Just Say No to Peakbagging or Plain Yoga, No Mat

Thursday June 15, 2006

I awoke at about 4am or so with a migraine and took a pill and tried to get back to sleep, but I just couldn’t. In my best Seize the Day mindset, I decided to bathe, dress and go off to the Fish Market. The hot, hot bath plus the pill worked wonders and that headache did get kicked. The JFMF people are incredibly organized in so many ways and they had provided a handout that gave the subway lines to take to the fish market. So I set off. At the bottom of the stairs to the street, I hesitated and almost turned back with an alternate plan to walk around the gardens or something. I was very glad that I didn’t. The subway system is really quite easy to manage once you know what to do. In the envelope with our food mad money, we received a brochure with a map and instructions on the fares and everything else. I thought of Rick Steeves, as this is the type of information he would appreciate. I purchased a 24 hour ticket from an automatic machine with the thought that I would be using it in the evening, but that didn’t turn out to be the case later. Nonetheless, it was the easiest way to navigate the subway. Like the new Charlie card (which let’s face it, it is a much younger American cousin to systems used in Europe and Japan) you use it to enter and exit the gates. Like in Europe, they tell you on an electronic sign when the next train is due, and by golly, there it is, on time. Nearly every time I bet. It was fairly easy to make the connections, although like New York, you go up and down stair cases and walk through corridors underground a bit. I was glad to have had this type of experience as a traveler previously.

I got off the train after making a transfer, and when I got off the train onto the platform, a transit worker asked, “Fish Market?” in English, and when I replied in the affirmative, he pointed me to the right exit. I met an American couple at the head of the stairs who were also going, but I decided to use the footbridge over the busy street. The gentleman in the couple declined as he didn’t want to be bothered with the stairs. A map outside indicated that you could cut through a parking lot of what turned out to be a university. I chose that route and found myself on the outskirts of the marketplace outside the fish market itself. This was a fascinating area full of stalls of tons of fish, of course, but also other items. In addition to fruit, dried fish, drinks, and knick knacks and cooking stuff for sale, there were a few stuffed – taxidermy style – creatures around. I walked literally up to one of the entrances of the Fish Market (please note capital letters) and decided not to go in. I felt very strongly that it was their workplace and I would be an intruder, along with whatever other tourists would be there. So I didn’t go in. I took a lot of pictures, and more importantly took my time outside the area among the stalls in the alleyways. At one such place, I went to what I thought was a cooler/fridge with a glass door to get a can of green tea. I was quite surprised that it was in fact hot tea, hot green tea in an aluminum can. I decided to get it anyway, for the liquid as much as the caffeine at that point, and it cooled off pretty quickly. Afterwards, I asked the woman if it would be OK if I took her picture, which she was fine with. I also got a very small can of excellent coffee – this cold – and drank this down nearly in one gulp. I took a lot of pictures.

When I ran in to some other people who had gone inside, there was a lot of peakbagging talk and semi-posturing, “Well, we saw The Auction.” This is a daily fish auction of a giant tuna, which would be cool thing to see admittedly but I feel that since we have precious little unstructured time that I wanted to make my own true choice. Someone later also talked about how she felt like an intruder, and she did go inside. Another person said, “Well there was a special place to stand to watch The Auction, and there were people from all over the world there. But no flash pictures were allowed”. I still didn’t think the fact that there were "people from all over the world there" made it right to intrude upon, but wisely for once, refrained from expressing this opinion. I did say that for me, I was glad to take the time outdoors and explore the surrounding streets. I had a time restraint due to breakfast and morning meetings. Peakbagging be damned.

The Pride Goeth Before A Fall Department:

I ran into some folks from the program on the way back to the subway. I really wanted to continue to move at my own pace. They were asking for directions a lot etc. (And besides I know all about trains and everything, right? Plus there was the virtuousness of not having peakbagged.) I kept going at one point, and then stopped to take a picture in the subway corridor. When I got down the stairs to the train platform, one was getting ready to pull away, so I jumped on it without looking Sure enough, it was going the opposite direction than I wanted to. So I had to get off at the next stop and cross the platform and pick up the train going in the opposite direction.

Figures.