Travel stories
That’s Ben, that’s a steep field of pure virgin snow behind him. We skied this same bowl all day long. There was a medium hike up to it, but a nasty, long traverse on the way out that kept the un-hearty and snowboarders out (not that I have a problem with snowboarders, I’m one myself 50% of the time). This was the North Country area of Crystal Mountain in Washington State.
This place has just been receiving dump-truck loads of snow. 117” of accumulation at the summit. You know you are in for a good day when there is a “deep snow warning.”...
Since I’ve been working during the days here in Florence, I haven’t had the chance to see a whole lot yet, but I did notice a couple of things.
There aren’t many homeless people on the streets, but I did notice one on my way into the office today and while clearly down and out, he had dangling from his perma-dirty-hand a bottle of red wine. No Thunderbird or Mad Dog here.
Another thing that stands out to me is how much cooler old people are here than in the US. They are substantially more fashionable, they are out riding bicycles...
Just as the day was ending, filled with extolments about Florence and Italy, the band at one of the cafes outside our window began to play a spirited "New York, New York."
Leaving Monday for Hong Kong, coming back after ten days. Emily is coming and bringing the full compliment of camera gear so expect pictures.
Was on a tour of the South this weekend. Visited Greer South Carolina, bought some fireworks and went to the dirt track stock car races in middle Georgia.
I managed to squeeze two days of golf into this India trip at the Delhi Golf Club.
The best part are the caddies. There were five for our threesome. Our host had two caddies, one to help him with his game + give him pointers and one to carry his bag; I had my Yankee cap wearing caddy; Kirk (next to me in pic) had his caddy, the muslim in his red winter sweater-vest; Plus the agi-walla (no idea on the spelling there), the fore-caddy, basically he goes down the hole and finds your ball in the woods.
Now I...
My allergies are absolutely killing me on this trip. I powered through my Allegra supply the first week, leaving me high and dry in the anti-histamine department. I couldn’t take it anymore and asked our driver to take me to a pharmacy. There is a distinct lack of big western type stores in India, even in Delhi, the capital, where we are. The driver took us to a local spot, the type of place he would go. Everything was behind the counter and you had to tell the guys what you wanted. Fortunately my needs were relatively easy to describe...
Prawns, shrimp or scampi?
They use the word “prawns” here almost exclusively, and cutely say “shrimps” when one of us Americans looks at them funny at the utterance of prawn something.
For those of you too lazy to follow the link: shrimp=prawn except for some people only use prawn for medium to large size shrimp.
You can buy extremely real looking plastic BB pistols in toy stores there. We went go-karting in Macau. They went all out in the bathroom. This is a picture of the sink. The shifter lever on the right turns the water on. There's also a race-car urinal pic if you are really interested. Our hosts took us to the horse track. I didn't win a damn thing, but I had an excellent time. My boss's father was a horse trainer and he grew up around horses - he picked the winner 3-of-4 times. They had an F1 car at the airport....
Yankees-Sox games 4,5,6 were all "watched" online play-by-play. On the morning of game 7 (Hong Kong = 12 hr time difference) I was fortunate to have timed my flight home that afternoon so I packed and watched from my hotel. At first I found the game on a Japanese station and that meant only one thing. Matsui. When the ball was not in play the camera man only had one job. What is Matsui up to? Matsui in the dugout. Matsui warming up in the outfield. Matsui picking his nose. I flipped around and managed to find the ESPN-international channel...
When I arrived at the Cathay Pacific checkin counter in Hong Kong, they informed me that they had overbooked the flight and I was assigned a coach seat for the 20 hour trip to New York. They slid a calculator across the table with a cash offer in HK dollars for my inconvenience. The number worked out to around US$1750. My first reaction was "I don't care about the money, my company paid for the ticket, do what you can to get me a business class seat." So I head off to the lounge and it hits me - that...
Ian has posted some good pictures of his latest two week stint in Hong Kong. My favorites: A residential building - linkPilipino working women on Sunday, their only day off - link"Let's go shopping" - linkIsland-city - linkThe whole lot here.
follow up to the javelin discussion:I just learned that they changed the table-tennis ball from 38 mm to 40 mm after the 2000 olympics to make it better for TV and live audiences. Watching it now I can't believe that 2 mm would make a difference, but it is indeed much easier to see the ball than I remember. Slate has an article about the new vaulting "tongue" that replaced the old horse. I suppose the vault is better off for it, but what will replace the running headlong into the end of it on TV blooper shows?Anyone have any other interesting...
I just got back from two days in Louisville, Kentucky. We had lunch at a BBQ place called Mark's feed store. They were instantly suspicious of the yankee with the blazer and pink dress shirt. The good news was that I found a new interesting regional food item. Burgoo. Essentially it is a spicy stew made out of whatever meats they have left over. Delicious. Here's a recipe I found online: [link]600 pounds lean soup meat200 pounds fat hens2000 pounds potatoes, peeled and diced200 pounds of onions5 bushels of cabbage, chopped60 ten-pound cans of tomatos24 ten-pound cans puree of tomatoes24 ten-pound...
Without a doubt the best thing about the CN tower in Toronto is the glass floor. I guess they only added it in 1994, so if you haven't been since you are missing out.
Had dinner with some HK peeps last night at what our host called "the most famous Chinese restaurant in the world." (Don't ask me) Their specialties are BBQ goose and a "Century Egg" which is a preserved duck egg appetizer. They use some secret Chinese preservation technique age it for a few months - it comes out gelatinous, oh and um black. They do include some excellent special ginger to put on top which makes it all ok somehow. The goose was good although difficult to eat from a texture/presentation to our American point of view. These geese were special because they only this...
Here's a shortened version of my recap of Cathay vs Northwest to Hong Kong that I posted on my internal company blog.
My latest trip I flew a newly retrofitted Northwest 747 from NYC to Tokyo and an older one from there to Hong Kong. I have flown twice previously on Cathay 747 through Vancouver.
[stuff about the seats]
[stuff about the movie selection]
Cathay has great noise cancelling style headphones, Northwest has crappy throw-away ones. Luckily I had my new Bose noise-cancelling headphones with me. You really appreciate quality headphones on a 20 hour flight.
I'm pretty sure the flight...