Author Archives: Admin

“Do androids dream of electric sheep?” book review

December 31, 2014 6:58 AM , Leave a Comment ,

[Author’s note:  I came to this book like most 80’s kids via the movie “Blade Runner”.  At first I didn’t like it as it veered away from the traditional sci-fi books that I knew.  No shoot’em ups, no bug-eyed monsters, or gee whiz technologies.  Instead the book is more of a meditation of what it means to be human and where we draw the line between man and machine.  As always spoilers from here after so stop reading now if you don’t want to know.]

 

“Androids“, as I will henceforth refer to the novel, is one of the more seminal novels in science fiction.  At the time science fiction was transitioning away from simplistic tales speculating on futuristic technologies and outer space and moving more towards exploring the social impact of new technologies and using the science fiction motif to explore contemporary social issues.

Even as a child Phillip K. Dick, the author, was always interested in metaphysical and existential themes. He wanted to explore through his writings how we divide up in our minds what is real and what is fake and how do we know the difference.

In Androids this constitutes the central theme of the novel.  The book is set on a post apocalyptic Earth.  Most of the planet has been ravaged by nuclear war. The majority of all animals have died out and the few humans remaining on Earth have genetic abnormalities due to the high radiation.  Most of the healthy human population has already left the planet for space colonies.

In order to help the human colonists the government provides humanoid androids to work as manual labor in the colonies. In essence these are artificial slave laborers.

The androids are physically indistinguishable from humans.  The difference lies in that unlike humans the androids have no empathic response.  Policemen use an empathic test on suspected androids to distinguish them from real humans.  From time to time some androids “malfunction” and run away from their owners and return to Earth to escape their servile life.

The story centers around Rick Deckard, a bounty hunter who specializes in hunting down androids.  He has been charged with hunting down six androids that severely wounded another bounty hunter and are in northern California.  He at first doesn’t want the case but the lure of money draws him in.  His wife is terminally depressed and Deckard could use the reward money to buy himself a real organic pet, a true luxury in a world where most animals are robotic.

Deckard travels to Seattle to interview the creator of the androids, Eldon Rosen.  Eldon suggests that Deckard administer an empathic test on a girl called Rachel.  Rachel fails the empathy test but Eldon says that this is because Rachel was raised in a space ship away from other humans and that his empathic test is therefore unreliable.  Deckard talks to Rachel more and realizes that Rachel is in fact an android but doesn’t know it.  Eldon has been using Rachel to distract bounty hunters from finding runaway androids by engaging them in sexual relationships.

In another part of town a badly mutated human called JR Isidore befriends a girl called Pris.  Isidore lives alone in a giant empty highrise building and has no friends.  The arrival of Pris gives Isidore his first friend in many years.  Pris is in fact an android.  She and her friends try to get Isidore to help them set up a trap for bounty hunters that will come to kill them.

Deckard leaves Rachel to find an android posing as an opera singer.  During the chase he begins to form the opinion that he is not just destroying faulty equipment but possibly committing murder by retiring these androids.  Deckard is arrested by the local police along with another bounty hunter called Resch.  The police charge that they are androids.  Deckard and Resch discover that the entire police station is in fact manned by androids and escape.

Deckard begins in earnest to hunt down and kill the androids.  He chases the last of them down to Isidore’s building and kills the last ones.  Isidore has a mental breakdown as he sees the last of his friends die.  Deckard gets his bounty and orders his organic pet, a goat.  When he arrives home his wife tells him that Rachel came by and killed the goat.

At the end of the story Deckard drives a car to Oregon.  Along the way he finds a toad which he thinks is real but he discovers that it is in fact an android.  He doesn’t seem to mind.

The story itself is an exploration of what it means to be human and whether we are defined more by our biology or by the way that we interact with the world.

In the story we have examples of artificial beings that yearn to be human and do anything and everything to pose as the objects of their desire but can’t quite make the leap.  On the other hand we have humans like the bounty hunter Resch that show no remorse or empathy and kill almost automatically.  The obvious question to the reader is “who in fact is more human? the android or the man?”

The subsequent movie, Blade Runner, itself became a masterpiece of cinema.  The movie altered and expanded the premise of the book but I feel it added some new dimensions to the story.  Among these is the speculation that Deckard really was an android but didn’t know it.  The director of the movie, Ridley Scott, opined that Deckard was an android.

I know that I’ve posted the link below in another blog post but it really is one of my favorite cinema scenes ever.  This cut is slightly different in that it adds some narration at the end which I think adds quite a lot to the movie and I urge you to watch it all.

Posted in: books, review

Decaffeinating

December 29, 2014 6:43 AM , Leave a Comment ,

Last Friday night I was trying to wind down from a hectic holiday week and decided to do some writing and enjoy some tea at Te house of tea in the Montrose area.  After a couple of pots and about two hours worth of writing I found it was still somewhat early so I headed to Siphon coffee for a Mocha latte.

Fifteen minutes later I began to regret this.

Don’t get me wrong.  Caffeine and I have had a long and profitable relationship.  Ever since I got my first taste of Coca Cola as a child I got hooked.  Back in my high school and college days I could drink as many as seven or eight cans of Coca Cola a day and not feel any ill effects.  Cola drinks have helped me pull all nighters in school and they were definitely the key to a four-day and four-night work marathon that I had to do back in the late 90s.

The only time I ever did go overboard I had to really push things.  Freshman finals were coming and I needed a boost to keep me going.  I got a giant (back then it was giant) 44 ounce travel mug and filled it with Jolt cola (a cola drink with twice the caffeine of normal colas) and just to go that one extra step I added two caffeine pills.  I was ill for an entire weekend.  I felt constipated and nauseous at the same time and couldn’t fall asleep and had to lie awake for the entire ordeal.  Now you know what caffeine poisoning feels like.

This Friday didn’t feel that bad but I felt somewhat anxious in the pit of my stomach.  I was wide awake till about midnight when I could finally doze off.

Over the past few years I have been curtailing my caffeine intake severely.  First, about 6 years ago I weaned myself off regular cola drinks and onto diet cola drinks and then to bottled teas.

I still needed the bottled teas as a boost in the morning to go running but in the last year I have been cutting that as well.  As a result I now really feel the effects of caffeine as I never have before.  If I control it properly I can get a good energetic boost from the caffeine but if I overdo it then I get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

This just reminds me that I need to practice more moderation in everything I do and not depend so heavily on one sole factor but to develop my life in such a way that I’m in a better shape to do what I need to do.  Whatever that may be.

A healthy body and a healthy mind work better without any sort of chemical supports or stimulants.

Posted in: aging, diet, life in general

“The Hobbit: Battle of the five armies” review

December 27, 2014 6:20 AM , Leave a Comment ,

[Author’s note:  As always with any review, if you don’t want to know then this is where you should look away.]

 

 

I went to this movie reluctantly.  I had already caught the first two installments of the series and was not pleased at all with the results. As with Lord of the rings (LotR), Peter Jackson, the director, divided up the book into three movies. Whereas in LotR the formula fit fairly well, in The Hobbit this division was extremely forced and obviously didn’t work.  The studio or Jackson himself tried to squeeze way too much out of the book and the added on story lines were ill thought out and served no real purpose.

So when I went to see this installment on Christmas Eve night I wasn’t hopeful at all.  I wasn’t wrong.  The dragon Smaug, who had been the main focus of dread for the first two movies, gets killed by Bard in the first 10 minutes of the film.  I’m not saying he shouldn’t have died but honestly that kind of deflated the movie before it really even got started.

In the meantime Gandalf has been captured by Sauron’s forces and is being held in a tower.  He is about to be killed when he is rescued by Galadriel, Saruman, and Elrond.  A love affair is hinted at between Gandalf and Galadriel which wasn’t in the books and never goes anywhere in any case, and Saruman is left to “take care” of Sauron, portending Saruman’s corruption in LotR.  Kind of a pointless scene but I suppose this is meant to link to the previous series of movies.

Back at the lonely mountain the human survivors of Smaug’s attack choose Bard as their leader and try to rebuild. Tauriel and Legolas go north to investigate sightings of an Orc army from the north.  The love affair between Tauriel the elf and Kili the dwarf is declared impossible.

Thorin Oakenshield, the dwarf king, begins to grow paranoid and demands that his dwarves find the Arkenstone, a mystical jewel of power somewhere inside the mountain.  He begins to get very greedy about his gold and decides to renege on his promise to repay the humans for their aid.

Azog, the Orc leader, marches out with an Orc army to attack the dwarves.

Meanwhile Thranduil, the elf king, arrives with an elf army.  He has some claims on the treasure in the mountain and forms an alliance with Bard against the dwarves.

Bilbo Baggins has found the Arkenstone and sneaks out to meet Thranduil and Bard.  He hopes to barter the Arkenstone to settle the conflict but Thorin won’t hear of it. A dwarf army arrives to bolster Thorin.

In the north, Legolas and Tauriel discover a second Orc army on its way to the mountain and race back to warn everyone.

Gandalf arrives on the battlefield warning about an orc army but no one listens to him. As the elf-human army and dwarf army begin to get ready to fight each other, Azog arrives with his orc army and attacks everyone.

The dwarves, elves, and humans put aside their differences and begin to cooperate but Thorin will not join in the fight.  His greed blinds him and he hides in the mountain.  Finally after a long delirious fit, he realizes his folly and joins the fight.

Thorin chases after Azog and finally kills him but not before Fili and Kili die and Thorin receives a mortal wound.  Tauriel mourns Kili.

The second orc army arrives but is destroyed by the arrival of giant eagles.

Bilbo Baggins returns home to find he has been declared dead and his home and goods are being auctioned off.  He proves his identity and reclaims his home.  The scene flashes forward 60 years and links up to LotR.

As a movie buff and a reader I understand that certain liberties must sometimes be taken with books.  I appreciate how hard it is to turn written descriptions into something that will appeal visually to a general audience.

In this case however I find the liberties taken to be too much. Not just one but several characters were made up.  Scenes were excised and other scenes were added, and every fight scene cliché was tossed in resulting in a battle scene well over 30 minutes long.  On top of that the new filming process makes the characters look cartoon like.

I watched this last movie for the sake of completeness.  I wanted to give it a fair chance but the new series of movies just didn’t capture the magic of the first series.  This may be a matter of just having too high an expectation or perhaps it’s that The Hobbit is really a kid’s book and really didn’t translate well into a movie for more mature audiences.  Perhaps it’s also that my tastes have matured in the last few years and that eye candy alone doesn’t satisfy anymore.  I am finding more and more that the new movies coming out of Hollywood are focusing too much on stunning visuals and almost ignoring story lines completely.

Whatever the case may be, I would not recommend this movie for anyone over 18 years of age or expecting something that is faithful to the book.  See it if you want to see some mindless action but don’t expect to draw too much deep wisdom from it.

Posted in: movies, review

Running past the app

December 25, 2014 7:07 AM , Leave a Comment ,

When I began trying to get fit I knew that I would need something to gauge my level of health.  This was around 4 years ago and the last time I had been in a gym or run a lap was over a decade earlier.  So I was starting from scratch and hadn’t a clue about anything, not even about how unhealthy I was.

After reading some books and websites, and then consulting a trainer I decided that walking and running would be where I would start my fitness crusade.  The general consensus was that in order to start getting healthy that I would need to walk at least 10,000 steps per day.  So I would need a pedometer, a little device to count my steps.

Most pedometers I’d seen were in the 40 to 100 dollar range.  I wasn’t sure if I wanted to make that much of an investment in something I might drop a week later.  Remember, this is at the beginning of the process and I was not all that sure of things at the time.

I was in a dollar store picking up some cheap batteries and next to the batteries was a pedometer.  A little cheap plastic device with a digital counter and a start and stop button and nothing else.  This was the most primitive type of pedometer, a pendulum pedometer.  Basically anytime you shake it back and forth you cause it to tick off one more step.  You could vigorously shake it in your hand for a minute and tick off a couple hundred “steps”.  The price was right and for my purpose it was perfect.

The next day I clipped it on and went through my normal day and lo and behold I barely took a thousand steps in a day. Depressing but eye-opening.  I took the pedometer for a few test walks and found what it took to get to 10,000 steps and did it.  After that I got a better sense of things and stopped using it.

A year or so later I stepped up the game and bought a pedometer watch.  It was much more accurate than the previous pedometer and could calculate distances and give me miles per hour for when I did run.  But I never really took to it.  After a couple of months I stopped using it.

My next couple of years were about building up my fitness habits.  I wasn’t really looking into better performance but just building up the  routine to make it habitual within myself.

But in 2013 I got a new smartphone that had a built-in fitness app.  This app used the phone’s built-in GPS application to plot my running routes and give me the amount of time I spent running and the distance covered.  This was quite handy as I could strap it onto my arm and not even have to set it up.  Just go and run and let the app do its thing.

I used it for over a year and watched my daily distance run over time grow and grow.  If I missed a day the app would show that on a bar graph and tell me how my average compared to previous months.  A handy motivational tool.

Then one day someone at the developer decided to update the app and erased all my records for the last 15 months.  In the blink of an eye all that hard work was gone.

Stunned doesn’t cover it.  Angry?  yes, a bit.  The new app works but I now have to log in before each exercise.  Not as automatic as I’d been used to before.  On top of this I now have to store my results on a cloud based app where it’s vulnerable to hacking.  I know, not a huge deal but still, why couldn’t it be stored on my phone.  Not the same easy experience that I was used to.

Along with this development I had been in a bit of a funk about my running lately.  I’d been missing days and doing less and this whole app mess didn’t help things.

I went on vacation and realized how much more I needed to do.  The vacation allowed me to set my goals for the coming year and one thing I realized is that the fitness doesn’t depend on the technology to work.  All the apps, and the watches, and the fitness bands are great but at the end of the day they don’t do the work for you, you do.

So the day after I came back I went out and just ran my regular route without the phone.  I’ve been running every day since that without needing to be prodded.  My fitness goals have been set and I’ve already contacted my new trainer to begin working out in the new year.

The technology was a good way to get back to where I needed to be in my life but it’s not the most crucial aspect of my fitness.  The point of it all is to feel better and to become the person that I want to be and no device will do that for me.

Posted in: activities, exercise, goals, health, running, technology

the end of the year review

December 23, 2014 6:59 AM , Leave a Comment ,

This is the end of the year review I promised months earlier.  Well since my last review post I’ve only had two major events.

The first was my entry into the world of real estate.  I took out a loan and purchased a small house in west Houston and have put it up for rent.  My hope is that I will be able to rent it for a couple of years and then sell it for a profit.  My initial plan was to try to “flip” a property quickly to generate some funds quickly but the housing market in Houston is quite competitive and good properties are hard to find.  This will take longer but I think it will be profitable.

The second event was my vacation to Costa Rica.  A bit of a headache to plan but it was so worthwhile.  You can read a recap in the previous posts.  I was somewhat sad to see my vacation end and to have to bid goodbye to my travel partner but I am already looking forward to my next vacation.

One thing I did not mention in my travel posts is that I got a lot done as far as planning my upcoming year.  I’ve laid out my goals and have edited and re-edited them until I think I have everything well planned and laid out.

If 2015 is as good or better than 2014 it will be a banner year.  At the very least I hope it will be as good as this last year.  These yearly goals have helped me immensely.  They’ve consistently allowed me to improve my life.  I’ve also enjoyed sharing the goals and the progress I’ve made on this blog.  So much so that I think I will again post 4 yearly updates in the coming year.

All I can tell you folks is to stay tuned.  It’s going to be a heck of a year.

 

Posted in: activities, goals, life in general, motivation

Holiday traditions if and when appropriate

December 21, 2014 6:27 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I really don’t want to put the “Bah humbug” on the season.  I’m not the Scrooge type that wants to abolish holidays.  Really I don’t, but you have to admit that sometimes people go way overboard on all the traditions stuff.

I came back from vacation last week and didn’t recognize the neighborhood due to all the decorations on the front lawns.  The next morning before dawn I went out to run and amazingly at 5AM people had the decorations on?  For who?

All the hold music on phone systems are the same Christmas carols, not to mention the muzak in stores and even background music in offices.

Of course everything is Christmas themed.  It’s enough to make a person wince.

I’m perfectly fine celebrating the season.  I have no problem going to see friends and family and doing the traditions.  But let’s face facts.  Most of this other stuff, the lights, the music, the Christmas themed everything isn’t done for the Christmas spirit.  It’s done in the name of business.

The season is becoming inundated and overloaded for the sole purpose of selling things, and for making more money.  Come round July 4th or Halloween and the trappings may be different but the aim is the same.  Squeeze the public for as much money as possible.  Swamp and overload everything as much as possible with the appropriate theme and never mind if people are sick of it, keep pushing more.

The real shame of it is that it ruins the season by over selling it.  We risk the danger of people being turned off and becoming jaded over time and not wanting to celebrate the season as it is no longer special.

Come on guys, less is more.  We were happy when the decorations weren’t so elaborate.  When you had to find a living breathing choir of actual people to sing a carol or when you had to find the one and only Santa in one location in the mall and not 3 different Santas.

Like I said, I don’t propose to boycott Christmas or not celebrate but for my part I will keep the Season special by doing less and enjoying it more.

Posted in: activities, Christmas, holidays, seasons

Sometimes you have to go on trust

December 19, 2014 6:33 AM , Leave a Comment ,

I’m looking straight up at a ceiling light.  I’m at my favorite barber shop and I’m about to get a razor shave.  The barber slathers some sort of alcoholic lotion on my face and then covers my face up with a steaming hot towel.  I can feel the capillaries and arteries in my face thumping and pulsing with blood as he covers me up. It’s supposed to make my face more pliable and easier to shave.  Somewhere behind me I can hear the wheet wheet of a leather strop.

Admittedly this is something of an extravagance in these days of electric shavers and disposable razors.  But sometimes in your private or professional life you need to have an outside eye to get a better perspective on a situation or to complete a task.  Trimming a beard is just such an occasion.

I normally trim and take care of my own whiskers.  But over time I find that my beard gets skewed or tilted to one side and you need someone else to look over the situation and fix what needs to be repaired.  Working in small shops for my entire career I have always worked with outside contractors and consultants; some good, some bad.  They are now a ubiquitous part of professional life in the modern business world.

The barber takes the towel off and dabs on plenty of shaving foam.  He’s not my normal barber.  I usually get the shop owner to do this but he’s busy working two chairs over.  The shop is packed with customers.  Guys talking about sports or politics or just gossiping.  The little blonde kid in the next chair over looking wide-eyed in my direction probably not believing that I’m about to let someone run a blade over my throat.

I have to admit I’m a little hesitant too as I’ve never worked with this barber before.  But I’ve known the shop owner for years and he wouldn’t hire a rookie so I must have faith and hope for the best.

It’s like that in business and in life sometimes.  You need help in something and someone, maybe a friend or business colleague, gives you a suggestion to follow or a recommendation.  You’ve no frame of reference to go on besides the fact that you know this person and he or she cared enough to give you this advice.  If you think that’s enough then you go ahead.

I’ve been in plenty of situations where I just don’t know enough about a subject or I don’t have the time or resources to do a particular job and I need the expertise or help from an outside source.  I then need to turn to my friends, colleagues and even acquaintances to steer me in the right direction.

The secret to shaving with a razor is little tiny scrapes.  Just a few inches at a time.  No need to rush.  The true professionals don’t need to be showy just precise.  If the person or company you hire out does a good professional job then that’s worth more than a hundred flashy business cards or a slick website.  The real professional doesn’t care about looking good but instead cares about the task at hand.

The crucial moment.  My throat.  That spot right over my carotid artery.  I try not to think about how my veins were thumping and pulsing a few minutes ago.  Trying not to breathe.  A steady hand and total concentration at this critical moment.  The essence of being a good consultant.  You need to be there for your client when and where you’re needed to finish the project or product or service when it’s needed.  Not tomorrow or later on but right at that moment.

The moment passes and everything’s okay now.

Now this barber has become a known quantity.  Now I can trust him to do this service for me in the future.  Hopefully that’s also true of the consultants that I trust for different projects.  But until they do prove themselves the only thing you have to go on is the word of a friend.  That’s where you have to trust that good people know good people and that your friend or colleague wouldn’t send you a bad recommendation.

That’s the moment you have to leave it all up to faith.

 

 

Posted in: business, grooming, life in general, thought

The high cost of success

December 17, 2014 6:23 AM , Leave a Comment ,

[Author’s note.  This is a reprinted blog posting from June 2008]

 

I was bored Friday night and decided to rummage through the closet for things to donate on Saturday to the local charity thrift store.  As I was sorting through old college notebooks and receipts I came upon a cardboard tube with my name on it and inside was my diploma.  I had never gotten it framed partly due to circumstances and partly due to laziness.

It was early December of ’93 and I had just cleared my library record, I had settled all my accounts on campus and I had gotten clearance from the registrar to graduate.  I went home and sneezed as I was cleaning my apartment since my parents were coming for the graduation.  That was the beginning of a three week-long flu bout.

By the next morning I could hardly get up.  Heavily fortified by NyQuil and pig-headed determination I somehow attended the graduation ceremony and stumbled across the stage to receive my diploma and then went home to lie in bed for most of December.

The diploma lay forgotten in some moving box. I was out of college but poor as a church mouse and living on credit cards as I tried to find a job, so framing a diploma was the least of my concerns.

Couple years later, I’ve got a job and I wander into a framing shop and they quote me 60 bucks for framing it.  Being lazy and needing to save money for vital things (aka going out and drinking) I put it off.

So it’s 2008, I take it out of the tube to look over.  There’s a slight crease along the side of the diploma from the graduation when I, half out of it due to the Nyquil and the fever, took the diploma out to look at it and then jammed it back in the tube hard.

On reflection, graduation should have been one of my proudest moments.  Not just for the occasion but due to the fact that I received my diploma from Michel Halbouty and shook his hand.  Who is Michel Halbouty?  He’s the last of the great Texas Oil men.  It would be like an engineer receiving her diploma from Thomas Edison or an art student receiving his degree from Leonardo da Vinci.

In any case, I finally took the diploma to a framing shop and found that success does indeed have its costs, as does laziness and procrastination.  There were frames to pick, backgrounds, different types of glass, and in no time a 60 dollar frame job turned into 390 dollar job and will take 2 weeks to be done.

The diploma will be custom fitted, sealed and protected from the elements in a dark red cherry wood frame with gold edging on a maroon and white (the school colors) background.  Normally I don’t like conspicuous display, I find it vulgar.  However, some things do deserve to be displayed and some things are worth showing off. This now sits in my home office.  The only decoration in the room.

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Posted in: education, life in general, memories, school

Be awesome within your own limits

December 15, 2014 6:16 AM , Leave a Comment ,

The combination of my vacation and a video I saw a few weeks ago got me thinking about this topic.

On this vacation I did some things I had never thought about doing (surfing and zip lining), some things I had not done in years (horseback riding), and some things that took me to the edge of my abilities (ATV driving).

People are awesome video.

I did these things to varying degrees of skill.  Some with average skill like the horseback riding, some with no skill whatsoever like the surfing, some just by sheer determination (The ATV).  But I did try them all.

A good portion of the credit goes to my travel buddy for not only pushing me to do some of these things but for also allowing me to push myself into trying these things.

One thing I did not do however is to try to push myself over the edge of my capabilities.  I will probably never be featured in a video like the one of above of people doing amazing physical stunts.

These people probably spend an inordinate amount of time practicing and re-practicing these skills that they have till what they do seems nearly impossible, and that’s great for them.  As long as it’s their passion, let them do it.

For my part however it is enough that I tried.  As badly as I did in some cases I tried to do it.  Maybe some time in the future I will try again and get better, maybe not.

One thing that I can say for certain is that trying a new thing whets your appetite for trying all sorts of other new things.  You get the sense that you really have no limits if you adopt a more open frame of mind.

So if there is some skill or activity that frightens you or scares you or you just don’t know about, why not try it just once?  You don’t have to master it the first time out, you may not even have to do it more than once.  But the important thing is that you tried.

Posted in: activities, attitude

Does travel change you?

December 14, 2014 6:53 AM , 2 Comments ,

[Author’s note:  This is the next in a series of writing challenges first proposed to me by Leslie Farnsworth.  Leslie has organized and expanded the challenge to include a larger group of excellent blog writers.  Once per month, one member of the group will propose a topic and we will all give our own unique take on the subject.  This latest installment was proposed by Joan Johnson.  You may want to look at the other bloggers listed below to see what they came up with:]

The first trip that I can remember was the trip up from Colombia. I have moved around the Americas since I was born.  First from Chile to Ecuador and then from Ecuador to Colombia.  I remember nothing from those trips.

My father is a geologist and he was constantly being assigned new jobs in foreign places.  My family followed from one project to another.  Finally my dad was assigned to the States and we moved to the promised land of Houston and have lived there for the last 37 years and counting.

I arrived in the US on my feet.  I was about 6 at the time and we we’re landing at Miami international on a 747 back in 1977.  Back then stewardesses didn’t give a damn what you did so I unbuckled, stood up, braced myself between two seats in the isle and landed in the US along with the plane on my feet.  It was the start of a new adventure and I didn’t want to waste a second of it.

To me the US was a magical land.  The birthplace of my father, the country that sent astronauts to the moon, and where Mickey Mouse was from.  I wanted to see and do it all.  Of course there was one slight hold up.  I didn’t speak the language .

That was my first substantive change.  I had to retrain my mind in English.  I was assigned to first grade but could barely speak a word.  One day a lovely old lady, who was a teaching assistant, took me to the back of the classroom and using the flash cards meant for pre-K kids taught me the alphabet in English and how to pronounce the letters.

Now I can barely recall what it’s like to think in Spanish anymore. I can do it of course but it now takes a conscious effort.

Of course you can say that this doesn’t really qualify as “travel”.  It’s not like a vacation.  But to my seven-year old mind it was a vacation.  It wasn’t till the first couple of years had passed that I accepted it as my new living condition.

If you want a real trip type of experience I would have to say a field trip just before my senior year in college would qualify as life changing.  We were assigned to a small resort town in Colorado and did some field exercises in the rocky mountains.  A very pleasant and bucolic trip with no real bad incidents.  But what it did do for me is to give me a taste of the sorts of things that geographers did every day when they went about their research.

Before that geography was a dry scholarly pursuit.  A very sterile and lifeless exercise.  No reason to get your hands dirty but here we were getting to do research in the rawest and purest form.  All that data we were used to getting in packets or looking up in books in the library had to come from someplace and here we learned how it went.

Geography to most people means drawing maps, or looking at globes or whatnot but really it branches out into so many fields like botany, biology, soil sciences, geology, anthropology, and sociology and of course how these interact and shape each other.

Learning how the land shapes the climate which shapes the plants and then the animals and finally man who of course goes back and shapes all these too.  That’s geography.

I think that’s when I decided that this would be more than just a degree to get just any job.  It was here that I found that not only did I have the capability of doing this type of work but that I could get passionate about.  That is  when I went from being just another undergrad looking for a piece of paper to get me a job after college to being someone who cared about the thing he was studying.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Posted in: thought, travel