when i left manila, i was astonished at the wealth disparity. across from my hotel room window was a river and across the river, a town made of buildings that were constructed in the most creative ways: strips of tru-link fencing, corrugated steel, bed linens, plywood. as i approached the water’s edge to get a better picture, a security guard (policeman?) advised me to not do that. there were others living on “my” side of the river. but the guard didn’t stop me, instead he watched over me. if pictures are worth a thousand words, this is but a few. the memories are going to stick with me.
this isn’t to say that life is not good for some residents. i saw kids playing basketball and a man offered me a ferry ride but he might have been asking me to go fishing with him!
on the other side of the hotel was my son’s joseph view–a manila business district to rival new york, london, or chicago. we left the hotel and made for the airport.
i wanted to take this bus to the airport but my son joseph insisted on a cab. kids are no darn fun these days!
we first flew to malaysia and then into mumbai well past midnight. i was exhausted, but first we had to go through immigration, customs, a security check, and then joseph got shook down for “tips” from two gentleman who gave us directions to our cab and who took his backpack. at the airport, the cab was checked for explosives and our bags went through a conveyor belt. our bodies were wanded and then inside the lobby our passports were taken for an additional scanning. i think india is at war and just doesn’t want to admit to it.
i met f2fb friend #234 anto prashanth and #235 rahul guru when they worked for taskseveryday.com which is an outsourcing company in mumbai. i wanted to devise a website. it didn’t work for me and i ran out of money but i did end up with two friends. unfortunately, rahul was unable to get a day off to see me and i got the impression that the american way of having paid days off and sick days and whatnot just doesn’t cut it here. rahul sent anto as his emissary. anto met me and joseph at the hilton mumbai where we were staying. i picked the hotel because it was the closest t the airport and i recognized the name “hilton”.
the hilton mumbai is so fancy i felt like the romanovs had added an extra princess: tatiana, olga,maria, anastasia, and now arlynn!
if you didn't get to take an elephant or a tiara back from india, would you settle for anto prashanth?
anto asked me if i wanted a souvenir from india. i told him that memories are the souvenirs i like to take with me, but that i wanted an elephant. something to ride in winnetka that would tower above the landrovers and the escalades. later, i fell asleep, part of the forty eight hour circadian cycle. i didn’t know this but anto went out and bought a wood elephant for me to take back a little bit of india to winnetka.
i hope anto and rahul (and anto’s wife, of course) will come visit me next in chicago! both anto and rahul work in american oriented companies that do work that one might call “outsourcing”. they are our new middle class. so they will have the wherewithal someday, if not now, to travel to exotic places like chicago and winnetka!
when i reached manila i was feeling completely dead to the project. it was impossible in january and no less possible in october. i had traveled all the way to the phillippines via korea and taiwan only to find out that f2fb friend #243 mark bitanga del rosario had appendicitis and couldn’t see me. a wasted plane trip, a hotel, a new city, another exhausting day of cabs and trains and figuring out the right line at customs and immigration.
and i would have failed at meeting a friend. i was coffee-d out. my son joseph was relentless about whether i knew the exact location of the cab to take to the air port because he had heard from a friend of a friend who had been to the phillippines that it was a dangerous place. no, i didn’t know the exact place where the taxi driver would meet us because i have never been to the phillippines — and right then i didn’t want to go to the phillippines at all.
i checked into the hotel and it was beautiful. manila is such a place of contrast. the view from my window was a shanty town, built with fencing, plywood, strips of corrugated steel.
joseph’s room faced skyscrapers and luxury brand shops. and we were just across the hall from each other! as i put down my carhartt’s utility bag that has been my luggage, the hotel room phone rang. a miss nona was waiting downstairs. i rushed for the elevator.
so many things on facebook are not what they appear. we put on a good face. we put on an entirely false face. we hide what we don’t like. we proclaim accomplishments that may not exactly have been our own. i have found out this year, for example, that my f2fb friend #54 InDaLoop is not actually a female rapper from brooklyn, but is a white dude f2fb friend #53 richard “mop” furniss. and i have had one contretemps when a friend in san diego failed to advise me that he had a girlfriend, his girlfriend that he was going to see me, and three months later she googled his name and KABOOM!
so i didn’t know what to think about mark’s appendicitis episode. or his wife being in the lobby. and yet, this was a case in which everything was as it appeared. he had taken ill on monday evening and was operated on. he is in hospital for at least another day. he remembered that he was seeing me and my son yesterday. he sent his wife with a present–a charcoal portrait that is called “shaman” but which bears a striking resemblance to fritz leiber, jr., my grandfather the science fiction novelist. both mark and his wife nona are fans.
nona, joseph and i had a few drinks at the hotel cafe–there is a specialty drink which is thick juice with a carafe of pure corn syrup on the side. then we went to a stationery store to buy a nice “get well soon” card. difficult, since manila is in full “christmas decorating” mode.
we were treated to a johnnie rockets’ “spontaneous” dance show!
and then we made a special video, nona and i, for mark!
then it was on to kuala lumpur and from there to mumbai in a scant fourteen hours of flying and standing in lines for customs, immigration, security, and then customs, immigration, security again. i slept so soundly on the plane that i couldn’t sleep this past evening and i have started to feel ill. i worried yesterday about seeing mark and now today, i worry that i won’t be able to see my friends anto and rahul simply because i am so sick. i regret the prescriptiosn for antimalarial serum that i didn’t fill and that typhus serum that i left in the refrigerator unopened. or maybe it’s just the fifty one years catching up to my itinerary. around the world in less than 18 days is almost as crazy as top to bottom alaska in less than 96 hours. who does that stuff?
i got here! i made it! it’s a small country, the little tiny renegade province that held its ground against the communists. they are proud of their resistance and they should be. even though america and many other countries have sort of abandoned them in their haste to curry favor with the larger, wealthier people’s republic of china. i appreciated that they had more flags up than a fourth of july, memorial day, and a joint republican-democratic national convention combined!
got lost but saw beautiful things
chestnuts roasting over an open fire seems more bing cosby than tai pei!
then i got even more lost and ended up in a dilapidated courtyard that boasted the finest sculpture–
everybody walked right by this thing as if it weren't remarkable. i wonder if i do that at home a lot!
so then i went to a wonderful little restaurant where f2fb friend #242 warner sills gave me a wonderful dinner of dumplings and noodles and ginger tea. he gave me a tour of the city and then went on to classes. i am so proud of someone so brave to strike out on his own for a new country–then it was to bed because our flight to manila was at seven thirty.
i logged on that night to an unsettling post. using the facebook account of my friend mark del rosario, his wife told me he was going to have to cancel, he was ill. i wondered “is he going to be all right?” “what the hell am i doing going into manila for a day?” and lastly “is this another example of facebook not being what it appears to be?” i looked at how i would hopskotch off to mumbai without hitting manila. impossible. so onward we went, although my son joseph decided iwas a complete idiot. he had been told by his friend’s friend who once visited manila that all the flights into the city are turbulent and the crime rate is so excessive that it was a fifty-fifty proposition on even one of us getting out alive. i was definitely feeling under pressure from this disaster i hadn’t anticipated.
murphy, always vigilant, always ready, drove my older son joseph and me to the airport. i felt that horrible sense of dread approaching t.s.a. but for the first time i was waved through. joseph, however, got some strange treatment.
t.s.a. agent: don’t slouch. and get a job. he doesn’t have a job, does he?
me: no, he doesn’t and can you ask him to get a hair cut?
t.s.a. agent: get a haircut and do what your mom says. she is your mom, right? not some random woman nagging you?
i think this might have either been what passes for t.s.a. humor or maybe they got a handbook advising them to employ humor for sotto vocce interrogation. for instance, if joseph had said “mom, you could be buried up to your neck in the sand and be stoned for telling me to cut my hair so just stop it!” maybe the t.s.a. agents wouldn’t have laughed and waved us through.
the asiana airlines stewardesses were so glamorous. they wear identical brown suits and brown slippers. they have tight, ballerina buns at the back of their heads. and theyare so happy to pour one champagne that one feels quite as if it’s only a matter of common courtesy to allow them the opportunity to do it again. joseph and i eschewed the “american” menu and did bibampop, kimchi, and ramen. i haven’t thought well of kimchi mostly because the people who owned our house before us buried kimchi pots all over the yard and i’d dig them up when trying to put in hostas, tulips and daffodils. it was like a sour smelling nonexplosive landmine.
but the meal was great. and the flight was straightforward except for the part where the pilot seemed to take great pains to avoid north korean airspace. maybe he had an ex-girlfriend he was worried he’d run into!
f2fb friend #241 john chie is neither fully american nor fully korean. he was born in korea and his mother, determined to give her children a good life, moved the family first to south anerica and eventually to the united states. he went to the university of illinois. he lived in chicago when i met him ten years ago. he moved back to korea five years ago and still hasn’t learned enough korean to be fully accepted. at one point, we were talking with a woman who was clearly baffled by my attempt to help her understand english by talking really loud. the woman turned to john and he referred to himself as “megook” which means “i’m american”.
he wants to move back to the states and i hope he does. my sense of korea is that american allows for greater diversity of people, we accept back stories that are different from expected.
unfortunately, the only picture i have of seeing him was so soft and grainy–and oddly formatted in a bmp (?) fashion that i can’t upload it. just as well. i look half asleep. joseph was half asleep. but john was wearing a nice suit and, this is the weird part, looked five years YOUNGER than when i met him last. i wish i could share that!
but it was nice to catch up with john and he was a gentleman to share a cab with us to make sure we made it to the best western hotel on incheon island. it’s quarter to six a.m. local time and we have a plane to taipei to catch in three hours!
thank you to john chie for seeing me and joseph!!!! and for being my friend!
the year began with 365 days, 325 facebook friends, and a new year’s resolution to meet every single friend at least once during the year. it appeared, and still appears, to be impossible. this weekend, on the 298th day of the year, i will have to embark on what i consider the most impossible aspect of this venture–traveling overseas.
i leave for south korea on sunday. i’ll have with me my older son joseph who is, oddly enough, f2fb friend #61. we will meet with facebook friend john chie, hopscotch over to taiwan, slipping into and out of the philippines in one day, hitting up mumbai and dubai before landing in rome on the 30th. we will see facebook friends at every stop, except in mumbai and rome there will be two friends!
after trick or treating at the vatican, joseph and i will head for germany on monday and wind up in england on the second of november!
f2fb friend #238 tina marshall invited me to highwood. she is a manicurist and she wanted at least my hands to look good on this trip. we’ve known each other for close to ten years but it’s been at least a year since we’ve actually physically seen each other. when we have phones, messaging, email, facebook, twitter, and carrier pigeons, we sometimes can forget that it’s spending time together that makes a friendship.
i told her that i’m scared of the upcoming flights, the uncertainties of countries where i don’t speak the language, the possibilities for catastrophe. and, of course, that i will–for the first time in my life–not be here for this sacred holiday of candy and mayhem. halloween is my favorite holiday because i don’t feel so silly being myself. she reminded me that i will also be missing the special festivities of the city of highwood.
(to learn more about the festivities go to highwoodpumpkinfest.com!)
it still seems impossible that i’ll see each of my 325 facebook friends by december 31 (all new year’s resolutions have an endgame) but if they’re as easygoing as f2fb friend #239 jim levin it’ll be a joyful but hectic 73 days to the finish line. jim invited me to the river north area of chicago where he works starting new businesses. he likes the excitement and challenge–for instance, when he was just 24 he recognized the talents of an italian designer gianni versace. he negotiated to bring the designer’s work to the united states. within a few short years, he had opened all the versace stores in america and sold the business, moving on to another challenge. he is an artist as much as a painter or sculptor. his canvas just happens to be commerce.
jim is an actor and was a highly valued college football player. but you could have guessed that from his good looks!
jim and i share an excitement about the impossible. i don’t know if we share the fear of the impossible–i have it, i have a sense that jim doesn’t have that fear.
make a new year’s resolution, whether your new year begins on january one or rosh hashanah or on your birthday or on the third day after the first full moon in april. make it something you’ve always yearned for but believe to be utterly impossible. then tell all your friends (posting on facebook december 31, 2010 worked for me) and you’ll find that you can’t back out. your friends will propel you forward towards success. you will take small steps, ignoring the big obstacles and turning them into strengths. if you want, email me your most impossible resolution. i will be that friend for you!
i visited the kicy radio station in nome for an interview with f2fb friend #234 ian coglan. it was very strange to articulate the reason for my new years resolution and even stranger to articulate it within the context of a specifically christian radio station. i don’t think i’m all that good at talking about matters of faith.
then i was off to catch my plane after a quick tour of downtown nome. . .
alaska has enormous natural beauty but i found downtown nome to be a bit depressing. partly that's because the town is above the tree line. wow, don't bring a lawnmower if you move here!
i was a little nervous because this coming home was going to be a bit dramatic. . .
at least i wasn't going to get lost looking for the terminal. there's only one. but i had a two hour flight into anchorage, then thirty minutes to find the gate for the trip to chicago--i got tagged by t.s.a. security coming out of the gate at anchorage airport for a "random" screening.
at eight a.m. chicago time, i was home. slightly less than 96 hours turnaround from my front door to alaska to home. 7400 miles. two facebook friends. well worth the trip! but i had an appointment to work out with my long time friend stu cohn. he works out every day. i used to do that before i started traveling. i have gained eight pounds this year. stu has gained. . .none.
after a workout, i purchased currencies for the countries i will be visiting beginning on sunday. then i went to dinner with f2fb friends #236 joanne staten, 214 paddy seymour, and 237 donna thompson. joanne has recently had hip replacement surgery and somehow, even through her recovery, she is caring for a dog who has one eye, can’t hear, and is limited in its ability to walk. donna is responsible for both the care of her mother and, at least once a week, for the care of her grandchildren. paddy takes care of her own grandchildren and has two brothers who rely upon her quite a bit.
i realized i can only do this project because i am at an odd moment in a woman’s life: i don’t have children to care for, no grandchildren who need me, no parents i am the caretaker for. i promise i will enjoy every minute of the remaining 74 days of this new years resolution!
three glamorous gals who take care of a lot of family! it's fun to take a night off!
so this week has been a week of missed connections and stalled out motors. a week of seemingly no progress whatsoever. i have a new years resolution to meet every facebook friend i had as of january 1, 2011 and damn, i haven’t gotten any further along since this past saturday. stalled at f2fb friend #229.
on monday, i had a hide under the covers day and bailed on a facebook galpal i haven’t seen in a couple of years. on tuesday, i figured out that my cellphone’s memory card (sim card? sd card? what?) was busted and my contact list failed. i had a definite date to meet up with a facebook friend after my appointment with the indian visa people–but i couldn’t call to figure out where we were supposed to meet. i don’t even know my own son’s phone numbers without my contact list. and then today, i traveled to cleveland for the fifth time to meet a facebook friend i have never met and am not even quite sure how i know. . .
but there IS some progress, although it may not be measured in numbers. i got my phone fixed and made arrangments for international calls when i am traveling. i got my visa from the indian government. and i have a reservation at the best western in incheon, south korea–a little bit of america stored on unfamiliar land. i have all my plane reservations and i got to see my younger son eastman whom i will not be able to see again until i return from my around the world visit all my facebook friends tour. sometimes our progress on goals is not measured on the numbers but on the foundation.
tomorrow morning i move from ohio to michigan. . . .
i couldn’t sleep last night and i could hardly breathe this morning from anxiety. my legs felt a little wobbly. i was going for my indian visa appointment. the website was quite stern in its directives: no cell phones. no bags. no backpacks. no strollers. all documents to be carried in a single ziplock bag. two passport photos, must be black and white. one photocopy of designated proof of residency–DO NOT CUT OR FOLD PHOTOCOPY. persons subject to security check. must arrive exactly ten minutes before scheduled appointment. money order preferred but no guarantees that you’re getting that visa.
i parked in the poetry garage. really, there's a poetry garage in chicago at 201 w. madison. i ended up on the eighth floor, one floor below langston hughes and one floor above emily dickenson. however, poet of the people my ass--parking on carl's floor cost me thirty smackers.
a lot of the questions on the application related to pakistan. specifically, was i of pakistani descent? did i have family members who were pakistani? had i visited pakistan, ever? if the answer to any of the above was yes–heaven forbid i scrawled “pakistan” on the “country of origin”–an extra six weeks were to be allowed for review of my application. i want to see my two facebook friends–anto prashanth and rahul guru, whom i met through taskseveryday.com–in mumbai. but as i approached the visa office, i knew i carried a deep, dark secret.
i briefly had a "thing" for imran khan. he's the pakistani cricket player turned politician. we didn't actually meet. he has no idea who i am, but you would have to agree he's something.
at the visa office, nobody was interested in my ziplock bag. nobody cared that i had a ten twenty appointment and it was already ten fifteen so therefore i was officially late. i stood in line behind a man holding a backpack and in front of a woman who had a baby stroller. there was a wide screen television on which was playing a movie with a lot of dancing punctuated by tearful embraces. i was turning red with anxiety hives. i had left my ativan and my inhalator in the car. with the dead poets.
imran's ex-wife jemima had a fling with hugh grant after her marriage broke up. i would do hugh grant. not only is she beautiful, but she's smart and a respected journalist and heiress to a large fortune. jeez, i'd take any one of those attributes. including the doing hugh grant attribute.
at last, it was my turn. i approached the window. i handed over my paperwork. the woman said “we’ve got your credit card on file. next.”
“does this mean i actually filled out all the paperwork correctly and i’m going to get a visa?” i asked. “on the first try???”
“ma’am, i can’t hear you.”
“DOES THIS MEAN I ACTUALLY FILLED OUT ALL THE PAPERWORK CORRECTLY AND . . . ” i looked around. oh, boy, major stand in line bureaucracy faux pas. nobody was watching the wide screen.
it was time for me to shut up and find my way back to the poetry garage.
i can’t say i actually have the visa. i don’t know yet. but if i am this scared applying for a visa to one country, it’s going to take a lot of desensitization before i can play the jaded world traveler.
i then paid a visit to jay the amazing verizon dude who reviewed the list of countries where i will meet facebook friends and declared i needed a new phone which he will order for me. tomorrow i strike east for cleveland and then north to michigan.
i stopped at st. peter's church on madison street because the franciscan friars were doing an eleven forty mass for the solemnity of st. francis of assisi. he's the patron saint of, among others, upholsterers, poets, and florists. he was also one of the original christmas pageant producers!
by next friday, i think i’ll be in alaska. oddly enough, i don’t need a visa.
“is it time?” i asked at the beginning of every september as the winnetka police department put out the “drive safely, no, really, we mean it this time because the kids are back in school and nobody around here teaches their kids to look both ways” signs.
“no,” eastman would say firmly.
“is it time?” i would ask when winnetka matrons would put winter cabbage and mums in their front porch urns and caribou coffee announced pumpkin lattes and pumpkin mochas and pumpkin tea.
“no,” joseph would say.
“is it time?” i would ask when i ripped the scribbled over september sheet of the family calendar from the refrigerator.
“all right, fine, whatever,” the boys would say.
and i would put up the halloween decorations: skulls hanging from the trees surrounding our house. tenacious spider webs that would cling until the first hard spring rain. a giant spider that had to be blown up and plugged in and held down with tent stakes and it would still roll over into the street. and my costume for the big day? i should use the plural, because i don’t like to limit myself to just one.
but this year, no halloween for me. october has become the month of the final sprint towards a number–325. i made a new years resolution to meet all my facebook friends and i am now, ahem, ready to meet up with the 230th friend tomorrow. i am 70.4% towards my goal, which puts me at 1.4% short of being on target. i’m feeling the pressure. on the other hand, most of my new years resolutions of old–losing weight, giving up drinking, cleaning out every closet in this house–are usually forgotten by february. so missing halloween will be a small sacrifice–i’ll be in dubai when the big day happens and i can assure you i will not be regaling the good citizens of that country with accounts of goblins and ghosts and obama costumes.
at the beginning of the weekend, i saw f2fb friend #227 tom seymour. he was a stage manager who saved a play i was working on. tom often posts lines from movies. the words seem utterly random until you figure out that it’s a movie line and you think “what movie?” and the reptilian part of your brain thinks it through and four hours later, you respond with another quote from the same movie.
he generally works as a property manager and october first means the day that people get their keys and move into the apartments he manages. it took a little persuading to get him to take the evening before the first to see me, but his brother charlie (f2fb friend #20) hosted a dinner party which, oddly enough, was comprised almost exclusively of facebook friends i have already visited with. it was fun to review the year, to catch up with people, to do this in a relaxed manner that a christmas dinner party would not quite allow.
tom is a smoker and he invited me to join him. i realized it’s been a long time since i went out onto the front porch with my son eastman (f2fb friend #1) and smoked a cigarette and made a video and thought “i just have to do this 324 more times and i’ll be a success!”.
the next morning, i met two f2fb friends. they live together. both of them are intensely shy. one of them is dealing with an internet stalker. i have had some experience with stalking and it’s awful. i went to a third friend who is related to both of them. she made a ruling: i would acknowledge that i have met f2fb friends #228 and 229 and i could use a picture i took outside their home. then i realized the picture showed the license plate of their car. because of the stalker, i decided to forego the picture.
three quarters of the way into the year, travel arrangements secure, money tight but i’m holding firm, joseph has agreed to come with me around the world–i have only to battle the ghosts and goblins that every resolve entails: self-doubt, self-loathing, taking the criticisms of friends and strangers to heart, faltering determination. always i have turned to my friends for help. i have no doubts about them. i believe everything can be done so long as one turns to one’s friends for help. i am grateful.
the first step in any great adventure is to make your goal: finding the new world, touching down on the moon, making your first million, winning an oscar, meeting all your facebook friends. that which doesn’t not seem impossible is not worth doing. make that resolution and then tell EVERYONE you know exactly what you’re up to. the modern way to do that is tweet but i am not a twitter, i posted on facebook. which makes sense since my goal was to meet every one of my 325 facebook friends. think about how grand it’s all going to be when you’re a big success!
damn, queen isabella just gave me the dough to take three boats and head west! gotta change my relationship status from single to "it's complicated"
the second step in any great adventure is to wake up the next morning with a great sense of the “take it backs”. no, you can’t take it back. it felt wonderful thinking about success, but it’s okay to spend a few days huddling up under the covers hoping all your friends and frenemies have forgotten all about this. they haven’t.
the third step is just a baby step. in my case, it was hauling my son eastman (facebook friend number one!) out onto the front porch. we smoked a cigarette together. we talked for a while. i posted a blog. i posted a video. i thought “okay, just 324 to go!” and that’s exactly what you need to do: clip a coupon and put aside a buck fifty for that million, leaf through style magazine and decide on the designer of the gown you’re going to wear on oscar night, or maybe take a tour of the huntsville, alabama rocket museum for inspiration.
the first step to a successful oscar win when you've never done anything more ambitious than a christmas pageant is to pick out your gown. maybe write your acceptance speech.
the fourth step, take a step just a little more ambitious than the baby step. repeat as necessary.
i had a massive anxiety/asthma attack waiting to meet f2fb friend #225 larry rieger. i didn't say it was going to get easier, but larry was so sweet and interesting that it turned out all right! he also gave me a cd of beautiful music he plays and some of which he composed
you’ll have cheerleaders–cling to them. you’ll have doubters–smile because one day they will clap you on the back and say “i always knew you had it in you”. and if you wake up every morning thinking “what the hell am i doing?” well, i just hope that doesn’t happen to you.
but what do i know? wait until december 31, i guess. in the meantime, a rough itinerary:
sunday october 23, leaving for south korea, will arrive at four o’clock in the afternoon on the twenty fourth. hello john chie!!!
monday the twenty fifth leave at eleven o’clock for taiwan to see warner sills.
wednesday the twenty sixth reach manila by nine thirty in the morning to meet mark bitanga del rosario and his family.
thursday october 27 head out for malaysia and after a layover hit mumbai at eight in the evening to see anto prashanth and rahul guru
saturday the twenty ninth fly from mumbai to dubai for a day with cecelia gigiolio
sunday the thirtieth fly into rome to see alessandro cerea and federico cenci
tuesday november first, fly into dusseldorf and take a bus to dortmund to see claudia klose
wednesday november 2 fly into luten which is a suburb of london and over the course of the next six days track down brandon brown, anna brooke and mark jonathan cage before heading home on the ninth!
and then i still have the entire northwestern quadrant (oregon, washington and vancouver) as well as another hit on los angeles and new york. . .
if i finish all this, then i guess i’ll be able to make an even more ambitious goal for next year–if it’s only going to be one, i’ll make it world peace. if i do two resolutions, it’s going to be world peace and one hundred million dollars. if i do three resolutions, sure, that world peace thing, but definitely one hundred million dollars and a house by the sea. four resolutions, and i figure world peace can take care of itself, but i want the one hundred million. . . .
arlynnpresser 