January 5, 2010
Small bits of plastic seem to dominate my time and thoughts over the past month.
The long saga of the replacement Mizzou Credit Union ATM card may finally be coming to close. Upendra says I should receive my card here in Hampi tomorrow or Wednesday. Not, however, before the situation elevated to near crisis level.
Shortly after a large withdrawal, my BofA card disappeared in Calangute, Goa. I am pretty certain that I left it in the machine but the staff at Axis Bank claimed not to have it. For all its global muscle, Bank of America has no better procedures for replacing a lost card than a podunk credit union in central Missouri.
Faced with only emergency access to further cash (credit card and about 100 US dollars I could convert), I decided to hedge. I opened an account with Axis Bank in Panjim with the idea of electronically transfering money into it from my US accounts. There are issues with this approach and I still need need to get my hands on that card but, at that time, the MizzouCU card hadn't even reached India. I had to do something.
But bits of plastic are not why I am here and I still had money. Besides, the room in Baga was expensive. After leaving the bank, I walked over to the bus vendors and booked passage to Hampi. For the 27th. I had diving scheduled for Christmas Day and I wanted the option of staying out late.
The diving mostly worked out. The visibility wasn't fabulous but it was OK and there were things to see.
Christmas evening was rather less. The diving group dissolved back into the crowd of a beach town grown too large to have community.
I spent the next day in Old Goa. It is the original Portuguese settlement, abandoned due to malaria. There are several large colonial era Catholic churches but that's about it.
Hampi is better. It was the capital of a Hindu empire contemporary with Angkor, similar in scale though not quite as grand. Most temples are rather plain inside. A few are adorned with intricate carvings. All share a fascinating landscape of river, palm trees, and boulders the size of small homes.
The town is an odd mix of tourist trap and dirt street India. There are more cows and more cow manure than anywhere I have been. They don't seem to clean it up here as well as I've seen elsewhere. I'm not sure if this is simply because there is more of it or if cow dung is just not seen as valuable here as it is elsewhere.
Every guest house has a roof top restaurant. All attempt to serve Western food but they don't really know how and they don't serve meat. The result is usually edible but seldom a delight and almost never what you would expect. The Indian food menu is usually limited as well.
Still, it is a pleasant, functional, place with good attractions. I spent five days temple tromping and, even though the guest house is charging me more than twice what the rate is supposed to be, it is still a much better deal than I had in Goa.
Unfortunately, those five days left me with several days left over to create new problems. I only needed one.
While preparing SD cards of photos to burn to DVD, I managed to damage my eeepc's card reader. The next day, while transferring files using the SLR as a card reader, the machine froze and hasn't been right since. The 4GB onboard flash drive that is the boot device has become completely inoperative. I can type this only because the 4GB USB flash stick I am carrying still has an OS install image from the mad operating system upgrade/replacement I performed just days before I left home. As soon as I get everything properly backed up, I plan to rebuild the system using only the 16GB drive.
But I don't trust the machine anymore. I was planning to route around Bangelore but I've changed my mind. I'm going to take advantage of being in what has to be the best place in India to buy electronics and upgrade my hardware. I came very close to buying a new netbook before I left the States so it isn't as dramatic a gesture as it might appear. It might even be fun.