Having alternated between cultural and outdoorsy experiences during our time in Egypt so far, we continued the tradition by spending the last couple of days in Dahab. After a few initial hiccups involving a defective key at the Red Sea Relax hostel, we were thoroughly impressed by the feast they laid out for breakfast.

With our bellies full, we embarked on a snorkeling trip in the Red Sea itself at a spot called the Blue Hole. The goggles I was given were loose so seawater kept getting into my eyes and I had to take a break to find tighter goggles. On my next attempt I got better at using the flippers, although it was still a tiring experience. That said, looking at fish and coral underwater was quite an amazing experience.

Having worked up a hearty appetite, it was time for dinner. The boardwalk was lined with overpriced restaurants all competing intensely but with pretty much the same fare. After comparing prices and haggling a bit, we somewhat arbitrarily picked one. The food was actually delicious, although we weren't the only ones to think so as our dinner was plagued by cats, all hoping to get some of it.

The next day Luke, Dave and I decided to get a professional shave at the local barber. It was amusing to watch Luke's reaction when his face was threaded! I ended up looking strangely Egyptian after they were done.

We spent our last night in Egypt scaling Mt. Sinai. I prepped by drinking a cup of coffee; the first I'd had in years. It took about two hours to drive to the base of the mountain and then another 150 minutes to ascend it in the dark using flashlights. But we managed to snag an excellent spot from which to watch the sun rise. Once that was over, however, we had to contend with a zillion other people who all wanted to descend along with us. Going slowly was just as well though, since I found the steep descent to be hard on my joints.

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Once we made it to the airport, getting from Cairo to Luxor was a relatively painless operation, as was finding our hostel, where we reunited with Yvonne and Luke, who had been exploring other parts of the country while we camped in the dessert. The hostel was offering guided tours of the West bank so we took them up on it the next morning. After our excellent experience with Hani in the dessert, we were greatly dismayed to discover that this guide could barely understand English; each time we asked him a question, he answered a completely different question!

The first stop was a temple that had been destroyed by an earthquake in 37 BC. Only a pair of giant pharaoh statues survived the quake, each of which has a miniature statue of his wife beside him. Apparently that was the thing to do back then. The second stop was the Valley of the Queens, so called because no kings were buried there, although sometimes princes who died in childhood ended up there as well. Before we could look at the burial chambers, the guide made us watch a crummy documentary whose sound was barely audible. While looking at the tombs, the guide fed us some outlandish tales about the queens, including one about a queen who fabricated a myth about her mom being impregnated by a god so that she could hang on to the throne without having to cede power to a husband.

The third stop was at an alleged artist workshop, where we saw how they make alabaster jars, although we came away with the strong feeling that the guide just took us there in the hopes that we would buy lots of overpriced crap that he probably gets a cut on. 

With that out of the way, it was on to the fourth stop: the Valley of the Kings, where we had only enough time to learn about three kings. Ramses III had 42 wives but still slept around with others and Sety II died young so they did an astonishingly sub-par job on his tomb. The highlight of this stop was a descent into the underground burial chamber of Thutmosis II, where we had a chance to examine very early hieroglyphs done is a style far simpler than anything I'd ever seen before.

Stop five was another temple, featuring two engravings of particular interest: one was a series of engravings of the fertility god, whose limbs were chopped off as punishment for impregnating a bunch of women; the other was a queen who swallowed the sun in the morning and expelled it through her vagina in the evening. The last stop on the tour was the residence of some old British guy that was only marginally interesting. The guide also tried to make us go through a sketchy papyrus factory but we refused unanimously.

That evening we visited the Luxor temple, which contained some fascinating relics from the Greek and Roman conquests of Egypt, including statues of Alexander the Great as a pharaoh and some Roman paintings that covered older Egyptian engravings. Outside the temple was a large courtyard lined with massive stone columns, many of which had statues of Ramses II beside them. But the most striking feature of the temple was a giant stone obelisk that rose several dozen feet from the ground.

On our final day in Luxor we visited the Karnak temple complex, this time ending up with an awesome guide. He explained that the complex had started out fairly small as the venue for the annual wedding ceremony for the Thebian trio of gods but had been successively enlarged by waves of pharaohs until it was the largest religious structure in the world. He also cleared up the fragmented stories we'd heard from the previous guide about queen Hatshetsup.

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This is the long-delayed post about our dessert-camping experience from November.

Unlike the car that was supposed to take us to the pyramids but never materialized, our guide for the Sahara camping trip arrived slightly early. His name was Hani (or something that sounded a lot like that) and he spoke English fluently, which put us all at ease. He'd brought along somebody else to drive the van, which initially seemed inefficient until I realized that this specialization of duties was quite effective; the driver zipped along at close to 150 mph while Hani was free to answer our numerous questions about the Sahara. In fact, we even picked up a police officer and gave him a ride to the police checkpoint in the dessert, which facilitated getting us through it without any hassle.

Once we were in the dessert, we stopped at the El Bahriya oasis and switched to a land rover that allowed us to roll down sand dunes without much ado. I was soon mesmerized by the sheer quantity of sand surrounding us; there was often nothing else to see in any direction! The first time we stopped to take photographs of the sand dunes, we struck the clichéd "walk like an Egyptian" pose, only to have Hani inform us that Egyptians no longer walk like that. I'd always assumed the pose was entirely fabricated for dramatic effect but he went on to explain that it was once used during religious ceremonies in ancient Egypt.

At lunch time we ate in a rest stop while surrounded by flies. I hate flies so much. After lunch Hani took us down a road built by the Brits during WWII to see the black sands formed by volcanic ashes. We even saw the flat-topped dormant volcanoes that had once spewed all this ash. Next we went to the "white dessert", which is composed of chalk. There were some very odd chalk formations that usually resembled mushrooms, although one of them actually looked like a chicken. This is where we set up camp for the night.

Hani and the driver cooked us a fine dinner of BBQ chicken and potato stew over a fire that also kept us warm once the cold dessert night set in. After eating, we slept under camel fur blankets. Although we'd been hoping to see stars, the full moon pretty much crowded them out. Aware that it is made of cheese, Don tried to eat it but to no avail.

Our second day in the Sahara devolved into a hellish amount of driving. But first we had to sit around for a long time at the oasis while the seats in the land rover were replaced. We killed some time by wandering around in some Coptic ruins from the 7th century. The Egyptians weren't too excited about those because they were "only 1300 years old", a sentiment only possible amongst people whose recorded history goes back for millennia.

With the new seats finally in place, we headed off in search of the Valley of the Whales. Unfortunately, Hani got a bit lost and we could not find the valley before nightfall so we just camped in the white dessert again. Such is the downside of navigating via old tyre tracks instead of GPS. On the plus side, this time we were able to see more stars before the moon came out in force.

In the morning we finally made it to the valley, which was dotted with fossils and striated rock formations, having once been a sea some 40 million yeas ago. Finding sea shells in the Sahara dessert is truly an eye-opening experience. Once we'd had our fill of this oddity, Hani took us to see a massive artificial lake that had been created from treated agricultural runoff and is now stocked with fish. That too was a bit surreal.

It was then time to leave the dessert, although we stopped at Imhotep's step pyramid on the way back to Cairo to see the first pyramid ever built. Unshockingly, it was far less impressive than the great ones at Giza and in a far worse state of disrepair. More interestingly, I noticed that there was an enormous difference in the quality of walls used to build dwellings for the pyramid workers VS the temple, although both were built by the same people at around the same time.

Once in Egypt, we needed to take a cab to the airport. Dave assumed that the cabbies would all speak English but after getting into one, we discovered that he thought we wanted to go to the Sheraton! I tried miming an airport but it only left him bewildered. Fortunately, he had the resourcefulness to take us to a police station where somebody could translate and we then headed for the airport.

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On our first proper day in Cairo, we attempted to take a cab from our hostel to Coptic Cairo. We were thwarted by our complete inability to communicate in Arabic, since none of the cabbies knew any English either. In the end we were forced to have one of the hostel staff members haggle with cabs for us.

Coptic Cairo wasn't nearly as exciting as we'd hoped. Perhaps it would have been better with a guide. Actually, in what would turn out to be a portend of things to come, a random Egyptian attempted to weasel his way into being our tour guide. We paid him what his information was worth: 17 cents. One interesting thing we did encounter in Coptic Cairo was a series of paintings that date back to around 18 A.D. Most of them seemed to have been preserved remarkably well, prompting me to wonder about the accuracy of whomever dated them.

Given our previous failure at catching a cab, we decided to try the Metro instead. That turned out to be a good idea because the Metro in Cairo is frequent, fast and dirt cheap. It cost a piddling 17 cents per ride, encouraging us to use it often during our stay there. In addition to taking the Metro, we also walked around a fair bit. While most street-crossings were tests of will and bravado, the few traffic signals we saw were delightful to watch because the little green walking man on them would speed up as time went by until he was sprinting at a good clip just before the sign changed to the red hand.

The reason for all this subway-riding and walking was our quest for lunch. But not any old lunch; we were searching for the best kushari in Cairo (and therefore the world). Kushari is a dish that originated in Cairo and is made from a combination of rice, macaroni, lentils, chickpeas, browned onions, garlic infused vinegar and tomato sauce. The word on the street was that the best place to eat it was a restaurant called Abou Tarek, which served nothing else. It took us a while to locate that place but we were rewarded by what I consider to be one of the best meals I've had in ages. I badly wanted to chow down a second bowl of the stuff but somebody else's better judgement prevailed.

Now sated, we ambled over to the Egyptian museum, where we got a guide to show us around. He was pretty good, although he kept telling us how he had recently discovered rather momentous facts about ancient Egypt, which made me suspicious about the veracity of his tales. But then I've never been one to let facts get in the way of a good story. The museum was quite interesting but after walking around in it for a couple of hours we were worn out so we headed back to our hostel for a rest.

That evening, I decided to get a haircut at the nearby barber. He didn't speak any English but the previous customer did and translated for me. To my surprise, after cutting my hair, he whipped out a length of thread and proceeded to thread my face with it. Having never experienced this before, it was an interesting sensation, albeit slightly painful at times.

With my newly coiffured look, we set off to watch the whirling dervishes or, as they are known locally, sufi dancers. The sufi are a mystical sect of Islam who believe that by whirling around they enter into a divine frenzy. Sounds vaguely like Thupasam, minus the sharp hooks! To our pleasant surprise, the event was free, having been sponsored by a cultural grant from the government. In addition to the dancing and whirling, they also played music on horns that had only one volume level: loud. The dancers wore brightly coloured skirts that looked awesome when they whirled around.

Having gotten our fill of mystics twirling in gaudy skirts, we ventured into the surrounding bazaar, known as the Khan-el-Khalili. I had been curious about a local spice called gad and at one point we found some for sale at a spice store but the proprietor evidently had better things to do than talk to a bunch of tourists so we moved on. We hadn't gone very far, however, when an English-speaking local who claimed he was a doctor offered to show us around the spice store. He seemed harmless enough so we took up his offer. He certainly did show us all manners of curiosities in the store, including dessicated and shrunken animals. In the end we bought some spices, only to discover that we'd paid an order of magnitude more for them than the going rate. 

No trip to Egypt would be complete without a visit to the great pyramids of Giza (and the accompanying Sphinx). Conveniently, Giza is right outside Cairo. Our original plan had been to hire a car to drive us there and back but the car broke down the morning we were to go there. Ever resourceful, we thought it would be a good idea to take the Metro to Giza and then either take a cab or microbus to the pyramids. Our guide book warned us that many locals would try to scam us into entering through the gate designated for Egyptian students and then make us shell out for a camel ride across the dessert. Sure enough, as soon as we got off the subway in Giza, we were set upon by a small horde of annoyingly persistent cabbies all trying to convince us that we should pretend to be Egyptian students in order to pay the much lower entrance fare. We must have lost half an hour trying to get them off our backs before we found a microbus that took us to the pyramids - but not before they also tried to convince us that we should pretend to be Egyptian students.

The pestering didn't end once we finally reached the pyramids; it just changed form. Now we were being offered horribly overpriced bottled water and camel rides. Between all these fascinating offers, we managed to sneak a few glances at the 4500 year old pyramids. Although the were a bevy of tourists around, none of them ventured to the far side of the pyramids so once we got there, we had relatively unobstructed views of the giant structures. Despite being so close, however, we did not touch them because doing so is forbidden in order to protect them against further decay. There are guards stations to enforce this rule, although, based on what we saw, their loyalties can be swayed by filthy lucre.

Later in the day we went for a cruise down in a Nile in a felucca. Having been conditioned to bargain for everything, we were dismayed to realize that the felucca owners had no interest in bargaining. Eventually we realized why: they were all situated across the street from a clutch of 5-star hotels whose patrons probably couldn't be bothered to bargain for anything.

We ended our stay in Cairo by visiting a hookah bar where Luke and I schooled the others in the fine art of nasally exhaling smoke.

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Getting my TN work permit at Dorval in Montreal was nice and simple. They were even happy to let me pay for it by credit card. On the other end of the flight, the cabbie who drove me to Williamsburg from LGA kept whining about how short a distance I was riding in his cab, as though I should feel guilty for it! And then he turned down a $5 tip on a credit card in favour of cash fare that was almost a buck lower than what the meter demanded. So weird. I couldn't stay at my sister's place because they were hosting a French juggler but I did get to have dinner with them on my first day in NYC and he entertained us by juggling random fruit, including a banana. The guy was amazing: he could juggle under his leg and behind his back!

My primary reason for moving to NYC a couple of weeks before I was scheduled to start work was to find a place to live. I had already been combing through Craigslist for the past week and lining up appointments to see places in Williamsburg and the East Village, the two affordable areas within convenient commuting distance. I only ended up looking at one place in the East Village and it was half a living room that had been partitioned off for use as a bedroom, which I didn't like. Funnily enough, I ended up living in the 2nd place I saw, which is only a 5 min walk South of the L train and comes with an awesome roommate.

Although the NYC subway system is supposed to be one of the best in the world, I had a poor experience wth it during my first week in town. On the first day there was smoke in the tunnel between Brooklyn and Manhattan, causing service on the L to be suspended for 2 hours. A few days later there was a nasty tornado that toppled trees onto the track and delayed the L in Brooklyn again. And on the weekend when a friend and I were taking the L with our bikes, the driver was a jerk. Hopefully things will be better once I get back from SF.

Another thing I'm looking forward to in NYC is games night, when a bunch of awesome people get together weekly at Google to play board/card games. They've been doing this for the past 3 years now and I've had a great time on both occasions when I've attended.

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Upon moving into my new room, I thought it'd be a good idea to paint the boring white walls a more pleasant colour. Having already tried a sandy colour in SF, I opted to use green this time. There's a paint store a few blocks from my new place so I picked up a gallon of paint and a set of painting gear there.

Before busting out the paint, I covered the entire floor with a tarp. This was not as simple as I'd expected because the tarp was 9x12 but my room is a little larger than that so I had to extend the tarp with another one to ensure complete coverage. I also taped the edges of the trimmings.

What I forgot to do was tape the door jambs and ceiling edges. Due to that oversight, I had to later get some primer and cover up the splotches that got on them. The other mistake I made was deciding to use a similarly light colour to accent the light green. This ended up looking awful and I had to buy another gallon of green paint to fix it. In the end, however, I'm fairly happy with the way my room looks now.

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For the past several years I'd been wanting to spend a summer in Montreal. This year I finally did it. Even though the summer did not turn out quite like I'd envisioned it would, I did enjoy my time in Montreal. Although the Metro has a good subway system, I found that it was nearly always more convenient (not to mention fun and cheaper) to get around by bicycle. At the beginning of the summer I found a used road bike for just $100 and, despite getting five flat tires in my first three months, it served me well. And I learned how to patch and change a flat tire, a skill that I had managed to avoid acquiring in my previous 4 years of daily biking. At one point my derailer broke but I was able to get it replaced quickly and cheaply at the Belleville Bike Co-op in old Montreal, which cemented its place as my favourite bike shop in the world.

Another thing I'd been meaning to do for years was get laser eye surgery. Having worn glasses to correct myopia and astigmatism since I was 12, I'd grown tired of having my glasses knocked off my face during sports and my brief experiment with contact lenses ended when I realized that I'd been scratching my cornea while putting them in. After waiting years for the technology to mature and my vision to stabilize, I finally decided to take the plunge this summer. Nearly four months after surgery, my vision is now effectively flawless. And compared to the ordeal that was Invisalign, Lasik offered far more bang for the buck.

During the three years I lived in San Francisco, I subscribed to a CSA program run by a local farm called Capay Organic, who delivered a box of seasonal produce to my door every week. I'd been hoping to do the same thing in Montreal but discovered that Montreal does not offer quite the same array of CSA programs as SF does. After a few weeks of shopping at regular grocery stores and being frustrated by the dearth of local organic produce, I was introduced to an alternate solution: local farmer's markets. I ended up being a regular volunteer at a biweekly farmer's market. The would generally give us volunteers a random assortment of produce to take home with us when we left and I often supplemented that with particular items that I purchased at the market.

Later in the summer I expanded my culinary repertoire by learning how to make casserole. After extensive reading and a week of practice, I can now make tasty casseroles quite reliably using whatever ingredients happen to be on hand. I'd been relying on a rice-cooker for the past few years but towards the end of August the one I'd been using all summer abruptly stopped working. Loathe to buy a new one just before I left Montreal and stuck with a large bag of rice that wasn't going to eat itself, I finally learned how to cook rice on a stove-top without burning it or producing a soggy mess.

Finally, just days before leaving Montreal, I got one last item off my bucket list. I watched the original Star Wars movies. For years, whenever I'd reveal that I hadn't yet seen them, people would first express astonishment and then declare that they had them on DVD and would watch them with me soon. But nobody ever did. Until a few days ago. The fallout from this experience included my acquisition of something I'd been lacking previously: the ability to critically judge movies. My lack of taste in movies had become something of a running joke because I would happily watch nearly anything and enjoy it. But comparing the characters in the original Star Wars with those in the prequels made me realize one very effective means of distinguishing good movies from bad.

While living in San Francisco, I'd been apprehensive about living in New York City because I'd grown accustomed to the mild climate and perceived NYC as being very materialistic by comparison. However, a variety of events over the past several months persuaded me to give NYC a shot. Although I'd be fibbing if I didn't admit to mild trepidations about the cold winters and high cost of living, overall I'm feeling optimistic about this new phase of my life. In particular, there seems to be an even better farmer's market culture in NYC and I look forward to exploring it until the snow falls.

If you've been following my adventures since I left SF, you might be wondering what became of my experiments with developing mobile apps. Here's the short version. I learned a lot about the technologies behind them, wrote a few apps, realized that I didn't enjoy writing software entirely on my own, and decided to join a startup instead, as had been my fallback plan all along. I certainly don't regret my decision to give it a shot and someday I will probably try starting my own venture again. But next time I'll make sure I have a partner.

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Last weekend Anita and I decided to spend a few days this week visiting the Eastern Townships as a break from city life. With a bit of effort, we found somebody in Magog with whom to couch-surf for 3 days mid-week. Our intention had been to take our bikes on the bus and use them to get around once we were there. Unfortunately, Anita forgot to lock hers up for a few hours the night before we were supposed to leave and it was only while packing that she realized she still had the lock with her. By then, of course, it had already been stolen. Faced with this last-minute hiccup, we figured we could just hitch-hike our way around instead.

Much to my surprise, the bus was packed. I had no idea so many people would be going to the Eastern Townships on a Tuesday morning. Upon arrival in Magog, we ate lunch at a little place called Chich Taouk, which our hostess, Marthe, had recommended. Anita even had some meat! After lunch we hitched a ride to Marthe's house, where she told us a few things about the town and then sent us on our way to the lake. Walking down the street, I was puzzled to notice that the traffic lanes had been created using wet toilet paper!

The lake was cold. Not so cold that we didn't immerse ourselves in it but cold enough that we had to keep moving around in it to generate heat. After we'd had our fill of swimming around, we lay around on the grass to dry off before playing frisbee and then returning to Marthe's for dinner. We helped Marthe make a casserole type dish. It was fun cooking with her because she had so many culinary gadgets. Marthe regaled us with fascinating stories until it was time for bed.

I joined Marthe for brekki around 8:30am. Although she doesn't eat fruits because the citric acid makes her fingers hurt, she had bought some just for us. I cut them into little pieces and proceeded to eat them very slowly until Anita eventually joined us and took over that task. Energized for the day, we were driven by Marthe to Mont Orford so we could hike up it. 

Despite stopping a few times for some impromptu bouldering, we made it to the summit, where we enjoyed a view that extended as far as Vermont. There were several yurts around, which are probably used by skiers during the Winter. I'd never been inside a yurt before so was quite enthralled by them. We took a gentler route down but, even so, I had to walk backwards to relieve the strain on my toes. It took a few tries this time but we were again able to hitch a ride back to Marthe's for dinner.

This time we followed dinner with some Coaticook ice-cream, which is made in a little town near Magog using the traditional method. It started raining while we ate but we decided to go out anyway because Marthe had told us about a free concert going on nearby. She drove us there and we enjoyed performances by 4 different string quartets playing pieces by Hadyn, Shostakovich and Beethoven. There was also some lovely vocal music by an opera singer but by the time she went on all the carbon dioxide in the church hosting the concert was making me sleepy. But not so sleepy that I didn't eat a bowl of porridge when we got back.

I ate porridge again in the morning and then Marthe drove us downtown so we could stroll through the marshlands. There were a few informative signs about the local fauna but of course none of them were in English so we made hazardous guesses at translation. Once we strayed far enough from the edges of suburbia, the marshes made for some gorgeous views. But the best part was when we discovered wild blueberries growing in them. We tried to offer some to passers-by but only one family accepted them.

By the time we got to the end of the marsh trail, my feet were pretty sore and I wanted to take the shortest route back to the city so we could grab lunch and rest. Sadly, we got lost trying to find the lake. After buying snacks from a dep, we managed to hitch a ride back into town, only to discover that Chich Taouk was closed for an hour between lunch and dinner and we'd just missed the lunch shift. We spent the better part of an hour looking for another place that offered reasonably priced vegetarian fare but in the end we just came back when it reopened for dinner. After we hitched yet another ride and packed up our stuff, Marthe kindly dropped us off at the bus station.

Interestingly, the bus we took back to Montreal was nearly empty.

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The fire alarm in my apartment building went off while I was cooking lunch today. It had been raining earlier so I grabbed a raincoat and my keys before heading down the fire escape. On my way down I found that several tenants had been using the fire escape as extra storage, blocking it with chairs, empty beer bottles and various other crap. Fortunately, I seemed to be the only person using the fire escape, which mystified me somewhat.

Upon reaching the lobby, I was amazed to discover that not only were there no other people there but the doorman was MIA too! A quick glance at the alarm console told me that it had been pulled on the 10th floor. I live on the 5th floor I would have been pretty far removed from the action if there was actually a fire. Nevertheless, I figured it wasn't worth the risk so I walked to the grocery store, intending to return in 20 minutes or so and see if the situation had been resolved.

On my way there I did see a fire truck with sirens blaring heading toward my building and by the time I returned the alarms had been shut off, although the elevators hadn't been turned back on yet so I had to walk up. Not very exciting at all.

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"Hey Jenny, ya ever wonder why there aren't any trees in front of me?"

"Oh George, must you bring that up again? I've told I don't mind handing you leaves from the tree behind you. After all, if you starved to death, I'd miss you terribly."

"I know, Jenny, and I do appreciate that you always feed me too but I just think that, you know, it'd be nice if I could return the favour now and then. If only there was some way I could make myself face the other direction..."

"That's crazy talk, George, and you know it!"

"Why must you always be so dismissive of my ideas, Jenny?"

"Well, for starters, you'd have to stick your head sideways out of the plate to turn around and that simply isn't possible."

What makes you think there isn't a 3rd dimension, Jenny?

"Hush, George! What if somebody heard you talking like that?"

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Since moving to Montreal 3 weeks ago, I have been cooking about twice a day. Based on my experiments, I have come up with a recipe for a delicious and nutritious meal that is both cheap and easy to prepare. Here it is.

Equipment:

• kettle (for boiling water, which can be done in a pot or microwave if you don't have a kettle)
• skillet and spatula
• pot
• wooden spoon
• cutting board
• chef's knife
• spice/coffee grinder (optional)

Raw materials:

• 1/2 cup cous-cous
• vegetable oil (e.g. olive, sunflower, canola, sesame)
• 2 carrots
• a handful of chives or 4-5 leeks
• 10-12 fingers okra
• 6-8 mushrooms
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• a few pitted black olives. [green may work but I haven't tried them]

Powdered spices (best made fresh in a grinder):

• cumin
• cilantro
• turmeric
• red chilli (go easy on this)
• fenugreek
• black pepper

Method:

1. Grind the spices if you have whole spices and a grinder.
2. Wash the veggies.
3. Pour some oil into the skillet and put it on a low flame.
4. Slice the carrots and add to pan.
5. Chop the chives/leeks into itty bitty pieces and add to pan.
6. Slice the okra and add to pan.
7. Add half the spices to pan and stir.
8. Chop mushrooms into quarters, add to pan and stir again.
9. Cover pan with lid.
10. Add a cup of water to the kettle and begin heating.
11. Check your email and return when the kettle screams.
12. Mix cous-cous with 1/2 cup boiling water, salt and remainder of spices in pot.
13. Stir with wooden spoon and cover with plate.
14. Turn flame off under skillet and stir contents.
15. You have time for one more quick email check but don't forget about the food!
16. When cous-cous seems to have absorbed all the water, ad a tablespoon of oil and fluff with fork.
17. Add contents of skillet to pot and stir.
18. Garnish with olives and serve. Serves one person with my appetite so probably good for two regular people.
19. Don't forget to wash your dishes!

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Go to http://qntm.org/files/hatetris/hatetris.html

Click the "show a replay" button.

Paste this into the dialog box and hit OK:

C02A AAAA AAAB 00AA AAAA AC08 AAAA AAC2 AAAA AAAA C2AA AAAA AEAA AAAA AA56 AAAA AAAA B55A AAAA AA96 AAAA AAAA D5AA AAAA A9AA AAAA AAB5 AAAA AAAA AAAA AAAA DAAA AAAA 9756 AAAA AA8A AAAA AAAB AAAA AAAB 5AAA AAAB 56AA AAAA AAAA A82A AAAA B00A AAAA A6D6 AB55 6AAA AAA9 4AAA AAA6 AAAA AD56 AAAA B56A AAAA 032A AAAA A65B F00A AAAA AA6E EFC0 2AAA AAAA EB00 AAAA AAA8 0AAA AAAA 802A AAAA AA54 AAAA AAA1 AAAA AAA0 AAAA AAA0 0AAA AAAA C02A AAAA B002 AAAA B00A AAAC 2AAA AAB0 AAAA AEAA AAA9 5AAA AAA9 D5AA AAA5 AAAA AAB5 6AAA A6AA AAAB 5AAA AAAA AAAA DAAA AAD5 56AA AA2A AAAA BAAA AAD6 AAAB 56AA AAAA 82AA AC02 AAA7 B5AA D556 AAAA 52AA A6AA B55A AB56 AA80 FCAA AAA5 583F 0AAA A9BB BF00 AAAA AE80 32AA AA82 FAAA A802 AAAA 96AA AA1A AAA8 2AAA A00A AAAB 00AA AB00 AAB0 AAAB 0AAB AAA9 5AAA AD56 AA5A AAB5 6AAC 02A9 AAAB 5AAA AAAD AAB5 5AA2 AAAE AA0A AAB2 AAD5 6AB5 AA02 AAA0 0AAA B55A AD6A BAAC 2AAB 0AA0 C2AA C02A

Be amazed.

If you aren't impressed, try playing the game yourself and see how hard it is.

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Having worn eyeglasses since I was 12, I'd been meaning to get laser eye surgery for several years but was waiting until the technology had stabilized and I could afford it. About a year ago I decided to get it after I was done with Invisalign. Last week, not long after I moved to Montreal for the summer, I ran across a Lasik MD booth in a mall and scheduled myself for a free consult.

Meanwhile, I'd been doing a lot of research on the various options for laser eye surgery and the risks involved with each. At my consult, I discovered that my large pupils (8mm) meant I couldn't use the standard Lasik procedure, which has become very cheap. Instead I'd need the more expensive Wavefront laser. At least I had thick corneas so I wouldn't need to undergo the pain of PRK. I mulled over it for a couple of days, knowing that I could afford the surgery and the surgeon assigned to me was one of the best in Canada but also that there was a 1% chance of complications and a 15% chance of minor regressions.

The day that I finished the Invisalign treatment my glasses also came apart. That was the last straw; I got Wavefront Lasik two days later. The operation itself lasted only a few minutes and was entirely painless. They'd warned me that my vision might remain blurry until the next morning but I was actually able to see fine immediately afterward. That night, however, I realized that I was experiencing ghosting in my right eye when looking at light sources (like traffic lights and neon signs).

Upon my return to the clinic the next morning for a post-op exam, they detected that my right corneal flap had a microfold, which was most likely causing the ghosting. Apparently those are unavoidable and common. Fortunately, they are also easily fixed. The surgeon simply peeled back the flap and smoothed it out. My right eye had blurry vision for the remainder of the day but the ghosting had stopped.

When I awoke the next morning, everything looks great. I returned to the clinic once again for a check-up and was told I now had 20/20 vision. [The ability to burn through steel with my eyes would come later, they promised.] Apparently most people wait 5-7 days before getting to 20/20 so I've been fortunate to have recovered quite fast. Here's hoping I don't experience any regressions in the next few months.

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In Bangkok, for the first time, we stayed in a hotel with a swimming pool. The pool was necessary because Katherine had been so badly bitten by mosquitoes that she was in dire need of chlorinated water in which to soak. After checking in, we ate dinner at a nearby restaurant that had an awesome tuk-tuk sign posted outside and then went right to bed, exhausted after a long day of travelling.

In the morning I awoke early (as usual) and set off on my own to find some street food for brekki. Before eating I stopped by a park to enjoy the fascinating sculptures on display there. While doing that I discovered a swimming pool that was open to anybody who wished to purchase a very cheap annual membership. And, of course, there were a bunch of people practicing Tai Chi. As I was about to leave the park, I heard music start playing all around me and everybody suddenly stopped and stood very still. It took me a few seconds to realize what was going on: the daily national anthem!

When Tony and Katherine had been trying to catch their flight from Tokyo to Bangkok a few days before, they'd missed it because Tony had forgotten his passport at home. They were able to purchase and take a different flight later that day, at which point they thought the incident had been put behind them. Unfortunately, however, Expedia then left them a message informing them that their return flight had been cancelled by China Airlines because they'd missed the original one. Annoyed at this reckless behaviour, we decided to visit the China Airlines office in Bangkok.

Getting there proved to be complicated because Google Maps gave us the wrong location for the office but eventually we found it. The woman at the customer service desk was extremely nice and promised Tony that he could get most of his trip refunded. She explained that, although the original return flight no longer had any seats available, they should be able to take a different flight within a day of it. That seemed reasonable enough so we left. But it then took several additional frustrating phone calls to Expedia before they were actually able to get the refund.

In the afternoon, after returning from China Airlines, it was very hot so we hit the pool. We had the entire thing to ourselves, which was nice. But there's only so long we could handle lounging in the pool and eventually it began to get a little chilly so we left for the Victory Monument, which is where I'd accidentally ended up when I caught the express bus from the airport a few days earlier.

By the time we reached it, we were rather hungry. The monument is littered with snack vendors so Katherine and Tony wanted to just nibble on snacks as we wandered around. Normally that would have been a problem for me because eating is a heavyweight operation for me thanks to Invisalign. However, at that point I had just completed the fortnight-long cycle for that particular pair so I decided to try an experiment. Removing them for the rest of the evening, I snacked with impunity. The freedom of being able to eat at will gave me quite the rush! The experiment was marred only when I managed to cut my thumb while peeling a local fruit.

After snacking, we took the skytrain to Bangkok's largest park and walked around for a while. Katherine bought a can of beer before we learned that drinking alcohol was not permitted in the park. I thought it was odd that beer could be sold in there if nobody was supposed to actually drink it. While Katherine furtively stole sips of her beer, we amused ourselves by watching an enormous crowd participate in an outdoor dancercise session. Although the participants were mostly female, there were plenty of guys too. 

As darkness fell, we left the park for the night market just outside it. There was a wide variety of food available there, although they wouldn't take our money. We had to purchase coupons and then use those to buy food. I was initially skeptical about ending up with extra useless coupons at the end but Tony pointed out that they would happily refund unused coupons. I guess they must have instituted the system to isolate the handling of cash to a small number of people. The food stalls are arranged in two inward-facing rows on either side of a lawn filled with tables and chairs on which to eat. At one end of the lawn is a stage on which various musical numbers are accompanied by dancing. It's a very pleasant experience.

Once we'd eaten it was time to hit the shops. Bargaining was underway everywhere we turned. Tony and I eventually grew tired of walking around and sat down to rest while Katherine continued window-shopping. I noticed several old white men accompanied by cute young Thai women. That didn't surprise me but what did was a young European dude with tattoos all over his arms yelling at an overly made-up Thai woman for trying to steal his medicines. She returned them and slunk off, disappointed. 

On our final day in Bangkok we decided to visit the zoo. I've been to many zoos in my life and this one was by no means among the best. However, I think I saw more interesting things there than I have any any of the others! At one point we were walking around when I spotted a strange lizard on the road being attacked by a crow. Never having seen a crow attack a lizard before, I stopped to watch. The crow seemed to be taking its time, waiting for a few seconds between attacks. The lizard, meanwhile, was desperate to escape and struggled mightily every time the crow grabbed it in its beak. Suddenly a young European woman walked by and, taking pity on the lizard, tried to shoo away the crow!

Some time later, we were looking at the reptiles when I noticed a snake that had just gotten hold of a mouse in its mouth. I think it had killed the mouse already and was about to swallow it. I hung around, curious to see what this swallowing process looks like, having never witnessed it before. The snake appeared to be in no hurry as it just lay there with the mouse in its mouth, tail sticking out, for a couple of minutes before finally getting down to business. Unhinging its jaw, it slowly stretched its mouth open even wider and very slowly used peristalsis to move the mouse into its gullet. Eventually the tail had vanished and there was a bulge in the snake's body that continued to move down. An amazing sight to behold.

At one point we walked into the sea lion show and found a troupe of monks in training. I'd never seen so many young boys in the traditional orange robes with their heads shaved! Despite being well behaved, they were by far the most playful monks I've ever seen. They seemed quite amused when I decided to climb onto a large dinosaur statue. 

By the time we left the zoo, we were quite weary from walking around in the heat for hours and watching a movie in an air-conditioned mall seemed like a welcome change. Alice in Wonderland was playing in IMAX 3D so we saw that before returning to our hotel room. I had an early morning flight to Toronto by way of Tokyo and Washington DC so I asked for a wake-up call. As it happened, I woke up on my own right around when I wanted to, which was good because that call never came! 

I took a cab to the airport, rescued my luggage and caught my flight, making it all the way to DC without incident. In DC, however, I had to go through the US CBP and the line was so long that I missed my flight to Toronto. The CBP officer was amused by the fact that I've had four different kinds of US visas but since I was just in transit he didn't ask me any questions and I was able to get on the next flight to Toronto easily enough.

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Rather than flying back to Kuala Lumpur again before heading to Canada, I decided to simply fly into Toronto directly from Thailand. This meant that, unlike my forays into Cambodia and Sri Lanka, I had to take all my stuff with me when I left KL. That proved to be problematic because I was flying from KL to Bangkok on Air Asia, which has a much lower baggage allowance than my flight from SF to KL did. I ended up discarding a bunch of stuff in KL and still having to pay $40 in excess baggage fees. 

I also needed to exchange hundreds of ringgits for dollars after getting my rental deposit back. I'd hoped to do this at the airport but ended up getting there later than I'd meant to and standing in the wrong line for a while. To make things worse, I almost left my passport at the check-in counter. Fortunately, the flight had been delayed so I had enough time to visit a currency exchange booth. They were able to give me some Thai baht but when I asked for Canadian dollars they did not have any so I ended up settling for greenbacks instead.

When I landed in Bangkok, after leaving my suitcases at the Left Baggage station, I caught a bus into the city. According to Google Transit, I needed to transfer to another bus so I could meet my friends Tony and Katherine, who were visiting from Tokyo, at the Ekkemai transit station. Unfortunately, I had no way of knowing when to get off the bus and the conductor gave me the wrong information so I ended up going too far and found myself at the Victory Monument, which is quite far from Ekkemai. I was supposed to meet them at 2pm and it was already 1:40 so I took a cab to Ekkemai and got there with barely a few minutes to spare.

From Ekkemai we caught another bus and then a ferry to the island of Ko Samet. It was already dark when we arrived and we weren't sure exactly where our cabin was but Tony managed to lead us to it. The cabin had a miniscule bathroom and the veranda had a low-hanging beam on which I kept bumping my head but it did offer a nice view of the water. And there were a couple of pigs outside!

In the morning Tony and I set off to explore the island while Katherine slept. I noticed a tamarind tree growing near the cabin. Although most of the fruit had been eaten by ants, I managed to find a couple of god ones. I kept one for myself and fed the other to one of the pigs. As in Sri Lanka, there were no bicycles to be had. Apparently motorcycles are all the rage these days. What we did find was a place that served amazing pancakes and had hammocks to lie in after eating them.

We also found a better place at which to stay. It was run by a guy whose name was also Tony! Although we had to share the bathrooms, they were very pretty. Initially I thought there was no wifi but when I asked about it, they told me they'd just forgotten to turn on the router that morning and then did so. These people take power-conservation seriously! 

After moving our stuff to the new hostel, we headed to the conservation park where, for a few dollars, we gained access to a beach with gorgeous white sand, an incredibly gentle slope, crystal clear water, no current and barely any waves! We played in the water for hours, amazed by how the water seemed more like a giant swimming pool than a seashore. For lunch I ate congee and cheap fruit at a beach-side restaurant. The only problem with the beach was that there didn't appear to be any toilets anywhere on it, which eventually forced us to return to our hostel. 

Katherine and Tony decided to take a nap but I wasn't sleepy so I headed out on my own. Finding a little store that sold fruit, I bought and ate a mango and a coconut. I also picked up a pair of imitation Crocs before deciding to get a massage. Traditional Thai massage turned out to be similar to Khmer massage at the macro level, although the details are different. By the time I got back to the hostel, the mosquitoes were starting to make their appearance for the evening. Tony didn't seem to be bothered by them much but I got several nasty bites and Katherine was practically covered in them.

Once we'd picked up some more insect-repellent, we went out for dinner. I'm pretty sure our waitress was a tranny. I ordered fried noodles and they were really good. During my time in North America, I hadn't been a huge fan of Thai food but those noodles made me realize that I simply hadn't eaten good Thai food before. I washed them down with a pina shake that was gone almost as soon as my lips touched the straw.

Having sated our appetites, we strolled over to see what the beach looked like at night. There were glowing coloured balls hanging everywhere and music playing from various restaurants, all of which were packed with tourists. On the sand there were some fire dancers, a few of whom looked like their daytime activities were confined to a classroom. Also on the sand were some food carts hawking roti pancakes. If it hadn't been for my Invisalign, I would have eaten a pancake.

The next morning a thunderstorm broke over the island and we were stuck inside the hostel waiting for it to end before we could catch the ferry back to the mainland. The staff took advantage of the excess water to clean the floors! We watched the storm for a couple of hours before it finally died down enough that we could make a break for it.

When we got to the mainland, we had plenty of time before the bus was supposed to leave for Bangkok so we killed time at the market across the street for half an hour before returning to board the bus. Unfortunately, when we tried to get on, we were told that what we thought were return tickets were actually vouchers for tickets and we needed to exchange them for tickets to board. Kinda annoying but the ticket booth was right there so it seemed simple enough.

Ten minutes later we finally got to the head of the short but slow-moving queue and were told that all the seats on this bus were already sold and we'd have to take the next one in an hour. We could see quite clearly that there were several empty seats on the bus but pointing that out didn't seem to get us anywhere. So we had to watch in frustration as a bus they claimed was full pulled away with entire rows of empty seats staring tantalizingly at us.

We amused ourselves for an hour with the free wifi and a gigantic cockroach before boarding the next bus. It made good time until we hit traffic in Bangkok, at which point we crawled along beside the Skyrain track as trains whizzed by us. I would have loved to just get off and take the Skytrain but we had luggage that had been stowed so that wasn't an option and we had to wait nearly a hour before we could disembark.

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For our last night in Sri Lanka, Anita and I decided to sleep in Negombo because it's actually closer to the international airport than Colombo is. But I really wanted to stop in Colombo on the way to have one last faluda before we left the country. When we tried to buy tickets for the train from Galle to Colombo, once again they had no first-class seats available. But having seen what second-class was like, we figured that third-class wouldn't be any worse and got tickets for the instead, thereby obtaining the trifecta.

As it turned out, there were a plethora of seats in third-class. Unfortunately, the only others in our car were a group of hooligans who acted like they'd never seen a woman on a train before. Ultimately I swapped seats with Anita so I was between them and her.

The faluda in Colombo was most enjoyable but afterward we had to wait a very long time for the train and it took far longer than we'd expected to reach Negombo. By the time we got there, none of the buses were running and we were forced to resort to a tuk-tuk for the third time so we could get to our hostel. We didn't have enough cash to pay for it and there wasn't really enough time to hit an ATM so I paid in USD and ended up with a lot of effectively useless rupees as change. 

Our flights were scheduled to depart only a couple of hours apart so we accompanied each other to the airport early in the morning. The tuk-tuk driver who was supposed to drop us off at the main bus depot actually dropped us off a block away and told us to wait for the airport shuttle to come by. Ever suspicious of tuk-tuk drivers, we went off in search of the actual bus depot and found the shuttle there. It was good that we did so because it by the time it left the depot, there was no room left on it and it shot right by the place we'd been dropped off without stopping to pick up any of the unfortunate people waiting there.

At the airport we discovered that everything was done backwards. We had to go through security first and then show our boarding passes. I didn't have mine yet but we somehow bamboozled the staff into believing that Anita's itinerary printout covered both of us. Upon reaching the airline counter, I was informed that they didn't use computers and had to look me up by name on a sheet of paper before handing me my boarding pass! Although the departure gates for both of us were right beside each other, they wouldn't let Anita through to wait with me because her flight wasn't for another two hours. So I blew her a kiss through the glass pane before stepping onto the aeroplane.

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After a long bus ride, Anita and I arrived at the port city of Galle, home to an old Dutch fort. We had booked a room at a hostel inside the fort itself so we checked in there before going for a stroll around the fort's ocean-facing walls. Our walk was punctuated by the discovery and dissection of yet another weird fruit, a charlatan who dried piquing our interest in sketchy gems, and an accidental detour into the maritime academy. 

The next day we decided to compose brekki entirely of local fruit. Leaving the fort, we went into town in search of fruits and returned with, among other things, half a jakfruit. Anita had never cut open a jakfruit before and my memory of doing so was rather hazy so we forgot to remove the core and thus ended up with sap all over our hands. Unlike the sap of most plants, jakfruit sap cannot be removed by mere glycerine and water. We had to use coconut oil to dissolve the sap and then use soap to get rid of the oil! At least we did end up with a large mound of delectable jakfruit flesh :-)

Near Galle is a beach town called Unawatuna and we'd been hoping to bike there for a day trip. But the selection of bikes at our hostel was pretty awful and nobody else in the fort seemed to have bikes available for rent. So we ended up taking the bus instead. Unawatuna had gorgeous waves and wasn't crowded at all but the sand had sharp gravel in random places, the slope of quite steep and the height differential between when a wave hit us and the tide pulled back was a mind-blowing three feet. When we'd had our fill of playing on the beach, we ate lunch and then I promptly fell into a food coma for the next two hours. When I woke up, Anita informed me that she'd been trying to wake me up by waving jakfruit in front of my nose, which made me laugh because that's exactly the sort of thing I would do. 

Upon returning to the fort in Galle, we decided to finish our exploration of the walls. This time, however, we were accosted by sketchy people and security guards who didn't speak any English. Apparently we had been loitering near an active military camp the day before the president was supposed to visit the fort and they thought we were up to no good! But when we returned the next morning nobody seemed to mind any more so we had a chance to shoot some excellent photographs on the fortifications by the ocean.

We'd been running low on cash all this time and when we had lunch for the last time in Galle, we calculated how much food we could afford before ordering. Unfortunately, we neglected to account for the taxes and fell short of the amount required to settle our bill. To our great relief, the restaurant didn't make a big deal out of it and let us off with nary a scolding. We ended our stay in Galle with a trip to the marine archaeological museum, where I learned that Ceylon was populated in the stone age and even as far back as a couple of millennia ago it was trading with the Roman empire!

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Anita and I had wanted to ride to Ella from Kandy by train in 1st class but they were sold out by the time we tried to get tickets so we settled for 2nd class instead. Unfortunately, by the time we made it onto the train, there were no seats available in 2nd class so we had to stand. The journey lasted several hours and I quickly decided that I had no desire to stand for that long so I just squatted on the floor instead and Anita soon joined me. We did, however, take periodic breaks from sitting on the floor to hang out the side of the train and enjoy the gorgeous view as it rushed by. Eventually some seats freed up and a Spanish couple we'd befriended nabbed two of them but were kind enough to let us share one of the two seats for the rest of the ride while they shared the other.

Towards the end of the trip, we were approached by a man touting a hostel in Ella. Despite our misgivings about touts and the fact that we had already booked another hostel, his offer sounded tantalizingly good so we agreed to take a gamble and check it out. Incredibly, it proved to be as good as he'd claimed and we decided to stay there. After checking in we wandered around in search of dinner but I was put off by all the flies, although Anita seemed to almost revel having them around. In the end we ate at the hostel and their food turned out to be very good.

After dinner we stopped by a local bar for a bottle of coconut toddy and then went for a walk in the nearby hills. We ended up getting a bit lost as darkness settled, although we eventually found our way back. I was pretty hungry after our walk but discovered to my great dismay that the hostel shut down at 10pm and we were no longer allowed to order food or even to leave! After haranguing the hostel owner for a while, he gave me a complimentary snack so I wouldn't have to go to bed on an empty stomach.

In the morning we treated ourselves to delicious coconut and honey pancakes for brekki and then caught a bus to the nearby waterfall. There was supposed to be a historically interesting cave at the top of the waterfall so we tried to find it. Unfortunately, even my well-honed climbing skills were no match for the smooth rock of the waterfall and after several attempts at scaling it we were forced to give up. 

When we got back, I raised my tolerance for flies in order to inject some diversity into our cuisine and we were able to find a place that served brown rice. I had been craving brown rice for several weeks so was delighted to find some. After lunch we picked up a clay pot of buffalo curd as a snack and went off in search of a hill called Little Adam's Peak. Before we left, however, we stopped by the hostel to borrow spoons and the waiter gave us just one spoon, saying it would be better that way because then we could feed each other!

Along the way there we came across these steps carved into the rock and, being the curious creatures we are, simply had to walk up them. The moment we reached the top we were greeted (in English) by a really sweet Sri Lankan woman named Kanthi who invited us into her home. We accepted her invitation and she told us about the crafts she'd been working on. Anita shard her passion for them so they got along very well and she offered us some tea but we couldn't stay very long because we didn't want to get lost in the dark again. We did, however, promise to drop by again on our way back.

We hadn't gone much further when Anita spotted a little temple by the side of the road so we walked over to take a look and were greeted by the family who owned it. They were just as friendly as Kanthi had been and gave us a tour of their little vegetable plots as well as a brief history of the temple, which had been in their family for 3 generations. After leaving the temple we kept walking towards the peak but eventually realized that there was no way we'd get to it in time to find our way back before nightfall. Settling for a view of the peak from across a valley filled with tea bushes, we sat down and ate our buffalo curds with some honey that Anita had brought with her from India.

As promised, we stopped by Kanthi's home for tea on the way back. Her 2 kids seemed quite excited by our visit and her daughter even gave Anita a dance lesson after performing for us in their living room! Kanthi herself taught Anita how to tie a sari in the Sri Lankan style that had captured her fancy when she saw women sporting it on the buses. We had a lovely time chatting with Kanthi about life in Sri Lanka before heading back to the hostel.

Suresh, the hostel owner had ofered to give us a tour of his organic farm before we left so we took him up on it. In the morning we checked out and got into a tuk tuk that he drove to the farm. Apparently he had teamed up with a Canadian to run the farm and they had been planning to turn it into an eco-resort at prices that blew our minds.

The farm had an impressively diverse mixture of crops. I can't even remember all the stuff they had growing there! It was 30 hectares and bounded by a river on 3 sides with a functioning well on the property. As I asked Suresh about his life story I was amazed by how entrepreneurial he was. After spending a few years working for Toyota in Japan, he had returned to Sri Lanka to open the hostel and then gotten involved with the farm in addition to that! After giving us a thorough tour of the farm, he dropped us off at the nearest bus stop so we could head South to the coast.

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On the day we had planned to leave Colombo for Kandy, we didn't need to catch our train until 3:30 in the afternoon. Wanting to make the most of our morning, we checked out of the hostel, left our luggage at the front desk and hopped on the local train into the city to visit the Natural History Museum. By the time we were crowded out of there by an unending stream of elementary school kids, we were both quite hungry so we had lunch in the city before catching the local train back to Mt. Lavinia to rescue our luggage. Unfortunately, while on the train, we realized that we probably wouldn't have enough time to take the local train back into the city to catch the intercity express to Kandy.

Desperate circumstances called for desperate measures. For the first time, we decided to take a tuk-tuk to the hostel from the Mt. Lavinia station instead of walking. Upon getting there, we sought advice from the proprietress, who advised us to catch a city bus to the main train station, since those run much more frequently than the local train. When we got stuck in traffic on the bus, I wasn't sure if we'd make it after all but Anita remained remarkably optimistic about us catching the bus. Eventually the traffic cleared and we did make it into the city to catch our train. We even had a few minutes to spare!

The first-class seats we'd purchased were quite comfortable for the journey and we enjoyed the scenic beauty along the way, although it was dark by the time we finally arrived in Kandy. This time we hadn't booked a hostel room in advance because none of the cheap ones listed in the guide books or online seemed to have phone numbers! We'd hoped, therefore, to simply find one when we got there. Unfortunately, that proved to be an exercise in frustration. Both the places we had planned to check out were full and getting directions from the locals felt like dental extraction on large striped felines. Burned out from walking around with our backpacks in the dark, we caved in again and let a tuk-tuk driver take us to a random hostel that gave us a rather spartan room at a price that, while higher than we'd been hoping to pay, was not unreasonable.

On the morrow, refreshed from a good night's sleep and aided by daylight, we set off by bus to visit the Botanical Gardens. Like most other big attractions in the country, they had one price for locals and another one, 20 times higher, for tourists. Since I kept being mistaken for a local, we decided to try and sneak in as locals. The guy at the ticket booth didn't flinch when I handed him the amount for 2 locally-priced tickets. Unfortunately, when we tried to actually enter the park, the gatekeeper tried talking to me in Sinhalese and when I failed to reply, he requested to see our ID. We ended up having to pay full price after all but it was worth a shot.

Wandering around the gardens, we came upon a tree with a thick vine that looped down to form a natural swing. Unable to resist, we started hanging from it and Anita even sat in it. We'd been somewhat worried that the nearby gardener might object to us playing on the tree but he turned out to be remarkably cool and we even convinced him to sit in the loop himself! Not all the staff were like him, unfortunately, as I was thoroughly reprimanded for climbing up a giant Java fig tree in a different area of the park. In addition to climbing trees, we also found some odd fruits, one of which we dissected to identify as a type of almond.

After sitting out the afternoon heat in our hostel-room, we went for a walk around the lake. Despite having been warned by legions of tuk-tuk drivers that the perimeter was several kilometers, it turned out to be a fairly short (and very pleasant) walk. About halfway around, we discovered the famous Kandy cultural dance show was about to begin so, on a whim, we bought tickets and went inside. It was amusing to be amongst a scarce handful of brown people for a change as the audience was mostly foreign tourists. When the show was over, we continued our stroll around the lake with a stop in downtown Kandy for sketchy street food.

The next day we caught an intercity bus headed North and eventually ended up in the little town of Sigiriya, where we'd been told there was an ancient city built on a large rock. Finding lodging was much easier this time around but we quickly discovered that it cost $25 to see the ancient city. While that may sound relatively cheap by the standards of industrialized countries, both of us has been traveling around Asia for long enough that it seemed like a complete rip-off. Disgusted, we decided to rent bikes and see the countryside instead. The bikes we rented were in terrible condition but they worked. Eventually we dismounted and went hiking for a while, which was an amazing experience because the scenery was beautiful and there was virtually nobody around. We even found tamarind growing in the wild!

After returning to the hostel for dinner and a nap, we headed back out at dusk to look for wild elephants, taking our flashlights with us. To my dismay and Anita's relief, there were no wild elephants to be found. Instead we came across wild dogs. Well, they weren't actually wild but they sure acted like it. We had to use the beam of our flashlights to keep them at bay while we slowly retreated to the hostel.

We left Sigiriya the next morning and returned to Kandy. The bus ride this time swerved between exhilarating and terrifying as the driver awed us with his finely honed ability to pass in oncoming traffic. Our ride on the death bus ended shortly before it should have when the bus blew a tyre. We were all forced to disembark and board another bus for the last several minutes of the journey. On the bright side, it was early in the day when we returned to Kandy so we were able to scout around for hostels and found one closer to the lake for a slightly lower price. The place was being renovated so our room was surrounded by construction workers. We did our best to entertain them.

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I met Anita at the airport in Colombo. She'd also quit her engineering job in California last year and had been traveling around India for a few months. Like me, she'd been part of the bicycling community in San Francisco and used to get her veggies from a local farm. Unlike me, she'd arrived in Sri Lanka with an enormous backpack containing most of the stuff she'd been lugging around the Himalayas all Winter. Neither of us had a concrete idea of what we wanted to see in Sri Lanka, aside from living in hostels, taking trains/buses and eating cheap local food. We were, it seemed, destined to be travel buddies.

As we left the airport in search of a bus to the city, we were harangued by a plague of tuk-tuk drivers. It was a herald of things to come. The bus ride into the city ended up taking over two hours, long enough for my hunger pangs to kick in. Fortunately Anita had brought with her a ripe guava from India. She gave it to me and it was delicious. I liked her already.

Upon reaching Colombo, we found a tourist information office and inquired about taking trains around the country. Unexpectedly, we found ourselves getting the hard sell for a fancy package tour from this alleged government official. Feeling uneasy about the whole situation, we insisted that we wanted to take buses instead of hiring a private driver and left, although we decided to roughly follow the itinerary he had suggested for us, since it sounded pretty compelling.

We also took his recommendation on a place for lunch. The staff there must have found us most entertaining because they stood by our table and watched us eat with giant grins plastered across their faces. Eventually, however, my slow pace of eating wore them down and they literally pleaded with us to leave so they could seat other customers! Acquiescing, we bought 1st class train tickets to Kandy and then caught a bus to a beach-side hostel in nearby Mt. Lavinia.

After checking into a triple room that we shared with a Japanese girl, we walked to the beach. First we splashed around in the salty waves, then we build castles on the beautiful sand. When the sun grew too hot, we lay down under a parasol and chatted, our conversation punctuated by the local train as it rumbled passed. Soon we grew hungry and bought some snacks, including a king coconut. King coconuts are different from the ones I'd been used to in Malaysia because they have only water and no flesh. Even so, they're cheaper than bottled water and far tastier.

As we devoured our snacks, a gang of young Sri Lankans, mostly guys, showed up on on the beach. They told us they were engineering students from a nearby university and had come to party on the beach. It was fun to watch them dancing and we spent some time talking to a few of them. One of them was shocked to hear that there were no coconuts grown in the US. Evidently he'd seen palm trees on CSI Miami and assumed that they were coconut palms!

At Anita's urging, we ended our night on the beach by dissecting the shell of a coconut. It was to be the first of many random things we dissected. A girl after my own heart indeed.

In the morning we walked down the tracks to the nearby train station and rode the local train into Colombo. We'd been hoping to lie on the grass in a park but the grass was withered from the heat so we strolled along the beach instead. Anita wasn't feeling too well that morning so we soon stopped to rest at a nearby Buddhist temple that had a large golden statue and an interesting pagoda with depictions of the history of Buddhism in Sri Lanka.

After resting for a while, we headed back to the train station for lunch. The place we picked for lunch had a wonderful surprise in store for us: they served faluda, a delicious milky drink that I that despaired about ever finding again after I left Karachi. Anita had never tasted it before but after just one sip she had been won over. Although we were bowled over by the availability of faluda, we did have some trouble asking for a more mundane item: salt. Anita wanted some to help with her dehydration but we simply could not get across the concept of salt to the one waiter who spoke any English! After a long and frustrating struggle to communicate our desire for salt, another patron took pity on us and translated the word. I think the poor waiter was almost as relieved as we were.

When we returned to the beach, I spotted a bunch of guys playing cricket there. I was a little surprised that they were able to do so without constantly losing their ball to the waves. I actually wanted to join them but I was too tired and thirsty to bother. Instead we just relaxed at our hostel for a few hours before heading out for a bite.

There was a little restaurant on the main road near the hostel that appeared to have cheap local food. Inside it was a guy constantly chopping a mixture of veggies and meat with a pair of large metal implements. It sounded something like a drum beat and grabbed our attention as we walked by so we walked in and ordered the stuff he'd been making, which is called kutto. I was fascinated to discover that they served the food on a sheet of cling foil! Not only does this eliminate the need for washing plates but it makes for an instant doggie-bag at the end of the meal.

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