A lovely dream

Silently crossing the ocean of death,
You come as a lovely dream,
My tears call for you hour by hour;
Wandering everywhere, everywhere repulsed,
I was sealed in this dark dream of this life;
Now you have come as a lovely dream.

Now I see darkness pour down like dark hair,
In its folds gleam the jewels of the evening stars,
Now the sky fills with the pain of song,
And trembles with the hum of crickets underfoot.
You worship with incense from the trembling forest -
Now you have come as a lovely dream.

from "The Housewarming", Rabindranath Tagore

I wish I could read it in the original Bengali, but one does what one can.

Warren Buffet Shareholder's Letter from 1978

"We make no attempt to predict how security markets will behave; successfully forecasting short term stock price movements is something we think neither we nor anyone else can do.  In the longer run, however, we feel that many of our major equity holdings are going to be worth considerably more money than we paid, and that investment gains will add significantly to the operating returns of the insurance group."

Turned out to be a fairly accurate forward looking statement.

Names Again

Names of the sandwiches at work :

Ice Man
Spider Man
He Man
Super Man

"Super Man" was my veggie sandwich, and it tasted like a wet sock. I just have to re-iterate my previous statement about names being indicate of content. Alternate names:

Rubber Sole
Wooden Sole
Wet Rubber Sole
Wet Sock

Now thats more like it. Creative and informative.

Whats with the names?

Names of the salads at work today :

As the World Turns
Days of Our Lives
Bold and the Beautiful
Guiding Light

I somehow believe that names for food should be indicative of content. It would be even better if names for people were also indicative of content. For example, the name Phoolan Devi conjures up the image of a goddess ambling amidst flowers (Phool = flowers, Devi = goddess), when in fact she was a dacoit with a rather nasty record of armed robbery.

A picture speaks a thousand words...

..but a few words can also paint quite a picture.

"After the cessation of rain, which had begun in the morning, all the foliage, the sky and the breeze were like eylashes still wet after weeping. "

from Boshtami, Rabindranath Tagore

Announcement

Summer is half over. Don't panic but do something about it. You know life is flashing by you when you have vague recollections of what you did in previous summers, but have no clue which year it was.

Chicago Blues Festival

The crowd. The festival was in Grant Park.

The main stage. The building right behind the stage is the Sears Tower.

One of the substages.

Lou Pride.

Oh that blues guitar!

So much anger and bad grammar!

Peru

Chicago (Thursday, May 21st) ->

Miami (May 21st) ->

Lima (Friday, May 22nd) ->

Cuzco (May 22nd) ->

Tinki (Sunday, May 24th) ->

Around Ausungate with Colque Cruz (Silver Cross) and Jatunpampa (Large plain) looking on (May 24th - May 28th) ->

Cuzco (Thursday, May 28th) ->

Olaytambo (Friday, May 29th) ->

Aguas Caliente (Hot Water!) (May 29th) ->

Machu Pichu (May 29th) ->

Aguas Caliente (May 29th) ->

Olaytambo (Saturday, May 30th) ->

Cuzco (May 30th) ->

Lima (May 30th) ->

Miami (Monday, Jun 1st)->

Chicago (Jun 1st)

Machu Pichu was impressive but not worth the hassle getting there and the gazillion tourists. Might be better in the off-season (November-March).

Cuzco is a town of 500,000 at an altitude of 3400m. The Andes in Peru reminds me of Sikkim (Nepal and Tibet possibly too, though I haven't been to either of the places). The altitude and latitude lead to comparable fauna/vegetation leading people to take to similar adaptations.