A new blog

(Hi everyone,

I've started a new blog under a pseudonym for the controversial stuff, and moved the post that used to be here, over there. It's at http://talkcontribs.blogspot.com/. See you there.)

Better than tripling elephants

In a now-infamous July 2006 episode of the Colbert Report, Stephen Colbert asked Wikipedia readers to insert the factoid that the population of African elephants had tripled in the past six months. Many did, and Wikipedia's vandal-fighters have been regularly removing the claim ever since.

Last week I was one of a small group of people doing a cleanup of Wikipedia's article on the humpback whale. The humpback whale is, apparently, both difficult to count and recovering quite well from the whaling era. A search for estimates of humpback whale abundance brought up this range of figures:

* National Parks Conservation Association: Worldwide current pop. 5,000 to 7,500, down from a pre-whaling population of 125,000
* American Cetacean Society: Worldwide current pop. 30,000-40,000 at present, or "about 30-35% of the original population."
* Marinebio.org: Worldwide current pop. 60,000, or "about 30-35% of the original population."
* State of Alaska: North Pacific pop. 1,000 - 1,200, or less than 10% of the original population
* National Geographic : North Pacific pop. 10,000 to 25,000.

The article last week gave the 5,000 - 7,500 worldwide figure. Because National Geographic cited a new study which uses the best methods to date, we have so far agreed that the 30,000 - 60,000 range is more likely. I did the honours of raising the global humpback whale population by a factor of ten, in one Wikipedia edit. Truth is stranger than truthiness.

Heaven in a paper bag

Soda bread from the Savary Island Pie Company in West Vancouver.

Good to be home

I've been back now for a little over a month. Vancouver is so nice. Clean, comfortable, friendly. The mountains have snow, and the streets are bike-able.

Visiting family Singapore was good too, the best part of the trip.

Surprises of India

The past seventeen days have seemed longer. It's hard to believe I'm flying out tomorrow. I wasn't mentally well-prepared to come here, and in most ways that was a good thing. I wanted to get a change in perspective, and got plenty of that. Here are some of the many surprises of this trip:

- More animals than in a Disney cartoon. The streets of most towns are filled with cows, pigs, dogs, donkeys, camels, and monkeys. The countryside also has goats and buffalo. A cow wacked me with the side of its head when I walked by it in Pushkar. I'm glad it didn't have horns. In the lacto-vegetarian town of Haridwar, I could understand the presence of cows, but why were pigs of all ages running around in the bazaars?

- Surprising practicality #1: Telephones in midrange hotels are minimal. Most in-room phones can't make long-distance calls at all, and they never have voicemail. Payphones are pretty much nonexistent, so if you want to talk you usually have to do it in a shop or a hotel front desk.

- Admission rates are usually several times higher for foreigners than for Indian residents. In the National Museum, Indians pay about 10 rupees (less than 30 Canadian cents) and foreigners pay 300 rupees. Which leads to surprising practicality #2 (OK, not all that surpising): So why can't they figure out that the foreigners aren't used to using a tap in the washroom stall, and that we would would really appecreciate it if toilet paper could also be provided?

- The as-an-educated-person-I-should-have-known-this surprise: Poverty here can be shocking. I thought it would have been a lot like Canada's urban miseries. The big difference here is that the very poor in the streets are often children: tiny kids wandering among cars and knocking on windows, and women carrying dirty, bare-bottomed infants.

- The nicest surprise: Tourists encounter some pretty obnoxious types, but with time you find people who are worth trusting enough to get to know a little bit. And then you discover that most people are incredibly kind, honest, and open-hearted people.

Restaurant menu misspelling of the day

From the Beverages section of a restaurant menu:

"Diet cock"

More highs and lows

Time for another set... The good:
4) The Ganges river in Haridwar
5) The Ayurvedic massage I had in Udaipur
6) The Taj Palace hotel in Delhi. There are a few times in life when a luxury hotel is worthwhile. Arriving in India for the first time is one of them.

The bad:
4) Riverside jokers who come up to you uninvited and "guide" you through Hindu prayers, then ask to be paid. Pushkar has a similar problem. It's like the main function of these "priests" is to prevent tourists from having any kind of spiritual experience.
5) Cold hotel rooms. It's very cold here at night and in the mornings. Just a few minutes away, people are sleeping under pieces of cotton draped over sticks, that make the Vancouver's tent cities look high-tech. I can't imagine.
6) Disappointing restaurant food. Street food actually tastes better.

Haridwar

I came to Haridwar, a town a few hours north of Delhi, for three main reasons: its repuation as being relatively free from annoying people, its excellent yoga and meditation centres, and the Ganges river.

I spent most of today walking beside the Ganges. Here, near its source in the Himalayas, the river is wide, fast-flowing, and beautifully clear. One can quickly understand why the Ganges is deeply beloved.

As for the yoga and meditation centres, the quick summary is that they don't accept tourists dropping in for a day or two. I learned this yesterday in an epic journey in search of a yoga class. The tourist office sent me to a university, the university people said to go to the ashram next door, I met some very kind and hospitable graduate students in yoga (in India, you can get a Masters or PhD in yoga), and one of the recent graduates gave me a tour of the ashram.

My goodness, what an ashram. The Shantikunj ashram in Haridwar has about 5000 residents, housed in apartment blocks. It has its own temples, gardens, and a meditation hall that's like an amphitheatre with three-dimensional mountain scenery on its stage. People stay there for months at a time to do yoga and meditation.

I took an autorickshaw back to my hotel, the Haveli Hari Ganga. I gave the non-English-speaking driver the address, but he still took me to the Hotel Ganga and then the Hotel Hari Ganga, and then then a field on the other side of the river to ask directions, and then got out and walked me across a pedestrian-only bridge. Ten days ago all this would have scared the living daylights out of me, but now that I'm more used to the impromptu nature of life in India we both laughed.

So no yoga yesterday, but getting there was fun.

Udaipur

On Sunday morning I woke up in Udaipur with no more fever but still with a stomachache. Singh had arranged a guide to show me the sights of Udaipur. Fortunately, I managed to not throw up while walking through the City palace, and I let my guie talk me into trying some Ayurvedic treatment for my ailments the next day.

The Vedic Ayurvedic Treatment Institute consists of about six small, clean, airy huts in a garden, none of which look as if they have running water or electricity, although some do. A propane stove also works hard to heat the many litres of water and oil that I went through in a few hours of massage, steam bath, oil-drizzling, and -- my favourite -- podikhizi, a rub with a herbal pack and hot water.

Steam baths take place right on the massage table, under a huge fibreglass half-cylinder that is hoisted into place and then filled with steam. At one point, with all the chattering and bustling going on to keep the steam bath running optimally, I felt like a guest in an Ewok village. The whole setup is surprisingly smooth and comfortable, and by the end the very kind and skilled masseuse was calling me her "daughter." Strange as everything was, it made me the most relaxed I've been in months.

I'm starting to feel more upbeat about being in India. On Saturday evening, I dragged Singh to a screening of the James Bond film Octopussy, which was mostly filmed in Udaipur. There are multiple restaurants in this beautiful city showing it every night. I have developed an empathy for the tourists who go to Tokyo or Rome and then eat fast-food hamburgers. Indulging in an experience of familiar culture, when abroad, is a form of blowing off steam.