Archive for October, 2008
The first leg
by Dom on October 31st, 2008
The trip has begun. I made it up to Notre Dame. Had a nice stop in Knoxville first though. It was nice to see Doug again; he was the first friend from Augusta that I’ve seen. Ridiculous. We went to some pretty sweet bars. One had a sign that said all shirts must have sleeves. At the next one there wasn’t a sign, or sleeves. The latter offered beer in 32oz Mason Jars. The draft Yuengling was pretty good. It’s a shame they don’t sell it in Georgia. Closed the night with some Krystals. It was a good night but it made waking up at 8am a bit more difficult.
The drive up was pretty unproblematic. The only issue I had was that I wanted to take the bypass around Cinncinati but the signs weren’t well marked and were still in Kentucky so I didn’t believe that I was there yet and missed the turn. It turned out not to be a problem at all. I’ve been taking photos. For the most part it feels pretty normal being home but seeing huge balls of chicken breast in the deli seemed really odd. I didn’t get a photo of that but I decided I’m going to use my camera like I would when I was in Malawi. As in just whippin’ it out at random times and snapping snaps of random things. I’ll pick the good ones when I’m done and post them up. Anyway, debating what time to wake up tomorrow. Either way calls for bed now.
LA&ACCD
by Dom on October 28th, 2008
Hory Clap, I’m back. In GA that is. Just got back from LA. It was surprisingly cool. Of course that could be because of the short length of my trip and the locations I was, but who cares, I liked it. Jenn’s doing great. Except that whole number 2 business…hehe. The first day we just went for a ride on the boardwalk and Jenn made a dinner of tortellini alfredo. Good good stuff. The next day we actually went to the beach and hung out. Water was quite cold. Like one of those backwoods streams you find in the winter. I made her get in with me though, it was nice having company! Hit up some cool restaurants that day too, fish tacos and crab cakes and the like. Friday we checked out the Art Center. Cool school, however I was an idiot about visiting and didn’t make an appointment with the dept. chair and he wasn’t there. It really shook up my views of what I want to do and what I expect form a school. Then again, I think it’s pretty cool a visit to a place can do that. We went to Jenn’s parents house that evening after a very late lunch at Panera bread. Jenn’s dad made some pretty good steaks for dinner and we just went to bed. It was a long day. Saturday morning we went wake boarding. I’m still sore. Sergio came, yes that one. Serdhyo. It was a lot of fun, we were out there all day pretty much. I got a jump off and superman face-planted straight into the water. It was pretty awesome. Later that day there was a little party and a lot of family friends came over. I got to meet a lot of people and they got to meet me. I had brought some skupernong wine (I doubt I spelled that right, that’s just a kind of white muskadine though). It was a big hit. The next day we went to Disneyland! Jenn has a friend that dances in the Lion King section of the play. As a tiger…Yeah. It was cool though. I had never been to the land before and it was a lot of fun. Didn’t make it to the Tiki room though. Apparently one of Jenn’s favorites; however we did do the tea cups! Heck yes. I ate over half of this obscenely huge pizza there too. It’s a bit sickening to think of, but I couldn’t stop. It was good and the first pizza I’ve had back. Overall it was a great time and it was great seeing Jenn again and meeting those friends. That school really intrigues me.
Continuing transition
by Dom on October 20th, 2008
So yesterday I started to get some stuff done, like a pretty serious nap. One of those ones you don’t wake up from. Crazy. More seriously, I got my bike put back together. Spent two hours before anyone else was awake looking for my spare parts box. It was out in the shed. Forgot how much quality stuff I had. Anyway, once other people woke up I was able to find it. It all went pretty smooth except that apparently I did myself a favor and ruined my chain before I left. It was snapped in half and tied in a rusty knot. Never seen anything like it. After spending a few hours on it with a pair of pliers and a blow torch, well no blow torch but carb cleaner. I was able to get it untied and get my half link and power link off it. Spent another half hour cutting and installing my new chain just in time to test ride it and then get in the car to take Chloe back too school. That took hours.
It was a nice trip through some backwoods south though. Small town USA. It was funny Chloe kept yelling at me when I crossed the road because I wouldn’t wait for the little white man to tell me it was ok, or I wouldn’t even be at a cross walk. She claims the cops are that bad. Ridiculous. Had a buffalo chicken sandwich with fries that had spices like those arby’s ones…They were pretty good. Finished everyone elses food too. Then went and got a huge waffle cone dipped in chocolate and peanuts with two scoops of that good hard American ice cream, snickers flavored. Quite quite good. We stopped at this little shop on the way back and got some muskadine and black berry wine. Two different bottles. Pretty sweet, literally. Pretty excited about the bike still though.
Overall the transition seems to be going a lot smoother than I expected. I keep waiting for the rage to hit but it hasn’t. Maybe once I get a new phone and actually start driving places like stores or bars where there’s more people doing their normal(stupid) things. Eh, until then.
Ha.
by Dom on October 19th, 2008
Alright so I’m back. Been back for over 24hrs now. I think it’s going pretty well. I haven’t had diarhea yet. Only solids and pretty regular at that. I’m impressed if I do say so myself. I know I’m back in the states now so I should probably stop discussing these things but old habits die hard.
I decided not to hang out in Amsterdam airport. I had like a three hour layover so I bebopped it out into town. It was a bit hairy but I handled it. I first had to figure my way around this, the busiest, whitest and most first world place I had been to yet. Fortunately Dutch people tend to speak English like they were English. I found a forex and learned a little about the Euro. So I had a $20. Pretty good I thought. Nope, there was a $5 fee for exchanging money and it cost like 3.20 one way to or from town. So I changed $15 and got like 7.10 in euro coins. As most can tell, that barely covered me. the train was more like 17 minutes to town; when I was told it was 15. The ticket kiosk was a bit confusing. They had special English ones for tourists people like me, but wait they didn’t take coins and so I had to go to the Dutch ones that I found had an English option but not an easy ticket option. I almost bought tickets to belgium or prague or whatever a few times. I got it figured out though and made it into town with like two hours to spare. So I just picked a road and walked down it. Took a few photos and headed back. I was there at the convenient time of like 6-7, when pretty much everywhere was closed. The architecture was nice. I think I found the redlight district. It all worked out thought. I made it back with like 10 minutes to spare. Until the official boarding time that is. However I did just sit there for another hour or more. I wasn’t aloud to take the Nali I bought at the Lilongwe airport and had in my carry-on, they took it. Annoying. Anyway, I got home. Atlanta kind of sucked. I’ve heard it does that though. I had the gate changed on me 3 times, we were told the plane was on the ground 5 different times, and it was delayed so much they just stopped alerting us via intercom. Oh and they downsized the airplane and had to take 20 volunteers to wait until the next day to take the stupid half hour flight. I was suppose to arrive at 5:18pm I think I arrived around 8 or 9pm. Most of the family was there. That was nice. They had a pretty sweet characature of me drawn on one of the posters.
In terms of my first foods…I did eat moe’s. Except after Amsterdam I could only afford the vegetarian burrito. It wasn’t bad though, don’t be mislead. At the house I had two or three different sandwiches. I dipped them in mustard. Mom made pans of little ones. Some little reubens and little ham and cheese ones and I think there might have been others but I forget. Had a blue moon and some champagne and some seasonal pumpkin brew. All quite excellent. Tried some cheesecakes too. They had bought a variety one with like chocolate and carmel and regular and swirl. Oh yeah, she made potato salad too. Quite good. For breakfast I had a ham and cheese omlette, pepperjack cheese that is and a bowl of fruit. Strawberries, kiwis, grapes, cantelope, bananas and oranges. Pretty good. Left over sandwiches for lunch and went out for Mexican for dinner. I got the chicken chimichangas and a huge strong margarita and a glass of sweet tea. I pounded chips and salsa before hand and pretty much just drank cheese dip. I appreciate that my stomach is treating me well so far. Hopefully it will continue!
I got my electric guitar up and running yesterday too. Thats nice. Haven’t really got the feel of it again yet though. My fingers have no precision and while power chords sound good tuning the amp to the tone I like to get the notes hearable too while still liking it has been difficult too. I’m so used to playing the acoustic it’s got me biased on what my electric should sound like I think. Not a bad thing though, just something to get used to.
Anyway, it’s four am and I’m hungry, enjoy that sima! Tumbuka4Life!
Barack Obama
by Dom on October 16th, 2008
I was curious if it was “ck” or just “k” and all I had to do was look at the shelf next to me. There’s like 8 different books or movies or something for sale on him in this little shop. I also heard some crazy regae song here in the airport earlier. It was naming all the states and saying vote for Barack Obama. It was amusing. I guess they like him here in Nairobi. As I type this there’s a news report on it with excerpts from CNN about the debats on the tv here. They’re in Kiswahili so it’s not very helpful but still…
Return Trip Interlude 1
by Dom on October 16th, 2008
So Nairobi airport is infact pretty boring. I think I’ve looked in all the duty free shops and done like 6 laps down the one hallway.
I made it out of Malawi ok. I did almost miss my flight though, that would have been amusing. No one informed me where the boarding area was or when it was time to board, just when it was leaving. So I was just hanging around drinking some beers. I just finished brushing my teeth and came out of the bathroom when this exasperated lady inquired if there were any more Nairobi passengers. There were. I pretty much ran through the metal detector. She told me I was the last passenger. Ha. Oh well, let’em wait we still got off early. So now I’m here and really bored. My flight leaves in like 2 - 3 hours and they haven’t even told me which gate to be at yet so I can’t really like nap or anything. Oh and it’s hot as crap. Stupid equator. Rainy season has started here too.
This morning was a bit crazy. Apparently my meeting with Dale, the CD, took like 2 hours. I was surprised. It was just a lot of form questions like “what do you think was your greatest achievement in Malawi?” Fun stuff. It actually made me late for the transport to the airport so I was running all over the place. Probably forgot something pretty important. Actually I know I did. I forgot to leave my house keys with Dora. That’s funny. Sweet memento. I hope that’s spelled right. They’ll figure something out. There’s an extra set with the Headmaster.
One thing I think is funny about this airport is there are no clocks anywhere almost. They only seem to be on these flat panel displays that show the flight information but there are only about three of those. Even in this big coffee shop here, obviously the hangout, there’s no clock. Ridiculous. I hope Amsterdam is cooler.
It was funny. PC gives me travel allowance, and in dollars at that. Except they didn’t have any one dollar bills this morning. So they asked if I wanted kwacha. Why would I want kwacha? I told him I did not want kwacha. MC ended up helping me out by making a little forex swap where she got kwacha for dollars from PC and I got her dollars. I used it to buy a Bitter Lemon soda. Ah Zanzibar. I’ll miss Africa. I like it’s ridiculous style. More later I’d guess.
Oh I also had the ending of that Pink Floyd song stuck in my earlier. “Good bye cruel world, I’m leaving you today, good bye, good bye, good bye.”
This is the end
by Dom on October 16th, 2008
My only friend, the end.
I still have to see the GSO, AO, CD, Cashier, AI, Dr. Rollin’ north at 11. And then my new journey will begin. See you all soon. I’m getting ready. You should too.
Today, and many other days like it.
by Dom on October 13th, 2008
I feel the boredome creeping up on me. It’s like warm feeling right between the eyes. I’d like to do something about it, but, eh, it just seems so futile. So here I sit. Slowly being overtaken (not overtook just learned) by this warmness. It moves slowly like a highly viscous fluid. It seeps. I have enough time to tell it’s happening but it’s already taken my mind and my ability of thought with it. Now I can only sit and let the thoughts fall out of my head all willy-nilly. If only it wasn’t an American holiday and the office was open. Then I could get motivated to do something. Otherwise it’s all been done or scheduled for another time. I guess I should have scheduled this time for boredom. Why can’t Lilongwe be a more interesting city?
Photos could be taken. Some have been but some still need to be. Knowing that they won’t take themselves is my only motivation. The sun, dirt, noise, distance and stench are my anti-motivation and they seem to be winning out currently if only from their strength of numbers.
The thing about boredom is it can only go on so long. So if I wait it out motivation will eventually turn it’s hat inside out and rally back. Then things will happen again just like they should. I’ve just got to wait…
It’s like punishment for an interesting life. Terribly vexed. I guess I’ll look up who won the first world series of poker, or how many spider species there are in Malawi. Something interesting you know.
*edit* look what I found…I dig it.
Big toe
by Dom on October 10th, 2008
So I had to get my toe cut open this morning. Just a little bit. Apparently I have a pretty deep infection from some stupid cut where I kicked a stump and it just hasn’t healed. So the doctor re-wounded it and now I have a huge gauze toe and can’t bathe for a few days. Hopefully I’ll be allowed to before I come home cause it’s hot season and that tends to also coincide with stinky season!
