Estoy aquí, queriéndote, ahogándome... que no puedo comprender

Tengo regresarar de mi viaje a San Salvador. (i.e. I have returned from my trip to San Salvador—atleast assuming I’ve got the Spanish correct.)

Highlights from my 4-day (Thursday p.m. through Sunday a.m.) return to Central America were:

• Spending 40 minutes in the TACA ticket counter line to check my 1-bag in, and another 20 minutes to submit said-checked bag for screening to the TSA. Why so long, you may wonder? Well, with one underweight bag, I was the exception to everyone else in line, who had atleast 1 more bag than you’re allowed (even when travel with family members--most were), and having overweight bags. This did not include the carry-on bags, which had to have a special tag on it in order to get on the plane (and, yes, all those were large suitcases). I also kinda felt like I was already beginning to enter Central America there in the Miami Airport (there are direct flights from MIA to San Salvador, not so from FLL), as the primary language there in the ticket line was Spanish (English was segundo)--not terribly surprising, given where TACA flies and where it is based.

• New Rule (a la Bill Maher): If you personally cannot lift your huge, designed-to-fit-perfectly-into-an-overhead-bin (and stuffed to capacity bag) suitcase into the overhead bin, then you should check the damn thing! (to continue a rant from last week)

• El Salvador is currently on Mountain time (i.e. 2 hours behind Florida). Going there I thought they were 1 hour behind, upon arrival I found out from my contact there that they are 2, and then proceeded to set my alarm clock 3 hours behind the East Coast. This makes it really hard for your alarm to wake you up at 4:45 a.m. for a ride to morning practice, because the clock thinks it’s 3:45 a.m. (problem fixed).

• The San Salvador airport is not actually in the city, but rather about a 30 minute drive away.

• My hotel, the small but nice Posada del Angel, had satellite t.v. so I got to watch the Miami network stations (still missed out on the Indonesian quake, though)

• A dubbed-version of The Sound of Music, where the songs were still in English.

• A visit to Pollo Campero (regretfully, Katie, I didn’t have any pupusas, tho; and Erin, I did not hit any of the American restaurants while there, despite going by KFCs, Pizza Huts, Burger Kings, and a Bennigan’s).


And upon my return, I downloaded my first 3 songs from iTunes: Lento, Hips Don’t Lie and Minority.


And now that I’m back, tomorrow I beginning prep’ing for Jamaica (yes, I realize it’s Memorial Day, and even worse, I can’t go into work because they’re repaving the parking lot or something. But I’ve got crap that must be done before my Wednesday departure to Kingston-town).


estoy aquí, queriéndote
ahogándome
entre fotos y cuadernos
entre cosas y recuerdos
que no puedo comprender

I am not the only cowboy... in this one horse metaphor

So I've been back in Florida for just over 24 hours. My flights, themselves, back from Hong Kong went well--I slept most of the way from H.K. to Chicago (other than watching Hoodwinked) and watched Last Holiday from Chicago to Fort Lauderdale.

Things would have been perfect, save for the circling instead of initially landing at O’Hare and the fact that I had to go through security to get to my second flight--I didn't ask to leave security, the airport forced it on me to do so when we landed at the international terminal and then had to go to the domestic terminal to get my other flight.

Anyways, a kinda cool, coincident thing happened: one of the flight attendants from my H.K.-Chicago flight ended up sitting across the aisle from me on my second flight. And of course I'm generally amazed by the people who insist on attempting to get the biggest bag possible into the overhead bins--check the damn things, people! If you brought all that crap with you in the first place, you can’t be in that much of a hurry.

Anyways, so since arriving back in FL, I:
-watched Donnie Darko (director's cut),
-slept a wee bit (I can’t tell if I’m jet lagged or not),
-had 'brunch',
-swam (yeah!--first time in a week),
-went into work for a bit,
-picked up my mail,
-saw The DaVinci Code--was alright, ‘cept they took out the line about the Caravaggio being on the floor--it's my favorite part! Tom Hanks didn't even bother me as much as I thought he would. Even had audience entertainment, when some guy decided to yell “liar” at the screen when Langdon decided to ponder whether/not Jesus might be human (another fellow audience member responded back with an appropriate, stifling comment--not sure if it was so much because of the noise disturbance or for the content of the yelling. In either case, it just made me realized, if a fiction book threatens your beliefs, how strong are they really?),
-pondered why the -ci in DaVinci is pronounced "chi" and not just "see",
-packed for El Salvador,
-put some more tunes on my computer.

And now, I’m attempting to recharge my iPod (apparently my computer needs to stay awake for it to happen), and I'll head off to bed shortly. Maybe even read some--I'm not progressing through Dracula as rapidly as I would like... (oh well).


Far away from the things that we wish to escape
That led us to think that we are not awake
We are ourselves
Despite ourselves this place gets smaller as the universe swells
We come to terms eventually, eventually, eventually

Talking out your neck, sayin' you're a Christian...

你好, 我的名字是麦
[I blame all mistranslation on Babel Fish... I know it's not perfect, but it's close (hopefully).]

Tonight, after finishing up my presentation (and my Cantonese-native-language audience took an English test over the presentation), I went out to dinner with 6 people related to my talks here.

Over dinner, two things occurred:
.
1) I learned how to write my name in Cantonese
.
2) I gave an explanation of part of Lauryn Hill's Doo Wop (That Thing), after the word "Christian" triggered part of the lyric to flow through my brain, and compelled me to write it out...


So, according to tonight's discussion, "Matt" 麥, is represented (or rather can be represented) when constructed phonetically in Cantonese by the symbol for "wheat", which itself is composed of the pictograms for "10" (十), "person" (人--3 times), and "dawn" (which I can't seem to find the matching character for, but is the bottom half of the character). Much cooler...

The more biblical "Matthew" 馬太--which I believed I'm named after--is composed of characters for "horse" (馬) and "sun" (太). [and that's literally the characters used in the Bible, sans a "king" added for reference to the apostle, is my guess--as I'm not either, I've left it out.]

My last name is not nearly as cool, story-wise, ("can" and "bus"--but I'm not finding the proper pictograms) so I'll leave it out....



And in case you're interested, my hotel has no 4, 13, 14, nor 24 floors... ("4" is an unlucky number in local custom...).

Talking out your neck, sayin' you're a Christian
A Muslim sleepin' with the gin
Now that was the sin that did Jezebel in
Who you gon' tell when the repercussions spin
Showing off your ass 'cause you're thinking it's a trend
Girlfriend, let me break it down for you again...
You know I only say it 'cause I'm truly genuine
Don't be a hard rock when you really are a gem

En la distancia te puedo ver, cuando tus fotos me siento a ver

Greetings from Hong Kong!

Actually, to be more precise, greetings from Causeway Bay on Hong Kong Island--which is where my hotel is-->across Victoria Harbor from Kowloon. (And on the Causeway Bay page linked above, my hotel is just a couple blocks from this street, which I was on today.)

Things here go well. I arrived late afternoon on Thursday, and other than a brief trip yesterday afternoon into New Territories to visit the Hong Kong Sports Institute, I've not been off this island since my initial train ride from the airport (which is located on Lantau Island-->confused? map here).

I have even managed to see about 5 McDonald's nearby. (Yes, I've eaten there already--the 2 Chinese meals I have had have been, let's say, interesting; so much that it drew me to more Americanized food, i.e. McDonald's and the Outback Steakhouse that's nearby. Haven't hit the Pizza Hut or KFC; though I'm not sure if I will... things are never exactly the same as they are in the U.S.--the McDonald's has menu items served on rice cakes (I think) instead of a bun, and I'm not exactly sure what's between them--not been that brave as yet.)

In any case, my lack of touristy visiting has primarily been due to my preparing for a presentation, which I'm partially through at the moment (4 more hours tomorrow). After finishing up Sunday with it, I am hoping to become a turista on Monday, prior to my return stateside on Tuesday. We'll see how it all goes...

Actually, most surprising is that I am not having massive jet-lag, particularly since Hong Kong is 12 hours ahead of the East coast (it's midnight here in H.K. and noon in FL). And as it's so late, I will bid you good night...

(And just in case you're wondering, as my Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese are non-existent, I am working with the other language of Hong Kong, English--a hold over from British colonial rule which ended in 1997--after my last visit here in 1993. Because I don't understand either Chineses, I've been having moments of wanting to speak Spanish, maybe in preparation for next week's visit to El Salvador--who knows. Oh, and in case you're curious, the language issue is probably effecting my presentation, in addition to some cultural differences...)


Cada vez que te busco, te vas
Cada vez que te llamo, no estas
Es por eso que debo decir que tu solo en mis fotos estas

It's just another manic Monday, oh woah...

Apparently, the check-in counter at the Fort Lauderdale Airport doesn't open until 5 a.m.

Helpful information to know, when you show up at 4 a.m. to check-in for your international flight which is beginning at 6:45 a.m., only to find out you get to sit on the floor for a hour instead of sleeping.

At least the wi-fi at the airport is working.

And, yes, Monday was manic... particularly because I was finishing up moving within Fort Lauderdale. But all possessions were moved by Monday--now they just need to be unpacked. Course, unpacking will get to wait until I'm back from Jamaica in a few weeks: not enough time after Hong Kong and El Salvador trips to really do anything but recover.

(and, yes, today, the time stamp is actually correct)

It's been a hard day's night, I should be sleeping like a log

"...and never did the far-away howling of dogs send such a woeful presage through the night."
-Dracula, p. 231


Well, Masters Nationals started today, and things didn't go so hot... while I did manage to win my age-group (30-34) in the mile, I actually went 10 seconds slower than I did a few months ago and on top of this the guy next to me in my heat beat me by a minute (he's 41, I believe).

Anyways... all-in all not so hot. But on the plus-side, I've got help for heavy-lifting duty on Saturday: my step-dad flew in today for the weekend. (Not to fail to mention that Heidi has been a savior with moving, and most, most helpful :)--I just don't think she should be doing much heavy moving during the meet.)


[btw, rest of the meet was split--> 1/2 slower than February (500 free--1 sec & 400 IM--.5 secs) and 1/2 faster (200 back--4 secs, 200 fly--1 sec); que será, será, I guess... moving on Saturday went alright and all the heavy stuff got done!!! Now if only I hadn't started to fall asleep during lunch on Sunday...]

Hip, hop, a-hippity hop, and you don't stop...

Show me the Bunny!


A couple weekends ago, I had a meet down at FIU. And at that meet, my team won this hip-hopping guy for winning the meet. He even does a bunny rap--ain't that cute.

(meet went alright, btw, tho I did get a bit burned, which is just now finishing up peeling.)


Hmm, otherwise, nothing too exciting to report, other than I do have a post to go before today (it's from Tuesday), which I'll hopefully post this weekend (I've got to track it down and get it up).

In the meantime, I'll leave you with this little trinket:
The home of the Providence Friars basketball team is the Duncan Donuts Center, which I find ironic, given that donuts typically don't have centers AND the fact that Friars and fryers are homophones...


Oh, and the fact that in most of the world, today was 04-05-06.

I was walking along, mindin’ my business, when out of that orange-colored view...

Wham, bam, alakazam I had a reason to be shouting mayday. Unfortunately, it was yesterday, May 2nd, and not May 1. Mais c’est la vie, non?

The set-up: I will be out-of-the-country for most of the back half of this month. I’m headed to Hong Kong for 6 days, am back a 1.5 days, then go to El Salvador for 4 days, back 2 days, then head to Jamaica for 4. Not the best timing, true, but the trip to San Salvador was the last to be placed, and if it doesn’t happen then another month is lost. The weekend prior to all this is Masters Nationals, in which I’m entered.

So at work I’m trying to deal with and prepare for the fact that I will be gone basically for two weeks. And other than a tendency for overloading, I’m ok there (‘cept I just realized that I was counting on the last two weeks of this month to work on a project that I won’t really be able to use). Then I get a call on Tuesday morning...

I’m moving before the end of the month, which really means I’ve got to move before I go to Hong Kong (2 wks from today), which probably means I’m gonna have to skip Masters Nationals, which I’m not really keen about.

About an hour after that I got an email which had an issue blow-up in my face, of my own doing; and later in the evening, I got 3 more hours of daily work to do. Course, by the time that came round, I was already numb. So... I’m now in survival and damage control mode for May: my goal is to survive with the least damage/fallout as possible.

Hopefully things will be better in June. And as I got 5 hours of sleep last night, I’m heading to bed now. Hasta.


I remember a lot about my childhood
I just don't remember it being this orange...


p.s. Court, I’m nowhere close to the person they hired for that job...

[as I post this on Saturday, "Orange-Colored Sky" is actually on...]