Category: Travel

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Africa Antibiotica

I’m fairly adept with languages, but hardly thorough. I can learn a lot of words, some grammar, and then the language will swim about in my head, frothing the waters like a school of desperate mullet. At times, my brain can provide the mot juste, at others, nothing more than a fluttering aphasia beyond the tip of the tongue. Hearing a speaker of another language on the street can trigger a whirlwind; a sort of Manchurian Candidate response in which my mind struggles to go into the mode of that language even if it can’t.  I joke that my language skills are enough to get me into trouble, but never back out; it’s not that witty of a joke. Continue reading “Africa Antibiotica”

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Mahalo, Oahu!

Hawaii is one of those legendary destinations that for everyone who has taken the journey, love.  And for those of us who haven’t, we know we’d love it, because we’ve seen it in movies and television. There’s the beautiful woman in a hula skirt encircling your neck with a garland of flowers, a pig roast after a day of surfing, and the wise aloha-shirted beach guru dispensing wisdom.

Only, I didn’t think I’d like it.  After all, I’m not much of a splashing-about-in-the-surf sort of guy. I also pay close heed to my dermatologist who has told me that with my tuna-belly-white complexion, I shouldn’t go out in the sun without a sun block equivalent to several layers of cardboard, and only then in the earliest hours of the morning, or to witness the setting sun.

921521_10151471786011985_2052099614_o Continue reading “Mahalo, Oahu!”