Tag: water

Been feeling a bit burned out lately, too many weeks of running around doing stuff and not enough down time, I suspect (hence the lack of posts and lack of Ant-Boy).

Anyway, while taking a break I ran across this article over at CSM. I’ve felt that frustration as well when I was younger. Back in a high school painting class I took; I was working on painting a lighthouse on an icy shore. The teacher came over and said my waves were wrong, took the brush from my hand and painted the waves the way she thought they should be. After all these years1, I still feel somewhat annoyed/bitter that she did that. Ah well, not much I can do about it.

Our assignment was to paint watercolor landscapes. I painted trees with round tops, modeled after the pruned trees I saw as I walked to school each morning. I liked my painting; my teacher did not. She said my trees looked like lollipop trees; that they didn’t look like real trees, although they looked like the trees I knew.

Mrs. E picked up a paintbrush and painted over my trees to make them look the way she thought trees should look.

For the rest of my school years, I never voluntarily took an art class.

Anyway to Mrs. Kennar I say, though I’m not a teacher and I did continue taking art classes2 in high school and into college; I’ll never paint over your lollipop trees.

1 While I’ve been told that I look much older than my actual age (28); I’ve been through enough other experiences that thinking high school feels like I’m trudging through ancient history.
2 Though perhaps not surprisingly, I haven’t done any painting since I took that class.

Today we went to Kyoto. We’d been warned that it was one of the hottest places in Japan, but I hadn’t paid too much attention to the warnings thinking that I wouldn’t really notice the difference after the heat I’d already been dealing with. Boy was I ever wrong! It was the single most brutal day of heat and misery that I’ve ever experienced. It wouldn’t have been so bad if I’d been wearing shorts, but AWelkin had mentioned prior to the trip that it was one of the more conservative areas of Japan and we shouldn’t wear shorts there because it’s just not done1. I have to say that if I’d known in advance how brutal the heat would be there; I would have ignored that cultural advice and worn shorts. It was horrific and it make matters worse, the main temple we’d come to see was more than just a little ways from the train station and all the walking was uphill. Before we got there though, we rode the local bus system which wasn’t too bad, except when it got crowded2. Once the bus desposited us at the base of the hill to the temple; we started the climb, ignoring all the shops on the way up. When we finally made it to the top of the hill; we found we had to go up a set of steep stairs to get to the actual temple area. I think we’d already visited another temple that day (I’ll have to go through all the tickets and scraps I saved from the trip to double-check) and so AWelkin allowed those students who wanted to; to rest at the base of the temples. Only about 5 of us (3, if you didn’t count AWelkin & Bryon) actually went in. It was the most beautiful temple we’d seen yet and had a view of the valley area below which rivalled (but didn’t quite beat) the view of the ocean at the one previous temple. Again, words fail me here so I’ll have to hurry up and see about posting some pictures.
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Homestay Day 2
We slept fairly late and then R & M made us brunch. A massive salad with tomatoes and onion, eggs, sausage, fatty ham patties and fresh fruit. After we lazily ate breakfast, they took us to a nearby beach. M-san warned us first that the water was very dirty but we had no better ideas on where we would have liked to go, so it was off to the beach. The whole area was filthy; actually, it was the first time I’d seen so much litter laying on the ground. And water level was really low, so there was something like a 100 yards of mud between the normal beach and the water line. Still, there was a strong breeze coming off the water and the smell of the sea was much like I remember from visiting the ocean back when I lived in North Carolina. So it was very pleasant. Then as we were leaving, R-san bought us some Japanese style ice-cream. Basically it like a slushie, shaved ice topped with flavored syrup but they also added in some cream. It was delicious!
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My study group all made it to Japan safe & sound. We did nearly lose some people along various stages of the way here, but in the end we arrived with our lives and health in tact. I don’t know these people well enough to say whether or not their sanity is in tact after the trip or if they’re always this crazy.

As this was the first time in my memory that I’ve flown; I think I should make a note of the following:

  • Flying is not as bad an experience as I had been fearing it might be.
  • Puddle-jumper planes suck for people over 5 foot 8 inches, due to low ceilings and no headroom when going down the aisle.
  • International flights are too damn long and my ears are still somewhat numb from the constant roar of the engines.
  • Turbulance sucks! Particularly when you’re watching the wing bounce.
  • Landings are not evil, but only because that means you can get off the plane soon.

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YOU ARE THE ATACAMA DESERT

You are the driest area on Earth. Your annual rainfall is roughly the depth of a dollar bill. In fact, often you can go for several years without any precipitation whatsoever. If you wanted to fill a pint glass by rainfall alone, you would have to have started in 1704, five years before the invention of the piano; to get enough water to drown a man of average height would take 3600 years, or the time between us and the Hittites. You really put Canadian “dry” ginger ale into perspective.

I am the Atacama Desert!
Which Extremity of the World Are You?
From the towering colossi at Rum and Monkey.