I am going to Salt Lake City.
The university is paying for me to go to SLC this weekend to sing with a 6 man vocal ensemble. Shidbe neat.
FYI this is my plan for conference weekend:
Arrive: 8:45am, Friday, March 31 SLC
Returning:
Depart: 11:30am, Tuesday, April 4
Arrive: 2:30pm, Tuesday, April 4
Sunday and Monday night I will have a room at the Howard Johnson. Friday and Saturday I plan on staying with James in Provo (or wherever).
I hope to hit up some conference while I am there. I have a mission reunion Friday night in Bountiful. In between Saturday sessions my coworker Justin who is in a Mormon boy-band (Jericho Road) will be performing at a bookstore nearby (maybe I'll check it out if I'm in the neighborhood). I have a BYU-Hawaii Alumni Fireside that I will be singing at Sunday night somewhere near SLC (you can come if you'd like) and I will be performing for PLC Donor meetings in Salt Lake Monday morning. Monday and Saturday evenings should be free (Jame's birthday is Sat so there may be some kimchee involved) and I can be flexible (other than the two meetings I'm singing at--that's why the University is flying me out).
That's my plan anyway. Hope to see you there.
Other than that life is good. The sun came out Monday afternoon, which is a state holiday here in Hawaii (Prince Kuhio Day). So I got to enjoy that. I am still dating Sariah. She's fun to be around. The Peace Corps office is reviewing my Medical papers. While in Utah I hope to see Mom, Dad, Clandy and fam, auntie and all her gang, James and Heesoon, Jillhane McCauley, Kira and whoever else I can fit in. Shoobie fun!
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Wednesday, March 22, 2006
Slip 'Tup
OK so its been a little spell. I guess I lose track of time when it rains. And I kid you not, it has been raining since my last post. You may have even heard about it in the National news. Some storm systems have been absolutely parked over our little Ko'olau mountain ridge. We do get breaks now and then (unlike Washington rain) but the big mud puddle in the front hard has been growing and shrinking for over a month. School even got cancelled a couple weeks ago.
Remember those little cartoons where the rain cloud hovers over the sad little person? That would be Hau'ula, the little town on the southern border of La'ie (where I live). It is like 2 or 3 miles down the road and yet the difference in yearly rainfall has got to be very noticeable. I often ride there to visit friends or get food (mmm Hau'ula Korean BBQ) and it seems like if there are clouds in La'ie, there is rain in Hau'ula. Hau'ula is also known as a notorious 'ice' community (since there is no real ice in Hawaii it is never a question that ice means methamphetamines). What a sad, sad little crack town... and proud proprietor of 7-11 (you can't seem to have one without the other).
Meanwhile life marches on. I am meeting with my French tutor every week. French is a fun little language. I find myself often laughing at its quirks. It's grammar, spelling and phonetics are almost as screwed up as how I speak English when I'm bored. It cracks me up. Unfortunately, since my vocab is still pretty limited, the sentences I create rarely have a context for actual expression ("Je mange la fille.") Although I'm quite fond of saying "J'ai troi freres et un seur" or however you spell it.
I sing in a male-voice sextet here at the university. We have sung at devotionals and other events. The President of the university is flying us out to Utah during the LDS general conference to sing at some donor meetings (we will also sing at a BYU-Hawaii alumni fireside). So if you're gonna be in Utardia, drop me a line. I am also going to a Nicaragua mission reunion (My first in the 4+ years since I've been home). Anyway I'll be there March 31-4 of April.
Uh... what else. I received my "official" letter of nomination to the Peace Corps yesterday (despite being nominated in February). So that's exciting. I sent in my medical paperwork but it has not been reviewed by the PC staff yet. DENTAL is another matter. I am currently seeking a second opinion. I am a bit worried that the Dentist that checked me out was digging for gold.
I've been dating a very nice lass. I met her a year ago or so then she went to Utah for a semester. This semester I saw her a couple times but never where I could talk to her. SOooo... as embarrassing as it may seem, I sent her an email to ask if I could ask her out, basically (for her digits F U will [and you will]). So we went on a hike and have been spending some time together which has been quite nice. Nothing for anyone to get too excited about but we're enjoying each other's company. We'll respectfully leave it at that.
I had something else but I lost my train. Oh well. Don't forget, I choo-choo-choose you!
OK so its been a little spell. I guess I lose track of time when it rains. And I kid you not, it has been raining since my last post. You may have even heard about it in the National news. Some storm systems have been absolutely parked over our little Ko'olau mountain ridge. We do get breaks now and then (unlike Washington rain) but the big mud puddle in the front hard has been growing and shrinking for over a month. School even got cancelled a couple weeks ago.Remember those little cartoons where the rain cloud hovers over the sad little person? That would be Hau'ula, the little town on the southern border of La'ie (where I live). It is like 2 or 3 miles down the road and yet the difference in yearly rainfall has got to be very noticeable. I often ride there to visit friends or get food (mmm Hau'ula Korean BBQ) and it seems like if there are clouds in La'ie, there is rain in Hau'ula. Hau'ula is also known as a notorious 'ice' community (since there is no real ice in Hawaii it is never a question that ice means methamphetamines). What a sad, sad little crack town... and proud proprietor of 7-11 (you can't seem to have one without the other).
Meanwhile life marches on. I am meeting with my French tutor every week. French is a fun little language. I find myself often laughing at its quirks. It's grammar, spelling and phonetics are almost as screwed up as how I speak English when I'm bored. It cracks me up. Unfortunately, since my vocab is still pretty limited, the sentences I create rarely have a context for actual expression ("Je mange la fille.") Although I'm quite fond of saying "J'ai troi freres et un seur" or however you spell it.I sing in a male-voice sextet here at the university. We have sung at devotionals and other events. The President of the university is flying us out to Utah during the LDS general conference to sing at some donor meetings (we will also sing at a BYU-Hawaii alumni fireside). So if you're gonna be in Utardia, drop me a line. I am also going to a Nicaragua mission reunion (My first in the 4+ years since I've been home). Anyway I'll be there March 31-4 of April.
Uh... what else. I received my "official" letter of nomination to the Peace Corps yesterday (despite being nominated in February). So that's exciting. I sent in my medical paperwork but it has not been reviewed by the PC staff yet. DENTAL is another matter. I am currently seeking a second opinion. I am a bit worried that the Dentist that checked me out was digging for gold.I've been dating a very nice lass. I met her a year ago or so then she went to Utah for a semester. This semester I saw her a couple times but never where I could talk to her. SOooo... as embarrassing as it may seem, I sent her an email to ask if I could ask her out, basically (for her digits F U will [and you will]). So we went on a hike and have been spending some time together which has been quite nice. Nothing for anyone to get too excited about but we're enjoying each other's company. We'll respectfully leave it at that.
I had something else but I lost my train. Oh well. Don't forget, I choo-choo-choose you!
Wednesday, March 08, 2006
Word Exchange Rate
A picture is worth one thousand words. What is a smell worth? Its been said that smell is the sense most closely associated with memory. And yet, it is fleeting, hard to capture. Some chemical compounds resemble and approximate others fooling your brain into thinking they are the same smell or similar. That's how perfume can smell like a flower without actually having any part of any flower in it. Have you ever smelled something? SOMETHING! Something... familiar. Something you know, but you don't know where you know it from. Something you know where you know it from but can't remember what it was? Like the feeling that you think you remembered a dream but you're not entirely sure about it. In moments like these I want to grab hold of that smell, pin it down and smell it until I remember. But these memories ride on the air. Yesterday on the three steps between my room and my bathroom I smelled something. It was a good memory that I think I remembered more fully in the moment but now I forget what it was like. I remember it being from Nicaragua. I wanted to smell it more but it was just a moment. Perhaps it was two smells colliding for one short moment wherein they created "the perfect storm" of smell.
In Puerto Cabezas there were 3 rooms and 4 missionaries. We lived two to a room with no furniture but beds. So we used the empty room as a dressing room. We each got half a bed for our clothes and after a bucket-bath we went in that room to change. That room smelled like Old Spice. I don't know who used it (one or all of us) but it permeated the ambiance of the room. One day we all four went to a wedding reception where potato salad was served. This was a rare treat for missionaries. Nicaraguans, however, add raw eggs to the mix for some reason. Well I don't need to tell you what the Nicaraguan sun can do during a day to a batch of potato salad made for a reception that night. The food took soooo long to serve that we had to eat and run in order to get home at a reasonable hour. We ate so fast. Too fast to notice anything. The next day was epic. Musical toilet-seat on a toilet with no plumbing. Four boys wiped out by food poisoning and with rare strength to draw water from the well. But I digress. The point is, for some reason I have associated that particular experience with the smell of that room. Old Spice (Original flavor) makes me sick to my stomach.
Once in Nicaragua a family insisted that they had a large Rubbermaid plastic container that held water that smelled like me. Or that I smelled like. I risked tearing a whole in the space-time continuum by going into the back area of their house, opening the container and smelling it. HOW SURREAL. Just kidding. I don't know what they were talking about. But they claimed it wasn't a bad smell so I guess that's OK.
A picture is worth one thousand words. What is a smell worth? Its been said that smell is the sense most closely associated with memory. And yet, it is fleeting, hard to capture. Some chemical compounds resemble and approximate others fooling your brain into thinking they are the same smell or similar. That's how perfume can smell like a flower without actually having any part of any flower in it. Have you ever smelled something? SOMETHING! Something... familiar. Something you know, but you don't know where you know it from. Something you know where you know it from but can't remember what it was? Like the feeling that you think you remembered a dream but you're not entirely sure about it. In moments like these I want to grab hold of that smell, pin it down and smell it until I remember. But these memories ride on the air. Yesterday on the three steps between my room and my bathroom I smelled something. It was a good memory that I think I remembered more fully in the moment but now I forget what it was like. I remember it being from Nicaragua. I wanted to smell it more but it was just a moment. Perhaps it was two smells colliding for one short moment wherein they created "the perfect storm" of smell.
In Puerto Cabezas there were 3 rooms and 4 missionaries. We lived two to a room with no furniture but beds. So we used the empty room as a dressing room. We each got half a bed for our clothes and after a bucket-bath we went in that room to change. That room smelled like Old Spice. I don't know who used it (one or all of us) but it permeated the ambiance of the room. One day we all four went to a wedding reception where potato salad was served. This was a rare treat for missionaries. Nicaraguans, however, add raw eggs to the mix for some reason. Well I don't need to tell you what the Nicaraguan sun can do during a day to a batch of potato salad made for a reception that night. The food took soooo long to serve that we had to eat and run in order to get home at a reasonable hour. We ate so fast. Too fast to notice anything. The next day was epic. Musical toilet-seat on a toilet with no plumbing. Four boys wiped out by food poisoning and with rare strength to draw water from the well. But I digress. The point is, for some reason I have associated that particular experience with the smell of that room. Old Spice (Original flavor) makes me sick to my stomach.Once in Nicaragua a family insisted that they had a large Rubbermaid plastic container that held water that smelled like me. Or that I smelled like. I risked tearing a whole in the space-time continuum by going into the back area of their house, opening the container and smelling it. HOW SURREAL. Just kidding. I don't know what they were talking about. But they claimed it wasn't a bad smell so I guess that's OK.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
