Thailand

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An Untamed Lust to See the World

Visiting the Epcot Center at Walt Disney World back in 1990 must have really left an impression on me.  Because now I want to travel the world,  for real.

Yesterday as I was driving home from work, “Who’s Says” by John Mayer came on the radio, and while it’s been in my head ever since then, there’s a particular line that I keep dwelling on: “plan a trip to Japan”.

It opens up this can of worms for me, one that I try to keep out of mind and out of sight: The realization that I will never be able to travel and see the entire world, in all its beauty and mystique.

To see the ancient and modern wonders of the world.  To meet the people who live in those countries.  To eat their food and drink their wine.  To publish a photo album on facebook from my travels to these places.

I have seen a few countries of the world: Ecuador in 1998, Trinidad and Tobago in 2002, Thailand in 2003 and 2004, Korea in 2004, and New Zealand in 2007.  But that only made me thirst for more.

Best case scenario: I would have to earn or win millions of dollars and retire early in order to be able to see all the parts of the world I want to.

Like Norway and Switzerland and Italy and Croatia.  So basically Europe.

So since it would be disappointing to assume I’ll end up a millionaire and be able to travel the world in this lifetime, I should consider my next best option:

That when we get to Heaven, in the likeness of a glorified Epcot Center, there will be portal we can step into and instantly see any part of the world we want to.

Even better, in any year.  Sweden 1983, here I come!

Paul Maley, whom I’ve never met and just happened to randomly find your website, I envy you and your 30 plus years of world travel…

Click below for enlightenment:

http://www.eclipsetours.com/ptravel.html

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The Randomness of Easter

Back in 2004 when I was in Bangkok, Thailand, I was riding in a taxi with my friend Jessie.  We were on our way to visit a Thai museum and she was asking me about American holidays.  Describing what Easter is to a Thai native is somewhat confusing when it’s said out loud:

“Easter is the day we celebrate Jesus coming back to life after he died on a cross.  But it’s also a way to stimulate our economy because everyone buys a bunch of chocolate candy, sends gifts to each other in ‘Easter baskets’, and purchases some sort of pastel colored dress or suit and tie for the church service that Sunday.”

She asked me, “But what do Jesus and chocolate candy have to do with each other?”

The answer?  Here’s the best I can do.

The LSD tripping Easter Bunny and the general populations’ collective excitement over the candy and the traditional gift giving serve as a vehicle to force the non-religious to identify that there is some sort of significant meaning behind Easter.  They may not fully understand who Jesus is, but they at least know that a lot of other people recognize Easter as the day Jesus came back from the dead.

Americanized Easter is a vehicle that is not against Christian Easter.  It points people in the right direction.

This past Easter it occurred to me just how big of a deal that Easter is to Americans, with or without the solid understanding of what the day is actually celebrated.  My wife and I spent the weekend with my family back in Alabama.  We literally had to leave the church service because there wasn’t enough room for everyone to sit.

So we left the Baptist Easter service and hung out at the Methodist church next door.  Because everyone that’s ever gone to church shows up on Easter.  It’s a major American holiday.  More major than I realized.

I kept hearing “Happy Easter” from everyone and seeing it as status updates on facebook.

Even last night Jimmy Kimmel was talking about his mom still giving him an Easter basket, though he’s now 42.  And he talked about how someone stole his friend’s seat before the church service started and all he could think about during the mass was punching the guy who stole the seat he was saving for his friend.

Funny.  And it shows that behind all the silly American traditions, that even the famous and influential Jimmy Kimmel recognizes there’s more to Easter than what’s on the surface.  In his joke he specifically stated that Easter is when we celebrate Jesus.

And I can relate to Jimmy.  I often want to punch annoying people in the face.

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Party Like It’s 1999: My Ten Year Class Reunion (Fort Payne, AL)


Last week as I mentioned to people here in Nashville that my 10 Year High School Reunion was coming up on Saturday, I was surprised to hear more than a few respond with, “Well I’m not going to mine. Everybody I want to see or talk to from high school, I already do. Most of those people I didn’t like then, and so I know I won’t like ‘em now.” Not one tiny part of me can relate to that statement.

On the same token, there have been times when I have hyped up an upcoming event in my mind for weeks or months, only to find my high expectations were not met. Again, this was not at all the case.

Ultimately it comes down to the fact that the Fort Payne Class of ’99 is a special group of people. Yes, I am being bias.

If the definition of a true friend is someone you can be apart from for years and the next time you see them, you can just pick up where you left off last time, then I have more friends than I realized. Because that was the case with everyone that was there.

I saw how warmly my wife was accepted by everyone there. (It actually reminded me of when I introduced her to my family a few years ago.) How often an official introduction wasn’t even necessary. Just straight to conversation like an old friend. That sort of instant familiarity with a large group of strangers is rare.

Ten years can definitely change people in a way I hadn’t considered; by bringing them to a more similar place in life than they were in before. Kristin Bailey Gardner works in journalism, whereas I am jealous that she is. Kim Thomas Clowers married my 2nd cousin, meaning we’re related now related and see each other at family reunions. And the should-be action movie star Morten Maaegard, the foreign exchange student from Denmark our senior year, was in the same parts of Thailand as I was in 2004. (He actually flew in from Europe for our class reunion- that is impressive.)

When an event this big goes so right, I have to take a look at why. Aside from a bunch of cool 28 year-olds all truly wanting to be there, a lot of it had to do with the planning. Tabitha Thomas Greenwood found and followed a formula that was flawless. First, during the day, we met at the new city park. That was a way that those with children could bring them and have something for them to do as the adults caught up on life.

Then that night just us adults met at an old yet restored hotel and restaurant in the crafty/artsy neighboring town of Mentone. Our senior yearbook was placed on a table along with a memorial of the four we’ve lost since graduation: Grant Dobbs, Derek Hood, Brooke Craig, and Joey Kean.

It was like a big house where after dinner we could just walk around and hang out as the band played. That was the ideal casual environment that kept everyone comfortable and in good spirits.

I have heard of class reunions where people had to pay $100 just to get in. Ours was affordable, practical, fun, and perfectly planned. We could have met in the Santa Fe room at Western Sizzlin’ (or The Sizzler as it’s known in the rest of the country). But no, the Fort Payne class of ’99 does things right. We knew not to play around with something as monumental as our one and only 10 year reunion.

There definitely is a dream-like quality about seeing so many old friends again after so long. Like a blurry Vaseline-on-the-camera-lens kind of feel. And because so many truly looked the exact same as they did in high school, it was kinda like a dream where we all just appeared in the same place and the only thing that really changed was the time in between the last time we were all together.

Eleven year reunion, anyone?

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No Pork on My Fork: Why I Decided to Go Kosher

I’m not Jewish.  But I am Jew-ish.

If vultures and possums were easy to sell and market to the public, and people enjoyed the way they tasted, would people still eat them? Surely not. Because those are gross animals. (I’m assuming.)

Hard to believe now, but from 2006 to 2008 I lived in a house full of 4 other guys. If a near cliché is needed here, it was the ultimate “bachelor pad”. A house where there was no such thing as “cleaning day”. The big screen TV was always playing in surround sound. The soonest anyone went to bed was around midnight. Cooking food ourselves almost never happened. Christmas lights on the roof and rotted jack-o-lanterns on the porch were not seasonal items, they were constant.

 

The owner of the house, Jared, always had a new “toy” that he exploited for all its worth. First it was a bread machine: “You haven’t had real bread until you’ve had my homemade bread…” A few months later: “Taste this beer- I made this stuff myself with this new kit I bought at CVS.” (I specifically remember him also inventing “twine”, a cross between sweet tea and wine.) But my personal favorite was the fruit juicer. He read to me all 67 benefits of drinking carrot juice from Wikipedia as I had a glass myself of it myself.

Juicing really can be a fun thing. I ended up going to Publix and buying grapes, apples, even a banana (which ultimately caused the juicer to disperse a mucus-looking substance). One day after work I was making a healthy concoction when I looked up at Jared at said, “What if we juiced a ham?” He said it would probably give us nothing but yellow fat water.

That mental image has disturbed me ever since. It also helped me realize I’ve never been a fan of ham anyway. Ham is pretty much an accessory to the main dish. I can’t think of many times in my life seeing ham as the main meat of meal on a restaurant menu, with the exception of places like Cracker Barrel.

I may even go as far to say that ham has become an irrational fear of mine. Just the thought of touching slimy, sliced ham. Sickening, really. But everyone else seems to be cool with ham. So what’s the true issue?

 

I had to accept that one of my destinies in life is to not eat ham. This calling eventually would lead me to learn way more than I or anyone else would want to know, and that knowledge I would gain would be so shocking and unbelievable that those who heard it either A) believed it and acted upon it, B) scorned my stupidity, or C) were intrigued, yet indifferent.

It all started last November when I began going regularly to a hydro colonics specialist in an effort to clear up my eczema. Ultimately, it’s the glorified version of the ancient Egyptian practice of getting an enema. Throughout my many visits, several worm parasites were released from my body. The biggest one was comparable to the size of a human finger. It was clear with a black head.

http://www.ablebodycolonics.com/practice.html

Of course I asked the doctor what caused this. My two summers in Thailand? My visit to a Korean sauna? Nope. The mostly likely cause of a human having parasites in their digestive system is from eating undercooked pork.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cysticercosis

 

While this incident that happened to me is nothing less of disgusting, it does raise a great question: Which is worse, A) to hear someone tell about pork-transmitted worm parasites that were released through something as weird and socially unacceptable as hydro colonics, or B) to go on living knowing that the chances of having the same worm parasites are pretty favorable, yet doing nothing about it?

With some research, I read that at least 1 out of 3 people in America are living with a similar kind of parasites that I had; some sources stated as high out 7 out of 10. But what good are statistics? Eighty-two percent of statistics are made up anyway, right? The proof was in the pudding (pun).

After sharing my personal results with them, I convinced at least 5 other people to see the hydro colonics specialist. Four out of the five had at least one parasite worm (if not several) come out of them. So all but one out of the six people (myself included) had parasite worms. I’m not good at math. But 5 out of 6 (83%) people is much more definite than 1 out of 3 (33%), as prior estimated statistics had predicted.

 

Growing up in a Baptist youth group, I always thought it was funny to hear the youth minister pray over our fast food dinners: “And Lord, we pray You will bless this food to the nourishment of our bodies and our bodies to Your service…” Really? French fries, cheeseburgers, and soda? All that saturated fat, sodium, and sugar? I see why that would be a necessary prayer, but seriously…

Wouldn’t it make more sense not to eat crap? Speaking of eating crap, I think it’s a little ironic that thousands of years ago God instructed the Jews about certain foods they should not eat. He set apart certain animals to serve as the “clean-up crew of the Earth”. http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=leviticus+11

They eat the rotting carcasses and/or feces of other animals. In plain English, these scavengers include, but are not limited to pork and shellfish (shrimp, scallops, lobster, crabs). Similarly, there are also catfish which are called “cleaner fish”; they feed off the dead skin and parasites they find on other living fish.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unclean_animals

Is it any coincidence that so many people are allergic to shellfish? (Thanks to Dwight on The Office, many Americans learned that the black vein on the spine of a shrimp is feces in its digestive track.) The scavengers of the sea often have a higher level of mercury, commonly being the main cause of allergies in humans. For me it was hard to look past the wonderful taste of these creatures. But if you are what you eat, and especially if you are what shellfish eat…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shellfish

Going back to those lovable piggies, the more I learned about them the more repulsed I became at the thought of eating one. They are different creatures, physically structured to carry out the task of be custodians of the ecosystem. Pigs have a very high tolerance to toxic substances. They can be bit by poisonous snakes and usually survive.

Instead of toxins traveling through their entire body, they go to the animal’s fat and are stored there. And oddly, they don’t have sweat glands. They are not able to “sweat out” poisons the way most mammals do. Therefore they roll in the mud to cool themselves off. Eventually, humans eat the fat which stored the toxins the pig consumed. What’s really weird is that pork fat, when consumed by humans, remains pork fat, instead of converting to human fat like other animal fats do. It’s hard for me to think of bacon the same way. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pig

This is my destiny, to eat like a Jew. My wish for the world is for everyone to continue enjoying sausage, pepperoni, bacon, shrimp, scallops, lobster, crab legs, and catfish as I did for 28 years. But since May 2009, I have chosen to take this whole thing a little too seriously.

http://bible.cc/deuteronomy/14-8.htm

Below is a word from a frenemy. This is one thing I can agree with him on.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJrJkFBEt_c

 

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People are the Meaning of Life: The Rich, The Poor, and The Loved

There are three types of people in the world. The rich, the poor, and the loved.

I recently watched the deleted scenes from the holiday movie Love Actually. The camera zooms in on a poster of two African women in the hot desert. They are carrying baskets full of corn on top of their heads – a scene that would cause many viewers to assume they live a difficult live. As their camera gets closer to the shot of the women, the picture comes to life.

Through subtitles at the bottom of the screen, the viewer learns that these women are indeed quite happy. They are simply carrying food from their garden as they do each day, talking about their husbands and their children. The scene closes with one of the women with her husband, looking out across their small plot of land. They lived a simply life, but were quite content. They had each other and had enough to eat. Though it wasn’t a feast.

A few weeks ago I viewed a slide show called “What the World Eats”. Each slide featured a family from a different country pictured in their kitchen with all the food they eat in a week’s time. One of the poorest families featured was from Ecuador. Their kitchen was simply a corner of their hut. They only ate vegetables, I’m sure not by choice. But they sincerely looked happy in the picture. They had each other and enough to eat. Though it wasn’t a feast.

Here is a link to that slideshow I saw :

http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1626519_1373664,00.html

While much of the world experiences constants civil wars and famine and corrupt governments, not all “poor countries” are suffering. They just live on a lot less than us. And are happy. Not all cultures require a family to own a large house and a minimum of two cars.

Subconsciously, I have been pitying every foreign country poor enough not to have their own national brand of vehicles or their own equivalent to American Idol. But perhaps, they have been pitying me, the Capitalist. Living in a land where it’s easy to end up focusing on chasing money for an entire lifetime.

My church has a ministry where they take in refugees from northern Africa, Iraq, and Southeast Asia. The church helps them to find jobs and an apartment to help them “get on their feet”. Some of them have expressed that life in America is not as easy as it has been romanticized.

While it is the land of the free, it is also the land of the working. Many are surprised by how many hours Americans must work a week to support their families and keep up the maintenance of even one car, which is all but necessary in our culture.

Obviously they are glad to be here instead of imprisoned in a refugee camp in a country plagued with violence, racism, and religious discrimination. But to be an American typically means a person must work the majority of the hours of the week.

From what I’ve been hearing from people outside this country, something Americans are known for is being obsessed with their work. But I don’t know. I’m not an outsider.

I do know I only have about 3 quality hours (at very best) each weekday with my wife. Because she’s in her Master’s classes all day Saturday, the only day we really have together is Sunday. And by then, we’re exhausted from the work week. I’m realizing I envy families who actually get to spend time with each other.

My wife has said several times that she would have like to live in the pioneer days of covered wagons and schoolhouses in the West. Not me. Too hot. Too cold. Too easy to get sick. To easy to die. No thanks.

However, this is the only life I know. If I never knew the comfort of an air conditioner in a house or road trip in an SUV with a CD player, then I wouldn’t know what I am missing.

I thank God for my life in America in 2009. Such a blessed country.

But in my time of seeing happy, simple families in poorer countries I have traveled like Trinidad, Ecuador, and the northern mountainous villages of Thailand, I became aware that I wanted what they had.

A big house and trendy clothes and new cars mean working more to keep up with the high overhead. I try to imagine a life where the picture is so beautiful, even if the frame isn’t fancy. That’s the life I’m aiming for.