the Malaysian CowboyWonderful news: I discovered the Green River hotel does have internet, and over the past twelve hours I’ve worked hard to get the photos, videos and blog posts up. I’m still a few days behind, but Day 4 and Day 5 now have more complete accounts; go check those posts out 
! Day 6, 7 and, Day 8 (which I’m just starting now) will come in time. Again, I appreciate the patience…I think the message of this Panda Express fortune cookie (Day 7, for those playing at home) is wonderful.
Today’s Flickr Gallery | July 24th: Disneyland. When I was six years old, I made my one and only visit to Disneyworld in Orlando, Florida. At the time, I quite enjoyed myself. Thirteen years later, I’m glad to say I experienced much of the same enjoyment one comes to know only by having been there for yourself! That being said, apart from the video above, I’m going to try and detail what we did do.
After a two and a half-hour drive down to Anaheim, we arrived at the ripe hour of 9:30 to find parking already beginning to fill up. Given that Disneyland itself closes at midnight, we had designs on spending the entire day there. And, while we ended up leaving at around 10:30 instead of midnight, I can assure you we didn’t have to work too hard to tire ourselves out =P.
Today’s Flickr Gallery | July 23rd: I left Flagstaff at 8:30 in the am, and finally arrived at Rafaela’s place in Bakersfield around 5:30 in the evening. Needless to say, apart from the Houston-Amarillo drive, this was one of the longer drives thus far.
As has become the norm over the past few days, the day started with breakfast from the hotel. Having devoured the somewhat salty scrambled eggs and a sausage patty, I stopped to get some gas and check the tire pressure, which gave me a chance to snap the friendly hotel greeting:
The drive itself was filled with a variety of landscapes, starting with Seqouia National forest just outside of Flagstaff proper. Usually, when people think Arizona, they conjure images of vast, sweeping deserts and the iconic Grand Canyon. But when you get this high in elevation, you really come to appreciate the beautifully vast forest that its also home to.
It looked like it was going to rain. It did. Quite hard. Then it lightened up. Kind of. Eventually, I did in fact make it to the Grand Canyon, despite my musings to the contrary in the above video. As you’ll see, the bulk of today’s focus was indeed getting to the Grand Canyon.
Two quick things: today’s flickr gallery is here, yesterday’s is here, and you can view the entire Road Trip collection, as it continues to grow, here. The other thing is that you may notice the posts are coming progressively later-this is partly due to the fact that I’m moving further west and turning the clock back, and, I was pretty tired today, haha.
Leaving Albuquerque at 7:30 in the morning, I told myself I would need to make as few stops as possible in order to make it to the Grand Canyon by midday.
I did end up making a few stops, as my camera seemed to have a mind of its own, hitting the brakes and flipping on my turn signal without much work on my part…don’t know what I can really do about that beyond going with the flow 
.
I didn’t bother stopping for lunch, instead, I munched on this almond-cranberry-cashew nut trail mix that I’m sad to say I’m all out of at this point, but will probably end up getting again once I’m back in Houston and can find a Randalls. I daresay I may even have to make the stop before I pull into my driveway, ’cause it’s really that good.
Today was the day of the famed New Mexico green chile. I’d been told about it previously, but had to have some myself.
The New Mexico chile is a local cultivar of the species, or subspecies otherwise represented as Anaheim peppers. The large, flavorful New Mexican variety gives the region’s cuisine much of its distinctive style, and used so extensively that it is known simply as “chile”. Green chiles are those that are picked unripe; they are fire-roasted, then peeled before further use. Unlike the ultra-mild canned supermarket green chiles, New Mexico green chiles can range from mild to hotter than jalapeños, and come in grades of spiciness at markets that cater to chile aficionados. (Wikipedia)
Leaving the hotel at 8:30 in the morning, I set out from Amarillo at a rather leisurely pace. The drive to Albuquerque was considerably more straightforward as compared to Houston-Amarillo: I simply headed west all day on I-40, ’till I finally got to the city.
Slated to last about five hours, I made sure to stop at various points to get some shots of the fields, which eventually turned into more undeveloped desert areas.
Hello long-overdue blog post! Today I finally began my long-awaited road trip. It’s been a while since my original post about the trip. In that time, I’ve been rather busy, spending close to two months in Malaysia (for which there are blog posts I still haven’t written, but do plan to), in addition to planning for this trip.
The final route for the trip has me headed from Houston to Amarillo, then on to Albquerque, Flagstaff, Bakersfield, Las Vegas, Green River (Utah), Denver, back to Amarillo, Oklahoma City, Dallas, and finally, back to Houston! Also on the agenda are The Grand Canyon, Disneyland, Death Valley National Park, and perhaps a few other things.
Now, back to today: the Houston to Amarillo leg of the trip.
I left home around 5:45 in the morning, and finally arrived at my hotel in Amarillo around 5:30 in the evening. So, a little under 12 hours on the road. Not too bad, I think, considering the numerous short stops to take photos, lunch, and one more stop to stretch early on.
Below are a few photos from my phone, I’m uploading the ones taken with my proper camera at the moment, and the full gallery for today will be viewable at this link.
There were a ton of interesting sights along the way some of which I documented with photos, but I’m way too tired to go through everything right at the moment, so I’m going to let these three (short) videos do a little bit of the talking for now.
Random things worth noting:
I promise all further posts will be longer and more interesting than this brief status update; I doubt I’ll be nearly as tired! Otherwise, things are going swimmingly thus far!
For the past few years, talk of the US TV news media has been CNN’s decline in ratings even as MSNBC and Fox, while declining at some points, are doing considerably better. Much is made of CNN’s attempt at impartiality in an age where the other two main competitors are entirely upfront about their more opinionated anchors and biases, and the reality that what CNN is pushing clearly isn’t bringing in the ratings. While a good deal of time has been spent discussing these developments, I feel like spending a bit of time discussing why TV news has gone down this road, and what it means in a larger sense.
Prior to the internet age, news media consisted of print, radio, and television. With the advent of each format, different advantages were afforded: with print, no longer did one need to rely on word of mouth to hear of the latest happenings. Further, there was the “reliability” of institutions, rather than mere individuals, collaborating to give you the news. Radio brought us closer to real-time information dissemination, across vast swaths of land. And with TV, the fusion of both visual and auditory awesomeness, again with the relatively instantaneous form of communication, things seemed to have really hit big time. Yes, I’m simplifying a large amount of history here in these few sentences, but, again, my point is that each of these had particulars about them that drove their success.
Back to our brief history. With all this in the background, the internet came along. Though it began with websites based largely on text and a few images, today, thanks to improved connectivity and innovative projects, the internet is now a bustling world of media, disseminating information to the global masses at awesome speed, allowing said users to interact and give offer their own opinions and commentary.
Let me preface this by saying this is a really, really brief blog post. Almost Facebook/twitter status-update esque. That being said, I plan to make a post or two later this week, once I’m done being consumed by studying for my two finals tomorrow.
With that out of the way, I’d like to offer a recommendation for a relatively new track by Nas & Damian Marley (also known as Bob Marley’s youngest son.) Entitled “As We Enter”, it’s the first single from the duo’s collaboration “Distant Relatives”, set to be released on May 18th (which just happens to be my birthday, wazah!) The track features elements of reggae, with the typical hip hop feel that Nas is known for. From Swahili to Hummers over to Kingston, the song’s references touch upon the shared heritage the two have, announcing their return to the kingdom. If nothing else, the track is chock full of that “we’re taking over” mentality that’s sure to get your adrenaline pumping.
If I’m going to be honest, I have to admit that I’ve spent a good chunk of the past few years fighting off the notion that this high-stress, split-second age of the internet and ever-present connectivity has somehow acted in a detrimental manner with regards to my sanity. Countless times I’ve said to people that they were wrong about this information age being too damned complex for our minds to make it out unscathed.
Yesterday, I woke up to my alarms blaring. Yes, alarms: I set two to three each morning, and most of the time manage to sleep through them all, or hit the snooze button until I have just enough time to squeeze in all of my ever-so-important “priorities”. As I walk to my first class, I’m incessantly checking my email, cycling through four accounts; often, forgetting the content of some of those messages, which ends up coming back to bite me sometime later. I check how the markets are doing at some point during lunch, and make it a point to read the first few top stories on the New York Times. After that, it’s either back to class or time to head over to the gym, both of which I view as crucial to my daily succes. Perhaps I’ll have a meeting or two to attend at some point in the evening or afternoon, after which I’ll then return to my room to try to finish the homework due the next day. Chances are pretty decent that I’ll do so in the company of the bountiful laughter and discussion that’s usually taking place, or, the sounds of gun shots and/or Star Trek, depending on the day—company which I’m entirely a fan of.
To be sure, I enjoy blaring my music at insanely high decibels—decibels I myself can only hear, thanks to my lovely in-ear headphones—as I make my way through the Tufts campus. I easily get lost in the sounds, even if the people around me aren’t. Similarly, I enjoy the calm and out-of-cycle nature I get from an hour or two at the gym. Most weekends, and even sometimes during the day, I find myself able to take a nap or two or just sit down and take some time to assess where my life is going (which, if my timing is right, allows me to author posts like these.)
But, at the same time, when I was sitting in on this week’s Snyder Lecture here at Tufts, delivered by Sherley Turkle of MIT, I began to take stock of all that I’ve listed above, and I came to realize that while I can certainly benefit from a lot in my present lifestyle, a part of me wants to experience a simpler, less involved lifestyle, if only for a week or two. One of the things that I really want to make sure I continue to do is try new things, and while I’ve had a good run with my tech-infused lifestyle these past few years, I’m eager for a break.
To that end, with a relatively empty summer in the way of plans, I’ve resolved to conduct a road trip sometime in late July. Depending on the final route, it’s set to involve at least 4,000 miles covered by car, and close to two days of just driving. It’ll take me through a number of states in the southwest, and give me the chance to make a number of interesting stops, in addition to visiting some cool people I happen to know in the area.
The key for me is making this trip alone. It’ll give me plenty of time to drive through vast, open expanses, pondering some of the more random things about life, but also learning to marvel at the simple things, as I make sure to stop whenever makes sense. Not to say that I’m out-and-out refusing company, mind you. But at the same time, there’s some part of me that feels like I need to do something a little out of the ordinary, and to that end, find a little solitude where I’m relatively disconnected from my modern life, and at the times when I am connected with people I know, I want to make sure they’re more than just through texts and liking their posts on Facebook. Oh, and I’m a cowboy, so it’s only natural that I’d want to go it my own way for a little while before I come back down to reality. Hah!
For now, the trip is in its relatively early planning stages, as I haven’t a clue as to how long I’ll end up being on the road, and where exactly I’ll stop, but rest assured I’ll be bringing my camera along with me to document the entire trip.
For me, few things compare to a good banana leaf meal.
For those who’ve never experienced such a meal, it’s easy to dismiss the picture above as just “some Indian food that happens to be on a banana leaf” as opposed to a conventional plate. And, objectively speaking, you’re right.
Still, there’s quite a bit more to this style of eating than first meets the eye:
