Dagger

I step off the ferry and find myself in a dusty port town. I’m now on Isle Y, a smaller sister island that is known for world-class diving and sand that feels like flour. I have no definite agenda; all I want to do is snorkel. People assure me I’m in the right place.

I arrange a ride for myself because I decide I want to go to the other end of the island, the one that is presumably emptier. Cruise ships arrive to this port town and demented old white people who have the “latest technology” in fanny packs decide to roam around a bit to “experience the nation”, until they decide it’s too dirty or foreign or a small blister forms on their left toe, at which point they scuttle back to the safety of their floating retirement home. Can you blame them? It’s probably lasagna night. If you think I’m mocking people who go on cruises, I am. Very much so.

My driver is six foot four, 300 pounds, has corn rows, and no front teeth. His name is Dagger. I find this out later.

I hop into the front seat and he decides to play tour guide, but does no more than jovially identify things that need the least identification – banks, bars, and random houses according to their paint job: “Oh, that’s a pink house. Nice trim detailing. There’s a blue house. I once lived in a blue house”. I’m weary of the situation, mostly because this man apparently thinks I’m color blind, but also because I’m traveling alone and I simply have to be. He’s what Americans would consider overly flirty, but I know this is just the culture. Even when he proposes to pull over for a beer. Stopping for fuel, I turn to my side to get gas money so Dagger can’t see the contents of my wallet. He says with a stupid grin, “If I was going to rob you, I would have done it already.” Fantastic.

Turns out Dagger is a pretty friendly guy, very well known on Isle Y. If he’s not talking to me about his philosophies on America, prostitutes, and the national beer, he’s honking at people he knows or on the phone with someone – he says 85 percent of the island knows each other. He’s on the phone when we hear an ominous humming noise. We get a flat. I’m still suspicious of him at this point because I really can’t afford to trust anyone.  I try to decide if this is an elaborate plot to rob me or some shit. I even scan the bushes for accomplices. But the flat is as flat as it’ll ever get and he throws on the spare and we’re zooming through the winding jungle roads again.

I have no idea where I’m going to end up this night, and there comes a point when this turns from being a novelty to a nuisance. I look to the crystal blue waters to my right to remind myself where I am. The clouds are low, and so fluffy and white. Contrasted against the rich sky, they look crisp and impenetrable. The air smells like salt and barbeque. Dagger tells me that Isle X smells like factories and Isle Y smells like working kitchens. I believe him.

Dagger becomes a friend, of sorts. The combination of his jokes and his accent are too funny and my eyes brim with tears of laughter on a few occasions. He even returns some of my money for the inconvenience of the flat tire. When a second, different tire blows out, I give him this money back. He needs it more than I do. We can’t go any further because his car is going to shit, so he drops me off in a village three miles away from my intended destination. While he’s changing the second tire with a spare that he borrows from a friend, Dagger gets into a fight with a homeless man who’s called The Fruit King. The exchange is more entertaining than threatening. Apparently everyone knows The King and everyone avoids him. I wouldn’t get this memo until 5 hours later, when I would run into him again and find him licking passion fruit seeds off my open palm.

But that’s another story.

Please have a Happy New Year! I will spend mine hungry and sober, because I am stuck in a village with no money and no ATM and the one in the nearest town is being difficult and won’t spit out the cash I need. But this is no matter. I have the wind, and the music, and the view, and the air, and some unripened mangos from The Fruit King, and the fortune to be on the road. I couldn’t ask to start the new year in a better way. Drink for me!

2011: 12 Lessons in 12 Months

I had little expectations for 2011. I always felt that some of my peers were a little too uptight with everything. Furiously scribbling down resolutions that – let’s be real – won’t get checked off the list, worried about job-hunting, boyfriend/girlfriend-catching, school-excelling, and place-going is a lot of pressure to put on oneself, especially when factors out of their control are involved. So I decided to go with it. That was my goal. To not be completely subject to the moody whims of life, but to accept them with an open mind and the thought that perhaps there is purpose behind the seemingly-random events that we like to label as ‘all of a sudden’. I feel like I did what I needed to do this year, but also a hell of a lot of what I wanted to do. Because life is too short not to do what you want. It’s also too short to just sit there and wait for things to happen to you. So the following is a short outline, a quaint marriage of what happened to me and what I made happen. That’s life in its most condensed forms, I guess.

January showed me that I am not impervious to externalities like a touch of seasonal depression due to the short winter days. It came as quite a shock to be completely honest, because I’m always the one to waive off things like medicine and the side effects of stress: “It’s all in your head!” I would proudly proclaim, believing that the mind is in control of the body 100 percent of the time. It didn’t help that my window faced a back alley and my bedroom was devoid of sunlight even on the brightest days. In turn, I decided to start kicking-ass in my Russian program, and I think I did. It was a wonderful case of reciprocity: I put forth the effort, and the profuse tangles of Russian grammar started sorting themselves out.

Lesson #1: Despair can be avoided by teaching yourself something.

February was a month of random dating. To some, dating is a wretched yet mandatory process, a channel for which to sort through the mud to get to the diamond. But I date simply because more often than not, I get a story out of it as well as the occasional reminder that there are people weirder than me (they probably think the same thing). Like the one young gentleman who, as it turned out, harbored severe anti-Polish sentiments and revealed them in a tale-worthy manner. I’m Polish. LOLZ. The other great thing about dating is that an immediate choice is traditionally attached to this social more – will you see that person again? If so, to what extent? This choice is sometimes awkward, confusing, or painful, especially if you’re on the receiving end. Or it could be the best thing you’ve ever heard. But a choice, the ability to directly alter your destiny – even if this resolution seems as inconsequential as a butterfly blinking its wings and choosing to rest on a Dahlia rather than any other flower – is what distinguishes you from the rest of the populace. February was also the month I had to watch my dad linger on the verge of death from an unforeseen hematoma. And all of a sudden, dating shenanigans seem altogether unimportant, and you reach the realization that sometimes choices should be made while you still have them.

Lesson #2: Choices are a luxury.

March was a month of running around like someone lit a fire under my ass. My friend Blake can be blamed for this proverbial flame because he’s the one who forced me to do things like prepare for our summer trip by carrying out the tedious Russian and Chinese visa process. My iCal from March 2011 looks like a toddler scribbled all over it, and in retrospect I probably paid as little attention to my responsibilities and appointments as I would a toddler’s scribble. With an average of four consuming things to complete everyday, it’s a wonder how it all got done. In fact, it’s amazing that having such a firm grasp on life was at all possible. How can you have control over something as random, unpredictable, and mind-boggling as life? I also went zip-lining on March 5^th. It was an obstacle course in the trees and of the four long stretches of zip-line, I was the only one of the group to land ass-backwards 100 percent of the time – despite the reassurances of the guides that if you bicycle kick you can reposition your body to face forward while cutting through the air. But no. Bicycle kicks don’t fucking work. And so every time I would approach a landing spot, I would shut my eyes, hope for the best, and inevitably end up with a muddy ass and wood chips in unspeakable places. Zip-lining was advertised as something you should have control over, and somehow I ended up with no control, completely at the mercy of the laws of physics and I suspect a bit of karma. The day before, you see, I had scooped up the last of the cherry tomatoes at a salad bar to the disdain of an evil-eyed girl with long brown hair. Life surprised me that month, as it turned out I was the master of my fate and the captain of my soul. Except for fucking zip-lining.

Lesson #3: You have as much control as you perceive yourself to have.

April was a month of academic shit-throwing. At every turn and corner, new work seemed to not only pile up but also increase exponentially. Then again, if you fail to tend the garden the weeds will start to grow. This was a burden completely of my own creation – I don’t feel as I’ve ever truly applied myself in academia, often leaving things to the last minute and failing to stir up a passion for metamorphic rocks, Rudyard Kipling, and the principles of economics. I had other things on my mind, like pork spare ribs, Beat literature, traveling the whole wide universe, hefty and thorough analysis of professional tennis, and how I was going to acquire my dream beach house in Zanzibar or pull that Delhi diamond heist à la Pink Panther. I believe that just as much time, if not more, should be donated towards emanating Peter Sellers as to silly things like academics. And if anything, my new diamond would pay for my beach house. But the day that catapulted me into mental exhaustion was April 14^th – I apparently documented this in my calendar. I had just realized that I couldn’t go home for Easter, a holiday that I view with utmost admiration simply because it’s the day my grandma makes my favorite soup. And now the soup-rug was suddenly pulled out from underneath my tired feet. So what do I do when so much shit is being thrown and I can’t get across the battlefield shit-free? I start throwing shit. Literally. April 15^th just happened to be the university’s celebration of Holi, a spring festival for Hindus where you attack people with mushroom clouds of neon pink, yellow, and green powder. So I partook in the shit throwing, this time with some friends and a smile. And with one whole-body throw, a properly over-sized Super Soaker, and a target hit, everything was made a little bit more manageable.

Lesson #4: Perspective is your shit shield.

Sunday, May 15^th was the day my sister graduated from university. It was also the day two friends and I would leave the States for one of the coolest backpacking trips of our lives. The ceremony was a beautiful one despite the rain. Toni Morrison spoke with an aged clarity and wisdom that breathes fresh inspired air into every listener. I don’t cry very often, but the combination of her moving words, the knowledge that I wouldn’t see my brother/family for three months, and the general momentousness that comes with leaving for a sufficiently unplanned trip that would take me from St. Petersburg to Kathmandu, well, it was a lot to take in. I live to travel, adventure is my middle name, I soak up the unknown like a liver in a lightweight, and I am the happiest when I’m on the road, but before every trip the dangerous question ‘what if?’ reliably pops up – what if something happens back home while I’m away, what if something happens to my friends or to me. While I can always count for this poisonous inquiry to emerge, it is always brief and fleeting, and I get back to my normal carefree senses pretty quickly. But when it did happen, its effect was deeply rooted. And like the symphony of rain that pattered against every umbrella, a waterfall of tears was uncorked. I did my best to hide it because tears don’t mesh well with my slightly callous exterior, so when my little brother said something about it, I responded with something along the lines of “don’t be stupid” followed by an affectionate yet appropriately tight headlock. I take my older sister responsibilities very seriously. At the end of May I would find myself in Siberia and then Mongolia, perfectly happy and in the position to spit in the face of “what if”. I was on the road, after all, and the road is my home.

Lesson #5: “What if” is the single stupidest phrase anyone can ever utter.

June was a month of delights and true pedagogy. I realized the breadth of my reach when one day, I set off running in a random direction in the middle of the Gobi Desert. Why, you ask? I answer this with why the hell not. It was a time of doing exactly what I wanted at the time that I wanted to do it, because people don’t abuse this inherent right nearly enough. It was a time of being ridiculous and spontaneous for the sake of ridiculousness and spontaneity. It was a time of going with the waves and the wind. We had no plan, no agenda. We were just some kids who dreamed of seeing the world and we were slowly but surely realizing that dream – that’s happiness if I’ve ever known it. Back to the running. My heart was pounding and I had a grin so large it probably split my face in half. I pointed to the distant horizon and told myself to stop when I reached the sun. In retrospect, I don’t think there is anything funnier than the image of a Mongolian in his daily routine and randomly seeing a white girl bolting across a still frame, charging towards the sun at an alarmingly anticlimactic speed. What I would give to be that Mongolian. June, and the whole trip rather, was a time for me to truly excerise my love for dramatic, colorful, and sweeping gestures in the name of excitement and simply doing something. Life is too ephemeral to do anything but. Mongolia and China hosted us in June and it was a time of veritable adventure and uninterrupted stimulus. Much was learned, little was lost. And hopefully you’ll see me running towards the sun sometime soon, the same sun that was denied to me last January.

Lesson #6: What was lacking before will be in abundance later.

July was a month of carousing around Shanghai in drunken stupor, hiking tens of thousands of collective steps at Taishan, Huangshan, and Huashan, being chased by a very mean monkey, becoming *very* well acquainted with bus and train station floors, hanging out with awesome Nepali orphans, discovering the swankness of the Incheon airport, falling in love…with Chinese street food, meeting the most amazing people I could possibly meet; it was a month of constant motion, constant seeing, constant doing, constant learning; it was the month I realized that my wallet is small but my heart is big, that my tastes are simple but my dreams are expansive, that my faults are many but my merits are many more. July was a month of sheer discovery, life-changing adventure, a massive acquisition of stories, and a healthy dose of perspective. China and Nepal did that to me. Let’s say the average life expectancy of an American woman is 81 years of age, or 29,565 days. There are 31 days in July, which means all of the aforementioned events can account for roughly 0.105% of my entire life. One month. If I live every month like I did in July of 2011, I’m going to be very happy, very wise, and one hell of a storyteller. I take into account that perhaps I won’t live as long if I carouse around every city in drunken stupor, but I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it, should I not accidentally fall off of it.

Lesson #7: Never stop traveling. (I knew this since day one, but a lesson of this significance cannot be reiterated enough)

The high I’d been riding for three months ended in August. Kathmandu: Of my two comrades I was the last one to go. I said goodbye to Blake, then to Misha. Then to Jessica, my awesome Aussie girlfran who had been kind enough to stick with me while I got a sleeve of mehndi painted painstakingly from my shoulder to fingertips. It was the morning of my departure and I wasn’t ready to leave. I was going mad, you see, deliriously upset that that chapter of my life, one of the best ones, was closing for good. My bags somehow packed themselves. I checked that I had everything important, I returned my room key, and I left. As I turned toward the exit, I stood there. My eyes glazed over and I spaced out. I imagined my backpack and I – the best travel buddy I’ve ever had – as we caught a chicken bus south to the border, shirking my date with Flight 6051 to Delhi and then to Brussels and then home. I imagined us continuing like no one ever left, like I had no where to be, like I had no one waiting for me. I imagined how nice that would be. And then someone asked if I’d like a cab. Angry with this person for jolting me back to reality, I gave him a terse ‘no thanks’ and trudged off. I turned right on Kathmandu’s mud ridden streets and hailed a cab. As I haggled with the driver, I smiled the whole time, soaking in every bit of this energy-sucking economic ritual that is so customary around the world and yet finds itself to be absent in the US. He must’ve thought me creepy and conceded to lower the price. It came time to board the plane too soon. They had us walk across the landing strip as some personnel rushed to shoo some lazy cattle away. As people queued up to have their passports and tickets checked, I stayed behind and made sure to be last in line. I dropped my bags and turned towards the Kathmandu cityscape. Shacks and tenements covered the hills. They marked civilization’s expansion towards the regal temples that overlooked the city from the summit of each precipice. Kathmandu is covered in traffic, mud, and garbage, but it’s charming despite these things. Underneath is a city of smiling faces, food of immense flavor, and paramount beauty. The weather was typical of monsoon season – overcast but unusually bright. I swear to this day, the whole of Nepal has a green tint to it. I can’t explain further. So I looked back on Kathmandu and it’s so cliché, I know, but every single day of the trip breezed by my eyes like an extraordinarily epic flip book. Breathing heavy, I felt strange and truly foreign for the first time, for the road is my home and I was leaving it.

Lesson #8: Nothing lasts forever.

In September I fell into a rut. Being completely apathetic towards the whole working/university thing, living in the past three months, and being virtually taunted by all my friends who were studying abroad are comparatively good problems to have, but they are problems nonetheless. Makes sense. After all, what happens after a high? The crash. After months of which my only responsibility was staying alive, it was shocking that mundane academia didn’t appeal to me. I escaped to inside my head where I held precious memories, newfound knowledge, and a joke or two when the time called for it. It was a month of pointless impulses: driving to the middle of no where, picking a random book in the library and reading it no matter what it was, and ordering just one more pitcher of beer at the local pub even if it was last call and everyone had enough. Education became a towering roadblock in the way of my learning, and the control I enjoyed in March seemed far off and out of reach. But as per lesson #8, the nature of ruts and the highs is transience, as is the case with everything in between. And ever since I’ve been slowly climbing my way out with a little help from my friends and my own resolution that I am better than that. It was time to move on, get done what needed to be done, and plot my next move.

Lesson #9: Ruts and highs are inevitable and impermanent.

I didn’t know what ‘anything is possible’ really meant until October.

Lesson #10: Moments are fleeting by nature. Hold on to them, remember them, don’t lament when they’re gone but be grateful that they happened.

November was a month of impulse; pure, liberating, unadulterated impulse. I woke up one day. I got dressed, brushed my teeth, threw on the kicks, and guzzled down a coffee. In the next hour I found myself in Southeast DC with a camera to capture some commonplace scenes that link the NW and SE communities together. I was there out of curiosity, trying to see if the Southeast is really as dangerous as the media, word-of-mouth, and supposed ‘common knowledge’ makes it to be, if the situation is really that dire. Future explorations and documentation are coming, but what I have learned is not surprising. What can be found there is people. People with a similar way of life and people in a similar place physically and mentally. People who should not be confined by the construct of the place they live. Southeast is one in the same; the danger is there but it is wholly distorted by distant group perceptions. It was not a search for trouble but for understanding, a project of which the goal was personal introspection. I just wanted to feel I was doing something worthwhile and substantial for myself, not trying to save the world but trying to understand this world that so badly needs to be saved. If I applied the previous ten lessons of 2011, directly acknowledged them, and took them to heart, I knew I would be okay.

Lesson #11: Substance should never be sacrificed. 

Oh, is it December already? When the fuck did that happen. It’s difficult to be introspective about something that just occurred. The dust hasn’t settled, the smoke hasn’t cleared, and I’m still biased and completely lacking the wisdom that time always offers to an individual should she is willing to accept it. But I suppose December has been a month of observing the most conventional wisdoms from the most unconventional sources. For example, after being handed an extremely large paycheck, a decision had to be made as to what to use the money for. Normally savings would be the primary go-to, but the holiday season has the uncanny disposition of complicating even the simplest of matters. So in the wise words of the talented Notorious B.I.G., “mo’ money” indeed elicits “mo’ problems”. But even then, I just did what I am naturally inclined to do – store the money away, forget about Christmas, and then panic last minute when I am left present-less, stressed out, and inclined to turn to my go-to emergency gift in embarrassing quantities. I firmly believe that every citizen of the world should watch Eroll Morris’ stunning, compelling documentary Fog of War, an expertly clipped and arranged interview with former Secretary of Defense, the ever controversial, ever fascinating Robert McNamara. It is truly amazing. One of those ‘bigger than yourself’ pieces, to be sure. And so the Fog of War shall rain down on unsuspecting family members. And they will thank me later. It’s been a whole 28 days of this month and that’s all I can think to write about. Which is fine. Come February or March, I will likely come back to this paragraph and view the last month of 2011 completely differently. This is one of life’s certainties – your present perceptions change how you perceive the past.

Then again, it is stupid to talk about oneself in such exhausting quantities. The world in 2011 was a pivotal one, truly unlike any other in history. What’s a little seasonal depression compared to the devastating January floods and mudslides in Rio de Janeiro that claimed 903 lives? While I fought for control with a zip-line as if it were a matter of life and death and not an ass full of pine cones, martyrs, heroes, villains, and victims were being made in split-second decisions that would change the course of history in the Libyan civil war. I will say: I do reckon my shit-throwing dealings of April much cooler than the royal wedding – history was made on that lawn that day when I pwned that n00b so hard with a handful of pink powder to the face. If only I got two billion people to watch. May: America celebrates the death (anyone else think this to be strange??) of head honcho Osama bin Laden, while I’m preparing for a trip that will eventually lead me to Pakistan’s general hood. Serious considerations ensue as to whether I should hop the fence, so to speak, from Nepal’s western most point into Uttarakhand, then Punjab, and then Pakistan simply to see what’s going on there. While I flee from a Gobi ger camp with an intended destination of the sun for absolutely no reason, thousands of Syrians flee to Turkey to seek refuge from a siege. Don’t I feel stupid. While I was gallivanting about China in July, a nation was born and she’s enjoying nominal unity under the appellation of South Sudan; this sounds great and all and I’ve heard some daft assumptions like: “Finally! The Sudan problem is solved!”. I remained silent as I would hate to play the role of dream-crusher by informing them that the problems have yet to see their end and there is likely to be a genocide there in the next decade. And so on, and so on. It’s been a great year for me, but the same cannot be said for others. This is why I constantly remind myself that it can always be worse, that I can never stop giving, that compassion and empathy are my most precious possessions in a world experiencing a deficit of them, that I am so lucky to have the life I have, and the most important lesson of all:

Lesson #12: There is a world beyond yours.

I took on the task of summarizing and analyzing a year in a few paragraphs. I cannot wait to read this in ten years and smile. Looking toward 2012, I have no expectations. I have goals, intentions, and dreams, and these will be completed or left unfulfilled by my action or inaction, my resolution to move forward or to stagnate, bucket-list-wise.

Speaking of the bucket-list, I’m off to Isle X now. Whether the Mayans were correct in their morbid prediction or not, I think people should view it as a pressing reason to either begin to live their lives to the fullest or to continue doing so. What else can you do, than to do what you need, do what you want, and play the cards you’re dealt.

Meet Me in Montauk

Montauk, NY

How happy is the blameless vestal’s lot
The world forgetting by the world forgot
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind
Each pray’r accepted, and each wish resign’d

It’s F****** Christmas Time.

The falling snow will fall until I decide virtual snow went from being a novel idea to a thoroughly annoying feature, which will probably happen sooner than later. Or until January 4th, 2012, when it shuts itself off.

Christmas is not only my favorite holiday but also one of my favorite times of the year; it’s the season when the most amount of people simultaneously and collectively realize what’s important. It may not last, but even a blip on the radar of overt goodness is better than nothing.

So. Have a Merry Christmas.

Love, Hugs, Kisses, and Bolts,

 Squeaky Robot

Important Realizations of December 15th, 2011

1) You can cut your Starbucks bill by 75% if you keep your cup. I am a sporadic coffee-drinker and Starbucks-attender so I didn’t know this until today, when I finished my last drop of black coffee and then looked down into my empty cup and pouted. Upon seeing this, a barista informed me I could get a refill for a mere 55 cents. What a world! Why is Starbucks charging $1.60 for a paper cup?? Oh, that’s right. It’s a business.

2) There is a soup kitchen exactly one block away from my home. I got up at the butt-crack of dawn to attend a volunteer orientation, and I’ll be officially reconvening my random bouts of community service in January. The manager working there asked me, “what brings you to us”, because most volunteers are there with some kind of affiliating group, a company, or it’s court mandated. That’s a joke. I wouldn’t know. Anyway, it was early and I didn’t feel like talking to someone so cheerful, so I just responded with a “Because I feel like it”. In retrospect, this answer is hilariously awkward and sufficiently reminiscent of some antisocial kindergartner, but it’s the truth. Behind her laugh she was probably thinking: “Why do I get all the weirdos?”

3) Amazon is heaven for lazy Christmas shoppers. And lazy shoppers. And lazy people.

4) After accidently buying the Diet Half Lemonade Half Iced Tea Snapple and being too absent-minded to read the label (anything with “diet” on it is automatically to be avoided), I’ve decided that this is the worst drink I’ve ever tasted and it may have turned me off from Snapple altogether. Nice work Snapple. You’re the worst.

5) This blog has now become a way of avoiding things I don’t want to deal with. The holiday season is synonymous with exam season, and even though I have nothing to worry about because I’m a smarty-pants, writing about the important realizations of December 15th is a great way to shirk my responsibilities of studying arcane social theories under a guise of discerning self-awareness.

6) Living in New Jersey and going to school out-of-state is a special position to be in. The typical chatter of the past week has been: “When do you go home for the holidays?” I go home comparatively late, and people tend to respond with “omg Squeaky Robot that, like, sucks so much”. And then I say dryly “I’m from Jersey”. And then they understand. In times of relentless mockery, I usually jump to defend the Garden State simply because no one else will, but sometimes I just cut to the chase and make the joke before anyone else can. Some would call this a breach of loyalty. I don’t have anything clever to respond with because I also would call it that.

xoxo Gossip Robot

The City of Luck: Likeng Reprise

Little Likeng is not lucky itself (this hasn’t been proven or unproven by me, actually), but much luck can be found in the gambling rings hidden in the lazy shops and make-shift restaurants and labyrinthine back-alleys that pepper this oasis among the paddies.

I apologize for the random postings. In between projects, my mind is already scattered, you see, and in my defense, it is hard to stop thinking of summertime in China when one has already experienced the utter delight of the place. I also really like this picture.

It’s Taco Day!

East Asian Taco Day is always a spectacular day!

The Roundabout Introduction of the Isle of X

Blogging is not only a forum for me to fabricate a word or two and completely get away with it free of criticism under a guise of creative license. It’s first and foremost a place to document my projects, adventures, photographical development, bucket-list progress, and general shenanigans, or lack thereof. It’s an online home of self-centered pursuits – I blog for myself and no one else, and the fact that people I don’t know have piped up and said this material appeals to them in one form or another, well, it’s a great shock to me but also a completely awesome and mind-boggling byproduct. Even though I am still wholeheartedly convinced that my mother is in fact my only reader, and the comments and page views made by ‘others’ are actually her making different Word Press accounts and personas and sitting at home clicking the ‘refresh’ button repeatedly so that her Robot daughter can feel good about herself and her silly little blog. It’s working, Mom! omgkthxsomuch.

With that said, I can now introduce an announcement of blog-worthy proportions, hence my mentioning of it here: I’m leaving the country for a while. After Christmas.

I am long overdue for an adventure. Straight up, travel confession style: In the name of Anthony Bourdain, Nat Geo, and airplane peanuts, it has been four months since my last international flight.

Considering I simply cannot cease traveling like a shark cannot stop swimming, I am escaping to a remote part of the world for a while, which will hereby be known to readers, family, and friends as Isle X. This is even contrary to the belief of my dear but dull friend Blake, who is convinced I’m going to Afghanistan for two weeks (after refusing to tell him my destination, he guessed Kabul and I just went along with it. He was then genuinely astounded with his own astute perceptions and ability to “read” people). But no. I cannot be read. Kabul is in my future, but not quite yet. In fact, I’ll excuse Blake’s dullness because people who know me would expect me to buy spur-of-the-moment cargo plane tickets to a state as failed as Afghanistan. No kidding. If anything, I’ll use this confession to gage how often Blake actually reads Squeaky Robot – if his real-life response to the fact that he’s a gorbellied milk-livered cankerblossom (courtesy of the Shakespeare Insult Kit) is delayed or completely absent, then he will lose my precious friendship both in real life AND on Facebook. Yes. I just went there. He’s already dancing on thin ice after rejecting my invitation to drink gin & tonic with me, even after casually mentioning that he would  be providing the gin & the tonic. Probably the lemon and lime as well.

The choice to keep my coordinates hidden is a brilliant move on my part. It’s whimsical and ridiculous, and I can welcome the New Year with a completely clean slate, one where telemarketers and the IRS cannot find me. Not that I necessarily want to wipe my slate clean, but every once in a while it does a person good to acquire a new one. Yes, this means I’ll be alone on New Year’s Eve, which is a completely personal choice and a good one at that. Scuba diving and kissing turtles is on the agenda, but not in the DR or Belize like I previously planned. Generic island photography is on the menu, though, as well as many other island activities. Hiking, swimming, seashell collecting, looking at the horizon in a dramatic fashion, talking, reading, writing, eating, seeing, ‘splorin’, breathing, peeing, and peeling off sunburnt skin have made the list of things To-Do. I may even go coconut-hunting with the natives. Those bitches (the coconuts) can be elusive in the midst of human predators and they may fear their fate of being cut in half and having their delicious innards sucked up by loud foreigners with “crazy” straws and then impaled by three-inch toothpick umbrellas that drunk obnoxious women put in their “I-tried-to-make-my-locks-perfectly-windswept-but-it-didn’t-quite-work-out” hair in a desperate effort to achieve the look of “island sexy”. But I will drink from said coconuts, throw them at passers-by or people who frustrate me, and most importantly, conduct scientific experiments that address the swallow-to-coconut weight ratio question: What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow? And then the same question will be applied to a swallow carrying a coconut (this test will use both African and European swallows, to be thorough).

A little description of Isle X: There is sun where I’m going, and also drugs and violent crime. Jackpot. There is also food, air, trees, poisonous animals and water. And malaria. My family needn’t worry because where I’m going has the same amount of detriments as any other place on earth. The US also has violent crime and drugs, as well as air and water. But anyone who stays put in their own country solely because they believe the outside world to be dangerous is an idiot. I follow this by saying it is better to have harsh, decisive stances than none at all. Better to act dramatically and colorfully than to not act at all. Escape to a pseudonymous island? Why not?

The Isle of X is bursting at the seams with the unknown. I literally don’t know anything about it. That’s the best part. As of yet, it’s unadulterated by faulty word-of-mouth and overrated hype. I haven’t heard bad things, I haven’t heard good things, I’ve just heard no things. A perfect blank canvas to form my own opinions, make my own assumptions, and make my own mistakes. God knows there will be mistakes.

And so I have plane tickets but no plan. My element. I have prospective hostels, but those hostels won’t graduate from prospective to definite status until I get there. Planning is a waste of time. Who knows what’s in store, because I sure don’t. I may just steal a hammock on the beach and set up shop there. Or build a sand fort. All of this is just a roundabout way of saying that adventure is just bad planning. Luckily for me, having to constantly deal with the unfamiliar and the unknown and basically living in the hazy fog that separates the present and the uncertain future is something I’m used to. That’s one thing about the familiar. It feels so good.

The Prostitute

This Nepali bracelet is one of the most expensive things I own. I probably fed the proprietor and his family for a month. The process of purchasing this bangle was a big affair. I saw it one day on some muddy street in Kathmandu. It glistened in the display window and called out to me. I stood outside that window for an abnormal amount of time, wide-eyed and dreaming about one day having it clasped around my wrist. I was the lost ship and it was the bejeweled lighthouse. I immediately got a price quote from the shop owner, and upon hearing it I gasped in terror. I finally knew what it felt like to be the poor man in french and russian literature who was in love with the most beautiful prostitute but couldn’t afford her. I told myself to forget about it. But I walked by the window everyday. It didn’t help that the city planner of Thamel, that particular neighborhood, either threw a hand full of spaghetti on a map and decided to build ‘roads’ there or he didn’t exist at all. So in this maze of a district, I just ended up right in front of the window, drawn by the bracelet’s teasing beauty, even if I purposefully opted for alternate routes. It was magical. Part of me exhaled a sigh of relief every time I saw that no one had bought it and part of me twisted and turned because now there was still the option to trade in food and other ‘necessities’ for this bracelet. I mean, look at it. It’s the prettiest goddamn thing I’ve ever seen, short of Leo DiCaprio in a black and white suit. And as a female, I have the responsibility of being irrational every once in a while and I take this responsibility very seriously. So I haggled for days with the kindly shop owner. He needed the sale and I needed the bracelet. I slowly but surely cajoled him to lower the price. We would alternate conversations about life and business. Life in America versus life in Nepal, then haggle a bit, talk about his children and my life as a student (this was a tactic), then haggle a lot. I like to think it was my dashing good looks (this is funny because I was backpacking for three months and I am notoriously bad at taking showers and generally sustaining the appearance of a girl) and charming personality, but it was probably his reasoning that he’d rather earn a little less rupees than originally planned rather than making no rupees. Also, I probably came off as pathetic and he felt sorry for this person of whom he couldn’t identify a gender. But that’s besides the point.

I generally condemn overt materialism. I can go months with nothing but a backpack and its limited contents. I don’t care about things and would rather have less than more. But once in a while, a bracelet like this one comes along. One handcrafted with turquoise, amber, coral, silver, and a design that makes me melt. A bracelet that would cost more than a month’s rent in SoHo had it been sold in the US, but was only a fraction of that in Nepal. A bracelet that would be passed on to my offspring, should I have a daughter. If I have a son, he will suffer a similar sartorial fate. A bracelet that makes me drool and makes all my friends green with envy. Not that that’s the goal, but when I feel my ego needs a kick, I’ll be honest, I wear the fucking bracelet. So this piece of jewelry temporarily bankrupted me. But that’s ok. Money will come back, but a bracelet of this caliber never will.

The Shark

Travel is the ultimate teacher and here’s why.

1) Foreign exploration reminds you that there is a bigger plan to all of this, one that is more monumental than our comparatively atom-sized brains can fathom. A trillion-gazillion other things, processes, occurrences, events, meet-cutes, robberies, deaths, weddings, business meetings, classroom sessions, birthday parties, beatings are going on at this very moment in this ever-expanding universe, and you are involved with embarrassingly little of these trillion-gazillion things, events, people, places, inanimate and animate, on this earth and off. There’s a lot going on here. I can feel it, and travel makes you see it.

a) Not to say that we aren’t interconnected with everything and everyone in existence (chaos theory and other philosophical abstracts), but I am speaking about a person’s natural tendency to assume the role of center of the universe. This makes sense. It’s with your own eyes you’re absorbing and perceiving, and it’s hard to think about flood victims in Bangladesh when you have your own shit to deal with. Not to say that people don’t think about Bangladeshi flood victims, but realistically speaking, self-absorbing tendencies prevail more often than not.

2) Travel humbles you. It makes you realize that regardless of the wars and genocides and divisions and problems that are born from the clash of humans and our cultures, borders, interests, and catastrophic technology of our own creation, the term ‘human condition’ clumps all seven billion of us into two neat words for a reason. And this is because we are all going through life, not knowing every joy or trial that awaits us around the bend, but going through it anyway, together, in both relative ease and hardship. Because that’s the second thing travel has taught me, and that’s that the world is full of good people and people who have suffered like you have. Everywhere, irrespective of race, gender, nationality, ethnicity, there are good people to meet, to laugh with, to learn from and to love. And it’s also humbling to know that disease, pain, and misfortune are blind to all the aforementioned classifications of identification. Misfortune is the greatest equalizer of them all.

a) For the sake of simplicity and my own sanity, I will not delve into human nature and the reasons why good people sometimes do bad things (ex. that pickpocket in Nairobi probably wants to feed his family). But I know that the opposite is also possible. Why not? Humanity and its behavior is fluid, complicated, nonsensical, and probably the hardest thing in the world to effectively categorize, study, and then communicate eloquently in a way that the majority of people would understand, second to the plot of Lost.

3) While good people can be found everywhere and in great numbers, humans are also capable of unspeakable cruelties. I need not go further, but I might as well. This fundamental contradiction may lie within us as individuals and it relies on a certain setting for the cruelty to be unleashed, like a hardened soldier in battle, or this contradiction can be viewed on a human-to-human basis, all of us the same species, more or less similarly evolved, and yet some of us murder and some of us are incapable of hurting a single living thing, like Ted Bundy and Mother Teresa. They both have coexisted on this earth. Such anomalies make me wonder. And then my head starts to hurt.

a) This is where travel teaches you about common sense, street smarts, and trusting instincts. Skills that are arguably more valuable than anything that can be learned in a classroom. Why? Because your life and wellbeing are on the line and when something so precious is at risk, it is then that people get to know themselves best. It’s one thing to speculate about a dangerous situation and say what you would do, but completely another to be standing there with a knife at your throat. And then you come away alive and well, less likely to take something as fragile as life for granted, with a great story under your belt and a brief glimpse into the core of your character.

I feel like these ideas are all painfully obvious but wholly overlooked. It’s easy to forget the bigger picture, and yet the shark keeps swimming. Overall, these teachings have made me a better traveler and a better person. More understanding of human motivations, more accepting and empathetic of people and their ways, more open-minded, more patient, but not less confused. The more you travel, the smarter you will become and the more confused you will be. Because the more you learn, the more you realize how little you know. It’s easy to become confused when you think about everything that’s actually going on, in your life and out of it. Tall order. Sometimes it is easier to acknowledge that thinking about the bigger picture is strenuous and frustrating work and never leads to anything conclusive. Sometimes it’s easier to be happy with the little but immediate things. Which is why I’m going to go back to my Irish hot chocolate, How I Met Your Mother reruns, and listening to Princess of China on repeat.

EDIT – In perfect conjunction with the previous sentiments: What a Fucking Year. Numbers 1, 12, 25, 27, 30, 33, and 44 get me everytime