Glen a.k.a. Psmith, MrWrite

For the few of you who follow me here and not at my own blog, a bit of a personal update in a series of blog posts:

It Had to Happen
Health Care Update
Scheduling the Follow-Up
You Have to Build Bypasses
Surgery and Recovery

It's a bit gory in the details. Short form: very mild heart attack, return to the U.S., discover 100% blockage in 2 of 3 coronary arteries, undergo bypass surgery, now recovering.

From </a></b></a></div>sturgeonslawyer
The Big Read thinks the average adult has only read six of the top 100 books they've printed below.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read
3) Underline the books you LOVE.
4) Reprint this list in your own LJ (if you want) so we can try and track down these people who've read only six and force books upon them.

I count 45 I've read. I only italicized those for which I have fairly short-term plans for reading.


1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Please leave a one-word comment that you think best describes me. It can only be one word.

No more.

Then copy & paste this in your journal so that I may leave a word about you.

How typical.

Easter Island with my spouse Jill, because she's always wanted to go there.  I'd also hope to stop off at the former home of the dodo, Mauritius.

sturgeonslawyer tagged me with the letter "L."

The rules:
- Comment and I'll give you a letter.
- You have to list 10 things you love that begin with that letter.
- Afterwards, post this in your journal.

1. Lyle Lovett's music, because it takes me back to Texas in a good way
2. London, where I would live given even half a chance (hear that, give me HALF a chance)
3. Letters, especially real ones sent with a stamp; I'm gonna have to send some of my own to get any, though
4. Living, and not just because the alternative is so bad
5. Learning, especially learning how to play the piano better, thanks to my enrollment in class here at UMBC
6. Lists!  Like this one, only more of them.  I'm as bad as that character in High Fidelity
7. Lights! Camera! Action!  (Okay, it's a stretch, but I do enjoy an occasional video)
8. Lunch.  Stomach growling because I didn't have it today.
9. Large drinks, preferably with alcoholic content
10. Letting other people tag me with memes

I'm working on upgrading my personal and work sites to the new MovableType 4.0, which has support for captcha and other comment spam fighting mechanisms.  If things go well, I'll reopen comments on items that I shouldn't have had to close.

It's been awhile since I've done one of these (this one via sturgeonslawyer).

"I've seen ____ of these 168 movies" in the subject line and repost. If you've seen over 85 movies, you have no life. Mark the ones you've seen. The movies:

(x) Rocky Horror Picture Show
(x) Grease
(x) Pirates of the Caribbean
( ) Boondock Saints
( ) Fight Club
( ) Starsky and Hutch
() Neverending Story
(x) Blazing Saddles
(x) Airplane
( ) Braveheart
(x) The Princess Bride
( ) Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy
( ) Napoleon Dynamite
( ) Labyrinth
( ) Saw
( ) Saw II
( ) White Noise
( ) White Oleander
( ) Anger Management
( ) 50 First Dates
( ) The Princess Diaries
( ) The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement
( ) Scream
( ) Scream 2
( ) Scream 3
( ) Scary Movie
( ) Scary Movie 2
( ) Scary Movie 3
( ) Scary Movie 4
( ) American Pie
( ) American Pie 2
( ) American Wedding
( ) American Pie Band Camp
(x) Harry Potter 1
(x) Harry Potter 2
(x) Harry Potter 3
(x) Harry Potter 4
(x) Resident Evil
( ) Resident Evil 2
( ) The Wedding Singer
( ) Little Black Book
( ) The Village
(x) Lilo & Stitch
(x) Finding Nemo
(x) Finding Neverland
(x) Signs
( ) The Grinch
( ) Texas Chainsaw Massacre
( ) White Chicks
( ) Butterfly Effect
( ) 13 Going on 30 (Suddenly Thirty)
( ) I, Robot
(x) Robots
( ) Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story
( ) Universal Soldier
(x) Lemony Snicket: A Series Of Unfortunate Events
( ) Along Came Polly
( ) Deep Impact
( ) KingPin
( ) Never Been Kissed
( ) Meet The Parents
( ) Meet the Fockers
( ) Eight Crazy Nights
( ) Joe Dirt
(x) KING KONG (of course, I've seen the original, not the new Jackson one)
( ) A Cinderella Story
(x) The Terminal
( ) The Lizzie McGuire Movie
( ) Passport to Paris
( ) Dumb & Dumber
( ) Dumber & Dumberer
( ) Final Destination
( ) Final Destination 2
( ) Final Destination 3
( ) Halloween
( ) The Ring
( ) The Ring 2
( ) Surviving X-MAS
( ) Flubber
( ) Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle
( ) Practical Magic
(x) Chicago
( ) Ghost Ship
( ) From Hell
(x) Hellboy
( ) Secret Window
( ) I Am Sam
( ) The Whole Nine Yards
(x) The Day After Tomorrow
( ) Child's Play
( ) Seed of Chucky
( ) Bride of Chucky
( ) Ten Things I Hate About You
( ) Just Married
( ) Gothika
( ) Nightmare on Elm Street
( ) Sixteen Candles
( ) Remember the Titans
( ) Coach Carter
( ) The Grudge
(x) The Mask
( ) Son Of The Mask
( ) Bad Boys 2
( ) Joy Ride
( ) Lucky Number Slevin
(x) Ocean's Eleven
( ) Ocean's Twelve
( ) Identity
(x) Lone Star
(x) Bedazzled (again, the original, although I caught part of the horrid remake on a plane)
( ) Predator
( ) Predator II
( ) The Fog
(x) Ice Age
( ) Ice Age 2: The Meltdown
( ) Curious George
(x) Independence Day
( ) Cujo
( ) A Bronx Tale
( ) Darkness Falls
( ) Christine
(x) ET
( ) Children of the Corn
( ) My Boss's Daughter
( ) Maid in Manhattan
( ) Frailty
( ) War of the Worlds
( ) Rush Hour
( ) Rush Hour 2
( ) My Best Friend's Wedding
( ) How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days
( ) She's All That
( ) Calendar Girls
(x) Sideways
( ) Mars Attacks
( ) Event Horizon
( ) Ever After
(x) Wizard of Oz
(x) Forrest Gump
(x) Big Trouble in Little China
(x) The Terminator
( ) The Terminator 2
( ) The Terminator 3
(x) X-Men
(x) X2
(x) X-Men 3
(x) Spider-Man
(x) Spider-Man 2
( ) Sky High
( ) Jeepers Creepers
( ) Jeepers Creepers 2
( ) Catch Me If You Can
(x) The Others
( ) Freaky Friday
( ) Reign of Fire
( ) The Skulls
( ) Cruel Intentions
( ) Cruel Intentions 2
( ) The Hot Chick
(x) Shrek
(x) Shrek 2
( ) Swimfan
( ) Miracle
( ) Old School
( ) The Notebook
( ) K-Pax
( ) Krippendorf's Tribe
( ) A Walk to Remember
( ) Ice Castles
( ) Boogeyman
( ) The 40-year-old-virgin

Today's tennis match with Jim Turner:

6-3, 6-0, 2-2 (had to stop at noon to get back home in time to clean up for...)

Today's Semiotic (until we find a better band name) session:

4 songs recorded live, with some real improvement on one of them. I'm not sure about taking the lead vocals for "Editors," even if Matt thinks it worked. My voice on a recording is scary.

Yet another Web 2.0 social network that I'm investigating: http://twitter.com/engelcox/

Bah, bah, went the memesheep. Here's this week's virus.

Post a comment and I'll...

1) Tell you why I friended you.
2) Associate you with a song/film.
3) Tell a random fact about you.
4) Tell a first memory about you.
5) Associate you with a character/pairing.
6) Ask something I've always wanted to know about you.
7) Tell you my favorite user pic of yours.
In return, you could repost this in your LJ if you wanted to.

All my friends are doing this (you know who you are, so here's my entry into quoting 80s pop lyrics):

"Tonight's the night we'll make history
Honey, you and I
And I'll take any risk, to tie back the hands of time
and be with you tonight"

--Styx

My notes from the trip are incomplete, written when I felt like writing and not to journal everything about the minutiae of what we did everyday, even though I did do that on some occasions (J's better at doing that than I am usually, anyway). Writing about our trips was never supposed to be a chore or a burden, for what's the use of taking a holiday if all you're going to do is force yourself to work while on it. This is the modern problem of travel, as stated in an article in one of the local Indian newspapers: the modern usage of vacation time is not for rest and relaxation that may have been more common 50 years ago, when taking a break from work meant exactly that--not working. The modern vacationers like us work hard at our recreation: getting up at 5am to do things or see things, rather than sleeping in, lying about, or some such. J and I are even worse than most--trying to cram it all in, traveling 100s of miles overnight in a train so that you can be there the next day to see things but also capture something of what you're missing, saving the extra cost of one hotel's night along the way, not to mention the experience of the train itself, as the method of the journey can be its own reward.

This means that our return to work does not necessarily leave us very refreshed (nor does the jet lag). I've often joked about how I need vacations from my vacations, to recover from the go-go efforts of traveling. What we get from these trips is different from what those in the past sought from their time off. We seek meaning for our lives in what is not present in our day-to-day work, as we seek to define ourselves in our experiences rather than that which we do to place bread on the table. Traveling also helps us put our normal lives in perspective by breaking us from from the daily routine of our lives and allow us to look at it from the outside and evaluate changes that might need to be made.

It was a trip such as this one that spurned us to leave Washington State and move to DC. Other trips have opened our minds to other opportunities and changes, like how Italy taught us how to cook better and Baja provided the necessary details for my never-published first novel, Darwin's Daughter. So while we may be tired upon our return to work, it is an exhaustion that we do not regret.

---

This was probably one of our most successful and enjoyable trips. The setting, as colorful and different from our home as anyplace we have ever visited is likely partly responsible, but mainly we think it was all the people that we met that made the difference. Even before we left, we had both noticed how excited Indians were about their country and that we planned to visit, usually suggesting that we go to their hometown or region, where they assured us there were things there that could not be missed. The same happened with Indians we talked to while there, after asking us our travel plans, they invariably lamented that we hadn't included their part of India, even over our protestations that we had limited time and the sheer size of India. "Next time," we said. The scope of what can be seen in Indian is only comparable to the U.S. or Africa or even Europe as a whole. Our Rough Guide to India has a list of 42 things that are the best of India, and we only did two of them (the Taj Mahal and tiger spotting, for what it's worth).

Beyond that, the other thing about the people we met is how genuinely engaged they were, friendly and inquisitive. Not just the relatives of our friends at the wedding, but the guides, the staff at the hotels and parks, our fellow guests, our companions on the train, or even the little boys in the village. Sometimes this was overwhelming (such as with the children), and would have been problematic if we had been introverts. Inevitably, the person you were talking to would ask (1) your name, (2) where you lived, (3) what you did, and (4) if you enjoyed India. What we liked about this is that it gave us the opportunity to throw these questions back at them. I can't think of another trip where we learned as much about the people we met as the history or art of the places we visited.

Sometimes these conversations would deepen, such as when J discovered that one of our guides was a Bhopal survivor or the discussion of religion, both Eastern and Western, that we had with Mohammed, our Muslim guide in Agra. We had expected that perhaps we would come to know some of the relatives of our friends who were getting married better, given repeated exposure over multiple days, but not that we would have a conversation with the old man sharing our train berth area or the surviving royalty of Bharatpur who had convert their palace to a hotel when they lost the ability to tax the locals.

I said to folks several times that what struck me the most about India was how much it had withstood the spread of Western culture, and by that I meant modern American culture, such as McDonald's and malls, at least compared to other places we had visited. I attributed this to the strength of the Indian film industry; elsewhere, Hollywood dominates the world in film, but India's regional film industry and big Bollywood blockbusters fill their market. This isn't to say that India hasn't changed--evidence of the modern world was everywhere, best exemplified by the ubiquitous cell phone. Everyone has one, it seems, and they are both an annoyance (such as the three cell phones shared by the old man and his son on the train) as well as godsends (being able to confirm our location with the taxi driver and our friends). Much more so than anywhere we've ever been, India lives in both the past and the present. Camels share the roads with BMWs. A woman in a full burka walks past a teen in blue jeans and a t-shirt. Some wedding nights were tuit and tie, others were kurta & scarf. The incongruencies kept you spellbound.

We had been prepared for the worst, especially in Agra: we had read reports of mutilated beggars and Oliver Twist-like pickpockets, dead bodies left lying in the streets, poverty and squalor as far as the eye could see. And while those things do exist in India, we saw little or none of it, partly due to our own economic status which meant we stayed in business- or tourist-class hotels instead of backpacker hostels, we ate at tourist or very fine restaurants (or, on the jungle plan, at the resort you were staying in because no other food was available nearby) instead of street vendors. While this came at a price (for example, masala chai tea at a hotel could cost 50-100 Rs; the same from a vendor just off the highway was only 4 Rs). J's comment about this, since she had more experience in visiting developing nations as she had traveled in Africa, was that there seemed to be a difference in outlook. Most Indians seemed optimistic about their prospects and their country in general (although the one sour note that constantly sounded was the population problem), whereas in Africa things seemed to always be getting worse. Everyone in India seemed to be the owner of their own company or starting one; the entrepreneurial spirit went from the tour operator with 250 employees (guides and drivers) to the fellow who offered to jump into the frothy waters just below the Marble Rocks falls for 5 Rs.

Compared to the USA and Europe, India is full of color, while at the same time everything seems to be dirty and drab. The color comes from the bright sarees and other women's clothing, which tends to be in a kaleidoscope of colors no mater what the station or the job (such as the women doing manual road work labor, carting gravel or digging trenches, as well as all the wonderful formal clothes for the wedding). The dirt comes from the dust and the pollution, not to mention the ever-present litter. The dust has no solution, but a campaign needs to be begun to help the trash problem, similar to what occurred in the U.S. in the 70s.

Finally, I'm not sure that we've ever been involved with anything quite like Manasa and Prashant's wedding, at least not on that size and scale. It was both intimate and public, professional and amateur, and it was likely as perfect an occasion as could be. We were quite fortunate to be a small part of it.