And now we resume our service - back to India and Tuesday*.

On Tuesday Carol’s father had kindly arranged a taxi excursion to show us the highlights of Goa, and so we visited to the church of Bom Jesus in Panjim, a spice plantantion (included lunch) a hindu temple and an old portuguese fort that had been a prison and used to hold members of the Goan freedom movement in the 1950s. 

One got the impression from information there that the Portuguese were hated, but as with so many things, I have a feeling they were considered good in some quarters and their legacy is both good and bad. Seems their treatment of the locals was typical for a European colony, though because they hung on longer than the British their occupation is seen as more malign. The Roman Catholic tradition was imported with some determination in Goa, and it seemed that non-Catholic beliefs were suppressed forcibly, leading to tensions and socio-political problems as one would expect.

Most amazing, while walking past the church of Bom (good) Jesus we met some friends from Somerton who had just cycled 500 kilometers from Mumbai to Goa, and were enjoying a recovery day before flying back – it’s the kind of co-incidence that might not have happened if we’d been there just a minute different either way.

Back at 6pm, a quick swim was enjoyed, then out to dinner and another chance to experience the local specialities – Chicken Cafreal is recommended and not fiery like some dishes. 

*I've had a cold since returning, and wasn't really feeling up to blogging in the rush toward Christmas.

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.