Hundertwassser version of Alice In Wonderland?

I am not a baseball fan in the least (and the end of this MLB season is not going to change that) but what occurred is statistically mind boggling:
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/29/bill-buckner-strikes-again/?hp

In a nutshell: "you get a combined probability of about one chance in 278 million of all these events coming together"

I was trying to figure out what another 1 in 278 million probable event is, just for comparison (flipping a coing and it landing heads up every time for 556 million attempts? Holy chappati wrapped in a bharotha!) but then again these sort of odds are impossible to get my head around.

The laws that govern Germany are numerous (and some say onerous), be they in the tax filing department or in the getting rid of garden trash department. Though not as litigious as the US, friends have told me about complaints that are nothing more than "You broke a rule. It does not affect me at all but I am going to do something about it simply because I can"

Yesterday I go into a bicycle accident. A car cut right in front of me and I could do nothing other than barrel right into it. Thankfully, the damage to me was not too serious. No broken bones. Only my left shoulder, which took the brunt of the impact, is immobile in certain directions.

What it did introduce me to was the myriad of rules that govern fault and health insurance claims in such situations. The police were called and an ambulance arrived shortly thereafter. I was asked around ten times whether I was wearing a bike helmet (thankfully, I was)

At the moment, the fault lies with the driver (which means points on his license, which can result in the revoking of his kicense if he has too many points, a fine possibly, and higher car insurance rates) but all that could have easily changed
if
1. I was not wearing a bike helmet: It does not matter if my injuries were head related or not. Not wearing a bike helmet somehow negates a lot of claims.
2. I was not biking on a marked bike path: Especially if there was a marked bike path that I should've been using. In response to the oil crisis in the late 70s, Germany built bike paths all over the country to encourage ridership. I guess regualting the ridership went along with that
3. If I had been listening to music while biking: that is a big non-no
4. If I had had a drink beforehand: a big big no-no-no

In the event the fault would have been mine, there is insurance one can buy to cover such situations (or at least that is how the insurance is sold) I wish I could remember what it was called.

Onto the health insurance side of things
1. In general, people are covered through the government insurance plan, meaning I hand my insurance card over when I go to the doctor/hospital and that's the last I hear about it. However, I am on private insurance meaning that I will be billed for it and then need to claim a reimbursement (which is generally straight forward)
2. Unless I am no my way to or from work in which case the employer is responsible for covering the costs of any accident
3. Plus there is something called Schmerzensgeld (literally pain-money) which one can apply for to cover pain.
4. I am sure there are other things as well that I have yet to hear of.

For all the stereotypes of Germans being cold and reserved (which is not entirely unwarranted), they can be the exact opposite. After the accident, two strangers pulled over to make sure I was ok and offered their phone numbers to give to the police if the police wanted an eyewitness. The accident happened directly in front a bakery and the women who worked there came out to help me. The police and ambulance were called. I was too dazed and confused and the adrenaline was just shooting right through me right after it happened to really register who was helping and what was actually going on.

The accident happened right here:

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If you are in the area, one of the nicest (and totally local) beer gardens right on the lake can be found here:

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Plus the Thai takeway up the road isn't too bad either (go for the daily menu)

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This is not a movie I would've ever gone to see on my own. Not only is my understanding of German politics rudimentary (I regularly get the two main parties, the CDU and the SPD, mixed up) but I would've been daunted by the german langauge skills needed to decipher the movie.

In the end, the movie turned out to be an eye opener. Its the story of a man (the facts are here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joschka_Fischer) finding his way in the world, changing his views when he saw that the world was wholly different to the one he had imagined.

He drags the leftists into the political process. He drags the Green Party into supporting war in Kosovo, a position he eloquently defends at the Greens Party Congress in Bielefeld where the party is ready to make war on Joshka (and tthe Greens wished to make war on Joshka literally, not figuratively) Then there's the famous dressing down of Rumsfeld as Fisher refuses to drink the Kool Aid that he is being fed about the WMDs in Iraq. He in the end refuses to be dragged, looks at the world and sees that he cannot change his views on Iraq, that the world he imagines is the world as it really is.

The film shows a man who is learning right from wrong as he stumbles forward, a man full of humanity. There are lots of things I did not understand (not solely because of the content but because the content was in German) but I came out feeling fully fed with ideas, wanted to drink the night away and chat forever. That's the best I can expect from a movie.

Here's the original kitchen

It took me and Keena like 12 hours a piece to get all the tiles off the wall

Then, the tiler came by and said the blocks under the tiles need to come off too. My neighbor brought over a kind of jackhammer and with that it took me about 15 minutes to remove all the blocks


Here's one of the bedrooms originally

Here it is with all the carpet that I ripped out from the entire apartment stuffed into it (in total, I ripped out 300 kilos of carpet. My hands are still feeling it)

And here's the room with the laminate flooring that I put in

Here're before, and after pictures of part of the dining room (Keena's still working on putting up wallpaper)

When Ike hit Galveston last year, my parents were living there. The entierity of their possesions were in the house that they owned there. My mom's wedding saris. My sisters old toys (which my mom had somehow managed to hold on to through the litany of moves that we'd made) The photographs of a life lived across many decades, a couple of centuries and across several countries. They were all washed away by Ike.

Maybe a slight exagerration as some of the photographs did survive. And when my mom came to visit over Christmas, she brought along all the photos that survived so I could scan them. This was not just the sum total of our family life recorded but also family life before I arrived on the scene, before my parents got married, before my mom hit puberty.

Going through the photos, all the very old ones where my grandparents look vibrant and young and where my parents look vibrant and very young, they're all posed. They don't capture anything except some event, some gathering of people. There isn't a hint of the wider world outside that photo. There isn't a hint of anything beyond those people. No scenery. No house. Only faces and bodies.
Until my cousin sent me the picture above, of his father, my uncle, my mom's brother, wandering through what looks like a field of wheat, the part in his hair obscured by a errant blade of wheat, the forest off in the distance, dark and scary. It looks vaguely like my uncle today  though it could be any one of his brothers. I love this picture, for everything that it is, despite the fact that its badly out of focus. Photographs don't look like this, at least from this period.
My grandfather on my mom's side was a district court judge. A highly respectable position. And he was respected more than the position. The rule was that a district court judge  could only live in one district for two years, before you were transferred, lest you be corrupted by the court clientele. So every two years, the family, ever growing would pack up and move house. They lived all over Kerala, from the backwaters to the urban centers, and my mom still talks about those days longingly.
I suspect that the photograph is from those times, wandering around Kerala, and here is my uncle wandering around where ever they had settled for the two years.
There is something Satyajit Ray-ish about this photo, a view of an India before I was born, that I have never seen or experienced. Its like all the stories I have heard and have never heard. Its the india Satyajit Ray as able to capture but an India which is missing from almost all the photos I've seen. Its the India beyond my family growing up, but the same india that they inhabited. The India of their troubles and tribulations.
The photos reminds me of the India that I am chasing, have been chasing since I started wandering back to India during college. I've seen it in my cousins and in the jumble of city after city, town after town that is India. And every once in a while, I see it in the photos that tumble out of long forgotten photo albums, of the India I wish to know, to illuminate the life I currently inhabit.

Bruce Chatwin: A Biography

Complicated man
Lots about his sex life but
his writing......still dark

A Woman in Berlin

The end: World War II

War is truly hell even

for non-combatants

Gripping Guanzhou (or China)














I spent two weeks in Guangzhou recently on a business trip. It was an eye opener, both good and bad. It made me appreciate how far China had come, how impressive their acheivements are and also how insular of a country China really is in spite of the World Stage it commands.

I was there when the Olympic torch came through town and that was quite an experience. The Chinese are extremely proud (and rightly so) that the Olympics are being held in Beijing. Just like the Olympics in Barcelona was a coming out for that city, the Beijing Olympics will be a place for the China to show who they've really become. This isn't simply a land where cheap goods are produced (I could not beleive how cheap things are though. And i was paying tourist prices)

This is a country confident of who they are, confident of where they are headed. They are proud of their accomplishments. They have lifted millions of people out of poverty. They have built some of the grandest cities in the world and are continuing at a breakneck pace. Guangzhou is not on my radar as far as world class cities but it is getting there fast.. The amount of construction that is taking place is breathtaking. And this isn't Soviet architecture that is being raised. The skyline is rising with what looks like amazing looking structures. The city is being built with big boulevards and iconic buildings (Now if they could just deal with the smog)

They have a unique system (socialism mixed with capitalism, authoritarianism mixed with a relatively relaxed social environment) which is working surprisingly that allows them to address whatever ails them in a unique fashion, a path that no other government has. The government has absolute authority and gets things accomplished when things need to get done. They are adept at outside of the box thinking and with their political system are able to devise and implement unique solutions to deal with their problems. The challenges they face are immense (environmental, social, policitcal) but from what I see, they are well equipped to deal with these issues. Their people trust the government to better their lives, not by giving them a handout but by providing the opportunity for people to do better their own lives. For me, this is absolutely extraordinary. Its capitalism on a grand scale. It’s a system even the most jaded of American conservatives would be impressed with.

One only need to look to my motherland, India, to see where a goverment has failed in this regard. With all the positive coverage showered on its successes, India’s failures are on open display on every street in every town: families living on sidewalks, children begging in the streets, trash and litter everywhere. None of its cities compare in any way to the grandness of China’s big cities. The people have no trust in the government’s ability to better their lives. It is in spite of the government that the country is moving forward. Democracy and human rights have done little to increase literacy rates, provide basic services to its people, or better the lives of its poorest citizens (who are also its most numerous)

The insular nature of China has to do with my experience as being a person of color in a wholly homogenous country. Though I only had a handful of bad experiences (mostly having to do with taxi drivers), the overwhelming impression was of a country that does not embraces foreign cultures, foreign ideas. With the exception of the US, it’s the only country that I’ve visited where most people do not speak a second language. It’s either Mandarin or nothing. Perhaps it’s a remnant of the country’s history of which I am completely ignorant.

27 Dresses

Always a bridesmaid
27 times. Hence the
title. Fun movie.

Waiting: A Novel

Man in love. Maybe.

Man wants divorce. Really?

In Maoist China

Markgrafenbraeu

A google search on the term returned zero hits which is a bit of a shame. Well, it is a cheap beer (6 euros for a crate of 20 when the average is about 13 euros) and the beer is brewed by Winkels Getraenke GMBH (Usually the name of the beer would be somehow associated with the name of the brewery, i.e. Margrafenbraeu would be brewed by Margrafen Brauerei. In this case, its brewed by Winkel's Drinks Incorporated, the sort of association that would cause most Germans to steer clear of this brew. There's a classic American commercial about salsa from years ago, where the actors cringe when they read on the salsa bottle that the salsa's made in New York City. Its the same kind of thing here. Beer should come from a brewery. Not from Wenkel's house of things liquid)

I generally do not drink exports at home. They're just really too sweet for me and don't complement food well. Markgrafenbraeu though it has a terrific sweet smell also has a nice bitter taste. I really dig that combination. According to the label, its been brewed according to the German purity laws (no, this ain't some Nazi thing. German laws for brewing beer precede Herr Hitler. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinheitsgebot ) since 1816. Not that that's any indication of a good brew (Check out Ruppaner for a sizable exception) but here, Winkel has done a good thing. For six euros for twenty half liter beers, I can't complain.
No google hits, huh? I guess it may be time to start a website for Markgrafenbraeu connoisseurs.

A Thousand Splendid Suns

How can a book be so sad? Within the first forty pages, I was ready to break down and weep. I almost dreaded having to pick up the book when I got into bed (nor could I resist. Kinda like being a drug addict. Don't want the fix but can't resist either) but then once I started reading, I didn't want to put it down.

It almost seemed like the book was taunting me with the amount of sorrow it could pack. Every time I thought there's no way the book could get any sadder, the next chapter just brought more heartbreak. Grief piled on top of misery with a helping of being the wrong sex in the wrong country when the shit hit the fan.

The characters just seemed so alive in the novel, and I felt all their trials (I wish could say I felt their tribulations, but there were hardly any tribulations until the very end. Mostly tribulations just resulted in more misery), and I almost felt that it was happening to someone I know. I couldn't separate reality from fiction as I read the book. It felt like a real story, real people, partly because its set in Afghanistan in the recent past, a past which is very alive today and a culture which is very much in the news at the moment.

Having a young daughter, all the gloom visited on Azizi struck unbelievably close to home. I couldn't help think of my daughter when reading about Azizi. How terribly sad to have to face a life like hers. Terribly sad to face any of the lives in the the book but Azizi's was especially hard on me.

People stuck in situations beyond their control whose only want in life is to live without war, to be able to live a life of their choosing. How is that that this is not possible in the 20th century? I think that strikes are the crux of why this novel caused me so much grief. That what the women are striving for is so simple, something that I expect as a birthright, but is still far beyond the reach of a lot of people. Something I feel powerless to address in any shape or form. Therein lies my true grief.

Timelines - 2002 and 2007

For my first wedding anniversary gift, I made my wife a timeline of our first year together: the trips that we took (we traveled a lot), the things that we did (lots of fests, a lot of evenings at the Schorsch which is a beer garden right on the lake in Fischbach) accompanied by pictures taken during the year. I'd been keeping a journal all year and this really made the effort of keeping the journal worthwhile.
I revisited the timeline this year as a way of showing how different our lives are today, mostly due to a two year old at home and another baby on the way.

I wasn't much surprised at the difference in the two timelines. I expected the second to be dominated by Asha, our two year old. What was a bit surprising was the things that occurred in both years that I included in one and not the other.

For instance, people visited us in 2002 as much as they did in 2007 but in 2002, I included pictures of people who visited but not them in the timeline. Going through my journal back then, it didn't strike me as important while in 2006, visitors were a rather important part of what occurred during the year.

I also hung out with friends with as much frequency and took as many pictures in both years. Granted, a lot of the hanging out was at playgrounds, parks, kid friendly areas but going through the pictures, those did not merit as much space as the things that Asha, my wife and I did together as a family. The family really has replaced anything else as the most important part of my life. If you'd asked me in 2002 what was mostly important, I would have said family as well but perhaps it wasn't all that true.

I prize the importance of ordinary events above anything else. I think that's what make good blogs, or good writing. People writing eloquently and meaningfully about their day to day events. I'm not sure I am able to do that. Writing that is. But perhaps writing isn't the only outlet.

Germany and its immigrants

Modern Germany has had a complicated relationship with its immigrants. On the one hand, they're needed to fuel the economy. They work in basically every facet of German industry and are an engine for its growth. On the other hand, they dilute the German identity that Germany has fought so many wars to defend. After having shed so much blood in the cause, losing that identity to the modern phenomenon of immigration gets under people's skin.

The view of immigrants is on full display at the moment due to the elections going on in Hessen where the incumbent, who is struggling, has started talking about the criminal immigrant youth in Germany to boost his ratings.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,527694,00.html
Some of the statistics in the article surprise even me:
Fully 59.4 percent of Germans either "agree" or "strongly agree" with the statement that too many foreigners live in Germany -- an increase of 6 percent over 2002. In addition, 35.3 percent of those polled agreed that foreigners should be sent home should there be a shortage of jobs in Germany, up from 27.7 percent in 2002.

Living on the Bodensee, far from the big cities, far from the center of Germany, stories like this show the disconnect I have from what's going on in this country. At the company I work for, about ten percent of the empoyees are foreign born but many of the wifes (only one woman in the engineering firm and she's the secretary) are also foreign born. Its common to hear turkish, russian, or spanish being spoken if you're out and about, and dark skinned people, while not common, are not an oddity. With immigrants so ever present, its surprising that anti-immigrant sentiment is so high.

The surprising thing about the German view of foreigners is that its not based on am insular view of themselves. Germans are in general very inquisitive about the outside world and are very adaptive to foreign ideas. Non-Germans are even displayed promimently n tv, magazines and ads (which to me is striking as it means like dark skin can sell products) What they are not adaptive to is just foriegners in their midst.

Germans want foreigners to integrate, whatever that means. That is their most common complaint. People will talk at length about what this means: Respect for laws and democracy, equality of the sexes, knowledge of German (ok, ful disclosure: after having lived here eight years, I'm still struggling in this department) and Germany's customs, yadda yadda yadda. A lot of this talk is complete bullshit in my opinion. I think the Germans would have no problems with immigrants if the immigrants looked like them. That's the integration they want. Don't have dark skin. Don't look turkish or east suropean. Don't dress like a muslim. Don't have Chinese features. If you can satisfy that, you can piss on the German constitution and no one will give a shit

The battle cry a while back 'Kinder statt Inder' (kids instead of Indians) strikes bluntly at this point. Its obvious that you can tell an Indian apart from a German. No amount of love for democracy can get around that fact. No amount of clothes from C&A will disguise that. Germans look a certain way and any significant change to that is very problematic to a swath of the German population.

Beyond that most basic problem with looks, integration also means buying into what Germans find important. They want immigrants to vote like they do, to think like they do. Germans want their concerns, enviromentalism, nationalized health care, workers rights, generally liberal views to be continued. its not simply that you accept democracy but use democracy to make sure Germany does not significantly change. Accept equality of the sexes but leave it up to the Germans to determine exactly what the means. 'Don't tell us what we are. We'll tell you what you are' is basically what is boils down to.

The knee jerk reaction is to find the current situation a continuation of the German persecution of the Jews. I don't think its that simple. The historical situation is different today and the German mindset has been starkly shaped by the events following World War II. Arguments over immigration and national identity are taking place in many western countries, including the US, and Germany is another one of the fronts for this fight. The difference here in Germany is just the context from which the problem rises, the history of the Germany mostly.

While my macro views of Germans attitides towwards immigrants are quite pessimistic, my micro views are the opposite. I've never had a problem with anyone I've met here (occasinally there are neo-nazi marches and cashiers at shops who are obviously rascist but never with anyone I've personally met). I have close relationships to many German friends and never heard anything rascist from them. I actually love living in Germany and would set down roots here if it were not for the fact that my whole family lives in the States. I hope Germany's attitudes towards immigrants changes but I fear it will not in the short term.

Germany and bears in the spotlight

First there was Knut in Berlin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knut_(polar_bear)

There there was Bruno in Bavaria
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5116316.stm

Now there's another star in the making at the Nuernberg Zoo (no name so far)
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/01/08/world/main3687047.shtml?source=RSSattr=HOME_3687047

Apparently, the foxes in Germany are urbanizing
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,511825,00.html
I can honestly say this is true. After having not seen a single fox in the first six years that I lived in Germany, I has three sightings last year alone. One jumped out in front of me from the bushes as I was riding my bike, growled and then ran off into the wineyards (kinda shook me as I was afraid it was rabid and could come back), I ran over a dead fox a few months later on my bike (riding really early in the morning, in the pre-dawn darkness) and then saw one running across the street once.

Before the Devil Knows You're Dead

First off, a few disclaimers: I'm a sucker for movies that are non-linear. I'm also a sucker for movies about human weakness. Allright, any sort of exploration of human weakness, be it books, movies....

This movie hits both points. Its non-linearity keeps the movie interesting and moving. And the core of the movie is the exploration of the weaknesses of two brothers who try to rob their parents jewelry store for cash, convincing themselves its a victimless crime.

I'm not one to harp on movie performances as I can rarely tell if anyone is giving an extraordinary performance but it seemed obvious to me that Ethan Hawke really inhabited the character he played and Philip Seymour Hoffman was fucking good (but he's always fucking good. He's kind of like the anti-Keanu Reeves. They always seem to play the same sort of role but on opposite sides of the character spectrum)

I was riveted by the sheer stupidity of the brother in committing the crime and the hubris of the brother who thought up the crime without thinking about it. And as the mistakes pile one on top of another and their lives unravel, the movie just grabbed me (though i had to stop in the middle as my sister was visiting and she was sleeping in the living room where the tv was and she was completely not into it and falling asleep. But that's neither here nor there)

Smoking restricted In Germany

I would never have thought this would happen in my lifetime: Smoking banned inside restaurants and bars in ermany! Partly it has to do with being a smoker at the time I moved to Germany and having moved from the US where smoking was already restricted.
I still remember stepping off then plane @ Frankfurt and being able to light up in the airport. Back at the Dallas airport, I had to go outside if I wanted a cigarrette, which meant having to clear security every time I wanted (ok, needed) to smoke. Germany was like heaven (smoking wise) for me. It seemed like there were cigarrette machines everywhere in Germany as well. I mean not just next to the bathrooms in bars/restaurants but like next to a farm down the street from where I live, there's a cigarrette machine set up. That still goes though the machines no longer accept cash. You need to put in a bank card, the logic being that kids are less likely to have a bank card and thus its harder for them to buy cigarettes.
I've not smoked for a few years now and haven't had much opportunity to frequent bars after my first kid was born. It came as quite a shock when I saw people huddled around an outdoor heater when I met some freinds for a drink the other day. The american newspapers seem to be convering the ban on smoking in France as if it is an affront to their culture (the french will cry and moan about every little thing and eventually do nothing about it. The Germans just accept that some things need change and deal with it without the crying and moaning) but have hardly covered what's happening in Germany, where coffee culture invented the coffee and the cigarrette (I just made that up. I have no idea if its actually true though my experience leads me to beleive there may be something to it)
As usual, the law is not quite so simple. Laws differ by what state it is. Check out the graphic below:

Seems like in Berlin (which in my estimation would be the birthplace of coffee with a cigarette), things have hardly changed. The only places where its restricted are schools, discos (huh?) and hotels.
Smoking's though has been banned at the airports in Hessen, which is where Frankfurt is. There goes the thrill that any future Americans will experience of landing in Germany and being able to light up without clearing security.

Saira Khan's Pakistan Adventure

The sister feature to Sanjeev Bhaskar travelling through India has Saira Khan travelling through Pakistan, the first episode of which takes place mostly in Karachi. Full Disclosure: I know nothing about Pakistan. A friend asked me a while ago whether the food in Pakistan is significantly different to the food in India. I had no real idea. Perhaps the fact that everything presented was so new to me is one reason why I found the show compelling.

I really appreciated the way in which Saira embraced Pakistan, which is a very difficult thing for someone part of the diaspora. They grow up hearing stories about their homeland and what they experience rarely matches what they've heard. It didn't feel like she was an emigrant returning home. She embraced the contradictions that Pakistan presented. She seemed to go out of her way to eliminate the distance between her and the country, be it in the dressing room with the cross dressing talk show host, or in the women's shelter. It wasn't reporting as much as she was trying to get us to experience the country with her.

She didn't try to show the country in a positive or a negative light. Some of the things about Pakistan shocked her and moved her well out of her comfort zone but she hardly recoiled from the country that she was covering. The show never lowered itself to presenting a caricature of the place. She really went beyond the media representations of the country, which from watching CNN is a country filled with Muslim men protesting the West but it still felt like a different part of the same country. Everything she showed appeared to be firmly within Pakistani society.

Ordinary people pushing the boundaries of a soceity is to me what is interesting. Ordinary lives lived in unordinary conditions. Ordinary jobs in places where those jobs take on far more significance and Saira does a great job of exposing all these features in the first epiode. I unfortunately missed the second episode as out satellite reception was out due to a storm. Hope it gets replayed on some night.

India With Sanjeev Bhaskar

Monday evening saw the beginning of India-Pakistan 07 on BBC2 with India With Sanjeev Bhaskar. One of the reasons I love BBC is their plethora of programmes about India, which are invaribaly good. I find the programs present India in ways that are unfamiliar to me, all the while showing it as itself, complete with all the contradictions that it is.
This program though mostly misses the mark. Some of the show was great. The tour thorugh the recycling industry in Bombay was eye-opening. The bit about the beauty contest for married women was uncomfortably funny. The firm producing India comic books in bangalore was fascinating (I'm not into comic books, if that's what you're wondering)
What struck me as strange about the show was that I had been to all the places that the first program visited and none of them looked anything like the places I had visited. It wasn't that the a new side of the cities were shown but the cities seemed white-washed, sanitized. They were places safe for Sanjeev Bhaskar's cooling glasses (sunglasses for those of you unfamiliar with late 70's indian-english slang)
Cochin among the most beautiful places on earth? Come on. I can name a few place in India that are up there (Jaisalmer, Dal Lake, other parts of Kerala) but the megapolis that is Cochin hardly qualifies. He's taken the India that's in the media and re-hashed it together to tell you what you want to hear.
I would've loved to have seen more of the India that isn't portrayed in the media (which, let me say again, they do a bit of and do quite well) The campus of Infosys gives me no more insight into India that going to campus of Cisco in San Jose (where there are as many indians working) Watching a taping of Eastenders on acid is no more enlightening either (unless they were actually on acid. That, I may have found interesting)
I hope the second episode is less hollywoody and more real.