Thursday, March 31, 2011
This is the end of the blog.
As I prepare to leave India, I am reminded of all of the highs and lows of the years I spent here. I'm not the emotional or reminiscent sort, but something there are no pictures of in all the archives of this fairly well kept travel blog, but that I will remember long past many of the places I've been, are the friends I've made. Its much less common in this second half of life to form real meaningful friendships. That bonding experience is left behind along with the frivolity of youth. But the people you share the experience of learning to live in a whole new world are real friends. So, while I'm a bit of a loner, sometimes more than a bit of a curmudgeon, and spent a good deal of time either traveling alone or entombed in my great marble mansion, I will truly miss the friends I've made here. Almost as much as Koh Samui.
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Proper Feeding of Shogun the Dog
Shogun will soon be taking a great adventure traveling back to his homeland. Those assuming his care will need to know the proper feeding instructions for keeping Shogun satiated and full of energy for all the house guarding and monkey chasing he will need to do when back in the US.
Step One: Gather the necessary ingredients
Eukanuba Premium Performance
Six slices of American style processed cheese
Imported German stew-like wet dog food, extra stinky
One liter processed Indian roof water
Step Two: Dry Food
The proper portion of dry food is exactly two full 7-11 Super Big Gulp cups. Pour into microwave safe bowl.
Step Three: Wet Food
Shogun prefers the sausage-like New Zealand imported "Butch" dog food that comes in plastic tubes, but my importer hasn't been able to get it for the last couple months so we've switched to this weird German slop called "My Lord". My German is a litte rusty, but apparently it is made out of Lassie parts, or some deity, or both. Or maybe you are just supposed to say "My Lord" when you crack it open and see all of the coagulated fat floating on top. Regardless, it seems to be a satisfactory substitute.
As any great chef will tell you (or at least Gordon Ramsey), you have to keep tasting the food while you cook. Quality control is very important. Shogun can help with this. He will need to taste one to two chunks of the wet food at this point in the preparation to make sure it is good.
Assuming the German stuff passes inspection, pour over the dry food. These cans are large, 1300 grams. About the size that Hi-C used to come in in the 70's and early 80's. I use half a can, or 650 grams, around 22 ounces.
Step Four: Cheeeese
You must ensure the cheese is of acceptable quality before continuing with this step. Shogun can help with this.
After the cheese has passed the quality check, place four slices over the wet food.
Step Five: Water
Pour about 1 liter of Indian roof water over the ingredients, until you can see the dry food is fully submerged.
Step Six: Cook it
The food should then be nuked for 4 minutes 50 seconds in a 900 watt microwave. This step is very difficult for the food preparation assistant, and he will likely need reminded several times during this 4 minutes and 50 seconds that the food is cooking and that you have not forgotten about the incredibly important task you were doing. Once satisfied you are still on the job, he will usually wait patiently.
Step Seven: Mix well
The melted cheese on the top should now be chopped up and mixed thoroughly through the gruel. The cooked mixture should have a nice, loose vomit consistency, watery, like when you drank too much Jaegermeister and then ate too much at Taco Bell.
Step Eight: Garnish and Serve!
The food should now be poured into Shogun's bowl. Its very important to finish the meal with a proper presentation by sticking one more slice of American cheese on the top. He will likely not accept the meal if this garnish is forgotten, be warned!
Bon Appetit!
Step One: Gather the necessary ingredients
Eukanuba Premium Performance
Six slices of American style processed cheese
Imported German stew-like wet dog food, extra stinky
One liter processed Indian roof water
Step Two: Dry Food
The proper portion of dry food is exactly two full 7-11 Super Big Gulp cups. Pour into microwave safe bowl.
Step Three: Wet Food
Shogun prefers the sausage-like New Zealand imported "Butch" dog food that comes in plastic tubes, but my importer hasn't been able to get it for the last couple months so we've switched to this weird German slop called "My Lord". My German is a litte rusty, but apparently it is made out of Lassie parts, or some deity, or both. Or maybe you are just supposed to say "My Lord" when you crack it open and see all of the coagulated fat floating on top. Regardless, it seems to be a satisfactory substitute.
As any great chef will tell you (or at least Gordon Ramsey), you have to keep tasting the food while you cook. Quality control is very important. Shogun can help with this. He will need to taste one to two chunks of the wet food at this point in the preparation to make sure it is good.
Assuming the German stuff passes inspection, pour over the dry food. These cans are large, 1300 grams. About the size that Hi-C used to come in in the 70's and early 80's. I use half a can, or 650 grams, around 22 ounces.
Step Four: Cheeeese
You must ensure the cheese is of acceptable quality before continuing with this step. Shogun can help with this.
After the cheese has passed the quality check, place four slices over the wet food.
Step Five: Water
Pour about 1 liter of Indian roof water over the ingredients, until you can see the dry food is fully submerged.
Step Six: Cook it
The food should then be nuked for 4 minutes 50 seconds in a 900 watt microwave. This step is very difficult for the food preparation assistant, and he will likely need reminded several times during this 4 minutes and 50 seconds that the food is cooking and that you have not forgotten about the incredibly important task you were doing. Once satisfied you are still on the job, he will usually wait patiently.
Step Seven: Mix well
The melted cheese on the top should now be chopped up and mixed thoroughly through the gruel. The cooked mixture should have a nice, loose vomit consistency, watery, like when you drank too much Jaegermeister and then ate too much at Taco Bell.
Step Eight: Garnish and Serve!
The food should now be poured into Shogun's bowl. Its very important to finish the meal with a proper presentation by sticking one more slice of American cheese on the top. He will likely not accept the meal if this garnish is forgotten, be warned!
Bon Appetit!
Monday, February 7, 2011
Living in an exotic foreign land
For those of you who have idealized the notion of living in an exotic foreign land and how it must be endlessly exciting, I submit the following video, which I watched, in its entirety, yesterday afternoon.
At some point around 20 minutes or so the sounds lose all meaning.
At some point around 20 minutes or so the sounds lose all meaning.
Monday, January 24, 2011
Bali Indonesia
Went to Bali last weekend. Stayed the first night at the Hard Rock resort. Raging party until dawn. Arrested Development the house band. The early 90's hip hop group, not the short lived sitcom with the two great seasons and one terrible one. Still singing Mr. Wendel and Tennessee. Kinda sad. Went up to the mostly uninhabited north side of the island on day two to dive a wrecked US troop carrier from WWII. Did some night diving, super fun. Back down to the south end to stay at the Oberoi and recuperate.
Friday, December 24, 2010
My Favorite Media 2010
I've decided this post is entirely IndiaAdventure related, as besides travel and getting violently sick, about all I do in India to wile away the time is consume media.
Best Book:
This one was an easy one for me, Freedom by Jonathan Franzen. An astoundingly brilliant book, the best 'our generation' book since Egger's A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Described by my sister as "mesmerizing", Freedom is a must read for anyone trying to figure out how to get through the incredibly boring and shitty middle part of life.
Best Video Game:
This is tough. Despite being the biggest year for video games sales in history, it was a surprisingly weak year for truly great games. Luckily, Halo:Reach came out to show everyone how an amazing game is made. It completely makes up for the awful Halo:ODST last year, and ranks as the best of the series for me. Its long, hard, beautiful, well paced, and incredibly inventive. I say its tough because I was also blown away by another game this year: Castlevania Lords of Shadow. Its so crazy that a Castlevania game is vying for my game of the year; Castlevania games haven't been good in over a decade, since Symphony of the Night in '97 (which I played through again this year in its entirety and its just impossible not to just spam kill everyone with the absurdly overpowered Holy Shield / Steel Rod combo). Lords of Shadow is a tremendously good game. Incredibly long, playing on the hardest difficulty level it took me well over 30 hours to complete. Its exciting, well balanced, innovative in parts, and where its derivative of other modern hack and slashers it does it better than the game its copying (I'm looking at you Shadow of Colossus and God of War III).
Best Album:
While I, like many, many others, have been listening to nothing but Kanye West's new minor masterpiece since it came out, unlike most top 10 lists you'll see I'll resist the urge to put the last great album of the year as the best album of the year (although its an amazing album, Kanye's best, and fully makes up for him picking on poor, homely little Taylor Swift). There were lots of great albums this year. Eminem's Recovery was a great return to form for him, albeit a bit one dimensional. The National put out their best album with High Violet. However sad I am about the demise of The Shins, James Mercer's new band Broken Bells put out a fantastic first album (although there are no songs on it that Natalie Portman would hand to you in a doctor's office waiting room). I'm an unapologetic Angels and Airwaves fan, and their free album this year, LOVE, is great; not a bad song on it. Shout Out Loud's Work wasn't received too well by a lot of critics, but I loved it and listened to it on repeat for weeks. Speaking of wearing the electrons off of an album, Vampire Weekend's Contra played on my iPod on repeat forever. The weird Americana/Bruce Springsteen/Punk drummer band Gaslight Anthem had their best album this year as well with American Slang; it probably made me more homesick for the US of A than any other this year. Freak folk was well represented this year by two phenomenal albums; Mumford & Sons debut Sign no More and Bombay Bicycle Club's Flaws. But, for my favorite album of 2010 I'm going to go with one you've probably never heard of but should be listening to; Swedish singer/songwriter The Tallest Man on Earth's The Wild Hunt. Its an amazing album and of an already amazing catalog, its Kristian Matsson's best yet.
Best TV show:
My sister records a bunch of TV for me onto DVDs and sends them to me at great cost all the way here to India. Unfortunately, I think 2010 TV was so bad its pretty much killed TV for me. I enjoyed the two seasons of Survivor this year like I always do, but that's just a guilty pleasure of course and doesn't represent anything close to art. Everything else was terrible. I've watched House for all of its seasons, even struggling through the awful season with the cop, but this one ended my viewing of that show. Terrible. All the sitcoms I used to watch have completely jumped the shark. Sorry, I think TV is dead, there is no best TV show of 2010 I'm afraid.
(Edit:) After writing this last night I remembered that in fact 2010 contained one of the best hours of TV ever - the final episode of Lost. So of course Lost is the best show of 2010, but unfortunately that only strengthens my argument that TV is shit right now as it was the end of one of the greatest series ever.
Best Film:
This one is tough for me, not because of all the great movies this year but because I've seen so few of them living here in 1850's India. But, of the ones I've seen, its a year with a fantastic studio monster Inception and a fantastic independent little gem Winter's Bone. I'm going to go with Inception, because while Winter's Bone is easily one of the best movies of this year or any other, its primarily so good because of the tremendous performance of its lead, while Inception is just all around amazing. Of course I haven't seen any of the late December Oscar bait movies so I could be missing the next Lost in Translation for all I know (one of which is a Sofia Coppola film, coincidentally). Honorable mention goes to Scott Pilgrim vs the World. I normally dislike comic book movies, but this is a wild, crazy, media mash of visual and auditory delight. Its not your parent's movie, that's for sure. And Kieran Culkin steals the show as the too cool for school roommate, his best performance in 8 years, since Igby Goes Down.
Best Book:
This one was an easy one for me, Freedom by Jonathan Franzen. An astoundingly brilliant book, the best 'our generation' book since Egger's A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius. Described by my sister as "mesmerizing", Freedom is a must read for anyone trying to figure out how to get through the incredibly boring and shitty middle part of life.
Best Video Game:
This is tough. Despite being the biggest year for video games sales in history, it was a surprisingly weak year for truly great games. Luckily, Halo:Reach came out to show everyone how an amazing game is made. It completely makes up for the awful Halo:ODST last year, and ranks as the best of the series for me. Its long, hard, beautiful, well paced, and incredibly inventive. I say its tough because I was also blown away by another game this year: Castlevania Lords of Shadow. Its so crazy that a Castlevania game is vying for my game of the year; Castlevania games haven't been good in over a decade, since Symphony of the Night in '97 (which I played through again this year in its entirety and its just impossible not to just spam kill everyone with the absurdly overpowered Holy Shield / Steel Rod combo). Lords of Shadow is a tremendously good game. Incredibly long, playing on the hardest difficulty level it took me well over 30 hours to complete. Its exciting, well balanced, innovative in parts, and where its derivative of other modern hack and slashers it does it better than the game its copying (I'm looking at you Shadow of Colossus and God of War III).
Best Album:
While I, like many, many others, have been listening to nothing but Kanye West's new minor masterpiece since it came out, unlike most top 10 lists you'll see I'll resist the urge to put the last great album of the year as the best album of the year (although its an amazing album, Kanye's best, and fully makes up for him picking on poor, homely little Taylor Swift). There were lots of great albums this year. Eminem's Recovery was a great return to form for him, albeit a bit one dimensional. The National put out their best album with High Violet. However sad I am about the demise of The Shins, James Mercer's new band Broken Bells put out a fantastic first album (although there are no songs on it that Natalie Portman would hand to you in a doctor's office waiting room). I'm an unapologetic Angels and Airwaves fan, and their free album this year, LOVE, is great; not a bad song on it. Shout Out Loud's Work wasn't received too well by a lot of critics, but I loved it and listened to it on repeat for weeks. Speaking of wearing the electrons off of an album, Vampire Weekend's Contra played on my iPod on repeat forever. The weird Americana/Bruce Springsteen/Punk drummer band Gaslight Anthem had their best album this year as well with American Slang; it probably made me more homesick for the US of A than any other this year. Freak folk was well represented this year by two phenomenal albums; Mumford & Sons debut Sign no More and Bombay Bicycle Club's Flaws. But, for my favorite album of 2010 I'm going to go with one you've probably never heard of but should be listening to; Swedish singer/songwriter The Tallest Man on Earth's The Wild Hunt. Its an amazing album and of an already amazing catalog, its Kristian Matsson's best yet.
Best TV show:
My sister records a bunch of TV for me onto DVDs and sends them to me at great cost all the way here to India. Unfortunately, I think 2010 TV was so bad its pretty much killed TV for me. I enjoyed the two seasons of Survivor this year like I always do, but that's just a guilty pleasure of course and doesn't represent anything close to art. Everything else was terrible. I've watched House for all of its seasons, even struggling through the awful season with the cop, but this one ended my viewing of that show. Terrible. All the sitcoms I used to watch have completely jumped the shark. Sorry, I think TV is dead, there is no best TV show of 2010 I'm afraid.
(Edit:) After writing this last night I remembered that in fact 2010 contained one of the best hours of TV ever - the final episode of Lost. So of course Lost is the best show of 2010, but unfortunately that only strengthens my argument that TV is shit right now as it was the end of one of the greatest series ever.
Best Film:
This one is tough for me, not because of all the great movies this year but because I've seen so few of them living here in 1850's India. But, of the ones I've seen, its a year with a fantastic studio monster Inception and a fantastic independent little gem Winter's Bone. I'm going to go with Inception, because while Winter's Bone is easily one of the best movies of this year or any other, its primarily so good because of the tremendous performance of its lead, while Inception is just all around amazing. Of course I haven't seen any of the late December Oscar bait movies so I could be missing the next Lost in Translation for all I know (one of which is a Sofia Coppola film, coincidentally). Honorable mention goes to Scott Pilgrim vs the World. I normally dislike comic book movies, but this is a wild, crazy, media mash of visual and auditory delight. Its not your parent's movie, that's for sure. And Kieran Culkin steals the show as the too cool for school roommate, his best performance in 8 years, since Igby Goes Down.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Hong Kong
In Hong Kong for the weekend. Staying at the Island Shangri-La on Hong Kong island. Top floor, "club" room. Awesome hotel, 60 stories. Room is identical to a Kruengtep wing Shangri-La room in Bangkok, minus the balcony. Same intoxicating smell wafting through the lobby floors. I'm hording the L'Occitane soaps, of course.
Went to the Hong Kong philharmonic orchestra on night one. Good. Did Barber's Adagio for Strings first (the Platoon theme if that helps). Second was an original piece by a Hong Kong composer for the bamboo flute. The chick on the flute would give Ron Burgundy a run for his money. Third was Copeland's Third symphony, of which I'm not a big fan. Orchestra was young and talented. Definitely no London Phil or Tokyo Phil, but a great show all the same. Concert hall was on Kowloon side.
The shopping mall integration is pretty advanced here in HK. They are a far cry from Singapore, as all of the malls don't interconnect, and there are still sidewalks here as opposed to the only way to get through the city of Singapore is through the malls. But there are a shitload of malls all the same. Big emphasis on luxury items. Ultra-luxury watches are an obsession here, almost every billboard is for a super lux watch brand; Patek Philippe, Vacheron Constantin, Audemars Piguet... watches that go for hundreds of thousands of dollars and make my watch look like a goddamn Swatch. Exchange rate with USD is terrible, makes everything more expensive than it should be. To the point where when shopping if you ask for the price in USD they will invariably give a 20% US discount on whatever you are shopping for, and that 20% will get your just down to a bit above full retail. Bogus. Except video games, which are about 1/2 price here. Brand new just released PS3 games for $30 US. Awesome.
There is a movie theater in the mall below my hotel that plays movies all night. I have reduced my sleep to 2.5 to 3 hours a night since I've been here and so far seen Red (actually quite good. Willis embraces his old age), The Switch (just awful and super slow paced. Everyone attached to this that usually makes good movies should hide their head in shame), Charlie St. Cloud (horrible. horrible. horrible.), Saw 3D (wow, so bad), Life as We Know It (terrible, too long, I really hate Katherine Heigl), Due Date (really not funny at all, however implausible that seems), and Grown Ups (unbelievably, Adam Sandler films just keep getting worse). So, lots of bad movies and one good one, but god damn its nice to go to the movies in a clean movie theater with a quiet audience.
Went to the two Michelin star classic French fine dining restaurant Petrus last night. Amazing experience, gorgeous restaurant on the top floor overlooking all of Hong Kong. Harp player, classic French motif. My dinner companion was a bottle of 1978 Chateau Petrus. Man it was delicious.
Every other meal I've had Sushi. Great sushi here, all the hard to find stuff I like; aji, uni, toro, ama ebi, you name it. Of course the gotcha is its way too expensive. Like $25 per piece of Sushi (not served in pairs like normal - one piece). Ouch.
Tomorrow heading over to Macao. My fool-proof roulette system will surely break the bank at each and every casino. I don't want to give away all of the details of my system, but, I'll let you know that it was originally developed by a Mr. Wesley Snipes in 1992's "Passenger 57".
I'll post some pics when I upload them.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Zimbabwe - Elephant Safari
Having once seen a "When Animals Attack" on Fox back in the day of an elephant rampaging through a zoo killing everyone in sight, as well as this video:
I was a little leary of an elephant backed safari. Luckily Jake the elephant decided not to kill us in cold blood and instead just walked around and ate trees. We got off lucky.
The vicious stare of Jake the elephant:
The murderous pachyderms lining up for their next round of hapless victims:
An elephant with the "ooga booga" strapped to his back. Roughly translated: "death saddle":
Jake lashing out for an unsuspected attack:
Clearly a recipe for disaster:
Jake stuffing what I assume to be a severed human hand into his mouth of razor sharp teeth:
I was a little leary of an elephant backed safari. Luckily Jake the elephant decided not to kill us in cold blood and instead just walked around and ate trees. We got off lucky.
The vicious stare of Jake the elephant:
The murderous pachyderms lining up for their next round of hapless victims:
An elephant with the "ooga booga" strapped to his back. Roughly translated: "death saddle":
Jake lashing out for an unsuspected attack:
Clearly a recipe for disaster:
Jake stuffing what I assume to be a severed human hand into his mouth of razor sharp teeth:
Zimbabwe - Victoria Falls Hotel
Zimbabwe is pretty much a shithole. Sorry Zimbabwe. You can tell immediately how much more depressed the economy of Zimbabwe is than the neighboring countries Zambia and Botswana. They abandoned their country's currency recently due to hyperinflation and now just use the American dollar, which they are clearly trying to apply their habits of inflation to. Unfortunately, assuming that the country doesn't just start producing counterfeit US dollars (which I wouldn't put past them, honestly), they'll quickly run out of currency to exchange. A total mess.
The hotel we stayed was clearly the nicest hotel in Zimbabwe, and from appearance is quite attractive. The management was horrible, though, and the rooms were as well. There was a solid day's worth of fun things to do in Zimbabwe. Unfortunately we were there for three days.
Sunday, October 31, 2010
South Africa - Lion Sands - Lions
Lions are like big huge housecats. Super lazy, lay around all the time and eat. I think the big difference is that a lion can kill you super easy (if he just wasn't so sleepy), but a housecat has a much tougher time of it. The housecat would need to position itself just exactly right over your sleeping face, or step in front of you at just the right time so you trip and fall out a tall window.
Landon had no concern of driving right up next to a feeding lion. It wasn't even because he had a huge elephant gun right in front of him on the dash, as he barely even had the case unzipped. It might have been because this dude Eddie sits on a little chair bolted to the front of the car, and Eddie would clearly be the first one eaten, giving Landon more than enough time to carefully back the Land Rover out of any danger.
According to the story told, the big dead hippo was killed in a hippo e hippo fight, and the lions just ate the loser as a meal of opportunity.
This lion was having a tough time chewing through the thick hide of the hippo, so he had the brilliant idea to get to the juicy center through the butthole.
Landon had no concern of driving right up next to a feeding lion. It wasn't even because he had a huge elephant gun right in front of him on the dash, as he barely even had the case unzipped. It might have been because this dude Eddie sits on a little chair bolted to the front of the car, and Eddie would clearly be the first one eaten, giving Landon more than enough time to carefully back the Land Rover out of any danger.
According to the story told, the big dead hippo was killed in a hippo e hippo fight, and the lions just ate the loser as a meal of opportunity.
This lion was having a tough time chewing through the thick hide of the hippo, so he had the brilliant idea to get to the juicy center through the butthole.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)