Something you may not have known

While in Mumbai I wandered onto this statue. I read the plaque and it mentioned the Parsi community. This is a small sliver of India that I knew little about, although I was aware of them. I decided to learn a little more.

The Parsis came to India as religious refugees from Persia. They worship in something called "Fire Temples".

They are Zoroastrians, which is an ancient religion from Iran that believes that the spiritual world is ruled by two competing kingdoms - one good and one bad.

They put their dead on pillars called Towers of Silence, where vultures eat their bodies. They don't practice burial or cremation.

They have the highest literacy rate of any Indian group, more than 96% can read. Less than 65% of Indians as a whole can read.

They make up .0006% of India's population, but the Tata family, one of the most wealthy and influential in India, are Parsis. Their company makes steel, does computer consulting (I worked with them for years), grows tea, and just bought Jaguar as a car brand. Their influence far outweighs their numbers.

Freddy Mercury from Queen was a Parsi.

For those of you with a higher brow - Zubin Mehta is a Parsi.



^ Ratan Tata, he just snagged Jaguar as a brand for the family empire



^ JRD Tata, Ratan's father (now deceased). He shows how Parsis can often look very "non-Indian", although the longer one lives here, one starts to learn that an Indian can look like just about anything..... except perhaps a Norwegian.

Well, there you have it. A little lesson about the Parsi community here in India.

Hope you enjoyed it.

Back

Quiet day back home.

Good bye to a nice vacation

We're off now. Tara never got the fish pedicure. Oh well, there's always next year. And that trip will be on the blog as well. We plan to use Singapore as a base of operations and go to another location near to it next year. Because only our flights were expensed on this trip, the whole thing ended up being a rather strong financial commitment, so we'll opt for something near to Singapore but cheaper next time. Maybe Bali? Thailand? We'll see.

This was a fine trip nonetheless.

Enough of my thoughts....

Tara's comments on the trip :: "Absolutely gorgeous, very orderly, very friendly. Very expensive. More like a Disneyland than a real place. Fun."

Liam's comments :: "Do you have to do this blog stuff every day? {scoffing tone, look of disgust}

Erase that. Erase that before I say something. Oh my gosh. Dad, stop it! I am going to press delete. I'll say something real if you delete it. Do it! Erase it or I will snap the laptop in half...." (he was asked to leave the room at this point). ;-)

Aidan's comments :: "Singapore was almost the funnest place in my entire life. My favorite thing in Singapore was the luge."

Jonah's comments :: "I thought Singapore was like America. I like Singapore more than Hyderabad."

Kuala Lumpur and Petronas Towers

^ Pictures from Petronas Towers, both from ground level as well as from the cross-walk. The cross-walk is only about 40% of the way up the towers. I don't believe there is any higher observation deck, just offices.









^ Pictures from lunch. Notice in one place the Koranic verses that are on the wall. Then I took a few snaps of the inside of the place where I ate. Tara had taken the boys to more of a known quantity, a western chain restaurant.

Then you have a picture of my sumptuous meal itself. It was really good, despite the appearance. Note the ashtray. It's still wide open for smokers in Malaysia and India. But not Singapore.....

Also, notice the dried cuttlefish (squid) from Argentina, it's in the box. Finally, take note of the soda - it had bits of aloe plant in it. Again, surprisingly good after you get past the cognitive objections.






^ Finally, being in a Muslim place on Fridays around 1 pm means witnessing the mass exodus to Jumma prayers. This is the Islamic sabbath, if you will. We were walking by the national mosque of Malaysia, and there was a carnival atmosphere of sorts, with people eating and buying items from an outdoor bazaar right before going into the mosque.


Overall, a really nice visit to Kuala Lumpur!

Kuala Lumpur

We made it to Kuala Lumpur and went on the crosswalk between the the Petronas Towers. Will supply pictures shortly.

It has been a whirlwind visit, with a train ride that took 4 more hours than the estimate. It was a total of 10 hours to get to Kuala Lumpur. One part of the delay was when we stopped in the middle of nowhere for 90 minutes due to an unexplained issue. During that time the boys and I went into a village on the edge of the tracks and scared up lunch. It was actually really good, purchased in something that amounted to a lean-to. It was tofu, hard boiled egg, cucumber, and chili sauce. We were way, way off the grid in that place! Consistent with Malaysia itself, the clientele was a combination of Malays, ethnic Indians and Chinese. Even in the rural areas all three groups are there. Evidence of all three cultures was very visible and distinct from each other in the village. There was a mosque, a Hindu temple and many of the shops had Chinese characters all around them. But they all spoke Malay, which is almost exactly like Indonesian.

A neat adventure this has been.

Malaysia is less structured and clean than Singapore, but it is still very nice and surprisingly developed.

Singapore - Day Five

And.......... a day at the zoo. It's getting tiring having all of this fun. Notice the boys getting kissed by a sea lion, and feeding elephants - in a setting vastly more controlled than in Kerala.

Singapore - Day Four

^ We visited the Arab Quarter today. You'll notice the mosque, the women in hijab, and the men in traditional clothing. There were some Arabs in this segment of the city, but most of the Muslims were Malays, the original inhabitants of the peninsula. They are much like Indonesians, both ethnically and linguistically. There was a poster all over the place for an escaped leader of Jamaat Islamiya, an arm of Al Qaeda in Malaysia and Indonesia. Creepy.





^ We also went to a place where they teach you the ritual of having tea here in Asia. It's a very elaborate thing, with each step having some meaning, and a particular sequence of making and presenting tea must be followed. It was a great deal of fun and Aidan and Liam showed they are naturals here in Asia. They both did a great job.







^ We also went to Chinatown. There was a Buddhist temple there where the buddha's tooth is kept as a relic. I got busted taking a video. There was no flash, I thought that was the only prohibition. They made it clear I was mistaken. One of the security guards got a bit miffed and looked like the kick-butt statue guy you see above.... it all ended ok, though.