the not-so differences

At the computer at work. At the computer at home. Download something. Design something. Listen to new Beirut album. Buy the cheapest groceries possible (factoring prep time heavily). Do laundry, take shower, eat, sleep, go to the bathroom, try to communicate with people. It’s not really so different. Think about the future, think about the past, think about girls, worry excessively, be lazy. Make mental notes that float around, occasionally latching onto something. Think about what other people are doing in San Francisco, in Glasgow, in Israel, what I could be doing, here or there. What I am doing, why. Not really that different.

Listen to new Jens Lekman album. Zone out. Stretch. Think about doing yoga. Draw uncertain and unreliable conclusions. Change mind. Free good, free great, feel tired, try to stay awake, feel bad, mopey, fall asleep, not want to wake up, not want to sleep. Layout different possible futures. Become determined to live in the moment. Live vicariously through other people. Think about other people. Think about that last sentence in “Catcher in the Rye”, the poignant one that relates to these feelings. Wish had the internet at house to look it up. Vow not to get internet at house, living in India should be different: people living in India don’t have internet in their houses. But, yes they do, and cheaply too. It’s not so different. Not really.

First first nots etc.

I am yet to blow my nose in India. I have, however, in an attempt to alleviate my snotty, dribbling proboscis wiped it on my shirt, on my hand, probably on my elbow, definitely on a towel, snot-rocketed, sniffled my heart out, scrunched my nose and upper lip adamantly, and, yes, even swallowed some. You’d think there’d be some multinational drooling over the potential of the tissue market here, but I’m guessing it’s a cultural thing which is the direct result of an economic thing—similar to how they eschew forks and knives for fingers…and they probably have better things to think about than tissues anyways. But not me, I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about tissues and what happens to the mucus in these people’s noses throughout the course of a spicy meal, of which there are many, or flu encounter.

I am also yet to wipe my ass in India. This is, luckily for both of us, a happier story. Instead of toilet paper here they have hoses, almost shower heads really, next to the toilet that you use to “hose off”. Not too bad actually, except that I can’t use toilet paper to blow my nose, although I could see what effect spraying my face with one of the hoses has. All-in-all, this emphasis on getting by without waste is especially appropriate considering I don’t think the trash gets far beyond the street corner where it’s burned, eaten by animals, picked through by people, or incorporated into the landscape. And recycling falls under the same policy. And I live in, according to some source somewhere, the second most livable city in all of India, after New Delhi. Makes you wonder what the world will be like in fifty years, although most things make me wonder about that.

Something else entirely, but still related to thinking about the world in fifty years: one Home Depot = (approx.) 800 small, kiosk shops in India. Today I walked by a shop, probably about 300 sq. ft., that simply sold door handles. And it wasn’t as if this shop was in an area reserved for handyman type things, it was next to a pick-the-live-chicken-you-want-and-we’ll-kill-it-and-cook-it-store and some “Cell phone Mega World” (both approx. the same square footage as door handle store). So basically, and I hope Sam Walton is listening unless he’s dead which I think he is and good riddance I hope his kids burn in hell with him, if someone constructed a giant dome above these shops and charged everyone to sell underneath their dome, well, this thought doesn’t make much sense. But the thing is that slowly all these small shops will get engulfed and melted and deranged until they form a Home Depot unless of course the world ends first, which might have to be the case because there’s 4 times as many Indians as Americans and that means 4 times as many Home Depots and is that what anyone but Home Depot CEOs want? Maybe? This is scary. I’m not too hot on the idea of door handle stores either. I didn’t talk to anyone today really, so I think that’s starting to show through.

I ate dinner at pizza corner this evening. I’d really rather not discuss the actually food. The ambiance was satisfactory though; there was air conditioning and lots of happy birthday signs (no actual happy birthdays though I don’t think) and families and a TV with a cricket game on and free newspapers. The whole meal with soda and garlic bread cost about US $6, which was, unfortunately, not really a good deal. The memorable event though was that I failed to leave a tip because I wasn’t sure if people tipped at restaurants in India. I decided they didn’t because in Taiwan they didn’t and they’re both in Asia, right? Regardless, the person I texted inquiring about tip-policy didn’t get back to me until about ten minutes too late. So I am a white, rich (Jewish) bastard who can never show his face a pizza corner again, not even his my birthday.

Weeds across the world

The first season of Weeds, a Showtime original series now in it’s third season, was categorically unspectacular: the premise was decent, the cast was varied, the characters slightly were contrived, the plot partially engaging. I remember watching those first episodes with my ex-girlfriend during that eternally bright and sunny and lackadaisical period of college between freshman year and senior year, which now seems eternally distant and for the most part a gap in the space-time continuum. Of course we would smoke a bowl before watching, and, I believe it was Mondays at ten, actively veg out with nothing to anticipate anytime in the immediate future but paper deadlines and parties with all the same people.

I watched the second season of Weeds, in which almost every episode was a nail biter and the show became a weekly must, in Palm Desert, CA. My college roommate and I, recently graduated, were living in his parents’ vacation home while we edited our movie about drive-in movie theatres, which we had recently spent two months on the road filming. We would work all day, starting around one pm and finishing around ten or eleven, after which with nothing, and I mean NOTHING, better to do we would smoke a bowl and watch the new episodes at the same time but separately on our individual computers, wearing headphones. When you spend every waking hour with someone for months the small pleasures like watching TV with them lose their appeal. Monday nights were big for us in those days when I sometimes wouldn’t leave the house for an entire week except to ride my bike around the abandoned (it’s too hot to live in Palm Desert during the summer) gated community and watch the sprinklers bring the golf course back to life in anticipation of the fall retreat and wealthy middle-aged vacation home people.

Well now it’s season three of Weeds and I’ve seen the first four episodes, with my initial reaction being that they fall somewhere between season one and three in quality. Even though the intensity is there it seems a bit forced, still feeding off the season 2 finale perhaps, and the plot is dragging and diverging. But I have faith that it’s all part of the master plan because it’s good to have faith in certain things like that. And for this season I’m in India. I’ve been downloading the episodes at work and watching them holed-up at home alone, unfortunately without herbal enhancement. Not yet confident enough to deal with the heat and the cows and the post-apocalyptic chaos which apparently has ancient roots and underlying harmony and could one day save the world, suburban Orange Country and planned communities resonate well inside my head, not to mention remind me why I’m over here. One giant leap across the world; one-hundred baby steps to the local shop, and one-hundred more after that, and pretty much every one-hundred baby steps there’s a small shop with a Wal-Mart somehow crammed inside of it. And I’ve got big plans to hop in one of the ubiquitous auto rickshaws tomorrow and bargain the price down to less than half and venture out of this neighborhood into the city of 8+ million.

But tonight I’m wondering about season 4 of Weeds, assuming season three doesn’t bomb and the show gets cancelled, and what I’ll associate it with, like the first time I heard Pavement or the first Lord of the Rings movie I saw, where I remember more the where and when than the what. Not to mention the how or the why, which are what I get to think about in the meantime I guess. So stay tuned…

Ode to Giant Bug

Oh, giant bug
How I ode to you
For someday I will own you
But that day is surely not today

You sit quietly
As I sweat and shiver
In anticipation of your next move
A move I fear may bring you close to me

I’ll go to great, great lengths to avoid you
I’ll lock myself in another room
I know you are harmless
I think
But you are so, so revolting

To imagine your green guts
And the way your wings would feel
Against my face
I’ll spend all night hiding from you
Blast you to hell!

But yes, someday I will own you
And I’ll know just what to do
How to catch and dispose of you
Without dreading you next move

Because I am bigger, stronger, smarter, and everything else is on my side too
You’ll be dead before long don’t you know giant bug?
And then I’ll be through with you
But I hate you so much
It’s quite pathetic
You make me feel pathetic

So for now I ode to you
But someday, someday I’ll get it and you

I just keep telling myself…

Welcome to India.Ari

Welcome to India: to pass through security you must walk through a highly suspicious metal detector seemingly made out of wood, probably fake wood, and place your bag on what appears to be a conveyor belt moving through a metal box with a man passively watching something on the metal box, presumably a screen, but more likely…the metal box. Amazingly your luggage arrives and the man holding a name card with your name on it is right there near the front of the crowd.

The man, a young man about your age, makes a call or two on his cell phone, interjecting an English word here or there, and says a taxi is coming. Then he makes another call and the guy he’s talking to is all the sudden 50 feet away on the other side of some motorbikes. You lift your bag over the bikes and walk through, as they are parked far to close together to fit you and your bag between, and follow him to his taxi. Apparently the man who was holding the name card and the taxi driver are good friends. Your bag finally fits into the trunk after significant manipulation of both the bag and the trunk and you find your way into the car. The driver enters on the opposite side of the car that you are used to and from then on nothing is familiar anymore, at least not for a while.

You are on a road but there are no lanes. People driving cars, auto rickshaws, scooters, motorcycles, bikes, are all weaving in and out of each other in what to you seems like the kind of graceful disarray you might arrive at if you turned the world on it’s head. Your driver seems to be honking with his forearm as he drives, everyone seems to be honking, ceaseless honking. While you sit in the back and try to keep your mouth from gaping open and gathering dirt and dust and whatever else is flying around your two friends up front are engaged in some sort of heated discussion, you imagine maybe about cricket. Eventually, a very long eventually, you arrive at a stoplight and people actually stop, and this surprises you. Then the driver will turn on some Indian pop music and everything will seem ok, even great, for a while, you even think you notice yourself laughing out loud. You arrive at some smaller streets where you can see remnants of old stop sign indicators, but clearly, very clearly, after only being in the country for one hour you are already very certain of this, nobody would stop at a stop sign in India.

You pull up at your new home around 10 PM. Your temporary host briefs you on the padlocks and the lights and the AC and the bathroom doors that don’t yet exist but will apparently materialize tomorrow. Your first is impression is once again slightly mouth gaping, but you focus on the fact that the AC works, there are few bugs, far fewer than the dizzying array you expected, and that you are deliriously tired and should go to sleep and avoid any further impressions. Sleep then hits you on the head with a hammer.

You wake up in the morning with a bug bite on your neck. Today will be your first full day in India, you think. Today you will ride on the back of a small motorcycle with no helmet and you will experience several power outages: welcome to India.

Malay over in Malaysia

Malay, the language of Malaysia and Malaysians, is, I’ve decided after careful scrutiny, a lot like scrambled Spanish without any accents, or maybe Italian. In my opinion, which took at least several minutes to form, it’s a very flat language with an off-putting lack of phonetic opportunity. For example, Taxi is spelled “Taksi,” even though, as far as I’m aware, the letter “x” does exist in their alphabet. Other interesting observations: it’s very hard to find a word in which the letter “a” doesn’t appear at least once, the word for “and” is “dan,” and I’m pretty sure the word for “water” is “air,” unless it means “drinking” instead.

So that’s where my thoughts rest at this juncture, somewhere around hour 3 of my 7-hour layover in Kuala Lumpur. As we descended over the city I was able to catch a peek of the Petronas Twin Towers, which means in the last day I’ve seen the two tallest buildings in the world. The tallest being the 101 Tower (101 because 100 is perfect and it’s better than perfect) in Taipei, Taiwan, of which I actually got to ascend (and descend) in the fastest elevator in the world—which apparently should add substantial wow to the already wow experience of ascending the tallest building in the world. My observation is that tall buildings as far more impressive from the ground than the sky, but impressive either way. The 101 Tower has a 65-ton ball which hangs about eighty-five floors up to decrease vacillation, so that’s impressive.

Back to here and now. This airport has special lounges for each airline, all located on a special second floor for lounges. These lounges have entryways that resemble those of 5-star hotels, and I imagine spas and massages and alcohol behind the smiling concierges but am still too unfamiliar, and let’s face it, stingy, to actually proceed beyond window shopping. There are also “movie lounges” in the middle of the concourses: four TVs all facing outward, and, from what I’ve seen, all playing the movie “airheads.” There are free internet hubs and free WIFI, motion-sensing escalators, and women in headscarves reading Malcolm Gladwell’s “Tipping Point.”

So far I’ve toured the premises, changed my Taiwanese Dollars into Indian Rupees, which was surprisingly satisfying and may become a pastime for me, changing currencies, it felt oddly like getting paid, especially if you don’t think about things like exchange rates or conversion fees, and been accosted by scavenging cologne salespeople. My future plans include reading and probably eating at Sbarro pizza—a week of Asian food has created a craving for something with no assembly required. Just so you know, “pizza” in Malay is “peetsa”…I wouldn’t doubt it in any case.

Friday Night in Taipei

It’s my first, last, and only Friday night in Taipei. Well, to be specific, it’s the evening of Friday the 17th of August 2007. I’m at dinner with some friends; all of whom I’ve met within the last 24 hours and probably won’t meet again after the next 24. But really, it’s earlier, an hour or two before dinner, and I’ve just arrived home from a day of sightseeing and museum touring with some PhD students of my dad’s former PhD student, friends of a friend I guess you could say. They call themselves Peter and Phil, those are their English names in any case: upon being asked how they arrived at such creative aliases Phil attributes “Phil” to his 7th-grade English class name, bestowed upon him by his teacher, and Peter says “Peter” is simple to pronounce—astoundingly they make good Phils and Peters, respectively. Phil is Christian, very Christian, and once informed that I’ve been to Israel persistently inquires about my experience there. He even gets me to teach him how to say “I love you” in Hebrew, and when I ask him if he’s fallen for a Jewish woman (often ill-advised) he blushes and laughs it off. Peter is 27, still lives with his family, granted that’s not unusual this side of the pacific, and is constantly doing the wrong thing in the most adorable ways: walking the wrong way, twice, as we try to exit the subway, going up to the counter to inquire about his food while it’s being brought to the table, trying to get onto the wrong bus. I feel pretty secure in presuming that Peter is a virgin, yet I can’t help feeling a strong admiration for him. Peter and Phil are both Chemical Engineering grad students. I enjoy their company and we have fun talking about things like Kobe Bryant (basketball is always a good topic with males from abroad), girls (3 single guys…), and food, but by the time I say goodbye to them our conversation, as well as our legs, are exhausted and I imagine myself falling asleep early and relaxing throughout most of the next day as all of Taiwan waits to hear the roar and retreat of the approaching super typhoon.

Now it’s 2 AM and Niels and I are getting into a cab that’s been sitting by the curb waiting for us for at least 10 minutes. We are leaving an ex-pat club called “Bliss” where we just witnessed some Russian-Asian techno/dub/bass-core music, primarily from downstairs where it was possible to keep up a conversation as well. Alissa, a native Taiwanese girl, and Morgan, an exuberant canuck with something like pathological life-lust garnished with egoism, departed in a cab just ahead of us. Earlier in the evening we all had dinner together at a traditional Japanese-style restaurant where we ate “Hot Pot,” which consists of choosing a soupy-broth (I got Korean-style pickle soup) of which you boil various vegetable and meats in all by yourself, right in front of you, you even control the heat and everything, and then you eat it. It was very tasty and fun, Japanese are good at having fun with their food, and my tongue is still burnt with reminders of the boiling chicken and fried tofu. I met Niels, a Swedish grad student, on the subway as we tagged along with Morgan to meet Alissa, whom he had never actually met before but had talked to extensively via an online dating site before coming out to Taiwan several weeks ago. The more questions I ask Morgan—how?/what?/what?/why?/how?—the more it becomes abundantly clear that he is basically in Taiwan just to meet these girls which he has been courting online for the last however long, probably long. And that he’s already met several of them and several of their parent’s. But I take it as testament to something that he’s still staying at the hostel, which he attributes his prior accommodations “just not working out.” So we get off the subway and meet Alissa, 20, (for the first time), Morgan, 30, gives her a rose, and Niels, 27, and I, 23, stand facing each other a little awkwardly but mostly contemplating beer and cigarettes and how we want them.

After making introductions someone else walks up to Morgan, a male this time, and they hug and rejoice with each other. Apparently this “friend” of Morgan’s, who was also meeting us at the train station and hasn’t seen Morgan in over 10 years, and I believe is one of those sons-of-father’s-good-friends with whom sons-of-fathers will so often develop relationships with based on convenience or need, has lived in Taiwan for the last 10 years—an English teacher who wishes he wasn’t English, or Canadian in this case. And he’s recently married a native Taiwanese girl, so maybe we can start to see where Morgan is getting some of his ideas. We get some beer and cigarettes at a local 7-Eleven and go to Leon’s house, Morgan’s male friend, and really squeeze in to this maybe, very maybe, 500 sq. ft. apartment and begin to settle into the damp, humid, pre-typhoon heat, and I open my beer called “Bar,” which according to the label is fun anytime, anywhere, and just as we’re settling down it’s time to go to dinner and Leon has to go meet his wife and prepare for their Russian-electro/noise show later that night at “Bliss” which we’ll all bare witness too.

Dinner, as I previously mentioned, is novel and good, and I mostly enjoy myself except for the strange bouts of “confess to a Jew” that Morgan undergoes in which he tells me where/why/and how he feels deep down, maybe in his soul, maybe in his “Jewish gene” (at which point he informs me of the likely existence, both scientifically and in his own DNA, of a “Jewish gene”) that he should be Jewish and has thought long and hard about converting and has spent time in Israel and how he sees some of himself in Jacob and I’m thinking about how this girl he just met isn’t paying attention, isn’t pretending to pay attention, and he sure didn’t come all the way to Taiwan to convert to Judaism, so maybe this could wait until another time. And eventually I think he realizes this and the rest of the meal is semi-normal with Niels and I playing with some octopus legs and Morgan trying to redeem himself with Alissa, which he may have eventually succeeded in doing by 2 in the morning when he left in a cab with her.

But now it’s 3 PM the next day and I haven’t seen Morgan yet, and he’s not the type of guy to stay tucked away in the corner bunk of his room in the dark typing obscure things like some guys are, so I’m assuming he succeeded in some way or another. I just hope he doesn’t convince himself that it’s time to move to Taiwan, which he was already pretty far along in convincing himself of. Or maybe he should move here. I’m starting to think he might be in some legal trouble or going through a painful divorce back home as I sit here and write this. Earlier I said goodbye to Niels who was departing for Zurich and graduate school and fair-skinned, protestant companionship. I liked Niels a lot though and I got his email in case, well just in case I guess. It’s sweaty and hot in this room which I share with 5 other males, all Asian. We smile at each other and sleep in each other’s company, it’s not so bad. In two days I’ll be on a plane to India, where things will be hotter and sweatier and there will be more Asian’s, so many more, for me to share my company with.

Asia.Ari

Well, I arrived in Taipei this morning after my long and relaxing tour of the West Coast. It's nearly noon here and I haven't slept much in the last 24 hours. My dad's ex-graduate student, CK, picked me up at the airport and brought me to a hostel, something I don't think I would have had much luck accomplishing on my own. In fact, if it weren't for him I'd probably still be sleeping in the airport terminal. Unfortunately check-in isn't until 2 pm, so I'm stuck sitting in the lobbying anxiously awaiting a shower and a bed.

I know it's lame to have just stepped foot in Asia for the first time in my life and to already be sitting in the common room in the 13th floor of building blogging about it...but I'm hot and exhausted and don't care. Outside it's crowded and muggy and without anyone to urge me on I just don't have the motivation.

So, bottom line: I made it to Asia and everything seems OK, the next 5 days in Taiwan should be great. The internet apparently switches languages somewhere over the pacific so now I can't understand most of what my computer is telling me, and I need to buy a new suitcase because mine somehow developed a hole.

Dustin' up

Sitting in Dustin’s room in East San Francisco, staring at Dustin type his first entry in a blog I just created for him, several things start to make sense. Dustin is wearing a hat that says “Bud of California,” plaid shorts, and an inside-out t-shirt. The lights are on but entirely unnecessary and the room is scattered with bud clippings and indie-ish VHS films such as Empire Records and Fight Club. We’re both thinking hard and attempting to translate some of those thoughts into worthwhile words. Generally Dustin does nearly nothing productive throughout the course of any given day. Today, however, he decided to try and translate that lack of productivity into a second life, the website Secondlife specifically. The thought of Dustin and his online avatar whittling away their days in unison disturbed me and I decided it would be better for him to have a blog. I’ll be surprised if either of these enterprises endure beyond my departure in several days.

We’re listening to some quintessential Dustin music; drum and bass beats, profane lyrics, high-pitched vocals, all interrupted by some guy speaking Spanish. Dustin says he doesn’t know what to write about, I write about that. It’s all very interesting here in Dustin’s studio apartment. Entering into Dustin’s life for several days feels in a lot of ways like a spiritual retreat during which I can reflect on everything that happens during my time in the real world. We might go walk across the Golden Gate Bridge soon. I wouldn’t mind seeing a movie later, but he’s already seen everything worthwhile.

Dustin just made his first post at http://dustinupandaway.blogspot.com/. He’ll probably go back to “playing” Secondlife now. I might eat something. It’s all very interesting here, even though not much happens. I mostly like it.

America.Ari

It's 10:30 AM here in Bellevue, a wealthy suburb of Seattle located on Samamash lake. I'm staying with my good friend Chris at his parent's house before I fly to San Francisco for five days and then to Taiwan to spend a week with an old family friend before finally going to Chennai, India for a year to work for a small publishing company, Tara Books. Chris and his girlfriend are still asleep, his dad is at work, and his mom is weeding, I can see her out the window. There's a tree being trimmed somewhere nearby and I haven't had my morning coffee yet, but I did do my laundry and folded it all back to the small suitcase which I have packed my life into for the next year.

The phone is ringing, it says EVERGREEN HOSP. Chris's mom finally hears it, but it's already too late. She comes inside anyways. I left Santa Fe, NM about 12 days ago, coming to the west coast to spend a few weeks away from home before leaving the country, mostly visiting friends in San Francisco and Portland. I thought it would be nice to make the transition abroad a gradual one, where I could appreciate the actual transition, shedding my old routines and preparing to take on new ones.

I can't help but consider this the beginning of an odyssey, a perception I attribute to listening to an Of Montreal song one too many times. But really, I'm departing to an exotic, foreign land carrying just a suitcase and a wealth of recent goodbyes with nothing I have to go back to, and everything to look forward to.

Like blogging, I look forward to blogging.

My feet in a hot air balloon basket, looking down on Aurora, OR.