Facebook Voyeur

Like 200,000,000 others on the planet, I have a Facebook account. (See Is Facebook Growing Up Too Fast? ) Jill, a friend and colleague, first invited me to join Facebook in the late spring of 2007 when she tagged me in a photo of her, Jennell, and me on a boat at the Great Barrier Reef after our trip there together over Christmas Break, 2006. I declined. That summer I visited Bali with an Intrepid Travel tour group, and all the twenty-somethings insisted that the best way for us to share photos would be on Facebook. Still, though, I didn’t sign up until May, 2008, after a second trip to Australia over spring break that year. Once again, a group I spent time with on a three-day live-aboard at the Great Barrier Reef concurred that the best way to share photos would be via Facebook. Although I missed that sharing—except by way of what Jennell, who had joined Facebook, subsequently shared with me—it catalyzed more serious consideration of the Facebook proposition on my part.

As one who tends to find photographs of myself somewhat unsettling and as one who has become quite skilled at avoiding a camera lens pointed in my direction, I found the expectation of posting a profile photo of myself rather disconcerting. In fact, I endured three to four months of ribbing and hassling from various “friends” because I retained the Facebook generic “male” silhouette arbitrarily presented by Facebook in the photo position of one’s profile when one joins until the time one sees fit to upload something from one’s own sources. Eventually I remembered that Jennell had “painted” a photo she took of me during our first trip to the Great Barrier Reef: I am sitting in a chair on the rear deck of the boat, staring into the middle distance at the reef and the sea; it is between dives—in my case, “snorkels”—so I wear a sun hat, bathing suit, and a sarong.


Now I just get asked how I made the photo like that.

As my one year anniversary on Facebook approaches, I realize I am mostly a voyeur on Facebook. People often tell me I’m rather mysterious, such a private person. I do know that I have little desire to write anything in that status box attached to my Facebook pages; broadcasting what I’m doing or thinking to such a public forum unnerves me. I will use chat, send messages, and write comments—even on a friend’s “status” statement—but I have little inclination to present much information to all my Facebook friends in one glorious announcement in my status box. Actually, I wonder why someone would even want to know that I ate a chicken quesadilla for dinner, just finished running, or that I am in the middle of watching an episode of Lost! However, I have no qualms about exploring the status updates and subsequent commentary presented by others on their pages.

Facebook quizzes frustrate me; they are so manipulative and so limiting. I don’t understand the point of “poking” someone, and I no longer accept stuff like “flair” or any other virtual gifts or trinkets connected to holidays, causes, or groups. I have no idea what to do with it all and no real interest in learning. And another thing, do guys send all this virtual stuff to Facebook friends? I only receive it from female Facebook friends… although I have begun to see a decline in the stuff sent my direction… probably because I ignore it. I do play Kidnap—most likely because it involves geography and travel trivia—and I like looking at photos people post.

What fascinates me most about Facebook is what I like best about it, too: the opportunity to have a link to the people who have spaces in the design of your life. Numberwise, I don’t have the legions of Facebook friends that many others do, yet I am in awe when I review my list of friends. Some are people whose connection to me I believed would now only be in memory. Over a third of my Facebook friends are former students, and there is a real sweetness for a teacher to receive a query from a former student who wants to remember together with me and/or catch up with each other’s life. Particularly amazing for me has been the students I taught my first year at Ulm American High School who have found me on Facebook; we were together in a classroom over twenty years ago!

Even if I’m not one to actively solicit Facebook friendships, post much in the way of pictures or words, participate in Facebook games and activities, or support various causes in the Facebook forum, I do relish my voyeuristic moments when I log in to Facebook... pretty much once a day!

Sri Lankan Journal #9

You Can’t Get There

Sri Lanka: Mirissa, Galle Fort, Nuwara Eliya, Weligama, Pinnewala




from Here

Japan: Ashina (my house)

Do you realize how excellent chances are that you cannot go directly to Sri Lanka from where you are now? There are like FIVE airports in the entire world that have daily direct flights to Sri Lanka. Singapore’s Changi International Airport is one of them and the one we flew to, to fly from.

Because the price of airfare mattered to us, our itinerary included lengthy layovers at Changi International both directions. From Tokyo to Singapore, Jennell and I flew JAL, arriving in Singapore just before 1:00 in the morning. Our connecting flight on Sri Lankan Airlines wouldn’t depart until 9:30am—a fact which caused sufficient distress to motivate us to reserve a six-hour block of time in a room at the transit hotel located in Terminal 2. Apparently Changi International does solid business with passengers flying with this type of connection situation because three of the four terminals at Changi International Airport have a transit hotel…to include swimming pools. If you stay at the transit hotel in the terminal where you arrive, you can totally bypass the Customs scenario. Although our transit hotel room could only be described as Spartan at best, it had a private bathroom and we each had a bed in which to collapse. Six hours later we got up, charged a Subway breakfast (sandwiches, chips, and drinks) on a credit card, and inched our way through a crazy congestion of the masses mobbed in front of the three counter ladies attempting to serve those in need of boarding passes for the upcoming flight to Colombo on Sri Lankan Airlines.

On our return trip through Changi International, we arrived just before 11:00 in the morning, and our flight to Tokyo was not scheduled to depart until just before midnight. Now for daytime layovers, the airport offers city tours of Singapore by bus. If you opt just for the bus tour, which pretty much means you’re on the bus the entire time—no dining out, walking the streets and shops, or touring by foot—you can bypass the Customs scenario once again. After lunching at the airport, Jennell and I did take the bus tour. Despite views only through a bus window into a pretty steady tropical downpour, Singapore enchanted; I would consider visiting it in a more conventional manner another time. Back at the airport about three hours later, we located the Hard Rock Café for dinner, and then browsed airport shops, read, snoozed, or surfed the Internet on the banks of computers set up at various places in our terminal until we could finally board our JAL flight back to Japan.

Should one be required to while away extended portions of a day—or a night—at an airport, one could do far worse than Changi International!

Sri Lankan Journal #8

Shandy

From Christmas Day to New Year’s Day, Shandy chauffeured Jennell and me around the southern half of Sri Lanka in a white van big enough for two banks of seats behind the driver. Shandy was one of two drivers working for Eddy--the German expat who took Jennell on a diving trip during our stay at Mirissa. Eddy ultimately presented the best bid after learning from Jennell that we were in the market for a driver for the remainder of our trip. Shandy, although always a consummate gentlemen and quite soft-spoken (despite residing his entire life in what could be a rather high-volume society), was a surprisingly aggressive driver and certainly skilled in Sri Lankan style driving.

Sri Lanka can be driven largely without the aid of stop lights or traffic circles; in fact, I observed stop lights only in Colombo and its environs. Since in Sri Lanka one drives on the left-hand side of the road, right turns are the more challenging ones, and I never fully understood how drivers determined whose turn came next: Even with no stop lights and a steady flow of traffic in both directions on a main drag, right turns could be made both into and off the main drag. I fully believe size and horse power played persuasively into the mix of prioritizing turns and spaces in the traffic flow. And Shandy understood always what should and could be enacted in any driving situation: when to jump a queue or when to submit; length, volume, and repetition appropriate for any occasion in the language of car horns; and how to circumvent all manner of road damage and/or traffic and still maintain optimum progress towards a desired destination.

Whereas Shandy’s English proved to be more limited than we would have preferred—especially when a situation of culture, religion, or politics piqued our curiosity—we managed to communicate quite effectively on a basic level. In the hill country outside of Nuwara Eliya, Shandy found a tea factory/plantation for us to visit, and we all sat down together for complimentary tea and chocolate cake after the Jennell and I completed the official tour. I told Jennell to prepare my cup of tea just how she liked it—milk and lots of sugar—and then she got to drink both of ours. (Mind you, I ate all of my own chocolate cake.) Shandy and Jennell bonded early in the trip over tea, stopping at at a myriad of roadside shops and stands for a cup during our days on the road...devotees of tea drinking, both of them.

After leaving the tea factory area, Jennell and I spotted “pickers” and asked Shandy to pull over for a photo opt. He thought it rather funny that we wanted pictures of them. He smiled, shrugged his shoulders, and said with some wonderment, “They working.”

One evening right after we first started our road trip with Shandy, I was jotting down some notes about the day and I asked Jennell how she thought Shandy spelled his name—with a “y” at the end, since it rhymed with the city name Kandy, or with an “i” or “ie.” She pondered a moment and then pointed out that he probably just spelled it with a lot of loops and curlicues!

The top line is Sinhala and the middle line is Tamil.

Sri Lankan Journal #7

Hill Country... and the End of the World

World's End, Horton's Plains, Sri Lanka

Once, in Cornwall, England, I trekked to Land’s End. In Horton’s Plains, Sri Lanka, I hiked to the End of the World.

Sri Lanka’s highlands—sometimes referred to as the “hill country”—conjure a stunning contrast to its coasts, yet both hold the kind of beauty capable of taking your breath away. Craggy peaks plunge dramatically towards narrow valleys, steeply cut and lushly green with a tangle of tropical vegetation or else terraces of immaculately manicured tea plantations. Morning and evening mists and clouds further evoke the mystical aura of a world mostly lost except in books and imagination.

Traveling the roads in the hill country requires skills, guts, and perseverance. Most “highways” are merely two lanes with occasional lapses into a single one—depending on one’s route—and they wind endlessly up a “hill,” over a “hill,” and down a “hill” in a continuing pattern of repetitions that extends a 100km journey into multiple hours. Fortunately, the view is always dazzling and often includes fascinating details of the human experience in an environment so startling and different than other places we spend our lives.

The Walk to the End of the World

Belive it or not, frost iced the grass and leaves when we commenced this jaunt about 7:45am. Elevation counts even at the equator!

Me, on the final run to the top... Jennell, just a bit below... and then together at World's End.

First, we took the arrow to the left to World's End; then we continued with a jaunt to Baker's Falls. (Waterfalls motivate Jennell to hike like nothing else.) Here is Jennell at the completion of both routes, about three hours after we first began.

A tea plantation near Nuwara Eliya.

Sri Lankan Journal #6

Elephants




Jennell and I visited the Pinnewala Elephant Orphanage on our travel day from Kandy—in Sri Lanka’s highlands—back to Colombo. First set up in 1975 to look after seven orphaned baby elephants, it now houses the world’s largest collection of elephants in captivity, around 75 at this point, ranging in age from first year to approximately 65. Many of the elephants were orphaned, abandoned, or injured in the wild; however, the orphanage averages about one new arrival born in captivity each year.

We arrived while the elephants were still indulging in their leisurely morning bath activities (about two hours worth) in the Ma Oya, the river running beside the village. Then, around noon, the mahouts drove the elephants back through a village street and across the main highway to their feeding and living area. We had fun watching all of antics during every act comprising a normal day in the life of an elephant at Pinnewala Elephant Orphanage!



Jennell watching the bath time scenario



A mahout showers one of his charges.




The beginning of the exodus of the elephants from the river to the feeding and living area. The "bad boys"--the ones hobbled with chains--were moved first.

Driving the elephants up from the river through a village street

Here elephants are crossing the main highway...which isn't so much of a highway in our envisioning of such a term, by the way.




A truckload of "elephant food" headed into the living and feeding grounds.

Jennell sipping on the liquid of a king coconut while watching... I, on the other hand, nibbled fresh mango slices.

Elephants lunching after the morning bath time

Lost in LOST

Lost in Lost, season 3






At a dinner party I attended a little over a week ago (three married couples and me), the conversation briefly alighted on the TV show Lost. Two of the guys are serious Lost fans, and they momentarily launched an intense discussion about something currently developing in season 5. Two vigilant wives immediately hushed them because AFN (Armed Forces Network) has yet to broadcast any of season 5 and what if this discussion became a spoiler for other followers of Lost at this party. Next, of course, we each had to confess our TV viewing habits, particularly with regard to our affiliation with Lost. Everyone admitted to following Lost except for Angela, who is Australian, by the way, and who thinks Lost is just too weird. Since I don’t have a working satellite—and haven’t had for three years now—I don’t really follow any TV show in real time; I just watch an entire season at a time on DVD.

I watched season 1 of Lost almost three years ago—courtesy of my friend Molly, who funneled the box of DVDs my way before returning them to the person she had borrowed them from—and I was hooked! As soon as season 2 made it to DVD, I added it to my Netflix queue and viewed it about six months after the season 1 experience. Maybe because I became a little impatient with some of the story lines in season 2, I never moved season 3 to the top of my Netflix queue, so it has languished behind two seasons of House, one season of American Dreams, and a goodly number of movies. (Something else you should understand about my perusing habits, though, is that the home viewing scenario tends to be feast or famine with a fair amount of famine; I can go a month at a time without watching any of my stash of Netflix movies.) In spite of all this, I have remained committed fan of Lost.

No sooner did people learn I had only watched through season 2, then—thanks to Nathan and Lindi, who hosted the party—I had a box of Lost, season 2, placed in my hands. At home I promptly dumped Lost, season 3, from my Netflix queue, but, remembering my viewing pattern established while watching seasons 1 and 2 of Lost, I refrained from actually starting season 3 for almost a week until I had a few other things in my life tidied up…one of my rarer moments of wisdom, I must say. You see, I don’t seem capable of merely watching one episode of Lost at a time. I am not allowed to start watching an episode of Lost until everything that has to be done for the night is done or, the truth is, it will not be done. I may tell myself come 7:30 or 8:00 in the evening, okay, you can watch an episode or two before bed, but there on the couch in front of the TV I remain at 10:45, still raptly entangled in the story lines of these bizarrely convoluted lives. (Realize, please, I’m in bed most school nights by 9:30 because my day starts early: The alarm sounds at 5:00am and I’m on the road to school by 5:35. Stretches of 11:00 bedtimes on school nights take their toll!)

So, the photos embedded with this blog…well, that’s where I currently reside most nights and will likely continue to while away too much of the dark hours there until I complete season 3. Grade papers? (Not even carrying them home right now.) Read books? (They’re neatly stacked on my nightstand, awaiting a more propitious timeframe.) Exercise? (Only if accomplished before I sprawl on the couch with a blanket and remote!) Blog? (I’m typing this at school because I know it will never be done if I go home first!)

NOTE: Nathan has promised me the box of DVDs for Lost, season 4, as soon as I want them.

Sri Lankan Journal #5

"The Troubles"

The bunkers—complete with guys in camouflage holding automatic weapons—positioned sporadically along the runway at Bandaranaike International Airport, stunned me when I landed in Sri Lanka for the first time in December, 2004. I looked for them this time as soon as we touched down, and they were still there. On this visit to Sri Lanka, though, I definitely noticed a much more visible military presence throughout the country than I did back in 2004. I had heard that the troubles between the Tamil Tigers (LTTE*)and the government had intensified several different times since my last visit, to include some suicide bombings in Colombo and, in March 2007, an attack by the LTTE on the Sri Lanka Air Force Base situated right beside the international airport.

New Year’s Day—a day which ended up marking another bombing in Colombo, by the way—Jennell and I departed Sri Lanka on a 7:00am flight. In the wee dark hours of the morning we experienced firsthand the security procedures the government/military had instituted at the international airport: All potential passengers are deposited at a bus stop beyond the terminal area, and any good-byes to people remaining in Sri Lanka must be said there. Tickets (maybe passports, too, in some cases, but no one was interested in seeing ours once they saw our faces) are then viewed and marked before individuals are allowed to board an airport bus to the terminal. Once at the terminal, all the security measures typically run at an airport begin.

During the time we traveled in Sri Lanka, we passed checkpoints along every road. Most of the checkpoints had police and/or military people present. Our driver always slowed at these checkpoints, and, as soon as the men glimpsed Jennell and me in the back seat, they motioned us on. In fact, no one ever signaled us to stop until we arrived in Colombo; there we were stopped at every checkpoint! Our vehicle had a license plate indicating a Galle registration (southern Sri Lanka), not a Colombo one. The soldiers would motion us into “stop queue,” speak Sinhala to our driver while reviewing his paperwork, look at Jennell and me, ask us where we were from, and then smile and wave—as in hello—when we said “America.” In Colombo we stayed at the Ceylon Continental, located in the financial/diplomatic district along with the Hilton, etc., and there were checkpoints everywhere for road traffic and for pedestrians. I had to pass through one when I walked across the street from our hotel to go to an ATM in a building just down the block. They waved me through the curtained cubicle with smiles, didn’t ask for identification or anything, but it all felt a bit eerie!

No Sri Lankan was anything but gracious to us. People we met all along our way mentioned how “the troubles” receiving so much press in the world had really frightened away many potential tourists, causing financial stress and hardship for many employed in enterprises supported by tourists. The Christmas/New Year time frame is Sri Lanka’s peak tourist season. This one, though, did not usher in any crowds. For Jennell and me the deficiency in tourist numbers certainly had advantages; sadly, for many Sri Lankans, it meant profoundly tougher economic times.

These photos were taken from the window of our room in the Ceylon Continental in Colombo.

* The LTTE holds the dubious distinction of being the originator of the suicide bombing strategy.