L'Arte di Viaggiare - Art of Travel - Francis Galton
19 August Almost electronic scales . . . . . or, the art of managing
Namaste Nepal En
The usual little lady brings her carp fish to the Yeti restaurant. The one she has today weighs several kilos and she has just one weight of one kilo. So she picks up the largest stones she can find lying around on the ground, weighs them, then uses them as weights adding them to the one true weight she has. The fish, weighed in this original way, is just over five kilos. Marcello and I reserve it for dinner, grilled, certain that it will be brought to us cooked in exactly the same way as yesterday when we ordered it steamed, and as the previous day when we asked for it to be baked. In fact the various ways of cooking it only exist on the menu. In reality it is always stewed, covered in a thick layer of sauce, sauce which we have regularly asked them not to put on the fish, but to no avail.
Pineapple story
4.55 p.m. I buy a pineapple from the fruit-seller, who also has a small electric blender, and I ask him to make me a fresh fruit juice with it.
5.00 p.m. the fruit-seller finishes peeling and cutting up my pineapple, as he puts it in the blender the power suddenly goes off.
I get him to return the pineapple chunks to me, it means that I'll eat them as they are. To be honest, he did offer to use the hand fruit squeezer, but it looks so dirty and rusty that I don't trust it.
I'm on the point of going away when an Italian woman arrives to enquire about the bus which stops opposite. We start talking and, without our realising it, two hours go by. The power comes on again, so I give my pineapple chunks back to the fruit-seller who puts them in the blender again. He fills a glass with the juice and offers it to my Italian friend. As he starts juicing the remaining pineapple, there's a second blackout! By now it's seven o'clock: I now take back the unused chunks of fruit once and for all and, in pitch darkness, make my way back to the guest house.
