Raw Fish and Contact Juggling

            I never cease to be amazed at…well, life.  That’s the sort of thinking that produces this kind of stream-of-consciousness writing.  There is no main topic, and it isn’t going anywhere.  I hope you find it interesting.

            A few nights ago, Oldest and I meandered a mere two blocks away, on a quest for sushi.  By sushi, I don’t mean the junk they serve in the United States, stifled by health codes.  I’m talking about real raw tuna and salmon and other things that would make the local health inspector’s face red as he hunches over his clipboard, scribbling furiously.

            I understand the need for regulations to protect the public.  Sewer pipes shouldn’t cross connect with runoff pipes, and employees should always wash their hands before returning to work, even if they are 99.99% sure they didn’t get pee on them, but I think an over-regulated society misses out on a lot, and becomes blinded and ignorant of what the world has to offer, if one is to take only a modicum of informed, calculated risk.

            Otherwise, it produces things like this label, found on a package of peanuts, served to me on an American Airlines 767 two weeks ago:

Ingredients:  Peanuts Roasted in Peanut and/or Canola Oil, Salt.

Produced in a facility that processes peanuts and other nuts.

Seriously?  I think I would be more concerned if the warning stated that it was produced in a place that didn’t.

            Following a hearty meal of sushi (is that an oxymoron?), we strolled back to the house, and at the corner, saw a new group of street performers.

            Some background is necessary here.  Intersections in Lima are often occupied by a variety of people.  On rare occasions, you will see someone leading a blind relative or carrying a special needs child, who will walk between the cars, asking for coins, but with those exceptions, begging isn’t well tolerated.  I do wonder sometimes if someone on the next corner isn’t renting out little blind men for this purpose, but I will move on.

            Instead, Peruvians are imaginative, and not that limited by their own disabilities, or rather, willing to work inside those limitations.  During our time here, we have met a blind man, Alan, who sells individual pieces of candy from a larger bag.  Gino, a paraplegic, sells random items from his wheelchair near a local grocery store – and by random I mean wooden spoons, dish towels, or umbrellas.  Veronica, a “little person” also confined to a wheelchair, sells bracelets and key chains that she has made from beads. 

            You may notice that these people have names.  Thank you.

            The more able bodied individuals are known to work the intersections as well, performing various acts of entertainment, during the 75 seconds that the light is red.  Traffic lights here actually have countdown timers, which may be for motorists, or for performers.  If an act isn’t finished by the time the clock shows 15 seconds, there isn’t enough time to walk between the rows of cars and collect tips.

            We have seen pin jugglers, fire jugglers, acrobats, clowns, and magicians.  Traffic really is a circus in Lima.

            Tonight we saw something I hadn’t seen yet – a “contact juggler.”  A contact juggler manipulates clear, heavy balls made of glass or acrylic, without actually throwing them.  He maintains “contact” with the balls at all times, but creates the illusion that they are floating or moving. 

            We didn’t have a camera, and I wasn’t carrying loose change, but this act was worth coming back, since we live on the same block.  A few minutes later, armed with about the equivalent of about $1.50 in local coins, we returned with iPod in hand.  The contact juggler agreed to do his routine for us, since the intersection was currently occupied by some little kid juggling flaming sticks and chainsaws or something boring like that.

 Peruvian Contact Juggler Video

            It sure beats a cardboard sign that says “Laid off.”  I hope you enjoyed

Memorial Day Thoughts

I’ve never understood why people visit cemeteries.

A few weeks ago, I made two exceptions, a few days apart, one for a man I had once loved as closely as a brother, and for a grandfather who was so close that it feels like a part of me is now gone, and perhaps it is.

The two of them departed this life in very different ways, one faded away, and the other flashed out.  I don’t know exactly what I stood to accomplish by going to the cemeteries.  Closure, perhaps, to finish something off that had been brewing inside me since both of their deaths.

Pappy’s stone wasn’t hard to find.  I was alone in the small Missouri graveyard, so I got out of the car and just stood there and looked at it.  I had always considered myself his closest grandchild, due to geography more than anything else, but I hadn’t attended the funeral.  The old man had spent the last few months of his life in an old folks’ home, and while the flame flickered at times, he had always known me when I came to visit.

Mom had had him buried in his black suit, with a light green shirt and a tie he had worn only a couple of times in life.  I could almost see it through six feet of Missouri dirt.

I didn’t speak.  I always thought that talking to tombstones was a little weird.  I didn’t have anything to say anyway.  I said goodbye to him for the first time when I went to Iraq in 2005, because I thought I might not come back.  I said goodbye again in 2007, because I thought he might not remember me when I did.  I said it for what I knew would be the last time in June of 2010, when I left for my new job in D.C.  The last words I said to him were “I love you,” and it doesn’t seem like I could have done it any better.  Mom told me a few months later that he was gone.  I was the only grandchild not to attend the funeral. 

I took a deep breath, and told myself that this was okay.  I had said what I needed to say to his ears, and the others probably had to say it to his casket.

It had been a year and a half, and the dirt still hadn’t blended in with the rest.  In fact, there was a big patch of clover growing right over the top of it, the only patch in the whole field.  I spent the next five minutes looking for a four-leaf, something Pappy and I had done together many times in his yard, when I was barely old enough to walk.  I didn’t find one.

I brushed a bit of dirt back from his flat footstone that had been provided by the U.S. Government as a token of his wartime service.  I’ll have one of these someday as well.

A few days later, in a different field, I paid my last visit to my friend from high school.  Once upon a time, he had been a member of my “one hand”- meaning the friends that you could count on one hand.

He had left this life at a time and in a manner of his own choosing, more than 20 years later, but less than a day after my wife and I had pondered aloud how he was doing.

He had become a riverboat captain, and his stone was wrapped in a thick rope.  Next to the stone was a large glass jar.  It had somehow gotten a couple inches of water inside from the rains, so I opened the lid and carefully poured it out.  Inside was such a strange assortment of things:  A couple of pens, which he always carried, two debit cards from the local bank, an old lighter, and a notebook.  I assumed that these were items he had with him when he died.

I allowed myself to get a little excited.  He had often carried a notebook when we were young, he had called it his “brain.”  I opened it, but instead of seeing the notoriously sloppy handwriting, there were letters from his wife and children.  I read each one of them.  Perhaps I shouldn’t have, but I did.

He had once considered me family, but adding my own thoughts to the pages seemed a little invasive, since his children barely knew me at all.  I knew what I would say, though.

I would tell them that forty yards away from their dad, lies the father of dear friends, a set of brothers close enough together that we hung out with all of them.  My friend consoled his that day in a way only he could have done, having already lost his own father.

Two years later, another of our group lost his dad, and my friend was there, too.  It wasn’t wise words or a caring touch, it was a cigar and a cold beer, and let’s go do something to take your mind off this.  At that point, “something” was blowing up an old refrigerator in the middle of a cow field at midnight, and it certainly took one's mind off mourning.

Ten years after that, my wife lost her father, and my friend was there again.

I would tell them that when we were kids, he had saved me from being bitten by a three-foot copperhead.  We had explored White’s Creek cave together, before the Forest Service put bars across it.  One night in town, he had pulled a toy gun on me, after I pulled one on him as a joke.  We stood there for a moment, sweating, each convinced that the other’s was the real thing.  He let me stay at his place when I didn’t want to go home. He had taught me how to drive a clutch.  I drank my first beer with him.  He had attended a few karate classes with me, and could kick harder than Bruce Lee, he said it was because he had practiced on cows.  He had showed up to help me fix Dad’s fence after my truck rolled through it.  We pondered together what to do about the tattoo with his first wife’s name on it after his divorce.  His creative solution was to add a banner with start and end dates below the big red heart on his arm.  He had married again, and taken her three children as his own when they were barely school-aged, and now they were adults.  We had shared all sorts of happiness and anger and laughter and fear, during that time in every man’s life when he is trying the hardest to figure himself out.

For all of that, and for all of the people for whom he was there, none of us were there for him.  I wish I would have called, but I didn’t even know I needed to.  I'm not sure how long I will carry that, but I know he wouldn't have wanted me to.

I put the notebook back in the jar, and put the lid on a bit more tightly to keep the water out.

In this field, as in the other, I recognized names.  Not just one or two, but dozens.  I remember what these people looked like, the sounds of their voices, the kind of people they were.

I suppose that is the reason people visit cemeteries.

Surfing and Bembo's Near the Beach.

After a couple of weeks of blog silence, I’m writing again.  After our week-long vacation in the U.S., we’re finally home again.  That seems like such a strange thing to say. I suppose I should share the real reason I took this time to write.  The neighbors are having a party with loud music and it’s 3 a.m.

Yesterday, my family of five (my oldest daughter returned to stay with us for a couple of weeks) piled onto a bus and headed to Miraflores for an afternoon of activity.  While Middle and Youngest are still emotionally scarred from our adventures in Stranded, we braved the bus system yet again.

My oldest daughter wanted to surf, and of course Youngest was all for that.   We walked the last few blocks to the coastline, and descended roughly a half-million stone steps to the beach.  Lima is probably one of the few cities in the western hemisphere that has good waves 24/7/365, and a number of enterprising locals have built thriving businesses by offering surf lessons to tourists.

To my friends in the north – remember it’s almost winter here, because the seasons are reversed.  Add this to the fact that the current brings water straight up the coast from Antarctica, and it’s COLD.  For reference, it’s about a degree chillier than Greer Springs in Missouri.

Our regular company is Surf Peru, basically because they ambush us the second we step off the footbridge on the way to the beach.  Oldest and Youngest, with some assistance, got into their wetsuits, and I became about $45 lighter.  The price isn’t bad, but it seems to change with the seasons and perhaps how nicely we are dressed.  At least it includes the board, wetsuit, and one-on-one instruction.

After some discussion with my wife, we agreed to let Youngest solo, rather than riding a board tandem with her instructor as she had on the previous two occasions.  I pulled her off to the side, away from Mom, who had already bitten off two fingernails.

“You know you are going to suck saltwater.”  This was the prelude to my confidence-building discussion.  I promise it got better – I told her some gobbledy-gook about anything cool not being easy, and it might take her ten or fifteen tries to catch two or three good waves, but she should just keep trying.  I reminded her that the surfboard floats and if she got swept under, she should just find the cord tied to her ankle, and it would lead to the surface.

She reminded me a little bit of a professional boxer, getting advice from his coach.  She nodded at the end of each sentence, and I think a couple of times she said, “Got it.”

Once she hit the water, she paddled out a hundred yards and I don’t think she even looked back.  She raised her head up like a seal as she crested each wave on the way out.

The process works something like this:  An instructor, on his own board, will go out with the student, get them turned around and in position.  When a suitable wave comes along, the student paddles like crazy, and with a shove at the exact moment from the instructor, she can hopefully catch it and ride it in.

Oldest was having a little trouble with this.  She would stand up, but immediately fall off.  In her defense, I think it was gravity.  She’s taller, and thus it’s harder for her to stay low and keep her balance.  At least that was my assessment.  Since I have also tried this twice, I can tell you that anyone who says it isn’t a real sport has never done it – it requires some pretty serious endurance, not just to ride the waves, but to continuously paddle out to get the next one.

For the next hour, Mom, Middle, and I watched the other two fall off of their boards a lot, but both of them managed a few good runs.

Youngest came in first, and after approaching us, she looked around for Oldest.  We informed her that she was still out on the waves, just as we watched her get her best run of the day.

“Why is she still out?” She shivered.  “My teacher told me it was time to come in, that’s not exactly fair.”

“Child,” I said, “Your lips are purple.”

I am pretty sure that Youngest is addicted now, this is going to cost me for at least a few more lessons, and I may even end up buying a surfboard.

Since now my squad was ravenous, we hit a place called Bembo’s, a Peruvian fast food chain, much more popular here than McDonald’s, although they have a few of those too.

Why is Bembo’s so popular, you may ask?

First of all, the name is funny.  My wife will say I am acting like a 12-year old boy, but I’m sorry, they might as well call it “Sluts.”  It makes me giggle.

Secondly, the burgers are made from real South American beef.  I hate to offend American beef producers, but if they can’t convince American fast-food restaurants to build burgers like this, they have already lost the global meat war.

Lastly, and perhaps the most important reason that Bembo’s is awesome:

(translated into Redneck English from Peruvian Spanish)

Me:  “I want one of those big German-style hamburgers with the relish on it, and some cheese sticks.”

Bembo Girl (See?  The name is funny, it never gets old!):  And what would you like to drink?

Me:  I'd like a cold beer with that.

Bembo Girl:  We’ll get that right out to you.

Bembo’s for the WIN!  Yes, readers, not only is the burger thick and beefy, but you can order a beer with your extra value meal!

I’m glad to be home.

Cloudy Notes on the Pain Scale

I was about two hours into a promising workday when it hit me.  If I hadn’t felt it before, I would have said I must have just twisted my back, but this was the same feeling I had four years ago, when the same irritating problem put me in the hospital for two days.

Women how have had children will tell you that the pain is worse than childbirth.  I have no frame of reference.  There is no position of comfort, but it doesn’t stop me from trying.  The pain isn’t severe yet, so I continue to work through it, although at times, I have difficulty concentrating.

How could something as small as a grain of sand cause so much pain?  I don’t know, how can something so small as a tiny electron smashing into a molecule of Plutonium cause a nuclear blast?  

In a foolish attempt to objectify pain, such geniuses as Wong, Baker, and MacGill, whoever they are, have probably done theses on the scale of one to ten.  Back when I worked as a nurse, I hated this scale, because basically, it’s useless and stupid.  All you need is a single patient who is equally useless and stupid, and the scale falls apart.

“Can you rate your pain on a scale of one to ten?”

“Twelve,” the patient calmly replies.

“You flunked math in school, didn’t you?”

“I don’t know what you mean.  Oh, by the way, I’m allergic to anything except for narcotics.”

Sometimes the scale would produce something I would call the “Static 10.”  That conversation would go something like this:

“Ten,” the patient would reply, again calmly.

“Is it as bad as it was earlier before you had the pain medication?”

“Oh, no, it’s not nearly as bad as that.”

“So if it was a ten then, and it’s much better now, what is the number?”

“Oh, it’s still a ten.  Can I get some more of that stuff?”

Enough of these conversations, and a guy gets a little paranoid when a nurse asks him to rate the pain, but since I had found my way into the Embassy’s health unit after a failed attempt to go home sick for the afternoon, I had to answer the question, I just didn’t feel like the answer was all that simple.

“Seven.  A seven…is when you can’t finish a sentence…without a pause.  An eight, you can’t start a sentence.  A nine, you can’t…speak in words, only noises, unless it’s random utterances of colorful vocabulary.  I’m saving the number ten for later, in case something…really bad happens.”

My honesty definitely didn’t pay off.  In spite of the fact that I have had five of these things previously, the doc wanted to be sure, so I had to stick around long enough to donate a urine sample, which took almost another hour.  It was a good deal, though, I traded my urine for a bottle of Percocets and a prescription for Flomax.  I guess the stuff is liquid gold after all.  I resisted the urge to pop a couple of pills right in front of the nurse.  I walked home instead, since I only live five minutes away.  I’m sure I looked amusing walking down the street all hunched over and PO’ed.

As I stood in my kitchen, I looked longingly at the half-empty bottle of plum brandy on the shelf, as I washed down two of the Percs with ice water.

For the next hour, I writhed.  The most unusual thing about kidney stone pain is the randomness of it.  Within a minute, it can go from a 7 to a 9, then drop to a 2, which on my scale means I can do light entertainment reading, but nothing academic.  I really should try to get some grant money for this, because I think I’m on to something.

I think I slept for a little while, but I’m not really sure.  I thought perhaps I did, since I dreamed of Leann Rimes with giant 80s hair and missing teeth, chasing me with a bowl of applesauce, yelling, “Eat this!”  My inner monologue was alternating between Morgan Freeman and Charlie Sheen.  Charlie at one point called me an idiot, and told me that only he could be that stoned and live.  Morgan has all sorts of philosophical stuff to say, if you just listen.  I wish I had written more of it down, because I feel somehow that it will be important later on.

I crawled out of bed sometime in the early evening, and the pain is now gone, although I’m a bit sore from all the struggling with it.  Someone has filled my house with fog.  I walk down to the kitchen to refill my water, and some “My Little Pony” dolls scare the crap out of me.  Fortunately, they didn’t talk, but they didn’t have to – their little demonic eyebrows said it all – the only thing stopping them from attacking me with the kitchen knives was their lack of opposable thumbs.  They seemed to know this, one of them sat back on his little haunches and his glare followed me back across the room.  Shut up, it really did.  I’m scared to go back down there.

I’m going back to bed again, to try to sleep it off until the Oxy-hangover starts.  If that doesn’t work, I’m going to listen to some Beck.  I have heard that when a person is this baked, the lyrics are hidden verses of the Tao Te Ching.

Stranded

I grabbed a handful of change and we headed to the street to catch the trusty EM-17 bus.  The brown and white rolling piece of junk was like a thousand others in Lima, but the numerical and color code meant it was heading to Miraflores, a touristy district near Lima’s oceanfront.  My girls had gotten an invitation from one of my colleagues – they could borrow some much coveted books from her library, but they had to help her unpack it.  They had graciously accepted the challenge.

On the way down, a violin player had stepped onto the bus, to play for us in the hopes of a few coins.  He wasn’t bad; my youngest was sure she had heard his song before.  He finished it and turned around with his small change purse in his hand.  I saw that he was blind.  I gave him a handful of small coins, maybe a sole in all.

A short time later, we dismounted and walked the remaining few blocks to my friend’s apartment, where they spent the next two hours sorting and shelving books – not with enthusiasm, but the labor was free, and at least something was getting done.  I spent a bit of my free time drooling over her electronic piano, one of the best I had played.  We would undoubtedly share some sheet music as time went by.  The girls finished, or more accurately, they were finished working, so we left the apartment at 6:30, enough time that we should be able to catch the bus before dark.  We headed back up to the main bus route, Benavides.

We waited there a half hour, which wasn’t unusual on a Sunday night, since the buses had been known to be sparse.  After we had waited another half hour, I fished around in my pocket and counted my change.

I had a total of 7 soles, four 50 centimo pieces and 5 singles.  A dollar is about 2 soles and  60 centimos.  On weekends, the bus cost s/1.20 each.  I was 20 centimos short of the possibility of a two-bus combination to get home, which would be our option if we couldn’t find the right bus.  We needed to wait for the brown and white EM-17, or a blue one with a rainbow on the side that also passed very close to the embassy.  Anything else would leave us almost two miles from home, without enough change to get back.  We would be walking.

The youngest decided we should walk, which was fine with me.  I would glance over my shoulder from time to time, watching for the right bus.  Tons of buses passed by, all heading to San Juan de Hurigancho, or Villa Maria - not places I wanted to visit after dark, and certainly not on the way home.

Just over a minute after our feet started pounding pavement, the rainbow bus went by, at not less than 20 mph, never even slowing.  Youngest, who has a bladder the size of a walnut, had to make a pit stop, so we found a coffee shop, while Middle and I kept watch outside, hoping grumpily that we wouldn’t see our only chance at a ride home pass by while Youngest was in the john.

By 8, I decided I should report in.  Wife was certain to be worried, and since she had taken Middle’s phone to put some minutes on it, we were without commo.  The first payphone we saw, I stopped.  Some idiot had jammed the coin slot.  We moved on.

At 8:30, we were at a place called Ovalo Hugerieta, in the daylight a hub of activity, but after dark a creepy place.  I didn’t like being here alone with my two girls, but the first functional payphone was here, so I posted them as lookouts and tried calling again.  Payphones in Lima are 20c/min, but they don’t give change.  Since I didn’t have enough for a two-hop on the bus, I sacrificed a 50c piece for the good of marital harmony.

Wife suggested I call a cab, and I was agreeable to that, and she gave me a number.  I got a recording at the cab company, which meant another one of my precious coins was gone.

Not content to set up a defensive perimeter here, we kept walking, past the Ovalo de Doomoh Certaino, and back into a more civilized area.  Not a bus in sight, and at this point I would have taken a ride to the nearest big exchange point and walked the last two miles.

We tried each of the next four phones we saw, and not a one of them worked.  Apparently the same phone gremlin who had jammed the previous ones with 5c coins had done so with all of them.

By now it was 9, and we had been on the streets of a Latin American city for two and a half hours.  I wasn’t sure how much longer I could play these kind of odds.  I’m pretty good at projecting a “Do NOT screw with me” aura, but that’s a lot harder with two little blond girls in tow.

Finally we reached a Starbucks, and a payphone bank that was functional.  The drop of another 50c coin, and I called Wife – this time just telling her where we were, and to call a cab for us.  I joked that I would buy Middle a coffee, except I was down to 5 soles.  We sat for ten more minutes, and I called home again, to find out which cab was coming for us.  Fortunately, it was a cabbie we knew, by the name of Carlos.

He was there in 20 more minutes, and ironically we were within a mile and a half of the house.  My feet were killing me, and I’m sure the girls weren’t doing much better.  I didn’t want to risk more bad neighborhood by walking the rest of the way home.

This adventure is a series of lessons learned, like be sure to carry cab fare just in case, and a cell phone is always a good plan - but it demonstrates how our lives work – as a family, we are very adaptable, so really, if one or two things goes wrong, we barely notice.  When something truly bad happens, it is a result of a perfect storm of events – in this case, a dead cell phone and a lack of available cash.  Had the blind violinist not played for us on the early bus, we would have had just enough for a two-hop.

We were home by ten.  I had forgotten Wife’s birthday, and holidays and such usually aren’t a huge deal in our house (She and I both forgot our anniversary until the day after), since it was her (number deleted)^th, the children and I had discussed buying some black balloons or something.  After being stranded for over 3 hours in the Peruvian urban sprawl, none of us were thinking about anyone’s birthday, other than perhaps hoping that we would all be able to celebrate our next one.

Funnel Cakes and Second Degree Burns

Fresh from my brush with the Oompa-loompas in the Houseof Cocoa and Chocolate,  I checked my e-mail to discover that I had received my quarterly payment from Yahoo. 

There is a certain bipolar element to professional writing, if that is what you would call what I do.  Mostly, I write about experiences that I have enjoyed, or things that I have found thought-provoking or downright entertaining, in a way assisted by my own distorted internal monologue.  On most days, I post at least one story’s link to my Facebook page, asking family and friends to read my latest work.  A good portion of them tell me that they enjoy reading what I have written, but never enough to share with their own friends who don’t know me. 

The vast majority of this monumental body of work appears on my blog.  I’ve not yet made a penny from it, and I doubt that I ever will, but the blog gives me the freedom to write whatever I want, without being forced into a genre.

My secondary outlet is Yahoo Voices, which is what made today different.  About a third of my articles are eligible for upfront payment, and I receive $1.50 for every thousand page views.  This makes me a paid writer!  In the past three months, I have made $1.76, bringing my lifetime earnings (since April of 2008, when I first went pro) ever closer to three digits.  It’s elusive, but I believe I will make it there within five years, if I can catch a couple of lucky breaks, like the first sale I ever made – I was paid $15 to write a pamphlet about pre-paid credit cards.  It took me twenty minutes, and I thought, "Hey, this is going to be easy."  I’ve since put in hundreds of hours.

My lucky break wasn’t going to come on this day, since my pledge of support for my wife’s new hobby was taking up a bit more of my time.  We were heading to an event known as the “Embassy Games,” which here in Lima, is four consecutive weekends of soccer, volleyball, and a few other team sports.  Different agencies and work sections engage in a bit of trash talk, but it’s taken very seriously by some.  For me, it’s a way to meet people in other parts of the mission.

The hobby in question is neither volleyball nor soccer.  My wife has started a baking business.  It earns a bit of money here and there, but mostly it’s something for her to do, and she’s gotten quite good at it.  It’s been great for the whole family, since my kids grew up thinking that the smoke alarm going off meant that dinner was ready.

The bread and butter of this is homemade cookies, but lately she has gotten into various soups and stews.  I got the bright idea that she could make and sell funnel cakes at the embassy games.

Funnel Cake Recipe:

2 eggs          

1½ cups milk

2 cups flour

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp salt

Mix batter and cook in hot oil.  Corn oil tastes better than vegetable oil, but olive oil won’t get hot enough.  Sprinkle with powdered sugar.  Makes about a dozen, depending on how big you want to make them.

We did sell a couple dozen to Americans, who longed for the carnival feel that walking around with a funnel cake gives you.  We discovered that Peruvians have no earthly idea what a funnel cake is, and since 80% of the embassy staff is Peruvian, most of her potential clients just walked on by.

While my wife was busy breaking even, I headed over to the volleyball court to round out a team from my section.  By “round out” I mean allow the group to meet the minimum number required to take the court.

Given my aversion to wearing shoes, and since flip-flops don’t work so well for volleyball, I played the game barefoot.  It was a slaughter.

Enter my next problem – I seem to have a fairly high tolerance for pain.  I realize that this is subjective, since it will never be possible for any one person to relate to the way another experiences pain, but I don’t usually let it bother me.  Pain is something that must either be ignored or worked through.  The pavement of the court was a bit hot, and by the time I had finished the second game, the soles of my feet were pretty red.  When I slid back into my flip-flops, I felt a large blister on the ball of each foot, about the size of a half-dollar.

I think I’m going to use my windfall to buy some burn cream.

Salon del Cacao y Chocolate

I saw the beige envelope lying in my chair.  As I picked it up, I saw my name printed across the cover, and inside was a cloth-and-paper card that would have cost ten bucks if you were using it for your wedding.  It had my attention.  If someone had gone through the trouble of sending me one of these, it was likely my presence was expected.  Diplomatic functions are usually dry and boring sweat lodges full of free booze and important people I don’t recognize, but this one piqued my curiosity, so I sent the customary RSVP.

The event was called “House of Cocoa and Chocolate 2012.”

After work, still in my gray suit, I stepped onto a coaster-bus, a 28-passenger conveyance.  At least 50 of my new closest friends shared it, and the conductor kept yelling at guys in the back to get closer together, because there was still room.  The driver was a rock, but they usually are.  The bus companies either search for high-level Buddhist monks, or they give them tranquilizers to deal with Peruvian traffic.

We drove by a station - a gallon of 98-octane gasoline was up to s/19.34, which at current exchange rates is $7.39.  In a country where minimum wage works out to about $1.40/hr, that should add some perspective.  The next time I complain about $4 gas, someone please remind me to shut up and be happy that the U.S. has its own refining capacity.

The bus dropped me off a few blocks from the address, just as it turned the corner to head back north.  The event was easy to find, since outside was a line that came out of some movie, where some nobodies were trying to get into some exclusive club, and the big thug at the door won’t let them in, yet some hot girl walks right inside.

Tonight, I was the hottie.  I walked straight to the front and handed the guards my invitation, and he checked my name against a list.  Doors open.  I could get used to this.

The Prado house is probably one of the largest private residences in Lima.  As one point in recent history, it was liberated from the Prado family and used as the Prime Minister’s office.  A few years ago, the more reasonable government returned it, and now it’s used to host snooty-snoot events such as this one.  The main hall has the split staircases straight out of the Munsters, only a lot cleaner and without anything living underneath, and the ballroom was a spot for about 300 people to gather.

In celebration of the history of chocolate, the organizers had hired “living scuptures” in the entryway – live models dressed in period clothing, who depicted the ancient methods of processing the beans.  On either side of the entrance hall stood a man and a woman, dressed in pre-Inca garb and covered with red makeup.  They moved, but very slowly, beckoning the guests inside with their movements.

Oh, the smell!  I took a deep breath through my nose, as the smell of melted chocolate almost stung in my nostrils.  In the center of the entrance stood three huge multi-tiered fountains of chocolate, surrounded by skewers of fruits, marshmallows, cookies, and various other items, all designed to be waterboarded in one of the chocolate fountains.

This decadent buffet was not yet open for business, since first we were herded into the ballroom, where a half dozen honored guests spoke for a few minutes each.  We heard from chocolate association execs, and some guy from France who spoke Spanish with a thick French accent, which was just fascinating to listen to, almost musical.  The U.S. Ambassador to Peru spoke somewhere in the center of the lineup, where she almost casually mentioned how cocoa played an important role as a legal crop in the fight against cocaine production. 

At the end of the remarks, the crowd moved back into the main hall and attacked the fountains of chocolate.  I tried a variety of things – mango dunked in chocolate, marshmallows dunked in chocolate, kiwi dunked in chocolate, strawberries dunked in chocolate…is that really a variety?  Maybe.  A sharply dressed waiter kept bringing around a drink tray full of a chilled Bailey’s and chocolate concoction.  It tasted strong enough that I limited myself to two.  I wasn’t driving, but some of the drinks here will leave one not remembering where he lives.

The press was there in hordes, including some guy from a TV show.  I tried to pay attention and move in the other direction, and at one point when we got cornered, a colleague of mine said to me, “Hurry…look boring…look like you aren’t having fun.”  A press photographer did catch me in an action shot, shoving some chocolate covered shish-kabob into my wide open mouth, but I’m not ashamed.

The danger of press at such an event is getting caught in a candid comment.  I had my sound bite prepared.  “I’ve been all over the world, and Peru has the best chocolate.”  It’s a true statement, even a lot of the German and Swiss stuff comes from beans grown here.

The press doesn’t want to talk about chocolate, they want a blip about U.S. policy toward Syria.  “Does Syria have chocolate?  You guys should ship them some, and then we could have world peace!”

By nine, it was time to make a gracious exit.  The lady who was the living statue in the entrance must have gotten into the chocolate-liqueur, because she had the giggles and was doing the robot dance in slo-mo.  The other guy was still a stone face, even after a hundred photos and a bit of a performance for the live cameras.

I stepped out into a night that was 20 degrees cooler, and in my wool suit that was probably going to need a good dry-cleaning, this was a good transition.  Within minutes, I stepped back onto another crowded bus.

The thing about this sort of adventure – you never know what you might see.  On the bus with me, I saw a nun in a white dress and black sandals.  Doesn’t she know it’s after Labor Day?  Wait, since Labor Day in Peru is in May, she’s okay.  Another dude looked like he jumped straight out of an anime, with heavily gelled sculptured hair and everything.  He was jamming to his iPod, using giant chromed-out Dick Clark headphones and bobbing his head.  Ludicrous.

As I stepped off the bus near my house, I glanced up at a police vehicle, a Toyota truck.  On the tailgate was a “Baby-on-board” sign from the 80s, except it said, “Police-on-board.”

The life of a diplomat may be a lot of things, but it isn’t boring.