Chickpea, in her latest post, points to this CNN story of four MIT kids driving an old jalopy from London to Ulaan Baatar, Mongolia (just gotta to love a place that has a name like that). This actually bought back memomries of one of my all time heros, Richard Feynman's Tuvan saga.

As the story, told in Ralph Leighton's book "Tuva or Bust" goes, Feynman who was an avid stamp collector, had colleceted stamps from in Tuva for their odd ballness; they came in odd shapes (triangles, diamonds, etc.) showing odd scenes (men on camels racing trains, men on horseback hunting with airplanes above them, etc.). In 1977, at a dinner Feynman asked, "Whatever happened to Tannu Tuva?" And when they looked Tuva up in the atlas, they saw that the capital was named Kyzyl. They decided that any place with a name like that must be interesting; Kyzyl- a place without a vowel in it. They soon discovered that a monument near Kyzyl claimed to be the center of Asia, and Tuvan throat singing.

And being the madcaps they were, they decided that they had to go and check out Kyzyl for themselves. The only hitch: Kyzyl was then inside Soviet Union, and those comrades weren't going to allow two madcap American scientists to just take a walkabout in their backyard, even if one of them had already won the Nobel Prize for Physics. By the time the Soviet paperwork came through, Feynman had succumbed to stomach cancer, and Leighton had to go on the trip by himself.

While my Tuvan oddesy is still very much incomplete - a day will come when I will post here from Kyzyl - I was very, very happy when I attended a workshop as well as a concert on throat singing, even if it was the Tuvan cousin, the Mongolian variety, few years ago at the Silkroad Festival in Washington DC (Attention Chicagoians: Silkroad is coming to your city in 2006!). For those of you who must hear throat singing, do watch the wonderful film Genghis Blues. Meanwhile here are some samples for you to check out:

Rekha Alash Artyy Saiyr Feynman Drumming over Throat Singing

Also before you even think of knocking this music, remember it is damn hard!

Listen up all you single people out there, if this post on a Guardian blog is correct, you too can attract a suitable boy/girl by reading the right kind of book in public, such as on the subway, on the bus, in a park, in a cafe etc. Now I am not much of a cafe person, and prefer to do most of my reading in bed, standing at a tall desk, and occasionally in the smallest room of the house. And the only time I chatted up a young lady reading, she was holding Marquez's "One Hundred Years of Solitude", and I think she prefered to be left with her solitude. You can read similar stories of others in the comments section of that post; here is a sampling:

"If I ever bumped into a young lady reading a David Foster Wallace novel, I'd do my best to disregard my lack of physical appeal while turning up the charm and attempting the seduction of my life. Unfortunately I think there's more chance of bumping into a singing Daschund belting out an uncanny version of Bohemian Rhapsody."

"In the US, "Christian fiction" about the coming rapture/apocalypse is quite popular -- seeing someone reading that doesn't just turn me off, it scares me."

"I was clocked reading Geek Love by an attractive girl on the tube the other day. She asked me what it was about, and I told her: a circus family experiment with drug and radioisotope cocktails to breed their own freak show. She went strangely silent, turned away, and started talking to her friend on the other side."

"- A DIY manual - this guy's already hitched and a home-maker. No chance

• Shakespeare's complete works. You'd never be short of conversation."

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So maybe it is time for me again to appear in public, hefting Tolstoy's "War & Peace" or Dante's "Inferno". To rephrase an Apache Indian song "Arranged Marriage":

"Me wan gal say a soni kudi Me wan gal that say she read wif me"

Also any ladies, reading this post, please give me your suggestions as to what would work best?

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A related link derged up decause of comments: this witty NYT essay titled "You Can't Get a Man With a Pen".

is the title of the latest offering from the percussion mastero/Dj/ tabla-ist Karsh Kale. My fav tracks are "City Lights" (for the way sitar is used), "Hole In The Sky" (for its hot damn tablas) & "Rise Up".

About two years ago, I managed to catch him spin his wizardry at a club here - the man produces good stuff, let me tell y'all. He also has made some superb live music as part of the Tabla Beat Science collective - the other "Beats" include Zakir Hussian, Talvin Singh, Sultan Khan etc