Pakistan is doing well on the coronavirus front, much to the befuddlement of all. Hard to say if it will last, but for now. In the meantime, I happened to be at the birth of a meme. One of the people I follow on Twitter lives in Karachi and with the devastating monsoon rain there […]
Intercontinental travel
This afternoon we took the ferry across the Bosphorus from Europe to Asia. We went to Kadikoy, and in particular to Moda, which is a little pointy bit of Anatolia looking down from the Bosphorus into the Sea of Marmara. Because it is pointy, there is a sort of a quiet lagoon within a lagoon […]
Singed ear
The GF has just returned from a haircut, his face perturbed and his ears lightly coated in ash. It appears that an intrinsic part of the Istanbul barbershop experience is to have your ears set on fire.
Further along the coast
Yesterday, Sunday, we went even further along the coast to the home of someone we knew in Istanbul. The house was just above the coastal road, at a point where the Bosphorus turned towards the Black Sea, and a cool, fresh breeze blew constantly down that long channel. We went for brunch at around noon, […]
Along the coast
Yesterday we went along the Bosphorus to Bebek, a wealthy neighbourhood overlooking the sea. It was very pleasant, quite like Hampstead or Primrose Hill, with some nice restaurants and cafes, pretty houses with white wooden decorations like icing on a cupcake, and of course beautiful – but not too beautiful – people. I suspect a […]
Sheriff of Istanbul
We were given the phone number of a friend of a friend, someone in Istanbul we were told, do give them a call. So the GF rang them and told them where we were, and they said ‘I know the area well, I’m the sheriff.’ So today we went to meet the sheriff, in an […]
Another market
Yesterday we realised that, for all our efforts, we were getting low on fruit, so at lunchtime we went to the Sunday market near the flat. A very different experience indeed from the previous day’s organic market. This was set up along a street, with stall after stall overflowing with produce and interspersed with stalls […]
Long day’s travel
We’ve arrived. We left Tainan around noon, a taxi to the HSR and then a train ride to Taoyuan. It was the usual one and a half hour, which seems to be the journey time in Taiwan, regardless of where one is going. At the station we were met by the Boddhisattva and the Woodland […]
Great disaster
Eid began with leftovers as I ate the daal from a few days ago for breakfast. Rather pitiful, since it was stale and old and not at all Eid fare, but it was what I had that felt like home. Also, two cups of tea instead of my usual rigidly rationed one. When the GF […]
Tatami afternoon
Our guests left this afternoon, but before that we went to a matcha teahouse in an old Japanese house, very rickety indeed, for lunch and tea. Our plan had been to then get the train to the Chimei museum, a somewhat ridiculous seeming place, part US Capitol and part Versailles, with a collection of Western […]