The Alia Trip

Golden State - Bombs (The Ron Paul Song)

2011-12-19T17:06:00.000-08:00

YEAH WE HAVE A PEACE CANDIDATE !!! Ron Paul is #1 in the polls!

"It's not impossible, not to late for a miracle, we can END THIS WAR!"

I never thought I'd say this but I need to figure out how to register Republican.

The War of the Machines Is On

2011-07-09T00:46:00.000-07:00

"Well the first War of the Machines seems to be drawing to its final inconclusive chapter—leaving, alas, everyone the poorer, many bereaved or maimed and millions dead, and only one thing triumphant: the Machines."
--JRR Tolkien (1945 letter to his son)

I've just read the wikipedia article on Tolkien and discovered that he hated new technology like cars, and he was very outspoken against war and a self-proclaimed anarchist. Nobody can hold the power without being corrupted by it in Lord of the Rings, so it was no surprise to read that he was not a fan of government.
It might seem funny to people to read about an old dude from old-times who hated this new invention: the car, and chose to keep riding his bicycle. But at 25 I'm feeling a lot like that old dude. Things are changing, expanding, faster and faster--and as I watch most people go along with it unquestioningly I feel like shouting, "hey! how is this better?" Needless to say, the f*$%ing wars are too much (How's that hope and change doing 3 years later?....suckers.) the food is getting creepier, our freedom and dignity is being taken away incrementally, and people are being sucked into their computer devices like that little girl was sucked into the television in Poltergeist. I miss the outrage of the Bush years, the silent consent of the Obama years is incredibly frightening. Don't be annoyed by people yelling and screaming about what's going on in the world--THEY are sane, awake, human beings. And THEY are becoming harder and harder to find.
We need to remember what words mean. Peace. Freedom. These are two words that are being distorted right now. Hold onto their meanings like Tolkien held onto his bicycle. Look for proof and evidence, rather than simple televised declarations. "That box is the single most effective propaganda tool ever invented" (Network), it's like a freaking ring of power!---and the "SUPERBADS" (Freeman) have it! So what in the flying f-bomb do you think they're going to do with it? Do you think they're going to use it to tell you the truth so that you can make rational decisions about your life?
People will come along and say, "I'll take the ring of power, I'll use it for good." Impossible. Don't believe them. It's like a baton being passed to the next guy, they're all on the same team and nobody's going to win but the machines.

More About Boobies

2011-05-31T08:45:00.000-07:00

The last time I went for a follow up appointment at Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU) I told my family, "This is the last time we will come here, EVER!", hoping that speaking those words aloud would ensure we had no more medical issues. I am now reminded of advice I got from my mother about praying for things: BE SPECIFIC!!! The day before yesterday I had to go to the emergency room of the hospital closest to my house, Adventist Medical Center. So yes, it's not OHSU, but it's a hospital and I had another medical problem! Grrrr.....
This time it was my other breast which had a plugged duct that got infected with the MRSA that I'm told by doctors I may always have, (but which I plan on killing for good with lots of natural remedies) and I got another abcess. At first I was treating it the natural way with lots of hot compresses, massage and good stuff like garlic pills and Happy Ducts tincture and Turmeric and probiotics and Acai berry juice--I was feeling fantastic! I was like, woh I should spend $100 on supplements every month! The redness was totally going away, until I ran out of my Happy Ducts (I could so do an infomercial for that product--it freakin works) and the lump in my breast turned bright red again and started to be the worst pain ever. By the next day I was in the emergency room begging for pain killers, NOW, my pain's a 12. Seriously. They gave me percosets, however you spell that, and they worked. That was the first time I can say I literally had "crippling pain". I felt totally fine otherwise but there was a knife constantly stabbing my breast which made it hard to do anything or even think about what to do. Then they did an ultrasound of my breast and saw that I had an abcess so this nice surgeon came over and "lanced" my breast, yes that's the word he used. That word makes me think of swordplay and not surgeory. He packed the wound with gauze and today I have to get the gauze out which I already know is incredibly painful because they put about a 50 feet of it is there, and they pull it out and it just keeps unraveling and it really really hurts and is grouse.
When I went to the Adventist Medical Center's emergency room they got right down to business, and I was out of there in a few hours. I was so used to OHSU with their team of doctors having meetings to confer with each other and waiting around for days before they decide what to do. So I already had a bag packed and was expecting to have to be there for days, but I got to go home right away!
Ok: This will be the last medical problem my family has for a long, long, long time.

The Breast of the Story

2011-05-24T13:53:00.000-07:00

This has obviously been a long, long overdue update. I so wish I could have written an individual blog for each of the adventures I've had since I last updated you, plus extra blogs for the mini adventures, character studies, anecdotes and thoughts on life that have occurred to me over this long hiatus. But it is harder and harder to find the time. Or if I do find it, I'm groggy from sleep dep, oxys and benedril (you'll understand why as you read further) and incapable of typing letters. Since I last wrote here we have moved into an apartment, had a daughter, spent 2 weeks going back and forth from the hospital while she was in the NICU, and finally I have had a severe breast infection and been re-hospitalized and had surgeory, hense the title.
Gypsies know when to roll, and we always roll into an amazing camp without even trying. When we first moved into this apartment we thought we were settling for a roof over our head and no less, a desperate grab for shelter before the baby came. The only apartment manager that would accept our jobless status and trust that we would somehow manage to make the rent each month. We're on the outskirts of town, next to 3 gas stations and a busy street. I made the best of it in my mind by imagining that we were convicts on the run and had to live on the outskirts so that we could avoid detection and get out of town fast if we needed to. However, it turns out that we stumbled onto a hidden gem of a neighborhood whose many amazing sites are found like hunting for easter eggs--but really easy to find easter eggs. We are walking distance from a community farm that we now have a share in--we get a huge box of produce every week for $25, a 40 mile hike and bike trail that leads us to a marsh with ducks and canadian geese among many other things, and which we can use to get to the laundrymat, the great Mexican restaurant, the off-track (which has a huge fenced in kid's play area, so Joe and Siobhán can play while me and Michael bet the ponies) and the Max (Portland's city train) which takes us anywhere we need to go. We are also a stones throw away from the Leach Botanical Gardens which is a huge 14 acre woods with lots of trails, we have a sweet park with an awesome playground, 20 minute walk from a grocery store, a HUGE thrift store, and we'll probably discover more things. When something like this happens it's like God literally just placed a gift in my lap. Here, since you would have been thankful for a shit hole, I give you: a gold hole. I just invented that term, gold hole.
Speaking of gifts from God I will use that to segway into the story of the birth of my daughter, Siobhán. We knew that she was coming early, April 4th was the date of the scheduled C-Section, but she ended up coming even earlier! March 31st I went to the hospital for one of my twice weekly fetal monitorings, which until then was just an excuse to watch a half hour to an hour of television while sitting in an armchair with monitors on my belly. That day the monitors actually picked something up--I was having contractions every 3 minutes! I couldn't even feel them! With my condition going into labor was a no-no. If my water broke me and the baby could die. I hate even writing that, but that's what it was. If I hadn't have been sitting in that chair at the hospital being monitored, and I was back at our apartment, not feeling contractions, my water could have broken and I would have been far from the hospital. So within an hour I was having a C-Section. At first when they told me I FREAKED OUT--I had been scared of C-Sections and wanted to first have a chance to "prepare", maybe bring my ipod so I could not think about how my belly was being cut open with a knife. Also we had Joseph with us and I was afraid Michael wouldn't be able to come into surgeory with me because he would have to look after him. But thankfully Aviva rushed over and watched him for 5 hours--which is an amazing feat! Watching Joseph is literally like being in charge of a wild monkey. The most painful part of getting a C-Section is the numbing stuff they poke you with before they do the epidural. So it's painless, is what I'm saying. Afterward however when my pain meds began to wear off, it was more painful than the 3rd stage of natural labor. But when I got more pain meds, as long as I kept perfectly still it was fine. The problem is you are high on oxycodons and want to laugh or cry, but if you laugh or cry you hurt. I flipped through the T.V. channels to try to find something unfunny and unsad, which is hard. I settled on American Pickers, a show about men searching for antiques to resell. A C-Section, although sometimes necessary to save lives like in me and Siobhán's case, is not ideal. I actually didn't even get to see Siobhán until hours later. She had to be put on a breathing machine in the NICU and I was in the recovery room. The nurse kept asking me what level (between 1 and 10) my pain was at. 11. 10. 9. 7. 5. 4. as the drugs kicked in. Finally she whispered: "if you say 3 you can go downstairs to see your baby" and I was like, "WHAT? I would have said 3 a long time ago!" It is not good to be separated from the baby you just had, it is very unnatural and cruel, but if it weren't for the C-Section she wouldn't be here so I just had to keep that in mind. When she was born I heard her crying which was a huge relief but I couldn't see her because of the sheet that was up. However, the doctor DID wheel over my placenta to show me. (How considerate, doctors are strange.) She told me my placenta was "impressive". It was an anomaly, large and in 2 parts with a vein running in between. They took pictures of it and it may end up in a medical textbook.
The next few days I kept waiting for Siobhán to leave the NICU and come up to be in my room---I had no idea she was going to be there for 2 weeks. After 4 days I had to check out of the hospital and she had to stay. That meant I still was at the hospital all the time visiting her in the NICU, just without the comforts of my own little room to retreat to for naps. Making me exhausted. In the NICU I found beautiful displays of the goodness of human nature. There are tiny 1 pound babies in plastic boxes that are being cared for and although they are too delicate to hold all of the time, their mothers sit next to them for the entire day caressing them through the hole in the box and talking and singing to them. They will probably have to do this for 6 months. There is also a harp player who volunteers her time to play music for these little cuties, wheeling her harp from room to room. Although Siobhán was technically "premature" at 36 weeks and 4 days, she was a giant compared with most other babies in the NICU. At a dinner held for the families of NICU babies, me and Michael snuck out as soon as people started to tell the stories about their babies. Would these people want to hear about our daughter's jaundice and initial feeding difficulties when their baby was born with its intestines on the outside of its body or born at 25 weeks weighing 1 pound 1 ounce? Our story was incredibly unhelpful to them, I did not want to tell it. And although we were having a hard time with her being there, I tried as hard as I could to hold back my tears. How could I cry for my situation? Look at the baby next to Siobhán--he's connected to so many wires, has a bandage on his head and I overheard that he is receiving intravenous morphine.
So after 2 weeks she made it out of there safe and sound, but she brought me a little present: MRSA. I'm just guessing that I contracted MRSA from her since I've read that it's rampant in NICU's and gets passed to the mother while breastfeeding. I got a serious breast infection a couple weeks after Siobhán's release. My breast was a hard, red painful mass and I was sent back to the hospital to have it drained of this super-bug called MRSA which requires super-antibiotics. I had to have surgeory and was left with 2 huge open wounds in my breast with a plastic drain attached. The wounds had to be packed with gauze twice a day and I still had to pump that breast of its milk. If that wasn't painful enough, when I got home I began to get an allergic reaction to the antibiotics which caused an itchy rash to develop all over my entire body, well actually it spread from my chest downwards onto my belly and upwards onto my face but it was stopped by getting off the antibiotics and taking benedril just in the nick of time if you know what I mean (think: where are the worst places you could get a rash? Thank you benedril!!!)
Let this be a warning to all: GET AN ULTRASOUND! If I didn't we would have DIED! I have had this revelation about my thoughts on medicine, since I think hospitals and western medicine do so much harm, but at the same time mine and my baby's lives were saved by them. During crisis situations western medicine is great, it's just not great for our everyday preventative health. Like, I'll go to the hospital if I break arm, but I will use natural medicine for my regular day to day health. For instance had I been using preventative medicine I may not have gotten this infection in the first place, I could have taken garlic extract the whole time I was spending in the hospital and perhaps nipped that MRSA in the bud before I even knew I had it. However it got serious and I needed surgeory. Now, since my immune system has been ravaged by antibiotics, I'm taking probiotic pills and Doreen's Immune Tonic. Maybe I'm preventing a further hospital stay from some disease I would have caught now that my immunities are weakened. Anyway, it's good to be alive and healthy.

Going Back Home (less)

2011-03-03T11:48:00.000-08:00

Since I've been released from the hospital early I haven't had much time to write in this blog. We're living in a hostel-type situation with a group full of single older men who have lots and lots of time on their hands to ruminate about the meaning of life, and one younger man who does the same but also stresses about canceled dijaredoo performances and his cats getting influenza. We're on the apartment search which is difficult to do when neither of us have a job--and time is not on our side since the baby is coming very soon. Oh yeah and I'm supposed to be on bed rest still. We'll probably end up living on the outskirts of town in no-man's land, because those apartments will take jobless desperados like us. It's actually kind of fun because we are like outlaws on the run getting a place on the edge of town for a moment. Actually we are like this book I read to Joseph called "The Christmas Story" about Mary and other Joseph going from Inn to Inn and nobody will take them, and finally settling on a barn with a patch of hay to have their baby (Jesus).
Of course if we had have known I would only be in the hospital for two weeks we could have kept our apartment in the Rogue Valley and been all set, instead of winding up broke and apartment-less here. According to my doctors there's no way I could have known--this condition rarely corrects itself. Which is amazing. The way we are looking at it is that although we loved the Valley of the Rogue, it was not on the ocean, and therefore could never have been our final destination. Now although we are not on the ocean still at least there are seagulls in Portland--like God's telling us "follow the seagulls and you'll find your way home!"

The Joys of Delivery

2011-02-08T18:34:00.000-08:00

Staying indoors all day seems very unnatural. I'm starting to feel like a crazy cat lady or something. The more visitors I have the more normal it feels (hint, hint) but there is this strange time in the evening in between checks of my vitals when I don't even see a nurse for like 3 hours and I start to have a real hamster-in-cage feeling. Ordering meals is very exciting, kind of like how it used to feel to order dresses from catalogs on Lopez Island. Maybe it's because I grew up there that I have a special appreciation for anything delivered. Especially food. Because food delivery on Lopez Island does not exist. Right before we left Medford an amazing discovery was made--Natalee Thai--a delicious Thai food restaurant that delivers! Although I've lived in multiple big cities I still find myself with moments of small town ignorance--"but I thought Pizza was the only thing that got delivered!" Oh no...I was thinking that what might make delivery so fun is that it is "supernatural". It's so unlike anything our ancestors experienced gathering nuts and berries in the forest and hunting and fishing. The idea of just thinking about what you want and having it brought to you at your own home is magical and superhuman. No wonder we are impressed by it. If anyone ever wants to dine on the OHSU room service menu I'll tell you exactly what's good and what's not (at least for the vegetarian fair). And I'll tell you how precise you need to be in ordering (they will not assume any condiments unless you specify).
I was watching a program called "Heavy" last night on television. It's similar to The Biggest Loser except it's not a competition. And I was having scary thoughts that I may have to be on that show when I get out of here...due to this medically enforced lethargy. The funny thing is I was doing so good with weight gain on this pregnancy, just gaining steadily but nothing outrageous. I thought for sure this time I'll be in the "+25 club"! Not the "doctor telling me to lay off the ice cream club". Then bed-rest happened, and I have absolutely no idea what's happening with the weight (they have not weighed me since I've been here...), but it can't be good. Don't get me wrong, that is such a minor detail compared to the more important things. But the point is don't take for granted your ability to walk, and your lack of room service! Doctors are forcing me to sit on my ass right and when I get out of here I'm going to have to make up for it! So don't just walk, run! And make your own food! On a limited budget! And be thankful!

I'll Have My Bread and Circuses This Year

2011-02-05T16:17:00.000-08:00

Last year Michael and I hosted a very special radio program in which we promoted "boycotting the Superbowl", a noble effort to wake up the distracted masses. This year, however, it will be the complete opposite, I will be very interested in watching the entire Superbowl--as I am stuck in a room not able to go outside!!! Can anybody else say they have a better excuse than that for lapping up the "bread and circuses"?! Another thing getting me interested in the big game is that we have the possibility of winning money each quarter since Michael's dad generously bought us a "Superbowl Square"! Each quarter if the scores end in our numbers we could win $600! So I will be ordering extra room service food, and glued to the game, although I'm still unclear on the rules. However, you don't need to know the rules of play to read what the score is at the end of each quarter and check if you won money. When Michael Sr. bought us that "square" he had no idea the events that would soon unfold, that I would be stuck in a hospital room in great need of distraction. And now, fate would have it that the Superbowl is going to bring some excitement into this Bed Rester's life!

NOT Complaining About Bed Rest

2011-02-04T08:23:00.000-08:00

I'm sure most if not all of my readers will agree with this--I can't complain about bed rest and free food!!! (BTW--I've found some good things on the menu, the Southeast Asian Curry is delicious, the salads are surprisingly fresh, and the yogurt parfait is a yummy breakfast item) Yes I feel a little stir craziness starting to come over me but then when I see the same nurse who took my vitals last night before I went to bed take my vitals when I wake up in the morning, AND she has a toddler at home, I think to myself--"she would probably kill for some bed rest!" Last night was the first uninterrupted night of sleep I've had in a year and half. (My first night in the hospital didn't count because they woke me up at 2am to change rooms and then woke me up again at 3:30 am to take my vitals and then again at 4am to put a 'saline lock' in my arm, but they've told me my schedule's changed now so that I can sleep!) I literally slept last night from 10:30pm to 6:15am UNINTERRUPTED, I didn't even have to get up to pee! Joseph does sleep really well now, he usually only wakes up only once, but I find myself still frequently in "war sleep" that half asleep-alert zone in case enemies might attack or something. Like a cat. Except cat's get to war sleep all day whenever they feel like it. I only have a certain amount of time and it would be to my best interest to "regular sleep" so that I can be prepared for battles the next day. I think my war-sleeping is held over from when Joseph was a newborn and waking up constantly to breastfeed, also from when he did that scary newborn sleep that's so still and limp I have to constantly put my hand on his chest to feel breathing or I can't even war sleep. I should realize that at the age he is now--if there was anything wrong in the middle of the night he has sufficient vocal and motor skills to let me know about it. He can now climb up on my bed and stick his fingers in my eyes and whine if he needs me to get out of regular sleep. And as long as the door is closed and there is nothing dangerous in the room I should be able to drift off with no problem. But now we have another little one on the way and I will definitely be back to full-time war sleeping again soon! Which is why if I complain in the slightest bit about this medically-required resting period I will hate myself in 2 months! I will look back on this time and think, "you should have slept all day and night and not gotten up to get a freakin thing you idiot!" or as my Uncle "Al the Sly" told me once: "Sleep is one of life's greatest pleasures and don't let anyone take it away from you."

In the Hospital Zone

2011-02-02T19:57:00.000-08:00

I was thinking of starting an entirely new blog concerning this hospital stay--I'd call it Hospital Time or something...but then I thought, 'why would I not write about this in the Alia Trip?' After all this is a big part of Alia's Trip---I can't confuse my 3 loyal readers with a new web address! And I can't betray the dignity of this blog by omitting a most important chapter!

The baby and me are totally healthy. The most likely outcome of this adventure is that I will sit around for 2 1/2 months with nothing to do, occasionally getting poked and prodded and then deliver a healthy baby girl at 36 weeks via C-Section. I have internet, TV, a phone and a room service menu I can order as much food from as I want. (Don't get too jealous yet--I've already ordered 2 meals and it is nothing to write home about! Maybe I'll learn what to order...not the vegetarian lasagne or the garden burger that's for sure...I have a theory that they keep the food bad here to keep stir crazy inmates like me from packing on the pounds.) Anyway, thank you Oregon Health Plan!And thank you modern medicine...you actually save our lives sometimes! Wow.
I know you're probably thinking...what happened to the Rogue Valley? The Rogue Valley was such a perfect place for a family of gypsies to try to plant some roots. Well, we got uprooted. And this time it wasn't by our own will, it was by God's. There is no hospital in the Rogue Valley that can handle somebody with my condition, they don't have enough anesthesiologists working in case something went wrong. Their anesthesiologists go to sleepy-time. The one's here are up 24 hours a day.
So we had to load up our Caravan once again and hit the road, we tried to settle down but it just wasn't in the cards for us! Gypsies don't plant roots, they send out spores.
Me and the baby girl are well cared for and lounging around like two Green Valley retirees. The boys, Michael and Joseph have the toughest job--navigating and figuring out a new town without Mama. But I know they'll be fine, they already found their way home from the hospital and Joseph rode on the bus sans stroller like a big-shot. He's been a Texas boy, a country boy and now he's going to have to learn to be a city boy.
You know what always makes me smile and laugh at our petty adult hangups about the comforts in life? Thinking about how happy Joseph is just to be anywhere! Like we're all worrying about where they were going to live while I'm at the hospital and then it occurred to me, if Joseph just had a couple cardboard boxes to climb into and put on top of his head he wouldn't care if he was living in the 4 Seasons Hotel or in somebody's walk in closet. And I think that's an attitude we all should try and hold onto.

The National Dishes of Poor Countries

2011-01-17T20:17:00.000-08:00

Shopping in the BTR (Better Than the Rest) organic/natural food section can run through the foodies fast. The food money ran out pretty quickly this month so rice, beans and potatoes were on my mind. Suddenly I remembered the best tasting rice and beans I'd ever had in my life were when I was in Nicaragua. I couldn't wait for breakfast, lunch and dinner--even though it was always the same thing! Those beans were freakin' delicious! What was it about them? So I decided to google: Nicaraguan Beans. I found out that Nicaragua's National Dish (I didn't know country's had national dishes!) is Gallo Pinto--"Rooster Beans". So I decided to make it and find out if it tasted like the delicious beans of my memories. Result: Most delicious beans I've personally ever made and almost as good as my memory.
So I got to thinking, what are other country's National Dishes? And I should make them! But I should probably stick to poor countries because their National Dish would be something that fits my budget right now. Something based on a good bulk item like beans or potatoes, and with no expensive ingredients. And something that is a lot of bang for your buck. Sorry France, I'll make crepes next month. Not that crepes are really expensive to make--they just don't stretch for 4 days like a big pot of beans does, providing you with the cheap, filling nourishment you need when you've come to the end of your Oregon Trail.
Here are some examples of National Dishes I might be making in the future:

Ireland: Colcannon--mashed potatoes with kale or cabbage.
Ukraine: Borscht--Beet root soup.
Egypt: Kushari--rice, brown lentils, chickpeas, macaroni topped with garlic, vinegar and spicy tomato sauce.
Bulgaria: Kacamak--cornmeal, potato and feta cheese and paprika. Served with milk. (Ok feta is an expensive ingredient, but the recipe actually said feta was optional)

I am pleasantly surprised to find so many countries with vegetarian National Dishes! And although I won't be making them, I admire some of the non-vegetarian Eastern European National dishes. For instance:

Bosnia: Bosnian Pot--which is a soup of meat and various vegetables. The recipe is impossible to define as there are so many variations. (Whatever you have in the fridge at the time!)
Poland: Bigos--another meat and vegetable stew with no set recipe. The meats may include pork, ham, beef, veal, sausage, venison and whatever leftover meats you have, and it may be seasoned with pepper, caraway,juniper berries, bay leaf, marjoram, pimento, dried or smoked plums and other ingredients.

Some National dishes that are my favorite foods:

Israel: Falafel
Thailand: Tom Yum Goong--soup of lemongrass, lime juice, fish sauce, chili peppers, with shrimp.

Some National Dishes I will never eat:

China: Peking Duck
Austria: Weiner Schnitzel

All this information is from Wikipedia. The internet is the best cookbook.

Valedictorian Speaks Out Against Schooling

2010-10-26T21:05:00.000-07:00

Go girl! What I would have said if I got good grades and was the valedict-whatever. I bet they didn't even know how smart you were and now the school faculty's like "oh shit." I could write a lot more on this subject but just wanted to post that video for my readers as soon as I saw it. That girl rocks!

Eat A Pumpkin This Halloween!

2010-10-24T12:55:00.000-07:00

Pumpkin is good food! And this time of year I see a lot of good food being wasted on festive porch displays. That Jack-O-Lantern could make you like 3 pumpkin curry dinners or a big pot of pumpkin-carrot-ginger soup that would last you a weak. It could also be used in many different deserts besides just pie (cookies, tarts, pumpkin ice cream, etc...) And hello...pumpkin seeds! Pumpkin bread. Baked Stuffed Pumpkin. (Remember we eat squash right? We don't carve squash into a mean looking face and stick it on our porch. Pumpkin is like better tasting, less stringy squash.) The point is pumpkin is a BIG CHEAP FOOD. (It's 19cents a pound right now at Fred Meyer) It goes a long way and is delicious, nutritious and versatile. And ORANGE which makes the food look as good as it tastes! It's poor people's best friend in the fall! And unlike other foods that are a lot of bang for your buck--potatoes, rice, beans--it's not available all year long so you have to get it while the gettin's good! The gettin's good right now...but for those in the know it's even better after Halloween. When all the food wasters have gone home to their rotting pumpkin heads. After Halloween stores practically pay you to take home their surplus pumpkins. And then, sadly, after like a month of eating orange food pumpkins are gone and you have to wait until next year. Don't miss out! EAT a pumpkin this Halloween!!!

Mullet Land

2010-08-06T22:47:00.000-07:00

Ok I'm aware that laughing about mullets is SO beginning of this millennium. But I didn't write this recently, believe me, I wrote this poem when mullets were hot! Actually, before they were hot..when they were up-and-coming. But that's besides the point--I have been tediously dismantling my facebook account for the past 3 hours, (with Michael's help of course) by deleting every post I ever wrote. (we switch off) That is the only way! We've looked into it! There have been lawsuits against facebook and they still won't ever permanently delete anyone's account, the only thing you can do is tediously delete everything, although I'm sure it's backed up somewhere in their creepy databases, at least it's kind of gone. Reading through and deleting all my old facebook posts is like a sad journey through shameville. But amongst all of the self-absorbed, superficial and irrelevent, who cares? updates of my everyday goings on I found one thing of substance:

Let's go down to mullet land,
The place where dreams are made.
We'll pick a mullet flower,
And watch a mullet parade.
And when we're tired from the day,
We'll sit by a mullet stream.
We'll watch a mullet sunset,
As i tell you my mullet dreams.
Because you are my mullet love,
I'm happy as can be.
You've stolen my mullet heart,
And i feel wild and free.

'Mulletland'
by A. A. DuMonde

Back In the Promo Game

2010-07-03T11:41:00.000-07:00

Being a promotional model is possibly the greatest entry level job in the world. The pay is between $16-$25 an hour and the work is so easy I could have done it when I was 4. Also, at the end of a shift you are practically forced to load your car up with boxes of the free stuff you were promoting. It could be iced tea, it could be dog food, it could be cans of some new poisonous energy drink, it could be gum, but whatever it is, you'll have too much of it and can give it to your friends. You'll also have a paycheck for like $150 for the easiest work day you've ever had in your life.
The only thing you might have to surrender in the promo game is your dignity. You have to sell out. So if you're alright with that, it's easy effin money. I recommend this job to anybody who's good-looking and doesn't like to work hard. (Question: why should good-looking people work hard anyway?)
I did this job in Seattle and it was a great little side gig. But because I had 2 other steady jobs, I was forced to turn down a lot of promo work. At the moment however, with no other employment to speak of, I plan to be a full-time promotional tycoon. This summer, wherever there is a free sample, I will be the one handing it to you; wherever there is a table in the mall where you can sign up to win a free car, I will be directing you towards the little slips of paper; wherever there is a teenybopper mall concert series (Shop Till You Rock 2010, I'm already signed up! :) OMG LOL ) I will be handing out the free goody bags; wherever there is a new perfume to sample, I will be spraying it at you without your permission. See you there!

Family of 7

2010-06-05T12:41:00.000-07:00

A few days ago we went to The Grange Co-op--the place to see and be seen in Farmville--and picked up 4 baby chicks that were born on Tuesday, June 1st (Geminis). A striped Ameraucana, a blonde Ameraucana, a Rhode Island Red, and a Barred Plymouth Rock. So we are now a family of 7.
When I was pregnant back in Texas and me and Michael were both working at Freshens--the poorman's Jamba Juice--Michael remarked: "Now we're really working class. Before we were just DINKS." (double income no kids) Well now that we have chickens I feel that we're really Gypsies, before we were just a traveling family. Picture this: the next time we move there'll be (at least) 7 of us loaded into a caravan, and 4 of us will be flapping around and laying eggs. We'll probably have a lot of plants in containers that we dug up and are hauling with us, and maybe a chicken coop strapped to the top of the van. That's more like it.

From left to right: Cynthia, Dolly, Katie, & Liberty

Going Rogue

2010-03-26T15:32:00.000-07:00

How did a few gypsies end up living on the Rogue River in the Valley of the Rogue and going to Rogue Community College? By moving to one of the most beautiful places in the country/world--Southern Oregon!!! I have long known of the beauty and charm that the great state of Oregon has to offer. I love me some Eugene. But I had no idea, until now, how much more gorgeous it was down South. This is real farmville down here---when you drive around it's like farm after farm after farm. And the greatest thing is--I'm pretty sure nearly all of them are not weirdo genetically modified "pharms". Check out this documentary called--"The Future of Food" if you want to know what I've been having nightmares about.

We had big plans to work on one of these sweet farms. We got an internship on a farm/"intentional community" up in the Siskiyou Mountains. April-October we'd live in a little cabin and help with the growing of all of the community's food. No electricity/living up in the wilderness with some hippies who call themselves the "Stewards of the Land". It was a cool deal but doubts arose when we realized that the drive up to the farm was a 4-mile, skinny, windy, steep, unpaved road on the edge of a cliff. I guess now that I have a baby I'm more keenly aware that being 2 inches from the side of a cliff is being 2-inches from death.

With doubts emerging about "the road that should be less traveled", we put a word out to the lovely website we call "St. Craig"--better known as Craigslist to see what we got back as far as places to rent in the Rogue Valley. St. Craig, as he always does, middle-manned our communication with God and provided us with more than we ever could have hoped for. Beginning April 1st the O'Connell/DuMondes will be moving into their very own 2 bedroom/2 bath trailer (but believe me it's a big, nice one) with lots of garden space, fruit trees and our own chicken coop! And just to make up for that year in burning fires of hell--I mean Texas--we have our own washer/dryer! No lugging our shit down the road no more baby! The place we're renting is actually it's own separate little fenced in "compound"--(I'll just call it that, since we have a garage and 2 outbuildings, it's a "compound") but it's on the property of a sweet old couple's farm that we get to work on for part of the rent! I LOVE St. Craig! He helps us with places to live, jobs, rides, buying and selling (or giving away) furniture, finding somebody to take over our lease when we need to split, everything that gypsies need, he provides. For free.

So if you need us, we'll be in the Rogue Valley. We have an extra bedroom and plenty of food.

Alia Trip Census 2010

2010-03-11T11:15:00.000-08:00

Please take a moment to scroll down to the very bottom of this blog and participate in a mandatory survey. In order to best serve my readers I need to be able to acurately categorize you into specific demographics.
It occurred to me recently that I have never participated in the U.S. Census during my adult life. I guess I've moved around so much that I've unintentionally managed to avoid it for 7 years. My common-law husband, Michael has avoided it all of his adult life too. I never thought about it until recently when a close family member of mine became a Census worker. I realized that our family is part of the uncounted minority of travelers.
When I read King of the Gypsies by Peter Maas in high school it sparked my imagination. I realized that there was a whole world of Gypsies traveling through this country that I didn't even know about. And I mean real-deal Gypsies. I mean Gypsies from a long family line that speak family languages and that have managed to fly under the radar and preserve their own unique culture. You won't find these people on a census, there's no way of knowing how many of them there are, but they exist.
As our country becomes more and more of a police state (check out some of the legislation that was just passed about indefinite detention of American citizens deemed "enemy belligerents", I feel so free!) it makes me happy that I've managed to avoid being counted in the yearly round-up. Uncensured Gypsies Forever!

---It has just come to my attention, thanks to one of my well-informed readers, that the census is only taken once every 10 years. Ok, so it's no feat I avoided it for the past 7 years! But guess what, I'm not taking this one, so I won't be censured! No CENSURING ME!!!! HA HA HA!!!

2 Dozen

2010-03-08T14:40:00.000-08:00

Happy Birthday me! I can almost say I'm in my "mid-twenties" but still can claim to be in my "early twenties". In one year I will be allowed to rent a car. I have traveled around the sun 24 times.
I am happy to report that life seems to pass by not too fast and is filled with a lot of happenings. When I look back over the past 24 years I remember many adventures, a lot of which are cataloged in this blog.
On this birthday I have to make some confessions: We snuck some Guinness cake and Young's Chocolate Stout into the alcohol free vegan raw foods high and shitey hippie house we're living in. The cake is in a plastic container which may or may not be recycled. Joseph is wearing a (gasp) disposable diaper. We bought some antibacterial soap and left it in the communal bathroom. (When approached about "maybe not buying any more of that..." did not remove it, just turned it around so label was clearly displayed. Western Family) I flushed the toilet when it wasn't absolutely necesarry. I went wild and ate cheese. I lived!

Oregon Friends

2010-03-03T19:51:00.000-08:00

Why is the state of Oregon so magical? And the people so wonderful? Is it because there is no sales tax? Or because 75% of the state is protected national forest? Is it because it's sandwiched in between Washington and California like the feta-avocado-smoked salmon filling in between two pieces of wholewheat sourdough? The Alia Trip has been trying to figure out this mystery on and off for some time. Now, armed with a Dodge that can take me anywhere, I'm back at it!

Seagulls migrate inland from the Oregon coast during the winter. They settle in Eugene, Oregon--a town friendly to hobos, bums and seagulls alike. With no fish or clams to hunt, they scavenge for free food in a town where you don't get any funny looks, just tips and conversation. There's no preening of feathers here, no competition with those vane & crafty cormorants. It's a safe little stop on the hobo train.

Eugene is a vortex. A friendly, lovely, comfortable vortex. It's swallowed up countless travelers. There is no "just passing through" Eugene. You'll be back, and back again, and again. Or maybe you'll just never leave. I know I worked in a hostel there. I saw world traveling gypsies become settlers in that little town. Pitch their tent and then start building a barracks around it. Once you get there you start feeling this pulling--come to the light! Stay! You must summon the strength of a Dodge motor to continue on with your previously made plans for further travel. Which is what we did. Further on to Ashland!

In the beautiful Rogue Valley (Valley of the Rogue) sits a little town continuously giving a shout out to William Shakespeare. You are surrounded by mountains here, and the speed limit never goes over 25 mph--nice for us new-to-the-off-island-driving drivers! But actually speaking of driving--I tottally drove our asses here! So that handicap of not being a good off-Lopez driver is slowly but surely becoming a handi-can. Except for when I forgot to turn the lights off last night and killed our battery. Love the triple A!

Dodge Love

2010-02-19T08:25:00.000-08:00

It's very cosmic that another Dodge has come into my life. My first car was a Dodge Dynasty, a dark blue automatic shark of the road, queen of the highway, she was gorgeous! Those of you that experienced the passenger seat know there was no place more comfortable, and more fit to your needs. The seat could be adjusted up-down-backways-frontways, and reclined to your liking. I lost my Dynasty due to circumstances which were--I was leaving the country and my mother refused to let me keep her in the driveway while I was gone. I tried to sell her for months, but as she is priceless I was forced to give her up for free. The fast talking man that was the lucky recipient told me he was going to send her down to New Mexico to ride for the rest of her days on the Native American Reservation. Nice...I thought. The warm weather will be easy on her bones, and she's been to New Mexico before, she enjoys the South West. But behind my back he sold her to another Lopezian which I discovered a year later. That's fine, but I don't know why he felt the need to lie about it. No bullshit story was necessary. I was leaving in 2 days and would have given her away for free to anyone, he just happened to call first. Whatever. The people he sold it to were meant to have her, she wasn't meant to retire to the Southwest just yet.
I have had an empty place in my heart ever since I lost my Dodge--until I got another Dodge. Now the empty place has been filled with more love, Dodge love. Dodge owners know what I'm talking about. I got my new Dodge, a Dodge Caravan for $700. I bought her from a man who had recently lost his wife to Cancer. He had used the van (with the seats removed) to transport her to her doctor's appointments since she could lie down in the back. When we came over to look at it with little baby Joseph he asked, "what day was he born?". "August 29th" I said. "That's the day my wife died," he said, "New life." That's a sign from God that we were meant to have this car, I thought. And that we're on the right path.

Dodge Love.

If You Want Me, You're Going To Have To Find Me (I'm Not On Facebook)

2010-02-08T16:55:00.000-08:00

I should have done this a long time ago--I canceled my facecrack account. But like a lot of addictive things, you have to reach rock bottom before you can give it up.
Quitting Facebook forces you to look at life in a whole new way. Instead of receiving praise for every little thing you do, (example: Alia DuMonde bought the Lopez Village Market out of Frank's Red Hot AND Tazo Awake Tea! LOL! YAY food stamps! Nicole Malinoff likes this.) you are forced to view your accomplishments for what they truly are--triviality.
Over the past couple of days I've had many moments where I achieve something (like shaving 3 minutes off my running time for a mile) and think: Facebook update! And then I realize I no longer have an account and think, who can I tell? Facebook is turning us all into egocentric assholes. But the worst kind of egocentric asshole--the kind that really cares what other people think. If 5 people like that you finished all 5 seasons of The Wire on dvd in under a month, that doesn't make it cool. You still spent a lot of time sitting on your ass in front of a television.
When you quit Facebook, the creepy engineers behind it have designed a guilt ridden farewell in which your best "friends" photos are displayed with messages that say: "But Zoey will miss you!" For a second I feel bad. Then I remember that Zoey exists outside of Facebook world and I still have her phone number and e-mail address and we'll both be on Lopez this summer. She's not gone from my life simply because we can't share our trivial accomplishments in a public forum.
So if you want me, you're going to have to find me. I'm not posting every move I make on a public controlled forum that is really a CIA database in order for the government to discover new subversives to ad to their ever growing terrist (I spelled that wrong on purpose--no data mining MY blog!) watch list.
In very un-Facebook style I'm posting some unflattering shots of me and Joseph from back when he was about a week old. These would so not make it onto my Facebook. But they can make it onto my blog. I like these--they capture that sleep deprivation of the first month of motherhood so well you'd swear the photographer was a professional documentarian. (Me and Joseph have gotten our look together since then) Hey--you know how facebook had "doppelganger" week and everybody found flattering shots of movie-stars that they claimed to look like? Let's have unflattering photo week on our blogs! I LOVE photos that are so bad they're good.

The Rumbling of Jets is Rattling My Brain

2010-02-04T08:51:00.000-08:00

That's a video I shot a few days ago of a C-130 spraying some kind of chemicals in the sky (there were no forest fires that I know of) on a rainy day and then the chem trails it left behind the next day, a clear day. But that's just the straw that broke the camel's back with this whole thing. Since I have been back on Lopez the last couple of months military jets have been flying all day everyday all night every night--I am NOT exaggerating!!! And they are LOUD--they rumble in the sky like some doomsday noise of the rapture, like a monster come to eat us, like we're in a war zone (we're not, are we?). I know there's a military base on one of the other islands nearby but I have never heard this many jets, and it's pretty much rattling my brain. Not to mention a weird (experimental military?) aircraft that has been been spotted by multiple people. A large low-flying vehicle that doesn't look like a plane but more like a car flying in the sky with "stadium lights" -- that's what a lot of people have described. But they don't fly their experimental planes in the middle of the night--no they fly them at 6pm, when people are getting home from work, when a lot of people can see them. SO.....do they WANT us to see them? Are we being conditioned to live in a war zone? And what are those chemicals they're spraying on us? Those are the important questions the Alia Trip is trying to answer, I'll get back to you if I find any answers.

Have Babies, We Could All Fit In Texas

2009-12-17T09:03:00.000-08:00

My bog quality could go down, cuz I'm typing with one hand. In the other hand I hold the heir to the throne, the future of the DuMonde/O'Connell dynasty, the legend, the chosen one, the one the only, The Baby Joe. He came here all the way from Texas. A place that could fit all 6.7 Billion of us with a house and a 3 by 3 foot lawn for everybody. And if we all crammed into Texas, "we'd have that whole rest of the space freed up for other stuff."-- Guy on youtube. It makes you wonder why there is so much starvation and poverty in the world. Overpopulation? I don't think so! If we could all fit in Texas why can't we grow enough food in the rest of the space? Because we're using the extra space for bullsh$#, and because we're paving over good land and making golf courses and strip malls out of it and polluting it, and growing one kind of food in a spot when we should be growing more kinds of foods. So when some college educated "experts" tells you that "overpopulation is the greatest threat facing our environment" tell them Alia said that "Everybody's welcome to the party, and if more people show up than expected we need to mix up some more gaucamole. We have enough avocados!" In fact--if we had more people at the party they could help make the gaucamole!
Baby Joe has a onesie he received as a gift. It has a picture of a little tiny footprint on it and says: "my carbon footprint". I like this. Because there is this new thing going around about "carbon footprints" and I've even been seeing articles about how the more kids you have the bigger your carbon footprint is--in other words--the more kids you have the more you contribute to global warming and the destruction of the planet. WAIT---did I just read that?! Are you shitting me? Here at the Alia Trip we LOVE BABIES!!! And we know that they could ALL FIT IN TEXAS!!!
i don't have as much time now to articumalate myself and form well-reasoned opinions that are bullet proof, but maybe this BOG or BLOG will be more stream of consiousness now because I'm writing in 5 minute nappy times and not in the 2 hour coffee times (I can't have coffee anymore--because of breastfeeding--Joe will get HYPED UP!!!) of the past. But I'm gonna keep the flow no matter what the hellz....so ENJOY!

Red Bull and What It's Meant In My Life

2009-07-02T08:06:00.000-07:00

Pregnancy is a special time of many joyous moments: seeing the first ultrasound, feeling the baby kick, wearing big elastic waist pants... But it is also a time of many sacrifices. For the health of the growing baby pregnancy insists that you give up some of the things you once held dear in your life. For me, that means saying goodbye to the Mojito, the Espresso, and the occasional Cigar. But standing above all of those things on a special golden and bejeweled pedestal, is my dear old friend, the can of Red Bull. Going without it's fizzy goodness and inhuman energy boosts for 9 months has been difficult, but has afforded me a special opportunity to reflect and appreciate even more deeply it's special magic and what it has meant in my life.

Red Bull has allowed me to survive and thrive in situations otherwise humanly impossible to go through with a smile. I know Britney knows what I'm talking about. Ever notice how when she was going through a divorce and losing custody of her children that red and blue can was never far? And in my bar-tending days, Red Bull allowed me to work a 10 hour shift on 5 hours sleep, and not even be tired at the end of the night! But in addition to making difficult situations feel like a breeze, Red Bull also has a special power to make already happy days absolutely fantastic. Sometimes when having a great day, I'll grab a can of Red Bull to make the day even more joyous! Red Bull can also be used as a powerful weight loss drug by speeding up your metabolism. Red Bull allowed me to lose 20 pounds in a few weeks. Following a strict diet of 1-2 Red Bulls a day, and as many bowls of rice, avocado and black beans as I wanted, I shed that extra weight that always happens when I stay on Lopez for too long. Note: that probably isn't very healthy, but it works. However, I did ask a medical student at a party in Seattle if he thought drinking 1 or 2 Red Bulls a day was healthy, and he said YES. If that isn't a solid recommendation from somebody in the medical field I don't know what is.

I know what you're thinking, all this sounds highly addictive. And yes, Red Bull and other energy drinks can leave you feeling like you're missing something when they're gone. Everybody is addicted to caffeine, let's just get that out of the way. Whether it's coffee or tea, who doesn't need that boost of artificial energy in the morning? But the problem with Red Bull is that it is not just one caffeinated drink which can be substituted for another. When you're on the Red Bull wagon, there's no stopping at the cafe, you need a RED BULL, and nothing else will satisfy.

This is why although I am a huge fan of the Red Bull, I understand that it's potency, just like all medicines, must not be abused. Use Red Bull when you need it, when you really need it. (You'll be glad you waited because you won't have to buy as big of a can to get the affect) OR--use Red Bull when you are sure that you will have a few days of leisure coming up to detox from it. Or in an extreme case, like with our friend Britney and her custody battle, use Red Bull throughout a period of your life just too difficult to get through by natural energy sources. Getting off Red Bull can leave you feeling down and out. But if you used it for the right reasons, it's ultimate affect on your mental state will have been worth it. If you just worked a busy shift last night and then came home and didn't go to sleep right away because you knew you had the next day off--only to be called in the morning by a frantic coworker or boss saying the restaurant is going to EXPLODE if they don't get another person in--WHO CARES about whether or not it's an addictive harmful substance--have a Red Bull and thank god it was invented!

Broke Moment

2009-05-03T17:41:00.000-07:00

With the recession upon us, and unemployment and underemployment rates rising, many of us are experiencing more than just our usual broke-ness. With our hours being cut mercilessly and a "full-time job" becoming the new American Dream, all of a sudden that 98 cent loaf of bread isn't looking so bad, hours spent hand-washing is worth it to save $4 at the laundromat, and that kid you see working 40 hours a week at the Whattaburger has overnight become a "lucky bastard".
During this time of economic turmoil, we may experience these and other "broke moments". A moment when you do something or think something so out of your usual character, that you laugh at your self for having a "broke moment". A broke moment could be stealing a light bulb from your apartment hallway when yours dies out, coming up with weird new combinations of whatever food you have left like a burrito sans cheese or corn chips dipped in strawberry jam, or it could simply be a moment when something breaks and you have absolutely no plans for replacing it.
I experienced one of these moments a couple of weeks ago when the air mattress me and my boyfriend had been using as a bed, POPPED and began to sink slowly to the floor like a leaky boat. First we tried the insanity method--blowing it up again and seeing if it would stay blown up, over and over again getting the same result. Finally we surrendered to our fate--sleeping on the floor.
Now this wouldn't be so bad if this was the first air mattress we had that had popped. But this was the second. I have now learned that air mattresses are not meant to be used as regular beds, you can't stand on them to fix the light bulb, and you should do everything you can to try to maintain equal weight distribution.
After a couple of night's unsatisfying sleep on the floor, we realized we needed something soft to sleep on, but another air mattress was out of the question. Out of the question, too, was buying a new mattress--$200 at this moment of joblessness? I don't think so. But even after three restless nights my brain was still functioning enough to come up with a plan--post an ad on Craigslist describing our dire circumstances in the hopes of getting somebody's old mattress for free or cheap!
Here's the ad we posted:

PREGNANT COUPLE SLEEPING ON THE FLOOR--NEED MATTRESS WILL PAY $25

I figured $25 was generous for something I see people abandoning on the side of the road all the time. Saving them from having to pay disposal fees, plus an extra $25? That's good for us, them, AND the environment!

But it just so happens that there is a woman patrolling the Craigslist "Free Stuff" and "Wanted" ads, seeking out poor innocent people like us to unleash her judgment upon, and her name is BEVERLY.

This was the first e-mail we received from BEVERLY shortly after posting our ad:

So, get a full-time job -- easy remedy! There are

plenty of jobs out there but you first have to be

willing to work. If you can't even afford a mattress

on which to sleep, how will did you EVER think

you'd be able to support a child that will be here

in only 4 months??? The last thing you need right

now is a mattress -- the first thing you need is a

job. Wake-up and get going.

This is what I wrote back to her:

Hi Beverly,

Of course we are willing to work. The reason we are only working part time right now is because it is very difficult to find full-time work at the moment. My husband (Ok so I lied--we're not technically married yet--but when you want to get through to people like BEVERLY it's best to speak in a language they can understand) is doing everything he can in between the hours that he does get at his job to find a full-time job or another part-time job. I on the other hand, am not looking for full-time employment because I am pregnant, and after the baby is born I am not going to stick my child in day-care all day to continue with my career. (OK maybe that was a little judgmental on my part, but I had just recently worked a job in a down town daycare where I saw business women dropping off their INFANTS for 9 hours days/ 5 days a week, and I was a little disturbed by it.) We were not asking for charity with our posting. Lots of people have unwanted mattresses that they end up dumping on the side of the road. We offered $25, I think that was a reasonable offer for somebody's unwanted used mattress which we would pick up ourselves and save them garbage fees or the hassle of bringing it to a thrift store.

No, we can't afford to buy a new mattress for $300 at the moment. We thought putting out the word that we are looking to buy a used mattress on Craigslist was a smart, thrifty, and GREEN thing to do. I'm sorry if it offended your narrow-minded consumerist mentality.

God Bless You.

Alia

A woman who always needs to have the last word, this was BEVERLY'S reply:

I understand what you are saying, but please try to

understand what I'm trying to say to you. I too am of

the understanding that it's best to have a stay-at-home

mom -- that's how I raised both of my sons who are now

29 & 27 and outstanding businessmen -- they each own

their own businesses so they have turned out well. The

point I'm trying to make is that there are hundreds of

full-time jobs out there -- none of which may be of your

exact choice or choosing, but it's a full-time job and that's

what pays the bills and what gives you free, or cheap

insurance. Right now, BEFORE the baby comes, YOU

could likewise get a job. I worked right up til two weeks

before our first son was born....I wanted us to have the

extra money. You've got almost 4 months in which to

work and bring in money for the extras that you'll surely

need with a new baby -- including a mattress for you.

But you say, who will hire a pregnant lady? Get on

Craigslist offer housecleaning services, or window-washing,

or help with "spring cleaning" or babysitting within the area

where you live....be creative...find something, anything, that

you can do to make extra money. You can do this -- you

just have to be willing. I'm in hopes that someone will come

through for you with a used mattress -- that wasn't the reason

I wrote -- it was to tell you that jobs are the main thing right now.

This is what I wrote back to her:

What you're saying is preaching to the choir. We are looking for jobs and being creative. Because we were being "creative" enough to look for a deal on something we need on Craigslist rather than buy it new, you have made certain assumptions about our work ethic which are wrong.

You probably have never had a job as a house-cleaner, because if you had, you would know that it is not the right job for a pregnant woman. I worked as a house cleaner for two years,

and standing on your feet, bending over at the waist and inhaling chemicals for 8 hours is rougher than a lot of people realize until they actually do the job themselves. It's not like cleaning your own home where you can go at your own pace and don't have a deadline.

Here's my husband's assumption. He's assuming you're sitting on your fat ass all day, looking on Craigslist and God knows what other web sites, on your company's dime. He assumes they're paying you good money. He assumes it's very wasteful to be paying an employee to surf the web on the clock, sending negative, judgemental e-mails to strangers. He assumes you don't know what real work (labor intensive work), is. He wishes I could get a cushy job, and get paid to surf the web while I'm pregnant, it would make for a really low stress pregnancy.

God Bless

Do not judge, so that you may not be judged. For with the judgement you make, you will be judged, and the measure you give will be the measure you get.
-Matthew 7:1-3
(Bible quote! In your face BEVERLY! You wanna talk jive? I can talk jive!)

BEVERLY wasn't done yet! This was her reply:

Unfortunately your husband is WAY off base! As a

matter of fact I own my own business (since 1982 --

do the math, that's 26 years!) and it's quite successful

so indeed I do have time for fun things to do -- my father-in-law

passed away leaving us tons of items of which to dispose; my

mother recently died leaving us tons more things of which to

dispose so I search Craigslist EVERY day, morning and

evening to see what I have that I can give to people in need.

I have no mattresses left or I would have obliged you. I recently

posted a "kitchen item" giveaway on Craigslist and had 35

people respond within less than an hour -- I then bagged up

what they requested on their wish list and gave the stuff to

them; a few people had requested things I did not have on

hand so I asked our church group to supply those and then

when things were still needed I went and bought things new

at Family Dollar. I give this stuff away because the Lord has

MORE than blessed us financially; my husband has worked

for the same company for 38 years and both of our sons have

their own businesses; one for 10 years; one for 8 years -- they

chose not to go to college but instead to follow in my footsteps

as a self-employed person. They too do well so perhaps it's

the both of you who need to work at the phone company?

If you have need of other things it might be that I have some of

the things left to give to you -- no baby things -- and no furniture

left; I gave it all away to a half-way house, to a drug treatment

facility, and to a lady that was starting a house for alcoholics.

This was our reply:

We were never asking for something for free, but if you are giving things away to other people you should give freely from the heart, without making negative, presumptuous, judgmental comments. There really wasn't any good reason for you to waste our time by sending us an e-mail to read without the offer of a used mattress for SALE!

God Bless You,
Alia & Michael

p.s- We just purchased a futon last night ($25 from craigslist). The man was so happy some one was able to pick it up for him, so he didn't have to rent a truck.

BEVERLY would never let up! She came back for more with this reply:

I do not take offense. I know my heart. I know I have

given away literally thousands of dollars worth of stuff

that belonged to my in-laws and now my mother -- I

have still MORE to give -- that's why I wrote asking if

you needed anything other than a mattress. (But she never offered us anything--look at her first e-mail)

I objected to, and in my opinion rightly so, was that

you mentioned both of you were part-timers and you

were 5 months pregnant. Sometimes young couples

need to wake up and see what is needed -- no big deal;

there are plenty of others to which I will give things away.

Who knows, you may wind up with some of it anyway

if you read the free ads all the time -- as I clean out one

room at my mother's I offer the stuff for free. I wish you

the best.

That's when I got bored of writing to her, it was amusing for a little while, but we had job-hunting to do! By the way we did end up with a great mattress, offered by a kind gentleman with a lot of lawn ornaments and no "helpful advice", I make more money now selling designer jeans on Ebay than I would in a stressful part-time service job, and Michael found a full-time $12/hour (Great for Austin's cost of living) air-conditioned cushy office job.

By the way, when somebody is actively looking for work--the most enraging and absolute LEAST HELPFUL THING that you can say to them is "You really need to get a job."

Live Long and Prosper

2009-03-26T18:14:00.000-07:00

It all started with a digital camera and a dream...
A dream to escape the hell that is being an entry level employee in a corporate fast food chain, and to make money doing something that I love. Shopping.

Let me give you a taste of my former employment with SODEXO: selling people inferior products at ridiculous prices, being told to continue serving peanut butter after it has been recalled, being told to relabel the dates on food that should have been thrown out weeks ago, being constantly talked down to by a**holes that feel you owe them respect despite their complete lack of respect for you, having your hours cut every week because their crappy business idea is failing and doing it all for minimum wage.

No thank you.

That is why I have recently begun selling vintage and designer clothes on Ebay. Why did I never think of this idea before, you may ask? I have no idea. But I finally purchased a decent digital camera that plugs into my laptop, and started working for myself. Selling people great products at whatever they feel like paying (Ebay is an online auction, so the customers name the final price). Being completely honest and not relabeling anything, and only being talked down to by myself when I kick my self in the ass for realizing later that I passed up a great find at the last thrift store.

I've only been at this for a couple of weeks, but so far I have had regular profits, like turning over a lot of $2 buys for $10, and two major successes. My first was a Star Trek uniform t-shirt that cost me a dollar. I thought some trekkie out there would surely need it, and then lo and behold four trekkies got into a bidding war and I ended up selling a little old t-shirt for $41 !!! My second success was recently finding a pair of Citizens of Humanity jeans for $2 at the Salvation Army. I'm waiting until Sunday to put them up, but these are $250 jeans people!! And very hot right now!! Which means they can go anywhere from $50 to $150 used on Ebay!!

Kiss my butt SODEXO!

It's Not Peanut Butter Jelly Time Anymore

2009-02-04T11:01:00.000-08:00

Was anyone else feeling like "you don't know what ya got till it's gone" with the recent peanut butter recall? I was! Although I haven't been an avid consumer of peanut butter of late, during the past few weeks when it was nowhere to be found in respectable super markets, I found myself craving the nutty spread, singing the song "peanut butter jelly time" over and over in my head and planning all of the creative ways I would use peanut butter once it was declared safe to eat again by the FDA. Peanut butter on a rice cake, peanut butter pickle sandwich, peanut butter banana smoothie, spicy thai peanut sauce, chocolate and peanut butter and a good old fashioned peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Mmmm...and how excited was I when I noticed peanut butter's reapearance on super market shelves on Monday? Very. Why, we've even got the famous "Peanut Butter Energizer Smoothie" back for sale at the smoothie place I work at on the UT campus. Excellent. But wait...my attention to detail and distrust of the company I work for (SODEXO) leads me to look closer at that tub of peanut butter only to discover a label that clearly reads....
JANUARY 3RD!!! Is that the same tub of peanut butter my boss was supposed to have disposed of 3 weeks ago during the recall? It can't be!
I ask my manager James, he's a bit slow and tends not to know what to reveal and what to conceal when it comes to sketchy company policies.
"James, did Michael (not my Michael, big boss man Michael who is by the way polluting the name Michael) give you a new tub of peanut butter or did he just give you back the old one."
"He gave me back the old one." James says cluelessly.
"How does he know it's not contaminated with salmonela?" I ask.
Blank stare.
"Isn't the point of a recall to throw the stuff away, not to put it on a shelf until after the recall and bring it out again?"
"I don't know." James said and just like that my peanut-butter cravings themselves were recalled, thrown away, not put a shelf to be brought back out later, but thrown away to be newly purchased when we live in a world free of cheap petty corporate greed!

HERE'S A VIDEO TO REMIND YA'LL OF THE GOOD OLD DAYS

Valanda: Mystery Woman

2009-01-28T07:59:00.000-08:00

About six months ago my boyfriend Michael got a new cellular telephone and new number in Seattle, Washington. When he signed up for the month to month plan with 600 any-time minutes and free nights and weekends, there was one feature attached to the phone that the helpful salesperson at T-Mobile failed to mention. His brand-new telephone number wasn't brand new at all. In fact, the number was well-known throughout both Seattle and Tacoma and had once belonged to a very, very popular and sought after woman named Valanda.
The first call Michael got for Valanda came from a deep-voiced man who persistently asked "Valanda there?" and kept repeating irritatedly that he had "met her at the club, the CLUB!" Calls like that continued to pour in about every other day.
For about two weeks we thought the man asking for Valanda was the same man. Someone Valanda had snubbed and given the wrong number to at "the Club". This man is pathetic! We thought. He won't let go of his dreams of a date with Valanda even though she obviously gave him the wrong number that one night they met each other at "the Club". So Michael did what any good citizen would do, he gave the guy on the other end of the line an earnest talk. "Look man, you met Valanda at the club but she gave you the wrong number. This isn't Valanda. The girl gave you the wrong number man. Sorry."
But the calls continued for Valanda. Day in and day out. There was no stopping this man in his pursuit of Valanda.
But when a call came in from a Tacoma area code it was finally obvious to us that it had been different men calling for Valanda every time. They had all met her at "the Club" and were very interested in seeing her again. I pretended to get on the line as Valanda a few times, but aparrantly I sound nothing like Valanda. The men were never fooled. They know their Valanda.
Although not quite as frequent anymore, we can still expect a call for Valanda about once a week. Now that we're in Texas, when we see a number coming in from a 206 area code, we can be pretty sure it's a "Valanda call".
Who is this Valanda who's graces are known far and wide by the men of the Emerald City and fair Tacoma?

Hounds of Hell

2009-01-11T08:37:00.000-08:00

The Greyhound bus-line has historically been the cheapest way to get around the country if you don't have a car. It has also been known to be the funnest. Ex-cons used to be able to swap prison stories while freely sharing a bottle of whiskey across the aisle and sharing in a bus-wide drunken sing-along of classic Elvis tunes. But now instead of the feeling of liberty that comes after getting released from prison, the feeling on the Greyhound these days is more akin to the suffocating powerlessness of being sent to prison.
In recent years with gas prices skyrocketing to over four dollars a gallon, Greyhound has subsequently raised its fares, and following suit with the airlines, begun to charge fees for overweight or extra luggage. But as gas prices fell--did we see a drop in Greyhound ticket prices? Did we see them do away with charging for overweight or extra luggage? No.
There used to be saying among Greyhound riders-- "Well, that's Greyhound, ya get what ya pay for!" The sketchy bus-depots that smelled like pee, the uncomfortable seats that didn't always recline during your nine-hour overnight bus-ride, the sign written above the ticket counter that promises riders "Your ticket does not guarantee travel", that was all fare when you could get from Bradenton, Florida to Seattle, Washington for $69.
But today that same ticket will set you back $237 and your dignity. Not only have fares gone up, but quality of ride has sunk to an all-time low. If you do make it all the way from Bradenten, Florida to Seattle, Washington with all the luggage you put on the bus, and without getting left behind at one of the stops, count your lucky stars.
Drivers and staff on the Greyhound are getting meaner. I've taken several Greyhound trips in the last month and been yelled at by the guy at the ticket counter for asking a simple question, and by the driver from the second I got on the bus. The entire Greyhound experience is one of groveling shame. "did you hear how late our bus is going to be?" I whisper to the person next to me, too intimidated to ask one of the employees lest I be shouted at again and risk not getting on the bus at all. Without a clue I wait outside in the freezing cold Oklahoma City air as a bus marked "Jefferson Line" pulls in. Everyone is wondering if this is our replacement bus, but noone dares to ask. The driver steps out and says rudely. "I can only fit ten!" The small group of people that had gathered feel priveleged. Our bus is two hours late but at least we have a seat on it! (That is if you get a seat. Greyhound has less busses now, and less scheduled routes, and has recently begun allowing overflow passengers to sit in the aisle. But believe me, Greyhound riders that are allowed the privelege of sitting in the aisle rather than being left behind to wait for the next bus, feel like they just hit the freakin lottery.)
Once boarded, passengers are subject to the Greyhound driver's infamous pre-ride rant. "No smoking, no drinking, no talking on phones, not even in the bathroom! If I can hear your conversation you're TOO LOUD!! And I WILL kick you off my bus!"
Before stops there's the usual warning: "We'll be taking a FIVE-MINUTE break in Asheville. Be back on the bus in FIVE-MINUTES or I WILL LEAVE WITHOUT YOU!!"
I can understand the reasoning behind all of these requests, but being yelled like we are little kids on a field trip is hardly the respect I feel Greyhound rider's deserve. Greyhound riders are broke people without options. Even though prices have risen they still don't have the money for a plane ticket, and they don't have a car. Greyhound-riders are many times on the way to a funeral or to visit a sick loved one in the hospital, and with no other option they are forced to ride "The Hound".
But Greyhound drivers run the gammet of rudeness. I've had a driver that didn't say a word, not announcing a single stop or telling us how long of a break we had. Then yelling at us for tearing our tickets off before giving them to him. (By the way--on the Greyhound ticket there's always a ticket stub, but I have never, NEVER been allowed to keep it. What's up with this?)
The Greyhound used to be a dirty, old but lovable dog that got you to your destination as quickly as it could. Now it's a mean attack dog that has got you by the balls. Why does it matter my loyal readers? Because when broke Americans without cars need to get somewhere it's Greyhound or nothing. And when you're on the Hound, being disrespected and talked down to and messed around by the staff is just part of the game, you're forced to take it in stride or risk being LEFT BEHIND in some Greyhound stop on the outskirts of a mysterious town with no other country-wide bus-line in sight!

I'm a Youtube Star!

2008-12-05T14:02:00.000-08:00

Whattup people? I've been more into youtube-ing lately than I have been into blogging. But it just occurred to me that I never gave my loyal blog readers my youtube channel address! How rude of me! Here it is:
http://www.youtube.com/user/southiebysouthend
Help me become a youtube star! So far my most popular video only has 184 hits, that's LAME!
Part of the failure of my older videos may have come from the updated version of imovie HD, which is not in fact updated--but purposefully OUTDATED. They actually made the newest version of imovie not be able to do as much stuff as the old one because they thought a movie editing program that's FREE should not include as many features--so they took a lot of the features AWAY!! You can no longer speed up or slow down clips, or extract audio and edit the audio and many other things!!
But thankfully I have a computer genius mom that loaded my laptop with the OLD imovie so that I can return to making master pieces. Did you know that the amazing documentary "Tarnation" was made entirely on an old version of imovie? I guess the people at Apple didn't like average citizens being able to make brilliant peices of art on free software--so they dumbed imovie down!
Anyway, my latest video: Sunnyside of the Street was made on the good old imovie. Watch my videos and help me become a youtube star!!

Yuppies Everywhere

2008-08-25T13:36:00.000-07:00

Am I the only person in this city who is OUTRAGED by the amount of construction going on? I would like to lodge a complaint but I don't know who to lodge my complaint with as these construction sites all seem to be different company's individual projects. My First Hill neighborhood is a mess! Walking down the street in a straight line is impossible, I'm constantly forced to zig zag the different construction sites, only to find that the road I needed to cross is completely blocked off and I need to backtrack and walk around. And is it just me--or have pedestrian walk signs been getting less and less friendly towards walkers--taking their sweet little time to let you cross their precious path?
The worst part of all this construction is that 1.) It never ends--once one building is complete another is in the works and 2.) All they're building is more condos for yuppies.

I wrote a little song about it, you can invent your own melody as you read it, it goes like this:

Yuppies Everywhere (First Hill version)
by Alia DuMonde and Michael O'Connell

You were just a hole in the ground
When we first got to town
And now you're getting taller and taller everyday
The re-bar is going up
And the cement is being poured
And I can see that you're gonna have many, many floors
You're gonna be condominiums, a comfortable little abode
But what will your new tenents think of the convicts across the road?

CHORUS:

(Booming voice:) ARE THEY (Operatic soprano:) Gonna shut down the food bank and the work-release program?
(Back to normal:)Cuz one thing about these yuppies thay just don't give a damn
(Booming voice:) CAN WE (Operatic soprano:) Pick through your garbage without you calling the cops?
(Back to normal:) Maybe we'll get lucky and find a thrown away laptop

There'll be new boutiques and cafes cuz you're bringing your own vibe
But what are you gonna say to the homeless under I-5?
When my rent goes up in my tiny little studio flat
Will my landlord care that it's still infested with rats?
Location, location, I didn't know you had your little yuppie eyes on First Hill
This is just the place where bums and drunks like to chill

CHORUS:

(Booming voice:) ARE THEY (Operatic soprano:) Gonna shut down the food bank and the work-release program?
(Back to normal:)Cuz one thing about these yuppies thay just don't give a damn
(Booming voice:) CAN WE (Operatic soprano:) Pick through your garbage without you calling the cops?
(Back to normal:) Maybe we'll get lucky and find a thrown away laptop

You're movin to my hood cuz now its the new up and coming
It might not look like much now but you'll bring the class and money
But no matter how much your condo cost no matter what you say or do
There ain't no difference between us
And you'll (Big finish:) HAVE ROACHES Tooooooooooooooo

Yes You'll HAVE--ROACHES---TOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

p.s. This song is a sister song to "Yuppies in the Mountains, Yuppies Everywhere" by Michael O'Connell.

Bobby Fischer Report

2008-08-22T13:06:00.000-07:00

I was asked to write this report after a friend of mine repremanded me for calling myself a chess player and not knowing anything about Bobby Fischer.

Alia DuMonde
Chess Hist 294
Prof. Nate
May 20th ‘08

Bobby Fischer:

March 9th 1943- January 17th 2008

The Most Bad-Ass Chess Player of All Time
By Alia DuMonde

Crazy enough, Bobby Fischer was born on March 9th, only a day after Alia’s birthday. Also crazy, Bobby Fischer was born in Chicago, Illinois, where Alia’s whole family is from. So just as we’re getting started, he’s already cool.
Like every cool Chicago Pisces kid, Bobby learned the rules of chess age six. Except actually he was living in Brooklyn, New York by then, where he joined the Brooklyn Chess Club at age seven. When Bobby’s mom would say, “It’s nap time Bobby.” or “We’re going to the dentist today Bobby.” Bobby was known to reply, “No! I’m going to play chess at the Brooklyn Chess Club!” and he would take his tricycle and just beat it out of there. That’s how he got so good, by being a little persistent badass from day one. Also he had a strict pre-game regimen of one apple juice box and three elephant shaped animal crackers and two lions.
This defiance against parental figures and obsession with chess may have contributed to his mother’s getting fed up and skipping town when he was sixteen and leaving him in their Brooklyn apartment to look after himself.
"It sounds terrible to leave a 16-year-old to his own devices, but he is probably happier that way." His mother wrote in a letter to Bobby’s absent father. Turns out his own devices were genius ones, and so he dropped out of high school saying that school had little to offer him. Indeed, the chess club at Erasmus Hall High School (the same high school Barbara Streisand went to) sucked.
Ok, I forgot to say that when Bobby was twelve he joined the more prestigious Manhattan Chess Club, so he was bumping elbows with the likes of Hermann Helms and Arnold Denker (whoever they are). He started playing lots of tournaments and he became the youngest ever person to be awarded the title of National Master. At age fourteen, he became the youngest US champion and that record still stands to this day. (He was also the U.S. Champion a total of eight times—in eight attempts!) When he was fifteen he became an International Grandmaster and did you know what also happened that year? His stupid mom forced him to go to school so he missed the Olympics of chess!
"Chess is war on a board," Bobby once said. "The object is to crush the other man's mind."
Indeed, through what could have been a mixture of abandonment issues from his mother and father, and stir-craziness from spending his formative years obsessing over a board game with a bunch of old guys down at the local chess club, Bobby became an arrogant little bastard. He’d show up late to major tournaments, insist on flattering lighting while being filmed and make incendiary remarks about the nationality of whoever he was playing.
Jim Slater, the rich British guy who financed Bobby Fischer’s glamorous life of chess said, "Fischer is known to be graceless, rude, possibly insane. I really don't worry about that, because I didn't do it for that reason. I did it because he was going to challenge the Russian supremacy, and it was good for chess."
Oh yeah he said that thing about the Russian supremacy because Bobby played a game against a Russian guy and beat him, bad. Although he had bad ass moves on the board, Bobby also played dirty off the board. Opponents were often frazzled and unsettled by his erratic behavior at tournaments. He’d say stuff like, “I can’t play with these commie cheats!” and then eat his animal crackers in the middle of the game and drop crumbs all over the board.
Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, president of the World Chess Federation, called Fischer "a phenomenon and an epoch in chess history, and an intellectual giant I would rank next to Newton and Einstein."
In 1972 Bobby became the first ever World Chess Champion born in the United States when he beat Spassky in a little town called Reijavik, Iceland. The Fischer-Spassky match, at the height of the Cold War, took on mythic dimensions as a clash between the world's two superpowers. "It's really the free world against the lying, cheating, hypocritical Russians," he said. He then drank two apple juice boxes in succession and stormed off.
In 1975 he dropped out of competitive chess and went on to pursue his true passion—being a reclusive traveling eccentric who resurfaces in a different country every few years to make offensive public statements. Other famous chess player Kasparov said that Fischer's early retirement was a great loss to chess as he retreated into "his mental self-exile."
In 1992 he resurfaced to be a cocky bastard and play a chess game against his favorite person to beat, Spassky, in a country we weren’t supposed to go to at the time because there was a sanction against it, Belgrade. After doing this he got his U.S. passport revoked—REVOKED!! Making him the Grandmaster of Bad-ass. Can you believe it? Who gets their passport revoked? Bobby Fischer does.
After years of making anti-U.S. public statements such as praising the 9/11 attacks and saying, "I want to see the U.S. wiped out," Bobby was arrested in 2004 at a Japanese airport for traveling with his already revoked U.S. passport. Japan detained him for nine months while he fought deportation to the United States. In March 2005 Iceland invited Fischer to live there. Yay Iceland! Japan released him, and he promptly renounced his U.S. citizenship and became a happy citizen and resident of Iceland.
In Iceland he invented a new kind of chess game he called “Fischerandom”, where he randomly mixed up all the pieces on the chess board before starting to play. "I don't play the old chess," he told reporters when he arrived in Iceland in 2005. "But obviously if I did, I would be the best." And I bet he was the best at Fischerandom.
Sadly, he left us just a few months ago due to kidney failure. Now he’s up playing Fischerandom in heaven.

Alia Trip Book--Almost Here!

2008-08-19T17:00:00.000-07:00

I am far enough along in the process where I think I can safely tell you all what I have working on, and why I haven't been writing my blogs very frequently, without JINXING it! For the past year I've been working on a book--a coming of age adventure set in London--which is almost done. ALMOST--for the following reasons: I don't have a freaking computer and the library only lets me log on for an hour and the internet cafe is too freaking expensive and I'm not a student this summer so i can't use the college computers!! Otherwise this thing would have been done like--6 months ago!! I know I sound whiny and all you old people are probably thinking--why can't she just hand write her stories like in the good old days? The answer: I'm generation Y people, I have to cut and paste when I write and handwriting moves slower than my genious brain moves and it's frustrating. Nevertheless I HAVE purchased a notebook and pen and tried this old fashioned thing called handwriting. I've been forced to by neccesity. My routine for the past few months has been to painstakingly hand write a chapter or two, then transcribe what I've handwritten onto the library computer, than copy and paste it into a draft e-mail. This draft e-mail has been getting larger and larger as my book is almost done. One day--soon--I'll copy and paste this draft e-mail onto a word program, print it out, and the world will be changed forever!
Stay Tuned!

Short One: I'm a Selling Machine

2008-04-17T12:58:00.000-07:00

I'm happy to see Non-Boring Football (soccer) gaining more popularity in the USA, I'm happy that Mexico beat China in the game held in Seattle last night, but even more importantly--I'm happy that I sold $765 worth of overpriced candy in three hours! If you calculate that out I'm a $255 dollar an hour selling machine, the likes of which have never been seen in the candy-tray hustling business! Of course I only get to keep 15% of that total, but anyway I kicked ass. I will expand later on and tell you all about my techniques, but at the moment I'm pressed for time....

Think Pink

2008-02-23T14:03:00.000-08:00

A comment by one of readers has inspired me to send out a message. Nobody is ever too old to wear pink! Nobody is ever too anything to wear pink!
A couple months ago I was going kinda crazy and not in the best mood, and shopping one day I realized that I was not gravitating towards pink as I normally had before, but buying darker colors that reflected my state of mind. When I went home I realized my wardrobe had become a nearly pink-free zone, an unheard of catastrophe! I had even changed the background of my blog page from pink to blue! So I began decisive action, intentionally shopping for pink as I never had before. My intentions then caused pink to come into my life naturally, when my secret wheatie sent me a box full of pink things, my roomate gave me a pink hat and offered to trade me her pink umbrella for my black one, and I found a little pink-haired doll in a supermarket parking lot. But the most alarming event was when I opened my eyes and realized that the club I had been working in for months was entirely pink, with wall, carpet and table cloths all pink--just a suttle classy pink that I hadn't even noticed before!
I also want to say, that while I believe that other colors also have inherint magic when you wear them--the reason I stress pink so much is because I think it has gotten a bad rap and people don't incorporate it into their color-diets as much as they should. Although the color pink has the power to give you peace of mind, and make you feel happy, most men refuse to wear it! Even women not wanting to appear overly feminine refuse to wear it! Its generally considered too-much to wear multiple items of pink at the same time! Why do most people neglect this important color? According to www.holistic-online.com,
"Pink is a soothing color on all levels, physical mental and emotional levels. It can be used to soothe conditions of anger and feelings of neglect. Pink can be used to awaken compassion, love, and purity. It can be used in meditation to discern greater truths. It is comforting to the emotional energies of the individual."
Anyway, I know not everyone likes to drape themselves in pink from head to toe like I do, but just as an experiment, I want my readers to go to a thrift store, find a pink hat or a pink scarf, wear it around for a while and see if they don't have a great day!

Does Shit Need To Happen?

2008-02-22T12:06:00.000-08:00

Imagine this: You're trapped on an elevator with thirteen other people. It's getting crowded and hot in that little prison cell as you await the elevator repair man who has been stuck in traffic for half and hour. What is the worst thing you can imagine that could happen in this situation to make your already claustrophobic experience be even more hellish? I want everyone to think about it for a minute, what's the worst thing?...thinking...thinking....
Well, for those of you that said a retired military vet with a bad temper takes a shit in the corner, then that is exactly what happened when I was trapped in an elevator last week! We were trapped for an hour, but this guy couldn't hold his shit in for more than 15 minutes, he squats down, proclaiming that he was in the army for thirty years and peeing and pooping in front of other people is normal for him. Meanwhile all of us young college students are crowding into the opposite corner and holding our noses and laughing uncontrollably in disbelief. Is this really happening? People are asking. Am I in a dream?
It was one thing when we lent that guy a bottle to pee in, I felt bad for him, like, this must be the most embarrassing thing that's ever happened to him. "We understand, if you really gotta go", we had said. But then, not a minute after his pee time we all turn our heads believing him to be finished, when without warning he drops trow and shamelessly takes a big poop on the floor.
I know that everybody poops, but there's something unnatural about doing it in an elevator.

Never Becoming a Hipster

2008-02-22T10:18:00.000-08:00

Some hipster just almost killed himself with his own ipod right across from me. The ipod went flying when he tried to sit down and he nearly lost contact with his hipster music and was almost thrust into an unsoundtracked world where sometimes outsiders approach you to say something. But luckily his earphones never came unnattached and he didn't have to suffer that grim reality. Anyhow it reminded me of something that's been very important to me ever since I moved to Seattle.
Ever since I've come to Seattle I've been trying to make a consience effort not to become an Urban Hipster. Not that I'm assuming that I ever could become a hipster, just like the Jehova's Witness lady explained to me at my door, "There are many steps, even if you wanted to become one, you might not be able to." But nonetheless I've been taking extra precaution, because sometimes I have this thing where I unconsiencly adapt to my environment. Sometimes its good, like in London where everyone dresses well and gets their hair done by proffesionals regularly, i'd like to think I adapted to that environment. But adapt to hipster style? Never. I will avoid being overtaken by hipster disease just like I succesfully have avoided "Good Customer Service Voice" disease(or good customer service for that matter) at my chain super-market job.

Here are some of the precautionary steps I've taken to avoid becoming a hipster:

1. Not wearing an ipod in public. Or, if I have to wear an ipod in public, its pink and I'm playing Shakira.
2. Shopping at Ross rather than Red Light.
3. NEVER drinking PBR or any other hipster approved cheap beer.
4. Listening and responding when people are talking to me. (Saying "right on" doesn't count.)
5. Being enthusiastic about things!
6. Pink. pink. pink.

I think those six things can help anyone living in Seattle who is trying not to sink into hipsterness, and they are generally good rules for life.
I love everybody and I'm happy! BYE!

It's A Two Red Bull Day!!

2008-01-12T16:07:00.000-08:00

Some days go so well, I feel like celebrating by getting buzzed on not one but two red bulls! By the way, whoever came up with the recent idea to make a bigger sized can of Red Bull, I love you. The old can of Red Bull was too small. Today was a "Two Red Bull Day" because I didn't have to go to school or work, I got a package in the mail (from my Secret Wheatie!), my Aunt Marylin called to tell me she's taking me to Las Vegas for my birthday/spring break, and I went to an audition for an independent film about champion pie-eaters. I was trying out for the female lead, the girl that two rival pie-eaters duel over. The director told me he wanted to do it, "in the vain of the Karate Kid, but instead of Karate--pie-eating". So who better to play the girl that two pie-eating champions fight over, but ME? That's what I thought. But we'll just have to wait and see whether they want me to be in the movie, or whether they want their movie to not be sexy. Anyway, regardless it was fun to audition, get back in the actressing game, and drink two Red Bulls to celebrate.

My Easy Job

2007-11-30T13:03:00.000-08:00

Life at the Club is a trip. I won't mention the name of the club I work for, as I like to respect my employers anonymity in this blog so that I can tell-all without being discovered. No matter what I say about it, this job is still the easiest $15.25 an hour that I ever made in my life, and I literally am getting paid to stand around and look pretty. But the best part of it is, my boss takes what we do at the club with the utmost seriousness, thanking me profusely for the work I did refilling wine glasses and delivering the pre-set dinner (No menus in this waitresses paradise!) for that one table of eight I kept my eye on for four hours. How amazing that you've learned how to carry a tray! And it's beautiful the way you've learned not to clear plates until everyone's finished!
But even though we are performing the same easy rituals over and over, they are precise rituals which must be performed with rigid accuracy. At first I thought, why would these old rich people even notice how I poured the wine, that my tie was straight, that I served the ladies first, but made sure to serve the host last? But apparantly while dining in their all-pink ballroom these discerning ladies and their husbands do notice, and although they don't speak to you, they report back to the management about little things they discerned about the help. One fellow employee was taken aside yesterday, apparantly the woman she was serving actually had to pour her own glass of wine at one point, the waiter failing miserably in her job to recognize when her guests glass was getting low.
I realize that in order to be an enlightened human being I should try to do away with certain stereo-types which are being reinforced for me every day at the club. Although this all-white, all-republican group of upper class heirs to family fortunes are exactly what I expected them to be (boring) I feel that it would do me more good to try to have compassion on them rather then my first impulse which is to hate them. One breakthrough in my quest of acceptance came last week near the end of a function. It was coffee time and in my utter boredom I began to examine the way one woman was going about her coffee drinkage. In the way that she prepared her coffee with cream and sugar, stirring it delicately with her little spoon and letting the liquid drip off her spoon at a precise angle, she was following a precise ritual with rigid accuracy too. It made me realize that although they are on the other side of the plate so to speak, they are just the same as "the help". Having cocktails, eating dinner, attending functions, and chatting pleasantly with each other is their job, which must be performed with the same seriousness and attention to detail that they expect out of the wait staff. Put that in your glass of Pinot Noir and swirl it.

Drag Along Back-Packs, A College Epidemic

2007-11-07T18:31:00.000-08:00

Don't get me wrong, I am all for the drag-along. I often see people in the airport carrying a giant akward backpack or heavy un-wheeled suitcase, and I wonder--why do they wish to suffer? There is something much easier out there people, wouldn't you rather stroll through the airport, without a care in the world, your things wheeling themselves behind you, rather than struggling with fifty pounds on your back? Come on people!
But I do have a line that can be crossed, and the drag along back-pack seen frequently on college campuses has wheeled itself across that line. Vacations, travel, yes. But day to day purse-replacement? That is just lazy. While I adore the drag-along suitcase, I despise the drag-along back-pack! Especially when there is nothing in it but things you could carry in your hands. While the drag-along suitcase serves a necesary purpose--to relieve your back of things that are too heavy to carry, I believe that the drag-along back-pack aids in the degeneration of muscle tissue, and after frequent use on college campus leaves you unable to even lift a regular back-pack (should the situation become unavoidable) leading to the inevitable "drag-along text books" we can look forward to in the future.

Fancy Pants-Two Legs up on Success

2007-10-24T18:02:00.001-07:00

I want to spread the good word, but I don't want to spread it too far. I figure not enough people read my blog to totally ruin this secret, and like The Mason's shared their secret Masonry technique with only their select group of devotees, together we'll share my "Fancy Pants Secret To Success" within this tight little group.
To those of you born and raised within wealthy or classy professional households, this may come as no surprise whatsoever. It may be rooted in your being to dress apropriatly for job interviews and like second nature to shop at Ann Taylor. But to me, this has been like a revelation I need to record here and now as a divine answer to some of my questions. (Why didn't they call me back about that job?)

Through much trial and error I finally realized that the degree of the fanciness of my pants and shoes, was directly related to the interview/call-back ratio that I have been experiencing in my Seattle-wide job hunt.
Fancier the pants? More job prospects. Period.
Part of my U.S. culture is to think that jeans are appropriate wear for any occasion. For job interviews I thought wearing my "nicest" pair of jeans and a nice shirt was enough. Wrong. The day I went out and bought business-womany black fancy pants and a pair of pumps (inspired by my room mate who works in a law firm), I got offered a job on the spot for my next two interviews.
As another divine testimony read my friend Nicole's recent blog entry: "Business Casual Part ll: When Charm Attacketh!"
Nicole went through the same series of events that I did. Trial testing "nice" jeans and "my favorite pair of corduroys" with no success on the job front. Then I told her my secret. I said, "Nicole, you gotta to try this new technique. Go out and buy a pair of black fancy pants and a pair of uncomfortable shoes. You'll get the job."
She did. And so can you, with this new proven technique that I am sharing with my readers.
"But it's wrong that people judge other people based on the way that they dress." you say.
True. I think it's sad that someone who may not be able to afford a pair of fancy pants (or doesn't yet realize that they need them), but is a perfectly good worker, will have a much more difficult time finding a job. But whatever your views on the issue are, it's good to be aware of the facts and use them to your advantage. Time and time again, fancy pants=job.

Like Selling Candy To a Baby

2007-10-24T17:39:00.000-07:00

Top ten sentences I thought I'd never be able to say:
"I've seen every game this season" is one of them.
But come this new year when the football season ends, although I still don't understand the rules, I will have seen every Seahawks game in the season.
Hustling the field with my wares is hard work but really good hustling practice. I like selling candy because I can fit more product on my tray and I don't have to refill as often as other products. Also candy is something people always want even if they don't "know" that they do yet. Hold that tray under their nose for a couple seconds, and they'll want something. Yes, some people do change there minds when I state the ridiculous price.
"A snickers Bar for four dollars? Do you think I'm out of my mind?"
But that is the point in the conversation when I say,
"But it's King size, and it's the best Snicker's Bar of your life, trust me."
Another way I up-sell candy bars for four dollars is by being hot. That's right, I said it. Being hot makes selling candy to drunk football fans f-ing easy. It's like selling candy to a baby.

Being a slashy

2007-10-18T21:22:00.000-07:00

So I got a job at a Mexican slash Italian Restaurant in downtown, where I work as a bar-tender (mainly Margaritas) slash waitress. I like the place because it's super casual and it's an icon of cultural exchange being a Mexican slash Italian Restaurant, two kinds of restaurants you go to when you feel like eating a lot. My boss, a short Italian Grandpa also feeds homeless people that drop by and we donate a portion of our tips to a girl's orphanage in Mexico. Also people are nice there. The customers and the employees. So don't mind the fruit flies, I pretend they aren't there and it's a really nice place to work.
Also, I like having multiple jobs and being a general "Slashy".

Collecting Part Time Jobs

2007-10-12T13:15:00.001-07:00

Hey yall! I'm back! I'm gonna try not to take such a long hiatus this time. I have recently been blessed with a 2nd part-time job. This one could be quite profitable.
Anyone into football?! Not me. I don't even understand the rules, which is fortunate, as this way my eyes will be on the prize, rather than on the game.
This Sunday, while football players are taking three long hours to run and play with each other, I will be hustling the 67,000 people in the audience. Candy, water, popcorn anyone? I'm excited for this job because I'm working on commission, making 15% of everything I sell, which means I got to hustle! I also suspect this job to have possibilities of overly generous drunken tipping.
The training session for this job was quite a sight. It was a random assortment of young college kids, carnies, and the road-weary hungry for money temporary job set. One shower deprived middle aged man attempted to impress us all with his vast experience.
"I've done festivals, worked the carousels, carnival games, you name it. I'm a sales guy!"
When he realized that the managers were desperate for people and would hire anyone, he changed his tactics.
"Man, if I get you four guys, we drive down here from Kansas City, Missouri, split the cost a gas, work a couple games---could you give us a place to stay?
It'd be worth the gas if we had a place to stay man. I could pay off debts on the way back!"
I may have only qualified for Math 84 this quarter, but man, that's just not good financial planning if you ask me. Not that you should ask me to plan your finances. But that gives me an idea, I think my next blog should be titled, "Alia's Financial Planning Advice".

Discerning Women

2007-10-10T17:33:00.001-07:00

She's back. And I think god wants me to continue writing in this blog because I have just been offered a new job that could lead to some serious in depth undercover work. I won't reveal any names but I am about to go undercover inside a very exclusive "women's social club" working as a server. All I know about it is that there are 600 members, and they do something inside of a huge mansion which no one outside of their club is allowed to know about. I think it has something to do with playing "bridge". We'll see. My boss said I would have to train before he "threw me out to the wolves". Then he corrected himself by saying, "I mean not to say that they're wolves, but, they're very discerning women." So before he "throws me out to the discerning women" I'll have to learn how to carry a huge silver tray full of plates gracefully so as not to spill anything on the discerning women and be discerned upon and eaten alive on the bridge table. That would be awful.

That Bitch Is Crazy!

2007-07-24T14:40:00.000-07:00

It has been so long since I've written. Sorry for depriving you all of the inside scoop on my adventures. But the truth is, right now sitting on a little floating rock in the Puget Sound, my life is far less dramatic, far more peaceful, however so much less of a travel adventure story and more of an informative brochure about a relaxing vacation spot. Not what I like to read about. In the books that are our lives, is it possible that we sculpt the character and the adventures to suit our own personal tastes for what is entertaining? Seeking out possible disaster scenarios? I feel like that sometimes; after all I can't say that everything that has happened to me has not been from my own doing and my own choices. And to avoid the scary parts would i do it differently if I had the chance? Absolutely not. I'd like to quote my ex-drama instructor in San Francisco who said, "When i go to see a play, I don't want to be like, oh yeah, this is so normal, these people are so emotionally sane. I want to go to a play and be like, That bitch is crazy!" I don't seek out disaster, but i probably do invite it in the front door and ask if it would like some tea. What I seek out is adventure, and the thrill of adventure is probably the fact that it can easily lead to a disaster. Think of the best travel stories you've ever read--David Sedaris hitch-hiking across the United States with a quadraplegic friend in his book "Naked" has always been one of my favorites. The never-ending road, with all of it's possibilities for disaster, and all of it's possibilities for success, is my favorite story.

Clap Your Hands

2007-06-06T12:59:00.000-07:00

What will these kids do without me? Who will tell them (in english) not to chew on the table and what to do if they´re happy and they know it? (f.y.i. clap your hands) I´ve had a real internal struggle going on, do I stay or do I go? Though my personal life has been a made-for-t.v. movie, my career has been an after school sit-com. I believe everything in this life is destiny, and although I got beat up in a plaza, I did get the best job I´ve ever had in my life, and discovered that like everything else I try--I´m a genious at it. So parents be warned, I might just make a career out of this, I´m coming to educat yer kids.

SERIOUS NOTE

2007-05-30T09:06:00.000-07:00

The Alia Trip is having a company crisis. For the past couple of weeks I have been trying to come up with a funny entry about what´s been going on in my life. Because serious is boring. However, reluctantly, I may have to take you all on a new type of reading journey as I write the first ever: Alia Trip SERIOUS NOTE.

I am from hippie stock and small town stock. Similar to Dolly Parton, I believe that ´a river of happiness flows and that´s where love grows....´ etc... Raised on child-hood propoganda like, ´everyone is beautiful inside´ it is hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that some people are genuine assholes.
However, one important person in my life has just stepped out of my ´circle of trust´. That is my boyfriend for the past year and half.
When we were at a big festival for the anniversary of his home town, he got a lot too drunk and I decided to do the right thing by not giving him the keys to the car when he wanted to drive us home. (The Alia Trip believes that friends don´t let friends drink and drive). In response to my suggestion that he not kill us in a car crash, he started to beat me up like a cheerleader in a locker room brawl--a lot of hair pulling and scratching. However, unlike a chearleader, he had the strength to hold me so that I couldn´t get away, and was forced to bust out my yellow belt karate action because apparantly in his home town, even when a man is beating up a woman in the middle of a crowded festival and the woman is obviously screaming and trying unsuccesfully to get away, if he lies to the police that, ´she´s my wife´ they leave you to take care of your own business.
The Alia trip is also experiencing karmic repurcussions at this time. Do you recall last year when I had a little immigration trouble and so I ´lost´ my passport in an Italian dumpster? Well I am now experiencing what I call passport-karma. I went to retrieve my important documents from a lawyers office only to discover that unknown to me they had been picked up the previous day by my ex-boyfriend who now is nowhere to be found. I like to think the best of people´s intentions, but it´s not looking good.
But as I recently told a friend, I´m doing very well career-wise. I recently changed accomodations to live in the upstairs of the kindergarden where I work as the best english teacher in town. The director of the kindergarden is a saint for inviting trouble (my current situation) to live inside of an institution for children. God bless her!
And god bless this crazy rollercoaster of life.

Read more at The Sue Trip, The Real Deal Bolivia

Home-Land News Report

2007-05-15T09:58:00.000-07:00

Alia Trip Home Land News Report: It´s so interesting when I´m in a foreign country and then I get a snippet of news from the home-land. This is probably on every cable news channel 24 hours a day back home, it´s probably in every magazine in every dental waiting room in the united states, but here in Bolivia it was a two-inch blurb in the international section of Los Tiempos, or the sunday paper: Paris Hilton, following in Martha Stewarts footsteps, is another celebrity going to jail! And 45 days, that ain´t no walk in the park. The Alia Trip knows. Fortunately I´ve only done three hours of ´hard time´ myself, that is if you count a stint in the British Immigration holding cell in Gatwick Airport as doing ´hard time´ (I do). However a lot can happen in three hours in any type of holding cell; I traded cigarettes for a home-made blade, then I bet my blade in a poker game and lost it to brazillian woman (deportee) who made me her bitch, then she got deported finally and I organized a gang to start secretly chipping away at the wall behind a poster to build a tunnel of escape, until we found out that our tunnel of escape only led to the interview room, then they gave us sandwiches and tea, then I made a chess set out of the cement wall chippings which I carved into form with my teeth and a marker which i used to draw the chess board on the table, then I organized a chess club, or ´gang´ and we carved skull tattoos on our foreheads, and then the police went through my bag to make sure I wasn´t carrying any explosives and put me on the plane back home. What a three hours! I still have the scars to remember it by. I can only imagine what our beloved celebrity will do for 45 days in a prison holding cell that probably doesn´t provide sandwiches and tea as dutifully as the British do.
All I can say is keep practising that karate, I know it helped me.

Coffee Detox

2007-05-03T11:39:00.000-07:00

I saw a nun on a motorcycle, so my day has pretty much been made. But do you what would make my day even better? If I could find a mother-f-ing Frappacinno. I know you island hippies are cringing at my blatantly typical North Americaness but I´m sorry, It´s a hot day today, I could use a shot of java, and ever since I saw a woman at the ¨U.S. Citizens living in Bolivia¨ conference (By the way our ambassador is a total DUSH BAG and his spanish is worse than mine) with a frappacinno-type drink in a PLASTIC CUP mind you, not a plastic bag with a straw, I have wondered where in the world she found that thing. Is there some secret coffee shop that has to-go cups hiding amongst the fresh squeezed juice stands like a snickers bar in a health food store? I have yet to find it, and I have also yet to find coffee to-go. My request usually brings two eyebrows closer together expressions that tell me without words ¨are you so stupid to think I´m going to put hot coffee in a plastic bag with a straw?¨. To which I kick myself for not bringing one of my mom´s ten or so hard plastic coffee mugs. And the coffee-detox goes on....

Fernando Chess Champion of Cochabamba

2007-05-01T10:10:00.000-07:00

In a brash move, Fernando abandoned his leading role in the Cochabamba Chess Club´s tournament to compete in the University´s tournament which was scheduled on the same day. When asked why he replied ¨if I win at the University I get a free trip to Santa Cruz¨. The gamble paid off, Fernando is the chess champion in the Universidad de San Simon in Cochabamba, and on Thursday he´s going to Santa Cruz to compete with the nation. All the Universities in Bolivia will be there, competing in the Santa Cruz heat for the title of Biggest University Chess Nerd in Bolivia. Despite my distracting influence and insistence that a free vacation is winning enough, Fernando has remained determined that he´s ¨not going there to lose¨ and has been studying like a mad-man, replaying famous chess games throughout history on his little magnetic travel board and finding ¨the solution¨ for the losing side. The chess nerds of Bolivia better get all there fidgeting and eye blinking done before they sit down at Fernando´s table, because he´s not playing to lose people.

I´m Back in the Luxury Sedan

2007-04-24T14:16:00.000-07:00

As I said goodbye to my old dark blue luxury Dodge sedan a few months ago as she sailed away to make someone new´s life more glamorous and stylish (In a 1991 kind of way), I somehow new that we would meet again.
I have met my old Dodge again. In her newest incarnation, she has elevated to Toyota status, she has aquired a more evolved dark green color, and she has 1997 style and luxury. She also has racing stickers and a Bolivian flag on the front bumper.
I´m back in the luxury sedan.
The great thing about Bolivia is that anyone who has a car can be a taxi--in fact almost every car you see driving down the road IS a taxi. There´s not as many annoying laws here, you wanna be a taxi, don´t bother getting any fancy liscence like in the U.S. or buying some fancy yellow car with advertisements on the doors and an official taxi liscence plate, just put a sign in your car that says ´taxi´ or honk at people you see standing on the side of the road. You´re a taxi.
Alia likes that. Last night we made fifteen Bolivianos, enough money for a full tank of gas, by giving three guys a taxi ride from Punata to Cochabamba. We were going that way anyway! All we had to do to earn those fifteen big ones was respect that three people were sitting in the back seat of our car and try to choose music everyone could enjoy.
My old Dodge ain´t sittin´around collecting dust at my mom´s house no more, she´s a little money making toyota now.

That´s What It´s All About

2007-04-20T15:32:00.000-07:00

At the end of my last class today, half-way through dancing the Hokey Pokey, a smile crossed my face as it suddenly ocurred to me that: I´m finally being paid to dance the Hokey Pokey. And as I turned myself about one last time before the day´s end I realized, that´s what it´s all about. That´s what it´s always been all about.
Until now, in all of the various fields I´ve lent my proffesionalism to, dancing the Hokey Pokey was something I had to do on my own, un-paid time. For instance, when I was working in the super-market, in between orders I didn´t even have the time to put one right hand in unless it was to scoop cold pasta into a plastic container to be weighed, and as for shaking it all about? Forget it. That was strictly for the break room or on off hours. (And not to be done in company uniform).
Maybe it´s because my mommy told me I´m a princess, but I feel I am entitled to special priveleges for being cute, and when I bust my ass dancing the Hokey Pokey all day, I expect payment for my work. Finally I have an employer that understands my rights!
And that´s what it´s all about.

Saturday Night Chess Club Review, Cochabamba

2007-04-16T13:21:00.000-07:00

When I was recently in the great state of Oregon I took up the chess game for a couple of months--at first solely intrigued by the cocky attitudes that always accompanied this little board game socially aloof men seem to think is just as serious as any other sport---I kept myself entertained. Then I started to learn the game and realized that none of the players were in reality as grande as their attitudes were. Then I started to think I was as grande on the board as my grande attitude was. (A natural progression). Until I came to intelligent nerd land Bolivia, where the chess competition is much much fiercer than in little Oregon, and my attitude was popped like a balloon and deflated completely in the only five or six moves the players here took to nail my ass in a check mate. Intrigued I decided to go with my boyfriend (who is a chess nerd and not without a big grande attitude of which I have tried and failed to deflate) to see what the action was like at the local hangout for people with frequent facial twitches in Cochabamba, Bolivia.
At first glance I was quite impressed with the clubs ambitious design--consisting of tables with upwards of twenty or thirty boards for people ready for a little one on one action. There was a large wall of framed photos of famous chess players through out history, and a line of framed photos of Cochabamba champions--many of them ten year kids looking very serious and guru-like, chin turned up and eyes down above the board, and even an artistically rendered bust of the honorable chess club president, complete with a pair of large plastic glasses sitting on it´s sculpted plaster face.
As for the Saturday Night action, there were plenty of old dudes playing serious games that other old dudes watched (standard), and plenty of young prodigy kids wandering around with pen and paper jotting down moves and telling adults (like me) why we shouldn´t have moved our queen out just then, and then interestingly one little boy told me (in english) that, ¨the table is yellow¨, and me, being a kindergarden english teacher, gave him a ¨Very good!¨ to which he glared at me (As if I NEED positive reinforcement!) and walked to the next table.
I was happy to meet a middle aged fidgety man, who played Fernando very well but lost, but nonetheless had a good nerd attitude (as opposed to a bad nerd attitude) and went for another round, in which he fidgetally and nervously took five minutes for each move and then lost.
When the reigning Cochabamba champion finally stepped in to play ¨real games¨ for money, he wore a team Cochabamba jacket with the collar turned up, a case of the chess-nerd facial ticks and a big fat attitude.
When I made my way over to use the bathroom, I was pleasantly surprised to find both male (marked by a ´king´ chess piece design) and female (marked by a ´queen´ chess piece design) lavatories. (Male AND female bathrooms--an unecesarry extravegance in any chess club.)
In closing I have to say it was a good Saturday Day Night Chess Club Experience, I liked the well lit room and the decore and the smart nerd kids and the fidgety man, although I could have gone for some snacks. What I learned from the experience however, is that although it was a chess club in South America, it was just as nerdy as any chess club in North America. There are no borders where chess playing nerds are concerned, the square battle rages just as strong from the north all the way down to the south.

$2 An Hour

2007-04-12T08:47:00.000-07:00

Remember when I wrote a blog complaining about the louzy pay at my super-market job in the U.S.? The taxable $8.50 and hour I recieved with bitterness and loathing?
Well, the tide has changed because now I´m making $2 an hour with a smile! I just got a four day a week job at Walt Dizney Kindergarden (It´s as fun as it sounds) teaching english to even more drooling five year olds! The school is decked out in Mickey Mouse posters and signs that read: Let´s Learn English! And by god I´m going to do my best to take those kids under my wing teach them everything I know.
The first day went well for my first three courses--ten to fifteen attentive kids ready and willing to play a ¨hello/goodbye¨ version of the classic ¨duck duck goose¨ and talk excitedly about ¨who is wearing red, and who is wearing blue?¨
Until I got to my finale, the class they oh so sweetly saved for me to teach last. The class of twenty-one four and five year olds in a small room, back at their desks after recess and eating the cake and chocolate milk that this Kindergarden seems to think is a great snack in the middle of the day!
I couldn´t get them to SHUT-UP. In fact I think it was humanly impossible. I panicked trying to decide whether a game of ¨Hello hello goodbye¨ would tire them out or rile them up, or if a drawing activity would calm them down or make them even more restless and wiggly. My lesson became a combination of both and they kept up their screaming without rest.
But I made it out alive and later they won me over by screaming ¨Hi teacher!¨ after class and one girl went through my wallet and counted everything and asked what everything was.

I´m In Avocado Heaven

2007-04-08T12:41:00.000-07:00

As most of you know, avocados are the way to my heart. And when I say I am in avocado heaven right now, I mean it. The avocados here are big enough to cover my whole face if I wanted to hide from somebody, they are big enough to take care of all of my vitamins and nutrients for a month, and they are so big that I could make a whole bowl of the gaucamole of my dreams with just one.
The avocados I am used to savouring in the United States are small and stingy at two to three bucks a piece. Shopping for avocados is a special treat when I feel I can afford them, and a bowl of home-made gaucamole? Please. Maybe when I have $15 (6 small avocadoes plus other ingredients) to spare for a snack item! ¨Should I splash out and buy this small fruit for two dollars and fifty cents?...¨ A question I no longer need to ask! As here they literally grow on trees in my mother effing back yard!
I thought I was hallucinating when I first saw the delicious fruits of the gods hanging from a tree ready to be to picked and eaten by me for no money whatsoever. I think when they planned this country they were thinking of Alia:
¨We´ll make the trees grow the biggest avocados in the world! And we´ll make everyone wear hats!¨
---Country Planners

Bolivians Know How To Rock The Hat

2007-04-04T15:22:00.000-07:00

I want to give a shout-out to my late grandpa, the reason being my grandpa loved hats and always encouraged people to rock the hat. I remember when we used to watch old movies or, movies ¨FROM MY GENERATION!¨ and they would be paused frequently for five minute rantings about how people used to wear hats when they went out to town, and what happened? No one wants to wear a hat anymore?! One particular Audrey Hepburn film lasted a good four hours do to the frequent pausing for celebrations of great hats and mourning of current societies lack of great hats. At the end of the film my Grandpa asked me a very important question, ¨Alia do you like to wear hats?" of course I like hats, ¨Then I pass this task on to you Alia, a one-woman mission, bring back the hat!¨
Although I buy hats frequently, and frequently rock the hat, I can´t say that I have completed my grandpa´s mission to ¨bring them back¨ into current society. I have however done one thing for which my grandpa could be proud. Rather than bringing regular hat wearing (and I don´t mean baseball caps) back into fashion in the United States, I have turned that mission on it´s head by moving to an entirely different country that I can tell you, surely rocks the hat to the extent that my Grandpa would be satisfied with.
This is hat country, there´s large straw hats, and knit hats and my top favorite ¨the bowler hat¨. I love all hats worn, but in my opinion the large straw hats serve a purpose---keep the sun out of the eyes---but the bowler hats, those are worn jauntilly perched on top of the women´s head purely for the purpose of hat wearing with no alterior motives. Bolivia has not sunk to the depths of non-hat-wearing that The United States has, in Bolivia a hat is a necesarry article of clothing worn daily, and I like to think my grandpa would be proud that I´ve moved to a hat-friendly nation.
But as for my one woman mission to ¨bring back the hat¨ in The United States, it´s still on people. And you better believe that when I come back from hat-land Bolivia I´m going to be even more aggresive in my tactics to fulfill my mission. To put it simply: when I come back, you better have your hats on when you´re going out to town.

Just Say NO

2007-04-03T16:35:00.000-07:00

I just got my roots done and got a really nice haircut--and then it got blow dried and styled into a garrish news anchor bob remeniscent of Barbara Walters. But the stylist was so pleased with her finished product, when she asked: "So are you going to the disco tonight to show off your beautiful hair?" there´s no way I was going to let her down with the truth and say, "No, I´m going home to dump a bucket of water on my head." In fact, not only did I say that, "Yes, I love it." But I also gave her a tip. The reason being she had such a winning personality and was so cute (note to self: winning personality and being cute will get you by in life). Also she talked really fast and excitedly through the whole hair experience not seeming to notice that I was only picking up on half of the rapid spanish. Of course I said yes when she invited me and Fernando to play Volleyball, how cute! And then, just at the end, after I had heard about how she had so many friends from the United States (although I didn´t question why? Or from what...creepy missionary?) she invites us to "The Temple", and in my experience it is never wise to go to "The Temple" when the religion is not specified and your invitation to "The Temple" is handed out easily and freely like "Would you like something to drink? Would you like to go to The Temple?" I think...and this is only by process of deduction...that most likely The Temple she is referring to is the god damned Mormon Temple. Those pairs of young gringos that wander the streets here in white button down t-shirt, tie and name tag, looking like door to door salesmen, (which they are). Me and Fernando have invented a game I call "count the mormons" (which is very simple to play and similar to "count the prostitutes"--the game Kelsey and Marco taught me how to play on the country roads in Northern Italy.) We had one very good day for "count the mormons" in Santa Cruz, a damn swarm of them descended on the plaza, we couldn´t count high enough in each other´s languages, basically if "count the mormons" was a carnival game, that day we won the big stuffed animal. (and his seven stuffed animal wives)
I am making fun of a religion right now, and it´s ok because 1) free speach and 2) freakin mormons plague me everywhere I go on this godforsaken earth. They followed me home every other day when I was going to college in Washington because I lived right next to their church, they cozied up to me in London, and I´ll be damned if I let them cozy up to me here. If anyone asks me to go to "The Temple" again--I´m counting them and then I´m just saying NO!

New Assignment

2007-03-30T13:08:00.000-07:00

Finally Alia has been given a real asignment! No it´s not to investigate the thrilling world of minimum wage supermarket jobs any further (I believe I already cracked that story wide open--they play cat and mouse with you for one month of "hiring process" and then they slowly kill you by not paying you enough to eat) and it´s not to "build more character" by getting bruised and dirty crawling around under a house building stuff (I´m officially finished with the term "building more character", I have enough! It´s a new age of working in clean clothes and having un-chipped nail polish!) At last, Alia has been given an assignment that is truly a mental challenge, rather than a physical challenge. And it is a challenge which I would like to accept! Alia, the same Alia who got thrown out of mother-england, is going to make her way in Bolivia by teaching the english language. (suck it high school english where I only got a C--I´m gonna teach this shit now!) And who wants to waste time teaching annoying old people? I´m going to teach 5 and 6 year old kindergarden kids.
Since I take this new assignment with the utmost seriousness, I´m attempting to do things in a proffesional manner and not at the last minute relying solely on my old improvisation training or the fact that they are 5 and 6 year olds and therefore will probably just be happy if I wear very bright colors and pass out candy. No, this is serious business, so to prepare in advance I´ve already printed out the lyrics to "Head and Shoulders Knees and Toes" (classic) and I´m in the process of drawing an extensive collection of big colorful and easily recognisable animal pictures so that we can play my invented game "What is this? That is a____" (Which is a more basic version of the game I used to teach my Polish and South American friends in London English: "What am I doing? You are_____")
Although initially I became terrified at the thought of three hours of doing a job I have no experience or training in, the thought later hit me that, yes indeed, I do have experience in teaching English! Throughout my illustrious and illegal career working my way around London, it seems I always found myself in situations where I had to work closely with people in need of English training. I recall my first week working in the hotel when my beloved roomate Diana asked me the question I will never forget or understand, "My uncle is in the refrigerator, Do you like?" One thing I learned about making friends with people that don´t speak your language: Curse words first always breaks the ice and wins friends. Time and time again, friends of mine who could not conjugate "to be" could spit out every dirty word in the book, and once I discovered that, we had so much to talk and laugh about!
Oh, but that´s not appropriate for kindergardeners.

P.S. My loyal readers, please post ideas for english lessons in the comments!

Bolivian Pozzo

2007-03-27T11:28:00.000-07:00

When I spot a Pozzo (the very memorable big fat monologuing tramp character from Samuel Beckett´s play, Waiting For Godot) I´m so on it. I spotted the Bolivian Pozzo at a party on Saturday from a mile away. He was a musician and comedian and poet and although he was speaking Quechua and I only know the dirty words that Fernando thinks are amusing to teach me (seeki mi cha wi-- kiss my ass)I could understand quite a lot of what this man was saying, and I just got an overall Pozzo-vibe from this large long haired military boot wearing gentleman. When he dedicated a song to me by replacing some of the lyrics with a long drawn out ¨Griiiiiiiiin GA!¨ to everyone´s laughter and then told me and Fernando to please remember him and bring him back a new guitar from the U.S.A., he handed me a copy of his c.d. and I was pleased to discover that my suspicions had been correct, he was indeed Pozzo. Manuel Pozo. Damn I´m good.

Dog City

2007-03-24T08:16:00.007-07:00

There are so many dogs in this city I feel like every direction I look, I see five dogs. They run around scrounging for food in packs of three to seven dogs united by their similar size and personality, and from what I can see of their reasonably healthy appearance (they´re not skinny, just really really dirty) I´d say they have pretty good luck in the scrounging department here. One thing I noticed about the packs--is that the packs of small dogs are by far the dirtiest and their hair is the most matted. The large noble German Sheperd Husky packs look like they just stepped out of the groomers or a dog-show, scrounging at a steady gait with their heads held high, only settling for the good stuff (offerings from restaurants or compost piles) but those small white poodle shi-ztu packs look like they took a shower and all that came out of the faucet was dust, scrounging the sidewalks with their eyes on the ground for whatever bits of edible dirt covered food is at their eye level.
I´ll get into the world of cats later--cats being far more crafty, rather than developing a snarling groul when they meet up with humans, they go straight to the food source--staking out homes and hearts for months at a time, in a determined effort to become the family pet rather than the neighborhood thief, and thus have a lasting and stable food source. I have already fallen prey to one such crafty cat, his name is Don Naranjo.

Capatalise on the Hippie Market

2007-03-22T11:01:00.000-07:00

I am trying to get Fernando to understand the english concept: hippie, as there is no spanish translation that I know of. A hippie is a certain type of gringo spotted in Cochabamba, usually seen carrying at least one musical instrument and a stray dog, and wearing an akward compilation of REI and native Bolivian gear. Yes, those white people in the park juggling, the man wearing a native bolivian woman´s skirt, those were hippies. The reason this concept is so important to get across, is because as I explained to Fernando and his friends that make hand-woven bags and rugs, if you want to sell that hand-crafted merchandise in the U.S. and make a killing--your target market is hippies and their hippie festivals. Those beautiful layered knee-length velvet skirts that the native women wear here--I can´t help but imagine a bunch of dread-lock haired North American women (and men) with ankle bracelets dancing to a drum circle in those skirts. The market is hippies I tell you.

The Amazing Race

2007-03-19T09:52:00.000-07:00

Excuse my absence from the blogosphere. It has been a shamefull two weeks since I last updated this manuscript of my continuing journey in the world of off-island. But I can safely say now, without hesitation, that the evil immigration officer witch in Calais, France, (You may remember if you´re a long time reader) who six months ago cast me out of the Great United Kingdom, and for a short time seperated me from my love Fernando, well--she has been melted Wizard of Oz style! Me and Fernando took a big bucket of water and poured it all over her black dress, and as she melted to the ground we both bought tickets to Bolivia, and told the U.K. to kiss our culos (spanish word for the day #1 culo=butt).
Are you all familiar with the reality television series The Amazing Race-- in which teams of two must race across the world and conquer obstacles to be the last team standing? Well, it just so happens that this season´s Amazing Race takes place across the continent of South America. Good for me as I can go on my own obsessive journey to follow the show´s path in real life, and bad for me because they don´t play that damn show on Bolivia t.v.
Anyhow, I have been saying for awhile to mildly irritated listeners that I think without a doubt me and Fernando would be the best team to conquer the Amazing race. My point was proven on a recent bus excursion from Santa Cruz to Cochabamba.
For those of you who don´t know, we´re ballin´ in the united states. You pay for that Greyhound ticket from Seattle to San Francisco, and you can be pretty damn sure you´re gonna get to San Fransisco on the Grey Hound. A homeless man might pee on you at a rest stop, and you may have to listen to endless prison stories being yelled across the aisles, but you can bet your bottom dollar you´ll get to San Fransisco on that Grey Hound. In fact, I´d bet you 50 bucks. I say you have about a 90% chance.
Not so on Bolivar Buscama. Me and Fernando had to use all of our scrappyness to get to Cochabamba in less than 4 days. The bus had been driving for a good 24 hours on a journey that should take eight, we had little water, no food, and the two lane highway was jammed more than any traffic jam I´ve ever seen in my life. Pigs were squeeling, kids were crying, trucks full of bananas were stuck in a banana purgatory, busses full of people were deciding that they could walk to Cochabamba faster than the bus could drive, but not one wheel was turning on that hot March day. But hark in the distance I spied three Hell´s Angels (actually I don´t think they have Hell´s Angel´s here, but they saved our day nonetheless!)
Fernando being even scrappier than me, (my scrappiness was to conserve the half bottle of water we had left, lest we--I don´t know, never find water again!) yelled to the three gentleman and before I knew it we were cruising in between busses and trucks with my baggage in tow, on the back of two motorcycles that took us to the place in the highway where there was food, water, a very grouse baño (spanish word for the day #2 baño=bathroom), and---TAXIS. (I have never seen a highway in the U.S. that has a bunch of taxis parked on the side of the road, waiting for the inevitible impossibility of being able to move a bus through traffic.) The taxis were practised and scrappy enough to manouver along the side of the road and get the hell out of the traffic jam nightmare! Only five more hours and we were safe at home in Cochabamba, where there is the biggest statue of Jesus I have ever seen in my life, looking down upon the city from the highest hill.
And yes, we´re ready to recieve our clue and conquer the next leg of The Amazing Race.

Giving My Two Days Notice

2007-02-23T12:26:00.000-08:00

That's right, I'm no flake. I give a full two days notice when I am about to quit my job! I would have given more notice had my yahoo e-mail calender not shown 31 days in February and had I not gotten totally confused about what day it was and awoken from a Piscean fog with the realization: Hey I gotta go in two days! But not to worry, as slicing meat and serving beef brisket was not my true calling, I'm sure my beef-turkey mix-ups and my blank expressioned "what's proscuitto?"s will not be missed. One time a customer asked me what tempeh was, and I proudly informed them that it was made of soy beans but not processed like tofu is, smiling at my genuinely informed answer. However, unless I'm being asked about the difference between tofu and tempeh or what Puttanesca sauce is (Italian for whore sauce) I mostly don't know what the hell I'm talking about. "Is the beef tender?" they ask so often, "Ummm, well, yesss....." (I think that's what they want to hear.) Anyway, although I've learned many new things, like about how ham has a rainbow colored sheen to it similar to that of a gasoline spill in a mud puddle, (and no there's not something wrong with it and I'm not going to poison the customers) it will be great to get back to my true calling, laid back vacationism.

Sunday Church Review

2007-02-11T22:16:00.000-08:00

Unitarian Universalist Church

For my first weekly church review (I hope this can become a regular sunday establishment on the Alia Trip) I sampled a little known organized "religion" called Unitarian Universalism. As unified as that name sounds, I have to say it lived up to its title--managing to "unify" aspects of both the classic circle gathering before a hippie potluck (I was actually familiar with some of the hymns from said gatherings), story-time at the library, and an actual church---though only by form and not by content.
But let's get to main points: The deal went down in a circular treehouse, it took an hour, there were cookies. Not bad for the attention defecit. In fact, if you do have a mild case of the old a.d.d., good choice for worshipping the lord. The worship is brief, but not to the point, I don't know what they believe in, but they kept me entertained with stories, life-lessons, songs I actually knew, and at the end, cookies galore! And get this little tid bit--the priest (a lady priest) drank coffee while sermonising. Now there's a church for me.
The Alia Trip gives Unitarian Universalism a thumbs up!

Stay tuned for next Sunday's Church Review on The Alia Trip!

Bleach On Food, Not Cool Buddy

2007-02-10T12:44:00.000-08:00

In a town where everyone and there mom is on food stamps and dumpster diving is the local past-time, why does the super-market where I work pour BLEACH on the produce that they throw away? To prevent people from dumpster diving. Or as one of my co-workers put it, "Because they are corporate dush-bags". Upon hearing this information last night, it is the opinion of The Alia Trip and that of my associates, that pouring bleach on perfectly good food to prevent dumpster-divers from diving for it, puts the "dush" AND the "bag" in dush-bag.

The Gourmet Market--- "Feeding the world's upper-middle class, then pouring bleach on the left-overs."

Experiment 1/1

2007-02-09T12:20:00.000-08:00

Hypothesis:
My friend Nicole and I wanted to find out for sure if the restaurant we frequented was truly as dirty as we suspected it might be.

Research:
To find out we conducted this field test: Last Thursday at approximately noon-day we planted a ketchup dropling under the napkin despensor.

Results:
Exactly one week later, we came back to find the ketchup dropling still in it's original location, dried and collecting dust.
Data:
According to the data we collected yesterday, the restaurant is indeed as dirty as we first hypothesised. The spoons are indeed greasy.

Conclusion:
Not eating there again because: according to our findings, it is indeed dirty.

Keeping Mouth Shut--Proving More Difficult

2007-02-07T18:40:00.000-08:00

Keeping my mouth shut is proving more and more difficult at my work; as the honey-moon phase ends, I quickly glide past comfortable phase and land steadily and determinably in I-hate-my-job-and-don't-care phase. It's proving really really difficult right now not to rant and rave to my miserable-in-their-job co-workers, that I'm getting out of this hell-hole soon! As I get frustrated trying to decipher one kind of deli meat from another kind of deli meat, I want to yell, "But thank the good god I'm getting out of this hell-hole soon and moving to South America!" I want to sing and dance with thankfullness that this indecipherable meat is only a temporary inconvienence, but instead (as not to blow my cover) I yell explatives similar to my co-workers, such as, "All of this freakin deli meat looks the same! This is driving me crazy!....And will continue to drive me crazy for quite some time!" For now I remain undercover, revealing my true plans to no one, assimilating and taking on the appearance of my fellow Gourmet Market workers, collecting data for my expose and waiting, like a good gypsy, until I've scammed enough money to hit the road again. (Don't get me wrong--by "scam" I only mean working in a supermarket for a month and then quitting.)

$497

2007-02-03T09:50:00.000-08:00

Yep. That's how much I got paid for two weeks of giving my precious time to serving cold pasta, hot pasta, and cutting and serving every kind of dead animal that is socially acceptable to use as food in Oregon. When I got my first pay check last night after work I was expecting something different--I was expecting to feel happy, sweet I got money! I knocked on the door of the front office to pick up my first pay check, which I recieved with a smile and a big, "Thanks!" but I didn't look at it until the door had closed. When the door closed I looked down, took a couple steps in shock and then went back to knock on the door again. "Is this for two weeks?" I asked the sunny customer-service-voiced manager. "72 hours! Yep!" He told me in good-customer-service voice. "Oh really?" I said, "I guess I expected more than less than $500." "Oohh.." he said, then closed the door to go back to the business of counting the cashier's tills.
Maybe it's that every other job I had until this point has been under the table, cold hard tax free cash, in dominant British pounds sterling, with the added bonus of customer-tipping and free food, but I was just a little shocked to see how little me and my co-workers got for doing a less-than-pleasant job where tipping is not allowed. It made me wonder why they put me through a month-long hiring process---and it made me feel a bit foolish for going along with it, when all the outcome was of this long tedious hiring marathon was a poorly paid normal job. It also made me thankful that unlike most of my co-workers, I was not in a situation where I had to pay for the rent, my higher education, and the care of little children. Thank god my biggest expense is still just shoes!

I Ot-gay Y-may Isa-vay Or-fay Olivia-bay

2007-01-27T12:16:00.000-08:00

When I'm at work I have to remain mysterious. Not only are there cameras in both the customer and the staff-only areas, but there are spies working among me, people listening on strategically placed microphones connected to ear-pieces worn by unseen managers, computer files on what has been said--ok, maybe I'm getting a little paranoid and over the top, but when you clock-into work by fingerprint, you come to expect anything from these matrix people. Anyway, because I want to keep my job for now, it's ix-nay on the olivia-bay ans-play. If anyone asks, my only plans are to work at The Gourmet Market for the rest of my life--who knows, maybe if I play my cards right I could be assistant-manager some day! I have no plans to travel to South America and reunite with my boy-friend. My plans are all right here, in the cold pasta section. The cold pasta section is where it's at. I'm oing-gay in arch-May, on't-gay ell-tay em-thay.

I Bought Ugly Shoes

2007-01-26T22:52:00.000-08:00

It doesn't matter where I go in this world--Lopez Island, Eugene, London, even Italy--the shoe capital of the world--wherever I go, I will inevitably have some kind of problem with my shoes. Not having the right shoes, or having too many shoes, or blowing all of my money on shoes, or my shoes breaking at inopportune moments, or wearing the wrong shoes for the wrong activities. My Piscean nature is to consistently be forcing my friends and family to become unwilling passengers on Alia's never-ending shoe shopping tour of the world. Most recently my problem has been in trying to locate the ideal pair of shoes for standing eight and a half hours in--work shoes. Why should I spend money on shoes that are probably going to be ugly? This difficult question arises every time I have a job and realize that the shoes I have worn to work, are just not working for me, but against me, and slowly killing my poor little feet with their hard soles and no arch support. But yesterday I did something crazy--I bought ugly shoes! They were five dollars, they were from Rite Aid, they were a size too big, they were ugly, and incredibly--they were comfortable after standing in them for eight and a half hours! It is so important to me to have happy feet while working, that this time I have gone to extreme lengths, in a way I have become an adult, my friends, I have bought ugly shoes.

GCSV-further findings

2007-01-25T17:45:00.000-08:00

Still attempting to avoid the "good customer-service voice" contagion, I continue with my job at The Gourmet Market, traveling deeper down the rabbit hole of the super-market under-world. I realized that this is the first time I've ever worked for a large corporation, and the first time I've ever gotten paid by check rather than a small brown envelope full of cash at the end of the week. This is also the first time I've had to suffer the "three interview process", drug screening and "endurance test"; in which I was told I had fantastic flexibility and body mechanics (Thank you tap-dance), but my grip strength was terrible. Also below-par was the force with which I was able to squeeze my thumb and fore-finger together. What's that about? Well, as neither of those two things have proved me incapable of performing my duties, I am able to continue through this strange world and give you, my readers, up-to-the-minute on the field reporting of the goings on behind the scenes at The Gourmet Market. I know you all were riveted by my ground-breaking analysis of the phenomenon I call "Good Customer Service Voice", or to make things simpler, "GCSV". So here's the latest: It appears that the GCSV phenomenon bleeds over into the employee-employee relations as well as employee-customer relations. Many a time as I asked an older more experienced employee where, say, you could find more plastic spoons to restock, I've been greeted with a big fake smile and a kinder-garden teacher voice telling me: "We put thyose in the cayabinet on the farrr left side!" The first time I heard this I was little bit shocked, "But I'm not a customer!" I wanted to say, "You can talk to me normal!" but I resisted as better to observe these GCSV sufferer's in their natural and undisturbed habitat.

I'd like to take your attention now however, and direct you to two websites:
1. My friend Nicole is a blogger now, and it looks promising: www.greatachievements.blogspot.com
2. Believe it or not, my poem, Help Me My Sea Monkey was published on an internet literary magazine: http://apt.aforementionedproductions.com

Good Customer Service Voice Is Getting Out of Control

2007-01-20T22:46:00.000-08:00

Do you know what a: "good customer service voice" is? Just make your voice go uupp and squeaky at the end of each word, and throw in a little minnesota on sentences like "thyat's okayyy" and "cyan I hyelp you with anyythying?" Aparrantly "good customer service voice" is an unspoken requirement at my workplace. A little Stepfordwivian undercurrent that lingers behind every "may I help you?" like the missing link between real human employees and the robotic ones that will replace us in the future. I'm lucky, because I'm still at a point where I can decipher "good customer service voice" from the voice of a real human talking, but believe me, it's taking all of my will power to avoid this contagion that has already devoured the other new girl no more than a half-day into her first shift. It's really hard not to share illnesses with the people you are surrounded by, to catch their colds, and their accents. But I will try to muster all of my bad attitude into a forcefield that shall protect me in my workplace from this plague that is sweeping the service industry and holding us all between the teeth of it's big fake smile.

Officially Employed

2007-01-19T12:08:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to me! I am now the official in charge of all noodle-weighing services at The Gourmet Market's cold pasta section. I am also the official in charge of all price-sticker-putting-on-the-container-of-noodles-I-just-weighed-for-you services, all noodle re-stocking services, all giving-samples-of-noodle services, and the telling-of-ingredient-list-services, or should I say: guessing-of-ingredient-then-giving-you-sample-to-find-out-what-kind-of-meat-YOU-think-it-is services. Most importantly, I am employed!
Even better than the blue vest and name tag I was envisioning for my future career at a gourmet super-market, I get to wear a white asian-style chef's jacket, and a black beret! I get to eat within a 30 minute designated period in the designated break-room! I get to be video-taped by state-of-the-art surveillence cameras while I work! And if they keep me long enough I get to clock-into work with a machine that scans my finger-print!
Congratulations to me, I am employed!

Frost liked to rhyme

2007-01-04T20:40:00.000-08:00

Bereft by Robert Frost

Where had I heard this wind before
Change like this to a deeper roar?
What would it take my standing there for,
Holding open a restive door,
Looking down hill to a frothy shore?
Summer was past and the day was past.
Sombre clouds in the west were massed.
Out on the porch's sagging floor,
Leaves got up in a coil and hissed,
Blindly striking at my knee and missed.
Something sinister in the tone
Told me my secret must be known:
Word I was in the house alone
Somehow must have gotten abroad,
Word I was in my life alone,
Word I had no one left but God.

This is Officially A Rhyming-Friendly Poetry Site

2006-12-30T13:37:00.000-08:00

Since my recent success getting published in the Eugene Weekly, (Click on the Eugene Weekly link, scroll down and read "Procrastination Destination") lately I've gotten motivated in trying to get other writing of mine published. But, after sending out poetry to different magazines and poetry websites, I've discovered something: People ain't down for poetry that rhymes. Apparently "the cool kids" don't like poetry that rhymes or has a cohesive form. I checked out the website of one place that rejected the poem I submitted and not ONE of the poems on the whole website was a rhyming poem!! Edgar Alan Poe anyone? NOPE. More like Idunnohowtorhyme Alan Poe! So that is why I am proposing that The Alia Trip be a safe haven and venue for poets that enjoy the rhyme. Send me your rhyming poems, and I will appreciate them and post them on this rhyme-friendly site. Also--this site is not only rhyme-friendly, this site is also non-depressing poetry friendly too. Have a poem that's NOT about how you wanted to kill yourself? Send it to me! Here is an example of a poem that rhymes:

HELP ME MY SEA MONKEY

Help me for my sea-monkey has grown too fat
He's eaten all the other sea-monkeys in the sea-monkey habitat
Help me for my sea-monkey is an unusual size
I can see his whole face, I can see his big eyes
Help me for this is not what I had in mind
This is not the pet I asked for, this is a different kind
Help me for my sea-monkey, and god please let me live
Despite this empty jar you'll find, and the love I cannot give.

I wrote that after I got a jar of sea-monkeys and one was bigger than the others. No sea-monkeys were harmed. See--who says people won't take your poetry seriously if it rhymes?

It's An Honor To Serve

2006-12-29T18:51:00.000-08:00

Three whole weeks ago I casually handed in my resume and filled out an application at The Gourmet Market--a fancy pants super-size gourmet grocery store, and to this day I am still running through the hiring process marathon, jumping over each coming hurdle, wondering--when will this end? When can I don my blue vest and name tag and be a "gourmet market girl"? WHEN?! I've been to the two hour interrogation with the ex-military seargent who now does interviews for cashier wannabes, I answered eighty questions with answers I honestly thought could get me hired on the "personality survey", they've spoken on the telephone with every person I've ever worked for in my life, and as of now they are performing an extensive background check on me, in which, maybe, possibly they will find this blog? I don't know dude. But I must have somehow passed their little mind games because coming up on January third I've been scheduled for my SECOND Interview--oh god I can't wait!! And providing everything goes well in THAT interview, my SECOND---I have the great honor and privelege of submitting to not only a drug screening but also a physical examination!! Providing I'm healthy and drug free I could be working by the end of next week, side by side with the rest of the cream of the crop who got past all the of the many many tests of character you must first pass through in order to don the honorable blue vest and name tag, and serve my country by working in the bakery department at The Gourmet Market. God bless America.

Space Permitting--Alia Trip Published

2006-12-21T12:44:00.000-08:00

Hi my loyal legion of reading fan!!! If you are in the Eugene, OR area, say....around December 28th, and you happen to pick up a free copy of Eugene Weekly you will be happy to find a limited edition Alia Trip story PUBLISHED IN THE NEWSPAPER--space permitting!! (I have not published it on this sight! Grabbing hold of that printed material would be a feet of Herculean power demonstrating your loyalty, by the way.)
Here is the e-mail I just recieved form the big boss man at EU:

Thank you for submitting your story. Space permitting, we plan on
printing your personal story in our Dec. 28, 2006 issue. We reserve the
right to proofread and edit your piece to make it consistent with our
style guidelines and space limitations.

If you have any digital photographs that relate to the story you sent,
now is the time to please email those to me at .
Identify who is in the picture (if any) and who took the picture. They
will be used in the paper at our discretion.

Thanks for sharing your story with us (and other EW readers).

Best,
Chuck Adams
Calendar Editor
Eugene Weekly
484-0519 x26
cal@eugeneweekly.com

Tragedy Averted--Alia Not Joining Magazine Cult

2006-12-09T21:37:00.000-08:00

A tragedy has been averted. Although at first this job offer sounded too good to be true!!---Travel around the Southwest this winter hawking magazine subscriptions at people's doors? That would be in the job category of: Right up my alley! Yes I'm out-going! Yes I have no tattoos or body piercings! I'm in!
But further consideration and serious discussion with "experienced former door-to-door salesman homeless man bob" who scrounged up the $19 to stay at the hostel last night and disuade me from joining magazine cult, AND internet research led me to the conclusion that THIS particular job and company would probably not be right up my alley, but rather---up the back alley, the dirty back alley where you don't want to go because the people hanging out back there just got out of prison.
Or like my mom put it so elequantly after I got 2 sentences out of my mouth explaining a team of young salespeople traveling the country in a fleet of vans--"Sounds like a cult! Yep, yep, that would be a cult."
Tragedy: averted.

Rebel Without A Job

2006-12-07T10:16:00.000-08:00

Looking for a job in a smallish town is frustrating! In London when I was looking for a job in the serving people beer/food/accomodation field I always knew where I stood as soon as I handed my resume to the hung-over manager too early in the morning. Either he'd ask me to start immediatly (good sign--guaranteed at least one shifts pay before they fire your ass.) come in tomorrow (maybe the job will still be there tomorrow---a gamble but a good bet) or to wait for a call (which you always knew was never going to happen, so move on!). But here things move so...much...slower. Will they call me back? Maybe. Maybe in two weeks. Maybe never. But not to let those slow pokes get me down while they ''go over'' my resume, I have recently invented a little job-finding tactic I call "Alia's harassing day". Alia's Harassing Day is 2 days after I've handed out my resume around town and received no phone calls, a day to knock on the doors of every business I applied to work for and harass them with, "So I just wanted to check back and see if you've had a chance to look over my resume, I'm really interested in working here." And if THAT doesn't recieve impressed expressions at my fantastic display of ass-kissing and eagerness to work at a cafe, then I dutifully start work at 'last resort' jobs--chain restaurants and hotels that NEVER take the "NOW HIRING" sign off the marquee for all their years in business as a 'last resort' job, risking my health and perfect complexion by breathing in grease and cleaning fluids, while I apply at more glamorous places in-between shifts and wait for those snails to call me back. Hopefully it doesn't come to that point, but DuMonde plans for every coming disastor during this 3 month down period before my twenty-first birthday while I am still too young to tend-bar in the United States and must take other work---leaving the drinking population of the continent thirsty and parched, without an understanding friend, their ashtrays filled to brim with used cigarettes, and their complimentary snack bowls of peanuts left EMPTY! I can find other work--but it's the PEOPLE of America that suffer without me behind the bar.

I'm Bringin' Sexy Back

2006-12-05T15:07:00.000-08:00

I'm not as far South as I'd like to be, but like a migratory bird I'm making my way down. I just crossed the state line and came to Oregon, on a train with a drunken conductor talking over the loudspeaker about the good old days when he was a ''hog-head'' PRE-1980 he underscored just so we all knew he wasn't some newbie poseur ''hog-head'', but the real-deal, and he welcomed all the transients riding on the train in a slurry tone that made me afraid for my life until he stumbled into the aisle and I was consoled that it was someone else's job to drive the train (I hoped).
In the station that morning I had been kindly helped by a friendly mentally retarded Amtrak employee with a cell-phone clipped to his lapel that continuously played the Justin Timberlake song, "I'm Bringin' Sexy Back'' for all to hear over and over again as he strutted up and down the station handing out warm smiles. Making me wonder: Are all Amtrak employees mentally disabled or innebriated, could I get a job here, and what does Justin really mean by I'm Bringin' Sexy Back?
No matter where I go I am still always amazed to find more and more people I consider to be seriously mentally-ill yet apparantly undiagnosed, living alone and managing to take care of themselves---OR--living with me. One such person has made himself overly apparant here in the shared house I just moved into. Let's just call him ''neanderthal bob'' because I can't remember his real name but he looks and acts like a pre-human humanoid and I don't feel bad at all about saying this because, as I witnessed this morning he is really mean to my friend Nicole. But don't worry-noone messes with us, so we were mean back. He wanted Nicole to move her Italian espresso machine off the front burner so he could cook something there. Why couldn't he use the back burner? Or WAIT? And when she politely refused as the burner had already gotten hot and heating up the back burner would only waste more of our precious time--he starts freakin out! He also asked us to move out of the nice room we had dibs on so that he could ''cuddle'' with a girl who obviously did not want to cuddle with him! AS if! But who I mostly feel sorry for is his poor bandana-wearing dog. It's people like HIM that are the reason Justin had to bring sexy BACK.

Being Cold Is Wrong

2006-11-11T10:02:00.000-08:00

Being cold is wrong. I don't like it and as long as there are places on this earth where I can live in an eternal spring--by god I'm going to try to live in those places and not put on 10 layers of clothing just to avoid freezing to death.
Growing up in Washington where it is mild most of the time with a cold winter and a hot summer, basically 4 distinct seasons, I was unaware that a whole beautiful world existed just to the south where I could have a perfect summer all year long, a sunny christmas-time and never have the need to buy any clothing for 'practical purposes only'. I discovered this world last winter when I visited my grandma in Southern Arizona. And I discovered that there's a reason why old people move to Arizona---it's an easier life!! No snow shoveling, no freezing to death, no driving super slow so your car doesn't slide off the road, no being cold!!! AND there's no reason in my opinion why, even though I'm only 20, I shouldn't live in a place of eternal sunshine and happiness too. So next week me and my mom are off to visit grandma and that land of sunshine and escape the bitter cold of winter even if only for a week!

I'm a Cement Mixer

2006-11-05T11:14:00.000-08:00

Since I have been back on the island I have been out of my element in the working world: Instead of being where I belong on center-stage behind the bar in a fancy restaurant having customers kindly paying for my capacinnos on my breaks, I have been bruising my legs and ripping my hair and picking dirt out of my nails after working under a house helping to build a foundation (In NOVEMBER no less). I hate to sound like a spoiled brat but yesterday was a particularly traumatic day for me mixing cement in pouring rain and wind. We worked into the dark night and when I finally got home I was so tired I missed the step coming up the stairs on our porch and fell into the grass in all of my cement and dirt-coated attire. Heaven's knows why these people need a foundation under their house so bad that I should have to crawl around under the house digging holes and pulling infinite rocks out of the earth in order to build it, but I maintain my piece of mind knowing that in a few months time I will crawl out from under the house, rise to breath the fresh air, and return to one of my true callings where I enjoy the comforts of working in a place where I am not getting ridiculously covered in dirt. If I ever said that the life of a bar-tender/waitress was anything but glorious I apologize now. I have seen the other side---THERE IS DIRTIER WORK---and I when I return to the lower-payed, but oh so much more my style customer-service industry, I will return with a new found appreciation.

The Island Blimp-Out

2006-10-23T13:53:00.000-07:00

I have only 2 simple goals for this current living back with mom on the Island time. The first goal is to save up enough money working that I can stop living back home with mom on the island (sorry mom). And the second goal--much harder to obtain--is to not blimp-out while I'm here, to leave home wearing the same jeans size I arrived wearing, to stay behind the voluptuous line without slipping across the border into the land of full-figured. Don't get me wrong I would never attempt to become thin, infact I have frightening images in my mind of what would happen if I gave up chocolate and coca-cola all together, began working out at a gym, and maintained a perfect figure--what if my dieting and exercising left me without any boobs?! That nightmarish thought is what keeps me snacking, but another thought, the thought of blimping-out like I have on other trips back home keeps me from over-snacking. I must maintain a happy medium, I can't say exactly what that is, how many pounds, what jeans size, but I do know when I feel comfortable, and I know when I feel rolly-polly, and as far as my nightmares of becoming ultra-thin and boob-less, well, I haven't really had a problem with that so far.
I don't normally need to make not-blimping-out a goal and have that issue on my radar, as normally I maintain my happy medium without much incident. However, back home, on the rural island in the winter when everyone is gone and I have no car and I am working near to where I live and it is ass-cold and my mom has cable t.v. and I don't care what anyone thinks of the way I look as everyone walks to the store in their pajamas anyway, it is very easy to become lethargic and forget about the happy medium, not noticing my jeans getting tighter and tighter, not noticing my face becoming chubbier and my boobs becoming novelty-sized, until I leave the island, return to the land of more things to do and places to walk to, and realize that, yes, back before my rest-stop in no-where-to-shop land I used to buy smaller sizes and "gordita" wasn't my nick-name.
So that is why ladies and gentlemen, I have made it my goal, on this visit for the next 2 months that I am here, to attempt to avoid the usually innevitable: The Island Blimp-Out.

Bar-Tender at Heart

2006-10-14T16:13:00.000-07:00

Today is reminiscent of London. There is greyness all around and it feels too cold for human habitation. Tomorrow I'm working at the local (only) bakery on the island. I have the crazy 6:30 a.m. opening shift---only to be out done by the crazy insane baking shift which begins at god-knows-when, all I know is that when I arrive bleary-eyed at 6:30 (In the freakin mornin!) there are bakers there that have already baked a whole shit-load of cookies.
I'm a bar-tendress at heart and early mornings are not my style. I prefer the 4pm---1am bar shift which some people might call a crazy and makes-you-so-you-don't-have-a-life shift but I call it "I get to sleep in with no alarm clock AWESOME." Unfortunately I am too YOUNG to tend bar here in the land of the free. Although I got all kinds of mad bar-tending skills which I aquired working in teen-drinking-friendly England, since I have been back home I haven't been able to put my perfect level of foam beer-pouring, fabulously decorative cocktail making, and friendly understanding bartender/therapist skills to any positive use!!
Which leaves me at point A. Bakery crazy insane 6:30 am in the freakin morning type jobs!

UPDATE: ISLAND STILL EXACTLY THE SAME

2006-10-10T11:48:00.000-07:00

Wow, islands are great, but there's not as much to blog about when you are living on one. Which is probably why I have not updated in a long time with new wild adventures. Mostly I have just been working in the dark of night with on-going plans for my next big adventure---WHICH I PROMISE WILL BE EPIC BEYOND ALL YOUR WILDEST IMAGINATION!!

BACK IN THE U.S.A.!!!

2006-09-11T17:05:00.000-07:00

It's official: On Her Majesty's Service I have been sent home, empty handed, banished from the United Kingdom. I have been deported back to the United States. Apparantly site-seeing for six months in the U.K. is a completely unbelievable story to these unimaginative immigration officers. "For six months?! What is there to see for six months?!" Umm......castles, grass....like, distant cousins....I SO was not working!! Anyway, they've sent me home, and to celebrate I've just mowed down on a box of a dozen donuts and cup of coffee I can re-fill as many times as I please. I'm back in the States yall!!!

IT ALIA

2006-08-27T06:27:00.000-07:00

The large homeless man asked me what I planned to do next, and said with strong eye contact that, "You have GOT to have a plan and go forward with it immediatly. You have no time to waste now." At that point I wondered what HIS plan had been and how his direction had led him forward to sleeping in the ferry terminal with his dog and collecting stories from banished travelers trying to get inside "the kingdom". With tact I asked him just that at which point he began to recount for me an epic story of annoying foreign border laws having to do with the transportation of animals between countries, endless quaranteens and veterenarians, and an eleven month battle for the love of his dog.
"SO, it was all for the love of a dog?" I asked.
He sighed looking at her, "All for a bitch, thats right."
He was exactly right however, in such a moment as this there is no time to fumble the ball and question your next move forward but one must simply proceed. I put the PRO in proceed and set out on the train for my friends house in Italy, where I was planning on going anyway when my boss gave me time off from work, but hey! Italia is one of the many great nations that spells ALIA in its name so Italia is where Alia will figure this mess out.

Alia Trip Visa Trip

2006-08-25T01:49:00.000-07:00

For the past 2 weeks you have not heard from me. I have been on an epic grande adventure backpacking across Europe. As all great adventures do, it began unexpectantly sort of like Bilbo Baggins adventure did, although mine was set off by an english immigration officer in France with a giant pole up her bum and the nerve to suggest that I was "living" in the U.K. and therefore should not enter her controlled area of border.
Well, as I failed to appear like a rich kid bumming around London without a job, she told me in so many words to enjoy France for a bit longer. I so have never met an immigration officer doing her job so well. I mean, I and everyone I know in London were under the false impression (and myself through plenty of experience) that a passport from the United States was like, "Hello", STAMP "Have a nice trip." Apparantly not in the mother country!
SO! Unexpected events at passport control set off the train treck across europe, with nothing but a small pink back-pack and one more change of clothes, and---THANK GODDESS---my hairbrush and all of my make-up.
After getting a big horrible X mark written on my passport by the French police, I was told I could sleep in the waiting room of the ferry terminal until morning. Where I met a Sri Lankan woman with her 3 kids who had been turned away by immigration and couldnt speak english but smiled and offered me a whole bottle of water, a homeless English man with a dog who told me he collected detainees police letters and that mine would be the first and coveted "white north american" letter for his collection but he understood when I said Id rather keep it for my personal records, and 3 funny French security gaurds who nicknamed me "Marylin Monroe" (merci beaucoup) and then made fun of me when I tried to sleep by making snoring noises as they kicked a ball around for the homeless mans dog for what seemed like hours, and a couple of back-packing hippies fashioning a card board sign that read PARIS and wearing vests with no shirts underneath, and lastly an english man whos car broke down in the middle of the night but who failed to show the same compassion for my story as everyone else did, and instead turned his lip up at me and said I had asked for it.
And after a restless nights sleep the adventure began!

Under-staffed

2006-08-08T05:18:00.000-07:00

I have a new boss. Or rather, there is a new girl at work that is sleeping with the boss, and therefore acts like she is an extention of the boss even though she has only been here three weeks. I was going to get a ice from the ice machine the other night and there is my little dwarfin boss with the new girl making out while she is supposed to be working. It was like a scene from a movie where you walk in on something you are not supposed to see, I dove in to get ice quickly (as customers were waiting) laughing a little as they get embarassed and go back to their posts. Later my boss came up to me and said he was ''sorry for not having more staff working tonight, it got busy.'' Right, because at this restaurant we need one in the bar, one cooking, one bringing food to the tables, and one lurking in a dark corner to make out with our disgusting boss. We were so understaffed, I know.
Well, I was reading an article by a man that wrote a book called ''The 48 Laws of Power'' to help wealthy businessmen achieve more and more power. He said one of the rules was to ''Pose as a friend, but work as a spy.'' Although I am not after the same motivations as his readers, there ARE times during my epic food service career that I feel as though the only true reason to be wasting my time doing these jobs (besides of course that I need to pay my rent) is so that I can work as a sort of undercover spy and get endless writing material and knowledge about the fascinating world of humanity. I mean would I give up this endless supply of dramatic writing material for a job working with sane people for average joe boss serving polite customers? HELL NO. Well, maybe. YES. But the bright side is that these things are always funny.

The Importance of the Ferry

2006-08-04T05:33:00.000-07:00

I have just been reminded by one of my readers of the importance of ''The Ferry'' on a true island. No I am not talking about a whale-watching pleasure cruise, I am talking about our true means of survival as unfortunately not every neccesary item for life can be purchased at The Store and you do once and awhile need to plan a trip off-island. For instance, when I made the transition from brunette to blonde I could never find the right products to touch up my roots at The Store, I was unable to find tickets to Bumbershoot music festival there, and I also could never seem to find a Green Tea Frappacinno anywhere on the island. If you are looking for a kebab shop open 18 hours a day to get yourself a late-night falafel you will not be able to find one anywhere on the island, or if you have a gambling fetish--your best bet is saturday senior bingo night but don't try looking for a slot machine or roulettes table, you will be out of luck. That is why as my reader so elequently put it in her comment--''the ferry is god'', our means of survival on the island, and the ferry schedule which changes seasonally is our bible.

Alia's Rules For Being A True Island

2006-08-02T04:34:00.000-07:00

Ok, I decided for my latest post I would post an epic poem that I wrote about the island. The reason being on a recent trip to another island, although this one far far below my standard for good islands, it did anyway make me feel a little bit homesick. This island I visited, though beautiful, was not in my opinion, as hard core an island as the one I was stranded on for the first eighteen years of my life. In my opinion, to be a ''true island'' the island MUST follow these basic principles, these are Alia's Rules For Being A True Island, as follows:

1. Said piece of rock must never show up on a map of the country, or state.
2. MUST NEVER HAVE A BRIDGE--OBVIOUSLY!
3. Locals must be able to identify off-island people from normal people easily from a distance.
4. Island must have a hand full of old-timers that have never lived off-island.
5. Any person must be able to walk to the beach easily from any point on the island.
6. Residents MUST be paranoid and resistent to modern advances in technology.
7. If an islander happens to get off-island, must gather the entire community together to view pictures of the momentous event.
8. There must NEVER be more than one ''The Store'' !!!
9. When it's night time it's dark!
10. And most importantly, when making a trip off-island, islanders must be aware of the distinct feeling that the rest of the outside world is a freakin nut-house.

THOSE ARE THE RULES.

EPIC POEM

2006-08-02T04:25:00.000-07:00

When I met you sister
We were living on an island
Trying to grow up
Where time stays still

Sister you were wild
And where you ran I followed
Though the water made a wall around our world for a child

Sister we were spoiled
And age just made us rotten
In a land of pristine beauty
In a place we have forgotten

Sister we had one wish
To leave this place behind
By the sea
Through the air
We said goodbye to the trees
Goodbye to our world, nevermind

Sister through the continents
We've traveled all these years
The low paying jobs
And love affairs
We've bought new clothes
And died our hair

The Earth feels like an island now
It's not so big at all
We stretched our hands
Towards distant lands
It's not so far at all

Sister if we look back now
The wind could blow our sails
Steer our boats back towards that island
To the rocks
The sands
The shells

Sister they say
You can never return
To the home that you once knew
But did they know
The place we know
They'd say that isn't true

Because sister whether we're here or gone
Wherever we may stand
You and me
Always together
And always a part of this land.

BY ALIA DUMONDE

Anything is NOT POSSIBLE!!!

2006-07-29T02:28:00.000-07:00

Last night assholes were numerous in the bar. When they get drunk they have no fear and think anything is possible. Hideously ugly people, and people that used to be nice looking but are now too drunk to hold a glass without spilling it on themselves, and old men that have become so obese they can't seem to find a button down shirt that can button down, and eighteen year old whipper snappers with achne, all these people have become so dissilusioned by the powers of alcohol that they are living in a dream world, a dream world where they believe me, or one of my georgous colleagues might find them so intriguing we would like to spend time with them outside of our working hours. I can't speak for my colleagues, but I am there to CRUSH that dream with an iron fist at the moment they try to realize it!!

My Achilles Heal

2006-07-25T05:36:00.000-07:00

As the hero of this epic blog adventure I feel obliged to stick with my impulses and move on heroically, however I must inform you all of the situation at hand, which is that four days after my quit/fire I was offered my job back and I took it.
During the four days out of work two emotions ran through me simultaneously-- 1. a triumphant feeling that comes from telling sleezy people what you think of them. And 2. the lost feeling that comes from needing to pay rent and not having a job and then realizing that I gave up an ideal well-paying job in an expensive city in a country where I'm---how shall I put it? Not strongly encouraged to seek money in exchange for my labour.
My character's achilles heal in this epic story is that every Sunday, too early in the morning, an old Pakistani man climbs up two flights of stairs to ask me and Fernando for £100 pounds. He comes relentlessly every Sunday morning, like a spider endlessly, persistently, sucking us dry of our life blood. So I must keep feeding him, for without this spider we would have no web to seek refuge. Can you tell I'm trying to push these metaphors and similes for all that they're worth? I have no refined taste or sense of control---WATCH ME GO!
So anyway, when my boss called me to ask me to come in and ''talk'' I thought that I would go in, NOT apologetic for what I said, but apologetic for losing my temper, and NOT ask for my job back but accept it if it was offered back to me. And that is exactly what happened. There is certainly no time-table set for how long I plan to work there, only this--I've got to pad my bank account a little more, but not too damn much longer. And as far as my boss or colleauges finding out about this blog, well, it wouldn't be the most fantastic thing that ever happened to me, but I'd brush it off and find it funny almost immediatly, so don't worry my eager fans, I'll be tottally explicit, this is a behind-the-bar exclusive blog. I'm naming psuedonyms.

Next Steps

2006-07-11T11:08:00.001-07:00

Ok, the initial thrill of quitting my job for moral reasons is beginning to wear off as the realization is setting in that my boss owes me £600 pounds and isn't returning my phone calls. But I proceed on the usual step by step plan I always follow after a situation like this. As follows, step 1: I ask for the money myself. I ask and ask, and ask until I become a pain in his backside. If that doesn't work then I employ step number 2: my boyfriend asks. Although he's only about 5 foot 5, my boss is a little bitty munchkin dwarf which means it would still be possible for Fernando to--if it becomes necesarry--look downwards into his eyes while standing too close and saying, ''I think you need to pay up!''. And if THAT doesn't work I employ the last necesarry means which I have never used before which is number 3: I call in the silly unnarmed british authorities to deal with the situation. No, NO! Are you kidding? I wouldn't do that. I would never disturb those jolly fellows while they are busy with their important duties! Giving directions to lost tourists, repositioning their jaunty little caps in the reflection of a store window, or ''guarding'' (HA HA) a famous british tourist attraction while having their pictures taken. I'll have to deal with this dirty business myself, meanwhile, the hunt for a new job continues.
My dream job, the job I would give my right leg for--I have an interview for on thursday. An assistant to a veterinarian in an animal hospital. I tell you I would give all my limbs for a job where I got to cuddle fluffy animals all day. (Although I would lack the ability to cuddle them if I had no limbs.) But something is telling me that my c.v. lacks medical experience and/or training. So I'm also looking in my usual field: bar/restaurant/cafe/any job where I give people things to eat and drink and then clean up after them/that sort of thing/maybe if it's not a very proffesional place reception work/anything in the west end because that's where they don't ask for if I have permission of work in this country.
I know whatever my next job will be in London, the city where the nut-cases from every country in the world decided to gather, I will innevitably be working for more crazy people. And you know I love dead end jobs working for lunatics for the comic value of the experience, so it's all good times ahead!

I Got Quit Fired

2006-07-09T09:49:00.000-07:00

I got quit fired, it was a combination, a two for one deal. Although I was the one that got the ball rolling, my boss did say, ''Get your stuff and leave.'' To which I replied, ''I'll be glad to.'' So it was really a mutual thing, a quit fire.
Now that I am quit fired however, my blog could get more interesting as the modesty with which I wrote about my former job is stripped away and I will lay bare the naked truth of what REALLY went on behind the bar. I was covering up before on the rare chance that someone from work might possibly find this blog, but now that I am quit fired, I DON'T CARE.
Is it wrong for the male boss to hire all young female bartenders then drink with them after work and try to sleep with them and AMAZINGLY actually get lucky with two of them and have the whole thing captured on the security cameras while the chef is upstairs seeing the whole thing and also the boss is married with a son and has another regular girlfriend on the weekends that doesn't work at the bar as she is too young to work at a bar but he lets her and her sisters drink there anyway and then the girls he is sleeping with from work start to become the managers and control everyone else and get all the nice girls fired until the bar becomes a polish brothel minus me and meanwhile the chef is an emotional rollercoaster ride on the way to margaritaville and excepts every free drink the customers offer to pay for him while he is cooking and him and the boss are drunk and arguing together everyday?
Maybe it's not ''wrong'', but it's just not for me. That's why yesterday at approximately 8:00 p.m. London time I said and I quote, ''Why are you sleeping with all the girls? I'm fed up with this bullshit.'' To which he replied, ''This is my business and my personal life and it's not affecting you.'' To which I replied, ''Well I don't like to work for people like you.'' To which he replied, ''Get your stuff and leave then.'' To which I replied, ''I'll be glad to.''
Walking through the back gate of the beer garden at approximately 8:30 p.m. London time both these thoughts crossed my mind: ''What to do next....?'' and ''WHAT TO DO NEXT??!!!!''
And the answer to THAT question my dear friends, is just another blog entry away....

Back to work

2006-07-08T03:01:00.000-07:00

The world cup is nearly over. The break we have had in our T.V. free pub will soon come to an end as other pubs with giant T.V. screens no longer have anything so exciting to put on them in order to draw customers away from our pub's fabulous food and stunning barmaids. So that means I have to start working now. While the world cup was in it's heydey and England was still a participating member I've had so much free time to experiment with different alcohol-free staff drinks that I've come up with a combination of coke, lemonade and lime cordial that I want patented. I've also managed to keep the salt shakers constantly filled to the brim and the ketchup bottles consistently restocked. I don't know what people will do with a half filled ketchup bottle once I have no time for this kind of great service, and what will people do when I can no longer give them a fresh new ash tray after each cigarette? Dare I imagine there will be ashtrays sitting around with two, three, maybe even four used cigarettes still sitting inside them while I forced to do other ''more important'' tasks like seating a party of ten and taking their dinner orders? And also what will happen to our dear chef when he no longer has time to rant to me on a cigarette break about just what a great chef he truly is and how much natural born talent he has and just how fresh his ingredients are? Beginning next week we won't even have time to clean dust off the wine bottles on the top shelves every hour and I might not be able to finsih my game of expert sudoku. I'm going back to work.

Rubbish Man

2006-07-03T12:25:00.000-07:00

I have to tell you all about the man that lives upstairs in me and Fernando's building. He cooks Italian food so I think he might be Italian but I'm not sure. I'd know where he was from if he had any interest in socializing but apparantly he doesn't want to make any friends while he's in London. Apparantly that's not on his agenda. Apparantly what he'd rather be doing than making friends is making enemies by being a shared house secret undercover spy and using our 70 + and crippled land lord as a liason for complaints he has about me and Fernando not taking out the rubbish in the kitchen. Even though in all honesty we always take the rubbish out! We take the rubbish out like every minute of every day! Any spare moment we have we are taking the rubbish out! We take the rubbish out more than we eat sleep or breath! We take the rubbish out more than the rubbish man! Seriously.
And then get this-this man who hasn't spoken a word to us since we moved in, takes the rubbish from the bin upstairs and DUMPS IT in front of our door under the cover of darkness for me to find when I get home from work. Then he removes the bin entirely from the kitchen so that there is no rubbish bin making cooking more inconvient for everybody. Hijo de Puta.

A Fantastic Exit

2006-07-02T01:18:00.000-07:00

I hope one day when I get fired for the first time I will make an exit as glorious and dramatic as my colleague Lea. It was truly beautiful. This is how it went down behind the bar:
5:00 p.m. the boss takes her aside and fires her, no tears, no nothing. 5:05 p.m. she marches to bathroom, changes into a sexy outfit and sits down with three Polish men who had already been drinking since the morning time. Cut to 10:00 p.m. Lea is laughing her face off drunk and requesting 3 shots of sambuca (Or, ''saaam......BLUCA'') for which I am faced with this dillemma: had she been a regular customer I wouldn't serve her as she is blasted, however this is Lea, my colleauge. I hesitate. 10:05 p.m. I walk to other side of the bar. 10:30 p.m. Lea is looking drunkenly into one of the Polish men's eyes and whispering sweet nothings. 10:45 p.m. I am informed that Lea's party have spent all their money and are now requesting free drinks. 10:46 p.m. I hesitate and walk to the other side of the bar. 10:55 p.m. Lea strolls up to another regular customer and requests he buy her the most expensive bottle of champaign. 10:56 p.m. He complies. 10:57 p.m. One of Lea's new ''friends'' gets jealous about the champaign---apparantly she's ''his girl.'' 10:58 p.m. a punching fight ensues. 11:00 p.m. I hesitate behind the bar witnessing my first bar fight while the chef and the manager break it up. 11:05 p.m. the police arrive to assess the situation but fail to look as intimidating as American cops. 11:10 p.m. Lea consoles her night in shining armour and walks away with him---making the most fantastically dramatic exit after being fired that I have ever witnessed. 11:11 p.m. I give her a silent standing ovation behind the bar.
THE END