This time, in talking to my dad, I found out that my grandfather was hired as a grave digger in 1918/19. He was probably around 16/17 at that time, and my dad remembers stories about how they would have a funeral procession (Goa is very catholic) to bury someone who had died, come back to the village church and find another body ready for burial.

I’m glad H5N1 was not as brutal in its virulence.

I was afraid it wouldn’t work, because they had stopped doing stuff like that. But then the guy must have realised I would be too much trouble to shake down for a bribe and let me go.

Maybe next time I’ll carry my film SLR and watch their heads explode. Which might be fun, and on the other hand they might try to ding me for the lens and I wouldn’t want that.

The jet lag seemed a lot worse on this trip. I couldn’t stay awake on Thursday or Friday after lunch. And it was raining too heavily so I didn’t get to go out or do anything outside. My nephews (one of whom is in pre-school; the other in 2nd grade) and sister were sick with colds and given how much I was sneezed around and upon, I think I’m currently incubating a super-virus. Feni seems to help a little.

Sunday, I went for mass in the village church. It’s been all snazzed up, with a new paint job, gold paint on the altars, faux marble wall panels depicting events from the bible and bird guards on the rafters. Goa’s a rich state (second-highest per-capita income in India: Rs 28,000 [around $600], compared to Rs 11,000 for India as a whole. Uttar Pradesh is the lowest at Rs 5,500 [around $120]) and it shows. But I missed the sparrows that used to chirp and flit around during services. It was also heartwarming to hear church-goers break out into spontaneous two and three-part harmonies on the hymns.

The homily was interesting. The priest started out with a general fable about a zen monk and his disciple. The one about how your possessions end up owning you. And then went on to something else that I forgot, because he finished with rant about a statistic: every week, their office is receiving two applications for marriage annulments and he went on about how the parish (second largest in Goa, about 10,000 people) has been doing so much to prepare couples for marriage, organizing a compulsory two day marriage preparation course and despite that, people were wanting annulments, so here he was entreating the parish to pray (yes, that’s right, pray) for the couples to be strong in the face of their troubles.

Grrr. Seem to me things will get a lot worse before they start to get better.

I felt like I was driving through on of those road trip sets: straight roads, no traffic, blue skies, strategically placed prop clouds. And at any moment, I was expecting either a hitch-hiker or a car-chase to start up.

Sadly, the universe disappointed in that respect. But the views? Picture perfect.

Mount Shasta started getting visible along the side, and then I was driving towards this majestic snow-capped mountain.

I drove up to Lake Shasta, had breakfast and then walked along the dam.

I had just finished reading The World Without Us by Alan Weisman, so it was interesting to see the leaks and repairs in the concrete retaining walls of the dam and easy to imagine the scenarios from the book. Standing up on the causeway was inspiring. We designed and built this. It was also humbling to see that given half a chance, nature would take it back.

That was it. My very first road trip. I had a lot of fun and would definitely do this again, preferably with a driving companion. Anybody interested?

The drive up to the gorge along the Old Columbia Highway was very pretty. I got lost around the town of Troutdale and had to dig out my GPS to get back on track.

I drove up to the visitor center, with stunning (and very familiar) views of the gorge.

I stopped at a few falls and hiked up. The signs were correct in that the distance to the top was 0.3 miles. What the sign neglected to mention was that it was about 600ft up. It was fun speed-walking past people who did not expect that

I watched the sun set over the river and then drove back to Portland.

Portland was fun. I got there late, around 8:00pm after around 11 hours of driving (14 hours after I started). I called my friend and we went and had dinner at McMenamins. Their Cobb Salad with Cajun Spiced Chicken was barely spicy enough to keep my taste buds happy. Their Terminator Ale got me nice and mellow for a walk to Powell’s city of books. Which was amazing. I was tired enough that I buy anything right then: one of the rare occasions where I walked out of a bookstore without buying anything. We then walked down to Voodoo Donuts. It was close to midnight by then, and luckily for us the place was empty and I got to take my time on my selection.

I had the bacon maple donut. It put just enough sugar into my system that I could speedwalk back to where I was staying (on NW 22nd & NW Flanders).

I woke up late on Tuesday and walked down NW 23rd to have brunch at St Honore a cute and very busy bakery. It was a nice day and I got to sit outside in the sun with a book, a quiche and a pot of tea until it was time to join my friends writing group at Fat Straw on the South East side.

I explored a few cafés and more patisseries and not to mention pubs and more pubs.

Ok, I ate a lot and drank a lot. I also walked a lot.

Once after peeking at a map and seeing that Washington Park was only about 4 blocks away from my guesthouse, I decided to walk there to the rose garden. Unfortunately the map did not mention that those 4 blocks were all uphill. Fortunately, I walk in San Francisco so I was used to the hills. It was fun overtaking the group of mid-westerners who had also decided to hike up to the park and were taking a breather at an intersection.

The rose garden unfortunately was bare. It was still winter there, not a single rose to be seen. So I took a picture of the willow tree.

The next day I walked down to the Classical Chinese Gardens.

More pictures and notes to follow…

I’d decided to take my time getting to Portland and drive along 101. I was driving the detour along the Avenue of the Giants when a road sign attracted my attention so I backtracked to confirm what I’d thought I’d seen:

I was a little hungry by then, so I decided to stop in the town and have some brunch.

There was also a sign for the Miranda Gardens Resort which I found amusing for some reason .

I stayed on the Avenue of the Giants detour and the drive was stunning. Driving through a sometimes narrow road lined by towering trees, sunlight dappling through the branches and the cool wind with just a touch of morning dew. It was an experience enhanced by the fact that I seemed to be the only car on the road. I would be driving along, with only tire noise to advertise my presence (thanks Prius!) and birds would be hopping along the side of the road. One blue-jay even dive-bombed my car. And then I broke through to the coast.

I thought it would remain just that gorgeous. But then the clouds started massing, and by the time I stopped at the wild Elk viewing point (which was flooded, so I couldn’t see any elk), it had begun to get dark.

And then start to rain.

I was still the only car on the road at this point. And the rain was making visibility so bad that I decided to cut over to I5 along 199. Yes, I drove 199 in the pouring rain. And I did get a bit nervous when I would go miles and miles without seeing any other vehicle go by in either direction. Most of the towns I drove through seemed closed – the stores looked opened (the lights were on) but I couldn’t see anyone around. Maybe the rain was keeping them away. Or the fact that it was Monday and they hadn’t woken up yet. In any case, by the time I got to I5, the sky had begun clearing to the west, giving me some more dramatic pictures.

The only thing I have to say about my drive on I5 is: I heart cruise control. I don’t know if I could have driven that section without it.

I noticed something strange that happened to me as I was driving. When I first started out, leaving San Francisco, I could feel each mile. I would look at the speedometer and it seemed that every time I looked, I’d only gone a mile or so. (Along 101 north of Novato, I stopped looking at the GPS distance to destination because the drive was so stunning.) On I5, with cruise control on, that changed. Now every time I looked, I’d travelled 20-40 miles and it seemed like they were going by in a flash. There wasn’t too much traffic here either – just big rigs that stayed in the right lane.

I got to Portland 14 hours after I’d started, showered and met my friend for dinner at McMenamins, where half a pint of beer almost put me to sleep so I made an early night of it.

More pictures and notes to follow…

Other than the noise of the movie and the truck the four year old has starting pushing around the house, its quiet outside. It’s amazing how much difference that quiet seems to make. This does not seem like civilization – I can hear traffic from miles away and there are honest-to-goodness vendors who walk by shouting out their wares (mostly fish at this time of the day). Of course, I can also hear every word that the neighbors say and know in exquisite detail exactly how wrongly the mornings tea was made.

I’ve got here Sunday afternoon and it’s been a blast so far. I landed in Singapore for a stop over and found that my checked in suitcase had set off the alarm, and found a very amusing (to me) sticker on the outside:

I can just picture the suitcase in the machine now: oh no!, I’m all alone in the big, bad, x-ray machine. Help! Help! and the TSA agent pulling the bag out and saying There, there, little suitcase. I’ll just open you up and check you out and put you back with the other suitcases. See? That was painless.

Singapore was amazing. I guess I liked it more this time around because the last time I was here, I was on a business trip and did not have a relaxed time around. December is the rainy season in Singapore, so my plan for walking around the city (there are 5 museums within a 5 block radius) fell apart. I wanted to stay awake and start beating the jetlag, so I signed up for a guided tour.

The tour didn’t start till 2:00pm, so I went down to Orchard road and wandered around.

Orchard road was an eye-opener. Good lord, they have really taken the Christmas shopping spirit to heart. My favorite part was when I dashed into a shop to get away from a downpour and got lost wondering around. The shops are like twisty little mazes, all alike. And when I found myself at the very bottom, next to the garage, there was a little sign at the bottom of the escalator:

The guided tour was as expected. Most of the group were like me – stopping over in Singapore before catching the next flight leaving at an unearthly hour. The guide was a die-hard Singaporean: Singapore was the greatest country in the world and the Singaporean government was the best and was always looking to help out native Singaporean citizens.

The regularly scheduled program followed with frequent informercials.

One stop on the tour was the botanical gardens, where christmas trees decorated by the various embassies in Singapore were exhibited:

The next day I left for Mumbai (or Bombay as I knew it as). I was also excited about flying into Mumbai for the first time at a decent hour (ok, the whole leaving at 4:00 am wasn’t so good, but the arriving at 10:00 am – I was all for that).

There was a giant fish pond at the airport that stopped me in my tracks.

Luckily, I slept on the way and once we started our descent, opened the window shades and looked outside.

I guess LA must have looked like this before the Clean Air act.
My sister had been to Delhi for a conference and she was telling me that when they went outside, their eyes started burning and they found it hard to breathe. Mumbai is a coastal city, so the ocean breezes keeps things from getting that bad.

I fell in love with it and was sad to see it go nearly extinct. Fortunately, a local nursery started selling live plants and now I see it almost everywhere in Goa. Unfortunately, I don’t know what it’s called. This is what the plant looks like. If you recognize the plant and know of a US source, please let me know.

Next, the toilets: I forgot who had asked me this, and the question was whether we had the Indian style squatters or the western style sit-downers.
Well, Indians are smart. What we have are the combos. In light blue (or pink).

If you want to squat, you leave the seat up. If you want to sit, you put the seat down. The fuzzy cover is optional extra.

And now for some cow-porn. Yes, they do hang out in the middle of the street and neck in public. There was even some tongue action, which may not be completely clear from my vantage point.

This bouquet was on the buffet table at my nieces party.

I was impressed at the realism and detail in it.

Onions, radishes, egg-plant and beet root never looked so pretty before.

Other misc shots: I snapped a squirrel who had come over to sample some of the chikoos:

visited 7 states (14%)
Create your own visited map of The United States

And the vast swathes of India I haven’t been to:

visited 12 states (34.2%)
Create your own visited map of India

And this, is absolutely ridiculous:

visited 8 Countries (3.55%)
Create your own visited map of The World

The other thing I’ve noticed is how he mixes up languages. At first he was just mixing up nouns. So, if a sentence was spoken mostly in English, the nouns in it would be in Konkani (or vice versa). Now, he’s starting to construct gerunds in Konkani (which does not have gerunds) to great hilarity by all.

An example of the first one: instead of “The spoon is on the table”, he’ll say “the culer is on the mesa”. And of the second one, “I am vaching the paper” (for I’m reading the paper).

His brother, who is two speaks mostly in English, and responds to Konkani. It’ll be fun to see how he develops.