Welcome to Nick, Why(ley), and Casey’s blog for our uber posh trip to Asia. A little background: Nick and I graduated last year from Stanford, and have since been pretending we still go there. We’ve been fairly succesful, although from time to time, Elise will spot us and threaten to expose us if we don’t leave her alone. Just yesterday we bumped into each other at the gym, and without saying a word, pointed to the exit and watched as Nick and I moped home like sad puppies who know they are too old to have peed the rug.
My parents are going through similar withdrawals, although they are trying this new therapy right now called “TeVo every televised Stanford sporting event and then watch the entire thing in slow motion in hopes that the camera frame passes over Elise’s face before going to a commercial break”. Fortunately for them, what usually happens is that some perverted cameraman develops a crush on Elise by half-time, and the network starts cutting to Elise during every timeout, which needless to say delights them…such good parents.
Anyway, I thought I’d do some brief introductions for those of you don’t know everyone. I, for example, don’t know anything about this Casey character (Nick’s friend from High School) except that after graduating from Occidental, he began working the graveyard shift bottling pills in the basement of a Pharmaceutical Company (I don’t know who is farther from becoming a doctor, Nick or Casey). Casey, you are throwing your future away – have fun working as a school teacher the rest of your life.
Nick has been working in a Stanford lab with Dr. Michael Dake developing a new treatment for Multiple Sclerosis. I’ve been teaching, tutoring, surfing, and playing obscene amounts of scrabble in San Diego. The last and most revealing biographical information I will share is… what we have all packed. The three of us got together yesterday, put on the Hogwarts sorting hat, and let it decide what we would each need for the next three months. Here are the results:
Wiley [Hagrid]:
Suitcase: two pairs of socks and a pair of athletic shorts (Lulu Lemon brand). The remaining suitcase space has been reserved for food. Now before you think - “typical Wiley”, know that I have come a long way in terms of civilized eating since Nick and my study abroad adventures in Argentina. For example, if this were 3 years ago, I would right now be eating handfuls of brown rice, legumes, and rotten vegetables (all mixed together) out of a ziplock bag. Nick refused to sit with me on our train rides to volunteer at an orphanage ouside Buenos Aires because he didn’t want to be associated with this person that even the train-roaming blind, tri-legged gypsies beggars didn’t have the audacity to appraoch me. On a backpacking trip in Mendoza, my friend Mike and I met a reformed ex-convict who nicknamed me “Porrota” which translates elegantly from Spanish to “Bean”. He said that in 25 years of dealing marijuana, he had never seen such indiscriminatory eating. “Bean” from Disney’s Even Stevens, wherever you are, I miss you.
One last note on my garbage disposal of a stomach (literally): while Nick and I were in Argentina, Nick’s older sister Alicia worked at a summer camp where I had worked the summer before. When we got back to the states, she asked us if we were aware that it was considered high treason to to refer to the camp’s new high-tech compost bin as anything other than “The Wiley”? We were not aware.
Anyway, I have been adopting some technologies myself. They are: tupperware, utensils, and most revolutionarily- the separate consumption of foods that do not belong together. Currently I am grazing in the SFO International terminal on oats steeped in yogurt, banana, pasta, and raisin (no coffe grounds, tampons, etc.) out of one tupperware, and indulging in homemade chilaquiles out of a SEPARATE tupper. In all honesty, there is a stalk of celery in there too, but I simply didn’t know where else to put it (Nick, if I wake up with you in my 4’x1’ Japanese bed/capsule/pod, and you use that excuse, I will make you into sushi). Confession: I did just put a bite of chilaquiles in my mouth before having finished chewing an oat bite and they mixed together, but I swear to god I didn’t enjoy it.
Nick [Hufflepuff- through and through]
Suitcase:
-his trusty abslide
- 26 tall tees featuring various images of Albert Einstein
Why Casey?...
If you made it this far, you deserve to hear a little bit about our actual trip. Here is the itinerary:
Japan
South Korea
Vietnam
Cambodia
Thailand
Bali
South Africa (World Cup)
I am about to board my plane (Casey and Nick will meet me tomorrow), but first I will divulge my first Asian experience. I saw Hermione on a Burberry billboard on my way to my gate, and decided to take my first photo of the trip. Since I am by myself, I employed the help of a fellow traveller, a older Japanese man, so that I could cuddle up with my fellow Gryffindor. I explained that I wanted my arm to appear to be around Hermione because I was going to photoshop in the words “Expecto I-bone-‘em”. At first, I thought he was having a hard time understanding my vision, but then I realized he was having a hard time understanding my English. I became very afraid. If I can’t explain to an Asian, whose cameras are usually their excaliburs, that I want a picture of me taken, might my inability to speak Asian be more of an issue than expected? I hope they speak Mexican somewhere we are going.
Asian experience #2: It’s my hobby/obsession/moral-obligation to sneak up on rat tails and cut them off. If security hadn’t confiscated my scissors, I could have saved this guy from his. One time in the Stanford cafeteria, a wearer of a rat tail caught me snapping a photo, and so I lied that I liked his shirt so much that I wanted to document it. At this point, we both looked down and noticed he was wearing a frayed Church Camp shirt. When he started getting suspicious, I akwardly stammered “It’s 2:23 PM” like McLoven when he gets caught staring at the redhead’s underwear, and walked away as if nothing had happened. True story.
WISH US LUCK EVERYONE! I miss everyone already – you know who you are.
Con amor,
Wiley
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