Little Things Seem Big to Nicole

Coin collecting is not a glamorous hobby. I know that. Shaking out my piggy bank and poring over handfuls of change looking for wheat pennies did not help my playground popularity as a child, and as an adult, fewer people than you might expect think that being able to tell if a coin came from Philadelphia or Denver is a good party trick.

But, getting excited about things that most people could care less about does have its advantages. For instance, something happened to me today that would be an annoyance at best to normal people, but which made my whole afternoon.

I went to buy flowers in a neighborhood where you pay for your parking at a machine that gives you a receipt to put on your dashboard. I have noticed that these contraptions often reject perfectly good coins, letting them fall through to the change return box, so I always check the box both before and after I put my own money in.

This time when I checked, I found an unexpected treat. It wasn’t a bent nickel, or a slug, or even a quarter with something stuck to it, but something even odder: an English 20-pence piece.

Okay, it’s not really that big of a deal, but I do love the idea that a machine designed to give me parking validation instead spat out a little piece of Europe.

Paper Tickets Are Dead

I also read an article that included a quote by a travel expert who declared paper tickets “technically obsolete.” What a relief. I’ve made a lot of dumb travel goofs in my day, but I never actually managed to lose a plane ticket. Now, I can safely say that I never will.

Armchair Travel

The tidbit about banking in Maui is just one of many facts I gleaned from a recent travel-section binge. I had a number of Chronicles stacked up, and finally worked my way through them.

Speaking of banking, one other interesting thing I learned is that the dollar is surprisingly strong against foreign currencies these days. About a year ago, for example, one U.S. dollar was buying about one and a quarter New Zealand dollars. But now one dollar is worth almost two Kiwi dollars. This is about the rate I remember from my visit five years ago. The news about Australia is also pretty good for Americans. A year ago the currencies were very close to equal. Now a U.S. dollar is worth about half again the value of an Australian dollar. That will help considerably down under.

Fun Fact

The bank in Hana, on the island of Maui, is open only ninety minutes a day.

I’m Just Saying

A partial list of places gay couples can get married:
Spain
South Africa
Nepal

A partial list of places they can’t:
Fire Island
Key West
Palm Springs
Buenos Aires
Greece
Sydney
Berlin
Los Cabos
Las Vegas

It occurs to me that a trip where a couple gets married in every country where it’s legal would be an odd but interesting adventure.

Not Strictly Related, But….

….Vermont! I did not see this coming.

How does this make me feel? Surprisingly sad. Sad because as good as the news is, it led me to notice that in one important way, California falls short of the example set by states to the east.

We have no maple candy here.

I learned this because I could think of no better tribute to Vermont than a spontaneous mid-afternoon maple sugar candy binge. First I tried Walgreens, then an upscale grocery store with lots of imported candy and cookies, and finally a candy store in a swanky neighborhood. No luck. The lady at the candy store said they sometimes get maple candy at Christmas. I told her that spring is maple syrup season and she smiled at me in a way that I thought was reserved for people who offer useless information. I left empty-handed and still unsure how to honor the Green Mountain State in a way that doesn’t involve a trip to Ben & Jerry’s.

I guess I can boil up some corn on the cob while I thinking that over. (Thanks to you, too, Iowa!)

Reading Material

It’s a looooong flight to Australia. We have a non-stop flight from Los Angeles that will take just under 15 hours. Much of that will be at what seems like nighttime to us, but I don’t sleep all that well on planes so I need something to do. We will also be taking two long train trips in Australia, and of course, there’s always the trip back.

This means that I need a lot of reading material. Luckily, I have a number of books stacked up at home. I do feel, though, that I should stock up on some destination-specific reading.

I have a guidebook, a Frommer’s guide to the whole country that I’ve been flipping through. I’ve also already read Bill Bryson’s In a Sunburned Country.

If I’m feeling like something light, I might re-read The Thorn Birds. I read that once when I was quite young—probably too young, actually—and I remember having crushes on several characters and the whole southern continent as well. It seemed like a place with enough drama to satisfy a young teenager, which is a lot of drama indeed.

I also want to read Jan Morris’ Sydney. Her last book took me several months to get through, so that may be enough, but if anyone else has some good Australia books to recommend, I would love to hear about it.

Making a List

Speaking of music, here’s my Australia playlist so far.

Land Down Under, by Men at Work. Vegemite? Chunder? If you lived in New Hampshire in 1982, this song made Australia seem like the most exotic place in the world.

Lady, by the Little River Band. From 1978; probably the first Australian song I ever heard. My Mom and I both used to get so excited when this came on the radio.

Jessie’s Girl, by Rick Springfield. No, he is! Who knew?

Humming a Tune, by Mental as Anything. From the Starstruck soundtrack.

Body and Soul, by Jo Kennedy. A remake of a Split Enz song, also from Starstruck.

That’s the Way, by Deckchairs Overboard. An oddly mesmerizing song featuring a pre-Crowded House Paul Hester as well as a bass player that I thought might be a drag queen but isn’t. You have to see the video for this one.

Before Too Long, by Paul Kelly and the Messengers.

Something So Strong, by Crowded House. I saw this video so many times in the eighties that I only recently realized how well the song stands the test of time.

New Sensation, by INXS.

What’s My Scene, by the Hoodoo Gurus.

Dream World, by Midnight Oil.

Take it In, by the Waifs. I love this band!

Let Me Be, by Xavier Rudd. From 2004. See, I’m not entirely trapped in the eighties.

Throw Your Arms Around Me, by Hunters and Collectors. Okay, yes I am.

I know there some big omissions. No Olivia Newton John or Bee Gees, for one thing. I don’t think I own any songs by these artists. I guess don’t love everything Australian.

Tangled up in Blue

I hope it was clear that I was joking about being in a funk yesterday. Eating ice cream and listening to girls with guitars is actually perfectly normal behavior for me. It’s only when the music stops that you need to worry.

It’s Not You, It’s Me

Sometimes when I submit an article to an editor, I hear back right away, but usually rejection takes a long time. The record so far is two years. So the nine months it took a certain Los Angeles-based publication to get back to me about an article on Japan that I sent them last June isn’t too unusual.

What is unusual is that I think nine months is the longest I’ve ever waited for this kind of message. It wasn’t exactly a rejection, but it certainly wasn’t encouraging. The email thanked me for sending the piece, and noted that they receive far more submissions than they can possibly print, making competition for column inches very tight. Then it invited me to look at their online editorial guidelines and wished me well.

It was, frankly, a little bit like being dumped by a serious smooth talker; the kind of breakup where the conversation seems nice while you’re in it, but later you realize that what they were saying was that there won’t be any more conversations.

Okay, it wasn’t that bad. I’m not going to go get an extreme haircut over it or anything. It just kind of came out of the blue is all. Why now? Was I being needy? Did the editor meet another Japan article? Can we still be friends? I don’t know. I’m going to spend the next few days eating ice cream and listening to Joni Mitchell, and hoping it will all make sense eventually.

Meanwhile, Back in My World

This is what it feels like in Oakland today: Like it’s going to take divine intervention to turn things around.

I love Oakland, but it’s a rough time to be in the city. In January, BART police shot an unarmed man to death on the platform of the BART station closest to my house. Now a fugitive parolee has managed to kill four police officers single-handedly before dying in a standoff.

These killings took place around MacArthur Boulevard, a very long street that cuts through many neighborhoods, my own included. I haven’t gotten as far east as 75th Avenue on my walking tour yet, but yesterday I decided to jump ahead a little bit. I usually like to finish one neighborhood before moving on to another, but I wanted to see what was going on in this part of the town that has been in the news lately.

MacArthur Boulevard in Eastmont didn’t look all that different from the way it does near my house. There’s a big cemetery, which feels peaceful. But on the side streets, most yards have chain-link fences and big dogs.

The most remarkable aspect to the neighborhood right now is that there are several shrines set up to honor those who recently died. On two corners at the intersection of 75th and MacArthur there are floral tributes to the four officers. And on 75th Avenue, in front of an apartment building (I think the one where the suspect and the last two officers died) there is a memorial for the cop killer.

This disturbed me because I don’t see any way to paint this particular incident as an example of police brutality. Plus, the killer, with a long rap sheet and DNA evidence linking him to the rape of a 12-year-old girl, is a hard guy to feel sympathy for. Still, as the signs on the avenue attest, he was someone to somebody—quite a few people, actually. That gave me something to think about as I walked back toward my own, quieter strip of MacArthur.

Taking Care of Business

No matter; there is still plenty of time to square away little details, like hotel reservations. Right now I’m concentrating on important arrangements. I’ve already taken care of booking a tour of the Sydney Opera House and a walking tour of Sydney movie locations. And I’m making good progress on researching concerts we might like to see. I’m also making lists of movies we have to rent before we leave. (Top of the list are Australia, and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert--again.)

When is a Hotel Not a Hotel?

Answer: When it’s in Australia.

It’s said that Eskimos have dozens of words for snow. I don’t know if that’s true, but it seems plausible. In a possibly related linguistic quirk, Australians seem to have developed several different words for “drinking establishment.” If you want to go out for a drink down under (as opposed to picking up something at a “bottle shop” to drink at home), you can go to a bar, a pub, a club, or, confusingly, a hotel.

Hotels in Australia always have beer, but they don’t necessarily have rooms. I learned this the hard way when I emailed the Harbour View Hotel in Sydney. I knew of it because it played a boardinghouse in my favorite Australian movie (Starstruck), and I thought it would be fun to stay there.

I wrote asking how much rooms cost, and wondered why they didn’t seem to be in a hurry to take my money. I finally got a politely restrained note back explaining that they aren’t a hotel you can stay at. That was disappointing, but maybe it’s for the best. The hotel seems to be right under the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and it probably would have been too noisy for sleeping anyway.

If anyone has a recommendation for a moderately priced hotel in Sydney, please let me know!

Australia is Sooooo Big…

How big is it? So big, motorcycle gangs travel by plane.

I wish this were a joke, but it isn’t. A few days ago, rival biker gangs clashed at the Sydney airport, smacking each other with those metal poles that the velvet ropes go between. The melee spread over two floors. This sounds absurd, and it is, but someone did die, so it’s not really funny.

There are many unanswered questions regarding this incident, some of which probably only bother me. For one thing, how did the one gang find the other? As I’ve mentioned before, you can’t just meet people at the gate anymore in most places, and I would have thought Australia was one of those places.

Secondly, what was the biker gang doing on a plane? Australia, which has sunny weather and wide-open roads, is probably the ideal place to ride motorcycles. Why in the world didn’t they make a road trip of it? I know, I know, the distances between Australian cities can be huge, but they’re bikies (to use the Australian slang I just learned). What else did they have to do this week?

It’s hard to even imagine a biker on a plane. Real rebels don’t put their seats in the full upright position just because the man tells them to, and they certainly aren’t going to extinguish their smoking materials. And how did they get through the metal detector? There are many things I don’t understand about this strange and troubling gang incident, and I can’t believe I’m about to go halfway around the world to find the kind of senseless violence that exists right in the Bay Area.

Rising to the Challenge

This morning I didn’t know what KLM stood for, but I do now: "Koninkliijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij," which means “Royal Airline Company.” This information comes courtesy of my father, who is both a former airline pilot and a speaker of Dutch, so I didn’t have to go far to get the answer.

(K,L, and M are also the San Francisco public transportation lines that run under Market Street between the Financial District and the Castro neighborhood. When I moved to San Francisco, I quickly learned that to get to the Castro, I just had to pretend I was going to Amsterdam, another sexually liberated place with lenient recreational drug policies. Or so I hear.)

Fun Fact

Have you ever wondered why there’s no “u” in “Qantas?” This has always driven me nuts. Australians, like the British, put “u”s everywhere they don’t belong (colour, favour, etc.) and then leave out this one, which, coming after a “q,” I would have considered mandatory. But there is an explanation: Qantas is an acronym standing for “Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services.”

If only this new information somehow allowed me to use “Qantas” as a Scrabble word, but alas, a proper noun is a proper noun.

The Third Sex?

Here’s something I’ve never encountered before: A few hours after booking our tickets to Australia, I went back to the Qantas site to double-check that my reservation had gone through. It had, but the site did want me to fill in some pre-departure information to make it official.

One of the personal details they wanted amused me. They wanted to know my gender, which is not so funny, but the options were: male, female, or “unspecified.”

“Unspecified.” Not “transgender,” or “intersex.” Not “none of your darn business.” Just “unspecified.”

I have the impression that Australians pride themselves on being a little more brash and forthright than their tea-sipping Kiwi neighbors, but I am reminded that both countries came into the world as English colonies, and it seems the Aussies haven’t totally lost their instinct for defusing awkward questions in a dignified and understated way.

(I marked “female,” but I’m seriously considering changing my answer just to see what happens.)

It’s My Recurring Dream

Do you ever have recurring dreams? I never have exactly the same dream twice, but I have recurring scenarios. Most of them are pretty common, I think. One is where I show up to work or class inappropriately dressed, or not dressed at all. The other involves being completely unprepared for something at school. Sometimes it’s a paper I haven’t written, but usually it’s an exam I haven’t studied for, and almost always, the class is math.

There is one other category of anxiety dream that I’ve been having more and more often as an adult. (I have lots of good dreams, too; they’re just more creatively plotted.) Lately I’ve been having stressful dreams about traveling and messing up. Usually I’m about to miss my plane for some really dumb reason--I can’t get anyone to tell me when the flight leaves, or I’ve forgotten to pack, or I realize on my way to the airport that I don’t have my passport or tickets. (I also often dream that the plane is flying really low, or landing on a freeway. I don’t know what that’s about.)

The one thing these travel dreams have in common is that I’m almost always on my way to Australia in them. I’m not sure why the land down under is so anxiety-provoking for me. I think it has something to do with the fact that it’s such a big deal to go there—I think I’m really afraid of messing up something that important and hard to reschedule.

I mention this because in May, I really will be trying to catch a flight to Australia. Pipi and I have been talking about this for a while, and we finally committed. I just bought two tickets to Sydney on Qantas. They’re non-refundable (although for what I paid, I think I get to keep the plane when we’re done), so we’re going for sure now.

It’s two months away, but I’ve already started a list of things (like packing) to be sure to do before we leave the house.

Small Digital World

My Hawaii article appeared in the print edition of the San Francisco Chronicle, and also online. There were a few comments posted to the online version. These reader comments can be pretty nasty, but the group went pretty easy on me. (I think--I am still scratching my head over the Jimi Hendrix/rainbow bridge post.)

What I didn’t see were emails that readers sent directly to the Chronicle. The next week’s travel section quoted a few, though, and one message made me laugh. It was from Sandi, the park ranger who helped turn around my bad attitude about the weather.

She didn’t say how she’d found the article, but she did say she liked it, and I’m glad. I meant for her to come off well. I needed a talking down that day, and Sandi came through. Thanks for reading, Sandi!

Not Losing Hope Yet

I wrote the Shanghai article quite some time ago, and I was starting to give up on finding a travel-section audience for it.

I happened to mention this to the people I will call, for lack of a better word, my in-laws. (There’s nothing lawful about it at all, but don’t get me started.)

Anyway, Pipi’s mother suggested that instead of trying to get travel publications interested in an article with a Jewish theme, I instead try to get a Jewish journal interested in an article with a travel theme. Genius! There’s hope for this piece yet.

Well, It’s Better Than a Dishonorable Mention

Here’s another interesting development: One of my stories won an honorable mention in the 2009 Solas Awards. This is a writing contest sponsored annually by Travelers' Tales, a Bay-Area publishing company specializing in travel literature.

Sharp-eyed readers will notice that there seem to be a lot of categories, with several winners in each category. You’ll also notice that the honorable mention list is rather long. You’d be forgiven, then, for concluding that this is one of those competitions where everybody wins. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. I did the math (and then had to go lie down for a while) and determined that it was a competition where hardly more than a third of the competitors won.

The story in question is one I’m happy to have praised, however faintly. It’s about Shanghai’s Jewish history. I’ve been having trouble attracting attention to it, and I was starting to think I’m the only one who finds the idea of Jewish culture in China intriguing.

“Hey, Let’s Go out for Mongolian…”

The oddest thing about Mongolia popping up again in my life is that hours before I noticed my yurt write-up, I had been chatting with a real Mongolian.

Pipi and I had gone out for waffles at a neighborhood place we’d never been to, and I was feeling eccentric, so I was wearing a suede herdsman’s jacket that I had bought at a natural history museum in Ulan Batar. Our waitress noticed it right away. She told me she herself was from U.B.—she was quick to add that she’d been born in the urban area, and I got the impression she wanted me to know that she was a city girl, no more a nomadic sheepherder than I was.

Later Pipi chided me for leaving without asking the woman where we could get good Mongolian food in the Bay Area, but sadly, I don’t remember Mongolia as a place with really great cuisine. I liked a lot of the things I ate; I just don’t see salt tea and fried mutton dumplings really catching on here. But then, Northern Californians do like a good yurt, so you never know what’s going to find an audience.

Published Again

Here’s a pleasant surprise: I was out of town the weekend of March 1, so it took me several days to get my hands on a Chronicle travel section from that weekend. When I finally did, I noticed that a small blurb of mine got published. I had no idea this was going to happen so I hadn’t even submitted an invoice. It turns out it literally pays to read the paper carefully.

Published

My Hawaii story appeared in the San Francisco Chronicle over the weekend. I’m very happy with it. The editing was minimal, so I stand by it all. Here’s a link.

On A Completely Different Note

Once upon a time, if you wanted to pick someone up at the airport, you used to be able to meet people at their gate as they got off the plane. I used to love that. I loved the anticipation of watching streams of people come out of a jetway and watching the face of one person in that crowd light up when they saw me. I loved being met, too, and I would always feel a twinge of sadness anytime I got off a plane unmet and had to walk past all those people hugging and kissing their loved ones. I would feel this way even if I was just changing planes and wasn’t even expecting anyone to greet me. It embarrassed me, but it would happen every time.

Now, of course, you have to have a boarding pass to be anywhere near a gate. I’ve gotten so used to the ritual of meeting people at baggage claim--or being swooped up in a touch-and-go curbside operation--that I don’t get wistful anymore walking through the airport by myself.

Just recently, though, Pipi happened to notice that they still have flight arrival information posted at airports. Why is this? No one meets people at gates anymore. You can only meet an arriving passenger if you have a boarding pass, meaning you’d have to be about to go somewhere. How often does that happen? Maybe more often than I think, but I’m pretty sure the posting of arrival information is just one of those quaint things, like no-smoking signs, left over from a bygone era of air travel.

Snow Day

Pipi and I are back from Boston. I’m afraid it wasn’t a fun trip—we were there for Pipi’s grandmother’s funeral. We left Saturday morning for what was supposed to be a punishingly quick trip to the East Coast, but were saved from ourselves by the weather.

On Sunday morning, the day of the funeral, we woke up in the hotel to discover that the biggest storm of the year had already dumped about six inches of snow on Cambridge, with no sign of letting up. Later that morning, as I stood by the snowy gravesite, I thought to myself that this must be Mother Nature welcoming Dorchester-born Grandma Ethel back to New England.

Pipi and I and the rest of her immediate family were supposed to fly back to California Monday, but the storm caused a huge number of flight cancellations and for a while, it looked like the whole party might be stuck. Pipi’s sister-in-law, Michelle, said she thought Ethel was telling us she wasn’t ready for us to go home yet, and I think maybe we weren’t ready to go, either. At brunch, we all batted around ideas about how to fill our extra afternoon in Boston and everyone but Pipi and I, who already knew we were grounded, put off checking the status of flights back to the West Coast.

In the end, the L.A. family made their flights out and only Pipi and I stayed behind. I wish I could say we spent our day going to museums and exploring the city, but the weather was really awful, so we mostly watched movies and read books. When we went out, we limited ourselves to the Harvard Square area. It was a classic lazy snow day, and it felt like a delicious indulgence.

Could Michelle be right? Could Pipi’s Nana have sent the snowstorm? I know the answer is no, that there’s nothing otherworldly about a nor’easter in New England. But it’s fun to think about, and I like the idea that the day off was one last thoughtful gift from a classy and considerate woman who will be missed.

We Interrupt This Broadcast

I am going to be making an unexpected trip to the East Coast. This should keep me busy for the next few days. I’ll be back Tuesday.

Alarming Newspaper News

The San Francisco Chronicle is reporting on its own possible demise. It seems they need to find a buyer or a whole lot of money lying around soon or the paper will be in dire financial straits.

This is alarming not just because I have a peculiar obsession with getting myself published in this paper, but also because the closing of the Chronicle would obviously be a very bad omen for publishing in general. Here’s hoping they—and other newspapers in trouble—find a way to turn things around.

A Different Perspective

It’s fashionable to mock air travel for being tedious and irritating, and lots of comedians and travel writers (especially those who think they’re also comedians) get easy laughs out of this subject.

Then there is this brave guy who thinks we ought to be enjoying flying more. This clip is pretty interesting, and very funny. Thanks to my sister for sending it my way! (The first few seconds don’t make a lot of sense—what now about the donkey?—and he riffs for a few minutes on other subjects. Flying stuff starts at about the two-minute mark.)

(Oh, and the language is a little crude—sorry!)

So It’s Not Just Me

This guy seems to be a compulsive facebook user, too.

Not Strictly Related, But….

…Has anyone else heard of this Facebook thing?

I’ve been resisting, because I’ve seen it suck the productivity right out of stronger people than myself. But I finally succumbed, and whoa, Nellie, is it ever a time waster. I was right about that.

But it’s also a fabulous tool for reconnecting with people, and for all those who pooh-pooh electronic communication as superficial, I submit that I have known my friend Lisa for 12 years, and we just now realized that we share a fanaticism for the band Squeeze. We figured this out not through a face-to-face conversation, but because in my Facebook profile I’d marked myself as a fan of the band’s lead singer.

So that’s my story and I’m sticking to it; that there is some socially redeeming value to all the time I now spend on this site.

Some of the site’s features are a little harder to justify, but they are undeniably fun. One feature lets you put virtual pins on a world map to show where you’ve been. You can share your map with your friends and see where your friends have been. I’m pleased to discover that I’m the only one of us who has visited Mongolia, but my African and South-East Asian experience (zilch) does not come close to measuring up to my peers.

As if that’s not enough, the map page also comes with a link to a geography game. I’ve played an online game like it before, but this one gives you a score in the form of a “travel IQ.” Mine was a slightly disappointing 111, but I’m just getting my mouse warmed up. I know I can do better next time. It’ll just take a minute…

More Disarming Digs

I sent another one in. (If the editor feels she’s under siege from me, then I’m accomplishing my goal.) This one’s about the experience of traveling on the Trans-Siberian railroad in a sleeper car. If that’s not “disarming,” I don’t know what is.

Disarming Digs

I just submitted a very short piece to the Chronicle. They have a new section on offbeat lodgings, and I wrote in with a description and photo of a Mongolian nomad tent I once spent the night in. That’s got to be offbeat enough to at least warrant a second glance. Here’s hoping.

Why Didn’t I Think of That Part II

Before I interrupted myself with my appreciation of Southwest Airlines and Valentine’s Day, I was musing about getting scooped.

It probably happens to everyone. It happened to me recently—the Chronicle had a story on the Trans-Siberian railroad, which I’ve taken. The author didn’t take the train the whole way across Russia. Instead, he traveled from Moscow to Yekaterinburg and back. The Moscow-Siberia leg was the route traveled by the Czar Nicolas II, on what turned out to be the last trip he ever took—he and his family all met a bad end in Yekaterinburg. So the author presented the story as following in the last footsteps of Russia’s last Czar.

That’s a creative angle, and it was a good story. So I definitely am not saying mine would have been better. I just know it could have been me in the paper, if I’d just been quicker on the draw, or done a better job, or known the editor better, or…well, I don’t really know. You can make yourself crazy trying to figure out why something happened or didn’t happen. All you can do is hope for better luck next time. (You can also hope your trip gets complicated in some amusing and unforeseen way. Everyone likes a good-trip-gone-wrong story.)

Happy Valentine’s Day

Speaking of LUV, I hope everyone has a very happy Valentine’s Day. Pipi and I are going to L.A. to see a play directed by her cousin. We’ll have dinner at a restaurant we like at the Grove, which is Pipi’s favorite mall.

Okay, that sounds kind of funny—favorite mall? But if you grew up in L.A., you’d have a favorite mall, too. And it would probably be the Grove, which is very nice and often good for a celebrity sighting. I grew up in a place where there were only two malls. One we creatively dubbed “the mall,” and the other was “the dead mall,” so I may not be much of a judge, but my inexpert opinion is that even though you can’t get an orange Julius to save your life, the Grove is a pretty good mall.

So happy Valentine’s Day. Here’s wishing everyone love and happiness, or at least some good retail therapy.

LUV is All You Need

They’re not the most glamorous of carriers. In fact, Southwest Airlines, with its folksy flight attendants, orange airplanes, and cutsey stock-ticker symbol (LUV), has probably done more than any other legacy operation to destroy the mystique of air travel.

But LUV is there for you. When something comes up unexpectedly as it did for me this weekend (and is it just me, or is this year already off-the-charts bizarro?), Southwest does make it incredibly easy to change your plans. I just had to bump up a flight for this coming Saturday by a couple of hours. I assumed that I would have to pay the difference between the price of my original flight and the two-day advanced purchace price of the new flight. Since I had to rebook for both Pipi and myself, I thought it might be expensive.

Turns out, there’s a sale going on and the new flight was about half the price of the old one. No, Southwest isn’t going to pay me, but they are letting me change my itinerary absolutely free. That’s a rare thing in these days of baggage fees and peanut surcharges.

It’s official: For flights under 2,000 miles, I LUV Southwest.

Why Didn’t I Think of That?

Last Sunday the San Francisco Chronicle had a cover story on gay and lesbian travel. There was no incredibly creative angle; the main information conveyed was that there exist cruises sailings for gay and lesbian travelers, and that more and more same-sex couples are honeymooning and traveling with children. The author didn’t even go on any gay adventures. This piece was strictly a desk job. I finished the piece thinking, “Well I could have done that.”

So why didn’t I? Because I didn’t think of it. Or rather, it didn’t occur to me that the Chronicle would be interested in a cover story that is an overview of gay travel. I’m not saying I could have done it better; it was a very good article. I’m just saying I could also have done it, but for some reason I didn’t. I’m reminded yet again that so much of this business is having the right idea at the right time. I’m going to have to work on that.

And Now for Something Completely Different

The San Francisco Chronicle has given itself a complete makeover. If you ask me, it looks a little too much like USA Today for my taste, but that’s not important to me. What is important to me is the fact that there are several new departments in the travel section, and a brand new editor to go with them. It’s a great opportunity and I hope to weasel my way in there and pretend like I was there all along. We’ll see how well that works out.

Speaking of India

There’s a new Indian restaurant in Oakland’s Dimond District, which is right next to my neighborhood. It’s called Shaan and it’s pretty good. They bungled our delivery order pretty badly—we got three times as much rice as we asked for, and half as many lassis (wrong flavor, too), but it was all so good we didn’t mind. We will definitely be back when we’re in the mood for something a little healthier than Vik’s.

A Clarification

Every once in a while I’m reminded that I’m not writing in a vacuum. Real people, sometimes not even related to me, check in here and keep me honest.

Yesterday an alert reader noticed that I had a questionable claim in a posting I wrote more than a year ago. In it, I called Kauai the rainiest place in the world because it gets 350 days of rain annually. This may make Kauai the place with the most monotonous weather forecast, but it is not actually the rainiest spot on the globe. Parts of Kauai get about 400 inches of rain a year, which is a lot, but not as much as the village of Mawsynram, in India’s Meghalaya State. This sodden spot gets 467 inches of rain every year, making Mawsynram a strong contender for the world’s rainiest place.

Of course a much more glaring error is my contention in the same posting that we didn’t need any more rain in northern California. In spite of a rainy January, last winter’s rainfall was below average, as I recall. And now we’re in a drought, with very little rain having fallen in January of this year. I take it back! We could use some rain now.

How It’s Done

I just finished reading Trieste, by Jan Morris. It took me a long time to get through, because it’s a dense book, full of centuries’ worth of historical lessons and anecdotes, and because Morris writes in a careful third-person style that’s very different from the zany, personal stories that are popular now.

The time was well spent, though. Morris paints an interesting portrait of Trieste, a city I’ve never been to (and one which, according to a possibly apocryphal 1999 poll, 70% of Italians don’t realize is in Italy). She covers all aspects of Trieste’s history and culture, from the city’s Jewish Diaspora to the city’s relations with its Slavic neighbors and what happened when the city ceased to be an important Adriatic port.

Just when the anecdotes start to get a little cloying and you’re starting to wonder where she’s going with all of them, Morris wraps up the book—her last, she says--with a magnificent chapter that explains why Trieste has been significant to her throughout the years. It’s a beautiful end to not just a book but an entire distinguished writing career. The final chapter manages to tell us a lot about both the author and the city, without being either self-indulgent or dryly historical. In my experience, that’s a hard balance to strike. It’s easy to tell your own story about a place, and easy to impart a history lesson, but very hard to make your own experiences interesting and relevant to a general audience. This book shows how that’s done.

First Things First

Before we go to Australia (Pipi just got the time off, so it’s looking more and more like that will happen), we’ve got a quick trip to L.A. in the works. We’re going down to see a play staged by Pipi’s cousin, Debbie. It’s been getting great reviews and keeps getting extended. We’re very proud of her.

Going to Australia in My Mind

I’ve been paying attention to all things Australian lately because Pipi and I are trying to plan a trip there for this year. Details to follow, if it all comes together.

I also feel I should mention that not everyone celebrated Australia Day on Monday. The country’s Aboriginal population parties on that day about as heartily as America’s indigenous people do on Columbus Day (i.e., not so much) for precisely the same reasons. So don’t think you were the only person not having a knees-up (party) that day.

Happy Australia Day

It has been brought to my attention that in my post-Christmas hibernating mode, I managed to overlook a holiday entirely. (Honestly, after a yuletide season that included many parties, most good but one so awful that all my clothes had to be dry-cleaned afterward, I don’t think I would have been ready for more festivity anyway.)

Monday was Australia Day, and the day came and went at my house with nary a boomerang thrown nor a vegemite container cracked. I’m not sure what I would have done if I had known. I probably would have had a Fosters and watched an offbeat independent film where everyone has unusual names. That sounds like a pretty good plan for the coming weekend, and better late than never. Happy Australia Day, everyone.

One More Thing…

…About water landings. I had never heard of anything like the Hudson River incident, but it turns out that safe water landings aren’t unprecedented. The San Francisco Chronicle had an article a few days ago about a similar situation that occurred in the Pacific Ocean between San Francisco and Hawaii in 1956. A passenger plane lost power in two out of four engines and had to ditch in the open water. Everyone on board survived that crash, too.

Here’s a link to the article.

Remarkably, video exists of the crash and rescue operation, too—someone on board the Coast Guard ship that pulled everyone out of the water had a movie camera.

Xin Nian Kuai Le

Happy Lunar New Year. If you’ve been feeling like you got 2009 off on the wrong foot, tonight you get another chance, when the year of the Ox begins. May it be a prosperous one.

I’m Not Making This Up

And neither is my father. There is apparently an urban legend going around implying that a frozen chicken has the power to destroy a locomotive. It’s not true. They really do use frozen, not fresh poultry to test engines and windshields. (Well, except for the Air Force, which now uses synthetic birds. This story just keeps getting stranger.)

Chicken Gun

I actually did learn one other tidbit of information from the Hudson River plane crash. I learned that because bird strikes are not at all unusual, airplane engine prototypes have to be tested for their resiliency to birds before they go into production.

How do they do this? Well, there’s really only one way. There exists a tool that is a distant cousin of the ball lobbers tennis instructors use. (It has several names; “rooster booster” is my favorite.) Engineers load real chickens (my father says they use frozen ones from the supermarket) into the gun and launch them at high speed directly into the spinning turbines. The engines are required to maintain a certain amount of power after the strike. If they don’t, the engine design goes back to the drawing board before it’s used on a commercial aircraft.

Think about this the next time you see a scientist speaking soberly on the news about the safety testing that airplanes have to go through. Now you have some idea what that guy's doing all day long when he’s not on camera.

The Audacity

Here’s to choosing hope over fear.

The Unlikely Event of a Water Landing

I think we can all agree that this is an amazing story.

There are a few takeaways for me. The first is the reassuring knowledge that airplanes more or less float, at least for a little while. I didn’t know this.

The second is a reminder that pilots are the most unflappable people in the world. This I did know.

The last thing I have gleaned from coverage of this crash is the conviction that New Yorkers can handle a disaster like no other people on earth. An airplane falls out of the sky and nobody panics. The passengers calmly exit the aircraft and stand on the wing in freezing water up to their knees like they’re waiting for a crosstown bus. Ferry commuters start throwing life jackets overboard and pulling people out of the water like they do it every day.

It’s pretty incredible. I worry that if this had happened in the Bay Area no rescue would have happened before a drum circle was organized and social workers had determined that all the victims actually wanted to be saved. I fear that if I had been on the plane, I would not have calmly waited my turn to exit. I’m pretty sure I would have made a scene, and I think it would have been like the scene in Airplane where the passengers are lining up for the chance to slap the hysterical woman.

I don’t always enjoy being in New York City, but I will admit that the people are a lot tougher than I am.

What Changed?

I’m not sure why this article got accepted when others haven’t. I suspect that the subject matter was right—the Chronicle runs a lot of stories about Hawaii because it’s a destination that’s hugely popular with Californians.

One variable that’s impossible to discount is the fact that there’s a new executive travel editor at the Chronicle. I liked the old editor personally—I’ve taken classes from him and run into him several times at networking events, and he seems like a really nice guy. The last time I saw him he told me I was doing some good work, but he just never printed my stories. I think they were mostly a little too urban for him. I’ve had more established travel writers tell me they too had trouble getting him interested in city and culture pieces—he seemed more drawn to stories with an outdoor slant.

The new editor said in her introductory column (which was mostly about shoes) that she’s an urban girl, and I almost turned cartwheels. As soon as I read that I started revising some city stories I’ve had sitting around. I’ve already sent one (Shanghai) and will be sending more. The idea is to get in on the ground floor with a new editor still building up a stable of freelancers. We’ll see how that goes.

Hawaii Article to be Published

Last week I posted a serialized account of my adventure on Haleakala. Later in the week, when I’d gotten a little distance from it, I put the two halves together, tightened it up considerably, said a Hail Mary, and flung it at a couple of editors.

I submitted it first to Travelers’ Tales. They publish anthologies of travel literature. I haven’t heard from them yet, but I wouldn’t expect to—they have long turn-around times.

The other editor I sent it to was at the San Francisco Chronicle, a newspaper whose travel section has a long tradition of roundly ignoring me. Yesterday, though, the Chronicle was feeling benevolent and accepted the Hawaii story.

The story is scheduled to run March 8, in a Hawaii-themed issue. It should be in the Departures spot. This is where the editor normally has a column, but it’s not unusual for a guest writer to appear there. I’ll post a link as soon as it’s up.

Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad…

…Especially when a good alternative surfaces.

There were three things I was hoping to do in Maui. One was snorkeling at Molokini, which I did. Another was driving up Haleakala for the sunrise. The sunrise didn’t happen, but the trip did, so I think that qualifies as a good-faith effort. (And it turns out that I got more out of that trip than I even realized—details tomorrow.)

The last thing on my list was driving to Hana. Once we were in Hawaii, though, I started to realize that people weren’t exaggerating when they said it was an all-day thing. It was hard to understand from a distance how this could be, but then I got there and began to see how narrow roads, traffic, and a culture that values not rushing all contribute to making Hana a very long expedition. It didn’t feel right taking a whole day away from a family celebration, so we didn’t make the drive.

Fortunately, we found an alternate trip that seemed to include many of the important elements of the road to Hana, such as great views, real Hawaiian towns, and island-paced progress. For this trip, we drove Route 30 around the northern shore of west Maui.

The road was narrow and twisting, and provided a beautiful view of sea cliffs and the ocean itself. In one particularly harrowing stretch, where you are not, strictly speaking, supposed to take your rental car, the road went down to one lane. In both directions. Because of the curves, so many pullouts had been created that I wondered why they didn’t just go ahead and carve out a whole lane. If everyone goes slowly enough and keeps an eye on the road ahead, it does work out fine.

We stopped at Julia’s Best Banana Bread in the town of Kahakuloa (free samples!). It was very good. The town itself is interesting, too, isolated as it is by the hard drive. Judging from the number of stands set up along the main drag, I’d say the economy seems to be coconut-candy based. I might have liked to have stayed longer, if only to sample more of the local currency.

The nice thing about this drive is that the road intersects with major highways near the airport, so you don’t have to retrace your route. Getting home is much faster than the outbound trip. We were back almost before anyone even noticed we were gone. We didn’t see quite as many waterfalls as we might have on the road to Hana, but I bet the banana bread was better.

Honolua Bay

As great as Molokini was, it isn’t the kind of trip you can do spontaneously, unless you have a boat that can go out on the open sea. It’s also a little expensive. Luckily, it’s not the only snorkeling option on Maui. It’s not even the only great snorkeling option on Maui.

A few days after the Molokini trip, several of us from the wedding party drove to Honolua Bay, on the northern part of west Maui, for a do-it-yourself diving expedition. We rented masks, fins, and snorkels from a dive shop on the way. The guy at the shop was either not very bright or else he was very stoned. Either way, I can’t say I recommend that particular shop, but I do recommend Honolua Bay.

To get there, you just park by the side of the road and walk about five minutes through a patch of jungle that is inexplicably full of chickens. The bay is semi-circular, fairly shallow, and very clear once you’re away from the beach. There weren’t fish everywhere you looked as in the water around Molokini, but there were big, beautiful schools that were fun to watch.

One thing we saw at Honolua that we didn’t see at Molokini were sea turtles. They were enormous and didn’t seem at all bothered by our presence. Honestly, I’m not sure they even noticed.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have an underwater camera that day, so I don’t have any photos. Here is a link to other Maui shots, though.

Molokini

Along with the sunrise on Haleakala, one other thing I really wanted to do in Maui was snorkel at Molokini. This was one quest that worked out well.

Molokini is about two and a half miles across the water from Maui. It took about an hour to get there on a catamaran. It would usually take a little less, but the captain stopped the boat and in fact backtracked a little because he sighted a pod of whales that he wanted us to get a look at.

Molokini is not exactly a secret, and the water got a little crowded. Still, the visibility was great and there were a lot of fish. The parts of the crater that are still above water protect the snorkeling area, keeping it very calm. I saw needlefish, puffers, angelfish, lots of coral, and a giant sea cucumber. Eww. On the way back to Maui, we passed through a sea-turtle gathering. All that and it was only lunchtime when we got back to the marina where we’d parked. That was a good morning of sightseeing.

Surfing Goats

Did you know that goats can surf? I didn’t, either, but these are especially cool goats. They live at the Surfing Goat Dairy, in the town of Kula, on Maui. The dairy is in upcountry (i.e., not coastal) Maui. They offer great tours with plenty of cheese tasting.

Surfing Goat makes more varieties, or I guess I should say flavors of cheese than most dairies. What avant-garde chocolate makers are doing with truffles these days, Surfing Goat is doing for goat cheese. They start with a basic creamy chevre base (called “Udderly Delicious”), and add all kinds of things I’ve never seen in cheese before. Some work really well, like the O Sole Mio, which has sun-dried tomatoes in it, and some are a little out there. I never tried the Mandalay blend, for example, which contains apple bananas and curry, but I don’t think I need to. Most of the cheese was really good, though, and the tours are fun. You can feed the goats, who are gentle and friendly, and see them milked.

All the goats (there are about 80 on the farm right now) have names, but unfortunately I didn’t write down what this one is called. She was a character.

Come Back Soon

We stopped at a visitor center about halfway down the mountain. There was a nene (wild goose) crossing sign near the parking lot, but no nene were out in the rain. I worried that this meant the two of us had less sense than a goose. Outside the main building was a silversword plant, a rare succulent that grows only on Hawaiian volcanoes. In Hawaiian, the plant is called ahinahina, which means “very gray.” In spite of the name, it’s normally an attractive plant, especially if you catch it in flower. This one, though, was covered in the withered remains of its once-in-a-lifetime blooming cycle. Wind-battered and rain-spattered, this specimen was not just very gray; it was also very close to death.

Inside, though, all was warm and bright. There was a friendly park ranger named Sandi on duty and she listened patiently while we whined about driving all this way and missing out on the sunrise. When we paused for breath she asked gently if we’d ever heard it said that the journey is more important than the destination. I forced an indulgent smile. Yes, of course I’d heard that, and 99% of the time I agreed. But this was, so far, a hundredth-percentile day, and I was too wet, too cold, and too far from a good cup of coffee to imagine my attitude changing.

Sandi went on, though. The journey we had just taken, she said, from the West Maui coast to the Haleakala summit, was like driving from New Mexico to Alaska, if you considered the number of climate zones you pass through on both trips. Looking at it that way, it was quite a journey we’d had that morning, and maybe a little more appreciation was in order.

Sandi further redeemed herself by giving us some practical information, including the visitor center phone number and the URL for a live summit webcam, both of which might have told us before leaving the hotel that Haleakala was socked in and likely to remain that way all day.

The ranger left us with some last words. “Haleakala is sending you a message,” she assured us. “She wants you to come back.” Sandi let that sink in, then added, “She doesn’t say that to everyone.”

By the time we left the visitor center, Haleakala was driving her point home with an intensity she must reserve for her densest visitors. The pounding rain continued all the way down the mountain and followed us back to the normally dry Ka’anapali coast. It was still raining the next morning. The storm eventually passed, but we got caught up in the excitement and late nights of the family wedding that had brought us to the island, and we never did take Haleakala up on her invitation.

Someday I will, though. It’s not every day a volcano offers you a personal summons, and when Haleakala speaks, I, for one, listen. I don’t know when I’ll be on Maui next, but when I am, I fully intend to get myself to the summit of Haleakala again and finally have that spiritual sunrise experience.

I’m going to check the webcam first, though.

The Darkest Hour is Just After the Dawn

What’s the exact opposite of “spiritual?” I don’t think we have a word for this in our language. Hawaiian does, though, and the word is Haleakala.

Haleakala is, of course, really the name of a dormant volcano on the island of Maui. The House of the Sun is about 10,000 feet high, and is both Maui’s most conspicuous physical feature and one of its biggest attractions. It’s considered especially auspicious to visit the volcano’s summit at dawn. On a good morning, the sun, visible across a massive crater-like depression, appears to rise out of a cauldron of cloud. On a great morning, the mist turns fiery red and orange and the lunar landscape is illuminated in adobe hues. And a couple of times a year, if some of the more hyperbolic descriptions I’ve read are true, angels actually sing. “Spiritual” is a word I encountered repeatedly while researching the Haleakala sunrise experience, and so I put an early-morning trip to the top on the short list of things we absolutely had to do on Maui.

Pipi and I scheduled the trip for our first full day in Hawaii, reasoning that jet-lag would make the early wake-up call less painful. It did, but 3:45 still felt very early to two people who were supposed to be on vacation. Nothing was open, so we made peanut butter breakfast sandwiches and coffee in our room, and set out on the two-hour drive to the top of Haleakala.

For a volcano, Haleakala is pretty easy to drive on. The road is well paved and wide enough for two cars. It’s very dark and curvy, though, and often choked with bicycle-laden vans ferrying riders to the top for the popular 37-mile sunrise coast down the mountain. On the morning we drove it, there was the added challenge of dense fog, which started at about 5,000 feet of elevation.

It was the kind of fog that is so thick it’s hard to imagine that it’s sunny anywhere. And it may not have been. It certainly wasn’t sunny at the top of Haleakala. In fact, it was about as far from sunny as I’ve ever seen. At a little past 6am, it was dark, with a howling wind blowing and fog swirling. Sleet pinged off the car like buckshot. Visibility was about 50 feet. When I finally gathered the courage to get out of the car, I accidentally started down a hiking trail instead of the path to the observatory, but was luckily turned back by a blast of wind that could have knocked down an eight-year-old. I was wearing what at sea level had seen like a nervous-Nellie number of layers, but the cold still took my breath away. As I scurried back to the car with my head down and my hand on my hat, I had a little epiphany, the closest I came to a spiritual moment that whole morning. “This is how people die on mountains,” I said to myself. (And in my head, it didn’t even sound melodramatic.)

When Pipi and I finally found the visitors’ center, with about 20 minutes to spare before theoretical sunrise, we found it already filled with a rainbow coalition of disappointed people from around the globe. I heard sulking in at least three languages. We all milled around until our watches said the sunrise had occurred. It was lighter now, and the sleet had turned to regular rain. It was barely 7am (although we were already thinking about lunch) and already we’d had a big setback. As we got in the car and prepared ourselves for the long, wet plummet back to the coast, I wondered if there were any way to salvage some crumbs of spirituality from the day.

Happy New Year

This is again a short week, but I did want to take a moment to wish everyone a happy New Year! See you in 2009.

Maui Photos

I finally got my Hawaii photos uploaded and labeled. Here they are.

Merry Christmas

I’ll be enjoying a little Christmas break for the next few days, and I hope you all are, too. I wish a very merry Christmas to everyone.

(For your viewing pleasure, a photo taken in Maui. Hawaiian Christmases are especially surreal.)

Geography Quiz Answers

Here are the answers to the geography quiz. How did you do? I got, by my generous reckoning, 26.5 right out of 49. This was by far my best year. It helps that I always read the Chronicle travel section—the editor gets a lot of trivia from stories that appear there. (And sometimes from stories that don’t—I strongly suspect that a rejected article of mine inspired a question about Mongolia that was included several years ago, but I can’t prove it.)

Yuletide Geography Quiz

Some Christmas traditions are enduring. Every year, for example, in a tradition going back to when I was in junior high school, we have a Yule log cake for dessert at Christmas dinner.

Some traditions do fall by the wayside. One thing we don’t do anymore is axe-murder a whole tree. We used to, but now we just use a little potted rosemary bush decorated with gingerbread cutouts. It’s small, tasteful, and sustainable, so it works well for everyone. The only thing I miss about the full-size tree is the ritual argument with my sister over what exactly that dough ornament I made when I was six is supposed to be. (It’s a sheep, so don’t even let her try to tell you it’s a turkey. It’s clearly a sheep. With drumsticks.)

For every tradition that runs its course though, it seems a new one comes along. Here’s one that’s fairly new for me. It may not have the emotional resonance of baking Christmas cookies for Santa, and now that I think of it, there is nothing specifically holiday-ish about it, but it’s something I do every year at Christmastime nonetheless. Please join me in hosting a glass of eggnog (and then discreetly leaving it on a bookcase because nobody really likes more than a few sips of eggnog) and taking the annual San Francisco Chronicle Geography Quiz.

On a Lighter Note

Pipi and I are off to Hawaii today. Her brother is getting married there, and we’ve all decided to make a vacation out of it. I’ll be back late next week. I probably won’t blog while I’m there, but I will put up pictures as soon as I can.

Other Things We Learned the Hard Way

One other example of this kind of thing: After the Indian Ocean earthquake in 2004, we all learned that what we used to call a tidal wave is really supposed to be called a tsunami. I sort of knew that before the event, but all the news coverage really cemented the proper term into my brain.

Mumbai

Like everyone, I’ve been following the news from India. I don’t have much to add to the narrative that hasn’t been said already. I did have one observation, though, and that’s that I noticed that all the news I’ve been reading refers to the city where the attacks took place as Mumbai. For a day or two, most stories clarified that this is the city formerly known as Bombay. But now they’ve stopped, because it’s just understood that we have internalized the new name and don’t need to be reminded anymore.

Mumbai has been known as such since 1996, but I confess, the name change never really took with me until now. But now I’ve heard Mumbai enough that I get it, and I probably won’t make the mistake of calling the city by its outdated name anymore. It’s funny how a tragedy can have the unintended effect of making us a little more cosmopolitan.

Now I need to get to work becoming fluent with the names Kolkata (Calcutta) and Bengaluru (Bangalore). But please, no more violence. I can do this on my own if I put my mind to it.

Bah, Humbug…

…No, that’s too strong, because there are a few really great Christmas pop songs out there. Here are a few that actually make me dawdle if they should come on just as I am getting ready to leave a store.

Christmas Rapping, by the Waitresses
When the song came out, I remember that the thing that impressed me the most was the fact that the song used the word “damn,” which I thought was very daring. But I was 11. Now, I realize that this was actually a group of very good musicians. Note: there is no actual rapping on the song.

2000 Miles, by the Pretenders
This is one of those not-so-merry-Christmas Christmas songs. Brillantly melancholy.

I Believe in Father Christmas, by Greg Lake
Perhaps because the holiday season involves a lot of overindulgance, things that I normally hate in pop music—strings, kettle drums, obvious classical influences, and British terminology—all seem to work here.

River, by Joni Mitchell
I always used to wonder what Christmas was like in warm places, like Los Angeles, and now I know. Kind of bittersweet.

Father Christmas, by the Kinks
The best song ever written about getting mugged while dressed up as Santa Claus. OK, actually the only song ever written about that, but it is really good.

Fairy Tale of New York, by The Pogues with the late, great Kirsty MacColl.
This is another song about dysfunctional Christmas, but this one is funny. The song gets extra points for being sung by a guy who was born on Christmas day.

Do They Know It’s Christmas, by Band Aid
Boy George, George Michael, Duran Duran…it’s the ultimate guilty Christmas pleasure.

The Christians and the Pagans, by Dar Williams
In all seriousness, this is possibly the best secular Christmas song ever. It’s about a family gathering that by rights should have gone horribly wrong. But instead, everyone realizes they have more in common than they ever realized and gets along great. And isn’t that what Christmas is all about?

It’s Beginning to Sound a Lot Like Christmas

Where did November go? It was just here, and then I turned around, and suddenly there’s Christmas music at the grocery store.

I sort of dread this part of the holiday season because Christmas music at the grocery store means I have to start shopping in very short bursts. I can only stand commercial pop holiday music like “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” for a minute or so. I think it’s just a coincidence that this is also about how long I can hold my breath, but I’m not sure. What I do know is that for the next few weeks, I will be shopping like I’m diving for abalone. I’ll take a deep breath, dive in, and hope I manage to grab at least one thing before the pain becomes too excruciating.

Happy Thanksgiving

Pipi has a short work week this week, and I’ve decided that I do, too. So let me take this opportunity to wish everyone a very happy Thanksgiving. We’ll be in San Francisco with my parents, my sister, and her boyfriend. I truly am thankful that we can all get together so easily these days.

This morning on KFOG listeners were invited to call in and relate Thanksgiving disaster stories. I was tempted to tell my turkey-on-a-train story, but I think the Bay Area has had its fill of that one. On the off chance, though, that there is someone out there on the Internet who hasn’t seen it, here is a little Thanksgiving-themed reading to get you through the rest of the week.

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

Still Crazy After All These Weeks

One habit I’ve been slow to get back into after moving is walking. For a while it seemed like every afternoon I would find a household project to work on instead of going out. But now, maybe because the days are getting shorter and colder and wetter, I am appreciating the daylight more and trying to get outside as much as I can.

Plus I’m running out projects.

I’ve had a few good walks recently, and am starting to have covered a pretty good radius around my house. I’m making some interesting discoveries. One is the neighborhood crazy yard. Every neighborhood has one, and I located ours towards the end of October. I wasn’t sure at first if the house was full-time crazy, or if Halloween had just gotten a little out of hand. I was suspicious from the start, though, because some of the crazy stuff didn’t seem to be Halloween themed. There seemed to be a lot of holidays going on at once, as well as some pretty eccentric statuary. I went by again in mid-November, and sure enough, still crazy. I think it’s pretty safe to assume that we’re dealing with year-round nuttiness, although I’m interested to see if there are seasonal variations.

Back from the Real World

I’m back in the blogisphere after an absence—I hope nobody missed me too much. I guess I just needed a break.

Actually, there hasn’t been that much to write about. I was writing copy for two web sites, but in the last few weeks, one project came to an end, and the other went on hold because the site isn’t making enough money yet. This is kind of discouraging, but it’s just the way freelancing goes. There is a chance that both projects may have a second phase, but I’m not expecting anything to happen before the end of the year.

Chinese Democracy

Yesterday I said that I was a life-long voter, but I confess that that doesn’t mean I have voted in every election for which I was eligible. I made what I thought was a good faith effort to vote in 1992, but never ended up casting a ballot.

I was on my Chinese walkabout then. I knew I should have arranged an absentee ballot ahead of time, but I didn’t have any idea where I would be at election time.

Once I was in China, I determined that I would probably be in Shanghai at about the time I should be sending my ballot back, so I faxed a request to have an absentee ballot sent to me there.

This plan had so many flaws that I can’t begin to guess which one actually tripped me up. I can’t even be sure the fax ever went through. I had a little trouble with the machine. My Chinese vocabulary didn’t cover telecommunications issues, and the shop owner didn’t speak any English. Amazingly, someone who happened to be there at the same time asked me in excellent French if he could be of any assistance. Together I think we made the fax machine work, but the receipt it spat out was completely unintelligible to me, so I’ll never know.

I remember thinking at the time that U.S. election officials would jump at the chance to literally deliver democracy to China, but it was not to be. I showed up every day for almost a week at the American Express office in Shanghai, but the package didn’t arrive while I was in town. When the election actually happened, I was on a ferry sputtering up the Yangtze River. The Chinese were definitely interested in the election, and several different people told me that Bill Clinton had won, but I had no access to news sources on the boat. It wasn’t until I arrived in Chongching four or five days later that I found out for sure that Ke Lin Dun had beaten Bu Shi (with Pei Lo placing a distant third).

I thought of this on Tuesday night when the results of the latest election were announced on television. We knew the winner just seconds after the polls had closed in California. It’s amazing how quickly they can calculate things these days. It’s also amazing to think about how hard it would have been to put myself in a place where I wouldn’t have been aware of the results of this election.

I Voted

Did you?

One presidential election year—I think it was 1988, when I had just tuned 18--I announced to my parents that I wouldn’t be voting because none of the candidates met with my approval.

My father explained to me that even in a situation where neither of the candidates is all you are hoping for (and I think we can all agree that Dukakis/Bush wasn’t exactly one of those once-in-a-generation matchups), not making a decision means leaving the decision up to someone else.

My father created a life-long voter that day, and I admire him for urging me to exercise my rights even though he knew that my vote would probably cancel out his.

I’m repeating his words in the hope that if you’re thinking of skipping this election, you might reconsider. Maybe you think both the candidates are bums. But one of them is going to be the next president. Wouldn’t you like him to be the bum you chose instead of the bum imposed upon you?

Polls are open until 8pm.

Time Out

It’s not all gnashing of teeth around here. Tonight Pipi and I will be far from the angry corner. We’re told that trick-or-treaters do come to this neighborhood, so we’re staying in tonight to hand out candy.

This may not be the most impressive Halloween display in the neighborhood, but it’s our first ever, so please cut us a little slack.

Bula

The first word every Western visitor to Fiji learns is “bula.” It’s kind of like “aloha.” It’s a versatile word that can stand in for many things, including “hello” and “thank you.”

I think that what bula literally means, though, is “welcome,” and as you can see, Fijians are a very friendly and welcoming bunch. This photograph was taken at a checkpoint near the international airport in Nadi as I was on my way home from Fiji several years ago. There had just been a coup, and I had been invited to Fiji as a journalist to document the fact that the islands were once again safe for tourists.

This soldier was supposed to be guarding the airport and looking for the leader of the coup, who was then still at large. (Somebody did catch him later, but I somehow doubt it was this guy who nabbed him.) I had asked the soldier if I could take his picture because I thought he looked very fierce in his guardhouse, and I thought a photograph would reassure my readers that Fiji was well protected.

I really wanted a picture of him by himself, with his gun and his imposing bulk, but what I got instead was a man transformed into a giant golden retriever, all eager goofiness and affection. I understand that this kind of unguarded openness is common to the people of the South Pacific and I certainly saw a lot of it in Fiji. I really got the sense that everyone I met there would have given me the shirt off his or her back if I had asked.

I’m trying hard to keep that in mind as I deal with a neighborhood that is invaded every evening by Tongans intent on taking something away from me and my community. I confess that I’ve been struggling with some ugly thoughts lately, stemming from the fact that while about 45% of the state backs Proposition 8—a large cross-section of the California population, in other words--virtually all of the people who have gone to the trouble of waving rude signs in my neighborhood are of Tongan descent.

So I did a little research. I learned that there are thought to be about 20,000 Tongans in California, 75% of whom live in the Bay Area. That means there are about 15,000 Tongans here, and only about 100 of them are actively campaigning against gay rights. That’s actually a pretty low bozo rate—less than 1%--which makes me feel better.

But mostly I just like to remember the chorus of “bula” that greeted me at the airport on arrival in the South Pacific and followed me for 10 days across three islands. I’m trying to hold onto the welcome that was extended to me with no regard for whatever strange or maybe even offensive cultural baggage I brought with me from home. I only wish I were doing as good of a job accepting Tongan guests into my neighborhood, but I have to admit, right now it’s hard.

First Time Protesters

The funny thing is I’ve never really been a protester before. Oh, sure, in college I showed up at some Gulf War protests, but everyone does that. I don’t think they let kids graduate if they haven’t, at some point during their four years, protested a Gulf War. But I never really believed that signs and slogans changed the world much.

I still don’t believe they do change things directly, but for once, I feel strongly enough about something that I don’t care. I needed to go out on the corner anyway, partly because I wanted to show that there is resistance to this amendment, and partly because I just needed to make a public scene.

Interestingly, a lot of other people seem to have had the same reaction. Several other people I’ve struck up conversations with have told me that this is their first protest ever. I haven’t asked any of the Yes people, but I wouldn’t be surprised to find that most of them are otherwise fairly apolitical as well. This just really seems to have gotten all of us here in California pretty riled up.

Signs of the Times

Pipi and I aren’t just sitting around seething. Last night we were out on the corner, too, with a pretty good crowd of like-minded people. I can’t say it was fun—I endured more epithets and slurs in one hour than in the rest of my entire adult life—but it felt like doing something, and I did meet a lot of my neighbors. There are some good, brave people living here and that, at least, makes me feel better.

Suffer the Children

The following isn’t strictly related, in fact isn’t even loosely related to travel, writing, exploration, or cultural discovery. It’s just what’s on my mind and I need to unload.

Lately a group of pro-Proposition 8 protestors have been massing during rush hour at the corner of High and MacArthur Streets in Oakland. This intersection is almost a half a mile from my house, but it’s a major Laurel District thoroughfare, and I seem to have to pass by this group almost any time I go anywhere.

Every time I do, my blood boils. Proposition 8 is a proposed state constitutional amendment that will outlaw gay marriage, a right that, believe it or not, we actually do have in California right now. So every time I go on an errand, I have to pass by this vocal group intent on taking away one of my civil rights. That this group that wants to make me a second-class citizen is composed mostly of people of Tongan descent is just one of the oddities of the situation. Why would a bunch people of color try to impose a separate but equal scenario on anyone else? I don’t get it.

Another thing I don’t get is the fact that most of this group are also Mormon. I know it’s a conservative faith, but you’d think Mormons, of all people, would understand how terrible it feels to have people legislate your relationships.

And it does feel terrible. This is the thing I don’t like to admit, because it gives the bigots power, but it really does hurt. It feels just like junior high school, when the popular kids go out of their way to make it clear how unwelcome you are at their table. This feeling, this shame at being made to feel like you aren’t good enough to be included in something, is apparently one of those things I’m never going to outgrow.

Part of what makes this so painful is the fact that for the Yes on 8 crowd, it’s a big party. They’re out there on the corner dancing, shouting, high-fiving each other, and just generally having a great time.

That hurts, of course; nobody likes to feel that someone’s having fun at their expense, least of all me.

But the thing that’s really disturbing me, that’s actually making me despair a little bit, is the fact that kids are getting involved. These people, pretending that they’re pro family, are dragging their children to the protest. On Thursday night, a large group of adults and children were still out at 9:30pm, when I drove by on my way home from a class.

Now, 9:30 was my bedtime—my weekend bedtime—until I was 14 years old. So here’s the last thing I don’t understand: If these Yes on 8 people are such superior parents, why are their little urchins not in bed at a reasonable hour?

A Room with Access to a View

This is not the view from my house. Like most Oakland residents, I live in what East Bay people call “The Flatlands.” We don’t have any view to speak of out our windows, although I am learning to appreciate living at ground level for the glimpses it provides into our neighbors’ lives. This morning, for example, our firefighter neighbor was pounding something into her lawn with a sledgehammer, though we couldn’t see exactly what, and wasted a good deal of time speculating as to what it could be. But I digress.

The good news is that if you’re feeling energetic, views are not far away. This picture was taken only two blocks from where we live. One of the blocks, though, is very long and graded like a ski jump. The reward for climbing that hill is a view across most of Oakland and the San Francisco Bay, one even better than the one I got the other day.

Walking Down My Street

One of the interesting aspects of moving is that it puts a whole new neighborhood within walking distance of my house. My own new street, in fact, is one that I hadn’t ever been on before we looked at the house. So recently I took a stroll up and down my street so that I could mark it off on my map.

This was harder than it sounds. Where I live, my street is only a few blocks long. Almost a half a mile away, though, the street recurs for about a block. I ended up getting some pretty good exercise just finding my whole street.

¡Obamanos!

I took a great walk yesterday. I was exploring my own neighborhood but I went uphill a little bit and found myself in Redwood Heights, which borders the Laurel District. It’s a wealthy neighborhood full of very large houses, most of them mock Tudor or some other imposing style. It was a little intimidating, but the houses were pretty and I was rewarded for my uphill trudge with a beautiful view of the Oakland flatlands, the bay, and the hills south of San Francisco.

Some of the campaign signs that I saw in Redwood Heights surprised me. There were a lot of “No on 8” signs, just like in my neighborhood. (Proposition 8 is a proposed amendment to the state constitution that will outlaw gay marriage in California. Again.)

There were also a lot of pro-Obama signs. Most of them I’d seen before, but one caught my eye. It just said “¡Obamanos!” I take this to be a play on the Spanish “vamanos,” meaning “let’s go.” I thought that was very clever, and I love that for everyone out there calling him “Osama” or reminding us over and over what his middle name is, there’s another person using his or her powers of name-twisting for good.

Haleakala

The other thing I want to do is ride a bike down Mount Haleakala. You get driven to the top of the volcano very early in the morning to watch the sun rise. Then you are given a bicycle and pointed downhill. You more or less coast back to the bottom.

This is my favorite kind of outdoor adventure--one that has a veneer of athleticism, but which is really all about looking at pretty things. I can look at pretty things all day long and not get tired.

Molokini

The first thing I want to do is snorkel at Molokini. This is a partially sunken volcanic crater in the ocean a few miles from Maui. I saw a picture while I was researching luxury activities in Hawaii and knew instantly I wanted to go there; I just didn’t know when I’d get a chance. I’m told you can go on a sort of escorted scuba dive there, too, without being certified, but I’m not sure I’m brave enough for that. Snorkeling works for me.

Next Big Thing

Pipi and I only have one major trip planned this year, but it’s a good one: We’re going to Maui in December. The occasion is Pipi’s brother’s wedding. This is the wedding that might have taken place in Australia, but we’re not complaining.

Pipi has been to Maui before, but she was pretty young, and I’ve never been at all. I did write a luxury travel description about Maui a few months ago, so I feel like I know it a little. I’m looking forward to doing some of the activities I wrote about, which actually aren’t all that expensive--they just struck me as cool.

Some Good News on the Candy Front

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that White Rabbit candy will relaunch soon. It will have different packaging, the main feature of which is some kind of message from the company saying the product is no longer made with tainted milk.

I guess this is good news. I’m not sure how much safer the new packaging really makes consumers, but I like White Rabbit so much that I may risk it, once in a while anyway.

Flickr Fun

Here’s another interesting web site I find myself part of. This isn’t one of those wayback searches; this item just went up a few weeks ago.

The site is called Now Public, and it appears to be a user-generated news site, sort of like Wikipedia, only for news. Writers troll sites like Flickr for photos, and recently someone found a photo I took in China to use with an article about traffic controls in Beijing.

Several hundred other photos are attached to the story, so I don’t feel like it’s a huge honor, but it’s kind of interesting nonetheless.

Pardon My….Turkish?

If you’ve been to Google’s home page in the last few days, you know it’s their 10th anniversary. As part of this observation, they’ve placed a temporary field on the home page that enables you to see what results would have come up if you had used Google in January of 2001.

I was curious what would happen if I Googled myself using the time-machine box, so I did. It found 113 results, about 20 of which were non-duplicates.

Some hits don’t actually have to do with me; they’re news and statistics about Nicole Clausing the Midwestern soccer star. Some are from my ancient history—mostly tables of content for books I edited 12 or 13 years ago. But the very last one amused me. I’ve seen it before, but I haven’t been able to find it on the Internet for years. It’s a link to an article with my byline—but that’s the only part of the article I can read. The text itself is written in a language I don’t even recognize. Turkish, maybe? If anyone knows, I’d love it if you’d let me know.

I think I know what the article is. I’m sure it’s this article that I remember writing (in English, naturally) many years ago with my Travelocity co-worker, Lisa Zeng. What I can’t explain is why someone would bother to translate it. This is the only thing I’ve ever written that I’m aware of having been translated. I guess it’s an honor, but mostly it’s just a fun mystery.

Even Worse Candy News

I spent three months backpacking in China in the early nineties, and one thing I remember fondly about that time is Cadbury chocolate bars. Cadbury isn’t the best chocolate in the world, but all the other “chocolate” products sold in China in those days tasted like brown crayons in colorful wrappers, so I was grateful for it.

I was so grateful, in fact, that I used to buy one or two every time I saw some for sale, reasoning that I never knew when I would next get the chance to have good chocolate.

It wasn’t until very close to the end of my trip that I realized that Cadbury was pretty much everywhere, and that I was actually consuming candy bars at a far faster rate than I did at home. I had somehow convinced myself that I was experiencing a chocolate famine, when in reality, I was putting away three or four bars a week.

I don’t eat Cadbury that much anymore, but when I do, I have a Proust-like memory of traveling on Chinese trains, and I can remember how good it made me feel to taste something sweet and creamy and familiar so far from home.

I am thinking of all the Cadbury chocolate bars I have eaten in my day because I just read that the company is recalling its Chinese-made chocolate because of fears that it might have been made with tainted milk. I’m not concerned for myself—this was a really long time ago—but I am a little sad to think of all those backpackers out there now, scrunched up on hard-sleeper bunks somewhere in the Chinese countryside, scribbling in their journals after an unsatisfying train dinner, and not being able to pop an overly sweet, oddly light colored piece of mediocre chocolate in their mouths.

They’re probably all sipping Starbucks mochas and not missing mass-market candy at all, but that’s a sad thought in its own way, too.

Interesting Article

Today I stumbled upon an article in Travel + Leisure magazine that caught my attention. It listed the scariest airports in the world to fly in and out of. It seemed to be judging the fear factor from the perspective of pilots, but I imagine that in most cases, the approaches would be pretty scary for a passenger, too. There’s an airport in the mountains of Bhutan that’s so hard to get to, for example, that only eight people in the world are qualified to land there. I think that most passengers would notice the rocks and trees whizzing by the window and be a little alarmed.

A few approaches did take me by surprise, like JFK and Washington National. Who knew these airports were so difficult for pilots? But because of airspace restrictions and traffic from other nearby airports, they are.

I’m pleased to report that I’ve flown into three of the ten scary airports, plus one—Hong Kong’s old Kai Tak—that got an honorary mention even though is no longer in use.

There is one I probably never will get to, though. That’s the one in Lesotho where the runway isn’t long enough, so on takeoff planes sometimes go off the edge of a cliff and plummet until they get enough speed to become airborne. I just don’t need that much adventure in my life.

Not Strictly Related, But….

…This struck me as funny and I wanted to share.

I was at Whole Foods last night, and not even the one in Berkeley. This happened in good old Adams Point, in Oakland.

I was standing in line and someone said over the public-address system, “Would the gentleman who wanted the vegan doughnut holes please return to the deli counter?”

I repeat, this wasn’t even in Berkeley. Vegan doughnuts. What will they think of next?