About Landlocked: Landlocked is an interactive blog of Detours magazine. Landlocked bloggers seek to highlight Midwest events and culture with an international perspective. Comments and questions are always welcome!
Landlocked will be taking a short pause for the summer, but we will return again in the fall! Have a wonderful summer and thank you for all your support this semester. We will see you again very soon!
Who knew that one should check seismic pressures before traveling? Because of the Icelandic volcano that erupted and clogged Europe’s airways with dangerous ash, most air traffic squealed to a halt. I left my home in Vigo on that fateful Thursday to try to go on a weekend vacation to London, via the Madrid airport (I have to fly there from where I live to get almost anywhere else). I arrived in the spilling-over-with-angry-passengers airport with an unusable ticket to London, sin mobile phone, sin laptop. Cursing Icelandic volcanoes, I spun around in circles for a bit.
Of course I didn’t grasp the scope of the problem, and with valid return tickets in hand, I barred my teeth and told myself I’d make it to London. Thus ensued four days of trying to push my way to the British Isles through other means of transportation than air travel. Yes, me and every British person on the continent were fighting for ferry fares and train tickets. I successfully booked two train tickets, one from Madrid to a small town in the south of France, and from said small town to Paris. With the warm blanket of success wrapped around my travel-weary self, I slept easily that night, almost tasting the Earl Grey tea I expected upon impending arrival.
The train to the Hendaya, France, carried me through curvaceous countryside, undulating with ripples of foothills leading to the Pyrenees. Contentedly waiting for my train to Paris, self-assured I could easily catch the Chunnel when I arrived, I overheard some other travelers chatting about the chaos caused by the volcano. Then I heard “Chunnel booked til Tuesday.” This was on Saturday. I bolted to a pay phone and called my parents. Yep, looked pretty much like I’d be stuck in Paris if I boarded the train. I started troubleshooting with my parents: “Ok ... train for Paris to Cannes, ferry from Cannes to Portsmouth, train for Portsmouth to London...” My wonderful mother calmly advised me: “Meg, maybe you should head back to Vigo, hon.” Lip quivering, I agreed. First step, get back to Spain.
There came a time in Beijing when I no longer strolled with my mouth hanging slightly open.
Instead, I whizzed through hutongs on the gravel road, my tires dodging rocks, bricks, and dirt piles, fruit and vegetables and people, but most of all, other bikes and cars. Squeezing between pedestrians and cars took more aggressiveness than skill because freezing like a deer in the headlights would turn one into mincemeat.
Merging into traffic, my thumb consistently placed near the bell (I loved using that thing) on my handlebar, I wound around busses and taxis, careful that other bikers passed by safely. I sped up to avoid being sideswiped or cutoff, but when I realized that I was not comfortable trying to fit three bikers between a stopped bus and oncoming vehicles, I chose the sidewalk.
One of the greatest lessons that I have learned in my three years in America is that there exists a tremendous lack of understanding and a generally high rate of hilarious stereotyping on both sides of the globe.
In Nepal many people still think America is all about skyscrapers, beaches, big cars and one-night-stands. America is imaginatively reduced to be made of New York City on one side and Los Angeles on the other; while everything in the middle is a big farm and everyone is a cowboy. Similarly, a surprisingly high number of people in America assume that just because Mt. Everest is in Nepal I have climbed it. And another thing, just because I am from South Asia doesn’t mean I can help you with your math homework or fix your computer.
There are many reasons why ill-informed people think of South Asians in terms of stereotypes, so I will list a few of these stereotypes and try to dispel them .
One question I've asked some of my friends is the origin of the little tag line that says “Show-me State” on every car license plate in Missouri. Everyone knows that is Missouri's slogan but none of them could answer why Missouri is the “show-me state”. I decided to research about the origin of the slogan on the internet – it turns out to be an interesting story.
According to the Missouri Secretary of State website, the “show-me” slogan has several theories associated with its origin. The most popular theory is attributed to Willard Duncan Vandiver, Missouri's U.S. Congressman from 1897 to 1903, when he attended a naval banquet in Philadelphia, and delivered a speech there on 1899:
One of the biggest problems in our country today is general laziness or apathy when it comes to exercise and physical activity. We are blind of how truly beneficial a good day’s exercise can have on both our physical and mental health. However, there is an opportunity for change for three separate weeks this summer.
The city of Columbia, Missouri, will be hosting the “Show-Me State” games during the weeks of June 11-14, July 16-18, and July 23-25. The games are an Olympic-style sports festival with more than 40 competitive sports for Missouri amateur athletes of all ages and abilities. The idea behind the event is to promote healthy lifestyle, a social environment and sportsmanship. Last year, over 37,000 athletes participated in the games year round. A wide variety of games are played including baseball, kickball, basketball, as well as the always-popular synchronized swimming.
Now, I’m a pretty a big sports fan. I’ve made that known in some of my previous blog posts, especially the one about my love fest for the St. Louis Cardinals. Not only that, but I’m always up for playing any type of sports. Even in college, I play a variety of sports ranging from basketball to beach volleyball. So, obviously, I find this to be an awesome idea. A lot of the events that I’ve written about this semester have consisted of events where the attendee merely watches or tours a venue, but this event provides the attendee to get involved with the event that they are visiting. Plus, it provides a great opportunity for people to get to know each other through a social atmosphere of competition. So if you’re bored this summer, you should check out the Show-Me Games in Columbia.
Summer is coming to the Midwest and Truman! It's hard to keep yourself from going outside when the sun is shining, the flowers are blooming and the birds are singing. However, you can still be entertained and connected while studying. It's wonderful to see how the digital revolution has given us more freedom to get outside.
Ten years ago I thought Walkman CD players were the coolest thing in this world – they allowed me to enjoy my high-quality music outside without having to carry a boom box. The whole world could fit in my pocket, with only a couple of double-A batteries and a few spare CDs! But, now if I go out with a CD player, people will stare at me as if I'm coming from the jungle. The game changed when MP3 players, or iPods,provided a place for your entire music library in a tiny device. And the newest iPod Nano can easily play music and video clips continuously for half a day. The catch? Copy protection is tricky. Your CDs would play in your friend's boom box, but your files wouldn't? Shame on you, DRM.
I can't tell you how many mornings I dreaded rolling out of bed in Beijing because I knew I would have to talk.
My host mom loved to start the day with breakfast and a conversation. She would give me a terrifyingly quick mouthful of Mandarin, watch me struggle, slow down her speech and then patiently listen. Her efforts were in good faith, but they overstressed my groggy brain.
Words would catch in my throat as I would frantically try to muster verbs, subjects, nouns, exclamations—anything I could use to string together a sentence, half a sentence, or a meaningful cluster of phrases. I even searched the nearly bare dining room for objects that matched what I wanted to say.
By this point, the majority of us are aware that we have been on the wrong track, environmentally speaking, for many years and are still charging full speed ahead into the great incinerator of doom. Obviously, we need a new system.
For those of us who want to unplug from the machine, Permaculture offers an answer. It’s a comprehensive system designed to create agricultural and lifestyle systems that can ecologically sustain themselves. Indefinitely.
An answer to our crisis, according to Permaculture, would involve creating systems of human life that replicate the self-sustaining systems of nature. Relying upon the city to bring you water, a supermarket to sell you food, and electricity to produce your power means there are a lot of external environmental costs you don’t see on the surface. Meanwhile, you could catch your own rainwater—treating and reusing it, grow your own food from a garden and/or livestock (or buy locally) and produce your own renewable power—or don’t product it at all.
Vonnegut was born in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1922. He is known for blending satire, dark humor and science fiction into a giant ball of craziness. Some of his best-known novels include “Slaughterhouse-Five” and “Cat’s Cradle."
