Lhasa

Saw a lot of YAPs and YATs (yet another temple) ... the Potala palace this morning was spectacular. Haven't seen any yaks yet.
Did eat a few, though - on a yakburger, fried, as a steak - it's best in curry :)

3600m above sea level. it's hot, between 30 and 40 degrees. Perfect summer days. Air is very dry - i'm goin nowwhere without a bottle of water, lip-ice and some face cream! It's hot, i hope i get to use all the cold weather gear i brought! There's a lot of hiking shops here in Lhasa, but unfortunately i have everything i need :)

There's an incoming or outgoing mail stuck in the phone's in/outbox, so i can't use it for mail at the moment - so i can't post pictures from there at the moment.

Finally begin cycling tomorrow. The support team arrived, and are buying our food now. I think it's a flattish 85, haven't checked.

The box was badly damaged on the three flights, but bike arrived undamaged and with all the parts. The tubeless tube came off. There's a few bike shops in Lhasa, but bikes don't run on tubeless. Motorbikes don't run on tubeless either, so i'll put a tube in this afternoon, and then go test it.

Kathmandu

Was Buddha's 2554'th birthday yesterday. Big festivities around town.
Here's Boudhanath temple, a favourite pilgrimage destination for buddhists; somehow i didn't expect to see monks talking on cellphones & taking digital pictures - but how else would they talk to family & take home memories?
Saw Kumari, a living goddess, in Durbar square, about 5 yrs old. Monkey temple, where the monkeys were hiding from the heat. Lovely views of Kathmandu from there :)
A Hindu cremation site, where-after the remains just gets dumped in the almost stationary and very shallow river. Won't recommend swimming in that river.
Catchin a flight over the himalayas to Lhasa early tomorrow morning.

doha

41 degrees outside. waiting for connection flight to kathmandu just after 12. haven't spotted any yaks yet, but wil keep my eyes open ad camera ready. need coffee to ensure that i'm awake & not miss the flight.

Happy Geek Day

Star-wars fans and other geeks celebrate Geek Pride Day world-wide on 25 May - the date that the first Star Wars movie was released in 1977. 25 May also happen to be  International Towel Day (an indispensable item when you hitchhike through the galaxy), which was celebrated for the first time 2 weeks after Douglas Adams' death in 2001.

Excitement in our office started building quite a while ago when we all completed the geek test to find our geek scores. (Can't work in the IT department and NOT celebrate geek day!) We put up everyone's scores, nagged those who hasn't taken the test yet, watched star wars over weekends and then retook the test to beat someone else. Forgotten (and sometimes not so forgotten) cupboards were searched for working Light Sabres, Rubiks' cubes of every shape and size, Star Wars chess sets, cards and monopoly, working Atari consoles, the installation floppies for forgotten Dos text-based Hitchiker's Guide games, Dungeons & Dragons manuals, 20-year-old working Tetris consoles, and a complete collection of every Star Wars movie that was ever made. Invitations were made in green-on-black dos fonts, and instructions to the venue were coded in C# and in SQL.

Like true geeks, we turned to Google to find out what we're supposed to wear on Geek day. It turned out that it's business as usual - jeans and t-shirts - so we decided to up the game a bit. We had Superheroes, Harry Potters, Nutty Professors and Girl-geeks in every shape and size.

A very fun day at the office - it's cool to be a geek!