Ernie says "GO AWAY!"

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.

The end.


P.S. The other LIGERs are awesome.

A poorly packed mannequin

Classy dinner party at Firdaus' flat last Saturday night. Maddie and Amy came by and the boys cooked and served for the girls. Gnocchi with mushrooms (Amy got a dirt ball in one), roasted vegetables (asparagus, red bell peppers, portobello shrooms, broccoli, and scallions), and a standard lasagna, followed by cashew caramel cookies (for everyone) and coconut sorbet (for me). Then Preston and Bryan stopped by and we watched the Simpsons movie and Super Troopers... everything else is left to your imagination.

I need to work out housing with Katie and Johanna.

And I need to find a job for the summer (in Atlanta, sorry nomads). Who wants to hire me, or suggest a means of employment?



And in other news, the wheels creak and groan as they begin to turn in Kenya. The tipping point has been reached, and soon I predict there will be a whirlwind of activity yet to be seen. Keep an eye on both of these amazing individuals.

Creation's case for irony

I have to admit that sometimes my fascination with my own mortality extends into a curiosity on the mortality of mankind as a whole. And it doesn't help that the Discovery and Travel channels appear to have figured this out and subsequently developed programming that sates this piqued interest.

And as cool as the concepts of the shows are, at the same time they're somewhat disturbingly morbid.

Take, for instance, the Travel channel's 1,000 Places To See Before You Die. I like the premise of this show. There are so many amazing places around the world that everyone (ideally) should have the opportunity to experience. All you have to do is look at these people's photo albums to be convinced of this. But OH MY GOD, the title of the show. Talk about blunt and awkward. I don't mean to imply that death is somehow a taboo subject, or that the mass media should stick the happy-go-lucky side of life, but this is something that's just disturbing.

And then there's the Discovery channel's shows that are centered on the extinction of mankind or the outright absence thereof... due to an implied extinction. There's a show (maybe a series of specials?) focusing on the various forms of natural disasters that can occur which would wipe out life in various ways: animal life, terrestrial life, and even all life in general. It covers freaky stuff that includes the impact of a comet and generic stuff like global warming. They go into detail about how many days it would take for the human population to die out given current technology and infrastructure and have fun with the idea that any of these, while unlikely, are not as unlikely as we would like to think. And then there are shows that focus on premise that humans will kill each other off somehow, and the rest of the world will move on as if we simply packed up and left. They go buck wild with computer generated models of projected animal species if humans were to disappear and CG animations of what ubiquitously urban areas would look like thousands of years into the future, completely inundated in flora and fauna.

They're extremely interesting to watch, but at the same time, sobering in their implications. It's one thing to despair about one's impact on humanity and the "world"... it's another thing entirely to think about the big picture of big pictures, where even civilizations don't matter.


Moving on, everyone should get a Twitter account. Just take a gander to the right. It's like facebook stalking for those of us without iPhones... or until someone else releases a cheap, mass-produced phone that can access websites with the same ease.

Go out and make an account so I can follow you.

Wholly unreal and timorous

Sean was mugged on Sat. 2/16. He sustained a head injury resulting in 70% hearing loss in his right ear and vertigo. He was released from the hospital yesterday and is on bed rest with his host family. We are having a difficult time communicating with the drs in Nairobi. If you have any contacts in Nairobi, please contact us mkolk@mindspring.com or 770-595-2337.
thanks, margaret kolk

Part of me can't help but recognize the irony in the fact that his mother posted this comment after he wrote about his feeling awkward of people's concerns for him.

My immediately first gut reaction was something I'm not proud of, and something completely unbecoming of an AIESECer. I've gotten over that, though, because I know that he's going to take this in stride and not hold it against the Nairobi LC or the whole of Kenya. If anything, he's received his first battle scar, and all I can do is hope that it's just cosmetic.

Keep living the dream, buddy. You're never far from our thoughts.