It doesn’t take long wandering the streets of Turkey (or even Greece, for that matter), to realize that belief in the Evil Eye is very real here. Typically addressed to someone who is unaware, it is essentially a dirty look given by someone who is jealous to another, able to cause bad luck, injury or even death for the recipient. Its legend dates as far back as the Old Testament in the Bible, and it requires protective measures to be taken against it.

The most common of these measures is the display of a blue charm or talisman, known in Turkey as nazar, featuring concentric blue and white circles typically arranged from dark blue to white to light blue and back to dark blue (outside-in). Many people believe that the presence of these charms will actually turn the malicious gaze back upon the sender, with the charm being blue because of the ancient Anatolian belief that it shields or absorbs negative energy. As a result, you will see these charms attached to anything and everything that may attract envy and greed—homes, animals, machines, newborn babies, and even web sites!

It is worth noting that the evil eye doesn’t have to only be given to another ‘deserving’ person. To the contrary, it is believed that the most common “victims” are babies and young children, as they are so often praised by others, and can even extend to animals and possessions. The phenomenon has been widely documented as well, with more than 100 authors ranging from Plato to Theocritus having described it.

While the protective charms that are so popular among tourists are most prominent here in Turkey, belief in the Evil Eye extends far beyond the Mediterranean. Addressed in Islamic doctrine and also used by Jews and Christians alike, it is most feared in the Middle East, but also can be found in Africa, Central America, South and Central Asia and Northern Europe.

The Evil Eye displayed in a home…

The Evil Eye displayed in a garden…

Someone once told me that the buses (colectivos) of Buenos Aires are like old men in a bar—loud, smoky and rough around the edges, but dependable—they always show up, usually in no time at all.

My first experience—Bus 152 from Palermo across town to La Boca—couldn’t have lived up to my expectation any more.

Despite that lack of a centrally-managed bus system, this is the transportation method of choice for hundreds of thousands of portenos every day. Why? Because the (lack of a) system works. Just don’t expect your every day modern conveniences, like air conditioning, a seat, or, oh, for the bus to actually come to a complete stop before you exit.

Yes, the experience can be harrowing to the newbie, but you’ll be surprised how quickly you catch on.

Make Sure You Know What You’re Getting Into!

How to Ride

Here’s a few tips to make your acclamation easier:

1. Map Your Course: Unless you’ve got a good local friend to explain it to you, you’ll likely need your Guia T to figure out the best way to get to where you’re going (because you’ll likely have several choices). More on this later!
2. Know Where Your Bus Stops: This seems easy enough by recognizing the path your line takes, but not all bus lines serve each bus stop.
3. Know Where Your Bus Goes: No, I’m not stating the obvious. Some bus lines in Buenos Aires have multiple routings—meaning the 24 can go one of three different ways. There is a little diagram of the routing on the front of the bus, so make sure you give it a glance or ask if in doubt!
4. Flag Him Down: While there will likely be a queue of people at your stop, they may not all be waiting for the same bus as you, and the driver isn’t going to stop just because he sees people there. Make sure you wave when you see yours coming, and even then…
5. Have a Short Memory: Life throws us all rejections sometimes. The best thing we can do is to forget about them and move on. The same applies to waiting for a bus in Buenos Aires. Just because the customer wants to get on the bus doesn’t mean the driver is going to stop—this is the Wild West of public buses! If it happens to you, fret not—there’s likely another bus coming soon.
6. State Your Destination (or Fare, if you Know): Fares in BA are set by distance. Without a transit card (“Sube  Card”), it’s likely going to cost you two pesos. Anyway, once you state where you’re going, the driver programs that into the machine where you…
7. Pay Your Fare: Don’t come with bills—these machines only accept coins.
8. Keep Your Ticket: As the fares do vary, it is possible that there will be someone checking tickets to make sure riders are paying the right fare. Given that fares don’t vary too much, it isn’t likely, but it does happen!
9. Don’t Take the Priority Seating: Yes, people here actually abide (for the most part) by the sign that specifies priority seating for the elderly or pregnant. Don’t be that guy, or girl, unless you are that guy, or girl!
10. Try Not to Fall Down!: As you may have inferred from Instruction #5, drivers here aren’t typically interested in being customer-friendly. In fact, some companies pay commissions based on passengers carried (yes, there are several different companies operating the 100-plus bus lines in BA), so these drivers are interested in speed above all! You may want to hang on tight, and when it’s time to exit…you may have to jump out while the bus is at a slow roll!

Hopefully that will help you the first time you cover the expanse of Buenos Aires…and don’t forget to enjoy the ride!

Ready for a ride through Palermo

Some local food choices…

Imagine a million people running around with no place to go, all united in celebration of….something. So what that the vast majority of them haven’t a clue exactly what they are celebrating? It’s Notting Hill Carnival, baby!

Every year on the last weekend of August, about a million people of every creed, color and nationality descend upon this otherwise quaint neighborhood on the western edge of central London—just to the north of the posh Kensington and Holland Park areas and just east of gritty Shepherd’s Bush. The Carnival originated in the 1960’s as a celebration of West Indian culture, with a heavy dose of Trinidad, Jamaica, St. Lucia and just about every other country in the region. While its origins trace to a time of heavy racial tension in London, it has evolved over the past four decades into a multicultural celebration, with countless blocks of narrow residential streets packed shoulder to shoulder with peaceful party-goers.

While the event is centered around a parade, featuring Caribbean steel bands, dancers with elaborate costumes, radio deejays and the like, most attendees probably never see the parade course. Instead, every few hundred feet there seems to be another party going on, with a new set of speakers blasting reggae, trance, hip hop, and just about anything else that gets people moving.

If you can navigate to some of the food stalls, you can enjoy Jamaican specialties like jerk chicken, plantains, patties and rice & peas, and of course there is Red Stripe—the beer of choice by a longshot—available by the basketful.

Enjoy some of the pictures below from the Carnival, and if it looks appealing to you, book your ticket to London for the last weekend of August. If you’re looking for one of the largest street parties on the planet, with completely free entrance, you won’t be disappointed. 

The Puerta del Sol, or “Gate of the Sun”, is the center of life in Madrid and the symbolic center of Spain. The radial network of Spanish roads begins here, with just about every Spanish road (and all of the 250 bus lines in the city) measuring distances from here, but it is more commonly known for its social elements.

Originally one of the gates in the city wall that surrounded Madrid in the 15^th century, in the subsequent decades and centuries it became the place where people gathered to hear the latest news and gossip (after all, Twitter wasn’t around in the 17^th century). While it no longer serves this purpose today, it has remained the place where Madrilenos meet up. The square also hosts a large New Years Eve celebration (The Eating of Twelve Grapes) and just about any political rallies that take place in Spain.

Where Life in Spain Begins…

If some of the Netherlands’ more conservative civic leaders had their say, marijuana would no longer be available to visitors in this country. Tired of Amsterdam’s longstanding brand association with marijuana since it was decriminalized in the 1970s, last year, the government introduced a mandatory membership card which would be required to purchase the drug—a card that would only be available to Dutch citizens.

Fortunately for those of you saddened by this news, cooler heads have prevailed, as the law was repealed just before its scheduled introduction on January 1^st. Instead, each city in the Netherlands will be able to regulate marijuana as they choose.

Credit people like Amsterdam mayor Eberhard van der Laan for letting common sense and foresight trump conservative politics:

“It’s not like tourists are going to say ‘OK, there’s no cannabis here anymore,” and accept it, van der Laan said. “Instead, they’re just goingt o try to find it on the streets, leading to a larger black market, more disputes with dealers, no control over its quality and all of the other problems we used to have.”

Of course there is an economic play as well. According to Amsterdam’s Bureau for Tourism, about 25 percent of the city’s 6 million annual foreign visitors visit one of the country’s 750 coffeeshops (220 in Amsterdam alone) to experiment. They estimated that the law would have deterred about 1 million of these from even including Amsterdam in their travel plans.

Whatever the ultimate motivation behind the repeal—be it common sense or euro stacks—it is great to see Amsterdam’s cannabis tradition remain alive and well.

Asians, male and female alike, generally tend to do pretty well when it comes to aging—in many countries in the Far East, it isn’t uncommon to see working professionals who could probably pass for high school students in many places. Whether it is genes, the hefty emphasis they place on body and skin care, or overall healthy lifestyles, it can be difficult for people from other cultures to play the age-guessing game here.

In Korea, that is even more challenging, because of Korea’s unique method of calculating someone’s age.

Most of us turn a particular age on the day that is exactly that number of years from our birth. So if I was born on the first day of March in 1990, then today, March 1st, 2013, I turned 23. For the rest of this year, and actually until March 1st, 2014, I will be considered 23 years of age.

Koreans, however, are all considered two years older than they really are. Three months after birth, a Korean is already considered to be age 1, factoring in the 9-month pregnancy. Then, on the New Year’s Day of their first year, they are considered to be 2. So from our example above, if I was Korean and born on the first day of March in 1990, then I turned 1 on June 1st of that year. Then, on New Year’s Day of 1991, I turned 2. From then on, I add a year every New Year’s Day.

So under this method, even though today is still celebrated as my birthday, my age doesn’t change. I actually “turned” 24 on January 1st. Come January 1st, 2014, I will turn 25, while the non-Korean I share a birthdate with will still be 23.

Of course, this method opens up another can of worms: If the first birthday is considered 90-or-so days after birth, and the second is the first New Year’s Day, then what about those babies born in the last three months of the year? Does that first New Year’s they experience just not count, because they haven’t reached their 90 days yet?

In this case (which the math would suggest applies to about 25% of Koreans), the first New Year’s Day is indeed “skipped” in regards to counting age. But the age calculation quickly catches up after that. For babies in this case, the first actual birthday (as in, the anniversary of the actual date of birth), would add a year, and then the annual New Year’s Day tally would continue as per normal.

So in this example, if I was born on November 1st, 1990, I would turn 1 on February 1st, 1991. I would turn 2 on November 1st of that year, and quickly turn 3 on New Year’s Day of 1992, just as in the example above when I was born on March 1st.

Got that?

Next time you bet a drink on guessing your Korean friend’s age, don’t forget to clarify whether you’re guessing their Korean age or their other age, and if it’s their Korean age, add two!

(image credit: eMagAsia.com)

When I travel abroad, I come across people all the time, all over the world who want to visit the United States. I’m frequently asked where I think they should visit, and I almost always answer their question with a question: what kind of scene are you looking for?

See, I love the East and I love the West. (I can’t say the same about the South or the Midwest, but that’s another story for another day). But they are distinctly different, from the people to the landscape to the overall culture. When I was reading a few message boards to see what other people had thought about the difference, the funniest summary I read was this:

The East Coast is John Travolta’s character (Vinnie Barbarino) in Welcome Back, Kotter,  a popular late eighties sitcom. The West Coast is Sean Penn’s character (Jeff Spicoli) in Fast Times at Ridgemont High, a 1982 teen comedy film.

I found it quite interesting to explore this further, so I’ve pulled both characters’ description from Wikipedia for your enjoyment. Do you think it is accurate?

In the East Corner…Vincent “Vinnie” Barbarino!

 A cocky Italian-American, and “unofficial official” leader and resident heartthrob of the Sweathogs (a group of underachieving friends). Barbarino’s prowess with women was a source of envy (and more often amusement) among his classmates. On occasion he would break out in song of his last name sung to the tune of The Regents’ classic, “Barbara Ann”. He was the first of the Sweathogs to move out on his own when he got a job as a hospital orderly. In the first episode of the series and fourth season, he has a girlfriend, Sally. Vinnie is Catholic (often quoting his mother as a saint), and as shown in “I’m Having Their Baby”, is a Star Trek fan. Little is known about Vinnie’s life at home other than his parents argue a lot (“Follow the Leader (part 2)”), his mother’s name is Margie (“The Great Debate”), and he shares a bed with his brother. The episode “Don’t Come Up And See Me Sometime” implied that Vinnie is the older of the two.

Vinnie’s catchphrases

• “Up your nose with a rubber hose!”
(Barbarino was the first in the series to rank somebody. In later episodes, other body parts and objects whose names rhymed were incorporated into the rank. For example, “Up your gizzard with a rubber lizard!” was used by Washington in a later episode.) The so-called art of ranking was immortalized in song in 1976 performed by Gabe Kaplan. The song, “Up Your Nose”, did not get very far as it highly dated itself by making numerous contemporary references– CB Radios, The Gong Show, singing cat commercials, etc.).
• “Wah-ha-ha-ha-howwww…”
(Whenever he becomes love-stricken)
• “What?” “Where?” “Why?”
(Usually to feign ignorance when accused of something or asked to do something he’s not ready to do)
• “I’m so con-fused!” (Usually over-dramatized)
• “I’m Vinnie Barbarino!” (Also over-dramatized, usually when a girl snubs or spurns him)

East Coast: John Travolta as Vinnie Barbarino?

In the West Corner…Jeff Spicoli!

 A a fictional character in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. While he is a freshman in the book, he is a senior in the film. Spicoli is a surfer dude with no job who enjoys smoking marijuana. Penn’s performance is the first notable instance of the Southern California “surfer stoner” being portrayed on film (as culturally distinct from other “stoner” characters such as Pedro de Pacas (Cheech Marin), Man (Tommy Chong), Carl Spackler (Bill Murray) and Billy (Dennis Hopper)).

One of the first times the viewer sees Spicoli in the movie, he is late for Mr. Hand’s U.S. History class. According to one of his classmates, he has been “stoned since the third grade.” Throughout the film, Spicoli serves as the comic relief, usually opposite Mr. Hand in a series of amusing sketches. He was also late when he stayed in the food lines to get a bagel. When Mr. Hand asked him why he continually wastes his time, Jeff’s response was “I don’t know.” Mr. Hand then wrote those words on the board for all of his classes to see, with Spicoli seemingly appreciating the recognition.

He is always short of money and does not have a job. When Brad Hamilton asks him why he doesn’t have a job, Spicoli answers, “All I need are some tasty waves, a cool buzz, an’ I’m fine.” He purportedly received a guitar pick from Mick Jagger, whom he claims to have met after a Rolling Stones concert in Anaheim, California. His closest pals are two unnamed surfer dudes played by Eric Stoltz and Anthony Edwards. He is also friends with Ridgemont High’s star football player Charles Jefferson’s little brother, having played video games with him at the mall. When they were driving Charles’ car to a party, Jeff crashed the car and wrecked it. They made it look as if a rival school, Lincoln High, had done it. Jeff’s little brother, Curtis, thinks that he is stupid. He also owns a pair of turquoise colored Ray-Ban Wayfarer sunglasses, which he wears occasionally in Mr. Hand’s class.

On the day of the prom, Mr. Hand shows up at Spicoli’s house and tutors him as payback for having wasted 8 hours of his time during the school year. After the tutoring session, Jeff wonders if there’s a kid like him in Mr. Hand’s class every year. He also wonders if he’ll pass U.S. History. Mr. Hand tells him not to worry and that he’ll probably “squeak by.”

At the end of the movie, it is revealed that at some point in the future he saved Brooke Shields from drowning, and was rewarded with a large amount of money. He then blew it all by hiring Van Halen to play at his birthday party.

West Coast: Sean Penn as Jeff Spicoli?

It is no secret that there are many similarities among Scandinavian languages—from the unique characters to the sounds, they are among the more distinctive languages in the world. Danish and Norwegian are the most closely related, although it is common for speakers of Danish, Norwegian and Swedish to be able to understand each other.

Finnish is a different story, as it traces its roots to Eastern Europe as opposed to Scandinavia, and Icelandic and Faroese are outliers as well. But never mind the details—similarities exist, especially among the Big Three.

However, it is a testament to the language skills of Scandinavians that despite their understanding of their neighbor’s tongues, they often choose to converse among each other in English. Much like British English, American English and maybe the American “southern accent” sound much different, often to the point of difficulty to understand, the different Scandinavian languages have different ways of pronouncing sounds. Danes say that Norwegians “sing” their words, while Norwegians say that Danes talk “as if they were chewing a potato at the same time.” As a result, despite their ability to understand, it is often easier for them to just shift into English.

What a luxury it must be—not only to be able to speak our own language and that of our neighbors, but English as well. So much for being proud to be “just” bilingual!

If you spend more than $100 a week on your dog, allow it to sleep in your bed, or otherwise treat your dog better than you would a child, stop reading now, before you realize that all of that money you’re spending, extra cleaning you’re doing or ridiculous care you’re giving is more for your benefit than the dog’s.  Do you really think the dog cares that he’s eating ‘premium’ dog food? Do you think the dog wouldn’t sleep just as well outside, or in the living room? Garage?

Where did I learn this?  Thailand.  Go see for yourself.