So I've been amiss in updating here - for some reason I didn't really feel like it anymore. It might be that a number of my friends here have moved on, or something else. But I found something today that I thought I should share with whoever is still reading this:



A unsigned band in Manchester, England wanted to make a music video, but had no money for one, so they decided to make creative use of the British Freedom of Information Act and the many security cameras in Manachester. Brilliant.

via Agents of Urbanism

COLOMBO (Reuters) - Pioneering science fiction writer and visionary Arthur C. Clarke, best known for his work on the movie "2001: A Space Odyssey", has died in his adopted home of Sri Lanka at the age of 90.

He died of respiratory complications and heart failure doctors linked to the post-polio syndrome that had kept him wheelchair-bound for years.

Marking his "90th orbit of the sun" in December, the prolific British-born author and theorist made three birthday wishes: For E.T. to call, for man to kick his oil habit and for peace in Sri Lanka.

Clarke was born in England on December 16, 1917, and served as a radar specialist in the Royal Air Force during World War Two.

He was one of the first to suggest the use of satellites orbiting the earth for communications, and in the 1940s forecast that man would reach the moon by the year 2000 -- an idea experts at first dismissed as rubbish.

When Neil Armstrong landed in 1969, the United States said Clarke "provided the essential intellectual drive that led us to the moon".

Clarke wrote around 100 books and hundreds of short stories and articles, and wanted to be remembered foremost as a writer.

Trained as a scientist, he was renowned for basing his work on scientific fact and theory rather than pure fiction and for keeping humanity at the heart of his technological visions.

In 1964, he started to work with the film maker Stanley Kubrick on the script of a groundbreaking film which was to win audiences and accolades far wider than those of most previous science fiction -- "2001: A Space Odyssey".

Based loosely on a short story he had written in 1948, it dealt poetically with themes of human evolution, technology and consciousness and came to be regarded by many as one of the greatest films ever made.

BIG THREE

Clarke, one of the most prolific authors of his genre, was the last surviving member of a group of science-fiction writers known as the "Big Three".

The two others were the Russian-born Isaac Asimov, who died in 1992, and Robert A. Heinlein, a Missouri native who died in 1988.

"The thing about Clarke is he had this footprint lasting 60 years with a constant stream of publications," said Russell Galen, his New York-based literary agent for more than 30 years.

"So he has a kind of stature from his long influence that puts him in a unique, elite group."

Clarke finished reviewing the final manuscript of his latest novel "The Last Theorem" just days ago.

He had also been working on the idea of a "space elevator".

"The golden age of space is only just beginning," Clarke forecast.

"Over the next 50 years, thousands of people will travel to earth orbit and then to the moon and beyond. Space travel and space tourism will one day become almost as commonplace as flying to exotic destinations on our own planet."

Clarke's brother is traveling to Sri Lanka for his burial, due in Colombo's general cemetery later this week.

Clarke left written instructions that his funeral be private and secular.

"Absolutely no religious rites of any kind, relating to any religious faith, should be associated with my funeral," he wrote.





Thanks for your books, ACC. I've greatly enjoyed each and every one of them.


And now, his last video missive to the world, filmed in December for his 90th birthday.



video via Underwire, epitaph in the subject by Arthur C Clarke also via Underwire also

I just had to share this: BEST SCI-FI CON NAME EVAR!!

Day 1 - Ngorogoro Crater

We get picked up around 8:00am for a 3 hour drive to even get to the crater. Most of the drive is through a fairly dry steppe, since we were there right before the short rainy season. It was really cool to see dried-out riverbeds everywhere. I can only imagine what it looks like right after the rainy season. Looks like I'll have to go back... (I feel like that might be a recurring theme.) The road to Ngorogoro/Serengeti/Lake Manyara is probably the nicest road in all of Tanzania, because that's Tanzania's big money-maker. So it makes sense. What I thought was incredibly interesting is that on the road between main highway and crater there are these giant troughs in the road. These troughs apparently are there to allow water to flow from one side of the road to the other during the rainy season. I thought this was fascinating, because you'd never find anything like that here in the States.

So once we get into the actual Conservation Area, the road isn't paved anymore. It's bouncy as hell. So then we go up the outside of the crater, and when we stop at a lookout point on the crater rim, are breath is just taken away. What we see is very much like this. The first amazing sight of the safari. What's amazing about the crater is that you are looking down on a little bit of forest, a lake, a huge steppe, and all these different biotopes in this (relatively) tiny crater. But from this lookout point you can also see all these little dots from up there, and while you can't make out the animals themselves, you know that the area is just teeming with life. We then drive another 20 minutes along the crater rim before we hit another gate, at which point we open up the roof of the 4x4 and then off we go to the animals. Of course Sven, Inga, and I stand up because how often do you get to do that kind of thing? I mean, without being one of those people who stand up while they're in a rented limo.

As we drive to the crater floor, we see animals slowly grow from dots to little fuzzballs to vaguely recognizable shapes. Before we knew it there were baboons, gazelles, zebras, wildebeest, impalas, water buffalo, etc, all over the place. Warthogs run across our path. Ostriches stand around, doing something. A hyena trots right up to our car before turning away. We then pass at least 10 hyenas just lying by the side of the road most likely extremely pregnant and about to burst. Hippos can be found primarily in the aptly named "Hippo Pool". They don't do anything. Really, none of the animals did anything except for sleep and graze. Rhinos similarly, we standing off in the distance. I was tempted to jump out and start a fire, but decided against it. Then, finally, after driving around for about 4 hours, we head towards the exit ramp up the rim, pausing only to take pictures of elephants in the distance and a sign telling one not to feed animals because apparently it kills them.

After picking up a cook, we commence on a 3 hour drive to our campsite, into the Serengeti along a road that is bumpy as hell and we never go below 80 kmh the entire time. I somehow managed to shoot a decent sunset pic while being shaken about like a martini. So finally we get to our campsite at around 8pm, 90 minutes after the sun went down, after racing through seemingly random roads in the pitch-black Serengeti for 90 minutes. It's literally just a patch of land in the middle of the Serengeti. Literally. No fence, no sentry guard. Just us and the belief that animals don't go near human settlements, which turned out to be true. And in spite of the nasty toilet facilities, I absolutely loved camping there.


Day 2 - Serengeti

I woke up in the middle of the night and was just amazed to see that with the cloudless sky and full moon I could see everything out there. Still, I returned to bed fairly quickly, since it was cold and dark and I was in unprotected in the Serengeti. But then, when I woke up in the morning this view greeted me as I walked out of the tent. Amazing. I was just stunned. It took 5 minutes before the thought "hey, get your camera - this shot won't be here forever" popped into my head and I went to get my camera.

After breakfast, we headed out towards a dirt airstrip in the middle of the Serengeti where our driver could pay our national park fees, since we had arrived too late to pay them the night before. But before we even got close to the airstrip, we stopped to see giraffes. Only 30 feet from our car. Sadly, the one that was closest was back-lit for its close-up, but the others in the group were not. We saw still more countless impalas, another elephant herd, an alligator, a scavenger bird whose name I forget, more monkeys than you could spit at, lazy lions, another elephant herd grazing on that dry grass, and lots of stunning vistas. (I only wish I could upload as many pictures as I'd like, but Flickr has a 100mb/month limit. If you want other pictures, just ask.) At one point we past a different jeep that had a (60ish year old) English couple looking out the top towards an area that had, it appeared to us, nothing to offer. Inga proceed to ask the couple what it was that they were looking at. They answered "Some birds." When my mother asked what their answer was Inga said "Oh, just some birds," which prompted the English couple to respond with " 'Just birds'?!?" This then became a recurring line during the rest of our trip. The 90 minutes or so were spent driving around, hoping to see a leopard, as that was the last of the "Big Five we had yet to see. I wasn't too upset about this though, because I just couldn't get enough of the endless never-ending plains that are Serengeti. Finally, after getting a tip from the driver of a different car, we headed to a large rocky outcropping that had a leopard on it. Around the outcropping were a dozen other safari cars. We ended up driving around the outcropping 3 times, following the leopard from one side to the other. Finally, it decided to lie down, which let me calmly get a decent shot.

By noon all the animals were sleeping in whatever shade they could find, so we headed back to the campsite to grab some food. After lunch we proceeded to race back through the Serengeti, along the same bumpy road as the first time, though this time it was during the day, so we could see more than the bit illuminated by the headlights. This feature turned out to be important, because animals tend to be dumb when it comes to timing when exactly to cross the road. Thomson's Gazelles feel the need to cross just when we will barely miss them. Also, we could see dust devils, sometimes 3 or more at a time. We even drove through one, which made us roll up our windows rather quickly, though we rolled them down just as quickly. After 2 hours on this bumpy road, my heels were entirely numb. I discovered, much to my dismay, that this feeling would only decay slowly, when I woke up the next morning still suffering from crazy-heel. As we drove back up to the Ngorogoro Crater rim, as hit some road-work. Since the road isn't paved, road-work consisted of a dump-truck filled with dirt (presumably clay) and a steam-roller. Again, much later than planned we get to the camping ground, which is actually in a town. This made me happy because it meant that I could charge my camera battery, so I had a spare the next day.


Day 3 - Lake Manyara

On the third day we drove to Lake Manyara which was actually only a 10 minute drive from the campground. At the entry gate we were told not to take anything tangible with us. Again we had luck, because 5 minutes after we entered we met a herd of elephants eating a bunch of trees. It was actually interesting to see them amidst lots of green foliage, since the day before we only saw them in dry plains. Honestly, I wondered where all those elephants in those dry plains would get their water from. But we soon had to move on to monkeys. Specifically little ones like this one hanging out in a tree, or two new-borns playing with each other. In hindsight, those little monkeys bore quite the resemblance to Peter Jackson's vision of Gollum. Our attention was soon diverted to an army of babboons marching across a clearing on the other side of the road.

We continued on into a large clearing near what I can only assume is Lake Manyara itself. I was somewhat surprised at the number of bones littering the area. Not everywhere, but still a noticable number. And at one point there were these three water buffalo, just staring at us. All three of them, hardly moving, seemingly wondering what we found so interesting about their home. We tried to tell them, but they just kept staring. So we moved on, and soon found another couple giraffes. This one had better lighting, which made me happy. Near him was a leopard, sleeping in a tree. However, I caught him mid-yawn. WOOHOO!

Moving on, we passed a colony of babboons hanging out by the roadside. Let me tell you: that stank. I mean, seriously, couldn't they take a shit a little further away? But we could here one of them talking on a tree above our car. Too bad I cannot for the life of me remember what it sounded like. The next animals we saw were 10 or so giraffes, just sitting or standing near each other, all gazing in the same direction. Why they all decided that staring off in the general direction of the sun was a good idea beats me, but Inga decided to join them.

After leaving the giraffes to their staring contest with the sky, we move on to see the most excited animal we saw: An ostrich running away. We then drove around for a while searching for something in particular (what exactly, I don't know) before heading out at noon to get lunch and back to Arusha. There was only one thing standing in our way: an elephant. Literally. It was meandering down the road, then stopped on this small little concrete bridge over a stream to get a drink. I'm guessing that it felt vaguely threatened by us, since every few minutes it would turn towards us lift one leg, and stare at us for a couple seconds, before turning back to get more water. It did this like three times before finally moving on. After the bridge it moved off to the side of the road and we passed it so closely that I could've jumped onto its back. What I would've done then is another matter entirely, and it's probably a good thing that I didn't. After lunch we then made the three hour drive back to Arusha.



If any of you ever get the chance to go to Africa, I can't recommend a safari enough. Personally, I would go for a 3 day safari, because that's just about the most you can stand before you're overcome with the feeling of "great, another babboon/elephant/lion/giraffe/water buffalo/etc". Then again, the more time you spend there the better your chances of seeing that certain animal you've been waiting to see or the animals doing more than just grazing and sleeping. I'm told that we missed out on elephants just randomly knocking down a tree in Lake Manyara by one day. If you can swing it, definitely camp in the Serengeti. Camping isn't completely safe, naturally, since I met people on Kilimanjaro (subject of my next extensive post) whose tent was broken into during the night. By a warthog. Because the guard had fallen asleep.

You'll probably get some sticker-shock when you get a price from a safari company (we paid $1000 per person). But at least $400 of this went towards national park fees and another hefty chunk went towards all that diesel. All I can say is that it is definitely worth the money. As was the camera and lens I bought, as you can see.

Finally, for some reason Flickr didn't really put my pictures into any coherent order. It's generally in chronological order in the photostream, except for the very beginning which is only pictures from the end of the trip, and the occasional out-of-sequence picture. If you want the comments to make sense, I suggest starting at the end of the photostream and working your way towards the front, since that's how the pictures were presented to me once they were uploaded. Does any of this make sense? Good. And what do we learn from this? Flickr's interface sucks.

Tags: africa, safari, tanzania, travel

A quick recap of small things I wanted to mention previously but forgot to:


So here in Tanzania oranges and bananas are actually the same color: green.

While "hakuna matata" actually does mean "no worries", noone here says it in Tanzania (perhaps in Kenya? I doubt it).

For those of you following at home, I'm sad (but not really) to say that I only made it up to approximately 5000 meters above mean sea level (I'm guessing that's what A.M.S.L. means) due to the lovely combination of exhaustion, hunger, and nausea the night of my summit attempt. Still, an beautiful experience, even if at the end in the higher altitudes the main thought in my head was "SHOULDN'T VACATIONS BE RELAXING?!?!" Still, I can only recommend you do this trek yourselves if you get the chance.

Also, I was lucky that my trip included a night before and after the trek at this hotel which had this view from the hotel restaurant.

Once I get back home I will put in some massive updates with choice pictures for both the Safari and Kilimanjaro. I'm thinking one entry for the safari and one for Kilimanjaro will be the order of business, though near-unanimity could sway my decision.

Tags: tanzania, travel

Best day thus far.

It starts out at breakfast this morning. The past two days my mom and I have been waiting to see the monkeys that this place claims to be a habitat/sanctuary for. Then, today, there were like 10 of them hanging out in front of the house we get breakfast in. And a little kid that was also staying there was terrified of them. Awesome.

Then, we made a visit to Mama Elly. Inga stayed with the family on the weekends while here so that she would have to use the Swahili she learned here during the week. That was just a great trip, even if we felt a little (extremely!) out-of-place. We initially planned on walking to her house, which would've taken somewhere around 45 minutes, but upon leaving and being reminded of the fact that AFRICA IS HOT!! so instead we decided to take a Dala-Dala, which was not an unpleasant experience. I mean, dala-dalas we saw in Dar Es Salaam were packed with people sitting on top of laps of people who were themselves sitting on someone else's lap (Inga has some great stories, including one involving a chicken), but the one we were in had room for everyone to have an individual seat. I feel gypped.

So after a short ride we got off the Dala-Dala to walk about 15 minutes down a dirt road (at least half of which would have to be qualified as "off-road") to our destination. It's amazing how much better a village is for mzungu walking through it than a major city is. Of course, it also helped that Inga is fluent in Swahili and greeted everyone (the norm) so that they were much more welcoming.

We had been at the house the previous day, dropping off some gifts for the family, including a soccer ball for the 9 year old Jonas living there. When we got to the field he was currently using his new ball in, we called his name. He picked up the ball and ran over to hug Inga. His friends, now deprived of their kicking sphere and having nothing better to do, followed us into Mama Elly's front yard. Once inside we joined in the cooking a bit, mostly with little pancakes called Chipatzi, and then had what will probably be the best meal I'll had the entire trip. In terms of how it's eaten, it's very much in the style of Ethiopian food, but it was just such a wide variety of fantasticer awesome-er-ness. That was the best party my mouth has had in quite some time.

(Sadly, at this point in time, my camera's battery ran out, and I had left the spare battery at home. This part sucked for the rest of the day.)

After this, the five of us and Mama Elly went off to visit someone else that Inga knew from her time here, Baba Ndosi. (I'm starting to wonder who she doesn't know.) This visit happened to coincide with the confirmation of the one of Ndosi's "daughters" (I'm guessing a niece since Meru people refer to all aunts and uncles and "father" and "mother" and nieces and nephews as "daughters" and "sons") so we got to attend that, even if we didn't understand most of it. But it seems that these people were loaded (relatively): they hired a sound guy (who used headphones as a microphone), a small brass-and-drums band, an MC, and invited and fed ~150 people. We were among the 150 guests, surprisingly. Not only that, but front row seats were saved for us as well. Um, what? OK. What pissed me off that my camera's battery died was the "Meru Cake." This is not a baked good of any sort. In fact, it is a roasted goat. A whole goat. A roasted whole goat. Goat. Right there, less than ten feet away. A goat with patches of fur still on it's feet and head, but mostly roasted flesh. It did look tasty though. Hopefully Sven's pictures of it will develop nicely. But the second large meal in as many hours there was good, and we weren't made to feel unwelcome at all, even by the people we later found out were sitting on rocks 30 feet behind us. Also, the goat was tasty. The band, however, gave the CU Marching Band a run for their money. (I'm not quite sure which party that should insult.) The funniest part of the shindig was that the parents of the girl received blankets, symbolizing the fact that they're now old fogies.

Baba Ndosi, who had taken us to this party, mentioned to me that he was glad that we weren't like all the other tourists who fly in, take in a Safari and perhaps a mountain or two, and then fly out again, instead of also getting to learn the culture of the people who live there. Then again, I realized later, the only reason that we were able to partake of African culture is because Inga knew these people. It's not like any tourist would ever randomly decide to walk into a village in Africa, especially since most people only speak Swahili. There's also no way whatsoever to just randomly strike up a conversation with people, even if they do speak English. It's just not done.

After the confirmation Baba Ndosi took us on a tour of his coffee farm (somewhat interesting) and then drove us back home, since the sun had already long set. But my god, that 'road' was a lot of fun to drive on. Bouncy, rickety-rockety fun.

Tomorrow I'm off for three days at least, though it might end up being more than a week.

Current Location: Arusha

I know it saves a lot of money (~$160/pp) but taking a 9 hour bus ride from Dar Es Salaam to Arusha (technically just outside of Arusha) is a bad idea. Sure, it's cool to see the landscape go by slowly become ever more arid, but you don't see anything mind-blowing. And like with any bus, the seats are cramped as hell and fairly uncomfortable. Plus the buses don't have bathrooms, which is somewhat of an inconvenience. And that's on the 'luxury line'. My mom is now lobbying for a different mode of transportation back to Dar. We'll see how that plays out. Or at least I will, since I am not affected by this decision. Instead of going to Zanzibar with my folks, I'll be trekking up Kilimanjaro. Why I chose to forgo a tropical island in the Indian Ocean and instead risk hypothermia and hypoxia is beyond me. (Not quite)

The one good thing about Arusha is that it gets cool at night. Inga is glad to finally need a blanket top sleep. Dar stayed like 75-80 last night, and Inga said that it was a relatively cool day. My dad's and brother's shirts would disagree (yay, less active sweat glands!) And supposedly mosquitos are less intense up here, which makes me happy. Plus being ~5800 ft up lets me start acclimatizing a bit.

Monday we start a 3-day safari, so tomorrow my mom and I are going to try to finagle a way to a Masai village, where we're told they sell cool textiles. Sunday I would like to do a hot air balloon safari, but the one that my mom found online before we left was like $400 and required you to be at a different hotel at like 5am. Not cool. Hopefully I can find something cheaper and later. This also assumes that people work on Sundays, which I'm told is a rarity in this religious country.

Finally, it turns out I brought entirely too much cash. See, all I was told was that "I would have to pay for everything I do." It was not made clear to me that my dad had already paid for much of it in advance, so we would just settle the bill later. Of course, I might feel slightly different once I pay for my Kili trek and flight to Dar (see 1st paragraph).

So my schedule, for those who want to follow along on your at-home maps, is thus:
Monday - Wednesday: HOLY CRAP, LIONS!
Thursday - Tuesday (following): going into cold and thin air instead of a beach. Seriously.
Friday - flying back home.
Saturday - get back home after a 26 hour journey (assuming plans hold up).

And finally, how the hell do I always find ways to get online? I was not expecting this.

So I've arrived in Dar Es Salaam without major incident and am happy to report that OMG IT'S F&%*#IN HOT HERE! Also, it seems that for every person that appears to want to rob you (a guy zipped open my mom's fanny pack while bumping into her, presumably hoping that after crossing the street he could make another pass and actually pilfer) there are 20 zillion who try to get you to start talking to them and then get your money somehow and 45 taxis. Luckily, Inga has taught me the most important (so far, at least) Swahili word: hapana. It means no. SO USEFUL!

Last night, 2 hours after arrival, Inga decides to take us to an ex-pat bar where she literally knows everybody. They seem like cool peoples, even the South Africans with their short shorts. No, seriously, they wear really short shorts. But I'm happy to report that the Tanzanian (and one Kenyan) beer that I've had has all been drinkable and refreshing. Awesome.

Tomorrow it's off on an all day, cross-country bus ride to Arusha, which is more or less the tourism capital of the country, since it's near the Serengeti and whatnot.

W00T!

Current Location: Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania
Hearing: Robbery-free for the past 20 hours!

Holy crap. Only 15 hours til I fly off. I hope I didn't forget to pack anything.

Also, last chance to send me your mailing address for a snail-mail post-card. And by last chance I mean by noon Tuesday.

Have a happy turkey day, all!

Current Location: holy crap, lions!
Hearing: holy crap, lions!

( Stacking 3400 lbs of tuna cans takes a while )

Also, tomorrow, instead of heading to my office, I get to do the following:
Take the A-train. Then the D-train. Then the R-train. Then a bus. Then walk 10 minutes. Yay, 2 hour journey to a meeting.

Best. Wedding. Cake. E.V.A.R.

Awesome shots of New York City young and old

Also, I am now putting out a general call for people who want postcards from Tanzania. Either email me your address or post them in the comments, if you so desire.

I'm also thinking of getting a fancier camera since I'll want something capable of taking breath-taking pictures of (presumably) breath-taking vistas. But do I want to spend $500+ so soon before spending a crapload of money in Tanzania. Also, I have to buy a whole lot of stuff to make sure I won't freeze to death while climbing Kilimanjaro.

Seriously, I cannot believe I'll be Tanzania in 3 weeks. Whoa.