INTENSITY²
Start here => Free For ALL => Topic started by: Al Swearegen on March 16, 2018, 06:59:59 AM
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Well?
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I want to go on a tornado chasing holiday, and get up close enough to a tornado without getting injured in any way. I’ve already been very close to a lightning strike which was less than 2 metres away. I’d like to experience a decently shaky earthquake too. Again, without getting hurt in any way. So, I guess anywhere which has those things. I’d also love to see a volcano erupt, again without getting hurt.
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What do you want to do?
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I want to live in Thailand (Chiang Mai)
I would love to visit the world but these places are on my bucket list
New Zealand
Fiji
Philippines
Malaysia
Singapore
Bali
Maldives
Prague
Florence
Southern France
Barcelona
Morocco
Mauritius
St Kitts
Cuba
Playa Del Carmen
Cuenca, Ecuador
Off the top of my head
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Back to York, London and Aachen/Aix-la-Chappelle.
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If having the means, would make is so I didn't need to go anywhere.
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in no particular order:
Iceland
Scotland (for obvious reasons) :scotch:
Sweden (to see Lit) :viking:
Germany (again)
Poland
Czech republic
Hungary (again)
Italy
Greece
Egypt
India
Thailand
Vietnam
Australia
New Zealand
China
South Korea
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I've travelled a lot already. I'd like to take my family on a big OS trip if/when I have the $$$$. The one regret I have is not travelling to Egypt while it was still reasonably safe to do so.
I tend to find travel for its own sake tedious and stressful. There are some things worth travelling for though, like (for example) the British Museum.
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I would like to go back to Japan. Awesome place.
The UK would be good too. And visit odeon in Sweden where I can see actual snow. :zoinks:
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I've travelled a lot already. I'd like to take my family on a big OS trip if/when I have the $$$$. The one regret I have is not travelling to Egypt while it was still reasonably safe to do so.
I tend to find travel for its own sake tedious and stressful. There are some things worth travelling for though, like (for example) the British Museum.
I stopped in the Egypt airport 3-4 years ago around the time of the uprisings and the atmosphere was far from serene. I did not feel safe there in the airport for two hours waiting and it was not until I was about an hour in the air after leaving was I at ease
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And visit odeon in Sweden where I can see actual snow. :zoinks:
We have some right now. :zoinks:
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Unfortunately I don't have the means to visit you right now. I need a holiday!
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Czech republic would be on my list, theres an interesting bugger of a contact of mine round those parts. Gun nut with an absolutely INSANE arsenal of hardware, from autocannon, to sniper rifles, machineguns, IIRC rocket launchers, to various HE charges, plastique etc. that could be fun to fuck about with, the pics I've seen....it would make lit go insane with envy :D
Clandestine chemist, which is probably a lot of what would go on, got some fairly similar tastes in some things. It'd be entertaining thats for sure.
Where else...well theres a few people here I'd love to meet. Oz would be on my list, would be good to meet ren and al.
Portland, IL, US. and west VA, people I'd like to meet with there too.
And whilst I don't know anyone there, there are some valleys in papua new guinea where I'd love to go, to do some studies on certain really quite unusual native fungi, packing the latest in analytical chemistry equipment, and containers for spore prints, and for seeds, cuttings etc. of the native trees, to see if I could grow some of them myself (being in the genera Boletus and Russula, they are near certain to be mycorrhizal, and need to grow in symbiosis with trees)
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I've travelled a lot already. I'd like to take my family on a big OS trip if/when I have the $$$$. The one regret I have is not travelling to Egypt while it was still reasonably safe to do so.
I tend to find travel for its own sake tedious and stressful. There are some things worth travelling for though, like (for example) the British Museum.
I stopped in the Egypt airport 3-4 years ago around the time of the uprisings and the atmosphere was far from serene. I did not feel safe there in the airport for two hours waiting and it was not until I was about an hour in the air after leaving was I at ease
Where were you on your way to? I wouldn’t have liked that.
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Turkey to see the cave towns.
Egypt for the pyramids and ruins.
Vietnam for the massive caverns with trees growing inside.
France, Italy, Greece for the art and architecture.
Japan because why the hell not, you've got to do it once.
Iceland. Mongolia. Brazil. There's lots of places I would go on an infinite budget.
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Japan
France (Longer than just 15 hours)
Germany
Ireland
Sweden
Canada
West Coast United States (That isn't Dodger Territory)
Pakistan (Because I haven't been back since 1995)
South Korea
Norway
Roswell, New Mexico
Ukraine
Hong Kong
Australia
New Zealand
Spain
Iceland
Denmark
Zambia
Botswana (To visit a British Ex-pat that I became acquainted with)
South Africa (Mainly Cape Town, I've been to Johannesburg yet never Cape Town)
Netherlands (Van Gogh Museum)
Russian Federation
Lithuania
Poland
Czech Republic
Lafayette, Indiana
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West Coast United States (That isn't Dodger Territory)
IF you visit Californiastan, see as much of the Sierra Nevada mts that you can. I'd recommend seeing Kings Canyon, Sequoia National Forest, Yosemite, Owens Valley, Mammoth Lakes and Lake Tahoe.
Lafayette, Indiana
:dunno:
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Lafayette was the inspiration for a fictional town in my writing. That's why I want to go visit it...
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I've travelled a lot already. I'd like to take my family on a big OS trip if/when I have the $$$$. The one regret I have is not travelling to Egypt while it was still reasonably safe to do so.
I tend to find travel for its own sake tedious and stressful. There are some things worth travelling for though, like (for example) the British Museum.
I stopped in the Egypt airport 3-4 years ago around the time of the uprisings and the atmosphere was far from serene. I did not feel safe there in the airport for two hours waiting and it was not until I was about an hour in the air after leaving was I at ease
Exactly!
There are some excellent Egyptian exhibits at some of the big museums I've been to. No need to play big-fat-walking-target in Egypt.
I've been to Istanbul. That was Middle East enough for me even if it was technically still Europe. Amazing food and history.
Iceland I did a 24 hour stopover. Ended up just walking around Reykjavik after a long sleep. Still interesting. Beautiful country and so clean. Nice place to go if you like fresh seafood.
Vietnam I just stayed in Hanoi. Amazing food.
I'm boring. I hate sightseeing. I'd rather wander around and look for interesting food. //edit: and go to museums.
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Lots of places. Right now, though, Italy, especially southern Italy.
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Home. ;)
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Always wanted to visit Moscow.
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Years ago I saw a travel show where the presenter guy went to Moscow. He practically said not to bother because some of the worthwhile places to visit he wasn't allowed into and the people there were quite rude.
Hopefully that's changed.
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Years ago I saw a travel show where the presenter guy went to Moscow. He practically said not to bother because some of the worthwhile places to visit he wasn't allowed into and the people there were quite rude.
Hopefully that's changed.
I haven't been to Moscow but I've spent a bit of time in Eastern Europe and people maybe aren't as "polite" as they generally are in the UK or the US or even Australia.
But that's an important part of the experience of travelling to new places with different cultures. Do you really want people in Moscow to be polite and say "heff a nice dayski"? (apologies for pathetic attempt at typing with a Russian accent).
It's important to do your research ahead of time and work out what you want to see, and what you need to do in order to see them. You might need to book a tour, for example. Or there might be horrendous queues at certain times of the year (as there were at the Louvre and at the Vatican Museum when I went there). Although I'd imagine that there are horrendous queues year-round these days.
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West Coast United States (That isn't Dodger Territory)
IF you visit Californiastan, see as much of the Sierra Nevada mts that you can. I'd recommend seeing Kings Canyon, Sequoia National Forest, Yosemite, Owens Valley, Mammoth Lakes and Lake Tahoe.
Lafayette, Indiana
:dunno:
I'd love to visit Mt. Shasta or Lassen Peak!
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Iceland is on my top of the bucket list.
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Years ago I saw a travel show where the presenter guy went to Moscow. He practically said not to bother because some of the worthwhile places to visit he wasn't allowed into and the people there were quite rude.
Hopefully that's changed.
I haven't been to Moscow but I've spent a bit of time in Eastern Europe and people maybe aren't as "polite" as they generally are in the UK or the US or even Australia.
But that's an important part of the experience of travelling to new places with different cultures. Do you really want people in Moscow to be polite and say "heff a nice dayski"? (apologies for pathetic attempt at typing with a Russian accent).
It's important to do your research ahead of time and work out what you want to see, and what you need to do in order to see them. You might need to book a tour, for example. Or there might be horrendous queues at certain times of the year (as there were at the Louvre and at the Vatican Museum when I went there). Although I'd imagine that there are horrendous queues year-round these days.
I've frequently found that the supposed "rudeness" in parts of Eastern Europe is more about not sharing a common language, i.e. English.
As opposed to Paris, where they are actually rude and don't want to speak your language. :P
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Years ago I saw a travel show where the presenter guy went to Moscow. He practically said not to bother because some of the worthwhile places to visit he wasn't allowed into and the people there were quite rude.
Hopefully that's changed.
I haven't been to Moscow but I've spent a bit of time in Eastern Europe and people maybe aren't as "polite" as they generally are in the UK or the US or even Australia.
But that's an important part of the experience of travelling to new places with different cultures. Do you really want people in Moscow to be polite and say "heff a nice dayski"? (apologies for pathetic attempt at typing with a Russian accent).
It's important to do your research ahead of time and work out what you want to see, and what you need to do in order to see them. You might need to book a tour, for example. Or there might be horrendous queues at certain times of the year (as there were at the Louvre and at the Vatican Museum when I went there). Although I'd imagine that there are horrendous queues year-round these days.
I've frequently found that the supposed "rudeness" in parts of Eastern Europe is more about not sharing a common language, i.e. English.
As opposed to Paris, where they are actually rude and don't want to speak your language. :P
I lived in a Central European country for a year not long after the fall of communism and subsequent independence, and I travelled around a few other formerly communist countries. I always put the abruptness of people in customer service roles down to a certain lack of customer-focus that is inherent to communism, i.e. customers are a pain in the arse rather than your bread and butter. I always found people in South-East-Asia to be incredibly polite even where they don't speak a word of English. Even in Vietnam, which kind of blows my hypothesis about communism out of the water.
My girlfriend (American) at the time knew a few languages and she could speak fluently to people in their own language most of the time. It didn't seem to help.
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Years ago I saw a travel show where the presenter guy went to Moscow. He practically said not to bother because some of the worthwhile places to visit he wasn't allowed into and the people there were quite rude.
Hopefully that's changed.
I haven't been to Moscow but I've spent a bit of time in Eastern Europe and people maybe aren't as "polite" as they generally are in the UK or the US or even Australia.
But that's an important part of the experience of travelling to new places with different cultures. Do you really want people in Moscow to be polite and say "heff a nice dayski"? (apologies for pathetic attempt at typing with a Russian accent).
It's important to do your research ahead of time and work out what you want to see, and what you need to do in order to see them. You might need to book a tour, for example. Or there might be horrendous queues at certain times of the year (as there were at the Louvre and at the Vatican Museum when I went there). Although I'd imagine that there are horrendous queues year-round these days.
I've frequently found that the supposed "rudeness" in parts of Eastern Europe is more about not sharing a common language, i.e. English.
As opposed to Paris, where they are actually rude and don't want to speak your language. :P
I lived in a Central European country for a year not long after the fall of communism and subsequent independence, and I travelled around a few other formerly communist countries. I always put the abruptness of people in customer service roles down to a certain lack of customer-focus that is inherent to communism, i.e. customers are a pain in the arse rather than your bread and butter. I always found people in South-East-Asia to be incredibly polite even where they don't speak a word of English. Even in Vietnam, which kind of blows my hypothesis about communism out of the water.
My girlfriend (American) at the time knew a few languages and she could speak fluently to people in their own language most of the time. It didn't seem to help.
Well, my experience is limited and not that close to the fall of communism.
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Are jailbait holes an appropriate answer?
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Years ago I saw a travel show where the presenter guy went to Moscow. He practically said not to bother because some of the worthwhile places to visit he wasn't allowed into and the people there were quite rude.
Hopefully that's changed.
I haven't been to Moscow but I've spent a bit of time in Eastern Europe and people maybe aren't as "polite" as they generally are in the UK or the US or even Australia.
But that's an important part of the experience of travelling to new places with different cultures. Do you really want people in Moscow to be polite and say "heff a nice dayski"? (apologies for pathetic attempt at typing with a Russian accent).
It's important to do your research ahead of time and work out what you want to see, and what you need to do in order to see them. You might need to book a tour, for example. Or there might be horrendous queues at certain times of the year (as there were at the Louvre and at the Vatican Museum when I went there). Although I'd imagine that there are horrendous queues year-round these days.
I've frequently found that the supposed "rudeness" in parts of Eastern Europe is more about not sharing a common language, i.e. English.
As opposed to Paris, where they are actually rude and don't want to speak your language. :P
One of those stereotypical assumptions regarding the French that has been used in a number of movie scripts.
Hilarious!
Stereotypes are not invoked from thin air, as evil as it may seem to remark upon one.
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Maybe a tour of old European majestic architectural masterpieces (kind of a list here!), but mostly, my list involves the Western Hemisphere.
I have seen many things over thirty five states here (I used to keep count) but I was often within a few miles of something I really wanted to see and was "RUSHED" in our travels so that it was impossible to turn off and stop for a day or two. I would like to make up for that.
There is enough to see in this country alone to keep me busy for years and if I live long enough, I want to see more of the Aztec and Mayan cultures, then maybe a look or two at the Inca things that still exist in those lands.
I want to fish in the Amazon and eat what I catch (Can not eat local fish catch here due to horrid environmental crimes committed in years past - still not safe after forty something years of regulation against constant dumping of crap into the waterways. I do not drink native tap water either, nor do I give tap water to our animals. We drink purified water and I have done so since I was in my teens, no matter where I lived)!
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Iceland is on my top of the bucket list.
Same.
...and Ikaria.
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I've heard several people try to justify the French attitude to their language, i.e. "isn't it rude to travel to a country with a foreign language and expect them to speak your language?".
Well... no. The French are mostly pissed off that their language isn't the international language and are known for getting stroppy in other countries where hotel staff speak English but not French. In a tourist city you need to be prepared to speak the language that most tourists speak as a second language, or at least be prepared to try to communicate with people when you don't have a common language. I wasn't going to spend 6 months learning French in preparation for a 3 day stay in Paris.
What struck me was that in London museums the exhibits would be labelled in several languages including French. At the Louvre the exhibits were labelled in French only.
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Back to York, London and Aachen/Aix-la-Chappelle.
Ooooh, do take a day of rest on your way from the UK to Aachen in my humble village. Or we could meet in York, London or Aachen. Köln is also nice.
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Mainly northern Europe. Scotland, Ireland, Iceland, Scandinavia, Germany. Ardennen in Belgium. Would love going back to Italy too.
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Iceland is on my top of the bucket list.
Same.
...and Ikaria.
A lot shorter flight than to Hawaii if I want to see volcanoes in action. And probably cheaper! What is Ikaria???
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Years ago I saw a travel show where the presenter guy went to Moscow. He practically said not to bother because some of the worthwhile places to visit he wasn't allowed into and the people there were quite rude.
Hopefully that's changed.
I haven't been to Moscow but I've spent a bit of time in Eastern Europe and people maybe aren't as "polite" as they generally are in the UK or the US or even Australia.
But that's an important part of the experience of travelling to new places with different cultures. Do you really want people in Moscow to be polite and say "heff a nice dayski"? (apologies for pathetic attempt at typing with a Russian accent).
It's important to do your research ahead of time and work out what you want to see, and what you need to do in order to see them. You might need to book a tour, for example. Or there might be horrendous queues at certain times of the year (as there were at the Louvre and at the Vatican Museum when I went there). Although I'd imagine that there are horrendous queues year-round these days.
I've frequently found that the supposed "rudeness" in parts of Eastern Europe is more about not sharing a common language, i.e. English.
As opposed to Paris, where they are actually rude and don't want to speak your language. :P
One of those stereotypical assumptions regarding the French that has been used in a number of movie scripts.
Hilarious!
Stereotypes are not invoked from thin air, as evil as it may seem to remark upon one.
This one is based on experience. Parisians can be quite rude in comparison with the rest of the country.
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Back to York, London and Aachen/Aix-la-Chappelle.
Ooooh, do take a day of rest on your way from the UK to Aachen in my humble village. Or we could meet in York, London or Aachen. Köln is also nice.
I was in Aachen for a two-day workshop last September. :orly:
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Rather more specifically, its the Wahgi valley area in papua new guinea that I want to visit, to do some research, taking with me, given the unlimited funding, both LC-MS, GC-MS and one of those portable NMR machines along with some of my glassware and solvents. And of course some TLC plates and staining reagents.
There is a mushroom there, the natives know it as nonda gegwants nyimbil, meaning in the native language 'left handed penis' because thats what they think it looks like, a theresa may, and they believe it must be picked with the left hand.
The unusual part, the really interesting bit is that its a powerfully psychotropic, hallucinogenic species, and the weird bit, is that its a member of the Boletus family. Boletus manicus (Heim et. al.)
And it must contain some incredibly potent compounds, and can't be something we are familiar with, such as DMT, 5-methoxy-DMT, baeocystin, psilocybin/psilocin. It was analyzed but with primitive technique, using paper chromatography and presumably something like Van Urk or Erlichs reagent; for three spots were detected, showing trace quantities of three unidentified indolic compounds. There are plenty of psychoactive indole derivatives, tryptamines like DMT and psilocybin known, as well as many synthetic tryptamines not found in the natural world. LSD and the naturally occurring lysergic acid hydroxyethylamide, and lysergic acid amide (ergine) found produced by a symbiotic fungus in the seeds of the morning glories, hawaiian baby woodrose and the aztec Badoh Negro/ololiuqui, produced not by the plant but the endophytic clavicipitalean fungus, which cannot be grown in culture as it requires the plant. The seeds are psychoactive, not wholly dissimilar to LSD.
Boletus manicus showed only very small amounts of whatever these three indolic compounds are, which rules out psilocybin immediately on potency grounds, and they must be nearly as potent as LSD, active fully at a couple of hundred micrograms and very powerfully at half a milligram.
So, its really got my attention piqued. I REALLY would love to discern the chemical structures of these three indoles. Because they are quite likely new to science, or else not known in nature.
And while I'm at it, I'd both collect spores to try and grow the mushrooms, as well as cuttings of the local nearby trees because members of the Boletus family are mycorrhizal, I.e growing in association with tree species, forming intimate super-fine networks of hyphae around and penetrating the tiny fiber-like rootlets at the end of roots, each supplying the other with nutrients they need, in a symbiosis.
So I'd grow the trees from cuttings and attempt to infect them with cultures from the spores germinated on agar plates or liquid culture, as well as taking samples of the mushroom, and of course, trying it out on myself. I really want to know what is in Nonda Gegwants Nyimbil, it would be a totally fascinating piece of field research and I'd love to be the one to make the discovery. Reportedly it causes, as well as visual hallucinations, auditory distortions. Thats unusual, and I know of one tryptamine well known for it. Namely N,N-diisopropyltryptamine, the typical effects of the psychedelic tryptamines are mediated through their properties as agonists of the 5HT2a type of serotonin receptors, although also many have quite pronounced effects as 5HT1a and 5HT2c receptor agonists (5HT stands for 5-hydroxytryptamine, the chemical name for the neurotransmitter serotonin)
Although its binding affinities for 5HT2a, 5HT1a and 5HT2c receptors is well known (low single digit micromolar in each case save for 5HT1a receptors to which diisopropyltryptamine binds with a Ki value of just over 500 nanomolar affinity), there must be something else going on to cause the unique auditory distortions induced by DIPT that aren't a feature of the other well known tryptamine psychedelics or ergolines.
And as a result it would be fascinating to figure out the structure of these three indolic compounds found in the hallucinogenic Boletus manicus (Boletus isn't a genus of fungi otherwise associated with mind altering compounds or species, this is quite exceptionally unusual) and, given the tiny amounts found in the mushroom and their remote location, synthesize them in the lab and do some displacement assays with radioactive probes for various serotonin receptors, the genes for which being cloned into cell lines, such as E.coli and thus find out, and comparing the actives to diisopropyltryptamine, just what the fuck is going on with this most unusual and exotic mushroom.
Whatever these indoles are
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Portugal (Azores; Madeira; mainland)
Canada (again)
Malta (although I can get Farsons Blue Label and Kinnie here at a price - privately, it's a favourite of mine)
Cape Verde
New Zealand
France
Spain (mainland)
The Netherlands
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Parisians can be quite rude in comparison with the rest of the country.
If you adopt the Parisian attitude back, they like the banter. They know they're rude - that's the point. It's a stereotype but remember that Paris is a big place and that people have to live and work there. Same with London, NYC, Amsterdam - in fact, any big city.
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People in New York are rude compared to the rest of the US. As a tourist it would be disappointing if they weren't.
In places like New York it is more abruptness and plain speaking. In Paris it comes across as snootiness.
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I don't have a bucket list really, but I do want to take my son to a bunch of museums. In Washington DC, in London, in Duxford (awesome aircraft museum, they even have the prototype concorde).
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I don't have a bucket list really, but I do want to take my son to a bunch of museums. In Washington DC, in London, in Duxford (awesome aircraft museum, they even have the prototype concorde).
Depending on where you live, you could travel to somewhere fairly nearby to do all the museums in your country (or surrounding countries).
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I live in Straya.
We've done all the good museums here. They are good but they don't really compare to the Smithsonian or the British Museum or the Louvre.
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What about those in New Zealand? It's only a relatively short flight to there, from the east of Australia anyway. Three and a half hours from Sydney - hell, I could be in central Europe by that time.
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I'm not flying to NZ to go to a New Zealand museum.
That won't even be 1% as good as the museums I mentioned above.
My son is obsessively into WW2 aircraft. The Australian War Memorial in Al's hometown has an amazing collection, including a Me262 (WW2 jet fighter, the only one in the world that still has the original paint) and a 163 (rocket powered fighter). But my son wants to see the Enola Gay (in Washington DC) and the collection at Duxford.
The Air and Space Museum... not gonna find anything like that in NZ.
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I was thinking more in the sense of museums generally, not specifically war museums.
I feel like I've had my head bitten awf a bit there.