"Zeeee" said the woman (9/24/2018)

“Zeeee, zeeee, zeeee” spoke the woman in a low, somewhat low husky but hushed voice to me. The owner of the restaurant asked me: “Can I buy it from you?” What the heck was going on? Well, let’s start at the beginning.

I was in Blacksburg this week; home of Virginia Tech. I was teaching two different inspector classes and as usual consulted Yelp for a place to go out for dinner. I have found Yelp to be a fairly reliable travel companion when it comes to finding good to sometimes even funky places to eat. Well, when Yelp told me there was a Tibetan restaurant nearby called Himalayan Curry Café that has four and a half stars, this former dweller of the Himalayan Mountains had to go and try it out.

As my regular readers know, my wife and I lived in Nepal for about a year and a half. My job took me up on the Tibetan Plateau of the Mustang district at regular intervals. I have written about my wonderful encounter with a Tibetan scholar/Lama and about my experience getting dehydrated in a snowstorm at 12,000 feet elevation. There are many more stories I can tell from being up there. I sometimes feel that his blog is turning out to become somewhat of my personal memoire, combined with observations of current events and some of the more natural things around us.

Getting back to the story. When I got to the restaurant, it was obvious a place for a university crowd. A cut above one of those take-out Chinese restaurants that your see in every strip mall, but less than a regular Indian restaurant. You either get takeout, or they end up serving your food on styrofoam plates and you eat it with plastic utensils. To me, the menu looked very Indian; however, in fine-print on the side were some Tibetan dishes which immediately caught my attention. I ordered momos, a dish of Tibetan steamed dumplings; lentil soup; and a samosa (yes that was Indian). While paying, I asked the proprietor if he was from Nepal. “No” he answered, “we are from Tibet.” We made a little additional small talk and that was it. 

With the lentil soup finished it was time to attack the momos.  The black sauce is a hot chili sauce which is very good.

All dishes were out-of-this-world delish (later, I rated the restaurant a five star on Yelp). The momos were filled with beef, in Mustang mine were filled with Yak meat or mutton, but boy did I recognize the taste. Tibetans are Buddhist and they will eat beef (or cows) unlike the Hindus, for whom the cows are considered holy. I remember so well being with the Buddhist population and Tibetan ethnic groups in Nepal; they are so very different than the Hindu population of the lowlands. One of the more interesting memories is that of sleeping with an entire family unit in their home during a very cold evening. I was taking a visiting scientist around the districts I was working in. Everyone on mats on the floor, of course, with their head towards a central fire. In the beginning I was somewhat distrustful, but that was completely baseless. When we woke up in the morning, the first thing that happened was the passing around of a cup of warmed up peach brandy. This brandy was distilled at an agricultural experiment station nearby. After that the lady house started making the famous butter tea, made from tea leaves, yak butter, boiling water and salt (an acquired taste for sure). Memories of a night and early morning I will always carry with me. 

The one time we visited the area we landed smack in the middle of a Buddhist ceremony.  Here monks are tooting their long horns in a procession.

Another picture of the ceremony male and female monks in the ceremony while the villagers are looking on.

But I digress again. After finishing my dinner, it was time to leave and I walked over to the trash bins to deposit my dirty plates and dinnerware. In the meantime, a Tibetan couple had come in and sat down in the far corner and the owner of the restaurant had joined them and they were talking. I waved at them and the owner asked me if I enjoyed my food. I told him I did and decided to walk over and show them the ring I bought from a Tibetan gentleman when I was in Nepal some 35 years ago and that I wear on my right hand. The instance the lady of the couple saw my ring she hissed those words to me: “Zeeee, zeeee, zeeee.” We knew the stone in the ring was a Z-stone, but her reaction was amazing, and it was the first time I had an independent confirmation. 

Here it is, the ring I wear every day with the Z-stone.

The lady continued: “That is a precious stone.” This was where the restaurant owner asked me if he could buy the ring from me. The lady’s husband chimed in telling me that a Z-stone gives the wearer power and the bigger the stone the more power it has. According to the owner, the power flows from the shoulder to the hand and goes “pow.” It seemed none of them had a Z-stone and it is very desirable in their culture, because it gives you power and fends off evil. We talked a bit more about things. It seems that I met all the Tibetans in Blacksburg that evening; a fun, interesting and delicious evening indeed. A wonderful throw back to a time 35 years ago, but still fresh in my memory.

Some of the things you can only remember when you travel.  To quote Mohammed: "Don't tell me how educated you are, tell me how much you traveled."

On cyber communities (12/7/2015)

On the road again, for the last trip of the year.  It started pretty darn shitty, but finally made it to my destination as of this writing.  Wytheville is a sleepy town in "them hills" of Virginia. I have this reputation with my colleagues of being in love with this town, and for one reason or another I used to go here very often; at least until they discovered it.

When on the road I rely a lot on my (artificial) cyber communities that we all seem to have amassed around us.  I was reminded about that today during my drive over here listening to National Public Radio's Fresh Air by Terry Gross.  She was interviewing Rick Moody about his new book "Hotels of North America".  The book is written as a set of hotel reviews.

It made me think of how I live and depend on my cyber community when on the road:

• Yelp (for restaurant reviews)
• LinkedIn (for support form like-minded professionals, kind of like a support groups)
• Facebook (mostly friends)
• Google+ (my blog, more artsy community and bonsai enthusiasts)
• Google Maps (for traffic updates and restaurant recommendations)
• Weather Underground (all about weather)

Within these communities there are also special groups that I'm a member of.  For example in Facebook I'm a member of our church group, our neighborhood group, the Virginia birders group, and a bread bakers group.  In LinkedIn I'm a member of 20+ groups.  Driving over, I started realizing that I have a lot of fake or maybe artificial friends. The interesting thing is too that all these sites keep suggesting more groups that you might be interested in joining, like trying to suck you in deeper and deeper.

I'm always amused by my 88 year old father-in-law  (who reads these posts and will probably give me grief for mentioning him), because he seems so bemused by the fact that Facebook knows so (too) much about him and it keeps suggesting potential new friends to him or trying to invite him to join LinkedIn.  He is correct it is somewhat intrusive, just look at that list of communities that know my preferences etc. and keeps tabs on me.

But yes, without Yelp, I would never have found those great restaurants, or avoided those supposedly lousy ones.  I also write reviews, usually only of good experiences and only once or twice of really horrible dining experiences (I hated those professors that graded you on your mistakes and did not look at the things you did correct).  I never review a place to settle a score or to make someone look bad; I try to be a responsible partner in my community.  Some don't; this morning there was a thing on morning edition about women being taken advantage off through on-line dating, another one of those communities.

Internet communities are great things for a lot of people including me.  They put all your friends together: it allowed me to rediscover old long lost friends; it gave me support groups; it gave me traffic information; and I had some absolutely great inexpensive food.  So yes, I like my friends on my cyber groups, my real friends or virtual friends.  Moreover, traveling is lonely and it is better than getting silly in a bar.  But I realize as well, nothing is better than real life friends in real flesh that you can talk to, have a drink with and just be with.

Virginia Beach (5/12/2015)

This week's travel takes me to Virginia Beach.  At least I had a chance to walk along the beach after the "Stormwater Plan Review" class that I taught.  As usual, I was exhausted from a day's worth of teaching, but it was still nice to be out there.

It was warm, with temperatures in the high 80s (30 to 31 degrees Celcius) and there were a fair number of people on the beach for a Tuesday afternoon.

Virginia Beach is a great place for a family vacation; for us it is so close but so far away.  Political leaders in the area are desperately trying to make the Hampton Roads area one community,  but the tunnels actually divides the area into the south side and the peninsula.

What amazed me during my walk on the beach was the number of people on their smartphones.  Darn, it seems that people cannot just enjoy their surroundings and the environment but have to be connected all the time.  How many times do you sit in a restaurant and a couple comes in and after being seated and ordering they ignore each other and just stare at their phone.  While phones are a god sent for us travelers  (we stay in touch with spouses and find the nice restaurants on Yelp), it seems that human relationship seems to suffer.  Even on this beautiful beach, couples were sitting on benches staring at their phones instead of looking at people, the beach and the ocean.  So close, but so far apart.

A nice change of pace was the sushi counter at my favorite sushi restaurant: Kyushu Japanese Restaurant on Newtown road.  I was sitting there with three other people and we had a wonderful discussion.   Kyushu is really my favorite and worth a try for all that like sushi.  The fish is fresh, it tastes great and good conversation.