Chasing Condors

Just two more days to go! What? Two more days to what, you ask? Why, just two more days to go to my holiday to Peru!

I love vacations (duh!) and I love the anticipation of an upcoming vacation every bit as much as the holiday itself. So right now I am beside myself with excitement.

After an initial hiccup I got myself a visa. And now I am all set for a backpacking, mountain hiking, all-action adventure in the Andes.

Of course I'm looking forward to seeing Machu Picchu. I read about it as a child and ever since then I've dreamed of seeing it for myself. What I did not dream was that I would get there the old-fashioned way, hiking through wilderness to come to a lost city.

And right after Machu Picchu I'll get to go another dream destination, Nazca. I don't care what you think, I would really prefer to believe that the Nazca lines were made to serve as landing strips for alien spacecraft. I know that I need to survive a fourteen-hour overnight bus ride to get to Nazca, but even that cannot dampen my enthusiasm to see the lines.

I know it's odd to blog about a trip before I make it. I'm almost worried I might jinx myself. But only almost, because how can you possibly jinx a trip to a destination as exciting as Peru?

Maine Attractions

I am almost embarassed to admit that last weekend I went to Maine to see lighthouses. I know, that sounds as geeky as going to a Star Trek convention. Except that at a Star Trek convention you won't get to see something as pretty as this.



This gem is a hundred and thirty years old and is named the "Nubble" lighthouse, after the rocky little island it sits on. And it might just become the best-known lighthouse in the universe. In 1977 NASA launched the Voyager 2 sattelite. This satellite is now well on it's way out of solar system. It carries pictures and recorded audio on a gold-plated disc, in case it encounters intelligent aliens who are curious to know who sent it. And on that disc is a picture of the Nubble lighthouse.

Yes, I know, sharing that bit of information actually made me seem more geeky, not less. Well, never mind. I am hoist with my own petard, so I might as well go on.

On to Portland Head Light, for instance. This is another beauty, an hour's drive north of the Nubble. It was built in 1791. And when it was completed a certain Captain Greenleaf was appointed as its first keeper by George Washington, who at that time was himself just 2 years into his term as the first president of the United States. Capt. Greenleaf clearly won the approval of his employers, because 2 years later they decided to start paying him a salary.

His name is engraved at the top of a plaque that honours all the keepers who were in charge of the lighthouse for the first two hundred years of its existence. But when I looked at the plaque myself, the names that caught my eye were those of Joshua E. Strout (keeper from 1869 to 1904) and Joseph W. Strout (keeper from 1904 to 1928). A quick internet search confirmed that they were father and son. But there's more to their family story than that. Joshua's wife was his assistant keeper for a decade, and his mother was a housekeeper for a previous lighthouse keeper. In fact the combined service of the Strout family at various New England lighthouses was 128 years!

Imagine that: one family devoting over a hundred years to bringing sailors safely home. I wonder what it was like growing up in their home. Was working the lights just a trade to them? Or did they, as I would like to think they did, take their job very very seriously? Did they ever get bored? When Joshua had a cold and fever how did he drag himself upstairs to climb to the top of a 100-foot tower to do his job? And when he got to the top did he ever accidentally drop something and have to climb all the way down the stairs to pick it up?

We shall never know, but we can speculate.

Seriously, though, that's what really fascinates me: not the lighthouses that are still standing on the rocky coastline of New England, but the men and women who used to tend them and are now gone. If you squeeze your eyes half shut and stretch your imagination really hard then you can sort of picture them. I imagine them as earnest, weather-beaten men and women who liked the company of others but only in small doses. I wonder where you'd find them today.

It's A Sign!

I love it when random chance leads to a revelatory insight, as it did to me today.

I've never been on good terms with Monday mornings. Of late our relationship has gone from bad to worse. I try to undermine Monday by waking late. Monday retaliates by throwing me out of bed and forcing me to go out into the world and meet stupid people.

It makes me meet people like the consular officer in the Peruvian consulate. I went there today to get a visa for a trip that I'm going to make at the end of August. But first the officer wanted a certificate from a doctor to prove that as of today I do not have the H1N1 virus inside me. It did not matter to her that I still have six weeks after today to acquire it, store it in my body, and smuggle it into her country when I go there. And she's only interested in swine flu; she does not care if I have the bugs for bird flu, typhoid, or the bubonic plague.

Yes, I tried to reason with her politely. The more fool me.

In the end I was forced to walk back to my office without a visa, ranting silently and tearing my hear out imaginarily. I was way too pissed to notice anything around me until I saw a sign that made me stop dead. "Life is short", it said. "Be quick to love and make haste to be kind."

And here I was, frittering away my precious minutes in silent fury at a problem that I could do nothing about today, but which I had plenty of time to take care of later.

So I stopped looking inside myself at my bubbling pit of frustration and instead looked around. At the lovely church that stood behind the sign that had woken me up. At a cyclist who had dismounted and was now stretched out in the sun with a newspaper. At an engraving in the pavement in front of me that recorded the past winners of the Boston Marathon and their race times. At the few tourists who were out and about and who had been taking in all these sights with wide eyes while I had been ignoring everything.

And then for the rest of the day crazy stuff happened which made no sense at all, not even by Monday's abysmal standards. I won't go into detail because I can't; and even if I did, it would be insufferably boring. Suffice to say that I have seldom seen as much corporate irrationality packed into a single day as I did today. But I kept remembering that life is short, and I got the better of Monday.

(Until later in the eveining, when I went to the gym and my trainer kicked my ass. Effing Monday got it's revenge then.)

Pass The Sausage And Wave The Flag

You have to admire a country that knows how to celebrate itself. This year, for the first time, I got to experience the 4th of July celebration. It was not the self-important display of national strength that I expected to see. Instead it was one massive party to which everyone was invited.

We chose not to go to the big celebration in Boston. Instead we went to the one in our suburban town. A mobile crane had been stationed in a school sports field as a makeshift flagpole. There were vans dispensing snacks and drinks. In the middle of perhaps two or three thousand people there was a stall selling lightsabers for children. (Jedi Knights would have to take their custom elsewhere.) At one end of the ground a music station was playing hits from the 70s, 80s and 90s for people to dance to. Then, at about 9pm, a half-hour firework display brought the festivities to a climactic end.

And that was it. No parades. No speeches. No displays of martial patriotism. No tragic/heroic re-enactments of a bitter struggle against the British army.

No jingoistic tributes to glorious nationhood.

Just one long, awesome family picnic.

It was almost the opposite of any Independence Day celebration I had ever seen before, in any country. And in an unexpected way, it was also the most inclusive celebration of nationhood imaginable. It even made me feel privileged to be a guest and a participant.

For so many years I have been baffled by the blithe sense of superiority that so many Americans seem to feel for their country. Now I begin to understand it just a little. When you celebrate your nation's independence as if it was a giant family event, I think it becomes very natural to take for granted that your country's way of life is the way that life should be. And that the rest of the world should aspire to that same way of life.

And if every day were a summer cookout followed by fireworks, maybe they should.

Turning The Other Cheek

Americans, if they do it, do it once. The Swiss seem to do it thrice. And a couple of days ago I may have accidentally offended a young French girl by only kissing her once on each cheek. But in my mind she's still the bright little eight-year-old I knew, not the fifteen-year-old debutante she's become. So I'm just relieved that when she turned her cheek to me in greeting I did not freeze in surprise with mouth agape.

I was in Geneva this week, and boy did it feel different from my last trip out of Boston. And that wasn't just because of the pressures of following the correct etiquette for social kissing.

You see, a week ago I was in Cincinnati. I spent four nights there and did not sleep well through a single one. I was kept up by the constant stream of police cars racing past my hotel all night with sirens blaring.

In Geneva, on the other hand, even rush hour traffic is barely audible. Perhaps that's because noone is in much of a hurry. Sasha, a Russian colleague who lives there, told me of her horror story when she gave her leather jacket to the cleaners and it took her six months and an argument to get it back. According to a porter in my hotel, a gentleman with an improbable South African accent, such sloth shows the influence of indolent French culture on Geneva. He clearly prefers Zurich where, according to him, the Germanic character of the people makes things run as smoothly as the legendary Swiss clockwork.

But Geneva's leisurely atmosphere suited me just fine on Monday evening. I took a stroll through the old town with a former boss. She pointed out the sights to me as we walked along cobbled streets lined with the red & white flags of the Swiss nation and the red & yellow standards of the Canton of Geneva.

Afterwards we had a dinner that featured three things I rarely get to enjoy in America: portions that are modest enough that you can really enjoy your food; dessert made of fruits; and exquisite after-dinner espresso.

For three days I drank coffee incessantly from very small cups. I snacked on croissants instead of cookies. I lunched on sliced meats, fruits and cheeses. And I wondered if I too should acquire some European flair and start wearing a snappy summer jacket when I go out.

Perhaps I will; but only after I first figure out if the Italians expect to be greeted with three kisses or four.

Travelling Salesman Blues

Flick. CNN. Flick. The Weather Channel. Flick. ESPN. Flick. Flick. Flick.

Thirty years ago Pink Floyd sang "I've got 13 channels of shit on TV to choose from". Times have changed since then. We now have more than 13 channels.

So this is the glamorous world of executive travel. Meetings all day. A couple of polite drinks in the evening. Then everyone goes home and you're the solitary out-of-towner.

It's still light outside and your feet are too itchy for room service. So you walk around the block looking for dinner. An overly bright gyro restaurant serves you just right. Then you decide to check out the famous local ice cream. It's all right, but you wish the taste of strawberries was a bit stronger. And now you can no longer put off going back to your solitary hotel room.

Flick. Cartoon Network. Flick. TNT. Flick. Flick.

It's no use. The television can't take your mind off the fact that you'd really rather be somewhere else. You switch it off and clip your fingernails instead. It's equally entertaining and vastly more productive.

Thank goodness for the coffee machine in your room. You're in the mood for a bitter brew.

This is the glamorous world of executive travel?

Out Of The Mouths Of Babes...

"In the morning I sat in my usual place. I giggled with my friends. We acted silly but we pretended to be very serious. That was funny.

One of the kids was sulking. I don't know why. Maybe he had a booboo. But we paid no attention to him, so he went away.

Then someone started a game. We took turns to say silly things that we did not really mean. It was a noisy game and it made the teacher angry.

So we became very quiet. We had break-time and we ate a snack.

Then we acted silly all over again."




"Your pre-school sounds a lot like my office."