Grushenka

I’ve created another blog to share my musings into socio-political issues.

http://grushenka.wordpress.com/

The title of the blog Grushenka comes from a Dostoevskyan character but has otherwise nothing to do with her. Grushenka was an informal, common name among female peasants throughout 19th century Russia although i’d never heard of this name until i read Dostoevsky. The Russian word for pear is grusha, so if anything, the name reminds me of pears and fruit and shapely women. And maybe outspoken women? Wow… i didn’t realize Grushenka had so much meaning for me! So yes, maybe the simplicity of the name is also important because my blog is essentially very simple and limited since i’m just a fledgling pseudo intellectual..

LA

I don’t like LA.

It’s as charmless as Brooklyn minus the efficient public transit system. I spent over 6 hours waiting for and sitting in buses today as i commuted to Santa Monica, Hollywood and back.

Although i must admit i hardly saw anything in LA because i spent so much time on the bus.

I didn’t dislike LA 100%… I liked Venice beach. I liked the hippy district surrounding Venice beach. And i liked the cop who volunteered to drive me there when i asked for directions.

Artistic souls and vagabonds are plentiful in Venice. The boardwalk is laden with tables of crafts for sale and pot doctors. “Come in and get your pot! The doctor is in!” It only costs $150 for the opportunity to exaggerate your symptoms and get a prescription (valid for one year).

I accomplished another of the goals i sought to satisfy on this journey (first one was Grand Canyon) … i swam inside the Pacific ocean! Now i’ve had my feet on both sides of the USA! The ocean was chilly (but warmer than Coney Island) and the mist was so dense one could hardly see anything beyond 50 meters in some directions. The waves were numerous and so huge that i scared myself by imagining the various ways one could drown beneath them.

Grand Canyon

Flagstaff is 85 miles away from the Grand Canyon (a 5.4 million year old gorge, 277 miles long, 4-18 miles long, and over a mile deep). By studying the rock layers in this gorge, geologists have been able to discern what’s happened to the earth in the last two billion years!

Yesterday I took a shuttle to the canyon. There was one other passenger, a 21 year old English guy, and together we hiked halfway down the canyon (4.6miles) to the Indian Gardens. It had taken us less than 2 hours to walk down and I only gave passing attention to my thoughts about the need to go back up sometime. A sign at the 3 mile mark said: going down is OPTIONAL, going up is MANDATORY.

I struggled incredibly on the way up. My heart and lungs almost gave up. Once I tried to take a shortcut up by climbing the rocks and patches of grass but the violent swinging of my camera and the slipping of my feet suggested that the risk was not worth the reward.

On the way up I was joined by a Belgian lad who was only a little faster than me. It was past 5 when I finally reached the top and the shuttle I had arranged to take me back to Flagstaff had left without me. I decided to hitchhike. To my dismay I waited for the first twenty minutes as a lot of people waved to me as they passed. A Hawaiian employee of the canyon finally stopped and took me my first three miles, then a contractor of the canyon drove me another 20. As I stood, holding out my thumb the mesmerizing sunset glared back at me. I was tired and cold and no one was stopping for me but I felt peaceful and happy =)

Then a man picked me up. From his fair face and radiating goodwill I guessed (correctly) that he was Mormon. He also worked for the canyon. He drove me 25 miles to the ramp going on the I-40. It was pitch black when I got there and there were few cars. The next person who stopped for me was native and employed by the train that served the canyon. He worked on transcribing traditional native music using western rhythms. He did not consider himself a native American and refused to pay taxes to the government. In his youth, he’d hitchhiked throughout the states.

This morning my muscles are sore and walking hurts. Later tonight I’m going to Phoenix to visit a friend. Then I’ll got to LA. Then to SF. Then home.

Shana Tova everyone!

Road trip USA

My friend George decided to move to California because his favorite technology (speakers) are developed there. I decided to go to California because I’ve always wanted to see the USA. I chose our route (66) and made our couchsurfing arrangements. We left on Wednsday (9.9.09)

Pittsburg, PA (7 hours) was our first stop, Cincinnati, OH (5 hours) the second, and St. Louis, MO (6 hours) the third.

Pennsylvania

Corn in Ohio

St. Louis

In St. Louis we went to the City Museum, a body arcade (slides, caves, interesting stairs, arts&crafts) constructed out of recycled industrial material inside and outside of a rundown building.

Slide going from the 7th fl to the 3rd

Wall made of recycled glass bottles

another slide

St. Louis is bisected by the Mississippi so I also got my first look at the River of Huck Finn!

Mississippi river

Our next stop was Oklahoma City, OK (8 hours) where we also spent two nights. We visited the memorial to the 1995 bombings there.

Writing left by fire department rescue team

We left Oklahoma City after noon on Wednesday and spent the night in a motel 6 in Amarillo, TX (5 hours). This city had four Wal-Mart’s and TWO gas stations on every corner =(

homage to the first Phillips 66 station

Ten Commandments along Route 66

2nd largest cross in America, Groom TX

New Mexico

Arizona

Our drive to Flagstaff, AZ (9 hours) was a weary one. We argued a lot and eventually stopped talking. When we finally reached our host’s house in Flagstaff, he left me there and drove away…

Finally uploaded to youtube!

More here :)

And i say GO

I think New York may have the worst subway system in the world. Slow, unpredictable, and dirty, i wonder why New York, a city richer than Bangkok and Tokyo has such an inferior public transportation. We have old rails and old trains which make for a very shaky rides compared to Europe and Asia’s metros. The trains are hardly ever on schedule (which “conveniently” is only available online). The only plus our system has is that it provides some kind of service 24 hours.

I went to Union Sq tonight. It took me over an hour to get there from Bensonhurst. But the way home was even worse. From Union Sq. it took 2 hours to get home because the D didn’t run after a certain point, so i had to take another train to the end of the line and then wait there for the D to go back toward Manhattan. It took the D about 15 minutes to come and another 20 to leave. All this time i stood there thinking my bladder was going to explode. Eventually i succumbed to the pressure and desire to say fuck you to the MTA. I ran behind a garbage can (not exactly from view), squated and let the yellow juice go.

On the Broadway-Lafayette platform there sits a man who’s been sitting in the same spot since i started college in 2003! I finally talked to him today. His name is Jim or Joe, he’s from Haiti, and says he’s been sitting there since 1996! Imagine that… sitting in the same damn place for 13 years.

I’m going home!

Here are two songs for your pleasure while you wait for me =)

Download them!
(On the bottom of the screen it will say “Save file to your PC”)

Nina Simone – I’m Going Back Home

Simon&Garfunkel – Homeward Bound

Bamboo in Kyoto, Japan

Kyoto & Osaka

Yesterday I hitchhiked back to Tokyo after spending a week in Kyoto and Osaka.

I recon I saved about $300 by using cs for accommodation and hitchhiking. In Kyoto, my host was Shoji, a Japanese farmer who set up a house for his guests and has hosted over 250 since he began last year. There was a Danish couple, 4 Belgians, and two French girls staying there besides me.

The cs house is a traditional Japanese house (not a condominium in a building) and Shoji’s walls are covered with graffiti left by his guests. My contribution was not so nice… (one of those times when I should of stopped closer to when I began)

Kyoto is a very small city compared to Tokyo and famous for its temples. But I visited only a few. For one, I had trouble waking up early. And two, I am navigationally retarded. And being that this is the end of my trip… i feel tired of being a tourist. I just wanted to sit somewhere and read…

In Osaka I stayed with a Canadian guy and his roommates. I’ve been thinking about going to Montreal later this year but hearing my host’s story about hitchhiking the width of Canada made me desirous of such a trip. Perhaps my unemployed (anyone looking to hire someone with great analytical ability, sense of humour and a BA in economics?) brother could join me.

I decided to return to Kyoto rather than hitchhike directly from Osaka. If I wasn’t alone I would have traversed the complicated highway system from Osaka, but being that the navigational part of my brain is on holiday I thought it better to take the simpler route. I figured that if I start hitching on the expressway that goes directly to Tokyo it would be easier to find rides going in my direction.

I woke up at 5:30am and decided I needed 10 more minutes… and kept extending this decision until it was 7am. (I was tired because i had gone to sleep around 3am because I wanted to finish my host’s Murakami book which I had started the night before)

I was on the train to Kyoto by 8:30. Somewhere near the main train station there was a bus I needed to take to the expressway and this bus only ran once an hour. It passed me as I got to the bus area so I had to wait until 9:54 for the next one.

When the bus driver told me to get off, I expected to see a service area not an entrance to the expressway for the cars. So i wondered around seeking a good place to hitch (even walking along the entrance itself to the toll booths). One employee of the booths suggested I walk back to the gas station  and try from there. She and the other Japanese man who tried to help me by drawing a big sign that said “Going to —” knew all about hitchhiking.

Of course any experienced hitchhiker would have known to start from the gas station…

I managed 6 rides within 5 hours. But these barely took me 200 km! Some people were nice and smiled as they signaled that they were going a different way, but some people refused to even open their windows when I knocked on their car. Did I look more untrustworthy than I did 1 week ago?

Of the 6 drivers I had only one was a woman. She was going with her husband to the mountains in time for the blooming of the flowers. They were a couple in their 60s with grown children. They spoke English well.

The last of the 6 were two engineers, both married with children. And yet they seemed like 2 boys fresh out of college (but more innocent and humble then America’s graduates). I sat in their car, weary and tired. Before letting me go they said that they had an idea. They were going to get me a ride to Tokyo. By looking at the license plates they could tell which ones were from Tokyo (I had tried to do this too but asking people proved simpler).

And that’s how I got my last ride, the one that took me all the way to Tokyo, all 350 km. He may have been mildly retarded but he was kind. I left him a little Buddha another driver had given me in Thailand as a symbol of my gratitude.

As close as i got to Mt. Fuji...

He went out of his way for me. I only asked him to deposit me near any train station in Tokyo and I thought he understood… but I had make the mistake of telling him my final destination and it stuck in his mind. He called his friends for advice on how to get me there while I tried desperately to explain that it wasn’t important. But the dictionary I had did not translate the word “any” in the way I needed and the poor guy couldn’t shake off his confusion.

School girls in a Kyoto train station

Boys reading manga (comics) in Kyoto

Osaka

View from a ferris wheel

Osaka at night

Girls

Tokyo

I spent 5 days in Tokyo staying with an American teacher of English i met in Thailand 2 months ago. The flight from Bangkok was only 6 hours, but because i spent my last ‘night’ at the airport – and slept only 2 hours – I was very tired when i arrived my friend’s place. This fatigue lasted for the next several days and worst of all, my lower back hurt (probably from the monster that my backpack evolved into after i crammed in all that junk i bought in Bangkok 20 minutes before i left for the airport)

I spent my days very casually, waking up late, visiting museums and walking, and returning home around 7 to make dinner with my friend. I almost mastered Tokyo’s complex subway system consisting of a million privately owned lines requiring new tickets and exits for the transfers. Every station is almost as busy and large (or busier and larger) as New York’s Grand Central, and usually more complicated. But Japanese people will often go out of their way to help you and even as i stood momentarily paralized by the grandiosity i felt wonder not anxiety.

ticket machines and a map of JUST one of the metro lines in Tokyo

Queueing for the subway. Can you imagine this in NY?

View of Shibuya intersection

On Sunday i attended an earth and peace celebration near Shibuya park. Besides the hundred little booths selling organic stuff there was a stage where musicians played traditional Japanese instruments in non traditional ways and people danced. I danced too of course!

On Monday i set off for Kyoto with a near empty back pack (I left most of my things at my friend’s place) and an atlas of Japanese roads. I found my way to a Mc’Donald’s near the entrance of an expressway and tried to hitch a ride by standing 50 meters from the entrance point. No one stopped.

Holding my umbrella close, i tried another way. I approached the cars as they collected their food at the drive-through. Three women, a mother, her daughter and a grandmother scooped me up and took me 30 kilometers south to a parking space on the expressway. Before they left me they insisted i accept a water and a sweet bun that the daughter had run out of the car to buy in the rain especially for me. After that everything was very easy.

Kyoto is about 515 km away from Tokyo and the road is a straight path on the expressways. Unlike hitching in Thailand almost all the drivers i had insisted on finding my next ride. All i had to do was wait. Six rides and 8 hours later i was in Kyoto. I met 11 friendly people and cannot imagine a better way to have gotten to Kyoto.

My only complaint is that it’s raining every day but otherwise i am very happy :)

bye bye ราชอาณาจักรไทย

My flight to Tokyo is at 5am tomorrow, which means i should be there by 4… which means i might as well “sleep” in the airport. The last tourist bus to the airport leaves around 11pm.

For some reason, i never feel like partying in Bangkok. I love to stay out late and dance (in Ko Tao and elsewhere i went to sleep with the sunrise) but in BKK i always feel so languid and bored. Maybe it’s because i’m alone most of the time in BKK. I come here on my way elsewhere… so i come knowing no one. The hundreds of tourists flailing around just don’t appeal to my senses. Once or twice i’ll see one i’d like to get to know but then the crowd eats him.

Funny coincidence. I’m reading a funny surrealistic story by Malamud called Pictures of Fidelman which takes place in Italy. The book i read before had a few lines in Italian. And in Ko Tao i spent some time with Italians…

Here i go… 5 hours left to say goodbye to Thailand (for the time being!)

I’ve been pining for Cambodia lately.