lessons for the dunce
Two paragraphs on India and work-thought inspired by India, then I'll politely say "goodnight" and you'll all be left wanting.
Honestly, I can't believe how easily I adjusted to this timezone. Nearly twelve hours out from sunny Northern California - but I took to it in just one night of solid sleep. This, and other similarly easy transitions to varied time zones, have convinced me that I am a body built for world travel. I read once that if you're outside in the sunshine as much as possible during the waking hours, you're body realizes that its internal clock is off and you should be awake during that time. Maybe spending Sunday tooling around the countryside in the awesome South Indian weather actually helped me adjust so quickly. I can only hope that the transition back to west coast time goes as swimmingly.
Staying thematic for once, I was thinking to day how much I appreciate the different "learnings" I've gained from my current employment. No, not just the "professional development," which has been invaluable, they tell me, but moreso the cultural and "eye-opening" type learnings I've been able to pick up. Travel and exposure to a host of different cultures have really granted me a better worldview, I think. I mean, more than just understand a few scattered sentences in Mandarin, I've been exposed to peoples and traditions I'd've been wholly ignorant to otherwise. In some ways, I think that the more "eyes" through which you can look at the world, the better. Knowing, for instance, that things taken for granted by Joe America are luxuries to people elsewhere makes a man more humble, and, more importantly, better equips you to relate to folks from all over. Who'd have ever thought that I'd be sitting outside in India, enjoying the weather while a young Indian man in the courtyard below sings the Eagles' "Lying Eyes" in perfect English, writing a paragraph singing the praises of my gainful employment. I'm here to tell you that I've decided I'm riding this one out - I know a good thing when I've found it.
Goodnight.
monkeys and soggy cigarettes
To start my first blog while in India, a brief roundup of my impressions of the place thus far. India is: A symphony of honking horns. Free-range cattle, heads-bent to gutters looking for trash to eat. Dirty barefoot people walking dirty dirt streets. Riiich rich and pooor poor. More tropical than I'd imagined. Still very much British. Where I first heard the Strokes' leaked 3rd full-length. Friendly. Yummy food that doesn't fulfill many ne'er-do-well-wishers' predictions of 24/7 toilet-guarding. Broken, dusty, randomly-laid out roads that seem to have been paved as a need to arrive at a new place arose. Families living in tarp-tents erected alongside the road wherever a spare piece of land can be found, outside cooking breakfast in the morning over a smoking fire.
Bought some cigarettes while I was here, y'know, to "sample" the local Indian offerings. They pretty much have the same ass-flavor as American, Taiwanese, and Chinese cigarettes. However, I found myself drawn to them a little too much - kind of blowing the "sampling" thing out the window and trading it for a different verb, "smoking." So tonight I doused them with water and threw them away - thus rendering them unsalvageable and certainly un-smokeable. Good for me, bad for the Indian tobacco industry and millions of barefoot workers that sweat to bring cancer to the lit-up masses. I was planning to insert a picture of the sodden, broken cigarettes strewn about a table below this paragraph, but the dang five-star hotel housekeeping staff is too efficient and liberated me of my trash before I could do it - sorry, I had planned it to be quite the artsy offering.
And, from above, you likely guesses that the Strokes' 3rd LP has leaked in its entirety - and I've been filling my hotel room with the horribly treble-heavy laptop speaker rendition of it for the past couple days. As for a review, I'm going to reserve an opinion for when I can actually hear it through once with some bottom-end to it - but from a catchy melody perspective I think it's gonna be a winner. They're a band I'd like to see live again, as I really enjoyed the Halloween-eve show we caught in the city a couple years back before Room On Fire dropped. Our concert attendance has really dropped off since we decided the frequent trips to the city just weren't paying off, and reserved them for big or important shows. I am, however, looking forward to seeing the Wolf Parade in January - that one was sufficiently important to motivate both Ben and I to buy the gas, fight the traffic, and find the parking.
Sometimes I love traveling; I think partly because I know my dad did so much traveling when he was younger, and I feel like I somehow following in his footsteps. I would love to be able to have been some of the places he's talked about, and I feel like my job has at least helped me experience a bit of the "world traveler" bag. Sometimes, waking up in a hotel room with no one to report to and absolutely nothing on an agenda can be a really liberating feeling - miles away from any "real" commitments and real people, for that matter. Especially here, where I can wake up and throw open my balcony door to the sounds of running water and some kinda tropical birds - really makes a guy feel disconnected and content.
Now that I've been assured you read my entire boring post, I'll drop a link for you: here are some pictures from my first few days in India.
Until tomorrow, goodnight.
cream of ’05
Hey music fans. Huh? You're not a music fan? Better just leave this one alone then and wait till tomorrow's post, because it's about as musicy as it gets.
To begin with, this is post #472, yesterday's post was #565 - meaning I first drafted this nearly 100 entries ago. It's been through some work since then; some shuffling and a couple drop/add sessions. But, I've been working on it so long, tweaking this and fine-tuning that, and I'm finally happy with how it turned out.
Y'know, I would've thought that last year would've been a tougher year to pick a "top 10" albums, because for some reason I look back on it as a really good year for music. But, when I really think about it - the reason I see it as a particularly amazing year for tunes is just because it's the year the Funeral came out. In reality though, 2005 was an amazing year for music. The year brought so many great albums, it was extremely hard to pick only ten... so, I picked 25 instead. And, this time, I decided to give a little blurb on why each of the top-15 LPs landed where it did (please don't underestimate the stylesheet-wizardry that made this all possible). Enjoy:
14. The Cloud Room - The Cloud Room
13. The Ladies and Gentlemen - Small Sins
12. M83 - The Dawn Will Heal Us
11. Clor - Clor
10. The Decemberists - Picaresque
9. Broken Social Scene - Broken Social Scene
4. The New Pornographers - Twin Cinema
3. The Most Serene Republic - Underwater Cinematographer
2. Architecture in Helsinki - If We Die
1. Wolf Parade - Apologies to the Queen Mary
And now, the shortlist of albums that were at one time either in the top-15 and slowly bubbled off the top, or hovering near the bottom waiting to receive their number - which never came. All these efforts come highly recommended, and in reality could've been on the list had I compiled it on a different night or published it a week or two later. So, if you happen to be Mr. Banhart or Mr. Stevens, please don't be disappointed you only made the Honorable Mention list - you're still alright in my book:
24. World Leader Pretend - Punches
23. Autolux - Future Perfect
22. Sufjan Stevens - Illinois
21. Rogue Wave - Descended Like Vultures
20. Ponys - Celebration Castle
19. Devendra Banhart - Cripple Crow
18. The Editors - The Back Room
17. Joggers - With A Cape and A Cane
16. Fine China - The Jaws of Life
Now, for a twist, and because I'm on a roll, the top 3 albums that weren't released in 2005 (and therefore wouldn't be eligible for the above list) but were discovered by me in 2005:
2. Shout Out Louds - Howl Howl Gaff Gaff
1. John McLaughlin, Paco De Lucia, Al Di Meola - Friday Night in San Francisco
And, even though I didn't do "blurbs" about the "honorable mentions" and "discovereds," I felt I had to comment on the Friday Night in San Francisco album. You may think, being the self-proclaimed music aficionado that I am, I would've heard this album long ago when I was in the frenzied-exploratory phase that every burgeoning music nut goes through. You know, right about the time you finally "discover" Bob Marley, acknowledge Dylan's genius despite his whine, and realize that Miles Davis is a God. But, I didn't discover this album until this year (The Kooper & Bloomfield is really just more Super Session, so you could consider me familiar with that already). Suffice it to say that I should've known about it earlier, 'cause it truly rocks tits.
OK folks, I'm completely typed-out. Happy listening, take care. (First "true" entry from India tomorrow.)
something new
I'm going to try something new today, something I think may be fun and help alleviate "bloggers block" in times of trouble (which, thankfully, has not been a problem lately). I'll call it "one liners," and entries of this kind will get their own little category in the sidebar. Hopefully, this'll be something quick and dirty I can do when time is tight and/or I don't care to write. Today, however, is neither of those - but I had to kick it off somehow.
I've decided to grow a beard, at least until I get tired of it or get enough criticism about it.
Right now I feel anxious, nervous, and restless. Not for me, for my brother.
I can't help smiling every time I see my wife's big fat belly.
7pm and I haven't yet begun to pack; it's because I don't want to go.
I feel guilty leaving Sharaun alone for another week of travel.
Our refrigerator broke this week, and we're currently storing all our perishables in a cooler full of ice on the back porch.
I've not yet bought anything for my wife for Christmas, and am afraid I won't have time enough to get her something meaningful.
9pm and I'm completely packed and ready to go; it's because I have to.
Well, that's it; the new thang. I can't really claim it's 100% original, as I stole the general idea from largehearted boy's "shorties."
Goodnight and, until India, goodbye.
bathrooms the size of coffins
You'll have to excuse the terse entries this week - daily writing is competing with travel arrangements and the probably-getting-too-much-love "best of 2005" entry. On the bright side, I think I'm still on track to publish that next week, so it won't be sucking all my resources. Be ready, it's bound to include luminary passages of prose unparalleled by any other "best of 2005" list; oh, and it has little pictures of album covers, too. Seriously, wait for it.
In preparation for my trip this weekend, and ultimately to my dismay, I sat down today to review my flight plans. I knew the trip to India wasn't just a hop, skip, and jump - but I guess I wasn't really aware of just how abysmal it really was. I began adding up the time: four hours to Chicago, wait an hour and a half for eight more to Frankfurt, wait two and a half more in the terminal for another eight and a half in the air before landing in Bangalore. All told it's twenty-five hours of travel, not counting the time getting to the airport and awaiting the initial flight. The way back is worse, courtesy of mean headwinds and a tacked on trip to visit my folks in Oregon: twenty-eight hours. That's a lot of flying and sitting and pooping in bathrooms the size of coffins.
Ever since I decided to kill our landline phone, my DirecTV TiVo has been nagging me daily with a warning that it's not made its daily call in X days. Back when I was researching adding an extra hard drive to my TiVo, I remember reading about a way to hack the thing to work wirelessly - and in the process enable all sorts of cool features like extracting recorded programs to your PC for archive purposes. Back then, I was paranoid enough about just adding another drive to increase my recording capacity - I didn't want to brick my beloved TiVo - so I stuck to just the drive upgrade. However, the daily call nagging got me interested again and I began hunting down information on hacking my box to enable all the cool features that standalone TiVos have: networking, USB, recording extraction, and thankfully - no daily call nag.
So, I proceeded to scour forums and pages on hacking my particular box and software version. Turns out it's dead-simple, or at least it seems to be from the various guides out there. I was super impressed with the ease of the hard drive upgrade - the hackers are extremely industrious and have spent their own time making their labor-of-love tools really user-friendly and pretty idiot-proof for someone with a modicum of PC skillz. So, I guess I shouldn't have been too surprised when I found a detailed website showing exactly how to do exactly what I wanted to do to my TiVo in a few relatively simple steps. I downloaded the utilities I need, bookmarked the step-by-step instructions, and plan to call my TiVo-hacking alumni buddy Erik over when I get back from India to actually take apart the beast.
I am curious about what happens when DirecTV rolls out it's next software upgrade to the box, but considering that it took them years to rollout 6.2 I guess it's not a huge concern. I also briefly considered upgrading to the new R15 model of DirecTV DVR - which no longer requires a "daily call" - but was somewhat dissuaded when I found out it's not based on TiVo software but the same guts that run the Dish DVR. Dish's DVR may be good, but since I'm so accustomed to TiVo, and I already have a working box I enjoy - I figured I may as well try my hand at hacking what I've got. Either way, the R15 is a $100 upgrade even if I do somehow manage to brick my current box - and I have an old vanilla receiver I can hookup in the meantime should the worst happen. So, like you care, I'll keep you updated on the progress.
That's it then folks, I think that'll cap off the week; not sure I'll be writing anything for Friday as I'll likely be busy Thursday night packing and readying for the big trip. So, if no Friday, I'll catch ya all in India. Peace out.
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