All week (plus), all I can think of when I listen to “I’m Housin’” is Sunshine, and it saddened me. But now, it is a reminder of salvation. However, I still must slave and sacrifice some to make it back to the dojo. Ahead of me lies a cumulative 10 hour commute back to the hallowed Batcave, 10 slow, torturous hours containing a significant time change. This time change demands I take my shocking ability to go without sleep for long periods of time to a whole new level, and I am doing everything within my power to cheat this time change.
What is the best plan? The original idea was to not sleep at all tonight, thus forcing me to sleep during the monstrous commute. Having awoken a mere couple of hours before the marathon, I would theoretically be rejuvenated and ready to kick pixilated ass. However, let’s remember my aforementioned ability (and tendancy) to go without sleep for long times. Who’s to say that I wouldn’t make it through the night, only to find that sleeping during the commute was impossible? This would undoubtedly lead to an UBER crash during the marathon. Exactly what we don’t want. So the new plan is to try to make it to 3 or 4 AM, and then achieve 4 or 5 hours of sleep. Hopefully this would make me tired enough that commute sleeping was probable, and if it wasn’t, I still may be able to go on that little amount of sleep for the marathon. Cross your fingers.
But since you probably don’t give a shit about that, I suppose I’ll share a bit more of my experience over here.
Fallacy- What It Means To Be An American
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…Well, you don’t. You see, apparently being obviously American (Backpacks, baseball packs, general tourist attitude) in a hot tourist location makes you a target. People try to sucker you, and we got a bit suckered right off the bat. As our American group walked down some outdoor stairs in a popular location on our first day here, we were spotted by 5 guys, possibly homeless, possibly just trying to make a buck, who had decided to spend their day preying on generous souls such as us. As we completed the stairwell, each of us was blocked by one of these men, who asked us for our pinky. I was perplexed, and along with one of my companions, withheld. However, one of our group had foolishly given in, and the rest of us followed reluctantly, and as a result of peer pressure. It may just be my pride, but I’m pretty sure I gave in last. Just saying.
In any case, the men proceeded to make some sort of braiding around each of our pinkies as they spouted homely values of prosperity and dominantly peace. When this was over there was another awkward moment in which we all stood there wondering “What now?” until inevitably, someone made it a charity event and started dropping greens (or blues, as it was). A minute and a half later we stood there, now alone, with less money, thoroughly suckered.
About 8 days later, and it’s round 2 of Americans against the world. Spotted as the Americans we were by a waiter at a local breakfast spot, he eagerly waved us in with a warm smile. Having dropped into this nice place a handful of times before for a coffee (but never a meal), we gave in to the friendly-looking waiter. Let the suckering begin.
The first sign that something was fishy was the beer one adult ordered. For future reference, ordering beer= you are an American. The beer received was massive and costly. Someone was trying to fool us into thinking that local custom was to have that size. Then we ordered a pitcher of water. You know, with the intent that it would be free. But no, we were brought two large glass bottles of water, which we were later charged for. Once again we took this to be a misunderstanding and made nothing of it. There seemed to be nothing wrong with the wine one adult got, however, until we realized it was $16+. All this we took respectfully and didn’t make a big deal out of.
For those of you who don’t know, it is the custom here to never tip. Most restaurants build gratuity into the bill, and the capitalist idea of tipping for performance is completely absent.
When we got the bill, we attempted to pay with credit cards. He refused every one of the six or so different kinds we offered him, claiming they could only take a type of card I now suspect does not exist. We resorted to cash and paid with exact change, as we had done in many classier restaurants in the past week. When the waiter saw the exact change, he inquired as to what was wrong with the service. We told him nothing was wrong, and once he had left, we debated amongst ourselves why he had asked. We settled on the hypothesis that he was trying to play on our American affinity towards tipping. Having figured him out, we were pissed and wanted to leave. As we made our way towards the door, he reappeared and asked again what was wrong with the service. We once again told him it was fine and moved to exit. Suddenly, his mild annoyance escalated into rage. He pursued us out the door, all the while yelling (in his own restaurant) “The bill is the bill, tip not included!” anmd then cursed us with “I do not wish you a good night, I do not wish you a happy New Year, Do not come back here!” Asshole.
Moral of the story- Sucker me once, shame on you. Sucker me twice…Well, you don’t.
Fallacy #2- Nostalgia
I always seem to be able to find something about any part of my life which I miss. If you were to pick any era of my thus far short life, I would undoubtedly have some bit of deep nostalgia associated with it. And I don’t mean eras like preschool, first grade, anything like that. I mean even more specific, like last December break or freshman summer. For some reason, I have always been a very nostalgic person. It is likely that this is because of my fascination with isolation, as things I am nostalgic about seem completely gone and lost, except for where they reside in the romantic section of my mind.
This vacation has been very interesting. How could it not be? History all around me, breathtaking views right around the streetcorner. However, it has not been my favorite of all time, simply because I find it very hard to relate to history. The palaces of the long dead mean nothing to me, their ornate golden thrones seem a waste of resources in my mind. I’ve never been an art fanatic. However, I felt a strong notch of nostalgia in my stomach tonight as I peered through a window into the local famous art museum.
The day I spent there was probably one of my least favorites, lots of looking at paintings which I couldn’t relate to at all. We were there with a member of the family one of my comrades had been staying with, a guy who seemed really great, but who I didn’t get to know very well. At the time, I had not really felt any way about spending the day with him and my group, but somehow tonight I was filled with amorphous nostalgia. It may’ve just been because of the perfect sadness of the scene- The dark exterior of a massive, magnificent museum which was uncharacteristically vacant. It is our last night, and the surrounding land is serene and almost completely silent, and I’m staring down into the museum, somehow feeling I’ll miss it. Could it be that deep down I actually enjoyed the museum tour? Could it be that the man we were with was an embodiment for me of the cool people in the world who I will never meet because I’m there and they’re here?
No, I don’t think so. I’m coming to think that maybe there are two types of nostalgia- the real and the fake, and I was experiencing the fake, as I have many times before.
What is fake nostalgia, you may wonder? It is when you are in a particularly uninteresting phase of life, such as my school year thus far. Not at all unhappy, just uninteresting. You are caught in one surreal moment which really has no meaning but is strangely cool, and you convince yourself that you have an attatchment to that part of your life. Basically, you create memories which are better than the actual occurrence. I don’t know if this happens to anyone else, but I know that it is the case here for me. It makes me wonder- How much else of my nostalgia is fake? Not the friend stuff; that’s good shit. But middle school, when life wasn’t nearly as good as it is now, are my memories of that sunnier than reality? And how about freshman year, which was dominantly awkward and annoying?
No, based on the memories I’ve heard my elders recount, I hypothesize that only the meaningless nostalgia reveals itself as trivial. In any case, sometimes I wish I wasn’t such an imagery guy.
1 fucking day.
-Batman
Bon Voyage…Throwback much?
2 comments:
Dude, I know traditionally french restaurants don't do tips but there's a good chance this one decided to advance with the westernized times or take advantage of the tourist culture and not include service. If the bill said something along the lines of "servis n'est pas..." something, you made an oops.
funny story though....
and as for fake nostalgia- pretty much my life sophomore year, not to mention for a lot of other mediocre periods. But isn't any form of nostalgia bound to isolate the good in a situation by definition, even if there was only a small iota of it, and highlight that? I mean, think of how much life would suck if we evolved to only remember how shitty everything was....we'd all commit suicide before we could procreate, or decide the world was not a good enough place for our offspring.
Well, we asked a bunch of employees at our hotel and they all said that the waiter was just trying to pull one over on us. There was nothing written on the bill, I mulled over it a few times. Seeing that this place was pretty much the least classy place we ate at all week, I don't exactly feel that they went above and beyond the other restaraunts. That, and the waiter turned out to be an asshole. So yeah, wouldn't have tipped even if it was customary.
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