Originally posted July 18, 2006

The box of stuff that we sent from Greece arrived yesterday, including my $13 Akihibara mouse: The happy face is of course split into left and right buttons, and the brightly lit nose is the scroll wheel. What you might not be able to tell from the photo is that the bottom part is sort of like a snow globe, and has red and green (plastic?) flowers, a couple of sea shells, and some coarse sand floating in water. Some LEDs in the front compartment cycle through red, green, and blue colors, lighting up the water and stuff in it. Awesome.

It also works very nicely as a mouse.

Then there are the $15 webcams:
(Janet’s is a mouse with eyes that light up when the camera’s on.) They’re not quite working with iChat because of some driver problems, but the tech support guys are on the case.

Meanwhile, some things that didn’t find a place anywhere else:

* Going in, we knew that cell phones were big in India. What I wasn’t expecting was the strength of the cell phone model in commercial media. Watching local TV (great Bollywood music videos!), you’ll see TV commercials that are visually and structurally equivalent to American or British commercials (although in Urdu, of course). But when you get to the point where an American commercial would show the URL there is something like “sms FREE to 73371”. It was very rare to see a URL in India, although they’re all over the place in Cairo.

* Saturday morning, BBC 4 was running a live feed of their Big Brother house. For HOURS — continuing coverage of people sleeping, and absolutely nothing happening. Warhol lives, with a British accent.

* India seems to have rejected the Negroponte $100 laptop program, at least at this point. A Delhi paper reported that the appropriate government agency told Nicholas that the evidence on the utility of machines like this was unproven, and that maybe they should try it out in their own country and see if it works instead of expecting India to be their guinea pigs. Snap! Whether this is just a stage in the negotiating process remains to be seen.

I’m sure I’ll think of other things that should go here, but I should get those lovely pictures of our new toys out first…

Originally posted July 17, 2006

But what then?

Step 2: Delay the flight out of Heathrow for an hour, so that the connection in O’Hare will probably be missed (but while holding out the possibility of making lt),

Step 3: Put Jim’s bag at the very end of the baggage claim. This way…

Step 4: …they will be towards the end of the near-endless line to rebook their now definitely missed connection, along with all the other victims on the plane.

Step 5: Make sure all the other flights to SFO today are full. Give them a confirmed booking on Monday, and hold out the possibility of flying standby this evening. Also decree that, since the flight delay was because of air traffic control and not United per se, they would have to pay for any needed hotel stay. They would also not have their bags with them in the hotel, since those would have to be checked to SFO on the standby flight.

Step 6: Run them through an amazingly mysterious security process at O’Hare (take me back to Cairo, please!), just to increase the tension.

Step 7: But, being benevolent travel gods, let the standby reservation clear, in first class no less. So it’s a piece of post-dinner tiramisu and a glass of wine as an end to a very long day.

My, that was fun.

Originally posted July 17, 2006

A brief update upon having left London. More will be said of this, except to note that I could walk around this city all day long (and almost did), and that Judi Densch is surprisingly good at physical comedy.

We got to Heathrow a little early, figuring that we could check out whether our miles-funded business-class upgrade had come through and, if all else failed, burn off our final pounds on duty-free English goodies and hang out at the airline club. We got to check-in to discover that our flight to SFO was severely overbooked (thus no hope of the upgrade), but that they were offering $1000 travel credit for people willing to be bumped and arrive a bit later. Family members willl recognize our response: “Hmm…”

Negotiations began; keep in mind that we had just arrived from Hong Kong, India, and Egypt. (“That much? Oh, no, no — far too much. My loss! My loss!”) We were also conducting the negotiations from the business class line, which they thought they were entitled to and which gave us a certain amount of leverage. A bit of back and forth followed (travel hint: in a bumping situation, airline folks have a lot more flexibility and options than you might think) — we went from business class and the full travel credit to business class without the credit to coach with the credit and I think a couple of other things. I was about to throw in my DVD of Cars and a copy watch when we agreed on business class to SFO and $500 credit per person. What followed was some waiting for paperwork and then a frenzied escorted dash through Terminal 3 security to make the new flight, complete with a ride on the “get-out-of-our-way-more-important-people-than-you-are-coming-through” beeping golf cart. The driver of the cart failed to run over anyone, somewhat to my dismay. In any case, we’re currently working through the ice cream and port course of our lunch on our way to Chicago, where we’re hopeful that the hour delay leaving London won’t keep us from catching our final flight to SFO, and thinking about where to go with our $1000. Assuming we make our connection in O’Hare, life is good.

Originally posted July 17, 2006

I’m really glad we came to Cairo, and Egypt in general, because I had no idea what to expect from it. I mean, intellectually I knew there was more than mud huts and camels, but I had no idea of what modern Cairo really was like. My guess is that I’ve absorbed so many images of the Pyramids and the Sphinx over the years that there’s no cognitive room left for more mundane questions like how hotels fit into streets and sidewalks and whether they have 7-11s. My problem, not theirs.

Flying into the city, you start to get an idea. It’s a big city (14 million?), and, in many respects, just like any other big city, aside from the fact that it seems to be all one color — the color of sand. But, yes, there are streets and sidewalks and traffic lights and all that stuff; yes, you can walk from your hotel to a restaurant or a kiosk selling newspapers, magazines, and bottled water. Yes, there are people of varying ages and economic levels who would love to sell you a new memory card for your camera or simply-made bookmarks. No, you probably don’t want to drink the tap water. But once you get past all that, it’s another big city with all the advantages and disadvantages of any big city. On arrival, we check into the hotel, think about showering or hitting the pool, and figure out where to eat.

But then you’re off to do the Rampaging Tourist run through Cairo — the Pyramids and the Sphinx, the ruins at Memphis, and the 3200 BC step pyramid at Sakkara. Sheesh. Somewhere in here, Amazement Fatigue sets in, especially the next day in Luxor, spending hours going through 5,000 year old tombs with amazingly beautiful paintings and wall carvings. Seing evidence of sufficiently developed models of medicine to understand that the heart was a pretty significant organ worthy of some respect. Enough engineering to cut straight-as-an-arrow blocks of granite and limestone, and fit them together without a gap. And all at a time when our ancestors were rolling around in the mud and picking lice off each other. The Fatigue comes from trying to reconcile all of this, and failing miserably. Which is okay — you give up and fall back into simply absorbing what’s in front of you, figuring that you’ll reflect on it later and be amazed, Which you do, and are.

As suggested above, our last (second) night in Egypt was in Luxor, about an hour’s plane flight away and home to most of the tombs and temples (temple complexes, really) you’ve heard about, including Tutankhamen’s. Some additional evidence for Jim’s main travel principle: “Use organized activities as a way to put yourself in the way of serendipity, which is what you’re really traveling for”.

* We went to the “sound and light show” in Luxor. These have become quite the thing lately for those places that have lots of monuments that can be lit impressively at night. They write a little script telling a not-awful history of the place, get some voice actors to play the parts of the ancients in their best James Earl Jones voices, and walk the tourists through the site, doing the sound and light thing as they go, I apologize for the condescing tone of that description; it’s better than I made it sound.

Anyway: the show ends with the audience sitting in a set of bleachers overlooking the entire site — a huge place of 40 century-old architecture and construction and religion — taking in the final bits of dialog and western-ish orchestral music. While the dramatic lighting of the site remains, the sound track ends, and is replaced by the natural sounds of Luxor at the moment…

..which turns out to be the evening call to prayer, sent out with simple amplification systems, of what must have been ten to twenty mosques throughout the city. This was the real soundtrack of the place — calls filled with passion and faith, bumping into each other yet telling the same story that the callers and their ancestors have told for centuries. It hit me in the gut; I didn’t, and still don’t, know completely what to make of it. It was one of those things that transcends reason and rationality. But there was a reality there that couldn’t be denied.

* We went back to our hotel, which was across the street from where the Cairo-Luxor-Aswan cruise ships (ferries, really) dock. We got out of the car and into a completely joyous chaos. As in India, July is low season for tourism in Egypt — only idiots like us and truckloads of American college students would travel to Egypt from America in the heat of July — and so many of the ships, which are rather nice, rent themselves out for parties and weddings and the like. A couple of weddings were underway, judging from the elaborate gowns on some of the women, the video cameras capturing everything, and the music. The music was provided by random collections of locals with collections of drums, horns, and who knows what else — it somehow reminded me of a New Orleans krewe: they would descend on a wedding party, play their hearts out and get everybody into the excitement of the moment, and then move on to the next one, presumably after being paid either for their efforts or simply to go away. Big fun, and definitely the best street music of the trip.

* We then went inside the hotel to find the lounge band — two singers and a keyboard with bass and drum loops — doing a vaguely recognizable country/western song. Brain hurt, Must go outside again.

Other completely random notes:

* Gasoline here is about 75 cents a gallon. Most of it seems to be going directly into the Cairo air. Nasty stuff.

* At the airport food court, I watch three local (I think) kids taking advantage of the free WiFi to down Egyptian porn or semi-porn into their laptops and cell phones. Some things don’t change, no matter where you go.

* Why does the Cairo airport have free WiFi, but you have to pay in SFO and Heathrow? Grr.

* There’s huge variance in womens’ clothing here, from stylish things you might see in LA to a full-bore head-to-foot black burqa, with only a slit for the eyes. But look a little closer — some of the burqas have gorgeous bead work along the edges, and the glasses peeking out of the eye slits can be very stylish. Things here are not as simple as they might seem; Janet may have more to say about the status of women here, in India, and some other places. For my part, I’m glad I can pee standing up.

* So, you’re down in one of the 5000 year old tombs, and you’re met by a local in full bedouin dress (almost certainly not a costume, but his everyday clothes), who is happy to help you down the stairs and point out the interesting bits (in exchange for a little baksheesh, of course). He asks, using much of English he knows, where you’re from. We say “America”, and he responds, with a big smile on his face, “Ah, yes, America! Very good!” As noted before, we were spending most of our time around locals who were probably financially motivated to be friendly to us, and we were certainly on our best guest-in-your-fine-country behavior. But I can say that I saw no anti-American sentiment; no negative comments, and no dirty looks (except for the Luxor bellman I inadvertantly undertipped rather significantly). America still has some emotional capital available to it in this part of the world, no matter how quickly we seem to be burning it up.

* With all respect to the country of Egypt, I have finally found a country with a worse monetary system than the US. I don’t mean this in any macroeconomic sense, but just in terms of the physical currency. While there are coins, they’re not accepted by local banks, and so everything we saw was paper money, all rather bland and brownish. It’s bilingual Arabic and English, but on a side-by-side basis — if you fold a bill wrong, you have no idea what it’s worth. And then there’s the matter of getting the rightkinds of money.

See the previous discussion of baksheesh — there are lots of expectations of small tips/gratuities/payoffs here, from the bathroom attendant who dispenses the toilet paper, to the antiquities guard who looks the other way while you take a picture of something you’re not supposed to, to the local cop who lets your guide’s car park someplace it’s not supposed to. In most cases, not much is expected, usually just an Egyptian pound, or about 15 cents US.

The problem here is getting the pound notes (not coins, you’ll recall). They certainly don’t come out of any ATMs, and most of the banks or hotel cashiers look at you with a sheepish look and tell you they don’t have any, which is probably true. But you’ve gotta have them to get along in the city, and perhaps especially as a tourist. As far as I can tell, All the notes are in the hands of the people receiving them, who could probably set up a pretty profitable black market in them — seven one-pound notes for one ten-pound note, let’s say. We were reduced to looking for newspapers or other small things that cost maybe six pounds, so that the shopkeeper is forced to give you four pound notes in change for your ten.

If you’re lucky enough to get some, you then go through the Clothing Preparation Process, so that you can pull out the appropriate tip at the appropriate time without fumbling around with your wallet: One-pound notes for local guides in the right pants pocket; five or ten-pound notes in the shirt pocket for water or trinket purchases; more serious money for drivers or guides in the left pants pocket, Or whatever works for you. Great fun, I guess; it’s a way of life here.

* Plus, of course, Murphy’s Law starts to apply, and you find yourself collecting more and more of them as you get closer to departure. I now have seven or eight pound notes; if you’re going to Egypt, let me know and we can work something out. Two or three dollars for the set seems about right….

* Interesting pop music on the Egyptian MTV clone. Definitely western at its base, and a little too Celene Dion for my taste, but with Arabic scales and modes mixed in that turn it into something quite different. There’s probably a culinary analogy I could draw here if I wasn’t as tired as I am.

* Of course, the big question for Egypt, and the area in general, is how the modern Egypt Is to be reconciled with its conservative Islamic culture. Western trappings are everywhere — the famous KFC across the street from the Sphinx; the English-language billboards advertising some sort of idealized lifestyle to be obtained from some purchase or another; Western-style night clubs, still open during our 5 AM run to the airport. And it’s clear that there are some people with some pretty strong opinions about the incorrectness of these trappings and what ought to be done about them, as well as the motivation to act on those opinions. I’m glad nobody’s looking to me to find the solution to it all.

Meanwhile, the Real World has started to slip into our consciousness — another packing session and airplane flight or three, and we’re off for a quick stop in London, and then home. (This is written in the fake present tense, mind you — see a previous post for how we really got to London.) Memories of work and other realities are starting to appear, which is either a good or bad thing. We’ll figure that out later, I guess.

Originally posted July 15, 2006

Sigh. I’m back to being two countries behind. That’s okay — it means we’ve had other things to do than sit around a hotel room writing blog posts, But I don’t want to be too far out of the moment while writing this, so I may have to resort to a blast of bullet points that will at least let me pretend I’ve covered things. I can always come back and pontificate later (see India post).

Greece was somewhat jarring after our stop in India: landing at the airport, we were very clearly back in the western world. Also, we were no longer one (or two) of a very small number of westerners, as we were in India. Our flight from Delhi went through Frankfurt, where we joined up with endless American tour groups. Back to the land of Raiders t-shirts and American flag baseball caps.

Greece was much more fun than I had expected. Even granting that we’re mostly encountering people who are financially motivated to being friendly, the folks here seem genuinely happy and outgoing; they’re very touchy, back-slappy people. All the old Zorba stereotypes — sit down, enjoy life, have another glass of wine! — seem to be real.

We realized the other day that, accidentally, we’re sort of going back in time on this trip — modern Japan, the Hong Kong of the Brits and the Victorian era, India and the 1500s that gave the world the Taj. Now we’re back to the early BCs, with the Acropolis, Delphi, Episus, and their cohorts. Time has done what time usually does, and a certain amount of imagination is needed to fill in the gaps of the Parthenon and such. But, yikes. There are endless opportunities to have those “Cleopatra-was-a-real-person-and-once-stood-right-here” moments, which can shake you a bit.

I didn’t quite know what to expect from Delphi — it’s about an hour and a half outside of Athens, and (surprisingly to me) up in some pretty impressive mountains. The effect is somewhat staggering —temples, ampitheaters, and streets, all set in a mountain valley only slightly less impressive than Yosemite. If you were looking for a good place to put a city honoring the gods a couple thousand years ago, you’d be hard pressed to do better.

Other, somewhat more random thoughts:

* Up to this point, Athens wins the prize for Best Street Music — guitar guys, somebody playing a zither, an Alenis clone, and (best of all) a somewhat raggedy group of three accordians, a guitar, and a tambourine who pulled up along the row of tavernas we were having lunch in, working for tips. Their exuberance somewhat exceeded their talent, but the combination was certainly worth a euro.

* Lots of street vendors, here and in the cruise’s stop in Kusadasi, Turkey. The pitches in Kusadasi were the most fun — unlike “Mister, you want copy watch?” as in Hong Kong, this was much more “Hey, why are you smiling so much?” Or, a few yards away, “Hey, why aren’t you smiling?” They were no less interested in doing business than any of the other vendors we ran into, but they seemed to appreciate it as more of a dance — The Fleecing of the Tourists — than a simple matter of commerce.

* Favorite sign: “Genuine Copy Watches Here!”

* Mykonos is a seriously gorgeous island. White buildings and blue water everywhere. Not much to do there than sit back, look at the ocean, and have another glass of wine, but sometimes that can be enough.

* World Cup fever was of course everywhere; we watched the finale in a big room on the ship with a couple of TVs and maybe a hundred rabid football fans. Good fun, except for the part about France losing (there was a sizable French tour group on board).

* Most cringe-worthy comment heard on the ship staircase, from an American coming up behind us: “We were at lunch with a whole table of French people, and, even though you know they could all speak English, they decided to speak French, just to get under our skin.” Yeah, I’m sure they missed out on some great conversation.

* Personal linguistic best: at our lunch with part of the French group, I needed the salt, which was at their end of the table. I made the “shake-shake” motion and pointed at the shaker, and got out what I took to be a reasonably understandable version of “Excuse me, I speak only a little French.” They seemed entertained.

* Fun Fact #73: Every country on this trip, except for England, has a non-western alphabet at the heart of its language. There’s plenty of English around, but, still….

* In comparison to the countries in our previous stops, I’m not sure I know what Greece wants to be at this point in its history. It’s a prosporous country (relatively speaking) with a great sense of history and its place in it — nothing wrong with that. But I don’t see the drive to the future, to what it might be in 5 or 10 years. This, of course, could be my problem more than theirs — I probably just need to sit down with Zorba, have that glass of wine, and relax a bit.

* I’ve lost count of the number of bottles of water we’ve gone through. Hiking around in the bright sun on top of marble and granite can be no fun — the heat bounces off the rock and blasts right back up at you, broiling and baking you at the same time. I’m sure Cairo (our next stop) will be much easier.

Originally posted July 15, 2006

So, India. India is, well, complicated. This may take awhile.

(Up front, we should note the absurdity of almost anything I might have to say about an utterly unique country of a billion people, based on a two-day visit in extremely privileged surroundings. But this is the blog world, and you get what you pay for.)

I’m sure I’m not the first person to see India as a land of contrasts — beauty next to squalor, Mercedes taxis sharing the road with camels and water buffalos. But so it is, and somehow the place works. The traffic in India may be a metaphor for it all — at any given time, a road can be carrying trucks, buses, cars, tuk-tuks (think enclosed golf carts, except with cargo or 8 or 10 people stuffed inside), motorcycles, rickshaws, bicycles, water buffalos, cows, camel-drawn carts, and pedestrians. There are traffic laws meant to control all of this, but in practice they’re best thought of as suggestions: any time you see a sign saying “Please don’t drive on the wrong side of the road”, you know you’re playing with a different set of rules. And yet traffic flows well amidst the chaos, or perhaps <i>because</i> of it. Everybody is paying attention to their driving because they have to. There are no assumptions about right of way or ownership of a lane based on a centrally-planned and enforced set of regulations; these are all negotiated between the players, in real time. And, here as in other places, India is most definitely a bargaining society. Some people win, and some people lose.

So, yeah, there is certainly what we in the western world would consider squalor. You’ll drive by what seems to be a collapsed building and see people living inside. Beggars in the train station will sort of attach themselves to you — not physically, but silently following you around, hoping for something in return for their karmic escort service. And any place that has camels and water buffalos wandering the streets is bound to have piles of stuff on the ground you’ll want to avoid. But if you look a little closer and drop your prejudices a bit, it’s not clear that things are really any more extreme here than, say, around Ensenada or Cancun. Or, to be honest, parts of South Central, Mississippi, or BedStuy. I can safely say that life in the Indian countryside is not one that I would find particularly rewarding, but in most cases the housing is functional, the people look pretty healthy, powerlines run everywhere, cell phones are common, even in the boonies (thanks to a VERY different pricing philosophy than Cingular has figured out how to offer in the US), and TVs are not unknown. Still, there’s no pretending that this isn’t extreme poverty, and the impact on the society and visitors is what you would expect. It’s never fun to have somebody trying to sell you postcards or Taj snow globes or Chiclets and just not taking “no” for an answer. But you can’t expect much else when you’re an obvious westerner coming to a place like this and bearing signs of what must be seen as unimaginable wealth. It’s part of the toll you pay to come here.

The advice of our guide was “to remain in a meditative state” and walk past them as if they didn’t exist, just as has happened in India for thousands of years. We did seem to get a sense that “this is how it has always been” among the guides we were with; there doesn’t seem to be the sense, as in the US, that this is a sign of societal failure that goes against the proper order of things and must be corrected. But, just as the government does seem to be getting the most basic essentials of life out to the people, it also has a very clear idea of how it can deal with its problems in a longer-term way. And the key is education.

Education (and its corrolary, career advancement) is simply everywhere. Billboards, TV commercials, half-page ads on the front pages of Delhi newspapers. All along the road from Agra to Delhi, there are large, gorgeous buildings that house either universities or crosses between colleges and technical trade schools. Newspapers are filled with stories about the students who have done well on the British-style leveling tests and entrance exams. It’s just a fundamental part of the culture; yes, more so than in the US. You don’t see too many kids in Delhi proudly wearlng “I’m slacking off” t-shirts; a schoolbag with a logo spelling out “Success” is more common. There are many issues and challenges here, but they know what they want to do. And, combined with a similarly-thinking China, we’re talking about a couple billion people that would like to make the world a very different place than it is today. I don’t know if I’d bet against them.

Of course, there’s beauty, too. You have to know where to look for it; much of India looks simple worn down by the years of a challenging climate and too little money. But there are amazing 16th century forts and cities; huge sandstone complexes of buildings — sometimes dozens of them — that had once housed the government until Something Changed — politics, the water supply, whatever.

And then there’s the Taj. A story that I believe to be true: George Bush was invited to take a tour of the Taj while visiting India a few years ago (his first trip out of the country, ever?). Reportedly, he declined, because he was wasn’t interested.

If true, that says everything you need to know about the man.

The Taj starts out pretty much as you’ve seen it in pictures — glistening white against the sky. And that’s amazing enough to warrant its reputation. But as you get closer, the white starts to break up into mixtures of white and gray; you think it’s maybe different kinds of marble. It’s not until you’re much closer that you discover that it’s covered with inlay — precious and semi-precious stones forming designs, flowers, verses from the Koran. Everywhere, something new and beautiful to look at. I remember feeling like one of the apes from 2001, staring up at this thing of beauty and purity, and trying to imagine who or what created it. If it had simply disappeared and returned to whatever dimension it had come from, I wouldn’t have been surprised. There’s another line from 2001; (the book, actually), where Dave’s last words before entering the monolith are “My God — it’s full of stars.” It kind of works here, too. You need to see it, and walk around it, and touch it to really appreciate it. All the other bits of squalor disappear for a minute, which is what great art is meant to do, 500 years ago, now, or 500 years from now. It’s one of those reasons you have to travel.

Originally posted July 14, 2006

Our astonishingly good fortune bestowed upon us by the travel gods finally ran out, a little anyway. Today (Friday) is a travel day — Luxor to Cairo, and then Cairo to London via Frankfurt. Unfortunately, the flight from Cairo to Frankfurt is badly delayed (something about a crew problem in Frankfurt?), and we won’t get to Frankfurt in time to make our connection. So we’ll be crashing at the Frankfurt airport hotel (it’s a little plush for the term “crashing”, but whatever), and then catch an early morning flight into Heathrow.

Still, our luck has been pretty good; I guess this is why we bought that travel insurance.

Originally posted July 10, 2006

I haven’t posted much recently because, well, we’ve been kinda busy. When I started writing this, we were on the ship going from Athens to Mykonos, so there’s been a bit of a chance to pull back and catch a breath.

It’s all becoming something of a blur at this point. Another airplane, or train station, or ferry, or all three — more pretty good accented English (thank God!), which I can usually figure out once I remember which accent filter to activate, except for a few days ago, when the right filter was “Arkansas redneck”. Another hotel, another search for a place for dinner and something other than CNN on the TV. But things are going well, somewhat amazingly so. We’ve been hit with a couple of different versions of Traveler’s Tummy (not so much the tummy, but you get the idea), but that’s about it. No missed flights, no lost bags, at least so far — knock on wood.

So, what’s been going on?

Hong Kong: Major frenzy. I wasn’t here before the handover, so I can’t have a clear sense of how it’s evolved since then, and I don’t really know how HK fits in with other parts of modern China. But, to me, its British heritage only comes through in the street names and liberal use of English in street signs and many (but not all) of its people. That’s surely helpful to the western tourist — we found it quite easy to get around — but there’s really no question that you’re in China, and there are some different rules at play. At times it feels you’re in San Francisco’s Chinatown, and, at other times, you might as well be on Mars.

It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the energy of the place — the rush of people, the buildings and lights along the harbor. Is this any different than someone from China might feel after being droppped into New York? Probably not. But it’s certainly different, which, from the Rampaging Tourist’s perspective, is good enough. Things are just recognizable enough to let you get by, and then something weird hits you upside the head and reminds where you are.

Much of what you do in HK is shop, so we had no choice to oblige. We passed on the Chanel and Bulgari shops in city center, and headed out of town on the Metro to the Rainbow Computer Center, three floors of tiny independent stores crammed one after another selling gear from the common to the bizarre. In some sense, this was more fun than Akihibara. $15 webcams in the shape of cartoon characters — stuff like that.

Later, we went to the Night Market elsewhere in the city, looking for something approximating adventure. Janet is still learning the finer points of street market bargaining, but there are signs of progress. The most noticable purchase, carried out as a professional exploration only, is that I picked up a few DVDs — Cars, Mission Impossible 3, and DaVinci Code. US$2 each. The video transfers are excellent, although the sound leaves a bit to be desired (dubbed off a telecine?), and they come complete with subtitles and soundtracks in multiple Asian languages. I dunno — I really am opposed to piracy, but there’s gotta be a solution to this problem that doesn’t require us to believe that people living on an astronomically smaller level of income than Americans are going to plunk down US$25 for a DVD when a much cheaper alternative is right in front of them, probably being sold by people they already know. It’s hard to expect that people bargaining HARD over 25 cents are going to care a lot about taking a buck or two out of Tom Cruise’s mouth. But if I had to solve this? Mumble. Maybe site licensing, from the studios to China, and co-opt the pirates into being the distribution channel? (Update from Athens — street vendors were selling Superman Returns last Thursday in the tourist areas we were in, just as we saw “genuine fake watches” (love the term!) being sold in Turkey.) Dunno — sleep might help me think about this, but there’s precious little of that in sight, and not much more wisdom.

So now I’m only two countries behind, as we head from Athens to Cairo via Zurich. (If you think this routing sucks (check a map), you’re right.) And those are tough countries to figure out. But airplanes are meant for sleeping, reading, and writing, right?

Originally posted July 1, 2006

Huh. So that’s what Chinese food is supposed to taste like.

Originally posted June 30, 2006

In an attempt to satisfy the unexpected demand for bullet points, and since extended travel does kinda reduce your brain to the point where stringing together a couple of sentences is a pretty good accomplishment, a few more for you:

* Best name for a restaurant that we didn’t go to: “Cabbages and Condoms”, in Kyoto, Turns out that it’s a Thai restaurant run by a non-profit organization that uses its proceeds to support AIDS education and family planning in Thailand, Probably should have gotten the t-shirt.

* Mmmm — just took a brief Pocari Sweat break, It’s actually pretty good — like most of the bottled waters available in the ubiquitous street-side vending machines, it’s more like a weak Gatorade than straight water. But when you’re hiking uphill to a Kyoto temple in 85-degree / 60% humidity, a few extra electrolytes can be a good thing,

* Oh, yeah — they have humidity here. Not a big fan of it,

* Kyoto has an interesting approach to the big, multi-floor department store here — the different departments are contracted out to a variety of brand-name retailers. The store has casual clothes, like any department store, but you look a little closer and realize that you’re really in a Gap outlet, Walk a little further, and you’re in the housewares section, which is run by Miji (sort of a Japanese Ikea — we blew a few yen on little boxes and cases). Computer stuff is handled by Sofmap, and so on, No physical barriers between the areas; it’s laid out just like an American department store, with one department flowing into the next, Maybe it was just one case where an existing Big City Department Store was being repurposed, but it’s kinda interesting.

OK, so we all know that Japan is Cellphone Central, and it’s mostly true — people are plugged in everywhere, and cellphone services are advertised everywhere. What’s surprised me is that cellphone use here is getting moderated by Japanese culture, in ways that, had I thought about it for awhile, should have been perfectly predictable. That is, there’s a developing awareness of the invasiveness of cellphone use, which gets in the way of Japanese concerns about politeness. So, you’ll see signs in the metro near the “priority” seats for the elderly or disabled that ask you to turn your phone off in that area, There were sitting areas in our Tokyo hotel; one of them had a sign saying that this was THE place for cell phone use in the hotel (widely ignored, of course), while the other had a sign requesting no smoking and no cell phone use (text and logos; image pending). The kicker was in Kyoto, where we found a logo-ed sign of a silhouette of a head with what seemed to be a cigarette coming out of the head’s mouth; following the image out a bit more, it morphed into the antenna of a celll phone. The tagline: “Digital smoking”. Are they just ahead of us, or is this purely a Japanese thing? Hmm. Something to keep an eye out for, as we move along.

Speaking of which, the plane to HK is about to land, and my Palm is about out of juice. More later.