Column Three

Some of this echoes what I already wrote in my blog, but I thought I would post it here:

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Where am I writing this column?

I could be writing it longhand in a notebook overlooking sometimes-Lake Lagunita. But let’s assume for a moment that I’m on a laptop, and that I require high-speed Internet access to research and procrastinate effectively.

I could be at a coffee shop. A lot of people work in coffee shops nowadays; Starbucks reinvented itself as a place to check your e-mail when it introduced T-Mobile wireless hotspots two years ago, and lots of smaller competitors followed suit. Even McDonald’s is adding wireless Internet access to all its restaurants, with the charming slogan “Bites or Bytes—We Do Both!”

Or, I could be inside an eggshell. But this would require that I be flying Japan Airlines in its new egg-shaped business class seat—redesigned for privacy and comfort, and the ideal way to avoid single serving friends. Several other airlines are introducing wireless Internet access in the sky, including Lufthansa. More would have earlier, but the original venture, called Connexion, lost steam after 9/11 (so did the Concorde, which should have checked with Al Qaeda for scheduling conflicts before holding a public demonstration of its safe return to flight that same September morning.)

I could be at Kinko’s. Kinko’s certainly wants me to be at Kinko’s—it claims to be “your office away from the office”, with no bites required. But frankly, Kinko’s is too much like an office, and not a particularly nice office, for me to want to spend any extra time there (though I did shave at a Kinko’s once. Never again.)

I could be tucked away in a back alley leeching free Internet from an unencrypted source. But this means finding the right alley, which is too time-consuming to be worth it unless you have one of those hotspot tracking devices.

I could be writing while my professor lectures. This is hard in smaller classrooms, but I know at least one person who uses a tablet PC to quietly check e-mail without clicking any keys.

I could be at a municipal park with wireless Internet, like the JFK Park in Cambridge. But when it’s sunny, I can’t see my screen; and this time of year, when it’s not sunny in Cambridge, it’s cold.

I could be at a random motel in western Wisconsin. I’m not, but I did finish a take-home final at one in January. The proprietor was very gracious when I charged into his lobby claiming my paper was an hour overdue; he set me up with a table and a king-sized Snickers bar.

I could be in Half Moon Bay. Like more and more small cities, from Athens to Corpus Christi, Half Moon Bay provides public wireless access anywhere in its downtown area. You can still get a latte with your e-mail at La Di Da Coffee Shop—but now you can take both to go.

Or, I could be at the mall: not just at a café in any wireless-enabled mall (there are lots) but at the Internet Home Alliance’s experimental “Connection Court” in the Willow Bend Shops in Plano, Texas. Unlike the cubicles at Kinko’s, these are plush, featuring Aeron chairs, cherry oak desks, waiting areas with plasma TVs—and yes, easy access to the food court. Laptops are even available in case you left yours in the car.

Or, I could just be at home, or in Tressider. These are both difficult for me, however, as I don’t really live anywhere in particular, and I haven’t been on campus since February.

So—where am I? Here’s the answer: I started this column yesterday in a Boston bookstore café. Then I spilled green tea on my laptop. It kept working for about a minute, long enough for me to e-mail myself a few files—including a thesis that I was about three hours from presenting—before it sizzled fragrantly to a halt.

Afterwards I relocated to my school’s harshly-lit computer cluster for the night. Around eleven, I decided to get a drink. The vending machine only took my dollar bill after a half-dozen tries, and when at last I pressed the Sprite button, it clanged, then gave me a Coke. This reminds me why I avoid computer clusters (and vending machines, which—speaking of innovation—really ought to accept Paypal, or at least credit cards.)

Fortunately, today my backup laptop arrived from California, and proving that it takes a lot to change a bad habit, I’m at another café drinking tea again.

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In his weekly RPG, Daniel answers to the name Cannister; on the Internet (wherever that happens to be) Daniel answers to dan@demidec.com.

Not Named Tina

They guard my apartment while I'm gone (I'm testing the new Blogger Photo feature in Picasa--let's see how it works.)

Sitting on Eggshells

Bin Laden would be pleased: Microsoft Word recognizes Al Qaeda as part of the dictionary. Condoleezza, too.

I'll be spending at least a third of this DemiDec summer in Texas. Here's one place we're likely to hold DemiDec events.

Done with my latte, on to Lapsang Souchong tea. I first drank this after a long hike in Banff with Sheldon. Canada apparently peppers its national parks with teahouses. This particular tea is so smokey that one person behind the counter here at 1369 can't drink it--it reminds him of when his apartment burned down.

Okay, back to writing my column for the Daily. Something I've learned today: If you fly Japan Airlines business class, you get to sit inside an eggshell.

All-Beef Hot Dogs

After a Decathlete from Granada, Molly, observed that she'd seen me in the same red sweater a lot, I wore a new jacket to the California Decathlon competition the next day. It's sort of a rough-cut collarless piece with cool tattoos on the inside. Not my usual jacket; I tend to wear things which are big, yellow and poofy.

Anyways, yesterday I wore it again for my thesis presentation (where I was definitely underdressed among my very professional public policy peers.) Later I stuck my hand in one of its pockets, only to find an unfamiliar receipt for an all-beef hot dog at the Arrowhead Pond.

The receipt was dated March 2004. Nine months before I even bought the jacket. In fact, I've never been to the Pond--but someone apparently wore my jacket there and spent $3 on ground cow. Maybe his date went badly, so he blamed the jacket and returned it. Good thing there are no mustard stains.

After presenting my thesis, owing to the anti-Centrino properties of green tea, I had to work in the Kennedy School computer cluster. There are two drink machines in the hall outside: one serves soda, the other Dasani water and Minute Maid juices. Both refused to take my dollar bills. The soda one eventually relented, so even though I really wanted water, I decided on the next clearest thing, Sprite, and pressed the appropriate button.

The machine did nothing for a while, then grumbled, and finally dropped out a Coca-Cola.

Darn objects.

"Quiche"

A few minutes ago, I spilled hot tea on my laptop. This had two consequences: the laptop sizzled, then stopped. And it now smells pleasantly of green tea and rice.

In two hours, I'm presenting my thesis before members of the faculty and fellow students. This may be difficult given that my PowerPoint presentation is sort of gone, yet I'm surprisingly calm--perhaps as a consequence of the very pleasant grilled-cheese-and-tomato sandwich I enjoyed while the tea was still too hot to drink and destroy things with.

High energy. Low anxiety. Thank you, Weber. Thirty-minute impromptu, here I come.

* * * * *

In other news, the local chowder shop expanded its menu. Its sign now proudly indicates: We now serve "Quiche".

And DemiDec will now serve comic books.

How to Earn a Free Latte

I'm writing this entry from the baggage claim area of the airport in Madison, Wisconsin, after an overnight flight from Los Angeles via Chicago. My suit, sadly, decided to spend an extra hour in Chicago--so I'm waiting for it to arrive on the next flight before I head down to the Wisconsin state competition. I could probably do without the suit, but my alpaca sweater's in the bag too, along with ten little alpacas.

My roommate Sasha often noted that I had a "unique relationship with objects." He reached this conclusion after I broke his laptop by standing near it. (Not on it. Though I've stood on a laptop before too, and that didn't end well either.)

In recent days, I've speculated that this relationship may extend to web sites. But yesterday, I had a good old-fashioned experience with physical objects. First, at Starbucks, picking up a toffee nut latte, I asked the woman behind the counter if she could recharge my Starbucks card--and if it would take too long, as I didn't want to create a line. She waved negligently. "Not long at all," she assured me. Moments later she reported my card didn't work. We tried another. It also didn't work. Okay, I'll just pay with my credit card, I said. But the credit card didn't work either. By now a line was steadily growing toward the door. I'll just pay cash, I said, and offered her a $10 bill. She shook her head. "Don't worry about it," she said. "Just go."

Apparently, my Starbucks card broke the cash register.

Much later in the evening, I was boarding my United flight. I used miles to upgrade, so was one of the first people on the plane, toting along my new travel pillow (acquired in Providence) and a Carl's Jr. bag. I slipped my boarding pass into the giant "I will devour your boarding pass then spit it out again" machine--then heard a grinding sound familiar from years of photocopying for Dr. Hurlbut.

Yep. I had jammed the giant "I will devour your boarding pass then spit it out again" machine.

As a result, I was the last person onto the plane for a while. The upside: this gave me plenty of time to eat my bacon-less guacamole bacon burger.

Vodka

Just got in, so about to shuffle to bed, but wanted to mention that I wasn't the only one startled by my neighbor's aroma on the plane earlier; the flight attendant felt so bad for me having to sit next to him that he kept slipping me complimentary bottles of vodka.

Since I don't ordinarily drink, and had no interest in doing so at 30,000 feet, I brought them home as souvenirs.

Tilted

My laptop is tilted on my lap so my neighbor on this flight can't see what I'm about to write, which is mostly that he smells.

Time to shut down... off to L.A.!

Broken-Yolk Fried Egg Sandwich

I can't sleep, but the breakfast menu makes great reading. "Sourdough bread with cheddar cheese, maple pepper bacon and grilled tomato." Yum. Or: "Almond-granola with fresh berries." More yum.

Have I mentioned I'm a little hungry tonight? It's a good thing this room doesn't have one of those little refrigerators full of Kit-Kat bars and Pringles potato chips, or I might run up quite the bill.

One more nugget gleaned from the menu: a "Greygoose Martini" is apparently a "Carb-Conscious Beverage." Who knew?

BitTorrents

The title of this blog refers to two things: (1) what my blogging was like today (lots of bits, in a torrent) and (2) the current background activity of my computer, which you might say is making good use of this hotel's high-speed connection.

So I got off the train in Providence thinking the hotel was next to the station. A lingering quality of my having grown up in California is that even when a police officer says, "Oh, it's a couple more blocks," I cheerfully walk on, forgetting that below-freezing temperatures can actually freeze you--or at least your ears.

Joe

On second thought, I felt bad for Joe, too, when his girlfriend Iola was blown up in Book 1 of the Hardy Boy Casefiles.

I'm on another train now, this one much less bumpy than the "Downeaster" from Portland.

Cafe Guy

The guy from the cafe is bounding up and down the cabin wearing a tight red polo shirt and chewing gum. As for me, I'm now too sleepy (post-pastrami) to accomplish much productive, so I've watched a TV episode and lamented that I left my novel on the plane.

What I've read so far this trip: The Path of Minor Planets, by Andrew Sean Greer, and Oracle Night, by Paul Aster. A reviewer claims that the first masterfully explores "the emotional lives of highly intelligent people." While I enjoyed it, it may have taken someone more, um, highly intelligent than me to completely get the ending.

Great astronomy imagery, though. And I felt for the characters. Of course, I feel for pretty much any character better developed than the Hardy Boys.

Osmotic Pillowcases

I'm writing this entry on a train from Portland, Maine, to Providence, Rhode Island. I just took off my tie and am fighting off a cheerful drowsiness that comes in the aftermath of my second latte (the first one was white chocolate blackberry from a drive-through coffeehouse in Kinnelon, the second a more traditional Starbucks toffee nut.)

Today I announced a potential new DemiDec product, osmotic pillowcases, to much amusement and interest among coaches and Decathletes in both New Jersey and Maine. I think we'll have to produce them, if we can figure out how. The idea would be to fill these pillowcases with facts for Decathletes to absorb about the curriculum while sleeping.

Based on how much this train is honking, there must be a lot of other trains on the tracks. However, there aren't very many other passengers--just two, an older couple that is debating the squishiness of various seats.

My taxi driver in Portland didn't understand the word "train" very well, so took me to the Grayhound Station. He insisted it was the train station, though I pointed out the window several times at the street and repeated, "No tracks. No train." Eventually he called a friend for help. I made it, naturally, in the nick of time.

A small DemiDec crisis presents itself: we're running out of alpacas! If you read this and would like to visit Ecuador Monday to pick some up from an indigenous market in Otavalo, please let me know.

Munching on a pastrami sandwich. I hesitated asking the sleepy-looking cafe manager to make one, but felt better after he pulled it, pre-manufactured, from a refrigerator. Not bad at all, and somehow, like ginger ale on planes, appropriate.

Shepherds of the Andes

"Ranchers have discovered that llamas bond with sheep. They will chase coyotes, gather sheep and stand between the two with little or no training. "Guard llamas" also stay on the job longer than guard dogs."

http://espn.go.com/outdoors/conservation/s/c_fea_animals_study.html

Practice Interviews, 25 Cents

I'm camped out in the lobby of the Anchorage Hilton offering practice interviews to teams finishing the speeech event (their actual interviews are tomorrow.) I put up a little sign at the table and am sipping chai and writing e-mails between students. Alaska is a warm and welcoming place.

Klondike Bar

It hit home that I was in Alaska when I couldn't get into my hotel parking lot because it was surrounded on all sides by walls of snow. I finally found a little break in it and parked on a patch of ice -- leading me to wonder whether my car would roll away if the ice melted. Anyone from a cold weather place know the answer?

Incidentally, I'm lucky that none of the teams I've met this year have asked me to deliver my speech.

YKK

About to leave for the Alaska state competition, and the zipper broke on my jacket--meaning I'm heading to Anchorage jacketless. But no worries, I have gloves. :)

Honk

Today I co-pondered what Thanksgiving would be like if Squanto had supplied the pilgrims with a goose.

Dilated

My college advisor, Dr. Hurlbut, used to console us when we came down with colds by describing them as chemical-free opportunities to experience "an altered state of consciousness."

Having your eyes dilated is also an altered state, albeit not chemical-free, and your typical Starbucks sure does look more interesting when it's a big bright blurry blob.

Ramada Inn Bayfront

Running behind, but just had to post a little something about the hotel I first stayed at in Corpus Christi. My room at the Ramada Inn Bayfront lacked (a) a desk (though the manager kindly sent up a table from the cafeteria), (b) working outlets, (c) a functioning alarm clock, (d) a bed that wouldn't sag to the floor when you sat on it.

Did I mention there was only one working lamp?

Other teams staying at the Ramada reported malfunctioning locks, no running water and scary encounters with shabbily-dressed guards who were roaming the second floor. Basically, I think the place was haunted. It was built on the site of another hotel that burned down in the 1980s, so some poltergeist probably stuck around to irk the guests--which this weekend included not just Decathlon teams but a bunch of middle school teachers and a Catholic association that was offering confessions in the lobby.

I have to say, despite (and even in part because of, for reasons I will detail later) the ghosts, it was a wonderful weekend. I shared a floor with two amazing teams and had the chance to spend time with many others at competition, at an aquarium and even at the airport. I saw a giant alpaca on stage (and had nothing to do with it.) I hugged a sort-of-purple teddy bear. I met, in short, many many cool cool Decathletes, their coaches and their mascots.

More to come about Texas in the next post...

Meanwhile, in less happy news, I stayed up all night Saturday before the awards trying to write a column for the Stanford Daily. I'm still feeling it today. (I would sleep for ten-to-twenty minute snatches in my chair, getting little writing done but not much resting either.) My column's ostensibly regular theme is innovation, so this time I wrote about narrative innovation. The editor, DemiDec poet Chuan-Mei, chose not to publish it because it wasn't sufficiently in keeping with the so-called innovation theme. Anyway, I suppose I could post the piece here. The beginning should be familiar to those of you who read my original Ecuador posts... I still remember Jean-Luc Picard cutting off my leg at the knee!

The Lost Column

One night over winter break, I dreamed that I was in Hell with the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I don’t know what this says about me—I don’t really want to know—but it did get me thinking about the way Star Trek, and storytelling in general, has changed in the twenty years since that show first premiered.

I’m no expert in this. I declared English as a major, then undeclared it a year later. So this is purely speculation based on observation—and maybe too much observation, thanks to my TIVO.

On that note—first, television. What I’ve witnessed is a transition toward “story arcs” in TV series. Arcs are plots that span multiple episodes, in which regular characters can change, have their eyes poked out, even die (see Buffy, or The Sopranos.) In Star Trek and most other weekly shows, writers were instructed to make sure that the cast ended each episode approximately in the same place as they started. If Data manufactured himself a daughter, you could be pretty sure she would expeditiously disappear, be destroyed, or sacrifice herself by the end of the episode. The same went for any character’s new love interest. Similarly, Gilligan and company would never find a way off the island, the fugitive wouldn’t be caught, Alf wouldn’t be found out, etc.

But later versions of Star Trek began to experiment with story arcs, like prolonged wars with evil shapeshifters. These weren’t exactly groundbreaking: daytime soap operas had been doing them for decades. Otherwise, how could you have last season’s villain return for this season’s finale? Strangely, though, a show about the twenty-fourth century took thirty years to catch up to Dawson’s Creek. Story arcs have several advantages: they drive existing audiences to come back every week, they allow for more interesting plots, they require writers to come up with fewer “new ideas” and instead to focus on creating a few really good ones. Characters can pay the price for their mistakes in one episode several episodes down the line. Their disadvantage is that they make it harder for new viewers to get involved, which may explain why very good shows like Angel, Jack and Bobby and even the recently cancelled Enterprise (which I heard was good but hardly ever watched for that very reason) tend not to grow their audiences over time.

Different things have happened to literature over the same period. Consider my sophomore year roommate, Sasha. When he was little, he wanted to be a postmodern philosopher. Eventually he became an international tax attorney, then ran away to music conservatory in Holland. In between he experimented with writing “postmodern fiction.” His stories were ostentatiously weird. In one, a romantically involved pair of older Jewish women (one of whom becomes a man around page four) walk from Burbank into sub-Saharan Africa while nearby monks chant in honor of the Big Mac and then visit Wal-Mart. It was whimsical, almost nonsensical—yet deftly written. I remember him showing me a book called something like Eight Devices of Postmodern Fiction. “I included all of them,” he said.

What’s happened, the way I see it, is a lot of these devices that back then very forcibly stylized have been internalized by writers and readers as quirky but no longer revolutionary. Thus, a novel like Middlesex can switch between a first-person and third-person narrator as naturally as the plot moves back and forth through three generations and two continents. In The Confessions of Max Tevoli, a man is born old and becomes younger as he ages—but the science of this is never questioned, and parts of his story are told in reverse order. What used to be referred to as “magic realism” (a literary genre in which unconventional things are accepted as existing in the everyday world) has bled over into fiction in general. Maybe this is why science fiction clichés, like time travel and memory manipulation, can form the bases of critically acclaimed films like The Butterfly Effect and Eternal Sunshine for the Spotless Mind without their even being branded as sci-fi.

One result of all this is that plain old linear storytelling seems increasingly dated. Instead we have novels like The Time Traveler’s Wife—a selection of the very mainstream Today Show Book Club—in which a woman is married to a man who skips around in time, so that in each scene, he is a different age. Things happen at the beginning of the book that actually take place late in the plot. Trust me, it makes sense when you read it. Part of this new comfort with complex narratives might be blamed on (or credited to) the Web, where hyperlinks have gotten us used to reading in bits and pieces that connect in different ways.

Today in Corpus Christi, I talked to a high school junior who was writing a set of short stories. “Each one follows the other,” she explained, “But is from a different person’s point of view. And sometimes they see the same things through different eyes.”

She didn’t seem to think it was anything that unusual.

It used to be that if an author hung a shotgun over the fireplace at the start of a novel, it had to be fired by the epilogue. These days, it’s more likely that in the last scene, it turns out that the shotgun was the narrator all along.

Crispy

A quick note, as I have a 1:30 meeting to make: I came back to Quito from Otavalo today a different color than I left on Saturday. In other words, I'm learning the joys of sunburn... well, my left shoulder and my left forearm are, anyways. Either I forgot to apply sunscreen on one side of my body or I hiked yesterday with the sun to my left.

The last seems unlikely given that the hike was at mid-day on the equator.

Too Many Lattes

Last night I wrote a quarter of my thesis by a fireplace in a cabin about four kilometers outside of Otavalo. It had no Internet connection, which was probably for the best. On the whole, very Thoreauvian, unless you count the borrowed laptop.

So I've decided to stay here one more night in hopes of returning to Quito tomorrow with half my thesis behind me. I'm not sure what my advisor will think of it, as it's mostly practical and anecdotal, not theoretical, but Eli and Orazio seem to like it so far. Which is what matters, as the idea is to help them, not to secure a place in the annals of academia.

Today I worked off yesterday´s blackberry pie and caramel flan by hiking 14 spectacular kilometers around a volanic lake. It was the most up-and-down hike I`ve done in a long time, maybe four years, and I felt every bit of the altitude (3,000 meters.) I clearly need to get back in shape; I've been drinking too many lattes.

What I'm reading: A Death in Vienna, by Daniel Silva. The body count so far: two Israeli women, one Israeli boy named Dani, and a top Israeli spy (except he's only in a coma.) I suspect representatives of some other nations will be dying soon too.

One Hundred and Thirty-Two

I may have some explaining to do at U.S. Customs. I now own 132 alpacas, of which 2 are large, 16 medium, and 114 compact. All are soft, though 35 are less soft than the others. Sadly and also happily, they won't stay in the family long: they're meant as gifts for DemiDec subscribers and team members.

I'm in the town of Otavalo, which Lonely Planet claims has the most famous indigenous market in South America. I'm not sure about its fame, but I can't dispute its size: stalls disappear down every street and fill every plaza. The alpacas, however, were cheapest at an actual store, where Orazio bargained hard on DemiDec's behalf.

Afterward, the three of us came across a woman selling puppies. One was a castellano, Eli´s desired breed. We took turns holding it, and during her turn Eli determined it was a she. Around then she made a small noise and fell asleep.

They weren't sure how to buy it now, as they were on vacation (Eli won't be back in Quito till Tuesday.) The vendor, sensing but misinterpreting their hesitation, offered to lower the price from eight dollars to maybe five or six.

Eli and Orazio ended up passing on this one, but giving their phone number to the vendor. I asked her to keep an eye open for Pomeranians. If she had been selling an American Eskimo, I think I'd be holding it now... sorry, Misty.

A Mexican at Twenty

Quick update before running to Grupo Faro. Today, over breakfast at my hostel, two of the women who work there asked me if my parents were Mexican. I asked why they might think so, and one pointed at my hair. "Es tan negro!" she said. (It's so black.) More black than they're used to from Americans. The other then indicated my eyebrows, which are apparently too thick to be plausibly Gringo.

I admitted my parents were Chilean and made a quick exit (though first I finished my granola, and not before they expressed shock at my age--they thought I was 20.)

By the way, Eli, Orazio, if either of you is reading this--stop now, and return in 3 weeks. Trust me.

Would Misty Approve?

Today I bought a dog. It was my first time. And it was also sight unseen. The dog is (or will be) a "castellano"--a mixture of a cocker spaniel and a French poodle. It's not, however, for me. It's a surprise for Orazio and Eli. When a puppy of the right breed becomes available, about two to three weeks from now, the pet store owner will deliver it to their apartment. I left a note for them, "Woof! Un regalito..." They've been dog-hunting for a while, and I overheard that this is the breed they're looking for. I wanted to do this last time I was here, and am glad I had the chance today.

What I'm reading: Reunion, by Alan Lightman, the author of Einstein's Dreams. So far, so good, even gritty, though not in a Sam Spade kind of way. I'll write more about it when I finish.

A Dark Night in Quito

I must look like a Republican tonight. My taxi driver began our drive by asking if I was a "friend of Bush." I assured him that in fact, I had volunteered for the Kerry campaign. He seemed doubtful. "Why did Kerry lose?" he then asked me. "How could the American people have elected Bush again?"

I gave him a few reasons, mostly mistakes I felt were made by the Kerry campaign, but also encompassing outside factors such as Bin Laden's last minute tape. He kept asking for more. "Y la cuarta razon?" he demanded ("And the fourth reason?) I provided one. So he asked for a fifth--"Y la quinta?"

He then asked me if I was here in Ecuador to help someone or another whose name escaped me. I admitted I didn't know who that was. He again seemed doubtful. "Es el presidente!" he chided me. He then invited me to a protest march tomorrow. Apparently all of Quito is going up in arms circa one in the afternoon. I thanked him politely, then noticed that he was overcharging me for the ride by about $4 (out of $5.) When I pointed this out to him, he scowled and said, "I know you're really a friend of Bush's."

I gave him $2. He didn't protest, and I exited the scene a bit amused and more than a bit annoyed.

A Little Late, as Usual

It took me a long time to graduate from Stanford, and even longer to become a columnist for the Stanford Daily.

http://tinyurl.com/47tc9

What I'm writing next: something on narrative innovation. Or maybe food.

Death and Continuation

On our way to La Casa Sol, the manager of my airport shuttle service confessed that her father and fiancé had both died in the last year, one of disease, the other in a car accident. She was in good spirits, considering.

I wonder if it´s just the altitude´s passing effect on my brain, but my Spanish seems more fluent than it did a month ago. We´ll see if it stays that way tomorrow.

My room is the same as last time, except one floor down. This trip, though, I came prepared with an Itty Bitty Book Light, so I can read more comfortably.

Speaking of reading, I finished another novel today, The Confessions of Max Trivoli. It´s the story of a boy born an old man in 1871, a three-part love affair with a woman who doesn't recognize him each time they meet as he ages backward toward infancy. Very well-written, and if not haunting, still memorable. Recommended.

Newsworthy

A quick note from Lafayette, Indiana: yesterday, the L.A. Times hardly covered the results of the Academic Decathlon. So I sent them this letter, which they didn't publish.

Dear editor,

I was dismayed to see that your coverage of the L.A.U.S.D. Academic
Decathlon has diminished this year to a small piece buried on page 4 of the California section, with only a single quote and no photographs. Compare this to coverage in the 1990s and early 2000s, when color photos, features on team members and multi-page articles were matter of course. Just because Los Angeles schools now have some of the most consistently competitive Academic Decathlon teams in the country doesn't mean we should take them for granted. For many of the students who participate with C averages, this is the first time in their lives that they've had an opportunity to shine as scholars. And for a school district confronted with challenges of every kind, the Decathlon is an annual breath of fresh air--but one that the public can only inhale if they have a chance to read about it.

Indeed, the winners from Taft and the runners-up from El Camino, and all those who gave their hearts and minds to this marathon of intellect, determination and hard work, have earned at least as many accolades as any champion athletic team. Their achievements are not only praiseworthy, but newsworthy.

If It's Wednesday, It Must be Sacramento

A lot of my days have begun like this lately: on an airplane, this time an American Airlines 737-800, watching other passengers file in and dispute overhead space. One woman just assured the rest of us that her bags were "soft" and therefore unlikely to damage our carry-ons even when squeezed tight. Good to know.

My experiences these last couple weeks have included being stranded without photo ID in Minneapolis, pondering an Arby's fish sandwich, and jumping off the back of a dragon.

My next big update--if all goes well, later today--will be on books, though I may mention the dragon again, too.

What I'm writing today: a column for the Stanford Daily. What I'm reading: Perfume, a novel about a serial killer with no body odor.

ucla

my alpaca is drawing lots of attention in ackerman union. is it a sheep? someone just asked. ok, back to interviews.

An Alpaca on Shattuck

I'm at a Starbucks next to Berkeley waiting for DemiDec interviewees. For lack of signage to distinguish me from a other dozen folks with laptops, I'm holding a masked alpaca to my chest (in the form of a Drama Resource.) One man with a goatie just looked at me and blinked a couple times before returning to his Frappucino.

SFO

I didn't realize an airport would stir so many memories, let alone this one. I usually flew through San Jose, and toward the end Oakland; SFO was for special occasions. But then, maybe that's why I remember them so much.

Here, Sasha and I once nearly followed B.J. to Japan, while Robert, Andrew, Craig Janik and others dashed about the terminal in a comedy of errors and unexpected convergences. Here, I once waited breathlessly as Sasha finally came tumbling through security moments before they closed the door to our flight to Santiago; another time I stumbled out of immigration on my way home from Tokyo just in time to make a CASIO focus group in San Jose. Here, I picked up Karen after her quarter in Chile, Patrick after his six months in a Japanese village. It was a place for belated reunions and awkward partings.

And even before that, flying in, I felt a lurch in my stomach as I glanced out the window and first saw the Bay. Somewhere down there were Stanford, and Fry's Electronics, and CASIO's old offices; a few miles away on Castro Street sat a credit union that momentarily became a venture fund. Further down El Camino Real there was the Target where Sasha and I had our first adventure, buying a bike (sometimes you've got to start small.) And there, somewhere along the water's edge, were the apartments where Patrick, Jeff and I nearly lived, before a high-tension power line popped up behind the bedroom window.

I didn't think about anything in particular as I looked out there, but the tingle persisted. Maybe it was a sense of homecoming. It felt a bit like that when I took my first breath on the jetway and smelled a familiar blend of salt and sunshine in the air. Then again, I've also felt I was coming home arriving in Santiago, Boston, Denver, even Patzcuaro. I'm a jack of all trades with memories as restless as my feet.

Later, in a rented Dodge Magnum, I drove across the bridge to Oakland and instinctively stabbed the radio to switch to Candle on the Water--the song I always played crossing the Golden Gate, the Dumbarton, the Bay Bridge, the San Mateo, any and all of them--before remembering that my Disney Classics CD is somewhere in a closet, and that I'm not even sure what state the closet is in.

So I sang the song instead, as best I could, windows down, hair all a mess.

And the tingle persisted--at least until I hit traffic.

Lights Out in Manhattan

Lights just went off at airport--this can't be good. Man behind counter adds, "You've gotta be kidding me." Posting with cell phone.

Defying the Enlightenment

It stands to reason that if last night it took me fewer than twenty minutes to get from entering my hotel room to slipping under the covers, it ought to take me no more than that to slip out from under those covers and exit in the morning.

Reason is about to be put to a very severe test, and writing this blog probably isn't helping its cause.

Sleepy, but not downright grumpy after all. Just using the word "downright" remains enough to make me grin. So I must still be giddy. On top of that, when I bought two 9x12 envelopes yesterday (for submitting a story for publication--more on that later) the cashier at the university bookstore asked me if I'd like a sack for them. I'd heard pop for soda, but this term was new to me. Sack. I pictured potatoes. I got plastic.

Reasons Why

"Are you always smiling?" asked the clerk at the Comfort Inn, as I trotted back into the lobby after moving my car. "Or are you just having a really good day?"

"A really good day," I confessed. "Just wait--when I come down tomorrow morning at 4 am I'll be downright grumpy."

But there was more to it than that. It was one of those days that reminded me of what I love most in DemiDec: meeting people, learning about them and their lives, understanding a little about their hopes for the future, even just exchanging quirky anecdotes. It's amazing to me in how many little ways lives can meaningfully intersect and overlap. One coach once lived up the street from my high school. One girl gave her speech entirely in Greek (and another integrated Spongebob Squarepants.) One volunteer wants to spend a year in Chile. The state director remembered that the last time we talked was in Orange County five years ago, and I wasn't sure then whether to stay with DemiDec or try something new (I eventually did both.)

In short, the day was full of good conversation and lemonade--and many, many warm and welcoming coaches, students and volunteers. Kansas state competition is the earliest each year, sort of the Iowa caucuses of the Academic Decathlon, and I'll be sure to come again.

The Little Apple

The sign at the airport welcomes you to the Little Apple--a.k.a. Manhattan, Kansas--but it's a bit premature; you need to drive about four miles through the fog to reach the Apple proper. Along the way, there are a number of billboards advertising hotels with free wireless Internet. I guess I could have finished that paper pretty much anywhere nowadays.

Today I'm at Kansas State University, awaiting the start of the competition. Coaches and teams should begin arriving at any minute. In the meantime, I'm sipping a very milky chai. The women at the table next to mine are discussing strapless bras, the virtues of satin, and weddings. Upstairs, students are selling little paintings to raise money for tsunami survivors; they're not doing very brisk business, though the smoothie vendor next door to them is thriving.

Club Med, Missouri

I basked in the warm air. I had no hat on, and my ears didn't hurt. There was an enclosed stall available in which to wait for the hotel shuttle, but I hovered outside of it, tapping keys on my cell phone and just taking gulps of air that didn't make my lungs ache. I felt very light, almost giddy.

I was in Kansas City. In mid-January. But compared to Wisconsin and Nebraska last weekend, and Boston these last few days, it was Cancun.

This will be a short blog, but it marks my return after a couple weeks of frantically finishing my last ever paper for the Kennedy School (unless you count my thesis) while also planning out the next couple months. Along the way, I learned the beauty of wind-resistant headbands.

I'm inspired to write here again by a number of factors, among them a review by a King-Drew Decathlete whose speech is on blogs. She checked mine out and said it was "like reading the footnotes for the Demidec Resources." Writing footnotes has always been one of my favorite parts of DemiDec, right up there with meeting teams and drinking chai. So I'm back to write more of them. Footnotes strung together into paragraphs. Centipede notes, I suppose.

Speaking of a very different kind of footnote, I finished my last paper--the one about how the Republican party could win California in 2008--not in a library, or even at Starbucks, but at a small motel in Jefferson, Wisconsin. It had a banner advertising "high speed Internet access"--so I stopped there on my drive from Waukesha to Whitewater.

By the time I got to the University of Whitewater, the competition had ended. But then, so had the penultimate chapter of my academic career. So I toured the campus with a smile on my face (and a jacket on my body) then went looking for the airport.

On the plane, I stretched out across three seats and slept--though I relocated after a flight attendant suggested I move up a few rows. "Why?" I asked. "Look out the window," she advised. I looked, and saw a very big jet engine. Scratch 28F from my preferred seating list on MD-80s.

Tonight I dined on a meat-and-cheese snack and a cup of hot chocolate.

In an upcoming entry, I'll write some thoughts on the inauguration. Even footnotes can sometimes be serious.

Hazelnut.net

I wish. I already miss the cybercafes that serve tasty juices and amazing vegeterian sandwiches. Instead, I'm working on DemiDec tests at a Starbucks, where the hazelnut lattes are good but nondistinct--and about to begin my final paper of the semester, a thirty-five page juggernaut on which I'm collaborating with two Republican friends, Matt and Jo. It's due Friday. Our paper needs to suggest a strategy for the Republicans to win California in 2008. Now, if Arnold could run for president... at least I hear he's more or less a moderate. But the paper needs to figure things out without relying on a constitutional amendment.

Looking forward, this blog will probably be quiet on weekdays for the next month or so; on weekends I'll be visiting Decathlon competitions in different states, which will supply various mid-size rental cars and, hopefully, at least a few travel anecdotes to post.

These Are Your Passengers Squeaking

We're finally off the plane and in the baggage claim area, but a woman on the PA just announced it'll be at least another 45 to 50 minutes before our bags reach us. The result: more groaning, of course. And lots of rolled eyes.

This is Your Captain Speaking

Everyone groaned when he spoke. He announced that our gate was occupied--which means that even though we landed around 11:03 PM, we'll actually get off the plane around midnight. For reasons I don't understand we can't use the adjacent gates even though they're empty. Maybe there are only so many gatekeepers to go around. I miss Ecuador, where we could probably have just gotten off without a gate at all and walked across the tarmac into the airport.

At any rate, to pass the time, I've accessed Logan's wireless network from on board and am writing this blog while also cyber-witnessing a Clippers blow-out (unfortunately, the Clippers are at the wrong end of it.)

Just after I last posted, the man running the cybercafe in Guayaquil's airport asked me if I could help him find flowers for his girlfriend, who lives in Canada. We visited 1800flowers.com and ftd.com together before I remembered that I might miss my flight, at which point I dashed off--and found one more alpaca, this one mounted on a bell, along the way.

What I read today: in the morning I finished Peace Like a River, which wove a wonderful narrative out of asthma, miracles, North Dakota and a bit of Huck Finn. Later I read Joe Haldeman's Guardian, a surprisingly soothing tale of the Alaskan gold rush mixed with sodomy, parallel universes and shapeshifting birds. However, I'm not sure that he completely captured the voice of a 70 year-old woman looking back at her life in the late 19th century. To me the narrator sounded very modern and man-like. Then again, I've never been 70, a woman or a citizen of the late 19th century, so I wouldn't know for certain. It kind of reminded me of a novel, Nadya, by my other science fiction professor, Pat Murphy, which also featured a woman seeking a new life in the Wild West, except that one had werewolves and was (at least) R-rated.

Foiled

The Kentucky Fried Chicken at Guayaquil's ¨Simon Bolivar" International Airport promises "The Best Chicken in the World." I suppose this means that it is still, by implication, finger-licking good. Several years ago, the Colonel himself sued KFC, claiming that it was producing lousy chicken and that he no longer wanted to be used in deceptive commercials. I forget how the lawsuit turned out, but at any rate he soon died and KFC replaced him with a more cooperative cartoon Colonel.

I had hoped to visit Guayaquil proper and find ceviche there during my three-hour layover. Unfortunately, the luggage storage facility was closed (when will it open? I asked a security guard, who shrugged, then said, maybe today, probably Monday) and I hesitate to venture downtown in a big city carrying two overcoats and a large down pillow.

So instead I've camped out at the cybercafe in the airport, which is named, rather plainly, Internet Center. To make it more of a true cafe experience, I picked up a vanilla cappuccino in the food court next door. Giving up on my seafood dreams, I also tried to order a guacamole burger from the menu. "No tenemos guacamole hoy,¨ said the woman behind the counter. This made me sad. After scrutinizing the pictures a while longer I asked for a "pernil sandwich." I wasn't sure what pernil was, but it seemed to be some kind of cold cut. The woman looked embarassed. "No hay pernil tampoco," she said. I asked her what she did have, and ended up with a mushroom burger and yesterday's french fries.

In better news, though, I did secure one more alpaca at a souvenir shop, this one made of brass, and picked up a clean t-shirt for the flight home. Then I went into a bathroom to change--which is where I learned that I´m not the only one having trouble finding things here. As I slipped into my new shirt, a man in the stall next to me made some noises, then grunted, "Do you have any toilet paper?¨

I looked around. There wasn't a sheet to be seen, except in the trash can, where I preferred not to see it. Suddenly, I was happy to be just switching t-shirts. "Sorry," I said.

Earlier today, I survived the chaos of checking in for a domestic flight from Quito to Guayaquil. Even Southwest couldn't have matched this: there was a flight every fifteen minutes from 6:30 to 7:45. Every flight status indicator, instead of "on time" or "delayed", read "early." I´d never seen anything like it. It was like Chicago in reverse. Because the airport was closing at 8 am and not reopening till nightfall, the airlines had crammed forward as many flights as they could into the early morning. I was scheduled originally for an 8:30 and then moved up to 7:30, but when I finally got to the counter, the airline rep asked me if I would be okay with 7:15. Sure, I said, unwittingly switching from a modern Airbus A320 to a Boeing 727. The three-engine 727 was last produced in 1984 and nowadays is used mostly for cargo service; this one probably dated back to the 70s. We boarded through its underbelly directly into the rear galley.

Anyway, it's time to emigrate. Farewell, Ecuador. It's nice to be leaving a country where I don't have to worry about what to do with my leftover currency. Off I go to seat 35G on American Airlines flight 952.

From Ceviche to Clam Chowder

Grupo FARO and I just said our goodbyes outside a pizza place called "Tomato." Orazio proposed we extend the night a bit more with a visit to a Cuban bar to drink and dance, but Ellie was sleepy and I have a flight at 7 am tomorrow, so we decided against it. FARO is, after all, democratic.

Tomorrow morning I'll spend three hours or so in Guayaquil between flights (assuming I wake up in time for my first one.) Orazio and Ellie (who, incidentally, have great chemistry) recommended that instead of just waiting around, I leave the airport and go find myself some ceviche for breakfast along the boardwalk. Sounds like a good plan to me.

So: a final good night from Quito, at least until February, when I'll probably come back between the regional and state Decathlon competitions. With that in mind, I advised all the alpaca shops to restock.

As Faro as the Eye Can See

I'm not sure how it happened, but the whole staff at my hostel now calls me "Danielito." I also met many of the other guests during last night's search for the missing Emma, so this morning the lobby was a veritable town hall with travel guides, e-mail addresses and itineraries switching hands.

When I first arrived at the Casa Sol, I was admittedly underwhelmed by the size of and lack of light in my room, but I've come to like it very much. If I return in February to continue working with Grupo FARO, I'll probably stay there again. It doesn't hurt that there are a dozen Internet cafes named after fruits and TV shows in the neighborhood.

It occurs to me that I may be better suited to help organizations when they're just getting started--when what they need is less a specialist and more someone with what you could call either "a diverse skill set" or "a lack of focus." That may be one reason I was very comfortable volunteering with the Kerry campaign last November. I'll ramble now about all this for a bit, so I encourage you to skip ahead to the paragraph where I explain what Grupo FARO is.

At CASIO, I wasn't really one of the technical folks. I worked with a team to come up with product ideas, liaisoned (sometimes in spectacularly unsuccessful ways) with our Japanese colleagues, avoided tutoring Mr. Kashio's grandson in English, and even helped outfit a creativity room with toys and a tent. However, I didn't deal with the web site, and my only contribution to office IT was to suggest that we install one of those then-newfangled 802.11b wireless networks. The installation itself was mysterious to me; all I knew was that one day everyone was suddenly checking their e-mail during meetings, to BJ's understandable dismay. (I was also getting my laptop stolen during a meeting, but that's another story.)

By contrast, at Grupo FARO, I found myself falling into the role of the computer guy. Suddenly I'm explaining acronyms like DNS and pontificating on the impact of file-sharing on the music industry; I'm cleaning PCs of spamware, debating the pros and cons of different broadband providers and setting up online survey forms. At DemiDec I depend on Tina for her wonderful artwork, but at FARO I find myself struggling with Ellie on Illustrator to integrate a lighthouse into their company logo. I'm also offering my haphazard feedback on fundraising strategies, telephone bills and project planning--and, of course, lobbying for Faro to acquire a puppy for a mascot. (In the meantime, I've loaned them an alpaca, whom Ellie named "Sassy," and they already have a magical shoe and a turtle with a bobbing head.)

I'm very happy with this kind of role. I wish I didn't have to write a detailed academic thesis on a single aspect of FARO for the Kennedy School, when I'm most content just helping out in lots of different ways. It reminds me a little of my early days with VentureNova, when we were looking for an office, hiring an executive director, negotiating with CASIO, designing a logo, writing presentations and eating lots of bagels with avocado and cream cheese. I really like that slightly chaotic start-up feeling.

Once at VentureNova, Craig Janick, the director whom we hired, and also a founder of Simple Devices, noted that Sasha was our lawyer, BJ our innovator, Robert our young businessman, and so forth. He got to me, realized he had no idea what I was, and asked me to proof a letter he was writing.

Enough on me, though. By this point, you may be wondering what FARO actually does. FARO stands for "Foundation for the Advance of Reform and Opportunity." It aspires to help Ecuador achieve a more universal and effective system of education, more empowered municipalities, a less corrupt government, and a more competitive environment for local and international businesses. So far, it has secured grant money from UNICEF for an education project, held workshops for women and for municipal leaders, and begun various consultancies in the above-mentioned areas. I admire their intentions and am hopeful for their success. When Orazio runs for president of Ecuador, I may not be able to vote for him--barring change of citizenship--but I'll definitely volunteer for his campaign.

Puppies

A flight was delayed out of Boston today to Miami; this in turn delayed my blog. That is, I've been helping a family track down their daughter, who missed her connection to Quito. It looks like American Airlines is putting her up at a nice hotel near the Miami airport--but we still have no idea what time she'll get here tomorrow.

I'm very sleepy now, though, so will write just a little bit. Overall it was a great day, and a productive one too. We set up a host for the Faro web site. Designed a logo. Analyzed phone bills. Sipped cappucinos. Met with the web site designer. Bought cooking supplies. And drove by an Applebee's.

Perhaps more importantly, I learned that Orazio's childhood nickname is "Funfy." And certainly most importantly of all, we visited a pet store, where I held a cute white puppy that licked my nose. Ellie, who wants a puppy very much, held one too. She's afraid all of a sudden that she might be allergic, though, as she began sneezing after we got back to Faro HQ.

What I'm reading: Peace Like a River, by Leif Enger. And also this blog, over and over again, because I'm so sleepy I'm not sure it makes much sense.

Very Likely Alpacas

Quick mid-day update as I rush off to Grupo Faro: I am now the happy owner of thirteen new alpacas!

The Forgotten

In the RPG that I play on Sunday nights at Harvard, my fellow adventurers and I tend to over-debate inconsequential decisions. Should we enter the cave or set up camp for the night? Should we go left or right? Split up or stay together? Chase the dwarves, or hunt the boar? (As long as I get to use my magical shovel, I'm usually happy.)

Deciding what movie to attend with Grupo FARO was kind of like that. The choices were Ocean's Twelve and two foreign (to me) films, one Israeli and one Mexican. We talked them over. We looked up ratings. We checked out times. And naturally, we ended up seeing none of the above. Instead, our treat for the evening was The Forgotten. Summary: Mother discovers that her son has not really died, but was kidnapped by aliens who then erased everyone's memories of him in an experiment to test the power of a mother's love.This is the kind of movie that gives aliens a bad rap. It doesn't do so much for mothers either.

At least the movie theater was new and sleek around the edges. Not forum-style, but with plush seats, a food court that included a French bistro, complimentary post cards and the latest in surround sound. All for the tidy sum of $2 a ticket. Moments like that, no matter how Third Street Promenade your surroundings, you realize you aren´t in the United States.

While we waited in the lobby, Ellie observed that people who watched movies here had nice butts. I had no comment on the matter.

Grupo FARO turns out to share most of its name with a defunct Ecuadorian Communist organization, Al-Faro Vive, leading to misunderstandings with taxi drivers who believe I am here to help revive it.

Stores I saw today in a hunt for Internet access near Faro's very capitalist HQ: Dunkin' Donuts, Cinnabon (2), Tony Roma's, and a Domino's that still promises pizza in thirty minutes or your money back.

Coming up tomorrow: the long-promised Grupo Faro update (my work now includes a logo redesign) and a visit to a town about two hours away where Ellie thinks I may be able to find some alpacas.

What I'm reading: the Clippers box score.

"A Beautiful Life Forever"

That's what a man in a blue turban wished us--in English--as Grupo Faro and I left the local Mongolian barbeque about an hour ago. I'm hoping this blessing helps compensate for the time I was cursed by a Gypsy. I'm very sleepy, so will defer tonight's blog to tomorrow--but the good news is that I finished my paper, and the bad news is at worst very mild: I went hunting for Doite backpacks, and along the way learned there's no banana sushi in Quito.

Una Cartita

I write this mid-day update at an Internet center while Ellie, Cesar and I wait (and wait some more) for the staff to copy two CDs full of education statistics. About an hour ago, we visited with a man in charge of collecting data for the government on school enrollment among the indigenous population. This is approximately how the exchange went, albeit in Spanish:

Us: Do you have these statistics?
Him: Yes, I do! And no one else does. *cackles*
Us: Super! Could we get a copy?
Him: Yes. It'll only take five minutes to download.
Us: Fantastic!
Him: But first you must write me a little letter [a "cartita"] asking for it.
Us: Umm. Okay. Can we bring the letter to you later today?
Him: No. We're closing in fifteen minutes.
Us: Okay, how about tomorrow?
Him: No, we'll be closed for a few days. I think we'll be open on Monday. Come back then.

It was kind of like being at the DMV--in Moscow. Afterward Ellie and Cesar concluded that he had probably wanted a bribe.

The CDs are done copying, so off I go. I had popcorn and bean soup for lunch..

Don't Worry, Be Happy

I resisted titling this blog, "As Faro as the Eye Can See," for two reasons. First, it's a really bad pun. Second, I'm still trying to finish my paper, so I won't write much about Grupo Faro tonight. Maybe I'll recycle the title tomorrow when I have more time. It'll still be a bad pun, but consider yourself forewarned.

Instead, the title refers to the song playing at this, my latest Internet cafe of the day. The only available station to plug in my laptop was directly beneath the speaker (which is hidden by a hanging blue globe) so I can hear it very, very well. Don't Worry, Be Happy always makes me think of the seventh grade, when I more or less failed first sewing and then typing at Nobel Junior High before fleeing the country for a school in Chile. People would whistle it non-stop in the halls. Since I couldn't whistle (I still can't) I hummed it.

A few minutes ago, I stopped at a convenience store to buy a bottle of water and some chocolate for energy. The music there was traditionally Andean in style, relying heavily on a traditional flute called the quena. (It's worth clicking on the link to see not just the instrument but also a cute alpaca.) My friend Paula once bought a quena at a train station in Aguas Calientes, near Cuzco. Anyway, I was so dazed from paper-writing that my first thought on entering the store was, "Wow, they're playing musica Andina here!" Only afterward did it hit me that I was in the Andes and this made a certain sense.

I blame the New Jersey Star-Ledger. Specifically, its archives, which don't work very well. Some quick moments from the day before I dive back into them and into my third-to-last paper (ever?):

At the supermarket, the cashier asked me where I was from. I said, "Boston." About a quarter of the time this evokes a wistful sigh and John Kerry's name. This cashier, however, said, in very good English, "Boston! That's where Harvard is, yes?" I confirmed it, and he went on to explain that he would like to apply to Harvard for business school. We traded e-mail addresses.

I discovered that the tiny memo pad I grabbed on my way out the door to LAX contains all my notes from a trip Sasha and I took a few years ago to Kosovo. Maybe I'll type some of them up as a sort of retro-blog.

My cab fare to Grupo Faro was $1.87, and my bottle of water at the supermarket $0.18. I maintain that Ecuador did not dollarize the economy as much as it pennyized it.

At Grupo Faro HQ, which doubles as Orazio's and Eli's apartment, we dealt with a very slippery spatula, brainstormed ways to increase school attendance among Ecuadorian children, and debated whether shrimp scampi could survive ten days in the freezer. I also reheated some soup and earned that new civil servants in Ecuador make at most about $300 a year--and that's if they have connections.

Coco Loco

A mid-day update: it's time to finish my paper on New Jersey newspaper coverage of terrorism during the presidential election. To that end, after working with Grupo Faro on education reform in the morning, helping to cook lunch and then exploring a supermarket, I've settled down at an Internet cafe called "Friends."

The place is comfortable. The music is less loud than at Papaya.Net, and I've been able to connect my own laptop at a seat facing an open window to the sidewalk. It's like working on a balcony.

I'm dressed up a bit today. Standard Silicon Valley garb (khaki pants, a blue shirt) plus an extra-long black blazer. As it turns out, it was overkill for the meeting this morning, but maybe it'll help me concentrate.

The menu includes a coffee called a "coco loco." Coffee and coconut: it sounded good. When I ordered, however, the waiter warned me that it contains coconut liquor. Maybe today I look underage? I was about to switch to something more conventional, then I realized that at this point, with the paper due tomorrow and my frustration with it at an all-time high, a little alcohol couldn't possibly hurt. It worked for Hemigway, but then, Hemingway didn't take a class with Maxine Isaacs.

A man just stopped in the window to try and sell me burned CDs. He's dragging a roll-on suitcase with him, presumably full of merchandise.

Anyway, time to (carefully) sip my Coco Loco and analyze articles ad infinitum. Back tonight.

No Cigar

I came to Quito with a secret plan: to transform my hotel into a wireless hotspot. The Radisson would no longer be able to claim it was the only wireless hotel in Quito. La Casa Sol would become a haven for the 802.11-enabled from all over the world. But after two hours of fiddling, I better understand why companies hire IT professionals. It's fair to say the Radisson remains the only wireless hotel in Quito, and that La Casa Sol will stay a haven mostly for backpackers who read Lonely Planet and want to spend approximately $20 a night.

Thankfully, the hotel night staff was very gracious as I crawled behind the manager's desk yanking at cables and intermittently dropping things. (It helped that the manager wasn't due in till tomorrow morning.) They even surprised me with a juice of a fruit whose name I didn't recognize--it's magenta (would make a good nail polish) and very tasty. While I worked, one, Moses, also asked me for advice on what computer to buy for school. This was a step up from Cancun, where Sanjai and I tried to juryrig a network connection on the sly and then had to explain ourselves to a suspicious clerk.

I just asked Suzy, who squeezed the juice, to repeat more slowly what kind of fruit it was. She sheepishly admitted that it's not what she said originally--maracuya--but guayaba, which I think I´ve seen on sale at Whole Foods. I assured her that I'm not too picky when it comes to unfamiliar fruit, and since the maracuya looks a little more like a lime, I probably came out ahead in terms of taste.

Before logging out for the night, I should share a little bit of my afternoon since posting earlier. After touring the city´s historic plazas, where I mostly visited churches and hunted anxiously for toilet paper, I rode a trolley back to the neighborhood near my hotel, Mariscal Sucre. The trolley bounced around a lot more than Boston´s Green Line, which meant I slipped back and forth in a desperate fight to keep from hitting the ground. Everyone else stood around looking bored. One was eating a drumstick of fried chicken, which is big here: local chain restaurants with names like "mr. pollo" and ¨pollo rey¨ pepper the whole downtown area.

Outside the oldest cathedral in the city, one dating back to the 1500s, a man sold drawings of God for $10. He had scratched out an earlier price of $20.

It was a quiet afternooon back in Masicral Sucre, a bit of it devoted to investigating other local hotels (because it's fun to pose as a travel guide writer) and the rest to my paper on coverage of the presidential election in New Jersey. I planted myself at Papaya.net and wrote over a slice of manjar-and-vanilla cake and a cup of coffee (the combo conventionally priced at $1.99) while also tracking the Clippers score. Thankfully, they won, beating Philadelphia.

Manjar is also known in the States as dulce de leche; it's one of my favorite treats from Chile and the moment the waiter told me it was in the cake, I ordered a slice. If I understand it right, manjar is made by boiling condensed milk while stirring in sugar. At any rate, it's gooey, looks a little but tastes nothing like caramel, and goes great with almost all breakfasts and desserts.

Later on I had dinner with Eli and Orazio of Grupo Faro at a Lebanese restaurant, where we ate shwarma, passed on the water pipe, and caught up on some Kennedy School gossip before settling down to business. Their project sounds interesting and they're very flexible about how I can most help them--which I appreciate, given that I´m an energetic person but not always that focused. I'll write more about Grupo Faro and its mission tomorrow.

The thing that most surprised me today: I was mistaken for a college professor.

Off to sleep and dream for a few hours, hopefully with no guest stars from the twenty-fourth century. When I was little I once dreamed I was a smurf--an evil smurf created by Gargamel to mislead the good smurfs, but who ultimately found redemption with the help of Papa Smurf. That dream, I could have again. But please, no more of Captain Picard with a scalpel.

Make it so.

Amputation

I dreamed that I was in Hell with the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation and that Captain Jean-Luc Picard accidentally amputated my leg.

The day has improved since then. I've been walking from my hotel to the historic downtown area, and am now checking in at a small Internet center down the street from Payless Shoe Source and about a block from "la plaza grande" (the big plaza). At first, the city was deserted (except for one Pentecostal church) but things began livening up around noon. I've passed a massive Sunday art fair, several hundred sweaters with alpacas on them, and at least a dozen Chinese restaurants.

More to come.

Bastille Day in Quito

The silver lining to not sleeping the night before you fly to Quito is that afterward you don't really remember flying to Quito. I only just got in about two hours ago, enough time to clear customs, find my hotel, and wander the streets looking for dinner. No taco stands here, of course, but I did come across a promising Mongolian barbeque, which seems out of place in the Andes--and a hamburger joint called "The G Spot," which would seem out of place just about anywhere.

Bypassing them both, I've settled down at a cafe, Papaya.net, that serves avocado sandwiches with a side of high speed Internet. Which reminds me: a few years ago, Ecuador gave up its own currency and decided to use American dollars. Yet prices aren't exactly structured how you would expect them to be back home. For instance, most items at U.S. restaurants cost, say, $2.99 or $3.50, or maybe $5.97 if a proprietor is feeling very creative. But at this Internet Cafe a bagel with salmon costs $3.28, Mexican bread $2.42, potatoes with mushrooms $3.07, a green empanada $1.64--and so on. The penny must get a lot more use here. (I've also seen a lot of Sacajawea--whose dollar I had previously come across only at the post office.)

I'm staying at La Casa Sol. My taxi driver warned me that it was "simple" and but reassured me that it was also "comfortable." Both appraisals are fairly accurate, the former perhaps more so. Most of the walls are painted a festive Ukrainian orange. Up front there's a TV lounge where no one is watching TV. As for my room, it's... cozy. Maybe five paces by four and a half, with a window. The bed is about knee-height, which I guess is great if you roll off the bed a lot. I'll report back on the water pressure.

Up ahead: a quiet Sunday working on a much procrastinated paper for a course on the 2004 presidential election, mixed with a little bit of sightseeing and shopping for alpacas. Tomorrow night, I'll have dinner with Orazio and Eli, who run the organization I'm consulting for here, Grupo Faro.

Resolution

Happy New Year's! I hereby resolve never again to book a flight at 7 am on the morning of January 1.

Interstitial Space

Back in Los Angeles, at DemiDec HQ. The blog will probably be quiet until New Year's Day, when I'll fly to Quito to research for my Master's "thesis"--technically, a "policy analysis exercise" in which I'll work as a consultant for a non-profit organization, Grupo Faro. Between now and then, I'm projecting an uneventful stay here working on a paper, recovering from my Cancunian cold, and catching some Clippers games.

What I'm reading: Nothing for the moment, but on the flight from Boston, I finished Dean Koontz's newest novel, Life Expectancy. It's not Middlesex, but it's probably his best in several years. I do wish all his characters wouldn't sound alike, though. The heroes are always a little too clever, a little too glib. At least this one didn't have a dog play a major role, though it did feature an evil clown. Somehow he pulls this off without ever sounding silly--which itself is worth the price of admission.

(By the way, since American Airlines is apparently now showing the same movies in the same order regardless of whether you're going north, south, east or west, I was also able to finish watching Ella Enchanted yesterday. I could basically guess how it would end--it is Cinderella, after all--but I can sleep more peacefully now that I know for sure.)

I wore an orange fleece today in honor of Ukrainian President-Elect (presumptive, pending possible further fraud, new legal challenges or additional dioxins) Viktor Yushchenko.

Technical update: I've created a link to this blog at www.unlikelyalpaca.com.

Cinderella and Christmas Eve

I was triple Borowski'd in the last two days. Last night at the Irvine Spectrum in Cancun, I came across glass sculptures by an artist named Borowski. Here's one to check out. I rarely fall for sculptures in malls, but these were special. Then, today at the airport, American Airlines kept paging a Borowski who was late for his flight to Dallas. It sounded enough like "Berdichevsky" to get my attention. A few minutes later, a General Borowski made a cameo appearance in the novel I was reading.

I am not the late passenger. Glass bottomed sculptures. Someone who commanded a submarine. What does this mean?

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If I had speculated only a year ago with whom I would travel through Chiapas, I wouldn't have thought of Sanjai. In fact, I wouldn't have thought Sanjai would want to take such a trip. So I'm very glad he decided he did. He was a fantastic travel companion--thoughtful and adventurous, open-minded and resourceful. He has a new perspective on things that I admire. It would be oversimplistic to summarize it as "if not now, when?" -- but that's an important part of it. And it's something I'll take to heart.

Once, he led us both to a cave behind a waterfall with only a rope for support. He never hesitated to sample Mexico's ubiquitous food stalls, or to check out random places to stay for the night (indulging my travel writer instincts--I always want to know how all the accomodations in a given town compare.) He shared my fondness for town plazas, and took even the minor setbacks, like a noisy room or a missing pilot, with good humor. When we lost our Lonely Planet in San Cristobal, he suggested photographing someone else's at the bus station. He packed light. He could hop from big bus to little bus in thirty seconds flat. He ate lots of "puerco." He took great pictures, with and without flash. And heck, he rocked Chiapas. So--thanks, Sanjai. Looking forward to the next one.

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Ironically, after trekking through Chiapas for a week to no ill effect, we both caught colds in Cancun. Other minor nicks: I sprained an ankle at a restaurant (again in Cancun) and bloodied my shin a bit (on the airplane.) Maybe highly processed environments aren't my strong suit?

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If you want to study peculiar demographics, try Au Bon Pain in Harvard Square on Christmas Eve. The only women there were two behind the counter and one with her husband, drinking coffee. The rest of the clientele was male and mostly elderly. One of the younger ones, sitting alone, was scribbling in a notebook. Two were studying physics. Still wearing my backpack (which I kept just below 25 pounds) I walked in from the subway station to pick up bottles of juice and a sandwich, and was not too startled to hear everyone speaking English: two days in Cancun had readied me for that. It looks like I won't be experiencing the culture shock that usually comes with returning from another country.

Earlier, on the bus from the airport to the subway, a high school girl from Texas asked for help finding her way to a town in Northern Massachusetts. Ruby described herself as a "small town girl" feeling very lost in the big city of Boston. I imagined all of a sudden how disorienting Boston must be to a first-time visitor--all this talk of Red Lines and Blue Lines and Green Lines, and purple commuter rails dashing off to the periphery. In the end, I left her at Government Crossing, hopefully safely en route to North Station to catch her train to Haverhill. She had missed the 8:30, so even as I type this, she must still be waiting for the 10:35. Here's hoping she makes it safely and soon.

Walking to my apartment, I also passed the Kong. It was still open--does it ever close? For years, the place didn't mean much to me: a Chinese restaurant open late, where once I drank my only shot and another time ate a two a.m. dinner while applying to work for Let's Go. However, this last semester (my last semester?) it became irrevocably linked to Kong Runs with the Harvard Radcliffe Science Fiction Assocation (a.k.a. HRSFA.) A fellow HRSFAn calls for a Kong Run, and a few minutes later whichever of us are hankering for crab rangoons or good company arrive at the Kong to munch on appetizers and talk about... well, once we talked about antelope. The HRSFA folks amaze me. If I had met them (or their predecessors) my freshman year at Harvard, I may never have transferred to Stanford.

On the airplane, a flight attendant apologetic about our late departure passed out free headsets. I took advantage of mine to watch a Cinderella movie, in which the title character suffers "the gift of obedience", forced to obey any order anyone ever gives her. She only overcomes it just in time to save the prince's life. That's about as far as the plot had gotten when the plane landed. What can I say--it reminded me of Ever After, which I loved. I guess I have a soft spot for fairy tales.

Acapulco 2.0

Sanjai three, me one, all shrimp.

This quote from the local tourism booklet just about sums this place up: "Cancun may well be the world's first completely fabricated vacation resort, from the infrastructure to the superstructure… in which the Mexican government hoped to duplicate the success of Acapulco... so what you see now is not the result of haphazard growth, though it appears that way in parts, but the completion of phases one and two of a three-phase development plan..."

The truth is I'm not all that sure what to do with myself in this kind of resort. I don't think I relax well on command. For instance, I went splashing in the crowded waves alongside Sanjai, but where he whooped as he dove between them, I gurgled saltwater and squinted a lot. As for parasailing, it was at once tranquil and exhilarating. We even saw a shark. But there were so many people doing the same thing that I felt a little like I was on an airborne conveyer belt. Snorkeling was kind of like being at an aquarium while very wet and occasionally choking. In retrospect, the best part of the day have been driving a motorboat. You can't argue with the thrill of the wind in your hair and the flicks of salt water against your cheeks.

I enjoyed everything, to be sure, except maybe the squinting and the choking, but I'm left wondering what I'm missing.

A quick anecdote before the Internet center closes: I walked by a young girl and her mother today, both taking sun on the beach. "I'm really hot, can I stop now?" the girl asked. Her mom said something like, "No, if you do that, you won't tan your front well enough." The girl gave in.

The Real Las Vegas

Cancun in a nutshell: see title above, subtract casinos, add beach. Also, subtract Internet--at least from this hotel. I'm posting this blog from an "e-photo postcard" machine in the lobby. Which is only debatably a lobby, as it lacks walls, but does have festive marble flooring. The machine only allows one paragraph, and I'm not sure how much text I can squeeze in, so we'll see what happens. Outside the hotel, about a mile down the strip, is a giant Mexican flag. The government probably put it there to remind people they were actually in Mexico. Almost all the signage is in English, and restaurants such as the Hard Rock and the Rainforest Cafe are joined by Papa John's Pizza. I imagine they do well during spring break. After a week in Chiapas, the prices seem impossibly inflated, but more importantly, something about the place (I'm guessing the fact that it was a master-planned resort community?) doesn't ring true. For instance, there's a group of street stalls downtown, but they feel like sanitized, overdecorated imitation stalls, as if Disneyland were doing "Main Street Mexico." Sanjai, who flew in his first propeller plane today, agrees--and like me, he really enjoyed the more classic backpacking part of our journey. We'll definitely have a good time here, especially since we plan to spend tomorrow mostly in the ocean, and you can't discount the value of high water pressure and numerous soft pillows, but we also know that the heart and soul of our trip are probably behind us. In other news, we both did laundry in the sink--probably among the very few guests at the "Fiesta Americana" that ambled in with backpacks on, then proceeded to wash their clothes before checking out the pool. The taco count: none today. Really. But for breakfast near Tuxtla Gutierrez, I had layered tortillas, eggs, ham and fried bananas, drizzled with red sauce. I'm going to try making this at home. To post this blog, I first tried borrowing an ethernet cable from the concierge's computer, which was off for the night but unguarded. Sanjai, holding his "Mexican water" very well, was my very skilled accomplice, distracting people while I fumbled under the desk. All for naught: the cable didn't work, alas. Earlier we had a minor scuffle with our "colectivo" driver from the airport, who took us to the wrong hotel. Working hard for a tip, he had also said some things that would enrage anyone with a decent respect for women's rights. He then refused to take us to the hotel where we had our reservation. Poo him. But it still worked out okay when a kindly valet whose coworker witnessed this exchange offered us a ride to the right hotel in his Hummer. Those things are big: Sanjai and I both fit in the back even with our backpacks sitting between us. (Congratulations to Sanjai's mom for passing the first part of her final at culinary school!) What we talked about at dinner: Dr. H, Ayn Rand, Hawaii, Sanjai and ballroom dancing. What I'm reading: still Ludlum. Our hero has been shot in the shoulder.

Sanjai Rocks Chiapas

If I had written this blog an hour ago, I would have started with, "A quiet day." But in the time since, Sanjai used his iPod to bring music to the town plaza here in Chiapa de Como. People gathered to watch and listen as he transmitted songs through a boombox owned by a music vendor on the plaza sidewalk. The vendor himself was fascinated, and several folks wanted to take the iPod home. I'm not an Apple fanatic (whenever I use one, the operating system confuses me and I keep trying to click the missing mouse button) but even I have to grudgingly admit they have an amazing product here.

My favorite song of those Sanjai played: Bizarre Love Triangle, by New Order, though I prefer the Frente cover.

Quick notes, as there's only eight minutes till this Internet center closes. It's running ten computers on a shared modem connection, so it's a bit like trying to surf today's web with my Commodore 64 and a 300 baud modem. Sanjai gave up and already went back to our posada (a.k.a. hotel).

In today's incontrovertible highlight, we rode a motorboat through a spectacular "canyon del sumidero"--a deep fissure running twenty miles long and with cliffs like rocky skyscrapers. We also came across a boat floating along in the national park and offering refreshments. It had a red Coca-Cola roof.

In the last two days, I've seen both sweaters and bracelets with llamas on them, but when I ask, no one here can identify them as llamas. This leads me to wonder whether the Mayans had already heard of the llama from way down in the Andes, integrating it into their art, or if their presence is a product of more recent globalization.

The taco count: two more apiece, but these had double shells and avocado slices. We also had taquitos later in the afternoon. Since they came in a choice of chicken, beef or "al pastor", we tried to order a combo platter. This puzzled the cooks, who eventually created ten taquitos, each containing all three ingredients. Overall, not bad, though the flavors were hard to tell apart. For dessert we munched on dried mangos covered in chili powder. That flavor was very distinct.

To distract one persistent street vendor I tried speaking Chinese, but this worked about as well as when I tried to speak Chinese in China.

What we talked about at dinner: hard to say, as we ate dinner twice.

What I'm reading: The Prometheus Deception, by Robert Ludlum. It doesn't hold a candle to Middlesex, but it's had at least one good battle scene so far and the inevitable abdominal injury. Anyone see Wesley die (uselessly) in the last episode of Angel? That's what I'm talking about.

Plans for tomorrow: first we'll take a minibus to Tuxtla Gutierrez, and in the afternoon we'll fly to Cancun, where Sanjai has suggested we go "parasailing". I'm still not really sure what that means, but I understand it involves a parachute and with a parachute I don't think I could hit the ground very hard, so I'm probably game.

Big Ruins, Small Plane

Today's count: Sanjai, five tacos, me three. For dessert, we asked a street vendor who was about to close down if she could fry us two bananas. We must have asked nicely (that, or she felt bad wasting food) because she surprised us with special dessert platters incorporating all her leftovers. The result: fried bananas topped with condensed milk and churros. It was an eye-opening (and heart-clogging) combination.

Location update: I'm at an Internet center in San Cristobal de Las Casas, a colorful colonial town in highland Chiapas. It's closing in twenty minutes, so I'll be brief again. I'm also very sleepy, so my thoughts are vague. Those who chat with me on AIM can testify to the fact that I typo dramatically late at night, at least until I infuse myself with mixed nuts or a can of something caffeinated. While no mixed nuts are available here, I did buy an interesting "power soda" called CULT to bring home as a souvenir.

That reminds me of the time I decorated my room in Chile with a hiking boot, which left my uncle and aunt a bit nonplussed... but that's a story for another day.

One reason I'm sleepy: last night, we slept in a room by Ocosingo's central plaza. The noise was relentless. First, around midnight, we witnessed a dogfight. The sparring dogs howled like coyotes eating someone's pet in Porter Ranch. Trucks cruised by at intervals playing techno music; I'm not sure who they were cruising to be seen by, since everyone was (at least until they came by) asleep. And, though I didn't notice it amid blurry dreams of visiting the DMV, Sanjai lay awake in bed observing that the town clock tower rang a random number of chimes every twenty minutes or so. It was very pretty, though, so we forgave it.

In the morning, we tried to charter a flight to Laguna Miramar, but the pilot wasn't at the airfield--just a security guard making sure no one stole the plane. So instead we found a minibus to a local set of ruins called something like "Tonina." They were empty and awe-inspiring: set against hills and over 90 meters high. When we climbed to the top we could see for miles. The vista included a group of cows and a ranch recently occupied by the Zapatistas, to the dismay of the ranchowners, who now operate a small hotel in town while waiting for them to go occupy something else.

What we talked about at lunch: education policy, Mock Trial, the quality of writing at Stanford, and a man named Mr. Rude. The women at the table next door sent us cups of sangria when they heard us trying to negotiate a serving smaller than a pitcher with the waiter. Sanjai liked his. I swallowed some and tried hard to remember that red wine has health benefits, which presumably survive being mixed with fruit juice and mineral water.

What I'm reading: I'm not sure yet, as I finished Middlesex on the bus from Ocosingo to San Cristobal. What a brilliant book...

They're shutting down the Internet center, so I'll stop there. Coming up tomorrow: possibly a rental car, certainly a visit to the Canyon of the Sumidero, where we may try to kayak and will probably get very wet.

Ocosingo

This is a high-security cybercafe. To prevent theft, the monitors are recessed beneath glass panels, so that the viewing angle is kind of like looking down at a plate of food but without ever actually eating anything. It's a little tiring on the neck and another good reason to make eye contact at the dinner table.

The walls of this cafe are decorated with two things: a price sheet (8 pesos an hour) and a portrait of Jesus Christ.

I'll write about today quickly, because Sanjai is nearby making a phone call and will probably return soon with an interest in finding dessert--most likely plums dipped for a long time in sugar water. Earlier we tried cups of corn doused in sweet and spicy red sauce. Overall this trip has been delicious, which you can probably tell from how much I keep writing about the food.

In the morning (after breakfast, naturally) we visited the ruins of a Mayan city. We posted a short blog from there using Sanjai's cell phone, which oddly only worked on top of the temple where we were hiding from a sudden storm. We had guessed rain was coming when we saw all the local salespeople packing up their wares. One group clustered beneath a blue tarp, then when the rain let up moved gingerly out of the ruins still hiding underneath it. It looked like something that might have fit in a Chinese New Year's parade, but missing a dragon head.

For lunch, Sanjai managed eight tacos, all al pastor; I stuck with six and mixed in two beef. Felipe would have been proud.

In the afternoon, we hired a driver to take us to a supposedly spectacular waterfall where the movie Predator was filmed, Misal-Ha. It was, in fact, just that. We climbed behind the waterfall itself with the help of a rope, then crept deep into a cave where we saw bats and a Mexican man swimming in the dark.

Tonight we'll sleep in Ocosingo, a town that Lonely Planet describes as "agreeable." That's an understatement: the place is charming and the air is cool. We found a little hotel overlooking the bustling central plaza. The room is clean and has a fan that produces a neat strobe effect when its blades pass under the light bulb. Of the twelve other parties checked in, eleven are here on business from other parts of Mexico.

What we talked about at dinner: diabetes.

Tomorrow: it's not clear what will happen. We'll try to charter that plane to the Laguna, and if that fails, we'll probably visit the nearby ruins of Tonina, then go motorboating in a "deep fissure" near Tuxtla Gutierrez.

Rain

Taking shelter in ancient temple 200 feet up during tropical downpour. All wet, all well.

Day Two - Palenque

Sanjai and I were underdressed at the "Museo de la Vente" in Villahermosa. At least, this is what I gathered from the "this way to the bathroom" signs, which depicted a man wearing a suit and tie and a woman in some kind of fancy gown. By contrast, my outfit featured "backpacking pants" that kept falling toward my knees--the elastic snapped last summer and I forgot to fix it.

Also, the "Museo" was not a museum but a weird hybrid between a zoo and a sculpture garden. Large stone heads relocated (a.ka. looted?) from ancient Olmec sites were embedded in the jungle alongside cages full of birds, jaguars and spider monkeys--as well as "small felines" that looked like household cats with designer fur. The layout of the so-called museum was cryptic enough that the Lonely Planet recommended hiring a guide for 150 pesos. No guides presented themselves, so we made do with occasional "you are here" maps.

I used to think fried bananas were a Cuban food, but I've reevaluated. Other cuisine moments from the day: complimentary tequila sunrises when we checked into our hotel, and a street stand selling quesadillas where we camped out and kept ordering more to eat until the end of a tropical downpour. The damage came to 36 pesos for six quesadillas, each with a different unidentified meat in it. If I had to guess, I think one was chorizo and another chicken. Afterward, to balance the meat, we bought dried fruits--Turkish-quality dates, apricots that were a little too sweet, and very dense, very tasty pears. Sanjai wanted mangos but the only ones they had were coated in chili powder.

Though he wasn't keen on these admittedly very red mangos, overall Sanjai has been both cheerful about eating random things and not particularly paranoid about the water. This is good, as it's very hard to avoid the occasional water exposure, unless you boycott showering. (He eventually succumbed to the ice in a margarita at dinner.)

Speaking of water, I've been very happy with my toothbrush. It has built-in toothpaste.

Lonely Planet described the town of Palenque as dull. I didn't find it so at all. It has the best-stocked shoe stores I've ever seen. Their walls are so crowded with footwear that I'm surprised they don't staple some to the ceiling. There was also a city plaza with two clowns and no grass, and a church housing a nativity scene that included a giant rooster (larger than all the humans except Mary.)

What I'm reading: "Middlesex" by Jeffrey Eugenides, which is brilliant, and the same chapter of the Lonely Planet guide over and over again, which is helpful but not as funny as Let's Go.

Tomorrow: we visit the Palenque ruins in the morning, then bus to Ocosingo in the afternoon. The next morning, we plan to charter a plane to a body of water called Laguna Miramar, which is somewhere southeast of here and supposedly very beautiful. There's a tiny bit of info on it here.

Arrival

My first blog got erased by a temperamental Pentium III here in downtown Villahermosa, so I will try again, and still without any idea how to get an apostrophe out of this keyboard. I miss using contractions. Wait, never mind, I found it. Directly to the right of the 0 key. Which means my next word will be a contraction.

Let's see, then... where to begin... the most unusual thing I ran into today was not the Mexican national champion futbol team, which got kind of drunk between Cancun and Mexico City. No, it was the sushi: tuna and avocado wrapped in rice rolled in fried bananas, topped with chipotle sauce.

Oh, a note on airport logistics. To transfer between flights in Cancun, you have to go through immigration, leave the airport, fend off hungry taxi drivers and then walk down the street to the departure terminal. Fortunately, I ran this gauntlet in good company, with a Canadian man who rambled a bit about the steel industry and error tolerance in plasma TVs.

More to come. Tomorrow (Saturday): a bus to the Mayan ruins at Palenque, which either leaves twice a day, once an hour, or every thirty minutes, depending on whom you ask.

Pivot

“Go where it ended, and begin there.” I wasn’t sure what I would think as the subway neared Harvard Yard. In fact, I didn’t really give much thought to thinking anything at all. So I was surprised when I began to feel a little queasy, an incipient shiver thrusting up from my midsection someplace.I looked at the windows, rushing past long dark stretches of tunnel wall, slowing as we took the final curve. Was this to be nothing more than a wasteful conceit? Two days later, to a visiting music professor from England, I would respond, “Unfinished business,” to his question of why I was coming back. But could unfinished business truly justify resuming a part of my life that had seen me convinced I'd lost my place and my path? Perhaps it was just me trying to live as though I were a character in a storybook. Sasha might have said that to me, once. But now Sasha seemed supportive. We’ve both changed since the days when he was from South Africa and I could get drunk off the Beauty and the Beast soundtrack.

The subway halted. I emerged.

The shiver never quite manifested, and I passed through the turnstiles to face the first choice of the day. Left, to Harvard Yard and yesterday. Or, right, to C’est Bon, breakfast and, presumably, the future.That’s when the phrase took me by surprise.

Go back to where it ended, and start there.

Signal a new direction by commencing where the old one failed. Two rays can share the same terminus and journey different ways. One ray emerged from Canaday A-13 in May 1995 and made it to a taxi cab in Harvard Square. From there, it took me to Chile, to Stanford, to CASIO and Dr. Hurlbut, to Albania and Kosovo. It was a good ray, despite its inauspicious beginning.

This one would start in the same place again but go somewhere else. I exited left.

Cover is Destroyed and Never Reused

Today I encountered, for the first time, a device in a public toilet stall that sits behind the toilet itself and, at the touch of a button, rotates a plastic cover over the toilet seat, digesting it at one end and emitting it at the other. "Cover is destroyed and never reused," a sticker reassures you, and a little LED display lets you know how many covers remain stored for future use. How wondrous!

Once, in Peru, I noticed that none of the toilets even had seats. They were otherwise normal, porcelain bowls, sporting brand names such as "American Standard." In Cuzco, I caved in to my curiosity and visited a toilet shop. "Porque no tienen asientos?" I asked, gesturing at row upon seatless row of merchandise. The saleswoman shrugged, and explained, "Cuestan menos asi." They cost less this way. It was a simple answer, but sensible.

When I visited Albania two months ago, I learned that they had recently remodeled the capital city's airport to provide modern bathrooms for Western visitors. I walked in and at first glance was appropriately impressed. They had installed a shiny concrete floor, a bank of urinals along the wall, sinks with mirrors and even canisters of antibacterial soap. But then I noticed that beneath each urinal was a wooden bucket—perhaps a sign that "modernization" is still a work in progress there.

Return to the Iron Curtain

Hello all,

I was writing to apologize in case I failed to respond to a recent e-mail or phone call -- in something of a sudden departure I've ended up in Spokje, Macedonia, en route to Albania. I should be back before Christmas, however.

Best to everyone,

Daniel

ps. Today was our first day in Macedonia and relatively uneventful so far. Sasha and I spent much of the morning searching for a place where our ATM cards could generate the cash necessary to purchase breakfast, as well as Internet time at this local cafe. Our on-hand funds had taken a severe hit last night when a linguistic misunderstanding resulted in an order-of-magnitude mistake in the price charged us by a taxi man driving us from Skopje International Airport to the city proper (in a surprisingly nice Mercedes.) Sasha looks bored in the seat next to mine so I will send a lengthier update from somewhere else. Take care.