Big Books Wanted

56/365
Originally uploaded by Christiane B

Before commencing the journey I am in dire need of a book fitting the following qualifications:

1000 pages plus

paperback

fun enough to keep me from jumping out of the window of some shitty bus after hour 19 of journey which may only have transported us 20 miles away from starting point but which did include two blown tires and maybe an average of nine screaming babies plus some chickens on my lap.

Ideas please.

Grand European Life

I have been living a grand European life the past weeks and month. Work trips, weekend trips, family trips, friends visiting and walks through sunny, springy, sparkly streets. There is something unique about Europe in the spring. The misery of the past months gives way to a mindset where everything is wonderful: pints on the sidewalk outside the pub, a morning walk to work, wearing a summer skirt, being cold in your summer skirt at night but not too cold to need a jacket, yummy mummy's sitting in cafes all day long, construction workers getting back to cat calling after a long hard winter of not having anything to look at but girls in big North Face jackets. It's a great time and it feels so much more special than a sunny day in a place where sunny days are a dime a dozen.

To some extend I feel like I have been living the very life which in theory is exactly the life I envision. In other words if it was your life or the life of some darling girl in an airport news stand novel, I'd be just a little bit envious. I am living in a big diverse city, jet setting everywhere all the time, being at home in pretty much all those places I visit because I visit them so much, carrying four currencies in my wallet (yeah, somehow the euro has not gone all the way yet), being able to hop on a flight last minute to see family in random seaside towns in Eastern Europe just because, having friends pop in from all over the world at a day's notice, living in the greatest little neighborhood, knowing all kinds of interesting people who make me do interesting things, having the money to harvest those cute flowery dresses on Portobello Road, trying the food in all the ridiculously overpriced yet enticing looking restaurants, being young enough not to need much money to have fun, biking to work and did I mention all the fun weekend trips? Yes, so life is pretty damn good. I could totally see newly acquired husband and I live like this from now until the cows come home. However, despite the fact that it IS all very great and fun, it seems just a little bit boring. Maybe because it is so easy or maybe because there is a routine to it?

I am a bit upset that less friends will pop in en route to somewhere when we are in Singapore, and that we are pretty much half way across the globe from our families and that Singapore is not known for it's Italian food, but somehow the thought of staying in Europe and continuing this grand European life seems dull. Maybe once I have conquered Singapore in a similar way, 'Asia' will seem a bit boring and easy and obviously there will be a routine. Maybe I will want that ease and routine then or else we'll have to move on. I just hope we don't ever run out of continents.

Final Count Down

It's on.

Two weeks till we land in Mumbai. Two more more Mondays in the office but only one more Tuesday. This is the perfect distance from now till D-day as to maximize the Vorfreude.

The sweet feeling of emails flying around that should say: "could you please do this awful and boring thing for us and rather fast, but be aware this will be your life from now until this pointless and mind numbing project ends" but instead they say "since you will be gone, do you mind finding a victim whom to bore to tears with these mind numbing tasks that you will be unable to do".

That's the opposite of the "yay, it's my birthday in three weeks and we are doing the most amazing things ever and it will be sunny and will you please come along" email to which I need to respond "sorry and damn the man for your birthday being when it is and not a week earlier". Given that I am researching beaches in Goa I am not too bummed but there are some major events this summer with the high point being a wedding in Italy that I am thoroughly upset to miss, but there you go again with that cake and eating it too.

1. May

In the homeland and I dare say across the old continent and some of them new continents, the 1st of May is a holiday designed to celebrate worker's rights. In the homeland the 1st of May is also father's day. Combined that somehow is a go-ahead to smash windows, beat up other dudes and rally through the city with open containers of booze as far as the eye can see.

Surely that was what those lawmakers and union leaders had in mind when they fought for workers to have Saturdays off and made the 1st of May a holiday to celebrate that.

Using amazing restraint and foresight regarding the upcoming drunkenness, in the homeland a super amazing contraption is traditionally used by the inebriated fathers and non-fathers to transport enough booze to last them all day as they explore the city: it's the so-called Bollerwagen. I am not joking. Early on the 1st of May my male German friends load up the Becks or Astra (=the ghetto version), iron the Lederhosen and off they go. And come to think of it, surely any good father will bring his young son or daughter along for a solid day of boozing because after all, someone will have to pull the Bollerwagen.

Here is to work and fatherhood.

Cheers

Who wants to live forever?

"Wouldn't it suck" newly acquired husband asked, "if we were the last generation of people to die?"

The Lure of Dirt and Disease

I was exchanging emails with a friend on malaria prophylaxis and its ugly side effects, when she finished off the conversation saying that all this talk of loosing one's mind on Lariam, puking one's guts out in general, loosing all power of birth control pills on doxycycline and getting various girly infections due to being on antibiotics for a long time really got her jealous and itchy footed to go somewhere. Strangely I know what she means. When friends of ours shipped off to do the Peace Corps in Peru a few years ago when I had just returned from a longer stay in South America, thus still clued in to all the different amoebas awaiting one there, I was actually jealous too of the bottles and tubes of things they had lined up on their table. Arguably it is the point and the merit of living in the western world is that one does not have to worry about drinking the tab water and eat antibiotics every day in order to keep a minimum level of health. However, there is something exciting about travel that does necessitate all these precautions. Maybe that is the difference between travel and a vacation. The latter is striving for comfort, maybe some adventure, maybe some relaxation, but the former is all about the inconveniences of leaving the sanitized mother ship. A good vacation is one where shit works out, an interesting trip is something where shit does not work out and from shit not working out one is confronted with something that is also not covered by Lonely Planet or The Rough Guide and it is then when things get interesting. Maybe that is the nostalgia about malaria prophylaxis. Also, lets be clear here: in theory it's adventurous to pull some nasty worm out of your leg while taking a swig of your whisky bottle while outside a small African nation is staging its third revolt against everyone foreign especially whitie you, but in practice of course it's a lot nicer to eat your malaria pills and just miss (by a hair so it's a good story) true disaster and disease. Knock on wood. On a side note: Lariam makes for amazing dreams. I recall Wednesday night, malaria pill night on a previous trip being my favorite night ever, every week a new treat. Some people do freak out though like on a bad acid trip, so be aware. The problem beyond that is that in SE Asia most malaria strands are already resistant, so the other option are those antibiotics. And on more of a side note: the nurse who prescribed them to me quickly clicked close on the little window that popped up when she put the prescription in the computer. I made her go back because I thought I saw the world "pregnant" floating in there somewhere...and yep, as I already mentioned doxycycline makes the pill useless. Well now, isn't that nice to know. The competence of a medical professional is never to be underestimated. Instead of worrying about whether Thai curry is nicer than Indian curry, we'd be worrying about whether it will be Little Jonny or Little Jane. Phew. Saved by the bell. 

Singapore Sling

A quick search on flickr did not yield much bloggable stuff in terms of Singapore slings. Either that means they are waiting for little me to become the officious photographer of Singapore, or it really is as boring as I remember!

Lets go with option 1 and hurrah, here we come.