avast belay, yo ho, heave to, A-pirating we go

sick of all the weight loss advice...gonna write my own

2011-12-21T05:24:00.001-05:00

tip 1: sit in bed emailing all morning...give those fingers a good workout. you'll lose weight if you're too lazy to go downstairs to the kitchen.

tip 2: eat lots of different foods so they'll fight in your tummy and cancel each other out

tip 3: chew lots to get all the flavor out, then swallow. these actions use lots of face muscles.

tip 4: lift your fork/glass/spoon to your face multiple times before eating/drinking off it. it works better if you count aloud during this process. if this seems daunting, you can pump yourself up beforehand by muttering "5 reps per bite" under your breath beforehand. thrash wildly when the men in white coats come to take you away.

tip 5: eat sketchy foods and develop a stomach bug. diarrhea is the best weight loss medicine.

overwhelmed

2011-12-06T06:17:00.002-05:00

4+2 years of college did not prepare me for bra shopping at victoria's secret. i stood in a stupor as the saleswoman explained the bra shapes complementing the boob shapes and which lines had what...in the end, i lifted my shirt and bought the ones she liked the best. i hope her tastes match jon's.

resolutions

2011-11-19T08:25:00.003-05:00

when i started medicine, i kind of decided that i wouldn't let what i learned affect my way of life too much. yes, there are all these dangers out there, and if you hold the world up to a microscope, it's a gross place. but i've survived up to now, i'm relatively robust, and once you start avoiding the gross, where do you stop? it's all a slippery slope to bree van de camp.

only...i've decided i'm not going to eat anymore bivalved mollusks. did you know that human sewage plants don't kill the enteric viruses in poo? these viruses get into the water supply, where all these mollusks just sit around filtering tons of water to get the yummy and the yucky out of it. in fact, mollusks act as filters for the especially harmful types of norovirus (those that bind ABO glycoproteins). plus, it's not like oysters are that tasty anyways. i mean, if pigs sat around in virus infected water all day, i'd probably still eat them, but oysters are so not worth the risk.

random thoughts about paga 21

2011-05-01T11:11:00.003-04:00

every year, paga divides my life: pre and post. this year was better than the last in that more international friends came, so the social scene wasn't dominated by the brits (seriously, there is a herd party every weekend that is more fun/less awkward than the crown & roses drinking game scene--btw, my scale of good times is by the amount of alcohol required before you're having one. altho there is ample drinking opportunity w the herd, i find myself jolly even without the liquor). oh yeah, and the herd were there this year, yay!

but then again, this year was not as good b/c we lost in the finals to fembot ballers 13-6...i don't think they were 7 points better than us. takeaways? losing sucks. i need to get more stable on my around backhand breaks. it's ok to hold the disc for a bit before throwing...tend towards the ange.

moments for the highlight reel: i tipped a callahan to myself in the semifinals against the russians (bonus points for demoralizing the russians), i got a poach D on one of the best japanese cutters, and i got a point block on one of the main czech handlers (both for immediate conversions). nothing spectacular on O, i'm afraid...something to work on.

the rest of paga was a blur...even without copious amounts of alcohol. lets see...shenanigans in the arcades:

we managed to top last year's elephant debacle by getting 5 people on a mechanical horse while ppl dressed as old men waved their canes at us (they then blocked up a roundabout by crossing extremely slowly..the cops got involved).
ange and linz are, as suspected, both ace at various tabletop games (air hockey, foosball). i sucked only marginally less than neibh, who may or may not have had an injured shoulder.

otherwise:

i ate the obligatory amounts of gelato, strazzopreti, calamari (ie LOADS)
went for a cold dip in the mediterranean (my first)
caught up w the asian friends (jake, jim, doc, sherry, steph & trey, who are now ENGAGED!!!), the hot lava friends (alice, minh, beth), the mit friends (lori & christy, who is now PREGNANT!!!!), and the european friends from hotpot last year.

ok, now i'm less sleepy, so will get back to studying the kidney.

jon is awesome

2011-04-08T03:17:00.003-04:00

an email description of an evening in beirut:

First along the seafront promenade – no sand but a nice broad pavement. Weirdly, no restaurants along the coast so we headed inland a bit. Lots of local street food but nothing that we were looking for. Ended up back in the fancy downtown where we had al fresco supper on cobbled streets where the leaves on knarled cedar trees, dappled by subtle illumination, chewed at the sandstone pillars on archways between which were interleaved domes of mosques and spires of churches, such are the perpetual emblems of a once war-torn city.

Or, if you would prefer that description in a more Hemingway-esque style:

“Hi,” I said.

“… Oh”, he replied.

“…,” I paused.

“How about a drink?”

“Hey,” I replied.

How do you get 2 whales in a car?

2011-04-07T05:46:00.019-04:00

*on the motorway, dummy.--ok, so it doesn't really work in print, but if you don't get it, try saying it allowed.

Paul dropped into the UK for a brief stint while his brother Andrew sits on a panel at the Skoll Foundation Conference in Oxford. I met him for lunch at Mai sushi on Monday (I ate, he nibbled) before heading out to Swansea for 3 days.

i love stuffing my friends full of good food, but it's troublesome when friends visit from areas with better food than London (eg HK, cali, nyc, chicago, basically almost everywhere), so it was a huge relief when Paul revealed that he'd been in Africa for the last couple of weeks. Jackpot! Recently returned 3rd world travelers are so low maintenance and grateful for everything. he was bound to be impressed, and sure enough, cornish pasties knocked him off his feet. furthermore, when we first got into our hotel room in swansea, paul peeked into the bathroom and said: "wow, lily, have you seen this shower?!" um, yes, paul, it sprouts hot water when you turn it on. i totally get where he's coming from though...after mbita, my biggest joys were running water & real pillows.

that first night in swansea, we walked to our hotel and then went to mcD's to get a "snack"...

paul: "wanna share some chicken nuggets?"

me: "no"

paul (to cashier): "i'll have the 20 piece chicken nuggets, please."

needless to say, that snack ended up being our dinner, especially after i won a free apple pie to wash down the mozzarella sticks, chicken fingers, & french fries. ah, the beginning of our foray into brown colored foods. also, can we all just agree that orange fizzy fanta tastes better from mcdonalds? i don't know if it's the dispenser, the straw, the cup or what, but fanta in a can should be called can't (har har).

the next morning, we caught a bus to rhossili of worm's head fame. we got there too late to walk all the way out onto the peninsula, but we got far enough for paul to pee in the ocean and for me to play w the shells that completely covered all the rocks...it was like walking on, well, a slippery, mossy, mollusky chunk of rock (yes, i know, you're dumbfounded by my creativity).

From swansea mar 2011

after watching the ocean drown the rocks, we took in a fairly overpriced lunch at a sea-side restaurant and caught a bus to another stretch of shoreline, upon which we hiked to oxwich castle.

From swansea mar 2011

Along the way, we saw:

lots of nice views of the beach (paul showed his appreciation for the prettiest ones by pissing from them, although they were invariably too far for him to hit the water).
a rope down a steep path that allowed us to "rappel" down to the beach, where we found a homemade lobster trap (we think) & a very dead rabbit.
From swansea mar 2011
From swansea mar 2011
a troop of ponies that galloped down to our bit of grass. the beautiful white one was heavily pregnant and thus shy, but a black one snuffled all over my R4 looking for treats (paul fled to the background and mumbled something about not wanting to be eaten).

From swansea mar 2011

a wildfire that the firemen were having trouble approaching w their trunk.

we got to the castle just after closing, and it was deserted but accessible, which meant that paul and i could scramble all over its moldy walls without censure. awesome.

From swansea mar 2011

in the evening, we caught a bus back to swansea, where we found an unloved toddler's bike forlorn next to a rubbish bin. in spite of its sliding handle bars, flat tires, and miniature size, paul rode circles in the street (i managed to stay on just long enough to prove that i, too, could ride it if i so desired).

From swansea mar 2011

Dinner = lamb chops for paul, lamb cawl for me at the no sign wine bar on wind street. as w every meal, bites were interspersed w scrabble strategery.

From swansea mar 2011

the next day kicked off w a lazy trip to the dylan thomas museum, where we could listen to bbc recordings of him speaking like a preacherman and rolling is r's to beat the thunder. as paul says on his blog, half the exhibit is devoted to proving he's not a womanizing alcoholic; i contend the other half is dedicated to establishing the importance of swansea (over london & nyc) to his poetry.

then we headed to mumbles, a seaside town w a pier. i lunched on bubbles & squeak at the kitchen table, a yellow organic cafe that reminded me of tosci's. paul had eaten 2 meat pies en route, so he just sipped a (very delicious) fruit juice (beets, ginger, lemon, apple). the surfer dude owner drew us a secret map, and we hiked up to find a past place for WWII anti-aircraft guns and down to find a cheerful, red, plastic dragon slide that said "mumbles pier" (further along, seagulls nested and a plastic bikini'd gorilla lay on her back in disuse). More hiking along the coastline revealed a boat-shaped playground and a giant shaggy dog that liked to romp (to his owner's chagrin).

From swansea mar 2011

the next day, we took the train to oxford, where we sat by the river and played scrabble. i finally beat paul (1 out of 10, baby!). mags graciously let us borrow some bikes so we biked into town and made dinner w andrew before coming home to a final game of mapominos. oxford is not as pretty as cambridge, but much more accessible. oh well, i like my towns sleepy (when they're not overrun by tourists).

final impression of gower: a place i wouldn't mind retiring. it's got:

friendlier natives than the deep south (sorry, hometown, but it's true)
lots of large dogs
lots of hiking paths
lots of joggers
lots of surfers

color me impressed.

From swansea mar 2011

welcome to czech

2010-07-12T03:46:00.003-04:00

a few impressions:

the tap water is cold and delicious. cold enough to be numbing after a few seconds. where does it come from? far underground? even ice seems to be scarce, and soft drinks from restaurace refrigerators are often only tinged with cold.

the architecture is amazing, but the stonework is sooty. i spent lots of time looking up at cupolas. one building near the herd house even had an iron man hanging from the neck...i wonder who he was...

the astronomical clock is mechanical! i can't believe things can work without batteries.

pork and potatoes! i'm not a fan of dumplings if they don't have fillings, but i'm for any culture that uses pig for EVERYTHING! others of my teammates weren't so chuffed.

how did we do at worlds? iceni ranked 17th, after crawling out of a very tough powerpool. we lost to hot beaches, storm, and uno, but i believe we had a shot at both hot beaches and storm. our only other loss was to chukyo university, uno's feeder team, who went on to rank 10th. in the beer bracket, we had an underwhelming performance against little miss sunshine (except by kaleigh, who made sure we won 17-10), decimated jinx 17-5 (they had earlier beat leeds), beat wildcard 17-something, and then won a nailbiter against e6 (we were down 2 breaks coming out of half, game to 13...and managed to score the last 2 points in a row).

and now we're in vienna. watched the world cup last night, and i still think soccer is ridiculous. cheaters win too often.

words about words

2010-04-26T09:14:00.001-04:00

pooja (in a broad northern accent): "you're having fun with them tah-mah-toes"
me: "haha, them tah-mah-toes..."
pooj: "what would you say? them tah-MAY-toes?"
me: "um, we wouldn't say them anything"
pooj: "ohhh THOSE tah-mah-toes"
pooja slaps herself on the hands. if only everyone could be as committed to their grammar.

another conversation:
trang: "what's that word...for when you put blood outside?"
me: "blood? outside?!"
pooj: "a scab?"
trang: "no, animal blood."
.......the word she wanted was "congeal". the conversation didn't make any more sense with context.

2010-04-26T05:07:00.002-04:00

my new rule is that i will catch up when i feel like catching up, but the backlog will not stop me from writing about current events.

the weekend was eventful. friday night, si organized an outing at vibe to see ladi6. i am not hip enough to have heard of any of these things...vibe? ladi6? where the f is brick lane? but he promised me the best bagel in london, and it was within walking distance of work, so after a couple of tequila shots celebrating a colleague's bday on the green, jackie, jonnie, anne, and i traipsed off toward east london. we got distracted by some thai food, but we made it eventually, and the venue was great, the cider delicious, the music meh (apparently it got a lot better after jon and i left...pffft).

saturday featured a 3hour 8am partybus trip to bristol for some scrimmaging. we lost in game point to leeds leeds leeds. d line had some (read: a lot) of trouble converting, but we did manage to get some d's. the o line looked like a machine (well-oiled and all that). i took that night pretty easy, but some of the girls had a big night out at people's republik (the plan was to eventually get to inferno's, but ppl's r is like the blackhole of nights out). sunday started with dimsum, followed by a 2 hours skills session in hyde park at which whit kakos made a surprise appearance (yay!), and then...it took me 1.5 hours to get home thanks to the northern line closure (which seems a bit daft on marathon weekend), and as soon as i got home, we remember that the parkway drive concert we thought was on monday was actually on sunday...so that's another hour journey back into town for some hardcore metal.

i highly recommend going to a metal concert in a smallish venue. the energy is fantastic, and watching teenage boys flail like berserker never gets old. the first time i saw a circle pit, i thought it had formed spontaneously, but i eventually cottoned on to the fact that the band was calling it. it's a bit like square dancing actually...the band will say, "circle pit!" and the room will turn into a cyclone of bodies, or they'll say "split the room!" and the boys will flood to opposite sides, and on the count of four, they all throw themselves at each other, crashing like waves in the middle. winamp should create a new graphical sound visualization...instead of those bars going up and down, it'd use skinny teenagers bouncing off each other.

we saw 4 or 5 different bands, culminating in parkway drive, which was the most normal and likeable one. they seemed to genuinely enjoy being there in front of an audience and rocking out. the lead singer was so pleased that the audience knew enough words to sing along that he grinned like a kid. it's nice to see a band that isn't jaded with the rockstar lifestyle yet, and they weren't afraid to incorporate some melodic guitar bits in amongst the killer fast bits. the other groups were a bit older, a bit muscley (in a "i've just gotten out of prison way"), and way more tat'd up.

going home after the show was a bit of an adventure. although british people are normally all for queueing, british people straight out of a metal concert try to squeeze as many people as possible simultaneously through the train doors. i was carried through by the 3 hyper-aggressive boys behind me, all the while apologizing to the guy in front of me whom i was pressed up against. once we were all on the train, we discovered that it wasn't even crowded--we all got seats. what melodrama! arrived home to a very affectionate cat. and that, in a nutshell, was the weekend.

next weekend, jon's going to brussels on a roadtrip with doug and family...i'm staying home to cat-sit.

ziggy

2009-11-06T10:09:00.003-05:00

From ziggy stardust 10-09

jon and i are moving tomorrow to balham (yay). in the meantime, world, meet ziggy stardust, wondercat extraordinaire. hobbies include chasing tampons, playing with pearls, walking across keyboards, and teddybear wrestling. thanks to him, i now spend WAY to much time curled up on the couch.

back to the grind

2009-07-29T10:46:00.004-04:00

it's my second day of work today, which for me, means getting back to a routine, finding more reading material for the tube (stat!), learning to use a mac, and giving up my daytime tv (b/c all my tv channels are owned by the british gov, there are always pairs of stations that play the same thing: e4, e4+1, channel 4, channel 4 + 1, virgin, virgin+1, etc etc. as you can imagine, the +1's just play the same programming an hour later. i've been known to watch the same gilmore girls episode 2 hours in a row. their quirky gab is irresistable (and infinitely preferable to the unscripted gobbledygook of big brother). for you, it probably means more frequent blog posts.

and all that is to say that work is boring. always. i had dinner with philipp, my boss at credit suisse last night, and i found out that i don't miss it. not the politics. not the ass kissing. and definitely not...hmmm...did i mention politics? legally, i'm not allowed to work yet (shhhh!), which is to say, i'm not getting paid. ooof. and even when i do get paid, it will be measily compared to my last salary. but meh, i can't live on the $10 daily allowance that jon's giving me. i'm just not that low maintenance (and public transport costs a pair of limbs in london). so for now, i'm working 3 days a week, not getting paid, and hoping that eventually, i'll get a spousal visa for the uk. until then, who knows.

mombasa

2009-07-16T07:31:00.003-04:00

we stayed at ash's mom's timeshare resort, which had its ups and downs. the luxury was refreshing--private bathrooms, air con, mosquito nets, but it felt like a resort in florida, not africa. people were there with their families, old ppl populated the pool...and we were warned in the orientation meeting to stay away from the beach boys. so, the typical resort experience was very sterile. you flew in, got picked up at the airport, and joined the water aerobics and putt putt sessions. but we had our own car. we were free to go as we pleased. still, it was depressing to see the masai huddled in the tennis court, roasting in the sun as old tourists in sunhats picked thru their trinkets. watching the tribal dancers brought in for a post-dinner show felt very voyeuristic. they rumbled in, gyrating to local gods, while we sat sipping colorful drinks and clapping politely. maybe if we could've joined them in their ritual...but just watching, knowing they had been paid to come in, well, it was unsavory...like we had displaced their gods and they were dancing to us. dirty.

From mombasa 3-2009

most of the time we lounged at the pool or the beach. the beach wasn't nearly as nice as zanzibar's. in low tide, there were miles of not quite beach...mucky black sucky sand and pools of brackish water. to get anywhere swimmable required walking over a mile out. we did manage to squeeze in a very nice beach walk with the beach boys (who prefer to be called beach operators to escape the sexual griminess associated with the term beach boy). they showed us lots of interesting sea life (urchins, starfish, slugs), and took us to a coral rock pool that was deep enough to dive into. we brought snorkeling equipment and got a nice peek at the stripey fish that huddled in the coral to escape the surf. i did an ok job of not getting bashed into the coral, but i think erika got scratched up pretty badly. she bruises like a peach, that one.

and then we ran into mika, mika, and morgan! what are the chances? small world, all that jazz. i mean, i understand that most travelers thru africa follow the lonely planet, but we were off the path beaten down by backpackers. we were in a posh timeshare resort...and so were mika, mika, and morgan, courtesy of mika's mom, as a honeymoon gift to mika (the other one) and morgan. not only where they in the same resort, they were in the room right next to ours, which came in handy when we locked ourselves out and had to break in via our balcony.

remembering that mika's dad is a mechanic, we had him look at our car, which translated into driving the car to market with a carload of ppl, which meant that i got to ride on the roof :-D. i've always wanted to ride the roof of a 4x4, and what better place to do it than africa, where my safety was no one's concern but mine. we bumped along the dirt road as i held on for dear life to the roof rack. when we got to the major road, we sped up, turned up the kings of leon, and i leaned into the wind and took advantage of the speed bumps to wave at the catcallers who yelled, "hey cheeeeena!". FREEDOM!

that night, we bought some prawns from the beach boys and made ash's spicy red prawn curry, along with garlic+lemon stringbeans, and a huge cucumber, tomato, avocado salad. as usual, we made way too much food, but luckily, gerwin was stoned off his face, so we put away a good deal of it. the ants had their way with the leftovers.

From mombasa 3-2009

Another memorable meal was when we got the beach boys to throw us a moonlight seafood bbq. to be honest, they oversold it a bit, promising us lobster, kingprawns, fish, and crabs and delivering only octopus, barracuda, and prawns, but the home made coconut wine, the excellent curry, and the great ambiance under the stars made up for everything. i told them i liked sea urchin, so they picked a few of those for me too. we literally cracked them open and ate them raw...which was sandy and salty, and not quite the uni-like experience i had hoped for. did i mention the curry was to die for?

From mombasa 3-2009

pui, 13 going on 30

2009-06-29T06:23:00.003-04:00

i have a very special friend named pui, and this post is dedicated to her. if she reads this, she will surely kill me for hinting that she is 30 yrs old, so let me quickly add that she's actually in her mid 20's somewhere.

this weekend, pui tripped down to wimbledon with her brother and the tickets her brother's brokers got them. after the match, pui joined a queue of 10 yr olds with her oversized tennis ball to get andy roddick's autograph. in an attempt to be cool, pui decided to tell these 10 yr olds that she is 13 yrs old. i guess white ppl really can't tell how old asians are, b/c these kids believed her. i mean, she's kinda short, but i'm willing to bet she hasn't been carded in a bar in ages. maybe it's true what they say about kids growing up way too fast.

i can just imagine pui standing in a line of prepubescent kids, giggling and flirting, delving into their young minds for their autograph acquiring secrets. one boy was so taken by her that he claimed he was a pro:

Pui: well they knew the tricks to getting autographs!!!!

this kid was like just follow me

10:36 AM cos you have to sprint up and down to get to the player

and this kid said he got justin timberlakes autograph!!

poor kid. fathers, lock up your sons and daughters. this pui will do anything for her tennis ball.

10:39 AM Pui: hv you seen my big big tennis ball

it's my pride and joy

yes of course, pui. anything you say.

and of course, the photo is of pui at the US open. her wimbledon picks have not come out yet.

driving to mombasa

2009-06-26T08:52:00.005-04:00

now that even laura is beating me to posts, i'm gonna get on my horse. but don't get too excited. the horse is really just a fat, slow, three-legged donkey.

the drive from dar es salaam to mombasa was supposed to take 5 hours, but when has africa ever followed a schedule, especially my schedule? so it was over 12 hours of cramped riding, sitting in the hump seat with my feet wedged amongst bags, the largest drum i could've ever bought squeezed between my knees. i mean, there were so many small manageable drums, but no, i had to buy the monster. and to top it off, the ignition would randomly shut off after every couple of minutes, which not only made driving nerve wrecking, but also rendered it impossible to listen to any type of music. we had to stop the car every half hour to let the engine cool off, and we were afraid to push the thing past 40kmph.

we managed to make it to the kenyan border before the customs office closed. everything went pretty smoothly, until simon left the keys inside the car, and the car locked itself automatically.

From mombasa 3-2009

luckily, they keep a spare inside the tent on the roof.

the stretch of road on the west coast of kenya isn't the safest, and once it got dark, driving a wonky car became all the scarier. the empty road was pitch black except for whatever light our headlights cast. every time we stopped, i was sure some car would come careening out of the unknown to sideswipe us, and gerwin insisted on getting out of the car from the driverside to open the hood. has the boy never seen meet joe black? yeesh. one car passed us at speed, and then backed up until it was directly in front of us. while it was drawing near, ash was entreating gerwin to drive away. just drive, just drive, just drive. who knew what the car wanted from us, and with all of us wedged in like sardines...even running would've been hard. the man from the car turned out to be just a good samaritan. he had stopped to tell us that it wasn't safe to stop here. we explained our car troubles, and he offered to drive behind us slowly until we got to the next town, where we could find a roadside mechanic to offer a temporary fix. i felt a tad sheepish for the melodrama, but it's easy to overreact sometimes.

we told him we couldn't break 40kmph, but i guess our car felt just as eager to get out of that spot as we did, so as soon as it started up, gerwin hit 70kmph, and we quickly lost our friend. as we got closer to mombasa, the roads got better, but our car got worse. the last 10 miles took us over an hour, and the closer we got, the slower we went. i remember thinking that i could run faster than this car.

when we finally arrived at ash's mom's timeshare resort, it was past 10pm, and we were told that the kitchen would close in another half hour. having had nothing but bananas and cokes since 6am that morning, we were starving, and boy were we glad to sit down at a nice place and eat. what an exhausting day.

to kendwa and back

2009-06-23T08:53:00.010-04:00

before it slips away beneath the haze of amsterdam, here is the rest of zanzibar.

the morning after the spice tour, jakob, erika, and i had breakfast in a very nice coffee shop, one of the few places in east africa that roasts and grinds its own beans. the food is fantastic, but the counter service left something to be desired.

From zanzibar

After breakfast, we walked briefly by the market, where we saw huge rays and tuna, before finding a dala dala to take us to the beach.

From zanzibar

the dala dalas park at the front of the market. each car has touts running around, trying to recruit western tourists. they start with 5000 shilling a head, but for that, we could've gotten a private taxi (there were 6 of us afterall). after threatening to walk away multiple times (to which they would tell lies such as: "the next one doesn't leave for 2 hours!" or "you can't take that bus, it is dangerous and dirty."--let me tell you, there is nothing less comfy/safe/clean than a dala dala, except maybe a boda boda, which is the motorcycle taxi that got us around uganda), we finally got on for the local price of 2000 shilling each. yes, we only managed to save around $1.50 per person, but it's the principle.

From zanzibar

the outside of these things say that they take 13 passengers, but we crammed in over 20 ppl, and i think maybe a goat or two on the roof.

From zanzibar

Like most forms of road transport in africa, the ride was bumpy, dusty, crowded, and hot. unfortunately, i also happened to have a full-milk cappuccino sloshing in my stomach, fighting to see daylight with every pothole. when we finally emerged from the dark car into the burning noon sun, we still had about a kilometer to walk before we'd hit the beach. it doesn't sound like a lot...but nauseated, sleep deprived, and carrying bags, i found it interminable.

From zanzibar

after getting settled, i went on an impromptu fishing trip. the locals took us on a wooden skip, gave us string attached to wooden blocks, and baited our hooks with fresh squid. we sat for what seemed like hours, our feet dragging in the water, almost able to see all the way thru the clear water to where our hooks scraped the bottom. even so, the fish were too smart for me. i'd respond to all these nibbles (both imagined and real), pulling my line up every couple of minutes. every once in a while, my piece of squid will have gone. the locals managed to snag a fish every couple of minutes. color me frustrated.

and then our 2 bit motor died, leaving us drifting on the strong current. i was pretty much over this fishing trip. and when the guy tried to charge me more than we agreed to, i pretty much lost it a little, which, in retrospect, was not good, b/c then he turned all rasta and zen, and i felt pretty shitty. oh well. tomorrow would be better.

still enjoying the fishing trip zanzibar

From zanzibar

the next morning, j+e+i went on a full day snorkelling trip. i was wary of being stuck on a boat again, but this one had a sail, more talkative skippers, and refreshments on board.

From zanzibar

the water was, as always, amazingly clear. we must've seen 10 shades of blue. the snorkeling itself was so-so. zanzibar's history of dynamite fishing and omnivorous eating had depleted the waters. still an ok assortment of fish, but not nearly as stunning as i would've expected given the visibility of the water.

From zanzibar

we took turns jumping off the top deck and the mast. jakob's fancy camera took such good action shots that it almost felt like cheating.

From zanzibar

our lunch zanzibar

From zanzibar

when we'd gotten our fill of snorkeling and swimming, we waded to shore with our bags on our heads. the chef had prepared a bbq tuna lunch on a wood fire in the sand. it was a simple meal of fish rubbed in salt, chilis, and lime, with sides of tomato relish, boiled rice, and fresh fruit. having asked for avocados in the bargaining phase of the trip (when i still thought it was a private trip for just the three of us), i got my own plate of avocados. i felt awkward nibbling away on my private stash when there were 20some ppl sitting around us...but meh, they tasted good anyways, especially after sitting in a frisbee full of seawater.

From zanzibar

he's not actually jumping that much higher than i am, but he jumped a second later, so while he's just reaching his peak, i'm already on my way down. this is the only photo where we're both in the air. yes, i feel the need to justify my aerial.

From zanzibar

on our way home, we sighted a pair of dolphins in the distance. we didn't harass them as is the tradition in these parts, but it was a nice surprise anyways. apparently, i was worn out, b/c i napped on the top deck for the entire ride back.

From zanzibar

when we got back, we found the others lounging in the hammocks, sipping on beers. we went out for a local group dinner, during which jakob defined shwaffling for us, and in return, lucy defined dogging, and rupert defined a fruit basket. thanks guys, i wouldn't have been complete without it.

From zanzibar

the next day we did nothing much (finally!), basking in the sand and cooling off in the water. the fake masai and the locals all have art stands with italian names. italian tourism is big in the area. the local boys greeted us with ciaos.

From zanzibar

in the evening, the whole group walked to nungwi, the closest resort. it's not a long walk, but because of the high tide, we had to do some impressive bushwhacking and wall-scaling.

From zanzibar

i very nearly impaled my thigh on an iron rod, but someone warned me just in the nick of time.

stocking up on munchies zanzibar

we spent a lot of time wandering in and out of shops, buying artwork, trinkets, hats. when you've got a group of 8, it may take 2 hours to get ppl to head towards a restaurant for dinner. at any point in time, 3 ppl would say, "i'm hungry, let's go!", stand around waiting for about 10 minutes, and then wander off into the nearest trinket stand, b/c hey, if i'm gonna wait, might as well window shop! the only thing that saved us was the snack shop (pictured above), which had a tv in the corner showing an early jackie chan flick (might've been drunken master). it had english subtitles and jackie still sported a bruce lee wannabee haircut. highly amusing, and more importantly, had immense sticking power towards willful tourists. before you knew it, practically the entire group had congregated in front of the tv, along with a group of locals, and we were all cheering jackie on.

Dinner was good but unremarkable seafood. the only memorable bits were simon's stupid comments about the prayer calls, simon calling jakob gay after simon ordered a girly umbrella drink, jakob's awesome goat joke, and the hostile cats that prowled the floors.

After dinner, jakob and i bought more munchies (we each had two chocolate bars and a stack of cookies, plus the two cans of pringles i had bought earlier). the others had found a pretty cool bar with a huge bonfire. it also had a motorcycle hanging in a tree (how'd it get there?!) and a wooden plank swing hanging from the same tree. jakob and i must've spent the next hour staring into the fire and double fisting our food. we took eating very seriously. didn't say a word, didn't crack a smile, just one hand after the other. left hand for pringles, right hand for cookies. altho the pringles made me very thirsty, i couldn't take a break to drink water. i kept thinking that alternating the flavors would cure it. erika must've been bored out of her wits. we snapped out of it when we ran out of pringles. it was around 1 am when we three took a cab back to the dorms. the others stayed until 7am, but they had a pretty rough time of it.

simon fell asleep on one of the hammocks and lost his sunglasses. he caught some dude walking off with his hat and chased him to get it back.

rupert may have been date raped. he was walking with ash when he wandered off to find a loo. ash couldn't find him for 40 minutes. she asked everyone if they saw him, finally seeing him walk up the beach holding the hand of a local girl. when she saw ash and lucy approaching, she ran off, then ran back to him, and ran off again. he was completely groggy and didn't remember a thing. then they discovered that his wallet was gone. they combed the beach for 2 hours, looking for his wallet, but when they tried to retrace his steps, they found he couldn't remember what he'd done or where he'd been. he kept sitting down on the sand and saying, "was i here? i don't remember being here..." poor rupert was so freaked out. they never did find his wallet, but it didn't have much in it (he had spent all his cash on souvenirs before dinner), and he was going home in a few days anyways. the weirdest thing is that they had only been doing shots from the bar, so either the bar staff was in on it, or someone had slipped something into rupert's drink between the time that they got the shots and the time that they downed them. sketchy...

the next morning, our little group was in pretty rough shape. erika and i went for a run on the beach to sweat out some of the pringles. between jumping over the fishing tethers, we wove in and out of the water to try and cool off a bit. a bevy of white domed buildings clustered like eggs to our left. local children in tattered shirts threw us the odd "ciao".

a couple of us walked to the next resort for lunch. some nice south african ladies on our snorkel cruise recommended their tuna with chef sauce. delicious indeed.

From zanzibar

we enjoyed our last few hours walking on the beach, and somewhere along the way, we found a monkey chained to a tree. he's very agile, but if you let him perch on you while he eats, be prepared to be splattered by half-chewed banana.

From zanzibar

goodbyes are always sad. rupert, lucy, and jakob would be going back to the UK after zanzibar, while erika, ash, simon, gerwin, and i would drive up to mombasa in their 4x4. but first, we still needed to get back to stone town. jakob almost left his passport at reception, yelling "HOLY MOLY" with the accents on all the wrong syllables in a heavy german accent. and then, the taxi driver that we thought was the guy who arranged the ride back with us wasn't the taxi driver who arranged the ride back, so he wanted to charge us more (story of my life). but since he was nice and it was a genuine mix up, we met somewhere in the middle. i mean, at least we weren't on another dala dala.

From zanzibar

on the way, large buses kept passing us at breakneck pace. apparently, these are the staff buses that ferry staff between their homes in stone town and their work in beach resorts. there are only 2 buses to take 3 loads of people, so one of the buses must double back and make 2 journeys, which is like tacking on an extra 3 hours of work for the driver. the idiotic policy is that the first bus to arrive in stone town doesn't have to go back, so the buses race to be first. by the way they were driving, you'd think they were being chased by someone with an uzi. swerving between lanes, edging each other out, i've only ever seen driving like that in movies. the weirdest bit is looking back to see this maniac vehicle bearing down on you, and then seeing the expressionless muslim women in burqas bouncing along. they must believe in god to travel like that.

we spent their last few hours in stone town shopping for more souvenirs.

rupert looks like a war child. he actually went to a public school that allowed hunting-with-beagles as a p.e. choice. if that didn't float your boat, you could also do sailing/fencing/other posh "sports" (the kind of sports that ralph lauren develops their sportswear line for).

From zanzibar

the next day, erika and i spent our last stone town moments eating with nadine and taking pictures, buying spices.

night market zanzibar

From zanzibar

day market zanzibar

From zanzibar

skinning a cow zanzibar

skin of a cow...see the eyeball? it sees you.... zanzibar

From zanzibar

pomelo in the spice market zanzibar

street stand food, really good. zanzibar

view from archipelago zanzibar

lunch was at archipelago, one of the best seafood restaurants i've ever been in. prices are reasonable, the view is amazing, and the food to die for. i've never been a fan of octopus, but the waiter recommended it, so what the heck. i don't know how they did it, but the octopus practicallly melted in my mouth. not chewy at all. delightful!

my octopus main zanzibar

squid salad starter zanzibar

erika's whole fish and nadine's king prawn curry zanzibar

view from mercury zanzibar

that evening, we rejoined ash, simon, and gerwin at mercury (named after freddie mercury of queen fame, who was born in zanzibar) before boarding our night ferry for dar es salaam. they had bought return tickets thru a sketchy guy named ali (who ripped them off in various ways) in dar for the flying horse, whereas we had bought tickets the night before for the seagull, which we were told is the only ferry running. trouble. long story short, they bullshitted their way thru 5 security checks with the wrong tickets before being stopped at the gangplank by the manager of the boat, who made them go all the way back to the office at the eleventh hour to buy tickets for this boat. none of ash's sweet talk about the evil man who ripped them off did any good, but he did upgrade all of us to first class at no extra cost in sympathy to our plight. and thank god.

by the time we got on the boat, the steerage was completely full with ppl and their prayer rugs sprawled out all over the aisles. it was like nap time in communist china: standing room only. even the outside decks were full to overflowing. i guess ppl aren't afraid of rolling in their sleep. we picked our way up the stairs to first class, where the seats were mercifully empty, the air was air conditioned, and a big screen tv was playing THE ROCK (with nicholas cage). i even got my own row of seats to stretch out on. bliss. the rocking of the boat put me right to sleep, and when i woke up, it was 6am in dar. first mission, find ali and kick his ass.

just kidding, but we did run into ali after packing the car (a monumental feat in itself--we were so hungry that we broke open a coconut and gnawed out the hard insides). he took us back to his office, and after a lot of negotiating, some of which involved a plain clothes police man, he gave them back all of the money he had ripped off them (eg, the phantom deposit for booking a hotel which the hotel never saw, the extra commission he took on their tickets, a total refund for the flying horse return tickets). he was very afraid of that police man, and after he threw us the last 40,000 shillings with the words, "get out and don't give me any trouble", we booked it out of town lest he give us any more trouble. lesson learned: always buy tickets from the official ticket desk, never from agents. and thus, the zanzibar leg of our trip was behind us.

From zanzibar

view from the house of wonders zanzibar

From zanzibar

coming to america

2009-06-01T11:52:00.002-04:00

iceni is playing chesapeake open this year! so i will be in the states aug 28 onwards, prolly for a week or so. haven't really planned where i'll be going yet, but hey, i'm unemployed, so enjoy, right? let me know if you wanna hang out!

meh

2009-06-01T04:16:00.004-04:00

i've been bored with blogging lately. with blogging and the reading of blogs. i know i still have to write about: zanzibar and lamu, barcelona with laura, and the plethora of things that are happening in london now. but let me tell you, procrastination is a odious habit. whereas i used to blog to procrastinate from work, now i find things to help me procrastinate from blogging. i guess it's good that one of these things is job searching.

there is a curse upon the herd girls. we come down with niggling, weird, stupid injuries that prevent us from playing for days, weeks, months. rowan has a lingering pulled hamstring that has hamstrung her for all of mixed season, and is threatening to take her out of women's as well. gainey is mostly healthy, but missed practice due to a mysterious case of pinkeye (she woke up with it after a huge night out, where 5 ppl ended up in her twin sized bed. whence did it come? maybe someone farted on her pillow?). jackie has a bad ankle because alex picked up fergus and dropped him on her during one drunken night. she saw him coming but was too drunk to get out of the way. alia has a bruised boob after some guy railroaded into her at mixed tour 2. no cracked ribs, but the tendons/ligaments are damaged.

if there is a hole in the field, a herd girl's ankle will roll in it. i myself have rolled the same ankle twice (neither time was bad). on top of that, i missed saturday of tour 2 with a uti induced fever. i played sunday b/c ange and rowan were both ko'd, but that knocked me out for the next week. sunday of tour 3, a boy landed on top of me, charlie horsing both my quads with his boney knees. i got up and played the rest of the day, but he claimed that my elbow in his upper quad was too painful to endure, so he sat out the rest of the tourney. that night, we went out dancing, and he was walking perfectly, limpless, whereas i had to grasp stair railings with both hands to maneuver up/down. i still can't bend my right leg all the way. and i picked up an annoying, snotty cold after practice tuesday. so now, between the duct taped quad, the ankle wrappings, and the toilet paper, i'm beginning to feel a bit mummyish. none of the things are bad enough to sideline me (knock on wood), but all three together are ANNOYING to play thru. oh, and i also have bilharzia, a tropical parasite picked up courtesy of lake victoria. i've taken a course of drugs for it, but it will stay in my blood stream for years apparently. it's not serious, but i think it makes me lethargic.

the UK is officially a police state

2009-05-14T16:06:00.003-04:00

i'm watching UK Border Force a tv show about immigration officers who roam the streets, arresting anyone who "reacts to them / looks at them in a funny way" or anyone who "acts suspiciously". you'd think this program would be of the whistle blower type, but since all tv stations are owned by bbc (ie the government), it's more of a bad boys type.

in this episode, they're posted at north greenwich tube station, questioning dark people who've apparently looked at them the wrong way. what right do they have to question people? what happens if you ignore them? one man's session went like this:

border force: what right do you have to be in the UK? (straight off the bat!)
him: i'm an EU national
bf: and how are you an EU national (what, b/c he's black he can't be an EU national?)?
him: my wife is an EU national
bf: and where is she from?
him: france
bf: and is she in the UK?
him: no, she's in france.

at which point, they try to lead him away for further questioning, but he makes a sprint for it, and 3 of the them tackle him to the ground, kneel on his back, while he yells, "i am not a criminal!" repeatedly. far after they've quieted him down, they get off his back, cuff him, and ask, "if you're not a criminal, why did you run?" his reply, "i was trying to catch my bus". fair enough. no one plans to be harassed by the border monkeys in their daily routine.

While the guy is being led off, an onlooker starts gesticulating: "he was not a criminal! why don't you ppl go do something useful! like getting knives off streets!* why are you here harassing innocent ppl who are just trying to make something better of their lives?!" the short fat blonde bf woman responds, "get your hands out of my face!" (the guy is punctuating his sentences with his hands). about 3 seconds later, 3 of the bf arrest this new guy (who was not doing anything illegal AND had perfect right to be in the UK). pan to blondie waddling away, "he was getting quite aggressive with his hands in my face. if we didn't do something then, i was afraid he was going to hit me, and i'm not paid enough for that." (smug bitch. he was no where near hitting her. he wasn't even focused on her).

surprise! she's walking to him, sitting contritely in the back of a van. she's willing to be magnanimous, "i'm going to let you go this time. but next time, don't get involved in other people's business, ok?" he nods. he's being a good boy now, but he doesn't get off completely scot-free. she's going to report him to his local police station, so he'll be in the system, and they can keep an eye on him (he's obviously too outspoken for the good of the People, and must be eliminated once the State seizes total control! moohaha!).

and meanwhile, what happened to our original friend? he got deported!!!!!!!!!! WOOHOO! SERIOUS?!!!! how is this happening? and then, how is it on tv?!

*knife crime is a Big deal here. a series of teen jackets even came with latched on knives (on a silver chain). there was an outcry of course and they were retracted. but the point is, some designer thought they'd be popular. and, the other week, from the newspaper: some hospital emergency room had to be shut down b/c a fight broke out. the grieving family of a 21 yr old guy who died of stab wounds spotted his attacker, who was in the ER for stab wounds as well. it was a gang thing, and the dead guy's gang got revenge on the attacker. wow.

3 hour naps fuel my day-to-day

2009-05-05T10:33:00.003-04:00

canned soup wisdom: "do not overheat as this will impair the flavour."

if i'm going to keep using blogging as procrastination, it would behoove me if my friends would blog more often (you know who you are). otherwise, i might have to go figure out what the big deal is about twitter or myspace.

a bit of disc

2009-05-05T03:53:00.003-04:00

they've finally made a handler out of me. i've spent so many years avoiding it. even in hk, i managed to sneak myself into the cutting ranks often enough to satisfy. oh well. i guess it's time to grow. and to learn to catch a pull (yikes!).

after a weekend of practice, i've found that i have no idea where to stand behind the disc or how to make a dump cut. luckily, the O we're learning doesn't have any dumps behind the disc, so those are two things that will continue to elude me.

even on herd, where i'm supposed to be a mid, i'm often called as a short fill. i'm having some issues with the herd leadership. they've put our fastest girl, who gets at least 1 d per game, on the o line, where she is timid and unsure. they've put me on the d line (which is fine), b/c they need some "handlerish" ppl on the d line, even though my official position is mid. they've got more female handlers than you can shake a stick at (well, enough, in any case).

and the big thorn in my side last week: at the scrimmage against flump, i was relegated to the b team so that we could have even numbers of girls on each team. except, flump's b team only had 2 girls, so they played 6-1 for most of the game, and i ended up covering a guy anyways. what the f is the point of me playing with the b team? i was told that even if more ppl show up, i shouldn't move teams b/c we were supposed to gel within our teams. except...um, is there any good that could come out of me gel'ing with the b team? i'm positive that si (our captain) didn't mean anything by it, and that it was just a boneheaded move on his part. but could he not see how this might make me angry/sad/confused? i'm trying not to be a whiny bitch about this. si did do a good job of planting a nugget of "i'll show those bastards" that i can pull out in a tough game. after all, i play best when i feel i'm underestimated.

i love summer

2009-04-24T04:02:00.002-04:00

TWO WEEKS AGO

easter weekend was pretty low key. most of our friends were drinking their faces off in rimini, while we sat in london passportless, friendless (the mad cow team dropped from 12th place to 31st, out of 32 teams, but it seems they did manage to terry tate a lot of people).

we went for a couple of bike rides with jon's family around kingston, which was nice. the number of recreational cyclers in britain is immense. there's even a best-buy sized chain store that sells only bikes + car accessories - halfords. in my limited experience with them, they are friendly but not the most competent - a change from the snooty but lifestyle cyclist folk at the niche bike stores around boston. i think i prefer the competence peppered with snobbery over the dilettante mechanics of halfords.

jon's work gives him 50% off any bike (part of a government carbon emissions scheme), so over easter weekend, we went to halfords to pick out a new bike for me. we found the one we wanted, but the guy says we should order it online since even if we buy it now, it won't be ready till monday at the earliest. when i order it online, the website says the bike won't be ready until friday (a whole 5 days away), and i have to go all the way to mile end to pick it up. i'm awful at london geography, so armed with my A to Z(ed), i set out to for shallowford, which, i think, is the closest tube stop. wandering from shallowford, i drop into a neighborhood bakery (i mean, what good is wandering unless you're allowed to make pitstops?). it's not the sort that normally grabs me...more of a mental clinic vibe than a warm baked goods one, but i'm sick of the restaurants with more ambience than flavor, and this one did claim to bake all its savoury goods in store, day of (maybe the sweet goods have more shelflife?). so i walk in, try to ignore the elderly unkempt man rocking himself by the counter and the pensioners on their date in the corner (cute, but the cafeteria style seating and the flyaway white hairs depress me), and pick out a carrot cake cupcake from the display case. back in the street, i walked past the fresh produce stands and the women in purdah (who evoked the daily muezzin that i'd grown accustomed to on the indian ocean shores), and i felt proud of myself for venturing into the unkown. that lasted maybe all of 2 seconds. then i bit into the cake...and it wasn't bad per se, but it was saltier than expected, and it just...tasted like old people. sorry, but i'm hopelessly gerontophobic. you know when ppl get truly infirm, and they give off this smell...like their bodies are decomposing already. it's just so sad and disturbing. i can't deal with it. anyways, i wasn't mentally strong enough to distinguish the impression left by the bakery from the flavor of the cupcake. oh don't worry, i still ate all of it. i mean, old ppl flavored food is still food after all, and i firmly believe that food you've paid for is food that's going down the hatch darnit.

in the next stage of my friday afternoon adventure, i found a street vendor selling a basket of pomegranates for 1lb(!!). i thought of yelena, but i personally have no use for pomegranates, and i can't imagine it's worthwhile to send them to her, so i suppressed the urge to buy and walked on. but i guess that means pomegranates are in season for those of you who like them. and then, even more randomly than the cupcake incident, i decided to watch a movie. it wasn't exactly a decision per se, but i walked by an oldish looking theater (and unlike bakeries, i actually prefer my movie theaters a bit seedy), asked about prices, found that i could watch a 4lb movie on my old MIT id card, which i happened to be carrying b/c i had gone in the morning to retrieve my passport from the home office (they told me to bring photo id...which, you know, you have my passport, can't you just hold it up to my face or something? moot point anyways since the lady at the counter didn't bother to check anything. so i walked out with both my passport and jon's, not having undergone any identity verification. love the lack of bureacracy, but not the most secure process, me thinks). anyways, so confluence of factors, plus the offering of a poignant coming of age flick with VAMPIRES, which just seems like the perfect thing to watch matinee, alone, after a disappointing but blameless cupcake (since it's my own prejudices which made it so), and i was powerless to resist. incidentally, the movie, Let the Right One In, is in norwegian with english subtitles :-).

three hours later and suitably touched, i finally get to halfords. surprise! they forgot to build my bike. i can either get it on monday or wait an hour for them to build it on the quick. i'm not sure i can survive the journey again. plus, next time i walk past that theater, i'll have to watch zac effron's 17 Again (slightly appealing, but i think i can wait the 3 yrs for disney channel to play it for free, thanks). while i wait, i read a mountian biking how-to book that extoles the ATTACK! position. by the time i finish the book, they're still not done - they're having some trouble with the mudguard + pannier rack double whammy by the back wheel. the situation has already been escalated to the shift manager (just as well, since the original guy hadn't ever built a bike before being hired by halfords. oh, but don't worry, you pick it up within the first 2 weeks, since you're just building bikes day in day out. reassuring). about an hour and a half later, the bike is finally ready to go. they hand me the packaging for the pannier rack, which just about shouts from the rooftops that this pannier rack is better than the rest b/c it includes a reflector mounting (i mean, holy gosh, don't forget about that reflector mounting!), so i innocently ask about the reflector mounting, and apparently, the guy had just thrown it behind the counter, b/c sheesh, why would i want my reflector mounting? i mean, it's not like i bought a reflector or anything. so then he sheepishly installs that, and half an hour of figuring out the voucher, and i'm finally on my way home to drop off the bike so i can be 2 hours late for dinner in the city. not to mention, it's about 8pm, so i'm riding home without lights, without helmet, in the dark. luckily i was feeling a bit dangerous.

the night ended well - belgian oysters, fries, and beers with nic and dan in covent garden. big bird ain't got nothing on my perambulations.

LAST WEEK

contained a lot of frisbee. saturday, i crashed an iso practice b/c jon had an early throwing session with fire. then herd. the weather was beautiful. idyllic summer day, not too warm, but the grass and the water glinted with sun. in the time i've been gone, clapham has grown a coat of small, white, wild flowers. after herd, a couple of us had a picnic on the grass, courtesy of bob's (?) 24 hour burger truck. i had a greasy burger with egg, cheese, grilled onions, drenched in "burger relish", ketchup, yellow mustard. they even grilled a blueberry muffin for me ("but it'll taste like burgers." "i don't care, do it!"--it tasted fine). then to the firefly for beer and nachos. we didn't make it back to surbiton till 10pm, just in time to down some cold salmon, baby potatoes, fresh strawberries before showering and crashing.

sunday, simon had a cookout in brixton. everyone sat outside and ate burgers, sausages, fancy pasta salads. we even managed a few non-frisbee conversations in consideration of si's non-frisbee friends, but you know, we had a quorum of 3 discers, so invariably, the talk turned to ulty (sorry folks). once the sun had left the backyard, we followed it to the park to play some cups. a great way to end the weekend.

monday, i crashed another iso practice (what can i say, i love playing with catherine), where i rolled my ankle slightly on a shotput divot, not badly though. i felt a lot better after the three (!) free cones from ben and jerry's on tuesday. all 3 b&j's that i could find were in leicester square, where state of play happened to be premiering that night, so when i first walked up, i was a bit horrified. cordoned lines?! security guards?! i didn't know free cone day was such a big deal here. luckily, it's not. the lines were so short that i had to hide my first free cone beneath the counter while ordering my second. double fist much? alex, jackie, and i sat on the grass, enjoying our ice creams, watching the courtship of the fatnecked pigeons. then alex went to abh practice, and i dragged jackie into a mcD's to satisfy my mcnugget hankering. i got a kids meal, but the bottom of the castlebox split open, spilling most of my fries, and i think i left the toy in the sushi restaurant (sushi was so-so, but cheap and filling).

wednesday, we had a herd fitness session in regents park. afterwards, ferg showed us the best burrito place in london. reminiscent of anna's, and cheap too. really really awesome limeade (or corona, if that's more your shtick). we closed the place down with their paga stories, and some interesting frisbee gossip. too bad it's really far from where i live, but i guess if we keep having fitness at regents park, then wednesdays will be burrito night :-).

yesterday we had herd practice at clapham. the d line kicked the o line's ass. repeatedly. UNfortunately, ferg is on the o line, so afterwards, he made us do full field sprints in punishment - back of the endzone to back of the endzone, split into groups of 3, 10 sprints in total. when he'd finally worked out his frustrations, we went to nandos (a portugese chicken place) and ordered 4 whole! chickens! which comes with 8 sides and free refill sodas (which is uncommon outside of the US) to share among 6. it was amazing and awful all at once. we waddled back to the station groaning repeatedly, audibly, like fat, full lunatics.

tonight, we're playing discgolf/prepartying/taking a scenic tour of north london before heading over to stella's goodbye/birthday party in hackney. tomorrow, i fly for barcelona to be reunited with laura. if this is unemployment, then i could get used to it.

africa can wait

2009-04-08T06:01:00.002-04:00

well, my first foray back into ultimate went as expected. i've lost a lot of throws. my stabilization muscles are shot. i'm not in shape to play both O and D. on the bright side, it seems my catching has gotten better...and as always after a long hiatus into a foreign country...my pain tolerance is higher. there's nothing like third world problems to help me say "blister schmister, i can play thru that." and my cardio is surprisingly ok. thanks kili!

at pickup monday night, there were a bunch of guys doing really weird core exercises on the track next to us. turns out they're surfers. finally! a sport weirder than ulty...hmm...except i guess they can be professionals, and there are worldwide competitions, so maybe they're more legitimate than us after all. anyways, the guy leading their workout is a professional workout guru and he offered to hold a session with us, tailored towards ulty, for free! free stuff! alright! except...no one on iceni seemed that excited about it, and i didn't feel like i was in a position to say, "sure, we'll show up! thanks!" so we ended up taking his website down on a scrap of paper, playing hot potato with it for a bit (no, you take it. oh, you want me to take it? um..alright...), and not making any commitment whatsoever. smeriously yall. i don't understand british offhandedness sometimes. cute surfer dude offers a free conditioning session. seems like a no brainer to me.

i've become strangely ok with washing my hair once a week. even after the tournament this weekend and practice on monday, i didn't wash my hair until wednesday morning...and that was only b/c i thought i was having lunch with one of my ex-bosses in canary wharf. someone at practice monday even called me a "minger" (britishism for gross person) for wearing the same clothes to practice that i had worn to the tournament...oh if only she knew. i keep thinking that meryl and erin would be proud of me :-).

the spice tour: the beginning of the posse

2009-03-29T06:56:00.005-04:00

the spice tour per se was mediocre. we piled into a van, drove to some plantations, and tasted various parts of various plants. the medicinal explanations were pseudo-interesting, but by the third one, they all started bleeding together (except that nutmeg is an aphrodisiac). they even cheated by showing us starfruit, jackfruit, and rambutan (which aren't spices last time i checked). after trudging around a while, they sold us some henna, some spices boats, some ointments, and fed us a spiced lunch (fragrant rice, veggie curry, chapati, kale) (it wasn't that spicy, but it was nice anyways).

From zanzibar

nutmeg zanzibar

cinnamon zanzibar

cocoa zanzibar

a painted woman zanzibar

spice lunch zanzibar

after lunch, we headed for the slave caves, where the sultan hid his slaves after the british abolished slavery (the slaves spent nights in the caves, which were accessible only by rope at the time). i was all prepared to be unimpressed, but the narrator had an interesting lilt in his speech, and he wove a python god story, which was made all the more convincing by the hotdog sized millipedes and the skittering bugs in the halflight. anyone with any ambition (eg for public office) needs to go down the tunnel at midnight and ask the python god's permission/blessing. we emerged from the slave caves grateful and spooked and took hidden stairs down to the most beautiful white sand beach i've ever seen. we were the only ones there. the water was clear turquoise. limestone cliffs rose to hide their treasure from public view. we swam out to a fishing boat and lounged on it for the rest of our time. so this is paradise.

inside the slave cave zanzibar

monster millipede zanzibar

secret beach zanzibar

From zanzibar

but the spice tour was the best thing we did in africa. we (jakob, erika, and i) met 8 other awesome people, all youngish, all backpackers, (almost) all headed to nungwi the next day (nungwi is a beach north of stone town). role call:

From zanzibar
lucy the crazy artist. "i was in a sex show once" (all conversations at the dinner table stop. "i mean, not IN a sex show, but i watched one. a woman was shooting darts out of her hoo-ha"). screams at everything. a grandmother who said, "it's the whiskey, my child, the whiskey." (as in, whiskey was the answer to her good health. when this same grandmother started losing her hearing, lucy would sit and sketch stories with her). unkempt hair, sweet smile, manages to be late and considerate in the same breath. makes friends with all the natives. more trusting than she should be. more honest than most. studied art at bristol for a year, went to florence to get a more classical education, painted in lamu for a month, and is soon returning to florence.
From zanzibar
rupert the devious artist. public school boy with amazing manners but a shocking but not profane vocabulary (ever heard of a fruit basket?) that he uses to steer conversations quickly south (ash's terminology). almost date raped, which after the initial freakout, he managed to take as a compliment (how else could he take it anyways?) (we think his drink was spiked. he disappeared for 40 min on the beach, returned groggy, memoryless, walletless). rupert and lucy are traveling together, but they are not together. rupert also painted for a month in lamu, and will soon be in florence.
From zanzibar
ash the traveler. perky south african who wakes up chattering. studies interior design. drove her dad's souped up 4x4 from south africa, camping and cooking along the way. the car has a fridge and a snorkel. buys everything in pink, but claims her favorite color is gray. loves donkeys. tells her mom everything. we have surprisingly similar shopping tastes, considering. after zanzibar, erika and i caught a ride with her party truck to mombasa and crashed at her mom's timeshare for a week. we dragged her by bus to lamu for a couple days in the middle of that week, and she absolutely loved it. two bruises, one on each leg from the same bus armrest. she ran into it on the way onto the bus and again on the way out of the bus. ash eventually hooked up wtih gerwin, followed him to germany, and they will both visit me in london this month. exciting stuff!
From zanzibar
gerwin the german. lived in south africa for 6 months studying english. traveling with ash and simon. looks like a partyer, but is surprisingly laid back and mellow. triathloner, but had a surgery 2 years ago that extended one of his legs 6 cms (he was born with it 6 cm shorter, and they had to wait for him to stop growing before they could break his leg and stretch it with metal poles). still in amazing shape. packed a huge tub of protein powder into the car and hasn't used it once. stubborn but friendly. always smiling.
From zanzibar
simon the fink. this kid has more than 1 screw loose. he hits on every girl he meets (lying about his girlfriend until he's sure he has no shot whatsoever, and then he tells ppl that he has a son, which turns into his nephew in subsequent versions of the story, but morphs back into his son again when he likes--i wonder if he had him with his sister). it's hard to describe what's wrong with this guy. he's negative, pessimistic, rude, untrustworthy, lazy, and ugly. he's homophobic, misogynic, and surly--a self-pitying meathead who's stuck in the adolescent phase of life where you write poems and feel all alone, except he's never heard of a poem and probably doesn't know how to read. he constantly makes snide comments under his breath, is incapable of having fun, and never does his share of the work--which can be really annoying when you're camping with him. it got so bad that ash and gerwin sent him home yesterday (they gave him his share of the money and told him to buy a plane ticket back to johannesburg). in retaliation, he stole KSH2000 of the money we had collected for the hotel tab, hinted that the roomservice stole it, and made us all give him KSH400 more each. erika accused him pointblank and almost punched him in the face. go erika! he had a stroke while playing rugby about 2 years ago, gained a lot of weight, is now fully recovered, but uses it as another excuse to feel sorry for himself. he works as a safari guide on a game ranch in south africa, and thinks that he is so grownup and mature for it. we've heard so many stories about his animal encounters, in excruciating detail, complete with mimicked animal noises. this kid loudly made fun of the muslim prayer calls while sitting in a public restaurant in a fully muslim country. stupid.
nadin the outgoing schoolteacher. german who makes friends at the drop of a hat. most complete swahili knowledge out of all of us. eats nightly at the open air market.
jeanette the wise. interior designer who's been traveling for ages. joined ash, simon, and gerwin for a leg of their trip. eldest of the group.
bastion and claudia, the couple. soft spoken german couple. he works for lufthansa...she, i think, is a student. he wore funky plastic glasses. walked back thru the maze of cats from mercury to the hostel.
From zanzibar
me
From zanzibar
erika
From zanzibar
jakob the constant companion. we met him on our kili trek, using him, his dad, and claudius as our pacers. we didn't realize till the second to last day that claudius didn't speak any english. they descended the mtn a day before us, and we promised to find each other in zanzibar. instead, we found that two days of our safaris overlapped (which is strange b/c erika and i planned our safari completely off the cuff)...met in zanzibar a couple of days later, and hung out until he returned to frankfurt. apparently, ppl from frankfurt are called frankfurters, ppl from berlin are called berliners (jelly donuts), ppl from hamburg are called hamburgers...

by the way

2009-03-28T07:04:00.002-04:00

somebody better post about foolsfest (!!!)

zanzibar

2009-03-28T06:13:00.005-04:00

what is there to say about zanzibar except that it's a postcard. likely the most picture perfect place i've ever been.

one of many elaborate doors zanzibar

slave cave beach zanzibar

From zanzibar

different shades of blue water zanzibar

From zanzibar

we arrived in the afternoon, surprised at how aggressively the burka'd women would shove their matronly, mountainous bellies into the throng, swimming past us with henna'd hands and sausage arms, mindless of the little children (theirs) who bobbed along in the crowd.

once i fought my way off the boat (one arm around my drum, the other my purse, and the bow and arrow slung across my bag), the breeze soothed me immediately. zanzibar is cooler than the mainland. the old stone town is a labryinthe of alleyways, bullied by the unruly buildings, crooked paths laboriously carving their way amongst the shops, houses, and mosques. incomplete street cats littered the dust, yowling and fighting and lounging. they missed eyes, ears, tails, as if there weren't enough parts to go around.

that first night, we stowed our stuff at the flamingo guesthouse (our predetermined rendezvous with jakob, who would arrive the next day), and set off to find dinner. we ended up at monsoon, where we sat on the cushioned floor and listened to the live taraab (taarab?) group. the drummer was amazing. he could make that drum talk (stroking, soothing, prodding, beating). a violin and a 11 stringed lute completed the ensemble. i started with passionfruit calamari salad, had the king fish in coconut ginger sauce with coconut rice, greens, potatoes (i think), and mango salsa (traded the salsa for erika's greens). i finished with coconut ice cream in a bowl. the night was as exotic as our spiced tea and brown sugar cakes, as chill as our passion coladas. just an amazing vibe.

taarab band zanzibar

coconut kingfish zanzibar

From zanzibar

we rolled home stuffed like the fat moon low in the sky. couldn't wait for tomorrow, when we'd make it a point to get lost in stown town.

we spent the entire next day shopping, stopping to have lunch at a vegetarian indian restaurant. the highlight was the passion lassi. that, and the volume. they'd refill your plate as often as you liked...which come to think of it, is not that surprising given the number of indian buffets, but it was unexpected in africa, so i took advantage. we met jakob in the afternoon (after getting amazingly lost which made us 40 minutes late). for dinner, the three of us went to the two tables restaurant, a very literally named private kitchen. we met a south african couple who shared their white wine and our table (the owner of the restaurant was muslim, so he didn't serve any alcohol but didn't mind if we partook). they were the first of the good friends we'd meet in zanzibar. we ate course after course of curry this and coconut that. there must've been 3 starch courses alone. by the time he introduced his signature fruit juice blend, our stomachs were too stretched to finish even 1 jug. we capped the night off at mercury's, but erika and i were both too full to drink much of anything (the bar is named after freddie mercury, who was born in zanzibar).

pickled peppercorn zanzibar

From zanzibar

bananas as big as a bucket zanzibar

From zanzibar

dried seafood at market zanzibar

anyone want a date? zanzibar

the next morning we ate an early breakfast on the rooftop of the guesthouse, shielded from the heat by the hanging linen. then we set off on the spice tour that would shape the rest of our trip.

jakob, erika, and the stereotypical german nurse zanzibar

a play in two acts

2009-03-28T01:17:00.004-04:00

when southerners fall in love, it's always with an ideal. it's the heat. it makes everything shimmer, blurs the edges. you see horses where there are none, metal glinting in the sun. when southerners fall out of love, it's always with sarcasm, laying "pumpkins" and "sugarplums" like barbed wire under skin, dulled only by the hard liquors, and then only for a while.

me, i've always imagined on a donkey, in a skirt, kicking up dust clouds.

you can yell the love story from rooftops to strangers, but the bumps you keep to yourself. otherwise, the faces become masks and the eyes go away. the tongues make clucking noises, but even they are dry in their sympathies.

they make me tired in a tennessee williams way.

sorry, i get like this when i don't sleep a lot. and by that, i mean cryptic.

and another thing about the safari...

2009-03-25T01:07:00.005-04:00

puffs of ostrich rose out of the flat grass plains, like bushes with legs. immediately identifiable.

From safari

the monogamous dikdik, smallest of the antelope, was barely a miniature rocking horse.

From safari

a cloud of flamingos floating above lake manyera (in squinting distance) would shed wisps of pink smoke as birds took flight.

From safari

the gassy hippos shared a pond with a constantly fluffing water bird. it was like listening to a percussion band.

i love watching the masai and their regal, long legged walk. they have beautiful posture--straight and relaxed, swinging along behind their cattle. up close, you can see their holey ears and decorative scars. they're all ridiculously tall too. they're allowed to graze their cattle in the ngorogoro crater, amongst the zebra, wildebeest, hyenas, and lions. no wonder they carry such formidable weapons (huge spears, but their shields resemble umbrellas--useless against nothing sharper than water).

From safari

around the resorts where we are, there are lots of plastic masai--ppl who pretend to be masai so they can sell you trinkets. their identity is betrayed by their walk. at the timeshare in mombasa, they hosted a masai market. all the fake masai were herded into the tennis court under the blazing sun, where they peered out at the white tourists lounging in the swimming pool. it was like watching animals in a cage. depressing. when i passed, they didn't have a single customer, and no wonder. i think anyone who walked into that tennis court would've been pounced.

(most photos courtesy of jakob and his huge lens)

safari

2009-03-13T13:09:00.004-04:00

just got back from our 4 day safari. one day in lake manyera, one day in serengeti, and one day in ngorogoro crater (yeah, that doesn't really add up to 4 days, but add in the transportation and there you have it). ngorogoro crater was definitely the best day. some highlights:

From safari

baboons safari

blue balls safari

From safari

you killed mufasa! safari

From safari

bumping into jakob again near a pond of gaseous hippos. and then twice more, at various campsites. i'd swear he's following us, except he always arrives before we do.

sereptitiously driving off road in serengeti to track a pregnant cheetah (we didn't know she was pregnant at the time, not that we would've given her any quarter had we known)
From safari
finding a colony of prairiedog-like rodents behind the bathrooms of our serengeti camp. they had an elaborate system of tunnels and they'd stand up on their hindlegs to investigate strange noises (like the clicking of cameras...not bathroom noises).
From safari
going for our dawn gamedrive in serengeti and finding a dead hippo (legs akimbo--skyward). we tried to direct all vulture and hyena traffic its way.
From safari
From safari
skidding out of serengeti in the rain. the roads had turned pretty messy, and our brave mystery machine hydroplaned in the mud more than once (the other safari-goers (who were mostly white haired retirees in full khaki outfits toting intimidating cameras) drove around in cool range rovers while we got a flatnosed scoobydoo van). linn got splashed pretty well from a puddle we drove through, but otherwise, we emerged jostled but unscathed. full props to bernard, the driver/guide (fuller props to mchina, our chef/cook--he fed us WELL. the double title is handed to him by the safari company, who probably feels like he needs something to balance bernard's driver/guide role). nothing like the element of danger to add flavor.
From safari
bernard introduced a bird with a curiously thick (and furry looking) neck as the "bastard". i'm sure we heard him wrong, i think it's actually called the battalliard (or something), but the name stuck. we had a fun time shouting at all the dirty bastards. freddy even came up with a dorky theme song for whenever one arrived on the scene (dooby dooby dooby dooby).
From safari
kili time (make the most of it) with linn and frederick, our fellow safari-ists from sweden. linn had some trouble finishing her beer one night and decided that the stuff would go down easier if she poored it into a teacup and drank it out of a hollowed out greenbean. after freddy spent ages prodding and squeezing the beans out of the casing, linn took one half-hearted sip and declared that the bean turned the beer too salty. poor freddy ended up slowly slurping the beer out of the bean, just as a proof of concept of his handmade straw.
From safari
camping on the rim of ngorogoro crater and being woken up at 2am by a family of munching buffalo--i thought they were rhino at the time--they were HUGE, and they chomped grass with a mighty ripping sound.
From safari
From safari
at around 2:30am, we sneak out of our tents again, this time to see a bush pig rooting into linn and freddy's tent. the pig managed to enter the fly and rip a hole in the tent before freddy aimed a kick at his nose that sent him scampering.

entering the crater and seeing swarms of zebra, wildebeest, buffalo, and deer.
From safari
From safari

From safari

spotting the elusive black rhino, sleeping in the distance with it's baby.
finding a pond of muddy hippos. every once in a while, one of them would roll over in the water, showing it's soft pink underbelly.
From safari
From safari
the family of baby warthogs wallowing in the road (when i was a young warthog....when he was a young WARRRTHOOOG!) (psssst, we went thru all the characters of the lion king, asking our guide if their names meant anything in swahili. aside from simba (lion) and rafiki (friend), the only word that had meaning was pumba (sawdust). our guide was mighty confused by the other names, and we forgot what the 2 hyenas were called...but ed doesn't mean anything in swahili in case you're wondering). warthogs run with their tails pointed straight up in the air. this led to an argument between erika and i about whether rats run with their tails straight out behind them or dragging on the ground. anyone care to enlighten?
From safari
From safari
From safari
the fucking lions! the female would get up first, stretch, look toward the male. the male would wait a good beat (no one wants to seem too easy), mount her, and start licking her head. 5 seconds later, it'd be over (that's generous timing too). the male lion doesn't make a single sound the whole way through. then they'd both flop over, sleep for 5 min, and start the process all over again (yes we watched it more than once. the angle the first time wasn't quite to our liking). our guide said that honeymooning lions will go like that for days, doing it about 60 times a day. sometimes the male lion will have 2 females with him, in which case he doesn't rest the full five minutes, but bounces back and forth between the two females. cool eh?
From safari

From safari
From safari
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picnicing near a herd of zebra and a bunch of kites. bernard wouldn't let us sit outside b/c of the circling kites, but after i spilled my chicken on my lap and kicked over my coke, i decided that i'd brave the birds. bernard even came over to act as "security". whenever a kite circled too close, he would pretend to throw something at it, and it would fly higher. in the split second that bernard turned to talk to mchina, a kite dove and snatched the chicken from my hand. bernard was only 5 meters away too! some security. that will come out of his tip :-).
From safari
while i was still sitting in the scoobyvan like a good girl, a small, intrepid, yellow bird would fly into the roofhatch and steal macaroni off our plates. the football shaped partridge/turkey-looking-things with blue necks and bright red waddles would crowd the van door to hop at the macaroni in my hand (if i held it out to them, just out of their reach).
From safari
From safari
From safari
From safari
sticking my head out of the roof hatch and catching a fly full in the mouth. it was bound to happen sooner or later.

ngorogoro made the safari worthwhile. otherwise, i'd say it was a lot of sitting in a car and watching. i don't know what i was expecting exactly, but the word safari sounds so exotic and exciting...(it's like the word fatfree in the US...ppl tack it onto exactly everything that they can. even in mbita, we'd see signs for "safari beach hotel". ha! yeah right, and next you're gonna sell me a bridge?).

it's just a matter of expectations, i guess. the majority of other ppl we saw on safari were elderly pensioners--potbellied, skinny-legged men sporting way too many pockets. everyone wore the same hat too. the logos on their vehicles would say things like, "it's rough, it's dusty, but it's an adventure!" but if a bunch of 60 yr olds can do it...how rough is it really going to get? plus, driving, you're still rather insulated from the animals. even when you do find the lion or cheetah, most of the time they're sleeping. and you didn't do any work for it, so it doesn't feel very rewarding. if i do this again, i'd prolly opt for a walking safari or a biking one. not having a car between you and the animals is really different. the buffalo at camp, for example. that was exciting. sleeping lions from a car? not so much.

tomorrow we're off to zanzibar to meet jakob again (this time, planned). maybe we'll see some giant manta rays!

From safari

once again, all good photos courtesy of jakob.

a long post about a long trek

2009-03-08T11:27:00.006-04:00

you know what we learned on our kili trek? the guy matata who tried to sell us the trip for really cheap? his name means "trouble" as in, hakuna matata (you know the song as well as i do, so i'll spare you). what's in a name you ask? well, word on the street is that he's done time. second chances and all that, but not while climbing a 5895m mtn, thanks all the same.

kessy bro's did a really good job of taking care of us. the USD1115 we paid was the cheapest out of everyone we asked (altho lots of ppl booked their trek from overseas, where you're liable to get charged anywhere from $3500 to $1500--even though companies will most likely punt you off to zara, who will charge you around $1200 if you book directly. on the last day, we had dinner with todd and skip, both of whom were trekking with zara. skip paid $1900, which includes a $300 single traveler fee, and todd paid $1200; no fee, even though todd was also traveling alone. ouch.

anyways, our guide's name was nicholaus, nickname sungura ("rabbit"). we requested him b/c we'd heard that he was the assistant guide for jimmy carter in 1988. nick says carter used the marangu route, didn't summit, and had lots of security helicopters circling the mtn.

we started monday morning at machame gate (1800m) and hiked to machame hut (3000m). it was supposed to take us 4.5 hours, but we did it in 3.5, which includes the 30min we took for lunch. along the way, we lost nick b/c he was too busy talking on his phone, and we were too busy to notice. we thought he'd catch up eventually, but we didn't see him again till camp. we did the whole thing in a very comfy stroll--only breathing faster on the longer stretches of steps--but we managed to pass not only every other group, but also most of the porters. our punishment for speed = sitting in the rain waiting for our porters to show up with our tent. oh well.

a porter kilimanjaro

one of the groups we passed consisted of a bunch of ppl who had just run the kili marathon the day before. and now they're on a 6 day kili trek? crazy (k'cha in swahili (sp?)). a bunch of them even flew in from the US for the express pleasure of running a marathon at 4000feet, then climbing kilimanjaro the very next day. it was sold as a package tour like that. for crazy ppl by crazy ppl. not just the president, also a member. you get the idea.

we also met jeff and curry. jeff runs a fire department back in the states, but he's only in his 30s. he's also done tons of amazing things like expeditions to antarctica, etc. he's the one who convinced me to start my diamox the third day while throwing a frisbee around at 3900m. i don't know anything about curry except that he's afraid of spandex.

we hiked through eerily quiet rainforest. not a single animal on the way up. the odd bird call. like the whole forest but us was aware of a hidden danger sleeping in the next grove. pinpricks of wildflowers, red & yellow, pink, purple. wildberry bushes with tart, miserly fruit. the same grew by our tent, and erika ate some to the chagrin of our guides and porters. that girl is always hungry; most of her problems can be solved by feeding. this, after 1.5 months of listening to her stomach rumble (one night she woke up to her own hunger and thought that it was distant thunder. then she fed herself some coconut biscuits. also, more than one night, she's told me she's had nightmares about the striped mice stealing her biscuits--we saw striped mice even on the summit hike. i would guess at around 5000m...at that height, i have no idea what they'd eat...unless they feed exclusively on human vomit and erika's biscuit crumbs).

From kilimanjaro

wild berry bushes kilimanjaro

right around sunset, flashes of red lightning lit up the clouds. that first night, i slept amazingly--the silent forest a welcome change from the street noises of moshi, the party noises of jinja, and the tin roof amplifications of mbita. i lay snug in my sleeping bag, a hot nalgene tucked between my thighs for added warmth (another helpful tip from jeff). we were high enough to make the heart beat exciting, but not yet to make the head ache. waking up to pee, i see the loud stars overhead and hear the distant chanting of the night warden's radio.

first sunset kilimanjaro

in the morning, we ate breakfast outside, with the welcome sun warming my back. uhuru peak stood in the distance like a challenge.

on day 2, we hiked to shira camp (3900m). right before starting out, some of the porters discover a thomson (?) grazing near the cook tent. it's a fat black deerlike animal. when we first saw it, we both thought it was a pig. other than this, all we've seen are striped mice. too bad--apparently there are supposed to be honey badgers here (a kili website has this to say about them: "Don’t be fooled by the rather cute name. As well as being blessed with a face only its mother could love, these are the most powerful and fearless carnivores for their size in Africa. Even lions give them a wide berth. You should too: not only can they cause a lot of damage to your person, but the thought of having to tell your friends that, of all the bloodthirsty creatures that roam the African plains, you got savaged by a badger, is too shaming to contemplate.")

can you see the thomson? he's staring at you. kilimanjaro

this day's hike was thru heather, moorland. dwarf trees hanging with moss. much rockier, steeper, and through some of the lower clouds. we started off fast again (erika's fault), but soon learned to pace off a team of friendly germans. jakob is a 23 yr old med student who did a rotation in south africa, and is now climbing kili with his dad (corny, short for cornelius, but we all called him babu lungo--"gramps"). claudius, the random german guy who spoke no english, rounded out their group (incidentally, we didn't know that claudius didn't speak english until the fourth night, when we were playing rummy and jakob left the tent to pee. that's a long time to talk to someone without them understanding a word, but at least i finally knew why he blanked me whenever i asked him a question). thanks to jakob & co, we managed to hit the eta of 3.5 hours (including lunch).

From kilimanjaro

at shira, i start feeling the elevation. a slight buzz in the hindbrain, a perfect happiness to just sit. the camp is covered in clouds when we first arrive. visibility of maybe 20m. murders of huge crows everywhere to feed on our trash. the dizziness goes away after a diamox and a nap. i break out the disc, and jeff, erika, and i have a toss. it flies faster than usual, and a couple of them hit us hard in the gut. doesn't hurt thanks to the layers.

layers of mountains kilimanjaro

venus setting kilimanjaro

bathroom above the clouds kilimanjaro

kibo kilimanjaro

nick brings us exciting gossip (yes, i've switched to present tense...sue me). a group of "superstars" are camping at shira hut that night (~30min away), and a paparazi who works for the daily mail (a british rag) has been kicked out of their camp into ours. he was supposed to climb all the way to baranco (where we are going the next day), but he balked, claiming sickness (i'd be sick too at the thought of starting the 6 hr hike at 4pm), so instead, he had 4 park wardens guarding him, and 1 armed park warden to guard the superstars at shira hut. much drama in the next 24 hrs, as the superstars try to force him off the mtn (apparently he already took a pic of someone peeing, and he's been running ahead of them, hiding in a bush, and popping out to take pics just when they look their worst). they've offered to pay for his tour, but he's told his guide that they don't have any money, and that he gets 40k lbs per pic to try to get his guide to help him out instead. when the park wardens arrive and ask why he isn't going to baranco as commanded, he tells them that his guide told him to come to shira camp instead. his guide is like," wtf! you told me you were sick!" but the park wardens threaten to revoke his guide's license anyways. eventually, the paparazi does get kicked off the mountain. at the time we wondered how anyone can kick anyone else off the trek that they've bought. i mean, it's a national park, not private property. turns out the superstars (who are actually the comic relief team from the uk, doing a red nose day charity climb) are pretty tight with the government (they paid a lot of money for their visas), and the paparazi is here on a tourist visa, but since he's selling photos, he should be on a work visa.

the comic relief team had like 200 ppl (including porters, guides, etc), so they were literally an army, even staying in army drab tents. they did an 8 day hike, the last 4 days of which coincided with ours. the celebrities involved are: Gary Barlow (of take that), Chris Moyles (dj for radio1), Ben Shephard (english tv presenter), Ronan Keating (of boyzone) , Fearne Cotton (tv and radio presenter), Denise Van Outen (english actress, tv presenter, and rear of the year 1999), Kimberley Walsh (of girls aloud), Cheryl Cole (wife of chelsea soccer player ashley cole and member of girls aloud) and Alesha Dixon (formerly of mis-teeq, now solo, winner of strictly come dancing 2007)--can you tell i had to wiki most of them? some of them were really friendly, and some of them were really aloof. i guess that's not really all that surprising.

bbc is covering their efforts. the show is airing thursday at 8pm on bbc 1. i prolly won't be in any footage, but at least you can see exactly what we went through (although we didn't quite have the same level of support as they did...i think the last girl literally got dragged the last kilometer or so. we met them on our way down and i gave her (and her two guides) my last packet of gu).

on day 3, we hike to lava tower (4600m) where the comic relief team will spend the night, and everyone else will hike down to baranco (3950m). when we wake up, the sky is clear as usual, with a few fluffy clouds below us. i spot a short rainbow that seems to go from nowhere to nowhere. we climb steadily through red: reddish moss covering darker rocks that break with bright red streaks. wisps of cloud pass amongst us, moving fast. the plantlife is reduced to short things alee of the rocks: spiky thistle plants with mild pink flowers, lichen. we get our first clear glimpse of kibo ("there is"). it rises directly in front of us. eventually, we start seeing ice on the ground and some streams of meltwater. at lava tower, we lose sight of the peak. we eat packed lunches amongst jagged volcanic cliffs enshrouded in mist; harsh winds whip our faces. i can't believe anyone would want to camp here. we hurry our food, scrambling down a steep path that skips gradually back into vegetation. a grove of tall senecio plants herald our arrival at baranco camp. the whole trip took maybe 3 hours up, 2 hours down.

snow at lava tower kilimanjaro

scrambling down from lava tower kilimanjaro

sungura's senecio garden kilimanjaro

after dinner, we wander to the cliff edge with jakob to see moshi town. instead, we find a serval, sprinting amongst the bushes. long graceful strides until it was out of the clear. i think it was afraid of us. a serval is a small, leopard-colored cat with longer ears that feeds mostly on rodents. our first cat sighting in africa! after that, the night lights of moshi hardly thrilled. we spent the rest of the night in jakob's food tent, playing rummy with him and claudius.

tents at the base of a glacier kilimanjaro

that night, i couldn't sleep for excitement. most of our friends were on the 6 day trek, so they would be summiting at midnight the next day after a 6 hour hike to barafu camp, where they'd get a meal and a couple hours nap. erika and i still had a good 2 days to go, but i got the anticipation jitters. at least my nightly wake-up-pee was less painful than usual...i mean, if i'm restless anyways, then it's not much of a sacrifice to crawl out of the sleeping bag. outside, the night is clear as always (it's been raining in the afternoons and clearing up in the evenings). stars overhead, moshi lights in the distance, and the glow of the glacier on the mountain.

in the morning, a fly rests on my teaspoon, and thinking to chase it off with my fork, i make a slow stabbing motion towards it. apparently, i was too fast for the fly, who ended up impaled on my fork. i guess i won't be using that fork anymore. this must be what it feels like to be a squirrel: you think you're moving slowly, but the rest of the world is like whoa there fella. or maybe the fly saw me coming, but couldn't fly away for the altitude? a slow dreaded death like the pit and the pendulum...or maybe it saw me coming, but the tea was just too good...like a drug addict.

From kilimanjaro

since we only have a 3 hr hike, we start off really late (actually, we're usually the last to leave camp, but this time we actually have an excuse). our first challenge is the baranco wall (aka the breakfast wall, since you climb it right after breakfast). it looks impenetrable, but there's a hidden path that winds thru it. it's the toughest bit of the trek in terms of technical climbing ability, but it's still pretty easy...unless you're a porter with a table on your head.

we watch the marathoner group snake slowly (very slowly) out of camp. then, 20 min later, we see 2 of them stride back. they're going down. the first to quit, and still days before summit. already. already!

ppl winding up baranco wall kilimanjaro

clouds above and below baranco camp kilimanjaro

From kilimanjaro

we climb to 4200m today before starting our descent into karanga camp (3930m--yes, it's slightly lower than baranco). most of the terrain is arid wasteland. not much growing at all. riverbeds (glacial deposits?) of gravel. every once in a while, a cloud blows thru to make you feel even more alone. before reaching karanga, we have to climb down a valley and climb back up again. on the way up, my face starts to tingle. interesting feeling. we catch jakob at karanga before they head off to barafu, wishing them a last round of luck. babu is feeling pretty down...we hope he can make it.

karanga camp kilimanjaro

karanga camp is...well, not very pretty. it's on an unprotected slope with rocks all around. the only reason to be here is that it's close to a river, from which porters carry water for boiling (unless you're with comic relief, in which case you drink bottled water the whole way). i feel pretty lonely and antsy. all of the friends we've made along the way have gone ahead without us. i really hope they make it. and i wonder what will become of the marathon group.

needless to say, i can't sleep again that night. the gradient in our tent which keeps rolling me off my sleeping mat doesn't help at all. in the morning, we're the last to leave again. the comic relief team trudge past us, one by one. the girls seem like they're going really slowly...at what i'd like to call chain gang pace (like they have ankle shackles on). or maybe it's more bridal march pace? take a step, wait a beat, take a step. at least it's clear in the morning. we can see mt meru in the distance.

mt meru kilimanjaro

it takes us 2 hrs to reach barafu. we pass everyone and their mother on the way. at one point, a security dude in sunglasses walks out onto the path and holds up his hand (but he doesn't say a word). i'm kinda like, dude, you don't own the mountain or the path, so unless you actually ask me politely to stop, i ain't gonna. when we keep walking, some porters behind us tell us to stop b/c some of the famous girls are peeing. ah ok. fair nuff. later, as we walk past them, we say hi, but receive grumpy stares in return (they may have been tired).

the last uphill slope before camp is steep. we let nicolaus go ahead, and he adopts his moonwalk pace. i actually caught him stepping as if going forward, but letting his foot fall behind his other foot once. reminds me of those math problems...if a snail crawls up a well at 1 inch a minute but falls 3 inches every 5 minutes, how long will it take it to reach the top of a 10 ft well?

we both feel the elevation at barafu (4600m) despite the diamox. i'm not hungry at all. just want to crawl into my sleeping bag and stay there for a while. we're early enough to meet most of our friends on their way down. nearly everyone made it, even babu! jakob says that babu was feeling pretty bad, but when his guide suggested turning back, babu got a sudden burst of power and managed to make it to the top. the marathoners all made it too. when they came down, i saw that one of them had a bunch of caked blood around his nose/mouth. i was impressed...altho i shouldn't be surprised that marathoners are good at pain tolerance. masochists, every one of them.

a celeb girl making her way past barafu to kosovo kilimanjaro

after we had a light lunch, erika and i took a very nice 2 hour nap. i woke up in time to see the celebs walking past our camp, into their higher camp, called kosovo. it's 1 hr higher into the mtn, so they get to forego the steeper rockier bit at the beginning of the hike. you need a special permit to camp there, since there are no toilets, but their porters were carrying portable toilets for them anyways. we also saw a porter carrying a box of bottled water up for them. fancy.

our porters had to carry our water all the way from karanga, so we had to use it sparingly, plus one of our porters was suffering from the altitude, so he went down a day early (accompanied by another porter), so we were 2 porters short. those guys are pretty amazing.

mawenzi peak in the distance kilimanjaro

clouds rebounding off of hot rocks kilimanjaro

after our nap, nick took us up to kosovo so we could see what we were in for. i was still feeling groggy, so i just concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other. we got back down, ate some dinner, and slept again for 2 hours. at around 10:45 pm, i wake up to my bladder, and am too excited to fall back asleep. the summit hike is nigh! danny, our waiter (sad, i know), brings us some porridge and biscuits, and i force them down. at least it wasn't yet cold outside. the stars are out in force, and i am excited to get going.

the first 2 hours of the hike are easy. not very windy, and we'd already done the first bit of it anyways. i keep telling myself not to be an indian (apparently, indians are the most likely to turn back early. on the marangu route, there's even a place called indian's point about 1 hr into the summit hike, where most indians give up. the japanese are the hardiest. nick says he's had japanese clients crawling on hands and knees to reach the summit despite their altitude sickness). the excitement keeps the going good.

between 2am and 3am, i start to get bored. this coincides with the picking up of the wind. not good. i feel like a little kid in the back seat of the car. when are we going to get there? but at least being antsy while walking is better than rolling around in my sleeping bag, anticipating the antsy walking. i try to sing some songs in my head (in particular, a chinese one about living in the northwest high country. there's a bit that goes: "a big wind blows overhead. doesn't matter if it's northwest wind or a southeast wind, they are all my song." it's best sung in a loud wailing manner, where you really just open your throat and let it rip, but i can't really do the song justice, so i just let it bounce around inside my brain), but nick is singing some tuneless song (i think he was motivating us?), which he alternates with the tanzanian national anthem (which i preferred), which he alternates with roaring and growling and yelling of "we're going to the summit! why not?!". i can only imagine what the ppl below us thought (oh yeah, we start off behind a couple of groups, but true to form, we soon pass them. one group of old folks even yelled out "polle polle"--"slowly slowly", which i like to sing to the tune of the siberian slave driving tune (actually, i dunno what the tune is called, or really how to describe it, but trust me you've heard it)). nick's cheering prevented me from getting into a groove with any of my own head songs, but i did manage a mantra: "polle polle up, down with impunity". mantras are important on long distance things. they keep your feet moving like a robot.

the wind really starts to blow, stealing my breath. i hold my gloves in front of my face to try to create a pocket of warm still air, which works, but my arms soon get tired. nick sees this, and offers me a face mask. life saver.

erika stops to pee, and i notice that i am shivering hard. i hadn't realized that my muscles were this cold. i try to limit the stops to as few as possible. gotta keep moving, even if we do it at chaingang pace. my footfalls never fully exceed my other foot, and every once in a while, i stumble sideways or backwards. mostly just from disorientation. still no headache, which i was expecting. to stave off boredom, i use the turns in the path to stare alternately at the big dipper, which hangs barely above the mountain (in fact, we lost it altogether for a bit of the way), and the city lights down below. i think about the underground railroad and the long march.

two streaks of light overhead cheer me. i think they are shooting stars, but at our next pitstop, i see streaks of green light shooting across my bag as well. great, i'm hallucinating. this is the most expensive hallucinagen i've ever bought. at least i still feel almost no pain. diamox, do your work!

around 4 am, i get my second wind. i feel great. i guess part of the 2-3am downer was the fear of running out of air...but now we're high enough that i know i can make it. stella point is just an hour away! but erika is flagging. she's walking with her eyes closed...sometimes standing for long stretches that way. nick and i end up losing her for a couple of yards and then waiting, even at this slow shuffle. the waiting is painful for me...i'm really cold and can't stand to stop moving. finally, she eats a granola bar, and the sugar rush wakes her up (told you, the answer is always food). she's much better now, but says she feels a headache. i'm still headache free.

the approach to stella point is steep, but i don't mind. my legs were never the limiting factor anyways. we just shuffle along at our slow pace. like broken windup toys. up and down, but barely forward. i worry that we'll make the peak too early. it's freezing up there before sunrise, but i don't want to stop for cold. nick says stella point is just ahead (it's around 4:30am). i see a shack with a light in the window, so i point and ask him, "what's that?" he's like, "what?" "that." "a rock?" "no, beyond the rock" "um....another rock?" yeah, hallucinations. the light in the window was a star, and my mind constructed a lighter patch of sky around it to make the shack. after that, i kept my discoveries to myself.

right around stella point, i see more shooting stars, but these look different than the previous ones. i say, "shooting stars", and nick confirms that he sees them too, which is really important to me at this point. yay, not completely crazy.

nick wants to stop a while at stella point (so we don't peak too early), but i've heard too many ppl say that they made it to stella and no farther. i don't want to stop at all. if we don't stop, we have no chance of, well, stopping there. plus, i was shaking from the cold. my mantra changes to "fuck stella point". i did not go this far to say, "well, i almost summited" and then have to explain how stella is really close to uhuru after all. no asterisks for me. at around 5:15, we reach the last outcropping of rocks before the summit. sunrise won't be till 6:30. i finally consent to stop, and we sit shivering under the rocks, trying to huddle for warmth. while we're there, we see todd (a british kid) come down from the summit b/c of the cold. he had started climbing at 1:30 am (most ppl start at midnight), and gotten there way too early anyways. now he would miss the sunrise. another group start to pass us, and i call out to them to come huddle for warmth. they don't really respond to this, and only later do i learn that it was the comic relief group.

at around 6, we go the rest of the way to the summit. it's still dark when we reach it, and we keep looking east in hopes of seeing a lightening of the sky. finally arriving at the signpost announcing uhuru peak is amazing. my eyes start to tear...but i realize it's silly to cry over this, and stop myself. big hugs all around with nicholaus and frankie (our assistant guide). some of the comic relief team is already there with their camera crew, and they're shining their headlamps into the faces so they can tape. i'm happy to let them hog the sign announcing uhuru for now. they jump around a bit, their guides and porters do a kilimanjaro dance that gets taped (while we try to stand out of the way), and then a bunch of them start their descent. the sun hasn't even really risen yet, but i guess they want to get out of the cold.

i venture up to the sign, next to someone with a poofy comic relief jacket on. i say, "so did all of you make it?", but i think he heard, "all of us made it!", so he replies, "yeah, isn't it awesome?!" and gives me a big hug. huh. i remind myself to look up who he is later, but i'm excited b/c i'm pretty sure he's one of the boybanders.

we don't stay on the peak for much longer. maybe 10 minutes to take pictures. it hurts to take my hands out of my mittens, so quality of pics are sacrificed.

From kilimanjaro

first glimmer of sun kilimanjaro

From kilimanjaro

glacier at the peak kilimanjaro

From kilimanjaro

nick makes us run the descent. he says staying in the sun too long will make us weak. the thing i hate most about climbing mtns is the coming down. what's my motivation? but we slip and slide down the gravel and the volcanic ash anyways. at least i have the experience of fuji to help me out. i remember to dig my heels in and not commit too much to any step. my quads are really burning.

on our way down, we pass alesha dixon, struggling past stella point. she has two guys abreast of her, one under each shoulder. i hear one of them tell her, "you see that? that's the mountain. that's it. just that." i offer them my last packet of gu (mint chocolate with caffeine!), but i think they don't really know what it is, and think i'm creepy. then i offer it to one of their camera crew girls, who thanks me for it, and gives it to her and a cameraman, who had also hit a wall. oh well, i was done. i had made it.

we pass a couple more ppl on the way down and offer encouragement. by the time i get to camp, my knees are shot, and i almost get blown over twice by the wind. the wind is really at it now. it had already blown over lots of tents. we crawl into ours, take another nap, and listen to the flapping outside. enormous force of will to pack our bags for the rest of the hike down to mweka camp.

it takes us 3 hours to hit mweka. the hike passes in a painful blur. i'm not looking at scenery anymore, i've seen it all, done it all. i just want off this mountain. i want a hot shower (after 7 days of hiking without bathing) and a pizza, and i can't believe we have to spend another day at camp. i also can't believe that the only way off is by walking. didn't i pay a $20 rescue fee? come on! no more walking!

the next morning, i'm not as sore as i expect, and my knees have stopped aching. sweet! still, i'm ready to get back to moshi (never thought i'd say that). i practically run the rest of the way down, and sit at the gate waiting for nick and erika (erika was having eye problems, so she couldn't go as fast).

while waiting, two of the boybanders come down. this is my last chance to talk to them, so all caution to the (ample) wind. i make my smooth approach and say, "are you the famous ppl? hi, i'm lily. what's your name?" (i know, this charm can't be taught). turns out the guy who gave me the hug at the summit was ronan keating! he was super nice, and even offered to buy me a beer. i initially said no, but then when greg, a former olympian pentathlete, now a member of their crew, offered again, i thought, when am i going to drink kilimanjaro beer after climbing kilimanjaro with ronan keating and ben shephard again? so yeah, i had a beer, and got a bit tipsy (but much better than normal, i had no breathing problems whatsoever and became really good at both bargaining and arithmetic--i bought a masai knife and arranged our safari while tipsy. that's what i call altitude training). ronan and ben are both really down to earth. they even asked me what i do and why i was in africa. so yeah, my brush with fame.

ronan keating! like, ohmigod! kilimanjaro

and then when i got back to moshi, i found out that i made iceni!!!!! HURRAH! that's better than all the boyband encounters in the world! SO EXCITED!

leaving jinja

2009-03-01T12:01:00.003-05:00

Thursday night, micah and morgan had their wedding party, catered by tony’s uncle (I think). They met at the orphanage, knew at first sight that they would get married (this from both of them), dated for 1.5 weeks, and got a phone pastor (micah’s dad) to tie the knot. Apparently, morgan (who has a good relationship with god) really hated africa when she first came, prayed, and heard a voice clearly tell her, “don’t go home, I’ve got so much more for you here.” How’s that for spirituality?

micah and morgan, pre-electricity ruma and jinja

The party featured some of the best beans I’ve ever tasted (sorry mom) and big chunks of steak. I bought a round of neon green sambuca (called zappa in jinja), and immediately regretted it. That stuff goes down vile. When we first arrived, the power was out, and mark had lit candles everywhere. Very romantic, but not so good for partying into the night. Ppl were just about the break out the acoustic music (someone had a guitar, and I had just bought a drum in town), when mama betty announced the cake, which elicited a round of speeches and a long kiss between the newly weds. As soon as they kissed, the power came back on! Uncanny! After this, the night slowed down a bit. Erika and I spent most of it shooting pool and avoiding unwanted attention from guys (matthew insisted that he was in love with Erika after 2 nights of shooting pool together. He kept asking my permission to take her back to his place like I was her chaperone or something). We stayed up till 3am not doing very much, and then went to wind down in nash’s room over a silly movie. Then I did what I do best and fell asleep on his futon.

attempts to jam ruma and jinja

The next morning, we got up early for 1 last kayaking session. We both remembered how to roll, and after a couple of practices, Roberto took us 1 at a time to some class 2 rapids. Erika went first, so I stayed with bosco, who taught me how to handroll in the black kayak (longer, thinner, easier than the trick ones). I got it after a couple of tries, and spent the rest of the time swimming and lazing on the rocks. Bosco spent the rest of the time carving a turtle into his inner thigh with a jagged piece of rock. When I got back and asked him if it hurt, he said yes and grinned sheepishly. That bosco.

secret beach ruma and jinja

secret beach again ruma and jinja

secret beach 3 ruma and jinja

getting ready for the rapids ruma and jinja

bosco, handrolling ruma and jinja

bosco's artwork ruma and jinja

Then it was my turn in the rapids. Paddling up to them was a chore. I’d look down for a second to adjust my hand positions or bail water or something, and when I looked up, it was like the whole world had moved back. Have you had that experience where someone moves closer to you in the exact moment when you blink? And then you look up and are like WHOA! Yeah, same. Or I expect it’s what electroshock therapy is like. You wake up, and the world has slipped into a familiar but different place (I’ve just finished reading zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance). Once in the rapids, keeping balanced was hard. If the current is coming at you from the left, you’re supposed to tilt the kayak to the right, which is completely counterintuitive for me. I would’ve thought that you would want to lean into the current so that it can’t push you the other way. Shows what I know. Anyways, I got rolled twice. The first time, I managed to roll myself back upright, but the second time, I got stuck in a slight eddy and panicked b/c why can’t I stop spinning? and ended up swimming. it turned out to be a good decision, since roberto was supposed to save me with his kayak, but he was busy bailing water when i went under, so he was nowhere near me. even after the 2.5 tries, he was about 15m away when i bobbed up. Oh well. swim or death? Cake pls…

erika returns ruma and jinja

my practice roll ruma and jinja

After running a few errands in town, we headed back to NRE to pack and eat a last toasted sandwich (they do really good tuna melts). Getting on the boda boda (motorcycle taxi) with my big bag, small bag, and drum was a balancing act. After bouncing our way to the bus stop, I realize that one of my downhill sandals (which I had strapped to my bag) had fallen off during the ride. I offer the boda USH1000 more if he can find my sandal, and he agrees. i wasn’t too hopeful, since the ride was a long one, and USH1000 isn’t much incentive, so I was gleeful when he turned up with it. And THEN, matthew turns up with a kayaking shirt for me! I had told him the night before that I wanted one, and he promised to bring it to me, but I thought he was mostly using it as a lure to seduce Erika (“I have to work tomorrow so I may not have time to bring you the shirt, so she should just come back with me now to get it…and then she can bring it to you tomorrow morning”). NB boys, if you want to sleep with a girl, don’t offer a free shirt to her friend. Still, I guess matthew thought I had some weird control over Erika, like her pimp. Sweet! Mzungu for sale…will take payment in cows, crack, or kayaking shirts.

The next 24 uneventful hours were spent on an akamba bus (except for one nosy joe who told me that I look good asleep…ALWAYS a creepy opener. Once upon a time, a guy on a hk flight also thought I was a sexy sleeper…so maybe it’s MY problem, but I hope not…I spend a lot of time asleep…and then he commented on how “sensible” my shoes were, and how he hoped his 17 yr old daughter would get a pair). We had the good fortune to arrive in moshi the night before the Kilimanjaro marathon. That is to say, EVERY hotel in town was full. We finally found a local guesthouse with the help of mr matata (he was trying to sell us a kili trek for USD970…which we eventually rejected b/c that is totally not enough money to pay the USD740 of park fees, pay the USD8 per day per porter, guide, etc, and still feed us). The guesthouse doesn’t have any English anywhere. It’s also missing sheets, blankets, toilet seat. At least it has a toilet? The shower wasn’t too bad either. After 24 hours on a bus, any bed would do. Today, we finally booked a kili trip with kessy brothers. I stumbled on them unexpectedly, and heard some good recommendations from other mzungus, plus internet praise. We’re paying USD1115 for a 7 day machambe route trip (they call this the whiskey route, as opposed to the marangue coca-cola route, I think b/c it has more up/downs, but someone told me it’s b/c you camp instead of lodge).

Also, Erika and I are both getting better at ignoring ppl who try for our attention by 1)hissing 2)yelling konichiwa 3)grabbing our arms. At least Tanzanians are more savvy about my American-ness. I’ve gotten some dubious looks when I tell ppl that I’m Chinese (a tactic I use to thwart marriage proposals and to inspire fear). I’ve even gotten a couple ppl tell me that I don’t speak like a Chinese person. They can tell I’ve got an American accent! Amazing. Erika is getting more mistaken identity trouble though. Ppl think she’s European or Canadian. I guess it’s a safer bet since those ppl get insulted if you think they’re American, but we don’t the other way around.

After booking our trip, we had a very good lunch of rice, beans, greens, and meat at a local place for TSH3000 each. They use a lot of coconut milk in their cooking here, which is a-ok with me. the night before, we ate at indoitaliano (hey mambo! Indoitaliano…) for around TSH8000 each, but the food wasn’t nearly as good (both the arrabiata and the curry chicken falsely claimed to be spicy—we’re having real trouble finding spicy food in Africa outside of the sprig of peppers that paul picked us (and they weren’t even pickled)).

Wish us luck on our trek tomorrow!

broad generalizations are the best!

2009-03-01T11:20:00.000-05:00

After a 24 hr bus ride, we’re finally in moshi, Tanzania. Before we leave Uganda forever, I’d like to mention the child soldiers and the LRA. I didn’t really know about them till I came here, and I still don’t know that much about them, so maybe your best shot is just to wiki it.

In any case, the LRA is absolutely insane. Like literally. They started out as an attempt at a political coup, but now they’ve degenerated into a violent cult. Journalists have traveled with them for days, but no one can figure out their purpose anymore. They kidnap children from the northern villages of Uganda and brainwash them into child soldiers. Then they go through more villages, kidnapping children, killing people, cutting off lips to show they were there. these kids are as young as 4, and to brainwash them, the LRA uses a mix of scare tactics and bullying (eg killing the kid’s entire family in front of him). Then the children are sent out to mow down others. By the time they are 10, they have no regard for human life. Some kids escape. Micah (the married one) says that when you go to northern Uganda, the kids all have a hardened look about them. Unlike the jinja ones, they never beg. To avoid the night raids thru the villages, some children walk 10 miles into town to sleep in doorways; then they walk back in the mornings. The guy who runs the LRA has been at large for at least 10 yrs, but the Ugandan government has done mostly nothing to track him. Now he’s on the run, but mostly b/c of international pressure. He’s one of the UN’s top 10 war criminals, and he’s one of the few who’s killed UN peacekeepers. Every time I talk to someone about the LRA, the big question in my mind is always why. Wtf is it all for? Ppl (especially the ones who’ve been here a while) all seem pretty disillusioned. They seem to think the cycles of genocide in Africa will never end, as if these ppl are programmed to murder each other. Micah brings up Somalia as an example. He said there were a couple of months of random peace. the british were still there, the Americans were still there, the warlords, the rebels, everyone, but no one was fighting. Then, one of the rebel groups got bored, split into opposing camps, and killed each other off. b/c of boredom (but I’m taking micah at his word on that).

I’m not sure I buy that. Africans will always kill Africans? Really? If that’s true, then we’re in trouble with obama as our president. Plus, tanzania seems to have broken out of it. In Tanzania, ppl identify as Tanzanian first, and their tribe second. It’s like saying I’m American before saying I’m Georgian. It seems to have taken them 1 good president to create that attitude (altho he was the president that liberated them from british rule, so needless to say he was quite influential). I think the problem lies in family planning (or lack thereof). Ppl in the poorer areas of Kenya don’t use any contraceptives, so they just keep popping out babies (no wonder the life expectancy of women is low)—rereading that sentence, this is a huge generalization (again) based on a few first hand experiences (that is to say, I could be very wrong), so take with salt, eh?

Anyways, ppl keep having babies, but they don’t seem to do much in the way of raising them. I mean, they feed them and clothe them and sometimes send them to school, but they don’t pass down values (unless that’s done in school?). the kids run pretty wild, doing whatever they like. Most of the time, a barely older child is in charge of a younger child, and the parents work (or not, depending on the parent), so parent-child interaction is pretty low. If the parent finds out that the child has done something wrong, the child will be beaten, but punishment is reactive and only comes if the child is caught. It doesn’t seem like children get taught a rule unless they accidentally break it. And then, isn’t the lesson just not to get caught? I guess I think that if ppl had 3 kids instead of 10 and bothered to spend time with them, the children would grow up with enough…something (brains? humanity?) so that a demagogue can’t manipulate them into killing other ppl. Sure some dictators are crazy motherfuckers, but how the heck do they get their support base in the first place?

blast from the past

2009-03-01T10:29:00.000-05:00

this happened all the way back in mbita, but the power cut out just as i was posting it.

one night, as we sat in daniel's hut waiting for supper, a knock came at the door. it was two strangers, one of whom carried a flashlight, and the other an assault rifle. the unarmed one very politely requested to speak to one of us, and then pointed to daniel, saying "you". while daniel was outside speaking in luo to the men, erika and i considered our options. should we run? what do they want? are they here b/c of us? i was still pretty sick at the time, so i was in favor of the sit still and hope option. i think she was afraid that they'd kidnap us. in a bit, they came in to search all the rooms, going through some of them multiple times, obviously not finding what they wanted. where they looking for our bags? it wasn't until they left to search the other huts that daniel told us, "don't look so worried, they're the police. they're just doing their jobs". apparently they were searching for moonshiners. i guess an AK47 is badge and warrant enough in these parts. i was still worried though. when they left, we went to make sure that our bags hadn't been tampered with. and what if the police were corrupt? what if they sent ppl to rob us after they saw that americans were staying here (not an unlikely scenario in some chinese villages)? but never fear dear reader, we are alive, well, and still possessing of our earthly possessions. if i ever run a police force, i'll make them wear uniforms when they sneak up to ppl's huts in the dark.

the next day, as we did laundry at the lake, two helicopters passed overhead--the only air traffic we'd seen here. turns out it was the prime minister (raila odinga) come to open a branch of equity bank. we missed him, but when we got to town, we enjoyed seeing everyone in their sunday best who had come to hear the pm speak. black ppl are lucky. they can wear absolutely any bright color and look amazing.

from obama to jesus

2009-02-26T02:26:00.013-05:00

sunset over lake victoria, From kenya nairobi to mbita

loading the bus, From kenya nairobi to mbita

morning clouds over the farm, From kenya nairobi to mbita

lake birds, From kenya nairobi to mbita

buying fish in the morning, From kenya nairobi to mbita

peter offering papaya, From kenya nairobi to mbita

mdazi vendor at market, From kenya nairobi to mbita

gerald showing off at the motorcycle field, From kenya nairobi to mbita

ok, i cheated. i read erika's blog and realized there's tons of stuff that i've missed. like the kenyan beer. kenyans "like" to drink their beer warm, but when i asked why they can't stick a couple in the fridge for mzungus (i know i'd pay more for a cold beer than a warm one), they said it's cuz the fridges are too small so the cold beers run out too fast, so they just don't bother. very um kindergarten...if you didn't bring enough cold beer for the whole class, then you'd better not drink any yourself. in kenya, the favorite beers for guys are tusker and obama. obama used to be called senator, but they've since changed the name to president. girls like to drink guiness mixed with coke. someone offered me a sip of her guiness (thankfully, she drank it straight) and asked if i'd ever had it before. since i've never drank warm guiness before, i answered no and took a sip. not as bad as i expected, but i'll stick to my fanta thanks.

the day before we went rafting, we tagged along with ben and maria (two australians who are moving to edinborough--jon, we have an invite to visit them if we like), on their mtn biking adventure. we rented bikes from nash, a very westernized kenyan who does an amazing job buying and maintaining around 30 bikes at nile river explorers. he's so mzungu that when i met him the first night, i couldn't guess where he was from. i tried new zealand, australia, uk...and the next morning i tried again with bangladesh. in actuality, he's never been out of africa. he's also one of the best pool players i've ever met. erika and i have gotten into the habit of shooting a couple of hours of pool with the boys every night. it only costs 25cents per game, and we've gotten to the point where we're not SUCH a serious handicap (altho i still have streaks of utter suckiness, where i couldn't sink a ball to save my life, but i think that's b/c i get lazy and forget to aim). i've seen nash sink 2 balls with a single shot at least 4 times, and he plays with a foresight more common to chess. also, nash has really big poofy hair. he hasn't cut it in over 4 years. it makes him look like beaker from the muppets or sideshow bob (except he's shorter and black and absolutely ripped--he's got a very strict diet--no chocolate, no soda, no alcohol, no fried foods, only black tea, etc. i don't know why he does it, b/c all the other boys here eat whatever they like and are still ripped. he eats with the austerity of a monk or a model (sans drugs, cigarettes, alcohol) or an olympic athlete (sans volume). almost a religious aesthetism, with only slightly less devotion than he gives his bikes). he wears a bike chain around his wrist, and gave us a hand-drawn map of jinja for the biking.

From ruma and jinja

ben is actually quite an expert mtn biker. he tried to teach me how to jump the bike, but i could only get my front wheel up, and not very far up at that. we went up and down hills to bujagali falls, where we got lost amongst some villages. a guy tried to sell us a trip down the river in his boat, and when we said no, he pointed us in a random direction to get us lost.

From ruma and jinja

it was very relaxing biking. the dirt roads were just bumpy enough to make it interesting, and there were some sections steep enough that we needed to walk. ben biked down one bumpy downhill section (with boulders and roots), and when i tried to follow him, i had to jump off my pedals to keep from going head over heels. actually, i had to do this a couple of times, generally bruising the crotchal region on the crossbar in the process. luckily, my bike was more of a female bike, and the seat wasn't as high as i usually have it, so it didn't go terribly for me, but if i were to do this for real, i'd seriously consider wearing a cup.

From ruma and jinja

we picked up children as we went through the villages who would run behind us rolling tires with y shaped sticks. they were really fast with those tires...they managed to keep up with us most of the way, and just when we thought we'd lost them, they'd come jogging up behind us again. we enjoyed their company since they weren't bugging us for anything, just answering "yes" to everything we asked them (failing ben's "are you the son of a leprechaun" test spectacularly). at bujagali falls, we watched a man jump into the rapids on a 5 gallon water bottle. he asked us for money afterwards, but since we weren't the ones who asked him to jump in, we didn't feel obliged to pay.

From ruma and jinja

on the ride back from the falls, we stopped to taste some roadside jackfruit. we didn't see any jackfruit at all in kenya, but they're all over the place here. we got a huge slab for less than 10cents. in the heat, the sticky sweetness of the thing was a bit much. cloying. it gummed my fingers together and stuck a bit in my teeth. if i touched my finger to my face, i could bring my entire cheek off my jaw, and if i pulled farther away, my cheek would snap back to my teeth with a wobble. between the 5 of us, we only managed half the slab and gave the rest to the children who had gathered to watch us eat it (to be fair, maria refused to try any b/c we said it tasted like a banana-pear combination and she doesn't like bananas, and ben only ate a little bit before riding off to wait in the shade of a truck full of cheeping chicks).

From ruma and jinja

for lunch, we stopped at ling ling, the premier chinese restaurant in town. they even had a chinese bartender named chen. the food was so so and all-taste-same, but we've met other foreigners who've raved about it. while we were there, an 18 wheeler truck overturned on the roundabout outside. no one was hurt, but they took the windshield out to let the driver escape. apparently these things happen all the time.

From ruma and jinja

in the afternoon, we rode down to the lakeside and hired a boat to take us and our bikes to the source of the nile. the boatman pointed out a fish eagle in a tree. it had a white head and a black body and sat the branch like a king. the source itself wasn't that impressive. you couldn't really tell where the lake ended and the river began. the boatride was peaceful.

From ruma and jinja

that night, we ate dinner with nash at flavours. ppl laughed at me for ordering the apple/passionfruit crumble as an appetizer (and then the peanut butter/snickers muffin for dessert), but man, i was hungry. it confused the waitress a bit, but she got us back. on nash's recommendation, 4 of us tried to order veggie burgers. the waitress came back and told us that they were out of burger buns (a bit of confusion already about what exactly they were out of: the buns or the burgers). i tried to ask her to serve them on sandwich bread (i had ordered a tuna melt), but this wasn't an option b/c they were also almost out of sandwich bread (just enough for my sandwich). so then 3 ppl changed their orders, and erika decided to get the burger anyways, without the bun (i spent a couple minutes haggling for her to serve it on a baked potato, but this was way too farout of a concept for her). when the veggie burger came, it was sitting happily, normally on a bun. everyone who had changed their orders were like "HEY! no fair!" apparently, they had 1 bun left, and like the no-cold-beers-in-kenya thing, instead of making us choose 1 person to give the bun to, they just told us that they didn't have ANY buns. go erika, way to be persistent.

over dinner, nash explained the whole cows for wives thing. in kenya (at least amongst the kikuyu tribe), the men pay a cattle dowry when they marry (i've never understood why women pay dowries in other cultures). if you're ugly, stupid, and worthless, you get 2 cows. if you're amazing, then you can get up to 70 cows. now when kenyans ask to marry us, we can ask them for cows first. the best offense is a good defense?

women's rights in uganda seem much better than in kenya. we actually see men doing laundry. when i asked roberto about this, he said, yes, unmarried men have to do their own laundry. in kenya, they'd just give it to their sisters to do. paul said, well, if you beg really nicely, maybe your sister will do your laundry, but it's actually her choice. how refreshing! AND, women can hold jobs! roberto's mom actually DIVORCED her dad for cheating on her! (now she supports herself financially and gets money from her children occasionally). divorce is unheard of in kenya b/c women have no rights, no possessions, no way of holding property/earning money/etc. a cow can't divorce it's owner for bad treatment, and a woman worth 70 cows can't either. this is why it's so ridiculous when kenyans propose to us...it's like, oh, you're offering us a chance to wait on your ass AND give you mzungu money? wow, thanks, but no thanks.

but even in uganda, hooking a mzungu is a big dream. we've seen newspaper articles describing hotspots where mzungus like to hangout and how locals should chat them up. one article interviewed locals who advertised in dating ads exclusively for mzungus. one said that she needed someone to pay her way through college (her parents had died). another said something along the lines of "i'm giving my life! they need to bring some money to the table in exchange for that"--as if the other person in the relationship wouldn't be giving their life as well (and by the way, money in exchange for life...i think that's called buying a slave, not marriage). a third person said "africans are fine if they've got the cash. if there are africans with the cash, i haven't met them yet. if an african wants to date me, i say, show me the money first!" yeah prostitution! i guess other cultures are also into dating foreigners (eg hk, china, japan--in china if you manage to marry a white guy with a lot of money, that's called having skillz), but usually it's a bit more artful. ppl actually go thru the courtship ritual and pretend to fall in love instead of proposing marriage as the follow on to "hi, my name is...".

after the rafting trip, we stayed at adrift for 3 nights. the bar at adrift looks out right over the river. absolutely beautiful. in the mornings, the monkeys come down from the trees to steal the banana peels. there are two types: the red tailed ones with faces like raccoons, and the normal looking ones with pastel blue balls. the younger monkeys play in the tree branches, crawling to the end of the branch to weight it to the ground, then jumping off to catapult the other monkeys into the air. erika tried to tempt one near with a banana peel, but they run off as soon as you make eye contact. shy, intelligent creatures.

From ruma and jinja

in town, you can buy metal-tipped arrows and spears. these arrows were used to kill ppl in kenya last year during the upheaval. we saw a man guarding a speedboat with them. also, we saw what looked like slingshot frames (a y-shaped piece of carved wood). upon closer inspection, i realized that it's a carving of jesus, with his arms raised in a y above his head (now they just need to make an m, c, and a). i smite you with my holy slingshot! then i realized that to actually make a slingshot out of it, you'd probably need to drill holes thru the wrists to tie the rubberband ends. just call me pontius pilate. sacriligious much?

jinja

2009-02-25T03:44:00.005-05:00

i'm exhausted. i spent the last two days learning to roll a trick kayak. those are the short, wide ones that are especially hard to roll. i got it consistently before lunch yesterday, but after lunch, i think i was too tired to do it right anymore. i'd dig the paddle into the water, get the kayak halfway up (enough for a new breath of air), flop back down and try again. sometimes it'd take me 3 or 4 times before i got fully upright. trying to position the paddle flat against the water while half-drowning takes a special kind of zen: death, poo-poo to you; is my paddle parallel yet?

From ruma and jinja

two safety kayakers from our rafting trip were teaching us on the sly. their friend actually set up a kayaking company that charges USD125 a day (they sometimes teach for this company), but they agreed to take only USD75 for 3 days. every day, we had to leave separately from the hostel and sneak down to a secret beach on the nile. all very hush hush...they kept emphasizing how we couldn't tell any of the "boys" or they'd get into trouble.

From ruma and jinja

the beach was gorgeous. you walk past some fields, turn off onto a path thru flowering trees, and eventually end up on this half finished mosaic-tile portico where locals would swim or do laundry. very secret garden. i think the someone started building it but ran out of money. now it's crumbling, covered in vines and trails of ants, half finished columns reaching to nowhere. in the water with us, crested cranes, thin-necked cormorants, and kingfishers that drop like stones.

From ruma and jinja

in town, maribu storks pick thru the rubbish heaps. these birds are seriously huge--the size of a large flamingo. i think they'd come up to my shoulder. when they take off, they need to have a running start and a hop b/c they're so big. one of the mikas here (there are two) got pooped on by a stork. he said it landed on his shoulder and covered his entire torso. he thinks that anything that poops so much has no business living in a tree. the other mika married morgan after dating for 1.5 weeks. they're throwing a big party on thursday, which is why we're not leaving till friday.

From ruma and jinja

roberto and paul, our kayak teachers, took us to a local place for lunch yesterday. we sat in the shade of a jackfruit tree, and smacked on pork baked in a clay oven, on a dish with cabbage cooked in g-nut sauce (g-nuts=p-nuts). paul picked us a sprig of small red chilis to squeeze over the pork. we ate with our fingers, trapping the meat against pieces of motoke (mashed plaintains) or posho (ugali/cornbread). large black crows with white chests hopped all around us. when i made a motion as to shoot a crow with a bow and arrow, roberto said that ppl don't kill these crows b/c they're poisonous. every bit of them is poisonous. their blood, their bones, their feathers (whereas hyenas and snakes only have a poisonous organ that you can remove and eat the rest of them safely). i tried to convince them that the crows aren't poisonous, but it was an uphill battle. they said that even flies won't eat a dead crow. also, they are convinced that sunblock will burn a black person's skin (they said that mzungu skin is tougher than black skin--"we may be black, but our skin is tender like a baby's"), that the color red attracts lightening (b/c it looks so bright from the sky), and that a man from the bujagali tribe may ride through the waterfall on a piece of goatskin if he keeps the old ways (i.e., doesn't wear any western clothes). turns out, the traditional tribal clothes are all made of wood. no wonder he's buoyant.

From ruma and jinja

also, after paying off a local to let us store the kayaks by the river, roberto pointed out a round woven mat to erika. erika was a bit confused, so she asked what it was. "a mat." what's it for? "sitting". it was kind of a weird funny moment. i think he wanted to impress us with its roundness...

roberto the rasta ruma and jinja

roberto and paul ruma and jinja

the kayakers here are badass. geoffrey, our raft guide on the second day, is the top kayaker in uganda. he took #23 in the last olympics. i think paul was #2 in uganda (behind geoffrey) until he got injured and lost his competitive drive. while we were paddling the rafts thru still water, they'd casually float up and do some loops (flips--they'd bounce on the kayak with the nose in the water, so the person is facing the water, and after 3 or 4 bounces, jump the kayak completely into the air). no wonder they're all so ripped.

roberto flipping ruma and jinja

the rafting trip itself was pretty good. we did a two day, camping in between. the group we went on had about 30 18yr old kids who are volunteering in africa for their gap year. they were ridiculous. it was like watching a soap opera. for example, on the busride back, they had a huge debate about whether tactical booting counted as booting at all. and then later that night, i heard three of them in the same toilet stall. two of them were coaching a girl on how to stick her finger down her throat. ah, the lifeskills you learn in africa! apparently, around 3am, one of the girls slept with someone on the sofa at the bar (i was long in bed by then), and another one of them went home with one of the local raft guides (she was crying about it the morning after--"oh, i'm so stupid" etc etc).

but enough about the company. the rafting itself was amazing. we started out with 8 ppl on our boat, one of whom was a reporter from the NYT, doing a travel piece. he had lots of cool stories about getting kidnapped in the middle east (he managed to convince them that he was greek, not american), sneaking up kilimanjaro without guides, porters, or permits, getting caught on the way down, escaping to the US embassy in dar es salaam, cooking up some story about tanzania corruption, being found out and told to leave the country in the next 24 hrs, and staying for 2 more weeks anyways. the other girls on the raft were all volunteers from that program. a couple of them couldn't paddle to save their lives. we flipped our raft on the last rapid of the day (a class 4), and everyone got trapped under the boat. i think we were only under for 3 seconds, but it felt like forever. that's when 1 of the bad paddlers lost her nerve and rode safety boat for the rest of the trip. the next day, the entire left side of the boat got bounced out on a rapid, and i was the only 1 to come up scotchfree. 1 girl dislocated her ankle, and another fractured her wrist. we stopped for lunch early to take them to the hospital, while erika and i had our first taste of the kayaks.

From ruma and jinja

the last rapid of the second day was a class 4 called malalu (crazy). it formed an eddy so rafts could surf in the same spot forever. ollo's raft got stuck there for like 5 minutes, and he had to make everyone jump out of the boat before he could navigate out. we also broke out some body boards to surf the eddy. really good fun.

From ruma and jinja

and did i mention that i rafted the first day naked? josh, our raft guide, promised me USD50 if i did it...and i got a bit screwed on the exchange rate at the border (never change money at the border), so i wanted to make up the cash. it wasn't that big of a deal. i had a life jacket on the entire time, and i think half the time you can't see the bottom anyways what with the water and the getting down, and the swimming. the kids were pretty shocked tho. i got some stares, and during lunch (which i didn't have to do naked), some polish guys (i think) came up to me and said, "looking good" or something weird like that. i think a lot of the other rafts thought my shorts had fallen off in a rapid. i hope i don't end up in any of the nyt photographer's pics :-).

this girl fell out in the first rapid, right on top of some rocks. props to her for getting back into the boat and bouncing around the rapids on bruises and scrapes. i cringe just looking at her. even without hitting rocks, i ended the rafting trip battered and fried (like a chicken?).

From ruma and jinja

tidbits

2009-02-22T08:43:00.003-05:00

the last couple of posts have been pretty negative, and i don't want you to get the wrong idea. a lot of stuff is frustrating and disgusting or whatever, but the wonderful things come in unexpected glimmers. like a curtain is down, but you can see a shy something peaking out through the crack. here are some of those things:

my downhill shoes: i bought a pair of shoes made from tire rubber for KSH100 (USD1.5). the cobbler cut them especially for my feet, but the toe loop on the right foot was still too big. the shoe tended to slip off unless i was going downhill. after two free refittings, the shoes are now perfect.
making babies cry: the really small babies, the ones who are too young to know the word mzungu, cry when they see us. terrorizing babies isn't wonderful per se, but it's charming in a weird way.
strong bananas: in mbita, i bought 1 banana every afternoon to wash down my doxycycline. the first day the market woman was annoyed, but she grew to expect me. the bananas are thick and flavorful, even if the peel is green and bruised.
in homa bay, we were given a calendar that advertised a clothing factory. under the name of the factory, it said, "manufacturers of sanitary napkins, zippers, and candles".
the pyramid of oranges: on one of the many matatus that took us from mbita to jinja, we were approached by an orange vendor. for USH1000, he gave us his entire pyramid of bitter oranges. the rinds were tough to break, and our hands were dirty enough to streak the white skins red. it was like biting into a lemon, but we each ate 3 immediately anyways.
at another matatu stop, i bought what looked like grapes. they turned out to be a sweet, dusty, pitted fruit, hot from the sun. i didn't have a window seat, so i had to chubby bunny the seeds until i could lean across erika and machine gun them out the window.
one morning in jinja, we passed an 18 wheeler truck with a green teletubby doll strapped across its grill. our driver said it was just for fun.
on our mtn biking day, we got lost and saw a baby goat, balancing on its hindlegs to jump at the green laundry hanging from a line.
on a smooth patch of nile water, we paddle our rafts past a cormorant swallowing a large tilapia. he chokes it down completely oblivious of us.

leaving mbita

2009-02-22T08:37:00.002-05:00

A lot’s happened since i last posted. We’ve since left mbita for jinja, uganda. Before we went, we made two attempts at seeing ruma national park, both fruitless and frustrating.

the first time was on Sunday ; gerald took us on a motorcycle en route to visiting his family in homa bay. the joy of riding a bike in the morning is pretty much perfect. The roads are still and open ; the sun gives light but not heat ; we speed through wind, past fields, mountains, lake. Climbing the path to ruma, we saw our first baboons and monkeys, whole clans of them sunning on the road. They’ve since become common visitors (a troop of them live in the trees at our dorm), but at the time, a novelty worthy of cameras. Also, a brilliant rainbow bird that was too quick for me to capture.

At the park, we were told that we could hire a care for KSH1500 or if we brought our own car, it would cost KSH300. ken had said that he could drive us to ruma on Tuesday, so we decided to save the money and wait till then. That was a mistake.

The rest of the day was spent at gerald’s home in homa bay. Gerald’s cousin showed us his pink guava trees. They weren’t quite ripe, but we tasted some of the early fruit. The second one i took had a translucent grub on the opposite side of my entrance bite. I didn’t see it until i had eaten all the way through the fruit, but i did see it in time to not eat it. That took away my appetite for more guava.

I was pretty hungry by the time lunch rolled around. Gerald’s stepmom had cooked chicken (the most expensive meat, traditionally given to visitors). When she brought in the pot, the lid was crawling with black specks. I thought they were flies, since the hut supported a heavy fly population, but when i waved my hand over the lid, they didn’t fly away. Then i realized they were adolescent roaches—maybe 10-20 of them—running frantically over the lid and the handle. Gerald thumped the table a couple of times, and the roaches all fell away from the pot to skitter under the table. I don’t think any of them managed to get anywhere near the chicken…my guess was that the lid was placed on the ground while the chicken was cooking, where it collected the roaches, but i was still pretty grossed out. I mean, i know the feeling was small and unworthy, but i have a thing about roaches…even more than the thing i have about most spiders. I wouldn’t call it a phobia yet, but they make me extremely uncomfortable. If i see one, i think they’re everywhere, and that they will swarm me and lay eggs on me. One of my greatest fears is suffocating under a mound of cockroaches. I guess it’s more paranoia than anything else. Anyways, i tried really hard to put the roaches out of mind, but for the rest of the visit, i was pretty constantly swatting at my feet or brushing off my pants. Obnoxious behavior...I hope they didn’t notice me too much.

Other than that, the chicken was delicious. Gerald gave me the heart and a leg, and he took the head. I really like heart—the way it chews and tears against my teeth. My mom used to make it when i was a kid, but i haven’t had it in ages. I was very impressed with erika—she not only tried a bit of the heart, she also voluntarily took the claw. I watched her pull out each toenail before gnawing on the knuckles. Way to go mzungu !

I guess a lot of this trip is about finding boundaries and pushing them. After that visit to gerald’s, i started noticing cockroaches everywhere : in the squatter at night, on the floor of daniel’s hut, even on the table with the free tea and coffee at the backpacker’s hostel in jinja. I’m getting better at swallowing my discomfort. I’m trying not to see them so much. It’s stupid of me to be more worried about roaches than mosquitos. Roaches don’t carry diseases and they don’t bite. This is a resolution : no more silliness ! plus, there’s nothing i can do about it anyways. No sense in fretting.

We left gerald’s family to go into homa bay town. It was definitely bigger than mbita, but not any cleaner or more impressive. If mbita has maybe 3 streets of shabby shops and dirty roads, then homa bay has 10. also, i was rudely swiped by a dirty, staggering man as he passed me. He looked like he was gonna pass on the left, but at the last second, he switched directions, walked across me and ran his hand roughly across my stomach. I really wanted to run after him and punch him in the nose. What a jerk ! maybe this incident colors my views of homa bay, but i did not come to africa to see cities or towns. Gerald then took us to a nicer hotel sporting an expansive lawn with paper mache giraffes and lions. It was nice to sip my black currant fanta out of a glass bottle, unmolested by insects, but i don’t think we were suitably impressed by the building. Gerald likes to show us nicer houses or hotels…i guess the way we might show someone the empire state building or the chrysler tower…and i think he’s confused when we would rather look at hippos or monkeys or lake birds, the way we are when tourists are more fascinated with the pigeons and squirrels.

Despite gerald’s best efforts to pass the matatus and buses that kicked up clouds of dust, we still acquired red streaks of dirt on our faces by the time we got home. I was very happy for that trip to end so that i could give my bruised bum a rest. We would try again for ruma on Tuesday.

Monday night, ken and his friend come home at 10pm for dinner. Erika and i wait up for him to discuss details for Tuesday’s journey. We want to go early so we can catch the animals in the morning, when they are most active. Ken’s friend keeps us up till 11pm, talking about kenya’s political problems and the good that they’re doing to fix them. Interesting stuff, but neither of us can keep our eyes open. We cut the conversation short, and ask ken what time we can leave in the morning—ideally, it’d be around 7 so we can hit the park by 8. ken wants to leave at 10. turns out, he promised some woman that he’d give her a ride to her boarding school, and she needed to do some shopping in a neighboring town, so he figured he’d just kill 2 birds with 1 stone and drive us to the park afterwards. I wish we had known that beforehand. We would’ve gone on our own on Sunday. Plus, we needed to get back into mbita by 4pm so i could pick up my lariam from the clinic and run a couple of other errands before we left on Wednesday. i felt let down, grumpy, and sleepy. Not a good combo. Since we were at an impasse, ken decides to call gerald (at midnight) to get him to rent another motorbike for the morning, to take us to ruma, without him, to hire the car for KSH1500. at this point, ken is coming off as pretty inconsiderate (both to us and to gerald), but at least the issue is resolved.

The next morning, gerald shows up a bit late. Understandably, he’s grumpy, and we’re still a little chafed from the lack of sleep and the unexpected change of plans (and did i mention that to hire a motorbike for a day costs KSH700, plus KSH300 in gas—not a TON of money, but in the 2 weeks to date, we’d only spent around KSH7000 each, which includes the transportation from nairobi, so in comparison, it seemed like a lot). All the bad feelings evaporated as soon as we hit the road. I love the smell of motorcycles in the morning.

When we get to ruma, they tell us that hiring a car would cost at least KSH4500. they won’t budge at all on it. apparently, on Sunday, the boss was in nairobi, so the underlyings were gonna drive us around on the sly and split the proceeds. On Tuesday, the boss was back from his trip, and we were screwed. Even finding out this bit of info took an hour of arguing back and forth, them talking to gerald in luo, gerald translating to us, us arguing back in english, them responding back to gerald, etc etc. can we say frustrating? (can we scream it ?)

We weren’t willing to spend the cash to see herd animals (ruma is the only park that has the roan antelope), so we call ken in the hopes that he’s now done with the boarding school girl’s errands. By 1pm, we meet ken at some town, down a yogurt each for lunch, and drive to ruma’s public access road. We see some giraffes in the distance, which is mildly exciting, but they’re pretty far away (btw, the swahili word for giraffe is twigga, which i think is much more appropriate for the animal than the english). I fall asleep. When i wake up, we’re in some small town and the car’s broken down. We spend 4 hours trying to fix the clutch with bits of rubbish from the side of the road. In the interim, we are harassed by an outgoing girl and her toy razorblade. We were friendly for the first hour or two, but by the end, i just wanted her to stop reaching into the car and trying to touch us. The razorblade was dull, but i still didn’t want her scraping it down my hair. Ditto for the empty bottle of brake fluid that she kept dropping into the car via the open window. Not a fun game. At this point, it was obvious that i wouldn’t get back to mbita in time for errands. Let’s use some adjectives : grouchy, dirty, disappointed, hot. When ken turned to us, waved a hand and said, « come » in a very imperious way and then expected us to pay the mechanic who had failed to fix the car, i had just about had it. luckily, erika is better at playing bad cop, and she told him straight out that we weren’t going to pay. I ended up giving him the money anyways (only KSH100), but he got the idea. We ended up towing the car to the local police station and riding home in the back of a truck, covered by a canvas tarp, packed in with 4 other ppl and a truckload of sugarcane, bananas, printing paper, etc. the other passengers seemed to enjoy the ride, laughing carelessly while cracking jokes about HIV (i think they worked at a testing center or something), but the heat, the road, and the constant smell of gasoline got to erika and me. We both had to boot out of the back of the truck at some point. As far as booting goes, it was one of my more comfortable experiences—purely fluid so it came up smooth, no stomach acid to burn the throat, the wind and the speed of the truck to pull it away from the face, and a convenient metal bar to pressure the gut. Overshare ?

Wednesday morning, instead of taking the 7am ferry like we had planned, we took the 10am to give me time for errands. As we were packing, we noticed that our energy bars had disappeared. We suspect that sullivan had stolen them since a grownup would’ve taken our money instead. Erika found a couple of powerbar wrappers in the bushes behind our hut. We told daniel and ken, but i’m not sure what will happen to sully. They spoil him pretty bad, so i think they’re inclined to believe him innocent and not punish him at all. he’s the pampered baby of the family, and cries if he doesn’t get what he wants…like food that stella is eating (she’s the 7 yr old aids orphan that takes care of him), or toys that aren’t for him. Oh well, energy bars can be replaced with chocolate bars, and he’s not our kid, so what do we care if he grows up right. Plus, a couple more hours, and we were away !

rant

2009-02-16T09:16:00.003-05:00

I had a malaria scare. Luckily, it was just that—a scare. I’m still not sure what was wrong with me, but for about 48 hours, I had absolutely no appetite, a slight fever, and couldn’t keep my eyes open to save my life. i woke up not wanting to move at all, did a half-assed job of weeding on the farm, and then dragged my feet all the way to the icipe clinic. We had just climbed gambe the day before, so luckily all our hosts accepted the explanation that that’s why I was tired and didn’t worry too much more about me.

On our way to icipe, we passed a hut where a bunch of guys were loafing around. I think the hut belonged to one of ken’s brothers, so when they called to us to stop, we did. What a surprise, they wanted money. A tattered looking old fisherman sold us some story about his critically ill 1 yr old baby, saying he needed KSH100 to take her to the clinic. His friend added that fishermen were the poorest ppl in Kenya. Not knowing too much about the Kenyan healthcare system, I told him that I’d give him the money if he brought me a fish, but I wouldn’t give him something for nothing. They promised to deliver a nile perch to ken’s door tomorrow, and we were on our way. I remember fearing that I’d heard their price wrong. Only KSH100 to fix a girl’s chest problem? Really? Maybe they think I’ll give them USD100 for their fish…and then I got to thinking. There were maybe 8 men there. Between them, they couldn’t scrape together KSH100 to help their friend? Why did they need me? Ppl are poor, but not really THAT poor. Just 3 fish go for around KSH200 to 300.

and that’s something that’s been confusing me for a while. When ppl beg, they always ask for KSH20. you can barely buy anything for KSH20 (maybe 4 bananas,4 pieces of fried bread, or a game of billiards—which most ppl can definitely afford). I finally figured out that for most of them, they don’t beg b/c they actually need it, they beg because it costs them nothing. They think we’ve got so much money we’re happy to go handing it out to everyone we meet. Seeing a mzungu is like catching a leprechaun—free gold! I’m convinced most kids only know 2 english phrases: “mzungu, how are you!” and “give me money!” I’ve started answering them with: “why?” as in, why do you need money? And also, why should I give you money? Why should you get something for nothing? But my ambiguity is wasted, since “why” is not in their repertoire of English. It just buys me enough confusion to escape.

At the icipe clinic, I asked the doctor about healthcare in Kenya. He said that healthcare is a pyramidal. At the lowest level, there are free dispensaries, and then there are government clinics where you get all your drugs and tests for KSH20. The sicker you are, the higher up the pyramid you go, so the ppl at the top are the sickest, but also get the best medical attention. if you can’t afford the KSH20 fee at the government clinic, you get your chief to write you a letter, and the fee is waived. Children under 5 automatically get their fees waived. So. The fisherman lied to me. What a surprise. The doctor also said that fishermen are the richest ppl in kenya (but he must've meant richest of the poor b/c he himself was obviously better off than a fisherman) and that he sees tons of men who come in with kids who’ve been sick for days, but the guys don’t bring them in until they’re critical. And then the guys say they can’t pay the fees, even though they’ll have been out drinking for the past 2 nights. Then he added that if a man can afford to have two wives, he can afford KSH20 for his kids to go to the doctor. Two wives are expensive to keep.

Oh yeah, surprise! Bet you didn’t expect polygamy to rear its head, especially considering how Christian this country is. For example, Kenyan Christians are always amazed that American Christians like to drink alcohol (I know teetotalism isn’t a Christian virtue per se, but it shows you how strict they are), and every night, before we close the center, someone says a prayer, which usually mentions something about the blood of Christ washing ALL OVER the center (really? Hasn’t the poor guy bled enough? And what with the catholics eating him all the time at mass…). Gerald told us, “there’s nothing in the bible against a man marrying two wives”. Um…I haven’t really read it thoroughly, but I guess I always assumed that monogamy was a requirement. Am I wrong? And then Gerald added that Christians can have many wives, but if you want to be a preacher, you can’t have more than two. I hope he meant more than one, but I’ve learned that this country wreaks havoc with my assumptions. Like when I assumed the wwoof ad that pluralized “wives” while requesting Christian workers was a typo or a language barrier (I even pointed it out to Erika for a laugh. Turns out, the joke’s on me).

But whatever, I can understand how polygamy isn’t really the issue that alcoholism is in this country. maybe there’s nothing inherently evil in polygamy (jon, don’t get any ideas), as long as all parties agree and there’s no abuse. I mean, in cultures where marriage isn’t really for love anyways, does it matter if your husband already has a wife? Doesn’t it just mean that you’re under the thumb of the older wife instead of the mother-in-law (like in traditional Chinese households)? Whereas alcoholism means that a husband squanders the little money that should’ve been spent on the family on drunkenness instead.

Let's bring it back to polygamy. Shevaun, a vet friend of mine from HK, mentioned once that guys don’t have the balls for polygamy. apparently, polygamous animals all have much larger testicle to body weight ratios than humans. To put it into perspective, she said that the average human male has the same testicle size as a small poodle. Chew on that.

Back on track--men are in charge of decisions and finances, but women are in charge of the home. Half jokingly, a guy at the bar told us that babies can cry but the man doesn’t care; the home can burn down, but the guy doesn’t care. ken told us that ladies aren’t taught to think, so they can be convinced to do anything. They can follow their men around and spend money on “bling bling”, and no one will worry about how they’ll buy food the next day. Food is seen as a woman’s concern, so it’s given surprisingly little emphasis. guys will spend KSH40 to charge up a car battery so they can play their radios all night long (quite literally, even while they're sleeping), KSH80 for a tusker beer, KSH100 for a furaha brandy (and then KSH40 more for the coke mixer), and who knows how much for their NYC cap and cell phone with the fancy ringtone, and be content to eat potatoes with cornmeal constantly (and by constantly, I mean at their 2 meals a day). It’s almost like they’re aping the form of being rich without trying to figure out how ppl get there. And this isn’t just the uneducated squatters who sit around the motorcycles all day and heckle us when we pass. Ken must spend KSH100 daily on gas for his Peugeot to drive the 3km from his home to the town (that’s exactly how he fills it up too—daily. I think we usually buy about 3L of gas at a time. One sunday he was really in a quandary b/c there wasn’t any gas in town). Ken also has this dream of going to America (why? To do a 9 month course…something about becoming a pastor, I think), even though the ticket alone will cost around USD1500. For USD500, he could bring electricity into his home. For prolly around USD500 more, he could get running water, and then for the rest, prolly even an internet connection. But he doesn’t worry about any of this. Why? b/c he’s a man, and his ambitions trump his concern for his home. Don’t get me wrong, ken’s a good guy, but I really really don’t understand ppl’s priorities here.

And now let’s get started on the work ethic. I’m not talking about the whole population. Obviously there are ppl who work hard, go to school, have ambitions, get jobs, etc. but there are a surprising number who are happy to do nothing. Everywhere we see clumps of young men lazing in the shade, drinking beer, asking us for money when we pass. Ken’s dad, Daniel, dropped out of school to be a laborer when his grandfather died. On that income, he supports 2 wives and raised 10 children (one wife was inherited from his brother, who died in 1976). He sent a good number of those kids all the way through school. Daniel’s dad was an alcoholic who gave him nothing, so it’s not like Daniel had some glowing opportunity that other ppl couldn’t get. But even some of daniel’s kids don’t do anything (but it’s hard to tell b/c ppl don’t consider farm work a job…so maybe those kids help him on the farm). I don’t know…it just seems that the prevailing attitude is that ppl are happy to take handouts. How should Kenya solve this or that problem? Obviously, wait for aid from the UN or the US or the world bank or whatever relevant party. How do you send your kids to school? Get a mzungu to sponsor them! Hey why not, it’s free! it's such a big difference from china, where begging is seen as something that only the lowest sector of society does.

Being here really makes me appreciate the US. Sure there’s a lot wrong, but we take for granted all that’s right. At some point in its history, America must’ve been a developing country like Kenya; I can’t fathom how it managed to get from there to where it is now. Thank you forefathers.

Oh yeah, and I don’t have malaria, but I’m changing my medication from doxycycline, which gives me an itchy rash from sun exposure (advertised as “sensitivity to sun”), to lariam, which may give me weird dreams/depression. I’m kinda pissed off at the travel clinic for pushing doxycycline so hard—it’s a bit overprescribed in this area, and some resistant strains have developed. And when I asked them about side effects, I got the answer, “all drugs have side effects”, and not much more, so when I developed the rash, I had a hell of a time imagining what was wrong with me (from worms to scabies to lots of stuff in between). When I asked about lariam, the doctor was really dismissive—pretty much saying that this WILL give me depression, when the odds aren’t that high at all. Anyways, we’ll see.

and this post brings us back to doooohhh!

2009-02-12T10:05:00.001-05:00

Rain is a noisy visitor on a tin roof. I awoke predawn with the sunrise threatening on one side of the sky and lightning clouds sailing away on the other side. A perfect start to our hike up gambe hill (the highest peak in this area). The hill overlooks the ruma game park, and it’s covered in tall grass that hides not only stumbling stones, but also cows and antelope. The ascent took us 2 hours, through a dry riverbed, past thatched huts, onto a windy rock where we perched to munch our boiled peanuts and mdozi (fried balls of dough). We sat with the islands of lake Victoria and the distant mountains of Uganda at our feet. We tossed the peanut shells into the bowing grass.

On our way to town, we saw a goat sucking on its own udder for milk. Flexible goat.

tidbits in mbita

2009-02-12T09:39:00.004-05:00

I introduced Erika to boiled peanuts the other day. She thinks they taste like potatoes (as do the plantains), which in her book is a good thing. She was throwing the shells at the chicks that wander around the center when one took a small squat and did a small poo directly into a peanut shell. I didn’t actually see it, but she thought it was intensely cute. On a separate note, chickens are ridiculously stupid. I caught one by the tail, and it gave a mighty squawk and jerked out of my hand, but as soon as I wasn’t touching it anymore, it went back to its peck peck pecking, completely still within reach of my hand. Erika caught one of the chicks, which freaked the mother hen out but once she let it go, the mother hen brought all the chicks to peck around erika’s feet again. Do chickens have a sense of smell?

Kenyans have a very biased view of Chinese ppl (which they insist I am—if I tell someone I’m American, most will say, “no, are you Chinese or Japanese?” and then, “but you and her (Erika) do not look alike, so which one is from america?”). there is a Kenyan myth that Chinese ppl are cannibals, b/c apparently the Chinese workers who built some bridge ate dogs, which somehow got extrapolated to humans. and of course, we all do kung fu. When I walk down the street, ppl make ching ching noises at me. One day, I got a fed up with it and lunged at the guy while striking a karate kid pose. i’ve never seen a grown man run so fast. He even jumped over a motorcycle in his haste to get away from me. Awesome :-D. I love when I can use stereotypes to my advantage. I think the power has gone to my head though. I find myself talking with unsynced lips and saying things like, “wood, does not hit back.”

Kenyans are understandably proud of obama. They are convinced that he is a Kenyan, not an American. Most of them even think that he was born in Kenya. A lot of ppl claim to be his kin. Hence, naming obama as the ultimate example of how Americans can look different from each other (and don’t have to be white) is an exercise in futility. There is even a beer named obama. It used to be called senator, but they recently changed the name to president. Yesterday, Erika and I shared a KSH200 jug of obama with our new mzungu friends from the catholic parish. They taught me how to swat flies with a piece of straw from a broomstick. The first one I hit only lost a wing and a couple of legs, but then it could only hop around the table like a Mexican jumping bean, rendering it rather easy to smoosh with a palm. The second one I hit went upside down and twitchy on the floor. After that, the flies learned to leave us and our beer alone. now if i only had a tailor to make me a "7 in 1 swoop" banner, what giant wouldn't tremble in my path!

instead of bathing out of a small tub, we've taken to bathing in the lake with all the other women, parasitic snails be damned! erika had the foresight to bring a hot pink bikini, just in case her audience didn't fully appreciate the flourescence of her skin. the first day, we got a lot of stares and a couple of giggles. funny how we were the ones who felt naked amongst their low swinging boobs, but everyone was friendly enough. they even said, "see you tomorrow" when we left. and from there, it's only gotten better. we're hardly worth a titter now (no pun intended).

not much substance

2009-02-09T11:25:00.003-05:00

on saturday, erika and i learned to do laundry at the lake. we spent a good hour scrubbing everything with soap until it shined (or so we thought). when we announced that we were done to ken's sister (our chaperone), she commenced rewashing all of our clothes a second and a third time. i wasted a good deal of effort after each wash wringing things out only to watch her dunk them in water again. oh well, now i know. i would've taken pictures, except there were also lots of naked women at the lake...they didn't seem to mind the male donkey cart drivers that would come periodically to fill up drums of water though.

Sunday, Gerald took Erika and I on a motorcycle trip around rusinga island. We found an airstrip that chartered customers from Nairobi into a secret resort. The sign on the gate said reservations only, but we managed to talk our way past the guard onto the manicured lawn. the place was seriously swank. Swimming pool, masseuses, discrete, khaki’d servants hidden in every nook. Even more impressive given the hungry dogs and wandering donkeys right outside it’s impenetrable doors. The plump british manager offered us drinks and told us that one night’s stay cost USD400. USD400! You can buy all of mbita for that amount. On our way out, we passed the newest bunch of fresh smelling mzungus who had just flown in. It’s hard to believe that they will have been here without seeing more than that place.

Monday, instead of working on the farm, Erika and I hired a rowboat to stalk some hippo. We spotted two clumps of them, wiggling their pink ears but otherwise resembling the floating mangroves that choke the lake. The sky here is much closer, and even closer when mirrored by the lucid lake, disturbed only by our occasional paddles and the dipping birds. An absolutely beautiful way to experience the water.

Before we went back ashore, our guides showed us the humming cages of a tsetse fly research center. I didn’t really want to go with my undeeted, naked legs, but I didn’t want to seem impolite, so sleeping sickness be damned. Also on the island, I found some perfectly round, watermelon-like fruits and was surprised to learn that no one eats them (“no, we only use them for balls”). When I cracked it open, I found a white, fleshy interior, like wintermelon. The thing was obviously not poisonous, and the Chinese would’ve made a soup out of it long ago. The wild beans on the farm fences grow unmolested too, and ppl were shocked that ppl can eat snakes. Gerald protested that snakes were poisonous and thus inedible, and someone else told me that the hatred between men and snakes is ordained by god. Given the famine, I can’t believe that ppl aren’t more cunning about their food sources.

In the afternoon, we took another motorcycle trip, but instead of 3 on 1 bike, we did 2 on 2 bikes. Much more comfortable. Everywhere we went, children ran after us yelling “Mzungu! Mzungu!” I felt like the pied piper of Hamlin. It was actually quite dangerous. One stretch of windy road was fenced on both sides by trees and shrubs, out of which kids would spring to chase erika’s bike, landing them right in front of my bike. We had close calls with about 3 of them.

The villagers we met had no qualms about asking us for money. One drunkard even showed us a gaping wound on his leg. It’s weird. We’re seen as walking money trees. All Americans must be rich, and America itself is a heavenly place that all Kenyans strive to reach. Hence the marriage proposals. Hence the begging. The wealth disparity is true enough, but I wish ppl didn’t perceive the US as such a faultless candyland. I spend a lot of time trying to convince ppl that an American visa isn’t worth the trouble or the USD150 processing cost (which you don’t get back if (when) they reject your application, which is a lot of money to a Kenyan), but no one really believes me. They’ve heard of welfare, you see: “so the government gives you money even if you don’t work?” yes, but it’s not really enough money to live on. Ppl here are poor, but everyone is poor, and the climate is nice, and the land you live on has belonged to your family forever. When you are poor in America, unless you’re on your way to becoming not poor, it’s a hard life.

But how do you turn down someone’s grandmother whom you’ve just met? Anyways, I always handle it awkwardly.

on the bright side, i forget which day it was, but one day, we taught ken and his 60 year old dad how to jump rope. we were actually trying to teach sullivan, the 3 yr old kid, but the concept was so foreign that he was too shy to try. we were never good enough to get a double dutch going, but erika and i amazed them by both jumping at the same time while ken and his brother swung the rope. ken actually had a bit of trouble timing his jumps, so finally, his dad decided to show him how things were done in the onyanga family--he got it on the first try. amazing!

sooner than expected

2009-02-06T05:42:00.002-05:00

hi folks! i'm back. in case i haven't mentioned, i'm here with erika, who is also a regular blogger:

erika1212@blogspot.com

if you don't have access, just send me an email (or comment) with your email and she'll let you in lickety split!

and as a reminder to me:

the weird prioritization of food (lower than expected)
paradise USA
gimme a pump!
eating with the men
teaching?

minwah, karen, orion, & co are biking from capetown to cairo. they have a blog too, but i always just get to it thru minwah's blog (which is linked on the side). can you tell i'm getting lazy? a papaya beckons.

getting comfortable

2009-02-06T04:34:00.004-05:00

we're settling down ok now that we're not traveling so much. i'm getting used to the meal routine and the bucket bathes. tomorrow, we get our first shot at doing laundry at the lake.

yesterday was our first day on the farm. we only do around 2 hours a day in the morning, before it gets super hot. so far, we've been planting lots of kale. droves of dragonflies swarm around us, but the other bugs aren't that bad--it's the hippos that are the menace. they come out at night and dig up the sweet potatos. the farmers sleep in grass huts on the fields so they can scare the hippos off with metal cans hanging on the trees. on monday, the farmer is taking erica and me on a boat to see where the hippos sleep during the day. i asked him if we could eat one, but he said we'd need a gun and a wild park guy's approval. fair enough.

yesterday, after our labor, i tried to buy a papaya off the farmer, so now he brings us lots of papayas every day after work. it's fantastic. i'm no longer worried at all about having enough food. all day, we feast on papayas and avocados and pineapple. we've started eating more regular meals too, but the dinner is a bit late to suit me. we've been having it around 9 or 10 pm, which is essentially my bedtime, but i guess it does take a lot longer to prepare food over an open flame. food is delicious though. one night we had telapia and catfish stewed in a tomato/onion broth, and the other night we had potatos and cabbages mixed in with rice. yum. for lunch, we had ugali--a sort of corn bread--with fulu, which is lots of small, salted telapia cooked with tomatoes and onions and spices. once again, delicious.

i've noticed that i've started talking like a third grader, that is, simply. apologies if it's interfering with my blogging abilities.

70% of this region's population is HIV+. that's the highest in kenya, which has the highest in the world. it's hard to believe this when i look at people. everyone seems extremely healthy and tall and well built. ken's grandmother is over 80 yrs old (obviously, SHE doesn't have HIV), but her back is really straight, she has good teeth, and she can still dance at church. other old people i meet seem in equally good shape. also, the children here are amazing. ken's youngest brother sullivan is 3. he can run barefooted across the yard with the most sure-footed stride of any 3 yr old i've ever seen--no tottering for that young fella. he can also drink hot tea out of a grown up cup and entertain himself for hours on end. stella, a 7 yr old aids orphan, looks after sullivan. she washes him in the mornings and brings him his sweater when it gets chilly at night. she also does a good portion of the housework. we've seen lots of other kids that are barely 5 taking care of younger sibs of 1 or 2. children rarely cry or make much noise at all. it seems like the ones who don't know how to talk just don't talk. they toddle amongst the older children mutely in their small blue sandles.

yesterday, erika broke out the frisbee (legitimately whamo) and started a session of 500 that lasted a good hour or two. we would throw high releases or push passes and a herd of ~5 boys of varying ages and heights would scramble all over each other to throw the disc back to us. i saw some pretty good roundhouse and back kicks break out. one kid especially liked to hold another kid's leg to keep him from going anywhere. he must've learnt this from herding goats. we've seen similar maneuvers from shepherds amongst their stock. most of the time, the "catch" degenerated into an all out pile on--always amusing to watch from a distance. also, there were some very athletic catches in the air while other kids hung on to shoulders and head (even if they did get stripped of the disc immediately upon landing). plenty of kids got hit in the head with the disc in the mayhem, but the reaction was always surprised laughter (kind of a "silly me, i wasn't paying attention") and never a cry.

during this intro to frisbee, i bought a whip from a vendor for 200 shillings (it was a retooled car tire), and all the kids had a crack with it. i'm glad to report that no one has lost an eye.

in the afternoons, we're supposed to work in the community computer center, but the blackout yesterday meant we could do whatever. gerald took us to a field on a motorcycle (in itself interesting--ever ridden 3 on a bike before?), and gave us lessons. i found the gas really sensitive so i stalled the thing a couple of times. lots of fun though. i hope we can go often. by the way, gerald is the kid with a crush on erika. we've gotten lots of marriage proposals along the way (mostly from people who want green cards or see us as cash cows), and i'm not sure gerald is much different, but we will probably see him every day for the next week and a half, and he's already asked erika to go to a bar with him, so he may be the most awkward to deal with. still, i'm glad it's not me (i generally have the good excuse of being engaged though. thanks jon for getting on that horse).

this is getting long, so so long for now (and thanks for the fish). remind me to talk about the hand out culture sometime.

kenya

2009-02-04T04:33:00.003-05:00

wow. kenya is unexpected. erika and i are in mbita, a small fishing village off the coast of lake victoria. getting here took 2 days from nairobi--8 hours on a bus to kisumu plus a drive and ferry ride. in kisumu, we stayed at ken's brother's house (ken is our host. he's running a center in mbita to try to incorporate technology into the rural people's lives). some thieves broke into the kitchen during the night and stole the food and oil. luckily, the kitchen was padlocked from the inside, so they couldn't access any other parts of the house. then, on the carride (ken's old peugeot), the braking fluid started leaking, so we did a good portion of the journey with sketchy brakes and an unreliable clutch. only 1 exciting bit where we had to dodge some cows on the road.

mbita doesn't have running water or electricity. we are in the heart of a famine (political instability dislocated a good portion of the farmers, followed by a year of drought), but i have a hard time gaging how hard things actually are. the supermarkets carry lots of cadbury chocolates, and the people on the bus with us bought snacks from the vendors that would hop on and off. however, our meals are monotonous if not exactly meager. yesterday, food consisted of white bread and milk tea for breakfast, some watermelon that we bought at the supermarket in kisumu, butter sandwiches, plain rice (cooked in some kind of oil), and tea for dinner. that's the second day in a row that we've skipped lunch. and i haven't bathed since london. i don't mind so much, but i'm only here for a couple of weeks. as a lifestyle, it's a bit rough.

this morning, ken took us down to the lake to see some of the farms we'll be working on. they mostly plant kale, bananas, onions, taro and paupau (which we later learned is papaya). there are wild cotton and beans growing along the fence. i didn't know cotton could grow wild. we watched the fishermen pull in their net. we bought 2 telapia and a catfish for 300 shillings (~80 shilling per 1 USD), and that's including 50 shillings worth of foreigner tax. the catfish almost escaped while the fisherman was washing it for us. he had to plunge in after it and wrestle it back to shore. also, some cheerful yellow birds with funnel shaped nests hanging from the trees. the donkeys are very orthodox. they look just as you'd expect them to.

tryouts

2009-01-27T13:16:00.002-05:00

i had an amazing tryout with thundering herd over the weekend (henceforth referred to as mad cow). we did 6 hours on sat, mostly drills, some fitness, and then scrimmaging. our coach, fergus, likes to make us do the grr drill. and he likes to throw me bad passes--3 of which i had to layout for in the endzone drill--1 of which was the swing pass.

laying out in the uk is easy. the fields here are always soft and muddy. i've taken to wearing my predators, which has a much longer and flatter cleat, b/c my other cleasts just don't give me any traction. it's amazing the difference it makes. but it also means that i tend to kick myself repeatedly on the inner thigh. i have bruises running all the way up and down my right leg, along with two angry looking scratches (through the tights!). my left leg only has one bruise. hopefully, i'll eventually learn where my cleat ends and my leg begins.

sunday we split into 2 teams and played a game to 15. i actually got to play mid instead of handler. super fun. i love being mid. i had forgotten how much more rewarding it is :-D. and on monday, i had my one and only iceni tryout (i can't make their normal tryouts, which all happen in feb). it went ok...i got layout d'd once (i had already started to clear when the handler threw the disc--excuses, i know), but i also threw 3 away passes for goals. that's the other great thing about being a mid. my long flick is just long enough to land someone in the endzone.

i'm 100% positive that i've made mad cow, and i hear about iceni end of feb. fingers crossed!

and being the genius that i am, i lost my wallet at walmart yesterday. soooo...we'll see if i get my cards back in time for kenya, and if not, i'll figure something else out.

i went outside yesterday; it's overrated.

2008-12-18T06:42:00.001-05:00

jon's neighborhood is riddled with foxes. not surprisingly, there are no rabbits. the foxes are a nuisance, just like the bluebells are a nuisance. they (the foxes, not the bluebells) scatter the shoes and gloves. they (the foxes) poo as they walk, leaving driblets along the sidewalk, in contrast to the doggy piles. i like the foxes as they slide along the night and squeeze thru the cracks.

i think there should be a singular to sheep that's different from sheep--maybe shoop. shoop. shoop de doop. shoop de doop de doop de doop.

these days leading up to xmas, i'm trying to figure myself out. i feel like someone pushed a pause button. everything takes too little and too much effort. everything is within reach, but i'm too lazy to reach. i'm afraid i'll fall into something haphazardly again, like i did with finance; only this time, i won't escape so easily. a narrow miss, that. the thought of finance for the rest of my life used to make me panic. what will i have done? but i didn't have the guts to deny the easy money. and now that i'm out...do i want to go back? how many more years can i do before i'm trapped? i don't want to define myself thus. how long before it starts shaping me. a variation on the theme: commitment fears, mortality fears.

but if finance is unworthy of me, then what else? and do i have a right to demand more? is all of this just laziness under the mantle of idealism? why should i get to pick and choose, why not be satisfied with my lot. it seems uniquely gen y to demand fulfillment from work, to be attached to our careers, and this reliance we have on institutions will surely only disappoint. ppl not so long ago used to go to jail for ideals like democracy. we are too jaded for that (what is democracy really? a big word. and the state. the state is just people, most of whom i probably wouldn't like--i've gotten snippety with age). and we've learned not to believe too much and not to stick our necks out too much. everything's gotten smaller. and now i'm completely off track.

i've been toying with the idea of a blue collar job. construction site. would i derive a zen satisfaction from it? but then, shouldn't i be able to derive the same satisfaction from say, really applying myself to something, anything, like drumming. or french.

scratch all of that. erika and i are going traveling since we're both destitute. hurrah!

homeland haunts

2008-12-17T13:30:00.003-05:00

i've taken to wandering around aimlessly, and today took me to greenwich. on the way, a chinese woman crossed the street to ask me whether i spoke chinese. thinking she needed directions, i said un poco, and she said, well, do you read chinese? and i was like, um, is your map in chinese? she didn't have a map. she had chinese literature that she wanted to give someone...and at first i was sad that i didn't read chinese, b/c i thought maybe she meant journey to the west or something like that, and now i think she meant religious literature, in which case, oh well. do i look like a heathen or something? ppl are always trying to save me. maybe i should carry around some literature of my own. we could swap pamphlets, swing religions. mi dios es su dios?

greenwich market was disappointing. lots of little hippy trinket shops, overpriced and useless. i was hoping for more of a fruit and veg affair, but i did manage to buy a box of kung pao chicken. the man started off speaking chinese to me, so i responded in kind. he was very nice and even threw in free spring rolls, probably b/c he mistook me for a poor, hungry student (and b/c it was already 2pm and his business looked sparse). when he asked me whether winter break was soon, i didn't have the heart to disallusion him, so i said, well, for college, they've already started-- not really a lie--and made off double step with my food. why are my encounters with chinese ppl always so awkward? probably b/c i always have the urge to call them uncle, even though i'm now of an age where i can't.

in my spare time, i am:

2008-12-16T08:23:00.004-05:00

eradicating my language (again) of unnecessary exclamation marks. they always sneak up on me.
applying for random jobs via craigslist (does this count as looking for work?)--and by jobs, i mean personals...(jk)
wishing i had the guts to ACTUALLY get a mohawk instead of this normal haircut (which i like, but isn't daring). the problem with punk haircuts is that they take too much product and time, and i just don't have enough F*CK YOU in me to shave my head completely (what if i have a lumpy skull?)
wrapping xmas gifts (YAY)
reading roald dahl books
dreaming of things i can do in my spare time

over the weekend, i played my first ever indoors tournament. it's a lot different than i expected. the courts are roughly the size of a basketball court, and there are walls about 1 foot outside of the boundary lines. my first game, i had a rough time finding the field...tons of my leading passes went bonking off walls. by the end of the tourney, i'd learned that it's all about blades. unfortunately, i didn't quite manage to unlearn my lesson at yesterday's iceni/iso practice. every huck i threw had a dramatic o/i curve to it. whoops, sorry girls. oh, and you know how i thought it was a mixed savage tourney? no such luck--it was an open savage tourney, and 1 of our 3 guys dropped out last minute so we had to replace him with a girl. at least the small courts meant that guys couldn't burn us deep that badly. i had a couple of hammers thrown over my head, but for the most part, i managed to keep up on d. i even managed to d 2 deep throws (as in, i got a hand on the disc).

sunday got a bit out of hand. we got pappadams, french bread, whipped cream, and pie tins from the local supermarket for carbo jousting. after our games, each team nominated 2 ppl, a horse and a knight. the knight, holding a pappadam shield and a french bread lance, would charge the opposition on the horse. the first time we tried it, i (having thrown the first turn) and jon (having dropped the first drop) were the knight and horse. both our pappadam and the opposition's broke, but we were declared the losers, and ended with cream pies in the face. and that's the story of why i spent the rest of the day smelling like babies. later, during duck duck goose, i slipped on a patch of wet floor and accidentally laid out into a bunch of bags and water bottles, earning me a nice purple bump on my thigh. like i said, indoors is nothing at all like normal ulty.

place names in england are plain silly.

the beginning

2008-12-11T11:56:00.005-05:00

so, i guess y'all should know--i just got fired. beyond the initial shock, it's not so bad. not nearly as bad as nationals 2003 or not making nationals 2006. the closest previous experience i've had is being kicked off the cross country team my senior year of high school (i was really close to lettering, and the coach said i couldn't race with the team b/c i wasn't practicing enough with the team. um...hello? running is not a team sport. as long as i'm running every day, why should he care when i do it?).

anyways, the rejection stings a bit...but i know it's not in my control. i mean, it's not really a reflection on my performance. and i guess it doesn't hurt much b/c this thing was never mine to begin with. i fell into finance haphazardly, and now i've fallen out of it. the scary thing is: now i gotta figure out what to do with the rest of my life. i get all these resources from HR, and my manager has offered me tons of contacts to find another finance job (along with 6m severance pay tax free). but do i want to? for the first time in my life, i feel like i have the freedom to do whatever i want. go to culinary school? med school? law school? journalism? travel journalism? housewife? i could even go back to mit and get my m-eng (it's deferred indefinitely).

i was lucky to find that job. it took me to hk, allowed me to travel and eat and eat. and i met jon. too bad it ended before i got the frisbee house. maybe i'll be a carpenter and build it for yall anyways :-).

haha, and now i can finally add all my friends from work on facebook. sweet!

and get a motorcycle license!!!!!

and maybe a trihawk?

a collection of shorts

2008-12-04T12:21:00.005-05:00

tonight is the equities xmas party, and it is supposed to get wild. they (as in, the MAN, as in, brady dougan) are firing a bunch of ppl next week, so this is our last chance to get something for nothing (even the stationary here is guarded by the group secretary--and next year, we, as in the lucky and industrious survivors of the next week cut, will have to pay 2lbs for our own daily diaries). if only i had practiced more in college, i would drink my bonus. as is, i will drink 1 shot of tequila (or equivalent), and sway wildly all the merry night.

and can i just say? i am glad the car unions are making concessions.

on my way to work yesterday, i slipped on a foot bridge and almost slide tackled a woman. luckily, she pulled up short, so i merely fell on my butt, no harm done to anyone. she was so shocked though that i ended up apologizing repeatedly to her.

can erika and alice pls let me into their blogs? i'm back from my hiatus now...

beijing, finally.

2008-11-15T18:07:00.005-05:00

From May 08 Beijing and Jeju

i always start off a beijing adventure right with a bowl of soymilk and fried dough. jon tried to have the hot soymilk and the cold soymilk at the same time, and as my mother warned, he ended up with a war in his stomach.

From May 08 Beijing and Jeju

the first day, we went to the obvious places: tiananmen square, the forbidden palace, and yiheyuan. the weather cooperated fully (now that i'm british, i like to take note of these things), and we randomly bumped into frankie from work, who happened to be going to all the same places...but we obviously didn't want to go together, so that was a bit awkward. after a round of introductions, we let him walk on ahead, and tried not to catchup too quickly.

From May 08 Beijing and Jeju

this sign forbade the scratching of walls. i'm glad the government is taking the necessary measures for the preservation of historical sites.

From May 08 Beijing and Jeju

LION! TIGER? LIGER?

From May 08 Beijing and Jeju

the second day, we had the grand idea that we would hike between two stations of the great wall, but a traffic accident conspired against us. we did manage to walk around a bit, and some guy tried to fine me for climbing on the walls, but he was clearly drunk (inspite of his official arm badge), so i managed to get away clean. i was also very close to finally buying a hairy russian hat, but i escaped from that silly notion too.

From May 08 Beijing and Jeju

and afterwards, we went to a famous beijing duck place: quan ju de, that jon had learned about in his chinese lessons. they put on a nice show during dinner with lots of old beijing cultural things (like the long stemmed teapot dance)

From May 08 Beijing and Jeju

and the third day we went to the zoo! the beijing zoo is the best zoo in the world, b/c they're not so concerned about animal rights as to give every single thing an acre large compound. obviously, they're very nice to the pandas (those things are cash cows!), but lots of other things are just running around in concrete cages with painted walls. which means, you know, you don't have to walk a mile to try to pick out the lone cuddly thing which is inevitably hiding under a bush.

don't get all up in arms, let's remember our priorities (humans first!--as in, if you're gonna protest anything to the chinese gov, perhaps it should be humans rights, not animal rights--and this is by no means an advocation to protest the chinese gov. they're a lovely gov, and i was very happy as a chinese citizen, which is, i'm sure, exactly how all the animals feel). they do have large compounds, but the animals have to take turns in them. so between like 10 large cats, they'll have 1 large enclosement, and while the other 9 are languishing in their cells, 1 will have the room to frolic. and whatever the animals lack in space, i'm sure is made up for in feed. every animal we saw seemed to be eating. watching hippos eat is GREAT fun. every couple of bites, they'll lift their great maws as if to coax their cud down their gullets. i wonder if they can swallow without the gravitational aid.

From May 08 Beijing and Jeju

these wolves? hyenas? were running frantically in circles, trying to hide their bits of meat. every once in a while, two wolves? orbits would intersect, and one would bully the bit of meat out of the other one's mouth. or one would deposit his meat into a hole in the ground, only to have it found by another one. very hyper animals, these. reminded me quite a bit of sir wile e. coyote.

From May 08 Beijing and Jeju

in a tragic twist of fate, this tire ended up locked in a cage with a frustrated tiger. must've been a bad tire in a past life.

From May 08 Beijing and Jeju

one of these things is unlike the others...but he does a very good gay kangaroo impersonation, doesn't he? go on darling, you're a wild thang! make love to the camera, be a jungle beast!

From May 08 Beijing and Jeju

and here, he seems to have an elephant up his butt.

From May 08 Beijing and Jeju

ah, ethel and henry, the lovely couple.

From May 08 Beijing and Jeju

fried scorpions anyone? also on offer: starfish and spikey things.

From May 08 Beijing and Jeju

wangfujing small snacks street. now that's my type of street.

hip to the hop and you don't stop

2008-11-13T13:34:00.003-05:00

tonight i'm going to a pop-up restaurant with camilla, jon's sister. it's a restaurant "installation" that's here for 2 months and then gone. it's the restaurant equivalent of a travelling circus, except it doesn't travel. it just gets dismantled. anyways, on the menu, there's this:

roast guinea fowl, carrot gallete, salsify, poached date.

now i have a question for you. what kind of ingredient is salsify?! that sounds like the best thing i've ever heard of. that is all.

*edit: camilla actually ordered the fowl, and turns out, salsify is a starchy tuber like a parsnip.

hello again!

2008-11-10T14:45:00.002-05:00

i know i know, i'm way behind. LOTS has happened since i've been away...and i STILL haven't written a post about the beijing trip with jon and my mom. a list to get me in the mood:

BEIJING
HK beach hat
New Zealand
How the world went to hell in a handbasket while I was reading about bees in the New Zealand news (holy crap!)
Saikung hike and last day of beach ulty
London
Obama?

and can i just say, again, HOLY CRAP! who would've thunk that the failure of lehman would've triggered all this? i mean, HOLY CRAP!

today, circuit city filed for bankruptcy and a Swedish bank got taken over by the Swedish gov for insolvency. the scary thing is that neither of these incidents are abnormal in this environment. i mean, i think circuit city may be the first large commercial company to go under from this, but ppl didn't even bat an eye. the unexpected 1.5% rate cut by the uk gov last week got a couple of cheers from ppl paying floating rate mortgages, but it hasn't changed much else...(except for killing a couple of our structured products that are now too expensive).

the media coverage of it is a bit infuriating too. one day, they'll interview a bunch of small business owners who will all cry and say, "boohoo, the banks won't lend us money, how will we buy the flour to bake our bread? boohoo...the banks are kicking us out of our houses and i've just had these two babies too". and then the next day, it'll be, "the evil banks have caused this financial crisis by lending out a gazillion times the amount that they actually have in their coffers, leaving them vulnerable to overnight financing costs, etc etc." so, do you want us to lend or not to lend? make up your minds bbc.

and you know, i tend to think this mess is caused more by the buy now pay later mindset than by banks and their large fees/bonuses. both americans and brits tend to be oddly comfortable with spending money that they haven't yet earned. after the rate cut last week, my colleague (roughly the same level as me) said straight away, "woohoo, now i can buy a ps3 by refinancing my loans!"...um...this is the guy who still has college debt, has a loan on a bmw z4, has an apartment to himself (i'm guessing that would cost around 300-400lbs a week), and covers his day to day costs with credit card debt...what's wrong with ppl?!

and this thing about the evil banks repossessing ppl's homes...fyi, banks hate having houses on their balance sheets. they're illiquid, they don't move, it's naked risk most of the time. in fact, they hate it so much, they're willing to sell them at like 50% of face value, which i guess may even be an improvement on what they were selling some of their other mortgage-backed assets at, but still.

OHHH, and the thing that really really pissed me off: the anti-capitalism protest in canary wharf. i guess the uk doesn't really celebrate halloween, so instead, a bunch of bored ppl organized the protest in the city's financial center and screamed "capitalism doesn't work" all night. ok, what do you suggest as an alternative, smarty pants? have you ever lived in a non-capitalist system? ok then. it's kinda disturbing how many mccarthyist feelings that protest stirred in me. after being teased for being communist most of my primary school life, i thought i would be pinker. instead, i find myself thinking things like, "we should've fed you to the soviets".

but come on, those ppl aren't protesting capitalism b/c they have some higher belief in utilitarianism or socialism, they're protesting capitalism b/c they're on the wrong end of it, which, if they were starving or homeless or beaten down, fine. but they were dressed up in fairy wings and monster masks. grrrr. i'm not sure why i'm so angry, i just am. if you have free time, protest a real injustice. why doesn't capitalism work--b/c you're poor? and why are you poor? were you a crack baby? no? ok then. oh, you're poor b/c some evil salesman tricked you into spending too much on your credit card, and now no one will give you a loan to cover your other loans? too bad mr mcgee, no sympathy from me. take some responsibility, ppl!

and i kinda feel bad for dick fuld. he built something all his life, he cared about it, and despite trying really really hard, it died. and not only is it dead, everyone blames him, and they're right (at least partially). how bad must that feel? without the benefit of hindsight, i'm not sure what else he could've done. it's like a greek tragedy in 2 acts. and sure, he has 300 million in compensation over 8 years, but i bet a TON of that was in lehman stock, and i doubt he sold much of it either (how bad would that look--a CEO selling his own stock).

ok, this turned into a lot about things that aren't really related to me, but i promise a more personal post soon. i miss you all.

lily

pics from new zealand

2008-11-08T17:15:00.003-05:00

From new zealand week 2 9-2008

From queenstown skydiving 10-2008

From new zealand week 1 9-2008

feeling cheated

2008-09-12T03:42:00.002-04:00

i'm the type of girl who likes to get emotional. i'm not particularly picky about what kind of emotion, as long as i get a pang of something. even when i get angriest or saddest, there's a detached part of me relishing the feeling from afar. after all, it means i'm not dead yet.

call me sentimental, melodramatic, exhibitionist, whatever. it's all true (which is probably why i can't get thru a non-fiction book to save my life--not enough emotion). maybe it's due to the fear of boredom characteristic of so many gen y'ers (b/c we're the generation that hasn't suffered, so we need something to fill the space created by the freedom*).**

Phew, ok. all this is to say that i'm not feeling much emotion at all in this goodbye to hk, even tho it's a huge life change. i don't want to go out blubbering, but it'd be nice to have the appropriate solemnity to gain at least a bit of closure. instead, i'm skipping out like i'm going on an extended vacation (which i am, yay new zealand), and my brain has totally missed the fact that i will not see a lot of these ppl ever again (thank god! JUST KIDDING. you see what i mean? still cracking jokes at the 11th hour).

but then again, maybe this is just another effect of globalization and the internet. or maybe this is uli's fault. he's the guy who has permanently left hk for about 6m now, and i still run into him every week or so b/c he's popped into town for some random errand (which, incidentally, is more often than i saw him before he left). thanks for robbing me of my cathartic goodbyes, uli. OR, maybe it's b/c hk is one of those cities that you never really leave. like neverland. it keeps a bit of your young adult self, and in return, it leaves something under your skin (pollution mainly). ok, now i've hit the sap. peace out brothas.

*maslow's hierarchy? also, can we claim that our formative unifying experience is terrorism? i think not. altho seeing those towers crumble on tv scooped out my insides with a spoon, the emotion was mainly voyeuristic and ephemeral. the only lasting change in MY life pre and post 9/11 is more inconvenient airport procedures (and of course, whatever damage 8 yrs of republican party schutzstaffel politics caused). no lasting fear and no lasting hunger = no formative experience. actually, given the constant bombardment of the sensationalist media, none of the classic boogeymen are capable of scaring me anymore; my crippling fear is of being left to deal with the paperwork when the dust settles. i am doomed to be worn down by the minutia. actually, is it a contradiction to be afraid of boredom? if you are afraid, then you are not bored, right?

**we are also the generation that rambles***

***and also the generation that likes to make broad generalizations based on limited personal experience****

****and b/c jon is technically a gen x'er, he is perfectly content to sit in front of a computer all day and be grungy while i'm pulling my hair out in a bout of ADD.

every time i tell someone i'm moving to the uk...

2008-09-05T05:48:00.002-04:00

they give me advice on where to live. what's with that? i have no idea about london geography, so when they spout off about this area next to that tube stop, it's in one ear and out the other with some polite nodding in between.

time flies

2008-09-03T22:42:00.002-04:00

yikes! a month without posting and a week to go. august flew by in a blur. every weekend featured at least 1 beach ulty session, maybe a wakeboarding session, and the occasional junk.

the best junk was the private one that kristin invited us on (LOOK AT ME! CHILLIN' WITH THE HIGHROLLERS!), with the devoted speedboat and the donuts of death. these things seriously FLEW thru the air and bumped your backside something furious. luckily, i only fell off once, and since i was lying on my stomach, the fall was just a couple of barrelrolls before landing on my side. jon wasn't so lucky...i think he may have done some flips before landing on his head...and grant managed to barrelroll thru the rope, picking up some impressive burns on his arm. huge adrenaline rush tho. probably one of the most exciting things i've ever done to date (soon to be changed by new zealand (!!!!) ).

and then of course, there were the olympics. the tv at work is right over my shoulder, so i spent a good portion of the days watching tennis, swimming, track, and volleyball. absolutely gleeful when the US relay team beat the frenchies--a lot of our traders are french. my mother is in love with michael phelps--my dad is jealous. she keeps asking if "our jon" could train to be a swimmer. i told her that he hasn't got the pain tolerance, and she agreed that he is a bit of a softie (awww). i'm very glad the US basketball team pulled it out. USA! USA!

TWO DAYS OFF B/C of TYPHOONS! that's 3 to hit this summer! ppl always die on typhoon days b/c they see a lull in the storm and think, oh, that's a good chance for a swim or a surf. idiots. no sympathy.

what else? mmm...went to singapore last weekend. my first foray into what a colleague calls "the real life version of disneyland". i quite enjoyed it, and now i wish i had taken a non-frisbee weekend there. we stayed in little india, in a "hotel" where the shower was right above the toilet and jon could stretch from wall to wall. the fields were a 10 min walk away, and the best part is that there's a fresh food market right next to the fields. so every day for lunch, we had our fill of prata and biryani. not the best for playing on, but meh, it's our last asian tourney so we can do as we please. for dinner, we went to the food stalls in china town. i love laksa. kristin found some yummy crispy wantons, and we washed it down with root beer floats and soursop ices. also, i found that i don't like cactus juice.

and for our last weekend here, we're shopping for hiking boots and playing the beach hat tournament. i will definitely miss this place.

2008-07-23T23:00:00.002-04:00

last night we found a lonely merry-go-round on elgin st, hidden behind the road, under a tree, amidst the restaurants of soho. it was guarded by 2 white cats. we took turns spinning; we came up dizzy; we ran goofy laps around the tar. a giddy and nauseous end to the day.

Of course, Robin. Even crime-fighters must eat. And especially you. You're a growing boy and you need your nutrition. - Batman*

2008-07-21T01:52:00.007-04:00

one of the big BIG BIG things i'll miss about hk is it's ability to make me feel far far away from everything. mostly, i just like going to the beach.

saturday, jon and i spent 2 hours wakeboarding in lamma next to the fishfarms. the water was kinda choppy (it was raining in big wave bay where we normally wakeboard), but sitting at the boundary of rain and sun (slightly in the sunny side of course (stay on the sunny side, always on the sunny side, stay on the sunny side of life--TWO THREE FOUR!)) was awfully pretty. and i managed to give myself whiplash (and maybe a mild concussion?) by forgetting how to wakeboard, sigh. after a big breakfast at frying pan, we met with a few others at the mui wo ferry terminal for a 9km hike to pui o. as far as hikes go, it's not very challenging, but it's one of the more scenic ones i've done here (which i think is saying a lot). we saw lots of strange flowers and huge butterflies and stick insects (!!) and mating bugs (we interrupted a pair who had chosen the footpath as a romantic hideout. they flew apart as soon as we approached). we even found a hidden helipad. i postulated that it was a secret spy helipad for chinese gov agents or drug lords or something, but tim said it was in case someone got hurt on the hike (deduct 10 pts for lack of imagination). oh, and apparently, the top 5 things jon would take if he were stuck on a desert island are 1) tv 2) playstation 3) shotgun 4) power generator (for the tv+playstation combo) 5) something else frivolous. notice anything missing on that list? AHEM. AHEM. COUGH COUGH HACK! yes, thanks for bringing your betrothed. love you too dear.

we got to pui o just in time to start a second beach game (it wasn't really a coincidence that we were hiking there...the issue with pui o is that you feel so cut off from everything...that, and the sand). the sand is very firm and fine grained, which is to say, bad for laying out on, very very good for running on. and very very good for sticking to everything. i played a couple of points before deciding my time was better spent in the water (which incidentally, has a very good (read: low) salinity level and bigger waves than most hk beaches--they hold surfing clinics here too, which i guess we can do if we ever get bored on the weekends).

sunday was way more chill, altho i woke up with what felt like a hangover and a very sore neck (i blame the wakeboarding). we watched dark knight (finally!), and it definitely wins the award for the best batman movie so far. altho, if you think about it, not much of the plot makes sense, which i guess is why you shouldn't think about it too much. for those of you too busy/poor to visit me, i live 2 blocks away from where they shot that scene of him standing on the escalator. all of those places are right outside my house, and those tall buildings he's crashing thru are right near my office. it makes me feel mildly important and very special. like, i could've met him wandering around! and then i could've shown him some damn good eating places.

one HUGE complaint about the mcl-jp cinema in cwbay: it doesn't have any bathrooms!!! what kind of theater doesn't supply bathrooms on the way out?! i've been sitting in a dark room for over 2 hours, sipping on caffeine, crossing and recrossing my legs b/c i don't want to miss anything, and you reward me with...NO BATHROOMS?! the theater exit doors lead straight down a flight of sketchy stairs that deposit you into the main lobby outside of the paid area. even on the way into the theater, the bathroom next to the concessions sucked. it only had three stalls, none of which flushed, AND the floor is so shiny and black that you can actually see the person inside of the stall (not that i spent a huge amount of time looking, but i did notice). needless to say, as soon as the movie finished, i dragged jon thru the crowded streets by his arm until we reached a suitable sushi restaurant with a suitable pee place (quote: "OW").

we spent the rest of the weekend finding 2 new bookstores (not new new, but new to us, which is uber exciting b/c one of them is pretty comprehensive and the other one is an outlet, where everything sells for ~$39--the downside being that everything is grouped by price so not even fiction vs nonfiction categorizatons). i bought 3 new john irvings plus 2 saint exuperys and 1 terry pratchett (i know i know). the bookazine outlet is 2 blocks away from my flat in an old sketchy building with THE sketchiest elevator i've ever been in. it's a very small box a bit larger than a telephone booth with a folding door--you know, one of those doors that you thought weren't legal anymore. when the thing moved, you could see the walls moving outside. the outlet was only on the third floor so we eschewed the elevator in favor of the stairs, which btw, had uneven landings (as in the floor sloped and dented).

on the fifth floor, there's an absolutely lovely (and very hidden) nepalese restaurant (lovely horizon or something). it's behind an unmarked red door (no signs or ads for it outside the building either). it's gotta get all of it's business from word of mouth b/c god knows it's not getting anyone wandering in off the street. it has very good momos (himalayan dumplings) and curries, plus the added incentive of everything on the menu being less than $50. i had 3 lassi's for a total of $45!! that's unheard-of for a restaurant in central. the serving pace is leisurely and the courses came 1 by 1 (which is not necessarily my preferred way to enjoy a meal), but it gave us plenty of time to relax on the cushions and watch the bollywood music videos on tv. and that's my weekend in not quite chronological order.

* quote courtesy of http://greatsayings.blogspot.com/2005/03/batman-and-robin-quotes.html

birfdays

2008-07-16T08:05:00.004-04:00

to celebrate my birthday this year, i made my parents buy me some fireworks. it took a bit of convincing...my dad was absolutely sure that i'd burn down our house and our neighbors houses--he's such a city boy. luckily, my mom grew up amongst 2 very rascally brothers, so she was all for the scheme.

so on my last night at home, july 3, we ate some chocolate cake and set off what turned out to be 3 very loud whistling/spitting/sparkling tubes. i kept thinking some finicky neighbor would come outside to tell us off (stupid foreigners who don't know when independence day is...).

and then on my actual birthday, naomi made me some yummy japanese curry and served us chocolate cake crumble out of martini glasses. we wanted to watch the painted veil, but her dvd setup objected, so instead we watched little man on hbo...that movie is special...if anyone is looking for a drinking game, you should watch it and drink whenever someone gets hit in the balls.
jon hid my presents in the bathroom (the poo is wishing me "happoo birthday")

and a few random pics from last year that i found on my camera (i've always associated wakeboarding with my birthday, since our inaugural trip was for my birthday last year):

notes from home

2008-07-09T23:05:00.004-04:00

going home with jon is definitely better than going home without jon. i don't want to seem sappy or anything, but i get cranky when i pine...

airlines are getting stingier, which i think is fair. i'd much rather have to pay for food than pay more for tickets, but i was kinda surprised when my 5 hour flight from san fran to atl didn't offer to feed me. i was more surprised on my way from montreal to san fran when air canada tried to sell me a blanket and pillow for $2 (they assured me it was mine to keep--great, thanks guys).

as expected, once home, my mom spent the first 2 days pampering me and the last 2 days guilt tripping me about when my next visit would be. i told her i wouldn't come home next year b/c i wanted to spend all my vacation time in europe. we'll see how that goes. my dad showed his love by fiddling with my computer. the battery on my lenovo went kabonk so he bought me a new laptop for my birthday. it's a gateway something or other, and everything is bigger/better/faster AND it can play high def movies...but i miss my eraserhead mouse. i guess i'll get used to the touchpad eventually, but that eraserhead and i have a lot of good memories together (how am i supposed to play minesweeper with a touchpad?!).

as part of jon's grand tour of georgia, we visited:

stone mtn: jacque caught me up on all the old high school gossip at miss katie's--the place where tiff used to waitress. they throw the "hand tossed rolls" at you; they used to throw the fried pickles too, but now they just come on a plate along with a bunch of other free fried foods (mmm...sweet potato fries and onion peels).

coke museum: it's a lot fluffier than what i remember, but maybe that's age talking. the coolest part was seeing all the failed coke products (eg coke black--coke with coffee added). AND we got to meet the polar bear!

six flags: we rode THE best rollercoaster ever. bar none. like, totally, THE BEST. it's called goliath. it takes you 200 feet up in the air (as high as acrophobia, the ride where you go up and drop straight down...every park has one of em)--that's 32 seconds of upwards going before you start downwards going. and then you downwards go FAST. it's the metal version of the great american scream machine. a modern classic. no loops, no frivolousness. just drops and speed. marvelous. there's also a superman where the seats go horizontal after you get on, so essentially, you're riding with your belly facing the ground...which would make me feel like superman, except your knees are bent (imagine a seated position), so instead, i feel more like a cow...MOOOO. anyways, i definitely think six flags GA beats six flags NE. there's nothing in new england that can even begin to compare with classics like the monsters' plantation and the log flume. speaking of classics, i cannot believe how rickety wooden coasters now feel. i thought my skeleton would get rattled to pieces. and, they've gotten rid of the viper. RIP.

and then we tried to go whitewater rafting in tennessee (ocoee, where the 96 olympics canoeing happened), but it was closed, and we didn't find out till we got there, so the day went towards visiting rock city (a very posh private garden turned public), eating bbq, swimming in a swimming hole (i needed to get wet somehow), and outlet shopping.

on tues/wed/thurs, they don't open the dam upstream of this place...so instead of rapids, you get pools.

i finally bought some work clothes. shopping in the US just feels better than shopping in HK. i know what stores i like, i know what size i am, and the salespeople are much more helpful (usually). i even felt comfortable enough to buy two dresses--the first dresses i've bought, incidentally, since middle school (i got tired of borrowing arati's clothes whenever i had to go to a function). speaking of shopping, we finally got that second guitar for rockband. now we can have a full fledged four member band! yay!

the weather held up beautifully for jazzfest (thanks meriweather--apparently, no one except me and dordor knows that meriweather is the blue fairy from sleeping beauty...jin even thought that sleeping beauty was the fairytale where she eats an apple and falls asleep...um, close but no cigar). everyone still looks exactly the same, except kathy looks cooler. phne had an awesome tournament, but i forgot to tell her to her face. smite now calls dor "dodo", which totally threw me off. and shuangy was still sick (altho worse this time than usual). and yelena is still beautiful (altho dordor is the only beautiful one who did the wave for me).

personally, i had a meh tournament. i am now solidly a reset handler...i'm too lazy to cut. i threw two completed backhand hucks to kdob, but turned two awful backhand hucks to stacy (one was a decision error, one was an execution error). i also had a perfect pass from jin bounce off my chest in the endzone (which hasn't happened to me in years). ah well. we lost to storm by a chunk in the semi's (after losing to fusion by 1 in pool play--everyone thought we would win until we lost. boo). at least we got to do the beaver cheer thrice and the log roll twice (once for james and once (sorta) for stacy). i love the log roll.

it was very good to see everyone again. liver gave me three boxes of girl scout cookies, and i'm still working my way thru the thin mints (after sneaking them thru both US and HK customs). today, i'm jetlagged and depressed to be back in dreary hk, where it's supposed to rain for the next 6 days.
3 cool cats.

wahooooo!

2008-06-26T06:11:00.001-04:00

jazzfest, here i come!