'Worse than India'

Why is it every time I mention that I plan to go to India people quirk their head and twist their eyebrows out of shape?

It's starting to make me feel like I'm missing out on a big secret.

Everytime I tell someone, I pull my head back, waiting and expecting that nose-scruncher of a face. I have to fight an impulse to peak behind their back, as if it could reveal the secret.

India, in my mind, is not all that exotic. A popular, well-travelled destination, the country doesn't even seem like a full-fledged adventure.

But my opinion of and yearning to go may stem from an encounter I had with a German couple during a solo trek through Southeast Asia.

Crossing the border from Thailand to Cambodia via public transport instead of the tourist preferred tour buses, I bumped into them as I was exiting the bus.

It was the first part of a multi-vehicle, multi-hour journey across the chaotic no-man's-land that is the border.

I was clutching directions handwritten from a website on how to make it safely across. The German woman was just clutching her husband. They had no idea how to get across.

They decided to tag along with me and my list.

After the bus, we grabbed a tuktuk to get to the border where we walked, eyes gaping at the flow of impoverished humanity. Fending off touts (they weren't even deflected when I spoke Japanese to fool them... they spoke that too), we paid the police more than legally required to enter.

Then crossed the border to stand in our next line to get stamped for entry.

After that the fun began.

We flagged down one of dozens of white Toyota Camry taxis (98 per cent of the vehicles in Cambodia are Camrys).

Hours and hours were spent dodging crater-like potholes in the muddy roads. Larger vehicles showed their right of way by bullying toward you until you pulled off to the side.

Then as semis and buses waited on either side of a partially broken bridge (caving in on the north side), our taxi sped across.

The German woman began to cry, bawl on her husband's shoulder.

'This is worse than India!' she sobbed.

I was shocked. And I wanted to go.

Three-legged dogs and other anomalies

If anyone remembers Labour Day weekend, it was dreary and depressing. Everyone came away disappointed that Mother Nature had spoiled the last good weekend of the summer.

Well, she redeemed herself this Thanksgiving weekend when she doled out three generously warm fall days.

I soaked it in with a long, lovely walk from the Annex to the lake, where I sat and stared and thought for over an hour. In the span of that excursion, I saw the following:

1. A man walking his three-legged dog.
His back right leg was amputated. He bunnyhopped.

2. A tight-jeaned Asian lady in clunky heels clip-clip-clip-clipping down the sidewalks at a frantic pace. Tiptoe running at a walking pace.

Behind her, a wiry man in too-big, clown-sized black dress shoes slowly kerlump.... kerlump.... kerlumps. A slow thundering step. His step swallows its own sound.

3. A middle-aged yuppie couple weave their matching boardwalk bicycles down the lakeside sidewalk. The woman leads the way, a radio mounted on her wide handlebars blasting the Beatles' 'Come Together.' In an earlier life, they were undoubtedly slouch-socked teens with ghettoblasters perched on their shoulders.

Where in the world?

My computer, lovingly named Ralphie after the Simpsons' character (not for their mutual social ineptitude but for my own amusement), is ill and dying a slow death. He is four years old.

J. dropped off his turqouise Toshiba laptop last night. I promptly set up the Internet. It's only for a week. And mostly because I'm getting my wisdom teeth out on Friday, and to be without a television or a computer is actually horrifying just in general, never mind when you're numb from novocaine.

Without my laptop (which I rely on as my stereo, DVD player, etc.) I might as well have been a hermit living on a hill for all my technological amenities. Thank god for the saving grace of my cell phone. Plugged it in to my speakers and listened to music and MP3s. Even checked e-mail on it from time to time.

Anyways, more on life in the slow lane at another time. I'm going outside to enjoy the warm autumn day.