Halfway down the Danube

Also back

Hi all. It's Carlos, the Aquaman of the Superfriends of this blog. I haven't posted in a while, because I didn't want to turn this blog into Halfway Down the East River while Claudia and Doug were away. But hey, I was in the Philippines with virtually zero Internet access most of the time anyway. Some highlights:

Trying to sleep on the concrete floor of the humid, open-air plaza outside the domestic wing of Benigno Aquino, Jr. International Airport while waiting for its doors to open at 2:30 AM. Recommended if you want to precipitate a spiritual crisis.

The phrase, "she has a great personality", is a culturally universal signifier for "not very physically attractive at all". I do not have a great personality.

My grandmother's tomb. It's in a fairly new cemetery that has all the good taste and restraint I have come to expect from the Philippines. But my father designed it, and he is a man of parts. A simple, graceful, portrait-sized lotus above the sarcophagus -- my grandmother was a Buddhist -- and repeated in the ironwork of the windows.

Watching the working girls leave the lobby of a ritzy Makati hotel at four in the morning. I am hard to shock, but Jesus they looked young. But not.

I did get a great haircut at that hotel. Even in NYC, it's hard to find someone who will cut it properly, I think maybe because of cognitive dissonance in the old-time barbers. The dilemma of being an ethnic guy with white-boy's hair. Yes it has a wave. No it won't stay up if you cut it that short. Yes I part it. No I don't want my name shaved on the side of my head. Gel? Are you talking to me?

Anyway. Now that I'm back, I could discuss Lampe and Palairet on comparative Balkan economic history, or the recent American editions of Luljeta Lleshanaku and Edvard Kocbek, or that cheerful and really safe reactor complex across the Danube at Kozloduy, or some other such thing that is thematically appropriate for this blog.

On the other hand, pies! And football! Packers on Monday Night, oh yeah. Are you ready for some football? I certainly am.

PS read Bad Mama.

Posted by coyu at September 6, 2004 06:40 AM