I spend a lot of time talking about how much better Apples are than PC’s, and I really do believe that’s true. But simply saying Apples are better designed, more stable, more intuitive isn’t the same as saying that they are well designed, that they are stable, and that they are intuitive, because they’re not nearly as good as they could - and should - be. Its more a matter of Microsoft having set the bar so mind-bogglingly low that almost anything would be an improvement. That is, I suppose, if you ignore the fact that Microsoft has almost single-handedly made personal computers a mainstream device. But the parallel stream is that they have thereby also made hating computers only slightly less popular than Baseball - at least in the United States.
The bottom line is that I can’t believe how horribly computers and the software that runs on them work. I think the most common thought that runs through my mind while using a computer is, “Oh - wait - let me try that again.”
Every now and again, Michelle will come home from work a little on edge. I can usually tell by the glint in her eyes that it wasn’t the rough day at the office that caused this edginess; it usually means that something was played on the radio that reopened some chapter in her life that I try my best to believe never happened.
Last night was one of those nights. She came home, hurriedly set her bag down, absently kissed me hello and disappeared upstairs. After a few minutes, she rushed back down stairs, turned on the stereo and hollered, “Frank, come out here!”
This is never a good sign.
Sure enough, moments later I heard a beat thump out of the speakers which reeked of “eighties”. Within seconds, Michelle was jumping around the room (which, under these circumstances, can hardly be referred to as “dancing”) and belting lyrics into her thumb (which, under these circumstances, acts as her microphone). This went on for seven very long songs, each cheesier than then last, and all of them interrupted with shouted comments like, “This music is all about the SMOOTH LOVE!” or “You just can’t SIT STILL when this is playing!”
How this can be the same person who has been Raging Against the Machine since ‘92 and who has been to more AC/DC concerts than my brother and I combined is beyond me.
Memorial Day Weekend has held a special place in our hearts for a few years now; I moved to Seattle on the Tuesday after Memorial Day two years ago. Since it was our last weekend together before I left, we made sure to make it a special weekend, and we’ve kept the momentum up ever since. This year it was extra special since it was our first full weekend at home since returning from India (not counting our first full weekend at home).
We started the week by cutting out of work early and watching two movies at the Seattle International Film Festival: The Fall and Before the Rains, both which took place (at least primarily) in India. (Correction: the imagination sequences of The Fall mostly took place in India; the movie itself took place in LA.) The former took place in North India where we didn’t travel, but the latter took place in Kerala, which is where we vacationed. While The Fall was a much better movie, it was great to see Kerala again in Before the Rains, especially since it was filmed in one of the regions we visited. We closed out the day with a nice dinner at How to Cook a Wolf in the Queen Anne neighborhood of Seattle.
Saturday morning we woke up to a stunning day and enjoyed a nice espresso and a stroopwafel on the porch before heading off to the farmer’s market to pick up a bone-in pork shoulder from Woolie Pigs. We had Jim and Jess over to enjoy some roasted pig and some St. Joseph that we brought over from France last time we visited. It was the first time we saw them since we’d left for India, so it was great to catch up and swap stories. Add to that a delightful cheese platter, a fresh, light soup, a delicious hunk of pork, fresh lemon gnocci, and a few great bottles of wine and you’ve got yourself one hell of an evening. Provided that “one hell of an evening” for you doesn’t mean “going out drinking with friends and waking up in prison with a I LOVE FORMALDEHYDE tattoo on your left shoulder”. I’ll be honest with you: that just doesnt’t sound very relaxing to me.
Jim also brought over his home-brew which we had started before I left; it was awesome. In fact, I proposed we start making two batches of it staggered so that we always have some beer of that particular recipe on hand. It would require that I buy a supply of beer-making equipment. Jim said it would be cheap if you do it ghetto-style like he does. I said, “I can do it ghetto-style” to which Jess remarked, “You don’t do anything ghetto-style.” Besides being spectacularly unfair, her statement is also annoyingly accurate.
Sunday, we woke up to another spectacular morning and spent the day lazily reading the New York Times. One of life’s greatest indulgences is to spend Sunday on a sunny porch with a great cup of espresso while spending hours pouring over the paper. We finished the day off by sipping Mojitos and grilling bratwurst, chickenbreast, and corn. Beat that.
Memorial Day dawned with overcast skies. At least I’m guessing it dawned that way, because by the time Michelle and I got up, it was overcast. We started our day with our favorite breakfast: a fried egg on a sourdough muffin with ham, arugula, vinegarette, tomato and Beechers Flagship cheese. We even managed to squeeze in some Bollywood and a dinner of fresh pasta.
After a month of relentless sunshine, it’s funny how refreshing a nice cloudy day can be.
Kerala has a democratically-elected Communist government which means it’s the first Communist society I have visited. I was surprised to find that the communists didn’t have horns and weren’t green and hairy or anything like that. In fact, we didn’t notice much difference at all except that Kerala is much cleaner and well organized than Karnataka.
I didn’t notice much difference, that is, until I was walking to my airplane on the last day. As I walked across the tarmac, I noticed that my plane was a rickettey old prop plane which looked like it was held together by masking tape and chewing gum. Wanting to take a picture of the contraption which would surely lead me to my death, I snapped a photo of it. Within seconds, three police officers with machine guns grabbed me and threw me up against a wall. Two of the officers held me at gunpoint while the third took my camera and sifted through my photos and deleted everything he felt was inappropriate for me to have photographed.
Kerala was amazing. The drive to Thekkadi was stunning. We drove through mountains in the jungle, through tea and spice plantations, and through rubber tree farms. We saw people commuting by elephant.
Our hotel in Thekkadi was on an island which we could only get to by boat in the Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary which was originally the hunting grounds of the Maharajah of Travancore - and the hotel we stayed in was the palace where the Maharajah stayed while hunting. I can understand why he choose this place: the area was crawling with wildlife: wild boars, deer, buffalo, elephants, tigers, monkeys, eagles, vultures, birds, you name it. We saw no cobras, but we did spot a small water snake. It was quite far away, so it could have been a stick or a weed, but I’m pretty sure it was a snake. Probably poisonous.
We went on a long hike through the jungle where we were followed by monkeys who were trying to get some insider tips on how to be more human. It turns out I am not very good at keeping secrets. By the end of our hike, two of the monkeys had laptops.
Michelle and I rode an elephant called Akbar who I fell completely in love with. I am quite certain he fell in love with me, too. Michelle and I got to feed him after riding him, and he stared at me and leaned his giant head into my face while I pet his trunk. Michelle wouldn’t let me take him home.
We also made friends with an English couple who were on the hike with us. I am frustrated that I don’t have an English accent; I don’t sound anywhere near as clever as they do.
Then it was on to Alleppey where we spent a day and night on a houseboat. The crew cooked us three amazing meals including the largest tiger prawns I have ever seen and fish which were caught by the crew only minutes before being cooked. The crew laid anchor for us along a canal where Michelle and I were able to enjoy one of the most stunning sunsets in the history of the universe.
Then it was on to the Kumarakom lake resort where we spent the last days of our vacation getting spoiled rotten by the staff. The resort was a two hundred year old palace and the woodwork was stunning. Our cottage was on a meandering pool where we read books in the sun and relaxed until we became tense. I wore a dhoti which delighted the staff. Despite looking like a dress, a dhoti is a manly garb.
On the last day, we spent a few hours in Cochin, which used to be Dutch-controlled port. We visisted a Dutch-built cathedral, cemetery, and the old Dutch port. One of my ancestors lived in Cochin when it was controld by the Dutch; it was an amazing oportunity to see the old colonial buildings and imagine how strange it must have felt to arrive there without any idea what to expect and try to start a life.
As delicious as the food in India is, first thing Michelle and I did when we got back to Seattle was get hamburgers and microbrew at Quinn’s Pub on Capital Hill. It was awesome.
Ironically, our first weekend home, the New York Times travel guide featured a section on Kerala and happened to specifically mention the houseboat and lake resort we stayed at: Liquid Assets: A Perfumer Noses Around Kerala.
Michelle and I are off to the jungles of Kerala for a few days before we return to the United States. Kerala is widely considered to be one of the most beautiful places on earth, and I’m gunning for the the monsoon season not to strike a few weeks early so we have nice weather. I took the precausion to place several “good weather” orders with all the right people, so I feel good knowing I did my part.
We’ll fly into Cochin and travel 5 hours east to Thekkadi where we will spend two nights in a “cottage on an island in a wildlife sanctuary”. Having seen the animals running around the tiny sanctuary in Mysore, this actually scares the bujezuz out of me. Sleeping on an island with this guy as my bunkmate sounds more like “terrifying” than “relaxing”.
India’s national mascot is the King Cobra, the world’s largest venomous snake. It really bothers me that one of the deadliest animals on the planet is fast over land, can swim, can squiggle into small areas, can move about silently, and can strike accurately and lethally from something like 10 meters away. If it can kill a full-grown elephant with a single bite, the least nature could do is make it super gimpy or blind or something.
One of the managers here in Bangalore is from Kerala and I expressed my concerns about getting up in the middle of the night to stoke the fire only realize that what I thought was the fire poker was actually the business end of a cobra. He really got a kick out of me being afraid of snakes in the cottage. “Oh, they make sure there are no snakes in the buildings. But you should be careful when you go outside or leave the door open.” Thanks. That helps.
While staying in the sanctuary, we’ll be going on an elephant safari or some similar activity that seems to border on suicide. The good news here is that apparently, it’s possible to reattach limbs that get torn off by jungle beasts. The base assumption here being that you survived the attack. And even then, I bet it still ruins your trip.
After Thekkadi, we’ll be heading to Alleppey to get on a private houseboat for an overnight tour of the Kerala backwaters, which Conde Naste ranks as one of the ten things everyone should do before they die. What they forget to mention is that you should time this trip so that you do it before you spend the night in a cottage on Cobra Island in Thekkadi because then it becomes one of the ten things you should have done before you cozied up to a 12 foot venomous snake.
The houseboat will then drop us off at our final destination in Kumarakom where we will have a room on a big lake. Apparently, this is the place to be this time of year because most of the streams around the area will have dried up by now and all the wildlife will come to the water to drink.
If not, I’ll just use my croc-call to bring ‘em in.
Disclaimer for both our mothers who I’m sure I have scrared half to death with this post: the dangers of this trip have been greatly exaggerated. This is a very common itenerary and almost no tourists die on these trips. Usually.
But simply saying Apples are better designed, more stable, more intuitive isn’t the same as saying that they are well designed, that they are stable, and that they are intuitive, because they’re not nearly as good as they could - and should - be. Its more a matter of Microsoft having set the bar so mind-bogglingly low that almost anything would be an improvement. That is, I suppose, if you ignore the fact that Microsoft has almost single-handedly made personal computers a mainstream device. But the parallel stream is that they have thereby also made hating computers only slightly less popular than Baseball - at least in the United States.
it usually means that something was played on the radio that reopened some chapter in her life that I try my best to believe never happened.
Since it was our last weekend together before I left, we made sure to make it a special weekend, and we’ve kept the momentum up ever since. This year it was extra special since it was our first full weekend at home since returning from India (not counting our first full weekend at home).
I was surprised to find that the communists didn’t have horns and weren’t green and hairy or anything like that. In fact, we didn’t notice much difference at all except that Kerala is much cleaner and well organized than 
of the most beautiful places on earth, and I’m gunning for the the monsoon season not to strike a few weeks early so we have nice weather. I took the precausion to place several “good weather” orders with all the right people, so I feel good knowing I did my part.
