My cook-for-myself Thanksgiving

Yesterday I had the good fortune of spending a Western holiday absent from all things Western. Wait, I did the lying thing in my last post. Yesterday I had the bad fortune of spending a Western holiday absent from all things Western. It's not that I'm particularly attached to mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce. I love good food in general, and have been missing it since I left home. So it's not about the food, or at least not more so than every other day here. My family and I have a love-tolerate relationship. But Thanksgivings are never on the tolerate side of the spectrum; they're far too delicious for that. Maybe I'm just romanticizing all of the past Thanksgivings, but I'm pretty sure that I even offered to help, and then did actually help, with preparations and clean ups for these events. (Not that I normally don't help, because I'm capable of being very helpful, but my utility on any given Thanksgiving is above reproach). I've been away from home at Thanksgiving before, but when I was in Hong Kong my uncle, sister, and cousin visited me and we had dinner at Fat Angelo's. Yesterday there was no family. I couldn't even bring myself to leave my apartment, so I stayed here and made myself rice noodles, fried up some tofu with a delicious soya sauce (which, strangely enough, had a picture of a fish on the label), and boiled some water so I could learn that this Milo stuff doesn't taste much like hot chocolate. In good news, it looks like I'll get to return home for Christmas. The bad part about this is that now I'll have to get gifts for all my relatives. Of course, they wouldn't be too disappointed if I didn't bring back gifts, because most years this is the case, and if I was to ask them what they want they'd only say, "Oh JB/Jumbs/Mr. Sun, you don't need to worry about gifts for us; your presence here is a gift enough." Well my little brother would probably ask for a VidiPod, and my sister would probably ask me to talk to Mom and Dad again and convince them that she needs my car (and it's manual transmission that she can't drive but that she thinks she can learn in 3 or 4 hours) back at college. And my cousins (yes, mostly you Peter) would just tell me not to bother, because they can't be bothered to find something for me. Still, gifts always beats no gifts, so long as it's really a gift and not a revenge or a manipulation. Now it probably sounds now like I'm just complaining. I probably am. Am I trying to appear pathetic? Maybe, but not consciously. Really, I'm quite happy, for reasons I haven't discussed here. My posts are often, in the names of reticence and entertainment, incomplete and slightly skewed versions of my self-perceived reality. So enjoy the good stories, hyperboles, and fibs. Believe what you want, and laugh at the rest. Congrats Lisa and Carl. I'm very sorry that I am not able to attend the ceremonies and celebrations, but please know that I wish you the best as your lives and loves continue to grow together.

it's over

ok, i'm done with blogspot for now, because I can't view my posts. I can post, but I just can't see how it looks, so now you'll find all this at www.myspace.com/jwooch.

Negativity (lies upon lies)

I didn't return to Hanoi yesterday. I didn't ride in a plane with a screaming child in the row in front of me and I didn't sit next to an old lady who three times couldn't figure out how to unbuckle her safety belt. I wasn't then taken back to my living quarters by a taxi who didn't have to stop probably six times to ask for directions. I didn't feel stupid for not knowing where I lived.

I didn't spend Saturday night in my hotel room. I didn't buy pirated DVDs from the Chiang Mai night market. I didn't watch Goal!, and I didn't find it sufficiently entertaining, even though it wasn't completely predictable.

I'm not absolutely furious with Fox for cancelling Arrested Development. I'm not thinking about defacing their garden gnomes with a Sharpie and a handaxe, and possibly some mule urine. I won't be consoled when Scrubs starts back up in January. I'm not completely in love with Zach Braff in a totally hetero-male {or at worst metro-male} appropriate way.

I'm not constantly woken up by the exorbitant amount of noise that goes on in my neighborhood. I don't think I hear an old woman creaking around the compound singing in a parrot voice, "Why'm I here, God?"

I don't mind sink-washing my clothes again. Nor do I mind cold, no water pressure, shower-curtainless showers that force me to sit in the tub like I was taking a bath and spend four minutes trying to rinse my body of soap, only to not dry off with a towel that won't dry from the humidity so it won't start smelling of mildew again tomorrow. I don't mind finding ants on my toothpaste container or finding my dress clothes wrinkled in my suitcase because I still haven't no hangers, and even if I didn't have hangers, I wouldn't have a place to hang them. I don't mind showing up on the first day of my job to a government meeting with all the other relief organizations present in awkwardly creased clothes, wearing khaki's that haven't seemed to have lost a key button, not forcing me to cinch my belt extra tight against a stomach that doesn't hold only a can of raw Superlinks because I couldn't find a food place close by and wansn't able to get the stove working. I'm not hoping that Thanksgiving will be much different.

I don't need a hug.

loy krathong is going on now and it's the coolest thing

Thailand has the best idea ever. It's called loy krathong, and it's a light festival. I will briefly try to describe it, but no amout of words will do it justice. It's 3 days of firecrackers and parades and flower-filled banana leaf boats that we toss into the river to carry our burdens away. And then there are these sky lanterns, which are like luminaries for the heavens. Little hot air balloons that speckle the sky like incredible stars. It's pretty damn romantic. I'll definitely be returning here.

My program here is finally clear. I'll be gathering information, writing proposals, and developing programs. My specific concerns are going to be avian flu and tobacco risks for HIV/AIDS patients. Yes, it does sound very high and noble, and I'm hoping that's how the medical school admissions committees see it. And then I hope they like high and noble. I am excited. I can't wait to get back to Hanoi and start working.

It must be the humidity or something, because I'm finding that I need more sleep than I'm used to. It's more bothersome than anything else. Also, I've been eating larger but fewer meals. I haven't had breakfast in a number of days, and lunch happens about half of the time.

I got a sudoku widget for dashboard. If you have no mac, this won't make sense. And if you don't know how addicting sudokus are, you probably won't realize how difficult it is for me to get anything done on my computer now.

Big shoutouts to Doug, Jarrod, and Danielle. I don't think anyone else knows about this page. I ask that we keep it that way until I go back and fix some things I wrote earlier that really don't have to be general information. And if anyone else is reading this, well I suppose I'd like to know so I could pretend that I care. Or be slightly embarrassed. Or censor myself in the future.

The Vietnam tour was a lie, both by me and the government

No that's not true. But here's the real story. I left home, spent a day in Bangkok so I could get a Vietnamese visa, and then I was off to Hanoi.

For a whole 2 days. No wait. Not even two days. About 42 hours. And a few of those were spent in the airport.

Then I was back to Bangkok to take a train (yay trains!) to Chiang Mai, Thailand for ADRA leadership meetings. APLI to be specific, and that stands for ADRA Professional Leadership Instruction, or Institution, or Inoculation or Inundation.

The meetings are OK. I sometimes wish I had a book. Or a make-out buddy. But mostly a book. It'd be a bit awkward to do anything with a makeout buddy during Adventist meetings, except maybe read a book with her. I thought about sneaking out of the meetings, all stealth, and then sneaking back in to get all the bored people out too. It would be very underground railroad Harriet Tubman-like.

I've been waking up early, around 4 or 5, so I can get online and work on medical school applications. Yup, that's all I do.

I've been getting lots of sweet secondary application love from medical schools. There's also some hatin' involved, as Yale has decided to give me less than a week to fill out their secondary application. At least my letter of recommendation people have been exceptionally cooperative. I hope that also means that they're writing me delcious letters that will get me interview love.

I finished Cien Años de Soledad and Franny and Zooey. Both rocked. And now I've given them both away. I love to give books I like away. It's like I'm proselytising. Hooray for my religion. Hooray for me.

One day I'll learn to post up pictures. That way I can show you how ridiculous I look as a white guy on the back of a motorcycle with a girl driving instead of just having to tell you that it was pretty much the most embarassed I've been in a long except for about an hour ago. But that hour ago story isn't one I'm ready to tell yet, or ever, so just forget about it.

And forgetting about it is something I'm good at. Just look at how often I update this page.