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December 29, 2004

Two ways to travel:

Anxious, or not.

A little trepidation about the upcoming trip in the last few days. We were dropping off Christmas gifts for my bro and sis-in-law on Sunday evening when he informed us of the tsunami and its consequences.

We'd been enjoying a lazy Sunday to celebrate the end of our holiday obligations, so we came home and turned on CNN immediately to see what had become of the people and places we'd been planning to visit.

Unlike Shrub. Rather than try to cultivate some goodwill, he's clearing brush around the ranch while some disaster-relief government guys manage to scrounge up about $35 million. The death count will be somewhere north of 100K, and they've offered as much money as we'd burn in Iraq over the course of a long afternoon.

By today, the footage by DV-enabled tourists has saturated the cable news nets. NetZero's made a mistake hiring fatuous wingnut/huckster Dennis Miller as pitchman. Is there any corporation Miller won't spread for, BTW? We were both browsing news sites this afternoon when She swiveled her laptop, to show off a photo of a compact car bobbing around a flooded lobby in Phuket. "I wonder which hotel that is," she mused.

Bloated bodies wash up on shore with each tide, to say nothing of the increased threat of cholera, malaria, typhus and who knows what. She made a helpful donation today to MSF this morning. She's good like that.

Last night, She sleepily gave me a sketch of a book she's reading, "Holy Cow." It's apparently a snarky memoir written by an Australian woman who visited India and swore she'd never return, only to move back years later with the love of her life. As you can tell, I read the jacket copy, and not much else.

After considering the author's well-documented culture shock, She let me know that she was vaguely concerned about my ability to go with the flow, if you will. I assuaged her concerns, as I've spent hours reading about what to expect from squat toilets. The answer: a hole in the floor, footrests, and a water bucket with a scoop.

I'm reading up now so I'll know what to expect when we arrive. But nothing would have prepared me for the tsunami that struck the Indian Ocean Sunday. Reading about beaches thronged with tourists and locals who were either swept out to sea or smashed inland on the face of a debris wave wasn't reassuring.

Scanning survivors' accounts, I reflected on the two hours plus each day we'd spend in the water when visiting Cancun. All of this is a convoluted, beguiling way of saying, "that could have been us. We might have been killed if we'd been there."

As my well-traveled Trustafarian friend recently told me, "there's only two things you can really worry about when you're traveling: make sure the girlfriend is safe and has shelter, and look after your money. Everything else is pretty much out of your hands."

Despite his sexist framing, I think he's pretty much on the money. Even a stoned clock is right twice a day.

So, I'm not going to worry about tsunamis, which are rare. I don't have money for a satphone, nor do I have any seismologist friends keeping tabs on me, so I'll have to CY mine own A when it comes to significant undersea landslides and the like. Squat toilets, on the other hand, I fully expect to encounter, so I'd better start spot-toning those quads, hams and glutes.

Speaking of two ways to travel, "traveling" is the straight-arrow spelling, but "travelling" is an accepted variant. I'll be using the former.

Posted by Your Protagonist at 07:16 PM | Comments (0)

December 28, 2004

A little social instruction.

This is how late my day started: when I got to the coffeeshop, the pastry was picked over and wrapped in plastic. Two croissants remained, lifeless and unappealing beneath shiny saran shrouds.

One of the Jordanian brothers who owns the joint was chatting on the phone while mopping up behind the counter. The fake-pine funk was overpowering, and all I wanted was to carb up and caffeinate enough to get started with the laundry. After a minute more mopping and chatting in Arabic and English, he put down the phone and approached, eyebrows raised.

"What's inside that croissant?" I asked, pointing.

He looked down at the basket, then back to me. "First of all, good afternoon. I think that guy is cheese, and his friend in the corner is ham and cheese. Some coffee?"

And suddenly, I was chagrined. I don't know why I forget the "good morning" greeting when I walk in there. It could be because I'm trying to make up my mind between one thing or another, and so end up plunging into an order before I change my mind yet again.

Or it could be my East Coast upbringing. I never heard a lot of "good afternoons" or "howyadoins" while standing in line at a New York deli.

I'd have apologized and chalked it up to lack of sleep or the earliness of the hour, but I'd slept well and quite late, so I gamely tried to recover. I left a moment later with a croissant and two coffees.

If I'm going to be travelling the world -- and I am -- I'll have to encourage myself to be more engaging with people I encounter. I think I'm plenty engaged, but I flatter myself. Being a capable observer of people and places doesn't necessarily mean you have a facility for the social stuff.

My first gig as a reporter, I had to interview the extended family of a local politico who'd just died. Leaving aside the fact that it was my third day on Guam and I was still extremely jet-lagged and culture-shocked, everyone in the village of Umatac was related to "Uncle Joe" in one way or another. His death was a personal loss to everyone, which was obvious when I rolled into the village with a photographer.

Everyone looked like they were struck with the same branch from the family tree. I remember looking at the dead man's photo in my notebook and then seeing his eyes, his nose in the faces of the people I spoke to. A little overwhelming for someone with no professional reporting experience. It was the photog who initially got the ball rolling with my interviewees. I'd walk with her from one small home to another as she knocked on doors to capture a town's grief.

After two of these visits, I had enough resolve to approach these strangers and talk to them, but it wasn't second nature, not at all.

So, a thank you to the fellow at the coffeeshop, for reminding me that "hello" is always appropriate. A little eye contact's never killed anyone, and neither has a smile.

Posted by Your Protagonist at 02:18 PM | Comments (0)

December 19, 2004

Bake at 350 degrees, then slather with aloe.

Friends are visiting from out of town, so the queen-sized bed She moved in with is temporarily set up in the living room. The cats are getting a double-shot of attention, but there's an attendant increase in their crazy quotient. At least now we have additional witnesses for their wack-ass behavior, so we know we're not going crazy.

Sorry to babble. This sunburn is still with me, and I haven't slept decently since returning from Meheeko. I've absorbed enough Aloe barbadensis to float a battleship, or, at least a canoe full of hippies.

Loose cotton is the order of the day.

Yesterday, we attended a long-planned dinner party. Since I'm not a long-planner, I ended up doing the cooking the day of.

This was not a chore for me. I love to cook, and baking particularly gives me pleasure. Baking feels more like alchemy than actual food preparation, and there's plenty of time to clean while one bakes. I enjoy preparing whole meals for others, but I hate the pile of pots and pans that usually accumulates afterwards.

Not to mention the chore of parcelling leftovers into small plastic containers, so I may be sure to forget them in random corners of the fridge, rediscover them later, then sniff them with disgust before tossing them guiltily into the trash when no one's looking. Why am I so bad with leftovers? It's really a true test of my own cooking. For which foods will I shout "encore!", and which should open and close on the same night, like an ill-conceived musical?

Getting back to the baking. Yesterday, the guests were off on an outing to visit another friend who performs in various fora, so I had the kitchen to myself.

Not only did I manage to view three episodes of Law & Order (thanks TiVo!), I prepared the following:

When everyone got back from visiting Victorian London, they oohed and aahed at the cooking smells, which is always gratifying.

Baking diffuses any potential holiday anxieties of mine. I can prepare something with care and intent, and make it as good as I can so it'll appeal to the people I care about. I'll still deal with the crowds at the stores this week, but being able to bring a basket full of food to a party with friends meant a lot.

My building's manager has slathered kitsch Xmas crap all over the foyer downstairs. In addition to the plastic pine boughs taped to the banister, there's plenty of tacky window decals, and a perfectly ugly lighted tree. The control box for the tree lights even plays one or another awful carol, about as well as you might expect a 12-volt adapter to sound.

Several of us residents turn it off regularly, but the super constantly reactivates it. Now, another holiday-minded soul has dropped a Santa head into a ficus by the front door. It has an IR sensor, so when you walk past, it plays a crappy electronic medley, along with a tinny, "Ho, ho, ho!"

Luckily, Santa quiets down when you kick him behind the right ear. The tree is more complex, so I scurry up the stairs, rather than get caught fiddling with it.

Posted by Your Protagonist at 06:37 AM | Comments (0)

December 15, 2004

Speed kills, but it gets you to the airport lickety-split

I stayed up the night before we left because I get wound up before I go anywhere. I enjoy being someplace, but I don't particularly enjoy the time spent in cabs, airports and airplanes. When he arrived, the driver had a meth addict's smile, and driving habits to match. The Woman was still drying her hair when he arrived at 4:40, so I loaded the trunk and we left around 4:45 a.m.

As much in a hurry as he seemed to be, he didn't start the meter until she came downstairs and we got in the cab. We headed toward an artery that would take us out of the city, but the stop signs seemed to annoy him. "Maybe I should go another way, to get there faster?" he offered.

"The faster way is fine," she said. He cut the wheel sharply, and hit the gas.

The surface streets were foggy and slick, but he blithely ignored speed limits, zooming and decellerating when he'd miss each traffic light. I resisted the urge to tell him that if we went a constant rate of speed, we'd be likely to make more lights, but I didn't feel he was the type to take advice too well.

We're going 50+ mph on residential blocks, and though we had the road to ourselves, I was still a little tense. The Woman was somewhat meditative in the backseat with me, and didn't even reach for her seatbelt. Was she afraid to show weakness? I know it's foolish, but I didn't belt myself in, despite my concern. If she wasn't afeared, neither was I.

Still, I'll admit stomping an imaginary brake when we came over a hill at 60 and had to change lanes at the stop light a half-block after to avoid rear-ending an SUV.

On the freeway, I decided to look away from the spedometer when the needle hit 90. We arrived at the airport in about 17 minutes, which is usually a 25-30 minute trip, without traffic. I gave him $40, and felt my blood pressure drop as he sped away, possibly to his crank dealer.

Posted by Your Protagonist at 02:16 PM | Comments (0)

"Dos margaritas, por favor. Rocas, sin sal."

I fear for my palefaced friends out there. This is the second time I've returned from a vacation sunburnt, and my dermatologist assures me that I have 25 times more natural skin protection than he does.

The Woman avers that his assertion is urban legend, not medical fact. Her mockery suggests that if I were just a squosh more intelligent, I'd wear more sunscreen, more often. As it is, I think I merely rubbed some on my T-zone.

Cancún is beautiful, despite the fact that it's also a stark presentation of how Brand America has been exported -- quite successfully. The strip in from the airport is dotted with familiar franchises like Tony Roma's, Ruth's Chris, T.G.I. Fridays, and other players from your local shopping mall.

Not a novel observation, I know. But it's odd how the place has been terraformed to accommodate the tourist trade. I'll have to do more research, as I'm curious about how they turned Cancún from a tranquil tropical spot with 38,000 people in 1971 to semi-Vegas sprawl that's now home to more than a million.

These stats are courtesy of our corpulent, cheerful cab driver, who've I've chosen to call "Gordo." He was inhaling some chile-corn salad out of a paper cup when we flagged him down outside the market. He never stopped talking, and twice tried to sell me some marijuana, so maybe I should take these factoids with a grain of salt.

Market 28, Downtown Cancun

Each hotel is sloped and staggered to remind us of the Mayan pyramids that are less than two hours' drive, usually via a tour bus that'll offer lunch and a chance to stop and stop at a flea market with grossly inflated prices. Even though we were there during the off-season, we paid U.S rates for everything.

A club sandwich in Cancun was about $8.50, which is what I would have paid down the street at home. The silver bracelet that was bargained down to $80 at the flea market was purchased for $40 and change at the airport, and would have been closer to $25 in Ensenada.

By my second day, I was developing a good sense of guilt about being a tourist -- no one could possibly be as friendly as everyone was trying to be. These people were working so hard to get a tip, a sale, a fare, and the common thread was always a broad smile and, "OK my friend?"

If I had to work that hard to be pleasant to these tourists -- these overfed folks lucky enough to be born middle-class in a developed nation -- just so I could make some kind of a living, well, yeah, I'd probably do it. But rest assured that it would piss me off mightily. From what I observed, about half of us tourists were nice enough, maybe 25% would go out of their way to be polite and gracious, and the rest were just boors.

My most embarassing moment? Handing a soggy 100-peso note to a hotel bartender while dripping and blinking the sand out of my eyelashes. He seemed not to care or notice.

I actually saw a T-shirt for sale with a cartoony Bubba reading, "This ain't a big belly -- it's a fuel tank for a SEX MACHINE!" At the airport on the way home, a young Korean guy was wearing his "I'm shy but I have a BIG DICK" shirt proudly. I think he's lying on both counts.

We had a truly memorable meal in the hotel's Mexican restaurant. The place is open until midnight, so we poked our heads in the door at 11:30 p.m. our second night, only to see that there were no patrons, only workers.

We went back the next night a few hours earlier, and we were greeted cordially by Nicolas and Orlando, the two waiters on deck that evening. Again, we were the only patrons, so they lavished us with attention and good humor that seemed genuine. It was almost like they were glad to have something to do, if I may project that much. (I've had lame service jobs, and slow days can actually be worse than busy ones, trust me. You have all kinds of time to consider how much you really don't like your work.)

At Orlando's suggestion, we had the special, the Mixed Seafood Grill for Two: grilled lobster tail, langostinos, shrimp, scallops, mahi mahi and salmon, along with various sauces, rice and vegetables. It's the best thing I've eaten in recent memory and along with dos margaritas, Nicolas poured us each free shots of 1800 along with our café con leche.

They swept past occasionally to see how were were doing, but mainly, they seemed to argue soccer and sing along with the music that was being pumped in -- traditional, romantic torch songs. Of all the people I encountered down there, Nicolas and Orlando seemed to enjoy their jobs the most.

It was a beautiful place to be. Our plane got in after dark, so I didn't really observe much on the shuttle van in from the airport besides the hotels and the other riders. When we got to the room, I think I put our bags down, handed Her the room service menu, and passed out diagonally on the Sheraton Sweet Sleeper like a drunken sailor. She awakened me by whispering in my ear gently. I response, I kissed her, fell upon the food tray ravenously, and went promptly back to sleep. I believe She drank both margaritas.

Late the next morning when I woke up, she was standing by the window. "I want you to see something," she said, drawing open the curtain dramatically to reveal a white beach and water that was every color of blue. A few minutes later, someone parasailed at balcony level on the beachfront.

We spent at least two hours in the water every day, but we never did get to the snorkeling we'd planned on Isla de Mujeres. Plenty of time for that on the Big Trip coming up in a few months. Travelling during the off-season is highly recommended. There were never more than a hundred or so people on our stretch of the beach, and we had the hotel's pools to ourselves each night after dark. One night, she pointed out that Orion was far lower in the sky than usual, and I flashed back to a similar moment on Guam, when I had the same thought.

If you've never floated on your back at a different lattitude and looked at the constellations, you should.

Posted by Your Protagonist at 12:33 PM | Comments (0)

December 06, 2004

The squeaky wheel gets a return call.

One of the gym's co-owners left a voice mail for me this afternoon to follow up on the cranky note I left behind.

I tried to keep myself from turning into the aggrieved customer who suddenly has someone's ear. You know the type; they blather on at great length, so glad for a somewhat interested audience that their salient point is drowned in a torrent of tangential thoughts.

I kept it simple, describing my occasional run-ins with Chatty Kathies who are also committed to cardiovascular health. I suggested that I probably wouldn't be allowed to sing along with my headphones for an entire workout, and mentioned the corollation to heavy perfume and appropriate attire.

The owner did a fine job of customer service, empathizing with my concerns and validating them by indicating that she'd been annoyed similarly in the past. She said she'd be talking to her partner about it, and I hope she wasn't just shining me on.

Before I got off the line, I let her know about the new vogue of cell phone booths. These vestibules are popping up in restaurants and other public spaces.

I may even print out a few of these articles and leave them for her consideration. Nothing like a little follow-up to motivate someone.

I should contact this company to see about designing a modular Cone of Silence that could be used to keep inconsiderate assholes away from decent folk like myself. I'd be doing a solid for others who honor our social contract, and I might make some long green in the process. Looks like cell phone booths might be a really hot space, if I might appropriate the silver tongue of the fatuous asshole I recently encountered.

Cell phones are here to stay, as are the dickheads who don't know when or where to use them.

Posted by Your Protagonist at 11:24 PM | Comments (0)

December 05, 2004

Roll your own title for this one.

I just tuned away from The McLaughlin Group to a comedy with Dean and Jerry because I couldn't take the inanity.

Pardon me, but I'm in a bit of a mood.

I went to the gym to work out on the elliptical, but cut short my session because of the jackass a few machines away who was offering a friend detailed career advice -- a 20-minute pitch for why his buddy should quit his job and come work for him.

smassholeoncellatgym.jpg

After all, it's a hot space, and he's this close to securing funding. He's having a meeting with the money people just this week. The guy on the other end of the phone would have to be a fool to pass up this oppo. Or so I heard.

In excruciating detail.

Sadly, my headphones only cancel out ambient noise, not loquacious assholes. I got a headache from turning them up loud enough to block him out, and then decided that, as a matter of fact, an extended conversation on your cell phone while you're sharing a public space is actually fucking inappropriate.

"Excuse me."

He turned with great effort after I repeated myself, never breaking stride.

"Yeah?"

"Is there any chance of you finishing that call out in the hallway?

"No. But I'll get off in a few minutes. Look, I've got to go, I'm at the gym. You need to remember that the window is closing on this soon ..."

And so on, for at least two and a half minutes more. He may have gone on longer, but I can't say, as I'd gathered my belongings and made a beeline for the front desk.

The guy who hands out towels is affable, but I don't know how much he has on the ball. He indicated that they don't have a cell phone policy, but did concede my point that the existing policy that requires patrons to dress appropriately and to refrain from wearing heavy perfumes validated my inquiry.

I filled out a comment card for the owner/manager:

I'd like to know if you have a policy regarding the use of cell phones in public areas. I've been distracted a number of times by members who make long calls while still on the machine. Please contact me at your convenience -- I'm considering looking for a new gym.

We'll see if that merits a timely response. Hmm. I just realized how terse and official-sounding I am right now. I sound ... clenched.

Luckily, the Bass is doing its thing, and The Woman is clickety-clacking with her feet up in her Ikea rocker. There's a cat asleep under a comforter next to me, and another on the ottoman. A pan full of noodles, sauce and cheese is baking quietly, and we'll finish the end of a bottle of fine wine her parents gave her, if it hasn't already turned. When will I remember to purchase a wine stopper?

When I came home and told Her all about it, she suggested something I'd thought of at the time:

"Sweetie? Yeah, I'm still at the gym. Listen, you wouldn't believe this asshole working out next to me. He's been on the phone for the last twenty minutes, half-berating/half-conning his pal to join him in some fekakte startup. No, I did ask him nicely if he'd take it outside, but he told me to go eff myself. Yeah, I can't remember the last time I saw someone be such a dick, either."

Posted by Your Protagonist at 11:03 PM | Comments (0)

December 04, 2004

Out of her hair for two hours, seventeen minutes.

Thanksgiving was great.

We drove 15 hours there and 13 hours back to spend four days with my folks. They loved Her, as expected.

Our return kicked off the first full week of "taking a break."

I started by attending to mundane personal tasks that I never got around to while I was working full-time: getting the title from the loan company that held the note on my VW, quotes from an insurance broker, securing the last paycheck from my former employer.

When you have 83.6 hours of vacation accrued, it's only because you're working too damn much. Don't argue with me on this one.

By Monday afternoon, my to-do list was to-done, and I was in need of direction. The Woman makes a good living working from home, so I was wary of encroaching.

Instead, I kept busy with books, computer games and multo, multo episodes of Law & Order. The Series 2 TiVo records up to 80 hours, and at any given time, we've got at least 5 hours of Dick Wolf's punchy morality tales stacked up on the hard drive.

Mike Post really is something, although he seems to have given up on scoring each episode individually. The shows from the first few seasons have discrete soundtracks, but in later years, the incidental music starts to sound canned. With three L&O series on the air, I imagine it's hard work.

It was after I shared this observation with The Woman that she suggested I get some fresh air, even if it was only on my way to our local movie palace.

By the time I was out of the shower, she'd pulled up a matinee for my consideration.

"Starts at 1:30, so you can definitely make it. Check it out."

She turned her laptop so I could read the Moviefone summary. "Not trying to get rid of you or anything," she said, entirely umprompted.

The synopsis was for "Burn," which was touted as an notable festfilm about two writers and the mindgames they play. As the twin demons of writer's block and professional jealousy were central plot points, my interest was piqued.

I was one of only about 20 in the theater as the lights went down. A few oldsters, a handful of clearly unemployed cineastes, and assorted film nerds with a jones for stale popcorn and movie miasma.

The trailers ran through -- slickly packaged indie films produced by major studios, and guaranteed not to overly challenge an audience.

And then, the main attraction.

It started off with a blaring Ennio Morricone soundtrack (is there any other kind?) and lurid Caribbean montages, which was not at all what I was expecting from a taut psycho-thriller.

Stranger still was the sight of Marlon Brando wearing 19th C. noblewear, standing sternly on the prow of a clipper cutting the waves along the Western Antilles. A toothless old salt breathlessly shouted exposition into his ear for five minutes, establishing the milieu: a Portuguese colony whose largest export was sugar cane, and whose largest problem was the untenable practice of slavery.

For you see, Moviefone got it wrong. The film offered was "Queimada," also known as "Burn!"

I blinked hard at the screen for a few minutes, and sure, I thought about leaving. And then I heard a voice in my head that was so clear, it could have come from the seat behind mine:

"What else have you got going this afternoon?"

Some might have been disheartened by the question, but I settled into my seat to view what turned out to be a somewhat insipid, yet entirely unexpected movie.

Posted by Your Protagonist at 09:54 PM | Comments (0)