SAST Wingees

Bihari Engrish – hilarious

What do you call Chilled Beer in Bihar? (Via Sairam Muthuswamy).

NYTimes links to Sast Wingees Speaketh!

I was checking my incoming links yesterday after a while. Lo &  behold, the venerable NY Times had linked to us. Pamela Paul wrote an interesting article titled “What are the blogs saying about me?”. She talks book blogs and their impact. As a part of writing this article, NYtimes ran an automated survey and picked the most blogged-about books of 2005. The preface of the survey reads –
 ” This list links to a selection of Web posts that discuss some of the books most frequently mentioned by bloggers in 2005. The books were selected by conducting an automated survey of 5,000 of the most-trafficked blogs. ” The survey linked to Blink and Freakonomics, which Sibu had written about and Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs & Steel and Collapse that I had written about. Congrats Sibu!  I am flattered that we are amongst the 5000 most-trafficked blogs! Thank you New York Times. However, Kottke seems to be very upset with this whole thing.

Italy Moblog #9

We left Venice at 8 AM on a 8-hour bus ride and reached Rome at 4PM. The ride was made enjoyable by a small detour through the picturesque Chianti area in Tuscany.

Once we reached the hotel, we took a cab and reached the Campidoglio and checked out the Museo Capitolini (Capitol Museum). This is another famous museum with some very important works like the She-wolf bronze (a wolf suckling Romulus and Remus the mythic founders of Rome), Venus, Dying Gaul, Phidias’s Amazon Woman dated to the 5th Century BC. We also saw the gigantic head, foot and hand of Constantine.

The head was 5-times the size of the David statue we had seen in Florence. Probably the Constantine statue would have been 100 feet tall to have a head of that size. Wonder how it would feel to see the entire statue intact. There were also some excellent paintings at the museum by Veronese, Tintoretto, Guercino and other great painters.

They allowed us to take pictures of the paintings in this museum – the only one that we visited where this was posisble. So that was cool.
However, in general, the documentation in this museum was bad, making you wonder whether its an elaborate ruse to make you hire guides or buy their books. All the same, considering that its a very important museum, I hope they improve the documentation before our next visit.

Then we walked to the Fontane de Trevi (Trevi Fountain). Its called Trevi because 3 streets converged onto the fountain in the olden days. Now, 6 streets are converging. This is a spectacular fountain made by another famous artist – Salvi. It has the God Neptune astride his chariot at the top and water flowing in all directions with many mythical and real animals below the God. Its a huge fountain – the mother of all fountains. As is customary, I swung a coin into the fountain for good luck. The visit to the fountain was a fitting finale to our Italy trip.

We then had a quick dinner at one of the restaurants and made our way back to our hotel. We got up early in the morning the next day and reached the US in the afternoon. The customs counter on the exit in Rome was a nightmare – multiple queues were converging on the same official, there were too few officials and many of the officials were yelling something in Italian! On the whole it was a fish market or a zoo – not something in a place like Rome where so many tourists come and spend their hard-earned money. On the whole, this turned out to be another unforgettable trip.

Arrivederci Roma! (as they say in Rome).

P.S.
1. Ganesh, I saw your comment on the previous entries. I didn’t see it untill today and so I missed the gelateria at the fountain. Too bad. 2. In a moblog, i just email the text to a certain address and the text appears as a blog post. Thats what I did. I did not have web access. If any of the other posters want to use this technique, please let me know.

Italy Moblog #8

Yesterday was a relaxed day, so decided to not write. Here is yesterday’s account. We left the hotel at 8am on our Venice tour.

We reached the San Marco square which is the major center in Venice. Our first stop was at the Murano Vecchio glass factory. We saw first hand how the famed Murano glassware is made. Two experienced workers were making them. Their seamless coordination and the way they made the beautful glass was very interesting.

Then the tour guide gave us a sales pitch which we weren’t quite prepared for and proceeded to explain how wonderful all the stuff on sale is. Definitely the beauty of these glass objects is something to be seen. But everything seemed so expensive but so tempting to buy.

From there we went to the San Marco church – nearly a 1000-year-old one. The domes were organized to represent a Greek cross.

Our next stop was the San Marco square and we looked at where Napoleon Bonaparte lived when he conquered Venice. The square didn’t look as impressive as it looked during the night. There were thousands of pigeons roaming the square and it made for a nice spectacle.

The next stop was the Doge’s Palace. The Doge is an interesting concept – Doge was an elected ceremonial head of the government and lived in the palace and presided over the senate, council etc but had no power. Doge is what you get if the Queen of England was elected – ceremonial figurehead.

The palace is beautiful and is typical of any such thing in Italy – ist filled with paintings and sculptures. There were too major ones worth mentioning – Veronese’s masterpiece in the celing of the Senate. The ceiling instead of having a fresco actually had framed paintings by Veronese mounted on it. It is spectacular.

Then in the Grand Council Hall, we saw Tintoretto’s masterpiece mounted on the ceiling in the same way. In both instances the best painting was right above the throne of the Doge. Our tour ended around 11am.

We walked back to the hotel after lunch. We passed through the Realto bridge which offers some excellent views of the canals and some excellent shopping as well. It was a long walk but one filled with a lot of window shopping. These Murano glassworks are too tempting. We reached the hotel around 2 PM and took a siesta till 4PM.

Then after a cup of coffee, we reached the Jewish Ghetto that Priya wanted to see. The word Ghetto originates from a Geto – a foundry here in Venice. The Jews were not allowed to go outside the ghetto after certain hours of the day. There were a couple of synagogues in this area, but were closed by the time we reached there.

It was around 6.30pm, so we decided to have dinner at the Ghetto Vecchio (“Old Ghetto”). We found a jewish restaurant – Gam Gam. It was a wonderful dinner. We had the best Falafel we’ve ever had. That’s saying a lot because we eat Middle Eastern cuisine atleast once every 2 weeks.

After that, we roamed around – checked out the Venice Train station. The trains looked pretty good – probably not as good as the ones we had seen in Switzerland, but pretty good. We then headed back to the hotel and chatted with some of our tour group members and hit the bed at 10pm.

We left Venice today at 8am on a long bus ride back to Rome. More to come.

Italy Moblog #7

We left the Jolly Hotel in Florence (Firenze to Italians) around 8am. Our tour bus hit the road to go towards Venice with a short stop in Verona. We reached Verona around 12 noon.

We first did the most touristy thing you can do in Italy – check out Juliet’s balcony in Verona. There is no record of Shakespeare having been in Verona ever, but since the story of Romeo and Juliet is set here, you have to assume that he did, atleast for the sake of tourists. This place is complete with Juliet’s bronze statue and even a sarcophagus!

After that we had a quick lunch and had enough time to take a peek at the ruins of the Arena – a smaller version of the Colosseum in Verona. We left Verona around 1.30 pm and reached our hotel in Venice around 3.30pm.

Our hotel Carlton is right on the famous Grand Canal. At 4PM we did the Gondola Serenade tour on the Grand Canal. Going on the Gondola through Venice looking at the nice old buildings and nice hotels. It is a great experience. We came back to the hotel and after a cup of coffee we left at 5pm on our Venetian Night Out tour on a small cruise boat.

We passed through the Realto Bridge – the first bridge on the Grand Canal and reached the spectacular San Marco square (St. Mark’s). With the brightly lit facades, the sight of this square at night is something. Took some pictures but I’m not sure one can capture this beauty that easily. We had a good dinner at the All Angel’s restaurant where Picasso and other great artists have frequented.

Venice is a unique town owing to the system of canals that serve as the thoroughfares. The buildings, atleast some of them are very stylish and exude a certain old world charm. Venice does live up to its Queen of the Adriatic epithet.

Tomorrow also we’ll be spending in Venice. More to come.