Three places I would love to visit before I die. Day 5 of the Emerson “Self-Reliance” project.
Tag Archive: Travel
Zuzu Irwin’s Brush with a Bengal Tiger
A fitting end to the Year of the Tiger.
My Foreign Body
My newest guest post for the stellar expat+HAREM poses the question: Do warm places make warmer people?
“With/out borders” on the expat+HAREM
My newest expat+HAREM post, “With/out borders”, is featured on their beautiful site for the next week.
Why?
An explosive encounter with a racist Czech granny prompts me to once again consider why it is I continue to live in Prague.
Transitions Abroad Essay Competition Winner
Dear Readers, Just a quick note to let you know that the essay I wrote about life in Prague as an expat placed as a runner-up winner in the Transitions Abroad essay competition. The article, Living in Prague as an Expat: The Times They Are a-Changin’, will be on their website for the next year….
What’s In A Name?
The name on my birth certificate reads Sezin Piotruszewicz Menekshe Rajandran. I was named with the same initials as my grandfather on my father’s side, SPM Rajandran. He died just months before I was born, and in fact my mom was so upset at his funeral that her amniotic sack tore and she might have…
Born Hybrid
In 1990 Chris McCandless donated all of his life savings to OXFAM and went into the wild to live in the Alaskan outback. He had the feeling he didn’t belong in the life his parents planned for him. He knew they’d not take no for an answer, wearing him down like a chainsaw until he…
Fear Of Flying
In 1973 Erica Jong wrote the feminist anthem, Fear Of Flying. The heroine, Isadora, though terrified of flying, boards a plane and her subsequent journey leads to a spiritual and sexual awakening that was the one of the first of its kind in print. Jong’s thesis is that the fear of flying is the fear…
Food of The Gods: The Ethiopan Experience
My introduction to Ethiopia and its cuisine was in a Rastafarianism, Reggae, and the African Diaspora course I took in university. What struck me the most was learning that Ethiopia had never been colonized, and is one of the few African nations never to have been. Not for lack of trying, mind you. The Italians…
The Ties That Bind
Five years ago at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, I met an amazing Californian Phillipina woman and we became fast friends, seeing in each other kindred spirits. Interestingly enough, it was the same year I met Paolo Coelho who told me: “Always keep your heart open; it will bleed, but it will heal.”…
Emirates Airlines: A Skyward Hotel
I always thought that the airlines that offered a personal TV for each seat were the super-duper fancy airlines that only the wealthy could afford. Imagine my surprise at Christmastime to discover that Emirates Airlines has a personal TV built into every single seat in their airplanes! Wow! You get to choose what movies you…
curiouser and curiouser
you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone is the gift that keeps on giving. when i lived in france with my parents, backdropped with the jura mountains all fresh air, trees and snow, i enjoyed every moment of it because something told me it would be a long time before i got to…
good, bad, ugly
it’s good that aside from tommy i may have a new friend here in istanbul, a person not a cat. of course, she would be the one person that none of the other ditzy english teachers like because she is older and far more worldly than them. we connected over the stray cats and now…
she keeps on passing
so many days have passed since i have been able to write. our internet connection is shaky at best and i am trying my luck to post this. yesterday, i had my first physical contact with Tommy, the stray cat who adopted us and is now a part of our family. he is the sweetest…
the illusionist in istanbul
we went to see ‘the illusionist’ today. wow. just, wow. go see it! i love watching movies in their original language. there was just not enough of this in spain and here it is more common than not that films in the theatre are in their original version. blessed be the Cinema Gods. after many…
friday, i'm in love
friday is sunday in muslim countries. it is the holy day, mosque day, but in istanbul, unlike more radical muslim countries, life goes on more or less as usual. there is just no work. it is very quiet and the workers in the lot in front are off today. how nice! fridays are such a…
i am the elephant man lost in translation
when i saw ‘the elephant man’ i felt i was him somehow. someone who never quite seems to fit in with the sea of people around him and someone who is always obvious no matter what he does to hide the fact. today after going to see a wonderful doctor who diagnosed my Middle Ear…
pirates, princesas, and we are not in kansas anymore
after quite a grueling two days in madrid in which my ear infection compounded by a hundred after the freezing cold ride on the granada-madrid bus, we have made it to istanbul. madrid would have been a nice layover if i had not been so wretchedly ill, but we did get to see two very…
things that we learn the hard way
that things were not quite so bad before until we enter into an even worse situation, or go deeper into an existing one. drunk people are not wise no matter how much they think they are. they only get more glassy eyed, they slur their words and don’t remember the simple things you just spent…
cyber-stalkers in istanbul
i have had my msypace location changed to istanbul for all of an hour (if even that) and it would seem that is enough time for internet perverts from istanbul to begin emailing me to a)ask me to email them privately, b)meet in istanbul somewhere, c)in turkish as if i am turkish just because i…
finally some real movies and saying goodbye to granada
in previous blogs i have discussed a two types of travellers phenomenon (The Questing Traveler and the Runaway Traveler) along with my discontent at the cowardice demonstrated in films these days in telling the easiest parts of stories and leaving the most interesting and complicated parts alone. because i have been surrounded by Runaway Travelers…
two types of travelers and how film versions of books can be amazing
two types of travelers there are two types of people who travel. the first group is the Questing Travelers, those who travel because they are in search of something. spiritual awakenings, daily epiphanies, random fated connections with strangers that may only be fleeting but end up lasting a lifetime. they are the type who travel…
‘lost in la mancha’ or goodbye to accursed spain
i think spain exists in a black hole. like los angeles, an accursed place where nothing goes right and madness is sanity. don’t get me wrong, i am all about madness, but more that creative madness that is healthy, not the drug-addled-brain madness that seems to infect the denizens of this sweltering land. case in…
on how much 'hostel' sucked and they don't make scary movies like they used to
since my ear feels like an evil fairy with a blowtorch lives inside and wants to liquify my brain, i am trying to keep a low profile. an earache is just the worst. i have no appetite, no balance, and occasionally what feels like a nail driving through the side of my head. which leads…
in search of the perfect butterfly and other things
*my wrist is still sprained but cannot resist the writer’s urge to write. *i have been searching for the perfect butterfly tattoo, which will be imprinted in the weeks to come before we leave granada. i have learned that the cooler the name of the butterfly, the more plain the creature. swallowtails and metalmarks are…
moving forward
packers came today and put all of the possessions my family will keep into a container, soon to brave the wild tsunami-threatened oceans for sri lanka. moving day is always strange for me. i realised today that i have more attachment to the things that make up our home than the home itself. a carved…
a troubling turn towards conservatism
May 06, 2006 local british election results came through today with a disturbing turn towards conservatism once again. portugal recently elected an ultra-conservative president. switzerland has the most conservative government it has had in 20 years, along with france. spain currently has a socialist government, but with two simultaneous separatist movements in the basque region…
a love letter to Packing
written on a peice of a box that normally i would paint on but instead have cut into a postcard on the blank space: leaving behind my life as a girl feels much better than i thought it would where i would paint a stamp with cray-pas:thoiry, franceapril 25, 2005it feels delicious to get rid…
a love letter to Coming Home
written on a postcard of a girl with a straw hat and suitcase looking up at her family’s farmhouse in the blank space: i am glad to be here to say goodbye where the stamp would go it says:april 25, 2006thoiry, francei miss my love, so i dobut i have unfinished business herei will return…
a love letter to Seven Children
written on a postcard that is an easyJet seat tray just below the “keep closed during take-off and landing”: you are the reason people say children are angelswhere the stamp would go:april 25, 2006somewhere in the sky above switzerlandyou sat all around me on my flightyou were so young but you made not a fuss,…
a love letter to Steerek H. Love
written on a postcard with a black and white photo from the fifties of a couple about to kiss, enclosed in a red cartoon heart on the blank space it says: you are the home i have been searching for. where i always put a kiss instead of a stamp for you:granada, spainapril 18, 2006finally.
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