Java City Cafe

I admit it: I'm nutty about coffee shops with wireless Internet access. In the United States, that usually means a Starbucks or, in California, a Coffee Bean. I'm not sure about Caribou Coffee out in the Midwest, but still, at best, there are a few chains, and try as they might with the occasional gingerbread latte, they aren't anything special. They smell of java but reek of sameness.

Enter Korea. I'm in a shameless state of bliss. I type this entry at a Java City Cafe with about 1500 square feet of room, plump pinstriped chairs, cherrywood tables that don't look like they could be dragged onto the patio at a patron's whim. There are ten other chains with equal attention to detail. About half of them imitate Starbucks, but the others transcend it.

I hope they stay in business. But I look around and this enormous cafe is empty. The perfect lighting falls on my laptop, one man reading a book, and two couples. That might be enough to fill the corner Coffee Bean, but here, we're so far apart we could fit additional coffee kiosks between us.

And yes, Korea has those too. I photographed a few today in a futile quest for the Chinese embassy. I'll post them at the fotki site soon.

The World Turned...

In Korea, "La Paz" isn't a Tex-Mex restaurant, it's a coffee shop.

But never fear: burritos are available, from Hyundai.

Don't Know How Long This Link Will Work

Click here

Congratulations to Zac, Dean, Julia, Monica, Farhan, Atish, Michael, the two Davids, Miss Paul, and Dr. Berchin...

Shorn

One pastel smoothie bar in the CoEx Mall advertises that "we are coffee." Nearby an actual Coffee Bean attracts a trickle of patrons; behind it a larger Starbucks is crowded to the brim. As for me, I've found a Holly's Coffee about one underground block away, where I'm not sipping my green tea--since I plan to nap in a few minutes. Afterward I'll be meeting David at the thirteenth entrance to a designated subway station.

Elsewhere in the Coex Catacombs I got my hair cut. Haircuts in places where no one speaks your language are not only fun, they're low-stress: there's no need to make small talk, and I don't have to figure out how I want my hair styled, since there's no way to communicate it anyhow.

The stylist, who introduced herself as Sohyung, had an assistant whose job was to occasionally tap what looked like an eraser against my face and neck.

The Closest I've Ever Been to Hawaii

After a long absence, I'll see if I can rouse this blog back to life.

Last night I returned to Korea. On the plane, I sat next to a small Japanese man in a tophat.

I'm back to work with David Kimel to start an academic competition for middle and/or high school students. We've dubbed it (tentatively) Scholar's Cup. Our hope is that someday it would become the Scholar's World Cup. I'm convinced it could succeed, but as with many plans, it's not clear how to execute it. We'll see what happens. But something's bound to.

David found me a place to stay: the Hawaii Hotel. It's a mid-sized, perfectly rectangular black structure with small windows looking out on a construction pit. This is how he describes it:

"...in the area, very comfortable (American television, Internet access in every room, near a giant mall, etc.) and pretty cheap (about 50-60 bucks a night, if memory serves)."

I should add that it's also the most decked-out hotel room I've ever been in. There's a Sparkletts-style water dispenser. Gigantic shampoo, conditioner and body wash pumps. Shaving cream, toothpaste, something called an "emulsion." A computer with an LCD monitor. Robes. Sandals. And, tucked discreetly by the bed, two complimentary packets of condoms.

"It's a business hotel," the woman at the front desk assured me, when I asked for a discount.

I see. Business. Uh-huh.

"G for Gendetta"

Not sure why, but my gmail account was suspended overnight, for "up to 24 hours" (though you never know.) With typical google humor, it describes this as a "lockdown in sector four"; more seriously, it alleges that my account violated gmail's terms of service.

I figure one of two things did it: the e-mail I sent to coaches about the resurrected message board, or my downloading messages to Thunderbird to respond to on my way home. Since I send e-mails to coaches from time to time and this hasn't happened before, it was probably the latter. Either way, I'm probably "going dark" as an e-correspondent till it revives.

All in all, this is the perfect bookend to a trip that included my luggage visiting Tennessee, my cell phone taking up permanent residence at O'hare, my solitary confinement at an abandoned airport in Madison at 2 am, and my (brief) assignment to someone else's hotel room.

La Vida Loca

I don’t write random musings very often anymore, which maybe makes it even more cliché than usual that I would choose to write on a dark beach on the coast of Mexico. I’m sitting about twenty feet from the water. It foams but doesn’t rise very high. The Beatles are singing “Let it Be” somewhere in the nearby hotel; they’re louder than the surf. I once karaoked that song in Boise; another time, in Shanghai. The song is bittersweet enough without the memories.

I walked nine kilometers today, maybe ten. From the center of Mazatlan to this “golden” periphery peppered with motels and mid-tier resorts. I limped the last few blocks, but I don’t think it’s my age catching up to me. It seems to be more a matter of bad shoes and thin socks. Conceivably I should also exercise more.

I’m not really sure why I’m in Mexico. At least in London, I had a secret mission and could enjoy the first class seat. Here, I think I came to prove that I could follow through on a travel whim. I had, after all, just cancelled a trip to East Timor in order to work with Bill Cathers at L.A. High this coming Saturday. More than once I had driven toward the airport, then not actually gotten on a plane. So this time, I did. It wasn’t unlike my motivations for doing Decathlon the second time. Regret minimization.

Also, I had told Chuan-Mei I would come—and this was my last chance to make good on that. Of course, I had abortively visited so often that she assumed I wasn’t actually flying here and made other plans. So I’ve been wandering Mazatlan on my own. Not a bad thing. I needed the peace and quiet. I do my best storytelling with an audience, but not my best planning.

I caught the tail end of Mazatlan’s Mardi Grass. Steaming crowds of—Mazatlani?—crowding the beachfront to watch a series of floats. The floats were crawling with dancers, some disinterested, others flaunting their curves. One float was for Alamo Rent a Car. I bought a coconut pastry of some kind, which left my fingers oily, then a cup of corn kernels mashed with cream and cheese. It was tasteless, maybe because I asked them to hold the chili; I tossed it out at a pharmacy where I bought water. I had expected it to taste of Chiapas and my journey with Sanjai.

I think this moment may have made the whole overnight venture worthwhile. Writing on the beach. I’ve always been a sucker for melodrama. Yet there’s something to it. Buried in me—perhaps entombed, at this point—is still that writer who loves words more than alpacas. It takes a lot to let him out. But when he comes out—or, as he is doing now, pokes a tremulous finger through a crack in the wall—he proves that he wants to come out.

I hear threads of The Hunchback of Notre Dame in my head. Memories of the summer after my sophomore year, driving to Venice Beach to meet Sasha and Jessica. Two years earlier I had tossed a Frisbee and run back and forth through Serrania Park. At night I would sprint through a different park with Ali and Jeff. Already I already felt like that had been the distant past. It’s startling how quickly Stanford installed a wall for me between high school and the thereafter.

A lighthouse blinks in the distance. A faro. Last year, I worked for a Grupo Faro, in Quito. That almost feels like Frisbee already. The walls come up more often now. I finished the “thesis” the first couple days of April, from a beautiful hotel in Taipei—after a week of good times and transient friendships.

Taipei. China. Singapore. When did Asia begin to feel more comfortable than Los Angeles? Maybe I am a natural expatriate—or someone who needs regular doses of alien-ness. One could argue that I always feel different from those around me, and that being in a foreign country allows me to manifest that difference, shamelessly.