UPDATE - JANUARY 17, 2009

January 17, 2009

My very masculine friend pointed out that I kept having conversations about a book called “Eat Pray Love.” I told him that happens because it relates to the conversation. He thought it was because I am a girl. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (blink). . . .(blink). . . . . . . . I think I am a boy.
Is there ANY boy, metrosexual or heterosexual, who has read the book “Eat Pray Love”?
Please speak and show my chauvinist friend, Jose-Miguel, that I wasn’t the only one. Are there any? Any? Are there any women who have male friends who read the book? I looked out in Oprah’s audience the day the author was on the show, but all I saw were women. I am a boy, right? . . .anybody? E-mail back.

Twelve percent of adults are supposed to have HIV in South Africa. And the percentage gets higher when you include kids. There are regions of the country where the prevalence rate is 50%. Now what would you do if you were getting your head cut by a barber and the barber accidentally cuts your head (breaks the skin) with his electric clippers and blood is pouring from your head at the sight of which he nonchalantly continues to cut and finally dabs the blood with a napkin and continues cutting while it continues bleeding? (Later he dabs the blood again)


A Nothing because you’re so shocked that he didn’t use alcohol or something else. Doesn’t he realize this is South Africa?

B Tell him you have diarrhea and quickly run to the nearest bathroom OUTside the barbershop.

C Tell him you have AIDS (to get him to stop cutting your head).

D Ask him to please use Neosporin to heal the wound before continuing because 8 out of 10 doctors recommend Neosporin for minor cuts and bruises.

E Ask him if he is not waiting to stop the bleeding because he’s actually also a doctor and is one of the 2 out of 10 doctors who did not recommend Neosporin.

F Ask him if those same clippers have ever caused a cut on anyone else’s head, and right before he answers the question, cut him off and say “No, nevermind. I DON’T want to hear the answer.”


By the way, really quickly, if you had to list the top five most pressing problems facing the world today, what would they be? Take a moment to jot them down. And then compare with the global section somewhere below.

UPDATE

I’m back, and it’s good to be home? It’s strange. On the plane from Senegal to South Africa, I see people I know and meet a girl who knows a friend of mine. I’m greeted at the airport by a wonderful friend who is there to pick me up and see another friend beside her who happens to be at the airport. As I walk in the warm Cape Town weather outside, someone honks (hoots) his car horn at me as he drives by. At the grocery store, I bump into two friends. . . .I think people know me here, at least a bit.

But I still love anonymity. It’s one of my favorite things. And most of us take it for granted until it’s completely and utterly gone (as it is for celebrities where even people who have never met them know them). I can actually say it feels like home here. The purpose of staying or actually living in a foreign country seems to have been served for me. I wanted to actually stay long enough to develop a community of family and friends and peers, have people whom I support and who support me. Though I haven’t fully explored it (I have just been invited to audition and possibly join a salsa performance group and I have to yet to act in a production in Cape Town among many other things still yet to do and explore), I can say that I actually live here and occupy a particular place in society that is outside that of short-term visitors.

And it feels good.

The FIRST thing I want to do is head to the beach. I’ve been missing it in the cold of Houston (yes, it actually snowed the day before I arrived). I may do that either tomorrow or perhaps next weekend.

Oh I forgot to mention that I have 4 articles/papers out being reviewed. Before I left in December, the first week, one was finally accepted for publication (meaning no more asking me to revise it). The second of the first two is still sitting with editors in the form of a 2nd draft. I submitted two more in December before leaving. Yesterday, one came back from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Journal of Aircraft as accepted. They sent an e-mail right before New Year’s only asking me to eliminate some pictures and shorten some parts (no substantive or content-based editorial changes at all). So that will go through typesetting as well. The second of the final two papers is still with the editors. So I’ll probably have four published this year from this set.