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Post by onlyMark on Dec 3, 2014 8:54:27 GMT
I am amazed at how perfectly white those eggs are at the food stall. When I was little, the eggs at my grandparents' house came from local farms and most of them were speckled with traces of chicken shit. I would have expected eggs on an Indian roadside to look like that rather than having been processed industrially. In Amman they are always dirty as well. Here though they all are pristine white. If they are washed I expect they are washed by hand soon after being picked.
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Post by questa on Dec 3, 2014 12:48:52 GMT
I saw vast chicken sheds in Northern India, just like the ones now heavily modified in Oz. Looking at the commercial packaging, I doubt those eggs came from a village. In Bali people want to buy 'kampung eggs' not 'factory eggs'
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Post by tod2 on Dec 3, 2014 13:48:30 GMT
I get those pure white shell eggs here and have often wondered if they come from a certain breed of fowl? I prefer the darkest brown eggs I can find - thinking most times wrongly, that they will yield a lovely orange-yellow yolk.
I had such a laugh at your remark Mark about the 60mph truck going downhill with failed brakes..Ha Ha!
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Post by onlyMark on Dec 3, 2014 13:55:34 GMT
Last Easter we were in Spain and wanted to continue with a German tradition we have of painted eggs. Couldn't find any white ones at all. They were all brown.
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Post by bjd on Dec 3, 2014 15:02:36 GMT
Eggs in France are brown too, while in Canada there are only white ones. I thought it depends on what the chickens eat?
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Post by Deleted on Dec 3, 2014 15:03:41 GMT
It all depends, light coloured chicken lay white eggs, dark coloured chickens lay brown eggs. However, dark chickens are generally larger and require more feed, so that's why the eggs are more expensive.
Edit: bjd, there are lots of brown eggs in Canada now.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 3, 2014 15:31:59 GMT
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Post by tod2 on Dec 3, 2014 17:21:34 GMT
Mark... what's with this German tradition? I thought you were English/Welsh/Irish/Manx We have close friends who follow the Russian tradition of painted harboiled eggs rolled down a slope to crash into one another. Done that one Easter with them, mainly for the children.
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Post by lola on Dec 4, 2014 2:57:03 GMT
What a subcontinent! Grateful you took us along on those km, oM.
I'd eat street food, certainly. Since the daughter of hippie family friends contracted typhoid in India during the last weeks of her around-the-world Gap Year, and it cramped her style considerably for quite some time, I'm afraid I don't accept the theory that only prissy types' minds allow food poisoning. (In her case she thinks it was when she drank a cup of Kool-Aid offered her from a booth.)
I'd have sat there and eaten the ridged crisps, probably. (I think we in the US have abandoned term "freedom fries," forgiven France for not helping attack Iraq, call them either "fries" or "french fries.")
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Post by onlyMark on Dec 4, 2014 6:36:46 GMT
K2, it says in that article that white eggs are preferred in Spain. I'm not sure about that considering what I said earlier.
Tod, I am English through and through. There is some French way back but then there is in most of us probably. As a family we follow UK tradition at Christmas, i.e. dinner on the 25th and presents opened on the 25th. Mrs M was born in Slovenia of a Slovenian/Lebanese mix and is now a German national. We lived in Germany when we had the kids and fell in with the Easter tradition and carried it on. Painted eggs is one.
Lola, thanks, you're welcome.
I'm now transiting Muscat on my way home.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 4, 2014 6:48:25 GMT
Since the egg article is British, they may have only considered the traditional British holiday zones in Spain.
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Post by tod2 on Dec 5, 2014 12:13:28 GMT
Thanks for the explanation Mark - you have satisfied my un-ending curiosity Thank goodness our families had two Xmas traditions which have come in very handy now that there has been a divorce between my son and his wife. Her family have Xmas eve dinner and open presents - we open presents on Xmas morning and sit down to a lunch ( in the sweltering heat.....but next to the pool) So, now the grand kids have one with mum and one with dad and us.
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Post by onlyMark on Dec 5, 2014 19:08:40 GMT
I can't imagine kids opening presents on Christmas Eve and then being told to go to bed. I always thought Santa came overnight 24th/25th anyway. Does he come then on the 24th. Also, how do you sneak the presents under the tree during the day if the kids are up, or at the end of their bed. Doesn't make sense to me.
So to finish off the travelling portion of the trip, two videos I took. The first is of the fish escaping from the next on the beach in Goa. The second is a bog standard average road junction at an average time of the evening, not rush hour and not in a particularly busy city. Imagine living nearby and having to put up with the traffic noise.
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Post by bjd on Dec 5, 2014 19:26:19 GMT
There are people simply driving down (or across) the wrong side of the street. Not only on the left, but definitely going the wrong way. And the horns are set on "on position". I guess they are all deaf.
About Christmas presents: when I was a little kid, we opened our presents on the 24th in the evening. My father used to take my sister and me to the movies in the afternoon, while my mother and grandmother decorated the tree and put the presents under it and prepared the food. When we got home, everything was ready. I don't remember it being a problem about going to bed, and I suppose we were allowed to stay up later than usual. Anyway, if you're young enough to believe in Santa Claus/Father Christmas, you don't go to bed all that late.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 5, 2014 19:28:11 GMT
I am really surprised to see plenty of traffic but no traffic jam. My Asian experience is that wherever you have vehicles, they will find a way to block each other.
When I was little, it was out of the question open gifts before Christmas morning. We switched to opening them Christmas Eve in later years.
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Post by onlyMark on Dec 5, 2014 20:19:40 GMT
bjd, imagine driving in that, though it isn't by far as bad as some places in India and in the world. As for traffic jams, I'm not sure that regulating traffic with lights and organised junctions does improve flow at all. It's only my anecdotal experience but I seem to be able to make more progress when it's every man for himself. Though the down side is that it does seem to only take one false move by a rider/driver to block everything up.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 5, 2014 20:23:40 GMT
That's why France is the country that has created the most traffic roundabouts in the world even though they were invented in Great Britain.
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Post by onlyMark on Dec 5, 2014 20:52:11 GMT
Is that true though? I've no idea.
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Post by Deleted on Dec 5, 2014 21:28:10 GMT
Well, France has more than 40,000 roundabouts and the UK has about 30,000, and those are the two countries in the world with the most. The US is still freaking out about them even though they only have about 4000.
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Post by questa on Dec 6, 2014 0:03:15 GMT
In my experience of Asia's traffic, when left to its own the traffic seems to flow by itself with all the drivers seeming to allow other drivers to join in like a river flowing (if slowly). Once they put in traffic lights and cops on corners the whole system gets clogged and patience gives away and that is when the accidents happen. In Saigon it is a challenge but not impossible to cross the road on foot through a stream of motorbikes 19 bikes wide. I found walking firmly, not fast and diagonally against the flow, with my arm out indicating where I was heading, the bikes all went around me. It made me feel like I was dividing the Red Sea!
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Post by onlyMark on Dec 6, 2014 5:26:53 GMT
k2, I don't know whether to be amazed or concerned that you know how many roundabouts there are. Like with the type of people who want to visit every one of a certain fast food place for example, I'm sure there will now be someone who wants to go round every roundabout in the UK or France. They will make it their life's work. In saying that, I have previously come across the UK roundabout appreciation society - www.roundaboutsofbritain.com/
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Post by bjd on Dec 6, 2014 9:37:12 GMT
No more trainspotters -- now we have roundaboutvisitors. By the way, the link doesn't work.
I personally think many roundabouts in France are a way of siphoning money to the construction industry. You will find roundabouts in the middle of a road out in the countryside somewhere, in a place where they are absolutely not justified because of the small amount of traffic. And in big cities, they installed roundabouts in places with heavy traffic, but because it was so difficult for cars to get into them, they put back the traffic lights.
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Post by onlyMark on Dec 6, 2014 10:16:09 GMT
You're right. It doesn't work. It did when I posted it though 'cos I checked it. No matter.
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Post by tod2 on Dec 6, 2014 14:16:30 GMT
Great videos Mark - The ocean one reminds me a lot of the Sardine Run which occurs once a year on our Indian Ocean coastline. Millions of fish jumping out of the water, just like in your movie. I wonder what fish they were? Maybe sardines too?
The Traffic Video is scary to any driver - even over here where chaos reigns on the streets especially on Fridays and Saturdays.
About those Xmas presents: They are placed under the tree as they arrive from family and friends. So the pile gets bigger as the days grow nearer 24th. I will ask my grandsons about Father Xmas....I think they know he is the man in the department store sitting in a fairy cave and asking children to whisper in his ear what they would like him to bring them. Well that's how it was in our time and even when my son was around 3/4yrs old. The labels on the gifts tell who really sent them...."With love from, Aunty Mabel" for example.
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Post by mossie on Dec 6, 2014 15:55:36 GMT
Christmas Day is the time for presents. In the days when our kids had stockings my wife did the Father Christmas act, our daughter was a little devil and would pretend to be asleep and would wait till my wife was creeping out of the door and give a little "tee hee". In latter years we all had to wait patiently until after Christmas lunch.
Roundabouts have been both a godsend and a nightmare to the construction industry. First superimpose a new roundabout on a simple junction. Wait a few years for the next whizz kid traffic engineer to come along and alter the approach and install traffic lights. A few years down the line another upgrade is required and so on. Actually carrying out the work could be a nightmare and cause chaos for weeks. All good stuff, I'm very glad I am not responsible for dancing about on those jobs any more.
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