A girl I had never met before, with whom I was connected on Facebook just happened to mention that she was giving away her bike since she was leaving the country for some time.
Went and picked it up, and now I have a fabulous Raleigh bicycle! :) Pics soon.
Incidentally, there’s a fantastic website called (no pun intended): FreeCycle where one can pass on / request for stuff! :)
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| Zen and the art of zero-maintenance! |
I slept at least one night in each of these places:
* Denotes multiple non-contiguous visits.
** Artwork by Patrick Moberg
*** Template via Zach Klein via Nick Gray
Facebook and Twitter make you forget about timezones, but with friends n family on the other side of the planet, its a nice thing to know local times. Windows 7 does it with a simple hover over your local time – awesome simplicity! :)
Click on ‘Adjust Date/Time’ > ‘Additional Clocks’ tab.
Choose upto 2 new time zones to track …
Voila – you’re done!
Stemming from a Twitter discussion I was having today with @rashmid I began to think about all the buzz around global warming, hunger, insert_global_or_local_problem here and the massive amounts of action surrounding these and other issues.
I’ve seen this action in person, volunteering my time with projects with kids, the poor and even during the horrifying tsunami incident – and believe me, its heart gratifying. Touching, inspiring, moving to say the least.
As an entrepreneur / business person or even on a basal level, as a logical person – it still poses a stark question in my face – action, yes – happening at the local and global level yes. But what about the results? Where’s the universal scoreboard?
Couple of years back after leaving Microsoft, I picked up a copy of ‘Leaving Microsoft to Change The World’ by John Wood. It caught my fancy because of the title of course, but it had me gripped once I started browsing through it. John Wood quit a lucrative, enviable position at Microsoft Australia – reporting at times, directly into CEO Steve Ballmer – to start an NGO, initially based out of Nepal. Their charter was to create a ‘room to read’ for young children who didn’t have the means to study. They created libraries and schools.
What fascinated me most, was the way their model worked – they would map individual / corporate donations against action, or rather results. That model is widely used these days by a lot of NGOs – I don’t care who pioneered it.
Bottomline – I’d love to see local efforts reflecting in a global scoreboard or check sheet which maps donations/actions taken to make positive change happen, with the actual results. Now wouldn’t that be wonderful?!
Finally starting to write about my (extended) South America trip. Lets begin from the pre-planning stage. Helps being a designer to create visual itineraries… this is what I cooked up.
Route, Dates and Initial Itinerary
The plan initially was to go through London, stop by and stay with a friend and move on to Brasil > Bolivia > Peru > Ecuador
Route Options & Costs
Made this using a website – I forget the name. Will update this post with it. Fabulous way to map your route, explore flight options and see costs upfront.
Visual Itinerary
This was my favorite piece of inspiration. Before this, the whole trip looked like a dream. Now it had a face. Spent half a day making this, but totally worth it! The dream was taking shape…
Next update: The real itinerary and first week in Brasil!
While browsing regularly through the Facebook homepage, I happened to hover around the language dropdown menu at the bottom left of the page and scrolled down to find “English (Pirate – BETA)” as a new option!
Fun little surprise, and makes for some fantasy entertainment…
Screenshot:
I owe all my readers a mega load of posts about my travels. Been writing it down in a physical blog, so will surely upload it all soon (a blog redesign is also on the cards), with photos! Salud, desde Quito!
Woke up pretty late this afternoon – perhaps from the accumulated fatigue and not sleeping properly on the couch last night – Almost 11 a.m. Missed the breakfast again, and I had a bucket load of clothes to wash. Used the fabric detergent Paul gifted me and put the clothes to dry in the hostel verandah.
Karima came along all excited to start the day and asked me to hurry up. We were going to MASP (Museu de Arte, São Paulo) and later to the Ibirapuera Park. After Tori changed some cash (we walked through the Carimaru market first) and Karima helped me activate my SIM card, we took the metro to Trianon MASP. Plans to meet up with Bebeto didn’t materialize.
MASP was a very pleasant surprise for me – firstly, entry was waived off on Tuesdays, so we got in for free – but what I pre-conceived as a boring museum, in fact turned out to be an incredible experience with some of the most exquisite, detailed and breathtaking art I’ve ever seen.
Half way through the museum visit, got a SMS from Bebeto around 1:30 pm “Man, your flight is at 6 pm, not 10! You need to be at the airport by 4!”
Whoa – what a lifesaver! Did my quick goodbyes to Karima, Tori and Paul and dashed off to the hostel. 2:15 pm. Gulped down a Guarana, packed my bags, bid adieu to Tarcisio, Ana, Juliana and my dear friend Husam – and rushed out at 3 pm. Reached Tatuape station at 3:40 pm. Doing fine – and finally reached the airport at 4:15 pm! Not bad :)
Checked in, cleared formalities and flirted with the TACA stewardess.
Had a cappuccino and a delicious sanduiche de frango (chicken sandwich) and was on my way to… Ecuador.
Writing this while having a nice meal of chicken rice with Inca Cola (from Peru) and Johnny Walker Scotch Whiskey. Viva Ecuador!
Woke up after catching three hours of sleep, at around 9ish this morning. It’s raining outside, so I did some quick web surfing, took a shower, did a Skype video call with my family back home while watching the Opening Ceremony to the Olympics. My friend Bebeto gifted me a cool ‘Petrobras’ jacket to keep warm and off we headed to Avenida Paulista for lunch.
Shopping Center 3 – the place was packed with lunch hour rush. Note to self: Next time, come a couple hours later to skip this rush.
While Bebeto shopped for some caipirinha mixer kits, I was busy chatting up the cute chick at the t-shirt store with my broken Portuguese and some hand gestures thrown in. My first inspiration to learn the language well enough to converse with such ivory statues in the future.
Back at the Praca da Arvore Hostel, Ana informed me about Samba/Salsa nite so I stayed in. A tall, dusky, demure woman – Mara Santos taught us our first samba, salsa moves. At the end of it, she threw in a surprise – why not head out for the night and go to a real forro club!
Meanwhile, got an SMS from Bebeto about another party happening at Blue Pub with the CS gang. So I headed there first, met up a bunch of Paulistanos as well as gringos over some great Skol beers.
After about an hour, I joined the hostel gang again and we headed to the forro club – Canto de Ema. What a spectacular experience!
Forro is different from other forms of salsa/samba, in that it uses the ‘symphonie’ instrument and has easier steps. The passion in the dance form is simply beautiful. Met two beautiful girls, one Brasilian and the other Portuguese – both of them spoke perfect English.
While taking a beer break outside, this guy walked in to our group and introduced himself as Roberto – making friends is so easy here! We managed to converse in broken Portuguese and English respectively, but it was good fun. Some more girls joined in. Later I watched Roberto and his girlfriend dancing, and I could bet my bottom dollar, they were the best damn couple, swinging and swirling to the forro music with the most amazing grace I had seen. Ana taught me some dance moves and surprisingly I managed to pick it up pretty well.
The final stop of the night was of course, food! Stopped by an Arabic joint called Habib’s – the best darn cheese and chicken esfihas (think mini, soft pizzas)! Retired at around 5:30 in the morn. What a day!
Sitting at the lounge at the Mumbai International Airport sipping on some white wine, I toast to myself on my 28th birthday – I was actually doing this – going to Brasil and Ecuador – South America ahoy!
As the land of sun, sand, exotica and wilderness beckons me, I am reminded of Paulo Coelho’s character in The Alchemist. This was meant to be.
Next Update: From Brasil!
Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the new kid on the blogosphere - my little brother Sagar Karkhanis!
"I write about good parenting.... no I'm not a parent" - 24 yr old Ronak, who looked younger than 20.
"I started blogging when I was feeling lonely. It's helped a lot. Blogging is a very emotional thing for me!" - Anjuli
"Hurr hurr!" - Abhishek
"I think I should start a sex blog" - Clement
