Beam Me Up

As a young professional it is remarkably easy to fall into a weekly routine and succumb to the monotony of the greater American workforce. For a young professional, this means going to work Monday through Friday, keeping up appearances by attending the obligatory happy hours, and throwing back at the same favorite bars on the weekend, where everyone thankfully doesn’t know your name. Fortunately, my Mer-friend Megha ensures that we never fall subject to the constraints of adult life.

Megha took the initiative to plan a group outing to UltraZone, where for $14.95 ($10 with a groupon) we could essentially play endless Laser Tag. I decided to continue my youthful guise and participate. I knew I had made an abhorrent decision as soon as we stepped foot in UltraZone. It was difficult to push through the throngs of Ultra-hyper metal mouths, and the Zone was soaked with the foul stench of puberty. After getting our passes, we were set to battle for bragging rights.

The last time I played Laser Tag I could count my age with my two hands. So to ensure that I was appropriately briefed on the latest laser techniques, and more importantly, understood the rules of engagement, we sat through the requisite instructional video. Three teams, Red, Green, and Blue, would compete in the arena, with only one being victorious. Since Megha had created two teams in advance, we now had the added complexity of fending off a third team of strangers. I’ve chronicled the epic journey through the trilogy of games.

Game 1, The Warm Up: We proceeded to the vesting room. The third team, comprised solely of teenage girls, flocks to the Blue vests. So we divide into our respective Green and Red teams. I spend the first few minutes in the arena getting my bearings, finding myself incessantly under fire. It doesn’t take us long to realize that the entire Blue team ascended the ramp and has assembled a full out poaching fortress, gunning out teams down while protecting themselves behind their altitudinal shield. With around 1 minute to spare, the strategy shifted and I led the Joint Forces up the ramp, reminiscent of the Battle of Bunker Hill (except for unlike the Brits, we failed to secure the high ground by the time the game ended.) The final score wasn’t even close. We got schooled by a bunch of school girls.

Game 2, Domination: With bitter tongues and a desire to win back some of (alright, all of) the pride we sacrificed in Game 1, we decided on an important course of action developed from the lessons learned in Game 1. We would unite. Two teams of us versus one team of them would surely secure a definitive victory. Having forged this alliance, we proceeded to the arena experienced veterans, and emerged as champions. Nothing like beating an outnumbered pack of puberty to boost our egos.

Game 3, ADHD: I apparently still have a short attention span, and two games was enough for my liking. So instead of participating in the third game, I wandered aimlessly through the arena looking for hidden crevices and secret passage ways (hopefully finding a connecting chamber to Narnia to rendezvous with my dear friend Ed.

Something Fishy

I recently went to my family’s beach condo in Dewey Beach with some college friends for a weekend escape. It was an enjoyable weekend; similar to the Zak Brown Band lyric I got my toes in the water, a$$ in the sand, Not a worry in the world, a cold beer in my hand. Life is good today. My toes were all that got in the water because, despite the unusually warm May weather, the water temperature was cold enough to cause hypothermia. And thankfully my rear didn’t end up in the sand, despite my friends’ attempt at digging a crater under my beach towel while I was taking a leisurely stroll.

Anyway, on Saturday evening, at Stuart’s suggestion, we elected to play Fish Bowl (a game involving two teams, and three rounds). After all, we were at the beach, and had many conversations spanning the sea spectrum, from the science of estuaries to the mating patterns of sea horses. Rules are outlined below:

Each player contributes five nouns to a collective “fish bowl”. Each team alternates minutes attempting to get fellow teammates to guess the nouns on the cards. In the first round, the describer can use anything except for the actual noun to describe it. For example, if the noun is immigration, the describer might say Arizona just passed a racist law about it. The second round uses the exact same nouns, but the describer can only use one word. For example, Arizona. The final round is charades, so in this round the actor might point to the can of Arizona iced tea sitting on the coffee table. The winning team is simply the team that accrues the most points over the three rounds. Simple, right?

Well. The past two times I played, the game went as follows. Stuart assigns each individual to a team. My team always ends up being my two loyal friends, Hurley and Rhino. The other team always ends up being EVERYONE ELSE. The first time, the team was literally Hurley, Rhino, and myself versus 10 everyone elses and one Stuart. I cried foul play the entire game but nobody else seemed to care! Obviously my team lost. Well, the second time, I was ready to redeem my damaged pride, sure that with a level playing field, my team would emerge victorious. It turns out the field wasn’t level, my team was charging up an incline the entire time, Stuart standing at the top. So third time’s the charm. I was pleased to humor Stuart, finally wrestling her to her defeat. Shockingly, when the teams were formed, I was on the team of three, Stuart on the team of four. Not surprisingly, my team lost, however, if the score was calculated based on the metric points per team member, my team would have won!

I’m currently petitioning the officials at gamesecretary.com to get the rules changed. I should have known Stuart was up to something fishy as soon as I smelled the sea air.

The Middle East Part 7: Keffi-maybe

My friend Bowman came to Washington for New Years. It was then that he gifted me a keffiyeh in advance of my Middle Eastern adventures. Keffiyehs are a very practical arid climate headdress worm to protect the head from direct sun exposure. I was excited, less so because it was a gift from a distant land but rather because it was one of the few Arabic words I knew.

In anticipation of my trip, I spent some time each evening with my roommates attempting to master the art of keffiyeh tying. Originally, I used Bowman’s written instructions, but soon realized I couldn’t wrap my head around his foreign instructions (or rather wrap it around my head). So I turned to youtube and futilely attempted to use instructional keffiyeh tying videos. When I had exhausted all of my options, I decided that it would be best to learn to tie a keffiyeh while in the Middle East, for authenticity’s sake.

Well, my keffiyeh emerged as soon as I touched down in Jordan. Everyone else, including Val, had this tying mastered. I haven’t felt this uncoordinated since trying to keep up with the clay pottery lesson in elementary school art class. My head looked more like it was balancing a bunched up picnic blanket that sporting a secured keffiyeh.

One evening, our tour master Bowman, took us on a camping adventure with the Bedouins. We went to Wadi Rum, traveling deep into the heart of this beautiful desert. I was Lawrence of Arabia, or at least pretended to be. It was here where I met my Arabic counterpart. I instantly befriended the Bedouin with braces.

Due to the language barrier, I used a translator to inform my new friend that I wanted to take a picture of the two of us with our braces. I’m not sure what was translated; when I saw the pictures when I returned to America, I realized he hadn't smiled. I couldn't see his braces. I had been boondoggled! I guess I can’t complain too much, he did end up fixing my swaddled heap, turning my keffino into a keffiyeh.

The Middle East Part 6: Gemal

I have always had an infatuation with animals, which I can’t seem to trace back to any hereditary trait, so I’m not sure where it originated. (Maybe one day some scientist will discover a gene for animal obsession, but until then, people will just continue to think I’m weird). Another interesting point: my obsession is entirely dependent upon my environment.

For two weeks, while on a environmental restoration trip in the Shenandoah area, I was determined to spot a black bear. And for two weeks, as if knowing we were playing a game of hide and seek, the black bears hid from me. In hindsight, I guess it wasn’t difficult to hide from the loud bravado stampeding through the Shenandoah. It wasn’t until the final evening when, annoyed with my besetment of bear dialogue, the rest of the team piled into a car and we drove around the winding roads until we finally spotted a black bear. YES! Oh yea, did I mention this was after college?

When recounting this story on three separate occasions to my mother, father, and then sister, I received the exact same response. Rolled eyes and some dismissive comment about how some things never change. Apparently, as a child (and by that, I mean a high school student) my family vacationed to Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming. The rest of my family all happened to have the same memory of me forcing the family to continue trekking through the mountains in search of the elusive moose. I was apparently blackout for this entire episode, but, am thankful to hear that I did, in fact, find the moose! YES!

So it comes as no surprise that my excursion to the Middle East brought about a newly cemented camel obsession. I embraced the inner tourist and was determined to ride a camel. The opportunity did not present itself until the end of the trip, in Jordan.

Aside: While I am magnetically drawn to animals, I do not have much success in riding them. I have a fair amount of confidence that I am the only person in the world to have fallen off of a stationary horse. The scenario went something like this: Hop on the saddle, saddle rolls off, back on the ground just as fast as I unsuccessfully mounted the horse. So it also comes as no surprise that my camel-riding entourage bestowed upon me the superlative most likely to fall off a camel – which, I boastfully did not do, albeit, may have been closest to falling off.

I can count very few times in my life where I have been as happy as I was when I sat mounted atop my camel. However, after a few minutes of riding, I found myself in a balancing act, trying to protect the nape of my back from hitting the upper back saddle and sliding forward consequently causing my pants to constrict my freedom. The novelty of riding wore off pretty fast, or at least faster than the bruise on my back.

Based on my observations and research, the childhood song about Sally the camel is fraudulent and misrepresentative. For starters, Sally flat out lied about her lovely lady lumps. Camels can only have a maximum of two humps. Well, it turns out that Sally wasn’t even a camel – she was a horse the entire time! Also, a little unknown fact. Horses detest the smell of camels and are consequently harder to control around them. I can only imagine the inner conflict Sally had impersonating a camel while detesting her own camel odor the entire time. What a poser.

The Middle East Part 5: Fact or Fiction?

As previously alluded to, I’m fairly confident that my journey to the Middle East could be entirely documented based on nothing more than the fine fare I feasted upon. And Istanbul was no exception. Domers and kabobs lined the street shops and roasted chestnut vendors were well within a chestnut throw of one another (on further reflection I think the Christmas Song might have been written from the streets of Istanbul) creating a fragrant atmosphere and subconsciously encouraging my gluttonous behavior.

One delicatessen Val and I were determined to try was the famed Turkish delight. While we were both set on partaking of this cultural confection, neither of us actually knew what it was. I just knew that I wanted to try it, because I remembered a close friend of mine (whose name eluded me at the time) raving about Turkish delight.

So with much fracas, Val and I tore across town in an attempt to be delightfully enlightened. Things we discovered: Turkish delight is a jelly-like confection coated in a powdered sugar, and comes in a variety of nutty and fruity flavors. Turkish delight is a bit over hyped and over rated (I would gladly default to the bordering baklava). Oh…and also that my close friend that espoused the virtues of Turkish delight was not in fact a dear friend, but rather Edmond Pevensie, from The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. Woof.

The Middle East Part 4: Hamam...um?

Having voyaged all the way to Istanbul, Val and I were determined to participate in full cultural immersion (which I defined as anytime I found myself in a room where the Turks outnumbered the European tourists - I know, not a very sophisticated metric.) As part of this cultural immersion, no inch of culture was left untouched...quite literally.

After becoming well acquainted with minced meat, mosques and minarets, Val and I took our cultural immersion to a more intimate level by going to a hamam, or Turkish bath. Having done our Lonely Planet research, we elected to go to Cemerlitas Hamami, where the C and s were appendaged with hooks for which pronunciation eludes me, since my 4-night stand in Istanbul did not translate to Turkish fluency. Alas, we settled on this bathhouse because of its perceived ability to handle tourists.

As the wet relative of the sauna, a hamam is intended to be the trifecta of hygiene.

Step 1: Relax in the warm room, also known as a sauna, allowing the bather to perspire freely.

Step 2: Perform a full body wash and massage to cleanse the body.

Step 3: Retire to the cooling room for a period of relaxation.

Well, after paying, I was directed to my private locker room, where having done my research, I knew I was supposed to strip naked and wrap myself in the Turkish terry cloth. Private is a relative term in Turkey; as my locker was simply a confining space with a glass door overlooking the atrium. I was then directed by a series of grunts and finger pointing and thrust through a fortified wooden door. Finding myself alone in the large domed sauna with a huge slab in the center of the room, I sprawled out to fulfill step one. I found myself short of breath, not sure if my elevated heart rate was attributed to nervousness, liberation, or just my body adjusting to the new struggle to take in oxygen.

Just as I was getting comfortable, the calm was irrupted by a chanting man who came in and forcibly began to drown my body with water, rolled up my terry cloth, and aggressively scrubbed and massaged me cap-a-pie.

One important note: I'm certain that the use of the terry cloth is simply to trick the mind into the false perception that the body is clothed. I'm also certain my mind was not deceived, as I was well aware of my exposed flaccidity.

Step 2 ended just as brusquely as it had commenced. All of a sudden, there I was, still sprawled across the stone slab, with nobody instructing me on the next move. Check mate? Alone in the sauna, I couldn't even put up a pretense and imitate a more experienced bather. Instead of retiring to the cooling room, I found myself excessively sweating and beginning to feel rather dehydrated. After waiting another 10 minutes to make sure I got my money's worth, and now feeling less clean then when I arrived, I proceeded back to my locker and changed into my clothing.

I walked in the front door prepared for an unobjectionable experience and left through the same door, feeling like I had been Istanbullied around.

The Middle East Part 3: What Goes Around Came Around

The Hagia Sophia was pretty much the extent of my elementary education of the Byzantine Empire; it’s grand dome literally shaping the course of architecture. So it was important for me to may tribute to this church-converted-mosque-converted-museum. Valerie and I (read Valerie) took to rapid-fire upon entering the UNESCO World Heritage site. We eventually made our way over to the Weeping Column, a column in the inner narthex that has a concavity said to provide good fortune to anyone who rubs it and feels moisture.

So, of course, Val and I stood in line with the gathering of tourists waiting for their photo op and stroke of luck. Directly in front of us was a couple with two teenage boys, overextending their time at the Weeping Column – perhaps hoping that the longer they were in contact with the column, the greater the odds of feeling a dab of water.

I thought nothing of the family until five minutes later when I noticed the one of the teens hunched over in the corner, his stomach revolting and spewing it’s content across the sacred foot-grounds of the Hagia Sophia! I was immediately insulted to think that here was this boy defaming such an architectural triumph, and took it as a personal assault as Val and I proceeded to soak our hands in sanitizer.

I swiftly maneuvered to the nearest staffer, and despite the communication barriers, made audible gagging noises while simultaneously using hand gestures and posture to demonstrate what had just gone down. Despite what I thought was a universal charade for boy yakking in corner of Hagia Sophia, the puzzled staff member left and returned with an English speaking staffer.

For the remainder of the trip, I proceeded to share this occurrence, partly out of offense, partly out of humor, with everyone. I suppose karma had its way of going around and coming around, since right before Val and I boarded our 14 hour return flight to the land of the free, we both came down with a pleasant case of food poisoning, and now recognize the value of the barf bag. It was definitely a highlight, or low light, of the trip, depending from which direction one is looking at the light. Look who got the last yak.