On The Road (from LA to SF)

Lele:
Umm… Babe… Let’s switch off at the next exit.

Me:
Why? Are you starting to get scared of my driving now?

Lele:
No. I started to a while ago.

Me:
What? Why? See? I’m so calm. I’m even laughing, still.

Lele:
(Gripping his seat, tightly) I wish I could say the same.

On The Other Hand

Why isn't my diet working?

Bah!

Tired of it. So so so so so so so sooooooooooo tired of it.

Oh Shit!

So, randomly, oh so randomly, I decided to google myself today. I do this every so often, but OH MY GOD. Boy am I glad I did, today. Last Halloween, Lele and I ended up on the front page of the SF Weekly blog and smart ol’ me, I wrote a comment on that page recently, requesting a copy of the photograph. And guess what? I signed it with my real name!!! So when I googled myself, the Halloween picture (which is soooo not appropriate!), was the third listing from the top (Friendster being the first, Facebook second). Aarrggghhh!!! And I know for a fact my dad googles me. So of course, I called SF Weekly, found the editorial assistant for the blog and had her delete my comment. I’m still waiting for it to update. But guess what I found out when I re-googled myself to check if it had been updated? The fourth listing is my Twitter page. Arrghhhh!

I hate you, internet!

Afreeka, Afrique!

This morning, we got our round-trip tickets to Casablanca. (Wow. It sounds cool just to say that!) I’m taking a month off work. This will be the first time in years that I’ll have had that much time off at once. At the same time, we’ll be so busy traveling that it will probably go by so fast!

Tentative itinerary: Head straight out of Casablanca to Rabat. Head to Tangier. Go wine tasting in Meknes. Fez. The Great dunes at Mirzouga. Marrakesh, Essaouira, Casablanca. Over all, spend about two weeks in Morocco. Fly to Dakar, Senegal. Spend a week on the beach, catch some live shows (perhaps even Orchestra Baobab). Take the train to Bamako, Mali. Go looking for Selif Keita and Tinariwen. Hopefully succeed. Fly to Timbuktu. Join a tour group to head out into the Sahara for the Festival in the Desert. Hopefully see Amadou and Mariam, Selif Keita, Tinariwen, Orchestra Baobab, tons of others. Bus/Drive back to Timbuktu. Fly to Casablanca. Spend a night or two. Fly to Madrid for a night. Be on our way back to San Francisco.

In between, will probably be lots of photography, making friends with locals, love, some nice hotels, some hostels, some camping, photography, some shopping for Moroccan rugs and tea glasses and lanterns and wine and just about anything else we can bring or ship back to the US, love, photography, photography, photography, bettering my Arabic skills, shopping, picking up bits and pieces of French, eating, photography, lying in sand dunes at night watching the stars, listening to awesome music, not wanting to return to the US, not wanting to return to work, not being able to wait to get back home asap, missing tofu, photography, making friends with other travelers, heat exhaustion, a fight or two with Chris, mad sex, photography, starvation, dehydration, camel rides, suntans, sunburns, forgetting things in hotels and not realizing until the next day or next week, awesome music, sand, sand, sand, love, photography, running out of places to charge my camera battery, eating yummy vegetarian tagine and couscous and hummus and olives, bad wine, good wine, being forced to drink funny-looking water, running out of toilet paper, having to pee in the sand, photography, debauchery in Madrid, hangovers, shopping for Spanish wine, running around trying to figure out ways to bring the wine back to the US, and coming back very tired, very dark, very gaunt, and very, very poor.

The trip of a lifetime!

When?

Soon!

I Do (And So Does Everyone Else)

Today is Pakistan’s Independence Day. It should be a happy day, but I’m in kind of a somber mood, because of everything that’s been going on with Pakistan lately; thinking about how things evolve, where we come from, where we think we’re going, the plans we make for our futures, and how those futures play out.

I’ve been focusing on a lot of things today, including one really strange one: As the day to my own wedding gets closer and I buy escort cards and plan centerpiece decorations, I can’t help but think about Megan McAllister. She was supposed to get married today. She could have been spending the last week or so running around, getting her dress fittings, and massages, and pedicures. She might have been planning seating charts and putting together favors. She could have been giddy about walking down the aisle, she could’ve been nervous about stumbling over her vows, or about him having cold feet at the altar.

Instead, she got the worst case scenario- one that no woman even thinks of: Her fiancé was not a lying, cheating, bastard, who ends up fucking a stripper at his bachelor party. He was a murderous psychopath who killed a woman, beat up another, and tried to rob a stripper. He collected women’s underwear under his- no, THEIR bed. He hid a gun in a decoy Grey’s Anatomy which she may never have thought to reference. He was a homophobe who tried to pick up gay men in restrooms (who knows what he planned to do with them) - all this, without any clue, any hint, NOTHING. In ways, it’s worse than having her fiancé back out at the last minute. It’s worse than him getting into an accident and dying the day of the wedding- or any other awful thing that can happen.

She planned for a future. She thought she was going somewhere.

I wish her peace of mind, the ability to move on, the capability to love again.

61 Days

That's number of days before you must call to make a reservations at the French Laundry (I couldn't get one!)

It’s also the number of days before my wedding.

Wow.

Photographic Memory

I recently came to a funny realization. I have now owned 5 cameras in my life, and only one of them I bought myself.

Camera 1: My dad bought me my very first camera (in Saudi Arabia), a point-and-shoot (Canon?) back in 6th or 7th grade after he and I got into an argument over something. I was misbehaving, I think, talking back to my mother or something.

Camera 2: My dad also bought me my second camera (in Boston), a Ricoh SLR, back in Sophomore year of college. This was after we got into a fight because he wanted me to change my major from Psychology to something in computers.

Camera 3: This was the one and only camera I bought for myself (my first week in San Francisco), a Nikon CoolPix digital camera. This was right around the time I was started to do a lot of things myself, like buying a laptop without discussing with my dad (the computer expert) and moving to San Francisco for grad school (when my parents were hell bent against it- I just kind of announced it to them one day that I was moving).

Camera 4: Chris bought me a red Canon Elph 14.1 megapixel digital camera for our first official Christmas together. Three months later, in Guatemala, I lost the cable that connected my camera to my laptop, to download the pictures (which isn't such a big deal, because I can still upload pictures; it's just a little more complicated).

Camera 5: A few weeks ago, Chris bought me a Nikon D90 digital SLR. I was planning to buy one in a couple of months, before our honeymoon in Africa, this December. Instead, he decided to surprise me and texted me at work one day to say he’d transferred $x,000 to our account and I should go get myself a nice digital SLR. It is now my favorite possession in the whole wide world!!!!!!! Yippee!!! (Makes me wanna forget all 'bout writing and become a poor, starving, full-time photographer!)