Category: General

Dear everyone,

I had the best dinner last night! Lisa and Bill came over and we had dinner at the Italian restaurant at my resort. Everything was perfect; the service was friendly without being overbearing, and the FOOD! Bill had veal, Lisa had lamb, and I had bacon wrapped steak and cheese manicotti (with pine nuts! YUM).

They picked up that it was my birthday from one mention, and for dessert they brought out a tiramisu – with two ladies’ legs, carved from cookies, sticking up from the top! Happy Birthday was written on the plate with chocolate sauce.

Daniel, our waiter, delicately pried the legs apart so he could place the single candle between them.

After, we sat around the pool and talked until late. Oh, and drank. And people-watched. Bill was impressed by the topless ladies. Lisa could not stop talking about the food. She joked that she felt like she’d had a reward meal on some reality show, and now had to go back to eating grub worms at the other resort.

I ate so much food!

How can I possibly be hungry this morning? And yet, I am.

signed, Brian.

Dear everybody,

Last night, after a run and dinner, I went for a walk along the boulevard. I saw many hotels, and just as many dark boarded-up buildings. About every 10 minutes I was approached by taxi drivers. “Taxi, señor?”

I wandered into a flea market. A shopkeeper kept asking me questions I couldn’t (or wouldn’t) understand. I pretended I didn’t hear him.

Eventually I reached a mall near a bunch of nightclubs, like Planet Hollywood & Carlos ‘n’ Charlie’s & The City. And Coco Bongo, which I’ve heard is the best in Cancún. It is an all-inclusive club; US$40 gets you in and all the drinks you want. I found that out by asking a pretty Latina wearing a logo’ed t-shirt while waiting in the huge line out front.

“And I still have to wait in line?” I asked.

“Oh, you don’t want to wait here? Follow me, señor,” and she ran around to a hidden side door. “Fifty dollars, US.”

After I determined it wasn’t fifty MORE, I accepted and went inside.

Imagine a combination dance club and Vegas show, with tequila girls. That’s Coco Bongo. I saw acrobatics, chorus lines, and impersonators (KISS, Beetlejuice, Spider-Man, Usher, Beyoncè, Madonna, and more). So much fun. But after several hours, my introverted self was a bit over- stimulated. Finding the exit was difficult, and not just because of the drinks I had had and the packed crowd. I think they deliberately made the exit hard to find.

I grabbed a taxi outside and rode back to the hotel, presented with a sign on the seat in front of me advertising a 24-hour “adult spa”.

signed, Brian

Dear everybody,

Last night coming back from the other resort I ended up playing psychiatrist to a lonely cab driver, francisco. His girlfriend had kicked him out for vague reasons and had forbidden him from contact with their 11 year old daughter. But even so, he had met a beautiful 19 year old (Francisco told me he was 34) who said she loved him… Sometimes. I suspected this girl was a professional, if you know what I mean.

So many stories in my head! CANT GET THEM ALL DOWN!

signed, Brian

Dear everybody,

On my taxi ride to my sister’s hotel this morning, I left my iPhone in the cab. Didn’t notice ’til I tried to call my sister in the lobby.

Panic nearly ensued.

I immediately asked the bell staff to help me track down the driver. He had already left. They asked the concierge, Gabriella, to help. She was able to get the taxi number and the driver’s cell and started calling.

Meanwhile, I found my family and used their phone to call mine. Voicemail. Max was the only one who spoke Spanish so he left a message telling whoever answered to bring the phone to the Blue Bay Club for a reward. I started counting my cash…

Back at the front desk, Gabriella said she had called my phone and had a woman say, “I think you are calling the wrong number” and hung up.

I asked her to try again.

This time, the driver picked up. Gabriella explained about the reward and he agreed to return it.

I gave the driver US$60. I think that’s worth it.

Merry Christmas! signed, Brian

Dear everybody,

It was a long trip, made longer by my staying out all night Friday. The fight was delayed leaving Houston. There was some trouble because I hadn’t pre-paid for transportation to the hotel.

But the weather is gorgeous, 80 and a light breeze. There’s more food and booze than I need. People from all over the world to talk to. And this morning I ate breakfast with a beautiful French Canadian woman.

Did I mention she was trying to sell me a timeshare?

Still, she seemed genuinely sad when I said my final no. Head down, voice low, she mumbled, “but I really liked you,” before picking up all her charts and notes and walking me back to the lobby. And we did talk of other things. I learned she is frightened and disgusted by the sea. “Lovely to look at, but when it is time to swim, I always have other things to do.”

Later I’m going for a run on the beach, and I have to schedule the relaxing massage that was my other reward for listening to the sales spiel. A few more days of this and I’ll forget what Portland is like.

I wish you all were here. No, really. When can you get here? The bus to the nightclubs leaves at 10:30! Merry Christmas!

signed, Brian

Just checking in. Thanks to Kevin, Tracy, and Athena for helping out. (I’d link them but it’s a pain in the carpal tunnel typing HTML on my iPhone) Still need to hear from Ken… Maybe next week.

Right now I’m sitting outside a shopping mall in Punta Cancún stealing some wifi bandwidth. Gonna wander around and maybe shop a bit before meeting my sister and brother-in-law for dinner and drinking. Mucho drinking.

It’s 82° F and a bit humid. Looks like it’s exactly half that in Portland.

Not a bad way to spend my 43rd birthday.

Hasta la vista, amigos y amigas!

Today I swam in the ocean, drank, talked to new friends from London, South Africa, Wisconsin, California, Canada, and of course, Mexico. And had dinner with my family. I left my iPhone in a taxi, and it was returned to me – after I offered a reward.

I understand it snowed back in Portland.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

I am leaving for Cancún, Quintana Roo, Mexico, early tomorrow morning. Posting from me will be light until after I return on Thursday 3 January 2008. I may post. I may not. You’ll just have to wait and see.

But in the meantime, I’ve asked some of my friends to fill in, with a guest post each (more if they feel the urge). I can’t wait to see what they’re writing about; I gave them no direction beyond “write whatever you like.” They may disagree with me; they may respond to something I’ve written before; they may make death threats (but I hope not – they don’t strike me as the death-threatening kind). But they’ll bring a different perspective to my little truck on the intertubes, and for that, I am thankful.

The guest posters are (in alphabetical order):

• Athena, who is blogging about her own personal quest for bliss. She and I may have seen each other naked, though we didn’t know each other at the time. How many people can you say that about?
• Ken, who is a busy husband and father of two beautiful children, and one of the most social, friendly, stable people I know.
• Kevin, one of my closest friends who is also related to me. He’s known me all his life, and I him, and yet we’re still friends. Plus we share a birthday, 6 years apart.
• Tracy, who is my closest friend, the mother of a beautiful girl, and who is on her own quest for bliss. Or maybe she’s just trying to figure out where to go?

I’m not going to be too mad if these four get way more comments on their posts than I do. Not too mad…

At any rate, I hope all my readers enjoy their year-ending celebrations, and take care of each other. Feliz Navidad!

This is my second year for the Carl Sagan Blogathon.

In fact, it’s the second year for the Blogathon itself.

Yay, I got in on the ground floor!

December 20th, 2007 is the 11th anniversary of Carl Sagan’s death. It is also the 10th anniversary of the release of “Contact”, the science-fiction flick based on Carl Sagan’s only work of fiction. Sadly, the astronomer did not live to see the debut of the film.

I have a confession to make; I have never read “Contact”. When the novel first came out, in 1985, Dr. Sagan was at a peak of his popularity, and I had long been a fan of his pop science books and of “Cosmos”, the television series he created. But for some reason, the idea of this man of science writing genre fiction did not sit well with me.

Don’t think that I was above reading sci-fi. Not at all. I read it. It was most of what I read, if by “most” you mean “99.9993%”. Larry Niven was my fav, if I recall correctly.

But could an actual scientist write a good story?

Little did I know that science and the pursuit of science lends itself particularly well to crafting a good story. There are so many scientists who write, I am now well aware. And, in fact, I was even aware of those authors back in 1985: Isaac Asimov, who was a professor of biochemistry at Boston University. Arthur C. Clarke. a mathematician and physicist. Rudy Rucker, a mathematician who taught at many schools, before retiring from San Jose State University.

The difference was, I knew them as authors first, and as scientists second.

Carl Sagan was always a scientist in my mind. And that meant that I never even considered his work of fiction, Contact.

So my first experience with Dr. Sagan’s gift for sincere, hopeful, human storytelling about relationships, was the Jody Foster movie. Seeing the character of Ellie Arroway butt heads with bureaucrats and politicians to try to get some science done, and seeing her fondness for her father, showed me a side of Carl Sagan I had not previously understood. Carl Sagan knew people, just as much as he seemed to know astrophysics.

After seeing “Contact”, I had a new-found appreciation of the book he co-authored with his wife, Ann Druyan, “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors: A Search for Who We Are”, shows how compassionate and insightful an atheist could be towards the only species we know of that has evolved intelligence… and how close that species (us) is to the rest of life on this planet.

Re-reading “Dragons of Eden” after seeing “Contact” only reinforced the view; Carl Sagan knew people. He knew the lows to which they could sink, and the heights to which they could rise. And he strove towards the latter. In public view, he was always positive, and cheerful, even when pointing out the terrible mistakes he saw humanity making.

And as I noted last year, Carl Sagan was able to admit his own mistakes and failings.

Carl Sagan is one of my intellectual heroes. This is not a sad day. Dr. Sagan’s legacy is that we should continue to reach for the stars.

If I were braining clearly, I would come up with a word, a new word, a word that encapsulated the experience and feeling of having a call come in that’s clearly identified by the Caller ID to be someone you know, and picking up and saying “Hello?” as if you did not know that person, and having them, in a worried or nervous or confused way, explain to you who they are.