I sat down at the restaurant and braced myself for the hassle of ordering, some places have English menus and some do not. You never know if you will have to guess at what you are ordering or if you will be lucky enough to know what you are getting. I know the characters for beef, chicken, pork, rice and fish, so I can usually order something involving beef and rice, I’ve yet to order the same meal twice so it’s always a bit of a crap shoot like the time I accidently ordered beef tendons and rice. Let me tell you beef tendons a meal do not make.

But I was lucky and they had English menus, but not only that my waitress was excited to practice her English so she eagerly awaited my order under pressure I quickly scanned the menu and saw a familiar bowel of beef stew and a small bowel of rice. I pointed it out to her and you would have thought I had shot her favorite dog, with eyes cast downward and a trembling lip she said “so sorry we only have Monday,…Tuesday… umm” I save her from having to remember Wednesday and said ahh not on weekends. There were almost tears of joys in her eyes at having made herself understood.

I pointed to the next identical meal and she nodded her head down and checked a box that had the characters beef something something meat something rice. Still on a high at having communicated the previous problem my waitress boldly recommended I try the green tea lemonade. And was further overjoyed when I said yes.

Afterwards as I sat in the afterglow of a full meal and sipped from a giant glass of green tea lemonade I looked at the window at the bright sun the waving bamboo and reflected on how similar my friends keys were to mine. How we both had the same number of keys and how the keys that would open my door were in my room and how her keys were of no use to me. As I pondered how would I ever get into my apartment since I didn’t have the number of any of my roommates and didn’t know where the landlord lived I realized it didn’t matter. I had a good meal a happy waitress and some keys, so they didn’t open my door it was nothing to get worried about.

Something about God opening another door when he closes one. Anyways I am starting my starving student week tomorrow so expect more posts.

From El Guapo in DC :

1. Go to http://www.mcdonalds.com.au/
2. Click on the Broadband button on the left side.
3. It will take a bit to load. Sometimes it’s faster than other times….
4. Move your mouse over to the light bulb that says: What’s New and click on it.
5. A picture of the EL MACO should appear. Click on the right hand corner where it says Latest TV ADS.
6. You will then be taken to another screen where several ad names are listed. Click on “El Maco.”
7. Click on play.

Full details of where this is.

When I left the states someone told me they were impressed that I was able “to leave the cubicle of fear behind”, I thought it was an interesting phrase but didn’t really think about it. At the time I was much more concerned with my dreams of traveling and seeing the world. But the fear never really goes away. From an early age we are told that we have to follow a certain path in life, study hard, go to college, get good grades, a high paying job and if you follow the path properly you will find happiness. If you don’t follow the path then you will most likely end up like that bum on the street begging for change a failure in every sense of the word. The path never really worked for me, don’t ge me wrong I liked making money, and the life style that I could afford with it but it didn’t really make me happy and it certainly wasn’t my dream.

Last week I woke up in the middle of the night to the sound of the AC unit and realized the most important aspect of the path: security. Earlier that week I had started to look for a new apartment since my roomates were moving back to the states and I needed a new place to stay. I had seen a few places and they were all without exception decripit. The one apartment that was actually nice wanted me to sign a one year lease. Since I was thinking of staying about 6 more months that was clearly out of the question.

As I grew more and more concerned about the search for an apartment I made an appointment with my boss to talk about my salarey. You see when I started my job me and my boss agreed that I would start on a lower salary and after 3 months we would review my salrey. Since it had already been 5 months I reminded my boss of our agreement and she quickly agreed to meet me later in the week. I entered the meeting thinking about what kind of a raise I would get, instead my boss surprised me by downsizing me. Since I had refused to work there full time she had decided to hire someone else and was firing me at the end of the month.

As I layed there homeless, jobless, and single (the triple signs of failure for 30 year olds everywhere) I thought about the path and the security it brought. The security that allowes you to sleep at night withouting worrying. The fear was like a living thing, I could actually feel it in the room with me. “What will I do ? Where will I live ? What will Mom and Dad think ? I am throwing my career away”. A few years ago I saw a documentary on a plane crash, during the crash several different alarms go off and at one point the pilots are assaulted by 4 different screaming alarms. I felt that I was in a similar situation with every single alarm going off, every fiber of my being wanting to be back in my bed in CA and have a job and a place to live in the morning, I wanted that certain future again.

But then I remembered my dream. I think I was about 12 years old the first time I saw a National Geographic magazine, the glossy pictures were mesmorizing. Every month we would get a new one and I would see yet another increadible scene, jungles, mountains, amazing sea life … The only thing I could think of was why did those guys get to see this and I couldn’t. Some kids want to become firemen, others pilots for me my dream was to see those magical places in National Geographic.

Of course realizing your dream has a cost and that cost is lying awake in the middle of the night wondering if you have made the right decisions, if by going off the path you have thrown away your career disappointed your family and failed in life. But the more I thought about it the more I realized that while I was mortified by my current situation I would not be happy if I was back at a 9-5 job in CA regardless of the security it would bring.

On Saturday I saw a great apartment and agreed on a month to month lease, then yesterday I got a call from an internatinal recruiter who places people in Singapore, China, Malaysia,… I still don’t know what the future holds, I am certain that I will have more sleepless nights but I am also certain that I will get to realize that 12 year old’s dream of seeing the world. And that’s something that I woudln’t trade for all the security in the world.

P.S. Of course on the Internet you will always see someone that not only realizes your dream but also does it much better than you could have ever imagined. For me that bastard is Mat. Check out his videos below and you will realize why I want to kick him in the nads someday.
The first video.
The second video.

a big bad post, in the meantime it’s time for the penguin to explode.