giffy land

I put up four posts today with lots of new nonsense

So I am staying in a hotel that is a bit more then I wanted to spend. It is not expensive, by US standards, but it is a little high for India. I looked around though and couldn’t find anything that was both cheaper and not full of bugs. It is a cool place though. The power goes out rather randomly, they have a generator, but it fails every now and then for 10-15 minutes. I find it kind of fun; I bust out my headlamp and pretend I am camping. They also call me whenever I have a phone call. It’s really cool. In a semi-British accent they say “A call for you sir” and I am very tempted to respond in an overblown British accent, “Well jolly good , send it though then” I don’t of course, but I ma very tempted.

So not much has happened as of late. In Bombay we pretty much just rested. I managed to get some pages for my passport, which is pretty cool. We also took a trip out to Elephanta Island to see some 1500 year old Hindu statues centering around the god Shiva. Shiva is a main god who is both the creator and destroyer. Once again our good friends the Portuguese did some damage to the island, but there are a few statues that were in good shape. Interesting when I got to the airport on of the security people there had been on the boat ride to the airport.

I left Bombay yesterday. I was going to take a train ride to Bangalore, but woke up feeling very nauseas and sick. I get a little train sick already so getting on a 24 hour train was probably not a great idea. Therefore I went to the airport and got a plane ticket to Bangalore.

Once I got to Bangalore I checked into the hotel I had made reservations at. It was quite the dump, dirty stained sheets, bugs, weird rustling sounds form the walls, that sort of thing. I left there and found another hotel down the street that was nicer. It is a little to expensive though so today I ma going to look for a good place that is cheaper.

Also on the economic front, we have decided not to do the Trans-Siberian railway trip. Instead we are going to fly home from Beijing on the 9th or 10th of March. Generally a round trip ticket is not substantially more then a one way, so I may get a roundtrip ticket and come back this summer.

So let’s see… Done quite a bit in the past couple of days. On Sunday we went on a dolphin boat ride and went to ….

The dolphin boat ride was more of a porpoise boat ride, but it was still a lot of fun. Saw an Indian prison form the boat, even had some of the prisoners wave at us. It was a very odd feeling. Much different form visiting detention facilities in South Africa. This felt a lot more intrusive, but for some reason less depressing.


On Monday we went on a bird watching boat trip. It was over on this island by the capital of Goa. We took a dug out canoe though these mangrove sided rivers. Saw a few birds and some water buffalo. We also went to some Hindu temples on that same day.

Goa was colonized by the portchagees oh about 400 years ago, right during the heart of the inquisition. Of course they bought with them the lovely missionary types, who in their arrogant self righteous imperialist way destroyed all the Hindu temples in Goa save one. Fortunately they were not able to completely destroy the religion and when they left in the 1800’s many of the temples were rebuilt. We were able to visit the one that they didn’t destroy, the temple for the Goddess Vishnu. We also visited another temple, this one for sheep. I made an offering at the alter, partly as a way of paying respect for allowing me to visit, and hey yah never can have to much good fortune regarding sheep.

I got to say that Hinduism is one of them one fascinating religions of the world and I guess when you are the oldest faith in the world (at least 3500-4000 years old), you probably will be one of the most complicated and interesting. While it is no more True then any of the other religions of the world, True in this case being rational physical truth. It nevertheless does offer some interesting Truths in the mythos, spiritual sense, much like most other religions. It is interesting how just about all the religions of the world stumble on some of the same fundamental principals. The may have different gods, Jesus, Vishnu, Gaea, whatever. And they may have different mythological frameworks, but these devices all tend to proclaim the same thing. It is to bad that some religions had to get this missionary imperative thing going, which has no tolerance for other beliefs and sees there way as the only way to salvation or whatever. I like to see religion as much more of a personal mechanism for understanding both self and the outside world. While I may disagree with the Christians of the Hindus or just about any other religion, I respect there attempt at achieving understanding as being as worthy as my use of science, reasoning, or whatever. Religion only really becomes destructive when it gets power, like Christianity in premodern Europe, or Islam in the Middle East today.

I sent 34 baby turtles into the sea today. One of the most amazing experiences I have ever had. Turtles find there way to the sea by following the brightest thing. Generally that is the night sky over the sea. However people have built lots of lights by the beach so the turtles get confused. Therefore they need some help. I have a rather bright LED headlamp and was able to use that to guide some turtles into the sea. They just scoot along until they hit water then they swim like crazy. What is really amazing is that 20 years from now after swimming all the way to Europe they will return to this exact beach and lay there own eggs. Some of the turtles we sent into the sea may still be alive long after all of us who were there are long dead.

It really makes you marvel at the fact that the same process that brought us here bought the turtles. And whether you believe these process to be evolutionary as I do, or religious as some other do, it doesn’t really matter. What matters is the humility and marvel that such an understanding brings. The interconnectedness of reality is truly amazing. Well enough philosobabble. Have good night.

I posted three new posts today

So we got to see sea turtles, baby ones at that. They are so adorable, almost all black and about 2 inches long. I even got to hold one. Some fishermen who live near by are taking care of them until they are ready to go out to sea. They have a little fence around the nest, where there is still some waiting to hatch. I am going to go down tomorrow morning and see if I can see some come up from the sand.

Yesterday we went to see some old portchagees (sp) churches and a spice plantation. The porteguess were particular ruthless missionaries and had a habit of destroying Hindu churches and then building huge cathedrals. After they departed however it seems that both Christianity and Hinduism have been able to coexist and even blend.

This blending of faiths is quite interesting. Many people practice both Hinduism and Catholicism. Hinduism stresses that God come to earth in many forms and in many different ways. To them there is no contradiction in celebrating both Hindu holidays and Christian ones. In fact many people have adopted Jesus into Hinduism as a god along side Vishnu, Ganesh, and other. Linda, who works for lazydays, told us that one time she was going to midnight mass on Christmas Eve with some Hindu friends of hers. She asked them shy they were going and they said to celebrate the birth of God. It is nice to see tolerance built into a religious system like that.

Another interesting note is a shrine in the place we are staying. It is currently an alter to the Christian god of Jesus. However it appears as though it was at one point an alter to a Hindu god, which they affixed a cross to the top of and placed a crucifix inside.

The spice plantation was interesting, quite touristy, but not all that bad. Learned some cool stuff about the various spices and there uses and got some yummy ones to boot. Plus we got to see a water snake hunt for fish as well as some sort of river crab.

Many of you are familiar with my relatively decent luck. Well it has struck again, as you know our train was late and it wound up making us miss our flight. We enquired with a travel agency who told us we could not get out today and would have to wait until tomorrow. We decided to go to the airport and see both if we could find a flight and if we could get a refund for our missed flight. The taxi took us to the wrong terminal and as we were driving away I noticed the word Goa on a departures board. Low and behold an earlier flight had been delayed. We went and bought tickets and headed into the airport. I then phones lazydays and told them of our updated info.

We arrived in Goa transferred from the airport to the villa. Got a flat on the way and so it took as just a little under 2 hours to get here. When we finally arrived we were most happy. Everything here is amazing, great views, spectacular service, great décor, everything.

Woke up in the morning and had a nice breakfast outside under the trees. We decided to go do some shopping as we all need some food and clothes. Went to a couple of Indian clothing stores and got taken, till we got the hang of it. Basically they will try and charge you 4 times what something is worth. I almost bought a some clothes for ma guy for 1500 rupees (35US), but ended up getting more for 1200 (28US) somewhere else. Still too much though. We also went a nice size market in another town were I bough a couple of large Indian blankets for 2000 rupees(45US) after bargaining down from 4000 rupees (90US). They also tried to sell mom some blankets but we walked away. They fo0llowed us for the next 20 minutes continually trying to get us to buy more. Finally offering two similar blankets to mine for 800 rupees (18US). I felt a little silly after that, but you live and learn.

We got back home around 5 to meet a woman who works for lazydays so that she could fill us in on our stay. Apparently I had made the reservation for our villa in Goa for Feb 14th to the 21st not for Jan. Despite it being written on many forms I never noticed the error. When I called with our new info they were quite perplexed until they discovered us in Feb. If we had made our flight on the 14th no one would have met us at the airport and we would have had no idea why. Also quite lucky was the fact that the villa just happened to be empty and will remain so until the 21st. They were very understanding and so now we are enjoying our stay. I forget who the Greek god of travel is, Apollo maybe, but who ever it is they are smiling on our journey.

Today are going to a spice farm and to old Goa. Should be fun. Hope all is well back in the states.

Had a bit of an adventure trying to get on our train. We got to the station and attempted to find out both where to boar our train and then were to sit once we got on. There are a bunch of people who offer to help, but most of them either make up stuff or direct you to random tourist offices. They also informed us that the tourist information office was closed, it wasn’t of course. We finally got seat assignments and checked the giant board for our departure platform. Looked up and saw a train to Bombay leaving at 04:00 at station 4. Went to station 4, 4:00 rolls around and no train. Asked some people if we were in the right place. We weren’t, we needed to go to platform 6. Weren’t there, not our train. I then went back to the big board to double check. Saw our train, not the one we had saw before, but the one whose number matched ours. It indeed was leaving form platform 6, but was delayed till 17:40 (5:40). Went back told Sis and Justin and we waited. They went to try and call mom to tell her we would be late, but could not succeed, due to confusing phone system. Still was a little confused about the missing 4:00 train until I realized that the board was on 24 hour time so 04:00 was of course 4 in the morning. We got on our train when it arrived at 5:40 and went to our cabin.

Turns out we are riding with the chief engineer of a sizable chuck of the Indian rail system. In addition to lots of interesting stuff, he informed us that we are riding in the nicest car in India and most likely one of the nicest in the world. We have ample space and will be served a freshly cook multiple course meal. Not to shabby for under a hundred dollars each. He also has offered us a tour of the maintenance facility were the trains are repaired, an offer we will try and take up when we are in Bombay. Well we are off and traveling in comfort and hopefully the delay will not mean that we miss sour flight.

Update. Saw a bunch of kites flying around. We trained through an Indian village at sunrise and there were all these kites flying around, it was most beautiful. Our companion informed us that the Indian state we are in was having a kite festival. Just our luck I guess.

So India kicks ass. It is sort of like they built a country in the middle of a construction site. There are people selling things everywhere and everything appears half finished.

I met a very nice India that helped me to get my train tickets. I am sure it was partly to get money, but it was still a nice change from Russia.

Our hotel is very nice, especially for under 10US a night. Very friendly people and very decent accommodations. Even get CNN and HBO in the room.

Today we leave for Mumbai(Bombay) at about 4:00pm It should be a nice train ride. Our ticket does not list any seats on it however so I am not sure exactaly what to do when we get to the station. Ahhh Well, I'll figure it out.

Getting ready to leave St. Petersburg and then Russia for India. Not so much looking forward to the 6 hour flight aboard a Soviet Turboprop plane, but it should be an experience.

Yesterday we went to the Winter Palace and the Monument to The Heroic Defenders of Leningrad. The Winter Palace complex is basically a giant museum now. It was were the Bolsheviks defeated the interim government way back when, but there really isn’t any mention of that now. Saw some cool paintings and some artifacts.

Also went to the Monument for the Heroic Defenders of Leningrad or MHDL (Metal) which is a fitting acromin for the giant monument. Basically during World War 2 Leningrad now St. Petersburg was sieged for about 3 years. About 1 million people died half soldiers half civilians. This was a monument to them. They were basically all that stood in the way of the Nazi sweeping though Russia. The monument was started shortly after the war but Ol’ Uncle Joe Stalin hated Leningrad quite a bit so he destroyed the monument and lost most of the artifacts. It was finally completed in the 70’s. Interestingly the area around it was designed be Stalin to be the new center of St. Petersburg. It never really became that. He designed it to be symmetrical and it is that, which make it quite eerie. It kind of is a little Moscow in St. Petersburg.

We also visited the museum of political history. One of the more interesting we visited. It was housed in the building were Lenin worked in 1917. The have preserved his study with all of his office supplies and stuff. It was quite hard to resist the temptation to play with his phone :).

Well that’s about it, off to India.

Final thoughts on Moscow., Well our time ended on a slightly sour note, when the keys to our flat took a nice long plunge down the shaft of the elevator. Luckily we had already left the flat with all of our bags, but still kind of lam, yet oddly funny. So we then almost missed our train arriving with about 2 minutes to spare. We are now safely in St. Petersburg.

So basically Moscow was a bit of a wash. We did get to see the city and get a taste of it. However we had the misfortune/fortune of visiting at Christmas time. So despite three attempts we were unable to see Lenin or go on any real tours. We did however bribe a guard 500 rubles to let us go and see the Kremlin.

Another reality of Moscow is that it is cold, very cold. This makes walking around for to long very difficult hence finding a place to warm up is always a concern. Fortunately there are ample casinos in Moscow were you can play slots for a good amount of time for about 100 Rubles (3.20US). The slots are also a bit looser it seems and I think I would up ahead about 500 rubles when it was all said and down. This was mainly due to winning about 800 rubles (25US) on one spin of the 20 Koepek(.0066US) machine. Not to shabby.

So far St, Petersburg seems more open so we will be able to visit the Winter Palace and some other note worthy site. Plus our flat is quite nice which is always a nice bonus.

Arrived in St. Petersburg yesterday night. I had a post about final thoughts in Moscow, but It is on my laptop. I will most likely post it tonight. St. Petersburg is pretty cool. We have flat on Nevsky Prospect, which is the main street in town. It overlooks the river and is quite comfortable.

We are going to leave this little internet cafe shortly and go to Peter and Paul fortress, then it is off to the hermitage, also known as the Winter Palace. More later.

God damn day after Christmas Thursday Sunday Closed Everything whatever can't go to see Lenin damn damn damn.

Ok, so if that didn't make any sense, basically everything in Russia is closed agian today. Not entirly sure shy, maybe day after Christmas, maybe because it is Thursday??? and one guy said it was Sunday. We bribed a guard 500 rubles (15US) to let us into the Kremlin. It was cool to walk around, but could not get inside anything as it was all closed. We may try agian tommorow morning, but we may just be out of luck. Ahhh well it tis Russia for you.

A couple of humorous things today. One about Russia and the other not. The first is a rather odd email exchange that I have been privy to. As some of you know this trip is partly academic so I am enrolled in thesis credits. Well, the advisor for CHID was out of the office so I just enrolled in some random classes, one of these was Phil 120 Logic. So I start getting theses emails about the software for the class not working. Then I get a couple saying
“I don't think I should be getting these messages. Please remove me.”
I guess there was some sort of problem and people were on the list that weren’t. So the prof sends out an email saying
I am sorry to bother subscribers to the logic list, but I think this reminder is in order.

Please do not send requests to be removed from a mailing list to the list.
The members of the list cannot remove you from it. At best, the listowner is the one to do this. The logic list, however, is an exception, since it is computer generated from the class enrollment list. Even I, the listowner, am unable to add or remove names from the list. It is done automatically.

If you drop the class, you will automatically disappear from the list the next day. If you are getting these messages but are not in the class, there has been an error outside of my control, and you must contact help@cac.washington.edu.

When you write to the list with such requests, you succeed only in annoying your fellow students and accomplishing nothing for yourself.
Please don't do it.

Thanks.

SMC

Seems a bit overly harsh, but then from what I can gather most Philosophy prof’s at the U, especially the ones that teach Logic are wither Assholes, or way to sure of there own knowledge. It would be rather amusing if not for the fact that they are supposed to be educators not republican presidents. So another unfortunate soul who probably checked there email and noticed an abundance of random emails asked to be unsubscribed. TO which a very helpful student replied.

jeez are u guys dumb or what??? in case u didn't read the professor's e-mail regarding this discussion list, YOU CANNOT BE REMOVED UNLESS YOU DROP THE COURSE. THAT IS WHY THIS IS A CLASS DISCUSSION LIST, BECAUSE YOUR CLASSMATES MIGHT POST IMPORTANT E-MAILS CONCERNING THE COURSE THAT MIGHT RELATE TO YOURSELVES. SO STOP ASKING TO BE REMOVED OR JUST DROP THE CLASS, BECAUSE EVERYTIME YOU ASK, IT GIVES ME AND HUNDREDS OF OTHER PEOPLE ANOTHER ANNOYING, USELESS MESSAGE TO READ. (Caps his)

I wonder what it is about philosophy, but it seems to attract the more assholish members of the University community.

So now for the other amusing story. This one took place at a restaurant in Moscow. We decided to go to this Ukrainian place for dinner because they have excellent Borsch. They also have very large menus, about 35 pages and a good 1.5 inches thick. We order all of our food including desert upfront since we have to point at everything. We get our meals and then I notice two of the deserts we ordered coming out. The take them to the table next to our however, were the people had just arrived and had not even ordered gotten dinner. The women I saw seemed a little perplexed, but perhaps random ice-cream appearances are common in Russia so they ate away. After our meal our server brought out only one of our deserts. Meanwhile the desert stealers at the other table got up and simply left, without ever paying. We ate the one desert and then I signaled for the check, as to try and communicate what happened would have been very difficult given our complete lack of understanding in Russian. She then signals just a minute and brings out the other two deserts. Very bizarre don’t you think. For instance why did the other people come to the restaurant if not to order anything, how did they know they would get our deserts.

Today we achieved a major victory. We figured out the Moscow subway system. I also feel that I am getting somewhat a grip on decoding the crylic alphabet. Speaking of Subways, while we were out trying to get to an orthodox church last night to see a Christmas celebration, more on that later, we met some Russians who looked to be in their twenties. We got to talking on the subway and this woman remarked that the Russian subways were said to be among the most beautiful in the world. I agreed that indeed they are. She then said that this was due to them being built by Alexander during the imperial era of Russia. Funny thing is that that is not even close to true. The subways weren’t built till much later, more like the 1930’s and 40’s under everyone’s favorite leader Stalin. I wasn’t sure if she was just uniformed or if perhaps she didn’t want to say that Stalin did it.

Back to Christmas. Today Jan 7th is Christmas in Russia. So by coming we essentially get two Christmas’s so I guess in the Christian mythos that means that we now have two saviors. But as I found out a first Christmas this year, I am possibly Jewish, so go figure. We tried to go to an orthodox Christmas service, but the line was to long and it was cold, so we went gambling. The first casino kicked us out because Justin’s shoes weren’t nice enough, so we went to another. Blew though a whole 5 bucks in about half an hour, but I ended up ahead about 50 rubles, so I made a nice profit of a $1.50. Exchange rates kick ass in losing, but kind of screw you over when you do win. Everything is closed today so we are going to go see all the cool subway stations and our goal is not to have to go topside at all. Internet cafes are supposed to be open so we also might do some gaming. Haven’t been able to do much sightseeing as yesterday we had to register our visas a process that took only slightly under 5 hours. Hopefully tomorrow we will get to go see a bunch of stuff in Red Square.

Ahhhh Moscow,

So far it has been quite the trip. Flew i non Aeroflot, Russian airline. Needless to say I was not quite sure what to expect. Overall though it was a fine flight. Very detailed safety talk, including some advise to practice buckling the seatbelt and a nice discussion on the plane ditching. They also ask you to open the blinds during take off and landing, couldn't for the life of me figure out why. Twas quite annoying after a nice long nap to have to open the blinds and get hit right in face by a very bright sun. Ohh well.

As for Moscow it self, it is very similar to Havana except with much more snow and about a forth the temperature. Same weird combination of really nice cars and funky old soviet style autos. Much like Havana the outside of most buildings are quite in disrepair and the common areas aren't much better. Inside apartments though it is not half bad.

they seem to have gone a bit overboard on advertisement however and all the malls look like Vegas expect in Russian. Which by the way is a very difficult language to understand, damn different alphabet. I have tried to learn a few phrases but tend to just get blank looks when I try them out. Well must be off to Red Square to gander and Lenin.

Hey all,

Arrived in New York today. God I hate that city. So damn noisy and crowded. The only highlight is the wonderful amount of advertisements telling you of all the crap you need to buy. I don't know how I would get along without them. On the plus side, well not really the plus side, but on at least a somewhat useful side, I was able to go to ground zero. The shear size of it is rather overwhelming. The only draw back is the large number of street vendors hawking various photo logs and book about the trade center. We leave tomorrow for Russia in the evening and I am looking forward to getting to Moscow.