What I did for my Labor Day vacation: got dusty.

I've put up a whole raft of photos of our recent Burning Man trip, over at flickr. They're on the second or third page of my photostream at this point. I only wish that the slideshows there came in a bigger size.  Anyway, the photos themselves are full size, if you want to click in and see all the gory details (i.e. the alkali dust of an ancient lakebed, ground by the millenia into the consistency of chalk dust . . . into my hair).

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sandover/

When you mention Burning Man to people, many of them still go blank. Burning What? Well, OK, it's this, and this, and this, and this.  I wrote an article about it here, but jeez, people, Bruce Sterling blew the lid off with a WiReD cover story back in 1996.  Hello!  Happy Burn.

 


 

camera clicks

here's a small sample of the photos from my travels in portugal and morocco http://photography.rayidghani.com/porto http://photography.rayidghani.com/casablanca http://photography.rayidghani.com/marrakech

1 cent plane ticket

Before I continue, I have to say this is being written under duress :) (and also to save the lives of many photos that would otherwise be destroyed). But given that I am writing this, I thought I might as well make it interesting (us in research have had a lot of practice with this type of activity lately :) Have you ever wondered how an airline flight that cost 1 cent (+ taxes of course) would look and feel like? Well, wonder no more. I’ve flown low-cost European airlines before but this Ryanair London to Porto flight takes the prize - 1 cent! I asked around 15 people on the flight how much they paid and everyone said 1 cent!!! Ryanair does make some money by advertising on and in the airplane but can it be enough? There are several nice articles online that describe their business model (similar to southwest) and it seems that they have found countless ways to be extremely efficient, cut costs and make money off partner deals and advertising. ok, off to explore porto. By the way, where do the british think willie wonka’s chocolate factory is?

In Venice now...

over the past couple of days i visited the leaning tower of pisa, the ufizzi (a museum where a lot of famous paintings are - i.e. "birth of venus" by botticelli, raphael, rubens, etc), and the accademia (where "the david" is). I am so amazed by the amount of emphasis that was placed on the arts in this region. I heard that 60% of the western worlds art is in Italy. I have to admit though it was overwhelming. Some areas just didnt do a great job in presenting the art. At the Vatican there is just too much to see and it was presented like an art maze leading to the Sistine Chapel. It was just too much to really appreciate one work or a few works at a time. I really enjoyed seeing the David however because of the way it was presented - and by its grandiose nature and by michelangelo's vision. There were the statues of the slaves which led right to a large atrium where the david was. It was inspiring to see because it came from one large block of marble and took 2.25 years to complete. I wonder what michelanglo was thinking as he made it - did it turn out the way he envisioned? did he like it as much as people like it now? did he mess up? how many times did he fail to get this outcome? Now we are in Venice - which is such a unique city. We took a boat ride along the grand canal to the hotel - felt like a decrepit disneyland. In hindsight, I wish I had taken a trip like this before I started working - i really feel like having a better global perspective would have helped me. This trip has had a lot of first's for me - first time on this long of a vacation, first time in all of these countries, first time being in a place where i didn't know the language, first time going this long without indian food :) - first time being so far away from mitu... I am really looking forward to paris now...

Amalfi Coast

In Amalfi now (just past Naples) and have to say this place is so beautiful. It has a great view of the mountains (including Vesuvious) and meditteranean (i am probably spelling all of these wrong). We also went to pompeii today - it was very different from what I had imagined or remembered from grade school film strips. I thought it was going to have a ton of preserved human life and more ash covered areas. Instead it has been very much excavated with most of the main items in museums. There were a few bodies that were enclosed in glass that were preserved in a huddled up position - i thought it was very interesting and scary. The other thing that was surprising was the fact that pompeii is so big - the area that was excavated was huge. Also Vesuvious is pretty far away - so the volcano erruption must have been very big and fast to get to this area. Onto venice tomorrow!

London

Tube advertising in London

Fountain - lots of fountains in Europe...

Food

We are in Italy now!! It has been a crazy two days of traveling to get here. We left Barcelona a few nights ago and took the overnight train to Nice. We spent the entire day in Nice - going to the beach, eating lots of gelato, having caffe lattes (espresso with milk), sight seeing - the french riviara is amazing. It was the first time I was in a country where I didn't know enough of the language to fully communicate. That was an awkward feeling to get used to. I didn't really anticipate how that would feel until we were on the train and two random French men boarded our cuchette (sleeper cart) and tried talking to us. It didn't take us long to understand basic conversation (through hand gestures, etc) but it was definitely an experience. Then we took another overnight train to Rome. I am really impressed with what I have seen thus far on our trip. What has impressed me the most is the food. I am usually a person who is somewhat picky about food and likes to be consistent with the food I am eating. (chipotle! - though it's getting harder to eat there all the time now - terri is probably jumping with joy since I have finally admitted toThough I like to try new types of food - I am generally the one who will get a safe dish and let Mita get something new. Anyways - the food in Spain and Italy has been surprisingly extremely delicious. We have been trying new things left and right. In Spain we went out with some friends who took us to some amazing restaurants. They had this bruchetta ham (very thinly sliced) that was good and we also had traditional dishes (piella, seafood, croquetas, omlette con patatas) - all very tastey. In Nice - it was back to the sandwiches again. Mainly ham sandwiches on french bread. Didn't really like that too much since they were cold - but still decent. Italy has by far been my favorite when it comes to food. I usually don't have the best time at Italian restaurants in Chicago but Italy's Italian food is sooooooooooo good. I can't get enough of it. So far I've tried a tuna pasta, lasagna, steak, pizza, seabass - all very good. I can't wait to see if the rest of Italian food is just as good (since we have only eaten in Rome) Though the food tasting has been great, I have to admit seeing and sometimes eating at a McDonalds in each of the places has been comforting too. (I actually found the McDonalds in each country very interesting - I must say that they have branded themselves in such a unique way. They are really consistent throughout the world. I decided to take a picture of their menus which I will attach to this post at some point). In London the McDonalds meals were smaller - in fact I even heard a man complain about getting a large fries when he ordered a medium. One of the main sandwiches was a Chicken Tikka burger - I later heard from people that their national chicken dish is the indian dish of Chicken Tikka. In Spain the McDonalds was very trendy - they were giving out fashionable belts with a purchase of a meal. They also had people talking orders from a pda. Size of the orders were more similar to Chicago. In Nice (France), the McDonalds also had an "indien" sandwich. Italy was more or less the same. As far as desserts go - chocolate is amazing all over the world! I love all the different flavors of gelatto - who wants to open a gellateria in the states? Let's get one started...

barcelona!

first off just wanted say - thanks for all the messaging and calling to check up on us. We are doing fine. it is very weird that we were on all these trains the day before. it´s interesting how londoners are reacting to this terrorism vs. new yorkers - there is a stress on remaining calm and civilized in london. more so than in theUS. but my favorite british headline was "BASTARDS". I met up with one of my college buddies who now lives in London and he was able to take us to the airport (so we stayed away from public transportation). We are in barcelona now and are having a great time. Some how we were upgraded to the ¨la torreta¨ suite which means mini tower that resides on top of the hotel. it is amazing b/c it has 360 views of barcelona. I wish this blogger thing worked better b/c i posted pics but they aren´t showing up and the formatting is horrible when its published. the people here are so nice and they have so much night time energy. we met up with some locals here for dinner at 11pm and didn´t get done until 1:30 or so. the food was amazing and no tip is required! that is definitely the best part (i believe in tipping when service is great not when it is mandatory)...then we went to a few different clubs. the indian movie star thing didn´t work here - i am not as convincing in broken spanglish plus the locals i was with were laughing at my attempt to get in. hope things in the labs are good..i heard they raised the alert for trains there too. i also heard acn stock went up 10%! tarko - i saw a silver dollar guy here that will blow away the silver dollar guy in chicago...they don´t mess around here...i will post pics when i can...