While Stephanie went down to Koh Phangan for a 10 day yoga retreat, I stayed behind in Chiang Mai to volunteer at Elephant Nature Park for a week. The park, founded in the early 1990s by Sangduen “Lek” Chailert, is…
I wanted to post a few more photos from Elephant Nature Park as a follow up to my previous post, My elephant week. But first, a little photography navel-gazing. I picked up a new 50-200mm telephoto zoom lens (for an…
I had a few days in Chiang Mai after my week at Elephant Nature Park (and before Stephanie finished her yoga retreat), so I decided to look for a second Thai cooking class, preferably one that focused more on quality…
So the big reunion, having been apart for nearly 2 weeks (after spending every waking hour together for 7 months!), was supposed to happen on March 31st in the Bangkok airport. Stephanie was going to take a boat from Koh…
To make a long story short, we survived Kolkata. But oh, the honking! We arrived just before noon, took a yellow Ambassador taxi to a part of town where there were a bunch of guesthouses, ordered lunch at a local…
The most chaotic part of our overnight train from Kolkata to Mughal Sarai was the taxi ride to Howrah Station at 8 at night. The shear volume and variety of traffic en route boggles the mind. The eight-lane Howrah Bridge…
Agra was an overnight train trip west of Varanasi, which seemed to be a sign that we should stop and visit the famed Taj Mahal. My favorite shot: I took this out the open door of our moving train in…
I like “loops”. I dislike “going there and back”. In the past, this predilection only reared its head when I went day hiking. I prefer a trail or combination of trails that brings me back to the starting point without…
I ordered the “peanut masala” thinking it would be a nice crunchy snack to go with lunch. I did not expect to get something that I might have otherwise described as “salsa fresca with peanuts”. Though the combination was unusual…
We took a day train from Jaipur to Udaipur. We arrived at night and went to a nice hotel that had been recommended to us. Of the rooms they showed us, we particularly liked the one painted blue on the…
Oh dear:
Facebook profiles are more or less de rigeur for anyone with an Internet connection.
Also, thing I did not know, and have a hard time believing without context (from the same article):
Google commands 12.6% of the annual $10.1 billion U.S. online ad spend; Facebook trumps that figure by nine full percentage points. (Source: eMarketer)
Marcia sez: I have held my book in my arms like a colicky baby (DIY Cocktails is out) #
It’s April 2nd in Bangkok, dammit! It’s not fair that I’m getting April Fooled! Apparently DreamHost is now part of the Endurance International Group! (read it and I kept going, “whut, no, whut, no!”) #
Neat tool for looking up words based on any number of criteria: Word Matcher (word search, crossword tool) #
What would Michael Pollan say? Portlandia: Is It Local? #
I find this sad: Waxing Frida (Mostly because it seems to impose modern, western ideals of feminine beauty on a renowned, beautiful woman from the past in a way that erases prominent facial features that she proudly incorporated into her own art—rather than critiquing said ideals. I mean what’s next, giving her a photoshopped nose job?) via Tralalère! #
It’s funny. I’ve spent untold hours helping people migrate their comments off Haloscan and into WordPress, and now what do I see popping up all over?
Go Stephanie!
I found it both cool and scary to learn that there’s some JavaScript that can automagically hyphenate your typography on the web. Me, I’ve found a relatively narrow column width (380 pixels, ~65 characters per line) plus text-align:justify to be sufficient for my purposes (via Tim Bray) #
Yes yes yes yes yes yes YES! How to steal like an artist (and 9 other things nobody told me)
So much in this I’ve said, written, believe. Crazy to see it all put down like that in one place by someone else. Going to have to let it percolate for a while, reread, and possibly refer back to later. In the meantime, I highly recommend reading. #
Stephanie took a very cool weaving class back when we were in Luang Prabang: Part I and Part II #
Outsiders always seem to fixate on creation myths. Insiders focus on the iceberg. #
Outsiders view companies as omniscient and omnipotent (imagine me linking to every single article that has ever been written about Google). Insiders know that companies are composed of actual living, breathing people, and people are not infallible.
“You know, we’re just individuals. We’re just humans running these companies.”
In fact sometimes it’s amazing that people in companies manage to accomplish anything at all.
(Great title on that article by the way) #
I had a large mug of chai masala at the start of our evening cooking class in Udaipur two nights ago and the next thing I know I’m tweaking my about page until four in the morning. It’s the only revamp I’ve done since I first cobbled the thing together years ago. Let me know what you think… #