A Hundred Thousand Miles

Friendly Fire

2008-06-23T21:43:00.000-07:00

Just when you thought it was safe—I’m back!

Not from the dead, nor the leave of absence. No, I’ve returned from the No Man’s Land of writing the book that never ends. And now, feeling very much like the Russian woman who birthed the 17 pound baby, I am spent, exhausted, and never want to do that again.

Of course, I probably will, but at the moment I’d rather shove bamboo shoots under my fingernails than entertain the thought of writing one craftily-clad sentence ever again.

During this time, I’ve been to Kentucky, to New York, to Toronto, Iowa, Illinois, Ohio, Tennessee… and Italy—ah, Italy!—where I was verbally made love to by an Italian man my father’s age with via an English-speaking accomplice sitting nearby in the hotel lobby bar (“Antonio says he never—never!—see a woman as beautiful as you. He only want you to meet him for a drink tomorrow, and please to come back to Firenze perhaps for some dinner and drinking. He is not this kind of man who says this to every woman. He only want to have some drink, and to make love to you.”)

In Italy, I stumbled into the Duomo, saw the statue of David just before museum closing time (I thought he was supposed to be Jewish?) and consumed a respectable—or not so respectable—amount of Chianti.

Somewhere in between I taught a seminar to several Italians in a show room full of clothing, shoes, and purse samples—none of which fit in my briefcase. It was inhumane and cruel; what I made in one day of teaching the Italians was not enough to afford even one of their handbags. The universe is unjust.

Alongside my Italian-to-English innocence, I also lost my 1K status and became one of the milling throng yearning to breathe free—the poor, the disenchanted… the United Airlines customers with only Premiere Exec Status.

***

Winnipeg, Canada: Huddled Mass

So here I am now in Winnipeg. Every other store front is appears indefinitely closed And though I hate to be uncharitable, there is something distinctly moribund about this city so that it seems the Dollar Stores are the only thing thriving well here.

I have a notion to take myself to a movie (no book to write, no edits—I hardly know what to do with myself)—until a colleague partner originally from here, suggests I may not want to walk parts of downtown at night.

Gotcha.

I work out. Take myself to dinner. Build tomorrow’s Powerpoint in front of the movie “21,” prepare for bed.

Recall with me: I have only been free in spurts, my last edit a mere 20 hours behind me; only at 3am last night did I finish a list of errors in my current project’s galley after my initial scratches were unceremoniously FedExed back.

After a week of listing out the case for every misspelling, omitted word, klunky sentence and remainder of earlier versions—not to mention two nights of 20 year high school reunion (voted “most likely to become a librarian,” right here), what I really need is rest. But freedom is like a shiny new toy, beckoning, intoxicating, and…

I’m ready for bed by 10:00.

I’m talking on the phone with Rick when I notice blood in the toilet water.

Yes. I was peeing on the phone. Not literally, but—

Don’t even try to tell me you haven’t done it yourself.

Somehow, I don’t think this is right (the blood—not the peeing on the phone.)

“Maybe go to bed and see what your sister says when you get to Boston,” he says. My sister is probably the most talented family physician in Boston and her house is tomorrow’s destination.

Still, the blood thing freaks me out. I call my mom.

“Get to the doctor,” she says. “You need a prescription right away or you’ll be miserable by tomorrow.”

I call the front desk. They don’t have access to a doctor. What kind of hotel is this? I can just call an ambulance, she says. Um, no. “I can give you a nurse line and she can give you some advice,” she says.

Yeah. Because advice is good for blood in urine.

Joan, the nurse on the phone, is not sure what to do with a foreign southern neighbor.

“I’m trying to make your file.”

Why are health professionals always so interested in files?

“I don’t want a file. I want a prescription.” My bladder is pulling, more insistent by the minute.

“You’re passing blood.”

“Yes.”

“Does your lower flank hurt at all?”

“No. Maybe. I don’t know.” I thought only horses had those.

Joan makes me a file. It makes her feel better. She directs me to go to the med center, and gives me an address.

I have been ill in Thailand and Korea, been to the ER in Honolulu and seen the hotel doctor in Beijing. I am no stranger to illness out of town. But that doesn’t make it any more fun.

The taxi is prompt—there’s something squeaky-clean about taxi drivers in Canada, with their prompt arrivals and neatly-written receipts. I briefly think I’m in Singapore.

I ask him to take me to Misericordia.

“You’re sick?” he says.

“Yes,” I groan. It positively hurts now.

“No worry. You’ll be fine.” And while I expect he’s telling the truth, I’m beginning to wonder if there is indeed a 24-hour pharmacy nearby and how I will make it there and back. I’m beginning to flirt with misery.

We pull up to the glass doors. “There are few people inside. You will be able to be seen right away. You will be better soon,” he smiles and diligently fills out the receipt.

In fact, everyone here is nice.

“Allergies?” the nurse asks.

“Sulfa.”

“What happens when you take it?”

“I turn into Swamp Thing.”

She blinks.

“Seriously.”

“That really limits what we can give you. It’ll probably be Cipro.”

Hey, if it works on anthrax it’s good enough for me.

By now, I feel as though I might need to go to the bathroom. Forever.

The nurse sends me one desk over to reception… so they can start a file.

“Oh. You’re from outside the country? You’ll need to pay.”

I hand her my wallet, all my cards, everything. Anything.

“You need to pay at security, down the hall.” I peel myself from the chair.

The man in the security office smiles. “Tosca? That’s a nice name.”

I grunt.

“I hope you feel better. That’ll be $405.”

I shove my money at him.

I take the receipt back to reception. She makes my file. At last. I have a file. Can I have some pills now?

With a shiny new hospital bracelet on my wrist, I sit and wait. And wait. And pee. And drink water. And pee some more. And wait. And pee. I have never peed this many times, cumulatively, in my life. I wonder what people without $405 do and how they get pills in this place.

An hour and a half later, I’m sure it must be Friday already. The man next to me offers me the TV changer. There are only some four people waiting to see the doctor. I can hardly stand to sit on anything that doesn’t have a toilet seat on it.

I call my mom. “Tell them to hurry up,” she says, “That you need to get in now.”

“I have a file,” I offer.

By now, it’s 2am. I don’t even know if I’ll be able to get meds here, or if I’ll have to find a way to survive a taxi drive to a 24 hour pharm.

“If I’m not here when the nurse comes, I’m in the bathroom,” I tell reception.

“The nurses are clever. They’ll figure it out considering what you’re here for.”

I am in no mood for coyness. I want, in fact, to shove her ID badge up her left nostril.

I wait. And wait. In the bathroom.

Two hours later, the nurse takes me back.

There a bed in my curtained-off room, but I cannot by now sit or lay down. I’ve been in the bathroom perhaps 40 times since arriving… and spend most of the next hour in the one off this room.

When the doctor comes in, disaster strikes.

He’s cute. Strike that, he’s unerringly handsome. This is so wrong.

“So, we have some problems with urine?” he says.

I do not want to talk to a handsome doctor about my urine. Please get the ugly doctor—really, it’s fine. I can wait.

He prescribes me ten days of antibiotics and the nurse comes back with my first dose and one of those pills for the spasms. It’s well after 4am and I’m free to go. But for the next twenty minutes, all I can do is sit in the bathroom.

I’m not sure how this is going to work.

By 4:30, I’m nauseous and buy some chips from the vending machine. I wonder how in the hell I’m going to teach in three hours.

There’s a dedicated phone line for the cab company—but lo and behold, there’s one waiting outside, just hanging out. He looks surprised to see me. “You need a cab?”

I nod.

Back at the room, I pee again, E-mail my manager and my internal partner on the project. If I can get three hours’ sleep, I’ll get up, find a 24 hour pharm, get my prescription for the rest of the day, dress, go teach, fly on to Boston.

Apparently I think I’m superwoman.

7am. My security company calls. The alarm on my house is going off in Lincoln.

Rick is on his way over. The police are already there.

And then relief: the partner has postponed the workshop.

I go back to sleep, more relieved than I have been in days.

By late morning, I’ve found a pharmacy at a mall, taken breakfast in the hotel. I arrange a late checkout, fall asleep, and barely wake up in time to go.

At the Winnipeg airport—part small-town airport, part café and bait ‘n tackle shop—I realize I’m missing my cell phone.

I inquire at security. They don’t have it. I confront an actual pay phone with my work calling card, locate the taxi company with a number located from an actual paper phone book. I think I remember how to do this.

The cab company has it. I’ll call later, from Boston, and learn it’ll be cheaper to get a new one than finagle this one home from Winnipeg.

One hour, one cell phone and $405 in cute doctor’s fees later, I take off for Boston.

2008-01-16T22:29:00.000-08:00

Queens to Florence: The Coming

Today began at 5:30, which is 4:30 at home and not so bad; I never got to sleep the night before in order to get Havah—messy, overweight, redundant, missing research, to my editor. In bed by 10Est is the earliest I’ve been to bed in maybe five years. I’m frankly surprised there’s a world to wake to, that it hasn’t ended. But all signs point to a disappointing lack of apocalypse.

At least for today.

I’ve spent a half hour calling Italy to reverse a hotel booking that the hotel cannot do because it was made by a website after a misunderstanding with my colleague. I am hung up on three times by the Italian representative when it becomes clear I didn’t speak Italian.

I e-mail the hotel, get dressed, panic that I can’t cancel my reservation, and run out the door, bootlaces trailing. Luckily, nobody sees me sitting in the hallway two minutes later, laboring to lace them up.

The Marriott car driver takes out his glasses, opens a book of maps, and pages through them. Has he not heard of GPS? Does he not know I have a class to teach, that Jesus is probably coming and if he doesn’t get his act together I will miss class, Jesus and apocalypse all?? Drive on, man!

Queens is not my favorite place in the world. I admit it—industrial, ramshackle in parts, graffiti-scrawled. I love Manhattan more.

I’m teaching a class of participants—many of whom it is obvious do not want to be here. I open a vein and do my job. The class finishes, the client is pleased, says this is a tough group, I was the right one for it. No matter that I am, by now, bloodless and a husk of the woman I once was.

I change my clothes. George, the driver, is back by noon and off to LaGuardia I go in my pumpkin.

***

I’m not a fan of LaGuardia, with its Red Carpet Club outside security. (What’s up with that?) I’ve barely gotten settled in when a man announces my flight to Dulles is cancelled.

I go to the desk. When it’s my turn, it’s as though I’m suddenly shopping in Asia.

“I can get you out at 6.”

“No. Too late.”

“How about Delta?”

“What’ve you got on Delta?”

“I can get you in by five.”

“No good.”

“Nothing else goes from Dulles. I can get you direct to Munich on Lufthansa.”

“No way. I finagled an upgrade to business.” And it’ll be a cold day in hell before I let him pry it out of my post-apocalyptic hand.

“How about US Scare?”

“They only go to Reagan. I can get you out of JFK at four.”

“No good. Put me on the Scare Shuttle.”

US Air operates an hourly service to Boston and D.C. I get the ticket downloaded to my e-mail, see that my reservation at the hotel in Italy has been reversed and the Weston made in its stead, and take off.

I look for the B bus to move one terminal down. I see a public bus and ask the driver. He waves me over to the curb and points: number 5 is coming. He honks and waves me over again.

Anyone who says people in NY aren’t friendly haven’t been there.

Mr. Miagi is driving the B line. Seriously. I wax on. I loop all the way around the check-in. I go through security. I fly to Reagen. I catch a cab. I call my manager and talk about another trip, call T&T and book flights. I arrive at Dulles, check in, go through security.

The shuttles at Dulles look like giant snow cats on tires instead of treads—something of a mix between a tank and a mini-van on wheels. That is to say: weird.

I eat a chicken taco, get green tea, buy a book. I’ve already got three on me, but I have a phobia—second only to pool drains—of being bored on planes. Which is stupid since I couldn’t stay awake on them to save my life anyway.

In the Dulles Red Carpet Club, the woman at the front desk offers me a drink coupon. “Would you like a drink-—a drink with ALCOHOL?” She says with the hypnotic look of pedophillic men with candy.

“Um, no thanks,” I say, backing away slowly.

***

This is one of those new planes with business class that lies flat. The TVs are the size of my computer monitor. They have 30 movies, TV, games, and books on tape. Holy shit. Clearly this flight needs to be longer so I can fit all of this in.

By the time I eat dinner, watch two movies and write 50 (seriously) e-mails, watch three episodes of 24, eat breakfast, we’re there. I am so not finished.

It’s been a year since I’ve been overseas—by choice—but I’m still jonesin’.

The last time I was in Frankfurt was with Mom on the way to Greece.

This is a weird airport—hard to find flights in. I look around and do the logical thing: ask one of the guys who was sitting in my cabin for help.

“Well, what you do is go to the lounge. Get your pass. Follow me.”

I have a pass.

“Are you traveling for work?” he asks as we walk.

I sigh.

“How often do you get out to Europe?”

“Never,” I say. “I mean, except this time.”

He shows me his international phone simm cards. Advises me never to book hotels—to book apartments instead.

I’m only staying two days, I tell him.

“Oh! And use Skype. See, if you had Skype, I could call you, wherever you are, and say, ‘Hey, want to meet up in Brussels?’”

“Here’s the A gate. Gotta go!” I announce.

The only thing I want to rendezvous with is gate A3.

By the time I get to Florence, I’d like some soup. A shower. A nap.

No such luck.

2007-08-01T19:46:00.000-07:00

St. Lucia: The Drain

My hair has transformed, overnight, into fuzzy brown wool. A veritable Asian afro. In the shower I dump a travel-sized bottle of conditioner on it. I clip it up wet. The ends slump to one side and drip onto my shoulder for an hour.

I have no TV. No internet except at reception. No cell service, air conditioning and no phone except for two unreliable credit card gizmos posted on the bulletin-board style wall in front of the reception shack. There is only a clock on the dresser that intermittently scares the shit out of me by turning itself on to a local French-speaking reggae station.

I take breakfast at the restaurant up the hill. And I mean “hill” quite literally. By the time I reach the top, I’m winded, sweating, and more ready to barf than eat. But then someone puts a basket of toasty baguette slices and fresh banana jam in front of me and I am restored.

Somewhere between baguette and Creole omelet, I am beset by a herd of kittens. People make jokes about this kind of thing. At first I mistake the mother—scrawny and runtish—for one of her litter. She stares at me, eyes huge in her head, and I feed her some omelet. Afterward, her taut belly full with my shared breakfast, one of her kittens begins to suckle as she’s trying to give herself a bath. Isn’t that how it always goes?

On the way back down I see a dead spider on a step, legs folded in arachnid rigor mortis. It’s the size of a tarantula. Now I understand what my taxi driver, Bryos, meant when he called the spider in the car “little.”

There are bugs everywhere. Tiny ants, crawling on the tables, larger ones on the floor. Bees and wasps. And phantom mosquitoes, Ninja-stealthy.

I spend the rest of the day alternating between the hammock, the kitchenette table, and, when I can stand it, a beach towel laid out on the deck. By mid-day I summon the courage to step into the plunge pool. The paint has peeled away in splotches on the bottom forming spooky-looking pock marks and the drain is as ominous as a submerged carnivore. I get in up to my knees and then skitter back out.

It rains without notice in full sunlight. Sometimes I get up and go inside. Sometimes I just lay there, naked from the waist down, and slide my book under the eaves to safety. Rain trickles in crooked paths down the curve of my nape, the small of my back, the arch of my foot. I close my eyes and drift. When I open them again, the rain has stopped and I am hungry.

I take lunch at the restaurant, and dinner, too. And then read some more, looking for tidbits of reality to add to a story that, for many, will be a fairy tale brought, I hope, to plausible life.

On Friday, I’m not sure I can stand it any more. I have made a fine meal for the mosquitoes—which I have yet to actually see. All attempts at natural, aloe-infused repellent have failed. I now believe mosquito-bite scratching rivals sex. It’s time for some Deet Jujitsu.

I take the shuttle to town in the plainest shorts and camisole I own. I saw the town on the drive in; single-room homes with rotting boards and laundry lines strung across the tiny front porch make up the prosperous front of the block. Some of them boast a second story, their balconies precariously supported by thin wooden struts. Tarp and siding shanties line dirt alleys a block from the center of town. Chickens poke through street gutters running with urine.

There is rust everywhere: on crusty plaster, window casements and broken eaves, on the metal roof of the only hotel in town. It is a ramshackle two-story building with peeling white paint and open shutters. It looks out on the square, a fenced-off area replete with brick walkway and a wealth of flowering bushes, trees sprouting red Dr. Seuss flowers lorded over by a tall, sparse fir. Locals loiter on the fence, lean against the gate, call out to familiar others on adjacent street corners.

It is a place, I think, that would be beautiful, except for the evidence of human poverty and neglect. As it is, people sit in dirty t-shirts and ragged shorts—on store stoops, on home porches, on crumbling mossy curbs and steps—watching life go by without them.

I was told there was a mall of sorts near the square. It is the finest building in town, and that isn’t saying so much. Inside, the building is near-silent, like something from a post-apocalyptic movie. The tiny pharmacy—the largest and busiest store in the building—is full of goods imported mostly from the states. A small line waits to consult the pharmacist. I buy Benadryl and bug spray and cortisone cream. I pay with dollars and receive local currency in exchange. I ask where the mall restroom is and a man who does not seem to work there offers to show me the way. I am, as I have been, suspicious of his willingness to help. When I come out he is waiting and my hackles rise, but then he steps around me and I realize he was waiting for the toilet.

What’s wrong with me that I’ve become so much on guard? Truthfully, I’m not sure I would have it any other way; I travel alone and put myself at the mercy of strangers plenty enough. I’ve been called naïve and too trusting before. But I wonder at this new suspiciousness in me.

Down the hallway in the mall is an empty Asian restaurant. Its white-tiled walls look more like a bathroom than a place to eat. Its few tables are empty, the counter sparse, the kitchen beyond it silent except for one lone worker. Farther down there’s a barber shop with two chairs. They’re full and the locals study me with as much interest as I do them. Again, the store is sparse, but at least it looks like they might be having fun. They’re the first smiles I’ve seen.

I’m ready to leave town. I want to leave. Not for the poverty—I’ve seen it in China, in Thailand and most notably in India—but for the air of stagnancy.

I walk past shops filled with cheap clothing and plastic sunglasses, open-air bars as big as a closet stocked with some 10 kinds of rum, past a bank filled full of people, down towards the dock. I’ve got twenty minutes until the shuttle returns.

There’s a restaurant on the harbor, obviously designed for tourists. As I walk past the tiny kitchen toward the bar, one of the girls duly gets up from a stool. She does it with the air of a back alley massage parlor girl trudging out to meet her next client. I just want coffee. Idiotic in the hot weather, but I’m looking for a pick-me-up. She makes it fresh, strong, and loiters nearby as I drink it, saying nothing, looking with arms closed around herself out toward the bay. The dining area is open to the water, characteristic wicker basket lights suspended from naked ceiling beams. There’s a miniature galleon docked just out on the pier. I noticed it now as I watched a line of fat, white Americans waddle in their tank tops and flip flops down the same dock to a tour boat. Suddenly, I feel like a schmuck of a tourist, a predictable American. I quickly pay and leave.

I walk toward the little park lining the water, trying to snap when the breeze lifts the black flag just right. And that’s how I meet the Rasta man.

“I saw you over there,” he said. “Going into that restaurant. I could see from here that you are a spiritual person, and a positive person.”

I raise a brow, wondering what he wants.

“I’ve got a boat. I’ll take you out on the water. Snorkeling. Around the island. On a fish safari if you like, for two hundred dollars. I’m a Rasta Man. Spiritual is my name.” He’s carrying a book about Jesus.

I shake his hand. “You’re bald,” I say.

He grins and we meander toward a picnic table. I’ve still got ten minutes until the shuttle returns. “Yes, I had to cut off my hair.”

He sets down the book and I see that it’s written by Ellen White. He’s a Rasta man toting a Jesus book written by a Seventh Day Adventist. St. Lucia is a strange place.

A girl comes to the table, carrying an aluminum plate. She’s dressed in the uniform of the small supermarket in town. Spiritual greets her and she smiles. “I want that book.”

“I know. You can’t have it,” he says, grinning, as she sits down.

“You see,” he says, “I used to have hair down almost to my knees. But there are so many negative people. People who cannot see the positive in life. And they saw that I had my own boat, and that I had a good business. And one day I went out to my boat, and there was a powder there. And when I touched it, I became very sick.”

I nod. “Sounds like voodoo powder to me.” I know stuff.

The girl is biting into a fried chicken leg. “Mm-hmm,” she intones, intent on her lunch, stuffing a fry chaser in her mouth.

“I became very sick. I tried everything. I went to every doctor. But it was not something a doctor could heal. Because sickness, you see, is a spiritual problem.”

“Hmm-hmm!” the girl says, her mouth full.

“I had aches and pains. My kidney hurt. Finally, I had to cut my hair.”

“Why do Rastafarians not cut their hair?” They remind me, in that sense, of the Sheiks.

“Because our strength is in our hair. We are not to let a razor touch our head.”

“Like Sampson,” I say.

“Like Sampson,” he nods. I study him then, a skinny guy with nubs of black stubble upon his head. If his strength is in his hair, I figure I could probably take him.

“You know Sampson?” he says then, seeming surprised.

“Yes.”

“You know the Bible.”

Well, some.

The girl finishes her fried chicken and asks the Rasta man for his book again. He won’t part with it.

By then, it’s well past time. The shuttle has forgotten me. I’m scorching out in the heat at the picnic table with the Chicken Girl and the Rasta Man. Luckily, there’s a bank of taxis nearby.

The ride is ten minutes back to the old plantation and ten dollars. Taxi rates are exorbitant on this island, as I’m sure gas prices are.

Back at my villa, I strip off the clothing that has somehow melded to my skin. I start to head for the shower but then stop and pull on a towel.

Out on the deck I step onto the second step of the plunge pool, hand clasping the hot aluminum rail. I take another step down, and another, and hitch a breath as cold laps my thighs. The peeling paint wavers beneath the water in grotesque shapes. The drain peers from beneath the shadow of an overhanging tree.

I hurry back out and track wet footprints to the shower.

There is another cat now, no doubt the tomcat. He appears at dinner. He’s got a black splotch on his nose that makes it look dirty. Another cat behind him has ears that turn this way and that, like two radio antennae trying to find a frequency.

I take tea, tuna salad, pumpkin soup, looking directly at the piton, and then out toward the sea. I should go to the beach. I should climb the piton. I should see the turtles.

But I came here to work.

It rains in the afternoon. I read, organize my notes, and lay in the sun. My beach towel looks like a bikini-clad shroud of Turin. Confused roosters from the direction of the forest crow throughout the day and a cow lows in return.

That night a shaq shaq band plays at the restaurant. I ask why it’s called that and the waitress points to the metal cylinder filled with beads that one of the band members is shaking. Shaq shaq.

There’s a couple there with their son, come to hear the band. We end up chatting and I learn that they’re staying not at the estate but at the house of the woman’s father in the forest. They don’t stay long, having only come for a drink. “We’re eating at home,” the woman says. “Dad caught barracuda today.”

After dinner I return down the hill past birds of paradise. The flowers I pay large sums for at home grow as wild and free as dandelions here.

The security guard, Daniel, is waiting at the bottom of the hill outside my villa.

“I want to know,” he says, “Did God know that Adam and Eve would eat the fruit?”

“I suppose he must have known,” I say.

“Then why did he put it there?”

It’s a question I’ve pondered.

“I suppose that if there is no chance to choose wrong, then there is no true morality,” I say. He nods and seems to accept this. I walk to my deck. He holds the gate door for me. “Do you think that Adam and Eve looked on this same moon that we are looking on now, and that Eden was as beautiful as this place?”

“I suppose so,” I say and wish him good night. I go inside my villa until he is gone and the gate is shut after him. Several moments later, I return to my deck.

I stretch out on the hammock and feel vaguely as I did the night in Maine, except rather than avoiding shadows, I know what—or rather who—is there, standing outside the gate. I’m not sure whether I feel annoyed or safe. The cicadas sound like stringed instruments tuning and re-tuning the same note. Like the shaq shaq band with their repeating melodies, playing the same refrain over and over again

Eventually, I go inside and bolt the door.

***

By morning, the cicadas are silent, and the birds are out in force. Their songs sound somehow less sophisticated than their six-legged competitors. But they’re fascinating. A hummingbird hovers beneath the tree outside my villa. Smaller birds perch on my hammock.

Inside the villa, a brown lizard poses on a wooden slat inside my bedroom. Later, when I see a lump on the slat, I think it looks like a fly. But I know it is, in fact, lizard poop. Having had a pet lizard, I know these things.

I have well over 15 mosquito bites and am no doubt damaging my skin laying in the sun without benefit of sunscreen. But I do not burn easily once I start, and though I know I should still put some on, I find I don’t care.

Some time late morning, I trek to registration to drop off postcards and check my e-mail. I’ve just learned that the immediate area around the reception shack is wireless, that I need not hurry on and off the reception guest computer. So I dawdle with my laptop, missing, for just a while, the outside world.

Stephen King has responded to my e-mail about professor Mark.

“Thank you for that blast from the past,” he writes. “I had forgotten the nicknames we had for one another while I was there.” He’s referring to a fact told me by Professor Mark that I relayed to Mr. King in my e-mail: that there were two Mr. Kings at the high school he used to teach at: A Weird Mr. King and a Big Mr. King. Stephen King was the Big one. I understand that he’s quite tall.

During lunch I mention the cicadas, how they seem to sing at night beneath the full moon.

“You’re not the first to say that,” the girl waiting on me says. She gives a strange smile, as though she couldn’t imagine them sounding any other way and I suppose she can’t.

Up the hill. Down the hill. Up to registration. Down to my villa deck. Up to eat. Down to sleep.

After dinner the next night, Daniel is waiting for me again. He’s taken to parking outside my villa. I find it irritating but I don’t have the heart to be mean.

“Would you like to go to town, or climb the piton?” he asks me.

“I went to town. I don’t need anything more now. And I think I won’t climb the piton. I came to work.”

“Is that why you are always writing?”

“Yes. Besides. You work in the post office during the day, you said.”

“I would take off from work for you.”

“I don’t think that would be a good idea.”

“I pray to God that you will return to St. Lucia. When do you think you will come back?”

“I don’t know.”

“Come when you are ready to get married.”

“Why?”

“Because I will be waiting to marry you.”

“Um. How old are you?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“You see, I am much too old for you. And you are much too young for me.”

No matter that this is a boldfaced lie, that I have, in fact, had mad crushes on men (a man) ten years younger than me.

“I will still pray to God for you,” he says.

“Well,” I tell him. “It is always good to pray.”

I walk onto my porch and he comes to push my hammock for a bit before I bid him goodnight and go inside.

Once he has left, I return to the hammock and look out at the ocean. The water is still, silent, fixed by the silver of the moon

***

Pale grey clouds scrape the petit piton. Drops splash rings into the pool. When it passes, the heat comes back in full.

I hurry down the first three steps of the pool and then quickly up to my waist. The water is cool enough to make my heart skip. I plunge in to my neck and stare out toward the drain.

I stay there for several minutes before casually, coolly sauntering up the steps and out.

There is a tree here, growing abundantly on the property, that looks rife with fuschia flowers. But they’re really pink leaves on the tips of the branches. The real flowers are tiny, obscured beneath their flamboyant covers.

At dinner I order fish steamed in banana leaves. I like fish, but really don’t like it steamed. I feed most of it to the cats when no one is looking. And I wonder why I have a veritable feline swarm around my table at every meal.

I take margaritas, too—they make them with fresh time juice here. They’re delicious and after two I find I can stop thinking just a little. By the time I head down the hill I am ready for sleep, or to listen to the cicadas—anything but work, and anything but the melancholy that has plagued me in fits since my arrival.

Daniel waits at the bottom of the hill. I walk to my deck and sit down in my hammock. He sits down in a nearby chair, talks about something or other, pushes my hammock like a swing. He wants to dance, to show me that he knows how to two-step. Instead, I get up and show him out the yard gate.

The next night he brings me a card. He brings me CDs. He says I should come back and marry him. I must leave this place.

By the time I leave at 5am the next morning, the taxi is late. Reception isn’t open yet. The manager has to be fetched from sleep in her villa. She calls a new taxi for me, and by the time it comes I am beyond ready to be gone. I have come to a beautiful place but not found the solitude I wanted or left behind the vulnerability I have felt. I barely say goodbye as I climb into the taxi.

“You should sit in the front seat,” the driver tells me. He is right. He drives like a madman. I am, at first, terrified as he takes winding roads up and down mountain passes, seemingly careening toward the ocean before turning sharply into the mountain, all at 60 miles per hour.

I am going to die here, on this island, away from everyone I know, with a suitcase full of books and a pile of dirty underwear. I am going to die, die, die in the process of getting to the airport on the other side of the island in time.

“I am rushing so we get there in time,” he says.

Suddenly, this strikes me as hilarious. Bryos, who drove me in, came cautiously and gently, waving at friends around each bend. This man drives pell mell in all directions, as though pulled by wild, demon horses. And indeed, I am in a hurry to get home. I have had enough. And I am tired of being such a coward.

I sway right and then left in my seat as he takes curves in the road, caught in the throes of centrifugal force. And in the midst of all that rocking back and forth, the rushing over and around mountains and through tiny towns, I am lulled into strange comfort. Into the knowledge that I am going where I need to go as quickly as possible, driven by a manic angel.

“Yes,“ I say. “Drive quickly.”

2007-07-25T17:06:00.000-07:00

(with non-drug-induced flashbacks to July 18 and 21)
Lincoln to St. Lucia: Open Hearts

Must. Eat... Tuna tomato.

I trudge through my pre-flight ritual. It’s 5am and it hurts to move. My step-dad, still in town and staying at my house, drove me to the airport this morning after a very painful 4:10 alarm. I considered postponing this departure by a day more than once this morning; one day between trips is not wise planning.

But I did love my time in Maine. Here’s my excerpt from my third day at Moosehead Lake:

***
July 18: Greenville, Maine
Fly, Fly Away

By 7:30am I’m sliding into my favorite, now super-grimy cargo pants and loading up my backpack.

I’m going fishing.

Bob, my instructor, is waiting for me in the lodge. The owners need some help finishing a new suite on time for a guest, and he’s on the phone with his brother, asking him to come lend a hand. And then he turns to me.

A bear of a man, he grins and shakes my hand. It disappears in his. This man has set three world records in fly rod fishing and yet here he is, ready to fit me out in waders.

We go into town to a little shop so I can buy a license. We hit a gas shop for Luna bars (for me, not him) and coffee. And then we’re off to the river.

Bob runs a hunting lodge an hour north of here. His wife does the cooking, he leads the fishing and hunting. “I’ve got a group of bikers there right now,” he says. “They came hunting last year and had so much fun they brought their women this year and they’re just riding around all over.”

“So how’d I get lucky enough to get you to come all the way down here?” Despite not being free, I know he can’t be doing it for the money.

“I like to meet people,” he grins. I believe him.

“Here, put these on first,” he says. The waders are huge and Bob chuckles. “You’re just a tiny thing!”

After spending a solid, critical few moments in front of the mirror, butt naked yesterday, I can attest that I am not as tiny as he thinks. But I don’t. He hands me a pair of boots. “Try those on.”
They fit perfectly. I peer into the back of the truck. It’s the only pair. “How’d you know these would fit?”

“I could tell by your voice on the phone.”

Walking stick and rod in hand, we head out into the water and upstream.

I am so frickin’ excited, I could pee my waders.

I have a theory that people who can do this kind of thing with idiot beginners over and over again—or worse, with idiot beginner couples or even full groups—are saints. I would go stark raving mad and kill someone, were it me. But Bob has the patience of a kindergarten teacher as he ties the fly on the line, showing me how the line gets thinner and thinner toward the fly.

We practice casting and mending the line, false casting—and most difficult, keeping an eye on the fly floating down the surface of the river.

“See, the fish don’t want to have to swim against the water. So they hide out behind a rock. Rocks look like that, out there, where the water swells up. See that? And they just wait out there, their fins sort of floating like this and wait for their food to come to them.”

I nod.

“The flies we’re using are supposed to look like these bugs that live in the river.”

“Bugs live in the river.”

“Right. They’re everywhere. They live under rocks. They look like little lobsters.”

“What?”

“And then they come up to the surface and shed their shells and they’re flies now, with these wings. And they sit on the water and dry their wings. That’s what we’re trying to look like.”

Bob wades off toward a rock and comes back with a little tiny something clinging to his finger. “See that? That’s the shell those bugs crawl out of.” And sure enough, it looks like a little lobster.

I will never eat lobster again.

I work on getting a natural-looking float. I work on casting. The line and the fly are so light, it’s harder to sling that poor thread bug out there than it is with a weighted lure.

But it is surprisingly easy to keep track of the fly.

A ripple on the surface. Bob yelps. I start and almost drop the reel.

“There’s one! Did you see it! That was a trout!”

I barely saw it, though I heard it. “That was like, just his lip. How could you tell what it was?”

“I’ve been doing this for 30 years,” he says. And I realize that yeah, that was a stupid question.

It takes me a while to react fast enough; without a quick tug on the line, the hook doesn’t catch. This is quite different from eating cookies on the deck of a boat while herrings lay gored on the bottom of the ocean in Alaska, waiting for halibut to come swallow them whole.

“There’s one!” The line flinches. I react—too slowly.

I swear a few times, but Bob doesn’t seem to mind. He swears, too. We share a cup of coffee from his thermos.

“She got it kind of sweet today,” he comments. “There’s one!”

I almost fall over.

Another guy in a vest and waders comes by, asks how the fishing is. I want to laugh at him and explain, if he could not tell, that I’m just trying to keep from sinking my fly. The other guy pulls out a camera to show us a trout he caught in this very spot yesterday. He introduces himself to Bob. Bot tells him his name.

“Oh. I know who you are,” the guy says. It’s quite obvious he’s an admirer.

We go upstream.

“Now here’s a bunch of fish that don’t know you’re here yet. I want you to cast out there, in that lane there.” And, surprisingly, I do.

“There’s a bunch of fish here, I can see ‘em,” he says.

I narrow my eyes. “How can you see them?” I know he’s done this forever, but as far as I know he doesn’t have x-ray vision. He hands me his polarized glasses.

He has x-ray vision.

“There’s one!” I jerk the line and reel it in.

“What is it what is it whatisit?!” I demand. It’s a wriggly little something.

“Well look at that. It’s a little salmon,” Bob says, lifting it up. I lean over and peer at it.

“Now, when you take the hook out, you just turn them over like this—“

I reach for the fish, to hold it upside down. It squirms out from between my fingers. Bob picks it up, turns it back over. “See, we turn it upside down because the fish is like, ‘What the hell is going on? I’ve never been like this before.’” And sure enough, it holds still.

It takes a pair of clamps to get the hook out, but then we’ve sent junior on the way.

It’s overcast and getting chillier. It’ll rain for most of the day, Bob says. I can feel it, seeping like water into my waders. I wonder if I should have eaten more than a Luna bar; my heart has started to flutter.

I catch another little salmon and we turn it lose. After another hour, my wrist is stiff and my heart is flapping as much as those slippery little salmons. I wonder if being recently declared anemic (again) has anything to do with it.

“What time is it, about?”

Bob shrugs, “Probably time to go.”

Back at the truck, my cargos are wet inside the waders. Aha! I’m not crazy after all. I slip into socks, dry shoes. Bob puts the gear away and hands me the fly to keep. I’m really touched by this, somehow.

“You should come out to the lodge some time. You’d have fun!”

“Do you teach women to hunt?”

“Sure!”

“Women by themselves?” He’s talked a lot about women coming with their husbands.

“Well,” he hesitates. “It’s been a while. But that don’t matter. And you don’t have to hunt. There’s a lot more to harvesting animals than just shooting them. You could learn a lot.”

I add this to my mental list of Things To Do Before I Die. I ticked one off today, might as well add a new one.

“So when you go hunting with guys, do they know how to shoot?”

“Well, some of them are more experienced than others.”

“What do you think of Cheney peppering his friend hunting?”

Bob says there’s a lot that we don’t know about that—where the friend was, if Cheney could see him. “That happens more often than you know, getting peppered. Sometimes people I take out pepper me.”

“They do??”

“Sure. And then I say ‘holy son of a gun!’ and then I go have a little talk with them.’”

I sure wouldn’t want Bob having a little talk with me.

Back at the lodge, we sit down for coffee. Bob’s hanging out to be social. I’m trying to warm up. By the time we part, he hands me a coin from his pocket that reads: “With God all things are possible.”

I add it to the fly in my backpack.

***

Having never logged the rest of the Maine trip, let me sum it up here:

After leaving Moosehead/Greenvill, I drove to Deer Isle. Deer Isle is a tiny little mist-shrouded island on the coast just south of Bar Harbor. Getting to Deer Isle required nearly four hours of drive-time and a trip across a particularly frightening suspension bridge. It was a newer one, built right alongside the old one—one my GPS system was apparently unaware of; it literally showed my car driving across an expanse of water the entire time I was on it.

Suffice it to say I wasn’t thrilled about the bridge—or the causeways that connects Deer Isle to Blue Hill… or the one connecting smaller parts of Deer Isle to the main island.

Here is a little-known fact about me. Among my list of fears are:

Natural water bodies
Heights
The dark
Swimming pool drains.

There are others, too, weirder than these, but these are the usual suspects. At any rate, combining the fear of heights with the fear of natural water bodies just does not make bridge or causeway-crossing in the evening one of my favorite activities.

Anyway, I do finally find the Deer Isle Pilgrim’s Inn and decide then and there that I will prolong my stay in Maine by two more days (leaving me only a day to regroup before I leave for St. Lucia). So my two-day sojourn on Deer Isle becomes three, and I spend my last bonus evening in Maine tucked in the lovely Bar Harbor Bass Cottage Inn, reading through the last of the books that I brought with me.

During my time in Deer Isle, I read, occasionally drive the tiny island in search of lunch, and take dinner at the Whale’s Rib Tavern.

A few highlights from the Pilgrim’s Inn: watching the husband in the couple that owns the inn ably carry my book-laden suitcase up three flights of stairs before realizing that he has a prosthetic leg. I learn later he lost his leg below the knee to a bad sprain that never healed properly. Add losing a leg to a bad sprain to my list of fears.

Also, deciding that my attic room in the Pilgrim’s Inn is haunted. This is a thought that dismays me only insofar as I do not relish the idea of waking up and having the shit scared out of me upon seeing an ectoplasmic face staring at me in the dark. This never happens, but I still believe it could have.

My last day at the Pilgrim’s Inn I move to a ground-level room—not because of the ghosts but because of the new mortal tenants who have already booked room 14 for the night. The full logue of that day follows:

***

July 21: Deer Isle, Maine
Pick Up

I can’t sleep in. I think it’s the champagne I’ve become so fond of that makes it hard to sleep. Or drinking anything before bed, for that matter. I roll out of bed, put on my Red Sox cap and go downstairs for breakfast.

Apparently, I’ve turned into a guy.

Later, the maid shows up to help me make the transition to Room 3, which I am certain will be less haunted than this one. I warn her we ought to get Tony, since my bags—splitting at the zipper with dirty laundry, shoes, and bogarted Gilcrest and Soames toiletries—are heavy. I did, at least, keep a stack of books out of them.

“He’s not around,” she says. “But I can help you.”

I frown. “These are really heavy. If you’ll just take the small one—“

“I can take the big one. I grew up on a farm, hauling bales of hay.”

I accept and never tell her I’m from Nebraska.

The tiny library across the street is open today, from 11-3, I believe. I’m excited about this. With only a few select hours on Saturday and two hours on Wednesday (it used to be open for a couple hours Monday, too, but that part of the sign has since been covered up), the opening of the Deer Isle library seems to rank up there with the occurrence of partial eclipses.

Deer Isle—the little main town part, at least, where the Pilgrim’s Inn is—isn’t even as long as a football field. I walk a half block to the art gallery, which also doubles as an espresso bar, consider pre-work tea or coffee, but then just settle for perusing jewelry. I peer into the windows of the ice cream parlor next door—which doubles as a snack joint—and then head to the library.

It’s closed. It’s just past noon now and I was mixed up on the times; it was only open from 9-12. I pound on the door and shout out that I’m not there for the newest Harry Potter, that it’s safe to let me in.

I get nothing.

I go back to the ice cream/snack shop and order a tuna sandwich.

In an unannounced appearance reminiscent of Sammy Hagar at the Cabo Wabo Cantina, the sun has come out. I’m sitting on the back deck of the inn, eating a little tuna with my mayo, reading David Rohl’s “Legend” (fascinating book) in camo shorts and a camisole. I bake until I can’t take it any longer, retreating to the cool air of the inn study. I spend the rest of the afternoon studying the Sumerian similarities of Gilgamesh’s epic and Noah’s flood, dissecting the meaning of the Hebrew “rosh,” and pouring over the geography of northwestern Iraq.

By the time I hear diners entering the Whale’s Rib restaurant one level below the narrow staircase just outside the study, I realize it’s almost time to eat. Though the last thing I want to do is add any food to the pool of mayo sitting in my stomach, I’m already getting hungry.

Ten minutes later I’m at the restaurant bar, doing my best to infect one of my as-of-yet unworn tops with the stench from my mid-day sunning. The massage oil of three days ago has long congealed in the roots of my hair, making it amenable to keeping just about any shape I mold it in. I can’t remember where my makeup is but I’m just feeling good that I found my toothbrush after the move. Not that I used it.

So, given all of this, doesn’t it just go to follow that someone should try to pick me up?

The fellow in the middle of the bar is trying to order his beer and dinner to be delivered onto the deck. I’m trying to get my hands on some of tonight’s special sushi appetizer. He orders one, too. I really don’t know how the conversation started—something to do with my comment on feeling weird eating sushi dipped in pesto and with a fork (I’m pretty sure I violated several international laws in the process), or his telling me about his summer home here, in Maine and his winter home… in Maine, or how he’s a professor of government, apparently, on his summer leave. At any rate, we ended up talking and he never did take his dinner outside. The conversation went like this:

Me: I took government. My teacher had a twitch. I didn’t get very good grades. Maybe that’s why I have to get all my political news from The Daily Show.
Professor M: You’re funny!
Me: And even then I don’t get it. My friend interprets it for me.
Professor M: How long are you in town?
Me: Wanna buy my book?
Professor M: (Looking at the cover on the bookmark.) I’m not religious.
Me: Wanna buy my book?

Professor M: So what have you done in Maine?
Me: Eat.
Professor M: You’re funny!
Me: I had to have a rib-eye last night to neutralize all the lobster. And soak up all the booze. Oh, I went to Moosehead Lake.
Professor M: You went to Moosehead Lake?
Me: I went fly fishing.
Professor M: You did?! Look at you!
Me: I caught two salmons. (I measure them out on the bar. They’ve grown since the last telling.)
Professor M: How long are you here? Want to go to dinner?
Me: We’re at dinner. And sorry. I’m stalking Stephen King tomorrow.
Professor M: He was my high school English teacher. He wasn’t famous yet.
Me: When was this?
Professor M: Late 70s. I’m sorry I’m so old.
Me: How old are you?
Professor M: 48.
Me: What are you doing talking to me? Frickin’ pedophile.
Professor M: I’ll take you to dinner. To my favorite place.
Me: I’m going to Bar Harbor.
Professor M: When?
Me: Right now. I mean, tomorrow.
Professor M: I just meet the woman of my dreams and you’re leaving tomorrow!
Me: (Stare.)

He asks about Nebraska. He thinks it must be conservative, Bush-loving country. He tells me he’s very liberal. Very non-religious. The bartender asks for my order. I waffle about a drink—and settle for a glass of champagne, asking her if I can buy a split to take to my room and drink later.

Professor M: I’ll buy you champagne.
Me: I just remembered I hate champagne.
Professor M: Think you’ll be back? We can go sailing.
Me: I hear the Baja peninsula is great for that.
Professor M: Let’s go.
Me: Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior?

***

That evening I jot a note to Stephen King, to tell him I ran into a former student of his. As one of my MySpace friends I figure he probably wants to hear from me.

The trip home is long and delayed. My flight to Lincoln from O’Scare is cancelled. I fly into Omaha and Scott, who knows this drill very well, picks me up.

Two days later, unpacked and repacked with fresh underwear and provisions, here I am: St. Lucia-bound.

While Maine was, as my character, Clay, would say, a reclamation trip, this is only a clamation trip. That is to say, I haven’t been to St. Lucia before.

I expect to get a lot of work done on the five hour flight from Chicago to San Juan—but fall into conversation with my seatmate, an engineer named Kyle.

You know how you meet people sometimes, and you just take to one another well? It happens like that. I guess it helps when, in watching an in-flight version of Blade of Glory, you realize you’re both laughing idiotically at the same parts of the movie and randomly snorting in your ginger ale.

We spend the three hours after the movie talking about failed marriages, work, things we like to drink. We share my roasted veggie sandwich and I show him pictures from India and Singapore and Maine.

I spend most of my four-hour layover in San Juan roaming the airport, looking for anything to eat that is not fast food. I have to say, I do not like this airport. I do not like the food options. I do not like the bathrooms, which are dirty. I do not like the American Eagle seating area, which is too air-conditioned. I do not like them, Sam I am.

Arriving in Castries, St. Lucia, at 10pm, there is no Air Jamaica rep to arrange land transportation as there is supposed to be. This is really bothersome, considering how tired I am, how very muggy it is even at this hour, how small and congested the open-air receiving area is.

“Do you need transport?” one lady asks. She’s with the Ladera, which I remembered was the place I originally wanted to go after I had already booked with the Stonefield Estate. She finds me a cab driver. I climb into his Mercedes SUV in a daze.

Half-way out of the airport property, it occurs to me that I don’t know for sure if this man is a cab driver. That there is no meter. That I am, in fact, more paranoid of late about being on my own than usual. I am beset by images of kidnapping, being sold off, of being raped and pillaged.

Especially pillaged.

I ask him where his identification is. The meter. The note from his mother. He reminds me that there is a “TX” on his license plate, that they do not use meters in St. Lucia, and shows me the insignia on his shirt. And I remember that I have read these details in one of my travel books and so stand down.

“You’re so far away,” he says, and invites me to the front seat. His name is Bryos, he says, giving me his card. It looks official.

We wind along the mountain road, on the wrong side, as he explains that St. Lucia, though independent, is part of the British Commonwealth. I’m not sure of the implications of this, but I’m too tired to care. He points out the rainforest, the site where they filmed Dr. Doolittle, the town named after the sulfur that runs in the water. The towns are mostly comprised of shanties. The kids are dancing in the broken concrete of the street, a boombox blaring somewhere.

“It’s the summer now, so the children are not in school,” he explains. I nod, but am still struck by the level of poverty I see.

And I have seen poverty in many forms: in Chinese communes with nothing but a concrete floor and drainpipe in the middle for a kitchen, in the sprawling city laundries where citizens of Mumbai go to beat their clothes in a trough, in the cardboard houses built on Bangkok city sidewalks, and the colorful saris of women splashed like flowers across a dumpster as they foraged for food with the pigs in Delhi.

I ask about crime and Bryos shrugs. “Anywhere you have drugs, you have crime.” I ask where the drugs come in from, and he says Venezuela, mostly. “There is the ganja, of course, but the crime is mostly surrounding the cocaine. Do you understand?”

I learn that the locals speak Creole patois. That they do not dislike Americans or even George W. “Americans are our friends. They are the tourists. They are very open—they will talk about anything. How can we blame them for the actions of the president?” he says. “Do you understand?”

Yes, I understand, though I don’t point out that we’re the ones who voted him into power.

We pass through Cannaries, where, on Fish Friday, vendors come out with shellfish and lobster, hawking them in the street. Where dances turn into “jump-ups.”

“You should go to Fish Friday. Do you understand?”

“I don’t know anyone.”

“You know me.”

And so does everyone else. Cars honk and people seated inside plywood bars lean out of paneless windows and wave at my escort.

All this time, the cicadas and crickets have been filling the open windows with a chorus more musical than their state-side counterparts. And I should know; the same creatures serenaded my acreage every April, but they never sounded like this. They have the voices of birds here, tuning and retuning their notes to perfection in a symphony of song.

By the time we arrive at the Stonefield Estate Villas, I have cited a spider in the car. “Ack!” I say, pointing.

“Oh, that,” he shrugs. “It isn’t a big one”

Reception has closed for the night already, and after some confusion one of the security guards produces a key. After paying Bryos and tipping him handsomely for the cultural introduction, one of the guards helps me carry my suitcase to my villa.

The villa is simple but stunning. The front porch faces the Petit Piton—the smaller of the two signature mountains of St. Lucia. It drops dramatically down to the ocean, visible beyond the tropical forest that sprawls just below my villa.

“You are here alone?” he asks, squinting at me. Again, the usual disconcertion. I hate to admit the truth, but everyone will soon know it.

“Yes, alone. I came to write a book. About Eve.”

“How about one about Daniel—Daniel in the lion’s den?” he says, introducing himself. I smile slightly. He leaves my bag inside, shows me the light switches, where the shower—a fenced-in area open to the stars—is. I wonder if it’s a hint. The villa is rustic and open-air, with slats in the doors and windows that allow the sounds of every musical bug in along with the breeze.

“You are not married?” he queries after that.

I am tired, sticky and stinky. No, not married, I tell him. I am divorced, traveling the honeymoon capital of the world. And tired. And did I mention tired?

I tip him outrageously mostly because I have no change and want him to go away.

“Would you like to climb the pitons? Or go into town? Just tell me what day,” he offers, energized. He tells me he works at the post office, but would take off to take me there if I liked, but please not to tell anyone here he has another job. I tell him I’ll think about it but for now I’m tired.

When he finally leaves, I shut the outside door and turn on the security lights. Stripping off sticky clothes, I take a shower beneath the night sky.

Refreshed at last, I step out onto the deck and gingerly edge along the stone path that frames my pool, peering down at the forest below. The ocean lies beyond it, covered in a wash of denim-colored moonlight.

I edge back to the safety of the deck and slide onto the hammock. Venus and the moon are bright in the sky. The cicadas have coalesced into an old fashioned hymn-sing. Every now and then I hear the ch-ch-ch of some insect that reminds me of yard sprinklers.

Air brushes my back through the cords of the hammock and I wonder if Eden was like this: green and womblike and filled full of sounds.

I feel my face crumple and cover my eyes with a hand as the wind rustles the banana trees and the cicadas sing to God.

2007-07-10T17:08:00.000-07:00

Chicago to Lincoln: End of Days

I planned to eat breakfast in bed, maybe in front of a movie. But there seems to be something inherently wrong with watching movies in the morning—something too decadent in a city like Chicago where one could otherwise wander, visit the museum, walk by the river…

Shop on Michigan Avenue.

I’ve used hand cream on my face and find it moisturizes much better than wimpy face lotions. And no wonder, if it’s strong enough for cracked, dry hands. We should all use such potions. I have a girlfriend, a former queen, no less, who used to use Crisco. I’ve used virgin olive oil, myself.

I am secretly having a ball on my forced retreat, and the rest has made me philosophical.

The retired major I recently met on my last trip is seeing more and more cases of people worried about the end of days; the Mayan calendar, I Ching, and Doomsday clocks all point to the same end date in 2012. Apparently this is causing some anxiety. Christians alone contend that the date is unknowable, though that hasn’t stopped some theologians from making predictions (and thereby ruling out that particular slot on the calendar).

At any rate, if the world is going to end, I have only a few things left to achieve: to further share my observances of the world and philosophies on God with others and posterity. To possibly have children (note to self: must find sperm). To better enjoy moments away from the moving sidewalk of life. To learn, perhaps, to even be still.

For as frustrated as I was yesterday on the tarmac, I am grateful. In the glass atrium of the Hyatt I take breakfast sitting by a stretch of water filled with trees that seem to float. As Norah Jones’ “Come Away With Me” soars through the steel rafters, I think, only distantly, about the tab for my pimped-out stranding, but more immediately about how grateful I am. And in that moment of quietude, it seems to me as though God himself has said: “Savor.”

And I do, starting not least of all with the food. This wrap is amazing. I bite through eggs and sausage and think of the 1996 Miss Universe who, when asked what she would do if she had only one day left to live, said, “I would eat everything. Twice.”

An hour later I’m back at O’Hare. I anticipate an eight-hour workday but lo, there is room on the 3:30 flight back home. I’m almost disappointed.

I work for three hours until time to go to the gate. I board, and almost feel a bit sad that I’m going home so early.

And then a storm hits and we sit out on the tarmac like idiot birds in the middle of a lightning storm.

A long line of idiot, metal birds.

“There were more than 100 planes on the runway trying to leave at the same time yesterday,” the attendant says.

I don’t care. I’m tired of this. I want to go home. The woman next to me sighs and throws up her arms. I offer to buy her a drink when we’re airborne.

The black wall of clouds and lightning blows through and the rain has hardly stopped spitting when the attendant rushes down the aisle, shoving people into their seats. We take off before ground control can even fart in our general direction.

I buy my seatmate a drink. She’s on her way to Lincoln for training, from New York. We talk and talk.

By the time we hit the tarmac, Lincoln has never looked so beautiful to me. It’s perhaps 80, the sun is shining and I am tired but blessed.

2007-07-09T16:53:00.000-07:00

Chicago: A Moment in Time

I stayed up too late to spring out of bed at 6:30am, (I went, frantically, into that good night around 2:30am) but slept fitfully enough that the alarm didn’t scare the bejeezus out of me. It’s almost an elegant awakening, refined and quiet, this tossing and turning business.

Uh huh.

I stumble into the bathroom and wonder which of my two outfits to wear today: cowboy Jane or Chinagirl Chow?

I opt for Chow, without the fake ponytail that is too dark to match my fading red highlights and wonder why I lugged my shitkickers here in my carry-on. Yesterday I realized I forgot eyelash adhesive and while I might consider lash glue a necessity, I doubt the Westin keeps it at the front desk for guests.

No boots, no fake hair, no lashes. I feel so naked.

I meet up with Eric, one of Nav’s sales guys, downstairs. Eric was one of the infamous threesome of the New York City cab accident. Having had a recent kidney transplant, he gets more and more healthy-looking each time I see him. Today I even swear he has a tan. We eat breakfast, talk about the show, Demon, the upcoming book. I will feel like a heel later for not asking him more about his family and job, but am so focused on learning more and more about the sales and marketing future of Demon that I forget. Focus, Gallup calls it.

Obsession, I say.

At a table behind me Danielle, the media relations manager, is sitting with Sharon Hinck, author of The Restorer. What an odd thing, sitting over breakfast discussing book sales and numbers, reminding myself I want to meet Sharon before we leave breakfast since we’re going to be signing together later.

Is this really my life?

At the convention center I stand in line for my badge. The bag of a man in a western jacket in front of me reads: Hartline Literary. “Hi,” I say. “Joyce Hart is my agent.” I befriend an author next to me, a writer of WWII historical fiction, and we exchange propaganda. I know her later as Tricia Goyer. I am such a newbie I don't realize that the woman's practically a legend. At the window, the volunteer who helps print her badge asks her if she’s signing and Tricia pulls a book from her bag like a magic rabbit, asking who to make it to.

Oh, she’s good.

Badge in hand, I skip over to hug Joyce, standing at another window, and then jot down to the exhibition floor and Nav’s substantial booth. It’s larger than the BEA one complete with larger desk in front, tables in the back and two semi-private meeting areas. It’s nearly ten o’clock and marketing friends at Nav are setting up my poster, pulling out boxes of Demon.

Suddenly, Greg Stier from Dare2Share appears like a magician. I am so happy to see him, to ask about his new book—he, too, has some with him and signs one for me on the spot. I ask him to check with his movie director friend re: Demon, the movie. I think that would be uber-cool.

By the time I have my pen out, my bookmarks out, and before I can slip from my sneakers into my heels, there’s a line at the counter. I abandon the heels and sign in bare feet: books for bookstores, churches and their libraries, ministries, spouses of ministry workers, kids of bookstore owners. (I have a sneaking suspicion more than a few of these will end up on Amazon.com’s new and used list for sale.) I meet people from the south, from L.A., from Norway, , New York, Florida, Idaho, Togo, South Africa, the U.K., Korea. Members of the sales team help pull books from the boxes in shifts, slip bookmarks into each one as they hand them to me.

“I’ll call in and join discussions with book clubs,” I say. “I’ll send you posters, shelf-talkers, my shar pei.” I point out my website on the bookmark, my e-mail address. I answer questions about the book, myself, where I live, how I got my name. Will I do online interviews? Yes! Will I do radio? Absolutely. Camy Tang stops by and we take a picture together. That girl is so cute. Lincoln author Steph Whitson stops by and tells me I clean up good (she’s never seen me with makeup on.) I tell her I actually bathed for this. People comment on my eyelashes in the author’s picture and some even tell me I'm pretty. I remind them that I’m currently wearing a gob of cosmetics to make up for my lack of eyelash glue.

I never stop; there is a line. I sign and write and chat and take pictures. I must be dreaming. “How’re you holding up?” one of our sales guys asks. I don’t know how to tell him that I’m high, that this is the greatest feeling I’ve ever had. How does one explain the most gratifying and fleeting moment of a life?

Two and a half hours of my life disappear before the faces and name badges, the signatures (“she signs in hot pink!” one gal says, delighted). I stop to slurp water only twice, to shake hands with a couple Korean publishers.

And then there are only four books left. “These are the last four,” I say, looking at them as one looks at the last woefully wonderful spoons of the best crème brulee of her life, wishing there was more. The end of the line slumps off.

And then they’re all gone. I’ve signed all 200 shipped by the publisher. My back is sore. I’m hungry, thirsty and probably have bad breath.

I could do it all again in a second.

Joyce, my agent, has been there through the last half hour, waiting for me. We go to lunch; she’s buying. I ought to eat a salad, some chicken. But I’m celebrating and order a hotdog and chips. I’m so happy. The hotdog is happy inside me. I return to the booth to help set up for the next set of authors, and one of the sales team gestures me toward the semi-private conference room. I show up, and two men rise to shake my hand. “We’re going to sell your book in South Africa,” they say, and ask me to sign a book. I do it in a daze, offer to round up some more bookmarks.

***

On the Atlanta airport tarmac, we’re waiting on O’Hare. Of course.

We sit for three hours.

They’re selling Demon in South Africa.

As we finally take off, I strike up a conversation with my row mate. I buy myself a Cape Cod. I do not like Finlandia vodka, but it’s all there is. And I feel entitled. (I have no idea yet just how entitled I feel.)

Outside my window, a ceiling of stratus clouds has crash-tilted into a range of cotton. It whispers lightning like secrets into giant plumes of white. I want to celebrate. To eat a steak and a giant baked potato. To call my friends and tell them that I love them. The clouds are albino thunderheads and I swear I’ve never seen them so closely or well-formed. We descend past misshapen warriors with hard, glowing edges; I’ve never seen the clouds like this—their auras white-hot. And I think I could die and all would be right in the world.

We land and. I’ve got enough time for Panini en route to F5. The plan: Panini for now—steak dinner in Lincoln.

At F5, I’m just picking at a chicken Panini and humus when the gate announces the flight is cancelled.

I fold up my dinner and head to the Dead Carpet. The lady at the desk comes up with… nothing. Nothing until the same 8:20 flight tomorrow night.

I stare at her, uncomprehending.

“I’m an author,” I say.

She stares back.

“I’m a 1K?”

She’s unmoved.

There is no other flight—not to Omaha, Denver, KC, Minneapolis, or Siberia. Not on United or any other airline. She hands me a coupon for some unfamiliar inn and tells me where to catch the shuttle.

I schlep past four-hour customer service lines down the stairs toward the bag claim and transport curb, which I am totally unfamiliar with in this ant farm called O’Hare (is it legal to leave?).

Outside, I cannot find the shuttle. The taxi line is an hour long. I call the hotel and ask what restaurants they have.

“Uh. We have a Denny’s nearby.”

That is the last straw. I march in the rain to the Airport Hilton and slap the counter guy with my Hilton Honors card. I demand a room. He come up with a big, fat… nothing. I ask for a suite. Nothing. I beg him to call other Hiltons. Nada.

I signed 200 books today. I lived a dream. I am not going down without a fight. I pull out my Hyatt card and call for a reservation—anywhere. The lady on the phone books me at the Hyatt Regency downtown. I ask the Hilton bellman to call me a cab. He offers a car service. "Anything," I tell him. I just don’t want to stand in the rain for an hour.

A green town car shows up 20 minutes later and whisks me off to the Hyatt. I phone my Dad inside the car.

“I signed all the books, Daddy,” I tell him. “There was a line and everything.”

“Good girl.”

“I’m going to the Hyatt. I’m stuck here.”

“Good, baby. Just go inside and have some room service. Don’t walk around,” he says. “It’s Chicago, after all.”

At 37, I’m still his little girl.

The doorman at the Hyatt asks me how I am.

I grunt.

“Long flight?”

“Tarmac. Hungry.”

“What for?”

“Steak.”

“The chophouse just closed,” he says, “But Gibson’s is open until 1am.” He takes me up to the bell desk, keeps my bottle of water for me. I check in, throw my cold panini into a trash can. Then I’m in back down in the luggage elevator and the doorman sends me off in a magical taxi cab to steak paradise.

My cabbie is the strangest man. An African American fellow with a spacey, lifeless falsetto. There’s a white rabbit sitting next to him and a strange grinning cat smoking a doobie in the rear-view mirror.

At Gibsons the valet guys grin at me. The hostess smiles.

Today was the realization of a 24-year dream. Tonight is celebration, a diversion planned by providence.

I order a split of White Star. Blue cheese salad. A bone-in ribeye. A giant baked potato. I eat and write. There is no husband, no S.O., no token pretty boy sitting across from me. There is only me and this seems somehow fitting; I alone saw those long, last hours of writing through the night before the morning of my deadline as I dashed off the final 84 pages of my manuscript. I order another split of champagne. The waiter puts the little baby-sized bottle in a large water glass full of ice. I take out my camera and snap a shot of the miniature ice bucket.

On the way back to the hotel, the stone buildings and cathedrals of Chicago’s downtown remind me of Zurich by night. I’m so glad I’m here. I’m so glad I took my pen and thereby you, vicariously, with me. I wish you could see the nightscape at that moment, half-dazed and sleep-deprived as I am, drunk on more than champagne.

At the Hyatt I call Scott. I’m feisty because I'm so tired and will have no recollection what I say tomorrow. I crash out and give myself the greatest indulgence of all:

I sleep in.

2007-07-08T16:15:00.000-07:00

Lincoln to Atlanta: White Rabbit

I pull around the house in a fog, knowing I ought to pack, wondering why I stayed up so late, thinking I’ve got to overcome this Amazon.com rank obsession.

I wrote a book. People can buy it.

I give a mad giggle that scares the dog.

Tomorrow I’ll sign my book at the International Christian Retail Show and shamelessly hand out bookmarks to anyone who will take one.

It’s real. Like Pinocchio, I’m a real boy—I mean, writer.

I can’t believe it, and keep waiting for some second shoe to drop.

***

The airport is busier than I’ve seen it in months. Perhaps ever. Allegient is flying to Vegas and everyone in line is wearing shorts and flipflips.

Upstairs I eat the requisite tuna tomato and a cup of vegetable soup.

This is the first log I’ll put up in months, but that isn’t to say I haven’t gone anywhere or haven’t logged. Au contraire. It’s that the logs have been incomplete, like brittle lost scrolls, with little bits missing and only conjecture to fill them in.

I can tell you with certainty, however, that in the last six months I’ve been to Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Kalamazoo, Fayettville (AKA “Walmart town”), Ann Arbor (Borders town), and New York City. I got in a cab accident in New York City while attending Book Expo America—which is where I got a copy of The Butt Book signed by author Tosca Reno (“Who do I make it out to?” she asked. “Tosca,” I said.). I also got Sex for Dummies signed by Doctor Ruth, just to see if she really knows her stuff.

***

Downstairs in the check-in line, I turned around just in time to see one of those priests from Our Lady of Guadalupe.

Can I just say that I find these priests, in their crisp black robes and manly skirts like Japanese martial arts guys, extremely masculine and more than a little sexy? This particular priest is weathered, like Clint Eastwood. Upstairs in the gate area, he’s reading his Bible, his lips moving in silence. I imagine he’s saying a kick ass prayer over this flight and feel safer than usual, not to mention a little turned on.

I think of handing him a bookmark. Of telling him that I like to read my Bible, too, that I write Christian fiction, but I’m star struck and tongue-tied. So I just peer at him sidewise from beneath my bangs.

These have to be the most virile priests on the planet. All of them are broad-shouldered, athletic men with military haircuts. They look like soldiers. I wonder if they’ve been doing spiritual warfare. They’re sexy men of God. I even have it on good authority that these priests sometimes enjoy a holy pint at Lazlo’s.

Preparing to board, I run into Sara Pipher, just fresh from Maui (I hate her). She asks me where I’m off to.

“A Christian thing, to sign books,” I say, glancing sidelong at the priest.

I can practically hear her gaze taking in my Cinco de Mayo skull necklace, my purple-black nail polish, the serpent ring coiling about my finger.

“Uh huh.”

On board the plane, the priest passes my seat and I stare at him, mute, stars in my eyes.

After takeoff, I feel guilty perusing Victoria’s Secret in my aisle seat. That priest might be sitting within viewing distance. I don’t want him looking at Giselle Bunchen in a bra. I put the catalogue away and take out Crate and Barrel instead.

The plane has no ice. The stewardess reminds every single seat as she serves drinks. I accept a mini-me bottle of water and fall asleep, my head bobbing three directions it was never supposed to go.

***

There’s a new food option in Chicago O’Hare’s B terminal, toward B 1-5. Tepanade is a Mediterranean café complete with paninis, salads, wraps. Your side can be pasta, couscous or hummus. I give the Portobello veggie Panini a whirl (which isn’t a good choice since I’ve just learned I’m officially anemic) with hummus on the side. It comes out hot from the Panini grill—the hottest sandwich I’ve ever had—but I can’t stop eating it, picking it apart, dipping it in hummus. It is the tastiest Panini I’ve ever had and for sure the best thing I’ve ever eaten at O’Hare. By the time I finish I’m a pesto-y, hummus-y, olive oily happy girl.

As I’m eating a nun sits down opposite me in the seating area (you can’t take food into the Dead Carpet Club). She’s got a polar fleece vest over her grey habit. She’s wearing a rosary over a bouquet of hardware (keys, chains, handcuffs) at her waist. She reminds me of a medieval pantler—or prison guard.

What is it with all the holy people today?

At the Dead Carpet I check e-mail, my website, my Amazon ranking (I wrote a book!). At $6 an hour internet here is a rip-off, but I do it anyway.

And then I hurry to my gate to catch my flight to Atlanta.

You’ll never believe this: my flight out of purgatory—I mean, O’Hare—is delayed. The United robot calls me on my cell phone (we’re on a first name basis) to let me know. So I slide into the other B-concourse RCC and proceed to pay another $6 an hour to shop online. And then, realizing that the delay time got moved up, I pack up in a panic and run to the gate.

There’s a guy at the gate that I ran into at the RCC counter earlier. We end up waiting on the plane so we loiter like waifish orphans and he asks me what I do for a living. I tell him I write books and give him enough bookmarks for his neighborhood. He has all kinds of questions after that, and I’m suddenly reminded of something author Jon Konrath (Whiskey Sour) wrote in an article: that people want to talk to authors because they seem like celebrities.

And I see a little bit of what he means, which is so weird. Because, you know, I was an author before—just not of published fiction. What is it about getting an elaborate lie published that makes people look at you with wide eyes?

Who cares? It’s frickin’ cool!

All the while I’m talking with this guy, I’m scanning the gate area. Surely there are others here going to ICRS. Maybe they’ve seen Demon in the NavPress catalogue. I peruse intent, book-holding forms for the familiar flaming cover. I’m desperate to fulfill the book-sighting fantasy I talked about in my Novel Journey interview: http://noveljourney.blogspot.com/2007/07/author-interview-tosca-lee.html.

But it looks like the fantasy will wait for another day.

***

We sit on the plane, which has ice but no AC. We have no pilot either.

I’m reading I, Eve, an account of Eve (of apple-eating fame) written with in 60s jargon with occasional play on words by what must surely be a shroom-chewing bibliophile. It won’t qualify as my favorite book ever, but anything on the subject matter seems to spawn ideas.

***

Atlanta airport is a silly place. When I called the Link shuttle service from O’Hare to tell them I was delayed, they told me to go to the red south terminal and head out door S5. Running around this rabbit hole, I wonder if a red terminal even exists. I see blue, yellow, white. North. East. This place is packed. It’s like some bad dream after watching a Sci Fi channel Twilight Zone marathon and eating pickles—that is to say, trippier than a shroom-chewing bibliophile.

Finally I find S5. I get on the shuttle, hear a pair of people talking behind me on the ride to the Westin. One of them is a writer here for ICRS. The other owns a Christian bookstore in San Diego. I plaster them both with bookmarks.

And so it begins.

2007-04-12T22:56:00.000-07:00

Lincoln to Kalamazoo: Long Way Home

My Mom’s staying with me, helping me get packed and ready to move. But I’ve got to hustle off for a day and a half to teach. She drops me off at the airport and I run upstairs to the gate, on the phone all the while with my publisher, talking about my second book’s cover.

Look at me—I’m a real writer!

Actually, I’m just a harried chickadee from Lincoln in the midst of eBaying my worldly possessions so I don’t have to schlep so much stuff when I move across town. I need a shower, something to eat, and to dust off my treadmill. I’m also in the process of going bald. My hair is literally falling out. (“Oh, that’s stress,” my dermatologist says, which helps so much.)

I look at catalogs, fall asleep on the plane, get a veggie sandwich In O’Hare. The flight from Detroit to Kalamazoo is as silly as the one from Denver to the Springs. I fall asleep and we land before my head can bob.

In Kalamazoo I rent a Vibe, a car I’ve never even heard of until this moment, and commence driving like a crazy person. On the street, an SUV whizzes by, horn blaring.

At the Hampton Inn a lone businessman sits in the dark breakfast room. A polite zombie greets me at reception. Upstairs, I turn the heat on, the lights on, take one look at the “Welcome Back” card tucked beneath a bag of cookies, accompanied by a bottle of water. It’s a post card—you can tear it out along the perforated line and send it to someone. The picture: a black and white long, empty road. I feel suddenly despondent. I want to be home with my mom. At my friend Gaurav’s Charlottesville concert where he’s playing with Chris Daughtry, watching American Idol with Scott or drinking wine with Debbie.

I eat a cookie and toss the rest in the trashcan, feeling my expression crumple despite recent botox.

Why do they have to be so blatant about the fact that you’re in one of their hotel rooms—again? Why can’t we just know it and keep a civil code of silence? Or, if they must leave a note, why can’t it say, “Welcome! We’re so glad you’re here!” as though it were the first visit and not one in a long string of many. And while I’m grateful for the black and white-clad labels on everything (a placard with “firm” is propped against the pillows of one bed, “soft” against the other. The soap in the bathroom says “wash your face.” The larger bar: “wash your body”—in case there’s any confusion.), and think I ought to write to the hotel home office to say that I like this simple uhm, simplicity and no-frills ease, I find parts of it depressing. The “Do not disturb” sign says “I’m working” at the bottom and shows a black and white photo of a man at a desk. I find this only mildly humorous but it mostly makes me want to plunge a spork through my heart. I still bogart it for my collection that used to hang on the handle of my office door.

It may be beacuse of this assumption that I'm here, alone, again, working that I’ve come to appreciate chains like Homewood Suites—those three and four story hotels with their miniature granite counters and neat little silverware stacks in the drawers, the mini microwaves where one can nuke a Tyson’s chicken pot pie purchased from downstairs if one wants.

I rent Pan’s Labyrinth to work to, not realizing that it’s subtitled and that my eyeballs will be toggling between my laptop screen and the TV. I do indeed work, fret over my eBay sales, and ultimately choose the "soft" pillow for more of my hair to fall out on as I sleep.

2007-03-25T01:15:00.000-07:00

Redux

I've been between so many short trips of late that sometimes I don't unpack my little carry-on, but just throw in fresh underwear and sometimes take out the old. I'm currently going for the triple crown--Monday I'll take the same outfit I wore on two trips this week to Newark.

And then maybe I'll get it drycleaned.

Nah.

Tonight, as I'm putting up old logs, re-reading and reliving old trips, re-eating some of my more memorable meals (actually, that sounds pretty gross--the jury is ordered to disregard that last bit), I found this rumination from my September trip to Zurich, as I roamed the old streets at night:

"Sometimes people ask me why I do what I do. It’s demanding, draining, and takes me away from home. I’m constantly frustrated by flight delays, irritable bowel, sore back and spotty e-mail access. I’m always tired. I give standard responses to these questions, but the real reason is for moments like this. I have taken tea in the oldest teahouse in Shanghai, have walked the antique brownstones and watched white-haired women playing mahjong on the street. I have looked down on Hong Kong from Victoria’s peak, and out at the lights of Bangkok from the top of the Banyan Tree. I’ve seen the Grand Palace lit up against the night from beneath the canopy of a motorized rickshaw. I’ve shopped the red light district of Pat Pong Road. I’ve been to ice bars in Singapore and partied with ex-Pats on the harbor. I’ve dined under the domes of medieval churches cum restaurants in Spain, and run, freezing in the cold from the Oriental Café to the Prado in Madrid. I have gazed at the work of Picasso. I have walked the marble cemetery of Sitges with its weeping statues and danced on the beaches of Goa. I’ve stood on the steps of the Taj Mahal. Looking out now at the steeples of Zurich, I am taken by the beauty of this city at night, by the camaraderie of this walk with friends. By this still moment..."

And that's really it, isn't it? The thing that we look for in the exotic trips, in the daydreams, in the anticipated epiphanies: the still moment.

I've been fortunate to have several--and to have missed many more.

As we look toward the rest of 2007, let's you and I make this pact: to chase those moments diligently, to hold them dearly, to relay them fondly.

Here are some of mine.

Tosca

2007-03-13T09:17:00.000-07:00

It All Goes Back to the Tomato

I'm so seriously behind on getting my most recent travelogues finished, but lest you think I've let my side obsession go, the notes are all there. Lo, I've got six files on my desktop, waiting for embellishments--I mean, editing.

Today as I reflect on it being March 13th--the day that would be my 15th anniversary, were I still married--I thought it appropriate to return to one of my favorite trips of last year as one returns to a favorite story. It wasn't the most spellbinding, or the most spiritual, or the most extravagant trip of my life, but it was filled with a sense of reflection for me--and particular irony. A lot has happened since then. Even the protests surrounding the Thai Prime Minister have come full-circle, as have I.

I'm considering putting other old logs up along with the new ones. I've enjoyed the adventures in every one of them, even while rushing through airports or karate-chopping the man next to me--you know, standard covert ops stuff. If you'd like to revisit them with me, drop me a line (tosca@toscalee.com) and if you'd rather I just get on with the most recent ones, let me know that, too.

If you'd rather not read them at all, then what are you doing here? Go away, you silly person! (But can I still sell you a book?)

Tosca

2007-02-07T12:32:00.000-08:00

Philadelphia to Omaha: I Can Stop Any Time

“Hello? This is room 216. Can I have a late checkout?”

The reception sounds uncertain. I tell them I’ll call back.

I’m downstairs by 8am and, while it’s still better than the 7:00am I was down for yesterday, it is still painful. I down a quick four cups of coffee, promise Tom I’ll be on a call later in the day en route to the airport, and realize, at his queer look, that I am a week off; the call is not until the 13th.

I drink more coffee.

Mary Pat and I have limited time with our 70+ participant group today. After experiencing my loose canon style yesterday, she has allotted me an hour to carry a chunk of material between her two segments. I shoot out of the gate a hundred miles an hour. I’m high on caffeine and damnit, these people are going to ride high with me or get trampled by my zebra hooves.

In between, I excuse myself to visit the reception desk.

“Listen up, you @#&. I’m high on caffeine, just finished firing 70 people into a rabid, mouth-foaming fervor, and I’m ready to storm your fake rivers and go fishing for your pot-belled koi. I want a late checkout RIGHT NOW.”

I’m not sure how many times my head spun around as I said that.

By noon we’ve all crawled, panting and sweating, back to the ballroom to wrap up. The creepy guy who has been staring at me from another table since yesterday morning is in rare form. So am I. I stare back and slowly insert my finger in my nose as far as it will go.

We’re finished. I pack, change, haul my bag downstairs, anxious to blow out of here until the minute I step outside.

Note to self: fishnets do not offer protection from cold.

Inside the Philadelphia airport, Mary and I divide and conquer. I love this airport, with its Fire and Ice store, its Italian bag and Museum store. I wonderingly stroke a lime green and then a red laptop bag in the Italian shop. It’s $325. I could justify it, but I just want to share this stolen moment, this clandestine, illicit caress.

“If you like it, I’ll give you good deal,” the store clerk tells me.

I suddenly flash back to Europe, to Romania, to anywhere but an airport store in the continental U.S.

“Really?” The word comes out, light and dream-like. I know this can’t last.

“I’ll mail it if you don’t want to take it with you today. Free of charge.”

“What about sales tax?”

“I can include that.”

I admire myself with the bag. We’re a handsome couple. But no, no, it can never be. Alas—

“I give to you for $275.”

I long for the possibility of a life together but know it would be a mistake.

“$250,” he says. “And I give you the card holder.”

This changes everything. The card holder by itself is $45.

I leave, the happiest woman in the world.

I con Mary Pat into sitting with me at TGIFriday’s with her coffee while I order food. “Does your life revolve around food?” one of our partners, Gary, asked me yesterday.

I ask you: is it so wrong?

I’m still infatuated and regale Mary Pat with the story of how I met the red leather bag, the cute pocket inside for my cell phone, the way the straps fit my shoulder perfectly, as though we were made for one another.

Until I spy the menu. Holy carrots, the sandwich Bette on Top Chef made for the fire house elimination challenge really is featured on the TGIFriday’s menu! As a Top Chef devotee, I feel it is my duty to order—nay, to savor—this sandwich.

Outside our gate, Mary Pat and I run into Ryan and Grant. Apparently our flight has been delayed. And delayed. Once we board, it’s delayed some more.

We finally board. Leaving my companions behind to sit in first class—all lines of friendship are broken in the face of an upgrade—I hunch down into the leather chair and crash.

***

Mary Pat and I have we have missed the last flight in to Lincoln. Inside the F concourse Dead Carpet Club of O’Hare airport (where dreams go to die), we rebook for Omaha, and alert Grant and Ryan that we’ll be joining them on yet another happy escapade. We meet up afterward in B Concourse at Wolfgang Puck’s for drinks and pizza. It occurs to me that I might be a lush, but it also occurs to me that I don’t really care. I order another drink.

On the flight to Omaha, Mary Pat and I drift, heads lolling, on seats across the aisle from one another. Behind me, Ryan is reading a book, Grant is curled up behind Mary Pat. It’s the most silent you’ll see the four of us, ever.

2007-02-06T12:19:00.000-08:00

Chilly Philly

The hotel is freezing. I put the zebra coat on over my red suit and then go upstairs to put the same stinky turtleneck I wore yesterday on under my suit jacket.

I do have to say the Philadelpha Embassy Suites makes a mean omelet. The good kind: thin eggs wrapped like wonton skins around a filling of diced ham and mushrooms and cheese. No brown spots. No fluffiness. Just eggy omelet goodness the way Nature intended.

I meander my way to the ballroom, along yellow brick paths, over bridges that span fake brooks filled full of molding pennies and fat, moldering koi. It’s like the Wizard of Oz and Memoirs of a Geisha collided in some trippy dream after a night of bad sushi dinner.

It was at some point after that, during the beginning of the morning kickoff, in the back corner table of our ballroom where we huddled like corporate knights around a table, that it suddenly clicked. It happens this way, that Eureka Moment, much, I suspect, as it did for the decipherers of the Rosetta Stone. And I knew, with the same sudden certainty with which one suddenly understands religious tongues, utterance falling from Babel into seamless collusion with the English language, what we were doing.

And though I struggled to keep my eyes open through all the sitting in the sessions—is there a greater torture for a speaker than to sit in the back of the room?—the sessions with Mary Pat flew and we were, if I say so myself, brilliant.

And that’s how I knew—know—as I had not known before…

…that the aliens, in fact, never removed my chip.

We raise the roof on the session, causing a ruckus that threatens to incite a smackdown with an equally raucous group led by Grant next door. All is as it should be.

***

In room 516, I sit on the bed and stare at the wall. I am so tired, I am not certain that my heart has not long since stopped beating. It might have. I can’t feel it.

I consider a nap but think I ought to call for late checkout tomorrow instead. The front desk tells me I need to check on it tomorrow morning. I find this lame and hang up.

Two hours till dinner. I find myself watching Man Camp on Dr. Phil. I’m morbidly fascinated by the abusive men forced to clean houses, the way they really look possessed to me, the way their women cling to them. I see something mildly familiar in the wives’ vacillating venom and frenetic need to make things work. Familiar and appalling. I turn the TV off.

We take cabs to Moshulu—an upscale restaurant on a boat in the harbor. I con Ryan into ordering shrimp appetizer, and Bronson into the pumpkin ravioli. I ask for samples of the lobster bisque. We declare it wondrous and then chow down on almond-crusted mahi mahi between sips of Grey Goose and cranberry. Life is good.

Back at the hotel we drink some more, brainstorm, declare ourselves brilliant.

2007-02-05T12:06:00.000-08:00

Philadelphia: Unidentified

The luggage screener at the Lincoln airport points at one of my knee-high boots. “It’s untied,” he says. I remind him I’m going to be taking them off upstairs in a few moments.

Five minutes later, the woman in the café is politely looking at me.

“Tuna tomato?” I nudge.

“Oh!” She says. “I didn’t recognize you!”

That is because I have sworn off the black polar fleece pullover, have in fact given my holy jeans to the Consignment Shop. I am a new woman in my fishnets and untied army boots, in my mini skirt and zebra-striped coat.

Charles affectionately calls this my Stripper Nun outfit—especially when I wear my big rhinestone cross.

“I love your coat,” she says, setting a tuna-stuffed tomato on the tray. And then, “My granddaughter’s in the hospital right now, having my great grand-baby.”

I congratulate her, scarf the tomato and, pre-flight ritual complete, leave the café.

“See you next week,” the woman behind the counter says. I assure her she will.

[Note to self: must ask about grand-baby.]

This is the first of four trips this month I am taking for PNC Bank. I missed the all-day pow wow last week and so have five hours of meetings on 3 DVDs in my bag to keep me subsequent company. Not exactly the in-flight entertainment I had hoped for.

Standing in the security line, stripped of my magic coat and super-power boots, toes poking through holes in the fishnet tights, I suddenly feel lonely. Things have changed in my personal life and, as a result, I am not making the usual compulsive text pages and calls I normally would. I wonder if I have been hitherto addicted to communication, to relationships—even a bad marriage—if, in fact, I am afraid to be alone. I do not like that thought.

I reclaim my boots on the end of the security line—and with them, my super hero powers—and walk, laces dangling, to the gate.

“Hello, Tosca.” A woman looks up at me from a row of seats. It’s Mary Pat, my colleague. She’s reviewing a tome of material as mysterious to me as a missive from an alien culture three clicks beyond this galaxy. I look at her with awe and not a little suspicion that she might be a witch.

“Have you gone over this?” she says.

I start to explain that I’ve had trouble reading alien script ever since the little men returned to reclaim the chip in the back of my neck.

“I’m hoping I can get up to speed with everyone tonight,” I say, dubious that any of it will ever make sense to me this side of Andromeda.

On my flight to Chicago I’m wondering why Hemispheres Magazine carries ads for so many matchmaking services, and about the poor schleps that waif about from city to city outsourcing the romance they don’t have time for between trips in order to support health-challenged shar peis while making desperate fashion pleas for help between decoding alien text.

My mother is convinced that if I only invest a couple grand in Valenti International I’ll meet a Moroccan prince who won’t be able to live without meeting my every jewelry whim.

I tear the page out of Hemispheres and stuff it in my boot.

In Chicago, Mary Pat and I stop at the F Concourse Starbucks. The baristas scowl at us, shove coffee into our hands with a grunt. We leave and I try to explain to Mary Pat, who normally flies Northwestern, that we could have gone to the B Concourse Starbucks but that it isn’t nearly as friendly.

Boarding my flight to Philadelphia, the attendant coos at me. “Cute coat! Cute hair! You’re so cute!”

She isn’t bad herself.

I’ve upgraded to first class. Just because I can. Because I want to appall dedicated high-profile business travelers who no doubt outsource their romantic lives and know the Moroccan prince by name with my Zebra Warrior Princess antics.

Actually, I just want more room to watch my DVDs and eat a free turkey sandwich.

My seatmate turns on me during dinner.

“Going home?” he says.

Now, as an experienced traveler, I know that he is one of three things: a bored commuter whose expression, the moment I tell him what company I work for and what I do for a living, will change into the same wide-eyed fascination that most mortals hold for astronauts and professional fire eaters; a skanky business man with a special need to tell me that he loves Asian women; or a well-intentioned cheapskate unwilling to outsource his romantic life who has, in fact, become a do-it-yourselfer.

“No,” I say. “I’m going to Philly for work.”

“What kind?”

Right now the jury is out; he might be a future groupie. He might still be a letch. And he might be that well-intentioned cheapskate. I just can’t make the call.

“I’m a consultant.”

“Ah,” he says. He knows all about this, apparently. As his chest puffs out, I see he is a man of the world, a man who knows things, a man worthy of respect and the adoration of a woman. “I used to be a consultant. But now I’m a CFO of a building materials company.”

“Ungh.” I say, sounding most fascinated. “What kind of uh, building materials?”

“House moldings. We’re based in Canada.”

I stare at him for several seconds without blinking.

“We have offices all over. I fly every week.”

My eyeballs are drying out but I don’t care.

“Uhuh.”

“So what kind of consulting do you do?” He’s checking out my fishnets, the zebra coat, the boots. I know what he’s thinking.

“Corporate. Management. Fortune 500 clients, mostly.” I say, pigtails poking out over my shoulders.

“Really now?” His eyebrows form little bat wings over his eyes, raising and lowering on his forehead.

“So where are you based?”

“Nebraska.”

“Nebraska?” I can see the little gears working in his head, the bats fluttering, the gerbil running on its squeaky hamster wheel.

“How did you get into that?”

“Well, see, I used to be a pageant queen.”

“Oh?” The hamster scampers on the wheel. “I… see. And you travel… every week?”

“Sometimes. In between I write novels.”

The bats arch, the hamster trips.

“Novels?”

“About demons.”

“Uh—“

I nod and return to my sandwich. Somewhere a hamster has died of a cardiac arrest.

We land some time later and the attendant welcomes us to “Chilly Philly.”

Downstairs in the baggage claim, Mary Pat and I stand inside the sliding glass doors and wait on the Embassy Suites shuttle. Next to us I notice the flight attendant that called me cute, a Bluetooth set over one ear. She looks, I think, like a pretty Borg.

In the hotel we meet up with colleagues for food—a baked potato that is more butter and sour cream than spud, for me—and to meet the rest of the team. I don’t know a lot of these partners, have only seen a few of their names before, in e-mail. One of our economists is sitting next to me—a man in his 50s with a bona fide comb-over. He eats in silence, chopping his salmon into minced little pieces on his plate.

Bronson, Ryan, Grant to talk strategy for the concurrent sessions we’ll be teaching as our group of several hundred breaks out tomorrow. They’re on fire. Meanwhile, I am not what Gallup would consider a Learner—that is to say, that if I could download everything I needed to know, Matrix style (I know Kung Fu!), I would, because I do not enjoy the process. They agonize with me as I contort and warble like a creature emerging from a sticky cocoon, patient as I spew foamy goo and seize in my chair. It helps when I learn that Mary Pat and I have been teamed together for this first session—or at least, it helps me. It’s always good, I think, to have one able-bodied someone to clutch at when one is drowning.

Some time past midnight a pair of drunk guys, drinks in hand, approach our table.

“Escuse me,” the one says, “but we jus’ wondered wha wass keeping you working passs miidnight.”

I stare. He doesn’t go away. One of us says we’re teaching a seminar in the morning.

“No offense, but if you don’t know now what you’re doing by now it won’t go well,” he says. Because obviously he knows a great deal about these things.

“We’re trained professionals on a closed course,” I assure him. “Don’t try this at home.”

He finds this hilarious enough to concede us the point and peddle his snake oil elsewhere.

By the time Mary Pat and I call it a night, it’s nearly 1am. Up in room 516, I have no less than five pillows, all of which have lumps. I toss, flail and sleep no more than an hour before the alarm signals time to get to work.

2006-11-29T00:31:00.000-08:00

Sleepless in New York

At some point I must have fallen asleep because it’s 4:45am and I’m awake—in silence—packing in the pre-dawn darkness.

At 5:30am, the deli across the street is just opening, its chain drape half-raised over the deli’s front windows like the lid of a sleepy eye. Fresh fruit sits in bowls on the counter and businessmen are waiting inside for coffee.

The doorman hails my taxi, and I genuinely mourn the fact that I cannot spend this early morning eating an egg sandwich at Isadora’s Café, or watching the garbage trucks collect the bags left out on the curb.

I’m sniffling inside the taxi, and my driver hands me tissues. I sneeze and he blesses me. Everyone is friendly and it occurs to me that this is the politeness that comes with the sharing of close city quarters. We like to think of ourselves as so polite in the Midwest, but I think this must be the truest test: how one sustains politeness in the absence of real estate elbow room.

My driver takes a call on his speaker phone—a sleepy woman wishing him a good day. I really hope she doesn’t start talking dirty or anything, and remain awkwardly silent in the back seat.

“We’ve been together 12 years,” he says, afterward. “We’re not married. I was getting divorced when we met and I said to her, ‘if you want to get married, find another guy.’ And now here we are, 12 years and two children later.” Apparently it’s worked out for them. I even think his story is a bit romantic.

He’s a Greek man, and tells me that his family came from Greece and lives in Queens, where apparently the largest Greek population is. We chat and I tell him about traveling through Thesseloniki. As we arrive at the airport he gives me his number and tells me to call him next time he’s in town for coffee.

What is it with taxi drivers these days?

2006-11-28T00:30:00.000-08:00

New York City: Let’s Hear it For The Boys

I know by his crisp, eyelet cap that my taxi driver is a Pakistani Muslim. He’s also in desperate need of deodorant. Now, I know that Matthew McConaughey has been recently quoted saying he hasn’t worn deodorant in 20 years, that a man should smell like a man—and I agree. I really do.

I just don’t think men should smell like this.

At the OMNI Hotel I flee the car for the lobby, sucking fresh bus exhaust in by the lungful the minute I hit the curb.

I’ve been anxious to see this hotel—first, because I have not stayed at an OMNI before, and second, because it is costing my client $600. And I’m just, you know, curious about what makes it worth $600 a night. I figure it like this: I’m going to be here a total of approximately 13 hours. Of those 13 hours, I will be gone for nearly 7. So at $600 for 6 hours, this place is costing $100 an hour.

I should make an important disclaimer here: this hotel was recommended to me by the client. It was one of two on the list, and the other one was $700.

Now let me specify that for $600 a night, I am expecting a butler, a man servant and a slew of dancing boys. In short, I am expecting a darned good time. Nevertheless, as a courtesy to my client, I ask for the AAA discount.

Apparently the OMNI does not take AAA. And I thought this was a classy joint.

The desk clerk does politely tell me, however, that I have received an upgrade. Suffice it to say that I just hope I’m up to the darned good time I have been upgraded to.

Upstairs, I let myself into a suite replete with living room and dining area. The butler apparently hasn’t arrived yet, so I sit down and wait. After fifteen minutes, I’m starved and call room service for a snack. Maybe the butler will bring it up when he comes.

“How can I assist you, Mr. Lee?”

Why do hotels always assume I’m a short Asian man with a receding hairline? I order squash soup, a salad and some tea and then hang up to await my butler and, with hope, the dancing boys. Apparently they’re running late as I prepare for my meeting, tying my hair off in two Pocahontas braids.

Tom and Brian come for me within the hour (these are not the dancing boys I was looking for) and we walk the block to McKinsey.

McKinsey is ensconced in one of those gigantanormous corporate buildings zig-zagged with escalators and bolted through with elevator banks like iron pins in an artificial hip. Downstairs, holiday charity drives have stashed a mother lode of toy trucks, life-sized dolls, and bikes complete with tassels on the handles behind cordoned-off sections of the lobby. I try to make off with the latest Elmo, but Tom makes me put it back.

On the 22nd floor, our meeting is replete with sweets, pastries, cookies, cakes. Apparently they knew I was coming. We talk for four hours.

“You were hot in there,” Cherie, the McKinsey learning director, says afterward. And I have to admit I rocked.

Afterward, Tom, Brian, Cherie and I head to the Waldorf, to Inagiku.

This is demi torture, this walking from one giant box to another in a city filled full of delicious holes-in-the-wall, corner delis, and street-vendor knishes. But we’re starving and ready to imbibe, and can’t find a closer sushi joint. So this will have to do.

The last time I was in New York City the President and some eighteen other world leaders were staying here, and the Waldorf was, for all practical purposes, as accessible as Everest. It’s populated tonight by attendees of some wedding event or formal Christmas party. They stroll past that famous lobby clock in tuxedos and stoles—the kind with the feet and head still attached.

We wander past them down the stairs, there to come to the ultimate crossroad: Inagiku sushi to the right… the Bull & Bear Steakhouse to the left.

Holy crow, could they taunt an Asian girl from the Midwest any more?? I stagger, stare, dope-faced, looking from one hostess stand to the other. This is the worst kind of hell, choosing between two heavens.

Tom grabs my sleeve and pulls me from stupefied inertia.

Like Nobu, Inakigu is a place where one may order tempura by the vegetable—including pumpkin, eggplant, and enigmatic avocado tempura.

I must have been a very, very good girl.

***

Back in my suite, I wait for my man servant, but he must be off for the night. I wander from my estate-sized bathroom through the bedroom and into my living room, feeling less and less well. I blame this on the Zelnorm that I have so recently started taking for irritable bowel. It doesn’t get better, so I prop myself up in bed with the TV on, and find myself staring through the open door into the giant bathroom mirror. That is just weird, the view of oneself sitting up in bed with pigtails.

Kinda makes me want to barf.

At 12:30a.m., I am curled up in a dark bed when a jackhammer starts up six stories below my window. I whimper and pull a pillow over my head, but it goes, and goes, and goes, echoing between buildings in the post-midnight silence in ways that screech along my spine.

I fumble with the phone, call the front desk.

“Someone is jack hammering below my window,” I say, not sure what I expect the hotel operator to do about it. “I don’t feel well. I can’t sleep. I never received my dancing boys.” The voice on the phone is empathetic.

“Security has gone to talk to them. They shouldn’t be doing that at this time of night; it isn’t right.”

I hang up, and as the jack-hammering continues, ponder insanity but settle for throwing up instead.

2006-11-16T00:29:00.000-08:00

Minneapolis: Circus People

I can sleep in. I sleep in. I sleep until nearly 10am. This is luxury. Taking breakfast in my room with the sci fi channel on as I check my e-mail, I am at peace. Compared to yesterday, today is a tranquil standstill, a piece of devil’s food cake after yesterday’s Spartan dry toast.

After completing a late checkout and leaving my bag with the bellman, I take a cab the eight blocks to 100 S. 5th. With my skirt and sneakers, I look like some bad yuppy throwback, but I have a strict no-work-shoes-until-arriving-at-destination policy and wait to change inside the office building after securing the cabbie a few hours from now.

Here’s the thing about large corporate buildings; they’re impressive and nice-looking but impossible to navigate. I wander up an escalator and through a labyrinth of towers, each with their own banks of elevators. It’s like some bad Escher drawing—with a Caribou Coffee in the middle. Finally, I give in and call the contact.

“I’m lost,” I say.

“I’m by the elevators,” she says.

“There are too many damn elevators in this building. Please activate your transponder so I can find you.”

Finally, I see her and I’m surprised; she’s clearly Caucasian, but her last name is distinctly Chinese. She’s got the box of materials for the session on a dolly and perkily leads me to a well-appointed (and naturally lit—Eureka!) conference room. Giant windows look out on downtown Minneapolis and, more immediately, on metal roof spikes that keep pigeons from perching—or fix them permanently to the roof, depending.

Karina is asking me questions about my job and travel. She’s got the quintessential Fargo accent.

“Soo, do you travel all the time?”

“Yeah, when I’m not gambling in Monaco. That can get pretty tiring sometimes.”

“Ooh, you beetcha. But most of the time, doncha just love it to shreds?”

To shreds.

The seminar flies and I’m back down waiting for my taxi. The guy that picks me up was sent by my original driver, who apparently had more pressing clients to cart around. He takes me to the hotel to pick up my suitcase.

The bell guy isn’t at his post, so I wait in line at the front desk. Two men are checking in in front of me and one of them is double-taking and then openly staring at me. And while at first I’m flattered—yes, a full night’s sleep does much for the skin—I do begin to wonder. Finally, he turns to me and says: “Are you with the show?”

Me: “No?” And then: “What show?”

Staring Guy: “The sex show.”

Me: “Aroo?”

Perv Guy: “Sex and Much More Show.”

Me: “Uh.” Cuz, you know, this is a new one and he’s genuinely got me. “No?”

He looks embarrassed. So I stare at him for a long moment before deliberately crossing myself, nun-style. He slumps away and I give the reception guy my baggage tag. As the clerk leaves, the perv comes back. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean—“

I can’t help it. I open my mouth and laugh at him. He slinks away again.

I quick-change in the bathroom—never travel in work clothes—and return to my cab.

My cab driver is on the phone, speaking in a language I can’t identify. When he’s done talking and I ask, he tells me he’s Ethiopian. We have a nice conversation about freedom—namely the restricted brand of it espoused in Ethiopia. “If you want to stat a business, you have to get a license,” he says. “It’s very difficult to get a license unless you know someone. You cannot drink under 25. Or smoke. If you’re caught smoking, you go to jail.”

“What’s your favorite Ethiopian food?” I ask. He tells me about the bread, made of oil and flour that sits for 24 hours before baking. And spicy soup.

“When do you come back?” he says. “I wish you were staying. I would take you to an Ethiopian restaurant.” I thank him, give him my regrets, and then helpfully inform him about the new sex show in town.

If you’re going to arrive five hours early at an airport, make it the Minneapolis airport.
I spend a couple of hours shopping—first to replace Ben Affleck’s the shaving cream that I put in my carry-on and security took away from me, and then for a Christmas gift for Dad. I take dinner at Bonfire before finding one of those comfy black leather chairs—the ones that sit in clusters between moving sidewalks. From here I have an excellent view of the rest of the airport, winding out before me in all its miles-long ant-farm glory.

I’m doing my best to wake up enough to work on the reference notes for Demon—the back matter, they call it—and to finalize my acknowledgments. But I’m tired now. I’m really tired.

2006-11-15T00:26:00.000-08:00

Des Mointes to Minneapolis: The Simple Life

I’m up early and teach two sessions at Wells Fargo before returning to the hotel where I’ve arranged late checkout. I bounce up and down on my suitcase and by the time I manage to get it closed it bears a striking resemblance to the belted and burgeoning waistlines of middle-aged men walking out of Ole’s Big Game Bar in Paxton: bloated as a bullfrog.

And then I’m driving to the airport. Note: do not drive in an unfamiliar city while looking at a map. Nor while looking at a map and eating fast food. It’s especially unhealthy, if momentarily satisfying. The driving’s hazardous, too.

I decide I need to get myself one of those fancy GPS systems.

Surprisingly, I arrive at the airport in one piece and fly to Minneapolis, cheek glued to the window, slack-mouthed, drool pooling on the armrest.

It’s rush hour in Minneapolis and I am so glad I cancelled the rental car. I relax in my cab, on the phone with my ex. We’ve stayed friendly and call to catch up on one another every now and then. I tell him about my recent stint as a reality show finalist and the mad fling I had with the producer—which I so recently cut short because that pasha I saw last summer sent his Lear with a desperate plea for me to come join him in Monaco, where I am now. And did I mention I just won a cool mill at the blackjack table? We end the call because Brad Pitt is calling me. Again.

At the Hyatt, I wander down to the cute shop on the second floor, buy some high-falutin’ shaving cream for a friend. Apparently Ben Affleck uses this cream, too.

And then I’m seated in Manny’s Steakhouse, confronting a ribeye and what appears to be a five-pound freak potato. It’s like some 4H root vegetable project gone awry. My waiter, Darren, tries to try to sell me more food and because he’s cute, I succumb to pecan pie. By the time I’m too comatose to move, he brings the check.

“I’ll be downstairs at the sports bar when I get off work,” he says, leaning against my booth. “I’d love to buy you a drink.”

I kindly explain that, thanks to him, I’m good for nothing but sleep right now, and waddle up to my room.

2006-11-14T00:24:00.000-08:00

Des Moines: Greed and Gluttony

Today is my longest day of this two-city stop and I teach what will be my most challenging group. By 5pm I’m not sure I have the energy to shop. After all, I’m out of shape; I haven’t shopped for real (meaning not out of a catalog) merchandise for months. The other shoppers should go on, save themselves, and not worry about me.

But then I miraculously revive.

At Jordan Creek mall, I stop at PF Chang’s for soup and sea bass. I talk through dinner with my girlfriend Julie until my cell battery dies. I know it’s bad form, but no one here knows me.

I spend the next few hours shopping—in the traditional try-it-on-before-taking-it-home sense of the word. Amazing! Just like riding a bike.

A lady at Arden B. has tricked me out in cropped sweaters and J. Lo jeans. “Those make your butt look good!” she says. Studying my rear in the mirror, I wonder how all the junk got in that trunk. Agh! My new red wine habit has caught up with me, the extra buttery movie popcorn topping has had its day, and the Red Lobster cheese biscuits have had the last word.

It occurs to me, as it has many a time before, that stores would do themselves a great favor—not to mention sell more swimsuits—if they installed more flattering lighting.

I don’t get the jeans, but I leave with a Matrix-style coat, Jackie-O jacket and slenderizing pants. And a free candle for spending so much money. I feel like an evil genius. At Cache, I buy two black camisoles. Just because I can.

On the way back to my hotel I realize I have no idea how this is all going to fit in my suitcase.

2006-11-13T00:23:00.000-08:00

Des Moines: Saints and Sinners

For nearly a full day I live the life that I aspire to: rising from my hotel bed, going directly to the gym and working out before tromping off to teach two seminars—in between which, I take soup, and a turkey sandwich. I drink water and my only vice is coffee. Tomorrow I will become a vegetarian. I will avoid gluten. I will eschew caffeine forever, and take a vow of chastity if not poverty.

When I finish teaching, I call my girlfriend Jennifer. Jennifer is a former ballerina, local attorney and, in recent years, mother of two. I think Jennifer actually graduated into a size 2 while she was pregnant—before immediately shrinking back to a 0 the moment her kids came out. She is also the daughter of my Jewish mom, Susan, who is the same size as her daughter. Suffice it to say that any time I am around either of them—and most particularly when I am with both of them—I feel distinctly queen-sized.

Jennifer picks me up at my hotel and we take off for the Cheesecake factory. Jennifer’s daughter, Sophia, is a little curly-haired pixie, her brother a chestnut-haired cherub. At the restaurant we color and drink chocolate milk. Jennifer and I share my all-time favorite Cheesecake Factory item: the fire-roasted artichoke.

Let me just say that the Cheesecake Factory fire-roasted artichoke is one of those items that one must sample before one dies. It is listed in my book between genuine Peking duck and real Belgian chocolate, followed closely by escargot from M’s Pub.

We wander the mall after that, buying cookies and stopping at the play center to talk while the kids run around on a soft-sided landscape of bridges and slides—a playground no doubt designed by attorneys, Jennifer observes.

We say goodbye when it’s bedtime for the kiddos and I vow to return to the mall tomorrow.

Back at the hotel I run down to the gym to hit the treadmill again.

2006-11-12T00:20:00.000-08:00

Lincoln to Des Moines: You Really Like Me

Someone actually reads these, my little orphaned rants, my sometimes-truthful accounts of all happenings surreal and bizarre!

…either that or they just notice when I haven’t dropped one in their mailbox for a while.

At any rate, I’m taking the “why haven’t I gotten a travelogue lately?” queries as encouragement.

So just know: you brought this on yourself.

A lot has happened in the last few months: I re-wrote a novel from the ground up, was on hold for jury duty, had my house filmed for an upcoming episode of HGTV’s “What You Get For The Money,” watched my new townhouse sprout windows and a roof, and my dog fell gravely ill. As of today, the dog is recovered, the HGTV episode is airing some time next spring, I dodged jury duty (I have it on good authority that if you show up drunk the first morning they will excuse you—not that I actually did that, as far as you know), the new house got a driveway and the novel is in the hands of the editor.

My big goal this week: to watch TV. I need to peek in on Jericho, check up on House and find out if everyone got off New Caprica on Battlestar Gallactica.

***

Let me present here, the highlights of my last few (unrecorded) trips:

Returning from New York City at the end of September, I got off the plane in Lincoln to find not one but two of those sexy brothers of God in their long black robes waiting to get on a plane. I’ve got to find out where they keep going.
In New York, I ate at Nobu.
That same month, I went to Martha’s Vineyard. While the flight from Logan to Martha’s Vineyard was not my first Cessna ride, I have to say it was the first time my plane felt like it was skating on the air.
In Vineyard Haven I tried to order a glass of wine only to find out that Vineyard Haven is a dry town. I’m starting a petition.
In Nantucket I got chatted up by an enthusiastic taxi driver with a Master’s Degree in education and had the best service I’ve had in years at the White Elephant Inn.
While visiting my sister in Boston, I ate ribs at legendary Red Bones.

***

This afternoon as I ran out the door, bags in hand, my home prepared for (yet another) Sunday open house, I felt distinctly like one of those cleaners in organized crime movies: sparkling floors in my wake, innocuous bag in hand, enigmatic look on my face.

At the airport cafe, the woman greets me with, “Tuna tomato?” To the other woman working with her, she says, “This girl, she gets the same thing every time. She only eats tuna tomatoes.” Between that incident and the security screener’s “We haven’t seen you forever!” on my trip to Martha’s Vineyard, I’ve realized that I’m not only predictable but predictably recognizable; I wear the same jeans and fleece pullover every time I travel.

“I normally see you at 6am,” the screener says today. It’s true; I am usually here at the butt crack of dawn.

“I know,” I say, lamenting. “I’m normally predictable.”

“Who’s fault is that?” the screener says.

He’s right. I’m in a rut. I’m throwing away the polar fleece first thing when I get home.

Colleen Kenney’s kind article about me in the Lincoln paper said I felt weird for not having been on a plane for a month. And that was true for most of October. As a result, I’m clam-happy to be looking at catalogues at Gate 3 today. I even indulge in the frivolity that is People Magazine. I’m content upon reaching O’Hare.

Put your white robes on and go stand on the mountain. Quick.

***

This is a very silly trip: I am flying to Chicago to get to Des Moines. This is necessitated by the fact that I’m flying out of Des Moines in two days to go to Minneapolis or else I would have driven. This is also silly because I know for a fact after an emergency landing en route to O’Hare that Des Moines is only twenty minutes via air from Lincoln. But apparently you can’t fly to Des Moines direct unless you’re about to lose a wing.

Eating a burger in O’Scare, I wonder: assuming one was committed to eating more healthfully, where would one do it here? The only thing I can think of is Wolfgang Puck salads. Denver has a new rice bowl place, but barring a packaged salad, what’s one to do? If you have ideas, please send them to me. I need to know. Because although I didn’t feel guilty eating the burger at the time, I… well, I didn’t feel guilty after, either. In fact, I felt pretty happy about the whole thing.

There’s a table set up between the F and B concourse: flu shots, $30, phenomena shots, $45. They’re stationed across from Hudson Booksellers, where I mean to do some holiday reconnaissance; I’m woefully behind and ought to seize the opportunity. Right now, though, I just find the idea of one-stop food, medical and Christmas shopping depressing.

Inside the B concourse bathroom a woman sits on the floor beneath the towel dispenser, her phone plugged in to an outlet.

“This is so sad-looking,” I say, studying her.

“I know,” she says. “But my battery is dead and I couldn’t find an outlet near my gate and I have a call about to come in.”

“Would you like me to get you in to the Red Carpet Club? They have plugs in there and, barring all else, nicer bathrooms.”

She thanks me, but she’s fine, she says. I wash my hands and leave, despairing of the state of today’s business traveler.

2006-09-01T00:54:00.000-07:00

Zurich to Lincoln: Mountaineer

“Room service.”

“Hi, can I order breakfast?” I ask this as I’m starting my computer. I forget that the volume is cranked, that it recites Monty Python on startup.

“Of course, what would you—“

“YOU DON’T FRIGHTEN US, ENGLISH PIG-DOGS!”

“Eggs, please. Scrambled. And coffee.”

The lady shows up fifteen minutes later, brings the tray inside. “Same as yesterday,” she says, cheerfully.

Is it really my second morning here? Was this not all one long day?

I take breakfast, consider bringing the bottle of Swiss wine on the mini bar home. It’s red with the white Swiss cross on the front. At first glance, I thought it was a fire extinguisher.

Inside the cab, I ask to go to the airport. Ten minutes later, the driver gives me the fare and I request a receipt. We’ve done this all in German and he looks at me with a grin. “German, very good!” he says in English, giving me a thumbs up. I’m all too aware that I’m linguistically on a par with most four year-olds, but I appreciate his encouragement.

The Zurich airport is a name-brand haven, a bargain-shopper’s hell. Hermes, Cartier, Armani, Bulgari. New BMWs are on display in the first terminal. I am people watching with avid interest, openly gaping at a few men.

Openly gaping.

They don’t gape back.

Again, I note their clothing with interest. I’m trying to put my finger on just what it is about the clothing. It has the same modern, industrial hint to it as their buildings. It’s not as ornate and flashy as Asian fashion. It’s soccer inspired, Ferrari-inspired. Their haircuts are angular and spiked, their shoes good Italian leather. And, as I said before, they wear it all well because they are all lean. I don’t think they eat a better diet than we do—they certainly love their cheese, their espressos, their chocolate and beer. But they eat smaller portions. Juice is served here in tiny vials. A sandwich fits in a palm.Good steak is expensive. A soda is bottle-sized—not Slurpy-sized. Again, the only overweight people I see are clearly American.

I have to say that our clothes look generic, dull and cheap in comparison. Our hair looks unkempt. And while I wouldn’t necessarily advocate every grandmother-aged woman in the states throwing a splotch of fire engine red in her blonde bangs as the woman I saw going through the security line, I think we could all stand to let go some hang-ups and break free a little more.

The Swiss Air lounge, with its small tables and racks of European and American newspapers resembles a business library with a coffee bar more than an airport lounge. I take espresso, start a bit of travelogue. At length I realize that I have, in fact, gotten my face moisturizer in my eyes and they are now stinging to the point where I wish I had packed my glasses. But I couldn’t do that because I can’t take saline solution on the airplane to store my contacts.

I leave the lounge, which is really dull compared to the expansive two-story windows of the airport itself. Just now a Canadair Jet is angling up from the ground, too cumbersome, too impossibly slow to make the descent that it is making.

I saw a pharmacy downstairs earlier and head there now. I haven’t bought anything (sorry Amy, Ryan, and other post card collectors) despite wanting to dump my coinage, because even post cards here are $2.50 US. But now my eyes are burning and the coin franks are going to go. I find a travel-sized bottle of saline. It’s 15.60 Swiss franks—about $13. Ahead of me in line, a woman is asking for something to help her sleep, she’s terrified of flying. She drops $55 for a package of over-the-counter pills. Another woman is doing the same.

In the bathroom I flush out my eyes and clean my contacts—and then throw the saline away. After all, I can’t take it on board. Notice that the signs about the restriction on liquids are only for those traveling to the U.S. This strikes me as slightly embarrassing, as though the rest of the world is having to accommodate our special needs. I feel this again when, a train-ride away in E concourse, I am sent off to the special security line, based on my passport and destination.

At security, the agent addresses me in English, calls me “Madam.”

Oh god. Madam. I am getting micro-dermabrasion first thing next week.

They’ve given me a seat this time, so there will be no mad races or ultimate fighting at the gate. Instead, there is a verbal fight going on in the sky bridge; the purser has told a man that his luggage is too heavy and must be checked. The man is upset; he’s brought an entire carry-on suitcase full of toys and food for his kids. The man is angry and shouting. The purser says this is no way to talk to a person, that if he insists on talking this way, he will have him offloaded completely.

Why don’t we all learn a lesson from this?

On the plane, I’ve moved to accommodate two girls who want to sit together and lookee here—there’s my seat partner from the flight in, sitting across the aisle and in at the window, a buffer seat away. I pretend not to recognize him because I don’t want him to expect another hangman extravaganza.

I eat pasta and drink mimosas. I think that I ought to work or write, but I’m falling asleep during Mission Impossible III. You know you’re tired when you start twitching and wake yourself up. I’m sure it looks funny, too. I sleep a couple of hours before waking enough to type these logs, to eat some more pasta before landing, to have some coffee. My manuscript has accompanied me on this trip, untouched all this time. I’m hoping to get to it during my four-hour layover at O’Hare. After all, who knows how long I might really be there.

You know your layover is long when it’s not even on the monitor. When you ask at the desk about the Lincoln flight and they say, “We fly there?”

Four hours. I have ambitious plans for travelogues, for meeting notes, to answer e-mail, balance my checkbook, write hate mail to Starbucks.

In the O’Hare Dead Carpet Club, I get this e-mail from Jordan:

“FYI, see below. By the way, you’d better not be reading this from the O’Hare Red Carpet Club.”

I actually look around me over my shoulder. He’s uncanny. He shall henceforth be known as Big Brother.

I answer some e-mails, write and send one travelogue before it’s time to go. I can’t believe it.

On the way to F4, I stop at the Cinnabon place. Just because, you know, it’s there. And I’ve already eaten the Nutella. It’s the equivalent of going from crack cocaine to weed in the grand scheme of recreational eating—a step in the right direction if you ask me.

“Are those contacts?” the cinnamon guy asks me.

“Uh?”

“Is that your real eye color?” he says.

“Oh. Yeah. It used to be darker, but then something happened,” I say.

“Like a super hero.”

“What?”

“One day, something just happened to you.”

“Yeah. Like that.”

Hear that, Travis? Light of the yellow sun, baby.

I see soldiers in fatigues, navy men in their pressed white uniforms. Am I getting older, or are they getting younger?

I don’t get these people who walk around with their pillows around their necks at the airports. Especially this guy with the leopard pillow and the cowboy hat. I don’t get these women who wear stilettos with hoodie sweatshirts. I don’t get these guys who comb over ten strands of foot-long hair over their naked scalps. And don’t get me started on the guy in the blazer, shorts and sneakers. After people watching in Zurich, I’m embarrassed for us.

On the plane at last, fifteen minutes past the board time, we sit on the tarmac for an hour. I fall asleep against the hull, breathing blooms of moisture against the window. I wake myself up some time after takeoff; I’ve been mumbling in my sleep. Looking out during our final descent, I see Culver’s, Old Cheney, my own neighborhood. I’m certain Attila is outside even now, taking a leak and mocking me as I drift overhead.

2006-08-31T00:47:00.000-07:00

Zurich: Credit Dauphin

7am. More hives. In splotchy patterns across my torso that vaguely resemble the continents of Africa and Greenland with a few of the Northern Marianas thrown in.

I take breakfast in my room, as Michael teased me I would (“Of course. You are a princess”) and revel at the wonder that is Nutella. Normally I shun the stuff even when I can find it, simply because this hazelnut-chocolate spread has 4000 grams of fat in every schmear. But I’ve since given up foolish notions about healthy eating, and slop an entire individual-sized pack of the brown stuff on a buttery croissant.

We’re back at McKinsey by 8:30. In the conference room, Cherie, the McKinsey learning coordinator, is singing Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline.”

Oh no. I’m doomed. I can hear it all so vividly: Sweet Caroline… bah bah bah! And I don’t know any words after that. That is the worst kind of stuck.

By 9am, I realize it’s 2am at home—the time I normally go to bed.

“Tosca’s eating again,” someone says. What. There was a cheese plate in the room and these twisty pastry things. What was I supposed to do?

“Are you going to eat that whole thing?” Dean David says.

“Hell yeah,” I tell him. Resistance is, after all, futile.

… bah bah bah!

***

Considering the fact that we are writing on yellow tablets that say “For your eyes only” printed on the top of every page, that include icons advocating sealed lips, guarded doors, and safe screens, I will not write here the content of our meeting. Maybe Scott is more right than he knows.

Sweet Caroline… bah bah bah!

By 10:30, I’m no longer taking this sitting down. Because I’ll fall asleep. I’m not even sure at this point if the physical act of standing up will actually keep me awake—that I won’t nap on my feet like a horse. I drink enough coffee to give even Andre the Giant a coronary (if he weren’t dead, I mean) but all it does is upset my stomach.

Carolyn and Michael are leaving tonight, so we find a restaurant to catch quick dinner. There’s traffic and the driver points out the reason: the onramp to the Autobahn is blocked. I hear this in German and realize that I might be only a Rosetta Stone program away from recovering a portion of my former fluency. “You’re learning!” Michael has said to me through the day after my stunted little conversations with him. In fact, it’s more a matter of trying to remember—the mental equivalent of sorting through dusty attic corners and digging in moth-eaten trunks.

Bah bah bah!

At the restaurant—which is also a little chalet hotel, the name of which I cannot remember—Jordan and I eat weiner schnitzel, veggies, fries. You know, I have not had weiner schnitzel in more than a decade, I think, but I could have eaten that stuff all night. Michael and Carolyn say goodbye and run off. Tom, Cherie, Jordan and I linger on, ordering a chocolate truffle of an ice cream dessert and a chocolate-covered coffee cream thing surrounded in a moat of Grand Mariner that has been lit into a veritable torch on our table. It burns blue flames and I admit I’m dubious. Some time later, when the fire goes out, I am smitten from the first bite and break out the Bruce Lee moves against any interloping spoons.

I’ve tried to cajole Cherie into coming downtown, but she’s going to work. The collective is depending on her. So I tag along with Jordan and Tom. I’m cross-eyed tired, but I’ve never been to Zurich and if I go to bed without seeing any of it I know I’ll hate myself and worse, have no vicarious adventures for my friends.

We grab a cab. Stone buildings, Swiss banks, and couture stores are lit up along streets filled full of Benz cabs and pint-sized Smart Cars. We get out near the river on a famous shopping street—Bahnhof, or something like that. The night is clear, about 60 degrees, and perfect. We stroll by designer stores, mercifully closed at this hour, open-air cafes and bars open out onto the sidewalk.

We wander down to the river, which Jordan contends is a lake. It’s flowing quickly under a series of bridges that seem to hold the two sides of Zurich together like stitches. The bridges themselves are cobbled on the sides for pedestrians, paved in the middle for cars. Gothic iron rails houses intricate webs and their eight-legged occupants, suspended in glassless windows. A parking lot of boats are silent on the water; I miss them at fist glance. The water of the river is green around the edges and under the bridge where lights illuminate rocks lurking beneath the surface. Girlfriends, their leather satchels under their arms, pass by us, headed in the direction of bars. Lovers hold one another’s waists. They’re locals, and oblivious to the scenery—to anything but one another. Across the bridge, clock tower church steeples point toward heaven.

Sometimes people ask me why I do what I do. It’s demanding, draining, and takes me away from home. I’m constantly frustrated by flight delays, irritable bowel, sore back and spotty e-mail access. I’m always tired. I give standard responses to these questions, but the real reason is for moments like this. I have taken tea in the oldest teahouse in Shanghai, have walked the antique brownstones and watched white-haired women playing mahjong on the street. I have looked down on Hong Kong from Victoria’s peak, and out at the lights of Bangkok from the top of the Banyan Tree. I’ve seen the Grand Palace lit up against the night from beneath the canopy of a motorized rickshaw. I’ve shopped the red light district of Pat Pong Road. I’ve been to ice bars in Singapore and partied with ex-Pats on the harbor. I’ve dined under the domes of medieval churches cum restaurants in Spain, and run, freezing in the cold from the Oriental Café to the Prado in Madrid. I have gazed at the work of Picasso. I have walked the marble cemetery of Sitges with its weeping statues and danced on the beaches of Goa. I’ve stood on the steps of the Taj Mahal. Looking out now at the steeples of Zurich, I am taken by the beauty of this city at night, by the camaraderie of this walk with friends. By this still moment in the midst of a 48-hour trip.

We’ve decided to investigate one of the churches: reformed evangelical, 1782. There’s another one further on, its spires having given it the illusion of standing just behind the first when it’s really a few blocks away. We pass the Savoy, round blocks at haphazard angles, pass up and along cobblestone streets that look, to my mind, exactly like the postcards of crowded old-world shops and tiny hotels, their box windows painted in colorful Swiss designs. Back on the main street, where designer store windows advertise handbags for $1500, the streets are clean, the people walking them a more interesting kind of beautiful than Americans; their clothes edgier, their hairdos more urban, their bodies more lean. The only obese people here are tourists.

Jordan opines again that the river is really a lake. I consider the narrow channel under the bridge. “We call this a river, where I come from,” I tell him. Swans float by. The water level is perhaps only 12 inches lower than the river walk next to it. An ambulance whizzes by, and I would know by the high-low pitch of the siren that I am in Europe even with my eyes closed. We cross to the opera house, round back to an outdoor café for espresso, apple juice. It’s getting chilly now but the brisk walk has revived me.

Crossing back, we find a city map at the bus stop. The river opens out into the Zurich See—Lake Zurich. Jordan is triumphant. This is a bitter defeat I won’t soon forget.

We grab a ride from a line of waiting taxis. This is a new Toyota hybrid, with engine display on the dashboard monitor. You can actually see when it’s storing energy and using electric or gas power. The cabbie smells worse than I did upon arrival yesterday. Tom cracks his window. The cabbie, noticing a window down, closes it a moment later.

…bah bah bah!

At the hotel I say goodnight to the New Yorkers. They won’t be going on to Austria. One of these days I’ll actually catch them at the New York Gallup office, maybe, which I am not convinced really exists.

2006-08-29T00:33:00.000-07:00

Lincoln to Zurich: Joe’s Pizza

Jaunting off hither and yon is losing some of its shock appeal.

“Hey. What’re you doing today?” John / Julie / Jason calls to ask.

“Goin’ to Zurich.”

“Cool.”/ “Huh.” / “Buy me something.”

Scott espouses the theory that I do not actually consult for Gallup, that Gallup is, in fact, a front for SD-6, and that I am really an intelligence operative. Of course, Scott has also been known to mail homemade newsletters under cover of night clad in nothing but dark clothing and an aluminum foil hat. Still, I try not to dissuade this way of thinking. Sometimes I even come home with the occasional bruise, which looks, naturally, like I’ve been doing kung fu in the boiler room of a derelict building housing seedy terrorist types.

I originally had four hours to work in Chicago before my Swiss flight, but the plane coming in to Lincoln from O’Hare was, surprisingly, late.

That was facetious, by the way. We are all aware by now that O’Hare is the Venus fly trap of airplanes. The hotel California of airports. Where dreams get mired and die like roaches in a sticky trap. Letting Attila out at midnight, I often see the 9:55 flight from Chicago carting yet another metal tube of lost souls in to Lincoln. I can mock them because I am not on that plane drifting over my own roof.

In O’Hare, I really don’t know how to find my connection. Living in the ant farm that is terminals 1 and 2 (concourses B, C, F) I didn’t know that you could get to A, G, or H. Or that there is, in fact, a terminal 5. Next they’ll be telling me that you can actually exit this place.

My Dad has taken to sending me off with the admonition—not once but thrice—not to pick up any “strange men.” I haven’t told him that that’s the only kind I seem to attract running through airports with pigtails in a “sweet and toxic” Urban Outfitters t-shirt while humming the Eagles and striking Bruce Lee poses. I must be losing my touch, though; the only man who approaches me in Chicago’s international terminal wants to know where I got McDonald’s.

Swiss Air does things differently than Abusive Air—I mean, United. The jury’s still out on the whole thing for me, but I’ve conveniently broken down the differences for you here before your next trip to Zurich:

First of all, there are no check-in kiosks. You have to wait in line for a really disengaged (note the Kool-aid drinking consultant lingo for maintaining perfect alias) Asian Swiss Air guy who looks at his watch after every passenger he checks in. They do not assign you a seat for business class—they call your name at the gate and you have to make a mad run to the counter. There’s a lot of pushing and shoving as they seem to award the aisle seat to whoever reaches it first. This is where my ultimate fighting skills definitely come in handy. I even saw a group of guys taking side bets on each round. (Someone made a lot of money when I broke that other passenger’s arm.)

The rest of my chart breaks down like this.

United:
Serves salad
Better pillows than Swiss Air square ones
Better in-flight amenities—namely Kleenex packs
All the female attendants actually look like females. So do the male ones.
Better dinner entres
Mid-flight snack availability

Swiss Air:
Bigger soup course
Bigger personal movie screen
Strong European coffee (which may not be a good thing on long haul flights)
Personal movie screens feature games—most notably: blackjack
Individual olive oil with dipping dishes for bread
Real knives included with cutlery (United still serves only plastic ones)

The pilot comes on the PA system, giving flight information in English. He repeats it in German. And then, with a sigh, in French.

After dinner, I try to sleep. I only got four hours last night and I’ll be arriving today just in time to go right into session. I mean, on my mission. But I can’t sleep. I want to recline flat and these seats don’t. And I’m too warm. It might be the Sudafed I just took but I toss and, well, toss. (You can’t turn in these seats.) I sleep an hour. Two at best. This is not good. Considering the fact that McKinsey guys have three to ten PhDs a piece and brains scientifically proven to be the size of Einstein’s, I feel obligated to be awake, if not intelligent.

To top it all off, I’m itchy. The allergic dermatitis that I’ve had for weeks now is refusing to die and you can’t bring Cortisone cream on the plane because of current security restrictions. Anywhere my skin rubs against my clothes, my watch, my seat belt, I get hives. Anywhere I scratch, my nails leave long red tracks. I’m a veritable human Etch-A-Sketch.

I’m also super stinky. Girls, Dove deodorant might not leave white marks on your clothes, but it also doesn’t prevent stench. I feel badly for the guy sitting next to me. I hold out my arm, ask if he wants to play tic-tac-toe. He settles for hangman. As I write this, I still have a dead guy dangling on my bicep.

Zurich is green and hilly. I even see some sheep. Farmhouses stand in Alpen idyll just beyond the runway, turning the airport into the Swiss equivalent of a junky, loud neighbor.

The plane stops at the gate and the musak system goes on. The hills are not alive with the sound of music, but with the elevator version of the Copacabana. I flee the plane.

The bathrooms here are neat, clean, industrial and so very European with their narrow seats (remember the Balkans: please don’t sit on it!) and toilet bowls like gullets. Actually European toilets kind of creep me out.

The baggage belt is UFO silent. There are no buzzing announcements and bags float by with eerie serenity. This is going to haunt my dreams.

I grab a cab and arrive in ten minutes at the Renaissance Zurich. Pulling up at the front door, I spot my target—I mean the main McKinsey faculty guy—getting into a car, his big brain wobbling on the stem of his neck.

My room isn’t ready yet. The nice man at reception asks if I’m going straight to work or need a room so I can freshen up. I lift my arms. He catches my drift.

Really, I prefer not to think of it as stinky so much as French.

I ring Jordan’s room; I’m told he’s just checked in (“He had to wait, too,” the man says).

“Was business class nice?” Jordan says on the phone. He has class envy, having schlepped his way over in cargo—I mean, coach. It’s so hard, being an airplane Brahmin, when the lower classes get discontent.

Jordan says we’re meeting at 1pm. “How about 1:30?” I ask. “How long do we really need?”

“With you there? An hour. Because you ask so many questions.”

“What if I don’t ask any questions?” I ask.

***

There are certain clothes in my closet—or, as now, in my hotel room—that I need to remember to burn. These Chico’s pants, for one, because they get stuck in my butt when I walk. It’s so uncool.

We meet, a kinder, fresher, better-groomed bunch, at the restaurant to discuss the afternoon. Despite eating twice on the flight, I’m starved. Michael is here (“Don’t hug me!” I said when I ran into him in the lobby before my shower. “But you’re always stinky,” he said, giving me a hug.) We order oxtail soup. We are adding to our repertoire of lovely places we have been together; Zurich now joins Madrid, Shanghai, Sitges, Toronto. In two weeks, we’ll add Austria. Carolyn is in from the UK. Tom and Jordan from New York. They’re the handlers running this mission. I mean, session.

We talk strategy. I eat and ask questions, the two things I do best.

Around the corner at the McKinsey offices, we move in on—er, convene—with their faculty dean, learning coordinator and a member of another partner firm. When I arrived, it was 3am at home. It is now 8am Lincoln time. As I write this, I have notes I don’t remember taking. I spent a half hour watching a vortex open in the middle of the table. The hangman on my arm got off the scaffold and walked away. And there was a brief period when I saw little dancing elves in the corner.

Some time after six the dean declares dinner time. We take Mercedes-Benz cabs to the Doktor Haus restaurant. The driver isn’t sure where we’re going. “Just follow those other cars,” I tell him. My German has deteriorated to such an extent that I may well have told him his mother was a hamster. He says to please call him when I’m done eating. Now I really wonder what I said.

“What kind of wine do you like?” Dean David asks me.

“Red,” I say. He orders Sardinian wine at 300 Swiss Franks a bottle. We take dinner of veal, bratwurst and potato pancakes. Talk turns to other faculty members, including the incoming dean—a former coachee of mine, a devoted Taoist, and a dear, wonderful man.

“He’s a legend at McKinsey,” David (whom I sometimes call Locutius) says. “Been here 30 years.”

This is unheard of at the consulting firm where the newest, brightest minds are always being assimilated—I mean, hired—and the average tenure is 2.4 years.

“Oh yes, he started the insurance division. They’re responsible for what—5% of our global revenue. If you can get his buy-in, you’re set.”

I’m meeting with him next month in New York.

“No pressure,” someone says, looking at me.

Back at the hotel, I call home. I’m so tired, I can hardly talk. I see that I’ve gotten an e-mail from Pete, the McKinsey legend, but I’m too tired to write an intelligent reply tonight.

2006-04-16T00:09:00.000-07:00

Lincoln to L.A.: Mea Culpa

Two priests in long black robes, sashed at the waist, chat on the concourse in front of the tuna tomato shop before parting: one to the United gate and another to the Northwest gate. Their robes are full, to the floor, billowing with each step like the long duster of a gunslinger. They strike me as masculine in the way that Polynesian men who wear skirts are ultra-manly. In fact, the priest at my gate seems somehow more virile to me than most of the men at this airport. I want to talk to him—I think he must be from Our Lady of Guadalupe Seminary in Denton—but I’m intimidated and shy as a high school girl at her first frat party. I’m aware of him in the seating area, sitting two rows behind me, and wait to watch him board the plane. He’s carrying a backpack and a Bible streaming with beribboned bookmarks, which only makes him sexier.

I saw this Kate Hudson movie a couple years ago on a flight to Singapore, about a woman who inherits her sister’s kids after a horrible accident. She gives up her high fashion lifestyle and takes the kids to church—and then starts to date the pastor. One night, the pastor, tired of Helen’s vacillating back and forth on whether she wants to date him, says, “You know what? I’m a sexy man of God.”

This priest is a sexy man of God--from the weight-line of his haircut to his flowing robes, to the tear I notice just along his hem… the holy equivalent of acid-washed jeans.

***

Rule of Flying #1: Do not wear perfume unless it smells like chocolate, fruit, or sex. Especially do not smell like a grandma. Even if you are a grandma.

The little old lady next to me is totally overpowering me with her Scent-Wizard (plug it in plug it in!) floral fresh perfume. This stuff is more potent than nerve gas and I am reduced to a mindless, frothing zombie.

***

In Denver, I have just enough time to discover a new wrap/bowl restaurant and to eat a teriyaki bowl with a single piece of broccoli in the middle like a lone American flag on the moon before boarding my next flight.

***

In the Denver airport, I slip my new Bluetooth headset over my ear. My hair covers it up; I look like a certifiable self-talking crazy.

“Call Scott,” I say.

“Call Mom?”

“No.”

“Call Carson?”

“No. Shit.”

“Samit?”

“No, gah!”

“Cynthia?”

“Oh, piss off.”

“Christophe?”

***

On the plane, I sort through catalogs and magazines, tearing out pictures of cute shoes, Pier 1 coupons, recipes from the latest issue of Cooking Light, and market listings from The Writer.

I keep noticing my new watch. It’s a wide, black band that, despite being laser cut into a veritable snakeskin lace, looks at first glance like a wide black band, which makes me look like one of those thin-framed women who wear wide men’s watches, which makes me look, from the corner of my eye, a little butch from the elbow down. I keep getting distracted by it and wondering if I’m a lesbian.

***

Flight Wisdom

Tosca say: she who get up in seat 2A face entire plane coming back from bathroom.

***

One of the last times I was at LAX, I saw author Anne Lamott. I’m the last one who would ever spot a movie star, but it’s hard to miss a blonde white woman with chin-length dreadlocks.

Waiting at the baggage claim, I also remember that the last time I stood at this carousel some guy from my flight tried to impress me with his parking garage empire before asking if I’d meet him for drinks. I said no. But see, if he had worn a long black robe and taken a vow of poverty I would have considered it.

***

Picking my car at the Emerald Aisle—the least generic of the lot of American cars I can find—I throw my bags in and climb in… before nearly passing out.

I spend ten minutes looking for the offending air freshener like a hidden bomb. I nearly swerve off the road in Inglewood. Oh, yeah—I’m driving by then and it’s like trying to run away while you’re on fire; this thing is killing me, eating away at my brain cells faster than grandma’s perfume. It’s so insidious, this pimped-up pine, that I’m worried about it sticking to my clothes and inducing a vegetative state while I sleep.

But I never do find it.

Damn, these car people are good.

***

I like the Torrance Hilton. It’s five minutes from LAX, right off Hawthorne, around the corner from Starbucks and down the street from Trader Joe’s. Checking in, I inquire whether they have annual rates. The guy just stares at me before giving me the key to a room way down the hall, next to the fire exit, all by itself.

I take myself to the Elephant Bar (parked in a row with Bennihanna, Red Lobster, Marie Calendar’s and Souplantation right behind the Hilton) for a half-pound burger, fries, salad, and a hot fudge sundae.

Walking back, I reflect on olfactory sin.

Grandma perfume: Bad.

Steaming hamburger with mushrooms: Good.

Car air freshner: Bad.

Tosca after ice cream: Bad.

Really bad.

I walk to the Hilton parking lot and sit in the car for a while.

2006-03-16T10:23:00.000-08:00

Bangkok to Tokyo. To Chicago. To Lincoln.: Return to Tuna

My limo (Nissan) driver at the bright hour of 4am this morning is a man burly enough to pass for a body guard. So, just to be cool, that’s what I’m pretending he is. Until he starts talking about Thai soup and how the vegetables are very healthy. He turns the radio on to hip hop. Now I’m starting to wonder if he masquerades as one of those man-girls at night.

Guess what I find at the coffee stand (the logo is green and circular, to look like you-know-who) at the airport? A tuna salad sandwich. Okay, so it’s 5am by the time I’m in and through security. Tuna is tuna.

My stomach is cured. There will be no barfing today.

Asian sandwiches are neatly trimmed of all crusts and cut in sharp, geometric shapes. Triangles and rectangles especially. No messy paninis here. I crash out during takeoff, reviving later, thanks to three cups of coffee, to type e-mail. Granted, my internet is impotent up here. But I’m ready for landing.

***

Here are three sure-fire ways to scare your seatmate on a plane:

1) Swat at imaginary demons while citing scripture
2) Retrieve your air sickness bag and hold it in the “ready” position
3) Scream at every turbulent bump

The six-hour flight in to Bangkok from Tokyo is only five going back. I spent half the three-hour layover in Narita’s Red Carpet Club—and you know, I really kind of like this one; every seat in it has its own electrical 110 and 220 volt outlet—and the other half wandering the terminal and eating sushi at a tiny restaurant near the gate. Every time Dad hears that I’m passing through Narita, he tells me to go eat Udon at the noodle place, but I have yet to find this noodle place. In fact, I don’t think it really exists, this airport noodle fantasy restaurant. I think he’s pulling my leg.

***

On board flight 882 to Chicago, I can’t sleep. Are we there yet?

***

Agh! I can’t sleep! I’m bloated and I keep eating things! How much longer?

***

The man next to me is a Cornell University physics professor. If there is one class of people that creep me out, it’s people who do physics for fun. (The other being grinning accountants.) He keeps making these upturned-palm gestures toward his personal video screen, as though he’s going to make some erudite comment, but he doesn’t because he’s wearing headphones and watching a movie. I slide my eyes sideways and back, muscles tense, before scribbling manic notes, hunched over my Little Fat Book.

Yeah. We totally look like a pair of loonies.

***

They left my favorite scene out of the movie version of Rent—when Angel dies and he’s lit up, mid-audience, flying out of his body. I feel so ripped off. I can’t believe I watched this thing for two hours. Though I never did notice the actual strains of Puccini’s La Boheme in the score the first time.

What happened to Walk the Line and Pride and Prejudice, I wonder? Those are the ones I know.

***

In Chicago, giant white feathers are falling from a frozen sky.

Curse you, Chicago weather! Damn you, O’Hare airport!

Now let me tell you something: if you want to see a Christian woman act in a distinctly uncharitable fashion, tell her after a five hour flight followed by an eleven hour flight that she may not get home the last hour of her journey to her pillow-top mattress, flatulent dog and closet full of clean underwear. Tell her that. I dare you.

The bartender of the F Concourse Dead Carpet Club does a double take at me and grins.

“Double absolute, cranberry and lime?”

“I need to stay awake,” I mumble, grimacing a smile. “How about a Diet Coke.”

He brings me my soft drink, napkins and a pile of cookies.

Bless you, Red Carpet Club. Bless you, bartender guy.

My flight goes from a 4:50 departure to 5:15. To 5:50 to 6:15. To 9:50.

I camp near an electrical outlet, answer e-mail. Get up to pick at my face in the bathroom. Return to reprogram my cell phone, cut my cuticles and re-organize my purse.

At the front desk, I check on my flight.

“It got moved up!” the woman at the desk says. “Go go go!”

I go. I run out onto the tarmac to board my Lincoln-bound puddle jumper. I don’t care that I’m wearing a t-shirt, fresh (or not so fresh) from Southeast Asian 90-degree weather. I jam my carry-on under the seat in front of me and buckle in. It’s 8:30 and I’m going home.

2006-03-15T10:17:00.000-08:00

Bangkok: Yak yak yak

We’re in the middle of a third-day engagement activity. One of my participants, a pretty girl who reminds me of a Thai version of my friend Kamma, says she used to be an attendant for Japan Airlines.

“The Japanese—they will have sex anywhere!” she adds. “Anywhere on a plane, any place!”

“So, uh…” I say, looking for the natural segue into strengths theory. It’s not coming to me.

We finish just past noon. I order soup and salad in my room and wonder what I’m going to say to my consultee, A.K.A. Mr. No EQ.

1:30. I’m down in the Imperial Club (it looks like a Thai house stuck in the middle of the lobby) with the Pharma and Chemical division head. He’s telling me, non-stop, why everything happening is due to the behavior of other people. I ask questions he’s glad to answer. And answer. Okay. I have ideas. But wait—he’s got to tell me more. Alright, then. Now I have another id—okay. I’ll listen. Ahha. Okay, so my suggestion is—another point? Yes, all right. I see. Hmm. I see. Uh-huh. Uh… huh.

Right. So, after almost two hours, I make engagement suggestions—the last of which is that he listen to his people. For a whole day. Without talking. While taking notes.

I limp upstairs. Not physically. Mentally. I feel like I just crawled through a spaghetti strainer.

I send notes to the Thai team and realize I’m not feeling well. An hour later, I’m truly nauseous. After several minutes of yakking Tazmanian devil sounds in the bathroom I consider that dinner with the client might not be the thing tonight.

On the phone with Herr Merck, he’s already talked to the man I consulted with earlier.

“Yez, he said zat you gave him very fair suggestions.” I recap the two hours, my feedback, recommendations. I barf again.

This does not bode well for air travel tomorrow.

2006-03-14T10:06:00.000-08:00

Bangkok: Higher Education

Today’s Bangkok Post headline: Fears of Violence.

I finish class just before 5:00. Hopefully I don’t look as tired today as I did yesterday. I do think my jetlag is getting progressively worse rather than better; I’m waking up at 3:30am, at 5am, and 6am, regardless of how late I go to sleep, regardless of Unisom.

After class, I have a covert meeting with the head of Merck Thailand (who is actually German) and the head of HR. They’ve requested a private consulting session for the head of their Pharma and Chemical divisions, a man responsible for 70% of Merck Thailand’s revenue. After many disclaimers and a reminder that only God changes people—and even then I’m pretty sure he says a few bad words in the process—I agree to help the manager brainstorm engagement ideas tomorrow after class.

Upstairs, I put my feet up. Recline. Supine. And ponder the ants. There are ants on my desk and in the bathroom. I keep wondering how they got up the 25 floors to my room. Nick calls at 6:30. He’s still working and will call when he’s done. Bogie (Patch’s nickname) has a headache—she gets this way and I worry about her.

By 8:30, I’m en route to the Banyan Tree Hotel. In previous travelogues, I’ve pondered the allure of going postal vs. going Bangkok taxi. Now, blasted by AC and bad folk music on a staticky station while held hostage in traffic, it all rushes back to me. Just as my fingers are tightening and my lips curl back from my teeth, we arrive.

The Banyan Tree (the actual tree is in the courtyard—there’s always one on the premises of these hotels, with long, twining branches and twisted roots elbowing back up from the ground) is posh and, at rates competitive with upscale U.S. hotels, exorbitant for Bangkok.

I take a glass of Chianti in the lobby bar while I’m waiting for Nick, distracted by a twiggy Thai girl in flounced skirt and heels. She bounces toward the elevator, her ponytail swishing back and forth with each step—the certain product of practice. Swish swash swish swash!

Nick shows up, rucksack over his shoulder, all khaki and button-down English charm. He joins me, ordering a gin and tonic—a drink I haven’t been able to stomach since having nine too many at Oxford in ‘89. Afterward, we’re in the speed lift, which opens out onto the 59th floor where we take another set of stairs to Vertigo, the rooftop restaurant and moon bar.

I realize I’ve been here before. The team had dinner here my first trip out in ‘04; seated in the high center of the restaurant, I ordered rocket salad. Today we’re sitting against the rail, so close I can see over the ledge to the streets below, covered by a clean bed of black and sparkly lights. I consider Bangkok over another glass of Chianti. Nick and I talk about relationships, love, work. He eats salad. I take fois gras three ways (my favorite is still seared over pear slices). We dig into chocolate and banana mousse. The waiter offers us a complimentary photo and he’s serious about this business, having set his tripod up on a chair. I appropriate the photo with a promise to scan it for Nick later.

We spend the night on the town, taking in the streets of the famous red light district. It is a curious, strange, and sad place to be with no American equivalent or comparison.

Simply put, we don't possess the poverty to completely understand it.

"What time is it?" I ask after some time.

"Nearly two in the morning."

“No kidding? I gotta go.”

“Yeah, me too.” And he does need his sleep; he’s running a marathon this coming weekend. Crazy bastard.

The taxi drives to my hotel past the Japanese bar girls, looking bored outside the hostess bars in their prom dresses. I bus Nick on both cheeks, thank him for the education, and promise to send dinner photos.

2006-03-13T09:58:00.000-08:00

Bangkok: Red

My session is attended by three observers from Merck and four colleagues from Gallup.

I’ve said before that my first day is my asshole day. Today I only feel like half an ass. That’s not to say I’m doing a half-assed job. On the contrary, I’m teaching a three-day seminar that is normally tag-team taught by two teachers in English. My class today does not understand American pop culture references, idioms or most of my jokes. But they speak English, so that keeps it from running four to five days, as my previous translated courses have.

We take lunch at the buffet—Thai, Japanese, and Indian food. And one curious Vietnamese “targo”—which I learn is meant to be “taco” on the placard sign. This mixing of Vietnamese cuisine and Mexican reference blows a miniature hole in my brain.

Tik,having left after lunch to make a presentation to another client, returns around 3pm.

“You look tired!” she says.

I am a bit drained. Jet lag and uncomfortable shoes, plus the extra effort of communicating to a group for whom English is a second language is taking its toll earlier than normal.

We finish for the day. I limp out and collapse onto my bed. For five minutes.

Verapong has arranged dinner with the main brother from the Yontrakit group—the client I came to Bangkok for on my previous trips.

I pop Tylenol, spritz my hair. Studying myself in the mirror, I wonder if, at 36, I’m wearing too much makeup. If, in fact, I need a face lift. Or extensions. Or Botox. Changing under the dour lights of my dimly-lit room, I briefly consider the hail damage on my butt before covering it up with a red dress and painting Chinese red lipstick on my mouth.

I spend an hour in the hotel limo (which is really a Nissan) on a trip that would normally take 20 minutes. But it’s rush hour and I’m lucky it doesn’t take longer.

“Excuse me, Madam?” the driver says, rousing me. Oh god. Madam. That’s what people say to women who wear too much makeup, isn’t it, to women compensating for fleeing youth. I wipe off half my lipstick with a tissue.

“Turn left, or go straight?”

He’s asking me? I tell him I don’t know. He seems to accept this.

We pass shanties along the street, rows of corrugated tin townhomes, children and fathers squatting on the sidewalk in front for lack of living room space.

Splendor and squalor. This is Bangkok.

We spend nearly 20 minutes stuck around the corner from the Standard Charter building, just sitting in this, the largest parking lot in the world. Commuters pass us by, holding on to the back of motorbike taxi drivers in orange vests. There are legends of businessmen abandoning their BMWs in traffic and hopping motorbike taxis to get to important meetings. Forget the meetings—what do people do if they need to pee? Or have diarrhea? Seriously. What if someone is having a baby? I mean, forget avian flu—the real pandemic here is traffic.

I’m meeting Verapong at the office, from where we’ll go on to dinner together. But when we finally pull up around the front, I can’t remember which tower it is. I haven’t been here since 2004. The information desk recruits a worker stepping off the lift. She speaks English and directs me to the right elevator.

Upstairs, on the 22nd floor, the receptionist buzzes me in. It’s 7pm and she’s shuffling around in fuzzy teddy bear head slippers.

Nick’s here. Tik, Note, Vibhas, researchers… all here. I wonder, not for the first time, if they actually have homes.

I collect Verapong and we head down to the garage to his BMW and drive the few blocks down Satthorn Road to the exclusive Bangkok Club.

Splendor and squalor.

Kuhns Vithit (the director of the group), Smith (Sa-mit, as they pronounce it) and Nid (which is short for Akarintorn) are waiting for us.

“I hope you like Japanese,” Vithit says. A typically petite Chinese Thai man, he exudes self-assurance and no small measure of power.

“I love it,” I say, which pleases him.

Slipping off shoes, we enter a private, screen-doored room before sitting on flat chairs on the floor. There is a pit under the table for our legs.

The Bangkok Club, built by and for its members, features a variety of cuisines in appropriately-matched settings. I came here in ’04 with Vithit and his brothers for a Chinese meal during which I managed to use my personal serving spoon inappropriately—an action that resulted in Vithit taking it upon himself to cut my food for me the rest of the evening, which later became the stuff of legend among the Thai and Singaporean offices.

Vithit orders Petrus, a Pomerol—his favorite. He explains that Pomerol is a very small wine-making region in France, and therefore the wines tend to be rare and more expensive. My friend, Scott, will later turn green and briefly hate me when I tell him about it later.

He says something to the serving girl, kneeling in her kimono, her zari slipped off outside the room every time she enters, and she pours the first taste for me. I swirl it around in my glass, sniff it.

No buttery smell. Hmph. I don’t care if it costs $600 a bottle; it’s no pinot.

We talk about Vithit’s son, about to go to special golf school in the states at the age of 12. Smith and Nid say nothing, listening while Vithit holds court. He sends a plate of sashimi back, unimpressed with the presentation.

“It’s too crowded on the plate,” he says, gesturing vaguely at it. “Too crowded together.”

It returns laid out on a wooden boat, complete with sails, the scallops tucked into a miniature ice cave on deck.

“So how are your brothers?” I ask. I’ve consulted with all four of them, dined with them on two occasions and met two of their wives.

Vithit sighs. “Well, I might as well be open about it. Verapong knows. It’s been in the paper.”

What, what? I wonder. One of them did a shady business deal? One of them left the company?

Vithit sips his wine and his brow furrows as he tells the story. It seems that in keeping with Thai custom, Vithit’s youngest brother has taken a mistress—a secondary wife. Vithit’s own father did the same—it’s the reason for in-fighting in the company between Vithit and his brothers and a second set of siblings.

“It isn’t normal, but it is accepted,” Vithit says. I am aware of the practice among rich Thai men, and of their father’s background, too.

Turns out his brother was with his mistress when a gang broke in on them and beat the brother up, putting him in the hospital. The brother’s wife and 25 year-old son came to the hospital, whereupon the son attacked the mistress, who had brought him in, thus landing her in the hospital.

“Oh my God,” I say.

Vithit sighs. “Yes, but that isn’t all. That was last Christmas.”

“It gets worse?”

Vithit nods. “Two weeks ago, the mistress was gunned down in traffic.”

There are just some times when one doesn’t know the appropriate thing to say. So I blink and stutter: “Gunned down?”

Vithit confirms: Gunned. As in executed. An easy thing to do when one is stuck in traffic and the assassins are on motorbike.

Vithit is still talking, saying that the police are investigating it. They don’t know if it was the wife or the son or a past lover of the mistress who ordered the hit, though the assassins were surely not professionals because they didn’t kill her instantly. The woman bled to death in traffic before she could get to a hospital.

We stare at our plates. We drink our wine. Vithit looks tired.

“You seem thinner than the last time I saw you,” he says eventually, looking at me.

“I lost some weight,” I tell him.

“Why?”

“I’m going through a divorce.”

“You are? Why? What happened?”

“My husband took a mistress.”

And I suddenly realize that it’s March 13th. My wedding anniversary. It’s been 14 years since I married on a Friday the 13th in 1992. My husband’s girlfriend is three months’ pregnant and I go to court in ten days.

Things are very different than they were my last trip here in 2004.

After dinner, I sip a glass of cognac and pick at some chocolate cake. Vithit is going to Phoenix soon. I suggest he look into the Phoenician. We say goodbye and Verapong drives me back to my hotel.

Undressing in my room, I think of Vithit’s brother, of his son and his wife. And of his mistress, dying in traffic.

Don’t worry. I didn’t get any ideas.

2006-03-12T09:56:00.000-08:00

Bangkok: Swank and Sherpas

A group of Thais and turbaned Sheikhs are playing basketball on the courts outside the coffee shop where I take breakfast of eggs, beans, cereal, and the coffee I’ve so recently given up.

When I was in India in ’04 teaching a manager’s seminar for Sony Entertainment Television, I surprised one of my Sheikh students by observing that his turban-tying style and fabric was quite different than that of another Sheikh participant. He was shocked, never having had anyone of Western persuasion notice these subtle details before. I asked, unsure if I would offend, if I might get a turban-tying demonstration before we left Goa. Maybe it was sheer surprise, I’m not sure, but he consented, and later I watched as he tied some twenty or more feet of cotton gauze around a top knot of hair, aided by a fellow student who held the end for him—a job he must recruit hotel staff to help with when away from his wife.

***

I receive this message under my door while at breakfast:

Dear Sir:
Kindly be informed that Mr. Nick would like you to call him back for a launch at 1200.

I call Nick about “launch,” to take place at a restaurant on the river that he’s fond of. I ask about dress code—going to Chatuchak market afterward in anything nice might be problematic.

“It is quite swanky,” Nick says. But he thinks shorts might be all right. I hope so; the weekend market is infamously hot, a veritable endurance test for sweltering shoppers. It’s where I procured the Thai bells, rain drums and other items in my basement—and the reason Nick is wary of being turned into a sherpa.

The restaurant is the outdoor sitting area of the Oriental Hotel’s main café. I order a swanky lobster and tomato sandwich with a posh bit of mango juice. I am already sweating down the front of my tank top, but it’s gorgeous on the river. This is the first time I’ve met Tik (whose real first name is Jintananarumit). She’s a petite thing (should I really eat this lobster and all these chips?), just like the others, with sparkling eyes and a ruffled pink pillow in the backseat of her car, which Nick drove her in to come pick me up in today.

After lunch, just when I think I can’t possibly take more of this heat, we catch a cab to Chatuchak, the stifling mid-day weekend market.

Chatuchak is a maze of miniature shops and stalls not unlike the night market, but also not unlike peroxide on a fresh bit of liver: bubbling up and spilling all over the place. Booths and stalls and tables flood past the numbered labyrinth of official stores (some of them converted into tiny bars and hot-food restaurants tended by sweating cooks), out into the street and sidewalks and into by-alleys. I heard once that there were some 8000 stores in this market. A person could get lost, die, and not be found for years beneath the pile of foot traffic, panhandlers, homemade popsicle, fish balls-on-a-stick (balls of fish, that is) and iced green tea vendors.

To my amazement, I actually recognize some of the stores; there’s a pink one (almost everything is pink, and I hear that this store has become a favorite) out front that Patch loves. In an open area nearby, a band of freelance artists and long-haired musicians with kamakazi headbands scribed with “freelance artist” on the front are playing political songs against the Prime Minister. Activists hand out folded flyers complete with political cartoons, commentary in bubbles coming out of character’s mouths. Apparently the PM has been involved in some dodgy deals and made a lot of money. I haven’t gleaned any more than that, but I do know that it’s on the front of the paper, that the King is considering mediating talks, and that the populace is pissed.

There’s an antique store that I recognize, too. They sell old abaci, reed mats, curved box pillows. I buy a bronze door knocker: a foo dog with a ring in his mouth. It’s the only purchase I make in the hours that we’re sweating through narrow corridors and Nick is amazed. Tik is too. Despite the fact that this is the first time we’ve met, my reputation has apparently preceded me.

We finally sit down in a stall of a bar with stools and tiny tables spilling out into the main open common between the two main chunks of Chatuchak, joined by hippie American men with dreads and women in tank tops without bras. Even their babies have gone native in cotton batik wraps. These are the kinds of Americans I encounter most often here—not so much your usual businessmen as characters straight from the movie The Beach.

We’re melted, drained and overheated. Despite a good college try to wander a few more stores full of chunks of marble, furniture and orchids (they even have pet stores here, but my heart can’t take it anymore; last time I tried to buy a passel of puppies), genius strikes:

“Let’s go get massage!” I say. We have an hour and a half left before dinner with Verapong at the Sukothai. Nick and Tik readily agree and we make our way out of the madness that is Chatucak to the street, past vendors of socks and shoelaces and squid on a stick (why is every food on a stick here?). Hailing a cab, we’re off to a health spa popular with tourists and foreigners that Tik likes to frequent.

Health Land looks like an old colonial building, complete with a parking attendant to direct us to a slot. Cars are parked in neutral perpendicular to the stalls, and the gloved attendant bends over a bumper to push a vehicle out of the way. That’s how they do it in garages, too, drivers pushing cars that are not their own forward or back like square puzzle pieces to get their vehicles.

I’m so thirsty—again. I sip orange juice while we wait. They can’t take us for full body right now, so it’s reflexology for us. Nick is antsy about foot massage. I have requested wimp-strength for myself.

Massage establishments are different in Asia—even private rooms aren’t so private, most usually screened in by curtains at best. Patrons in for the footworks recline in a room full of easy chairs, covered with a towel, head askew, drooling on their own shoulders. Tik and I have two comfy seats in a room of perhaps twenty. Nick is somewhere off around the corner. Dim lights and wimp-strength massage do the job; I’m out after five minutes until the therapist pulls me up like a rag doll to sit me on her stool, pound on my shoulders and stretch out my arms.

By the time we stagger out, we’re late for dinner. Tik leaves us to prepare for a presentation and Nick and I catch a taxi.

We’ve taken several cabs today, but keep in mind that one can get nearly anywhere in Bangkok on 60 Baht—about $1.50. A trip across the expressway will cost an extra 40, which is the reason some travelers avoid it. But for an American in Bangkok traffic, the extra dollar is hardly worth a thought.

Verapong finds my choice Thai food favorite hilarious. An everyday blend of broad rice noodle, Chinese greens and meat, Phadsiew is the Thai equivalent of meatloaf or goulash. Not so exotic. But I love the sweet brown sauce (which I can’t reconcile with its “gravy” description). We eat tiny bits of nuts and dried things I don’t recognize folded over in leaves, sample a variety of appetizers chosen by Nick. I go through two pots of jasmine tea. By now the heat, massage and food have taken their toll.

“I have to go,” I announce abruptly, suddenly impatient for bed.

At the hotel I sketch out tomorrow’s plan, set my alarm and gratefully collapse, nearly chipping my tooth on the bronze door knocker I took to bed with me.

2006-03-11T09:53:00.001-08:00

Bangkok: Enduro

“Tosca, it’s Patch! Oh. You’re sleeping.”

Patch is my little sister, self-adopted by me in 2004. We love to shop, go to movies and eat saba together. We love to get massage at her mother’s massage chains, too, where two hours under the “family discount” costs me about $15. She introduced me to foot reflexology (not for the faint of heart), and I’ve begun the slow process and big sister responsibility of corrupting her. Last trip, I made her go to Pat Pong road (the red light district) where men hawk sex shows to passers-by with an illustrated menu of sight-seeing options. I also made her ride in a tuk tuk (a motorized rickshaw) last time. That’s what older sisters are for. This trip I’ll offer to buy her some booze or something.

I actually have to inquire with the hotel about how to dial the phone in order to return Patch’s call and then ring Nick, the Englishman who works in the Bangkok office. International dialing, even when it’s in-country and therefore technically domestic, is still a problem for me. The man explains that the 66 in front of Nick’s cell phone is really just meant to be an 06, and that will replace the 6 in front of the number.

My eyes cross.

Down in the café, I pick through a weird buffet of Thai soups, sashimi, paella, fish, salad, and Malaysian-looking dishes (they are the most complicated and most mysterious to me). Despite two cups of strong, wonderful, aromatic coffee as only Asians (second to the Turks) can make it, I’m still under the impression that I’m quitting the stuff. And that I’ll work out today.

The shopping is so extraordinary and the dollar so strong here (about 2.5 U.S. to 100 Baht) that I’m getting that jittery knee-bouncing feeling that I get when my hit-me finger is itchy and I know it’s going to be a good blackjack night. In the gift shop downstairs, I buy some beautiful painted cards, knowing full well I could get them cheaper on the street, but at 80 cents, bargain hunting is a matter of splitting hairs.

Speaking of which, watching the lithe figures of Thai women strolling along the street and through the buffet, their plates piled with noodles, I remember now that I meant to lose 50 pounds before coming here. The woman in the elevator this morning was so tiny, I doubt her jeans were even a size 1, making me wonder what the man with her had to hold on to at night. Suffice it to say, I feel ungainly here. Rough-hewn. Big boned. Where I come from, I’m considered slender. No, really. But the last time I shopped for clothes here, the salesgirl gave me a dubious look down her nose when, holding a sample item from the rack, I asked if they had my size.

She brought me an XL.

It didn’t fit.

Thank God for Marks and Spencer.

I call Nick, and we make arrangements to go to Chatuchak, the weekend market, tomorrow. He says he’s glad to go so long as he doesn’t have to carry huge Thai drums for me. Don’t worry, I assure him, I bought all of those last trip. He consents to accompany me to Pat Pong as well, so long as I don’t tell everyone in the office. Oops.

Patch meets me at 5pm and we head for MBK—a mall somewhere between the cramped stall quarters of an outdoor market and American style mall. The individual stores are tiny but everyone makes the most of their space.

“We’ve been here 20 minutes, Tosca, and you’ve already bought two purses,” Patch says, carrying one of my bags.

What can I say? I’m highly focused.

We shop until we’re hungry and talk about Starbucks the way girls talk about rock stars. Both stricken with irritable bowel, we’re not supposed to have any of that good caffeinated goodness—and besides, I’ve given up coffee—but we talk about it until we get the munchies. We seek out Zen, a Japanese chain we like to frequent in Siam/Discovery Square. This is a place where you take your shoes off to get into the booth and toward the end of the meal, the waitresses pull your shoes out from the cubby hole beneath your seat for you in the most polite hint that it’s time to leave.

We have a routine when we do Japanese food, Patch and I: saba fish, vegetable tempura and unagi.

“It’s pumpkin,” Patch says, pulling a tempura apart with her chopsticks to share with me. I’ve missed her. She tells me about her boyfriend, about her impending grad school and exchange portion of the program in Chicago. I remind her that she has to visit. We talk about American Idol and TV. Korean series are very popular here—her mother is apparently hooked. What I don’t get is why Korean and Chinese soap operas all take place 100 years ago; any time I turn the TV on to a Korean or Chinese channel in these countries, they’re all doing their end-of-scene soap opera stares in traditional garb.

We hit the bathroom at the mall, a feat which costs us one Baht each (about four cents). One doesn’t want to go to the bathroom at the market, Patch says, and I believe her.

“So, uh, I have to ask you something,” I say, as we leave.

“Yes?”

“What *are* those sprayer hoses in the bathrooms for?” Every bathroom here has them. They’re plumbed right in to the water pipe that feeds the toilet with a sprayer just like the one in my kitchen sink on the end. And I can hear them in use in the bathrooms.

“Tosca… You know. You know? Tosca! To *clean* yourself with!”

Thais must think Americans are so dirty.

Outside, we flag a cab. It’s dark by now, but still stifling. Humidity sticks to the skin like a wet blanket, melting makeup. It’s good for you, actually, but bad for those of us with straight-haired white girl afros. The last time I was here I didn’t wash my hair for days, letting it get thick with pollution, hair spray, dirt and sweat. It didn’t smell good, but it stayed styled.

Transportation here is rigged to support livelihoods; we pass a bicycle outfitted with a jewelry rack on the back. Another carries a miniature greenhouse out front—with electric light at the top—the contents of which are not plants but pastries.

At the weekend market, we buy wallets, another purse, and a few small gifts. I spy a gorgeous painting of a Buddha. The artist is a long-haired man sitting with his family. At 1500 Baht, the painting’s a steal. I don’t even try to talk him down. His stall is going out of business.

We pass mothers with children in their five by nine-foot clothing store stalls, others full of entire families in the middle of their clothing/wallet/silk scarf businesses, sitting on the floor, watching TV. (“See?” Patch says, pointing to the TV set. Sure enough, it’s a Korean soap opera.)

I’m amazed at how awake I am. Surprisingly aloft. Patch suggests we go to the coffee shop for drinks and, most importantly, “air con.” It’s downright chilly inside in comparison, but it feels good. I don’t know how much money I’ve blown in the heat, but I’m giddy. Ecstatic. And jet-lagged. Midway through my iced coffee, I start to crash. It’s only 8:30, but I consider it a respectable go for my first day here.

The coffee doesn’t help. Patch notices. I had hoped to get to Pat Pong tonight—Patch reports that she saw a Tiger (a bastardization of “Thai Girl”) show with clients recently. “It was so gross,” she says. We forge on for another half hour before the earth starts to tilt beneath me.

“Ugh, I can’t go any more,” I say.

“It’s better to go to Pat Pong with a guy along anyway,” Patch says. I believe her. She hails a cab and sends me back to the hotel. Just down the street from the Imperial Queen’s Park I notice a couple of Japanese bars, the girls sitting outside in their prom dresses waiting for clients. They look so bored.

Inside my room, I curl up with my new merchandise, happily, materialistically content.

2006-03-10T09:35:00.001-08:00

Lincoln to Bangkok: Return to the Kingdom

You know, there’s something morally wrong about getting up at 4am. Especially considering that it’s the time I went to bed night before last. Last night I managed to get packed by 2am. So, you know, I got a good two hours of sleep last night.

At the airport check-in, the ticket agent points to the screen.

“Oh. She’s the one?” she says to the man. The man nods.

Whatever it is, I didn’t do it.

Well, maybe I did.

Agent: Our flight out of Lincoln is overbooked. These guys wanted to see if you’d fly out of Denver. It gets you in to Narita an hour earlier.

Me: Ungh? (It’s 5am, you know.)

Agent: The flight leaves at 7:15 for Denver. It gets in at 7:45 Denver time. You fly out of Denver at 8:46. You get in an hour earlier into Narita than your other itinerary.

Let me point out that my original itinerary had me arriving in Chicago around 7:45 and laid over until nearly 1pm. Now I’m no human calculator, but I’m fairly certain 8:46 Denver time is 9:46 Chicago time.

Me: So… you’re telling me I leave three hours earlier… and get in one hour earlier. So the flight time is two hours longer?

Agent: I don’t know.

Another agent joins the first one, looking over her shoulder at me.

Agent #2 (A.K.A. Man Who Made Itinerary In Genius Move To Fix Overbooked Outbound Flight): Well… it does stop in Seattle en route to Narita.

Me (A.K.A. Grouchy Non-Morning Passenger): So you’re trying to get me to fly two hours longer with an additional stop-over.

A third agent peers over Agent #2’s shoulder.

Agent #3 (A.K.A. Evil Henchman to Agent #2): They have low ceilings in Chicago. So it’s definitely what I’d do.

Me: And you can rebook me in business class. Can you upgrade me to First?

Agnet #2: We booked you in coach. So you should have a good chance of upgrading.

This is the point where my head spun around and I projectile vomited.

Me: Are you #$%ing kidding me?

They want me to fly two hours longer, with one stop over more, on a paid business class ticket with the possibility of upgrading—back to business class?

Let me provide a bit of background: I asked about first class because the business ticket I currently have isn’t upgradable. It took our Thai team long enough to verify that this was the best fare available that we nearly lost the fare. It was only through some finagling of our travel center that we re-secured it, and only by buying discounted business class. (Which begs the question why we can’t always get discounted business class, or who wouldn’t want to? Or why it’s considered a discount at all, at $4700?) All that is to say that I’m lucky to have this business class ticket and I’m not at all enthused about the possibility of an overpriced coach ride.

Granted, I don’t love a five-hour layover in Chicago, but I had plans for that time with plenty to do—like balance my checkbook and catch up on e-mail. And if I don’t call my Jewish mother, Susan, before I go, I’m going to get a Jewish life threat.

“I don’t mean to be difficult,” I tell the lady, who is as flabbergasted and confused as I am, “but no frickin’ way.”

And I don’t mean to be a snarf, but why not give the covert shaft to one of the poor souls who only flies once every five years and chooses United because it sounds like a classy carrier—rather than the worn-out woman who single-handedly supports a small village of United workers?

“I don’t blame you,” she says. “I don’t know why they overbook these flights anyway. It’s stupid.”

She said it.

***

I make it upstairs, still irritated. If they wanted me to leave an hour later, they could have at least given me the grand pitch the night before and I could have had an extra hour’s sleep.

Eh, who am I kidding. I’d have just watched more DVR.

I stop, dumbfounded, at the top of the escalator, blinkblinking.

The café is closed.

There will be no tuna tomato this morning.

The implications are both global and catastrophic.

***

In Chicago, I wander around like a zombie on ludes. I can’t find the gyro place. Maybe it’s not here any more. My whole world is in shambles. No tuna. No gyro place in F Concourse. I briefly consider paging Charles to ask him where it is or where it went but worry I’ll find no Charles on my phone list next.

I wander through the Starbuck’s line and stumble into the C Concourse Dead Carpet Club. I circle the club three times but don’t like the working desks here. I wander back underground to the B Concourse and settle into a carrel like a vagrant into a refrigerator box.

A vagrant with two computers, that is.

It’s not that I’m an abject geek. It’s that my work laptop has never properly displayed powerpoint presentations in the near year that I’ve had it. So while all my work information, slides, and other resources are on that laptop (which shall henceforth be referred to as “Satan’s Laptop,”) my personal computer is the only one I can depend on.

I’m not sure where five hours goes, but it goes and I’m re-crossing underground to the C Concourse and boarding my plane.

Now here is confirmation that in this day of missing tuna I at least made the right choice in sticking with my original itinerary: I have two business class seats at the bulkhead to myself. I can flail, spill things and pass gas at will.

Let me momentarily note the physical effects of flying: it dries out your skin, makes your hair oily, and bloats you at least two sizes larger than your worst PMS day so that by the time you land, half-alive, with peeling skin, cracked nostrils and dandruff, is it any wonder that the customs agent holding your passport looks skeptical?

I don’t know what it is, but something about the 40,000 cruising altitude makes me want to nosh, (thus exacerbating the bloating). I’m not a chocolate person, but I still manage to plow my way through a pile of Twix bars, several cookies, two sandwiches, and some cheese after my elaborate Japanese bento box meal—as well as tortellini and a croissant just before landing.

The only thing I can’t seem to do is sleep. Go figure. I fall in and out of consciousness in one-hour stints. I watch Aeon Flux (which I rate five clones out of ten), Walk the Line (nine guitars out of ten) and most of Pride and Prejudice (ten petticoats out of ten).

***

Narita airport is more compact than Hong Kong’s sprawling glass compound. Both have quick security and clean restrooms.

I’ve returned to walking-dead status. One 12-hour flight down—six more hours to go. I check the time—Tokyo is 15 hours ahead of home. Bangkok is 13 hours ahead.

A half hour later, I’m on the upper deck of a 747—seven rows of relative privacy behind the cockpit. I order Thai noodle dinner (I’m not hungry, why am I eating?). By now, I am so tired it takes three attempts before I get my last name right on the Thai entry card. I pick at my food, fumble around with my notebook, fade in and out of sleep. My old carpel tunnel syndrome returns on long flights during stints away from the keyboard, aching from my palm to my elbow. It keeps me from sleeping long. So does the man across the aisle and one row up: he’s sawing through logs, cement and stainless steel over there. Something about snoring grizzles me. [(def.) “Grizzles”: to rub along the nerves in an abrasive manner.] Even loud breathing at night can do the trick and keep me suspended, awake, grouchy, with intermittent kicking. I borrow a pair of ear plugs from the attendant, pull my hoodie hood over my head, put earphones on top of the hoodie, settle back…

And can still hear him.

Descending into the kingdom of Siam, I worry over the fact that I don’t have a visa for this trip. There was no time. So for this trip’s purposes, I’m officially a tourist. With two laptops and a stack of business cards.

The customs people don’t notice.

The instant we deboard, I can smell it: Bangkok. The city clings to the skin, pollution and street food sticking to your clothes and armpits with 100% humidity from the moment you step off the plane. Down in the baggage claim, I shed my hoodie. Even at midnight, it’s 80 degrees.

God hears me; my luggage arrives. Outside, I scan the hotel reps.

“What hotel are you looking for, Miss?” a hotel rep coordinator with clipboard asks me.

“The Imperial Queen’s Palace,” I tell him. The Thai people love their monarchs and have particular fondness for the queen. She was a real beauty when she was younger. Now aged and heavy, she wears the beaded jacket tops of older women at cocktail parties and still favors dark red lipstick.

“I’m so sorry, I think he went home,” the coordinator says. It’s an ad hoc, chaotic job that he has in this throng of passengers fresh from the arrival hall. I tell him no problem, that I’ll catch a cab, realizing that I forgot the cardinal rule for travel in Bangkok, A.K.A. The World’s Largest Parking Lot: to pee.

“M’am? M’am!” the Coordinator rushes out, finding me at the taxi stand, on the verge of being next in line. “The driver is coming! He will meet you here with a sign of your name!”

I follow him back to the terminal, wondering how long I’ve been awake today, and, more importantly, how long it’s been since I peed. He disappears into the throng and I just stay put, knowing he’ll find me. The Coordinator returns with a man my father’s age. He’s holding a hotel clipboard placard: MISS TOSCA LEK.

Close enough.

“Kup kun ka,” I say, and the Coordinator wais. The chauffer apologizes for making me walk a whole 20 meters from an elevator, taking me to a beige and tan leather upholstered car. I almost get in the wrong side, forgetting that they follow the way of the Brits here.

“Excuse me,” he says, handing me a mini bottle of water and a wet towel in a packet. I briefly wonder if it’s more hint than custom.

“The music is okay, M’am?” The driver says, turning on the radio. “It’s old song. When I was young.” It’s an English Thai song I’ve never heard before, followed by some country song about a man’s first time with a woman sung by what I swear is Kermit the Frog.

“How the weather in your country M’am?” he asks. “Cold? Haha. You get warm here.”

Bangkok is part broken-down shanty, resplendent metropolis, inner-city dinge and gold glitter chaos in a crash mix of old Asia, Western culture and Buddhist gold leaf. It’s also a haven for the dollar. Vendors line sidewalk and curb edges, stalls rigged with tarp and electric light hung about with anything from purses to chickens. It’s 12:30am and the tailor shop is open, the bars and restaurants in full swing. Checking into the hotel, I briefly consider a walk outside, but after a multi-floor odyssey in search of a room that doesn’t smell burnt or smoking, it’s well after 1am. I settle on a room that smells like salami.

By 3am, it’s 2pm the day after I left and I swear I’m still not tired.

Unisom comes to the rescue.

2006-03-02T00:17:00.000-08:00

Boston to Lincoln: Zeal and Zealots

The Boston lifestyle is yuppy and utilitarian . It takes longer for college grads to get out of their dorm room futons and into the sofas and box springs of established folk. It smacks of a more conscientious existence: recycling, organic food, practical clothing, antique wood floors and cotton rugs that do little against New England chill and fair-trade wool sweaters that do. People shop at Trader Joe’s or Harvest where food is subtly and regally attired in politically correct, less flashy packaging on the high end of cheap organic for Bostonians clad in black, or Stop and Shop or Shaw’s on the more commercial and vivid end of suburb life (for dressers in less black but still-drab attire). Either way, you won’t see Super Walmarts or Targets around town here.

My driver is talking about the Big Dig, a project started in ’91 to run a tunnel under the city—this was before they realized the ground was mostly backfill and like trying to dig through soup. Finished at last, the debacle regularly spurts water and has been renamed the Big Leak.

Winding down through Harvard Square, I quell the urge to jump out of the car. We pass pubs, Tibetan art stores—Korean restaurants! My driver has wisely child-locked me in.

***

My bank boardroom is loaded with diversity: African American, Guyanese, Indian. I have a sudden yearning to be here, to walk into the Cambridge rentals office across the street, to hawk the value of my 4900 square-foot home for whatever single-serving cereal box footage it will gain me here—which isn’t much; somewhere just off Newbury Street, a parking place here just sold for $150,000. The driver tells me a top floor studio in the area just went for $1.2 million. A cute house in the suburbs, he says, will run you about $450,000. You won’t get anything decent for less than $300,000, that’s for sure.

I do my work spiel. I end with my favorite quote.

“You say that with such conviction,” a woman named Dana says. “And it’s true. She’s right. I know she is. Say it, preacher girl.”

Can I get an “Amen?”

***

I change in the bathroom before sneaking out. The local contact with this client sees me. “Wow! A completely different person! You know, you look like Kristi Yamaguchi!”

Okay…

I sneak back to the meeting room to retrieve my coat.

“Bye Tosca! You changed fast!” And then, when I’m leaving, “She’s so cute.”

I suddenly feel like Romeo, hiding out behind the Papasan chair with his baby blue eyes. Without the crop circles.

***

Outside, I have time before my car returns to whisk me to the airport. I wander past Indian spice shops, Thai and Persian restaurants, and organic co-op cafes. I pass a crazy woman talking to herself and a panhandler before turning into the Picante grill. Two days ago I flew home from Cabo San Lucas, but the yen for Mexican food hasn’t left me yet. The chicken enchiladas in this typically self-bussing (wooden floored) Mass. Ave. restaurant are served with salad, rice, beans and chips and loaded with roasted chicken.

My eyes roll back and flutter. I didn't know it could be like this. Somehow I manage to people-watch the influx of (pragmatically-dressed) academics, working Bostonians and grads through chicken-inspired blissful sighs and little moans.

On my way back to the bank to meet my car, I watch a woman blow kisses to the companions in her cab as she gets out at the corner. On the sidewalk, the crazy woman has found a smoking companion. Talking between drags, she seems like any other person.

***

On the way to Logan, I look out at the Charles River, grey and overcast as the sky, at the mishmash of buildings lining the river: modern offices, run down brownstones, hospitals, little mom-and-pop restaurants. And I realize that the difference between small and large city dwelling is the difference between already knowing the crannies and the joy of ferreting out a limitless supply of undiscovered cubby holes for yourself.

***

“Wow. That’s a big difference,” the woman in front of me says, pointing to a Star magazine cover featuring Britney Spears pre-Kevin and Britney Spears post-baby.

“I don’t think they found a flattering picture of her,” I say.

“Pilates,” the woman swears.

“Pilates?’

“I lost a pants size in a week doing my workout on the ball after my baby. I have a six-pack now.”

“Pilates on the ball, you say?” I’m intrigued. I just got a workout ball. Granted, it’s not inflated, but I do own one.

“Twenty minutes a day. Fifteen if I’m in a rush. It works.” And then, “Sorry, I don’t mean to be an evangelist.”

Can I get an “Amen?”

2006-03-01T00:16:00.000-08:00

Lincoln to Boston: Angst and Fervor

Standing in line at Starbucks despite my having given up coffee, I struggle to open a bag of new, unchewed, fresh plastic bic round stic medium black ink pens. My hands shake like a junkie in the d.t.s.

I found a stash of trampled yellow notepads, too, hiding out under a forlorn shelf at Hudson News. At $2 a piece, it’s airport robbery, but I don’t care. I can’t keep cracking open my computer and waiting the small eternity it takes to boot, mock me, and then make me forget what it was I was opening it to write about. I must have looked desperate inside Hudson’s as I turned this way and that, my gaze falling blankly on a People magazine before I ever found the paper. It was right then that a kind woman came up to me, talking in the measured tones of someone who cares for mental patients for a living.

“I bought and read this one already. Would you like it?” she said, in soothing syllables that have surely talked a myriad of others off the ledge. I mumbled my thanks, asked her who was on first, and grabbed the magazine before beginning my manic search for pens that don’t say Chicago or have Lake Michigan on them and paper larger than the Little Fat Book in my purse.

After finding the paper, I stood in front of the paperbacks, tears flooding the corners of my eyes. It isn’t that I simply need to read more. It’s that I keep forgetting I’m an escape junkie until I actually have a moment like this in front of a row of books or find I’ve got no paper or working pen to write with. I’m reminded of the Marquis de Sade in Quills, who wrote with his own excrement when they took away his pens.

Yeah. I’m not letting it get quite that far.

In the Starbucks line I get the pens open, filling a page of the yellow notebook before it’s even my turn to order.

***

Arriving at Amy’s, I let Romeo, her over-protected and micro-managed dog, out to pee. I wonder if Amy or her husband will see that I did, in fact, let him out on the puppy cam, but the camera only updates every five minutes. No one sees me but Jesse tells me later he did notice that the pen was empty once.

As for Romeo, he’s got a case of mange mites. His hair has fallen out in crop circle patches that I’m not convinced are not alien attempts at communication. Having done my dog duty, I try to lure him back into his pen. He hides behind a Papasan chair and stares at me.

I camp out in the living room, taking in Laura Croft: Tomb Raider. Cracking open my laptop I find that—aha!—I still have the settings to leech on to their local network.

When Amy gets home, we take the dog out again. Water him. Promptly wipe his chin. And then we head straight out to Burlington Mall, home of the fake hair pieces we like so well and have named the Ya-Ya Sister Hair but, more importantly, home to the nearest Cheesecake Factory.

I can’t think of a worse thing than a woman with PMS confronted by a Cheesecake Factory menu. I must have stared at that sucker and agonized for fifteen minutes before getting bitchy and starting to cry because I didn’t know what I wanted. Eventually, my head just exploded.

I always start with fire roasted artichokes. Trust me on this. Artichokes, not cheesecake, are the reason I seek that restaurant out like a culinary Shangri-la.

My sister flirts with the waiter. I’ve trained her too well and reflect on this moment with Frankenstein-like pride. The waiter has one leg shorter than the other, though it doesn’t seem to slow him down [walk this way…]. We drink mojitos and cosmopolitans. I order Thai pasta.

Our waiter, flirting right back, tells us he’s from Brazil originally. I ask him if he speaks Portuguese. He beams, so happy I didn’t ask if he spoke Spanish. I ask where he’s from—San Paulo? He asks me if I’m psychic. I don’t tell him it’s the only Brazilian city I can think of. We finish dinner, he busses the table—and us. We tip him big.

We shop at Sephora until the mall closes, buying needless makeup with reckless zeal. At home, we watch American Idol that Jesse TiVoed for us and crash. Laying in the guest bedroom, I can hear Romeo through the floor beneath my futon, snoring in the converted dining room below.

2005-10-22T00:00:00.000-07:00

Austria to Denver: Carpathia to Rocky

We hate goodbyes. Cheung and Sophia (who called me “the princess” at dinner last night—a nickname that has followed me since college that people tend to pick up on their own, somehow) meet us for breakfast. Upstairs in the lobby, Barbara is wearing the grey and pearl and fuzzy rabbit ball necklace I bought her yesterday. We tip her a weird conglomeration of various currencies. We hug goodbye but not for long; we’ll plan to meet up next year, maybe in London if she can’t get a visa or all else fails.

And then Christoff is taking us to the airport. I brandish my star alliance gold status like a sword, fighting our way through shorter lines and into the senator’s lounge for a last-minute hit of internet access before boarding. Our flight is late leaving and we’re stressed by the time we circle Frankfurt, caught in a holding pattern with a bus ride to the terminal, security, passport control and re-security yet to go. We make it, though I’ve lost the opportunity to claim my second VAT refund for my coat. No matter.

On board the plane, we elbow one another in our seats, trouble the attendant for champagne. Mom joins me for a mimosa. We’ve got more than eight hours head of us, but at least we’re direct to Denver.

From there we’ve got three hours’ drive to Divide, plus another eight or more day after tomorrow for me. Luckily, a friend has met us in Denver to help me drive back. It’s a long trip, getting almost halfway around the world and most of the way to immortality. I’ve returned with a couple of icons, 35 Euros, a few random Lei, a bottle of absinthe, three Cuban cigars, a sinus infection, stronger thighs and six pints of my own blood.

A girl could do worse.

2005-10-21T23:54:00.000-07:00

Austria: Incognito

We’re up early and arrive before the crowds at Schonbrunn Palace. I’m still tired, and not as recovered as two days ago. But the palace is grand. We tour the city afterward: St. Stephen’s Cathedral is especially impressive to me, less gilded than others, filled full of lifelike stone statues—including the artist, peering out from stone trap doors like a gremlin. A fitting site for Mozart’s wedding. The catacombs contain some of the imperial family—by some, I mean that it only contains the intestines for some of them. Hmm. The organ is in the process of getting tuned (the musical kind, not the intestines), the high, sustained notes threaten migraine.

Barbara has taken California to the hospital. It isn’t how she wanted to spend her morning, I know, but she got her shopping in yesterday; she made off with bargains at the store I pined at after they reopened and while we were touring the Palace.

I’ve walked through museums, churches, and town streets with my notebook glued to my hand. I bought a stack of cheap school notebooks somewhere along the drive through western Nebraska toward Colorado to bring along with me, but have neglected them in favor of the fat little notebook in my purse, nearly used up by now. Curious retirees in our group ask what it is that I tap into my laptop during our long bus rides. I tell them about my skittering accounts and about you, reading along with me. They ask me who you are, and I tell them, all the while missing your company, your smiles, voices and hugs. I would write these pages for only myself but I’m glad we’ve done it together. So let me say thank you right now for bearing with me through these curious, sporadic, garlicky and occasionally snot-filled pages.

We have an hour and a half before catching our ride back to the hotel. An hour and a half to find a perfect skirt, a Juliet top, a cropped coat, requisite crystal jewelry, and three open-faced sandwiches. My hair is matted to my head from the wool cap my mom has made me wear ever since Transylvania. I’ve been pulling three of five layers of mismatched sweaters off and on my head all morning every time we enter or leave a building. I have a zit, blisters, hairy legs, and canker sores from sour wine two nights ago. I’ve been living for the last week in my polyester long underwear and Marmot polar fleece pullover. It’s time to clean up.

By 5:30, we’re gathering in the lobby. No one recognizes me: I’ve washed my hair and done my makeup. There’s no polar fleece to be seen. Nor long underwear—but that’s because it’s hidden under my floor-length skirt. I haven’t shaved my legs either, but, you know, I’m not going for perfection here.

“Beautiful girl!” Cheung beams, petting me. It’s amazing what soap and makeup can do.

“You bought all of that in one hour,” Barbara says. “One hour. Everything. Even your earrings?” Yes, all of it. Except the shoes. And long underwear. She laughs at our affinity for clothing (you wouldn’t know it by my uniform this week); she has the same coat that I just bought, but in green. “This is my favorite store,” she says, really pissed off now that she spent the afternoon at the hospital. Jan, it turns out, is fine to fly—she simply needs to drink some water and eat some real food. [We ran into Jan while we were shopping; she was headed to McDonald’s.]

We take a beautiful Austrian dinner at a cozy corner restaurant, up in a private room at a single large table. We drink kumquat liquor, red wine, and tea. We eat fish, Weiner schnitzel, and cake. We take pictures of the bathrooms, complete with statues of naked men in the lady’s room and boys peeing a fountain of water into the urinals of the men’s (don’t you wonder what I was doing in there?). And then we go to the concert hall for a night of Mozart arias and nacht musik.

At the hotel, Barbara, who is wearing a lovely copper-colored Swarovski crystal necklace—a gift from California—and I take hot tea in the bar. It’s a perfect end.

Until I start packing.

2005-10-20T23:52:00.000-07:00

Vienna: Swear

Yes, fine, I admit it. I’m moving slowly today, and my mouth is purple from all the red wine. If the Count wasn’t so garlic-phobic none of this would have happened and I’d be roaming the Transylvanian countryside, so naturally it’s none my fault and I’m the victim here.

We have a short drive to Vienna. I forget, momentarily that I’m in Hungary as we pass a giant highway McDonald’s.

I’m sad to leave Budapest—a day and a half isn’t enough to crack the surface of this city. But we’re off to Eisenstadt, Austria, where, in this quaint Austrian town Sophia, Cheung, Barbara, Mom and I take in an authentic local… Chinese lunch. Sophia and Cheung have been dying for some Chinese food, Cheung fantasizing on cold days about hot bowls of noodles. So they’re happy now and I would have been, had this cute clothing store been open after 1pm, but naturally they’re closed the only time I have free to shop before we go off to tour Esterhazy Palace, where Joseph Hayden performed. So I just pine at the window, nose pressed against the glass, credit card in hand.

The highway to Vienna is lined with vineyards. The sun is out, existing here where it did not in Romania, Indian summer in full swing.

At the Vienna Hilton, Barbara is letting the front desk have it; she faxed our arrival time ahead and they’re not prepared. They’re the only hotel to keep the entire group waiting while they prepare keys. “They always have this. They are always like this and that man is an asshole,” Barbara says, slumping against the counter and looking heavenward.

We could go into the city center, but we’re tired and so sack out until dinner, which we take downstairs with Cheung and Sophia: Weiner schnitzel, salad, pumpkin soup. I practically nod off at the table.

Climbing into bed, coughing, sneezing, sniffling and miserable, I can’t get my covers untucked and pulled up to my shoulders. I whine and haul at them, having been pathetic all day, and Mom falls into a fit of giggles. We laugh like girls (and I curse a few times).

2005-10-19T23:45:00.000-07:00

Budapest: The Magyar

A night of quiet and uninterrupted sleep has worked wonders. I feel nearly human this morning [no thanks to the Count]. At breakfast, Barbara administers Jan’s antibiotics.

Our city tour is a brief three hours; enough to make us all want to come back for more. Hero’s Square is sprawling, gorgeous, austere with its oversized statues of Hungary’s kings and seven tribal barbarian leaders. I’m enchanted with the moustaches and armor of the barbarians. No wonder that they’re here, that the first king is depicted holding both cross and sword; as the gateway between Asia and Europe, they were the first to have to defend themselves.

We pass a lovely casino—the largest in Hungary. It happens to be owned by the Governor of California, who comes once a year to collect money.

He’ll be back.

The 13th century church of St. Matthias is grand and gorgeous and, as all grand and gorgeous churches, overrun with tourists who forget that it’s still a working church and talk too loudly, interrupting the serene light of sun diffused through stained glass with flash photography. Up on the hill of Fisherman’s Bastion, I feel as though I’m standing above the middle of River Danube looking down on a giant postcard.

Leaving the Bastion, I overhear an Italian toddler talking to his parents. This is bizarre to my ear, Italian from the mouths of children, so adult and emphatic at once.

Budapest (Budapesht, as the locals say it) is really two segments divided by the river: old, prestigious and hilly Buda, and flat, hip Pest. Those who live in Buda pay large amounts of money for old homes, walk classic Hungarian dogs and read books. Those on the Pest side walk pit bulls and talk on cell phones. Barbara bought her flat on the Pest side for US$30,000 and it has already appreciated to $120,000. Mom is trying to get me to buy a flat here. I’d be tempted if I had any hope of learning the Magyar language, but as it is the fourth hardest to learn in the world, I’m not optimistic.

I spend the afternoon at the hotel, taking goulash soup (very tasty!) with Sophia and Cheung, and resting. Lame, I know, for a tourist in such a beautiful city; I ought to be walking two hours straight all over with some of the Canadians, or shopping with Mom and Suzie. But I’m just starting to feel better and with overseas flights coming up in two days, I’m not wanting to push my luck.

We take dinner in an elegant restaurant with gypsy performers, giving the Hungarian toast (ab-i-sheg-a-da—don’t get it wrong, or you’ll be saying “ass” instead of “cheers.”).

“Don’t look into the eyes of the gypsies, my mother always told me,” Barbara says. So of course I look into their eyes. They look back. They play cello, violin, cembalo. I request Liszt’s Hungarian Rhapsody. It’s spectacular. Cheung wants to hear something slow and beautiful. “You chose,” she says. I ask the violinist for a Roma love song. [“Gypsy” is pejorative.] Mom threatens to start crying. As the violinist plays, Cheung’s withered face beams.

Back at the hotel, Barbara and I catch a taxi to her flat. It’s a large building with iron gates, built around an open courtyard. We’re giggling like girls up three floors of marble staircase, teetering along the courtyard walk, Barbara in her black lace stockings and high heels, Mongolian sheep fluttering at the wrists and hem of her black coat, me tinkling in a Romanian skirt hemmed with copper coins. I feel downright dowdy next to this woman, but that’s okay. She shows me her kitchen, with the washer below the oven, her bedroom (red!), her closet. I resist the temptation to steal her clothes. Her place is cozy, filled with art from favorite friends and artists, maps of old Hungary, and an extensive collection of vases, ceramics, and books ranging from the Joy of Flying to Orwell—and that’s only the titles in English. Her brother, Dibor, is there; I met him briefly when he joined us for dinner last night. He’s shy about his English, but joins us for a glass of wine and plate of pistachios. We talk about men, women, hurt, what it is to love, through the course of the entire bottle. It’s a strong cabernet from Barbara’s home region.

“Come on,” Barbara says. “Let’s go down the street.” It’s cold; I borrow the red and purple coat she was wearing earlier in the day. Outside it’s chilly, the streets and sidewalks empty. We pass a magnificent building—I’m almost drunk by now and can’t remember what she said it was, but I managed to snap a picture of it—on the way to a hip bistro. I can’t finish my wine. Barbara drinks fruit juice, pours me water. We talk as old girlfriends sharing secrets that I won’t write here. My taxi arrives in a matter of moments. I give Barbara back her coat, hug her goodnight, hating the evening to end.

Hungarian taxicabs are like dark horsemen; appearing at a moment’s notice out of the shadows, whisking you away around sloping corners, down empty streets and over bridges, whirling to a stop in front of the Art’otel.

2005-10-18T23:43:00.000-07:00

Transylvania to Budapest: Stood Up

I can’t believe it. Despite my vigilant tossing and turning, I have been totally stood up. Even with the birds cawing, the window cracked to the dark and pregnant sky, warm-blooded and waiting in bed, I’ve been left at the alter.

“That bastard!” I say, examining an unmarred neck first thing in the morning. My breath nearly knocks me out; I reek of garlic.

Oh no. Realization dawns on me like a holy water cold shower.

And to top it all off, I’ve woken up with a full-blown sinus infection.

I’m sick, mortal, and miserable. I console myself with tea, honey and bread, pissed off in general and running out of Kleenexes. I feel betrayed by a system that would deprive its most devout followers on a seasoning technicality.

On the bus I am relegated to the back with the rest of the other Untouchables. I drown my sorrows in Sudafed, Benadryl, more vitamin C.

We’re leaving Transylvania, making our way up our last mountain range in a fog so dense that I half expect to see the Count coming for me after all; it’s twilight-dark—I literally have not seen the sun for days. We’ve passed the expansive homes-in-the-works of rich gypsies—houses that stand out for their ornate turrets and Mercedes symbols on metal spires. But don’t be fooled; the vast majority of gypsies are living in slums or down in burned out brick crusts of once-houses near the river with blankets for windows and a fire in a garbage bin outside, as I saw in Oradea.

So here are Balkan bathroom rules: prepare to pay. Bring your own TP. Don’t expect there to be any light, plumbing, water, soap, paper towels or working dryers. In fact, don’t expect much other than to get to go if you’re lucky. And you better be strong enough not to sit if you’re a woman.

California has told me no less than six times that she cannot find her absinthe, that she thinks someone took it, thinking it was their bottle of wine, that her friends called her at 3:30am to ask if she still had it and to say they’re swimming. And then she starts to tell me all over again. I’ve decided she really is 50 but has the mentality of a 12 year old, and so somewhere in the middle decided to split the difference. She asks a fellow sickie, a man traveling alone, to ask the front of the bus whether they’ve seen it and he says “I’m not going to get into it. That’s your problem.” Go, that guy! The steel worker guy asks how I’m feeling and I tell him honestly not so great. He says about ¾ of the bus is sick.

We stop to go to another dark loo. This time I don’t bang my head. I’m grouchy at still being among the un-un-dead and having to even go to the bathroom in the first place.

In Oradea , we take lunch, do our best to get rid of the rest of our Romanian Lei. Sophia, Cheung, another couple (the man of which is one of the sickies), Mom and I order pizza. Barbara shows up and joins us. Conversation inevitably turns to California, whose real name is Jan. Barbara is convinced she’s on drugs—just not the ones she’s been prescribed. Jan can’t remember if she took her prescription this morning; Barbara is carrying them in her purse and will give them to her tonight, watching her take them. To me, this woman is sadly fascinating, and I wish I had better studied psychology or drug addiction. Another woman agrees with me on the 50 thing. (I tell Barbara to get a look at it during the border crossing today), and her boarding school background is disputed—this is a woman who can’t speak proper English. Mom’s convinced she’d had some hard years of living, and doesn’t rule out that she’s actually 28. As for me, I’m holding to the late 40s-early 50s range. And I suspect she drank her absinthe.

We go shopping in a group for any things that we can find for the approximate US$6 (or 160,000 Lei) that we have left. Barbara takes a call from her office; they’re trying to see what they can do to get single rooms for Mom and another man who want to leave us sickies alone so we can both sleep better. Between the two of us (I sniffle, she snores), we kept ourselves up most of the night.

“Tomorrow night is dressy dinner,” Barbara says. “After that, we go to my flat for a drink.” I don’t think I’ll feel up to it, but it won’t stop me. I keep thinking that Kamma would like Barbara as well, and vice versa. “It will be cold; you will need a coat. You can use one of mine. I have black, grey, brown.”

The land flattens as we leave Romania; seven legendary tribes (those same tribes against which the Chinese built the Great Wall) arrived in 895 from Mongolia to settle these plains. Even Attila wintered near the Danube. We’ve passed through Greek, Slavic, and Latin countries; Hungarian, however, is more similar to Korean than any Indo-European language.

I now understand more of Barbara’s passion for history, politics, and wanting to know; in ’89, her senior year in high school and the year of the revolution, there was no history text. The text books were thrown out, the students informed that history was being re-written. There were no history exams that year—the same year that she helped to form the Young Democrats, a radical student party the head of which just served as prime minister last term. Since then, she’s had a cynical eye for any single telling of history and a passion for digging through those chests of secrets closeted away like so many classified books in storage.

As we near the boarder patrol, Jan asks to hold her own meds. Barbara says, “I’ll give it to you tonight. Why should I trust you?” The conversation that ensues sounds more like one between a parent and a sullen (pre) teen rather than two adults.

At the border patrol, Jan, who bought an ornate knife somewhere in Romania, has it out in the back and is examining it. Barbara lets her have it: “Put that away immediately! We’re at the boarder patrol and you’re playing with a knife? What is wrong with you?” Barbara moves back to the front of the bus and Jan says, “I didn’t know!” Another fellow sickie (one who needs his own room tonight) says, “Well, now you do.” It’s seriously like having a 12 year-old on board without a guardian.

We gain an hour as we pass back into the EU, four hours of bus time in front of us. Christoff puts Benny Hill in the DVD system.

***

Mom just came to tell me that Barbara was able to arrange separate bedrooms for us at no cost. Maybe we’ll both sleep better. “And did you hear?” Mom says. “Barbara got a look at Jan’s passport. She’s 50!”

I knew it!

***

Entering Hungary, the sun is a red globe over the rail yard; lazy, unwinding from the work day, and welcoming. We’ve changed from the Lei to the Forint now and the math has changed as well: hack off two 0s and divide by 2 for the dollar equivalent.

Budapest is different from any country we’ve visited so far; one would never know that it had been communist upon first glance. Having never experienced the food rationing that Romania did (in order to pay off national debts), having kept some private industry and religion, it is a commercial blend of medieval and renaissance architecture with posters for concerts, movies, and performances on posts and bus stops. Cafes line the roads, neo-gothic and art nouveau style buildings bank every downtown street, baroque style buildings, churches, and statuary making a walk through the city as rich as dark chocolate mousse. Lincoln suddenly looks like a jello pudding pop in comparison.

We take dinner in the hotel and I retire to an expansive, modern room with—eureka!—wireless internet. I catch up on e-mail to the background noise of German soap operas.

2005-10-17T23:38:00.001-07:00

Remedy

Church bells sound well before 6am. I’ve been tired for the last 20 hours and sleep another few minutes after the 6:30 wake-up call.

California has a habit of coming out to sit in the lobby ahead of everyone, looking pitiful. Most people pass her by, but Barbara has brought her in to breakfast and brought her tea. “I can’t choke this down,” California says. “You’ll drink it, no argument,” Barbara says. “See? I’ll drink the same.”

“But you’re a tea person,” California whines. I’ve brought her a croissant. Barbara tells her to eat it. She ordered the doctor in last night and tells California that the antibiotics will upset her stomach if she doesn’t eat.

“Do you know how many calories are in this?” The Woman Who Lives on Chips and Fries says.

“I don’t care,” Barbara says.

Meanwhile, I’ve covertly eaten scrambled eggs. The big hotels get their eggs from large industry and I’m less concerned about avian flu than lack of protein for breakfast. Yesterday I was ready for lunch at 10am. My ears are closed—I’m hoping it’s more a result of the down pillows than any bug. I’ve been taking as much vitamin C as I dare. The rest of the buffet is an elaborate display of hors d’vours, similar to what we started with last night at the Citadel: ham wrapped around potato salad, tomatoes stuffed with pate.

We’re making our way to Cluj, Barbara giving her morning history of Transylvania at the front of the bus. We’ve mangled our two-seat a day counter-clockwise seat rotation; the sickies have now been relegated to the back of the bus, everyone else crowding to the front.

“Oh my God, it’s snowing,” Barbara says, interrupting herself. “It’s only two degrees!” she notes on the bus thermometer, which reads in Celsius. I dreamt of perfect and beautiful flakes last night, so this is no surprise to me. Speaking of last night, the count never showed. We slept with the window slightly ajar, even. No matter, Cluj is also in Transylvania. I don’t mind the wait. “Patience and tobacco,” Romanians like to say. Rather similar to Bulgaria’s “It’s Bulgaria; wait a little.”

Houses in rural towns build gates and fences between themselves, enclosing space for a courtyard—or muddy and garbage-filled alleys. Everyone in the fields seems to own at least one cow or donkey. Yesterday near the restaurant I saw two farmers walking a parade of bell-adorned cows down the street. We pass another town citadel, its ruins standing out in stark relief against a roiling grey sky. Houses of devout Christians boast crosses or, occasionally, roosters, which is supposed to mean essentially the same thing.

Okay.

We stop at the fortified town of Sighisoara, the birthplace of Dracula. I buy a wooden box in a small café where we stop for tea, quiche (eggs again!), and pie. Outside, it is raining;. My plastic shopping bag, turned up on the edges, makes a nice hat as we walk down the hill back to the bus.

California, duly crashed out across the bus’ back seats, is silent until everyone returns. The coughing commences.

In Cluj, we stop to either see a church or grab a snack. I’m freezing and hungry and Mom is on a mission for a water closet. We find a coffee place down the street and stop for as short a time as possible; the smoke is so thick that it burns to breathe. I think I prefer to take my chances in the cold. On the way back we find a store, buy hats and gloves. Back on the bus, everyone else has already returned from the chilly rain; they’re watching Benny Hill on the DVD system.

At Hotel Transylvania (they seem to have tried to change the name to Belvedere, though it hasn’t made its way onto the towels yet), I feel at last that I am in an Eastern Block hotel. It’s as though time has stood still here for at least 30—if not 40—years. The water is the color of tea, but I take a hot bath anyway, and then a shower. My throat has grown more sore by the hour.

No matter. I’m not long for the mortal world.

As I’m toweling off, I’m awed by the view out my window: another thick Transylvanian canopy threatens to devour the landscape. Great black birds perch intermittently on the bare branches of a tree that should not have lost its leaves yet. In the other direction a giant cross thrusts up at the sky, metal-dull, a black church steeple dwarfed in the distance. But it is the ravens that fascinate me, whirling like carrion birds over a battlefield, a cawing dervish of beaks and wings.

At dinner, I forego fish in favor of extra soup. Sophia concurs; Chinese medicine dictates that one should not eat fish if they are feeling ill. Barbara, who has had it with California, makes her come sit down for dinner—the woman was actually going to wander out in the cold in search of a McDonald’s.

Barbara has been ordering garlic for herself with dinner for two days now in order to stave off sickness; she brings me two cloves. I eat them raw. The first moment is bland, crunchy and nondescript. The next is searing. My eyes water; the garlic burns all the way down. I gulp water.

I don’t particularly like this remedy.

I return early to the room, gargle with salt water as Sophia has instructed, take cold pills and vitamin C. The giant feather pillow here weighs as much as a cement block; I chuck it in favor of my travel pillow, already drowsy from medicine.

2005-10-16T23:32:00.000-07:00

Transylvania: Maligned

I have competition. Another lady in our group is here for the Count as well. Well, move over grandma—I have it on good authority that the Count like his women nubile.

There were eight weddings at the hotel last night, the music lasting until nigh six in the morning. Before breakfast, I pay US$16 to have eight postcards posted by the hotel. When we check out and give our room number, the clerk’s eyes widen. “Ah yes. A lot of money, your bill. The same as two months’ my salary.” Turns out the phone system did not recognize that we were calling home on our AT&T prepaid card. Two phone calls Mom and I made have amounted to an easy $400. I pull a Barbara. The charges are removed from the bill.

Outside the bus, Barbara is letting Monika have it. “How do we know that this hotel will not be having eight more weddings the next time?” I hear that she called the front desk until 3am about the music.

Barbara is not a fan of Monika. With her kitten mouth and curly hair, she seems demurring, though Barbara finds her competitive and catty. Her prim descriptors (“ladies and gentlemen, this is a very special house”) can’t compete with Barbara’s passionate scholasticism, astounding comprehension and open editorials. Monika is dismissed with Machiavellian efficiency.

That girl just doesn’t know what hit her.

California, sitting two rows behind me, is coughing incessantly, looking miserable. She’s given up potato chips, even, her throat too sore to eat them. I wonder if I should feed her some absinthe. I pass her vitamin C, water. The lady across the way [the one competing for the count] says, “She’s not taking it. You’re wasting your time.” A terse conversation with her husband follows:

“We should stop at a pharmacy so she can get something to take.”

“She’s not sick. It’s self-inflicted.”

“You shouldn’t say that.”

“She has no congestion, no phlegm.”

“Well, you shouldn’t say she’s not sick.”

“She’s got something wrong with her head.”

“Well, I’ll give you that.”

Having been babied and coaxed through half a bowl of soup last night, still making it to every meal and event but not allowing Cheung, Sophia (a registered nurse), mom or Barbara to feel for fever, California’s popular prognosis is a lack of attention. So I figure we might as well give her some. She’s lost her mother and father recently. Mom is trying to find some Tylenol PM to knock her out.

Our new local guide, Carmen, is a 60-something (though I seem to be a bad judge of age these days) lady with the tag still stuck to her Levis red tab jeans, who speaks in a Julia Child falsetto that sounds weirdly operatic and hurts my ears.

Here is something about Transylvania: it was almost always its own country. Michael the Brave united Walachia, Moldova and Transylvania once, but that didn’t last long. It only became a part of Romania when it was essentially given to Romania after WWI. Having been a part of the Hungarian kingdom until then, the giving away of Transylvania is a sore spot to Barbara.

Every region here has its secrets, its re-written history and forgotten facts like old family feuds, illegitimacies, affairs, and other things not spoken about. But they are written in the furrows around their eyes and the fatigue of the very land.

Vlad the Impaler, the man who became the prototype for Dracula, was schooled in Istanbul. No wonder he knew how to defeat the Turks. As the ruling prince of Walachia, he was harsh but good, if such a dichotomy can be possible; he nearly did away with thievery. Of course, he’s better known for his cruel tricks—impaling his enemies and feeding their heads to crawfish—which he in turn fed to the friends of said enemies at a banquet later, for instance. I think he would have liked Hannibal Lector.

The countryside is changing now; we pass haystacks with wooden poles sticking out the top, an old woman with scarf-covered head gathering up a bunch of wood by the roadside, an old man in a hat shuffling along a back road, overgrown stone bridges bypassed by more modern roads, yellow leaves flitting on the air, stirred by idle and invisible fingers, never quite touching the ground. I see Turkish influences in window, door and portico arches, peaked like an onion now at the top, in octagonal roofs with spires at the top, the crosses with the slanted double horizontal bars. Sides of houses are ornately painted with floral patterns that recall, to me, the inlaid marble of the Taj and Moroccan tables in my home. Some houses bear carved icons (infinity, suns, snakes) on their lintels or gates to ward off evil and bless those who dwell inside.

The Carpathian Mountains are sheathed in clouds, the cross at the top emerging out of the grey like Avalon from the mists and disappearing again. We are driving into a blackening sky; I have hardly seen the sun since coming here. This area contains a quarter of Europe’s wolf population, and brown bears are a constant menace, killing sheep and attacking people. With oppressive skies and animal life like that, is it any wonder that even the lichen-covered birch trees seem to whisper “vampire?”

We pass a gypsy settlement; it’s poor, depressing, the European version of a trailer park. Barbara talks about the gypsies, how the musicians are very good, the horse trainers famous, how they can be Orthodox or Catholic.

“How do they reconcile stealing with their faith?” a woman in our group asks.

“For God’s sake, Elizabeth!” Barbara exclaims, “Do you think gypsies are the only ethnic group that steals?” Failed by the system, gypsies represent some of the poorest minorities in Europe—as well as the first to be racially slighted, to lose their jobs or experience disadvantage.

Built in 1377, Bran Castle isn’t really the home of Dracula (“Drac” meaning the order of the dragon, or, according to some, “devil”). It was, however unoccupied during the time that Bram Stoker wrote Dracula, suspiciously enough. The name of the castle means “gate,” as it stands between the feet of two mountains. I’m enchanted by the stone doorways, carved doors, the bronze work, the carved wooden furniture and chests. We pass up through a secret staircase that was formerly hidden by a fireplace (and only used when a fire wasn’t in it, of course). This is the same secret system that, according to Bram Stoker, Dracula used to jaunt from one room to another so quickly. The tour guide gives me first admittance to the bedroom of King Ferdinand (“only young single women,” he says), and I decide that his bed is cooler than mine (if not as big), cherubs looking on like something from the set of The Haunting.

After the castle we head to a nearby restaurant. We pass the Ukranian-Australian couple touring with us. The woman has the same buzz cut as her husband; I originally thought she was his brother. The man is bigger, walking with a footed cane; my mother keeps trying to pawn food off on him.

By the time we make our way to Brasnov, three people on our bus are sick. California’s inability to take care of herself is the favorite topic of discussion. She’s quickly become the local untouchable; Mom is wondering what it would take to send her on to Vienna or, better yet, home. Barbara and Carmen have had it; Barbara is hauling a doctor in to see her against California’s protests.

I nap before dinner, which is served at the citadel. A guard keeps the gate, and inside, musicians play Brahms, the Blue Danube, Meditation, some jazz, and When the Saints Go Marching In. The man next to me, a steel plate worker from Connecticut, says, “God, I love classical music.” I don’t bother to explain that it isn’t technically classical. “I used to hate it,” he explains, “until I took a music class in college. Now I really like Johannes Sebastian, you know, Bach.”

The sour cherry brandy is much better than that Tzuica stuff. I don’t think it’ll kick my butt. No matter; I immediately fall asleep in the bus on the way back to the hotel, and again upon arriving in our room.

2005-10-15T23:09:00.000-07:00

Romania: Bleak

Something kicked my butt (again) last night. I suspect it’s the Tzuica—the plum brandy we had with dinner. I felt it burning all the way down, the room spinning with the shot, the paint coming off the walls.

I want to be a gypsy.

At dinner my mother asked an older man traveling with our group if he had seen Kingdom of Heaven.

“Who’s in that?” he asked.

“Orlando Bloom,” she said.

“Never heard of him.”

“He was in Lord of the Rings.”

“Oh. That guy.”

Last night the accordion player, a man my mother’s age, was making eyes at me. I tried not to smile back. Meanwhile, Mom has created monsters; three people are stashing their left-over pork to save for homeless dogs.

Even now, Turkish terror has left its mark here. Barbara says that in Hungary they have a saying that someone is “coming like the Turks.” The Hungarians are of Magyar descent, having come from Mongolia. The Magyars, a horde of horsepeople, armed with composite bows, are famous for having actually defeated the Turks. Since Koreans come originally from Mongolia, we figure we’re ultimately related.

“At Budapest,” Barbatra says, “we go out.”

In Bucharest (not to be confused with Budapest—a faux pas made here by Michael Jackson, whom the Romanians no longer like), it is raining. We loll in bed, listening to the weather. We will eat no eggs at breakfast; Romania is experiencing avian flu.

Colorful advertising in Romania is a new result of the ’89 revolution. Those who were jobless after the change had to forego raising their children; unable to support them, they gave them up. Consequently, Romania is full of orphans. We pass by the U.S. ambassador’s house, the Russian embassy, and Casa Duina—a restaurant in business since 1884. Ironwork has turned black and scrolling, its gothic presence everywhere. High fashion co-exists with ramshackle apartments; we pass Max Mara, Escada, and Clinique boutiques. Casinos are everywhere, some of them in old, stone buildings, their garish neon signs at odds with ancient stone. McDonald’s is everywhere, too. We pass by a restaurant called Tosca, but it doesn’t seem to be doing as well as Micky D’s.

We pass a church with special properties: circle it three times and you’ll be married within a year. Another church down the way will get you divorced if you circle it once. I especially avoid the first one. There are universities here, and they are only 400 Euros a year, but for villagers, where there is no high school or college, this is only the beginning of the cost of relocating to the city and finding a job for the sake of higher education.

The river through the city is banked with cement block and hedged by old apartment buildings. It looks exactly like the river where Val Kilmer hid out in The Saint.

The palace and current home of the parliament was built by Ceausescu. The architect was only 28 at the time, and its 1000 rooms were 70% finished by the ’89 revolution, when Ceausescu died. It is still only 90% finished; Romania doesn’t have the money to finish it faster. The palatial building is huge, supposedly one of ten buildings that can be seen from the moon. Ceausescu built another palace for his wife. One must wonder about the state of a marriage when 1000 rooms are not enough for two people. [Maybe they should have circled the divorce church.]

The Ceausescu‘s villa, a separate residence where he lived in luxury while the people went hungry, is currently the Romanian NATO office. Street dogs are again everywhere; in the 80s when Ceausescu demolished the homes of the people in favor of new apartment buildings, he left many dogs homeless. It’s been a problem ever since. Our local guide, Monika, asks if we know Bridget Bardot. “Ohyeah!” one of the guys on our tour says. I swear twenty years just fell off his face. Anyway, I guess Bardot tried to come do something about it, though apparently the Romanians told her to go mind her own business.

We pass the former headquarters of the secret service, where Ceausescu hired one million agents out of sheer paranoia. It is said that there was an influx of taxis and taxi drivers after the revolution, and that anyone getting inside one need not say his address; the drivers, former secret service agents now out of work, already know where you live.

The clock in the center of the city displays 443—the number of days until Romania joins the EU, assuming, of course, that they can get things together by ’07.

There is a lady in our group who sits, every day, on a newspaper. She says it keeps her from getting carsick. That’s a new one.

We pass the triumphant arch that is the replica of the same arch in Paris.

We come to a folk museum, several acres of relocated village homes and buildings from Moldava, Wallachia and Transylvania. California is sick. She wanders in the rain without an umbrella. We’re all paranoid of catching whatever she has; the same thing has happened on so many other tours. Everyone in the group is suddenly a nursemaid, but she’s like a feral cat, not letting anyone feel her forehead for fever. I am shocked to learn that she claims to be 28. The woman looks nearly 50.

In the folk museum, I’m fascinated with the steep thatched roofs of the wooden homes, the carved wooden arch entries, the braided birch fences. The carved crosses and roofed gates are reminiscent of Lord of the Rings or a Brothers Grimm movie set. Narrow, shingled roofs or brambles top wooden fences. Mom finds several stray dogs, feeds them her leftover pork. The old church with low front porch and intricately carved wooden crosses—a conglomeration of several crosses, the middle one with a halo at the juncture—looks exactly like the place that an angry mob of townfolk might set out on a vampire hunt. Unfortunately, I didn’t buy a photo permit. I’m kicking myself.

At the hotel, later, we find that the bar serves fresh-squeezed orange juice, which we take with spring rolls, tea, and hot water. We’re warding off sickness and passing time until lunch, when Transylvanian soup will become available in the restaurant café.

The currency here is the Lei, and it goes in increments of either 1, or 10,000. They’re in the midst of switching systems to four zeros less, but for now, the two denominations co-exist. There is just over a dollar to 10 Lei—or 10,000 Lai. This is all very difficult for a girl who had to cheat off of cute Sean Rediger just to pass pre-calculus math.

At dinner; we force Transylvanian soup (which is really vegetable beef soup after all) on California, who complains through every sip. I snap a picture with a flustered waiter. “I’m married,” he stammers. He looks afraid. “It’s okay,” I tell him. At the table of our bus driver, Christoff, and Barbara, Christoff is playing with Greek “worry beads,” which he flips back and forth. He has a one year-old daughter named Cleopatra. I think this is just great. I tell the story of how Kamma and I knew we would be fast friends: on a fun questionnaire I concocted for our consociate group at Gallup, we both answered that we were Cleopatra in a past life.

Barbara is going to try to get a visa; January is a good time for her to come visit me, while I still have my house and before she’s on call for spring tours. Barbarba and I take off for my room to call a friend and then she’s off to talk to her boyfriends. Despite having just eaten dinner, I order room service—I saw caviar on the menu.

There’s another party in the courtyard. I fall asleep to Chicago, Little Richard, and other popular songs that meld together into a weird tie-dye of American rock with Romanian accents.

2005-10-14T22:37:00.000-07:00

Bulgaria to Romania: Boheme

Something kicked my butt last night.

To everyone I called—well. I don’t really apologize. And Carson, I meant everything I said.

After paying my phone bill this morning, I ought to say something about not drinking and dialing, but it was worth every Leva. At the counter to my right, Barbara is letting the reception have it in English. “I used a pre-paid phone card and for that you charge me fourteen Leva? For picking up the receiver, I pay ten dollars? Christ. That is ridiculous.”

Have I said that I love this woman?

The greyness that is Sofia gives way to green, rolling mountains crowned with lazy clouds. I’m reminded of Scotland. We’ve been gone nearly a week, I can’t believe it. On the other side of the mountains brick houses connect to small, fenced yards covered by trellis like a private scrap of vineyard. Random chickens pluck about their business. The town goes by in the space of five blinks and we’re in scrubby hills again.

We stop for “public facilities” at a Shell convenience station. California buys a bag of chips. I hope, for her sake, Idaho never shuts down.

The only thing in these little towns that is upright and clean-lined is the Communist monument in the center. These hamlets could hint at European charm, but it’s as though the people who live in them have simply given up. Crumbling walls and ruffled roof tiles remind me of the small lean-tos and miniature barns collapsing in on themselves along Colorado back roads.

I learn communist Bulgaria was in denial of its Turkish population (around eight percent), not even acknowledging Turkish coffee—there was only “Thracian” coffee in select shops. Travel abroad, which consisted of Eastern block countries, was rare and exceptional. Jeans were against the law, as were beards and listening to the Beatles. Anyone on holiday had to have documents and permission to spend the night elsewhere from home, including at the homes of friends or relatives. And woe to the man who took a woman who wasn’t his wife to a hotel.

Our Bulgarian guide, Svoboda, or Bobbie, for short, is sitting in the front seat of our Mercedes bus, carrying on a conversation on life in communist Bulgaria with herself. I think two or three people are listening; everyone else is asleep (except for California, who is watching movies and Barbara, doing her paperwork).

I’ve decided to give up trying to give up coffee. I only have two days of mortality left, so I might as well do my thing. I drink—no, I savor—espresso over lunch.

Trash and rust are everywhere in Ruse. Now I understand Barbara’s comment that this is so Balkan.

We stop at a rest stop. It’s dark and I bang my brow on the watertank of the toilet. As we leave again, Svoboda tries to log off, says goodbye three times. She won’t shut up.

We go to the Ruse-Riga hotel. The restaurant tried to recreate a rustic scene with a water wheel and Astroturf, but it looks like putt-putt to me. Our lunch consists of more tomatoes, salad, roasted red pepper. We’re about to drive on to Bucharest.

Romania is slated to join the EU in ’07, but the outlook isn’t good; Amnesty International reports that 25% of women here are domestically abused, that illegal trafficking of women and children is at unacceptable highs. Barbara is passionate about the local mistreatment of gypsies, sensitive to local derogatory commentary by guides like Svoboda, who told us to watch our purses.

“Dynastic” communism is common here; Romania was best-known for this nepotistic version. Barbara asserts that Marx would never have associated with Stalin, Lenin and Mao.

We go for a night of gypsy dancing and dinner. Later, in our rooms, there’s a party going on in the courtyard, the music floating up to our open windows. I fall asleep to Turandot’s Nessun Dorma. The singer isn’t great, but from the courtyard here in Romania, it cannot help but be beautiful.

2005-10-13T22:31:00.000-07:00

Bulgaria: Contraband

In the business center this morning, a man asks what the computer sign-on screen says. “Only that there is no computer shopping, no looking at delicious sites,” explains the 50-something business center attendant. I snigger from the other computer. “To put it softly,” she winks.

After breakfast, we set out on a walking tour of Sofia. I’ve loaded on half the contents of my suitcase and despite two layers of polar fleece, a cardigan, a rain jacket and long underwear, I’m freezing.

We look at churches. We look at churches. And… we look at churches. The local guide seems nice but her annunciation is monotone enough that I can’t seem to get interested in what she’s saying. I decide I don’t love Bulgaria. The block Cyrillic alphabet and bland, communist buildings are oppressive, dull, linear, militant. Graffiti breaks out in bold and vibrant color on fences and dumpsters, the only truly living thing I’ve seen other than weeds growing through sidewalk cobbles. A wizened gypsy woman, her face pruned with wrinkles, head covered with a scarf, sells tiny bunches of wildflowers outside a Russian church. I give her two Leva and she thrusts out a bunch of flowers despite my polite refusal. Susie and another man on our trip do likewise. I leave the flowers on an icon in the church; the caretaker relocates them to a vase in one of the chapels. The wilted bouquet looks more alive than anything else in a church weathered by time, American bomb blasts and a wealth of tarnished bronze. It seems to me as worn down and decrepit as the old woman outside. The Luxemburg princess and her entourage arrive as we’re leaving.

California is freezing. My mother tries to close the collars on her velour jacket. She fastens them shut with a diaper pin [??] offered up from one of Cheung’s vast pockets. “That will hold it, eh?” Cheung says, laughing her 80 year-old laugh.

We hit a flea market. I buy two icons, two hats. One of them is silver fox—at $16 it’s a steal; the ones I coveted just this week in the Bloomingdales catalog were $400.

We find lunch down the way; soup for Sophia, Mom, Cheung and I. French fries for California.

In the business center [no delicious sites for me] I send out my entry for the 11th. Barbara comes in from some errands to see pictures of Attila and my friends. “Don’t dress up tonight,” she says, “everything will smell like that cooking smoke.” I’m not sure what she’s thinking; today is the first day I’ve worn anything resembling makeup, and even then I’ve worn the same pullover every day so far.

California knocks on my door an hour later. “I found the store, just five minutes from here!” I grab my sneakers and we make a contraband run: Cuban cigars, absinthe, Dunkin Donuts. California tells me again she likes fries.

I don’t know how a hotel like this can have the workout facility it does (the treadmill controls are on the built-in touchscreen TV) but no internet in the rooms! I work out to Bulgarian top 50 music with decided Turkish influences.

We head to a local gypsy tavern for dinner of—surprise surprise—more tomato and cucumber salad, pork, some kind of strudel. We drink rakiya and red wine. I give the Albanian toast (“Kazur!”) since Albanians enjoy raki as well. God, that stuff is just awful (but I drink it anyway.) Barbara points out a singer on the floor. “She’s a famous pop singer. I don’t know what she’s doing here.” Vladimir Putin was here just last week, too.

The rest of the evening passes in a fog of dancing and lively discussions about men, clothes and other forms of hunting.

2005-10-12T22:25:00.000-07:00

Greece to Bulgaria: Warm-Blooded

My step-dad reports 18 inches of snow in Divide, Colorado this morning.

Barbara tells me, as we board the bus, that she got her skirt stuck in her pantyhose coming out of the toilet, and that a porter stopped the bus driver to ask if this was the new fashion.

I ask if she was at least wearing exciting underwear and she lifts her hem to reveal leopard-spotted pantyhose.

Have I said that I love this woman?

Small shrines dot the highway. They look like little church birdhouses, a place to stop and light a candle, a prayer station for those unable to make it to the big one. Yesterday we passed a marble monument to 23 children killed when a truck hit their bus.

We’re leaving the most polluted city in Greece as we head for the Bulgarian border. California is watching The Pacifier. She bought a calendar of sex scenes from Greek pottery. I got an entire education looking through it.

At the Greek border we get our passports stamped and a man comes to “face check” us. This strikes me as funny since no one even noticed as we entered the country. The face-checker forgets to stamp someone’s passport. “This is stupid,” Barbara says, exasperated. “Now his day is made; he feels important.” We pass through no-man’s land to the Bulgarian border. The bus is sprayed from underneath with “disinfectant” and passports are collected again at customs. A nursing mother dog has come to sit outside the stalled bus door. Barbara spies her three puppies at the guard station across the way. “Shit,” she says. “I want to take one with me.”

California tells me that she likes to buy clothes while she’s traveling since then no one else will have them. She reminds me she spent 12 hours in Zurich airport, and that she’ll eat chips for lunch since she’s allergic to fish.

We pass stork nests in the middle of Bulgarian towns, donkey-drawn carts on tree-lined rustic roads. We stop for lunch at the foothills of Rila mountain. The restaurant has got to be 55 degrees inside—if that. They serve us salad (a dish to eat while you make up your mind what you want to eat, our local guide explains) and, eventually, the hot tea we asked for. We’re sitting with Cheung and Sophia. “It’s good, eh?” Cheung says. She reminds me of an 80 year-old Chinese McKenzie brother. Sophia asks me again for my e-mail address; she wants to keep track of how my arranged marriage goes. “I hope you can find someone to share your life with,” she says. [Wait for Transylvania.]

We eat trout from the river, served head-on, and roasted red peppers. And potatoes and cabbage. Always potatoes and cabbage. I don’t eat the cabbage.

Rose oil is the big thing here—they use it for baby baths and tonic waters, for distilled drinks and lotions.

We head up the mountain to Rila Monastary, rebuilt after being destroyed by communists. The church is gaudy-gorgeous. It’s cold out and I’m still freezing from lunch. I consider buying a spectacular icon of St. George, though at 260 Leva and 1.4 Leva to the dollar, it’s pricy.

They’re sweeping as we leave, a policeman standing by. The princess of Luxemburg is coming for a visit.

Arriving in Sofia, I have just enough time for a hot bath to remind my blood to commence flowing before dinner. In the dining room, Barbara is letting the head waiter have it in German: “The wine is supposed to come with dinner. Do you understand me? You don’t understand me. This is shit to me.”

Have I said that I love this woman?

2005-10-11T22:17:00.000-07:00

Athens: Peckish

Something munched my butt in the night. I’ve woken up with a spray of bites. Vampires don’t have this problem, either.

As we leave Athens, Barbara recounts two hours of Greek political, art and military history from the Mycenaean period until the present day. I’ve never seen anyone recite so much history off the cuff in one standing. I love this woman. She talks about Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. She pronounces “Troy” “trajen” and “Aphrodite” “aphroditty.” She explains the migrations that broke apart the Greek city-states, talks about how Spartans were only allowed to visit their wives one hour a day and how babies not considered fit enough for the Spartan lifestyle were killed at birth. The vast number of funerary reliefs in the museum are the result of the first Black Death, she says, which wiped out Europe three times.

More about Barbara: she speaks Dutch, Czech, Russian, Hungarian (her first language), English and German. She has a soft spot for street dogs, which is how she came by her own pet, Rocky, having found him half frozen as a puppy near a dumpster. She wears a white crisp shirt and multi-colored Swarovski crystal necklace.

We drive past Marathon, site of the famous Greek-Persian war, from which one Greek ran the 26 miles back to Athens to breathe only the word “victory”—before expiring from exhaustion. The marathon run was born in his memory.

Here’s the main difference between the Greek, Romanian and Bulgarian Orthodox churches and the Catholic church: the Orthodox churches don’t recognize the supremacy of Rome, are based on the old, “original” services, and believe the Holy Spirit is given from the Father, not the Son. I did not know that.

A long monument marks the battle of Thermopylae, where 300 Spartans on a suicide mission held off more than 100,000 Persians, including Persia’s picked army, the Immortals, at the narrow mountain/ocean pass. Last year I finished Gates of War by Steven Pressfield—a novel about this very war. It’s thick going, but a great read.

Back on the bus, we do a go-around to belatedly introduce ourselves. A single traveler from California sleeps through her intro. A few moments later, she wakes up to blurt out, “Spielberg’s mom is a fruitcake!” and falls back asleep.

We stop for lunch and, as Barbara says, “public facilities.” She instructs us to eat olives, cheese and spinach pie while in Greece, and of course, feta. I’m feta-ed out and opt for French fries. In the bathroom, Sophia points to a stall. “This one doesn’t have a seat,” she says. Barbara is there. “None of them do. You don’t sit on it. Please don’t sit on it.” For those of us familiar with early Asian travel, we’re well-versed, though I suppose it might be frightening for neophytes.

California is watching the First Wives club on DVD in front of me, skipping out on the last segment of on-board Greek history. She pauses every so often to announce that my mother is going to marry me off to Dracula. I don’t bother explaining to her that I don’t need help with that one. She tells me again that she spent 12 hours in the Zurich airport getting here, that she likes to eat chips. That she’s shopping for porcelain dolls.

I’ve slept the last two hours into Thesseloniki, crashed out against the bus window. When we get to the hotel, I go to sleep again, arms folded over my chest.

***

I resurrect in time for dinner, during which Barbara asks what we want to eat near the monastery near Rila—chicken or fish. The fish comes from the river and Bulgaria and Romania are experiencing avian flu. We all vote fish.

“So we do fish,” she says.

***

After dinner, Mom decides we need to pool our leftovers and go on a mission of mercy to feed Greece’s stray dogs. The other tourists look at her as though lobsters just crawled out of her ears, but scrape their plates off in a plastic bag donated by a bemused wait staff. Barbara laughs, delighted with the crazy American.

So Mom, California, Barbara and I head toward the city square lugging five pounds of chicken, potatoes, eggs and who knows what else in a plastic bag. It’s 9pm, dark, and the population of stray dogs has apparently disappeared, but resistance is futile; Mom is on a mission. Barbara stops intermittently to double over and laugh, but she’s enthusiastic.

We head toward the park, finding dogs in a pet store, dogs on leashes being walked by owners, but no strays. We give a piece of chicken to a cat. Finally, Barbara of the Dog Radar, shouts. They’re in the park, hiding out like recalcitrant untouchables. We deliver food to two. Down the pedestrian mall closer to the water, we feed two more. Four dogs and a cat in all, a mile from our hotel. I snap a picture of a toy dog being sold by gypsies down near the water to add to the collection of canines we’ve encountered tonight. The gypsies, an old man and woman, look at one another.

We stop on the way back to look over fake Fendi, Burberry and Gucci purses spread out on a sheet by illegal vendors (the sheet makes it easier to gather up shop and take off if necessary). Mom buys a small purse and I pick up a Burberry with a red strap for Noelle.

We meander off the main street into the slums. “This is very Balkan to me,” Barbara says, pointing to the dumpsters and trash and decrepit apartments around us. She talks about how Americans assume that Europeans hate them, how when some of her Hungarian friends went to help with Katrina efforts the Americans were so touched that such a small European country would come to help, having assumed that they hate us. Europeans might not like our foreign policy or our president, she says, but they certainly don’t hate the people.

Back at the hotel, I am relegated to the business center at six Euros a half hour to check e-mail. Mom scans TV offerings in Greek and German. Paid movies include “Blue” movies, which I assume are similar to blue books, judging from erotic trailers. I crash out in a sweater and long underwear—a ward against the obscene air conditioning my mother favors and further nibbles on my ass.

2005-10-10T23:08:00.000-07:00

Athens: Goin’ To the Chapel

By the time I run up to the room after breakfast and meet Mom back in the lobby, she’s got a map to the museum, knows the best bank to change money at, the good place for dinner, and has started herding people together for the morning tour. I think there’s a career in this somewhere for her. Sheryl/Barry/Pamela is nowhere to be seen—he must be in another Greek group.

“C’mon girls!” Mom says to Sophia and Chueng, the Chinese Canadians. Chueng, the mother, moves slowly at 80 but she’s got gumption. “Keep an eye on them to make sure they don’t pick up young men!” Mom says in a stage whisper to me. Chueng finds this hilarious.

Here are a few quick facts about Athens:

* Population: four million
* The owl (symbol of its patron goddess, Athena), is the city symbol.
* Marble is cheap and abundant—and easier to purchase for a house floor than good wood.

At the foot of the Acropolis, it takes me a moment to realize that all the smashed black berries on the ground are olives. We’re in a veritable grove. From here I can see the hill that is home to the seven muses [must leave offering], as well as the Pnynx—the flat open space where Greeks first voted on how to run their city and democracy was born. Farther up, we stand where Paul preached (he only won two converts in Athens). I think I can see all four million people from here.

At the top, the Parthenon is under painstaking renovation; bits and chunks of it have been carefully strewn all over the ground in a giant archaeological puzzle. I’ve studied this temple and fantasized about standing here like this, but now that I am, I feel detached. Maybe it’s the scaffolding or the mob of tourists. I take pictures, hoping they’ll capture whatever it is that I’m missing: mysticism, magnetism—something. I forget to look for the rounder corner columns, the lack of horizontal lines (the ceiling is curved to the give the illusion of being straight and not sagging), the lack of vertical lines and the fact that one end of the top is six inches higher than the other. This is something beyond architecture, our guide, Marie-Louise says; these columns carry the swollen tension of holding up the weight of the temple. They are living.

Looks sorta chopped up and dead to me, though.

I did find out that I’m not the youngest person on this tour—I’m sure that the lone Australian woman is several years younger than me.

At the Erechtheion, I take pictures of the maidens holding up the portico, and peer into the hole in the floor on the front (there is a corresponding opening in the roof) where Poseidon struck his trident in his contest against Athena that founded the city. Poseidon offered the city the seas, Athena, olives. Greeks chose peace over wealth and Athena won.

**

It was on the way down from the Acropolis that I got betrothed.

We had left Chueng in front of the grand entrance to the top. There were too many steps and steep walkways for her and after 20 years of ginseng farming, her knees weren’t up to the climb. So we came back down against traffic, the way we came, to find her. Another woman was following with us, trying to meet her husband down the hill. She asked if she could hold on to me—her eyes aren’t that good and she had problems going down steps. So I took her by the arm.

“You lost your chance—you could have grabbed on to a cute young guy!” Mom chided her. (Now I know where I get it…) The rest went like this:

Lady: Oh, no—she’s cute. Not that I swing that way. My son does, though. He’d love you, honey. He’s 43. Too old?

Me: I’m 35.

Lady: He likes them built like you.

Mom: Tall and thin?

Lady: Just like this. He’s 6’2”. Lives in Arizona.

Me: Oh darn. I live in Nebraska.

Lady’s husband (as we meet up with him): He went to school at Creighton in Omaha!

Mom: She works for Gallup and travels the world. She’s in Singapore practically every month.

Lady: He just came back from Vietnam! This is a match! We make good in-laws, by the way.

Mom: I like you already. I want grandkids.

Lady: [After a knowing nod at Mom.] Give me your e-mail address, honey!

Mom: See you at the wedding.

Lady’s husband: Save us a seat.

And so it was that Tosca got engaged to Dan the Pharmacist. Sophia, trekking with us and observing this entire transaction said, “Yup. That’s how it was done a lot in my country.”

A little while later I ran into the same lady in the bathroom. “Is that my daughter-in-law?” she said.

I don’t think I’ll tell Dan about the Count and I. He just wouldn’t understand.

**

After we return to the hotel, Sophia, Chueng, Mom and I find a small restaurant down the street from KKE, the local communist headquarters. We share paella and grilled meatballs. We go on to the museum, full of statues and funerary reliefs until we get bored; most of the really good stuff was hauled off to the British Museum years ago. Greece is still hopeful of getting some of their things back one day.

We wander out later when we (surprise surprise) get hungry again. Sophia and Cheung are waiting in the lobby just to see if we appear; they couldn’t remember our names or room numbers. So the four of us set out looking for soup, but no one seems to know a place that has “zuppe.”

[Vampires don’t have this problem. Anything is fair game for dinner.]

And then, I see it… The clouds part. The angels sing. No, it’s not the golden arches—it’s the big green letters. That green goddess. No, not Demeter—Starbucks.

I only had a half cup this morning—my limit for the day. I will be strong. I will be strong.

I’ll make it up to myself with ouzo.

So we find a back alley lined with several local restaurants and do what only tourists in Greece can do: eat gyros. The four of us dine for less than two Euros a piece and wander around digesting tatzaki sauce. We find a bakery and buy some baklava—pieces the size of my hand and half the weight of my head. Back at the hotel, Mom and I have delusions of saving it to eat on the bus tomorrow.

On the 11th floor, the bar opens out into a sunroom, which opens out onto a terrace with a spectacular view of the Acropolis at night. At the bar, I am one of three women; the one on my right looks like Morticia Adams with a side part. Her fingernails are red; I wonder if she knows the Count. The other woman, to her right, is talking animatedly into her cell phone. I’m the only woman at the bar not smoking, the only one with a book. The bartender refills my wine glass without charging me, asks me where I’m on holiday from. He likes that I look exotic, he says. He asks me what I like about this book. I tell him Greek men are beautiful.

I’m in Athens, looking out at the slate-blue sky. This is the center of the beginning of city-dwelling, of civilization. I sit and ponder the sky, drinking red wine. I sit and read and wonder.

2005-10-08T23:00:00.000-07:00

Changeling

Let me just come out with it right off the bat: I’m here for Dracula. That’s why I’m on this tour to the Balkans. So despite warnings from relatives and concerned friends about men who are “long in the tooth” (and my recent bout of AARP members asking me to marry them), I am after one thing here: the real deal.

So that said, it all starts with biscuits and gravy.

Woodland Park, CO
Every trip to Transylvania should begin at the Hungry Bear. You just never know when you’re going to have good biscuits and gravy again. I mean, it could be weeks—or if all goes as planned—centuries. A girl’s gotta load up.

Best get some sun in, too, while I’m at it.

They’ve sent the glasses I forgot to pack to the Castle Rock UPS Store (“they” being my neighbor, Noelle, and Dave and Martha, owners of the local UPS Store near my house). We loiter in Castle Rock, buying vitamins and water and Sudafed at Walgreen’s until they (“they” being the nice guys at the Castle Rock UPS Store) call to say that my package has arrived.

Glasses, vitamins and Sudafed—three items on the pro-vampirism reason list. I’m having an allergy attack that seems to be part of my usual high altitude experience. Along with the nosebleeds.

Let’s face it: mortality just ain’t that great.

Denver, CO
[Note to self: the car is parked in E-8.]

I can waste any amount of time in a Red Carpet Club. Give me coffee, a T Mobile hot spot and an electrical socket and I’m a happy girl. The one thing I’m already jonesin’ without is my cell phone. There’s no point in taking it; the thing doesn’t work overseas. I feel like a caveman having to use a phone card for domestic calls for the first time in years. Another case for hypnotic trans-atlantic Dracupowers.

Washington, D.C.
The plane is delayed on the tarmac in Washington/Dulles. “Do we have time to pee?” I ask the gate guy. Mom elaborates about how long we were delayed and how far we’ve walked. The guy holds our tickets and has mercy.

Vampires don’t pee either. I have it on good authority.

Note to self: never fly economy on international flights. I can do this for about 7 hours, but I think that’s got to be my limit. Maybe I’m spoiled by too many business class tickets and first class upgrades, or maybe it’s just that the last time I felt comfortable on these economy long hauls I was 5’4” and 105 pounds and could wedge myself into just about any space (or, as a ballerina, any shape).

About five mimosas later, I feel more amenable to sleeping just about anywhere. Until I have to pee.

This is the thing about traveling with Mom: she covers me up when I sleep (even if I’m hot), sets my pillow up for me, hands me food off her plate, digs fives out of her purse so I can pay for my mimosas, and reminds me, once we’ve arrived in Frankfurt, to comb my hair and brush my teeth.

I keep wondering how I normally do this by myself and can only come to the conclusion that I’m a dingy-mouthed, cold, sleeping girl with natty hair just usually lucky enough to get her mimosas for free. Then I remember the Singapore flight attendant chiding me for reading without a light on and figure I’ve got a lot of moms looking after me.

Frankfort, Germany
The German I was once so fluent in that I dreamt in it trickles back to me in airport signs and the conversations of ticket counter agents, couples snogging in the passport and security lines. I think of my friend, Michael, conversing with my other friend David, and the fact that they have no clue that I can understand them. The ticket agents congenially click their pens at one another after a difficult French man, and I eavesdrop on the commentary under their breaths.

Frankfort airport is about as inviting as a vault. All efficient German engineering, designed for human transportation if not comfort, the industrial Spartan architecture gives me more attention for people watching. I love European women; they walk an edgier line of beauty than Americans. Mothers with pierced noses read to their daughters. Women with gorgeous blonde hair hide peer out from mod spectacles. They remind me of tennis stars and models like Peta Wilson and Bohemian chicks in thigh-high boots. The 50-something lady at the Lufthansa counter has a Pepe Le Pew skunk streak of blonde down the top of her head. She reminds me of Dr. Evil’s henchwoman but she still comes off as sexy in some really uptight kind of thin-lipped way.

Our flight to Athens is delayed. Mom is asleep across two (efficiently designed) German seats in gate A21. I’m ready to kill for Starbucks and a Hot Spot. I’m still under the delusion that I’ll give up coffee on this trip. (Mom says, “Not on my watch!”). I won’t be grouchy. Really.

My head drops like Rutger Hauer slumping over in Bladerunner before we even take off. I’ve developed a Pavlovian response to aircraft in the last few years; one minute in an airplane seat and my eyelids turn leaden. Mom’s trying to talk to me. I fall asleep on her shoulder until she wakes me, saying her arm is numb and do I want to eat? I slump over the other direction.

We land and meet up with other members of our tour that were, like secret agents, stashed on the same flight as ours.

So there’s this guy in our group with a terrible palsy. His name is Barry—he thinks. He says it’s really futile to wear his nametag as his name changes every day. Last Tuesday he was Pamela. So when I ask him his name on his passport, he checks it out from the fanny pack at his waist (it takes him several tries to get it open) and reports, “It says Barry. Do passports lie?” I say, “Not usually. What did you think your name was today?”

“Sheryl?” he says, confused.

For a woman like me, who likes to ask questions, this man is a veritable gold mine.

The drive through Athens at night is beautiful. We arrive at the hotel Titania and we are, as all Moncrief/Lee girls are, starved. We indulge in salmon and pizza and give away a couple slices to another mother/daughter team of Chinese Canadians in our group who just sat down nearby. Our waitress is a lovely Greek girl with bottle blonde hair. I’d like to take her with us. She has that European way of acquiescing a point with a tilt of her head. I have two glasses of wine. My mother is thoroughly convinced that I’m a wino. We make our way to our single-sized cereal box of a room and turn on the TV. We have internet. It’s 25 Euros a night, but still, my [as of yet still mortal] life is made.

I try to convince Mom that the Stephen Baldwin movie on television is so bad that even other countries are showing this stupid American movie only after hours. She’s riveted. I crash out, arms folded on my chest.

2005-04-22T00:07:00.000-07:00

Singapore: Return to Lah-Land

My college girlfriend, Heather, wrote this on messenger to me last night (my late night/your afternoon)

heather says: was thinking of you today - I haven't showered since Thursday...

Last night was long. Long, long, long. It’s an hour to Chicago and four hours layover there, and then 14 to Hong Kong (which is weird, since it’s usually 16) and 2 hours there, and then 3.5 here. I woke up out of a dead sleep so deep on the last lag that I got dizzy.

This morning I’m up after only 4 hours of sleep. I meant to sleep until noon after being up until 4am Sing. Time but I just couldn’t do it. I have too much I want to get done today. I’m sitting at a semi-circle of a desk in my room at the M hotel looking out on a vast shipyard on the edge of the financial district. Multi-colored overseas containers are stacked everywhere, giant cranes on the edge of the water, which is probably only a few blocks from where I am.

Breakfast just came. You know what I love about Asian and European countries? (Or just about any country other than the US?) They know how to make good coffee. The kind that is so strong the spoon stands up in it. Spain is like this, too. So is India. The other thing is the mango. And papaya. And real guava juice.

Here are a couple things about Singapore.

Singapore has two main things going for it: excellent shopping and a vast array of international cuisine. You can eat any of your favorite cuisines here and they’ll be excellent. It’s safe and clean. I made a faux pas last night of walking out to the taxi stand with a piece of gum in my mouth. That is so not kosher here as gum was outlawed until just last year and is only for use between consenting adults in the privacy of your own home now. Chewing it on the street can get you in trouble.

Everyone says “lah” after each sentence. They speak a patois of English and Chinese they call Singlish that is, to my ear, impossible to make out. The Luxe guide (my favorite city guide if it’s a city you know decently enough to want the nitty gritty on and don’t need to do a lot of sightseeing) says: You will only need three Singlish phrases: “Hello, lah,” “Goodbye steady steady pom-pi-pi,” and “I have absolutely no idea what Singlish gibberish you’re talking, go away immediately.”

All they’re missing is a raspberry from a French knight threatening to taunt them a second time.

Right now I’m aware of the fact that I’m going to be missing the most incredible champagne brunch complete with its own foi gras bar at the Swissotel, but you know… I need to get to the Raffles mall and find some pantyhose, which I forgot, and some hair conditioner. And work out and get to dinner with the partner here and another dear co-corker from the Omaha office in town for another client. We’re going to a place called the Tavern. Oh. And at some point figure out what I’m going to be teaching tomorrow. Might be smart.

2004-08-23T00:33:00.000-07:00

Shanghai: Shangri-La

I find there are three keys to being out of the country for weeks on end:

1. E-mail. Without it, I would feel totally cut off from the rest of my life. Even in a city of 12 million people you feel totally alone. I find this holds true even in English-speaking cities, though the language barrier definitely makes it worse.
2. Ready cash. ATMs disperse cash in the local currency long after traveler’s checks are gone.
3. Working out. It keeps you regular when customs takes away your Milk of Magnesia.
4. Laundry service. ‘Nuff said.

Things I find invaluable: a travel alarm, a conditioner I picked up at the Bangkok airport hotel that actually doesn’t smell like men’s cologne (all the other hotel ones do), Tylenol PM, and a cardigan.

My moving in ritual (and it is moving in, for a week), consists of completely unpacking, ordering more hangars from housekeeping and requesting foam pillows. In other words, I totally make a pain of myself. I like this hotel. My room is the smallest of my trip so far, but the bathroom is efficiently set up with shelf space and a glass bowl sink. The bathtub even comes equipped with rubber duckies.

Meanwhile, I’ve totally become addicted to corn flakes with banana.

Outside my window, there is a Starbucks. Shangri-La is alive and well. I see something here that I didn’t in Bangkok: bicycles. In Bangkok, there are motorcycles and mopeds. Here the Chinese tradition of bicycle-riding seems to continue in tiny vestiges. In ’85 I visited a city where practically everyone was riding bicycles. I can’t remember which city it was, though I think it might have been Beijing. At any rate, I’m sad to see less bicycles but at least there are some.

Today is what Todd would call a “lazy” day. In other words, a day of hanging out, watching TV, eating, and not moving about too much. Except that housekeeping has just called. I’ve got to exit for a while. I’ll take the opportunity to finally get some cash at the nearby mall, try to locate some dental floss and nail polish remover. The Pepto-pink was never quite dry and my nails look like the surface of the moon.

I ventured to the shopping mall across the street, bought some postcards at a bookstore, a scarf, a couple hair accessories. There’s a grocery inside; I have a soy milk source at last.

One of the beautiful postcard books I bought is a set of pictures called the Twelve Ladies of Jinling City, based on A Dream of Red Mansions—a Chinese literary classic that I’ve just ordered on Amazon. If I send the postcards out I’ll probably buy another set to keep; they’re too pretty.

Something I’ve not mentioned yet: the popularity of bird nests as medicine and for dessert in Asia—particularly China, but also in Thailand. The first time I heard of this I wondered how people ate feather-stuck twigs, but these are made from a particular species of bird that builds his nest out of his own saliva. And then you eat them, prepared in various ways. A hilarious commercial that played several times during Miss Thailand World featured two gun-slinging cowboys: one downed a jar of birds nest before the shootout and won. The other guy ended up with a fly stuck in a deep furrowed line in his face.

Yeah. I didn’t get it either.

Operation Dental Floss and Nail Polish Remover are proving more difficult than originally planned, though I did pick up a couple knockoff Prada wallets on the street tonight. The Twins Effect, which I wanted to see in Bangkok but was only available in Thai subtitles, is also on the street, as are Collateral, SipderMan 2 and all other recent releases. Of course these are all illegal.

I take myself out to the Japanese restaurant and—eureka! You can order the veggie tempura separately. (All sweet potato and pumpkin for me. Who know I was such a pumpkin freak?) I start the process of writing some 26 postcards during dinner. I spend the rest of the evening (until 3am) catching up on e-mail and starting to prepare for the program, which begins day after tomorrow.

One of these days I have got to wash my hair.

2004-08-22T00:31:00.000-07:00

Bangkok to Singapore: Walk the Line

Today I go to Shanghai. I haven’t been there since ’85.

At the Bangkok airport I see everything from dreadlocked backpackers to European businessmen and Indian tourists. The Arab family in front of me consists of a man with four women. I’ve seen this kind of configuration on several occasions now, though I can’t tell whether the women are wives, grown daughters, sisters, or other family. The man wears a crisp, long white robe and white headdress. He carries a stainless combination-locked briefcase. The women wear black robes and head scarves, the costume at odds with their backpacks, tiny stuffed animals dangling from the zippers.

The thing that bothers me at this airport is not that it’s so crowded, but that people stop dead in the middle of foot traffic. Doing this in the weekend market will get your Achilles’ tendons sliced by old ladies pushing carts down the aisle behind you. I bump into a few people, get aggressive with the excuse mes. I’m worried about my latent potential to turn into a raving stopped-traffic lunatic.

Line etiquette is virtually unknown here. Lines happen everywhere—it’s the etiquette that’s missing; give one small gap between you and the next person and someone’s bound to cut in front of you. A man in front of me in the security line got preoccupied trying to locate his ticket. Another guy in a surgical mask cut in front of both of us. The same non-rule holds true for driving; give five feet between you and the next car and five cars will slip into the gap. Ladies in the bathroom do not form one line for stalls as they open, but individual lines for as many stalls as there are. So you’d better not take too long. And bring your own TP or you’ll have to pay for it from a stand or machine in front.

I’m waiting to board my flight to Shanghai. Another flight is calling final boarding to Katmandu. I’ve got to figure out where that is.

I call Patch to say good-bye. I wake her up. I have car-paint purple toenails and Pepto-pink fingernails to remember our fun evening by. Speaking of Pepto, my package that Noelle mailed me never arrived. I bought some milk of magnesia here (the only thing different is that it’s made here) for about 20 Baht—about 60 cents. Doesn’t that just drive me crazy that it’s so cheap here? I was tempted to send a box home with the crate of my other Thai treasures, believe me. My call to Patch on the pay phone was two Baht—about five cents. I got all this change for it, thinking it had to be more. Now I need to find a place to dump this coin.

When you buy your sushi roll at the snack bar, you hand it to a woman standing outside the bar where you are, who rings it up from your side. I feel like I’m constantly fumbling with the process of things here, trying to do it like we do at home. The seaweed comes in its own wrapper to keep it crisp. Tasty.

Pudong International airport is outside the city and across the river. The hour-long drive into the heart of Shanghai is dismal; a dark sky lends industrial grey to every building we pass. It’s raining. High rise slums look like purgatory. As we move into the city I have visions of Bladerunner. I see very few people in this city of 12 million; they’re all inside because of the rain. It’s like driving into a ghost metropolis, giant light screens flashing Samsung ads at nobody.

The hotel is huge and elegant. Here are some people. My room is small but cozy. It takes me 20 minutes to figure how to turn on the TV and lights; the master remote is way smarter than I am.

After working out, I take myself to dinner—Chinese pumpkin soup, stir fry and dim sum. I watch Olympics on the Japanese channel, dozing off in bed.

2004-08-21T00:30:00.000-07:00

Bangkok: Action

Sleeping late after the last week is a luxury. And Nisarat, who hasn’t slept in for weeks, seems like a whole new person. She picks me up. We hit the weekend market. We accomplish Mission Buy Thai Drum and Arrange Drum Shipping. We also accomplish Buy Thai Carving and Buy Thai Bells and Buy Thai Antiques…

By 3pm, I’ve done my part for the Thai economy.

We meet Nick at the mall. I try again to fit into clothes here. The sales girls give me dubious looks when I ask if they have my size. They give me a M/L—the largest they’ve got. I get the pants hooked—and then realize I can’t breathe. I again consider counseling for self esteem issues. For about 15 minutes, I hate Thailand.

We solve the problem with ice cream—these little round ice cream pellets that look like pop rock candy but melt in your mouth. These Asian novelties would never make it in the states; the portions are too tiny for super-sized appetites.

I’ve told Nisarat about a Thai boxer-turned-actor that I read about in the paper. I don’t always find Asian men attractive (or even American actors, for that matter) but this man is gorgeous. Nisarat kept referring to him as the Beautiful Boxer and I thought she was just referencing the handsome boxer-actor. Turns out this guy is in a movie called just that, about a transvestite boxer who wears makeup into the ring. It’s based on a true story and won a lot of awards in Singapore. When I finally locate a copy of the Scorpion King for Patch, who has a crush on the Rock, Nisarat buys me Beautiful Boxer.

Now let me say that in a country that loves its action heroes, it strikes me as weird that I couldn’t find the Scorpion King at any of the knock-off stores (though I could have readily bought a pirated copy of the Bourne Supremacy, or any movie still in theatres). I don’t know that Patch really wants to see the Scorpion King, but by the time I finally do get a copy it has become an obsession for me. (My top StrengthsFinder theme is Focus, the mental barracuda grip.)

Mission Locate Scorpion King accomplished, we meet up with Bobby and Patch for dinner at a Korean restaurant in a nearby hotel. It isn’t good Korean, but if you’ve got a choice between bad Korean and no Korean, you take what you can get.

From there, Patch and I head to the gold theatre, finally to see Alien vs. Predator. It’s freezing inside, moreso because it started to storm during dinner and we got wet crossing between buildings even under the bridge cover. My friend, Ron, was right; the movie was really fairly decent. We head back to Patch’s mom’s place after the movie and change plans from body massage to foot reflexology so we can watch TV; the Miss Thailand World pageant is on. I pick the winner, get a back massage, manicure, pedicure, the works. It costs about $25. Patch is sad to see me go and I’m sad to leave her as I return to the hotel. She calls a little later. I pack and actually get most of my stuff in the suitcase.

2004-08-20T00:28:00.000-07:00

Bangkok: Just Look

Let me tell you, teaching seminars is hell on diets. By 10:30, snacks arrive: chocolate croissants and cream-filled donuts, or cake. And some companies start with breakfast way before that. Lunch is at 11:30. Tea break is sacred: cakes and pastries arrive at 2:30. Luckily, here the donuts and pastries are sushi-sized. So I eat five. I point out my favorite to one of my students. “But,” he says, “I heard you were on a diet.” A woman has no secrets here.

One of my students has created an animated, multi-media set-to-music slideshow of all 34 StrengthsFinder strengths—with options in English or Thai. Wow. Or, to quote my U.K. educated student: “Crike.” (I don’t even know how to spell it, but it’s the weirdest thing to come out of a Thai mouth ever.)

Customs, who was waiting for FDA approval on my popcorn (are you kidding me???) has finally released it. It arrives with the printed and framed winner’s cards and the certifications for the students whom I taught last time. Everyone is happy. Meanwhile, my class has surprised me with customized drops (a form of Gallup recognition) with pictures of me in a top hat from my web site watermarked beneath written messages. I love these. And presents, too: the exec who functions right under the brothers gave me a pink scarf yesterday. Nid has given me Hershey’s kisses. The rest of the students from last class arrive, including Preecha, my favorite. He has brought me a box of cakes from the Thai Airways bakery, including one called “Tosca.”

We graduate the coaches. More than 230 feedbacks have been conducted in the last three months here. I give the winner’s cards. Two of the brothers come to make comments. The main brother closes the event, and afterward makes sure that I know where to get shopping. He actually asked one of the execs to take me, but she has to see her mother and I have plans to shop with Nisarat and Patch anyway.

That evening at the Gallup office (you’d never know it’s after hours; everyone is there) I find the rest of the presents from my box, pass them out, meet up with Patch. Everyone else is going out for Nick’s birthday until late. Patch and I go our own way, opt for dinner to ourselves at Patch’s favorite Japanese place in Siam square. I love this mall, and it’s just blocks from Patch’s home on the top level of her mother’s foot reflexology/massage shop.

We were going to finally take in Alien vs. Predator, but decide it’s time for an educational experience. So we head for Patpong road—the red light district. This is the home of legendary “Tiger” shows—a bastardization of “Thai girl” where all the weird business with ping pong balls and bananas takes place. You can also get some good knockoff shopping done, too.

We buy things. We get approached by guys hawking shows (“You just go see, no pay. I not charge for just look.”) and peek into bars covered with long lines of pole-dancing women. They’re wearing matching thigh-high boots—and bikinis, which strikes me as positively prudish in such a “dodgy” place, but I hear that anything beyond the entrance point gets dodgier by the yard.

We have appointments at Patch’s mom’s place around 11ish (no one keeps normal working hours here) and so head back for massages. I twist Patch’s arm into taking a “tuk tuk” a three-wheeled motorized rickshaw with open back so named because of the tuk-tuk-tuk sound the engine makes. She hates these but indulges me.

We get massage. I’m good for nothing after that except going home to bed.

2004-08-19T00:26:00.000-07:00

Bangkok: Bath

For the last two evenings, I’ve had this illusion that I would actually wash my hair. But between winner’s cards and the desire to catch six hours of sleep, it hasn’t happened.

Oh, who am I kidding. I wouldn’t wash my hair anyway.

On the way to work, the manager walks me to the hotel car and gets the door, telling me to have a good day. While I’m gone the maid will re-arrange my makeup and tidy my clothes. The front desk brings any faxes or packages that arrive for me to my room, the number of which they know by heart. It’s a little like Cheers, where everybody knows your name, except that it’s a hotel and no one pronounces it correctly.

I’m afraid to look in the car mirror; the awful haircut I got before I came looks like a long-haired version of a mullet. I’ve been working around it, but it’s been tough. On the way to work, I get a peek at elusive candidate #5, whose posters are rare. I still think I prefer #1 the best. So far I’ve only seen one woman.

Today, during lunch (they’ve ordered a separate, more mild entrée for me every day despite my protestations), one of the execs in my class informs me that the four brothers who run this business hardly ever get together and that these dinners are rare occasions. That makes me feel good.

Meanwhile, still no Poppycock. The customs department here is like a black hole—things go in, but never come out. I have two boxes in stasis—one I sent weeks ago for this class, through Gallup, the other my neighbor sent Fex Ex a week ago containing a prescription, some Milk of Magnesia and my organic seaweed bath. I’ve been informed that I need a copy of my prescription and my passport for the personal package. Todd faxed the prescription in last night, but so far, no word. I dropped a hint to the main brother the other night that I was struggling with customs. Can’t hurt. Last time he got his packaging department to crate up my varied purchases for shipping. This time he’s concerned about finding me the furniture shopping I was looking for. I’m trying to figure out how to tell him that I just don’t want to surrender my $30 organic seaweed bath to an anal government department that is surely eating my Fiddle Faddle.

I let the class out at 4:45. I decided today that I didn’t need to book the hotel car for these short trips to and from work, and so find a cab at 5:00. This turns into the most tortured experience of my trip to date. For one, the cab has enough Freon in it to cure global warming. A Chinese talk show blares from the backseat speakers and something is beeping incessantly and won’t stop. Every few blocks, the taxi driver coughs, hacks, opens his car door and spits. I think I can live through 15 minutes of this—barely.

We get caught in traffic. This continues for an hour. I try to take refuge in sleep. I do some work, draft a winner’s card. We actually get close to the hotel. I can see Citibank from here. By now we’re creeping along a back street and I have no feeling left in my frozen fingers. We halt for 10 minutes. We move 10 meters. We stop outside a tiny spa and massage shop. My shoulders ache. We park in front of a hotel. I fantasize about lying in bed. We stall in front of a Korean restaurant. My mouth waters. I consider escaping and walking the rest of the way—about four blocks. But the sidewalk is non-existent and I’ve got my carry-on suitcase full of stuff with me. The driver hacks up a lung, spits it out into the street. I had planned to work on winner’s cards and maybe get to a movie with Patch tonight. Now all I want is out of my work clothes—no, out of this car. I wonder how people live like this. I’m beginning to feel traffic rage. I start to think that going postal might be a mild younger sibling to going Bangkok taxi.

After two hours, I finally make it back. The taxi driver heaves a sigh rather than a loogie this time and says something to the effect of “finally!” I flee up to my room, take solace in a burger (never order burgers in Asia), French fries, and cheesecake (never order cheesecake in Asia).

I write winner’s cards until I can’t see straight. I think I set a world record—for masochism, if not for most cards written in a night.

I crash around 2:00am.

2004-08-18T00:24:00.000-07:00

Bangkok: Skin

My goal was to teach this course in two days and let the students teach back the various components for one and a half days. So far we seam to be on target, which means that after 10am tomorrow my job will become much easier, except for one thing: winner’s cards. We’ve decided to give them to this class since we’ve trained them to teach managers to do them. A winner’s card is about a third of a page of written and highly personalized recognition that takes anywhere from 40-60 minutes to write. I did the four for my Singapore class—but that was four. This is 14. The trick is to write them based on observations of a person’s strengths. Hearing the things they say and the way they say it helps a lot, though I don’t have that luxury here since most of the conversation takes place in Thai. I could not start writing them the first day because, to be honest, I still have trouble matching lengthy Thai names to faces. Tonight, armed with a class photo complete with names in the margins, I will have to get on it.

The day goes well. The activities are lively and time slips by. I think we’ll finish right at 5:00, but I go until 5:45 by accident. I don’t notice that we’re late because no one is fidgeting or looking at their watches. By the time we’re done, traffic is terrible and I’m anxious to get to the hotel; I’m supposed to meet the brothers at the Silk Road Chinese restaurant at another hotel by 7pm.

Meeting times here are tricky business. I had hoped to go to the hotel first to freshen up before being picked up by one of the brother’s drivers for dinner. But traffic is at a standstill—this happens every time it rains here.

The hotel driver drops Nisarat off at the office, just two blocks from my hotel. By then, dinner has been pushed back until 7:30. We get stuck in traffic leaving the parking lot. It’s still raining. By 6:45, we’re still in the parking lot and I’m worried that I’ll miss the next driver. I grab the hotel driver’s umbrella, get out of the car and walk the rest of the way to the hotel. Turns out the brother’s driver isn’t at the hotel yet. When he finally arrives we hurry on. I get to dinner at 7:50. Two brothers (one of the two camps) are there. The other two arrive shortly after me. We start a meal with so many courses I lose count. But I do not pick food from the turntable with my chopsticks, and do not use my personal, long-handled serving spoon for eating. There must be hope for me. The main brother gives me a book from the meditation center where he and his brother (one camp) often go for 10 days at a time. They talk often and well of this meditation practice. I give them the new Gallup book on recognition, to which I contributed.

The brothers are in high spirits, joke often about growing up together. I challenged them two days ago to find something they can do to promote more unity between them. Only two of them golf so they’re considering… bowling. Hey, whatever it takes. The wife of the main brother is a writer and speaks good English. I enjoy her, though I’m totally self-conscious of the fact that I really think I need a bath and feel like I totally have B.O. The main brother, sitting near me, explains that this shark fin soup that we’re having is specially prepared (any shark fin soup is special—it’s extremely pricey); they boil a fish stomach all day until it disintegrates to make the stock. I wish he wouldn’t have told me that, but nevertheless, the soup is wonderful and I haven’t had shark fin since the last time I had dinner with them, and not for many years before that. The brother remarks that the last time they had this soup at this restaurant was with the Prime Minister. He goes on to talk about another meal he took with the Prime Minister wherein they ate turtle, spikey fish and thinly-sliced horse tartar. I have visions of monkey brains and wonder why people always tell me this stuff at dinner.

The Peking duck as they serve it here is made only with the duck skin—crispy and flavorful. Only certain provinces in China serve the actual meat, though that’s what we’re used to in the states. We make our way through scallops, fish, vegetables, more duck. We eat a Chinese fried ice cream ball, Chinese plum pancakes, gooey sesame cakes and ginger soup, which is so ginger-peppery that I can’t handle more than the first spoonful. We suddenly realize it’s well after 10pm.

I’m sad that dinner is over, except for one thing: the main brother and his wife are going to drop me at my hotel, near their home. We get in his custom 700-series BMW. I immediately start pushing all of the buttons in the back seat, which reclines. Kick ass.

Back at the hotel, full of too much food and tired from being “on” all day, I manage to squeeze out one winner’s card before passing out.

2004-08-17T00:15:00.000-07:00

Bangkok: O'Hara

Today I start teaching. This class is a subset of 14 of the 24 people I taught last time. It is good to see them again—all familiar faces. Even if they can’t all speak English, we know we’re happy to see one another. I think we’ll have a good session again.

I might be wrong. People filter in up to 20 minutes late. Breaks run 20-25 minutes before everyone comes back. Students stared at me, glassy-eyed.

This is a train-the-trainer session. In other words, I’m teaching these people to teach their managers a management training program that I normally teach to the managers directly. It was sold this way because it’s more economical, as well as for the fact that these trainers can teach in Thai, which I cannot. Much of the day is review and exercises that are similar in scope to what I taught them in the previous program and a review of workplace engagement measures taught prior to my first trip by my colleague Ashok (who took me to the Singapore zoo). By 4:00pm, I’m wondering if they’re alive. I think there are 10 collective brain cells functioning in front of me. And there are 14 students. One of them has flown in just that morning from Australia. He doses off at least three times. Another of them, Nid, (who went to lunch yesterday and is the client coordinator for this project) has passed on a trip to the states with family because of this training. I feel badly that they look so zoned. Trying to teach them how to teach it is not as entertaining as teaching it.

Either that, or I just suck at this.

I always say that the first day of a seminar I feel like an asshole. (I tried to write that word in other ways: loser, jerk, dumbass—but it doesn’t capture the same feeling. “Asshole” is the right word.) I didn’t expect to experience my asshole day today, but I did. I leave, uncertain of the week ahead. The client has advertised this class (as they did the previous one) with posters including photos of me—these, taken from the last class. (I walked right past the posters in the morning until someone pointed them out.)

I head back to the hotel. Nisarat, my colleague and translator, thinks it went fine. She heads to the bank for a few hours of case studies (this is the workaholic office here where everyone is working themselves to an early death, remember). I take the hotel car back. It’s dark, looks like rain. Outside of a closed shop, a dirty man sleeps on the step. Bangkok is so stifling that a blast of wind sturdy enough to make the trees dance feels like the onset of tsunami. I’d like to find a bookstore to work, but quiet book stores with coffee are hard to find and Barnes and Noble seems unknown here.

Not sure what I’ll do differently for class tomorrow, but I’ll come up with something.

I should make a note that Thai people have a formalized way of addressing people, especially face-to-face and in front of others. “Khun” is a neutral-gender title that goes in front of a person’s first name. So here I am “Khun Tosca.” My students are Khun Tanayut, Khun Itiampon, etc. We don’t use last names. When we know someone well, we refer to them as their nickname, which has nothing at all to do with their given names. Nisarat’s nickname is Aom. Patch’s, in the office, is Bogie (like the enemy planes in Top Gun).

I work out, order some cereal, think about strategy for tomorrow, and then decide I’ll figure it out in the morning.

2004-08-16T00:14:00.000-07:00

Bangkok: Pieces

From this morning’s paper I learn that the gold medal won by the Thai weightlifter is the first for a Thai woman. She’s a national hero now.

I order eggs and coffee and meet the hotel car to ride to the client, a car distributorship conglomerate. Two Buddhist shrines on the first floor of the company (a Volkswagen showroom) send incense wafting to greet me as I walk in.

I spend the morning giving feedback to one of the four owners/brothers who was out of the country during my last visit when I gave feedback to the other three. He has changed his name since then; he now has a more auspicious alphabetical assortment of letters chosen by a monk who specializes in this king of thing. I learn this is the second time he has changed it. We have a good session from which I learn more about the split camps between the four brother leaders of this company, or segment of the company, at least. There are some 20 family members involved in all the family’s business overall as a result of the fact that wealthy Thai men often take additional wives. Such was the case with this company’s founder. Two days from now I will learn that two of these four brothers are responsible for bringing Gallup in, and have funded the project out of their personal pockets.

Two of my students from last trip take me to lunch a few alleyways down the road. The place looks like a hole in the wall by our standards, but the food is good and, most importantly, fast; I only have 45 minutes between the conclusion of my feedback with the name-changer and the strategic session with all four brothers. Knowing what I know of their relationship, I ought to spend it praying, but I opt, as usual, for food. A shrine to the king stands just over the pass-through window to the kitchen. I enjoy seaweed soup with egg tofu and flat noodles with pork and some green cabbage-type vegetable I never see in the states. Pon, who works under the training coordinator—also eating lunch with me—tells me that the dish’s name literally translates as “slap on top” since they pour brown gravy sauce over it. He tells me this in his U.K.-educated accent. The “slap on top” is delicious. I even keep from slapping it on my outfit. I’m getting good at this Thai style of eating off the spoon and only using the fork to push food onto it.

Less than an hour later, I meet the four brothers all together. I purposefully put myself at the head of the boardroom table, though that doesn’t keep them from sitting in two camps on either side. I’m happy to see the lead brother again. He’s charismatic and one can easily believe that his circle of friends includes the Prime Minister. As I start the session, I’m surprised at the boldness of a couple of the brothers’ complaints—can totally believe they once shared the same room growing up. Keeping the conversation on track is like trying to steer a broken grocery cart. Two hours and a massive headache later, I conclude the session with some challenges for them. They seem pleased. The main complainer says he thinks this went very well. The lead brother proposes dinner some time this week. He did this last trip as well, though the wives were not invited as they will be now, and my associates were, as they are not now. Maybe that’s better—I’ve already been teased (in the Singapore office!) about the lead brother’s cutting up my food for me after my atrocious Chinese dinner manners at the exclusive Bangkok Club (I used my chopsticks to pick tiny whole dried fish from the main plate—acceptable to Koreans but not for formal Chinese dinners).

I piece together two quick executive follow-ups after that. I make it through, sure that my eyes are boggling and fresh lines are forming on my face by the minute. Despite vows of sugar chastity, I eat five cookies that look like dog treats but taste like granola bars left over from the strategic session. My second appointment says, “Will you be back? Who will follow up with me?” I assign him to my first follow-up, a strengths coach I trained.

I make scarce after that, wanting time to relax. I get it, too; it’s rush hour. Sitting in the hotel car, my skull is numb with tension. I think I have muscle knots in my eyebrows. I go “home” to dinner and a workout.

The room service guy is stymied that I’m ordering not a Thai omelet, but a breakfast omelet, cereal and juice for dinner. He calls me back two minutes later to ask what kind of cereal I want. He recommends “corn flake.” Before we hang up, I hear: “Excuse me? I recommend some banana in cereal. It very good.” It is very good—sort of Lucky Charm marshmallowy.

I go to work on the Powerpoint deck for class tomorrow feeling very well taken care of, albeit lonely.

2004-08-15T00:13:00.000-07:00

Bangkok: Gold

“Good morning pumpkin.” I love technology. It’s 9am and Todd has called to say he’s home on the same calendar date he left on (I’ve never gotten my mind around that), albeit some 26 hours worse for travel wear. I fall back asleep for a little while, but soon enough it’s time to work, make some calls, and head to the office.

Nick, the English Bangkok employee, is in the Au Bon Pain on the first floor and spots me. It is just weird to walk down the street in a city of six million people whom you can’t understand and hear someone shout your name. He’s grabbing sustenance for the other workaholics. I get iced coffee and we head up to work with Nisarat for a few hours.

The box I sent ahead with Poppycock and—the grand experiment—Fiddle Faddle is not to be found, still held up at customs, it seems. I’m telling you, this stuff will cause wars some day. I feel like Mr. Frodo, carrying my precious cargo all over the world.

Around five, we set off on a mission I outlined last May: Operation Buy Thai Drums. Once used to collect rain, the mostly copper drums are now collector’s items that cost about $1500 in the states, but roughly $200 here. They have little frogs on the top and when you get a piece of glass cut to sit on top of them they make a nice drink table. The copper ones have patinaed into a light green, but the dark metal ones are quite beautiful as well.

Last trip, we parked across a six-lane divided roadway and took our lives into our own hands (Patch, Vidhya, Nisarat and I) crossing that thing. Well, three months later, here I am again. I’m telling you, it’s as close to unintentional suicide as you can get, trying to cross a street full of Bangkok taxi drivers.

Turns out we got there a little late, held up in traffic and the drum store is closed. I buy a drum top wall hanging and three bells from another stall (this market is a labyrinth of some 8000 stalls—Patch and I were nowhere near the stores we hit today), as well as a couple gifts for Christmas. We find the shipping guy and make plans to buy the drum and ship my treasures home next Saturday all at once. Meanwhile, the shops are closing. The national anthem plays over a loudspeaker. Shoppers in narrow alleys between 8000 stores stop in place. The song ends. The people move again. A few stalls in one section have been turned into a cozy bar with an islandish feel and live music. I order a lemon shake, which is neither a shake nor made or lemons—it’s a lime slushie. Any time one asks for lemon here, they’re certain to get a lime. The yellow variety isn’t known in this Land That Lemons Forgot.

More on the gubernatorial election: Nisarat tells me that those who don’t vote can incur a penalty—for instance, they may not be eligible to run for future public office. Nick, the Englishman in Bangkok, likes #15 just as Patch does, but apparently for different reasons; seems the guy’s been involved in “dodgy” massage and night club business. He and Nisarat muse that perhaps the bars will stay open later if he’s elected. So far there’s a dodgy nightclub businessman and a former secretary of defense with a mafioso approach to power on the ballot. I’m afraid to ask about the others. Meanwhile, I explain that we don’t vote by number. “How do they list them on the ballot then?” Nisarat asks. Why, by name of course. But this seems just as weird to her.

Back at the hotel, my room seems too quiet. I almost wish I had gone to dinner with Nick and Nisarat, despite not being hungry. But I need to prepare for tomorrow and now that I’m better, it might be good to hit a treadmill. The maid has brought me a new banana, folded my clothes, and organized my makeup on the bathroom counter. I feel like I have a mom. Still, I feel lonely.

I do hit the treadmill and work out to Olympian women power lifters. I watched this for a while last night and couldn’t get enough, especially of this Latvian woman with super-arched penciled-in eyebrows who cleaned and jerked 90 kg, stuck her tongue out like a macho Polynesian dancer, dropped the weight, yelled something kickass in Latvian and pumped her fists at the audience before stomping off the platform to go kill someone. Tonight a woman named “Mabel” cleans and jerks 115 kg. A Thai woman with piggy tails closes her eyes for a serene moment before opening them with a war shout and taking the platform. Two Thai fans in traditional costume with weird war paint and red-white-and blue stocking caps wave flags and wiggle their pelvises in the stands. It’s the weirdest thing I’ve ever seen. The girl wais (lifts her hands in front of her in Thai greeting). When Asian people do it it looks gracious. On her it looks like a deadly kung fu move. I’m pretty sure she kicks Mr. T’s ass for fun on weekends. She cleans and jerks 125.5 (just over 276 lbs.), drops the weight, and falls into the arms of her trainer—and cries. Thailand has just won an Olympic gold medal.

I work until 1am.

2004-08-14T00:11:00.000-07:00

Bangkok: Mojo

4:50am: Todd just left. I saw him down to the hotel car. I cried a little. It’ll be just over three weeks until I see him again. My sister reports that Attila’s already upset; apparently he’s been having accidents all over my mom’s house.

I take a Dramamine and go back to bed.

11:00: Awake and feeling good, I eat some eggs and meet up with Patch. We head out to the weekend market and I blithely buy some 15 items. Patch says, “Tosca is back!” It is HOT. We’re talking stifling hot and humid. I’m sweating in places I didn’t know I had sweat glands. We do damage, head to Siam square to eat some snacks and catch a Thai heartthrob giving an outdoor mall concert just outside. We visit the pharmacy and find some enzyme multi-purpose tabs. The interesting things here is that unlike the 24- or 40-packs of Sudafed or whatnot, the bins of various medications are filled with bulk blister pack cards of pills, and you pick out how many you want. If these don’t do the trick, I’m going to get drastic and call Susan, my Jewish mom, for her prescription. We’re talking serious Yiddish mojo here. (Most likely candy and shopping.)

It’s election time in Bangkok. The campaign process is quite different; each gubernatorial candidate draws a number—there are more than 20 in all. Their posters are strung all over the city on lampposts off the side of the streets with their numbers emblazoned on their pictures. Patch muses that she thinks she’ll pick #15. It sounds like a McDonald’s value menu order to me. I ask her if she wants to supersize that.

We catch the sky train back to the hotel just as Patch’s aunt and uncle arrive to take us to dinner on the Chao Phraya river. The riverboat restaurant was booked; Patch is disappointed. But we eat dinner looking out at ocean liners and the longest suspension bridge in Thailand at Patch’s favorite land restaurant. Despite the river view, it’s industrial and not necessarily beautiful, but interesting sightseeing. I’m getting better at mastering the art of eating with a fork and spoon—at the same time. The trick is to cut the food with the spoon and then push it onto the spoon with the fork, but not eat it off the fork. Why? Because that’s not how they do it. You have to eat it off the spoon. Afterward, Patch’s aunt and uncle drive us by the Grand Palace (wow—shimmering even at night, it looks like something from a fantasy novel), temples, parliament, and China town. China town is lit up like Las Vegas, and looks like a Jackie Chan movie—it even has red lanterns strung on a wire above the street. In front of parliament a statue of the Thai king (someone the fifth) rides a horse and despite the hour, there’s some 40ish people paying respect and praying to him. The closest American equivalent I can think of is people gathering at Graceland or loitering at the grave of John Lennon. Everywhere there are pictures of the queen (mostly as a younger woman) still out for the celebration of her 72nd birthday (6th cycle), which was the 12th, Mother’s Day.

Back at the hotel, I take stock of the bounty of the day, stash it away and get to work. I have a lot of work to do before I start consulting Monday and teaching Tuesday.

2004-08-13T00:09:00.000-07:00

Bangkok: Seats

This morning we enjoy sushi, eggs, and Chinese fried dough breakfast. I finally succeed in getting the data engineer up to work on my connection (it’s ALIIIIVE!), and we take off for the office. Oops, that was a mistake. We get tangled in last-minute program details, not the least of which is getting the manual printed.

The sky train here is quick, easy and clean. We find our way to Siam Square, look at shops, check out the gold theater show times (Alien vs. Predator is showing—I can’t convince Todd to see it). We find the regular theater and buy tickets to Collateral and decide that theather-going commoners here still have it better than in the U.S. For one, you can pick your specific seats off a computer chart when you purchase the tickets. For two, the seats are actually comfortable. Americans still have the popcorn buttery topping market safely cornered, however. One interesting thing here: movie-goers stand for the national anthem to pay homage to the king before each film.

We meet Verapong and Patch for dinner. Todd loves Patch. She reminds me of my sister a little. We have some wonderful Japanese food. No one talks about monkey brains. Afterward, we head out for the night market. The only thing I buy is something small for Ryan that is neither a watch (every watch I bought last time broke in the first wearing) or a dishtowel.

Todd is tired and Verapong has been working like a fiend. I’ll see Patch tomorrow. We go back to the hotel and hit the sack.

Post script: Don’t see Collateral.

2004-08-12T00:07:00.000-07:00

Phuket: Staying Alive

I wake up with a headcold, stomach pain, and no “eureka” moments on how to rewrite my manuscript. I wonder how someone can feel so miserable in paradise. I call my sister. She’s never heard of the stuff the doctor gave me (not this version of Cipro, and not the stomach stuff). She’s amused by the electrolyte packets, however. “Wow. That’s some third world medicine. That very kind of thing has kept millions of people alive in places where they don’t have IVs.” She concurs that if things don’t get better in a couple days—or get more painful—to find a hospital. Apparently you really know if it’s your appendix. “When I’m checking for appendicitis,” she says, “I ‘accidentally’ bump the examining table. If the patient says, ‘Ow! Owowow!’ from getting jostled, then I know it’s probably his appendix.” This strikes me as slightly diabolical from the “good doctor,” as Todd calls her.

“That’s mean,” I say.

“So is unnecessary surgery,” she says. I guess she’s got me there.

There’s some dialogue for you.

We arrive in Bangkok and check in to the Evergreen Laurel, where I spent time in May. My stomach is really bothering me, so we order room service (miso soup—which also feels good on colds) and lounge about. I send off some laundry. I can’t believe how quickly I ran through ten pairs of underwear. But then again, it is the 12th. (Kinda makes you wonder what happened on the 11th and 12th days, eh?)

The internet connection in this room isn’t working. Today is Mother’s Day as well as the sixth cycle birthday—which is every 12 years—of the Thai queen, so the computer guru has the day off. Maybe that’s why no one was in the Gallup office when I called either. Yeeeaah. I’m slow, but I get there eventually.

I spend a few quality hours jacked in to the business office downstairs. Joyce, my agent, has written me back that we’ll brainstorm on the phone when I’m back in the states. She says encouraging things about my writing. I feel a little better.

Back up in the room, Todd is passed out on the bed, golf channel on (there are only four English channels here and two of them are golf. Go figure.) Suddenly, my laundry arrives. Dry cleaning and fresh underwear in three hours. What a great country.

2004-08-11T00:06:00.000-07:00

Phuket: Rx

We originally booked a tour of Phi Phi island (film location of the Leonardo DiCapprio movie, “The Beach”) but by morning I know I’d be miserable on a tour. I feel badly that we’re missing it and that Todd, who came for this romantic week, is taking care of me.

Considering that my stomach isn’t cooperating anyway, I eat French toast and croissants for breakfast. It doesn’t necessarily help. Nor does going to the resort library to check e-mail; I learn that RiverOak, once so excited about my manuscript, has declined it. The editor wants more dialogue in the monologue. Isn’t that like asking for more vegetables in your dessert? I spend noon time trying to figure out how to make carrot cake of my story. My stomach continues to hurt. All in all, it doesn’t feel like a great day.

By 1pm, Todd decides I’m going to the doctor. The clinic, at the shopping area where we ate at the bakery and bought souvenirs from the Jim Thompson store, is small but clean. The doctor is nice and speaks good English, which he uses to tell me I ought to get my appendix checked at the hospital. This does not thrill me. He gives me antibiotics and some other pills with the promise that if I’m not better in two days I’ll go the hospital.

A hospital in Thailand is not my idea of a fun time. I decide I’d better improve in two days. That night we head out for pedicures—Todd’s first. He survives. He even concedes that maybe he ought to get this done—every one or two years. We go back and watch “Amadeus” on DVD, order room service and go to bed. I notice I now have the sniffles as well.

2004-08-10T00:05:00.000-07:00

Phuket: Pumpkin

We’re up and pushing buttons on the coffee maker and counting the frogs that have appeared outside by the lily pad pool. I’m resolved to work out before eating breakfast, tired of feeling like a bloated slug in this humidity.

I’m wondering, when it’s time to leave, how we’re going to pack the few things we bought in the shopping center. My suitcase already merited an orange “heavy” tag on the way here. I’m going to pawn as much ballast as I can off on Todd by the time he heads back.

Midway through the day I realize I’m not feeling so well. My stomach is intent on making me miserable. We take it easy (in case we weren’t before) and watch a couple movies on DVD, read, eat a burger at the golf course, and decide we’re not hungry for dinner. By evening I’m wondering if the pumpkin soup didn’t like me as much as I liked it.

2004-08-09T00:04:00.000-07:00

Phuket: Encounter

Alanis blasts through the serenity of our retreat, blowing away the serene spa music of the night. We run the coffee maker (it grinds the beans and everything!) and walk the path to breakfast: a Japanese, Thai, and American buffet. We eat as much as we can and slug our way back.

We have a hectic day in front of us: a 10:00 massage here at the villa. Golf balls at the range. Shopping at the main villa. A walk to the beach. Locating Japanese food for dinner among the various resorts here.

If we’re really ambitious, we might take a nap.

We take the shuttle into town around lunch time, find we’re famished and eat at a little bakery. This is maybe the best food I’ve had so far: pumpkin soup and a little baked-just-for-me quiche.

Back at the Banyan Tree, we remark that we’ve found utopia, and that here time is upside down. The times we walk to the main building seem to go faster than the times we hitch a golf cart ride. Our massage session this morning seemed to go on forever. Those things that we hope will take a long time do, and more mundane things don’t.

I should report that there is no internet in utopia. I’ve been diligent about these journals, though I won’t get them sent out on time.

The only troubling thing: there are guards from a security company posted all about the property. They’re friendly and salute every time we pass (everyone says hello and wais even while driving a golf cart—the Thai equivalent to the Midwestern raised index finger greeting over the steering wheel) but we wonder at the need for the guards.

We returned from dinner to find our villa strewn with flowers, the outdoor bathtub filled with orchids, lavender oil, potpourri burner lit, and wine standing by. The bed was made with satin sheets and covered with more flowers, “love oil” and “bliss oil” waiting on the stand. I feel a little performance anxiety at the setup. Our villa comes with an “intimate moment” evening. I think they should call it the “sexual encounter” package.

2004-08-08T00:02:00.000-07:00

Phuket: Play

So weird, to me, to be making my way through the Bangkok airport with Todd. It feels like a honeymoon. I must still be on Western time; I woke up an hour earlier than intended. We had a leisurely breakfast. They had watermelon juice. It’s become a facetious joke, his offering me some.

In Phuket we’re met by the Banyan Tree driver and brought to the Laguna property, shared by several resorts. We’re too hungry to wait and have a quick lunch at the golf club—part Thai, part spinach salad. I ask for a coconut cookie to go and am given a box of four. Everyone smiles, everyone is polite.

Our villa blows us away. Three separate rooms spread like square leaves of a clover off the entrance: living room with TV, DVD player, bar, and a coffee machine like Dr. Turk’s (we stared at it like monkeys watching a television for the first time the night we were at his house), a bedroom with low futon-style bed, and extensive bathroom. The bathtub is outdoors, and the entire villa is ringed with shallow fish pools. The private swimming pool opens to a platformed sitting area that looks out over the lagoon.

We’ve found paradise. I strip and jump in the pool. There’s a little green frog on a lilly pad in the fish pool watching me.

We read, play with the coffee machine and come indoors only when it threatens to storm. Eventually we make our way to the fitness building, some ways away, to work out and scope out the restaurants. We check out a couple of DVDs from the library as well as an Alanis Morisette CD. We come back, can’t resist the pool, and dry off in time for a golf cart ride to the Taramind restaurant at our resort for lobster and clam miso, pumpkin and arugula salad, giant crab springrolls and crab and avocado salad. We eat my one daily requirement for this trip: mango and sticky rice. Todd is nodding off in his chair. I’m tired too. We come back to find our bedroom transformed into a curtained sanctuary complete with a potpourri burner and incense ready to light.

2004-08-07T00:00:00.000-07:00

Singapore: Wonder Wonan

I’ve adjusted to the local time. I sleep without incident until 8:30, loll in bed for another half hour. I can’t stand the idea of another day of room service and so head down and out through the Narnia door to the mall. I call it that because it’s a tiny, obscure doorway in the hotel lobby that opens out between the Museum Shop and Mont Blanc pens in the middle of a gigantic mall. The stores aren’t open yet, but the Starbucks is. Somehow I’m surprised that they don’t carry soy milk and the New Orleans jazz they’re playing just seems wrong here. Nicely caffeinated, having had time to go back up and check e-mail, I head to the gym.

Half-way through a determined workout (I will not let the blisters win) I’m wondering how I’ll make it without Iron Chef. Suddenly, screen number five shoots an animated star-burst. There they are, in all their 70s glory: bronze breasts and toothpicky legs. Wonder Woman is on Saturday morning TV!

Singapore is the greatest nation on earth.

I pack and wait for Vidhya, who is a half hour late. Another ten minutes. I’m convinced she’s laying dead in a ditch somewhere. By the time I finally ask the concierge if anyone tried to message me after I checked out, she shows up, rubbing her nose and not quite running. She’s been sick and throwing up and couldn’t call, but she’s better now. We cross the street for tapas lunch. I teach her the merits of Seven-Up after barfing.

It’s a quick lunch—I’ve got to get going. By the time I collect my baggage, say good-bye and grab a cab, it’s after 3:00. For a minute I forget where I am and worry about getting to the airport early enough to beat the unruly crowd. But as far as drivers go, I have hit the jackpot. She buzzes around a triangular median and turns the wrong way to bypass legitimate traffic. I’m pretty sure she’s risking caning at this point. A polite tone on her taxi cab sounds, reminding her she has hit the 100 kilometer-an-hour mark. It goes nonstop for five minutes. Everything here is polite; we pass roadwork areas where the end of work is noted on a (clean) orange sign with a giant yellow smiley face. We get to the airport early, the Singaporean Renegade and I. Only a group of Amish outlaws would have impressed me more.

The Singapore airport is clean, tidy, and full of world class shopping. I’m trying to get rid of my Singaporean currency and so find a pharmacy and spend it on Tiger Balm and Dr. Scholls blister packs. Here is another reason Singapore is the greatest city in the world: wireless Internet hubs, free Internet kiosks, and Sakae Sushi—a little stand in the open “nibbles” court full of tiny sushi packs. Heaven must be filled with such tiny plastic boxes of individual sushis and petit six-packs of maki rolls.

Soldiers wander in loose packs of four, holding their rifles, with the slow purposeful glide of PacMan ghosts. Security is done at the gate itself, which is partitioned off with plexi-glass. I go through and the x-ray supervisor exclaims, “What a mess!” at the picture of my carry on. I’m defensive; I just cleaned that thing out this morning when I packed.

Thai Air seems like a Singapore Air wannabe to me, but as a customer, I can’t complain. The service is formal and, and they give each woman a beautiful orchid corsage before landing. The man sitting next to me has long black hair. They give him one, too.

The rooms of the Amari Hotel, a skywalk from the terminal, feel like an instant executive living room. It’s surreal and I wish for just a plain bed in a pristine white room, apparently seeking the box again. Though I flew only two hours straight north, it’s an hour earlier here than in Singapore and I’m tired.

I’ve developed a distinct way of sleeping when I’m on the road. I turn my pillow into a geisha-style neck bracket. Maybe I think this will prolong my hair-washing cycle in the ways it kept the geisha from having to get their elaborate dos redone more than once a month, I ‘m not sure. I doze off this way, trying to tell myself not to be frightened when a strange Caucasian man shows up in my room and climbs into bed. That doesn’t stop me from being startled three hours later at a knock on the door. Todd feels great. I gladly trade the geisha pillow for his strong arm.

2004-08-06T23:59:00.000-07:00

Singapore: Zoo

Never wear a pink silk suit. It’s a nice idea in theory, but not when eating turkey tortilla wraps with salsa.

I’m not sure about my Fiddle Faddle world peace theory—a communal bowl of the stuff and limited amount of the substance nearly sparked an all out war. I’ll see what happens in Bangkok, though I am now remembering that when I gave all the Yontrakit participants snack packs of Poppycock, some of them ate the packs of other students while they were gone on breakout sessions.

My new theory: Poppycock as the new oil. Nebraska as the Kuwait of the Midwest.

I spent breakout sessions today covertly writing four winner’s cards for my students. Vidhya and Siti in this office ran them over (literally—Vidhya runs everywhere with the natural exuberance of a girl) to the frame place in the highrise across the street. They’re now in beautiful black wire-backed frames. I’m excited to give them.

The session ends well; I get all 5s, which is great in theory until I remember I only had four students to impress.

Today’s Iron Chef theme ingredient: Oxtail. Two Japanese French (?????) chefs go head to head. The translator says, “These guys are ready to get it on!” This translation weirdness doesn’t even bother me. The Iron Chef wins.

Chicken satay in the room and I’m outta there. Time to wait for Ashok and his son downstairs. After loitering in the lobby for twenty minutes, I’m fairly certain there is an international ballroom competition going on. As a dancer, you can tell. The men are short, lean, tan and macho with slicked-back hair. The women are short, lean tan and macho with slicked-back hair. Their knees hyper-extend and they look like prancy horses when they walk.

Ashok arrives with Abishake, his son. “Tosca Auntie?” Abishake says in the taxi. “Where do you live?” I explain that I’m from Nebraska and that indeed, we have bison (he’s got one on his shirt). He wants to know how far that is from New York, where he’s sure Dr. Octopus is waiting for him (one of many Spiderman 2 references—I’m totally out of my league). “Singapore is much too hot. I want to move to Australia,” he says. He’s fashionable about wearing his baseball cap backward and cocked just so to the side. I wonder if his sandals, which look like they were bought to grow in to, are too long for his toes—I tease him that they’re going to fall off. He looks down and reassures me that they’re not. I keep reminding myself that this Jay Leno-sized personality is only four years old. Ashok seems to breed child prodigies.

The zoo is outstanding. The exhibits are lit just off to the sides of the tram path. You can smell the hippos and rhinos and lions. They need a bath. The lions are so close, I keep wondering how many tram incidents they’ve had. The hyenas scare me. I tell Abishake I’m frightened. “Not me,” he says. “I’m not afraid of anything. I want to see pythons!” We go to the show after that, which is standing room only. Animals come out on choreographed cues. A man wears a python. Abishake is mollified. I take a picture, figuring it’ll be good for an instant heart attack for Todd. We leave after that; it’s 11pm. I had secretly started to nod off during the last of the tram ride, so I’m ready to head back. Abishake crashes in the backseat, a regular four year-old at last. Ashok’s wife is expecting. I’m wondering if the baby will come out talking and ready to play backgammon.

2004-08-05T23:57:00.000-07:00

Singapore: Crash

Morning: Construction zones en route to work are arched with conscientious reminders: “Let’s think safety” and “Let’s put safety first.” Busses are painted with giant public messages urging people to speak good English and be understood, an effort to head off “Singlish”—a weird Malay Chinese English patois spoken by locals. As a cuisine, the mixture would make a grand fusion. As language: con-fusion.

At Ocean Towers I ride my way to the 23rd floor and wonder how much elevator time a Singaporean does in an average life.

I love these long packets of “white coffee” that Gallup keeps on hand—a mixture of instant coffee and creamer. I keep stashing them away like some furtive hotel amenity thief, wondering how many packets I can fit in my bag before getting found out.

Back at the hotel, I hit the treadmill. Iron Chef’s ingredient of the day: sturgeon. The fish is tough; the head keeps moving minutes after being severed.

Vidhya and I meet at the hotel and catch a taxi to the Japanese restaurant. I ask how many square miles Singapore has and she asks the driver, calling him “Uncle.” It’s the same connotation as the Korean “adashee,” though it’s weird to hear it in English. The guy looks nothing like her.

At the Japanese restaurant we sit out in the courtyard and make our way through eel, egg custard soup, seaweed, sushi, sirloin, carpaccio, miso, tempura… Between Bobby and Alex, who will apparently eat anything, the conversation digresses to cultures that eat live fish by pouring hot oil on them, drink snake blood and gobble snake hearts right out of pythons. By the time we start talking about fried bear paws and methods for eating live monkey brains I’m having flashbacks of my English and Japanese students talking about nose blowing customs and the virtues of Kleenex versus handkerchiefs over lunch.

Alex brings me back and I am ready to crash. All ambitious plans to do winner’s cards (haha), work out (ha) or any other work-like activity go out the window (and crash to the street 54 floors below). I’m hitting the sack.

2004-08-03T23:55:00.000-07:00

Singapore: Circuit

Woke up at midnight. Woke up at 2:30am. Woke up at 3:30 and gave up. Forgot how fast room service is and started my new bodylastics band circuit off my laptop DVD player.

You know, I’m not sure I recommend eating 4 eggs in the middle of circuit training.

The sun rises around 7am here at this time of year. As it does, I’m fascinated by the bay; huge ocean liners wait to use Singapore’s ports—not bad for a country with no natural resources. Seiyi tells me Singapore is very pro-American, which has garnered disapproval of Muslim neighbors. There are U.S. and U.K. bases here, which I did not know.

This morning I actually stopped to give ID at Ocean Towers’ security desk instead of getting stopped by security mid-way to the elevator bank.

I never realized what a security hazard I was before.

Visa has sent four students: an Englishman living in Singapore (sounds like a book title, doesn’t it?), a Chinese Singaporean, and two who came in from Australia and Tokyo. It’s an intimate group. We sit at two tables pushed together like friendly parties in a restaurant. I try not to spit too much when I talk.

Ashok, my darling colleague whom I taught with in India, is in the office. He heartily recommends the Night Safari at the zoo that my Smith College girlfriend, Heather Boyd, also recommended. We make plans to go Friday night. I’m hoping I can stay up that late by then.

I’m conducting a covert experiment. I’ve got this theory that Poppycock (or its more commercial neighbor, Fiddle Faddle) is the undiscovered key to world peace. People anywhere in the world love this stuff. I shipped a load of the stuff ahead of me before I left town. Today, two boxes disappear between four people in the space of three hours.

2:45pm: My left eyelid feels heavier than my right. I’m partially sleepy and feeling a little quasi-motoish.

7:00pm: Let me tell you: Iron Chef is the greatest show to work out to. I’m thinking of buying the soundtrack.

9:00pm: As a night owl, I’m ashamed of myself. I can’t stay awake any longer.

2004-08-03T23:53:00.000-07:00

Singapore: Studio 54

On the 54th floor of the Swissotel, I try not to think about the fact that I'm laying on top of 54 stories of space. That the building might sway in the wind. That the balcony rail isn't that high or how far the plumbing has to travel to get to me--or vice versa. I really try not to think about the perilous precision with which concrete and load-bearing walls must be lined up to support a structure so high, or wonder how much all the furniture in my room weighs and how in the world a building can support that much weight in every room. But what really gets me is the fact that the rooms are not right. Literally. They’re devoid of right angles. This is a round hotel, and the rooms are a weird trapezoid shape. The desk is even with the wall, but not at a right angle with the rest of the room. The beds rest against the wall, but are not even with the adjacent walls. For someone who likes to prize herself on living outside of the box, I think I'm trying to find one to crawl in to.

The workout center across the tower in the Raffles center throbs when you enter it. Three graduated rows of machines from elliptical machines to treadmills face eight TV screens. The throb comes from the pounding of the feet of runners on the treadmills and the club dance music on the speakers. I've found workout nirvana. I walked an hour until I got yet another set of new blisters from my so-called comfy running shoes. Tomorrow night I've got a massage appointment. Tonight I've made the fact that my cuticle clipper got taken away the main excuse for a manicure. Seiyi reminds me I'm going to pay and arm and a leg for hotel prices, though comparatively speaking, it's cheaper than the U.S.

This is the cleanest big city I've ever seen. The taxi driver at the hotel wouldn't pick me up for business until I put away the chocolate rice cake (styrofoam wtih chocolate chips) I was eating. There are no cigarette butts on the street. Construction zones are neatly contained behind fences. Trees are planted in neat rows. I think I actually took some comfort in spotting a spilled trash can and a tiny, furtive scribble of graffiti on the taxi ride to Ocean Towers, where Gallup is.

Monday is a national holiday. I'm going to miss it, as I leave the day before. I’m bummed; Singapore Idol starts its telecast that evening.

Seiyi, Vidhya and I are heading to my hotel for some light dinner in just a few minutes. I'm ravenous, but fully alert. The true test is the 7 o'clock hour. If I fall asleep during my manicure maybe they'll be so kind as to deposit me in my room.

Tonight I'm going to try to decipher all of the colored workout bands I brought along and all the connectors, door stop holder thingies, pulls and whatever else is in that bag. And I may even work out with them.

Addendum: I started nodding off during my manicure and went to bed at 9pm.

2004-02-02T23:51:00.000-08:00

Singapore: Back to the Future

Ahh. Back to Asia—continent of clothes I can’t wear and shopping self flagellation.

It is nearly 24 hours since I got up to start this trip. I have to say that the 14.5 hours from Chicago direct to Hong Kong actually went by very quickly in first class. The beds recline all the way. I was able to read in bed on my tummy. A flight attendant chided me that I was ruining my eyes and turned on my light.

The airport here is surrounded by green mountains, ocean and sky scrapers in the distance. Coming in (for the most perfect landing I’ve ever experienced—how do they do that with these giant planes? For that matter, how do they get off the ground??), Hong Kong looked like something from a sci fi novel; green mountains with attendant clouds suspended above each one, skyscrapers nested in the valleys, rivers dammed before they run into the ocean, brave settlements nestled below. And in the other direction, islands sitting on the ocean that might as well belong in the South Pacific.

I saw the cutest t-shirt at the airport here (“I was going to take over the world but got distracted by something sparkly.”) But the medium size (the largest they had) would fit my neighbor’s 10 year-old.

The airports in big Asian cities have the best bathrooms. Clean and high tech. And this is the airiest and sunniest airport I’ve seen, ever. I lost my cuticle clipper to security here. It seems it was all right for me to bring it all the way here on a jet full of fuel, but I just might cut someone’s cuticles to death en route to Singapore.

I’m fascinated by the mauve dragon lady toenails of the lady sleeping next to me in the waiting area. Her baby toe looks like a lethal little spike. And they let her through security?

5:50: I am so tempted to hit the massage shack nested between the Gucci and duty free stores. An attached shopping section carries all kinds of Chinese herbal remedies. Supposedly I can grow bigger breasts, turn my husband into a tiger and cure my back issues in the space of a single shopping basket. Not unlike U.S. e-mail spam, though something about the Chinese on the package makes me actually believe them.

I get into the Stamford Swisshotel around midnight, switch rooms once because the air conditioning isn’t working (trust me, you want it to work here), and hit the sack around 3am.