rtw365

There's always Melted Cheese

2008-05-21T22:59:00.001-07:00

The record of what was to be a year of travel is now but memories, no longer updated and left for posterity. But, Melted Cheese goes on.

If only I'd fully counted all the pizza I'd tried in my travels. Besides finding local pizzas, I tried to go to Pizza Hut everywhere I could. I ate Pizza Hut in an air-conditioned second story (above KFC) across the street from the Sphinx in Egypt. I ate paneer tika masala Pizza Hut near the Taj Majal in India. I had Pizza Hut in Marakesch. Not to mention Lisbon and elsewhere in Europe. Ah, three continents of pizza! (Four if we count back home.)

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

Vipassana

2005-02-14T02:53:00.000-08:00

It's been REALLY strange being back in the US, I'm still getting over the culture shock. You wouldn't understand how even the simplest of things seem so utterly foreign now. I keep citing the example of what I did the day after I arrived -- staring at a floor for the better part of an hour. It was clean. I hadn't seen a clean wood floor for a long time, I think since at least September, and it just seems strange and interesting. Things like stop signs and driving on the right side of the road haven't gotten me in trouble, but I'm really starting to remember fully how annoying parking (and parking tickets) in SF is.

Anyway, In the morning I'm off to Olympia, Washington, where I'll visit my Mom and my oldest best friend Steve and his family, as well as doing a ten-day silent vipassana meditation retreat (so I won't be able to respond to email or calls the 16th through the 27th).

The current plan is to be back in the San Francisco bay area March 7 to find a job and a place to live. I know I can go back to work as a trainer easily (at least I can as soon as I get in a little bit better shape again), perhaps even go back in a fitness manager position. But I'm also interested in other management positions where I could leverage my broad entrepreneurial and technical backgrounds.

enneagram

2005-02-13T17:59:00.000-08:00

Main Type	Overall Self

Take Free Enneagram Personality Test

Enneagram Test Results

Type 1	Perfectionism	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	63%
Type 2	Helpfulness	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	71%
Type 3	Image Focus	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	73%
Type 4	Hypersensitivity	\|\|\|\|\|\|	21%
Type 5	Detachment	\|\|\|\|\|\|	30%
Type 6	Anxiety	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	32%
Type 7	Adventurousness	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	85%
Type 8	Aggressiveness	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	72%
Type 9	Calmness	\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|\|	56%

Your main type is
7
Your variant is sexual

Take Free Enneagram
Personality Test

"Emergency Medical Evacuation" 9,800 Miles

2005-01-28T03:30:00.000-08:00

I took the travel insurance offer to fly me back to SF rather than continuing on to Vietnam. It was a difficult decision since there was a lot to be said for either choice.

Today I flew 9,800 miles from Mumbai to London and Mumbai to SF. Left at 2:40am, arrived at 1:30pm, same day, 13.5 timezones, more than 20 hours in the air. It wasn't an option, but if I'd flown via Bangkok, I'd have completed going round the world and it would have been only 9,700 miles.

My travels don't really end quite yet, though. I don't have a job or home to return to, and I have a few more things I need to do before I settle down. I'm staying with friends, and I'm planning to be in SF for a couple of weeks. Then visiting friends and family in Washington state as well as doing a 10-day Vipassana meditation retreat there, probably back in SF mid-March.

Feeling the Energy and Peeing Gravel

2005-01-18T20:43:00.000-08:00

Three days ago I went running for the first time since my surgery. Just 15 minutes, but it felt nice to do that. Then yesterday, I ran for 20 minutes. Within an hour after that, I'd peed out three small pieces of my broken up kidney stone. Wow was that nice! So today I ran for a bit more than 30 minutes, but all I got for it was the reddest urine I've ever seen. Still, felt wonderful to be out for a run at dawn and then to Chi Kung class before the sun is over the trees.

One of the really wonderful things about being "stuck" in Pune is that I've found an amazing Tai Chi and Chi Kung instructor. He's been studying for the last 30 years all over the world, and it really shows. Though I've felt the movement of energy before, it was always vague compared to this. In his classes I've felt it intensely and clearly. He breaks things down to the smallest details, taking three weeks to go through 24 move Yang short style. He says that it has been the last 20 years here that have really made the energy work part of it come together for him, that it is a part that the Chinese don't teach verbally and really don't even have a vocabulary for. For me, I think it is the main thing that has ever been attractive to me about martial arts, but it is missing from most classes (and most people's practice -- not that there is anything wrong with it as a purely physical or physical and mental exercise).

Funny, I had hoped to do Tai Chi in Thailand with Master Chia after doing Vipasana and then making my way via Vietnam to Thailand. Seems like I was meant to do a different order in different places.

I've also made some wonderful friends. Hanging out a lot with four women visiting from Iran (two sisters, one of their best friens and their mother) and a couple of their Indian friends (one self-described hippy and the other who has a construction business). It's been eye-opening to learn about life and politics in Tehran (I was shocked at how different they are from Arab countries I've visited, and it took a while just to get over the idea of four women from Iran traveling on their own). It's been interesting to see how middle to upper-class Indians live (with maids, cooks, drivers and etc.). Really, there isn't much middle class here, it seems, you're either really poor or you've got a strange mix of amazing luxuries combined with the fact that no amount of money will buy you good service, clean air, quiet, or other things that are foreign to Indian cities.

Now about that Tehran connection, I wonder if I'll have problems with Homeland Security when they read that I've befriended nationals of our next enemy...

Surgery in India

2005-01-09T21:07:00.000-08:00

On January 4th, I got on an overnight bus from Goa to Pune from where I was going to catch another two busses to get me to a 10-day vipassana meditation retreat in Igatpuri. I made it to Pune early morning on the 5th, got on the next bus, and then had it take me to the hospital. I was having severe pain in my low back and side, severe enough to be accompanied by dry heaves (I hadn't eaten all night, so I couldn't actually vomit). I had the bus get me to a hospital in Pune where I found that the problem was two kidney stones, one which was 9mm and required surgery to break it up.

So I got to enjoy the adventure of four days in an Indian hospital. It wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been since Pune is a major city with one of India's most prestigious universities. I got a great surgeon who's performed this exact surgery over a thousand times, and the hospital, while not what I would consider up to US standards, was much better than I might have expected. Nice people. They all were amazed that I was alone though and kept asking where my friends and family were. If an Indian goes to the hospital, it seems like not just their friends and family but their entire village accompanies them! OK, perhaps that's a minor exageration, but there looked like a heck of a lot more visitors than patients.

I got to stay awake for the surgery and he showed me on the monitor what he was doing, though there came a point where I was uncomfortable enough that they sedated me and I missed out on some of it -- I'll have to wait until I get back to the US and watch the video tape he gave me.

The first procedure, including four days in the hospital and everything else, came out to about 35,000 Rupees or $750. I think that's about the room charge for one night in a hospital back in San Francisco!

I go back to the hospital again on the 22nd to have a stent removed, and will probably stay in the hospital for two days at that time.

Tsunami

2004-12-28T02:32:00.000-08:00

I'm fine. I'm on the west coast of India, the beaches of Goa to be exact. We were spared the worst of it, so only a few huts washed away at some beaches and one or two in this state were partially evacuated. Alas, a few people were killed, I think mostly when they went out to collect shells while the "tide" was so low. I still go swimming every morning, but my beach looks different now. The 24/7 outdoor Goa dance parties go on almost without notice that we're so near to such a huge disaster.

I'm trying to get information about going to Tamil Nadu or Sri Lanka to volunteer for a few months -- I've got skills and experience that should be valuable, not to mention a broad back and strong shoulers. I was thinking I might go to Sri Lanka next anyway, at least when it still seemed like a viable tourist option. This is just a more meaningful option. I wrote to Oxfam and will consider working for other groups, too, if anyone has any suggestions...

--Update--

Tons of email to aid agencies later, I found that they really have some good reasons for prefering money to bodies, even skilled bodies. They need very specific skills for managing distaster relief, basically requiring a trained professional with this specialty. For everything else, it is better to hire locals -- they need the work, the economy needs the cash, and being active gives people a way to work through the grief and loss. So I have lots of "no thanks" and even an official rejection letter from the UN. One agency expressed interest in taking advantage of my tech skills since their IT is swamped, but my own personal minor disaster (see my post about Surgery In India) has me thinking that volunteering isn't the way to go for me right now.

Also, a friend went to Pondicherry and has been doing some short term volunteering with Auroville, so that's a possibility, but last I heard it was a few hours here and a few hours there in really short projects. He even had experience in the Marines doing disaster relief and didn't seem to have any better luck finding someone to work with.

Jaipur 2

2004-12-09T19:30:00.000-08:00

Pushkar Camel Fair

2004-11-29T23:35:00.000-08:00

This is still a placeholder, sorry no pictures of the camels...

A Letter RE:Burning Man: More Whiskey and Rockets!

2004-11-20T00:25:00.000-08:00

If you don't know about the petition and the current controversy around Burning Man now, a good article is at The Bay Guardian. As they explain there, it has escalated from a petition to increase the funding and beauracracy for art at Burning Man to creating a fully redundant funds collection and dispersal system. All of which just sidesteps the fact that for the majority of Burning Man participants, art is just a sideshow. In fact, Burning Man is so many things to so many people that any one thing is a sideshow to most of them, and each attempt to make Burning Man more about one thing or another, or to create more limits is something which destroys what is most valuable to most participants.

Here's an updated version of a letter I emailed to Jim and Larry and LadyBee after the third or fourth time someone forwarded me the petition. It's amazing how bad my writing gets without spellcheck. I spent way too much time on this, but it matters to me, and hopefully I can have more impact on this issue than I did in spending days to eventually cast my Emergency Federal Write in Absentee Ballot from Cairo. Plus, the view of the mountains is beautiful in this internet cafe whose profits go to educating Tibetan refugees.
---

Namaste from India!

I was tempted to sign on to the new Burning Man petition going around. That is, until I realized it was only about art funding and remembered that I don't give a damn about art funding at BM. I strongly support spending government money on art rather than on missles, but BM is a different story -- there I'd rather fund missles than art!

Wish I had more time and ability to contribute to the conversation, but I'm circumnavigating the world right now. I just spent ten days in a Tibetan Buddhist retreat, having spent the last month in the village of the Dalai Lama.

By the way, I really missed all you guys this year while you were burning -- I was trekking across the saharan dunes of Morocco on a camel, and surviving an overnight sandstorm that rearranged the landscape and covered everything inside the tent. So at least I was in "a" desert even though it wasn't "the" desert. The plaza J'maa F'nal in Marrakech feels something like Burning Man every night (you'll know what I mean if you've been, if not, go). Yeah, they exchange money, but Dirhams are really play-money anyway.

You know, maybe it's just not possible in the USA to have a festival where something dangerous might occur or someone might be offended. Despite the warnings on our tickets, BM makes itself safer and less offensive each year with the implementation of more regulations and requirements.

It's more dangerous for me to ride a bus in India for a couple of hours than it is to spend a week at BM. Hell, it's more dangerous to take a drink of water here than to spend a week at BM.

I certainly see more men here holding their own penises in the streets than I do at Burning Man, not to mention urinating everywhere.

Every night and every morning, there are fires on the streets, in the train stations and everywhere else. All the trash is burned whereever it sits or wherever anyone wants to warm their hands.

Maybe the lesson of BM is exactly that as the group of participants grow, so does the regulation and governance until all the original ideals dissapear and we reflect the larger society we sit within. If that's so, I say we should just hold one last event, rip down the fence, kick out the cops, invite everyone else in and drop all the rules, then go as long as we can before we all go home. But just in case that isn't a necessity...

I like the idea of trying to restore some of the wonder we've lost at Burning Man (I think everyone will agree that is happening to some degree), and to elminate some of the feeling that we're governed by a dictatorship which is sometimes an impossible pain in the ass (I think everyone will agree that feeling exists, whether or not it is an accurate refexion of dealing with the BMorg).

And no, regardless of how bad their opinion of the Borg may be, no one actually thinks that Chicken is less of a pain in the ass than the Borg, just a different pain in the ass.

Unfortunately, I think that focusing on Art is really distracting from the real issue, and may even take us in the wrong direction. It's the wrong discussion because it is only a small part of the bigger issue of increasing rules and beaucracy spoiling free expression.

Similarly, focussing on democracy may be going exactly the wrong way.

Don't get me wrong, I love the art. I spent a couple of afternoons helping you Jim (one of the petition authors) with Temporal Decomposition my first year at Burning Man (when I traveled
out from Philadelphia in 1997), and I've spent days just randomly pitching in to work hard in the heat of the day helping strangers with their art projects every year since, getting to know something about them and their projects, and to have some pride in whatever small contributions I can make outside the constraints of registering as a volunteer or signing on to a project. And I know that the grants have encouraged some artists and groups to reach
amazing potential they might not have been able to otherwise, with some really amazing examples. Hell, last year I got a tattoo of the art being put together with a grant by people I camped with.

The more we fund that art, however, the further we get from the ideas of self-expression, of having every person who walks in the gate find their own inner artist and toward reflecting the values of the outside world where you're only an artist if you can get a
gallery show. Outsiders don't want to be in competition with insiders, they want their own show.

Heck, if any single art project should have been funded, perhaps it really was Jim Mason's 2004 proposal that was rejected as "unsafe." Because then when governement agencies (or whoever) attempts to impose more restrictions and censorship on the event, we are actually in a position to negotiate. We can tell them to fuck off and bring on the army tanks if they like -- we've got Jim's secret project to fight back. Shock and Awe ain't nothin' baby!

But, but... safety is important, right? For Christ's sake, you should see how they celebrate religious holidays in India -- they don't even HAVE little panzy-ass firecrackers, the fireworks stands on the streets sell "bombs" that would blow off your arm. All the little kids have 'em for when they aren't shooting rockets at each other. For days it sounds like I remember BM sounding many years ago. For that matter, I've seen 'em burn a 90 foot high effigy
filled with fireworks, too. Note that they have a Muslim family build that effigy, no Homeland Security here!

I treked up a mountain to about 10,000 feet, and there was a little tent of a chai stand (go figure, some guy has to haul cases of full bottles of coke up and empty bottles down for me). I saw that the
guy had rockets in the corner for Diwalai. When I commented on this, he said in his Indian sing-song "yes, and I be having whiskey, too, tonight is a great festival." Whatever happened to whiskey and rockets at Burning Man? Almost ten years of increasing compromises for lawyers, law enforcement, liability, safety, "improvements" and government regulations, that's what.

Now you have to get a permit to start a fire (and might go to jail for burning a replica of the original Man from Baker Beach), and be a licensed pyrotechnician with a permit for the place and time to light a piss-ant little firecracker. Hell, we have a fire department in a desert where there's nothing to burn but the stuff we want gone at the end of the week anyway.

Being in India makes me think about the seemingly innocuous growth of rules for art cars. I mean, hey, if someone is seriously hurt or killed, we should fix the problem right? Well, here they sure as hell don't. For example, in the whole damn country, they don't make the busses come to a complete stop to pick up or drop off passengers. Sure, loads of people have been hurt doing it. But you don't have to take the bus if you don't want to.

Well, back to our art scene. With the evolution of grants and the increasing number of funded projects we're turning the Playa into a gallery and the BMorg into a patron of the arts, and the participants into spectators.

What we need is not a propogation of more and more projects of a larger scale, where the only way to "compete" is to be part of an enormous project with a year's planning, but a return to a time when people who never considered themselves artists could express themselves with more emphasis on creativity than on planning and managing and politicing.

Of course the paperwork requirements to show that you have a clean up plan, and that your engineering is safe, and all of that other stuff seem really reasonable to the BMorg -- they've spent years evolving all these issues with lawyers and insurance companies and government agencies, and each step seemed reasonable and not a barrier to artists. But taken together, it all adds up to a barrier to the participant who wants to try taking the risk, for the first time in his or her life, of calling him or herself an artist.

Once upon a time, there was no art curation, there was no paperwork, if you wanted to be creative, you just put your piece out for others to admire or play on or whatever, and that was that. It was the whole point of Playa art -- that anyone could (and many did). If your art kinda sucked, that was OK. There
were really no barriers to overcome, and no risk to take in putting something out.

But hey, if you are giving grants to Art, then why not also to Theme Camps? Theme Camps contribute at least as much, if not more, fantastic experiences for the participants. As much as I like the art, I'd happily do a Burning Man which had only the Theme Camps and none of the art. But perhaps Theme Camps don't make quite the PR impression for the media reports and government permits that art does. Regardless, the money and the months of hard work to create some of those camps can far exceed any reasonable expense for most of the art.

For both the Art and the Theme Camps, the small, very genuine things that people do from their own pockets (and hearts) tend to create the most wonderful experiences. They're far more meaningful (if sometimes less family-friendly) than the Disney-Land/Las Vegas that the Esplanade is becoming.

Reality is, we are getting bigger each year. With the growing city and increased congestion on our roads, why hasn't Burning Man yet funded public transportation? Maybe there should be grants for Mutant Buses, or better yet, a Burning Man Subway (complete with muggings and corridors that smell of urine -- that'd even reduce the load on the porta-poties).

OK, we all agree that the funding thing is getting out of hand, but improved governance makes sense, right? I love the ideals of democracy. I've long thought that it was crazy that the governance of an event with the ideals and promise that BM participants hold is both legally and practically a corporate dictatorship. Why can't we be governened by the kind of ideals we come together with? Perhaps having right governance just encourages more governance, and the problem is that we already have far too much. What we really need a minimal benevolent dictatorship who's sole purpose is to get themselves and everyone else out of our way.

Here's another example of well-meaning improvements by the BMorg causing as many problems as they attempt to address (maybe you'd disagree with the particulars of this example, but the point is that rules are being propogated by dictatorship and not everyone agrees with them): I used to have great fun at Burning Man playing ridiculous bartering games (both giving and receiving). The fun was in the bartering, not the objects of exchange (though those were
usually silly and fun too). Heck, half the time when you asked for something, the thing you'd be required to do for it would give you even more than what you asked for (which you were also getting!). And then, Shoplifting Camp was the coolest. But the Org identified a problem of stupid participants not realizing that bartering was just a game, so it was effectively becoming barter commerce.
Rather than finding more ways to educate the ignorant and increase quality of new participants, the Org said "now we're a gift economy." Now my bartering fun is gone. This is like changing the Souks and bazzars around the world to fixed-price rather than teaching the tourists to smile and joke and to get more by far out of a half-hour drinking tea and bartering than the worth of the money or object they will exchange in the end. And what good is shoplifting camp where everything is free?

The list could easily go on, though each participant might have a different list. Which is yet another reason less is more.

So I half-jokingly wrote my own petition to respond to URL going around, and I want to share it with you... I hope that this will become a real competing petition with its own URL and that it will get a lot more votes than the one from the artists, so pass the word (and LadyBee was even kind enough to say it gave her a good laugh and to pass it to the rest of the BM staff):

I am in India, so I'll bring the tea for the party...

We, the people, in order to form a more perfect Burning Man, say fuck the artists and their whiny-ass demands for more funding from BMorg. And while we're at it, fuck the paid members of BMorg, too. And most of all, fuck the continual addition of more services and rules. It was a better party when it was mostly volunteer and all about the sex and the explosions and all the other recently-outlawed shit anyway.

We are tired of taxation without representation, and ever increasing taxation at that. We advocate spending funds only on the minimum necessities to make the event happen, i.e., lobbying for the least government-imposed constraints possible and then meeting those constraints. All other expenditures and rule propogation are to cease.

We are also tired of people who make BM their life telling the rest of us how it should be. 300 people out of then tens of thousands who've participated showed up at the last Town Meeting. Why? Not because no one cares, but because they know that the firmly entrenched politics and bureaucracy and personalities are just about impossible to deal with, so we try to ignore all that shit and just go to the event and hope that we can ignore most of the new rules.

It's time for Burning Man to go from being a fucking bureaucratic welfare state back to being a survival event and an experiment in radical self-expression. The risks and discomfort we once faced there are exactly what made it the most significant and life-changing thing most participants experienced.

We want our Temporary Autonomous Zone back -- we want it to once again BE both temporary and autonomous.

Hopefully change will come before it suffocates under the weight of everything built to make it more comfortable, less offensive and less risky.

Oh, and no more God-damn theme camp fund-raisers either. If you want to raise money for something, give it to the lepers and children I see begging on the street everywhere. Bring to the Playa what you can afford to pay for from the salary you earn at your real job. Just like with the art, it's OK if you can't afford to bring much, it's OK if you suck, we love you anyway!

There, that'll teach you to send me off to a Tibetan Buddhist retreat where I can't talk and have to meditate on relieving the suffering of all beings starting at 6am every day.

Love,
Dale

Jaipur 1

2004-10-23T23:15:00.000-07:00

I landed in Delhi at 9am. By 5pm, I was in Jaipur, taking a shower and dressing
for the wedding that was to start at 5:30. I joined the groom's family to ready
him and to dance in the procession to the bride. The groom is blessed by a
priest and put into all kinds of crazy garb by his family, then he rides a
horse while a band plays and we dance in front of him. Lots of fireworks, etc.
Then everyone eats and most go home, because it isn't until after midnight that
they start four or five hours of more ritual!

The next night, my second in India, I had the priviledge of joining Hindus in
their celebration of Dussehra, a celebration of Rama's victory over the demon
king Ravana, a triumph of good over evil. It involved sitting through an
hours-long play in Hinidi, and the burning of a huge effigy filled with
fireworks. I guess that's my Burning Man this year. I seemed to be the only
white in the crowd, and I was very welcome. Everyone wanted to talk to me, to
say hi, to shake my hand, to ask if I was comfortable, how I was feeling, or to
point and smile and say "My God!"

Fun. Now I'm off to the next city...

Morocco and Egypt - A Few Pics

2004-10-23T21:31:00.000-07:00

Most of the pics I took in Morocco and Egypt I mailed off on a CD before I got to a computer good enough to put them on the web, but I did grab off a few quickly from one of the CDs (so other good ones will have to wait until much later).

In Morocco, here is our Berber guide who led us by camel through the Saharan dunes, and my footprints behind me as I walked the dunes at sunrise, as well as me and some camels (that photo is taken by one of the Berbers who had brought his camels and goats to a well in the middle of NOWHERE).

In Egypt, here are some pictures inside of a pharoh's tomb and one of the tombs of the nobles. Don't tell anyone I took them -- the gaurdian who let me take them required much backsheesh and had to keep watch to make sure our police guide didn't notice. Apparently they've banned all photography since they didn't seem to be able to keep dumb tourists from using flash (which damages the paintings) even when educating them while selling them a photography permit.

Here's a scene from a temple wall. No, it's not really Beavis and Butthead Doing Egypt.

I don't know about crocs in the Nile, but there are still Crocs in the hotel:

The Quietest Large City

2004-09-26T19:20:00.000-07:00

I don't know if it is all the bicycles, or the large spaces of open air created by the canals, or just the inclination of the Dutch, but Amsterdam is by far the quietest large city I've ever been in. Loud tourists really stick out. I guess I don't as much, because people keep coming up to me and asking me questions in Dutch. Anyway, it is such a pleasant change from all the noise and crazy driving in so many of the other places I've been.

There are so many bicycles here... it seems that everyone has one. And with bike paths going both ways on so many of the major streets and flat terrain interupted only by the slight elevation of canal bridges, its very pleasant to bike here.

Oh yeah, one last thing. Philosopher's Stones are highly recommended.

Barcelona

2004-09-26T09:57:00.000-07:00

Barcelona is technically in Spain, but is really in a different place altogether. They even speak a different langauge (Catalan is taught first in schools there, then Spanish). It is a wonderful city with lots of art and creativity and tolerance for eccentricity.

The architecht Gaudi is an amazing product of this, and seems to have smoked the same stuff as Bosch. His buildings give me the same feeling that Bosch's paintings do. Even though it won't be completed for another 20+ years, even while it is being built his La Sagrada Familia alone is worth flying to Barcelona for. Not only is the artistry differnt, the very engineering of this true new Wonder of the World is unique. The guidebooks and photos simply don't do it justice -- you just have to be there to appreciate it. Completely unlike anything else, it will blow you away.

Speaking of different, Picasso spent his formative years in Barcelona, and the Picasso museum shows his work from childhood through his blue period. It's impressively informative to see the progression he makes to the leap for that huge first in art history -- painting what he felt rather than what he saw. I only wish they had a fuller collection after his blue period since I could understand so much there but didn't get the leap to cubism in the same way.

Milo and Dali are both from Barcelona or nearby and seem as much a part of what Barcelona is rather than just something that happened there.

Among the other things to do in the city, I found a designer that I really liked and picked up some fairly inexpensive shirts to replace some of my traveling wardrobe.

Going for Japanese food one night in Barcelona we ran into Calista Flockhart and Harrison Ford -- I guess the restaurant I picked was a bit too trendy.

Morocco

2004-09-22T09:50:00.000-07:00

Morocco was wonderful, and we ended up staying longer and cutting short another part of our itinerary. An amazing country with amazing peoples, and it seems so far away in place and time, even after Lisbon.

We watched the sun set from the ferry to Tangier and watched it rise from the train to Marrakech. Both magical moments.

We spent several days in a Riad in Marrakech, shopping and haggling in the Souks, taking in the crazy experience of the square Jmaa el Fna. Snake charmers, Arab story tellers, musicians and dancers, portable food setups complete with generators and lights over folding tables. People speaking several languages (French, Berber, Arabic, and tourists on top of that) and clothing that seems as much like costumes as anything else. At night with all the smoke and noise and chaos it feels very much like a foriegn language version of Burn Night.

We also enjoyed a visit through the south. It was relatively inexpensive to hire a car and driver, and Omar (our driver) was quite interesting and intelligent making him a valuable resource on the trip. We made it all the way to the Saharan dunes past Merzzougah and a short camel trek with a Berber guide. Well, the sandstorm that woke us in the middle of the night until we figured to sleep with the sheets over our heads (sand blows right through Berber camel hair tents). Taxi rides through Marrakech are crazier than any sandstorm.

So at least I didn't completely miss the desert during Burning Man this year. :-)

I've got some wonderful pictures from Morroco, but don't know when I might be able to upload them -- it's not easy to do so from most internet cafes.

Anyway, after the south we returned to Marrakech for one night in the new city, then took an overnight train, ferry and overnight bus to Barcelona. Two nights in a row of "sleeping" on ground transportation is a bit much, especially after so much driving through the south.

The Marrakech Express

2004-09-03T04:50:00.000-07:00

After ten days in Lisbon, we're finally heading out, and we've decided to drop Berlin to make time for Morocco.

The plan is to drive ten hours and drop off our hired car in Algercerias, take a ferry from there to Tangier, the overnight train to Cassablanca and on to Marrakech where we'll spend a few days or a week. We may spend all of our time in Marrakech or do some kind of trip into the Atlas and Sahara.

After Marrakech, we're on trains and ferry to Barcelona where we spend a week before flying to Amsterdam for a bit more than a week, and then to Cairo at the end of September).

Lisbon

2004-08-30T06:17:00.000-07:00

On the sidewalk in San Francisco just before I left, a friend made a quick introduction, and I took Isabel's phone number. She was visiting from Lisbon, and would be back at the same time I was there. She ended up spending a couple of days with Kathryn and I and was fantastic company and a great guide. We are glad to have a new friend in Portugal!

The following are five photos I took in the Alfama, near Elinor's house, and they're quite typical of the entire neighborhood:

I managed to take very few photos of any of the tourist sights, but this tiled house must be on the list:

Some of Lisbon's best nightlife is in the Bara Alta:

Kathryn and Elinor at the dinner table:

Elinor at one of the hip bars:

Elinor's Door

2004-08-22T05:55:00.000-07:00

As we arrived in Lisbon by hired car, a friendly taxi driver showed us how to get to the Alfama district. He had us follow him!

The Alfama is the most beautiful district of Lisbon, a working class neighboorhood where families have had the same apartments for generations. People live on the stone walkways and roads, as well as on their balconies. There are always people just hanging around on the street talking, kids playing, dogs and cats to be petted. Their is always laundry hanging in front of the balconies. It all feels very little changed from a hundred years ago, or 500 years ago. Yes, there are cars and electricity and the like, but none of it seems to really have changed the look of the buildings or the way that people live their lives.

Anyway, once we met Elinor who showed us a place to park, we had to carry our lugguge up 170 stairs from the riverside street to the plaza in front of her house. Once in her front door, it was another 53 very steep and narrow marble stairs to her top-floor apartment. The streets near her house are closed to cars which don't have a special permit, and the little barriers in the road sink away for those cars and then pop back up to enforce the policy.

At the elevator in Lisbon, we found a postcard which shows Elinor's house, and in this photo similar to that postcard, Kathryn is standing in front of Elinor's door.

Here's the plaza in front of Elinor's door at night:

Elinor's apartment is truly amazing. It has fantastic views out each window, and each is different. It's huge by the standards of the European hotels we'd stayed in, and really is large even by comparison to San Francisco apartments. Here is a picture from her living room window...

Elinor was called to work at 1am on Saturday morning as we returned from dinner and drinks, just hours before her flight to San Francisco for a three week holiday. I've been with her before when she was called away to report on an Internet worm and had to go in to the local office to file a story. From Lisbon, she was reporting on something equally interesting.

Salamanca

2004-08-21T06:11:00.000-07:00

En route to Portugal, we decided (again, following Steves' advice) to stay a night in Salamanca.

Though filled with tourists, it felt like a uniquely Spanish old town. With a university established in 1200 and a "new" cathederal built in the 1600's as an addition to the old one, Salamanca certainly has history.

The Plaza Mayor, or central plaza is called by some the living room of the Salamancans. They live out their lives here, and just having a drink on the Plaza and people watching is quite entertaining.

The new cathederal has some pretty amazing "easter bunnies" in it's carvings, including a demon eating ice cream and an astronaut!

The Garden of Earthly Delights

2004-08-20T06:30:00.000-07:00

We've found Rick Steves' Guide to Spain and Portugal to be excellent at recommending the best highlights to hit and a fantastic help in deciding between destinations. (Steves' has a show on PBS and several other guides for Europe.) In Madrid, there are two key things he recommends: the Prado Museum and the Palace Real. I picked the Prado to do something "touristy" in Madrid before we left.

I had no idea what a treat I was in for. Though there are many other things in this museum that are quite worth seeing, there is one in particular that I was surprised and thrilled to see, that I would have gone quite a ways out of my way to see...

Prado museum's page on The Garden of Earthly Delights

Can you give us some picks?

2004-08-19T22:10:00.000-07:00

After all the craziness that came with changing everything in my life on very short notice to travel the world for a year, there was an enormous amount to do, and things that were left undone.

When I arrived in Madrid, I expected to spend a little time unwinding, I guess having a vacation before I started traveling. I knew, however, that I needed to get one of the final shots in my series of vacinations and that it was actually due the day I left San Francisco, so we needed to find a clinic to provide it. (Kathryn actually needed another shot for hers as well.)

I thought this would be the simplest thing in the world. I had no idea that it might take three days and provide adventures all over the city.

Some highlights:

-The hotel staff directed us to a hospital where the front desk guy was reading a Spanish Playstation magazine. He spoke no English. (Actually, no one in Spain seems to speak English. We found out later that all their movies are dubbed, whereas Portugal's are subtitled, so it is much easier to find someone in Portugal who speaks English.) Anyway, he eventually pointed to Kathryn and I, and waved his hand over his belly, pantomiming "pregnant." We shook our heads, then looked around more closely and realized that we were in a maternity hospital.
-We found another hospital where we eventually conveyed what we needed. A kind nurse (or some kind of employee), walked us to another wing of the hospital and spoke with someone there to hand us off. The new person took us to admissions where they wouldn't talk to us but gave us the address of a clinic. That clinic told us we were at the wrong place, and we gave up on that route.
-On Thursday, our friend John (go to Malaga, Spain, to the city square, and ask for John the Australian -- they'll find him for you) served as an interpretter while we went to other clinics. One told us that there was no doctor until Monday. We asked if we might get a referal to another doctor and were told that there were no other doctors who could do it before Monday. In all of Madrid. A city of 4 million people.
-After the fifth or sixth Farmacia that we went to, finally a pharmacist gave us the vaccines we needed. Now we just needed needles and syringes and we'd be set. I asked John to see if the pharmacist would give those to us, and he said there was no way, but maybe he could go find a needle exchange and ask if they could give us some picks.
-We went to other clinics and asked elsewhere, and couldn't find anyone to just give us the damn shots now that we had the vaccines with us. Someone finally had the sense to look in the packages we'd been given only to find that they included miniature syringes and needles along with the vaccine.

So we went back to the hotel room and gave each other injections.

The Whirlwind

2004-08-14T07:24:00.000-07:00

It all started at the door to a private party, and I've been caught in a whirlwind a bit more than a month now.

It seems that the whirlwind is meant to take me away from San Francisco in less than 48 hours, and to carry me around the world in a 35,000 mile circle on a year long trip...