Travel

Unapologetic

This poor ignored blog has been silent for a few days (and less prolific before that) while I have totally and unashamedly ignored it for the world beyond and outside the computer screen (well almost). Traveling to Seattle has been great and the experiencing both city and suburbia life in America has been an eye opener.

An added bonus was coming here during the presidential campaign so the experience of politics in the making was part of the trip. Most of the time is spent sightseeing, visiting friends, relaxing, shopping and experiencing the US. I have been here a few times before but always as a tourist in big cities not as a part of everyday life. For example Friday night football at the local high school, to the outsider this is a marvelous experience.

photo Lines by Wrote (CC BY NC)

The highlights of the trip include grocery shopping in so amazingly overstocked stores it is almost frightening, a Jackson Browne concert, good food, great sushi, going up in the Space Needle… you know, the turist stuff. Anyway this blog will not be back to normal for a while longer but if you really want to see what’s happening I am posting lots of pictures on my flickr page.

Posted on by mklang

Back from Marrakech

So after returning from Marrakech I have been planning to write about it. Unfortunately writing about Marrakech is not the easiest thing since it is an amazing city. It’s all exotica, shopping and sunshine.

The exotic is everywhere! The great buildings, the marketplaces (souqs), the large squares, the call to prayers, the clothes, the carpets, the customs, the food and more…

The shopping was amazing. Unfortunately the merchants there are the most amazing bargainers – they could sell ice in Greenland! Every purchase made was coupled together with buyer’s remorse. When you bargain the end price to a third of the starting price – what was the real price of anything? Despite this nagging concern we ended up buying plenty of interior decorating stuff.

The sunshine! The all time high this week was 52 degrees! This was made bearable by air-conditioning and the pool. Actually the heat was not all that bad but the pool and air-conditioning did make the stay very nice.

I suppose this is a very crappy description of Marrakech but there are better ones online. I will let my pictures give you a glimpse of what I experienced.

Posted on by mklang

Orientalism

Sitting at the train station waiting for the train – this is really nothing noteworthy in my life since I seem to spend much of it on trains these days. But you realize that you are spending too much time in train stations when you begin to recognize members of the cleaning train cleaning crew. It may be not too surprising to recognize them since these are the people who stand and wait at the station at the end of the line (where I get off) in fact these are the people I see most often at the station. Even though I am also beginning to become familiar with the train crews.

Today is different. Sitting with a big yellow suitcase on my way to Norway is the first leg of the journey. Tomorrow the real trip begins: it’s off to Marrakesh in Morocco. Besides being a trip away from a cloudy 14 degrees to a sunny 35 degrees minimum it is also an adventure to new sights, sounds and smells.

The heat demands poolside relaxation during the day so I carry relaxing paperbacks: Heather “The Fall of the Roman Empire”, Sen “The Argumentative Indian”, Murakami “Kafka on the Shore” & Auster “The New York Triology” – as you can see I am planning to do some non-work related reading. But not to worry, there is a laptop discretely tucked away in the suitcase.

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North Pole Marathon

Talk about pushing life to the extremes. There are those who feel that a marathon in itself is not enough of a challenge and choose to run the in extreme. Naturally they are not alone. The North Pole Marathon is an annual event…

Photo: North Pole Marathon 2008 by Mike King

Once you have got over the shock, an intense desire to participate is natural 🙂 And why stop there? The organizers of the North Pole Marathon also hold the Antarctic Ice Marathon.

 

 

Posted on by mklang

We are not alone

Techno Tuesday captures the reality of travel

nomads.jpg

Picture by Andy Rementer (CC BY-NC)

Wifi searching has become more common due to the costs being charged by commercial actors and the closing up of so many networks. This is mainly due to the default settings of the major Internet providers who are now automatically providing wifi routers with closed defaults (more about this stuff here). In addition to the scare tactics in the media. Using a scanner I walked around my new apartment and found 40 wireless networks but only two were open – these were too far away for me to be able to use.

Posted on by mklang

Travel Fraud & Plagiarism

Just because it’s plagiarism doesn’t mean that it has to be bad writing. A travel writer for Lonely Planet, my favorite travel series, has admitted to the Sunday Telegraph that he has not been in the countries he has written about. He wrote his book on Colombia from San Francisco and has admittedly never been in that country he has also admitted to plagiarising  large sections of the book.

The Lonely Planet has fact checked his books but discovered no faults in them.

So what is the problem with a travel writer who has never been in the country? Well it is dishonest and fraudulent since the premise is that the writer is writing from personal experience. The fact that it is good writing is not the point. In fact, as most students are aware, a prerequisite for good plagiarism is good writing.

Posted on by mklang

Thoughts in the London Drizzle

Its kind of sad when wifi rules your thoughts and I am pretty sure that their are lots of ways of rationalizing the need for an internet connection but I must admit it is pretty sad. Sad people should be pitied but when it comes to Internet connections they are not pitied they are preyed upon. The prices hotels seem to think they can charge (maybe they can) for a connection are absolutely ridiculous. Amazingly enough the better the hotel the higher they want to charge – it should sort of be the other way around. The hotel last night only had wifi in the lobby and wanted to charge 80 pounds for a 24 hour connection!!!! This was a new record for me and naturally I went without until today when I can scrounge off someone else.

After arriving yesterday I gave a lecture at the LSE on Disobedience and Resistance in Online Environments – it went very well and the students were quick to join the discussion. Today I will be discussing PhD projects with four students and then its out in the London drizzle. Thanks to the Internet connection I uploaded the last of the Ljubljana pictures – the city is a very cool center for innovative street art.

The rest of my photos are on Flickr

Posted on by mklang

Leaving Ljubljana

Going offline in a short while and I will be leaving Ljubljana in the morning. The rest of the day will be spent on some final sightseeing and then writing in the wifi free hotel room – this is not the same as free wifi! But with any luck I will find a connection in London…

Check out my Ljubljana photographs

Posted on by mklang

Ljubljana

Love to travel, but it’s the traveling I hate! Yesterday I woke up at a little past four. Not much sleep, the usual charming security checks and waiting in line to squeeze into a small city hopper jet and as usual I always end up next to the eccentrics – must be Murphy’s law of airline seating. An all to brief stop in Vienna – my travel agent must be a huge optimist but I managed to make the connection by barging through the passport queue and the security line.

And all of a sudden I am in Ljubljana. Travel is funny like that. Wake up in Sweden and in Slovenia before lunch.

By taking the afternoon off (conference begins tomorrow) its time for sightseeing. Another reason for taking the afternoon off is the lack of wifi. Anyway, the city is really charming with lots of cobbled streets and old houses from all periods and in all states of repair (or dilapidation – if you are more pessimistic).

The center is old and filled with cafés and restaurants I was told that this is the place to find some old antique or maybe some art but what I have seen is reasonably generic and rather pricey. The only really original artwork I have seen is the masses of graffiti on the walls and most of that is pretty generic stuff.

Lots of photography but no souvenir as yet. I have managed to try the local coffee and the local beer (Lasko) and I am happy to report that the Slovenians take these seriously. For some odd reason I ended up eating Mexican food so I cannot comment on their cooking.

The conference begins tomorrow and I am hoping that they have wifi so that I can post this. So if you have read this they must have had…

Posted on by mklang