FELIX SAN ROQUE

RIP 61 X CHOICE

2008-02-01T09:00:00.000-08:00

The Title of the this Book

Felix San Roque

I. The Red Eye from Frisco International

I arrived at the airport in Frisco[1] a couple of hours early. My flight departs at 2105 hours. It is now seven in the evening, Saturday December 22, 2007, three days before Christmas. Check-in was a cinch. It took about fifteen minutes but that’s because I’m flying business class, and the line in the business class check-in counter was very short. Only three people were ahead of me when I arrived. I went through the security check and headed straight to the VIP lounge. I sat down, relaxed, and had some h’orderves and drinks. Everyone was cool and nice and minding their own business. Really boring. Another couple came in. They looked worthy enough to be written about so I grabbed my notebook and pencil and started writing. These people could provide me with some good materials to write about. I started doodling and writing about nonsense, pretending not to notice the couple that just came in or else they might get suspicious and keep their distance, staying as far away from me as possible.

Now, you may ask yourself, what is so dad gum amazing about the said couple to compel you to mention them and then start writing about them? And the answer is; there is absolutely nothing remarkable about these people, not one iota, not a single speck in the sand of an endless beach in the Philippine Archipelago. They just happen to fill a void in my field of view and thus became an unfortunate prey for my appetite for hyperbolic articulation. They are normal looking people, not any stranger than anyone I’ve come across in my entire life.

One is a middle aged gentleman, around the age of forty or fifty, something ridiculous like that. His wife - I’m assuming it’s his wife, she could be his mistress for all I know – is about the same age, dressed conservatively in black slacks and a red blouse, wearing a wire rimmed glasses, and ordinary looking. The middle aged gentleman is also dressed conservatively in a blue pastel colored shirt and polo pants. If the wife was ordinary looking, then this gentleman is so ridiculously ordinary that his very existence evokes no feelings of emotion at all from this observer. There is simply no way to describe him other than that a door knob probably has more personality than this guy. One look at him puts me completely to sleep. He is that boring! He could be a guaranteed cure for insomnia. The pharmaceutical companies can save all that money that they pour into their R&D[2] budget every year trying to find a formula that will put people to sleep. All they really need is a picture of this guy. Have people look at him if they’re having sleeping problems and in no time they’ll be snoring to no end for sure.

Well, I thought to myself, they might be ordinary looking but that does not necessarily mean that they’re uninteresting people. I haven’t even talked to them. Then again, would I want to? Come on, you can’t judge a book by its cover. I’ve come across many colorful looking people in my many years of travel only to find out what boring and pretentious characters they really were when I finally got to know them a little better after spending several days with them. So I figured that I should at least try to get a conversation with them to see if they’re really as boring as they look. The problem is how to approach them. I don’t even know them and quite frankly, I don’t think I have anything in common with these people. The weather would be a harmless and innocuous topic to broach so this was a possibility. The other problem is how to get that conversation going with them. They are twenty feet away from and they are completely clueless as to what my intentions are. Whether or not you think my intentions either are malicious or harmless, condescending or what not, they are for my on amusement and mine alone. I don’t really care if other people find them interesting or offensive, all I care about is to write them down and read them days, months, even years later and if they amuse me then as much as they amused me at that very moment when I wrote them down in my little notebook that I keep specifically for moments like these when I’m bored and have nothing better to do, then I will have been satisfied with my efforts regardless of what the general populace thinks of them. That’s how I roll with literature. Strictly for me and no one else but me because it is all about me.

The Mabuhay Lounge in Frisco is the VIP lounge strictly for Philippine Airlines passengers flying in business or first class. It is located on the 4^th level of the International Terminal Boarding area at the end of the hall where all the VIP lounges are located for all the airlines. It is somewhat small but comfortable with plenty of glass windows and views of the runways and the mountains of South San Francisco and Daly City. The ordinary looking couple was sitting on the large comfortable sofa adjacent to the glass window overlooking the mountains of Daly City. I went up to the bar area of the lounge and poured myself a scotch on the rocks and then casually walked towards the sofa were the boring looking couple was sitting. They were staring blankly at the television. Some stupid game show was on which did not elicit any kind of interest or emotion from either me or the rest of the passengers waiting idly at the Mabuhay Lounge. This was my chance to strike up a conversation.

Me: “Thank god the weather will be better in Manila”.

It was cloudy, gloomy, and drizzly outside, the kind of day where you’d rather be lounging around inside on the floor of your living room with the fireplace lit up, a glass of chardonnay in one hand and caressing your sweetheart with the other. The husband looked up at me and smiled, then went back to staring blankly at the mindless game show on the tube. This was not starting out too well, I thought to myself. Not only that, but this was somewhat awkward. It isn’t like this was some chick I wanted to impress and pick up; I’ve got plenty of lines in the bag for that occasion. This is more complicated and more difficult, to be perfectly honest. You just can’t walk up to a complete stranger whom you have nothing in common with and start asking questions about their lives without them thinking that you are some kind of a nut. With a girl at least your intentions are somewhat understood. You find her attractive so you go up and talk to her and try to see if the two of you could hook up. If you did that to a guy who is older than you, or any guy for that matter, he might think you’re a homosexual. That would be a bad thing, especially if you’re not homosexual. And even worse if the guy you tried to approach was a closet homosexual who happens to be a US Senator[3] or a highly respected religious leader with hundreds of millions of followers, who preaches against and condemns the moral decline of the our society and the decadent behavior of our youths[4].

A couple of minutes passed before I was about to start saying something again but then the wife got up to get some beverage. The only thing I have in common with this couple is that they are Filipino and they are headed to the Philippines for vacation. There was nothing else I could think of in order to get a conversation going.

Me: “Where are you guys headed to?”

Husband: “We are from Pangasinan”.

Me: “Ah, good place”.

I lied. I’ve have never been to Pangasinan, I don’t even know where the hell Pangasinan is or if I spelled it correctly. I figured it’s in the province somewhere but I just didn’t know which province.

Again, after the terse response, the husband said nothing else and offered no other information about his destination nor did he inquire about mine. He simply went back to staring blankly at the mindless game show on television. His wife came back a minute later with a bottle of Evian water and sat right back down next to her boring husband and did the exact same thing, stare blankly at the mindless game show on television. Their faces were expressionless as they watched the mindless programming. The game show was Jeopardy. One contestant picked a Daily Double. Exciting stuff, a possibility of winning double the many thousands of dollars the contestant bet on the line on the subject of Geography. But the boring couple was not responsive to the exciting drama unfolding in front of them. They just stared at the television as if they were watching paint drying on a white wall.

“What is Nova Scotia?” the contestant on Jeopardy questioned confidently after Alex Trebek, the host, gave the answer to the Daily Double topic of Geography.

“That is correct” said Mr. Trebek to the winning contestant. This was followed by the

wah wah wah wah,

wah wah waaaaaah!

wah wah wah wah waaaaaaaaaaaaah!!!!

wawawawawa

wah…..

theme song music of this stupid show. The studio audience crowd was cheering perfunctorily followed by an inset shot of the spouse and other family members in the audience. This was not enough to impress the boring couple however, and neither were the rest of the PAL passengers waiting at the Mabuhay Lounge in Frisco International. While most of the people were not paying attention to the television programming, they were at least jovially communicating with their fellow travelers and family members about their upcoming trip to the P.I.[5] Most of these people were going home to the motherland for the holidays and were eager and excited about the trip.

The holiday season in the Philippines is probably one of the most joyous places to be in the whole wide world. They take their Christmas and New Years celebration seriously. It isn’t just about shopping and giving gifts, it’s about a celebration of the birth of Christ and all the good things he brought to God’s green earth. Ain’t no Kwanzaa or Hanukah gonna spoil the fun of this Christ loving nation of the Philippines. You can take your Sodom and Gomorrah and stick it up your part of the anatomy where fully digested food gets discharged.

The Philippines leads the world in fiestas – one for every Barangay[6] of every town in all the provinces of each island in the Philippines – and holidays – one for each saint of every Bargangay of each town in all the provinces of each island in the Philippines. If there’s religious feast to be had, the Philippines will celebrate it. This is why every year during the holiday season millions of Filipinos all over the world flock to international airports with their huge Balikbayan[7] boxes, with all the members of their family and armed with large amounts of their disposable income to be spent on frivolity when they get back home to pump up the local economy and drive the exchange rate down in favor of the local currency which is too bad for saps like me because my spending power is slightly undermined by the influx of overseas foreign worker remittances.

The energy and vibe in that little lounge at the Frisco International Airport made the boring couple look even more out of place than they really were. These two looked like catatonic skeletons in the middle of a wild and crazy party. People around them were laughing, speaking in rapid fire Tagalog, speaking so fast that I could barely understand a word they were saying. I have a hard enough time trying to understand the language when it’s spoken very slowly, when every syllable is stretched out clearly for my benefit, but when these Tagalog speaking people starts spattering away like a machine gun all comprehension of even the most basic sentence is lost on me. It’s akin to reading in English when all the words are spelled backwards. There is absolutely no hope of understanding.

So there we were, me standing and looking out into the darkness of the Frisco International Airport runway, the boring couple sitting and staring blankly at Alex Trebek and his stupid show, and the hundreds of Balikbayan Filipinos - kids, mothers, aunts, uncles, grandmothers, grandfathers, their neighbors and everyone remotely related to them - gathered together in the tiny Mabuhay Lounge getting liquored up and having a whale of a time before boarding on Philippine Airlines’ flight PR105 from Frisco to Manila.

Finally, at 8:15 pm an announcement was made on the PA system that our flight was ready for boarding. I never even got the chance to have a lengthy conversation with my catatonic Pangasinian friends.

II. In the heat of the night

This seems like an inappropriate title for this section because it has nothing to do with the night or in the heat or any combinations of the words displayed above at the heading of this section. Nevertheless I gave it that title because I couldn’t for the life of me think of anything more clever or creative than that. All I could think of was that movie, In the Heat of the Night, starring Sidney Poitier and Rod Steiger. The movie is about a Police Chief in Mississippi played by Steiger who encounters a black cop from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, played by Poitier. The Mississippians are of course, bigots, and even though the black cop is only in Mississippi to visit some relatives, he is somehow embroiled in a murder case which has nothing to do with him. So a conflict ensues between him and the bigoted cop but somehow they both work it all out and everything ends on a good note. The white cop becomes less bigoted and the black cop has a little better opinion of Mississippians in particular and white people in general. Like Rodney King[8] said, “Can’t we all just get along?”

I didn’t particularly enjoy that movie because I thought it was a little silly but it was played late at night in one of the local TV stations so I watched it until I got bored and then changed the channel hoping to find something more entertaining to look at. But it’s hard for me these days to watch television for any length of time because there doesn’t seem to be anything interesting to watch these days and the ones that do seem interesting I have already seen before, like In the Heat of the Night. Which is why being on a sixteen hour flight from Frisco to Manila is so agonizing because there is absolutely nothing to do except eat, sleep, or watch television and the airlines programming are either limited or outright terrible. They show movies, most of which I don’t really want to see. They have pre-programmed music stations, most of which I don’t want to listen to. In the business or first class cabin the food is great and the drinks, alcoholic beverage or not, is free. But you can only eat so much and you can only drink so much. After that you either watch a movie or sleep and I can never do either one for any length of time. Two hours is the most shut eye I can get out of a flight. It’s just not comfortable enough for me to get a good night’s sleep. So what am I to do? Well, I look around just to see if anything can make my flight a little more bearable. Now, what exactly am I looking at or looking for that will make me feel a little better. A pretty face? Nope, the flight attendants are over forty years old. Not ugly but not exactly young and voluptuous either. I turn to my left and glance at the lady sitting next to me. Old, boring looking, not exactly someone I’m interested in having a conversation with. So I get up and go to the bathroom. I don’t really have to go to the bathroom, it’s just an excuse to get up and walk up and down the aisle a bit for a little stretching. It didn’t help me at all. I am still restless.

I get out my notebook and start writing. This has always worked for me every time things get boring during my travels. So I write about the passengers on flight PR105 from Frisco to Manila on Dec 22, 2007. It’s now 0112 hours on Dec 23, 2007 PST. The cabin is cool and dark. All the lights, with the exception of a few small light bulbs above the passenger’s heads, are off. The hum of the plane’s engines is noticeable enough for me to be an annoyance such that I can’t get any sleep. Most of the passengers are asleep. Two are watching movies. One is reading a book. The majority are either sleeping or trying to get some rest. I am the only one writing. Little do these people know that I am writing about them.

I reread some of my old notes from way back. Here’s an interesting one, written on September 20, 2005.

Mission Analysis, how very boring. So I’m sitting here, it’s 3:49 PM, and I am absolutely bored out of my mind. I just missed a whole section of the presentation. Now, the guy is presenting the so called EWSK overview. I have no freaking idea what the Acronym stands for. Frankly, I don’t care. Thank goodness he is done.

Radiation & Something Analysis. So far, I’m not interested, nor am I impressed. Now ESD is presented. Boring! I am drowsy. This presentation is a guaranteed cure for insomnia. I wish I had a pillow. That would complete the task of putting me to sleep. The solar array will be isolated from Electrostatic Discharge. He’s not stopping, and there is no sign of him stopping anytime soon.

Finally, the presentation is over.

Now obviously these notes were taken from a design review presentation at work. I can’t reveal too much what they really mean because some of it is proprietary. Everything at work is proprietary. Well, almost everything, but in order to protect yourself from being accused of disseminating patently protected information to the outside world it would be safer if you assumed that everything that is generated inside the walls of the building in which you make your living as proprietary.

I don’t make a habit of writing about work and I’m not about to start now. The above nonsense will have to be my only mention of things that happened at work.

An older gentleman with a terrible toupee walks out of the lavatory. He is a short, pot bellied looking fellow of mestizo[9] extraction. I had also seen him earlier in the evening at the Mabuhay Lounge in Frisco with his mestiza[10] wife. They didn’t seem as boring as my Pangasinian friends. As a matter of fact they were yakking it up with some of their Filipino friends, speaking in rapid fire Tagalog and mixing every other word with English. Now, this is one of my pet peeves about Tagalog speakers. Some of them would start out speaking English and in mid sentence would abruptly shift into rapid fire Tagalog and completely lose me. If you’re gonna speak Tagalog, speak Tagalog. Don’t mix it up with English because I and other people who don’t understand Tagalog will not be able to comprehend what the hell you are talking about. This is common with Tagalog speakers only, I think. I haven’t noticed this as much with Bisayan speakers. I have no idea why this is so.

The old pot bellied gentleman is sitting a couple of rows down from me. His wife looks like she is completely asleep, as if she had taken a sleeping pill and is comfortably whiling away at 55000 feet above the Earth while I suffer the agony of being restless. The flight attendant comes over to ask if there was anything else she could do for me. I asked her if she has any sleeping pills. She answered no. She was peeking at my notebook at the same time so I quickly covered it up and put it away, perhaps fearful and somewhat embarrassed that she might find some of my compositions offensive. I then asked the flight attendant for a scotch on the rocks (Johnnie Walker Black).

So here I am again, with my scotch, my notebook and my pencil, writing about nonsense with my senses working overtime like XTC[11]. This is how desperate I’ve become aboard Philippine Airlines’ flight PR105 from Frisco to Manila on the early morning hours of Dec 23, 2007 PST. I am quoting old songs from the 80s that everyone has either forgotten about or has never heard of in the first place. It’s a cool little song actually. It starts out with a soft acoustic introduction followed by some soft high pitched vocals by the lead singer and then it goes into the chorus:

And I’ve got One, Two, Three, Four, Five

Senses working overtime…

The song never made it far in the Billboard charts because I don’t think people were ready to embrace its quirkiness or its cleverness. The beat and the tune are fine but back then all the people really wanted to hear were either The Police or Bruce Springsteen. I like Bruce Springsteen myself because he wrote songs that most of my generation could relate to, songs like Born in the USA, Darlington County, Working on the Highway, and Glory Days. The Police on the other hand were writing far out songs like Synchronicity, Walking in Your Footsteps, Synchronicity II, King of Pain, Wrapped Around Your Finger, and Every Breath You Take. Furthermore The Police’s sound were more foreign and exotic while Bruce’s sound was more American and hard charging, with more down to earth guitar riffs and country rock themes. Again, these are the music genres that my generation could relate to.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. You are thinking that I am probably an X-generation type of guy, the generation that followed the baby boomers, the no good for nothing generation of slackers lacking direction and motivation, no ambition, no originality, no creativity and generally being useless to the entire human species. I must confess that I am guilty of all these generalization but at the same time I must also differ on the labeling. Yes, I was born after 1964. Yes, I lack ambition. Yes, I am not fulfilling my civic duty to society by being ambitious, aggressive, and goal and career oriented. These are the things that society would like all of us to be so that we can expand the empire of humanity and completely dominate God’s green earth with our avarice and our increasing appetite for conspicuous consumption. These are the things we need in order to maintain the stability of our society. I have no problem with that. My only beef is that I just find the label X-generation rather objectionable. It doesn’t sound cool and it implies a misleading connection to Malcolm X, at least it appears like that to me, as if we were a generation born during the reign of Malcolm X. No, Malcolm X was never the leader of our free world, only the leader of the Nation of Islam. But the Nation of Islam didn’t want him to lead them so they promptly shot him and replaced him with somebody they feel more comfortable with, like Louis Farrakhan. So what should the generation who here born under reign of Louis Farrakhan be labeled with? The Farrakhanian generation? That would be great, I’d be all for that. All these bright and clever kids who came up with Youtube, BitTorrent, Google, Yahoo, Napster, MySpace, and a host of other internet applications would be forever known as the Farrakhanian generation because they had their rites of passage when Louis Farrakhan was the supreme leader of the Nation of Islam. We could alternately call them the Farrakhanian kids, the Louis Vuitton Farrakhanian, or simply the Louis, whatever works. Quite frankly though I think the Farrakhanians label is catchier. You could sell advertising around such a label. You could design urban style clothing with such a label. You could manufacture black colored ball caps with a big white F label above the bill of the cap followed by arrakhanian in small lettering and market the hell out of it and have movie stars, professional athletes, musicians, artists, and general celebrities without specific professions like Paris Hilton promote it, and have inner city kids who look like gang bangers wear it crooked to one side of their head combined with their baggy pants and their wild and far out hairstyles. Corporations could generate gazillions of revenues with these Farrakhanian products and make billionaires out of these fat cats who are already suffocating with too much wealth anyway from the backs of the poor inner city youths who wear their products and convince suburban kids that by wearing the same kind of ridiculous outfits they too could become cool like the inner city kids.

I am on my second scotch on the rocks and the alcohol is beginning to slowly work its effect on my cerebrum. I am slowly beginning to notice a delay between thought and action. Is this just fatigue or the effects of alcohol? I don’t know and quite frankly, I don’t care. I only care about getting through this fourteen hour flight with my sanity intact. So I write some more. Now the cabin is completely dark except for the single little light bulb above my head. I am the only one awake in the business class cabin at this moment. Even the flight attendants have gone to their resting area. I don’t exactly know how the flight attendants work their schedule out. I know that once the airplane is up at cruising speed a meal is served, whether that’d be breakfast, lunch or dinner, they serve it. Then they clear the trays after serving the meal. Then they serve some more drinks to the passengers who, like me, want to get liquored up for the rest of the flight or until they pass out, whichever comes first. Then they disappear until they have to show up again a couple of hours before the plane is about to land. But what do they do in between, when the rest of the passengers are finally resting, the whole cabin is dark, and there’s no one else to serve? Do they go to their bunk beds in the back and get some snooze or do they just wait around for some idiot like me to buzz them up and make their lives miserable? I’ve always thought they were on station, ready to respond to a passenger’s request at any time during the whole flight. But then again, I could be wrong.

I turn on the monitor in front of me to see if there are any good movies to watch. Channel 2 is showing a Filipino movie with no English subtitle so obviously I have no interest in watching it. Channel 3 is an old black and white movie from the fifties. It’s an American movie called From Here to Eternity. It is a military movie, about an Army troop based in Schofield Barracks in Wahiawa, Hawaii on the Island of Oahu. I used to like this movie back when I first saw it on television but as time passes I’ve become less and less enamored with it partly because I lost interests in the main characters of the movie. The Sergeant, played by Burt Lancaster in the movie, has an affair with the Commanding Officer’s wife, played by Deborah Kerr. They end up having sex on the beach, waves splashing over them, with Diamond Head in the background in one of the most memorable scenes in the history of cinema. To this day that scene is played over and over everywhere in the whole universe, from commercials to parodies, from film school to summer school, from the mountains to prairies to the oceans white with foam, God bless that scene for it made superstars out of Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr. And it also made superstars out of the supporting casts in the movie such as Montgomery Clift, Frank Sinatra, Donna Reed, Ernest Borgnine, and Jack Warden. There was a rumor that old blue eyes, Sinatra, got the part because of his mafia connection, a rumor that was magnified into legendary proportions when it was used as the basis for that infamous horse’s-head-in-bed scene in the 1972 movie The Godfather.

I’m not sure if there ever was a horse’s head in bed anywhere to scare the living daylights out of the producer which convinced him into casting Frank Sinatra as the lowly corporal who gets bullied by a hulking, menacing looking sergeant played by Ernest Borgnine. Sinatra is no more than 5’ 7” something at barely 125 lbs compared to Borgnine’s 6’ 250 lbs plus frame, so this was no match physically. But Sinatra’s character in the movie is one of those runts who won’t back down from nobody, the kind you see in the schoolyards who is friendly with anybody but can hold his own when attacked no matter how big the opponent is. Thus, the character was a perfect fit for Sinatra because he was basically playing a part that he knew so well, himself. In one of the movie’s many poignant scenes Sinatra confronts Borgnine in a dark alley in Honolulu, probably somewhere near Hotel Street[12], while Borgnine was out on liberty, and pulls a knife on him. A fight ensues but Borgnine being a seasoned military man and street fighter knew how to handle these kinds of situation and was practically licking his chops at the opportunity to finally put this little runt away. In the end however, Borgnine gets stabbed in the belly and eventually dies while Sinatra also gets injured but makes a final dramatic scene with another supporting cast, Montgomery Clift. Sinatra eventually dies while bleeding to death in the arms of Montgomery Clift and soon after the movie ends with Burt Lancaster abandoning his affair with the Commanding Officer’s wife. Actually I forgot how the movie ended because it’s been such a long time since I’ve seen the movie but this being Hollywood in the fifties, the extramarital affair probably ended on a bad note and the Commanding Officer and his wife probably got back together, lived happily ever after, and a lesson was learned about fooling around with an enlisted man.

The next channel, channel 4, is just like channel 1; blank, no show, no dice, no nuthin’. I never really understood why TV stations in the US or anywhere around the world for that matter has no channel 1. Is channel 1 a spectrum that’s already occupied by some other industry? Apparently the FCC allocated channel 1, which is at 44 to 50 MHz spectrum, to the fixed and land mobile services. So what industry is that? There could be many, many industries which uses these frequencies, such as privately owned land mobile communication, trucking, and land navigation just to name a few. In order to really know who is authorized to use this spectrum you have to look it up in the FCC documents to see who owns the license to operate in that frequency.

Channel 5 is nothing but a global display centered at the Pacific Ocean with the plane’s route outlined in red with a little figure of the plane placed at the approximate location of the plane and the times of the departing airport and the arriving destination displayed to the side along with the time of arrival at the bottom. Wonderful information to know but not something you want to look at for fourteen straight hours. Actually I was once on a flight from Frisco to Hong Kong and sat next to an old Chinese lady who watched nothing but the plane’s route display all throughout the flight from take off to landing. I guess she just couldn’t wait to get to her destination and was counting how many hours, minutes, and seconds left until arrival. Either that or she just couldn’t stand sitting next to me and was pretending to stare at the empty display so that she wouldn’t have the deal with me, which would’ve completely destroyed my already fragile ego, which was probably her intention in the first place. Now that I’ve thought about it, from what I remember, that old Chinese lady was not only unfriendly towards me but she was also rude to the stewardess, yelling at her in Chinese. I didn’t really understand what was going on at first because obviously, I don’t speak Chinese. I thought they were just having a normal passenger to stewardess exchange, nothing unusual except that the old lady was speaking in a rather loud and high pitched voice with a heightened sense of urgency. But what do I know, I don’t understand Chinese, so I thought there was nothing unusual about the exchange. The flight attendant – the stewardess, who is also Chinese – took back the tray of food from the old lady and came back a few minutes later with another tray. That’s when I realized that the old lady was demanding to have a different meal than what she was given. Again, even after the tray of food was handed over, there was some exchange which seemed like it was heated and full of bile, but then again, I don’t understand Chinese, so I’ll never know if the exchange was acrimonious. Then the old lady started pointing her finger at the stewardess and hurled more Chinese vocabulary in her direction. The look in the flight attendant’s face told me that she was not pleased with the old lady’s comments. Her eyes look annoyed, her face was tight with anger, but she said nothing and just stood there while staring at the old Chinese lady with her hands rested on her hips, a gesture of contempt. She promptly turned around and went back to her station, walking hard and mad. A few moments later a male flight attendant came over and handed the old lady a cup of tea and some complimentary cookies of some sort. The old lady waved him away. I couldn’t blame her, she was eating and didn’t want to be bothered but the male flight attendant kept working on her, cajoling her, as if trying to console her and make her feel better.

To this day I still don’t know what caused the heated exchange between the stewardess and the old lady sitting next to me, and I don’t know if the old lady was already in a bad mood before take off, but I knew one thing for sure. That old lady made every second in that flight a living hell for everybody around her, and it didn’t stop until we finally boarded out of the plane either. She was still yelling at the stewardess on her way out of the plane and everyone could hear it from Hong Kong to Timbuktu.

Channel 6 was also blank. Channel 7, blank. Channel 8, blank. Channel 9 is showing an American movie which had been released months earlier. It is called No Reservation, a story about two New York City chefs, one man and one woman, who meet and fall in love. Like Christopher Cross said:

If you get caught between the moon and New York City

The best that you can do…

The best that you can do is fall in love[13].

This movie is not to be confused with the television show No Reservation on the Travel Channel starring Anthony Bourdain, a chef, who travels around the world and eat wonderful food. That show is terrific! It is much better than this silly love story movie where the lady chef, who of course is gorgeous because she is played by Catherine Zeta-Jones, meets a male chef with shaggy blond hair and who is also obviously wonderful looking. No surprise there. Hollywood would never put together two ugly people in a romantic comedy, not if they want to make some money.

There are some wonderful kitchen scenes in the movie, if you’re into that Food Network kinda deal, but the plot is predictable and inane. I didn’t even pay attention to the dialogue, much less the plot, because all I was thinking about was how wonderful it would’ve been if an episode of Bourdain’s No Reservation was shown instead of this movie. I would’ve particularly like to have watched again the episode where Bourdain goes to Cambodia accompanied by his restaurant business partner who is French and is not afraid to try the most exotic and strangest looking food available on the streets of Phnom Penh and Siem Reap. They go around eating bugs, tripe, crickets, and end up having dinner in someone’s Cambodian house on stilts in the river. Now, the house is just a simple looking abode with no running water and no modern plumbing. They get their water from the river, they wash their clothes, their dishes and themselves in the river, they dump all their wastes, including solid and liquid human wastes, into the river and they get their food from the river. Bourdain notices all of this while their meal is being prepared by their Cambodian host. The French restaurateur digs in enthusiastically at the food being served in front of them while Bourdain looks somewhat skeptical at first but ends up digging in anyway as if to say “what the hell, I’ve eaten in worse places”. I don’t know if they actually liked the food or if they just pretended to enjoy the food so that it’d look good on television. For all I know they might have actually abhorred the food and ended up with diarrhea afterwards and are confined, for the rest of the trip, inside their hotel rooms and spent the rest of their trip running to the bathroom every thirty minutes to defecate all the nasty gastronomy that they consumed from the river. It would’ve been funny if they actually showed scenes like that on television but I doubt if it would sell. I don’t think the general public has the stomach to consume that kind of raw reality programming on television yet. We are still not sophisticated enough to appreciate such nastiness. Eventually though we will be desensitized enough such that these kinds of raw material will be commonplace and it will be shown all over the world without much protest or outrage, but simply yawn and search for something more enlightening. Then we’ll know that we have evolved to a higher form of thinking and thus we can advance to a level of intellect that is beyond extremism of any form and will demand intelligent simplicity in our choices of entertainment. I can only wish. That will probably never happen in my or your lifetime.

Speaking of two ugly people in a romantic comedy, because Hollywood has never tried it, the name should be changed to Hollyneverwould. Actually Hollywood is a city in Southern California. There’s also a city in Florida called Hollywood but I don’t think they have movie studios there. There is a Universal Studios in Orlando, Florida, but that’s far away from Hollywood, Florida. Anyway, because the Hollywood studios shy away from meaningful movies and tend to make packaged movies with mass appeal so that they can make gazillion amounts of money and make filthy billionaires out of fat cats who are already suffocating with too much wealth, a protest is in order to change the name of this city from Hollywood to Hollyneverwould. All movie lovers of the world should band together and march to the city hall of Hollywood, CA carrying signs and banners that say something like Down with Hollywood Up with Hollyneverwould or some catchy slogan like that, shout out loud until your voice is hoarse, jump up and down like chimpanzees and demand that The city of Hollywood does not deserve such a glamorous name and should change the city’s name to Hollyneverwould!

If Holly(wood) never would then the independent film industry can’t make enough films portraying two ugly people, if not more, in any kind of movie, whether it’d be a romantic comedy, comedy drama, romantic drama, or any combination thereof, and not only are the people in the leading roles ugly but more frequently nowadays the people in a romantic entanglement are of the same sex. If Holly never would is one extreme in the spectrum of filmmaking then the real Hollywould, the independent film industry, is at the other extreme, and the real loser in all of this are the casual non angst ridden ordinary Joes and Janes of the world who go to the movies for entertainment’s sake and not so they can be educated, enlightened, proselytized, patronized, or manipulated by some other hidden agenda so that the fat cats can make their gazillions or the artists can expose themselves to a wider audience that they wouldn’t have access to in the first place if there was no mass medium such as film, television, the internet and the radio.

I like eggs. I also notice the lack of coherence in my thoughts. This is probably because I am working on my third scotch on the rocks (Johnnie Walker Black). But the liking eggs bit is not just random babble, it actually has some basis of deep and meaningful thought. Back in the day when Billy Crystal was funny he often mimicked famous black personalities like Sammy Davis, Jr., Marvelous Marvin Hagler, Muhammad Ali, and Larry Holmes, just to name a few. He was very good with his impersonation of these black celebrities but my personal favorite was his Larry Holmes impersonation where Billy, talking like Holmes in that deep southern black accent of his, says nothing meaningful at all except “I like eggs”. Here’s an example of Billy Crystal impersonating a Howard Cosell interview of Larry Holmes:

Cosell: We are here with the current WBC Heavyweight Champion of the World…Larry Holmes. Larry, what can you tell us about your next fight?

Holmes: Awhhh,…., y’know….,Ah like ayggs. Ah like ayggs.

Cosell: Do you now? Well, that’s absolutely amazing Larry, I like eggs too. Tell me Larry, do eating raw eggs help you in your training regimen?

Holmes: Awh, whale Howud, y’know, Ah like ayggs. Ah goes down to dee resh traunt at dee ho tell an Ah like to orduh me a alm ma let.

Cosell: So let me get this right Larry, you don’t actually eat raw eggs, you just like to order an omelet from the hotel restaurant?

Holmes; Das rayt Howud, das rayt. Ha ha ha. And sometimes Ah like my ayggs sunny side up too, so Ah orduh dat, and sometimes, ovah easy, and Ah orduh dat too.

Cosell: Have you ever tried boiled eggs Larry?

Holmes: Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha……ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha…., nah Howud, nevah had, ha ha ha ha ha ha….

[Holmes continues laughing for the next fifteen minutes. Finally, when Holmes settles down, the interview continues.]

Cosell: Now Larry, getting back to the topic that I brought up earlier, what can you tell us about your next fight?

Holmes: Ha ha, awh whale Howud, y’know, Ah like ayggs. Ah really do, ha ha ha, …not boilt dough, not boilt, but Ah like ayggs Howud, ha ha ha ha ha….

Larry Holmes was a good boxer back in the late 70s and early 80s but he was a poor interview not because he didn’t have much to say or that he didn’t want to do interviews with reporters but because nobody could understand what the hell he was saying other than that he liked eggs, or at least it sounded like that to me when he said something. When he was talking about his upcoming fight against Leon Spinks he could’ve been saying something completely different which had nothing to do with eggs. He could’ve been saying something like

“I think Leon Spinks is a really good boxer and it’s going to be a huge challenge for me to defeat him in our upcoming fight”

but when it came out of his mouth it sounded something like

“Ah like ayggs, y’know, ha ha ha, Leon Spinks don’t like ayggs cuz he ain’t got no teeth to eat dem ayggs so Am gonna beat his ass”.

At some point during my third scotch on the rocks and while writing a made up dialogue for a mythical Howard Cosell interview with Larry Holmes I fell asleep. This was a good thing only if it lasted until we finally reached Manila. But it didn’t last any longer than two to three hours, if that. While sleeping, a faint hum of the plane’s engines was still noticeable in my ears, which meant that I wasn’t really sleeping that deeply, but was only slightly unconscious, which meant that the main functions of my brain were still operating, and that meant that I wasn’t really getting a good night’s rest, not even a good deep nap.

There’s a thin wall of separation between the conscious and the unconscious which at times can be noticeable if you just close your eyes and count to a million. First, you will notice that you never reached a million counts. Second, you will not remember the last number you counted before you dosed off but you will remember dosing off while trying to count. This is a form of hypnosis but since no one is sending subliminal messages in your ears to perform a murderous act at the snap of a finger then there’s no need to worry about being brainwashed to assassinate a United States senatorial candidate, such as the case in the movie The Manchurian Candidate. Speaking of The Manchurian Candidate, Frank Sinatra was also in that movie, although I don’t think the mafia had to put a horse’s head in a producer’s bed for him to get that part because he was already a big star at that point. He was in demand, nobody had to scare the living daylights out of a Hollywood (Hollyneverwould) producer to give him the part because by then, Sinatra was already The Chairman of the Board of the Rat Pack. Sammy Davis, Jr. was also part of the Rat Pack, the only black entertainer of the bunch, and not only was he black, he was also Jewish. Imagine that, a black man who converted to the Jewish faith, jet setting with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and I forgot who else was in the group, these are the only people I could think of because the I think the rest of the bunch are second or third rate entertainers with very little name recognition. If they were so popular then even an idiot like me should be able to recall the names of those sonovaguns, shouldn’t I?

I’m not exactly sure what the reason was for Sammy’s conversion to Judaism. Maybe he thought he had something in common with the Jews being perpetually persecuted and all but I don’t think that was the case with him because he was a popular entertainer and had a lot of fans and even ended up marrying a Swedish actress. So I don’t think that he felt the brunt of racism as much as some other black folks who were stuck in poverty and living in the inner cities. He was not a very big fella, probably no more than 5’2” and 115 lbs, and not particularly attractive either. He was no Billy Dee Williams for sure but he could sing and dance and make people laugh because among other things he was funny to look at, especially while singing and tap dancing, one eye bulging out like it was about to pop out of its socket, and jaws jutting out like Jay Leno’s. That’s another thing about Sammy Davis, Jr. He had a long ass jaw for a little guy. But the important thing about Sammy is that he could sing, and a particular talent like that can trump out many flaws. You could be physically unattractive, have bad breath, be the size of a midget, lacking intellectual capacity, be uncoordinated, and have plenty of bad habits like chain smoking, alcoholism, carousing and womanizing but if you can sing like Wayne Newton women from all over the world will adore you because women love men who sing and dance well. Singing fills the heart with joy and uplifts it to unimaginable heights such that while in the act of singing you actually feel like you’re flying above the clouds like an angel on the wings of love. If you don’t know how to sing then the next best thing is to hear somebody sing really well because a beautiful sound sends the spirit soaring high up in the sky and takes it to the limit of eternity. A voice like Sammy Davis, Jr. singing The Candy man is one of the best toe-tapping tunes this world has ever heard. There is no way to resist the urge to start wiggling the posterior once Sammy gets The Candy Man tune going and by the time he’s belting out the chorus

The Candy Man

Oh The Candy Man can

The Candy Man cause he mixes it with love and makes the world taste good

your face will be grinning so wide and far, your head will feel as light as a feather, and your heart will beat like a twelve year old with a crush on the girl next door. There is absolutely no way to escape this unbearable lightness of being.

The plane lands in Guam for refueling. Nobody is allowed to exit the plane. Instead the passengers are served food and drinks. Arroz caldo is a dish best served in the morning for breakfast. It is what the Chinese call congee, or rice porridge. In Tagalog it is called lugaw but the Spanish name, which literally translates to as rice broth, sounds more westernized and therefore sophisticated, so the Filipinos prefer to call it that when in the presence of foreigners. But among themselves they call it lugaw. I don’t actually know if the little street side carenderias in Manila call it lugaw or arroz caldo. If I had to guess I would say that they would list lugaw in their menu because I don’t think they attract much foreign business. The foreigners, westerners if you will, are a little queasy when in comes to street food in Asia and especially in the Philippines. Again, I haven’t walked down the streets of Manila and witness what foreigners what their time in the city, so I’ll have to reserve my judgment on that one.

[1] Frisco = San Francisco, CA

[2] R&D = Research and Development. Companies waste a lot of money developing new products that people won’t buy.

[3] Senator Larry Craig of Idaho

[4] Rev. Ted Haggard of Colorado Springs, CO

[5] P.I. = Philippine Islands

[6] A Barangay is a the smallest political entity in the Philippines that is recognized by the government.

[7] Balikbayan means homecoming in Tagalog, a language in the Philippines.

[8] Rodney King was a small time criminal who got beat up by white cops in Simi Valley, CA in the early 90s. When the cops were acquitted of police brutality a huge riot ensued in downtown Los Angeles.

[9] Half breed - male, typically of Filipino and Spanish combination

[10] Half breed - female

[11] The group XTC wrote a song called Senses Working Overtime which was released way back in 1982

[12] Hotel Street is Honolulu’s red light district back in those days, and still is to some extent, even though only washed up hookers and down and out drug addicts are the only one’s left roaming in the dark alleys these days.

[13] Theme song from the 1980 movie Arthur starring Dudley Moore and Liza Minnelli.

Around the world with Mark Twain

2007-11-12T16:04:00.000-08:00

Monday, 7:30 PM back home in the Bay Area.Tuesday, 10:30 AM in Southeast Asia in general and Singapore in particular. Signasnore, Singabore, Singalong back to where you belong. There's a village called Singalong just north of Manila, up in the slums in Tondo, near the garbage dump called smokey mountain. It ain't anything like Singasnore, Singabore though. Quite the opposite. It's dirty, grimy, gritty, and despicable. I have never been there myself but that's what people tell me, people in the know, like the hustlers and pushers in the old Manila district.

This tropical heat can be brutal if you're not careful Jack. When you're out there, exposed to the elements, with the searing heat scorching your body, and then you step indoors to an ice cold, air conditioned compartment, you could easily end up with pnuemonia. Last night was terrible, I couldn't get any sleep, I was coughing often, and anything and everything I tried in order to get some snooze resulted in failure. Much hyperbole to describe an otherwise uneventful evening but that's why we have literature as an art. We need diversion. If all everyone wrote was "Jack and Jill went up the hill to get a pail of water then came back down and lived happily ever after", we would all end up in an insame asylum or jump off the Golden Gate brigde. But that's not what we do because we're all human, and as desperate and conflicted peoples trying to find meaning in this otherwise confusing world, we tolerate exaggeration, licentiousness, and even plain old blatant falsification as long as it's interesting and entertaining.

The reason that I am not a published author, nor have I ever been encouraged to pursue the writtens arts, is because I am not gifted at doing these kinds of things. Taking simple stories and embellishing them, make them appear interesting, entertaining, endearing, or depressing. I simply write what I see, perhaps add a little hyperbole, combine it with some brutal honesty and a little bit of insight and that's all you'll get out of me. But I just can't take a simple event like washing my truck for example, and turn that mundane and boring task into a magnificent piece of literature in the same way that Mark Twain turned one of Tom Sawyer's daily chores like whitewashing a fence into a classic portrait of Americana. Tom Sawyer is regarded as a hero by most, if not all, students who read his adventures in grade school. Yet most of us have known a Tom Sawyer at one point in our lives, and we'd just as well pound his ass to the ground than congratulate him for his cleverness and wit. Such is the power of the written word. It influences people one way or the other and pardon the cliche but the pen can really turn a man more than a hatchett.

Speaking of Mark Twain, he once traveled around the world, following the line of the equator, and thus visited many of the tropical locales which lie along or near it. Many of those were third world countries then and many of them still are after all these years, like the Philippines. He was not for colonizing the Philippines though, and I don't think he had much flattering opinion of the islands. He also visited Singapore but I have no idea what he thought of it. He probably loved it and predicted that some day it will become one of the most resourceful, success, and vibrant economy this world has ever seen. If he had had that opinion he would've been right on the money but if he had said something quite the opposite it wouldn't have mattered one bit to his reputation or his legend because people still would've read him, right or wrong. He was that good!

I wish I could be that good. What it must feel to grab and control peoples' minds. To rule the world, essentially. That's what every writer wants, the dictatorship of the written word. Forget political power, that doesn't inspire people, especially these days. What people want is to be lead to believe that they are in control of their own lives, and that they matter, and see all these things written down on paper as an affirmation of their fantasies. Like I said before, without literature Smith & Wesson would make a killing, literally, supplying humanity with the weapon to blow their brains out.

How to work a batter

2007-03-15T16:37:00.000-07:00

A dissertation of a single at-bat in a baseball game

Conventional wisdom says low and away, make that batter chase the ball that’s sliding away from the strike zone. Most likely, especially if the batter perceives a fastball, which most sliders appear to the batter at the point of release from pitcher’s finger tips, the batter will gear up to hit a fastball, only to fan away or foul it off as the sidespin of the ball forces a redirection of its trajectory as it approaches the plate. Strike one on the first pitch, painting the outside corner.

Play-by-play

Strike swinging, low away; 0-1

The batter steps out of the box and swings his bat, adjusts his gloves and jock strap (that’s what he’s actually trying to do although the general public perceives this as a baseball players’ predilection for fondling his testicles), spits out a sticky juice of tobacco, touches his helmet to make sure it’s snuggly fit, taps his bat at the plate and assume his stance at the batter’s box.

But all the gestures, rituals and idiosyncrasies are inconsequential, all pretenses to hide the batter’s diffidence at the plate. He is down 0-1 and his margin of error has been reduced by a third, so he thinks about his predicament while going through the ritual in between pitches.

At the same time the pitcher goes through his own ritual, rubbing and squeezing the ball, adjusting his cap (and his jock straps), lick his palm and digs a hole on the mound in front of the rubber so that he can plant his back foot firmly as he drives his lower body with his leg and thigh after uncorking his upper body in that final motion of slinging his shoulder, arm, elbow and wrist to fire the ball with thrust and rotation such that it will hit the target at the edges of the strike zone. The delivery takes less than a second, too quick and too fast for the naked eye to capture the essence of each detail yet the pitcher is aware of every motion of his body, every effort, every feel and pain that he endures during that split second motion, and he knows at the point of release, based on that sense, whether the ball will hit its target, for the slightest deviation in his mechanics will propel the ball either inside the fat part of the strike zone or way outside of it.

The catcher signals for the same pitch, a slider but slightly more outside than in, intentionally outside of the strike zone to induce the batter to chase and/or to gauge his tendencies, to see how far out of the strike zone he is willing to lunge after the ball, setting him up for the next three or four pitches and the next three or four at bats. The worst that could happen is that the batter takes the pitch, and the count 1-1. But the best case would be for the batter to swing at it. The chance of getting a hit or doing any kind of damage to a slider low and outside is very, very low. Either he will foul it away or completely flail at it.

The pitcher, leaning forward with his glove on his knee and the other hand with the ball hidden behind his back, with his attention focused to the catcher’s signal, sees the index finger pointing straight down, then a flash of two fingers down followed by the index finger again but this time it is pointed slightly askew towards the outside, then the tap of the catcher’s fingers on his cup, the final gesture given by the catcher before the pitcher initiates the next play. The pitcher nods and positions for a wind-up delivery. The batter assumes his stance, knees slightly bent, legs spread apart at the end of the box, front elbow perpendicularly set and hands on the bat held all the way down to the knob at a 4-10 position slightly above his shoulder. He rocks back and forth in a slightly open stance for a quicker reaction with his head turned towards the pitcher and eyes wide open and alert, not blinking, he never blinks until the ball is delivered.

Play-by-play

Strike swinging, low away; 0-1

Ball, low and outside,1-1

The pitcher goes through his motion and delivers the pitch. At the point of release the batter sees the same action, the same rotation of the ball, the very same exact motion as the previous pitch except for one slight difference; the point of release is slightly off to the side. The batter’s arms and legs jitters and his grips tightens as he gears up to swing the bat but during that split second in which he was able to perceive the difference in the point of release of the ball his instincts quickly took control of his physical kinetics, allowing his muscles to relax and let the ball pass. Ball one low and outside. The count now is 1-1.

The batter goes through his ritual and the pitcher does the same. The catcher meanwhile, is going through his mental index cards; the game plan. He knows the batter’s tendencies, hot spots and cool zones. The first two pitches validated the scouting report. In his mind the next pitch, the third, is the most important in a 1-1 count because the outcome of it portends the outcome of the entire at bat. The first two pitches were low and away. The batter’s tendency to chase bad pitches has a limit. He has good eyes but he is vulnerable to pitches low and away. His history say so, the video files on him say so, and the situation he’ s in say so. The book on him says that he will chase balls low and away if he has two strikes against him, but not one. The first two pitches were evaluation pitches, trying to get a feel for the pitcher’s control as well as the batter’s mood.

Conventional wisdom calls for a pitch that the batter will likely swing foul to get that second strike. That means an off speed pitch; a curve ball or a change up. This particular pitcher has not established a command of his curve ball and he tends to hang it in the middle of the plate when the game is not on the line, when nothing is at stake, so the catcher tries to stay away from the curve unless he really has to call for it. On the other hand, this pitcher’s change up is his second best pitch next to his fastball. The delivery is identical all the way to the point of release, the only difference being his grip on the ball. The catcher puts the super secret signal down for the change up in this inning, a series of 2-4-3-2-1 flashes on the fingers in that sequence. They go through all this trouble simply because it would be a murder of a pitch to throw if the batter knew it was coming. The catcher goes through the signal quickly and casually, not deliberately, in order to disguise it from the code breakers lurking all the ballpark. Teams, especially home teams, have them stationed at strategic positions and relaying the information back to command central once the signal is decoded.

The batter takes his stance and the pitcher readies and unwinds. As the pitcher releases the ball the batter knew by instinct that a fastball was coming. This was based on his observation of the pitcher’s delivery, the same motion of his last two pitches except there was less wrist action, and the ball seemed to pop right out of his hands without a tight spinning action, just like a fastball should. The batter gears up and swings his bat at the ball and had the bat in the perfect path, right in the line of the ball’s trajectory, except the ball was still three feet away from the plate when he had his hands fully extended, with his bath right out in front, crossing the plate at maximum speed. Momentum caused the batter to follow through the motion helplessly - he had no choice - completely twisting him around with the sound of swoosh!, before the sound of paat!, as the ball hits the catcher’s mitt a tenth of a second later. Strike two and the count is 1-2.

Play-by-play

Strike swinging, low away; 0-1

Ball, low and outside,1-1

Swinging strike, low, off-speed, 1-2.

Ball, high and inside, 2-2.

The batter’s chance of failure has increased significantly. He has two strikes against him while the pitcher has two more to give away. The strike zone has widened for both, which is always a pitcher’s advantage. The batter will have to swing at anything close to the strike zone to protect it. The catcher calls for a fastball up and inside, mainly to push him away from the plate and make it even harder for him to reach a slider low and away. The pitch is just a set for the final out. The pitcher sets and delivers. The batter recognizes it high and tight and turns his head and shoulder away, protecting his body in case the ball sailed in on him. Ball two and the count is 2-2

The batter was expecting a setup pitch but he didn’t know which one. He hadn’t been thrown a pitch inside yet until now. He has seen everything; fastball, slider, change up. He anticipates that the next pitch will be the out pitch, a slider again, low and away. The catcher watches the batter as he moves into the box. He expected him to stand further away from the plate after the last pitch but the batter stood close to it, the same as he had in this whole at bat. Apparently, the batter is concerned about the outside corner and he is trying to protect it, guessing that the pitcher will try to get him out on a slider low and away, which is just fine with the catcher. Now that he knows which part of the strike zone the batter is protecting it is easier to get him out on a pitch that he is least concerned. The catcher calls for a change up low and inside. The pitcher delivers. This time however, his delivery was not as good as the change up he had thrown a couple of pitches before. His grip on the ball was not tight enough that although the pitch landed near the inside corner of the plate the velocity of the ball was too fast for the batter to be fooled. The batter instinctively reacted on the fastball and took a huge cut, a full swing of the bat, smacked the ball so hard-paaattttt!!!-and smoked it past the first baseman’s ear, missing his head by an inch and unable to react to it because it was hit so hard that it zinged past him before he could put a glove on it. The batter made solid contact with the ball, smacking it at the thick, fat part of the bat - the sweet spot - which gives you that feel of pure power and confidence, and propels the ball like a slingshot by the sheer force of reaction from the impulse. The catcher immediately took off his mask as soon as he saw the ball leave the bat, stood up to see where the ball went and his held his breath until he saw the ball land just three inches outside of the foul line.

Play-by-play

Strike swinging, low away; 0-1

Ball, low and outside,1-1

Swinging strike, low, off-speed, 1-2.

Ball, high and inside, 2-2.

Foul, 2-2

The batter had turned on the ball too fast, pulled the trigger a little too early and sent it out of play, barely, towards the bullpen at right field. Foul and the count still holds at 2-2. The pitcher didn’t flinch one bit. He knew instinctively that the batter would pull the ball but he didn’t anticipate it to be that close. He didn’t stop to think that the change up wasn’t as good as his last. Only the catcher, with the perfect vantage point behind the plate for diagnosing the balls’ spin and trajectory, could detect the slightest difference.

The batter is kicking himself because he knew as soon as he made contact that he had hit it hard, as hard as he’s ever hit it. In baseball you don’t get many opportunities to succeed and when the pitcher makes a mistake or gives you a ball you can hit you have to take advantage of it. He clearly missed that opportunity because he knew that pitchers rarely pitch to him with a fastball inside, his hot spot. He could only hope, for he knew, as he walks back to the box, that the pitcher and catcher aren’t so foolish as to fool him twice. The catcher calls for the out pitch, low and away, but instead of a slider he calls for a curve ball. A good pitch to call since it is slower than a slider and if the pitcher misses he will miss outside of the strike zone. The chances of doing damage to an off speed pitch like that is minimal. The pitcher nods in agreement. Although this isn’t his best pitch he is comforted by the fact that he is still ahead in the count at 2-2. He wasn’t the least worried about missing. He sets and fires. The batter knew it was a curve because the pitcher’s motion made that obvious. His body gears up for the swing even before his mind has decided whether to swing at it or not and just as the ball reaches its highest elevation before descending down a rainbow path he decided that it was too close to lay off. The slightest hesitation made all the difference as the ball caught the outside part of the plate and the batter’s swing path was half an inch above the ball because the batter was handcuffed, there was no way to make a last minute adjustment on a slow ball moving on a curved path. He have to guess where the ball is going to land and swing there at the right moment, to anticipate, essentially to guess, like closing your eyes and shoot in the dark. The batter had no chance. Strike out swinging.

Cebuano Hospitality

2007-01-30T16:59:00.000-08:00

The flight from Manila to Cebu takes about an hour. The airplane takes off, it ascends, and before you know it, it begins to descend again in preparation for the landing. Breakfast is served but I hardly had any appetite for food at this moment because I just had breakfast earlier in the day, so I opted for a glass of orange juice and a cup of coffee.

The fella sitting next to me is a white guy from St. Louis, about 40 years old, and wearing a Cardinals baseball cap. So I tell him that Tony LaRussa is overrated. He says, "why do you say so". I said "because I'm an A's fan and when he was the skipper back in Oakland he had a loaded team who managed to reach three World Series in a row but only won one". He was incredulous of course, and he went on this long spiel about "anything can happen in baseball", "1 out of 3 ain't bad", and "at least he got there in the first place... how many managers can claim to do that", blah, blah, blah. He was indignant, and I had a lot of fun getting a rise out of this guy, it speeded up the whole trip by almost a third.

We landed in Mactan International Airport on the Island of Mactan, a small island across Cebu City, but I hardly noticed that we've arrive, having so much fun tweaking the guy from St. Louis about his beloved Cardinals. As we reached for our luggage in preparation to disembard, I casually said to the St. Louis fella,

Me: "So, what brings you around this part of the world?"

He: "I have business here"

Me: "On Christmas Eve?"

He just looked at me and smiled, as if I was ignorant.

He: "You live in the States?"

Now, that question struck me as mildly offensive, but I didn't say that to him. Instead, I just nodded my head. I felt somewhat dumb to be asking a white guy what the hell he's doing in the Philippines, as if he has no business being here. While we wait to disembark Mr. St. Louis fella keeps looking at me with a smirk in his face, knowing that I felt embarassed, and the satisfaction that he got me back for tweaking him about his Cardinals. I smile back with that stupid grin of a kid who got smacked in the head for teasing a little girl.

Mactan International is a relatively small airport but it's quite efficient and also modern; at least you don't have to step on the tarmac before getting inside the terminal. But the best thing about flying into Cebu instead of Manila is that you don't have to deal with Manila cab drivers, the traffic, the smog, and all the other shiketers in that godforsaken town. Although you pass through immigration in Manila, your baggage goes directly to Cebu, so you don't have to go through all the hassles of retrieving and rechecking your baggage again in Manila. There were only a handful of passengers who booked a direct flight from either Frisco or LA (El Lay) to Cebu, and so only a few people waiting in the international baggage claim area. Thus, I was out of there in less than twenty minutes.

The heat and humidity grabbed me like a blanket and almost literally suffocated me as I stepped out of the airport. Feeling somewhat disoriented, I fumbled around for a taxi until one finally dropped in on me. The cab driver spoke to me in Visayan (Bisaya), so I just said "Marriots Hotel". He said " 200 Pesos sir". A quick calculation in my head told me that's equivalent to US$4, so I said yes.

Cebu will strike many first time visitors as filthy, grimy, chaotically orgranized, and somewhat intimidating. I certainly felt that way as the cab crossed over Mactan Bridge and into the city of Mandaue. It also seems a bit backwards. There are traffic lights but few people seem to obey them. The streets are oily and dirty, there are kids begging in the streets, and many makeshift houses sit side by side with sari-sari stores (variety stores) and barbecue stands. It's about ten o'clock in the morning on December 24, 2006 here in Cebu and the whole city is bustling. The traffic is horrendous and there are tons of people walking in the streets, selling newspapers, lots of jeepney passengers, and lots of people going about their business on a Sunday morning. Maybe it's always like this, maybe it's because it's the holiday season, maybe it because of the upcoming ASEAN summit that's been postoned until January due to inclement weather (right!). Whatever the reason, I feel encouraged, because there's a certain vibe into this town that is evident in the way people greet you, as if they truly are glad to have met you. Even my cab driver was so easy going and friendly, even though he is probably gouging me with that 200 pesos taxi fare, that I can't help but appreciate his hospitality.

We passed by the Cebu Convention Center, a stylish new building where the ASEAN summit will be held. The cab driver starts telling about how much the making of the convention center has overrun its budget, bad management, corruption and graft, all the shenanigans that occur in the Philippines. It went in one ear and out the other. At this moment I could care less about Philippine politics, this is not what I'm here for. We finally arrived at my hotel, the Marriott's in Cebu. I checked, went up to my room, took my clothes off, shut the curtains and promptly went to sleep for the rest of the morning.

Frisco International Shuffle

2006-12-15T16:17:00.000-08:00

It's late in the afternoon and I'm not in a mood to be hospitable. A cranky old man cuts me off, so I go up to him and said "Sir, the line is back there". He looks at me as if I was out of my mind. He turns around and ignores me. I cut right in front of him, turn towards him, look him straight in the eye and said once again, "Sir, the line is back there". I said it with the utmost courtesy. I didn't shout at him, I didn't give him a mean stink-eye look, I didn't curse at him, and I did not in anyway disrespect him. I simply wanted him to understand that he was out of line and should be considerate of the others before him.

The old fogey was no fool. He must've been at least seventy years old, and like they say

"you don't get to be old being a fool",

and

" them wise young men, they dead them motherfucker ain't they".

Guess where I heard that from? You don't wanna know. In any case the old man was very apologetic and made some hand gestures that he had difficulty hearing at his age. He couldn't even speak coherently and so I had no choice but to let him get in front of me. It aggravates me that I should be this nice to people I don't know, knowing full well that they are just taking advantage of my kindness. What kind of an asshole would I be if I had told the old man to get in the back of the line? People would've given me the dirtiest look and thought that I was a major dick head, which I can really be, especially right now, right this moment.

Civility can be frustrating, especially if you're the one being civil. Being crash and callous must feel real satisfying to so many people because I see it in so many of them. But enough about that, nobody wants to read somebody complain about every little frustrating thing that happened to them that day. However, people do want to hear a truthful, authoritative account of an incident that they can relate to, like the one I just described. I'm thinking, just how many people would've; 1) done the same thing I did and be angry about it, like me; 2) beat the living daylights out of the old fogey, shove him back at the end of the line, and feel really wonderful about; 3) done the same thing I did and feel really wonderful about it. My guess is that 70% of the people in the same situation would've done option 1), 20% option 3) and 10% option 2). Doing option 2) would've been the most spectacular, but very few of us would've had the guts to do something that obnoxious.

I was angry about the situation for a whole ten minutes. That was the amount of time it took for me to finally check-in and get my boarding pass for my flight to Manila, The Philippines, on flight PR105. I've been looking forward to this for the last four months, so I was real excited when I woke up this morning. I got out of bed at six o'clock when it was still dark outside. I took a shower, pack my bags, dressed for work and arrived at work at about eight o'clock in the morning, but I hardly did anything the half of the day that I worked. The first thing I did was check my e-mail, responded so e-mails that looked urgent, responded to some voice mail out of courtesy for the co-workers who bothered to leave messages, and then had myself a cup of coffee and shoot the shit with another co-worker until lunch time. This whole week has been skate week not just for me, but for everyone else in the company. Unless you were working on a program that had critical milestones to meet during the holidays, chances are that many of my co-workers were too busy preparing for the holidays. I'm no different, but I must say that I was mildly productive this week; I attended everyone of our daily meetings; I checked my e-mails; and I attended our annual christmas party. Like I said, mildly productive.

When lunch time came around on this Friday morning however, I was out of my office like there was no tomorrow. I turned off my computer, locked my desk drawers, tidied up my office, walked out of the building, and zipped out of the parking lot in three minutes. By 12:05 PM I was on the Cenral Expressway way from Palo Alto to Mountain View and heading home. I packed lightly, bringing mostly shorts and light shirts, a pair of flip-flops, a dozen underwear, and toiletries. I had my friend SJ drive me to the airport at 3 PM and by 4:30 PM I was sitting in the VIP room of Philippine Airlines' Mabuhay Lounge, sipping a bottle of Heiniken and writing this marvelous piece of travel article that you see with your own eyes right in front of you.

After a couple of hours of laboring, trying to come up with a few clever anecdotes so that I can entertain the very knowledgeable and intelligent group of travel buffs who regularly peruse through my highly acclaimed and award winning travelogues on travelblog.org, more people started to arrive, disturbing my peace and quiet. After awhile it became a distraction and I couldn't write any longer, so I stopped writing, put my little notebook and pen away, walked casually to the bar to pour myself a Johnnie Walker Black on the rocks, went back to my lounge chair, put my feet up on the coffee table, and watched mindless television in the comfort of the airline lounge while the rest of the business and first class passengers rolled in to pamper themselves with all of the amenities available in the lounge; alcohol, h'orderves, free wireless internet, more food, and more alcohol.

As I relax and sip my scotch on the rocks, a young woman in her late teens/early twenties walked in with her luggage in tow. She scanned the room with her big bulging brown eyes, which looked as if it was burning with anger. I took one look at her and I almost fell off my lounge chair as she stared at me sharply with those fiery eyes. I'm sure she meant no harm by it, she doesn't even know me, but something about her demeanor made me believe that she is not a very happy young lady. In walk her mom and her younger brother, a teenage kid with short cropped hair and baggy pants.

Most of the people in the lounge were either watching mindless television or talking amongst themselves, and I don't think anyone would've minded if someone decided to change the channel and see what else is on the tube. But nobody even attempted to do that, everyone just sat down and watched Channel 5 news as if it was the greatest show on earth. After five minutes the young lady with burning eyes turned around and asked her mother if she could go out and shop around at the airport's boutiques.

"I'll go with you", the mom said. Miss Burning Eyes turned her attention back to Channel 5 news, disgusted that she couldn't go walk around on her own. The younger brother turned on his laptop and started playing video games. Five more minutes of staring blankly at the television was about all Miss Burning Eyes could take. She turned around and glared back at her mom. Mother understood.

"All right, we'll all go together." Mother wasn't about to let the young lady out of her sight for one minute. She is intent on shadowing Miss Burning Eyes the whole day. The younger brother was peeved that his entertainment was interrupted. He turned off his laptop and put it back in his backpack after which they all left together to shop around for overpriced knick knacks at the Frisco International Duty Free Shops.

I'm on my third scotch and the effect of alcohol is starting to make its way into my cerebrum. I was ready to talk to somebody, anybody, and everybody about any topic, at any level. This is when I become dangerous because I can sound mildly intelligent although I am absolutely clueless about the subject I'm talking about. Fortunately, in any kind of gathering, there are always men who are all too eager to tell everyone what a hotshot they are. I say fortunate, at least for me, because I find adults who brag a lot highly entertaining. One old Fogey, a Filipino man in his seventies with a twenty year old bride from the P.I., was so consumed talking about his property in Black Hawk, a very exclusive community with a world famous country club in the East Bay, so I listened to him brag about his wealth and egged him on to tell me more.

"Pare, I can show you, step by step, how to acquire a property at Black Hawk", the old man said to me.

Well, I wasn't exactly in a mood for a lecture on the back breaking process of real estate investments, turning over properties, go on a hunt for forclosures and other schemes that could sometimes turn into a wild goose chase. I was on my fourth scotch on the rocks and by now I was barely coherent, so I told the old man to save it until I'm sober, and then I said,

"No no Pare, don't teach me, entertain me."

He just looked at me and smiled as if I was a buffoon, and me looking like one; all smiles, eyes bloodshot, and downing my fifth scotch on the rocks. Thankfully, my flight was ready to board.

Cebuano

2006-11-25T17:36:00.000-08:00

As the sun rises above the horizon, the sun’s rays are filtered through a yellow haze from the smog. I have never seen such pollution in my life. I find it hard to believe that people could endure such filth. I could only imagine people walking around with a surgical mask over their mouths and noses as they walk around the streets of Manila to filter out the harmful pariticulates from entering their lungs. Why people would want to live here, I’ll never understand.

It is now six thirty in the morning, still a few hours away from boarding. I see a petite young Filipina, probably in her late twenties, with a young son in tow. I don’t know if she was on the same Frisco flight with me. She’s quite pretty but she’s got an eraser size mole on her left cheek. She catches me staring so look away quickly, embarrased that I was caught looking. A few minutes later, a mixed couple shows up. These two I saw checking in at the airport in Frisco ahead of me. The wife is a Filipina with a curvaceous build, well endowed physically, but with a dog for a face. Too bad. You would think that a body like hers could make up for what she lacks in the face department, but not in her case. She looks like she could be in her mid thirties, especially from behind and especially with that body, but when she turns around you get real disappointed. The husband, a haole American, is a tall, lanky fella, probably about six-foot-seven, about sixty or so years old, but not ugly. He’s going to Cebu with his wife, a mail order bride, for the holidays. That’s one. I’m keeping count of how many haole American/Filipina couples I see while I’m here. I have no idea why it suddenly strikes me as interesting enough to keep a tab on. It barely enters my mind back in the States. Perhaps it’s the stereotype that fascinates me. Like all stereotypes, it’s rooted in some truths, and maybe I’m interested in how much of it is true. Is the guy almost always American, old, fat and ugly? Well, this particular fella is American and old, but he’s neither fat nor ugly. Is the bride almost always young, attractive and from the province? This particular lady ain’t young, certainly not attractive face wise, and Cebu is the next most populous city in the Philippines and perhaps as modern as Manila. It certainly isn’t considered the province by most peoples estimation. With all the available women in the States, why are so many haoles going to the P.I. to get their brides. Are all American women such bitches, so demanding, so career oriented, so independent such that they almost become unbearable spouses that the marriage almost always end up in a divorce? Yes, Americcan women are demanding and independent, more so than Filipina women. But career oriented and bitches? Not always. On the contrary most Americans I know, men and women, are generally good people. More to the point, if they reveal themselves to be jerks I usually try to avoid them. So what about the men, perhaps they’re the problem? Are they such lonely losers with no balls and too insecure to approach women that they have to resort to mail order brides from the Philippines to get married? Again, most Americans I know are not like this at all. The only people I know with mail order brides are the ones on television and the couples I see at the airport. In any case, the women in the Philippines don’t care if the guy is old and ugly as long as he is from the United States of America. It’s sad but the situation here is so poor that the women really don’t have the luxury to be as picky as their American counterparts.

It’s seven in the morning now and more people are showing up at the terminal. I recognize some of them from the airport in Frisco. Where the hell have they been? Weren’t we on the same flight? Perhaps not. There were two flights out of Frisco last night bound for Manila. Perhaps the earlier flight took a detour to Canada or some place like that, before turning left and heading
for Manila. Perhaps not. It doesn’t really matter.

A man in his forties, wearing a burgundy sweatshirt, sits across from me. He stares at me. I gave him a little nod, like “How ya doin” kinda gesture. He responds with the same, perhaps copying me, and smiles like he recognizes me or something, so I engage him in a somewhat friendly conversation.

Me: Are you going to Cebu?

He smiles at me as if I was crazy. Of course he’s going to Cebu. That’s why he’s sitting here in Terminal 1, because he’s waiting for the same flight as I am. But that’s not the reason why I asked him that question.

Him: Yes.

That’s all he said. A hell of a conversation this is turning out to be. I don’t want to ask him his name because quite frankly, I don’t care, so I ask him another question.

Me: Are you from Cebu?

Aha! This is clever. If he says yes I’m going to speak Bisayan to him. I love speaking Bisayan because I hardly ever get a chance to speak it since I moved out of my parents home, when I was eighteen. Ever since then it’s been all English, English, English. I speak nothing but English now so that my thougth process, my perception, my logic, my intentions and my criticisms are all in English. Even Bisayan words I have to translate in English. It’s sort of like a transformation that took place gradually and internally. I didn’t even notice that it was happening. By the time I was twelve years old I was talking and thinking in English, with an American perspective, without really realizing that such a transformation had taken place. I was
young and impressionable enough such that the transformation was smooth and seamless. We always spoke Bisayan inside at home but seldom outside of it, and never whenever Americans are around. That may sound strange to a lot of Filipinos but it was necessary in the town that we lived in because there were no other Filipinos except our family and our neighbor, which were also our relatives.

So now, back to my Cebuano friend sitting across the aisle from me.

Him: Yes.

Me: A di-ay ba? Dis-a mang ka gekan?

Him: Gekan ko sa Torku, Finland.

I have no idea where Torku, Finland is, so I ask more questions.

Me: Ha-i mana ang Torku? Du-ol bana sa Helsinki?

Him: Layo ra, mga 200 km sa Helsinki.

Me: A di-ay ba? Nag unsa mang ka ngadto. Nag trabajo ba ka didto?

Him: O-o. Truck driver mang ko.

Me: A di-ay ba? Di ba tugnaw didto sa Finland? Nag siging snow man gyud, di ba?

Him: Ow, O-o, tugnaw gyud. Pero, lame man pud. Daghang mga guapa nga babae.

Me: Ow siempre! daghan gyud ug mga blondes, di ba?

Him: Sigurado!

And with that I laughed. He just smiled. I think he’s still scratching his head, trying to figure me out, which is odd because there’s nothing unusual about me at all! I’m just an ordinary looking guy. I fit right in, especially in the Philippines. I can walk down the street and be totally immersed into this environment without being noticed. But he keeps staring at me as if I’m from Mars or some other planet. Maybe that’s just my imagination but it didn’t reassure me when he kept looking around while we were talking, as if he was trying to escape from me. We were silent for a moment but then he found someone he recognized sitting on the other side of the waiting area. He grabbed his carry on bag and split right away, heading for the “friend” who was sitting on the other side, as far away from me as possible. This was his chance, perhaps, to escape from my probing questions. The supposed “friend” barely recognized him as he sat down to shake his hand. Perhaps they didn’t know each other at all. The guy just wanted no part of me.

Strange indeed!

Domesticated

2006-11-24T10:41:00.000-08:00

I turn around, feeling a little uneasy with these shikesters watching me, waiting for that opportunity when they could screw me. I slung my backpack over my shoulder and head straight over to the foreign exchange booth. A haole American woman is in front of me exchanging her wads of cash. I see three or four of these haole women at the airport, in the domestic terminal area, perhaps island hopping during the holidays in the Philippines. Don’t these people have families? Why am I concerned about them? It’s none of my business, really. I change one $10 bill only, thinking perhaps that I’ll get a better rate elsewhere. I head back to the domestic terminal entrance and pay my fee, leaving me with three 100 peso bills and a 20 peso bill. They check my backpack for terrorist weapons and things of that nature. They , the checkers, were all smiling at me, which made me uneasy. They were wishing me merry christmas, exposing their big teeth and huge grins. Who are they kidding? I know exactly what they want. Money!

I walk past the metal detector and started handing out the rest of my money. The sonsabitches were elated, getting 100 peso each. The women checker motions towards me, smiling and getting all excited before I wave them all away, saying “sorry, I’m all out of money”. They all laughed and walked back to their station. Perhaps I’m a tightwad, perhaps just cautious; I said this to myself. Well, the ladies weren’t too disappointed. They were all laughing. I thought that perhaps they were just amused that they missed an opportunity to gain some “Maligayang Pasko” money from a balikbayan. The haole American women stared in horror, feeling somewhat apprehensive, thinking that maybe they too would have to shell out some dough to grease their way through the security check.

So here I am, at the domestic terminal of NAIA II, exclusively for Philippine Airlines. The hand dial on my watch has stopped but the digital timer still works, which is just fine with me. My Cebu flight will be boarding in Terminal No. 1. It is now approximately five in the morning. My flight departs at eight thirty this morning. I have lots of time to kill before boarding. As I walk around the airport I noticed that labor is abundant, perhaps because it’s cheap. Of course, this is common knowledge, and I sort of knew it already. I understand what this place is really like. There are lots of airport employees, and they’re noticeable, somewhat boisterous, all of them; security checkers, baggage handlers, vendor attendants, and maintenance workers. I see a couple of maintenance guys cleaning the restrooms and pretending to play basketball with a rolled up toilet paper, shooting the little paper ball over the sign at the bathroom entrance. I find this amusing but comforting, because it’s so familiar. I understand the Filipinos passion for basketball.

I’m sitting, waiting, at Terminal No. 1 for my flight, which departs in three and a half hours. A few people, maybe ten of them, are also waiting. I see a cute young lady, dressed fashionably, looking sleepy, waiting and sitting behind me. She looks back, sees me and smiles at me. I smile back and ask her for the local time, pretending to set my watch to the Philippine Standard Time. She tells me it’s ten after five. I’m encouraged by her generosity and I’m tempted to flirt some more but just don’t have the energy at this time of the day, especially after the 14 hour tour de force, to engage in a little love chase. She herself looks sleepy and tired. So I just sat there and tried to relax, trying to absorb it all in. But this doesn’t last very long because after twenty minutes I became restless. I shifted, crossed my leg, slumped, spread out my arms and rest them on the lounge chair, spread my legs out and stretched them, stood up, sat down, moved around, stood up again, paced back and forth, and sat back down again. Only twenty minutes have passed. What to do, what to do? Rerun, the fat black guy I saw at the Mabuhay Lounge in Frisco, appears. I smile, amused that he is on the same destination as I am. He looks a little apprehensive himself, perhaps feeling a little out of place. He might even be scared a little. I am tempted to ask him what the hell is he doing here, but I refrain and decided to just leave him alone.

Meanwhile, I am still restless, so I grab my backpack, sling it over my shoulder, and started walking around from one end of the airport to the other. I recognize a couple of people from the same flight in Frisco. Apparently they have a connecting flight as well, somewhere in the Philippines. I stop by the little cafe called Deli-France. I look up at the menu and found nothing of interest. The cashier, a Chinese-Filipina, is wearing a candy striped uniform with a matching boufant. The haole American woman who was in front of me at the foreign exchange booth enters after me. She too looks up and browses the menu. I don’t have much of an appetite for food right now so I leave. I keep walking to the other side of the terminal. I find nothing of interest. I walk back to my own terminal, way down on the other side. The whole walking tour chipped another fifteen minutes of my waiting time. I have no other choice but to sit and wait, near the cute young lady with fashionable clothes. She looks like she’s asleep. The fat guy, Rerun, gets up and walks towards the other side of the terminal. Perhaps he is restless also. There he goes, walking, waddling like a Buffalo, dragging his fat ass to the cafe on the other side of th airport.

I stare out into the distance. I see a father and teenage son, haoles, waiting in another terminal, engaged in some animated conversation. What the hell could they be talking about? I just wonder. I can only guess. Their conversation might go something like this;

Father: “Hey son, ain’t it great. Us, a couple of haoles, sitting here in this godforsaken terminal at dawn, in the P.I., on Christmas Day. What could be better?”

Son: “Gee whiz Dad, this is great. I’ve always wanted to spend Christmas Day at NAIA in the P.I. with you. Thanks Dad. This is great!”

Father: "You bet son. Anything I can do to make your life wonderful. How was your flight in coach by the way?”

Son: “Couldn’t be any better Dad, not even if I was sitting right next to you in First Class, with your delicious meals and your comfy seat. Why, I sat next to an old Filipina. She didn’t say a word to me during the whole flight. All she did was kept a tight grip on her rosary from take off to landing. Then she called the stewardess a gago for giving her the wrong meal. Do you know what that word means Dad, gago?”

Father: ”He he he...never mind son. At least we’re here in this comfy airport, safe and sound, and loving every minute of it.”

These two haoles, father and son, talking animatedly at Terminal No. 4 of the NAIA domestic terminal. God knows what the heck they could be talking about. And why do they look so happy? Meanwhile, I sit and wait for my flight in Terminal No. 1, bored stiff, at dawn, the morning sun barely peeping through the horizon, and I become more restless that ever.

Manila Tricksters

2006-04-30T12:25:00.000-07:00

I feel a little sense of trepidation as we approach the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA). Already I can smell poverty just from inside the plane even before cabin doors open to the accordion attachment of the terminal. This was once called the Manila International Airport when I first left this county thirty years ago. I was just a kid then, about six or seven years old, barely able to recognize the deplorable living conditions of the underclass that continues to be ignored by the privileged few. And so it goes on, as the rich continues to get richer, the poor continue on living like dogs, and the rest just bidding their time waiting to leave this country and settle somewhere else, hoping for a better future for their families, like my parents.

This was fourteen-hour flight with a one-hour stopover in Honolulu, my second home, for refueling. I slept for no more than one hour, at most, throughout the whole flight. It’s difficult to get any kind of sleep in an airplane, even in Business or First Class, at least for me. Not with the continuous drone of the engine which keeps buzzing in my ears, not when the temperature is never comfortably warm, and not with these seats which are nothing more than miniature Lazy Boys. It’s not a bed and it’s nothing like home at all. Not even as comfortable as a hotel room. Fourteen hours above the Earth, at approximately 30000 feet, is never a comforting thought to begin with. Maybe if the planes were a little bigger, a little more comfortable, with a little more privacy, perhaps it may help me to sleep. Not on this flight however.

The lady sitting next to is pleasant enough company. She goes home to the P.I. every year to visit her parents and the rest of her family. She is probably 50 or so years old. We chit chat a bit about this and that; she lives in Milpitas, has two kids, typical Filipina. She never mentioned a husband however. Maybe she is divorced, maybe her husband’s in jail, or maybe the husband is dead. I didn’t ask and quite frankly, I don’t care. She said she sent her two daughters to Manila to live with her parents because she caught her oldest daughter, sixteen years old, doing something bad. I didn’t exactly ask what kind of a bad thing she did although the old lady mentioned something about a boyfriend. I can only guess.

We landed at dawn on Sunday, December 25, 2005, Christmas Day, at dawn, approximately 4:30 AM. Up on the second deck we can hear the cheering crowd in coach as we landed safely. I find out later that the cheering and clapping is a tradition among Filipinos on PAL flights. Perhaps they are thankful for the safety landing, thanks given to God that we are still alive after this horrendous flight, lucky to be flown in by pilots who are competent enough not to ram the plane down the airport concourse, blowing up the whole terminal. It’s a good thing these pilots are not Islamo-fascist jihadis from Iraq or Pakistan but full blooded Filipinos. As the plane’s cabin door attaches to the accordion the pilots give instructions to the passengers in both Tagalog and English, welcoming us all to this wonderful country, the Philippines. Mabuhay!

I get off the plane and head out to the immigration check. I am a bit afraid because I don’t know what to expect. Perhaps this is why I love traveling so much. The unexpected. I don’t expect to get killed while I’m here, although you’ll never know. But I’ve been warned to be careful. There are a lot of tricksters in Manila. At the immigration check I handed I handed the official my passport and a foreign items declaration paper which everyone has to fill out upon arrival. The official speaks to me in Tagalog. I don’t understand a word he says so I respond in English, saying something like ‘I don’t speak Tagalog, Sir’, which he understood perfectly. He looks at me with disdain, as if it was my duty to speak Tagalog because I’m Filipino, but I let it pass. I tell him that I have a connecting flight to Cebu. He tells me to go to the Domestic terminal; go outside, go left, take the stairs up to the second deck, and you’ll see it. It’s not that obvious to me because I’m an idiot, so I fumble around and ask people for direction. People smile and chuckle, perhaps amused of my ignorance. They always speak to me in Tagalog, not knowing I don’t understand a word of it. Actually that’s not true. I do understand some of it but I just can’t speak it fluently so I respond in English.

After fumbling around for a couple of minutes I found the entrance to the Domestic terminal. There are plenty of security personnel carrying guns in their holster pocket and everything that signifies the occupation of a constabulary. They all smile at me, amused at my ignorance. What? I have to pay 400 pesos to enter the terminal? What kind of nonsense is this? This is what I was thinking. I didn’t say it out loud for fear of getting the shit beat out of me. Besides, I had no idea how much 400 pesos translate into US dollars. I don’t even have any Philippine currency. Actually, the fee is only 200 pesos, which I later found out is only US$4. I only have US$20 bills and one US$10. They didn’t have any change either, at least not in US currency, so one of the security guards points me to a money exchange booth. The exchange rate is currently at 52.5 pesos to US$1. This is the time of year when many overseas Filipinos send money home, driving the exchange rate down because of the influx of foreign currency, which strengthens the Philippine peso, which is too bad for saps like me. The security guard chuckles as I pull out a wad of twenty-dollar bills, perhaps thinking me a fool and a prey for the local tricksters.

“Maraming pera palang ito”, is what I think he says to his buddies. They’re all smiling, laughing even, and perhaps smelling blood. I may not understand Tagalog well, especially when it’s spoken very rapidly, but I can certainly feel it when I’m about to be had.

iF Owe Bees

2006-04-23T12:45:00.001-07:00

Friday, Frisco International Airport

It's 1:28 pm and I am sitting, waiting, at the International Terminal, waiting for the Philippine Airlines check-in counter to open. Meanwhile I am watching a herd of people being checked-in by KLM, a British Airliner, for a flight to Amsterdam, Europe's City of Sin. I heard from fellow travelers that the Amsterdam flight is cheaper than a flight to London's Heathrow International because of some ridiculous tax levied for that destination. In any case I don't care since I have no plans to visit either cities anytime in the near future. I just want to check my baggage in for my flight to NAIA - ie Ninoy Aquino International Airport.

Across the aisle from where I'm sitting are four Mexican women, also waiting for the check-in counter of their airline to open, probably Air Mexico or whatever the national carrier is for that country. Again, I don't care, the only reason I notice them is because one of the Mexicanas is quite attractive. She's a tall slender young lady with the innocent face of a village girl, wide eyed and full of youthful exuberance, probably in her twenties. She's talking to someone on her cell phone, laughing, giggling, flirting with somebody on the other line, probably her boyfriend.

Outside it is pouring rain like there's no tomorrow but I have no problem with that because I'm inside, sheltered, comfortable, and writing. I am writing everything that I see in the terminal because I am bored out of my wits waiting to check-in for my flight. Now the Filipinos are showing up in bunches, carting off their huge Balikbayan boxes. I see a family of seven; a grandma, a grandpa, two kids, the kids parents, and a baby. They have three balikabayan boxes with them and a ton of luggage. Most likely, what's inside those boxes are toys, gifts, presents, clothes, canned goods, electronic gadgets, etc., to take home to their families back in the P.I. What a bunch of FO's. That's short for F.O.B., as in Fresh Off the Boat.

A Mediterranean looking family just passed by the aisle. One guy is dressed up like he's Rambo or something. Sleeves rolled up to show his biceps, ragged jeans, the bottom tucked into his boots like a marine. He thinks he's a bad ass. He doesn't realize what an FO he is. He is probably from Pakistan or India, brainwashed from watching all those blow 'm-up American movies they love so much. No wonder why some of them grow up to become aggressive jihadis, killing in the name of Allah. What they watch becomes who they are, a product of their fantasies.

Two Filipina ladies are talking loudly, sitting behind me. At least they're not FO. I can tell by their accent, or lack of it.

A toddler is dragging her little carriage around and the father just let's her do it with complete impunity. She does what she wants, Daddy just laughs, Mommy is looking frustrated like she's menstruating, and everything around them is going to hell in a hand basket. A perfect portrait of a happy Caucasian-American family.

2:30 pm. Finally, the check-in counter opens. I get my boarding pass to get on the International Terminal. Once I pass through the security check I head straight to the PAL lounge. It's only 3 pm and so far there are only seven people in the lounge, watching TV. I relax on a nice cushy sofa, grab a bottle of Heiniken, open up my laptop and start writing like crazy. It's going to take me a few more drinks before I can completely relax, to get socially lubricated and candid. After an hour more people show up; two haole[1] guys on their way to Thailand or some ridiculous place like that; a couple of Popolo[2] guys, one a fat, bubbly looking one, sort of like Re-Run from the old seventies sitcom What’s Happening. The other Popolo guy is a Kangol hat wearing mofo ala Samuel Jackson. He is a really mean looking son-of-a-gun, real muscular and even more sinister looking. He looks like he can kick some major ass! I wouldn’t mess with that guy. It wouldn’t surprise me either if he were a criminal, probably related to Tookie Williams. Now the mean looking Popolo guy is stuffing himself with tiny slices of tuna sandwich and washing it all down with a cold bottle of Corona.

After a couple of hours more people are coming in. I love flying business or first class because of the lounge privilege, the free drinks, free food, and the comfort to pamper your self before a long flight out, seventeen hours from Frisco to Manila. Unlike the waiting area, which are real drab, no class, no food, and no drinks. Here in the PAL lounge we get real comfy seats, a living room like atmosphere with free Internet, not like the not so free WIFI of Frisco International. T-Mobile’s got the market cornered on that service at $6 for the first hour and $1 for every hour thereafter.

It is now quarter to five. My flight is not until 8:45 pm. Some of these people are on Flight 115, which leaves at 6:45 pm. Now I am stuffing my self with the goodies and lubricating my social consciousness with lots of alcohol. By the time my flight takes off I should be well stuffed and dozy, ready to fall asleep for twelve continuous hours and wake up just in time to get ready for landing. I can only hope. Viva Las Islas Filipinas!

[1] Haole is a Hawaiian word for foreigner but is used to identify Caucasian in the vernacular

[2] Popolo is Hawaiian word for African-Americans

Pegasus

2005-10-06T06:35:00.000-07:00

For a little town Castle Rock, Colorado sure has a few fine places to dine out. Most of them are located near the main thoroughfare on Wilcox in the heart of its downtown. There' s the Pegasus, where we went to for lunch; Augustine Grill, a nice and fine little restaurant with a superb wine list; the Old Stonehouse Church has a nice dinner menu, the hanging beef being its locally renowned specialty. Those are the just a few of the places worth mentioning. There are probably more as this place gets fancier with developers from Denver scouting out the area and making this into a bedroom community for Denver and even Colorado Springs, which is just twenty five miles south of here.

After our morning teleconference with the headquarters in Palo Alto we spent the rest of the morning bullshitting about this and that. Sometimes about work but most of the time it had nothing to do with work. The reason for this is because we spent most of the time waiting for the satellite, test equipments, and the type of signal to be sent to all come together before I can do any kind of data analysis. This is especially difficult when you're out on the field with limited tools. All I had was my laptop and it did not have all the necessary software to run all the analyses that I needed so the best I could do is set up the test in the proper configuration, eyeball the data from the spectrum analyzer to give it either a thumbs up or down, and collect raw data so that I can make a final assessment through a set of analyses when I get back home to my office. But first everything has to be coordinated from the home office to the ground station, then send a command to the satellite, and so on and so forth, before we can start to do our work. Nothing was accomplished from our side the whole morning so all we ended up doing was wait until it was lunch time. Then we carpooled, four of us, to downtown Castle Rock, at Pegasus. All four of us work for a different compay. Each of the company involved in the project that I'm working on sent a representative for this little exercise to see if the new signal scheme that we're using is feasible for the existing infrastructure.

We are using a particular transponder in the satellite that's not carrying traffic right now, uplinking from Palo Alto, sending that signal up into the sky 10,000 km above, through the satellite, and receiving the downlink signal through the 4.5 meter dish at the ground station in Castle Rock. All of that signal, which has a very low power when we receive it, is being focused, as it arrives, by that humungous dish, to the receiving atenna, where it gets converted from one frequency to an intermediate frequency before it can be stripped out of its carrier frequency and reveal a modulating signal which contain some information. One of the guys in the car with me is a satellite expert, one lady, in her forties, is a test equipment specialist, and the other guy is a ground station manager in charge of tracking and commanding the satellite. My specialty is communications engineering and analysis so my sole purpose for being here is to evaluate the fidelity of the signal as it travels through a long distance in space. I am basically here to collect the data and leave. All the rest of the people I am working with are doing the real work so I felt insecure and useless at times because there isn't much I could do to help in order to keep the whole thing moving. What I'm describing here is just a general idea of what's going because the details are too boring to get into. Nobody really cares about the details other than the people who work in this field. It's boring to everyone else.

The satellite expert is a grizzled old veteran named Roger. He's been working for the same company for thirty years doing in-orbit testing and building satellite simulators. A funny old guy who knows the ways of the corporate world. I myself am relatively young and so he was always willing to give me pointers on what to charge and not charge on my travel expense account. Basically, his whole idea is that travel should not inconvenience you from the normal routine of your ordinary life at home. Spend as much as you want if it accomplishes the task at hand when you're on travel. Don't worry about how much it cost and don't ever spend your own money when you are on travel for the company. The reason being is that the company writes off every expense account, which is tax deductible, so it's not like you're saving money for the company if you limit your expenses. They write it off anyway. That is a good point to remember, I told myself this. Roger said one thing though which I understood but have difficulty remembering.

"Make sure you keep the receipt for every meal over $25.00."

Most of the time I don't even grab the receipt of my meal when I eat out because I usually pay cash.

"Big mistake", Roger says. Evelyn, the test specialist riding with us, was laughing at my naivete.

"Never pay cash on a meal when on business travel. As a matter of fact never pay cash on anything when you're on business travel. Gas, food, lodging; anything! The reason being that you can't keep track of every meal that you eat, especially if things get hectic. So if you pay cash you leave no record. That's the point! If you pay by credit card you have two sources of records. The chit that you sign when you pay which you get a copy of. The second is your credit card bill that you receive each month. Also, now a days, you can always get a copy of your credit card activities through the credit card company's website at anytime", Roger added some more.

"Well, in that case, you can pay for lunch. And write it off in you travel expense account", I responded.

"You bet! Eat what you want, drink what you want. It's all on me", Roger said.

And he wasn't kidding. The other two with us, Evelyn the test specialist and Kirk the satellite commander, said nothing. They knew the whole deal. Now, although I am relatively young I've been on business travel several times in my five years with the current company that I work for but writing up my travel expense is such a drag that most of the time I don't even care if I get reimbursed more or less than what I was due. All I really care about is getting the travel done quickly and get back home as soon as the job is over because there is nothing more agonizing than being on travel for business. It's like being on a 24 hour duty for seven days, if travel was that long, regardless of whether it was a workweek or a weekend. When you are not at home you are at work and that's exactly what business travel is, work! But these grizzled old veterans have been through it more than I have and they've gotten past the pain of traveling and are now keen on the idea that it is the company's responsibility to keep them as comfortable as possible when on travel at the company's expense.

For lunch I ordered some exotic mediterranean lamb sandwich, souvlaki or something ridiculous like that. Roger had some extravagant meal and ordered a bottle of the restaurants finest chardonnay. On top of that he ordered some appetizers that just filled all of us up and nearly put us to sleep afterwards because we were so full. The meal was excellent. We were so tired and full afterwards we didn't get anything accomplished in the afternoon. Which was just fine with the headquarters because they were having problems just trying to transmit the test signal. At four o'clock in the afternoon we called it quits. Just another boring day on travel.

Castle Rock

2005-10-02T18:54:00.000-07:00

I always find it impossible to sleep well on the first day of travel, especially if I'm in an unfamiliar surrounding, like a hotel or a stranger's house. I have to get used to the bed regardless of how comfortable it is. The pillow too, needs a little wear and tear before I can be comfortable with it, not to mention the blankets, the comforters, the hum of the air conditioners, the background noise and the ambient temperature. I probably got no more than three hours of sleep that first night in my hotel in Englewood, Colorado.

I was lying in bed, staring straight up at the ceiling, in darkness, cursing at everything under the Sun because I was wide awake instead of being comfortably numb. I look over the bed stand where the digital clock reads 4:30 AM. Damn! I pick up the remote control in darkness and turn on the TV. There's nothing to watch, mostly infomercials and cowboy movies. I love cowboy movies but I was not in the mood to watch one at this hour. I wanted to sleep. I channel surf some more. ESPN runs Sports Center for the umpteen time. Boring. HBO movies are even more boring. After clicking on the remote at three channels per second I threw it at the television. I don't know if the screen cracked and frankly, I don't care. I probably missed and hit the wall because I pushed the OFF button before I threw it and heard and thonk! instead of a ding! which indicated to me that I probably put a small dent on the wall. Now it's 5:00 AM, mountain time. Back home in the Bay Area it's still 4:00 AM. If I was home I would still be sound asleep and dreaming of a passionate romp with some blond goddess on the beach somewhere in the South Pacific. I curse some more. After a while I got tired of cursing and actually fell asleep. But it only lasted for fifteen minutes because a little disturbance, the sound of the continuous rush of water from the shower head in the bathroom of the hotel room next to mine, promptly woke like a slap in the face. Damn the guy for waking up and showering early. It's still 5:30 AM.

At 6:00 AM I reluctantly crawled out of bed and turned on the bed lamp. I didn't even bother to put on my glasses, I just got up and head straight for the bathroom. I stepped on the remote control that I hurled at the TV earlier this morning. It accidently turned the TV. I kept walking like a zombie, ignoring the white noise and show image of the TV screen. I turned the lights in the bathroom and looked at myself in the mirror. I had no glasses on and my contacts have been soaking in saline solution overnight, so my image is blurry. I look closer for a better focus. It wasn't very encouraging. My eyes are bloodshot red. The skin underneath my eyes are baggy and dark. I look like a Goth out of hell, or at least a prowler in the night, a raver, a Nine Inch Nail concert goer. I look tired and terribly overstressed, just plain awful. But I have no choice but to move on so I put on my contacts, looked at myself in the mirror some more (no improvement), gurgled some Listerene mouthwash, turned on the shower, and stood underneath the shower for ten solid minutes without doing anything, not soaping, not shampooing, nothing. Just stood there motionless and let all of that water rush down on every inch of my body. It didn't help. I didn't feel refreshed. So I soaped up and shampooed, rinse, and towelled off. My image improved a little bit after the shower but I didn't feel any better. I was still very tired.

At 6:30 AM I went down to the hotel dining room for breakfast. There were only a couple of people having breakfast and I didn't see any waiters or waitresses so I just helped myself to the buffet line and got some eggs, bacons, toast, orange juice, and coffee. That's about all the appetite that I had this early in the morning. I picked a table at random, sat down, had my breakfast, and read the morning paper. I skipped all the political news and the devastation of hurricane Katrina and the pronosis of an upcoming one from hurricane Rita. I went straight to the sports pages. The local story in this town is the Denver Broncos. On the first page of the sports section there were three articles relating to their beloved Broncos, one opinion, one beat, and one human related article featuring a Bronco player, his trials and tribulations, boring stuff like that. Frankly, I could care less about the Broncos; my real interest at this point in time is baseball, baseball, baseball. My Oakland A's lost their second game of the series against the Cleveland Indians the night before, but this was no surprise since I didn't expect my Oakland A's to win more than three games in this road trip. Nevertheless, it's discouraging to see your team slowly twirling down the drain and out of contention.

I barely touched my breakfast this morning, concentrating more on the articles in the sports page, when the waitress approached me to ask if there was more that I wanted. Now, normally, when I'm at home, a waitress with ordinary to above average looks is barely noticeable, especially if I'm out having dinner with my girlfriend. But now that I'm away from home, involuntarily I might add, with no female companionship, there's a tendency to look a little tighter and with more interest at any female that looks even remotely attractive. It's a good thing my girlfriend doesn't know I keep a web log of interesting thoughts and things that happen along the way of my life. The waitress, a cute red head with lots of freckles, not fat but had enough flesh to fill out her outfit of tight black slacks and burgundy top, was smiling down at me while these thoughts of infidelity ran through my head. I smiled back and saw that little twinkle in her eye which suggested to me that she was agreeable to my dalliances. Clearly, I was flirting with her, as I asked for her name, where she lived, how long has she worked here, the usual twenty questions game. She answered every one of them. Is there something going on, is something going to happen between us, or was I just imagining, fantasising, out of loneliness. But I'm not lonely, I said this to myself, just alone and restless, which is not the same thing. Loneliness is state of despair, isn't it? I'm just frustrated that I don't have my girlfriend with me. The waitress was still smiling at me. We've been talking for five minutes. Surely she flirts with every customer that pass through this lonely dessert, doesn't she? I didn't dare ask. Instead, I asked for my bill and gave her a generous tip. Aha! Maybe that's why she was willing to flirt with me. That's it. I felt better knowing that I was not compelled to pursue the chase since open flirtation was in her best interest, and not because she had any particular interest in me. She doesn't even know me! Ahhhh, the crazy thoughts that go into your head when your mind is cluttered from lack of rest.

Today is Wednesday, September 14, 2005, in the state of Colorado. I drove out of the hotel parking lot and into the busy thoroughfare of Lincoln Ave in Englewood, heading west. After a quarter of a mile I merge onto I-25 south, towards Castle Rock. It's a bright, clouldless day, the sun beaming at me broadside, and I'm listening to a morning sports talk radio show. Broncos, Broncos, Broncos. Jake Plummer sucks. Fire Shanahan. Boring. I turn it off and drive in silence. Ten minutes into my drive I see the familiar terrain of Castle Rock, mostly a brown dessert landscape with tumbleweeds scattered about. This is the wild west, like something out of a Clint Eastwood spaghetti western. The only difference is the recent development. There are condos, townhouses and single family homes being built everywhere in this dessert land, which is becoming a bedroom community to nearby Denver metro. Up ahead in the distance is a hill where on top is a square looking rock, not man made but natural, which looks a lot like a castle. Thus the name, Castle Rock. This is a little town of no more than fifty thousand people. Most people would dismiss the inhabitants of Castle Rock, Colorado as a bunch of down home simple country folks. They are, but they're not stupid. They just don't like a lot of pretensions and silliness that tend to characterize people from the city. These are my kind of people.

Downtown Castle Rock is pretty small. You can drive through it is five minutes. My final destination was not downtown Castle Rock but in the outskirts of town towards Franktown where the communications satellites are located. They are located there primarily because of the low interference from other radiating sources and because of the altitude. It's a perferct place for a satellite ground station. On my way there I pass by barely populated land. Mostly they are ranches owned by people who either have a lot of money or have been passed the ownership through generations. It's a nice wide open space and the whole time I was driving through I dreamed of owning one of these huge ranches and the huge house within. These houses look like castles. Far south as I was driving through the highway I can see Pike's Peak with snow still glittering in the sunshine.

After another ten minutes of driving I finally arrive at the ground station. The security guard recognized me immediately since I have been here several times in the last five years. I picked up my security badge and went straight to the conference room for the morning telecon. What followed was just another interesting day at work.

High and Dry

2005-09-28T03:31:00.000-07:00

The Denver International Airport is one of the strangest airports on earth. It is located 23 miles Northeast of the Denver metropolitan area and covers more than 53 square miles of landscape, more than necessary. Even at first glance there's a sense that this airport is unlike any other, from the translucent tent-like structure of the main terminal to the strange murals and artwork displayed throughout the airport, none of which has anything to do with the culture and history of the state of Colorado. Many murals portray paganism, Sun worship, indigenous uprising, and scribes from secret societies. Many people have suggested that the airport itself was built for a different purpose, perhaps as a ``control center for the New World Order'', whatever the hell that means, because of the extensive underground infrastructure and fiber optic communications network. This airport is relatively brand new, built in 1995, and at the time of its construction many locals questioned the necessity of building a new airport since an existing one was perfectly capable and adequate for handling the amount of air traffic that pass through Denver. I personally don't have a problem with this airport but for some reason the atmosphere gives out bad vibes, as if it was built for something more sinister than just handling air traffic.

Our plane was ramped up on Concourse C. I got off the plane and headed for the underground rail that takes passengers to the baggage claim area at the main terminal. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this airport other than the new age feel of the artwork. It's busy but not inconvenient. At the baggage claim area another sinister looking gargoyle sits above in an open suitcase, overlooking the area, a frightful sight for those who just want to claim their luggage. Perhaps the gargoyle is the luggage guardian, scaring the hell out of someone intent on stealing other people’s luggage.

It took about thirty minutes before my luggage finally showed up on the carousel. I claimed my bag and headed out for the shuttle of the Hertz car rental service. I was given a midsize sedan at the Hertz counter at a rate of $49 a day. I was hoping to get a mustang with a stick shift but they didn't have anything available. Darn! One of the perks of having to travel on business is that you can rent any car you like, as long as it's reasonable. I should've taken the gas option as well and save myself the trouble of having to gas up before returning the car, but I forgot because the salesperson never bothered to mention it. Besides, I was also in a hurry, so once the salesperson gave me the lot number where my car is parked I took off with luggage in tow. I was anxious to get the teleconference because I had a lot issues that I wanted to bring up to the folks back at the headquarters. By the time I drove away from the Hertz parking lot it was already four thirty in the afternoon. The teleconference is at five o'clock in Castle Rock, about thirty miles south of Denver.

I got out of the airport and headed for the toll highway, E470, heading south towards Castle Rock. This toll highway is much more convenient than the I-25, the interstate freeway, which is usually clogged in the afternoon rush hour at this time of the day. The toll fee is $1.75 every five miles or so, and even cheaper if you have an electronic device which is scanned by at every toll stop but since I am not a Colorado resident and I am only here for short visit I have to exit at every toll stop and pay a fee, which seems kind of a pain. However, there is absolutely no traffic jam and so it is worthwhile to pay the fee and get on your way, especially if you're in a hurry. I asked for a receipt every time I paid the toll fee so that I can claim it on my travel expense report. I was cruising along E470 and by the time I reached Englewood near the Denver Tech Center area it was already five o'clock with twenty more miles to get to Castle Rock, and not just downtown Castle Rock, but out in the back roads where the huge satellite communications ground station compound of which I was to spend the next couple of weeks was located. So instead of driving further out to Castle Rock I took the last exit before the end of the toll highway where E470 meets with I-25, in Englewood.

I checked in to my hotel and a lovely young blond was at the counter to welcome me with a sweet smile.

``Welcome to the Hilton Garden Inn'' she said.

``I have a reservation, Last name is San Roque''.

``Oh yes, Mr. Roque, we have you booked for the next twelve days. Your home away from home''.

``Hopefully'' I replied.

With that she went through the routine of checking me in and within five minutes she handed me my card key for my room. I wanted to flirt with her some more but I was too tired at the moment so I moved on and went into my room. The first thing I usually do on an extended stay is to unpack my luggage and stuff my week's worth of clothes in the dresser and closet while turning on the TV for background noise. That's one of the pain of traveling, being alone without anybody to talk to in a strange town, and so to appease the loneliness I turn on the radio of the TV to counter the strange quietness of being away from home. I don't really even pay attention to the programming. After doing a little bit of housekeeping I made a few phone calls and gave a sincere apology to those who expected me at the teleconference. Once that was taken care of I sat on the sofa and watched the news on television. More depressing images of the recent hurricane and a new upcoming one just blazing its way towards the Gulf of Mexico.

It's dinnertime and I'm getting hungry. I could order room servicebut I hate eating inside my hotel room. So I left my room and took the back exit of the hotel where just a few yards away from the back parking lot of the hotel is a nice Mexican Restaurant called The

Hacienda. Unlike most people I don't mind eating alone in nice restaurant when I'm on travel because I can always sit at the bar and order my food there. So I went into The Hacienda and two lovely young blond hostesses greeted me with a warm smile. My God, Colorado seems to be full of beautiful blond women. I said hello but promptly declined a table, inquiring instead if I could have my meal in the bar. Go right ahead, they said. So I went into the bar and ordered a Dos Equis on draft and a Carne Asada dinner plate with refried beans and rice. All the while I was looking around the bar and watching the clientele, mostly young adults having drinks after work and a few groups on a dinner party waiting for their tables. The crowd seems no different than the ones I see on Ramona Street in Palo Alto during weeknights after work. The place was crowded so I only manage to make small talk with the two bartenders working that night. One is a tall twenty something kid with a winning personality, real friendly and hip, giving me some good pointers of places to go in Denver. The other is another lovely young blond lady, also in her twenties, asking me the usual what-do-you-do-where-are-you-from questions. After finishing my meal and having a couple more drinks, I asked for my check and my receipt (must have receipts for travel expense report), went back to my hotel room and promptly lay down in bed, hoping to fall asleep.

Rocky Mountain Bound

2005-09-24T12:02:00.000-07:00

Tuesday, 9/13/05 - Frisco International Airport

I will be on United Airlines flight 892 to Denver which departs at 11:05 AM. Got up early, around 6:30 AM and my limousine picked me up at 8:00 AM sharp. The driver was kind and prompt and we had a good conversation during the thirty minute drive from Palo Alto to Frisco International. Why the limo service? This is a business trip, all expenses covered by the travel office of my company. My company even insists on the limo, albeit only mildly, because limo companies guarantee the times of pick-up and arrival at the airport. Costlier than taxis, but it’s better to pay a few bucks ($101, including tips versus $75 before tips for the taxi) and make sure that I’m on that plane to Denver in the morning so that I will arrive in time for the teleconference at 5:00 PM Mountain Time (4:00 PM Pacific Time). We arrived at the airport at eight thirty or so, dodging only a mild morning commute traffic. Checked in one baggage and carried my laptop case on board. As I walked towards the departing gate I remembered that I hadn’t had breakfast yet so I walked in to this fancy, overpriced airport restaurant called the Yankee Pier. Yuck! I ordered an eggs Benedict with dungeness crab but realized that this is not crabbing season yet so naturally the crabs were rather stale due to it having been frozen. I won’t make that mistake again.

I finished most of my breakfast and headed out to Gate 80 where flight 892 is departing. It’s close to nine thirty so I turned on my laptop, did a little on-line banking, read a couple of newspapers on-line, and sent a few emails. At approximately ten o’clock an announcement was made concerning my flight. The man who made the announcement was a bit hesitant to divulge the nature of the problem and all he really said was that flight 892 to Denver will be delayed because the plane is ”still in the shop”, the plane itself ”is not working” and more updates will be given concerning flight 892. So the plane ”is not working”. What the hell does that mean? Did one of the wings fall off? A leaky fuselage? Broken engine? What?

The faulty plane announcement was made at 10:00 AM and I am sitting here in Gate 80 of the Frisco International Airport and a bunch of people are waiting at the terminal with their plans disrupted. Flight delays normallydon’t bother me but this is a business trip, not personal travel, which just adds to my irritation. Traveling by plane is annoying enough even without delays but it becomes mortifying if you’re fighting against schedule. Now I have to call people and tell them to change their schedule and unnecessarily inconvenience everyone. I’m sure it’s no big deal but I hate - absolutely abhor - changing plans and breaking promises.

At 10:56 AM an update was given on the PA system concerning my flight. The time of departure is now 11:45 AM, only a forty minute! delay, the man in behind the PA exclaimed. That was no consolation for me however because my plans had already been disrupted, not to mention the several others who have connecting flights in Denver to some other final destination. There was still no word on what was wrong with the plane. All I heard was that it’s been fixed. Does that mean they’ve duct-taped the wings in order to keep it together?

The fact that we’ve gotten a new departure time did not appease me. I’ve already changed my schedule. Although this a business trip it is not my intention to write about work while on travel. However, it is always difficult to keep work out of my mind when on a work-related itinerary because everyday, away from home, living in a hotel for twenty one days or more, is like being a sailor on a ship underway. The only difference is that the environmental conditions are not as harsh. The accommodations that my company pays for is usually at the high end level, three-star or above, and staying in a five-star luxury hotel when on a business related foreign travel is the norm. In addition, all expenses are paid while on travel; every meal, rental car, gas, toll fees, everything that you do in order to accomplish a work related task.

I hate work related travel, and I think many people hate it too (at least many people in my company do), so in order to ease the inconvenience and discomfort of having to travel the company is generous with our travel expense. I never spend my own money when I’m on a business trip, which is the way it should be, not even on the entertainments and other lavish meals that I treat myself to when I’m away from my office. Because business trips are a huge pain in the ass no one will ever question a meal that cost more than $25 as long as you provide a receipt for such meals. You can have whatever you want, alcohol and tips included and covered by your travel expense account. If the meal (breakfast, lunch and dinner are the normal items in the expense report) cost less than $25 no receipt is expected. Now, some people might take advantage of this by skipping meals in the afternoon, putting $25 on their expense report, and having a huge meal, with a receipt, for dinner, or do something ridiculous like that. The company understands this so if a pattern is detected such that Mr. Knucklehead always puts $25 for breakfast, $25 for lunch, and $75 or some ridiculous price for dinner alone your travel expense report and itinerary will be audited by the travel office. But the company has also taken this into their travel budget account and has set the $25 limit of which an abuse of the system is not too detrimental to its finances. This is because business travel expenses are tax deductible for the company and the individual but both can’t claim the deduction at the same time, so the company takes the initiative of claiming the deduction by making it worthwhile and more profitable for the individual than if they claimed the deduction in their own tax report. Besides, tax forms are complicated enough as it is even without having to itemize your business expense. This is the reason why many corporations have a travel office which takes care of this kind of things.

People with more than two carry-on luggage try to board the plane as early possible before every overhead storage gets filled up. I only have my laptop case to carry on board so I didn’t feel the need to queue up early and be herded on like a cow.

Mooo!!! Mooo!!!

I was moooing to myself while writing this down and watching all the cows marching down the
check-in line.

Mooo!!!

I finally got on board at 11:40 AM, plenty of time to settle down in my window seat. I wanted an
aisle seat because I wanted the freedom to get up whenever I wanted to but by the time I checked in they were already taken. I didn’t mind because it’s only a two-hour flight and the old man next to me didn’t bother me. He did cross-word puzzles for two and a half hours during the flight. In addition, I liked looking out the window on a day flight, so that kept me entertained for the duration of the flight. The plane pulled out of Gate 80 and onto the runway, waiting for the control tower to give the go ahead for the take off. The engines were humming while we waited for the plane ahead of us to zoom out of Frisco International. I was seated on the starboard side (right side) of the plane and since our plane is lined up to take off on the runway pointed in the Northeast direction I had a clear view of the Bay with the San Mateo Bridge visible in the background about a mile away. Perpendicular to the take off runway is the landing runway which is pointed towards the Northwest, and from a distance, just above the San Mateo Bridge, I could see a plane approaching the landing runway as our plane started to gain speed for the take off. The approaching plane is getting closer and closer while our own take off was progressing, and as the approaching plane descended further for the landing I was fearing that we were going to get broadsided by it because it appeared very close. Just when the approaching plane touched the ground for its landing our own plane was at the intersection of the take off and the landing runways, a mere one quarter of a mile away! As soon as we passed the intersection our speed increased faster and faster and ten seconds later I felt the weightlessness of our take off, a relief, and saw from an acute angle of my view the approaching plane speed down the landing a quarter of a mile from behind the tail of our plane.

I have been on many flights but I can’t quite remember a situation where a take off and a landing was a mere ten seconds apart from a collision. Maybe I was the only one who noticed because I didn’t hear any reaction or murmur of a close call from the rest of the passengers. Most of them were either reading, listening to their iPods, or bored our of their minds to even take notice. Once we were above the ground a nice view of the Bay Area was visible from my window seat but the marine layer has clouded most Oakland and the North Bay side. Only a few familiar buildings and landmarks, through patches of the early morning clouds, were visible on the South Bay Side. The marine layer clouds were soft and pillowy looking, like a soft cotton fabric, dense and extremely white. The plane kept an up angle of about five degrees during our ascent until it reached its cruising elevation of about 38000 feet above ground at 500 miles per hour. As the elevation of the plane increased and heading east we passed the soft cotton clouds and the view below became clearer. The brown mountains off Contra Costa County and beyond were now visible from below us and the terrain changed from brown hills to flat land as we flew above the central valley of California, the agriculture capital of the world. After a few minutes the land below changed from flat agricultural grass fields to a mountainous dessert land, all brown with some pockets of snowy white at higher elevation. The landscape below becomes rugged, more open, and less developed as we keep heading east towards Denver. This is the frontier where the early settlers of the west had to cross in order to find habitable land in the Pacific Coast. It is raw and awesome from a distance above, an endless wide open brown sandstones, canyons and boulders, and it goes on from the foot of the Sierra Nevada through the seemingly endless dessert of the state of Nevada and Utah until we reach the edge of the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. This is a flight best taken in the daytime when all of this topography is visible. As we flew above the Rockies the profile of the landscape stays rugged but with more sharp edges with snowy peaks as the elevation of the land increases markedly above sea level. The sharp edgy-ness is the hallmark of the state of Colorado, which covers most of its landscape
from the west at Grand Junction through the foot of the Rockies at the Continental Divide, where the landscape changes abruptly and becomes flatter as we approached Denver. The sight below was interesting enough to keep me entertained for the duration of this two and half hour flight. As we passed by the Continental Divide the plane started to descend down to the mile high city of Denver. Dense urban settlements appeared from our view as the plane lowered its elevation so that the airport and Denver’s suburbs are visible from above. I could see that familiar white canopy that covers the Denver International Airport terminal as the plane made its approach on the landing runway.

Finally, we landed and the plane ramped up on the Jeppeson Landslide Terminal at the Denver International Airport. Local time now is 3:30 PM.2:30 Pacific.

The Gambler

2005-09-11T14:24:00.000-07:00

In the heat of the mid-season in July Kenny Rogers shoved a camera man away and when the camera man complained The Gambler ran back towards the camera man and shoved the camera he was holding down his throat. There was no logical reason for doing it other than frustrations in and out of the field. He didn't like all the distractions and all the other things going on with his life so anyone who irritated him, especially if he was some helpless camera man, got the shit beat out of him. After all, Kenny is a big league pitcher, he can do almost anything he wants, and if he gets punished for minor transgressions like throwing a man out of a restaurant window, well hell, what can they do, fine him $10,000? He makes more than $10 million for crying out loud!

Newspapermen/women from all over the country jumped up and down screaming what a jerk The Gambler is. They wanted him suspended indefinitely, wanted him out of the All Star game, wanted him to apologize, wanted him down on his knees and admit what a terrible boy he's been, wanted his blood and his first born sacrificed. But Kenny knows the game, and not just the game of baseball, so he wasn't about give anything away, not if he could help it. For all the screaming the high and mighty did to bring Kenny down from the pedestal all he gave them was a little feigned humility, an obligatory apology, and a ten day suspension which amounted to two games. He didn't miss the All Star game and he hardly lost any money since he was paid while under suspension. His team suffered a little without his services since he is the best pitcher they've got, and this is exactly the reason why Kenny can shove a man into submission without as much as a slap in the wrist and a scolding from the school principal, or in the major league case, the baseball commisioner. He can afford to big league anybody.

The Texas Rangers have taken a dive since the middle of the season and had an awful August, going 1-12 in one stretch and have been playing below 0.500 ball since the All Star break. But this wasn't due to Kenny Rogers. It's true that he's been pitching poorly lately but so has the rest of their pitching staff. The Rangers has since traded Chan-Ho Park and some other mediocre pitcher for Phil Nevin of the Padres. Of course, this wasn't what they needed. The Rangers lead the league in power ball but as always, year-in and year-out, their pitching is shaky and that is why they always slide down after the All Star break. They have no pitching to sustain them. Except The Gambler, of course. But when The Gambler goes into a funk he takes the whole team with him. Somehow, baseball finds a way to give you what you deserve.

Our generation will always remember 9/11 as the day of infamy in the same way The Greatest Generation will remember Dec 7, 1941. Four years ago today the whole country was paralyzed from the devastations of the WTC attack and the furor it brought. The effect was like a slingshot by David that hit between the eyes of Goliath. Halfway around the globe Muslim extremists in the Middle East danced in the streets, claimed victory against Satan, and hailed Osama bin Laden a hero. But the United States of America has since chased Mr. bin Laden out of his foxhole and into hiding in some remote rugged mountains near the border of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Today we are able to go freely around this country without fear because we took care of who those tried to scare us. We stomped them to the ground and showed them who's boss. The rest of the world resents us for responding with might. I suppose diplomacy is a better conduit for communication and cooperation with the disenfranchised Muslims who believe in the fundamental supremacy of Allah. But due to the sacrifices of the United States Armed Forces we have the privilege to indulge in frivolities, like flag burning, spitting on a Vietnam Veteran's grave, and baseball. Today my Oakland A's will finish their three game series against the Rangers in Arlington, Texas. On the mound for the Rangers is The Gambler, Kenny Rogers.

Kenny Rogers knows how to pitch, the wile and guile type, relying mostly on wits than on the velocity of his fastball. He doesn't really have a fastball to speak of, topping at 89 mph at best on a good day. But he can hit his spots when he's on and when his mind is not preoccupied with other things, like shoving a camera man down to the ground. He pitched six solid innings, making only a couple of mistakes and keeping his team up at 5-3 by the time he left the ballgame. He fooled guys with his sinker and change-up and set them up with an inside fastball that looks like a 100 mph by disrupting the batters' timing. At the bottom of the sixth inning this game was basically over. The A's starting pitcher, Joe Kennedy, tried to hold the fort but if you're going against a pitcher like The Gambler it's going to be tough, especially in a hitters ballpark like Ameriquest Field. Kennedy gave up another run in the bottom of the sixth to make it 6-3 with only one out in the inning and was promptly yanked out of the game. In came Keichi Yabu, who gave up a hit but retired the next two batters.

But like always in Arlington, things get interesting in the later innings of the game. Kenny Rogers is now out of the game (over 115 pitch count) and the Rangers bullpen is suspect. However, my A's could only make noise but amassed no damage, hitting grounders for a double play and flying out to left field. At the end of the seventh inning the Rangers were ahead 7-3 on another home run by Alfonso Soriano. The game basically ended this way, with my A's managing to score only one more time with Marco Scutaro's homerun. Now they are on their way to a tough three game series in Cleveland. They were wiled, guiled, and beaten by The Gamber.

Arlington Country

2005-09-10T16:21:00.000-07:00

On Friday, September 9, 2005 my Oakland Athletics nearly lost control of a game that appeared to be underwraps by the sixth inning. They were ahead 9-4 at the bottom of the ninth inning of the game but for some reason their reliever Kiko Calero, who is normally pretty solid, gave up a run and put two batters on base after getting two outs. Things looked kind of dicy so the manager, Ken Macha, made a cautious move by signaling the closer in, Huston Street, to get the final out. However, the guy at the plate was the fastball hitting switch hitter Mark Texiera. He looked for that first pitch fastball and put all of his Potagee power into it. That ball flew way out of the ballpark and landed somewhere near Dallas-Forth Worth International Airport. The next day the local newspapers reported that the air traffic controllers at the airport tower sighted an unidentified foreign object. Meanwhile the closer, Huston Street, was still kicking himself for throwing that pitch. He eventually regained his composure to get the final out and save the game for the A's, with final score Oakland 9, Texas 8. It shouldn't even have been that close.

Today they go at it again at Ameriquest Field in Arlington Country. I expect to see the same kind of excitement as I did last night just because this is a hitters ballpark. You'll never know what will happen until the final batter makes an out. Until then you hold your breath and wish for the best. The lineup has been juggled again because of Bobby Crosby's injury but it looks very effective from a numbers point of view.

1. Mark Ellis, 2B, R
2. Jason Kendall, C, R
3. Mark Kotsay, CF, L
4. Eric Chavez, 3B, L
5. Jay Payton, LF, R
6. Hatterberg, DH, L
7. Dan Johnson, 1B, L
8. Nick Swisher, RF, S
9. Marco Scutaro, SS, R

Last night the top four batters in the order were effective so it would be interesting to see how they fair tonight.

At the top of the first inning Kendall ripped a ground ball single to left field but Mark Kotsay, on a first pitch by the sinker baller Cameron Loe of the Texas Rangers, hit a ground ball to the second baseman for an inning ending double play. So far, not so good. But at the top of the second however, Loe loaded up the bases with nobody out for Dan Johnson. On a 1-2 pitch Johnson swung on a ball that caught a little too much of the plate, sending it deep to right field for a grand slam that put the A's ahead 4-1. Things are looking a little better. This is how it is in this field. If a pitcher makes a mistake it's usually costly. The Rangers made the first mistake and they paid for it but it's still early in the game, eight more innings to go, and plenty more chances for pitchers to make more mistakes.

At the bottom of the sixth inning my A's made their first mistake with the score 5-2 in the A's favor. A's pitcher Joe Blanton walked the lead off hitter Michael Young and Mark Texiera unleashed some more of that Potagee power for a two-run home run to get closer to the A's at 5-4. Fortunately Blanton had enough to end the inning with minimal damage and kept their one run lead intact.

Fortunately, the A's didn't make anymore critical mistakes after that, only a hit and a walk here and there but they did enough to put a stop any kind on nonsense that might have transpired if they had stuck their heads up their asses and blown the game wide open for the Rangers. The game ended with the score at 5-4 in the A's favor. So far so good. Let's see what happens tomorrow.

Doomed

2005-09-09T16:06:00.000-07:00

It's uncharacteristic of me to keep harping on about my Oakland Athletics but for the past week things have not improved and the future looks very weak from my vantage point. I'm sure the A's themselves have reason to be fearful as well because this is the last month of the season, so its crunch time. Either you do it now or the season is over. Things don't look so good further down the road, especially with the way they've been playing lately.

On Wednesday afternoon they pulled out a miracle. In the bottom of the ninth inning with the team down by four runs against the lowly division cellar dweller Seattle Mariners, my A's came by with two doubles to score two runs for each double, tying it and then going ahead by Nick Swishers walk. Old Nick, Moneyball numero uno, has been struggling lately. This is typical for a rookie, especially a talented and much hyped one like him. Moneyball brought him a lot of publicity before he ever put on a big league uniform. In addition his youthful exuberance and confident demeanor (some might say cocky) did not necessarily endear him to his teamates earlier on. Nevertheless, the fans loved him and he worked hard, started to break out of his funk in the middle of the season and showed that he could hit successfully at the major league level. He was on a hot streak in the middle of July until early August, when he fell back into that funk again, which is really just a natural roller coaster ride that evey rookie experiences in the major leagues. He wasn't even in the lineup on Wednesday before he was called to pinch hit in the bottom of the ninth, where he lead off. He singled, gotted batted in by a double and came up again with two outs, bases loaded, and the game tied at 7-7. In this situation the favor was clearly on Swishers side. He didn't have to swing at anything he didn't like. All he had to do was wait for the pitcher, Jeff Nelson, to throw one just a little bit over the plate for Swish to make a solid enough contact to get a hit. Nelson had to be extra careful because the bases were loaded. His chances of success was vey poor. In the end he walked Swisher and the game was over. Oakland A's 8, Seattle Mariner's 7.

On the road ahead is a three game series in Arlington, Texas against the Texas Rangers, followed by another three in Cleveland against the Indians, and finishing their road trip with a four game series against their more affluent Moneyball counterpart, the Boston Red Sox in Bean Town. They might win in Texas but the prospects in Clevelend is doubtful and they are hopelessly overmatched against the BoSox. If they win three games out fo this ten game road trip it will be a miracle. So, right now I am hoping for a miracle, albeit a mild one, by assuming that at best they will win three games on the road. My reason for my prediction is logical but too long winded to go into right now, so lets just take it at face value. Based on a three win road trip they would come back to Oakland with a 80-69 record and maintain their place at second place in the division. Meanwhile, the Anaheim Angels (Okay, LA, if you insist) would probably go 7 and 3 based on their schedule. That would put them at 85-64. If the A's are going to have any chance of winning the division they have to at least win five games in two three game series against the Minnesota Twins and the Texas Rangers before their final four game showdown against the Angels. In the best case scenario my A's would be 85-70 while the Angels would be at 89-66. If that were the case, in order for the A's to at least tie for the division, they would have to sweep the Angels in that four game series, a very highly unlikely prospect.

So with all that said and done, my Oakland Athletics are doomed.

Baseball Blues

2005-09-07T05:07:00.000-07:00

There isn’t anything more humbling to the human psyche than the game of baseball. One day you’re hot, the next day you’re cold as ice. One week you’re on a winning streak, the next week you’re sliding down a deep hole of doom. Mediocre pitching can be lethal to you when you’re down. You scuffle and you fall but you keep grinding it out no matter what because in baseball, as in life, moments of desperation are temporary and the only way to get out of the hole you dug yourself in is to work your way out of it day after day.

My Oakland A’s are on a four game losing streak and it appears to be getting worse. They seem powerless at the plate. Their pitching has been terrific but with no run support there isn’t anything more you can ask from your pitching staff. They’ve juggled their lineup, hoping to add a little power at the top of the order but power isn’t what they need, it’s consistent hitting, whether a double or a single. They need to put men on base consistently. They have been patient but at the moment their patience isn’t paying. Undoubtedly, they are on a downslide. But for how long? Will it be too late by the time they get back up again?

The last time they were hitting consistently was on Friday, September 2, against the Bronx Bombers, The New York Yankees. While it was nice that they were pounding the mighty pinstripe sluggers the A’s slump was imminent because of injuries to key personnel, such as Bobby Crosby, Mark Kotsay and the hard throwing Rich Harden. Their rotation hasn’t fallen off even with Harden injured but losing Crosby at the number three spot is killing them right now because opposing pitchers are able to work out the number three and four hitters with minimal damage. This was apparent on the second and third games against the Yankees when Eric Chavez was at the three spot, a position he is not comfortable with. Mediocre pitching did him in and he was bold enough to say so after the game.

Today they lost their fourth game in a row, twice against another lowly team, the Seattle Mariners. They’re working hard to get out of the hole, grinding it out, but still having a good time. A report of more injuries (Zito and Keilty) followed and if this trend continues the good times will stop rolling.

Dinner with Annie

2005-09-03T12:54:00.000-07:00

When things get complicated, when the pressure mounts, when I feel guilty, and when I need affirmation I find solace in having a plain old simple no frills dinner with Annie. She has no idea that I write about her but at the same time I don't publish important personal details about her, like her real name, and I don't exploit her for my own self gratification. I write about Annie because she understands me more than I care to admit, and her thoughts and opinions about me is like a mirror that I hold up in front of me whenever I want an honest assessment of myself.

I picked her up at her place then we drove to a quiet little Italian restaurant on California Avenue in Palo Alto. She's been very busy lately with her personal life and her own career and so I was more than happy that she took the time to have dinner with me. I've always known that I could count on her when the chips are down and for that I'm forever grateful. I ordered a bottle of the restaurant's finest Pinot Noir to go along with our dinner, which was just a simple pasta with pomodoro sauce, lamb shank soup, and assorted vegetables. It was a nice pleasant dinner in a simple but elegant little place. There was little conversation during dinner except for the pedestrian exchange about work and family. The bottle of Pinot was half empty by the time I finished my meal. The wine had a smooth, rich taste with a vibrant texture. It is the perfect social lubricant, the kind of drink you want to have when you want to share something intimate and talk candidly with your date.

"I'm in a new relationship", I said casually while caressing my glass of wine.

"How old is she?", Annie replied in between bites of her pasta.

"Does it matter?" I asked.

"Only if you're serious about her."

"I'm not at that stage yet."

"What about her, how does she feel?"

"She's nineteen, how do you think she feels?" I asked rhetorically.

"I don't even know who she is?"

"She's a girl I met in Hawai`i a few weeks ago. She's nineteen, a waitress at Duke's, lives with her parents, she's afraid to come and live in the mainland, and we have very little in common."

"Then you two will live happily ever after", Annie replied sarcastically.

"There's something special about her that I can't define."

"That's BS and you know it. You're thinking with your little head again."

"No, that's not it at all. It's the way she makes me feel. I mean, she really makes me feel confident."

"That's the same thing as thinking with your little head. You're just looking for someone to caress your ego."

"No it's not the same thing! It's probably true that I like my ego caressed every once in awhile. But believe me, I'm not interested in her for sex alone. We have a long distance relationship for crying out loud!" I protested. I was disturbed that Annie would think like that about me.

"Young girls fall in love easily. They really don't know what they want. They tend to be gullible, and they are easily impressed by older men who tell them lies or manipulate their weaknesses, their insecurities, and their vulnerability. Do you want to be that type of a guy?"

"I'm not sure I'm manipulating her."

"Well, you're a grown man. I'm not going to tell what to do with your life or how to handle your relationships. I just hope that whatever you do, don't hurt this girl. You don't know how it feels when men make promises to young girls but leave them behind when they become inconvenient. I trust that you're not that kind of a guy."

"You think I should let her go, don't you?" I asked.

"You should do what you think is right", Annie replied.

Of course, the right thing to do is to let Ursula go. Annie is absolutely right, I'm just leading this poor girl on. I don't think our relationship is going to ever be anything more than mutual infatuation.

"How about you? How's your life been lately?" I asked, changing the subject because talking about my own is beginning to depress me.

"I'm not dating anyone special, if that's what you mean."

"I thought you were dating that pretty boy from Atherton", I asked jokingly.

"He's nice but he's full of himself. He calls me all the time but I haven't dated him in three weeks."

"You're a tough customer, you know that?"

"I have enough things in my life to think about. I don't have time for needy, self indulgent numbskulls like him."

"Yeah? What's been in your mind lately?"

"My sister lives in Lafayette, Louisiana. I finally heard from her last night after three days of wondering where she was. She and her husband managed to escape north up to Colorado."

"Oh god, Annie. I didn't know. Here I am crying about my sorry little life and I didn't even know you were worried sick about your sister."

I truly felt guilty for not even bringing up Hurricane Katrina and forgetting about the fact that Annie's sister lives in Lafayette. But the best thing about Annie is that she's very self reliant and unemotional. She doesn't get all worked up about things she can't control. I felt ashamed for being the kind of guy that she truly abhors, the needy and self indulgent type. But then again, we've been friends for a long time. We spent the rest of the evening just talking about her sister and the natural disaster down south. It's one of those nights where my own selfishness was truly exposed by my beautiful friend Annie.

The Desert of Sin

2005-08-30T14:58:00.000-07:00

Every year at the end of August (the dog days of summer) and towards the Labor Day weekend the wackos from the greater Bay Area make a counterculture pilgrimage to a place in the middle of nowhere, in the hot desert sun north of Reno, Nevada, and waste a lot of time and energy putting up a meticulous compound where they can indulge in binge drinking, drugging, vegging, and endless fornicating. This event is known worldwide as Burning Man. The idea is suppose to be one of anti-commercialism, anti-conspicuous consumption, anti-war, anti-righteousness, anti-pro-life, anti-anti-abortion, anti-inhibition (don’t stop me, I’m on a roll), anti-cleanliness, anti-marriage, anti-commitment, anti-law abiding, anti-conservatism, anti-self respecting, anti-common sense thinking, anti-inside the box thinking, anti-outsourcing, anti-corporation, anti-Christianity, anti-religion, anti-gun, anti-oil, and just plain old anti-Americanism.

The drugged out, the whacked out, the unwanted, the alienated, the homosexuals, the bisexuals, the socialists, the communists, the anti-Bush, the anti-Reagan, the anti-Arnie, the nihilists, the nymphomaniacs and generally everyone who is out of their minds congregate in this weeklong celebration of the flesh and the deterioration of the mind, an orgy of unimaginable proportion. This is the wildest party on Earth and I’m sitting here in my office writing about it while my friend Dmitri is out there with his girlfriend indulging in the free-for-all. Damn him!

Aside from the orgies there are countless exhibitionists ranging from the most inane to the spectacularly bizarre. But the weird thing about this event is that many parents bring their toddlers to this wild event. Why in the heck would anyone expose their impressionable young ones to this madness of the highest order and produce bad mannered-poorly adjusted adults?! One reason might be that many of these parents were brought to this event by their parents when they were toddlers and now they’re screwing their kids in the same way they were being screwed. It keeps the cycle of incestuous degeneration rolling.

No money changes hands in this place they call “the playa”. It’s a Heaven on Earth created Utopia by a bunch of Frisco counterculturalists who enjoy nothing better than to flaunt their disgusting habits out in the open, veiled thinly in some artistic guise. They loathe money, commercialism and America so anything to do with any of them is banned from “the playa”. They’ve installed a system where goods and services can be exchanged not by money but by gifts, sort of like a barter system. Getting laid in this place is so easy that most of the time all you really need is a piece of gum in exchange for the sexual pleasures with someone decent looking, preferably someone of the opposite sex. A six-pack of beer for a hand job is not all that uncommon.

It’s utterly ridiculous but that’s the purpose of this whole affair, to show that the ridiculous is possible, and to encourage the ridiculous. This is an event where participation is a must. This is not a spectator sport. A typical day at this place might include a visit to a tent with performance artists doing abstract dance scenes with androgynous performers, a bong party at another tent, a stroll down an alley with naked bike riders and homosexuals in Cinderella dresses, pay your obligatory respect to the geek who keeps himself inside a white cube for a week, lunch at the central plaza, more orgies after lunch, help people put up some abstract art work to show good faith even though you are only here to get laid and party, a break in the afternoon in someone’s tent smoking dope in exchange for another six-pack, follow some hot young blonde and persuade her to have dinner and sex with you, she turns you down, you ask someone else less attractive, she says yes, you two have dinner, exchange worthless gifts just because that’s the rule around here, have sex until dawn, and pass out until noon. Then you get up and do the same goddamn thing all over again. It’s a fantasy filled week better than any Rotisserie league draft a sabrmetrician with no life could possibly assemble. There is simply nothing like it.

Even though it has been shown that Marxism is a failure in theory and practice it appears to me that the organizers of this event are hell bent in trying to prove otherwise. This is nothing but a well organized commune for the proletariats (although the majority of the people here are bourgeois) and if Marxism failed in the real world the organizers thought well we’ll just create our own little piece of Marxist paradise for everyone to enjoy but we’ll exploit artists and numbskulls to hide our intention and instead promulgate the idea that this is a free expression session for nonconformists, idealists, and counterculturalists. Well, they’ve succeeded, and who better than The San Francisco Chronicle to carry this propaganda for them. After all, The Chron is a left-leaning, socio-communist-liberal piece of ass wipe. These people deserve each other.

Meanwhile, I am sitting in my office at three in the afternoon, sending email to my friend Dmitri asking him for the latest update and wishing that I was there participating in the free-for-all.

Tijuana Blues

2005-08-28T13:00:00.000-07:00

I pride myself in my professionalism. I can separate my personal life from my work. When I’m off from work my life takes on a different dimension. I explore the realms totally beyond what’s considered reasonable in my professional life. I am more spontaneous, carefree and uninhibited in my personal life. Outside of work I don’t talk shop. That is why I have very few friends from work. My relationship with my coworkers is totally professional. I don’t ask about their personal lives and I tell them nothing about mine. That doesn’t mean I’m aloof and enigmatic when it comes to professional camaraderie. I attend company-sponsored functions with coworkers drinking at some elegant hotel bar or a semi-formal dinner at one of the managers’ homes.

On Friday August 26, 2005 the managers of my department put together a picnic for the entire staff. This was especially a well-appreciated gesture by our managers in the dog days of summer since there has been a push to be aggressive with schedules. In my line of work (Communications Engineering) and especially in the industry (as opposed to academe) schedule is king; technical issues are a nuisance.

“We plan for success” is the mantra with these managers. Of course, that’s more dream than reality. It’s merely wishful thinking, and there’s always a margin in the target date of completion or whatever the hell it is that’s on the agenda. Let’s say a contract is negotiated for a completion date of June 21, 2006. However, embedded in the contract are numerous incentives and bonuses if it is completed ahead of schedule. So these fat cats, knowing that they can only get fatter if we finish the contract ahead of schedule, push the staff to be aggressive with the schedule. “Streamlining” is what they’d like to call it. Cut the inefficiency and get to the heart of the problem. It all sounds good but every once in a while I sometimes wonder if we are putting incentives ahead of prudence. I sometimes wonder if “streamlining” is just a euphemism for “shortcuts”.

I arrived at the park where we were having the picnic at noon with another coworker. She wanted to talk about work but I tried not to pay attention to her questions about spread spectrum techniques or any of that nonsense.

“To be honest with you I am sick of talking frequency hopping or direct sequence or CDMA or any that garbage. We employ these techniques and milk them to the bone. I am sick of it all. I am thinking of doing something else”, I said to my coworker Shelly as we pulled into the parking lot.

“Are you gonna quit your job?” she asked.

“Not really. I’m just gonna do something different, within the company.”

“Like what?”

“I have no idea.”

Actually I plan no such thing. I just told her that so that she’d stop asking me questions about spread spectrum techniques. Shelly is one of those bright people who are insecure about their intelligence. She’s always trying to show me or anybody who would listen how intelligent she is. The fact of the matter is I don’t care.

We arrive at the picnic, grabbed some food, did the obligatory greetings with everyone and anyone, I didn’t care who they were. There were a couple of big wigs crashing the party so I said hello to them and joked about the new contracts or the new programs in the agenda.

I sat down to eat at the same table with Shelly and two other coworkers, all geeks with no life, except me, of course. A coworker named Kyle was blabbering about OSI layers. I wanted to choke the living daylights out of him. The other coworker is Justin, another annoying geek, talking about the advantages of the 802.11g networks. Don’t these people ever stop!

“I’m going over to Haight-Ashbury tomorrow and drop some acid. Anyone wanna come?” I asked, trying to shock these young dick-less wonders. They all just laughed, thinking I was only joking.

“You ever drop acid Shell?” I asked.

“No…he he he…no, you silly, I don’t do drugs” Shelly replied, laughing with that nerdy laugh of hers.

“What about you Kyle?”

“No, I don’t do drugs either.”

Justin just sat there speechless with his mouth wide open. I don’t think he’s ever met anyone who’s done anything illegal in his or her life. The guy is pure All-American from the Midwest, pays his bills on time, went to Stanford, probably got straight A’s throughout college, and probably saving himself for marriage. I wanted to tell them some really far out stories because I was sick of their chatter about work.

“I once went to a bullfight on acid in Tijuana, when I was in college”, I offered.

“Yeah, right”, said Kyle skeptically.

“Really. You can ask your friend Daryl. We spent the spring break of our senior year in Mexico, just roaming around and surfing, getting laid, smoking dope and dropping acid at every opportunity.”

Daryl is a college friend of mine who used to be Kyle’s roommate before Daryl got married.

“That’s really bad!” Shelley scorned.

“Yeah…acid kills brain cells and freezes your memory. You’re going to get Parkinson’s disease when you get old”, Justin the square added.

“That’s all right, I don’t plan to live any older than sixty, if I ever live that long”, I replied grimly.

“I think you’re full of shit”, Kyle said, still incredulous.

“We drove to Mexico from Los Angeles, me and Daryl. We stopped for a couple of hours in Newport Beach to get our drug supplies from Daryl’s brother Ken. You remember Ken, don’t you Kyle?”

“Yeah, I remember”, replied Kyle, resentful of the memory.

When Daryl and Kyle were roommates Ken broke into their apartment while Daryl was away, with the intention of stealing some of his stereo equipments and selling them to buy drugs. But Kyle came home in time to catch Ken stealing not only Daryl’s stuff but Kyle’s as well. Now, Ken is a real menacing looking guy, the kind you wouldn’t want to mess with, and he fights dirty. Kyle tried to stop him but before he could do anything Ken kicked him in the gut and ran away with only a set of speakers in his hands.

Ken and Daryl come from a pretty well off family in Southern California, in Laguna Niguel. Daryl is the more cautious of the two while Ken is a wild man. I don’t think he ever finished high school because he spent most of his childhood days hanging out at Huntington Pier hustling, scrounging, surfing and just being a general menace to society. Their parents tried everything but he just kept doing drugs and getting into trouble. He’s been in and out of jail several times, starting at the age of sixteen. Right now no one knows his whereabouts.

“Ken gave us a week’s supply of marijuana and four tablets of acid, two for each one of us. Then he told us to look for a gringo named Happy Pappy whenever we get to Tijuana. He would hook us up, he said.”

“Why didn’t Ken go with you guys?” Kyle asked.

“He couldn’t for some reason. Probably had some deal going on in Newport. Anyway, we drove to Tijuana and the border people just waved us through without searching us. They do that to every tourist that comes in. We spent the week driving along the coast towards Ensenada, stopping on the beach every time we a see some good waves. We would camp out on the beach for the night, drinking Tequila and smoking weed. It was the best spring break I’ve ever spent in all my four years of college.

“At the end of the week we drove back to Tijuana and looked for this Happy Pappy fella. After searching around for three hours we finally found him, dead drunk in some crappy hole in the wall bar, which he probably owned, with waitresses doing double duty as hookers. Then…”

“I don’t wanna hear anymore of this story…it sounds disgusting”, Shelley protested.

“Yeah, I don’t wanna hear anymore either”, added Justin the square.

Kyle just sat there and said nothing. The thought of Ken still agitated him to the bone. I decided not to push with my Tijuana blues story. After all, these are not the type of people who can appreciate a drug binge outing and survive to tell about it.

Missy

2005-08-25T21:54:00.000-07:00

At one thirty on Wednesday morning my phone rang. It rang ten times before I finally crawled out of bed and answered it, kind of groggily, saying

“Hello?”

Who the hell could be calling me this early in the morning? I hope it wasn’t about work because whoever the hell it is from work will surely get an earful from me.

“Hey hon, how are you?”

It’s Ursula.

“Sweetie! Thanks for calling. What time is it back there?”

“Eleven thirty.”

Ursula is my new love interest from Hawai`i so I wasn’t about to start a heated argument with her about the time difference between Hawai`i and California. Instead I pretended to listen to her random thoughts while lying in bed. She did most of the talking while I responded with the obligatory replies of encouragement and amazement.

“Is that right?”

Those were my common response to her stories. She felt awful about things that were happening in her current situation. The conversation went on like this for about an hour or so, most of it meaningless chatter about work, family, friends, etc. I let her go on like that because she’s my girlfriend. We’ve only really dated once, back when I was in Hawai`i for a brief visit, but we’ve talked on the phone almost everyday since I got back home in the Bay Area.

“When are you coming back?” she asked.

“To Hawai`i?”

“Yeah.”

“Oh, I don’t know. November or December, whenever I have some time off.”

“That’s too long”, she complained.

“That’s the best I can do sweetie. Why don’t you come over?”

“When?”

“Whenever you want.”

“I don’t know. I have to save some money.”

“Don’t worry about that. I’ll pay your air fare.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“I don’t know. I don’t like the mainland.”

“You don’t have to stay that long. Maybe a week or so, that’s all.”

“Maybe.”

There was a moment of silence. Ursula was thinking about the idea but I could sense that she was a bit apprehensive. She’s an island girl and she gets homesick really easily if she’s out of the islands for more than three days.

“Well you don’t have to give me an answer now. Just think about it, that’s all.”

“Okay”, she said.

There was silence again. I could feel her doubts from the airwaves emanating through the night sky. She wanted to get something off her chest. It is something about the mainland that she didn’t like.

“I went to college in the mainland for a year, you know.”

“I know.”

When we first met she had mentioned this to me and the painful memory of her experience. She never really elaborated on it, dwell on it, other than to say that she was home sick a lot, especially because it rained a lot in Seattle. She said she was miserable. But I could feel that there was more to it than that. Is there something more that she wanted to tell me? I didn’t know and at this stage in our relationship I didn’t think I should push her to open up. Not yet. It’s three o’clock in the morning now and I didn’t really have the energy to have deep conversations with her about this matter but at the same time I just couldn’t turn her away if there was something that she felt strongly about. I didn’t want to be rude.

“I’ll tell you what. Go ahead and sleep it over and well talk about it tomorrow. I’ll call you and if this is something that you have issues with then we’ll try to resolve it one way or another. I love you sweetie.”

“Love you too.”

With that we said our goodbyes and I went back to sleep.

The next day I received an email from Ursula detailing the painful experience she had after one year of College in Seattle. It would be inappropriate for me to repeat the details of her email but the gist of it is an experience of alienation, loneliness and insecurity. I felt compelled to call her and reassure her that those things are in the past, almost two years now. I did this and she cried the whole time we were talking on the phone. The best I could do is telling her to not come just yet. Instead, I will visit her when I get the chance, soon, maybe in a month or so.

Coming Home

2005-08-21T18:24:00.000-07:00

Three months ago I came back from a long trip to Singapore without any clue of what was going on with my Oakland Athletics. Of course, I could’ve followed their progress from the web but what’s the point of leaving and traveling if you have to check back home every minute. The point of traveling, for me at least, is to leave everything behind and forget about them until you come back again. Otherwise if you already know what’s happening back home before you arrive then you have nothing to look forward to. You might as well keep traveling until you get so tired and bored with it that you just can’t wait to get back home again. I don’t have enough vacation time to think like that and even though I have been working for the same company for a long time now I still only get 25 working days a year of vacation. I don’t know how it is in other countries but this is standard in the United States. In Europe they probably get 59 days a year, or something ridiculous like that but that’s because they’re a socialist community. Their people get taxed heavily for all the luxuries they receive, and the quality of goods and services that they receive, because there’s less motivation and less competition to perform at the highest level, is always substandard compared to what you could get in the United States for the same price. That is why Europe’s economy is crumbling, their infrastructure is falling apart, and their old people are dying earlier and faster than the old people in the United States.

My Oakland A’s were in the middle of a month long slump when I returned from my trip. Their record was something like 15-28, just god awful, they were in the cellar of their division, they couldn’t hit, their pitching was shaky, and their divisional rivals, the Anaheim Angels (Los Angeles, if you insist) and the Texas Rangers, were on a hot streak, winning five or six games in a row. Everyone, the baseball columnists, the beat writers, the so-called experts, the fans and even my beautiful friend Annie, had given up on them. Actually Annie could careless about baseball, least of all the A’s, but she is kind enough to accompany me in some of the games that I choose to attend at the Coliseum. I myself had doubts about their chances of making it to the playoffs this year although I did not lose my interest in them. Through the slump I kept listening to the games on the radio and synchronized it with the television broadcasts. As any baseball aficionado will tell you the best way to experience a baseball broadcast is simultaneously through a synchronized radio and television reception, with the TV sound muted. Baseball on the radio is much more enlightening and satisfying to listen to because it engages the mind of the listener. It provides some sense of intimacy, and the listener can indulge in the minutiae of baseball along with the broadcaster. Because the game is slow it provides the broadcaster an opportunity to discuss the intricacies of a baseball situation, such as the situation when the game is tied in the late innings and there is a runner on First Base with nobody out. On the radio the game of baseball is the focus, channeled through the voice of the radio broadcaster, and is descriptive-content intensive. This is not the case on television because there are so many more attractions (or distractions) that are available to the viewer, such as the structure of the stadium, the city that the teams are playing in, the tourist spots, the landmarks, the celebrities, the fans and of course, the hot girls in tight jeans in the stands that camera men and producers are always keen on showing to the viewers. As a result the commentators have to have a different approach when the doing the games on TV because, as they say, you can never under estimate the “human element”. Personally, I could care less about the peripheral human element, all I care about are the players and their play on the field. That’s human enough for me.

Slowly but surely my Oakland A’s kept plugging away at the futility of it all (or so everyone thought), just grinding it out, and having a good time. They were in on so many games. They lost a few more but suddenly their fortunes began to change. They won many more games than they lost in June. They won a few one-run games, a few extra inning games, and clutch hits began to fall through instead of being caught by the opposing team. Suddenly a rain of dying quails began pouring on them; a bloop single here and there, a whopping line drive to right center, an occasional home run and most important of all, a hit, any hit, with men in scoring position. This is their game. This has always been their game since Billy took over as General Manager. They put men on base and they wait there because there’s no sense in stealing if the objective of the batter at the plate is to get on base by either getting a hit, drawing a walk, or by being accidentally getting hit with a pitch. If you get on base the chances of scoring in the inning goes way up, especially if there’s less than two outs. You have to get on base before you can score in the same sense that you have to learn how to crawl before you can learn how to walk. One precedes the other fundamentally. The idea is that if you put men in scoring position often enough the scoring opportunities will tilt in you favor and if you have more scoring opportunities than any of your competitors then you will score more runs than them. Thus, more runs means more wins, which means a better chance of getting into the playoff. In a nutshell, it’s a numbers game. The most important number is, of course, the amount of runs you score. There are 162 games in a Major League Baseball season and so with that many games there are plenty of data from past seasons to analyze and categorize situations with men in scoring position. An analysis of those data showed that runs tend to come in bunches when you put multiple men on base. They are not evenly distributed and that they tend to come in streaks. Teams who employ the on-base-percentage doctrine tend to go on long streaks of scoring and often winning while teams who employ some other doctrine tend to go on shorter winning streaks. Of course, a team with a solid group of superior athletes can win a lot of games and not have winning streaks longer than four or five but not many teams have the luxury to be able afford such high caliber athletes in their roster, unless you’re the New York Yankees, and even they haven’t won a World Series in six years, so nothing is guaranteed.

A few weeks ago I went on a short trip to Hawai`i. Before I left my Oakland A’s were on a hot streak of winning many, many games and losing only a few. It was one of those times were the statistics were on their favor. They put men in scoring position, hits were dropping, the mood of the team was loose and lively, and they climbed out of the cellar and into first place in their division. By the time I got back from Hawai’i they were still winning, although the dying quails became less and less frequent and the manager seemed to have fallen back into his old habit of playing “little ball”. The truth is that not once had “little ball” been a factor in allowing them to climb back into contention. Today, Sunday August 21, 2005, my A’s lost to the lowly Kansas City Royals for the second time in three games. The Kansas City Royals are the sorriest team in Major League Baseball. I was at the game with my old friend Annie. The game went into extra innings with the A’s having a stronger bullpen and deeper on their bench than the Royals, a situation which the Royals had no business winning. In the end the Royals scored the last run and won 5-4.

Coming home can be very painful.

Mahalo Nui Loa

2005-08-19T14:58:00.000-07:00

There wasn’t time to pack and gather all of my stuff before my flight back home to the Bay Area so I just took all my junk, dirty laundry and all, and shoved them all in my sport bag and the rest of my stuff in my back pack. My sport bag is bulging out and bursting at the seams but I didn’t care because I was in a hurry. I had not slept all night as Bea, Ursula and I along with Bea’s effeminate guy friend Keola spent Saturday night, which turned into Sunday morning, out and about near Tantalus Point and Manoa Valley drinking beer, swapping stories, making trouble and smoking some sweet pakalolo. We were all so wasted that by the time we got home, around 6:00 AM, before Auntie T could yell at me and Bea we were out of the door and heading for the airport to catch my flight.

“Where you two been all night!!!” Auntie T was yelling, coming out of her bedroom.

“Sorry Auntie, gotta go” I said to her as I was running down the stairs.

I stopped long enough to give her a quick hug and kiss on the cheek and quickly ran out the door before she could start asking questions. Bea already had her truck running and ready to roll so I threw my sport bag in the truck bed and hopped on the passenger’s side. We were off before Auntie T could come out of the house and we left her in a cloud of dust, delaying what eventually will happen to Bea when she gets home after dropping me off at the airport.

“Oh boy! You’re in trouble now sweetie” I exclaimed, laughing as I said it.

“No worries brah, can handle” she replied, unconcerned.

Of course, Bea doesn’t like getting yelled at by her mother so while she was driving we tried to think up stories as an excuse for staying out all night.

“Hey, just tell her you were with me the whole time. I’m your cousin for chrissakes. You were in good hands. Just tell her to call me and I’ll explain everything” I suggested.

“What you goin tell her den?”

“That you had sex with Keola while Ursula and I were walking down by Manoa Falls” I said, joking of course.

“Ha ha, Keola likes guys” she replied.

“I’ll tell her that I was out with Ursula all night and you tagged along to protect both me and your friend Ursula, to make sure that we didn’t do anything stupid. That’s the truth” I offered.

“No, dat’s not da truth” she replied, knowing what the truth is, exactly.

“Yeah but your mom will believe me.”

“Maybe, only because she likes you.”

“You really think so?”

“Yup”

Well that’s a good enough lie, I thought to myself. Bea was going about 100 miles per hour because we were running late. She swerved into the curve on Farrington Highway near Kapolei and nearly hit the guard rail but she was unfazed. Her dexterity on the control wheels was extraordinary to say the least. She kicks ass in four wheel driving! I was holding onto the door handle trying to get a grip, scared that she may run both of us down to the ground before we reach the airport, while she casually maneuvered her truck into H1 freeway, albeit with light traffic on a Sunday morning.

“So waht you tink of Ursula?” she said.

“You weren’t lying. She’s very beautiful.”

“I told you” she said. “She broke up wit her boy-friend last month” she added.

This was news to me. Ursula never mentioned a boyfriend the whole time we were together last night. Not even this morning when I said I’d like to keep in touch with her. She said yes so I assume she was not involved with anyone else.

“She has a boyfriend? Why didn’t she tell me?” I asked, almost disappointed.

“Had a boyfriend! Dey broke up ahready!”

“Yeah, but still, I wish I knew. I felt betrayed already.”

“She not even your girlfriend yet.”

“I know, but she’s gonna be.”

“Yeah, how you know?”

“I’m hoping she’s gonna be.”

“No worries brah, dey broke up ahready.”

“Who is this guy, anyway?”

“Linekona , from Jade Street.”

“You know him?”

“Yup, you know him too! He used to surf Lahilahi point in da summer time. Used to come ovah the Princess wit da barbecue.”

I remember some Hawaiian kid charging the left at Lahilahi point during one of those good southwest swells when I was living at the Princess five years ago. It’s a pretty dangerous place, you’ve got to have a lot of sack to charge it and there were only very few who were out there when the swell was big enough for the spot to go off. That kid, Linekona, couldn’t have been any older than sixteen but he had sack. He was the only kid out in the lineup with the grizzled veterans, older guys, and heavy locals with battle scars to show their worth. After a good surf session I would invite the guys in the line up for a barbecue at the Princess and I remember Linekona always being there with the gang, building the fire or making Poki and drinking with us. Now I find out that he’s been going out with my beloved Ursula. That little punk. I’ve always admired his sack.

“That kid had sack.”, I said. “Why did they break up?”

“Don’t know. Why don’t you ask her?”

“Nah. It’s too early to ask questions like that. We’ll see.”

We arrived at the airport with forty five minutes left before my flight takes off. I gave Bea a kiss and asked her to say goodbye, once again, to Ursula for me. It really wasn’t necessary because I was gonna call her tonight anyway.

“Bye sweetie” I said.

“Mahalo Nui Loa” Bea replied.

I got on the plane with ten minutes to spare. All passengers have already boarded when I got there but since I’m flying first class I got to my seat easily and comfortably. Thank god no one is sitting next to me. The flight attendant greeted me and asked if I wanted something to drink, coffee, tea, milk….I interrupted her and said I wanted a glass of champagne. I was still a little lightheaded from the partying all night but a glass of champagne was just what I need this morning. After two glasses of it I slowly drifted into sleep for the next four to five hours, long enough before our arrival at Frisco International around noon, Pacific Standard Time.

Tourist Trap

2005-08-17T17:10:00.000-07:00

I hate Waikiki. It is one of the most disgusting tourist traps ever invented by mankind. Within a mile stretch of white sand beaches anchored at the east end by a huge crater, Diamond Head, which provides a magnificent view of this tiny piece of real estate that is marketed throughout the universe as the ideal tropical paradise, resides rows of high rise hotels on both sides of Kalakaua Avenue. Along the high rises on Kalakaua are numerous shops, boutiques, shopping centers, banks, porno shops, movie theaters, street musicians; anything and everything that caters to the tourist so that they will never have to leave the Waikiki tourist trap. The trap begins on the west end at Fort DeRussy, once a US Army compound, now mostly civilian property, although the Hale Koa Hotel is still available only to the men and women of the United States Armed Forces. It runs east towards Diamond Head but effectively ends near the Honolulu Zoo at Kapahulu Avenue. It also goes up north in three layers, or avenues, distinguished by the quality and desirability of the hotels or dwellings that occupy these avenues. The first layer is Kalakaua Avenue. On the makai – ocean – side of Kalakaua are first-rate hotels right on the beach and each hotel room have lanais overlooking the beautiful green-blue Pacific Ocean. The daily rates here start at $500 a night and the best one of them, The Royal Hawaiian Hotel, start even higher.

The second layer of the trap is Kuhio Avenue with rows of second-rate but still marvelously located hotels. It’s marvelous, however, only to the tourists who don’t know any better, because all the trappings are within their walking distance; strip bars, restaurants, pubs, hookers and what not.

The third layer of the trap is Ala Wai Blvd. There are no hotels here, just residential condos and apartment buildings where many Haoles who work in Waikiki live. Many hookers who walk the streets of Waikiki at night also live along this one-way strip next to the Ala Wai Canal. Early in the evening the residents of these high rise condos will sit on their lanais with a mai tai on their hands and watch the outrigger canoe races across the street at the Ala Wai Canal. Meanwhile, the hookers are just about to begin their day. They get up at around six o’clock in the evening and do their daily routine; shower, dinner, then dress to thrill.

The last thing I ever want to do whenever I’m back in Hawai`i is to go to Waikiki but I wanted – needed – to go to Duke’s to see my cousin Bea and of course, to meet her friend Ursula. Although the restaurant is inside the property of the Outrigger Canoe Club, Duke Kahanamoku’s home turf, the place is a mind boggling, overblown Polynesian décor; a pretty unreal site, a pure tourist haven. It makes me sick just looking at this place. I went over to the bar and ordered a glass of chardonnay. The bartender, a Haole guy with a deep tan and sun-drenched blond hair, looked at me like I was some sort of a sissy.

“You no like da kine margaritas brah or waht?” the bartender said in a local accent.

I can’t tell if he’s faking it or if he really talks like that naturally, he sounds so good at it.

“No man, I ain’t no tourist!” I replied, somewhat indignant.

The bartender paid no attention to me, his focus was on the two women sitting on the other side of the bar, a couple of Haole chicks from Kansas. They were intrigued and amused by his pidgin so they asked him how you say this and that in Hawaiian, as if the guy was an expert in the language. Mr. Bartender taught them a few words like Pupule and Punani. They were even more amused when he told them what they meant. I guess it pays to be local. I was also amused at first but then I became annoyed because the guy was starting to show off. Actually I was jealous, that son of a bitch, I thought to myself, just because he sounds cool in his local pidgin accent. The Haole chicks are going gaga over him. After five minutes of watching him flirt with the girls I signal for him to come over.

“Eh, want anuddah one brah?”

“No, actually, I was wondering if you could tell my cousin Bea that her cousin is here” I said politely while laying down a five-dollar bill for the drink.

“You Bea’s cousin? Shit brah, you shoudah told me. Eh, I hook you up. Try wait, heh?”

No wonder these Haole chicks are digging him. He’s a smooth operator. He glided his way out of the bar and disappeared for a few minutes. The Haole chicks were giggling while drinking their Pina Colada, getting kind of tipsy, and whispering to one another about something ridiculous like having a threesome in their hotel room with this local Haole surfer dude looking type of bartender. These girls can’t be any older than twenty one. They look so young, so blonde and so tanned from lying out on the beach all day. This is typical of many Haole chicks that come to the island. For some reason they check their brains at the airport and go bananas, as if being on vacation in Hawai`i gives them a license to be clueless. Many them will usually hook up with some local guy and lose their virginity, if they haven’t lost it already.

Mr. Bartender came back with Bea behind her. My lovely cousin Bea, who is usually stoic and unemotional, had that impish smile on her face, as if she knew what I was up two.

“Eh, cuz, waht you doin?” she said, smiling while giving me a nice little hug.

“I came to see you sweetie” I replied, returning the embrace and giving her a nice little kiss on the cheek.

“Yeah, right”, she said incredulously.

“Really”, I pleaded.

“I know who you came to see.”

“Yeah?...Who?”

Bea didn’t answer, she just smiled and shifted her eyes slowly towards the dining room, where Ursula is working. I smiled back and bit my lip, indicating to her subtly that I’m eager to meet her friend.

“Eh, Bea, dis your cousin or waht?” interrupted Mr. Bartender casually. The Haole chicks were eager to talk to him but he ignored them for awhile. I could tell that he kind of likes Bea himself. He was acting kind of jealous of me, a strange reversal.

“Eh cuz, dis Harold from Kailua” she said to me.

“Eh brah, call me Kolohe” said Mr. Harold the bartender while extending his palm out in an arm wrestling embrace, the homeboy handshake.

“Felix” I said. “Are you as naughty as your name?”

“Naughtier!” Harold exclaimed, showing off.

“Is that what Kolohe means?” one of the Haole chicks asked.

“Why, you like find out?” said Harold.

“Find out what, if you’re as naughty as your name?” Haole chick number one replies.

Number two was sipping her Pina Colada and giving Mr. Kolohe the look of inviting eyes. Kolohe walked slowly towards them and leaned over the bar, whispering to the chicks’ ears. Their giggles have taken up another notch. These three are going to party tonight like there’s no tomorrow. Lucky son of a bitch, I thought to myself.

Bea punched me in the arm and gave me a nasty look, as if to say “pay attention, stupid”. I was busy watching the Kolohe boy make a move on the two blond beauties from the mainland.

“Oh, yeah, right.” I said as I snapped out of my dreams. “Hey, when to do you get off work?” I asked.

“Eleven” she said. But she added “Eh, if you stay she goin come ovah heah, like soon.”

This was encouraging. I was dying to meet Ursula. Bea went back to the dining area while I waited in the bar. I asked for a bottle of Budweiser. Kolohe Harold gave me one, on the house. He was too busy flirting with the two blonds from Kansas to take my money. I sat on a stool in the bar and glanced at the TV monitor every now and then because there was an interesting show on the tube, a local cooking show hosted by the local celebrity chef, Sam Choy. It was a good time killer. After five minutes of watching, looking around, and waiting a girl in a blue and white Hawaiian print mini-dress came in the bar and handed Harold an order. She’s a waitress. I’ve seen her before. Her face look is bubbly and tanned, very pretty, and had that familiar Hapa Haole feature. She had thin sharp nose and sweet red thin lips. Her hair is curly brown with a shade of blond, almost dirty blond, and looks natural, not like some fake hair-dying job that many Asian women do to their hair.

Kolohe Harold took the order in a flirty sort of way, saying something like I’ll do you a favor if you do me a favor. This Kolohe kid is insufferable. He flirts with every pretty girl he sees because he can getaway with it. The girl in the mini-dress just smiled as if to say “yeah…I’ve heard it all before”. Then she turned in my direction and smiled at me.

“You Bea’s cousin?” she asked.

“Yeah”, I replied, excitedly I might add. “Are you Ursula?”

“Yup” she said, still smiling.

“I’m Felix. Nice to meet you”

“You used to live at the Princess” she said.

“Yeah, I moved five years ago”

“Me and Bea used to hang out on the beach by Cabanas.”

“How come I never saw you before?” I asked.

“You did” she insisted. “I was only fourteen den”.

“I wish I remembered” I said regretfully.

Kolohe Harold was listening and eyeing me the whole time while he was mixing the drinks, the kind of jealous look of concern. Again, a strange reversal. He finished mixing the drinks, handed them over to Ursula and gave her a flirty flying kiss. Ursula just smiled and walked away. She kind gave me a sweet and friendly smile while walking back to the dining area, the kind of look that tells you which tells you that a girl is really interested in you. Meanwhile Mr. Kolohe promptly forgot about her and went back to the bond beauties that he’s been working on all night. Ursula came around the bar a couple more times that evening, once with Bea. That’s when I asked both of them what were there plans after work. Both of them said they have no plans. It’s a Saturday night, tomorrow I have an early morning flight, but I was not going to let this opportunity get away so I asked both Bea and Ursula if they wanted to do something, anything, after work. They both agreed, thank god, and so we spent the rest of the night out by Tantalus Point drinking beer and swapping stories.

Green Flash

2005-08-11T18:03:00.000-07:00

The sunset in Hawai`i is one of its understated attractions and the best place to observe it is on the West Side at any beach in Wai`anae, Nanakuli, Ma`ili and Makaha. Friday evening, at around 6:00 PM, the gang gathered around the barbecue pit drinking beer and biting on last night’s leftovers in Auntie T’s backyard. There was Uncle Dave with his ukulele, Kimo who brought along a 12 pack of Budweiser with him, Glenn, Jonathan Kanehele, Aunti T, and me. We were watching the sunset and looking for that elusive green flash as the sun dips below the horizon. The patches of clouds in the sky had a pinkish-reddish color from the suns reflection. In order to observe the green flash you have to stare at it while it’s going down. The last glimpse of the sun as it dips below the horizon will have a blue-green after glow just before it completely vanishes. It’s very subtle so you have to concentrate a little harder. Only Auntie T and me actually saw it. The rest of the guys were too busy drinking, eating, singing and having a good time.

Later in the evening a couple of local boys came around the beach near us and called Kimo over. They couldn’t have been any older than fourteen or fifteen. I recognize one kid as Cheyenne, a skinny kid with long straight hair down to his shoulders. The other is a tall Haole kid named Sonny. These kids looked like they were trouble from the beginning.

“Eh, Kimo, try come?” said the skinny kid Cheyenne.

“What you want brah?” said Kimo as he casually waddles his way down the beach while chugging a can of beer and belching. He shook hands with them, a hand slap and a firm grip in an arm wrestling posture kind of shake, the way homeboys greet each other. I couldn’t hear what they were saying but I was curious. Something was going down and whatever it is I’m sure the legality of it is questionable, just from the look on their faces. The kids had that look of anxiety and anticipation, the kind of look that teenage boys have when they are about to do something stupid and exciting. Kimo’s manner and body language spoke of someone who is disingenuous, as if he’s heard it all before and shook his head, indicating he agrees only if there’s no skin off his back. I couldn’t stand it any longer, I had to know what was going on, and so I went over to check it out.

“Hey guys, what’s going on?” I said casually as I approached the threesome.

“Eh brah, nevah seen you long time” said the skinny kid Cheyenne. I knew him a long time ago when I was living just a mile up the road.

“Hey there Cheyenne. Sonny, howzit brah?”

“Eh, you move or what?” said Sonny, a Haole boy trying to act local, with the fake accents and all.

“I live in the mainland now. California.”

“Eh, dis guy get mo’ money dan you and me combine” said Kimo. His face was all red from hanging out on the beach and drinking all day long.

“Fo reals brah?” said Cheyenne.

“No man, I ain’t got no money” I said. I didn’t want these guys to get the wrong idea and start mooching off of me. I was sure that was the reason Kimo mentioned money. He probably wanted me in on the action, whatever it is.

“So what Kimo, you goin do it or what?” Cheyenne said.

“Ahh nah...I dunno brah…my wife get me on one leash you know…I cannot go juz li’dat”

“We goin geev you one cut brah…das plenny…last you one week” said Cheyenne again. It was clear that he is the ringleader of this two-man gang. Sonny just stood silent most of the time trying to look tough.

“I gotta go tell my wife” said Kimo.

“Kay den” said Cheyenne.

With that I went back to Auntie T’s backyard and rejoined the laid back get together with my friends. Kimo went home to go get his car keys while the two boys waited on the beach, looking in from the outside at our little party. A few yards to our left on the beach a group of young men and women were building a campfire. It looks like they were having a party. The two boys went over to check it out, maybe crash the party. It looked like everything was cool as the group introduced themselves to the two boys. Meanwhile in our group Auntie T was talking about Robi Kahakalau, a local singer who lives in Wai`anae. It appears that Sistah Robi, as the locals affectionately call her, has been having some problems lately with drugs, her boyfriend, and her manager. I could care less about Sistah Robi, I was more interested in what was going on with the boys on the beach, so I didn’t really pay attention to what Auntie T was saying. From my viewpoint it appeared to that Cheyenne is hitting on one of the girls in the campfire. Sonny stood behind Cheyenne with his chest up like he was his bodyguard. A guy tried to get in between Cheyenne and the girl. His girlfriend? I wasn’t sure so I went over to see what was happening.

“Hey guys, what’s going on?”

“Nahting” replied Cheyenne. Yet he had his fists clenched like he was ready to punch this guy getting in between him and this girl. The guy was just a little bit bigger than Cheyenne. He looks like he might be Japanese, kind of wimpy looking but trying to act tough. He had a short buzz cut that made his hair stood up like a porcupine. The girl he was trying to protect is also a Japanese looking girl. Nothing was said, just a lot of posturing and grandstanding.

“Eh, you goyin pound him or what?” said Sonny, trying to get the action going. I looked around and there were three other guys but they all looked pretty manageable. If something was to go down I was pretty sure that I could take on any one of them. Sonny, who is big and muscular, could probably take at least two. From the looks of these Japanese looking townies I don’t think fighting is their bag. They look like a bunch of pussies. They just stood there with a look of bewilderment in their faces. None of them even had the guts to stand behind their guy.

“Hey, Cheyenne, there’s no need to fight man. This guy is not worth it. You can probably kick his ass with one hand,” I said, trying to quell the riot. The Japanese guy looked at me like he was ready to slug me, Mr. Tough guy that he is. There were three other girls in the campfire as well but they all stayed away from the confrontation. Clearly these people did not belong here. This is typical. The locals start pushing them around and they just take it, except for Mr. Tough guy, and he looks like a wimp himself even though he seemed to be the only one in the group with some sack. All of the sudden Cheyenne pushes the guy hard with both hands. The Japanese guy falls back but gets up quickly and throws a wild swing with his right hand at Cheyenne, the kind of swing that inexperienced fighters take when they don’t know what they’re doing. Cheyenne saw it coming right away and ducks quickly, responds with a counter punch to the gut that knocks the wind out of the Japanese guy. The guy falls on his knees, clutching his stomach and hyperventilates, unable to gain his breath and losing his composure. That was enough for me because I just could not stand watching this guy’s sorry ass get whipped by this skinny local kid with an attitude.

“Alright, that’s enough,” I said casually as I stepped in between them, holding the Japanese guy’s back down.

“Stay down, you just got the wind knocked out of you. Stay down until you regain your breath” I said to the guy. He didn’t resist. It took about half a minute before the guy finally started breathing again. Afterwards he slowly got up and his friends took him away, taking their stuff with them and leaving the campfire that they had built. They said nothing. These townies will never come back to Wai`anae again. I felt bad that I just stood there and let it happen. I could’ve stopped it but I didn’t because I wanted to see a fight. Well, I saw one and it didn’t make me feel good.

Second Dip

2005-08-09T19:12:00.000-07:00

The sound of the surf crashing on the beach woke me up late Friday morning. I was vaguely aware of it earlier in the morning but the pounding became heavier as time wore on. I was lazily dreaming, somewhat half asleep on the couch from eight in the morning, when the sounds of footsteps and doors opening and closing, lifted me from my deep sleep. I heard Auntie T giving some sort of instruction to Bea, Glenn yelling at Kristina to hurry up, a car starting and Glenn’s truck varooming, and off they all left for work except Keali`i and Bea. Meanwhile I went back to sleep with the soft sound of the surf crashing on the beach rhythmically lullaby-ing me back into the realms of the unconscious. Strangely, the sound of the surf remained in my consciousness even though I was sleeping, albeit lightly. The roll and crash of the wave as it dumped all its energy onto the beach produced a loud boom, followed by a sizzling sound from the backwash as the water recedes back into the ocean. That loud boom!…is what woke my up at around ten in the morning. It was still relatively early, considering I didn’t really hit the sack until three in morning. I got up from the couch and walked outside to the lanai, in the backyard, to check out the surf. The tide is up, with the water reaching up nearly ten yards away from Auntie T’s backyard, and consistent sets coming in every ten to fifteen minutes from a southwesterly direction. I sat there on the grass in the backyard for about thirty to forty five minutes just gauging the waves for consistency and swell direction in order to plot my next move, which would be to figure out the best places where the waves would have the best shape and size.

I didn’t bring my boards with me because surfing didn’t even enter into my mind when I planned this trip. I only wanted to come over and spend a few days in Hawai`i to cure my homesickness. If a swell came up then that would be a bonus. I went to the tool shed where Glenn keeps his quiver and picked out an old 6’ 3” Willis Brothers thruster. This thing is about fifteen years old. It had thick rails, nearly three quarter inch, nineteen inch wide at the midsection, and a pin tail. I had ridden this thing before on a summer swell at Barber’s Point, nearly ten years ago. I like this board for its stability and speed. It goes down the line so fast that you literally have to hold on to the rails on big waves because a slight bump can throw you off the board.

I went upstairs and knocked on Bea’s bedroom.

“Hey girl, you up?” I yelled from outside, in the hallway. I was guessing she works late otherwise she would’ve been up by now. No answer so I knocked again.

“Hey girl, wake up, surf’s up!”

She opens the door, walks past by me without a pause and goes directly to the bathroom, wiping her eyes and scratching her hair. She slams the door without saying anything. After a few moments of silence I heard the toilet flush, then her hocking and spitting, and then the shower turning on and running. She’s getting ready. Bea is not a real talkative girl. I ask her for a favor and she just does it without saying anything. This is the way she is and I’ve gotten used to her seeming indifference or lack of emotion. I knew that she’s always been this way and everyone, her family, friends and neighbors are used to it by now. The stranger might feel alarmed or confused by her detachment but she means nothing by it. I went downstairs and realized that I also didn’t bring a pair or surfing trunk for this trip. All I have are a bunch of shorts for casual wear, the kind you put on for walking around and sometimes, even going to work, which is not all that unusual in the islands. I figured why not, I’ll wear these shorts, it’s just the same. It may look ridiculous but I’ve worn strange clothing before while surfing. At one time I went surfing with a pair of Levi’s jeans on, in a spur of the moment. I was in Pokai Bay with my girlfriend when suddenly the surf went up from three feet late in the morning to six feet by lunchtime. I was in my working clothes but I figure I couldn’t wait, I just had to get in the water, so I borrowed my friend’s board, took off my shirt, shoes and socks, and spent the next four hours catching waves at Rest Camp. When I got back to the beach my girlfriend was gone. She was absolutely furious the next day and it took three weeks before she finally forgave me.

Bea finished her shower and put on some fresh clothes. Bea is still relatively young at nineteen, a teenager, and although she is pretty – soft red cheeks, toned and tanned body, big innocent looking brown eyes, brown hair from sunny skies, and sexy Jennifer Garner like red lips – her eating habits have made her a little chunkier over that last couple of years. She is not fat but her hips are starting to bulge out, which is not a good sign for a young woman. She’s got all kinds of guys falling for her but she is not the flirty type. She’s quite the opposite, almost aloof, to the point that she intimidates some of the guys that are crazy about her.

She picks up her car keys and asks me where I’d like to go.

“Let’s go Yokes”, I said.

“Kay den”, she replied. That must be her favorite thing in the world to say, which is the shortened island version for “Okay then, let’s go” or “Okay then, whatever”. I loaded the thruster in the truck bed while she started the engine. I got on the passenger’s side, Bea started backing out and all of the sudden Keali`i comes bursting out of the front door with his boogie board and yelling for us to stop.

“Eh, wait for me…wait for me” the little bugger says.

“Hop in the back!” Bea yells at him. So finally we are out of there and heading west towards Keawa`ula Bay, otherwise known as Yokohama Bay, or simply Yokes for short. Half a mile from the house we pass by Makaha Beach, famous for big waves in the winter and gentle surf in the summer. The place was packed with surfers of every age and level of ability, from beginners who don’t know what they’re doing to the heavy locals who sit way out in the line up, women of all ages, boogie boarders and the local boys who think they’re hot shredders, showing off their moves to the visiting Haole chicks from the mainland. We slowed down enough just to watch the circus and moved on. Keali`i was yelling at somebody, one of his friends, who tried to climb aboard the truck bed.

“Get off or I’ll pound you!” Bea yelled at the little punk. The kid let go, laughing and yelling some obscenity at Bea and me.

“Forget him, he’s just a little punk” I said to Bea. “Who was that?” I asked.

“Harold, Jimmy’s cousin”

“Who’s Jimmy?”

“Da orange truck guy. He lives next door from Jonathan and Lilia and dem”

“Was he at the party last night?”

“Jimmy was”

I was so fucked last night that I could hardly remember who was at the party, except for the two girls from the Big Island, Mahea and Pua. I wanted to know more about them so I tried to make small talk with Bea to see what I can probe.

“You know Mahea and Pua?” I asked.

“From da Big Island” she said stoically.

“I know that! What else? How long have they been staying with Jonathan and Lilia?”

“Two weeks”

“And? Have you talk to them? Do you know anything else other than that?”

“No. Why don’t you talk to dem?”

“I did. Last night, but I was so out of it and I don’t remember what happened.”

“You like dem, huh?”

“They’re pretty”

“Wheech one you tink is da prettiest?”

“Both of them”

“My friend Ursula likes you” she said, out of nowhere.

“Who’s Ursula?” I asked curiously.

“She lives on Water Street. Da kine Hapa-Haole. Blond hair.”

“What, just because she’s blond doesn’t mean I’ll like her. What does she look like?”

“Pretty. Her fadduh Filipino, her muddah Haole. She get one nice skin, real smooth, ya?” she said, getting real animated now with her description, trying to pique my interest.

“Why haven’t you introduced me to her?” I asked, anxious to know more. I can’t remember a hapa chick that she’s introduced me to lately. I imagine that this chick must be a knock out. I’ve seen some real fine looking half Filipino-half Haole chicks, and these types are usually highly coveted because many of them turn out really good looking. I was thinking I’d be lucky if I have a chance.

“I did, long time ago. She was only fourteen den” my lovely cousin Bea replied. Now her demeanor had changed. She had a mischievous smile on her face and took a somewhat impish delight in knowing that I was squirming in my seat, eager to know who this Ursula is. Fourteen? You’ve got to be kidding me. Lots of fourteen year olds have crushes on older boys, it happens all the time, but it never last longer than the time it takes for the new kid in town to show up. I’m sure she’s forgotten about me by now.

“Yeah? What is she doing now?” I asked casually, as if not all that interested.

“Waitress at Dukes”

“In Waikiki?”

“Yup” Bea said, keeping that mischievous smile on her face, knowing that I am actually more interested than I’m showing. I didn’t say anything for a few moments. I wanted to change the subject, to forget about Ursula. I was quite embarrassed but I didn’t want Bea to know that so I kept pretending that I had only minimal interests. Bea knew better however.

“Ranches” I said as we passed by the surf spot across Makua Ranches. No one was out in the line up because it was all soupy slop. The southwest swell is just not the right angle for the reef structure at Ranches. Bea wasn’t interested in surf talk. She was more interested in coaxing me to go after Ursula.

“I work same shift with her tomorrow” she said coyly.

“You’re a waitress there too?”

“Yup”

Her one-word answers were her way of egging me on and to keep me in suspense. She didn’t say anymore than yes, no or anything more than she needed to.

Farrington Highway curves around on the edge of the Wai`anae Ridge for two miles, a scenic drive on a coastal that ends at the entrance to the Ka`ena Point Tracking Station, a satellite ground station operated by the US Air Force. The road up the hill from there is for “Authorized Personnel Only” while a small paved road to Ka`ena Point runs along the beach on Keawa`ula Bay. This road is bumpy and has many dips. In front of the first dip is surf spot that pitches way up and is a very fast wave. It’s way too fast to be ride-able on a surfboard. It breaks in the summer on a south swell and in the winter on a northwest swell and is normally ridden on a boogie board only. This spot is called First Dip.

A hundred yards down this small road is a third dip. In front of this dip is a fast hollow tube that breaks on a strong northwesterly swell only, starting at six feet, and anything below that is nothing but junk. It is one of the most fickle yet one of the most satisfying waves to ride if you can master it. The wave breaks ten yards away from the sharp corral shelf that can cut you like a razor in a hundred ways. If you make a mistake in your take off, it’s over. You will end up with severe cuts and bruise and you will probably need hospitalization at the very least, or die at worst. Only expert surfers need apply here. This is a famous wave, known worldwide by professionals, and is called Third Dip by the locals.

Fifty yards ahead of the first dip on the road is a second dip which also has a famous break, known as (alas!) Second Dip. Like First Dip it breaks in the summer on a good southwesterly swell, starting and four feet. The difference is that while First Dip is quick and fast and breaks only five yards away from the beach Second Dip breaks further outside on a sharp and wide reef. This makes the waves break out like a point break and gives a long hollow tube. The tube however, is not as fast as Third Dip and there’s no sharp corral in front to make it frightening. On this nice summer swell at the end of July only Second Dip was breaking consistently. It wasn’t big enough to be scary but not too small to be overcrowded. Thus, while all the hotshots are out in Ala Moana Bowls for this summer’s fest hardly anyone was here at Second Dip, only a few locals and some Townies.

As soon as we got there I wasted no time. I grab the 6’ 3” Willis from the truck bed and immediately ran to the beach. Then I stopped ten feet away from the water, eager to go in but cautious at the same time. I haven’t gone surfing in almost a year so I don’t want to make a mistake right off the bat. I took my shirt off and put on my leash. This board is so old that the wax has mildew on it. I started rubbing sand on the board to get the goop out of it. The whole time I was gauging the ebb and flow of the sets, trying to get the timing right. The waves were coming in consistently every fifteen minutes so once the last wave of the set subsided I started paddling to the line up. There were about ten people there. Most of them I recognized so I gave a quick nod. They nodded back likewise. The gesture means it’s cool, no problem here. Just DON’T DROP IN ON ANYBODY! Five minutes later a set comes. Everyone starts paddling like crazy, trying to position themselves properly. When the first wave comes a Townie looking kid paddles into it and takes the right, slashing and burning his way to the beach. Not bad. Second wave comes, and a guy I know as Alika hops on it on his longboard almost effortlessly, in a single motion, slides down the face of the wave and does a fantastic bottom turn which created such speed up on the wave as he nose rides his way down the line. The third wave, the wave of the set, was taken by a couple of heavy locals, one I recognize as Perry and the other is Dennis. Perry goes right carves a powerful slash, spraying water in a fan-like effect. Dennis goes left and as he takes his drop he holds onto the rails and stays on the ledge which enabled him to catch a deep tube, and he stayed covered like that for what seemed like an eternity, emerging out of it about twenty five yards away, slashing and burning. The talent level in this place is unbelievable. Sometimes I don’t even catch a wave, I just watch and marvel at the way these guys maneuver, how they make it all look so easy. On that first set I didn’t catch a wave. I just watched and tried learn, trying to remember how to surf this place. It wasn’t until the third set, about forty-five minutes later that I finally caught a wave. I nice six foot wave in the middle of the set. I made sure that I had the wave and when I started paddling for it the guys stayed out of my way. The take off was probably the most difficult part because you’re going so fast but once I felt the speed of the board I got up and took off vertically right down the face of the wave, sliding at what seemed like 100 miles per hour, with by left knee bent (I’m goofy foot) and my front right foot trying to maintain control, crouching low on my board with my arms lifted up to my hips, positioned like a fighter, as if ready to tackle the wave. My speed helped me maintain my balance and once I felt confident that I was going to make this wave I relaxed and let my trailing left foot steer the board to carve out a nice bottom turn, gaining a lot of speed in the process and climbing my way back to the wall of the wave, a nice soft green wall, speeding my way down the line, feeling like I was floating in the air at high speed. Right behind me I heard the waves crashing and it seemed to be chasing me, until it finally caught up, but it rolled above and broke a foot in front of me such that I was covered with by a massive green tube of wall, with water shading me and all I could see ahead was a round hole with the bright sunlight like the end of the tunnel. The ride lasted no more than ten seconds but it felt like an eternity. That was the only wave I caught all day.

West Side Story

2005-08-08T13:04:00.000-07:00

Right next door to Makaha Surfside is Wai`anae High School (WHS), reputed to be the toughest, meanest and most brutally local school in the whole state of Hawai`i. Being an earnest honor student has never been popular in the islands and nerdy guys who study a lot tend to get beat up by tough local kids who resent those trying to emulate the virtues of Haoledom. This is especially true in WHS where ninety five percent of the students are non-Haole. All my cousins graduated from WHS and they carry that distinction like a badge of honor; if you can survive there, the rest of life is a cake. Everyday at Wai`anae High presents a new kind of challenge for the students either trying to avoid getting into a fight, trying to stay away from the bad crowd, or simply trying to stay alive for four years and graduate.

A few years ago in the distant past, while I was in between jobs, I signed up with the state Department of Education (DOE) as a substitute teacher. My intention was to fill up some free time while I worked on a personal project in order to break up the monotony and to maintain my sanity. I didn’t really want to take every assignment that was given to me, and in the end I only took seven out of fifty. One of the assignments I took was a substitute job at Wai`anae High School. It was a Wednesday assignment for a Mr. Sayvitz. No reason is given why he was away and it didn’t really matter anyway because they never tell you why teacher is absent. All they care about is that you either take it or you don’t and they don’t really care if you don’t take it either because there are hundreds of substitutes, most of whom are unqualified because they don’t have college degrees, but the state DOE gives priority to those with the highest formal education. I drove to the WHS campus and got there early, at 7:30 AM. I reported to the administration building and told the secretary that I am a substitute for Mr. Sayvitz’s class. She went to the mailbox labeled Sayvitz, pulled out a key and a manila envelope, handed it to me, marked something on a ledger and wrote my name on it.

“You’re in Room 121” the secretary said and handed me the key.

“Thanks” I said.

“Good luck” she replied while making an entry into the ledger, not even looking at me. I had no idea what she meant by wishing me luck. Perhaps because I’m a substitute and a relative novice? Perhaps because ultimately all substitutes are clueless and defenseless that the best thing for them to do is nothing other than to make sure that they make it through the rest of the day alive? I was so naïve at that time, like many substitutes, that I thought I was actually going to do some teaching. I was very wrong.

I entered Room 121 at 7:45 AM. It smelled of decayed pulp mixed with the thick salty air. The windows were open with the view of the deep blue Pacific Ocean The room was organized and decorated in a way that indicated to me that Mr. Sayvitz is a history teacher. There was book shelf filled with volumes of the National Geographic magazine, another filled with history books, a huge map of the world dominated a quarter of a wall and a bulletin board filled with articles of Wai`anae and awards won by students in WHS. That was surprising to me because I didn’t think academic achievement was part of their Mission Statement. The teacher’s desk was in the corner of the room facing the chairs where students sit, on the opposite side of the front entrance of the room. There was also a desk in the back, bare and empty, symmetrically opposite from the teacher’s desk. I went over to the teacher’s desk and sat on the cushy chair. I opened the manila envelope that the secretary gave me. It was Mr. Sayvitz’s daily class schedule, with short hand written instructions inserted for each class.

8:10-8:25 – Homeroom class; take roll, class roster in ledger on the desk

8:30-9:20 – Hawaiian History; sophomores. Students read Lili`okalani biography during class time

9:30-10:20 – US History; juniors. Students read chapter on civil war.

10:20-10:40 – Recess

10:40-11:30 – Drivers Education; sophomores. Students read DMV manual.

11:30-1:00 – Lunch

1:00-1:50 – Math I, remedial class. Students work on independent exercises from workbook.

2:00-2:50 – Math II, remedial class upper level. More tedious exercises from workbook.

I didn’t really know what to expect but it seemed to me, based on the short instructions given, that I was expected to do nothing, just sit there and let the kids read and do “tedious exercises” from some workbook, as Sayvitz stated in one of his instructions. I was sort of upset that these people didn’t trust me with their students. I was looking forward to giving some sort of meaningful lecture, quiz the kids a little bit, have a give or take with them and engage in a little debate. Probe these kids’ minds and let’s see how much spine they got; that’s what I wanted to do. Unfortunately they didn’t expect me to do that. Well, I thought, I’ll show them. I’ll ignore their instructions and talk about Lili`okalani and her house arrest, the annexation, and what it means to modern Hawai`i. How about that!

The bell rings at 8:10 AM. Doors, front and back, are wide open. I see students passing by the classroom. No one enters. I see many more kids walk by and staring at me but that’s all they do. I thought, okay, those students are in a different Homeroom class. Where are my students? It’s 8:15, still no one. I pace side to side in front of the room, waiting for my students, annoyed that they should ignore me, those little bastards! I look at the clock again, 8:19, no one, just kids passing by my room and staring at me. All of a sudden I hear a student, a girl, screaming and yelling some obscenity at someone, a guy probably. Boom! Thud! Thwaaaack! That was the next thing I heard, followed by a kid stumbling into the classroom, falling down face forward, smack!!! …and laughing hysterically on the floor. He was a skinny kid, one those part Hawaiian, part something else, a real mouthy bastard, looking at me and saying

“You da subs tee toot?”

“Are you in this Homeroom classes?” I demanded angrily. The kid noticed my annoyance and immediately stood up and started strutting towards me. He had a demeanor of a punk who is daring me to punish him, knowing full well that the best I could do is send him to the principal’s office. He struts with his chest up, acting as if he owned the place. He doesn’t even look at me, he just casually struts up to the first chair in the middle row and sits down slowly, slumping with his legs straight out and his left arm resting on the chairs back, eyeballing me every now and then. A real fuckin’ rebel.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Lokahi”

“Like the lokahi tree?”

The kid looks at me like I was some stupid Haole. I wanted to ring his neck in but I resisted. A girl, local, part Hawaiian-part something else, came in, looked around, and when she noticed that I was staring at this Lokahi kid contemptuously she immediately became apologetic.

“So sorry, eh, mister but my boyfriend told me class was canceled” she said.

“Are you in this class?” I demanded.

“Yes”

“Where are the rest of the students?”

“Dey out in da parking lot, smoking and drinking”

“This early in the morning?” I said incredulously.

She didn’t respond, she just walked slowly to the front of the room and took a seat next to the Lokahi kid. I was exasperated. I figure if no one is going to show up I will mark each one of them absent in Mr. Sayvitz’s roster book. I felt ridiculous calling out the names of the students in the book, especially since many of them are hard to pronounce, names like Mahealualani, Kamakawiwoole, Kawihilanioumokeele, and many more native Hawaiian names like that. A few names were inserted with Haole names like David for Kawika in parentheses, James for Kimookelekaualiki and Rick for Kalani. Before I could even ask them their full names the bell rang and they were quickly out the door. I didn’t see a Lokahi in the roll call and I wasn’t about to guess what their names were so I just marked them all absent. To hell with them. This pattern went on for the rest of the day, either one or two kids showing up for class. The whole day was a waste of time for me and the students. During lunch I mentioned this to one of the substitutes, a Haole lady who drove in from Wahiawa. She just laughed and said she’s not surprised. The first time she subbed in Wai`anae no one showed up at all and the second time three locals showed up just to harass her because she was Haole. This was her fifth time subbing in Wai`anae and students are finally showing up although fifty percent are still cutting off.

I drove past WHS and thought to myself that I never really found out if its reputation is deserved or exaggerated. I never saw fights, I never saw Haole kids get beat up, and I never saw gangs roaming around and beating up other kids. I did see a lot of truancy, a lot of girls and guys ass-grabbing in the parking lot and smoking (cigarettes or dope, hard to tell) but I also noticed a lot of school pride. Football players were proudly walking around in their Jerseys and Letterman’s jackets and cheerleaders earnestly practicing their routine after school. As a matter of fact that’s all they seemed to have; school pride, school spirit, a good football team and the principal encouraging their excellence in sports. I was thinking about this while driving my cousin’s Toyota truck toward Wai`anae town, forgetting why I was going there in the first place until I approached Tamura’s supermarket, when I remembered that I was suppose to get some charcoal. Tamura’s is always busy because they have reasonable prices and they cater to the needs of the locals. Furthermore they provide jobs to the locals and are often sympathetic to them. It’s a family owned business with close ties to the community. The Tamura family is actively involve in local activities, either sponsoring the local community tennis team or donating their time and money to charity within Wai`anae. Most important of all, they live in Wai`anae, up in Wai`anae Valley Road, which indicates to the locals that they care deeply about the community and are putting their money into it, not out of it, unlike some business people who put up businesses in a poverty stricken neighborhoods but live in the comforts of downtown Honolulu. I went in Tamura’s and was pleased to see many familiar faces. Not only is it the supermarket of the West Side but also a place where you can always count on seeing the same people at the check out counter. I got my charcoal, bought a half-pound of Ahi sahimi that I intended to make Poki with, some sweet Maui onions, tomatoes and a case of Budweiser. I also got to see some people that I haven’t seen in six months or so, made casual small talk and invited them all to the barbecue.

The barbecue got well underway around 7:30 PM, with the grill hot and ready and Glenn’s marinated ribs, sausage and chickens bristling in the crackling fire of the barbecue pit Auntie Teresa came home at 7:00 PM while I was getting the charcoal for the barbecue. She helped me make Poki and also cooked some rice and made Poi. The kitchen table was filled with condiments and fruits as if she was preparing for a Luau. In fact, the dinner table almost always looks like this, especially in the summer time when many friends and distant relatives come to visit. Tonight however, it was just the family and some neighborhood people. There was Uncle Dave, a seventy year old Hawaiian who is semi-retired, hangs out on the beach most of the day, and plays the ukulele nightly whether there is a party or not. We always have him around nightly whether we have a party or not because he is fun to have around. Then there’s Kimo. He doesn’t work anymore because he broke his back working construction so he sits on the beach with Uncle Dave everyday, making Hawaiian handicrafts and selling them to tourists. His wife works and she’s always nagging him about this and that. They have a six-year-old daughter who hangs around the beach all day with him and Uncle Dave because there’s nothing else to do in the summer time. I was sitting by the fire while Glenn barbecued his stuff. Uncle Dave came over with his ukulele and Kimo joined us a few minutes later. We were nibbling on Tortilla chips with salsa and the Poki that Auntie T and I made, drinking beer around the barbecue in a hot Thursday evening with the breeze cooling us off as the Sun was setting down below the deep blue Pacific. A pile of succulent ribs and sausages, ready for grinds, are sitting in a large pan as Glenn turned over the others in the grill. Off to the side a rotisserie was turning the huli-huli chicken, dripping with kiawe sauce and looking delicious. The kids ate, Auntie T was calling over the neighbor Lilia and Jonathan Kanahele and there two twenty something nieces from the Big Island. We were having a feast and having a good time when more people showed up. All of a sudden there now fifteen people in the lanai and the backyard munching on barbecued ribs, chicken, nibbling on the Poki and the chips, eating macaroni salad with rice and sausage, drinking beer and listening to music from the Brothers Kazimero. It was still a relatively small and intimate group. I recognize almost all of them. The Kanahele’s nieces from the Big Island were a couple of gorgeous local beauties. One is Mahea, twenty-two, works as a receptionist at the Waikaloa Resort, and the other is Pua, twenty-one and a student at UH-Hilo. I asked her what she was studying and she said something like Sociology. She is planning to be a social worker, working with Native Hawaiians, when she graduates next year. I told her that that’s an honorable choice of profession. She said she wasn’t expecting to make a lot of money doing casework with Native Hawaiians but she felt it was her duty to do so. So I asked her how much Hawaiian blood she had in her. She smiled and replied that she was only one-eight Hawaiian but she felt deeply in touched with her Hawaiianess. I couldn’t blame her for feeling that way and I wished her luck in her endeavor.

By nine o’clock the party was beginning to get really interesting. Everyone was full although there were still plenty of food around and the fire in the grill was still crackling with Glenn attending to the last of the sausages and ribs. Everyone was drinking and singing Hawaiian songs with Uncle Dave playing the ukulele while Kimo rolled up a couple of joints. We were taking turns, almost all of us except the kids, inhaling the sweet and potent pakalolo. There were twelve of us talking and drinking beer, sitting in a circle around the fire, and puffing on a joint. It didn’t take me long to get high, maybe fifteen or twenty minutes. That’s when things kind of slowed down. The smell of the barbecue was even appetizing but I was too full to take another bite. It was suddenly getting a little chilly so I grabbed a Wai`anae High sweatshirt, one of Glenn’s. The sensitivity of my taste buds increased five-fold, or so it seemed, because I could taste the wheat barley in the beer and the sauce of the barbecue intensely while licking my lips and gurgling my mouth with beer to wash down all the tastes in my mouth. The smell of cannabis in the air was thick. I was feeling good, everyone was cool, the Big Island girls were even more beautiful than I first thought, and I felt bliss from within me. This is what life is all about, I thought to myself. I hardly remembered what happened the rest of the night, but it went on until three o’clock in the morning.

Makaha Surfside

2005-08-04T16:24:00.000-07:00

It’s Thursday evening, around 6:00 PM, I had just gotten off the flight from Frisco five or six hours ago, had lunch at Barbecue Kai with my cousin Bea, she drove me home, I dumped my bags in the living room, fell on the couch and had a long nap. I was barely awake when my cousin Glenn came home from work.

“Eh brah, get up awready. We goin barb ikyu” he said in pidgin with an island accent that I’ve always thought was cool.

“Waaaaaaht…..zzzzrrrr….zzzrrrr” I said, barely acknowledging him because I was still half sleep. I was dreaming, bopping up and down the ocean with my surfboard waiting for a nice set to roll in. All of a sudden some hot dog with an Afro, looking like Bu La`ia zooms past me, laughing and hollering something like “Da kine, Eh, cannot touch brah, mine…he he he…mine….cannot touch” and keeps hollering the same nonsense while sliding down a soft three feet wall of swell on his longboard, arms spread out, legs spread apart, showing off and shoving away anyone who tries to get on the wave. I tried paddling as hard as I could in order to try to catch up to him and get on the wave but no matter how hard I paddled I kept falling back, a set of swells passing me by which I couldn’t seem to catch up to, until I was out in the deep blue sea and the swell got bigger and bigger and I became smaller and smaller and there’s that Bu La`ia guy again, sliding down a humongous wave and laughing and yelling the same nonsense, “cannot touch…mine, brah, mine…cannot touch...ha ha ha…”

“Ha ha ha ha…Popolo eh, that guy?” I heard my twelve year old cousin Keali`i laughing when I finally snapped out of my nightmare. He was watching some surf video hosted by none other than that buck toothed comedian-surfer wannabe-Bu La`ia.

“Eh brah, wuz the beegist wave you catch?” Bu La`ia said, asking the famous surfer Dane Kealoha on the surf video.

“Oh, I dunno, must have been at Off the Wall, a nice six to eight foot day, the tubes were really hollow, and …”

“Eh, dat’s nahting brah, nahting…” Bu La`ia immediately interrupted, eager to tell a big lie. He continued by saying “I was on dis wave brah…twelve feet at Pipe line…I swear brah I no lie, I’m Hawaiian…beeg wave brah…I was behind da kine Derek Ho...me and heem brah, on da wave at Pipe line…I was in dis toob brah…beeg…”

“Ha ha ha…yeah man, okay” Dane said laughing.

“Eh brah I no lie, I’m Hawaiian…promise brah, promise” Bu La`ia said, pleading his lie.

“Turn dat shit off, das stupid!” Glenn shouted.

Keali`i ignored him, kept watching the video and laughing hysterically at Bu La`ia.

“Eh cuz, get up awready, we goin barb ikyu” Glenn said to me as we embraced, a brotherly greeting among island boys.

“Whaddaya got?” I asked.

“We get Pottagee saucesage, pork ribs, huli-huli chicken, burgers, eeveryting brah”

“You need help”

“Can light up the grill?” he asked.

“Hey, no problem”

I got up and went out back to the lanai to start firing up the grill.

“Hey, there’s no charcoal!” I yelled back to Glenn in the kitchen.

“You gotta go geet ‘em! We out awready! Can take my truck!” Glenn yelled back from the kitchen as he was tossing the keys to me through the window. So I went back inside to grab my wallet before I went out of the front door. I forgot to bring my own slippers (sleepah, as they say) so I just grabbed one at the front door that fit. Glenn’s truck is a 1996 Toyota King Cab 4x4 with the body lifted up six inches and fitted with monster tires, the typical Moke mobile. I had never driven his truck before so it felt kind of weird sitting high up there in the driver’s seat. My own 4x4 is dwarfed by comparison. I turn on the ignition and the engine went varrrooooms…boom, boom, boom…the sound of a well tended machine that’s been overworked for the owner’s own good. Shifting to reverse, I barely had to touch the stick to shift gears.

I backed out of the drive way, drove out of the loop in Moua Street and turned right onto Farrington Highway, heading towards Wai`anae. I am staying with my relatives, Glenn’s family, in Makaha. Makaha is known for its big waves in the winter and gentle south swells in the summer. Glenn’s mother is Auntie Teresa[1], my father’s first cousin. She is divorced with four kids, all still living in her house on the beach in Moua Street. Glenn is the oldest at twenty four, Bea, who picked me up at the airport, is second at nineteen, Kristina is third at sixteen, and Keali`i is the youngest at twelve. As I drove down Farrington Highway I pass by the high rise building where I used to live, half a mile away from Auntie Teresa’s house. I was living in a condominium at the Hawaiian Princess on Lahilahi Street five years ago when I used to work and live on this island, before I moving to the mainland for better pay and better future. There are hardly any opportunities now in my line of work on this island, which is unfortunate, because I still consider it to be the best place to live in this world. I love driving down this coast and watching the big waves in the winter wrap-around to this side of the island and unleash their energy onto the beaches at Makaha Point and Lahalahi Point. Across the beach from Lahilahi, at the intersection of Farrington and Makaha Valley Road, is an old abandoned building which used to be Cornet’s department store. The company went bankrupt in 1994 and the building has been boarded up and unoccupied since then. All you see now a day are a bunch of crystal meth addicts squatting outside begging for money, or stealing it, in order to buy some more ice to get high. There is a lot of drug dealing going on along this side of the island. You can see it around Cornet’s, especially at night, and along the back roads of Makaha, at the triangle on Jade Street, Hanalei and Lahaina. Past Makaha Valley Road on the makai side of Farrington is a beige-brown colored two story apartment complex called Makaha Surfside. Twelve years ago a triple murder took place inside one of the apartments, apparently a love triangle involving drugs and money laundering. A woman living with her boyfriend was found in the bathroom with a bullet in her head, between the eyes. Another man, not the boyfriend, was found in the bedroom, naked, with three bullets in the lower abdominal area. The man who shot them both was the boyfriend, a drug dealer who was laundering money through a contact in downtown Honolulu, apparently a lawyer with a colorful reputation and a distinction for defending well known criminals in the island. He defended a member of Hui `O Hee Nalu, also know as the Black Shorts or simply Da Hui, who was accused of shooting a tourist point blank in the head and dumping and burning his body out on the cane fields in Wahiawa. The boyfriend and the lawyer met at Makaha Shores, introduced by the apartment manager, through their common interest of free-basing. The lawyer seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time at Makaha Shores because he liked smoking crystal meth, which he bought from the boyfriend, and because he was taking the cash from the boyfriend and distributing it through semi legitimate businesses which he had some interests. The man found in the bedroom with three bullets in the lower abdominal area is the lawyer. The boyfriend was found in the living room couch with a gun in his mouth and his brains splattered on the wall behind him.

[1] The names of the people mentioned here have been altered.

Nani `O Wai`anae

2005-08-03T17:11:00.000-07:00

As the plane started its descent I could see the channel between O`ahu and Moloka`i, perhaps one of the roughest channels in the islands with its strong current and sloshing waters. Paddling across that channel is a challenge not taken lightly by every local waterman in Hawai`i. If you’ve done it you are a true waterman and have earned the respects of the local. That thought was on my mind as the plane made its approach to the island of O`ahu, heading towards the west side. It has always been a goal of mine to paddleboard from Molokai to O`ahu. I have yet to accomplish that goal and time is running out because I am not getting any younger.

We were at roughly ten thousand feet up in the air as the plane descended down from the windward side of the island, passing over Kane`ohe Bay and the Ko`olau mountains. We passed through patches of clouds as the plane kept descending down to a lower elevation. The ridge off the Ko`olau, watered by the Mauka showers every morning, is a smooth and velvety green with white clouds kissing its summit. Off to the side, on the east side of the ridge (The Windward Side), you can see the suburban sprawl of Kailua and Kane`ohe, where most middle class Haoles (Caucasians) live. Haoles make up twenty one percent of O`ahu’s population but the largest ethnic group in the island are the Japanese at approximately thirty percent followed by the mixed blood Hawaiians, having Native Hawaiian extract plus some other which may include some Chinese, some Filipino, some Portuguese, some Japanese (though many won’t admit it), some Haole other than Portuguese (Pottagee), some Popolo (Black), or a combination of all of these races. Those who are purely one hundred percent Hawaiian make up only eight percent of the population and their numbers are dwindling. In fact, their numbers have been dwindling down to its present miniscule level ever since the Haole settlements back in the 1800s and compounded by the influx of the field workers from Japan, China, Korea, Puerto Rico, and The Philippines. Some may call this a systematic genocide of the indigenous people, the Native Hawaiians, and lots of books have been written about this subject by people who may not even have a drop of Hawaiian blood in them. Some of these Hawaiian activists will proudly claim to be part Hawaiian but if you probe deep into their family tree you may find that only 1/32 part of their ancestry is of Hawaiian descent. These days being Hawaiian is no longer a racial identity but more or less a political statement. Haole bashing is popular these days, especially in Hawai`i where they are outnumbered. Many Haoles in Hawai`i are forcibly made to feel guilty of the shameful past of their ancestors; the diseases they brought to the islands, the Annexation, the house arrest of Queen Lili`okalani, the exploitation of the Hawaiian culture, and on and on and on. Overall however, every race in Hawai`i gets theirs one way or the other, even the Hawaiians. This is what makes Hawai`i such a pleasant place to live. Forget about the perfect weather, beautiful beaches and the lovely scenery. All these things can get old real fast. Its Hawai`i’s mixed culture of Polynesians, Asians and Haoles, able to live with their differences and their past, able to make fun of one another without taking it too seriously (except maybe the Filipinos), and being able to share the cultures of others without attempting to dominate each other, these are the traits one needs in a populace if they are going live in harmony with one another, and for the most part that’s what you will normally observe in Hawai`i.

The plane flies over the Ko`olau and descends even further down on the other side of the mountain where the traffic on H1 freeway and Likelike highway are now visible from above. Off to the east side I can see the Diamond Head crater dominating the landscape near downtown Honolulu, making the concrete jungle of Waikiki to look like miniature buildings. The plane passes above the airport and Pearl Harbor, continues cruising in the westerly direction until it reaches Barbers Point and then turns around towards the ocean to make a complete U-turn until the plane is pointed directly to the runway of the Honolulu International Airport. The planes descent continues, staying over inland and underneath the shape of residential houses and cars are clearer. We slope down even closer to the suburban sprawl of Ewa Beach and the mouth of Pearl Harbor where from two hundred yards away a submarine is sailing back to its homeport. Finally, past Pearl Harbor, past Hickam AFB, we touch the runway of Honolulu International Airport. Mahalo nui loa (Thanks very much).

Again, thank god for first class. We get on board quickly and get off board in a jiffy since we’re usually the first in line. I got off the plane and was immediately greeted by the tropical humidity followed by the cool winds from the Ko`olau’s splashing all over me. I felt as if I had just come home from a very long trip. I got on the wiki-wiki bus (quick bus) to baggage claim and took out my cell phone to call my cousin Beatrice[1]. I knew that she would be waiting by the baggage claim.

“Eh, what’s goin on cuz?” I said as soon as she picked up the phone.

“Where you at?” she responded.

“I’m on the wikiwiki. Should be there in about five minutes”

“Kay den”

“Eh, what’s the matter with you. You don’t sound thrilled to see me”

“I haven’t seen you”

“You will”

“Kay den”

“Bye” I said and closed my cell phone. I only brought one piece of luggage with me other than my laptop so there was not much to claim but it took thirty minutes for my baggage to finally appear in the carousel. I arrived at the baggage claim area with my cousin Bea waiting for me. Contrary to her tone on the phone she was glad to see me and gave me such a huge hug that I nearly suffocated. Bea’s is a little on the overweight side although she does have some attractive features, like her face, but it’s been awhile since she weighed less than me. She is six years younger than me but we’ve gotten closer as we got older and most of the time she introduces me to some of her pretty, petite friends, which is what I like about her the most.

“Hey, great to see. It’s been awhile, what, six or seven months?” I said.

“Last December, during Christmas” she said.

“That’s right. So, what’s new?”

“Got a new truck”

“Yeah? What kind?”

“Ram 1500”

“That’s some truck. Four-wheeler?”

“Yup”

“I drive a Dodge Dakota 4x4”

“I got a V6 engine”

“So does mine”

“You go four-wheelin?”

“Not as much as I’d like too. The tracks are far away from where I live”

“I’m going tomorrow. You like come?”

“Nah. If I’m not in the driver’s seat it’s no fun”

“I’ll let you try”

“Right. When was the last time you let anyone drive your truck?”

“Nevah let nobody drive my truck”

“You see. Hey, there’s my bag” I said as I spotted by black sport bag filled with shorts, shirts and slippers, nothing else. I hauled it off the carousel and headed to the parking structure where Bea’s truck as parked.

“No worries cuz, I got the parking fee”

“Kay den”

We drove out of the airport and onto the H1 freeway, heading for Wai`anae. The traffic in O`ahu is not as dangerous as it is the Bay Area, mainly because the speed limit is only fifty five miles per hour. The island is too small to have too many long stretches of open road such that there’s really no need to go faster than say, sixty five miles per hour. I’ve seen people go seventy five of course, but it’s not as common as the Bay Area where people routinely go way past the speed limit, which is seventy miles an hour. As a result, it is much easier to slide into the freeway traffic in O`ahu. You don’t have to fear for your life every time you enter the freeway from the entrance runway since there’s usually nobody daring you from the side as they’re going one hundred miles per hour like they do in the Bay Area. We pass Hickam AFB to the side and as the freeway curves right up north we pass by Pearl Harbor and Aloha Stadium. The freeway curves west again past Ai`ea, Pearl City, Waipahu and Ewa where the traffic gets a little thinner and curves south some more until we finally reach Makakilo. The road turns west and the freeway merges with the two lane Farrington Highway towards the Wai`anae coast, passing by Electric Beach which the locals call Tracks, and after five miles a stop light in Nanakuli Road marks the beginning of the region that is feared by everyone outside its borders, the West Side. Nanakuli is the first town of the Wai`anae coast. It has the unfortunate distinction of being home to many racketeers, drug dealers and crystal methamphetamine labs. It looks depressing just driving through it. Farrington highway is right on the coast, only a few yards away from the ocean and not much real estate in between the beach and the water so naturally most of the houses are built on the mauka (mountain) side of the high way, as opposed to the makai (ocean) side. There are houses on the makai side however but those pieces of property are high coveted. Therefore, those houses on the makai side are usually nice houses owned by people in power or people of influence, like rich businessmen and politicians. Henry Peters, a well known former trustee of the Bishop Estate, owns a house on the makai side in Maili. So does the famous actor Richard Chamberlain (Shogun, Thorn Birds, etc). There are others who I’m sure for one reason or another own a house on the beach side but would like to keep it confidential. The houses on the mauka side however, looks dilapidated, neglected, unattractive, desolate, deprived and destitute. These are houses normally owned by Native Hawaiians and other minorities in the lower rung of the socio-economic ladder, like the Samoans, the Tongans, the Laotians and the like. The scene of dilapidated houses on the mauka side continues throughout the coast, from Nanakuli to Makua, broken up only by the retail strip malls at the coasts’ center of commerce in Wai`anae. The unfamiliar visitor, depressed at the sight of poverty of these houses on the mauka side will usually focus their sight on the makai side where the view is friendlier to the sore eye. The next residential township on the coast is Maili which is marked by a huge boulder that protrudes outwards and makes a curvature on the highway. Next to Maili is the Lualualie Homestead, a Native Hawaiian settlement and finally the town of Wai`anae.

At the edge of the town is the Wai`anae Mall which is really not a mall in the modern sense but an open air retail mall without the fashionable department store that serves at its anchor. What they have instead are Longs’ Drugs, Home Depot, a couple of Chinese Restaurants, BKs Surfshop, and other little retail stores like that. There are no Tommy Hilfigers and Ralph Laurens here, only Blockbuster Video and a branch of the American Savings Bank. As we drove in to Wai`anae traffic it was around 1:00 PM Hawaiian Standard Time. I was getting hungry and so I suggested to Bea that we go get something to eat. Food is one of Bea’s favorite topics and she knew exactly the place to go for some good grinds. At Pokai Bay Road we stopped at Barbecue Kai for some plate lunch of Teri beef, macaroni salad, rice and some Passion fruit drink.

[1] Not her real name

The Flight to Honolulu International

2005-08-02T16:02:00.000-07:00

On board United Airlines Flight 59 – Thursday morning 8:45 AM, settled on a window seat, drinking my coffee and reading the San Francisco Chronicle - The Chron. I try to fly first class whenever possible, or affordable, on a flight that is more than four hours long. This is because I’ve had my share of agony in coach or economy class in overseas flights. The seats are wide, there’s plenty of leg room, there’s complementary champagne, the food is better, and the service is terrific. If only there was no one else sitting next to me the flight would’ve been perfect. This is never the case, of course. There is always someone next to you. I don’t mind it really but in first class it’s always some big talker too eager to talk about his wealth, accomplishments, experiences, mistresses, wives, daughters, sons, grandsons, granddaughters, great granddaughters, nephews at Harvard, a brother who makes a killing as a bond trader at Shearson-Lehman, his latest sex-capades…alright, enough already, leave me alone and let me enjoy my first class experience!

The Chron is a left leaning regional newspaper covering the greater Bay Area. Its focus is mainly of events taking place in the San Francisco proper and parts of the Peninsula, ending in Palo Alto, although I don’t know why they stop there. Perhaps because the great minds in the The Chron’s editorial board think nothing interesting ever happens south of Palo Alto. Granted, the greater Silicon Valley starts and ends in Palo Alto, the rest is just real estate, manufacturing, middle managers, and consumers. Venture capital in the universe is highly concentrated within the boundaries of Page Mill Road and Sand Hill Road, the borders of Stanford University. Like other centers of the universe, good ideas originate there and are funded within its borders. Once funding is secured properties, products and employees are outsourced south of Palo Alto and beyond, even as far away as India. Thus, with its privilege and high brow standing in the world, there’s a tendency for the citizens of the Peoples Republic of Palo Alto to thumb their noses at the rest of the universe. In their arrogant minds Palo Alto is the center of the universe. The Chron’s editorial board knows and understands this, not even disputing this, and in a sense is awed by this so they cover events, politics, culture and sports that take place in Palo Alto. It is not a coincidence that many members of The Chron’s editorial board are also graduates of Stanford. This partly explains its liberal persuasion, in addition to the Bay Area having a high concentration of socio-liberal-communist residents, and the fact that the mainstream media is usually left leaning. Although Stanford is home to the Hoover Institution, a conservative think tank, the undergraduate program and its deans have cultivated an atmosphere and student body that is conducive to an education that is politically correct, culturally diverse, globally aware and environmentally sensitive. The students are taught to hate Bush! Maybe not, but during the thanksgiving holiday weekend when many students return home from school for a brief break many parents wonder who the kid sitting in the table next to them is. “Honey, did you do something to your hair, you look different?” one of them might ask, unable to put a finger on the changes precisely because it’s not physical but rather a mental and intellectual transformation, the kind that usually happens in the process of indoctrination. Because many of the kids who attend Stanford are bright and earnest go-getters they eventually end up in positions of influence, like the editorial board of The Chron. This is the main reason why I skip the front pages of this paper and head straight to The Sporting Green, its sports section, the toy department.

The toy department has its share of socio-liberal-communist indoctrinated columnists as well but at least their political opinion is subjugated by the demands of their job, which is to cover sports and have an opinion about sports in general in the Bay Area. First and foremost of interest to me is the progress of the Oakland Athletics. The Chron has a team of able beat writers who cover the A’s intimately and accurately. I don’t always agree with some of the columnists’ opinions and many of the beat writers’ summaries I find lacking because they tend to focus mainly on individual players and their stats and less on the strategy and structure of the game. I understand that they have deadlines and they’re too close to the moment to offer a little more perspective so it’s the method itself of covering the team that’s the problem and not on the beat writers themselves. Like any profession that has matured to the point of boredom, there’s a template for the task of covering a team, and all those slots in the template have to be filled if you want to keep your job as a beat reporter. So when I start reading the sports page the first thing that appears in the article about Wednesday’s game is the hot streak that the A’s have been on, winning 18 of the last 13, 12 and 2 since the All Star break, and on and on about how hot they’ve been since May 29. All the slots in the template filled, the beat writer did his or her job by spewing out these statistics, who has hot during the game, the pitcher’s pitch count, this and that and no room for analysis. Not once have I read a column on why the A’s have won so many games in the last couple of months and if there is an article about it it’s usually attributed to better pitching, the injured players are now healthy and back on the roster, streak happens in baseball and they’re bound to cool off, the younger players are adjusting to major league pitching, the younger pitchers getting better control of their pitches, the usual stuff with no in-depth and well thought out analysis, just tidbits of a hell of a lot of good fortunes. The sports page is so thin and empty that it literally took me only five minutes to read the whole section, and I’m not a fast reader. Granted the Thursday edition usually has the least content but if the toy department is taken a little more seriously they could have doubled the quality, if not the quantity.

I slipped the paper in the seat pocket right in front of me, along with the flight magazine, emergency instruction, barf bag and headphones. It was still only 9:05 AM and the plane was stranded in the runway, waiting for the plane in front of us to take off. We were third in line so the airline pilot informed us that we “will be taking off shortly”, which probably means in another half hour or so. The person sitting next to me is an old lady, in her sixties, a wealthy widow, and a pleasant company. I was thankful it wasn’t some loud mouth big talker talking about his Learjet being in the shop and grumbling about having to fly commercial. She said she spends half the year in Hawai’i and half in the mainland, in Marin County.

“Larkspur?” I asked.

“Mill Valley” she answered.

“It must be nice living in Marin” I wondered.

“It has its good points. But I love Hawai’i”

I like the fact she pronounces it How-eye-ee, like the residents, not How-eye, like the tourists. This lady is no tourist. She understands Hawai’i, its good points and pitfalls, the ways of the locals and the beat of the islands. She’s been going back and forth for thirty years, including the first twenty with her husband. She showed me a picture with the view of downtown Honolulu from their home in Manoa Valley. I was jealous that they had such a marvelous place and I told her so. She could’ve sold the house for a huge profit, especially now a days when the prices are sky rocketing out of control but then she wouldn’t have a place to stay when she came back to her second home and besides, she said that the memories in that house is not worth the profit she would earn the sale, no matter how big. I was terribly impressed by such an attitude. The experience was what mattered to her, not the money.

“Where do you live?” she asked.

“Wai’anae” I said proudly.

“Oh” she said, sounding somewhat apprehensive. I just smiled, knowing that people who are familiar with the island of O’ahu have a low opinion of the West Side. Many locals are scared to even set foot in Wai’anae and there is no shortage of warnings for tourists to be extra careful if they want to go on that side of the island. “Don’t get out of your car, don’t stop for hitch hikers, don’t stare at the locals, make sure you bring a cell phone with you and if you run out of gas call 911!” a tourist guidebook warning might say. Of course, that’s exaggerated but it’s not far fetched. Some locals will always try to find an excuse to avoid going to Wai’anae. That doesn’t bother me actually because I know the people in Wai’anae are exceptionally good spirited and family oriented so if there’s trouble it’s usually handled within the family, no cops involved. Since I know many people in Wai’anae it’s very easy to find out who stole what from whom because I know which family to go to if there’s a problem. Outsiders don’t have this type of access and so that’s why they feel helpless because even the police can’t help them. It is an extremely local area, perhaps the most local of any neighborhood in O’ahu, and many of the locals look tough and menacing, which only adds to its mystique.

“So you’re local” she said, sounding somewhat impressed.

“Yes, but I live in Palo Alto now” I replied. “I come back twice a year” I added.

“That’s quite a change, from Wai’anae to Palo Alto”

“Yeah, I know. I kinda like the contrast”

We were having a pleasant and agreeable conversation that I lost track of time and didn’t even realize that we were forty thousand feet up in the air. The stewardess interrupted our conversation by handing out the menu and informing us today’s special. I didn’t care for it so I ordered the ham and cheese omelet but first I took in a glass on red, a 2002 Kendall-Jackson cabernet, which wasn’t bad. It certainly got my blood flowing. The breakfast started out with salad or soup before the main course. After the main course a bowl of fruit salad, peaches with cream, grapes, oranges and watermelon was served followed by more complementary champagne and/or red wine. At about 11:00 AM Pacific Standard Time I was slumped down in my cushy seat and slowly drifting into the unconscious. This is one of my favorite moments in life, when you feel so comfortable and relaxed but have enough presence of mind to experience or recognize the subtle process of drifting from conscious awareness to unconscious dreaminess. The thin boundary between the conscious and the unconscious is like an intermediate state, a feeling of vague awareness of the outside world while the world of darkness inside you begins to materialize in forms of dreams and sometimes nightmares, two worlds pulling you from once side to the other. That moment doesn’t last long however because once darkness gets a good grip of your imagination it sinks you into the world of darkness in a thought and holding you there for the duration of your rest, or until your brain has rested to the point of no activity other than to serve the basic needs of the body, such as taking in oxygen.

I could not remember my dream, which is probably a good thing because the memorable ones are usually horrible nightmares. Perhaps the drone of the jet engine, the subtle subsonic vibration, or some other constant motion within the cabin disturbed my cache memory, which is primarily short term, and whittled my dream out of cognition. I was in a state of comfortable subconscious for approximately two and a half hour because when I woke up it was nearly 1:30 PM in the afternoon. I looked next to me and the old lady seemed to be sound asleep also. I didn’t want to bother her so I didn’t get up to go to the bathroom even though there was enough leg room to squeeze out without bothering her because I didn’t really need to go that bad anyway. I just stayed in my seat with that lazy and tired feeling that you get when you’ve had a good nap. I felt energized afterwards. There was a movie on but I paid no attention to it. I didn’t even know what’s playing. Instead I took out my notebook and started scribbling a bunch of nonsense, most of which appears on this page in front of you. I felt the urge to have one more glass of cabernet but decided against it once I realized that we will be landing in an hour or so. At about 2:30 PM Pacific Standard the captain ordered the flight crew to prepare for landing.

Early Bird from Frisco International

2005-08-01T15:06:00.000-07:00

Late last week I boarded Flight 59 from Frisco International to Honolulu, Hawai’i. It’s my usual summer time trip to the islands to visit friends and relatives, a routine that I have followed since I moved back to mainland USA five years ago. Unfortunately, because of work, I was only able to visit for 3 days. My flight back to Frisco was on Sunday, in the morning! But I made the most of my trip.

The day started early for me, waking up at 5:00 AM to start my morning routine. I did not have time for breakfast because I wanted to be at the airport by 7:00 AM for a 9:00 AM flight, security these days being tight and the lines extra long, especially in Frisco. One other problem that I had was that it was difficult to convince any of my friends to get up this early to drive me to the airport, so I didn’t even try. I just called a cab, which cost me $45 for the trip. The cab driver picked me up in my apartment at around 6:15 AM, a convenient time because traffic is light at this hour and if anything happened – an accident, which delayed traffic – there would’ve been enough time to spare which would enable me to not miss my flight. The sun was already up by the time the cab driver picked me up and thankfully the traffic was as expected; no major event, no accidents, and the heavy flow going towards San Jose and the light flow to Frisco. I arrived at the airport in of plenty time, around 6:50 AM. I went to the check-in counter and got my seat assignment in a jiffy, only because I’m flying first class and there was virtually no one in the first class line.

So now it’s 7:15 in the morning, my flight is at 9:00 AM, boarding starts at 8:00 AM, or something ridiculous like that. But first I have to go through security. This I dreaded because they’ve tighten the security checks since the bombing in England. While I sympathize with those innocent people who died in the bombing I am a little bit disturbed at the arrogance of those English citizens who are ardently critical of the United States and its foreign policy, specifically of the Middle East. English people, generally, have this ingrained arrogance that is culturally embedded. They are a little too quick to remind Americans that we were, in fact, once subjected to the whims of the United Kingdom, as the first thirteen states were under colonial rule. Now days however, Britain is as insignificant as the some of the oldest European nations; Italy, Greece and France. They are old, tired and boring. They have no real power, not even political power, and their influence is only being felt by the lesser nations whom were also colonized by them. I visited some of these countries; Barbados, Rhodesia, Burma, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Singapore. Although all of them are independent and self-ruled, a nostalgic reminiscing continues to pervade in its culture. It’s ridiculous, really, to listen to people young and old trying to imitate the ways of the English and French. I’ve met several Asians in Asia and Africans in Africa during in my travels who thought that the English were a superior species, and that was reason enough for them to copy their accents, to follow their custom, and to adhere to the principles, no matter how ridiculous, of the British. At one point during one of these encounters I wanted to grab these people by the neck and squeeze the nonsense out of their head. It was no use however, because one hundred years of colonial rule can do irreversible damage to a society more than a drop of an atomic bomb could do physical damage to a region.

I stand in line at the airport waiting to go through the security checks and as usual, the line was three miles long; at least it seemed to be. People in front and behind me were grumbling and blaming President Bush. It is typical of Frisco residents, of course, to blame Bush for everything. Hey, it’s 90^oF outside! Fucking Bush, vetoing the Kyoto protocol. Global warming is Bush’s fault goddammit!

“This line is just to darn long!” I said to the old lady behind me.

“Yes, I know! Jeez Louise! When is it gonna stop. First the Patriotic Act, stripping us of our civil liberties. Now he is nominating a right-winger to the Supreme Court to overturn Roe vs. Wade! This guy is truly evil”, the old lady responded, with vigor, I might add.

I am not a fan of Bush. I didn’t vote for him. I despise the Patriotic Act and I cringe every time he kow-tows to the religious fundamentalist in order to maintain their support. These evangelicals are responsible for putting Bush in the White House and he knows it, so he does everything he can to appease these sonsabitches. Stem-cell research? Bush opposes it. Church-based philanthropy? He is all for it. But when it comes to foreign policy he doesn’t pussyfoot. Attack Iraq; get rid of that darn Hussein! Saddam is history and the world is better for it. Don’t fool around with China, North Korea, and Iran. That’s what he does best. He kicks the little asses of these little countries who need their asses kicked. The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom knows this. Tony Blair didn’t fool around with the Bush Administration. He knew that these Muslim fundamentalists are a nuisance and could do irreparable damage to Western society so he joined Bush – he, in fact urged, G Dubya - to go into Iraq and beat the shit out of Saddam. Mission accomplished! Now get out let these people rule for themselves. Of course, that’s easier said than done. But eventually, that’s what every American – in fact, every citizen of the planet Earth – would like to see. God knows when that will happen.

I went through the security check, took my shoes off, took my belt off, took off my shirt off because I had a necklace underneath that kept the metal detector beeping everything I crossed the gate, and almost had to take off my shorts because of the metal zipper and buttons. When I started to unzip and unbutton my shorts the Filipino lady doing the security check got real hysterical, started yelling in Tagalog, and ordered me to stop in her heavily accented English and to put my shirt back on. I was ready to bare my ass out of spite but the prudishness of the old lady prevented me from exposing my vital organs. The people behind me were practically rolling on the floor, laughing so hard that the routine of the security check became an absolute joke. I finally got through the security check but it took so long that by the time I got to the gate boarding was already in progress. Thank God for first class. Virtually no line! I got through boarding in a jiffy, found my seat on board, was greeted by a pretty Hawaiian stewardess who offered coffee, milk, tea or champagne. She didn’t offer herself, which I would’ve preferred. I settled for coffee instead.

NUT HOUSE

2005-07-26T13:26:00.000-07:00

Thursday night of last week I went to visit an old friend of mine from graduate school. He had not been feeling good lately. He works at Stanford (actually he works at SLAC, which is not quite the same) and is frustrated with his co-workers, especially his senior colleagues, whom he found to be arrogant and condescending. Furthermore he’s lonely because he doesn’t have a girlfriend and has not had one for a long, long time. That’s really what’s troubling him, which only magnifies the frustrations he is feeling at work. He doesn’t mind condescension and arrogance, it’s typical of the type of people he works with (part of the reason I got out of that field early), because it doesn’t diminish the contributions he has made to his research group, which just published a couple of papers in a prestigious journal, so he tells me. His confidence in his ability, professionally, wasn’t lacking. The problem was that he wasn’t getting laid and that’s compounded by his increasing irritation with some of his co-workers. I didn’t know what to tell him other than agree or sympathize with him. Yeah, those guys are jerks, don’t worry about that, let’s go have a beer or something; these varieties of reassurances was the best I could do. I didn’t know what else to say. I don’t own a black book filled with phone numbers of eligible bachelorettes. I don’t even have a girlfriend myself, and I told him so. That didn’t give him any comfort, however.

“What about Annie?” CJ asked.

“We’re just friends. We go out sometimes. There’s nothing between us” I replied, truthfully.

“What about Tiffany[1]?”

“Tiffany’s confused. All she wants to do is get married.”

“Don’t you want to get married?”

“Eventually. Not now, though.”

CJ was clearly depressed. He was sitting on the sofa of his apartment that looked like it had not been cleaned for weeks. There were dirty dishes all over the place, from the coffee table to the dining room, his desk, on the couch, on the nightstand, just about everywhere. There were dirty socks on the floor, dirty clothes in the kitchen sink, knick knacks and leftover food on top of the television, ants on the wall, books everywhere but the bookshelves. The place was a mess and so was he. When I arrived he was curled up on the couch with his pajamas on and watching some stupid TV show which he wasn’t even paying attention to. It was depressing just watching him, unclean, unshaven, and disorganized. After the usual greetings and small talk I felt depressed at the sight of him looking very pathetic so I dragged him out of the couch and shoved him into the shower.

“Shower, shave and get dressed. We’re going to the Nut House” I ordered. CJ had nothing better to do so he agreed. Besides, I was ready to whip his ass if he didn’t. The Nut House is a small, down home, casual pub on California Avenue in Palo Alto. I like going there because it’s an unpretentious little place with regular looking people and a cool bartender (a wicked looking lady, but she’s nice if you treat her right). There are a couple of pool tables in the back, a juke box that plays old Rock & Roll music, and free peanuts which you can grab yourself from inside the cage where King Kong’s likeness is imprisoned. You can eat your peanuts and toss the shells on the ground without anybody yelling at you. As a matter of fact it’s compulsory, or at least it seems to be, since the whole floor is covered in peanut shells. Perhaps this is why they call it the Nut House (the official name is Antonio’s). Perhaps it’s because the majority of the patrons, the regulars, seem to be just a little bit whacky.

We settled at a table in the back of the bar near the Taqueria, which shares the same building and space with the bar but operates separately from it, or at least it appears to be. I was never quite sure. I never asked. CJ and I were drinking beer and talking about anything but his problems with women. One way to get him fired up is to tweak his spine a little bit and get him talking about his work and his job, which he has high regard for. I’m usually a little cynical because I used to do the same type of work, although in a different sub discipline, but nonetheless academic and somewhat irrelevant in the real world.

“I think High Energy Physics is headed in the wrong direction. There’s no need to dig deeper into this CP violation nonsense. Nobody cares. No new knowledge will be uncovered because of it. All it does is it keeps post-docs like you gainfully employed, courtesy of honest, hardworking taxpayers like me” I said, provoking him.

“That’s because you don’t understand it” he replied. “Condensed Matter Physics is worthless. Your experiments are a joke. It’s just a bunch of table top high school set up which uninteresting results” he added some more, exposing both ignorance of my old field and my current field of interest

“I’m not in Condense Matter anymore. In fact, I’m out of physics altogether. I have been for the last four and a half years.”

“People in the private sector are boneheads. They have no appreciation for basic science. They don’t care about the truth, they only care about money. They get up in the morning, pride swallowing, sucking up to their superiors who are just as boneheaded as they are, if not more, because they’re too comfortable with their money. So they’re afraid to rock the boat. A bunch of spineless yes men and women” CJ replied back, unabashedly politically correct (yes men and women, he says), and now really getting hot and angry.

“At least our industry makes real stuff that is useful to human kind. We don’t fantasize about Grand Unified Theories and other ridiculous sounding theories like that. How more arrogant can you be? Here we are in this little marble of a planet we call Earth. We are but one speck of sand in this vast universe yet we pretend that all our knowledge, scientific or otherwise, encompasses the whole. We don’t even know what’s out there. We don’t have powerful enough instruments to capture the whole universe. And yet these theorists keep on fantasizing about a theory that will unify every force in the whole universe” I retorted back. I got CJ really fired up now. I was just enjoying myself.

“Corporations are all about making money, increasing their profits and reducing their costs while sacrificing the well being of the workers who, by the way, are the backbone of the company. Without them there would be no company. And who gets the biggest share of the loot? Not them, no sir. It’s the people they suck up to, saying yes to everything they say. Yes sir, Mr. Peterson, you are absolutely correct. I will fire my men so that you can keep your Learjet and increase the profit margin at the same time. Yes sir, Mr. Clark, it’s all about the shareholders. There would be no company without them. Yes Madame, you are absolute correct Mrs. Anderson. The company’s burden to the workers’ health benefits is sinking the company down the toilet. Yes Madame Cherie, workers are tough and that’s why we hire them because they can work long hours and they don’t need health care and pension plans and any other perks. Yes, yes, yes, yessssss!” CJ said, frothing at mouth, ready to chop the head of some capitalist scum.

“You sound like a Communist” I said, laughing out loud.

“I’m not a Communist. I believe in Laisser Faire economics. It’s capitalist greed that I hate.”

“You can’t have one without the other.”

“Only in an unenlightened society” CJ replied indignantly.

“You’re a real wacko, you know that! You are nuts! Not only are you a wacko but you also don’t trust mankind” I said. I was really laughing hard now because CJ looked so serious. He really meant what he said.

“People are worms. You give them a little inch and they grab a whole yard. Everyone is out for themselves. Greed, greed, greed. Everyone is selfish”

There was no point in arguing some more. Our points of view were clearly a world apart. I understood that but CJ was uncompromising. I figured that’s the reason that he stayed in academia and I headed straight for the industry. I wanted something real. I wasn’t interested in intellectual vanity. CJ was an idealist. He wished the world to be a certain way, a neat orderly universe where everything makes sense. I have done enough research in physics to understand that things aren’t that simple. Perhaps I’m a realist. More likely I’m what many people call pragmatic. I would love to be in academia. There are no pressures and demands of the market place. A career in academia is uncertain however, especially in physics. There are too few positions available per PhDs produced each year. Many do what I did, which is go for the money and stop dreaming about working in interesting fields, like Condense Matter Physics. Either way, I was glad to cheer up my loveless friend at the Nut House.

[1] Not her real name also. A lot of the names here have been initialized or changed outright to protect them (or more appropriately, to protect myself).

Haight-Ashbury

2005-07-22T15:51:00.000-07:00

Amoeba Music, at 1855 Haight Street, is probably the most comprehensive music store in the whole wide world. They’ve got everything from old vinyl records to the latest rap-hip-hop-along Cassidy tweedle doodoo lala music. I didn’t think anyone use turntables anymore but apparently some people still dig’m, especially old schoolers and nostalgia grabbers. You can see these people poring over old vinyl LPs of Joan Baez, the Bee Gees, Kris Kristofferson, Mac Davis, Leo Sayer, Dan Fogelberg, the Gibson Brothers, Crosby Stills & Nash, Crosby Stills Nash & Young, Neil Young of the old stuff, Neil Young grunge stuff, Neil Young in the pink Cadillac album, Olivia Newton-John, Kenny Rogers (The Gambler, not the baseball pitcher), Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, Ronnie Milsap, Jerry Reed, Conway Twitty, Mel Tillis, The Carpenters, Burt Bacharach, Neil Diamond, Nils Lofgren, David Soul, Thin Lizzy, The Band, Three Dog Night, The Doobie Brothers, The Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin, Lawrence Welk, Lou Rawls, Boz Scaggs, Ricky Skaggs, Leif Garret, Shaun Cassidy (Da do run-run), Bay City Rollers, The Tubes, Greg Kihn, Kin Kinka Son, Eddie Money, Eddie Grant, Jackson Browne, Pat Benatar, Kim Carnes, Adam Ant, Kim Wilde, The Clash, Journey, The Four Seasons, Richie Valens (Para Bailar La Bamba), Jose Feliciano, Freddy Frender, Ted Pendergrass, Kool and the Gang, The Commodores, Air Supply, The Little River Band, Fog Hat, Uriah Heep, The Stray Cats, Frankie Valli, Squeeze, Oingo Boingo, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, The Ramones, The Romantics, Dead Kennedys, Sex Pistols, Charlie Daniels Band, Jefferson Airplane, Jefferson Starship, Washington & Jefferson, Tesla, Rex Smith, Night Ranger, Slayer, Joan Jett, The Pretenders, Cheap Trick, Haircut 100, Dave Edmunds, Weather Report, Larry Carlton, Randy Newman, Danny Elfman, Kenny Loggins, Loggins & Messina, Donna Fargo, Donna Summers, Marilyn McCoo, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Sonny & Cher, The Allman Brothers, Greg Allman, Herb Alpert, Joe Zawinul, Joe Jackson, Steely Dan, Tommy Tutone, Fleetwood Mac, Stevie Nicks, Lindsay Buckingham, Triumph, Rush, Meat Loaf, Hall and Oates, Kiki Dee, Chicago, Spandau Ballet, Prince (or whatever he calls himself these days), Van Halen, KC and the Sunshine Band, and Neil Sedaka.

And that’s just a tenth of one percent of their vinyl collections. On top of that they have thousands more in the form of cassette tapes and compact discs. A vast collection of Jazz, R & B, Soul, Disco, Electronica, Rock, Hip-Hop, Blues, Bluegrass, International Music, Hawaiian Music, Cambodian Music, Laotian Music, Mongolian Music, French Rock, Canto Pop, ridiculous Chinese love songs, Swahili music, music from the Solomon Islands, Seychelles classics, Djibouti Rap records, Afghani music, Punk Rock, Devil music, Cannibal music, Euro fag music, and Burmese rock. You name it, it they got. There’s a diverse group of music aficionados hanging around the store too. I saw a black guy in African garb in deep colors of green, red and yellow, checking out some Vietnamese music. His Vietnamese wife was tagging along with him with their toddler. There was this other guy wearing a brown silk shirt with huge collars, bell bottoms and high heeled boots. He combed his hair straight down with Brylcreem. He looked something out of Saturday Night Fever.

The whacked out, the drugged out, the wannabes, the derelicts, the unwanted, the winos all congregate near the entrance of Amoeba Music. This is where the lunatic fringe begins. They are scattered throughout the Haight, hanging out in music stores, cannabis clubs, coffee shops, psychedelic bars, occult bookstores, vegetarian restaurants and abortion clinics. The Haight-Ashbury Free Medical Center on Haight Street was created on the belief that health care is a right, not a privilege.

“It should be free at the point of delivery, and it should be comprehensive, nonjudgmental, demystified, and humane”.

This is what they advertise on their door step at the Happening House on Haight Street. It is in fact, their Mission Statement. These people are card-carrying Socialists. There is nothing wrong with free health care. I would love it. Unfortunately, we can’t afford free health care. We can’t even afford free food. The Communists have tried all of this before. It failed. So did a bunch of European countries bent on Marxism. They may enjoy better health benefits than the US but that doesn’t necessarily mean better quality. More competition means better quality and unfortunately that comes with a price. In other words it’s not free, so these people are living in a dream world. It is also curious that they include “nonjudgmental” in their Mission Statement. Nonjudgmental about what? Sickness and health by definition is suppose to be nonjudgmental, it doesn’t care about personalities, ideologies, political persuasion or sexual orientation, so it shouldn’t even be said, it goes without saying. I can understand “comprehensive”, meaning they will treat any disease or provide a comprehensive diagnosis that will leave no stones unturned. “Demystified and humane” are mere trivialities, included to promote personal attention and care, to introduce a little humanity. But note that “comprehensive” is followed by “nonjudgmental”, perhaps because what they really mean by “comprehensive” is to include not only health related matters but other medical related matters that hinges on a moral (or immoral, depending on your persuasion) obligation, like abortion! Yes, indeed, the Haight Free Medical Clinic will perform abortion on demand, for free, at any phase of pregnancy, no questions asked, no parents’ permission required for the underage, and as stressed in their Mission Statement “free at the point of delivery”. Aren’t you shocked? Not me. This is Haight-Ashbury. They believe in this kind of counter-culturalism. I sort of enjoy the fact that they are adamant about it. These people are definitely out of their minds but that doesn’t stop from doing what they believe and that’s what makes this place so fascinating to me. Forget about the wannabes and the derelicts. The real residents of Haight are these truly whacky people lurking in the backgrounds going about their fantasies, a bunch of modern day Don Quixotes, fighting the windmill of improbability. They don’t make a show of it, they just go about their business doing it, handing out condoms on street corners, exchanging used needles for clean new ones to gay drug addicts in the Castro district, feeding the homeless, doing case work for welfare recipients, adopting young black youths in juvenile hall, inviting gang members to church events and fighting for the rights of sex offenders and pedophiles. So it’s not surprising too, that a large portion of people employed by the newspaper and entertainment industries are residents of Haight-Ashbury.

I must admit that it’s hard to write good things about the Haight these days because less interesting things are happening. The vibe is gone. Even the strip clubs have closed down. All it is now are a bunch of tourists taking pictures, nostalgia seekers gawking at the corner of Haight and Ashbury, so they can go back home to Missouri and tell their friends they’ve made the counter culture pilgrimage to Frisco.

“Here Marge, look here, see…I’m a rebel” one could imagine some old geezer saying to his friends in Wichita.

“Where are the freaks? I don’t see any freaks. I don’t know why we can’t any see any, there are suppose to be lots of them here” I heard an old lady complaining to her husband.

“Let’s go to that psychedelic store and buy some of them tie-dyed T-shirts for Carlotta and Imogene, honey” the husband said to his wife. The wife was still complaining about not seeing any freaks. What kind of freaks is she talking about?

“Frisco’s full of them, you just gotta know what kind you want. The homosexual kind. The drugged out kind. The homeless kind. The foreign kind. Just name and I’ll point it out to you” I wanted to say to this woman. Fortunately Annie was with me, which prevented me from acting against my better judgment. She would have whacked me upside the head if I had approached the old woman and told her that were a couple of homosexual males making out in the alley between Page and Haight.

Haight counter-culture is strictly an American phenomenon. People of the baby boom generation who are now in their sixties are well aware of the things that happened here back in its heyday. They saw it on television. It looked dangerous then, so most stayed home and watched it on TV. It’s a tourist attraction now. They even have a walking tour showing points of interests that include the house where Charles Manson stayed for a brief period before he went back to Southern Cal and massacred a bunch of people. Most of the tourists, however, are Americans. There are some Europeans too who are hungry for some of that American style of counter-culturalism. You won’t see too many Japanese tourists in this place, only locals with Japanese descent. The Japanese from Japan wouldn’t get it and they wouldn’t like if they ever did get it. The Japanese tourists are more interested in snapping up pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, Coit Tower and the like, the generally safe and comforting place. They’re a bit apprehensive when things become dirty, slimy and grungy. They are uncomfortable with the American style of casualness, letting it all hang out, and laying your balls out in the open. This is also typical of the Chinese. They see a black person and they automatically cross the street in order to avoid them. Perhaps they think they might get mugged by these young urbanites.

At three o’clock in the afternoon a three piece band was playing on the corner of Haight and Ashbury. The lead singer and bassist is a grungy looking black guy with braids wearing mirrored Foster Grant sunglasses (there is no shortage of old school aficionados here), multicolored linen pants, a white shirt and a trench coat. He was playing his the bass in that 70s funky style of pulling the high note string with his fingers and thumping the low note with thumb, which makes that “Jing-thub” sound. He wasn’t really singing at all, just mumbling some ghetto words in the same style of John Lee Hooker;

Ba how how how how

Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

he-yeah!

Let that boy boogie woogie

A little black girl was clapping, smiling and swaying side to side to the rhythm of the music. She might’ve been part of the attraction. The guitar player was another grungy looking dude, white, strumming a classic Fender with a disco influenced riff while the drummer, a fat white girl wearing a laced purple gown, kept the rhythm moving to a 3-4 beat. They sounded like a cross between Cool Jazz and Hard Rock Blues with the lead singer providing the blue note and the guy on the guitar providing a harmonious jazzy sound with some screeching transitions in between.

While the trio was playing I heard some screaming behind me. A commotion ensued but hardly anyone took notice because they were more interested in the band playing some funked up music. I turned around and saw, five feet away from me, a guy in his twenties with shaven head, no shirt, just shorts and tennis shoes, down on his knees and hands behind his head ready to be handcuffed by a cop with a thick mustache and a pilot’s sunglasses (Foster Grants). The cop was shoving his walking stick in the guy’s back while holding the top of his head, putting the guy in a humiliating and defenseless position, which was what the cop intended to do. But it seemed to me that all of this, though standard procedure for the cops, was unnecessary, because the guy looked like he was drugged out of his mind. He had that lazy, empty, zoned out look in his eyes, like the type you see in people on an acid trip. He was wobbling back and forth, could hardly hold his balance even though he was on his knees, almost ready to fall down. All of a sudden a gush of pinkish-cream colored thick fluid (not fully digested food) was heaved out of his mouth, puking his guts out on the pavement. The cop let him go. Now he was on all fours, spitting the last of what was in his stomach and dry heaving himself to death. After five minutes of what seemed like an agonizing experience the guy finally stopped barfing and sat right next to his own puddle of puke on the pavement. The cop grabbed his left arm. It was full of needle marks, little red tick marks all over. The cop checked his right arm. The same thing. The cop radioed for a patrol car. They were gonna take his ass down to the station. The guy was so fucked up that he didn’t even care. He was totally compliant. He even said thank you to the cop.

Puppy Love

2005-07-20T15:33:00.000-07:00

The east end of the Golden Gate Park meets the lower end of Haight-Ashbury on Stanyan Street. In order to get there we had to pass through a mob of grubby youths peddling low quality cannabis. These little punks, looking dirty and dangerous, approached us with the same pitch you’ll hear if you’ve ever been to Golden Gate Park.

“Hey man, want some buds?” the little punk says.

I sure hope they hire a new ad agency because their marketing campaign is old, tired and boring. These little punks hang around in groups of three or four, joking, laughing, smoking cigarettes and swigging a bottle of tequila. They can get pretty rowdy sometimes. There was this one kid in torn up clothes and a watch cap blazing through the walkway in his skateboard, barely missing an old fella, going 100 miles per hour (maybe not but he was definitely speeding), but a little rock on the pavement caught the little wheels of his board and threw him flying into a group of teenage girls sitting on the grass. He landed on top of one the girls, head first, right into her lap.

“Eeeeeewh! Get off me you little bastard!” the young girl screamed at the little punk. The rest of the girls got up and started bitching at the little punk as well. “Eeewh, like, that guy is just a dick!” one of them said.

Meanwhile, another group of teenage punks nearby were laughing hysterically at what just transpired. They were probably friends of the little bastard and dared him to thrust himself onto those teenage girls. One of the punks was jumping up and down and laughing, high fiving another punk while swigging a bottle of tequila and biting on the worm.

“What are you doing?” Annie asked. She was dragging me because I had stopped walking, fascinated by the incident.

“I’m just watching these kids”

“Don’t be stupid. There just kids showing off”

“I gotta record what just happened” I said.

“You find that interesting? It’s pretty inane, boys trying to impress girls by harassing them. It produces the opposite effect”

“They’re just inexperienced. I was never like that when I was a kid though” I offered, a conceit on my part.

“You did other stupid things” Annie responded.

“Like what?” I said, challenging her. This is where Annie is at her most wicked. She has this incredible ability to dig deep in her memory bank and produce the most embarrassing moment for me. Right after I said it I knew I had made a mistake.

“Like when you’re uncle caught you on top of your tomboy cousin when you were twelve years old?”

How the hell did she know about that!

“Your sister told me”

That bitch! I said nothing for a few seconds because I was so embarrassed. My face must have turned red by now and I was blushing to hide my guilt. Finally, I regained my composure and said

“We didn’t do anything! We were just fooling around” I lied. That moment still kind of haunts me like a bad dream. It was so embarrassing. My cousin was two years younger than me but we had been hanging around each other like best friends because she liked the same kind of things that I liked. We went to the batting cages for batting practice every Saturday and we spent a lot of time on the beach surfing, fishing and outrigger canoeing. She was a tomboy. We watched the same TV shows together and did just about everything together. One day, while watching wrestling on television, we tried to copy the moves of the wrestlers. I used one of those Rowdy Roddy Piper moves to pin my cousin on her back. As I was on top of her I couldn’t help but notice that she is a girl, and a pretty one at that. Until then I had never really thought of her as a girl. Suddenly, slowly, I moved my face closer to hers. I remember feeling really strange or funny, like the kind of feeling you get when you have a crush on a certain girl. I didn’t understand it then. I planted a soft kiss on her lips. That’s when the shit hit the fan as my uncle found both of us on the floor with my lips on hers. My uncle beat the shit out of me. My cousin wouldn’t look at me for weeks. Later on, when we were much older, I finally brought the incident up to her and told her how sorry I was. To my great relief she wasn’t upset or as embarrassed as I was, and she surprised me by saying “I used to have crush on you”.

My tomboy cousin is now a pretty young adult, engaged to marry her college boyfriend. She really blossomed at the age of fourteen, the critical time when girls’ bodies change and they leave their tomboyish behavior forever. I am proud of the way she turned out and a bit jealous of her success, but not the hateful kind of jealousy. More of an adoring fan kind of jealousy. So when Annie brought this subject up (my sister’s got a lot to answer for) it floored me like I was hit with a two by four.

“Have you met Alice[1]?” I asked Annie.

“Yeah, at your parent’s house last Thanksgiving”

“Oh, that’s right” I had forgotten about Thanksgiving.

“She’s really nice. And she’s pretty. I kept telling your sister how pretty Alice is. One time, while the rest of you guys were getting drunk and the rest of us girls were gossiping at the dinner table, your sister whispered to me about you and her” Annie explained.

“She told you that in front of her?” I was aghast at my sister’s blabbering.

“She told me while she was away talking on the phone to her fiancé”

“Her wedding is in October. Are you going?” I asked Annie.

“I don’t know yet” she said.

[1] Not my real cousin’s name

Baghdad by the Bay

2005-07-19T16:24:00.000-07:00

Many things can be said about San Francisco. It is endlessly romanticized by journalists and writers, vociferously attacked by right-wing politicians whom they describe as a modern day Sodom and Gomorrah, relentlessly utilized by left-wing activists as their stage for protests, and fervently protected by the locals from opportunists capitalizing on a sky rocketing and mind boggling real estate prices. The noted San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen once described this place (among other things) as “Baghdad by the Bay” for its mysteriousness and naughtiness. It is a fittingly humorous description these days for a city bent on being the center for anti-war demonstrations. The free for all sexual orgies in the summer of 1969, otherwise known by its counter-culture euphemism as “The Summer of Love”, took place here in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco.

I don’t live in San Francisco and personally I have certain distaste for the exaggerations put on it by people, mostly writers and journalists, who for the most part are transplants from other parts of the country and the world over. There is nothing special about this place! Only its high-minded residents would feel privileged to live is such a cluttered city filled with ticky-tacky match box houses in the Sunset district and drug ridden gay bars in the Castro district. San Francisco is proud of its homosexuality. People here tolerate the out-of-touch, the out-of-work, the off-the-wall and generally anyone who is out of his or her mind. This is not a place for the morally squeamish.

My old friend Annie and I started our day in Frisco at the Golden Gate Park and figured we would play it by ear until sundown then maybe have dinner at some little Italian restaurant somewhere in North Beach. It is a nice, sunny, warm Saturday with only a hint of the marine layer left over in the sky. By the time we arrived in the park there was already a festive atmosphere in the air. There were groups having picnics, couples having a glass of chardonnay with their gourmet sandwiches, kids tossing around a football, teenagers ass-grabbing and young adults playing Frisbee. However, there is no escaping the lunatic fringe in San Francisco. We were walking down casually towards the botanical gardens and was approached several times by young men (and women) selling drugs. We tried to ignore them because we (or maybe I) felt embarrassed being propositioned. “Do I look like a dope fiend to you man?” is what I wanted to say to these dime bag peddlers.

“Hey man, want some buds?” the kid said as Annie and I were settled down on the grass by the little hill above, watching the drummers’ jam. He approached us from behind and took us by surprise. He looked particularly disheveled, with dirty blonde hair that looked like he hadn’t taken a shower in days. On a day with the temperature in the mid 70s he was wearing a red-brown sweater that was torn at the shoulders, baggy jeans that was so loose at the hips it looked like it was about to slide off his ass and exposing his dirty blue dotted yellow underwear, and old Nike shoes duct taped at the toes to cover the holes and with the laces loosely tied. He smelled particularly disgusting as well, as if he had been sleeping on a pavement where homeless people urinate. His eyes were bloodshot red, his face filled with acne, and his lips were so chapped that it looked like it had been mutilated. This kid was a sorry sight. Naturally I was intrigued by him.

“Whaddaya got?” I asked. Annie nudged me and whispered “Don’t encourage him!” in my ear. She knows me well enough to know that I am just toying with this kid to see where it would lead us. I wasn’t going to buy anything.

“Gotta fifty, an ounce, dime bag. Whatever you like” he said.

“What kind?”

“Humboldt Gold”

“Got any Maui Wowie?”

“Nope!”

“How about some purple Thai?”

“Ain’t got it man! Just Humboldt Gold” the kid said, somewhat exasperated by my specific demands.

“What the hell kinda dope dealer are you, anyhow? No Wowies, no purple Thais. You ain’t got shit. I ought to report your ass to the police down by Kezar. They’ll throw you in jail for selling low quality shit” I said jokingly. The kid knew I was just fucking with him because I was smiling the whole time. Even Annie was laughing.

“Do I look like a dope fiend to you man?” I asked the kid.

“You look just like everybody. And everybody gets high” he responded.

“Do your parents get high?”

The kid laughed and looked at me like I was crazy but he didn’t answer my question. After a few moments of silence he started to get up and walk away but I stopped him. I was kind of enjoying myself. Annie was getting kind of annoyed.

“Hey, wait a second!” I yelled. “Where are you going?”

“Around”

“Around where?”

“Around wherever. What’s it to you. You ain’t buying nothin”

“You gotta let me have a little sample. You know, to see if it’s good quality”

“Naw man, I gotta go” the kid said and ran towards a group of similarly disheveled looking kids and adults taking turns on a little bong. The air was rich with the heavy smell of cannabis. I was even getting a little high just from breathing it.

I don't want to work, I just want to bang on the drums all day

2005-07-17T20:18:00.000-07:00

I write better when I’m angry or when something is bothering me. But lately I haven’t found anything to complain about, which worries me. On Saturday morning I picked up my old friend Annie[1] at her place. I had agreed to spend the day with her in San Francisco as a payback to her for spending the day at the ballpark with me two weeks ago. I really appreciate Annie’s company and I have always found her attractive but the last time we were more than friends it turned into a nonstop antagonistic relationship. Annie is a very opinionated girl and for some reason it delights her to expose contradictions in my thinking or the hypocrisies and prejudice that I hold. She thinks I am conceited and it gives her so much pleasure (this I know for sure) to see me humbled and disgraced, to eat my own words, and to take a dose of medicine that I give to others. The fact that she thinks I’m conceited irritates me because I have always thought of myself as simple and modest, just another ordinary guy. Perhaps the fact that I am nonchalant about being pedestrian she misconstrues as high-minded self-confidence to the point of arrogance but that’s about as inane as a homeless person by choice to prove his mettle and self-reliance. I brought this up with her during breakfast at some nondescript little café on California Avenue in Palo Alto.

“No it’s not that. It’s just the way you talk. You are so sure about everything you say, even if you’re wrong, especially if you’re wrong. I’ve had arguments with you where I have shown unequivocally that were wrong but then you go ahead in a roundabout way, saying you misunderstood this or that” she said. There was no hint of indignation in her voice or her manner.

“Well, I can’t say that I remember what you’re talking about. But forget about specifics. You think I’m conceited because I have confidence in myself?” I retorted back.

“It’s one thing to be confident, it’s another to be cocky”.

“I’m cocky?”

“Yes”

“How do you figure that?”

“You tell everyone you’re nothing special and you’re just an ordinary guy but you are only saying that to be patronizing, because you know, or you think you know, that you are better than the other guy at work. Remember, we’ve known each other for quite a long time and I know you better than you think you do” she said. I was inclined to believe her because we were really having a meaningful conversation. Not hateful or antagonizing. Annie was being honest with me, basically holding up a mirror in front of me and I couldn’t deny it because most of it was true. I am conceited although I won’t admit it, not even to myself.

So much for having nothing to worry about. After breakfast we drove to San Francisco via El Camino, Page Mill, I-280, 19^th Avenue, and Golden Gate Park. I don’t mind driving to Frisco (Annie gets a kick out of me saying Frisco) because Interstate 280 is a three-lane-wide scenic highway, passing through the hills in Woodside, Hillsborough, La Honda and ending up at the south end of the city at Junipero Serra and turning into Highway 1 towards the Golden Gate Bridge. Annie wanted to spend the day walking around Golden Gate Park and I suggested that we should also spend some time around Haight-Ashbury, just to see if something interesting happens. I parked my car on Lincoln, right in front of Kezar Stadium, so we had to walk across the street in a busy intersection to get to the park. It was around 11 AM and there were already tons of cars parked on Lincoln that I surprised to find a tiny opening in the sidewalk to squeeze my midsize truck in. Apparently there was a youth soccer game going on, a team from Mexico playing against the gringos of Frisco. There were lots of Mexicans wearing ponchos colored red, green and white and sombreros displaying the team insignia. We ignored the soccer crowd and crossed over to the park where the crowd was also getting thicker. There were families and church groups having picnics, a group of college aged men and women playing Frisbee, teenage boys tossing around a football with one kid wearing a Joe Montana jersey, couples in picnic baskets and fine chardonnays, and the ubiquitous drummers banging away on their home turf.

Ahg….the drummers at Golden Gate Park. If there is one constant in Frisco it is these guys. Every time I come here these guys are always here, the same familiar faces with a few variations every now and then. Mostly old black fellas with a couple of white guys every now and then and some Hispanic guys for good measure. They’re here banging away without a care in the world. Don’t these people have jobs! I must have been thinking out loud because just as I was thinking that Annie turned to me and said:

“These people don’t need jobs. They beg, they steal, they go on welfare or they’re disabled workers and can’t find jobs so they don’t have anything to do. They come here because it's the only place where they feel comfortable and appreciated. Everyone else treats them like trash”.

I felt ashamed for even thinking what I just thought. Clearly these people look decrepit and destitute, the type who begs on street corners and in the middle of traffic.

“How could they afford the drums if they don’t have any money?” I asked, to no one in particularly, although only Annie could hear me.

“Probably stole them” she responded, to no one in particular.

[1] Not her real name

Locals Only

2005-07-11T08:12:00.000-07:00

One of my favorite things to do in the Bay Area is to drive around the back roads in my four wheel drive, up and down Highway 17, Highway 1, Highway 9, I-280, and all the other highways with a winding road and a scenic view. I especially love driving up and down Highway 1 during the summertime, when the soft offshore breeze early in the morning is blowing down the Pacific Ocean such that it makes the south swell in the summer form into a perfect wall of water. Every time I receive a wave alert from one of my friends who live down the coast I wake up early the next morning, around 4 AM, so that I can be the first guy out in the line-up at my secret spot (Locals Only). However, since I live thirty minutes away from the coast I am never the first in the line-up. There are lots of guys out there, the heavy locals whose lives are built around the daily conditions of the wave, who’ve caught many waves in their dawn patrol session before I even get to the line-up. There’s no need to mention names because these people (they know who they are) don’t really care what anyone else thinks about them and they don’t read weak-ass blogs like mine. They don’t read blogs at all, which is probably a good thing. They might even have a better sense of reality than those who read and write blogs, like me. I have lived with such heavies before when I was living in Hawai’i. It doesn’t matter if your Haole or Hawaiian; surfers are surfers. Most of them are idiots when they are out of the water. That’s because they are out of their element, like a fish out the water. They get into car accidents, they don’t know how to balance a checkbook, they get into fights when they should be walking away, and they always fall in love with the wrong girl. Needless to say, their finances are never in order, always borrowing money from somebody, barely able to sustain their lives and always living under the poverty line. In the water however, they have the mental acumen of a loan shark prowling the street corners who watch for the subtleties in human behavior to take advantage of the small margins in other people’s financial conditions. That’s what these watermen do; they paddle up to the line-up, they sit on their board, watch and listen. They’re not going to waste their time with just some small ripple that passes along, that’s kid stuff. They wait for the right swell to arrive, paddle around, sit and wait, look at the horizon, and as soon as a bump becomes noticeable they paddle around some more while looking around just to see the other surfers’ position in the line-up. There are only, at most, six waves in a set. The young and inexperienced will take the first one that comes along, eager to get a taste of ecstasy; they want instant gratification. The clueless amateurs will be at the wrong place at the wrong time; there’s no need to worry about them. It’s the heavy locals who keep an eye on each other, positioning themselves in a pecking order that’s understood without saying. In every spot in any locale - Hawai’i, Southern Cal, Northern Cal, Central Coast, wherever – there exist a order pecking among the heavies in the line-up based on local knowledge, style, seniority, and ability; all in that order. This is especially true in Hawai’i and, to a lesser extent, Northern California. These are places where local knowledge means a whole lot more than seniority and ability. In any other field of endeavor the idea is absurd because a pecking order is almost always based on ability regardless of seniority, locality and style. Not in the subculture of surfing however. Local knowledge is king because wave behavior is so fickle. It can snatch you up and snap you in the same breath and pound you mercilessly until every bone in your body turns to mush. The heavy locals know this but the non-local hotshot shredder does not have the same familiarity so that what they think might be a point break that may turn into a hollow tube will actually turns out to be a close out that can lead to disaster for everyone involved. This is where the heavy local in the top of the pecking order will step in, undaunted by the reputation of the hotshot shredder, to make it clear to Mr. Hotshot that the best course of action is to sit back and watch, and learn, so that your face will not be contorted into some doughnut shape by the pounding of the reef when you misjudge that point break.

“And if by chance that your face is not reshaped by the reef then I will reshape it for you on the beach” is what usually follows from these exchanges. This is local culture!

Hapa Haole

2005-07-07T16:59:00.000-07:00

I drove down Alma from Palo Alto (which turns into Central Expressway in Mountain View) on my way to downtown San Jose but I took a detour at San Tomas because I wanted go down Stevens Creek Blvd and stop by Ivar’s Seafood Bar at West Valley mall across from Santana Row. It bothers me that the only Ivar’s in the whole state of California had to be inside a doggone mall. It was still early in the afternoon when I got there so the lunch crowd of mall shoppers and weekend soccer moms and their toddlers were filling up the food court. That’s another thing I hate about malls, the darn food courts. They are lined up with fashionable food stalls and most of them are never any good. It’s like everything in life; you have to sift through the garbage to find a jewel. In this case Ivar’s is the jewel, the best fish n’ chips and clam chowder in the country, maybe the whole wide world. I reluctantly had to walk inside Nordstrom’s department store and then pass through a few more retail outlets at the second level to get to the food court which in my opinion is a nuisance because the mall was full of weekend shoppers gobbling up 4^th of July weekend sales and promotions. Like any mall in the world, it’s a mad house of bargain hunters. Capitalism at its prime, conspicuous consumption at its very worst. I tried to ignore them all and just focused my attention on Ivar’s. I went up to the counter and ordered a fish n’ chips and a cup of chowder, found an empty table in the middle and savored the whole meal to the very end. Satisfied with my meal, I was ready to go downtown and join the Pacific Islanders for a day of Polynesian festivities, Hula dancing and listening to Hawaiian music. I drove down Stevens Creek all the way downtown where it turns into San Carlos and ends at the west end of the San Jose State campus. As soon as I got out of my car Keola greeted me in a huge bear hug that I nearly suffocated.

“Heh brah, nevah seen you plenny long time awready” said Keola, laughing and joking and just a having a jolly old time. This big Hawaiian lug looks like he could tackle a MAC truck with one arm while holding a cone of ice cream in another. Though he looks mean and scary his disposition reminds me of a childhood friend of mine who was friends with just about everyone he met. Keola is one of those laid back type of guy who is in his element when the vibes around him were positive because they were mostly of his own doing. Things generally became jovial whenever he is around. We got to chatting a little bit about the latest things happening but all I could get out of him was his last trip back to the islands, three weeks ago. Keola has been living here for eight months now and I don’t think he’s going to stay much longer just from listening to him talk. Although he likes his job at the airport in San Francisco he clearly misses Hawai’i. We joined the group gathering out just outside the Events Center on campus. They were mostly friends from the old days; Ah-lan, Monica, Janice, Trinda, and Ikaika. The rest of the group I didn’t know but they were introduced to me as Malia, a beautiful hapa-haole girl, Mahea, Vicky and Kalani. I was glad to meet them but I was disappointed to know that they are currently living in San Diego. They are up here with their Halau from San Diego. I especially wanted to get acquainted with Malia so I tried to make small talk with her.

“So, where in the islands are you from” I asked.

“Actually, I was born in San Diego. My dad is from Hilo but he moved to Southern California. That’s where he met my mom” Malia responded in perfect mainland USA English, so precise and so…Haole…I’m sorry to say that it almost disappointed me. I wanted so much for her to be local (Islander local). Nevertheless she was nice enough and we chatted a little bit about this and that. I tried to impress her by implying that I was from the islands, a local, and lived in one of the most local areas in the island of O’ahu but she was unfamiliar with the place and it didn’t appear to me that she was the least bit impressed.

“Do you Hula?” she asked, which caught me off-guard. I should have been prepared for this. Of course she was interested in Hula!

“I used to when I was a kid” I lied. I tried my best speaking English with a local Hawaiian accent by adding “but nevah had time cuz we wuz at da beach”. I waited to see a reaction but she just smiled at me blankly, clearly not impressed. “Surfing” I added some more. Still no sign of amazement from her face. “You surf?” I asked, as is challenging her and in turn implying that I’m some hot shot shredder from the islands.

“No, I dance the Hula. I love the Hula. Our Kumu is so wonderful, she is like a mother to us. We call her Auntie Kamuela,” she said. She went on and on some more about Hula and her Halau and all that. She is a very nice girl but somehow we didn’t connect. Maybe it’s because she was much younger than me. Perhaps not. I noticed Monica giving me the stink eye. We used to have a thing for each other but I thought that was over now. She came over and gave me a friendly jab in the ribs but she did it with enough force that it made me jerk up a little.

“What are you doing?” she asked in her soft sweet voice with a tiny hint of the island accent that she was able to maintain despite having live in the Bay Area for almost ten years. I guess once you got it you never lose it.

“She’s talking about Hula and I’m talking about surfing” I replied. “Do you know Malia?”

“Yeah, course I know her,” said Monica. She then turned to Malia and said “How’s Auntie Momi, is she getting any better” and from there they went into this long intimate conversation like they’ve know each other for years. I felt like a complete outsider, not knowing what or whom they were talking about. I was thinking that Monica was doing this on purpose to drive me away. Is she protecting Malia? Or is she just trying to annoy me, like always? Anyways, I didn’t bother to stick around and listen some more of their inner gossip so I turned and joined the rest of the gang chowing down on Li Hing Mui, dried squid and other island goodies that they brought with them. I was having a good time until we finally had to break the gathering and go inside to watch the Hula competition. It was a good night of performances I guess because this is the final night and the competitors are the best professionals in the world. I didn’t know a single competitor however so I had no idea who to cheer for, and the night ended somewhat somberly.