Heading off into the horizon of my life without a map or compass. A curse, a blessing? Who knows? We'll see. Bring it on.
Friday, June 20, 2008
Shuffle, shift, and scatter
In the past, whenever someone would leave the city, state, or country, I would have the same reactions each and every time. Enthusiasm, excitement, utter joy that someone I knew would be visiting some fantastical new place in the world. I would wish them well, knowing that regardless of the contents of their trip, the experience would make them into a better person.
What I've taken for granted is the fact that, invariably, they would return. These travels were hardly ever permanent, and even if they would be gone for a month, two months, a year, or even longer, at some point, they would be back, and we would be able to reconnect and carry on like we used to.
Now, the onset of age has reared its head. People are graduating and literally scattering themselves around the globe. And this time, there is no defined "next time". No Gainesville, no Atlanta to come home to. Wherever they're heading for, that is home to them now. No guaranteed winter breaks, no guaranteed summer reunion. They'll be occupied in Los Angeles, Vancouver, Houston, Hong Kong, Copenhagen, Cincinnati, etc. I myself graduate in a little under a year, and have on idea where I'll end up.
Holy crap. It's been over a month since my last post. This is probably because I've stopped writing them during class. Oh well. In any case, here is the long awaited (?) update.
Since the passing of Summer LTR and the real onset of classes, happenings have been relatively awesome.
Cass had her 20th birthday! Athens was great. What you can't see in these pictures is Megan Wing, whose family is now living in Atlanta. She dropped in on the fun and games. Holla!
We had a potluck dinner as an LC, and almost every continent was represented in the cuisine (I think South America was left out). There's Wing! Holla!
Katie and I took Ben James out to dinner for a belated birthday celebration. It was over a month after-the-fact. We went to a fondue restaurant, and although it was amazing, we opted to make dessert fondue on our own rather than pay another $20 for it at the venue. Here we are at Ben's abode with his girlfriend (!) Jessica and her sister. We had chocolate fondue with strawberries, raspberries, and angel food cake. MMmmm.
Coming up in the world of Pu: camping this coming weekend with the LC! We're going up north somewhere, apparently it's near Helen, the German oasis.
In other news, Katie and I got our visas for China! Orient, here we come!
Alas, Canada NLDC 2008. 'Twas a bittersweet experience, and it was all my fault. I came expecting the same great feelings of '07, but it was not to be. Like all AIESEC conferences, a measure of similarity must be maintained, and for me it had ventured into the realm of the redundant. And in my pride, I couldn't reconcile necessity with yearning.
But that was only the "bitter" part. The "sweet" part was in the people, the delegates, the individuals. You kids seriously kick some AIESEC ass, and you're generally ridiculous(in a good way). Maybe there are more Canadian conferences in my future than I thought...
Anyway, post NLDC shenanigans. See below.
Niagara Falls:
Me playing around with the macro function on my camera.
And finally, after we crossed the border, we were right next to Buffalo, so we simply had to visit the birthplace of the chicken wing. Here are the magnificent results: Try to guess which bowl of bones belongs to whom.
After global village, there was a gathering in my room of the LCPs of 6+ Canadian LCs, including Thomas and Kyle. We played Never-Have-I-Ever with amazing results.
Example statements: Angry white dragon Urban dictionary sex terms Sleeping with relatives once removed
God god people are retarded. And now Facebook has made it even retardeder. Yes, "retardeder".
Some people like to rant how our generation is lazy and uncaring because we haven't had to fight for things like our parents did. An entire generation banded together to protest the Vietnam War, the Berlin Wall, to fight for the civil rights movement. And have we done? Little, if not nothing.
Well, I disagree.
That link above? It proves we're doing something.
But instead of joining our voices into a battle cry for genuine truth and justice, we are perverting the proud heritage our parents have built by making it into a popularity contest.
How many of those people actually know what the situation in Tibet is like?
Never mind the sensationalized pictures that the mass media likes to bombard our TVs, newspapers, and computer screens with.
How many people truly grasp the argument behind the call for independence?
How many people know the history of the land?
How many people know the Dalai Lama as someone other than that "speaker in the park"?
How many people realize the implications if independence was actually granted, and the gravity of their effects?
If a sampling of the event's wall is any indication, the outlook is dire.
It sickens me to realize that not only do we have to fight against those who seek to deny justice and fairness in the world, but also those who blindly wield their rhetoric in the name of something they don't actually understand.
So I went to AIESEC US's national LTM this past weekend. The following is my account of the crazy shit that happened outside of the actual meetings.
I got to the airport and it was a breeze to the terminal. I patiently started reading Life of Pi (yes, finally, and Shanky I still have your copy of it), and eventually the plane started boarding. My side of the aisle was just me until the very last moment, when the final person to board the plane was the window seat of my side (I was in the aisle).
Now, I don't know how else to describe this guy except to say that he was an older, fatter version of Mr. Bean. He had the same facial expressions, the same mannerisms, the same accent, everything.
He got to our seats, put his bag into the overhead bin, and then smiled at me and said "Excuse me." I let him in, and no more than a couple minutes later, I had to let him out so he could to get his bag. He sat back down, and then two minutes later, he had to get something again. This repeated 8 more times, and then eventually I said "You know, you have enough room underneath your seat to just put your bag there. Plus, I don't think there's anyone in the seat in between us, you could put it there too." He looked at me blankly, then after a couple seconds he brightened up and said "Ahhhhh."
Once we had taken off and were high enough to use our electronics, we both got out our iPods. 10 minutes later, I noticed that I was hearing something that wasn't coming from my earbuds. This really bothered me, because I always play my music really loud. I hit pause, and realized what I was hearing was coming from the window seat. I took off my earbuds, and it occurred to me that I was hearing Mr. Bean's iPod blasting Die Fledermaus. I'll let that marinate for a minute. Over the low blasting hum of the airplane, and through the loud house music coming through my own earbuds, I could hear HIS music. Meanwhile, he was slouched against the window, snoring softly. I looked around, and no one else seemed to mind that his music was loud enough to be heard within a 5 seat radius.
The view from my seat. Taken for posterity.
So we landed in NYC at 11PM and I scurried for the M60 bus stop. I'm standing alone there, and over the course of maybe 15 minutes, a flock of little Asian girls shows up, followed by an old married couple and disgruntled airport worker. And immediately afterward, Blue Steel showed up. Picture Ben Stiller, but blond, 6'5", and actually a model. Er... so basically, a typical male model with Derek Zoolander's trademark pout. He maintained this expression until his bus came by.
The Q72 came up around the corner, and almost immediately Blue Steel dropped the pout and took on a look of sheer bliss. But it was not to be. As the bus got closer, it was becoming rapidly apparent that it wasn't going to stop. Slowly, the grin became a grimace of murderous intent. When the bus zoomed by us, Blue Steel dropped his bags and chased after the bus, screaming at the top of his lungs "WHAT THE FUCK?!"
This was enough to spook the flock of Asian girls into scurrying 50 feet to the taxi hub, but the old married couple merely snorted and went back to cataloging the contents of their bags. Blue Steel was trudging back, saying "Are you kidding me?" out loud to no one in particular. I just smirked and went back to my book (at around this point, Pi had successfully constructed his raft).
"Are you kidding me?"
Blue Steel furiously pawed through his blackberry, looking for god-knows-what. The pout had returned. The old married couple got on the Q33.
"Are you kidding me?"
The M60 finally came by, and I got on and produced two crisp $1 bills for the driver. "Coins only," she said, without even looking at me. Now it was my turn to say "Are you kidding me?!" So I shambled back into the terminal and found the change machine. When I came back, Blue Steel was squawking into his phone about the bus injustice.
"Are you kidding me?"
The bus had left me, and by now it was past midnight, which meant that the next M60 wouldn't come by for maybe an hour. Blue Steel came up to me and said "You know, the next M60 probably won't come for another hour or so." We got to talking about how retarded the New York airports were: JFK's clusterfuck qualities, La Guardia's insanity, and Newark's distance. A Q__ bus pulled up, and the Asian flock scurried over to get onto it, while Blue Steel meandered over to the taxis to talk to the cabbies.
"Are you kidding me?", as he headed over.
He came back a few minutes later. By now, half an hour had passed since the M60 ditched me for lack of quarters. "You want to split a cab?", he asked me. I replied, "Aren't you going into Queens?" He said, "Yeah, but you could take a train into Manhattan from there. I'm willing to cover 3/4 of the cab fare."
Are you kidding me?
Blue Steel seemed like a nice enough guy, but I had been to New York enough to know that taking the metro into Manhattan from Queens could take hours. So I fed him a bullshit response about how I didn't know Manhattan at all and was meeting friends at a specific subway station. He relented, and we said our goodbyes. "Safe travels," he said, and flashed Blue Steel as he ducked into the cab. The cab sped away, and I was left alone on the platform.
At that very moment, an M60 pulled up. It had been just over an hour since the last bus, approximately 90 minutes since I first stepped out of the terminal. I staggered forward with my fistful of quarters, only to hear the man in the driver's seat say to me, "The machine is broken. Ride is free."
...
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!
The trip into and through Manhattan was pretty monotonous. The hostel was really kitschy and nice. I slept fitfully until the next morning and went to LTM.
Lunch was at a fabulous Turkish?/Lebanese?/Persian? place. The service was slow, but the food was worth it. No pictures to document this, sadly, but Northwestern has a new place in my heart from the conversations that took place. It turns out Richard finally got in touch with the LC there! Yay! Also, there was a girl there (whose name currently is escaping me) that's going to be in Shanghai at the same time as Katie and I. Now that's a network for you.
In the evening, we headed to Layaly for Ma'andi's final hurrah. Take note, kids, this place was amazing.
I'll let those speak for themselves.
Got back to the hostel at about 1AM. One of my roommates was busy washing his socks in the bathroom (yuck), and the entire room smelled like wet feet. I went to bed despite the olfactory assault.
When I got up the next morning, it only took me a few minutes to get washed and packed and down in the lobby to check out. When I got there, I saw one of my roommates arguing with the poor woman at the front desk. He swerved around, looked me dead in the eye, and screeched, "YOU STOLE MY WATCH!" Imagine my incredulity.
At this point it was already 9:45, and I had to walk 10 blocks to LTM. But this crazy motherfucker made me stay (by preventing the woman from being able to check me out) while he called the police over to arrest me and search my bag. Luckily, the po-pos thought he was as crazy as I did, and let me go whilst taking him down the hall to calm him down. My only regret is that I didn't snap a picture of the guy doing his wild "WHERE'S MY SHIT" histrionics.
I got to LTM at 11:30, an hour and a half late, but whatever. By the end of the day, we were exhausted. Costa gave us a ride, and this is what followed:
I got on my delayed flight and nearly finished Life of Pi (I got to the carnivorous island and couldn't deal with it anymore). Arrived in town at around midnight.
1. LTM this weekend. Inaugural week as the Fundraising LIGER for AIESEC US. NYC in all its glory. Will wonders ever cease? Let's hope so.
2. I FINALLY PICKED UP MAIL FOR OUR OFFICE! I walked by the mailbox and almost didn't check inside, but I figured I should, and LO AND BEHOLD, a piece of mail! FOR THE FIRST TIME IN A YEAR AND A HALF!
