lingqi's Journal: April 5th, 2004

August 5th, 2004 (5:03pm)

-- continues --

I went outside for the "scratch check" and I found two cars with their engines running parked next to eachother. One was a silver Toyota Vitz, that familiar shape that probably hadn't changed much for the last four decades, and next to it was a tiny little green sardine can of a convertable. It was the size of a averaged size dinner table; the fabric top must have had some unpleasant run-in with something hard, as an L-shaped cut was patched up with several patches. Hot air rose from the top heated in the sun, and the air conditioner strained to keep the interior somewhat cool and spewed hot air from under the car to us standing next to it.

Definitely not a March; Maybe a Daihatsu, I thought, and eyed an orange March that an attendant was pulling out from the lot while they checked over christian's hard-toped Vitz.

The attendand came over. "Ok Mr. Qi this will be your vehicle for the next four days," he said, squinting in the bright sun.

HUH? We had four people - this car could barely fit a LEG. As much as I like the coolness of a convertable (not really), I really figured for a while that we got really screwed with the mixup - Vitz was not a big car but this car makes a Geo Metro looks like Goliath. I read the tags carefully - March _Cabriolet_... I guess it was a March after all, just, well, completely not what I had in mind. I remember a legend where this woman asked for "a piece of land that can be surrounded by the skin of a rat" and turned out to cut the skin into very thin strip and netted herself a pretty big lot. I feel like whoever that had to give her that lot (I think actually some god or godess from Greek myth) - shafted. 50 points to whoever able to provide the actual reference to this story.

The trunk was so small that it was not able to fit anything other than my gigantic backpack, which actually illustrates how cavernous the plane's overhead compartment really was... Surprisingly, though - the car actually swallowed four people - the legroom was not exemplary, but to my amazement, it was tolerable.

Just one little neat note about the car - it was equipped with a continuous variable transmission, so when you hit gas, the tachometer would jump to 2.5k and then stay there as the car ramped up speed. It didn't

After going to MOS burger for some quick lunch, we were on our way to the hotel. While the airport was in Naha, our hotel was much further up in Onna-son (Onna Village) - inexpensive beach-front hotels can be so persuasive...

Driving through Naha did not take such a long time, and soon we were heading on Route 58 northwards toward our destination. The entire scene is almost exactly the same as Saipan despite the fact that Okinawa was several hundred kilometers to the north. I have somehow gotten a mental association between tropical islands and "small size" together, and always expected for some reason that Okinawa was also going to be 22km long, and a subconscious part of me kept feeling very strange that we still havn't reached the end of the island yet. The tropical island feeling was reinforced by rows upon rows of palm trees, and finally when the road took a sea-side path, and the sea greeted us - a turquoise tranquilty resting below the crystal blue sky - and we sped along with its accompaniment; relaxation suffuses.

when the oceanside is not a sandy beach, it is often lined by craggy rocks of a very porous nature. Red and brown, they often stood isolated, like art piece by some aloof sulptor that must have his work displayed individually.

The hotel actually was one of the less encouraging parts of the trip. It was not new and the rooms greeted us with an inevitable smell of mold as a sign of the years that this hot and humid weather had acted upon the rooms. Though the inside is still meticulously clean, the yellowed plastic facade of Air Condition unit and the spotty rust on the furniture on the balcony all spoke the same story.

However, the balcony looked outside to the same beautiful ocean that we had earlier feasted our eyes upon. Toward the south, the surface glittered, dazzling.

-- to be continued --

Elissar Dido, Queen of Carthage

[rickwood]

Lingqi,

The story you are refering to is the Legend of the founding of Carthage. In what is modern-day Tunisia, the Phoenician Queen Dido made a deal with the local rulers. She promised them a fair amount of money and rent for many years for as much land as she could mark out with a bull's skin.

Cf.
http://phoenicia.org/elissardidobio.html [phoenicia.org]

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Dido [nationmaster.com]

Thank you for so many mornings enjoying the story of your adventure.

Your Fan,

rickwood

Awsome!

[lingqi]

Hey thanks friend.

I was actually calculating that you would need to cut the skin of a rat (assuming 100sq.cm) into 300um threads to yield a mere 10sq.m, and I was kind of wondering why it didn't seem feasable to build a city on it! Guess I need to brush up on my mythology / history.

Thanks again.