summer feeling

one weekend morning you wake up early, and from the open window come all the smells of summer. you hear the birds twittering around in the otherwise silent and peaceful atmosphere. you walk down the stairs and the smell of early heat reaches you. today is going to be a hot day. but for now, you can enjoy the freshness of the morning, before the sun starts beating you down. you go out on the terrace and have breakfast in the warm shade.

that is paradise.

ahem...

so, for those of you in the know, and especially for those who've asked, i'll say that i sent him a postcard today, to remind him, should need be, of my existence, as he should, by now, be back from his no doubt fabulous holiday in Cape Town.

let the waiting game begin...

tv addictions

it's a terrible thing to admit, but there's a 'new' american show on tv these days, and it's well and truly hooked me. the title itself is totally uninspiring (well, it was for me), and i don't remember how i ended up watching it. must have flicked channels on a boring rainy day.

the show's about a family that has moved from the big apple to a small Colorado town (i think it's Ccolorado, but i could be wrong), after the wife/mother dies. father gives up high profile doctoring (was a neuro-surgeon) to become small town doctor, while reconnecting (or, actually, just first time connecting) with 16 and 12 year old son and daughter. that's the background.

surprisingly, the show actually deals with loads of quite important issues, and although i realise no teenager really utters the words they use in the show, and probably never act as grown up as these kids do, i find it very entertaining and enlightning.

not that this interests anyone, but the show's name is Everwood.

my onsen adventures - part 3

it took me a while to finally get the hang of onsen, and to love it, but i got there. in my second year in Japan, i made it to Kurokawa, an amazing onsen place. it's a tiny village with 412 inhabitants, very narrow and undrivable streets. it was incredible! people were wondering from one bathhouse to the next in their yukata. it was like a movie set. and that's where i experienced my most peaceful baths ever. Yamamizuki was by far the nicest, being as it was by a river, with each bath being surrounded by beautiful Japanese maple trees.

then, in my last year, i went up north, to Akita-ken, and spent a whole weekend in another tiny onsen village (not really a village, just a street, really, and then again, all of it is just the housing. ok, let's say it was just one onsen ryokan [traditional Japanese inn]). this one was covered in snow (about 5m). it was about -5C outside, but the best bath of them all was definitely the outdoor one (rotemburo). although i think we tried most of the baths (all supposedly good for different ailments), i preferred that outdoor one, and spent hours on end there. the weekend went like this: eat/bathe/sleep/bathe/eat/bathe/sleep/bathe/eat/bathe/eat. the second day, it snowed hard, so while we were sitting there, about 10 cms of snow accumulated on top of our heads. it was the most amazing experience ever! and that's also when i discovered those waters actually do have an effect: my stomach went into overdrive trying to get rid of toxins and whatnot. it's made me a believer!

my onsen adventures - part 2

my second experience was in one of the most famous onsen around, the one Soseki's novel Bochan takes place in. it's a beautiful old building, on 2 levels (although there are so many stairs going so many places that it feels like a lot more). more to the point, it was used as the backdrop for the Japanese animation 'Sen to Chihiro', otherwise known as 'spirited away'. it was all right, but confusing. we didn't understand enough Japanese to figure out whether there were changing rooms, and, upon seeing most men in the tea room dress back from their yukata to their clothes in front of everyone, i thought i might as well do the same. so i tried to take my clothes off as inconspiciously as possible (which, for a woman, doesn’t tend to work well), but the women around me seemed shocked. i wondered why. after all, noone gave the men a second look. maybe it was my being a gaijin (foreigner). as we walked down to the women's bath, i realised why they had been so upset: there was a changing room downstairs! ooops.

my onsen adventures

one of the best things in Japan is onsen (hotsprings). originally, i wasn't all that keen. onsen water was hot, and i couldn't sit there for more than about 10 mns, so i couldn't see the point of spending a whole afternoon there. also, my first experience was expensive, and i think that might have reinforced my opinion. it took place in an outdoor onsen so close to the sea that there were only a couple of rocks between the hot water and the cold one. it also happened to be a temple, so everyone had to wear a light, white yukata (summer kimono). it was a mixed bath (i.e. with men and women), and the yukata offered some protection, but it was awkward moving in the water with it on. the place WAS beautiful, with tree roots hanging in the air above us (the tree had originally grown on rocks that no longer existed, but that didn't seem to bother the tree much), and the volcanic water gushing out from about the same height, straight from the volcano we were on. nevertheless, i only went there once.

(to be continued...)

conspiracy theory

i was watching a rerun of the first X-Files episodes, and i was reminded of how strongly Mulder always feels about conspiracy theories. this particular episode was about a computer engineer who'd managed to create artificial intelligence that had then taken over. at the end of the episode, no trace was left of the event, all nicely cleaned up by the feds, or whoever. while Scully was trying to convince Mulder that, surely, the government wouldn't let such things (mostly manipulating the population into believing, or not, some things) happen, i couldn't help but feel as sceptical as Mulder. after all, why not? what would stop the government from hiding loads of things from us?

that same week i found myself on a blog where this guy was disputing our ever walking on the moon. he gave arguments, links to more arguments and pictures, so i went and read it all. although i thought some of it was worthless, i did come out of it thinking mostly that, really, it's all a big scam, and we never got that far. let's face it, what happened to building a complex on the moon, to having people live there and do research on a permanent basis? over thirty years later, nothing. which doesn't really do much for their whole 'let's go to Mars' thing. not in our lifetime anyway.

so, as a normally confident and believing soul, i now find myself questioning every single bit of info i get. good in a way, bad in another. it would be nice to feel secure in the world we live in, it would be nice to trust our leaders just a little and believe that they are trying to make ours a better world. just a little...

stars in the night

as i got home from the pub, last night, i looked up at the sky and the stars were amazingly clear. there were a couple of tiny clouds drifting, which added to the magic, cos it looked much more real with them in the picture. then, in the background, i heard the nightingale that's been singing for the past 2 weeks - and not really helping my sleep patterns, but it was great to hear it then. as i stood there, i wanted never to go back inside. the feeling wore off quickly, though, as it was pretty cold. still, it was nice.

the importance of life

in response to the fan mail i get off-blog, i'll clear this up right now.

no, i didn't intend to use Forrest Gump's line when i wrote "Life is like an archaeological dig...you never know what you're going to unearth" (see blog title). i realise it's really close to the movie, but, honestly, i just wanted to say something about why archaeology was important to me. so there you have it.

on a side note, i'd like to say that it's really annoying having these low temps and all this rain after that absolutely fabulous weekend we had.

pictures i like to take 2

another type of pics i love to take is windows. they fascinate me. a boundary betwen two worlds, and yet, you can see right through them (mostly). here are two types of Asian windows i was lucky to find: the first one was at the Temple of Litterature, in Hanoi, and the second one on Jonker Street, in Melaka. both were so different and funky.

in Hanoi

in Melaka