free rommy

My love affair with the NPR News iPhone app

2010-02-28T07:15:24Z

I am on an unlimited iPhone data plan in Sweden now.

The implications of this are immeasurable. The ability to check email, browse the web and check-in as often as I want, to tweet, to upload pictures and video have all just made it immensely easier on the wallet. It's the future of mobile, the future of internet, the future of epic awesomeness.

There are two iPhone apps which will now see a huge uptick in usage from me. Spotify which, previously mentioned, streams music thus eliminating the need for downloading it, is now my primary source of music-listening pleasure. The second is the NPR News app.

I appreciate the BBC and the awesome news options available to me in Europe. But the one thing I was missing were the fantastic cultural, political, economic, and social commentaries and shows that NPR was airing. This American Life, Car Talk, A Prairie Home Companion, and Wait Wait Don't Tell Me were among the shows that allowed me to focus and relax when I was living in San Francisco. Don't get me wrong, I could listen to them through my PC at work, but too much multi-tasking wouldn't allow me to enjoy them as much. The NPR iPhone app allows me to walk through the streets of Stockholm while I hear the self-deprecating Click and Clack give advice to hopeless yuppie intellectuals about their outdated modes of transportation. This is the stuff I miss.

The NPR app is flawlessly executed. Traditional media outlets are complaining about their demise while the one without any money to begin with goes out on a limb to take risks and become part of the technological revolution. Within the app, you can read news articles and listen to news stories. You can create playlists of broadcasts and stream them all in a row. You can save favorites. The ads are non-invasive and quick. And the app is so easy-to-use (and easy on the eye) that you're almost having fun while you're using it.

Kudos to NPR for pioneering the way we consume news in the future. You've set an example for others to follow.

The best burgers in Stockholm

2010-02-22T19:48:47Z

This post is long overdue. Then again, I wanted to make sure I had enough experience at joints that serve burgers in order to compile this list with some amount of credibility.

I personally believe it's hard to find a good burger here. The burger patties are often frozen and griddle/pan fried, prepared in ways that burgers should never be prepared.

But when you do come upon that place that has a good burger it can, with a single bite, drop you back 20 years, to beach barbecues and youthful innocence.

These are the places in Stockholm that make a fantastic burger, in order of my personal favorites:

Grill Ruby - A pricey burger, but the best one you'll eat in Stockholm. An American chef grills them over an open flame of imported Kingsford charcoal. Are. You. Kidding. Me.
Bara Vi - Served on homemade bread, Bara Vi's burger is charred on the outside and tender and rare on the inside.
Wirströms - A great, big burger with all the fixins, and a fantastic Spaten to help wash it down, while listening to live music is a great choice in Gamla Stan.
Akkurat - A big burger chased down with one of their huge selection of beers, is perfectly topped off with a glass of one of their many fine whiskeys.

I will be updating this list as I try more places, but if you're looking for a good burger these are definitely good places to start.

Nerd Alert Geotagging

2010-02-27T20:16:17Z

I recently got an iPhone through work. I know, I know. Welcome to 2007.

Well I'm thrilled with it. In fact, I can't believe I ever used another phone. I am ashamed and annoyed that I spent the last two years frustrated with technological excrement when I could've had a device as well-thought out and useful as an iPhone. Now, that's not to say it's perfect, but I like it and it serves a good purpose for now, until I can jump ahead of the curve and get Google's Nexus One.

One of the things that makes owning an iPhone so thrilling is the concept of geotagging. Geotagging is a technology/concept where content can be associated with a location. Photographs, editorial content, and personal messages between friends are all examples of things that are being geotagged nowadays.

The exponential growth of the internet and the information therein has made it exponentially more difficult to find information that's relevant to me and my immediate lifestyle. Thus the internet moving towards "local" is becoming far more important to the average person. Sites like Craigslist in the US (Blocket in Sweden) and Yelp are two strong examples of why local is key. It combines the virtual proximity of information on the internet with the physical proximity of your surroundings.

More recently some of the biggest communities on the internet have begun introducing geotagging. Flickr has had it for some time. Twitter introduced it in early 2009. Google Buzz is built around this concept. Bing built Twitter maps allow you to see what is happening (i.e. being tweeted about) in your immediate vicinity. Twitter maps on the iPhone through apps like Tweetie 2.0 allow you to see what's going on near you from where ever you are. Other applications like Foursquare and Gowalla are location-based and allow you to check in at bars or restaurants and to see which of your friends are nearby.

Facebook on the other hand arguably moved further away from this when they hosed the local networks. This will probably come back to bite them sooner rather than later.

Geotagging doesn't come without controversy. Many are arguing this is a breach of privacy. And I'd argue that you only give what you want to give. But it's the constant argument between information and privacy. That line gets blurred more and more.

I'm totally thrilled by this. The ability to shrink the internet again, to what's relevant to me, in terms of content and location has made it more appealing to me as a person who craves information and as a total geek who likes new toys.

My new Geo page has three maps, one that indicates where I am now, with the help of my iPhone and Google Latitude. The second is a Twitter map where I'm geographically charting my 140 character moments, and the third is a Flickr photo map wherein I take pictures with my iPhone and upload them from that location, thus plotting them.

The Great Expat Super Bowl Challenge

2010-02-07T16:22:17Z

The Super Bowl is the biggest American holiday of the year. Furthermore, it's the one event of the year that we American expats can all get together and overindulge in our American culture - our spectacle, our tradition, and our competition. In short, our hard-hitting, meatheaded, Americanism.

But it's not so easy to be an American abroad during football season. Being abroad has made following the NFL very difficult. Games are on Sunday and Monday nights, which for us translates to ridiculous hours of the morning. So we feel a bit more detached from the tradition of American sports.

Then on the ONE night of the year, the night of the big event, the Super Bowl, the tables turn. The NFL season we've had such a tough time following all fall and winter, all culminates in the single championship game. It's the one event of world sport that all of a sudden the whole world chooses to watch, report about, talk about, Facebook about, tweet about, Gmail chat about, email about, fart about, etc.

And I'm simply too old to want to start watching a three hour game at midnight on a school night. So tomorrow night, I'm hosting some friends at my place to watch a re-airing of the Super Bowl in HD on Viasat Sports. We will have guacamole, pizza, chips, beer, etc. etc. etc. And we will be Americans. And it will be great.

But tonight begins the Great Expat Super Bowl Challenge.

When I wake up in the morning, I will need to avoid, at all costs, any connection to the world, until 6pm tomorrow night.

I will need to:

Not turn on the television.
Not check email.
Not access Facebook.
Not access Twitter.
Not read the news.
Not look at my iPhone.
Not talk to any American friends.

In other words, I need to not do ANYTHING wherein there's even the slightest inkling of a chance that I may find out the score of the game before we start watching it tomorrow.

I was successful last year, but to stay completely disconnected from the world, in such a connected world is an EPIC challenge and just gets tougher year after year.

My love affair with Spotify

2010-02-06T11:35:09Z

Thus begins the second in the series of things to which I want to make sweet passionate love.

Spotify is taking the music industry and music fans by storm. Though it's not available in the US, and though it hasn't shown profitability yet, Spotify is paving the path for the future of online media distribution.

Spotify is a streaming music service, which eliminates the need for downloading music, and recentralizes the distribution of music. In an industry running rampant with piracy, Spotify has used technology to not only legitimize the distribution, but also to quell the demand for pirated music. Digital rights management (DRM) is maintained centrally at the distributor and simplifies the complexities that iTunes faces on a daily basis. From a consumer standpoint, it eliminates the limitations of digital storage, and places the burden on the digital pipeline, which is rapidly expanding and is a shared cost among consumers. It eliminates the need for consumers to backup media files and to manage their personal, digital libraries.

In short, it's the future of music, books, and film. For me personally, it's practically rendered iTunes completely obsolete. I haven't bought an album off iTunes in months and it feels great. Spotify is a light, lightning-fast client application which you download. The user interface is easy-to-use. For free you can listen to Spotify's entire catalogue and every few songs you hear ads. Users can also pay 99 SEK per month (around 15 USD) to get a wide range of premium options, including: no ads, higher bitrate quality, offline playability, and early access to music. For me this is worth it, because these are features I use AND it's still cheaper than what I would spend on iTunes to buy albums of the course of a year. I also don't have to back anything up or worry about losing music. I can create playlists and email my friends links to any of the music from a catalogue that is the best among all streaming applications and frankly has just about everything my wide taste in music seeks (though iTunes catalogue is still bigger). There's also a 24-hour premium option for those that want to have a wide music catalogue for an event like a party, and don't want to hear ads (brilliant, btw). Furthermore, there's a Spotify application on the iPhone which allows you to stream on-demand music to a portable device. This is awesome and ridiculous.

It's not the first time we've seen streaming music services. Rhapsody, Pandora, Last.fm, Blip.fm, Lala, etc. etc. etc. However it seems to be doing it more successfully than anyone else. This likely has to do with significant investments in early business development, securing distribution deals with major music distributors and building a large music catalogue up front.

Though this early widespread success doesn't come without struggle. Spotify is 7 million strong in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the UK, France, and Spain. Only 250K of these are paying subscribers (3.5% - 4%). And although in Sweden, Spotify generated more revenue for the major music distributors than iTunes did in 2009, it's likely because most Swedish consumers were getting their music for free. My true belief here is that Spotify simply gives too much away for free, and provides little reason to go premium, unless you are a tech geek who is really into music.

Spotify is attempting to make its entrance in the US market in 2010, but rumor has it it's going to be very difficult unless they get rid of the ad model. Distributors simply don't believe in it. However I do believe that if Spotifycan create a content-based ad model (similar to Google), tailored to different listener segments (heavy metal v. classical v. jazz v. pop) they could be successful. Furthermore, if this ad platform can allow for local ads, I can imagine it would be essentially on-demand internet radio station. I do believe the ad model can work, and I do believe that this can be profitable (as it appears to be for radio), but Spotify needs to make some significant short-term investments in its ad platform for longer term profitability, and furthermore to sell the distributors on it.

Spotify is top-notch, cutting-edge, and smart. But the next few years will be critical to determining its long-term success in Europe and eventually abroad...especially with Rdio just around the corner.

Spotify is currently invite only, but I have three outstanding invites and I get two every month, so if you or anyone you know needs one (and you live in the aforementioned countries), let me know.

My love affair with Caffe Nero

2010-01-24T15:28:43Z

I'm starting a new series this year called "My love affair with..." It's an attempt to take all those products, services, artists, technologies, etc. that significantly influence my outlook on the way things ought to be done; things that are done so well, they change the world, the community, art, technology, etc. for the better. They set new standards and innovate, they make our lives better, not easier. They are things that, if it were physically possible, I would make deep passionate love to, cuddle with, and even call back in a few days.

So this is the first in the "My love affair with..." series.

Swedes take a ton of pride in their coffee. They like it strong. Long, cold winters might have something to do with it. I'm proud to say, I live just around the corner from the best coffee served in all of Stockholm. In fact, I will venture to say it is the best coffee I've had in my life.

It's Italian coffee, so it's served by forcing hot water through densely-packed ground coffee beans. I will have my coffee one of two ways, Americano or Espresso. More often I will have it as an Americano, typically for breakfast or during a midday fika, served with foamy warm milk on top, and a bit of brown sugar. Sometimes I'll have it as an espresso with a cannoli dessert. No matter how I have it, Nero makes it perfectly. It's made in a way that only your local neighborhood Italian restaurant and cafe can make it. And Nero qualifies itself as something that, when it disappears, or when I disappear, will be completely and utterly irreplaceable in my life.

So sadly I've become strangely addicted to it. Every morning before work, I wake up and I walk just around the corner to Caffe Nero. Everyone knows me there and expects me there. I'm one of the first to arrive in the morning. With my Americano, I have a freshly-baked croissant (cornetto) filled with either apricot preserves, lemon vanilla cream, almond paste, or chocolate. And every morning when I walk in the door, they get it started for me, no matter where in line I am. I'll then sit down and savor the thirty minutes I have with my Americano, my cornetto, and my book. It's my chance to unwind before I begin a day at work, or to appreciate the time I have with myself on a Saturday or Sunday morning. I am typically not a person of routine in any way, but I am probably Nero's most regular and predictable customer ever.

And that's just the coffee. They also happen to serve an amazing Italian lunch and dinner menu which changes seasonally and includes some of the best Italian food I've had. The pan fried and breaded veal stuffed with ruccola and prosciutto is something you'll taste in your mouth for weeks. Their freshly-made pastas are second-to-none. Their service is immaculate.

And with their success comes great opportunity. As of today, they're moving their main restaurant to a far larger space just two doors away, where they will have a bar and more seating room (something they are in desperate need of) and their current space will eventually be turning into their fresh bakery/cafe after some renovations, something Stockholm is desperately missing.

Nero is an assault on the senses with their amazing coffee, their good, fresh Italian food, and their outstanding service and I humbly resign myself to the ridiculous power it has over me. If every place in Stockholm were like Nero, I'd never have any reason to want to leave.

Ramblings on Nepal and India

2010-01-24T11:31:01Z

There are those moments in life that you know will forever live in your memory as a sort of pinnacle of your existence; moments wherein you know you've truly tasted the essence of life and all that it has to offer; moments when you know you've absolutely taken advantage of the single life you have on this planet by doing something so extraordinary that it reminds you you're truly alive in every sense; moments when you come close enough to death that you love life more than you ever have.

Traveling through Nepal and India was a spiritual experience. No, not in terms of religion or finding God or anything like that, but rather in terms of achieving a higher level of spirituality within myself.

You can go on living your life everyday and you forget that you're alive. And when you have that moment that reminds you of just how alive you are, you realize that every other day was a mundane, routine march to the end of your existence.

When I originally heard about the Rickshaw Run and signed up, it was with the expectation that I would get to see a part of the world that I'd never been to before; that it would be a fun and crazy experience; that I would meet new people like myself; and to a certain extent that I would challenge myself mentally and physically. But what I didn't realize was that I would be pushing myself to limits I'd never experienced and that I would learn things about myself that I'd never known.

Upon landing in Kathmandu, the stark reality of one of the poorer countries in the world was apparent. Nestled among the Himalayas, you'd find it hard to believe that a city like Kathmandu can experience such plight. It was poor, and yet by no means the poorest city we would see on our trip. It was built up, but crumbling in all but the wealthiest areas. It had charm, it had edge, and it was beautiful. It was a chaotic patchwork of a former glory and a modern plight.

Probably only half the city had electricity at any given moment. You walked down the street in the Thamel or elsewhere and watch all the lights go out for as far as the eye can see and 20 minutes later, everything would come back up again. When you walked down the street and saw the electrical wiring, literally hundreds of tangled electrical cables being held to a building by some rotting piece of wood, you wondered how this place had any electricity at all.

Electricity, technology, modernity. A recurring theme throughout the trip, you see that when implemented poorly, irresponsibly and without any forethought, how it can destroy a society.

I would've loved to have seen Nepal and India 100 years ago. Countries which had no real modern technology to speak of; where they operated with within the bounds of what nature and their immediate surroundings could provide. I say this because so often we saw how the plight of the cities were a direct result of a lack of foresight and education, of giving people technology and not telling them how to responsibly embrace it to benefit them and making their lives better, but rather of how to use it to attempt to make their lives easier (which it didn't) all the while destroying them and their surroundings in the process.

You can't walk around most cities in Nepal or India without covering your face. My lungs got absolutely shredded in our time there. People burned garbage on the streets to stay warm. Cars, rickshaws, trucks, and buses coughed out black diesel smoke so thick the air was almost unbreathable. In some cities you would wade ankle deep through garbage (mostly plastic, metal, and other non-biodegradable junk) just walking down the street. There was no such thing as clean water (anywhere) or modern plumbing (in most places). Massive vats of water which were manually filled were placed on the roofs of buildings and used gravity to provide water to the floors below. Heat of any kind was non-existent except in some nice hotels where they had hot water boilers powered by kerosene to provide lukewarm water. Herds of animals and families would sit atop the same piles of garbage scavenging for food. But I don't want to paint a horrible picture. These were perhaps the rougher areas, which sadly were more common than you might expect.

Yet through all this, over one billion people maintain their existence, living their day-to-day lives. To us, they were millions of people in an ocean of human life. In such a vast population, one face could hardly be differentiated from the next. Yet they were individuals with individual lives, maintaining an individual existence. They were human beings just like us, but they lived lives of constant struggle for survival.

And yet throughout all this was an overwhelming feeling of love for life, that to struggle to survive is to truly live. Every moment of every day counts. Love for your fellow man is critical to your survival when you have only them to depend on for your life. Imagine a country of 1.2 billion people, 4x the size of the US population, living on land 1/3 the size of the United States. The US has 32 humans per square kilometre. Europe has 70 humans per square kilometre. India has 364 humans per square kilometre. As Gregory David Roberts said in Shantaram, no western country would survive in these conditions. Throw a billion westerners into western Europe and it would evolve to WWIII in just a matter of minutes. Chew on that.

And you can sense the warmth of the people, that their plight was their existence, that perhaps they wouldn't have it any other way, that they willingly resigned themselves to this because otherwise, life might be too boring. And you know, I think they're right.

I missed the toughest part of the travel through India due to my border troubles and visa issues. I missed charging through the poverty of Uttar Pradesh, my fellow rickshaw runners driving with their sleeping bags on through fog and miserable cold, getting sick, staying in the most horrible of hotels, and aching to get south as soon as possible, to the warmth, to the cleaner air.

In the meantime I was dealing with overstaffed and inefficient government offices in Kathmandu, with inflated egos and absurd rules, with legal documents, and written statements. You've never met someone with such a passionate hatred towards bureaucracy as I have. I also have absolutely no patience. So it's obvious that I was being tested.

Five days of complete nonsense. Five days of written statements, senseless waiting due to unmotivated, and underpaid government officials. I couldn't buy a plane ticket. I had no idea how I was going to rejoin my team. I was on the verge of being arrested or deported.

And I loved it all. I loved the living on the edge. I love that I was so sick, I was shitting my brains out every hour. I loved the constant struggle to overcome the odds. I loved knowing that I was pushing myself to my limits and growing up with every huge challenge I faced. I loved that I was living outside my 9 to 5 office bubble. I loved that to truly face my emotions was to truly live. I loved how this insane experience was rendering my life up to that point as completely fucking insignificant. I loved how I was, for once in my life, truly alive.

As I rejoined my team in Indore, India, I looked forward to completing the adventure I had set out to do in the first place.

The reunion was nothing short of spectacular and will truly live among the best memories of the trip. The chaos of four rickshaws parked outside my hotel, 11 other rickshaw runners, fueling up, rebalancing the weight in the rickshaws, taking a breather, having a smoke. Locals were gathering around wondering what the hell was going on and who all these filthy-looking white people were. Team Blighty in their waistcoats and cravats, Team Tukelicious taking a break, Team Rickshaw Knight Riders looking at their engine, and Chris and Seema looking at me and smiling and welcoming me back with open arms, both of them barely able to contain themselves about the difficulties, the excitement, and the craziness of the trip up to that point - how they'd met up with these teams, how they'd broken down in a traffic circle, how they'd driven through some insane cities, how Seema had gotten sick, how bitterly cold the journey was until that day. It was with a bittersweet pang I felt some sadness in my heart at my misfortune that forced me to miss it all, but I knew that there were still nine days left of the journey.

For all of us, the struggle and misfortune experienced up until that day, would completely reverse itself that day into what would become an amazing rest of the trip. For the first time, since the teams had set out from Pokhara, the day was sunny and warm. The Indian countryside of Madhya Pradesh was breathtakingly beautiful. We stopped, picked, and ate chili peppers from a field. We wore t-shirts and shorts for the first time. That night we would stay in a fantastic hotel in a small city called Buhranpur, India. The owner greeted us personally and treated us to one of the best local meals we would have in India. We ate outside under the stars listened to live music. We would sit around on couches in one of the hotel rooms, drink beers, laugh until our stomachs hurt and truly appreciate the moment we were living in. We were whole. We were complete. And that moment tasted so sweet.

Traveling in a convoy sounds like a recipe for disaster. Especially when the convoy is made up of four rickshaw teams and three people in each convoy. I was a little skeptical when I realized we would all have to try to get along for the remainder of the trip. That compromise would be a necessary routine for a group this size. That we would be doomed and possibly leave wishing never to see each other again.

There are times in life when the odds are overwhelmingly against, that egos and personalities are destined to tip the balance, where twelve type-A individuals working together to achieve a common goal are a statistical impossibility.

I have never loved being with eleven strangers as much as I loved being with these guys. No group of twelve people in the world worked together as well as we did. I wish I could say it was a lesson in team-building, but we worked so well as a team that there was hardly any building. People stepped up when they needed to and stepped back when they weren't needed. No one felt the need to take charge, and every individual brought something to the table when it was needed of them. Some were great with directions. Some were great with mechanics. Some were great with negotiation. Some were great with communication. Some were great with providing comic relief when it was needed. It was the most perfect team I've ever been a part of. And I will miss it for the rest of my life. We can all say with confidence that we all made close friends that day. To truly respect twelve people is to do the Rickshaw Run with them and not kill them afterwards. But to truly love twelve people is to do the Rickshaw Run with them, have amazing laughs, accidents and breakdowns, fantastic meals, and to feel like you truly know them in the end. If someone asked me what made the entire trip for me, it was being with eleven other amazing people that I hope to stay in touch with forever. They made this adventure extraordinary.

Sadly just a couple days after I would rejoin the team, Chris was scheduled to depart back for San Francisco. In total, we'd only spent a few days together during the entire trip due to our misfortunes. Chris' departure was a bummer. I'd been looking forward to spending time with him and though the time we had together was amazing, it was simply too short.

Seema and I charged on as the only two-person team, but with the support of the rest of the convoy. We had great conversations as we drove, helped each other to drive at night (which we did far too much of). We worked well as a team, though I'm sure I stressed her out more since I can be such a horrible backseat driver. In the end, we got along great, and I would do it again with her in a heartbeat.

We faced a ton of challenges throughout the trip, but luckily as we continued to trudge south, gaining more experience and feeling the warm weather, things got remarkably easier. The regions down south were wealthier and more developed. Breakdowns were a non-issue; we knew exactly what issues were as they arose. We knew our rickshaws better, we knew the roads better.

But towards the end were a few moments of adversity which challenged us mentally and emotionally more than we'd been challenged up to that point. These were the defining moments of the trip that reminded us we were on a dangerous trip and that at any moment something could go wrong.

The biggest breakdown our convoy would have was the day Chris left. It was supposed to be a "power" day of 500+ kilometres, but we'd end up far short. Team Rickshaw Knight Riders pulled over to the side of the road at around 2pm after they'd more or less lost power. They couldn't get their rickshaw started up again. They'd been experiencing serious power issues throughout the trip and this is where it culminated. We knew this was a serious problem that we couldn't fix on our own. We were in the middle of nowhere in Maharashtra about 30 kilometres north of a city called Solapur. As was the case in the rest of India, middle of nowhere still means there are people around (364 people/square kilometre). Within minutes, a mechanic and a couple of his friends drove by on his motorcycle and stopped to help. After about 30 minutes, he diagnosed the issue. A hole in the piston. A virtual death sentence. To fix it, he needed a new piston. It was a Sunday and the only mechanic open was in Solapur, and that's if we were lucky. He offered to drive one of our convoy on the back of his motorcycle to Solapur where they would pick up the part, then come back and take a few hours to fix it. Two hours later, they returned with bananas for everyone in the convoy, which they had insisted on paying for. The mechanic then spent until 9pm fixing it in the dark of the countryside with nothing but our headlamps guiding his way. At around 7pm, our team and Tukelicious headed to Solapur in the dark to look for a hotel for all of us while Blighty and the KRs stayed back with the mechanic.

On the way to the hotel, I got a call from one of the Blighty guys telling us that there was a very dangerous man following us on a motorcycle. Apparently one of the people that stopped by our convoy earlier in the day when we were broken down was an acquaintance of the mechanic. The mechanic and his friends feared for our lives when this man showed up demanding to know where we'd gone. Apparently the dangerous man had hopped on his bike and was making his way to Solapur on our tails. We luckily never encountered him again. In the end, the mechanic and his friends had spent seven hours of his day helping us, feeding us, and protecting us, and if you want a testament to the kindness of the Indian people, these men epitomized it. When in the end, we offered the mechanic 1000 rupies (20 USD) for his work, he emphatically denied taking something along the lines of a couple hundred (4 USD).

I have a lifetime of stories from the trip. Stories that I will carry with me until the day I die. I never felt more alive than I did on this trip. I never learned so much about myself, about the kindness of strangers, about the plight of mankind, about the strength of teamwork and the power of friendship, about joy and sadness, about courage and fear, and about the thrill of adventure and being alive as I learned on this trip. If you live your remaining years without having an experience like this, then you haven't truly lived.

There is no more an appropriate quote with which to end this post than that of Chris McCandless:

"So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservatism, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more dangerous to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun."

Carpe Diem. Make your life extraordinary.

The story of what happened at the border crossing between Nepal and India

2010-01-21T01:14:41Z

(Republished from tuktukgoose.com)

Early on the morning of January 3rd, we set out from a love hotel in Butwal, Nepal. None of us had slept much and we were anxious to make up for the departure delay. We'd also been driving the previous night in the mountains which, as Chris will recap, was terrifying.

We arrived at the border town of Sunauli around 7:30. As was protocol, we went to the Nepal Immigration Office at the border and got the exit stamp. Then we proceeded to the India Immigration office with our passports to enter India for the first time...or so we thought.

Rewind to December 28th

On December 28th, when I had flown into Kathmandu, I transited in Delhi, where I'd arrived from Istanbul on Turkish Airlines. In order to transit in Delhi, I was required to go through immigration, which means I got an India entry stamp.

I picked up my luggage and proceeded to my Jet Airways flight at the Delhi airport which subsequently gave me an India exit stamp. I had a single entry visa which thus invalidated my visa. I hadn't known it at the time. I'd insisted to the immigrations officer that I was just in transit and he insisted that I'd be fine getting back into India.

Back to January 3rd, 7:30am at the Sunauli border crossing

The immigrations officer was a big, burly Indian man in his 50s. He was a hardass. He looked at my passport and said my India visa was invalid. As the color drained from my face I asked him to explain. He said that I'd been stamped in and out of India. I explained to him that I was transiting at the Delhi airport and was forced to go through immigration. He didn't care. We explained that we were part of the Rickshaw Run where we raised money for Indian and Nepalese charities. He didn't care. He said it was an issue of national security and that we were required to go back to Kathmandu to get our issue resolved.

This is where things get blurry.

Other Rickshaw Run teams argued for us to no avail. A couple guys pulled me aside and told me to just hop in the rickshaw and drive through. Sadly, listening to my illogical and extremely emotionally-charged self, I decided we were going to drive through.

My Indiana Jones moment

I told Seema and Chris to get in the back of the rickshaw. In the meantime, the five immigration officers formed a wall across the street, each one standing about a metre apart. They told me to turn the vehicle around and to drive back towards Nepal or they would have me arrested. I proceeded to make a u-turn from the left hand side of the street, but rather than complete the u-turn I put the pedal to the metal and went straight for the wall of officers.

Instantly, all five immigrations officers jumped on the vehicle trying to bring it down. They were punching me in the back of the head while Seema was telling me that this was not a smart decision on my part. Chris as I recall was speechless. Since a rickshaw only goes 5-10MPH (10-15KPH) in 1st and 2nd gear, we were pretty much in a no-win situation.

After going about 15-20 metres with the five men on the vehicle, I made a u-turn and started to head back towards Nepal. They told me to stop the vehicle instantly and then dragged me out by my shirt. A huge crowd gathered instantly as I got chewed out by the big burly man. He told me that I did a very stupid thing and that they could have me arrested.

They dragged me back to the immigration office sat me down and detained all three of us for two hours. Chris and Seema tried desperately to call the US Embassy which of course was closed, since it was Sunday. In the meantime, as the reality of what I'd tried to do hit me, I apologized profusely. The man who had spent his time furious at my insolence began to break. He explained to me what the implications of what would've happened if I had entered India without a valid visa, that I would get arrested eventually and that it's an extremely serious offense not to have a visa. He made me write a letter of apology to the Indian government. By the end of the two hours, despite how angry these men were earlier, we all became good friends, sharing cigarettes, laughing about the bizarre incident, and shaking hands and hugging.

I wasn't the only one

Oddly enough, at the border crossing, just as I was getting ready to make the trek back up to Kathmandu by plane (there was an airport just 6 km away), one member of a team of Italians, a woman named Elena, was stopped for the exact same thing. In fact, we'd taken the same exact flights from Istanbul and from Delhi. All her teammates had multiple entry visas, but she'd had just a single entry. As she tried desperately to fight the situation, I explained to her concisely that it was no use arguing, that I would be making the trip to Kathmandu, and that we could go together.

So Elena and I hugged our teammates and saw them off as they continued the journey through India, while we backtracked through Nepal.

The journey back to Kathmandu

We were required to return to the Nepal immigration office at the border to have our exit visas cancelled. They simply took out the sticker in our passport, but remnants of the stamp existed, making it look like we removed the stickers ourselves, so we emphatically refused this. They insisted that we'd be fine. We told them we wanted an official note from them to give to the authorities in Kathmandu to have our exit stamps rescinded. After a 30 minute discussion, they agreed with us and wrote us our letter.

As we were about to head to the airport, we were informed that all flights out of Butwal were cancelled. So our only other option was to take a taxi, for seven hours back to Kathmandu. We had no choice. I could probably write a 2 hour blog post on the 19 year old kid that drove us through the mountains and how he wouldn't live past 20 judging from the way he drove, but I'll spare you the details. This kid was insane and Elena and I were lucky to have escaped that journey with all our limbs.

In Kathmandu

We arrived in Kathmandu two nights ago. Yesterday we contacted the Italian Consulate in Kathmandu after Elena contacted her embassy in Calcutta. We received the gracious help of Sabina, a Nepali who represented Italians in Kathmandu. Without her, we might not have made it out of Nepal again.

She took us to the Nepal Immigration Office in Kathmandu, where they listened to our story. They told us that technically were in the country illegally and that we should be deported. After pleading with the officials, they decided they would review our cases, but that they would need to take a written legal statement about our crazy adventure from the beginning - about how in transit our India passports were stamped, about how we were stamped with Nepal exits in Sunauli, about how we weren't allowed back to India, about how we came back to Nepal, and about how we ended up in Kathmandu illegally.

This statement took the whole day today. But in the end we got our Nepal transit visas.

Regarding the India situation, we are required to get India transit visas which are valid for 15 days. However, the line at the India visa office in Kathmandu is notoriously long, so we contacted a taxi driver named Kumar who bribes the security guard at the visa office to get some tickets prior to when the office officially opens. For a simple 500 Nepalese rupies we'll be among the first in line. So we expect to get our India visas tomorrow and a flight to India later in the afternoon, where we'll be meeting up with our respective teams in either Agra or Jaipur.

Assuming everything goes well, I should be rejoining Tuk Tuk Goose tomorrow night or on the morning of the 7th. Wish me luck.

I’ll see you on the other side!

2009-12-20T18:20:46Z

I've been slightly distracted hence my updates have been lacking frequency and inspiration. I have a ton of blog posts lined up for editing and publishing, yet I can't seem to complete any of them.

But I have good reasons for my distraction. I leave for India and Nepal in a week. One week.

In one week, I'll be headed to a new country, a new continent, to partake in the greatest adventure of my life to date; a journey of 2200 miles in one of the most exotic places in the world. I'll be puttputting along in a poor excuse for a tin can with two good friends through the mountains, the jungles, the deserts, and the countryside of one of the most diverse, beautiful, and interesting places in the entire world. I'll be challenging myself not only to survive and to be patient, but to truly live. I'll be eating amazing foods, dancing beautiful dances, perhaps participating in some "extracurricular activities" and in all likeliness not bathing. In short, I will be making my life extraordinary.

My level of stress hit peaks I never thought possible in the last few weeks. Now that the paperwork, expenses, and headache are out of the way, I can finally take the time to get completely excited for what is sure to be my greatest adventure and personal challenge yet.

I will likely hold off on any posts recapping 2009 until the end of January or February.

In the meantime, check us out (read: stalk us) at http://tuktukgoose.com. We'll be posting regular updates from the adventure trail.

Namaste!

Mr. Hooper is Dead

2009-12-11T12:12:56Z

I stumbled upon this video posted at The Retroist and it had a profound effect on me in more ways than I would've imagined. I remember seeing it when I was just 5 years old and I remember having been deeply affected by it then as well.

It's the episode in Sesame Street soon after Will Lee, who played Mr. Hooper, died in real life. The regular "human" Sesame Street crew is sitting around and talking, when Big Bird comes over showing some pictures he drew of everyone. The final picture he shows is that of Mr. Hooper. It's at this moment that the crew has to reexplain that Mr. Hooper was dead and wouldn't be coming back.

There are many reasons why this video hits such a spot with me at 31 years old:

It reminded me of the incredible dignity with which the Sesame Street writers and producers behaved and of the responsibility they took upon themselves to teach children about death. They didn't have to address it, but they did. And they did it effectively and tastefully.
It reminded me of the mindnumbing crap they serve on television to kids today, and of how much more socially-awkward, unfocused, and sheltered children are nowadays.
It reminded me of a time when parents didn't use television as a substitute for their responsibility, but rather as a supplement, wherein sometimes television programs (not "TV shows") and the characters whom the kids trusted, could help them to understand difficult-to-comprehend things in their own terms; things that perhaps weren't so easy for parents themselves to explain.
I didn't think the explanations that Maria, Bob, Gordon, and others gave were perfect. In fact, there are things I'm sure I might've done better, but in the flaws and the awkwardness it became real and they took a very difficult topic and explained simply and effectively.
This moment in television was how I'd learned about death in the way I would have finally understood it. And I'm proud to have learned it this way.

This moment in television speaks of a time when I was proud to be a kid in the US, when parents were parenting, when kids had attention spans, when television served not as a distraction, but as a responsible source of information, education, and enlightenment. I'm not sure we'll ever get back there, but it's fun to relive my past through when emotions were real and education and responsibility were dignified.

PS - Most incredibly is what they're discussing when the video starts. Are. You. Kidding. Me. Awesomeness.