I drove up to the Columbia River Gorge on the Thursday before I left. My friend warned me that the traffic would be terrible and I should expect delays.
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Category Archives: travel
Road trip part 3
Road trip part 2
lj-mood: idle
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.
Trip news
Finally got some time to write something instead of just enough time to upload photos to facebook. One sister and her family is away at her in-laws. My nephews are watching Kiki’s Delivery Service and mom is frying some fish in the kitchen. Continue reading
Travel tales…
In which I try to answer the questions what kind of toilets do we use in Goa?, do cows really walk the streets?, can vegetables be flowers? and where I try to see if anyone can identify a flower/plant that I’m very fond of. Continue reading
Posted in travel
I’m a travellin’ man…
This is motivating me to make some travel plans…
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
Language
My nephew, who’s 4 is growing up in a bi-lingual household. And I have been watching him for a while now: he has this notion in his head that he has to speak Konkani to certain people, and English to others. For instance, with my dad (his granddad), he’ll only speak in Konkani, even if my dad says something in English. With me, he’ll only speak in English, even if I reply back in Konkani.
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.
Almsot there … part 3
wherein I discover that Mumbai is not what it used to be.
Almost there … part 2
wherein I get to Frankfurt and wander around and reminisce…
Almost there…
Greetings from Mumbai. There is apparently free wi-fi here, and I can connect to the access point and that’s it. So this may probably not get posted until much later.
It’s 3:00 am in Mumbai and it was pouring when we landed. There was so much water on the runway that the pilot used reverse thrust to slow down the 747 and did not hit the brakes until we got almost to the end of the runway. My travel adventure (part 1) hasn’t ended yet. I have another flight to catch (this one, to Goa’s short – only about an hour) and then maybe an hour’s taxi ride to my sisters house in Santa Cruz, Goa.
The last time I had a chance to sit and open the laptop was in Chicago. Where, (naturally), the United flight to Frankfurt was delayed (only by two hours). I wasn’t in any state to do anything in Chicago, so I just sat there watching a 747 come close enough to kiss the terminal as it pulled into its gate. Everyone ooh’ed and aah’ed appropriately and then we stood around and watched for a bit and then drifted off.
As we boarded, I noticed that some of the passengers were especially bitchy and realised that maybe some of my fellow SFO-ORD-FRA re-routees were happy with having to dash to the airport on short notice. Me – I just wanted to get it over with. That didn’t leave any time or energy to be bitchy about anything.
Chicago-Frankfurt, the captain was very apologetic about the delay. Turns out that the plane was delayed getting in from Beijing, and he said that they had loaded up extra fuel and would be travelling a little faster than normal (at 0.86 mach) to try and make up for any lost time.
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