Soy Milk Seagull

The past week has been crazy.

I’m not saying that because I’m trying to find an excuse for not posting, it was actually crazy. I’m just stating.

I started work, (sort of) moved into my new apartment, and (partially) fixed a toilet. It was the kind of week that you don’t use definite articles to describe (kind of). It was the kind of week that had those sneaky bracket-ed factors of uncertainty that could trip you up at any step (almost). I shouldn’t even speak in the past tense, it’s (kinda sorta) not over yet.

Nevertheless, I’m really digging living in Victoria again. I love this city, and I’m doing my best to appreciate it this time around.

I remember saying that I wouldn’t post about what made my time in central america so great. But I think this would be permissible. Over the month, my dad and I met some really amazing people. People who travel, as a general rule, are pretty interesting. People who decide to move to another country are, as a general rule, even more interesting. 

I was going to list off a bunch of the people who we met in Guatemala, but there is a seagull attacking an abandoned carton of soy milk on the sidewalk outside this coffee shop and it is one of the most entertaining things I have ever seen. Somebody left the soy milk on the garbage can for a few minutes while unloading their truck, and this bird knocked it off, punctured the carton, and started drinking the fluid in about thirty seconds. The seagulls in this town are as opportunistic as crows, but bigger, with more personality and less caution.

Anyways. There were a lot of people on our trip who were super interesting. I can’t remember all of their names, so I’m just going to say what made them interesting.

There was the Turkish guy who smoked like a chimney and drank way too much Cerveza.
The Englishman who ran a hostel and cooked really good pizza.
The two guys from Denver and Ontario, respectively, who played music beautifully together.
The Irish guy who ran a restaurant called The Clover, who was a stage tech in his Irish life.
The drunk jerk who kept asking one of the boat captains if he was going to the town they were currently in.
The endless Australians on vacation. Seriously, do they never go home?

That’s all I can think of off the top of my head. Believe me, there were many, many more.

Anyways. Work. I have to go there soon. Last night I worked an 8 hour shift, 5 or 6 of which were spent in the dish pit. I just want to go back to making croissants. There is one upside though.

-A

Back In The Land Of Bacon And Bears

I have a headache.

I’m wearing the gorilla slippers.

Let’s blog.

The funny thing about having a long day of travel, is that the time between waking up in the morning in one country and falling asleep in another feels like a month. It felt like that on Thursday when my Dad and I flew home from Guatemala. Our itinerary was exactly the same as our trip there. Guatemala City – Houston – Vancouver. The only difference was that we didn’t have to stay for 7 hours in Texas. Thank god. The accents were starting to jackhammer their way into my subconscious. By that, I mean I would start dreaming in a Texan accent or something, my psyche is generally good at doing stupid things like that.

I was happy to be home, in a weird sort of way. The grey skies and overcast weather can get old pretty fast, as can the chilly temperatures, but this is where I’m from. It’s my home climate. Central America treated me well, but it’s time to get my life rolling again.

I guess I’m obliged to do some sort of reflection. Some conclusion that “Guatemala is a nice country, with some rough spots”. One would imagine that it’s the least I can do, seeing as I allegedly had such a fantastic time there.

I did have a great time there, but I’m not going to write this entire post about it. I think there’s some value in giving an incomplete picture of a place. Knowing a lot about somewhere can make it seem less interesting in your head, you don’t really think of it as an adventure if somebody else, especially someone you know, has already been there. Guatemala was one of the few countries I didn’t know a lot about. That was one of the reasons I was more receptive to the idea of going.

I know it sounds like a bad excuse, but the mystery of going somewhere is sometimes what drives the going. Also, I’m lazy and tired and jet lagged. To make things up to you, I’ve uploaded all of the photos I took into an Imgur album which can be viewed here.

Anyways. It’s the 1st of a new month. Which basically means it’s time to put my nose to the grindstone. I’ve been setting my self up mentally for this month to be my make-as-much-money-as-you-can month. And spending time with family. I have to do that as well. But yes, money. For various reasons, including the fact that I need to pay for a lot of my trip to Turkey, and that I need to pay for the laptop with which I am currently writing this post.

RambleRambleRamble I’m going to go have a post-dinner snack.

-A(ppetite)

The Dude Abides

For the past week, I’ve been really digging life, man.

We’ve been staying in San Marcos La Laguna. Which is this little town off of Lake Atitlan. To contextualize this, here is a friendly little map to describe the area.

For a whole week, I didn’t wear shoes. My days would consist of eating really fantastic food, swimming, and answering emails. It was the kind of blissful living that you know can’t go on, but you enjoy it so much that you don’t want to think about it ending. It was also the kind of blissful living that makes you forget to blog. So please accept my most sincere apologies for not doing this.

While we were in San Marcos, my Dad and I were at a pizza night at one of the hostels. We had become friends with the guy who was running the place, an Older English gentleman by the name of Stewart. Anyways, there was this little two-man band playing by the name of ‘The Lone Om-Ers’, a reference to one of the guy’s yoga careers. They were amazing. Paul and Eric played covers of songs by Flight Of The Conchords and Neil Young.

To make a long story short, we had a great conversation just before they started playing, about permaculture and urban farming. Both of them were really knowledgeable about that kind of thing. Coming from a hippie neighbourhood (and let’s face it, part of the world), urban farming is very much of interest to me. The insane concept that it’s possible to grow and produce all the food you need has had me interested since I was a kid. Just the idea of sustainable farming and crop rotation is fascinating. Knowing how to replenish the soil with key vitamins and minerals just by rotating cabbage and soybeans? That’s a real education.

It’ll be a few years until I’ll even have the option of buying land, let alone wanting to. But someday I’m going to be self-sufficient for food. That’ll be a good day.

Our conversation with Eric and Paul also got me thinking about cooking, something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently anyways, seeing as I love it so much. I really like challenging myself to do crazy things, like going off HFCS for 6 months, or asking out girls who I’m pretty sure will say no to me. I think I have a plan for another one.

For one month, I am going to make my own food. I can only eat the food I have personally made. Now this sounds super easy. So to make it more fun, for that month, I can only make food from scratch. This means I can make pizza dough with flour, but I can’t top the pizza with cheese or sauce that I haven’t made myself. I want to do it during a month on the calendar, not just a thirty-day period. So I’ll have to do it in February, seeing as I’m going to be pretty busy with travel until then. So there. Goals. I tend to collect those.

I’m going to go charge my laptop, eat Falafel, and enjoy the pleasant climate before being plunged back into 4° weather (39.2° for the dinosaurs).


-A

The Free Prisoner

It seems like right now, world travel is becoming more and more popular. Planeloads and planeloads of people are flying to new countries and new cultures, they stay in places that are in this kind of niche. On one side is the places that too many people go to, like Mexico, on the other side are places that are too dangerous to visit, like Afghanistan. Places like Guatemala fit right there in the middle.

My vast generalization aside, it kind of seems like a lot of people who travel have something to escape from. Work, family, their tiny hometown, they take it all with them. Eventually they settle down in a backwater area like where I’m staying now. These people smoke like chimneys and do most known drugs, but is it really worth it?

Don’t get me wrong, travelling is great. It opens your eyes, I advocate it as much as the next world traveller. But a lot of people get lost in travelling. I met a Turkish gentleman in Antigua who told me he stayed in San Pedro La Laguna for six months drinking. And he wasn’t the first. It’s like a lot of travellers here have something to hide from, and they’re escaping their lives with self-destructive habits. To not have a ‘home’ that is, to not have a place where you like living and have an a decent life, can be very destructive. So, world travel isn’t some quick fix for every life problem that you may have. It never was.

Here’s something I’m not ashamed to say. I’m looking forward to going home. My life as a traveller and my life in British Columbia are the same. One is not an opposite of the other. I have nothing to escape from. I love travelling, but I also love Eggnog, which for obvious reasons can’t be procured here. I love the little bump the plane makes just before it makes contact with the concrete landing strip, but I also love longboarding to work.

My advice? Think about why you’re travelling before you go. If it’s to escape your life, you may never experience a place the way you wanted. You’ll just run in circles, thinking about things that don’t matter, like a dog chasing it’s tail.

But travel.

Because travelling is good.

-A

Portrait Of A Guatemalan Dog

This, is Dog.

As far as I can tell, he has no collar, and no owner. Chances are that he doesn’t have a name either. There are dogs everywhere in this country. Spaying and Neutering is pretty uncommon, so overpopulation is the norm here, and a lot of them go hungry.

In north america it’s pretty normal for government-enforced fixing of animals, and people are pretty happy to pay for it, since pretty much nobody wants their pets running off and getting freaky with the neighbour’s pets.

Here, the most common view is that if there are puppies, then you can sell them, and get some money out of it. Really, I don’t blame the people here who think that way. From what I’ve seen, the poverty here is crippling. In a perfect world, every puppy from every litter would get bought by a family who would be able to consistently provide a good home. In this world, a lot of the puppies go unsold and grow up quickly to procreate. Hence the overpopulation issue. Here comes the really shitty part. Kind of awful actually.

The population can’t grow indefinitely, there would just be too many dogs in the towns. So, to quell the growth, the locals band together and (sigh) put out poisoned food for the malnourished dogs to eat. This results in, a lot of dead dogs. In effect the only dogs who survive are the ones who have owners who can prevent their pets from eating the poison. It’s pretty sad, really. It’s an endless cycle of unhappy dogs. But whenever you visit another culture you always have to be the observer, never the judge, and just tell yourself ‘that’s just the way it is’.

The good news, is that a group of people have hired a few veterinarians and have set up a by-donation fixing service. Once or twice a month, these vets do a circuit of the villages around the lake, and fix dogs. So there is change happening, it’s just can’t come sooner.

This post isn’t meant to make you sad, or inspire you to move to central america and start an animal clinic, it’s an example that while people in north america are pretty lucky compared to central/south Americans, the animals are pretty lucky back home too. When there’s more to go around, everybody benefits. Even the pets.

-A

Earthquakes, Elections, And Hippie Bars.

So yesterday, there was an earthquake.

A fairly big one.

Here.

I mean, it was off the coast of Guatemala, but we totally felt it here. The quake was like a 4.0 at least. At its epicentre, it was an estimated 7.5. Pretty powerful. I was eating lunch during my time at the language school where I’m learning Spanish  And then the earth just starts shaking, and the roof is creaking, and everybody is freaking out and running out of the building. It wasn’t powerful to cause any serious damage to the building I was in. But I’m pretty sure some of the ones that were built poorly got trashed. Anyways. It was totally rad. Or so I thought, until I found out a ton of people died.

Two nights ago, was the US Presidential Election. I didn’t really care until it was actually happening, then I kind of thought about how high the stakes were, seeing as a new president wasn’t the only thing Americans were voting for.

I waited it out in the best establishment ever. For real. This place is called Buddha Bar. It’s a three story bar/restaurant with really cheap food and lax ID checking. All the seats are padded with corduroy pillows, with really comfortable backrests and mood lighting. I love it so so much. So much. Anyways, I hung out there for two hours copying the Chinese version of the ingredients list from a bottle of Sriracha Sauce.

I’m really liking it here in San Pedro (La Laguna). A lot.

-A

Food, Bliss.

So we’re still at this hostel in Antigua. Every day is full of really fascinating aspects of the city. To the south, there is this gigantic dormant volcano looming over the town. It’s a big surprise when you turn a corner, and there’s this gigantic mountain that you’d forgotten about. It’s massive, but it just adds to the beauty of this area.

The food is fantastic here. We’ve eaten at a few places so far, and we’re kind of impartial to them, but outside of the downtown core there are a some little bar/restaurants where ex-pats hang out and get drunk. The food is really cheap and really good there, a decent meal that fills me up costs about 25Q which is around $4.30 US. And if it fills me up it’ll fill you up, because my teenage appetite is monstrous. I’m so busy eating and wandering around that I’m having trouble writing and posting. I’m trying though.

Something I’ve been thinking about lately is that food is a pretty big part of my life. I don’t think foodie is really the right term to describe my devotion. I’m more of a food-ist. Or food-ish. It’s another one of those things I consider to be my zen. Along with longboarding, dishwashing, and hanging out in airports. I love buying the food, carrying it home in my red backpack, quietly chopping the veggies and putting together the meal. Eating it isn’t even the best part. Just the process. Over time I’ve gotten pretty okay at it. I have a few recipes that I can rely on consistently. Most importantly, my Chili. I’ve been a vegetarian my whole life, so everything I make is always meat-less. If I can’t prepare my own food, or even choose what I’m eating, it makes me really unhappy for some reason. At summer camps especially, I always had trouble because you couldn’t make your own food, or even choose what you would eat that day. Making my own food is a big part of my life, and Chili is my zen. At least here I can choose what I eat. And the meals are simple.

Another day in Antigua, then to Lake Atitlan for two weeks (hopefully). More posts on the way for sure.

Thanks for reading,

-A

Hi-jinx In Houston

The past 48 hours have been crazy busy, but in the end, my dad and I made it to this beautiful hostel in Antigua, Guatemala.

Yesterday morning, I woke up with a fever and headache 45 minutes before our wakeup call. I was pretty fucking pissed. I was about to spend the entire day in either planes or airports, and clear two customs agencies. It was lame. We got to the airport, caught our plane, and flew to Houston. I don’t remember the flight to Texas very well, just the pounding pain above my right temple and feeling sick to my stomach. After a four-hour flight, we settled down for a 7 hour layover. We were just sitting down when we were approached by two other Canadians off of the same flight as us. Steve and John had met up before our mutual flight, and discovered that they were both headed to Lima, Peru. We sat and talked in a corner of the airport for an hour about politics, weed, and world travel. Then we ate some tacos and they left to catch their flight. I was really happy to meet those guys. Not just because we all had something in common to talk about, but that they were just really interesting dudes. By the time the conversation was over, my headache was gone.

In the time we were in Houston, we ate Mexican, Italian, and Chinese food. Eventually it was time to board, and we caught our plane to Guatemala City. As we took off, I thought about how most airports look the same. Especially at night. Just a lot of steel-panelled buildings and runway lights.

As the plane descended below cloud level, I realized how massive Guatemala City is. Orange streetlights stretched as far as the eye could see, the urban sprawl was intimidating. The airport  not what I was expecting. One runway extended past a single terminal that could only accommodate ten planes. After arriving, we approached the customs booths.They didn’t even check our photos before stamping our passports and waving us through. For all the comments about narcotic trafficking that I heard from friends before leaving, it seemed that the Guatemalan border guards didn’t care about tourists.

Guatemalans celebrate Halloween the same way people do back home, apparently. Get wasted and wander around downtown in kinky costumes. The streets were full of techno music and parties. After a short taxi ride, we got to the hotel, and fell asleep in hard beds.

This morning we spent an hour and a half in a chicken bus, surrounded by shouting chocolate bar vendors and incredibly cute Guatemalan babies. We ended up in Antigua, 45km from the capital, but oh so very different. Where Guatemala City is crowded, ugly, and grey, Antigua is colourful, welcoming, and has better vibes, man. We’re now staying in a hostel that I can certify is wonderful via exhibit A:And that’s where we are now. Killing time after really long time travelling. I had to edit the hell out of this post because so much had happened since my last one. I’ll be updating more now that I have consistent access to wi-fi in this hostel.

Day one of NaNoWriMo. Word count: 0.

Thanks for reading.

-A

Thoughts From Downtown Vancouver

This morning I woke up with an unreasonable amount of sleep under my belt, drank the coffee that I sorely needed, and got a ride to the ferry terminal. I live on an island, in case anyone was wondering, and the only cheap way off is by boat.

My mom and I were half asleep while she drove me to the dock, so we got lost twice on a route that we’ve been taking for nearly nine years. Eventually we got there, and after a two-hour boat ride, I got to Vancouver. I love this city more than I can say. It’s clean, the people are nice, enough said.

I try really hard not to look like an out-of-town person. For some reason I assume that if I don’t look like I live in the city I’m in, people will laugh at me or look at me funny. I guess it’s all part of the normal human desire to fit in. I’ve gotten the hang of looking like I live in Vancouver pretty good. There are a bunch of business/modern people who walk around and look really self-important, and if you try to look like them you’ll end up looking arrogant. The trick to looking like a Vancouver person, is to look mildly content, yet at the same time looking like you have a lot on your mind. It’s a careful balance.

Anyway, I searched for an hour to find a coffee shop that wasn’t a Starbucks or a Blenz coffee, and I was successful. Not that I have anything against those establishments, but I’d prefer to give my money to a coffee shop that needs my business to stay afloat.

I’m also pretty sure that that paragraph confirms the fact that I am in the process of becoming a hipster. Fuck.

I’m preparing right now to start my next book. Writing while in a brand new city can be an incredible pain in the ass, because you need to write a lot, but there’s a whole new place out there that you need to explore, distracting you. But it can also be an incredible opportunity to get your mental gears turning. It’ll be an adventure.

I’m going to sign off for now, Vancouver demands some more exploring before I fly tomorrow. I’m going to leave a note on this table with the address to this blog. So if you’re reading this because you found my note, good job.

Next post will be from Antigua. Thanks for reading.

-A

We Fit Our Lives Into A 10×10 Box

Well, today was moving day. And everything went flawlessly. My dad and I had nowhere to put our stuff for the month, so we moved the entire apartment into a storage unit that was, you guessed it, 10 feet by 10 feet. I’m camping out at my mother’s house until Tuesday, then it’s time to go.

It finally feels like the loop is breaking.

Every morning for the past two months, I have woken up to the same view out of my bedroom window. The same grey parking lot and the same noises of parents dragging their whiny children down the stairs and off to school. Eventually, the mornings just blend together into this messy soup of memory that I can only vaguely piece together. It’s the same feeling as when a record skips, and just plays the same two seconds of the song looped. The singer’s voice says the same word over and over again. But after a while, it doesn’t even sound like a human voice anymore, just this looped sound. The music looses it’s purpose. And the same goes for the past two months. The days merged, they flew by, and after a while, they didn’t seem like days anymore. Just these vague purposeless moments. And I am happy beyond belief that I might have some chance to give my days purpose again.

I’m only going to say this once.

Peace, Nanaimo. It’s been fun.

Anyways, I’ve been putting off posting this for a while, and I want to get it up, and stop reminding myself to post it. I frequent the Longboarding SubReddit, where I do all my Longboarding things online, and somebody posted this video. After careful deliberation, I have decided that this is probably my favourite YouTube video of all time. You can apply it to whatever you want. The words will still mean the same thing.

Sorry for the rambling, indirect post. I’m a mess right now and trying to keep up with my life. But I will post whenever I can in the next three days. I won’t forget.

The amount of people who have followed this blog doubled after my last post, so thank you for taking my advice. I’m a terrible self-promoter and a brutally self-conscious blogger, so having people read what I post means a lot to me. If you enjoy what I do, please encourage someone you know who might like this kind of thing to check my blog out. And that’s all I have to say about that.

I dismantled an apartment today and it’s already the 29th. I’m going to bed.

-A