october weekends

the steps seem to be a little off, the eyes heavier than usual. people waking up today prob were not too fond of the police sirens this morning or the quick sucker punch the sunlight gave. new orleans was a blast. new orleans during halloween weekend was just retarded

the past 4 days here have gone by fast, a little too fast but with no complaints. this town has something that i can't describe. but you see it as soon as you walk out into the streets and notice the strange smiles and the peculiar local dress.

voodoo fest was also an experience. looking at the line-up 2 months ago was torture, knowing that most of my favorite bands were going to be in one spot, in this case new orleans sent fat goose bumps through me. it was obvious that the sound was going to be there, but with it came warm and pleasant winds that seemed to blow at the precise moment where the person next to you was getting a little too close.

i wouldnt have been here if i hadnt won tix. filter magazine funded my little trip out to the big EZ and i cannot be more thankful

last weekend i was in new york and i signed up to see a concert, with it came a webpage asking if i wanted to win tix to voodoo. the rest is just short-term memory

grand canyon/hoover dam and prob vegas is up for next week, should be fun.

balloon fiesta!

been waiting for about 2 hours now here in phoenix sky harbor airport. i'm on my way to albuquerque, nuevo mexico and yea i'm kind of excited.

but i'm a little tired from last night's festivities.

anywho, here goes another crazy weekend :)

korean diaries

i've been a korean for about a week and half now and i'm not sure if i'm cut out for it. the food is great! kimchi and i are like this son (fingers over each other) & calbi and all of the other funky soups i cant pronounce correctly have stolen my heart.

but. if there is one phrase that i could use to describe seoul, it would be that it is like a possessed ping pong table strung out on acid.

the people of seoul resemble the salmon i used to watch on the discovery channel. the absence of the sun is no deterrent. every single corner is illuminated by intrusive lights. the constant movement of people of korea have no regard about you or walking etiquette; nana will just run you over with her cart full of vegetables and dead fish.

i got away for most of the week. koreans have a holiday sort of like thanksgiving called chuesok. the country pretty much closes shop and bails to the countryside for good ol' rest. that's what i did, well at least it was the plan. 

took a bus down to the southeast portion of the country called gyeonggju and saw some pretty cool tombs and ancient palaces. climbed a huge mountain and found an old buddhist temple. ate some calbi and went to the local karaoke bar and sang journey and lil jon songs 

spent 2 days there then hopped on another bus towards the beach city of busan. the weather was beautiful, about 85 degrees, no clouds, gorgeous beach, but i did note the lack of lifeguards, not one. normally this doesn't affect me. still...a little weird. 

who knew the next hour i would be far out into the ocean swimming against invisible hands pulling me farther and farther away. 

the waves were nice, water not so cold. i noticed the waves were bigger and broke better about 20 feet before they broke again on the shore. so i held my breath and swan underneath the set and emerged exactly were i wanted to be. someone else was with me trying to get the same waves. the next half hour the ocean and i were at it; little did know what was working below the surface 

so deceptive the ocean is because the next thing i noticed was...nobody. the person who was catching the same waves i was was now an ant and the shore a horizon. i swam with a fury, pounding my arms and kicking the ocean in the face saying "i won't die in korea, i can't die in korea!" i made little progress at best so i started swimming at angle but it didn't seem to work. i didn't know in which direction the rip current was taking me. i kept at it, but my strength was leaving me. i felt my heart in my mouth as the kicks and punches were beginning to wain.

luckily...well it didn't seem like it at the time, a set of waves began to churn behind me. so i reached down to whatever it was i still had and swam, even harder than the first time. 

in all honesty, i don't know how long it took me to reach the shore but it seriously felt like hours. over and over and the waves would come and i'd swim and kick hoping to get pushed further inland but with every wave i'd get swallowed down in the murkiness and each time it would get tougher to reach the surface. i can still taste the seawater in my mouth, i swallowed so much of it.  

i had about 20 feet to go, but at the point i was done. my arms were burnt out rubber bands, my legs anvils, my belly a bloated aquarium. the waves kept coming, i knew that the next one or for sure the one after that would be the last. 

...thank God i made it :)

the guys and i checked into a "love motel" a place where korean men take their mistresses out to fornicate. not the most hygienic place to stay at, but it was dirt cheap, even for koreans. a couple of stain splattered walls here, a couple of drops of blood on the mattress there and it wans't so bad. we even had our own hot tub, which was never used due to the yellowish tread marks left by the previous visitors. 

on the second day it rained but it didn't matter much. ruben, peter and i made the costly mistake of drinking some pretty gnarley stuff. and whenever you end your night with rammen noodles, things usually head to disaster town. 

we met some cool peeps the night before and went out. pretty much the same story as the night before but this time we had to wake up at 8am in order to catch our 5-hour bus ride home. didn't get much sleep, ate some weird meat, which i thought was orange chicken at a rest stop, drank 2 liters of water, so sleep deprived. 

so now i'm back here, at my buddies place in seoul, trying not to scratch the countless insect bites on my body and thinking to myself, was it all worth it? yes! totally one hundered and five percent. 

do i miss my bed? also yes

 

kimchi & time zones

it is 3 in the afternoon; i am barely waking up.

today i woke in a place where today hasn't happened yet for the most of the world. for the second day in a row i have slept for 14 hours...something not worth bragging about but to help show how time zones stick like fresh spider webs.     

the past 2 weeks have been truly amazing. it seems like everywhere i go, not just on this trip, but my life in general, God lowers down his fingertip and carves all the clouds and bad people out of the way; it's nice. from the clean streets and tweaked out ferrari/audi driving bankers of switzerland, through the beautiful southern curves of croatia and her supple hills in the north. \
finally then on for a quick hop to visit the deutschland for a night 

a lufthansa catapult has thrown me across the eastern european sky and through the cold siberian ice box across the yellow sea to seoul! korea of the south.

haven't seen much of the city. this swarming bee hive, obviously alive but with something different besides over-caffeinated citizens, is where i'll collect myself. i hope
i have over a week to find secrets and whispers  

today i'll eat with a korean family. maybe i'll find some there   

back for a minute

the past 14 hours have been pretty crazy.


to say the least:
woke-up @ 5am(maui time) to try and make it on a flight to seattle @ 8am.
flight was full.
from there i looked at all the possible destinations out of maui but most of them looked bad.

the only flight that looked promising was the one out to sacramento, but that would have meant that i'd had to rent a car & drive to L.A the whole night in order to make it to work @ 5am. in my mind, i was  not prepared to do this.

luckily! there was room on the san jose flight.
and thanks to God, once I landed, the plane that was parked next to our gate was headed to L.A...with exactly 2 seats for brianne and me...AND it was delayed!

anyhoot. maui was great, celebrated brianne's bday, met some cool peeps, and was finally able to swim in the ocean.

maui def will be in the works for october

...instead of the beach

just literally spent over half the day watching the complete 3rd season of 'chuck'

g-night. 

might go to the beach today! :)

yesterday was brutal. my cuerpo was not cooperating with me one bit
maybe it was all that coffee i was drinking on an empty stomach; who knows.

all i know is that i can only study math for a max of 2 hours, anything beyond that my brain begins to do chinese fire drills.
i went for a run after almost setting my books/coffee bean on fire; i know it's not a library but seriously, must real estate agents speak so loud?
felt queasy for the first mile, but the cool air made it better afterwards

well, in a few hours ill be through with this test. then beach'n it for most of the afternoon.

here goes nuffin

mondays aren't so bad

it wasn't the most productive monday to say the least but it went smooth.

other than a brief episode this morning with a crazy angolan with heavy....heavvvy! bags, everything was pretty chill at work.
 
beyond work things began to blur. napped about 3 hours with brief interruptions from the sisters, one of which was an early unexpected surprise. my camcorder's battery and charger arrived!

walked to my local starbucks and found out that they close at 8pm. pretty lame considering that i got there at 7:35pm. i walked back somewhat defeated but as soon as i got home, i cradled my camcorder and spent some intimate time with her. countless buttons were pushed 

camcorders are great, they appeal to me. more than cameras. that being said, i hope the world is ready to see my whims

looking to expand

1. Budapest, Hungary
2. Barcelona, Spain
3. Odessa, Ukraine
4. Buenos Aires, Argentina
5. Hong Kong, China
6. Playa del Carmen, Mexico
7. Prague, Czech Republic
8. Miami Beach, FL, USA

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sunday @ starbucks. studying

taking a short break from the books.
been brushing up on my math game. skills i dumped a long time ago are now coming back to donkey punch me. it's a sunday to top it off : /

i haven't been to the beach ONCE this summer, situation pretty much blows. hasn't been a real hot summer like past; yes. still though, that has never stopped me from diving into the murky pacific.

i prob won't do well on the test this wednesday. i've had more than a month to prepare...i kind of don't care. i think i'm taking it just so that i could tell myself that im actually doing something grown-up. as in trying to look for a career. 25 is a big deal    

any-hoot i want some chinese, desperately craving some chinese.

maybe i'll have some, but in the meantime. "compass north is generally not the same as magnetic north because of..."

a late bloomer

so somewhere out in limbo, inside a cold dusty old server lie the remnants of my old blog i started six years ago. a total of three or four blogs were posted.
i think about them from time to time

...eventually i forgot my username, then went the name of the website.

anyways. i thought i'd give it another shot; it was either this or go for a run.