What's Up With the Duck?

Some love it, some hate it. It was made people smile a lot. Some people think I am cool and some look at me as if they think I am insane when I pull out my yellow rubber duck to place it at a landmark to take a picture. It has happened more than once that my little yellow friend nearly got stolen by a kid. Also did I nearly lost my group on a guided tour because I was busy taking duck pictures in the back so not too many people would notice. People have started to buy me duck gifts. Above all; I got many, many remarks about his little fellow. Bringing this gadget along on trips turns out to be the perfect way to start a conversation.

So, why did I start taking pictures with those ducks? To be honest, I stole the idea from some friends. They took vacation pictures with two little bears and had a whole collection of those. This made the pictures so much more fun and special than just any picture of a landmark. Many people can take the exactly the same picture of a famous building or sight, so I wanted to add something to make it my unique picture. I decided to go for a rubber duck since it's bright, waterproof and it can float. Also, there are many different kinds of rubber ducks available. So I see opportunities for a future collection there.

Meet the team:

 

 

 

 

This is Billy Bob. The first duck of my collection. He has joined me on my travels to Prague, Porto, Antwerp, The Hague, Sarajevo, Mostar, Dbrovnik, Zagreb, Ljubljana, Chennai, Vianden, London and more.

 

 

 

This is John. I brought this one because I thought it was a pilot and he could thus be traveling the world. But then my mom pointed out it's a police man and all friends who I asked agreed with her. Bummer. For me, John is still a traveling pilot. Some of the places he has been to are Trier, Porto and Berlin.

 

This last one was a gift from a friend. I call him Barney. I haven't taken it on travels yet because I am too afraid to lose it and I won't be able to replace it. So this one will be featuring in my photos with running BIBs and medals.

 

 

That's it. Hopefully I'll be adding more ducks to my collection soon.

Exploring Chennai: Mahabalipuram - Tamil Nandu (India)

 

It's been a month since I have come back from India and I am still not done telling the crazy stories. Every time I see a friend I haven't seen for a while, I have lots of fun anecdotes. It is not that I got to see or so a lot when I was over there, but I did see a lot of things that we do not have over here. I wouldn't say it was a culture shock, more a culture amazement. Not always in a positive way, but surely in a memorable way. Somehow, it's usually the daily things that I end up telling people about; like the traffic on our way to the office or the high amount of staff members we had to pass every time we entered the hotel (around 24 from entering the premises until entering the room).

I do realize that I might not be giving my days of sight seeing the attention they deserve. We did see a lot of nice things in those days. I've been very busy the past weeks, but now I finally had the time to upload some photos of my visit to Mahabalipuram.

 

 

On Sunday, we had two cars with driver to take us and two guys from the company around to some touristic places in the region. First we visited Mahabalipuram, a group of monuments which has been classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. We were lucky enough to have a guide for our group, so we got to learn a lot about the temples.

 

 

Soon it turned out that this spot is not only a place for foreign tourists, but that it is also visited by many Indians. For them, our group was a walking touristic attraction. Many wanted to take photo's with us.

 

 When visiting the second temple, we noticed that there were three goats on top of the temple, casually taking a walk on it. They must have been mountain goats, because they did not at all seem uncomfortable with climbing on the carved stone at about ten meters high.

 

This big rock is just fascinating. It stands solid on a steep slope, with only a small surface touching the ground. The guide told us that many years ago, the British have tried to pull it down and that even elephants were not strong enough to get the rock moving. True or not, it's a great photo opportunity.

 

 

Oh yes, cows are just standing around anywhere here.

 

 

 

Later we moved on to the shore temple, where there is a separate entrance price for Indians and foreigners (about 10 times more).  In 2004, there has been a tsunami on this very coast. The guide told us that there used to be two more temples before that, but they were wrecked by the water. Some pieces of stone and sculpture were found back on the shore and have now been added to the remaining temple.

 

 

The temple is surrounded by dozens of life-size stone cows and many carvings and statues of the god Shiva. Because you had to pay to enter, the street sellers could not sell their souvenirs on the premises of the temple. But creative as they are, they did find a way to reach the visitors anyway.  They would stall out their products in between the bars of the fence surrounding the premises. That's what I call innovation.

 

 

Later we went back to the cars and had to drive a while to go to a place where they had recreated an old Southern Indian village. It was full of cute little buildings, which had small museums about the history of India inside.

 

 

 

 Unfortunately, we did not have a whole lot of time to walk around since we had a late lunch scheduled. At the beach! On our way to the restaurant, we noticed that the road along the coast was full of beach and water parks that looked like carnivals. Many were overly decorated with bright puppets, clowns and cartoon-like statues. Several of them could easily serve as the set for a horror movie. The restaurant turned out to be in one of those big, bright parks. Luckily, one of the nicer looking ones.

 

 

That day was international woman's day, so me and my female college were welcomed with a rose. During the meal we each received another rose from an Indian Charlie Chaplin impersonator (hilarious!). The meal was accompanied by live music. But not the kind of music you expect to hear when you are on a beach in India. No, we were treated on songs like "Stand By Me" and "Waterloo".  Wonderful.

 

After the meal we went for a small walk on the beach. This sign was very funny to me. The real reason swimming is not allowed, is because of the strong current. According to the sign, the reason you are not allowed to swim are the jellyfish. Of course, jellyfish can be dangerous. However, neither the guys from the company who went with us, nor anyone from the table next to us had ever seen a single jellyfish there. Another sign in India which did not make a whole lot of sense.

 

That was the end of a long and warm day. Time to get back to the reality of working life and start the laptop to prepare next day's training session. But this time charged with vitamin D and good food.

 

 

Leaving the Bubble - Chennai (India)

Being on this business trip has been quite a surrealistic experience. Besides the fact that India is different from Luxembourg in a million ways, we have been living in a bubble pretty much. I spent all day either in the office or in the hotel. Every day, a car picked us up from to hotel to the office and back again in the evening. In the evening we had dinner together and after that some more working. Even if we would have had time for it, going outside in the evenings was just not going to happen. The area where the hotel was is mainly surrounded by a lot of traffic, construction sights and other hotels and it was always dark already by the time we reached the hotel. Even my adventurous side had to admit going out in those conditions was not a good idea. That is why is was so happy when the weekend came around and we had a car with driver to explore the city.

 

 

First stop; St. Thomas Mount. From this hill you have an amazing view over the whole city. There is a church and several memorials. Like in any place in the city, cows and goats walk around freely and nobody bothers them. It is a really calm place within the crazy city of Chennai.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Next, we wanted to go to a temple, but it turned out to be closed until 16.00, so we decided on a beach and lunch break. On the beach we saw the only signs of the Holi festival I have seen that whole day. That was a bit of an anti-climax. It was very different than I imagined. Some girls walked around throwing a bit of the powder on other people and wishing them happy Holi. We were not colored by them and neither did we have any powder. Or did we?

 

 

 

 O wait, we did! We found a whole bunch of bags of colored powder just lying on the beach. That was pretty cool. Unfortunately we did not use them then and when we were back in the hotel it was too late (imagine the powdered mess in all that fanciness) . Still a shame.

 

 

 

 

Considering it had snowed just before we left Luxembourg, it was really cool (or rather, hot) to be walking on the beach barefoot with over 30 degrees and a lot of sun. The beach was full of small stalls, some selling food and some offering rather strange gambling games (?). I really enjoyed that walk, although we were being roasted alive and the sand was burning our feet.

 

All good things come to an end when food moments are calling; lunch time! We asked the driver to choose a local restaurant for us so we got to eat somewhere outside the hotel and try some "real" Indian food.

 

 

Tadaa! They also kindly offered us a jar of fresh tap water. We were trying to be adventurous tourists, but not THAT adventurous. I ordered something at random, which turned out to be weird, but good. But then again, everything there was good. The total price of our six meals was less then the cost of one meal at the hotel, crazy!

 

Eating where the locals eat; check! Time to move on to the next visit. This beautiful temple could only be entered barefoot, so we had to hand in our shoes for safekeeping. The normal shoe "wardrobe" was out of service, according to a quite angry looking man, so we had to leave our shoes with a lady sitting on the street. This all seemed pretty dodgy and we were half expecting to have to return to the hotel without shoes.

 

 

 

The sun had warmed up the ground and it was hot, so very hot. With feet burning even when walking on the "cooler" while line, we strolled along all the beauty the temple had to offer. Someone told us that we had to buy a ticket in order to take pictures, but then he just left and never returned. So that guy never got his money. This paying for taking photos pretty much seemed at random anyway (as many other things). Sadly, we were not allowed to go inside any temples, but still there was plenty to see. Upon leaving the temple, we even got our shoes back - success!

 

The heat and humidity had made the day pretty exhausting, so it was time for us to return to our bubble of luxury at the hotel to go for a swim and have dinner. What a day!