Jeremy Middleman

Q15: "[...] how is that going being ruled by monkeys?"

2009-02-27T15:30:00.002+02:00

Aliza asked, "Jesse mentioned in passing yesterday that monkeys have overtaken the government building in New Delhi. I was skeptical. a) Is this true? b) If so, how is that going being ruled by monkeys?"

[First off -- oof, sorry for the big intermission in posting. Hopefully, I will continue to post regularly. No big promises, though.]

Jesse may have been referring to this article in The New York Times last year. Since those incidents, however, I think Delhi has dealt -- by what means, I don't know -- with the problem. In any case, I saw fewer monkeys in Delhi than I saw in most other places. There was a huge group of monkeys that seemed to be filing non-stop out of an abandoned building in North Delhi, but otherwise a monkeyless Delhi.

I saw the most monkeys in the state of Karnataka in South India: at the botanical gardens in Bangalore, on the top of Nandi Hills (about 45 minutes from Bangalore), around the former capital of Mysore and in the ancient ruins of Hampi. This is not to say that there are more monkeys in the South than in the North -- I just visited more monkeyish places in the South.

The effect probably wears off after living around monkeys for awhile, but I was in awe of how (perhaps unsurprisingly) human they look and act. (Or is it the other way around?) The humanoid faces and the opposable thumbs really do the trick. Social situations, like when you see one monkey grooming lice from the hair of another, are eerie.

Usually we kept to ourselves -- the monkeys in the trees or on building exteriors, and me with two feet on the ground. But in some places, like Mysore or the Bangalore botanical gardens, with bolder monkeys, there was more intra-primate interaction. Sometimes the monkeys-cum-space-invaders try to pry a bag of chips out of human hands. More often, however, they just hold out an open palm.

I'll leave you with this photograph, of a Delhi monkey doing its best "Blue Steel" impression:

Q14: "[...] ready to begin writing now? [...]"

2009-01-18T15:15:00.000+02:00

My mom writes, "Dear Jeremy, I miss your blog and wondered if you are ready to begin writing now? What have been the highs and lows so far in India? Also do you photos of places you have been?"

Yes, my apologies for not writing since my arrival in India. This has partly been because until now there have been no new questions, but mostly because settling in (or not settling in) has been a very long process. I'm ready to write, though, so here we go...

To begin, this has been my itinerary so far:
- December 9-17: Bangalore, Karnataka
- December 18-20: Hampi, Karnataka
- December 21-22: Bangalore
- December 23-24: Mysore, Karnataka
- December 25-27: Bangalore
- December 28- January 1: Pondicherry (Union Territory)
- January 2-3: Chennai, Tamil Nadu
- January 4-19: Kolkata/Calcutta, West Bengal
- January 20-?: Delhi (Union Territory)

It would be futile to summarize the last month and a half, so I won't even try. Instead, I'll try to update more regularly over the next few weeks, either in response to questions or on general themes.

The highs and lows? The highs so far have been eating and walking in Kolkata, meeting some extremely nice people and slowly getting the hang of things. The lows so far have been illness (bacterial throat infection in early December, food poisoning in mid-December and a head cold last week), pollution in Bangalore and Kolkata (my mucus is nearly black and getting darker, I have seen blue sky once and for 15 minutes in the past two weeks) and people constantly trying to sell me things.

About photos, unfortunately my internet connection is too spotty to upload photos regularly. When I get home, though, I'll make sure to post the photos online and put the link on this blog.

### Got questions about India or my time here? Ask, ask ask... ###

Q13: "[...] is there somewhere online that we can see photos [...]?"

2008-12-09T18:00:00.000+02:00

Hannah asks, "Not really a blog question, but is there somewhere online that we can see photos from your trip?"

Ah, you caught me! Per international travel norms, I really ought to have an online photo album (or something like that) but I don't.

I'm traveling with a digital camera and a small, low-resolution video camera -- both for the first time -- so I really should go all "new media" on you readers. But I haven't. It may just be my impatience with uploading a bunch of big files. Or, it could be that I prefer to pool my photos at the end of a trip and then cull from that pool. Whatever the cause, I'm sorry to say that there's no central repository of my photographs yet.

Nevertheless, I'll still post plenty of eye-candy when it's relevant to the questions you ask. I hope that suffices for now!

### A small loophole: I suppose you could click here to ask for some specific photographs. ###

En Route to India

2008-12-08T18:00:00.001+02:00

I am in the sky right now, somewhere between Heathrow and Bengaluru International Airport.* This means that I'll be writing mostly about India until early March, when I return to Romania. If you have any questions about India** that you would like me to take a shot at, click here to ask!

---
* Actually, I wrote this all yesterday and had Blogspot post if for me in the future, so I'm not really blogging from the plane. Pointless, really, and all for naught if I miss my flight, but oh the wonders of the Internet.

** India is large. General questions about India are no problem, but if you want to ask more geographically-specific questions, here are the cities I plan to visit (in very rough chronological order):

- Bangalore
- Mysore
- Pondicherry (maybe)
- Hyderabad (maybe)
- Kolkata/Calcutta
- Darjeeling (maybe)
- Patna (maybe)
- Agra
- Jaipur
- Delhi
- Chandigarh
- Ahmedabad

Q12: "[...] have your travel plans changed at all [...] ?"

2008-12-07T18:38:00.002+02:00

Kristina asks, "Not to be too much of a maternal worrywart, but have your travel plans changed at all in light of the attacks in Mumbai?"

They have, and they haven't. I'm still going to India -- in fact, I land in Bangalore in about 30 hours -- and my itinerary is generally unmodified. (I fly out of India from Mumbai, but I had not planned to spend much time there anyhow.) I suspect, however, that the attacks may change my plans in many smaller ways.

Most broadly, I will probably now spend more time outside large cities than within them. And while I never planned to stay in ritzy hotels or eat in chic restaurants, now I'll avoid them deliberately. Among my largest concerns is that I'll spend more time looking over my shoulder than in more interesting directions.

After failing to pick up much Romanian, I have been looking forward to reading local and national newspapers over breakfast in India. Now I'll keep a particularly keen eye on national security news.

Were any readers of this blog traveling through (or living in) Madrid, London or New York after the attacks there? If so, do you have any tips for staying sane while remaining safe? You can comment below or send me an email. Thanks!

Q11: "How's the beer?"

2008-12-05T14:07:00.009+02:00

Jonny asks, "How's the beer?"

In Romania*, inexpensive but generally boring. To produce a more specific, pseudo-scientific answer, Kim and I did a mini beer-tasting over two days. We bought four pint-cans of Romanian beer from the corner store: Ursus, Bergenbier and Silva "Strong Dark Beer". We had another, Timisoreana, in the fridge from a previous groceries trip. Each can cost between 2.00 and 2.50 lei, or roughly $0.70-$0.90 (USD).

The results follow, in order of tasting:

Bergenbier: Light in color, weak in hops. Could pass for Budweiser, Coors, etc.

Ursus: Very similar to Bergenbier. Too similar, in fact. After we accidentally mixed up our glasses, we couldn't distinguish one from the other.

Silva "Strong Dark Beer": Looks like a red ale, with noticeable hops and a very creamy feel. The only can we finished.

Timisoreana: We skipped this one. We had tried it a few weeks earlier and we realized part-way through the tasting that it would be indistinguishable from both Ursus and Bergenbier.

* I may post an update later about Indian beer, if readers are interested.

Another Update to Q9: Fish, Seven Ways

2008-12-01T16:12:00.002+02:00

Here's another update to Dan's question about food in Romania:

Last Sunday, we stayed the evening at a friend's home in Braila, near the Danube Delta in eastern Romania. Our friend's father is a priest of the Eastern Orthodox persuasion -- Romania's dominant religion/worldview -- so his family was rigorously observing "Post," the month before Christmas during which you eat no meat but have tons of fish on Sundays. There are other Post rules, such as no marriages, but the dietary restrictions seem to be the most prominent.

Anyhow, the point of this Post blog-post is just to list the seven preparations of fish on the table that night:

- Grilled "Danube" fish (species unclear, but trout-like)

- Fried fish cutlets (species unclear, but it had a very dry, meaty texture)

- Smoked salmon fillet

- Smoked herring fillet

- Salt-cured fish fillet (species unclear, but salmon-like)

- Salmon paste

- Fish roe paste (species unclear, but likely carp roe)

Partly out of curiosity and partly out of courtesy, I tried a little of each. The pastes were surprisingly tasty (kind of like a salty-vinegary whipped butter). The smoked fillets were also good, though chewier and saltier than smoked salmon from a States-side deli. Nothing out of the ordinary about the grilled or fried fish.

Update to Q9: Shaorma de Pui

2008-11-29T16:42:00.003+02:00

Earlier, I answered Dan's question about Romanian food by describing some of the meals we had in the countryside. I haven't stopped eating, though, so I figured this topic could use an update:

Behind only pizza and pastries, shaorma (sometimes "shwarma," but never "gyro" as it's known elsewhere) seems to be among Romanians' top three fast-food choices. At its most basic, Romanian shaorma is flatbread wrapped around ribbons of meat (shaved off a vertical spit), shredded cabbage, fries and mayo. I've had a few of these and they're decent -- filling, cheap and easy. But nothing to write home about ... until I tried shaorma deluxe.

We were in Bucharest ten days ago so that Kim could attend a mandatory training session. I had an atypically sunny day to myself to wander around town. I had resolved to get shaorma for lunch since a Romanian friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend we met in Brasov said that the shaorma in Bucharest were the country's best. By my very unofficial reckoning, he was right.

The "shaorma de pui mare" (great/grand/big chicken shaorma) from Rotisserie Beller fundamentally re-calibrated my internal sandwich scale. The Beller foundations were solid: atypically fresh lavash, juicy but not too greasy chicken and creamy fries. A pile of tangy coleslaw, sour pickles, light mayo and ketchup filled the lavash to the brim.

I ate my shaorma on a bench in charming small park, but fully enveloped in thoughts of bread, chicken, semi-vegetables and vinegar. One hour later, still walking around northern Bucharest, I felt a brick in my stomach but I didn't mind it much.

Update to Q5: Brasov and Bran Castle

2008-11-18T17:32:00.008+02:00

Kristina wanted to know about vampires and Romania. I only partly answered her question earlier but promised more information upon visiting Transylvania. On Friday, Kim and I took nine-hour train from Iasi to Brasov, Transylvania, where we spent the weekend.

One of Kristina's trio of questions was whether the countryside in Transylvania was spooky. Far from it. My primary memory of the train ride is of the gentle, undulating hills as we approached the Carpathian Mountains. Old Brasov -- a Saxon town nested between two mountains -- is yet more charming. (The Communist concrete housing outside old Brasov is less than charming, and the Hollywood-style BRASOV sign is just amusing.) On Saturday, one of Kim's colleagues led us on a walk around the former fortifications of old Brasov and to the base of the mountains, where many locals come for jugfuls of spring water. Rather than spooky, this part of Transylvania is the most beautiful area I've seen in Romania.

On Sunday, we took a bus out to Bran Castle, a.k.a. "Dracula's Castle", and were thoroughly underwhelmed. The castle is a very large fort-house at the top of a hill, but it's not the least bit spooky, and only tangentially related to Vlad "Dracula" Tepes. The museum inside the castle does not even mention Dracula, and instead highlights the possessions of Queen Marie, one of the castle's final residents before the Communist government seized the property.

The surrounding tourism industry, however, has made a mountain out of the razor-thin connection to Dracula; you can buy all sorts of fanged, bloody and batty paraphernalia at most of the several dozen kitscheries just below the castle, or you can stay at Vampire Camping 1km down the highway. Sadly, we did not have time to visit Sighisoara, which supposedly has much more legitimate Dracula connections.

A couple of photographs from Brasov, courtesy of Kim:

Update to Q6: Another surprising thing about Romania

2008-11-15T17:45:00.001+02:00

I wrote earlier about a few things in Romania and Iasi that have surprised me. I'll continue to update this blog with more surprising, beginning with this consistently mood-lifting feature of Iasi (and many other cities in Romania):

And this is only the second-raddest type of pedestrian signal -- there are a few in town that also show the time left until you can cross again, which lets you think about something besides that question while you're at the crosswalk.

Public works projects are pretty solid in Iasi -- more of these signals are being installed, the parks are well-maintained, there are several trash-bins (neat little swiveling ones that the collectors can just swing upside-down to empty) per block, and whole sections of the city seem to be getting new overhead electric wires.

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Update to Q8: More on Romanian Politics and the U.S. Election

2008-11-13T22:47:00.004+02:00

I mentioned earlier that one of our Romanian friends, Silvia, was pretty pessimistic about politics. She said that most people she knew considered the government ineffective and easily persuadable, if you will.

I thought you might want to read a slightly more optimistic assessment, from a man we met over the weekend. (We spoke in rudimentary French, so I might have missed some of his nuance, but hopefully not too much.) During the Communist era, he had been sent from rural Bucovina to Bucharest to work as a mechanic. Now, at age 40 or so, he lives with his wife in a small, bucolic town. The source of much of the distrust in the government is the perception that the 1989 Romanian Revolution was not a 'real' revolution, he said. While the the revolution brought new freedoms, the politicians of post-Communist Romania were -- and continue to be -- culled from the same elite circles that produced the recently-deposed officials, he said.

Yet, to fulfill my promise of optimism: this same man said that popular trust of the government may gradually improve as idealistic young adults begin to interrupt the conglomerations of old power. Perhaps of more interest for readers back home, our acquaintance opined that the election of Barack Obama would mean more for Romania than Romania's own legislative and local elections later this month. He quickly conceded that he was partly joking, but only partly: U.S. foreign policy will determine much of the economic health and political stability of Romanian and its neighbors, he said.

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Q10: "What is the most scenic sight in Iasi and can I get it on my postcard?"

2008-11-13T00:17:00.003+02:00

Roger asks, "What is the most scenic sight in Iasi and can I get it on my postcard?"

This is certainly not the definitive or final answer to your question, but I enjoyed this view from the Botanical Gardens in Iasi on recent morning:

I haven't found a postcard of it, but I'll keep an eye out for one of the Botanical Garden or something equally scenic.

I'll be posting more nice views from Iasi soon...

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Video Bonus -- Adorable Romanian Schoolchildren at the Botanical Gardens! :

Q9: "How's the food in Romania?"

2008-11-11T17:06:00.004+02:00

Dan asks, "How's the food in Romania?"

Nice timing on this question, Dan. I saw it just before Kim and I left for the weekend to the countryside, where traditional Romanian food seems to have remained a staple. (In Iasi, pizza and pastries seem to have trumped most else, although there are still some pretty good traditional restaurants.)

We wanted to see the painted monasteries of the Southern Bucovina region, so we took a train north to Suceava, where we rented a Daewoo Matiz. From Suceava, we drove the itsy-bitsy blue car in a loop, stopping to see the monasteries at Humor, Voret, Moldvita and Sucevita. The monasteries were impressive -- the exterior paintings have lasted 500 years in some instances, and the illustrations of biblical and historical scenes are very attractive -- but the food was equally memorable.

During our two nights on the road we stayed at cozy "pensiunes", the Romanian versions of bed and breakfasts that also serve cornucopian traditional dinners. We spent the first night at at Casa Ancuta in Humor, where dinner included:

- Homemade blueberry liqueur, as an aperitif
- Vegetable soup, served with bread and sour cream on the side
- Shredded cabbage salad
- Mashed potatoes
- Veal cutlets in a mushroom and cream sauce
- Homemade pickles
- "Gogoasi": Romanian-style doughnuts (no hole in the middle, no icing) with blueberry jam
- Coffee

We shared all this with just one other guest. (During the summer, these pensuines are extremely popular with Romanian city-dwellers who come to the countryside for vacation, but we learned that during the winter most pensiunes are either closed or deserted.) Breakfast was only slightly less overwhelming:

- Eggs, omelet-style
- A bunch of small pieces of five types of cured meat, each about the size of a pat of butter: 1/4-inch-thick bacon; slices of sausage; slices of some cut of veal; a mysterious, marbled meat; and cured lard, still on the pigskin.
- Crepes filled with sweet cheese and cinnamon
- Bread with butter, blueberry jam, and a jammy applesauce
- More doughnuts
- A feta-like cheese
- Coffee and tea

We stayed the second night at Pensiune Felicea in Sucevita, where we were the only guests. (The friendly owners weren't expecting guests at all: it took an hour of cleaning and heating the wood-burning stove before our room was ready. They kindly gave us tea and some lemon-walnut cake while we waited.) Dinner here was a healthier but no less bountiful meal:

- Homemade blueberry liqueur
- Beet, potato and bell pepper soup, served with bread
- "Mamaliga": a dense cornmeal polenta, served with sour cream
- "Sarmale": pork-and-chicken dumplings wrapped in steamed cabbage leaves
- Red wine
- Apple tart/cake

Breakfast, however, was just tea, bread, raspberry jam, butter, honey, and a pepper-mushroom spread.

On our drive home, we passed a small town which no doubt grows the most cabbage per capita, enough to wrap a country's-worth of sarmale. Almost every home seemed to have a field of cabbages growing or recently harvested, and I counted no fewer than five horse-drawn carts burdened with what looked like a half-ton of cabbage heads each.

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Q8: "[...] what is the election coverage like in Romania? [...]"

2008-11-06T23:54:00.003+02:00

Aliza asks, "I know we had talked about this before you left, but what is the election coverage like in Romania? What do Romanians think of President-elect Obama?(also, sorry to hear your baggage got lost...probably because I accompanied you to get your visa)."

It's been somewhat difficult to directly gauge Romanian coverage of the U.S. election, since my vocabulary consists of roughly 30 words. But I asked Kim's pentalingual* friend, Silvia, about the coverage of the presidential race and election. Some interesting things she said:

- On Nov. 5, most news shows mentioned the results of the election, but Romanians generally don't care much about presidential elections, since they have little faith in their government. (A recent poll supposedly found that only 9% of Romanians trust the government as an institution.)

- The international students, and especially the French students, were much more excited about the election than the Romanian students were.

Since the election wasn't decided until around 6 a.m. on Wednesday here, newspapers printed the results on Thursday, with a few giving Obama above-the-fold, front-page treatment.

Romania's satirical weekly comes out on Wednesdays, however, so they jumped the gun to avoid being a week late. They picked the political winner correctly, but politically incorrectly:

Here's what I can glean from an online Romanian-English dictionary:

Headline: "A new feature film about the colored White House: Afro-american beauty"

Bubble on right: "Mr. President, rumor has it that your grandmother died. My condolences. So, if our grandma also dies, can I become President?"

Middle bubble: "You ate the rainbow, boss, so you get to pledge yourself to the "Glow-worm Sea". Now, with a glow-worm afro-american, with her neither so panicked." [I clearly mistranslated a lot of this. "Licuriciul Mare" literally means Glow-worm Sea, but it's an idiom I can't figure out. Anyone have a clue?]

Bubble on right: "I understand very well why we are going through hard, economic contraction. Problems with the lion. I know this. America is here to help! Even my father had trouble with the lion! It ate three business partners!"

Text on bottom: "Important people of short-to-medium stature rush to present their offerings in front of the new Grand Chief of the USA's GDP."

Yup.

* Silvia is conversational in Romanian, English, French, Spanish, and Italian. (She's at Cuza for a Master's degree in Letters.)

p.s. Thanks for your concern about my luggage, Aliza. I finally received it last night -- seven days and one hour after I arrived in Romania.

Q7: "Are Romanians surprised that you, an American, have come to visit the country? [...]"

2008-11-05T16:47:00.000+02:00

Abe asks, "Are Romanians surprised that you, an American, have come to visit the country? Or, more specifically, to visit Iasi?"

Yup. Most Romanians I've met -- really just a handful at this point -- are surprised that an American is in Iasi, and some are surprised that an American would even visit Iasi.

When I first got off the plane at Otopeni Airport in Bucharest, a dozen aggressive cabdrivers chirped "Parlez français?" even though we were arriving from London. When they realized that my French was pretty weak, they turned to English, which most of them spoke very well.

Yet Americans are relatively abundant in Bucharest compared to in Iasi.

Here, the "Education USA" advising center and the "American Corner" library (which has a surprisingly impressive collection) are both run and principally used by Romanians. The American Corner librarian says there's a Peace Corps volunteer in town, but as far as we can tell, we are the only other Americans here. And Kim says that the English and American Studies departments at Universiatea Alexandru Ioan Cuza (where she is teaching) last had an American faculty member seven years ago.

People are usually interested when they realize I'm from the U.S., but perhaps no more curious than they would be about any other distant foreigner. One exception was the guy in his early twenties who ran the skate-rental booth at Ice Mania -- he high-fived me and asked what part of the country I came from.

To finish answering your question, some Romanians do wonder why I've come to Romania, as many don't seem to think highly of their country. According to Kim, about 40% of the population has moved to other parts of Europe and further abroad since Romania joined the EU last January.

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Q6: "What is the most surprising thing about Romania?"

2008-11-03T14:08:00.000+02:00

Someone (anyone want to claim this?) asked, "What is the most surprising thing about Romania?"

It's hard to pick out just one most surprising thing about Romania. Here are a few early candidates:

- Some Iasi residents burn their trash at night. This was one of the most maddening aspects of life in Senegal, partly because of the smell (saccharine-toxic, with hints of campfire and molten plastic) and partly because of the blatant carcinogenesis. In rural Senegal, trash-burning made some sense, since there was no public garbage pick-up outside of the big cities. But Iasi is Romania's second-largest city, and there are public trash cans and dumpsters on every block.

- Stray dogs nap, swagger, and prowl along every street. People in Iasi seem fairly fond of them, although I hear that some towns (like Cluj) have euthanized (or maybe shot) all their dogs. The mutts -- somewhere between labrador, wolf, and Rin Tin Tin -- aren't terribly menacing but still pretty annoying. (On Friday, one trailed us for a full block because he smelled our bagel chips, and in some neighborhoods they bark and growl all night.)

- Except at supermarkets and other big stores, you rarely get coin change back. So if 3 tomatoes cost 2.60 RON (2 lei & 60 bani) and you pay with three one-lei bills, you don't get the 40 bani back. Fortunately, a lot of items cost X.00 or X.50 RON.

I'll keep you posted about additional surprises as they pop up in the coming weeks.

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Q5: "Why/when did Romania become associated with so many vampire legends? [...]"

2008-11-02T01:36:00.000+02:00

Kristina asks, "Why/when did Romania become associated with so many vampire legends? Is it just because that's where Count Dracula lived? Does the countryside look adequately creepy? (That's sort of three questions, but apropos to Halloween)"

There were a few minor Halloween celebrations in Iasi on Friday, my first full day in Iasi. In the afternoon, we accidentally walked into a children's costume party at the "American Corner," in the basement of the Palace of Culture. Despite the Corner's name, all the children and parents seemed to be Romanian and the host spoke only broken English.

We were invited to a "pumpkin sculpturing" event at the student center in the evening, but we were exhausted and hungry from touring around town all afternoon (and unsuccessfully trying to pick up my lost/delayed luggage at Iasi's one-runway airport), so we decided to pass on it.

No trick-or-treaters came a-knocking. This wasn't surprising, as it's not a big tradition here and since our apartment is spooky enough as it is. (Although not as spooky as the building across the street, where bullet holes from WWII are the main ornamentation.)

Transylvania is in central Romania, and about a nine-hour train ride from Iasi. I hear many of the castles are as as eerie as Count Dracula's, but His Fangness' 'real' castle (est. 1340s) is in the Transylvanian town of Sighisoara. We plan to visit Sighisoara and Brasov, where there's another (albeit supposedly less 'real') Dracula Castle, in a few weeks. ("Count Dracula - The Truth" seems to be a good resource for this topic, although I haven't done much digging there.) More on the man, the legend and the castles once we return.

Q4: "Might blogging--both the writing and the "job" of blogging you've given yourself--get in the way of [...]"

2008-10-29T21:58:00.000+02:00

My cousin David asks, "Might blogging--both the writing and the "job" of blogging you've given yourself--get in the way of your more deeply experiencing the places you'll visit and the people you'll meet? Might blogging make it harder to be fully present during your trip?"

Definitely, but I don't think this is necessarily a bad thing on the whole.

Blogging will certainly get in the way of being "fully present" at times, but so would other ways of staying in touch with family and friends back home, such as sending mass emails or Skype-ing (Skyping?). I'll aim to be "very present," but I have no illusions of a perfection.

The upsides of of blogging will hopefully outweigh my lack of full presence. I created Jeremy Middleman partly to resolve the selfishness of personal travel. I'm going abroad to learn a little bit about a part of the world, and it would be a shame (and perhaps amoral) to keep what I've learned to myself or to restrict what I learn-and-tell to just what interests me -- that's where your questions come in.

There's also a risk, however, in being "fully present" wherever I am, and that's disregarding wherever I'm not. If all goes all goes according to plan, then blogging and fielding your questions will have the additional benefit of learning about aspects of "Romandia" that I would not have explored on my own.

I've been blessed by (hopefully only temporary) unemployment, which has allowed me to spend so much time abroad. Consider this blog a 'tax' on my experience, the revenue of which I'd like to share with you.

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Q3: "Anything you'd like to collect on your trip?"

2008-10-26T09:53:00.000+02:00

An anonymous poster (anyone want to claim this?) asks, "Anything you'd like to collect on your trip?"

When I was much younger, I collected those flat little wrapped soaps from hotels when our family visited relatives or went on vacation. I have no clue what happened to that stash of soap, nor what happened to my collection of hard-plastic trays and cups that I used to collect from airplane meals, from way back when airlines still served meals on cross-country flights. So my memory of forgotten collections makes me think twice about starting another doomed bag full of "stuff".

Still, I think there's a place for collections, especially if they're thought-provoking or evocative. (I consider my impromptu collection of Senegalese tree-stuff -- a large seed of the abundant trees beneath Dindefelo Falls, the bark of a Konkoran's costume, and a good-luck husk from a creepy guy -- to be in the latter category.) I don't know exactly what I would collect, but here are some of the thoughts I've had since first seeing this question:

- For a while, I've thought about collecting national constitutions. India, as the world's largest democracy, might not be a bad place to start.

- I might try collecting things related to the U.S. election, since I'll be in Romania on Election Day and in India on Inauguration Day. Maybe I'll collect the font pages of newspapers on these days and others when U.S. politics generates significant coverage.

- I might try to make a photographic collection of (for instance) taxicabs, beds I sleep on, computer cafes, animals in the road, people I meet, or types of bread.

Any and all suggestions are welcome. If I do start a collection, I'll post something about it on this blog.

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Q2: "Why not "Jeremy Middleperson"?"

2008-10-26T06:08:00.000+02:00

My cousin David asks, "Why not "Jeremy Middleperson"?"

A legitimate question, especially since my Berkeley heritage predisposes me to political correctness. The blog's title is an allusion to one of my favorite episodes of Arrested Development (or as G.O.B. might say, an "illusion" to it):

Michael Bluth: I'm sorry, have we met?
Bob Loblaw: This is Larry Middleman, your father's Surrogate.
Michael Bluth: Surrogate?
Larry: That's right, you dumb fuck!
George Bluth Sr.: See, I hired this guy to be my eyes and ears. This camera helps me...
Larry: ...keep tabs on you idiots while this thing rubs my ankle raw!
George Bluth Sr.: I mean, look at the size of this thing! I cant even go in the hallway without hearing that...
Larry: ...Beep beep beep.* (link)

Now I don't endorse Larry's expletive, nor is my goal to "keep tabs" for you on any sort of "idiots". But I do like the idea of being your eyes and ears -- your surrogate -- even if momentarily and imperfectly. The analogy between this blog and Larry Middleman is pretty unrefined, but it would disintegrate even further if I were Jeremy Middleperson.

* I realize this snippet might be hard to follow if you've never seen Arrested Development, since it's really one of those things "you just have to see" to understand. All the more reason to start watching!

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Q1: "So what made you choose Iasi? What's so special about it?"

2008-10-24T22:54:00.000+03:00

Thanks to Utpal for posting the first question! He asked, "So what made you choose Iasi? What's so special about it?"

The principal reason I'm visiting Iasi is that my girlfriend is teaching and co-teaching some courses at Universitatea Alexandru Ioan Cuza, Iasi's main and oldest university, on a Fulbright grant. (Some part of the campus appears to be in the background of this YouTube video -- I think the guy is singing in Romanian, if you're curious what the language sounds like.)

If global interest in a city can be measured by how much detail it gets on Google Maps, Iasi is an afterthought in a country that most people forget even exists:

No matter how far you zoom in, there's still no road to Iasi! (Good thing I'll be arriving in Iasi by train from Bucharest.)

Despite Iasi's cartographic ellipsis, the town has a relatively robust Wikipedia entry that suggests other reasons I might be excited to visit:

- "It has an active trade in metals, medical drugs (antibiotics), textiles and clothing, banking, wine, preserved meat."
- "The city is host to five universities, and is widely regarded as the cultural "heart" of the Old Kingdom (that is Moldavia, Wallachia, and Dobruja - the three regions comprising Romania until 1918)."
- A beautiful University library

After I arrive on Wednesday, I'll have a much better idea of what's to like and dislike about Iasi, and I'll update my answer to "What's so special about it?" accordingly. Thanks, Utpal -- I'll send a postcard your way...

New question category: General

2008-10-24T07:04:00.000+03:00

I just added a new topic to the question tool. "General" will cover questions that are not location-specific. For instance, "What books did you bring?" or "What food do you miss most from home?"

My Itinerary

2008-10-18T03:51:00.001+03:00

October 30 - early December (2008): In and around Iasi ("yahsh"), Romania.

Early December - December 8: Visiting Cambridge & Oxford, England.

December 9 - March 3 (2009): Traveling around India. Arriving in Bangalore, departing from Mumbai.

March 4 - 18: In and around Iasi, Romania.

How this will (hopefully) work...

2008-10-18T03:22:00.000+03:00

I'm about to take a very big trip -- the longest I've ever taken, unless you count leaving home for college.

But I won't presume you'll be interested in everything that happens. Instead, I'm only going to write about what you want me to write about. How? I've set up a page on Google Moderator where you can submit questions (or any arrangement of words, really) you want me to answer.

For now, the two topics are "Romania" and "India" -- the two countries where I'll be for most of the trip. You could questions such as:

- What are some traditional Romanian meals, and how do they taste?
- Have you met any call-center workers in Bangalore?
- What kind of cars are in the streets of Iasi, Romania?
- What are Delhi newspapers saying about the US-India nuclear pact?
- Could you take and post some photographs of the painted monasteries in Bucovino, Romania?
- Are you feeling healthy? (Hi, Mom!)

On the same site, you can vote on other people's questions, and other people can vote on yours. As often as I can, I'll answer the top-rated questions on this blog.

Get started, and ask me a question!