Yule Tide Log

This is an entry wholy on that TV channel that on Christmas Day shows strictly a crackling fireplace, for hours, with Christmas carols in the background.

What is worse than having on the stupid Christmas-morning flaming log show on TV in the background?

Why, actually watching it.

But it gets worse.

My Dad TIVOED it.

For an HOUR!

As if he would watch it later.

BUT HE DID!

MORE THAN ONCE!

Stupid: The Christmas crackling log show. (Oh and rewatching any portion of the Christmas crackling log show.)

Cool: My Dad's childlike joy in something so simple. (And his thought that it should really be sponsered by Duralog.)

By the way the video is on a forty five second video loop in case you wanted to know.

Do You Have The Time (Zone)?

When you live on a ship, you change time zones as the ship travels east or west, so very frequently. You become accustom to checking and making sure your watch is right for your current time zone.

When you do this on land… you have lived on ships too long.

I did this today, either out of habit or the concern my house has traveled between time zones since I last wore my watch.

Let’s all hope it’s the former.

Working Girl

So lately, I am working in one of the 40 something twin tower buildings in Century City, Los Angeles.

Today was Halloween... which was not actually the strangest part of the day.

Today, I waited twenty minutes to take an elevator down nine flights, from the NINTH FLOOR, so I could wait fifteen minutes to take an elevator up fourteen, to the FORTEENTH FLOOR. (For security reasons you can only take stairwells going down and for big building reasons, certain elevators only hit certain floors, meaning the elevator that stops at the ninth floor does not stop at the fourteenth.) This is why I hate cities.... it was a half an hour commute to effectively get up five stories. That is stupid.

The floors are emphasized because post ship life, I have been referring to them all day as DECK nine and DECK fourteen. (The guy in the elevator laughed at me saying, "So I am guessing you worked on the ships.")

In talking to my sister today about big city work life, I casually mentioned something which I actually wound up finding fascinating. You can tell the women assistants from the real career women by what they wear. The assistants flaunt their looks; the career women dress them down. It is an interesting psychological and sociological statement. I am sure this has been discussed by countless liberal arts women's studies programs across the country. I still find it fascinating.

The scariest part of the day was the mandatory evacuation. (Crammed with hundreds of people in a high rise stairwell made me wonder if that was what the World Trade Center stairwells were like. On a much less serious note, I also noticed stairwells on land only have handrails on one side. The random thoughts that go through one's mind.)

Strange was the people I saw who may or may not have been in costume. Is that woman supposed to look like Foxy Cleopatra or does she always dress like that? Who wears a red turtle neck under a blue shirt.... oh wait... he is supposed to look like Spiderman.

But one costume was clear. When I got to the bottom of the stairs, Moses was holding the door open...

Stupid: Spending a half hour to effectively go up five stories.
Cool: Situationally fitting costumes.

My mother, of course, will now worry about my saftey working high-rise.

(Last week it was the person who was arrested on my flight to JFK. I do my best to provide her with an unusual variety of things to worry about.)

An Image of Odessa

It is strange to wander into a cultural tradition, when you least expect it. I was mundanely crossing a bridge the other day in Odessa.

It did not pop into my mind, in flashing neon "Tradition Ahead." Of course not.

The thought was, "Oh, someone left their bike lock here." And there is another.

And there is another....

And I look up, across the length of the bridge and realize the entire bridge is lined with locks.



(The dark line 3/4ths the way up the fence is entirely locks.)

At this point, it is clear, people did not just leave these locks here accidentally. This is a statement.



So I began to study the locks. Some of them had no markings. Some of them had markings long worn bare. Some were ornately engraved with care and time.



The writing was mostly Cyrillic, which obscured the message initially.



But the presence of a date marking seemed consistent.

Then the prevelance of two words, unique on each lock.... not words, it dawned on me, names.

And then of course, the symbols, common with my culture, gave away much of the meaning.



These were symbols of love etched on steel symbolizing union, strength and unbreakable bond.

By the time I left the bridge, entriged by a tradition I had never known before, it was clear to me that the locks were engraved the names of those married and the date of their union.

The web later told me it is a common Russian wedding tradition followed by tossing the key into a river, so the bond is forever.

Cool: I stumbled on to a bridge, lined by railing, hung heavy with locks...How Romantic!

My Local Bar Gets Around

I mean, it is always on deck six mid-ship, but deck six mid-ship can be any where in the world.

Today we are outside Poland.

I walk into the local bar and it is the usual crowd, a mix of people I know extremely well and a few guests on for an eleven day cruise.

I get tapped on the shoulder by a guest, who says, “I know this is going to sound crazy, but what is your name?”

I reply in utter astonishment to a guy I went to high school with, “Not Scott Sterling.” Twelve thousand miles away from home, on a boat outside of Poland, I ran into Scott Sterling, someone I knew in high school and still have friends in common with.

The world really is a lot smaller the further you travel…

Are You A Real Traveler?

How can you tell a real traveler?


After 23 hours of traveling, 3 flights and five hours of sleep...


The first thing I did upon arriving in Bergen, Norway on July 6th, was drop the suitcase in the room, grab the camera, and go.


I have real affection for Norway. It is beautiful and charming in a European/High Rockies sort of way. The architecture is European and the scenery has the feel of the Rockies, if you are more familiar with America than Norway.


Norway's topography is extremely vertical. Between infamous Norwegian pines gracing quiet hills and strong granite cliffs, there is always something pleasing in the background of pictures.



Often there is serene water in the foreground.


First, my tiny and cute hotel room:





Then the beautiful harbor:








This was a cool fountain in the town center, water started at the highest point and flowed through this little maze.





And a sign, cause I love signs. I need some Gratis Cube Puff.





Bergen on July 6th, after traveling so far, is a time warp. Already you have no idea what time it is, cause your body is on one time and you are physically in another.


Add to it the fact that it never gets dark. They claim the sun sets. But it never gets dark. (It is extremely north.) It twists your mind and becomes completely surreal.


I looked outside my room at 1:30 am. The hotel was on a busy city intersection. Notice the word was. When I retired to my room that evening there were tons of cars going this way and that and people walking in all directions. It was noisy, like a city normally is.


At 1:30am, the view from my window had a completely different feel. With the lush green and warm light, it looked like maybe a mid-summer twilight. In the peace, though, there was a tang of the eerie. The streets were deserted and it was completely, ear ringingly, silent out. It was both beautiful and somewhat out of the aptly named Twilight Zone.


The next day we were in Eidfjord which practically defines picturesque. The Norwegian Fjords, very narrow sea inlets straddled by steep granite mountains, are a must see for the serious scenic traveler. It is cool, even at the peak of summer, but its beauty and the endless day make it an amazing destination.


I should let the pictures do the talking:




Unfortunately the low cloud cover masks the towering high of the mountains.





My home


I just love this picture. Somehow it define serenity.






(Though I don’t know who is jumping into that %$*^# cold water.)





There were ten mountain streams pouring into the fjords everywhere you looked. I took this picture for the guy fishing off the dock.


I see trolls and I just need to get my picture taken with them:





And lastly, modern art. This statue stood at the center of what could barely be called a town (a few restaurants, a market and a gas station). I love her. She might look strange to an American, but her features are definitively Scandinavian. Her brow is bent into a pronounced V. Her eyes are large with full upper lids, and that button nose is a tell tale sign.





This is my friend who is Swedish and female and therefore named Anna, like seemingly all other Swedish women. (She would kill me if she knew I did this.)


But look at her and then at the sculpture.




I think the similarity is striking.


At the moment we are sailing out of Russia and I reminded by the rocking ship that I must get some sleep…

Maybe I Should Travel With Another Airline?

Is it a bad sign when the airline asks you for your death certificate?

They Really Do This?

I am at my parents' home at 8pm on a Saturday night.

They, my parents, are reading entries of the dictionary to one another.

Yes, really.

It is amazing I turned out relatively normal.

(Before you protest, please note the "relatively.")

They are researching the difference between underwhelmed, whelmed and overwhelmed if you are interested.

Perspective on the Downside of Travel

As I sit here at 1:45am, wide awake and ready to start my day, I am annoyed. Jet-lag is stupid.

But then, in a moment of ‘the glass is half full,’ I realize what a luxury and how cool it is to have traveled around the world.

Petra

(OK OK, I am way behind. I think this is from two weeks ago.)

As I sit here watching the Suez Canal go by, high sandy stone banks, speckled by long abandoned huts, a short length of green lots, palm trees, primitive basic shelter and a central mosque, followed past that by nothing… a wasteland of dead sand, in the distance sudden steep
slops… I have come to write about Petra.

But instead I am a bit inspired to talk about Egypt. I spent two weeks in Egypt exactly ten years ago at this time. What strikes me most as I watch it travel by again, is the smell. I can only guess that what I smelling is the sand. It is distinctive, and indeed the smell of Egypt.

The middle east is a wasteland of dead land. An infinite, at least mentally, stretch of sand.

Nothing. It is like the moon and equally supportive of life.



The Egyptian Civilization that built the pyramids, is not an indication of what this land’s people is capable of. It is an indication of what this land’s people is capable of assuming water is available.

It is beyond me how the Bedouins survive. They must know of hidden water sources. The stories of biblical times are so much more inspiring when the hardship of this land is taken into account.

It is amazing to me that the Middle East exists at all. But of course, they exist because of the black gold beneath their feet. Without it, they would be little more than the roaming nomads from which they descend. The land does not really provide for anything, and survival itself is an
outstanding feat, forget innovation and artistic creation.

Artistic creation with what?

But the black gold at their feet has allowed them to enter the western world, with perfect streets, and malls, and Cadillac’s, and Starbuck’s… at least in the major lucrative cities. I think that the westernize countries, Jordon, United Arab Emirates, Oman, (these are the ones I have
visited) I think they will all play a growing influence in our culture. Not because they control oil, Jordon actually has no oil at all. They will enter our culture because their people finally, freed by the wealth of oil, can spend time on the arts and engineering that they never had time for before.

I look forward to seeing their creations. I think Dubai is a stunning example of what’s possible. Its architecture is a dazzling illustration of what the future holds.

But let me revert to the concept, artistic creation out of what? Surrounded by sand and small rocks, the rare tree, artistic creation out of what. Perhaps the people were simply not innovative enough to create from what they had. I mean after all the ancient Egyptians managed to create out of just rocks, right?

Artistic creation out of what.

And that there is the magic of Petra. In a land where all that existed was sand, rocks, and the walls of the hills, the people of ancient Jordon created functional works that catered to their need for shelter from the heat, and they created them from the walls of the hills.

OK, that sounds like they found some caves.

But no, they carved elaborate buildings into the soft sandstone of the rock like hills to form a city unlike any other in the world.



Can you believe it? Carved from the landscapes stoney walls, an elaborate building of colonnades and figures.



I think that this is proof, wherever man is found, if mere survival is supported, art will sprout, as if from a thaw.

The word “building” actually wrong. What is found in Petra is really quite the opposite. It is a deconstruction. To build is to create by assemble of parts. This is to create by disassembly of parts. So far as I can recall, it is unique in the world for this. It is a structure of shelter
by disassembly. There are a few other works by disassembly, Mount Rushmore comes to mind. But I cannot think of another elaborate work of disassembly for shelter and functional use.

This “building” is called the treasury. It is known by the western world for its cameo in one of the Indiana Jones films. (Notice the obligatory presence of a camel.)



It stands, or rather is immersed in rose-colored walls carved by annual ages of flooding rainfall, followed by eleven months of drought.

(Me in the ravine leading to the treasury.)



What shocked and thrilled me, was this building, The Treasury, was not a lone marvel in the Jordanian desert. It is one structure of an entire city carved into the gorgeous veined walls of the hills.



A city, each building ornate.

This people, with nothing, sand, rock, and dead land flourished into artistic geniuses despite only having only the walls of the hills at hand.

I think this is an apartment complex.





This, by far, is on my list of places to see. I often say, I am glad I went, but I would not make an effort to go back.

I would definitely make an effort to see Petra.

I will see Petra again. If ever you find yourself in the Middle East, see the Pyramids and see Petra. I put it above Jerusalem. I have seen many of the ancient cities, Pompeii, Herculeum, Ephasis… and I say again, see Petra. Pompeii, Herculeum and Ephasis are built cities.

Petra is a carved city.

The landscape is actually quite like Zion, in Utah. Tall, iron reddened walls, organically threaded by variations in time, shaped by rare rains.

The rock itself is awe inspiring beauty. My pictures do not do it justice.



My time is running short, and my blog is running long.

In short, unbelievably, knock-your-socks-off, strike you dead, earth shatteringly cool, the ancient city of Petra.

Absolutely nothing stupid about it.


Some more pictures...

The manditory ancient city amphitheater. (I have been to a lot of ancient cities and an amphitheater is a given.)

Name That City

I am going to describe a city and I want you to guess what city I am talking about.

There are miles of high-end shops, like LaCosta and Coach, and of course who can live without Starbucks, in malls with marble floors. On the streets there are Bentley’s, Rolls Royce’s and Hummers with dark tinted windows.

Do you have a city in mind?

I will continue.

The city is defined by the competition between developers to out do one another. Each building is bigger, grander, taller than the next, each offering one more high end item of special appeal. The city is growing so fast it is mind boggling. It is in the middle of a desert where water is a considerable issue, yet there are often accents of beautiful water intensive landscaping. Air conditioning exists in EVERY building.

Do you have a better idea what city I am talking about?

There are amazing hotels with suites for as much as $15,000 a night. Of course one of those hotel’s has a revolving restaurant on top featuring a buffet which views beyond the spectacle, miles of single family homes which have been build in just the last ten years.

Are you sure you know which city I am talking about?

All the street signs are in English.

Still think you know what city I am talking about?

All street signs are also in Arabic.



Suddenly stumped? I will give you another hint.

I have been there recently.

Now do you know?

My last hint is I mentioned it in my last entry.

Dubai is such a fascinating place I hardly know where to start.

I suppose I will start with the basics. (Imagine me taking on the drone, monotone voice of instructional movies of the past, complete with the ticking sound of the projector.) Dubai is a city of 1.4 million in the United Arab Emirates on the Saudi Arabian Peninsula.

OK, basics done.

The similarities between Las Vegas and Dubai are surprising, aren’t they?

Are they building enough?



Dubai is a lot like Las Vegas, which is ironic, because in a lot of ways it is the antithesis of Las Vegas.

Dubai, overwhelmingly Muslim, limits the sale of alcohol making it only available in very exclusive locations. I seriously doubt any gambling is allowed. There are far more burqas seen than mid-rifts. And there are no sex-appeal ads. (Well… of course there are. It is just that they dare to show women’s forearms. How Risque!)

I love Dubai. It is so culturally rich and fascinating you can taste it, come to think of it, literally. Like any wealthy city there is not shortage of high-end worldly restaurants, but I don’t think you will find any pork dishes.

The one aspect of Dubai that really reminds me of Vegas is the fast, aggressive, competitive building projects constantly in the works. It is notoriously referred to as a construction zone, no area specifically, the entire city. Dubai is currently building, what for some period of time, will be the world’s tallest building, 190 stories. It boasts the world’s only indoor ski slope. (I thought this would be a little bunny hill. It is not. It is many stories high… and a delightful break from the shopping available at that mall. It is that big gray projection out of the side of that mall.)





Its crowning architectural achievement is the Burj al Arab (or Arab Tower). The Burj, a mere 27 stories high, is designed in the shape of a wind-full sail. In the mast area, the entire atrium is open the entire 27 stories. You have seen this building, but perhaps for only seconds as Tiger Woods struck a golf ball off the helipad in some ad, or Agasie played tennis on that same helipad.





The suites in the Burj start at $1700 per night, with the penthouse suite a mere $15,000 per night. It is entirely booked most of the year. To enter the hotel, you need an appointment, usually booked a month in advance. (Hence no interior pictures from me.) And by appointment, I mean reservation, for at very least high tea, which starts at $70.

But all this grandeur must be fueled by something. In Vegas it is gambling. In Dubai, it is oil.
(This is one of the reasons why I like Dubai better. There is no seedy element.)

But it is a strange city made up of almost entirely foreigners. The natives found black gold beneath their feet, you don’t think they were going to pick up a hammer themselves do you?

The city is strikingly India, from all parts, and Pakistanis. There are also noticeable communities from various African countries and many areas of Asia.

Dubai is a promise land for many foreigners. It boasts jobs at all levels and educational possibilities less available elsewhere.

But as a working promiseland, it has a noticeable feature. The men out number the women, significantly. (I don’t know the numbers… but just walking around, you notice more men than women by far.)

And lets talk about the women and their burqas. (If anyone can find out for me why burqa are black… I will be forever grateful. This intrigues me and yet I cannot find the answer.) Dubai, as the most progressive, multicultural apex of the Muslim world, had women in all forms of what I would call, Muslim dress. I have been corrected though. A Muslim man argued that this is not Muslim dress, it is cultural dress. No where in the Koran does it dictate this particular extent of covering. It is Muslim cultural practice (or so was his argument.) I disagree slightly. I think is a Muslim sect practice. Specific garb is also important to the Mennonite Christian sect and the Jewish Hassidic sect.

I think it is naïve for us to want women to abandon this garb. We are imposing our culture on them. Many of them do not want to dress like westerners. They do not see it as freeing. They feel overly revealed. (I am 100% against the eye covering. I think that is just ridiculous, unpractical and makes women subservient.)

I was given the example of going to a nude beach. Everyone there may be nude. But I would not be comfortable wearing nothing. It is not something I am used to. So even though it is perfectly acceptable to be nude, I may choose to stay clothed. If women are more comfortable in their traditional garb, who am I to protest.

As the Middle East moves culturally more to the west, women are gaining the choice. As long as women are free to make their own choice, I don’t care what that choice is.

So let’s say you need a burqa. I walked into something which resembled a WalMart called Carreflours. One of the funnier things, but natural I suppose, is the fact you can by burqas off the rack at this superstore. I guess they have to buy them somewhere. (There were high end burqa stores too.)

In the Carreflours you could pay with at least five different currencies at the checkout counter. (I wish now I had made a note of which currencies.) I naturally paid in dollars. I paid in dollars everywhere I shopped in Dubai, the bookstore, the pharmacy, the department store, etc. No one ever hesitated to accept US dollars. And consider this, how many American’s do you think visit Dubai? Yet they readily, like most of the rest of the world, accept dollars. It is odd.

I spoke English to everyone I encountered and found each person fluent.

I suppose they have to order their Tall Mocha Latte’s at Starbucks too.

Or burgers and donuts.

Cape Town Pictures

OK, I finally uploaded my Cape Town pictures. (It has only been a month.)

First, the pictures I failed to take. I really wish I took more/better pictures of the fences to illustrate what I meant in my last blog about vicious. Next time.

As if there will be a next time. Cape Town is an amazing place, but I would not go out of my way to get there. And lets be honest, every way to get there is out of the way.

Cape Town's amazing central feature, Table Mountain, with clouds spilling over the top, as seen from the Waterfront.



And the view from Table Mountain, complete with me, to prove I was there.



That, by the way, is what I look like after thirty hours on planes and in airports, at what is four am in my brain, when my hotel room is not ready.

Now some quirky pictures. In every port, there is a defining trinket being sold to tourists. For example, in the Amazon, stuff piranhas are sold, in Venice it's Carnival masks, in Dublin it is all things Guinness.

Well in Cape Town, there are lamps. Lamps, you ask? Yes, lamps. But of course as the representative trinket from Cape Town, there is something unique about these lamps. Decorated by engraving, they are actually ostrich eggs with a bulb inside. Here is a group of them.



And here is one close up so you can appreciate the engraving.



Now onto the strange. The woman who walked into the public bathroom as I was taking this picture surely thought I was crazy. (I mean wouldn't you be weary of someone taking pictures in a public bathroom?) But I had to take a picture of this "sink."

In the bathroom were multiple faucets over one single inclined slab of well polished marble. Water running from the facets ran down the incline to a barely noticeable gap between the splashboard and the slab, the drain. It was just an interesting concept for a sink.



And finally, the choice sign from Cape Town.



Apparently the parking requires commitment.

Coming soon... Dubai.

Cape Town

Cape Town is a physically astonishingly beautiful but politically and socially troubled. It is clear that life is improving (mostly evident by new building and the maintained infrastructure) but I think it is also clear that it is not improving as fast as the public would like. The upper class is still mostly white. The office workers definitely seemed disproportionately white while service jobs were entirely black. Where I stayed, it was a modern metropolitan area like anywhere in Europe or America, complete with four coffee shops per square block. But outside of town are shack towns of mostly immigrants fleeing bad conditions in other countries.

In my traveling of the world, I have decided there are only two types of places in the world, places people are emigrating from, and the places they are immigrating to. Everywhere falls into one of these two categories. Cape Town is a place people are immigrating to. Many Europeans, experiencing extraordinarily favorable exchange rates and longing the marvelous year-round warm weather, are retiring to Cape Town. Importantly, Cape Town has summer during Europe’s winter, meaning it is a great place for European “snow-birds.”

On the other side is the mass emigration from the rest of Africa. People fleeing social, political, economic or religious problems in their homelands get to Cape Town and learn it is not the panacea. There are so many more immigrants than jobs that many places post in their windows “No Jobs,” meaning they are not hiring and people should not ask. Jobless and penniless, they build shack towns out of debris where there is space, outside of town. Crime is out of control in South Africa, and it is understandable. There is a huge population that is simply hopeless. No money, no jobs, no place to live, no way of feeding themselves, crime seems the only way to survive.

We in California complain and complain about our immigrants. We have no idea how good we have it. In the end, our immigrants can find work and places to live. Imagine having an immigrant population that could not work or find a place to live. People think the immigrants would stop coming, but it would be a decade before they stopped coming. They would simply be a drain on the economy instead of contributing to it. That is the lesson of South Africa. Immigrants who can work, feed themselves and pay for shelter are less of a drain on the social system than immigrants that cannot. The immigrants are coming either way.

The crime has yielded an odd utilitarian art form in South Africa, if you can call it that. I have never seen so many different types of fences that could be described, in a word, as vicious. The fences were designed in two categories: rip you to shreds or impale you. I only saw a couple fences that tried to obscure their purpose with decorative design. I now thoroughly believe, you can judge a place by its fences.

On a completely different note, the hotel I stayed at had the strangest elevator system I have ever encountered. In the elevator, there were no buttons, none. Outside the elevator, there were a lot of buttons. Instead of pressing up or down before boarding the elevator, there was a panel where you pressed the exact floor you wanted to go to. The panel would reply with Elevator A, B or C. If it said Elevator A, when Elevator A arrived, you got on. Once in the elevator, you pressed no buttons (as there were none). The elevator, knowing from the panel which floor you were going to, would stop on the floor you had pressed on the panel. If you changed you mind and wanted to go to a different floor, well you were out of luck. You had to go to your prescribed floor or the floor that someone else had predestined the elevator to stop at prior to their boarding the elevator. The whole idea was just odd.

Cool: The beauty of Cape Town and basic things that are totally different, like elevator controls.
Stupid: How difficult striving for a better life can be.

Cartagena

(I wrote this post on Columbia a month ago. I am in Kenya today.)

Cartagena was a surprise. Everything I know about Cartagena, Columbia I learned from the movie Romancing in the Stone (Kathleen turner and Michael Douglas, 1984) or from CNN reports on Columbian drug lords.

Its poor reputation was not improved by things I had heard from crew members who had been there, mostly relating to crime.

So why on earth was our ship making this miserable stop?

Because Cartagena is beautiful.



It has two primary attractions, the old city and the fort. The fort is by far the biggest stone military installation I have ever seen. I have been to castles around the world, and this fort out sizes them all by many times. It is huge. I did not have time to more than drive by it, so its grand size is all I can comment on.

The old city was an architectural delight in a style I will call brilliant new world fusion, emphasis on bright colors and architectural elements from wherever the builder felt like.



The result was ornate wooden balconies hanging below tile roofs and above hard stone walls. Somehow it all melded together into a Mediterranean-style warmth.



It was so perfect and so attractive, even in being random, that when someone said “This is like Disneyland” I understood what they meant. It was perfect, bright and colorful.



There were certain consistencies. The natural color of wood was prized and the ornate posts of the wood balconies were all the same. The colors, while of every element of the rainbow, were all equally bright. Bougainville of every color seemed to climb some portion of every building.



(I love sundials.)



I get in trouble with my co-workers regularly for saying, "It looks just like Santa Barbara." But the next picture really does look just like Santa Barbara.

In fact, it makes me think of the Wells Fargo Building on Figeroa and Anacapa, in Santa Barbara. After taking the picture, I tried to find something to prove that it is actually not in Santa Barbara, but I couldn't. So you will have to take my word on it.




All in all, Cartagena goes on my list of places I am glad I have been to, would like to go to again, but will not be a singular destination point, unless the politics change.

Cool: The beauty and surprise of Cartagena
Stupid: The politics and crime that prevent it from being the glorious destination its beauty deserves.