the mario blog

I flew back into Portland last night, repacked my bags and now am on route to Los Angeles. This really has been a crazy week of traveling. On that note, my trip to Boston next week got canceled, so I’ll have some time next weekend to relax and work on my quickly approaching speech. That preparation is much needed.

Right now, I am sitting at the Portland airport looking at a massive line in front Starbucks. It’s funny how people complain so much about having to stand in line at the airport. Apparently things are different when you’re waiting for a Latte. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather wait in line at airport security to ensure that I am not attacked by an old lady with her invigorating foot lotion.

After a night of drinking really cheap Mexican beers (Caguama anyone?) with Mark and a surprising second place finish in a Saturday morning Golf outing,  I headed down to the OC to stay in Huntington Beach with my buddy Evan and the gang. I have never spent much time in Huntington Beach before but I really like it. I’ve been staying with Evan’s very Mexican family, which is great. They love to eat,  better yet, get you to eat.

After a monster run on the beach, I went out with Evan, Ramzey, Rogan, Brianna, Mark and Grace. A fun night at various local watering holes ended at some 24-hr a night eating place called the Harbor House Cafe. The highlights there were that Evan had a cheese fry taken off his plate by a drunk walkerby and that I finished some sort of Omelet plate which apparently nobody had finished before. Note to self, there are situations in which I don’t have to, and probably shouldn’t, finish my plate. Such is hard to do for a full blooded Prussian like myself. Now I’ll have to go on another monster run after working on my graduation speech in some local coffee shop.

I made it back to LA last night. Back in Mark and I’s old apartment on Corinth. Things haven’t changed much. The weather is still nice (about 65F), the women are still very pretty and there are still Mexican day laborers standing on every corner, juggling soccer balls while waiting for their next job. I greatly admire those guys. They are given very little in life, work exceptionally hard, live humbly, don’t complain or beg, send most of their earnings back to their families in Mexico and are usually really good soccer players.

It’s good to be back.

A couple of months’ ago, I flew down to SoCal to celebrate my friends’ Chris and Amanda’s wedding. Today, Amanda sent all of us pictures of the wedding. Here’s one picture that caught my attention.
Notice how some people are looking forward at the group of bridesmaids.
Notice how all those people are men.
Notice how all the women are looking back, apparently admiring the couple to be married whose walking down the aisle.
Notice how I am trying to convince my old roommate, Mark, to turn his head back and stop staring at the bridesmaids.

My Christmas this year will be spend traveling across the Pacific to the far lands of China. Just in case you care, here’s a rundown of the major events on this Christmas day:

6am – Crazy cab driver
My cab was supposed to pick me up at 5:45am. At 6:25am, the guy finally showed up. In LA exists a wide variety of scurrile cab drivers; the chain-smoking near toothless lady, the turbaned middle Eastern man who at no point of time stops talking on his cell phone, the Russian retiree who swears at every light, stop sign, pedestrian and vehicle; and not to forget the cheery African American fellow who drives passionately and sings loudly.

Well, today I got the ex-convict. A white, bearded, 40-yr old dude who never speaks but most certainly is accent-free. This guy couldn’t have been released from prison more than a week ago. I stepped into the cab, he said “Merry christmas” and off we went at 80mph down a 25mph neighborhood. I can honestly say that I have never driven that fast on a surface street. I was slightly worried that we were going to be pulled over but was rather confident that he wouldn’t stop for the cops in any case. I was worried, but I also felt gratitude about his concern of me catching my flight. That was until he asked if he could stop at a Starbucks to grab a coffee. That really wasn’t an option with my already ridiculous timeline. I took a gamble and denied. 2 minutes later I was at the airport. He had turned a 20-minute cab ride into a 7-minute race.

8:30am – moody lesbians
I had the great pleasure to sit next to the quite possibly worldwide grumpiest lady to be ever seen on Christmas. She looked mean and she was mean. As she sat down and wished her merry Christmas, she asked whether I was going to occupy her leg space for the rest of the flight. Needless, to be said my legs didn’t move and at no point did I give up control of our shared armrest. 5 minutes into the flight she asked to switch seats and is now sitting next to a couple of cool kids two rows in front of the bathroom. Needless to be said, her girlfriend (who still sits in my row and looks much more like a boyfriend) is not happy with this situation. She keeps shaking her head and managed to crumble her sausage bagel sandwich over an empty seat onto my lab. I don’t care. I won.

10:30am – 3pm – darn Canadians
Apparently our plane had some sort of mechanical difficulty. We were scheduled to leave at noon, then got pushed back to 1:15pm and then 2:45pm. At some point, Air Canada managed to board the place halfway and then decided to begin deboarding, without really telling anyone. Just imagine, one group of people is walking off the plane while another is walking on. In the end, everybody had to get off.

3pm – end of Christmas
My flight from Vancouver was rather pain- and eventless. 13 hours of red wine and sleeping pills probably will do that to you.
No crazy cranky lesbians this time. Just a Chinese PhD student named Yang. Yang studied Economics at some University in Albany, NY and was coming home to visit his parents. Yang was a pleasant seatmate at all times, easy to talk to and as straightforward as they get. He literally didn’t bring a single form of entertainment on the plane (no magazines, no music, no sleeping pills) and seemed perfectly content in just looking at the back of the seat in front of him. It was a pleasant change when he accidentally tripped on of the flight attendants towards the end of the trip, which almost got him slapped. I have never seen a flight attendant so worked up about something that endangered nobody but herself. After all, isn’t their duty to just keep us happy and safe?

Either way, Yang never forgave himself and kept apologizing every time the lady walked by again. At some point, he actually apologized to the wrong flight attendant.

Merry christmas to all of you out there.

I’m back in LA, flying out to Shanghai tomorrow morning. Thanks to my good friends Marc and Lee, I had some great company over the holidays and a place to stay.

Ok, I have been trying to keep myself from ripping on my neighbor, but the time has come. Let’s give him the fictional name of Bruno for the purpose of this post. Bruno is a middle-aged, single, Middle Eastern looking guy, who loves 80’s pop music and at no time hesitates to not only play it but rather sing along with it. Bruno also coughs uncontrollably, usually in the wee hours of the morning.

I never complain as I somewhat feel bad for the guy. Bruno on the other hand always complains. The guy knocks on my wall more often than any pecking bird does into a barrel thick oak tree. I think I heard him knocking a couple of weeks ago when I was brushing my teeth. Electric toothbrushes are so noisy.

Last night I came home rather drunk, as I had hit Main Street in Venice with a few work buddies. Bruno has been out of town for about a week and I was rather surprised when he greeted me at my door. At 2:30am. He welcomed me back with a hug and then proceeded to tell me that he just came home from a week-long hotel getaway with his girlfriend in the Anaheim Hills. I thought it was kind of weird to go on vacation 25 minutes south of where you live, but not a big deal. Mind you, I am pretty drunk at this point and just want to hit the sack. Bruno proceeds to tell me his girlfriend (who is at least 20 years older than him) completely freaked out on him and called 911. It’s been a stressful day and he’s just trying to calm himself down with some gin and pop music. Fine by me. I shake his hand, close my door and tumble into bed. What a weirdo that guy is.

Five minutes later he’s knocking on my door again, wanting to apologize for all the times he knocked on my wall. I talk with him for another twenty minutes and finally manage to get him to leave.

It’s 12:30am on Saturday night and his Tina Turner is literally making my apartment walls shake. I am not going to knock on the wall, as it will just give him a reason to come and talk again. Gosh, I am helpless.

Today is the first day I actually sense an improvement in the condition of my rather painful laser surgery caused oral infection. One week post-surgery, I just want the pain to dissapear. Really, I shouldn’t even be allowed to call it surgery, as it was a piece of skin the size of jelly bean that was removed. How it can be so painful at this point is simply beyond me.

I am going to the chinese embassy tomorrow to apply for my Visa. Wish me luck.

We also moved into a new office at work today. Coincidentally on the same day I told people about me leaving the company. Quitting my job has been one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make.

Sorry for not posting for a couple of days. It’s been quite hectic. Two things right away:
- My mouth got infected after that stupid laser surgery and I have tasted more salt/warm water and baking soda/hydrogen peroxide mixes in the past few days than in 24 years prior.
- I am moving to Portland, Oregon in a couple of weeks. More on that later.

It snowed like crazy back home. Only my parents would think of going on a hike that day.