A Day In The Life...

Its pretty nice to be temporarily unemployed. It's even better when the "superior other" decides she needs a 4 day weekend. With most of the population toiling away at their desks and few people congesting the roads we meandered down to the wonderful area of Santa Cruz. Our first stop was Land of Medicine Buddha butted up against the Forest of Nicene Marks in Soquel (http://www.medicinebuddha.org/). This place was amazing, not only for its location in the redwood covered hills but also the serenity, calm, and peacefulness of the center. Neither of us had ever been there before and this was a chance to walk around the center and just check it out. Here is a gigantic dharma wheel that greets you at the entrance of the facility:

Just up the way was another dharma wheel and, although it was much smaller, had an amazing roof. Each roof tile was pounded copper that had patinaed over time due to the sun and rain. Each tile was pounded into the shape of a lotus petal. Really cool:

We continued up the hill and saw another shrine that was just beautiful. Why belittle it's splendor with my crummy prose?! Here it is...

There are also plans to build and enormous stupa at this facility. The base will measure 108' x 108' and will be 53' tall. It will have 100,000 little stupa's placed on the entire structure. It will be an formidable edifice when completed. It is based on the Borobodur Stupa plan in Indonesia - the largest Buddhist complex on Earth. For now, this is all that is there...

On our return trip back down the hill, Namgyal noticed a 'bracket fungus' that had been painted. I thought it was a clever art medium and she thought it to be a beautiful work of art:

After leaving the center we headed to the Saturn Cafe in Santa Cruz for lunch, one of my favorite places to eat in Santa Cruz. We gorged and Namgyal did what Namgyal does best: be cute...

Our next phase of the afternoon adventure took us to a beach I really enjoy. It was foggy and overcast but not too cold and just downright beautiful. It wasn't hot and sunny like those Southern California beaches! :) I needed one last beach fix before we left and this sated my beach appetite perfectly. It will be a bit of time until I get to smell the salty air or feel the sand between my toes so I had to take full advantage of the situation. Beautiful!

I call this last one "Succulent Floating in Space." Dali would be proud. Next we called this, "Succulents Take The Train" and finally, "Succulents Ended Up In Our Car and Will Be Planted In Our Yard."


It's time to get back to the chores of getting ready for our trip. Only 7 days left and a heap of things to accomplish!

NaHCO3 + HC2H3O2 ------> CO2 + H2O + NaC2H3O2

For no particular reason, science is really entertaining to me right now.

Hee hee hee...

A Flurry of Activity...

If you put your foot into your mouth, is this where you get it removed?

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Ah, back in the blog saddle. There's gonna be a lot in this post and this one is gonna need a set of directions! For the first part I will describe the necessity of the blog and the second part will relay the specifics about some of the features and key elements on the blog.

First, the necessity of the blog. As you may or may not know, Namgyal and I will be traversing the globe beginning on June 6 of this year. We will be flying from SFO to Kathmandu, Nepal via Taipei, Taiwan and Bangkok, Thailand. I want all of you to be able to "visit" us on this journey and because of the success of the last blog, I calculated that this would work even better than the last one. I have learned a few more things about computers and blogs and pictures and video so I thought I would incorporate it here to make the Himalaya's seem as if they were right there in your living room. The only thing that I know I will want to convey but lack the technology to do so is the smells. If you have any suggestions, I happly encourage it!

We have a return ticket back to the US for September 3 of this year and we can only guess as to what the three months will entail. There is no shortage of things to do; only the imagination and desire to get up in the morning and GO!

We will be staying with Namgyal's mom and dad at thier house in the Kathmandu Valley. Mom in Tibetan is "amla" and dad is "pala." Amla's name is Dhongtso and pala's name is Tsultrim. Namgyal's sister, Tenzin also lives in Kathmandu with her husband, Tsering and thier daughter, Uma and son, Mila. Namgyal also has many more friends there and I hope to introduce you to them as I meet them. Not to leave anyone out, Namgyal's brother, Tsering lives in Toronto, Canada with his wife Tsering and thier daughter, Yodon.

Perhaps I also need to explain why I mentioned Tibetan names... Please email me questions about the holes I accidentally place into this story! :) Namgyal and her family are Tibetan. Her parents fled Tibet in 1959 with the Dalai Lama during the Chinese occupation of Lhasa and have lived as refugees in Nepal ever since. I could go on ad infinitum about thier history and their stories but I think that I will intersperse them here and there to get you up to speed.

It may get confusing at times but I will try to make trees and diagrams to keep it all in order. You can expect to see three general cultural and linguistic divisions in this blog - Tibetan, Nepali, and Indian. Obviously, these can be broken down further but I will try to keep things in those general catergories for simplicity.

Because of these distinctions I will be using three different languages to describe our experiences. On the right of the blog you will see some links to online dictionaries in the three different languages. I've had quite a bit of success using them and I encourage you to try them out also. If you like them or don't like them, let me know. If you find a better one, let me know and I will put it up for all of us to share and use. Heck, send me anything that you find interesting!

I think that maps are a powerful tool. The map technology that exists today is mind-boggling and is incredibly accessible. I find Google to have the best global information currently available. On the side of my blog you will find something called "Treasure Map." This is the map 'brain' of my blog. By choosing this link you will be redirected to a GoogleMaps page that is loaded with my settings. GoogleMaps is great for obtaining directions and looking at roadmaps. The only problem is that a road map must already exist in order for it to be on GoogleMaps. This can create an interesting situation when a country exists that may not use maps in a similar fashion to our culture. If you look at the Treasure Map page you will notice a "partition" (for lack of a better word) between the image and the top of the web page. You will see four buttons that say traffic, map, satellite, and hybrid. The default setting is always to load in "map" form. Any time you look at someting that is in Nepal it will appear blank. Click on the "satellite" button and a satellite image will appear that looks like a photograph. This is the setting you will need to be in everytime you go to the Treasure Map. Its super easy. Once you do it, you will know how to do it in the future. GoogleEarth is another amazingly cool program that allows you to see the earth in three dimentions. It is possible to link my GoogleMap to GoogleEarth but that is a little more complicated to explain. Let me keep working on that one!

I just went to the Treasure Map and realized that I needed to mention two more things. Make sure you play with the zoom in and zoom out buttons. This map can take some time to load. Even with a DSL connection it takes at least a minute to load. Be patient. I'm not sure what is going to happen when I put video into it. Let's see, eh?