Ingrid and Alp are no longer with the people of Asia. They have joined the affluent masses of North America. The day they left Sri Lanka, they took first a plane then a train. Changing states of mind, time and space transported themselves across to Chennai. That was the next day. They saw there a 400 years old Banyan tree at last, which was one of the most magical things they had ever seen. With glossy eyes they stared at this tree of the Theosophical Society that covered 60,000 square feet and reminesced of the time where such trees were king. Four in the morning they boarded their steel bird and a long time later they arrived in the city of stories and TV shows. Alp passed through the police and immigration peons with fervor and ferocity to meet his maiden Ingrid once more on the other side. They were much loved by members of the maiden's family with whom they took shelter and still currently reside. On a clear day like today you can see the pulses of love they emanate all the way from Shenandoah.
However they don't expect to be able to answer ^that^ question fully.
Sunday, November 20, 2005
Monday, November 14, 2005
Bibliophilia
All our reading material over the past year has come to us fortuitously. I hope these suggestions for literary pleasure will come into your life unexpectedly too.
~Hegemony and Survival, by Noam Chomsky; classic reading for those wanting to accrue evidence to use against the "MAN" for their own personal debating arsenal
~Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell; a wonderfully original, intelligent, multi-faceted novel that will have you entertained and in awe of Mitchell's versitility
~Kon-Tiki, by ?; this real-life adventure of several Scandanavian men crossing the Pacific on a balsa-wood raft is so compelling and wild that we literally couldn't put it down... it deserves a cult following (or perhaps it has one and i just don't know of it, I did see an middle-aged white man in Chiang Mai with a Kon-tiki tee-shirt)
~The World According to Garp, by John Irving; the ultimate read-aloud American novel, it gets better and better and you will remember it and the time you spent reading it with true fondness
~The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood; fascinating, eerie, and important story of how the world in the near future, ridiculously easy to imagine ourselves in this anti-utopia
~The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown; yes, this is airport thriller material in some sense but we read the illustrated version and it was beautiful and wholly worthwhile
~The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami; I didn't know Murakami before this trip but he is a writer that is intriguing on many levels and has an army of books under his belt. A mixture of cherished mundanity with awesome violence and surreality.
~Shantaram, by David Gregory Roberts; an real-life story of an Australian jailbird who makes a new life for himself in Bombay, filled with unbelievably amazing experiences and deserves to be made into a movie with Johnny Depp as the lead (coming to theatres sometime in the next few years)
~Hegemony and Survival, by Noam Chomsky; classic reading for those wanting to accrue evidence to use against the "MAN" for their own personal debating arsenal
~Cloud Atlas, by David Mitchell; a wonderfully original, intelligent, multi-faceted novel that will have you entertained and in awe of Mitchell's versitility
~Kon-Tiki, by ?; this real-life adventure of several Scandanavian men crossing the Pacific on a balsa-wood raft is so compelling and wild that we literally couldn't put it down... it deserves a cult following (or perhaps it has one and i just don't know of it, I did see an middle-aged white man in Chiang Mai with a Kon-tiki tee-shirt)
~The World According to Garp, by John Irving; the ultimate read-aloud American novel, it gets better and better and you will remember it and the time you spent reading it with true fondness
~The Handmaid's Tale, by Margaret Atwood; fascinating, eerie, and important story of how the world in the near future, ridiculously easy to imagine ourselves in this anti-utopia
~The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown; yes, this is airport thriller material in some sense but we read the illustrated version and it was beautiful and wholly worthwhile
~The Wind-up Bird Chronicle, by Haruki Murakami; I didn't know Murakami before this trip but he is a writer that is intriguing on many levels and has an army of books under his belt. A mixture of cherished mundanity with awesome violence and surreality.
~Shantaram, by David Gregory Roberts; an real-life story of an Australian jailbird who makes a new life for himself in Bombay, filled with unbelievably amazing experiences and deserves to be made into a movie with Johnny Depp as the lead (coming to theatres sometime in the next few years)
So Long Ceylon
Though we can hardly count ourselves learned in the ways of Ceylon, I will be missing what I know best about this place, the beautiful view from the windows of Helaena's flat, redtiled warehouse roofs, the low canopy of emerald trees, pelicans and bats flying at eleventh floor eye-level, and exquisite clouds. The thing I know next best is next door, the fabulous Cargill's supermarket, where the papayas are meaty sweet, the ginger snaps spicy, the oyster mushrooms like angelic clouds, the beer cold and cheap and good, and everything is endlessly affordable. When I say alas alack to myself in anticipation of the exorbant lifestyle price increase we will confront upon landing in New York, I have to remind myself that it will be worth it to see all of you that we love in America again.
so long~
Ingrid
so long~
Ingrid
Tuesday, November 08, 2005
Me Come You're Country
Folks we did it. It is been months in the making and a global effort but finally Alp has an American visa to get married to Ingrid with. It has been a tremendous adventure, from contemplating what kind of visa to apply for to trying to figure out where to apply from. It has been a rollercoaster ride with the most exciting and scary part at the end. The embassy here has been very nice especially the extraordinarily helpful head counsular officer Marc Williams. The last two weeks have been a bureaocratic wrestling match. My criminal record hadn't come from Turkey and we were thinking that it might be something we can swing considering I lived in America for the last seven years, but it turned out that we really needed that or they did. So I started the phone conversations with Turkey. At this point I should thank God for Skype. It was day after day of talking to the same man who told me he would help me from the first day and sounded so sincere yet managed to do so little for so long. With Eid (Muslim holiday, end of Ramadan) approaching, last week we had two and a half days to get that form out of them, he flip-flopped until Tuesday as to whether he could give it or not. It turned out that they had lost my form completly and not even the duplicate copy that was supposed to be in their records was there. Because of that he was telling me that he couldn't get it signed, he would have to stick his neck out and admit that they had lost it. Luckily for me the telegraph that came from our other extremely helpful attache Ahmet Bey at the Turkish embassy to the Foreign Ministry in Turkey changed his mind completely and against all policy he said send in whoever you are sending and we will give it. This happened the day before the Eid holiday was to start and the next day was only a half day. Then I did most stupid mistake that I could've done and mixed up the time difference and called my Dad's good friend Ozcan Oktu at 11 o'clock, an hour before closing. Miraculously he was at the man's office ten minutes to twelve and got the form, mailed it with UPS and viola! four days later it arrived. I must also thank Ozcan amca here for being so marvelously wonderful, for without him running this last lap, it wouldn't have happened. So now the plan B is scrapped, which involved changing many a flight and train reservations, getting extra visas, and worse possibly getting separated with Ingrid, we are on trak and hope to see you all before and after Thanksgiving; we will have a lot to give this year.
Alp
Yippee and zipididooda to all of you lovely people!
Unbelievably everything Alp has said is true. It has been such a long and arduous process of vicissitudes in feelings and plans that we are breathing a massive breath of relief. And now we can finally reveal to you all what we have been keeping from the blog- the ups and downs- because we had grown superstitious in this labriythine world of visas and didn't want to jinx anything. Ffffeww! And I get to marry the most wonderful thing Turkey has ever exported!
We have been mostly confined to Colombo because of waiting for papers, calling on embassies, going to appointments, and so on. But this weekend, we took out Helaena's Mazda and went inland for two and a half days. Unaccustomed to being in the front seat of a car with power brakes(the first time in over one year), I was feeling nauseated as we were making our way out of the city, into the densely populated suburbs that never seemed to end. The landscape was lush and green though, with many side-of-the-road stands selling corn, king coconuts, and inflatable animal toys. Our first tourist stop was the beautiful botantical gardens outside of Kandy, where we stood under a massive java fig tree that spread its arms out seemingly infinitely and provided shade and perches to numerous shyly kissing couples. Sri Lanka's green spaces seem to be dominated by young lovers, some of whom use umbrellas to shield themselves and their clandestine embraces from view, but who actively lock lips noticably far more than their Indian counterparts. I suppose we Westerners take for granted being in our twenties and being able to make out in our own houses. Then we went onto Kandy, the capitol of the hill country and Sri Lanka's second largest town, where we were sold tickets to a cultural dance performance by someone praying to the Buddha lakeside who managed to convince us jaded travellers that this was our lucky day to be in town to catch this marvellous performance!! and we had to go and see fire-eating dancers and 25 baby elephants! It was our first "cultural performance" in all our travels through many countries offering cultural performances and, though it was interesting, it certainly was a nightly gig. The next day we hopped in the car (which had diplomatic stickers and certainly made us look far more important than our fairly tattered appearances belied) and went north to Dambulla. We were completely perplexed when we could not find a place to eat lunch in either Dambulla or the next town over. Finally, we found some grub in an alley shop next to the bus station and decided to go to the Buddhist painted caves nearby. They were very nice... buddhas, buddhas, and more buddhas in several caves on top of a splendid hill that offered views of the thick vegetation blanketing the area. We spent the night in the next town over, Sirigiya, famous for its massive rock fortress. Our hotel was in a wild garden, where we saw a substantial rat snake writhed around a palm tree, and it proved to a quite a wildlife haven. There were little frogs in the toilet that got flushed down with the first push of the lever and most shockingly, a surprise swarm of thousands of winged flies that poured in to the room and gathered around the lone light bulb hanging from the ceiling, mating and worshipping the light in a mad, disconcerting push to pass on their seed. There were hundreds of wings littering the floor after just a few minutes and we escaped the room for a while to eat a magnificent dinner of Sri Lankan home cooking. The food here is lovely and somehow still exotic for its different use of coconut, cinnamon, and other indigenous spices than southern Indian cooking. The next morning, thankful for the lack of any other memorable interactions with animals, we went to the rock and were dismayed, indeed bummed, to find out the entrance fee was a $20 per person. We decided to abort our mission and boycott the double standard in pricing (Sri Lankans: 20 rupees, foreigners: 2000 rps.) and drove back to Colombo. All in one piece, we had our taste of the Sri Lanka at large that we were dreaming of seeing while waiting in embassy lobbies and happy to return to the comforts of the eleventh floor. Amen.
ingridaisahappygirl
Alp
Yippee and zipididooda to all of you lovely people!
Unbelievably everything Alp has said is true. It has been such a long and arduous process of vicissitudes in feelings and plans that we are breathing a massive breath of relief. And now we can finally reveal to you all what we have been keeping from the blog- the ups and downs- because we had grown superstitious in this labriythine world of visas and didn't want to jinx anything. Ffffeww! And I get to marry the most wonderful thing Turkey has ever exported!
We have been mostly confined to Colombo because of waiting for papers, calling on embassies, going to appointments, and so on. But this weekend, we took out Helaena's Mazda and went inland for two and a half days. Unaccustomed to being in the front seat of a car with power brakes(the first time in over one year), I was feeling nauseated as we were making our way out of the city, into the densely populated suburbs that never seemed to end. The landscape was lush and green though, with many side-of-the-road stands selling corn, king coconuts, and inflatable animal toys. Our first tourist stop was the beautiful botantical gardens outside of Kandy, where we stood under a massive java fig tree that spread its arms out seemingly infinitely and provided shade and perches to numerous shyly kissing couples. Sri Lanka's green spaces seem to be dominated by young lovers, some of whom use umbrellas to shield themselves and their clandestine embraces from view, but who actively lock lips noticably far more than their Indian counterparts. I suppose we Westerners take for granted being in our twenties and being able to make out in our own houses. Then we went onto Kandy, the capitol of the hill country and Sri Lanka's second largest town, where we were sold tickets to a cultural dance performance by someone praying to the Buddha lakeside who managed to convince us jaded travellers that this was our lucky day to be in town to catch this marvellous performance!! and we had to go and see fire-eating dancers and 25 baby elephants! It was our first "cultural performance" in all our travels through many countries offering cultural performances and, though it was interesting, it certainly was a nightly gig. The next day we hopped in the car (which had diplomatic stickers and certainly made us look far more important than our fairly tattered appearances belied) and went north to Dambulla. We were completely perplexed when we could not find a place to eat lunch in either Dambulla or the next town over. Finally, we found some grub in an alley shop next to the bus station and decided to go to the Buddhist painted caves nearby. They were very nice... buddhas, buddhas, and more buddhas in several caves on top of a splendid hill that offered views of the thick vegetation blanketing the area. We spent the night in the next town over, Sirigiya, famous for its massive rock fortress. Our hotel was in a wild garden, where we saw a substantial rat snake writhed around a palm tree, and it proved to a quite a wildlife haven. There were little frogs in the toilet that got flushed down with the first push of the lever and most shockingly, a surprise swarm of thousands of winged flies that poured in to the room and gathered around the lone light bulb hanging from the ceiling, mating and worshipping the light in a mad, disconcerting push to pass on their seed. There were hundreds of wings littering the floor after just a few minutes and we escaped the room for a while to eat a magnificent dinner of Sri Lankan home cooking. The food here is lovely and somehow still exotic for its different use of coconut, cinnamon, and other indigenous spices than southern Indian cooking. The next morning, thankful for the lack of any other memorable interactions with animals, we went to the rock and were dismayed, indeed bummed, to find out the entrance fee was a $20 per person. We decided to abort our mission and boycott the double standard in pricing (Sri Lankans: 20 rupees, foreigners: 2000 rps.) and drove back to Colombo. All in one piece, we had our taste of the Sri Lanka at large that we were dreaming of seeing while waiting in embassy lobbies and happy to return to the comforts of the eleventh floor. Amen.
ingridaisahappygirl
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