Category: Travel

When I’m in a new city, my impulse is to walk. Not take tours, or work through the top tourist spots, but simply to walk the streets, wherever they take me. (Remember Prague?) And when I start walking, I have a tendency to keep going, at a fairly brisk pace, until I can’t walk any more. Often I won’t stop to check out an interesting sight, or even to eat.
So it was today. I thought about visiting the Great Wall, but that would be an all-day commitment, and I wanted to get back and get some work done before Seattle woke up and I had to pack for my flight tomorrow. So around 9am I set off. As yesterday, I started west down Jianguomennei Dajie towards the Forbidden City, but when I reached Chaoyangmen Nandajie I turned south, under the railway tracks. I was looking for the Park of the Ming City Wall, which turned out to be delightful. There were elderly women doing their morning exercises, children everywhere, and ancient men who looked at me as though I was an alien. (I guess I was, in my broad-brimmed kangaroo leather hat and my “There’s no place like 127.0.0.1” t-shirt.) The oddest thing I came across was a perfectly preserved late Victorian style railway signal box!
At the end of the park, I followed Qianmon Dongdajie towards the south end of Tiananmen Square. I plugged in my headphones and cranked the music up, to discourage the many young men who wanted to be my tour guide. (My choice of music: Banco de Gaia’s “Last Train To Lhasa”. Hmmmm.)
After Tiannmen Square, I decided that I’d seen enough big, ornate stuff: I wanted to see “real Beijing”. (OK, that’s a bit pretentious, but you know what I mean. So I explored the hutongs (narrow alley-like streets) southwest of the Arrow Tower, in Dashilan district. I went down Zhubaoshi Jie until I found the turning into Dashilan Dajie, and followed this into a maze of twisty passages, all different. Dashilan Dajie turned into Dashilan Xijie, then Tieshuxie Jie. And then suddenly I was stuck – and so was everyone else. There was a small excavator digging up the street, and the operator decided to take out the one remaining strip of pavement. A few brave souls scrambled over the debris, ducking to avoid the bucket of the excavator, but I decided to backtrack and work around. I turned south down Shanxi Xiang until I hit Zhushikou Xidajie, which I followed west until I reached Nanxinhua Jie. (One confusing thing about Beijing is that the streets tend to change their names every block or so.) I turned north; I had some vague idea of going all the way up to Bei Hai Park, but I soon abandoned that.
Just as I noticed when I was in Seoul, Beijing merchants tend to cluster. Nanxinhua Jie was full of shops selling musical instruments and trophies – awards, cups, plaques, medals, and so forth. (I probably saw more trophy shops than any other kind in Beijing, except for food and clothing.) I kept going north, until I reached Xichang’an Jie, which is the western continuation of the street I’d started out on. At this point I realized that I wasn’t going to go much further: I’d been walking non-stop for four hours, and my feet knew it. So I reluctantly headed west to the nearest subway station, paid my 2 yuan for a ticket (that’s 29 cents US), and rode the gleaming, streamlined (and packed) train back to Guo Mao station. To the Chinese passengers with whom I shared the train, I apologize for my slovenly appearance: the humidity had picked up mid-morning, and my shirt was terribly sweat-stained.
And now I must deal with my blistered feet, and transfer all the photos to my laptop. I’ll go online and upload this piece in a few minutes. (I have to buy internet access one hour at a time in this hotel.) I probably won’t log in tomorrow morning, because I need to be at the airport by 6am. This time tomorrow, I’ll be in Singapore. (Well, at the airport, anyway.) And tomorrow night I’ll be in Hyderabad.

We’re in the middle of a strange, slow-motion thunderstorm here in Beijing. After a beautiful sunny morning, a bank of low, grey-yellow cloud has descended on the city. There are barely-discernible signs of motion in the cloud, as nearby skyscrapers seem to drift in and out of focus, and occasionally an aimless pattern of lightning will put in an appearance, followed by a muffled apology for thunder.
Meanwhile, it’s rush-hour. From my vantage point on the 11th floor, I’m looking down on an elaborate intersection: ChaoYang Road crossing the 4th Ring Road. It’s a bus enthusiast’s paradise: double-deckers, single-deckers, short bendy-buses, long bendy-buses, long-distance coaches, even a few trolley-buses, all in a dazzling variety of colour schemes. The only common factor is that they all look much more modern and stylish than any buses that I’ve seen in the USA.

Yesterday evening I returned to my hotel from the Amazon office, and came up to my room on the 9th floor. As I mentioned yesterday, it’s a suite: living room, bedroom, bathroom, kitchen, and laundry. Or so I thought… When I entered, I noticed that a door at the end of a corridor was ajar. I had previously assumed that this connected to the next suite, so that adjacent units could be combined – but why was the door open? My first reaction was to wonder if someone had entered my room, but when I explored I realized my mistake. The door led into a master suite: a huge bedroom, walk-in closets, a sumptuous hi-and-hers bathrooms with side-by-side walk-in showers, a whirlpool tub, and so forth. This “hotel suite” is twice as big as my apartment in Seattle!
When I’d finished exploring, I took a few photos and closed the door again. I’m not sure why: I guess it’s because I’d already settled into the “room” as I’d originally found it, unpacking my clothes in the smaller bedroom and arranging my things in the bathroom. I didn’t really feel the need to “move”.
But it’s an awesome bathroom!

I’m busy planning a business trip later this month that will take me around the world… Beijing, Hyderabad, Bangalore, and London. Here’s the route:

Apparently the best route from Beijing to Hyderabad is via Singapore. If only I could spare a day…

I’m flying down to the San Francisco area for the weekend, to visit friends and family. I’m really looking forward to it, although not to the early departure and late return. I shall take my iPhone and my Kindle, which should be enough gadgetry to be going along with; I don’t think I’ll need a laptop as well.

My missing suitcase was delivered to Uwajimaya this morning. Time to do the laundry…

Back in March, I blogged “I’m presently seated in The Fishes, a delightful pub/restaurant not far from my mother’s house in Oxford.” And here I am again. This time the beer is Guinness, but the WiFi is still free.
The drive down from South Queensferry to Oxford was really easy. I woke early, because at this time of year it never really gets dark in Scotland. I was on the road before 6, and even though I stopped three times I was still in Oxford before 1pm. I took an hour over breakfast in Gretna Green (yes, that Gretna Green), and then made two more short stops to stretch and refuel. The Lake District was beautiful, but wet; otherwise the weather wasn’t a problem. When I reached Oxford, I grabbed some lunch, and soon after 2pm I was visiting my mother at the John Radcliffe infirmary. ((She’d been taken in a few days earlier with acute pancreatitis. No gall stones, fortunately.))

I just spent a happy four hours walking the streets of Dublin, just soaking it up. And “soaking” here is purely metaphorical: although some ominously dark clouds rolled overhead, the morning was dry and mostly sunny. My favourite bit was walking through and around St. Stephen’s Green, a beautiful city park. Dozens of local artists were displaying their paintings on the railings around the park, and I was both impressed and frustrated; there were some stunning pieces for sale.

Having started out at the Guinness brewery, I eventually wound up at the corner of O’Connell and Abbey Streets, getting a little footsore ((I was wearing the sandals that I’d flown over in)) and hungry. I decided to check out the LUAS tram, and rode it the few stops to Smithfield, where I’m staying. It’s an excellent system, and obviously very popular: most trains are full.

And finally, when I returned to my hotel I found that my missing suitcase had just been delivered. So now I can change into some real shoes, and upload the pictures from my digital camera, and recharge my cellphone, and…
Oh yes – and have some lunch. Then this afternoon I’m going to visit the Old Jameson Distillery, just across the street. ((Web site is here, but turn the volume down before you click it; it’s a tacky, noisy Flash thing.)) Apparently visitors are encouraged to indulge in a “practical” assessment of their quality claims! And (weather permitting) I’m planning to eat at the Bull & Castle this evening. It’s a self-described “gastro pub” recommended by Mike McHugh.
UPDATE: The Bull & Castle was a great choice. I had a pint of Guinness (what else?) followed by a superb steak – possibly the best I’ve ever tasted. Highly recommended.

As I was walking down the steps from the aging Air Canada 767-200 to the shuttle bus that would take us to the main terminal at Dublin, I was mentally composing a blog entry about the flight. It was going to expand on my thoughts that even though nothing really went wrong, it felt like a mediocre experience. Mediocre food. (Dinner was four different ways to deliver fat; breakfast was four different ways to deliver sugar.) Mediocre seats. Mediocre, 1983-style in-flight entertainment. (The feature film was an art-house flop, and one of the supporting pieces was a random episode of the BBC’s Top Gear from 2003. I enjoy Top Gear, but it’s less interesting when they’re featuring obsolete car models.) No duty-free. (Not that I usually buy stuff on the way out, but it was as if they didn’t care.) And mediocre communications: the flight landed 32 minutes late, but the crew didn’t even mention this fact, let alone apologize…
That was before I realized that Air Canada had lost my bag. When I checked in at SeaTac, I checked my bag all the way through to Dublin. Somewhere (Seattle? Toronto?) they lost it. That kind of thing overshadows mere mediocrity.
If all goes as well as possible from this point, they will put it on the next flight and deliver it to my hotel in Dublin tomorrow (Sunday) morning. If it doesn’t go as well as possible… Well, sufficient unto the day and all that. Meanwhile I just walked up to the nearest Marks & Spencer and picked up some things to tide me over.
I was trying to remember the last time this happened. It might have been that terrible trip that I took in the mid-1990’s, when British Airways managed to lose the same bag twice! (The first time when I was flying from Heathrow to Stockholm, the second when I was flying from Lyon to Heathrow a few days later.)
UPDATE 5:49PM: A few minutes ago, I called Servisair, the company that handles baggage at Dublin for Air Canada, but I just got a recorded message. So on a hunch, I plugged my file reference into the Worldtracer tracking page, and it reported:
Bag 1 Status RECEIVED AT AIRPORT / DELIVERY PROCESS INITIATED
Which airport? Oh, well: this seems like good news, so I’ll try to be patient.

I’m at the Maple Leaf Lounge at Toronto airport, killing time until my evening flight to Dublin. I’m not flying business class or anything like that, but my United Red Carpet Club card was good enough to get me in. The facilities are w-a-a-y better than any RCC that I’ve been in recently – the booze is free, ((though my consumption so far totals 4 cans of club soda)) there are fresh veggie snacks, and the staff are really attentive.
My reading material for the flight is the Ruby “pick-axe” book. My impression after the first couple of chapters is that the language has lots of convenient features but there’s a certain amount of ad-hockery about how they’re brought together. When I’m learning a language, I like to establish a clear relationship between the concrete and the abstract levels of interpretation, and the concrete syntax of Ruby feels all over the map to me. Nothing that a few sample programs won’t clear up, I’m sure. Meanwhile the pure OO features are sweet…