I recently moved into a new place in DC. For the first few weeks every time I would walk into my place I would smell the strong smell of marijuana. What is more, there was a constant line of people coming and going from my neighbor’s apartment. I would see my neighbor from time to time but to me, he was just the drug dealer that I despised because he stunk up the whole hallway and was always having parties.

One day upon returning to my apartment, Ada and I saw him sprawled out on the floor, in handcuffs, as police went through his apartment. I immediately felt guilty to see him in such a bad place.

Well, I finally got to know him after this.  It was the next time we were in the elevator that I broke the silence by saying, ” Crazy Night when you police came, are you ok?”  I then got to know him a little bit.  It turns out that he is a 23-year-old college graduate with a decent hear that works at the Humane Society.  He just got involved by dealing to support his habit. He was a real guy with real fears.  He seemed so nice and down to earth.  I feared for him knowing that he was probably going to be charged with a felony and this would affect his life forever.  He seemed to have a good heart and now I find myself feeling a bit bad for him.  I feel he should not go to jail but on the other hand, he is a criminal.

a picture of me, extremely wet by an old monastery that the vikings destroyed.

the monastery

where the car broke down.

the famous cliffs from the west coast of Island.

breathtaking scenery

in county Kerry

this is blarney castle.  The blarney stone is there where all the people are crowded around.  It is a stone that was part of an old fire place and people are supposed to kiss it to become good orators.

the castle grounds at blarney

a great Irish door.

This is Dublin where you cannot find a drink to save your life during Holy Week.  I did not plan it too well because when I was there it was good friday and being good friday no one was serving any beer and the Guinness and Jameson brewery and distillery were closed.

some places in Dublin

Here is some trivia that you may or may not know.  You will notice that the arena is filled with sand. Well we call Arenas such because they have sand.  Arena is the Latin word for sand because in ancient times, the gladiator arenas were covered with sand to soak up the blood.  As this is the case with bullfights, I thought it appropriate to share that fact.

At any rate…. below are the pictures.

This is the outside of the arena in Madrid, called Las Ventas.

My friend Mathew and myself enjoy some Cruzcampo, before the fight.  Though Mathew called it Cruz-crapo because it is one of the worst beers ever.

At the start of every fight there is a procession where the matadors and all the other bullfighters parade through the arena and present themselves to the person who is overseeing the bullfight.

Next comes the bull.  I think they are beautiful animals.

The next step is the Picador.  This is a man on a horse who has a spear.  It is his job to weaken the bull by stabbing it with the spear right in the shoulders. Plus the puncture wounds bleed and I am sure that the loss of blood also causes the bull to be weakened.

If you notice, the bull has small javelins stuck in his back.  I missed the action which brings these about but, there is a man called the banderillero who puts these spars in the bulls back.  He puts in two a total of three times for a total of six javelins.   These serve as decoration and to weaken the bull.  Often times the javelins are done in symbolic colors such as the colors of the flag or the colors of region.

Finally the Matador does some passes with the bull. Here is his chance to show how brave he is.  He does things like get on his knees, put his back to the bull and things of the like.  In the end however, he kills the bull.

Going to see the bullfight is odd.  It is not an experience that I want to have over and over again or maybe ever repeat again but to see something so savage and yet revered as a piece of cultural heritage is interesting.  I think sometimes we get a little removed from animals and our meat.  Seeing a bullfight, in a way, makes it a little more real to me.  For me to get my meat, an animal must die so that I can get that meat.  I think seeing that bullfight helps ground you in that fact.  I do not want to take what I eat for granted but at the same time I am not about to become a vegetarian.

Valencia was a quick but memorable trip mostly because of the unexpected.  When my friend Jon came we decided that we would go to some different soccer games, as we are both soccer fans. We decided we would hit up a saturday game in Valencia and then a sunday game in Madrid between Atletco de madrid and Villareal.  The Valencia game was the largest adventure.  We rented a car and went to Valencia to watch the soccer game.  Everything proceeded according to plan.  I got a car, not a problem, the large pepe.com sticker on the side of the car was a little embarrassing bust really, not a big deal since neither Jon nor I are too concerned with image.  Anyone reading this who knows Jon would have to agree that he is probably one of the least image conscious people and would certainly not be bothered by a small thing such as a sub par car.   Anyway, we pulled out of Madrid without a problem and since we were making good time, we decided that we would go ahead and take some of the back roads and maybe stop somewhere.  We ended up stopping at a place called maria de Molina. It is a nice town with an old castle.

a nifty little castle that we were able to explore.

After our stop to see the castle we continued on to Valencia and we got there with about two and half hours to spare.  Which was great because we still had to pick up the tickets from will call.  We parked the car and then went to the stadium, to the will call window. I go up to the ticket window and I kindly tell the woman behind the window that we have purchased tickets on the internet and would like to pick them up.  She looks at me with a very puzzled look and says, “what”?  I repeated what I had previously said, and she said….”where are you from?” I replied telling her that we were not from Valencia but that we had purchased tickets on-line.  She then asked for my ID and I gave her my Spanish ID.  She then proceeded to look at the back which tells your place of birth and she called a co-worker over to look at it and they both laughed at me. I asked what the problem was and she explained that you had to pick up the tickets at the bank.  Now this is something that she would have known from the second that I asked her where to pick up tickets purchased on-line but she felt the need to laugh at me, all because I didn’t know how the system worked. I love Spanish customer service.

SO now Jon and I had to look for a bank, which are all closed on Saturday night. But we soon figured out that what we had to do was go to an ATM.  The problem was that we could not find a “La Caixia” with an ATM that worked.  Every single one was only in Catalan and did not work. After going to three different ATMs, we found the one that worked.  With our tickets in hand we got a beer and a sandwich from a street vendor and headed into the stadium.

The game was cool but we were so far away.

Anyway, the cool part came after the game.  We did not know this when we were at the game but there was actually a huge festival going on in Valencia.  The festival is called las Feias.  It was only after the game when we decided to go walking around the town did we discover the huge festival.  The festival is a huge street party that keeps all people out and parading well into the morning. I could not believe it.  It was 2 in the morning and there were so many people on the streets, young and old that had it not been dark you would have sworn it was 2 in the afternoon.  here are some of the pictures from the festival.

all of these floats are made out of paper mache and ultimately burned.  We didn’t get to stay for the burning because we had to go to another soccer game the next day.  The next day we went to a soccer game in Madrid and had much better seats. IT was actually cool because we arrived a little late and in doing so walked in after the game had already started.  The stadium was already buzzing with energy. Jon walked in and said he felt like a kid in a candy store.

Tee coffee here is delicious, they make it with condensed milk which gives it a natural sweetness and gives it that milky taste.  I think it is great and I recommend that everyone try it if they can.  Also, the cool thing about the coffee here in Singapore and more specifically the coffee at school is that if you order it for “take away”, you get not one of those sleeves that does not really work to keep your hands from burning rather, you get long plastic handle that works great.

as you can see it is a plastic sleeve with a handle that works great on any conical cup.  I think coffee shops in Minnesota should get both of these innovations.  Both being the condensed milk and the plastic sleeves.

The train and the city bus took for ever.  We took the city bus across the straight into Malaysia and into Johor Baharu and it took forever since the bus made all of its regular stops and then had to stop at the exit passport control and then on the entrance control in Malaysia.  Once we got in Johor Baharu we ended up in the bus terminal and had to go ahead and get a cab.  We negotiated a Cab ride to Mersing and off we went.  Though it was not too far into the trip that it became evident that there was a problem with the fuel pump in the car as several times the engine just quit as though there was no more gas which required us to pull over and wait as the cabby physically manipulated the pump and got gas into the engine.  Twice we ended up stopping for 20 min. as we waited for the cabby to fix the pumps.

the cabby working on the car

While we were waiting for the cabby to fix the car, I did have a fear that we were in fact going to be stuck on this rather remote road.

When we finally made it to Mersing we had to take a boat to the island of Rawa and that had to be the bumpiest ride ever.  I think the sea sickness is very evident in the face of Luis as we took the 30 min. boat ride to Rawa.

When we finally made it to the island, it was well worth it.  The island was beautiful.

despite the look, this was one of the hottest places I have ever been on earth.  I have never sweat so much as I did when I was on that Island.  We got lost looking for our little cabin to stay in and we ended up walking up this mountain and I was sweating so bad it was dripping from my eye-lashes.

I don’t think you can tell in the picture but I was sweating very badly. In the end, when we got back down we leaned back.

and had some

I have come to enjoy Tiger beer.  It is brewed in Singapore and is quite tasty.  It is called Tiger because apparently up until the early part of the 19th century there were Tigers here.

Rawa is a nice Island as a resort type beach Island. IT has a very beautiful beach but it is not meant for an extended stay.  We only stayed on the island one night. That was enough time to enjoy the beach and relax.  The South China sea is some of the warmest saltiest water I have ever been in but it was nice.  There are so many fish and the water is so clear you can easily see them.  I would recommend the island to anyone in the area.

The trip back was much less eventful and only took a fraction of the time once we learned of the direct bus.

Catarina is a master negotiator and she was able to get a villa for all five of us… It was beautiful as you can see below.

The first thing you note about the island is the natural beauty.  Here is some of the pictures of the beautiful beaches

I include these pictures because the way the sun travels on the equator is just different.  It is not like anything I have experienced before, the angle is very different and I can tell… plus at noon, the sun is directly overhead such that there is no shadow cast… all very interesting.

Our first day in Bali was spent on the beach and then in the evening we went to a white party which I thought would be dumb but actually ended up being very fun.

Here I am with my two roommates.

It was a great time

The next day we went around the island.  Across the street from the villas there were cows… I noticed a lot of cows. I particularly noticed them around construction sites.  I wonder if they were around for good luck.  I know in the Hindu faith they are sacred so perhaps they are kept around for that reason.

we went to a temple where there were monkeys.  It is a sanctuary and a hindu temple.  The place was absolutely overrun with monkeys and with so many people feeding them, they were kind of aggressive.

I also want to include some of the pictures of a typical street and a rice paddy.  There is really no center of population it is all very sparsely populated with many winding roads.  The traffic on these roads is crazy, cars are zipping by surrounded by a sea of mopeds which together bust flow and be ever vigilant for the stray dogs. I can’t say enough about the island and really two and a half days was not enough.  The people are all very friendly and the island beautiful. There is a chaos about it that is so south Asian but it seems as though everyone is so used to the chaos that it all works somehow.  The only down side is that everything, absolutely everything must be negotiated and if you don’t negotiate you will get over charged.  Even the cabs need to be negotiated.    Now that I think of it another minor annoyance is the currency, they use the rupee and the exchange rate was 10,000 to the dollar and with that many zeros it is just too unwieldy.

rice field