THE G-LINES NEWSLETTER

Racial and Faith Equality

2012-02-16T23:10:00.000-05:00

I love that feeling of starting a project that’s your own and carrying it through to the end. I’ve decided to have Jasmin’s Summer Wish illustrated and self-published, so I can share it with more kids. Leading this project means that I can have the final word on both the art and the copy, which is so empowering. Since we’ve started the illustration process, the meaning behind the book has taken on a whole life of it’s own.

Jasmin, the main character, was initially set out to be ambiguously multi-racial to appeal to more kids in the city. I knew I wanted to have many kids identify with the main character, but recently, it grew more important that this book teach a lesson in racial and religious equality. Having a semi-brown main character only brushed over this issue.

I noticed that in New York, which has a relatively large Sikh community, there is very little awareness of who Sikhs are. If I didn’t have friends to help open my mind about accepting all faiths, I’m afraid I might also have made cringing judgments I’ve heard others make against people wearing turbans in New York. This fear of the unknown has caused much discrimination against Sikhs, and there is very little exposure to defend their community.

I thought it was important to show kids in New York that their neighbors aren’t so elusive and unknown. And I thought it would be important for Sikh kids to have a character they can identify with. So, that’s why I decided that Jasmin, as well as one of her friends in the book, will clearly be Sikh characters.

I dream big

2012-02-08T22:18:00.000-05:00

I dream big. I dreamed last night that I sold my novel. Simon and Schuster had scheduled a meeting early in the morning, and they put me up in a fancy penthouse hotel room in Soho the night before, which was interesting since I live blocks away from that neighborhood. I pretended that I lived in the hotel room, which was several times bigger than my apartment, counting the square-footage in the fire escape. That night, I went grocery shopping, filled the fridge with fresh produce, and cooked dinner for my friends using the stainless steel Viking oven that I had stumbled across. I opened the large loft windows, exposing my view to other windows in the sky. This is when I got the first taste of real wealth in New York City. These large windows exposed me to happy families dancing around their spacious apartments—the kind of apartments that you look for in Halstead Realty, just because. Because, that’s what you look for when you dream. Then suddenly, their windows went static. I had been watching TV screens, and these happy memories I was growing envious of were actually pre-recorded, rehearsed memories that didn’t really exist. I woke up promising to finish this novel for myself and to dream big, stay foolish, but stay humble.

Oh my God, it's the Curry Smugglers-- A review

2012-02-04T14:25:00.001-05:00

I'm sitting in a NYC coffee shop, listening to the Curry Smugglers Season 5 finale. I may be sitting next to a drafty door, but I feel like I've just materialized in the hottest club, drunk on life, rubbing against shirtless Goans, and hearing only the tightest remixes with all aspects of Desi flair.

DJs Paresh and Sachin have taken the time to sift through everything from Bollywood remixes to Bhangra and Goan trance, and they showcase only the artists they feel deserve the premier platform they have built together. They stand confident in their music selections and have a wealth of knowledge behind the effort put into the tracks.

After listening to five seasons of the Curry Smugglers free podcast, (also available on their website www.currysmugglers.com) I realized this show wasn't just made to fill the void for the bollywood meets hip-hop crossover. There is a whole world out there of talented artists who have perfected the details behind the melodic pull that can rock a club off it's foundation but don't necessarily have a voice in the commercial music world. The Curry Smugglers have stepped up to give these artists that voice, while being passionate about playing good quality music regardless of it's commercial success.

The Curry Smugglers defend a track from Raghav, who recently went under scrutiny for his recent songs being less traditional and too "commercialized" in an abridged excerpt below:

Paresh: He's not just Asian. He's an artist. He's supposed to try different stuff. Let him branch out.

Sachin: I don't think music needs to be seen as a commercial track or not. If you like it, you like it.

Paresh: At the end of the day, if people hear the song in the club, and there's some booty-shaking girls in the club, who cares?

Of course with this DJ duo, there is the "crack up in a public place" entertainment factor, guest interviews, blunt opinions about the Bollywood music industry not cutting it, and the human quality the smugglers bring when they melt in the presence of Honey, the Bollywood gossip guru from The Daily Honey.

As I break into Season 6, I have proclaimed myself a smuggler for life. And you will too.

Need more Curry Smugglin love? You can also follow them on twitter: @currysmugglers

Number 81 CHECK

2012-01-25T23:34:00.003-05:00

Number 81 on the bucket list- Help my dog catch a squirrel

So things are going to change on this blog. I'll be writing more often, You'll be happier and tell all your friends, and I'll be happier, because I get to share more thoughts with you. I'm looking forward to crossing more things off my bucket list, so stay tuned...

PEPPER'S STORY
When I first met my dog, Pepper, it was love at first sight. I was sitting alone in my apartment in South Boston in the beginning of 2009, and my sister, Kitty, called to ask if she could come over. I knew things were rocky between her and her boyfriend at the time, so I was prepared to put on my empathetic face. In about ten minutes, I was greeted by a severely underweight pointer named Pepper. I could tell that she hadn’t been bathed in months, and we laughed as we took turns holding our breath and hugging Pepper in a staggered rotation to ensure her that she was in a safe space.

“We have to save her,” Kitty said. She explained that after her boyfriend lost his six-figure salary job as a chef at a country club, he started canceling one luxury after another—his car, cable television, and later, the dog. He was now making 8 bucks an hour, cooking shitty bar food and could barely afford to feed himself. He grew depressed and crazy and expressed in passing that he was going to take Pepper to the animal shelter that puts dogs down, so that it would be a “clean break,” and Kitty dumped that boy, took her stuff, and dog-napped Pepper to my apartment.

And then I had a dog.

The most amazing dog really. She was so well behaved I thought. She was always leaning by my side. She knew all these amazing tricks that I didn’t have to teach her. But then I realized just how poorly treated she had been. She did whatever I told her to, because she had dependence issues and was beaten by her previous owner in shocking ways.

Every time I took her to the vet, I would discover the other methods of torture that she had endured in her past life: she had multiple Beebe wounds, was by a truck, had her ears chewed in dog fights, and was 20 pounds underweight. I had to feed her puppy food to fatten her up for the next 6 months.

She only smiled once, and that was when I took her on long walks. She would leave her stoic manner at the apartment and the creases at the edge of her mouth would curve up gradually as she led me on these expeditions. Pointers are working dogs by nature, which I learned quickly when she led me on these multi-mile walks with conviction. That was until Pepper saw a squirrel. And then all obedience, dependence and any memory of her frightened past would vanish, and she had determined that her life revolved around one thing, capturing that animal.

The proud foster mom that I was, I was determined to help her catch a squirrel, for I felt that achieving this goal would bring her complete joy and perhaps then, she would forget her past.

I would stealthily unleash her, avoiding the “leash your dog” signs, if I thought she was within biting reach of a furry creature. She only came close once, and confirmed that this was not a game of tag. A loud bite barely pulled out stray gray hairs from a lucky squirrel’s tail. She licked her lips. Her victory was so close.

Then, 2009 being what it was, I lost my writing job and was forced to take my old college job at the sailing center, where I got paid much less. At first, I cut my cable. Then I quit my gym…

Then I lost my apartment, and Pepper and I moved in with my parents. As I searched to find myself in the unfamiliar turf of depending on my parents, I was relieved to find that Pepper found pleasure in running around the acre long property, as well as the rest of the town.

I found personal defeat in Boston and sought relief in the New York industry, which had several job offers waiting upon my decision to move back. But how could I bring my now overweight and restlessly energetic dog to a tiny New York apartment? My parents agreed to take care of her. In fact, they had grown so attached to Pepper that they had their own aspirations for her. My mom enjoyed going on long morning walks with her, and my dad had plotted an evil plan to get back at the groundhog that had a vendetta against him and his garden.

But guilt still ensued. How could I have abandoned a dog that had been abandoned? I was finally back in New York making money, but I felt like I had pawned off something important to me. Furthermore, I could no longer give Pepper the opportunity to catch a squirrel, which had been a personal goal of mine. My dad would send me messages about how Pepper had adapted life in the country. Together, they flushed down a deer and sought revenge on wild turkeys.

A few months ago, while my dad was training Pepper to scare away the groundhog, she had cornered a wild rabbit that was 4 times the size of a squirrel, broke it's neck, and presented it to my dad as a present. This picture was texted to me during my lunch break at work.

Pepper found her catch, and from what I hear, she has been smiling ever since.
CHECK!

Jasmin’s Summer Wish

2012-01-02T16:43:00.002-05:00

[Title]
Jasmin's Summer Wish

For Jasmin who turned on the heater in Jamaica

Jasmin was a kid like you, who lived in New York City.
She loved warm weather oh so much that summers made her giddy.
But one hot day, the hottest day, there reached a record high.
A temperature of 102 was too hot to deny.

Jasmin still would skip along and when some expressed disdain.
She’d smile and say in a laid back way, “It’s summer, don’t complain.
I’ve waited all year for the summer to come,
and it breaks my heart that you wish we were numbed
by snow or slush, by cold or rain,
Why would you wish for yourselves this pain?”

She had made her point. She could have left, but still she turned around.
“In fact,” she said with a cheery head, “I wish it was summer all year-round.”
Suddenly, the sun did something no one could foresee
The thermostat crept up from 102 to 103.

A heat wave struck the city hard, and many dreamed of days,
When rain would force them inside to play board games while they graze.
“Jasmin!” They said.
“Don’t you wish the heat would fizzle,
or for raindrops, a sprinkling, a flurry, a drizzle?”

But Jasmin shook her head and said, “Summer should be forever.
To deny ourselves of sunny skies would simply not be clever.
And I truly doubt you want weather that causes such a bummer.
For you must admit the only time you wish for cold is summer.”

From Indian summers to African winters— the heat wave lasted years,
And naturally, the city changed. To all but Jasmin, was it clear.
It finally came to her during a game of hide and seek,
When her friends sought refuge in the frozen food aisle for a week.

A gasping realization came to her and made her say,
“The NYC I loved is now a boring place to play.”
Over air-conditioned spaces,
empty parks and playground places,
no more relay running races,
Endless frowning flower faces.

Confused by this, she wandered into Central Park to ponder,
And remembered all the seasonal events she once was fond of.
They used to freeze this dried-up pond: a place that she could ice skate on,
And where she jumped in piles of autumn leaves is now a grassless lawn.

As she walked past cacti gardens, little Jasmin pieced together,
How the city is affected by these changes to the weather,
And most of all she understood that growing plants need rain,
And also cold ‘cause everything must die to grow again.

Jasmin closed her eyes and wished for seasons to return—
for snowfall, frost and chilliness, her lesson had been learned.
And just like that, the clouds rolled in and blew an autumn breeze.
Winter coats went back on sale so people wouldn’t freeze.

Jasmin was so happy to have seasons as before,
Still, when the summer months arrived, she smiled slightly more.

Liz's Mix Volume 9: Discoveries from 2011

2011-12-12T21:15:00.002-05:00

One of my favorite holiday traditions began about 7 years ago when my friend from high school moved to England. At the time, I was in Philly being completely inundated with the indie music scene. We both shared a love for music and would make each other a mixed CD of music we had discovered while on either our travels in Europe or the warehouses of North Philly. Despite the later opportunities to easily shoot a you-tube link over in mid-discovery, we continued to send each other a tangible CD every year around the holidays. We have similar taste in music, so receiving each other's album gathered over the course of a year is like reliving that magic moment of discovery in one sitting. Tonight, I don't feel like writing the novel, and this kid in the cafe is sharing an awe-inspiring iTunes library (thanks "killer hip hop" from Earthmatters Cafe), so I've decided to put together my music discoveries of 2011. I have to admit, this year I'm playing catch up, as many of these songs are from a few years ago, but they each tell a story. I'm not going to tell it. The beauty of music is that I get to write less.

The List:
1. Never Give Up - Robin Thicke
2. Te Mando Flores - Fonseca
3. Vocal Chords - Dale Earnhardt Jr. Jr.
4. Through the Roof - Gogol Bordello
5. Mi Primer Millon - Bacilos
6. Inevitable - Shakira
7. The Broads - Minotaur Shock
8. Hold You - Gyptian
9. Obsesion - Aventura
10. Best Thing I Never Had - Beyonce
11. No I/ Ain Ani - Fools of Prophecy
12. Vanished - Crystal Castles
13. Take off Your Cool - Outkast (feat. Norah Jones)
14. Brother John/ Iko Iko - The Neville Brothers
15. Lucha De Gigantes - Nacha Pop
16. Bring on the Wonder - Susan Enan
17. Eterna Soledad - Los Enanitos Verdes
18. Ciega, Sordomuda - Shakira
19. Lamento Boliviano - Los Enanitos Verdes

Thanks Pandora, indie flicks, primetime dramas, WERS and my obsession with learning Spanish through music lyrics.

Do Christians need the promise of an afterlife to be good people on earth?

2011-12-12T10:43:00.000-05:00

Can’t I be a good person, not because I am expecting eternal life in return, but because I just want to be a good person? Sure I have my day-to-day struggles in my attempts to live like Christ. In a world where cutting in line and cheating to get ahead are the norm, I sometimes walk away questioning why I make things harder for myself through these honest yet hard choices. But the idea of “suffer now, go to heaven later” has never entered my mind. In fact, the more that I give blindly without expecting something in return, the better I feel, so much that knowing that I did something right, whether it benefited me or someone else is reason enough to continue doing it.

Now, how can I take this thought and relay it to those who challenge my belief in God and heaven? I want to tell them about how Christ lived and how contagious love can be when transferred blindly from one to another. I want to say, yes, I believe in God and an afterlife and I’m looking forward to it, but one’s decision to be kind to others on earth is irrelevant to whether or not I think I’m going to heaven, so not believing is no excuse to be dishonest or hateful toward anyone.

Be good, because you want that for the rest of the world. Be fair, because you want everyone to have a fair shot. And be honest, because you want to hear the truth. You might not get this completely in return, in fact, you won’t, but as many times as you give kindness, someone else will receive it.

Absent in blogging, present in the fictional world

2011-11-04T17:45:00.001-04:00

So it’s been a while since I’ve posted something… I’m aware. But this month may be a little scarce, since I’m participating in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). The goal of NaNoWriMo is to write a novel in the month of November, or at least 50K words of one. And if you register with www.nanowrimo.com, and track your word count through Google docs, you can enter the writing competition, which will select a winning novel after the month is over with cash and publication prizes in tow. I’m not officially enrolled in the competition, but I’m using this as a way to motivate myself to finish my existing novel. Through online forums and twitter (#nanowrimo is trending with vigor), I’ve found a great amount of support and camaraderie for my writing. I see it as though I’m running a marathon with several others, except I’ve already run 10 miles and I don’t have to cross the finish line at any particular time. So, while others are stressing about making their nightly word count, I can relax knowing that if I just open my word file once a day consecutively for a month, I’ll be doing more than I did last month. Of course, it would be nice to hit 50K well-written, edited words.

On top of this goal, I am eager to finish a new music review of Joe Lovano and Us Five, an amazing jazz ensemble featuring Esperanza Spalding on bass. It’s been a challenge translating my two-hours of a spellbound face into words that follow my review style, but should I find myself procrastinating from the above project, you just might see my more recent review.(http://www.joelovano.com/videos/detail/11/Us-Five)

Also on the radar is a review from the famed DJ duo Curry Smugglers, who have created the now necessary platform for up and coming artists with a South Asian influence. (www.currysmugglers.com)

BAMF creative lost their (our) first pitch which was a big let down, but we’re looking to win back the next one and blow them away with our badass ideas. The next campaign, due in January will have to completely take over.

See? I’m writing. A lot. And I have a job. Where I write more.

All Day I Dream Of You--DJ Lee Burridge Review

2011-10-03T23:01:00.003-04:00

September 18, 2011

In a barren and industrial part of Brooklyn, outside of a concrete warehouse-turned shitty apartment building, thirty flamboyant hipsters and a bouncer stood in isolation. The heartbeat to house music steadily throbbed from the rooftop and echoed throughout the neighborhood, assuring those below that the ever-so pedestrian action of standing in line was only temporary. I had been in this line before, but I didn’t get in the last show. Now, with ticket in hand, I was guaranteed admission, at some point. The kid in front of me wore tattered jeans and a black silk jacket with a patch, which read “SILK JACKET” stitched on the breast pocket. He bent his knees and squirmed before turning around to talk to me.

“I have to piss. Can you hold my place in line for me?” After I assured him that his place in line was safe, he handed me two colorful pills. “So, you know I’ll be back.”

“That’s okay, I believe you,” I hastily blurted out as I handed him back his stash. He didn’t come back.

Before I knew it, we were fighting the 10-flight walk up to the rooftop. After a quick check-in, a fuzzy hippie branded each of us with an “All day I dream of you” stamp, and the line dispersed into the crowd. Bright orange cloth streamers and lanterns hovered effortlessly above the crowd. There were tents selling tacos and drinks on rooftop corners and plush couches with fluffy pillows.

In the center of it all were the high crowd, the nodding crowd, the dancing crowd, then the inner layers of the hypnotized crowd, who pressed as closely to the speakers as their ears would let them. Nestled deep in the seed of this energy, was the man responsible for it all, Lee Burridge. Unlike other DJs, who either remain behind the curtain or perched on a platform for those to admire, Lee was clearly responsible for this magic but put himself at eye level to identify with our emotions. It’s as if he depended on our energy to feed his fire of talent, and we didn’t disappoint.

I started at the outskirts of the high people and eased my way closer to the stage. Between the head nodders and the dancers stood a hybrid of sorts. This girl had her eyes closed and her mouth open and she swatted her arms at the air with every measure. My friend and I were completely spellbound by her. We watched every tone change sweep through her body and widen her smile.

“She doesn’t look high.”
“I think she’s just feeling the music.”
“Oh... can we do that?”
So, we decided to close our eyes and “feel the music” for about two minutes before checking in with each other afterward. About a minute later, we caught each other looking to see if the other one was bored yet.

The music was good, but I felt like we were watching everyone around us ride this exhilarating roller coaster, simultaneously experiencing the same bumps and loops with lofty expressions, but we had missed our chance to buckle in and were stuck holding everyone’s shit.

A new theme took over, and we were instantly drawn like mosquitoes to a bright light. The drumbeat echoed through me as the bass line established a strong foundation, and as Lee stacked one track over another, song samples mathematically strung together in perfection, my eyes closed and my jaw fell open.

Deeper into the song, I felt this powerful uplifting charge moving amongst the crowd. With the combination of Lee’s music and the crowd’s energy channeling through me, I felt pure freedom from everything I ever learned to know. I left this show with more than a new-found appreciation for house music. I now have further support that music is the reason why I live.

This show taught me a valuable lesson. House is not just a genre of music. You can’t judge it by downloading a 20-minute song and simply hearing. You need to be in a musty basement feeling the cold air wisp by, despite a tight sweaty crowd of blissful attention-deficit kids. You need to be on a rooftop watching jaded city girls close their eyes and let go. You need to be patient enough to saturate yourself with every feeling of animate being before you can honestly transgress to the next stage. You have been chosen to become the advanced listener. Don’t blow it.

Lee Burridge’s music is an intricate collection of whimsical stories powered by the energy of the crowd he entertains. Find a show and get your tickets early. This guy has some serious followers.

BAMF Creative

2011-09-17T17:04:00.001-04:00

I've worked in the ad industry for a while and it's not the industry I thought I was going into when I was in college. I couldn't wait to be in an environment of endless stimulation, surrounded by these incredibly creative people that continued to blow me away with new ideas.

I've worked at large holding companies, small start-ups, and conflict shops, and it's all the same...

Each project is full of too many chefs with the least creative people in the world making the most important decisions, beating good ideas down so hard that they have lost their vigor and meaning by the time the project is out the door.

You don't have to be in an agency to know what I'm talking about. The media is all about stimulation, but they have continued to throw shock without meaning so many times that they have desensitized the most horrific moments and appalling language (ahem MTV). Talented musicians are selling their sounds one hook at a time, only to be rehearsed to the point of exhaustion. Nothing is fresh anymore.

I feel like the media is trying so desperately to get our attention that they are constantly fighting to shock us. If they were to paint a picture, they would want to throw out all these bright colors at us, but because all these non-creative types get a hand in it, they unknowingly mix all the colors together, and instead of painting this beautiful piece of art that they pay so much money to market, they instead create that nasty purple/brown mud color that can only come from cheap generic paint. For all of you who weren't design majors,, see below for clarity.

If I had my own ad agency, this is what it would be like...

-We would only hire people who have their own side projects that we believe in (real creatives believe in themselves other than their ability to write about Ritz crackers and Cialis.)

-Our clients seek us out to come up with that one amazing marketing tactic that works better than waning drawn out campaigns that cost the same and don't work.

-This is a new age: people don't pay attention to long drawn out campaigns (unless it's 5 commercials strung together during the Superbowl), they say "Remember the time when Kayne interrupted Taylor Swift a day after his clothing line, Pastelle, failed...oh you don't remember that second part? It's called good PR.

-If a client offers us tons of money to do something boring or stupid, we wouldn't do it (maybe we'd have a list of non-clients on our site titled, "People who asked us to do something stupid or boring")

-We would work on standard media like print, digital and social media campaigns, but we would also offer other services like guerilla marketing tactics, psychosocial marketing tactics and creating new media platforms that blow their fucking minds away

-No pharmaceutical advertising (too many rules)

So, we're starting it right now: one account director, one copywriter and one art director. The plan is to continue business as usual at our real jobs but work on these two pitches at night. That's right, two pitches. Two companies. We rock. We're called BAMF creative. Follow us on twitter. @BAMFcreative

Hot-blooded and Unabashed: A Band Review of Gazelle

2011-08-29T21:28:00.000-04:00

Sunday night I arrived at the upstairs lounge at Pianos in the Lower East Side. A small place to house a powerful voice, I thought, as Pianos tends to host bands with a metallic flair that would require good sound diffusion to appreciate.

About to start were the acoustic duo, Gazelle. Armed with a short blue dress and some serious copper pipes, the lead singer, Zeena Koda stood in unapologetic confidence, ready to either blow us away or take us all out. With the ever-present resilience that could only stem out of Jersey City, she already told the audience and myself that we fucking suck at least twice before the show even began.

With a swift methodic kick of the amp below him, the bearded quieter half, Jason Urbanski, interwove the makeshift bass drum with his rarely amplified guitar into a whirling rhythmic motion that sent us all into a trance.

Koda’s smooth sultry voice opened us up to her world, and jaws dropped as her voice fluidly progressed into a powerhouse of endless capacity that drew consistent throughout. Deep into the show, it was clear that she could take us on an emotional high in an unyielding rasp that moves you like that of the Wilson sisters without the dramatic hook.

I followed the impressive oscillations, and though pitchy and raw at times, one particular melancholic tune at the end of the set convinced us all that a Gazelle show is a ride worth taking.

Self-described as a “beat laden slap in the face,” Gazelle has this impassioned sound that will push limits as far as an acoustic guitar can go. Just make sure you see them in a venue with enough room to support a powerful voice. It was difficult to find the sweet spot in the upstairs Pianos venue, and personally, I like to keep a safe distance from those of Jersey City.

ToughMudder: how much do you really love mud?

2011-08-05T11:38:00.002-04:00

I thought the Tough Mudder would bring back those momentous child opportunities to jump in mud puddles without the contrition of getting dirty. Dressed in an ensemble that I was prepared to discard afterwards, I arrived with the idea that I would be in a cross-country foot race with a few obstacles meshed between to keep the running part less boring. But having never looked at the course map and without a hint of mudder-dedicated training, I was far less prepared than I thought.

The first few miles fulfilled my desire to engage in several deviant acts that wouldn’t warrant judgment, like throwing mud at strangers. But the decreasing temperatures made me question how much inner child I was channeling on this 9-mile trek. As I sit solemnly, achingly, wondering how I bruised my kidney, I can’t help but wonder if anything good came out of this.

To help you determine if sacrificing your warm soul is really worth the orange headband and free beer, take these lessons as you will.

Lesson One:
Maybe training isn’t a bad idea
I hadn’t run in 8 months, but climbing 3 times a week gave me the false sense that I was in amazing running shape. I was very wrong. The climbing didn’t go unnoticed, for one of the most challenging events was the inclining monkey bars, which I completed successfully and earned a free slice of pizza, but had I trained properly, this may not have been the sole highlight of this race.*

There are several helpful training videos you can follow. I ignored all advice because many of the videos end with the trainees shaving their heads and grunting into the camera, but they all serve a helpful purpose.

Lesson Two:
Even space blankets have their limits: Dress Warm
The base of Mount Snow was 60 degrees, the perfect temperature for a road race. Of course, I didn’t account for the rapidly declining temperature as we ascended further up Mount Snow, or the several obstacles, where we were submerged in frigid waters. Whether we jumped off a 15 foot platform into a recently unfrozen pond (Walk the plank), waded through a river with a snow maker shooting a storm at us (The ball shrinker), or dumpster dove into red dye and ice cubes (forgot how to read at that point), the space blankets that the organizers gave out were hardly considered generous. At least I have the priceless memory of burly tattooed men grasping their aluminum sheets in desperation.

A layer of Under Armor or other quick drying material will save you from being one the 150 victims of hypothermia in each Tough Mudder race. A pair of neoprene socks isn’t a bad idea either.

Lesson Three:
There are several different types of mud, and your ankles will hate them all
The snowmakers were working full-time to ensure there was not a dry grain on the course, which created mud of different viscosity levels, and each required a different approach to avoid a twisted ankle.

Some of the more memorable kinds to watch out for:

Step, Step, Sink- The unleveled bottom of the mud puddles in the woods creates some comic relief as even a careful canter can result in a single leg covered in thigh high muck

Swamp of Sadness- Move too fast in this dense clay mass and you will likely trip over your heavy mud-gathered sneakers and face plant, move too slow and the suction will steal your sneakers altogether. After mile 7, you won’t notice the difference anyway.

Wintry Mud Mix- The snow bits provide some much needed traction to climb uphill, and shuffling quickly downhill will ice your sore calves.

Overall, the Tough Mudder is a spiteful challenge that gives you a pool of vinegar to crawl through after falling down a hill of sharp ice and makes you run through dangling live electric wires after getting soaked from an icy waterslide. Of course, every obstacle is optional, and you still get your free beer if you don’t finish. So your level of sadism is completely up to you.

Good luck Mudder Muckers.

*Tough Mudder is not a race, it is a “personal challenge” as they advertise, but it’s still a race against your diminishing body heat.

SURFING IN PICHILEMU, Chile Part 5

2011-07-02T16:37:00.001-04:00

Another long drive with Chico Max and Leo, and the 20-song playlist was starting to annoy me. They let me play my music for the last hour of the trip, despite their dislike in my chick rock taste. I had just bought the Florence and the Machine album and insisted on playing it.

“Please, no more!” Leo begged me to stop. Changing wetsuits in front of each other didn’t phase the two genders, but certainly music choice was where the line would be drawn. I could tell they were in agony, and I eventually surrendered my music privileges to their 20-song playlist.

We came to the quaintest little touristy beach town yet. With tents in the center of town selling t-shirts, shells and nearly everything else with the words “Pichilemu” on it, I knew that surfing wouldn’t be the only exciting thing I did here.

Max drove us to the big break at Punta de Lobos. We walked to the cliff edge and watched as 9 foot waves threw a surfer on his board down one of the longest runs of the day. I watched in awe.

“You’re not going to surf this. We decided you’re not ready.” Max informed me that I’d be surfing at La Puntilla. I trusted their judgment, but felt left out that I was succumbed to a petty little place called Little Point as opposed to Wolf Point.

One of the highlights of Pichilemu was the hostel we stayed in—Hostel Case Verde. I walked in and was instantly greeted by four girls talking about how excited they were to go surfing the next day. After claiming our bunks, we collectively exhaled in the common area and mingled with the characters of the hostel.

I shared about my time in Puertocillo and my surfboard injury in a more noble light. When they questioned my story, I lifted my chin, revealing the shiner that was growing in vividly.

Nim had worked as an iBanker in the financial district of London until the death of her father led her to decide whether banking was really worth her hard-earned time on earth, thus sparking her traveling journey of at least 6 months. And traveling beside her for the last month was Miriam, a Dutch girl, whose American-taught English was slowly transforming and was gaining a bite of British influence adopted from the outspoken Nim.

Jasmin had made a promise back home in Germany to her newly divorced parents that she would find an internship by the end of the summer, before she was allowed to spend their money. The loophole? Traveling as much as you can, and spending what you can until your parents get a hold of you is a good plan B and a good deterrent for avoiding a bad home situation.

These stories led me to think if I was running from anything. My iPhone was soon hijacked by Nim out of boredom for better music and without contest from me.

“Oh, I love Florence and the Machine,” she said and I chuckled, wishing Max and Leo were in the room to hear that. The new album was interrupted by ringing noises, which caught me off guard since I knew I couldn’t afford anything other than airplane mode. Somehow I had wi-fi… and a voicemail from home.

I took the phone to the bedroom and realized that yes perhaps I was running from something. My very drugged-up sister had left me a message in English words that made no sense. Having spent a week in Chile, where no one was collectively fluent in the same language, I was looking forward to a coherent conversation in my home tongue. This wasn’t it. I finally decided that I was far enough away to let it go and trust that she was in good care, which she was. I needed to be this far.

With the little count of reality still scratching at my mind, I wished for some luck on the water at La Puntilla.

I was on the water now and left behind all my inner-thoughts at the rocks. Jasmin and I followed Leo to the bigger breaks. We paddled past the crowd of beginners, past the plastic boards, past the friendly “holas” and the “olas buenas” conversations to the deeper part that no beginner dared to brave. Of course, that wasn’t enough. Jasmin and I had dreams of surfing Punta de Lobos, and this was a sad compromise. That was until we realized the waves approaching us were overhead. This was the best setup. We were in deep waters away from rocks, so we could afford to take risks, but I didn’t realize that the waves were also a lot stronger. Each steep ramp threw me down the wave so fast, I forgot to stand, and then had to hear from Leo about how real surfers stand earlier. This was my first overhead wave, and I didn’t want to risk falling, so I bodyboarded each time down and stood when I felt comfortable to Leo’s dissatisfaction.

The next wave was different. I paddled, caught it, stood, fell, without even realizing I had caught anything, and of course without taking in that security breath, just in case I was where I was, on the wrong side of the ocean. Instead of light, fast and exhilarating—dark, tortuously slow, and terrifying. The calm, fetal position wasn’t working, so in a panic, I swam toward an unknown direction as sure as I could be, but quite honestly, I couldn’t tell you what that did other than waste my energy. I surfaced and gasped with tears and whimpers following. After a few more deep breaths, I quickly gained my composure and prepared to pretend as though nothing had happened. I looked around for Jasmin and Leo, but I couldn’t find them. Another big wave came through from the distance, and Jasmin emerged on top of it for a few seconds before taking a painful spill on her board. I found her when she came up, and the panic of being held under for her didn’t go away.

“I came up and I was like where am I? I couldn’t find anyone or the shore or anything.”

Having just experienced the same thing, I suggested that we spend some time near the beginner waves to gain our self-confidence back, and Leo agreed that we needed some more practice responding to the fast moving waves.

There we met up with some familiar faces from the hostel among hundreds of others. This was a place where every wave was a party wave, meaning several surfers would paddle for the same wave at once, but no one actually ever caught it, which was ideal for the people who could. This was until we saw two surfers collide, and then shrug and laugh. I was relieved to be in this joyous atmosphere, but my fiberglass board was cringing, so we headed back to the hostel for lunch.
Waiting solemnly at the bottom of the stairs were more hilarious characters staying at the hostel.

Tiger was an actor who had shot a movie in Pichilemu that took 2 weeks less time than he anticipated, and decided to simply not change his return ticket, but from his attitude, it seemed as though he would have been content with never returning at all. He fully embraced the town by taking Spanish classes, surf lessons and making friends with the locals. Tiger had also just come from La Puntilla and had broken his third rental board in 3 days. He stood there like a child in trouble, holding a short board with a slash mark across the tail. Pete was one of the owners of the hostel and shook his head in disbelief looking at the damage. How would he explain this to his close friends at the surf shop?

The Casa Verde Hostel and its owners and temporary dwellers collectively made me feel at ease, like a home should be, and the surfers and I made an intense routine out of our days that a home base to retreat to was needed.

Chico Max

7AM watch the guys surf Punta de Lobos
9:30AM breakfast
11AM I surf at La Puntilla
2PM lunch
4PM afternoon surf session
7 dinner
…sometimes we had an early dinner and a sunset surf session. This was my life for a week.

A week into this surf trip and my appetite was no longer shy. On Friday, Leo and Chico Max brought out Tilapia and rice with a side of sliced tomatoes and avocado for lunch, I amazed them with the ability to finish before them. Having gone on surf trips with guys before, I became increasingly impressed with my surf guides’ master cooking abilities. Marinated pulled pork, seasoned steak, fresh fall-off-the-bone fish, with veggies and rice on the side. I could easily get used to the rigorous schedule they had me on.

“Liz G, it’s the last weekend of summer, and the hostel is having a seafood night for dinner, tomorrow. What do you say we relax, enjoy seafood night with our new friends and go out to the club?”

I know I needed a break and I was looking forward to bonding with everyone from the hostel. Two more travelers came in a few days before, Tim and Kai, and I felt like I didn’t get the chance to greet them yet.

Like a real household, we designated chores for each other, setting out the forks and bowls and expanding the table, while Pete worked his magic in the kitchen. A huge steaming pot came to the table consisting of mussels, clams, scallops and several other shelled creatures boiling in broth. If Casa Verde wasn’t a home already, sharing this feast together made it real.

A few times, I had been reminded that other than the residents of Chile in the room, everyone else had been traveling for several months with many more to go. And up until seafood night, I wasn’t traveling, I was “vacationing.” I say I needed a home to come back to at the end of the day, but these guys needed a home to come back to after leaving Bolivia. And it all seemed to make sense why Nim made her bed everyday; this wasn’t like home to them. This WAS home.

Although bonding made me want to spend more time with my temporary family, the schedule of the week I was used to made me restless after a few hours.

“I want to go surfing,” I exclaimed, but Chico Max and Leo made plans based on what we agreed to before, so instead I walked to the beach, board in hand with Tim and Kai.

Tim was an arborist from Melbourne, Australia, a rugged, resourceful and remarkably selfless guy, who was Punta de Lobos worthy. But because he was also go-with-the-flow, and willing to do anything to surf, he accompanied us to La Puntilla for the smaller waves.

A few paddles past the rocks, I started to reconsider whether putting all your weight on your stomach after eating a seafood feast was a good idea. It wasn’t. Although I had come a long way to surfing overhead waves this week (still bodyboarding at the crest, but standing much earlier), I had also been breaking new ground on different types of surfing disasters. So far, I had been hit in the face the hardest, held under the water the longest, and thanks to seafood night, I was now puking in the water. Check!

Later that night, Pete set a campfire, and the Casa Verde family sat outside nursing pisco colas and wrestling with the dogs, Pichi, Turi and Flaite while music blasted from the house. We took all the surfboards and wetsuits out of Chico Max’s SUV and headed to town for the Waitara Club; a crowded place that I barely remember.

I woke up at noon. Max suggested that if we eat something lean and healthy we would feel better.

“I want pizza.”
“Really? You don’t want grilled vegetables and rice and fish?”
“No, I want pizza.”

After a short tour around the town, we found a pizza place and I ordered two pizza “slices.” Although, it tasted like something from an elementary school cafeteria, the grease and simple carbs did the trick.

By Monday, I was well rested and ready for a long session. Half of the surfers from the previous week had gone back to Santiago to work or start school. The swell in La Puntilla had increased to overhead in all parts, and I had the best 3-hour session of the trip, standing at the top of the wave and riding the fast waves through until they fizzled out. Unsure of what the previous week’s struggle would amount to, I was relieved to be making some noticeable progress.

Back at the hostel, there was a more serious tone. Pete’s girlfriend, Michi, asked me if I felt anything bizarre. There had been a small earthquake, a rumble, while I was on the water. I came here knowing that rumbles in Chile were common, but the serious tone brought a reminder that the yearlong anniversary of the record-breaking earthquake was the next day. Although the center was hours away, in Pichilemu, alone, nearly 300 people had died.

“Tag it or lose it.” The awkward silence was broken as Pete discovered that someone forgot to tag their food in the fridge. He took out a yogurt and pretended to open it before Nim and Miriam came barrelling through the door to stop him.

“Tag your food, ladies, or I eat it. That’s the rule, and I like strawberry yogurt.”

Pete knew he had a needed role to keep the atmosphere light, and he put on some Bob Marley and shouted the lyrics to make us all smile again.

Summer was officially over and our family was preparing to disband, and had I not been reminded that I was working the next Monday, I would have followed one of them. Some travelers were headed North toward the hotter beaches of Peru, and others were headed South towards Patagonia or to climb the volcanoes in Puccan. Pete and Michi were going back to Santiago, and housekeeping duties were replaced by Benjamin, a crazy surf nut, who made up words and had a liking for Nim who he nicknamed Lady Gaga. Nim called him Jamon, ham in Spanish, which the rest of the house adopted.

The waves these next few days were pathetic. On the water, I would see something promising headed toward me, then I would turn around and paddle, and by the time I turned around again, the wave would disappear. This was quite frustrating, but shorter sessions allowed me to further bond with my family before they left—before I left.

We were running low on food, and this cute little restaurant at the bottom of the driveway looked promising. At this family-owned joint, you could order one of three kinds of fish, grilled or fried, with rice, veggies or mashed potatoes. We ended up going three times after that and I learned more about Tim, Kai and Nim, the only ones left other than Miriam, who had met a Dutchman and disappeared often.

Leo was getting tired of speaking English and went back and forth a few times with Chico Max in their singing Chilean dialect.

“Pasa la cola, ahuevonao.”

That was not how you say pass the cola, man. These weeks taught me not repeat anything I learned from them. On top of Chile having a separate sub-language of dialect and expressions, Jamon and Leo had become known to make up their own words and expressions as well.

“Mira,” said Leo. Look in Spanish, but to Leo, it was also an expression that something was amiss. A limping dog came to greet us at the restaurant. It was the neighbor’s dog, Nerd, which was good news, because Nim thought she had lost him nearly a week ago, when she went to take the dogs for a walk. The hostel owners would remind her about it frequently and tease her, but they knew Nerd would find his way home, eventually.

With Nim and Miriam on the bus headed North, the rest of us decided to take a day trip to Puertocillo one last time before we went back to Santiago.

Leo and Chico Max said I was ready to surf Puertocillo again.

“The waves are the same height, but you have your sea legs, now. You can do this.”

Our hostel picked up and relocated to Puertocillo for the day. I wish I could say that I trumped those 7-foot waves, but my mind wasn’t in it. I focused on the waves closer to the shore and had some unsuccessful half-assed attempts. I got what I needed out of this trip, even if I didn’t ride out a barrel, I was ready to go back to New York. Tim, Kai and Jamon went in one car, and Chico Max, Leo, and I went in another, back to Santiago.

On the ride back, I wondered if anyone at Casa Verde would remember me amongst the several others they would encounter on their continued trip. I will never forget them.

Through the Roof and Underground.

2011-05-26T19:22:00.000-04:00

I saw the film, Wristcutters this weekend, which exposed me to some great music...and these guys are from the LES too.

SURFING IN PUERTOCILLO Chile Part 4

2011-05-17T00:26:00.000-04:00

The beach point ended in steep and porous rock with sharp edges I could feel through my thick rubber booties. We walked to the end as Chico Max explained to me how there were still some sharp rocks hidden beneath the beginning of the break and how to maneuver around the tight wave sets.

One by one, we jumped off the rock and into the Antarctic-inspired Pacific, board first, hipbones second. One hand motion after another, I followed Leo as we made a wide turn around the break line.

“Hurry up, Liz G, or you’ll have to…” I held my breath and got ready for the first head dunk as I ducked beneath the wave in front of me. Ignoring the icy headache, I kicked and struggled, unconvinced that I missed the strong cycle above me, but when I popped up shortly behind Leo, I was reassured.

Leo and Max each caught one with ease, and I got more impatient as I saw their heads dart by, then disappear beneath the overhead. Finally, behind me, there was something forming, and as the shimmer got closer and the peak formed, I realized I was in the perfect spot. I looked around and other surfers lined up beside me, waiting for me to fail. My polite grin turned into a gritting as I paddled to meet the break.

I went from being among a group of surfers sitting in still water to being encompassed by a steep declining ramp with a white giant throwing me from behind. This was the strongest wave I’ve ever been on, and call me what you will but I bodyboarded the drop before even considering to stand. I stood unevenly. My forward leg cramped and I collapsed in front of my board. With my hands over my head, I felt my right ankle pull in alternate directions as my board tested its tight tether in the cold cycle. But it was soothing to know that other than the rocky point, we had nothing but black sand and cold water to worry about.

I came up unharmed with the energy of that strong push still circulating through me. Catching my breath, I attempted to make that same wide turn around the breakline, unaware of where the first wave had carried me. I was now deep inside the swoosh of the point fighting a current that wanted to take me back to the main beach.

“You’re out of shape. Paddle, paddle, paddle, duck and paddle some more” I told myself, but watching the rocks on the beach move swiftly by, despite my reverse efforts, I gave up and walked to the beach to ascend my walk of shame back to the point.

Once I was out of the water, my relentless determination miraculously metamorphosed into apathy. My arms could barely hold my board. I was tired, but while in this daze, I managed to tiptoe around the sharp rocks at the point. I passed a barefoot man and his dog sitting at the edge of the point looking out, collecting thoughts and images. I felt a pinch in my toes and wondered how the man made it to the edge. I was distracted as I jumped off the rock, probably still looking for that man’s shoes, I voluntarily dove right into a tight set of high waves. My hybrid board didn’t have the most aggressive nose, and I tended to miss ducks during tight sets, because it took me a while to sink the board sometimes. I thought of this and looked behind me to see where I might end up if I got caught in the wave cycle again. Sharp rocks. The rest of this session was filled with obligatory paddling and missed ducks.

I knew waves were different everywhere, but I had been nurtured with light fluffy waves and wide sets. Chilean waves had a lot of powerful cold water behind them, and the sets were lined up waiting to drown the weak and keep the experienced happy. This early in the trip, I had already determined I was the weak one.

My thighs felt thick like they were covered in jelly, and my breath was shallow and faint. As I lay in the hammock at the Puertocillo Hostel, counting my breaths, I wondered if I could honestly make it to 10 days, or if these surf guides, really strangers I knew nothing about, would let me wither away.

“Liz G!” someone yelled. I woke up to three huge piles of pasta on the outside patio with Leo and Chico Max waiting patiently for me. With my body startled from constant struggle, I was eager to gain back energy with food. A few bites in and I found myself struggling again, realizing that my gasping for life muscles were so closely connecting with my eating muscles. I watched entertained as Chico Max and Leo shoveled the pasta in their mouths as fast as they could swallow.

“No more, Liz G?” They kept addressing me as Liz G, but in a lower gangster rapper kind of tone.

“Tell me, Liz G, why are you called Liz G?”
“I’m not. Why do you keep calling me that?” Max looked confused then took out his phone to show me the string of emails between us, where I signed each time, Liz G. In work mode, I was unconsciously discerning between myself and the other Liz in our office, which in the Southern Hemisphere translated to an elusive gang name title. So used to the drone of work, I applied my habits everywhere. I smiled knowing that I was where I needed to be, away.

A few hours of “napping,” or restless mind racing from body shock, and Max and Leo were ready for another session.

The water didn’t seem any different, but this time I had a much easier time getting out and reading the waves. Chico Max and Leo were at the first lineup, closer to the rocks, while I stayed further back with the polite surfers who always let me inside, always. There was something wrong. Nothing is worth the gift of giving good waves away. I was so flattered that these gentlemen were being so generous, until I found out what they were doing.

A wave crested in the distance. This was my chance. Off I went. Paddle, paddle. Breath, Liz. Don’t forget to breath. Shit, paddle! (I talk to myself) I wasn’t paddling fast enough, and the wave went over me, conveniently, just in time for the next guy to catch it. Sure, these guys were being really friendly, even coaching me in the right spot, but I was put on the inside, because they didn’t think I could catch the waves.

I paddled back to my lineup and smirked at them. “I’m gonna catch it this time.”

“Que?”

They didn’t read the conviction on my face. They put me right inside and smiled.

Another wave came, perfect for our lineup. (Why do I always hold my breath) I took off right away this time, and exerted what I could without breath, until I finally peaked with the wave and prepared to drop. But wait! Why are these guys still paddling? Why are they dropping? I’m on the inside. This one dude, my encouraging coach for the first twenty paddle strokes was less then a foot away, dropping in on MY wave. We dropped together and I panicked. My board isn’t one with precision, especially when I’m on it, and I would have run him over indefinitely. I dove inside, without thought. Even though I was in a sandier, safer area, the panic left me more disoriented than usual, but I surfaced with my board in front of me. When my eyes came to focus, I was right in front of a fast moving wave on the inside with two surfers competing for it with my board blocking my face to the wave. No time to hop on my board, no time to duck, no time to move. The wave threw my board to my chin and the force of the wave went right up my nose, crashing waves of salt water on my brain. I rose to the surface in terror, and Leo was there to see the tremble in my face, although there wasn’t much I could feel at the time.

“Is my nose broken? Is it bleeding?” He inspected my face with empathy.

“Everything looks in tact. Do you want to go in?”

Day one and I’m already injured and going in early, I thought. What a terrible first day that would be.

“No. I’m going out there and beating up those fuckers.”

Thankfully Leo still thought I was incapable of such anger and chuckled silently at what he thought he heard.

My arms were done, and I half-assed a few attempts, making the other guys in the lineup happy with my misses, before paddling in.

I was really looking forward to dinner. Leo unwrapped a steak on the counter and seasoned it with salt and pepper. I pretty much had skipped eating all day and was looking forward to some form of rejuvenation, whether it be in food or confidence. I was in luck. Chico Max saw the whole ordeal of other surfers trying to take my waves and retold the story, focusing on my insistence to drop and ignoring my messy spill. He would later use that story to deter the other surfers from scheming to take my waves. While I was dealing with some drama in my lineup, the guys had some turf wars in theirs.

“Eh concha tu madra, dejame correr. Soy local. Mis reglas aqui.” The guys spent the rest of the night mocking the line they heard that day.

“Pass the salt, man, soy local.”

My frustrating day was abated by the comic relief of these guys. Chico Max inspected his last piece of steak. As he peeled back the pink pithy ends, a surge of white puss emerged. After an exchange of uncomprehending Chilean slang, they burst in a fit of laughter.

“He said a joke,” clarified Leo, realizing the words may have been lost.

“Yeah, I know.”

The next few days of surfing Puertocillo were uneventful, since I didn’t drop anything without body boarding my way down, and bright purple bruises were shining through on my hips and ribs, proof that I was a coward doing some serious tummy time.

I had already lost focus. Spanish conversation around the barbeque fire was getting faster and I could no longer pick up snippets of conversation. I zoned out and stared at the fire, making out animated faces in the glowing coals.

The last day we went climbing, and I saw Chico Max and Leo in another light. Max the short, tough, aggressive man on the water was terrified of heights and falling rocks, and he left out of boredom in 20 minutes. Leo and I made up a route that took us the whole afternoon to actually complete.

“What are we gonna name it?”

“La Mañosa, because it’s very moody. It has high and lows. It’s really easy, then really hard.”

It was the perfect name for it. I helped set a route that Leo claimed was two grades harder than my personal best. Whether I truly believed him or not, my confidence was gained back, and I was ready to conquer the next shanty beach town.

DRIVING TO PUERTOCILLO, Chile Part 3

2011-04-25T14:27:00.001-04:00

I woke up at 8:30; both startled that I was late and surprised that I woke up at a decent hour. I ran downstairs for breakfast and ran into Chico Max and Leo, my surf guides, who I would spend the next 10 days with.
“Ready to surf, Liz G?”
Honestly, I was a bit foggy, and this was the first of many experiences where I would have great difficulty balancing a physically demanding surf trip with a hostel lifestyle.

We went behind the hostel bar to pull out some surfboards including mine, and the flashbacks set in. It was only 3 hours ago that I drunkenly talked some Brazilian guys into breaking into the unattended bar so they could see my 6’6 biscuit board that I hadn’t used since September. They were quite impressed, and I neglected to tell them that this was really a beginner’s board in disguise, or a hybrid—the marketing euphemism. But there was something about a board with thick love handles that I couldn’t part myself with. Sure, I sometimes missed a duck or two and got slapped in the face by a cold wave, but the ride was always smooth. And I thought of this when Guillerme, the Brazilian, let his grip go, leaving my board to be pulled to the floor by a gravity way out of it’s element.

“No!” Sacrificing my knees to the concrete bar floor, I kneeled with my arms out and eyes shut, ready to catch my little biscuit. I opened my eyes, and Guillerme had regained his once fumbling grip. We later resorted to plastic boards that we straddled across the bar counter, so that I could practice my paddling maneuvers with the Brazilians cheering me on.

After regaining focus, I was back on the road with Chico Max and Leo. Leo connected his mp3 player to the speakers, and I quickly grabbed my notebook, eager to discover what Chilean surf music was. By the end of the ride, I had a page of songs by mostly Australian beach bands and purposely omitted Leo’s obsession with “A Tribe Called Quest” and “Method Man.”

“Where’s our first stop?”
“Puertocillo. It’s a secret surf spot,” confided Max. After hours of highway driving, we found ourselves on an endless bumpy and narrow dirt road. The tight turns seemed to hug the cliffs overlooking the vineyards, and I retracted my head into the car to put my seat belt on.

“No, Liz G. If we go over the cliff, wearing a seat belt won’t help any of us. If we do go over, you need to be free so you can jump out the window.”

Cliff driving aside, I was more frightened by how much thought Max put into the possibility of the gravest emergencies. His comment reminded him to hand me a pamphlet about how to be safe in the event of tsunamis, earthquakes, avalanches, and volcano eruptions. I memorized some of the terms in Spanish, just in case.

We passed droves of wild raspberry patches untouched by anyone, which spurred the first of many daydreams, beginning with, “If I had a tent, I could live here.”

Some Sublime tunes came on as we came over the last hill, exposing an animated Google Maps view of the cleanest and closest wave sets I’ve seen yet.

I took in a deep salty breath, knowing that my journey hadn’t even yet begun.

Wait for me in Valparaiso- Chile Part 2

2011-04-05T00:03:00.001-04:00

I came to the Dominica Hostel in Santiago with two weeks worth of laundry fresh clothing, but thanks to my self-proclaimed professional traveler friend, my luggage had narrowed significantly to a small duffle, including only 3 shirts that I didn’t care about but secretly favored. I threw the bag under the stairs and ignored the others in the nearby living room who were ignoring me. Exhausted by picking out known Spanish words overheard by those I pretended to ignore, I meandered down to the kitchen for a second breakfast with a more amicable group. Twenty minutes later, I was on a bus to Valparaiso with new friends.

The urban bus station emptied out into a desolate environment of urban filth and deserted dogs, further discredited by buildings, whose foundation still had noticeable cracks and gaps from the earthquake a year before. But a few turned corners and palm trees later, the scene had quickly shifted to a lively port town surrounded by its twenty-something hills, covered in houses displayed in a fantastic array of heights, sizes and hues.

I knew Valparaiso was a place that many visit, but I wasn’t expecting the sloping streets to be so crowded. As we were making our first accent up hill one, a cyclist flew off the gazebo, over our heads and down a ramp that I hadn’t noticed before. Cerro Abajo is an urban downhill race that brings mountain bikers from all over the world to ride the challenging hills of Valparaiso, and we were right in the midst of it, and definitely on the wrong side of the orange tape. Hiking further up the hill, we were finally able to discern the race path from the rest of the narrow street, until the orange tape would seem to tie off at a doorstep or a wall, and I would assume that perhaps this is where the race started. Then a whistle would blow, the crowd would hold cameras to the sky, and a biker would fly off the roof, land past the doorstep and continue the path set by the orange tape. We were fooled several times after, as the jumps got higher and seemingly less believable until someone appeared out of the sky and back on the set path to disprove our simplified minds.

We eventually found the starting line and joined other tourists and dogs at a pier wall, which overlooked the entire point, with ships and barges passing busily below. I had seen so many dogs lying apathetically in the streets, from the time I arrived in Chile, and the dog lover in me would collapse each time. Pretending that they all had homes and loving owners waiting for them kept me walking past. I had avoided contact with them in fear that they may be dangerous, but once I was told otherwise, I found myself breaking multiple travel rules in a short time.

I only had to look into Juanpi's eyes for a short moment to know we would be the best of friends. He skipped with me up and down the pier as tourists oohed and awed at our instant connection. I thanked him with a rather generous scratch behind the ear, and his eyes opened wide and his eyebrows softened—a humble response I thought, until he rolled onto his back, bearing a stomach in need of a rub. This time, my eyes softened, and unaware of the dirt, oil and hair collecting on my hands and fingernails, I pretended Juanpi was my own dog at home in my backyard, scratching out any memory of any fly that had ever tickled him. I wrestled him to the city ground and growled in his face, and he responded with a long lick from chin to forehead. My new friends, disgusted by my actions, strongly suggested I stop, and threatened to walk away.

“Ciao, Juanpi. perro bueno. I’ll miss you.” Either my pronunciation was way off, or Juanpi didn’t want to say goodbye. The scratching triggered an unconditional attachment, and Juanpi and his girlfriend became two more travel companions, which completed our temporary Valparaisian family.

After an exhausting steep trudge and a sampling of antibacterial gel from everyone in my group, we stopped at the top of yet another hill inside one of many seafood restaurants for a late lunch. Juanpi and his girlfriend waited patiently outside. There I learned more about my new travel friends: a collection of nannies, students and a motorcyclist from all over who had been traveling for months. Logan was the motorcyclist making his way through South America with others he met along the way until his motorcycle broke down. He was waiting in Santiago for nearly a month for a spare BMW part to be sent from Germany. I couldn’t believe his patience. I was almost embarrassed to admit that I was only going to be in Chile for a few weeks.

After a satisfying meal of fresh fish, rice and a soft-boiled egg splayed over it all, we made our way toward the Pablo Neruda house. Throughout our journey, there were several gorgeous paintings on the walls. The locals called it graffiti, but it was so well done that I didn’t want to attribute a negative name to so many beautiful pieces of work.

We passed a man with 7 or 8 dogs following close behind him. I started to laugh, knowing just how he had acquired his canine entourage.

We walked faster past him, thinking nothing of our dogs crossing paths until I heard my little Juanpi give a threatening growl to the others, and then we were suddenly amongst a pack of angry dogs with only two in our defense. When a set of teeth brushed my leg, the allure of having a pair of loyal guard dogs to defend us disintegrated quickly. We ran ahead leaning into our knees up the hill with the intention of losing the dogs but they proved to be endlessly persevering. We stopped in little art shops and went out alternate exits, but they found us. We went down steep winding stairs that initially frightened Juanpi, but his attachment to me forced him to face his fear, lucky for me.

getting creative on our path to Pablo Neruda's

I felt guilty for wanting to abandon him, just as he had been sometime before, but the reality that he would never leave made me want to run even faster. It turned into a cruel game, like trying to lose your annoying little brother in a shopping mall. When we arrived at the Pablo Neruda house, they followed us through the gates as usual. I shrugged at the guards, when they looked at me and explained that dogs weren’t allowed. “Then don’t let them in,” I grimaced.

The outside of the house had been restructured to look like a dull museum, but the inside of the house was breath-taking. Neruda’s various collections and house arrangement depicted a clever persona that painted a clear portrait of who I always imagined he was through his poetry. I was immediately drawn to his love for the water and was reminded of my surf trip that was close ahead. We exited the house in peace and almost forgot about the dogs, when Logan quietly nudged his head at Juanpi’s girlfriend whose loyalty had been distracted by a large woman, tempting the dog with food and head scratches, while they both posed for a photo. Juanpi was nowhere to be found, so we made a quick escape, and the guard locked the gates behind us. Closing time had worked favorably.

For the next hour we would be looking behind us, stressed that Juanpi would find us again. We stopped for a snack, and chose to eat inside in case Juanpi had followed our scent.

Another dog watching over his new-found owner

It was getting late, but we hadn’t yet taken one of the many notorious free elevators, so we hastily squeezed that in, the old screeching death box traveling up a vertical un-climbable cliff to the top of what we would declare our last hill of Valpo. Knowing that the only other way down was a long and steady trail to the bottom, we decidedly forgot about our canine stalkers.

The misty blue sunlit scene made the view down at the pier seem vapid. And of course, waiting patiently at the top of the cliff underneath a park bench, was my forever-loyal friend, Juanpi. We were instantly on our backs with laughter over his miraculous appearance and joked about him showing up back in Santiago.

Unlike the states, the suburbs of Valparaiso were more dangerous and more prone to pick pockets, and it was getting dark now, so we headed back with Juanpi walking in front of me, ready to protect with my approval. He followed us all the way to the bus station entrance, where we left him waiting patiently outside with a hopeful smile, and he will undoubtedly remain there until I come back.

Travelogue series begins now--Chile

2011-03-24T23:24:00.000-04:00

Thanks everyone for your patience. It has taken me some time to organize my ideas and edit the seven or eight part series, which I'll release intermittently, because that's the way I roll. For the surfers out there. I don't surf until part 4, so you'll just have to wait.

Chile: February 19- March 6

ATL to SCL: Long flight to a long place
February 19-20
“We get dinner?”
“Yes, and just when you thought you’ve fallen asleep, you get rudely awoken at 4 in the morning for breakfast,” my well-traveled neighbor assured me.

I had been so used to shitty domestic American flights that deprive me of good nuts as the company slowly goes under, I forgot all about dinner. I also never recalled checking off “vegetarian” when I bought my tickets but shrugged knowing I had been in a major health nut phase a few months back. As I gnawed on my stringy veggies, a fit of apprehension came over me as I wondered how a pale person tarnished with winter could be freshly plucked out of New York and expected to perform with tanned summer suppleness. I didn’t want my trip to be wasted on getting back into shape. I came with one solid goal in mind. Like any surfer, I wanted to get shot out of a barrel, and I had decided that I wouldn’t come back until I did just that.

I spent the last few months taking yoga classes and climbing to strengthen core and balance, but at this moment, I knew it wasn’t enough. Yes, something very vital to surfing was left out of my plans to defy winter weakness. I usually discover around Memorial Day that I have lost all paddling endurance, a problem that could have been resolved with a few months of swimming. Thankfully this realization came early this year…while gagging on stringy veggies in February… on my plane ride to Chile.

It's about time...

2011-03-11T13:16:00.000-05:00

I've been gathering stories and experiences over these last two months, and I look forward to getting something out here by Saturday. Thanks guys for your patience. For the ones who haven't been patient and have repetitively nagged me since February, thanks for the extra kick in the pants.
-Liz G

Free Noise Brigade: More than a beach town band from Long Island

2011-01-20T10:56:00.001-05:00

If you are trapped inside, during a harsh New York winter and long to escape to a beach bonfire in mid-July, it’s time to check out the Free Noise Brigade’s self-titled EP album. This young-blooded reggae band based out of Long Island, NY has an unfixed yet calming air that transcends limitations prematurely set for reggae music.

Lead singer, Ryan Dobby, takes you through this musical exploration, from his clear pop voice in the bright opening tune, Good Day, to the hard rock raspy tones in the mostly acoustic Lights Down Low.

Throughout the album, which explores several of the reggae subgenres, you can catch the drummer deceptively wandering outside the boundaries of standard reggae cadence with crisp well-thought fills that enhance his cross rhythm style and heavy Sublime influence.

Laced with meticulous bass line variations, and a dub-style intermission [Choreomania Dub] that weaves in an acid rock jam session, these kids will show you that you don’t have to speak Jamaican Patois to start breaking reggae barriers.

The Free Noise Brigade has proven their ability to transform an empty cold dancehall into a hot summer beach night, but a sophomore album will truly determine how a band with this degree of aptitude will develop as they find their own skin.

Keep a sharp eye out for the Free Noise Brigade: their rooted Amityville townie fans are definitely onto something.

CHI CHI CHI

2011-01-15T12:37:00.000-05:00

LE LE LE!

"It was Halloween in the West Village. A stage of space had cleared amid the unruly crowd to make way for Lady Gaga emerging from a cardboard escape pod covered in a Chilean flag. Surrounding miners wearing sunglasses and headlamps proudly lead a chant of hundreds to a country so obscure to them, while Spiderman begged to go next. I never thought that 5 months later, I would be in Chile, trying to make sense of the past associations I made with this place."

The next travel blog is coming in March. I'm very excited to go visit my friend, make new friends and experience the elusive Chilean mindset that no one can explain.

In the meantime, a band review of Long Island's own Free Noise Brigade will be published, and I'll share it here (if they let me repost it; batting eyes) and a fiction narrative about an early 90's Boston band is in the works as well.

How I feel today!

2011-01-07T08:33:00.000-05:00

...in this world of bitterness, you've got to take a chance.

Tahoe Snowboarding Adventures: An Oxygen-Deprived Euphoriant Narrative

2011-01-05T02:02:00.004-05:00

I had let several winters pass before I was able to truly exercise and build on my snowboarding abilities. I had been incrementally falling in love with every other board sport out there, so when I was invited to visit a friend in Lake Tahoe, I knew I could finally verify if I could just pick up where I left off, and continue my learning curve, as if I never resented snowboarding for giving me my first broken bone—as if I never decided to discredit winter altogether.

I was three when my dad first put a set of cross-country skis on me—a good head start to a love for granola winter sports, had I not performed a shrieking tantrum several miles into the wilderness. I demanded that my skis be removed convinced that it was the skis and not the long hike that made me so tired. My dad, probably annoyed by my whining, shrugged and unfastened my boots from my skis. I took one step away from the weight displacement and quickly sunk waist high in the snow. I cried to exhaustion, and my dad, thinking he had taught me a valuable lesson, pulled me out of the snow and carried me back to the lodge.

As I grew older, the abilities and interests of each family member separated, and we found ourselves no longer trudging in one line on the green trails, but sparsely divided along the mountain. Skiing became an independent journey that I could take with these little conundrums I could figure out on my own, and keep to myself if the proposed solution found me waist high in the snow again.

Then I discovered snowboarding, and I couldn’t wait to try it. I rode a sled standing up over that kid-made jump at the local sledding hill. The Oakley Country Club was notorious for sending kids to the hospital, and I ensured the place’s reputation. That jarring sound, a brisk crunch shuddered throughout my body. Clutching pieces of my shattered sled, and using my broken collarbone and concussed logic to climb back up the hill, I immediately blamed the winter for breaking my immortality at age 10.

It had been years; I had gone snowboarding intermittently, but with no intentions of letting go or adopting the craft as my own. Instead, I would ride both toes forward, continuously breaking with concentrated precision. It was incredibly boring, and I eventually gave up on pretending to love it, despite encouragement from friends impressed by my balance.

Last Sunday, I landed in Reno. In this high altitude, there were no substandard hills. Mountains seemed to compete with each other to reach the sky. Even the dirt piles at the airport were eager to peak at their full capacity. The intimidation had me dithering about trying to snowboard again.

“Normal or goofy?” The woman at the rental place asked.
I couldn’t really answer. I skate normal, I prefer starboard tack on the windsurf/kiteboard (normal), I surf depending on the direction of the break, but snowboarding? Did I want to tell the woman renting me her gear that I’m so chicken to choose a side that I ride breaking the whole time? I volunteered a side. Left. Normal. Whatever.

“Describe your level. Beginner. Cautious. Moderate. Expert.”
Without feeling slighted, I yelled out, “Cautious!” I knew I was more advanced than that, but ‘cautious’ described my feeling on the board. Cautious, guarded, on-edge. Eventually my ego took hold of the conversation.

“Cautiously moderate!”

The first day on the Nevada side of Heavenly was clear, sunny and balmy. The rows in the fresh-groomed snow were glistening and I couldn’t wait to break through it. I took the Big Easy ski lift to warm up on the Easy Street trail, a short green trail that would surely clear the cobwebs of my muscle memory before I moved onto the fun stuff. As I left the lift, the bench encouraged my board to move smoothly out of the lift’s divot and onto the trail. I conducted a structured fall to strap myself in. Insecure about my abilities, I had a desire to let the lift operator know that my fall was indeed done on purpose. With my boots and board resting in front of me, I stood erect with strong fresh arms, and made my ascent down Easy Street. Feeling guarded, I rode facing downhill, digging my heel edge so deep so I barely moved at all. As I was hogging the narrow path, onlookers rolled their eyes at my technique as they swept by. The redness of anger pooled in my cheeks as I realized the alienation I was creating for myself. Time to let go, Liz. I put pressure on my left foot and shifted my hips so I could ride edge-free. For a few seconds, I was fine, and then I shifted too much. I was now facing the top of the mountain and digging my toe edge to stop from riding backwards. I was way out of my comfort zone and I was gradually making my way toward a cliff. I couldn’t dig my toes in far enough, so rather than falling forward, I did the snowboarding unthinkable. I leaned back, caught edge on my heel side, and the board propelled me, back first down the mountain. I heard a crack I had grown accustomed to hearing since first discovering I was mortal, and a wind deep inside my lungs became presentable in forced exhalation. Deceleration forces startled my internal organs when meeting the hard surface. Everything I had injured in the past started to throb—a reminder of previous events in which this one could also be catalogued. I rose up surprisingly unharmed, and inched down the hill, both toes first, riding slow as my organs retracted back into their assigned cavities, my eyes wide open, alert, and moderately cautious.

I had three days of rented gear and prepaid lift tickets that quite possibly had been a complete waste. I knew the movement I had to adopt but had lost trust in the snow that made it possible.

I swallowed my pride, which eased my stomach and signed up for Level One snowboarding lessons to occupy my day. After some routine direction, we hopped on a lift to test out our skills. At the instructor’s amazement, a few of us had picked up the basics quickly, and I later learned that I wasn’t the only one keeping a secret. The fear of letting go had bottled up in many of us and brought us together to face this fear head on.

The top of Sam's Trail

The instructor led us down Sam’s Trail, a wide blue path, synchronizing some routine drills: front and back falling leave, slow C turns, and slower S turns. Then he let us ride the trail on our own, while he focused on those who really belonged in Level One. On the lift up, I couldn’t stop staring at the trees. They looked as though only the east side of the pine trees were covered with large cotton balls. I was told that the snow is so wet that the snowflakes collect into little balls, and the top of the mountain can get so windy that they fly horizontally until they stick to the trees. Amazing how odd weather patterns can create such beauty.

With the cobwebs cleared, I focused on carving, knowing that my fear lied in catching edge during the transition and possibly injuring my left shoulder for the 4th time to date (left shoulder injuries: age 10, sledding, break; age 16, soccer, break; and age 22, windsurfing, dislocation) My left shoulder throbbed at the thought, but I became preoccupied with all of the little puzzles to figure out on this trail. I had falling skiers to dodge, acute turns to make, and moguls to ride over. I stopped thinking about the fear and started experiencing this trail as a self-made journey, the way I saw skiing when I was younger with a little more independence gained. With this trust that the instructor had in me, I had what I needed to move forward. But after the first day, I was panting and my thighs were burning, and I was finally convinced of the effects that high altitude, dry air and low oxygen could have on a person.

My friend and host, Natalie, and I stopped home and filled up on hot tea to defrost and hydrate ourselves before heading out to the Grocery Outlet to pick up dinner. This Grocery Outlet is the most bizarre grocery store I’ve ever been to. When I arrived, I understood how Natalie and her friends had such a hard time describing it. The Grocery Outlet seemingly carries only products that were rejected from mainstream grocery stores for one reason or another, and the Tahoe locals make a game out of trying to determine how each product got there. I walked by this can of Cream of Celery soup by Heinz, which probably wasn’t too popular at ShopRite, but at 99 cents, someone was bound to buy it. We picked up a bag of sausages, which must have been rejected for being packaged twice in hard plastic and impossible to open. On our way out, we walked by chip bags that must have been packaged at sea level and the altitude had caused the chip bags (interestingly only half of them) to inflate so much that I swear if the bags were one shelf higher, they would burst. They were just asking to be opened and relieved of such pressure. I sympathized and bought a bag.

I was awake at 5am, not really fighting jetlag, since my friend had to be up shortly after and I as well, since she was my ride in. Even though my knees were covered in purple bruises, I was wondering why my arms were so sore. And then it occurred to me how many times I had fallen and gotten up. Many.

The bottom of the mountain was overcast, calm and not too cold, but 15 minutes up the Gondola, I was in a cold and windy snowstorm. (I’ll save my exaggerations until later, because day 3 was a lot worse.) I stuck around the Nevada side again and was determined to break out of this fear I had been haunted by for so long. I had this urge to let go, and by the end of my vacation, I promised myself it would happen. So what is letting go? Letting go is when you don’t have to think about what you’re doing and trust that you can handle the bumps and the obstacles in front of you. And only when you trust your abilities can you truly enjoy the ride presented to you. I’ve achieved it with nearly every other board sport (I find it difficult to feel free on a skateboard when surrounded by angry traffic) and I had high hopes for achieving this in three days.

I tried to take the most challenging trails, but each time, I found myself not able to focus on what I needed work on. On one supposed blue trail, the Nevada Trail, I ended up taking off my board and walking, because the flat skating path seemed to never end. On another trail, I was about to turn the corner and discovered a wind tunnel that was so powerful, it was physically stopping me from going forward down the steep mountain. After crouching down, I finally inched by the wind tunnel. I couldn’t stop thinking about how cold I was, but I continued to study my movements, and the movements of others who had a seamless ride down the mountain. I pretended I was on the slopes even when I wasn’t. While I was in the lodge getting lunch, someone stepped in line to take a napkin, and I eased back, heel side, subconsciously thinking I would carve out of that guy’s way. The snow and wind picked up as the day went on. I managed to get in a few good runs, but I was still not satisfied. While in line to take the Gondola back down, I passed this little girl with messy blonde hair and a cold red face dripping with sniffles and tears. She kept repeating, “I’m cold. I want to go home.” Had I not been stealthily cutting her in line, I would have told her how much I understood her. I wanted to go home too. This day had left me physically and emotionally defeated.

The long line home when you're cold and tired

Later that night, the weather got worse, but I was on a mission. After a hot shower, and watching my face wash bottle explode yet again, I was going to cross something off my bucket list. No only does Tahoe have the snowiest mountains to ski on, but several natural hot springs, which isn’t surprising considering all of the other bottled and packaged items I’ve seen close to eruption. The snow was coming down so hard, you could barely see the cars in front of you. We drove easily with our snow tires, although the wet snow was testing the wipers. We passed clusters of cars, which had stopped on the side on the road to put on chains or give up and wallow. It reminded me of the mountain trails, when you ride by groups of boarders on the side who may have stalled out shortly before gaining the confidence to continue. We passed signs that said, “If you don’t have chains on, you WILL BE turned around.” Then we hit standstill traffic and decided to turn ourselves around. Ambulances and firetrucks hastily heading ahead of the traffic confirmed that we would have been there for a while.

I woke up really chilly, but my exhaustion ensured me a full 8 hours of sleep despite the coldness. Our power had gone out. I looked out the window and saw at least a few feet on the ground…and it was still snowing pretty hard.

It was my third and final day of snowboarding. This time, I went to the California side, the only group of lifts that were open. The other ski lifts were buried and had no signs of being dug out. At the bottom of the California Lodge, there’s a double diamond trail called Gunbarrel, which is so steep, it basically allows people at the bottom to see the full trail, and every embarrassing mistake the boarders make on it. For about 20 minutes, I watched as boarders struggled with this route. Old packed down moguls were buried in three foot powder drifts. Watching the beginners trying to make their way down, was like watching a mouse try to find its way out of a maze, until they got caught in a snow drift and had to detach their board completely and walk down the mountain.

A Beginner Face Plants on the Gunbarrel Trail

After warming up on some green routes, I took a few lifts until I was at the top of the Canyon Express, nearly 10,000 feet above sea level. Any laughter or warmth I kept inside my layers had blown away by the time I reached the top.

The lift to the top; getting snowier

If you have ever walked into a house of screaming people, and you think to yourself, “I need to get the fuck out of here.” Well, that is how I felt at the top of that mountain. It was snowing so hard, I couldn’t see where the trail started, and I could only follow the shadows of other boarders in dark jackets. It was so fucking windy, I could easily describe with precision how far away the air was to any area of my skin. I felt my nose running a warm liquid, and then that warmth froze off into a snowdrift.

This new altitude found me tired and lightheaded. I collapsed in the pool of white to strap myself in. I sat with my ears close to my chest, and realized I was breathing heavily. It was weird to notice my body doing something different in another climate, the arid arctic at 10,000 feet. I was already at the top of the world. All I could do is count on the lack of oxygen to keep me from hyperventilating.

I stood up and eased down the mountain once again and fought with the cold for the first few minutes, my burning thighs battling with the caustic air. I still couldn’t see anything in front of me. Like an underexposed photograph, there was no depth or texture for me to discern where the moguls started or how steep the trail was. But then, I found out why snowboarding on powder is the most amazing euphoric experience in life—other than lack of oxygen. I flew through that powder like I was flying in the sky, cutting through tepid buttery air.

I forgot why I hated winter. Then, I hit a mogul, which became a ramp, and I jumped into more white and had no idea when I would land or how I would fall, but somehow it just happened in the smoothest way a snowflake could be placed. A seamless jump. Elated from this, I carved myself all over this endless wave in thanks and praises, letting the moguls come as they did, and just trusting myself in whatever my underboard encountered. The surf was sometimes bump and jump like windsurfing over steady whitecaps. Most of the time, I felt a push from behind, as if the water was pulling crazy vector forces, throwing my surfboard on a plane ahead of the double overhead. Then in a heated moment of compassion and love for the powder, I carved a sharp toe-side turn and leaned forward to touch the stuff that had initially fed me my mortality, and it melted, inferior to my hand. I had conquered this mountain.

I rode faster and the wind howled through my helmet. I thought I heard city sirens, and I stopped short to look around out of habit. I had to remind myself I was the only one around, and there were no streets around the corner from me.

Time to keep moving. I shifted my hips and nothing happened. The snow was so thick in my sight that I didn’t even realize that the trail had leveled out. I unbuckled my back foot to skate ahead and it sank thigh high into the snow. There I was, like that three-year-old who was scared and tired, although this time, my dad couldn’t pull me out and carry me home. Focusing on trying not to fall, I stepped out of the drift with my hands high over my head, restrapped my back foot in and ooched like crazy for several lonely minutes, until my board started to accelerate on it’s own. I finished out the High Five trail and transitioned into the Powderbowl Run, wearing the most deliriously wide smile winter has ever seen.

My day ended at the Turn 3 Peanut bar, where we overheard locals talk about the power lines setting trees on fire, and how the bartender tried to smuggle bacon fat in her suitcase on a holiday flight. I was still smiling. Something had changed in me and made me want to seek out anything else I ever feared.

On the flight home out of LAX, the plane flew over the Pacific Ocean, and I stared into the dark grid of conflicting waves. The sun hid behind the plane wing until the Pacific was presented in front of me. Then the sun let itself fully reflect over the water, which fed warmth and nourishment to my dry weather-beaten face. Through this warmth, the sun expressed to me, “It’s time to explore more of what I see. The world is for you to find.” Then the plane turned around and headed east.

…next time, I’m going somewhere sunny.

Fall Climbing: I contradict myself

2011-01-04T18:31:00.000-05:00

My Tahoe snowboarding trip was such an amazing experience, I was inspired to write a literary narrative worthy of submission somewhere else. While I work on that, I wanted to share, or rather document, my climbing progress and priceless New York moments from this fall.

In early September, after my swimming challenge was completed, I started climbing two or three times a week at Brooklyn Boulders. Since the schedule of a writer can’t always commit to weekday events, I knew I couldn’t keep a regular belaying partner without pissing them off, so I started bouldering again. At a time where my job was becoming increasingly demanding, climbing was such a release and made me so happy, I quit my regular gym at NYSC, and joined Brooklyn Boulders as a monthly member. Before I took on this swimming challenge, I had reached a climbing plateau, and couldn’t complete anything past a V3, but after 3 months of climbing regularly, I can honestly conclude that I have jumped that hurdle successfully. Viva V4!

The Saturday after Thanksgiving, I found myself back at my old climbing grounds, MetroRock in Boston. I was looking forward to testing my skills at another gym but soon met disappointment, when the two hardest routes I did were V2s. I know, I know. I shouldn’t look at the grade, and I wouldn’t still be climbing if I only cared about the grade, but their V3s seemed years away from possibility. I couldn’t believe that climbing gyms differed this much in route grading. I spoke with the man at the front desk and urged him to find me some challenging but manageable climbs, something that I would most likely ascend by the end of the day. He took me on a tour.

“The climber that sets these routes is built like a gorilla, and loves to include upper body moves, so don’t be surprised if you don’t get these…This routesetter is 6 foot 5 and always unconsciously sets reachy holds, so you might not be able to do this either…and our token girl routesetter who’s short and focuses on technique over strength, doesn’t set anything under a V6.”

Although, I acknowledge that climbing gyms can be different and I have become accustomed to the techniques of the BKB routesetters, I was thankful that I had the variety within the walls of BKB to rely on for my progress.

I competed in two climbing competitions and placed 2nd (out of 2) and 3rd (out of 10), and was heavily disappointed by all of the amazing women climbers who didn’t compete. I’ll tell you right now, I’m not that good. It would be better to have more honest competition beating me than to win out of default. Since the last competition, I have a personal goal to convince other women to compete in the upcoming comp in February.

What else? Oh yes, and I started writing the novel again on my nights off from climbing. I joined a writing group with Marble Church and just the act of going to the meeting and talking about why I like to write was the motivation I needed to finish this book. I’m looking forward to sharing my first excerpt with the group. I’ve been hiding this thing for too long.

Precious New York Moment:
A few months ago, I was walking by 2nd and 2nd, and discovered that the cemetery gate was open and people were meandering in and out. I had some time, so I walked through to see what was going on. They were giving free tours of the history of the cemetery and the headstone walls that surrounded this grassy meadow, a rarity in New York. My first thought was about how envious I was of the apartment buildings that surrounded this open space. Walking to the back of the garden, I looked up at a window and met eyes with a young man staring down at me in disgust. I guess our group was contaminating his pretty view. I shared with the tour guide how lucky the people who get to look through these windows were, and she responded, “Well, that’s a homeless shelter and that’s a [rehab] meth house, so you tell me who the lucky one is.”

Touché, tour guide lady.

You too can have fun in a prison cell

2010-12-21T23:22:00.001-05:00

There are times when I feel poor or hindered, which sucks when I feel like getting out and doing something. This video reminds me that you don't need money to have a good time and create amazing art. Put on a suit and have a good time in your matchbox apartment.

Free-Range Woman

2010-12-05T22:05:00.003-05:00

As I crack a free-range chicken egg on the edge, a sharp edge, of a bowl, I notice how much thicker the shell is and how brightly yellow the yolk is compared to the cheap eggs, and I think about those free-range chickens. Happy, shiny-feathered hens running around in the sun, eating sunflower seeds and sprouted grains, chatting away with other hens, until one cramps up and projects an egg hard enough to be stamped "EB" on it's unbreakable shell in red organic beet ink.

Is that all it takes for these eggs to change? Some stress-free sunshine, a run in a meadow, and a hearty organic meal? If that's true than what do you tell a woman, stuck in a cubicle all day, eating her fix of quick takeout before going back to the stress mill? How would anything she produces compare to a girl who leads an open, stress-free life of healthy diet and exercise?

I think I'm onto something, and this scares me so much that now, everyday I strive to be a free-range cage-free organically-fed woman. And I will not be broken by the blunt side of a bowl. I will stick to my Ezekiel sprouted grain bread, my daily exercise, and of course, cage-free eggs.

PIXELS by Patrick JEAN (OFFICIAL BY ONEMOREPROD - HD)

2010-11-21T22:29:00.000-05:00

Summer Union or Some Reunion

2010-11-21T17:12:00.010-05:00

After reconnecting with an old friend on facebook, a snippet of my childhood flooded into my mind, and I had to record it on paper. And since my high school reunion is coming up, it seemed appropriate to share...

In the seventh grade I had a crush on this guy named Jared Michaels. He had a mushroom haircut, parted in the middle, and his hair smelled like Pert Plus for kids, unless he was wearing cologne that day. He never knew I liked him although we had frequent conversations about relationships and sex. Of course, they were one way conversations and often involved him calling me a faggot and professing who I wanted to have relations with. I could have cleared up the rumors by expressing how I felt, but he was dating this tall muscular girl who could definitely beat me up, so instead, I took the heat and rolled my eyes as often as needed.

One apathetic day in Social Studies class, we were paired to present a radio broadcast about the historical events of Russia (Don't ask when. I only remember it was about Russia, because we thought it would be clever to have a vodka commercial in between our segments.) I volunteered to bring in my dad's tape recorder and a blank tape into school the next day, so we could get our project done during our shared study hall, although, I would have preferred to meet off school grounds.

I went home and found a tape that was unmarked and could be blank, but I was determined to play it through to ensure I wouldn't be embarrassed later. Knowing my mom's infatuation with Anita Baker at the time, it was quite possible. The first side was blank, and I flipped the radio to Kiss 108 for homework-doing inspiration while the tape rewound. During some pre-algebra problems, the drum solo kicked in through my Sony boom box, and my heart sunk into my chest and shuttered. In an impulsive desperation, I lunged to the record/play buttons just in time for Always by Bon Jovi to be captured on my cassette tape. I spent the night dreaming of Jared Michaels with a soundtrack.

The next morning, knowing how cool Bon Jovi was, I thought I would score some reputation points if Jared knew I listened to quality pop music, not just Nine Inch Nails and Nirvana, which would suggest that I was not only a "faggot" but also a "freak". So, I grabbed the tape and conducted a plan that would reveal my hip taste in music.

We met up during study hall, and I casually mentioned how I may have recorded Bon Jovi on one side of the tape. he interrupted, "I love Bon Jovi. Is it Always?" I nodded. He then insisted we hear it first before recording over it.

So, I pushed my bitten thumb nail into the play button and swallowed as that familiar drum solo started again. We looked at each other the entire duration of the song as we sat in the 7th grade hallway. I secretly wanted the song to play in an endless loop that would last forever. We had a moment, an understanding, the easiest five minutes and fifty-four seconds of my middle school career. When the song ended, we mutually decided that a song this amazing shouldn't be recorded over, so we recorded our radio broadcast on the opposite side of the tape.

Moments before class, students exclaimed how lucky I was to be working with Jared on a project and I agreed. During our presentation, we stood proudly in front of the classroom to show off our radio broadcast of Russia and Russian products to sell during commercial breaks. The end of our presentation left with an awkward silence, just as I remembered that I never checked this side of the tape to determine whether or not something had been previously recorded. I ran to the tape recorder to press stop, but it was too late. Michael Jackson's Smooth Criminal was already in mid-song. The class burst out into laughter and Jared exclaimed, "It's her tape." My moment of popularity was over.

Kid Cudi - Pursuit Of Happiness ft. MGMT

2010-10-26T09:22:00.000-04:00

Intangible Being: In Memory of Frank Clark

2010-10-09T19:21:00.008-04:00

I had a few early memories of Frank in my childhood, but I really didn't get the essence of who Frank was and what he represented until my adulthood--actually a most pivotal step in my adulthood when I moved to New York to start my career in advertising. In December 2005, I stayed with Toni and Frank in Yonkers for a week before finding the apartment in Jersey City. Not only could I now understand to appreciate his adult humor, but our brief conversations consistently depicted Frank's ability and interest in understanding anyone's perspective, even the giddy 20-something niece, who paved every landmark with material celebration.

Our conversations began when I returned from my first days at FCB, and although he was ill and in a great amount of pain, he hid it with great agility as he let me spend his precious awake hours yapping about the Christmas tree in Rockefeller Center and other annoying touristy attractions that caught my eye.

I was aware that Frank had strong opinions about religion, but he never imposed his opinions on me, even as I spoke candidly about finding the right church and prayer.

Frank looked at my cross necklace and asked me very politely why I wore it. I explained that it was a reminder of my faith. And he said, “If you believed in something so special to you, do you really need a necklace to help you remember?" I was stunned. No one had asked me that before. I came from a place where parents said "She's a good girl. She wears her cross," and it seemed irrelevant how faith played a part in it.

I wanted to buy a pair of pearl earrings with my first paycheck--a symbol representing my independence, but I also had to be cognizant of the expenses that come from moving into an apartment.

"Even if you don't end up getting your pearl earrings, you know you still have accomplished what you sought after." I knew that, but the need to have some kind of tangible representation was overbearing. Our conversation segued into how people spend so much money on precious stones that are as simple and cheap as rocks in the ground.

"Diamonds are just compressed pieces of coal. They only have worth because we say they do."
"And pearls are just scar tissue from oysters," I jumped in.

I learned a handful of valuable lessons that week. I no longer saw Frank as the man in the family who was ill, and I hoped that everyone else would see him for the rich person he was. Although Frank was barely physically present in my life, these lessons he taught me have played an integral part in me shaping who I wish to be.

After moving into my apartment in Jersey City, I went to a shady jewelry store and bought a pair of pearl earrings that I later discovered were fake. They have since fallen apart and disintegrated.

25 miles in one month: The completion

2010-09-04T21:29:00.004-04:00

So, I completed my goal (see t-shirt above) while keeping a very detailed log about it, and I'm excited to share everything from what "treasures" I encountered along the way to the various reasons that I couldn't make the lap count that I should have on that day. Instead of telling it in narrative form, I'm just going to share the log, because it's just more fun this way...

These logs cover 7AM-8:30AM of August 2010

Monday August 2
-whistle blows and I finish 63 lengths, I get out of the pool at the far end before realizing that no one really pays attention to the whistle, hence the obnoxious repetitive use of the thing by the lifeguards.
-found a fountain soda lid at the bottom of the pool
-discover that high school kids are running this program and are responsible for keeping record of my lengths

Tuesday August 3
-64 lengths, that's two miles, with a long break between each one
-I find 2 silly bands (a black elephant and a yellow dinosaur)

Wednesday August 4
-I wake up choking on the cap of my tooth
-I make an emergency appointment with the dentist
-I unknowingly walk through a wet puddle of white paint, which I discover as I cover my dentist's plush rug with it
-I spend the rest of my day spilling stuff on myself at work
-0 laps

Thursday August 5
-68 lengths, feel good until the person behind me says 80 lengths, showoff.
-find a Burger King burger wrapper and a tampon applicator

Friday August 6
-68 lengths
-find a red crayon which I forget to rescue

Monday August 9
-32 lengths, stop early to walk my friend to her first day of work
-red crayon still there, I snag it while I can

Tuesday August 10
-64 lengths without any break
-swam in the fast lane (I'm improving)
-no time to collect treasures

Wednesday August 11
-65 lengths
-started off in the fast lane but got clipped by a girl with webbed fingers and flippers (the webbed fingers are detachable, she didn't really have webbed fingers)
-meandered back to the middle lane

Thursday August 12
-26 lengths
-feeling ill/lethargic
-found 2 pearls, one real and one fake, and 2 silly bands, one M and the only silly band i the world that actually lost its shape. I know I'm lucky. This gave me the will to carry on despite being sick.

Friday August 13
-32 lengths
-still feeling crappy
-found one fake pearl and a pantyliner
-yeah I know, why do I still swim at that pool?
-Because I've only done 15 miles thus far

Monday August 16-20
-week off, teaching sailing

Monday August 23
-"I have a week off. What's one more day?"

Tuesday August 24
-64 lengths
-It's raining and cold
-Find out that I actually only have until the 30thone week to finish 25 miles
-Thought I had 2
-Find 3 paper towel sheets

Wednesday August 25
-It's pouring and cold
-I wear a wetsuit
-The lifeguards don't come out of the shed for 20 minutes and pass on the message that they'll come out when they "feel like it"
-60 lengths non-stop

Thursday August 26
-70 lengths!
-water's cold but it's hot and sunny out
-my friend at work informs me that the chafing mark on my neck from my wetsuit looks like a hickey. It isn't.

Friday August 27
-64 lengths
-realize the pool has been spotless all week
- probably because it's been raining

Monday August 30
-70 lengths again!
-I only report 64 because I lied on Friday, and I want to win this thing honestly.

The party was that same Monday night, and I officially met all the other Hamilton Fish swimmers. I was really happy to get my T-shirt.

The adult swim continued through Friday, and I went on Friday to celebrate my accomplishment by NOT counting laps as I swam.

Friday September 3
7AM-7:20 Lifeguards don't show up
7:20AM One guy starts a revolution and leads 50 swimmers to the pool past the desk of the sign out guys who are apparently also lifeguards but unauthorized to work as lifeguards. They panicked and called their bosses, 311.. oh and the police. While they did that, I decided to play lifeguard. Someone has to watch these fools. When the kid with orange shorts, the lifeguard, showed up, I went swimming. The police showed up and didn't know what to do because the lifeguard had arrived.

And the swimmers all went out to breakfast afterwards to celebrate the free-swimming summer. I can't wait until next summer. I want to get 50 miles next time.

OK, climbing season...

25 miles in 1 month

2010-07-31T18:57:00.002-04:00

I have a new challenge ahead of me. A challenge full of swimming trunks, weaves, headbands, hair elastics and tampon applicators. Let me explain...

I felt especially elated after my 6th Appleman Triathlon on Sunday, July 18th. I am finally at a place where in order to improve my future times, I have to do more than just try to be in better shape than the year before. I have to actually swim, bike, and run a lot, and after having slower times in the swim and the bike, I decided that perhaps it was about time that I train in these fields for once. Hopping on crappy bike a week before the event was no longer going to work for me.

For a while, I even separated myself from swimmers and cyclists in the past, saying to myself, "swimmers and cyclists are the people I pass on the run," but after this event, I knew I had to finally integrate myself with them and perhaps even become a swimmer and cyclist, myself.

Looking at my splits (17 min, 45 min, 26 min), I was exploring ways to shave off some time: 4 minutes on the swim, 5 minutes on the run, but it became apparent that I could shave the most time, up to 15 minutes, on the bike leg. My biggest problem in cycling was that I really don't know how to ride a bike, efficiently. I was shopping for some top-notch tri bikes, and asked a stupid question. The answer would shape the way I ride in the future...fine, so I didn't know that switching to a smaller back gear makes your pedaling more efficient. I get it now. In the past, I just powered through every hill and set the gears easier if I was about to lose momentum and fall over. Not anymore.

I quickly realized that buying a decent tri bike is a huge investment, so I decided to put that off until the spring when I'm confident in my savings plan to squander it. But just as I began to give up and wallow in my Kardashian gossip, another opportunity to improve my triathlon time had surfaced.

In one of my aimless strolls to explore my neighborhood, I discovered the Hamilton Fish pool. I had passed there before. It was the weekend and kids were overflowing from the gates and screaming and hitting each other with towels. Not the ideal serene environment to go swimming in. But on this journey early in the morning, before work, I saw adults taking turns, swimming laps, and encouraging each other. I later found out that joining this pool is FREE. So I joined.

I started swimming whenever I could, either in the "early bird" or "night owl" shift. Both shifts had something that no other pool I've swum in had: evidence of the reckless kid shift in the middle of the day. I thought swimming endless laps would be boring, but as I approached remnants of wild youth, I couldn't help but wonder how these things ended up at the bottom of the pool. Did no one notice that there is an impressionable young man who seemed to misplace his swimming trunks? Who seriously let that girl go swimming with giant hoop earrings? Are the lifeguards honestly not concerned about what the dark spot in the water is? It's a weave of hair.

I wasn't disgusted--more intrigued by the several oversights that made this experience happen. And the number of swimmers with expensive goggles who swam over the questionable treasures.

I stayed because everyone is really friendly and joked about the hairball in the water.

"I saw you swim, you did well today. Working on your stroke?"

"Yes, thanks," I lied. I swam slowly, because I was feeling lazy.

"How many lengths today?"

I wasn't counting so I was flustered by this. I soon realized that I wasn't being probed. Just outside of the entry gates was a sign that recorded total laps of every attending swimmer. And if you swim 25 miles by the end of the summer, you get recognized by the Hamilton Fish pool and a T-shirt stating your accomplishment.

The swimmers were encouraging each other, because they were all working toward one common goal, 25 miles by the end of the summer.

I wanted in, but it's the end of July so I needed to do 25 miles in August alone. Taking my vacation into consideration, that's two miles a day. I've found my next challenge. So starting Monday, I will be swimming 64 laps a day, 5 days a week. I just hope that the interesting finds at the bottom of the pool don't make me lose count of my laps.

Pierre Lapointe - "Au bar des suicidés"

2010-07-27T09:56:00.000-04:00

French makes everything sound sexy.

19 little seconds away

2010-07-16T00:13:00.003-04:00

One of the goals on my list is to break a 6-minute mile. This has actually been a goal of mine since high school when I ran the mile for indoor track.

I started my freshman year running the 400-meter sprint. At the end of the season, my track coach realized that despite frequent intense training sessions, my time from the last race of the season was the same as the first. So, by sophomore year, I was running distance and I was thrilled to finally see my time decrease with hard training.

From the sidelines, I saw gym and state records being broken... by my teammates on a regular basis, and I wanted more than anything to get my mile time under 6 minutes. I certainly wouldn't be breaking records, but I was so tired of seeing sixes. I was ready to be a fiver.

My Junior year, I treated track as a sport and not a just a way to stay in shape during the winter. In my last race of the season, I ran the mile in 6:18, and that’s been my personal record ever since.

Fast forward 11 years, and I found myself struggling to even be a seven-minute miler. So, when my bucket list came around, I thought, hell, why not!

Since March, I’ve been working with a trainer, and for the first time ever, I did more than just running to train. I finally understood how important core strengthening was for keeping your form, and how squats help your spring in that last half of the race. I was lifting, pushing and running intervals.

Between sessions, I ran the fastest mile I could on the treadmill, and every other day, I went a notch higher anticipating that moment when I would hit 9.5 miles per hour…a 6:18 minute mile.

One Tuesday while playing 1,2,3,4 by Ozomatli with my water by my side, I did it! Staring at the treadmill number 29, designated by the gym, I reached a meditation interrupted only by the inconvenience of having to start the song over again on my iPod. I stepped off the treadmill with a sweaty grin on my face and stumbled to the locker room hoping someone would ask me what I had accomplished.

19 seconds away, I thought, and yes, I would be perfectly content if I ran 5:59, because even then, I would be a happy fiver.

But soon after, I faced other challenges that would keep me from achieving my goal. My trainer, who I gave credit to any progress, had quit.

I was in a windsurfing competition, where I came very close to pulling my quad and had to take a week off to prevent injury.

I also made the mistake of assuming that a treadmill mile was the same as a road mile, which was proven wrong in a recent hilly 3.5 mile road race, where my first mile pace was 7:30, not 6:18.

I set my treadmill to an incline of 1, and gave up prematurely, realizing that I might as well start over. I decided to be a fiver on a flat revolving surface before putting up barriers. Yesterday, I set my treadmill to 9.6, a 6:15 mile, and also had to quit early…This was going to be harder than I thought.

Before the summer ends, I'm going to step on treadmill #29 and set it to 10.1, and I won't step off until I'm a fiver. I'm only 19 little seconds away. How hard could it be?

Windsurfing in Manhattan

2010-05-30T18:45:00.008-04:00

I had never seen anyone windsurf on the Hudson River for as long as I'd been here. I spent three years seeking it out and figured the concentrated boat traffic was way too dangerous for beginners to be unintentionally blown into. Of course, this most recent New York relocation has exposed me to the unreal. In April, I joined this windsurfing meetup, which was born two months after I left New York in late 2008.

At my first meeting, a member of the group, Michael, approached us and tried to recruit us to take part in the Hudson River pageant, which involves windsurfing in the Hudson river behind decorative kayaks and canoes in a whimsical water dance-like presentation. What made this more appealing was that without this "performing permit" excuse, windsurfing is forbidden on the Hudson. Without blinking, I volunteered. As the event got closer to date, I did some research and discovered that the Hudson River is rarely windy, and there was major concern regarding the current, which is a problem if stronger than the wind.

The day before the event, I questioned my competency on the water and was terrified of being dragged into a barge by strong currents that my wind-driven sail couldn't possibly escape from.

The next morning, Saturday May 22nd, our recruited windsurfing team strapped the gear to the roof of some car with man-made roof racks and drove down the pothole streets to Pier 40, balancing shit on the roof and waving at surfer hopefuls on the way.

"Dude, where are you going with that?"
"The Hudson River, where else?"
"???"
"Yeah, I know"

Now, let me digress and mention this time where I took the Community Boating kids to Cape Cod to go windsurfing. When we arrived at Kalmus beach,past the parking lot, where there was just sand dunes, sharp grass and patchem eggs, the car windows, which were ajar, started to whistle, and without even looking at the water, we knew the wind was cranking. The car was silent until we went over the bank, revealing white caps spilling off the shallow waves. These kids went wild, punching and slapping the roof, howling with the window. I could tell, this was going to be a great day.

So, we approach Pier 40, I didn't hear anything, because even though we were only 100 feet from the water, we were still surrounded by concrete. We unloaded our gear onto a wagon-type structure, and I was already tired, because the gear was really heavy and it was humid, hot and windless. I was afraid. Michael said on the car ride over that it had to be blowing at least 10 knots against the current for us to go anywhere, because the current moves 5 knots, which is one of the strongest currents, certainly the strongest I had ever encountered. I fooled him into thinking that I didn't care about how little wind there was. That was a lie. You don't load, unload and rig your sails just to go cruise around. In my mind, I thought, this better be worth it.

We wheeled our gear over to the kayak dock, and we finally felt the wind. It was blowing a gusty 20 from the East, which didn't make any sense, because we were getting the wind that went through Manhattan before it hit us, but it was still strong, and unsteady but manageable. I took a heavy board, (the equivalent of a hyfly primo) and a 5.0 sail, and I still flew. Planing, falling, carving, it was unreal. Unreal. And the wakes from the motor boats and barges made my path feel like this fun and twisted obstacle course.

I hadn't gone windsurfing since last September, and I relived some moments from my last sail, but with a little twist.

I had a boring, plowing reach as I pointed toward the Statue of Liberty, steering clear of the Coast Guard pier. Dark ripply waters and a deep wake were heading my way, so I cautiously tacked around, saying to myself, don't let the wake take you down. You got this. This is gonna be good, Liz." I sheeted in, sank low, and let the Manhattan air pull me out of displacement and into fleeting oblivion. Tourists with cameras waited for my arrival, and I carved upwind with one hand and pretended to take a drag of a cigarette with the other. Then, like all upwind endings, I fell in with an uneventful splash, which my sister happily got a picture of.

On our way in, one of the windsurfers hit a kayaker, ensuring that we'll never get to windsurf on the Hudson ever again. Honestly, that just made this day more special.

My 4th grade pen-pal

2010-05-26T15:23:00.002-04:00

My friend and colleague, who I’ve known since 1st grade is now a 4th grade teacher in the exact classroom that we both had 4th grade, 18 years ago. It's unreal to think of how long ago we were sitting in our mini desks pondering how old we'd be in the year 2000. In February, he reached out to some of his former colleagues to ask us to take part in a pen-pal program with his students, and I was so excited to participate.

After a few weeks of finger crossing, I received my first letter. What started off as an awkward exchange of favorite colors and hobbies has turned into an understanding between two worlds. The student I write to loves to read and loves animals. And her words, which are simple yet colorfully expressive, brought me back to my childhood, where school was fun, and reading for school wasn’t a required task, but an opportunity to explore the unknown. She asked me what my favorite books were and I responded with a condensed list, including, “To kill a mockingbird,” which I strongly recommended she read by 7th grade.

“Is that book really about killing a mockingbird? I don’t think I would like reading that.”

This sentence was one of the many unsolicited journeys that I took while reading her letters. I scribbled out several explanations of what and who the mockingbird represented before realizing that 4th grade is a place where crimes aren’t justifiable and spending hours on the meaning behind character actions don’t exist.

I’ve come to learn that 4th grade is the calm before the storm. It’s fun to read, because there’s no dark turn to Mr. Popper’s Penguins. James’ parents’ death by rhinoceros stampede is comical and forgetful in James and the Giant Peach. 4th grade readers have conquered the idea of long chapters and story structure, but they’re not quite in a place where death-stricken moral dilemmas can be explained.

So now, it’s the end of the school year, the last of the letter exchanges, and I had decided to get my pen-pal a 5th grade reading level book, a whole new platform of worlds to choose from. I definitely thought she could handle the reading level, so I sought out to find something suitable for an animal lover.

I soon found out that a majority of young adult authors think, “in order to introduce death-stricken moral dilemmas, which is a required lesson for reading comprehension, we should start with dogs.”

Every book that I recalled reading in the 5th grade, involved the main character’s dog dying, which is seemingly a requirement. Where the Red Fern Grows, Sounder, Old Yeller, Stone Fox, I could keep going. 5th grade is simply not an animal lover’s year, and I had genuine concern for the challenge my pen-pal would have to endure in the coming future.

I pondered, Call of the Wild, because the owner dies, not the dog. I finally settled for “Island of the Blue Dolphins,” about a girl living on an island by herself with a bunch of dolphins…

…Of course the reason she is alone is because half of her tribe died, the other half abandoned her, and a pack of wild dogs ate her brother. Whatever, the girl has to learn sometime.

Nike Y2K Jogger

2010-05-17T21:16:00.001-04:00

The stuff that dreams are made of...

2010-04-27T15:23:00.002-04:00

...has much less endurance than the drive to make them come true.

I am headstrong into my bucket list, happy that I haven't gotten sick of the need to pursue anything on this list, except maybe the Sundance film festival as I have no desire to travel to Park City, Utah. I guess I'm a little disappointed that even in full pursuit, some things are taking longer than I want them to.

This list has certainly sparked my urge to finish the novel. Now, I feel I have a fair shot to defeat my dad in our race to novel completion. But since I've spent the better, sunnier part of my weekends writing, I feel I've missed on the opportunity to cross other more viable items off the list, so lesson learned, I'll make more of an effort to do that from this point on.

Also, some items like donating bone marrow and is a two step process, the second step being waiting for a match who needs a donor. I've put myself in the position of having to choose between the health of others and the joy of crossing something off the list.

I've also been working with a trainer to get my mile time below 6 minutes, however, this might take years to accomplish (My current mile time is 7:15, a far cry from the 6:18 high school personal record). I'm also throwing a wrench in the plan by giving my trainer other goals to conquer like: improve triathlon time, strengthen my core, look toned, get my bikini body back, get in better shape than my boxing friend, which may or may not improve my running time. Correction, my decision to ignore diet advice is the wrench.

Number 51 CHECK

2010-04-08T21:03:00.004-04:00

51. Live IN Manhattan

"It all came close to never happening. This life came so close to never happening."

This excerpt from the 25th hour has always resonated with me. Whatever is becoming of me through this project, through all of these endless projects, I feel like I need to step back and acknowledge the effort gone into each step.

I don't think I've had a long-term goal as challenging as this one. The moment I set foot in Jersey City in 2005, I knew I wanted to live in Manhattan, but I took my time, paid off my loans, and prepared myself for the big move. Then other things got in the way and I decided this move wasn't important, but saying this aloud several times didn't make it true. Moving back to Boston without completing my Manhattan destination gave me the impression that I failed at my quest and didn't give New York a fair shot. Because the New York I had abandoned wasn't New York at all.

This time I decided that since I've put in enough time and struggle in Jersey, Brooklyn and Queens simply weren't going to be options.

March 1st. I move into my Lower East Side apartment. One month later, I'm still jumping up and down and sporting a lameass Ben Stiller smile curling at each end. I'm finally here, and there are already so many stories to tell building with each day, but I'll share my favorite one.

The two windows in my quaint bedroom look out to other quaint bedroom windows. During my recent past time of people watching, I've managed to label my neighbors, much like a modern day Rear Window scene. There's the jogger, who puts his smelly shoes out on the windowsill every morning. There's the music fan, who thinks he just discovered indie music for the first time, and plays songs repetitively with the boombox speakers facing outward, so I know the music is for our "benefit." There's the Julie Andrews, who belts musicals on hot afternoons. There's the party guy who has annoying sloppy drunk parties on his deck. Oh yeah and there's the freaky couple who happen to live directly across from me...

The weekend of March 13th was a cold and rainy one. Mother nature graces the art of making the temperature just cold enough that the precipitation is still rain, but I swear I've felt much warmer in a blizzard. That Saturday night, I came home, got into the fluffiest pants, sweatshirt and socks I could find and huddled to the heater with my hot cocoa. I soon fell asleep to the sound of the chilling downpour. I woke up in the middle of the night to a flash seeping through my blinds. Must be lightning I thought. I waited for the thunder, but nothing. Then I see multiple flashes as if someone was taking a picture of my window. I brace myself and bend the blinds. A man is standing on the fire escape ladder across from me with a camera, and he's taking photos of his girlfriend, who is rolling around naked on the cold steel fire escape platform...in the freezing cold rain.

Sure it looks warm now.

The buried list has been extended

2010-04-01T17:15:00.005-04:00

In the slight chance that I won't be able to eradicate polio, I've developed a few other list items that can be substituted. I will also use these in the place of a completed task that I found to be lame or uneventful.

101. Meet my childhood penpal from Japan
102. Be the first person in the world to see daybreak
103. Windsurf in the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool
104. Shimmy up a really tall coconut tree
105. Become a TEDfellow
106. Compete in a pinball tournament
107. Compete in the Ironman Triathlon

I have also completed a few more tasks and look forward to posting about them.

Number 21 CHECK

2010-03-26T19:38:00.009-04:00

21. Go to Holi Day in Washington Square Park, NY

I was incredibly outgoing when I was a kid and yearned to be different from everyone else. More importantly, I remember thinking how pathetic the other kids were as they stood still during recess watching in disgust as I ran circles around them before crashing into the ground, and getting up and doing it again. Thankful that I was raised in the 80s, if I grew up any later, I would easily have fallen under the attention deficit disorder cohort. I think my biggest disappointment was that good behavior meant acting like an adult, so all the “good” kids stood near mom, being reserved, while I went exploring and recruiting my close friends back into kid-dom. I soon met my demise as studying and conformity became the only means of middle school survival. But before that, my life was simply about immunity from any injury and insult: attempting to get the swing around the top bar with me still on it, riding my bike down a bumpy hill without holding the handlebars, climbing trees, climbing brick walls, and climbing the crown molding inside my house, doing flips off the bunkbed, trying to land on my head. It's a lot harder than it looks.

My most exhilarating experiences as a child involved completely letting go of all inhibitions to truly enjoy the moment. When a friend taught me how to ride a bike without the handlebars, she really couldn’t explain in detail what to do. “Just let go and be free,” she would say. And it wasn’t until my hands were flying through the air down a car-free hill that I knew what she meant.

I knew there had to be an event somewhere that celebrated this kind of freedom—an event that defined who I was and what my youth stood for.

Then sometime in college, the rumors started to spread about this Hindu holiday called Holi. To commemorate the coming of spring and the lively colors that go with it, people of all ages would gather and throw colored powder at each other. This always became an opportunity missed, as year after year, I would seldom approach what looked like a care bear mass murder scene—a myriad of bright hue powders scattered across a vast flat area. One day, this powder would hit me instead of the ground, I thought.

Sunday March 7th. I went to American Apparel and bought white pants and a white sweatshirt. If I was going to partake in this, I was going full-force as a blank canvas. Washington Square Park is being renovated this year, so my new destination was Richmond Hill in Queens, NY.

I began my journey strutting down the Lower East Side, and surprised that I was being gawked at by the tourists for my all-white wardrobe. I didn’t mind. I wanted to say, "wait until I come back."

I took the long A train ride into Queens. I was hoping to see some evidence that I was heading in the right direction, maybe a blue smear on someone’s face, but it wasn’t until the last stop at Ozone Park, where I saw red blotches of color on the ground of the station. Someone just couldn’t wait any longer to unleash a youthful red blow, an impatient feeling I could identify with.

I followed traces of color on the ground and on the people as I made my way towards the park. Unscathed, I was warned by strangers that I might get my sparkling clothes dirty. “I know,” I responded smugly.

I walked head first into the crowd, and was flawless for about 30 seconds before two brothers and their super soakers filled with blue and red dye sprayed me in the face. “Are you alright?” said someone in the crowd. Still with my eyes closed, I nodded. I opened my eyes, and a young man said with confidence, “That’s good,” as he painted a pink smudge down my sleeve. With two packages of purple ready to go, at first, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. That was until an old lady rubbed orange on my cheek without verbal permission, and I quickly patted her shoulder with purple. I spent the next hour patting peoples’ shoulders with purple. Then, they would turn around, thinking I had just tapped them on the shoulder, and I had to make the awkward gesture that their shoulder was now purple. Eventually, I emerged into conscious coloring, acknowledging that everyone in the park wanted to be colored and a sly tap on the shoulder was lame. I sought out colors that I felt I was lacking, on a mission to become entirely covered. Between flights, I wandered around, enjoying the music and the playground occupied by toddlers who had no idea they had green and blue faces.

Then I saw a photographer asking teens if he could take their photo, unaware that the exchange involved him getting colored afterwards. He summoned me over to his camera, and I then realized my mission was complete.

Photo taken by Gerald Holubowicz

The subway ride home was fun as I shared my coloring encounters with other Holi participants while others simply shrugged at our disposition. I’m sure they’ve seen worse. I emerged out of the subway, looking like Rainbow Brite after a car accident. I couldn’t pretend that I was no different from everyone else on the street, so I held my head high and nodded at passersby. I stopped into Sugar Café on the lower east side, deciding that I deserved a piece of cheesecake after my event, and I’m happy to say that I had the best service with all smiles. The only real judgment I received was from the bums on my block. This old man looked at me in confusion while the woman beside him said, “You’re not hallucinating this time. She’s real,” and they both had a good laugh over nips and a metal bench that was getting colder as nightfall approached.

Number 95 CHECK

2010-03-06T13:38:00.008-05:00

95. Eat something I haven't eaten before (preferably something edible)

When I initially wrote this one down, I had images of the Survivorman, trekking through the jungle for days and sucking the bone marrow from a freshly killed Rhino. I definitely hadn't eaten Rhino before. But as I ventured to conquer number 95 and put a dent in my list, I soon realized that there can be varying degrees of defining how to complete each task.

For example, there were a few foods I was exposed to this past month, where I thought to myself, well I've never had that before, and I ate them all: goat's milk, kim chi, Rice dream, soy ice cream. Yes, I ate them all, and yet I felt ashamed to check off number 95. Why? Well, the night after I ate kim chi, I looked up how to make it only to realize that I've had all of the ingredients separately. The same thing went for the rest of the new foods I've tried, so at this point I decided to set guidelines for my list. I may not get to suck the bone marrow from a Rhino, but every task will be complete when it has a great story to back it up. That will make the seemingly easier tasks a little tougher. So, my story...

My mom always told me to never ever eat mussels. She only vaguely recalls the absence of mussels from her family dining experience. I blame the fact that dining with the Collings family in the 50s had been overshadowed by liver and onions, which was apparently a favorite. My mom never shared by whom. I think at the time, that would have been the deciding factor of which grandparent I loved more. Both grandparents were gravely allergic to mussels and warned my mother against them. She had successfully avoided them until her later twenties when she started cooking macrobiotic foods and incorporating more seafood into her diet. The next few years would teach her that mussels may as well be a notable substitute for ipecac syrup, and crustaceans would cause her face to swell to great proportions, increasing with every bite. Now she is forced to carry an epi pen in case the food she eats is even cooked next to crustaceans. She used to love lobster. When I was really young, we went to Legal Seafoods and she was so submerged in the lobster, I actually thought, wow, mom needs a bib more than I do. But a few years ago, when I asked if she missed the taste of lobster, her eyes widened, and with direct response she exclaimed, "No. Not after experiencing what it can do to me. It's not worth it at all." I used to think I was allergic to lobster. I remember being sick from eating lobster, but in hind sight, it may have been from eating a WHOLE lobster when I was eight. I avoided lobster for years. I even refused the free lobster we would seldom be offered at Community Boating after discovering a function had leftovers. But one time I was traveling for business and the special was lobster ravioli, and I just figured, what the hell. And it was delicious. I hadn't inherited the lobster allergy gene. And I thought, what else am I not allergic to? Should I take into consideration that my dad is allergic to mussels too? Mussels would be my next venture, and after eating them, I would deserve to cross 95 off my list.

Thursday February 18th, 3PM. I was hungry, there was a Belgian restaurant right across the street from where I was staying, Petite Abeille, and I knew they served mussels. I texted my friends, I'm going to eat mussels now. They assumed I was being my usual obscure self, which I was, to which they replied their ambivalent standing, and off I went.

I ordered the appetizer bucket and started shelling and eating...and it was delicious.

Back in the land of OZ

2010-02-12T12:05:00.001-05:00

The rumors are true...coming soon.

To all my friends in Boston

2010-02-07T10:48:00.003-05:00

When I decided to move back to Boston last year, it wasn't a rash decision, it was my conviction. I had been threatening for months to move back, and then I had two sick family members, my cue to take action. I missed seeing my sister more than twice a year, and I wanted to go back to the place I was raised and be a young professional in Beantown. Things didn't exactly fall together like they did when I moved to New York. In fact, 2009 was a rough year. I realized I could no longer be aggressive and picky about the work I got, and my spending habits went from shopping sprees to savings to survival.

But I will never regret moving back. My grandmother passed away one month after the move, and the extra time spent with her was worth so much. I also made several new friends with inspiring interests and developed existing friendships. I rescued a dog from a broken home, ensuring she will always be loved and well fed. I got to spend time with my family, and realized that my sister was so busy that I saw her maybe once more than the year before.

But the reality is that I never want to be in a position where job security is an issue. I guess in these times, one is never truly secure, but I was so much more secure in New York, and it's time to move back there once again.

Now that I'm heading back into the health care advertising world, I want to be highly selective of the brands I choose to work on, because how I feel about the drug world as stated in previous posts still stands.

The Buried Life list Part 2

2010-01-13T20:11:00.005-05:00

54. Live in Buenos Aires
55. Conduct an orchestra
56. Lean my head against the glass wall of the viewing room of the Sears Tower in Chicago
57. Throw a water balloon off a tall building
58. Build a 3-D model of a New York apartment building
59. Open a bakery in the Lower East Side
60. Invent something that many people could use and benefit from
61. Catch a grape in my mouth at 200 yards (yep, that's a world record)
62. Experience Manhattanhenge
63. Be an extra in a film
64. Walk into a room and feel others being awed by my presence
65. Drive across the country and come back with "The Story"
66. Learn and perfect the lift (think Dirty Dancing)
67. Grow old with my friends
68. Donate bone marrow
69. Walk the streets of Manhattan blindfolded for the day
70. Fake handshake George W Bush
71. Discover new land, even if inhabitable, temporary, or a sandbar, and tend to it for a day
72. Hop on a moving freight train headed to Santa Fe
73. Climb up a giant dome jungle gym
74. Go cotton picking in Missouri
75. Work up an immunity to a poison, ie Indian food
76. Meet Munzareen Fatima
77. Learn how to breakdance (Capoeira doesn't count)
78. Ski off a ski jump, the big olympic kind
79. Street luge
80. write and direct a mockumentary
81. Help my dog finally catch a squirrel
82. Start a non-profit that gives shark blood to surfers to use as shark repellent
83. Learn how to flip against a wall
84. Find out the name of that song from that place
85. Invest money in something I truly believe in
86. Relax in a natural hot springs
87. Overcome my fear of SCUBA diving (I can thank my chemistry teacher for convincing me that my head might implode)
88. Jump from the roof of one building to the next
89. Sail a Catalina 14 in full harness
90. Climb the mast of an America's Cup boat
91. Float down the Mississippi River on a raft or powerless tugboat
92. Go bouldering in Thailand
93. Complete a Navy Seals obstacle course (in no desired time)
94. Make use out of all my old electronics (CD walkman, cassette walkman, sony minidisk, portable radio etc)
95. Eat something I haven't eaten before (preferably something edible)
96. Find myself in a boat where all i see is sky and water
97. Find myself in a desert where all I see is cracked earth and sky
98. Save someone's life
99. Pick a fresh pod from a Cacao tree and turn it into chocolate
100. Fall madly in love

so that's my list. I would like to know how many of the one hundred you think I'll actually do. I have to say, this was so much fun. This exercise has encouraged me to think creatively, and i love the opportunity to do so. You can bet that every time I check something off this list, I WILL blog about it.

Buried Life: The young man's Bucket List

2010-01-06T14:14:00.005-05:00

So, as you might have imagined by the silence, I didn't get into grad school of my choice for the Spring term, and decided that Northeastern wasn't the right program for me. Along with my letter of disapproval were some keen suggestions that would have helped before I initially turned in my application, such as, "take more advanced biology classes" and "Don't get hung up on Spring term, because we're only accepting 12 students." I'm well over the sadness and look forward to the March applications process. For inspiration, I turned to MTV. Ha, wouldn't that be pathetic?

Well, I did and this is where I heard about the buried life. The creative play on the concept stayed with me. Four friends ponder over the accepted idea that if they were on this earth for only one day, they would, of course, have a list of things they would want to accomplish. The truth is they have more than that, so they have an even longer list of crazy things to accomplish. Every time they cross something off their list, they change someone's life in their path, and it's all documented by MTV cameras. I decided to make my own list of desired accomplishments in my lifetime. The goal is to hit 100. I'm almost there.

1. Meet Barack Obama
2. Climb Malibu Creek and fall into the water
3. Think of something scientifically that no one has thought of before (ie, PhD)
4. Finish the final draft of the novel and have it professionally published
5. Learn how to drive stick shift
6. Attain another country's citizenship
7. Speak French fluently
8. Visit the Christ Redeemer, Brazil
9. Meet a Namibian San farmer in Africa
10. Eradicate polio
11. Have an art show (screenprinting)
12. Have a casual conversation with a celebrity
13. Get a 100% on a difficult test or a 4.0 in a semester
14. Jump an island or sandbar in a windsurfer
15. Completely gut and remodel a house, "This old house" style
16. Win a national or international award
17. Donate 1 million dollars to Community Boating
18. Help Mike Choi's cousin meet Bono from U2
19. Rebuild the Waterworld set in the middle of the ocean and live there for a bit
20. Pay off my parents' mortgage
21. Go to Holi Day in Washington Square Park, NY
22. Participate in La Tomatina in Madrid
23. Partake in the Running of the Bulls in Barcelona
24. Travel the world to spend all of my collected foreign money in the countries of origin
25. Go to SXSW in Austin, TX
26. Have a discussion with David Benioff
27. Visit Cuba before Castro dies
28. Go to any of the abroad Summer Olympics
29. Attend the Sundance Film Festival
30. Be a lead singer in a band long enough to endure at least one live performance
31. Laugh over money
32. Make a BIG difference in someone's life
33. Quit cracking my knuckles
34. Punch someone in the face
35. Get punched in the face (please no random surprises. I just got a job and I want to keep it)
36. Teach sailing to my friends
37. Go snowboarding (sandboarding?) down a sand dune
38. Open a bar in New York (Barbell)
39. Bear a child
40. Be Zoe Bell's stunt woman in a movie
41. Watch an open heart surgery
42. Inspire someone to make a life-changing decision
43. Randomly see someone reading my book on the subway
44. Meet someone who has lived in a remote village in Tibet their whole life
45. Travel to compete in a sporting event (Run, tri)
46. Catch a piranha with my finger
47. Visit a cave that can only be travelled with aided oxygen under water
48. Windsurf in Bonaire
49. Eat raw for a year...and survive
50. Run under a 6 minute mile
51. Live IN Manhattan
52. Live in Los Angeles
53. Live in Paris

So, I'm half-way through. Writing these really made me excited, and I can't wait to check off my first item. Actually, I feel a little empty, as if I haven't done anything, but I have to remember that I've done several things that were on my list several years ago: getting jetlag, working in New York, climbing a 5.11, surfing in Malibu Beach, doing a triathlon, going up the Eiffel Tower, participating in a mass protest, mass pillow fight. feeling better now.

Dreaming of NY

2009-12-14T18:35:00.003-05:00

I remember why I left New York. I was tired of working long hours, and I missed being close to my family. Of course, now that I'm here, I have more free time and I'm literally living at home. Now I miss my New York family--not just my cousins, but my close friends who were there to support me through every decision I made. And now that I have free time, there is no other place that I want to spend it other than New York. I've been thinking so much about this, and my prime motivation to do well in school is to get into the PhD epidemiology program at Columbia, so I can be back with my New York family in Manhattan. Last night I had quite the dream, which captured what I miss most about New York...

So whenever I dream that I'm at Shilpa's apartment, she always has a deck-like fire escape. I guess that West side story/RENT apartment fantasy had never fully been erased from my mind. So anyway, Jasmin, Shilpa and I were on Shilpa's fire escape, and we were just talking and enjoying a glass of wine. Then we looked out at the other building roofs and saw a woman in heels and a fluffy cocktail dress climb out of her window. She hopped from one fire escape to the other, balancing her stilettos on the thin black bars as if she had done this dozens of times, and all while holding half a martini glass of something to match her dress. "Who is that?" I asked. Shilpa quickly responded, "Oh, that's Carrie from Sex and the City. She's making her way to her first party. This is rare. She's usually out much later." When she floated to the roof, I could see that it was indeed Carrie, and she whistled for her first cab of the night, which sped up to the roof, picked her up and disappeared in the direction of the meat-packing district.

Next we saw a professional gymnast who wanted to talk to us. Shilpa said, "Well if you shovel the front steps for us we can talk." He insisted on impressing us on the roof, so he did several acrobatic tricks across the roofs of the block and performed handstands on the banister of his fire escape. We clapped and cheered and he disappeared inside.

Jasmin forgot something at her home so she hopped across a few fire escapes, crawled through her window and came back with Christmas lights, which we dangled over the banister. We just continued conversation until someone would intermittently shout from below, "Nice Lights," to which we shouted back, "Thank you," and our simple responses impressed them as if someone from the deck rarely graced a response to the ground.

I think this dream represents how I see people in New York. Other than maybe 20 of the close friends I have in New York that I would allow on the deck and into my life, I view the people of New York as 6 million single-serving friends. The professional gymnast represents a special moment or memory one would have with a New Yorker, but I guarantee you, even if that gymnast ended up living next door, we would never see him again. Even if we sat on that deck every night.

Carrie is the icon that is supposed to represent us young professional women in the city, able to balance and float easily from one adventure to the next.

In Dreams

2009-12-06T10:27:00.003-05:00

So I've been wait listed at Tufts for about a month and a half now, and I've spent that time thinking of any conceivable way of acquiring further education credits, recommendations and any other way I can prove to them how serious I am about getting my MPH there. I've spent so much time thinking about what my future in three weeks will hold that I started dreaming about it.

My dream started when I entered a Biology class. The first thing I noticed was that there were several packages from high school students to the school, which had several Bio-lab projects inside. We opened a package and found out that these projects were groundbreaking impressive experiments that impressed even the professor, and I had immediately discredited all of the work I had previously sent in.

After viewing the contents of the package, I looked up and realized that these 12-year-old kids were in the next room working on something. I went in and saw about 50 petri dishes with different liquids in each one. I asked what was going on and the kids said that they all went onto the online class site and were told to take and record the temperature of all the liquid samples in the room. I quickly got my materials together so I could do the same thing. But I had one of those aluminum-framed mercury thermometers that couldn't possibly get the temperature of something in a little petri dish, so I was stuck. When I looked up again to ask for help, all of the 12-year-olds had gone downstairs to eat lunch, so my lack of preparation led me to miss lunch.

Then the professor walked in and said that the class hadn't even started yet. The students in my class were so epic, they had finished the coursework in the class before it even started. WTF.
Dream over.

I think I can analyze this one to a tea, because it is revealing all of the feelings that I have toward grad school. Of course to a much higher degree of exaggeration.

1. I'm afraid that the credentials I'm handing in don't have as much merit as I thought.
2. I'm apprehensive about being in classes with students that are as much as 6 years younger than me, of course in dreams, that means 12-year-olds.
3. I never had to worry about finding online material at Drexel, and there might be some essential online material in my classes that I'll never be able to find, because I'm obviously so computer-illiterate.
4. I have a long resentment over the time in ninth grade when I didn't have a lunch break on Wednesdays and had Bio-lab from 11:45-1:15 that day. I was sternly told the first Wed that Bio-lab is not a place to eat lunch, so I had to convince the crotchety Geometry teacher that I had to eat lunch in her class, and every week she would say in her trollish voice, "Elizabeth, it looks like you care more about your lunch than your geometry." She was right. I could have eaten lunch in History at 1:15.

In reality, I am aware of the changes that will take place compared to Drexel, ie, larger age gap, more online material, more competition. But I wouldn't categorize them as fears. I'm excited about what these changes will bring.

I need better theories

2009-11-16T21:12:00.004-05:00

As I begin to become interested in particular topics in my studies, there are several topics that spark further exploration. (oh yeah, I'm taking online courses at University of Minnesota School of Public Health, and I'm giggling only because I can say Minnesota with a stellar Fargo accent, stellar)

The 20s and 30s represent prime childbearing years for low-risk pregnancies in white women. But while white teen pregnancies are considered extremely risky, studies show that African American teen mothers experience a survival advantage compared to infants whose mothers are older. As African American women enter their 20s and 30s, infant mortality rates increase.

The Weathering Hypothesis suggests that African American women may begin to deteriorate due to socioeconomic disadvantage. It is unclear why these disparities exist, but various social determinants are offered as possible explanations.

Reflecting on what other factors could play a part in this, I researched further and discovered there are several genetic differences between white and African American women. On average, African American women enter puberty and begin menstrual cycles much earlier than white women. The high-risk associated with white teen pregnancies may be because of the lack of fertile development, while most African American teens have reached fertile maturity much earlier and have already surpassed the high-risk pregnancy window during their pre-teen years. These facts suggest that it is possible that for African Americans, prime childbearing years could naturally peak in their teen years. [Don't be impressed, when I researched further, I discovered several other explanations shooting down this theory]

And so far, my world of theories are continuously being rejected. I think it's because I'm way too optimistic when it comes to health.

For example, we now know that some long-term smokers get COPD earlier than others. When speaking to a physician about possible genetic effects, I suggested that perhaps some guys have a gene that makes their lungs more elastic and resilient. The physician laughed and said "There's no superman gene. There must be patients with genes that make them more at risk for the disease." My immediate thought was, what a pessimist, but as I find out more about the approaches made to find these facts, the question is always, "Who's more at risk?" and never "Who's in the clear?"

Now that I've finally grasped that without prevention, every relevant person has a chance of being at risk, perhaps now my theories will have more worth. Of course, as I understand, it is common to have even the most profound trial findings shot down several times in one's career.

Why Epi? Why Now?

2009-11-16T07:20:00.008-05:00

It's crunch time. For the admissions office, not me. I'm in the waiting game with no apparent timeline. Since, I've applied, I received various promises from one school that I will hear back in: 5-7 days, 2 weeks, 1 month from the app deadline, and now, the beginning of December. The other school has me waitlisted, which is just an excuse to have me wait longer.

Many of you are curious why I decided to make a career switch of this magnitude. As I learn more about Public Health, the combination of curiosity and passion has led me to create a list of all of the things I want to accomplish while on the road to a PhD in Epi.

Head-to-Head Trials
When Big Pharma finally breaks down and funds head-to-head-trials, they have all these dodgy ways of weighing data to their favor. I want to create an organization that funds head-to-head trials, while taking into account the strengths and weaknesses of each drug as documented by their pivotal trials. Clinical trial models should use treatment guidelines for measurements, any AEs that require special monitoring and other factors.

Associations
There is so much data already out there that we can use for retrospective trials. An example that has already been done makes an association between rib injuries and pneumonia. Rib injuries can cause patients to breath shallowly to avoid further pain, but shallow breathing can lead to a build up of bacteria in the chest causing pneumonia and other bacterial infections. Findings like these can prevent additional ailments in patients.

Unusual exposure
I feel that a fair number of trial proposals from physicians stem from undocumented evidence observed in the several patients they see everyday. I want to explore fields that might not be followed as often in medicine, and interview people who may have exposure to a specific group of patients that aren't seen by a physician everyday. An example could be interviewing trainers who help overly obese patients lose weight dramatically. The process of losing excessive weight is especially interesting, because the body does what it can to maintain the weight that the person is, so when they begin to waste rapidly, it would be interesting to know what the body does to cope and if these processes can be arranged into stages...

Regulate Big Pharma
Last year, the FDA put all of these regulations into place to align Big Pharma with better practices, but I'll tell you right now, they failed. Keeping sales reps from giving doctors flashy pens will not solve the manipulation behind sales. The first thing I learned in Marketing class at Drexel was that health care is an inelastic market. Even though Big Pharma does us a favor by creating medications that save lives, something should be done to remind them this business is for the lives.

-Keeping patients from getting a better approved drug, because the company's other less effective drug hasn't run it's life cycle yet--worse than a flashy pen.

-Paying doctors (key opinion leaders) millions of dollars to advocate a drug and pretend that all their patients flourished on the medication--worse than a notepad with the logo on it

-Redefining the disease state to fit the medication's needs and brainwashing sales reps into believing it--worse than a flash drive

Obviously, this is more of a health policy thing, but this is something I care about.

Stop and give yourself a pat on the back
Thanks to epidemiology, awful diseases have been controlled and even eradicated, and yet there are new diseases, new strands of old diseases, and several other things to keep epidemiologists at work. One question that I'm trying to answer through retrospective research is if we eradicated malaria, would there be a dramatic increase of anemic patients? How would we best prepare for this? Would it make sense to fight both synchronously?

There are several other efforts, I'd love to find out more about in general. I saw this film called "The Final Inch" about UNICEF trying to eradicate polio in the world, and it made me want to get involved. There are other diseases and ailments (HIV, diabetes, autism, malaria) where I'd like to know more about the current efforts people are taking to control or find the root of.

At the end of my career, I'd like to say, "Because of my contribution to public health, we know the cause of blank disease, we've eradicated blank disease, and we are living in a much safer environment, due to the data we've found stating blank." You get the idea. It may be difficult for me to be solely responsible for these things, but I hope to find correlations in the data that will lead to any of these great events.

Right now, I have to just get into an MPH program.

David Benioff is pretty much my favorite author ever

2009-11-05T17:34:00.006-05:00

I am so tired of authors like Elizabeth Gilbert (eat, pray, love) and Julie Powell (Julie and Julia) hogging the New York Times bestseller list. They sell a great product--overcoming an unsettling divorce by traveling the world, riding on only alimony and "self-worth" or following in someone else's shadow. Great Products. I'm not gonna lie, I read them both and loved them, however, I was disappointed that the New York Times Bestseller list is bombarded with Great Products but lack of literary masterpiece. I was yearning to find an author who was not only a great storyteller but a great writer.

Then I read City of Thieves by David Benioff. Amazing piece of literature with descriptive images that reminded me of F. Scott Fitzgerald's work. Then I read his other two books and I was officially a fan. I'm upset that City of Thieves hasn't made any notable book lists as it was first published back in March.

I had been so overwhelmed by my grad school applications that I completely forgot to tend to my novel, and now that I just finished "25th Hour", I'm now inspired to continue. I guess I'm also inspired by Benioff's life story. He was living in New York teaching English in a crappy Brooklyn high school while writing his first novel. There is actually evidence of a normal life before publication that I can identify with and that is what makes him my favorite author.

Looking at his books, I noticed that the dedication pages kind of represented his life and career journey:

25th Hour: For Mom and Dad
When the Nines Roll Over: For Amanda. I love you.
City of Thieves: For Amanda and Frankie.

and I thought of the struggle it took for him to write his first book. Did he know it would become such a success? Did he ever consider dedicating the first book to a girlfriend that he didn't realize he would lose? Is that what the whole To Mom and Dad bit is about? And then I thought of who my first dedication page would mention. There are a lot of people who I want to address:

To Mom and Dad. I told you I would finish it.

Kitty, I'm sorry for filling a pixie stick with white pepper before giving it to you, but seriously, biting me wasn't the answer.

Emily, thanks for letting me stay at your house in London for two weeks. I want to especially thank you for staying late with me that first night as you told me stories about China before my 3 days of sleeplessness. On that fourth night, my lucid jetlag-induced 12-hour dream led to my story.

Shilpa and Jasmin, thanks for supporting me, and as promised, I'm moving back to New York, although I would have preferred to fulfill my promise through winning the lottery.

Delevega, thanks for teaching me to become my dream, but you're still a douchebag.

To the girls in my high school who gathered on the stairs on the last day of school, wondering which student in our class would break free of mediocrity and become an outlandishly successful and inspiring person. Thanks for giving me the opportunity to think, 'that person could be me.'

Starnes and Shah Choose Boston's Indie Music Scene

2009-11-04T15:16:00.000-05:00

I recently sat down with Dania and Zilpha from the band Starnes and Shah, and they dished about their new move to Boston, their busy New England tour, and new record, ‘Pink, White, Blue, Green,’ which is releasing in May 2009. While chatting it up with the group over papaya martinis, I found out what makes Boston such a great indie music scene, and it’s not the groupies…

Liz: What were the beginnings of Starnes and Shah? What made you guys decide to make music together?

Dania: Starnes and Shah had started in 2005. I had played alone for a while since college. Zilpha and I went to the same school [Sarah Lawrence] but didn’t really know each other until after we graduated. I did a lot of coffeehouse shows in the city, open mics and little features. After I graduated, I was still working in Bronxville and needed a roommate, and Zilpha and I met each other through a mutual friend, and we ended up living together. For the first year, we didn’t play music together at all. I knew that she sang and played music but for some reason we never played together. Then we both moved to Queens, NY, and one day, I had written a song and heard Zilpha humming in the other room, so I said, could you indulge me for a second and sing along, and she did, and that was it. From that point on, I forced her to sing with me forever. [Zilpha laughs]

Liz: I’ve heard several of the samples provided on the website. Very creative stuff. How would you describe your sound?

Dania: I tell people it’s a vocal duo and usually people cringe when they hear that but really what we are is sort of indie/folk and now we’ve evolved into rock, but still a vocal duo. There’s no backup singer. There aren’t really any indie rock vocal duos out there.

Liz: What’s your process for writing music?

Dania: I write the songs. The basic lyrics and melodies. I see myself as the storyteller. And at that point, they’re half-cooked, but when Zilpha and I get together on them, they really come to life, because when I write songs the second voice is always missing. We come from very different musical backgrounds. I don’t know how to read music. I’ve never been trained to play anything. And Zilpha is a classically trained singer and musician, and had a music background in the church band and didn’t know who Zeppelin was when I met her. It’s been pretty educational in terms of the structured way to view and arrange music, which is really Zilpha’s strength. Each of our strengths is another one’s weakness and vise versa. It’s very collaborative.

Zilpha: The consistent thread for me [whether it be music or acting] has been relating to a story that’s already been created and trying to make other people present in the telling of that story. I want to complement the story, not compete or undermine or change it. It means a lot to me to be in a group and make music again with people who are receptive to what my strengths and interests are.

Liz: Have you guys been on tour a lot in the past, and how will this upcoming tour be different?

Dania: We were both working full time jobs in New York, so we weren’t able to go on tour, so we were a regional band at the time and played in New York, and we did a show in Austin Texas. We’re really looking forward to starting this Boston tour, because we’ll have some rock shows, some acoustic shows. The nice thing about living in Boston is that there are other cities nearby that we get to play at like Burlington, VT and Portland, ME. We have a radio show in New Hampshire and we’re setting up other performances there, and we want to continue to play in New York. We really want to extend our reach. Our goal is to be able to get in a van one day and go everywhere and anywhere.

Zilpha: I’m originally from Dallas, and I really hope that we can play a string of shows in the Dallas and Austin areas.

Liz: Is there a favorite venue that you’ve played at so far?

Dania: [without a pause] Our favorite music venue, I would have to say is Patty O’Reilly’s music bar in New York. This guy named Rick Johnson holds a great open mic there. He used to hold one at this famous club called the C Notes, which closed, but he arranges open mics around a feature act, which is great because the showcase interacts with everyone else, and the bar scene is great. We did it a few times with a full band. We’re definitely looking forward to discovering which Boston venue will be a favorite.

Liz: I’ve heard your previous record Summer in the Woodshed, which is available now on iTunes, and selected songs from your new record on your website [www.starnesandshah.com] and I noticed great similarities between you and the Indigo Girls. What are your musical influences and your response to this comparison?

Dania: I’m a huge fan of the Indigo Girls, and I dragged Zilpha to a few of their shows so she’s a fan too. My musical influences are scattered: I love Oasis, which I still get a lot of flak for, and I loved Pearl Jam. I still and will always love them. I love Tori Amos. She is a great singer/songwriter and she has a great band behind her. When we were performing in New York, I made it a mandate for the whole band to see her perform live. I love the band America and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young. My romance is vocal harmonies. Since we’ve been in Boston, I’ve heard some great stuff recently from the local band Faces on Film.

Zilpha: I grew up listening to a lot of country music, which would surprise everyone, George Strait, and Randy Travis, a lot of Randy Travis. I was a big fan of girl harmony groups like Envogue and Ace of Base and ABBA thus triggering my Swedish phase. I like to pretend I’m Swedish. My dad actually looks like one of the ABBA band members. [laughter] My biggest influence has been the people I knew personally that wrote and played music as I grew up.

Liz: What made you decide to move from New York to Boston?

Dania: New York is a great city, but it can be exhausting to pursue your art and pay the bills. We wanted to find a city where we could really tap into the artistic community, but at the same time, we didn’t want to go too far from New York. Boston has an amazing music scene, and other great music cities nearby.

Zilpha: I think that we were really fortunate when living in New York, because we had a “not New York experience.” We had a very intimate work environment at Turtle Bay Music School, where everyone knew that we did our music thing on the side, and that was our passion. And I don’t think we would’ve had the balls to move to Boston, if it wasn’t for our supportive workplace that believed in us.

Liz: Did the groupies follow you from New York to Boston?

Dania: Ha, well the groupies are PG-13, so none of that. But we’ve had some awesome people, who were friends, fans and supporters, period. We have some really dedicated fans across the country. It’s hard to make that commitment and move somewhere for art, and say I’m gonna give art a go, but we’ve had so many friends come out and say ‘we support you and good luck,’ and that’s why we didn’t want to move too far from New York, because we have a group there that support us and believe in us.

Liz: So what can we expect from Starnes and Shah in the near future?

Dania: I’m really excited. I know the band is excited. We have a bunch of shows all over New England. We’re gonna get a Zipcar van and just go, try and document all of our trip, and post snip-its on our web site, and then we have our CD release party in New York, which is very exciting. For us, we’re coming out of our 9 to 5 lives and dedicating our lives into this project, so we want to document all of it.

Zilpha: I’m very excited about the shows that we have. We’re going to play with the Bella Birds at the Lily Pad, and I think its great that we’ve already reached out to a local band. Similar to putting together a great mixtape for someone, I feel like we’re putting together a really fun evening of folk and soulful music. And we’re playing at Midway café with one of the members of Hotel Universe, and we’re putting together a rock compilation to compliment his style.

Dania: I think the best part about it is being able to reach out to musicians in the area and form a community. We’ve been able to contact bands we like and say, hey, I like you sound, we should play a show together.

Liz: So I guess since you’ve come to Boston, you’ve been welcomed by other bands in the area and have already become a part of the local music community.

Dania: So far yeah. Right now, we’re ramping up about our first show on the 17th at Midway, but we’ve reached out to other bands and gone to see them play. Going to these shows makes me think, yes, indie music is alive and well in Boston. We couldn’t wish for anything better.

Liz: Fences the Plea is one of the songs off of your upcoming album, Pink, White, Blue, Green. The combination of the heartfelt lyrics and the strong build up sounded like an eclectic campfire for the advanced listener. Could you tell me what inspired the lyrics and music for this song?

Dania: Fences the Plea is a story of venturing into a new world. I visited Australia last summer. We both did. And I wrote this song before even going there, because Australia was a present place in my mind and my reality. The continent is so massive, and there’s something so open and wide about it, but in that space there are still people who feel trapped and encaged. And it’s a common love story, where someone feels a lack of freedom, but I thought it was really compelling to think of that in the context of Australia.

Liz: Pink, White, Blue, Green. It’s a very interesting title. Can you elaborate on where you got the title from?

Zilpha: We were discussing the title on one of our whirlwind weekends between Boston and New York on the Bolt bus [big plug, its great, it has wi-fi], and we were at Tick tock diner, and they have this retro table that was white with pink, blue and green speckles, and Dania asked me what the title should be and I said, pink, white, blue, green. And that also refers to the song Confetti [which has said phrase]. I always liked album titles that referred to a song in the album.

Dania: Pink white blue green is just about being all over the map at once and being in a small space at the same time, and bouncing crazily from one thing to the next, and to me that’s a metaphor for living in New York and trying to get out, but wanting to stay. We chose the album title because it was really representative of what we were feeling—unsure, all over the place, kind of loving it, a little bit scared, and it’s been an interesting ride and has been changing colors dramatically.

So, if you want to see Starnes and Shah live in Boston, watch them kick off their live tour on May 17th at the Midway Cafe in Jamaica Plain, or go to their web site www.starnesandshah.com for more dates. Keep a close watch for their record releasing in May 2009.

You Haven't Seen Enough of the Cold War Kids

2009-11-04T15:14:00.000-05:00

The Cold War Kids have been ruling the indie music scene since 2004, and their newest album, ‘Loyalty to Loyalty’ is a sure indication that they intend to continue their reign. The band started this year off right with a major presence at the SXSW music festival in Austin, TX, and for the next few months, they will be on a world tour with Death Cab for Cutie. There aren’t any Boston dates set in stone yet, but with their early album success, you can bet that the tour will extend its way to Beantown.

I recently heard their new single “I’ve seen enough,” and it sets up a disappointing mood in the opening line ‘how’s it gonna feel when summer ends, out of money, out of friends,’ but the song is a beautiful reflection of experiencing a situation you don’t agree with and deciding to step in and take action. This song reminded me of the feeling I had when seeing the poor response to Hurricane Katrina on television. I was done watching people dying in the streets. I had seen enough and wanted to take matters into my own hands. Supported by strong vocals and lyrics that successfully carry out the singer’s frustration, this tune is on the track to be a Cold War Kids classic.

There’s currently a music video directed by Vern Moen found here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbxL9yDPJB4, but the web site verifies that an official music video directed by Sam Jones will release on their web site and probably youtube by the end of April, and “aspires to shatter all molds of existing online music videos.” I’m personally looking forward to the shattering. Keep a watch on their web site www.coldwarkids.com for these updates, so you don’t miss out on Nate Willett’s urgency to clap along with his own songs and the new music video.

Fiction Family Makes An Impression

2009-11-04T15:12:00.000-05:00

Two musicians from different family bands have come together to form a band cleverly called Fiction Family. They just finished their first tour following the January 20th release of their self-titled album. Before hearing the album, I wondered how the pop lyrics of Switchfoot frontman, Jon Foreman would mesh with the bluegrass sound of Nickel Creek guitarist Sean Watkins.

I was really taken by their first single “When she’s near.” If the song were in all major chords, it would have been chipper enough to be a mainstream top 40 hit, but the intentional change to minor and flat keys left an unfamiliar dissonance that made me want to curiously keep playing it over again. I listened intently as lyrics of celebration, written for a cheery upbeat melody, were hidden in somber undertones, as if they recorded it in Halloweenland from the Nightmare Before Christmas.

The rest of the album is laced with musical genius, spanning multiple styles of music and using various instruments. With rumors of upcoming albums and tours, Fiction Family is a band to watch out for in the future.

Mash-up Music Done Right

2009-11-04T15:10:00.001-05:00

It’s late Friday night, and you’re driving home. Out of shameful habit you flip on Kiss 108 and hear two well-known hits spliced together in harmony known as Mash-up Mafia. Your first thoughts are, 'this is a great idea if they didn’t try and scramble this together five minutes before the show started.’

And due to strict copyright infringement laws, it was almost impossible to find a plausible professional mash-up artist, until now.

I recently heard the genius mash-ups from DJ Gregg Gillis, better known as Girl Talk. I was immediately taken by his arrangements as my favorite slow jams were transformed into the ultimate workout album that encouraged me to stay on the treadmill for more than my patience alone would allow.

Girl Talk is one of those treasures ahead of its legal time, much like Napster was in 2000. It’s time to appreciate this gift with your head turned, until the authority reminds you that you are the only one being rewarded in this exchange, which is apparently wrong.

Known by the New York Times as “a lawsuit waiting to happen,” Girl Talk has released one of the best mash-up albums I’ve ever heard called ‘Feed the animals’. Go to the website http://www.myspace.com/girltalk, to hear the whole album, and if you want to buy it, pay as much as you think it’s worth.

I initially decided to buy it for $0.99, but when I realized that it was downloading before I even paid for it, I threw in a few more bucks to thank him for his altruism, the irony being that this is a combination of other artists’ work.

If you like Girl Talk’s album, and you want to hear the DJ live in Boston, before he gets sued, go to the link below and demand that Girl Talk stops here on his upcoming tour.

http://eventful.com/boston/demand/girl-talk-/D0-001-002489417-6/confirmed?status=ok&user=unknown&spid=P0-001-000012763-4&performer_int=1

New Band Hockey Makes You Give a Puck

2009-11-04T14:55:00.002-05:00

(Because I decided to stop posting Examiner articles, examiner.com has threatened to erase my archives, so I'm re-posting them onto this website. After that, I have two new articles to share: one on my aspirations in the field of epidemiology, and the other on David Benioff, currently my favorite author)

the article...
After watching countless episodes of “Girls next door,” I came to the conclusion that good things come from Oregon, so when I heard Hockey’s first single “Too fake,” it didn’t surprise me that this energetic American wave band was from Portland.

Hockey’s approach to music introduces some new techniques, from the lead singers voice sounding almost conversational, to the half step increase within the chorus, giving an onomatopoeic feel to the song. The lyrics pompously discuss the singers’ admission of being shallow yet soulful, but the catchy riffs will have lost tweens rocking out, thinking there’s meaning to not giving a puck.

Hockey recently released their single in the UK last week, along with a long run of tour dates abroad, but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy their songs, here in Boston. At the web page http://www.myspace.com/hockey, you can hear songs from their upcoming album, including the first single “Too fake.” American iTunes doesn’t carry the single yet, but you can buy it for less than a British pound at www.play.com.

Hockey will release their debut album in the US on June 16th with a slew of tour dates to follow. This is a band to be on the lookout for. I predict they will be red hot by mid-summer, hopefully with a real web site.

Don't Walk

2009-09-06T07:51:00.001-04:00

I don't want to be the one that says "They don't make 'em like they used to"... but Chris Cerf obviously doesn't work for PBS anymore.

five years later...

2009-09-06T07:39:00.001-04:00

...and it never gets old.

Grad School and stuff

2009-09-02T15:02:00.002-04:00

A lot is changing as I transfer my life from working professional to grad student/research assistant. More importantly, I'm moving from my awesome 2-story bachelorette pad with seaside view and deck in Southie to Central square with at least one other roommate, depending on who accepts me. It's a big change. I don't feel like sharing any more. hmm, time for a youtube post with something irrelevant yet necessary...

Veering, steering madly across the sun

2009-08-18T07:48:00.004-04:00

It's kind of been a while since my last post. I had to delete the last one, but I'm ready to post again. Below is a personal mission statement that truly reflects where I want my career to go. Although it may not appeal to everyone, it is a candid representation of how I feel.

PERSONAL STATEMENT
I initially went into pharmaceutical advertising with the intent of helping people. As a medical copywriter, my job was to pull data from unabridged clinical study reviews (CSR) and create meaningful messages that physicians would find both relevant and compelling. (This included determining statistical significance by finding the CI percentages and p-values in the raw data.) The primary goal for these messages was to convince physicians to prescribe more of the medication we represented. Through this incredible experience, I discovered a strength and passion for interpreting data and understanding patient perspective.

I observed several market research focus groups in four cities on patients with COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease; most often the result of long-term tobacco smoking) designed to prepare us for the anticipated approval of a COPD indication for the drug I represented (Drug A). The purpose of the trial was to find out what specific symptomatic relief patients looked for in a COPD medication. Since Drug A is a maintenance medication, we wanted to know how this maintenance asthma medication could be beneficial for COPD patients.

Patients did more than recite a list of physical symptoms. They yearned to reach out to us about their disease on an emotional level, which we were unprepared to document. While it was frustrating that we weren’t getting the answers we anticipated, I was fascinated by the large number of patients, who offered us candid details about their disease.

In an attempt to determine whether COPD patients would fill their expired prescriptions, we probed them on why they would allow themselves to get so sick without seeking medical help. Most patients expressed an overwhelming sense of regret, because they were responsible for this self-inflicted, irreversible disease. They felt that after years of ignoring medical advice to stop smoking, physicians thought they deserved to die. Failure to treat their symptoms had led to a rapidly advancing disease. Although we were failing to fulfill our intended research, these data explained why so many COPD patients advance so rapidly in their disease despite available treatments. Later on, when we were searching through one of the CSRs, I noticed that patients with 190-pack-years had the same initial FEV1 levels as patients with 40-pack-years. These two incidents suggested that several other factors (behavioral and genetic, respectively) contributed to disease progression in patients with COPD, and I was eager to find out more.

When the market research trials were over, I decided to shift my profession to a field, which, first and foremost values appropriate patient care, even if it would cost me considerable income. I want to move my career in a direction where I can run trials that research other factors that affect disease progression in patients with COPD. I have decided that pursuing a career as an Epidemiologist draws the most parallels to what I wish to do—applying my background to finding correlations within clinical data and using those findings to benefit the patient.

I want to pursue my Masters of Public Health with a concentration in Epidemiology (and later a PhD), because I know I need more resources and educational tools than my background in advertising can provide.

I’m eager to obtain the necessary tools that will enable me to run flawless, reputable studies exploring possible genetic factors that can explain why some patients are more structurally resilient/elastic than others. With this degree, I also hope to become involved with the endless efforts of the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Working with the CDC and learning how they follow prevalence and record statistics of diseases and behaviors will influence the measures and statistical models that should be used for future studies.

Additionally, although my desire to reach out to patients with COPD is deep-seated, there are several other areas of public health that I’m eager to explore and delve into. My experience in pharmaceutical advertising has exposed me to only a few examples of how patient care extends beyond prescribing medication, and I’m looking forward to expanding my knowledge of disease prevention in other fields as well. My goal is to find an academic program that will allow me to make a smooth transition from a profession that values a brand to one that values the consumer.

NEW

2009-08-14T07:10:00.002-04:00

I had to delete a post, because it was too controversial. Yes, I know, awesome. I'm finally at the point where my blog is popular enough to offend people. My dreams have come true. new post coming soon.

The game of life

2009-05-25T16:48:00.002-04:00

I grew up playing with my sister and our neighbor, Rebecca, who lived across the street from us. From our little neighborhood bubble, it was refreshing to play with Rebecca, because she exposed us to other ways of looking at the world. She picked up many taboo phrases and conversation topics that she adopted from her older siblings. She was the first friend I made who had divorced parents. And she wasn't afraid to challenge life ideals. This came more apparent in the Milton-Bradley game "Life", which we played often. While my sister and I were reaching for the more expensive "Victorian" house card, Rebecca would always choose to buy the "split-level" shack. The picture of that place was still vivid in my head--the falling blue shutters, the gunshot in the window and the hole in the roof, and we added our own details. It was clearly a poor neighborhood. And every time she chose that card, we would both grimace and ask her how she could possibly choose to live in such an awful place, and she always responded, "Sure it looks like crap from the outside, but you haven't been inside yet. There's basketball courts in the basement, there's a pool in the back. It's one of those places where kids are always hanging out and having fun, and there's no curfew ever." For the rest of the game, the Victorian house began to not look as cozy. Even my car full of kids and my "life-changing event" of climbing Mount Everest didn't change the fact that my house looked empty, because I figured everyone would be playing basketball or video games at Rebecca's house. At the end of the game, Rebecca would always win, because she spent 160K less in the beginning, which was some good padding for those life challenges ahead. You would think that we would have learned from her method, but instead of trying to just win, at every game, my objective was to get "the job" "the salary" and "the house" then get married, have kids AND win. Actually, I feel like that was the imposed objective of the game, which I now find so negatively idealist. Looking back, I realize that Rebecca taught me the most important life lesson. It's not the picture you paint that counts, it's what you make of it.

A Tribute to Joanny's Life

2009-05-16T07:04:00.004-04:00

This is the latest project I've been working on. When my grandma's memorial service was planned, I was asked to make an imovie to show the family during the service. My goal was to tell her story without using captions or narration and make a movie that minimized the outpour of tears. She loved music and often sang the tunes in this film. I would like to know how this is perceived, so any comments from non-family would be appreciated.

A few things to know: The picture quality for the web isn't nearly as good as the DVD, so I apologize if some of the pictures here aren't as clear as they could be, and also I decided to continue the music even after the visuals ended, because she really liked the last song.

Daft Bodies - Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

2009-05-13T10:09:00.001-04:00

M. Ward Chinese Translation

2009-05-05T09:48:00.001-04:00

Oh the places I want to go

2009-04-30T11:49:00.003-04:00

So, recently I've had several conversations about vacations and developed a list of the current places I would like to go and why. SInce I figured this is something I want to refer to later, I thought I'd document my list.

Oahu, HI: From the culture that can't be mimicked to the pipeline of the North coast, I would love to visit this place. If I went there, I would windsurf the areas where the surf is down, surf the kiddie waves that the Jersey shore would call huge, watch the big guys ride the pipeline, ride my bike or a vespa around Honolulu, and visit my friends from CBI and school, who moved there.

Malibu Creek, CA: Malibu Creek is a large basin surrounded by 15-20 foot climbable ledges. The highlight of bouldering here is that when you fall off the wall, you jump into the water. And this is nothing like the Quincy Quarries. This is a clean tropical paradise filled with fun and challenging climbs. I've been to Southern California dozens of times, but every new area I went to has a drastically different climate (hot beach weather, cold snowy mountains, desert, smog) and I'm not surprised to find this place is in that area as well.

Buenos Aires, Argentina: For a while, Paris was the starving artists refuge. It was an affordable place where artists could be inspired. Now, Paris is filled with wealthier American tourists making gimmicky art, and I feel it has since lost it's inspiring feel. Word is that Buenos Aires has taken over as the new place where art communes are thriving and color is most vibrant. If I went there, I would learn how to tango beforehand, so I could tango in the street with the rest of the city, I would see the gargantuous cathedrals and the art, and I would probably be mused to write something touching and heartgrabbing, while hiding in a crowded coffee shop. Oh and there is tons of sailing and colorful boats.

Anywhere, India: I don't know too much about it, but everyone I know who has gone, told me that this was a mecca trip that changed their lives. This girl who had just come back, said that when you come back to the states, you will question the purpose of everything, like why am I rushing for this train? Why do I never acknowledge the lives of the guys who work in the bodega? Do I really need butter on my toast? Why is my day ruined if my car won't start? I would love to be in a place that challenges my way of thinking and humbles me. I love being humbled. It costs less.

Capetown, South Africa: Again, another life-changing trip filled with climates and exotic animals our local zoos don't even have, but this time, there's sailing, surfing and windsurfing.

Dubai, UAE: I do really want to come here and see the worlds tallest building disappear out of my site, and ski indoors, and see the man-made islands, but I'm not a big fan of how migrant workers are treated. Especially the guys risking their lives on the largest building, getting paid next to nothing without health benefits. Not cool in my book.

Havana, Cuba: I had wanted to go for the food, cigars and beaches, thinking it was impossible, but my friend's brother got to go on a student visa. I think the rest of our country might get to visit within the next year or two, should a few more rules be lifted. I just want to know what the big fuss is about.

Playa Copal, Costa Rica: Yes, I want to go to Bonaire, Antigua, and any other windy water spot, but this place is premier for windsurfing and high-performance sailing. I almost got a chance to work with the guys at Kite Wind Surf, but I realized they paid in wind, which is awesome, but that doesn't feed me. This place looks like heaven on earth.

So that's my list.

Susan Boyle

2009-04-15T12:42:00.002-04:00

CC: sometimes I like to make people cry. If it doesn't work, just click on the screen and it'll bring you to youtube.

The city so nice, they built it twice

2009-04-10T10:02:00.002-04:00

Since these last six months in Boston, I've gotten used to the way the city moves, the way the people interact with me and each other. Every once in a while, I see someone with a Red Sox hat and get excited, but soon forget that I'm in Boston, and it's expected. I missed my friends in New York and needed an excuse to visit them, so I did.

Three weeks ago I went to Philly to get my indie life fix and visit my friends Jess and Nina. I arrived Friday afternoon when everyone was still at work, so I walked around center city and reveled in nostalgia that the city brings. Although, I'm not a Philly girl by any means, there are memories that shaped who I am today, so sadly, I can't discredit Philly anymore than I already do. And these memories come back to me randomly when I walk around the city. One in particular, I completely forgot, until I walked by a Baskin Robbin's near the Liberty Plaza.

My sister had come to visit me at Drexel and we decided that we would see a movie one night, so we walked to Penn's campus to the theatre hoping to see A Beautiful Mind. We had time to kill, so we stopped into a Baskin Robbin's on the way for ice cream. The owner/cashier of the store was excited to hear that we were about to see that movie. I think that film really touched him and he was hoping to discuss it with someone. He seemed like a lonely guy who was hoping to make conversation with someone in general, so all three of us talked for a while about movies and why he decided to buy the store. He told us to come back after the movie so we could have a serious conversation about it. We went to the theatre only to discover that every viewing for the day was sold out. We walked back frustrated and stopped into the ice cream place to let the owner know that we weren't able to see it. He printed out blank receipt tape from the register and proceeded to write down something as he said, "Now this question has been bugging me, since I saw this film. Now don't look at the paper until you see the film. After you see it, open the paper and please, please tell me the answer or confirm that there's a flaw."

I had this treasure in the form of a grocery list-sized receipt from Baskin Robbin's. The only thing better than buying enough ice cream to handle an ice cream receipt of this length was the big mystery question on the back of it. I went back to my dorm, and passed the note around to the girls on my floor who had seen the movie. I marveled at their reaction as each person looked stumped. Discussions about my secret paper became plentiful, so I quickly retreated to my cement cell. I tried my best not to cheat myself of a good movie and conversation. I had to see that movie so I could read the question. Finally that next Friday, I saw it and opened the paper. "When did you first realize that his buddy (the blonde) was not real?" Well, I didn't find out until the very end, when they point it out, and then I saw it again, and realized that there were scenes where the room mate was interacting with other people, and he helped Crowe's character toss a very heavy desk out the window, not possible for one person. A major flaw in the film. I had my answer and went to Baskin Robbin's to confirm. In the window, in front of a closed ice cream shop in the summer, was a sign notifying patrons that the owner had died, and that the store was closing.

You build so many memories, that somehow you consider this as storage in the attic that can only be brought back by nostalgic visual cues. This story was only a flash second of my time in Philly. I broke my raw eating diet so much that I probably reverted back to an unhealthy person, but the nightly Oreos and brunch at MoGlo's was well worth it. I continued my new found crap diet when I stopped in New York for dinner with friends, where I had gnocchi with pesto and a half of a seafood sampler.

There are parts of New York that I miss so much. This sounds funny, but I love how people think there. How the best conversations are heard in a coffee shop or a restaurant or the subway, and these conversations are about random things like window shades or sponge bob and never the weather, and yet they all seem intellectual regardless of content. Boston has this taste, where two friends walk onto a subway and somehow it's an excuse to stop talking. Maybe it's the polite thing to do, but I wanted to hear the rest of your story. There's plenty that I don't miss like the constant rotation of work, gym, sleep, and how my friends who've lived in their building for 4 years, don't know their neighbors.

So, I went to visit NY this past weekend. It should have been called a fitness retreat, because that's what it was. I arrived friday afternoon, and carried my crap to my friend's office so i could check out where she works and pick up her house keys. Then I came back, dumped my stuff off at her place and took a long walk in the city and breathed in the shared air, yum. Later I went out to dinner at Cafe Havana, where I had spicy creamy corn and a margarita...the fitness part is coming. The next day, I went to the Chelsea Piers annual Climber's Cup, and climbed for 4 hours, making sure I had a hearty lunch somewhere in between. I had the sushimi special: 6 pieces of sushimi (yellowtail, salmon, and tuna), brown rice, and miso soup for 11 bucks. And it's the freshest sushi I've ever had. I came home exhausted, but got ready for the drinks and desserts party. An hour into the party, we all realized we were the only ones there, but soon after, all of our guests showed up at once and we had a great time. Sunday morning I rolled out of bed and hit the floor. I was pretty sore from the climbing comp, but that wasn't gonna stop me from participating in our semi-annual gym day. We usually begin at 9 or 10, but since our get together ended late and drunk, we settled for 11AM. The schedule was as follows:

11:15-12:00PM absolute abs class
12:00-12:30 cardio on the treadmill
12:30-1:00 Lunch
1:00-3:00 Climbing (I was happy to come back and work on the problems I couldn't get at the comp)
3:00-5:00 Swimming/hot tub

By 5:30PM, we were out of there, and ready to eat again. I wanted to continue my raw obsession, but ended up having a rib sandwich. I ate so fast, my friends didn't get to see the sandwich when the waiter gave it to me. I was hungry. I ended the night with chocolate chip cookies, and that was my weekend.

New note: I can't wait to see the movie "Where the wild things are," because it's directed by Spike Jonez and the soundtrack is written by the lead singer of the Yeah yeah yeahs and Arcade Fire.

Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity?

2009-03-31T09:03:00.001-04:00

I think this speech is truly a testament to how schools should shift focus. Although I agree that putting an ADD tag on a child who learns differently is wrong, parents should be responsible for helping their children's talents flourish.

Master of nothing

2009-03-28T07:09:00.003-04:00

I've recently been dabbling in a little of everything. I've become really involved with Artists For Humanity. I love the people and the atmosphere. There's something about working at a non-profit that makes everyone just a little bit happier, the reason being that the purpose for each task is always a humble one. Work on these spreadsheets, which will lead to benefiting underprivileged urban youth. Yeah, I think I can do that. But I also miss the team environment that I get in an agency. Collaborative projects, researching, brainstorming, concepting, oh yes.

I also started reanalyzing my screen printing designs, and there's a good chance that I will collaborate with a new T-shirt company, Mantra Collective, to design a few shirts. I'm really excited to be involved in shirt designing again, and hopefully it will work out, because I love hobbies that you can do while listening to music, and i can't write while listening to music, because my mind is battling what to pay attention to.

One thing that I wish I had the time to do is the Champion sweatshirt design contest, called Hoodie Remix www.hoodieremix.com, where you can select from a palette of different colors and patterns and custom design your own hoodie, which will be entered in a contest, and the winner's design will be sold at Champion as a limited edition. Again, wish I had the time. I would be all over that.

The Examiner is a site where amateur writers get to write a column on whatever topic they want. As an excuse to listen to more music, I became the Boston Indie Music Examiner (http://www.examiner.com/x-4986-Boston-Indie-Music-Examiner) and it has been awesome. My job is to listen to great music, do a little research on the band and touring info, and write about it. I could do this for a living, however, it only pays a penny per hit, (I've made 20 cents so far), and my Examiner "boss" is pretty stringent.

The novel's going strong. I'm about to hit 20K words, which doesn't mean much, since most of it needs to be rewritten, but this project has been a positive learning experience. It's taught me how to focus on particular scenes at a time. Normally when I write smaller projects, I just reread the whole thing to get a sense of what's working, but I can't keep rereading 20K words, or it'll never get done. Definitely something I'm glad I got into. I also learned that the best writing comes from setting aside 4-5 hours at a time rather than an hour a day, which is why my weekends have been filled. I've only let my dad read it so far, and it'll probably stay that way for a while.

Addicted to the white powder

2009-02-26T08:30:00.007-05:00

Like most Americans, I am a refined sugar and white flour addict. I have often tried to kick the habit to avoid the risk of several health issues, but I've relapsed repeatedly. Both of these products are already processed and broken down, which leaves little digestion for the body to do. They're also empty calories and can only be digested by taking away vitamins that the body needs. Because these foods are quickly digested, they exert a quick blast of energy, which can later develop into a crash. It is the natural response in the brain to intake more sugar to overcome this crash, resulting in further addiction.

After weeks of eating extraneous amounts of bar food and frequent candy store trips, I decided that it was time for a 40-day empty calorie detox, where I would replenish my diet with only raw fruits and vegetables--the raw food diet.

I had already decided that I wouldn't go 100% raw. Although there are several calcium-enriched raw foods, women need to ingest a sizable amount to prevent future problems like osteoporosis, so I included skim milk in the diet. Since, this is a meat-free diet, there were a few more exceptions I made to include more protein like cooking wild rice, various beans and egg whites. To ensure I got the nutrition I needed, I reinforced my diet with Juice Plus fruit and vegetable vitamins.

I began the dietary cleansing in the morning with a fruit-heavy meal to replace the sugary cereal I was used to. The trick worked. In fact, I immediately felt much more energized the rest of the morning, where my sugary cereal would leave me counting the minutes until lunchtime.

Lunch on the first day, not so bad either, although, I had been away from non-processed food so long that I cringed when trying the bitter veggies like purple cabbage (Vitamin C, K), bok choy (Vitamin A, C, calcium), and mesclun greens (beta carotene, calcium, folate, iron). I had generous portions of various veggies as well as cashews and almonds for protein, and dark berries for antioxidant intake, but I was not left satisfied. My usual 4PM sugar crash was heightened by my hunger and thus spurred the first symptoms of withdrawal.

My craving for a York Peppermint Patty grew reckless, as I rocked the work day by, chewing on my pencil to pass the time. I had to hold my breath as free danishes filled the common area. I was breaking down, and the first day hadn't even passed yet.

Dinner was quite eventful as I washed down a bag of alfalfa sprouts with soy milk after my peanut butter/berry appetizer and wild rice adventure. My stomach was full, but something was definitely missing. I was surprisingly still standing after my post-dinner workout, but my desire to finish my day off with a slice of pizza and soda quickly turned into an obsession.

Similar symptoms continued throughout the week, and I would randomly find myself in a line at CVS with a bag of M&Ms in hand. I didn't remember walking in the store, but every time, I managed to put the M&Ms back and shamefully walk back out.

After a week of eating 70% raw food, completely without refined sugar and white flour, I was quite happy with myself. Then I was exposed to the several vices that Americans face constantly, eating out, and drinking. White flour is a staple of the American diet, and I could barely find options on a menu without it. I ordered the Mediterranean plate, a collection of spreads and chutneys, and grape leaves. This wasn't completely raw, but very healthy. I was in the clear until the waitress showed up with a basket of white pita bread, and ready to take our drink orders. I ordered a club soda.

The next week I was invited to eat out at an Italian restaurant. I could only imagine the several awkward moments I would have created had I accepted-- the dinner rolls, the pasta, the sweet meatballs, the hearty dessert. It would have been painful to be exposed to that night.

My battle with my addiction is far from over. The absence of cupcakes and candy has left a hole in my heart much bigger than the one I would create by eating them. I'm a few weeks into the diet, and my skin is noticeably clearer, my body is toner, but my mind is else where.

Opiates affect the mind by blocking out certain connections that the brain makes, forcing the brain to find creative ways to make new connections, and although it's extremely harmful, these thought processes cannot be created elsewhere. I think I might have found the newest, safest drug--healthy eating. As fresh fruits become my sole source of sugar, they begin to taste sweeter and fuller than before. I'm still avidly thinking about my next refined sugar fix, but I can finally see the progress made by a healthy raw food diet.

A Healthy Serving of BUTR

2009-02-24T12:04:00.002-05:00

Bands Under the Radar is a free podcast available on iTunes that features music by mostly unsigned artists. Hosted by the lovely Kami Knake, whose knowledge in music spans to great depths, this podcast is not one to miss out on.

After hearing podcast #33, I knew I would be an avid listener and fan of BUTR in the near future. Her playlist pulls you in on the first song, which highlights emotion through it's dramatic change in keys. A sultry voice comes through the notes and stings your heart as he conveys his dreary message. Appropriately titled "Wire to wire/Blood for wild blood," from Razorlight I desperately repeated this title in my head, so I could download it on iTunes later. Until then, I was glued to my iPod as I heard the rest of the show.

I was not disappointed, hearing one refreshing new song after another, each exposing a new world of key changes, voices, and redefining music theory altogether.

If you want to find comfort in music appreciation, then I suggest you turn your FM radio off, and download the BUTR podcast. If you want to find out more about the podcast and the mastermind DJ behind the genius music choice, check out the website www.bandsundertheradar.com, which gives you an indepth look of the artists, and restates the playlists of every podcast Kami Knake has recorded in case you missed the titles the first time.

...I thought I'd be a music writer today.

John Frusciante: A music review

2009-02-17T06:33:00.008-05:00

I lay face down, collapsing the parachute comforter with my body and only move for the satisfaction of crushing more blanket and the idea of movement. The light comes in through the skylight and warms my bare back, and I naturally dig and drag my fingers through the blankets like sand. I turned to see his face and my life made sense. He spoke in a wilting, tired voice, but he carried his words with strength and confidence as he told me about what he learned when he died, when his heart left him for heroine. He learned nothing about death but absence. He had more to say about life, and his lessons couldn't be expressed in words, so we spoke through touch and song. Death is cold and still, so we embraced warmth and movement. Death was a societal cliche, filled with repetitive motions that didn't make sense, yet the familiar motion fools everyone into thinking they understand. He rejected this by filling his song with several continuous genius moments that sequenced each other like a seamless piece of silk. My soul was hidden deep in the grooves of a track headed to a place--boring because it was known--and he picked up my soul by the heart and set it into the printless desert. Every step I take is my own.

I saw the light expose her, highlighting her lace which projected thin and playful tanning legs. I rubbed her warm back in large circles, grazing over the divot that protected her spine. She turned over and looked at me and smiled with tears in her eyes. In this moment, she realized that her life of imperfections brought her to this moment. The light reminded her of the beach. She told me that I inspired her to live a deviant life. We had each other to rely on and that was enough. Her torn lace expressed that nothing was stronger than what we had. My tongue slipped through with ease, and her long legs shuttered behind me, tapping my ribs. I reached her, and she understood me. I make her happy.

Lily Allen is my hero

2009-02-14T14:36:00.001-05:00

This song reminds my of my sister, because it's so clever and bubbly, you almost miss the spite.

Drink for the children

2009-02-10T09:43:00.003-05:00

I recently came across this organization called Artists For Humanity, which finds opportunities for urban youth to get paid for their art through corporation partnerships and auction fundraisers. This place also teaches kids the business end of becoming a professional artist and other creative fields (e.g. advertising). I thought this was such a great idea, I spoke briefly with one of the staff for possible volunteer opportunities. If they accept me (I had to submit a resume), I would get to work with kids again, and be able to focus some time on art as well.

I also started climbing again. My new climbing gym is at Metrorock in Everett, MA. There's a great community, and people are already talking about planning an outdoor climbing trip for the summer.

The book is coming along. I had to stop and rework my notes for a few weeks before typing more, but every step has been forward with this project so far.

Kelly Clarkson - Go

2009-02-08T09:44:00.001-05:00

So, this song was on a Ford commercial a few years ago, but never released on an album or single. I can't even find it on iTunes. Good song.

Practice makes perfect

2009-01-16T17:57:00.005-05:00

I hate seeing contestants on American Idol who claim that they've been singing their whole lives and preparing for the show, and when they get up to sing, they sound terrible. Either they are lying or the common fear that constant practice doesn't always mean success, is true, and these people may never sing professionally, ever, regardless of how much focused effort they put into it. I think there is a common fear similar to this that keeps people from pursuing their dreams. I share this fear when I've refused to share the drafts of my story with other people. I believe in it, but part of me is afraid that others won't. But the measure of success starts when you can convince others to believe in your project as well, so that's a high horse I need to jump over if I want to become a better writer.

I've been lucky enough to find a group of young writers, many of whom are also writing their first novel. In this group, writers submit their written material, and we meet up and discuss and critique their stuff. All authors are open to comments and it is a great environment to work in, because you have the opportunity to support other writers in their quest to perfect their written material. And in turn, you receive support from them as well.

I'm still reluctant to show the novel bits, so I submitted the Pride is Universal essay (rather than fixing it for Wilderness house), and I'm excited to hear the comments on Tuesday.

Hotter than a pepper sprout

2009-01-11T18:26:00.004-05:00

Although, I am nowhere near getting the novel and the web site done, I have some exciting news. I recently had the opportunity to rescue a 6-year-old German short-haired pointer named Pepper. I've been itching to get a dog for a while, but vowed that my schedule was way too erratic to keep one. When my sister brought her over, shared her story and said "you have to adopt her", I reconsidered. Although she came with some baggage, a sob story and abandonment issues, I quickly discovered that Pepper was completely house-broken, well-trained and knew and responded to several commands. I found myself arranging my schedule and making room for Pepper in my life. In the first few days of her staying with me, I found out that my newly found organization allowed me to exercise everyday and find more time to write, clean and do other errands, while being able to walk, feed and nurture Pepper as well.

The next step was to convince my landlord that this dog was a great idea. The first time I called, I panicked and succumbed to the worst convincing question ever. Can I have a dog? to which the landlord quickly responded, no.

I sadly accepted the fact that this might not happen, but later got the encouragement from friends an family to write my landlord a friendly letter, which included the phrases, house-broken, well-trained and additional security deposit. She called me when she got the letter and stated that I proved a good point, and I could keep the dog, free of charge. So, I have a new dog that I must admit, I'm already kind of jealous of, because random people come up to her and tell her that she's beautiful.

I'm having some trouble adding her picture tonight, but when blogger isn't acting up, I'll be sure to put in an image. Cheers.

Living your life, doing your thing

2008-12-27T19:28:00.003-05:00

Yes, it's been a while, and I was hoping to use this post to give several updates on projects, but some things especially the current things I'm working on, take time. The novel is well on its way to being written, but I'll tell you right now, this project will not take just a week or a month. I have no specific time goal either. When you decide to take on a big project, the hard work always seems hidden, but I won't be ready to show something for a long while. I've decided to write in this innovative form that involves adding several layers, so showing you my current stuff would be counterproductive.

Another project that I'm working on in partnership with two other editors, is this online literary magazine that will focus on controversial pieces, and the working theme is, it doesn't matter how deviant the content is, as long as its well written. I'm really hoping that this site will take off, because it's a great way to house well written works that have been rejected because of the topic, whether it be based on sex, politics, social deviancy, etc. We're working on getting the site up and running, and I can't wait to name drop it, so you can see what we've been doing these last few months.

I've been dreading writing this post, because I feel like I'm just making excuses, but... I don't know. I feel that if there is a project that you really believe in, you should make a full effort to complete it, regardless of the time it takes. And both of these projects will be well worth it when complete. Cheers.

The Best of Wilderness House Literary Review Volume 2

2008-11-29T13:30:00.003-05:00

I'm very pleased to announce that the the printed Best of WHLR Volume 2 has included my narrative "Jersey City: a shocking tale" (page 198). This is a real honor for me, and I'm excited to be a part of a best of series with such talented writers. This is my first published presence, and since I got a copy, i've been just staring at it, and opening to page 198, just to keep verifying that I'm in there. After Lightness of Being, Im very much looking forward to reading it.

I'm still currently into philosophy and physics, and strongly focusing my free time on this fiction project, but it's a great feeling to see your work in an actual book, printed and arranged for other people to read and enjoy. I just can't wait until I have something published solely with my name on the cover. The next step is a self-published chapbook, which you know will be posted here first. The "Pride is Universal" essay will hopefully be in the Winter online WHLR.

Here's the web site where you can get the book too. http://www.lulu.com/content/4921477

I kind of have that dehydrated, too much sun, kind of hungry and tired feeling, and it's keeping me from writing, so it's time for a break, but I do have some more philosophical stuff to share.

What are we missing

2008-11-20T15:29:00.003-05:00

Time has gone by so quickly. I've come to realize what would make me truly happy. I want to be able to express myself artistically and not have to worry about success or getting a paycheck for it. This could be through writing, screenprinting or any other artistic outlet that I haven't discovered yet.

I just finished "Iconoclast" by Gregory Berns, and it has left so many more questions than I initially had before reading it. In it, he discusses how our visual perception is completely skewed, because we have a blind spot right in front of our faces that our brains automatically fill in. I've come to wonder how much we're actually missing, when our brains are trying to make sense of what we don't see. Do all lines actually connect? Is space and perspective created by the mind? Does color even exist? I'm gonna say no. Reading this book drew so much of an impact, that I've come to question everything and believe nothing.

I think we have actually accepted that our eyes pay tricks on us. You could have 5 eyewitnesses standing in the same place and they would give you 5 different testimonies, and this happens on a regular basis. I want to explore that the sense of touch plays tricks on you too. You touch something to confirm depth and texture, but if your mind alters the way you feel things then we can bet that our eyes will adjust accordingly as well, and we end up experiencing something completely different than what actually exists. We may as well forget the world we're living in, because our mind is just making it up anyway.

I would do anything right now to spend my days writing, going to the gym, and doing my art stuff. So I'm trying to take the next steps to make that happen. Step number one, start writing. If JK Rowling can write a 7 book series, while raising 3 kids on welfare, I think I'm out of excuses. I've mostly done those non-fiction narratives that I post sometimes, but I think I'm gonna try my hand at fiction. The worst case scenario of this project is that I coerce someone to include it in a small unknown literary review, in which case I'll make a chap book out of it and give it away. Best case scenario...writing, gym, art. It's win-win because I always wanted to parade around with a chap book and have a fake book release party with my friends. A real book release party doesn't sound as much fun, because you have to sign books, talk about money, and people are in your face all the time and want to have a conversation about the book you thought you were done thinking about when the editor said "it's clean", and you can't make a drunken fool of yourself. God, I hope I fail.

But yeah, I'm gonna write a fiction piece now. Probably no more than 5,000 words, although I'm not aiming for a specific count. It's the story that I dreamt when I got my first full night's sleep after having my first experience with jet-lag in London (I had been to California several times before, but a 3 hour difference never had a major effect on me like traveling to London did).

Last night, I went to the Somerville News writer's festival, which got me pumped up to get started. Before the festival, I was reading Junot Diaz's book "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao", and it was so good that I told myself that I should hold off writing until I finish this book, because I felt that reading this book would make me a better writer. There were just so many new ways of thinking. The exposure alone would make me a better person altogether.

That's really what I have going on. I made Kitty a mix CD of nothing new. I rediscovered classic rock and the OTHER Jack Johnson albums and threw in a few indie songs from the free CDs I got at Virgin records.

I really want to get back into the art thing too. This morning I woke up and the sun and the venetian blinds were writing sheet music on my wall. That's what it looked like. I opened the window and the pace grew faster. It was so cool. I took several pictures and now I want to make a project out of it, but I want to focus on writing too.

How do I like my job? Sometimes, I have the sudden urge to stand up over my cube and scream, "what the fuck is wrong with you people?" All of these intelligent characters working in a mechanical zombie zone. At first, I felt like I was losing a year of my life with every passing minute. Now, the boredom of tedious nonsense work is so bad, I swear I'm starting to forget what makes me, me, because "I" would never work here.

That's it. This is Liz Glines (Senior Copywriter looking for a full-time pharma advertising job in the Boston area) Peace.

Pride is Universal

2008-11-03T23:44:00.005-05:00

I was offered a rare volunteering opportunity, when my local church ran a designated water station for the Gay Pride parade in Manhattan. I initially went for the guaranteed eyeful of entertainment, and the church’s participation suggested that perhaps my reform beliefs were shared. I denied the possibility that I would be amongst a group of opportunists, ready to give out cupfuls of judgment at any occasion.

I assumed there was no risk for shell shock. I had already experienced an AIDS Walk in the late 80s and had grown accustom to barrel-chested men in Speedos and angel wings throwing condoms at me, at a young age. But my impression was that this parade would be on a much deeper level of inner-subculture than anyone exposed me to in the past.

While I was arranging paper cups on the table, a man wearing pearl earrings approached me without warning and stuck my shirt tag in to help me avoid “tag tan” as he put it. His fragrance was of a sweet red plum wine gone spoiled, often worn by elderly women. It was surprisingly quite refreshing and far less potent than the Chanel Number 5 projecting from the gentleman to my left.

For a while, we just stood there, anticipating their arrival with thousands of others crowding the sidewalks on both sides. Looking up 5th Avenue, I saw a flash of color in the haze and heard scuffling sounds of a marching band and motorcycles. I was expecting the most outrageous surprise, a vision that I’m sure I had blocked out as a child in my AIDS walking days. I couldn’t pin-point an exact image, but I was sure it had something to do with my mom freaking out over a collection of “free samples”, she had discovered in my hand after we passed our first water station.

When it was clear that they were coming, we frantically poured water into paper cups and arranged them onto trays, where they would be taken, ferried out to the thirsty marchers and returned for refueling in a constant cycle that went on for hours. I missed the first arrival of the parade. I was delegated as the water pourer and tended to my assembly line, keeping my head down. After I had determined that my simple job was hurting my wrist, I decided to rotate myself out and deliver the water.

I grabbed a tray and shuffled into the forbidden street reserved only for parade marchers and water distributors. A zoo-cage themed float was heading our way, so I followed the water carriers ahead of me. Preceding the float was a team of street marchers, women (perhaps?) in detailed mermaid dresses, bright yellow sun dresses, stunning silver halter dresses, and matching four inch heels. They waved and smiled at clicking cameras. We must have been the first water station, because our operation had brought the parade to a complete stop several times.

A 7-foot tall diva in a gold sequin gown had been making eye contact with me for two blocks and made it very clear that she was thirsty. Her eyes got wider as she approached me, and exclaimed “God bless you, child” as she took two cups of water and poured one over her wig and drank the other. I was convinced she believed her march was a virtuous obligation, but I was struggling to understand what message she was trying to send. I was both confused and star struck by her appearance. She returned to me two empty cups with dragon red lipstick stains and then snapped into a model pose, which I didn’t realize until I stepped away to view her full stature and discovered someone from the crowd was taking her photo.

I could hear the underground jungle music getting louder. Someone from inside the cage spotted our trays and forty hands stretched out. As we approached, we held our trays as high as we could. I realized the great difficulty in transporting water on an elevated moving float to tanning oil-covered bodies that refused to stop dancing. Still, the obstacle was surpassed and the water went quickly. The caged men continued dancing, and I continued to wonder what the point of this parade was. The crowd applauded and verified that I was the only one in the dark.

As quickly as the parade came, so did the dark clouds, and the flash, and a long deep growl.

The crowd roared back as if the howling thunder was part of the show. A hint of cold moisture hit my shoulder. Then I saw it. A hearty raindrop landed on the cheekbone of a pop diva and streamed down to her chin, taking her hot pink face with it. Shortly after, the heavens voiced an opinion of the event with a blanketed downfall. Cold pelting comments were received quite well with further applause, with the exception of a few women sobbing over a puddle of gold glitter, revealing masculine features, weathered from a lifetime of unknown factors and the occasional use of oily foundation, apparently non-waterproof.

The persistent chilling rain eventually reached inside us all and stripped away any extraneous color. The lively street retracted back into its gray reality. The head dresses came off, the nearly naked had acquired clothing, and the parade was over.

I huddled closely under someone’s umbrella, watching others scatter to the closest storefront awnings. Our water distribution team started packing up, acknowledging that a higher power had taken over. I was preparing a B-line from one umbrella to another, when I saw a group of girls shielding the rain by holding a banner above them, which read, “Be proud of how God made you.”

I stepped out from under the umbrella and let the rain soak into me as I walked home.

Theories from a pseudophysicist

2008-10-29T12:12:00.008-04:00

So, I'm no scientist or medical expert, but oddly enough, my job is to read and understand poorly written material about complicated diseases (probably written by doctors, ugh) and rewrite it in a simplified version that anyone can understand. I see myself as a communicator, who isn't an expert, because I can't explain what I haven't written.

Although, my current job as a medical writer isn't exactly my dream job, these new experiences have cascaded my pseudoscience thinking, and I've come up with some theories:

When you throw a rock in the still lake, you create ripples that can last as long as the energy exerted, when the rock hits the water. I'm willing to continue to say that even when the ripples stop, energy is still being transferred, even though it may be very little. So, what happens when you wave you're arms in the air on a calm day? I say that the energy is transferred to the oxygen molecules in the air, and they keep transferring until they run out of energy. If you fan someone with your hand, they can feel the air being moved from your hand, but the energy doesn't stop, when they stop feeling the breeze. I think that energy, although its very little, is eternally moving in a continuum, yes on earth, yes in the atmosphere. I think the atmosphere and gravity do a great job at holding down things with weight, but weightless transferal of energy can go pretty much forever. So what does this mean? This means that every time you walk around town, you're bumping into several others' leftover energy. It means nothing really. The oxygen molecules that are moving around are still breathable, so no worries. But I gather that every one's leftover energy has to add up somehow, I just have to figure out how. Proving this point would be especially difficult, since I already admitted that it probably doesn't affect anything. How do you prove something that doesn't have an effect?

Oh well, so my next idea was going to solve the mystery of crop circles. I had always been mesmerized by this as a child. Already discrediting the idea that aliens did it, I always thought of creative ways that giant circles could appear in the corn fields. My first guess? A midnight pool party, where people rolled in and set up a giant above-ground pool (or more than one depending on the number of circles) and cleaned up before the sun rose. My next guess, more recent, had to do with sun spots. I recently shot this down, because apparently another common trait of crop circles are where the stalks are cut by the stem, and sun spots can't do that. But I was very curious about the effect that sunspots have on earth and crops. You could either view the sun as a light bulb, where the small writing on the bulb doesn't matter, because the light doesn't give focus, or you can think of the sun as a projector, which shines images over the earth. So if the sun can specify where light shines and where it doesn't, I wonder if this can happen in some sort of pattern. So in large open areas, could some crops get more light than others? Is this at all mistaken for bad soil, or the crescent effect? I have some seeds to sow on this one, but one conclusion I've come to...crop circles are caused by farmers looking to get a quick buck from the Daily Mirror.

The next idea revolves around gravity and energy similar to the first theory. Its silly really. So we all know what a ripple in the water looks like, but what if we took jell-o or something more viscous so we could hold it upside down and threw a rock in the center? Would the ripple be more convex because of gravity? Would we be able to tell since a standard ripple fluctuates between both convex and concave? Hold on...my guess would be that it would look the same, because energy is energy however you look at it. If you throw a ball up or down, it won't exert any special patterns, regardless of which direction you throw it in.

So, that's all I have for now. While I have the free time, I may get started on some more literary pieces.

Baby, it's cold outside

2008-10-22T10:04:00.007-04:00

I surprised everyone when I actually pulled through, and rented a UHAUL truck on Friday night, moved my stuff out of Jersey City by noon on Saturday, drove to Littleton, MA, where I picked up some other pieces of furniture, headed to Southie on Sunday, where I unpacked everything, and returned the truck by 6PM that same day. Even the UHAUL people charged me an extra day, and I had to call and correct them, exclaiming that I only needed the truck for two full days. Friday didn't count, because I couldn't load the truck until the next morning, due to the fear of sketchy Journal Square natives stealing my possessions.

I am all moved in, but for these last three weeks, I managed to survive without a couch or a TV. I never knew how much allocated time I had previously reserved for watching TV, which I had replaced with working from home, by means of sitting on the coffee table with my laptop balancing cautiously on my knees.

Work had been a touchy subject until recently. I had about 6 promising interviews, only to realize that they weren't actually hiring. I realized I had been in this Manhattan bubble for three years, which wasn't easily affected by the economy. Several companies were always hiring. I had an offer after two weeks of looking in New York, and in Boston, it took over a month for me to find something substantial.

In that month, I turned to none other than Community Boating for work. I had finally accepted the fact that I should stop relying on them and start giving, and as soon as I accepted this, I went ahead and used them as a crutch until I found something writing related.

I found a job as a freelance medical writer at CLD Inc. I honestly wouldn't say that this is a place I would spend my life working in, but its a great field and I'm working contract which is perfect. I'm told that after a few months I may get to work from home, which would be great, now that I have a comfy couch to work on.

So, with new environments, comes new inspiration. My sister's recent political actions actually inspired me. She was unexpectedly laid off from her job and was awaiting her unemployment check, while she looked for a new job, but the check never came. She went to the State house, spent a few hours talking to Deval Patrick (the governor of Mass), and came out with a check for $2500. When this girl wants something done, she can make the ground shake, and that inspires me.

Upon arriving here, I found a few things that I wanted to change. I travel to work every morning by getting on the Red line at the Broadway station. During rush hour, a whole slew of people run down the stairs with me as we look at the empty escalator going up. Nobody uses that escalator in the morning. so I'm going to request that the train guys put in the extra effort to switch the direction in the morning.

I recently joined the Boston Athletic Center. It's a great gym, relatively inexpensive, and a conveniently short walk from my apartment on the way to the train station. The only qualm I have about it is that after the safe walk through the neighborhood, pedestrians going to the gym have to cut through this abandoned loading dock. It's quite scary, when you're up before sunrise trying to get in a workout before work. My request, as soon as I figure out who to contact about it, would be to put lights in that area. That might take longer, because that actually costs money, whereas the escalator thing involves simply flipping a switch every morning, and it would benefit many more.

I know I haven't posted in a while, but I have some good theories coming up, and my whole move transition is finally complete.

This blog is still very much a part of my life, because it helps me track the progression of my writing style, which I will never retire from, and I promise to never abandon it, so please keep checking in. Cheers.

Apparently The Front Fell Off

2008-10-03T22:52:00.001-04:00

If you don't change the direction you are headed...

2008-09-09T17:09:00.003-04:00

... you will end up where you are going.

I'm gonna focus on the apartment search first, because that aspect has been the most fun. Where I was going to spend my first independent year in Boston was crucial. I looked around places in Cambridge, and it reminded me too much of my trouble-making youth. I always escaped the confines of my "dry town" which was hardly apparent, since I rarely bought the liquor I drank. Cambridge was our liberating commy refuge that accepted us for the pink-haired people that we were. Although areas of this city were promising and far from my teenage surroundings, I decided to venture into other neighborhoods.

I had made some ground-breaking decisions before this move that set the precedent for my ideal living situation. Now that I have successfully paid off school, I will no longer subject myself to the ghetto. It's about time that I experience my success. I also decided that I'm living alone, which is exciting because I have never not had a roommate before. For those, who exclaim 'oh you'll get lonely,' I will not. Everyday I will wake up and decide on my own time, when I will use the kitchen, TV or shower. On my own time.

So anyway, I ran a pole amongst friends and asked where young professionals are living, and South Boston came up frequently. When I initially heard "Southie", my initial thoughts were stories about my dad going into the Old Colony Housing Projects with my Uncle Jack to pick up a bag of potato flakes, and carrying a slab of metal and a baseball bat in case someone tried to fuck with them.

I knew that parts were up and coming, I just wasn't sure which parts. When I taught windsurfing, I would often volunteer at the Harry McDonough Sailing Center on Pleasure Bay . I loved it, the beach, the sailing, the planes. So, I agreed to look around in the area. The first three places were okay: bad paint job , crazy Irish landlord lady, sketchy pub nearby, all good things, but they didn't fit the criteria of no longer living in the ghetto, so I moved on. I stumbled blindly into a realtor and asked if they offer rentals, and that's how I saw my apartment for the first time.

After the 3 floor walk up, I opened the door to this beautiful wooden cottage-type atmosphere with a large living space and bay window. I had already decided that this would be my apartment. The previous tenants were still there and had left kiteboarding gear everywhere. It was a sign. Then I realized that there was no bedroom. I went up another set of stairs to reveal a bedroom taking up the top floor which led out to a large outdoor deck that overlooks the ocean. Hanging over the deck railing were a few drying wetsuits from the tenants who had recently gone kiteboarding. The ocean was only two blocks away.

I move in this weekend, I can't wait. I just know that it's gonna be tough moving out of Jersey City and into South Boston in 3 days.

Next post will be about career moves and new projects stemming from being in a new city.

"If you say 'think outside the box' then you're still in it." -NPR

Lizzie is coming back

2008-08-17T18:51:00.023-04:00

I've spent three years working here in New York. I sometimes feel like it's been a constant battle trying to adjust to this city. Growing up in a place that called New York City the "Evil Empire", where I was raised to think that all Yankee fans were assholes, made it difficult. But I always pushed through the whole team-hating thing. I thought to myself, what if I was raised to think that everyone from a particular race was an asshole? If I wanted to overcome this racist upbringing in disguise, then I had to spend part of my life in the empire that El Puké pitched for.

No wait, why did I really move to New York? I really wanted a job in advertising. And Boston had very few opportunities at the time in the field. I was destitute for a "real" job in general, so I made myself an ultimatum between two extremities to confirm that I was worth something; a windsurfing instructor in Puerto Rico or a copywriter in New York. In the end, the copywriter won by a judgment call, and three years later, here I am, pen in hand, with no windsurfing gear in sight. I have learned through my experiences that I actually like pharmaceutical-specific advertising. I have more ownership and knowledge as a copywriter, so I've confirmed that in my life, this is something I would like to pursue, although I wouldn't mind teaching sailing to kids either.

You might think, of course you prefer teaching sailing, why not? But our job was still stressful at times, and our job description didn't end at teaching. There was this incredibly diverse group of kids at this program, with all kinds of reasons for coming here: our family has a boat in Nantucket, so John needs to learn how to sail, this program is known for having the best sailing program in Boston (take that Courageous and Piers Park), we have 10 kids and can't afford to send them all to camp, we can't keep our kids out of trouble so we signed them up, now they're your problem. Some of these kids came with some effed up baggage, and it made me feel good that they could confide in me with their issues, even though there was the occasional fight, temper tantrum, weekly head injuries, or the countless isolated incidents, isolated to each kid, but numerous when you see hundreds of kids everyday. We also had to clean the bathrooms, take out the trash, clean goose poop off the docks, and other nasty tasks. I once did a fleet check in the middle of a hail storm. I can still remember feeling the pricking on my back. I can also remember loving every minute of it. We would sing Sloop Jon B as we made an assembly line of moving trash bags to the dumpster after a late night of entertaining some function event. "I wanna go home," but I really didn't. If possible, I wanted to stay overnight. They became my second family, who supported me through everything.

And after a super late night of annotating the Print CVA in New York, I thought that I wanted to go home, but I wasn't joking this time. I was burnt out, and no one seemed to care about how I felt. I told my friend in Boston, and she revealed to me the term "work/life balance." And I knew it existed, I just wasn't sure that it existed in the ad industry. There were a few times, when I asked myself, what if my son has a baseball game next Wednesday night? Am I expected to just miss it? I guess so. I don't have any kids, but what if I did, and they played baseball, and I didn't want to take a full day off to ensure that I could make it to their 8PM game? Apparently, that's what work/life balance means. You still work, you'll still have some late nights, but...life. I wanted to go to a Journey concert on a Wednesday night and told my boss a month ahead of time, and I was told no.

That's when I determined that I was done with SYMBICORT. I went on some interviews at CDM and Juice Pharma.

CDM is way too buttoned up. I asked them about it, and this guy in dark jeans that looked like they had been pressed and starched, said something like, well obviously that's a rumor, look at me I'm wearing jeans in the middle of the week. But I really liked that they were focused on creative aspects like pitching and concepting. I forgot that I was a creative. I don't remember the last time I was in a pitch. I've asked, but my brand is always busy.

Then I interviewed with Juice Pharma. Talk about doing something groundbreaking. I would be working on the Gardasil vaccine, and other preventative vaccines in the pipeline. Working on a product that helps people is my fuel, and Gardasil could keep all women from getting cervical cancer, so I was estatic.

That interview went very well, because if I'm truly excited about something, I am completely focused on conveying it, so they knew my word was honest.

Then somehow things turned. I finally realized how many events I had missed with my family and friends in Boston. Barbeques and birthdays and life stories all forgotten because I wanted to live in Manhattan and didn't mind what it took to get there. As I kept looking at my situation, moving to Manhattan became less and less of a priority compared with seeing the kids I taught how to sail getting their life on track and going to college, or seeing the kids I grew up with getting their life together and pursuing their dreams.

Boston is my extended family, and I miss them all. Even the kids who made fun of me in high school, because I was shaggy and dressed like I was on welfare. I miss you guys too.

So, I made an announcement about moving back to Boston, and no one believed me. I guess I had threatened to move back before and it never happened. I was...I am serious. I gave MedicusNY my two weeks notice, and the ones that I'm quitting to be closer with called me a "fucking idiot for shooting yourself in the foot and quitting your job without a safety net." Meanwhile my friends here in New York were in complete denial and were crossing their fingers for an offer from Juice Pharma. But recently, everyone finally realized that I was seriously determined, and I'm finally getting the support that I was hoping for.

This week, Juice offered me a position with 15K padding, and I turned it down.

I have three days left at my job. I plan on visiting my cousins on Saturday, and spending most of next week in Boston. The first thing I will do when I get there is get a membership, a real membership to Community Boating.

I have to find an apartment...and a job...and a Red Sox bar, oh wait. They're all Red Sox bars.

I'm coming home.

Gee Whiz! Why would you leave Journal Square?

2008-08-07T09:44:00.003-04:00

LANDLORD:
Dear Tenant,

I have been informed that you will be vacating your unit. In an effort to improve customer service, we are requesting that you provide a reason why you are vacating. We would appreciate it if you took a few minutes and just gave us a reason why you are leaving.

ME:
Sure, so I wouldn't call it vacating, but rather simply not renewing my lease. Why do you ask? Well, (my room mate and I) we have lived in our unit for 2 years. Our super has been attentive and well respected, our apartment has been very well kept, and our neighbors have been quiet and thankfully almost non-existent. But the issue lies outside of the building. We're in the apartment in Journal Square... Last night, I exited out the front door of my building, and a coked up woman who was drinking something out of a bleach bottle fell into the door and I had to step over her to walk outside and down the street to Subway. On my way, I saw a woman on other questionable controlled substances and she unexpectedly threw a Snapple bottle on the ground in front of me. And this was in broad daylight. I experience these happy little events everyday, and I'm ready to overcome the oppression and move to a safer area where my status as a middle-of-the-road working professional is known.

LANDLORD:
Thank you. I am really sorry to hear of your frustrations regarding Jersey City. I hope your future residence will be more suitable. Again thank you for taking the time to respond to my email.

Jib Jab's 2008 Campaign Song

2008-07-21T12:18:00.001-04:00

Think Positive

2008-07-12T14:07:00.002-04:00

After reading the past few posts, I realized how negative, annoying and cocky I can be. I try to always think on the positive side, but in a certain light, when I start writing, what I feel will shine through. I'm not gonna lie, in the past few weeks, I've felt overconfident and negative. It's now clicking that I should make this blog experience more enjoyable for everyone. When I first started this project over three years ago, I made up a series of rules that I've been seriously breaking recently:

Rule 1: Don't use my blog to vent; no one benefits from this but myself
Rule 2: Don't talk about relationships; this behavior ruins gawkers' lives, and bad relationships are not something I want to look back on
Rule 3: Stick to entrepreneurial and passion-driven adventures; no one wants to hear about my fun day in the park
Rule 4: Don't revise already published posts, it doesn't reflect how I feel in that moment

So, I have broken all of these rules, and since I'm no longer really into what the next big business venture is, this project has turned into a semi-literary, semi-this is my life kind of ride.

But I want to try to stick to the rules, and this includes leaving in the negativity posted a few days ago. I would like to know from people who read regularly, what you particularly enjoy reading about.

M.I.A. PAPER PLANES

2008-07-10T20:08:00.001-04:00

...Kinda bummed she stopped touring.

We pack and deliver like UPS trucks

2008-07-09T21:52:00.011-04:00

I'm finding it hard to write about things recently. I can't bitch about anyone, because they're all reading my blog. And I just finished reading Chelsea Handler's newest book, so I'm have this particular drive in making fun of my friends and family, especially since my vacation begins with my dad opting the family out of going to Maine, because our cheap hotel of choice was booked. I guess it will have to wait.

So, this morning, I got up early as usual to go gymming before work and was in an apathetic morning mood, which is odd because I'm a morning person. I'm walking out of the door of my building and this Hispanic guy with missing teeth and dirty clothes stops the door from shutting and begins to stumble into the building. "Umm, excuse me, umm do you live here?" I tried to be confrontational, but he mumbled angrily back at me in Spanish and walked back inside my building. I would have done something, but I was feeling especially careless and I was already 15 minutes late to my usual gym arrival, and although I know no one really cares, I have this paranoia that the gym crowd judges me for sleeping in an extra 15 minutes instead of working out earlier. After my workout, I came back to my building to discover the same man attempting to carry an Ikea couch-bed frame out the door. I stood there for a few minutes, appalled that I may have just been an assessory to a burglary, and I felt it gave me permission to watch him struggle to push this contraption, by himself, down a set of stairs and through two sets of doors. He looked up at me and motioned me to help him by nodding at the other end of the frame. "I'm sorry, I have to..." and I bolted downstairs and knocked repetitively on the super's door. He came to the door, and I immediately started explaining what had happened. He interrupted and told me to never let anyone in, who doesn't have a key. He then proceeded up stairs, and I took the elevator making it a point to miss the ground floor on the way up.

-- switch switch --

Hitotoki is going to publish my stuff, and I love my new editor. He said that my writing is "crisp and clear", and that I describe images so well. I think we're gonna hit it off, because he is great at the criticism sandwich. You know, you give someone two fluffy compliments, and somewhere in between, when they're not looking, you slip in the meat. He wants me to work further on a story and describe how I feel in certain parts, and I thought the last time I truly described how I felt about something, I ended up taking an impromptu weekend trip to "rest" at a mental institution. So perhaps I had a little knot that I had to kneed out before continuing with this pursuit, but I am seriously intrigued by this publication. And I was told that Hitotoki may soon go into print, which is perfect.

-- what what --

When I heard that the fam wasn't going to Ogunquit, Maine, I was a little upset. We go every damn year, and I don't think the fact that we're all technically adults should impede on continuing a family tradition, not to mention that half of the town is made up of hotels. I arranged to stay with my friend, Anna, at her house up there, and have myself a Maine event. It was pouring Friday morning in Boston, and the house was chilly as usual. It took more effort than anticipated, but I made it on the road before noon. As soon as we crossed the Maine border, the clouds parted, and the sun upped the temperature 15 degrees. I arrived at 1, and we immediately headed to the beach to overdose on Vitamin D. I could tell that I was malnourished, because I could actually feel my body sucking the warm sunshine out of the air. Anna and I talked about coming here, when we were younger and I realized that the strange things that I missed about coming to Ogunquit, she also shared. Like, both of our parents refused to pay for snacks at the beach, so we put on our entrepreneurial hats and collected cans from all of the nasty trash bins until we got enough to buy a carton of fries from Charly's. And there was nothing like the feeling of getting fries over your parents demand, because it was your own hard earned money, especially at age 7. We also talked about the yearly talent show that Robert(family friend) would initiate. No one would be allowed to eat unless they performed, and I always had something well prepared to keep from starvation.

I tried my best to fit in all of the standard traditions in the 24-hours I was there: Candy store, surf shop, a run along the Marginal way, beach, actually going in the 45 degree water, digging a hole, and fireworks, which has recently been replaced with karaoke night, although I would totally take fireworks over karaoke any day. I think I finally overgrew the digging of the hole. Why work, when you don't have to?

I headed back to Boston Saturday around noon, and apparently so did many others, because it took me three hours to get back. I took a long nap and woke up just in time for mom's BBQ and the arrival of adults and kids. The eating and drinking was just getting started, when the bored kids decided to play wiffle ball. I often wonder why "adults" don't partake in BBQ sports. I, of course, participated and hit a few doubles in the process. and the kids brought a giant wiffle ball bat that makes a dramatic hollow thud sound when you hit it. After working up a sweat and finishing my beer, I headed back to continue eating and drinking, and when things got boring, I played some more.

The next morning, we all went to the assisted living home to visit Grandma and were forced into watching Catholic TV for the entire hour. Her favorite show is of this guy preaching about how lust and betrayal are everyone's sins, and blah blah blah, but when when the guy said something vile or inappro and it got pretty graphic, we all tried to hold back our laughter.

After Catholic TV, my cousins (from NY) and I went on the Fenway Park tour before heading back to New York. I had never been in any area of the park other than the crappy bleachers, so that was pretty exciting. The tour guide made fun of my uncle the entire time, because he's a self-proclaimed and not ashamed Yankees fan.

-- simma simma --

So updates...I AM still working on the art project. I really don't want to lose sight of that, but when someone calls you and tells you that they're gonna publish your work, you can't really ignore that either.

The annual Littleton Appleman Triathlon is less than a few weeks away. I'm a little nervous despite the fact that I've done it 3 times already and I'm in much better shape than last year's tubbyness that still managed to flop across the finishline. And I've actually been training, so maybe I should just quit the needless anxiety.

Oh and I'm working on a new essay about the Tranny Parade in all it's glory. Supposedly, I'm not allowed to have my work published anywhere else, but fuck it, I'm totally posting it. It's too funny.

Curse of the kiteboard

2008-06-28T12:05:00.005-04:00

So, this yellow kiteboard has been an issue for over three years. I finally got rid of the thing, but with a terrible expense. So, kiteboard recap...

About three years ago, I was co-teaching a windsurf clinic somewhere on the cape, which ran simultaneously with a competition called freestyle frenzy. During my break, I went to one of the tents and bought a raffle ticket for a bunch of sweet windsurfing prizes, and won this bright yellow kiteboard. At the time, windsurfing and kiteboarding were polar opposites. You either did one or the other. So, it didn't make sense to give a kiteboard away at a windsurfing event. I tried selling this thing on ebay, iwindsurf, and ikiteboard, but because this was a board from a small company that no one had heard of, no one wanted it. I drove this kiteboard to New Hampshire at the only kiteboard shop in New England. It was on consignment for like 6 months, and one guy said he was gonna buy it and then didn't show up. Andrew, the shop owner, offered to ship it back to my house, because he no longer wanted it in his shop. So, this year, I decide to sell all of my windsurf gear to make room for the big move to Manhattan. Some of my gear sells, and the rest, including that damn kiteboard gets shipped to Community Boating. No one told me exactly what was being sent to Boston, so I didn't find out that the kiteboard ended up back in Boston, until I found out the trouble that the kiteboard had brought with it.

So Community Boating is a great place, but sometimes the kids that work there (including me, when I was working there)... just do stupid shit. We're talking tying one end of a rope to a tree on an island, and the other to a motorboat and throttling the engine to see if you can pull the tree out of the ground. We're talking throwing a top gun can (bathroom cleaner spray) to the ground and watching it explode near the gas lockers. We're talking going full speed down the river in the fog, standing at the bow, while remotely driving the boat with a broken tiller extension duct-taped to the suicide knob, while drunk. Stupid shit. So, I shouldn't have been surprised when the arrival of this kiteboard widened the eyes of the next generation of thrill-seeking sailing instructors. Three of them saw a brand new wakeboard, waiting to be pulled by the fastest motor boat in the fleet. And of course just being pulled was nothing, unless you had a wake made by another fast boat, which weaved in and out of the tow line. They would have been fired, except two other kids got in a fight with each other and got themselves fired earlier that week, and you can't fire 5 people in one week, so they're on some kind of probation. (Correct me if I'm wrong, I heard this from ten different people)

I decided to visit CBI, unaware of the trouble my donation has caused. Actually, unaware that the kiteboard had made it back at all, and discovered the truth when told "So, you're the one who gave us the wakeboard." Wakeboard? They didn't have to say any more. I already knew the drill. 8 years ago, I would have done the same thing.

What made me angry was that I felt like I was in trouble too. As if I should have known that this was gonna happen. So, I asked if I should take the kiteboard back. I really didn't want it. I left it behind.

--switch switch--

I was so excited that my essays were being published that I got overconfident and decided to submit my stuff to the Atlantic Monthly. Then I found out that there are 18,000 submissions for 15 spots in every issue. I'm still going to submit, but I'm also looking into other publications. I recently came upon www.hitotoki.com which has a publication based in New York, and the rules entail that your submission be under 500 words and about New York. The word count thing is a little annoying, but I have some material that applies, so I'm excited to submit. My next essay is not based in New York and well over 500 words, which poses a problem, but I'm happy with my options.

--what what--

I'm still trying to think positive and take on projects that benefit others, but I've run into a few snags, which may lead me to put a caveat on my altruism. I'm trying to help this one kid get a job, and he's not showing up to anything I set up for him. He's like I need to get a job, and I want one in Boston accessible by subway. So, I called up a few people who I know that work in retail, two responded back and said yeah just tell him to stop by. He seemed excited, and thanked me multiple times, maybe he didn't want to hurt my feelings, because he was too proud to work at the GAP, but he didn't show up and I haven't been able to reach him. So, I stopped putting in the effort. Why should I if he won't? I still want to help others, but only if they want to be helped.

Maybe this is the mark, where I'm starting to not understand these kids. The gap is just too wide now. I have already outgrown this street credit crap. I think they have too, but they play along with it, because others haven't. It's one big game of chicken, and it has Boston on a tight leash.

And this whole mind game has taken hold of my sister, an architecture grad student, a very smart kid. When she feels threatened in Boston, she snaps back, and people leave her alone. But a recent trip to New York had this aggressive kid wound up like a toy. With every shove on the street, rude look, shrug comment, bus door closing early, cab cutoff on a walk sign, led her to complete frustration, which ended in disaster at a Starbucks, when her giftcard was accidently deleted. A breakdown, a swing, a breakdown. Is this how Boston has taught us how to act?

Don't get me wrong, I miss my hometown and friendly people and the clean subway, but I've learned to not be threatened when a cab cuts me off several times in one stroll. There are a million battles here, and it's not worth it to pick even one.

Giving is all of the fun

2008-06-16T00:48:00.000-04:00

It turns out that only some of my equipment sold, but I really see this as a blessing, because this was a great opportunity to give back to a community that gave me so much. I gave the rest of my windsurfing equipment to Community Boating, and it was the best decision I made in a while. Donating to Community Boating is like buying a genuinely happy moment. If you give money, you see immediately what is being improved to the program. If you give your time, you see first-hand how teaching someone how to sail impacts their lives. And if you give windsurfing equipment to CBI, you get the most sincere thank you, and the equipment is rigged up and becomes the highlight of the week that members can't live without. I almost feel like I'm always getting more out of giving than CBI is, because their gratitude is priceless.

It's a good feeling.

So, I may have spoken too soon, when I exclaimed that no one is publishing my essays. After I submitted numerous entries, the Wilderness House Literary Review has accepted two of them for their Summer volume (The non-fiction section), after many revisions of course. My raw material is too slack for them--or rather not well written enough. The editor said that it's not my best work, but it made it. Still, I am thrilled. The Summer volume will be posted within the week on the following web site: www.whlreview.com.

So other than the above, my life is pretty boring. The making connections segment might restart again very soon. Remember? I've had this ongoing project to network and make a connection between two people that I know, without directly benefiting myself. My benefit is knowing that I'm capable of connecting people, and justification that I'm somewhat of an altruistic person.

I'm just on this kick that when you help others, their lives change. And if you help only yourself, you really don't get very far, because you've only promoted yourself, which doesn't leave much of a footprint. I want my existence to matter, and I want to ensure that my life actions affect others for the positive. Ok, Ciao.

A fabricated sea breeze

2008-06-09T11:09:00.000-04:00

Growing up relatively close to the water, a random Boston sea breeze was a frequent event. We would be outside on the porch watching the constant summer movement of the surrounding people when a certain whoosh sound would rattle the trees from that one special direction. Everyone would turn their heads, freeze and take in the salty air.

I figured that Manhattan would be no different, but the overpowering potency of life in this city, which ironically is often filled with cigarettes and greasy food, often overwhelms my senses.

While walking down 8th Ave, not too far from the river, I inhaled deeply, in reaction to almost being hit by a car. I felt a breeze but it was from an odd direction. The rustle in a nearby tree told me this mighty wind had come from the ocean. I tilted my head back, and let my nostrils fill like a parachute with sea fresh air. I closed my eyes and held my salty lungs in for one long moment. I hadn't felt this free of interruption for a long time. How could this exist in such a complex place? Slowly the scent began to break down. What I thought was authentic ocean air, unraveled into a disappointing collection of Chinese food, dried piss and stale cigarettes. Who knew that the formula for making the freshest scent consisted of such rancid ingredients!

Okay, that was a quick attempt to write something of quality for the Wilderness house literary review. Ever since my Jersey City journal entry was almost instantly accepted, I've had trouble submitting anything of real value, and have failed to have anything accepted since. Oh well.

This weekend, I started off by going to Harlem to watch the dance class that my friend taught all year, in a recital. It was cute, and made me want to volunteer more, although there was no A/C, which made me feel more ill, and probably a good reason why I'm sick now. I've posted some notable pics below.

There's nothing like cooling off from a fire hydrant in Harlem

Photo of the Boston Gas Tank by Sister Corita Kent

The beginnings of my artwork inspired by Sister Corita

Giving up one passion for another

2008-05-18T19:56:00.000-04:00

When I first moved to New York (Dirty Jersey) to pursue my career in advertising and passion for writing, I knew that I was leaving my windsurfing lifestyle behind, but I held on to my windsurfing gear with the slight chance that I might return to board shorts and year-round summer sun. Now, I'm getting ready for a bigger change. In October, I'm moving to Manhattan, a feat that I had limited myself from until I paid off all of my student loans, which is almost accomplished. Since the big move date is not too far away, I reevaluated what lifestyle changes I had to make to adjust. I knew that space would become an issue, so I sorted through all of my unused belongings until I came across my windsurfing gear. The gear wasn't particularly hard to find. The 100 liter board, kite board, 4 sails, two masts, boom and associated gadgets were hiding under my bed as the 300 pound gorilla in the room. If I were to move to a square-foot-challenged Manhattan apartment, the gear would have to go. I found out about this swap meet taking place next week, and signed up to drop off my stuff and have it sold. The days approaching this drop-off date were intense as I bartered back and forth with letting the tangible artifacts of my life go.

Then I thought:

How could I have possibly put myself in a position to have belongings that I don't use and don't want to let go of?
Because, there was a point in my life where I couldn't live without my gear, and I still felt that when I moved here. I didn't want to come unprepared, so I brought my whole life, but now it's collecting dust under my bed, because I love writing.

How did I fall in love with windsurfing?
Through Community Boating (CBI), which kept me out of trouble (mostly) and taught me endless lessons about life. Windsurfing was the added interest developed to keep me coming back to the safe haven. Teaching windsurfing was the niche I fell into on purpose, so CBI would always need me, because I knew that I would always need them, in spirit or in experience.

Why did I stop?
Writing is what I love too, and I invested money into my education, for the sole purpose of profiting from it. Windsurfing would have kept me in debt.

...So after philosophizing over the decisions I've made in the past four years, it was time to drop off my stuff. This morning, my friend Jomy piled all my gear into his Suburu wagon, and we headed to Windsurfing Hamptons surf shop. The 2 hour journey was relatively painless, but when we arrived, I felt quite anxious. We unloaded the gear onto the grass, and I spent some time "evaluating" it. I had forgotten about a sail that I had. The surf shop guy began the pricing process. I was a bit reluctant to put a price on my pride, but when he offered 600 bucks for my board, my jaw dropped. I only paid 250 for that board. The pricing continued in my favor. I was still a little upset to see my stuff go, but the fact that my stuff was selling for a pretty penny helped ease the blow.

The shop guy continued, "What about the 2.7 sail? How much do you want for it?" I picked up the sail bag and squeezed my fingers into it. "Not this one. Too many memories." I remember, when I went to my windsurfing instructor interview in San Francisco, four of the months were spent in Costa Rica, so I asked the manager what sails I should bring. (The smaller the sail, the stronger the winds) I mentioned the 8.5, 6.7 and 5.1, and then I kind of said "Oh yeah, and I have this 2.7 sail, but I just bought it for the kids to sail with" and he said with the most seriousness that any surf shop owner could have "Bring only the 2.7...yeah, the wind is THAT great."

Then I remember, when I brought the 2.7 sail to CBI, and the smaller kids were so excited to have a sail that they could lift up, and I felt so bad when I de-rigged it, but I wanted to take it to the Harry McDonough Sailing Center and have the kids try it over there too.

So, i took the 2.7 back with me in the car along with some of the miscellaneous cheap gear. I decided to just give away the 2.7 to CBI. I would feel more relieved if CBI benefited from that sail than some rich kid from the Hamptons.

The art project is coming along well, although this weekend's progress was a stand still, due to today's day trip and yesterday's great weather.

Dot Goddard

2008-05-04T19:28:00.001-04:00

...I think I know what I'm going to be for halloween!

I'm a New Yorker. Fear's my life!

2008-04-27T18:41:00.000-04:00

Something happened to me today that would never have happened anywhere else other than Manhattan. I was walking with some friends on Broadway near 30th street trying to find a good place to eat brunch, when suddenly we saw hundreds of people running and screaming from the west side of the street to the east and 2 blocks uptown. Women in heels didn't stop to take off their shoes. There was no time to think, no time to look back to see what they were running from, it was 'just go and don't ask' time. I came to accept that in New York, although seldom, this situation can exist. In those ten seconds of following these hundreds of people, just reacting to change as any animal would do, I was questioning in my mind what I was running from. Was a building falling over? Was there a man with a gun on the west side of the street? Was there a policeman being generous with mase? Was the Cloverfield monster throwing flames to the west side of the street? I had no idea. I just followed the crowd as Scottish sheep follow each other off a cliff. Don't ask, just go. When the ten seconds of running was over, we found ourselves against the wall, out of breath and in a line. The line wasnt as confusing as the people in business suits, on a Sunday. I soon realized that these people, who all worked for the same company, were waiting in the street until they found out where the line to their event began, and right before we turned the corner, it was announced where they had to wait in line. Additionally, there was some major incentive to get in line early, hence the screaming and intense rush. After I found out, I jokingly hit one of the guys in line and exclaimed in all seriousness, "You scared me!" And as if that wasn't embarrassing enough, we lost one of our friends in the sprinting dash and had to sift through the line to find him. The people in line were laughing, but instead of laughing at us, I assume they were laughing at the extent of hype that they had succomb to, and how it was perceived to strangers outside of their environment.

Losing hope is easy

2008-04-21T21:43:00.000-04:00

Writing becomes useless if there's nothing to say, but my art project will soon be underway, which will leave little to no time to document what's being done. This is the calm before the storm. since I have made little progress, I will show you a little bit about the process of what this project will entail.

Step 1: Take photos of high contrast images with a particular idea in mind of how the imae will be arranged on canvas.

Step 2: Load photos into photoshop and adapt the images so they are highest in contrast. Print out saved images.

Step 3: Copy printed image and adjust size to ideal canvas size

Step 4: Use myelin or acetate to color in the needed areas with india ink, using the print out as a guide. May need to do multiple times depending on the number of layers

Step 5: Burn emulsion screens and let to dry

Step 6: One layer at a time, screenprint the image onto canvas.

This is the basic idea of the process of each of the projects, and I know I won't always get it right the first time, but i intend to try.

Not many other updates. I plan on adapting the union square pillow fight bit into something for the literary review, but that's when I find more time. All will most likely be solved when I move into Manhattan, where my gym, grocery store, and launromat are all within walking distance. I am counting down the days, and I've already started talking to an agent about it.

One thing at a time. Art first, and I'm tring not to lose hope. I know I can create great things. I think I might have before.

Back to Life

2008-04-15T21:05:00.000-04:00

I'm back on my regular schedule that I was protesting before I left. I kept saying to myself that I really needed a vacation, but now that I realized how changed I am, let me exclaim that I really needed this vacation. I think most of my emotional change took place when I first decided to book this trip, but the internal change that I experienced was a complete physical detox that consisted of 2 straight weeks of 8 hour-a-night sleep, healthy food and constant exercise. Before I left, long work weeks sent me into a spiral of lack of sleep, eating takeout and not working out so I could sleep in more. A week later, I noticed that my best fit dress pants were more than a little tight. Now that I'm back, my pants fit fine and I'm more focused during work and geared toward waking up early for my daily run and gym activities. Also, now that I have my pictures from my trip, I can get started on my summer art project (fake art show). I did not get the scholarship, but I still plan to join the Manhattan Graphic Center and create the ideas I have documented in my little Kurt Vonnegut notebook.

Speaking of that notebook, while on my trip, I was overtired the first few nights but later had the best rest in a long time, and had the most interesting lucid dream ever. It was like a movie, and it was so suspenseful that when I woke up in the middle of it, I was determined to fall asleep again and leave off exactly where I left off, and for once in my life, it worked! I was able to continue my dream, and I finished the story.

I am so determined to document this that every morning after the gym, I write some more of the story down in my Kurt Vonnegut notebook. When I'm finished, sometime, when I haven't written in a while and I feel guilty, I'll pull out my story and redeem myself.

I just wish I had more time. My schedule is usually as follows:
5:30AM wake up and go to the gym--iPod time on train, run for 30 minutes, lift for 30 minutes
7:30AM eat toast with butter and jelly
8:30AM go to work--notebook time on train, usually reserved for reading or listening to French tapes
Lunch: chicken, dried fruit and nuts, peppers, green beans or broccoli with ranch dressing
7:30-8ish come home, clean, blog, watch Law and Order, eat chicken, time should be reserved for art stuff, happy hours and editing my imprompt essays
10PM sleep (I usually push it til 10:30)

Routine and boring, I know, but I like to get a lot accomplished in the week and this is the best way for me to do it.

I was trying to go see that play that I mentioned in the last post "Minus 30 million words". it's tomorrow, but the Obama-Clinton debate is tomorrow, and Thursday is a Sox-Yankees game, and I'm going to Pat O'Briens bar to celebrate the known victory with other sox fans.

Ok, I have some work to do...ciao.