A visit to the capital

Yesterday we forewent our lie-in to go on a visit to the capital, leaving at 7am for the estimated 2.5hr journey. Travelling here is never boring; even apart from the excitement of negotiating the traffic, there are always plenty of interesting things to look at. Here's a view from the road as we drive down the valley:

Going through one of the towns on the way down, the traffic slowed and stopped. I should explain at this point that traffic jams here (like everything else traffic-y) are somewhat more chaotic than at home. Here's sort of how it works:

• First line (nearest the side) of traffic slows to a halt.
• A few drivers, including our own, quickly get impatient, and move out to overtake, forming a 2nd line of traffic.
• We move forward a little, then this line too slows to a halt.
• Impatience -> move out into 3rd line -> slow to a halt.
• Repeat, until there are 5 or 6 lines of traffic going our way.

Then, clearly not going anywhere, we wait a bit. Our driver hops out to chat to a few other drivers. We discover later that the story appears to be that a few lorry drivers have blocked the road over pay disputes. We gather from the gestures going on outside that there might be an alternative route around the blockage.

So we turn round and head back the way we've come - easier said than done as the aforementioned impatient drivers are still doing their move-outwards-another-lane thing until the whole place is fairly jammed. Another stop for directions, and we're off down this tiny side road, squeezing past tractors and the like, heading out of the town to the side. And as we head across a bit of a dip in the road, a local gestures off to one side. So we turn off again, down what is clearly...

a river bed:

It's obviously a well-used route in non-monsoon time, with turn-offs to different parts of the surrounding settlements, and we meet various other cars, trucks and motorbikes picking their way along the tracks between boulders, banks and muddy bits. Our driver is a hard-to-read (though not unfriendly) chap of few words, but I got the impression he was enjoying himself.

When we arrive 3-and-a-half hours after we left, the capital is very obviously a planned city, with wide, straight highways set out in a grid pattern; a typical address might read something like House 364, Street 28. It's not the kind of place you could easily get around on foot. We meet up with one of our hospital colleagues who has been down here for the night before, and head into town and to the various markets. We pick up our one souvenir so far - a rather beautiful little table, the top of which looks a bit like this:

The shopkeeper apparently has relatives who have been treated at the hospital, so gives us a discount, after serving refreshments while we look around. The shop is full of fascinating bits of furniture and suchlike, a couple of highlights being a rocking-camel, and a glass table which has 15 or so legs set out in a circle - but with the difference that each leg supports the tabletop at the opposite side from where it's foot touches the ground, having woven through all the other legs on its way past. The overall effect is like a cylindrical woven basket. Each leg is entirely separate from all the others, but looped around and through all the others, and the whole thing has obviously been carved from one single huge piece of wood. It's like one of those soapstone sculptures you sometimes see, but hugely more complex. I don't bother enquiring about its price...

Then we go to have a look at the Faisal mosque, a vast marble structure. You leave your shoes at the entrance, then make sure that you walk on the white marble in the sun rather than the black!

We are treated to a great lunch at an 'Italian' restaurant, then it's the bookshop (Jenny's favourite!), a quick look around a couple of other markets, back past the furniture place for something our colleague had bought when we were there earlier, a stop for water, then back on the road. The journey back is less eventful, the road having been opened once more, though driving in the darkness certainly keeps the excitement level up. (Remember, if your vehicle is at the faster end of the spectrum, any trip is basically one constant overtaking manoeuvre!)

And relax.

Solar Survey

Yesterday afternoon's work: a solar obstacle survey from the laundry roof, with a view to eventually putting in a solar water heater for the washing machines.

Step 1: determine what direction true south is. Which means first of all looking up a sundial calendar to look up the time of solar noon (as opposed to local noon, which while always at 12 o'clock, varies in relation to solar noon as we spin and move around the sun. Clear? Not sure I'm explaining this terribly well...) for our specific latitude and longitude is on this specific date. Being the 23rd, only a couple of days after the equinox, this turns out to be 11:59 and 41 seconds. So call it midday then, after all that.

So, now I know that true south is that way, the direction of the sun at 12. (Oh, alright, 11:59.41.) Happily, this is only a couple of degrees out from the way my favoured piece of roof is pointing, so I'm going to simplify things by aligning to the line of the roof instead.

Step 2: Come back after lunch and climb onto the laundry roof. Easier said than done I have to say, though one of my workshop-fellows holds the rickety made-of-odd-bits-of-wood-tied-together-with-rope ladder up for me. Health and safety is a personal option here. The roof is (this time in the afternoon, pretty toasty!) corrugated iron, which offers no handholds, but the rubber of my trainer soles proves friction-y enough. I settle onto my perch on the top of the roof and unpack my useful and hi-tech instruments.

Yup, these are my handy here's-one-I-made-earlier Azimuth Angle and Elevation Gauges. Which, yes, are made of an old cornflakes packet, some thread, and a largish nut.

Step 3: Point my hi-tech instruments at things on the skyline that might get in the way of the sun, and measure their bearings and elevation angles. Threatening thundery noises from those clouds gathering in the east: this roof would be slippery in the wet, so I hurry up a little.

Step 4: Accept the help of a couple of random loitering patient-relatives, who have been watching me quizzically for the last half-hour, in getting back down again with all my things and bones intact.

Step 5: Back at the workshop, transfer beautifully measured skyline onto a chart of where the sun is at any time over the course of the year (it's amazing what useful tools you can find on the internet these days...). Even though I knew as much, it still amazed me how little difference there is between daylight hours in summer and winter, and thus how low in the sky the sun gets.

The upshot of which is that even in winter time the sun clears that big tree at 160° that I had worried might be troublesome. It's looks like we'll get a decent long stretch of strong sunshine in the middle of the day (obviously weather-dependent) most of the year round.

At last...

Hey, what's this? Could it be one of those trucks I've been trying to get a decent picture of for the last 4 weeks? Here, stationary, in the compound, where I can freely wield the camera? Why, I do believe it is, and a pretty fine specimen it is too.

A birthday outing - supplemental

Radiolab

In order to make our viewing supplies of House, Firefly & Life last a bit longer, we thought we'd better intersperse their episodes with something else. But what? All the video on iPlayer is "not available in your area", and our internet connection probably isn't up to streaming video anyway.

Enter Radiolab, as recommended by Tom. It's a sort of science-y look at all sorts of things that they happen across and think might be interesting. We listened to our first episode (Words) last night, which explored the role of language, and included fascinating stories of stroke victims and people who had grown up deaf and only really 'got language' at 27.

And it was brilliant. Beautifully put together, eloquently and amusingly explained, and wonderfully edited with some splendid use of sound effects. And all done with an evident joy in just investigating and learning about something new. We contentedly listened to the whole hour-long episode straight through.

I'm looking forward to episodes (from the titles alone!) as diverse as Falling, Blink, Parasites, Helicopter Boy, Quantum Cello, and the intriguing sounding Making the Hippo Dance.

Highly recommended, even for those of you with access to endless TV/iPlayer/film entertainment.

A birthday outing

Saturday being Jenny's birthday, we went into the next big town with a couple of friends. We visited several cloth shops to get Jenny some "birthday suits". The shopkeeper-to-customer work ratio is definitely the right way round: you sit on a comfy sofa and point at what you want to see, and the guy gets them out and unrolls them for you. Then if you don't want them, they do all the putting away. Also, since you take them to the tailor to get made for you, they're more-or-less guaranteed to fit you. Bonus!

Jenny (under the tablecloth (or chaddor)) at the cloth counter.

Trying on a dupatta.

About 1/20th of the selection in one of the half-dozen cloth shops we visited. I like the swirly one in the bottom row. It's a shame the men's fashions are so much drabber - you could make some cracking hawaiian shirts out of some of these...

A visit to the nut man. Nuts and dried fruit are good, but a lot of hard work: you have to remove all the stalks/stones/dust, wash them in a mild detergent solution, rinse, and finally bake them in the oven for 10 mins before they're safe to eat!

A view down one of the bazaar streets.

Our driver purchasing some freshly-cooked-in-its-husk-at-the-side-of-the-road corn.

As promised, a first half-decent pic of the painted trucks. Uphill they are pursued by an impatient queue of wannabe overtakers.

Trumpeter serenades the entry of the cake.

Chocolate-y traybake-y Pakistani-flag-y goodness. Yum.

A few of our favourite Urdu words 1

In dodgily-transcribed-roman-character form:

• chipkli (lizard)
• gadger (carrot)
• beewee (wife)
• saass (mother-in-law)
• panties (35)
• pujpun (55)
• pissle (slip/slide)

And sentence of the week goes to:  "Can the cow slide down the glacier?", with worthy runner-up: "Can the lizard climb the rainbow?"

Answers to these intriguing philosophical questions on a postcard please.  Or on a postcard wrapped round a nice block of cheese.

Earthquake

Soundtrack for this post:  Earthquakes by Moxy Früvous

We had an earthquake last night.  Admittedly, not a very big one, but an interesting new experience nonetheless.  It lasted about a minute and felt a bit like going over several sets of particularly rattly points in an old and rickety train.

Jenny slept through it.

Mehndi

Yesterday I went to my 2nd party here (I'm doing well I think). One of my colleagues had been invited to a friend's mehndi ceremony and she invited me to go with her. I had to raid the collection of outfits they have lying around here (because apparently it wouldn't do to wear cotton) and was advised to wear as much jewellery as I could get on!

The mehndi ceremony is a bit like a hen party to which the bride's entire extended family and just about everyone she's ever known is invited (men as well as women). Traditionally she wears yellow and green (to symbolise spring and fertility) and although the invite was for 6pm everyone knows that it doesn't start till 8. There was a band (complete with bagpipes) and after the bride had had hundreds of photos taken she was carried in a sedan chair to a bench at the front of the hall where she sat on display for the rest of the evening. Her relatives then danced forward with the mehndi (a type of henna body paint), women first then the men and after that all the bride's close female relatives took it in turns to go up to her and put some oil on her forehead, feed her some methai (pakistani sweet - delicious!) and paint mehndi on her hands.

The colours were incredible, the noise was terrific and I was definitely underdressed and under made-up for the event! Need to go shopping before the next one...

Family relations

Last week in our Urdu lessons we learned the names for various different relations and family members.  And they're... complicated to say the least!

For example:

• there are different specific words for your paternal and maternal grandparents,
• there are different specific words for your son's children and your daughter's children,
• there are different specific words for your sister's husband/husband's brother/wife's sister/brother's wife/husband's sister/wife's brother - and some of them are different if the sibling in question is older or younger than you or your spouse (and to add to things, many people refer to their first cousins as their brothers and sisters...)
• the one exception we found was that the words for your mother-in-law and father-in-law are the same in both directions.
• when you get married, one's spouse's Abu and Ami (Dad and Mum, informal) also become yours - since your families are now one.

We didn't even get started on aunts/uncles/cousins...

It's obvious how important family relationships are here.  We took heart from the fact that our teachers couldn't remember all the words either!

First cake attempt

So today, after getting my hands on a recipe book and an electric mixer and the installation of our oven this week, I had my first attempt at baking here. I went for the lemon cake in the end, mainly because it was the only one that I had all the ingredients for.

Some of the ingredients are a bit different to what I'd normally use.

These tiny little lemons - difficult enough to squeeze even with the mini-juicer but almost impossible to grate without giving more of myself to the cake making process than intended!

Sugar in crystals so big I had to grind it in the pestle and mortar first.

Flour stored in the freezer (something about weevils which I'm trying to gloss over in my mind).

All cooked in our shiny new oven which looks good, but seems to be little slow, (cooking time on the recipe = 20 mins, time in our oven = 3 hours + 20 mins, we think it needs looking at!).

Still the end result looked ok (picture doesn't really do it justice) and tasted good and there's leftovers for tomorrow.

Calls to prayer

The concept of noise pollution is one that doesn't exist here.  Trucks and their horns are one example, the calls to prayer the other.  They come in a whole variety of shapes, volumes, tones of voice, fervencies and tunefulnesses.  And during Ramadan, there were a whole load of extra ones right through the night.

My particular favourite is one down the hill a bit who managed to get the airspace to himself for a few minutes the other evening.  He actually had rather nice intonation, made up some lovely soaring melodies (in tune!), and was obviously enjoying the delicious echo effect as his voice reverberated off the sides of the valley.  For a minute or two it wasn't dissimilar in effect and grandness to a brilliant Floyd-esque delay-laden guitar solo.

Others are less melodious.  Some sound distinctly belligerent.  And one is obviously a child's voice, which when echoing out through a crackly tannoy system feels faintly grotesque.  Like one of those meant-to-be-amusing-but-is-actually-really-quite-disturbing clowns.

But they reach their full cacophonous glory when half a dozen of them go for it at once, competing for sound-space and the honour of being the loudest.

I can't help feeling that it's job my middle-brother-as-a-child would have delighted in.

A pretty flower in our garden

The height (and width) of fashion...

How to Drive

Soundtrack for this post: How To Drive by Cancel The Astronauts

A few tips on how transporting oneself by road should be accomplished:

1. You own the piece of your vehicle presently occupies.
2. Any unoccupied piece of road is up for grabs by anyone:  just because you are travelling at high speed towards a particular patch in your own lane doesn't mean you have any greater claim to it.
3. Horns are for honking.
4. Lights are for flashing.
5. Size matters.  But then so does nippyness.
6. Never be content with staying behind another vehicle.  No matter how fast it's travelling, you should go for the overtake.
7. When preparing to overtake, get as close as you can to the back bumper of the vehicle in front, while edging out into the oncoming traffic as much as possible.  Sound your horn a few times and/or flash your full beams for good measure (of course).
8. Go for it, whether it looks sensible or not.  Hopefully someone will let you back in if the move doesn't come off.
9. Switching the A/C off for a few seconds is handy for those nitro-boost-requiring moments.

Finally, if a truck is your vehicle of choice, it must be resplendently decorated.  Extra trucker points to be had for reflectors, coloured lights, whirly windmills, collections of sticky-up poles, a greatly protruding front bumper, a greatly protruding 'forehead', sticky-out bits on your wheel hubs, or a musical/novelty horn.

(this photo nicked from google somewhere - hope to get some of my own soon, as we've seen some equally/even more stupendous examples...)

EDIT:  Oh, and I almost forgot:  10.  Seatbelts should be worn on the motorways (where the road is smooth, well looked-after, wide, and almost deserted - and where there are signs saying you have to).  Take it off as soon as you're back on the twisty, bumpy, overcrowded, unmarked, potholed roads.  After all, "they're so restraining!"  (I kinda thought that was the point...)