Last night out

The guys at the office dragged me out for a final happy hour / night on the town yesterday. It was a great way to cap off the year with some fun times all around. We went to this bar called Hint - nothing special, a typical European-looking bar. We were goofing around a lot and telling stories.

One of our guys, Gordon, went over to chat up a girl at a table in the corner. To help him out, I went over to talk to the younger girl (who turned out to be a sister). It turns out that Gordon's girl is a Bollywood actress! Nicolette Bird (see pics). So I finally met someone in Bollywood - I'm surprised that it took so long, but I can finally check it off my list.

I'm all packed up. Some things I wanted to keep had to go anyway (space limits), and I'm over the weight limits - bring on those extra baggage fees! But I guess I'm almost through here. It feels like I was living in the US just a minute ago, and that this year has passed so quickly. The move is going to be a huge shock... it just hasn't hit me yet.

The Taj Mahal

A few weeks ago I was scheduled for another business trip to Delhi. And I thought to myself, "Self, you really need to get yourself down to Agra. Who knows when you'll be in Delhi again?" This was probably my 10th or 15th trip to Delhi. Interestingly, it would be my last! So I was fortunate swing by Agra when I did.

What a journey. It's almost 5 hours each way by car over bad roads (frequent stopping for cows / kids / etc.). That's one of the interesting things about India; all of its sights are nearly inaccessible. I ended up missing my flight back to Bangalore that night. But on the bright side, it allowed me to catch up on some R&R in a hot bath at a 5-star hotel in Delhi.

The Taj is beautiful, sure. But I think the mystique from the story behind it. At a time when most Indian kings took 100 wives, the king who built the Taj took only one. And when she died, he built this memorial to her, and never looked at another woman. The building is completely symmetrical in every aspect, and the interior has tons of semi-precious jewels around the queen's grave. They're all set into the marble to form flowers and vines, it looks wonderful.

Because of its symmetry, the Taj photographs perfectly from every angle. Every picture I took came out like a postcard. It was really hard to pick which ones to post here.

The Wadi Rum desert

I drove off into the desert with my hotel's check-in guy and his buddy. It was a little intimidating to drive off into the middle of nowhere in the Middle East with two strangers. But hey, it paid off. The desert is marked by its complete absence of... well, everything. Nothing living, no movement, no sound, no water. And it's dry. I think there are times in Atlanta that are more hot because of the high humidity, but here you also have to be careful to drink a lot of water.

Brief note on the absence of posts / communication from my side! The internet at my apartment has broken. Since it would take more than a month to get the phone company to fix something, and I had a month left (now a couple weeks), I've had to do without internet. Welcome to India. I will try to squeeze a few posts in before leaving via posts from work.

Book USA

I have a terrible memory. You would think this would hamstring me in life, but I have a work-around. I make myself little post-it notes about everything. If I ever forget your birthday / loan / whatever, it means that a post-it note either got thrown away too early, or went through the wash, or one of a million other things.

This evening's post-it says, "Book USA." Wild! I left the US in very early October (my initial "check things out" trip, which you may also remember, was in mid September). I am probably about six weeks from heading back to America.

Am I looking forward to it? Yes. Am I sad about leaving? I can't even begin think about that right now. All I can think about are the things I want to accomplish in my professional life before I go. There are so many things on the verge of happening, and I'm anxious to just tip them a little more and make them become a reality. I will be really disappointed if this year ends up like this: "India ALMOST achieved XYZ great thing, but after Josh left, it just kind of lost momentum."

Petra, Jordan - the Treasury

You're walking through the Siq, and you can only see maybe 20 feet in front of you because of all the twists and turns. You come around a corner, and bam! Even if you know the treasury is coming up, this view will stop you in your tracks. My first reaction was, "how did it sneak up on me?" It appears so suddenly. Duly note: this picture is almost identical to the first scene of Petra in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

Breathtaking. I wish I had a person in this picture so it would capture the scale. This thing is enormous; it's on a much larger scale than the Parthenon, for example. To think that this was completely forgotten by the outside world until the 1800's! Very similar to how it's portrayed in the Indiana Jones movie, the location was kept a secret and protected by the Bedouin nomads.

This is just the beginning of Petra, however. Petra goes on for 4-5 miles of caves and the like. But most tourists - on packaged bus tours - only see the the Treasury and go no further. They miss a lot! I hired a donkey guide and we set off into the city.

Petra, Jordan - the Siq

The Siq is a mile-long canyon that leads to Petra. It fills with water during flash floods in the rainy season, and so it has been slowly worn away over time into very interesting shapes. At some places it is only wide enough for a couple people to pass through. This provides a natural defense for the city (it would be difficult to march an army through).

Along the sides of the Siq you can see grooves cut into the wall, and in some places, the remainder of terracotta pipes. How old are these pipes? Petra was founded in 300 BC and largely abandoned around 400 AD. So they're surprisingly old to just be sitting around! But that's everything in Petra - it's an unprotected site. Something else you should notice in my pictures - where are all the people, crowding around to see stuff? They aren't there. In the morning when I was walking through Petra, it was me, four backpackers, and the Bedouins who live there.

The pipes hint to a key part of Petra's history. Back in the BC's, the Bedouin nomads realized that they could build cisterns to catch rainwater, and then funnel those cisterns into a common, enormous cistern through the pipes. This centralized water in the desert allowed civilization to flourish, but also became a marketable commodity. As trade caravans passed through the desert, they would stop to buy some water for the journey, and to trade their goods. And thus Petra became a center for business and trade routes.

Funny moment

Roopa was just cooking up lunch for me, and it was spicy. The chilli kind of gets into the air when she's cooking up something hot. She and I were sneezing simultaneously - her in the kitchen and me in my bedroom, but the timing was almost exact, every time. When she walked into my room with the food, she was giggling and I was chuckling (interrupted by coughs / sneezes). I said, "I'm guessing it's spicy?" And she said, "Sir, you like spicy!" Good times.

After-office Wii night

After work, a bunch of us headed over to Suresh's house to play his new Wii. Most of the Bangalore management had never played video games, let alone a Wii. Hilarity ensued. These guys would take full-body swings. But the best moments, quite possibly, came from Wii boxing.

They blew up Bangalore!

In case you haven't heard, there were seven small explosions in Bangalore today. Two people are dead, and 20 are injured, though these numbers are certainly 100% falsified (the government will keep the real, higher number out of the papers, to avoid scaring the MNC presence). I am safe and completely unharmed. But standing on my porch this evening, I was subject to a fascinating cacophony of sounds - the wail of fire trucks clashing against the Muslim call to prayer from mosques across the city. Although this is a Hindu city, it has a large Muslim population.

Terrorism has certainly worked its magic here. The majority of the day at work was spent watching the news roll in. The first three timed bombs went off just before 2pm, and afterwards, everyone was focused with rapt attention. The fourth and fifth bombs went off almost simultaneously. The sixth and seventh bombs went off some hours later, leaving everyone to imagine - is this the end, or just the beginning? When will the bombs end? Everyone is afraid - not terrified, given that only 22 people were directly hurt, but it's on everyone's mind. The phone lines were jammed all day, so some people are just checking in their families around now. And that's the point of terrorism really - not to hurt everyone, but to affect a large population. Check that box - even I've canceled my evening plans and will camp out at home. Is that a rational response? Are they really likely to bomb a bar? The probability is infinitely small, yet somehow large enough for me to have zero interest in venturing out.

I feel pretty safe in Bangalore and always have, but bombings are scary. You can't "out think" an explosion like you could a potential mugger, and it's hard to anticipate where the next bomb might be planted. Two of the bombs were within a couple miles of my office. One of them went off near where we had a department team lunch yesterday. This will certainly be on my mind for a while. In any case, I don't want anyone to worry about me - I'm ok, I'm safe, no sweat.

Paris Gay Parade

I walked out of the catacombs and right into the Paris gay parade. It was happening just around the block. It was a pretty shocking change from seeing so much death to seeing people full of so much life. The parade had some really interesting characters.

Les Catacombs

This was a really spooky experience. There are 6 - 7 million dead peoples' bones beneath the streets of Paris. They were placed in mass graves in the 1700's, then later reburied together in the catacombs. Finally it occurred to someone around 1850 to creatively arrange the bones - something between a tourist attraction and a way to encourage people to come and pay their respects. A section of the catacombs is still open to visitors today, but there are no brochures and it is not widely mentioned, and only some 100 people are allowed in at a time. And it is downright spooky. I was walking into the catacombs next to a woman and she had a total mental breakdown; some catacomb workers had to come and calm her down and guide her back to the surface. There are miles and miles of bones. And since it's so far underground, water is seeping in - so there's constantly a "rain" from the ceiling. Imagine having a drop of cold water hit the back of your neck in this place. I didn't know quite how to react, emotionally - it's like nothing else I've ever seen.

Rodin rocks my world

The Rodin Museum was my favorite, hands down. It's set up in a garden that surrounds an old house, and his statues are scattered both inside and outside. Walking around the garden was a very casual, fun way to visit an art exhibit on a sunny day. All of the statues are incredibly expressive - faces in deep thought, or pain, or sadness. The sculpture above is the top of an enormous door called "The Gates of Hell." Notice "The Thinker" on the left? This is the original use of the thinker; as Dante, thinking about the fates of all the damned people.

Musee d'Orsay

By far my favorite museum in Paris (for paintings, not sculpture!). I think its an old train station - the open layout looks wonderful. Galleries are off to each side. There were many famous pieces here; my fav's were by Seurat and Van Gogh. Van Gogh and Monet are below.

Champagne

Ok, so I'm stuck in the past. These next few French events were all in early July. But I don't want to leave them out completely, so I'll add some mini blogs about them. I took a full day trip out to the Champagne region to see the cathedral at Reims (pronounced "Rantz," go figure), the Epernee region in general, and the champagne houses of Mumm and Moet. The area is stunningly gorgeous. Fields of grapes are set in perfect lines, but all at different angles, so you get interesting patterns. And no building is more than two stories. There are several rustic French villages, and as you might imagine, they're largely involved in the production of bubbly.

Palais de Tokyo

The Palais de Tokyo is one of Paris's lesser known modern art museums. I was actually trying to go to the Musee National d'Art Moderne, but I just missed the closing time, so I went next door and found this museum. The place was all about large installations and modern, conceptual art. It reminded me very much of my favorite museum in Atlanta, Eyedrum.

The first picture should give you an idea of what this museum is about. They mounted about 100 Darth Vader heads on poles and fitted them all with computer processors. Then they set all the processors to generating synthesized music - the listing described it as the ultimate "dark symphony." The music was actually pretty good, and I really liked the concept.

The art gets even more crazy. This is a landfill - literally - that was transported inside the museum. You can put on a some gear for sanitation and then climb into the pipe and around the landfill, eventually emerging out of the red door. What was the message here? I don't really know; I didn't go inside.
This one was just playful, and it put a smile on my face. It's a life-size statue of an elephant standing on its trunk, and it has its own room.

Eglise (Church) de La Madeleine

This church looks curiously out of place and reminded me of my (somewhat) recent trip to Athens. It's actually designed to mimic a Roman temple. The church is the erratic result of 75 years of construction, including several failed stops and starts. Each iteration has a slightly different design, which is how the charmingly eclectic church came into existence. The statue of Mary flanked by angels in the center of the church was stunning, but it was too dark to take great photographs.

Stop Touching my Food, Paris!

Small gripe: people keep touching my food. For example, when you order a baguette, they pick it up with their bare hand and give it to you. So far today people have touched my baguette, my ice cream, and my chocolate cake. I think we can go on a limb and say they probably also touched my breakfast croissant. What's the deal? Put on some plastic gloves, or use tongs, or something.

Arc de Triomphe

If you're done looking at the picture, then you and I have both spent about the same amount of our time with the Arc de Triomphe. I came out of a metro station and there it was, so I snapped a few pictures. It looked great, but had cars circling it. C'mon people, use your national monuments for more than decoration for a roundabout. Anyway, the color saturation with the bright blue sky looks surreal

This close-up (above) on the statuary on the Arc came out really well. If you walk south from the Arc, you're on the famous Champs Elysees. It's a tree-lined street with wide sidewalks, true. But the shops are very disappointing. The storefronts aren't very impressive, and they have the same brands that I expect to see in any high-end mall. I didn't feel compelled to go into any of them.

Lunch at Pierre Gagnaire

Allow me to start this post with a list of the world's best restaurants.

1. El Bulli - Spain
2. The Fat Duck - UK
3. Pierre Gagnaire - France
4. Mugaritz - Spain
5. The French Laundry - USA
6. Per Se - USA
7. Bras - France
8. Arzak - Spain
9. Tetsuya's - Australia
10. Noma - Denmark

These are the titans of fine dining in the world. I looked at several lists, and there all contained essentially the same names. I came across one of the lists during my browsing of internet news, and that's where I got the idea to come to Pierre Gagnaire while I was in Paris. Normally you need reservations months in advance - I lucked out, and there was a cancellation for lunch. Aside from that, they were booked through August. I won't even get into the price, but it was more than I had ever paid for a meal, and we'll leave it at that.

The array of flavors was hard to describe, but I'll try to recall some of the courses. There were 12 courses, but each course had several items. The first appetizer had four parts: eel soaked in soy sauce, cream of sardines on a spear-shaped cracker, and two other forgotten items - all salty. Eel is delicious. One course had frog legs, a French tradition - they're very chewy. Lobster came out in a tangy orange sauce. One plate was a salad of red snapper cubes in a mustard sauce, with a red wine sauce poured over it when served. Dessert was five plates, each with several different desserts on them.

I had three surprises. One was that all the flavors were very subtle, and very light. French cuisine is apparently all about subtlety, and that was clearly true in this meal - meats were tender, and had only a light flavor, so that the lightly flavored sauce wasn't overwhelmed. The other big surprise was that there was no paired wine. I have become so used to this concept in the US that I am stunned to find it does not exist in France, the birthplace of wine and of haute cuisine. sommelier was relatively puzzled when I suggested he help me with this; to his point, there were too many flavors for there to be any hope of pairing the wine with even single course. The final surprise was the lack of decoration; I have been trained in the US to expect fancy food to come with a very stylized environment, but I guess that here they let the food do the talking.

One course was a disaster, and I remember it distinctly. Remember that all the other courses had subtle flavors. Out came an asparagus ice cream in a cucumber sauce, surrounded by a melon sauce. The second plate (same course) was tuna and foie gras wrapped together in a fig leaf - think of a domino shape, but the top half is foie gras, and the bottom half is tuna. It was all terrible! None of the flavors went together, and they were all overpoweringly strong. I have to think that this was an experiment by a sous chef. I took a couple bites of each and sent it back.

The waiter asked me if I would like them to make something else, and I took them up on it. They obviously wanted to make me happy; I obviously thought the last course was disgusting. The waiter promised a very special dish. And it needed to be, to make up for asparagus ice cream.

In the end, it was my favorite course. Black truffles sat on top of sea bass, which sat on a bed of tons of white truffles. A white truffle sauce was poured over the top. If you are unacquainted with truffles, these are a fungus that grows only on oak tree roots, and only rarely, and only in France/Italy. It cannot be grown artificially, and as a result of its rarity, a white truffle costs $2,000+ per pound. I was stunned to be having it for a meal. It was one heck of an apology for asparagus.

I have had truffle oil food in the US and disliked it, so I was negatively biased going into the meal. After going back and reasearching it since, I have found out that truffle oil in the US is a marketing scam. It is in fact olive oil with a chemical flavoring, and contains absolutely no truffles. And I might add, on a personal note, it has no taste in common with real truffles. Which are truly amazing. That dish will be my most lasting memory of lunch at Pierre Gagnaire.


Above: black truffles in a shop window near eglise (church) Madelline

Thoughts on Paris, Day One

My original plan was to go to 12 brand-spanking-new countries this year. It looks like I'll reneg on that, and part of the reason is that I'm recycling France. I went to Paris almost 10 years ago on the nose. In general, I found France to be full of rude people, and that they especially hate Americans. And love to talk about American politics, if you can find someone that's willing to admit that they talk English. I know this is the stereotype - but I maintain that I was not influenced by the stereotypes, and that I had plenty of my own experiences.

Paris was no exception. Overall, Paris did not "wow" me. My concern has been that Paris has successfully wowed so many people, including my friends. I concluded that Paris deserved a second chance. One of the few French phrases I know is "bon chance," which actually translates to, "good luck." I'll be here for six full days.

So far, so good. I had an unbelievable, 3-hour lunch, and I'll write a separate post about that. I saw le Madeleine church, le Palais Tokyo museum, and walked the Champs Elysees. It was a pretty full day, considering that I flew in this morning, and wasn't checked in until about noon. I didn't have that many interactions with people, but no flack so far.

Anyway, I'll wrap up with some quick observations:
1. In any French cafe, have of the patrons will be teenage girls
2. I never thought I would hear 16-year-olds with a smoker's cough (gross!)
3. Everyone in Paris tries to hard to look good. But man, I feel like the fashion police need to arrest me.
4. Everyone in Paris is beautiful! This is a fact-based observation. I would not say the same thing for the following cities: Delhi, Bangalore, Athens, Male, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Atlanta. I'm not sure how Paris got all the pretty people, but they need to share. And this is unrelated to the clothing / makeup.
5. The Paris metro is wonderful. I never had to wait more than 3 minutes, and I could make three metro line changes on the same trip without speaking the language. This is the #1 weakness of Atlanta, in my opinion.
6. Sarah (my dog) would love Paris! It seems like everyone has a dog and is walking it around. And they're allowed in cafes, which is an extra bonus.

You are allowed to laugh now.

This has been posted on the inside of all the stalls in my office. Some people really don't know how to use a Western toilet, and they end up breaking the seat and falling into the bowl. A traditional Indian toilet is a hole in the concrete with two yellow porcelain blocks on either side. Imagine reporting for your first day in a real corporate office, and going into a bathroom stall, and being faced with this mystifying... "toilet" thing. I got a real kick out of this sign and I hope you did too.

Singapore Night Zoo - bat cage

The coolest part of the Singapore zoo, hands down, is the Bat Cave. Alright, so that might not be the official name, but I'm sticking to it. Anyway, it's a huge cage that you walk into, and it has free-flying bats. They are everywhere you look. They buzz by you and brush against you. Wild! The first one that brushed into me REALLY freaked me out. In the end they are fascinating to watch, and you can get really close (obvious from these pictures).

Singapore Night Zoo show

Work sent me to Singapore in mid-May. I didn't get to see much of the country, to be honest, since I was so busy during the day. But fortunately enough, I was able to see their night zoo. Singapore has a zoo full of almost entirely nocturnal animals. Aside from being a great idea, this suits the country very well as a destination for conferences.

One of the highlights is the animal show. The animals come out and do funny tricks. Some of the more wild ones - an enormous hyena, for example - just come out long enough to wolf down a hunk of meat. This snake (below) was hidden in the audience just before the show, underneath the benches. You should've seen some peoples' reactions! Another highlight was the tram ride through the zoo. A lot of the zoo's exhibits are unfenced, so the animals are milling around the tram as you ride around. It occurred to me reach out and pet some of the more docile-looking animals. But it also occurred to me that I might draw back a bloody stump, so I held off.

Rickshaw breakdown

So what happens if your ric breaks down? You pull off to the side, And flag one of your compatriots as they drive by. In the US, you might have a buddy chain you to his trailer hitch and pull your car. In Bangalore, it's a much more delicate ballet. My driver braced a foot on the back of the other rickshaw, kept the two ric's driving in parallel, and navigated both vehicles through the surrounding traffic. Wild. The foot is even more clearly documented below.

Basketball weekend

I'm pretty much hobbled and may have thrown my back out, but it was a good weekend for sports. I've had a slight reprieve in work that let me get back to the basketball court. Yesterday I played for 2 and 1/2 hours, but mostly with kids. It's hard to find adults that still play basketball in India.

Today was much different. I had heard a rumor that people play at 10am (painfully early for me, since I work a night shift), so I set an alarm and headed over to the court. Sure enough, there was a five-on-five game. I got to join in for the final two games. I have been playing / practicing a lot on my own, and it paid off. There were two teams - a group of late 30-somethings, and the some early 20-somethings that just graduated from the Karnataka state team (like a European national team). In the first game, the 30/40-somethings got blown out. But then I joined their team, and we went up 13 - 4, then won in a landslide! I shut down their best player. I had a great day.

I've lost a lot of weight in India - mostly muscle mass. I'm scrawny now. But I had forgotten how weighing less can translate into jumping higher. I jumped up to block a guy's shot, and he ducked, and I landed sitting on his back. I jumped over him! Amazing. Like I said, I had a great day performance-wise, at least for me.

After the game, the team threw me in a car and took me to a restaurant that one of the players owns. We sat on the patio and had some tapas and fresh-cut fruit. A very relaxing way to end two hard-played days of basketball.

Qutab Minar - Delhi

This pillar is enormous. It reminded me, conceptually, of what the tower of Babel would look like. It's 72 meters high and looks infinitely tall. It was built in 1192 - wow! Imagine the effort it must have taken. And it has survived earthquakes.

Here's a picture of the inscriptions on the side. So what is this thing? Most people assume that it's a minaret for a mosque, but it's not. The call to prayer - if given from the top of the tower - could never be heard from the bottom. Instead, it's an ENORMOUS sun dial. That's right - this was made to cast a shadow that becomes the hour hand for a gigantic clock.

This is the "iron pillar" that can never rust, and is at the same site. It has some assorted folklore associated with it, which I largely forget. I know that it's really important to India's national heritage. In any case, I really liked this picture.

Humayun's Tomb - Delhi

Does this look vaguely familiar? No, it's not the Taj Mahal. Humayun's Tomb predates the Taj significantly, and the Taj was modeled after it. Indian architecture does not mind copy-catting itself. In general, I was underwhelmed. The exterior is spectacular, but the inside is very plain, and fairly run-down.

This is my GQ picture. Totally posed, but hey - probably the best picture ever taken of me.


This is the inside of Humayun's Tomb. There's a great risen ceiling, but again, fairly plain. It's hard to tell from this picture, but it's extremely dark in the room with the actual tomb. On a busy day of seeing things in Delhi, this wasn't the highlight for me. My feelings about Humayun's Tomb make me worried about my inevitable trip to the Taj Mahal - I've heard that it's quite a let-down.

Maldives! Snorkeling pics

Oddly enough, I'm going farther and farther back in time with my pictures. These date back to February, but I'm putting them up anyway, because I just got them back. I dropped them off to be developed almost a month ago and basically forgot about them.

The pictures came out! I was shocked, as this was such a last-minute endeavor. My dive boat was ready to leave, and on impulse I ran back to the resort, found the gift shop, and bought a $35 (yes, they kill you that badly on the price) disposable camera. My best guess was that everything would be a blur. There's so much (lighting, focus, etc.) that goes into a photograph that I didn't expect too much from a disposable underwater picture. But - not bad!

Heh - beware the great white whale!

The moray eel was as thick as my leg and it had to be 15 feet long. I wanted to get closer for a better picture, but I figured there was a decent chance it could bite my hand off.

Ali Isa Khan Niazi's tomb - Delhi

This is actually right next to Humayun's tomb, and is part of the same complex. There's nothing particularly special about it, but I was in a great mood and the weather was gorgeous, so Bettina and I hung around and posed some goofy pictures on the terrace on the tomb's roof.

You might notice that all the stone is red. And the Red Fort was also, well... red. This is a kind of sandstone that only comes from western India. It had to be brought a long way to Delhi.