The USS Quad Damage

I’m writing this at the end of day 3. This is harder than I thought it’d be. Getting time in front of the computer is possible, but getting regular time is hard. Also, it’s funny how many things you can do in a day. On day 2 we got to Delhi, and proceeded to drive up to Chandigarh. Chandigarh is a bit like the Campbelltown of New Delhi’s Sydney.

The first thing I noticed when hitting Delhi was the smell. You can see this cloud of pollution in the air from the plane, and when you descend below 1 km altitude, the smell comes right into the plane. Walking outside is the same thing. Visibility is like a ridiculous FOW in a computer with the graphics settings a little too low.

It’s so bad, when driving up to Chandigarh, we could look directly at the morning sun without destroying our eyes. I even took a couple of photos. It’s not until well in the afternoon that the sun starts looking normal, but even then the ambient light is very strange. It’s like a cloudy day, but the sun is out.

Delhi (and to some extent Chandigarh) at least seems like a tragedy of the commons par excellence. We went into a theme restaurant named “Haveli”, and it’s like walking into another world. Being a theme restaurant, it was fairly gaudy, and you’d think only tourists would go there, but the food was fairly good, so it was packed with (I assume) locals.

So, the amazing thing was as soon as you go past the gates (inside which is the parking lot), you immediately enter this atmosphere of… sanity. There are line markings for the parking spots, the area is well maintained, and there’s a ton of the “small thinking” you take for granted in Australia which is there again inside the walls of the restaurant. A lot of business owners in Chandigarh have taken to providing what I would see as “public goods” to benefit their business, like a make-shift bin outside a shop which sells ice cream, so you can throw the packaging away.

Another thing that gets you is how flat this area of India is. I mean it’s like dead flat. Circuit city style flat. As such the cities are in fact circuit cities. Houses are split up into “sectors” and things like that. It’s just vaguely amazing to be driving for such a long distance and never have to go past a hill. I felt like they’ve squandered a great opportunity with this great flat area, because in Australia so much effort and care needs to be taken with the design of stuff due to the interesting landscape. Weather is similarly very predictable (at least so far).

Speaking of driving a long distance, the drive was… fairly scary. A lot of people have stories about driving, so I’m not about to repeat that here, but basically it’s chaos. We had a fair few close calls, overtaking is done extremely close (like I wouldn’t want to get that close while parking, and we’re getting that close to other cars whilst driving at 90 kph), and whenever there’s a slowdown in traffic, instead of applying the breaks, people split up into “n” lanes, where there’s room for “n – 1” cars on that road, and ther’s line markings for “n/1.6” cars.

It’s interesting to see the amount of advertising in Delhi. A lot of people are working overtime to push their brands. It wasn’t so bad in Chandigarh, but in Delhi you can see that people are working really hard to get themselves into the mindset of a market that’s just waking up to brands, and is about to get really picky.

This might seem a bit like a journal. I’m sorry. I’ll try and make it interesting.

I’m coming to the end of the first day of my holidays. So far, that’s meant randomly busy times. “Doing stuff” tends to mean you lose track of time, so even conservative estimates have meant I just barely make it, from packing to cleaning up to locking up. Luckily, I planned conservatively for once. I think I’m learning to improve my timing. It bugs me that I often make people wait for me, either through a hopeless optimism, or trying to fit way too much into my schedule.

Before I left I made a point to see the Trevardies and wish ‘em the best for the new arrival. We ended up mostly talking about my trip, but it was because it’s been a while since we’ve caught up. This is partly busy-ness, partly laziness, partly distance. Still, it was good to see the high school guys again in a familiar setting. Like old times, but with this new and heartwarming twist. The baby is big now, and definitely feels like another entity inside her mum’s belly.

At the airport, we met a family friend who happens to teach English in high school. I tried to tell her of my disdain for fiction, but she wouldn’t hear a bar of it. She just shoved a book in my hands and told me I wouldn’t be able to put it down once I picked it up, guaranteed. I started reading and the writing started to bug me almost straight away. The ridiculous similes poured into every sentence, thick and near impossible to wade through.

It made me think about how much I prefer comics, because instead of telling me that someone’s “nose was red, like the nose of a man who’s spent far too long in the cold, his blood vessels trying their damndest to keep it from falling off”, you see a dude with a red fucking nose. It has a finality and conciseness about it that, with a few lines, describes far more than the complex shapes which comprise an alphabet.

It made me think about how much I prefer gaming to reading. How I’d much prefer to solve the main characters problem than be chained to their actions or inactions. Instead of listening to some guy’s whiny interlude, I can walk a little ways up his path and plant some proximity mines.

So many of the world’s problems can be solved with proximity mines.

We talked a little about Science fiction. I found I had to defend it, and she said “Star Wars” with this hate-filled fire spit. It’s hard to defend sci-fi when the most popular sci-fi is so terrible.

Could’ve been worse, she could’ve been talking about Battlestar Galactica.

I got in a plane next to a window seat. We were right near the wings, so we could see their aerolons (?) move about, as well as see the ground. It’s amazing how much the wings move during flight. Planes are awesome. I would really have pissed off the woman in the seat next to me, continually taking pictures and "ooh"ing and "aah"ing at every little thing that happened. I think the planes have more moving parts than they really need, just to impress people. The woman next to me (window seat) did this little cross-her-heart thing.

Got me thinking about the number of man-hours put into the plane. From the engineers (materials, structural, electrical), the testing in a variety of places, through to the maintenance dudes, not to mention the Pilots, who not only need a ton of flight hours just to be qualified to fly those things, but also (between them) have set up processes to cater for practically every scenario. To me, flying in an aeroplane is like watching an Opera or a play, and the ticket price is worth it for that alone. Take-offs and landings were a bit noob, but overall an awesome experience. The lady next to me should believe in humans more, and their ability to achieve things together. I think if people reckoned God was a mere tremor compared to the earthquakes of human endeavour, we’d co-operate a lot more.

So despite being awesome, the plane ride was long, but they had recent movies and a screen per person. Despite being packed like sardines, I got to see some movies I hadn’t managed to catch at the cinemas:

• Meet Dave – Hilarious. A lot of the humour was expected, but it was great nonetheless. The delivery kills it, and it’s good to see Eddie Murphy being funnier than his brother again (I’m Rick James… bitch).
• Get Smart – Not funny so much, but still a good watch. brings back memories, and they’ve got a different take.
• Hancock – Good movie, and adds an excellent realism to superheroes, but aims a touch too high, and doesn’t really get at the things it’s trying to say. They may have gotten further if they didn’t try and explain his back story.
• Incredible Hulk – I’ve liked Eric Bana since the Full Frontal days, and in some ways watching him is like hoping that maybe one day Micallef will be in a Hollywood movie. I didn’t want to see the Marvel re-creation because I knew it would be much better than the one where Eric is the Hulk. It is better, and it’s worth it better. It makes the other movie redundant.

I just got to Singapore Airport and I’m waiting for a flight here. My hayfever’s gone off something severe. There’s like this dust in this part of the airport. It’s a constant damp smell and gives me a runny and blocked nose. I’m thinking India’s going to be worse. This worries me, because if this was a story that someone else was writing, my hayfever right now would be foreshadowing.

The toilets here are completely retarded. The one I was in kept on flushing repeatedly. Everything here is “automated” which means no touching required. This is scary. I had un-coordinated toilet moments.