Learning to surf 2008: Attempts 3 and 4

I don't have a great urge to write, but I thought I'd just report about my latest surfing ventures. It seems like I'm really getting the hang of the basics--and I should be riding big waves (and staying on the board) in a couple of weeks.

Migraciones

I spent yesterday morning at the Migraciones office on Avenida Espana in Brena. My visa was due to expire next Tuesday, so I went to extend it for a month because I don't plan on leaving the country this weekend. I had offered last weekend to accompany precious's mom so that she could obtain her passport. I was able to witness first hand what a pain in the ass it is for Peruvians to leave their country. First, the office in Av. Espana is the only office in Lima that processes new passports and it couldn't be in a sketchier part of town. Stepping out of the taxi a throng of people comes at you explaining how to get your passport--and like in many places in Peru you don't know who you can listen too. Step 1-make copies of your DNI (and they will charge you double the price of copies anywhere else in Peru). Then Steps 2 through 20 basically consist of waiting in a series of lines, the last of which the estimated waiting time is 2 hours. Then once Peruvians have a passport, they require a visa for a large number of countries so they have that whole bureaucratic cowpile waiting for them once they've obtained their passport.

I on the other hand only had to wait in half as many lines and the process took me a total of 30 minutes and $29, much cheaper than leaving the country.

mouse!

Today I acted a little bit like it was my birthday and I treated myself to a mini optical mouse by GE and new Philips headphones. My mouse is about the size of a real mouse and I already came close to wrecking my new headphones (crisis averted) when I tried to figure out how to take them out of the case. So far I keep forgetting to use my mouse and I just use old faithful on my laptop. My precious will be happy to have the mouse albeit small so he can play Age of Empires III.

Squirrel Adventures

Bad squirrel, sneaking in through the window at 5 am

Good squirrel, awaiting me when I sneak in at 8pm

the nose

I'm super olfactory.

Scents I love:

Garlic
Ají
my precious
Clinique Happy heart
precious's Gilette aftershave
clean clothes
the sky before it's about to rain
Lucky's (my former cat) fur
Joey's (my first cat) paws
Big White's (my sister's cat) head when she'd been drinking from the drain
my shoulders in the sunshine
Pert Plus shampoo
steak
peanut butter cookies
Thai food (with ginger)
sourdough bread
new plastic
baby products
oregano
¡BASIL!


why the theme of smells? well, yesterday I went home from work with a killer headache and nausea. What made my head start to hurt? While helping someone train he felt the need to sit incredibly close to me and shed his musk. Ew. yargle. then that combined with not only cigarette smoke but other toasty smokes made my head ready to explode. On top of that there is a tree outside the office that is in bloom and is really fragrant, which although pleasant was probably sent me over the edge into nausea so--here is the corresponding list to the one above.


fUnKs that make me want to hurl:
men other than my precious
this perfume that my mom uses when traveling
vommit
feet
overload of cigarette smoke
Opium perfume - I forget which designer it's by
the cats outside my window
Callao
most breweries
Hamilton Street, Leominster (though I honestly haven't driven there for years)
the science wing at LHS

Learning to surf 2008: attempt 2

I stood on the board! 2.5 seconds! (11 Jan 08)

I also learned that the water has to be sufficiently deep otherwise when I paddle I touch more sand than water.

Staying on the board is better than stepping on the creatures on the sea floor. Aiee!

When catching a wave--it's paddle paddle paddle, and if in Cerro Azul, paddle to the left rather than straight ahead.

I am going in the water again this afternoon to see what I can accomplish. Ironically my other wrist hurts now, but I'm note going to let that stop me.

Falling behind

So last night I didn't write in my blog for the first time in 2008. I was going to write about my stuffed squirrel, but I guess that will have to wait for another time. On a whim today I decided to come to Cerro Azul tonight, so I could try surfing again tomorrow and be with my precious, who was left all alone in his house. We are having one of my favorite kind of nights--lengthy conversations about nothing, sipping rum and whisky, and chilling on the couch. It reminds me of when we used to live in an apartment in Barranco--when I had no job and it was summer and even though we had a place in Lima, we came to Cerro Azul every weekend.

Un amor precioso

Como yá les dije, hay que postear un poco en español también. Aparte, hace tiempo que quiero escribir algo para mi amor. ¿Qué día más adecuado que un ocho de enero?

Hace dos años y tres meses yo conocí a mi enamorado en el risueño Cerro Azul que queda en el kilómetro 131 de la Panamericana Sur. Les juro que desde entonces no ha pasado ni un día en que él no ha sido mi pensamiento dominante. Me ha enseñado tantas cosas en mi vida—como amar y ser amada serían las lecciones más importantes. Ha compartido su mundo conmigo—creando un segundo hogar para mí y haciéndome parte de su familia. Cuando nos conocíamos me habían advertido que es un poco loco (en el coco como diría mi hermano). La verdad es que los dos somos un poco sicóticos. Lo necesito para controlar mi manía. Sólos no somos completos. Juntos somos una reacción única y eléctrica y demasiado bella. Mi amor, te amo. Muero por estar contigo para besarte y sentir tu presencia.

The Late Shift

All day I have felt like coming to work was a mistake. I signed up for the late shift so I could spend the morning with my precious/on the beach. When I got to Lima I was rushed to make lunch and eat to get to work at 2. When I arrived there was another computer at my work station, I had no chair, and I couldn't find the calendar that I had left there on Friday. This was a Cineplanet calendar that my precious bought for me on my birthday and it had coupons that were really more of an enticement to spend rather than save money. I asked the maid if she'd seen it. No, no--no estaba ahi el sabado cuando limpie. Hmmm...so I ask my manager if he'd seen it. Yeah--That was yours? I threw it away. Awesome. Ok, thx. Now I see that I can't leave anything here that could be interpreted as garbage--so I guess pretty much nothing--what if they decide that my computer is a POS and they need to free up some desk space? Then I probably spent my first hour and a half battling with Word and Outlook to make my links look unclicked. And I got a call from a client who said he didn't receive the e-mails I sent him on Friday. WTF? I go to all this trouble to make sure that clients get a response from me ASAP--and then the effing server doesn't even allow me to send e-mails. Who knows if any of the other e-mails I have sent were actually received... A lot of my anxiety could be solved with a paycheck--here's hoping that my two months of hard work are actually rewarded on the 15th. Twenty more minutes and I can step out the door. Free. Away from phones. Away from crappy Outlook. Maybe I'll wake up in a better mood tomorrow. Maybe someone will actually want to buy tomorrow. Quizas quizas quizas.

Learning to surf 2008: attempt 1

I woke up this morning and put on my bikini and grabbed a surf board and got in the water. I didn't have as many chances to catch a wave as I hoped for because there were too many people--either poised to run me over or in my way if I were to catch a wave. I let a couple of perfect waves pass me by because I didn't realize that they were perfect until it was too late. I hopped on a couple of waves but they didn't have the force to take me anywhere. I started on a decent wave and then got tangled in the leash. Foamy waves pushed the board out of my hands and let me get more than one scratch from the skags on my legs and torso. I finally found a good spot, a good wave, and I paddled paddled paddled (which I'm learning is the key to grabbing a good wave) and I stand up--only to fall after about a second in really shallow water--where the hell is the tide? When I fell I slammed my wrist on the board, which definitely hurt at the moment. I thought no--I gotta keep at it--no giving up yet. So I tried another couple of waves in the kiddie section--and I realized that it was a wee bit painful to try to put my weight on my hands while I was getting up. So I decided to ride the board in because I wasn't in the mood to skivvy around the 50 other bathers with their boards and boogie boards. My wrist isn't visibly bruised or swollen, but it sure hurts like a mofo when I move my thumb.

Bzzz.

I spend way too much time in front of the computer. Warranted I had some pending things from work to do, and besides it was not the best beach day that Cerro Azul had to offer--overcast, low tide, and too much gente. So, while I was using my laptop earlier, I had it placed, oddly enough, on my lap while I was wearing shorts. When I stretched my arm behind me to embrace my beautiful boyfriend, he asked me if I was shaking. I said no, that's weird, though I know I felt something unusual too. So I reach out and touch him again: bzzz. and again: bzzz. It turns out that I was zapping him with I don't know what electical current that I was picking up from my computer. Bzzz. I decided that was the adequate moment to put down the laptop for awhile. I did eventually make it to the beach in the afternoon--though without a board and only for a little bit as it was getting colder at dusk.

at home in Peru

I had a really long day at work today. Fortunately it was one of those productive days rather than an exasperating one. The Oreos McFlurry I treated myself to was well-earned as a completed a sale within 1 hour of first contact and I easily sent 50 e-mails and 20 voicemails to potential clients apart from that. It turns out that business is booming when it comes to travel in South America and at my office we're just trying to keep up with the demand.

Enough about work. Now I am at my boyfriend's house in Cerro Azul, the magical town where we first met. I am happy to be able to hug and kiss him freely and I am psyched to literally get my feet wet tomorrow when I go in the ocean with a board. Let's hope for a good photo op.

Eating healthy

When my dad used to cook lentils it was like a punishment. At the moment they're my favorite menestra (legume?) I am hooked right now on lentils, rice and tomato/onion/cucumber salad with lime juice. It might possibly be the healthiest meal on the planet. Tonight my rice was lacking a little flavor, but despite not having enough sazon, at least it wasn't burnt or too mushy. I'll see what I can add for when I have the same thing for lunch tomorrow.

Holy Cat

LOLcats lit up my day on more than one occasion last year, and they continue to do so in 2008. Today my sister sent me this link for a wiki project to translate the Bible into lolcat pidgin. It made me lol at work today. Ceiling cat luvs u.

http://www.lolcatbible.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

Happy New Year

Hello and Happy New Year!

I just got back to Lima from Barranca where I rang in the new year with my boyfriend and his friends. I made the same journey just one year ago when I had just moved to Peru. I am happy to say that I am a litter tanner this year than I was last year as I sat on the beach in front of Tato Restaurant, the best place for Tacu Tacu in Peru. I expected a little more out of the night club on the beach--though I did last until daylight this year. I have now been living in Peru for a year and it looks like I have several more months at least until I pack up all my belongings and go on to my next adopted country. Speaking of belongings, that's something else I want to do this year--make my life fit into my two Nike duffel bags, apart from a bike that I hope to buy to get me around Lima. I'm not quite in the best state of concentration to write at the moment--so hopefully I'll keep up with my resolution and write tomorrow. Until then, Peace!