So sayeth the venerable Julio, as he posed for me in his Sunday best, describing the chief challenge in his path toward slimness. This particular Sunday best happened to be several suit-sizes too big for our more narrower Julio, however, who attests to the power of a particular diet book (whose name he was unable to remember) that requires its adherents to exercise immense willpower to achieve weight loss. Julio proves the efficacy of the system, having halved his weight in two years (I gather). He is very proud of his self-control, and ticks off on his fingers (uno, dos, tres...) the things that he perpetually resists: drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, eating more than he needs to survive or doing any drugs. To be honest, he is not uninspiring, but he tells of his personal achievements with such a goofy sense of self-satisfaction that it's hard to look up to Julio so much as it is to laugh with him.
Nevertheless, these pictures betoken a different side of Julio. They show a man who has written a book addressing the issues of corruption and forgotten values of his native Peru, which is, actually, exactly why these pictures were taken. He hasn't had his book published yet, but he's written it, and he needed some professional-looking shots of himself to grace the cover. I think these are pretty good, actually; have a look for yourself:
(I admit that, of the dozen or so pictures I took, I only uploaded the four that make me smile the most, not necessarily the four that best represent "serious Julio".)
So today is my last day here! I am leaving tonight, will probably call a cab at around 10 p.m., hopefully will be checked in well before midnight, and will be taking off no later than 1 a.m. tomorrow (fingers croix). I am sitting in Kaladi Brothers right now debating what precisely to do. I've had my athletic spurt for the day (courtesy of that same giant pile of snow from Christmas day in the parking lot):
I still have to go buy presents for my family. I'll do that now. I also have to do some work. I'll do that before. I have to go to the bathroom. I'll do that first. Here is a video I recorded of Peter. I figured you guys might want to see what the guy with whom I've had the most dynamic relationship here was like. This video shows that, as I said in my first post, he's incredibly blithe. But trust me, he's incredibly interesting:
(my camera cut off the end, but I was saying "I'll probably forget about him by tomorrow.")
Here is a picture of the building that I have used as a landmark for all of my travels. You can see it from every part of town that I've been, and it's been extremely useful in orienting me. My favorite bagel restaurant is right across the street from it, and it is lit up at night so I can still see it then. Hooray!
Here is a silly picture that made me laugh; you have to click on it to read the sign:
Not really. I mean it still, except that I understand him now.
I just had the most satisfying conversation that I've had since I came to Alaska. I walked into my hostel from having been out downtown with a friend of mine (story in a bit) and he and this other guy, Josh (who is purely insufferable in his personality -- I'll never take that back) were sitting around talking. I stood on the steps by the lobby dais and just sort of started listening in and adding comments here or there, and then the conversation slowly shifted from Peter/Josh to Peter/me until Josh was out of the room and Peter and I were just talking about life. It's not really...necessary or prudent to try to recreate the conversation. It just ended ~10 minutes ago. I realized that Peter is not only a smart guy, but he is a correct guy. He knows what he cares about and why, and why all that matters to him is what he cares about. I think that I will remember having that conversation for awhile, and perhaps will base decisions of my own off of the conclusions it will have helped me draw. Hmmmm...
Before that, though, I had one of the best days here this trip. I was at a coffee shop on the phone for an inordinately long amount of time, when I knew that I was supposed to be working on my personal statement for grad school applications so I could get it done before hanging out with my friend Matt when -- ta da -- Matt ran right into me walking down the sidewalk outside the coffee shop. Matt, who is in the Army as part of a really neat sounding intelligence unit (he had to learn Korean) is stationed in Fairbanks, which is a six-hour drive north of Anchorage. The temperature never gets above negative 10 degrees in the winter, and it gets as low as minus 47 (apparently). Anyway, we went into the coffee shop and sat around talking for, like, at least an hour, maybe an hour and a half. It was fantastic. I laughed a lot, and Matt has a lot of really interesting stories to tell and things to say about what's going on (in the world). He is fairly knowledgeable on world politics, and illuminated the Korean situation for me (hint: nothing is going to happen and N. Korea will dissolve in 30 years).
We eventually started wandering around Anchorage in search of pizza for me; I ended up eating a delicious toasted bread bowl of broccoli cheese soup at Quizno's (but it was like $6.45!!). It's the first time I've ever eaten there! When I told Matt that, he gave me such a huge wide-eyed look that I laughed un-self-consciously. We then walked back to the good ol' Qupqugiaq, from where he got a taxi to downtown (to meet his friends for dinner) and I started working on my personal statement (I finally finished it! It's good!).
After an hour or two, he called to invite me to a bar they were at. I went, but it was awful. It was called Platinum Jaxx, and it was just full of incredibly loud music, incredibly loud lights, and incredibly loud people. I had the most fun when Matt and I started talking about people we knew from high school; when Matt's friend's friend and I were talking about his army experience; and when the Met-Rx World's Strongest Man Competition came on the screen right above my head (Canada sure grows some huge-armed men). We left not too long after I'd gotten there, which I was fine with. I drank one glass of Guiness, which ended up costing me $20 ($9.50 taxi [+ tip] + $5 entry fee + $5 beer = oof). I didn't do anything else today, and except for the milk I bought this morning and the Quizno's....well...and the Italian soda from Kaladi's....I guess I didn't spent that much. :P
I don't have many pictures from today. Just two shots I took beause they were filming a commercial for the coffee shop inside it today, and so in the opposite corner from our table there were production crews all set up with lights and giant cameras and stuff. I took this picture of them from outside:
and this picture of their big van that I tried to tempt Matt into stealing, until he reminded me of a conversation we'd just had about how Alaska's gun laws are so lax that everyone has one:
and here's a picture I forgot to upload from last night; Julio brought me baklava!
But the title of this post is correct! I'm coming home tomorrow night...sorta. My plane leaves at 1 a.m. on the 31st, which means I have to be packed and out of the hostel by 10 p.m. at the latest, in a cab, to the airport and checked in and everything by like...midnight would be ideal, I guess. If no delays occur, I will be landing in Charlotte at around 4:45 p.m. on New Year's Eve, which means I'll be back in Winston-Salem by ~8 p.m. and from there...the night will proceed! I would like to spend it in Chapel Hill, but if that's not feasible, then...well...there are plenty of kazoos in the Henderson household, I'll have you know.
UPDATE: I just want to add this, because it emphasizes how awful of a person Josh is to be around. He just came into this area and sat next to me saying "Hey, you want to make a lot of money?"
That's never promising from a demonstrably moronic hostel tenant, but I humored him. So here's what he made me do, in his own words:
"I need..give me your computer. I need to type. Can you give me a blank space to type?"
*me opens Notepad.exe*
"Perfect. Now I need 18-point font."
*me knows that Notepad.exe doesn't support large font sizes; opens MS Word*
"Perfect. Now I need 18-point font. Perfect, now imagine this. Anchorage is Alaska's biggest village, right?"
*me: nods*
"Right, so imagine this, man." Josh types out "ANCHORQGE ALASKAS VILLAGE" [sic]
*me: confused, reaches to correct typo*
"No, man! Think about it! We could make millions, put this on t-shirts and merchandise. For the natives."
*me silent*
"It's like native, man. Anchor-[horrible sound] Alaska! They love that stuff?"
*me: expresses incredulity*
"Man, you gotta help me out on this, let's design something real quick tonight."
*me realizes it is almost 4 a.m.*
"Just a quick design..let me show you in lowercase too..." Types with one glove-blackened finger the same phrase in lowercase, then points to 'q' on screen.
"See, man! You and me can make so much money offa this!"
*me reminds Josh that I'm leaving tomorrow night*
"Awww, well...you can just help me come up with the design tonight and I'll cut you in on the check!" Kicks feet up and settles beside me
*me closes MS word and returns to instant message conversation. shoots down idea. ignores Josh*
"Well, fine. But it's my idea! Don't you try to take it!" Walks off to room
Short version: Today I went to see a movie and then watched a belly dancer in the Turkish restaurant for a little bit before going to bed.
Long version: Todayyyyyyyyy I decided to stop feeling sorry for myself for having nothing to do and find myself something to do. So I started walking in a direction I hain't gone before, s'posedly that'd take me past a cineplex playing a couple movies I wanted to see. To make the walk shorter, I called my friend, and ended up talking to her not only for the entire time that it took me to walk past the theater, get lost, backtrack and eventually find it, but even after I got in the theater our conversation continued. This is because, in my introverted rambling, I made several loops around the lobby of the theater until I accidentally looped right past the momentarily distracted ticket taker. I was really just trying to find the water fountain, but after I'd slaked my thirst, I realized that I was in the hallway from which every door led to a theater. I had planned on buying a ticket for Juno at 4:05 p.m., but the theater is designed such that one half of the theaters are separated from the other half, and I was in the wing that was showing Juno at 4:50 p.m. So....I just talked on the phone until the movie started.
It was a good movie! I thought that the eponymous protagonist herself was a big tiring in her dialogue and forced attitude, but the movie was enjoyable and made me tear up a bit at the end. Michael Cera as the boyfriend (Bleeker) and Jason Bateman as the frustrated future-father were my favorite parts. The hipster name-drops (McSweeney's, The Melvins, Sonic Youth, etc.) caught me off guard and felt a little forced as well, as if the writer (whose name is Diablo Cody -- go figure) couldnt figure out a better way to say "HEY I'M AN INDIE MOVIE." In fact, part of the reason I enjoyed the movie so much (apart from it being free) was that the audience was pretty talkative and enhanced the experience. Especially because I was feeling pretty lonely, it was nice to hear a bunch of people from my general social strata all making the comments I was thinking, even if some of them were kind of silly. One person behind me and to the left kept saying the same stuff throughout the movie, like: "This movie is kinda indie!" Any movie that emphasizes its Belle and Sebastien-graced soundtrack is doomed to suffer such trite characterization, though. As I was leaving the theater, I heard someone else say something along the lines of, "Yeah! It reminded me a lot of Napoleon Dynamite, except, you know, not as weird."
Now all that's left for me to see is No Country for Old Men. I keep having dreams about this movie, and the fact that Juno Reactor's "Pistolero" just came on my playlist feels somehow appropriate. I gotta see that movie.
Anyway, after Juno, I went back to my hostel and, walking in the door, immediately recorded this video:
and then Julio, who apparently is working behind the counter at the Istanbul Cafe now because the chef's wife or daughter is sick (along with everyone else in Anchorge right now), came running after me to request that I take more pictures and video of the dancer for the owner. Apparently Julio is going to make a Web site for these people (it is what he does for a living, after all) and I'm to contribute visual content. Whaddayaknow. Here's another of the videos, and one of my "professional" shots of the dancer, for good measure:
Here are some assorted pictures I took today.
This sign is up on the wall in the lobby area where I usually sit on the computer. I'm not clever enough to come up with an extra joke. It's stupid enough on its own:
These trees have more midichlorians than Luke and Anakin Skywalker combined:
This is on the refrigerator in the upstairs kitchen of the hostel. I thought it was cute: Here's a bonus shot of Mark rocking out with his ten-gallon hat:
I’m sitting here listening to the second fattest guy in this hostel tell me about how iron in the earth and water south of Anchorage causes urban concentration.
For the first time tonight, Julio and I just opened up and started getting along even better. I recorded some videos of him, and then we started singing and I recorded it, and THEN this fat guy, Mike, came out and Julio started making fun of him behind his back. I don’t know if I got much footage of it, but it was hilarious. He (Julio) kept pointing at the guy’s boots and rolling his eyes. Julio is hilarious. So I put new batteries in my camera and went on a recording spree, and so here’s what happened. The first two video is basically me making fun of this guy and him not picking up on it, the second video is basically me trying to capture a funny conversation they were having about “saxophones” and “sex-o-phones” (unfortunately I missed the best part) and the third video is Julio telling a story about how he took a photograph of a bunch of young skinheads in Germany once and they chased him into a library. I only got the second half of it, but what you can see is him describing how you only have to pay 1 penny to get out of some punishment for taking pictures of skinheads in Germany (twice). Then Mike starts talking about something I couldn’t care about if there were a gang of skinheads chasing me down.
I apologize for the number and length of these videos (I also apologize for my incredibly greasy hair). I thought it was hilarious at the time. I hope it still is.
Other than this, the only thing I’ve done today, other than waste hours and hours at the Kaladi Brothers coffee shop, was walk my butt down into downtown Anchorage just so I could get lost, get dispirited, and walk home. I gave up at a CARRS/Safeway grocery store, where I sat on the floor feeling sorry for myself, until a cop came up and yelled at me. He told me to sit in the pharmacy, “but don’t sit there for like an hour!” I walked home after that, and my left knee is killing me cause of it. Here are some pictures I took of that, incl. a church and a neat tunnel in a place called "Valley of the Moon Park":
Julio just told me a story about getting mugged three times in one day by groups of black South Africans in Johannesburg. Apparently, groups of 6+ foot tall men would walk up and instantly encircle him, cup his mouth, violently embrace him and shake him down in seconds. The first time it happened, he was alone on an movie theater escalator and they stopped the escalator and advanced from below and above. “I had confused, you know. I am feeling very bad,” he says about it. The great thing about Julio’s stories is that they’re half stories and half charades. He acts out his stories and supplements his English with fantastic gestures and pantomimes. The poor guy got $300, his passport and all the gifts for his family taken. Then it happened again in the mall. The third time he just spread his arms, shook his head and said, “Nothing! It’s all nothing!”
“I have some Indian friends – natives…. Soooooo crazy!” Now he is narrating a story about his Native American friend, Elmer, who is “very good friend,” but who tried to get Julio drunk (Julio is temperate) and tried to involve him in a rotating harem of loose women. I’m going to stop now, and skip write to the conclusion I had already written for this post, or else I’ll never stop.
Julio’s thing is he edits photos for people. He really, really likes Macromedia Fireworks (the program). Here is something he made for his family and showed me. Isn't his son Estefan cute?
(p.s. if you click on it and wait for it to load, all of the images will animate.)
I'm afraid that getting sick has broken my stride, so to speak. It's starting to seem like a larger and larger effort each time to tie up my boots, gather up my gloves, find my hats and face the cold, just to walk to the same familiar spots I've found within walking distance of my hostel.
That's the problem: walking. It's not that it takes a particularly large time investment to walk anywhere, but it does take a huge energy investment. In addition to the procedures delineated above, there's the plowing through snow that comes up to my shins, waiting for my glasses to un-fog (because I'm too stubborn to look for anti-fog spray, as was advised to me) and feeling stupid because I don't have anywhere to go. I don't mind having an open schedule, but walking around my square of Anchorage is turning desultory. What can I do to re-vitalize?
There's a zoo to the south of downtown, but it's pretty far south. The public transit bus only takes passengers to within ~four miles of the place, which I'm not willing to walk following my exhaustive six mile round trip hike on Day03. There are a few museums further into downtown, but they illustrate a more salient element of my dilemma: I don't really care. Has my enthusiasm run out, or am I just suggesting boring things to myself? Also relevant may be the fact that I forfeited spending Christmas with my family in favor of the potentially interesting things to do up here, and all I ended up doing on Christmas day was hanging around my hostel on the Internet.
What's my problem? I was having an amazing time until I got sick. Since then, I've just been zoned out. And maybe going a little crazy...
I gotta find somethin to do
-----------------
So here are the only pictures I took from today:
remember how I showed you it was snowing on Christmas? That's all the snow, piled up, from the parking lot of the place I go.
But that's unimportant. The real reason yesterday was interesting was that I caught a wider glimpse than ever before of the twisted world of my roommates. I'll start with Scarecrow, who it turns out is named Philip. He's a 47 year old homeless man who is staying at the Qupqugiaq until the new year on the kindness of its owner. He's also a street minister, and his congregation are the homeless of downtown Anchorage. First, a few short videos (the camera refuses to cooperate) to give you an idea of what Sca- er Philip is like:
Notice that I don't seem to care what he's saying. That's because he's spouting nonsense. A whole lot of it. He's apparently a sort of Messianic Jew who favors the "Old Convenant" teachings that explain how he was able to raise a dog from the dead. I swear if my camera worked any better, I would have dozens of minutes of footage of this guy being so weird. I eventually had to get a friend of mine that I was talking with online to call me to give me an excuse to duck out of the conversation. A little bit earlier in the night, Philip came in to repeatedly stack boxes of books in front of me. Apparently they're all the Bible, or some variation of it.
Good God, his teeth are awful.
But that wasn't even the more awkward moment of the night. Unfortunately, I don't have any footage or photographic evidence of what happened earlier, but I will try to convey it in the milieu of my time: snippets of IM conversations I had while it was going on:
me: Tracey
the homeless woman who stays here
is crazy
1:52 AM and she's stomping back and forth between her room and the turkish kitchen
hollering about how Chino, the indian guy, his accent isn't an accent but a voicebox the jews put there
friend: Wow me: HAHAH
HAHAHHHAHAHAH
oh god this is so ahrd not to laugh
2:04 AM this Turkish chef
oh my
AHAHAHAHA
2:05 AM Tracey just told the turkish chef straight to his face she wanted to assassinate him
friend: ...
O_O
me: because he's part of the jewish pyramid scheme
friend: this is ridiculous
and insane
me: and he told her, real quiet, right to her face, inches away
2:06 AM "Please...please stop. You're hurting...my business. You're hurting....my feelings."
Hey, today is Christmas day, so I bet everyone else is doing something different than I am. I went to bed at 4 a.m. EST, midnight here, which means I was cognizant of the first few seconds of Christmas before falling asleep. They didn’t seem much different than any other seconds. I guess that says something about my growing up, which at this point probably doesn’t need to be said, if I’m already all on my own two thousand miles from home. So I’ll let that go.
I haven’t updated this site much in the last few days because I was sick and didn’t do anything, but here’s a brief re-cap of some interesting things that happened:
Two days ago, when I was at my sickest (ex:) I was lying in bed and heard someone yelling. It took me at least 30 seconds to realize that the sound was coming through the open window, and so I grabbed my camera and caught footage of a crazy fat person walking down the street with their dog. This video only captures the last little bit of their ranting, but trust me, this person (I still can’t determine gender) was hollering like Sam Kinnison, mostly about the Anchorage police department. I apologize if there are discernible vulgarities in the video; persons under 16 years of innocence should refrain from viewing:
Then yesterday, the first day that I was feeling better at all, I walked to Title Wave Books and sat on a cushion on the floor in the back and tried to start writing my grad school personal statement. Along the way, I had a beautiful(ly American) moment (the end of the video gets cut off by my finicky camera, but imagine the sappiest thing you can and then imagine it in my voice):
and then, due to the store’s closing early, I was forced to go to recognize the likelihood that, if I didn’t buy groceries finally, I would have nothing to eat today, when most stores are closed. So I went to CARRS, which, as referenced before, is like a cross between Wal-Mart (in size) and a traditional grocery store (in content). In the process of buying the most delicious squirrel-sponsored peanut butter “flavored” cereal in all of Greater South-Central Alaska, I encountered someone I thought should have been busier devoting his philanthropic energies to the task of the next 24 hours…
O well. It seems he did his job alright, as this morning my family called to wake me up (7:30 a.m. my time) so I could listen on speakerphone while presents were opened and festivities engaged in. It was nice, and so far it’s the closest I’ve come to any real Christmas activities. So strange, being up here, away from everyone I know. It’s a succinct test determining whether I am able to withstand the homesickness of a couple weeks during that time of year when most people are with their families and friends. I guess I’m passing? Or something.
I don’t like my roommates. I hope I don’t forget I said this, and then show them this blog. That would be awkward. I trust myself not to be that stupid, though, so I’ll keep being honest. I don’t like their personalities. Especially Peter. Night before last night, I was on the computer until almost 3 a.m., when I got ready for bed and climbed in. Shortly after covering up with my blankets, Peter and our new roommate (whose name I don’t remember but who is the youngest besides me and Chino and who now sleeps in Julio’s old bed) came in, clearly intoxicated. They (mostly Peter) were trying to whisper, but were succeeding only in making their voices raspier, and therefore more grating. I didn’t mind this very much, as I was a) not that sleepy still and b) sort of mentally agitated, not yet ready for sleep and welcoming of the opportunity to divert my mind. Still, that doesn’t mean I won’t complain about what happened.
The first thing I can concretely remember Peter saying was this:
“Man. I haven’t wanted to smoke pot in….like…two years, but, man, right now I could really hit the J.”
I cringed in my fetal curl and pulled my hood even further over my face, but I could still see the reflection of a small flame playing across the wall right in front of my face. This irritated me, because I don’t like pot smoking and I prefer not to be around it. Granted, they thought I was asleep, but there’s also a sign on every single door in this entire building threatening immediate for any tenant who introduces or alcohol or drugs into the building. What happened next, though, was completely inexcusable for anyone, much less a man at least ten years my senior and of comparable intellect.
“Hey, I’m going to listen to some music, man, ok?” he rasped to the other roommate. “But, here’s the thing, I am terrible at volume control, right? So I need you to tell me if it’s too loud, ok? Can you do that? Ok.”
And he proceeded to lie on his bunk, smoking pot, and listen to The Jackson Five’s “ABCs” at top volume on his headphones. On the other side of the room (refer to the video below), I could hear every note crystal clear. The other roommate left the room to smoke (I rolled over and watched him leave), which is good, because I couldn’t stifle my giggling. Peter is a ridiculous person; I knew this already. After this video, the next video below it is something I recorded while he explained his atheistic antagonism toward religion to another new-ish roommate, nicknamed Scarecrow. I have promised myself I will get a picture of Scarecrow at some point, because I want you to see why I (and the night manager here) call him that. I think he’s Jewish, actually.
To give more context on the above video, the conversation that I overheard went something like this:
"Oh, so you're religious? Cool...I'm not. I'm atheist. Does that bug you? I mean, I don't want you to be offended, I just..don't try to talk to me about any of that. It just makes me uncomfortable. I mean, It's not that I dislike Christianity, but I just have my own thing, you know? I think whatever you need to get by is what you need, as long as you're a good person. I mean don't get me wrong, I'm sure it's great, but it's just not my thing, you know?"
Without the other guy getting a word in. Ugh...
UPDATE: As I was writing this, something else happened. Tracy(/Tracie?), who I have gathered from indirect evidence is not a paying customer but a homeless friend of the owner, just walked out of the room to my right shouting this (heavily edited) diatribe:
"I don't believe in [sodomy]. I don't believe in putting [vulgarites]. It's the [vulgarity] problem of the Aztecs who brought their genetic problem to the Catholic church. I don't believe in killing or raping little kids." &c., &c...
O_O
Moving on....
That’s about all that’s happened so far today and yesterday. There’s not a lot of Christmas-y stuff going on. Last night, less than an hour before midnight, half a dozen tenants of the Qupqugiaq werearrayed around a fuzzy TV in the upstairs lobby watching Ghost Rider with Nicholas Cage, and I spent about half an hour this morning listening to a partially deaf First Nations guy annoy Peter to death, which was hilarious. The guy is cooking a pot of meat with bones sticking out in all directions, which is disgusting, and he keeps flinging scum he skims from the surface of the pot into the sink with a ladle. I left quickly.
But, despite this, I want to send some Christmas feelings back home to you guys:
I was sick all day yesterday and didn't leave my hostel at all and slept a lot and had dreams over and over and it was weird, but now I am better and sitting on the floor on a nice chair-shaped cushion in a book store and here is a video I took two days ago and promised to show you so you'd see what my hostel is like!
Now I'm going to, uh...read, or try to get started on my personal statement for grad school, or something. I finished The Name of the Rose last night; it was really good! You'd like it, I bet.
