dubai light

In 10th grade, my math teacher announced to the class his belief that the olympic rings are the colors: red, blue, yellow, black, and green because these colors can be found in the flags of every county on earth.  This is incorrect.  The colors of the olympic flag are meant to symbolize the five primary regions / continents of the globe: Africa, the Americas, Europe, Asia, and Oceania (there is no official correspondence, but at the flag's unveiling - side note: how does one unveil what is essentially a horizontal veil - in Olympic Games of 1920, the famously racist inhabitants of the host country, Belgium, came up with their own associations.)  Anyway, back to my math teacher.  He maintained that I may be correct, and I suggested that should I be able to find a country with a flag that contains no colors of the Olympic Rings, I should be given extra credit on the next quiz - as such an endeavor certainly demonstrates laudable ability in the realm of pre-calculus.  

If you would like to take a moment to see if you can figure out the country's flag - and I'm fairly certain there is only one - that I was able to find to earn my 5 extra credit points, I will give you an ellipsis to help pause the flow...  the country is Qatar

...okay, so you may have figured it out, you may have been stumped, you may have highlighted the section of text that came after my ellipsis, or you may have ignored this entire exercise that I so thoughtfully put together for you.  Regardless, the answer - and the flag are:

Qatar!

Qatar recently displaced one of my favorite vacation destinations: Luxembourg, as the country with the highest GDP per capita (conservative estimate: $86,000/person).  Most of Qatar's wealth comes from agricultural production and high-industry, ha ha, of course not, most of Qatar's wealth comes from oil.  Lots of oil.  The country straddles oil fields in both Saudi Arabia and Iran, and since only about 17 people actually lived there at the time when oil was discovered there in the 1940's, much like the United Arab Emirates, they've got so much money they don't know what to do with it.  Where Dubai built islands shaped like the world, Qatar is constructing a hugely unnecessary bridge - set to be the longest in the world - to an island in the gulf with which it share both a cultural heritage and the distinction of supporting the two most complete welfare states on earth.  When asked to explain the motivation for such a project, the Minister of the Interior was quoted as explaining: "...we've just got too much freaking money and it's not burning fast enough."

There aren't a whole lot of travel guides to Qatar, as it's not a tourist hotspot, but I'd like to take the chance to visit an oil-rich state before they all go to crap when the black stuff runs out.  So I'll be in Qatar for a short while, soaking up the rays, keeping up relations, and doing my best to smuggle a jar of oil back to the states.  

formatting

Good afternoon campers.  As you may have noticed, I've been tinkering with the "Settings" and "Layout" options on my blog, and I now have a spiffy new header.  I've tried my best to be creative despite the fact that the only "design" program I have is Apple's Pages - which operates a lot like Microsoft Word for the Mentally Handicapped - but I'm quite happy with the result.  I have also learned, with some trial and error, how to import pictures into my blog, which means it's time for...

"Guess what all these pictures have in common!"

Castles carved into the hillside...

A gorgeous, if slightly short (>26 mile), coastline...

Majestic peaks towering over the countryside...

Tranquil lakes, dotted with adventure-promising islands...

Yes, you would be correct if you guessed "all of these things can be found in New Hampshire", but these pictures are from somewhere almost as magical.  In fact, each of these pictures was taken in the little-known European country of Slovenia.  Slovenia is, to its Balkan peers, kind of like the smart kid that's put in a classroom of underachievers to balance out the average GPA.  And while it must contend with being associated with countries that insist on sitting in the back of the classroom ethnically-cleansing their classmates, Slovenia does its best to demonstrate that it can shine admits inferiority (if I sound at all bitter, this is only because of my own experiences in 8th grade history).  

Anyway, Slovenia is the first country that I will be visiting that many people are not likely to be familiar with - Iceland and Denmark benefiting from reasonable prominence.   So I've decided to do a few blog posts over the next week to familiarize people with some of the more obscure or poorly-understood countries that I'll be stopping in.  Though, don't expect me to post anything about Egypt, as there's nothing that I could write that would be more informative than the comments that would be left on such a posting by my friend Katy.

inauspicious beginings

Those that know me are apt to wonder whether accepting an invitation to visit a new blog of mine will bring them to the first, and last, entry of said blog.  To my credit, I was able to surpass these expectations with my last effort - a travel blog of Belgium - by writing a grand total of two entries before I was defeated by Belgian distractions.  Admittedly, neither of these entries was actually posted from Belgium, but I nevertheless feel optimistic about this latest effort.

Soon, less than a month from now, I will be embarking on a 3 - 4 month journey, roughly around the world.  Having been unable to lure anyone into coming along on my global sojourn, I will be traveling alone for most of the trip.  While this may cause my dear mother unnecessary anxiety, I feel the sense of naive self-confidence in my own travel abilities that can only come from years of wilderness survival training, and one night spent sleeping in a cave in Luxembourg.  Having thus prepared myself for my upcoming adventure, I am now investing a gratuitous amount of time in planing a travel itinerary in the hopes that it will facilitate a smooth circumnavigation.

Currently my plan is to leave Boston, Massachusetts for Reykjavik, Iceland at 9:00pm EST on Monday, July 13, and continue from Iceland to Denmark, Slovenia, Greece, Egypt, Qatar, Nepal, Thailand, Australia, Canada, Brazil, and finally Venezuela before heading home.  With the exception of Canada - which, lets be honest, is pretty lame coming from places like Nepal - I have never been to any of these countries, and have actually not yet set foot in four of the six continents I'll be traveling to.  So it promises to be an interesting and education voyage, and I promise to keep this travel blog up to date if for no other reason than to ameliorate the anxieties of my dear mother, and to prove wrong a world doubtful of my ability to blog.