Here’s to girl power! Paul Potts might have been the rage last year for ‘Britain’s got talent’, and this year also we have a budding opera singer (a 13 year old named Andrew Johnston) but it’s the electric string instrument quartet of Scala that’s impressing me.
Roadandtravel.com has an interesting excerpt from the July, 1943 issue of Transportation magazine about how to handle female employees. This was written as a guide to male supervisors and was serious in its intent at that time; it’s hilarious reading this now. Some gems from this list:
- Pick young married women. They usually have more of a sense of responsibility than their unmarried sisters. They are less likely to be flirtatious.
- General experience indicates that “husky” girls - those who are just a little on the heavy side - are more even-tempered and efficient than their underweight sisters.
- Get enough size variety in operator’s uniforms so that each girl can have a proper fit. This point cannot be stressed too much in keeping women happy.
I finally did it! I quit my job, sold my flat and am already on my way to a journey that I hope will be life changing. After thinking very hard about this for at least a year and after long and painful conversations with those near and dear to me, I have decided to take at least a year off and travel the world mostly to exotic places that I haven’t spent much time in. Alone. I have no specific itinerary yet but am going to make them as I go along. I am only packing a small rucksack with a change of clothes for a week. I am not even taking a camera. I want to experience everything first hand and have my journal and this blog as my place to record my experience as I travel the world in search of meaning for my existence. I am not sure how much internet access I’ll have during the next year or so but I’ll try to update this blog with my experiences with the curious people, animals and places I will encounter whether it be in the train to Tibet or among the lemurs in Madagascar.
I am sooo shit scared but at the same time the adrenalin levels have never been higher. I am already in my first stop… Beijing, China and am writing this from here. More later… Zai Jian and Ni Hau.
I wasn’t born then (no, really) but the summer of 1967 came to be known as the “Summer of Love.” This was when young people looking for a new social experience descended in droves to San Francisco, especially the Haight-Ashbury district and gave birth to the hippie counterculture movement. It was a time for free sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. No one embodied that time better than bad girl rocker Janis Joplin. Joplin and a bunch of other rock stars of the time including guitar legend Jimi Hendrix and incomparable beauty Grace Slick lived near Haight-Ashbury. Even today, you can see the remnants of those hippie days while strolling down the district with its motley collection of tattoo parlors, bong selling joints, and tie-dye clothing shops.
In today’s Journal, frequent hunter and washed-up rocker Ted Nugent opines [subscription] that this time should be re-classified as the summer of drugs. The Motor City Madman has choice words for the likes of Joplin: “I often wonder what musical peaks they could have climbed had they not gagged to death on their own vomit.” He also weighs in on what the hippies did to themselves: “Turned off by the work ethic and productive American Dream values of their parents, hippies instead opted for a cowardly, irresponsible lifestyle of random sex, life-destroying drugs and mostly soulless rock music that flourished in San Francisco.”
Soulless rock music? For someone who mostly delivered crappy music, the Nuge shouldn’t be the one judging that. Drugs or not, the music of Joplin and co still incites passion in every rock music fan. It’d be easy for me to dig up a nice performance by Joplin on youtube to accompany this post but instead, I’ll leave you with one of the best covers of Joplin’s songs ever performed: by soul wunderkind Joss Stone and a bald but fabulous Melissa Etheridge at the 2005 Grammy Awards.
I am currently traveling in Prague in the Czech Republic. While it hasn’t replaced Buenos Aires (yet) as my favorite city in the world to travel to, it’s doing a good job at trying. Truly, one of the world’s great cities, Prague or Praha to the Czechs, has been around for a very long time and a lot of the buildings you see here date from more than 1000 years ago. Among the most impressive among them is the Prague Castle whose foundations were first laid in 870 A.D. More on that in a future post. There are numerous other structures including the famous Charles Bridge across the Vltava that command one’s attention in what Time Out calls “a symphony in stone.” The cobblestone streets add to the magnificence of this ancient city.
One thing you notice as soon as you clear customs at the ultra modern Ruzyně airport is that the Czech women are spectacularly beautiful. I was escorted by one of these beauties to my taxi from the taxi counter at the Arrivals hall. Nowhere else have I seen women of such beauty from all walks of life. And all over the place. I wish I could say the same for men too. The roadside cafes here are meant for people watching more than any other city I have been to. The fact that they dress stylishly every day as I observe on the daily Metro rides, adds to the oomph.
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A few of my friends, my wife included, frequently bemoan the fact that the world as we know it is coming apart and things are getting worse every day. The daily onslaught of news on the human condition does not help alleviate this feeling for them.
Ever the optimist, I assert that on the whole this generation is doing better by itself and by its fellow man compared to any other generation in the past. Obviously I say this with no data, only as someone who is actively engaged in a grounds-up effort to provide opportunity to those who have none. Personal experience of being with some of these people gives me that optimism. Now it turns out that there is also data available to show that our lot is getting better, not worse.
Take a look at Gapminder They present human development data across the world in some very cool and innovative ways (Google has acquired their technology to make it available for free).
Go to the tools section and try out the GapMinder World, 2006 (the first one on the Tools page). You can change the X and Y axes (It defaults to Income v/s Life Expectancy but you can change them (e.g. you can compare Life Expectancy v/s Military Spending). It gives you a clear indicator on how things are changing around the world (except in Sub Saharan Africa where, due to the AIDS crisis, things have slipped back a bit).
BTW: It is also a fantastic way to get kids interested in statistics. Over the weekend my 6 y.o look at it over my shoulder and the next thing you know she spent more than an hour in front of the computer playing with the X and Y Axes. She kept telling me everything from “How Malawi compares with the United States in Child Mortality (I explained to her what that is)” , she was playing with Physicans per 1000 people etc, population growth over time etc.
I would also recommend the 1 hour Tech Talk they have posted (given at Google) and the video on Slums.
(Sorry, this post does not fit into any one category that we have - so I choose a few of them)
Two tribal women in Orissa, India married recently after getting consent from the village elders. The two women had to offer a barrel of country liquor, a pair of oxen, and a sack of rice and hosted a family feast, as fine to get blessing from the community. More here.
Colombian women are using the oldest trick in the book to punish their boyfriends and husbands: refusing sex. They are advocating a sex ban until the men (gang members) give up violence. The strike is aptly called the strike of crossed legs. New way to achieve world peace?
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