i’ve needed a new watch for while now. my old one broke, and yet i continued to wear it for like a month after that. i kept checking the time on it, forgetting that it was broken, and each time thinking “dammit, i need to get rid of this thing!". well, i finally got a new one… and i’m not sure if i like it. it was a really tough call on what to get. i’ve worn nothing but Swatches ever since like 1990, but none of the Swatches out now really excited me. i didnt want a metal watch. i couldn’t buy watches w/ leather straps since i’ll be tromping through the rain a lot on my trip. so it was a really tough call, but i found a watch online that looked ok, i ordered it… and it’s *huge*. fucking enormous. it’s a dive watch so i can use it while scuba diving which is cool, but i didnt expect it to be so damn big!! i’ve had it for like 3 days now, and i’m still trying to decide if i like it or not. so tough to decide…

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47 days left till my trip. wow. i can’t believe it’s so close!

there’s so many different little steps that i have to take care of and check off before i go. buying insurance, researching hostels, getting my passport, etc etc. well, i finally took care of another big step yesterday… it’s one that i’ve been dreading and anticipating for a while now. i finally told my work that i’m leaving. it was difficult to decide on how much notice to give. on one hand, i didnt want to tell them too early in case they decided to get rid of me before my departure date, but on the other hand i wanted to give them plenty of warning so they could hire a replacement.

well, i told them yesterday, and everything went really well. they were all really cool about it. everyone i talked to said that they totally understood why i want to do this and were really excited for me. so that’s it. another major hurdle has been passed. yikes, the next month is gonna be soooo busy trying to get all the last minutes tuff done and moving.

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i’ve always hated the saying “what doesn’t kill me, makes me stronger". for some reason it’s always just seemed like a bunch of bullshit to me. taken in the literal physical sense, the saying is pretty much just dead wrong. someone who loses a limb in a car accident, or suffers a horrible debilitating disease will hardly be made stronger by their suffering. but, the saying really isn’t often used for physical problems, instead it’s mainly used regarding random emotional issues like break-ups w/ lovers or being fired from your job. but the thing is, even then, it’s really so often not the case. emotions and feeling are fragile, and crumble easily… they dont always get bolstered up by enduring hardships. a person robbed in an alley will forever be paranoid, an emotionally abused child may never be quite right again, the person once bitten will forever be twice shy.

i look around at people and sometimes they just seems so fragile and delicate… more and more bent and perforated by life as they go along, banged up by things that dont kill them, but sure as hell dont make them stronger. maybe the quote just depends on the person i guess. one can take hardships and use them for strength while others can endure the same hardships and they will only make them weaker. it’s weird, i’ve always been the kind of person who makes the best of things. even the worst situations for me end up not seeming so bad. i often wonder how i turned out like that. is it because my life has been relatively easy? pretty much every negative thing in my life has turned out ok, so maybe it’s just engrained in my mind that things eventually fix themselves. or maybe is it the other way around, has everything in my life turned out ok *because* of a positive attitude?

hrm. i really dont know where i was going with this….

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i went to yet another funeral yesterday. i’ve started attending these things all too frequently. one again, i find myself at the same old cemetary. just a year ago, there was only one person i knew in this cemetary, but by yesterday, that number had risento 5 people. the person who died was my grandmother’s brother’s wife. my grandmother’s brother had died only a week after my grandma, and everyone suspected that it was really just a question of time until his wife would pass away as well.

i really didnt know her all that well, so when i went to the funeral, i wasn’t sure how affected i would be by it. of course, it’s sad when anyone dies, and because of that i was sad, but it’s not like i would be personally affected by her death. regardless of that, the funeral was really sad nonetheless. seeing all the people that were close to her bawling and sobbing was very very difficult… but at the same time… i dunno, in a way it’s all a really beautiful thing depending on how you look at it. i think people are lucky that we care enough about each other to feel such intense and strong emotions when someone passes away. people love each other and slowly form strong unbreakable bonds together and when those bonds are severed, severed by death, the only thing that can break the unbreakable, it is only right that our whole world should come crashing down on us. i think life would be horrible and ugly if we could just shrug off the death of a loved one and not care. it’s only when someone’s absence can really hurt you, that they mean the most.

one thing i really disliked about this funeral, is that they chose to fill the grave at the ceremony. this means they brought in a bulldozer that lowered a huge cement slab into the grave and then filled it w/ dirt. for some reason, it all just seemed so impersonal an too high-tech for me. a bunch of guys in hardhats and a loud-ass bulldozer… my cousin said it was like we were on a construction site instead of a funeral.

so the funeral was pretty rough, and then we went back to the daughter’s house so everyone could eat. a lot of people made some good toasts. russians are all about toasting and giving speeches. it’s completely engrained in their culture. the saddest toast was one given by my grandma’s sister. she’s the last remaining sibling in the family and all of these recent deaths had really shaken her up, and yet she still got up and made a speech.

*sigh* what a day….

there’s this new reality tv show out called “the assistant". dude, this shit is soooo damn funny. i love reality tv and i love andy dick, so this show is totally perfect. it’s so hillarious how much he fucks w/ the contestants. on the very first episode, before the show even really starts, he comes down the stairs yelling “elimination time bitches!” and cuts one of the contestants. he makes them all sleep on these tiny cots in his garage and wakes them up in the mornings w/ a loud siren. he gives them this huge thousand page book called “the life and times of andy dick” and makes them memorize it. the whole thing is just so absurd!

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i went to this asian market today to buy some fresh fish. this place was pretty crazy. they had *huge* fish tanks with enormous fish swimming around. some of these fish were over 2 feet long! the whole place totally stunk of seafood. of course, i was prepared to see all the different types of fish, crabs, shrimp etc etc… but what i totally didnt expect was turtles. yeah, turtles for sale, only 5 bux each.

the turtles in that photo are alive by the way. still struggling about and climbing all over each other. it was a realy sad site. it’s so weird to think of people eating a turtle, especially i’ve known a bunch of people who have kept them as pets. i guess it’s just a cultural thing and realy… what’s to say that eating a lobster is fine but a turtle isn’t? it’s trippy how ingrained our cultural perspectives are. i keep wondering, would i ever eat dog? all sort of cultures out there do, and i keep wondering what i would do if i was offered some. maybe i’d try a bite just to see what it’s like. and the other question is, do different breeds of dogs taste different? how does a poodle taste compared to a german shepherd?

one of the turtles was able to escape the cardboard prison that he was in. unfortunately, he wasn’t smart enough to know that he was in just as much danger sitting next to the box as he was in when he was still inside. poor little guy…

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i was driving along listening to npr today and heard this hella crazy story. this reporter was talking about his experiences in this one area in columbia. i guess this area is ruled by these militant drug lords, but somehow he was able to get permission to be there. so he was saying that cocaine farming etc was so prevalent there and that it was such a crucial part of the economy etc, that a lot of people in town used it as *money*. i guess people will go to restaurants, and pay their restaurant tab w/ coke. or they’ll go to the doctor and pay the doctor w/ coke. or they’ll go to the candy store and buy their children candy… and pay for it with cocaine. this guy would see large groups of people just setting up huge tarps in the street and drying out huge piles of cocaine.

how crazy is that?? it’s so shocking to think that there could be a place where cocaine is so pervasive. i guess this reporter guy has all sorts of really hardcore photos of his experience in National Geographic.

after reading up about this a bit, it turns out that the area he was talking about is a section of columbia that was basically conquered by this group called Farc. this group is so violent and deadly that the government of columbia has no way of stopping them. they basically just took this area over, and now force the people who live there to grow cocaine and pay farc a “tax". they reportedly make about 300 million dollars a year. it’s pretty crazy to think that areas like this exist. areas that are completely lawless and ruled by whoever has the most guns.

in the year 2000, they announced a new policy: “[The FARC resolves to] collect the TAX FOR PEACE from those persons or corporations whose wealth is greater than $1,000,000 in U.S. dollars…Those who do not attend to this requirement, shall be detained. Their liberation shall depend upon the payment of the determined sum. PUBLISH AND COMPLY.” in other words, they will kidnap anyone in columbia who is wealthy and owns more than a million dollars.

here’s a link to the national geographic article

some more stuff about the Farc

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the other night we all went out to PF Changs since it was dave’s last night on the west coast. as i’ve mentioned before, him and sharon are moving to the east coast for the next 6 years. it sucks! we’ve all only known dave for a year or so, and yet we’re all super down with him. he’s hella smart, nice, and damn funny. hopefully, some day i’ll make it out to NY and havng out w/ him and sharon… or maybe we’ll meet up in africa, who knows?

after pfchangs we all got a few drinks at gordon biersch around the corner. i think all of us were traumatized/brought closer together by everything that happened last weekend, and it was good to hang out again. not sure why, but somehow a group photo got suggested, and we ended up taking abunch of pictuires of us standing around and posing. sheez, we are *such* dorks!!

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this happened a long time ago, but i just remembered it the other day and thought it was funny, so i’ll post about it anyways.

several years ago, elena, joey, and i drove down to LA for a party and i ended up getting crazy food poisoning. i was yacking like crazy over and over and over. we were at jerry’s deli and i was chilling in one of the stalls for a while getting ready to get sick yet again. at this point, some guy comes in, and i dont think he knew i was in there. after pissing, he walks up to the mirror and starts making all these crazy body builder poses. he’s flexing all his muscles, tapping them, etc… and then… he starts talking to his muscles!! “oh yeah, you guys are getting BIG eh? you’re looking GOOOOD. pretty soon you’ll be HUGE. oohhhh yeah!!!”

holy crap!! i couldnt believe that this dude was just gonna stand there and talk to his *muscles*. sheez.

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