Skiing in Delhi
I am having the "Currency Exchange Effect". The Effect explains the phenomenon that when a person changes his currency for a stronger currency, he is under the delusion that prices are lower even though they are exactly the same. That is precisely what happened when I bought my ski pants to get ready for the Christmas skiing in Delhi, which is in upstate New York. I am already in upstate, Delhi is even further upstate and the further you get up north, the colder it gets. I bought the ski pants for 29 dollars and it seemed so cheap I bought it without any second thoughts. As I walked out of the shop it dawned on me that the price was 45 singapore dollars and suddenly it didn't seem so cheap anymore. I have to constantly remind myself to convert prices back to Singapore dollars before making any purchases in future.
I have done ice skating before and although I wouldn't say that I am those who can skate around the rink at monstrous speed , I can manage pretty well. At least I can brake and braking is important. If you can't brake in any snow sports you cannot slow down. If you can't slow down you can only get faster and the next thing you know you are hurting yourself or other people you knock into.I can't brake in skiing. Not with the slopes. Not with the most gentle slopes.
When I put on my boots I felt like a penguin. Clumsy was the word. It wasn't easy to walk in ski boots, and I was completely rooted when I slotted them into the ski boards. Well, not actually. I did manage to move, only uncontrollably. There was a gentle slope and I started moving towards a 5 year old kid standing right in front of me. Shit! In that split second I knew I had to do something to avoid hitting that boy. I didn't know how to stop, so I had to make myself fall to the side. I missed that boy by a few inches. Phew. When I looked up at him he had a blur look. He was almost smiling back to me. I doubt he had any sense of the danger he just averted, but the parents were seething.
Once I got to know how to get moving a little and braking a little, I was presented with yet another challenge--to get myself up the "lift" which would bring me to the top of the slope. The "lift" resembles a cable car. It doesn't stop for skiers to get on. Skiers would have to go with the flow: to ski to the position in between 2 seats and wait for the next seat to bring them up. How could I possibly slot myself in when I couldn't even move easily? It takes perfect estimation too and as I expected I was too slow and I got knocked down by the incoming seat before I could get in position. They had to stop the "lift" for me and I kept apologising profusely. Once I got on it I wondered how I was going to get down. When I approached the end the service man shouted,"Lift up your pole!"
"Pole? What pole? You mean my pair of skis?"
"Ok. Obviously you don't know what I am talking about," the man grunted and there was an apparent impatience in his voice. He stopped the "lift" again and lifted up my restraining bar to let me get off. I wished I had the guts to tell him I call that a bar, not a pole. Sometimes instructions don't make sense and you have to rely on common sense. I wished I had.
Brian's 19 year old son, Marcus, is a pro snow-boarder. Snow boarding is more difficult than skiing. He is a pro, so that makes him many many levels more skillful than me. He completed four laps and I completed one. Brian told me he was worrying I would get stuck up the slope and he would have to send rescuers up for me. I was quietly glad he didn't have to. Haha, even though it was tough and I got a few knocks I totally enjoyed the experience.
(uploaded album "Christmas in Delhi")
Phantom of the Opera
It started with a auction. There were people dressed in clothes from the last century and they were bidding for an toy monkey which would dance and make music with its cymbals. The monkey's significance I would realise later in the show. An old man in a wheelchair won the bid, and next on the auction list was a enormous chandelier from the opera house. As soon as they unveiled the chandelier it swung out with full force from the stage to the audience in the orchestra seats. For a moment I thought it would almost hit the crowd, but it went up all the way to the ceiling of the theater. If Phantom wanted an start with an impact then it had certainly achieved its aim.
What a way to start a musical. The rest of it didn't let me down either. Most notable were the fantastic props and songs. There was such a large variety of props I could never get tired of marveling at them. It was almost like a magic show because you could see a scene and you wouldn't have the least idea how they did it. Of course I understand the chandelier was raised by cables, but how do you explain the underground waterway scene where there were hundreds of candles raising from below the stage? or the boat that seemed to sail without any water on the stage? or the manner the Phantom's eyes could spit fire like he was an X-men? or the fact that he could disappear in a flash and appear immediately in another part of the stage? And then there was the music by this genius called Andrew Lloyd Webber. There wasn't just one song that was nice. There were "Think of Me", "Music of the Night", "All I ask of You", "Phantom of the Opera", "Wish You were Here" and many, many more that I would like to name them here if I could remember their names.
I particularly like the way it ended, where the Phantom, despite unrequited love, gave his blessings to Christine and Raoul and overcame by grief, disappeared in his cavern and left behind his mask, and his toy monkey. Cool.
(I captured the Broadway advertisements in the pictures=), and there is haha, finally more photos of the interior of the house )
Unrealised Dream
Boston has Harvard University and MIT. I didn't know they are in Boston before so I decided to pay them a visit since they are easily accessible by subway. I have a friend who graduated with a double degree from MIT. Well, not exactly a friend but an acquaintance from military and who, by the way, topped the whole cohort for Junior College in my year.
The subway brought me to Harvard Square, a shopping area which catered to the students. There were restaurants, clothing stores, book shops and the square was bustling with students decked out in the nicest and sporty winter wear. The square was located in the heart of the university so I could imagine the students coming out to shop during their lesson breaks. The university was part of the town, but really the university was the town. The school itself was even more fascinating. Buildings were colonial and low-rised, and student hostels laid just next to the school libraries and classrooms. In the middle of a set of buildings would be a big green space called the yard. If it were summer I suppose students would busk in the sun reading books under the trees, and if they forgot to bring their teaching aids they could calmly walk barefooted back to their nearby hostels to get them. To add to the already beautiful scenery there was the Charles River cutting right through the university. This must probably be the most conducive environment to study in the world, and my photos didn't do it justice due to the snow.
MIT by the way, was made up of a pathetic small number of buildings. The buildings had no special architecture that could differentiate itself from the surrounding commercial buildings. One could walk into MIT and still wonder whether he was in MIT. Modern universities are built up and so concerned with using every piece of precious land that there is hardly any greenery and it is suffocating to the soul. Xianghua read a book called "The Pattern Language" and she told me human beings have this innate instinct to be close to nature and I think that is very true. That is why houses with a seaview are so expensively priced. A good summary of the book can be located here
http://downlode.org/etext/patterns/I left Harvard with a strong desire to get a place in it. It could be that Harvard overwhelmed me with its beauty, or it could be that I was trying to make up for an empty, unmemorable undergraduate experience in NTU.
It is snowing
My first taste of snow wasn't in New York but in Boston. I went up to Boston with David for a developer's talk on SecondLife and I decided to stay there for 2 nights.
The temperature must have been around -1 deg, and the weatherman said it would feel like -10 with the gusts of wind. Dressed in a shirt, sweater, windbreaker, boots, 40 grams gloves and a Thinsulate snow cap, I thought I was well-equipped enough when I first stepped out of the hostel in the morning. After walking for 15 minutes on the streets I could feel my nose, cheeks and toes were numb. They went so numb I couldn't feel my toes and I wondered if they were still attached to my feet. I had this fear that my toes would come off like stalactites on a cave's celilings. Then there was this difficulty of taking pictures, as the cold wind bit my fingers as soon as I exposed them to snap the camera button. Most of the pictures turned out blurred due to my uncontrollable shaking. I had to take twice of every scene to make sure at least one of them turned out ok. I couldn't stay in the open for too long and everytime I see a Dunkin Donut's (A fast-food restaurant with donut meals) I would seek refuge for a half hour break of hot coffee and donuts. I ended up having 5 cups of coffee, and it's a personal record I am not too proud of. I couldn't finish the sightseeing as a result of those breaks.
I was down at Boston Common admiring the garden when the first flakes of snow fell. They were tiny flakes that danced in the winds and if you didn't look carefully you might actually miss them. Some were caught on my sleeves and I peered at them for a while before I blew them off back into the sky. I reached a conclusion that I like snow, at least for now. Snow doesn't make you wet like rain does, and when it falls to the ground it doesnt make a noisy splattering sound. And you can play with them, though that day's snow wasn't enough for me to make a snow ball I still had fun blowing them off my sleeves.
Note: Due to the upload limits of Flickr I decided to switch to Yahoo!Photos which has unlimited storage. The link is on the right navigator. I have uploaded the pictures of Boston. Enjoy=)
