Cosmopoetica

“Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships, or trains.”

–Alain de Botton
from The Art of Travel

Posted in: Commonplace Book No Comments »

A few more annoyances to add to my ongoing list:

• Seven separate lamps, all of which combined leave it as dim as Shelob’s lair, each of which have a different position and type of switch. Do I have to travel with my own portable lamp now too?
• A single tiny trash can, apparently appropriated from the Ken and Barbie McMansion, hidden way back underneath the (immovable) desk.
• Do have to mention lack of power outlets? I shouldn’t have to choose between my coffee and my computer in the morning.
• Please make a choice: either include a large-outlandish gratuity on the room service bill automatically or leave the line on to write in a tip. No one needs both.
• I’m glad to have few tables in the room. It would be nice if they were near a source of light. It would be even nicer if the hotel would stop covering them with inane magazines I’m never going to read (Commercial Fisheries Report anyone? The glossy brochure of the overpriced hotel’s brethren around the world?). And stop putting the crap back after I move it!
• Television remotes that don’t have any of the buttons the drone on the television menu channel keeps repeating you should use.
• The “Conservation Serves us All” placard is pointless if the cleaning crew’s going to remove and wash my carefully hung towels anyway.
• Fifty cents per minute for calls billed to my credit card? Twenty-five cents a minute for collect and calling card calls? Seriously?
• I should be surprised when I discover that the wireless signal from the rival hotel two blocks away is stronger than that offered in my own.
• I understand the price of wireless–like the price of items in the minibar–going up as the price of the room goes up… but does the quality of service have to be inversely proportional? To this day the best (fastest and most stable) wifi I’ve ever had in a hotel was in, literally, the cheapest hotel I’ve ever stayed at.

Note: all of this is relative. In absolute terms I feel fortunate–particularly in today’s economy–that I am able to travel anywhere!

Posted in: Art & Life & Politics No Comments »

I Tweeted a few days ago about the gangs of wild cats that come out after dark here on Kona. Turns out they’ve been quietly colonizing the islands for a long time. Mark Twain wrote about them during a visit in 1866:

I saw cats–Tom cats, Mary Ann cats, long-tailed cats, bobtail cats, blind cats, one-eyed cats, walleyed cats, cross-eyed cats, gray cats, black cats, white cats, yellow cats, striped cats, spotted cats, tame cats, wild cats, singed cats, individual cats, groups of cats, platoons of cats, companies of cats, regiments of cats, armies of cats, multitudes of cats, millions of cats, and all of them sleek, fat, lazy, and sound asleep;

Guess they were tamer back then before they’d reached the population necessary to start their quick-tongued feline plotting.

Posted in: General 1 Comment »