Someone emailed us today (An Almost British Lawyer) asking an important question from an adult lawyer friend of theirs that we met several times last month in Barcelona.
The question was: "How are The Nerds?"
We don't know why Allen (Hi Allen and Lynne the Laywers! Yes, we have resorted to mentioning you on our blog to remind you to read it!) said this, but it probably has to do with some discussion he and Lara had about the meaning of travel. I.e. Reading Books vs. Seeing Lots of Sites, and that sort of thing. Lara basically defended our position of doing very little by saying that when you travel constantly you have to allow yourself "downtime" to "relax". Great effort, Lara!
So, this is a little glimpse into our lives as travel writers. Lara is not here tonight in Goa, as she is still in Mumbai, but if she were here the same things would be happening. And the same things would have happened all day, surely.
Today. July 25. 2006. A "downtime" day in Goa.
9:30 am: Wakeup to alarm and lie in bed doing 65 situps (take note) as Oprah talks to plastic surgery addicts and the men that love them. Don't know which came first. The sit-ups or the surgery.
10:00 am: Have awkward breakfast experience where I pour hot milk on something that shouldn't be poured upon and a family laughs in a mean way. Grrr.
10:30-1:30 pm: Deal with various employees of hotel to determine that the internet sucks and I can't set up my laptop and that the manager didn't mean to tell TripVenture that the travel writers would be able to set them up. Go to town to sit in the phone office and get my cell hooked up with Bluetooth etc. so that I can connect remotely.
2:00 pm: Receive 1 text message although no one has my number yet. It reads: "Hey Clara, Howz? Just wondering if u wanna b frnds wit me, since even i m alone here. Sunny..." It is from the techie guy that set up the internet.
2:00-2:30: Think about how to get out of awkward situation. Another. Always another.
Eat poolside.
2:30-4:30: Do work. By work I mean do 4 minutes of work for every 6 minutes of important things, like emailing and gchatting and things. Write Sunny back and get immediate response. Am going to have to deal with situation again tomorrow.
4:30-6:00: Finish my dissection project on illegal copy of How Opal Meht (sic) Got Kiss (sic) Got Wild and Got a Life that we bought through the car window. Compare each passage to the plagiarized ones (I have the list) and think about it all deeply.
6:11-6:35: Go on run. Awkward City. Sooo bad. But fitness center here is moldy. Only upside is that my t-shirt is in Spanish and one of the million times I am yelled at it is in Spanish. "Maybe they think I am Mexican?" I dream.
6:35-10:00: Deal with blogspot nightmare in which blog is virtually erased. I actually wasn't the cause of it.
10:00 pm: Get room service pizza. Only because the chef says the Tandoori is bad and won't make it after I order it. Open the minibar and have beer. Wonder if the beer is comped. Simultaneously talk to sister about important updates in last 24 hours (Rain, Bollywood, etc.) until phone dies inexplicably.
10:46 pm: Begin g-chatting with my RA from freshmen year of Stanford, who I have reconnected with due to this blog. Talk about article Lara and I saw in India about how marriage is like diabetes.
11:23 pm: Write this riveting entry. Look at the phone and wait for Amalia to call. The phone rings. It's sister again. Her cat has died. It's really sad.
Peaks and Valleys, my friends, it's all Peaks and Valleys. At least that is what my father says.
4 comments:
no, idiot. court's cat, ixta, the mexican volcano or something.
To follow up, I just got this semi hysterical email from lana:
"Would it be really insensitive to write Amalia with the subject line 'I heard your cat died?' That is soooo sad."
Answer: YES. Especially since Amalia would call her mom and like freak out thinking you knew something she didn't.
I feel, Claire, that your tech know-how has just expanded by leaps and bounds after India. I remember when we were getting cell phones in Jaipur and you were asking Jitu, Alok and Ishwar all sorts of questions. And now here you are connecting remotely via Bluetooth, and adding things to your blog and playing with html. It's like an unstoppable bullet train of technological advancement.
I find it interesting that Claire's favorite word is "awkward" now. It used to be "ridiculous".
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