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Leaving Melbourne for familiar ground

2012-01-02T22:32:00.003-05:00

Nearing the end of my journey, in many way to myself this was the end as I would soon be with familiar people, in a familiar place.

Flights reworked, bus to the airport, Broken bag, and resulting broken laptop.

SF, arriving at my brother's abode, a lovingly familiar place, something that almost feels foreign.

Lot's of sleep and a bit of laziness, perhaps my first chance in a while to do nothing.

So many old faces, how different could this be from just a bit ago?

Road trip up to Portland with my brother, such a different way to travel.

A lovely little house, AirBnB success.

Coffee, Donuts, Pizza, fun people, crazy movies, what a wonderful town.

Driving home through the red woods, weaving through the trees.

In Eureka we learn of a slide, our route is blocked for days.

Quick dark ride home, deep conversation, and some-In n-Out.

A bit more time in SF, and then back to life.

---
Beers, I show my annoying obsession, but choose a delicious beer, creme brulee stout
A burger and fires, one of their specialties, she declines, as well as my brownies
A vegan, but I don't mind, I'm completely taken

A lovely time, with more exchange
Plans for food another day
Vegan Brownies, and vegan dumplings for her, meat for me

A walk over the bridge, a beautiful night, a beautiful companion
Look over the water, weird lights in DUMBO, what could it be?
An artshow, people everywhere, giant bubbles to make

A walk along the water, contrasting worlds in Brooklyn
A stop at a watering hole to rest our feet, and moisten our parched lips
Walk down the dark streets home through Brooklyn

Good Night...

Off to Australia, mother nature can be such a harsh mistress

2011-11-28T15:54:00.005-05:00

First off some off topic stuff. My posting rate has gotten really bad, frequency wise that is, lately, at this point most of the people who I believe read this only know things about me that I write here in this blog so such people would have no idea why my posting has been so irregular, as such I'd like to say. So after finishing my trip back in April (what I'm still writing about because I'm so backlogged) I went forward with one of the many ideas for my longterm goals directions. I'm currently now taking Organic Chemistry, Biology, and Chemistry Lab, so a lot of my time has been taken up by that and other various things.

On another note I've been considering doing some blog branching, but if and when I do that it will be clear what is going on.

This time success, no problems boarding, what a relief I must say. In then I probably only lost half a day as my original flight had a huge lay over in China. In the terminal I met a Japanese man from Sendai, to this day I have no idea if they are okay, I hope they didn't make it hope before the tsunami. We just hung out in the terminal and then we each took our own flights. I sat next to an American couple, we went flying in our giant speeding beer can (we were flying King Fisher, same company as the beer). It was really well handled, actually one of the nicer flights I'd ever been on, Namastar to India. We were served food in nice little china trays, reminiscent of what air travel used to be even in America. I have to say though the Indian male passengers were horrible, they kept ringing the bell for more beer, even when it was just ordered a moment earlier, they were also truly harassing the stewardesses. One flight down, two more to go. At this point I can't remember the order, but I slept for about 5 hours in one airport and then got on another flight, finally arriving in Melbourne.

Well apparently I was looking like a sketchy fellow as I was forced into the super express extra scrutiny line, probably because I was as honest as possible about what I had with me. I found some of the questions and requests odd, they made me flip through my photos to show that there weren't any containing child pornography. But in then I ended getting through security faster than everyone else. Quick bus ride over to the city. It was early so I just hung out at the bus station and tried to snooze, but I got screamed at by security. I ended up getting in contact with Cathy's friends and we arranged to meet up after work. I locked up my bag and then wandered around the city. I got some coffee, some food and just some totally different energy.

First impressions of Melbourne, it is actually really quite lovely, the first fun aspect were the street cars, though I've been in other cities, but there was something different about it in Melbourne, the next fun thing I came across were the blue bike share bikes, oh yeah did I forget to mention, the city was damn clean, what an unbelievable contrast. I really just wandered, as I had so much time to kill. Melbourne has a pretty healthy coffee culture, I just took photos, thought, and ate, well I also had some coffee. The sites were quite nice to see, and so were the people, people watching is one of my favorite activities.

Well the day quickly rounded down, and when the work day ended up I met up with Ben and Jordan, and walked back to there place. We got some food, we talked about friends in Brooklyn, and then bed time, after the exceedingly necessary shower. It might have been a couch bed, but I slept amazingly well.

At this point for whatever reason much of australia is a bit of a blur, I think the next day was actually a mixture of laziness and being on the phone trying to work some stuff out, I then went and met up with Ben for a trivia night. All of Ben and Jordan's friends were really cool and trivia night was really fun, I don't think I helped too much, but in the end we won, which was the first time for their group, I guess I was a bit of good luck. I also had some 'Parm', which is what they say for chicken Parmesan. The funniest thing was just how huge the portion was, when I spoke with the Australians and pointed this out to them, they were all shocked that I would think such things as they had heard how large American portions are, this was one of my first moments of realization of just how similar Australians and Americans are.

The next day I used Melbourne's bike share system with a friend of my Brother's. I even managed to purchase a helmet from 7-11 for $5, this is a subsidized price due to Australia's helmet laws. First I did some people watching at their train station, which was quite nice, but all I ate was a chocolate bar, something similar to a snickers. This of course would bode poorly for riding around Melbourne for me, it certainly wasn't quite as exciting and death defying as my riding with Rosie was in Pondy. It really was a fun time and then me and Andrew started to just walk around Melbourne, and guess what Rosie found me... Then we got some drinks. What an odd and lovely day. Me and Rosie made plans to meet up the in two days which was lucky. That very night as I was getting ready to go to bed I checked my email and saw a message from my mother letting me know about the Japan tsunami, which was to be my next destination, couldn't do much that night.

Next day was essentially entirely based around getting ticket stuff handled, which wouldn't be finished handling until more than a month later. This was a terrible day, but the next was quite lovely, me and Rosie got some Brunch, went to the farmer's market and just walked around and Checked out Melbourne some more.

Wrapping things up a bit, bike borrowing around town, museum cruising and cool collective dining, riding street cars and feeling the world while wallowing in my own sadness of part of journey that would never be, but overly distracted by myself over those whom really were hurt. And some Kangaroo.

---
Can I have your number?
Sure... Here you go

What do I do,
do I text her,
do I call her?

Someone tell me what to do
No one answers
It's all on me

Conventions are wise for conventional times
But hearts are fickel
Swells of emotion must be quelled

To hell with it all
Tap out a few letters
to say, "I want to see you"

"Me too" she says
What a relief to my soul
Who cares about anything else

Rushing out of lab,
A quick checking in
Seeing her, feeling my heart skip

A Bagel in Delhi, But it was no bagel or Deli to me

2011-09-28T22:37:00.003-04:00

I arrived back in Delhi, this time knowing much of my way, and this time with a pretty solid goal.

Somehow I managed to find Kaz Haus Village, with little to no trouble this time. I had a bagel, which I certainly expected to be horrible, but as a boy from Brooklyn I felt I must try it, my expectations were correct. Little conversation with a fellow New Yorker. Finally great free wifi, where I was able to do everything necessary, most awesome.

Just a few days to do a little bit of what I hadn't done before, but ended up just walking and getting wifi, it wasn't so bad. It seemed nearly idillic, and it was time for me to go, my bag were all packed an I was ready to go, I said farewell to my most amazing and gracious hosts, I made my way to the subway which would take me to the newly completed (literally not even two weeks prior) airport train arrived, which after arriving at the airport I was greeted with a disaster. Let's just say that I ended having not technically a visa issue, but something exceedingly surprising, which ended up causing an incredible stir. The people from the airline didn't actually understand the problem, which made things worse for months and months to come. Well after getting back to Vivek's parents' home, and waiting for a bit out side, his father arrived and told me that he had had a feeling that I would be back that night, I jokingly remarked that things would have been much easier if he had just told me that in advanced. The next day was not fun at all, mostly lots of phone calls, but I did get to see Vivek's mother again, who I must say is a great conversationalist like her husband, but definitely different.

Well back to the airport and most things succeeded this time, I ended up hanging out with a Japanese guy from Sendai before boarding my kingfisher flight, which would eventually bring me to Australia, which we will speak of next time.

---
Walking in circles that are never meant to be
Always going forward while climbing time
Feeling like you've gone no where
Encounters that would never have been
Different way
Different life
---
I saw her on the train
She was looking at her moleskine
Possibly doodling away, maybe writing a story unheard
All I could think was that I somehow knew her
I kept looking up hoping to understand
We exchanged fleeting looks

Who was she, I had no idea
Her presence root in my mind the entire ride
I started to fear that she was worried about whom I am
I could get back to my reading all I could think of was her
I couldn't help myself, I had to keep looking at her
We were nearing nearing my stop

With great resolve I decided to alight with her
She got up, I followed, we walked side by side
I tried to get up the courage, I was about to ask who she was
And then...
She suddenly spoke, she inquired if we knew each other
We shared our mutual sense of familiarity
I walked her home
---

Beginnings of New Branches

2011-07-28T23:19:00.005-04:00

Squish, as my boot sinks in the mud between the roadways.
Rattles as I run acros the pebbles lining the track bed.
And a hop onto the platform.

Into a bunk, some dinner and rest.

Morning and the rattling continues.

Evening and the shaking doesn't stop.

Morning and we Disembark.

A quick zip down a road, after bargaining in this sacred realm.

Dropped off arbitrarily, a wandering walk to a temple to find a place to sleep.

Unload my burdens to prepare for wandering.

Walking around, ignoring call for rides.

Chance upon the Zen temple, peace and place found.

A bit more wandering to the Bodhi tree, to bask in the shade where the Buddha found his way.

Hawkers all around, spit and garbage flying everywhere.

Ticket to the beginning is purchased from a man who believes the clammer with a discussion with one whom thinks they are god.

New plans hatched after the evening at the Zen temple.

Sleep silently.

A bit more arguing with the man who listens to the clammer as he was quite the dishonest man.

Auto rickshaw ride to the train, bit of a rush, but no need as the train was delayed.

Waiting longer 5 hours late train.

Crazy people, drove from europe in a VW bus, but friendly.

Train finally arrives, fear that my ticket wont be accepted.

Mostly nice people, no problems with where I sit.

Time for an auto ride, I join up with the friendly crazies.

After leaving them behind, off to Sarnath.

The driver quoted me a price, but one which he would not honor.

Much argument ensued.

Sleeping in an empty dorm for 20, nice.

First thing in the morning off to the Japanese temple, peaceful bliss and familial presence.

At the temple, peace was in the air and children playing.

Lunch with everyone, served by the temple, simple yet filling.

Wandering around Sarnath.

Depressing zoo and park, but ancient ruins all around.

Something special in the air, peacefulness.

Helping to back some bread, attending temple prayer.

Utter silent and peaceful sleep.

Off to the train through the stench of Varanasi, off back to delhi to fly away.

With an argument whether my bill was okay.

Dharmsala

2011-07-19T00:13:00.005-04:00

Reformat as usual, mostly due to memory failures.

Sweet air, awoken from the rattling train by the chilling breeze rolling of the Himalayas. A run across platforms in a panic to make the toy train. Cramped quarters, but freshness blowing through the windows, unlike anything I'd experienced in India up to that point. Chugging along through a dark tunnel seeming endless. Moving up the mountain, we finally reach Kangra. No one would take the me, the foreigner, in their packed tight autos, until a kind soul talked a driver to allow me to ride hanging out of the trunk. Apparently 1000 rupees is too much for a 10rs ride, luckily honesty prevailed and breaking was accomplished. Off to the bus, then packed into a tight truck clipping my bag to the roof fearing it would fall at every curve and bump. Finally up in the land of the Dali Lama, McLeod Gange. Before taking anything in an ATM and housing would need to be found, all of which took place pretty quickly. After a bowl of soup, some quick browsing and some momo, I set off to the Dali Lama's residence. I walked down the gauntlet of merchants, and I did not bite, until the end when I got some momo from an old woman. Into the temple I walked around spinning the wheels of time, until I turned around and started to go in reverse, to see the faces of those infront of me. Bed time in the frigid cold and bad movies and tv.

Morning sun shining through, golden shadows on the wall. Yesterday's grey is today's blue, looking out over the foothills below and the snow caped mountains in the far field. Bones warmed by the radient sun, off to make momos the food of the snow capped land. A dark room with light streaming through the air, specs of flour dancing in the light. Our host is there directing us how to stuff and fold little packages. Off to the waterfall, not far away, walking up and down a dirt path. A family playing music, asking for alms. Stretching from home to home all along the mountains, colorful flags fluttering in the air, illuminated by the bright mountain sun. With each step I realize that I'm getting hotter and hotter, a fever seems to have taken root in me, so I turn around prematurely. Soup and Momos, what could be better for dinner on a cold night.

Off to a new abode, conversations with new people with different views and visions of the world. In the evening I went to Lhamo Croissant to watch a movie and to have some traditional Tibetan soup. With strong powerful conversation as a dessert. The next day with a quick stop at Lhamo's I headed off to the waterfall, which I had failed to reach previously. The waterfall was lovely, though the garbage strewn by the Indian tourists was disheartening. On my way down I found my path going through the path of goats and people doing their laundry in the river, the runoff from the waterfall. Another movie at Lhamo's croissant and more bone chilling cold in the evening.

Norbulinka, a research facility for the preservation of Tibeten culture, a lovely site/sight even on cool damp afternoon. Too expensive, and a few miss steps from the bus. A man beating a hammer against a glowing hot blade, an implement to be made, perhaps a scissor. And then I bought my ticket to Bodh Gaya, but then right off to Lhamos for another movie and talk and then sleep.

The next day was just relaxing to explore the vicinity, and it would be my last. Just taking in beautiful weather and sights, and conversation. Then the next day long 4 hour bus ride to my train, which would be about 36hrs, two nights on a train, a not to appealing idea, but appealing in its own way.

Some selections from my original Delhi post:

Delhi Belly

Big Boots,
Black Boots,
Doc Martin's,
Skinny Girl,
Grey Skirt,
Black Shirt,
Leather Satchel,
Tanned Legs,
Dirty-Blond Hair,
Legs Move,
Eyes True,
and a
Reassuring Smile.

Two Naked Men,
In the Dark,
On top of a truck,
Parked in the rain,
On the side of the road,
Lashing a tarp to keep it dry.

No Pastrami in the Delhi

2011-05-24T00:04:00.009-04:00

After some breakfast and tea at Rahul's it was off to Delhi. I had to Coordinate with Vivek's parents to figure out where I where they live and when to meet them, but that was pretty quick and easy and then Rahul's driver brought me to Nizamoudin station. Well as with the first time I drove with him it was like a scary roller coaster, but we did get there safe and sound. Well I was going to Nizamoudin station to cancel my original ticket to Patankot, which I had tried to cancel in Jaipur to facilitate my going to Delhi's first comic convention. Well the people at Nizamoudin ended up telling me that I needed to go to New Delhi station to process a credit card return. The endless chase....

Well I wasn't going to Vivek's parents house until the evening so I had a bunch of time to kill, so even though I was completely burdened with my bag I figured I'd walk around the city and just kind of make my way to the new Delhi station. Delhi wasn't like Jaipur, but it also was no Pondy. I walked from the station which was a bit of a jungle itself and started walking down what seemed like an interesting path, I saw some nice people selling who knows what with a stray dog staying in their proximity and when I walked by the dog lunged out at me and started barking, now me with my pack and lumbar bag just bursted with energy and skedaddled right out of there. I then just kept walking. I eventually found myself resting on the wall outside of the courts and smelled all sorts smells, but I still managed to pull out my lonely planet and try to figure out where to go. I decided on the Museum of modern art, which was quite close by. I made my way inside through their lovely artistic entry way. My bag couldn't fit in their lockers, but the guard was super nice and let me put it on top of the lockers. It was really quite nice to no longer be burdened with the weight of the bag. I walked around and they had this really amazing show of orks by Anish Kapoor, which was really quite nice. However I couldn't stay there all day and I was quite hungry and their food was quite lacking and I might add quite expensive for what it was, so headed out after trying to get a good idea of where to go. I decided on a tea shop located in a book shop. It was surprisingly difficult to actually find the place and on entering they wanted to hold onto my bag, and by protesting and mentioning that I had a laptop in it, they relented. They had some really great tea, I had this amazing Darjeeling first flush and as per the books recommendation a muffin.

It was then time to finally make my way to the station. Now I should have known this better by this point, but no one really knows anything in India, but will have no problem telling you something. So following the map I though I was going the right way but ended up being confronted with a no entry and had to completely re route. I then made my to the tourist office and I told them why I was there and they told me to wait online. When it was finally my turn I was told yet again that I was in the wrong place as they could not process credit cards. Finally I found where I was supposed to go and managed to get the credit. I then had to find a place to recharge my phone, which was simply put an exercise in patience. I then called up Vivek's parents to figure out how to get to their place, Vivek's mother told me to take a cab, I would learn pretty quickly that I could have just taken the metro, but whatever. I found a cab stand, which seemed very confused where to go and the driver then seemed even more confused, so I tried to help by using my phone which I had marked down Vivek's house on maverick, well maverick had found the wrong location and I directed us completely the wrong way, well no completely, about a 10 minute walk. The driver then tried to charge me more money than was agreed upon for what was actually a shorter drive than what it should have been, I refused to pay the extra money. Well I gave Vivek's parents a call and luckily his father was nice enough to come and pick me up, well with a little help from a very nice Indian man who walked with me to a meeting point. On the way to meeting Vivek's father the man told me how he walked every day to work I believe 7 miles every day (at this point I can't remember the specifics too well). On arriving at there home after very kindly being driven by Vivek's father I was amazingly well fed, both with food and superb conversation with Vivek's parents. Vivek's father is a mechanical engineer who specializes in renewable forms of energy in many ways and his mother is a former school teacher who now designs the curriculum for much of the delhi school system. Not meaning to cut things short, but after some lengthy discussion I had to excuse myself for a shower and sleep.

In the morning I was fed some lovely food, including toast and cheese, which really is one of my favorite foods, some potato porotta with indian pickles and Dahi. After getting my fill of food I went off to try and find an internet cafe listed in one of the deli books that Vivek's mother had given me, but I couldn't manage to find it, even though it was in Hauz Kaz Village, which seemed to be where I was staying. I then managed to find the metro station and my way to the national gallery, which in all honesty was a bit of a let down, but the metro was amazing. They had some very interesting items at the national gallery, but it was very poorly organized and set up. There was a lovely if not overly ordinate display provided by the Thai government for housing the bones of Sidartha, which seemed most antithetical to the Buddha's ideals. I then went back to the station to try and buy 20 single ride tokens to the cheapest station I could find, they would sell them to me so I bought to, this started my game of trying to obtain as many tokens and cards as possible. I then made my way to the Indira Gandhi arts center, which had an interesting even going on, but honestly it was not that interesting or worthwhile of an adventure. I then made my way over to Khan market, which was a dirty expensive market, where I essentially hoped to simply find some internet. I ended up finding a McDonald's, which I don't even eat in the US, but I decided to try their vegi burger, which though looked very very un appealing was actually one of the better vegi burgers I'd ever had. And that ended up pretty much being the end of my day, well I then grabbed some great dinner and conversation at Vivek's parents' home.

Off to the red fort, I'd say more Pink, but first some internet. After that up to the red fort, which honestly was nice, but not amazing. They charge tourists much more money for tickets, but you get a shorter line, which I suppose is nice. I then went off to the location that Gandhi was assassinated and where he stayed when he was in Delhi. This was actually one of my favorite places in Delhi and it had come highly recommended by Vivek's father. There was an interesting media installation going on as well as some great history about Gandhi. The place was filled with monks who seemed to be making a pilgrimage there. It was one of the most sedate places I had seen in India up to that point. I then went back to Vivek's where I met up with his father so that we could go to an Indian poetry reading. Specifically the reading was all in Hindi as it has become common in India for such pursuits to be done in English. I ended up excusing myself half way through.

The next day was my last day in Delhi and with it came going to the comic convention, I'd been trying to get in contact with Rahul to no avail, but finally I got through to him and he informed me that he had been in a car accident. He was fine as was fine, but his car was destroyed, this was vaguely ironic as I had just complimented his driving especially because he doesn't honk so much, but the honking might have stopped the truck from backing over his front end. The convention was interesting if not more sedate than previous ones I've attended, but you could feel a very positive energy. I then headed back to Vivek's had a quick dinner with Vivek's father and then made my way to the station where madness began. First off I lost a towel, not a huge deal, but I quickly figured out that something was wrong with my ticket as even though it said NDS I was supposed to go to old delhi, well I panicked (always a bad idea) and tried to get a cab, forgetting that I could have taken the metro. I was immediately accosted by a horde of drivers who essentially wouldn't let me leave and gave me no room for bargaining, essentially they took almost all of my cash in my pocket, I luckily had a bit more, but not really much. I ended up getting to the station just by a hair and got on the train in a state of anger, much worse than panic.

Every time dishonesty dishonesty is leveled against me I become a little more disgusting.

Chop>
Chop>
Chop>
...
Chop>
Crash-

How much can a tree take?
Be a tree of Iron

I am but an echo through time and space
Of what I am, what I will be, and what I was

Oh to be a Vulcan
Life would be so much easier
No qualms or hesitation
Only one road to take
But what would be the joy in life?

always in a rush, never there
a little bit of patience, always here.

Jaipur

2011-04-22T23:02:00.009-04:00

First off I have to apologize for the massive delay in posting, things simply got crazy and hectic. Historically this is the pattern with my blog, but there were some major reasons, which if people would prefer I can tell them sooner than later, but otherwise I will be doing things in chronological order.

As the train arrived departed at 6:10am I obviously didn't get to sleep the entire journey especially as it was over night. I ended up really only taking a relatively short nap until breakfast was surved (the train I was on had food included in the AC2 class), which was really bad, I started to really see here how variable food can be on the trains. The train ride mostly consisted of either trying to read 100 years of solitude (great book), listening to pod casts, sleeping, eating and getting in contact with Rahul, that really was it. I suppose it was around this train trip that I started to lose a great deal of the romanticism with Indian Rail travel. This was also my first train to be significantly late, but I would learn that this is just normal for trains in India.

So I was arriving in Nizzamoudin station, which is the southern main rail station of Delhi and was to meet Rahul's driver, who was going to drive me to meet Rahul at his factory. This was the beginning of a very surprising and interesting adventure to say the lease. Rahul's driver speaks next to no English and I'm convinced is quite crazy. He was doing chew the entire ride and driving and honking like a mad man. On this car trip I very clearly learned how lines on highways are also used as lanes. By this I mean that on a two lane high way there can be up to three cars next to each other. It seems like almost every time I entered a vehicle in India I discovered a new fear of the roads. Well I arrived at Rahul's factory and was first greeted by his wife, who brought me into his office and I had some tea and biscuits. Meeting Rahul was great, we had a great conversation and then went over to his home where I met his family and had a good shower and some good home cooked Jaine food. After some more conversation Rahul then brought me over to the bus station where I grabbed a bus for Jaipur to spend the night and the next day there.

The bust ride was a very interesting one I guess. At first it wasn't all that special, but there were a bunch people giving me very odd looks, more than usual, and the ticket taker ended up sitting next to me watching my phone. Suddenly there was the sound of a crash and shattered glass and I instinctively ducked and when I look up the windshield was partly broken. After a bit more driving we pulled over and we all got on another bus, but no major problem. When we finally did arrive in Jaipur is was raining a bit and it was late and I had no idea where the hotel was that Rahul had booked me (it would turn out to be an insanely nice one) in was so I grabbed an auto rickshaw after a little negotiating, which was impossible to fully go my way, and which I was a little too tired to even fully carry out. At first the guys seemed mostly nice, with superb english, but then he got into talking to me about illegal jobs that he wanted me to do and he simply wouldn't stop regardless of how nice I was in my entreaties to him to stop. On arriving I told him how much I thought the ride should have cost, which he first agreed I was correct about and then quickly went back on. I probably would have felt more uncomfortable continuing to do this, but a guard from the hotel came to the auto and then I quickly paid and then checked in and got room 212, I thought this was a pretty good sign. Well it was too late to go to the pool, lol, but I did grab a quick bite, the food wasn't the worst, but it wasn't really that great. I then settled into the room, tried to fix a credit card issue I'd been having and then got my phone on the task of downloading maps of the area, and finally a good nights rest.

In the morning I grabbed a quick breakfast, and then brought down my bag for them to hold durring the day. I asked them the best way to the train station (I had some ticket stuff to handle), they told me to take a car, I chose to walk. It was a bit over cast,but one of the nice things I saw when I first stepped out was a large and by large I mean a lane and half wide bike lane in each direction and separated bus lanes with bus level boarding, but it was a bit over caste outside. Walking down the street began not so bad, but the traffic quickly picked up and with that the noise and odors. At one point I turned down the street and was welcomed by the sight of a camel pulling a cart, definitely not the U.S.. For some reason that completely alludes me every station in India have huge complexes of buildings, which are generally arranged in random ways, which means it can often be a long hunt for the reservations office. The reservation office wasn't all that bad, I was able to get a new ticket for heading to Dharmsala (I was changing my ticket ticket Rahul had invited me to Delhi's first ever comic convention), but when I tried to return a ticket that I had bought in Madurai with a credit card I was told that I coud only return such a ticket in Delhi, this is where that learning why not to by tickets with a credit card came into play. I then helped an older gentleman who seemed to be an American Indian who was back in India visiting family. The advice I gave him, was technically correct, but I felt bad giving it as I think it is part of what is wrong with the Indian rail system, but I gave it because it was the correct advice to give. I told him that even if he is unsure of going he shouldn't wait because if he were to they would sell out so he might as well just buy all of the tickets that he might need. He was with a young man who seemed to be a relation of his living in India that he was visiting who agreed with my advice and then he bought his tickets.

On leaving the station I found myself suddenly in the midst of a beautiful day. There were puddles everywhere which needed dodging and cars that needed to be avoided as well as the splashes from the puddles in their paths. I continued to navigate my way around the city taking in its sights, sounds and smells, and as this was just after the rain it was actually smelling and feeling quite clean. After dodging a number of cars to cross the street I decided that I was getting quite hungry so I started to look for sustenance. Suddenly in front of my is a horse coming down the street towing behind it some people and then I notice and an interesting looking restaurant. On walking up to the restaurant I quickly got usurer in, but I didn't let them seat me until I took a look at the menu. The menu was simply scary, it was filled with a huge number of foods from a large number of countries, I felt bad in doing so, but to me such a menu is a bad sign, so I quickly extricated myself from the restaurant. I was honestly just basking in the beauty of a day that it had become. I just started to follow google maps to what looked like it might be a fort.

Well I continued wandering and wondering, and ended up getting what I almost always get, some samosa's. Well I ended up in this interesting looking neighborhood that seemed nice enough. A group of kids asked me to take their photo, I kindly obliged and they were exceedingly excited, especially after I showed them their photos. I then continued down the street where some older guys very awkwardly also asked for me to take their photo, they were both odd and forceful in their request and they really just ended up making fun of one of them after seeing the photos. I then continued down the street and found myself in a nice little market. Suddenly out of now where a whole bunch of kids started asking me for photos, and I kindly obliged and everything was going quite dandy. They then decided to start following me, which made me feel somewhat like the pied piper of hamelin, but such an interesting situation can't last long, and pretty quickly after one rude kid started asking for money they all followed suit. They then started pushing me and pushing each other into me. I decided that I would go another way as the kids showed no signs of letting up, when I passed by a shop on my way out I suddenly got water or some liquid thrown on me. I then screamed at the kids, which probably was completely incomprehensible to them. I then made haste to an auto rickshaw stand I had seen on my way still with the kids following and screaming at me from behind. I found an auto rickshaw driver relatively quickly and hopped into an auto rickshaw and waited for the driver to figure out how to get me to where I need going, but as this was India it took a little while, and durring the time the kids continued to surround me and even entered the auto. Eventually a kind man came to my aid and shooed the kids away and then I was off back to the Hotel to fetch my things.

So after actually having to guide the auto rickshaw back to the hotel using my phone as the driver and his friend didn't know how to get there, they had the gaul to try to raise the price that we had originally decided on. Well after getting payment sorted out I contacted Rahul to coordinate him picking me up at the bus. Well the people at the hotel were super nice and friendly and I fetched my bag and went over the bus station. At the bus station I grabbed some peanut brittle found my bus and sat down. The bus ride was really quite eventful. I told the driver where I was going, but I always get nervous so I had marked on my phone where the stop was. Through great coordination with Rahul and my phone I managed to get off at the right place with Rahul knowing, but I was standing on the wrong side of the highway. In the middle of the night I didn't really feel like it would be a good idea to just run across the highway, but Rahul came across and we then ran across together. Apparently there was an underpass, but it was apparently filled with mud and cow shit, rendering essentially unusable. Well getting into the car with Rahul was a very different experience. He didn't honk his horn once, which was shocking, even when there were a huge number of vehicles driving around in the incorrect directions. Well we got back to Rahul's house had a bite and then I went to bed.

Darkness Driving, Unexpected paths.
Where to is inconsequential.

No Light ahead, only here and behind.

Tamil Nadu

2011-03-05T01:36:00.000-05:00

So the bust driver out of Munnar was much much better than the one into Munnar. This driver took the decent very calmly, which made the ride much much better and allowed all those on board to take in the beautiful views. We even got to see monkeys, though they didn't seem to be the trained variety that pick tea leaves for humans, man I would love a helper monkey. Now of course the entire ride was kept company by the loud incessant honking, though it at least seemed logical for many of the blind curves going down the hills. When we finally reached Theni I was in much higher spirits than I had predicted, but this didn't last long as almost immediately the beggars returned. Having traveled such a short distance it was shocking how different things seemed from Kerala. After switching and getting on the bus to Madurai, while being forced to have my pack on my lap, a man immediately started begging at my window and wouldn't go away so I finally just shut the window, which he then smacked. The ride to Madurai wasn't that bad other than the fact that I had my pack on my lap the entire 3 hours. The other problem with both bus rides is that I spent the entire time calling every hotel in lonely planet to reserve a room, but every hotel said they were full, this ended up meaning that I would have to get a really expensive room, but this wasn't that big of a deal as I was only planning on being their for a night and I was actually hoping to get a good nights rest, which has for the most part been alluding me. So after arriving I had a rick shaw driver drop me at the train station, got a room and then I went to the train station to get a ticket to go to Puducherry.

I managed to deal with the whole information part of the ticket and bought a ticket, which I was told would require a tourist quota and to go up to the ticket master's office. At the same time I met a couple from Scotland who were also buying a ticket and had to deal with the same problem, though I finished first. So I went up to the ticket master's office who had me skip everyone as he seemed very happy to deal with a foreigner and said that there was no quota available, but told me I was one of his VIPs and to comeback tomorrow. I then went to wonder around the town looking for food. I ended up running into the Scottish couple and we started looking for food together. We ended up going to a Thali restaurant, which was quite good, though we had a few miss-communications with the staff, but no real problems. We then wondered around and decided to look for some chai. I remembered seeing a place called best coffee in town (I figured they'd also have chai) near my hotel so we decided to head over there. Of course on ordering we found out that they didn't have chai, but rather they only had coffee, so we all decided to get a cup. The server, this was no barista, deftly poured the black coffee mixed with sugar with hot milk back and forth between two cups, cooling and mixing it together leaving a frothy cup to be drunk. On my first sip it just hit me that it tasted so much like canned coffee, now most Americans have never had canned coffee, but in Japan it is super common and this was perhaps a slightly sweeter and milkier and UCC coffee I guess. Honestly most chai in India has way too much milk and way to much sugar, too much sugar for me even when I was a little kid of about 5 or so, with my usual at the purity diner I didn't put sugar in my tea, though I did put milk in my tea to emulate the appearance of my mother's coffee, coffee being something I wasn't allowed to drink at such a young age. Then we all parted ways and went to our respective hotels. This was my first time with a working TV in quite a while so I decided to flip through the channels and put on the news. Almost immediately I was greeted by reports of unrest in Darjeeling due to the police killing three protesters. This was very disheartening news as Darjeeling is one of the places in India that I've most wanted to go to. I then decided that I wanted wash up and went to fill up the washing basin, but found no hot water so I called down to the desk, they informed me that there was only hot water in the morning, but that they would send up a bucket of hot water. Then after watching some more TV, sleep...

The next morning it was off to Madurai's chief attraction, its Hindu temple. Now it was day and the city looked completely different than it had the night before. The first clear thing was that the street was littered with sugar cane juice sales men. These people have carts laden with large amounts of sugar cane and a juicer, which consist either of hand cranks or gas powered engines turning two parallel rollers, which have the sugar cane pass between crushing the sugar can and extracting the juice. There were also lots of bananas, and by lots I really do mean lots, many of them were being transported around the city on the back of these large cargo bicycles, which make up a huge segment for transporting goods cities. Almost immediately a relatively friendly Indian gentlemen came up directing me to where I would have to leave my shoes when I went into the temple and where I could go onto a roof to get a good view of the city. Relatively quickly it became clear that his motivations weren't entirely altruistic. On getting to the place with the roof it was clear that the place was also a shop so that a major aspect would be them trying to sell me stuff that I was in no way interested in buying. The view from the roof was actually quite nice and worth seeing but, then on my way down they started the hard sell. I kept telling the sales person that I wasn't very interested and that the stuff was too expensive as it was a relatively expensive shop. Another sales person was bringing some other tourists up to the roof and after they were out of ear shot he started chastising me for using the word expensive as he felt that nothing was expensive rather everything was simply properly priced. We ended up in a bit of a tiff and I immediately left the establishment. Almost immediately afterwards the man that directed me to the shop started having a conversation with me, but very quickly he started to tell me about how he was a tailor and wanted to make me clothing. At the time I really didn't want to take on any more baggage. So I dropped off my shoes and went to the temple. The temple was nice and interesting, but most of the places that looked like they would be best were off limits to none Hindus. I think this is a little ridiculous as I've been to countless houses of warship through out the world of countless religions and other than some Mosques I've never been denied entry. At one point I got on a line not realized it was only for Hindus when a guard came up to me freaking and out started directing me out, at first I got quite happy as I thought he might be directing me to some tourist line, but pretty quickly I realized I was simply getting kicked out of the area. After seeing everything that there was to see at least for my western eyes I started making my way towards the Gandhi Museum. After getting my shoes a women started to follow me begging. I kept trying to politely say no, but she persisted so I decided to just walk a bit quicker, in India without even thinking about it I out pace pretty much everyone, in the end she first started trying to run to keep up with me and then quickly gave up.

The walk was quite interesting winding and weaving down the various streets. I decided that I wouldn't really check my book and just kind of go the way that seemed to make sense and ask directions. Most everyone I asked was super helpful but they were all shocked that I would walk it and kept tell me to take an auto or something. This is one of those weird of oddities of India, I've not been able to figure out if they tell me this because I am a foreigner or if they themselves wouldn't walk, but all I know is that when they do this it is almost always more than walkable. I then eventually made it to this bridge that went over a river bed, it seemed like perhaps at time the river is a bit higher, but at this time it was quite shallow and there were water buffalo in little pools bathing themselves, children playing and people doing laundry, leaving the large areas covered with laundry to dry, the stench was horrid. I kept walking and eventually a group of kids were super helpful and directed me to the final leg of my journey to the museum. On getting to the museum I was informed that I would only have a very short while as their lunch break was fast approaching. So I went in and made for a quick look. The museum was nice, they even have the bloodied mundu worn by Gandhi when he was assassinated. I then decided to head back to the city center and just kind of explore. A man with a bike rickshaw then started to kind of follow me regardless of how often I told him I was uninterested in a ride. This time I took a different root and walked down a street with a little market where women were selling mostly vegetables. When I went to take some photos most of the people were very nice, but this one women started throwing things at me, so I quickly left. This time I made my way across a much large bridge across the same river bed, on passing this one small segment I had to hold my breath for a minute or so as the stench of urine was completely overwhelming. The sounds were also quite over whelming, but it would have been quite ridiculous and impractical for me to plug my ears while journeying through the city. Pretty quickly I started to realize that I was in need of water and was quite hot so I decided to head back to the hotel very briefly and grab some water. On my way back the bicycle rickshaw driver found me again and started pestering me again, this time he seemed to heed my enteritis to him to leave me be. It really was quite hot and I came a across a church where I found a few moments of respite from the hot sun and finished what remained of my water.

After making my way back to the hotel I cooled off and got my stuff all packed up and then just wandered around town as my train was not 'till 11pm. It quickly became clear that the city was just filling up and filling up with more and more people. Slowly the city was just getting so much louder and louder as with the more and more people came it meant that there was more and more traffic. I honestly just couldn't take the noise and the pushing any longer so I went back my hotel (I had already checked out, but they had my bag) and just went to their rooftop restaurant, which many of the hotels in Madurai figuring it was the only place I could get away from the noise. In the end it was probably my best bet, but I could still hear most of everything, though certainly a more reasonable volume. It was actually quite nice, there were a few fire works and the view of the temple was quite nice at night. The food was certainly only okay, but the rice was actually much better than most of the rice you find in Indian restaurants.

I had a few a hours, but headed over to the station none the less. I decided to wait in the waiting room of the station and found my self next to an Englishmen reading a paper and asked him if he would tell me if there was anything about Darjeeling in there, he told me there was nothing and I started to read. Pretty soon a group of Indians, three men and three women sat next to me. Pretty quickly they started asking to take pictures with me. This lasted for maybe 20 minutes with them also asking me various questions. After they left I went looking for the Scottish couple. I found them and we had a pretty good discussion until they left. Eventually their train came and I was left waiting alone again. My train then came and I quickly got on and tried to sleep. The train then arrived at 6am. From the station we had to take a bus to Puducherry. I ended up asking these two dutch travelers, thinking they were waiting for a train at the station, where the bust stop was, they quickly pointed the way and said they were going there themselves. The two Dutchmen started to do what I had already learned is a stupid thing to do, but as I had somewhat attached myself onto them I couldn't really effect things, so they started to ask cab drivers and auto rick shaws where to get the bus, they all directed us to take a ride to the bus station. I pretty quickly started to suspect that we could just grab a bus at a station, but I went along none the less. We got an auto to the station and I quickly got us onto the right bus. On the bus I very quickly told the Dutchmen that I bet the bus stops at the station, which it ended up doing so. The money collector then came by to get money from us and I asked him how much, he put up one finger and I asked him one what, to which he put one finger up again, so I was about to give him one rs, but quickly one of the two Dutchmen quickly proffered a 100rs note to the collector, in exchange he got a slip saying the cost was 48rs for all of us and our bags. Through the ride we kept trying to get the collector to give us our change, but he wouldn't relent until finally another rider started to pester him for us. Well once the bus arrived I decided when the two Dutchmen decided to get an auto to the the city center to part ways as I knew it was no more than a 15min walk. I then quickly made my way to the town center area where all the rooms are and it was exceedingly clear when I made it to the French area as not only was the grid orderly, but it was also clean.

Well it was too early for any of the places to give me a room so I just hung out with my bag at one place and ended up meeting and just talking with one of the guards who was from Nepal and this German man. I then went looking for rooms again and actually saw for the first time in India a garbage truck and street cleaning crew, truly amazing. Still no luck finding a room. Finally at 9am I found a place that had a vacancy and took the room quickly up after consulting with another place run by Frenchmen and being told by the first place I went to that it was unlikely that they would have a vacancy. After getting a little settled and getting cleaned up I asked the proprietors where to get some wifi. They directed me to a little on the next street over. On my way in I got confronted by a some sort of TV crew doing a show a Puducherry. I tried to explain to them that I just arrived and really knew nothing about the place yet. But they said that they hadn't had a person from NYC yet so they wanted to interview me, well their loss I'd say. After the very awkward interview I made my way to the little cafe with the wifi and got myself a cheese crepe, hold the salad (not wanting to trust how the uncooked greens would have been cleaned). It was here that I first came across my next short term traveling companion, Rosie. On email I started to correspond with a friends mother about staying in Delhi with them and the same friend's friend Rahu who lives near Delhi. I then went off to explore the city and check out their hand made paper making Ashram and various other sites.

Puducherry really is clean and smelling good. It also isn't nearly as noisy, well all of these are true in the neatly ordered grid on the coast, which is part of the French side of town. It really was quite a peaceful pleasure. On getting to the Ashram you hit the outer ring, which is where things start to get hectic and smelly, but still not like anywhere else I'd been in India before. Of course as always the Ashram was out for lunch so I had to walk around and waste some time. Finally I got in and checked out their wears. After looking around I made my way for a coastal walk and saw their nice Gandhi statue, once again every town and or city has one, and even walked by a Basken Robin's. I also saw for the first time very clearly how they do road repair in India. Essentially they have a bunch of men and women in plain clothes lay their re-bar, delivered by bike, down and then page directly on top of the old road. Essentially the roads are just layered on top of each layer, this is essentially a really bad way to repair roads. I then following Lonely planets rough walking tour came across a cafe they have listed and while looking at their very uninspired menu came across Rosie again, who was reading the Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, a good book in my opinion. So we ended up just wandering around the town talking. It turned out that she was perhaps the tenth person I'd met from Melbourne so another in a line of an established pattern. We grabbed some food at the beach and then separated for a bit to get our own things in order then met again to grab some food, but first we went over to the beach and just sat and talked, no sunset to see as we were on the east coast of India, but then made a journey looking for food. Food was harder to find than you might think as most of the Indian seemed very tourist oriented and the rest was simply places that had too much of everything, essentially indecisive menus in my opinion are generally signs of bad food in all areas. We finally settled on an Italian joint and split two Pizzas also continuing a long pattern on this trip. The pizza though not amazing was actually surprisingly good. We then decided to meet in the morning and grab some breakfast and then decide on where to go. I then gave Rahul a call and we decided that we would meet in Delhi and he told me that he would talk to his aunt, but that he thought that the news was probably over reacting and that Darjeeling was safe.

In the morning we went back to the French cafe and quickly decided on going to Auroville and that we would ride bikes out of the city and Into the moving traffic jam. I have a masala chai and a crepe du formage et champagone, this is Pondy's duality in a meal.

Saddled up, and ready to ride into the storm, we don't yet know what craziness awaits us. Beginning the journey things go quite well, for me the only challenge is acclimating to riding on the left, which isn't too much of a problem and the calmness and order of the French quarter is simply like riding in a very quiet suburb in the U.S. but with more interesting sites. Well once we hit the outer ring as I noticed the previous day while walking we suddenly were in a totally different world of madness and chaos. Now instead of feeling like every auto rickshaw driver was harassing me for a fare I felt like they were all trying to kill me. The most bizarre part of the ride was simply how many people in India ride their bicycles against traffic. Now this isn't everyone, but the rate of Salmoning in India is much higher than in NYC. We just kept going and occasionally we would stop to consult my phone to see how much further we had to go, but it can some times be hard to when in a new environment directly translate scales to action. We were looking for a decent sized road, it turned out we should have been looking for a tiny alley. The entire ride we were continuously being honked at passed very closely, at one point a bus that was honking came with inches of Rosie. Well we road right past our turn and went quite a few km well out of our way until we checked my phone and discovered our folly. Well this was quickly remedied and this time I lead the way and we made the right turn. We ended up a on a very nice quiet road that wound up and down through some nice fields and very little other than one bakery with questionably looking goods next to a little resort hotel and eventually we made our way to the main road to Auroville. We then after a brief stop made our way to Auroville. At this point I'll explain what Auroville is, it is supposed to be a Utopian community, but like so many supposed Utopian communities is comes off as being a bit cultish, but they seem to do some good. They also built a huge temple type place that honestly to me was simply ugly and seemed quite wasteful. Such useless structures always seem to make me question any true positive ideals for any such community, but everyone did seem quite nice. Though one observation that I made was that all of the western members seemed to be following very idyllic pursuits, but only a few of the Indian members seemed to be pursuing and thing other than the manual labor related tasks. Well both myself an Rosie were a bit disgusted by what we saw and it was starting to get late so we decided to head back so that we wouldn't have to ride in the dark. The ride back was no better.

On returning we tried to get Rosie a ticket to Bombay, which was unsuccessful, they told her to comeback the next day. We then went to dinner to a place that was recommended as having good Indian food and it did, though for India it was a bit pricey, but it was certainly good. Towards the end of dinner I decided to check my ticket for the next day that for some reason I had convinced myself departed Chenai at 7pm, but on looking at my ticket I realized it departed at 6am. This sent me into a panic requiring me to figure out how to get to Cheni that night instead of the next day. Luckily I was quickly told that I could get a bus at 11 so Rosie and myself part ways and went to the bus station for a three hour ride to Chenai.

On getting to the station I literally kept hopping from Chenai bus to Chenai bus looking for the correct route taking the ECR (East Coastal Road) and ended up hoping onto the correct bus as it was already backing out of its space, I did this while wearing both of packs. The bus ride wasn't too bad though it was long, but I suppose that was to be expected, I pretty much just tried to read a book that Rosie had given me by the Nobel laureate Gabriel Marquez “one hundred years of solitude”, but with the lack of light and with the bumpiness of the ride so I ended up just trying to read some stuff on my phone. Finally we arrived and I got an auto rickshaw to the train station where I would wait 'till my train departed. The station was swarming with insects specifically mosquitoes due to the pools of water due to the half assed cleaning that was currently taking place. The cleaning consisted of a group of women sweeping dirty water around the station and occasionally one women would run through the water with a squeegee. The craziest thing about this whole scene was the large number of Indians that were walking through the mess bare footed and sleeping on the floor while the women were sweeping this dirty water just around them while the insects swarmed. After a little bit a settled down next to a Singaporean who ended up preaching to me about veganism and about Jesus being Indian and how such a truth had been revealed to him by an enlighten guru in the mountains of Kashmir.

Well the train eventually came and I hoped on board and went to sleep, finally.

Serene Path,
Disturbed by desire,
Tainted thought,
No more peace of mind.

Kerala

2011-02-21T10:22:00.000-05:00

Stepping off the train into Ernakulum out of my nice 2nd AC train car, the warmth and humidity immediately hit me, this is a different world. Based on the advice of my traveling companions I was off to get a different ticket to Delhi and Pathankot than I had originally planned. So I went over to the ticket counter and patiently waited my turn, India would appear to be one of the few former English Colonies that does not consider the Que sacred. Well after waiting I was quickly informed that I needed the reservation office and not the ticket counter, this would be an oft repeated occurrence for myself. They pointed me on my way, but it wasn't terribly clear where they meant, so I was still a bit confused and I was then more precisely directed on where to go by a kind gentlemen, who later made it clear to me that he had been hanging around me hoping to make me his passenger. After lot's of back and forth I managed to get two new tickets, one of my tickets ended up requiring me to go to the head office to get a tourist quota seat assigned to me, they were extremely nice, and by buying my ticket with a credit card, which would haunt me later on in my travels. It was my intention to walk to the ferry to Fort Cochin and the driver kept telling me how it was too far and that the ferries are on lunch until three, but it was a lovely day so I walked. Of course this was my first time being a pedestrian in a not even too crazy city, but none the less it was considerably more challenging than walking in NYC.

It seems Gandhi is everywhere in India and after walking west to the water I was met by a roundabout with a large Gandhi statue in it's center. This is about when I started to realize that no one was begging, this would actually be constant during my entire stay in Kerala, successful communist government, perhaps. Well on arriving at the ferry, which was both not a very long walk and also quite lovely along a nice park, though I couldn't seem to gain access as all of the gates were locked, but there were many children playing and having what appeared to be worlds of fun, I found that there were two lines, one for women and one for men and that the ferries were running without a problem. The ferry was unbelievably cheap, just 2rs, which is about 5 cents and quite quick with some fairly nice views.

On alighting from the ferry and walking around Fort Cochin I was bombarded every few minutes by a cab or auto rickshaw driver offering to drive me around, they kept lowering their prices and getting more and more angry with me for not taking their offers, seemingly to me because they thought I was too cheap as they found it unbelievable that I would want to walk, but it was a lovely day and I had every interest in walking around and getting my bearings. I made my way past all of the tourists and the Chinese fishing nets and decided to look for a place away from all of the tourists and started walking towards one of the places in Lonely Planet, of course they were all full up, but the owner was exceedingly nice, offered me tea, bananas and helped me figure out where I should try next, she also knew who 'Noah' was, which I would find to be quite uncommon in India, everywhere else people never seem to understand me when I say 'Noah'. Not to long after my arrival and calling another place that said they had room another tourist showed up and was sent on. I decided then that it would be best to get going. On arriving at the next home-stay I saw the person who had arrived after me sitting in an auto rickshaw just out front and up stairs I found their companion negotiating for a room. After being chastised briefly for taking so long, which instilled a fear in me that I would have no room, but luckily they were just trying to have a little fun at my expense and I ended up with a decently nice room, mind you with out hot water, which at first concerned me, but after taking a long walk in the hot sun, I realized that it would be of little concern. Before leaving a arranged to take a cooking class the next day at 11am.

Well never one to let the day go by without some type of accomplishment especially when in a foreign land, I went down for a walk towards Montecherry and had to compete not just with other pedestrians, cars and bicycles but also the occasional cow, not your average NYC road user that's for sure. Interestingly pedestrians in Indian seem to usually walk with traffic as apposed to walking against traffic. This always seems to cause issues for me, because I'm always trying to walk against traffic so that I can see what next crazy whirl wind is approaching, but then I have considerably more conflicts with pedestrians than I would usually expect to have. For the most part Fort Cochin didn't seem to smell to bad, but when I had to cross a canal I was immediately hit by a terrible stench, which made me increase my pace. I made my way finally to what is referred to as Jew Town as historically there was a large Jewish population there, which is thought to have come to Kerala after the destruction of the second temple, but as it was a Friday the synagogue was closed. But I came across a nice Women's Cooperative, which was selling organically produced spices. It was here that I first saw that the spices in India were no better than what we can get in the U.S. and often times they don't have quite the same Q.C.'s that we have, so I got some nice stuff that is slightly hard to find back home, for a little less than it would be there, but knowing that dealing with the co-op meant that the money was going to the right places. I also started to see how big tea, cocoa and coffee are in the south, but after doing some research in the not so distant future my suspicions were confirmed that none of them are really considered to be of too high of quality as it is too hot and wet for tea and too cool for coffee and cocoa.

On my way back to the guest house I made my way back down the road and was looking for a place called Krishna Cafe, which was recommended to me by one of the people at the guest house that I was staying at. I some how managed to find it even though it was getting quite dark and with all of the traffic. I had a good Thali, which is perhaps the main food of the south, some cutlets and some masala chai. I made my way back to the hostel, some how, and said hello to the people running the hostel, who kindly informed me that the cooking class would have to be moved to 3pm, this would prove to be grand providence. I went to my room took a shower and tried to go to sleep. By try, I mean I laid in bed and tried every trick I could think of to no avail. I was lying there in bed with my mind racing over so many things about my travels and I wondered to myself if I would ever fall asleep. At 2am I turned on a pod cast I had downloaded on my Droid Incredible and finally drifted off to sleep by around 4 or 5. Well with going to sleep so late comes waking up late, so I ended up, even though I had set an alarm for noon, waking at about 2pm. So luckily the cooking class was moved and I was able to quickly and very groggily get myself ready and then at three I was picked up for the class.

The cooking class was actually held at another, smaller guest house which had a French mother and son staying as well as a slightly elderly Israeli women and her two middle aged sons. The first thing we did was go over the recipes, which she had me write down in my notebook. We were making Coconut rice, Coconut Pancake rolls, fried potatoes, an Eggplant curry and a lentil dish. She mostly had me do various chopping tasks. For me I'm so used to using sharp knives, it was a little weird using knives that couldn't even cut my finger, this was also exacerbated by the fact that the counters were made for someone who is no taller than 4'6” tall. By the end I had an aching back. There is this habit that I'm sure everyone has observed where people, especially with seasoned home chefs, cut thing with the blade towards their thumbs, I can never do this, I guess I was taught well by the cub scouts. When it came to making the pancakes I guess I misunderstood how much batter to use so I ended up making way too many little pancakes. With all of the food done It was then my job to eat this enormous amount of food. This was simply not possible in one sitting and luckily I was invited back to finish at dinner time. While eating I got into a good conversation with the Israeli family, mostly by asking them what they though about the whole Egypt situation. One of the sons had absolutely no Idea what I was talking about as he had apparently already been traveling for quite a while and I ended up informing them about Jordan's situation.

Well after, my brunch I walked back over to the guest house, took a shower as I was still feeling terrible sleepy and it being so hot in Cochin and after spending a few hours in a kitchen, one really needs a shower. Afterwards I went for a walk, just to explore and made my way back to the guest house where I took the cooking class. This time my hostess' two daughters were playing the whole time while I ate. I some how got the feeling that they were about 2 years apart from how they were playing, so I asked and I was told that they were 20 months apart, the younger was born in April and the elder was born in May. I found this interesting as my brother and myself are 22months apart and I'm born in April, so I informed my hostess of this and asked when her daughter born in April was born, to which she responded the 29th, so by some weird coincidence we were only off by one day. The girls kept playing hide and seek, but seem to always hide in the exact same place, so I'm not so sure that was exactly their intention. By the end I couldn't finish all my coconut pancake rolls, so I offered them to everyone else. I then said my thanks and headed back to the guest house and stopped for a bottle of water along the way. I somehow forgot to take 50rs in change and just started walking off. About 5min later some car drives by screaming to me that I forgot 50rs at the shop so I head back and thankfully retrieve my forgotten change.

On getting back and getting to bed again I was being attacked by mosquito's regardless of how much repellent I used. Again I feared that sleep would never come while I laid back in bed pondering everything around me. Luckily I still managed to get myself up so that I wouldn't entirely miss the day. However I had managed already to cover most of Fort Cochin and Montecherry so there wasn't really all that much left for me to do. Really all that I needed to do that day was to actually see the synagogue, as I figured that through out my travels I've seen pretty much every other religions holy sites and houses of warship, so why not go to a synagogue, and I was having dinner that night at the Taj with my friend Nick's Parents. On getting to the synagogue I ran into the Israeli family and had a nice quick exchange and then I went off to the synagogue. On first glance it was really quite dirty and not like any other synagogue I'd ever been to, but on looking at the floor, which at first glance consisted of four types of tiles, was actually quite complex where every tile was in some way actually completely unique. They also had a particularly nice little museum that told the story of the synagogue and the main population of the Jews of India. I should note that they actually don't allow cameras inside and that on the front door hung a sign informing the residents about a birth right trip, how funny. I decided then to walk through this little passage way, which contained a book store and cafe. I decided to browse the book shop and saw some seemingly interesting books and then suddenly a book about Jesus living in India caught my eye. The books premise was that Jesus during his lost years studied Buddhism, attained enlightenment and then returned to Israel, it then further went on to say the Jesus survived the crucifixion and then returned to India to die of old age in Kashmir, I could help to let out a little chuckle. I then just went wondering around the Island and at one point went by this building with barbed wire and smelled like urine, it was most pleasant.

I then returned to the guest house and I had the manager order me an Auto Rickshaw for 5:30am to take me to the bus station to catch a bus to Munnar. I then had to rush over to the ferry station to make the last ferry to Wellington Island, which I ended up making with time to spare. Arriving at the Taj I realized how different of a world I had been traveling in than the world that Nick's parents were staying in. The place I guess was quite nice from the outside, but according to Nick's parents it actually wasn't all that amazing in the rooms and was in their opinion quite over priced for what you got. We had what was a pretty good dinner, but I would say even better conversation. It was my conversation with Nick's parents, especially with his father, which I would say started to change some of my perception of India and shaped much of how I looked at the country and my conversations with main Indians to come. Nick's dad made some very interesting points essentially about the stratification and segregation in Indian society.

Well as I said I got the last ferry to Wellington island so my only option was to take cab back to for Cochin. In the end I had a very nice driver, but one that really didn't know where my guest house was, but luckily due to my trusty Droid Incredible I was able to navigate us back. Ah the wonders of technology.

I guess I was still not quite adjusted to Indian time as I still could not fall asleep until quite late, luckily this night I was able to fall asleep some time around 3am, and I only had to wake up by 5am, no big deal. As we drove down the dark and mostly deserted roads, we would pass by the occasional cyclist and the relatively frequent person walking and stopping to pray at various Hindu shrines and temples. On arriving at the bust station I was shocked by the apparent chaos, which is apparently what just about all bus stations are like in India, but some how managed to find my proper bus, which was a super express bus leaving at 6:30. On the bust I began by being compressed by my two bench mates, who seemed not all to happy to have a foreigner to sit next to, but after an hour or so the bus mostly emptied out. This seemed to be a good thing at first and I was able to start up a conversation and become friendly with these two Austrian tourists, Roland and Rafaela, who I would later learn are planning on opening their own Yoga studio and were going to be doing an intensive month long course at an Ashram. Roland was a great person to meet as he had already been to India five previous times. But as most good things do, they come to an end and pretty soon I was getting tossed around like a rag doll as the bus sped up mountains and around curves while hitting huge bumps sending me flying every which way. According to Rafaela I was looking quite pale at times and simply tried to lie down on the bench. In the end though nothing to bad happened, I was simply shaken up and a bit out of it for a while.

So it is quite amazing how quick one becomes adjusted to the rupees as the place we ended up getting breakfast was more expensive than most of the places I had been eating at until then. Now the place was definitely a bit oriented towards tourists as they had English menus, but there were plenty of Indians eating there as well. Really the prices weren't so much higher or for that matter too expensive. I had been paying around 50rs for dinners and lunches and this was not even 100rs, 100rs is only 2.50 or so, so really in then end it is really just nitpicking. Well with our bellies full, myself and Roland started calling up various guest houses in the area and we finally found one with some vacancies named Zina. We managed to hail an auto rickshaw, from one of the apparently few honest drivers in all of India who then took us to the Guest house. The road was first pretty standard until we turned off the main road and actually entered a tea plantation and drove up and through the plantation to get to the main house of Zina Guest House. We were greeted by Joseph the proprietor, who was a spry 80 year old who was extremely enthusiastic about everything that had to do with Munnar. In the end he directed us to a secondary guest house on the same property administered by his grounds keeper. On are walk down with the grounds keeper, he quickly pointed out to some people spraying the tea leaves with something and said that they were giving the trees their medicine, Roland quickly asked if he meant pesticides and after a slight pause the grounds keeper with a huge smile replied, 'Yes'.

Well another room fit for two, but this one at least had hot water, which would certainly be needed as the higher elevation made nights quite cool. After quickly getting some stuff in order and talking a bit with the grounds keeper, Rafaela, Roland and myself all decided to go into town, but first we decided to get some lunch. The grounds keeper quickly recommended one of the hotels at the bottom of the tea plantation. At the restaurant I first saw how Rafaela and Roland traveled, they immediately ordered some fresh juice, which I wouldn't dare consume out of fear of contamination. This immediately started a discussion where they both felt I was being overly cautious, they further felt that my caution would spell disaster for me, but I decided throwing caution to the wind would cause nothing good. The food was simply put bad. Not nearly adequately seasoned, which seemed inexcusable as we were in a major spice producing area, if not one of the main capitals in India of spice. We then went off to town and in some ways I would say it was shocking that we neither were killed by a vehicle nor kill by the stench of urine and pollution. After wondering around a bit we came across a little covered market that stank of gasoline as they were all use little gas powered generators and after running away from that we managed to find ourselves in a little food market. The market seemed to a bit a little oasis in the middle of all of the craziness and it seemed to have pretty fresh smelling air. No where near as oppressive as anywhere else. But of course this didn't last long and we quickly found ourselves back in the mess of everything. After wondering around a bit more Roland inquired with a local about where to eat, the local directed us to the hotel Krishna. To get there we had to cross a little narrow crowded foot bridge that reeked of refuse and sewage, but on arriving we found ourselves at a lovely place that served all kinds of food on banana leaves. It was definitely a good choice. We finished the meal with some Masala Chai and then headed back to the guest house. Walking in the dark along Indian roads is not always advisable, luckily it wasn't quite completely dark yet. After getting back we had a little chat with Joseph about what to do the next day and then we went for a little walk through the tea fields in the dark.

Well I had problems sleeping yet again, whether it was due to the jet lag still or if it was due to loud music being played for a wedding at the bottom of the hill, though more likely a combination of the two. I woke up a bit later than we had planned so was not surprised to see that Roland and Rafaela had already left. But when I got up to Joseph's I found them there, they were apparently just a bit ahead of me. Joseph then went through drawing us a map of where we should go in the most flourished and passionate way I had never seen before. Roland and Rafaela ended up heading down to breakfast a bit before me, and when I got down to the hotel that Joseph has instructed us to go to this time they were no longer serving breakfast. I just assumed that Roland and Rafaela managed to get in in time so I decided to soldier on figuring I'd find some place along the walk to eat at, how mistaken I was. Well on the way I saw many a place where I might be able to eat, but each and every one of them didn't have food until noon. Well the walk took us first through some more of the tea plantation (essentially all of the tea in Munnar is grown by Tata, you might be familiar with their tea, in the U.S. the trade name is Tetley), but this part had considerably more dynamic views. Climbing through the plantation I passed many women who were tea pickers and still I can't believe how they manage to weave through all of the tea trees. It was hear that I started to look closely at the leaves and the main thing I noted was how the edges are serrated. I had actually just learned from a program that serrated edged leaves are evolutionarily adapted to colder climates. This is because the serrations allow for greater surface area, which would mean greater evaporation, which in turn means that there would be more force in pulling water through the roots of the plant. Eventually I reached a view point where Joseph had told us would have tea shops, which I had hoped would be open even with the restaurants being closed, however both shops were closed. It was hear that the tea plantation started to be come cardamom and coffee farm. The coffee was at first hard to find, but the cardamom was really quite easy to spot and really quite interesting how it grows in the shade of their leaves right at the ground. By this point I was just starving and every time I came across people I would ask them where to eat. Finally I came across a group, which consisted of a few people from the bus I was on the day before and one of their guides directed me to a place called tall trees. This was a very pricey ritzy looking place, but at this point food was all I needed. After climbing my way to their restaurant I found Roland and Rafaela waiting in the restaurant for some food themselves as they had apparently experienced the exact same troubled situation as I had. Here the food was quite pricey, but once again still cheaper than what I would have paid for the same thing in the U.S. and it was actually really quite good. After eating we ended up coming across a group of four Australian girls. If I have learned anything from traveling it is that there is always an Australian traveling where you are. So now our party became seven for at least a bit.

Roland, Rafaela and I then proceeded onto a spice garden while the Australians went to go into town for some Internet. The spice garden was really quite interesting, though some of the facts told us were wrong (our guide said that Coffee came from S. America, it comes from Africa), it was really cool to see vanilla beans growing as well as other spices as well. But out guide also informed us that essentially nothing in India is actually organic and certainly not in Munnar. They also though seemingly grow great spices, they don't seem to do much sorting when packaging giving them what appears to be bad consistently purely out of poor QC measures. It was after the Spice garden that I made a big mistake and instead of heading straight for dinner with Roland and Rafaela, I went back to my room did a few things, wasted a bit of time and then went walking into town for food. At this point I was really quite hungry again and I just started walking and was rejecting places that probably would have been fine for really no reason. One place I rejected because their table cloths were covered with stains. Another because there simply weren't enough people. In the end I ended up right back at the Hotel Krishna and ate my food way to quickly, but it was wholly necessary. An then I had to walk back in the pitch black dealing with all of the crazy drivers. Luckily I had a flashlight with me and was able to signal to vehicles of my presence.

Finally a night well slept.

Well on waking up I decided essentially on a whim to just head over to Madurai, which has what is supposed to be one of the most spectacular Hindu temples in all of India and is often considered to be the Taj Ma hall of the south. I got some info from Joseph and headed on my way to the bus stop to first catch a bust to Theni, which is just across the border in Tamil Nadu. This bus ride wasn't so bad. The fare collector was very nice and knew just where would be best to put my pack and the ride though very loud due to the continuous honking was actually not so bad going down the winding roads through all of the tea fields, this driver wasn't driving like a maniac.

And then Tamil Nadu...

Silly-Putty
Push, Pull,
Roll, Stretch
Nothing Permanent

On Newspaper
Always There

India-First-Album

Delhi Belly

2011-02-15T00:52:00.001-05:00

Not sure why this stuff was never actually posted...

Delhi Belly
---
Big Boots,
Black Boots,
Doc Martin's,
Skinny Girl,
Grey Skirt,
Black Shirt,
Leather Satchel,
Tanned Legs,
Dirty-Blond Hair,
Legs Move,
Eyes True,
and a
Reassuring Smile.
---
Two Naked Men,
On top of a truck,
Parked in the rain,
On the side of the road,
Lashing a tarp to keep it dry.

Inconceivable Probability

2011-02-06T08:13:00.002-05:00

Arrived in the airport quite late and decided I needed some food. One of the few things open was a Burger King, which I figured would be a good choice as it was doubtful I'd be having any beef for some time to come. It was surprisingly good, but also really quite expensive. It was then time to hunker down and find a place to sleep, preferably with an outlet. This was actually quite easy, I managed to find a nice place to hunker down and covered my eyes popped in my head phones and tried to sleep. I heard the sound of a floor cleaner coming my way and I then raised my head to watch the operator fastidiously clean the floor and very nicely not require me to get up. There was a woman who kept passing up and down, up and down the hall way in which I was trying to sleep, but they eventually settled down. I then went back to trying to sleep, but the light was too much so I found this little room, which was to some regard the foyer to the bathroom and tried to rest their as the lights would go off. I eventually awoke and realized that it smelled of paint and such and immediately left. It was then almost time anyway for me to check in.

After entering the terminal proper I got a nice freshly squeezed juice and a tuna avocado sandwich. It most certainly hit the spot. I then went to my gate sat down and got a paper, only to be forced out of the gate along with everyone else to wait outside. We all we left standing or squatting just in front of the gate. Half an hour later or so we were allowed to board and the plain took off and landed in Paris without a hitch. Charles Du-Gal is a huge and slightly confusing airport and the customs people aren't too nice. I tried to get them to stamp a receipt for VAT, which they refused. I got a nice big bottle of water and then tried to figure out if I could get my receipt stamped somewhere else. This seemed quite impossible and then some crazy chance would have it, I ran into someone I know from doing Karate at Columbia who was to be on my same flight. The kindly agreed to watch my bag while I went to get my receipt stamped. I managed to get to security and as all I had was my cell phone they kind let me skip everyone as I had just heard an announcement about my flight so I started to freak out. But all attempts were in vain as the security point simply lead me right back to where I started. I decided to just sit down and catch up with Vivek.

For some reason the flight was in the rear completely empty and my two neighbors moved somewhere else, so I invited Vivek to the back. The flight took off nearly one and half hours late and the plain got de-iced. Vevik and myself spoke most of the flight, both catching up and discussing things along all lines of conversation. Eventually we both decided to get some rest and Vivek moved to another mostly empty row and I was left with three nice seats to stretch out on, but I really never managed to get much of any sleep. We arrived not too late, which was quite nice, but after getting through one level of security Vivek discovered that they had lost his Luggage. Me and Vivek then parted ways and I made my way for the rest area, which was surprisingly not free.

In the rest area I met Thomas, when he asked if I could watch his bag while he went for a smoke, I kindly obliged. On his return we got to talking and it turned out he had just finished traveling for three months in India. He very kindly gave me his sim card, which saved me a whole bunch of effort and a bit of money, so thank you Thomas. It was quite difficult to sleep, so we mostly talked. At 8:30 I went to the prepaid cab stand and got a cab to the train station.

Probability says that things that might seem impossible do happen...

Reformatted for India, First Day

2011-02-06T08:07:00.002-05:00

Fling open the door to your cab, shuffle in with your bags and you're in another world. Immediately small children and women with babies will come to you, as if you were magnetic and they your polar opposites, perhaps it isn't so far from reality. Money is their first request, but quickly they move onto sweets, and finally they ask for a tooth brush. You must say “No, I'm sorry”, and you do truly feel sorry, but what really can you do?

It is as if even in your cab with its' windows closed you seem to be caught in a cloud of dust, which seems to permeate all of your senses, but your ears with its presence, your ears are rather filled by the cacophony of horns honking. As you look through the vale of dust you can see parts of a highway sprouting like flours in a fastidiously planned garden. But the order extends no further. Below the sprouted stems of the planned highway are cars, pedestrians, bicycles, scooters and motor cycles simply existing moving around in endless chaos.

As you look around you see a young boy in front of his father with the most serene of smiles, flapping his arms and undulating with the wind and traffic. In the U.S. we have family cars, in India they have family motor bikes. All around are people with their families on their bikes, quickly, a bike rides by with a woman in beautiful sari sitting behind its' driver side saddled while it weaves through traffic.

We quickly pull into a filling station. We briefly sit in front of a gasoline pump, which is completely empty, all the cabs and auto rickshaws are filling up with CNG. An opening appears and we quickly maneuver into place. The hood is popped and the nozzle is fixed onto the fueling port and suddenly right behind the sound of the CNG blasting into the empty metal tank behind, causing a slight sense of uneasiness that something with such explosive power sits just behind the cushions of the seat. There is a woman at the station covered by a sari with her face veiled to keep the insipid dust out of her lungs. On first sight her sari seems pristine, but on a second looked it is mottled with holes. All she does is sweep away the ever piling dust and debris from the stations ground.

Pulling back into the flow of chaos that is the street suddenly we pull up to a stopped intersection, which doesn't mean there is a read light, just that the intersecting street's flow has momentarily over come the street that we are on when a series of buses block our way. To our left is an auto rickshaw with it's driver siting on his crossed leg with it's bare foot's sole facing me, while his other bare foot is pressed on the brake peddle, while his passenger leans back insistently chatting on his cell phone, totally oblivious to the world external to himself. Perhaps this passenger is correct and has simply realized that he must surrender himself to this chaos, that his input and anxiety will get him nowhere. The flow of traffic seems to be controlled by simply which way, vehicle or pedestrian pushes hardest, whether through honking or steadily pressing on, allowing their flow to push through. So I just lean back and surrender myself to the chaos and how my taxi driver navigates it.

Moving again in our new sense of relaxation, I still can't help cringing every time we seemingly almost kill a pedestrian, all that the driver seems to do is honk to assert his superior momentum and presence to a pair of men walk side by side, at the last moment that one furthest from traffic pulls his companion out of the way of our chaotic vessel. Nor can I stop cringing every time we are almost killed, whether because my driver passes a colorfully painted truck, by simply holding down his horn and flooring the gas or when some other vessel seems to want to occupy the same space as us, which is physically impossible.

The trucks, often carrying garbage and its' stench with them are brightly colored and patterned to bring some sense of color and joy to everything and everyone around them. The trucks generally carry Hindu motifs on their rear, with requests for drivers to honk at them, such entreaty though is only visible after they almost kill you and pass by. An SUV quickly drives by, it has a special state of India plate and a sign in it's tailgate that implores to call some number if the driver isn't following driving norms.

We drive past some delivery people on bicycles with flat beds in the rear who simply seem totally oblivious to the chaos around them. Then a group of well dressed mothers are along the side of the road with their smartly dressed children in uniform, seemingly on their way to school, they show some sense of agitation with having to wait to cross the street. The only ones who seem to fully understand the whole absurdity of this whole chaos are a pair of dogs who seem to be barking at everything that passes them by.

We turn a corner and I look up and I see a skywalk, a side walk in the sky. Above are us walking on these skywalks are people who have tried to escape the chaos on the ground to the serenity of the sky above. We quickly turn away from this segregated reality.

One thing to say though is that the chaos is never allowed to move too quickly, we never seem to manage of 50km/h even on the highway. Much of this has to do with the fact that on the chaotic streets if there isn't a speed bump, their concave variety potholes, or simply some other road user in your way. On the Highway things seem to open up a bit and calm down, but not completely, it is though enough that my tension seems to drop and I begin to occasionally nod off. I open the window to allow the breeze to blow on my face, but the constant stream of garbage trucks makes this a mixed blessing. I reach up and grab that hand hold above the window and nod off, I'm awoken by my arm slamming into the arm rest after my grip must have relaxed.

Navigating seems to exceedingly difficult, my cab driver after a certain point begins to ask every driver he can find how to get to the station. Eventually he finds a scooter driver who says that he will lead the way, so we follow. Luckily the driver was able to keep track of the scooter and we successfully end up at the station.

Now slightly more wary and slightly shaken, I carefully alight from the taxi, finally with my feet back on solid ground, grab my bags, thank the driver and bid him adieu. I slowly walk to the station, leery of all cars around me. I make my way to the information window at the ticket window and show them my ticket. The woman looks at me shocked, for a moment I'm worried, but all that she is shocked by is how early I am, which is two hours. I ask her which track and she replies “platform 7”.

Having had not eaten yet that day I head over to one of the small kiosks on the platform. Worried about essentially everything making me sick I choose what appears to be a safe choice, crackers. In the end they turn out being rotten egg flavored.

Now I can start to take things in and look for a place to charge my phone with credits. I had luckily the previous night met a German who was finishing their India travels and kindly gave me their airtel sim card. Everything on the station is dirty, there is simply a constant presence of dust. Ahead me is another kiosk with vodafone stickers, so I thought that perchance they would also support airtel, but after inquiring with the clerk, he directed me across the bridge ahead. I couldn't see the best path their, but I saw one way, which seemed most circuitous, but I decided to go that way none the less. On this walk I walk by multiple offices, where the occupants appear to be holding court. In the ticket master's office it even looks like his wife and children are in there doing school work.

As I make my way to the bridge I begin to notice the great sense of poverty and disrepair that the whole station gives off. All around are stray dogs, with people stepping over them while they sleep. I eventually make it to the stairs of the bridge and begin my assent. No one seems to keep to the left or the right, they simply fill empty space, not so different from the roads. Once at the walkway of the bridge more young children are begging. Once again, what difference can I really make? I make my way to then and start down the stairs where an old lady is begging sitting facing the flow of people passing her by going up and down the stairs.

At the bottom I can see what looks like a cellphone store in the town ahead and follow all of the people over their. I have to squeeze by a sleeping dog and then quickly dodge a person coming from the opposite direction towards the narrow passage that I'm walking through. We walk through what appears to be a large empty lot and make our way to the street. I sleep between two scooters and remind myself that I must look right first. I dodge an auto rickshaw and wait on the medium 'till traffic clears the other way and make my way across. I note a pharmacy, but quickly singly mindedly head for the cell phone shop. After a quick back and forth with the proprietor I manage to add 300 rupies to my phone.

On my way back I notice some people frying samosa's, and quickly decide to head back to the station. I make my way back to the street and cross it, but find that I crossed quite early and my path is blocked by what looks like an old concrete bus stop, so I go around it and enter through its front. I'm immediately hit, by a horrid smell and try to traverse the shelter as quickly as possible. My eye is quickly attracted to some movement in the corner of my eye and a notice a litter of puppies. I decide I must move even quicker out of fear of the mother showing up and baring its' teeth.

I make my way back to the station and decide to sit on platform 7 for a bit. Once again I'm bombarded by many young children begging in a addition to a woman with a dog following her. I just sit and think and try to relax. I still have quite a bit of time. Now that my cellphone is charged up with credits I decide to very quickly check in with home, but notice the time and call my Brother to let him know that I've safely made it to India. As my ticket was just changed from being a wait-list ticket to a real one, I conclude that it would be a good idea to make sure everything is on the up and up, so I make my way to the ticket master's office. This time I know the direct route from the bridge. I make it to the ticket master's office and he quickly looks at my ticket, says everything is fine and sends me to the waiting room. I however decide that I need some real food so back across the bridge.

On crossing the bridge this time I notice two dogs fighting or playing, one can never tell the difference without seeing their ears, in front of the bus stop. I decide to give them a large birth and cross the street far down from the bus stop. I decide to first go to the pharmacy and buy some bug repellent. It's called 'Odomos'. In the town I seem to be a bit of spectacle with many people just saying hello to me, which I always echo. Looking for food a man running a biryani shop approaches me. I first tell him that I'm unsure and head over tot he Samosas, but I quickly am reminded of a story I was told about people using motor oil to fry stuff, so I decide on the Biryani shop. I get a simple biryani to go and have a small conversation about nothing with the owner. I head to the waiting room to wait.

After arriving in the waiting room I take my food and start eating. It is quite good with little purple carrots and spicy yellow rice. All of the components are in little plastic bags, which I poor over the rice for lack of any better way to consume them. It is surprisingly spicy, but this is fine and actually quite nice as it helps to wake me up. Not to long afterwards an announcement is made, which I surmise means that the train is coming so after asking a nice looking young couple for confirmation I head over to the platform.

On the platform I find a place to wait and see two little boys showering themselves with water pipes running parallel to the tracks. They seem to be brothers where one seem no older than 2 or 3 while the other is probably around 6 or 7. The youngest keeps filling up an old coke bottle and dumping the contents on himself. Now I'm confronted with a dilemma of whether or not I should take a picture. In the end perhaps right, perhaps wrong I chose not to take the picture, but the scene is forever in my mind. The older brother knocked the bottle out of his younger brothers hands and it fell down into a bit of ditch, which elicited a loud cry from the youngster, who reproached his brother to retrieve it. This little scene attracted the attention of some adults and station employees who started to chastise the children. The older brother cleaned his shirt and then the train pulled into the station making the children disappear from my existence likely forever.

As the trained pulled in a person who I had previously asked for advice on where to board the train told me to run down to the rear of the train. I somehow completely missed my car, A1, and just saw B1 and HA1. I asked people for help as I was worried the train would leave and everyone else was equally confused. They all told me to just get on, making me even more fearful that the train would just leave. So I hopped onto the HA1 car and then was told to get off and to get on at the other end, so I'm racing for the train to not leave. I walk into the passenger compartment, which turns out to be first class, not my class, where I find a helpful couple who seem super relaxed, with perfect English and point me in the correct direction and send me on my way.

I make my way through the aisle of the train, pushing and nudging through all of the other people who have recently embarked onto the train and I'm struck by the harsh blue air of everything, which is caused by the florescent lights above and the completely blue interior of the train. Everyone is also either barefoot or in socks, which I considered, but the train always felt quite dirty and in disrepair. This was actually one of the most surprising things to me as to the trains looked like they were well over 20 or 30 years old, but they were apparently much newer and ever had been over hauled just a few years ago. China I must say has considerably nicer trains, but perhaps the passengers don't all wear smiles. I finally make it to my birth and meet those who will be my primary traveling companions for the course of this first train voyage. There is one couple, the husband is a mechanical engineer who works for oil companies, his wife has amazing English. There are two young men on their way to business training course in Goa and there is a slightly elderly women whose story I never heard, but she carried with her a large blanket in a rectangular clear plastic bag, which she kindly moved for me to sit. I then put my bags up onto my birth and with some knowledgeable advice from one of the two young men put my bag up in the most efficient manner. Quickly while we are still stopped in the station one of the porters comes and asks me about lunch, without think I just assent to what he says and he brings me chicken biryani. A minute later I decide I don't want it and simply want water, I inform him of such and he kindly takes it back and gives me a little hermetically sealed plastic water cup. Pealing the lid away was its own immense challenge, which I was luckily able to over come. The train finally gets going, so all my rushing and agitation was totally unnecessary. Now the cabin is filled clatter of the train and the continual sways. After drinking my water and exchanging a few pleasantries I hope up to my berth and take a nap, which a few of my companions do as well, as if they all wanted to, but were simply waiting for someone else to be first.

After awaking and getting back down we all began to converse and get to know each other. Most of our conversations revolved around my travels, with each person offering their own opinions on what I should do. I've discovered that most people when they hear you are traveling immediately tell you all about their experiences and what they think your trip should be like. Though I'm always happy to hear helpful advice I do at times think people are too forceful in expressing what they think you should do, rather than simply offer ideas. One of people did however offer great advice in a totally none forceful manner and I will likely be follow a large amount of his recommendations. Every few minutes a porter comes by singing “chai, chai, chairichai, chai, chai” over and over again. After a few of them go by a decide to get a chai, these chai will be a continual treat throughout the entire journey.

By 8:00 my stomach was in need of food and the porter was coming by taking dinner orders just in time. I got a vegetable biryani, which unlike my earlier one was quite bland, but it hit the spot. I had this with a nice cup of chai. We continued to talk about my travels, which was quite helpful and helped me reshape my time in Kerala a little better and then it was time for sleep, if you could call it that. One of the my companions snored throughout the night and I just lay there hoping for some sleep. I tried listening to some pod casts of radio lab and hoping that the swaying train would rock me to sleep but no luck. A few moments here and there of sleep, but not until the snorer awoke did I really get any appreciable amount of sleep, what luck, but now I was somewhere else...

Stuck In Limbo

2011-02-01T12:59:00.006-05:00

Oddly it never came to mind, but Copenhagen really has been like being stuck in Limbo for me. I had the odd situation with my camera, where for over a week I really had no idea how that would go and I simply never planned to come here so I was always just waiting to go to India. Such situations I would say are not the best situations to be in when you are trying to see somewhere new. Now I don't want anyone to think from my previous post or from this post that I don't like Copenhagen, but perhaps it is the wrong time of the year for me and I wasn't really planning on it so it simply as always been simply a point of being in between. So some quick recapping of thoughts of Copenhagen.

It is very expensive. This is for multiple reasons, one is the VAT is 25% and then for say food there is additionally a service charge. These type of calculations aren't taken into the Big Mac Index, but fyi according to the basic Big Mac Index from 2010 the DKK is over valued by 31% compared to the dollar.

Bikes are king, but that doesn't quite mean that cyclists follow all the rules and not matter what, scooter drivers are the worst, most reckless, and scariest road users.

Things close early, this is due to good labor laws.

Buses really run well and frequently, but can be quite packed and are relatively expensive.

More cyclists wear helmets than I expected, but in many ways I'd say this is a good thing.

They have single stream recycling, but huge bottle deposits.

Their trains are amazingly tall and very accessible, both for people with needs and for the Internet.

The citizenry has the most amazing English, but I can't seem to find a word of spoken Dansk comprehensible, though written isn't too bad, the names are equally difficult.

Danes are simply always friendly and hospitable and helpful.

I could probably keep on going, but I think that will do for now.

Colored opinions are some much more interesting than Black and White ones.

Getting Ready to Defrost the Freezer

2011-01-31T12:28:00.004-05:00

As I get ready and wrap up my time in Copenhagen it kind of feels like defrosting a freezer, even more so because I know that not too long after I warm up, I'll be heading up to the Himalaya's. So first the sunny warmth of Kerala where I will hopefully warm up physically, mentally and diet wise, as compared to Denmark I expect to have much Hotter and more powerful flavors in India. South India also is home to some of my favorite Indian food so I really am looking forward to the south of India.

I kind of have been trying to simply and slowly wind things down during my remaining days in Copenhagen, partly because that's just one has to do, but also because I'm kind of tired of being here. But as my camera took just more than a week to get back to me I don't feel like I made a mistake of choosing to be in Copenhagen for the length of time that I chose.

I didn't find out until the next day, but on the day of the bike ride around the city it was -6c so I don't feel so bad for feeling like my hands were going to fall off and for really just having to crash that night. I've been hanging out with more people from the Hostel, which mostly came about because on Friday after spending the day observing some roasting at coffee collective and going to the Niels Bohr institute for a tour, I went out at night to just take some photos of the city and decided to wander into a Cafe retro, which I had walked and ridden by numerous times before and where I found some people from the hostel whom I ended up hanging out with. After returning to the hostel I met a few other people, two of which are doing stages at NOMA (it is supposed to be the best restaurant in the world) and just hung out and talk a bit more.

I finished the national museum up Saturday which was nice to do, but the cold and early sunset still really does get to me. Sunday was really just more hanging out with people from Hostel where we got a nice little lunch and then we went back to mother for some coffee. The two Italians that were with us (One of them, Lorenzo, is opening is doing a stage at NOMA and is actually planning on opening up two restaurants this year in Italy) really liked the place so they decided that we would all go to dinner there. There were 13 of us and 11 of were sharing so we ordered one of every pizza, obviously the best way to order and eat. Today I just hung out with Lorenzo, we returned my bike and just wandered around. We ended up going to a Ricco Cafe, which is the coffee roaster I met on my little bike tour with Mette. I don't like to be overly critical, but they really didn't do that great of a job with either my machiato or Lorenzo's latte, nor was my carrot cake any good. The space though was really nice and they have vegetable juices and shakes, but I just felt like for a coffee shop they were a bit lacking. We then ended up wandering back to coffee collective where Lorenzo got a double and felt that in his opinion it was the best in Copenhagen, which I was told and was thinking already myself. We then ended up with a large group cooking a decent meal of vegetable risotto, I got some really good pointers from Lorenzo.

Today as I write this I can really only think about getting off to India, but it feels as if there is no end. Two weeks in one place accomplishing little is perhaps just a bit too much for me.

Oh and for some weird reason the internet was absolutely terrible at certain times, where it wasn't just slow, but where one could simply not connect to the access point. So in the time that it took my computer to connect to the wireless ap I started playing Mahjongg and now I think I will have to break out my grandmother's old mahjongg set when I get back.

Freezing covers us in a cocoon of everything good and bad around us
Defrosting not only gets rid of the cold,
but also gets rid of all of those fowl lingering parts of the world

Here are my final photos from Israel. Soon Photos from Copenhagen to come:

Final-Israel

This Just in Camera Fixed and Back in my Possession

2011-01-27T14:07:00.004-05:00

So My camera is repaired and it seems that the repair costs will be covered by the company that previously repaired the camera so this is all good news. I guess there will yet be photos of Copenhagen.

Mutually Exclusive Desires...

2011-01-22T18:27:00.008-05:00

As I walk around the streets of cities like Copenhagen and Tel Aviv I find myself wandering down the same familiar paths with no intention of doing such. It seems that every turn I make is either pre ordained or always prevented from being anything but, where the existence of the large city is just a big ruse being put forth to me and there is nothing beyond that which I walk.

So I'm now in Copenhagen and it is really quite a nice city, but I must say that the sun setting as early as it does is most frustrating. So my main concern in coming to Copenhagen was getting my camera repaired so what amounted to the first thing I did was head over to Denmark's only certified Pentax repair center. This actually took place on my first full day in Copenhagen as I arrived to late to do such a thing on the day of my arrival. So first thing in the morning a rented a bike and road over to the location. Sadly on my arrival I was informed that they had literally just two weeks previously had moved. I asked the man if I could ride to their new location to which he said that I could, but with the weather I probably shouldn't and that I should take the train. So I rode over to the station and started my way over to the shops new location. The first great thing was that you can bring your bike on the trains, the next great thing was that they actually have bike racks on the trains so you don't even have to stand with your bike or anything. They also have free wireless on the trains, but you need to sign up for an account. Well it was a good thing that I had my trusty droid incredible as I had pre-fetched the maps for the area and was able to use the GPS to guide me once off of the train. On arriving I was greeted by a super helpful Dane, who after a while and in consultation with one of their techs told me that they could not repair the camera and that they would have to send it to Germany. After talking we decided to call up the Swedish repair location who said they could do it. The only trouble was getting to Sweden, which I prepared to do, but they told me I would be better off mailing it. So I ran to the post office and mailed the camera. Later that night I went to a concert with someone from the Hostel, it was actually quite good, before the concert we caught a bit of a talk (though caught is an over statement as they were speaking Danish), and all I was able to gather that some of the speakers were comparing lots of modern Danish music to Fascism and Communism.

The next Day was some wondering and some miss steps of trying to ride a bus that is no more, but ended up at the national museum, which had a really nice exhibit on the history of people in Denmark. For a Late Lunch I went to what is a really good neopolitan pizza place named Mother's with Trine a friend of mine who is a Danish chef whom I cooked with at Jimmy's, which is now quite a while ago and a friend of her's Sarah. The Pizza was really quite good and so was the Salad that we had. And then back to the Hostel and then later I went for one of my favorite things, an evening constitutional in a foreign city.

The next day I went up to the Louisiana museum for some art. It is a really nice train ride up to the Louisiana museum and then just a short little walk to the museum from the station and it would be quicker yet with a bicycle. On arriving into the museum you first enter the gift shop, which really is quite a nice gift shop. The museum covers mostly modern and contemporary art and it really is quite nice. It is made up of two complexes connected by a tunnel with a sculpture garden over looking from which you can see Sweden and from which I spied some ducks diving into the water hoping to catch some fish. There current special exhibit is Walton Ford, whom until I got to the museum I had forgotten that I had seen the same show at the Brooklyn museum, but I liked it the first time and still liked it the second time as well. I then went back to the city and went for a long walk off to Trine's for dinner. I was tracking my speed using my phone and I honestly couldn't believe it so I kept trying to go faster and made the cold night feel much like a very warm one. Well we had a lovely dinner and good conversation, I think soon their will be a movement in Denmark to get tax dollars back if you don't want to pay for the royal family.

The next day I took a walk around Christiana, which perhaps I should do again on a warmer day or do by bike, but I was a little less than impressed, but I must say that I do enjoy walking around Copenhagen. The day was pretty slow I guess for me and I really just relaxed and even hung out in the Christiana Library. I for some reason decided to go to Wagamama for dinner, which is a chain Japanese Restaurant, which I first went to (first and only time) in London. It was a huge contrast, when I went to the one in London 6 years or so ago it was packed and loud, here in the winter it was pretty empty and really relaxed.

Then off to Malmo Sweden. I would honestly say that it is essentially a not as nice cheaper version of Copenhagen. It used to be Denmark's second largest city. At night
I listened to a conversation between other people in the kitchen talk about accents and people of different nationalities. I thought perhaps the funniest bit was that they I was sitting there super quiet while they talked about how loud Americans are. They then also went into how all of them think that the French can't speak English.

I decided to rent a bike for my remaining week and road around the city and went to Coffee collective, which I was told is the best coffee shop in the all the city. When you go inside you are greeted by a tiny shop mostly filled up by their roaster and a super friendly staff and owner. I had a really good and long conversation with them about roasting and about the economics of how they buy their beans, it was really quite fun. I then went over to the Niels Bohr institute hoping to take a tour, they informed me sadly that I would have to make a reservation, so I will have to do so and go another day. Then off to more riding around the city.

Just more biking around one of the greatest cities in the world to bike around.

I also decided to buy tickets for some of my India travels. It shocked me, but it is the case that Indian rail tickets sell almost immediately and that you really need to buy them far in advanced. So now I have the first leg of my trip somewhat planned out, though I can always cancel the tickets and get my money back so it isn't a huge deal. As of now I will get down to Cochin on the 4th. I will then Head up to Delhi on a 2 day long train ride on the 20th and then from their I will start heading up to Darmsala and specifically McLeod Ganj, which begins with a ten hour train ride and then a toy train up to Darmsala. I think after that things will kind of calm down long hall train wise. Once in the North I will likely stay in the north and I will then likely make my way to Delhi to fly to points yet determined at some point. I will probably take plane either to somewhere in east Asia or southeast Asia and then head over to the west coast and maybe the pacific northwest or I will just head straight to the west coast/pacific northwest.

I think I need to switch away from this format where paragraphs represent days. Well there is still more left to Copenhagen, though I'm not yet sure how resolute I am to being the only person that comes to Copenhagen and never sees the mermaid. Too many bad experiences with Brussels.

Mutually exclusive desires,
Divergent streams of reality,
No way to realize more than one reality.

Soldiers Everywhere

2011-01-19T15:04:00.004-05:00

So this is the wrap up to my trip in Israel, as I'm now in Copenhagen so I can write about how my time in Israel ended.

After the rest of the trip left I went to stay with Idit's family, one of the Israelis from the trip as previously mentioned, who live quite far out there and technically live in one of the settlements that are just over the green line, so to some it is in the west bank and not in Israel and as such is one of the major points of contention for the peace process. Idit's family is Orthodox and keep kosher. This completely stands out when you walk into their kitchen, which has two dish washers and the first thing Idit did was to tell me which were the dairy and which were the meat dishes and silverware. I essentially was terrified to use anything as I feared that any move by me would require a rabbi and countless hours of work and money. I got driven into the city by Idit's older sister who as it turned out is a 26 year old lawyer who isn't working in law, rather she hates the law, and is trying to figure out what she wants to do. I then did what I most enjoy doing, I walked all over Jerusalem. By doing so I feel like one truly gains and understanding of an area and you learn how to navigate, which after having gone around in a bus I had no idea how to do. So really all I did Monday was walk around, which I really did find to be most enjoyable, but perhaps I didn't accomplish what most would consider a worthwhile time spent in one of the holiest cities in the world. One of the first things I did was grab some great Zatar bread from the market. Then I wandered. In my wanderings I came across a man with tons of cats, did I mention that Israel has tons of cat's all to catch the mice, I wonder what Israel will swallow to catch the cat? As I was taking a photo of a crow he asks me if I speak English. I could not read this man at all, but pretty quickly he started talking about how the world is going to be confronted with the next big war soon, that the next Holocaust is going to happen and that all the worlds problems are due to the Germans. On parting he asked me my name, which I more than gladly gave him, he responded with joy and then quoted I guess the book of look saying "And the World be like the time of Noah". I then went to find a nice coffee shop, which was not an Aroma (Aroma is essentially Israel's Starbucks, which they have none of) and then I had dinner at Burgers bar. On my way wandering around it started to rain, I took brief respite in a Hillel cafe and got some spiked hot cider. I then could not for the life of me find the proper bus stop, but in the process I found a fellow Brooklynite who helped me on my way. I then managed to get off at the wrong stop luckily got some more help and finally made it back to Idit's.

The next day I went to two things in the early afternoon, first the chain of generations (I don't recommend, it is just too cheesy) and the western wall tunnel tour, which I highly recommend. Then off to some great Hummus and Falafel at Idit's favorite place and then we went to the Israel museum to see the dead see scrolls and art, also highly recommended. At night we met up with Yossi (one of the Israelis) and Jessi the other person to extend their trip. We went to a pretty nice low key bar, which I really though was one of the nicer places I went to in all of Israel. We then got some Belgian waffles and then the day was over and back to Idit's. I managed to get myself lost again (I don't know what it is with me and the suburbs and no one ever seemed to under stand Idit's address and I couldn't make heads or tales of it either to get it into my phone, but I manged to get myself out of it this time, well mostly.

Off to Tel Aviv, it is only 45 minutes away, so it is less than most New Yorker's commute, and Israelis think that it is relatively far. This was the ominous day of camera failure, so I'll just get that out of the way now. We went to one okay market and then to a decent cafe, where we met up with our medic and protector Eyal. We all kind of now wandered around together until we ended up at a pretty decent gelato place, where we met up with all but one of the Israelis. Then off to dinner where we ended up having yet one more Israeli join our group, Eyal's sister. At dinner we had some pretty good conversation about whether or not everything going on in Israel today with war and the attitude taken by most Israelis is right or wrong, of course we ended with that it is complicated. Everybody then wanted to go to a bar, which brought on a discovery that I never would have expected, Israel has bars that have age limits well above the drinking age, so we ended up at one that required Women to be at least 23 and Men to be at least 26. Of our group only 3 of us even met this category, so after some arguing and mentioning Taglit a few times we got into a not so interesting bar. I ended up crashing at Shachar's place. The next morning I ended up heading up to Natanya to see the one missing Israeli from the night before to discuss trip stuff (he is heading to Nepal in may when his army service ends). I ended up meeting his two travel companions and while hanging out at one of their houses I decided to buy my tickets, which got me to where I am now, Copenhagen. It is still shocking that it was cheaper to have this little side trip than to go straight to India. I then stayed at Lidor's. Lidor has an awesome younger brother who is only 9 years old and speaks amazing English, totally crazy and has great taste in Music as he had only the worst words to say about Justin Bieber, but loves early 90s and 70s rock.

Friday is Shabat and all you do is relax on Shabat, so that is what we did. We went over to Barack's place (one of Lidor's friends) and just hung out. All of this was just an experience of understanding what young Israelis do and it was really fun. They watch terrible American TV and love MMA, and they smoke Hooka, so really in the end no so different from a lot of American's, none of those things are really my thing, but they were fun to hang out with. We then had Shabat dinner with Lidor's family and even his grandparents showed up, who had come to Israel just before the war of Independence from Turkey. We actually had some really great conversations about what's wrong in the world today and the real reason why there is so much strife between Jews and Muslims, historically there wasn't and Jews and Muslims through out History have actually gotten along really well together. Saturday is still Shabat and really once again we did nothing, but we did have this really great Eastern European Jewish dish that I'd never heard of before, which was just a stew of eggs, beans and sausage and cooked overnight. We then hung out at Lior's (Lidor's friend) and just hung out a bit more, did some photo editing and then talking about traveling with Lior's older sister and her husband.

Sunday was then back to Tel Aviv, where I stayed in a Hostel, which was actually quite a nice Hostel with a bunch of nice people. I really just walked around Sunday, but I also tried to get my second Hep B Vaccine shot, which created all of this confusion. I finally found a place that would give me a shot, but they closed at noon. So then off to more walking. I then had a good dinner of Musseli and then with one of the other hostel guests went on a good old constitutional and then I play some weird russian card game with a girl from Queens.

First thing I go to do on Monday is have breakfast, but my yogurt is gone, so off to get more yogurt. After having my musseli I head over to get my vaccine. The doctor asks me why I'm in Israel and I say that I'm there for Taglit, his response is that the shot will be free, that worked out really well. I then walked up to Tel Aviv University and went to the Musuem of the diaspora, which was really quite nice, it had been recommended by Ifat. I then made the long walk back to my Hostel stopped along the way for dinner and then finished home. I then went to bed on the early side knowing that I had to wake up early as I planned to go to the temple mount and the Dome of the rock back in Jerusalem. So I woke up early enough, had breakfast and then Alex, from the hostel came with me and we ran over to the bus station and then off to Jerusalem. We then got to the temple mount on time and got to step foot on the tiny piece of land that has been the cause for countless deaths over the past few thousand years. To me it wasn't very special, just very intellectually interesting, as really there wasn't anything special about being up there, yet so many people have died for it, which really is almost nothing. I did almost have a moment where I though I was supposed to go into the dome, where we heard a noise and I started walking over to the dome when I said if the doors burst open I'll go in and naught 5 seconds later the doors open up, but it wasn't really a burst so I refrained myself from entering. Me and Alex then parted ways, I headed over to the market to get Halva and Rugelach and I ate at a vegetarian restaurant in the market, which I think got me a little sick. I really then had nothing better to do in Jerusalem so then after grabbing a coffee I went back to Tel Aviv. On arriving back in Tel Aviv I decided that that I wanted to have Schnitzel as my last meal and so I searched out the best place and ended up at Cafe Noir, where the Schnitzel and mashed potatoes were really quite good and I had a good conversation with a fellow patron, we even talked about precious medals as that is his business. After getting back to the hostel to retrieve my bag I had little time to dawdle and had to head for the train station straight away. I made good time walking, but I've certainly learned that Israeli security personnel love questioning me. To just gent into the train station I had to answer a ton of questions about my travels. I then stayed the night at the airport to make check in at 2:30am. I also had to return my Israel phone before midnight, which I successfully did. Any decent airport becomes a good one with free wifi. I then had to deal with another security guard (this is what they mean when they say they profile, they talk to people like me) I even got into telling this guy where I went to Hebrew School and what Holidays my family celebrates, then after hearing that I was going to India after Copenhagen he brought over yet another security agent to question me. From there on things were a bit of a blur, but I can say that I did not enjoy my AlItalia flight, I banged my hand really badly in Rome and then luckily had an exit row seat for my Rome to Amsterdam flight. Then finally to Copenhagen. A simple super on the serface intial impression of Copenhagen is that it is beautiful and great to bike in. Really, when I walked out of the train station my first thought was how beautiful it is and they even had bike racks on board the train. So how will Copenhagen be? Find out soon I guess, You'll know as soon as I do.

One looks at the military totally differently in Israel as everyone is either a veteran, serving or planning to serve. The entire attitude is different, but at the same time they all have to live. And ones comfort with the military changes completely in the simple course of a few weeks, you simply become numb to their presence and it becomes the norm. In many ways I think the U.S. needs to figure out some sort of service requirement, but hey Germany is getting rid of theirs.

I feel like I always forget something in my recalling this back so far.

Wide sweeping flow through the old, sprouts the new.

Ruben's smoked meat in Israel

2011-01-17T16:01:00.002-05:00

Is it terrible? No, but it most certainly isn't great, it's serviceable. The bread is a failure. They use a meat slicer which always means bad news to me especially when it is set too thin. I even asked them to Alice it thick and do it by hand which owner agreed is better, but it was fine thinly sliced and didn't want to train people to be cutters. even further they cut the meat with the fran and it didn't have that great texture. The meat is way to lean, but this seems to be a problem everywhere so scant blame them too much for that. they have some cans of doctor browns and even some Katz's soda, none of which is actually for sale though. I'm actually trying to decide if they are better than bores head, but I suppose I will give them the win on that category. I thinly it is better for Tel Aviv to have them the. to jot have them, but I would jot call them great or anything In that neighborhood.

dark beats play through the night
echoing down the empty alleys
carried by the sound of silence
only to move those in its wake
all is ended in the morning light

Shoes...

2011-01-17T15:32:00.002-05:00

So a lot of people have commented about the prevalence of photos of shoes in my Picasa album I linked to in the previous post, so I feel that it would be easier to address all said comments en masse here.

So people keep wondering if I have a thing for shoes and my first inkling would be to say no, but that would be false as evidenced by my photos. But my interest is not your normal interest where for most it has to do with fashion. For me I think we can say my interest is two fold. The first that I find them to make for very dynamic and interesting composition and I think by showing less one can actually see more. The other is that I think a shoe can tell an amazing story and a lot about a person. The soles of our shoes are I think the souls of our shoes. On a shoe's sole is engraved its entire existence. Not that the uppers don't have a story to tell, but it is the sole that connects with the ground and remembers every surface and step.

I can never part with my shoes, not because I intend to wear them again as I usually where my shoes down, rather I can't throw them away because they all represents stories and adventures. My uncle has saved almost every tennis shoe he has ever owned so I know I'm not alone.

And even beyond all of that the shoes that someone chooses to wear tell a huge story about that person. It tells is troves of information about their priorities and in doing so it reveals much of the person beyond the vale. Wo yes I find shoes to be quote interesting and I'll continue to take photos of them, because through those photos I hope to learn more about the people wearing those shoes.

My thoughts go too the ether only to become reality through another

Taglit

2011-01-11T02:32:00.004-05:00

So I just completed taglit birthright Israel and it was an interesting experience to say the least. I think I've gained a more informed and nuanced viewpoint of the situation, though I certainly still don't fully understand it myself. Do I know Israel? No, but I have seen a lot of it and hope to see more. If here is anything that taglit is great at doing it is piquing one's interest in the country. In 12 days it is of course impossible to see all of a country, even one the size of new jersey. So now while I'm still in Israel I hope to see some more of what I missed this first time around.

Taglit is great in many ways, hey it is free so it can never be too bad, but it is in no way perfect. My biggest gripe comes down to how structured it is. As a 26 year old traveler I expect more freedom, which was not provided. Also what we ate was generally substandard, it was mostly bad hotel buffet food. Already though I've had better food than I had on the trip, but I'm not entirely convinced Israel really has amazing food. The Humus is good, but not as spectacularly flavorful as I had hoped for and is often too smooth and over processed. Marzipan rugelach in Jerusalem is absolutely amazing. Honestly it is perhaps the best food I've had so far in Israel.

The people are super nice and show everyone the greatest hospitality I've probably ever experience. People have no problem opening up their homes to me, which just feels absolutely amazing. I've now stayed with three different Israelis I met during the trip and they seem to try to make you want to stay with them as long as possible. Also perhaps most interestingly all of this is regardless of your opinions, Israelis seem to love this saying that talk to one Israeli and they will give you three different opinions, talk to two and you will hear 10 different opinions and the most difficult thing to do is to actually get an Israeli to agree with his or her self. So in the end Isralis are very amenable to differing opinions and viewpoints, even if they think you're crazy for expressing them, they won't hate you.

In the end Taglit is a good program, which is far from perfect. I went with an older group and everyone who had previous involvement in Taglit seemed to think we were quite the odd bunch, so I'm not sure how universal my experience might be. I think they do an interesting job at attempting to connect Jews with their heritage, though of course to varying degrees. Some people from the trip seemed to come out of the trip with a new and greater sense of their Jewishness. Personally as NYC Jew with both parents being Jewish I think had less of this, but the people who seemed to take the most out of the trip are people who grew up in more isolated (Jewish wise) areas. Also people who already have strong ties to their Jewish Heritage seemed to strengthen their connections. I guess the apathetic, self deprecating, NYC Jew like myself seems to have less to gain than those with either week or strong Jewish identities, though I by no means intend to speak in universalities.

So I'm going to end this post here as one more about Taglit as apposed to being about the trip itself.

Finding a string buried under the sands of time,
Pulling on it to find its end.

It's Complicated

2011-01-11T02:31:00.006-05:00

No this isn't a Facebook Relationship status update, rather this is Israel, and I don't just mean its relationship in the middle east, but rather Israel itself.

So getting into the Airport after about 14 hours of flying, having had a layover in Canada, means that one has no desire to wait almost two hours just to get through customs, but that is exactly what happened. And then after finally getting through customs we got stuck in traffic for about 2 hrs, which should have been only at most a 2hr drive, but we did finally get to Haifa, where we had a decently nice hotel and got ready for, of course my most dreaded thing, ice breakers. Luckily things went quick and we were able to get to sleep quickly. We then headed up the Karmel mountains to go to a school called Yeminore. On our way up we witnessed the damage by a recent fire that was the largest natural disaster in Israeli history. Yeminore was a very interesting school to say the least, they essentially are a school for children who are in some way not a part of Israeli society and to make them assimilated members of Israeli society, this is only the first of these schools that we would go to. I have my own personal issues with what they seem to do, but they are certainly providing educations for children who would otherwise receive little to no education and are made fully functional members of society. From Yeminore we went to what we were told would be a kibutz, but it was more like luxury cottage on the shores of the Galilee owned by a kibutz. They were the first place in which I really started to realize that Israel mostly has amazing showers. We had a nice little new years eve celebration, obviously to varying degrees, but it was interesting and I learned that they refer to it as sylvester, named after the saint.

Well on Shabat all you do is rest and that is what we did, well we went for a little walk but that was it, one might say it was boring, but with jet lag and with everyone seeming a bit sick it probably was for the best, we had dinner at this so place, but had some of the best humus I had in all of Israel, I ate way to much pita, as it was the first place with pita and it was also on a bet, we also went on a boat from Tiberius, I didn't much enjoy, but that is me, a party pooper. We then took some jeeps to the Golan heights, which is and isn't a part of Israel, officially it isn't as it was never technically annexed, but it is treated as such by most Israelis. The views were quite dynamic and there was only one minor kerfuffle where one jeep almost fell off the cliff, no biggie. We then headed off to Tel Aviv, where they essentially dropped us off at what I would consider their version of south street seaport. Went to a not so good restaurant called Boya, but it was featured in one of my favorite movies, "Waltz with Bashir", which was a bit conversation piece for me with many Israelis. Rewinding to my plane flight I had a great conversation with an older Israeli who had been in the first lebanon war, we talked about waltz with bashir, which he loved, but every younger Israeli I've spoken to about hated it, I'm really trying to figure out why. At this time cliques started to form as they so often do, though I dread them because with acceptance comes rejection, I also try to be the person who goes between groups, but I've learned long ago that this can be a dangerous activity.

After our "south street seaport" adventure and some talking we went to bed. In the morning we met our Israelis, by this I mean the Israelis who would be joining us. They were mostly young, but they were still a great group. Two of them, Shachar and Lidor were officers in the IDF, two were students, Yossi and Ben and the two girls for some reason were both just in the middle of starting their mandatory for all Israelis travels, Idit and Ifat. These would be some our greatest sources of insight into Israeli culture, and I don't want to sell short our great Israeli tour guide Lior. With some more Icebreakers out of the way we headed off to our second school, this one was perhaps more touching. It was a school for Ethiopian Jews, specifically to assimilate the children into Israeli society, we actually went into a kindergarten class and played with the kids. The kids were coloring, but were being unresponsive, so I started making fortune tellers, by the end I had three kids begging me to make more fortune tellers for them, it was quite touching. Then we went off to a bad Mall for lunch, I had some so so Schwarma and then off to picking Clementines for a grove that does city harvest type stuff. And then dinner, this time at the hotel, blah, but luckily we convinced them to let us go out, where we went to an okay bar, how nice.

Off to Jaffa we went with our first taste of rain, great for the land, but not so nice for touring a city, we found respite in a church. Jaffa is an interesting city, it has a lot of history in Christianity and is a predominantly Muslim city. It was essentially the port city in the area before Tel Aviv existed, which is a very modern city. I had the best shakshuka in Jaffa, perhaps shakshuka is the best food I had in all of Israel, other than the Halva and Rugelach. After Jaffa we went to a place called "better place" in Tel Aviv, which is working on an electric car system with battery swaps. It is probably one of the best all electric and battery powered concepts, but it is not I think a good solution for environmental reasons and at best is just a short baby step towards the future. Dinner was actually quite good at a restaurant in which Ifat works, I had pretty good schnitzel, which is very popular in Israel, due to the fact that there are so many eastern European Jews living in Israel.

The next day we went to the Elana Gould musuem in Jaffa, which was actually really nice. She does mostly metal work so for me it was really nice seeing other metal work, I'd like to think that I got some ideas from it. Also the musuem is in her actual home that she lives in, at least part time, and it is a truly beautiful home. From there we hopped on the bus and went to Sderot, which was a very important place in Israeli rock music history, but now is better known for rocket attacks from Hamas in the Gaza strip as it is literally right on the north eastern corner of Gaza. This was one of the most touching parts of the trip. We were literally looking right into Gaza, from here I most felt that there is sadness all around and that both sides really just need to see this and then perhaps we will stop killing each other. After Sderot we headed to the dessert to ride camels and for some donkeys and to sleep in a Bedouin tent. I got to ride a camel twice, which was okay, but some people had to ride donkeys at least once, which were having how should I say had bad bowel movements. We then had a really fun drum circle and then we slept, which is an exaggeration as we had to wake up early to see the sunrise on Mosada.

Waking up is always hard, but at least we knew we would see something great. So we got up, had some too sweet tea and two biscuits. Then I essentially dashed ahead everyone up to the top of the mountain. Up there we really did have a lovely site and we learned some very interesting about Mosada and Herod's temple. We also experienced the most amazing echo I think I've ever experienced by screaming into a valley. Mosada is high over the dead sea, though really it isn't too high, but even funnier it is essentially at sea level. We then ran down the mountain, by 'we' I mostly mean 'I', and I even found a lost cell phone, which was by shear luck when I strayed from beaten path. We then had this weird boxed meal of weird various cheeses and, but in the end we were so hungry it was delicious. We then headed off to the dead sea. The dead sea really is quite amazing. In the water you just walk over tons of crystallized salt and when you decide to just fall back into the cold water you are cushioned by your own buoyancy, due to the increased density of the water. One must take care to not get the water in your eyes though as it will seriously burn. After doing some swimming I went inside to try out their hot deep sea water pool which was great and stung even the smallest of cuts. We then had some terrible food and then headed off to Jerusalem to go to this event called mega event, which I will only mention that we got to see BB (Benjamin Netenyahu) speak.

The next morning we went to the Jaffa Gate and walked around the old city. I guess you could say going through the old city was nice, but the more and more you learn about it you kind of learn to realize that most of it isn't that old, even the western wall isn't all that old. But it is interesting none the less. We then went to one of my favorite places that I went to in all of Jerusalem, their big market off Jaffa street. It was here that I got the great Halva and Rugelach. Really this stuff was amazing. Coffee flavored Halva is truly amazing. I also bought some amazing dates. We then headed right back to the old city to check out the western wall for Shabat. I decided not to put a letter in the wall.

The next day me and three friends went a little rogue and escaped from the hotel on our own for an adventure of the holy sepulcre and the arab quarter. The church was really quite nice, but I just couldn't feel any factualness to its history, it's also quite new. I got some amazing falafel for 5 nis, which is less than two dollars and was perhaps the best I had the whole trip. We made it back though we were apparently detected. The rest of the day was filled with talks and a game run by the Israelis. At night they let us loose on Ben Yehuda street. I had a horrible restaurant experience, but it ended nicely by going to Golan micro brewery and good company.

Sunday, the last day of the organized trip was a mostly solemn one, partly because the trip was coming to an end but also because we were going to Mount Hertzel, the greatest of the Israeli national cemeteries. This was really quite interesting for many reasons. We went to Yitzak Rabin's grave, I remember when he was assassinated, and his death likely escalated the problems in the area. We saw all of the soldiers graves and the toughest thing was that most of the were children, only 19. There was also a grave for one American who had made Alia and would have been my age so that alone hit very close to home. We as Americans aren't often faced with such a sense of death, and this is something Israelis are faced with. Idit, then brought us to the grave of one of her friends who died in Gaza, this brought things even closer to home. We then went to Yadvoshem, which is the national Holocaust Museum. It is both amazing and beautiful, but also very sad. It does a good job of both teaching the history and creating personal stories and connections. One of things I kind of took from my visit there though is something I know my Israeli friends wouldn't agree with, which is that Israel should read the history and visit the museum to better understand some of their mistakes in handling the Palestinians. We ended the night having a good dinner at a Moroccan restaurant, which was quite good.

Monday we said our good byes. Only two of us other than the Israelis stayed in Israel. When I'm out of Israel I will conclude with another post of my time traveling without taglit.

So here is an interesting update. I will now be traveling to Copenhagen for two weeks and then off to India. It worked out that it was actually cheaper to do this than to fly to India directly and I've always wanted to go to a Nordic country. So on the 19th off to Copenhagen and then on the 2nd off to India.

Some Photos

On a sad note, my camera has stopped working. It seems the previous repair I had done has failed so now I'm left in quite a hard place. I will figure a solution out no later than in Copenhagen, hopefully in the next few days even.

Listen with your ears,
See with your eyes,
Smell with your nose,
Think with your brain,
Feel with your understanding.
--
A ringing tone carried in the wind.
A light crossing the darkness.
A wall lying between.
No one can hear, And no one can see.

No More Gene Patents and Rainbows

2010-11-06T23:54:00.005-04:00

First off, the oddest thing is that I had started writing this post a while ago and though often I just stop writing posts I always come back to them, this one though wasn't there when I came back to finish it. Perhaps this is an ominous sign.

So this is a great thing, though it doesn't yet come from the USPTO, it does come from the US government. This really will be good for everyone, including farmers. It will be great for research for the medical field and for people understanding more about their bodies. It will however not harm the stimulation of research and inventiveness because you can still patent the processes.

On another patent note I've been following all the ridiculous "apple against the cell phone industry, especially android" patent none sense. Now historically until relatively recently most technical companies, particularly ones in the telecommunications industries, have actually found it better to work together and share rather than prevent people access to technologies. Patent terms are 20 years for utility patents from application. It's funny originally it was 14 years, which is what it still is for design patents. We should have historically been shortening patent terms for patents, particularly for newer arts. This is because these areas change so quickly that patents themselves are very relevant for much more than 5 years and quickly become technological norms. Also long terms in the newer richer fields actually stagnates innovation as it makes people who have been in the area major hurtles for people trying to enter this invigorating sectors.

So a few days ago I was walking home from the train and when I turn my head to the left to look for on coming cars I see a huge rainbow. It's amazing how such a thing can put a smile on everyones face. I wondered to my self as I looked up at the beautiful sight and saw everyone doing the same, some taking pictures and kids calling out to their parents pulling them to look as well, whether or not you see drops in crime when there is a rainbow in the sky.

Riding around the city the other day it occurred to me that This are much more dynamic for me now than I would have ever expected, but I'm still unable to take truly scary and risky choices. I'm really quite risk averse and perhaps this is one of my big problems right now. In some ways to figure out what there is and what you want to do you really just need to take a bit of a leap of faith and not try to analytically look at everything. But this seems to be my biggest problem, taking risks that is.

Glowing Sky Over Head
Streaking Colors Through the air
Smiles for all to have
---
Buildings Speeding by
People being left behind
Solitude of mind being

Proper Directions

2010-10-14T00:48:00.002-04:00

Sitting in the airport watching all of the people go about there daily lives, the shoe shine guys, the woman washing windows, the man collecting garbage and all of the other people doing a job simply to pay for their lives and hopefully reach happiness. It certainly puts my own current journey into perspective. It also begs the question of whether or not I'm looking for something that simply is beyond something that people should hope to have. Or am I on the correct journey and the rest of the people who are stuck working to live are the victims of the system. But in the world that we live in are there simply jobs that need to be done that people don't want to do, meaning that some people can not have jobs that make them happy. In a capitalist system one would think that these jobs would pay more, but because they are generally "low" skill jobs they can be done by anyone, so the pay is kept down. This is where unions can be great. Perhaps we just need robots to do all these jobs, creating larger amounts of unemployment that would in the end require greater social welfare programs to be enacted and perhaps a similar movement as the WPA, providing jobs that allow people to both get paid for doing things and for doing meaningful things and in some cases actually provide fulfilling jobs, such as the many arts programs created by the WPA.

Howling wind
Under the starry sky
Chills of Clarity

It's easier to tip a scale than lift the weight it carries

2010-08-11T01:19:00.013-04:00

It has taken me a while to actually finish this post, sorry for the massive delay.

The Verizon-Google deal is simply put scary. Google who for the longest time has been one of the biggest corporate proponents of an open internet and laws and federal oversight to prevent the internet from being turned into a corporate commercial mine field. Google has taken with its deal with Verizon any of the possible teeth that would be necessary to make effective regulation and has even completely decided that wireless should not be made open. This is just sad and I truly hope that either Google changes direction or simply the whole proposal gets thrown out.

The whole Ground Zero Mosque kuufuffle is simply disheartening and at times disgusting. I just don't understand how people can so whole heartedly associate an entire religion with terrorism and how they think it is perfectly okay to infringe on another group's rights. If any of these people's religion was being discriminated of in the same manner they would be quite livid and would go crazy stating how un-American such discrimination is, so I just can't stand the discrimination.

It's interesting, I really don't know how to do small talk, I pretty much just know how to have deep and involved conversations. In situations where small talk is called for really things just end up getting awkward. I also don't know how to give compliments and I think I'm quite bad at receiving them as well, I always end up regretting how I end up responding to a compliment.

I think the scariest thing that is happening to our culture is the culture of "me". People seem to not care about anyone but themselves and I don't see how we can live in a truly functioning society with such ideas. How can our society move forward and how can we successfully interact when we are thinking about is ourselves? It just feels flawed, to live is to interact, you can't live in a vacuum and in someway everything you do has some broader affect down the road.

On my way home, venturing through a cold an unfamiliar city on my way home to the warm home of my brother's a point of anger formed in my mind at something of entirely no consequence. On this wave of senseless anger I began thinking of what the middle way really means. I always thought of it in the way that I suppose that it is conventionally mentioned, but with my thoughts that night and with some reading on Zen, I think I've come to fully change my viewpoint on what is the middle way. Perhaps some would say that this is conceited, I mean who am I to say what the middle way really is. I guess what I really concluded is that the relinquishing of emotions is itself an extreme. So the common viewpoint of the middle way is that emotions themselves are essentially two sided (let's call them the positive and the negative), where the command and mastery of all emotion is the middle way, but I suppose what I realized is that really the positive and the negative are one in the same so really it's like folding a paper along the abolishment of emotions. So in the end the middle way I think is better described as the flow of the center. The absolute of anything becomes itself an extreme making it itself not the middle way. I'm also not sure I agree with the standpoint taken by many Buddhist schools that enlightenment is something attainable through a journey for such an end, as the journey itself is counter to enlightenment. But at the same time if we are all one how can any part of the whole reach enlightenment on its own? I suppose in many ways that is the simple question that Bodhisattvas have asked themselves.

A fly buzzing around alights on a mound
Losing its center it topples to the ground
--
We are all just electrical impulses dancing around

Short Sighted, Are glasses really a fix?

2010-08-05T16:45:00.014-04:00

So Muji has on most of its items either prices in yen, euros and pounds in addition to dollars. Through this you can observe that almost all items are marked up a great deal, I observes some items that would be 500 yen selling for 15 dollars or so, essentially a 10 dollar increase. Wow

I'm reading the last lecture, it really can be quite touching, but what touched me the most is where he says that one of the keys to his success of making his dreams come true is that whenever he is confronted with a brick wall he perseveres until he is able to tear them down. This meant so much to me because I think that I often do the opposite out of fear that the wall will simply fall on me.

There is this phenomenon in NYC that there is always something to do, so when you leave you just have to come to peace with he fact that tons of things will come up when you are away and just understand that if you were to not come to peace with such a fact, you would simply never be able to leave NYC.

It is often more important to know when to stop than it is to know when to begin
--
I dream of loves and their forlorn beauty
Yet those tangible beauties illicit no desire
My reach goes to the stars, but my grasp comes up empty
--
I know how to want, but not to have
I know how to dream, but not to actualize
I know how to love, but not to share
I know how to scorn, but not to end

What Protein Do you Order? Prospect Park West Bike Lane and Abortion and, taxing patents and cigarette taxes

2010-06-20T22:24:00.009-04:00

So this is one of those odd little questions/observations, but what protein do you order when you're out at a restaurant and why? I personally first default to seafood and then red meat, this is because these are the things that I cook least frequently at home, both due to cost and ease of purchasing as both require me to go somewhere other than just the park slope food co-op as I would otherwise only buy fish from a fish store and beef from a butcher (perhaps I should do the same for chicken). I guess I also sometimes like to get dishes that I make in order to compare and contrast, one example would be risotto, I once ordered risotto at this place in LA with my aunt and it was horrible, it wasn't even risotto. Do you order pork because you love it, but don't keep it at home, do you order steak because it is your favorite, do you order chicken because you can get divine chicken that you can never replicate at home, what and why do you order.

So there is this truly amazing new bike lane in Park Slope along Prospect Park west. The lane is two way and is protected by parked cars from the streets traffic. The lane makes biking north and south in the slope much easier and enjoyable and as the street was narrowed from three to two lanes the time required to cross the street has been reduced for pedestrians and will also slow down and calm the traffic on the road. For some reason there are a lot of people who live along the street that don't support the lane. Most though not all of these are people whose children have long left home and have stopped riding, they fear change and fear that the change will hurt their home values. Most of their fears are unsubstantiated and will be proven wrong in time especially after accident is available. This fear has been fanned by former NYC DOT Commissioner Iris Weinshall who is Senator Chuck Shcumer's wife and who lives on PPW. She does not and did not support the lane and seems intent on protecting her legacy instead of seeing our current DOT commissioner from being seen as successful. However with all the good, some cyclists have been behaving badly, on monday I had a very bad encounter myself with a tattooed track bike rider. My basic story of the situation is that I was riding north on the lane when I was passed by this rider, I than decided to pace him, we were going quite fast, recklessly I'd say, on coming up to an intersection with some pedestrians trying to pass (all cyclists are required to yield to pedestrians especially on the lane), I stopped and yielded where as he just kept speeding on by. Now I will mention that it was dusk and that I and he both had our lights on and going, but visibility wasn't really affected yet and the lane is well lit when needed. As I got going again I could see a father and son riding towards him next to each other when I suddenly (I missed the actual incident as it happened so quickly) so this weird haphazard blur of a movement and then saw the light on his bike shining in my direction from the side of the road, at first I rode by but decided to ride back to try and diffuse any tension as they were arguing. The Tracker was pretty pissed at the father and son (the son was probably about 6) and was saying how the son shouldn't have been riding on the left hand side of the road and that he should have a light. I defended the father and son as I still think they were right and that the tracker was wrong, I proceeded to tell the tracker that he was illegally riding a bike without a bell and without working brakes, I also told him that I observed his failure to yield and that he was riding very fast, the tracker seemed quite shocked that I didn't side with him and got angry with me. After the tracker realized he wasn't going to get anything from the father and that I wouldn't back him up the father and son left and as did I. The tracker then followed me and we exchanged a few words he observed me running a red somewhere else to which I said I wasn't perfect and explained the controversy of the lane to which the cyclist said he didn't care and that he didn't want any lanes and that he didn't believe me about the laws, all of my assertions I told him can be verified by TA's biking rules, so hopefully he looked it up and saw his error. I doubt he did, I really just hope that these bad seeds don't ruin it for the rest of us.

Abortion is such an interesting topic and very divisive at that. I'm sure raises everyones blood one way or the other. Full disclosure, I'm both pro choice and pro abortion as a means of proper family planning. I even have some very radical views of abortion. To me people have to big of families and can often not support or provide a good environment for the children that they do have. People then always bring up adoption, but if a child isn't adopted foster care is especially hard and many children in foster care have a very fractured life sometimes being adopted more than once. Adoption is also very racially biased in that very few black children are adopted and white families will adopt children of almost any other race over black children and will adopt from over seas whether black or not over black children here, so I don't think that adoption is necessarily an option in all situations. Is it really humane to allow for over population or for a child to be raised by a family that can't provide a good quality of life for them?

People always argue that patents are property and that is why they should get all the protections that people get from any property yet patentees don't need to pay property taxes, why is that? I think they should.

Cigarette taxes are great in reducing smoking, but is it really good for us to fund our society on the killing of others? And what happens when there are no more smokers and our flow of revenue is reduced? It seems like a slightly faulty situation.

Everything about me changes.
I never allow my roots to go too deep.
Where will I be next, I never know.
Now I'm lost as to where I will be going now.
I'm simply adrift, afraid that I'm only moving back.

Weddings, C and C of ohio

2010-06-19T20:47:00.008-04:00

So first off, I'm quite sorry about my poor performance at posting on the blog. Things have been quite crazy for me. Everyone who reads this obviously knows about my general life direction situation. Well added on to that a funeral for my Grandfather, who I was very close to (this though not entirely surprising as he was essentially 95), two weddings and I moved four blocks so things have just been really busy. There have been so many other little things going on as well, I've helped a bunch of friends with various food things and I've been researching things for the future, who knows what will come from any of that though.

Weddings are crazy, both weddings I went to were friends from college, one was in Ohio and the other was in Madison. The weddings themselves were very different, but in the end the emotions and camaraderie was all the same. The settings were different, the people were different, but everyone at both weddings were there to share a moment in the lives of two people, so all the differences, even the different people, the food, the setting doesn't really matter. I guess in the end regardless of how much pomp and circumstance there might be at a wedding, the wedding will be fun. Also regardless of how well you know people at a wedding you can always have fun with them.

So for these two weddings I went to two of the C's of Ohio, Cincinnati and Columbus. It was actually the first time I'd ever been to Cinci, I went there to start off both wedding trips as I stayed with my Friend David for a night and then headed out to the weddings. While in Cinci the first time for the first wedding I got some skyline Chili for lunch. The "Chili" wasn't half bad if you just go in accepting that it is its own things and is not what most of us (Myself included) would call Chili. The second time around I explored a bit more by walking as I had a bunch of time to kill, we also drove around a bit more through Cinci so I saw a bunch more of it. Cinci obviously has some very depressed areas and some pretty affluent areas. On my walk I went to this area called Northside to go to a sandwich shop reviewed by the times called melt. Northside I guess isn't too different from Williamsburg, it has a burgeoning white affluent hipster community. I saw some very clearly hipster riding banana seat and I saw mopeds.

Columbus, I'd been to Columbus at least two times previously and during those two times I never really got to see much of it. The first time I stayed with Kao to go to an Anime Convention with him and I pretty much only remember eating Kare at his home, Steak and Shake and out to Sushi with Kao's family. The second time it was to a friends house party and that was it that I can recall, so this time it was totally different. First we got some German food in the Historic German town where I had this weird version of a Reuban using the house sausage, with some weird name that I don't have the time to look up right now. We went to some BBQ joint from Cinci that was okay, but nothing to write home about or really even blog about. We went to Thurman's, which is also in German town for their famous burger (not the thurmanator, which is 1.5lbs) which is 12oz, it was good, but honestly a bit too big, I prefer my two burger solution at the Corner bistro, which is actually cheaper, which is crazy for a NYC to Columbus Comparison. To get to Thurman's we rode around a bunch of Columbus' great cycle paths. It was always fun crossing the river and just riding around totally different scenery than I'm used to. Perhaps my favorite part of Columbus was Jenny's Ice cream. This is perhaps one of the greatest Ice Cream shops I've ever been to and they make fresh waffle cones all day, how can you not like that. They have some standard flavors and some great unique seasonals that were great, which I tried to try as many as I could. Really Jenny's could be a shop in SF, where I would say the best US Ice Cream location, the prices could be there as well. On my final night we decided to eat in so we went to a Japanese market and made some Japanese noodles and just talked.

In the end it was really great seeing a bunch of old friends and seeing some other sides of Ohio that I missed while I was there in College. It was disappointing though how hard it was to find truly independent local businesses.

Madison is an amazingly nice city and really does have an amazing Farmers Market that just eclipses every market in NYC. We went to Yellow Jersey one of the Legendary Bike shops in the US and we went to this great little knife store, where I got my friends their wedding gift. We also had some frozen custard from Michael's, which just doesn't compare to Ted Drewes. We went to the Double Windsor, which gave us some ordering issues, but gave us great service and a great local beer selection. Madison went by really fast.

I'm really behind updating and I hate throwing in way to much into a single post so I will up my frequency.

As turn my wheel for a new way I look back
All I see are my companions sailing by
I can't tell if I'm even going forward or backwards
To me I'm at a standstill and all I see is everyone leaving me behind

Multi vs Single Income Households Pt. One

2010-05-25T01:17:00.005-04:00

So can you judge a person by their bike? I guess it isn't too different from judging a book by its cover or a person by their clothes, all of which we do all the time, so I'm going to say yes. Here are some categories but not all:
Spandex Hero; wears spandex and thinks they need to spend money to go faster, someone who is more about competition than real enjoyment in life.
Utility; Rides a pretty plain bike, possibly rusting, doesn't view a bike as anything other than a tool, has a pretty plain no none sense attitude towards life and gets enjoyment from the end and not the means.
Hipster-Rust; Rides a bike that almost seems to fall into the utility category, but on closer inspection you can see that they actually care about maintaining the bikes appearance, might be a single speed or fixed gear but has horizontal dropouts. There are two types of people who can fit into this category, the authentic and not authentic, the authentic or creative types live through life figuring out how to get as much out of as little as possible and find enjoyment of all, the ladder seek acceptance from others in life, the unauthentic are more likely to have a brand new bike that looks like an older bike, these often can easily be identified by them having track ends.
Trackster; Rides a beautifully curated track bike, probably soulless unless found only on the velodrome.
Bike-Nut; Owns more than one bike or frame where the frames have themes, generally based around some esoteric concept like some specific bike part or groupo, have a generally obsessive nature.

It's interesting how many things get affected by the increase prevalence of multi income households. When all the adults in a household work it means that certain chores and responsibilities must either be shouldered onto other people, scheduled oddly or just entirely removed. Other than just chores and responsibilities there are major social and economic changes. In a single income household, the non-working adult can easily shop during the day and spend more time shopping and then in the case of food shopping cooking food. So why is spending more time shopping good? Well when people spend more time making decisions they often make better decisions, when you are rushing and shopping you are more likely to not make as thoughtful decisions. And then you have time to cook food which means you can buy less prepared foods and spend more time making healthful, cheap and compelling meals. If people have more time they are more likely to go to more purveyors, in some ways multi income households have destroyed the local grocer, baker, butcher, etc... in favor of the super market which accommodate the busy fast paced life style as everything is under one roof, you can easily do all of you shopping in a rush. More small businesses also means more local shopping, which means more walking, which means more exercise and more community, look in any local newspaper or events magazine and they are filled with adds from local businesses and almost nothing from big business. You might say that you don't have a local grocer so you would still need to drive, but you used to, well until the super market came in and shut down small business. I will write more about this at a later time as there is too much. Other soon to come topics are child care, cleaning, family time and many more.

For some reason the other week I was having visions of Japan, it was really odd, for a moment it felt like I was there. Perhaps it was just because me and Kao were talking after his recent trip there, or maybe it is just time for another jaunt over there.

Murder She Wrote was a surprisingly good show. It's so weird, I never appreciated the show when I was a king and then one day I was watching a re-imagined doctor who episode with Agatha Christie and did some research and I started to watch murder she wrote on netflix. J.B. Fletcher is an amazing woman. She is entirely self reliant, she bests everyone and she rides he bike everywhere. There was even this great episode about home made jam. Everyone should live up to the greatness of JB, now you often know quite quickly who did it, but it is still fun watching JB work it all out.

Floating all around, with a sea of blue in between.
Bright white, potted and contoured all around.
Shadows visible from far away, accentuating the form.
Always looking different, never the same as another.
Looking like anything, only limited by our imaginations.
--
Reaching in and approaching problems where you see them.
Working and working, but you actions are to no avail.
Finally you approach them from a new direction, on the outside.
Seemingly easy and transparent problems can be like dirt on the outside of a glass.

Five Borough Bike Tour

2010-05-05T22:54:00.005-04:00

It's already been three weeks since the bike tour, so obviously this post is a bit late.

This was my second year marshaling and it was worlds better, to the point that it was great. Though I must say dealing with the start line, which is what I did meant having to deal with a large number of very rude an inconsiderate people and even worse was the fact that some of the worst offenders were doing it with their children. Well the day ended up being a truly beautiful day, and I managed to enjoy it even with only 2 hrs of sleep and a 50 mile or so bike ride. In some ways the most amazing part of the day was that I was able to find my friends who were riding the ride with no coordination when there were 35000 riders. It really was a great ride and in the end after a burger and some ice cream, I showered and slept.

I love thinking about how so many little things lined up so that I would run into my friends. I think the exact same thing every time I meet someone or just have a great time that was unexpected. All of our little twists, turns, missteps, falls, successes, etc... add up to now.

I have been doing so many things and I'm getting a better idea of who I am and what I want. It is however still towards the beginning of my journey.

As an interesting note, the more busy I am enjoying myself I seem to post less frequently. I really am going to try to keep posting more regularly.

Most things in my life are either a matter where I know precisely what I want or don't want and get almost obsessive about it or where I simply can't make up my mind.

Past desires blind us to present possibilities.

Living your life like there is always something better over the horizon leaves you walking forever, sometimes though when you get back to the beginning you realize that there was nothing wrong with where you started.

As long as you don't know what is on the other side of the wall, you can always imagine it to be perfection making this side seem so much less appetizing.

Default Thought and Ratings

2010-05-02T00:42:00.004-04:00

So it's interesting, in junior high when I was walking to school, if I wasn't thinking of anything in particular I would essentially default to thinking about computer configurations. Now in similar circumstances I pretty much think about either bike configurations or food. I feel like this is very illustrative of how I've changed over the years.

So I recently watched "This film is not yet rated", which is excellent and is a great expose on the MPAA and specifically movie rating. It really reveals things that you would otherwise never know. It really echos many of the problems I have with the iTunes store, that is that they are providing censorship that isn't open to public scrutiny. Censorship, which in my opinion is pretty much always vile in every form and is particularly evil (isn't that funny that you use the same letters for evil and vile?) when it is done through a closed process.

This whole Arizona immigration this is disgusting. I really hate the proponents who say that it won't cause profiling, that cops will only stop people that they have fair suspicions of being illegal immigrants, but as it doesn't define what a fair suspicion would be it is only obvious to believe that people will be profiling based on race, especially hispanics I'm sure.

Swooping swallows in the air.
Diving to and fro like a magical dance.
Always high above looking down for the slightest sign.
At its appearance the swallows always dive for it.
Sometimes they succeed and sometimes they fail.

Transitions

2010-04-27T00:40:00.001-04:00

First off thanks for all of the well wishing. It's funny so far I've gotten tons of congratulation and lots of jealousy, how funny is that.

Transitions are interesting and funny things, so far I feel like most of my life has been a series of transitions and this is just another one. We are ever changing beasts, but perhaps sometimes there is nothing wrong with finding some constant. For most in many ways that is the truly special thing about family, they are always a constant. So far, I've honestly done very little with my new found time, though oddly I feel like I've been super busy, but when I look at the products of that effort I can't think of much. So right now my transition feel especially scary, because it just started, I don't know where it is going to take me and I haven't really done anything yet to take me anywhere.

So it was my birthday and with the huge flood of well wishes it really hit me how you can almost categorize the people that wish you happy birthday by how they do so (People that don't wish you happy birthday can't be categorized this way). Essentially those that tell you in person (assuming no party) are probably incidental, calls can be correlated pretty directly with closeness, then txt, email and then FB, there are of course exceptions based on people's own perceptions of these mediums and certainly I am imparting my own perception of these mediums onto these judgments.

The next two weeks will be the beginning of my big push forward into the future.

For a moment as the winds first shift they seem to not blow at all.
One just floats there carried neither to nor fro.
But as the wind finds it track again it carries one somewhere.

Obfuscation

2010-04-16T11:52:00.010-04:00

Well the title of the post itself is the Obfuscation. One could say that the root cause for the obfuscation is so that my auto twitter blog post alert doesn't on its own broadcast this to the world (I actually don't really use twitter any more, it was too much of chore, but it still does blog alert stuff). Well the true and proper name of this post would have been either, "Scared of the Possibilities" or "Laid off". The second one there says a lot I suppose. Now if I know you in the real world and this is how you are finding out about my being Laid off, don't feel slighted in the least, I honestly don't first off don't know how to tell people, but it is easy to write things down (I guess this is why people love status updates, blogs, tweets and the like), it's just so easy to be brutally honest. Also I'm not looking for any sympathy, which is what people seem to always want to provide on hearing the news, in actuality I'm quite happy with this as it makes me go through with my plans that I could have very easily just continued to put off. It's like a bird, a bird will never fly if it never gets pushed out of its nest, but when the bird gets pushed out it may fly or it may fall, it's the fall that is so scary and hopefully it flies. Don't think of this as being a social darwinian thing, I completely disagree with social darwinianism. So hopefully I fly, just time to find out what I should do to fly. I will be keeping the blog up to date with what I'm doing so I guess just keep reading.

What do you talk about that makes you the most passionate? I was thinking this question on my way home from having dinner with my old friend Trevor from College. I was thinking about this because we were talking about what I was going to do next and I threw out one answer (perhaps I'll apply to med school) more in jest than seriousness, to which he responded that he thought I would make a good doctor. In all honesty I've always thought about being a doctor, but there are two things that I guess you could say stopped me, first it was pretty much always said that I would become an Engineer and I just followed along with the flow, and second I never liked the premed attitude, no offense to my pre and post med friends, I never liked the competitiveness and the grade chasing. When I was thinking about this I realized that talking about healthcare and medical issues always makes me feel passionate, which got me thinking that perhaps we should pursue those things that make us feel passionate when we talk about them. When I think about the things that make me passionate the following are those things in no particular order:

Medical/public health
Social justice/Social issues
Urban Planning
Transportation
Food
Bicycles
Traveling
Sociology
Technology
Photography
Beer
Welding

So I guess these will be the areas that I will be concentrating my time and energy into while I have this new found freedom.

So in response to Kao's comment regarding the fact that you need to keep paying money for mass transit. The thing is you also need to keep paying for highways and roads. In the US we admittedly generally just wait for things to go into disrepair and on the other side you have Japan, which at least at one point would redo its roads almost annually to keep construction workers working. In general the costs of maintaining roads is bore by all tax payers where as mass transit the burden is placed on a mix of user fares and tax dollars. Most tolls on roads don't even come to supporting road maintenance for those areas as much as fare box collection does. For these reasons people have posited that all mass transit should be free if roads are or the other way around that all roads should be properly and proportionally tolled. But really the simplest answer is actually that it costs money to create jobs, so yes you will have continuing costs, but any real and lasting jobs will.

So patents exist to motivate innovation, and they are supposed to do this by offering people the ability to exclude other people from practicing an invention (they don't actually grant a monopoly even though that was the original intent). However there are now many people who try to patent things with little to no intention of ever actually innovating or providing their "invention" to the public rather they simply try to make money off of other people actual practicing and generally independent and often actual invention with a real reduction to practice. So essentially we need to figure out a way to prevent none practicing entities from actually exercising their ability to exclude, which is often erroneously granted by the USPTO.

So what is it that I hate about the iPhone and why don't I have one? The answer is the app store. The way the app store is scary to me and should be scary to everyone. Essentially Apple has the ability sensor what you put on your phone. This makes them a content controller, should we be allowed to put whatever we please on devices that we buy ourselves. I mean if I bought a computer and put a different OS on my computer, perhaps I won't expect them to support the OS, but I would expect them to support the H/W, which Apple won't do. What happens when Apple blocks a political app for reasons that they don't see fit to disclose or when they prevent competitors from getting apps into the app store (both of these happen everyday) would you be upset? You're not because you seem happy with what is there, but only because you don't know what isn't.

Thinking about riding a bike to Madison for a friend's wedding,

The future is open ended,
It's filled with infinite possibilities.
We can't see the end that our actions will bring,
But it is those actions that close the end.
What actions will I take?
And where will I end...

2010-04-10T20:27:00.007-04:00

So I'm reminded again about my poor grammar, I think I will try to do a better job to re-read what I write to try and make sure everything is readable, but it is hard to edit oneself so there will still be errors I'm sure.

So I find it so interesting how much of our idea of creating jobs for people is almost exclusively for construction. Now certainly these projects do create lasting jobs when the objects that are constructed require people to operate them after completion, and even so for maintenance and upkeep, but for one in the U.S. we don't do maintenance and upkeep, we let things break and then fix them. So the amount of lasting jobs that construction a new highway or widening a road create is really quite minimal, however if you construct a rail line or a subway, you create jobs for all of the operators, maintenance staff and train manufacturers. So in terms of doing infrastructure improvements, which are also meant to create jobs, we are much better off with rail than road just from a job perspective. On environmental and long term habits we are also much better off investing in rail and public transportation.

I have a new idea for a road type in NYC, it's based on the street that I ride on every day, 6th ave in Brooklyn. Essentially 6th ave is a relatively wide and quiet residential street, however for much of its length it isn't wide enough for a bike lane. It's two way so it is a major ave for movement, but because it is entirely residential it can be quite calm, but you more often than you would like get speeding cars and trucks. To me 6th ave is the best ave to ride on even though 5th ave has a bike lane. I think streets like 6th ave should have reduced speed limits, let's say 15mph and have increased traffic calming such as mini traffic circles and an increase in all way stop signs instead of just traffic lights. All of these together would make a residential sweet that shouldn't be used as a major thoroughfare, but rather a quiet destination road.

Fiction is really quite interesting in a way. It allows a person to create something unconstrained and provide somewhere for people to escape to. But is this escapism good? I don't know, this is certainly a harder question. Does fiction need to teach something or hold some intrinsic message, or ca it just spin a tale that brings you to something else? I've heard recent arguments against fiction, but I think that though we certainly have a need for reading nonfiction (though as previously stated my reading has drastically decreased since it started getting nice) we need to give a our minds good tests in imagination. There is nothing I like more than a well written reality, unless they try to do things in reality that are against reality, essentially bad science.

Not much of a product placement person, but just to say, my favorite kitchen gadgets are my Silpats. Really if you bake and ever you parchment, Id say a good 80% of the time where you would use parchment can be replaced with a silpat and make your life worlds easier.

So some more info about the inequality awareness dinner and to be supper club. So for this the first one there will be five classes that people will be randomly assigned to based on the income distribution of NYC. Each class has a different meal set. The meals will stress some point about inequality, whether it be fresh ingredients or high quality ones. The menu is still in the works so I will hold off mentioning any of that.

With the wind at your back all you do is applaud yourself.
With the wind in your face you curse it for always holding you at bay.
---
Sitting down in a rattling can speeding under the streets,
I spy you sitting there,
maybe you are listening to music,
reading something,
or just in thought thinking and watching all around.
You look up and stare me in the eyes,
I quickly avert my gaze,
I play it cool I try to let you think that I'm looking at everyone,
but I know my look was just for you.
I ask myself if your look was for me,
I look back expectantly and there you are looking right back,
only to quickly turn away.
What are you thinking?
Perhaps it's what I'm thinking,
for a moment I let my self think just that,
I look over towards you,
I say to myself that we will talk.
The car stops, the doors open,
I think that this is my chance,
as you get up I am immovable,
I watch you walk away staring at your back,
The doors shut and I continue on speeding down the lines.
---
I'm not looking for perfection in a relationship, but I'm afraid of being wrong.
I'm afraid of the fickleness of the human heart and its ever changing nature.

The First Win Against Biological Patents

2010-04-02T13:09:00.005-04:00

First off I did some more Croissants and I tried to pull off a croissant like Azuma, though I only did 128 layers this time, which is more than last time but less than the 324 of Azuma. But after doing some research I might not be that far off as I've only been counting the butter layers, but online something seemed to allude to the number being butter and dough, which would put me at 256. Either way I I baked them, burnt the outside, tried hitting them with a spoon and let's just say that the outside layer didn't beautifully fall apart dazzling my eyes with beautiful croissant underneath. They did come out really quite good any way and if the burn was too much you could just scrape it away to reveal a beautiful golden brown crispy crust and the inside was beautifully layered with that perfect buttery chewy center. These were probably my most beautiful yet, I had divided my dough in four so I still have more chances to experiment. So I started writing this, stopped and since I've actually done the remaining three quarters. I did one of the quarters on Thursday night and switched to baking on a rack in the oven without my fire stones and dropped the temp from 500F to 450F, this first batch I was a little nervous with the times so I got them pretty much right, but just a bit under baked, then on Sunday I made for a potluck I was kind of organizing the remaining two quarters and made my best croissants to date, at 450F for 12 minutes with one pan rotation halfway through.

On the topic of the pot luck it was coincidentally on Easter so it worked out to being an easter pot luck. There were some amazing stuff there, but I guess the most interesting from an American perspective was that we had a total of 5 Rabbits. My friends Laena and Jeanne made four rabbits in an Italian red wine style that was beautifully tart and earthy and I made a Flemish rabbit stew using prunes and a Belgium ale.

While writing I just heard on the radio that lot's school districts are planning on outsourcing custodians to private cleaning companies. I think this is ridiculous. Why should we feel good about paying people less and getting fewer benefits? Though I didn't have any real interactions with custodians outside of elementary school, the Custodian in my elementary school was awesome he was friends and would help with almost anything and he ran the Street hockey league. I can't imagine that he was the only custodian that managed to utilize school facilities for more good for the children than is actualized in the school during it's normal operation.

How long do you have to know someone for them to be an old friend? It's so weird, the other night I was sitting in bed while watching something on my computer when something hit me, freshmen year in college feels so far away and my memories of it feel almost disembodied. It made me realize that freshmen year was 7.5 years ago and now my friends from them I think one would have to consider old friends. In college I always thought of friends from HS as being old friends and at the time I'd known them for 4 years, but then that makes friends like Sam, whom I've known since pre-school, Shunya, whom I've known since second grade, and say Francis whom I've known since pre-school I'd say truly ancient. I guess a friend becomes an old friend when you occasionally have reminiscing conversations with them when you see each other, so college friends you are now old friends.

'tis the season of no reading. It is weird but true, when the weather gets nice I start riding my bike to and from work and in doing so I barely read as most of my reading is done on the subway. I guess the real solution to this is to stop watching and doing stupid things on my computer and simply read, but it's hard to break bad habits. The other problem is that I can't eat while reading very effectively and I certainly can't cook while reading and momentum is hard to stop.

So I was meeting with someone earlier this week to discuss engineering and food and more specifically this inequality awareness dinner that I'm working on and planning to make into an ongoing supper club series. And during the discussion she started to talk about a friend of her's who does design for social engineering in some regards and a round table immediately came to mind. And then from there the first though I had was of Arthur's round table and I realized the real strength of the mythical round table wasn't Arthur's leadership, rather a round table is the perfect place to for the meeting of equally great leaders. Though there is really no connection with reality nor the fiction, I think it is much more fitting to think of someone who meets about strategy around a round table a person who sees the strength in collaboration as apposed to working simply alone. Arthur as I'm now writing him I guess you could say was a great leader because he didn't lead alone and understood the strengths in bringing in other equal minds than trying to do everything yourself.

So as the title of the post kind of says, I first started writing this post about the recent patent case regarding the BRCA1 and 2 genes. Link Here for coverage by the times. This is a great first step towards fighting the drug companies and people like Monsanto. Now I know something about patents (it's what I do to make a living), and these type of patents I think are totally disgusting, I think it is even more disgusting that there are some practitioners that think these patents are okay as one could only think such a think if they are stupid or saying as much because they mean more money for them. Essentially the judge correctly found that these genes are no artificially made and as the patents only referred to the genes and not a process of manipulating them they did not stand up against US patent law. Now we must go after Monsanto for suing farmers who through no fault of their own have had their crops infested by Monsanto seeds.

Down and out, where the darkness sprouts.
Down and out, where there is no one about.
Down and out, where a smile counts.
---
Thoughts flowing like a leaky faucet,
One drip at a time.
They seems so valueless,
they only seem to sound echo's through our minds.
Each drop means nothing on its own,
but all together they create a symphony.
---
Speeding along,
what is close seems to simply speed away,
But those far away move slowly away.
Speeding along,
It's easy to miss those things close and speeding away,
BUt those things far off are hard to miss and easy to move towards.

Reward and Punishment Society

2010-03-25T16:35:00.010-04:00

I've been thinking about why people in the US seem to find the idea of social welfare so detestable, especially when I think such a standpoint seems counter to most cultural ideals that exist in the world. I think this comes down to this idea that most of our society is based around the idea of reward and punishment, we don't trust that people who are being supported by the state will try to be productive and get off of such assistance rather we think that they would simply lounge around and do nothing and partake in "rewards", we think this because most of us who are "working" feel that if we weren't "working" that we would simply enjoy ourselves. I don't totally disagree as I think if we gave people adequate economic security people would do things that they enjoy, but I think most of these things would actually be quite productive for society. I think many of the things we do now as enjoyment are purely mind numbing for the most part, they are enjoyment because they are escapism from the horror of what we must do. People now choose jobs and careers not based on enjoyment, but out of a means to feed themselves and when they aren't working they have to get away from work. For these reasons, I think, people believe that if you need a job to survive you will be unproductive. We won't have bankers, we will have a lot of artists of all sorts, doctors, engineer, scientists and any and all creative endeavors. We would also have entertainment athletic included. Cleaning I see as being the biggest hurtle, but there are people who see greatness in cleanliness, or we will each do our own share.

What is normal? We get our cues from society, but certain things such a our own state of condition has no actual foundation for what is normal. I mean say your arm hurts, how do you know that isn't normal? So many things are relative to ourselves that can't be clearly communicated to others.

My biggest question is life is whether it is equally as fulfilling to help just one person or to help many. This might seem obvious, but can one not be totally fulfilled by truly devoting yourself to helping one individual and in doing so you help all of the people they and their descendants touch as well? To go with this, is it a bad thing to feel like you want to be able to interact with the people that you help?

Oh and I have to recommend the most recent Woody Allen movie "Whatever Works" with Larry David. Now I can see why it was rated terribly well, a lot of the execution seems awkward and not quite on point and Larry David seems to be somewhere channeling Allen, but at the same time you don't feel like the character is really any different from Larry David on Curb. I think though the story alone makes the movie worthwhile and to some regard the arrangement, but it's execution really is quite questionable.

So first in regards to Kao's comment in the last post I totally agree with him about compensation for doctors not being fixed. Of course doctor compensation is a very difficult question. There is a point of compensation that Kao didn't mention that needs to be addressed which is time. Compensation as with most things should be calculated in a very formulaic manner, but the problem with this, which the US and Japan especially have with fee schedules, is that it is hard to say what is a fair price for the doctor as theoretically all work should be fully compensated by insurance. In thinking about this though my mind keeps going to the fact that we really should simply have universal healthcare and not rely on health insurance. Just think about it, the idea of insurance is that you get it to protect yourself against things that aren't necessarily within your control and aren't planned. So if you look at the idea that we accept that people will require health care it is really the payer (preferably the government) that needs insurance to cover expenses that are considered beyond normal. In such situations the payer is motivated to reduce costs not by reducing care as a reduction, denial or discontinuing of care will only exacerbate the situation, but rather to reward behavior that mitigate possible future issues. So in terms of providing security the new healthcare legislation making impossible for insurance companies to discontinue care for a treatment have lifetime maximums, it doesn't really guarantee that doctors will be adequately compensated and as such a doctor might deny treating a person who they don't think they will be adequately compensated from, which is happening right not with medicaid patients who are being denied care, not coverage because medicaid won't adequately pay doctors. It's funny people complain to say bike mechanics for charging to do things that the person could do themselves, but you pay the mechanic to do it faster, better and reliably also if it fails you can go back to them, also simply because until you saw them you were probably ignorant of how to perform the task. We need to understand that the cost for a procedure is made up of the training and time a doctor has gone through to be able to do it, the amount of time for the treatment, the cost of running a practice and then also money to reinvest into a their practice. In the UK a primary care physician is essentially salaried where they are paid based on the number of people in their practice (they have a gate keeper system so you must have a PCP) and then get rewarded for performing certain preventative medicine and rewarded for good health outcomes. So in Britain a doctors best means of making money and supporting themselves is through providing preventative medicine and providing quality care. Now the big problem that people see with care in the UK is the lack of choice and power in the hands of the patients. In the US we have the illusion of choice, and the healthcare bill moves us closer to choice it doesn't address many of the systematic problems in society. I'm thinking now that perhaps we should have universal healthcare where perhaps people should be required to pay let's say on a sliding scale based on ability to pay and have a government healthcare system cover the rest. This could easily be integrated into our tax system, where if we move over to a smart card system, the card could essentially contain or reference a payment level. From here we need to add that doctors should be and in a few cases patients be reimbursed within let's say 48hrs.

So I think this shows how one of the things I hate the most about the new law is that it still allows health insurance companies to not charge based on ability, old people can be charged up to 4 times as much for insurance, these are people who have little income and have to live off of retirement accounts that might not be keeping up with inflation. So let's revamp that tax system and healthcare at the same time. And I guess second that we aren't requiring a universally compatible electronic records system.

Let's switch to a fully electronic tax system where we simply go onto the IRS' website, verify all the info reported to them (write offs should be reported by the body receiving the money to be written off to the IRS, if they don't get it then it isn't write off able with a few exceptions such as some work and education expenses and certain gifts), and your healthcare card could be used to identify you for all of these reporting tasks minimizing mistakes.

Too much rambling, but that's what this all is for venting frustrations.

Greenberg the new Noah Baumbach's new movie is really quite excellent so I highly recommend it. I think it is probably his best movie yet. Ben stiller I think has done better jobs, but he was still quite good, but as the NY times said Greta Gerwig really makes the movie. You never get the feeling from her that she is acting rather you just feel like she is living the role. In someways the message of the movie really hits home for me.

Went to the spotted pig finally, I decided to get their famous burger and this great prociuto tart. The tart was great and you could tell the burger was great meat, had an amazing bun and truly amazing fries, but as might have been obvious I don't know if I can agree with their cheese choice. Now I should state that I am usually not a cheeseburger fan, but I felt it important to have the chef's vision. The cheese was just too strong and I felt covered up the taste of the obviously excellent beef, but it was still really quite good. Oh and their cask beers, flying pig bitter and six point ottis are both great and highly recommended.

Today I helped cook Brunch at Jimmy's No 43 with Trina Hahnemann, this absolutely amazing Scandinavian Chef. I really had an amazing time doing it, even though I'm sure it wasn't as razy as most Brunch services can be, this really was fun and tiring. Also as a shout out to an amazing Beer, everyone should try Hitachino's Beer especially this espresso stout they have that is amazing.

What do I want to do? I want to make people happy and I hope that in doing so I will find happiness as well.

Dandelion in the wind,
Reaching for the seed,
Evading every grab,
Every grab moves it,
Follow 'til it lands,
On the land you can reach.
--
Traveling along a twisting and turning path,
Caught in the movement of the passing scenery,
--
Echoing rain drop down the hallways
Twisting and turning all around the bends
Dissipating as it travels covering more and more

Post Walk

2010-03-23T12:32:00.003-04:00

First someone apparently recommended me for bloginterviewer.com, which I was at first weary about, but it seems fairly honest so I went through with it and it was just as they said it would be. I would link to them as I guess they like, but I feel that would not be in the spirit of this blog, but I will mention it as I am here, so thank you bloginterviewer.com, this not linking back is not meant to be an affront to them rather it is just to be in line with my odd sense of direction for this blog, which I hope all of you readers will always hold me to, and without further ado the real blog entry.

So our walking path changed slightly, we got to take the Wards Island bridge which was down early and we finished with the iconic Brooklyn Bridge. It was (not counting elevation) I believe and 18.95 mile walk, which I must say left my legs and feet quite sore, but it was certainly worth it. It was possibly the nicest day of the year and it was a perfect way to bring in spring. I had brought some Homemade Pan Au Chocolate and Croissant, only 97 layers, so not as good as Azuma (Reference to Yakitate Japan), but still good though I think they could have used a bit more baking.

Last night I went to Homebrewers meetup which was quite fun. It was really great to share my homebrew with others and see what other people were doing and get feedback from people much more knowledgeable than myself, as this was only the fourth beer brewed by me and my friend, though really only the 3rd I worked on.

I guess right now the big news is of course the healthcare legislation that was just passed. I guess to me it is a mixed bag, I don't think it goes nearly far enough and it takes away woman to have an affordable rite to choose, but it will provide a mandate, which is a plus and take away the ability for insurance companies to deny coverage based on pre-existing conditions, other than that though I think most everything else is a mixed bag. It made deals with big pharma to protect important and expensive drugs from becoming generics for a longer period of time, it allows older people to be charged more (people should be charged based on ability to pay not on the chances of getting sick) and price controls pretty much will be purely based on free market ideals of pricing. There is no motivation or requirement for electronic records that would be standardized across all doctors and insurers, it doesn't require all doctors to accept all insurance, and it has many other problems. So it is a mixed bag, though I guess I won't fault anyone for voting for it, but I will fault many of the people who didn't vote for, because they didn't for either ignorant/fear mongering reasons, bad reasons or just because they wanted to say no, when the bill though not written by their hands had more of the ideas of the right than the ideas of the left in it. In some countries traffic tickets are based on the ability of the driver to pay, so say a millionaire driving their Porsche at 120mph/200Km/h would pay tens of thousands of dollars while a day laborer might pay tens of dollars, the idea being that people that have more have a greater responsibility and that in the case of tickets as being a deterrent of bad behavior the fine has to be substantial in light of a persons ability to pay. I additionally sometimes wonder whether so called "rite to lifers" realize how many children die every year because of inadequate healthcare in our so called great nation.

I think the biggest challenge in our society is following your dreams as apposed to following what society holds as a dream. What's kind of interesting though is that often time on the surface these dreams may be the same the actual rules of society make you take a route to a different dream than the one on the surface of society. The greatest ideal of our society is freedom for people to pursue their dreams, but really in the end our society seems to have become one of pragmatic capitalists as apposed to dreamers and philosophers. Whenever I meet someone who is following their dreams as apposed to following money I always feel a tinge of inadequacy. Though I don't think I necessarily think that I am following money, I know I'm not following my dreams and the biggest hurdle to me following my dream is fiscal insecurity. I know in my heart what to do, but it is my rational mind that fights that need and path and this is only stoked through fear of what may happen to me if I don't follow what society says is correct. We should not fear failure as with failure comes great lessons, but our society only rewards success.

With the flow of the stream leaves go where they are taken.
Against the stream the swims to its own end, but to the future as well.
--
To the unknown seed goes.
Carried by the winds, animals and forces beyond compare.
The seed lands to grow to be a tree,
to shade and feed all for a lifetime.

Ennui

2010-03-10T02:40:00.004-05:00

Isn't it interesting how with every great an amazing innovation we make we need more money to buy these things, which means that we need to work more, which means that we have less time to enjoy these great new things that we are developing? In the end I feel like I'm just working for these possible material gains, but I find that the happiness it buys me outside of work isn't enough with the unhappiness experienced at work.

Japanese poetry and humor is exceedingly different than English humor and poetry. There is for one a lot more required knowledge to actually understand them, and I must say there are considerably more sophisticated or well at least complex. Reading the tale of Genji right now and it certainly presents a completely different idea of poetry from the normal English ideal.

I think might dread of work is making me less healthy. Every day I go into work and simply dread it. When I get home I need to distance myself from work as much and for as long as possible so I end up staying up so late that I get no sleep. Well the other explanation for my recent cold is that I was not dressing properly last week as monday and tuesday were beautiful and then the rest of the week was terrible, but I'd rather blame it on work. So today, the most beautiful day of the year I took the train into work instead of biking because I need to make sure I'm better for Sunday as I'm leading an 18mile walk around NYC, the route.

Slowly work wears away at my soul, but I must continue working to pay for life.
Why must my happiness be so reliant on my own suffering?
--
Sitting in my chair at work I feel my energy being sucked right out of me,
I sit there doing tasks that go against my soul all with the prospect of happiness tomorrow.
The force against my soul is like friction making advancing harder and removing a little bit of me with every motion.
--
Exalted towers all around,
shielding those inside from the world,
working at their meaningless tasks,
ignorant of life all around.
--
None of these seem quite finished, perhaps because I simply don't feel finished.

Re-Imagining Brooklyn's Fourth Ave

2010-03-05T16:31:00.002-05:00

Do you just skip to the end?

On Thursday night I went to discussion about re-imagining fourth ave in Brooklyn. Fourth Ave is a major North-South corridor for Brooklyn and is heavily used by trucks and parallels much of the BQE for it's run. For Brooklyn it is very wide, it has three lanes in each direction, which for Brooklyn is relatively wide. All of these factors put together make fourth ave a very dangerous street and this plus the fact that much of the businesses directly adjoining fourth are industrial makes much of fourth quite bleak. The idea of the discussion was to discuss ideas for the ave's future, there were multiple speakers on the subject, ranging relatively broadly in terms of interest groups. For the most part every speaker seemed to agree that the traffic needs to be calmed and that the street scape should be improved, there was however one that didn't. Now I agreed with many of the woman's points, she was there representing Hispanics in Sunset Park, while the meeting was occurring in Park Slope. I fully agree with her idea that there is something wrong with the ideas of how to improve fourth ave only come from the more white and affluent park slope, however I think she was taking too fearful of a stance. One interesting point that I've never heard before that she made that is actually quite understandable is that many people in sunset park resist positive change out of fear for increasing housing prices effectively pushing them out of their neighborhood. So essentially they are extra afraid of improvements causing gentrification as apposed to the usual pattern, which is gentrification causes improvements, because money comes in, of course the problem with this is that many people get priced out and much move out of their neighborhoods to points farther from the central business district. I don't think though that this is a good reason for inequitably upgrading infrastructure, rather this should be a call for more progressive housing policy in the city such as bringing back rent control and stabilization. We must protect lower income groups who often don't have the money or the time to sway politicians, but we can't stop positive improvements out of fear, we must use such opportunities to improve the equality and increase protections for those that are the most exploitable.

What is soup? This is a question I asked myself this Saturday and I expected my soup to be labeled not a soup, but it really begs the question, what is soup? So for the Souperama at Jimmy's No. 43 I made Chocolate soup, with homemade candied orange peals, homemade Churro's and a Mint whipped Cream. First I must mention my good friend Karol Lu won (some other people did too, but bleh), with an amazing Sweet Potato Soup, as is my opinion with Pies, sweet potato always beats squash, which is more common in both soup and pies. From what I could tell people liked my "Soup" and I was honorably mentioned especially for the churro's and candied orange peals, but with the caveat that they weren't in agreement that it was soup. As I said, this is what I expected, I would have actually been much more surprised if everyone just went along with it. To me soup is really just anything that is more liquid than solid, if it becomes more solid that liquid, but still liquid it becomes stew. However this definition gets murky because of soups with completely pureed vegetables or say drinks. So what made mine soup and not hot chocolate you ask? Well it was soup because I served it to you in a bowl with a spoon I guess, but if I had given it to you in a cup or mug it would have certainly been hot chocolate or drinking chocolate. You make the call.

The NY Times agrees with me as though I don't remember if I wrote this on this blog, but I was definitely discussing with someone about how that really there shouldn't be separate categories for men and woman in the Oscars, and just as an added note a woman just won best director for the first time, there is no best female director Oscar and a best male director Oscar.

An important thing I have to point out, apparently Iraq had a 62% voter turnout, while in 2008 the U.S. has a 61% voter turnout. So the Iraqi people were able to get a 62% voter turnout with bombs exploding around them and threats of violence, but in the U.S. we get 61% with for all intents and purposes a zero chance of violence.
__
Never content with what I have, as when I have I always yearn for something else.
The attainment of a goal is that much less interesting than the path to the goal.
Always wondering from one end to another end, it's the means that cultivates.
But as I walk away or am rejected by some end, I feel regretful for not choosing pause.
Perhaps I'm like a shark, always moving so that I don't suffocate on the world around me.
__
Who I can't be with is inevitably one that I desire to be with.
Who that desires me is one that is wholly unpalatable.

Taxes, FoodPrintNYC, Tips, MTA Fares for Students and All

2010-03-01T17:44:00.003-05:00

First in regards to taxing our system is ridiculous and redundant. All financial institutions and proper legal employers report all of your financial data to the IRS and for most Americans what you send to the IRS is information they already know. Even going through the form, most of the stuff that you select has certain default choices. The system should work where people may simply not file if they simply choose to follow all standard deductions and that they haven't done any independent contracting work that might ave brought in money no already reported. This would make filing for the vast majority of people considerably easier, only for people that choose to itemize their deductions or independent contractors would really need to file. Following on this our tax rate is too low for people that make money and too high for those that don't and dividends and capital gains should be taxed as normal income.

So I've been thinking about how we might create a simple and fair way of determining tax rates. The first and easiest part to establish is to say that incomes should be divided by the square root of the number of dependents and second people should be after taxes have been left with enough money to support that number of people. So essentially if you make no money and have one additional dependent you should be getting from the IRS a living wage divided by the square root of 2. Then we can I would fairly say that as people make more money they can both afford to pay a higher percentage of their money, but should also be pocketing more money. Eventually this would approach the point where there is no financial advantage to making more unless you have more dependents.

So I went to this great food conference this Saturday called FoodPrint. I was sick, but still soldiered on. Luckily even though I arrived 15 minutes later than I planned, I got there 15 minutes early and I was able to get a seat. Halfway through the first talk I turned around and saw that the place was completely packed. All of the talks were good, but I don't think they were long enough nor was there enough time for questions. I think one really needs to give about 3 hours for a real talk, where one hour or so is for questions, this worked out to being probably 50 minute talk with 10 minutes of questions. The first talk was all about how food gets to the table and it was quite good. The second was about mapping food related studies, which was good, but I think was a bit too middle way for the time as you ended up with very little time devoted to the studies and the mapping, with the amount of time they had they should have focused on just mapping. The third talk was about food history, which was good, but once again too short. The final talk was about the future of food and talked about additives and new alternative urban farming and green space. Once again too short. So essentially I loved the whole thing, but it was too short, I would love them to do it again for an all day thing or for even a multiple day event.

So recently David Sax wrote a blog entry in the NY times about tipping here is the follow up. So first off I find his 15% tip to be insultingly low, especially in nyc. Next I find it funny that he acknowledges that they aren't getting payed well, but stiffs them none the less. I think Japan has it correct where perhaps prices are a bit higher, but people will not accept a tip. But we have to start paying waiters well. This isn't just about altering the wage laws, but also a matter of altering our perspectives. In many regards the idea of flatly tipping a percent doesn't make much sense as I could order a 10 dollar salad and make very finicky requests or I could order a steak for 20 dollars, the waiter of course will get more purely based on what I order, in ways we aren't just paying servers gratuity, we are also paying them commission, which I think often can affect recommendations. Also by having servers rely on tips as apposed to simply a wage creates wage insecurity as there is no guarantee that on a certain night they will make much of any money and then on another they might make a killing. I think some people need to do some studies to see how servers might be affected by switching to a wage model and with perhaps as it is in some of europe where if any tip is accepted is truly a gift for good service or simply a showing of it even if the quantity isn't there.

So the student fare debate rages on. So there are essentially two sides to the Argument, one is that it costs the MTA effectively nothing to maintain the program (they feel it is purely administrative) and the other side is that the program costs precisely what the fares would have been if the students had to pay plus administrative costs. Further the second side says that the MTA is the only transit system in the country that transports students for free and that even with the amount of money they are asking for it is substantially less than it costs to bus substantially few students on yellow buses, which the state and municipalities pay for throughout the state. So the first argument is totally flawed, firstly let me tell you from my own time as a student on the subways and buses, kids are a hell of a lot messier and damaging to property than adults are. Second, the argument fails because why couldn't I say that about any group, especially fare evaders, the MTA will run buses and trains regardless of my paying a fare or not, so why should I have to pay it? Further perhaps the MTA could decide to run fewer trains and buses at 3pm when very few people other than students are using mass transit? That would save money. I've said it before Fares should be free on LIRR, Metro North and NYCT for people who live in the areas served. A transit tax should simply be added in and the funding should be completely through taxes. This would enable everyone to ride the trains it would be subsidized additionally by those that can afford and the rides of people who can't will have a subsidized ride. One might further choose to just make transit free figuring that money could be saved in multiple aves and that transit would aid economically in other ways.

Inspired By Anthony Bourdaine (though in retrospect, this might be inspired by comments on a friends blog quite a while ago)

They say that every scar has a story to tell, no scar goes forgotten. So for Clair she had many stories to tell. For a man these would often be seen as positive status symbols, but for her they spoke horrors to everyone. To Clair they were constant reminders of both the bad and the good, but she didn't understand why everyone else only saw the bad in them. There was the one on her hand from when she was playing with her friends and went to catch a ball and put her hand through a window, that was a fun day, and the one on her side from falling out of a tree, but there are also the bad, like the one on her arm from breaking it when she and a friend got hit by a car killing her friend. However all of these are proof to her that she is both alive and has lived. When she sees someone who is unmarred, all she can wonder is what an uninteresting and sanitized life they must have lived.

Whenever some other woman sneers at the sight, of what to them seems so unsightly, Clair replies with brightest of smirks, which even more off putting to most them. Men usually come right out and ask about the scars, but they always seem to see them and look at their own unmarred hands and feel inadequate, thusly scarring most of them off from anything more idle chit chat. When people are able to overcome their disgust and actually tough these scars there is an unworldly and satisfying sensation that she experiences in these dead patches of flesh. It's like the sensation when your feet are asleep and you rub your foot, you know you are doing it and their is sensations all around, but none where your hand lies. Most of these people linger too long on these marks, thinking that they can heal these old wounds, never seeing them for what they really are, memories.

In some ways though Clair is totally prideful about her physical scars they sometimes make her feel like some of her must intimate moments are always exposed to the world. If you have memories and stories to tell, but no scar to show it is entirely your choice what story to recount, but without fail people always ask her about the scars. Immediately regardless of how well she knows a person it's that story that a person has requested. Like a person who has worked with their hands their whole life, Clair can't hide certain things about herself, the moment they are seen she is revealed. This however sometimes creates for great fun for her when people make certain assumptions which she may turn on them.

Wall Street Bonuses

2010-02-23T18:00:00.003-05:00

Isn't it interesting how it is actually not that bad for wall street bonus wise to have a recession? Essentially they have contractually obliged bonuses that even when they lose they make and then when they have massive gains, because when you hit the bottom all you can do is go up, they get even bigger raises.

Further it is really weird for NYC and state, because all of this bonus money is being taxed in NYC and in NY state, when the bonuses are down, NYC and state stand to lose lots of money. This really comes down to the problem that we have so much inequality that our municipalities are fiscally over reliant on a tiny portion of the population and because we don't tax these people enough we can't pay for things for those who can't afford, but those who can have more than enough money for themselves.

Perhaps I'm meant to travel down a road all alone, but with only the occasional short lasting companion. What's the point of travelling down a long and winding path without a companion? Is it just the potential goal, the I am to travel for? Or perhaps it's the path itself where the value is.

In the goal is an answer, in the path is an understanding.

Accidental Facebook Stalking and People always love how it was, never how it is

2010-02-13T23:14:00.001-05:00

I'm sure we've all thrown around the term Facebook stalking, especially I'm sure about some specific friend who always seems to be on FB and is reading up about everyone, regardless of how well they know them. I am a reluctant FB user, I find it a really annoying site, but I admit that it is useful for staying in tough with some friends,as time has gone on though I've simply grown apart from most of these people that have become essentially FB only friends even if we were once really good meat space friends. I also use FB for when people add me as a friend, invite me to an event or send me a message, these events go to my gmail account where I have a nice little facebook label that can show me when one of these events occurs. In these situations I generally fire up FB and in doing so I generally quickly peruse the feed, figuring "I'm hear, why not?" This however I've fully realized can lead to accidental FB stalking, as in I might see an update about some girl I like and happen to be friends with on FB and now I know some fact that might not have otherwise been known to me. This really isn't all too different from Google Buzz and it's security features, especially because much to the chagrin of many neither FB or Buzz default to a locked down system rather they default to an open system. Google could gain something I think if they actually had a system where I could make certain info available to some people, but not to all, but default on the side of caution, so that I have to explicitly add permissions.

One of the great sayings I think that exists is "Hindsight is 20/20", however what is almost curious about this to the vast majority of people the past was always better. Just listen to the Republicans rhetoric, pretty much their entire platform is without rational beyond saying that new ideas aren't American and that they love America how it is an was and don't think anything needs to be changed. Now change doesn't mean good, but certainly in the same sense, stagnancy doesn't mean good either. But it is really fear of change and the keeping of the status quo that makes the past so attractive. Sadly though slowly, but surely the US is losing out in many areas because we refuse to adopt change. We need to understand that the past is for learning and understanding, now is for acting and the future is where our actions take us to. Will we make some mistakes and have to go back, of course, will we make visionary changes, I'm sure, but to make any of those changes we need to act.

Is anyone actually that interested in the iPad? I don't trust Apple to be a content provider for one as they seem to be pretty interested in keeping a tight leash on the content including a certain amount of censorship. I do in someways find their decision to use a squarer aspect ratio screen interesting.

So I don't know what happened, perhaps someone can tell me, but according to google Analytics I've gone to averaging almost 100 page hits a day. They all seem to be coming from the google tool bar, but this doesn't make much sense.

Flying with the wind at our backs,
we are taken along the winds course.
The wind blows its own course,
but we must must navigate our own path.
We might have to circle back,
but where ever we go is where we are going.
Every choice we've made brought us to now,
and our choices from now will take us to tomorrow

School Lunches and Control

2010-02-08T00:10:00.003-05:00

So kind of like how I think I must have said at some point in the history of this blog about school uniforms, my opinion on school lunches has vastly changed since I was a kid. Now I must note I went to NYC public school and pretty much had no dress code to follow and ate out pretty much everyday from third grade through eighth grade. Now I think everyone should be required to eat school lunch. I think this for two reasons, first it would reduce stigma for those that have no choice and it would motivate parents who would otherwise have the ability to send there kid's to school with lunch or give them money to go out for lunch to lobby for better school food. And on that note NYC's new ban on bake sales is ridiculous because they are allowing unhealthy food that is labeled purely because it is labeled rather then healthier or at least as unhealthy food that is home made. Things like this really piss me off, I really hope that bake sales continue as usual and students and parents simply ignore this rule and challenge it if anyone tries to enforce it. This is how drink machines ended up in schools because of stupid politicians not understanding the legislation they pass but only the money that ends up in their pockets.

Unhappiness in my work is in my control, but relationships are only half mine.
Do I play to their desires, do I simply play myself or do I play the game?
There is only honesty in myself, and uncontrollable urge to answer he desires, but only in the game appears an end.
___
Do I put up a fight and follow my heart or do I just let it go her way, end.
___
Do I dodge? Or does she dodge?
I dip in, our eyes locked, the result seems imminent, but it ends simply in an embrace.
Did I miss my chance, or was there never a chance to begin with?

What is a poem? And Creative outlets.

2010-02-06T11:05:00.003-05:00

So in answering this or actually not coming close to answering it, but much more so I'm interested in an answer as it seems the definitions has changed a lot and is even pointed out in the current rivendell reader, I will go through the history of this blog to some degree, but please answers would be greatly appreciated. Wow if that wasn't a run I don't know what one is, which I incidentally don't, so I might be wrong.

So I started this blog back in 2004 when I was going to Japan, I had actually originally started a Xanga, at this point I no longer remember the reason why I decided to switch to blogger from Xanga. It was meant to be a vehicle of communication with my friends back home and a way of memorializing my co-op experience. However I quickly ended up almost exclusively relying on AIM (which I've now essentially given up) while at NTT as while I was there during the day everyone was in their rooms staying up late, so there was little need for me to maintain the blog, but I would put posts up occasionally.

Quite early into doing this I would put sign-offs at the end, similar to Edward R. Murrow's "Good Night and Good Luck", but ever changing. These evolved into short snippets of me communicating some idea in an indirect means. On returning from Japan I remember once Kao, who at the time was actively still maintaining a blog with much greater frequency than I, berated be me for not updating my blog (I suspect this was over the summer when Kao, me, Dave and Nick all were on campus taking classes or doing academic stuff). This caused a short bout of me updating the blog on a quite regular basis. This tapered off after a while until Kao had his 100th post which motivated me to post more, once again this didn't last long. Around this time, I think that my snippets started to expand in length and became perhaps more lyrical composition. When I did this people started commenting on them as being poetry, I really didn't know what to say as I was setting out to do so.

My bursts of posting I think started to get more frequent after graduation as it was a major way that Nick, Kao, Trev and I all stayed in contact with one another. This was generally true around big trips as I would try to chronicle them, though as some might note, I am still not done chronicling my last Asia excursion. with this greater frequency came a greater amount of people complimenting me on my poetry, which as I said before to my recollection was never really a goal, but I suppose it was certainly nice getting such a compliment, but I wasn't quite sure why people were now seeing what I was writing as being poetry. As a person who hasn't really touched poetry since elementary school, where you are really only given two ideas of poetry, the Haiku and rhyming, mine were neither, so it was just very interesting hear and me start to wonder what makes something poetic. Another interesting thing is that more people whom I don't know actually comment about posts that are exclusively "poetic" as apposed to my nonsensical ramblings about the world, which really only friends seem to comment on. So first I say thank you for your kind words, but I do want to hear people's answers on "what is a poem?". I guess the definition I've learned to follow is that poetry is something that is meant to deliver a message in an indirect way, whether it is by odd construction or word choice or allusion it doesn't matter, it simply can't just get to the point.

I think everyone needs some type of outlet for their energies. I think we I was little the outlet was mostly TV, Video Games and Sports. In JHS, Photography came into the picture (bad joke) and that was probably where most of my energy went and I guess it was my first creative outlet since I was really little, well I suppose one could drop computers into it. In HS pretty much all of my energy went into video games, computers and Anime, for my first two years of college things stayed the same and then I went to Japan and I re kindled my love of photography and in some regards its where my cooking got much more serious as I became fully dependent on myself for my food. Really also starting in Japan video games started to fall as well to the extent that when I got back I really only ever played three games, smash (which was with a wide variety of people) and Initial D and Gundam with Kao, to this extent my video gaming became only social, I got rid of my TV and I got pretty much all my media on my computer. In grad school I had a roommate who got me hooked on games a bit more than before and my Anime dropped to almost nothing, rather I mostly kept up with manga and photography and cooking were my main things, biking also started coming back into my life being in NYC. Now pretty much cooking is what consumes the vast majority of my time, I wish I had welding equipment then I would put more energy into that, building furniture and then there is still photography, bikes have also become this other pretty big arm of my life including liveable streets advocacy work. The little "poems" at the end or as the bulk of a post are also a pretty major means of self expression for me.

Traveling over the ocean with the sails up to the wind.
Looking up to the stars, so far away, diving a course.
Being stirred by the sea and ever slowly worn by the friction of time.
Standing on the deck appraising so many ways to go.
Ignorant of the vessel's memory of it's travels.
Everything leaves a mark, the smallest never tended to.
Catastrophe comes quickly from the ever growing pains.
A captain outfits their vessel for the seas ahead, rather than the seas behind.
But it is the seas behind that bring the vessel to the seas ahead.
The wise captain brings the past with them to be ready for the future.
The pains of the past can't be unknown or ignored and left to fester.

Constant Goals and missteps

2010-01-30T13:50:00.004-05:00

For but a moment we connected,
but the moment was quickly left behind.
We were inextricably linked only to be inextricably parted,
Will the spark ever ignite again?
Or is a light once lit and extinguished unlightable?
Or perhaps it was never extinguished,
so that the light may shine on us again?

With the ever changing winds of my desires I have but one constant goal,
to share my journey with another.
With all my searching I've never found a soul that echoes my own,
except for when we both lack desire.
Whether it was I who desired and they who scorned,
or I who scorned and they who desired.
Perhaps there were times when we both feared the outcome,
never to test our desires.
Or perhaps yet we made decisions to shield ourself or the other from pain.
But it is the pain of solitude that perhaps hurts the most.
When I lust for a woman I lust with my entire body and soul.
This lust makes me either the over attentive fool or a cold and repelling figure.
I repel out of fear, but I'm attentive to no end from following my heart.
Acting in fear is always a course for destruction,
but acting from the heart is the only way I know to act in love.
To some finding companions is a fluid art of an ever changing cast,
For me it's been a journey just seeking that one companion.
But to no the ending to the story would most certainly spoil the surprise.

Collisions

2010-01-27T23:22:00.003-05:00

How many times did we cross paths before we truly saw each other?
We spoke, we passed by each other, but the time was never right.
Our paths seemed to be ever crossing but never to collide.
And then in a moment just as it seemed like our paths would simply cross again, we collided.

The meaning of life is to fight entropy
Fighting entropy is love

Ikiru

2010-01-18T11:55:00.003-05:00

So I just saw this movie on Netflix yesterday and I would recommend it to anyone who is working at a job where they feel like they are just going through the motions. Essentially the movie posits that you aren't living if you are just going through the motions and that you need to stand up to positively affect those around you. It certainly it me in a good spot, I guess we will see if I act on it.

So first I'm going to say that I'm using the word 'Black' and not "African American", because though I think any term separating people is wrong, I think saying African American separates people from being Americans as we all are, I'm open to discussion on this point. So today it is MLK day and wow is the city empty, it makes it that much more depressing to be working today, I think it is slightly unjust that anyone has to work today. It really is quite creepy how empty the city is. This is certainly a contemplative day. For all of the great strides that have been made since MLK we have gone no where and in some cases even taken some steps back in regards to race relations. Today more than ever before there is discrimination of immigrants, Black children still are disproportionally in school's that are under funded and failing. Essentially in the time since King, opportunities have certain been opened for minorities, but most are still left by the waste side and they are still considered separate, but equal essentially. In some area's segregation has actually increased (though of course there is no longer institutional segregation) because the economic gap between the rich and the poor has increased minorities particularly black and Puerto Rican populations have been disproportionationally affected. Also it is my understanding that at least for blacks there is a greater amount of income inequality than for the general populations. There is still much to be done, but the how is the hard part, in the end the answer at this point in my opinion is to mostly address things in economic, social and moral terms and the Black community will be disproportionally aided by such efforts.

So my friend Jackie has a blog at Let's sit outside and she has a list of her accomplishments from 2009 that I think everyone should read. She had a super hard year and I think her list can be an inspiration to all.

I just don't know how things should go with the whole Haiti crisis. It is a terrible thing, and I think this is a great opportunity to fix Haiti without any military intervention, but it seems unlikely that this will be done and as Pras a member of the Fugee's said this morning on the Brian Lehrer show, the government of Haiti can't be trusted to disperse aid to the people of Haiti. Essentially this a time to do something positive with Haiti. As one person had said earlier this week on the show, perhaps it is time to make them a protectorate like puerto rico or perhaps even a state, all I know is Haiti is a wasteland and fixing the disaster won't fix anything.

The health care bill is essentially if at best just a baby step. It will provide marginal help to people at the bottom, but not much, it will do nothing for the vast majority of Americans, it won't have universal coverage and it doesn't provide adequate funding to do the true necessary things. It's time for an over hall of the health care system not just a patchwork, same goes for our tax policy and just about every other policy and structure of US society.

As with the last two financial crisis' in the US the rich will come out of the one richer and the poor will be poorer and there will be less rich and middle class and a lot more poor.

I now have a new favorite Bill Murray movie, I would say it used to be groundhog day, but now it is "The Razor's Edge". Jackie, assuming you are reading this, I think you would like it quite a bit. Time to read the book and watch the first version. It's inspirational, but will I act on it? Only time will tell.

It's sad how we can all get together when nature destroys our world and lives, but when it is man we do nothing.

We're like fire flies.
Flying around we flash our lights.
Our messages are mesmerizing and beautiful.
Attraction is the dance of our flight and light.
But as we swarm and dance together,
will our messages be understood, or
will we simply dance together never to
understand each other's desires

What's the use of Effectors when there is nothing for them to Effect

2009-12-29T22:19:00.003-05:00

This whole thing with the underwear bomber is distressing. I really don't think that the hullabaloo is warranted. I just think that we give the terrorists to much power by making all of our lives revolve around them. Really if they so chose the terrorists could easily just attack any where anytime. Which makes it almost odd as it has barely happened in this US where as it has happened throughout the rest of world. I guess I just don't like the idea of us living our lives in fear, which is what we are doing. Well assuming that we keep doing so I would recommend that security screening at airports be moved to gates at boarding time. I just want us all to live life and not to have constant reminders of the darkness that is a part of it. I'm also trying to figure out why these full body scanners (getting that much closer to Arnold's greatest movie "Total Recall") have to actually show visuals to the screeners, it seems to me that it would be easy enough to have all of the analysis performed on the computer and I would say only when something is detected possibly showing the image to the screener for greater scrutiny and as a guide to searches. It would be great if the system could differentiate between a wallet, keys, cell phone from explosives, this of course is important because anything with a decent size battery could be used as a bomb.

I guess back to the MTA, Speaker Quinn has to stop pushing this idea of shifting capital dollars to operating dollars and it annoys me every time I hear it.

I just saw Levon Helm, the great singer and drummer of The Band. He recently had throat surgery so he wasn't singing much, but Donald Fagen was there playing the organ and keyboard. It really was quite good, they had a great horn section with Howard johnson, they also had some truly sick guitar work and Levon is simply still amazing on the drums. Okkervil River was the opening act and I'd never heard of them previously, but they really were quite excellent and I would certainly listen to and see them again, they had this really kick as guitar/slide guitar/mandolin player, it really was quite impressive.

So my plans have shifted from what I last said. Previously I said I would last out until the beginning of next year, but I no longer thing I can hold out that long. The biggest thing that is getting on me is that the more that you think about leaving a good paying job the more you have to think about handling the economic repercussions.

On Sunday I participated in the streets Memorial Projects memorial ride. It was really really really really really cold. I turned off with a small group of people early to go to the final destination as it really was too cold and I had a cold any way. But it was certainly a very humbling ride and was a poignant reminder of the dangers that await cyclists and pedestrians in our auto centric city.

It's really amazing, I was one of Paterson's biggest critics, but of late he has actually done a good job of attacking the legislator, though I don't think he has accomplished much he has certainly done a good job of showing how dysfunctional our state legislators are. He is making some great calls now. Not that I agreed with many of the ways that Paterson wanted to balance the budget I did respect the fact that no matter what I he did to balance the budget as he is legally required to do the Legislator wouldn't pass anything and simply started using him as a scapegoat.

Green Markets are great, but I think their fatal flaw is that regardless of how many of them get placed in poor neighborhoods they are only open during business hours. This means that in terms of accessibility they are only available to a select few people who are able to patronize the markets during these hours.

What is gravity with out something to pull?
What is Light with out something to illuminate?
What is energy with out something to energize?

Things are what they are because of how they effect the world.
Everything is nothing in a vacuum.
People are who they are because of what they do.

We are our relationships and our actions.
We are nothing on our own.
It's how we effect the world that makes us who we are and what the world is.

Through our actions we live forever.
Act to live

Perfection only with a lack of perfection

2009-12-25T22:07:00.006-05:00

I suppose I'm saying two things with this, first that there is not such thing as perfection and if there was I wouldn't want it. Perfection is the goal, but if you ever get to the goal you simply have no where else to travel. Who wants the journey to end? Also it's what is off that really distinguishes. Imperfection motivates where as perfection simply sedates. But what does this mean? Or, do we seek perfection in imperfection or do we simply live our lives seeking perfection never to find it? I think it is all to easy and generally the case that we follow the ladder, but I think that perhaps we would be better to follow the former. I guess this why I kind of want to see if there is anywhere in NYC where you can learn about the Tea ceremony, well more particularly the tea house, which is designed around principles of Zen and something always left imperfect. But what is finding perfection in imperfection? It's not lowering standards or ideals, it's finding perfection in the absence of the expected and often in the lacking of finality. We can't go backwards but how do we know when to branch off? When have we taken a certain road for too long, when have we exhausted a path of everything of value to us? Are our lives more enriched by as much diversity as possibly possible, where our experiences are terse, or are our lives more enriched by fewer but experiences of greater substance? I suppose to that my answer would be the middle way, but it is the path that really is the hardest to travel, you can all too easily end up on a side of the line. There are I think three things that we need to do to explore perfection, or perhaps the lack there of, and they are to create, seek and share. I think these three things pretty much cover all of our bases. It's finding a balance of course, just think of the Beatles line "Love You Take is Equal to the Love, You Make". I guess I have to decide when I've spend too much time or more precisely I must learn when I have spent the most appropriate amount of time on a certain path.

Spinning, they keep you upright.
Snaking around following a single line.
Only when they stop do you fall.
With a foot to the ground you catch yourself.
But you are to one side or the other.
You right yourself and begin spinning.
Falling to a side only when you stop.
Momentum keeps you going and the moment keeps your path true.

Reverse Priorities and Some Cookoff updates

2009-12-16T10:29:00.004-05:00

Wow, so in NYC right now the big big thing is the MTA's funding crisis and in the US the big thing the Healthcare debate. Now I just wrote a long post about healthcare, which really is just a starting point for a bigger conversation. So this time instead of just talking about how things should be (still don't have everything perfectly worked out so that is still a work in progress) I guess I want to mention some things about the Senates health reform bill. So firstly it isn't really much of any reform. One example of this is that the Senate is going to put a cap on how much insurance companies need to pay out over a year, this is completely the reverse of much of the world where the amount of money a patient spends on health care is capped.

Oxford (the insurance company is providing an 800 million dollar dividend which is 18% of the collected premiums in NYS. Well isn't it good to live in a country where we get our healthcare paid for by people are more concerned about bottom lines than about actual healthcare?

The whole MTA thing is really just angering, more so the way that the are being entirely scapegoated. Now they aren't right and they really really need to be more accountable for their actions and have greater transparency, but most of the problem simply comes down to under funding. The under funding is almost entirely the fault of the city, and state with a lot of blame to fall on the federal government. To me right now we really need to be spending money on these things, look at the WPA during the great depression. And I don't just want some buses of any stripe (BRT included) I mean rail preferably subway. Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx all need more service, and that is where we should start investing.

The other day I was at a meeting of TA's Brooklyn committee and a friend said a statement that amounted to the city lacking biking infrastructure and it occurred to me that isn't really correct, it's not that we are lacking infra structure we actually simply have infrastructure that is designed with a focus on cars. The worst thing is that the infrastructure isn't even designed for pedestrians. The best way for cyclists to become better road users and to increase safety for all would be to change the traffic light timing to suit cycling speeds, say designed to time perfectly at 12mph. Right now because of light timing cyclists are more inclined to run red's because for cyclists starting and stopping is considerably more costly than it is for cars, also the slower speed focus would slow down cars and be better for pedestrians.

I think I mentioned the first Obstructions so I won't mention them again so I will just go from there. I did this pie cookoff totally last minute and I had a bike ride scheduled that day so I knew I would have to go straight from the ride to the cookoff so I devised a pie that I could transport in my back pack. I made what I called a Chocolate Sweet Potato Cream Pie. I tossed the cream and my dehydrated sweet potato in my seltzer siphon and rode off. Sadly when I got to the event I found I couldn't get the topping out, luckily they had some cream for me to use there. The whipped cream came out with a great seltzer flavor, but sadly the CO2 left the cream quickly. So the Pie was a failure, but I now am going to figure out how I can keep the seltzer flavor in whipped cream, I'm going to try freezing it. The was the second obstruction which had as its five obstructions: Rosemary, Brooklyn ingredient, No Butter, Something with Seeds and an ingredient that starts with the letter K. I made Kix your Flax Rosemary Chocolate Truffles, got third place from it, my favorites though didn't get anything, but it was a fun even none the less and I used my $50 dollar winnings to help subsidize some bowling. Just last week I did the cookie takedown, this was perhaps the cookoff I've been looking the most forward to, but instead I really just got totally let down. So I got some amazingly encouraging compliments from people and I even got what to me was the biggest compliment I could have gotten which was that ti was as good as Jacques Toress' cookies, but my least favorite cookie tied for first place in the popular vote, the cookie actually made me feel ill, but pop votes are generally popularity contests. I was more disappointed by the judges rulings. One of the judges said mine was in his top three and intoned that the other of the two did not like my cookies. So for the first time ever I contacted the other judge and they described their rubric to me and I guess it was unexpected as I had talked to people and said this very thing, but I though a good judge would hopefully be able to get over these things and she essentially said she was looking for a cookie that is the exact opposite of what I want in a cookie. I mean what can I do? I try to make gooey cookies (I don't even use baking powder because I don't like how that makes cookies too airy, which is what she wanted) with a some crisp on the edges and she didn't even like the pretzels, only one there. Bah it's judging is such a subjective thing, I really just should let this roll off and not worry about it as she is the only person there or ever who has not loved my cookies (well ever is unlikely, I'm sure mine are too gooey for others and have too much chocolate for many).

With my eyes I see beauty.
But to you what i see is only ugly.
What is and isn't is untangle.
reaching for my vision only furthers you from yours.

Some more medicine, certainly not the last

2009-12-14T00:12:00.006-05:00

So I definitely need to hear back from people on this one. So I'm reading T.R. Reid's "Heeling of America", and there are bunch of things becoming clearer to me. So here are some early observations. The first observations is that The US unlike any other country has its medical policy decided to aid/enrich doctors (not that it actually does for most doctors, rather most doctors are believers in the fallacy that is the American Dream) and insurance companies whereas other companies have healthcare policies designed to aid patients/the populace. The other thing that I realized is vaguely three part. Around the world doctors say that they don't make enough and follow it by saying that they could make X times more in America. Now here starts our three parts. Firstly of course is the insurance argument, in all of these other countries malpractice insurance cost is worlds less. Now the solution that the AMA gives is that laws should be enacted so that malpractice law suits are in some way controlled and limited, but really this cultural as most of these countries don't have such laws they simply don't have the culture of tort that we have. Really perhaps tort law in the US should be changed to make awards realistic and actually representative of the actual harm done. Next is the the very idea of relative economics. You can only judge yourself against your peers and those that you know of. The problem with our world is that there are people who make so much more than others that we have expectations for salaries that are both unrealistic and unnecessary. And you know what, Americans are the biggest people to blame for this. There is no other country in the developed world that allows for income disparities as great as ours and pays people so much for the same job that people in the rest of the world do for much, much less. Are most doctors through out the world under payed? Probably, but it's hard to say, as with sports stars, movie stars and executives everyone makes too little in their respective fields than those in America. Well this is only partly true, the people in the bottom three quintiles makes less in America than in the rest of the world in their respective fields. So really the idea of doctors getting payed to little isn't restricted to just doctors, rather most people in the world are payed too little and few people (most of them in America) are payed too much, which make a lot people think that they are getting too little. This is a major institutional problem.And Finally we need to ask ourselves what is the biggest problem with pricing structures that have been developed through out the world to determine treatment costs. It seems that one of the biggest problems with say Japan is that there pricing scheme sacrifices Providers so much that eventually patients will suffer as they aren't given enough money to reinvest into their business such as necessary facility upgrades and upkeep. Negotiated prices need to be realistic and that seems to be sometimes one of the problems with a lot of countries through out the world, but you can't go to far either way.

What are keys to successful healthcare you ask? Well it's important that it is a none profit institution, other wise health isn't what is taken seriously, rather only profits are. Now I'm not saying doctors shouldn't make money, but I suppose I personally would say that they shouldn't be enriched, but that isn't a necessary factor. So the system can be either single payer or not for profit private insurance companies. Funding needs to be guaranteed, adequate and be enough for reinvestment. You need universal coverage. Now Universal coverage can be done in many ways, the most common is a mandate, where people are mandated to purchase insurance, though the other way is simply to have a single payer system where everyone is automatically covered. Which is better is hard to say, but it is easier in a single payer system to integrate in illegal aliens. But insurance or subsidies can be provided for illegals so it isn't that huge of a difference. And As I've espoused before we need more legal immigration, but zero illegal immigration. Now perhaps the biggest lesson to learn is that we need a universal unified electronic billing and payment system, preferably this would be compatible with systems already in use around the world. So though this would cost doctors an initial investment, it will save doctors at the bare minimum the ability to not have to pay someone to do paper work. So in the least a doctor will be able to run an office for one less say 45k salary a year if not more. Doctors will need less space for storing files as well so they will be able to have cheaper rent. Really though it will save more than just a single salary and make doctors lives easier. Also payments must always be guaranteed for all submitted bills from doctors and they must be payed promptly. Now needing a gate keeper is controversial, it is a way to cut costs, but certainly provides a barrier to access to certain health services. Funding should come from all people of all economic backgrounds, do you allow some people to by extra insurance? Well it is hard to stop it, but preferably it will be unnecessary. Drugs should be affordable of course in many cases free. A final question that there are two answers to that there isn't a clear winner is whether or not treatment should be totally free or if there should be co-pays. Co-Pays seem to add to ownership and provide perceptions of value, so even paying sums that are guaranteed depending on economic class works well, no payment makes value of services to be lowered and makes it easier for people to over use the system. Preventative medicine is a must as it will decrease the total costs for health care.

Because of all of the above I need to bring up the Armory Mall project in the Bronx. Well when I started to write this it was a big thing, but it got rejected by the city council. This is a great thing and it has been touted as the first time that the city council has rejected a pro development proposal, so this is a great thing. The whole thing came down to the community saying that the mall was not necessary, but if they were to do it would only make sense if the jobs payed a living wage, otherwise a job really meant little to nothing. This is simply how the minimum wage should be.

With every cough shivers are sent through out our bodies.
Uncontrollable convulsions erupt through us,
Control is all that we want.
But the end can't be see, with the first cough comes more.
The convulsions overwhelm us and breathing gets hard.
It's everything all over that is breaking, not working.
Calmness and attentiveness stop the seizures.
One action effects everything and the cause cascades through out.

Teacher Compensation, CO2 emissions per capita and Trials in open public courts oh and Tech mixed with 80's style capitalism

2009-11-16T12:23:00.003-05:00

So I really am disappointed with Obama in regards to his push for teacher compensation being tied to test performance. This is because the areas that teachers are most needed are in areas where we shouldn't yet be concerned with test scores, rather we should be more dealing with equalizing economic and cultural differences that are creating problems in our education. Also how d you handle special education with such a payment scheme? Then we get into the problem that you start paying teachers based on different standards. This idea will only make it harder to get teachers to go into troubled areas and take on difficult and challenged students. Certainly there should be some way to evaluate teachers, but doing it based on the performance of their students taking inherently flawed tests is not the way. Independent panels, peer review, parental input and other dynamic approaches should be taken as apposed to tying compensation to test scores.

The U.S. needs to stop being selfish and acknowledge that we need to adopt a CO2 emissions limit based on a per capita quota. Though China is the worlds biggest green house gas producer they are behind us in per capita pollution. Additionally we need expect that some countries will have increases in their emissions as they gain greater quality of lives. You know how we can do this? Stop driving. People should move to urban centers in higher density with greater proximity to where they need to go and utilize mass transit which is mostly only available in dense urban areas. Now this might sound unreasonable to some, but this is the likely future. There are some things to love Japan about, manufacturing prowess, especially when it comes to an appreciation of quality and (whether it is out of necessity or is cultural) it's desire to conserve and be efficient.

Wow, we really just can't have everything both ways and the administration just needs to say that since there is no actual declared war and because none of the detainees are being held under the Geneva convention then they are fully entitled to hearings in public open courts. Now really everyone should be entitled to such things even if they are being held under the Geneva convention. Also the death penalty should be taken off the table, the death penalty is against most human rights treaties and is considered by many to be cruel and unusual punishment, which is against our own constitution.

I fear that in some ways our technology and especially social networks is enabling the crazy capitalist times that we live in. This is more of a feeling that something I can really put my hands on yet, but there is some unsettling feeling. Well I still have my hopes that the peoples desire for free content will push us towards having a more positive view of our social connections with everyone around us, create socialism and with that greater egalitarianism.

They say that the road to hell is paved with good intentions, so I suppose you just get a dirt road with bad intentions. Really the greatest challenge in life is to live your life based on all of your intentions and principles. As long as you act on your intentions whether you succeed or fail shouldn't matter it is the impetus and the action that make us who we are. Success doesn't matter and be prepared to fail, we learn from our failures and we are content with our successes.

Media and some delays in plans for the future

2009-11-13T15:27:00.003-05:00

In the hey day of the newspaper industry, think back to Newsies, there were tons of papers and they were all trying to compete for stories and it was all about who got the news first with very little care for accuracy, think back to the impetus for the Spanish-American war. Well things for a bit seemed to get better, some might say this started to occur with the advent of radio, where I guess papers decided that radio could get to the people more quickly, but papers could guarantee quality accurate reporting. This can be seen to be the case even through the TV era, where papers were known for two sides of the spectrum, extremely high quality accurate reporting e.g. The NY Times and Washington Post and papers like the Enquirer and the NY Post. TV took a middle ground, much closer to sensationalism, with a few exceptions e.g. Edward R. Murrow, but papers held a certain stature for quality reliable reporting, with strong editorial boards. Also Papers were able to cover much vaster topics and have more localized News as they were not meant to be view for only an hour or so. So where are we going to today? To some degree papers have with the web eroded, much of their integrity and there seems to be little other reason. Well perhaps part of it is also that most papers offer their stories for free on the web where as before when papers were facing free News Outlets they never provided their News for free. However the NY Times certainly increased its share over other papers by providing its news for free it however has had a drop in profits affecting its reporters and editorial boards. So optimally to me News should be free and I've said before that the openess of information on the internet and the desire for free information and media could be a powerful force in changing our ideals about capitalism, but in the system that we live in now we are making writers and journalists even poorer than they stereotypically were and we are also becoming more dependent on ad revenue. Even yet further the factualness and accuracy of many of the writers on the web is questionable at best and the fighting for first to publish seems to be coming back.

So I think my plans will be delayed another year. This is a completely pragmatic decision. For one it is probably a good thing for me to have a bit more under my belt, some more savings and well after talking with some Ph.D. students I really need to give myself more time for the applications than I was considering giving them. So now I think I'm going to start preparing a writing sample of sorts, which will essentially be a long mini self motivated research paper and see how that goes. Also assuming I pass the Patent bar within the next year (hopefully first go, but who knows as I've yet to really look at much of anything in preparation), I should have some experience being an actual Patent Agent as apposed to just an Adviser of sorts.

Before I knew you I was smitten by you.
All I needed to do was see you and all I wanted to do was see you more.
Getting to know you was great, but we became friends.
As friends I got to know you, and now I know what I saw was true.
But now I want more, but I don't want to lose what is.

Other girls come and go, but you'll always be my constant.
But a constant that will never be.
You'll be the standard by which I judge all others.
But you won't be based in reality.
No other girl gets a fair chance when compared to your possibility.

I could stop the cycle, I have the power, but what would come of us?
If you say yes, even you won't stand up to your own image.
If you say no, we will have nothing, or perhaps that is just my fear.
I only have two choices, reality or safety in my imagination.
Tic Toc goes the clock, it's all against time.

Teatering on a Pin

2009-10-22T11:59:00.004-04:00

So I think Kao once said to me that part of Japan's advantage in the condition of their cities is that their cities were destroyed in world war II and as such they had a chance to rebuild a new, where as the US was left unscathed and as such we were able to hold onto and be nostalgic about our crumbling infrastructure. And in HS we were taught that after the US destroyed the Japanese manufacturing infrastructure, most importantly in regards to the steel industry, we rebuilt their industries to be the most advanced in the world, which successfully aided the Japanese industrial revolution making them the kings of quality manufacturing. The problem is us human being are nostalgic to no end and anal retentive to no end. We have no desire to see change and we hold onto the old because we are afraid of the new. But you know what there is something to walk around and live in history. There is something beautiful about walking in the steps of people who changed the world. I'll say that's how it felt to climb Tai Shan in the step of Confucius and Mao (I think I might still have to write about this when I get back to my writing about my china and Japan trip). As with most things its balance, not absolutes, but how do you balance? Who ends up in the old (generally either decrepit or single family, maybe two) and who ends up in the new? If you do it one way the poor get crowded together in shoddy housing and the rich get their single family homes and if you do it another way the rich get their glass towers and the poor get skirted to the sides in dilapidated single family housing. The almost obvious answer is the you make all of the building homogeneous, but that is culturally boring. So where is the balance? Or perhaps you say history is to be in museums and text books and not to be lived in. Well, we better understand the past by always being exposed to it. Also how do you maintain as Jacobs refers to as diverse micro economies? By this I really mean how do you maintain neighborhoods and communities? I was actually just talking to a friend about what defines a neighborhood and we seemed to agree that it had to do with the businesses. So in say brooklyn around where I live, 3rd, 5th and 7th aves each had there own neighborhoods with about 15th street being a delineater between north and south, where you see a change in the shops. So I guess the question becomes whether or not we even need these delineations? Well there can often be economic advantages to having districts of some sort, it means that there is often a very vibrant scene of whatever the district does, such as say Chinese food, they attract lots of cultural relevant things, they generate activities, create innovation and make it is easy for people to search out specific things. However they can also cause segregation and exploitation.
They also can mean redundancy, but you have a much more interesting variety generally which usually comes from having lots of disperse small businesses. I guess I also need to say that I grew up in an apartment building so I don't see very many negatives. We had Prospect park less than five minutes away and we would play on the block behind our building all the time. I think some people especially in America where we are raised to believe in white picket fences around green yards that there is something cold and disheartening about apartment buildings, but in my experience nothing can be further from the truth.

Library Book stores and ebooks. So really where are ebooks going to take us and what will happen to the bookstore and Libraries? This is being very much motivated by the nook, which really looks amazing, I'm considering getting one just for the ability to read pdf's which I often have to do and as of now for the train I usually have printouts and I can't use a kindle for it because I'm reading privileged documents that I can't send to amazon to convert for me. There is something still to the reading of a book made of paper, but is there any reason why new generations should feel that way. I don't think libraries will ever go away, in some ways libraries becoming less encumbered by the storage of books will be able to become even more integral parts of the community while still supplying what they supply today. Also it will decrease the cost of putting libraries in places that currently are lacking. Soon for a new library to come into being you will only need a trained librarian, some space, computers (I'm using 'computer' broadly to be e readers, desktops and servers) and readers. But what will happen to the bookstore? I think they will sell ebooks, but also move into more mixed uses and have a greater amount of talks and programs. Book stores them selves will become types of community centers, but also really anywhere with a server and a wireless connection or an SD reader could become a book store. Often it is for the staff that makes a book store really great.

So I was at the opening of a friends family store and I overheard a Star Wars conversation. It was just fun to listen to, I didn't need to add anything as I agreed with what they were saying, but it was just this really weirdly touching thing as I used to be such a big fan and how one of the people had done exactly what I did after Phantom Menace came out, stop reading the books and just become totally apathetic to the franchise.

I see her sitting there.
A few fast looks are exchanged.
Why is she looking?
Does she find me interesting?
Or is simply a response to my attention?

There are other eyes watching.
If we were alone I could act,
But under their watchful eyes my will is stolen.
Time is fleeting as my stop nears.
Perhaps she will alight with me.

The train comes to a halt.
I look for any sign of movement.
A few scarce looks are exchanged.
My course is set, I look back at her.
I see into her eyes as the doors close.

Without opportunity my will returns.
But now all I have is regret.
As the train rolls away the moment is lost.
Time to head home.
Bathed in the street lights I reflect on what could have been.

What a Brave new World we Live in

2009-10-13T12:04:00.003-04:00

Okay so I think I've said all this before, but I think it is said very succinctly by the following comic that I found shared by my brother on google reader click here. There really is little more that is needed to be said after reading the strip. Though of course it is much harder to overcome these issues as the internet has essentially become the medium of our time. How do you reach people in any other way or perhaps in a meaningful way. One could argue that our president was elected because of the internet, but has anything really changed? So far no, I guess we have better rhetoric now, but rhetoric will get you nowhere.

It's scary seeing how we in the US are arresting someone for using twitter to direct protesters away from cops. I suppose the use of a police scanner can be considered unlawful in some areas, but this is quite ridiculous and in the US we are supposed to have the freedom to assemble so in my opinion the police were acting essentially illegally, so this is the case of some blogger performing possibly one slightly illegal act to protect others from illegal acts performed by the police. We loved it when the Iranians used twitter to organize and escape the authorities, but when it is us we arrest.

You know what the success and enjoyment of almost everything is almost entirely predicated on our expectations and almost nothing else. Set the bar too high and you will always be disappointed, set it too low and everything seems amazing, the trick is I suppose navigating the world with realistic expectations that are most constant. I find this most obvious in regards to bad movies, which can be made enjoyable just because you expect them to be so bad. What first got me recently thinking about this was in regards to cook offs, where I generally like to do less than traditional things (of course with some exceptions). Now this can have some pluses where people get pleasantly surprised, where people seem to have no expectations either way, but it also sometimes scares people away when they get really low expectations by whatever weird thing I came up with. I don't think this is any different for relationships of all types. An example would be the kid that always talks in class is generally after it becomes expected behavior just gets associated with that behavior and stops getting recognition whereas the kid who never talks when they do talk it is seen as a huge thing. The same might be the reason why women seem to always go for the bad guy, because they have such low expectations that when the guy does something good it is seen as a great act and when they act poorly it is just written off. On the other hand with the good guy there good behavior is considered nothing special but rather expected and when they do wrong it is seen as utterly terrible.

I suppose coming off of this I will talk of my recent plunge into google chrome. So I had tried chrome out a few months back, and I dropped it quickly, my recollection being that it didn't support some page I went to (no fault of chrome I'm sure), but then I was talking to someone who was trying it out so I decided to give it a go on my work computer as I've been having stupid crashing issues with firefox. So the skinny is that when chrome works it kills, it's amazing, but I find it very often just freezes up and doesn't accomplish anything. Also I feel like the separate processes seem to eat up extra memory and when ever I kill one of the multiple processes it seems to kill all of them. The most awkward thing about chrome is that it has to the right of the address bar menu options instead of the standard file, edit, etc selections, this would work better if it weren't such a contrast to everything else (especially for me as I'm running vista on my work laptop in essentially win2k/95 mode). I also thing it seems to take a bit more memory and processor power than firefox, but it doesn't seem to have quite the same memory leak as firefox always seems to have.

Expect the unexpected means expect everything and nothing.

Human Currency and CBA's

2009-09-30T11:14:00.004-04:00

Why do the Palestinians sell them selves so short? Okay so I'm not talking about slavery, I'm talking about how the the Palestinians exchange many people for a single Israeli citizen. I mean this is essentially them saying that they value a single life less than Israel, now I don't think this is the case, but I think it is very symbolic. It's really no different from any other currency, where by demand and supply establishes value. Palestine is under valuing it's citizenry. One for one swaps will send a clear and interesting message.

Community Benefit Agreements are interesting. I mean they seem great at first thought, but they have some major problems. As they are now they empower certain groups that are willing to deal to make a project possible. Really these agreements should be legally binding with the city. I guess though I'm pretty pro big government and I generally don't think the free market or farming out public services is the best way to do things. They don't seem to always create good, but more often advance a specific agenda.

So long ago I setup google reader and just forgot to go back for a while and then found a pile of crap build up to be read so I just stopped using it. Then I started hearing good about it so I decided to give it another go and it really is convenient. You really just have to make sure to keep using it or just mark all as read, otherwise you just get a huge amount of detritus that you will never be able to get through.

I have had no motivation to get out of bed of late, I wake up on time no problem, but I just don't get out of bed. I've been rolling out of bed at about 10, which really isn't when I should especially because I want to ride my bike to work. I think it is all about my lack of desire to do my work. I feel like my work is just zapping out most of my motivation to do anything. I've been finding that the only thing I find time to do is cook, I think this is because it is both an escape and it feeds me, so it kills two birds with one stone. I've been procrastinating so much though I now feel like my plans are going to be put off by a year or so.

I'd been watching the office a while ago and loved it and put it down for a bit, but then took it up again. Man it really is one of the greatest shows ever. It also can be highly depressing especially if you are spending even a modicum of money.

Ah so two cookoffs of late, the first was fierce and sweet, this was a benefit type and it was very uniquely done. It was super hot during the day, but it cooled down, there really were some amazing entries. One thing I've really realized is that the results though they don't matter it really means more when you agree with them. For fierce and sweet none of my favorites got any attention but c'est la vie, it certainly takes out some of the enjoyment for sure. The woman to the right of me had the best pound cake I've ever had, the ginger in it was amazing. And to the left of me though it didn't have homemade jam was an amazing Lindser Cookie in the shape of the NY cares logo (who was the beneficiary). I suppose the over all best tasting and executed was this pomegranate chocolate truffle, it was by a pro, but it was a benefit and really was perfect. There were other good ones, but those are my most memorable. I guess I'll quickly mention what I made. I made a Sweet Potato Chocolate Cream Puff. It was a chocolate cream puff with a sweet potato whipped cream which I made by dehydrating sweet potatoes and then grinding them in a spice grinder and making a powder which I then mixed into some straight whipped cream, no sweeteners. Most of the sweat came from some homemade corn syrup free chocolate syrup. Oh and I had some sea salt that I was trying to decide whether to use, but based on some input it ended up out there. People seemed to like it, I think it's biggest positive is that it wasn't very sweet unlike every other entry. I think called up our friends at the Greenpoint soup kitchen to pick up all of the left over that were given out with their bagged lunches the next day. The second Cookoff was the food obstructions, this was the first of a new series by Karol Lu, Cathy Erway and David (don't know the last name) at the Gutter. It is completely different from any previous cookoffs, it is only 5 dollars and you certainly, if you paid, got more than your deserved amount of food for that much money. I don't think I would call it a cookoff for the competitive types. rather it is for a much more relaxed type as it is congenial and the winner is decided by a random sampling of all of the eaters. It is pretty much a social low key affair. My preference as always would be for it to perhaps move some of the prize money (the money collected is distributed to the winners. I think they should (I will maybe propose this) take the money and buy a round of drinks or give a percentage to charity or perhaps some bowling, which we did afterward and had tons of fun, though I think Karol might be a ringer. Now for this of the 4 chosen 3 of them were on my list for the best and 1 was my least favorite. I made something I grew up eating, Cheese Blintzes based on my Great Grandmothers recipe, with a few minor changes. I added in hot peppers to the cheese and used what I had left from the hot dog cookoff of my blueberry jam as a topping. They were good and I'm thankful as always for the kind words and input of everyone. The Obstructions was definitely one of my favorite cookoffs, it was close to as anti competitive that I've seen and super social. I definitely hope it can become a haven to social over competitive. So I will have to mention Laena's Umami Shiso Fine, which was delicious, a blue fish dish, a steak dish and the soup. Can't remember the names, but they were great.

In the Darkness the light is so bright.
In Brightness the light is no more than just another speckle.
In Brightness darkness can't be seen it just gets enveloped by the light.
But all is not light in the brightness, the darkness is just harder to see.

Helmets and Bike lanes yet again

2009-09-18T14:24:00.003-04:00

So I think I've said this before, but I think both of these things, Bike lanes and Helmets, shouldn't be necessary, but sadly they are. Helmets are perhaps more necessary because injuries for cyclists aren't necessarily because of recklessness of others, but might purely be the cyclists fault. For example today I was riding up to the Manhattan bridge which I do all the time, most days I use this long sharp turn to get speed so I lean over with my body and I often get a small pedal strike of no consequence, but today I guess I was rushing a bit more and I didn't lean over with my body enough so that my bike angle was too steep, I struck a pedal lifted up my rear and I landed with a enough force to unseat my tire, luckily I landed well, mostly just a hand and knee and I rolled onto my bag slightly banging my helmeted head. How would things have been without the helmet? Probably not too bad, but it was good to have the helmet. The reply yo this line would be that cars and pedestrians could just as easily have injuries from stupid actions, even more so to runners, to this I would say well as a cyclist I get up to 30mph pretty easily and probably average around 15mph, so with speed risk of injury increases. I guess I'm still somewhere in the middle of this issue, where I sometimes hate wearing my helmet (I need a new one actually) and sometimes I don't, but I mostly do. I'm thinking about getting a skate park helmet, because from what I can tell they are better at protecting against internal injuries as apposed to just protecting the skull from fractures as most bike helmets do.

I'd love it if we didn't need bike lanes, really I'd love it if there were no more personal autos. However this is just not reality. Bike lanes a greater positive than helping cyclists, they actually slow down traffic by effectively narrowing streets. It can certainly be harrowing to ride in the city sometimes with bike lanes because when you aren't in one drivers get especially mad, even if there isn't one on that street, you can some times be corralled dangerously into the lane with little room to maneuver, doors are simply a scary proposition and when the lanes suddenly disappear or switch sides things just get hairy. Part of the big problem with NYC bike lanes is that they were put in with no regard to road condition, as such bike lanes sometimes are riddled with pot holes. I've said this before, Bike lanes should be on the sidewalk side with cars protecting them perhaps trees as a delineater and be at least as wide as a lane and be an activity lane for joggers and bikers alike. However the very fact that they protect pedestrians is a plus, even if they aren't adequately utilized by cyclists. To solve delivery issues that small businesses love to make, deliveries should be set at a specific late night low traffic time, this will also reduce idling and traffic for all so it is a win win and loading zones should be made for every block. Perhaps a good scheduling system should be used to properly utilize and allocate the loading zone.

How best should we punish vehicular scofflaws particularly vehicular manslaughter? So this is broader in the sense that it really regards our penal system. Why do we put people in Jail? Is it purely for punishment? Is it to protect society from dangerous individuals? Or is it to rehabilitate these criminals so that they can be brought back into society? What is an accident and when should the person who commits the accident be held accountable? If I'm in a store and I accidentally knock over a vase, I will likely be required to pay for said vase, if I hit a child with a car completely accidentally I often will face no repercussions. This doesn't seem quite fair or logical to me. However if I can be found to have been drunk I will be prosecuted for murder. So if the idea of jail is to punish and through punishment deter by the threat of punishment then our current concept doesn't really work that well. This is because there are plenty of people that do harm to other that never get punished, hence there is a lack of punishment, which means a lack of a deterrent, which means we lack change. Now it is my understanding that drunk driving has been reduced, but it has been made out to being the only enemy and most of these people aren't major dangers society and the possible danger the pose could be thwarted in better ways. So what should be the punishment to act as a deterrent? Well this is a hard choice. In some regards because of our capitalistic society monetary compensation is often a difficult burden to bare. But how do you put a price on life? I suppose the best you can do is to make the assumption that children are economic drains until parents reach retirement, when often children provide certain services. I'd know what is the correct thing to do, but I'm not sure that jail is the answer for all crimes.

The weight of the soul does not equal the weight of the body,
what hurts the soul doesn't necessarily hurt the body and conversely.
But what kills the body kills the soul, but not conversely.
The bigger the weight against the body the worse off we are.
Any weight can be handle by the soul so long as enough effort is exerted.
But the fragility of the body can not win all battles.

The Waterfront

2009-09-15T09:50:00.004-04:00

So since times unmemorable the waterfront has been one of the most precious pieces of properties. For generally the rich it was a place to live, to bask int he sea and provide a person with the ability of easy escape. For social events it was a place to have beaches. For food it was a place to fish to hunt for shells, clams and just about anything from the bounties of the seas. For commerce it was where ports have to be so ships would be coming in and out of them. For industry it was the fastest way to get the materials to make products to you and the fastest way to get them out. Also in the case of rivers they were the actual power source running your manufacturing. So essentially there have always been more interest in the waterfront than there is waterfront property. This is actually partially why some canals were made such as the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn.

Well right now NYC is grappling with multiple issues and the waterfront is certainly at the forefront of many of these debates. Right now in Brooklyn there is a cement factory that is about to open in Redhook, redhook is historically not a residential community but rather an industrial one, but of late things have started to switch. For the concrete plant it is a great location because they can have shipments by water, this is all good for the surrounding areas in terms of truck traffic, but the residents are concerned by pollution from the plant (really they are mostly afraid of depressing their property values). So who is really right? I mean I love water front parks and riding along the water front, but I also recognize its importance to having a diverse and stable manufacturing base. There simply isn't enough water to go around and we simple have become short sited people that are mostly only focused on services and housing. Perhaps more canals? But eventually as is happening with Gowanus along the Gowanus people are starting to want to live there, of course it is currently an industrial waste land and a hopeful superfund site.

So all of this has to do with development I'd say. Now the question is mixed, there are always people who want to keep the old exactly as is and others who want things to change. There are two groups of people who like to keep things how they are (rich recent gentrifiers who want to guarantee their property value) and old residents who are likely to lose out especially when eminent domain is used. Then there is also a question of whether or not commercial, industrial or residential should be the zoning or perhaps mixed (we all played sim city). Which view point is hard to say, but I'd say we can't kick out all industry from our cities as high quality industries have to be in cities to attract the best talent and a city is simply more efficient and less truck dependent. So as is probably pretty clear if you know me or if you've read this blog, I take a very middle path, where you need to have a healthy mix of everything.

Food Truck/Cart wars. So this all makes me think about how all of these new food trucks and carts keep on getting threatened by the old timers. Now I can't really comment on the quality of the trucks and carts as I can't remember the last time I ordered something from a cart, and the last truck I got food from was in LA from the Kogi Taco truck, which really was unimpressive, to me at least. Now the real question people should be asking is why aren't the old timers changing their business models? I mean I don't think for many things you really need a fancy new truck (though certainly trucks afford many amenities), perhaps they should break the mold and start selling traditional specialties of where they are from as most street vendors are immigrants. Mr. Softy, take a hint change your model and you have nothing to fear, there is no reason to resort to threats, battle your competition with service, food and price. I suppose this is the one thing that sometimes social models fail, sometimes the better should simply win.

Lying on the beach looking up at the sky.
A seagull floats on currents on seen.
Squawking in the wind, its call seems to reaches you.
Endless waves wash over you to the sky above you can see no end.
The blue sky shifts to a red.
Sitting up you see an orb deep yellow at what seems to be the end.
Red and purple fringing everything.
As the sun sets in the distant all that is left is the star filled sky.
Slowly spinning through your vision, but the sounds of the ocean and gulls still permeate the air.
Taking in the vastness it is time to go home.
Turning around your world is changed by the honking and screeching of the city life.

A Cookoff Treatise - Creativity

2009-09-14T14:15:00.008-04:00

So first off I have minimal cred to really discuss this as I've been participating in cookoffs for naught a year, but I have seen the style of many organizers and had the pleasure to host a cook off with the Queen of Cookoffs and food blogging Cathy Erway, so I think that what I say can be considered to hold some weight, though it will of course be colored by my opinion of cookoffs.

So first I'm going to say that there are three categories of cookoffs that seem to exist, this first is the "for profit", next is "the benefit" and finally is "the small gathering". Now so far I would say that since I've been doing cookoffs, I've only had the pleasure to do one "small gathering" (The cookie takedown) and I believe 4 benefits (The risotto challenge, Curry Takedown, Great Hot Dog Cookoff and the Souper Douper Soup Kitchen Sandwich special (hosted by myself and Cathy)). Now my favorites are the small gathering and the benefit, for perhaps obvious reasons, which is better is hard to say, the benefit is always for a good cause, but the small gathering is a more enjoyable experience and much more congenial and should be free for attendees (eaters, or perhaps a cooking requirement). The for profits essentially have an organizer who is hosting the event and does a call for cooks, where the cooks then provide food.

So the most important thing about a cookoff is making your chefs happy. This can be done in many ways, but the most important is to thank them. This should be occurring often, don't allow your chefs to feel dejected an unappreciated, they are more important than monetary sponsors (in for profit events), because you would have no event without them and you wouldn't want to foot the bill for all the food they are providing. Make the atmosphere congenial, rather than competitive. Try to provide things for your chefs, but don't be stingy about it, because as said before they are your most important asset. So if you are going to provide them free beer and or drinks, make it endless (of course there has to be a point of reason), don't limit it, there are some exceptions, if the money for the provided things is provided by the event organizers and the event isn't for profit, then it is an amazing gesture even when limited, uncool if you are making enough money to pay for just a bit more (though as said before there does have to be some limit). Really this is the next most important thing after thanking your cooks, make sure your cooks try what everyone else has made. Try as hard as you can to do this, if it is a crazy event and you don't have time to have a pre event cooks eating time or simply the chefs don't arrive early enough, bring the food to every chef, especially the ones serving food alone. If your chefs have a simple request, assuming it won't kill you, fulfill it.

So guests aka eaters are the second most important part of the cook off experience, see above for number one. These people in many cookoffs are put above the cooks, I think this is wrong, but the hosts figure that they are paying good money for entry so they should get what they pay for and certainly this is what the eaters feel. Yes they are correct that the people are paying money, but for "the benefit" the food is really in many ways a bonus to the cause and if all of your attendees don't get food hopefully the eaters will be okay with this, in a for profit it was the organizers fault and you should refund the eater, don't get angry at cooks for not supplying enough or having given to other cooks. Keep your guests orderly, but don't make them stand on a line waiting to eat for hours, this will create hoards of angry frustrated people. If this is going to be the case, figure out a way to keep your waiting lines happy, perhaps a snack or if you included a drink (especially for a for profit) give people another drink for free if they've finished their first drink inline before eating or if you didn't include one, now give them one. Encourage the eaters to eat everything, unless they have a dietary restriction. Allow the cooks and eaters to talk and converse, part of the event is social and sharing, they aren't about winning, it allows the guests to understand what they are eating and connect with the cook and allows the cooks to connect with the people eating their food. Lists are great, providing room for notes on the list is even greater.

Volunteers, okay in someways these come before your eaters, but in others they come after because they are there serving the eaters. Make sure your volunteers get to eat everything and don't have to wait on lines. These are people who are helping you, most likely for free so you should provide them with as much as you can. If you are doing a "for profit" consider perhaps paying or in someway compensating the volunteers (essentially making them closer to employees of the event). Certainly friends will often have no qualms volunteering for you even if you are making money, but make sure that you thank them kindly, you can't do an event without these people.

The media, well... perhaps include them in the pre-event cooks eating time to test food as though they should be allowed in the area during the event they often talk a lot and have been known to cut people leaving both cooks and eaters befuddled.

Sponsors, well these people are important obviously, but if it takes you 10 minutes to thank them all, well you have too many, as people have short attention spans the sponsors will get lost in the talk and you will have not helped your sponsors one bit, you just might lose them. Also make everyone know what the sponsors provided, as the sponsors want to get something out of the experience and the people in attendance may actually be intrigued, but really they come after everything above.

You the organizer, well you just have to be thankful that people are there, you are dead last, you have to make the event your own, but be prepared to receive complaints and possible insults (I know complaints happen not sure about insults). Just have fun, be social, as that's what a lot of the event is, it should be a fun social activity not a chore, try to be creative, think outside the box. Of course before the event you've been doing a lot of work, but remember it is your show, but you aren't the stars.

Prizes are an interesting question. I don't think prizes should be the motivation for the cooks, but they are nice and certainly can motivate people to enter. However Organizers have to remember that every cook even if they lost put in a lot of effort for your event, it is nice when organizers make sure everyone gets something, this could mean giving everyone of the cooks a T-Shirt commemorating the event, or just a nice certificate a few little dinky items, nothing will go unappreciated, the thought is what counts. Oh and you're better off giving smaller winner prizes in exchange for also having some yet smaller things for everyone because you probably want these people to cook for you again.

How do you take votes and then what do you tell people? The worst way to take votes is to trust that people will be able to legibly write or remember correctly names, so having a sheet where you circle a winning entry is a great idea or having pre-printed numbers. My attempt was using marbles with containers in front of everyone's station, this made voting completely unambiguous, and allowed chefs to learn as they would have an actual idea of what people thought, but apparently the empty containers were intimidating to people and some fear it can cause mob voting. So do you tell people the entire standings? This is nice for everyone accept for those in the bottom half, but I believe that you learn as much from your defeats as you do from your victories, if not more actually. This is going to have to be a personal call, but just don't do hand written votes.

Some Do nots, don't let family compete, don't compete yourself. Pro's well I don't think you can make a rule against them, but it can be awkward for the none pro's and and you might distance those amateurs that are your core base. This is different for benefit types, where pro's are totally welcome. Don't thank everyone but your chefs at the event, e-mails afterward don't make you feel thanked, these should be done in addition, they make you feel like an afterthought when not accompanied by something at the event itself. Don't demand from the cooks "it's my way or the highway".

Price, well this is a tough one. Of course venue comes into this as do all other costs, a lot of venues will offer their space for free because of beer sales they will get, but not all so yes venue will effect this. If it is not for profit I would say 5 - 10 as min is probably safe. If it is for profit I really wouldn't exceed the cost of an adult ticket to a movie theater, so about 12, but I guess 15 doesn't seem to bad. Any more seems too much to me, of course having an expensive venue might effect these number. Though in some ways I'd prefer to that the pricing scheme go the other way, but for "the benefit" other than just raising money you want to raise awareness and you often have lower costs because things are hopefully being provided for free.

Okay here is an idea I came up with that I think cookoffs should start doing, a chefs choice award. Essentially during the chefs tasting have chefs rank there top 5 not including their own. As stated above the chefs tasting time isn't really needed to do this, you can just make sure the chefs get to try anything, possibly with you bringing them the entries.

Oh and provide cleanup materials, especially paper towels. Also be open to helping out your chefs, don't just give them some stuff and go and party, it can be awkward to be left cleaning while everyone else runs off, if you help they will be done twice as fast. This isn't a requirement and certainly circumstances will effect this choice, but if it isn't too much trouble and you see someone could use some help you should offer it. Bringing paper towels though really should be done.

Okay this is just a last word on Cookoffs, remember the event is about the Food, the cooks and the environment/community/mindful interaction. Don't make a circus, make things fun, don't worry about a long event that's relaxed rather than short and hectic. Most cookoffs do a good job on most of these points, I think cooks aren't really given the priority that I seem to be bestowing on them, but this is more forgivable for the benefits (social ones never have this problem) but for the "for profit" ones it just doesn't sit right with chefs.

So why do I compete in these wacky cookoffs you ask? Why would I spend my money to simply feed others with a pretty low probability of winning anything or for that matter pretty much no chance of recouping my costs? Well I think its a two part, the first is the social aspect, simple getting to meet people who are likely like minded and discuss food and try other people interpretations of the same theme and the second is more esoteric, but it's a matter of sharing your creative work and getting it critiqued so that you may learn and keep on creating. So food and people really is what it is, isn't that community? I guess I just like to create, whatever it is I like to create and the thing about cooking is that you can eat what you make.

A few endings today, all on the same theme, perhaps they are really jist one.

The monotony of every day makes every day more like the rest.
The few days that are different are what life really is.
Every day of the monotony is another day not lived.

As days become less of your life a day seems so much more fleeting.
Cherishing times and experiences becomes that much more difficult.
But what would be so beautiful if not for its uniqueness?

What would be so special about a diamond when there is less rough than diamonds?
Perhaps then we'd see the beauty in the rough.

Every day lived the same way is one lost day of life.
Look at the drones of the world. believing they are working to live.
But they live so little, that when they live it is that much more special.

Why Aren't We Going to Cover Illegal Immigrants?

2009-09-10T10:26:00.002-04:00

First off unless we change emergency room policies or many health clinic policies we will in some regards cover illegal immigrants, but we will and are covering them at a massive cost. Now they don't and in the new plans won't be given or mandated to have coverage, but why is this good? Wouldn't it be more cost effective to have all of these people whether legal or not (who often do actually pay taxes) covered so that they don't seek their health care when it gets horrible from the ER or seek unreliable medical sources? So that's where I stand, we should cover everyone who enters the US, countries like France do that. It will save us money... But of course as I've said before, illegal immigration shouldn't exist, we need more legal immigration and zero illegal immigration because illegal immigrants will always be taken advantage of.

Has social networking made it harder to simple contact information of friends? So I have friends who I suppose are more acquaintances who I have no way of contacting beyond Facebook or in some cases e-mail as well, but I have no phone number. In our time now it's almost a hurdle or perhaps a big step to have a friends number. I remember in elementary school how they would give out class lists of every kid in your grade with their phone numbers. Now I bet they have e-mail lists instead.

I now know how to shuck an Oyster. Wow, I must have shucked a good 30 or more oysters for a benefit at "Jimmy's 43" a restaurant in the east village for slow food. I didn't really go planning on shucking oysters, but one friend wanted to talk to a friend that was shucking oysters so I ended up taking their place. I was taught by an Oyster farmer herself about how to shuck an Oyster so I certainly had a good teacher. Once you get going it is quite fun, but I was covered by oyster juices by the end. The rest of the event was fun and very educational about oysters.

Walking down the street you see a sad face following you wherever you go.
You see it In every car and in every shop window.
Why is that face so sad?
Always staring back at you in a sorrowful look.
Above it you see a bright blue scene.
You look up to the sky and absorb in its warmth and greatness.
Little clouds floating by all showing their own sense of being.
Walking down the street you see a happy face following you wherever you go.
Thinking about the vastness of possibilities.

What does the web know about us?

2009-09-08T16:01:00.002-04:00

Okay so this was a little stupid experiment, I searched my name on Google, Bing and Yahoo. This little test placed Bing dead last, it had some results that were dead links in the first two pages and honestly things that are of no interest. Yahoo gave the best results about me, but Google gave good results about me and another by the same name, so I can't fault that, the other Noah would certainly have preferred Google, so I would have to say a tie overall, though Yahoo wins for me and Bing is dead last. Bing seems to sate that it gives tons of results, but this just doesn't matter in search as one rarely goes beyond a few pages of results.

Well apparrently there is now a real interview of me on the web, how crazy is that, well here is a link to he Superforest write up, beautifully done by Jackson. I always find it so weird hearing my own voice. It creates almost a weird idea in my head.

I really don't understand why the Democrats seem to refuse making the rational arguments to the republican base for universal health care, most specifically a public option, or even more so a single payer system. The only reason I can think of that they refuse to make the proper arguments is because they don't really want change, they just want their pharma and insurance money like normal and want to make there base think they are trying. The simple argument that I speak of is that Single Payer or a public option would help small businesses more than anyone else. Simply put then you wouldn't have nearly as many people feeling positive about companies like Starbucks, I don't like them, but I have to give them some respect for providing health care to their employees even part time workers, who if they worked at a better independent coffee shop wouldn't have any insurance. Small business groups should all support Government health care. I'm saying this now, if we get a public option, I'm switching to that.

Working on a few to many things right now I think. I'm actually currently having a conundrum. I had e-mailed someone about volunteering for the upcoming NYC century and just got there reply today, last night after not hearing back from them I decided to sign up for the cheese experiment, but now I'm super conflicted. I really want to do both, but that is obviously not possible. Well I suppose I could do a different thing of volunteering instead of riding 100miles and somehow fit in the cheese experiment, I guess I will have to think about this and possibly talk to some people. Cheese experiment would cost me a lot more money, that is for sure.

Every time I see her I feel my whole body change.
I become more self conscious, I second guess my every word.
But she doesn't know this, or so I am to believe.
We talk, we hangout, I enjoy this time for just what it is.
I don't need anymore, but that is just what I dream of.
But more I will never have, for I'm afraid of losing what I have.

Is this a shame? Or is this simply reality?
Why be selfish and risk losing something great for something that may or may not be.
Until we experience we never truly know.

High Speed Rail and The Urban Environment and Planning

2009-09-01T11:29:00.005-04:00

So I was listening to the radio yesterday as I always do, WNYC that is and they were discussing High Speed Rail (HSR) and they were interviewing people and discussing specifically speed and expense. Now we all know that flight time from point A to point B will just about always be quicker than rail, except for a certain minimum distance, because take off and landing are the least efficient time in the flight of an aircraft, but what they failed to mention is that in my experience time from arrival to departure is always shorter for trains than it is for plains and this is the biggest factor that annoyed me to have not been mentioned on the radio is that train stations are almost always in city centers. This means that if you are traveling by train, you only have one fair to get to the city you are likely going to and you are already right at the station to leave. Now this isn't universal but in general it is quicker by a fair margin to get to a train station than it is to get to an airport. For me from work to get to grand central it is a 15min max walk and by train to JFK it is a about an our using two trains and costing me seven dollars. I also think I'm generally more relaxed on trains than I am on planes. Of course if you are interested in speed there is a point where a train will be faster, they will take the same time and where a plane is faster. However speed isn't the only thing. Everyone before dissing rail should take a ride on the Shinkansen, and HSR in China or Europe and tell me that you don't find it to be a much better experience than flying.

Okay so now I'm gong to do some venturing into some not totally concrete and that I would love comment from people are more knowledgeable about these two titans that I'm about to discuss. The two titans that I'm about to discuss are Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses. Now I think I will use this writing as an impetus to actually reading more about them, so the opinions and knowledge I'm stating here is likely to evolve, but isn't that kind of one of the beauties of a blog? You can watch the evolution in thought. Okay so just a quick reviewing of who these two people are for those who don't know them, particularly for none New Yorkers as there names are quite well known here though I don't know how much so anywhere else. Robert Moses was essentially (this wasn't his title, he really had too many to write them all her) the person who decided what to and what not to build in New York for somewhere around 40+ years (purposely keeping things vague and possibly wrong now, nothing is glaringly wrong, just not fact checked and some dates and lengths of times may be off). Jane Jacobs was more of community organizer and urban planner or held in some regards the counter opinions of Moses. Moses is a pretty flawed individual, so there are tons of ways that one can attack him on, he was a classist, a racist and really just about any bad ist you can think of. Jacobs on the other hand much more of an egalitarian and looked to use urban planning as a way to create community as apposed to separate community. A super quick over simplified comparison of their planning perspectives is Jacobs believes in Urban Sprawl and Moses in Suburban Sprawl. Now I don't think either would have ever characterized their perspectives as such or was it their goals, but I think in some ways its what they were each really doing. So Moses was one of the great embracers of the automobile and completely altered the course of NYC and its surrounding areas where even more mass transit existed, only to be replaced by highways. Moses' ideal was that essentially the rich could drive in and out of the city for cultural activities, such as his creation Lincoln Center and be able to get anywhere where as the poor would have to take buses and trains every where which he tried to make most of his creation inaccessible by. He also created modern Ghettos for the poor and minorities. Jane Jacobs believed in an idea of a vibrant local culture that fit into a city, but she also deeply believed in small homes, which just automatically creates sprawl, but essentially in an urban environment, LA actually seems to follow much of this. Now don't get me wrong LA is definitely not Jacobs idea of an ideal city. Now I pretty much completely hate Moses, but he did have this concept that transit, though I would say a misguided view point of transit, is one of the most important parts of a city and enable the life blood of a city and or society to flow, by this I mean the people. Now I think with Jacobs I pretty much agree with her underlying principles, just not her conclusions on how to make those things a reality. I think if you attempt to do any type of sprawl you will create class segregation. I think the only way to have an egalitarian society is through smart density. Now there are problems with density, for one it makes it likely that you are not going to have robust of a local economy, well at least for America. Other countries have managed to keep manufacturing and small businesses even in dense areas, many places do this with markets, such as say the pearl or silk markets in Beijing. You need to have tons of public and open space, people need to be able to have access to mass transit and have a sense of security when in the dense city. Assuming Capitalism you pretty much can not create a totally egalitarian society unless you have a lot of laws controlling purchasing and renting of property or homes, or move to a fully public housing stock model. This is because assuming capitalism the most desirable locations, which will usually be in central areas of commerce and offer the most amenities and quality of amenities, will cost the most thus forcing lower income individuals further out, this is why I say that a tighter perhaps more vertical city is more efficient in terms of creating egalitarianism. Of course then you might end up with vertical segregation, so you still need some sort of controls. I think that's it for now on this subject, comments please.

Okay, so here is something that US cities should start doing, building developers can bill it as green and I think it is a nice feature, especially if executed well. So this is especially prevalent in say China, Every apartment building regardless of height has a terrace, this is partly because dryers are almost unheard of and as such almost everyone dries their clothes by clothes line. Why don't we do this? Let's start doing this.

So I was having a talk with Trev from Case, and I came to a weird contradictory conclusion, that might explain something. So first I think you have to be open to anything and kind of go with the flow and the counter belief is that the biggest cardinal sin of a relationship is to do something out of commitment even when it might create a regret or allow a partner to do the same. How can you believe both things? How do you end up in a relationship.

When the light breaks through the clouds bask in it.
Dance under the sun and find other souls in the world to be with.
Don't be restrained by suborn laws, be open to everything.
Even when it makes you feel a little more closed.
It just might warm you from within.

LA and SF yet Again, Inglourious Basterds, Brewing and traveling and a Hapa Kitchen Luau

2009-08-31T16:18:00.002-04:00

So first coming right after the Souper Douper Soup Kitchen Sandwich Special, I flew out that Monday off to LA for work, this was probably my most stressful trip yet, I had actually not found out about it until that friday, as in the day before the cook off. This trip unlike others I didn't call anyone, I was kind of burnt out a bit from standing in the sun for the cook off and needed some rest so I tried to use it for some good R&R. Well you know what I found out, LA has some amazing Sushi, well by that I mean I went to one place twice and had a great time, though it was expensive (one of the nights will be payed for by work, lost the other receipt sadly). I spent the night talking with the Japanese Sushi chef and owner. I simply told him to give me what's freshest. I love ordering that way. I had an adventure finding an in and out, but it was a fun thing to do. I really didn't enjoy LA much, but you know that's that.

I then went to SF to see my brother as I was on the west coast. This is always a fun thing to do as I enjoy hanging out with my brother and his friends. I really don't eat as much brunch in NYC as I do when I see my brother. I do much more eating in and honestly by the time the trip was ending I was getting tired of eating out. On saturday we went to Namu, which was recommended by my friend Cathy who knows the owners. It was really great and it was fun to drop a name, though the owner she knew best didn't arrive until towards the end of our meal so I felt like the were looking at us very skeptically. The food was really good, it was asian fusion, but not asian fused with western it was a fusion of asian cuisine, so very Japanese as I always say, Japanese is very much asian fusion on its own.

I saw this great movie presented by Brooklyn based at the hope lounge. The movie was about this group of four guys who traveled from brooklyn across the country visiting breweries along the way. At the movie I found out about bike and brew tour which seems, well even crazier.

On friday Cathy was throwing a supper club Luau at the Brooklyn yard. This was my first experience with a supper club so when she reached out for volunteers I jumped to the chance so I on thursday night I did some prep work, which mostly involved brining two whole suckling pigs and pig buts and peeling and shredding carrots. Then the next day we ate, and I provided some minimal help, mostly in the cleaning department (I know how funny is that?). The food was great and I would now certainly recommend to all to attend or help in a supper club.

So an interesting revelation, on getting back from SF as I alluded to I most missed cooking so one of the first things I did was run over to the food co-op (which I need to remember to work a shift soon) to shop and then I cooked. This could be a sign and has helped me to refine some possible future plans.

I see a bird over head, soaring with the wind.
Where is it going? To me it seems to aimlessly wander.
It always makes its way home, but where does it go in between?

Souper Douper Soup Kitchen Sandwich Special

2009-08-18T02:00:00.002-04:00

So I probably shouldn't have written up something about this before the actual event, but who reads this any way? And hey Cathy did such an amazing write up there was little point with me doing some second rate posting. However I will now fill everyone in on what had taken up so much of my time for a while.

So after doing the curry takedown, which I'm sure I mentioned, I decided I wanted to figure out someway to do a charritable event that was more than just one that would involve money being given to a charity. So I approached the queen of cook offs, Cathy Erway of Not Eating Out In NY, who essentially made everything possible. So I certainly owe a ton of thanks to Cathy for taking me essentially under her wing and doing the event with me, I just hope I carried my weight enough as I don't see how it could have been done without her. Well the premise of the event was to have the winner of the event be the head chef at a soup kitchen and have all of the contestants cook and serve the meal. This will happen in the near future. So the event was this past Saturday and it was amazing. We had fewer people show up than I think we would have preferred, mostly due to it being August, but it still was fun and we raised just over $500 dollars and we will be doing the cooking. We had some amazing Chefs, so I don't recall all of the prizes, but rest assured that everyone made amazing things, regardless of whether they won something or not. Out winner was Jui, with these amazing pork buns and this super refreshing soup, she arrived late and tons of people on trying hers immediately declared her to be the most deserving winner, and both the judges and the popular vote thought so. This was one of the very few times I've ever seen that happen. There are two people who I just have to call out for having great items, but just didn't get recognized (this happens sometimes). Mike O'Neal and David Klopfenstein. Mike made this amazing Tomato Soup with grilled cheese croutons, this was just an amazing comfort dish. David made this great sandwich, with too many things to for me to even remember, it had this great I believe arugula pesto, some great cheese, I wish I had had time to take notes, but I was really just bouncing all over the place going crazy hoping everything would go well. But Dave still managed to show even after slicing off the tip of his finger with his Mandolin, he truly defined blood, sweat and tears.

Now after handing out the evening with the head chef of Char 4 after the cook off I really need to go, which will hopefully happen sooner rather than later.

If you put your heart into something that you care about, no matter what you will be happy with the ends.

Taxes and Disiprin (South Park Style)

2009-07-31T13:07:00.004-04:00

I suppose to some degree I hate to see that big minus on my pay stubs, but you know what I realize that to get services, for things to be done money is needed. However most people seem to just want everything for free. They complain when they don't get something, but they even more so complain when they have to pay for it. Maybe I'm the crazy person in the world though. Certainly our money is wasted and their is way to much corruption in the current system, but there needs to be a means for society to be served above and beyond just the individuals needs. One option is for the US to adopt what some of the world does, which is put the taxation burden on the employers, where essentially people get the same money, but instead of it showing a deduction for taxes, your employer simply pays for taxes, it is the same thing just a different phrasing. But hey, I love egalitarianism and am pro-taxation to put us all at essentially the same income, so I'm just a loon.

I lack disiprin with most things. There are two things I feel the most disiprined about, thinking about how to we should be living (though this is more thought exorcise) and cooking. I'm the least in regards to my work. I guess this has kind of informed me of where I think as of right now I should go, well one of those two paths that I feel compelled to be disiprined about. I guess this would be a pretty big difference from where I am now, but I really am fed up with what I'm doing. I'm not even sure I can make it to the March time I was thinking about, but you never know.

There is an old saying that says you only get out what you put in.
If you don't put anything in you get nothing out.
If when you put something in and you don't care about what you get out, you stop putting in.
If you don't like what you get out, you don't like what you put in.

BBQ off's times two

2009-07-29T17:06:00.002-04:00

So I did two recent cook offs after getting back from SF. The first was the great hotdog cook off, which I won the working dog category (I have it on good authority that I essentially won the whole thing, can't talk about it here, we don't know who's reading). I made what I like to call "The French". "The French" was a hot dog on a homemade croissant bun, with homemade blueberry and raspberry preserves with some pepper jack cheese. I think it was delicious, but apparently everyone was skeptical until they tried and then they surprisingly loved it. It was actually a great day other than the fact that my turn on the grill was at high noon and I though I was going to die from the heat of the grill and the sun, making 64 hot dogs sucks when it is crazy ass hot.

Then the quickly following tuesday was a grill off at Harry's water taxi beach. I feel like I wrote about my last experience there with this big hamburger cookout that was terrible (Will you know what I'm talking about), well this probably could have been a better event if it was on a weekend, didn't rain and if Harry weren't a terrible capitalist pig. Well for this I did a black and blue Salt and Pepper crusted Sirloin with Fresh BBQ'd Jersey corn (The only good thing from Jersey, it's really god) that only had a bit of salt for seasoning, I like to think of this as my K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid), this won 3rd place, second place was done by Cathy Erway from Not Eating Out in NY which was great and certainly had much more work put into it than mine, the winner's was really good, though he was apparently a bit of a pro.

The best part of the whole night was then taking a persons mini school bus over to a bar Spuyten Duyvil drinking and since I had an extra steak (the turnout was lower than planned due to the rain) I just plopped down my cutting board pulled out my knife put the steak down and we all just ate steak in the Bar, it was great.

Thanks Trev for all you help, not you Mr Pour.

Simplicity is Beauty.
Simplicity is Focused.
Simplicity is Tranquility.

LA again

2009-07-29T16:57:00.002-04:00

So I never really know what to write about LA, it's good to see some people, but I really hate driving around there, living in a hotel room and such. However this time I went to little Ethiopia with some friends and had for the first time an Ethiopian meal that I liked. I've also noticed that LA has actually done a lot more day lighting than NYC, this is something the DOT should do. They also seem to have a pretty good system of express/local buses where the express buses are red and the locals are orange, it works quite well.

I can't think more about LA, there was tons of traffic and hell trying to find parking, that's LA though I guess.

Oh yeah I should mention, the Kogi Taco truck which when it was in NYC had a massive line was way over rated.

Slowly inching down a road, but really getting no where.
Trapped around you on all sides with other people just like you.
All you want to do is scream, but you go along with the pack and wait.

You don't know where you are, you have no map to tell you how to go.
You decide to turn of the road any way you can, to escape the pack and to go blindly.

You make it to some end, which end it doesn't matter it is but your end.

P.S. In LA no one get's off the road they just all stick it together.
P.P.S. I'm pretty sure I avoided a split infinitive, which I was originally going to write, probably missed some other one somewhere, guess where I mean.

If you are going to San Francisco, Remember to Wear a Jacket when you're there

2009-07-09T03:41:00.004-04:00

This really is true, San Francisco gets fucking cold at night even in the dead of Summer when it is over 90 during the day, the hot temp during the day makes it even worse. Almost every night after 6 I felt freezing, so please listen to the titles advice. Lyrically it should be read as if your were singing "San Francisco".

So I went on the 26th after work to San Francisco, I really needed a vacation and my brother's birthday was coming up so I decided to head out there for a long vacation. My flight got stuck on the runway for I think about 2hrs due to weather, but once in the air I saw the most amazing sight, lightning in the air. Most of it was this majestic orange, but sometimes these amazing bursts would occur where they would create these large trees of lightning scattering through the air, it was magnificent. So I had had a terrible stomach flu for the week prior to flying and honestly I was worried about the flight, but in the end I pretty much got better in the air. This was either due to the relief of stress from work or perhaps just getting away from friend arguments.

So I have mixed feelings about professional air guitar after seeing a competition in SF. Honestly what made the show truly worth it was Jello (Probably bad spelling) from the dead Kennedy's, he was a judge and just kept on ridiculing everything. People were throwing drinks everywhere. The crowd mostly sucked, they refused to catch crowd surfers.

Homemade smoked foods are fun.

Zeitgeist is fun, bring a jacket for late night fun, though they sell sweatshirts in case you forget.

I made another Gotham Chocolate Cake, but this time made some Iced cream to go with it, salted caramel almond, it was good, a little to salty, I guess when things are cold as my brother said the only flavor that doesn't lessen is salt, now I know, but it worked perfectly with the cake, probably the cake could have used a bit more salt.

If you want to see fireworks go to the Mission on the fourth.

So it's interesting, SF is a great city though not better than NYC. Honestly I would say certain things were going down in NYC that was making me consider simply extricating myself from the situation, with SF being a likely candidate, to save all relations. However I've now found a few scenes that are outside of those circles, which has made much of that a harder thing to even think about. Now this probably is a surprising thing to hear and it had nothing to do with NYC, just dealing with shit, but now I've got a bunch of friction occurring between relations ruining NYC's greatness, but I've found more people to escape to. One of the beauties of NYC is that there are always more people.

Always good hanging out with my brother and his friends, I guess I can't say that all of them would be close friends if I were to meet them on my own, but some of them probably could be.

Walking down the road I see storms raging
My way is clouded
My path brings me to the storms
New relations clears a new path for my way
I can follow this new way and path or I can simply run away

The New Highline Park

2009-06-17T16:59:00.002-04:00

So some of you may know what I'm talking about and some of you may not. The highline park is a refurbishment of an old elevated freight- rail on the west side of the city. It is something that has been fought for for years and has finally come to be, but with the changing demographics of the city, especially the area the meat packing district, the benefit for the park has been lost. The park as it has been executed lacks in my opinion any true public benefit. The park is amazingly beautiful, an amazing achievement in design, but it is sanitized, just as much of the city is becoming. The park weaves its way through the meat packing district a formerly eponymous name. Now how ever the are has become supremely expensive and the land interests and developers and hence the city have only supported the project because it will increase property values and bring in more rich people. The park is a sea of concrete with some wild like plant life that you're not allowed to touch or enter and some nice wooden loungers and benches. Who will truly gain a benefit from this park other than elite whites? This is my main concern it also makes a park that is in no way a kid friendly place, it is really the exact opposite of kid friendly. I really think the end result of a great and ambitious plan is a failure. I'm sure I am of the vast minority in this opinion, but I can look back and see my self at the age of five and absolutely hating this park, I can now possibly enjoy it, but I am not the entire city, which is who it should be for.

Good has many aspects, to succeed in only one area of many is a failure.

Beer Experiment and Curry Takedown

2009-06-17T12:27:00.003-04:00

The beer experiment was run by two acquaintances of mine, which was the main reason why I participated in it. It was quite good and an interesting event. The idea was to have people bring home brews and people to bring food cooked with beer. The most annoying this about it was that the organizers told people that they would no be able to plug things in at nearly the 11th hour, this was especially annoying because one of the organizers had at the Bacon Takedown, brought a deep fryer. So my planned dish Milk Stout Funnel Cake, would have to be pre fried and it was on the same day as the Tour de Brooklyn, which I had been talked into helping with because they needed people. People loved the funnel cake even though it was no longer crispy, I'm convinced that this cost me placing, but what ever, it was fun none the less.

The Curry Takedown was this sunday and for it I made Katsu Kare/Kare Raisu. The Katsu was actually deep fried bacon, because I had too much in my freezer waiting to be used, so it was better for me than going out and buying 2.5 pounds of pork. The Kare I made without using premixed curry roux, such as say a golden curry block or house curry powder. I mixed up my curry powder, plus some added quality curry powder and a gran masala and then made the Roux. Further I made the Kare itself vegan, because I've learned that some always show up and it is a good idea of having something that everyone can eat if possible, especially when I figured that curry would attract lots of vegetarians. I got 4th in the judges, I kind of feel a little robed with that, though second place was really quite superb, if I were voting it would have been a tough call between that and mine, 3rd was also good, but I guess I wasn't as impressed as everyone else, but I had it at the end when it was probably a bit cold. For the popular vote I got 3rd, the previously mentioned very good one got first but, the second place was very uninspired and it seemed that they had brought many friends along, apparently so did number one, but that was deserving and excellent.

Well the next cook off that I know of isn't until August, which will be lamb, I actually came up with something that sounds good, perhaps I'll make it for myself, but with the cost of lamb this one seems like it would be a bit too expensive to take part in, though if I come across a butcher with some cheap lamb that might change things as my idea is pretty simple, though the more I think about the more possibilities I see.

Time for only a few passions
Passions are what we do with our own time
Work enables us to have funds for our passions
But work takes away from our passions

To Helmet or Not to Helmet

2009-06-16T22:40:00.002-04:00

This is the biggest debate of biking in the US. Now the obvious answer is yes wear a helmet it will save your life. Is this really the obvious answer? I've spoken to many people for years about this, I should note that I usually end up taking the yes wear a helmet, it sucks, but it is just one extra thing to hopefully help and possibly save you. In all honesty the old arguments were bad, they were more out of laziness, but recently I have been hearing some very compelling arguments, however there seems to be a bit of chicken and egg situation. So first it should be noted that most other countries in the world barely wear helmets, this includes places with massive bicycle penetration, so in the end the majority of cyclists do not wear helmets. Now here is the chicken and egg situation, the reason why people can get away with not wearing helmets is because the roads are maintained to be safe for cyclists, there are lots of cyclists, cyclists aren't just cycling for recreation, but for many things and mostly at slow relaxed speeds with vigilant and understanding drivers on the road. In NYC I just don't feel safe riding without a helmet, but as many say that if we wear helmets we will scare people away from riding and without more people none of the real and important changes will take place. Some argue that the only solution is for us relatively early adopters is to adopt a more relaxed style of biking and not wear helmets, figuring our risk will bring more people and save more in the long run. As of now I don't think I have a bike that is really suited to the no helmet idea, I've been heavily thinking of putting one together, though it is very reliant on finding a frame.

As I walk I see them
They aren't just together they are whole
Or so they seem to me

To me on the outside, I see something
Or do I just see something missing in myself

I guess I won't know 'til I find it for myself

I invited my Friend [BLANK], do you mind?

2009-06-15T23:13:00.001-04:00

Has anyone ever said no to a girl or a guy who has asked this? And it communicates so much. I think we all agree what it communicates, so it is impossible to say no.

Yes... But I wish you didn't need to ask...

Moon

2009-06-15T23:04:00.002-04:00

Wow, David Bowies son is a fucking amazing director. See this film, it is fucking amazing. It has the feel of what I consider real SciFi, which is barely existent any longer. It has an amazing feel and a great story. Sam Rockwell is superb, truly a stunning performance. I really don't want to give much away, so all I will say is ISOLATING.

Spiraling through the cold darkness of space alone
Enveloping you with its essence
there's only one true light that you need and it a world away.

Pentax K7D and Olympus EP-1

2009-06-15T15:44:00.003-04:00

So these are two cameras I was super interested in, however both have in certain regards disappointed me. For the Pentax, I own a decent amount of Pentax glass, but the K7D is only partially backwards compatible with old manual lenses, I'd have to use them all in stop down metering mode, which isn't horrible, but it can make manual focusing a bitch if you are shooting at anything higher than F4 and as it gets darker it gets harder and harder. Also I'm a little disapointed of its max ISO (6400), now with film I rarely will use something over 1600, but what I see as the main advantage of Digital is low Light performance and with cameras like the D300, D700 and 5DmkII shooting 25600, I question why Pentax couldn't pull this off. Also though I don't require HD video, it is a nice thing to have especially when you know that in a year or less the same camera will have 1080p, when this maxes at an odd res of 1024p I believe. The good is that the camera is compact and packs a punch at being compact. It is also a magnesium shell, which is great and water sealed. I'm sure its pictures will be as good as a K20D. No doubt though that Pentax gives great features and it seems it has an amazing viewfinder, hopefully a split prism screen will be available for it as I'd jump on that immediately.

The EP-1 I guess I had super high hopes and thought he camera seems great as is, it misses a bunch of marks making one want to wait for a hopefully fixed next gen. So I think they made a mistake, but not adding a half inch if even on top to add a range finder, which would have fixed everyone's concerns of it lacking a good optical viewfinder and supporting a flash at the same time. Also as it is a micro four thirds camera, I was really hoping for 1080p. Finally they seem to have chosen on two lenses for the camera, a nice 17mm 2.8 zuiko lens and I believe a 14 - 40 3.5 - 5.6 Zuiko zoom. I would have liked at the minimum a 45mm or so 2.8 or faster lens as I don't care for zooms that much anymore and would prefer to just have two to four fast primes. A wide or normal and portrait is the bare minimum.

I love the idea of a relatively affordable digital range finder that I can always have with me and is more discrete than an SL, but looking at an LCD can cause slower composition especially when tinkering with manual controls. All of these problems are going to give me a harder time to decide on a camera, it's my feeling that 3 cameras is a great number (one could have even more delineated cameras for better variety, but you really just need three), what you really need is a really small point and shoot, for me at the moment that is an f50fd, a range finder for walking and taking pictures in a very unobtrusive manner and an slr for when you are doing serious work and require flexibility and quality, have a large and or medium format camera is also a nice thing to have added to the mix.

When I close my eyes I can see the past.
A past tainted by my perceptions and my being.
Can I trust what I see?

With a camera I can capture a moment.
A moment that is untainted.
But it was my eyes and hands that composed it.

What is the truth of the past?

Labor Issues

2009-06-11T16:16:00.004-04:00

Well I have a lot of topics in queue, will I ever get to them all? I don't know. Do I even remember where they were all to go, I'm unsure of that as well.

So I just had a cold and I'm still getting over it, I call it swine flue, but who really knows, it's actually more comforting to think that it was and is because that will keep me safer in the future. But what really irked me was that I didn't want to use sick days, luckily for me I can work from home if need be, which is what I did Tuesday and Wednesday. I would have on Monday as well, but I had to grab my computer from work. I'm sure I'm relatively lucky, if I needed to take a sick day I have them, if I can still work but don't want to get other sick or stress my body more than I have to I can work at home, but how many people in the US can do this? Really very few can. It is my opinion and to my understanding most modern countries that this is almost a human rights issue, I mean it is torture to work when sick and cruel to the coworkers. It's well known that sickness' hit entire offices, if everyone had unlimited payed sick days, this would rarely happen, people would recover more quickly and be able to be working at full efficiency sooner with few additional absentees. This would also help curb the spread of epidemics.

I don't understand how the normal citizenry can actually not support universal health care, when doctors do. I think Doctors and hospitals need to do a better job of telling all of their patients that they need to support such a system.

Why does me getting 2 weeks of vacation stack up as being above average for an American? Isn't this ridiculous? I mean we could hire more people if we need to always have employment.

Okay so pay caps, I don't agree with flat static pay caps as have been proposed. Pay caps should be based on the difference from the lowest payed individual. So perhaps the top payed can not make more 20 times the lowest payed person. This is the only way we should enforce pay caps in my opinion.

The US is really backwards in regards to labor issues. I think Unions, which I support might have some to blame. I think to many unions are interested in money turn a blind eye to reality and don't act realistically. I think the biggest crime of unions is that they make it too hard to remove people who should be removed, of course lines are hard to draw.

When you are but a pawn in other peoples game
You must find more pawns to escape the clutches of your Deus'
Together we can cut the strings above our heads
We must work for each other and not follow the dogma from times past

To create anew from the hearts of all
is the greatest challenge to us all
But it must be our goal to rid us of past evils

But we must not forsake the past, it is us and brought us to be
from the past we came and from the past we must take lessons learned

With the past in our hands nd us together we make anew to be all for one and one for all

Recent Food-Offs

2009-05-26T21:34:00.004-04:00

So I recently participated in two cooking contests, first was the Tofu Takedown and second and most recently was the Risotto Challenge.

The Tofu Takedown went okay, I came up with a dish, Maccha Tofu Brulee, very simple and quite good, but sadly it had a very green color and I couldn't brulee 300 individual plastic cups and as such I did it all in a half sheet pan and scooped a bit in. In the end I won the "best flavor worst appearance" award. I completely understood, but still. All the recipe was is blended Maccha, Silken Tofu and Sugar. Super easy and really can take any flavor as apposed to Maccha. I guess I should mention why I keep writing Maccha instead of the usually accepted Matcha, this is because I'm pretty sure the t comes from a little tsu which should cause a double consonant bur was probably improperly translitterated way back.

The Risotto Challenge Went well even better. For this I'd been playing around for a while with my Risotto, expensive because I was using shrimp. The Challenge had two major Challenges, Make two Gallons of Risotto and transport it to a bar in Manhattan and have it be eatable for about 2 hours. With my "Sunset Shrimp Risotto" I think I did quite well and apparently the Judges did too as I won the judges award. This isn't to say the others weren't good, My favorite after mine was a squid ink Risotto and the Risotto that won the popular vote was a delicious slow cooked Risotto. There is more coverage as well as my recipe on Not Eating Out in NY .

This last one was definitely fun and I think it had a more diverse group of participants than usual and had a much more intimate atmosphere than all but the cookie takedown.

Our Curiosities are fed by our own creations.
With our minds we shape the world.
With hands we build what our minds imagine.
And we consume the creations of our own and of all.

My Photos Have Changed

2009-05-05T23:24:00.002-04:00

I'm not sure when it happened, but at some point I started shifting a majority of my shooting to people instead of landscapes, trees and just things. I'm not totally sure why, but I have my guesses. I think it has to do with the fact that people are what makes society and by photographing them I am photographing society and getting small snippets of the world applied through my eyes, where as nature, which though intriguing, interesting and beautiful is quint as enticing especially when people are themselves a part of nature. Not to speak poorly of landscapes or anything, I still like them, just for what ever reason my eye isn't as drawn to them as much. But I suppose that is what we get as we get older, changing perspectives.

Aging is such an interesting thing, really what is so different about a birthday from any other day, I don't think there is much, but what there is really is s a desire of acknowledgment. I guess that's all we ever ask for is an acknowledgment of our existence. The acknowledgment assuages our fears of our nonexistence.

A face tells a story,
A story that sometimes is trying to be hidden.
A story of happiness, of sorrow, of Triumphs
And of failures.

Telling what is there is easy,
Telling what is hidden is the goal.

Presents

2009-04-29T12:28:00.003-04:00

So here are some of my view points on presents, much of this was recently argued so I know many people disagree with my sentiments, I myself used to, but I now see the error of my ways. It was vaguely put forward that there may be a predominate gender difference in this.

Okay so I feel a present should never be asked for, they should simply be given where the giver hopefully through their knowledge of the individual will make a good choice that will leave the recipient happy. To go along with this presents shouldn't be expected and certainly shouldn't be hinted at. Such acts to me seem to take away from the idea of a gift, which should be given out of desire to give as apposed to out of some distorted sense of requirement on the giver or entitlement on the part of the receiver. Now the worst action to take in regards to present requesting is to request something expensive, as this puts pressure on the person who if they can't afford what was requested is put in a bind, where anything they give will not live up to the request.

When I was young I felt that it was best to ask for presents because then you get what you want. However the two worst presents I ever got have turned out to be two things I requested. Now they were the worst not because I didn't love the presents, but because they were wastes of money, I never used them nearly as much as I should have and now the both of them are such legacy pieces of hardware that the only way for me to use them would be to maintain an old computer just for their use. These are both a Dazzle Digital Video Creator II and a Umax 2400s scanner. I probably couldn't sell either for any money and probably will probably be able to figure out something for the scanner, but not the DVC II.

What presents are have been perversely transformed by our society from a meaningful expression to one that is simply an expected. I would say prior to getting more thoughtful about this perspective, 95% of my presents were purely given out of requirement of the reception of gifts from people. Give a present that is fitting and whenever you find it, or hold on to it until the prescribed time. It should be noted though that upcoming birthdays and holidays can serve as convenient reminders that you want to acknowledge something.

Definition of Gift, from Dictionary.com (Only first three given):
1. something given voluntarily without payment in return, as to show favor toward someone, honor an occasion, or make a gesture of assistance; present.
2. the act of giving.
3. something bestowed or acquired without any particular effort by the recipient or without its being earned: Those extra points he got in the game were a total gift.

Essentially from this, most gifts/presents given aren't really gifts or presents.

Give from your heart to an others heart.
Don't Give from the others mind and call it from your heart.
Give when you are inspired, not when it is required.
The message given is more important than the item given.

Why doesn't the Government save?

2009-04-24T10:24:00.002-04:00

So this is a mix of a rant and a question, I never took any poli sci or Econ classes in college and perhaps they explain this somewhere, I imagine it just has to do with the fact that Constituents don't like seeing money unspent. Now for a normal person or family it is expected that you will save money and one of the uses of this saved money is to insulate yourself from catastrophic change, such as losing a job, you're not supposed to take out credit to support you 'til you get back on your feet and then have to pay interest creating an endless cycle of living in the red. This however is exactly what governments do, and then it just becomes complete normal to make debt service payments, how can we expect people to not live on credit when that is exactly how our government functions?

Live within your means,
unless your means are inadequate,
that is where government should come in
and expand your means.

Insurance and Capitalism

2009-04-01T00:49:00.003-04:00

So it is quite funny how the fact that we have private health care is held up as a major aspect of our democracy, when really it is anything but. So to start this little diatribe here are some of the basic things influencing my arguments to follow. So the tenants of capitalism are (well some major ones) that a market will through the forces of supply and demand an equitable price will be established, further through the needs of consumers demand will be stimulated such that only successful ventures will survive and that through the desire for profits, production and all aspects of supply will be made as efficient as possible and theoretically consumers will not consume if their demands aren't met preventing individuals from cutting quality too much for profit as there are other options in the market for individuals to choose. Now the last thing I wrote there is actually one of the biggest problems with capitalism, it depends on competition, but monopolies pop up so then governments come in and quash monopolies (going against a tenant of pure capitalism) to create competition or if companies collude to set prices, once again the govt comes in and sues them. Obviously though companies will always come in and try to figure out the best way to game the system and maximize profits. So we have private health insurance companies now the things is that there isn't any real competition for private insurance programs, by this I mean consumers don't actually get to choose their insurance, well this is slightly inaccurate there are a select few individuals who make a large amount of money and are independently employed and choose their own insurance. Now one would say "well hey employers do go through a selection process" well this is true, but employers generally have different plans from their employees, generally same company, but a better plan. AS an employee as of now you essentially have a take it or leave it attitude because in all probability you can't afford to go out and get a better plan. Further there is collusion in the market and there is essentially price fixing being carried out by the various providers. This takes away consumers major means of influencing a market essentially leaving all motivations to ones of profit for shareholders and executives. Further Insurance companies make it as hard as possible for consumers to actually voice their issues or fight them. The real question is why should Insurance even be for profit? Shouldn't it be a basic human right? Some argue that if it wasn't for profit it wouldn't be efficient, this has been pretty well dispelled, but let's just say that it isn't. For profit focus on well profit and do things at a minimum to keep themselves in business, this means that they will treat you but not prevent things, which is actually more expensive than preventing all ailments, but its more profitable if you intend to not actually pay for treating everyone, where as in preventative care you treat everyone and everything. If you aren't for profit you still have to stand up to public scrutiny, the people are the feedback loop in a public free system, in a private system there is no real feedback loop except for the highest payers, or the ones with so called platinum or premium plans. To effectively have not for profit services you need to have a direct connection the serviced to keep things from ballooning out of proportion. You can only true efficiency if you have an active feedback loop otherwise it is just administered by people looking at numbers. The thing is that the consumers are supposed to be the feedback loop in capitalism just as they would be in public health care, but they aren't there in our private health care system, the only feedback is from the investors who have different plans from most of the market. Now perhaps private health care could work if there was only one plan option for all and that it was affordable for all, but that's the only way, I believe in Evolution, but I hate Darwinians.

We are only what we think.
What others think is only what we show them.
To be a mirror is often most appealing,
but to be glass is true.
Be glass to others and yourself.

Thoughts compared

2009-03-23T01:21:00.003-04:00

So I honestly can't recall what post this title was supposed to take, but this one seems to work nonetheless and as such is likely to have been what I intended.

Who will make the bigger difference, a doctor who goes to Africa in order to help the needy who nobody can name or someone like bill gates who takes advantage of the world, but spends a small fraction of his spoils to send thousands of doctors like the aforementioned nameless doctor.

But who wants to live the life of scourge who ends it as something good to no degree as good as it was a scourge before, but perhaps good to another set of souls, only to infect them with some perverse ideals and dreams.

Really in the end it's all about what we do and how we do it. The question kind of becomes whether we do it for ourselves or others, or perhaps a mixed. Certainly though we can't look at life as a sums game. So for that I think the how is more important.

We all take our own paths,
but we all began in the same place
and end in the same place.
All we can do is find our own way.

VM Ware fusion

2009-03-21T00:58:00.002-04:00

Well this is super quick probably doesn't even deserve to be considered a full post, but I just had to say that VM Ware fusion is a really great product. I set up VM Ware Fusion on my parents brand new iMac 24" as they needed to run a windows only app, and I was able to put the windows app on the Dock and everything runs seamlessly. Well it's amazing how far virtualization has gone.

Hiding internals is often the paramount characteristic of design.

Special guests

2009-03-21T00:43:00.002-04:00

like two celestial bodies with crossing paths.
Sometimes they collide in a catastrophic incident.
Sometimes the less massive one becomes a satellite.
Sometimes one ricochets out never to come again.
And Sometimes their orbits become resonant
to only cross in their minds, but to never meet.

They Were only Children

2009-02-17T21:55:00.002-05:00

So I just saw an amazing movie, it's a movie I've been wanting to see for some time, but all of my friends were too lame to find the time to go and you know what? It was there loss, the Movie, "Waltz With Bashir", the best movie of the year in many regards. In some regards it is a shame that it is entered as best foreign language film instead of just for best film. It is actually a production decision what to enter a film as, one is not allowed to enter in both categories and the production staff need to weigh the positives and the negatives of which category they choose to enter into. Okay so you might now be thinking what this has to do with the title of this blog. Well, one of the main themes of the movie is that war is fought by stupid and immature children. It's touching and shows the horrors of war. Incidentally the Christians are made out to be the worst of the bad guys. I'm kidding in many regards regarding the last statement. The movie portrays a tale the children living out the fears created by the history of the fathers in the concentration camps of Germany. Fear and hatred only beget fear and hatred.

Fear really is our great controller, JFK said "All we have to fear is fear itself", this is because when you have fear it controls you. I don't know if this really means we should act with out fear because fear does provide a certain element to aid in our survival. But no it can't be your master. You must be your own master and all too often we allow fear to be that master. We must choose our battles wisely.

Well I went to this poetry reading in the LES and some of the poetry was great and some of it, was well, not so great. However, what I did learn is that poetry has mostly evolved into an anything. I guess this is why people look at what I often put at the end of my posts as poetry. I generally just think of them as type of musing of my thoughts. But I suppose they do often seem poetic and based on how people carried on at the reading, they certainly are all poems. I guess I don't like labels. And to call your writing poetry, seems almost self absorbed.

So I went to a friends party for the Manhattan young Democrats. I really thought everyone there was a douche bag, so I was already pretty strung up and I just want happy with some other stuff. Some people started popping balloons and I asked them to stop. I got into a bit of an argument asking some people to stop, but that ended. Then some kid popped a balloon because he was told to and I kinda got angry with him and we had a talk and he just defended himself by saying that other people told him to. I guess I put a finger on him, which pissed him off. Now this almost became something, but it ended okay. Later the kid approached me again and then we almost had a fight between me and him as well as the first kid I talked to and him. Bad night.

So before the party I went to the New French and had some great duck. Enough said, it was really good and I got a free glass of wine.

When we are young we live by hastefull gratification.
As we age our minds start fighting for control.
The epitome of our life is reached when we live for love.

February, Perfection

2009-02-12T11:58:00.002-05:00

Okay so this is going to seem odd and I just realized this, this February is a perfect month. Go open a calendar and you will see what I mean. As everyone knows February (when not a leap year) has 28 days, which is a multiple of 7, precisely 4. This means that February has exactly four weeks and will always end on the day of the week before it started, and this year February started on a Sunday (the first day of the week) and hence will end on a Saturday (the last day of the week). I'm probably the only person in the world getting a kick out of this.

Always keep your eyes open for things
that seem mundane, but are really unique and beautiful.

Which Choice

2009-02-11T23:52:00.003-05:00

So it is always easier for one to speak of a situation outside of oneself. Perhaps that's what one is suppose to gain when using "one", as Kafka said it shows and adds an amount of detachment from what one says, as if saying that it is not "I", but rather it is but any "one". By using "one", one is just yearning to be accepted and if they are not, one can always regard that it was not "I" referred to, but rather the greater "one".

Well, how does know when you're really just wasting time? So right now I pretty much know one more thing I don't want to do, but when do I know to stop doing it? I suppose if I know I'm that unhappy I should act sooner than later, but things are really never that simple, plus due to relatively recent events The person I would have consulted at least to some regard is not consultable any longer. I have a bunch of options I suppose, but I don't see any for right now that I would want to be long term. I guess I have some thinking to do.

There are right now too many things wrong that are going on in our government, both state and federal to scratch the surface. It all really comes down to money. Hopefully though some great infrastructure will come out of this, though it is seeming more and more unlikely and hopefully we will get some great social programs though that too is seeming less and less likely. I think our dear ignorant governor of NY is trying to let the free market fix things by cutting important social programs, particularly schools and medicine which are already terribly underfunded. And don't let me even get started on our new gun toting daughter of a lobbyist senator.

Sadly I can't even stop the commercialization of NYC, how can I save the world.

All we have are our minds, no map, compass or sexton.
All we have are our minds and hearts.
These alone are what allow us to navigate life.
We are blind to the obstacles and the landscape,
But what would life be without surprises.

Chili Takedown

2009-02-11T00:22:00.002-05:00

Well this past Sunday was the Chili Takedown at Union Pool. It was quite a fun affair, I'd actually practiced making a Chicken Mole Chili, which always came out decently, I was doing a very Texan styled thick Beanless Chili. However they day before the Takedown, while listening to studio 360, I was inspired by a Japanese girl whose favorite food was Shrimp Chili, so I decided to make a Thai Fusion Chili, which was essentially Thai Coconut Shrimp Soup meets Chili. Well I didn't win and in the end really most people were scared of my Chili, I actually took to heckling people that passed up tasting my Chili. I don't feel bad for the Heckling because pretty much everyone that tried my Chili loved it and regretted not doing so right away. I definitely plan on doing more Takedowns. Oh, So I think I'm going to get back to trying to keep my food blogging going, which lasted little more than a post or two and never had any of the promised pictures. Also expect a big thing soon. Next time is bacon. I really should have posted a bunch more of food posts, this weekend along I cooked three major things, though that isn't as much as I suppose it could have been.

I'd say re-evaluation are in order, but they are at this point more evaluations and I just need to decide what to do. Though really there are now two to three things and it is more a matter of working out the timing more so than anything. The execution of my plans are likely to occur in I'd say either 1 year or 2 years, I guess we will see which.

The future is a mystery that gets slowly unturned as we live.
In life all we is dig and dig to uncover tomorrow.
What monotonous lives we lead.
How sadder it is when our lives echo such monotony.

Auto Emmissions

2009-01-26T16:12:00.002-05:00

Why not follow only the strictest emissions standards, instead the auto companies complain about differences in standards in varying states as if they had to follow each states maximums individually as apposed to just designing to the strictest standards. The auto companies already design to mixed standards, one for the U.S. and another for rest of the world, which have stricter standards.

People are getting mad about Madoff being a jew and saying how terrible Jews are, but shouldn't this be spun positively in how many charities were hurt due to the fact that so many of them were highly funded by the same terrible Jews.

France, viva la revolution. Well while we Americans have been sittings on our asses and just paying tons of money out to the banks, they actually got up and protested the world economic crisis and the things going down.

Computers seem to have shielded us from being aware of ails of humanity and contact with others. It's actually quite sad, but I love my computer, what do we do, technology is an important thing in the world and should not ever be blamed on it's own, it is our usage that creates the harm done to us.

I don't know.

There are a bunch of things I feel like I saw and did that I am going to leave out, but hear some quick re-caps. The Wrestler, see it, it is quite a well done movie and is in no way a feel good movie. It's got re-watch potential and the direction, production cinematography and acting are all superb. I went to the tank the other week where there was a screening and discussion group for a documentary, it was good and was a very worthwhile experience. The Tank seems like a pretty great place, it's a none profit performance space. I also went to a fundraiser for Recycle a Bike, the not for profit bike shop I volunteer at. I feel like there must have a been a bunch of other things, but I've been to reticent in my blogging and have since forgotten.

Well I think I have a better idea of what I want to do.

Next time, the Chili takedown and probably more commentary about the administration.

Life is Searching
Searching for beauty
Searching for answers
Searching for connections
Searching for love
Searching for the right path

How do we know when we find
what we are searching for?
There is no one to tell us,
it is only for us chance upon.

Still a child

2009-01-14T12:49:00.001-05:00

I only know where I was and am, but not where I'm going?
Do I even know where I am?
Do I need to know where I am going to know where I am?
You can only live in the moment, the present, which is ever fleeting.
But how do you define where in a life with out knowing the geography?
What is the geography of life without the future?
Is the landscape of our life not comprised of our past, what is and what can be.
I only know something until after I leave it behind.
The possibilities of the future are endless until actualized.

I see So many possibilities before me, but what is the best?
What is the best? Best for me? For you? for all?
Is it ever really the same?
I try to navigate my choices to happiness?
But to make a choice of one path is the regret of another.
I find solice in the fact that in the end I will always make the right choice,
But I too will always make the wrong choice.
Which life of mine will get which choice, that is the question.
I always try the path with the most possibilities,
but It means I always miss the little things.
The path least traveled is always the one meant to be the best,
but it is the loneliest.
Follow the middle way, the gray, betwixt your mind and reality.

I'm still a child, but a nascent thought in a world trying to over come the ravages of society. Can I escape my ideology with action in reality?