Picture-Taking, Chronicled

Here you are. All of these took place in India.

Eric taking a picture of a sign in Lodi Gardens (in Delhi).

 Eric taking a picture of a map of the Red Fort (in Delhi).

Eric taking a picture of the monstrous rains outside of our car.

Eric taking a picture of Shyam smiling properly in front of the Taj Mahal (in Agra).

Eric taking a picture of Shyam sitting properly in front of the Taj Mahal.

Eric taking a picture of Shyam doing his best impression in front of the Taj Mahal.

Eric taking a picture of Shyam in Fatehpur Sikri (outside of Agra).

Eric taking a picture of some deer crossing our safari path (in Sariska Wildlife Reserve).

Eric taking a picture of monkeys.

Eric taking a picture in the Amber Fort (in Jaipur).

Eric taking a picture in the City Palace (in Jaipur).

2012 Olympics Fever in London

On the morning of July 27, I decided that one of the things I wanted to see in London was the new Olympic Park being built for the 2012 Olympic Games. As I planned this expedition over breakfast, I looked up at BBC News, which informed me that this very day, July 27, 2011, was exactly one year before the start of the games. That evening, they was to be a huge celebration in Trafalgar Square broadcast live across the world, where the chairman of the International Olympic Committee would officially "pass the games on" to London. I got excited and promptly lugged myself across town to see the stadium, and then later in the evening, I went to Trafalgar Square for the big party. And now, pictures.

Here's Part 1. Olympic Park, where the new Olympic Stadium is and where most of the events will be held, is about 15 minutes from the center of the city. I went in the morning and walked around the area. It's a relatively quiet middle class area in eastern London, typically untouched by tourists in the past, but it's going to be packed with people in a year. It was actually quite eerie when I walked from the Underground stop to Olympic Park. It was almost deserted. Only when I got to the viewing deck were there tourists.

There was a Porsche dealership in the area. One picture and I'm already off-task.

Lots of Porsches.

 Olympic Stadium, the centerpiece of the 2012 Olympics, bare and uncovered.

The viewing deck from which you can watch construction of Olympic Park.

The red garble in the middle is "Orbit," a sculpture designed by famous British artist Anish Kapoor. It's still under construction. Here's what it'll look like when it's complete. It's pretty nifty to have seen it in the middle of its ascent. The white V-shaped building on the right is the new Aquatic Center, which actually opened that day.

A messy artist broods.

There are children in here, and they'll get you. Grr.

Ghetto Blasting is a new Olympic event.

Mr. Biker, the Olympics start July 27, 2012, not 2011. But don't worry, that arrow shows you the small orange thing you can climb into to take you back home.

Another shot of the Olympic Stadium. Right now it's not surrounded by anything, but they're going to put some kind of covering just inside those white bars to make it look spiffy.

I think this was called the "warm-up" area for the athletes.

A final shot from the trains.

And then that evening, Part 2. I went to Trafalgar Square, where they typically stage celebrations. In 2005, when London was chosen over the other three competing cities, people watched from here. Folks also go here to protest this and set fire to that.

Setting up. A band called The Feeling played a couple of songs. Apparently they were big at some point.

Asian News Crew 1.

Asian News Crew 2, with a large pack of Brazilians cheering. Journalists from the 2008 Olympic country in the 2012 host country filming fans from the 2016 host country. I should charge you for photojournalism this good.

 Asian News Crew 3.

 Asian News Crew 4.

The stage from the side.

"Get it started already!" The BBC Worldwide broadcast started at 7pm and counted down to 7:30pm, the moment the Olympics were exactly one year away.

On the stage is the 2012 Olympic mascot, Wenlock. The host to the pre-show suggested that he looks kind of scary, but I for one think he's adorable. That being said, for an Olympic mascot, he does not have an ounce of grace or dexterity.

The program begins, the BBC anchors come out and start things off, and then boom, here's Prime Minister David Cameron. When he walked in there were loud trumpets playing very cheesy music, and somebody behind me grumbled very loudly, "Oh God." Also, he got booed.

There he is again.

This is the mayor of London, known affectionately as Boris. He got huge cheers, and he's an hilarious and charismatic speaker. "The streets will be ready. The trains will be ready. The taxis will be ready. The theaters will be ready. The buses will be ready. The hotels will be ready. The bicycles will be ready. The Olympic venues are already so ready that we might as well call a snap Olympics tomorrow and catch the rest of the world napping." And one of the reasons people love him is that the city is right on schedule and budget with the preparations.

Exactly one year away! After this, the head of the International Olympic Committee officially passed the Games on to Great Britain and invited all the athletes to London, and the heads of the Olympic committees from China, Brazil, South Korea, and Greece (all the known hosts plus the bankrupt one) all "agreed" Great Britain could have the Olympics. What if one of them said no?

The Princess Royal (the Queen's daughter) unveils the medals. Everyone o0o0ohs.

The Prime Minister hitting on the pretty BBC anchor.

An ESPN Brasil anchor memorizing his lines before he does a close-out shot. It's probably harder because it's in Portuguese.

Now I'm excited for the 2012 Olympics.

Home

So I'm back in Texas, and my travels are essentially over. I have lots of thoughts swirling in my head about the whole thing, so I'll probably continue to get them out in posts or (more likely) keep them all in my head. Regardless, my two months on the move were some of the most incredible and eye-opening I've lived. When you're tossed free and loose into the world without much to ground you, without a home to make your base or a person to continue to see every day, you learn a lot about yourself and the world around you. Those "constants" sort of protect your brain from all the other nuances the world is filled with. When you're around a certain group of family/friends every day for a long period, your actions and behaviors are more and more reflecting your interactions with those people. This also goes for your environment. During the parts of my trip where I was along hopping around, my environment and the people around me were constantly changing, and my mind was left hanging in the wind. It's a liberating feeling.

Over the Atlantic

I'm about to go to London Heathrow airport and fly home.

Last Leg

This is my last leg of what feels like twenty. Not my legs, really, but my trip's. I'd be some sort of freak human who got lots of his freak legs chopped off. This paragraph should end now.

I just flew into London from Budapest, where I knew two absolutely useless Hungarian phrases drilled into to my head in high school. The beginning of my journey was starting to feel like some faint reality until I landed at Gatwick Airport and everything from London Part 1 and Western Europe came flooding back.

If you requested a postcard, you might wait a bit longer. I was all ready to send them from India until I approached the post office desk in the airport, and naturally he was fast asleep. I'm okay with that; it was late. He woke up soon enough, so I went back to him, but he told me that post office doesn't actually send mail. I miss India so much. I really do.

Morning

It's 10:30 in the morning and 'Friday' is stuck in my head. Off to Delhi again.

Silly Cow, Restaurants are for Humans

We named him Chutney.

We are now in Udaipur, coming yesterday from a small town called Mount Abu. Originally, we had planned on leaving Jaipur and going Jaisalmer and Jodhpur before Udaipur. But we changed those plans because going to three cities in a row starting with the letter J is bad luck. Instead, we flew to Ahmedabad (where my family is), stayed there one night, said hi to my kin, and then hauled ourselves to Mount Abu, a little mountain town full of rich vacationing Indians. There, we (three intelligent and cautious Americans) followed a stranger into his home in the dead of night just to get some cheap Indian handicrafts. As we sat in their living room, he and his wife pulled out gobs and oodles of beautiful hand-painted postcards and silk. As we looked at them, one of those rotating fans was becoming a nuisance as it blew away the stacks of stuff we were looking at. Then I saw that the fan brand was 'Ravi' so I forgave it immediately for all of its tomfoolery.

So in India, astrological signs carry great significance. In the US, there's obviously a large amount of ridicule directed towards it, but here, people take it seriously in greater numbers.  In Jaipur, we went to Jantar Mantar, an old space in the middle of the bustling city full of astronomical instruments used to measure the position of celestial objects and to determine the earth's orientation. This means that many of these large chunks of concrete and metal are positioned in precise ways to align with the equator or run perpendicular to it (this allows you to tell the time based on the position of the sun, if its light is sharp enough that day).  The resulting effect is that you can kind of feel just how much of an angle you have from the equator. The only structures that weren't in line with the equator were the ones made to locate the position of a specific astrological constellation (there's one for Leo, one for Sagittarius, etc). Some of these structures probably required deep dedication and intelligence. Much of this dedication seems to spur from a long history of respect and awe for astrology.

Jantar Mantar

You can find Leo with this thing

Who doesn't love angles!

The Amber Fort in Jaipur was also remarkable. With tons of interconnecting rooms and hallways and stairways, it's a dream for hide-and-seek or tag or Goldeneye. We didn't play, not because we're too old but because there are only three of us. You know how it is with tag.

Guessing Game

Hello reader. So for the last week I've been traveling with Eric and Shyam through northern India. The following two pictures are previews of two albums I'll be putting together when I get back to the States. Go ahead and guess the album themes.

We have been to palaces and forts and temples, and we have gone on a safari and been stared down by packs of cute monkeys. This is a strange country to travel, and it can be hard since you're drowned by a vast poverty that pours into even the richest streets and has to be part of the country's definition. I asked someone in a store if there was a place to throw my soda can, and I was told to just throw it in the street. While India is so beautiful, you get the sense that its people need to gain a more practical sense of community for its people to escape this poverty. Being here is like living some kind of absurdist comedy.

Its chain is attached to nothing. Welcome to India.

To Rajasthan!

For the last two weeks, I've been in Ahmedabad, India, enjoying the company of close family members and living in thorough comfort. Just when I started to feel like I could happily live here for a little while, it's time to go. The looming departure obviously helped induce this deep desire to stay, as it did in every city in Europe. That being said, I have the joy of knowing I will be back in Ahmedabad soon enough. And! Tomorrow morning, I fly to Delhi and begin my two-and-a-half week tour of Rajasthan (a state in northern India) with two of my best friends. They're both a handful though, so it'll be tough. On to India: Part Two!

Since I have been so occupied with the rest of the world, I haven't been deeply homesick aside from the occasional friend craving and parent craving and Texas food craving. That is, until today, when my parents officially moved out of the house we lived in for 20 years. So for a couple of minutes, I gave that old home my brainspace.

Gujurat, out.

P.S. I'm supposed to meet Eric at Cafe Coffee Day in the arrival area of Terminal 3 in the Delhi airport. This is another place I can check in case I forget. :P

A Morning Herd

In the distance we have a herder with goats.

Indian Traffic

Lost in Translation

Moo

A Few Odd Photos from London

Here's what you've been dying for all week, a few pictures from my walking around London for two days. I have tons and tons more, but they can get boring. I did wander away from the tourist hubs to get an idea of what the city is like for those who live there, as I did with most cities I went to. Usually I didn't take my iPhone when going out at night, so there aren't going to be any friendly faces, just touristy pulp. It's exciting to observe the oddities of a city from another culture. Each little one provides you with a new nugget of information with which to understand folks (or realize how much you don't).

Here's a strange barrier on the sidewalk outside of the Houses of Parliament. I guess this is to make sure cars don't hop on the sidewalk, and I'm glad they chose such a reasonable and predictable shape.



Some ferris wheel and some building.



A picturesque little street near the Thames on the south side.



Austin's is better.



A blurry carbon-fiber body BMW M3 in a showroom. It was so pretty.

A building on Victoria St. that might be worth visiting if you're into photography. Lots of angles and lines and colors and reflective glass.

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Located in Regents' Park, this is a sculpture honoring the puma, the famed mascot of Springfield Elementary School.



You can't see it well here, but as I was walking around Primrose Hill (a hill in London with open green fields at the top of which you catch an incredible skyline of the whole city) and about 30 horses ridden by officially-dressed men slowly trotted on by, much to the incredible disappointment of the folks in these cars, I'm sure. Also, it smelled.



And here's that view from Primrose Hill. This area (the same as the above picture) is steeped in money, since it's quiet and peaceful (right next to Regents' Park) yet close to the center of the city. Walk around and you'll see some beautiful cars (Aston Martins and whatnot) guarded behind gates.


Anyways, that's some of what I saw in London, clearly besides the typical sights. One of my favorite encounters was near Buckingham Palace. I was trying to get around the gargantuan abode to get to the train station, so I asked one of the policefolk guarding the area (and thus partly responsible for the safety of the queen). He was a very nice person, and, well, he embodied dry cynical British sarcasm.

"So how do I get to Victoria Station?" 

"Yeah it's the queen's birthday next week. Her official one, rather. She gets two, reasonably. So things are closed off for a practice run for her parade. She gets a parade, reasonably. I think we had a pretty big one a few weeks ago, but that's alright.  Anyways it's going to be a pain in the ass."

I say thanks and he points me in the right direction, and I start to walk off. Now, on this side of Buckingham Palace, there are two nearly identical paths to get out, a giant open walkway, and another smaller sidewalk running right next to it.

He says "Oh wait. Now this is going to sound stupid, because it is, but you can't walk along that open walkway, because clearly since nobody at all is using it, you shouldn't either because in six hours a fake parade is going to march down that way. If you walk there..." 

"You'll have to shoot me?" Now at this point, I immediately regret saying that, because it feels akin to yelling "BOMB" in an airport. But...

"Well, I think the queen herself will shoot you." 

Charming. I love you, London.