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i preface this post by stating that i dislike professional baseball. any sport where the players can have beer bellies and still be considered top athletes is not much of a sport, in my opinion.

that said, i’m happy to report that the red sox won their best-of-7 alcs final against the yankees (aka the evil empire) after coming back from 3-0, a feat never accomplished in baseball history. you need to know the historical context to fully appreciate this. the last time the red sox won the world series was in 1918. in 1920 they traded a player by the name of Babe Ruth to the yankees. since then, they have never won the world series, and thus was born the curse of the bambino and a century of enmity between the yankees and red sox.

they still have one more series to win before they win the world series, so it may be premature to say that the curse has lifted. one thing is certain: boston will descend into an orgy of rioting, burning, and maybe even raping and pilliaging if the red sox do win. low-grade rioting took place last night even. if al-queda was smarter than it is and wanted to do serious damage to a major US city, instead of focusing on WMD or flying planes into buildings, they should have instead fronted the money to bring alex rodriguez to boston. anthrax and ricin is nothing compared to drunk, celebratory red sox fans.

speaking of delivering us from evil, my prediction is that if the curse of the bambino is lifted, it’s a sure sign from god that massachusetts senator john kerry will become president.

The more time I spend in India, the more backwards my homeland starts to be.

The overall word is quality and portion is not what you would get in our humble corner of the world so realizing that, you start to notice three big things here.

So before I left people joked about how cows were sacred so there’s no beef. So anytime you look for something with meat in it, it’s usually chicken. That’s not to say it’s a breast or a drumstick; it’s something edible so just eat it. I went to a pasta place the other day and like most menu’s they had a Veg side and a Non-Veg side: usually mostly chicken, a little pork and (at a nicer restaurant) Lamb. I now know that Non-Veg isn’t the same as Meat even though those familiar names are there. So I ask for a Chicken primavera (I think) which is chicken in a cheese-cream sauce with spaghetti noodles. What I got was sticky spaghetti noodles with Baloney. I won’t say it tasted bad; it’s just not what you would expect.

This is an international city, so there are international restaurants. KFC was an easy one to bring in, McDonald’s apparently just opened up but don’t ask me what they could serve besides a plain bun. My first day here I actually went for lunch at Pizza Hut. They actually did a very good job with the Pizza, the crust was pretty bang-on (actually less greasy), maybe a little skimpy on the sauce, but overall the same as I’d get at home. The difference is the Menu like I mentioned above; no meat-lovers here. The best one I saw permanently printed as an option in the menu was:
” Pepperoni!* – The proverbial pizza classic!
*These selections are not available due to import restrictions”
Even if it’s not an option, it’s nice to see a familiar favorite.

So the last is the obvious, there’s spicy and then well… there’s just spicy. Now I did expect that a lot of the food would be spicy, what I didn’t expect was the total lack of other flavors, no sweet, no salty, just bland or spice. I was in two different Chinese restaurants yesterday and neither had soya sauce. Though they were both very good, at the first there was a buffet. There was three different Non-Veg choices so I took some of each so I could avoid the really spicy. Well really the only difference was the size and texture of the pieces, beyond that I guess the bowls were different shapes. I’m not saying any were bad, just that the three options were spicy, spicy or spicy. At the second restaurant there was a choice called sweet & spicy which I automatically went for remembering the sweet sauces I would normally get at home. Of course I should have realized I was here; there is no sweet, I just picked something called spicy. So a lot of sweating and sniffling later, I actually did finish a rather tasty dish.

So besides that I’m taking a liking to the cafe lattes that are more common here. Coffee is normally served in something the size of a shot glass, but man is it potent.

Well, it looks like slanty.net is spreading around the world again. While SlantyK is in India, I have been up North again. This time, I have been slumming in Yellowknife for the past two months working as one of four anesthetists and trauma specialists up here. For our non-canadian readers, Yellowknife is located in the NorthWest Terriories of Canada. It is considered “sub-arctic” just north of 60 degrees lattitude but it still freaking cold. Inuvik and Paulatuk on the Arctic Ocean by comparison is north of 30 degrees in the Arctic Circle.

To begin with, the environment is pretty but harsh. First snowfall up here was back in early September pictured here. The snow has not stopped falling since the end of September and the temperature is usually spoken of as “13″ or “18″. Sounds pretty good until you realize that everyone just neglects the “minus” that needs to go in front of the number. In reality I have been driving on snow and ice for almost 4 weeks straight since they don’t bother to clear or salt the roads up here. As well, it’s been over a week since the temperature was warmer than -10. As you can see above, the parka comes in handy.

All in all, this is essentially just an acclimatizing step for me. This is because in mid January, I will be back in Inuvik where for that part of the year, the temp hits -60 on cold days. As well, there is no sunlight at that time of year (the exact opposite to my 56 days of straight sun during last summer).

More to come in the next installment of I Killed Kenny For His Parka…

So Saturday afternoon at 1 PM started the longest commute to work I can ever complain about. There are a lot of little details I could go on about for the trip but needless to say 3 planes and 2 hotels later, I walked into work at 10:00am Monday morning, half a world away from where I started.

So I think I could describe India, and then there is Bangalore, as they seem to be 2 separate things. In my quick trip through Mumbai everything was very beaten down and thrown together, feral dogs roamed the streets and every house looked like a slum. Banglaore on the other hand is trying to be North American, but starting from an India city.

My first day showed this unique city. For starters I needed to have someone from the office help we cross the street to get to our building 1 block away. I’m not kidding, traffic is NUTS here.

First rule, pedestrians are last. This actually makes more sense than in NA, a car is bigger than you, so why should the pedestrian have the right of way? Second, traffic lights just make you stop, so why have them? Third, why have lines when I can fit beside you? And lastly if you have a horn, use it. The ratio on the road is 60% motorcycles, 30% rickshaws (these are 3 wheeled taxis, it’s often better to take a rickshaw for short distances as it’s safer than crossing the street yourself) and 10% cars. But a weird thing is with everything gridlock, and packed together, horns honking every 2 seconds and an everyone for them self attitude, everyone is pretty calm about it& no shouting, no accidents, just something you have to do.

I’ll try to talk about more stuff tomorrow though I’m sure to most travelers this is nothing new, definent shock to me though, good thing that I found the Simpsons on TV.

Now that the apartment has been shown and sold, and now that we’re comfortably moved in to our new place, we now continue with our regularly scheduled insanity.

Dear SlantyNet: I missed you.

PS: Thanks AGAIN to everybody that helped out with the move. It would have been a hellacious day without you.

PPS: We got the big couch upstairs. Everything is possible.