Infinite Digress

When it comes to vehicular safety, be careful what you wish for. Read more…

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This delightful creature lives on a bush just outside my home office. I just happened to notice it while passing by on a recent sunny day. It is about 5 inches long. Read more…

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I have returned home.  I have uploaded some more pictures. I have a lot of catching up to do at home so more narrative will have to wait. The pictures have captions.

http://picasaweb.google.com/rwbrown900/OnTheWayToWork

http://picasaweb.google.com/rwbrown900/AroundMyHotel

http://picasaweb.google.com/rwbrown900/Buildings

http://picasaweb.google.com/rwbrown900/Miscellaneous

Thanks for following my journey.

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Here are a few pictures from my weekend  safari. The Park is a zoo with many creatures in cages, lots of monkies running free, lots of people and some “wild” animals in forested paddocks that you can tour in rickety old buses. Once again my camera battery went dead and my spare was back in the parking lot. So I had to switch to my camera phone and the pictures are lousy. So this is a small set. My friend Jim took some photos and I may get them from him to add to these. In particular, I am hoping that he got a good shot of the king cobra (in a cage). It was formidable. And some shots from the butterfly garden which seemed to have fewer butterflies that the gardens around it. I have several but they are not worth showing. Aren’t you glad I told you about what I do not have to share? Here is what I have.

http://picasaweb.google.com/rwbrown900/BannerghattaNationalPark#

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This is all the video I have from my encounter with a troupe of monkeys in the coffee plantation in Chikmangalur. As they appeared high in the trees above us, my camera battery died. I squeezed a little bit of video out and gave up. Just then our driver appeared, bumping down the mud road. I was able to retrieve another battery and catch a few more frames before the troupe moved on.

The video only shows a few individuals. There were about 30 in all including some babies. They are attracted to the jackfruit, though these trees they are swinging through are above the fruit. We startled them away from the fruits at first. The hooting you hear is from the monkeys mostly, though my hosts did a little bit of hooting to stir the monkeys up.

My best guess is that these are Bonnet Macaques, common to this area. Here is an excellent closeup of a mother and baby made by Satya PicMaker: http://www.treknature.com/gallery/photo150446.htm. I got nowhere near this close to the fellows, but it was still fun to watch them jumping through the trees.

Windows: Monkie Movie

Mac: Monkie Movie

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http://picasaweb.google.com/rwbrown900

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Bangalore city driving is interesting. Vehicles of all shapes and sizes move like a school of mixed fish species. Honking means something different than in the US. It means “Here I come. Get out of the way.” Drivers do not look to the side, ever. And they only stop when it is absolutely necessary. They just nose into the river of vehicles and claim a space. Most cars are small. Whole families (mom, dad, child, baby) ride on a single motorcycle.

Driving in the India countryside is just plain scary. I got a chance to experience it last weekend and again this weekend on the way to some temples. I was not doing the driving. I was in the back seat, the guy with the white knuckles. Read more…

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In the spirit of Infinite Regression, I saw one this weekend. A stairway landing with a giant mirror on each side, facing each other. Look in one and see yourself reflected infinitely deep as your image bounces off the other. I was transfixed. And barefoot. And a long way from home.

The stairway is in the Palace of Mysore, in India. I am here on a business trip. My hosts took me siteseeing. Here are some pictures: mysore

Here are a couple of other observations that I shared on facebook.

Imagine this scene: a river of traffic at rush hour in Banagalore, every kind of imaginable vehicle swimming in and out. From the left, two open trucks squeeze in ahead of us, each filled with very rusty propane tanks. Behind us is a small procession of men with a shrine - drumming, singing and lighting very large firecrackers. I was wishing I could remember the words to any prayer from my youth.

Today’s scene as I left the hotel, on a quiet side street. My driver waiting with a new white car. The hotel dog – medium, black and white, skinny, handsome – looking up the street. A woman in a sari, squatting to draw a mandala in chalk on the pavement in front of her shop. A man on a bicycle with 200 coconuts. A woman in sweats jogging with iPod. A large cow strolling down the center lane. Me, without my camera.

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These are rather pedestrian renditions of two songs that I often play as warm-ups. They are both acoustic instrumentals. I recorded these when I first got my wonderful Taylor 414e in 2007. They were recorded with a direct connection into an M-Audio Solo FireWire interface to my computer.

• Keys to the Kingdom

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• Monday Morning Blues

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One of my “good intentions” is to create an album of more interesting music. It turns out that making a good recording is more difficult than I anticipated. I have the technology down pretty well. I just have a hard time playing something through all the way with a reasonable number of mistakes.

So many things to do, so little time to do them…

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I wrote this some time ago while trying out another blog system. I believe in not wasting words, so I will reuse them all here.

I have played hoops for 49 years. Not steadily. I had to take some breaks along the way. I also had to mend some breaks along the way. I recently returned to the court after a 3 year break to mend a sore back. I guess it was a “back break”, ha ha.

Having played tonight and now cooling down with gatorade and advil, I am reminded of why I love to play pick-up basketball. Here are the reasons I can think of as the endorphins wash out of my system.

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