batli more

been busy drinking...was my birthday..then diwali, the festival of lights and then just happened to stop by an irish pub at midnight on sunday, when better sense should have prevailed. Been playing catch up ever since. Suffice to say that I roamed the area from Boston or Bastun to Batlimore or Bawlmer during these three days, and my chariots were winged, rubbertyred, steelwheeled and laced. I ate pizza and drank beer, ate a full indian wedding meal and drank whiskey, met a new born baby and drank whiskey, slept on the floor of an apartment without any furniture whatsoever and drank whiskey, played tennis, drank beer in the airport and in the irish pub and still had enough time left over to sing devotional hymns and the latest chartbusting hindi songs.... one wonders where all that time comes from. All this in one weekend and there was lots of time left over. Even got through 400 pages of a book called 1491 which is awesome and I shall be reviewing here shortly, if I can digest it. Right now its gotten inside my head and I suddenly feel like an expert in pre-columbus history of the Americas, but lets see what happens once i finish reading it.

Found a nice description of Baltimore, where i just spent 3 idyllic months wallowing in americana. This was in Salon.com, heres an excerpt -


To understand Baltimore, it's helpful to get a grip on its geography. Baltimore is one of those odd American cities that lies in no county; instead, it dangles in the water, surrounded by a ragged blob of land. It has been said that Baltimore County looks like a monkey wrench hanging from the Mason-Dixon Line, which makes Baltimore City the bolt -- one that has been tightened a hair too much. Incapable of expanding, the city has been losing population and political clout since the 1960s, when white residents began to flee for the suburbs. Fittingly, all quintessentially Baltimore stories have a "Wizard of Oz" quality: Characters dream of escaping to someplace new, only to yearn for home. Or, as we say in Bawlmer: Hooooooohme.

read the full article here, after watching the mandatory advert :)