Monday dawned bright and early.

 I’d wanted to get sunrise pictures, but it wasn’t really happening thanks to jet-lag, and in any case the sun comes up on the land side, so isn’t ideal.

Digestion hadn’t particularly settled so we skipped breakfast and at 10am joined up with our friends and went to visit Carol’s parents again – good to spend time, get to know them, and of course they fed us. ;-)

Napped in the afternoon, then swam and walked along the beach. The sand here is very fine and soft, but clings and is carried everywhere. Sea appeared clean but is not clear like the med, and was beautifully warm, with reasonable breakers to add some fun. In the evening Carol’s parents invited us all to dinner, and fed us amazing food, but would not eat with us because of the need to serve guests with hospitality – a tradition to make note of. Carol, being somewhat westernised, kept us company.

Sleep, somewhat, again.

*Reading through this post, written the following day, I realise just how jet-lagged, tired and full of colds we were, not really up to doing very much and quite un-motivated. Had we been part of a tour then the itinerary would have taken over and we'd have been much more driven to explore.

The India wedding trip

I've mentioned Carol several times here previously. She has become quite close to us, and so it was natural that we should travel to India for her wedding.

So the plan was: fly to Goa via Delhi, meet the family, travel to Kerala with them and see Carol get married, then fly home again.

Just the day before departure I got a moderate cold, and within 12 hours Chris seemed to have it too. Nice.

The flight from London Heathrow was ideal: 6.50pm departure from terminal 5 with British Airways. We arranged for the luggage to be checked forward (ha ha, more later) and caught a flight that, if not amazingly comfy, was at least pleasant, the famed BA service re-appearing for the first time after years of flying with other airlines. Colour me impressed. Food was as good as a restaurant, albeit in aeroplane-food format and departure and arrival almost spot on time too, even if sleep was in short supply.

Indira Gandhi airport is vast and immigration slow. I had completed eVisas for us (took 3 hours to complete mine, 30min the subsequent visa with so much shared info) in advance, but they were approved through the Indian Government in about 24 hours. We had to complete landing cards on the way in, then visit the eVisa desk in the airport area where our faces were photographed, fingerprints taken and everything stamped and checked multiple times. We were a little nervous due to the limited time available for transfer, but got away OK.

From the immigration desks one passes through baggage reclaim, situated in a hall so large that the other end is misty*. We just had a sense that we should check the conveyor where our bags should have been delivered and lo & behold there they were, not having been checked forward at all! Frome there we wove our way through the airport to a seeming underground area where we were to check our cases back in, then up to the main airport.

And suddenly we were in India.

The departure area for internal flights was incredibly busy, but better than that, it smelled of spices and exciting food instead of pollution* like the area we had just left. Everywhere there were people, some wearing traditional clothes, some in suits, some in army uniforms, all moving and talking and standing as only the Indians do. This was where the trip became an adventure.

*Mistiness. The last time we were in Delhi there was a fair bit of pollution, and I particularly remember the Taj Mahal being a grey building against a grey sky. This time it was borderline smog – I could smell it faintly within minutes of the plane landing after the doors were opened, and the terminal was full of it. I’m sure the fine particulates that we’ve seen mentioned in the news as being so harmful were the cause of the mistiness inside the baggage reclaim area.

So we got through security with more stamps on our boarding cards and 100% checking of every passenger. Our connecting flight with another airline that was organised through BA pushed off the gate 1 minute late but then sat on the apron for 20min, though with a flight time 20min less than described when booking, was likely to arrive in time.

At the time of writing this section we’re in the air. India is 5 ½ hours ahead of the UK and we left home around 2.15pm on Saturday. It’s presently 12.15pm local time or 6.15am in the UK (my phone displays both times – how cool is that?!) so we’ve been travelling about 16 hours.

In theory we meet up with another English couple in Dabolim airport in goa, and will share a transfer to Morjim where we’ll meet Carol’s family and have our accommodation. We still need to get money too, and will need to eat again at some stage, having passed on food this flight. Chris feels pretty lousy right now, and my eyes are burning from lack of sleep (and pollution?) but we’re OK and all my worst fears about failing to make the connection and losing bags have not come to pass.

It IS an adventure.

So continuing to write up the story on Tuesday morning, we arrived without difficulty to find the friends travelling for the wedding waiting for us in baggage collection at Dabolim airport. Bags collected, we went outside to see if we could locate the transfer cab taking us to the place we’re staying.

Went outside. I should mention that the heat at 32’C and humidity really hit us, moisture condensing on cool skin quickly, meeting perspiration coming from inside. The feeling was of a tropical butterfly house, and the smell was similar, with fragrant plant and spice smells, quite different from Delhi.

Of transfer cabs there was no sign, so we just got a conventional ‘pre-paid’ taxi (set fares) to take us.

The place we were staying – Morjim – is a good 1 hour+ drive from the airport, and the village is quite small, with tiny roads, many unmade. Our friends were staying in a hotel off the road that ran behind the beach-front restaurants, and wasn’t too hard to find. Ours was a little more mysterious, and after much questioning of locals, was eventually located at the end of a short dirt road. We knew the place was real, but had started to wonder if it would ever appear!

Once installed we contacted Carol, then met her family and were made very welcome – they could not have been kinder to us, though we may not have been very responsive in our rather jet-lagged condition. Eventually we got some food and hit the sack with the sounds of fans and air con gently drumming in our ears (the first couple of days are becoming fuzzy to me now).

We slept..........

society is weirder than you think.

Saw these 2 magazines next to each other.

James Bond apparently facing saladfingers.

Today at work we.....

...... listened to the song Useless Information. It just seemed appropriate somehow.

Talking of history.

Monday: Greg

Tuesday: Ian

Wednesday: Greg

Thursday: Ian

Friday: Greg

Gregorian Calendar.

Eee, ah remeber when this were orl fields.

A little reminder from El Reg about how things used to be in t'world of t'intarweb.

Everything was being developed by people thinking about how stuff worked and then breaking it for fun and the entertainment of others.

The article talked about voting in competitions. I'm sure that everyone else discovered around the same time that by deleting a cookie after voting in an online competition one could go ahead and vote again until one were bored. Or the other witty ruse of making the title of a forum post a hyperlink that would jump the person clicking to read the post to another completely different website.

Now it's all petty, dumb stuff, but back then the internet was a wild frontier, and a lot of fun.

Jesus and fluffy bunnies again

You may have forgotten this post (if you were lucky) about people saying stupid made up stuff that reinforces their point of view. I did get a reply from the chap who is administrator for the organisation - we know him and he married a friend of ours - that just said "thank you for your email, I will pass your comments on". It's hard to know whether the terseness came from disagreement or embarassment. I'd hoped there might be some kind of follow-through or feedback, but that was probably unreasonable on my part.

Increasingly I wonder about the way church is developing in the UK. It may be a reflection of me, but I think the way has been lost, pun only partially intended. It also makes me realise how important it is to have a wider leadership with a plan, aims and specific goals*, rather than just doing whatever is good that your hand finds to do.

*edit - in retrospect, I realise the goal is to be missional. The churches are notably shrinking, and although the skeptic in me suspects the shrinkage is BECAUSE they're trying to be missional, I don't really know.

Humans are a diverse bunch.

I never cease to be amazed at the different responses people give when they think they're being funny/friendly/witty etc. I work for someone who saw snipey comments as being a part of friendship, and took a while to realise they didn't work that way for everyone.  There's a photography forum with a certain group who are always baiting, always a bit nastier than necessary. 

This week the theatre director Jonathan Miller died, and the BBC had some that knew him reminiscing. He was apparently incredibly intelligent and a magnetic personality, but sounded like a complete bottom orifice in his attitude to others. 

Diversity? Not sure I want anything to do with it!

The Moon stood on its own 2 feet

Occasionally one comes across a blog that's a real gem. One such is aiweirdness, which, not too surprisingly is about artificial intelligence and the curious things it produces.

The more I know of AI, the less likely it seems that the world will be ruled by Skynet at some stage in the future and the more likely it is that we'll be wiped out by an infection caught from a dirty telephone (mankind having left the task of sanitising phones to robots).

The problem with freedom of speech

.... is that people will want to use it freely.

Have a quick shuftie through this article on 'section 230' of US law.

It's not even as simple as forcing big corps to be truthful: the probolem really lies at the heart of human nature, how we like to hear and believe things that reinforce our world view.

Examples?

Politics. Anti-vaccine. Religious faith. Racial prejudice. Sports teams etc. You can probably add more with a few moments thought.

Ignoring the contradictions of that article and connections with business, I've been reading discussions between various people regarding politics in the light of the forthcoming election, and it's making many of the relatively toxic arguments I've seen in church look fairly mild. The problem of stuff being true 'if it's true for you' is self-evident and known to every schoolboy that ever had to deal with unkind rumours about themselves. But I'm seeing people who are intelligent, tactically clued up and highly motivated throwing points back & forth at each other.

The bit which bothers me - maybe it's the scientist in me - is that there's no interest in finding un-subjective truth. No desire to reach a place of common understanding from which to move forwards. If you can't belittle those you disagree with using factoids then attempt to humiliate them by suggesting public opinion is against them.

Welcome the Untied Kingdom, Great Brexan.

Guess I've reached the point of realising that people can't handle free speech, the only problem being who should decide what can & can't be said. Perhaps the Chinese aren't entirely wrong to suggest their citizens should each have a'social credit' system, other than the fact that (from a western perspecive) it's evil and oppressive.

For those who thought the European Union was like a United states but further east:

They have the Gallileo satellite system cock up.

There are many highly admirable things about the EU that makes it a very worthwhile organisation, but there's also a side to it that most of us would rather forget or pretend doesn't exist. It's not merely chaotic and confused, but also self-protecting and deliberately opaque instead of transparent.

Over the last few months I've been gradually drifting towards being more Euro-centric, but this kind of thing reminds me of why departure seemed a good idea originally before all the other faeces around Brexit became apparent. I guess the upside is that it's NOT like the United States of America, but it does seem to share a common problem of corruption.

....when I see an elephant fly!

Or metal float on water?

blogger for Android has been updated

I *think* it works better - let's see. 

Can I post pictures from the phone?

This is what we have:

but this sounds like it should look beautiful:

Yup, looks like it works! 🙂

Trauma wasn't expected

I have a self-image that's a bit roughy-toughty: get damaged mountain biking & just carry on, bash myself - ditto, develop a large & bloody blister while hiking (in Morocco, that finally resolved a couple of weeks ago) - just keep going. etc.

I saw the dental hygienist this morning, and it left me traumatised. Head aching from the tension of holding my mouth open while she worked, not swallowing down the bloody goo & debris. Once outside the surgery my head was slightly spinning and very definitely wasn't happy, with the walk up to the car in the multistorey car park leaving me a bit gaspy and breathing hard. This isn't how I expect to be, and should be able to take a bit of minor medical pain in my stride.

Guess I'm getting old.

Self-driving cars

Apparently these are now a (partial) reality, despite so much expectation to the contrary.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/11/04/ai_roundup_011119/

Thank you Lauralea

Is what Chris said this morning. We remember that store cupboard.

Please don't do this.

Please don't become one of those 'religious nutjob' organisations, who give up critical thinking and basic integrity in order to promote their message.

Today I received an email message from our church stream advertising a 'bibleweek' (actually 5 days, hey ho - it's not all bad) that started with the following:

"When Joshua and the tribes encountered the commander of the Lord’s army it was in preparation to take a nation for Christ"
 
It's as though we're back to the old Sunday School joke about the answer to the teachers question - it may have floppy ears and a fluffy tail, but you know it's still Jesus. My ghast is completely fabbered - a couple of hours on, I can't believe anyone who had actually read the original passage to which this is connected could write that. I have politely emailed my astonishment to them, and if anything illuminating appears, will report it here.

On second thoughts, perhaps it was cleared by the leader of their huddle, so that's alright then.  [8¬O

I really wonder about this Christian faith business.

Skinny Jogger

Just walked past some 'trousers' using the word loosely, bearing that title. "Not me then" I thought. 😉

Tesco have a 20% off deal on clothing and there are some nice jumpers, but I already have a drawer full. 🤔 🙁 😊

Just let the Macbook update

Dang, that thing is slow.

There was a time it seemed fine because software demands were quite small, whereas now they're relatively huge and getting huger (Yeah, I know that's not a word, but it's more fun than some other choices) and the poor old thing struggles & sweats.

The update download - it's too old to run Mojave, which the app store tried to suggest as an update - was more than 1GB, and the installation time is estimated at 13min. Curiously, I remember the first point update to OSX when I'd only had the machine a couple of months, and THAT was also 1GB, which was a real problem since we only had 2meg broadband, possibly not even that, and it took fully overnight to arrive.

It's presently got 8GB RAM and a 256GB SSD, but there's simply no substitute for a fast processor; I can hear the fans whistling away as I type this while it's working.

So now it's done one restart after 6 or 7 minutes whistling and there's now 11 minutes remaining. Where's that rolleyes smilie?

I'd been using it because we wanted to recover a facebook password for an account created in 2016 in order for Chris to follow Ben using an Android tablet. It never happened, but it's the only current facebook account we have now AFAIK, and she will now use it to generate an Instagram account so she can see the stuff he regularly posts there. Using OSX again is a little like laying down in a soft bed where a number of prickly things have been scattered: some of it feels really good, but there are aspects that make the overall experience unpleasant. The app store requiring you agree to updated Ts&Cs before doing the updates, presenting you with an enormously long piece of text and then requiring that you have read and accept them at the bottom when it's obvious that you couldn't reasonably do so was one. The keychain tool presenting hashed passwords instead of plain text was another (I'm sure it used to give plain text).

After I complained out loud about the terms & conditions Chris said I was always like that with the Mac. I'm just not an Apple person, and their complete arrogance sticks in my craw.

Update done eventually.

It's tempting to flog the Macbook, but I'm not sure it's worth it. The machine is a handy spare laptop, and even though the battery isn't up to much now, it's still useful portable computing for light stuff.

We bought Chris a new laptop just a few weeks back - a Lenovo C530 - and it's really nice. Light, fast (faster than this XPS, although that's not a surprise) and with a much better screen than the Mac. It was far from expensive, but feels really nicely made, with a clean, slim aluminium shell that fits together well. Spent a couple of days moving data over, installing applications and migrating accounts. On a Mac it would have been easier/faster using time machine, but OTOH this is a chance to de-clutter & re-organise stuff a bit. I also made sure there's wasn't another nested 'Chris stuff' folder that never got unpacked as has happened in the past, more-or-less putting everything back on the desktop where it had been.

Oh, and Office XP applications start in the blink of an eye. ;)

Eventually I'll need to upgrade the XPS, but for now it's still good.

I hope this works

Tell me what's wrong with this page.

Is it age or difference?

So last week I signed up to Instagram.

Presumably the site is designed for ordinary people to use easily, but through the phone it's really clunky, awkward, un-intuitive. I feel a need to start using it, partly because Ben posts his pictures there, partly because I need to start using it to promote my pictures too.

Maybe it's better through a browser?

There have been 2 major social media sites that made little sense to me over the last 10 years, Instagram being one, Twitter the other. I hope Instagram gets better, and it should. Twitter feels like punching your self in the face repeatedly, and I cannot imagine why any sane person would use it.

Sometimes it's nice to have a little confirmation.

Probably no-one will remember that I blogged about seeing a 'new Starwars movie' (I think it was The Force Awakens) and was somewhat appalled that how one half of the human race was portrayed.

It seems that I was not alone.

Thanks to Inky, whose blog I still read, I saw this Dilbert cartoon.

According to one source Scott Adams had seen the same film and it produced this response. We no longer expect women to be universally weak, stupid and incapable, so why should we tolerate seeing men in films that way? Misandry is no better than misogyny.

The more life stays the same, the more it changes

I have 10min before leaving for a meeting off-site, and little concentration for other things.

I have become aware that the aging process - and other quirks of genetics & susceptibility - are affecting those I know of a similar age. A good friend has had prostate cancer and is now developing parkinsons: he is suffering the slings and arrows of hormone therapy for the first and trying to come to terms with the changes the second is making. Another good friend has an inherited respiratory condition that's causing his lungs to get gradually chewed away.

My voice seems to be changing - becoming sometimes husky, sometimes a bit squeaky. It's not a bad deal compared to either of my friends above, but it makes me even more reluctant to speak up at a time when personal confidence is not high.

It feels like I've been living the same way for a long time: same house, same wife, same career, same hobbies, same personal weaknesses and strengths. Yet despite my consistence things are changing gradually, yet irresistably.

What's wrong?

The sky has been a dull and unbroken grey all day, I've drunk little and been weeing loads. At least I'm not sweaty and sticky all the time.

🙂

Nice to be back in a country where you can throw paper down the loo, water from the tap is drinkable and the shower works predictably. Looking forward to a good steak and baked potatoes for dinner - tagine is off the menu.

Down to our last couple of days.

Morocco is - not what I expected.

I reminds a lot of Moghul India, but interpreted through European culture. Certainly the culture feels much less different than India did, even though it's extremely different to the UK.

We've had the stink and crowds of the city, torrential rain in the Sahara desert, blistering sunshine while viewing roman ruins and a beautifully cool morning today in Essaouira. People have generally been extremely polite, friendly, kind, but also a little deceptive and today we saw a couple of English tourists with another man who spoke the local language assaulted by a shop keeper and his friends in the street (no idea what that was about). There was also a protest through the streets last night that we think was about local jobs and tourists causing problems, but can't be certain.

It's been a good trip.

I'd like to come back some time to do a photographic trip, but I'm just not sure. There's a tension bubbling away below the surface. Roadblocks with police checks are common, and on a journey of several hours it's not unusual to pass 4 or 5 - reminded us of Zimbabwe. There are some incredibly wealthy individuals and every restaurant and shop had a picture of the king hanging, yet many people are apparently extremely poor, possibly made worse by tourists attracting beggars.

Mud.

This will also be a lasting memory of Morocco.

In polite circles it's referred to as adobe when used for buildings, but there have been times when buildings and countryside appeared to blend seamlessly. Roads sometimes disappeared under it. Streets were covered in it. Mud seemed to be everywhere. It's made images of villages being swept away by mudslides very real.

There's a lot to absorb and assimilate.

1 week in.

OK, Morocco is fascinating, blending African and Arab cultures. For a photographer, there's a picture round every corner and the people seem friendly this far (we were given warnings in our welcome meeting about those who are not).

Each area and hotel has its own flaws and idiosyncrasies: in this one the taps drip, last one had no hot water & toilet didn't work in our room etc etc. Also you can't flush loo paper.

Having an interesting time.

Keep taking the tablets

A couple of months back I bought a cheap refurbished windows tablet - about £90 - to use as a digital music storage device for church. 12" HD screen, detachable keyboard/screen cover, SD memory card slot to supplement the 64GB of internal storage. It's not exactly a fast performer, being pretty much on a par with the late 2008 Macbook, but it's about half the weight and the screen is really crisp.

Battery life is brilliant.

When new, the macbook would do 4 hours of word processing, or 2 1/2 hours with wifi on for internet. The Dell XPS was similar, although wifi use made almost no difference, but image processing drops life to 2 hours.

This thing gives me >10 hours of internet use.

Would the passengers of Easy Jet flight XYZ

Please go to Gate 5 for Decontrolling.

The unhappy sound of the airport moving passengers from a secure departure lounge back to the outside world. Gatwick North terminal hall is full of people and there is a queue that runs almost the length of the hall, presumably of cancelled Easy Jet passengers.

I'm grateful that at present our flight only appears to be 3 1/2 hours late.

Normally I would not post 'live' on holiday, but we've got friends living in the cottage while we are away, and it will be as secure as if we were there.

I suppose one of my biggest disappointments is

That there is no answer.

Everyone seems to have lots of answers when you're searching for faith: lots of scriptures that can point you in the right direction, encourage you to believe, re-assure you about how wonderful it all is.

What happens when you start to look a bit harder and become concerned it's a house of cards?

What happens when you start to look at a card and realise it's possibly not standing on anything?

I get that we need to use eyes of faith, I really do, but you need more than a wish to base that faith on. We know that 'reality' will let us down, and as Christians we live on the basis that the world is broken and failing. At the same time, the more I read the bible the more I read things that look like they have been made up, possibly for all the best reasons, but still made up.

And the thing that ticks me off most is that there is no answer.


Someone I knew a little - pastor of a church in Abingdon - had a heart attack and died the day I started writing this post.

A good friend's wife died of cancer a couple of years back, leaving a young family.

We may have some experience of this kind of thing too.

I'm fed up with the thinking that it's more important to reach out than to understand what we're offering.


Yesterday I bumped into the people who I now realise helped start me on this path of thought and theology. They had a thing about the people of Israel and the rock that went through the desert with them as described in 1 Cor 10 v3-4 - they believed that there was a physical rock that followed the Israelites through the desert, and that rock was Jesus in some other form.

I think it was that point that stopped me being a fundamentalist and instead started me searching to know what was true and what was just made up.

People like to make up stuff, not from malicious intent, but because they just want to have something to believe in that helps explain why the world is like it is and provides them something to believe in and bring hope and comfort. I'm NOT saying that Christianity is all a fiction, but that it has absorbed various peoples made up stuff along the way. At one time I would be cross about this corruption, but at the moment I'm just accepting it for the reasons above. Disappointing, frustrating, but nothing to burn someone at the stake over.

How do you know something is a fiction? It's hard to tell, but if people feel the need to defend their god by force of arms, anger and violence then that's a pretty strong clue they know it's not true. If god is really God, why would He need people to fight for him?

I've tried to stay quiet

About the bizarre 'buggers-muddle' to borrow an old English phrase, that has been Brexit.

For those who've not read the blurb that way & I'm an Austrian who has lived in the UK since 1 was 1 year old, so more than 57 years. Although I wish otherwise, my feeling is that Britain as a country will probably be socially stronger separate from EU, although it will likely hit people in their pockets and cause some severe hardship to the poorest. That's not the point though, and it would be much 'easier' for Britain to remain.

What is the point?

It's been a really odd journey to get to the point the british government is at today.

The first bit of stupidity was the referendum (not legally binding) that was set up with a poor set of choices and a failure to create a sensibly high threshold above which a popular vote to leave must reach in order for the vote to be meaningful. At least the PM who was responsible for such a situation 'fell on his sword', though I wonder if he should have been forced to stay in office until the whole mess was sorted out.

Perhaps such an obvious device as a threshold was ignored because the vote wasn't binding, except that it has been made so in political circles. The nature of politics is that those who fight through its mire are seeking any kind of weapon they can use, and this presented such a thing with a good sharp edge and a strong handle to swing it by.

The next bit of stupidity is what happened immediately afterwards.

In time of crisis political parties have often pulled together to work things out, thus I expected the 2 main parties to settle down and try to figure out the best way through. Not a bit of it. Apparently everyone in parliament decided they should do their own thing, and if not part of the presently ruling party then attempt to pull that party down, not helped by the newly selected PM deciding that she should call a general election, neatly losing most of the previous majority her party had.

So 3 years on Theresa May (probably a genuinely well intentioned woman, but apparently slightly inept politician) has been replaced by the less honest and distinctly wily Boris Johnson. He saw what had happened and decided enough silly-buggers had been played in parliament, therefore arranged things so that the UK would almost certainly be able to leave the EU with a no-deal hard Brexit - where we find ourselves now. I don't especially like what he's done, but admire the skill with which he's circumvented the efforts of those who were determined to just keep spinning out the who process with no possible chance of resolution.

I wrote the majority of this post a couple of days back.

We are presently sat in Gatport Airwick waiting for a plane.

Why mention this?

Our flight is delayed due, apparently, to industrial action* on the part of French air traffic control. The airport was relatively quiet when we got here at 9am, but at 11.35 it's full of people whose flights have been delayed. If you want a reason why Britain wants to leave the EU, never mind all the stories about darkies or polish plumbers taking jobs away, this is it. The British are different. The disease that allows people to sod-up the lives of others in arbitrary fashion has infected the UK a little, but it's still not really taken hold. In France it's the national pastime, and has been for generations. The Brits don't do corruption or green stuff like the Germans, graft and anarchy like the Italians and Greeks, laid-back lifestyle like the Spanish. On they whole they just try to mostly follow the rules without putting people out too much.

I can shrug my shoulders gallic style about the strike & delays, but this is the kind of thing that they see their European neighbours doing that hacks them off and makes them back Boris.

Is Brexit a good thing? I REALLY don't know, though I expect everyone will be a bit poorer as a result, at least in the short-medium term. I can see good reasons for both remaining and leaving, both come with a price and simply deciding to remain after all will come with a high price, not necessarily monetary, too.

Hope we don't have ANOTHER war here.

*Correction - apparently it was a computer failure, but my point remains and striking Frenchmen is sufficiently common, even normal, that it doesn't matter they were apparently working as usual on this occasion.