I didn’t want any, though, so I politely refused. Being an obvious tourist is such a strange thing. People class you in with so many other people, and with a certain kind of interest in a place. So yesterday I was offered a whole panoply of drugs, from the mildest all the way up to opium. Freakin’ opium. I was just looking up a stairway curiously, as it looked so precarious, and this man popped out and tried to sell me drugs. I also discovered that very nice people sometimes lie their asses off, and that I may be able …

Hey everyone! My webmail is freaking out, but I thought I would post an update that I am here in Dharamsala and I’m fine. We arrived early in the morning, and I slept since I could sleep only very little during the night in the truck. It was a strange experience, for a few reasons, but anyway that’s to be expected. I’m going to try find a phone because I’m to call Ritu and John and let them know I arrived safely, and the phone in the house won’t let me call them in Gurgaon. More later, in any case. …

So, I’m leaving for Dharamsala tonight in a car. The car will drive all night and I’ll arrive tomorrow morning. It turned out the buses are full, so we got me a place in a car. That’ll be fine: a small group of people, same people, and we might get there faster. It’s been a nice, relaxing few days, with one strange interlude of weirdness: we watched a Bollywood movie Koi Mil Gaya, a kind of E.T. meets Rain Man. Joyful song and dance sequences with a blue-skinned alien amidst the prancing kids and the adult mentally-handicapped man. (It’s politically …

Hey, anyone who reads my site, but also uses livejournal, look! I’ve got a feed from my RSS over at livejournal. http://www.livejournal.com/users/gorduncle/ So if you’re a livejournal user, please do add me to your friends list. I’m curious to see what other users have to say about various things!

Which Survivor of the Impending Nuclear Apocalypse Are You?A Rum and Monkey joint.

Here’s a nice rant over on Sarah Hatter’s page about the word “hey”. On occasion I’ve really disagreed with her, but it’s funny, I quite like her way of talking about the world around her, and she makes me laugh and think a little too. She’s cool. And I’ll never forget the time that Sun Hwa and I once started discussing her blog all of a sudden in conversation; Sun Hwa brought Sarah’s writing up, and I knew of course who she was talking about. And Sun Hwa probably knew I knew, having seen Sarah on my blogroll. We talked …

This picture is of my family. It was sent to me, among a selection of others, just before Christmas, and they looked so nice I wanted to post a copy here. This is the best one. Good job, Marie. :) You can click on the picture to see the full-sized image. From left to right, the couples are my sister Marie and and her husband Troy, my Mum and Dad, and my baby sister Annie and her boyfriend Martin. I sort of have more to say about this picture, and what it makes me think of, but have no time …