><style>body {opacity: 1}</style></noscript> +<script async src="https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0.js"></script> +</head> +<body> + +<nav> +<a href="https://luxagraf.net/"> +luxagraf</a> +</nav> + +<main class="h-entry"> + <article class="h-entry hentry post--article" itemscope itemType="http://schema.org/Article"> + <header id="header" class="post--header "> + <h1 class="p-name entry-title post--title" itemprop="headline">Anjuna Market</h1> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post--date" datetime="2005-11-24T00:58:15" itemprop="datePublished">November <span>24, 2005</span></time> + <p class="p-author author hide" itemprop="author"><span class="byline-author" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person"><span itemprop="name">Scott Gilbertson</span></span></p> + <aside class="p-location h-adr adr post--location" itemprop="contentLocation" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Place"> + <span class="p-region">Anjuna Beach</span>, <a class="p-country-name country-name" href="/jrnl/india/" title="travel writing from India">India</a> + </aside> + </header> + <div id="article" class="e-content entry-content post--body post--body--single" itemprop="articleBody"> + <p><span class="drop">M</span>y time in Goa is winding down, tomorrow I catch a plane to Mumbai, another on to Ahmedabad and then finally a train up to Udaipur. </p> +<p><break></break></p> +<p>Two days ago I rented a bicycle and road down the beach to Benaulim, about 2km south of here, which turned out to be pretty much just like Colva Beach, but it was nice to get some exercise. And having been here now for a week, there are those indelible reminders that you are India and not just any beach town, whether it's cows wandering the beach or the endless hustlers wanting you to have a look, just a look… it is always uniquely, somewhat insanely, India.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Cows on the beach, Goa India" height="100" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/colvabeachcows.jpg" width="139"></amp-img>It was not without some regret that I went for a final swim in the Arabian Sea yesterday evening. My time in Goa has felt like nice vacation from my trip. I have stocked up vitamin D as well as increased my melatonin count to the point that some of the girls hawking wares on the beach approached me speaking Hindi and were surprised to learn that I was not Indian.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Parasailing in the sunset Goa India" height="109" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/colvapara.jpg" width="145"></amp-img>Earlier today I caught a bus up to the Anjuna Flea Market and can now tell you for certain that old hippies do not die, they simply move to Goa. The flea market was quite a spectacle; riots of color at every turn and more silver jewelry than you could shake a stick at. In the end though it was pretty much the same stuff at every stall and the touts were relentless, especially the ones that want to clean your ear.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Girl on a tightrope" height="159" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/tightrope.jpg" width="120"></amp-img>The highlight of Anjuna to me was actually away from the market, out on the beach where many Tibetan refuges spend their time entertaining tourists, such as the little girl that walked a tightrope with various objects balanced on her head. Then there was a man with a Tibetan flute and a cow that was apparently mesmerized by the flute and could be made to go in various directions according the notes from the flute. He would walk down the beach with the cow covered in beads and silks and kind of maneuver him with a tune.</p> +<p>I've met several nice people here in Goa including a man roughly my age from Nepal who invited me to stay with his family when I get to Nepal. All in all I've enjoyed my time here, but I'm ready to be moving on. As a final note of weirdness, tonight at the Joema there are two Swedish girls one of whom is apparently an aspiring opera singer and has spent most of the evening working through her vocal scales. It's an interesting contrast, operatic scales, the smell of burning leaves and garbage, the sound of roosters, and to cap it off occasional burst of fireworks from the beach. </p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/anjuna-market.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/anjuna-market.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6e150ee --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/anjuna-market.html @@ -0,0 +1,334 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Anjuna Market - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="Earlier today I caught a bus up to the Anjuna Flea Market and can now tell you for certain that old hippies do not die, they simply move to Goa. 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" +} +</script> + +</head> +<body > + <div class="wrapper" id="wrapper"> + <div class="header-wrapper"> + <header class="site-banner"> + <div id="logo"> + <a href="/" title="Home">Luxagraf</a> + <span class="sitesubtitle">Walk Slowly</span> + </div> + <nav> + <ul> + <li><a href="/jrnl/" title="Stories of life on the road.">Jrnl</a> & <a href="/field-notes/" title="Short stories, snapshots of daily life on the road.">Field Notes</a></li> + <li><a href="/guide/" title="Advice, Tools, Tips and Tricks for Full Time Van or RV Life.">Guides</a></li> + <li><a href="/newsletter/" title="The 'friends of a long year' newsletter">newsletter</a></li> + <li><a href="/about" title="About Scott">About</a></li> + </ul> + </nav> + </header> + </div> + <ol class="bl" id="breadcrumbs" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/BreadcrumbList"> + <li itemprop="itemListElement" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ListItem"><a itemprop="item" href="/"><span itemprop="name">Home</span></a> → + <meta itemprop="position" content="1" /> + </li> + <li itemprop="itemListElement" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ListItem"> + + <a href="/jrnl/" itemprop="item"><span itemprop="name">jrnl</span></a> + <meta itemprop="position" content="2" /> + <meta itemprop="position" content="2" /> + </li> + </ol> + + + <main> + <article class="h-entry hentry entry-content content" itemscope itemType="http://schema.org/BlogPosting"> + <header id="header" class="post-header "> + <h1 class="p-name entry-title post-title" itemprop="headline">Anjuna Market</h1> + + <div class="post-linewrapper"> + <div class="p-location h-adr adr post-location" itemprop="contentLocation" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Place"> + <h3 class="h-adr" itemprop="address" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/PostalAddress"><span class="p-region" itemprop="addressRegion">Anjuna Beach</span>, <a class="p-country-name country-name" href="/jrnl/india/" title="travel writing from India"><span itemprop="addressCountry">India</span></a></h3> + – <a href="" onclick="showMap(15.58128947293701, 73.73886107371965, { type:'point', lat:'15.58128947293701', lon:'73.73886107371965'}); return false;" title="see a map">Map</a> + </div> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post-date" datetime="2005-11-24T00:58:15" itemprop="datePublished">November <span>24, 2005</span></time> + <span class="hide" itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">by <a class="p-author h-card" href="/about"><span itemprop="name">Scott Gilbertson</span></a></span> + </div> + </header> + <div id="article" class="e-content entry-content post--body post--body--single" itemprop="articleBody"> + <p><span class="drop">M</span>y time in Goa is winding down, tomorrow I catch a plane to Mumbai, another on to Ahmedabad and then finally a train up to Udaipur. </p> +<p><break></p> +<p>Two days ago I rented a bicycle and road down the beach to Benaulim, about 2km south of here, which turned out to be pretty much just like Colva Beach, but it was nice to get some exercise. And having been here now for a week, there are those indelible reminders that you are India and not just any beach town, whether it’s cows wandering the beach or the endless hustlers wanting you to have a look, just a look… it is always uniquely, somewhat insanely, India.</p> +<p><img alt="Cows on the beach, Goa India" class="postpic" height="100" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/colvabeachcows.jpg" width="139"/>It was not without some regret that I went for a final swim in the Arabian Sea yesterday evening. My time in Goa has felt like nice vacation from my trip. I have stocked up vitamin D as well as increased my melatonin count to the point that some of the girls hawking wares on the beach approached me speaking Hindi and were surprised to learn that I was not Indian.</p> +<p><img alt="Parasailing in the sunset Goa India" class="postpicright" height="159" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/colvapara.jpg" width="120"/>Earlier today I caught a bus up to the Anjuna Flea Market and can now tell you for certain that old hippies do not die, they simply move to Goa. The flea market was quite a spectacle; riots of color at every turn and more silver jewelry than you could shake a stick at. In the end though it was pretty much the same stuff at every stall and the touts were relentless, especially the ones that want to clean your ear.</p> +<p><img alt="Girl on a tightrope" class="postpic" height="90" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/tightrope.jpg" width="90"/>The highlight of Anjuna to me was actually away from the market, out on the beach where many Tibetan refuges spend their time entertaining tourists, such as the little girl that walked a tightrope with various objects balanced on her head. Then there was a man with a Tibetan flute and a cow that was apparently mesmerized by the flute and could be made to go in various directions according the notes from the flute. He would walk down the beach with the cow covered in beads and silks and kind of maneuver him with a tune.</p> +<p>I’ve met several nice people here in Goa including a man roughly my age from Nepal who invited me to stay with his family when I get to Nepal. All in all I’ve enjoyed my time here, but I’m ready to be moving on. As a final note of weirdness, tonight at the Joema there are two Swedish girls one of whom is apparently an aspiring opera singer and has spent most of the evening working through her vocal scales. It’s an interesting contrast, operatic scales, the smell of burning leaves and garbage, the sound of roosters, and to cap it off occasional burst of fireworks from the beach. </p> + </div> + + </article> + + + <div class="nav-wrapper"> + <nav id="page-navigation" class="page-border-top"> + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/11/fish-story" rel="prev" title=" Fish Story">Fish Story</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/11/living-airport-terminals" rel="next" title=" Living in Airport Terminals">Living in Airport Terminals</a> + </li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + + + + + + +<div class="comment--form--wrapper "> + +<div class="comment--form--header"> + <p class="hed">Thoughts?</p> + <p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p> +</div> +<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form"> + +<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" /> + + + <input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="19" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833487" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="df437d24c9879f7b8bc706086af79ea3f6ff1d05" id="id_security_hash"> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_name">Name:</label> + <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_email">Email address:</label> + <input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_url">URL:</label> + <input type="url" name="url" id="id_url"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_comment">Comment:</label> + <div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment"> +</textarea></div> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset style="display:none;"> + <label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label> + <input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot"> + </fieldset> + + + <div class="submit"> + <input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" /> + <input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" /> + </div> +</form> +<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. 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+
+<break>
+
+Two days ago I rented a bicycle and road down the beach to Benaulim, about 2km south of here, which turned out to be pretty much just like Colva Beach, but it was nice to get some exercise. And having been here now for a week, there are those indelible reminders that you are India and not just any beach town, whether it's cows wandering the beach or the endless hustlers wanting you to have a look, just a look… it is always uniquely, somewhat insanely, India.
+
+
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/colvabeachcows.jpg" width="139" height="100" class="postpic" alt="Cows on the beach, Goa India" />It was not without some regret that I went for a final swim in the Arabian Sea yesterday evening. My time in Goa has felt like nice vacation from my trip. I have stocked up vitamin D as well as increased my melatonin count to the point that some of the girls hawking wares on the beach approached me speaking Hindi and were surprised to learn that I was not Indian.
+
+
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/colvapara.jpg" width="120" height="159" class="postpicright" alt="Parasailing in the sunset Goa India" />Earlier today I caught a bus up to the Anjuna Flea Market and can now tell you for certain that old hippies do not die, they simply move to Goa. The flea market was quite a spectacle; riots of color at every turn and more silver jewelry than you could shake a stick at. In the end though it was pretty much the same stuff at every stall and the touts were relentless, especially the ones that want to clean your ear.
+
+
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/tightrope.jpg" width="90" height="90" class="postpic" alt="Girl on a tightrope" />The highlight of Anjuna to me was actually away from the market, out on the beach where many Tibetan refuges spend their time entertaining tourists, such as the little girl that walked a tightrope with various objects balanced on her head. Then there was a man with a Tibetan flute and a cow that was apparently mesmerized by the flute and could be made to go in various directions according the notes from the flute. He would walk down the beach with the cow covered in beads and silks and kind of maneuver him with a tune.
+
+
+
+I've met several nice people here in Goa including a man roughly my age from Nepal who invited me to stay with his family when I get to Nepal. All in all I've enjoyed my time here, but I'm ready to be moving on. As a final note of weirdness, tonight at the Joema there are two Swedish girls one of whom is apparently an aspiring opera singer and has spent most of the evening working through her vocal scales. It's an interesting contrast, operatic scales, the smell of burning leaves and garbage, the sound of roosters, and to cap it off occasional burst of fireworks from the beach. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/around-udaipur.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/around-udaipur.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e4461ce --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/around-udaipur.amp @@ -0,0 +1,183 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>Around Udaipur</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/around-udaipur"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1,minimum-scale=1"> + <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"/> + <meta name="twitter:url" content="/jrnl/2005/11/around-udaipur"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="Udaipur, Bagore-ki-Haveli and the strange, slightly creepy Shilpogram."/> + <meta name="twitter:title" content="Around Udaipur"/> + <meta name="twitter:site" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:domain" content="luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:image:src" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2008/shiplogram.jpg"/> + <meta name="twitter:creator" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:site:id" content="9469062"> + <meta name="twitter:creator:id" content="9469062"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content=""/> + + <meta name="geo.placename" content="Udiapur, India"> + <meta name="geo.region" content="IN-None"> + <meta property="og:type" content="article" /> + <meta property="og:title" content="Around Udaipur" /> + <meta property="og:url" content="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/around-udaipur" /> + <meta property="og:description" content="Udaipur, Bagore-ki-Haveli and the strange, slightly creepy Shilpogram." /> + <meta property="article:published_time" content="2005-11-30T19:05:47" /> + <meta property="article:author" content="Luxagraf" /> + <meta property="og:site_name" content="Luxagraf" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2008/shiplogram.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/jagdish.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/havelipeacock.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/udaipurdancer.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US" /> + + +<script type="application/ld+json"> +{ + "@context": "http://schema.org", + "@type": "BlogPosting", + "headline": "Around Udaipur", + "description": "Udaipur, Bagore-ki-Haveli and the strange, slightly creepy Shilpogram.", + "datePublished": "2005-11-30T19:05:47", + "author": { + "@type": "Person", + "name": "Scott Gilbertson" + }, + "publisher": { + "@type": "Person", + "name": "Scott Gilbertson" + "logo": { + "@type": "ImageObject", + "url": "", + "width": 240, + "height": 53 + } + } +} +</script> +<style amp-custom> +body { + font-size: 1rem; 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I don't have much interest in religious temples apart from an architectural standpoint, but the Jagdish Temple was an incredibly impressive design, covered in very delicate and ornate stone carvings depicting everything from scenes of Vishnu to elephants butting heads.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Carving Jagdish Temple Udaipur India" height="124" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/jagdish.jpg" width="200"></amp-img> I walked around the main building for a while watching the various supplications going on, one in particular caught my eye, a father and his young son, two maybe three years old, came to pray at the sun god temple on the southeast side of the complex and the boy seemed to instinctively know that something important was going on and as he approached he put his hands together as you would to say namaste, but his father had to show him how to bow and at first he did not, the father had to place his hand on the boy's head and show him what to do which made me feel slightly better, perhaps genuflection is not instinctive with in us, but taught by culture. I sat down on a bench and tried to make sense of the bewildering tangle of carvings on the sides of the main temple. I started thinking about the Taj Mahal, which, for those like myself that did not know this, is actually a mausoleum. I don't know what all the so-called seven wonders of the world are off the top of my head, but I do know that the Taj Mahal is one and the pyramids in Egypt are another which means two out of seven, possibly more, of man's greatest structures are essentially graves. Not temples or churches or monuments, but tombs. </p> +<p><break></break></p> +<p>After the temple visit I wandered down toward the lakeshore and bought a ticket to the Bagore-ki-Haveli. Another word I did not know, but can now offer the dictionary definition: haveli, traditional, often ornately-decorated, residences, which of course means nothing to me or you, except to say that perhaps this is how the upper middle class and upper class, but not quite royalty, seems to have lived. There are havelis all over India, but they seem to mainly be a focus in Rajasthan and Gujarat, and it's here that the most effort has been made to restore some of these often decrepit buildings to their once and former glory. The Bagore-ki-Haveli is one of the high points of these restoration projects. It took five years to restore and capturing the lifestyles of the rich circa 1780. </p> +<p>Comprising a total of 138 rooms it took me sometime to negotiate the entire museum, which in a way resembles the nicest most labyrinthine dorm you've ever imagined. There were elegant and gracefully decorated rooms that in many ways reminded me of Japanese paintings in and their minimalist, almost spartan aesthetic. There were also rooms for the more everyday life, kitchen equipment, including the biggest cooking bowl—I would say wok, but I know it's not a wok, still it looks like a wok— I've ever seen which was easily six feet in diameter, and then there were game rooms with gorgeous chess sets and some games I didn't recognize, they even restored the bathroom, which was a stunning example of the frozen sense of time that exists in India, since it looks exactly the same as the average India bathroom of today. There were also more of the same inlaid glass peacocks that I saw at the City Palace two days ago.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Haveli Udaipur India" height="200" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/havelipeacock.jpg" width="158"></amp-img>Throughout my time in the Haveli I couldn't quite escape the feeling of false history, of idealizing a culture whose great wealth and power existed on the back of people who are not remembered, whose homes are not on display and whose lives are barely recorded. I guess that to some extent the architecture and daily life of those people vanishes when they do, which is a shame. Obviously it isn't the workers that get to write the story of the building, save with their anonymous hands that laid the stones and marble in place and perhaps the perfection and beauty of the stone is in the end a more lasting monument than restored trinkets and board games. The rich may have lived and played in the Haveli, but the stone workers who built it and the craftsmen and women who carved the intricate chess pieces and pounded out the giant metal cookware are what made the Haveli a place that anyone wanted to live in the first place.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Dancer Shilpogram, Udaipur India" height="185" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/udaipurdancer.jpg" width="200"></amp-img>After the haveli I decided I ought to head out of town to Shilpogram which is ostensibly a museum of traditional cultures that continue to exist today in northeastern India—the craftsmen and women who would have built a haveli if such things were still built by hand. I took a rickshaw about 4km out of Udaipur to see what is actually a government sponsored project, an artist colony for various cultures from the five nearby states, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Karnataka, Goa and Madhya Pradesh. On one hand Shilpogram is a wonderful idea on the part of the government—for the India government to actually get anything done is nothing short of miracle apparently, unless you count badmouthing Pakistan and forming grand plans—but on the other hand the "artists colony" is slightly creepy. </p> +<p>Amidst displays of typical tribal life and buildings from each region there were artists and craftsmen and women hawking their wares along with dancers and musicians performing traditional songs. The whole thing had the feel of a living museum designed to give you an idea of how these people live in their respective villages. The creepiness comes from the fact that I could well have ended the last sentence: <em>how they live in their natural habitat</em>, and indeed Shilpogram has the feel of a kind of human zoo, a place for curious tourists to come and observe the anomalous foreign animals in their carefully reconstructed natural habitats. Still, the dancers were stunning in their acrobatic abilities, motions and positions of the body you have to witness to believe and the musical instruments of India are always particularly intriguing to me. I would like to say that what the government of India is doing is a good thing, trying to give tribal people a venue where they can come for two week periods and do what they do, but still the feeling of walking about a human zoo persists and I can not say that I would ever go back.</p> +<p>As I was walking home from dinner the sound of explosions drew my interest down toward the water where I was quickly caught up in a wedding procession with a number of other tourists. The Indians insisted on us joining them for a number of dances in street and even wanted us to follow the procession and have dinner. I had already eaten so I begged out and wandered down to the shoreline where the little kids were lighting of fireworks. But not the sort of fireworks you can buy in say South Carolina, no these were more like high explosives that had a shockwave you feel when they detonated. I sat up on the steps near the main ghat and watched ten year olds light massive aerial fireworks like the kind that professional companies set off at fourth of July in the U.S. using of course pyrotechnic experts and whatnot, but here anyone seems capable. And nobody lost an arm. At least while I was there.</p> +<p>My time here in Udaipur has been my favorite so far in India and yet like all things it will soon come to an end. Tomorrow I have errands to take care of and then I catch an early morning bus to Jodhpur where the next unbelievable thing awaits. </p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/around-udaipur.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/around-udaipur.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..34f53f7 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/around-udaipur.html @@ -0,0 +1,337 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Around Udaipur - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="Udaipur, Bagore-ki-Haveli and the strange, slightly creepy Shilpogram."> + <meta name="author" content="Scott Gilbertson"> + <link rel="alternate" + type="application/rss+xml" + title="Luxagraf RSS feed" + href="https://luxagraf.net/rss/"> + <link rel="stylesheet" + href="/media/screenv9.css" + media="screen"> + <link rel="stylesheet" href="/media/print.css" media="print" title="print" /> + <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon"> + <link rel="manifest" href="/manifest.json" /> + <link rel="dns-prefetch" href="https://stats.luxagraf.net"> + + <link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/around-udaipur" /> + <meta name="ICBM" content="24.667610368715458, 73.78486632273662" /> + <meta name="geo.position" content="24.667610368715458; 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return false;" title="see a map">Map</a> + </div> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post-date" datetime="2005-11-30T19:05:47" itemprop="datePublished">November <span>30, 2005</span></time> + <span class="hide" itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">by <a class="p-author h-card" href="/about"><span itemprop="name">Scott Gilbertson</span></a></span> + </div> + </header> + <div id="article" class="e-content entry-content post--body post--body--single" itemprop="articleBody"> + <p><span class="drop">I</span> spent the day wandering around Udaipur, in the morning I visited the Jagdish Temple and the Bagore-ki-Haveli. I don’t have much interest in religious temples apart from an architectural standpoint, but the Jagdish Temple was an incredibly impressive design, covered in very delicate and ornate stone carvings depicting everything from scenes of Vishnu to elephants butting heads.</p> +<p><img alt="Carving Jagdish Temple Udaipur India" class="postpicright" height="124" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/jagdish.jpg" width="200"/> I walked around the main building for a while watching the various supplications going on, one in particular caught my eye, a father and his young son, two maybe three years old, came to pray at the sun god temple on the southeast side of the complex and the boy seemed to instinctively know that something important was going on and as he approached he put his hands together as you would to say namaste, but his father had to show him how to bow and at first he did not, the father had to place his hand on the boy’s head and show him what to do which made me feel slightly better, perhaps genuflection is not instinctive with in us, but taught by culture. I sat down on a bench and tried to make sense of the bewildering tangle of carvings on the sides of the main temple. I started thinking about the Taj Mahal, which, for those like myself that did not know this, is actually a mausoleum. I don’t know what all the so-called seven wonders of the world are off the top of my head, but I do know that the Taj Mahal is one and the pyramids in Egypt are another which means two out of seven, possibly more, of man’s greatest structures are essentially graves. Not temples or churches or monuments, but tombs. </p> +<p><break></p> +<p>After the temple visit I wandered down toward the lakeshore and bought a ticket to the Bagore-ki-Haveli. Another word I did not know, but can now offer the dictionary definition: haveli, traditional, often ornately-decorated, residences, which of course means nothing to me or you, except to say that perhaps this is how the upper middle class and upper class, but not quite royalty, seems to have lived. There are havelis all over India, but they seem to mainly be a focus in Rajasthan and Gujarat, and it’s here that the most effort has been made to restore some of these often decrepit buildings to their once and former glory. The Bagore-ki-Haveli is one of the high points of these restoration projects. It took five years to restore and capturing the lifestyles of the rich circa 1780. </p> +<p>Comprising a total of 138 rooms it took me sometime to negotiate the entire museum, which in a way resembles the nicest most labyrinthine dorm you’ve ever imagined. There were elegant and gracefully decorated rooms that in many ways reminded me of Japanese paintings in and their minimalist, almost spartan aesthetic. There were also rooms for the more everyday life, kitchen equipment, including the biggest cooking bowl—I would say wok, but I know it’s not a wok, still it looks like a wok— I’ve ever seen which was easily six feet in diameter, and then there were game rooms with gorgeous chess sets and some games I didn’t recognize, they even restored the bathroom, which was a stunning example of the frozen sense of time that exists in India, since it looks exactly the same as the average India bathroom of today. There were also more of the same inlaid glass peacocks that I saw at the City Palace two days ago.</p> +<p><img alt="Haveli Udaipur India" class="postpic" height="200" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/havelipeacock.jpg" width="158"/>Throughout my time in the Haveli I couldn’t quite escape the feeling of false history, of idealizing a culture whose great wealth and power existed on the back of people who are not remembered, whose homes are not on display and whose lives are barely recorded. I guess that to some extent the architecture and daily life of those people vanishes when they do, which is a shame. Obviously it isn’t the workers that get to write the story of the building, save with their anonymous hands that laid the stones and marble in place and perhaps the perfection and beauty of the stone is in the end a more lasting monument than restored trinkets and board games. The rich may have lived and played in the Haveli, but the stone workers who built it and the craftsmen and women who carved the intricate chess pieces and pounded out the giant metal cookware are what made the Haveli a place that anyone wanted to live in the first place.</p> +<p><img alt="Dancer Shilpogram, Udaipur India" class="postpic" height="185" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/udaipurdancer.jpg" width="200"/>After the haveli I decided I ought to head out of town to Shilpogram which is ostensibly a museum of traditional cultures that continue to exist today in northeastern India—the craftsmen and women who would have built a haveli if such things were still built by hand. I took a rickshaw about 4km out of Udaipur to see what is actually a government sponsored project, an artist colony for various cultures from the five nearby states, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Karnataka, Goa and Madhya Pradesh. On one hand Shilpogram is a wonderful idea on the part of the government—for the India government to actually get anything done is nothing short of miracle apparently, unless you count badmouthing Pakistan and forming grand plans—but on the other hand the “artists colony” is slightly creepy. </p> +<p>Amidst displays of typical tribal life and buildings from each region there were artists and craftsmen and women hawking their wares along with dancers and musicians performing traditional songs. The whole thing had the feel of a living museum designed to give you an idea of how these people live in their respective villages. The creepiness comes from the fact that I could well have ended the last sentence: <em>how they live in their natural habitat</em>, and indeed Shilpogram has the feel of a kind of human zoo, a place for curious tourists to come and observe the anomalous foreign animals in their carefully reconstructed natural habitats. Still, the dancers were stunning in their acrobatic abilities, motions and positions of the body you have to witness to believe and the musical instruments of India are always particularly intriguing to me. I would like to say that what the government of India is doing is a good thing, trying to give tribal people a venue where they can come for two week periods and do what they do, but still the feeling of walking about a human zoo persists and I can not say that I would ever go back.</p> +<p>As I was walking home from dinner the sound of explosions drew my interest down toward the water where I was quickly caught up in a wedding procession with a number of other tourists. The Indians insisted on us joining them for a number of dances in street and even wanted us to follow the procession and have dinner. I had already eaten so I begged out and wandered down to the shoreline where the little kids were lighting of fireworks. But not the sort of fireworks you can buy in say South Carolina, no these were more like high explosives that had a shockwave you feel when they detonated. I sat up on the steps near the main ghat and watched ten year olds light massive aerial fireworks like the kind that professional companies set off at fourth of July in the U.S. using of course pyrotechnic experts and whatnot, but here anyone seems capable. And nobody lost an arm. At least while I was there.</p> +<p>My time here in Udaipur has been my favorite so far in India and yet like all things it will soon come to an end. Tomorrow I have errands to take care of and then I catch an early morning bus to Jodhpur where the next unbelievable thing awaits. </p> + </div> + + </article> + + + <div class="nav-wrapper"> + <nav id="page-navigation" class="page-border-top"> + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/11/monsoon-palace" rel="prev" title=" The Monsoon Palace">The Monsoon Palace</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/12/majestic-fort" rel="next" title=" The Majestic Fort">The Majestic Fort</a> + </li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + + + + + + +<div class="comment--form--wrapper "> + +<div class="comment--form--header"> + <p class="hed">Thoughts?</p> + <p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p> +</div> +<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form"> + +<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" /> + + + <input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="23" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833486" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="e31c868c58c14af2756cab1b125636b00c4aeb85" id="id_security_hash"> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_name">Name:</label> + <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_email">Email address:</label> + <input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_url">URL:</label> + <input type="url" name="url" id="id_url"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_comment">Comment:</label> + <div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment"> +</textarea></div> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset style="display:none;"> + <label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label> + <input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot"> + </fieldset> + + + <div class="submit"> + <input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" /> + <input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" /> + </div> +</form> +<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. 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I don't have much interest in religious temples apart from an architectural standpoint, but the Jagdish Temple was an incredibly impressive design, covered in very delicate and ornate stone carvings depicting everything from scenes of Vishnu to elephants butting heads.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/jagdish.jpg" width="200" height="124" class="postpicright" alt="Carving Jagdish Temple Udaipur India" /> I walked around the main building for a while watching the various supplications going on, one in particular caught my eye, a father and his young son, two maybe three years old, came to pray at the sun god temple on the southeast side of the complex and the boy seemed to instinctively know that something important was going on and as he approached he put his hands together as you would to say namaste, but his father had to show him how to bow and at first he did not, the father had to place his hand on the boy's head and show him what to do which made me feel slightly better, perhaps genuflection is not instinctive with in us, but taught by culture. I sat down on a bench and tried to make sense of the bewildering tangle of carvings on the sides of the main temple. I started thinking about the Taj Mahal, which, for those like myself that did not know this, is actually a mausoleum. I don't know what all the so-called seven wonders of the world are off the top of my head, but I do know that the Taj Mahal is one and the pyramids in Egypt are another which means two out of seven, possibly more, of man's greatest structures are essentially graves. Not temples or churches or monuments, but tombs.
+
+<break>
+
+After the temple visit I wandered down toward the lakeshore and bought a ticket to the Bagore-ki-Haveli. Another word I did not know, but can now offer the dictionary definition: haveli, traditional, often ornately-decorated, residences, which of course means nothing to me or you, except to say that perhaps this is how the upper middle class and upper class, but not quite royalty, seems to have lived. There are havelis all over India, but they seem to mainly be a focus in Rajasthan and Gujarat, and it's here that the most effort has been made to restore some of these often decrepit buildings to their once and former glory. The Bagore-ki-Haveli is one of the high points of these restoration projects. It took five years to restore and capturing the lifestyles of the rich circa 1780.
+
+Comprising a total of 138 rooms it took me sometime to negotiate the entire museum, which in a way resembles the nicest most labyrinthine dorm you've ever imagined. There were elegant and gracefully decorated rooms that in many ways reminded me of Japanese paintings in and their minimalist, almost spartan aesthetic. There were also rooms for the more everyday life, kitchen equipment, including the biggest cooking bowl—I would say wok, but I know it's not a wok, still it looks like a wok— I've ever seen which was easily six feet in diameter, and then there were game rooms with gorgeous chess sets and some games I didn't recognize, they even restored the bathroom, which was a stunning example of the frozen sense of time that exists in India, since it looks exactly the same as the average India bathroom of today. There were also more of the same inlaid glass peacocks that I saw at the City Palace two days ago.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/havelipeacock.jpg" width="158" height="200" class="postpic" alt="Haveli Udaipur India" />Throughout my time in the Haveli I couldn't quite escape the feeling of false history, of idealizing a culture whose great wealth and power existed on the back of people who are not remembered, whose homes are not on display and whose lives are barely recorded. I guess that to some extent the architecture and daily life of those people vanishes when they do, which is a shame. Obviously it isn't the workers that get to write the story of the building, save with their anonymous hands that laid the stones and marble in place and perhaps the perfection and beauty of the stone is in the end a more lasting monument than restored trinkets and board games. The rich may have lived and played in the Haveli, but the stone workers who built it and the craftsmen and women who carved the intricate chess pieces and pounded out the giant metal cookware are what made the Haveli a place that anyone wanted to live in the first place.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/udaipurdancer.jpg" width="200" height="185" class="postpic" alt="Dancer Shilpogram, Udaipur India" />After the haveli I decided I ought to head out of town to Shilpogram which is ostensibly a museum of traditional cultures that continue to exist today in northeastern India—the craftsmen and women who would have built a haveli if such things were still built by hand. I took a rickshaw about 4km out of Udaipur to see what is actually a government sponsored project, an artist colony for various cultures from the five nearby states, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Karnataka, Goa and Madhya Pradesh. On one hand Shilpogram is a wonderful idea on the part of the government—for the India government to actually get anything done is nothing short of miracle apparently, unless you count badmouthing Pakistan and forming grand plans—but on the other hand the "artists colony" is slightly creepy.
+
+Amidst displays of typical tribal life and buildings from each region there were artists and craftsmen and women hawking their wares along with dancers and musicians performing traditional songs. The whole thing had the feel of a living museum designed to give you an idea of how these people live in their respective villages. The creepiness comes from the fact that I could well have ended the last sentence: *how they live in their natural habitat*, and indeed Shilpogram has the feel of a kind of human zoo, a place for curious tourists to come and observe the anomalous foreign animals in their carefully reconstructed natural habitats. Still, the dancers were stunning in their acrobatic abilities, motions and positions of the body you have to witness to believe and the musical instruments of India are always particularly intriguing to me. I would like to say that what the government of India is doing is a good thing, trying to give tribal people a venue where they can come for two week periods and do what they do, but still the feeling of walking about a human zoo persists and I can not say that I would ever go back.
+
+As I was walking home from dinner the sound of explosions drew my interest down toward the water where I was quickly caught up in a wedding procession with a number of other tourists. The Indians insisted on us joining them for a number of dances in street and even wanted us to follow the procession and have dinner. I had already eaten so I begged out and wandered down to the shoreline where the little kids were lighting of fireworks. But not the sort of fireworks you can buy in say South Carolina, no these were more like high explosives that had a shockwave you feel when they detonated. I sat up on the steps near the main ghat and watched ten year olds light massive aerial fireworks like the kind that professional companies set off at fourth of July in the U.S. using of course pyrotechnic experts and whatnot, but here anyone seems capable. And nobody lost an arm. At least while I was there.
+
+My time here in Udaipur has been my favorite so far in India and yet like all things it will soon come to an end. Tomorrow I have errands to take care of and then I catch an early morning bus to Jodhpur where the next unbelievable thing awaits. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/backwaters-kerala.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/backwaters-kerala.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..88fe9ab --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/backwaters-kerala.amp @@ -0,0 +1,199 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>The Backwaters of Kerala</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/backwaters-kerala"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1,minimum-scale=1"> + <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"/> + <meta name="twitter:url" content="/jrnl/2005/11/backwaters-kerala"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="Touring the fabled backwaters of Kerala India."/> + <meta name="twitter:title" content="The Backwaters of Kerala"/> + <meta name="twitter:site" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:domain" content="luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:image:src" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2008/keralabackwater.jpg"/> + <meta name="twitter:creator" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:site:id" content="9469062"> + <meta name="twitter:creator:id" content="9469062"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content=""/> + + <meta name="geo.placename" content="Fort Kochi, India"> + <meta name="geo.region" content="IN-None"> + <meta property="og:type" content="article" /> + <meta property="og:title" content="The Backwaters of Kerala" /> + <meta property="og:url" content="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/backwaters-kerala" /> + <meta property="og:description" content="Touring the fabled backwaters of Kerala India." /> + <meta property="article:published_time" content="2005-11-15T00:53:50" /> + <meta property="article:author" content="Luxagraf" /> + <meta property="og:site_name" content="Luxagraf" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2008/keralabackwater.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/ernakulam.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/backwaterfishing.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/backwaterplants.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/coconut.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/backwatertour.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US" /> + + +<script type="application/ld+json"> +{ + "@context": "http://schema.org", + "@type": "BlogPosting", + "headline": "The Backwaters of Kerala", + "description": "Touring the fabled backwaters of Kerala India.", + "datePublished": "2005-11-15T00:53:50", + "author": { + "@type": "Person", + "name": "Scott Gilbertson" + }, + "publisher": { + "@type": "Person", + "name": "Scott Gilbertson" + "logo": { + "@type": "ImageObject", + "url": "", + "width": 240, + "height": 53 + } + } +} +</script> +<style amp-custom> +body { + font-size: 1rem; 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I took a ferry across the harbor into Ernakulam Friday morning with the intention of buying a train ticket to Mangalore for Saturday. </p> +<p>I brought all my bags so it would be easier, just get up and catch an autorickshaw to the train station. I found a rundown hotel that had reasonable rates and decent rooms, dumped my bags and headed to the train station. Unfortunately first class was already booked for the Saturday train and the particular train I needed doesn't run on Sundays so I bought a ticket for Monday and went walking around Ernakulam thinking that perhaps it would reveal something cool. </p> +<p><break></break></p> +<h3>You Never Had To Go Anywhere</h3> +<p><amp-img alt="Ernakulam India" height="90" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/ernakulam.jpg" width="133"></amp-img>Unfortunately that just wasn't the case. Ernakulam is a large city with large city problems, pollution, garbage, traffic, unfriendly people, confusion, noise, touts, etc. If I wanted to go to New Jersey I would have gone to New Jersey. But I had already paid for the room so I stuck it out for the night. </p> +<p>I have no doubt that Ernakulam does have some good things in it, just like New Jersey does, but they aren't things that a tourist gets to see. Cities are private things held in the minds of the people that inhabit them; you can never know anything about a city until you live there. So this one remains a city like any other, and the next morning I high tailed it back to fort Cochin and got a room. </p> +<p>With some time to kill before my Monday train I figured I might as well take the fabled backwater tour of Kerala. If you've never been to India or even looked at it in any detail this might bear some explanation. Kerala is one of the Southern states of India and lies on west coast just below the state of Karnataka (whose capital is Bangalore, which most of you have probably heard of— it's where your calls to tech support get routed to). Anyway the main draw of the Kochi area of Kerala is the "backwater" area where the numerous lakes and rivers in the region come together and meet the Arabian Sea to form a massive area of lagoons and canals. Most guidebooks say that a tour of this backwater area will be the "highlight of your Kerala stay," so I figured I might as well sign up for a tour. </p> +<p>Before I left on this trip I wrote a piece about travel blogs on the net and travel writing in general and swore up and down that I would not resort to the "crazy bus ride" or "cabbie from hell" or "eccentric local doesn't know much but his simple wisdom has showed me the key to life" clichés when writing for luxagraf. I bring this up mainly because I never actually published that piece (because it wasn't that good). If you dig into the world of travel writing you will find that these plots occur over and over again and have become terrible clichés, but seem to be what editors want. I wanted to point this out because though this story could go that direction it does not, because I am not trying to sell this to Conde Nast. In fact the bus was destroyed before it got to me, the cabbie was a very good driver and I did not get any morsels of wisdom from the locals, just a coconut.</p> +<h3>The Way We Get By</h3> +<p>Those that know me well know that if I had known the tour started at 8 AM <em>before</em> I paid, I would have booked a different tour. But I did not know that until the money had changed hands and the transaction seemed too concluded to back out. So I set my alarm for seven and got downstairs at just about eight. Just as I walked outside there was a bus leaving, which I must say did not seem to encouraging. I asked the hotel manager if anyone had asked for me and he said no, but then when he realized I booked a tour through someone other than him, he became decidedly less helpful. So I sat down and smoked a cigarette and waited. And waited. Eventually a guy on a motorcycle came up and asked if I was waiting for a tour bus. I said yes, but generally ignored him since I figured he was trying to con me into a different "better" tour. Finally he convinced me that he was in fact with the tour company I booked through and that the bus had been destroyed in an accident. He said he would take me to where the rest of the people were (apparently everyone else was from one hotel and I was the oddball stop). So I hopped on the back of his motorcycle and we went about 2km to another hotel where the rest of the tour was staying. </p> +<p>I waited around with two couples from Belgium while the man and another tour rep tried to find us some transportation. After about 20 minutes they told us a cab was on its way. So the six of us (including) driver piled into a fairly compact automobile, though by Indian standards this was far from crowded. The drive took about 45 minutes and we had to make several stops for our very nice, but understandably confused, driver to ask for directions. Eventually we got to the dock where about 15 other people were waiting. Everyone piled into a large thatched roof boat and we were finally underway. There was a large family from Bombay, another couple and their two kids from Delhi, an Iranian couple that now lives in London, the Belgians and myself.</p> +<p>We cruised around the islands for about forty minutes watching people on the shore and men out in canoes fishing. Eventually we stopped on one island to tour a factory. <amp-img alt="fishermen" height="100" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/backwaterfishing.jpg" width="159"></amp-img>I believe that during the week you get to stop off at places where you can see native workers doing their thing, making fishing nets, weaving rope, etc, but because it was a Sunday we got to go to a Calcium Hydroxide factory. Which was better because it certainly wasn't a show being put on to entertain the tourists. This is how the island dwellers really survive. They turn shells into calcium hydroxide and sell the results to cement companies. Except that in this case apparently a new buyer has come in the last six months, yes that's right everybody's favorite, hey look at us we help third world economies, Sandoz Pharmaceuticals. Apparently various pills are made from calcium hydroxide (that is, the actual stuff you want is suspended in calcium hydroxide). It was an interesting portrait of the changes rural India is undergoing.</p> +<h3>Mixing Up The Medicine</h3> +<p>The after a short walk through the jungle we came to one of the worker's houses where our guide went through the front garden and showed us all the plants and what they were used for. As we approached the front yard of the workers house, to an untrained eye such as mine, the plants looked random, like parts of the jungle that hadn't been cleared because they gave shade, but in fact they weren't random, they were carefully cultivated. </p> +<p>The guide showed us Tamarind trees, coconut palms, lemon trees, vanilla vine, plantain trees and countless other shrubs and bushes whose names I have forgotten. <amp-img alt="plants" height="75" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/backwaterplants.jpg" width="100"></amp-img>Nearly all of them had some medicinal use not just in their leaves and fruit, but also the roots and bark, and most of them had four different uses depending on which part of the plant you wanted to use. The most fascinating was a plant that produces a fruit something like a miniature mango that contains cyanide and which, according to our guide, is cultivated mainly to commit suicide with, though cyanide does have other uses.</p> +<p>After getting about an hour's worth of botanical information we got back on the boat and headed back to the launch area for lunch. We were served a meal typical of Kerala, which was more or less the same thing a waiter gave me two days before when I asked for some typical Kerala cuisine, boiled rice, vegetable curry, and various slaws of carrots or beans or cabbage. With the exception of the rice, which I find tastes just like overcooked white rice, I enjoy Kerala cuisine although it is very different from what gets served as Indian food in the States or Europe.</p> +<h3>Sittin In A Rag Top Soaking Wet</h3> +<p>At this point we hopped back in cab and drove to a second wharf area where we got aboard smaller boats that could navigate the narrower canals. Similar to dugout canoes, but not dugout, these boats were piloted by two men, one on each end using long poles to push off the bottom. Sort of like rowing, but less effective. </p> +<p>As my guidebook says of the longboat tours: "along the way are settlements where people live on narrow spits of land only a few meters wide." The thing it fails to mention is that you are more or less traveling through people's backyards, which felt sort of invasive to me. Women were doing laundry or taking a bath only a meter or so from our boat, which felt decidedly intrusive, though I suppose the people that live in these areas must be used to it by now.</p> +<p>One of the strangest things I saw was a fairly large lizard on a lily pad floating several meters from shore, which, if you're a lizard, is quite a ways even if you can swim. We also saw some sort of water snake (which the guides said was not poisonous), numerous Kingfishers, and from a distance an elephant walking down the road.</p> +<p>At one point we stopped and some of the guides climbed up a palm tree and retrieved coconuts which were first cracked and drank and then split open and eaten. I've never been all that fond of coconut so after drinking the juice I sort of wandered back to boat, hoping perhaps the elephant would return and watching the sky to the north turn so dark it looked like night.<amp-img alt="coconut" height="75" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/coconut.jpg" width="100"></amp-img></p> +<p>Then it was back in the boats and onward. It started to rain a little bit, but not too hard at first and I thought we might make it back without getting soaked. But then with no warning the sky just opened up and a deluge of water poured down on us. Luckily I had learned couple of days previous that you really shouldn't go anywhere in southern India without an umbrella so I had one in my bag. Of course it's still about 85 degrees and even the rain is warm so getting wet wasn't that big of deal, but digital camera's react poorly to water, so I kept the umbrella mainly over my bag and partly over the older India man who sat next to me.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="riverboat" height="133" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/backwatertour.jpg" width="100"></amp-img>We stopped the boats and everyone piled out and went up on the porch of someone's house where we waited for while. But the rain showed no signs of letting up and after half an hour our taxi and everyone else bus were summoned to come and pick us up. Driving back to Fort Cochin our taxi was kicking up a roaster tail of water higher than the car itself and our driver had to turn around several times where streets became impassible, but eventually we made it back.</p> +<p>And there you have it, the backwater tour extraordinaire. Later this evening I will be boarding an overnight train for Mangalore and then switch to another train that should get me to Goa by late Tuesday evening. The picture gallery has been updated. </p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/backwaters-kerala.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/backwaters-kerala.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0617e0d --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/backwaters-kerala.html @@ -0,0 +1,351 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>The Backwaters Of Kerala - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="Touring the fabled backwaters of Kerala India."> + <meta name="author" content="Scott Gilbertson"> + <link rel="alternate" + type="application/rss+xml" + title="Luxagraf RSS feed" + href="https://luxagraf.net/rss/"> + <link rel="stylesheet" + href="/media/screenv9.css" + media="screen"> + <link rel="stylesheet" href="/media/print.css" media="print" title="print" /> + <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon"> + <link rel="manifest" href="/manifest.json" /> + <link rel="dns-prefetch" href="https://stats.luxagraf.net"> + + <link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/backwaters-kerala" /> + <meta name="ICBM" content="9.958029970964114, 76.2533569229791" /> + <meta name="geo.position" content="9.958029970964114; 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return false;" title="see a map">Map</a> + </div> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post-date" datetime="2005-11-15T00:53:50" itemprop="datePublished">November <span>15, 2005</span></time> + <span class="hide" itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">by <a class="p-author h-card" href="/about"><span itemprop="name">Scott Gilbertson</span></a></span> + </div> + </header> + <div id="article" class="e-content entry-content post--body post--body--single" itemprop="articleBody"> + <p><span class="drop">I</span> am back in Fort Cochin after a brief and ill-advised stay in Ernakulam. I took a ferry across the harbor into Ernakulam Friday morning with the intention of buying a train ticket to Mangalore for Saturday. </p> +<p>I brought all my bags so it would be easier, just get up and catch an autorickshaw to the train station. I found a rundown hotel that had reasonable rates and decent rooms, dumped my bags and headed to the train station. Unfortunately first class was already booked for the Saturday train and the particular train I needed doesn’t run on Sundays so I bought a ticket for Monday and went walking around Ernakulam thinking that perhaps it would reveal something cool. </p> +<p><break></p> +<h3>You Never Had To Go Anywhere</h3> +<p><img alt="Ernakulam India" class="postpic" height="90" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/ernakulam.jpg" width="133"/>Unfortunately that just wasn’t the case. Ernakulam is a large city with large city problems, pollution, garbage, traffic, unfriendly people, confusion, noise, touts, etc. If I wanted to go to New Jersey I would have gone to New Jersey. But I had already paid for the room so I stuck it out for the night. </p> +<p>I have no doubt that Ernakulam does have some good things in it, just like New Jersey does, but they aren’t things that a tourist gets to see. Cities are private things held in the minds of the people that inhabit them; you can never know anything about a city until you live there. So this one remains a city like any other, and the next morning I high tailed it back to fort Cochin and got a room. </p> +<p>With some time to kill before my Monday train I figured I might as well take the fabled backwater tour of Kerala. If you’ve never been to India or even looked at it in any detail this might bear some explanation. Kerala is one of the Southern states of India and lies on west coast just below the state of Karnataka (whose capital is Bangalore, which most of you have probably heard of— it’s where your calls to tech support get routed to). Anyway the main draw of the Kochi area of Kerala is the “backwater” area where the numerous lakes and rivers in the region come together and meet the Arabian Sea to form a massive area of lagoons and canals. Most guidebooks say that a tour of this backwater area will be the “highlight of your Kerala stay,” so I figured I might as well sign up for a tour. </p> +<p>Before I left on this trip I wrote a piece about travel blogs on the net and travel writing in general and swore up and down that I would not resort to the “crazy bus ride” or “cabbie from hell” or “eccentric local doesn’t know much but his simple wisdom has showed me the key to life” clichés when writing for luxagraf. I bring this up mainly because I never actually published that piece (because it wasn’t that good). If you dig into the world of travel writing you will find that these plots occur over and over again and have become terrible clichés, but seem to be what editors want. I wanted to point this out because though this story could go that direction it does not, because I am not trying to sell this to Conde Nast. In fact the bus was destroyed before it got to me, the cabbie was a very good driver and I did not get any morsels of wisdom from the locals, just a coconut.</p> +<h3>The Way We Get By</h3> +<p>Those that know me well know that if I had known the tour started at 8 AM <em>before</em> I paid, I would have booked a different tour. But I did not know that until the money had changed hands and the transaction seemed too concluded to back out. So I set my alarm for seven and got downstairs at just about eight. Just as I walked outside there was a bus leaving, which I must say did not seem to encouraging. I asked the hotel manager if anyone had asked for me and he said no, but then when he realized I booked a tour through someone other than him, he became decidedly less helpful. So I sat down and smoked a cigarette and waited. And waited. Eventually a guy on a motorcycle came up and asked if I was waiting for a tour bus. I said yes, but generally ignored him since I figured he was trying to con me into a different “better” tour. Finally he convinced me that he was in fact with the tour company I booked through and that the bus had been destroyed in an accident. He said he would take me to where the rest of the people were (apparently everyone else was from one hotel and I was the oddball stop). So I hopped on the back of his motorcycle and we went about 2km to another hotel where the rest of the tour was staying. </p> +<p>I waited around with two couples from Belgium while the man and another tour rep tried to find us some transportation. After about 20 minutes they told us a cab was on its way. So the six of us (including) driver piled into a fairly compact automobile, though by Indian standards this was far from crowded. The drive took about 45 minutes and we had to make several stops for our very nice, but understandably confused, driver to ask for directions. Eventually we got to the dock where about 15 other people were waiting. Everyone piled into a large thatched roof boat and we were finally underway. There was a large family from Bombay, another couple and their two kids from Delhi, an Iranian couple that now lives in London, the Belgians and myself.</p> +<p>We cruised around the islands for about forty minutes watching people on the shore and men out in canoes fishing. Eventually we stopped on one island to tour a factory. <img alt="fishermen" class="postpicright" height="100" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/backwaterfishing.jpg" width="159"/>I believe that during the week you get to stop off at places where you can see native workers doing their thing, making fishing nets, weaving rope, etc, but because it was a Sunday we got to go to a Calcium Hydroxide factory. Which was better because it certainly wasn’t a show being put on to entertain the tourists. This is how the island dwellers really survive. They turn shells into calcium hydroxide and sell the results to cement companies. Except that in this case apparently a new buyer has come in the last six months, yes that’s right everybody’s favorite, hey look at us we help third world economies, Sandoz Pharmaceuticals. Apparently various pills are made from calcium hydroxide (that is, the actual stuff you want is suspended in calcium hydroxide). It was an interesting portrait of the changes rural India is undergoing.</p> +<h3>Mixing Up The Medicine</h3> +<p>The after a short walk through the jungle we came to one of the worker’s houses where our guide went through the front garden and showed us all the plants and what they were used for. As we approached the front yard of the workers house, to an untrained eye such as mine, the plants looked random, like parts of the jungle that hadn’t been cleared because they gave shade, but in fact they weren’t random, they were carefully cultivated. </p> +<p>The guide showed us Tamarind trees, coconut palms, lemon trees, vanilla vine, plantain trees and countless other shrubs and bushes whose names I have forgotten. <img alt="plants" class="postpic" height="75" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/backwaterplants.jpg" width="100"/>Nearly all of them had some medicinal use not just in their leaves and fruit, but also the roots and bark, and most of them had four different uses depending on which part of the plant you wanted to use. The most fascinating was a plant that produces a fruit something like a miniature mango that contains cyanide and which, according to our guide, is cultivated mainly to commit suicide with, though cyanide does have other uses.</p> +<p>After getting about an hour’s worth of botanical information we got back on the boat and headed back to the launch area for lunch. We were served a meal typical of Kerala, which was more or less the same thing a waiter gave me two days before when I asked for some typical Kerala cuisine, boiled rice, vegetable curry, and various slaws of carrots or beans or cabbage. With the exception of the rice, which I find tastes just like overcooked white rice, I enjoy Kerala cuisine although it is very different from what gets served as Indian food in the States or Europe.</p> +<h3>Sittin In A Rag Top Soaking Wet</h3> +<p>At this point we hopped back in cab and drove to a second wharf area where we got aboard smaller boats that could navigate the narrower canals. Similar to dugout canoes, but not dugout, these boats were piloted by two men, one on each end using long poles to push off the bottom. Sort of like rowing, but less effective. </p> +<p>As my guidebook says of the longboat tours: “along the way are settlements where people live on narrow spits of land only a few meters wide.” The thing it fails to mention is that you are more or less traveling through people’s backyards, which felt sort of invasive to me. Women were doing laundry or taking a bath only a meter or so from our boat, which felt decidedly intrusive, though I suppose the people that live in these areas must be used to it by now.</p> +<p>One of the strangest things I saw was a fairly large lizard on a lily pad floating several meters from shore, which, if you’re a lizard, is quite a ways even if you can swim. We also saw some sort of water snake (which the guides said was not poisonous), numerous Kingfishers, and from a distance an elephant walking down the road.</p> +<p>At one point we stopped and some of the guides climbed up a palm tree and retrieved coconuts which were first cracked and drank and then split open and eaten. I’ve never been all that fond of coconut so after drinking the juice I sort of wandered back to boat, hoping perhaps the elephant would return and watching the sky to the north turn so dark it looked like night.<img alt="coconut" class="postpicright" height="75" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/coconut.jpg" width="100"/></p> +<p>Then it was back in the boats and onward. It started to rain a little bit, but not too hard at first and I thought we might make it back without getting soaked. But then with no warning the sky just opened up and a deluge of water poured down on us. Luckily I had learned couple of days previous that you really shouldn’t go anywhere in southern India without an umbrella so I had one in my bag. Of course it’s still about 85 degrees and even the rain is warm so getting wet wasn’t that big of deal, but digital camera’s react poorly to water, so I kept the umbrella mainly over my bag and partly over the older India man who sat next to me.</p> +<p><img alt="riverboat" class="postpic" height="133" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/backwatertour.jpg" width="100"/>We stopped the boats and everyone piled out and went up on the porch of someone’s house where we waited for while. But the rain showed no signs of letting up and after half an hour our taxi and everyone else bus were summoned to come and pick us up. Driving back to Fort Cochin our taxi was kicking up a roaster tail of water higher than the car itself and our driver had to turn around several times where streets became impassible, but eventually we made it back.</p> +<p>And there you have it, the backwater tour extraordinaire. Later this evening I will be boarding an overnight train for Mangalore and then switch to another train that should get me to Goa by late Tuesday evening. 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I took a ferry across the harbor into Ernakulam Friday morning with the intention of buying a train ticket to Mangalore for Saturday.
+
+I brought all my bags so it would be easier, just get up and catch an autorickshaw to the train station. I found a rundown hotel that had reasonable rates and decent rooms, dumped my bags and headed to the train station. Unfortunately first class was already booked for the Saturday train and the particular train I needed doesn't run on Sundays so I bought a ticket for Monday and went walking around Ernakulam thinking that perhaps it would reveal something cool.
+
+<break>
+
+###You Never Had To Go Anywhere###
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/ernakulam.jpg" width="133" height="90" class="postpic" alt="Ernakulam India" />Unfortunately that just wasn't the case. Ernakulam is a large city with large city problems, pollution, garbage, traffic, unfriendly people, confusion, noise, touts, etc. If I wanted to go to New Jersey I would have gone to New Jersey. But I had already paid for the room so I stuck it out for the night.
+
+I have no doubt that Ernakulam does have some good things in it, just like New Jersey does, but they aren't things that a tourist gets to see. Cities are private things held in the minds of the people that inhabit them; you can never know anything about a city until you live there. So this one remains a city like any other, and the next morning I high tailed it back to fort Cochin and got a room.
+
+With some time to kill before my Monday train I figured I might as well take the fabled backwater tour of Kerala. If you've never been to India or even looked at it in any detail this might bear some explanation. Kerala is one of the Southern states of India and lies on west coast just below the state of Karnataka (whose capital is Bangalore, which most of you have probably heard of— it's where your calls to tech support get routed to). Anyway the main draw of the Kochi area of Kerala is the "backwater" area where the numerous lakes and rivers in the region come together and meet the Arabian Sea to form a massive area of lagoons and canals. Most guidebooks say that a tour of this backwater area will be the "highlight of your Kerala stay," so I figured I might as well sign up for a tour.
+
+Before I left on this trip I wrote a piece about travel blogs on the net and travel writing in general and swore up and down that I would not resort to the "crazy bus ride" or "cabbie from hell" or "eccentric local doesn't know much but his simple wisdom has showed me the key to life" clichés when writing for luxagraf. I bring this up mainly because I never actually published that piece (because it wasn't that good). If you dig into the world of travel writing you will find that these plots occur over and over again and have become terrible clichés, but seem to be what editors want. I wanted to point this out because though this story could go that direction it does not, because I am not trying to sell this to Conde Nast. In fact the bus was destroyed before it got to me, the cabbie was a very good driver and I did not get any morsels of wisdom from the locals, just a coconut.
+
+###The Way We Get By###
+
+Those that know me well know that if I had known the tour started at 8 AM *before* I paid, I would have booked a different tour. But I did not know that until the money had changed hands and the transaction seemed too concluded to back out. So I set my alarm for seven and got downstairs at just about eight. Just as I walked outside there was a bus leaving, which I must say did not seem to encouraging. I asked the hotel manager if anyone had asked for me and he said no, but then when he realized I booked a tour through someone other than him, he became decidedly less helpful. So I sat down and smoked a cigarette and waited. And waited. Eventually a guy on a motorcycle came up and asked if I was waiting for a tour bus. I said yes, but generally ignored him since I figured he was trying to con me into a different "better" tour. Finally he convinced me that he was in fact with the tour company I booked through and that the bus had been destroyed in an accident. He said he would take me to where the rest of the people were (apparently everyone else was from one hotel and I was the oddball stop). So I hopped on the back of his motorcycle and we went about 2km to another hotel where the rest of the tour was staying.
+
+I waited around with two couples from Belgium while the man and another tour rep tried to find us some transportation. After about 20 minutes they told us a cab was on its way. So the six of us (including) driver piled into a fairly compact automobile, though by Indian standards this was far from crowded. The drive took about 45 minutes and we had to make several stops for our very nice, but understandably confused, driver to ask for directions. Eventually we got to the dock where about 15 other people were waiting. Everyone piled into a large thatched roof boat and we were finally underway. There was a large family from Bombay, another couple and their two kids from Delhi, an Iranian couple that now lives in London, the Belgians and myself.
+
+We cruised around the islands for about forty minutes watching people on the shore and men out in canoes fishing. Eventually we stopped on one island to tour a factory. <img src="[[base_url]]/2005/backwaterfishing.jpg" height="100" width="159" class="postpicright" alt="fishermen" />I believe that during the week you get to stop off at places where you can see native workers doing their thing, making fishing nets, weaving rope, etc, but because it was a Sunday we got to go to a Calcium Hydroxide factory. Which was better because it certainly wasn't a show being put on to entertain the tourists. This is how the island dwellers really survive. They turn shells into calcium hydroxide and sell the results to cement companies. Except that in this case apparently a new buyer has come in the last six months, yes that's right everybody's favorite, hey look at us we help third world economies, Sandoz Pharmaceuticals. Apparently various pills are made from calcium hydroxide (that is, the actual stuff you want is suspended in calcium hydroxide). It was an interesting portrait of the changes rural India is undergoing.
+
+###Mixing Up The Medicine###
+
+The after a short walk through the jungle we came to one of the worker's houses where our guide went through the front garden and showed us all the plants and what they were used for. As we approached the front yard of the workers house, to an untrained eye such as mine, the plants looked random, like parts of the jungle that hadn't been cleared because they gave shade, but in fact they weren't random, they were carefully cultivated.
+
+The guide showed us Tamarind trees, coconut palms, lemon trees, vanilla vine, plantain trees and countless other shrubs and bushes whose names I have forgotten. <img src="[[base_url]]/2005/backwaterplants.jpg" width="100" height="75" class="postpic" alt="plants" />Nearly all of them had some medicinal use not just in their leaves and fruit, but also the roots and bark, and most of them had four different uses depending on which part of the plant you wanted to use. The most fascinating was a plant that produces a fruit something like a miniature mango that contains cyanide and which, according to our guide, is cultivated mainly to commit suicide with, though cyanide does have other uses.
+
+After getting about an hour's worth of botanical information we got back on the boat and headed back to the launch area for lunch. We were served a meal typical of Kerala, which was more or less the same thing a waiter gave me two days before when I asked for some typical Kerala cuisine, boiled rice, vegetable curry, and various slaws of carrots or beans or cabbage. With the exception of the rice, which I find tastes just like overcooked white rice, I enjoy Kerala cuisine although it is very different from what gets served as Indian food in the States or Europe.
+
+###Sittin In A Rag Top Soaking Wet###
+
+At this point we hopped back in cab and drove to a second wharf area where we got aboard smaller boats that could navigate the narrower canals. Similar to dugout canoes, but not dugout, these boats were piloted by two men, one on each end using long poles to push off the bottom. Sort of like rowing, but less effective.
+
+As my guidebook says of the longboat tours: "along the way are settlements where people live on narrow spits of land only a few meters wide." The thing it fails to mention is that you are more or less traveling through people's backyards, which felt sort of invasive to me. Women were doing laundry or taking a bath only a meter or so from our boat, which felt decidedly intrusive, though I suppose the people that live in these areas must be used to it by now.
+
+One of the strangest things I saw was a fairly large lizard on a lily pad floating several meters from shore, which, if you're a lizard, is quite a ways even if you can swim. We also saw some sort of water snake (which the guides said was not poisonous), numerous Kingfishers, and from a distance an elephant walking down the road.
+
+At one point we stopped and some of the guides climbed up a palm tree and retrieved coconuts which were first cracked and drank and then split open and eaten. I've never been all that fond of coconut so after drinking the juice I sort of wandered back to boat, hoping perhaps the elephant would return and watching the sky to the north turn so dark it looked like night.<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/coconut.jpg" height="75" width="100" class="postpicright" alt="coconut" />
+
+Then it was back in the boats and onward. It started to rain a little bit, but not too hard at first and I thought we might make it back without getting soaked. But then with no warning the sky just opened up and a deluge of water poured down on us. Luckily I had learned couple of days previous that you really shouldn't go anywhere in southern India without an umbrella so I had one in my bag. Of course it's still about 85 degrees and even the rain is warm so getting wet wasn't that big of deal, but digital camera's react poorly to water, so I kept the umbrella mainly over my bag and partly over the older India man who sat next to me.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/backwatertour.jpg" width="100" height="133" class="postpic" alt="riverboat" />We stopped the boats and everyone piled out and went up on the porch of someone's house where we waited for while. But the rain showed no signs of letting up and after half an hour our taxi and everyone else bus were summoned to come and pick us up. Driving back to Fort Cochin our taxi was kicking up a roaster tail of water higher than the car itself and our driver had to turn around several times where streets became impassible, but eventually we made it back.
+
+And there you have it, the backwater tour extraordinaire. Later this evening I will be boarding an overnight train for Mangalore and then switch to another train that should get me to Goa by late Tuesday evening. The picture gallery has been updated. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/bury-your-dead.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/bury-your-dead.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b204a8f --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/bury-your-dead.amp @@ -0,0 +1,177 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>Bury Your Dead</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/bury-your-dead"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1,minimum-scale=1"> + <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"/> + <meta name="twitter:url" content="/jrnl/2005/11/bury-your-dead"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="The catacombs of Paris "/> + <meta name="twitter:title" content="Bury Your Dead"/> + <meta name="twitter:site" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:domain" content="luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:image:src" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2008/pariscatacombs.jpg"/> + <meta name="twitter:creator" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:site:id" content="9469062"> + <meta name="twitter:creator:id" content="9469062"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content=""/> + + <meta name="geo.placename" content="Paris, France"> + <meta name="geo.region" content="FR-None"> + <meta property="og:type" content="article" /> + <meta property="og:title" content="Bury Your Dead" /> + <meta property="og:url" content="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/bury-your-dead" /> + <meta property="og:description" content="The catacombs of Paris " /> + <meta property="article:published_time" content="2005-11-06T18:28:52" /> + <meta property="article:author" content="Luxagraf" /> + <meta property="og:site_name" content="Luxagraf" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2008/pariscatacombs.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/catacombs.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US" /> + + +<script type="application/ld+json"> +{ + "@context": "http://schema.org", + "@type": "BlogPosting", + "headline": "Bury Your Dead", + "description": "The catacombs of Paris ", + "datePublished": "2005-11-06T18:28:52", + "author": { + "@type": "Person", + "name": "Scott Gilbertson" + }, + "publisher": { + "@type": "Person", + "name": "Scott Gilbertson" + "logo": { + "@type": "ImageObject", + "url": "", + "width": 240, + "height": 53 + } + } +} +</script> +<style amp-custom> +body { + font-size: 1rem; 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+ font-size: 0.875rem; +} +blockquote * { + font-style: italic; +} +blockquote * em { + font-weight: bold; +} +blockquote * strong { + font-style: normal; +} +hr { + border: none; + border-bottom: 0.0625rem dotted #ccc; +} +.hide {display: none;} +</style> +<style>body {opacity: 0}</style><noscript><style>body {opacity: 1}</style></noscript> +<script async src="https://cdn.ampproject.org/v0.js"></script> +</head> +<body> + +<nav> +<a href="https://luxagraf.net/"> +luxagraf</a> +</nav> + +<main class="h-entry"> + <article class="h-entry hentry post--article" itemscope itemType="http://schema.org/Article"> + <header id="header" class="post--header "> + <h1 class="p-name entry-title post--title" itemprop="headline">Bury Your Dead</h1> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post--date" datetime="2005-11-06T18:28:52" itemprop="datePublished">November <span>6, 2005</span></time> + <p class="p-author author hide" itemprop="author"><span class="byline-author" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person"><span itemprop="name">Scott Gilbertson</span></span></p> + <aside class="p-location h-adr adr post--location" itemprop="contentLocation" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Place"> + <span class="p-region">Paris</span>, <a class="p-country-name country-name" href="/jrnl/france/" title="travel writing from France">France</a> + </aside> + </header> + <div id="article" class="e-content entry-content post--body post--body--single" itemprop="articleBody"> + <p><span class="drop">I</span> feel I've been neglecting the site lately, but I haven't really done much worth writing about. The last two days I've been inside working on a new project. For those of you wondering how I afford this trip, well that's how, I stop doing fun things, lock the door and write or develop websites as the case maybe. </p> +<p>In this case I've had to do both in the last two days. So not too much interesting stuff to tell. Yesterday I took a break in the afternoon and we went to see the catacombs. There are some pictures up in the photo section. I would like to say that the catacombs had some spectacular effect on me seeing that I strolled through human remains, skulls and femurs mainly, "decoratively arranged," but the truth is, after you get over the initial shock of seeing a skull, well, it turns out you can get adjusted to just about anything. It was sort of initially horrifying to think that all these bones had been dug up out of their graves and brought here, intermingled, "decoratively arranged" and more or less became indistinguishably melded together into one singular body that stretches in and around an old underground rock quarry. </p> +<p><break> +<amp-img alt="" height="100" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/catacombs.jpg" width="133"></amp-img>But then about half way through I started thinking about a passage in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lilly" title="The Center of the Cyclone">Dr. Lilly's</a> <em>The Center of the Cyclone</em> where he talks about his experiments in sensory deprivation chambers, in particular he mentions one experience where, having lost track of any sort of notion of bodily form he reaches a point where all the universe becomes visible as pulses and orbs of electricity, a current he can feel moving through him to the point that he becomes uncertain where he ends and the universe begins and vice versa, and in that light the bones in the catacombs seemed to me an appropriate representation of death, a loss of individuality, a rejoining of some universal body so massive as contain everything and everyone. Besides which, at the rate were going many of us might end up in a big pile of bones ourselves. A word of caution to others, if you're at all claustrophobic don't go down in the catacombs, claustrophobia coupled with human remains every which way you turn is not the recipe for happiness. </break></p> +<p>After the contemplation of death it seemed appropriate to spend the next day in a park or garden of some kind and being a Sunday there wasn't a whole lot else to do. We walked down to little square/park and sat in the last rays of sunshine eating salami and butter sandwiches and reading. </p> +<p>Later in the evening we took a train and bottle of Belgium beer over to Sacre Coure and sat on the steps admiring the panorama of Paris. All in all I had a wonderful time and look forward to returning next spring via the trans Siberian Railway (if all goes according to plan anyway). But now it's time to pack the bags and get ready for India… </p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/bury-your-dead.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/bury-your-dead.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..e594136 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/bury-your-dead.html @@ -0,0 +1,333 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Bury Your Dead - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="The catacombs of Paris "> + <meta name="author" content="Scott Gilbertson"> + <link rel="alternate" + type="application/rss+xml" + title="Luxagraf RSS feed" + href="https://luxagraf.net/rss/"> + <link rel="stylesheet" + href="/media/screenv9.css" + media="screen"> + <link rel="stylesheet" href="/media/print.css" media="print" title="print" /> + <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon"> + <link rel="manifest" href="/manifest.json" /> + <link rel="dns-prefetch" href="https://stats.luxagraf.net"> + + <link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/bury-your-dead" /> + <meta name="ICBM" content="48.88623656623962, 2.343757152231122" /> + <meta name="geo.position" content="48.88623656623962; 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return false;" title="see a map">Map</a> + </div> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post-date" datetime="2005-11-06T18:28:52" itemprop="datePublished">November <span>6, 2005</span></time> + <span class="hide" itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">by <a class="p-author h-card" href="/about"><span itemprop="name">Scott Gilbertson</span></a></span> + </div> + </header> + <div id="article" class="e-content entry-content post--body post--body--single" itemprop="articleBody"> + <p><span class="drop">I</span> feel I’ve been neglecting the site lately, but I haven’t really done much worth writing about. The last two days I’ve been inside working on a new project. For those of you wondering how I afford this trip, well that’s how, I stop doing fun things, lock the door and write or develop websites as the case maybe. </p> +<p>In this case I’ve had to do both in the last two days. So not too much interesting stuff to tell. Yesterday I took a break in the afternoon and we went to see the catacombs. There are some pictures up in the photo section. I would like to say that the catacombs had some spectacular effect on me seeing that I strolled through human remains, skulls and femurs mainly, “decoratively arranged,” but the truth is, after you get over the initial shock of seeing a skull, well, it turns out you can get adjusted to just about anything. It was sort of initially horrifying to think that all these bones had been dug up out of their graves and brought here, intermingled, “decoratively arranged” and more or less became indistinguishably melded together into one singular body that stretches in and around an old underground rock quarry. </p> +<p><break> +<img alt="" class="postpic" height="133" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/catacombs.jpg" width="100"/>But then about half way through I started thinking about a passage in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lilly" title="The Center of the Cyclone">Dr. Lilly’s</a> <em>The Center of the Cyclone</em> where he talks about his experiments in sensory deprivation chambers, in particular he mentions one experience where, having lost track of any sort of notion of bodily form he reaches a point where all the universe becomes visible as pulses and orbs of electricity, a current he can feel moving through him to the point that he becomes uncertain where he ends and the universe begins and vice versa, and in that light the bones in the catacombs seemed to me an appropriate representation of death, a loss of individuality, a rejoining of some universal body so massive as contain everything and everyone. Besides which, at the rate were going many of us might end up in a big pile of bones ourselves. A word of caution to others, if you’re at all claustrophobic don’t go down in the catacombs, claustrophobia coupled with human remains every which way you turn is not the recipe for happiness. </p> +<p>After the contemplation of death it seemed appropriate to spend the next day in a park or garden of some kind and being a Sunday there wasn’t a whole lot else to do. We walked down to little square/park and sat in the last rays of sunshine eating salami and butter sandwiches and reading. </p> +<p>Later in the evening we took a train and bottle of Belgium beer over to Sacre Coure and sat on the steps admiring the panorama of Paris. All in all I had a wonderful time and look forward to returning next spring via the trans Siberian Railway (if all goes according to plan anyway). But now it’s time to pack the bags and get ready for India… </p> + </div> + + </article> + + + <div class="nav-wrapper"> + <nav id="page-navigation" class="page-border-top"> + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/11/houses-we-live" rel="prev" title=" The Houses We Live In">The Houses We Live In</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/11/riots-iraqi-restaurants-goodbye-seine" rel="next" title=" Riots, Iraqi Restaurants, Goodbye Seine">Riots, Iraqi Restaurants, Goodbye Seine</a> + </li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + + + + + + +<div class="comment--form--wrapper "> + +<div class="comment--form--header"> + <p class="hed">Thoughts?</p> + <p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p> +</div> +<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form"> + +<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" /> + + + <input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="14" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833488" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="098beedca6a3ab088a8c06a9688d5ee13ab7a32c" id="id_security_hash"> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_name">Name:</label> + <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_email">Email address:</label> + <input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_url">URL:</label> + <input type="url" name="url" id="id_url"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_comment">Comment:</label> + <div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment"> +</textarea></div> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset style="display:none;"> + <label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label> + <input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot"> + </fieldset> + + + <div class="submit"> + <input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" /> + <input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" /> + </div> +</form> +<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. 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The last two days I've been inside working on a new project. For those of you wondering how I afford this trip, well that's how, I stop doing fun things, lock the door and write or develop websites as the case maybe.
+
+In this case I've had to do both in the last two days. So not too much interesting stuff to tell. Yesterday I took a break in the afternoon and we went to see the catacombs. There are some pictures up in the photo section. I would like to say that the catacombs had some spectacular effect on me seeing that I strolled through human remains, skulls and femurs mainly, "decoratively arranged," but the truth is, after you get over the initial shock of seeing a skull, well, it turns out you can get adjusted to just about anything. It was sort of initially horrifying to think that all these bones had been dug up out of their graves and brought here, intermingled, "decoratively arranged" and more or less became indistinguishably melded together into one singular body that stretches in and around an old underground rock quarry.
+
+<break>
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/catacombs.jpg" width="100" height="133" class="postpic" alt="" />But then about half way through I started thinking about a passage in <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Lilly" title="The Center of the Cyclone">Dr. Lilly's</a> *The Center of the Cyclone* where he talks about his experiments in sensory deprivation chambers, in particular he mentions one experience where, having lost track of any sort of notion of bodily form he reaches a point where all the universe becomes visible as pulses and orbs of electricity, a current he can feel moving through him to the point that he becomes uncertain where he ends and the universe begins and vice versa, and in that light the bones in the catacombs seemed to me an appropriate representation of death, a loss of individuality, a rejoining of some universal body so massive as contain everything and everyone. Besides which, at the rate were going many of us might end up in a big pile of bones ourselves. A word of caution to others, if you're at all claustrophobic don't go down in the catacombs, claustrophobia coupled with human remains every which way you turn is not the recipe for happiness.
+
+After the contemplation of death it seemed appropriate to spend the next day in a park or garden of some kind and being a Sunday there wasn't a whole lot else to do. We walked down to little square/park and sat in the last rays of sunshine eating salami and butter sandwiches and reading.
+
+Later in the evening we took a train and bottle of Belgium beer over to Sacre Coure and sat on the steps admiring the panorama of Paris. All in all I had a wonderful time and look forward to returning next spring via the trans Siberian Railway (if all goes according to plan anyway). But now it's time to pack the bags and get ready for India… diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/city-palace.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/city-palace.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..5876876 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/city-palace.amp @@ -0,0 +1,183 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>The City Palace</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/city-palace"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1,minimum-scale=1"> + <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"/> + <meta name="twitter:url" content="/jrnl/2005/11/city-palace"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="Palaces are strange place, they overwhelm one with a vast and seemingly endless array of details designed to overawe and intimidate."/> + <meta name="twitter:title" content="The City Palace"/> + <meta name="twitter:site" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:domain" content="luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:image:src" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2008/citypalaceudaipur.jpg"/> + <meta name="twitter:creator" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:site:id" content="9469062"> + <meta name="twitter:creator:id" content="9469062"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content=""/> + + <meta name="geo.placename" content="Udiapur, India"> + <meta name="geo.region" content="IN-None"> + <meta property="og:type" content="article" /> + <meta property="og:title" content="The City Palace" /> + <meta property="og:url" content="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/city-palace" /> + <meta property="og:description" content="Palaces are strange place, they overwhelm one with a vast and seemingly endless array of details designed to overawe and intimidate." /> + <meta property="article:published_time" content="2005-11-28T22:00:46" /> + <meta property="article:author" content="Luxagraf" /> + <meta property="og:site_name" content="Luxagraf" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2008/citypalaceudaipur.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/colonade.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/pigeoncage.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/bathplanter.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US" /> + + +<script type="application/ld+json"> +{ + "@context": "http://schema.org", + "@type": "BlogPosting", + "headline": "The City Palace", + "description": "Palaces are strange place, they overwhelm one with a vast and seemingly endless array of details designed to overawe and intimidate.", + "datePublished": "2005-11-28T22:00:46", + "author": { + "@type": "Person", + "name": "Scott Gilbertson" + }, + "publisher": { + "@type": "Person", + "name": "Scott Gilbertson" + "logo": { + "@type": "ImageObject", + "url": "", + "width": 240, + "height": 53 + } + } +} +</script> +<style amp-custom> +body { + font-size: 1rem; 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But this guy just shrugged and took me where I wanted to go. Once we got to Lal Ghat a man hopped in beside me and started in about his hotel. Luckily for him I was too exhausted to protest much and I agreed to at least look at it. It turned out to be a very nice family run guesthouse that was cheap, immaculately clean, had a lovely rooftop restaurant and, amazingly enough, hot water. All this for a mere Rs 150 a night.</p> +<p><break></break></p> +<p>I tried briefly to sleep but decided that was a waste and set out to explore. I didn't feel up to much and was planning to just walk around for a while and maybe have a bite to eat, but I ended up walking right up to the City Palace Gate. I figured why not and bought a ticket for the museum. The City Palace is sort of a generic name for a whole bunch of palaces that were built over the years, each adding on to what existed before it. Legend has it that the founding Mewar ruler who started it was chasing a hare and when his dog cornered to hare the hare kicked the dog in the face so hard that the dog backed down. So rather than getting a new, tougher dog, the king took it as a sign and built a palace on the hill. Based on what I overheard guides telling other groups, nearly every successive ruler seemed to feel the need to expand and add his own touch to the legacy of what is now City Palace, kind of like the never ending construction projects you see around Boston. So the term City Palace refers to the whole collection and serves chiefly to distinguish it from the Lake Palace (now a hotel) and the Monsoon Palace high atop a nearby mountain.</p> +<p>After touring the museum section, seeing the various rooms and deciding that Mewar rulers had a serious glass and mirror fetish, I came to a sort of hanging garden courtyard that was just off what was once the King's bathtub, though that term hardly does justice to the massive swimming pool sized bathing area. The garden was ringed on all sides by arched colonnades and then within those were trees and decorative planters intermixed with benches. </p> +<p><amp-img alt="Colonnades City Palace Udaipur" height="150" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/colonade.jpg" width="110"></amp-img>I took a seat on a bench in the shade and stared for a long time at a collection of woven cages with rosewood frames and inlaid brass that once housed the king's collection of carrier pigeons. A pair of cages hanging beneath the colonnades outside the main display room were less ornate, solid brass and of a design similar to the one that Sylvester often attempted to decode in his endless pursuit of Tweety. For the most part tourists ignored the room full of cages despite the guides' attempts to impress upon them that once there was no telephone, no email, no long distance communication at all save carrier pigeons. I started to remember all the strange stories I had read about the now extinct birds. <amp-img alt="Pigeon Cages City Palace Udaipur, India" height="217" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/pigeoncage.jpg" width="260"></amp-img>The best comes from W.G. Sebald in his novel Austerlitz where a passenger pigeon was sent out somewhere and on its journey home it broke its wing and so, with an obsession that borders on human, it walked home over god knows how many miles. And yes it is a novel so it's ostensibly fiction, but I find that well written fiction is often much closer to the truth than things that confine themselves to facts.</p> +<p>I continued to sit there for quite some time listening to rustling trees and the various guides bringing small groups of western and Indian tourists through the garden. Each and everyone of the guides made a point to say that the King's bath, which was just behind my seat on the bench and sunken slightly into the middle of the garden, to say that this bath was in fact the absolute center and highest point of the mountain over which the palace was built, as if this detail would somehow shed some light on why in fact the bath of all things occupied this particular area when in fact, to me at least, it simply made it all the more curious. It reminded me of children's book that Laura and I once gave to a friend's daughter; it was a massively oversized and lavishly illustrated book that told the story of a king who refused to get out of the bath and instead made his ministers, advisors, cooks and even his wife conduct business by getting in the bath with him.</p> +<p>About two weeks ago while I was in Fort Cochin I was overwhelmed by the assault on the senses that India presents in both positive and negative aspects and to cope with it I started trying to notice the small details of things that I or anyone else often overlooks when confronted with any sort of overwhelming, novel experience. But the City Palace was confounding in many ways and stubbornly resisted my attempts to find its details. </p> +<p>I began to realize that perhaps palaces are in effect an attempt to so overwhelm one with a vast and seemingly endless array of details that it becomes impossible to single them out and that a palace's architectural goal is instead to overawe one into a generalized sensation of wonder or perhaps even confusion. I tried to picture the various kings lying in the bath behind me alone staring at the marble edges or perhaps the leaves in the trees above or even the tiny little plants in their relief cut stone planters along the sides, perhaps he would have noticed that the plants grow in the negative space, <amp-img alt="Stone Planters, City Palace, Udaipur, India" height="183" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/bathplanter.jpg" width="200"></amp-img>where the stone is not, the space that actually forms the pattern that has been cut into the stone, or maybe notice that the pattern of the planter is the same as that of the inlays in the marble around the bath, a sort of blunt flower shape that exists as negative space, similar perhaps to the way a king must exist not a person but a negative space into which is poured all the concerns of his land, his people, his economy, and his foreign affairs.</p> +<p>After a while an older Indian gentleman who appeared tired of the large tour he was partaking in, broke away from the group and sat down on the bench beside me. After asking where I was from and how long I had been in India and other such questions that all the Indians I meet want to know, he started talking about the sheer size of the marble blocks that made up the room around us, not to mention the equally massive stone blocks that formed the walls, all of which had to be dug up, cut to size and hauled up this mountain. We spoke for a while about what the workers lives must have been like in that time and how whatever they did and however they lived is not recorded anywhere in the museum. Eventually the shade of trees above us gave way and bench where we were seated became warm and then hot in the direct sunlight. The man never said another word, simply stood and nodded to me before wandering off to rejoin his tour and I headed back down out of the palace toward the city proper. </p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/city-palace.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/city-palace.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..c6aca36 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/city-palace.html @@ -0,0 +1,337 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>The City Palace - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="Palaces are strange place, they overwhelm one with a vast and seemingly endless array of details designed to overawe and intimidate."> + <meta name="author" content="Scott Gilbertson"> + <link rel="alternate" + type="application/rss+xml" + title="Luxagraf RSS feed" + href="https://luxagraf.net/rss/"> + <link rel="stylesheet" + href="/media/screenv9.css" + media="screen"> + <link rel="stylesheet" href="/media/print.css" media="print" title="print" /> + <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon"> + <link rel="manifest" href="/manifest.json" /> + <link rel="dns-prefetch" href="https://stats.luxagraf.net"> + + <link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/city-palace" /> + <meta name="ICBM" content="24.591304879190837, 73.69319914745653" /> + <meta name="geo.position" content="24.591304879190837; 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return false;" title="see a map">Map</a> + </div> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post-date" datetime="2005-11-28T22:00:46" itemprop="datePublished">November <span>28, 2005</span></time> + <span class="hide" itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">by <a class="p-author h-card" href="/about"><span itemprop="name">Scott Gilbertson</span></a></span> + </div> + </header> + <div id="article" class="e-content entry-content post--body post--body--single" itemprop="articleBody"> + <p><span class="drop">I</span> arrived in Udaipur in the early morning disembarking from the train bleary eyed and just awake enough to walk past the touts into the first hints of urban sprawl and find a rickshaw that I was pretty sure wasn’t looking for a kickback. </p> +<p>I told him to head to Lal Ghat which is the area I wanted to stay in rather than any specific hotel, lest I find it had suddenly burned down or gone out of business or was run by a very nasty man who breeds cockroaches or any of the other fantastical stories I have heard from touts. But this guy just shrugged and took me where I wanted to go. Once we got to Lal Ghat a man hopped in beside me and started in about his hotel. Luckily for him I was too exhausted to protest much and I agreed to at least look at it. It turned out to be a very nice family run guesthouse that was cheap, immaculately clean, had a lovely rooftop restaurant and, amazingly enough, hot water. All this for a mere Rs 150 a night.</p> +<p><break></p> +<p>I tried briefly to sleep but decided that was a waste and set out to explore. I didn’t feel up to much and was planning to just walk around for a while and maybe have a bite to eat, but I ended up walking right up to the City Palace Gate. I figured why not and bought a ticket for the museum. The City Palace is sort of a generic name for a whole bunch of palaces that were built over the years, each adding on to what existed before it. Legend has it that the founding Mewar ruler who started it was chasing a hare and when his dog cornered to hare the hare kicked the dog in the face so hard that the dog backed down. So rather than getting a new, tougher dog, the king took it as a sign and built a palace on the hill. Based on what I overheard guides telling other groups, nearly every successive ruler seemed to feel the need to expand and add his own touch to the legacy of what is now City Palace, kind of like the never ending construction projects you see around Boston. So the term City Palace refers to the whole collection and serves chiefly to distinguish it from the Lake Palace (now a hotel) and the Monsoon Palace high atop a nearby mountain.</p> +<p>After touring the museum section, seeing the various rooms and deciding that Mewar rulers had a serious glass and mirror fetish, I came to a sort of hanging garden courtyard that was just off what was once the King’s bathtub, though that term hardly does justice to the massive swimming pool sized bathing area. The garden was ringed on all sides by arched colonnades and then within those were trees and decorative planters intermixed with benches. </p> +<p><img alt="Colonnades City Palace Udaipur" class="postpicright" height="150" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/colonade.jpg" width="110"/>The best comes from W.G. Sebald in his novel Austerlitz where a passenger pigeon was sent out somewhere and on its journey home it broke its wing and so, with an obsession that borders on human, it walked home over god knows how many miles. And yes it is a novel so it’s ostensibly fiction, but I find that well written fiction is often much closer to the truth than things that confine themselves to facts.</p> +<p>I continued to sit there for quite some time listening to rustling trees and the various guides bringing small groups of western and Indian tourists through the garden. Each and everyone of the guides made a point to say that the King’s bath, which was just behind my seat on the bench and sunken slightly into the middle of the garden, to say that this bath was in fact the absolute center and highest point of the mountain over which the palace was built, as if this detail would somehow shed some light on why in fact the bath of all things occupied this particular area when in fact, to me at least, it simply made it all the more curious. It reminded me of children’s book that Laura and I once gave to a friend’s daughter; it was a massively oversized and lavishly illustrated book that told the story of a king who refused to get out of the bath and instead made his ministers, advisors, cooks and even his wife conduct business by getting in the bath with him.</p> +<p>About two weeks ago while I was in Fort Cochin I was overwhelmed by the assault on the senses that India presents in both positive and negative aspects and to cope with it I started trying to notice the small details of things that I or anyone else often overlooks when confronted with any sort of overwhelming, novel experience. But the City Palace was confounding in many ways and stubbornly resisted my attempts to find its details. </p> +<p>I began to realize that perhaps palaces are in effect an attempt to so overwhelm one with a vast and seemingly endless array of details that it becomes impossible to single them out and that a palace’s architectural goal is instead to overawe one into a generalized sensation of wonder or perhaps even confusion. I tried to picture the various kings lying in the bath behind me alone staring at the marble edges or perhaps the leaves in the trees above or even the tiny little plants in their relief cut stone planters along the sides, perhaps he would have noticed that the plants grow in the negative space, <img alt="Stone Planters, City Palace, Udaipur, India" class="postpicright" height="183" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/bathplanter.jpg" width="200"/>where the stone is not, the space that actually forms the pattern that has been cut into the stone, or maybe notice that the pattern of the planter is the same as that of the inlays in the marble around the bath, a sort of blunt flower shape that exists as negative space, similar perhaps to the way a king must exist not a person but a negative space into which is poured all the concerns of his land, his people, his economy, and his foreign affairs.</p> +<p>After a while an older Indian gentleman who appeared tired of the large tour he was partaking in, broke away from the group and sat down on the bench beside me. After asking where I was from and how long I had been in India and other such questions that all the Indians I meet want to know, he started talking about the sheer size of the marble blocks that made up the room around us, not to mention the equally massive stone blocks that formed the walls, all of which had to be dug up, cut to size and hauled up this mountain. We spoke for a while about what the workers lives must have been like in that time and how whatever they did and however they lived is not recorded anywhere in the museum. Eventually the shade of trees above us gave way and bench where we were seated became warm and then hot in the direct sunlight. The man never said another word, simply stood and nodded to me before wandering off to rejoin his tour and I headed back down out of the palace toward the city proper. </p> + </div> + + </article> + + + <div class="nav-wrapper"> + <nav id="page-navigation" class="page-border-top"> + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/11/living-airport-terminals" rel="prev" title=" Living in Airport Terminals">Living in Airport Terminals</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/11/monsoon-palace" rel="next" title=" The Monsoon Palace">The Monsoon Palace</a> + </li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + + + + + + +<div class="comment--form--wrapper "> + +<div class="comment--form--header"> + <p class="hed">Thoughts?</p> + <p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p> +</div> +<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form"> + +<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" /> + + + <input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="21" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833487" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="f46db486f5abdc6ade0d1476331aa77e33bc95d1" id="id_security_hash"> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_name">Name:</label> + <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_email">Email address:</label> + <input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_url">URL:</label> + <input type="url" name="url" id="id_url"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_comment">Comment:</label> + <div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment"> +</textarea></div> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset style="display:none;"> + <label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label> + <input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot"> + </fieldset> + + + <div class="submit"> + <input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" /> + <input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" /> + </div> +</form> +<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. 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+
+I told him to head to Lal Ghat which is the area I wanted to stay in rather than any specific hotel, lest I find it had suddenly burned down or gone out of business or was run by a very nasty man who breeds cockroaches or any of the other fantastical stories I have heard from touts. But this guy just shrugged and took me where I wanted to go. Once we got to Lal Ghat a man hopped in beside me and started in about his hotel. Luckily for him I was too exhausted to protest much and I agreed to at least look at it. It turned out to be a very nice family run guesthouse that was cheap, immaculately clean, had a lovely rooftop restaurant and, amazingly enough, hot water. All this for a mere Rs 150 a night.
+
+<break>
+
+I tried briefly to sleep but decided that was a waste and set out to explore. I didn't feel up to much and was planning to just walk around for a while and maybe have a bite to eat, but I ended up walking right up to the City Palace Gate. I figured why not and bought a ticket for the museum. The City Palace is sort of a generic name for a whole bunch of palaces that were built over the years, each adding on to what existed before it. Legend has it that the founding Mewar ruler who started it was chasing a hare and when his dog cornered to hare the hare kicked the dog in the face so hard that the dog backed down. So rather than getting a new, tougher dog, the king took it as a sign and built a palace on the hill. Based on what I overheard guides telling other groups, nearly every successive ruler seemed to feel the need to expand and add his own touch to the legacy of what is now City Palace, kind of like the never ending construction projects you see around Boston. So the term City Palace refers to the whole collection and serves chiefly to distinguish it from the Lake Palace (now a hotel) and the Monsoon Palace high atop a nearby mountain.
+
+
+
+After touring the museum section, seeing the various rooms and deciding that Mewar rulers had a serious glass and mirror fetish, I came to a sort of hanging garden courtyard that was just off what was once the King's bathtub, though that term hardly does justice to the massive swimming pool sized bathing area. The garden was ringed on all sides by arched colonnades and then within those were trees and decorative planters intermixed with benches.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/colonade.jpg" width="110" height="150" class="postpicright" alt="Colonnades City Palace Udaipur" />I took a seat on a bench in the shade and stared for a long time at a collection of woven cages with rosewood frames and inlaid brass that once housed the king's collection of carrier pigeons. A pair of cages hanging beneath the colonnades outside the main display room were less ornate, solid brass and of a design similar to the one that Sylvester often attempted to decode in his endless pursuit of Tweety. For the most part tourists ignored the room full of cages despite the guides' attempts to impress upon them that once there was no telephone, no email, no long distance communication at all save carrier pigeons. I started to remember all the strange stories I had read about the now extinct birds. <img src="[[base_url]]/2005/pigeoncage.jpg" width="260" height="217" class="postpic" alt="Pigeon Cages City Palace Udaipur, India" />The best comes from W.G. Sebald in his novel Austerlitz where a passenger pigeon was sent out somewhere and on its journey home it broke its wing and so, with an obsession that borders on human, it walked home over god knows how many miles. And yes it is a novel so it's ostensibly fiction, but I find that well written fiction is often much closer to the truth than things that confine themselves to facts.
+
+
+
+I continued to sit there for quite some time listening to rustling trees and the various guides bringing small groups of western and Indian tourists through the garden. Each and everyone of the guides made a point to say that the King's bath, which was just behind my seat on the bench and sunken slightly into the middle of the garden, to say that this bath was in fact the absolute center and highest point of the mountain over which the palace was built, as if this detail would somehow shed some light on why in fact the bath of all things occupied this particular area when in fact, to me at least, it simply made it all the more curious. It reminded me of children's book that Laura and I once gave to a friend's daughter; it was a massively oversized and lavishly illustrated book that told the story of a king who refused to get out of the bath and instead made his ministers, advisors, cooks and even his wife conduct business by getting in the bath with him.
+
+
+
+About two weeks ago while I was in Fort Cochin I was overwhelmed by the assault on the senses that India presents in both positive and negative aspects and to cope with it I started trying to notice the small details of things that I or anyone else often overlooks when confronted with any sort of overwhelming, novel experience. But the City Palace was confounding in many ways and stubbornly resisted my attempts to find its details.
+
+I began to realize that perhaps palaces are in effect an attempt to so overwhelm one with a vast and seemingly endless array of details that it becomes impossible to single them out and that a palace's architectural goal is instead to overawe one into a generalized sensation of wonder or perhaps even confusion. I tried to picture the various kings lying in the bath behind me alone staring at the marble edges or perhaps the leaves in the trees above or even the tiny little plants in their relief cut stone planters along the sides, perhaps he would have noticed that the plants grow in the negative space, <img src="[[base_url]]/2005/bathplanter.jpg" width="200" height="183" class="postpicright" alt="Stone Planters, City Palace, Udaipur, India" />where the stone is not, the space that actually forms the pattern that has been cut into the stone, or maybe notice that the pattern of the planter is the same as that of the inlays in the marble around the bath, a sort of blunt flower shape that exists as negative space, similar perhaps to the way a king must exist not a person but a negative space into which is poured all the concerns of his land, his people, his economy, and his foreign affairs.
+
+
+
+After a while an older Indian gentleman who appeared tired of the large tour he was partaking in, broke away from the group and sat down on the bench beside me. After asking where I was from and how long I had been in India and other such questions that all the Indians I meet want to know, he started talking about the sheer size of the marble blocks that made up the room around us, not to mention the equally massive stone blocks that formed the walls, all of which had to be dug up, cut to size and hauled up this mountain. We spoke for a while about what the workers lives must have been like in that time and how whatever they did and however they lived is not recorded anywhere in the museum. Eventually the shade of trees above us gave way and bench where we were seated became warm and then hot in the direct sunlight. The man never said another word, simply stood and nodded to me before wandering off to rejoin his tour and I headed back down out of the palace toward the city proper. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/fish-story.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/fish-story.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3b6b57d --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/fish-story.amp @@ -0,0 +1,195 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>Fish Story</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/fish-story"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1,minimum-scale=1"> + <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"/> + <meta name="twitter:url" content="/jrnl/2005/11/fish-story"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="It's not the cheapest meal in Goa, but you should definitely treat yourself to a whole curried fish at some point."/> + <meta name="twitter:title" content="Fish Story"/> + <meta name="twitter:site" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:domain" content="luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:image:src" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2008/colvabeach.jpg"/> + <meta name="twitter:creator" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:site:id" content="9469062"> + <meta name="twitter:creator:id" content="9469062"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content=""/> + + <meta name="geo.placename" content="Colva Beach, India"> + <meta name="geo.region" content="IN-None"> + <meta property="og:type" content="article" /> + <meta property="og:title" content="Fish Story" /> + <meta property="og:url" content="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/fish-story" /> + <meta property="og:description" content="It's not the cheapest meal in Goa, but you should definitely treat yourself to a whole curried fish at some point." /> + <meta property="article:published_time" content="2005-11-20T00:54:46" /> + <meta property="article:author" content="Luxagraf" /> + <meta property="og:site_name" content="Luxagraf" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2008/colvabeach.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/colvabeach.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/colvaboat.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/colvacow.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/mejoema.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US" /> + + +<script type="application/ld+json"> +{ + "@context": "http://schema.org", + "@type": "BlogPosting", + "headline": "Fish Story", + "description": "It's not the cheapest meal in Goa, but you should definitely treat yourself to a whole curried fish at some point.", + "datePublished": "2005-11-20T00:54:46", + "author": { + "@type": "Person", + "name": "Scott Gilbertson" + }, + "publisher": { + "@type": "Person", + "name": "Scott Gilbertson" + "logo": { + "@type": "ImageObject", + "url": "", + "width": 240, + "height": 53 + } + } +} +</script> +<style amp-custom> +body { + font-size: 1rem; 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Yes, after about 24 hours of traveling I finally made it to Goa. I'm staying at Colva Beach, which is in Southern Goa and apparently less of a party town than some of the areas to the north. </p> +<p>Quite frankly the idea of coming all the way to India and being surrounded by partying Euroteens just didn't appeal to me, so I opted for Colva Beach. This area also seems to be popular with Indian tourists. <amp-img alt="Colva Beach India" height="100" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/colvabeach.jpg" width="181"></amp-img>Anyone who's ever been to Panama City, Florida and stayed at the west end of the beach knows pretty much what this area is like. For you west coast folks think Rosarita Beach in Mexico. From Hawaii and Florida to Mexico or India tropical beach towns are all more or less the same, thatched roofs abound, chaise lounges and bars with twinkling Christmas lights are tucked between coconut palms, outrigger fishing boats, everything and everyone is relaxed and friendly.</p> +<p><break></break></p> +<h3>Orange Blossom Special</h3> +<p>But before I say much about Goa itself I wanted to tell a word or two about trains because until Tuesday I had never actually ridden on a train. The first train I took from Ernakulam to Mangalore was overnight and first class. Strangely enough first class was cheaper than 2nd sleeper, I guess because of the lack of air conditioning, but with the ceiling fans and open windows there was plenty of circulating air to keep cool. The second train from Mangalore to Margao, Goa I opted for regular sleeper class. The main difference between first class and regular sleeper seems to be the amount of padding on the seats. And regular sleeper is a little more crowded, but still quite comfortable. </p> +<p>There is of course chair class, but it doesn't seem practical with the amount of luggage I'm carrying. I enjoyed traveling by train; I didn't sleep much, but that was more me than the train. I spent most of my time by the open door watching the Indian countryside whirl by in a kaleidoscope of greens and reds and then flashes of purple and blue and white whenever we passed through a town. I saw quite a number of a very eagle or hawk-like birds, not unlike a bald eagle from the states, but with the white extending further down its body. Whatever it is, crows certainly seem to hate it; I saw whole flocks trying to attack these hawks or eagles with very little success. </p> +<p>The other entertainment of an India train is listening to the calls of "chai garam" (hot tea I think) from the venders continually marching up and down the aisles. Traveling by train in India is sort of like being on a moving smorgasbord. One can get everything from biryanis to dosas to a fried dough concoctions, not unlike an American doughnut but not sweet, to of course chai, which in India is just tea, not the chai you get at Starbucks, though that is available as well. </p> +<p>The second train passed by the massive 17m high Gomtateshvara statue in Karnataka, which was beautifully lit up on the horizon, though too far for pictures. I arrived in Margao, Goa at about 9:30pm roughly 26 hours after I left Fort Cochin. I very nearly missed the station because the signs for the station were labeled Madgaon, rather than Margao. Almost every other station I went through the name was simply the name of the town and I'm still not sure if Madgaon is simply another name or Margao or if they changed the name recently—India loves to change names, for instance Bombay is now Mumbai (even though everybody still calls it Bombay), they seems to slowly shedding the British colonial legacy— or what, but luckily I got off and didn't end up going all the way to Mumbai.</p> +<p>I took a cab from Margao to Colva Beach and dragged the poor cabbie through three different hotels that were all full before I gave up and let him take me to an overpriced place that was nice, but really not much more than you get at the cheaper places. Except. Except this place had hot water which was nice for shaving. I have learned to do the cold water shave and it isn't as bad as it sounds, but obviously hot water is better.</p> +<h3>The Sleepy Strange</h3> +<p>The next day I moved across the street to a place called the Joema Tourist Home which is structurally not unlike the little compound I used to live in Athens, GA. When I arrived the owner told me that there was a room available, but not until evening. I said fine I'll take it and went to go get my bag and have some breakfast. When I returned two hours later he apparently had given up on me and rented the room to someone else. But he said he felt bad about the mix-up and offered me his son's room in the main house. Because it's very crowded around here and I wanted to stay on the cheap I took him up on the offer and spent the night with his family, who were very nice and accommodating. His younger son was working on a silk painting of the Madonna and Child next to Shiva, a coupling that is not uncommon in India. He was a very talented painter even if the subject was not necessarily one I would choose. He had fantastic attention to detail, especially in the faces, the eyes of which were exactly as I think of the Virgin Mary, flat and lifeless, but with some excruciating depth behind them that makes you feel as if you are falling into a pool of blackness.</p> +<p>The next morning I went to a travel agent and booked a flight from Goa to Ahmedabad and a train from Ahmedabad to Udaipur. I had intended to travel all of that by train, but I'm starting to feel like I'm running out of time and I really want to see Rajasthan so I went for the flights, which ended up being only about $40 more than the trains and saves me about 48 hours of travel time, sadly I will miss Mumbai (Bombay). After taking care of the travel details and moving my stuff into the new, private room I headed down to the beach for a swim.</p> +<h3>A Salty Salute</h3> +<p><amp-img alt="Colva Sunset" height="154" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/colvaboat.jpg" width="200"></amp-img>The Arabian Sea is very warm and the sand sucks at your feet when you walk, schools of tiny fish dart and disappear into each receding wave. The sand is a kind of silt which must come from rivers up the coast as no ocean is capable of grinding out sand this fine. In the morning the water is nearly glassy and a fairly decent swell brings waves with maybe two foot backs, big enough to ride for a little ways though the beach slopes so slowly one can walk out at least 200 meters and be only waist deep (which makes body surfing tricky); I have seen men in the afternoon walk to the fishing boats moored quite a ways off the shore. They use a single outrigger fishing boat here and everyday many of them lie unused on the beach, painted in dazzling almost garish hues of blue and green and orange with blue plastic tarps to cover the nets lying in the stern of each boat, and when the breeze kicks up in the afternoon, keeping the mosquitoes and sand fleas and countless other bugs at bay, the tarps on the unused boats luff up and you can see the brightly colored orange and red buoys of the nets lying beneath. It's a nice reminder that Colva is not just tourism, at least some of the residents still earn their living by fishing.</p> +<p>For about two a kilometers in either direction of the main beach the shoreline is dotted with thatched roof huts selling drinks and various foods, a couple of them even offer tandoori, though the ovens never seem to be on when I ask, but I can't say I blame them as the midday heat combined with a tandoor oven would be miserable. The main appeal of these huts seems to be that, provided you purchase something from them, you may lie on their chaise lounges and, more importantly, they keep an eye on you things while you go swimming. I would like to say they also keep the countless girls selling jewelry and sarongs and fruit and every other portable, saleable item you can imagine from pestering you, but unfortunately they do not. </p> +<p>I have decided to spend the entire week here lying on the beach, staring out at the Arabian Sea and otherwise doing nothing. Laura told me the other day that I wrote her an email years ago saying I wanted to lie on the beach, sip pina coladas and do nothing, well, for a week anyway, I plan to do just that. I spent that first afternoon staring out at the ocean, watching the light reflect off it and create rippling textures that moved as surges of water and light, not unlike the way sunlight glitters in a stained glass window, which was undoubtedly (to my mind anyway) inspired by someone staring at the sea. And the substance of glass was, perhaps not coincidentally, right beneath my feet; I enjoy the possible symmetry of some ancestor melting the shoreline to capture the undulation and glitter s/he saw out on the sea.</p> +<h3>It's A Sight To Behold</h3> +<p>The Joema Tourist home is sort of one part hotel, one part residence and one part farm. Pigs and chickens scratch at the dirt and root in the bushes below my window and on the way to the beach there are several cows that consider the field you pass through more theirs than yours. It would be nice to imagine that leopards and even tigers might lurk in the bushes, but like everywhere else in the world, the big cats have long since been driven out and retreated up to the hills where they hide in the few nature preserves and national parks of India. Still, I do get to feel a bit like I am living in the forest on a little farm with all the animals, including the extremely annoying rooster who starts in at about six AM.<amp-img alt="sacred cow" height="160" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/colvacow.jpg" width="200"></amp-img></p> +<p>The food in Goa is more what we from the States think of as Indian Food, though, as my waiter some nights ago explained, this sort of food is actually only one region of India—Punjab—where a lot of people were displaced and apparently resettled in America. But Goa is enough to the north that one can find spectacular tandoori dishes, the best I've ever had, and wonderful naan and biryanis. The specialty here in Goa is, naturally enough, fish. I spent all day on the beach watching the fishermen out in their boats so I thought it only appropriate that I actually eat some of the local catch. </p> +<p>Last night I trekked down the road to what everyone claims is the best, though not the cheapest, restaurant for fish. And I didn't want just a fish curry or some bits of fish with other things, no, I wanted a whole fish like I have seen some people eating when I walked by. So I asked and did receive. They first brought out a platter of whole raw fish for me to choose from. There was a mackerel, a red snapper and something that looked like what I call a sunfish, but may have other names. It's a flattish fish sort of like a halibut but not that flat and I don't think it swims sideway like a Halibut. Whatever the case that's what I picked.</p> +<p>When it finally arrived the fish was about the size of your standard American dinner plate and surrounded on one side by<amp-img alt="me" height="100" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/mejoema.jpg" width="110"></amp-img> saffron rice and the other by steamed cauliflower with beans, carrots and peas. The entire concoction was covered in a mildly spicy, thick, brownish garlic sauce. Picking the meat off the bones was quite a project, but rewarding once you got the buttery sweet taste in your mouth. It was the best meal so far and yes it was expensive, but it was worth it. And no I didn't pick my teeth with the remaining bones. </p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/fish-story.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/fish-story.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..2a73435 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/fish-story.html @@ -0,0 +1,352 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Fish Story - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="It's not the cheapest meal in Goa, but you should definitely treat yourself to a whole curried fish at some point."> + <meta name="author" content="Scott Gilbertson"> + <link rel="alternate" + type="application/rss+xml" + title="Luxagraf RSS feed" + href="https://luxagraf.net/rss/"> + <link rel="stylesheet" + href="/media/screenv9.css" + media="screen"> + <link rel="stylesheet" href="/media/print.css" media="print" title="print" /> + <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon"> + <link rel="manifest" href="/manifest.json" /> + <link rel="dns-prefetch" href="https://stats.luxagraf.net"> + + <link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/fish-story" /> + <meta name="ICBM" content="15.277230227117771, 73.91541479989145" /> + <meta name="geo.position" content="15.277230227117771; 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return false;" title="see a map">Map</a> + </div> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post-date" datetime="2005-11-20T00:54:46" itemprop="datePublished">November <span>20, 2005</span></time> + <span class="hide" itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">by <a class="p-author h-card" href="/about"><span itemprop="name">Scott Gilbertson</span></a></span> + </div> + </header> + <div id="article" class="e-content entry-content post--body post--body--single" itemprop="articleBody"> + <p><span class="drop">I</span> ate a whole fish—skin, flesh, and all. Yes, after about 24 hours of traveling I finally made it to Goa. I’m staying at Colva Beach, which is in Southern Goa and apparently less of a party town than some of the areas to the north. </p> +<p>Quite frankly the idea of coming all the way to India and being surrounded by partying Euroteens just didn’t appeal to me, so I opted for Colva Beach. This area also seems to be popular with Indian tourists. <img alt="Colva Beach India" class="postpic" height="100" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/colvabeach.jpg" width="181"/>Anyone who’s ever been to Panama City, Florida and stayed at the west end of the beach knows pretty much what this area is like. For you west coast folks think Rosarita Beach in Mexico. From Hawaii and Florida to Mexico or India tropical beach towns are all more or less the same, thatched roofs abound, chaise lounges and bars with twinkling Christmas lights are tucked between coconut palms, outrigger fishing boats, everything and everyone is relaxed and friendly.</p> +<p><break></p> +<h3>Orange Blossom Special</h3> + +<p>But before I say much about Goa itself I wanted to tell a word or two about trains because until Tuesday I had never actually ridden on a train. The first train I took from Ernakulam to Mangalore was overnight and first class. Strangely enough first class was cheaper than 2nd sleeper, I guess because of the lack of air conditioning, but with the ceiling fans and open windows there was plenty of circulating air to keep cool. The second train from Mangalore to Margao, Goa I opted for regular sleeper class. The main difference between first class and regular sleeper seems to be the amount of padding on the seats. And regular sleeper is a little more crowded, but still quite comfortable. </p> +<p>There is of course chair class, but it doesn’t seem practical with the amount of luggage I’m carrying. I enjoyed traveling by train; I didn’t sleep much, but that was more me than the train. I spent most of my time by the open door watching the Indian countryside whirl by in a kaleidoscope of greens and reds and then flashes of purple and blue and white whenever we passed through a town. I saw quite a number of a very eagle or hawk-like birds, not unlike a bald eagle from the states, but with the white extending further down its body. Whatever it is, crows certainly seem to hate it; I saw whole flocks trying to attack these hawks or eagles with very little success. </p> +<p>The other entertainment of an India train is listening to the calls of “chai garam” (hot tea I think) from the venders continually marching up and down the aisles. Traveling by train in India is sort of like being on a moving smorgasbord. One can get everything from biryanis to dosas to a fried dough concoctions, not unlike an American doughnut but not sweet, to of course chai, which in India is just tea, not the chai you get at Starbucks, though that is available as well. </p> +<p>The second train passed by the massive 17m high Gomtateshvara statue in Karnataka, which was beautifully lit up on the horizon, though too far for pictures. I arrived in Margao, Goa at about 9:30pm roughly 26 hours after I left Fort Cochin. I very nearly missed the station because the signs for the station were labeled Madgaon, rather than Margao. Almost every other station I went through the name was simply the name of the town and I’m still not sure if Madgaon is simply another name or Margao or if they changed the name recently—India loves to change names, for instance Bombay is now Mumbai (even though everybody still calls it Bombay), they seems to slowly shedding the British colonial legacy— or what, but luckily I got off and didn’t end up going all the way to Mumbai.</p> +<p>I took a cab from Margao to Colva Beach and dragged the poor cabbie through three different hotels that were all full before I gave up and let him take me to an overpriced place that was nice, but really not much more than you get at the cheaper places. Except. Except this place had hot water which was nice for shaving. I have learned to do the cold water shave and it isn’t as bad as it sounds, but obviously hot water is better.</p> +<h3>The Sleepy Strange</h3> + +<p>The next day I moved across the street to a place called the Joema Tourist Home which is structurally not unlike the little compound I used to live in Athens, GA. When I arrived the owner told me that there was a room available, but not until evening. I said fine I’ll take it and went to go get my bag and have some breakfast. When I returned two hours later he apparently had given up on me and rented the room to someone else. But he said he felt bad about the mix-up and offered me his son’s room in the main house. Because it’s very crowded around here and I wanted to stay on the cheap I took him up on the offer and spent the night with his family, who were very nice and accommodating. His younger son was working on a silk painting of the Madonna and Child next to Shiva, a coupling that is not uncommon in India. He was a very talented painter even if the subject was not necessarily one I would choose. He had fantastic attention to detail, especially in the faces, the eyes of which were exactly as I think of the Virgin Mary, flat and lifeless, but with some excruciating depth behind them that makes you feel as if you are falling into a pool of blackness.</p> +<p>The next morning I went to a travel agent and booked a flight from Goa to Ahmedabad and a train from Ahmedabad to Udaipur. I had intended to travel all of that by train, but I’m starting to feel like I’m running out of time and I really want to see Rajasthan so I went for the flights, which ended up being only about $40 more than the trains and saves me about 48 hours of travel time, sadly I will miss Mumbai (Bombay). After taking care of the travel details and moving my stuff into the new, private room I headed down to the beach for a swim.</p> +<h3>A Salty Salute</h3> + +<p><img alt="Colva Sunset" class="postpic" height="154" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/colvaboat.jpg" width="200"/>The Arabian Sea is very warm and the sand sucks at your feet when you walk, schools of tiny fish dart and disappear into each receding wave. The sand is a kind of silt which must come from rivers up the coast as no ocean is capable of grinding out sand this fine. In the morning the water is nearly glassy and a fairly decent swell brings waves with maybe two foot backs, big enough to ride for a little ways though the beach slopes so slowly one can walk out at least 200 meters and be only waist deep (which makes body surfing tricky); I have seen men in the afternoon walk to the fishing boats moored quite a ways off the shore. They use a single outrigger fishing boat here and everyday many of them lie unused on the beach, painted in dazzling almost garish hues of blue and green and orange with blue plastic tarps to cover the nets lying in the stern of each boat, and when the breeze kicks up in the afternoon, keeping the mosquitoes and sand fleas and countless other bugs at bay, the tarps on the unused boats luff up and you can see the brightly colored orange and red buoys of the nets lying beneath. It’s a nice reminder that Colva is not just tourism, at least some of the residents still earn their living by fishing.</p> +<p>For about two a kilometers in either direction of the main beach the shoreline is dotted with thatched roof huts selling drinks and various foods, a couple of them even offer tandoori, though the ovens never seem to be on when I ask, but I can’t say I blame them as the midday heat combined with a tandoor oven would be miserable. The main appeal of these huts seems to be that, provided you purchase something from them, you may lie on their chaise lounges and, more importantly, they keep an eye on you things while you go swimming. I would like to say they also keep the countless girls selling jewelry and sarongs and fruit and every other portable, saleable item you can imagine from pestering you, but unfortunately they do not. </p> +<p>I have decided to spend the entire week here lying on the beach, staring out at the Arabian Sea and otherwise doing nothing. Laura told me the other day that I wrote her an email years ago saying I wanted to lie on the beach, sip pina coladas and do nothing, well, for a week anyway, I plan to do just that. I spent that first afternoon staring out at the ocean, watching the light reflect off it and create rippling textures that moved as surges of water and light, not unlike the way sunlight glitters in a stained glass window, which was undoubtedly (to my mind anyway) inspired by someone staring at the sea. And the substance of glass was, perhaps not coincidentally, right beneath my feet; I enjoy the possible symmetry of some ancestor melting the shoreline to capture the undulation and glitter s/he saw out on the sea.</p> +<h3>It’s A Sight To Behold</h3> + +<p>The Joema Tourist home is sort of one part hotel, one part residence and one part farm. Pigs and chickens scratch at the dirt and root in the bushes below my window and on the way to the beach there are several cows that consider the field you pass through more theirs than yours. It would be nice to imagine that leopards and even tigers might lurk in the bushes, but like everywhere else in the world, the big cats have long since been driven out and retreated up to the hills where they hide in the few nature preserves and national parks of India. Still, I do get to feel a bit like I am living in the forest on a little farm with all the animals, including the extremely annoying rooster who starts in at about six AM.<img alt="sacred cow" class="postpicright" height="160" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/colvacow.jpg" width="200"/></p> +<p>The food in Goa is more what we from the States think of as Indian Food, though, as my waiter some nights ago explained, this sort of food is actually only one region of India—Punjab—where a lot of people were displaced and apparently resettled in America. But Goa is enough to the north that one can find spectacular tandoori dishes, the best I’ve ever had, and wonderful naan and biryanis. The specialty here in Goa is, naturally enough, fish. I spent all day on the beach watching the fishermen out in their boats so I thought it only appropriate that I actually eat some of the local catch. </p> +<p>Last night I trekked down the road to what everyone claims is the best, though not the cheapest, restaurant for fish. And I didn’t want just a fish curry or some bits of fish with other things, no, I wanted a whole fish like I have seen some people eating when I walked by. So I asked and did receive. They first brought out a platter of whole raw fish for me to choose from. There was a mackerel, a red snapper and something that looked like what I call a sunfish, but may have other names. It’s a flattish fish sort of like a halibut but not that flat and I don’t think it swims sideway like a Halibut. Whatever the case that’s what I picked.</p> +<p>When it finally arrived the fish was about the size of your standard American dinner plate and surrounded on one side by<img alt="me" class="postpic" height="100" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/mejoema.jpg" width="110"/> saffron rice and the other by steamed cauliflower with beans, carrots and peas. The entire concoction was covered in a mildly spicy, thick, brownish garlic sauce. Picking the meat off the bones was quite a project, but rewarding once you got the buttery sweet taste in your mouth. It was the best meal so far and yes it was expensive, but it was worth it. 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Yes, after about 24 hours of traveling I finally made it to Goa. I'm staying at Colva Beach, which is in Southern Goa and apparently less of a party town than some of the areas to the north.
+
+Quite frankly the idea of coming all the way to India and being surrounded by partying Euroteens just didn't appeal to me, so I opted for Colva Beach. This area also seems to be popular with Indian tourists. <img src="[[base_url]]/2005/colvabeach.jpg" width="181" height="100" class="postpic" alt="Colva Beach India" />Anyone who's ever been to Panama City, Florida and stayed at the west end of the beach knows pretty much what this area is like. For you west coast folks think Rosarita Beach in Mexico. From Hawaii and Florida to Mexico or India tropical beach towns are all more or less the same, thatched roofs abound, chaise lounges and bars with twinkling Christmas lights are tucked between coconut palms, outrigger fishing boats, everything and everyone is relaxed and friendly.
+
+<break>
+
+<h3>Orange Blossom Special</h3>
+
+
+
+But before I say much about Goa itself I wanted to tell a word or two about trains because until Tuesday I had never actually ridden on a train. The first train I took from Ernakulam to Mangalore was overnight and first class. Strangely enough first class was cheaper than 2nd sleeper, I guess because of the lack of air conditioning, but with the ceiling fans and open windows there was plenty of circulating air to keep cool. The second train from Mangalore to Margao, Goa I opted for regular sleeper class. The main difference between first class and regular sleeper seems to be the amount of padding on the seats. And regular sleeper is a little more crowded, but still quite comfortable.
+
+There is of course chair class, but it doesn't seem practical with the amount of luggage I'm carrying. I enjoyed traveling by train; I didn't sleep much, but that was more me than the train. I spent most of my time by the open door watching the Indian countryside whirl by in a kaleidoscope of greens and reds and then flashes of purple and blue and white whenever we passed through a town. I saw quite a number of a very eagle or hawk-like birds, not unlike a bald eagle from the states, but with the white extending further down its body. Whatever it is, crows certainly seem to hate it; I saw whole flocks trying to attack these hawks or eagles with very little success.
+
+The other entertainment of an India train is listening to the calls of "chai garam" (hot tea I think) from the venders continually marching up and down the aisles. Traveling by train in India is sort of like being on a moving smorgasbord. One can get everything from biryanis to dosas to a fried dough concoctions, not unlike an American doughnut but not sweet, to of course chai, which in India is just tea, not the chai you get at Starbucks, though that is available as well.
+
+
+
+The second train passed by the massive 17m high Gomtateshvara statue in Karnataka, which was beautifully lit up on the horizon, though too far for pictures. I arrived in Margao, Goa at about 9:30pm roughly 26 hours after I left Fort Cochin. I very nearly missed the station because the signs for the station were labeled Madgaon, rather than Margao. Almost every other station I went through the name was simply the name of the town and I'm still not sure if Madgaon is simply another name or Margao or if they changed the name recently—India loves to change names, for instance Bombay is now Mumbai (even though everybody still calls it Bombay), they seems to slowly shedding the British colonial legacy— or what, but luckily I got off and didn't end up going all the way to Mumbai.
+
+
+
+I took a cab from Margao to Colva Beach and dragged the poor cabbie through three different hotels that were all full before I gave up and let him take me to an overpriced place that was nice, but really not much more than you get at the cheaper places. Except. Except this place had hot water which was nice for shaving. I have learned to do the cold water shave and it isn't as bad as it sounds, but obviously hot water is better.
+
+
+
+<h3>The Sleepy Strange</h3>
+
+
+
+The next day I moved across the street to a place called the Joema Tourist Home which is structurally not unlike the little compound I used to live in Athens, GA. When I arrived the owner told me that there was a room available, but not until evening. I said fine I'll take it and went to go get my bag and have some breakfast. When I returned two hours later he apparently had given up on me and rented the room to someone else. But he said he felt bad about the mix-up and offered me his son's room in the main house. Because it's very crowded around here and I wanted to stay on the cheap I took him up on the offer and spent the night with his family, who were very nice and accommodating. His younger son was working on a silk painting of the Madonna and Child next to Shiva, a coupling that is not uncommon in India. He was a very talented painter even if the subject was not necessarily one I would choose. He had fantastic attention to detail, especially in the faces, the eyes of which were exactly as I think of the Virgin Mary, flat and lifeless, but with some excruciating depth behind them that makes you feel as if you are falling into a pool of blackness.
+
+
+
+The next morning I went to a travel agent and booked a flight from Goa to Ahmedabad and a train from Ahmedabad to Udaipur. I had intended to travel all of that by train, but I'm starting to feel like I'm running out of time and I really want to see Rajasthan so I went for the flights, which ended up being only about $40 more than the trains and saves me about 48 hours of travel time, sadly I will miss Mumbai (Bombay). After taking care of the travel details and moving my stuff into the new, private room I headed down to the beach for a swim.
+
+
+
+<h3>A Salty Salute</h3>
+
+
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/colvaboat.jpg" width="200" height="154" class="postpic" alt="Colva Sunset" />The Arabian Sea is very warm and the sand sucks at your feet when you walk, schools of tiny fish dart and disappear into each receding wave. The sand is a kind of silt which must come from rivers up the coast as no ocean is capable of grinding out sand this fine. In the morning the water is nearly glassy and a fairly decent swell brings waves with maybe two foot backs, big enough to ride for a little ways though the beach slopes so slowly one can walk out at least 200 meters and be only waist deep (which makes body surfing tricky); I have seen men in the afternoon walk to the fishing boats moored quite a ways off the shore. They use a single outrigger fishing boat here and everyday many of them lie unused on the beach, painted in dazzling almost garish hues of blue and green and orange with blue plastic tarps to cover the nets lying in the stern of each boat, and when the breeze kicks up in the afternoon, keeping the mosquitoes and sand fleas and countless other bugs at bay, the tarps on the unused boats luff up and you can see the brightly colored orange and red buoys of the nets lying beneath. It's a nice reminder that Colva is not just tourism, at least some of the residents still earn their living by fishing.
+
+
+
+For about two a kilometers in either direction of the main beach the shoreline is dotted with thatched roof huts selling drinks and various foods, a couple of them even offer tandoori, though the ovens never seem to be on when I ask, but I can't say I blame them as the midday heat combined with a tandoor oven would be miserable. The main appeal of these huts seems to be that, provided you purchase something from them, you may lie on their chaise lounges and, more importantly, they keep an eye on you things while you go swimming. I would like to say they also keep the countless girls selling jewelry and sarongs and fruit and every other portable, saleable item you can imagine from pestering you, but unfortunately they do not.
+
+
+
+I have decided to spend the entire week here lying on the beach, staring out at the Arabian Sea and otherwise doing nothing. Laura told me the other day that I wrote her an email years ago saying I wanted to lie on the beach, sip pina coladas and do nothing, well, for a week anyway, I plan to do just that. I spent that first afternoon staring out at the ocean, watching the light reflect off it and create rippling textures that moved as surges of water and light, not unlike the way sunlight glitters in a stained glass window, which was undoubtedly (to my mind anyway) inspired by someone staring at the sea. And the substance of glass was, perhaps not coincidentally, right beneath my feet; I enjoy the possible symmetry of some ancestor melting the shoreline to capture the undulation and glitter s/he saw out on the sea.
+
+
+
+<h3>It's A Sight To Behold</h3>
+
+
+
+The Joema Tourist home is sort of one part hotel, one part residence and one part farm. Pigs and chickens scratch at the dirt and root in the bushes below my window and on the way to the beach there are several cows that consider the field you pass through more theirs than yours. It would be nice to imagine that leopards and even tigers might lurk in the bushes, but like everywhere else in the world, the big cats have long since been driven out and retreated up to the hills where they hide in the few nature preserves and national parks of India. Still, I do get to feel a bit like I am living in the forest on a little farm with all the animals, including the extremely annoying rooster who starts in at about six AM.<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/colvacow.jpg" width="200" height="160" class="postpicright" alt="sacred cow" />
+
+
+
+The food in Goa is more what we from the States think of as Indian Food, though, as my waiter some nights ago explained, this sort of food is actually only one region of India—Punjab—where a lot of people were displaced and apparently resettled in America. But Goa is enough to the north that one can find spectacular tandoori dishes, the best I've ever had, and wonderful naan and biryanis. The specialty here in Goa is, naturally enough, fish. I spent all day on the beach watching the fishermen out in their boats so I thought it only appropriate that I actually eat some of the local catch.
+
+Last night I trekked down the road to what everyone claims is the best, though not the cheapest, restaurant for fish. And I didn't want just a fish curry or some bits of fish with other things, no, I wanted a whole fish like I have seen some people eating when I walked by. So I asked and did receive. They first brought out a platter of whole raw fish for me to choose from. There was a mackerel, a red snapper and something that looked like what I call a sunfish, but may have other names. It's a flattish fish sort of like a halibut but not that flat and I don't think it swims sideway like a Halibut. Whatever the case that's what I picked.
+
+
+
+When it finally arrived the fish was about the size of your standard American dinner plate and surrounded on one side by<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/mejoema.jpg" width="110" height="100" class="postpic" alt="me" /> saffron rice and the other by steamed cauliflower with beans, carrots and peas. The entire concoction was covered in a mildly spicy, thick, brownish garlic sauce. Picking the meat off the bones was quite a project, but rewarding once you got the buttery sweet taste in your mouth. It was the best meal so far and yes it was expensive, but it was worth it. And no I didn't pick my teeth with the remaining bones. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/houses-we-live.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/houses-we-live.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b773abc --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/houses-we-live.amp @@ -0,0 +1,186 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>The Houses We Live In</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/houses-we-live"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1,minimum-scale=1"> + <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"/> + <meta name="twitter:url" content="/jrnl/2005/11/houses-we-live"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="People are essentially the same everywhere, they just build their houses differently"/> + <meta name="twitter:title" content="The Houses We Live In"/> + <meta name="twitter:site" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:domain" content="luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:image:src" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2008/pariscityscape.jpg"/> + <meta name="twitter:creator" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:site:id" content="9469062"> + <meta name="twitter:creator:id" content="9469062"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content=""/> + + <meta name="geo.placename" content="Paris, France"> + <meta name="geo.region" content="FR-None"> + <meta property="og:type" content="article" /> + <meta property="og:title" content="The Houses We Live In" /> + <meta property="og:url" content="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/houses-we-live" /> + <meta property="og:description" content="People are essentially the same everywhere, they just build their houses differently" /> + <meta property="article:published_time" content="2005-11-01T10:40:00" /> + <meta property="article:author" content="Luxagraf" /> + <meta property="og:site_name" content="Luxagraf" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2008/pariscityscape.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/eiffel.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/clytemnestra_agamemnon.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/choc.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US" /> + + +<script type="application/ld+json"> +{ + "@context": "http://schema.org", + "@type": "BlogPosting", + "headline": "The Houses We Live In", + "description": "People are essentially the same everywhere, they just build their houses differently", + "datePublished": "2005-11-01T10:40:00", + "author": { + "@type": "Person", + "name": "Scott Gilbertson" + }, + "publisher": { + "@type": "Person", + "name": "Scott Gilbertson" + "logo": { + "@type": "ImageObject", + "url": "", + "width": 240, + "height": 53 + } + } +} +</script> +<style amp-custom> +body { + font-size: 1rem; 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I'm paraphrasing here since I don't remember the exact phrasing he used, but something to the effect of "people are essentially the same everywhere, they just build their houses differently." </p> +<p>Mr. Bill is widely traveled from his time in the Air Force so it's not like he just pulled this idea out of his ass. I also don't think he meant it in too strict of terms. But with this idea in mind I've been paying more attention to architecture than I ever did in the past and, if for no other reason than that, I appreciate Mr. Bill's point. Or as my dad likes to say, when you get to Paris you really feel like you have gone somewhere. </p> +<p><break> +Paris's architecture is unlike anything in America. There is really just no comparison. A few neighborhoods in the more modern parts of town remind me at times of San Francisco if it were pancaked and painted mute colors. But by and large, Paris architecture is completely unlike anything in America. And I think one of the reasons that is so has to do with the way in which architecture reflects culture and the ideas of the people that make up culture. So while Mr. Bill may be right that people are essentially the same, nevertheless, important differences distinguish them from one another and sometimes these differences are reflected in the houses they make.</break></p> +<p><amp-img alt="Eiffel Tower" height="180" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/eiffel.jpg" width="135"></amp-img>To Americans the French are renowned for the emphasis they place on pleasure and sensual details of life. When Americans think of the French they tend to think of food and art and sex. Whereas I cannot pretend to tell you what the French at large think of Americans they seem somewhat obsessed with our bad television dramas, particularly those with detective/police/crime bent. Which to seems to reflect a view of Americans that is perhaps not entirely unfounded. </p> +<p>We're obsessed with regulating things the French don't care about, yet we love the anti-hero who flaunts our own regulations. We're gruff, only semi-civilized and most importantly very, very young as a culture. We still love to play cops and robbers (though cowboys and indians seems to have fallen out of favor). Many Americans would take tremendous offense to the nudes that adorn French gardens, which is just silly, but undeniably part of America's historical Puritanism, a history the French lack.</p> +<p>Of course I am speaking in clichés and do not want to imply that I actually believe either of these perceptions is in any way accurate or even representative of each culture. Still there may well be something to be learned from clichés.</p> +<p>There are more concrete cultural differences I've observed, for instance, one which really irritates Laura, is that Parisians at least, have a concept of personal space that's radically smaller than American's concept. The French have no problem basically stepping on you in crowded metro cars for instance. The other related irritating thing is the Parisians' habit of not getting the hell out of the way. For instance no one here runs to catch the metro train. Whereas in New York, if you are descending to the platform and clearly hear or see a train arrive nearly everyone speeds up and tries to make that train, not so here. People continue along at whatever plodding pace they may have and good luck getting around them. Yet curiously they have no problem moving into the 10 inch space between you and the supermarket shelf. These two things combined make the Louvre quite an ordeal even on a weekday.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Clytemnestra and Agamemnon" height="213" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/clytemnestra_agamemnon.jpg" width="240"></amp-img>Yet perhaps if you are always running to catch the train you cannot produce something like Clytemnestra and Agamemnon. And I don't mean that in the sense of stopping to smell the flowers, it's much more than that. It's an entirely different approach to life, something so big I don't pretend to fully understand it, but merely catch glimpses of it here and there in the smaller actions and movements of a culture similar too, and yet entirely different from mine.</p> +<p>At the same time I have come to see certain ways in which I am indelibly American. Laura, who has been here about three weeks longer than me, pointed out that while we tend to think of America as having no unifying culture, it actually does. It's just very hard to see until you look at it from along way away. I think perhaps it's doubly noticeable when encountering a culture that is very close to and yet not, your own. That is to say that certainly India will be so different from America as to virtually incomparable in any meaningful way (which raise the question whether or not comparing cultures is in fact ever meaningful, but I can't go there at this juncture). But France is just close enough that the differences are more obvious.</p> +<p>Yet similarities remain. For instance if you want to see the French go crazy with Americanesque consumer frenzy just stop by BHV on a Saturday. And BHV is itself a very America idea, and yet, as with everything, the French have refined the Target/Wal-Mart concept to a new and somewhat higher level. Everything under one roof takes on a new meaning at BHV where literally everything is under one roof except groceries. Imagine Wal-Mart mashed with Bed Bath and Beyond, Home Depot, Pier 1, Macy's, True Value, and Ikea. Nine stories of crazed French consumers. And yet the cafe has good coffee, beer and pretty good photography on the walls. They take what they like about an American idea, and add that distinctive French refinement.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Chocolat Chaud" height="120" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/choc.jpg" width="150"></amp-img>If you pinned me down and wanted some definitive difference between Paris and say New York, I would, aside from the architecture, point out that Paris has a relaxed culture where the emphasis is on doing things well rather than the quantity of things one gets done. Or perhaps it would be better to say that the things the French love to do, they fashion into an art form, and even when the output may be thought of as consumerist, there is still an art to it that distinguishes it from its American counterpart. Sometimes, as in the case of food, art, etc this is a wonderfully refreshing change from the homogenization of American culture. But other times this can be a bad thing. Which brings me to another point in favor of American culture, despite how many of might complain about a visit to the DMV, the paperwork involved in American life is nowhere near the bureaucracy the French deal with. Interestingly enough the word bureaucracy come from a French word, bureau (meaning office). But if the trade off for the way of life I see around me in Paris is to have a bureaucratic nightmare of a government, well damn it sign me up, I'd love to wait in line for health care. [And please please don't bring up taxes. I guarantee French taxes are nothing compared to visiting the ER in the states]</p> +<p>What seems like it might be ideal is a melding of the good aspects of both cultures, though inevitably such an idea would be doomed to failure. Perhaps the truth of culture is simply that you cannot have the good aspects without accepting the bad ones. Viewed from this light it seems to me that the question becomes not how much you love the good, but how little you mind the bad. </p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/houses-we-live.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/houses-we-live.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..b05a75c --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/houses-we-live.html @@ -0,0 +1,340 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>The Houses We Live In - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="People are essentially the same everywhere, they just build their houses differently"> + <meta name="author" content="Scott Gilbertson"> + <link rel="alternate" + type="application/rss+xml" + title="Luxagraf RSS feed" + href="https://luxagraf.net/rss/"> + <link rel="stylesheet" + href="/media/screenv9.css" + media="screen"> + <link rel="stylesheet" href="/media/print.css" media="print" title="print" /> + <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon"> + <link rel="manifest" href="/manifest.json" /> + <link rel="dns-prefetch" href="https://stats.luxagraf.net"> + + <link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/houses-we-live" /> + <meta name="ICBM" content="48.86409366210158, 2.3615670200875383" /> + <meta name="geo.position" content="48.86409366210158; 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return false;" title="see a map">Map</a> + </div> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post-date" datetime="2005-11-01T10:40:00" itemprop="datePublished">November <span>1, 2005</span></time> + <span class="hide" itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">by <a class="p-author h-card" href="/about"><span itemprop="name">Scott Gilbertson</span></a></span> + </div> + </header> + <div id="article" class="e-content entry-content post--body post--body--single" itemprop="articleBody"> + <p><span class="drop">I</span>‘ve been thinking the last couple of days about something Bill’s dad said to me before I left. I’m paraphrasing here since I don’t remember the exact phrasing he used, but something to the effect of “people are essentially the same everywhere, they just build their houses differently.” </p> +<p>Mr. Bill is widely traveled from his time in the Air Force so it’s not like he just pulled this idea out of his ass. I also don’t think he meant it in too strict of terms. But with this idea in mind I’ve been paying more attention to architecture than I ever did in the past and, if for no other reason than that, I appreciate Mr. Bill’s point. Or as my dad likes to say, when you get to Paris you really feel like you have gone somewhere. </p> +<p><break> +Paris’s architecture is unlike anything in America. There is really just no comparison. A few neighborhoods in the more modern parts of town remind me at times of San Francisco if it were pancaked and painted mute colors. But by and large, Paris architecture is completely unlike anything in America. And I think one of the reasons that is so has to do with the way in which architecture reflects culture and the ideas of the people that make up culture. So while Mr. Bill may be right that people are essentially the same, nevertheless, important differences distinguish them from one another and sometimes these differences are reflected in the houses they make.</p> +<p><img alt="Eiffel Tower" class="postpic" height="180" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/eiffel.jpg" width="135"/>To Americans the French are renowned for the emphasis they place on pleasure and sensual details of life. When Americans think of the French they tend to think of food and art and sex. Whereas I cannot pretend to tell you what the French at large think of Americans they seem somewhat obsessed with our bad television dramas, particularly those with detective/police/crime bent. Which to seems to reflect a view of Americans that is perhaps not entirely unfounded. </p> +<p>We’re obsessed with regulating things the French don’t care about, yet we love the anti-hero who flaunts our own regulations. We’re gruff, only semi-civilized and most importantly very, very young as a culture. We still love to play cops and robbers (though cowboys and indians seems to have fallen out of favor). Many Americans would take tremendous offense to the nudes that adorn French gardens, which is just silly, but undeniably part of America’s historical Puritanism, a history the French lack.</p> +<p>Of course I am speaking in clichés and do not want to imply that I actually believe either of these perceptions is in any way accurate or even representative of each culture. Still there may well be something to be learned from clichés.</p> +<p>There are more concrete cultural differences I’ve observed, for instance, one which really irritates Laura, is that Parisians at least, have a concept of personal space that’s radically smaller than American’s concept. The French have no problem basically stepping on you in crowded metro cars for instance. The other related irritating thing is the Parisians’ habit of not getting the hell out of the way. For instance no one here runs to catch the metro train. Whereas in New York, if you are descending to the platform and clearly hear or see a train arrive nearly everyone speeds up and tries to make that train, not so here. People continue along at whatever plodding pace they may have and good luck getting around them. Yet curiously they have no problem moving into the 10 inch space between you and the supermarket shelf. These two things combined make the Louvre quite an ordeal even on a weekday.</p> +<p><img alt="Clytemnestra and Agamemnon" class="postpicright" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/clytemnestra_agamemnon.jpg"/>Yet perhaps if you are always running to catch the train you cannot produce something like Clytemnestra and Agamemnon. And I don’t mean that in the sense of stopping to smell the flowers, it’s much more than that. It’s an entirely different approach to life, something so big I don’t pretend to fully understand it, but merely catch glimpses of it here and there in the smaller actions and movements of a culture similar too, and yet entirely different from mine.</p> +<p>At the same time I have come to see certain ways in which I am indelibly American. Laura, who has been here about three weeks longer than me, pointed out that while we tend to think of America as having no unifying culture, it actually does. It’s just very hard to see until you look at it from along way away. I think perhaps it’s doubly noticeable when encountering a culture that is very close to and yet not, your own. That is to say that certainly India will be so different from America as to virtually incomparable in any meaningful way (which raise the question whether or not comparing cultures is in fact ever meaningful, but I can’t go there at this juncture). But France is just close enough that the differences are more obvious.</p> +<p>Yet similarities remain. For instance if you want to see the French go crazy with Americanesque consumer frenzy just stop by BHV on a Saturday. And BHV is itself a very America idea, and yet, as with everything, the French have refined the Target/Wal-Mart concept to a new and somewhat higher level. Everything under one roof takes on a new meaning at BHV where literally everything is under one roof except groceries. Imagine Wal-Mart mashed with Bed Bath and Beyond, Home Depot, Pier 1, Macy’s, True Value, and Ikea. Nine stories of crazed French consumers. And yet the cafe has good coffee, beer and pretty good photography on the walls. They take what they like about an American idea, and add that distinctive French refinement.</p> +<p><img alt="Chocolat Chaud" class="postpic" height="120" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/choc.jpg" width="150"/>If you pinned me down and wanted some definitive difference between Paris and say New York, I would, aside from the architecture, point out that Paris has a relaxed culture where the emphasis is on doing things well rather than the quantity of things one gets done. Or perhaps it would be better to say that the things the French love to do, they fashion into an art form, and even when the output may be thought of as consumerist, there is still an art to it that distinguishes it from its American counterpart. Sometimes, as in the case of food, art, etc this is a wonderfully refreshing change from the homogenization of American culture. But other times this can be a bad thing. Which brings me to another point in favor of American culture, despite how many of might complain about a visit to the DMV, the paperwork involved in American life is nowhere near the bureaucracy the French deal with. Interestingly enough the word bureaucracy come from a French word, bureau (meaning office). But if the trade off for the way of life I see around me in Paris is to have a bureaucratic nightmare of a government, well damn it sign me up, I’d love to wait in line for health care. [And please please don’t bring up taxes. I guarantee French taxes are nothing compared to visiting the ER in the states]</p> +<p>What seems like it might be ideal is a melding of the good aspects of both cultures, though inevitably such an idea would be doomed to failure. Perhaps the truth of culture is simply that you cannot have the good aspects without accepting the bad ones. Viewed from this light it seems to me that the question becomes not how much you love the good, but how little you mind the bad. </p> + </div> + + </article> + + + <div class="nav-wrapper"> + <nav id="page-navigation" class="page-border-top"> + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/10/sainte-chapelle" rel="prev" title=" Sainte Chapelle">Sainte Chapelle</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/11/bury-your-dead" rel="next" title=" Bury Your Dead">Bury Your Dead</a> + </li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + + + + + + +<div class="comment--form--wrapper "> + +<div class="comment--form--header"> + <p class="hed">Thoughts?</p> + <p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p> +</div> +<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form"> + +<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" /> + + + <input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="13" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833488" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="4837212c364e5ceda1620f25c5290d5ab4d46910" id="id_security_hash"> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_name">Name:</label> + <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_email">Email address:</label> + <input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_url">URL:</label> + <input type="url" name="url" id="id_url"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_comment">Comment:</label> + <div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment"> +</textarea></div> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset style="display:none;"> + <label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label> + <input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot"> + </fieldset> + + + <div class="submit"> + <input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" /> + <input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" /> + </div> +</form> +<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. 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I'm paraphrasing here since I don't remember the exact phrasing he used, but something to the effect of "people are essentially the same everywhere, they just build their houses differently."
+
+Mr. Bill is widely traveled from his time in the Air Force so it's not like he just pulled this idea out of his ass. I also don't think he meant it in too strict of terms. But with this idea in mind I've been paying more attention to architecture than I ever did in the past and, if for no other reason than that, I appreciate Mr. Bill's point. Or as my dad likes to say, when you get to Paris you really feel like you have gone somewhere.
+
+
+<break>
+Paris's architecture is unlike anything in America. There is really just no comparison. A few neighborhoods in the more modern parts of town remind me at times of San Francisco if it were pancaked and painted mute colors. But by and large, Paris architecture is completely unlike anything in America. And I think one of the reasons that is so has to do with the way in which architecture reflects culture and the ideas of the people that make up culture. So while Mr. Bill may be right that people are essentially the same, nevertheless, important differences distinguish them from one another and sometimes these differences are reflected in the houses they make.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/eiffel.jpg" height="180" width="135" alt="Eiffel Tower" class="postpic" />To Americans the French are renowned for the emphasis they place on pleasure and sensual details of life. When Americans think of the French they tend to think of food and art and sex. Whereas I cannot pretend to tell you what the French at large think of Americans they seem somewhat obsessed with our bad television dramas, particularly those with detective/police/crime bent. Which to seems to reflect a view of Americans that is perhaps not entirely unfounded.
+
+We're obsessed with regulating things the French don't care about, yet we love the anti-hero who flaunts our own regulations. We're gruff, only semi-civilized and most importantly very, very young as a culture. We still love to play cops and robbers (though cowboys and indians seems to have fallen out of favor). Many Americans would take tremendous offense to the nudes that adorn French gardens, which is just silly, but undeniably part of America's historical Puritanism, a history the French lack.
+
+Of course I am speaking in clichés and do not want to imply that I actually believe either of these perceptions is in any way accurate or even representative of each culture. Still there may well be something to be learned from clichés.
+
+There are more concrete cultural differences I've observed, for instance, one which really irritates Laura, is that Parisians at least, have a concept of personal space that's radically smaller than American's concept. The French have no problem basically stepping on you in crowded metro cars for instance. The other related irritating thing is the Parisians' habit of not getting the hell out of the way. For instance no one here runs to catch the metro train. Whereas in New York, if you are descending to the platform and clearly hear or see a train arrive nearly everyone speeds up and tries to make that train, not so here. People continue along at whatever plodding pace they may have and good luck getting around them. Yet curiously they have no problem moving into the 10 inch space between you and the supermarket shelf. These two things combined make the Louvre quite an ordeal even on a weekday.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/clytemnestra_agamemnon.jpg" alt="Clytemnestra and Agamemnon" class="postpicright" />Yet perhaps if you are always running to catch the train you cannot produce something like Clytemnestra and Agamemnon. And I don't mean that in the sense of stopping to smell the flowers, it's much more than that. It's an entirely different approach to life, something so big I don't pretend to fully understand it, but merely catch glimpses of it here and there in the smaller actions and movements of a culture similar too, and yet entirely different from mine.
+
+At the same time I have come to see certain ways in which I am indelibly American. Laura, who has been here about three weeks longer than me, pointed out that while we tend to think of America as having no unifying culture, it actually does. It's just very hard to see until you look at it from along way away. I think perhaps it's doubly noticeable when encountering a culture that is very close to and yet not, your own. That is to say that certainly India will be so different from America as to virtually incomparable in any meaningful way (which raise the question whether or not comparing cultures is in fact ever meaningful, but I can't go there at this juncture). But France is just close enough that the differences are more obvious.
+
+Yet similarities remain. For instance if you want to see the French go crazy with Americanesque consumer frenzy just stop by BHV on a Saturday. And BHV is itself a very America idea, and yet, as with everything, the French have refined the Target/Wal-Mart concept to a new and somewhat higher level. Everything under one roof takes on a new meaning at BHV where literally everything is under one roof except groceries. Imagine Wal-Mart mashed with Bed Bath and Beyond, Home Depot, Pier 1, Macy's, True Value, and Ikea. Nine stories of crazed French consumers. And yet the cafe has good coffee, beer and pretty good photography on the walls. They take what they like about an American idea, and add that distinctive French refinement.
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/choc.jpg" height="120" width="150" alt="Chocolat Chaud" class="postpic" />If you pinned me down and wanted some definitive difference between Paris and say New York, I would, aside from the architecture, point out that Paris has a relaxed culture where the emphasis is on doing things well rather than the quantity of things one gets done. Or perhaps it would be better to say that the things the French love to do, they fashion into an art form, and even when the output may be thought of as consumerist, there is still an art to it that distinguishes it from its American counterpart. Sometimes, as in the case of food, art, etc this is a wonderfully refreshing change from the homogenization of American culture. But other times this can be a bad thing. Which brings me to another point in favor of American culture, despite how many of might complain about a visit to the DMV, the paperwork involved in American life is nowhere near the bureaucracy the French deal with. Interestingly enough the word bureaucracy come from a French word, bureau (meaning office). But if the trade off for the way of life I see around me in Paris is to have a bureaucratic nightmare of a government, well damn it sign me up, I'd love to wait in line for health care. [And please please don't bring up taxes. I guarantee French taxes are nothing compared to visiting the ER in the states]
+
+What seems like it might be ideal is a melding of the good aspects of both cultures, though inevitably such an idea would be doomed to failure. Perhaps the truth of culture is simply that you cannot have the good aspects without accepting the bad ones. Viewed from this light it seems to me that the question becomes not how much you love the good, but how little you mind the bad. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/index.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/index.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0bb126d --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/index.html @@ -0,0 +1,134 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Luxagraf - Topografical Writings: Archive</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="Luxagraf: recording journeys around the world and just next door."> + <meta name="author" content="Scott Gilbertson"> + <!--[if IE]> + <script src="/js/html5css3ie.min.js"></script> + <![endif]--> + <link rel="alternate" + type="application/rss+xml" + title="Luxagraf RSS feed" + href="https://luxagraf.net/rss/"> + <link rel="stylesheet" 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datetime="2005-11-29T12:03:31-05:00">Nov 29, 2005</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"><a href="/jrnl/2005/11/city-palace" title="The City Palace">The City Palace</a> + <time datetime="2005-11-28T22:00:46-05:00">Nov 28, 2005</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"><a href="/jrnl/2005/11/living-airport-terminals" title="Living in Airport Terminals">Living in Airport Terminals</a> + <time datetime="2005-11-27T11:56:20-05:00">Nov 27, 2005</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"><a href="/jrnl/2005/11/anjuna-market" title="Anjuna Market">Anjuna Market</a> + <time datetime="2005-11-24T00:58:15-05:00">Nov 24, 2005</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"><a href="/jrnl/2005/11/fish-story" title="Fish Story">Fish Story</a> + <time datetime="2005-11-20T00:54:46-05:00">Nov 20, 2005</time> + </li> + <li class="arc-item"><a href="/jrnl/2005/11/backwaters-kerala" title="The Backwaters of Kerala">The Backwaters of Kerala</a> + <time datetime="2005-11-15T00:53:50-05:00">Nov 15, 2005</time> + </li> + <li 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2005</span></time> + <p class="p-author author hide" itemprop="author"><span class="byline-author" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person"><span itemprop="name">Scott Gilbertson</span></span></p> + <aside class="p-location h-adr adr post--location" itemprop="contentLocation" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Place"> + <span class="p-region">Ahmedabad</span>, <a class="p-country-name country-name" href="/jrnl/india/" title="travel writing from India">India</a> + </aside> + </header> + <div id="article" class="e-content entry-content post--body post--body--single" itemprop="articleBody"> + <p><span class="drop">W</span>ell I've learned to roll with the punches in India when it comes to traveling so I wasn't really all that surprised that my plane was delayed four hours in Mumbai. Nor did it particularly bother me that I got to Ahmedabad too late to catch the train to Udaipur. </p> +<p>So I spent an unintended night in Ahmedabad, which isn't as bad as Lonely Planet makes it sound. After buying another rail ticket, I hired a rickshaw and went to a few mosques; saw two of the gates to the city which are all that remain of what must have once been an impressive city wall. I also had dinner at the marvelous Agashiye restaurant which was a rooftop retreat from what all the guidebooks refer to as one of the smoggiest most congested cities in India. <amp-img alt="City Gate Ahmedabad India" height="120" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/ahmedabadgate.jpg" width="160"></amp-img>I'll grant them the smoggy bit; I've never experience air that bad, far more than even Mexico City. Two blocks of walking and I would have a coughing fit and then tears would be streaming out of my eyes. All in all pretty miserable place to live, but it wasn't so bad for one day. I figure if you've seen the worst it's all uphill from there.</p> +<p><break></break></p> +<p>But the thing that has stuck with me for the last two days are the airplane terminals. Airport terminals are fast becoming my favorite part of traveling. When you stop and observe them closely as I have been forced to do on this trip, terminals are actually quite beautiful weird places. Terminals inhabit a unique space in the architecture of humanity, perhaps the strangest of all spaces we have created; a space that is itself only a boundary that delineates the border between what was and what will be without leaving any space at all for what is. The spaces we use to move through space have no space of their own. </p> +<p>Something about the mirror polished floors and the ceilings they reflect so that there is no definite up or down, both up and down a reflection of the other, and the traveler never can be sure which is which. And everything in this directionless landscape points to or revolves around the central edifice of the present, the traveler's god, the unadorned but prominently placed clock. It is always high on the wall with lines of sight from nearly any and often all angles of the terminal, not watching over, not even observing objectively, simply present, perhaps merely as a marker of dimensions in a place where space looses it meaning and we must look elsewhere to understand where we are. </p> +<p><a name="back1"></a>According to author Nathaniel Mackey<a href="#footnote1" title="footnote">¹</a>, Sun Ra once remarked that word should be spelled "wered," as if all language in essence creates the past, that word is the past tense of are. In terminals the clock becomes a measure of the wered, for there are often no other words in terminals as if language cannot stand up in this dimensionlessness, instead we rely on simple and universal pictograms and hieroglyphs to indicate the uses of various subdivided spaces like bathrooms or restaurants. All language is swallowed here by a kind of immaculate emptiness that has no past save what we contain within us. </p> +<p>Even the people moving through terminals quickly loose their words in the reverberating echo of polished stone floors and unreachably tall ceilings so that there is no distinct voice but a murmur of many languages that ceases to be language at all, merely the echoes of our passing. The words that slide off our tongue can find no past to move into here, no space to inhabit and make their own but can only drift about seeking the sliding entry doors and when the doors open to admit that there is world beyond this one the words escape out and are lost to us forever.</p> +<p>The partitions in the spacelessness of terminals are most often glass walls rather than anything solid so that scenes of outside are projected and bounced around in mirror images, a banner advertising an international film festival that outside hangs over a cement railing and cracks and whips in gusts of wind, becomes for those on the inside only silent motion, the reflection of the banner, its scrambled illegible message moves up and down in the breeze, but all accompanying sound has disappeared so that it merely waves like a loved one saying goodbye and watching as we disappear into a space they cannot, are not allowed to inhabit. But the glass is usually slightly smoked or tinted glass as if to keep the outside world at bay. Not even the heat of the sun could penetrate here and yet light is allowed, for this is no subterranean, Fritz Lang world, but one of light, filtered light. A space that is often the only one for miles to have the antiseptic, centrally cooled air that it has, air lit by tubular light fixtures from the future of light, florescent to add to the effervescent cool whiteness of the terminal. </p> +<p><amp-img alt="Airport Terminal Goa, India" height="190" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/goaterminal.jpg" width="143"></amp-img>The floor tiles of the main lobby are polished white with inlaid blocks of rusty brown that form geometric patterns, rectangles and squares, the only corners to speak of are here, and carefully placed so that one may not hide in them, but step over them as if they did not exist and indeed here they do not. Cigarettes are for sale in a Plexiglas case with machine cut curves and a smoothness that belies the idea that the world might have corners at all, as if to work our way into the future must begin with the surfaces of the objects we inhabit; to bend them like we bend time and the smoothness of the curves on the armchairs and smoothness of the curves on the cigarette display might allow us, from the proper angle to somehow glimpse the future around the bend. </p> +<p>Terminals seek to eliminate corners in their quest to bend space and time, there are no angular corners at all, save those out in the middle of the floor and those are after all only corners of color, not true corners that can be felt or nudged, no dust can be swept into them, no cowering is possible. All cowering must be done in the middle of the floor beneath the moving hands of the clock.</p> +<ol class="footnote"> +<li><p><a class="footnote" name="footnote1">1</a> This quote was brought to my attention by Laura in a recent and as always timely email. So if it's me quoting Laura, quoting Mackey… well you're now four generations removed from old Sun the one. <a href="#back1" title="return to footnote paragraph">↩</a> </p></li> +</ol> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/living-airport-terminals.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/living-airport-terminals.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a7acaa7 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/living-airport-terminals.html @@ -0,0 +1,340 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Living In Airport Terminals - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="Airport terminals inhabit a unique space in the architecture of humanity, perhaps the strangest of all spaces we have created; a space that is itself only a boundary between where we were and where we will be."> + <meta name="author" content="Scott Gilbertson"> + <link rel="alternate" + type="application/rss+xml" + title="Luxagraf RSS feed" + href="https://luxagraf.net/rss/"> + <link rel="stylesheet" + href="/media/screenv9.css" + media="screen"> + <link rel="stylesheet" href="/media/print.css" media="print" title="print" /> + <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon"> + <link rel="manifest" href="/manifest.json" /> + <link rel="dns-prefetch" href="https://stats.luxagraf.net"> + + <link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/living-airport-terminals" /> + <meta name="ICBM" content="23.009675285624738, 72.56237982693523" /> + <meta name="geo.position" content="23.009675285624738; 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return false;" title="see a map">Map</a> + </div> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post-date" datetime="2005-11-27T11:56:20" itemprop="datePublished">November <span>27, 2005</span></time> + <span class="hide" itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">by <a class="p-author h-card" href="/about"><span itemprop="name">Scott Gilbertson</span></a></span> + </div> + </header> + <div id="article" class="e-content entry-content post--body post--body--single" itemprop="articleBody"> + <p><span class="drop">W</span>ell I’ve learned to roll with the punches in India when it comes to traveling so I wasn’t really all that surprised that my plane was delayed four hours in Mumbai. Nor did it particularly bother me that I got to Ahmedabad too late to catch the train to Udaipur. </p> +<p>So I spent an unintended night in Ahmedabad, which isn’t as bad as Lonely Planet makes it sound. After buying another rail ticket, I hired a rickshaw and went to a few mosques; saw two of the gates to the city which are all that remain of what must have once been an impressive city wall. I also had dinner at the marvelous Agashiye restaurant which was a rooftop retreat from what all the guidebooks refer to as one of the smoggiest most congested cities in India. <img alt="City Gate Ahmedabad India" class="postpicright" height="120" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/ahmedabadgate.jpg" width="160"/>I’ll grant them the smoggy bit; I’ve never experience air that bad, far more than even Mexico City. Two blocks of walking and I would have a coughing fit and then tears would be streaming out of my eyes. All in all pretty miserable place to live, but it wasn’t so bad for one day. I figure if you’ve seen the worst it’s all uphill from there.</p> +<p><break></p> +<p>But the thing that has stuck with me for the last two days are the airplane terminals. Airport terminals are fast becoming my favorite part of traveling. When you stop and observe them closely as I have been forced to do on this trip, terminals are actually quite beautiful weird places. Terminals inhabit a unique space in the architecture of humanity, perhaps the strangest of all spaces we have created; a space that is itself only a boundary that delineates the border between what was and what will be without leaving any space at all for what is. The spaces we use to move through space have no space of their own. </p> +<p>Something about the mirror polished floors and the ceilings they reflect so that there is no definite up or down, both up and down a reflection of the other, and the traveler never can be sure which is which. And everything in this directionless landscape points to or revolves around the central edifice of the present, the traveler’s god, the unadorned but prominently placed clock. It is always high on the wall with lines of sight from nearly any and often all angles of the terminal, not watching over, not even observing objectively, simply present, perhaps merely as a marker of dimensions in a place where space looses it meaning and we must look elsewhere to understand where we are. </p> +<p><a name="back1"></a>According to author Nathaniel Mackey<a href="#footnote1" title="footnote">¹</a>, Sun Ra once remarked that word should be spelled “wered,” as if all language in essence creates the past, that word is the past tense of are. In terminals the clock becomes a measure of the wered, for there are often no other words in terminals as if language cannot stand up in this dimensionlessness, instead we rely on simple and universal pictograms and hieroglyphs to indicate the uses of various subdivided spaces like bathrooms or restaurants. All language is swallowed here by a kind of immaculate emptiness that has no past save what we contain within us. </p> +<p>Even the people moving through terminals quickly loose their words in the reverberating echo of polished stone floors and unreachably tall ceilings so that there is no distinct voice but a murmur of many languages that ceases to be language at all, merely the echoes of our passing. The words that slide off our tongue can find no past to move into here, no space to inhabit and make their own but can only drift about seeking the sliding entry doors and when the doors open to admit that there is world beyond this one the words escape out and are lost to us forever.</p> +<p>The partitions in the spacelessness of terminals are most often glass walls rather than anything solid so that scenes of outside are projected and bounced around in mirror images, a banner advertising an international film festival that outside hangs over a cement railing and cracks and whips in gusts of wind, becomes for those on the inside only silent motion, the reflection of the banner, its scrambled illegible message moves up and down in the breeze, but all accompanying sound has disappeared so that it merely waves like a loved one saying goodbye and watching as we disappear into a space they cannot, are not allowed to inhabit. But the glass is usually slightly smoked or tinted glass as if to keep the outside world at bay. Not even the heat of the sun could penetrate here and yet light is allowed, for this is no subterranean, Fritz Lang world, but one of light, filtered light. A space that is often the only one for miles to have the antiseptic, centrally cooled air that it has, air lit by tubular light fixtures from the future of light, florescent to add to the effervescent cool whiteness of the terminal. </p> +<p><img alt="Airport Terminal Goa, India" class="postpic" height="190" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/goaterminal.jpg" width="143"/>The floor tiles of the main lobby are polished white with inlaid blocks of rusty brown that form geometric patterns, rectangles and squares, the only corners to speak of are here, and carefully placed so that one may not hide in them, but step over them as if they did not exist and indeed here they do not. Cigarettes are for sale in a Plexiglas case with machine cut curves and a smoothness that belies the idea that the world might have corners at all, as if to work our way into the future must begin with the surfaces of the objects we inhabit; to bend them like we bend time and the smoothness of the curves on the armchairs and smoothness of the curves on the cigarette display might allow us, from the proper angle to somehow glimpse the future around the bend. </p> +<p>Terminals seek to eliminate corners in their quest to bend space and time, there are no angular corners at all, save those out in the middle of the floor and those are after all only corners of color, not true corners that can be felt or nudged, no dust can be swept into them, no cowering is possible. All cowering must be done in the middle of the floor beneath the moving hands of the clock.</p> +<ol class="footnote"> +<li><p><a class="footnote" name="footnote1">1</a> This quote was brought to my attention by Laura in a recent and as always timely email. So if it’s me quoting Laura, quoting Mackey… well you’re now four generations removed from old Sun the one. <a href="#back1" title="return to footnote paragraph">↩</a> </p></li> +</ol> + </div> + + </article> + + + <div class="nav-wrapper"> + <nav id="page-navigation" class="page-border-top"> + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/11/anjuna-market" rel="prev" title=" Anjuna Market">Anjuna Market</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/11/city-palace" rel="next" title=" The City Palace">The City Palace</a> + </li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + + + + + + +<div class="comment--form--wrapper "> + +<div class="comment--form--header"> + <p class="hed">Thoughts?</p> + <p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p> +</div> +<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form"> + +<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" /> + + + <input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="20" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833487" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="382be43988ba695f3162a5cdd9809026269e45bf" id="id_security_hash"> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_name">Name:</label> + <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_email">Email address:</label> + <input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_url">URL:</label> + <input type="url" name="url" id="id_url"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_comment">Comment:</label> + <div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment"> +</textarea></div> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset style="display:none;"> + <label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label> + <input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot"> + </fieldset> + + + <div class="submit"> + <input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" /> + <input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" /> + </div> +</form> +<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. 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Nor did it particularly bother me that I got to Ahmedabad too late to catch the train to Udaipur.
+
+So I spent an unintended night in Ahmedabad, which isn't as bad as Lonely Planet makes it sound. After buying another rail ticket, I hired a rickshaw and went to a few mosques; saw two of the gates to the city which are all that remain of what must have once been an impressive city wall. I also had dinner at the marvelous Agashiye restaurant which was a rooftop retreat from what all the guidebooks refer to as one of the smoggiest most congested cities in India. <img src="[[base_url]]/2005/ahmedabadgate.jpg" width="160" height="120" class="postpicright" alt="City Gate Ahmedabad India" />I'll grant them the smoggy bit; I've never experience air that bad, far more than even Mexico City. Two blocks of walking and I would have a coughing fit and then tears would be streaming out of my eyes. All in all pretty miserable place to live, but it wasn't so bad for one day. I figure if you've seen the worst it's all uphill from there.
+
+<break>
+
+But the thing that has stuck with me for the last two days are the airplane terminals. Airport terminals are fast becoming my favorite part of traveling. When you stop and observe them closely as I have been forced to do on this trip, terminals are actually quite beautiful weird places. Terminals inhabit a unique space in the architecture of humanity, perhaps the strangest of all spaces we have created; a space that is itself only a boundary that delineates the border between what was and what will be without leaving any space at all for what is. The spaces we use to move through space have no space of their own.
+
+Something about the mirror polished floors and the ceilings they reflect so that there is no definite up or down, both up and down a reflection of the other, and the traveler never can be sure which is which. And everything in this directionless landscape points to or revolves around the central edifice of the present, the traveler's god, the unadorned but prominently placed clock. It is always high on the wall with lines of sight from nearly any and often all angles of the terminal, not watching over, not even observing objectively, simply present, perhaps merely as a marker of dimensions in a place where space looses it meaning and we must look elsewhere to understand where we are.
+
+
+
+<a name="back1"></a>According to author Nathaniel Mackey<a href="#footnote1" title="footnote">¹</a>, Sun Ra once remarked that word should be spelled "wered," as if all language in essence creates the past, that word is the past tense of are. In terminals the clock becomes a measure of the wered, for there are often no other words in terminals as if language cannot stand up in this dimensionlessness, instead we rely on simple and universal pictograms and hieroglyphs to indicate the uses of various subdivided spaces like bathrooms or restaurants. All language is swallowed here by a kind of immaculate emptiness that has no past save what we contain within us.
+
+Even the people moving through terminals quickly loose their words in the reverberating echo of polished stone floors and unreachably tall ceilings so that there is no distinct voice but a murmur of many languages that ceases to be language at all, merely the echoes of our passing. The words that slide off our tongue can find no past to move into here, no space to inhabit and make their own but can only drift about seeking the sliding entry doors and when the doors open to admit that there is world beyond this one the words escape out and are lost to us forever.
+
+
+
+The partitions in the spacelessness of terminals are most often glass walls rather than anything solid so that scenes of outside are projected and bounced around in mirror images, a banner advertising an international film festival that outside hangs over a cement railing and cracks and whips in gusts of wind, becomes for those on the inside only silent motion, the reflection of the banner, its scrambled illegible message moves up and down in the breeze, but all accompanying sound has disappeared so that it merely waves like a loved one saying goodbye and watching as we disappear into a space they cannot, are not allowed to inhabit. But the glass is usually slightly smoked or tinted glass as if to keep the outside world at bay. Not even the heat of the sun could penetrate here and yet light is allowed, for this is no subterranean, Fritz Lang world, but one of light, filtered light. A space that is often the only one for miles to have the antiseptic, centrally cooled air that it has, air lit by tubular light fixtures from the future of light, florescent to add to the effervescent cool whiteness of the terminal.
+
+
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/goaterminal.jpg" width="143" height="190" class="postpic" alt="Airport Terminal Goa, India" />The floor tiles of the main lobby are polished white with inlaid blocks of rusty brown that form geometric patterns, rectangles and squares, the only corners to speak of are here, and carefully placed so that one may not hide in them, but step over them as if they did not exist and indeed here they do not. Cigarettes are for sale in a Plexiglas case with machine cut curves and a smoothness that belies the idea that the world might have corners at all, as if to work our way into the future must begin with the surfaces of the objects we inhabit; to bend them like we bend time and the smoothness of the curves on the armchairs and smoothness of the curves on the cigarette display might allow us, from the proper angle to somehow glimpse the future around the bend.
+
+Terminals seek to eliminate corners in their quest to bend space and time, there are no angular corners at all, save those out in the middle of the floor and those are after all only corners of color, not true corners that can be felt or nudged, no dust can be swept into them, no cowering is possible. All cowering must be done in the middle of the floor beneath the moving hands of the clock.
+
+
+
+<ol class="footnote">
+<li><p><a class="footnote" name="footnote1">1</a> This quote was brought to my attention by Laura in a recent and as always timely email. So if it's me quoting Laura, quoting Mackey… well you're now four generations removed from old Sun the one. <a href="#back1" title="return to footnote paragraph">↩</a> </p></li>
+</ol> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/monsoon-palace.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/monsoon-palace.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..337f9e2 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/monsoon-palace.amp @@ -0,0 +1,182 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>The Monsoon Palace</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/monsoon-palace"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1,minimum-scale=1"> + <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"/> + <meta name="twitter:url" content="/jrnl/2005/11/monsoon-palace"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="The inside of the Monsoon Palace resembles an abandoned barn, bare floor and walls with pigeons roosting in the obviously modern steel girders that serve to reinforce the caving roof. 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Just to capture the beam of light across the narrow stretch of lake between this shore and the one opposite me, a light that begins its reflection strong, turning a thick band of water brilliant orange, but then as it extends out away from that shore toward me, the light weakens and narrows like a straight road in the desert, shimmering as it comes to a point and then it begins to break up and ripple across the placid, but not entirely still, water which bends the light and makes it warble side to side until finally it breaks up into individual chunks of light dancing across the waves like luminous water striders in the still eddy of a river; even to capture one small, simple description like this (and we have not even begun to capture it, merely described it) would take hours if not days. Or perhaps to try and describe the emotional impact a simple tree can have silhouetted in a black shroud of leaves and branches against the vague slightly mauve last glow of light eking over the mountains in the distance. But even this simple scene calls up a hundred others, and each of those a hundred more.</p> +<p><break></break></p> +<p><amp-img alt="Sunset Udaipur, India" height="253" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/udaipurtree.jpg" width="200"></amp-img>I hired a rickshaw driven by a nice Indian man who spoke near perfect English and had clearly watched too many episodes of Pimp My Ride as evidenced by his tricked out rickshaw complete with recessed speakers in the back through which he enjoys blasting strange Indian dance music. I hired him, as I started to say, to take me up to the Monsoon palace at sunset. We started out in the early evening quickly leaving behind Udaipur and its increasing urban sprawl. The road to the Monsoon Palace passes through the Sajjan Garh Nature Preserve and there was a sudden and dramatic drop in temperature that made me question my decision to not bring my jacket, but then the road climbed out of the hollow and the temperature jumped back up to comfortable as we began to climb the mountain in a series of hairpin switchbacks. </p> +<p>Eventually we reached the summit and parked the rickshaw. My driver and his friend who had accompanied us were quick to point out that this was the highest summit around Udaipur, which is probably why Maharana Sajjan Sigh built his monsoon palace here. In India it pays to have a house in a high place so that when the monsoons come you can observe the torrential runoff from a safe distance (this is also the reason that Hindu temples are often very steep sided, architects found that the quicker the runoff the longer their work lasted).</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Monsoon Palace Udaipur India" height="200" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/monsoonpalace.jpg" width="150"></amp-img>The Monsoon Palace is at this point showing its age and the primary caretakers appear to be pigeons and some token gestures by the government, namely introducing UHF, shortwave and now cell relay towers on the rooftop. The result is somewhat disappointing after the City Palace and seems a good argument for the privatization of India's landmarks. Yes, large portions of the City palace are now exclusive hotels, but at least they aren't slowly crumbling into ruin. </p> +<p>The inside of the Monsoon Palace resembles an abandoned barn, bare floor and walls with pigeons roosting in the obviously modern steel girders that serve to reinforce the caving roof. The stark empty rooms and bare walls give no hint of the splendor that must have once filled them, the only hint of the palaces former grandeur comes from standing in the window balconies and admiring the sweeping mounta</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Shadows Monsoon Palace" height="180" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/monsoonshadow.jpg" width="100"></amp-img>I went down out of the palace proper and sat in the courtyard looking up at the three stories of reddish pink stone that make up the various towers and rooms. As the sun slowly slunk behind the mountain range to the west the balconies and balustrades took on an increasingly orange hue. I struck up a conversation briefly with an American couple from Tennessee who raved about the camel markets in Pushkar and then I decided to go back up inside the palace. </p> +<p>The rooms were still bare and essentially stark, but the light of the setting sun now imbued them with a soft pinkish orange glow and standing in the window I looked back and noticed that even my shadow was slightly fuzzy with feathered indistinct edges. After taking few pictures and admiring the light for while I went back out to the courtyard and sat down to watch the color begin to fade from the walls. And as the sun finally disappeared behind the hills we headed back down to Udiapur.</p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/monsoon-palace.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/monsoon-palace.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d93f150 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/monsoon-palace.html @@ -0,0 +1,336 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>The Monsoon Palace - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="The inside of the Monsoon Palace resembles an abandoned barn, bare floor and walls with pigeons roosting in the obviously modern steel girders that serve to reinforce the caving roof. 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Just to capture the beam of light across the narrow stretch of lake between this shore and the one opposite me, a light that begins its reflection strong, turning a thick band of water brilliant orange, but then as it extends out away from that shore toward me, the light weakens and narrows like a straight road in the desert, shimmering as it comes to a point and then it begins to break up and ripple across the placid, but not entirely still, water which bends the light and makes it warble side to side until finally it breaks up into individual chunks of light dancing across the waves like luminous water striders in the still eddy of a river; even to capture one small, simple description like this (and we have not even begun to capture it, merely described it) would take hours if not days. Or perhaps to try and describe the emotional impact a simple tree can have silhouetted in a black shroud of leaves and branches against the vague slightly mauve last glow of light eking over the mountains in the distance. But even this simple scene calls up a hundred others, and each of those a hundred more.</p> +<p><break></p> +<p><img alt="Sunset Udaipur, India" class="postpicright" height="253" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/udaipurtree.jpg" width="200"/>I hired a rickshaw driven by a nice Indian man who spoke near perfect English and had clearly watched too many episodes of Pimp My Ride as evidenced by his tricked out rickshaw complete with recessed speakers in the back through which he enjoys blasting strange Indian dance music. I hired him, as I started to say, to take me up to the Monsoon palace at sunset. We started out in the early evening quickly leaving behind Udaipur and its increasing urban sprawl. The road to the Monsoon Palace passes through the Sajjan Garh Nature Preserve and there was a sudden and dramatic drop in temperature that made me question my decision to not bring my jacket, but then the road climbed out of the hollow and the temperature jumped back up to comfortable as we began to climb the mountain in a series of hairpin switchbacks. </p> +<p>Eventually we reached the summit and parked the rickshaw. My driver and his friend who had accompanied us were quick to point out that this was the highest summit around Udaipur, which is probably why Maharana Sajjan Sigh built his monsoon palace here. In India it pays to have a house in a high place so that when the monsoons come you can observe the torrential runoff from a safe distance (this is also the reason that Hindu temples are often very steep sided, architects found that the quicker the runoff the longer their work lasted).</p> +<p><img alt="Monsoon Palace Udaipur India" class="postpic" height="200" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/monsoonpalace.jpg" width="150"/>The Monsoon Palace is at this point showing its age and the primary caretakers appear to be pigeons and some token gestures by the government, namely introducing UHF, shortwave and now cell relay towers on the rooftop. The result is somewhat disappointing after the City Palace and seems a good argument for the privatization of India’s landmarks. Yes, large portions of the City palace are now exclusive hotels, but at least they aren’t slowly crumbling into ruin. </p> +<p>The inside of the Monsoon Palace resembles an abandoned barn, bare floor and walls with pigeons roosting in the obviously modern steel girders that serve to reinforce the caving roof. The stark empty rooms and bare walls give no hint of the splendor that must have once filled them, the only hint of the palaces former grandeur comes from standing in the window balconies and admiring the sweeping mounta</p> +<p><img alt="Shadows Monsoon Palace" class="postpicright" height="180" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/monsoonshadow.jpg" width="100"/>I went down out of the palace proper and sat in the courtyard looking up at the three stories of reddish pink stone that make up the various towers and rooms. As the sun slowly slunk behind the mountain range to the west the balconies and balustrades took on an increasingly orange hue. I struck up a conversation briefly with an American couple from Tennessee who raved about the camel markets in Pushkar and then I decided to go back up inside the palace. </p> +<p>The rooms were still bare and essentially stark, but the light of the setting sun now imbued them with a soft pinkish orange glow and standing in the window I looked back and noticed that even my shadow was slightly fuzzy with feathered indistinct edges. After taking few pictures and admiring the light for while I went back out to the courtyard and sat down to watch the color begin to fade from the walls. And as the sun finally disappeared behind the hills we headed back down to Udiapur.</p> + </div> + + </article> + + + <div class="nav-wrapper"> + <nav id="page-navigation" class="page-border-top"> + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/11/city-palace" rel="prev" title=" The City Palace">The City Palace</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/11/around-udaipur" rel="next" title=" Around Udaipur">Around Udaipur</a> + </li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + + + + + + +<div class="comment--form--wrapper "> + +<div class="comment--form--header"> + <p class="hed">Thoughts?</p> + <p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p> +</div> +<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form"> + +<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" /> + + + <input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="22" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833486" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="e7e6ff00e70e4b5cc63cf8d77873003072371ec6" id="id_security_hash"> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_name">Name:</label> + <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_email">Email address:</label> + <input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_url">URL:</label> + <input type="url" name="url" id="id_url"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_comment">Comment:</label> + <div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment"> +</textarea></div> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset style="display:none;"> + <label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label> + <input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot"> + </fieldset> + + + <div class="submit"> + <input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" /> + <input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" /> + </div> +</form> +<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. 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+
+I would, like Proust, have to stop living entirely and just write. Just to capture the beam of light across the narrow stretch of lake between this shore and the one opposite me, a light that begins its reflection strong, turning a thick band of water brilliant orange, but then as it extends out away from that shore toward me, the light weakens and narrows like a straight road in the desert, shimmering as it comes to a point and then it begins to break up and ripple across the placid, but not entirely still, water which bends the light and makes it warble side to side until finally it breaks up into individual chunks of light dancing across the waves like luminous water striders in the still eddy of a river; even to capture one small, simple description like this (and we have not even begun to capture it, merely described it) would take hours if not days. Or perhaps to try and describe the emotional impact a simple tree can have silhouetted in a black shroud of leaves and branches against the vague slightly mauve last glow of light eking over the mountains in the distance. But even this simple scene calls up a hundred others, and each of those a hundred more.
+
+<break>
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/udaipurtree.jpg" width="200" height="253" class="postpicright" alt="Sunset Udaipur, India" />I hired a rickshaw driven by a nice Indian man who spoke near perfect English and had clearly watched too many episodes of Pimp My Ride as evidenced by his tricked out rickshaw complete with recessed speakers in the back through which he enjoys blasting strange Indian dance music. I hired him, as I started to say, to take me up to the Monsoon palace at sunset. We started out in the early evening quickly leaving behind Udaipur and its increasing urban sprawl. The road to the Monsoon Palace passes through the Sajjan Garh Nature Preserve and there was a sudden and dramatic drop in temperature that made me question my decision to not bring my jacket, but then the road climbed out of the hollow and the temperature jumped back up to comfortable as we began to climb the mountain in a series of hairpin switchbacks.
+
+Eventually we reached the summit and parked the rickshaw. My driver and his friend who had accompanied us were quick to point out that this was the highest summit around Udaipur, which is probably why Maharana Sajjan Sigh built his monsoon palace here. In India it pays to have a house in a high place so that when the monsoons come you can observe the torrential runoff from a safe distance (this is also the reason that Hindu temples are often very steep sided, architects found that the quicker the runoff the longer their work lasted).
+
+
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/monsoonpalace.jpg" width="150" height="200" class="postpic" alt="Monsoon Palace Udaipur India" />The Monsoon Palace is at this point showing its age and the primary caretakers appear to be pigeons and some token gestures by the government, namely introducing UHF, shortwave and now cell relay towers on the rooftop. The result is somewhat disappointing after the City Palace and seems a good argument for the privatization of India's landmarks. Yes, large portions of the City palace are now exclusive hotels, but at least they aren't slowly crumbling into ruin.
+
+The inside of the Monsoon Palace resembles an abandoned barn, bare floor and walls with pigeons roosting in the obviously modern steel girders that serve to reinforce the caving roof. The stark empty rooms and bare walls give no hint of the splendor that must have once filled them, the only hint of the palaces former grandeur comes from standing in the window balconies and admiring the sweeping mounta
+
+
+
+<img src="[[base_url]]/2005/monsoonshadow.jpg" width="100" height="180" class="postpicright" alt="Shadows Monsoon Palace" />I went down out of the palace proper and sat in the courtyard looking up at the three stories of reddish pink stone that make up the various towers and rooms. As the sun slowly slunk behind the mountain range to the west the balconies and balustrades took on an increasingly orange hue. I struck up a conversation briefly with an American couple from Tennessee who raved about the camel markets in Pushkar and then I decided to go back up inside the palace.
+
+The rooms were still bare and essentially stark, but the light of the setting sun now imbued them with a soft pinkish orange glow and standing in the window I looked back and noticed that even my shadow was slightly fuzzy with feathered indistinct edges. After taking few pictures and admiring the light for while I went back out to the courtyard and sat down to watch the color begin to fade from the walls. And as the sun finally disappeared behind the hills we headed back down to Udiapur. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/riots-iraqi-restaurants-goodbye-seine.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/riots-iraqi-restaurants-goodbye-seine.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..0b6e547 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/riots-iraqi-restaurants-goodbye-seine.amp @@ -0,0 +1,180 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>Riots, Iraqi Restaurants, Goodbye Seine</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/riots-iraqi-restaurants-goodbye-seine"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1,minimum-scale=1"> + <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"/> + <meta name="twitter:url" content="/jrnl/2005/11/riots-iraqi-restaurants-goodbye-seine"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="Riots in Paris, the best Iraqi food in the Marais and the long bus ride to points unknown."/> + <meta name="twitter:title" content="Riots, Iraqi Restaurants, Goodbye Seine"/> + <meta name="twitter:site" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:domain" content="luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:image:src" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2008/seinetower.jpg"/> + <meta name="twitter:creator" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:site:id" content="9469062"> + <meta name="twitter:creator:id" content="9469062"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content=""/> + + <meta name="geo.placename" content="Paris, France"> + <meta name="geo.region" content="FR-None"> + <meta property="og:type" content="article" /> + <meta property="og:title" content="Riots, Iraqi Restaurants, Goodbye Seine" /> + <meta property="og:url" content="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/riots-iraqi-restaurants-goodbye-seine" /> + <meta property="og:description" content="Riots in Paris, the best Iraqi food in the Marais and the long bus ride to points unknown." /> + <meta property="article:published_time" content="2005-11-08T18:30:13" /> + <meta property="article:author" content="Luxagraf" /> + <meta property="og:site_name" content="Luxagraf" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2008/seinetower.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/iraqi.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US" /> + + +<script type="application/ld+json"> +{ + "@context": "http://schema.org", + "@type": "BlogPosting", + "headline": "Riots, Iraqi Restaurants, Goodbye Seine", + "description": "Riots in Paris, the best Iraqi food in the Marais and the long bus ride to points unknown.", + "datePublished": "2005-11-08T18:30:13", + "author": { + "@type": "Person", + "name": "Scott Gilbertson" + }, + "publisher": { + "@type": "Person", + "name": "Scott Gilbertson" + "logo": { + "@type": "ImageObject", + "url": "", + "width": 240, + "height": 53 + } + } +} +</script> +<style amp-custom> +body { + font-size: 1rem; 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<amp-img alt="iraqi restaurant" height="100" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/iraqi.jpg" width="133"></amp-img> I don't want to get into politics except to say that my dislike for the current El Presidente was no small factor in my decision to go abroad. But now that I am abroad I prefer not to think about politics too much. +<break></break></p> +<p>At the same time I thought I should mention that yes, there are riots in the suburbs around Paris right now. As a matter of fact I had to take a bus out to Charles DeGaulle airport rather than the train, because they shut down the RER to the airport yesterday evening since it passes through the rioting neighborhoods. A number of people have emailed me concerned about the riots and my safety. Prior to the fifth or so such email, I hadn't paid any attention whatsoever to the riots. And it turns out that some gasoline bombs were set off within walking distance of Laura's house. That said, you would never know there are riots just from looking about on the streets. Even the local papers aren't exactly screaming New York Post-style headlines like <em>Paris Burns!</em> or whatever.</p> +<p>And I think the fact that Paris is ignoring the riots is sort of symptomatic of the point that the rioters are trying to make. Lest you be misinformed by the hyperbole prone sensationalism of the America press, I did a little digging and proffer this little summary. About two weeks ago some police officers were chasing three young men. The young men tried to hide in an electrical substation and two of them were killed, presumably when they touched some sort of electrical current. Now obviously, while tragic, this event alone is unlikely to start riots. Unless. Unless the young men were of North African descent and police force in Paris were almost exclusively white. Unless the North African community in the Paris suburbs were marginalized, discriminated against, and generally repressed by the white population of France (I'm not sure if anyone remembers all the apartment fires in Paris this summer and French governments response, which was to round up the displaced from there lean-tos in the street and send them off to god knows where). </p> +<p>When you have a situation where a large population (there are five million first and second generation North Africans living in France, if you would like to know why, google the terms "French Algerian War") feels marginalized and basically discarded by the dominant population some sort of flashpoint is inevitable. I'm not going to pretend to understand French politics, but my cursory understanding is that top French political officials are generally speaking, inept, out of touch and often blatantly racist in their political decisions. More or less just like top political officials in the United States.</p> +<p>And so you get riots (New Orleans anyone?). And then you hear officials call the rioters "thugs" and you get more riots. And then the officials hold meetings, and you have more riots. And then the officials vow to "catch the crooks" and you have more rioting. And then the officials hold meetings…. Who knows, maybe France is on the edge of some sort of um, restructuring. Probably not, but they could certainly use a little adjustment. I've only been here two weeks and I've seen two acts of blatant racism, the likes of which I can't imagine in the United States (and I did live in the South for four years). The French, and more generally, all of Europe has a growing population of Muslim immigrants that it needs to address and to find a way to live with, otherwise bad things are going to happen. Are happening. Will continue to happen.</p> +<p>So yes, there are riots outside Paris, but good lord the US media can blow things out of proportion to sell a newspaper. For instance, yesterday the New York Times headline read "ten French police officers shot in riots." The reality? Well someone fired a scattershot gun into a crowd of cops and several of them were injured. Okay technically you could say they were shot and no doubt it does not feel pleasant, but come on, printing a headline that says ten cops shot implies some serious shooting, a gun battle even, especially to American audiences whom are used to gun battles occurring in the streets. Not only is such reporting misleading, it's just plain wrong. </p> +<p>So take the headlines with a grain of salt. Or even better keep a whole salt lick by your side when you watch the news. As for me, I appreciate the concern, but I am fine. I even made it here to airport without any trouble and about an hour I'll be on my way to Cochin, India.</p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/riots-iraqi-restaurants-goodbye-seine.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/riots-iraqi-restaurants-goodbye-seine.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..eeca212 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/riots-iraqi-restaurants-goodbye-seine.html @@ -0,0 +1,336 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Riots, Iraqi Restaurants, Goodbye Seine - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="Riots in Paris, the best Iraqi food in the Marais and the long bus ride to points unknown."> + <meta name="author" content="Scott Gilbertson"> + <link rel="alternate" + type="application/rss+xml" + title="Luxagraf RSS feed" + href="https://luxagraf.net/rss/"> + <link rel="stylesheet" + href="/media/screenv9.css" + media="screen"> + <link rel="stylesheet" href="/media/print.css" media="print" title="print" /> + <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon"> + <link rel="manifest" href="/manifest.json" /> + <link rel="dns-prefetch" href="https://stats.luxagraf.net"> + + <link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/riots-iraqi-restaurants-goodbye-seine" /> + <meta name="ICBM" content="48.863514907961644, 2.3610734936288558" /> + <meta name="geo.position" content="48.863514907961644; 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return false;" title="see a map">Map</a> + </div> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post-date" datetime="2005-11-08T18:30:13" itemprop="datePublished">November <span>8, 2005</span></time> + <span class="hide" itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">by <a class="p-author h-card" href="/about"><span itemprop="name">Scott Gilbertson</span></a></span> + </div> + </header> + <div id="article" class="e-content entry-content post--body post--body--single" itemprop="articleBody"> + <p><span class="drop">W</span>ell it’s my last night here in Paris and I’ve chosen to return to the best restaurant we’ve been to so far, an Iraqi restaurant around the corner from Laura’s apartment here in a Marais. </p> +<p>I am using all my willpower right now to avoid having a political outburst re the quality of Iraqi food versus the intelligence of George Bush etc etc. I’m traveling; <img alt="iraqi restaurant" class="postpic" height="100" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/iraqi.jpg" width="133"/> I don’t want to get into politics except to say that my dislike for the current El Presidente was no small factor in my decision to go abroad. But now that I am abroad I prefer not to think about politics too much. +<break></p> +<p>At the same time I thought I should mention that yes, there are riots in the suburbs around Paris right now. As a matter of fact I had to take a bus out to Charles DeGaulle airport rather than the train, because they shut down the RER to the airport yesterday evening since it passes through the rioting neighborhoods. A number of people have emailed me concerned about the riots and my safety. Prior to the fifth or so such email, I hadn’t paid any attention whatsoever to the riots. And it turns out that some gasoline bombs were set off within walking distance of Laura’s house. That said, you would never know there are riots just from looking about on the streets. Even the local papers aren’t exactly screaming New York Post-style headlines like <em>Paris Burns!</em> or whatever.</p> +<p>And I think the fact that Paris is ignoring the riots is sort of symptomatic of the point that the rioters are trying to make. Lest you be misinformed by the hyperbole prone sensationalism of the America press, I did a little digging and proffer this little summary. About two weeks ago some police officers were chasing three young men. The young men tried to hide in an electrical substation and two of them were killed, presumably when they touched some sort of electrical current. Now obviously, while tragic, this event alone is unlikely to start riots. Unless. Unless the young men were of North African descent and police force in Paris were almost exclusively white. Unless the North African community in the Paris suburbs were marginalized, discriminated against, and generally repressed by the white population of France (I’m not sure if anyone remembers all the apartment fires in Paris this summer and French governments response, which was to round up the displaced from there lean-tos in the street and send them off to god knows where). </p> +<p>When you have a situation where a large population (there are five million first and second generation North Africans living in France, if you would like to know why, google the terms “French Algerian War”) feels marginalized and basically discarded by the dominant population some sort of flashpoint is inevitable. I’m not going to pretend to understand French politics, but my cursory understanding is that top French political officials are generally speaking, inept, out of touch and often blatantly racist in their political decisions. More or less just like top political officials in the United States.</p> +<p>And so you get riots (New Orleans anyone?). And then you hear officials call the rioters “thugs” and you get more riots. And then the officials hold meetings, and you have more riots. And then the officials vow to “catch the crooks” and you have more rioting. And then the officials hold meetings…. Who knows, maybe France is on the edge of some sort of um, restructuring. Probably not, but they could certainly use a little adjustment. I’ve only been here two weeks and I’ve seen two acts of blatant racism, the likes of which I can’t imagine in the United States (and I did live in the South for four years). The French, and more generally, all of Europe has a growing population of Muslim immigrants that it needs to address and to find a way to live with, otherwise bad things are going to happen. Are happening. Will continue to happen.</p> +<p>So yes, there are riots outside Paris, but good lord the US media can blow things out of proportion to sell a newspaper. For instance, yesterday the New York Times headline read “ten French police officers shot in riots.” The reality? Well someone fired a scattershot gun into a crowd of cops and several of them were injured. Okay technically you could say they were shot and no doubt it does not feel pleasant, but come on, printing a headline that says ten cops shot implies some serious shooting, a gun battle even, especially to American audiences whom are used to gun battles occurring in the streets. Not only is such reporting misleading, it’s just plain wrong. </p> +<p>So take the headlines with a grain of salt. Or even better keep a whole salt lick by your side when you watch the news. As for me, I appreciate the concern, but I am fine. I even made it here to airport without any trouble and about an hour I’ll be on my way to Cochin, India.</p> + </div> + + </article> + + + <div class="nav-wrapper"> + <nav id="page-navigation" class="page-border-top"> + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/11/bury-your-dead" rel="prev" title=" Bury Your Dead">Bury Your Dead</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/11/vasco-de-gama-exhumed" rel="next" title=" Vasco de Gama Exhumed">Vasco de Gama Exhumed</a> + </li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + + + + + + +<div class="comment--form--wrapper "> + +<div class="comment--form--header"> + <p class="hed">Thoughts?</p> + <p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p> +</div> +<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form"> + +<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" /> + + + <input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="15" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833488" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="d78425c386c86dcda9ebd1d600cef251385d6b1c" id="id_security_hash"> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_name">Name:</label> + <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_email">Email address:</label> + <input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_url">URL:</label> + <input type="url" name="url" id="id_url"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_comment">Comment:</label> + <div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment"> +</textarea></div> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset style="display:none;"> + <label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label> + <input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot"> + </fieldset> + + + <div class="submit"> + <input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" /> + <input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" /> + </div> +</form> +<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. 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+
+I am using all my willpower right now to avoid having a political outburst re the quality of Iraqi food versus the intelligence of George Bush etc etc. I'm traveling; <img src="[[base_url]]/2005/iraqi.jpg" height="100" width="133" alt="iraqi restaurant" class="postpic" /> I don't want to get into politics except to say that my dislike for the current El Presidente was no small factor in my decision to go abroad. But now that I am abroad I prefer not to think about politics too much.
+<break>
+
+At the same time I thought I should mention that yes, there are riots in the suburbs around Paris right now. As a matter of fact I had to take a bus out to Charles DeGaulle airport rather than the train, because they shut down the RER to the airport yesterday evening since it passes through the rioting neighborhoods. A number of people have emailed me concerned about the riots and my safety. Prior to the fifth or so such email, I hadn't paid any attention whatsoever to the riots. And it turns out that some gasoline bombs were set off within walking distance of Laura's house. That said, you would never know there are riots just from looking about on the streets. Even the local papers aren't exactly screaming New York Post-style headlines like *Paris Burns!* or whatever.
+
+And I think the fact that Paris is ignoring the riots is sort of symptomatic of the point that the rioters are trying to make. Lest you be misinformed by the hyperbole prone sensationalism of the America press, I did a little digging and proffer this little summary. About two weeks ago some police officers were chasing three young men. The young men tried to hide in an electrical substation and two of them were killed, presumably when they touched some sort of electrical current. Now obviously, while tragic, this event alone is unlikely to start riots. Unless. Unless the young men were of North African descent and police force in Paris were almost exclusively white. Unless the North African community in the Paris suburbs were marginalized, discriminated against, and generally repressed by the white population of France (I'm not sure if anyone remembers all the apartment fires in Paris this summer and French governments response, which was to round up the displaced from there lean-tos in the street and send them off to god knows where).
+
+When you have a situation where a large population (there are five million first and second generation North Africans living in France, if you would like to know why, google the terms "French Algerian War") feels marginalized and basically discarded by the dominant population some sort of flashpoint is inevitable. I'm not going to pretend to understand French politics, but my cursory understanding is that top French political officials are generally speaking, inept, out of touch and often blatantly racist in their political decisions. More or less just like top political officials in the United States.
+
+And so you get riots (New Orleans anyone?). And then you hear officials call the rioters "thugs" and you get more riots. And then the officials hold meetings, and you have more riots. And then the officials vow to "catch the crooks" and you have more rioting. And then the officials hold meetings…. Who knows, maybe France is on the edge of some sort of um, restructuring. Probably not, but they could certainly use a little adjustment. I've only been here two weeks and I've seen two acts of blatant racism, the likes of which I can't imagine in the United States (and I did live in the South for four years). The French, and more generally, all of Europe has a growing population of Muslim immigrants that it needs to address and to find a way to live with, otherwise bad things are going to happen. Are happening. Will continue to happen.
+
+So yes, there are riots outside Paris, but good lord the US media can blow things out of proportion to sell a newspaper. For instance, yesterday the New York Times headline read "ten French police officers shot in riots." The reality? Well someone fired a scattershot gun into a crowd of cops and several of them were injured. Okay technically you could say they were shot and no doubt it does not feel pleasant, but come on, printing a headline that says ten cops shot implies some serious shooting, a gun battle even, especially to American audiences whom are used to gun battles occurring in the streets. Not only is such reporting misleading, it's just plain wrong.
+
+So take the headlines with a grain of salt. Or even better keep a whole salt lick by your side when you watch the news. As for me, I appreciate the concern, but I am fine. I even made it here to airport without any trouble and about an hour I'll be on my way to Cochin, India. diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/vasco-de-gama-exhumed.amp b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/vasco-de-gama-exhumed.amp new file mode 100644 index 0000000..4f00040 --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/vasco-de-gama-exhumed.amp @@ -0,0 +1,187 @@ + + +<!doctype html> +<html amp lang="en"> +<head> +<meta charset="utf-8"> +<title>Vasco de Gama Exhumed</title> +<link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/vasco-de-gama-exhumed"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width,initial-scale=1,minimum-scale=1"> + <meta name="twitter:card" content="summary_large_image"/> + <meta name="twitter:url" content="/jrnl/2005/11/vasco-de-gama-exhumed"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content="Vasco de Gama died and was buried in Kerala, India for fourteen years before being moved back to Lisbon."/> + <meta name="twitter:title" content="Vasco de Gama Exhumed"/> + <meta name="twitter:site" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:domain" content="luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:image:src" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2008/fortcochin.jpg"/> + <meta name="twitter:creator" content="@luxagraf"/> + <meta name="twitter:site:id" content="9469062"> + <meta name="twitter:creator:id" content="9469062"> + <meta name="twitter:description" content=""/> + + <meta name="geo.placename" content="Fort Kochi, India"> + <meta name="geo.region" content="IN-None"> + <meta property="og:type" content="article" /> + <meta property="og:title" content="Vasco de Gama Exhumed" /> + <meta property="og:url" content="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/vasco-de-gama-exhumed" /> + <meta property="og:description" content="Vasco de Gama died and was buried in Kerala, India for fourteen years before being moved back to Lisbon." /> + <meta property="article:published_time" content="2005-11-11T00:51:41" /> + <meta property="article:author" content="Luxagraf" /> + <meta property="og:site_name" content="Luxagraf" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net/post-images/2008/fortcochin.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/princess.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/treecochin.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:image" content="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/gama.jpg" /> + <meta property="og:locale" content="en_US" /> + + +<script type="application/ld+json"> +{ + "@context": "http://schema.org", + "@type": "BlogPosting", + "headline": "Vasco de Gama Exhumed", + "description": "Vasco de Gama died and was buried in Kerala, India for fourteen years before being moved back to Lisbon.", + "datePublished": "2005-11-11T00:51:41", + "author": { + "@type": "Person", + "name": "Scott Gilbertson" + }, + "publisher": { + "@type": "Person", + "name": "Scott Gilbertson" + "logo": { + "@type": "ImageObject", + "url": "", + "width": 240, + "height": 53 + } + } +} +</script> +<style amp-custom> +body { + font-size: 1rem; 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Fort Kochi to be more precise. It's a little touristy for my tastes, but interesting nonetheless. I flew out of Paris Wednesday morning with a four-hour stopover in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. </p> +<p>In the cursory glance I had given my ticket way back when I got it I for some reason had read Delhi rather than Dubai, so it was kind of exciting to realize I was landing in Africa. The layover was my only time in Africa, which is too bad, but I guess I have to leave some things for the future. The flight crossed over the Alps, which were spectacularly large, even from thirty thousand feet; I now have a strong desire to get back to Switzerland and Austria. Unfortunately I crossed Saudi Arabia at night so I wasn't able to see anything, but judging from the photos around the airport, Dubai seems like Los Angeles twenty years in the future. </p> +<p><break></break></p> +<p>I have to say if you ever fly in this region, look into Emirates Airlines, it's the best experience I've had flying. I mean how many times have you gotten a menu while on an airplane, especially one that boasts gravlax and cheesecake?</p> +<p>I landed in Cochin after about sixteen hours of traveling and managed to get through immigration and customs without too much trouble. The Cochin airport is quite a ways from Fort Kochi so I had a rather long taxi ride into town, which I was sort of dreading given what I've read about Indian cab drivers (actually Indian drivers in general). However I found the experience an enjoyable, though mysterious, one. Maybe I'm a little crazier than most Americans but the driving didn't bother me. I mean sure, Indian drivers think nothing of passing an autorickshaw with oncoming buses in the opposite lane, but it makes sense when you watch them do it. Nobody is going much over 70km (45 mph) so you have more time than you think you do. Anyway it's not that scary, though after driving around New York with Jimmy I realized that, so long as you can fully inhabit your automobile, to the point that it truly is an extension of yourself, anything is possible when driving. What is kind of scary is that Indian automobiles have no seat belts. </p> +<p>What is confusing about India's highways is the Indian drivers use of the horn, which is constant enough to emerge as an almost linguistic device. I could tell that the horns constitute a language of sorts, but I couldn't for the life of me understand more than a few syllables so to speak.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="Princess Street Fort Cochin India" height="200" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/princess.jpg" width="150"></amp-img>I directed the cabbie to a hotel which I picked at random out of the Lonely Planet Guide to India and sprung for an air-con double-bed room. It sounds a little crazy, but after that tiny apartment in France, having some space and huge bed was worth the extra 400 rupees. I spent the afternoon in a sort of daze from lack of sleep, though I did take a walk along the waterfront in the evening, just as it was starting to drizzle a little bit, munching on roasted nuts and trying to understand the Chinese fishing nets, which seem impossibly complicated. Apparently they are some sort of cantilevered device which require four or five people to operate.</p> +<p>About a block from my hotel there is little park/public square that spills across the street and out onto the waterfront walkway, with street vendors and a fish market displaying some rather massive fish that I didn't recognize (though the fish make a strong testament to the feats of the Chinese fishing nets). I didn't partake in it last night, but you can buy a fish at one end of the market and then take it down to the other end and they will cook it up for you.</p> +<p><amp-img alt="tree" height="150" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/treecochin.jpg" width="113"></amp-img>The side of the park opposite the waterfront is lined with the most massive trees I've ever seen. The canopy of the trees is at least 40 meters up and stretches almost an entire block. The colossal trunks must be 8 meters in diameter and are covered in a mixture of moss and a fern-like plant—a leafy plant, but the leaves grow in the structure of a fern frond—that extend from the ground to about three quarters of the way into the branches and give the trees the appearance of a shaggy jungle beard.</p> +<p>After walking around for an hour or so I stopped into a little restaurant with a large hidden terrace/garden in the back where I had some passable vegetable curry, the local variation of rice and a wonderful bread that resembled an over-sized friend egg, but tasted delicious. </p> +<p>The whole time I was out and about memories of the time I spent traveling around Mexico when I was younger kept flooding back to me, similar smells and sounds rise up out of darkened doorways and muddy alleys, run-down abandoned and overgrown buildings lie right next to well kept, though equally old and moss-covered estates. There is also the characteristic lack of a middle class that puts tarp-covered shanty towns just over the back fence from massive almost hacienda-style mansions. Perhaps the similarities with Mexico come from the presence of the Portuguese in this area a few hundred years ago. Many of the obviously older buildings are of a distinctly Iberian-style—moss covered, adobe-colored, arches abound. There is graveyard just down the road with a tombstone that bears the name Vasco de Gama, <amp-img alt="graveyard" height="150" src="https://images.luxagraf.net//2005/gama.jpg" width="200"></amp-img>who died and was buried here for fourteen years before being moved to Lisbon (there we go again, more Europeans digging up and moving the dead). The Dutch appear to have had an influence as well, there is Dutch graveyard somewhere around here and obviously the presence of the Chinese fishing nets seems to indicate an oriental influence, which, according to my guidebook, dates from the Kublai Khan era.</p> +<p>After sleeping about fifteen hours I got up around noon and went to Addy's restaurant which is a converted Dutch house dating from around the 1770s. I had an amazing dish called fish chootuporichuthu (try saying that five times fast), which was tuna (I think) steamed in a banana leaf with some sort of great spice mixture and served with what passes for an acknowledgement of Dutch heritage—Belgium Fries. </p> +<p>I spent the next three hours wandering around in the heat of day like a true gringo (not sure what the Indian equivalent of gringo would be) watching all the locals stare at me from their shaded doorways. I ended up at the Dutch cemetery, which is not open to the public, but has some amazing decaying tombs and sepulchers. I stood at the gate for a while wondering which one might be Vasco de Gama's former resting place and why it is that I keep ending up around the dead.</p> +<p>Afterward I walked clear across town to the market area and bought some fruit and roasted peanuts for breakfast tomorrow. I have decided to skip the backwater tour and keep moving north toward Bangalore. Tomorrow I plan to catch the 2 pm express train the Bangalore, which is a 14 hour journey, so I probably won't be posting anything for a couple of days. The picture gallery has been updated for your viewing pleasure. </p> + </div> + </article> +</main> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/vasco-de-gama-exhumed.html b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/vasco-de-gama-exhumed.html new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6f0d71f --- /dev/null +++ b/bak/oldluxpages/jrnlold/2005/11/vasco-de-gama-exhumed.html @@ -0,0 +1,415 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html +class="detail single" dir="ltr" lang="en-US"> + +<head> + <title>Vasco De Gama Exhumed - by Scott Gilbertson</title> + <meta charset="utf-8"> + <meta http-equiv="x-ua-compatible" content="ie=edge"> + <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> + <meta name="description" + content="Vasco de Gama died and was buried in Kerala, India for fourteen years before being moved back to Lisbon."> + <meta name="author" content="Scott Gilbertson"> + <link rel="alternate" + type="application/rss+xml" + title="Luxagraf RSS feed" + href="https://luxagraf.net/rss/"> + <link rel="stylesheet" + href="/media/screenv9.css" + media="screen"> + <link rel="stylesheet" href="/media/print.css" media="print" title="print" /> + <link rel="shortcut icon" href="/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon"> + <link rel="manifest" href="/manifest.json" /> + <link rel="dns-prefetch" href="https://stats.luxagraf.net"> + + <link rel="canonical" href="https://luxagraf.net/jrnl/2005/11/vasco-de-gama-exhumed" /> + <meta name="ICBM" content="9.964370231041398, 76.24091147315163" /> + <meta name="geo.position" content="9.964370231041398; 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return false;" title="see a map">Map</a> + </div> + <time class="dt-published published dt-updated post-date" datetime="2005-11-11T00:51:41" itemprop="datePublished">November <span>11, 2005</span></time> + <span class="hide" itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Person">by <a class="p-author h-card" href="/about"><span itemprop="name">Scott Gilbertson</span></a></span> + </div> + </header> + <div id="article" class="e-content entry-content post--body post--body--single" itemprop="articleBody"> + <p>After a sleepless 36 hours I am now in Kerala India. Fort Kochi to be more precise. It’s a little touristy for my tastes, but interesting nonetheless. I flew out of Paris Wednesday morning with a four-hour stopover in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. </p> +<p>In the cursory glance I had given my ticket way back when I got it I for some reason had read Delhi rather than Dubai, so it was kind of exciting to realize I was landing in Africa. The layover was my only time in Africa, which is too bad, but I guess I have to leave some things for the future. The flight crossed over the Alps, which were spectacularly large, even from thirty thousand feet; I now have a strong desire to get back to Switzerland and Austria. Unfortunately I crossed Saudi Arabia at night so I wasn’t able to see anything, but judging from the photos around the airport, Dubai seems like Los Angeles twenty years in the future. </p> +<p>I have to say if you ever fly in this region, look into Emirates Airlines, it’s the best experience I’ve had flying. I mean how many times have you gotten a menu while on an airplane, especially one that boasts gravlax and cheesecake?</p> +<p>I landed in Cochin after about sixteen hours of traveling and managed to get through immigration and customs without too much trouble. The Cochin airport is quite a ways from Fort Kochi so I had a rather long taxi ride into town, which I was sort of dreading given what I’ve read about Indian cab drivers (actually Indian drivers in general). However I found the experience an enjoyable, though mysterious, one. Maybe I’m a little crazier than most Americans but the driving didn’t bother me. I mean sure, Indian drivers think nothing of passing an autorickshaw with oncoming buses in the opposite lane, but it makes sense when you watch them do it. Nobody is going much over 70km (45 mph) so you have more time than you think you do. Anyway it’s not that scary, though after driving around New York with Jimmy I realized that, so long as you can fully inhabit your automobile, to the point that it truly is an extension of yourself, anything is possible when driving. What is kind of scary is that Indian automobiles have no seat belts. </p> +<p>What is confusing about India’s highways is the Indian drivers use of the horn, which is constant enough to emerge as an almost linguistic device. I could tell that the horns constitute a language of sorts, but I couldn’t for the life of me understand more than a few syllables, so to speak.</p> +<p>I directed the cabbie to a hotel which I picked at random out of the Lonely Planet Guide to India and sprung for an air-con double-bed room. It sounds a little crazy, but after that tiny apartment in France, having some space and huge bed was worth the extra 400 rupees. </p> +<div class="cluster"> +<span class="row-2"> + + <a href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_01_fhahoSX.jpg" title="view larger image "> + <img class="pic66 " src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_01_fhahoSX_pic66.jpg" alt="Fort Cochin, India photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_01_fhahoSX.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" ></a> + + + + + <a href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_10.jpg" title="view larger image "> + <img class="pic66 " src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_10_pic66.jpg" alt="Fort Cochin, India photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_10.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" ></a> + + +</span> +</div> + +<p>I spent the afternoon in a sort of daze from lack of sleep, though I did take a walk along the waterfront in the evening, just as it was starting to drizzle a little bit, munching on roasted nuts and trying to understand the Chinese fishing nets, which seem impossibly complicated. Apparently they are some sort of cantilevered device which require four or five people to operate.</p> +<div class="picwide"> + <a itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_03.jpg " title="view larger image"> + <img class="u-photo" itemprop="contentUrl" sizes="(max-width: 1439px) 100vw, (min-width: 1440px) 1440px" srcset="https://images.luxagraf.net/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_03_picwide960.jpg 1920w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_03_picwide-sm.jpg 720w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_03_picwide-med.jpg 1170w" src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_03_picwide-sm.jpg" alt="Fort Cochin, India photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_03.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" > + </a> +</div> + +<div class="picwide"> + <a itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_04.jpg " title="view larger image"> + <img class="u-photo" itemprop="contentUrl" sizes="(max-width: 1439px) 100vw, (min-width: 1440px) 1440px" srcset="https://images.luxagraf.net/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_04_picwide960-sm.jpg 960w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_04_picwide-sm.jpg 720w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_04_picwide-med.jpg 1170w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_04_featured_jrnl.jpg 520w" src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_04_picwide-sm.jpg" src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_04_picwide-med.jpg" alt="chinese fishing nets, Fort Cochin, India photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_04.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" > + </a> +</div> + +<p>About a block from my hotel there is little park/public square that spills across the street and out onto the waterfront walkway, with street vendors and a fish market displaying some rather massive fish that I didn’t recognize (though the fish make a strong testament to the feats of the Chinese fishing nets). I didn’t partake in it last night, but you can buy a fish at one end of the market and then take it down to the other end and they will cook it up for you.</p> +<p>The side of the park opposite the waterfront is lined with the most massive trees I’ve ever seen. The canopy of the trees is at least 40 meters up and stretches almost an entire block. The colossal trunks must be 8 meters in diameter and are covered in a mixture of moss and a fern-like plant — a leafy plant, but the leaves grow in the structure of a fern frond — that extend from the ground to about three quarters of the way into the branches and give the trees the appearance of a shaggy jungle beard.</p> +<div class="cluster"> +<span class="row-2"> + + <a href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_18.jpg" title="view larger image "> + <img class="pic66 " src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_18_pic66.jpg" alt="Fort Cochin, India photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_18.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" ></a> + + + + + <a href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_19.jpg" title="view larger image "> + <img class="pic66 " src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_19_pic66.jpg" alt="Fort Cochin, India photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_19.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" ></a> + + +</span> +<span class="row-2"> + + + <a href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_09.jpg" title="view larger image "> + <img class="pic66 " src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_09_pic66.jpg" alt="Ayurvedic massage, barbecue sign photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_09.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" ></a> + + + + + <a href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_15.jpg" title="view larger image "> + <img class="pic66 " src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_15_pic66.jpg" alt="Fort Cochin, India photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_15.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" ></a> + + +</span> +</div> + +<p>After walking around for an hour or so I stopped into a little restaurant with a large hidden terrace/garden in the back where I had some passable vegetable curry, the local variation of rice and a wonderful bread that resembled an over-sized friend egg, but tasted delicious. </p> +<p>The whole time I was out and about memories of the time I spent traveling around Mexico when I was younger kept flooding back to me, similar smells and sounds rise up out of darkened doorways and muddy alleys, run-down abandoned and overgrown buildings lie right next to well kept, though equally old and moss-covered estates. </p> +<div class="picwide"> + <a itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_17.jpg " title="view larger image"> + <img class="u-photo" itemprop="contentUrl" sizes="(max-width: 1439px) 100vw, (min-width: 1440px) 1440px" srcset="https://images.luxagraf.net/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_17_picwide960.jpg 1920w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_17_picwide-sm.jpg 720w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_17_picwide-med.jpg 1170w" src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_17_picwide-sm.jpg" alt="Fort Cochin, India photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_17.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" > + </a> +</div> + +<p>There is also the characteristic lack of a middle class that puts tarp-covered shanty towns just over the back fence from massive almost hacienda-style mansions. </p> +<p>The similarities with Mexico come from the presence of the Portuguese in this area a few hundred years ago. Many of the older buildings are of a distinctly Iberian-style — adobe-colored, arches and heavy tile roofs abound, plenty of moss covered walls. </p> +<p>There is graveyard just down the road with a tombstone that bears the name Vasco de Gama, who died and was buried here for fourteen years before being moved to Lisbon (yet more Europeans digging up and <a href="/jrnl/2005/11/bury-your-dead">moving the dead</a>). </p> +<div class="picwide"> + <a itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/ImageObject" href="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_13.jpg " title="view larger image"> + <img class="u-photo" itemprop="contentUrl" sizes="(max-width: 1439px) 100vw, (min-width: 1440px) 1440px" srcset="https://images.luxagraf.net/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_13_picwide960.jpg 1920w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_13_picwide-sm.jpg 720w, https://images.luxagraf.net/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_13_picwide-med.jpg 1170w" src="https://images.luxagraf.net/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_13_picwide-sm.jpg" alt="Fort Cochin, India photographed by luxagraf" data-jslghtbx="https://images.luxagraf.net/original/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_13.jpg" data-jslghtbx-group="group" > + </a> +</div> + +<p>The Dutch appear to have had an influence around here as well, there is Dutch graveyard somewhere around here and obviously the presence of the Chinese fishing nets seems to indicate an oriental influence, which, according to my guidebook, dates from the Kublai Khan era.</p> +<p>After sleeping about fifteen hours I got up around noon and went to Addy’s restaurant which is a converted Dutch house dating from around the 1770s. I had an amazing dish called fish chootuporichuthu (try saying that five times fast), which was tuna (I think) steamed in a banana leaf with some sort of great spice mixture and served with what passes for an acknowledgement of Dutch heritage — Belgium Fries. </p> +<p>I spent the next three hours wandering around in the heat of day like a true gringo (not sure what the Indian equivalent of gringo would be) watching all the locals stare at me from their shaded doorways. I ended up at the Dutch cemetery, which is not open to the public, but has some amazing decaying tombs and sepulchers. I stood at the gate for a while wondering which one might be Vasco de Gama’s former resting place and why it is that I keep ending up around the dead.</p> +<p>Afterward I walked clear across town to the market area and bought some fruit and roasted peanuts for breakfast tomorrow. I have decided to skip the backwater tour and keep moving north toward Bangalore. Tomorrow I plan to catch the 2 pm express train the Bangalore, which is a 14 hour journey.</p> + </div> + + </article> + + + <div class="nav-wrapper"> + <nav id="page-navigation" class="page-border-top"> + <ul> + <li id="prev"><span class="bl">Previous:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/11/riots-iraqi-restaurants-goodbye-seine" rel="prev" title=" Riots, Iraqi Restaurants, Goodbye Seine">Riots, Iraqi Restaurants, Goodbye Seine</a> + </li> + <li id="next"><span class="bl">Next:</span> + <a href="/jrnl/2005/11/backwaters-kerala" rel="next" title=" The Backwaters of Kerala">The Backwaters of Kerala</a> + </li> + </ul> + </nav> + </div> + + + + + + +<div class="comment--form--wrapper "> + +<div class="comment--form--header"> + <p class="hed">Thoughts?</p> + <p class="subhed">Please leave a reply:</p> +</div> +<form action="/comments/post/" method="post" class="comment--form"> + +<input type="hidden" name="rder" value="" /> + + + <input type="hidden" name="content_type" value="jrnl.entry" id="id_content_type"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="object_pk" value="16" id="id_object_pk"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="timestamp" value="1596833488" id="id_timestamp"> + + + + <input type="hidden" name="security_hash" value="89cb993b14c90e12b9995235198ac9f8d27e0bfb" id="id_security_hash"> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_name">Name:</label> + <input type="text" name="name" maxlength="50" required id="id_name"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_email">Email address:</label> + <input type="email" name="email" required id="id_email"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_url">URL:</label> + <input type="url" name="url" id="id_url"> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset > + <label for="id_comment">Comment:</label> + <div class="textarea-rounded"><textarea name="comment" cols="40" rows="10" maxlength="3000" required id="id_comment"> +</textarea></div> + </fieldset> + + + + <fieldset style="display:none;"> + <label for="id_honeypot">If you enter anything in this field your comment will be treated as spam:</label> + <input type="text" name="honeypot" id="id_honeypot"> + </fieldset> + + + <div class="submit"> + <input type="submit" name="post" class="submit-post btn" value="Post" /> + <input type="submit" name="preview" class="submit-preview btn" value="Preview" /> + </div> +</form> +<p style="font-size: 95%;"><strong>All comments are moderated</strong>, so you won’t see it right away. 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Fort Kochi to be more precise. It's a little touristy for my tastes, but interesting nonetheless. I flew out of Paris Wednesday morning with a four-hour stopover in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
+
+In the cursory glance I had given my ticket way back when I got it I for some reason had read Delhi rather than Dubai, so it was kind of exciting to realize I was landing in Africa. The layover was my only time in Africa, which is too bad, but I guess I have to leave some things for the future. The flight crossed over the Alps, which were spectacularly large, even from thirty thousand feet; I now have a strong desire to get back to Switzerland and Austria. Unfortunately I crossed Saudi Arabia at night so I wasn't able to see anything, but judging from the photos around the airport, Dubai seems like Los Angeles twenty years in the future.
+
+I have to say if you ever fly in this region, look into Emirates Airlines, it's the best experience I've had flying. I mean how many times have you gotten a menu while on an airplane, especially one that boasts gravlax and cheesecake?
+
+I landed in Cochin after about sixteen hours of traveling and managed to get through immigration and customs without too much trouble. The Cochin airport is quite a ways from Fort Kochi so I had a rather long taxi ride into town, which I was sort of dreading given what I've read about Indian cab drivers (actually Indian drivers in general). However I found the experience an enjoyable, though mysterious, one. Maybe I'm a little crazier than most Americans but the driving didn't bother me. I mean sure, Indian drivers think nothing of passing an autorickshaw with oncoming buses in the opposite lane, but it makes sense when you watch them do it. Nobody is going much over 70km (45 mph) so you have more time than you think you do. Anyway it's not that scary, though after driving around New York with Jimmy I realized that, so long as you can fully inhabit your automobile, to the point that it truly is an extension of yourself, anything is possible when driving. What is kind of scary is that Indian automobiles have no seat belts.
+
+What is confusing about India's highways is the Indian drivers use of the horn, which is constant enough to emerge as an almost linguistic device. I could tell that the horns constitute a language of sorts, but I couldn't for the life of me understand more than a few syllables, so to speak.
+
+I directed the cabbie to a hotel which I picked at random out of the Lonely Planet Guide to India and sprung for an air-con double-bed room. It sounds a little crazy, but after that tiny apartment in France, having some space and huge bed was worth the extra 400 rupees.
+
+<div class="cluster">
+<span class="row-2">
+<img src="images/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_01_fhahoSX.jpg" id="image-1750" class="cluster pic66" />
+<img src="images/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_10.jpg" id="image-1753" class="cluster pic66" />
+</span>
+</div>
+
+I spent the afternoon in a sort of daze from lack of sleep, though I did take a walk along the waterfront in the evening, just as it was starting to drizzle a little bit, munching on roasted nuts and trying to understand the Chinese fishing nets, which seem impossibly complicated. Apparently they are some sort of cantilevered device which require four or five people to operate.
+
+<img src="images/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_03.jpg" id="image-1751" class="picwide" />
+<img src="images/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_04.jpg" id="image-1752" class="picwide" />
+
+About a block from my hotel there is little park/public square that spills across the street and out onto the waterfront walkway, with street vendors and a fish market displaying some rather massive fish that I didn't recognize (though the fish make a strong testament to the feats of the Chinese fishing nets). I didn't partake in it last night, but you can buy a fish at one end of the market and then take it down to the other end and they will cook it up for you.
+
+The side of the park opposite the waterfront is lined with the most massive trees I've ever seen. The canopy of the trees is at least 40 meters up and stretches almost an entire block. The colossal trunks must be 8 meters in diameter and are covered in a mixture of moss and a fern-like plant -- a leafy plant, but the leaves grow in the structure of a fern frond -- that extend from the ground to about three quarters of the way into the branches and give the trees the appearance of a shaggy jungle beard.
+
+<div class="cluster">
+<span class="row-2">
+<img src="images/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_18.jpg" id="image-1755" class="cluster pic66" />
+<img src="images/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_19.jpg" id="image-1759" class="cluster pic66" />
+</span>
+<span class="row-2">
+<img src="images/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_09.jpg" id="image-1758" class="cluster pic66" />
+<img src="images/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_15.jpg" id="image-1754" class="cluster pic66" />
+</span>
+</div>
+
+After walking around for an hour or so I stopped into a little restaurant with a large hidden terrace/garden in the back where I had some passable vegetable curry, the local variation of rice and a wonderful bread that resembled an over-sized friend egg, but tasted delicious.
+
+The whole time I was out and about memories of the time I spent traveling around Mexico when I was younger kept flooding back to me, similar smells and sounds rise up out of darkened doorways and muddy alleys, run-down abandoned and overgrown buildings lie right next to well kept, though equally old and moss-covered estates.
+
+<img src="images/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_17.jpg" id="image-1756" class="picwide" />
+
+There is also the characteristic lack of a middle class that puts tarp-covered shanty towns just over the back fence from massive almost hacienda-style mansions.
+
+The similarities with Mexico come from the presence of the Portuguese in this area a few hundred years ago. Many of the older buildings are of a distinctly Iberian-style -- adobe-colored, arches and heavy tile roofs abound, plenty of moss covered walls.
+
+There is graveyard just down the road with a tombstone that bears the name Vasco de Gama, who died and was buried here for fourteen years before being moved to Lisbon (yet more Europeans digging up and [moving the dead][1]).
+
+<img src="images/2018/India_Fort_Cochin_11_05_13.jpg" id="image-1757" class="picwide" />
+
+The Dutch appear to have had an influence around here as well, there is Dutch graveyard somewhere around here and obviously the presence of the Chinese fishing nets seems to indicate an oriental influence, which, according to my guidebook, dates from the Kublai Khan era.
+
+After sleeping about fifteen hours I got up around noon and went to Addy's restaurant which is a converted Dutch house dating from around the 1770s. I had an amazing dish called fish chootuporichuthu (try saying that five times fast), which was tuna (I think) steamed in a banana leaf with some sort of great spice mixture and served with what passes for an acknowledgement of Dutch heritage -- Belgium Fries.
+
+I spent the next three hours wandering around in the heat of day like a true gringo (not sure what the Indian equivalent of gringo would be) watching all the locals stare at me from their shaded doorways. I ended up at the Dutch cemetery, which is not open to the public, but has some amazing decaying tombs and sepulchers. I stood at the gate for a while wondering which one might be Vasco de Gama's former resting place and why it is that I keep ending up around the dead.
+
+Afterward I walked clear across town to the market area and bought some fruit and roasted peanuts for breakfast tomorrow. I have decided to skip the backwater tour and keep moving north toward Bangalore. Tomorrow I plan to catch the 2 pm express train the Bangalore, which is a 14 hour journey.
+
+[1]: /jrnl/2005/11/bury-your-dead |