Tomás Argüelles, a Dad for all time

“Papá Tomás is not my Dad,” Isa told me a few months after we started dating. Despite the obvious potential for confusion created by that moniker, Tomás, she explained, was in fact her uncle. It turned out he wasn’t really her uncle either, he was one of the many relatives that had over the years been brought into the fold of her family in a uniquely charming Venezuelan fashion.

My Trouble with the Curve

This is a place where I like to run my proverbial mouth about things I’m imminently unqualified to discuss. Today I’ve got idle commentary on not one but two such subjects – baseball and film.

Tell me about your trash, I’ll tell you about where you live

An archaeologist once told me that people generally thought of grand temples and castles holding the secrets of the past, but that the one could really learn the most from people’s trash. This is no less true for modern societies.

Borobudur

See Borobudur before you die.A 9^th century Buddhist temple in Central Java, outside the city of Yogyakarta (no, that’s not Jakarta misspelled), it’s one of the most amazing ancient sites I’ve visited. 

On a Bali massage table, dreaming of a Caracas newsroom

I glanced through the curative properties of the different treatments on offer. This was a two hour affair including a full body massage followed by a cleansing body scrub. That latter was available in five different solutions that ranged from green tea to jasmine coconut to some unpronounceable Balinese spices. They vowed to counteract wrinkles, cure cellulitis and wipe away stretch marks. After sniffing a few small flasks I ultimately chose the green tea concoction, mostly because it smelled good. It also offered to provide ample anti-oxidants. I didn’t really know what anti-oxidants were, but a cursory familiarity with Latin suggested it was something that would help keep me from rusting.  This was a requisite part of the Bali experience that I couldn’t miss out on, particularly in the Ubud where you can hardly walk two steps without someone offering you a massage. We were to be rubbed down with jasmine oil, then being scrubbed down with something that would tone my skin.

Bali keeps it real

In most countries I’ve been to, a tour guide shows me through a beautiful temple, or the ruins of an ancient society, or a church that exemplifies culture and history.  Leaving those places, one is almost always confronted with the reality that the modern descendants of those ancient societies don’t live in anything that remotely resembles to iconic buildings being showcased.

Go to Southern Venezuela Roraima and you’ll tour traditional villages with typical round thatch huts of the Pemon indigenous people, just yards away from the squat concrete zinc-roofed shacks where the Pemon people of today live. The countryside of northern Italy is littered with beautiful castles in various states of repair or disrepair, none of which represent a real housing option for the average person who lives there. The historic center of famed Salvador de Bahia in Brazil boasts cobblestone walks, ornate churches collapsing under the weight of gold adornments, while bahianos live in drab concrete apartment blocks and dress themselves up in stiflingly hot 19^th century garb in to lure tourists into paying them to take pictures.

Bali is the only place I can remember going where this is not the case.

Bumpy landing in Ubud

After a bit too much reality in Jakarta, our landing in the Bali resort city of Ubud turned out to be a bit more real-world than we had bargained for. The tourist haven was known as the alternative to the beaches of south Bali, converted over the last 20 years into a ghetto of drunken Australian college students in the best style of a Florida spring-break beach scene. What would ultimately become a fantastic five-day stay turned out to have a bit of bumpy landing.