Country Club

Vivian - with the benefit of hindsight, your generation will pass judgment on the events of the last few years involving the US and Iraq. But it ain't that hard from where one person stands today. I'd like to pass on this pearl to you.

Jo and my friend is doing his second tour of duty in Iraq. He posted the following on his myspace page under the "Who I'd Like To Meet" section. Vivian plays with his 9 month old son - who's briefly met his dad once.

Who I'd Like To Meet:
Anyone who truly thinks that Invading Iraq was a good idea and maybe get them to trade places with me for a day...wouldn't want them to miss a function at the Country Club..assholes.

News from Lake Ohara

Here's a story unrelated to Vivian in any way, except that it happened to her father - when Gunaraja and I were at Lake Ohara in Yoho National Park, Canada.

Background: Lake Ohara sits in a sensitive area of Yoho. You can only travel there by foot or take a park bus. There is a small campsite at the lake. Because it is bear country, the campsites are off to one side and there's a communal cooking and eating area. There are bear-safe lockers near the cooking area for all your food.

When we get there, one of the campsites that is available is number 31. An oldish Canadian couple grabs it. We get campsite 30. We cook. We eat. We get ready to put our food in our alloted bear locker. Gunaraja notices that our locker is full of someone else's stuff: three bright yellow bags of groceries, a very old and dirty canvas backpack with a Canadian flag on it, and a nasty looking Coleman stove. I think that the people who just vacated Number. 30 have forgotten their shit. I rush off towards the bus stop. Alas the last bus of the day has already departed.


We know that the locker 6 must be empty because there is no tent on that site. After thinking about our options, we schlep all the crap that someone else had left in our locker to locker 6. Then we neatly put our belongings in our locker and go off to set up our tents.

After a bit, the old Canadian guy stops by politely and asks if we have, by any chance, put our stuff in locker 31. A light bulb immediately (and admittedly long after it should have) clicks on in both Gunaraja and my heads at the same time. All this time, we have been screwing around with their locker - thinking it was ours.

It turns out that they put their food away, and then went off to set up their tents and drink a bit of wine. After a couple of glasses, they come back down to cook. And whoa - their stuff is gone, and someone else's crap is there instead. After much hand-wringing and worrying about their sobriety and convincing themselves that they had in fact not imagined putting their stuff in their locker, they peek in all the lockers and find their stuff in locker 6. More searching - and they the find locker 30 empty. So they rightly guess that the idiots in campsite 30 have put their shit in locker 31 after moving the original contents of locker 31 to locker 6 for some unknown and inexplicable reason. They come looking for said idiots and there we are.

They are Canadian. So they are extremely polite about the whole thing. We can't find any reason to dislike our victims to mitigate our feeling like idiots. The lady asks me if I am Canadian too. I say that I am from Texas. She says "Hmm - I saw you carrying a backpack with a Canadian flag on it just a little while ago". She had seen me moving her stuff from her locker and hadn't recognized her pack. Must be some good wine.

We apologize frequently and profusely. They try to make us feel better: "Any one could have made that mistake". Really?

It's 8pm. To hide our embarrassed asses, we decide to quietly leave the campsite and go for a short hike. We run into our Canadian friends several times. Three days and many miles later, Gunajara runs into them at the Lake Louise campsite.

I blame Gunaraja and the altitude and acid rain and several other things.

Siyagruva

Yesterday I sailed Siyagruva on Lake Travis with Grant. She's a Beneteau 373 and is Nautic7's flagship. It's time to say goodbye to Morpheus - the trusty Hunter 320 I have spent many an enjoyable afternoon with.

We have a tiny lifevest for Vivian, and she'll start sailing soon. But for now, she hangs with Mom while I go sail. Which is a part of the problem. The other part is that I am late coming back home. I tell Jo I'll be back by 630-7p, but it's already past 9p when I leave the dock. Time just runs away from us. We raise the spinnaker on Siyagruva, and Grant and I are grinning from ear to ear. We are cruising at 4.5 knots in a 9 knots wind! When it's time to drop the spinnaker, we fell like we are in the American's Cup - standing there on the bow and pulling in huge handfuls of flimsy sail.

So I decide to burn another 10 minutes and stop and buy Jo some flowers on the way back. I think it will make my apology smell nicer (after a hot afternoon on the lake, I don't).

I get back home and Vivian is already asleep. I give Jo the flowers and mumble. She says "Don't bother". Ouch.

Jo - I am sorry I was late. I love you and I enjoy sailing. I will be a very happy man if I can do both ;-) Will you go sailing with me the next time?

This morning I am on my best behavior. When Jo hands me Vivian, I take her for a walk. Then we think we'll make mom love us by picking up a pack of diapers. It's so freakin' early on a Sunday morning that Vivian is the second customer to walk in to the Target store. We miss being numero uno by less than 30 seconds. Damn.

I have learned my lesson - the next time I go sailing, I will get to Target early so Vivian can be the first customer to roll in through the door!

ps. the flowers that I got Jo look great and last forever. Jo calls them the "asshole flowers". "Hey - look how nice the asshole flowers look", and "Can you water the asshole flowers", and even "Vivian - what do you think of the asshole flowers".

Paradise Valley

I just got back from Paradise. Yoho and Banff National Parks in the Canadian Rockies. We hiked the high trail through Wiwaxy Gap around Lake O'Hara, Paradise Valley to Giant Steps, up and down Fairview Mountain above Lake Louise, Takakkaw Falls to Laughing Falls along the Yoho River, and Sunshine to Egypt Lake via Healy Pass. It is some of the most beautiful hiking I have done. There is spot in the an alpine meadows around Healy Pass where I can easily spend the rest of my life.

She is too small to have backpacked this time, but luckily for Vivian, REI carries some tiny sizes of hiking stuff - boots and jackets and that sort of a thing. Once you are off the boob, girl.

My American NPS has been spoiling me. Parks Canada has a very loose notion of trails. If a mountain goat can scramble up, so could you. The nice warden with great legs who hiked Paradise Valley with us tried to explain to me the difference between trail and route, but I'm not buying it.

One more thing - for what the Canadians charge you, I expect fresh sheets of high thread count in my sleeping bag every night. But they do have a good thing going for them. When a girl from Parks Canada cornered Gunaraja at the trailhead to answer a survey, and she asked him what Parks Canada was doing well, I had to tell her that they made good scenery.

This is my first time away from Vivian. By the last day I am thumbing through her flickr photos on my phone. My flight into Austin gets in after 1am, but I quietly steal into her room and stare at my little girl for a long time. Paradise is where the heart is.

Taslima

Rajesh started this by sending the following email to the HPS81 group. I had to reply. Vivian - if you plan to turn into a religious freak, here's why you shouldn't. If you are willing to suspend reason for superstition, you are well on your way down the slippery slope. It is only a matter of degrees from there on.

9TH AUGUST will be marked as Black Thursday for the freedom of expression in India as on that day noted Bangladeshi novelist Taslima Nasreen was roughed up by a bunch of activists led by MLAs of Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (MIM) party in the Press Club of Hyderabad. Nasreen, born in Bangladesh and a popular human rights supporter, was here on a visit to release the Telugu translation of her latest novel ‘Shodh’. As the function was about to conclude, gundas of MIM suddenly barged into the hall and attacked the novelist and all other present with chairs, flower bouquets, chappals etc. among front-runners were MIM MLAs Afsar Khan, Ahmed Pasha and Moazam Khan. They damaged the furniture and glass panes and some of them even reached the dais and roughed up the novelist. Though she escaped unhurt, the others including Narisetti Innaiah, Chairman of the Center for Inquiry who came to her rescue sustained injuries. The so-called member of Legislative assembly attacked Nasreen because her banned novel ‘Lajja’ raised the hackles of Muslim organisations. Lajja was about how Hindu minorities were mistreated in Bangladesh. Police were standing there as mute spectators and it was a state of total law and order failure. The government should take strict action against the culprits and dismiss the Police Commissioner for this shameful incident. We Indians are proud of our democratic culture and hospitality to our guest but this incident has damaged our image at a global level. In the country, which now boasts of a Woman President and Women Chief of Congress Party, it is a matter of worry if this is the way we treat a woman guest. This incident could definitely be described as black Thursday for freedom of expression in India.

As a beginning, let us see what all of us feel on the subject. I hope you do feel something about it. My questions are two:

1. If we let our right to freedom of expression get assaulted without voicing protest, are we dooming our country?
2. What can be the justification the MLA's have for the assault? They must have some justification, right?

Rajesh

My reply:

Siasat reports from a few minutes ago that Hyd Police have registered a case against *her*. My answers:

1. Yes
2. Why guess:

"We are not bothered about our MLA status. We are Muslims first. And its our responsibility to test those who have said anything against Islam in which ever way possible," said Akbaruddin Owaisi, MIM MLA.

My 2 cents: The freedom of press is a nice thing to defend. But you are defending it against those doing God's work.

You, Rajesh, are more logical than most. Do you examine your religious beliefs, however benign, with the same level of reason you use elsewhere?

I'm an atheist. It was harder to say I'm not Hindu. Should I expect others to not try to protect their religious beliefs - strange and militant and undemocratic as they may seem to me - without dumping their religion?