Rabat deux

So it turns out Rabat is the capital of Morocco. Embarassing. For me, not Morocco. Rabat is a really cool city. Yesterday I went to the medina, which I understand to be Arabic for the old walled city, usually containing the souks, which are the open air markets full of snake charmers and monkey wranglers, among other less savory characters.

Ross and I went to the beach, which had 2 lonely surfers and a horde of kids playing soccer on the beach, with the requisite old Moroccan gentlemen drinking coffee on the shore. Ross and I joined the old Moroccan gentlemen for a bit of coffee and gossip, then went down to the beach and inexplicably began collecting very small seashells. Time well spent.

I still don't know if they are policing tourists or policing for tourists.

Rabat

I'm in Rabat right now, which is a town on the coast of Morocco. We are staying with a French girl named Sophia and her German roommate. Sophia works for an NGO which does microfinance, although she said her major was in history, which made me happy.

Ross and I spent most of the morning having coffee at a beach side cafe, which is apparently something that all Moroccan men tend to do. I have yet to see a woman drinking coffee in a coffee shop. I am half inclined to think this would be a good tradition in America as well, although eavesdropping would become a lot less humorous.

Men in coffee shops are invariably seated facing towards the street. Only once did I see a guy sitting with his back towards the street, and I couldn't help but think of wolf packs, and that he was definitely the mangy wolf in the back with last dibs on sweet caribou meat.

Planes, Planes and Automobiles

It has been awhile since I wrote anything in this blog, but I'm finally traveling again, although this time I'm going to the White Continent, which is a brand new experience for me.

I woke up at 5:00 this morning. Rather, I was woken up at 5:00 this morning, after getting home at 1 and packing until 3:30. Now, I don’t usually need or get a lot of sleep, but this is pushing it, even for someone as Circadian rhythmically-challenged as I. I want to say that despite arriving at the airport an hour and a half early, my family still almost missed our flight, but that really isn’t true. My dad just has a tendency to freak out when airline employees are criminally slow in their baggage checking. After berating a few Delta employees and smuggling toothpaste through security, we made it to our flight with time to spare for the McDonald’s breakfast that I have come to associate with San Diego departures.

My grandparents were apparently lost in JFK, which, in previous years, wouldn’t have been so frightening, but my grandpa has recently become extremely mobile, thanks to his new scooter, and I was forced to imagine him riding through the terminals pinching the asses of any flight attendants who can’t recognize a mischievous grin. But I guess that turned out alright. There aren’t any lawsuits that I’m aware of, anyhow. I was busy catching up with Evan, who is at school in New York and decided to swing by JFK for a drink, no big deal.

Finally, after a 6 hour layover, we got on the plane to Budapest, where I sat next to two overfriendly Romanians name Ilena and Arpi. I’m not sure about the spelling on either of those, particularly “Arpi,” but I am hoping that “Arpi” is not actually RP, some strange Romanian equivalent to JR or LT. Anyway, they were very nice, despite being from Transylvania.

Now I am sitting in the Budapest Marriot on Sunday morning, although it feels like Friday night, and “this morning” actually occurred 40 hours ago. I feel spastic in time.

The drive into Budapest from the airport was kind of boring. I saw 3 McDonalds, two KFCs and a Burger King. There were also some gas stations, but the prices seemed like San Diego’s from 4 months ago. That is probably because of the wacky Hungarian money, called a Forint, which exchanges at 200 FT to 1 dollar, unless you are me and trade with gypsies, in which case the exchange rate drops to around 170 to 1.

Mustacioed

I was looking at novelty T-Shirts and stumbled upon a rather hilarious mustache related T. After that I felt an overwhelming compulsion to find other mustachioed shirts. I think something is misfiring in my brain.

Mustache Shakes

Mustache Rides

Cinco de Mustache

My Favorite

Back in the USA

I've been back in the states for some number of months now. I've been bored for most of them, so I try not to keep track of the exact number, lest I become morose. I don't want to make excuses for myself, but something is preventing me from getting a job. Something......sinister.

So, between my unemployedness (not yet a real word) and disinclination to do much of anything, really, I have had some free time.

After memorizing John Hodgman's list of 700 hobo names I still had some time left over, and my time-killing weapon of choice has been senselessly antagonizing my father by deliberately making inflammatory political statements.

Now it is very late and Phoebe is sleeping on the floor next to my chair. She has a blanket, although I'm not sure from (participle firmly undangled) where it came, which, now that I think about it, is somewhat unsettling. She is also farting a lot in her sleep; it is her unsubtle way of telling me it's time to go to bed.

The Seven Crawl

Some time ago I received this message in my facebook inbox:

Fact: There are 4,770 7-11 stores in Taiwan.
Fact: 7-11 has a wide variety of beer and alcoholic beverages.
Fact: Drinking alcohol on streets in Taipei is legal.
Considering all this, we are going to go on a Seven Eleven Crawl.

Ted Glomski, a real-live Wisconsonian, had organized an event which was so genius in its simplicity that I just sat at my computer, stupefied, wondering why I hadn't thought of it first. The plan was simply to walk from Chang Kai Shek Memorial Hall to Taipei 101 while stopping to buy a beer at every single 7-11 on the way. To Americans this might not seem like so daunting a task, but in Taipei 7-11s are more numerous than Starbucks are in America.

Unfortunately, Ted organized a little to thoroughly, and about 30 people showed up for the introductory speech, in which Ted outlined the rules and publicly shamed all non-drinkers.
This is taken before the crawl officially began. If you look closely you might notice a handsome devil in green near the back.
This is taken at the first 7-11. (Hereafter referred to as simply "7" for brevity and Taiwanese-ness) We organized ourself into 6 man drinking teams to maximize 6-pack efficiency. My team's name is "Pivozerci" which is, supposedly, Slovenian for "The one who loves beer."
My turn to buy a 6-pack for Pivozerci. It goes without saying that I buy American. Factoid: Hiro Aki, the dashing looking Japanese gentleman in the bottom right, may or may not be an actual pimp who makes his manifold hos play volleyball.

More beer. Ted is the country club looking fellow in the white hat.
Congregating outside a 7. This might be the 7 at which the police rolled by. They said hi.
This is Chido. Chido is GBC (German Born Chinese.) He taught me how to say "Your mother sweats while she expletive deleted" in German. Despite being awesome, Chido proved unable to complete the 7 crawl, as evidenced by his red badge of shame. I picked up his slack.

This is the point at which everybody, in the very shadow of Taipei 101, collectively decided that we had had enough. Ted, along with a few devoted followers, carried on and touched Taipei 101, but I quit. It was sad.

Don't Jump!

A girl killed herself at my school yesterday morning. Some frantic school administrators came into my class to make sure it wasn't a student of the school. It wasn't. It was a twenty-something Taiwanese girl. One of my friends said she was on campus early in the morning and saw a splotch of blood and some far-flung shoes. My roommate Nathan was there later in the day and says he saw a patch of very clean asphalt about ten feet from the edge of the building.

I guess suicide is a pretty big problem in Taiwan. Work is really stressful here. I know that a lot of people work more than 10 hours a day. The Taiwanese authorities are not, however, without a plan. At the subway station nearest my house there is a sign above the escalators with a picture of a smiling monk, feet on a cliff and head in the clouds with a big, blue-lettered reminder that "You don't need to commit suicide!" and a hotline number.

This led to many questions for me. Why is the monk smiling? Was he recently dissuaded from suicide? Was he about to jump off that very cliff? If so, how did he call the hotline? Also, how do you talk someone down in Chinese? Is it customary to say "You have so much to live for?" Can you say that with a straight face to an old monk?