speaking of igloos, just watched a very interesting episode of globe trekker (i LOVE discovery travel and living, heh) and it was a trip to arctic canada and it was soooo damn cool. also realised that the north is arctic, south is antarctica. antartica? they travelled around on sleds pulled by the most adorable dogs, and they went polar bear hunting with some inuit polar bear experts - as in searching for polar bears just to see what they look like, not Killing them. sort of like whale-watching in boston though that's sort of boring cos you hardly see any whales. and they were the humpback variety which are rather ugly. i guess it's polar-bear-watching then.

and the inuit guy had a funny name: balusi canolusi or something that sounded like that. and his grandson's name is just jason. and there was a girl who called herself a 'half-breed' because her mother's scottish and her dad's inuit. kelly's mom has a friend who's married to an eskimo. how cool is that.

i just discovered an Air Inuit website. they're having a pre-freeze sale now. "Collectively owned by the Inuit of Nunavik through their participation in Makivik Corporation, the airline has successfully operated for more than twenty-five years in this charming and challenging operational environment." no kidding. heh the website is so cute and simple it almost looks like the oceanic airlines website from Lost. www.airinuit.com if you wanna check it out.

also. 'eskimo' is offensive in canada. i had no idea! inuit is a term of ethnic pride, so it's preferred. and inuit is plural. inuk is singular, meaning 'human being'. inuit is also a family of languages spoken by the inuit people. "but it is less well understood that Inuit cannot substitute for Eskimo in all cases, being restricted in usage to the Inuit-speaking peoples of Arctic Canada and parts of Greenland. In Alaska and Arctic Siberia, where Inuit is not spoken, the comparable terms are Inupiaq and Yupik, neither of which has gained as wide a currency in English as Inuit. While use of these terms is often preferable when speaking of the appropriate linguistic group, none of them can be used of the Eskimoan peoples as a whole; the only inclusive term remains Eskimo.•The claim that Eskimo is offensive is based primarily on a popular but disputed etymology tracing its origin to an Abenaki word meaning “eaters of raw meat.” Though modern linguists speculate that the term actually derives from a Montagnais word referring to the manner of lacing a snowshoe, the matter remains undecided, and meanwhile many English speakers have learned to perceive Eskimo as a derogatory term invented by unfriendly outsiders in scornful reference to their neighbors' unsophisticated eating habits."

it's kind of like indians vs native americans. americans are so touchy about these things.

"In spite of regional differences, Eskimo groups are surprisingly uniform in language, physical type, and culture, and, as a group, are distinct in these traits from all neighbors. They speak dialects of the same language, Eskimo, which is a major branch of the Eskimo-Aleut family of languages. Their antiquity is unknown, but it is generally agreed that they were relatively recent migrants to the Americas from NE Asia, spreading from west to east over the course of the past 5,000 years."

anthropology! eskimos etc are mongoloids, like most of you because you're chinese. vaish and i are probably caucasoid since we're brahmin, and my dad has very caucasoid features. but we're also south indian and the dravidians of south india haven't been racially classified so... we lack identities. kitson's like a confused mongo-caucasoid. must take anthropology classes in university.

i am ferociously wikepedia-ing all this. i am very fascinated! and i must do Proper Research for igloo!sex story.

actually i just realised the north pole is the one with no land, because basically there's canada that goes all the way up, and there's greenland. and the pole itself just has lots of ice. the south pole has antarctica which is actually a continent with land, though it's uninhabited except for a bunch of research stations. and it's the one with a humongous hole in the ozone layer above it. apparently staying there through the summer is worse than staying at the equator for a year. something like that.

i want to go on an arctic expedition. deep inside me, i desire silence. lots of it. and lots of open space and fresh air. i don't know why but i'm pretty sure i'd enjoy an arctic expedition. i just hope it doesn't require too much physical training like an everest expedition does, but this isn't mountain-climbing so it can't be that bad right? although i'm terribly traumatised because i can't figure out how you can possibly go to the toilet in such conditions. i mean, you pour a jug of hot water and it'll freeze in midair, so uh. what happens when you pee??? and how can you take your pants off anyway? your ass would freeze off, literally.

on that same note, how do you take off enough clothes for igloo!sex? kelly we have some logistical issues to figure out.

and also, i think food would be a problem. they mostly eat sea mammals. gross. being vegetarian seriously limits travel options, damnit.

they wear cool boots though. hahaha. they have to wear special boots because otherwise their toes freeze off. some guy made a funny comment about how he counts his fingers and toes eveyr night to make sure he's got them.

oh!
we can have an episode with one of the girls making a big fuss about having to wear chunky Clarks boots instead of her Dior fur-trimmed boots that she bought Specially for the trip and she's soooo disappointed because by the time she gets home from the trip the boots will be passe already and it's So Wasted and she could have packed another fur jacket or something if she hadn't brought those boots!!!

heh. apparently hypothermia makes people irritable.

ok yes i need an arctic expedition. i desire immense silence. i am getting SO ANNOYED by the drilling and hammering going on at the neighbours'. literally on the other side of my wall. my whole room is shaking.

the most irritating sound in the world: electric drills. i am going to go now and sleep in my parents' room.