Category: travel

I can’t go into it now, because I can’t think straight, much less describe the past (what is it) 36 hours. But, we made it home safe and sound. 18 hours in the air, 4 or 5 more in airports, and some time in cars, and we made it back halfway around the world to our homes and families.\
I’ll tell you all about it after 18 hours of sleep, a couple showers and a pizza. In the meantime, you can check out the first set of photos from Saturday. There are a ton more. That’s just on the way to the first stop… the world’s largest banyan tree. I won’t even start with the crocodiles until after I get pizza and sleep.\
G’night. I’m glad to be home.

It’s 11:20pm. Enough with the megaphone already. Whatever it is, it can wait till morning. And last night? That was no fun either. I mean, can I come to your house with a megaphone tomorrow night? Would you like that? People are trying to sleep here. Did I mention is was 11:20 (now 11:21)?\
Yeah, I’m running out of travel-juice. Training folks takes a lot of energy. Sitting, white-knuckled, while our fighter pilot driver takes us 45 minutes each way every morning and every night through the craziest traffic I have ever seen or heard of really takes it out of me too. Breathing in the exhaust from motor rickshaws that illegally mix kerosene into their gas to save money isn’t helping my asthma. Did you know that there are 80 times more traffic fatalities in India than in the US? I do, and now I know why.\
Ok, enough with the complaining. The Indian people are great. They’re fun, nice and smart. They’ve made this trip enjoyable, even with the deathrace every morning.\
I still just want to go home. It’s been two weeks. That’s long enough to be away.

We got to India early Sunday morning (1am), after nine and a half hours from Frankfurt. We made our way through customs, then out to the hotel’s car through a downpour. It was hard to get a sense of the place at night, other than after the sun goes down, apparently all the traffic laws go away (along with the stoplights).\
The hotel is very nice, although I’m still not used to a place where you can’t drink the water. The room is stocked with bottled water, and I’m sure I’m paying for every drop of it.\
This morning (Monday), we made our way to the office by taxi. I have never seen a place where lanes and lights are almost completely ignored. The roads are jammed with smoke-belching three wheeled rickshaws, scooters, buses and taxis. It’s a mess, and I’m surprised we didn’t see any accidents.\
Crossing the street is also an adventure… you have about 15 seconds to make it across a lane before the oncoming smoke-belchers run you down. There are no lights, no warnings, and no crosswalk. It’s everyone for themselves.\
Unfortunately, it’s that way on the sidewalks as well. I tripped in a pothole on the way to the office, and I think I’ve sprained my right ankle pretty good.\
Some interesting tidbits:

• Washington D.C. (76 degrees west) is almost exactly on the other side of the world from Bangalore (77 degrees west).
• Geographically, we’re about even with Panama, The Sudan and Ethiopia
• This is my first trip to Asia.
• This is the farthest south I’ve ever been (we’re at 13 degrees north, D.C. is at 39).
• We’re farther south that Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
• We’re in Karnataka.
• There were 80,000 traffic deaths in India in 2000, compared with 1,093 in the U.S.
• You can read more about Bangalore at Wikipedia\
  So yeah, I think I can say at this point that I’d much rather be in France.

Good (early) morning from the sunny Cote D’Azur! I’m up at an ungodly hour unable to get back to sleep, so I thought I’d fill you in on where I am, where I’m going and how many miles it’s going to take to get there. I figured it out yesterday, and including my flights to get here, I’ll be flying over 18,000 miles in the next two weeks (hello Premier status!). That’s over a thousand miles a day. You’re probably saying to yourself, “But, Kevin, it’s only about 4500 miles each way to France from the States,” and you’d be right. I’m not just going to France. On Saturday morning, I leave for even sunnier (although right now it’s apparently raining) Bangalore, India. I’ve had more shots than I can count, am taking the Typhoid vaccine by mouth, and just too my first anti-malarial pill.\
Back to the flying. 18,400 miles adds up to thirty-eight hours in the air. That’s a lot of poorly censored movies, reading, and peanuts. I watched Sideways on the plane before unsuccessfully trying to sleep, and wow… I couldn’t help laughing at how poorly they bleeped it. It was distracting to say the least. I actually heard Thomas Haden Church say, on more than one occasion, “That’s bubblefish!” Couldn’t they at least have put in “bull hooey”, or “bovine nonsense”?\
Right now, I’m watching Phoenix and San Antonio, with French announcers. Wow. It feels weird. It’s the only place I’ve heard the French throw in a lot of English phrases (all Sportscenter-lite exclamations). I love being in Europe, for just that reason. I love seeing how cultures overlap, languages overflow, and how unbelievably comfortable everyone is with it. On the short flight from Munich (awesome airport, by the way) to Nice, the flight attendant spoke almost accentless English, superb French, and her native German. She switched between the three effortlessly (it appeared so, anyway). I so wish that we paid that much attention to language in the US. I feel so lost when I come here. My French is pretty bad, but I can get by. It feels like most Europeans, though, could do just fine in the States. I know, a good deal of the English absorption in Europe comes from all the TV, music and movies we send over, but still. It takes more than that. It’s taught in schools very early on, and people learn more than one language their entire educational careers. We only have to take three years in high school, which is really only enough to scratch the surface. It’s not enough to be comfortable with a language in a “native” way, or even close.\
I know that’s not likely to change, especially with programs being cut left and right from public schools. If we can’t even handle teaching art, music or p.e., how can we handle teaching a language in K-12? I would love to see it though. Could you imagine if we taught Spanish (the “gateway drug” of Latin languages) from first grade on? How much better equipped would we be to handle the new multi-lingual America, and be more comfortable traveling the world?\
It’s about time to start getting ready for my hike over to the W3C, well, after my petit dejeuner (I love that phrase – literally “little lunch”, but it’s really breakfast! language, I love it!), and some more Basketball a la Francaise.

I made it to Austin, and Avis was all out of Monte Carlos. That means I’ve got yet another Grandma car – the Buick Century, with it’s grandma-hand sized steering wheel, and soap-like handling. The only good thing about it is that I’m sure I can get everyone’s luggage in it next Thursday.\
Had a lovely lunch at Moonshine, and am looking forward to going to dinner with the Browns and Mr. McNally’s posse at Threadgills.\
I love Austin. It’s 75 degrees outside, little humidity and the sun is shining. I can’t wait to see everyone, and geek out for a week. I also remembered to bring blank cd’s, and am working on a soundtrack for this week (at least for the car).

I wanted to get these down before they completely got away from me. Last week was tiring, but well worth it. Boston was frickin’ freezing, but I learned a lot, actually contributed this time, and met some great people. So, here are my favorites from last week:

• Favorite Meal: Meeting Frank Wilczak and Betsy Devine for dinner at Atasca. It was a fun evening, with good food, good conversation, and some good laughs. I’m sad that Betsy won’t be joining us for SXSW this year…
• Second Favorite Meal: Bella Vista with the CSS WG. It started snowing while we were inside this cute little place in the North End that only took cash or American Express. I sat between Markus and Tantek, and had dueling conversations, about business travel and how to semantically markup the menu. The grilled veal was amazing, and the strachiatella was homey and rich.
• Favorite Joke: We were doing introductions at a group meeting, went around the large table saying our names, and who we worked for. Then, we went around again so the minute taker could write down everyone’s first names. Then I suggested we go around one more time and give our initials. Ok, it was funny at the time. The runner up was, “It’s Bert, spelled C-S-S.”
• Favorite TV Show: Top Gear!! I watched the rest of the episodes I’d downloaded, and it’s the best car show ever. It’s funny, smart and a great way to get reviews of new cars without getting bored by the minutiae. My favorite bits are the challenges: car olympics, historic people carrier (minivan) racing championship, the Ferrari vs. British Airways and Public Transport race, the 1,500 pound Porsche challenge, etc. They’re all funny, and better yet – fun. These guys love cars like little boys love cars, and it’s fabulous.
• Favorite Moment: Coming home to shouts of “Daddy!”\
  And I’m off again on Thursday… looking forward to more favorites.

Green Jellies

I went to the New England Aquarium this morning and had a good time dodging field trip kids of all ages, their harried chaperones, and wild strollers of death.\
The jellyfish exhibit was awesome, and gave me a chance to play with my new mini tripod (thanks, sweetie), and some long exposures.\
The only downer of this morning (yes, I’m at the W3C conference, but my group isn’t meeting again until tomorrow, and the group I was auditing wasn’t meeting until after lunch) was waiting for the Harbor Express boat for the trip back. I stood outside in freezing temperatures and wicked cold wind (see, catching on to this whole Boston thing) for forty-five minutes until I gave up and got a cab.\
Boston… it’s wicked cold.