I'm a man part IV

The strange places we find ourselves in sometimes... Imagine my surprise to find myself hurtling myself out of a very small plane at 13,000 feet (just under 4 km) with an old man attached to my back.

That's pretty much what's going through my head in this picture.





A most unusual feeling.





UPDATE: A couple of pics from the preparation

"Please waive all your rights"


"people who intend to jump out of a plane"


"warning- parachute landing area"


"I look friggin' good in a yellow jumpsuit"

I'm a man part III (Grand Canyon)

I had the day off today, so I took a trip down into the Grand Canyon.
To save some time I took a helicopter there. Las Vegas looks strange from the air.



On the way we passed the Hoover Dam. Did you know that by building this dam, they created the largest man made lake in the wester hemisphere?


The Grand Canyon really is grand.



I think I look good against a grand backdrop.

Hualien #1

I managed to infiltrate a group of employees of a publishing company this weekend on their corporate bonding trip into eastern Taiwan. The Taiwanese are quite a clever lot and I could tell they were suspicious from the start. Nobody seemed to believe my cover story of being an unemployed comedian. Except Vicky. She starts laughing everytime she sees my face.

Most of the trip was spent inside a bus. Normally this would be pretty boring, right? The difference here being that we were driving on one of the most dramatic roads you could imagine. Basically, massive cliffs going straight down into the sea, with jungle covering every non vertical surface. As usual, my pictures do no justice to what I saw, and you'll just have to trust me when i say: If you are going to spend a day in a bus, make sure it's a bus going through Hualien in Taiwan.

Haulien #2

We made a couple of stops. Taroko ridge is one mother f***er of a ridge. It's a much more impressive ridge than the one you told me about. It made me think of weird english words. Like: gargantean (wonder if I even spelled that right...), humongous, titanic. Boobies. Well, I often think about boobies, and I suppose I thought about boobies when I was at the ridge.


Can you get an idea of the scale we are talking about here?





Niiiiiiiiiiiiiice



We also stopped at a daoist temple. I've seen quite a few temples by now, but this was the first time I was accompanied with someone who knows anything about what's going on in there. Apparantly, the people in yellow clothes are there to pray and seek guidance. There was one older dood who spoke in tongues, somehow he was channeling the voice of Buddha (or some other spiritual force, i can't keep track) and advicing the believers. He sounded kind of funny.

Haulien #3

The night was spent in a quaint guesthouse in a rather run-down looking town. i had a chance to observe Taiwanese young people having fun. Excessive amounts of drinking, men given make-up and some sort of ritualistic baptism in the guesthouse pool.Maybe the most exciting part of the stay there was that saw two monkeys hanging about in a strange structure nearby. Last time I saw a monkey was in Borneo and he stole my pringles, but these two seemed much more occupied with themselves.


Dinner at the guesthouse


young Taiwanese people. And Jussi, the Finish dude


The guesthouse in the morning

Hualien #4

And the water rafting. Vicky and I had cleverly picked up a Finish dood on the road to join our team for the water rafting. Chosen for his well developed muscles, he turned out to be a strong asset. We paddled and we paddled, tried to vault the other boats and basically used every trick in the book. And guess what: we won! ha.
But what a pyrrhic victory :-( the entire adventure was done in pissing rain. Even in a tropical climate such as Taiwan, it get's cold when it rains. Four hours of river splashing into your face and rain rain rain. I'm sure this is not going to be good for my health...

In awe of chinese civilization (and others too)

I wasn't allowed to take pictures inside the museum, so wasn't able to document my experiences there. What I've done is to steal some pics from the official museum website. this is naturally highly illegal, and if you don't hear from me again its because the officials here will have taken me in and locked me up for good.

The exhibits in the museum were truly astonishing and gave me an awesome (100 million hotdogs!) perspective of just how puny my mind is. At school, I was tought that modern civilization arose out of the roman empire. We spent a year learning about how the greeks morphed into the romans and then how the romans dissolved leaving only some outposts in the UK. those outposts evolved into the great British Empire which again dissolved only to leave some outposts in the new lands of America-the modern US and the just heir to the roman throne.

Anyways, not only did the exhibit show equal or more advanced refinement of the chinese civilization at all times through history as their western counterpart. There was also a big map showing the world around 400 A.D. you had the roman empire, you had the chinese han empire (equally large). But then there were also massive empires in India and the Middle East. Sure, I knew that there were other civilizations at other times and that they were all really impressive. But i had never before understood just how massive these empires where, and that they existed at the same time as the roman empire was about to implode from it's own size.

Among the exhibits were a couple of items that were pretty mind-blowing. The heart of the exhibition was a jade stone cut to look like a lettuce. It's masterfully done such that the cutting uses the natural colouring of the jade to get an almost photorealistic replica of a lettuce without any paint- a white stalk with green leaves.
But since I don't eat vegetables, the item that caught my eye was the "stone that looks like meat". These items are related naturally, they were part of some movement where artists had become so sophisticated that they saught after materials that naturally resembled something, and then worked with nature to achieve spectacular effcts. The stone below does really look like the meat they seel here in the night markets and it makes my mouth wet to look at it.



The next item that blew my mind was a small olive stone that had been carved into a boat. It's difficult to appreciate from this picture, since it's been magnified. So just think of an olive, you know, the ones you eat with bread while waiting for the main course in an italian restaurant. They's nice aren't they? Now, the photo below is of the olive stone, the stone inside an olive. Can you grasp how small this is?



The nuts who did this carved a boat with 8 men inside, tables and i think there's even food and drink on their tables. The doors are fully functional, they can be opened and closed.
And underneath the boat somebody who was very bored indeed has written the entire story of the 8 high officials that went somewhere on a boat and signed some kind of treaty. Where do they get the energy, that's what I wonder...

Oh it's pointless, you've got to see it to really appreciate how tiny it is. Come to Taipei and check out the National Palace Museum! It's humbling to say the least.

Extreme sightseeing!

I thought I'd check out the National Palace Museum today, and got a whole rapid-fire tour as part of the deal- what a bargain. Buy one, get two free!

Once we arrived at the MRT station out here somewhere in the north of Taipei, we decided to check out the Grand Hotel that's just around the corner from the station. We got into a taxi and asked to stop briefly for a 5 minute photo session.

Now isn't this GRAND! That's a bloomin' hotel! That's why they call it the grand hotel.



The taxi driver now suggested that we stop by another tourist sight, the martyr memorial shrine. I got to do my peace sign here too. Have no idea what's actually inside, but we were lucky enought to catch the hourly change of guard.



And then we made it to the actual gugong, the museum. It's a palace and a museum. It has some of the most impressive artifacts from chinese history. It has a large temple ground and is surrounded by beautiful hills. And: just opposite, it has the three ugliest high-rises I've ever seen, so ugly and spoiling it almost seems intentional, like an ugly building is a must in every vista.

Summers in the palace

Typhoons in Hong Kong closed the airport for two days and my whole life has been disrupted. I think I’ve heard somewhere that men are particularly sensitive to changes in plans but I’m not sure if that’s true or not. I know I absolutely hate change of plans. I don’t mind the actual process of planning, but once I have a plan it feels like a burden, a constriction of my qi- the loss of possibility. To then have these plans changed and stop the momentum in my soul… this is one of the greatest pains I know. Not to over-dramatize, but you know, this is how I feel, man.
Anyways, the limbo I’m now in gave me the opportunity to tick one more item in my Beijing to-do list. I checked out the Summer Palace, originally built to entertain the ugly and evil empress of yore during the summer. Now it is a massive tourist destination, almost with the feel of a theme park. It took almost an hours walk before we got far enough from the crowds to really take in the experience of the massive grounds, a beautiful lake and a scenery of hills and palaces. Yet another remarkable experience in Beijing, yet another reason why I really don’t want to leave.

Having said that, I think you can see what I mean by Beijing being dirty... Imagine how beautiful the first photo would be if it wasn't covered in smog!

A dragon diving into the sea

The Simatai section of the Great China Wall is said to resemble a dragon diving into the sea. I think this pic hints at why people say that

A man (part 2)

This weekend, I decided to take up Chairman Mao’s challenge to my manlyhood and get up on the wall. The great wall of China, that is. The wall is actually broken and there are many sections scattered around Beijing. The section called Badaling is the most popular destination, and one of the best places to pick up a Starbuck’s coffee. However, the section much further away called Simatai is known to be a more rewarding. Snaking over a mountain-range, it’s both steeper and more visually impressive. When I arrived, I was very happy to see that it is true how they describe the sight: “a dragon in the sky descending into a lake”. Indeed.

On the way there, we stopped at a road-side restaurant. Not only was the food excellent, but so was the whole experience of sitting in the middle of a forest, eating fish we’d just seen captured out of a pool and a cucumber I had picked myself. Not to mention chatting with my party of co-weekenders who included such incumbents as Satomi and Nick, as well as friends and colleagues of Nick’s. If we’d decided to just stay there the whole day and never see the wall, I would have been very happy.

I’m glad we did do the trek across the wall. as now i can say that I’m feeling not only happy, but also quite moved by the whole experience. At one point at a particularly high section of the wall, the view was particularly awesome. It gave me a deep experience of awe. The mountains seemed to go on forever, hidden in mist (pollution?) in the very distance, but green and lush. And across this view spans the great wall in a way that defies any prior conception I’ve had of man-made buildings.

And of course, since walking this bit of wall was more similar to climbing a mountain than strolling across a crowdy square, I feel a sense of accomplishment. I'm glad I could now look Mao in the eyes if I ever met him.

(Warning: what follows is a self-indulgent piece of half-baked philosphy and/or flow-0f-consciousness amateur psychology. Here be dragons)

Speaking of pre-conceptions… I’m surprised to learn how empty my head is of pre-conceptions when it comes to nature and life outside of a medium-sized city. As a kid I had the amazing privilege of seeing the grand nature of Iceland with my grand-parents. But it seems I was much more interested in the comics I brought with me on these trips and my strange stories me and my uncle used to tell each other. Sitting in the middle of a forest and watching a newly caught fish splatter around on the ground is an entirely new experience to me. I have no internal language to describe what’s going on.

END OF DRAGON TERRITORY

The way down was way easier than the way up. Although much scarier. We took the cable cars down, flying over rather high altitudes but getting some really cool views of the landscape and a different perspective of the wall.

It's bizarre (and i'm back in Beijing)

What a bizarre linguistic experience! The Japanese tourists I was travelling with did not speak English, and I don't speak Japanese. The only language we had in common was Chinese, and it turns out my chinese is ridicilously poor. So, I was struggling to communicate with Japanese tourists in Chinese, in Inner Mongolia of all places... Truly bizarre.

What a bizarre challange to my national identity! The thing that struck me in inner mongolia was the fact that much of the time, I could have been transported back to my childhood in Iceland. The plains, the horses, the sheep, the yoghurt... somehow I even felt a strange spiritual connection between the people descended from the Mongolians of Gengis Khan fame and the vikings. Of course 99% of the time I felt like I was very very far from home. But it was the odd moment when I would suddenly feel I was 5 years old in Iceland again. I felt strongly Icelandic for some reason. I don't feel that very often.

Successfully made it into Inner Mongolia

I successfully infiltrated the Japanese tour group. Nobody suspected a thing. Got onto the train with them and shared a sleeping cart with three others. I really made an effort to pick up some Japanese but I don't think anything has actually stuck.

I've become quite pampered. This morning when we arrived at Huhe Haote in Inner Mongolia, I tried really hard to locate the snooze button on the world. But there was none. When the train arrives, it arrives. Strange that I've forgotten how thing work in reality. Did catch some sleep on the bus to the camp. The camp is made up of tents to give us a feeling of how it was to live as a Mongolian nomad. This is a tourist camp, so everything is of course staged, packaged-for-the-tourist and surely artificial. But I must admit this doesn't bother me at all. On the contrary, it quite suits me.

I think the last time I rode a horse was when I was five. That time, the horse started galloping, I panicked and of course the horse panicked too. I've never liked the idea of horses since then. It was time to face my fear here at the camp, and I think I did quite well. The horse I rode immediately realized I was a push-over and would not listen to any instructions I gave it. It walked slowly most of the time, and when I had built up the courage to want to make it run, it would just shake it's head at me. Thankfully it liked to hang out with it's dad, so whenever Daddy Horse ran, my one would run too. Now my bum hurts. Ouch.

PICTURE UPDATE:

1. Beijing trainstation
2. The japanese tourist group i infiltrated
3. Welcome at the nomadic camp. Welcome ritual included singing and drinking very strong rice wine.
4. Me on a stubborn horse.

Success, tourism and beaches

Ok, maybe I wasn't fair about the benefits of success. Taking a step outside of the familiar and not being run over by a bus teaches you condifence. It's quite a buzz.
I'm thinking about these kind of things right now. I'm in the middle of a self-discovery phase. Reading books about Zen buddhism, thinking about what I want out of life etc. Usually, you can get feel a bit frustrated or confused when you get too introspective. But I've discovered that if you combine it with touristing, it's actually quite pleasant. Yesterday (Saturday) I spent the afternoon walking through the Singapore botanic garden and then through the Chinatown next to the Central Business District.

ADDED PIC 17 February: I was in utter shock by what I found in the Botanic garden. Flowers everywhere. And so many of them were orchids they even called one part of the park "orchard gardens" and charged me $5 entry to see them all.


My Australian friend has pointed out the absurdity of the idea of a Chinatown in an ethnically chinese city. The neighbourhood is a left-over from the colonial times when the British segregated the immigrant working populations into ethnically defined sections. The chinese then took over the city, but the neighbourhood remained and lately they've realized that it can serve as a tourist attraction. It's a bit weird. It's actually mostly new houses, but built to be identical to the old houses they replace. So it's somewhere halfway between authenticity and Disneypark.

Among the most exciting things about my life here is that I can order in Mandarin! It's so exciting, and the people working in the shops are friendly and help me if I don't know a word. Today I ordered fish in black-bean sauce, TWO bowls of rice and some green tea. All in mandarin! Why does it matter that I ordered two bowls? Because you get one with your food. So when you want to have two, you ask them to "add one bowl". I think it's pretty cool to be able to say add in a foreign languange.

I ordered this particular dish in Ubin. Ubin is an island on the northern coast of Singapore. It's like being transported maybe 30, 50 years back. It's a reasonably big little island, it takes about 30-40 minutes to cycle from one end to the other. Yet there are only between 100-200 people living there. There's a genuine little village there that seems to live primarily on renting out bicycles to tourists. Someone claimed there was a beach on this island, and I spent a couple of hours cycling all over the island before realizing that someone had lied. However, it was an absolutely wonderful day, cycling through forests/jungles. I found a shrine dedicated to a German girl. She was a catholic German about 60 years ago that died falling off a cliff. Some buddhist monks found her and gave her a buddhist burial. Sometime since then she's gone from being a ghost that haunts the area to become a goddess in the Daoist religion. BIZARRE! Singaporeans travel to this island and offer her food and stuff, hoping to get her support. This was made even more bizarre by the fact that I was travelling this island with my german flatmate and some german friends of her.

Anyways, when we finally left the island, when we returned to the ferry terminal back on singapore island, we saw that just there next to the terminal was an excellent beach!!! So we did get a couple of hours lazing about in the end.

I'm also making some progress with my German and Japanese. Just hope I don't push my flatmates' patience too much. But here are some useful sentances:

Kareshi iru?
Watashi wa ima ie ni kaeru. Sonna ni tou kunai.
Uchi ni kitai?

Hast du einen Freund?
Ich gehe jetzt nach Hause. Es ist hier in die Nahe.
Moechtest du mitkommen?

Excellent!