Cordero y lengua

Mmm... Muy buen cordero es un placer verdadero. Lo he comido esta tarde en un restaurante venezolano que he descubierto hace unas semanas con un grupo de amigos. Esta vez fui con los padres (alías: papá = chileno que sueña con ser argentino; yo: telenovela mexicana-colombiana en vivo; mamá= francesa, ¿a lo mejor?) Pero todos con alma rusa, sea como sea.

Oír a la gente charlar en español me recuerda la vida fantástica de Madrid, eso de tomar cervecitas y comer carne bien hecha a todas horas en cualquier patio afuera, disfrutando del buen tiempo y de la buena compañía. Este sitio seguro que se cierra las 9 en punto, pero de todas formas me ha gustado el sitio, con un poco de estilo latino aquí en el South End. Aunque no es nada -- pero nada -- comparable con la capital española, Boston tampoco está fatal como a veces digo. Supongo que tiene su encanto también. Sino después de vivir tanto tiempo en Europa... uno se acostumbra a la belleza que allá te suele seguir por donde fueras, y lo que se considera normal en Estados Unidos es otra forma de vivir.

Summer Nights

Yep, it did come out at Vera's party last weekend. (Picture by Liz.)

As for the accordion, can't say I've progressed much in my ten months of absence without having touched the instrument. However, I'll soon be making up lost time... trying to learn the Paraguayan melody (and one of the numerous 'hymns of the Reznikovs') Alma Guaraní. That is, I hope to play this guaraní glory with the right chord progression, pop's authentic guitar accompaniment, and fluidity -- a.k.a. no messing up -- by the end of the summer. Hey, that thing is harder than it sounds!

T Time

The following incident occured today, word for word, on my green line ride to North Station this afternoon to go home:

[Out of nowhere]

Conductor 1 (through intercom, evilly and loudly): MA'AM!! CLEAR THE DOORS -- NOW!!

2 minutes pass.

Conductor 2 (through intercom): Ladies and gentlemen, we apologize for that. You'll have to excuse him, he has an ingrown toenail and is suffering. He's just bitter about it.
Conductor 1 (through intercom): Yeah, whatevah.

2 minutes pass.

Conductor 1 (through intercom): That was a @$^#ing lie. He only said because his wife beats him up every day and he's bitter.
Conductor 2 (through intercom): Does not.
Conductor 1 (through intercom): Does too.

Then I got off the train at my stop so I don't know how it ends.

Лермонтов

Я жить хочу! хочу печали
Любви и счастию назло;
Они мой ум избаловали
И слишком сгладили чело.
Пора, пора насмешкам света
Прогнать спокойствия туман;
Что без страданий жизнь поэта?
И что без бури океан?
Он хочет жить ценою муки,
Ценой томительных забот.
Он покупает неба звуки,
Он даром славы не берет.

Интересно, почему же в наше время нет великих поэтов? Может, мы живем в слишком циничном мире, чтоб тратить время на страдание в стиле Байрона? Наоборот: не смотря на монотонность современной жизни, я вижу и в этом дальнюю и непонятную красоту, как ни странно, у каждого человека есть история, хоть сейчас и не «модна» искренность.

А я всегда любила русские лирические стихи, хоть и относительно их мало знаю. Для меня Лермонтов и Пушкин пока еще не стареют.

Amen

"Life imitates art far more than art imitates life."
-Oscar Wilde

He certainly had a point: I was thinking deeply about this on the commute to work this morning... an oft-recurring topic, if you will, during any commute. Once I got to Boston I concluded once more that I agree 100% with Mr. Wilde.

In other news, my first day of work actually went rather well. The people are very nice and seem like smart, dedicated folks interested in the rest of the world. Everyone was very welcoming towards me and the other interns seem friendly and approachable. The work itself is a lot and kind of stressed me out momentarily, but I realize it's just the first day and I'm full-time -- so there is lots of time to get it done.

There is a lot of medical stuff that I will have to deal with that I'm not exactly lovey-dovey with (time to get out that dusty Russian/English/Spanish medical dictionary from the Brezhnev era), but a number of the staff seemed super excited that I came on board with this apparently odd combo of languages. I'll be stradling those two projects. I hope it's a chance to practice my Spanish especially with the Peruvians, so as not to lose my reaction time as stands. (The native tongue's cool, too, of course, but at this point I am more concerned about the español that I gained in Madrid.)

My duties will involve everything from database stuff to research in the three languages to setting up meetings with the Russia team to helping out the doctors with some of their "literature reviews" to cataloguing huge boxes of Peruvian scarves, mittens, and various knit winter gear. Don't ask.

But more about work later in the week. Now---a dormir.

Boston Boats

Charles River Sunday

Babble

I rented the film Babel on Friday with my mother. It's a curious, jagged movie, and I could see how it wouldn't make sense to some -- maybe most -- people. Its overall theme, however, struck a chord that I have been thinking about most of the weekend.

The film portrays four different countries and scenarios. It follows the effects of one event that takes place in Morocco and inadvertently alters the lives of people halfway around the globe. Among its main characters are a typical American couple (typical, of course, with Brad Pitt being the husband) in the midst of marital discord; two Moroccan boys that accidentally shoot the American wife; the kids of the American couple and their Mexican nanny that takes them to la patria on a roadtrip gone awry; and a Japanese doctor, whose deaf-mute daughter is under some sort of psychosexual trauma. The events are told out of order and all the connections only begin to make sense at the end.

In addition to showing "how we are all connected as humans in some way", though, I think that Babel is really a movie about not listening, and hence, not understanding. Even when speaking the same language, characters hear the others but don't really listen to one another. Even when we, the audience, understand by looking into a closeup of someone's eyes, for instance, in life -- in the movie life and in real life -- we may not really be listening, but rather wanting, begging, hoping, demanding that someone listen to us first. The eyes may be a window to the soul but batting eyelashes 500 times will land one in the optometrist's office nowadays and nothing more.

Everyone wants to be understood first, but taking time to understand others can be slow and painful. Does anyone have the time to do that?

It is somewhat like those conversations that people have often: when one has stopped speaking, he hears the other person while waiting for his next chance to speak. Almost everyone I know has been guilty of it at some point or another, myself most certainly included. There could be many causes. Laziness. Self-indungence. Disinterest. Hurry.

Sometimes, maybe, the inability to listen arises from the pervasive self-interest as a result of pure loneliness. I think lonely people are such each for their own reasons -- just as Tolstoy said, that everybody is unhappy in his own way -- but does loneliness cause selfishness? Is loneliness the ability to listen only to oneself? Are selfish people necessarily lonely deep down?

Workin' 9 to 5

Hola. Haven't written much because of the mundane striking of normalcy, but I am slowly coming back to my "old" groove (no worries, new blog has not been neglected). Signs I am getting used to being home: regular (~1 a.m.) bedtime has returned, along with the general laziness and lack of productivity. "It's too late to go out" moved from 1 a.m.~ish to a measly 11 p.m. or so. I no longer cook food -- just eat it in prodigious amounts. No more cafes con leche, I cannot drink gringo coffee. The quiet now seems normal to me, as always, and I don't imagine myself on calle Guzmán el Bueno when I wake up. Gone is metro Islas Filipinas and Linea 7, now I take the green line to the hospital where I will be working. The office is on the grounds of an intimidating hospital -- for someone who knows zip about medicine and who's still afraid of shots. Especially TB shots.

Basically, just an update that everything is fine. I went to orientation on Thursday and I start working on Monday, my tasks mostly consisting of a relatively serious level of research support and coordinating the communications for a couple of projects. One of them is in Russia and the other in Latin America, so I get to speak both (hoorah, they need me!). I am one of the very few there, it seems, however, who is absolutely not medically inclined in the least. From my short visit, it appears that the organization is filled with lots of bright minds seriously out to save the world (and equally ambitious albeit not-yet-doctor interns my age). These interns are nearly all pre-med students at schools like Harvard and Stanford, and they work to save lives of starving children in Haiti during their summers while probably searching for a cure for AIDS on the weekends.

I suppose I better learn to catch on to this save-the-world idea in some capacity. I have a tendency to feel faint at the sight of blood and I haven't helped any starving children probably ever. I guess, though, the one useful thing I can do is babble in Russian and Spanish when necessary. Can that save someone someday? It's a team effort, right?

Updates to follow after Monday, my first "real" day. I'm nervous and don't want to blow it.

Swampscott

(Photo by Gary W. Stanley)

Culture Shock

Surprisingly, coming home was much calmer than I had anticipated. That's probably because it is painfully obvious that in my nearly ten months of absence absolutely nothing has changed.

With the exception of a couple of new trinkets, new reclining chairs on the third floor of the house, and a coffee maker in the kitchen, my house looks exactly the same as when I left. My room looks exactly as it did the night of September 14. My sister is taller and prettier, but that's the only really tangible cambio. My town looks exactly the same, the ocean looks exactly the same, the heat is the same stifling vacuum of humidity, and the quietness of it all makes it tough to get off my hiney and do stuff.

Helen is leaving today to go to Europe (her turn) and my uncle from California is visiting, so I've been dividing "friend time" and "family time" these couple of days. I am still feeling the time difference -- I get up early and get very tired by the evening because I am still on Spain hours, and I have done a pretty good job these first two days of managing some time slots for friends. Everybody looks good. Everybody looks more or less the same as they did when I left.

It's hard to catch up on a year of absence, but my presence here feels completely normal, and yet... it's hard to articulate. I feel like I have been gone but at the same time I haven't. I'm beginning to forget some of my Madrid stories, because it's another world that doesn't have a lot to do with this one. Or not forget, but rather, store them away for another occasion.

Some things that strike me after being away from the United States for ten months:
- I had forgotten how to use my American cell phone. Writing text messages is more complicated, I don't remember which shortcut does what, and I keep expecting it to be in Spanish and have different names and numbers in them.
- There is no life in the streets. (This is killing me. No life. Just... the baseball field in front of my house and cars.)
- Everybody is speaking in English with an American accent, not British (had enough of that the past 2 days). This made me do double-takes and listen to every passing conversation until I remembered that yes, I am back home. (A similar weirdness occurs when I go to Russia and hear everyone speak in Russian. That's even odder.)
- Everything closes so early. Restaurants shut their doors at 9 or 10 p.m. and by 1 or 2 a.m., bars are closed. My learned dinnertime STARTS at 9.

Last night I went into Boston for the first time. Well, at least there I saw people and patios and dinners slightly -- barely -- reminiscent of Europe's. Amazingly, since I am now well over 21, I can even order alcohol in this country (!), provided I have my identification, of course. Boston is pretty, and familiar (even though I realize I know it very badly in comparison), and there are a couple of changes there. They expanded the train station. They opened a new Hard Rock Café in Fanieul Hall.

I had also forgotten how large the portions were and that I'd be offered to take the leftovers home. And then there were the regular Irish bars downtown, where large beer-bellied middle-agers and post-work twenty-somethings drink non-Corona beer and watch the Red Sox game on TV.

I was expecting this: by the second day, I miss Madrid like mad. It's great to see friends and to catch up, and I was ready to come home when I did... but I also miss the 4 a.m. traffic of Gran Vía, going tapeando, speaking Spanish and giving annoying American tourists the evil eye. It's hard to believe that on Monday I was just there, walking along calle Guzmán el Bueno, having a café con leche downtown and saying adios.

That's why I have not looked at my photos yet nor started organizing them or showing to all. It's still too real, too cercano.

The Evidence

These were taken approximately hour 4 into the ticket reassignment line. I had some new pals guard my bag and went around the line looking for specimens more miserable than me. These pics, however, were taken when we had all got used to our situation and don't portray the craziness that it really was.


These girls from California were supposed to join their high school French class in Paris. Instead they passed out in the Heathrow hallway.


The line, towards the end, thinning out because people gave up.


Spanish boy from Madrid. Triste.


Me feeling my best


No kidding

Mind The Gap - Again

The following, in honor of the opening of my new blog, is a terrible chronicle of whining about my latest (NOT FUN AT ALL) adventure.

It was quite frankly the perfect ending to a perfect year. Well, ladies and gentlemen, I am writing this from the lobby of the London Holiday Inn which costs probably more in a week than my first real monthly salary will be. But that's not the issue now.

Once more, I find myself in the UK’s capital… though I am starting to want to never return here with the luck I’ve been having in this bloody city!

I’ve talked with many of you and I’m sure from hearing the news you are aware of the Heathrow disaster. I go where all the fun is. To summarize:

Basically, a guard told me that they had found a “device” (euphemism for BOMB) in the terminal and “euthanized” it. This happened on Tuesday morning before I even got there. My flight from Madrid was delayed because the plane was late coming in, and we weren’t told of this. I waited in the entire security line before I was alerted that Terminal 4 was entirely shut down. Then we were all sent to another part of the airport, supposedly to get re-ticketed. Ha-ha.

The highlights:

· 5-hour rescheduling line stretching outside the airport. Hundreds, hundreds of people. Old people, children, lack of information, bad, bad, bad.
· 2 large lost bags, 30 kilos each, containing all of my stuff and clothes (for carry-on I have my laptop, my camera, money, documents and three novels in Spanish. Whoo-hoo.)
· I dropped the laptop from the pressure. Twice. It is now being weird when turning on.
· After waiting in line for the 5 hours, it gets shut down. The phone number for British Airways won’t work because thousands of people are calling in.
· By the time this happens, there are no available hotels in the area. Ticket desk reopens at 5 a.m. and I have no flight reservation. Some people managed to get through by calling, including a woman to Boston… only at the 7:40 p.m. Fourth of July flight, and she was among the first people, apparently, to get through.
· Misery loves company: made friends in the line. A thirteen-year-old recently bat-mizvahed girl from New York, Hannah, and her elderly grandparents. Three high school students from California en route to France to join their class, awake for 24 hours, traveling alone for the first time, in tears. A woman in her late 20s on a journey to India, a group of madrileños, various Brits.
· After the line gets shut down, Terminal 4 does reopen post-bomb. The Jewish grandparents and the girl from New York convince me to risk it with them and go directly to the terminal and beg to get on the flight to New York that was not cancelled. As soon as we get there, of course it does get cancelled. They go off into the center to look for a hotel, and I decide to camp out in the terminal until 5 a.m. so I can get a chance at a ticket.
· The Hilton Hotel, connected to Terminal 4, looked appealing to bum. So instead I went there in the lobby and made more friends: a kooky middle-aged teacher from Boston who teaches at UConn and borrowed my wireless, a Syrian-American travel agent who was on her way from Damascus and three college students from Tampa: a WASP, a Greek one, and an Indian.
· The Hilton had no rooms available (and they are nearing ₤400 anyway) but the staff told us we could hang out on the couches in the lobby as long as “you do not sleep”. Why, you ask? Because people paid lots of money to stay in a room in the Hilton and would feel slighted that we are there for free. Oh, goodness… had I known that my lack of being airborne would offend Paris Hilton’s corporate sponsors… really, truly, I apologize. Send me to prison but I want my dog with me.
· During this time I realized the Hilton had Internet and Skyped the damn Brits and my mother. Both without concrete results but my mama was at least sympathetic :)
· By some miracle, around 12:30 a.m. I manage to reach British Airways. They can only change my flight to Thursday. New York? — I beg. Newark? ANY CITY ON THE EAST COAST OF THE US? Nope, nothing earlier than Thursday. Good news: I may have misunderstood the guy (because I can’t understand half of what they say anyway), but I think I got upgraded to first class. Do I care? No. I just want to be at my house or home NOW. That is, in Madrid or in Boston. The latter at this point HIGHLY preferable.
· Nonetheless, a huge influx of refugees left the Hilton stranded as they kept arriving and unsettling the ego of the royalty who had rooms. Eventually the staff herded all of us to a downstairs meeting room where we were told to camp out with blankets and cheap plastic mats. There they had (nicely, at least) set up tables with tea and food (and B.A. didn’t offer even to FIND us hotel rooms — they handed out a piece of paper saying that they weren’t going to give us hotels).
· The place reminded me of the pictures of the Palestinian refugee camps — Western style, of course, being in the Hilton — but same basic setup. It was ridiculous: about 500 people in one room on the floor, coughing, etc. I found a corner in a less-populated room and slept for about three hours on the floor from 3 until at 6 a.m., when we were all promptly herded out.
· The next day at 6:30 I went on a mission to find my bags in Terminal 1, where I arrived from Madrid. Fruitless. I go to Terminal 4, where the bomb was and where my flight to Boston was/is supposed to be. “Bags are in a classified area.” Can I pick them up because I am staying in a hotel? Nope. Maybe they’ll go to Boston, maybe not.
· Begging to get on an earlier flight also useless because the lines (sorry, queues, as they say here) are longer than Cervantes’ Don Quijote, the unabridged version.
· Then at about 9 a.m. after hours of going back and forth to Terminal 1 and 4 in this godforsaken airport from hell I said to myself — a la mierda con todo eso, ¡COÑO! — and got myself a room here at the Holiday Inn, but also not without difficulty either. How nice of them to raise their prices as the refugees pile in.
· Other fun details: to get on the shuttle to the Holiday Inn, must travel to another terminal AND pay the equivalent of $8; all ATMs manage to be broken in Terminal 1 (!?!) and I had no more “pound sterling”; had to buy a British power adapter so I could use my laptop; and Internet costs more than selling my soul to the devil.

Okay, I suppose I now do see the irony and humor in this ridiculous situation (but only after a warm shower and a soft and expensive hotel blanket, I admit). Upon arrival, my appearance was rather, um, attention drawing at a fancy hotel. Well, that’s what 3 hours of sleep and travel disasters do to us. In fact, the Bangladeshi dude at reception gave me a “look” of disbelief when I told him yes indeed I am settling my own bill, buddy. Just ‘cause I don’t got no hairbrush don’t mean I don’t have no credit card!!

But on a serious note, this is a complete and chaotic mismanagement of a potentially critical situation. Someone could have had a serious health issue in one of those queues. Sure, they got their security part straight and killed the bomb. But the lack of “bureaucratic management skills” is appalling. I — a seasoned traveler — was quite seriously holding back tears most of yesterday because I simply COULD NOT TALK TO ANYONE FROM THE AIRLINE in person, by phone, or by internet… any and all information traveled down the grapevine.

Anarchy, guys. I suppose karma does not want me to return to Boston. That or it’s leading me to pursue my career in Foreign Service and single-handedly solve this blasted terrorist problem. …Right.

When I did manage to speak to someone, they sent me to another terminal. When I got to the other terminal, they sent me back to where I came from. Por dios, ojalá que este maldito aeropuerto fuera un poquito como Barajas.

I am disappointed I am not home for the holiday because I had plans to see friends and everyone and blah and blah but now I just hope I can get on a plane tomorrow… anywhere. Yes, I’m safe and fine and all that is good. But lesson from all this: Healthrow, гвалт, never again.

Hell, if I’d known I’d get two trips to London in a month, I’d have planned them better. I’d at least have taken a toothbrush.

Happy Independence Day! Damn, I don't think they celebrate it here...