April 02, 2007
It always feels like somebody's watching me
Well, there's no sense in hiding, I suppose.
Welcome, Palauan expat community, to stalk my sparsely populated blog!
[For the unititiated back home, the blog is a common source of derision here on island and often mocked and ridiculed. Right now, Palau is embroiled in a great blog witchhunt, wherein internet sleuths have been smoking out bloggers from Malakal to North Beach. Recently discovered blogs have been accused of being poorly written, overwritten, gossipy or just plain boring. I like to think that mine is all of those things.
Initially, I hid my blog in dark corners and shadows and have successfully flown under the radar for well on 19 months or so. Sadly, my anonymity has come to an end. That I lasted this long is only a testament to my mad internet skillz, yo.]
This began as a place to document my giant move overseas and to provide friends and family with little slices of Palau to get an idea of what it's like to live here. Then my stepdad died, then my uncle died, then my dad died and, well, it kind of dropped off. Understandably.
As my mother can attest (she nags me often about this), the entries are few and far between. I'm pretty sure what is here is fairly uncontroversial and pretty boring to someone who (a) lives here and (b) isn't particularly interested in my emo writings on death. I doubt there are any direct references to specific people in the expat community, if that's what you're here for. Although Tobal will be happy to know that he is, in fact, the individual indirectly mentioned as the one who cooked our feast in the infamous crab entry. And I think you'll all recognize "Edward."
I thought about taking the whole thing down once it was brought to my attention that it's become water cooler fare, but I think that, if I did, my mother would reach through the computer and backhand me, she enjoys it so. (Reading my internet ramblings, not the backhanding. Though I suspect she gets some kick out of the backhanding, too.)
Mothers. Whaddya gonna do?
So, again, welcome. Feel free to poke around and poke fun.
For the rest of you back home, sadly there is not much new to report that can be posted on the internet anyway. Save to say that I've been in a four week trial that threatens to change my mind forever about this whole litigation business. Either that, or I'm just tired and melodramatic. Shocker!
I think my melodrama is not helped in the least by the fact that there has been a Diet Coke shortage on island for over a month now. Oh yeah, you heard that right. Diet. Coke. Shortage. There's none in the grocery store, none in the convenience stores, none in the restaurants. It is so Not Good.
Tiny fissures are forming on my insides and I'm hanging onto sanity with a pair of shoelaces and some chewed gum. I tried to hoard some Diet Coke once I saw the writing on the wall but, like the poor sap who went to bed right after Carson during Watts, I was too late to the party to get a free tv.
Interestingly, there are still some limited sources of Diet Coke on island such that I can get my hands on about one every other day. For someone with a six pack a day habit, this is understandably troubling. Just imagine my poor coworkers who must face me early in the morning, unassisted by caffeine. It's dark, y'all. Blood has been shed.
What's even more interesting is that the limited sources of Diet Coke on island are all loosely connected to one another and it is beginning to appear as though there is an underground Diet Coke trade that favors certain members of certain communities. I was about to go all Encyclopedia Brown on them to reveal the hidden Diet Coke DaVinci Code to the rest of the island, but I was too tired from lack of caffeine.
Pray for me during this dark time, the Great Diet Coke Shortage Of Aught Seven. We hear word of new ships coming to us, but no confirmation and each day that passes we grow more and more hopeless. Until this is over, I have to survive by making due with *gasp* Diet Pepsi. Oh, the horror. The horrrrooooorrrrr.
| By honinterrupted | 10:20 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
February 27, 2007
We come from a land down under, you better run, you better take cover
Alright, it’s been a year since the Hat Trick Of Senseless Tragedy (the deaths, they do come in threes) and, in honor of that, I shall populate the blog so the recent entries aren’t all year-old eulogies.
Last week, I was prepping for a big prostitution trial that ultimately got continued, so I was sent at the very last minute to Auckland, New Zealand, for a conference on avian influenza and the International Health Regulations. Last minute as in twenty-four hours’ notice without a clean pair of underwear in sight. Cue frenzied laundry-making and frantic packing.
The trip there was like any other trip off of Gilligan’s Island. Long and annoying and usually routed through second and third world airports where bribery is not only encouraged, but sometimes required. Yeah, I’m looking at you, Manila. I will say this: There is no problem that cannot be solved in Manila with a carefully placed bill; however, there is no way to get through Manila without encountering some sort of problem.
To top it all off, I arrived in Auckland filthy, after twenty-four hours of travel, only to find that I had no hotel reservation because my trip was so last minute. So, there I was in Auckland, where I know no one and nothing about the city, wearing dirty, matted pigtails, carrying 50 pounds worth of luggage and trying to find a place to shower. Naturally, my conference just so happened to coincide with about a billion other conferences, as well as two cricket tournaments, so there was not a room to be had for under $300NZD. Thus commenced a frenetic flurry of email searching and telephone calls that may or may not have involved a teensy bit of crying. Shut up, I was tired.
Ultimately, I was able to locate an old-fashioned pub stay called the Shakespeare Tavern, which was just as awesome as it sounds. For the uninitiated, a “pub stay” is just what you would think – a pub with hotel rooms above it. Now, if you know me at all, you know that there could be no place more perfect for me to stay, particularly for an extended period. Before I left Palau, I said the main thing I was looking forward to was walking into a bar where nobody knew me. Obviously, that lasted only one night. By night two, they were greeting me when I walked in the door; by night three, I was family.
With respect to the room, naturally I expected the worst. Perhaps some fold-up mattress in a room with stained carpet, reeking vaguely of beer. In fact, it was immaculate. No, really. The bed even had fancy bedclothes. Now, it was teeny, don’t get me wrong. There was only a tiny swath of walking space around the bed to the bathroom or the lone window that also did double duty as the “exit” to the “balcony.” I think had I not lost all of the weight, it might have been unnavigable, it was that small.
The staff was what you’d expect from a local pub stay. Everyone did double duty. The manager was also the bell boy, as well as the bartender on odd nights and occasionally ran food for the kitchen and cleaned the rooms. It’s odd to have the person who cleans your room serve you beers at night. There are a lot of personal things in your hotel room that you don’t think about until you start seeing the man who cleans it every night. I found myself “pre-cleaning” the room to rid it of the embarrassing things you know you keep in your hotel room, too.
The conference itself was enjoyable, if a little terrifying. The prospect of bird flu hitting a tiny island nation without a lot of resources is daunting, to say the least. But it’s always refreshing to meet with the other Pacific Islanders. Our respective countries have, literally, nothing in common except that we’re all in the Pacific and we eat taro. Different languages, different histories, different perspectives. And Palau is the tiniest of them all. It’s kind of neat to be the tiny, underdog nation of only 24,000. Of course, any benefit I get from being the underdog is set off by the fact that I’m still seen as the ugly American there to take charge. Oh well. You can eat the taro and the mangrove clam, but you just can’t make yourself an islander in the end, which is probably as it should be.
Now, of course, I’m back in Palau, having survived a particularly hairy luggage snafu that left me in Manila once again searching for a palm to grease. Still, it was a wonderful trip. In the sunset of my current contract, I’ve got to start seriously thinking about my next step. After the trip, I’m this close to becoming a transplant Kiwi, for a million reasons, a couple of them actually legitimate. Either that, or I’m looking into Canada, Hawaii or perhaps the Caribbean. I simply cannot come back to the mainland until that man is gone from the White House and replaced with someone sensible.
Aw, come on, y’all didn't think I was ready to give up being interrupted yet, did you?
| By honinterrupted | 11:20 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
September 13, 2006
And he could see (no reasons)'cause there are (no reasons); What reason do you need to be shown
The front page of last Friday’s paper bore my favorite headline so far of my time in Palau:
“Machete wielding lawyer threatens PRA.”
What makes it most awesome is that, apparently, it is true. According to reports, this past Labor Day, a government lawyer became so frustrated with a downed computer server that he grabbed his machete, walked into the computer store and threatened to cut off the staff’s fingers and/or hands unless they came to fix it.
Which, when you think about it, is pretty awesome. I mean, who hasn’t wanted to take a machete to an IT professional before? At my office, we’ve decided that every expat lawyer needs to adopt his or her own weapon so that it is ready if and when one loses one’s shit. Some of the attorneys are skewing fancy, calling dibs on exotic weapons like Chinese stars and other assorted ninja paraphernalia. Personally, I think we should be adopting the creative, real-life weapons from actual cases that have been prosecuted here in Palau. As such, I haven’t settled on my weapon yet, but I have several options:
Mayonnaise jar
Loafer
Phone book
Shampoo bottle
Rake handle
and my personal favorite:
Broken red plastic wash basin
I’m reminded of a short film contest my friend told me about. Intrigued by the concept of the “hit” movie Snakes on a Plane, a cinema drafthouse in Austin, Texas, sponsored an amateur film contest entitled “Blanks on a Blank,” whose only requirement was that the film feature some sort of animal on some sort of moving vehicle. I’m told that the best short film of the lot was “Bears on a Motorboat.”
I’m contemplating doing the same thing here, hosting a short film contest entitled “Blank Wielding Lawyer Threatens Blank.” Think of the possibilities! Now all I’ve got to do is figure out what kind of terror I can inflict with this jar of Hellmans…
| By honinterrupted | 11:03 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)
September 05, 2006
One is the loneliest number that you ever knew
One year, by the numbers:
Months in Palau: 13.5
Months overdue for a “year in review post”: 1.5
Dives: 91
Near death diving experiences: 2
Life-changing diving experiences: those 2 plus a good handful of non-mortal dives
Diving-related injuries: scores of bruises, but no broken bones or holes in my lungs (yet)
Non-diving-related injuries: 2 broken toes and a flesh-eating bacteria (unrelated)
Pounds lost: 60
Tattoos gained: 1
Family deaths: 3
Trials won: 3
Trials lost: 0
Defendants put in jail: 3
Marine WWII artifacts recovered for the Republic: 13
Cases making international headlines: 1
Great American Novels written: 0
Great American Novels (or memoirs) started: 3
Different hair colors: 4
Pairs of flip-flops in my “wear to work collection”: 7
Days spent wearing a sweatshirt: 0
All in all, despite its ups and downs, not a bad year. So much happens that can’t be put on the internet, so you’ll have to wait for the book to come out. Until then, I will be back with a post on crazy Palauan foodstuffs. With pictures!
| By honinterrupted | 04:34 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack (0)
June 07, 2006
It's alright, you can sleep tonight... Knowing you'll always live on in a song
Well, it’s been over a month. I suppose it’s time.
My father died on April 27, 2006, finally succumbing to a years-long battle with early onset Alzheimers. He was diagnosed when I was just out of law school, though he’d been deteriorating substantially for two years before that. For years after that it took his wit, his memories and his speech until he was just a shell in a chair. After having finished taking his mental faculties, the disease moved on to take his kidney functions and, once that happened, it was over quite quickly.
To quote Hemingway, my Dad died “gradually… and then suddenly.”
My Dad was – and remains – the smartest man I have ever known (sorry, Chuck). He had a lightning wit and photographic memory that not only made him a formidable Trivial Pursuit opponent, but also a fantastic journalist. The latter was a dream he did not get to realize until his thirties, when he risked everything he had to go after what he always wanted: The ability to write for an audience.
I was on the way when he went back to school to become a journalist and was only an infant when he graduated, so I never knew a father that wasn’t a newsman. And let me tell you, it was everything he was. There was nothing he loved more than chasing a story – be it a grisly murder or human interest piece – and I was a teenager before I realized that not all families had police scanners on their dining room tables. More than the chase, though, for him it was about the writing. He was never more pleased than to tease whatever facts he gathered into an arc, an outline, a story.
Well, that’s not entirely true. As my Dad’s best friend and first editor reminded me at his memorial service, the one thing that my father loved more than anything was us. His wife, his son and his daughter. His eyes sparkled to talk about us, watch us grow and photograph the process. And though he ran out many a night in search of tomorrow’s headline, I know in my heart that he always loved to come home.
My Dad told me a story once about his own father, a tough-as-nails man who died tragically when my father was only twelve. My grandfather, Albert, was an honest to God cowboy – meaning he actually wrangled cattle all day – who’d leave home early every morning and come home late every night. Each night, my father would wait for him on the front stoop, watching him ride up to the house and swagger toward the porch. When he came home each night, Albert never said a word to my Dad, he just scruffed him on top of the head and walked into the house, expecting my father to follow. And this was their routine every night of every workday.
When he told me this story, my Dad said that Albert was a cold man who didn’t express his emotions. In all of the twelve short years they had together, Albert never told his son he loved him, never said the words. And my Dad said he was angry about that for a long, long time. “And then when I was older, when I had you two, I realized,” my Dad told me, “that of course he loved me. You just love your children. You just do.” My Dad realized that, though Albert never physically said he loved my father, he actually said it every day. Every day he walked by him and scruffed his hair. That was Albert’s way.
When my Dad told me that story, he said that, though he knew, ultimately, that he was loved, he still wasted a lot of years being angry and doubting that love. And that he never wanted Jeremy or I to ever, ever doubt his love. So he said it to us every chance he could. You couldn’t leave a room in our house without being told you were loved, you couldn’t eat a meal or spend an evening without being hugged. My Dad’s love for us ran deep and wide and he wore it like a banner on his chest. Most often to the point of embarrassment for his typically melodramatic children. Some of my most vivid memories of my Dad involve a profound mortification at seeing my Dad stand by the curb in front of the school, arms outstretched, knowing that he would remain that way in front of God and everybody until I went over and let myself be enveloped in one last bear hug before going about my day. Of course, now, I wouldn’t trade that memory – or that hug – for all the gold in California.
My Dad taught my brother and me many things. How to take pictures, how to write, how to sing three part harmony, how to dance like nobody’s watching, and how to drive like somebody’s chasing you. But most of all he – and my mother – taught us how to love.
I see my Dad a lot in my brother - the photographer, the songwriter, the poet, the father.
And I guess I see a lot of him in me, too. The budding writer, the master of the argument, the adventurer.
I think my Dad would be proud to see some of the things that I’ve written – here, professionally and in the countless scribbled journals that will one day make up my Frey-esque memoir. I also know that they’d be covered in red markings and editorial suggestions. But he never got to see me take to writing, as with so many things he never got to see. He never saw me graduate from law school, never saw me pass the bar. He never saw the woman that I became while he deteriorated and never got to be witness to the great feat of strength and courage that it took to go halfway across the world in search of something better.
No, while my brother and I grew into ourselves, we watched him wither as the horrible disease stole first his career and then his memory and then his mind. We saw ourselves vanish from his sight, as we ceased to exist in the vast tangle of his neural pathways. We saw the ever-present gleam in his eyes disappear and be replaced by the vacant look of a person who knows he supposed to be somewhere, but doesn’t quite know where; who knows he’s supposed to be someone, but doesn’t quite know who.
The worst thing about losing my Dad was losing him twice: Years ago, when he lost us, and then a month ago, when we finally lost him. No matter how long you wait for something to happen, know that it will happen, you are never quite prepared for the moment when it does. And today, I know why he told us every chance that he got that he loved us. Because I can sit here and know that I probably told him a million times that I loved him. And it still doesn’t feel like it was enough.
But I take comfort in the thought that there’s a payoff now, a release. That not only is my Dad finally free from the pain and seizures that accompanied his disease, but also that he finally has his mind back. That, wherever he is, he’s looking down (or across) at Jeremy and me and has been given back the memories of who we were while he watches where we’re going. That his soul or spirit was set free with the photographic memory and quick wit that made him such a smart, remarkable man. And that right now he’s trying to break through the fourth dimension just to correct my bad grammar.
It’s stylistic, Dad. That’s how the kids do it these days.
At the height of his journalism career, my Dad went on a trip to Bosnia to cover the conflict there and he and several journalists were treated to ride along on an air mission and a landing on an aircraft carrier. As the plane carrying them began its descent to the carrier, there was some malfunction with the landing gear and the plane came in hard, seemingly unable to brake, and skidded all the way to the edge of the carrier as everyone involved prayed the plane would not fall off the end. When the plane stopped, My Dad said that everyone got off and started kissing the ground and vomiting and generally praising their good fortune at having cheated death. My Dad said he did none of those things. He just pulled back his shoulders, settled into his strut and walked away because he’d never felt more alive in his life.
There was some debate over what the “copy” should be on his tombstone, what words could possibly sum up the man that we all knew would probably have preferred to have written it himself. Ultimately, his first editor did him justice.
Luther Clyde Johnson
March 30, 1945 – April 27, 2006
Lover of family, lover of life.
| By honinterrupted | 05:39 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
March 21, 2006
Please remember, please remember me
In the screenplay of my life, there will be a scene in which I attend the memorial service for my uncle, my mother’s youngest brother, who died tragically close to my stepfather, their demises separated by only five days. And while we are sitting on the deck trying to forget why we are there, the widow, my aunt, will ask me too casually how my father is doing. And against all protocol and social etiquette, I will tell her the truth.
“He’s dying,” I’ll say. “He’s been dying for years.” And because I cannot stop myself, I will go on to fall apart. “It’s terrible to lose someone without actually losing them,” I’ll cry. “You’re not allowed to grieve, and yet you have lost a parent. And nobody understands. The worst part is that, by the time I’m actually allowed to grieve him, I will have forgotten more about him than I knew in the short time we had together. I find myself thinking about the day he actually goes and I’m called upon to speak about his life, and I won’t remember anymore the father I knew. I can’t even tell you what his favorite meal was anymore. His favorite place. His favorite movie. And that makes me sadder than it ever will to lose him.”
And the weight of what I have just said, and the circumstances in which it was said, will fall like a weight over the table causing a pregnant silence that seems to last hours. And then I will hear a tiny, fractured voice from the diminutive woman at the other end of the table, my mother, who will look up at the group from under damp eyelashes and say, “country fried steak.” In the midst of another uncomfortable silence, I will toss her a puzzled look and she’ll meet my eyes and say, “his favorite meal. It was country fried steak.”
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| By honinterrupted | 11:45 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)