a song and a poem for a friend

on a high : duncan sheik
about happiness in your own terms

moving on : rainer maria rilke
about big awarenesses

happy birthday, bro.

the boss of me

i finally finished ripping all of the cd's i care about into my mac, and transferred most of the songs i care about to my ipod. out of 60 gigs, i have just a little over 2 gigs of space left, and i'm leaving that for some pictures. here's a shot of my ipod's screen. well actually, this is a recreation of my ipod screen, shamelessly knocking off a publicity shot from apple's website. i did try to take pictures of it using a digital camera, but they all came out looking like this.

i also tried scanning the thing, but it came out worse.

now all i need to do is get rid of duplicate songs from compilations and best-of collections. i wonder how much space that'll free up.

satellite (show me the worth of the world) : tabla beat science

click here to rock your world

listening time: the best 8m 48s that you will ever spend on blogger

have a groovy weekend, all. here's something from tabla beat science, the musical collective that includes talvin singh. i have no idea what the vocalist is saying apart from the chorus, or if she (it could be a he, i don't know, i'm too lazy to look at the cd liner notes) is saying anything at all. nor can i guess why this is called satellite. but heck, this record is so much fun. get the album if you too are a fan of the tabla, which i think is very versatile and in the right hands can easily get out of the traditional and asian underground scenes. this album was recorded live in 2001 at the stern grove in san francisco.

update: just looked at the liner notes. it is indeed a female vocalist, and she is ethiopian artist ejigayehu 'gigi' shibabaw. the male backing vocal belongs to istad sultan khan. interestingly, tabla beat science has this to say about the album: "peace and respect to george harrison for opening our ears."

then i'll be smiling : matt nathanson

click here to listen
listening time: 2m 56s

this song by san francisco-based artist matt nathanson is so beneath the surface i had to google what the word 'awarenesses' means. i've never used that word in the plural form in my life, and apparently it's some sort of a philosophical concept. read the lyrics here. i still don't get completely what the song means, but if my reading is right then matt makes a very poignant statement about shallow friendships. my guess is it's about a guy who has made a series of mistakes in his life and feels that his friends, with their "half concerns," have outgrown him. or it could be the other way around: he gained from his failures a deeper sense of self-awareness that he has outgrown his friends, the liars and fools he's probably referring to, who in contrast have become too self-involved. i may be reading too much into this, but it's only because the words are so captivating, delivered with understated woe, and all blending very well with the beautiful melody of the song.

anyway. matt's a brilliant artist, and i hear he's funny live. i love every song on the first cd of his that i bought, still waiting for spring, which includes this song, and his new one, beneath these fireworks, is even better. matt is what happens when a guy who listened to kiss before 12th grade discovers suzanne vega, indigo girls, and tracy chapman. that's more or less his own description. i'd fly to san francisco to see him. well only if mark kozelek is playing around the same time. then i'll be smiling.

been littered with small awarenesses lately?

never stop : the brand new heavies

click here to listen.

listening time: 4m 42s

this is the not-quite-funk version of the acid jazz hit, from bnh's album original flava. not sure who did the vocals, probably guitarist simon bartholomew. obviously nothing beats the n'dea davenport version, which is one of the few songs -- of any genre -- that can totally blow you away. but i like this because it's downtempo, which is more often my mood. i'd love to do this on acoustic guitar, substituting the keyboard with heavy strums. if only i knew how to play the darn thing.

never do that again : ivy

click here to listen

listening time: 3m 32s

ever had one of those moments of uncomfortable silence with your significant other? moments of estrangement that seem to have come out of nowhere? on an ordinary night, one of you will be sitting in the armchair reading a book, and the other will be lying on the couch watching television. this is how you wind down your day, and it's a habit that's as familiar as the pattern of conversation that ensues. one of you will say something trivial or insightful -- perhaps something that you saw or read, or something that happened to you during the day -- and the other will reply with a sentence, a phrase, a soft hmm. it doesn't matter how the conversation develops, or if one does at all; what matters is that both of you are silently taking comfort in each other's presence, aware of the same invisible connection that manifests itself most powerfully when you're making love. tonight, however, words are simply not in order, and every minute that passes without the familiar non-conversation amplifies the possibility that something might not be right. you try to brush the feeling off, yet it remains. suddenly, you start to notice that a neighbor is stuggling with his door key, or that one of the light bulbs in the hallway that leads to your kitchen is dimmer than the others. a light but eerie sense of touble prevents you from collecting your own thoughts. you feel as if something between you and your significant other has been violated, and you have a nagging feeling that it could be your fault. is everything okay? you ask, and the other replies with a yes that you think wouldn't sound as cold if it were true. and so you ask again, are we okay? and you receive the same unconvincing reply. and so you let it go, but not really, and you're left wondering how this moment is going to end.

this is the soundtrack to that moment.

torn : ednaswap

click here to listen

listening time: 3m 43s

i was going to post something that randomly struck me on my way home today after a three-day weekend break, but i thought i'd better gather supporting evidence first. it goes something like this: when it comes to pop music, vocal standards are lower for men than for women. i'll say no more.

in the meantime, enjoy the original version of torn, popularized in 1996 by natalie imbruglia. i remembered this song because i saw her new cd being promoted on tv earlier this evening, and i wondered, why bother? what possible tv-viewing demographic is her label trying to reach? in fact, who continues to like natalie imbruglia? i will admit, though, that i was a big fan of her version of torn. her voice has the perfect touch of emotional injury that the lyrics require, something the original doesn't achieve. ednaswap's arrangement would work if a male vocalist were singing; it doesn't work with someone trying to sound like chrissie hynde. i don't know. maybe i'm just too tired to think.

good night.

pressure drop : david kitt

click here to listen.
listening time: it'll be over before too long

i tried to restrain myself from posting this song but i couldn't help it. it grew on me, and i even had it on repeat in my ipod on my commute to work this morning. to appreciate the song, which is originally by the reggae band toots and the maytals, you have to first know how the more popular versions sound like. there's one by the clash, and another by the specials. (click on the bands' names if you'd like to stream 30-second samples on amazon.)

david kitt's version is what it sounds like when you deliberately overdose your best friend, shock him with extra-strength defibrillators (those electric plates they used in the movie flatliners) and hold him at gunpoint to sing a reggae song as soon as he comes to. an acoustic singer-songwriter from dublin, kitt never claimed that his vocals was his strongest suit. where kitt excels, as he demonstrated in his first two albums, is in his ability to exploit it to infuse every song with just the right amount of emotional disquiet – to make his listeners empathetic, as opposed to sympathetic. when i first heard the song song from hope st. (brooklyn, new york), in which kitt observes the sudden slow-motion of our pace in the winter, i wanted to come over to his apartment and help rearrange his furniture.

kitt's version of pressure drop comes from his fourth album the black and red notebook, made up almost entirely of covers, from r.e.m.'s (don't go back to) rockville to jj cale's magnolia. what kitt has done is sap each song of its passion and render it dry. which is normally a bad thing, but kitt, i'd like to believe, did it deliberately. for what purpose? i have no idea. the album isn't mediocre, just puzzling and oddly jaw-dropping.

million miles from home : keziah jones

click here to listen

listening time: 3m 58s

two months before summer and my mind's already somewhere else. in limbo, to be exact. i had completely forgotten that i have 43,000 air miles expiring at the end of july, so i've been trying desperately to book a flight with very limited success. i'm looking to travel before end of june to either morocco or russia, which means i have to transit somewhere in europe, but in both options i can't get a return seat out of london or zurich. so as a backup i booked a flight to tehran via gulf air, the status of which i'll find out only today. as another backup, i booked johannesburg via cathay pacific, and this one's confirmed. but damn, i want either of my two first choices. i'm wanting to trek the atlas mountains or mount elbrus. must find other ways to get there on miles. damavand in iran should be okay, but what if our good friend from washington strikes again? the drakensberg in south africa i heard is breathtaking, but for some reason i have very little interest in it. give me some altitude i can cover in a week!

oh well. here's a great song by the amazing nigerian-born guitarist keziah jones. he will eat lenny kravitz alive. turn it up, this one rocks.

a tribute to street musicians

baby can i hold you : orzo

click here to listen

listening time: 3m 20s

his name is orzo, and he's a street musician who played every night at ponte vecchio during our trip to florence last easter. on the evening we sat down on the sidewalk of the bridge, orzo received a visit from a policeman in a blue-and-white car. as if by routine, even before the cop could get out of the car, orzo pulled out pieces of paper from behind the chord sheets laid out on his music stand, walked over his guitar case which had just a handful of coins, and handed the papers over. the policeman leafed through them, gave them back, and left with a friendly salute. this is orzo's spot, the papers must have said, and what a perfect spot it was, getting more foot traffic at this late hour than any other corner of the historic quarter.

street musicians are everywhere, from plaza murillo in la paz to montmartre in paris to insadong in seoul. their presence in such diverse places is an affirmation of popular music as a universal language, touching universal feelings by provoking uniquely personal memories. (we all have stories about chiquitita, don't we?) street musicians don't always play with competence, but they always sing with passion. unfortunately that passion is lost on the majority of people who pass them by without a glance, or is only fleetingly shared by the passerby who drops a dollar, or hums along in his mind on his way to lunch. as a tourist i find them as a source of comfort. comfort that the city i'm alien to is friendly enough to have them. comfort through the familiarity of their songs in a land whose language i don't speak.

i've always been intrigued by street musicians, especially those who do it alone in a country not their own, like these guys. the one on the left is from the chatuchak market in bangkok, and to be honest i can't remember what song he was singing, though based on the way he looks it was probably dylan or cat stevens.

there must be elaborate stories behind them, but i've never had the courage to bother them and ask. what brought them to where they are? are they globetrotters saving up for their next destination? are they trying to escape from unpleasant circumstances at home? that's what i thought when i saw this other guy below in insadong in seoul. i thought he was russian, or from one of the caucasus states. i remember this shot very well. his pronunciation was so bad, i could barely make out a word. he was strumming, words were coming out of his mouth, but was he singing? and then, finally, something comprehensible: oh-wo-wow yesterday...

in any case, i tend to romanticize every street musician as the free spirit can only i wish to be.

that night on ponte vecchio, we shared the sidewalk with a group of 15 to 20 teenage tourists, probably eastern european, who insisted that one of them sing. orzo obliged, and the tourist sang shakira's underneath your clothes. she mimicked the colombian artist's voice very well, which means she probably shoved a ball of sock in her throat too. (no, i've never been impressed by shakira. well, okay, i like her mtv unplugged dig on ojos asi.) orzo obviously likes connecting with his audience. he performed other crowd-pleasers like u2's with or without you, which somehow morphed into the calling's wherever you will go, and america's horse with no name, which became fool's garden's lemon tree. the teenagers danced and sang to this tune. an old man (the one smoking in the picture at the top) started peddling orzo's cd, and since my significant other was having a good time, she insisted that i buy one. it cost 10 euros, quite expensive, but hey, we should all be supporting free spirits.

how to be a street musician

cucurrucucu paloma : caetano veloso

click here to listen. it starts off very softly.

listening time: 3m 50s.

very briefly in his college life, my father was in a band that played latin music in hotel lounges, and even though he played upright bass, he was very good with classical guitar, an instrument he played with melancholy everyday since his heart kept him homebound at 36. one of his favorite musicians were the mexican trio los panchos, and he owned one of their lp's that featured this song, composed by tomas mendez and popularized in 1954 by lola beltran. i remember having a laughing fit the first time i heard it as a child; i thought "cucurrucucu" was the funniest-sounding word i'd ever heard. my appreciation only grew the more i heard the song, and this version by the brazilian singer caetano veloso, from the soundtrack to the film hable con ella, is the most haunting and heart-rending rendition of this timeless classic. memories of my father rush in everytime i hear this song. without the requinta, a small, high-pitched guitar that was the trademark of los panchos, my father played this song similar to the way veloso does. it wasn't perfect, but it was his.

by the way, if you liked this song, you'll probably also love this one.

may day ruminations

this is your life : the dust brothers

click here to listen

listening time: 3m 31s

do you remember how you ended up doing what you now do for a living?

how different is it from what you wanted to be when you were young?

what happened? what changed?

would you rather be doing something else, or is it too late?

a playlist : songs to get depressed by

grey : ani difranco

click here to listen

listening time: 5m 22s

it's contrived, i know, and i can afford to say this because i'm looking at this playlist from a safe distance. i'm not depressed, not even sad. but i do tend to revisit this playlist once in a while because of the simple beauty of the songs in it. some of these are love songs, some are not, or at least not overtly so, but they all pine over a certain kind of loss and make for good company when i'm out of endorphins. i come from the let-it-flow school of emotional therapy, and in this school we learn to wallow in our misery by listening to songs that tear our hearts. grey by ani difranco is on the top of my list. what qualifies? the dour acoustic melody comes first, the words of pain are secondary. i have about 40 songs in this playlist. here are some of them, with my favorite lines.

grey : ani difranco
what kind of paradise am i looking for?
i've got everything i want
still i want more
maybe one tiny shiny key
will wash up on the shore

wise up : aimee mann
you're sure there's a cure
and you have finally found it
you think one drink
will shrink you to your underground
and living down
but it's not going to stop

i am : train
am i the son i think i am?
am i the friend i think i am?
am i the man i think i want to be?

have you forgotten : red house painters
when we were kids, we hated things our parents did
we listened low to casey kasem's radio show
that's when friends were nice
to think of them just makes you feel nice
the smell of grass in spring
and october leaves cover everything.
have you forgotten how to love yourself?

why don't you find out for yourself : morrissey
don't rake up my mistakes
i know exactly what they are
and what do you do?
well, you just sit there
i've been stabbed in the back
so many, many times

ghost : indigo girls
and i feel it like a sickness
how this love is killing me
i'd walk into the fingers
of your fire willingly
and dance the edge of sanity
i've never been this close

landslide : smashing pumpkins
oh, mirror in the sky, what is love?
can the child within my heart rise above?
can i sail thru the changing ocean tides?
can i handle the seasons of my life?

please please please let me get what i want : the smiths
haven't had a dream in a long time
see, the life i've had
can make a good man bad

boo hoo.

carry me : nick cave and the bad seeds

click here to listen

listening time: 3m 37s

i decided to post a nick cave song after stumbling upon this striking portrait of the musician by san francisco-based (but soon to be chicagoan) blogging artist eugene smith. based on this photograph, the sketch softens cave's expression, which eugene may have done out of his own interpretation, or by blending it with this other photograph, or both. in any case i think the look in cave's eyes in this sketch very well captures the mood of his music, which can be morose and contemplative, or ironic and humorous, but often angry and always deadly serious.

click on the image to see it in its original size. cave is the kind of songwriter who tends to intellectualize too much. in a lecture on love songs at the vienna poetry festival in 1998, he said:

The love song is never truly happy. It must first embrace the potential for pain. Those songs that speak of love without having within in their lines an ache or a sigh are not love songs at all but rather hate songs disguised as love songs, and are not to be trusted. These songs deny us our humanness and our God-given right to be sad and the air-waves are littered with them...The writer who refuses to explore the darker regions of the heart will never be able to write convincingly about the wonder, the magic and the joy of love for just as goodness cannot be trusted unless it has breathed the same air as evil - the enduring metaphor of Christ crucified between two criminals comes to mind here - so within the fabric of the love song, within its melody, its lyric, one must sense an acknowledgement of its capacity for suffering.

and you can see how much he believes in this even from one of his seemingly more uplifting songs, into my arms, which also has one of my favorite first lines ever ("i don't believe in an interventionist god"):

And I don't believe in the existence of angels
But looking at you I wonder if that's true
But if I did I would summon them together
And ask them to watch over you
To each burn a candle for you
To make bright and clear your path
And to walk, like Christ, in grace and love
And guide you into my arms

what's so sad about it? it could just be me, but listening to it, i imagine him singing to a woman on the verge of death. he is sitting next to her lying unconscious in a hospital bed. there is a wooden cross on the wall against the headboard, and wilting lilacs in a glass vase on the bedside table. he holds her hand, brings it to his lips, and cries. death is in fact a recurring theme in cave's songs; he even wrote one in the first person about a murderer set to be executed in an electric chair. i'm posting a different song because lyrically carry me, which comes from his new double album abattoir blues / the lyre of orpheus, disturbs me the most. here is a man in a dilemma over two unrewarding choices, choices that may lead him to do something harmful, to himself and to someone he loves. he refuses to take action and instead waits for a sign. it's deeply spiritual, which you can tell from its churchlike chorus. listen to it, read the lyrics here, and tell me what you think.

thanks to eugene for letting me post the sketch.

two songs : sondre lerche and blur

all luck ran out : sondre lerche

click here to listen

listening time: 3m 51s

coffee & tv : blur

click here to listen

listening time: 5m 19s

i've had these songs in my ipod for ages but i never really noticed the similarity until today, when my ipod, which is always in shuffle mode, played one after the other in the order above. i'd always thought there was something familiar about all luck ran out by sondre lerche (who incidentally is from bergen, norway like the kings of convenience below). i just never paused to think hard enough to tell what it is exactly. well now i know, and it's funny it took me so long because i love coffee & tv, especially the video. you remember this, dont you?

well you should, and if you haven't seen it yet, then leave this blog and google it now. it's one of my all-time favorite videos. but i digress.

i think sondre lerche was barely 20 when i bought his debut cd, faces down, and i thought good god, what would this guy be capable of when he's 30? and i mean that in a good way -- just think about all the crap that male poseurs of his age are excereting these days. sondre's voice is so engaging yet he uses it so effortlessly. his songs start off easy on the ear and end on rather disturbing notes. all luck ran out isn't a good example of that because it's pretty linear, but it nonetheless has an addictive rhythm to it.



which he may nor may not have borrowed from blur's coffee & tv. the pace, the rhythm...i think sondre only played it a couple of keys higher. you can almost interchange the guitars on both songs and still come up with nearly the same output. i googled and found two other people who thought the same, though i can't be sure, because one wrote in italian, the other in norwegian. are we tone deaf?

misread : kings of convenience

click here to listen
listening time: 3m 08s

they're launch.com's one to watch, and i'm nonplussed. i've been hooked on kings of convenience since their first single toxic girl started appearing in indie album compilations about four years ago. they're a rare breed in an artform that's populated with fluff, and i wanted them to remain unknown. i wanted them to remain mine, but i guess that's wishing too far. now that the norwegian duo of erlend oye and eirik glambek boe have been noticed, i only wish they don't fall into ringtone hell.



this song is the first single from their second album, riot on an empty street, which builds on the brilliance of their debut, quiet is the new loud. their music is all vocal harmony and guitars, and this minimalism has led to comparisons with folk legends simon & garfunkel. of course, that's just the easy route the music press has taken to break them into the market. there's really no better way to describe them than a breath of fresh air.

this is why you should never buy pirated cd's

you just don't get what you pay for!



only in hong kong, people. in case you're too young to get it, that dude above is country singer kenny rogers, who looks about as dangerous as a geriatric cat. the one below is the real kenny loggins, who seems to age gracefully. the songs in the album are by loggins.



this takes the comedy in buying pirated stuff to a whole new level. prior to this i would often find typo errors and misspellings in artist names and song titles. it's more common in movie dvd's. i've seen ahale berry and russell crowr. and i've also seen pirated dvd movies with subtitles from another movie!

missing : beck

click here to listen

listening time: 4m 43s

this is my favorite track from guero, the new album by beck, the 90s pop rock slacker poster child. guero is a great album, and as far as i'm concerned it's at par with his delicious odelay from 1996. inevitably that's the album guero has been most compared to, since they best showcase how beck can swing from one genre to the next (plus the collaboration with the dust brothers). he does so while maintainting a sound that's uniquely his own, not least owing to his voice. beck drags his voice than sings with it, and it works from the hopping hell yes -- which has a catchy bass line layered with scratches, harmonica, and awkward female ad libs -- to the melancholic broken drum, which sounds like it should be in sea change, beck's last album from 2002.

and then there's missing. listen carefully to his vocals here and you'll find that it's full and assured, a departure from the lazy warbling beck has charmed us with since mellow gold's loser. he showed nearly this much confidence in sea change, a collection of funereal acoustic ballads, notably in the track end of the day. his voice in missing is jarring, almost depressive, and he couldn't have done it better for this song, which itself is mature in its acceptance of loss in spite of continued yearning. it's not contradictory; it's honest and universal.

i prayed heaven today would bring its hammer down on me
and pound you out of my head
i can't think with you in it...

something always takes the place of missing pieces
you can take and put together even though
you know there's something missing...

she rides in a car like a queen on a card
and the guns of her mind aim a line
straight at mine to a heart that was broke

complete lyrics here

if missing is a taste of things to come from beck, then his best work is yet ahead of him.

why do i care about this?

if you've logged off from a session with yahoo in the last few days you've probably seen it. for a split second i thought wow, eminem's looking sharp. but something wasn't quite right and i had to rub my eyes to see if i read the name right. it's rob thomas, vocalist of matchbox twenty, sans the shaggy hair. and look at the sculpted arching brow and the white pearl earring!

i watched the video of the single lonely no more, from his first solo album something to be, and the similarity ends. but what's this -- rob shimmying in skin-tight pants? don't get me wrong, i like rob thomas. i liked him from his band's debut to his collaboration with santana in smooth. but lately he's becoming a bit of a pussy. lonely no more, catchy as it is, is devoid of the introspection of every song in yourself or someone like you and even mad season. oh well. so what if he wants to attract a larger audience (and with his makeover that probably means preteen girls). nothing wrong with that. and if my nieces ask me how old i am, i can just say, i'm younger than rob thomas and eminem!

back from europe

been away for over two weeks and i still feel it was too short. not that i didn't enjoy the trip; i did immensely. but the truth is, significant other and i probably crammed too many places in one trip that except for one, we felt bad having to leave each place just as we were getting warmed up. at least i did. all told, we went to six major european destinations in 17 days, including a couple of day trips. it's the curse of the corporate holiday handout. you can only take so many holidays a year, you feel like you need to make the most of it. so you end up planning to go to many different places in a short span of time, you end up taking in not enough of them. of course we could have chosen to stay longer in one or two cities, but it's the curiosity, you know, made more easily doable by the convenience of train travel. and hell if it wasn't fun! here's what we did:

venice. three full days, which means excluding the days we arrive and leave. i fell in love the night we arrived, even if it meant hauling our luggages through three tall, stepped bridges from the bus station. venice's innate charm springs at you the moment you see and smell its canals. walking its cobbled streets and crossing its arched bridges are just as fun as taking the water buses that run the stretch of the grand canal, which truly lives up to its name, not least due to the characterful facades of the buildings on both sides. since venice is one of significant other's dream destinations, and we were there in time for her birthday, we took the expensive gondola ride. twice. yes, our gondoliers did burst into song, and no, neither sang o sole mio. but even in broad daylight, the ride upholds its reputation for being romantic, especially when you enter the quiet tiny canals. and i don't care if we, like other googly-eyed gondola riders, became the subject of camera-toting tourists taking pictures from bridges, it was worth it. here's what it looked like, but the couple below isn't us. i'd never look quite as good wearing a straw hat with a red ribbon.



day trip to verona. i'm sure verona is a fine city, but can i help it if i felt that its top attraction, casa di giulietta, is a rip-off? it's the verona government's unimaginative interpretation of juliet's house, with the famous balcony that romeo stealthily climbed up to as its highlight. for ordinary folk, the building as a residence may impress, but shakespeare would probably cringe if he saw it. if you ever decide to pay juliet a visit, you'll do better than spend 4 euros to get inside her house. just stay outside and read visitors' love notes in different languages, pasted all over the walls of the courtyard, or take snapshots of male tourists rubbing the right breast of juliet's bronze statue, supposedly for good luck in love, which this overzealous dude probably needs:



florence. three full days is clearly not enough to absorb the art and architecture of this gem of a place. and yet, for some reason, it's easy enough to get bored here. it's small, and every corner or square looks like the one you've just been. oddly, the same can be said of venice, but venice never for a moment loses its charm, perhaps because the changing colors of the old buildings and reflections on the canals under the sun give you a different perspective each time you cast a glance at them. of course, florence more than makes up for this with its artistic treasures. two of the obvious highlights are the uffizi, which houses the ethereal the birth of venus and galleria dell'accademia which houses michelangelo's sensual rendition of david. picture-taking isn't allowed in both museums, so if you want to immortalize david in your photo album, you'll have to settle for a good reproduction of it in front of the palazzo vecchio at the piazza della signora. let's cut to the (uncut) chase, shall we:

day trip to pisa. there weren't as many tourists here as i feared, but even if there were, that surely wouldn't have lessened my appreciation of this place. yes, we went straight to the leaning tower, which is actually a bell tower that accompanies the cathedral and baptistry next to it. (apparently, most cathedrals in europe combine all three in one structure, but the italians like to do things differently. the duomo, the cathedral in florence with the famous dome, is another example.) all are magnificent structures in marble, but pale in comparison to the taj mahal which i've already rhapsodized about somewhere below. a curious structure -- it leans about 4.5 meters from the top because of the soft soil underneath -- the leaning tower brings out the silly in us. while most would pose as if they were pushing the tower up, this guy does it a bit differently:

rome, one full day. we've been in 2002, but we had to fly out of rome to get to amsterdam anyway (long story) so we thought we'd spend a couple of days there. it turned out to be fortuitous, because we arrived on the day the pope passed away, and we were able to hear the mass in his honor at st. peter's square the following day. i'm not a catholic, nor religious, but being there and seeing the outpouring of respect for a great man proved emotional for me too. frankly, it made me rethink of the reasons i converted away from catholicism, and although in the end my convictions against it as enforced by pope john paul didn't change, being able to reflect was an enriching experience.



amsterdam. three full days, and definitely worth coming back to. we arrived very late at night, and the morning we stepped out of the hotel, took the tram, and crossed the park leading to the van gogh museum, and nearly got run over by a bike, i said to myself, i can live here. that's always been one of my measures whether i like a place or not, and i'll do anything to move to amsterdam. it's pleasant, it's pictureseque, the people are straightforward and friendly, there is diversity among the people and in effect the cuisine, and i love the fact that bicycles like the one below rule the road. forget the red light district and the accessibility of marijuana, you can get your high for free walking alongside the canals, or very cheaply (29.95 euros a year) appreciating its museums. i'm happy the start and the end of our trip were also its highlights.

we stayed at bed-and-breakfasts during the whole trip, and i recommend every one of them. in venice, we stayed at albergo marin, which is kept spotlessly clean by its friendly owner, gabriele. they also serve perfect cappuccinos. albergo marin is located in the santa croce district, which is far from the main attraction of st. mark's square, but i like it because being away made us explore the areas that receive less tourist attention, yet we remained very close to the waterbus and train stations. in florence, luigi hosted us in his small and homey althea rooms, located in the quiet santo spirito district. it's tucked away from the noise of the historical district, yet only 10 minutes or less by foot from piazza della signora. there are also a couple of good places to eat in the santo spirito square. osteria santo spirito is delightfully innovative, and cafe ricci is frequented by friendly locals. in rome, 58 via cavour is probably worth less than the amount it charged us, but again the location is tops, somewhere in between the colosseum and the spanish steps, and a two-minute walk from the termini station. in amsterdam, hotel washington made for a convenient stay in the museum quarter. our room was huge, the bathroom was impressive, and it was good to listen to english tv programming again after nearly two weeks of nothing but italian.

next project: summer break. last year i trekked in the ruwenzoris of uganda and 'did kili' (reached the summit of kilimanjaro) in tanzania. i haven't any plans yet this year.

where are you going next?