the life of glenn

Turkey 2007

2008-01-27T10:31:00.000-08:00

We have finally put our pictures up here is the link:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/glennsaqui/sets/72157603806119691/

Snowing in london

2007-02-08T01:08:00.001-08:00

OK its February 8th and its one day before my birthday and it is snowing like crazy in London. Now is it bad that I am at work and all I can think about is how much I want to take a snow day and go play in the snow? I will hopefully be able to get home early tonight and get some pictures of what London looks like in the snow.

Dr. Doom anyone?

2007-01-05T04:58:00.000-08:00

our results:
You are Dr. Doom

Dr. Doom		81%
Magneto		77%
Apocalypse		76%
Lex Luthor		71%
Mystique		69%
Riddler		68%
Catwoman		58%
Green Goblin		57%
Juggernaut		57%
The Joker		55%
Dark Phoenix		53%
Venom		49%
Kingpin		45%
Poison Ivy		44%
Two-Face		37%
Mr. Freeze		35%

Blessed with smarts and power but burdened by vanity.

Click here to take the Super Villain Personality Test

2007-01-05T04:42:00.000-08:00

Your results:
You are Superman

Superman		85%
Iron Man		80%
The Flash		80%
Wonder Woman		70%
Green Lantern		70%
Spider-Man		60%
Supergirl		55%
Robin		50%
Catwoman		50%
Hulk		45%
Batman		45%

You are mild-mannered, good,
strong and you love to help others.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test

Soups for runners

2007-01-04T13:49:00.000-08:00

Here are two really good running soups that can be made early in the day for you to eat after you long runs or make a huge batch and freeze it so when you get home all you have to do is heat it up and eat. One of the most important things to do after a hard workout or long run is to get protein in your body. You have a half hour window when you first get home to get in as much as you possibly can. This is one of the reasons that I think these two recipes could really help runner who is busy. Both are extremely easy and I think people should not have a hard time making them.

Inca Soup

3 Tbsp olive oil
2/3 cup quinoa, rinse well in cold water and drain well (Can be bought at either Holland and Barnet or Thifties)
2 medium carrots
2 rib of celery
1 onion
1 yellow pepper
1 garlic clove finely chopped (optional)
1 can diced tomatoes
1 tsp dried oregano (can be skipped if you don’t have it)
4-6 cups chicken or vegetable stock
1 cup of frozen corn
1 can kidney beans (optional, any other bean would work as well) or chicken just to add more protein to the soup.
I like to put some spice in so I normally add pepper or some Tabasco.

Put oil quinoa, carrots, celery, onion, bell pepper, and garlic in a pot and stir it for 3 minutes. Add tomatoes, oregano, stock, beans and anything else you can think of. Gently simmer the soup for 20 minutes until quinoa and vegetables are tender. (Thin the soup with more stock if you find it too think. (This recipe came from a column by Eric Akis)

Lentil Soup

3 Tbsp of butter
1 garlic clove finely chopped
1 large onion
425 g green lentils, make sure these are rinsed and drained
2 celery stick
2 large carrots
1 parsley sprig (optional)
¼ teaspoon dried thyme (optional)
1 bay leaf
1.2 ml (2 pints) Chicken stock
900 ml (1 ½ pints) water
1 lemon slice
Salt and pepper

Melt the butter add garlic, onion and cook for 3 minutes. Lower heat and add lentils, celery, carrot, parsley, thyme and bay leaf to the pot. Pour in the stock and the water. Bring mixture to boil, skimming off the scum as it rises to the surface with a slotted (If you forget this don’t worry too much because I always forget). Add the lemon slice. Lower the heat and simmer for 55-60 minutes, stirring occasionally. If the soup is too thick then add more water. Remove the bay leaf and the lemon slice. Take about 600 ml of the soup and puree it in a blender until smooth then add back to the soup.

Sonja and I normally make up a whole pile of this soup and wolf it down because it is so good for you. Remember both of the soups can be easily doubled and frozen into smaller portions for a later date.

This made me laugh

2007-01-02T13:33:00.000-08:00

Since Sonja and I don't have TV we sometimes watch youtube to kill some time. Well this is what we found the other day that made us laugh. Hope you enjoy:

Donkey in Taroudannt

2007-01-01T08:42:00.001-08:00

Donkey in Taroudannt
Originally uploaded by Glenn Saqui.

All our pictures from our trip to Morocco are now online. If you have some time click away and have a look at Morocco.

Christmas Day run

2007-01-01T07:50:00.000-08:00

Hey Everyone,

Well this Christmas I convinced Sonja that we should go to Morocco instead of going back to Canada to visit our families. Well last year I invited people to join me on a Christmas day run and once again I did the same thing. So below is a list of what everyone did on their run:

Sonja and Glenn
Location: Essaouira, Morocco
Time: 10:30 am after a really nice lie in

After waking up late Sonja and I slipped on our runners and headed out the door. Morocco is a Muslim country which means Sonja had to be fully covered even though it was a warm 23 degrees Celsius. We ran for 45 minutes on the beach and then came home and had a nice breakfast followed by the rest of the day laying around on the beach. We had a wonderful Christmas meal of seafood and more seafood and no turkey.

My Mom
Location: Victoria, Canada
Time: 10’ish

It was a beautiful mild day in Victoria, no wind or rain and mainly blue
skies. I went for a run by myself around Cedar Hill Golf Course. I was
being lazy and only went around the course 2 times and my time was 49.29
minutes. It was a nice and relaxed run, I was watching the ducks on the
ponds and saying good morning to the other runners and walkers. While I
was running Dad was playing golf on the same golf course.

Felice Griffiths
Location: Miracle Beach, Canada
Time: ???

oooh, i slacked off on my run report. I did go, managed to get out of my
pjs and haul my ass out of the house. I went down to Miracle beach park, my
favorite place to run when im at home. Did 2 easy laps of the campground
and trails, 30 minutes then it was back home for turkey, yummmmm.

I am still awaiting responses from some of the other runners out there so hopefully I’ll be able to add to this blog later in the week.

Cheers,

Glenn

I will update you in the next couple of days

2006-12-30T16:04:00.000-08:00

I just arrived back from Morocco and I realized that I haven't updated anyone on how Sonja and mine Christmas day run went but I'll post it tomorrow morning.

Stache will come back

2006-11-24T09:22:00.000-08:00

OK next time Sonja goes on vacation without me I’ll grow a moustache. Its name will be stache and he will be my friend. Did you know teachers in the uk get 3 months off a year and Sonja still complains about how difficult the job is. Could someone please explain to me how a job where you get to boss 4-5 year olds around all day and get 3 months off a year can be difficult? Anyways the next time she goes on vacation without me (seems even in the UK I don’t get 3 months vacation) I will start the growth and post pictures.

Cheers,
Glenn

An update from this side of the world

2006-11-23T23:43:00.000-08:00

Well here is a quick update on the life of Glenn and Sonja.

We were lucky enough to have one of Sonja’s close friends come and stay with us for a week. It was awesome to have someone from back home here visiting us in the middle of November. Normally people come in the middle of summer as that tends to be the best weather but Felice, Sonja’s friend, lucked out and got dry weather the whole time she was here. We tons of fun stuff with Felice and sent her home early Sunday morning after we had taken her out all night to the clubs and the yummy street meat. After having anyone with you for so long tires you out and Sonja and I were both expecting to be able to take it easy on that Sunday when we were called by another friend of Sonja’s who needed a place to stay before flying home to Canada. So guess what we had to hang out with them as well. We had a nice visit but we were unable to get to bed before 10pm after the night before where we only had 4 hours sleep. I am not complaining but I would prefer if Sonja worked on staggering when her friends come to visit.

This year Sonja has had a cold every couple of weeks and again today she got up with a lost voice and a stuffy nose. I on the other hand have been lucky and I have not picked up any of her sickness. Sonja being sick all the time is taking away from her running but if she gets in she will be running the London marathon. Her goal is to just finish London and run a fast time in Berlin so that she can qualify to Boston. I keep telling her that Boston is super hilly but she has always wanted to run it so that’s what she wants that’s what she gets.

My running is coming along pretty well. I run to and from work everyday plus workouts on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. The run to work is 5.5 km so everyday I get at least 11km in. I love running to work because you get to rock up and have a nice warm shower before starting work instead of having to sit on the stinky tube and then get to work and not have a shower. The club that I am with race in a cross country league that has a race every other weekend so I have been doing those and have convinced Sonja that she needs to join so that she can come out and have as much fun as I do getting dirty. While at university we ran most of our races on golf courses or nice parks, here they know what the word cross country is and we run through some serious mud.

I am done Christmas shopping ha! Well except for Sonja as I don’t have any idea on what to get her this year. And to those that are thinking it I am not going to give her a ring for Christmas. This year Sonja and I are going to Morocco for Christmas so please join me on a Christmas day run. This is how it works: You run on Christmas day and then you email me where you ran, what time of day it was, who you were with, what the weather was and pretty much anything else that you want to tell me.

Well I’m off to work so I hope everyone has a great Friday

New Job

2006-11-06T12:05:00.000-08:00

Well I've been at this new job for almost two months now so I think I can finally give a fair assessment of it now. When I firt arrived they were in the middle of a (sorry parents) shit storm for lack of a better word. The team was two weeks late on pushing something out the door and were working crazy hours to get things done. Little weird jumping right in on my second day and making vital additions to their codebase but hey if you can't live on the edge you aren't living. Well for the first month I worked long hours like the rest of the team and I was really worried that this was what I had signed myself up for but I refused to believe that I could have put myself in such a bad situation. Well after we got it out the door the company took us for lunch/dinner/piss up fest. It was awesome this company really takes care of you when you do something nice for them. They threw around the money like it was going out of style. Every month my division goes out for an outting and this month it was bowling followed by a bunch of beers all bought by the company. Man I really like working for a company that has tons of cash in the bank.

Am I enjoying my job was the question that was raised by Sonja at dinner tonight and the answer is yes and no. Had I still had the job that I had in Victoria I would be really upset moving to this company as I really liked working for GenoLogics and I really believed in what we were building. The reason I left was not because of the company but the job that I had didn't really appeal to me. I wasn't learning and I wasn't meeting many new people because I had to travel a lot. I really enjoy being part of small company where you have no choice but to learn all the technology or the company fails as the new company I am with has almost a thousand people so some of the crazy technology is hidden away from me.

The things that I like about the big company:
-Security: knowing that I will be able to move up in the company and won't be held back because of my age. The old job I often thought they brought people in to manage the developers when the smarter thing would have been to promote internally.
-Crazy technology: Even though I complain that I don't get to learn the ins and outs of everything that this new company does I do get to speak with the people who have built it and I get to understand why certain decisions were made.
-New Challenges: My team is leading the way on transforming how the company produces software. When your team is moving a large iceburg it is exciting yet very difficult. This is a plus and a minus.

Things that I don't like in a big company:
-Communication: I think in a large organization communication is done poorly. Part of the problem is people just don't know who to ask so they have to get their manager to ask another manager to get something done. If you could eleminate those two managers the job would get ton three times faster.
-Managers managers manager: Too many managers (I've made a move to get myself in position to be one pretty quick)
-Time for things to change: In the old company it would take 4 months max to push something important through the business but with this new company it takes a whole lot longer than that.

Ah thats about all I want to say today.

later,
g

Sonja's pictures from Italy

2006-11-05T09:07:00.000-08:00

HPIM1989,
originally uploaded by Glenn Saqui.

Here are Sonja's pictures from here trip from Italy. More info to come.

Cheers,
Sonja and Glenn

Back to blogging

2006-09-04T01:35:00.000-07:00

Well I’m finally back to blogging again after a long summer of not that many blogs. I am going to attempt to blog every week with all the workouts that I did the past week in an attempt to keep a training partner informed on what exactly I am doing. The tentative plan right now is for me to post all my workouts online and if he agrees with what I am doing then he won’t complain too much as he will be doing something very similar.

A lot has happened in the month of July, Sonja and I moved out of our flat with our roommate Tanya and moved into a very nice newer flat with just the two of us. Sonja spent a month traveling Greece and Croatia while I was in Canada leaving the company that I was with for three and half years and joining a new company. I start my new job on September 11th so hopefully that is a good sign instead of a bad one. Sonja goes back to teaching on Monday of next week so hopefully things go well for her as she is in the same school that she was in last year and she really enjoyed it so hopefully that will continue for one more year.

Sonja and I are planning on racing at the end of September in the Windsor half marathon. Neither Sonja nor I are particularly fit so I suspect that neither of us will be very pleased with our time. I guess that is what happens when you gallivant around the world. One really nice thing about this new job is that I won’t have to do any traveling and it is only twenty five minute run from home to the jobsite. The plan right now is to run to and from work as this is cheaper and fitter then taking the tube. As long as I can get a locker at work I do not for see any problems with running to work and back, I picked up a really nice running backpack that can store 20L of stuff so that should barely fit my lunch and some clothes.

Changes

2006-07-24T06:34:00.000-07:00

Well this past week has been one of many chances in my life. I will go into more depth maybe next week but one of the chances has been Sonja and I moving to a new flat. I think is the first real flat that the both of us actually thinks is nice. Normally we live in cheap student housing because we are both bloody cheap. Well this time our new place is freaking awesome. In fact I am so proud of it I invite any of you crazy Canadians to come visit us at our new place. If you come we will have a nice dinner for you in our really huge kitchen and you can stay on our fold out coach. OK its not a separate bedroom but you have to remember where we are living. London just happens to be the most expensive place in the world and we chose a really nice location. Finally I think we may go ahead and actually buy some new stuff to put on the walls and maybe even buy a table cloth.

This past week has been a busy one for both Sonja and I. Sonja has finished teaching for this year and now she is planning on going on vacation to Greece and Croatia while I am planning on going back to Victoria for two weeks.

This past weekend was magnificent as well as Sonja and I traveled up to Cambridge to go punting as well as look at all the old university dorms. The places that some of these students stay at are amazing, I really am very jealous as I always wanted to stay in a castle and that is what some of these places look like. Hopefully everyone is handling the massive heat wave that they are dealing with. Last week it was a solid 36 C here in London.

Why do muslims not eat pork?

2006-07-17T23:26:00.000-07:00

This morning after my morning run with Sonja all I wanted to eat was bacon which lead me to think about this question. Why would any religion ban such a great food so I went on search for the answer. There are many answers to this question all based on the different readings from the different holy books. You have to remember that Jewish people do not each pork as well. So here is your answer:

Islam has prohibited things (from being used as edibles) due to their physical or spiritual uncleanness or due to the effects that they may have on the morality of an individual or a collectivity.

Pork has also been added to the list of these prohibitions of Islam. Due to this addition of pork in the Qur'anic list of prohibitions the Muslims do not eat pork. As far as the reasons for this disallowance or prohibition, the Qur'an has not clearly explained it. Nevertheless, because the Qur'an has clearly mentioned that the prohibitions are due to their inherent physical or spiritual uncleanness or due to the negative effects that something may have on the morality of individuals, it may be derived that the reason for the prohibition of pork also belongs to one of the two categories. However, as far as the specific reason for this prohibition is concerned, because the Qur'an has not mentioned it, therefore, I am not in a position to give any specific reason for it.

Food experts and those qualified in the field of studying the effects of various food items on human beings should try to determine the specific reasons for the prohibition of pork in the light of the above guidelines.

Another important aspect which should be kept in mind is that man has generally not used carnivorous animals as edibles. Lions, tigers, dogs, cats and the like are natural prohibitions, which man has generally not used for eating. Refraining to eat the meat of such animals is so obvious that man has, generally, not mistaken these animals as eatables. This is precisely the reason why there was no reason for the Shari`ah (the Islamic law) to explicitly include it in its list of prohibitions. The case of swine is a little confusing, as it is an omnivorous. Due to this fact, it was not easy for man to make a decision regarding its allowance or prohibition, on his own. It is due to this reason that the Shari`ah has given an explicit directive in this regard and thereby has explicitly prohibited the flesh of swine

Zidane you are crazy

2006-07-09T14:25:00.000-07:00

What in the world was Zidane thinking today during the world cup. That head butt was totally uncalled for if you really want to hurt him go ahead and give him a serious kick or punch him in the face but to head butt his chest. What the heck was that? He is an amazing player who makes amazing passes but this was totally silly and just does not make any sense. What did the other player say to him that would have set him off like that? Very strange move by Zidane but a fantastic good game to watch. Too bad it had to end in penalty kicks but that is the game of football. Sonja and I met with a large group and had a bbq before the game and then we sat around and watched and cheered for both sides. It has been an amazing experience to be in Europe for the world cup and seeing how crazy everyone is about their country as well as football.

Canada Day in London

2006-07-04T04:41:00.000-07:00

Canada in London was actually a lot of fun.

Friday I went to a large party Canada party in Trafalgar square put on by the Canadian Embassy. It was a lot of fun seeing a whole bunch of new Canadians. It is normal for me to see Canadians every weekend though because I live with two and we have a whole bunch of Canadian friends here. It is hard to find non Canadian, Australian, or New Zealanders in this country. It seems that there is no such thing as a true Londer’r but they must exist just not any where near me.

Saturday: Watched the footie and England lose in shootouts again. I do not think I need to say more since I am sure most of you have read about it in the paper anyways. The really nice thing about Saturday night was going into Hyde park and listening to Pink Floyd. They had a little concert in the park the other day and if you did not want to see them you could sit outside and listen to them. Pretty awesome actually so I am not going to complain.

Sunday: Sonja and I went for a long run and then we headed into the park for a nice picnic and then The Who played for everyone in the park. Man life was tough for use this past weekend.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Canada weekend.

g

England is freaking crazy over football

2006-06-15T15:38:00.000-07:00

England is absolutely nuts when their team is playing football. I was in Norwich the other day visiting a potential client and afterwards the sales guy and myself had dinner at a local restaurant. Sadly the place didn’t have any televisions or I would have been able to watch the game but we were close to local strip of bars. Each bar was over flowing with people all dressed in red and white and drinking hard. Really no difference then what Canada would be like if we were playing the Russians or the Americans in hockey the only difference is what happened after the game was over.

In Canada if our team wins all the drunks hug each other and play street hockey. Here they throw stuff at police, punch each other, and other really crazy stuff. This county is football crazy. So after I learned the train wasn’t going to come for another hour I headed to one of the local watering holes. Inside I grabbed a pint and looked around me and noticed that I was the only one wearing business clothes. I thought to myself that if I don’t make conversation soon I maybe killed or be totally bored for the next hour. As you can imagine I made the right decision and started chatting to the closest England fans, wait they are all crazy English fan so I didn’t have to go far. My line was easy, “This may sound really stupid but I’ve been in a meeting all day and I’m dieing to know who won the game?” They looked at me like I was crazy so I quickly changed my tune and said, “Well it had better be England because that would add to a perfect week. The bloody Americans lost the other day and you know how happy that makes a Canadian and if the England won that would top this week off.” This seemed to make them happy the fact that I was cheering for their boys and the fact that I detested the Americans

Well they decided to take the piss out of me and started ripping into me about the fact that Canada isn’t that good at football. Well I had the last laugh on that one when I pointed out that they were playing with one of ours. I said our guy sat on their bench and even got about eight minutes the other day. They didn’t like the fact that Owen Hargraves is Canadian or that he currently plays for Bayern Munich but I did point that he was ours. I must be a little proud of England seeing as Hargraves is Canadian and I kept pointing it out. They were kind enough to point out Lenix Lewis was Canadian but decided that he was British in the end. The only Canadian they knew who had made it huge was…..Ben Johnson. Those silly buggers that’s the best they could come up with. Well they had been drinking for a long time so I did what any British person would do in this situation (my fathers Scottish) swear up a storm and talk about how badly the English side played. This normally can get you out of pretty much any jam unless you are in Scotland and then they think you like England which is not a good thing up there.

The next English game is Tuesday but I’ll sadly be at practice so I’ll miss the crazy commotion. Missing this game is OK I’m told as England is through to the next round. Once in the next round we all have to cheer and watch our team play. A friend, Erin, works at Xerox and because the game was at 5 everyone was sent home at half four so that they could watch the game. Crazy country is all I have to say.

New Pictures are up

2006-06-15T01:17:00.000-07:00

HPIM1746,
originally uploaded by Glenn Saqui.

A whole pile of new pictures are up from the visit that frank had in London with us as well as our trip up to Edinburgh to watch Sonja run. I didn't do a good job uploading them so they are kind of mixed up and they aren't even titled sorry.

Edinburgh Marathon

2006-06-13T00:54:00.000-07:00

This past weekend Sonja, myself, Erin, and Megan all went up to Edinburgh to watch Sonja run the marathon. This was Sonja’s first ever marathon and she had spent five months of hard training by herself. Sonja would consistently get up before be on Saturday mornings (6am) to eat breakfast then go back to bed for an hour and then get up and go on her 3 ½ hour runs. These were the long easier runs while during the week Sonja did one really hard workout normally something along the lines of three repeats of ten minute faster running then taking a three minute break and doing it again. This is normally called tempo running and can be very strenuous on the body as well as very taxing on the brain. She did these Tuesday workouts by herself without ever complaining about how difficult they were or about how much she hated them, which she did. I knew she did not like doing the tempo runs based on what she put in her training dairy but she never once complained.

Well after five months of hard work the three non marathon runners decided the least that we could do is go up and cheer her on. Well that’s exactly what we did we rented a little car and we all piled in. Sonja and I the night before packed lunches for everyone so that we would not have to stop for lunch so that we would hopefully arrive in Edinburgh at a decent time. The drive is supposed to take about 8 hours if you don’t get lost or you don’t speed. Well we got lost and hit a massive traffic accident so we were a little later then we wanted to be. We arrived and had to go straight to pick up Sonja’ s race number because the place was about to close and she needed for next day. After we got the number and checked into our uber sketchy hostel we were famished since it was almost 9 and we hadn’t eaten dinner yet. We grabbed some food and put Sonja to bed as she had to race the next day while the rest of us were free to go out on the town. Megan wasn’t up to coming out with us at night as she had had a busy the night before.

This left Erin and I which can only mean good stories as Erin and I always find the most random stuff going on. Well this night we saw some really random stuff but that will be hopefully a totally separate blog. Needless to say we saw a groom on a stag night get a little over the top with a girl that isn’t his bride and his best buddies have it all on camera. We saw outfits on girls that I didn’t even think existed outside of magazines. Erin and I called it quits at midnight as we needed our rest to watch the rock star perform the next day.

The next morning Sonja and I got up before the other two girls as we were going to leave before them and make our way to the start line. Sonja had a good breakfast of oatmeal and a banana and then we headed to the start line. I was a little surprised at how hilly Edinburgh was as I had never been there before and was a little worried that Sonja hadn’t done a lot of hill training over the last 5 months. In fact she didn’t do any hill training for this marathon. I thought to myself that this could be a very long day for Sonja as the last 3 miles were uphill. The day was perfect marathoning weather; not too hot and overcast. The race was actually larger then I thought it would be as well with over twelve thousand crazy runners. One of the problems with this many people is the large number of runners who have to go to the bathroom (also known as the loo over here) and the lack of toilets. This meant that Sonja spent the twenty minutes before the race in a loo lineup, which may have been better than standing in the racing queue as this may have made her even more nervous. As soon as she was done with the toilet we quickly jogged to the section where she had to be and as soon as she arrived the race started.

Well she ran and she ran like a rock star. Looked great through 4 miles, looked great through 9 miles, went through the half at 1:53, looked tired but strong at 19 miles, and ran the last 3 miles tired but passing people going up the hills. She was tired but was able to walk away from the marathon and not be in too bad of shape. This really shows that her training has allowed her to end strong and not totally exhausted. Like the rock that star that she is the next thing that she wanted to do was eat and drink. We currently don’t know the official time but we do know that she was under four hours which is amazing for a person on their first marathon. She had three goals for this day: one that she wanted to finish, one that she wanted to go under four hours and other last goal was to go under 3:45 and qualify for London. Well she chose a very hard marathon to be able to run under 3:45 so this was the only goal that she didn’t actually accomplish but something that I am sure would/could be accomplished on a course that doesn’t have three miles of up hill at the end of the race. I will hopefully have the pictures of the race up soon.

After everything that was done we had to drive home, not arriving back in London until 12:30. Sitting in a car, not eating healthy, and going to bed very late didn’t help getting up this morning but sure enough Sonja got up and actually was not as sore as I would have thought she would have been.

Where are you going for Christmas?

2006-06-09T06:29:00.000-07:00

I think Sonja and I are going to go to Cape Town SA for Christmas this year. We've had enough of rain for Christmas and want something a little more exciting then turkey....who am I kidding I love turkey. So instead of coming home for Christmas we are going to come home for two weeks at the end of July to go camping. Anyone and everyone is invited to join us for a night of camping. More information as we get closer to the date.

Why can't all weekends by like the last

2006-06-06T14:16:00.000-07:00

This past weekend it was super stellar in sunny London. For the last two weeks I have been living in Frankfurt working with a colleague/friend of mine Franky. Well Franky decided to come visit Sonja and I in London for the weekend and man did we ever have an awesome time. First I think I should preface this story with the fact that Frank and I were super stressed for the past two weeks because we were at one of the most important clients that we have so it was nice to have a weekend to unwind.

Saturday morning everyone jumped on the tube and headed to a massive food market where we spent the day buying food for dinner and eating yummy food as well as just hanging out in the sun. Well after we got home and had a nap it was time for a bbq in the park. Frank’s old roommate lives in London now so we called him up and a bunch of our friends and headed to the park (3 minute walk from my house). We bought a one use bbq from Marks and Spencer and sat down in the middle of the park. The sun was shinning, it was hot, there was food, and it is legal to drink in the park. The food was lamb sausages, homemade salad, crisps, baguettes, and humus. We were in the park relaxing and hanging out for a good couple of hours before we hit our local pub for a couple of drinks to end the night off.

The next day we met up with Sonja’s brother and his girlfriend and headed to the park for breakfast. Yup that’s right we had another picnic in the park but this time after we ate cheese and a really high end loaf of bread then read the paper and hung out in the park for the rest of the day. At 3pm we went for icecream and then a cheeky pint. We then came home for a drop dead spaghetti and that pretty much topped the weekend off. Franky went home the next morning and I had to go back to work after a nice two day vacation.

What the heck is going on in Canada

2006-06-06T14:01:00.000-07:00

Terrorists in Canada? What is going on that we have this problem in Canada? I don’t really understand why they wanted to attack Canadians. It just does not make sense to me. The accused are all Canadians and they wanted to attack large numbers of other Canadians. I really would like to know what their rational is for attempting to blow people up. Is it because we are involved in Afghanistan or is it because we have spent so much time being a peace keeping nation that we have forgotten about the extreme racism that this individuals have received? Over the next couple of months hopefully the media will do a good job explaining the whole story of these men. This is one item I will be following very closely.

Frankfurt on a normal wednesday night

2006-05-29T13:33:00.000-07:00

Ok I haven’t blogged for a while but I haven’t had a good story in a long time so finally I’ve got a good couple of stories for everyone. So last week Frank (a guy I work with who just happens to be a tall German) and myself flew over to Frankfurt to do this massive install at one of the most important clients that our company has landed. Franky is a goof ball and most of you know I’m the same so we’ve been working our butts off trying to make sure this install goes well but Thursday was a holiday in Germany so this meant that we had Wednesday to go out.

You should be thinking man that should be fun. Well you are right since we got off work at 5:30 and I headed out for an awesome run. I mean my run was totally solid and Franky hit the gym. Well I don’t know how he did it but he busts into my room at 6:50 and starts talking about some blond stewardess and I’m all like “Dude come on you can’t pull that on me the gym sucks here and there is no way you met some blond stewardess”.

“Ya how about dinner with her and her crew in twenty minutes”

Ok after that I knew this night was going to get a little nuts. Well we went to dinner with the crew and had a great time drinking beer and eating loads of meet (I had a massive meat platter and Franky, the german, had a vegetarian meal). Well we all got back to the hotel that we were staying at and well…….Frank and I had to go to our room because we had a conference call with HQ at 9pm our time so we invited them out later but got the total shutdown. So after a massively long phone call I thought the night was going to fiz out and die but Franky convinced me to head downtown for a couple of drinks.

We arrive in downtown and have no idea where to go so we stop at the hot dog stand and the dude totally directs us to the district. So we are walking down this road and there was a small pub with a large seating area where they have large picnic tables all packed. Well Franky spots the table with the youngest crowed on it so we decide to go big or go home. We grab some beers and dive in head first:
“Ummmm Do any of you speak English?”
“Hell ya” (in broken English and well maybe it wasn’t that cool sounding but who cares we were now sitting at the table)

Not sure how we pulled it off but we were sitting beside all the girls while on the other side there were a bunch of dudes hang out. So we sat there for a good solid two hours in that time I have no idea how Frank doesn’t break cover and speak German. The dude is fully fluent in German seeing as he lived here until he was 16 so he has only been in Canada for like 8 years. The cover was don’t play the German card unless its totally required, make them work for hanging out with us. Franky chatted this chick up for the whole time until she left with her sister then the girl sitting next to the girl that just left moved over to Franky. The dude was a chick machine!!! Well at 1:30 it was just us and two German stoke brokers so they then took us to the smallest club of all time. You think a Japanese toilet is small imagine it doubled in size add 40 people and that’s this club that we went to. So ya after drinking until 3:30 there I was all pumped about going home to bed after a very stressful couple of days but once again this night was not over. The guys we were hanging with were not impressed that we were going home so they sent us to another club. Somehow, I’m not sure how, but they stayed behind and Frank and I end up in front of this other club that wouldn’t let us in. So here we are 3:45am standing in front of a club not knowing what to do until another group show up and they get shutdown as well. So drunk Glenn opens his yap and makes fun of them which thank god doesn’t lead to Glenn’s death but lead them to inviting us to another club. We hit this club and go straight to the bar then we start to notice that this club isn’t jumping but it does seem to have fish swimming around in fish tanks. Very strange but we drink a couple of drinks and head to the next club because at this point who wants to go home. Well we enter the next club at 4am and head right to the bar and grab our last beer of the night and then we spot the stage. Anyone who knows me knows what that means. Yup I was on it with Franky dancing our butts off and drinking our faces off. I would say we were fine until we decide to get another drink……this is when it gets ugly yet so funny.

Vodka red bull! Oh no you didn’t yup we did!

I’ll set the scene for you:
Night club two really drunk dudes laughing their asses off decide to hit the bar one last time before dancing and going home. Roll up to the pretty empty bar. Bartender looks like a raver who hasn’t slept in months. I forget where I am and I howl “Vodka Red BuLL!!!” He looks not so impressed and start pouring the vodka…….Frank and I start cheering him on and telling him to do it up well he then fills a two pint glasses have full and then pours the vodka on top. Math students think quick…..yup half and half also known in geek land as fitty-percent vodka. I don’t remember much except that we stumble out of the club at 5:30 and the sun has risen already and we find a cab home. Sleep until 1:30pm the next day and try to figure out why we were so hung over. One hell of a great night and one we will be speaking about for a while.

I know I haven’t blogged for a while but I’m going to try to get another one out in the next couple of days to recap our Amsterdam adventure with Sonja and the crew this past weekend.

Wedding pictures are up

2006-05-14T13:01:00.000-07:00

HPIM1694,
originally uploaded by Glenn Saqui.

Hey Everyone here is good old Jordans wedding pictures. More of a blog about the wedding later. Note you know you are getting old when your friends and family are getting married but I think you know you are really getting old when you have to trim your nose hairs. Since I've turned 26 I've had to start trimming those good old nose hairs. Anyways had a lot of fun at my cousins wedding hope you enjoy the photoes.

Training March 27-April 1

2006-04-04T10:10:00.000-07:00

This week I really put in four really long days and three really easy days but I think it seemed to work out pretty well. I fly home on Friday and I’ll be in Victoria by 9pm on Friday night and I hope to workout with someone on Saturday but I haven’t figured out who that is yet. The weeks workout went as follows:

Monday: 52 minutes easy running
Tuesday:32 minutes to the track, 8*600m with 200m jog all around 1:44-46 then 35 minutes home
Wednesday:32 minutes easy
Thursday: 32 minutes to the track, 8*200m with 70sec rest all between 28-9 then 35 minutes home. First 200m was 26sec.
Friday: 45 minutes very easy
Saturday: 54 minutes to the park, 8*850 meter park with 90 seconds rest, 58 minutes home. This was a huge mileage day.
Sunday: 90 minutes very easy.

Total km count: 110km

Saturday was way longer then I really expected but it was a good workout. The only problem with Saturday was the fact that it was on park field and everyone was in spikes and I was in my trainers. It rains a lot in UK so I didn’t have the best of luck on the grass.

Don't make the super geek mistake that I made tonight

2006-03-30T13:08:00.000-08:00

Funny story that I think people will like. I don’t know if everyone knows what a podcast is or not but essentially it’s a verbal blog. Yup it’s a voice blog that you subscribe to and you can hear a short commentary about whatever. Well I’m not into this because I think it sounds dumb. Well today I was messing around with iTunes (the application I use to play music on my laptop) and noticed this podcast icon. So I clicked away and saw a bunch of podcasts and thought nothing of it because like I said I’m not really into this whole uber lazy geek thing. I like a little work if I’m going to be a geek, I can read so I might as well.

Well I came home from my run today and Sonja was out rock climbing and Tanya, our roommate, went for a run which left the house to myself. This normally isn’t a big deal because I spend most days working from home but tonight I wasn’t working and had no plan on doing work tonight. So ate dinner (boiled potatoes with a can of beans on top. Love it when Sonjas not home) and then I was about to start doing the dishes. Now normally I would turn on the radio or even listen to some music on the laptop while I was doing dishes. Well tonight after a good run I was feeling a little adventuress so I thought what the heck I’ll listen to a podcast while I do the dishes. Huge mistake and this the reason why.

I thought I’ll listen to some light and easy so I dug down and found a track podcast. I was super pumped as I was hoping they would talk about workouts or times or something seriously track geeky. So I turned it on and started doing the dishes and what it was high school coach talking about how thankful he was that he had a job. It was so bad that I wanted to turn it off but my hands were wet and I didn’t want to touch the laptop with wet hands. I tried to blog it out but this stupid American southern accent just kept coming through. “I’m so thankful that Jon Jr. ran over the summer he’s real fast blah blah blah.” It was a total conflict I was getting slowly getting killed by this guy but I knew if I touched the laptop with wet hands that would kill me as well. Thank god the podcast was only 2 minutes since it didn’t actually kill me but I did lose three fingers and one baby toe. Lesson for all those people reading the blog don’t go the next step it totally isn’t worth it.

Do you know this useless fact?

2006-03-30T06:16:00.000-08:00

Uk's daylight savings was last sunday and in victoria it is this coming sunday

Useless to some but useful to others who were supposed to have meetings at 4:30 our time but it turned out they were at 5:30 our time. We learned our mistake after 15 minutes on the phone waiting for Victoria to pick up. lol stupid daylight savings time grrrrr...

Sonja's Birthday on Friday

2006-03-30T06:13:00.000-08:00

Sonja's birthday is on Friday so the plan is to go see "Lion King" something that she has been bugging me to see since we have been here. We'll go for dinner then see the play/musical. The next day we're going to make risotto and then head to a lounge style place for some drinks and then out to the clubs. We'll see how late we are out since Sonja has a long run during the day and normally she doesn't have that much energy to do anything after that. This week her long run is 3 hours, yikes. She is building for a June marathon so hopefully she stays heathly since that was the problem last time she attempted the marathon.

g

Next Friday I'm coming home woot woot

2006-03-30T06:05:00.000-08:00

Just thought I would post last weeks training since a few of the runners are following it:
Monday:7km easy
Tuesday: 7km to the track then 16*400m with 45 seconds rest all around 67-69 ending with 65, 7km home
Wednesday: Easy 12km
Thursday: off due to work
Friday:
Morning: 25 warm up then 15 tempo, 15 cool down
Night: 7km easy with Sonja
Saturday 40 minutes easy
Sunday:25 minute warm up then 8km race at 25.58, 20 minute cooldown and then 35minutes easy running later in the day.
Total kms: 95

Race report: I'm fit is all that the race told me thats about it. I wouldn't call it a race though because it was a 12 stage relay and when it was my time to run there was no one sight so I ran the whole 8kms by myself without seeing anyone. The course was fairly flat but there was a killer wind which I think slowed me down a little bit. I'm happy with my fitness but unhappy about my speed which I'll have to work on over the next couple of weeks.

This week so far has been the following:
Monday:12km easy
Tuesday: 32 minutes to the track-8*600m with 75 jog all around 1:45-7 then 35 minutes home. Once again I can't believe how quickly I am recoverying in these reps I think it shows that I'm fit but who knows.
Wednesday:32 easy

Standing sucks

2006-03-23T00:53:00.000-08:00

So I’m away in Manchester for a conference that the company that I work for has a booth. This means yesterday I spent 10 ours on my feet in nice dress shoes. I’m going to lie my feet hurt and I am totally not used to this. When I work from home I roll out of bed and walk to the living room flip on the computer and start work. I normally forget to brush my teeth until lunch when I stand up and think wow I haven’t brushed my teeth in fact I haven’t moved for the last 4-5 hours, weird. Five hits and then I normally flip the computer off and think about making dinner before I head out for my run. I normally run between 5 and 7 every night for those wondering this is the only time I leave my house when I work home. Why do I bring this up? Well it’s because this is hard standing for 10 hours if your body isn’t ready for it. The run that I went on last night was totally slow because my legs were sore from standing all day.

I was asked why I’m flying home twice. The reason is I have a business meeting in Seattle in the middle of April so the company is flying me home so I’ve just extended it a little bit longer to be home for Easter and the second reason I have a wedding at the beginning of May that I have to attend. Since the TC 10km is a week before I’m coming in a week earlier so that I can run it. This trip is coming out of my not so deep pockets. I have yet to buy this ticket but I think I’ll do that in the next couple of days.

My TC 10km goal was a question that Nick Walker asked about. I would have to say that I’m not really sure how fit I actually am so I’m not sure what my goal is. My club is competing in 12 stage relay against all the other clubs in Southern England and I will be running a 8km stage so hopefully this will give me some indication on how quick I am right now. I had a good workout on Tuesday 16*400m with 45 seconds rest and all the 400m’s were between 67-69 which is OK but it was my recovery that I was really impressed with. Each time the rep was done I was almost completely recovered when the next rep started. This shows me my fitness is coming along nicely I just have to work on my speed a little bit more. Hope everyone is having a nice day.

Oh man I'm coming home for a short visit

2006-03-21T07:36:00.000-08:00

Well I haven't mentioned it to anyone because I didn't want to get people excited but its looks like I'll be home in the middle of April and then again at the end of April. The exact dates of my time in Victoria are the following April 7,8,9 and then again 13,14,15 and I fly back to the UK on the 16th. I then will be back for a solid week at the end of april but those dates aren't finalized as of yet. I'm working on buying that ticket but these things cost a lot of money and I have to make sure I have enough in the back account to pay rent (yes I know highly over rated).

So my past week of running has been the following:
Monday: Easy 6km 32minutes
Tuesday: 55minutes to practice 12km then 5*600m with 60 seconds rest (1.47-50) then 2 minute rest then 5*500m then 35 minutes home. Total km for the day 25
Wednesday: 58 easy 14kms
Thursday: 35minutes to practice then 10*50 second hills 35 minutes back. 18km
Friday: Taken off because my km count for the week was climbing a little fast
Saturday: 20 warm up then 8 tempo, 3 down, 6 tempo, 2 1/2 down, 6 tempo, 1 1/2 min down, 5min tempo then 20 cool down. 16km
Sunday: Long slow run 86 minutes AHR 150 AKM:4:20

Total kms for last week was 99.

G-out

Last week of running

2006-03-13T09:43:00.000-08:00

This past week has been a little crazy for me. On Monday morning I headed up to Dundee Scotland to upgrade a client as well as do some training with them. I was up there from Monday until late Wednesday night. Normally this can cause a major problem with running but I seem to be really motivated right now so I'm making sure that I'm getting all my runs in. Here is a quick breakdown of the weeks running:

Monday:9km easy run after a really hard race on Sunday
Tuesday: 20 min warm up then 2reps of 8 minutes of tempo running with two 1 minute pick ups in the 8 minutes then 1 five minute tempo with a 1 minute pick up. 20min run home
Wednesday off because I was flying and everywhere I went during that day was broken. Eg the train from Heathrow to the nearest train station to my house, which normally only takes 15 minutes, was broken so I had to take the underground so that added 45 minutes to my travel.
Thursday: 8km to meet my group then 10*55 second hills then 7km home. I felt like a fat cow running up a hill my power isn't there yet but I'm sure it will come as I continue to run hills.
Friday:12km easy
Saturday: 20min warm up then 8*3min loops. The loop has a gradual uphill then downhill then a flat section so its good for power, turnover, and maintaining speed. 20min cooldown
Sunday:78 minutes really easy.

My Sunday run was super easy because I'm attempting something new for myself. While at university I used to cruise my long runs and sometimes I would actually push a little to hard. So now I have my heart rate monitor telling me if my heart rate gets above a certain level and if it does I have to slow down. The idea is that I keep my heart rate below 70% of my maximum heart rate. Its something that I was reading so I'll give it a try for the next couple of weeks and see how it all plays out for me. My thought is I may have worked to hard on my easy days while at university when in fact I should have been taking those days easier and having better recovery for my workouts. Who knows it may massively backfire but I think its worth trying.

British food

2006-03-11T00:44:00.000-08:00

I now know why this Jamie Oliver guy has his own tv show. I was at a university cafeteria today for lunch and the choices were the following:
-Fish and chips with green beans
-Some type of gravey meat thing with chips
-Grilled to death chicken with over cooked corn and boiled potatoes with tons of salt on them.

Now I didn’t spend as much time in the cafeteria as I would like because I was with a client and he was paying but I didn’t see any type of salads or even an option for soup. Now I’m sure they had at least one vegetarian option but I didn’t see it so maybe that was the one really healthy choice. Which one did I go for? Well I decided on the Grilled to death chicken with over cooked corn while the two Brits I was with went for Fish and chips. This is a university were the people are supposed to be smart you’d think they would want to feed their minds with healthy food instead of this type of crap. Like I said there may have been a healthier place on campus but I didn’t have time to go look around for it.

rock on I’m going for a run.
g

Glenn in front of Notre Dame

2006-03-04T03:42:00.000-08:00

Glenn in front of Notre Dame,
originally uploaded by Glenn Saqui.

Pictures from Sonja and mine trip to Paris for our 7 year anniversary. We had tons of fun.

Three week goal

2006-03-04T02:27:00.000-08:00

OK yes I know that I haven’t blogged in a while but this one is a good one. This one is about my heart rate monitor. The heart rate monitor that I have is the Polar RS200ds which means its not only a heart rate monitor but a speed distance monitor as well. The speed distance monitor is a little thing that you put on your shoe.

So at first I wasn’t a big fan of the heart rate monitor but that’s because I hadn’t spend enough time figuring out what everything meant and I hadn’t figured out how to use it. Well this week changed things for me. This week I’ve been doing some hard training attempting to drag myself back into shape. I’ve been stacking the workouts back to back in an attempt to get myself into shape. I’ll talk about this idea later in the blog but the watch is actually helping with this stacking of workouts. On Thursday I had a really hard hill workout (6*2min up a massive hill) and I was totally exhausted when I got home. The watch didn’t tell me anything I didn’t know from the workout, I knew that I had worked very hard and I wasn’t in shape. Friday is when the heart rate monitor was really useful and I’ll tell you why. Friday was meant to be an easy recovery day but when I started running I wasn’t running that quickly but I looked down at the heart rate monitor and it was telling me my heart rate was higher than it should be for an easy run. This was a warning sign that I was tired from Thursdays workout and that I should slow down even more to get the full benefit from the recovery run. Normally I would have just thought that I was lazy on Friday and would have pushed through the run and not complained or even known that I was overly tired. So finally this heart rate monitor has become useful. You can set the watch up so that you can be in between certain heart rate zones and if you get outside of the zone the watch will beep at you but I’m not sure if this is something that I’m really interested in right now.

Now I really like the speed distance monitor a lot. This thing is totally handy because I travel a lot for work and it’s always good to know the total distance of the run. That being said I have been running long enough that I normally pretty good at telling how far I’ve run so it isn’t that big of a deal. The big thing for me is the speed monitor that can tell you at what pace you are going. I love this because when I’m away and I have to workout I normally set my workout up so that I will do some tempo running. Tempo running is when pick up your pace for a certain time period but the key is that you need to keep that pace for the whole time period. You try to get a total time of tempo running of over 20 minutes because then it has an effect on your total fitness. This means you could do something like 4 reps of 5 minutes or 2 reps of 10 minutes, you get the idea. Well the watch is really good at telling me the pace that I’m at so that for the whole tempo run I can keep the same pace. I love it! When I think I’m going to slowly at the start I just check the watch and it tells me I’m at the right pace or it tells me to get my butt in gear.

For me I use the heart rate monitor to help keep my easy days easy and I use the speed distance monitor to help with my tempo running. Tempo running is only one maybe two workouts a week so I guess I really don’t need that part of the watch but since I bought the full meal deal its been worth it. I do like looking at what my average km is over an easy run and to monitor what my heart rate is at that km rate. I do think that if you are doing shorter workouts on the track I don’t think either the heart rate monitor or the speed distance monitor are that useful but longer lonely runs it can be a lot of fun.

Heart rate monitor

2006-03-04T02:18:00.000-08:00

Back at home for my birthday

2006-02-10T07:59:00.000-08:00

Well Wednesday I arrived in London after a 9 hour plane ride that I don't remember becuase I was passed out in my seat for the whole trip. I even skipped the first meal because I was sleeping, in fact I don't even remember taking off because I was out super fast. One really nice thing that they gave us on the flight was one of those black out masks that you put on your eyes. Totally helped me because as soon as its dark my body just shuts down. This is the reason that I'm not a cat burglar or else I'm pretty sure I would attempt this profession because it sounds pretty cool and sometimes you get to meet up with Batman when he tries to stop you.

Well Sonja surprised me and met me at the airport, which meant she had the day off so we had lots of fun getting caught up and going to buy my birthday present. It seems like every year I go and buy myself something that I want for my birthday well this year was no different I went out and bought a new watch. This watch is totally pimped out it has everything that you could imagine. Not only is it a pimped out running watch it has a heart rate monitor as well as the huge selling point for me was the speed distance monitor. The speed distance monitor works with the watch so at any given time I can see how far I've run as well as at what pace that I'm going. I've gone on two runs with it since I've bought it and it is totally fun to play with. Its just another factor into proof that I'm a geek and a runner so when you can find things that allows me to match them together I'm super happy.

My birthday was yesterday Feb 8th so I rolled out of bed munched on some toast with PBJ on it (something I totally missed when I was in India) and headed over to the computer. Sadly yesterday was the first day of work, well it was supposed to be but I really didn't work that hard because I had way to many emails to respond to and read. I went out for a solid 52 minute run with an average heart rate of 167 I'm not exactly sure what that means yet but I'll fill ya in when I do. Then my birthday started when Sonja took me to Cirque De Soleil. It was way more dancing and stuff like that and at the start I thought Sonja brought me to Cirque De Ballet but after they were done their intro it turned into a very impressive gymnasitic event. Some of those dudes are total freaks and now I know where all those freaks from school went. It was tons of fun and let me tell you its nice to be home.

Funny statements you would never have heard three months ago:
1) London is such a clean city
2) The weather here is so cold I don't know how people can live in this enviroment
3) The food is good here

thanks for everyones happy birthday wishes and thanks to everyone reading the blog while we were in India.

Goodbye from Rob

2006-02-07T06:48:00.000-08:00

Hello I am in Thailand now and Glenn is soon to be back in London. This will (most likely) be my last post. I have started a new blog at http://bobbycho.blogspot.com/ I hope that you all check it out from time to time, even if you are just Glenn's friend and you don't know me at all. He has some wierd friends but you are all still welcome anyway. I hope you guys didn't mind me hijacking his blog for 3 months. I had a wicked time in India and if you want to know more of anything just ask Glenn for my email or post on my blog.

Robinder

Last pictures from India

2006-02-04T01:30:00.000-08:00

P1010740,
originally uploaded by Glenn Saqui.

Now that Rob has left me and headed out to Thailand I thought I would post the rest of our pictures. So all you have to do is click on the picture and it'll take you to the correct site.

Last couple of days in India

2006-02-04T01:28:00.000-08:00

Well Rob has left to Thailand and now I must make my way back to Delhi to catch my flight back to the UK. Yesterday morning Rob left and I thought it would be nice just to hangout on the beach and do nothing except read my book. So thats what I did until 3pm when I thought it would be fun to go have an orange lassi, something I had never had, well the first one was good. The second tasted a little off but I didn't care it was hot out and the lassi was cold so I was pumped. I then walked down to the internet cafe and checked my email. While sitting there I started to feel a little ill so I decided to head back to the place that I was staying. Well lets just put it this way I got some serious Delhi belly. I slept and was sick from 5pm until 7am this morning. I'm feeling a little better now but it was a rough night. I should have known better then to have to orange lassi no one ever orders those.

Well today I had to rough it and take two buses back to Panjim, Goa where tomorrow I'll be catching a flight to Delhi where I'll be for two days before I fly home. While in Delhi I'm going to pick up a new pair of glasses and check out some stuff Rob and I missed while we were there.

rock on,
g

I found two funny websites you should check out

2006-02-02T05:25:00.000-08:00

Chuck Norris Facts
http://www.chucknorrisfacts.com/

Type into google "greatest website" and click on the first link. This guy hates everything but I can't believe this is what google comes up with as the greatest website. Scroll to near the bottom and you'll find one of my favs called "I am better than your kids."

Oh by the way this is totally not India related

2nd to Last Day in India, from Rob

2006-02-01T08:05:00.000-08:00

Glenn will fly to Delhi from Goa on the 5th, he leaves India about midnight on the 7th. This will give him enough time to get a pair of glasses made and to see a temple which we missed there. A while ago we purchased four flights within India and we still had one left so I had planned to use it to fly to whatever city would give me the cheapest fare out of India to Bangkok. I had been checking flights online and the cheapest I could find was 10400RS about 270 CAD, but yesterday we went to a travel agent, which I thought would be a waste of time and I purchased a ticket for 7600RS about 200CAD from Mumbai. That's not bad, but it is for the 3rd since that is when the sale is so I feel a bit guilty to leave Glenn hanging for a few days on his own.
So tomorrow is our last day, then on Saturday I fly from Panjim, Goa at 1335 to Mumbai and I will have a few hours to spend do maybe I will check out a Bollywood flick, and grab my last true Indian meal. Then at about midnight I fly to Bangkok and I will arrive at about 6am Bangkok time. I am not sure how long the flight actually is, its not like Canada where the give you a nice little itinerary of what to expect. All I know is that I am going to arrive in Thailand first thing in the morning with not a clue of what to do.
I have done very little reading about Thailand because mostly I have not felt like it to be quite honest. While in India I would make a point to check out the guidebook because I felt I owed that much to Glenn since we were travelling together so I should contribute to the overall planning. Now that I am on my own I have no responsibilities and if it sucks that I didn't plan better, that's okay because I only have myself to blame, and I only have myself to be upset at mysel--if that makes any sense....
No, I have an old guidebook of SE Asia, but when I get to Bangkok I will find a better one. Then I will have to hang out in Bangkok for probably 4 days while I arrange visas to Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. In that time I will meet lots of travellers, read my brand new guidebook, eat 22 pad thais and 31 nasi gorengs and have a better idea of what my plans will be. I think I will be heading up to Laos asap then east to Cambodia then to Vietnam if time permits then back to Thailand and home.
I can't believe we have been in India for 3 months, and I can't believe I still have 2 months left. I don't have any ideas of running home early but if I could be teleported back for one week and then teleported back here I would do it. I would love to make my own food, drink some real coffee and drive my car and listen to all my cd's that I didn't get to put on my iPod and take the dogs for a walk and not be surrounded by a billon people and have a hot shower and wear some nice clothes and eat some BBQ and drink real beer and watch hockey--just for one week would be really nice.
Despite some of my rantings we have had an amazing time here. Sometimes I just had to vent so that I could concentrate on the good shit. I cannot describe in one short blog how cool India is, all I can say is it gets in you and it will be something I will never forget. Who knows, maybe one day I will come back. They say lots of people leave India hating it, but then get home and start planning when to come back. Glenn has been a great travelling companion even if his running shorts smell; maybe one day we can go somewhere else cool like Russia or South America.
As for continued updates, Glenn is going to help me set up a blog for my future travels. As soon as it is up I will post a link to it from here. There will only be half as many posts since there will only be half as many authors, so don't get your hopes up. Also, I probably won't have much time since I will be mostly in opium dens and they tend to not have great Internet connections, so says lonely planet.

Hampi, from Rob

2006-02-01T07:41:00.000-08:00

About a week ago we spent 3 nights in Hampi, checking out something like 26 square miles of temple ruins. We obviously did not see it all, but we got some great pics anyway. Apparently they are still uncovering more of these ruins all the time. Glenn and I were both once again amazed at the how diverse India is. Our last sort of scenic place was Munnar with the tea fields and green mountains. To go from that to Hampi which is all rolling hills with massive boulders precariously balanced on each other was very striking. I would say the one drawback to Hampi was its lack of food. Basically we were forced to stay in a tourist area and there was no real food. In fact I would go as far as to say it was the worst food we have found. We just could not find anything decent and one meal in particular was so terrible I could not finish it. We went across the street and ate some banoofi pie which was almost okay. Then I went to bed and cried myself to sleep while hugging a pillow to my empty growling stomach....Soon we will get the pictures of Hampi up. They are some of our last pix of India and Glenn has burned all of them onto cds to take home with him.

Hardcore hippies

2006-01-30T21:17:00.000-08:00

Well we haven't blogged for the last couple of days because we have been living in a grass hut on the beach. Yup we had no running water and no shower for a total of a week. This place we were at had some of the hardcorist (I'm not sure that is a word) hippies I had ever seen. One dude had lived on the beach in a grass hut for the last 3 years. All these people do is sit around and smoke weed and then just sit in the sun. Rob and I didn't even know what to talk to these people about because I know we had nothing in common with them except maybe that we were both human and thats a tough one to use as a starter for a conversation. We did have fun laying on the beach and swimming when the sun got to hot. One thing about where we were was that the water was crazy boyount. So boyount in fact that the big bummed dude I'm travelling with, who normally sinks like a rock, was able to float on his back.

Now we in Goa and we are starting to get things ready for me to head back to the UK and for Rob to head off to Thailand. This means visiting the airline companies and making sure I have all the photoes burned onto cds to take home with me. Today we are going to check out some churches and maybe figure out which beach we are going to head to next.

g

Running in Mysore

2006-01-22T04:54:00.000-08:00

Well I'm attempting to get back into shape after taking almost two months off from running. It started Christmas day and I'm finallly starting to feel like I may enjoy this sport again. Yesterday Rob and I spent the day checking out a really awesome palace that I would love to show you pictures of except that we weren't allowed to bring our camera inside. The first thing we did yesterday morning was hike up over a 1000 steps to check out a temple at the top of a hill. On the way up there is Shiva's bull Nindi made out of stone. The thing is huge I think its 5m high so as you can imagine we spent some time resting and taking pictures of it. While hiking up the hill Rob mentioned that it was wierd that I didn't go for a run that morning. I came back with a bunch of bogus excuses and in the end I said I was just lazy and didn't want to get out of bed. Well this is when the beak started yapping, talking about how lazy I was and blah blah blah and this is why he wins at backgammon all the time.

He then threw out the idea that I should run up this hill tomorrow. I think he threw it out as a joke but I had already thought about it and had decided I was going to do it no matter what. Well our total walking time to the top was 32 minutes. We bused down and then had one massive lunch. Well that night Rob and I hit the booze a little harder then we should have and headed to what was supposed to be night club but turned out to be a sausage fest without any women. Its really weird being in a night club without women so you can imagine how long we stayed there. Yup we had one cheap beer then took off. Drank some more and well I like to say I fell asleep and Rob likes to say I passed out and has a picture to prove it.

Well the alarm went off at 7:20 and I was out of bed in a flash. Well maybe not a flash but I did roll out of bed so that was a good start to the run. Put the running shorts, top, and shoes on and walked to the door. The night before I had cut out the map from my guide book and took a compass along with me. You would think I wouldn't need a map since all I should have to do is run towards the giant hill but if you know me you'll know that I get lost in my own backward so off I went. While walking out the door I looked over at Rob who was happily sleeping away dreaming about all the great food he has eaten in India (Its a lot and its starting to show). Well with the map I made it to the base in 13 minutes. It took me 14 minutes to get to the top hitting every single step on the way up. During my run up I was lucky enough to have a few Indian boys attempt to run with me. Poor guys they never stood a chance. When I made it to the top I felt like Rocky except without the energy to throw my hands in the air and shout "Sonja" so instead I headed down the steps to the bottom. Going down was almost has hard as going up because my legs were totally dead but I did make it down in 13 minutes and off I went to run home.

As usual I got lost going home and had to use the compass as well as the map to get home. Well the rest of day was spent travelling instead of walking around because I don't think I would have made two more kilometers.

g

The Giant Grizzled Squirrel, from Rob

2006-01-21T04:07:00.000-08:00

We are currently in Mysore, Southern Karnataka, but tomorrow or the next day we will by busting our asses up to Hampi, via Bangalore. I had nearly forgotton one incident while back in Periyar NP.

In Periyar I thought you would like to know, we came across The Most Feared Giant Grizzled Squirel. What a terrifying sight that was! Why there was not an armed guard with us, I cannot understand. It was very irresponsible on the part of the park rangers. When we saw the said beast, our guide starting running and shrieking like a girl, so naturally we followed his lead. Glenn's runner instincts kicked in and he started throwing elbows on the narrow single track. An unfortunated German girl caught the worst of it and went down. I know Glenn never meant to hurt her, in his mind he was just running another race. He tends to get a bit intense sometimes. Nevertheless, I could not just leave the girl to die. From my bag I retrieved my trusty pineapple carving sword and faced the evil creature. He tried to circle around me and get to the girl who had a badly sprained ankle He saw the intensity in my eyes and so prefered to go for the easy kill, but I would have none of it. With one hand I fumbled for my camera and made sure the red-eye flash setting was on. Grizzled Squirells really hate to have their picture taken. When he saw me pull out my camera, he was no longer concered about the dame, but only wanted to stop me from compromising his anonymity. At this moment the beast lunged, and I fell into my yoga ninjai training that I had recieved in Varkala. I dropped backward into a roll and then when the beast was nearly upon my I exploded into a shoulder stance therby sending the monster into a tree. Before he could recover I leapt upon him and slashed at his throat with my pineapple sword. The beast howled in pain and ran off into the jungle to die. I looked down and noticed I too had been wounded; The Giant Grizzled Squirrel had ripped my shirt clean off. I then picked up the wounded girl and ran her to safety. Needless to say, she was very thankful. Glenn and I later double checked our guidebooks, there was not even a warning about the beast. They really dropped the ball on that one.

Rob, not drinking

2006-01-18T08:29:00.000-08:00

Rob, not drinking,
originally uploaded by Glenn Saqui.

OK we have uploaded almost a hundred new pictures so I hope you have some time because we have some really good ones this time. Just to let people know this picture of Rob is totally fake it was only taken because of the flag on the bottle and the fact the rum was called "Canadian Ice". Remember all you have to do is click on the picture and it will take you to the first picture uploaded and all you have to do click next to see all the new ones. The next one on the list is one of my lunches. It was awesome!

Bus rides rule!

2006-01-18T08:00:00.000-08:00

Well today Rob and I went from Munnar to Cochin, where we have been before, and then tomorrow we head north on our way to Mysore. Well we got up early had a really good breakfast and then headed for the bus. We were told the day before that the private buses wouldn't be running because they were going on strike so we had to take the public bus. Well we jumped on and it was one of the nicest buses we have been on in India. The seats were totally comfortable and there weren't that many people on the bus with us. This meant that Rob and I were able to share a sit meant for three people for at least half an hour then the rush hit. I would say about 30 school children jumped on the bus and made moving almost impossible. Well they were only on the bus for a half an hour and then back to just Rob, myself, and some random skinny Indian beside me. Well I think we got on the wrong bus because we arrived at a bus terminal and everyone got off except us because the money collector for the bus told us to stay on. First thought that crossed my mind was, "mmmm thats very strange." Well it got even stranger when we left the terminal and pulled down a dirt road behind a building. At this point I was a little worried because this is not normal but it turned out that behind the building was a gas station and they were just filling up.

After getting a little bit of gas they then pulled over to get some tea and invited us in to have some as well. Well we weren't alone on the bus there was a couple from Holland as well so we all got off the bus and had some tea and some grub. While finishing up our tea the bus dudes informed us that it was time to roll so we threw our tea back and jumped back on the bus. We went back to the terminal that we were at a half an hour ago and waited another half hour before we took off again. Well normally I wouldn't think this as being to odd, except maybe the chai stop, but we then went to the wrong town and were told to switch buses to go to where we wanted to go. Now I can see that people are thinking that I'm being sarcastic about the title that I have for this blog (Bus rides rule) but I'm totally serious this was a fun bus ride. The driver and the money collector had a great time helping us out and making sure that we were fed and had enough chai. I think the bus ride sucked because I think we got on the wrong bus and thats not their fault it ours. So instead of arriving in Cochin at 1pm we arrived at 3pm so it wasn't that big of a deal. We did the same things that we were going to do had we arrived at 1.

g

Congrats to my sister

2006-01-17T01:49:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to say congrats to my sister, as her and her long term boyfriend Dennis got engaged this weekend. Can't wait for the wedding :)

Glenn

Ah another India park

2006-01-17T01:33:00.000-08:00

So Rob and I have been to some really nice parks in India. I mean they have been truly awesome but the other day was the exact opposite. We got early and packed a huge lunch planning on eatting it in the park on our hike. Robs book said the park had a really nice 6km walk and it even gave it a thumbs up. Normally when Robs book gives something a thumbs up it is really good and both Rob and I walk away totally pleased. Well we got a ricksaw to drive us to the park entrance and was it ever an amazing drive up there. The scenery was stunning and because the ricksaw couldn't go very fast we had a lot of time to admire the view. Once we reached the checkpoint we found out they had jacked the prices up from 50RS to 200rs so we blinked our eyes and forked over the bling that they wanted. At this point the tourist police said that we could walk the next 3kms on a nice paved road and then we would have to come down. Both Rob and I were stunned, what do you mean its paved and you can only go 3kms?

Well Rob and I were pretty bitter and thought maybe the dude had no idea what he was talking about so we headed up the paved road. The road was loaded with Indian tourists taking pictures of the scenery. Sure the scenery was nice but it was no different then the scenery we was from the ricksaw. Well we rounded the corner to see 5 wild/tame mountain goats that the tourists were chasing around so that they could get pictures of. These goats were at the side of the paved road, not something I would call wilderness by any means. Well when we got to the top of the hill (3km) there was another tourist policeman telling us that we had to turn around and that we weren't allowed to continue down the paved road any further. This had to be one of the biggest rip offs of all time. I guess I had this idea of a park from west coast Canada where there are trees and you get to walk on a trail and really enjoy the nature. This is the type of park that we had seen all over India but yesterday we weren't that lucky. We did meet an older Indian couple that had the same complaint as us that the paved road wasn't really a park or people chasing the endangered goats wasn't very nice to see either. I think my hightlight of the park was meeting these really nice Indian couple that offered us a ride back into town. Rob and I like to say to each other when something strange happens or we get some wierd dish at a restaurant "You never know what you are going to get in Indian" and yesterday was a prime example of that. We truely had a different idea of what the park was going to be but at least now we can warn people not to waste their money there.

g

India Lite Pt 2, from Rob

2006-01-15T23:52:00.000-08:00

This story illustrates the mentality of some of the 2-week-travellers as I like to call them or maybe I should say too weak hohoho harharhar.
Last night we were waiting for our dinner to come out and Glenn had thoughtlessly left the backgammon board in our room. He said it was a mistake, but I am sure it was because he is just too tired of losing. Ah but too be fair I have let him win twice now. Anyway, to pass the time, what better thing to do than people watch--and ruthlessly critize of course.
First let me explain the restaurant we were in. It is called Rapsy's Restaurant also known as Chicken Corner. Its not even on a corner but it does serve up mean chicken. We have been in a million restaurants now and with all certainty I would say that Rapsy's used to be a local favourite (and to some extant still is) but since it ended up in all the guide books they have since adjusted to cater to tourists although without losing their Indian roots. They still make damn fine Indian food with a very simple menu. The only real difference is that they have printed an English menu with explainations and they have added a few "continental" dishes such as Israeli salad and Spanish omelet and chow mein with veg or meat. The prices are still ridiculously cheap (Glenn and I can eat till we explode for about 3CAD each) and their are still a few tables of Indian families their all the time--a good sign indeed.
We have met a few people, travellers, that are so scared of getting sick, they do not eat meat at all. To Glenn and I, this is an absurd philosophy. Sure, there are some places where we stick to vegetarian but if we walk into a restaurant called Chicken Corner, full of customers, a healthy amount of them Indian, you better be damn sure we will at least be giving the chicken a try. It just blows my mind that people will travel half way around the world and go home without ever even eating tandoori chicken for example. Have we been really sick from eating meat in India? Yeah probably. We have spent full days horizontal and due to one bad meal I now find the smell of cloves quite unappetizing. That being said, if someone told me there was a very high chance that I will be sick again in the next month in India unless I go vegtable-aryan I would still continue to eat meat. Not just because I am a omnivore, but because I am in India and I want to try everything, that is what I am here to do. I also make a point of trying out all the different vegatarian dishes, the salads, raitas, breads and sickly sweet deserts.
Now back to sitting in Rapsy's, hungry and bored. To my left I spy a party of five, 3 men, 2 woman all about mid forties. They were tall thin people, Europeans. The waiter started to bring out their food, he brought the men's first. Hmm what did they order? I was so hungry that I had to stare.
Chinese. Chinese! The 3 men each had a plate of vegtable chowmein. They were sitting in a gem of a restaurant in the middle of India Lite eating Chinese! I could not believe it. Glenn and I have tried the Chinese food at times and in fact have had some excellent western style Chinese in a Chinese restauant. By the way, we were actually both a bit sick the next day. Would the women be more daring? Would they have a bit of Kerala style fried chicken or at least a potato curry with some chapatti? No, they each decided to go with an omelet. Spanish or plain I was not sure. An excellent choice--for breakfast maybe.
But this is the best part. All five of them looked so sad. They picked meekly at their food. Well no wonder, didn't they know that fried eggs, omelets and chinese always comes out greasy everywhere in India? That the oil they use tastes a bit funny and that eggs are generally overcooked and chowmein is bland with very few vegetables. They all had stooped shoulders and sunken bellies. It was one of the funniest things I have ever seen. Yes, I am a mean shallow pathetic man, but we all knew that already. Glenn was laughing too by the way. I felt like yelling at them to enjoy their time in India. Or being more subtle and just asking them how was the Chinese here, oh not that good? Gee I am surprised because the Indian here is excellent. I couldn't imagine what they would look like in another week on that diet because they already looked quite malnourished. They just looked so depressed it was hilarious. It was seriously one of the funniest things I have ever seen, 5 adults picking the worst possible things off the menu and looking like there were going to cry. If that ain't funny I don't know what is...

Nothing Special, from Rob

2006-01-13T23:22:00.000-08:00

What do you do when you actually feel like blogging but you are too boring to come up with something worthwhile to say? Here it goes I will tell you the boring mundane details of our yesterday.

In the morning we got up at 5:30 to go on a pretty wicked nature hike for about 5km. We tried not to get too much of that nature crap on us though, but we had little leeches on our shows so they poured powder tobacco to deter them. At one point our guide almost flipped out when he saw Glenn had a tick on his arm. He actually shouted, "Get that off you!" It was funny, at least I thought so. Then afterward we decided to try and find a restaurant that the Brits in Varkala told us about. We had thought we saw it inside the park, but as it turned out, it was actually outside the park, which is another 4 or 5km. I was pooped afterward. My legs were so stiff and I was looking forward to brunch. It was 11:30 and it was the first meal of the day for us because we were up so early to go on our hike. We settled on a different restaurant that looked ok but it was all show. The menu was rediculously overpriced. This incident largely fueled my rant I wrote yesterday. I ordered toast with peanut butter and fried eggs. It was so rediculously overpriced and they only put a thin skim of PB on. Whats up with that? They can't overcharge AND then give you crap food at the same time. Glenn watched me gobble down my breakfast for a few minutes and then they brought out his sandwich. He said it was not very good, but he still had soup coming. He finished his sandwich and I got rid of every crumb on my plate and ten minutes later his soup still had not come. We were livid. Well at least I was. At first I think he was a little resigned to his crappy meal but I managed to get him worked up. Its one thing when you have crappy food and service when you are eating in some dump, but they were trying to be this high class place. We told them not to bother bringing out the soup. The waiter/manager/owner whatever he was was not happy. We were both giving it to him. I told him that I was insulted with the what they tried to feed me and if they want to charge high prices thats fine but they need to provide quality food and good service. We left and went back to our hotel, underfed and exhausted. The plan was to have a nap and go back to the park by 3 to go on a boat cruise. We got up at 3 and were out to the park by 3:30 but all the tickets were sold out. I wished I had stayed in bed. Right there Glenn decided to convert

his pants into shorts and go for a run. I grabbed a rickshaw (because I am fat and already walked 10km) and I got the rickshaw driver to take me where I could get a good cup of chai. I sat in this little shop with the locals and talked about how Kerala is nice, but it would be better without so many tourists. I ate a pastry and a samosa and 2 cups of chai for 18 RS (0.50CAD) I went back to the hotel and did some stretches and exercises for my back which I have been doing for a long time as well as a little yoga I have learned since being here. Afterward Glenn and I found some real straight up Indian food. Best and Cheap. And hella spicy. We played backgammon overdinner (I won again for the 10th time) and then went on the Internet for a couple hours to blog. After that we went back to our room and put a good dent in a bottle of "Romanov Vodka" which is Indian for degreaser. We turned in about 12:30 am after much laughter and some of that male bonding crap.

Not every day is an amazing story, but its all part of the experience so that's why I posted it. Well that and because I was a bit bored. Next time I will be have more interesting things to say.

Our first horrible day in India

2006-01-13T22:46:00.000-08:00

Today is raining and blowing and it really isn't that nice so we are spending the day inside emailing, postcarding and eating. Ya I think today will be a tough day. Let me fill you in on what it looks like here when it rains. I think I can sum it up in a couple of words "Mud everywhere". I think that would explain everything. The roads are super muddy as well as the side walks, where they have them. Its really strange to see the locals without shoes walking around in the mud. If I get a chance I'll see if I can get a picture of it because it always blows my mind when I see it. Thats all I have for now.

g

India Lite, from Rob

2006-01-13T07:36:00.000-08:00

Alright, I think I am going to spew this one off the top of my head. I apologize beforehand for grammatical errors.

We have had a pretty damn good time since arriving in Kerala 3 weeks ago. However, Kerala is NOT India. Kovalum and Varkala are such tourist traps, they should just rename them to India Lite. We originally went to Kovalum knowing full well it would be touristy, but we wanted to hang out on a beach for a few days and party for New Years. That went fine (Aside: I realize now I totally forgot to blog about New Years. There wasn't anything all that remarkable, except that had several of some type of demonic drink called gin fizz and I forgot to brush my teeth before I went to bed, and I kid you not, for 4 days I could not properly brush the top back teeth on my right side because they were so rotted from the paint thinner they call liquor in this country. Oh, also I found glenn outside our hotel at 2am sitting on the curb with his dinner between his feet.) but then we headed to Varkala because it was the next stop north of where we were. Everything in our books said it had recently been becoming more popular but was still much more low key than Kovalum. This was a huge lie. The place was full of hotels and restaurants that were not even in our books because they had sprung up overnight. The electricity would cut out randomly because there were so much draw the system could not handle it. To rent an umbrella on the beach was nearly the price of our hotel.
The menus are all in English. You think thats a good thing? I would much rather order something I have no clue what its going to be rather than order some Indian food that they leave the spice out of for the tender tourist's tummies. I am here for the real shit. Instead I am left with deciding between shitty Chinese, shitty pasta, or shitty pizza. I will admit, a few of them can get your order straight and tasting half decent 80% of the time, which is what they are supposed to do. The screwdrivers with freshly squeezed OJ were really good though.
The rickshaw drivers were such scammers they were charging at least double what they should've been and bartering with them was impossible. One time we wanted to go to town but they wouldn't reason so we left so angrily that we were shouting at other tourists not to get a rickshaw because they were being ripped off and all the drivers were cheats. Out of spite Glenn and I both found alternative modes of transportation. He chose the bicycle and the next day I chose a motorbike for about 3 times what a rickshaw would've charged, and I had never rode a motorbike before and that was fun and I burned my leg twice -- I am holding that against the rickshaw drivers as well.
I digress, what I was trying to say is since being in Kerala we have had very little cultural experiances because there are too many white people here. I hate white people. I haven't even seen a Hindu shrine since I have been in Varanasi but Glenn and I have been considering getting matching Ganesh tatoos. You get the point.

I was once a winner

2006-01-13T06:49:00.001-08:00

When I was five my mom entered me into a trike and I totally destroyed everyone. That year my soccer team won a bunch of games and I think my baseball team had a lot of fun. I can't remember the baseball but I'm sure we had fun. I remember the trike race really well since I was racing my best friend at the time Rob Lokken and he always beat me in our street hockey games. I remeber it well it was raining and Robs mom decorated his new bike (he was the first kid in the family so he didn't have any brothers to pass stuff to) and I was in my crappy trike that I'm sure my mom found on the side of the road and thought oh my son would love this thing. Well as usual my mom was totally right I loved that trike like nothing else. Yes I know what you are thinking
1) why was he on a trike at the age 5 and
2) Why the heck is he telling me this stupid story (granted I'm sure Sonja loved it)

The reason for this story is very simple. The girls that we met in Vakala gave us this really nice chess and backgammon set. Rob sucks at chess and refuses to play with me so I'm in the process of learning backgammon since this is a game Rob knows how to play and one he is really good at. This email is to reassure me that I was once a winner because Rob is killing me every game. Oh he is a lot nicer then I am about it and he tries to help me through the game but man do I ever suck. I almost won a game but nope I lost. How can a dude be pumped about playing a game when he loses all the time one may ask. Well I have no choice since the TV that we have only has one english channel and it seems to only be playing highlights from some Indian cricket games back when they didn't have tv so you can imagine some Indian telling a story about something you don't care about. Nothing could drive a man to death quicker then that so I sit back and lose to Rob.

One day I will win and that day will come when Rob drinks triples and I drink water for the night. Maybe then I can win.

G - The trike race champion of Campbell River, 1985

India gives me an earache, from Rob

2006-01-13T06:49:00.000-08:00

I don't mean figuratively. I literally have an ear infection, likely caused from swimming in the ocean. I went to the doctor 3 times (2 of them hung over btw) and he prescribed antibiotics, some ear drops, a decongestant, a B complex vitamin, and some other pill which I couldnt remember what it was for. Add to all those pills 2 ibuprofen and my malaria pill and it makes a complete meal. The doctor cleaned my ears out which was incredibly painful. I think usually in western countries they just squirt warm water in and rinse the wax out, but here he just scrapped it out manually. There was one nurse holding my head, presumably to prevent my from jamming my eardrum into the doctors knife or whatever medieval implement he had in there. I can't describe how much it hurt, but he seemed to enjoy my discomfort anyway. Afterward he showed me what came out. That was the only cool part. I think that stuffing things in your ears might be a good way to smuggle drugs or whatever--not that I have been trying to think of ways of doing that. Don't get worried or anything. Anyway, I think my ear will get better soon since we won't have to stay up late drinking and what not.

Finally Leaving Varkala, from Rob

2006-01-10T23:24:00.000-08:00

We came to Varkala exactly one week ago and finally we are leaving. At first we were not even sure we wanted to come here since we had already had a week of beach life in Kovalum. I kinda convinced Glenn that we should at least stop here and if we didn't like it we could leave right away. We originally thought we would stay about 2 or 3 days, but then we met some beautiful birds from England. They were the dog's bollocks! Basically in the day we would run into each other on the beach and then meet late in the evening for drinks and dinner. Last night they gave us a farewell gift and we are very impressed by their generosity and thoughtfulness. We took lots of rediculous pictures and we will post them soon, hopefully. Once again ladies, thank you all for the wonderful time, thanks for the gifts, take care and stay in touch, eh.

This afternoon we will catch a train to Kotayam, stay one night and then bus out to Thakkady/Kumily to see Periyar National Park.

Dinners with the British girls

2006-01-08T23:08:00.000-08:00

So over the last couple of days we have been hangin with four Brits. We normally meet for dinner and hang out. Well the first night we went for dinner we had to wait uber long for our grub to show up. Well after about an hour and a half the proper brits started to lose it. Gone was their politeness and good manners and out came evil Brits. They started yelling at the kitchen and the waiters. It was hardcore but our food came out pretty fast after that so I wasn't complaining. Well it turns out one of the salads came out to one of the girls and she wasn't impressed with the grated cabbage and carrots so she picked it up and stormed into the kitchen. All I see is arms going up and down and then I see Alex, one of the Brits, throw the food on the poor guy. Well I'm glad I had all my food at that time and Alex did get another salad I'm just not sure what they put into it. As you can imagine there was no tip left.

Well last night was nothing special to report until we started to see this dancing start around a fire. Hey no big deal except this people were on some type of drugs and they were going nuts. Well the Brits are poking fun at them and all of a sudden one of them says "Glenn come on lets see your moves". Bad move cause I was in. I actually walked onto the dance floor pushed people out of the way (all three of them) and then I threw down the best leg grab of all time and threw it down. People from other tables started to look at me and people started cheering. I danced like a crazy monkey for a good solid two minutes and then ran out of energy and had to leave the dance floor to people clapping. Once again I've made an ass of myself to please other people. We'll have to see what tonight will be since I'm sure Rob will have us lined up for dinner with them as well.

g

A little competion can't hurt you

2006-01-06T22:13:00.000-08:00

Well I'm in the process of getting myself back into shape so every morning I head out for a run. I haven't run in almost 2 months so I'm a little out of shape and I can't stand it and I know why people hate running it totally sucks when you aren't in shape. Well I've been out for 9 runs since Christmas day but yesterday turned into a little more then a run for me.

I was coming back to our hotel when I spotted this white dude with his shirt off running about 700m in front of me. First thing that crosses my mind is wow a white dude running wierd. The second thing that comes into my mind is that dude is 700m in front of me and I'm going to catch him. Let me tell you that before I saw this runner I wasn't feeling very well and my mind was convincing me that this running this was way over rated. Well once I spotted this guy all pain went out the window and I switched into race mode. I started picking it up and closed the gap quickly, my body was know listening to my mind and my mind had one thing in it. Beat this guy and make sure I don't looking hurting when I go by him. The whole point is to look like its a walk in the park when you go blowing by someone on an easy run. Well when I get close to him (he has no idea I'm coming) he starts racing the local kids so I get in my mind that its time to blow by this guy so thats what I do.

I pass him and just turn and toss out a friendly "Hey man where ya from" and pull ahead waiting to see what he will do. He's not into running with me and shouts as I start to put distance on him "I'm from Ohio". I chuckle to myself and head around the corner and up a street then totally slowed down and easily jogged back home.

G

My name is Glenn and I'm an idiot

2006-01-06T22:01:00.000-08:00

So Rob and I have started yoga for the last couple of days and in our first class I happened to ask this girl where she was from. Oh I'm from Melbourne Australia and I'm traveling for 6 weeks. So we continue the conversation and she tells me that her and her boyfriend are going to Rajistan and that they didn't know where to go when they go there. Well Rob and I offered to meet them for a drink later in the night to help them out since we spent a month hanging around Ragistan.

Well we met for drinks and I had a few and I thought I'd ask the Joe Canadian question. You know the one "So you're from Canada do you know Joe?" First I asked how old they were and they told me they were 22 so I knew I could ask the question that I wanted to ask. For people who don't know I have relatives who live in Melbourne and are aged (I'm sure I'll get this wrong) 27, 24, and I think 22. So I throw out the question "Do you by any chance know a Rosalyn from Melbourne?" They look at me like I'm crazy and they ask me whats their last name. Now this is where Glenn the idiot comes in because I can't seem to remember their last name and I just stare blankly back at them and respond with that she has two older brothers.

Well we get back into telling them where to go when the girl named Lara Piterman from M.L.C (I got her to right down her name so I wouldn't forget it) turns to me and says, "Is her last name Teskey by any chance?" I almost jump out of my seat because thats their last name and this girl was good friends with my cousin a couple of years ago. Wierd it just proves that its a small world after all.

G

Rob with his stache for the last time

2006-01-02T04:52:00.000-08:00

Rob with his stache,
originally uploaded by Glenn Saqui.

Ok ladies and gentlemen this is the last time that you'll see Rob with stache because soon afterwards he shaved it off. This was about 2 weeks ago before we got to Kerrala (South India). We have uploaded almost 100 pictures so take some time and check out what we have been seeing. There are some really great fishing pictures near the very end that are really cool. Hope you enjoy the pictures.
g

Life on the beach in Kolvam

2005-12-31T05:27:00.000-08:00

So let me give you a little heads up on what we have done since we have been here. Well we wake up and think what should we do....normally this leads us to thinking our bellies are hungry and we need to find some grub. After we inhale some food we then look out at the crashing waves and think man its hot we should go swimming. This then leads us to our hotel where we get chanced into our swimming trunks and then we head to the beach. The last two days we have rented bodyboards and then we spend most of the day surfing the waves. Ya its been really tough so far, I mean its tough eating then having to surf in water that is warmer then most pools. Then we normally have a massive feast for dinner and head to bed.

Well last night we decided that one of the places on the beach was showing the movie Hitch with Will Smith. So we rolled on over there and had dinner and watched the show. Oh and since we were watching a show we thought we should have 3 huge kingfishers each. Ya that made the movie more enjoyable. Well the flick was totally ripped from the internet and wasn't that good quality but who cares we're in India so we can't complain. So headed home and woke up on new years eve. Surfed and hung out all day and now we are blogging before we head out and have some fun. Its going to be a total gong show because there are about a million Indians who have shown up on the beach and there are about 2 million police with sticks (their version of billy clubs) so we'll stay off the beach and in a club having a few while we watch the police beat on the Indians (well hopefully that won't happen). Club???? Well not exactly its more like a restaurant that plays western music.

Well I'm out to get some dinner and then some drinks so I hope everyone has a great new years and look for our blogs tomorrow since I'm sure we'll have some good stories.

Glenn

Happy New Year!

2005-12-31T05:25:00.000-08:00

Hello all! We have been too lazy/busy to blog the last few days so we are now making an effort to fill you all in. Its New Year's Eve here and it is quite likely that tomorrow could generate a whole blog on its own, so we wanted to get something up today.
When last we posted, we were in Cochin. We left on the 27th and now we are in Kovalum, near the very south end of India. This place is one of a few very touristy beach resorts in India. It is full of a different kind of tourist; one that comes to India for a week or 2 strictly to hang out on the beach. They leave with very little cultural experience and are here mainly to just unwind. Basically there is one main beach, called Lighthouse Beach and it is lined with hotels and restaurants. Our hotel is about 50m behind, so that we don't have to pay too rediculous of a price. Our room is 350Rs/night which is a bit high, but after all it is tourist season and the hotel is very clean at least.
When we left Cochin, we caught an hour and half bus ride to Allepey and stayed the night. That place is pretty much a whole, but the attraction is that it is a starting point for backwater tours. We then took a tour boat from Allepey(aka Alapouza) to Kollam about 80km to the south. We were a bit hesitant to take the tour as we didn't have the greatest time in our water trek in Kashmir, but everyone said it was worth it, and after all we were only commiting to one day of 8 hours, not 5 days. The only downside was that even though we showed up about 20 minutes early, we were too late to get a seat under the shade on the boat, so we spent nearly an entire 8 hours, from 10am to 6pm in direct sunlight. We managed to keep our sunburns to a minimum.
In Kollam, we found the worst hotel so far. We looked at one place and it wasn't bad but the mattress was super hard, so we went across the street and took a room for 160Rs. That was a mistake; I would've much prefered a hard mattress to a room full of bugs. At least the weren't the biting kind, but I only knew that after I slept (miserably) in the bed. By the way, do you guys know how tough cockroaches are? I hit one with the heel of my shoe and it had no effect. I hit him again harder and he was stunned a bit but then tried to run away. The third time I hit him turned him into a white paste. It was kinda gross, but at least he didn't get away.
The next day, we toured the markets (pictures will be posted soon) and headed to Kovalum, our ultimate destination for New Years'. Everything else was just time spent in between Kochi and Kovalum. The bus drives thought that one day would be a good time to go on strike but the trains were still operating thankfully. We met a very nice lady at the bus station who was having the same problem and so we travelled with her to Kovalum and she was extremely helpful. It made it so much easier to deal with because she is Indian, so we had no hassles and she made sure we did not get ripped off.
Since then we have just been enjoying the sunshine, swimming, body boarding and the usual. I also checked out some fishing which was really cool, and I will tell you more about it once we get the pictures up in a day or two.

Happy New Year!

More thoughts on the dowry issue

2005-12-25T05:36:00.000-08:00

Well I've had some really funny comments from friends on my thoughts about dowries. Rob has told me that if we could get dowries he would be more inclined to be into this whole marriage thing. So what I will do is post the emails that I have received but I will change the names in the emails because I haven't asked for permission from those people to post their emails. What I'll do instead is change the names to my sister Michelle and myself. Gross I know but I needed names people can't really place so here we go:

email number 1:

oh dude ' the dowry line' is your greatest idea ever ----- just think how
beautiful it wokrs as a comeback to the following bullshit

example 1:
girl: "sorry but i was raised old fashioned
believing the man should pay for everything"

glenn: "oh, ok, well I'm glad you're old fashion, it'll help you understand
a little thing called dowries"

----------------
example 2:
After re reading the email I can't post this one lol

Email number 2
Glenn I’ll be honest the dowry thought…Golden. Man my random thoughts had been going as well…I was thinking whenever I actually meet a girl I want to marry I’m going to ask her dad’s permission. He probably won’t like me for some reason but asking for his daughter’s hand may gain me some points, if he does like me this will get me in the will. When I get the approval that’s when I toss out the dowry request…I’ll ask for a fly fishing equipment, that way when I’m married and I want to get away I’ll say to the wife “I’m going to go fly fishing, your dad will be insulted if I don’t use his gift”, then I’ll probably go get drunk in some little town with a strip joint…you should ask for fly fishing gear as well that way we can meet up. I’m also going to ask for him to work for me 1 hour a day, that way I’ll be able to keep in shape instead of having to come home and fix the sink or something like that.

--------------

Rob thinks that we men should start a lobby group and get organized and maybe we can make some changes to our beliefs. I hope you enjoyed those thoughts from my friends.

Glenn

Christmas Lunch

2005-12-25T05:03:00.000-08:00

How should I start this post. Oh I know by telling you something that my mother said to me today when I spoke to her on the phone this morning. It was Christmas eve back home and she was telling me that the next day they were having brussel sprouts tomorrow for dinner. Now must people think they are gross and I can see why but I actually really like them and I couldn't believe that my mom was rubbing it in that she was having turkey dinner with all the fixings. I mean she is my mother she isn't supposed to do stuff like that she is supposed to feel really bad that I don't get to have turkey with the family. So mom I hope you read this post because I got my brussel sprouts as well as a lot more.

After I spoke with my parents, sonja, and my sister I was thinking what the heck are we going to do today. Rob came up with the idea that we should find a turkey dinner and go from there. Well we called around and found a Christmas 5 course lunch at a swank 5 start hotel. It was only going to cost us 650rs each which is a lot but you have to remember we didn't buy anyone Christmas presents so this is cheap. Rob and I both need a serious shave so we cruise over to the barber and get our faces scraped then we walk across the road and buy nice shirts because we are going to a five star hotel so we had better look the part.

With our new shirts and our new faces we decide to head over to the hotel. Once we arrive we are in a different India from the one that we have been in the rest of the time. This place has AC and they are using it, good thing too because we are sweating. We find the resturant, one of four in this hotel, and sit down in the plush seats. The waiter is at our table in a second and invites us to check out the buffet. We have a look and its game on we are ready to attack this buffet. It had the following items:
-Roast duck and lamb
-Beef
-Mussels and calamari
-15 different kinds of salads
-Roast Turkey
-Brussel sprouts
-8 different high quality deserts
-A whole pile of different high quality rices and pastas
-Smoked salmon (we didn't touch it)

I'm a sucker for buffet in Canada but I'm an even bigger sucker for turkey 5 star hotel buffet in India cooked by a real chef. I think my first plate was just different kinds of meat. I know if I was a veg I would think thats gross but really its not when you consider we haven't had beef or duck or lamb in 2 months and this stuff was actually properly cooked. You have to remember there was turkey too so my plate was stuffed to the brim. After I sat down I realized that I had missed the open appies so thats what the second plate had a fair share of as well as more turkey. Funny story with the guy cutting the turkey, I think this was his first time because he was butchering this poor bird and whenever he was putting the turkey on my plate he was shaking. Third plate was salads and turkey as well as a pile of brussel sprouts and a sprinkling of duck and lamb. Fourth plate had pickles and pickled onions with some type of favoured beef.

Then came the three courses of deserts. Course one was everything at the desert table plus homemade icecream. Second course was all the chocolate dishes again. The last course was more chocolate and a really full belly. The whole time we were having the meal the kept our glasses full of champagne. Rob order coffee and it came in a bodem and said it was dam good.

So what were going to do with our bellies now that they were full? Well since we were at a five star hotel we might as well check out the pool. Yup we spent the afternoon lounging beside the pool and drinking gin and tonix. Now we are at home blogging and then at 8pm we are meeting another traveller for some beer and mayb some dinner if I can find room for it. Hope everyone has a good turkey dinner because we sure did.

G

Happy Christmas from Rob

2005-12-25T04:50:00.000-08:00

Hope you all are having/have had a happy christmas! I will tell you briefly of my Christmas Day in case some of you wacko's are inarested in that crap....

First off, I woke up bright and early because Glenn was up to go for his run. "Merry Chrithmaph."

"Merry Christmas," he replied. Right at that moment I thought, hey I shoulda got him something for xmas. Then he threw a crumpled up shirt at me. "Here, open your present." Figures. I actually thought of getting Glenn a present, only it was 1.7 seconds before he gave me his present. People are always doing that kind of thing to me.

"Huh what? Now? But I am still in bed.... Alright..." So I unfolded his shirt and lo I uncovered a compass. I can't tell you what a great gift this was. If we had had it at the beginning of the trip, we probably would've seen ALL of India by now, because we spend half our time lost. I'll admit it, I am not the greatest navigator sometimes. Especially when all we have to go on are crumby maps from our guide books and vague directions from people on the street. Then the whole time we also have to watch out for piles of poo, not get hit by traffic while walking on the wrong side of the road and ignoring rickshaw drivers and beggars. It can be a bit disorientating and sometimes all I want to know is what friggin direction is north anyway?

After Glenn came back from his run, his face looked like a guava. We went and had a terrific breakfast at Kashi Art Cafe where they serve you your own little bodum of coffee for 30 Rs. Basically they have a set menu and this morning for it was a mountain of fruit and some kind of really good loaf/cake that just came out of the oven. It is definitly a tourist place, but I am telling you they would be pulling in at least 8 dollars a plate in Canada. Their lunches usually consist of some kind of really simple and good soup and sandwich. Anyway...We thought we should do something cool for Xmas so I tried to rent motorbikes again but it was too late in the day and they were all gone so instead we decided we would try to secure some kind of turkey dinner. I knew that it would be an ordeal. Anything not straight off the menu in India is an ordeal. Like if you are at a restaurant and they offer honey pancake and they offer banana pancake and you ask for a banana-honey pancake which is not listed in the menu, then I really don't know what you are going to get. Even if we explain it a couple times we are never really sure if he will come back with what was ordered or if he will come back with 2 separate pancakes, one honey and one banana. One time I was at a place that actually had real espresso so naturally I wanted an Americano, which for those of you who don't know is just an espresso with a little bit of hot water added to it. At this joint you write down your order yourself but they didnt have Americano, but it is very straight forward so I just wrote out the recipe like this:

-Americano (2 shots of espresso + hot water in one cup)

That's pretty clear isn't it? And then when I gave the order to the waitress, I explained to her what I wanted. Can you guess what I got? 2 shots of espresso in 2 separate cups, no water on the side or anywhere. This kind of stuff happens all the time, and thats fine, you just have to get used to expecting to be disappointed. Then on the other hand you can be amazed with how awesome something turns out to be.

I kinda digressed there, but my point was that everything in India can be an ordeal, so steeled myself before I took Glenn's guide book and started dialing up high end hotels. The first one I called was supposed to be a bona fide 5 star hotel. After dialing 3 times because the call would not go through, finally I heard a voice on the other end. I asked if their restaurant offered Christmas turkey dinner. He yelled something in my ear, to someone else in the room and then put me on hold. No real receptionist at a real 5 star hotel would yell in someone's ear, I thought. I waited for a minute listening to the music in the phone which might have been India's national anthem or something. It sounded very patriotic. Eventually someone picked up the other end.

"Hello, Can I help you"
"Yes, I was wondering if any of your restaurants(they have 6 by the way) are offering christmas dinner tonight?"
"Hello?"
"Yes, I am trying to find somewhere that offers turkey dinner..."
"Well what do you want me to do?" That made me laugh.
"I want you to tell me if you have turkey dinner."
"Where are you calling from sir?"
"Fort Cochin, Park Avenue Hotel..." Long pause. "Uh..Is this the Taj Malabar?"
"No, this is the operator."
"Uhh ok-thx-bye." Click.

This is what happens when you try to do stuff in India. The secret is, I hear, don't give up on your first try. I phoned the other two hotels we had and one said they were not doing anything special, that I could just have "a la card" and the other said they had a real roast turkey dinner--last night. At this point I was ready to just give up but Glenn told me to phone the first place again. Whats the point, I wondered, it's not going to work anyway. I dialed the stupid number and got the same person who yelled in my ear before. "Hello, Can you tell me if any of your restaurants offer a Christmas dinner?" Once again I got yelled at and was put on hold. This time though I managed to get through. The line was very quiet, but after 7 or 8 minutes I managed to secure a reservation at 2 o'clock for "Mr. Roe." I told her "R-O-B as in banana," but it didn't matter. It is not worth it to push points like that when you are in India, it just is not worth the effort. So what if my name is Mr. Roe. Anyway, the rest of the story you know from Glenn, and I have to go to bed because this place is closing. Tomorrow we head about 3 or 4 hours inland to a place called Munnar where there are the highest elevated tea fields or something or other, but it actually sounds very nice.

Bon Soir and Joie Noel.

Sincerely,
Mr. Roe.

Whats up with men wearing skirts? From Rob.

2005-12-24T04:06:00.000-08:00

I am not talking about Indian men. It's true, in the south here some do wear kind of a sheet wrapped around sometimes like a long skirt, sometimes like a diaper, but whats with the western tourists doing it? I understand going to a place and trying to fit in, for example, not eating with your left hand, apologize if you touch someone's foot, be polite and chat with the locals--but wearing a skirt?

First off, only the labouring castes are the ones wearing them, to stay cool while they are working. Also because it doesn't cost much to tailor a sheet to fit. Basically one size fits all. The fact is actually many Indians can't understand why western tourists who come from rich countries dress like some of India's poorest. What are these hippies thinking? "I want to fit in, so I will dress like a bum."

As a side note, I can't understand uber yoga hippie logic anyway. When in Kharjuraho last week, I got up early, rented a bike a rode 15 minutes to a free yoga class. Glenn stayed in bed, but I figured, what the hell, its free after all. And of course, I thought it could be good for my back. The yoga class actually ended up being about yoga philosophy, meditation, etc. I stayed for nearly 2 and a half hours. There was the teacher guy, named Yogi Sharma, 4 other "students" including another skeptic like myself. I mostly just listened. I got a real kick out of people explaining how they "know" reincarnation exists and hearing them talk about memories from their past lives. It was great. I meant to get the yogi guy to read my aura, but I am sure it was red anyway. I left rather abruptly after comparing views on chemistry. His periodic table of elements consisted of earth, water, air and fire. Try as I might, I just could not wrap my head around it. I guess I need to meditate more. You can make yourself believe anything if you put your mind to it. But I tried to understand, I really did.

"So you are saying, if I have a glass of water--cold water, and I put it on a scale and weigh it, then I add fire to it and make it hot water it will weigh more then it did when it was cold??"

"Yes!"

"Alright! I have to go. Thank you very much!"

And I got up and left. That was my experience with those crazies. I came to ease my back pain, and instead came away more sore from sitting for so long. I guess if you can believe that there are only 4 elements, wearing a skirt in India might make sense. But I wonder, if they went to Scotland, would they wear a kilt? If in Africa would they run around in a loincloth, or wear a giant diaper in Japan?

Christmas plans

2005-12-24T03:31:00.000-08:00

Today is Christmas Eve here in India and we are both boiling to death because of the heat here. It is awesome being in a place like this for Christmas. You have no tacky Christmas music, no crazy ladies on the streets who have to buy three more presents in the next 5 minutes, no oversize ladies squizing into undersize christmas party dresses, and none of that horribly tasting fruit cake. Why in the world do people make that stuff it tastes like crap. I could go on a serious rant about fruit cake but I'll leave it at that.

So our plan for Christmas day? Well we are going to open our presents, eat the sweats that we got in our stocking, have a big breakfast and fall asleep on the coach while mom makes a killer christmas dinner. Wait......I'll restart this for the Indian plan not for the plan that I would have at home. Here is what I have planned for Christmas day.

I have contacted my old roomates in Victoria whom I used to live with in what was known as the runners house. We have all agreed that since we are in different parts of the world we should all go for a run and report back on where we ran, the weather, how out of shape we are, and pretty much anything else. So I plan on going for a run on Christmas morning and then Rob and I will go eat some breakfast and from there I don't know what we will do. One plan has us going to a cooking course and another has us renting motorbikes and ripping around on the island and maybe hitting the beach. The only thing I do know is I'll be making some calls to people back home actually to be totally honest I'll only be calling a couple of people (Sonja, my parents, and my sister, and possibly one other person).

The weather here is currently a hundred degrees and the humidity is around a billion over the normal level but I can't complain because its not raining. Instead of turkey this year I think Rob and I are going to have a massive seafood feast but we'll have to wait and see.

OK I'm out so everyone have a wonderful Christmas

Glenn

Hey so um by the way..., from Rob

2005-12-21T09:04:00.000-08:00

We forgot to tell most of you that we were going to the south of India where it is warm. Well we are here now. Yesterday we flew from Varanasi to Delhi, stayed overnight at our favourite hotel (The Rak International) and ate at our favourite nice resturant (Metropolis), then we flew today from Delhi to Cochin. For those of you who dont have a map, we just moved from the middle of the north east of India, down to about 150km from the southern tip on the west side of India.
We really wanted to be somewhere warm for Xmas, and it is definitely that! It is also super humid, like being in the shower. Just sitting here at 11pm right now it is probably 27 celsius and I am sweating. As if typing is hard excercise or something.
I think we will stay here for a few days and make plans for what we want to do. Tomorrow we plan on renting bikes, motor or green we are not sure, then taking a ferry to a neighboring island and checking it out. Supposedly there is a nice beach that we can vegitate on. Also while we are out we need to go to the local fish market to pick the fish we want cooked for us for dinner. I think I am going to like it here. The people seem way more laid/layed(?) back and less aggressive to sell you stuff you don't want. Its also really nice to see the ocean again. Cocchin is a major port full of freighters and real boats next to crappy little Indian ones. It will be a real nice change to have fish on the menu instead of just the usual chicken and occaisionaly mutton. I think the waiter we had the other day was taken aback when Glenn excitedly asked if the steak on the menu was cow.

Rob on the train to Bandhavgarh

2005-12-19T23:51:00.000-08:00

Rob on the train to Bandhavgarh,
originally uploaded by Glenn Saqui.

Whole pile of new pictures for you guys. Man do we ever love when we find a place with a fast internet connection.

Cremation is Education, from Rob

2005-12-19T22:33:00.000-08:00

I didn't make the title up. Those silly little Indians love sayings that rhyme.

We went and saw the burning ghats the other night. I really expected more. I had envisioned a pyre 20 feet high, not with a single body, but with dozens. I thought the fire would be so intense I would have to give it a 10 meter radius and that there would be a stench that would send me into dry heaves. Instead there were only multiple small pyres and they didnt seem to give off much smell at all. Not that I really took in a good whiff, but there did seem to be a faint smell of tandoori chicken. It was dark and hard to see what was going on. "Oh my god, is that really a burning body," Glenn whispers. "I don't know, I think its just a log on the fire. C'mon I am hungry, lets find some dinner..." We did eventually get a better look. We climbed up some stairs to a higher ghat where they burn the higher castes naturally. There was one pyre close to the top of the stairs and there was no way to not get a close up look. There was no mistaking it. The sizzle of barbecue. Made me yearn for home. All the presumed family members and friends seemed quite neutral, maybe a bit bored even. I think they welcomed the distraction of a couple of foreigners to their party. There was no tears or moaning, nor women either. They had to be left at home. I really got caught up in the lack of human emotion.

"Lets go Glenn...I think we are a few blocks away from that place in my book. Lets have chicken tonight."

Burning is learning by Glenn

2005-12-19T22:24:00.000-08:00

OK so we are here in Varanasi and it is considered by the Hindus as the holiest of their cities. If you die here you end the eternal cycle of reincarnation so there are lots of old people waiting to die here. Varanasi isn't only famous for that its famous because its the place to be cremated if you are a hindu. What this means is there are 5 full time burning ghats, locations where the bodies are taken to to be burned, that run 24 hours a day. First the body is placed in the Ganges, their holiest and most polluted river, and then burned. Around the burning ghats there are stacks of firewood that is weighed so they know how much to charge for the cremation. Well its totally normal for people to come and watch the cremation as long as you don't take pictures. So Rob and I decide that we should go check this out since its one of the "things to do" in Varanasi. So we walk up to see these ghats and I thought they would be big and I don't know be very clean looking.

Well was I ever wrong. They put these bodies on fires the size of a large camp fire. I will never forget how chillin it was to hear the sizzilling of the skin on the bodies that were being burnt. I will never forget seeing a charred black human head and how the fire tender would use a stick to break up the body. Indian women aren't allowed to go to a cremation of a family member because they would cry and there is no emotions allowed at a cremation. Its really weird that no one is sad or crying at a cremation. It really wierded me out and I didn't like it. I didn't like seeing the bodies either and I'm pretty sure the images will stay in my mind forever. I thought it was a surral event but the funny thing was I think I could have stayed longer and watched because it was just so wierd and disturbing to me.

Clean in india is so far from being clean in Canada

2005-12-19T05:00:00.000-08:00

So we wash our hands before every meal and we are always amazed at the amount of dirt that comes off our hands. This place is plain and simple dirty. In India its normal for me to go 3-4 days without a shower. I've been wearing the same pair of pants for the last 10 days, possibly more I've lost count. You recycle your clothes all the time. Ofcourse we get our laundry done but it never comes back perfectly clean so you just continue to build ontop of the dirt.

Dark alley showdown with a rickshaw driver

2005-12-19T04:32:00.000-08:00

OK so we always come out of the train station and right away the rickshaw drivers want to take us to their hotels so that they can make commision. We normally get something like this, "Ten ruppees I take you anywhere". We never go for these deals because we know their game. So yesterday we were out near the train station checking out flights, it was a 70 ruppee rickshaw ride out there so we didn't want to pay that to get home. Rob has been talking about taking one of these 20 RS deals and seeing where they take us. Normally I'm against it because we have just come off an overly long bus/train ride and the last thing I want to do is fight with one of these guys.

So yesterday we only had our day packs and we were out near the train station. The plan was to get one of these rickshaw drivers to get us close to our hotel and then walk the rest of the way. The key to this plan was to make sure he thought he was going to get commision from our hotel room. We walk out of the train station and ofcourse we are attacked by rickshaw drivers (something we are used to) and they start asking where we want to go. We play the dumbest tourists of all time, "Um...we would like a hotel near the river". You can see their ears poke up and they can tell that we don't have a hotel. They are instantly thinking that they can make a killing on us. We get an offer for 40 RS for a ride to the river and a promise to be shown the nicest hotels around. We are almost about to go for this one when another rickshaw driver undercuts him by 20RS. So we head over to his rickshaw. The other rickshaw drivers are telling us that he is a thieve and we should be careful and that we shouldn't go with him. We would normally be a little worried by this type of statement from other rickshaw drivers but today we were running the show.

So after getting in the rickshaw driver starts asking us questions like why do we travel with so little luggage? We travel light. So after one of the craziest rickshaw rides of all time, we hit one dude on a bike, the rickshaw driver takes us down a super dark alley and turns off the rickshaw. He's all excited because he has a hotel near here. We hand him the 20RS and walk away. He is totally lost because he thinks that we wanted a hotel when in fact we were just getting a cheap ride home. The dark alley that he took us down was so sketchy that I'm glad that we didn't go down another dark alley to see the hotel that he wanted to show us. Finally after all the times we have been ripped off by rickshaw drivers because we are white we turned the tables on them. Made us smile :) I know what you are thinking that it wasn't very nice but we never lied to him we just said we needed to go to a hotel we just neglected to tell him which we wanted.

Sunset at a fort

2005-12-17T23:27:00.000-08:00

Sunset at a fort,
originally uploaded by Glenn Saqui.

OK it took us almost 2 hours but we have put a whole pile of new pictures online for you guys to see. Hopefully you enjoy them since I think these will be the last until after Christmas. I guess you could say this is an early Christmas present to all of you reading the blog. We have some really nice ones of Taj and some really nice sunsets.

G

Random questions from my sister, from Rob.

2005-12-17T22:30:00.000-08:00

My sister Amelia emailed me a bunch of questions about India and about our trip. Since they are fairly general questions I thought I would post the answers on the blog since many of you would like to know the answers.

I enjoyed the Taj very much. It was amazing when you actually stand in front of and see how big it is. And to think that it was built entirely as a tomb for pme of King Shah Jahan's wife.

Yes Andrew is a crazy driver, but not as crazy as most Indians.

The back of a camel is higher than my head. To get on the guide gets it to lie right down, then you climb on and it stands up, back legs first so you have to lean far back or you fall off, then the front legs so then you lean forward. They don't smell too much except for their breath. I think they probably run about 25kph but they bounce up and down at 5000 mph and it takes everything you have to stay on. Glenn and I were both sore the next day after riding one for about 30 mins. And no I dont think they are a viable solution to global warming.

No, I don't think you should remove that growth yourself, I think you should see a doctor for that. Or I could bring home some water from the holy Ganges. With 1.5 million fecal bacterial per 100mL, its healing powers are intense.

For Xmas we originally wanted to be in Goa, an old Portugese colony. Not too many places celebrated Xmas, but there are pockets of Christianity that do celebrate Xmas. We have since changed our plans to Goa. It is a crazy party town on the beach, but everyone we have met is going to Goa and they quadruple the prices over the Xmas week so we decided we will go there later in January when it will still be a good time without being a rip off.

Tiger Hunting from Rob

2005-12-17T21:23:00.000-08:00

Wow its been 2 weeks since I last blogged. I never meant to go this long but it we haven't had a lot of chances to blog and when we have I just was not in the mood ok? Glenn has the ability to blog anytime, any place, but he also talks alot. Since Glenn last blogged we went to Bandhavgarh National Park to see a tiger. Unfortunately, we did not see one, although we should be happy, as the sign heading out of the park says, because one may have seen us. Whatever. If that's the case, then the tiger should give us some baksheesh(money/tip) then. We went on two safaris, one in the morning and one before sunset. The one in the morning was at 6 am and was freezing cold. We basically drove around the park in an open jeep for 4 hours. At one point we came around a corner and 6 or 7 jeeps were stopped in the middle of the road. Apparently a tiger had crossed the road only a few minutes before. We stayed for awhile and heard the tiger roar a few times and heard the alarm call of some deer. At that point we had the option of riding an elephant for 600 Rs/person to get a close look at the tiger. That seemed obscenely expensive at the time and people who did do it told us all they saw was the tiger lying down but nevertheless, I wished I had done it after all.
After the morning safari we had a few hours to kill so we ate breakfast and walked around the village called Tala for a while. One part of Tala is all hotels and tourist places but the rest of the villagers are farmers so it was interesting to walk around and see how they live.
I found the afternoon safari much more fun. First off it wasnt freezing cold. However the closest we came to a tiger was seeing some prints and we may or may not have heard one growl a couple times. To me it felt a lot like fishing. Instead of watching for jumpers we were staring into the jungle trying to spot any signs of a tiger. Occaisonally we would turn the jeep off and just listen. Everyone was so quiet I could hear the blood in my ears. At times it was very intense, but much like fishing, sometimes it all amounts to nothing. We were skunked. Well not totally I guess. We saw countless deer, mostly spotted, one barking and a few sambal deer. We also saw some wild boar and some birds. Yay.
I wished we could've stayed another day and tried again, but we needed to press on. We want to be in the south where it is actually warm before Xmas. We also knew we would be spending a few days in Varanasi (where we are now) and that we didn't really know how to get to the south other than by flying. Glenn is trying to find flights online right now, but I suspect that we will have to take a 9 to 12 hour train ride (Indian time, multiply by 1.5) back to Delhi, then take a flight to either Chennai, Bangalore or Cocchin hopefully.
For now we will hang out here, and make plans for the next stage of our trip. Maybe we will check out some burning ghats tonight. Tomorrow we will take a boat down the river and hopefully not bump into too many bodies...

Why is it everytime we get a tv we see one of these movies

2005-12-13T03:24:00.000-08:00

Since we have been here we have seen Hot Shots part 1 and part 2. Why is this even on tv in India? It doesn't make any sense to me but it sure made us laugh.

G

Wow was the tag amazing or what

2005-12-13T02:45:00.000-08:00

Ok so as many of you know Rob and I were at the Tag Mahal the other day and let me tell you it is as amazing as it is in the pictures. We got up early and went to the Tag Mahal for the sunrise like every other tour group. It was amazing and we have some get pictures to post as soon as we hit a town with broadband. I don't know if I mentioned it in my last blog but the reason the Tag Mahal was built was to be a tomb for one of the leaders wifes that had died. He loved her so much he spent 60 million in current money on this amazing tomb. One problem with the Tag Mahal it cost a ton of money to get into. I mean it great and everything but it was the most expense thing that we have seen in India so far. In fact its three times more expensive then anything else. It cost us 750 RS which is 18 Canadian dollars. People reading this I'm sure are like, "Dude come on thats cheap. Its the Tag Mahal". True but an Indian can get in for 50 RS so they are just taking the tourists for a ride and everything else in this country is so cheap this should be as well. Grumble grumble...In fact the most we ever paid for a place to stay has been 500 RS and we got a TV.

So the Tag day was kind of a long one because we wanted to see a lot as well as travel on that day. So I'll break it down for you.
5:30am-wake up
6-8am Hanging at the Tag and getting some great pictures.
8am-9 Breakfast
9:30 Train to Gwalior. We went there to check out the fort as well as some sculptures that came from the first century. Pretty wicked stuff.
6pm After seeing the city of Gwalior we decided that the city sucked and we wanted to continue onto our next destination which is a place called Khajuraho but a bus doesn't leave Gwalior to get there it leaves from Jhansi. So we hope on the train.

OK getting tickets can be a massive hassle in this country and getting the correct train with a seat can sometimes be almost impossible. So we lined up for our tickets and we bought them with no problem, I say that but Rob did a solid job of pushing to keep his spot in line. We then asked the train supervisor when the next train to Jhansi is. This is only a 1 hour and half trip and most trains stop there. The guy was kind enough to tell us where it was, this after him not understanding that we needed to catch a train. You could say it was a language barrier...lol something that we are used to. As we come down the steps to the platform the train is pulling away and there are people standing in the places where you would normally be able to get on the train. I tell Rob that we are getting this train but this could be a major problem since we have our massive bags on and there are people in the doorway. I point, yell and the guy figures out this massive bag and guy are coming at him and he has no choice but to move so he jumps off the train. I slam myself into the train and notice that it is packed! There are people on all the seats (two benches one below and one on top) and there are people in every aisle sitting down. People are not impressed with this bag that I'm bringing with me and I'm not impressed because I haven't seen Rob on the train yet. He soon rounds the corner and see stare at each other from each side of the train coach (not sure what you call them) and we know this is going to be a long trip.

I start walking down the aisle running into people looking for a place to put my bag luckly for me a dude who speaks perfect english who is in the army asks if I want to share his bench with him. I greatfully accept and squish onto the bench with him. I spend the rest of the time on the train just chatting with this guy. Rob has a different experience as he gets stuck with a family that doesn't speak very good english but I think he had an alright time. I'll have to let him blog about it. After we reach Jhansi we hit our hotel because the bus that we have to catch is at 5:30 in the morning.

We are currently in Khajuraho which is famous because it is thought to have the best kept temples in India. I would have to agree. Check out the site below if you want to see what we have seen. Trust me I think you'll be impressed:
www.liveindia.com/khajuraho
OK I actually went to this link and it does a decent, not great job, of the location that we are at.

I think we'll be away from the computer for a couple of days because we are heading into the wilderness to attempt to see a tiger. I'm not kidding we are going to a national park called Bandhavgarh National park and it is said to have the highest consentation of tigers in India. After we hit this park we will be heading up to Varanasi, the place with all the burning bodies and bodies in the Gange river. You may think this is gross and I would have to agree with you but it is an extremely holy city and it supposed to be really nice.

g

Tag Mahal we be seeing

2005-12-10T07:32:00.000-08:00

So we arrived in Agra the home of the holy Tag Mahal. One of the most famous buildings in the world and for you non history buffs the parliament buildings in Victoria were built based on the dome of the Tag Mahal. Getting to Agra was a little more stressful/long then it was supposed to be. I had bought the tickets a day in advance and was totally pumped because we were supposed to be in the sleeper class. Since the train was at 6am that meant we would have an early wake up and we would be able to sleep on the train. Ya well I made a mistake because it turned out we were in the most unconfortable seats in the world, stuck between some unhappy Indians who were pissed because we kicked out some of their friends that were sitting in our seats. Great way to start the trip hey.

Well it was cold so I put on my woolen cap(....lol love the brits) and put my head against the window and was asleep. Rob, who has a bad back, didn't like the seats at all so within twenty minutes of seating there he stood up and walked away. I didn't know it at the time but he went to another section where it was totally nice with nice seats and no one around. He tells me he had a great sleep, I'm sure he did because he could strech out and enjoy his leg room.

Well the train hit some kind of animal about 2 hours into the trip and the engine was then busted. Great not only am I stuck in the crappy seats I'm having to sit even longer because the train is busted. We sat in the same location for a good solid two hours before our new train arrived to carry us to freedom. Two hours later Rob pops his head in and tells me he is in another seat and we should move our stuff there because there is tons of room. So we move our stuff and I"m totally pumped because I can stretch my legs out and finally get some solid sleep. Twenty minutes into my sleep I get woken up by the train guy asking to see our tickets. I know we are in the wrong section but I play dumb, it costs us 7 CAn in total to have the rest of the trip in the nice section. I wasn't going back if I didn't have to.

The tag is amazing from the outside if you can actually see it from the smog. We are heading to it tomorrow morning at 6am as we hope to be the first people there and hopefully get some good shots of the Tag Mahal. As you can imagine our next set of pictures will be of the Tag. I'm done blogging for the night and now I'm heading to bed, I have another early wake-up tomorrow.

g

Havelis in Jaisalmer

2005-12-06T06:19:00.000-08:00

Havelis in Jaisalmer,
originally uploaded by Glenn Saqui.

We have posted a whole set of new pictures. Sadly the internet kept cutting out on us so you don't get all hundred that we wanted to upload. This is the start of the new pictures and at the very end there is something special so I hope you enjoy. There are lots of desert pictures so I hope you like those. We are off to Jaipur tomorrow (Wednesday) and from there we are off to Agra and the most famous building in India. Hope you enjoy.

g

Random thoughts by Glenn Saqui

2005-12-05T04:50:00.000-08:00

So I've had some random thoughts as I've been travelling through India. You see Rob has his Ipod and normally listens to it on the bus rides that we take. If its not to bumpy I'll read my book or write postcards (if you want one you need to send me your address I sent off four this morning) but most of the time I either stare out the window or sleep. Lately I've been getting better at sleeping but I've spent a whole lot of time thinking about random stuff. So here are some random thoughts from my travels and I mean totally random. They may make you laugh I'm not sure but when you've spent over 48 hours on a bus thus far on my trip I have a lot of time to think.

-I'm totally into this dowery idea. I mean come on guys in the west we really need to get into this. I'm not going to marry her unless you give me a new pair of shoes, a donkey, and a new computer. The shoes I could wear for a run so that would make me happy, the donkey...lol...I don't know what I would do with a donkey but they look cool and seem to eat anything. Ok maybe I don't need a donkey but thats what makes a good dowery the ability to negotiate on what you want. I'm telling ya it would add a whole new element to the whole wedding thing. My cousin is getting married this coming May (I'm so pumped) and he went over and asked her father in advance for permission. Imagine if he went over and negotiated a dowery, man that would have been a good story. "I asked for two donkies and he came back with a rice cooker. So we agreed on a rice cooker and twenty thousand rupees" (Patience please don't be offended I'm making this up as I type)

-Puppies have small tongues...thats it (I told you they were random thoughts)

-Indian women will only talk to us if they want us to give them money. No other reason so we have stopped being impressed when Rob gets Indian women talking to him because it always turns out to be something like this "Take my picture....twenty rupees"

-The Indians love Robs moustache. The Indian men are always super impressed that he has grown one. I think Rob should keep growing it and I bet in the next couple of years moustaches are going to be super popular and Robs going to be the man leading the charge. Him and Burt Reynolds...love Smoky and the Bandit. Ladies what do you think? Post your comments please or send them to me and I'll post the feedback on the moustache. I'm hoping for good reviews but I'll post very thing that I get. Look below for my gmail address or post your comments on the site.

-My suit is awesome and I have already told the story about how I got it like a million times. I love that suit and the story that goes with it. Next thing I'm looking out for is someone to make me hand made shoes. A total hand made outfit, wow what a story.

-I think the buses in India are the slowest in the whole entire world but are possibly the most packed with smelly people.

-There are more Israeli people in India then there are in Israel. They are all over the place. Most of them stand out because the women don't wear that much clothes and the men just uber hippie. I'm not sure yet but I get the vibe from the locals that they really don't like them that much but I could be wrong I'll be able to tell you a little more in 2 months when my trip is done.

-Goa for Christmas? LOL ya I'm not sure any more because every person we talk to is going to Goa for Christmas and we spoke to some travellers trying to get places to stay there and they weren't able to find anything so who knows maybe we'll go somewhere else.

-I spend too much time on the bus dreaming of salads, homemade soups, roasts, and any other type of clean food that I'm not scared to eat. I eat street food and I'm impressed because its good but I'm normally worried that in about 4 hours I won't be impressed again.

-I love the dowery idea, totally awesome I need more people to get onboard

Thats some of the random stuff that comes into my head as I've been travelling around India.

g

Pushkar and Characters

2005-12-05T04:43:00.000-08:00

We have been here for a couple days now. It is a nice place. Apparently Brahma dropped a lotus flower here and it created a lake so thousands of Hindus come here year to go for a dip. Only about 13000 people actually live here so the main industry is probably tourism. Its also where the massive camel fair is held that we missed because we thought freezing our asses off in Kashmir would be more fun. I dont know....
This morning we met a crazy lady from Isreal. I have not met many Isrealis but they are everywhere here. I do not have much to compare her to but she did have some definite similarities to George Costanza's mother, if that counts. Her name is Roma and I think she is about 50 years old. After her last child left home she announced she was going to India for a year. You meet some interesting characters here. Actually, a rabbi with a cowboy hat just walked by I think.
Roma had some interesting viewpoints too. When I asked her what food gave her Delhi Belly she said it had nothing to do with what she ate, it only had to do with some bad energy. She also filled us in on the fact that the reason Indians are poor is because they are lazy. I hadn't thought of it that way. She has travelled in SE Asia and says Laos is very beautiful, but does not have a lot of people. A perfect place for the Arabs to live. Oh how generous! Aaaaaagh! Ok nice to meet you, gotta go now. Bye!
About interesting characters here, we have also met 2 Ozzies and a Kiwi that have travelled here from England on motorbikes. They even came through Iran and Pakistan to get here! Their plan is to ride all the way home. They haven't planned it out too well though....But its true what they say about Canadians and Australians getting along well. They are crazy mofos but I havent met one I didnt like yet and we have met a lot here. So far I have met 3 yanks and for 2 thirds of those the stereotype very much held true! It was hilarious. The other one was from Colorado and I am told they are an exception. Still waiting to increase the sample size there are not many of them here. There are however tons of Isrealis. They have quite a reputation (with Indians and other tourists) for being rude, rowdy, and cheap but I have only met a few of them personally as they tend to travel in large groups. We also met an Indian who is a journalist that is in the process of opening up what he thinks is India's first Elvis museum. This place is random like that...

Book review

2005-12-03T06:43:00.000-08:00

Ok for those that don't want to hear about the books that I have read since I've been in India they can skip this blog.

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
If anyone wants to know what we see and what its like here you should read this book. It shows the life of two tailors as they go through their lives. I won't go into more details except that I really think this book shows the divide between the rich and the poor. Crazy book and a good read thanks Erin.

Tale of Two Cities Â· Charles Dickens
I think you can figure this one out. "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times" is the famous line from this book. I've read a couple of Dickens books and I think this maybe his best. In fact, of the ones that I've read I think this is the best I've read so far and Dickens himself actually thought this was his best work. It turned out to be a fast read because as we took a bus through the desert I was able to read the whole book.

Under the Banner of Heaven : A Story of Violent Faith by Jon Krakauer
This book is a great read like all his other books. I think I'll just say go read this and learn something new. It looks at Moronism as an example of people using faith as an excuse to do violent crimes. I'm having a hard time describing this book so I think I'll leave it at that.

Just started
The God of Small Things: Arundhati Roy I know nothing about this book except that it won the Booker award and its supposed to be a really good book, we'll see.

Palm reader (curse creator)

2005-12-03T06:29:00.000-08:00

OK I totally forgot the both times I've posted in the last couple of days to fill you guys in on our palm reader dude. I was the first to go and here is what he had to say.

-Your parents were apart for 4 years between 1994 and 1998. (pretty close)
-You have moved 4 major times in your life. (bang on Victoria, Richmond, Berlin, London)
-You aren't a computer programmer, you work with hardware (I'm a programmer or was two months ago)
-You are the oldest one in your family (nope)
-You are the middle child (ahhh...nope)
-You were born at 4am (ahh...I have no idea I was being born)
-You'll hvae two children a girl then a boy (who knows I guess I'll have to look back at this in a couple of years)
-You are single (nope)
-You'll get married in 2008-9 (lol...we'll have to see)
-You'll make six times what your father makes (Rob was given 10 times so I can't complain too much but come on at least mine could have 8 times)
-Your father works for the government, is a civil engineer, teacher, computers, three other random stuff before I told him what my father did.
-My job will always be changing (I hope so because that way it will always be exciting)
-I'm an adventurer and Rob and I work together (true on the adventurer, false on Rob and working together)
-Had no idea that I'm with Sonja...useless guy

I think he can figure some things out based on the type of hands that you have but I think he is just good at making educated guesses and he builds his profile on what or how you respond to his guesses. The dude freaked me out when he said my parents were apart for a while but I think he just got lucky with his guesses. He didn't mention two of the most important parts of my life, Sonja or running so I don't think he was that good. He had a super hard time with Rob as he went second and has hands the size of footballs. The palmist had no idea what Rob did and just kept guessing and saying all this random stuff so by the end his lucky guess with my parents was just that a lucky guess. I guess I'll have to wait and see a bone reader in the middle of Africa as I hear they are a lot better.

g

(from Rob) I just didn't give him any reaction to judge, thats why he did so poorly on me. I was actually impressed after he did Glenn, especially the part where he nailed how long his parents lived apart. I guess he used up his special powers on him or maybe it was cuz i didnt bob my head like a chicken everytime he was in the ballpark who knows... but get this. He told us it was 250Rs to tell our fortune and it would take about 20 mins, then after when he took about 40 mins on each of us and wanted 1000Rs we were like, Huh? So we explained that we thought it was 500Rs so he said, "As you like" so we gave him 700 cuz thats in the middle and I am sure this guy does very well for himself. Then that night I got sick so you do the math....

Three things that are always true in India

2005-12-03T06:21:00.000-08:00

So our guide today told us the following thing that I think is totally true when speaking of India.

1) Everywhere is a toilet. Let me tell you that I have seen people do the number 1 and 2 pretty much everywhere. The side of the road, on the sidewalk, on the road, right in front of me....you name they'll drop it.

2) Everyone is a doctor. If you are a little sick everyone will tell you how to solve your problem. I've had people tell me to take this drug and that drug and then eat this wierd thing and drink tons of water when I was sick. I don't take drugs unless I know what the heck I'm taking so I didn't take their wierd stuff even though I'm sure it would work just fine. The palm reader that we went to even told rob how to fix his back so now everynight he puts some wierd stuff on his back.

3) 24 hours a day you can get tea. Really this is totally true you can get it anywhere anytime. Train, bus, rickshaw you can tea in these little glasses and they are super hot. I guess thats one thing the useless Brits left over here. They didn't leave good beer grrrr...

Weather lol.....suckers

2005-12-03T06:16:00.000-08:00

Just thought I should tell you that I haven't seen rain since I've been here. I haven't seen snow since.....Christmas of last year. I've had to wear all my clothes up in Kashmir so I guess I was cold for a week of this trip but I can't complain (actually we already did) since I've received emails from those in Victoria where they have been kind enough to tell me that they have snow there and its cold. LOL poor suckers don't you know you have to do what Rob is going to do for the rest of his life. Work in the summer and then go where its hot for a vacation. Rob told me the other day that he thinks he'll chase the sun around the planet. Sounds like a good idea to me except I don't think IT jobs really allow for this type of situation. Lucky fisherman.

Enjoy the weather lol......sorry guys I had to rub it in.

g

Thalis...From Rob

2005-12-03T05:46:00.000-08:00

Have you guys heard of these things? Its pronounced talee and I think it literally means tray. The tray is divided into sections or sometimes has bowls and each one is filled with a different Indian dish, so you get to try several different dishes. But thats not even the best part. Waiters are going around constantly with pots and ladels filling you back up with more. They are also bringing round more bread(several different kinds) so you have to stay on the ball or you could theoretically end up there forever like a Star Trek episode or something....
Its originally a South Indian thing but you can find them all over. We just had a pretty good one tonight at a restaurant. We could not read the menu but discerned there were 2 different kinds of thali being offered one for 40Rs and one for 65Rs. Of course we went for the more expensive one without even knowing the difference. It would be too much effort to get the waiter to explain to us through broken english. We didn't have time for such nonsense. The thalis were so big we did not even get any extra food other than a few chappatis. I could not finish mine as it was the largest meal I have had since I was sick a few days ago and so Glenn ate a couple of my bowls. He is always good like that.
The night we arrived in Udaipur we were so hungry we found a restaurant before choosing a hotel. The place we went to offered an amazing thali for 50Rs. This was a quality joint too. Apparently the first thali made every day is sent to the palace where the Maharaja lives!
So I think you get the point. Thalis are really good, all you can eat for cheap. Maybe you guys get bored reading about good cheap plentiful food, but it still blows my mind when I see what they are asking for this. It also happens to illustrate the gap between rich and the poor here, when it does not cost very much to eat like a maharaja (about $1.50CAD) and yet there are starving and homeless people everywhere. But thats a whole other blog entirely...

feeling better...From Rob

2005-12-02T04:16:00.000-08:00

Note: I actually wrote this about 8 hrs ago but the Internet crashed so I had to wait to put it up.

After spending nearly all day in bed yesterday I am feeling a bit better. Enough to get up anyway. As Glenn said, I thought I just ate too much, but all night I never felt any better so around 5am I got up, hoping to throw up. I stayed in the bathroom for half an hour not knowing what to do. I wasn’t quite sick enough to puke but I knew if I went back to bed I wouldn’t feel any better so I tried to work up the nerve to stick my toothbrush down my throat but I just couldn't do it so instead I decided to swallow a gravol to see if that might at least let me sleep. Within 10 seconds of taking the gravol and a little water I was throwing up the big lump in my stomach. I never left the bed till about 4pm when I had a shower and went to find some food. I started to feel a little bit better other than these intense cramps in my stomach but I thought a little food might make them stop. I really wanted banana porridge or maybe some other breakfast food but the place Glenn picked did not have breakfast so I just had a stuffed parantha which is a flat bread with some vegetables and spices in it. The hot peppers and spices in it were not exactly what I was looking for but Glenn really enjoyed his dinner, so that’s good. Afterwards we went back to our place and started to watch a movie on the roof but I was not feeling great and it was a bit chilly so I went back to bed. Its a bit depressing that I spent an entire day in bed and never even saw the sun. I managed to log another 10 hours in bed and finally got my banana porridge this morning. It is now about 10am.
We are staying here an extra day since I am not up to taking a bus today but tomorrow we go about 3hrs east to Chittaurgarh where there is a massive fort. We will probably just stay for the afternoon then head off to Pushkar and stay a few days there.

Bought a suit

2005-12-01T20:11:00.000-08:00

OK thanks everyne for the info on the suit so here is what I got. I paid 130 Euro and got a wool suit lined with silk, one pair of pants half lined in silk, and two shirts. These are all hand made and in a couple of hours I have to go back and make sure its fits correctly. So I don't think you can complain when you have a hand made suit for you and it doesn't kill the pocket book. I'll be sending it to London so the girls there will be the first people to see it. The suit color is charcoal and the shirts are dark blue and a light green. The tailor will pack it in front of me and send it away for me. I'm pretty excited as this is my first suit ever. The suit is only taking a day to make so I'll soon have it.

Rob update: He lives!!! In fact he got out of bed last night and ate a little bit of food and today he is sitting beside me checking his email. Don't worry everyone he's fine just has a sore belly.

Christmas: I was asked by Sonja to let her know where we will be for Christmas so that she can send a present. Great idea in theory but I'm sorry to say there is no way for either Rob or I to know where we are going to be around Christmas, all we know is we will be in the state of Goa. If you want a postcard for christmas and maybe something else please comment with your address and I'll try my hardest to make sure we send you something.

g

My day today

2005-12-01T01:14:00.000-08:00

So I need a little help from the people reading my blog. First I'll give you the run down of what I've done today without Rob.
-Ate breakfast (2 boiled eggs, cold toast, porridge, tea)
-Checked on Rob
-Checked out an old house here and then a Jain temple
-Checked on Rob
-Went for a walk and found a tailor who will make me a suit out of cotton for 9000 Rs I'm sure I can talk him down but I don't know anything about suits like is 9000 RS (240 CAN) is a good deal or not. So I need someone to let me know if thats a good deal or not. I get pants, jacket, shirt and tie for that price. For the polyiester (spelled wrong) it is only 150 can dollars. What I plan on doing is sending it to england if I do get it. He says it will only take 6 hours to make and then I can send it away the next day. But like I said I know nothing about suits. Sonja ask your brother if this is a good deal or not. Anyone who knows anything about suits please comment or send me an email to (glenn (period) saqui (at) gmail (period) com) and let me know whats the story here cause I could use some help. I don't even know what to ask for when I get a suit made.
-went to check on Rob
-Headed to the internet cafe to drop a few words about Rob and how he is feeling.

g

LOL the eating here is killing us

2005-12-01T00:53:00.000-08:00

First of all let me tell you that sometimes we get so much food that we can't even finish it and yet we try and normally we come back and our bellies hurt. Normally we complain and normally we both say that we can't sleep on our tummys because they are so full. Well it seems Rob had this problem last night. We are currently in Udaipur the location Octopussy will filmed. Our hotel like almost every cheap hotel in the area plays this movie every night. So guess what Rob and I decide to have dinner on the rooftop patio and watch the movie. We order butter chicken, jeera rice, and curried veg with 3 nan. We finished that off with banana pancakes, actually they are more like crepes. We watched the movie as we ate and headed to our room earlier then we normally do as our hotel doesn't have beer (major problem when watching a bond flick). So we are laying in bed and Rob starts complaining that he ate to much and his belly was sore.

I ofcourse make fun of him because I, for once, didn't over eat. On that note let me tell you that I'm trying something new in India which is called trying to get fat. Its not working at all as I think I've lost weight here. Ok back to Rob, he's complaining the whole night and I'm just making fun of him. Well at 5am he busted out of bed (I mean busted out, arms a moving like mad) and he hits the toilet. All I hear is....well him throwing up and throwing up. He's sick for a good twenty minutes, guess he's eaten something that has made him sick. He hasn't gotten out of bed today because he is so sick. I've given him food and water and hopefully he'll get better soon. I leave the place for two hours and then I come back to see how he is doing. Let me tell you its 2pm and he doesn't look good. At least he's talking now earlier he would just make funny noises.....parents don't worry he'll be fine I'm looking after him.

Beer chasers

2005-11-28T04:43:00.000-08:00

So I'll first tell you where we are and then I'll complain about the crappy computer I'm on and then I'll tell you about beer and the crazy things we have done to drink beer.

First we left Birkaner and went to Jaisalmer where we rode camels and checked out the cool fort there. The camel ride was only 20 minutes but I figured we should get the most out of it. Well actually it started when Rob passed me on his camel (our drivers were in the seat behind us) and gave me a little shove. Well I don't like to be passed and I hate it when Rob pretends his a tough fisherman and can pick on the little computer guy. Lets not joke here his hands are twice the size of mine. So I'm a little pissed so I tell my camel driver to drop a gear and get this hunk of camel movin. Well all of a sudden Rob and I are climbing up sand dunes and running around in the desert. Those camels can move if they have to and they sure beat the hell out of you when they do decide to move. I have some great pictures of us on camels but sadly I can't seem to get them online because the computer that I'm on is a piece of camel poo. One night after a long bus ride from Bikaner to Jaisalmer, where I didn't eat lunch, we decided to get some grub. Well when I'm hungry and haven't eaten in a while I can really throw back the food. So we order food and beer and more food and more beer then finished with that restaurant (650 RS). I look at Rob and I'm like "dude you still hungry".
Rob laughs and says "No but I'm sure you are"
Off to the next restaurant so that Glenn can eat again. Like I said when I'm in eating mode I sometimes don't stop. More beer and more food and pop another 400Rs on food. So after two days in Jaisalmer we header to Jodphur. We arrived yesterday and let me tell you this whole desert thing is hot. I don't mean hot I mean really really hot. I can't imagine what it would be like in the summer. Yikes.
The fort here rules, in fact it hasn't been defeated/broken into in the whole 500 years that it has been around. Its massive and massively impressive. Tomorrow we hope to do a village safari where we go into the middle of nowhere and see some buddists that are supposed to be uber eco freaks. Should be nice after we have seen the exact opposite for the last month. Oh we have been in India for almost a month now so I guess I'm 1/3 of a way through my trip. Man time flys.

OK so Rob and I like to drink a beer now and then. Hey if you have to be in the middle of the desert at least you should have a cold beer. Man my dad will love that line. So while we were in Bikaner we ate at every restaurant in Robs book and every single one of them didn't serve any beer. This is actually normal when we go to restaurants, most are totally dry. Well after a day of not having any beer and only eating veg food we decided to hunt down a nice cold one. So we wonder around until we see this ally that has a faded sign that says "Bar and restaurant", the restaurant part was more faded. So Rob and I wonder in. Ok I'll first describe this for people who have been in Campbell River and then I'll let the rest of you know what I'm talking about but since Rob and I both agree the CR version fits nicely we'll use it instead.
CR version- This place was like JJ's but without the women. Same hardcores and run down bums all there drinking the beer and not thinking about the food.
Normal version-The place was where the hardcore drinkers in the city go. Not clean but it still serves food yet I don't think people actually eat there. We were the only whities in the area and I think they were shocked that we would actually be in there. So we sit down and Rob trys some of the whisky and I start by trying the beers I had never heard of. My review is as follows:
-It just proves that the British mess everything up, they didn't leave behind one solid beer after they left this country. The Kingfisher is the king beer here and it sucks! I've tried 5 different brands and I'm still glad when I have a Kingfisher because it doesn't make me ill.

Ya we seems to have adventures everywhere we go and things seem to be crazy and yet very laid back at the same time. Rob and I have no idea where we are going from here but we are thinking of going to Mt. Abu but we aren't sure yet.

I've attached a link to a map of Rajasthan for all those people who don't have any clue where we are:
http://www.rajasthantourism.gov.in/destinations/mount_abu/images/1mtabu-map.gif

g-out

Ok Random dudes if you see the picture then you came to the site

2005-11-24T02:37:00.000-08:00

Rock Garden, Chandigarh,
originally uploaded by Glenn Saqui.

This is for the random dudes that we met at the Rock garden. They really wanted us to send them the picture instead I told to go to our blog. So here is the picture for our random friends at the rock garden. Click on the picture to see it enlarged.

Rob went to get a massage and came back with these

2005-11-24T02:29:00.000-08:00

HPIM1060,
originally uploaded by Glenn Saqui.

So we have new pictures on the website so all you should have to do is click on the picture of Rob flexing and you should be able to see all our new pictures.

Rob has some crazy dude work on his back and the dude used some type of sucktion cups on his back and left him with these cool marks. There are only a couple of pictures of his back so everyone doesn't have to be grossed out by him. The rest are from our trip to Bikaner and the rock garden. Hope you enjoy.

Bus and a Train and finally we arrive at our destination

2005-11-24T02:03:00.000-08:00

So we have these crazy plans like trying to see India. Wow thats crazy dude you shouldn't even think of crazy things like that. Well we wanted to leave Dharamsala and make our way into the desert. So the plan was the following get a bus to Chandargh and from there figure out if we could get a train to northern Rajistan to a place called Bikaneer. So we get on our bus at 7am and we start our travel. Buses aren't like the ones back home.lol well nothing is so what would you expect. The bus isn't that clean and every corner it stops to pick people up or drop them off. At one point in our bus ride there are bums of people we don't know in our faces and people are shoving to get more people aboard. Its totally crazy so we drive through the day. The drive is actually nice if you were in a comfy sedan with the normal amount of people in it. We drove through the mountains and had some amazing views of the mountains and valleys. Cool I guess if you weren't fighting to stay on your seat.

Awesome we arrive in Chandargh without dieing, always something to be happy about. Seven hours of our trip is done. Next we stroll over to the train info place and line up in the handicap, old people, and foreigners line. Get to the front of the line and ask if we can get a train from here to Bikaner. "Yup"
"When does it leave?"
"10:25 tonight"
"Rob you want to continue our trek tonight"
"Yup"
"OK we'll take the ticket we want a sleeper"
"Ok that'll be 250RS each" (thats like 7 CAN)
"Sweet when will we arrive in Bikaner?"
"1:25"
"A.M?"
"lol no"
"Oh thats going to be a massively long train ride"
So now its 3:00pm and we have some time to kill so we head out to this famouse rock garden, the only thing this town has to offer. You can see the pics of it on the blog. Its pretty impressive and it kills an hour. We meet these random dudes who can barely speak english and want so badly to speak to us. We spend half our time in the rock garden telling them about our families and asking them about theirs.

We catch some grub and have two hours to kill at the train station. I would have gone for beer except that if I had had a beer I would have fallen asleep right away as Rob and I were totally zonked from the crazy bus ride. Finally the train arrives and we get on. The sleeper is three cot sized beds stacked ontop of each other. Not really that nice because we are close to the toilet so use your imagination on what we smelt through the whole night. I was in the middle bunk and as soon as I had my sleep sheet out and my eyes covered I was totally asleep. Rob wasn't as lucky as me as he was on the top and he froze the whole night. Oh let me through in a comment here that I'm to big for this country. Everything is for people under 6 feet. Everything is exactly 6 feet long so I barely fit in. I have to bend myself in some crazy ways to get to sleep most nights.

The train rocks us to sleep and we attempt to sleep as long as possible as this train is 15 hours long. Oh and it only cost us 7Can so I don't think you can complain to much. We finally arrive to our destination after a long trek. We are totally wiped but its a cool city.

The city is part of a desert and has sand everywhere and is totally hot. There are camels everywhere and they are used like horses to pull carts. We arrived on Wednesday and we plan on leaving tomorrow morning (Friday) to head out to Jaisalmer where we plan on riding camels. Jaisalmer is a city that just grows out of the desert so it should be cool.

Hope this was a good update.
g

In Dharamsala, from Rob

2005-11-20T02:37:00.000-08:00

As Glenn mentioned earlier, Dharamsala is the home of the Dalai Lama. Its also full of backpackers, monks, and Tibetan refugees. Its a base for trekking and you can take courses in massage, hindi, raiki, yoga, cooking (Tibetan and Indian), and other things I cant think of because Hotel California is playing and its so distracting suck a buddha i hate that song.... Anyway, this is very much a tourist town but because there are so many unemployed refugees here things are actually quite cheap. There are stores everywhere selling cool hand made clothes and jewelry and things and they really cater to the tourists. You don't have to worry about getting sick from the food here. Restaurants have signs saying things like, "Food is prepared with the strictest standards of western cleanliness," and "All vegetables are washed with boiled water." Its nice, but it we know its only temporary till we go back into the chaos of India. This is not really India. Its more like Tibet.

I just came back from a Tibetan museum and it struck me that this place should not even exist. I mean I knew before, and I am sure most of you people know as well the basic history of Tibet. Before 1950 Tibet was its own country when China invaded Tibet and called it "peaceful liberation". Tibet was overrun and the Dalai Lama as well as thousands of Tibetans fled to Nepal and India. Since then China has brutally persecuted the remaining Tibetans and more still make the trek over the Himalayas all the time. I even met one boy who just arrived. In the meantime China has encouraged their people to relocate to Tibet which has made the Tibetans a minority in their own country. They have also used Tibet to dump nuclear waste and have caused much environmental damage. Its one thing to know about the history but when you can actually meet the people and put a face on it, it affects you more deeply. Its also interesting to see the Tibetans make the best of it. They are not just sitting here feeling sorry for themselves. With the help of the popularity of the Dalai Lama they have created a great resort town. Most are not rich, but they are working. This place is full of tourists and its the off season right now. They work hard to educate themselves, learn English and gain a career. But anyway, I have to run, I am doing a cooking class on momos (Tibetan dumplings) in 8 mins. Sometimes this place reminds me of university because there are all the people drinking coffee and going from class to class.

My Lost Icecream Cone, from Rob

2005-11-20T01:42:00.000-08:00

No I didn't drop it on my pants or something like some of you have probably already guessed. Glenn and I were in Amritsar, had lunch and were walking to a park with some damn good icecream cones. Out of nowhere came a couple of beggar kids. A girl about 6 years old was tapping my arm with her hand saying, "Hello. Hello. Hello...." I don't know why but from some reason I have yet to understand they are so beautiful in a strange way. They are also persistant, haunting, and numerous. I don't usually give them any money for a few reasons. One, its just not responsible. There are different groups that try to help these people, so the best thing to do is make a donation to a charity. In Amritsar for instance anyone can get a decent meal of dal and chaptis 24 hours of the day at the Golden Temple. Glenn and I both made a sizable donation when we left. The second reason is if you give to one then more will appear out of nowhere and you will be mobbed. I could see more children in the direction we were walking so I knew pulling out any coins would be a bad idea. Sometimes I try to have some food in my bag but this time I did not. I decided I would eat a bit more of my icecream and then give to the girl when out of nowhere she snatched it out of my hand! I couldn't believe it, and I dont think she could believe her fortune either. She ran away laughing hysterically and her smile was worth a thousand times the price of my cone! We kept on walking when suddenly at the entrance of the park when we were mobbed by children. One boy ran up to me and grabbed on with two hands. Aghhhhh! What am I supposed to do, start shoving kids out of the way? "Glenn, we have to get out of here!" I turned and flagged down the first rickshaw I saw. Its the one of the picture of the old man with the big ears from behind. I think he was about 97 years old, weighed even less than Glenn if you can believe that and his rickshaw was a real piece of crap. I never would have asked him to take us all the way to the Golden Temple, 4 Kms away if I had thought out the whole situation but there hadn't been time for such business. We passed by the girl who stole my icecream and she waved and was still smiling. At least it made her day. The rickshaw ride took a long time and we had to get out and walk up a hill because there was no way the old guy was going to make it up. When I get back to Canada, I am going to get my brother to build me a cycle rickshaw out of lightweight titanium with disc brakes, suspension, clipless pedals and of course gears. I will then be outfitted with spandex shorts, gloves and an aerodynamic helmet and I will return to India and be the fastest cycle rickshaw driver in the whole country, and maybe the world...