November, 2007

India / agra / delhi / earthquakes / taj mahal — No Comments
27
Nov 07

Earthquakes, Mahatma Gandhi and the Taj Mahal

I forgot to mention that bright and early on Monday morning we had a
little quake – a 4.3 for about 5 seconds. It was my first real
earthquake and we were about 20 miles from the epicenter. Of course my
friends in California would mock me for it being just. 4.3. But that's
not the point.

During our second day in Delhi, we sort of missed out on the Red Fort
because it was under renovation, but did get to see the Laxmi Narayan
Temple and the Jama Masjid. We also got to go on a cycle rickshaw ride
through the Chandri Chowk, which was quite entertaining because it was
about barrelling down crowded market streets. We also got to go to the
Raj Ghat where Gandhi was cremated. It's a simple and tranquil site
that reflects a great man who lived a simple life.

Yesterday took us on about a 4.5 hour drive from Delhi to Agra. It was
a rather interesting drive, and I don't think I will get over how cool
it is to see cows on the road. It has its moments, and our driver is
totally awesome about getting us around the traffic, with most of the
traffic rules merely being suggestions.

Once in Agra, we went first to Agra Fort, which was a pretty
impressive fortification. I'll write more later on how awesome it was,
but the main attraction is the Taj Mahal.

One word: fucking amazing.

Not only is the Taj Mahal one of the great monuments of the world, it
has secrets, optical illusions and color changes. I'd like to come
back some day and just watch it and admire it.

I'm starting to think that with the food here, I'm going to come back
10 lbs heavier. Seriously it's that go. And longtime readers will be
pleased to know that I made Tim and Holly come to Pizza Hut with me -
number #19!! The chicken tikka makhali was awesome.

Oh, and 46 postcards have gone out thus far. Between thumbing out
messages, writing postcards and snapping nearly 900 pictures in 3
days, my hands feel like crap. We're en route to Fatehpu Sikri now,
and then to Ranthambhore. I will try to blog again soon, but that
depends on more than a few things.

India / delhi — 2 Comments
25
Nov 07

Declaration of pulses

First of all, I apologize in advance for the suckitude of the next few
posts. Thumbing long texts out on my Blackberry doesn't make for the
most accurate of typing.

So, we've arrived in Delhi safe and sound and have spent the last 36
hours enjoying myself and taking in the sights, sounds and smells. No
wild monkey attacks just yet, so those who have me in the office death
pool will have to wait a bit longer. Sorry.

Arriving in Delhi wasn't as bad as I had expected. The airport reminds
me of every British-influenced airport I've been in on a few
continents and it's nothing special. While you're waiting in line at
immigration, there's a list of things you are not allowed to import
into India, like plants and animals – which makes total sense.
However, #15 on the list was "pulses" which pretty much keeps the plan
for a zombie army for India ready to go.

The moment you leave the airport, you get hit on by touts, which are
always an annoyance. I let some dude put our bags in the car and gave
him 80 rupees. I should have known better, but I didn't say anything
because I was jetlagged and somewhat hungry. Might as well get that
out of the way.

Our first day featured a leisurely tour of the Qutub Minar and
Humanyun's Tomb, both of which are considered to be in Old Delhi. We
also did spend 2 hours at the National Museum, which was cooler than I
was thinking. We also did the "slow down enough so we can hop out and
take pictures" thing at India Gate and Parliament House. I also
managed to down some killer Murg Patiyala and Kingfisher as my first
awesome native meal.

Today we are going to the Red Fort, Raj Ghat (where Mahatma Gandhi was
cremated) and a co-op, where I think we will be put into the time
honored tradition to be sold stuff. I guess we will find out. Tomorrow
is a drive to Agra with an afternoon tour of the Taj Mahal, which I am
super excited about.

Uncategorized — 2 Comments
23
Nov 07

Up late

I don’t know why, but generally the night before any major trip I’m wide awake despite my body wanting to get some sleep. It’s nervousness, anticipation and the fact that I’ve drank enough Red Bull to kill a horse – but I digress. The trip’s been a long time in planning, so it’s sad in a way because the details of planning a trip is sort of intoxicating.

Packing is done – 90% of what I bring takes about 10 minutes to throw into bags but the rest takes the most. My electronics are charged and ready to go, my bags are packed and I know what’s being checked versus carried on. I’ve already mentally rehearsed the airport routine, which you’d think that I’d have down pat now, but routines sometimes never make sense. I generally mentally script the first 24 hours of a trip, from leaving the bachelor pad to arriving in my foreign country and getting to the hotel and going from there. It helps me better prepare for all the sights and sounds, which is important when you sometimes have concentration issues because you’re busy absorbing all this ancillary stimuli.

But it’ll be ok – I’m excited and will try to blog when I can while on the road. If I can’t, then try to act surprised when I backdate some of my posts to act like I was live blogging.

India / postcards — 4 Comments
21
Nov 07

Postcards

Isn’t this the blog post where I’m supposed to ask which of you people want postcards from India?

India / WTF — 1 Comment
19
Nov 07

India

I go to India in 4 days. I suppose that at some point I should consider packing…

This weekend was pretty cool – I mailed out a dozen postcards from somewhere foreign, got a $500 voucher on AA (which is like a crack addict getting an extra vial). I also finished watching the first season of Dexter, who eerily reminds me of my friend Drew on about 830 levels. But hey, whatever. The older you get the more interesting your friends become. Perhaps they were always that interesting and with age, you’re finally able to appreciate their nuances. Or something.

A few things:
1) Tom Cruise is rapidly becoming Kevin Costner – ending up in shitty movie after shitty movie. I sort of like it.
2) “Anti-American” movies – like Rendition, Lions for Lambs, etc… I’m getting tired of them. Listen, I know that to a large population of people, everything bad in the world is somehow due to the Bush administration. Parking ticket? Blame Bush. Hangnail? Bush’s fault. I just don’t want to be bombarded by billboards for movies that are clearly aimed at giving a big “Fuck You” to the White House. But everything has it nowadays – even that pompous ass Alex Trebek making comments about how the Administration “doesn’t know the Persian Gulf.” Hell, I was watching Air Guitar Nation – a documentary about air guitar – and that was brought up. Shit. I’m not a Bush apologist by any means, but c’mon…
3) Wicking undershirts are awesome. Just sayin’. Hell, wicking everything is awesome. I wish I could wear business casual clothing that’s wicking.
4) David Attenborough narrated documentaries are like nerd porn.

Uncategorized — 2 Comments
15
Nov 07

Fuck Fuckity Fuck Fuck Fuck

During dinner tonight I managed to not only pop my top left rear bracket off of my braces, but swallow it as well. Fuck.

Uncategorized — 1 Comment
13
Nov 07

Facebook

I finally joined Facebook. Why, I have no idea.

Uncategorized — No Comments
11
Nov 07

16 hours on planes

I’ve been in a grumpy mood as of late, mainly because my braces were tightened and now I get to do the rubber band thing as well, which makes me feel more introverted (as if that were possible).

This weekend featured me traveling like a mad fool again – roughly a total of 16 hours on planes. I got a lot of reading for India done, so I’m feeling more happy about that, in addition to killing off 2+ hours of training videos for Adobe Lightroom so I know what the hell I’m doing. I also spent some time thinking about Cool It, Bjorn Lomborg’s new book and the concept of “do good vs feel good” when it comes to environmentalism. I like Lomborg, political views aside. I appreciate the arguments and a lot of what he says makes a lot of sense, but it’s hard to institute that level of global change from a purely altruistic standpoint.

The highlight of my weekend? Waking up 35 minutes before my flight at the hotel near the airport and still able to make my flight. Bigups to the AA EXP staff at O’Hare for letting me pull that one off. The low point was dealing with idiots at LAX, which seems to be an attitude that affects every single staffer there. I seriously think that between LAX and JFK, they are two of the worst large airports I’ve been to, which is sad considering that by and large, they are major gateways into the US. Nothing says “Welcome!” quite like jerks at the airport.

Camera geekin' / nick=dork — 1 Comment
7
Nov 07

Photography geekery and general nerddom

Since I’m going to India, I was thinking about not only boring everyone to death with my few thousand photos I’m inevitably going to take, but do the following:

1) Take my best photos (70-100) and export them as a gallery within Adobe Lightroom. This will come as a welcome relief to people who think, Nick, you take way too many photos and they’re 5 shots of the same fucking thing. Yes, I know that… I’m getting better, honest.

2) Repurpose my Garmin Edge 305 to make it a datalogger, so instead of doing cycling performance metrics, it’ll just be there for recording lat/long in Google Earth format (KML). Repeat this for each day. I honestly don’t remember where I go sometimes even if I write the names down. I’m expecting a wild tour guide to drag us a lot of places.

3) Take KML files and geotag photos so it has embedded coordinates within the EXIF metadata. I don’t know if I’ll do every photo, more like geotag photos according to major landmarks. This is still to be decided.

4) Better yet, compose a KMZ with a daily explanation of what it is that I saw, along with links to Wikipedia, YouTube or Stage 6 (I need somewhere good to host the HD content I’ll be taking) and some photos.

I just read what I wrote above, and wow, I do look like a nerd. I need to find a wife, but unfortunately we all know that story.

The Hawkins 7 — 2 Comments
5
Nov 07

The Hawkins 7: 7 anecdotes from this weekend

I got some flying and some reading in, and had some interesting anecdotes (they’re interesting to me) that I thought I’d share. I also made a brief stop in Las Vegas. I haven’t been to Las Vegas since Tim’s bachelor party, which featured Simanek and Zack being sexually assaulted by David Copperfield as part of a “magic trick.”

1) While waiting for my flight there, an overly loud woman was talking away on her cell phone. “I bought the new book by the guy who wrote ‘Tuesdays With Morrie’… yeah, the book’s name is ‘Mitch Albion’ or ‘Mitch Albon’… Yeah, I don’t know who wrote the book.”
2) LAS is a horribly depressing airport with no real amenities other than racist graffiti in the bathrooms. But they do have a Pizza Hut there, and at midnight, the food isn’t exactly the most freshest in the world.
3) I was asked to change seats in First by a couple who had mullets on the flight out from LAS. Awesome.
4) The Cinnabon in Terminal 3 at O’Hare is under construction, which irritated me. After I’ve been eating healthy and everything and thinking that a trip to the airport means I can indulge in Cinnabon, I was denied. Sonofabitch!
5) Carrying software for photography on my USB stick proved helpful this weekend. I showed a dude how to organize his stuff with Picasa, and all went well. Of course, I also talked him into buying probably $200 worth of accessories, but everyone who has a good camera will tell you that it’s worse than a boat. This time I’m glad I could make someone other than me spend money.
6) I spent 15 minutes trying to remember my password for some encrypted PDFs that I made that are copies of all vital travel documents. That’s right, I encrypted something designed to be used in an emergency with a password I couldn’t remember. I suck.
7) I got humbled when I saw a guy with a 6 million mile tag on his luggage on my flight. Damn, just damn.

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