Peter Hill is unlike anyone I’ve ever known. I doubt that there is a person on this planet who knows Peter and does not like him. If they feel otherwise, they simply haven’t taken the necessary time to appreciate Peter’s genius, or, they are offended by nudity – either way they are missing out. The Middle Hill (Peter has older and younger siblings) will always say yes, I can’t stress how much I love this about Peter. It is truly a great attribute in a friend. Ok, sometimes it has taken Peter some convincing – “Don’t go to work Pete, Danish American Farms doesn’t need you as much as I do,” but he always comes through. He is loyal, fun-loving, kind, tough-as-nails, virile, and laughs at everything. But his character is only the beginning of why Pete is a dear friend.
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I am still a young man, I turn only twenty-eight next year. Yet an accumulation of observations has led me to conclude that I am officially feeling aged. Please don’t think I consider myself old in any way, but rather the changes about myself and my lifestyle have converged to make me acutely aware that I am leaving my youth. When I was a child my mother would try to encourage, threaten, and bribe my brother and I into reading books, which, of course, we resisted. As an adult I have come to enjoy reading; I especially enjoy non-fiction, and read the newspaper everyday, usually the Guardian Weekly and less often the Economist. So when I came across The Book of General Ignorance by John Lloyd and John Mitchinson, I was excited. The premise is that the authors briefly cover and debunk wrongly-held common beliefs (which number to about 200, hereafter these will be referred to as Facts). Here are a few examples of the Facts; When I was eighteen years old I visited my brother in Madrid and travelled to several other european cities, completing the perfunctory right-of-passage European trip Americans feel obliged to do (for more on this topic see Steinbeck’s America and Americans, written mostly when he was old and crotchety). Anyway, we found ourselves in Rome on New Year’s Eve and the following entry is equally a description and an inquisitive request regarding the custom practiced at Piazza del Popolo every year. Every friday I walk a few blocks to the local vegetable market to meet the villagers who come to sell there weekly harvest. It’s a misnomer really, because it also consists of vendors of fish, cheese, fruits, seeds, spices, breads, oils, many plastic Chinese-made household items, clothes, and delicious gözleme (a pancake-like treat with potatoes, meat, or parsley and cheese inside). The food products are fresh and delicious, I can’t rave enough, and the non-food items are, well, very cheap. Every neighborhood in Izmir has one, and in Kahramanlar, it is the place to be on fridays. Way back in 1996, my friend Peter asked me to come with him and his twenty-six year old brother Matt to Costa Rica for ten days of surfing. Now, we had recently been getting into surfing, like good Southern-Californian youth do, and the trip sounded unbelievably cool to my teenage ears. We left the next year after a lot of planning and saving. The trip itself had lots of golden nuggets worth sharing, but for readability’s sake I’ll truncate it to one story about having no money the last couple days. Much attention has been paid to how being a native English speaker is an invaluable resource in a world where speaking English has become expected in business, politics, and even social situations (in some countries it is a clear demarcator of class and social standing). We’ll not mention that having little material incentive to learn a second or third language results in the Anglo countries not doing so, forever precluding the educational and intellectual benefits accrued by learning another language. However, on the whole the internationalization of English is a benefit to us native-English speakers. But little attention has been drawn to the phenomenon’s effect on the ancient Japanese art of Karaoke. A friend of mine here in Izmir lives in a suburb called Buca. It’s significantly out of the city, but I’ve been a few times for dinner and a couple beers. Anyway, we were on the balcony of his 7th story apartment, gazing upon the half-picturesque, half-development-scathed landscape when we noticed some particular pigeons . . . → Read More: Messenger Pigeons I’ve been warned not to go many places. It seems every city, especially in foreign countries (not the U.S.), a concerned citizen will warn me about the perils of some particular neighborhood.
In the summer of 2004 two friends, Rick and Eric, and I stayed in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, for a month in a rented apartment (it was an academic trip, which i won’t get into). That month is describable by many adjectives: hot, intoxicated, sleepless, adventurous, mischievous, beachy, taco-filled, and…well now I’m just making up words. The apartment complex had a guard on duty at night, named Alvaro. Like most Mexicans I have met, Alvaro was an outgoing and congenial person. He was enthusiastic about our love of drink and, likely out of boredom, joined us at the apartment more than a working security guard should. |
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