Filed under: Bullets
- If you’re from San Diego, or if you have a conscience, you ought to check out Norman’s amazing Witch Creek story. As my house was on the edge of the fire evacuation zone, with my parents in China at the time, the only thing that affected us ended up being the massive amounts of ash that got into our house. The smell of smoke will persist, and if it ever rains, it will be disgusting.
- For the few sports fans who read this, check out this feature on the namesake of my blog and my favorite professional athlete, Gilbert Arenas. Hard life, admirable commitment to excellence.
- I will never understand humor like “2 Girls, 1 Cup.” I won’t even link to it, because it’s disgusting. Although the reaction videos ARE funny.
- January 23rd, 2008 is my new favorite day of the first month of the new year. Even above my “birthday.” I am conflicted, because on the one hand I’m incredibly excited and on the other hand I’m really scared that I’m going to be very, very disappointing.
- I prefer borderline-crazy-bitch to dull, sheltered, and racist any day of the week. At least I wouldn’t hate myself for it. Sometimes you have to take a chance.
- I tend not to be argumentative about politics or my beliefs, but this weekend probably gave me enough reason to start. Somehow, excessive talk of the virtues of religious state, homophobia, racism, and having other people being dismissive of all opinions and interests outside of their own can do that to you. In case you’re wondering, I support Dr. Ron Paul (R) and Mike Gravel (D), but I will be perfectly content when Hillary Clinton wins the election. On a side note, Dr. Paul received his M.D. from the Duke University School of Medicine. I still tell people I am Libertarian.
- Dr. Mario was one of the hardest games I thought I had ever played, but after getting used to it the difficulty dies down. Still, seems a little bit cruel to kids to make them play this game. Wonder if it helps brain training.
- I’m really scared that I’m not going to get out of the housing lottery and I will have to live in some piece of crap apartment on Central Campus.
- Is it hypocritical to have beliefs and values that you don’t follow? I don’t even want to go into how this would be perfectly okay if I was Christian, but for some reason people say it’s hypocritical for me to be against certain things such as animal cruelty and still eat meat, or sweatshops and still buy cheap clothing, or believe in equality but still make the occasional racial or homophobic remark. Is this just extremely hypocritical or does it prove that I’m weak and selfish? I’m not really sure. But it sure as hell doesn’t mean I don’t believe and that I don’t have any values.
- I don’t think I miss the people at school as much as I should at this point of my college life. I realize I wasted my freshman year and there aren’t people that I lived with that I even want to keep in touch with when I’m on the same campus as them. I know I do a poor job of keeping in touch in general, even with something like Facebook, but there is little motivation to contact some people.
- I am not going to get a good internship. I should come to grips with it now. It’s depressing. Life is hard.
- One of my friends was a big health advocate and lived substance free with me freshman year, but after a year and a summer of excessive drinking and a ridiculous tolerance, he was diagnosed with liver trouble. He noticed it first when it hurt to breathe. Scary thoughts.
- As of this moment, I am not planning to blue tent. To those who don’t know what that means, I am not going to sleep outside for roughly five nights a week in order to watch a game that we have never won during my years at Duke. But I might still white tent.
- I have four flights in the next two weeks: London to Barcelona, Barcelona to Casablanca, Casablanca to Madrid, and Madrid to London. The dollar is at an all time low to the Euro, but luckily they don’t use those in Morocco. My hair is getting long and I will be getting a haircut there, ideas?
- Because flickr only allows you to display 200 photos at a time (those cunts), I deleted a couple and changed some things on my blog. There are some differences in the photos from previous posts, if you’re interested in checking out. I can’t believe how much time I wasted because I was conscious of this sort of thing.
- The library here has a decent foreign films collection, but I find it difficult to make the commitment to watch a movie, so I have just been ripping them and returning them the next day. Like father, like son.
- I’ve been running every other day or so during the weekdays to improve my stamina. I haven’t been able to go to the gym here because I need a bank account, so my endurance is better and my backhand is much improved (frisbee).
- Every song used in an iPod commercial.
Filed under: Lifestyle
Many of my close friends and their families have had to evacuate their homes. It’s hard to understand until you see some of this in person, but I found these photos on a flickr community. It’s devastating. It’s estimated the 700,000 people (~300,00 households) have been forced to evacuate San Diego County. Compare that to four years ago when there were only 50,000.
I have been able to keep up despite being in London through these websites:
Two maps and other links
The fastest updates around
Official fire map
Official fire blog
The latest I’ve been hearing is that the fire is moving north to Rancho San Diego. Scripps Ranch and Del Mar are allowed to return home.
Fortunately, my parents are out of the country. I have been trying to contact them for days but they have yet to respond to any e-mails. Ironically, they have always been upset whenever I don’t check my e-mail or call enough. I guess I can see why. After going through several family friends, I finally reached the neighbor who has our keys and he has been sending me e-mail updates about the situation. I hope everything will be okay. It’s difficult not being there while all of this is going on.
Ironically, I had to go outside last night for a fire drill. Outside two boys played “Crank Dat” on their cell phones and proceeded to practice the Soulja Boy dance.
Later I went out and walked aimlessly around a part of East London for an hour looking for a place that was closed, then waited across the street because she was an hour late anyway. Then she told me about her celebrity obsession and made an awkward analogy to necrophilia and that was it for me. On the bright side, she’s in a band.
It’s cold in London right now.
Filed under: Travel
I spent the past weekend at Oxford and saw friends from high school that I hadn’t seen in years. Caitie Craumer goes to GWU now and is studying at Royal Holloway, all the way on the other side of London close to Windsor Castle. Matt Franks goes to Columbia and is spending the year at Oxford, and the second I arrived with Caitie he asked if I needed a place to stay. The rooms there are gigantic, and he was nice enough to lend us his floor.
We ate brunch at the covered market, an awesome place about 10 meters from Matt’s dorm. Caitie came with me to go sightseeing while Matt spent the day working. As soon as we got to the Oxford Castle, Caitie’s friend called her and told her about this ball in London that he was going to – so with less than two hours to find a dress and shoes, she set off in the mall and went to get ready for her ball. Ridiculous!
Ray and I visited our friend Josh Parker at Pembroke College who confessed that the first few weeks at Oxford had been so great that he wished he went there instead. Being there for only a few hours made it difficult for me to disagree with him. He gave us a tour of Oxford and showed us the Great Hall where Harry Potter was filmed and at the same time broke the news about Dumbledore’s homosexuality. When we got back, we heard grunting noises from a guy down the hall and he explained that this guy from Cornell (Ever heard of it?) is so strange that once he was watching TV by himself with a bottle of gin and invited someone to come over and watch with him. When that person went over, he noticed that it was a tape of the Cornell guy naked and covered in peanut butter while wrestling with another guy naked and covered in whipped cream. Rumor has it, that was only the beginning of the video. The party hadn’t even started yet.
Afterwards. we went out to dinner looking for a place to go with a group of 15, but realized that due to the rugby finals that day, everything was packed. We settled for a food truck and ate doner kebabs. We went to watch the game and noticed all sorts of “yobs” everywhere, from old guys singing and farting to this creeper who just kept taking pictures of everybody cheering and not watching any of the game at all. Very strange. England lost, to no one’s surprise, and Josh and his friends left to go to a union party while we went to hang out with Matt.
Back at Exeter College, Matt bought drinks and even fixed the lighting and we talked as if we hadn’t seen each other in over two years. Oh, right. Talking to both Matt and Caitie made me realize just how bad I have been at keeping in touch with people form high school, as there became a point with some people who I used to write letters to where everything would stop and we would stop being friends.
Anyway, later into the night while we were learning the basics of Russian from Matt’s friend Joe, the idea came up to go down the trap door in his dorm room meant to serve as a fire exit and climb down to take a cell phone. Just for fun. Of course, security came up and gave us a “yellowcard,” whatever that means. In all seriousness, I think breaking into someone’s room and taking their phone was less offensive to the security at Oxford then stepping on the grass. Only the most prestigious university in the world.
Filed under: Lifestyle
In life news, it was Tai’s 21st birthday last Wednesday and we decided to celebrate this completely meaningless age. Kassity made him a ridiculous dinner that necessitated multiple trips to go shopping and included home-rolled sushi and not home-made duck! Ray and I took care of the party and invited American friends over to … celebrate. Slowly, Americans such as myself have educated the Brits on how to play games such as beirut, kings, and spoons and generally refuse to try anything else. Oddly, I met girls from Duke that night that I had never seen before in my life. Really weird. It’s kind of pathetic that I don’t know anyone.
The next day I woke up in my clothes not knowing how the night ended. It wasn’t until 5 p.m. that Giancarlo showed me a photo he snapped of me without pants, sitting on the toilet, with my head in the sink. This picture will not be shown on the internet. Anyway, I suppose I learned that night that you can unscrew my bathroom door from the outside really easily. There’s this episode of Scrubs where J.D. develops a case of vasovagal syncope, meaning he passes out when he poops. On an unrelated note, I have a tendency to go and pass out in the bathroom after I have too much to drink, because the quiet and the small space comforts me. Somehow, put these situations together and you can understand my night.
The rest of the weekend was spent out and about in London going to Old Street one night and SoHo the next. England is in the Rugby World Cup finals against South Africa, and I have never had to learn about a very complicated sport so quickly. It seems unnecessarily complicated when all you really do is try to run the ball past someone else. Thankfully, I watched this with Joey who is at LSE, a former rugby player (which is only funny if you’ve met him and seen his frame. he was one of the kickers all the way in the back). Oh, and he’s Canadian. And the Canadian dollar has surpassed the American dollar. It’s upsetting.
One thing I’ve noticed: this country is so terribly unorganized and technologically backward, it is frustrating sometimes. Like how it takes two weeks to set up a basic bank account. Or the fact that the e-mail servers at school don’t really work and the school computers run Windows ME. Or that people aren’t meant to take courses in different subject areas so they place my lab in the time of my other class, making me miss information and group assignments for the lab, then having a group who does not respond to e-mails and disappears immediately after class that I end up missing my other lab on Thursday. I blame the country.
I’ve been mountaineering every week, partially in hopes of receiving an invitation to go climbing off the coast of Spain, but also because it’s awesome. Due to my unique combination of being very lightweight and very flexible, I don’t embarrass myself. There are some absolutely amazing people though. Too bad they are now going to Sardinia, and I am planning my own trip to Spain. I still have yet to go outdoors, but it’s definitely in my list of near goals. My parents have rock climbing equipment and it’s definitely something I want to try when I get back. Duke also has its own climbing wall now.
I saw my first musical, We Will Rock You, the jukebox one based off of Queen. Mostly because Ray really wanted to see it, but who doesn’t appreciate a good sing along? I plan to see at least one more, hopefully Avenue Q as they are offering some kind of special. I have yet to attend a football match yet, but I am trying to get in touch with Joey in the near future. Apparently he has a stepbrother who has season passes to Arsenal (yeah, ridiculous) – and he somehow got the connections to watch England vs. Estonia last weekend. I definitely have to go to at least one, hopefully one where I can learn all the songs and hooligan it up.
My roommates are all fun people. The thing I like about living with 10 others is the nightly midnight snack we all decide to have, consisting of mostly cereal and nutella. One night we even made fried bananas with cinnamon on top of nutella. I had a burn mark on my hand for over a week after that. And there is this amazing local kebab place that will sometimes let us get a free fried sausage when they are closing because we’re regulars. I have been living off of having a ham, egg, and cheese sandwich everyday for lunch and alternating between cooking pan-fried chinese food at night and pasta, as it is all I know how to make. Since I’ve been here, I’ve felt like a fat American as I realize just how ridiculous American portions are compared to those in other countries. But I keep eating.
The last few weekends I have been spending in London and hope to travel more in the future. I have Oxford plans this weekend where I will see people from high school that I haven’t seen since graduation. It should be interesting.
Filed under: Internet
The first time I met Bryan Zupon at the Chronicle where he was engaged in a conversation with Peter Blais about Bright Eyes and Circulatory System. Corinne, my former editor freshly hung over from her 21st birthday, marveled as Bryan told her to “pop your collar and holla” as he left the office. She told me that even though he seemed strange, he was an incredible tastes editor. Here is a recent article. Anyway, from recess outings I’ve learned that he basically developed this ability growing up normally and that he had his own kitchen at school for a while. He is also one of the four students who at Duke who interned at McKinsey last summer.
Anyway, it’s not everyday that someone I know is featured in the New York Times Magazine. So it’s worth a read. Apparently Bryan’s “Too Cool for School”.
Zupon, who is now 21, has always loved food. When other kids in Basking Ridge, N.J., were sent to school with sandwiches, his Japanese mother packed him elaborate obento boxes. When his parents renovated their kitchen, Zupon, then 14, begged for a six-burner Viking stove. After facing the cafeteria at Duke’s Durham, N.C., campus in 2004, Zupon set about joining the dining advisory board and persuading the college newspaper to make him the restaurant reviewer, allowing him to infiltrate the area’s emerging food scene.
HiBAiSHi 