Law, Partially

Away from home, in London as we are, we celebrated some of Americans' favorite holidays: Thanksgiving and Christmas. Missing our family members, we imported different groups for these holidays. Aunt Mawti, Laura ("Auntie Biscuit"), and Erica for Thanksgiving. Nainai, Gugu, and Kevin for Christmas. Many adventures away from home ensued. To Thanksgiving The term "citizen of the world" is bullshit. Holidays easily prove this true. Away from your home country, when a holiday arises that you would have spent at home with friends and family, you will pine to celebrate like them, with wistful thoughts of home. The Thanksgiving holiday for U.S. people has very specific connotations -- celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November, with visions of a well-defined (and probably mythical) pilgrim group, cornucopias, turkeys, stuffings, gravies, sweet and savory pies, etc. According to Wikipedia, Thanksgiving is celebrated a few other places but not by the majority of t...

Before, when a long trip abroad has been imminent, I have taken whirlwind tours of the Midwest to say good bye. (See, e.g., here ) Now I'm doing it again, this time with a family. Friday, April 28, 2017, we packed up the pick-up one more time and unceremoniously drove away from Chicago on the Stevenson Expressway, bound for a tour of central Missouri. Christine had never visited the town where I spent four rambunctious years "studying" in central Missouri. We also managed to fit in visits with some disgruntled Army veterans, living happily with their four kids just on the outskirts of Fort Leonard Wood, and another disgruntled veteran of St. Charles County. One last breakfast at  3rd Coast  before saying good bye to North Dearborn Parkway. The drive to central Missouri was challenging. Maybe you noticed, but after the Midwest's warm winter, it has been a rainy spring. Maybe you also have noticed that Midwestern weather usually flows from west to east. We ha...

Why do we (or anyone) travel? For Christine and me, we are just trying to satiate our curiosity. Making comparisons between places across time provides a method of organizing the knowledge accumulated during travel adventures. I was shocked and impressed to hear that the Quad Cities have a distinctive pizza style . The Quad Cities lie on the route just between Chicago and Cedar Rapids. Christine and I travel through there regularly on our frequent trips to the Linge homeland. Eating pizza while on the road is a bit tough. Pizza takes a while to bake, and we're usually too excited to arrive at our destination to wait for pizza. In addition, pizza is a heavy food that as a matter of tradition I tend to overeat. I'm usually sleepy while driving and become even more tired after eating, especially overeating. It's a shame we never tried Quad Cities pizza before because it is one of the best pizza styles in the U.S. We visited Harris Pizza in Bettendorf on Saturday. Quad ...

With all my trips and my time spent living, studying, and working abroad, you, dear reader, may think that I really like travelling. Actually, not really. Travelling is annoying as hell, especially on a tight budget and through less-developed countries. Some people love travelling so much they will devote their lives to it. I met a European girl who had been traveling through Asia for 11 months. I met an American man who was at the beginning of a 7 month trip. And I met a Dutch man who was a few weeks out of the Netherlands, and he had no return ticket but a list of places in Asia and Africa that he was planning to visit before going home. I think most travelers will tell you that they enjoy the challenge of traveling or even that traveling does more good for the world than harm. Both of these reasons I have read in Lonely Planet, the most popular series of travelers’ guidebooks. LP are also the books I have always used for traveling, even around the United States. I myself am not so...

This turned to be a pretty funny day, and I still shudder when I think how lucky I am I ended the day on a plane headed west. My last day in Bombay was Saturday. Friday night I stayed to work until 10:30pm trying to finish my work (especially since I had taken a 5 hour lunch break on Thursday with Christine). I even went in to work on Saturday morning, just to make sure my work was done enough. Actually, I have some significant portions to finish here in the States. I have no time for this, but I’ll make time. I was originally supposed to stay at Marico for another 4 weeks, back in those heady days where I thought I was traveling onward to Hong Kong from India. Had I stayed those 4 weeks, I would have finished more of my project. I am rather tired of Indian food, but just because I hadn’t eaten pav bahji very much and because it’s the last time I’ll have it in a while, I went to my office building’s cafeteria to get some pav bahji. Pav Bahji is a spicy tomato-based thick liquid eaten w...

I made a whirlwind tour of Missouri and Iowa last week, saying bye to lots of relatives before I go to Bombay for the summer. Fayette My Great Uncle Bob is a 78-year-old retired farmer, still living in his same farm house outside of that small, small town, Fayette, Iowa. He's growing asparagus and rhubarb this summer. He's got bad knees. One of my aunts said to him, "Why don't you pick us some asparagus?" and he said, "You can pick it your god damn self. I 'bout killed myself yesterday out picking some for myself." He wasn't mad. He's just not a delicate man. When there's a lull in conversation, he says "Yup," and then repeats part of what he just said. For instance, had there been a lull in conversation after the asparagus request, he probably would have said something like, "Yup. 'bout killed my back." He's also fond of the mysterious word used by the elderly in Iowa, "pretnear." I think it's a ...