Ship adventures

Since I ended up babbling pseudo philosophical proclamations I’ll compensate with some short ship adventures. So far we have lost seven passengers. Three of them left voluntary: one in Japan who had problems with drugs and couldn’t handle the withdrawal effects while on the ship, and two in India because of family reasons. Now to the other four which are far more interesting gossip wise. They failed one of the random drug tests, opiate components are to blame. So out the ship they go. The process its relatively simple, they catch you, they kick you out in the nearest port, in this case India where they were when tested, and they call your parents to tell them where you have been left and why. Nice, isn’t it? You only have one night to pack and there are no second chances or particular considerations in terms of types of drugs or level of usage, whatever, drugs are drugs. I don’t have and issue with this policy and I guess the majority of the ship community agrees, but it’s still weird because I met some of them and they seemed really nice, but then again, I suppose you have to be really strict when being in charge of such a big population in a small space.
With alcohol the policy is slightly more liberal, though they wanted us to sign papers that said that we would not get drunk in the entire voyage, they never enforced it and most people didn’t turned them in. Less than a month into the voyage we already had people who not only chunked (vomited) in the tourist buses, but also peed on themselves while riding them. Talk about prestige. Another guy knocked on a girls’ door and threw her out of her room ‘cause he thought it was his room and how dare her be in it?! He had to kick her out, and he pretty much literally did. This happened a couple of doors down my hallway, but of course, me being the good girl that I am, I was sleeping and didn’t find out untill the other day. Our sea (that’s how the hallways are identified and for Harry Potter fans it’s the equivalent of a House) wanted him out of SAS but instead they left the issue to the captain, Master of the ship. The Master, wise as he is, decided to shut him in the lowest floor of the ship for five days were he was forced to deal with himself without daylight or human contact. The Master is from Croatia. Trained with the army and everything, you don’t wanna mess with him, though he has a real sexy voice when he is announcing through the intercom the emergency fire practice routines.

On ship life

October is almost finished and it’s surreal how we are almost in Halloween. Here on the ship every single opportunity to make a day special is taken, since its extremely monotonous living in such a limited space. Thus, yesterday all the little kids aboard (most sons and daughters of teachers) dressed up and went around the ship asking for candy. My favorite was Lucas, a five year old blond thingy walking covered in cereal boxes, I’m still not completely sure of what his costume was intended to be, but I’m betting he was Cereal Monster, the healthy replacement for Cookie monster, now that the later has been censored and sent to a rehabilitation clinic for his unhealthy habits. This little kid (and his mom) probably saved cereal boxes for weeks until they had enough to make some sort of giant cereal box collage which later Lucas put on. There’s one more twist to this feat, you are not supposed to get food, or anything at all, out of the dinning halls, so they must have smuggled them (OH MY!!) which makes them my heroes, the executive dean scolded me once for incurring in Cheerios contraband. And I tell you this little story because it shows how bored we can get here, yes we do have a lot of homework, but in the lack of cinemas, parks or beaches (I wish they had a net in which we could just jump in and they would drag us in it while we swim at the Red Sea), you gotta get creative…and smuggling cereal to make costume is quite fun.
Another option is the different athletic classes or activities in which I have been involved since the beginning, but may have forgotten to tell you. I’m teaching salsa and flamenco for dummies, is really really fun and although I’m not sure if we’ll be ready dancing-wise for Spain, which is our goal, we do have a great time. It’s been an enlightening experience because I never thought I could teach dance; both because I lacked confidence and because I thought it would bore me to tears to explain the same step four hundreds times. I thought it would be incredibly monotonous. However, it turns out that even if you are repeating the same thing if you want people to get it you’ll obviously will have to come up with different ways of explaining it since the first version wasn’t effective, and in result it involves far more creativity than I had expected. I suppose people who are teachers already knew that, but to me it has been kind of an epiphany, knowing that I could actually teach and still feel challenged in a creative way.
This knowledge has also been highly liberating in a way, because I’m beginning to feel that I don’t need a PhD to be successful or feel self satisfaction, independently of what others may think. I used to have a very structuralized and detailed plan of my life, all heading towards this climax that I wasn’t even sure when it was going to come, but my life had to be a line straight up: everything a step towards something greater, instead of getting more “achieving” more and that also can be a consumerist desire. Now, I think it has become more of an ellipsis, I get the feeling that I could live as happily teaching film semiotics in NYU as flamenco in Kalekshetra Arts Village in a poor south Indian suburb. It’s liberating in a way to know that I have a choice in how to be fulfilled, and in consequence, happy. As a straight A student sometimes I wondered if indeed my As were a conscious choice of me liking knowledge and being responsible or just an egocentricity quest for recognition (social, intellectual, parental to a certain extent) which I had to accomplish because otherwise I would be the drug addict girl prostituting herself next to your building. Sometimes I wondered if there would be a moment when the pressure would stop: you are in elementary school and you gotta get to a nice high school so you better polish that English, then a good university (get your geometry right already), then you need the masters, and then, what’s the point of having a master if you don’t go for a PhD? and then I’m sure it would be getting the permanent job, then the better title, etcetera etcetera until you die in a nice wooden coffin with no organs in because you are so nice and educated that you donated them all. It never stops, there’s always something more that you can attain. It may not be a bank account size race but it is still a race and to realize that I have the option of dropping out of the race without it meaning that I’m a worthless failure it’s highly liberating. I know if by some reason I would ever choose something like that it would set me apart from my social niche and that would be hard, and I probably wont because I do enjoy a lot of that lifestyle, but still it’s highly relieving to know that its not a law, but a social construct, thus it can be deconstructed and reconstructed. I have met so many people who live lives so radically different from mine: housewives, dancers, travel writers, filmmakers, and they are brilliant, happy… self satisfied.

Pequenas historias

estos son fragmentos de emails que me parecieron interesantes.

Vietnam
una pequena historia de mis profesores de cine. Ellos fueron a la universidad y se sentaron en un café a ver si simplemente alguien se les acercaba y los conocian. Efectivamente, terminaron hablando con un profesor de alli y uno de mis profesores les hablo de la discrepancia entre cuanto los estadounidense buscan y hasta cierto punto viven la guerra cuando estan en vietnam, mientras a los vietnamitas no parece afectarles mucho. Su respuesta:” Of course, we won”.

Burma
Recién acabo de llegar de Burma (Myanmar) y no acabo de caer en sitio. Es extraño porque racionalmente hablando probablemente es el lugar más exótico y diferente que he estado en mi vida. Es de esos sitios en que sólo se pasea Indiana Jones en una película vieja porque si Lara Croft fuera ahora ya no sería tan raro. Sin embargo, mientras estuve allí todo se sentía tan natural, sin los choques típicos de “uh ah es la torre eiffel!” y no es hasta ahora, que llevo dia y medio en el barco y estoy en medio de la bahía de bengal (sorry, lo tenía que poner, suena demasiado cool, de hecho es la única razón por la que te escribo, jajaja) y bueno como decía, no es hasta ahora que me doy cuenta de lo raro que fue ese país en el contexto de mi vida. Las mujeres usan lodo en la cara como maquillaje, cargan canastas gigantes en la cabeza como en nuestras imágenes de África y los hombres usan faldas, pero aun así lo más que recuerdo es un viaje de 5 horas en una pickup con el grupo de gente más genuina y chévere que pudiera haber conocido en un periodo tan corto. Vi pagodas gigantes de oro y no les dediqué mucho tiempo por estar comiendo pasteles de arroz con coco rayado encima en medio de un chorro de viejitas mellas, todas en cuclillas riéndose de la occidental blanca que no sabia comer pasteles con las manos. Todos me decían lo blanca que era, ese era mi main exotic trait. Que puedo decir, uno se cree que está descubriendo el mundo, pero en gran medida el mundo te descubre a ti y te vuelves una postal ambulante, sobretodo cuando viajas por tu cuenta y eres tres mil veces más aproachable que si estás emparejado con alguien o un grupo.

Beware this is a whiny entry

Hi y’all, its midnight somewhere in the bay of bengal and the slip is heading for Egypt. I’m sitting on my bed eating an Indian desert called gulabjamun, which is basically condensed milk coated with caramel and maybe some coconut cachipas thrown in. Its delicious and like chocolate it kinda makes me feel better. I wasn’t joking about the title so this is your last chance to leave. My roommates just came in, which totally screws the mood for writing, in that sense it sucks to have a roommate, well, theres not really much I could say regarding the upside of having a roommate versus a room to yourself. My trauma doesn’t have to do with her at all, its just the sharing spaces thing, she’s probably one of the best roommates around: doesn’t smoke or come back drunk, doesn’t steal and doesn’t force me into “sexhile” , something that apparantely a considerable part of the ship suffers since theres club for them. By the way, around here sexhile is not alck of sex, but the recurrent circumstance of not being able to enter your room because it is being occupied already by two persons (or more so the rumors say – its college people). So in a roommate missuniverse, I would seriously consider picking her. She also happens to be smart and nice. But I just don’t like this, specially when there is no way to escape, it is not like I can go downstairs and head to that corner near the UPR tower where almost nobody hangs around. There is no intimacy, there is no space, sometimes I come and there’s no one, but she can always come back at any moment, it will never be more than an hour of alone time, because in the ship space is so limited… and the food sucks. Not because of the flavor, which is the popular complain, but because it doesn’t suit me. I can’t eat anything with vegetables because I know ill be in the bathrrom in less than two hours. But almost everything hast vegetables thrown in so I just live with it, wondering what that mayy be doing to my intestinal flora. They are living a civil war down there. Its funny cause I didn’t get the famous delhi-belly in India, nor in any country, but in the ship, I could buy stocks on it and know that my children will get lots of money from the profits, that’s how “favorable” the odds are. Its stupid, but it annoys me. So does waking up erly every single day. I know you think this is particularly stupid, but for a moment try to think that you really really like to wake around 11 am and more than two months have passed since you last had the chance to do it. There are no weekends on SAS, at sea you study, at port you run like mad trying to grasp as much as you can, I’m dead tired and I have two more paper to write, one art and religion book to read and two novels. Wonderful.

Cambodge

“Where do you want to go to?” – The question seemed absolutely unapproachable. The world map laying on the floor in front of me harvested too many wonders to just go and pick one. It was one of my typical National Geographic nights with my dad. We would wait for mom to come back from her night watches as a doctor while watching lions in African savannas, discovering kung fu in China`s monasteries or just going trough one of my dad’s big picture books. Usually, I would fall asleep before she actually got there, but I always put up a fight, and my dad usually complied as long as we did something educational, thus the NG nights were born.
However, that night was kind of different, the decision was made that we were going to travel next summer, and being the hippie parents that they were, my dad decided to let me in on the process of picking our destination. “Where do you want to go to?”, the question lingered on the air while I watched the drawings. Well, there was Mt. Everest for once, but my mama got cold easily so that wouldn’t be to much fun, maybe the pretty beaches in Yucatan, Mexico, but I had seen enough beaches in Porto Rico. I wanted something new, I wanted something ancient, I wanted to dig in into the World’s entrails, and then I saw it, an ensemble of temples fighting their way through the jungle in a remote part of the world that I had never cared for.
It was near China, even at my 5 or 6 years I could say that, I hadn’t watched all those kung fu movies for nothing, and China was pretty big. However, this country I couldn’t really distinguish within the rest of the nations in that chubby peninsula where it was located. Rivers crisscrossed it, sometimes traveling to the bordering countries making a messy drawing of water and border lines in the map. I pointed my finger and said decidedly “Here”. I knew it was far away and maybe we wouldn’t have the money, but it was worth a try. Maybe if I stopped dirtying up the walls by climbing them like some crazed spiderwoman and stopped collecting expensive 25 cents stickers my parents would consent. Maybe I could sell my sticker collection, I had tons and girls always want something pretty and shinny to make their notebooks look nice. So I pointed and smiled, knowing that my dad would be proud of me wanting to see temples and ruins, which he seemed to enjoy far more than I would ever understand.
He looked at me and smiled. Angkor, Cambodia. We can’t go there- I know its far, but-No, well that too, but we can’t go because its not safe, there’s a war going on. And I knew my cause was lost, if my dad said there was a war going on there was no saving money or strategic behavior, accompanied with a pinch of nagging that would make a difference.
It was the early nineties and a Porto Rican girl wanted to go to Cambodia. She wanted to see it, the land of the great Khmer civilization, far more mystical and interesting than fashionable pharaohs. But Cambodia was still struggling to overcome the remnants of the Khmer Rouge, the memory of its killing field still smelling of blood and human extermination. I wanna go to Angkor and it hosts people who lead racial exterminations campaigns. I wanna go to Angkor Wat, or the City Temple, and its majestic stones slowly become rain strainers with so many bullets intersecting their universe. The man made moats can’t protect it now, they can no longer be the link within earth and heaven… earth has taken over. My Cambodia: the country were during 1976 to 1979 “the Khmer Rouge murdered, worked to death, or killed by starvation close to 1.7 million Cambodians—more than one-fifth of the country’s population” 1.
One point seven million and even to this day, more than ten years later from my map wishing, people are suddenly blasted to the past with one more mine detonation. I didn’t know the extension of the war back then, but I did know war, and that it was bad. Now being older I can easily come up with fancier, less childish terms. It was horrible, atrocious, murderous, terrifying, monstrous and even ghastly. Yet, beyond that, one simple truth remains: it was bad.
Somehow, even when hanging near the local band where all musicians had lost at least one limb, the street vendor children seemed determined to move forward with a smile on their face and as many dollars as they could get. English was the way to success for them, thus they spoke it better than your average retailer or tourist worker I ever encountered in Japan. Without any trace of the western idea of Asian reserved modesty they surrounded the tourists: “Where you from, sir? United States, yes, yes, that’s between Canada and Mexico. What state are you from, sir? Oh the capital is Harrisburg, right? Maybe you could send some postcards to your friends back then” And you were trapped, how could you not buy a postcard from that kid who knew that the capital of Pennsylvania is Harrisburg? I have a US passport and had no idea until I spied on that conversation, yet somewhere in Cambodia a kid who probably lives under the poverty level knows that.
Thus, I have gone and come back from Cambodia. I saw 5 temples extensively, reading bits and pieces of its ancient courts with tastes of India in every Hindu statue or Ramayana retelling. I shared with the Americans the thrill of finally reaching the upper part after putting my spiderwoman skills to use by practically crawling up the almost two feet high steps. I nervously giggled with the Japanese teenagers when wondering whether we would in fact make it all the way down without having an anxiety attack due to vertigo. Angkor was absorbing us with its sensuous carved dancers and intricate spires, and somewhere along the gate where we would exit, under the nonchalant watch of its crippled father, a kid would be waiting for you. “Lady, lady, remember me? By me a postcard, pretty lady, please?”

Beijing

Marker near the Ming Tombs--Forbidden what?-- Communist chic in the Forbidden City


Me and the Wally----Hi! I'm a chinese american maniquee----Acrobat Show

Japan

Tokyo

Pagoda in Tokyo -----Japanese public toilet--Tsukiji fish market

Wednesday night in Shibuya-Capsule hotel: my capsule --Grabbing customers attention

Kobe and Kyoto

Guy welcoming us to Kobe City's Port---Riverside in Kyoto---------Toriis in Shinto temple
(local animist religion)-- Shrines in same Shinto Temple (called Fushimi Inari - dedicated to fox deities, which are convenient for good harvest)

Hawaii

Arriving to Oahu, Hawaii -------Diamonfd Head (volcano)











Hanauma Bay----------------Guess who? ----------Waikiki Beach

Pictures!!! (Finally) - San Diego

Rose and Desert gardens, Balboa Park










San Diego Bay