 Thursday, January 18, 2001 Multiple clocks are ticking now:
Essentially, this is the issue of how I'm going to continue to be employed over this trip—or else deal with the issue of having to go get yet another God-blighted job upon my return. I've decided to take a very Sayers-family approach, and trust in the Good Lord (oh, and the high-tech labor market) to provide.
Great news on the travel companion front! The Esteemed Mark Pitely has, tentatively, agreed to join us for the Rome/Athens/Istanbul leg of the trip! I brought up the prospect of an additional traveler to the other two principals—and of course they ringingly endorsed this idea. (Erin's specific comment, as I recall: "Pitely sucks. Count me out if he's coming along.")
<cloaking device from Pops> On the travel preparations front, not too terribly much to report. The only one of our destination countries that requires a visa is Turkey—and evidently you can pick that up at the border crossing. On the downside (I should say "moderately worrisome" side), as I was collecting U.S. Embassy/Consulate contact info, I learned that the U.S. consulates in Istanbul and Adana are "temporarily closed to review security measures." ! Happily, the Embassy in Ankara evidently feels safe enough to keep the doors open and the shop running. The one really major agenda item on my list is to make hotel reservations for all our Italy destinations. We're pulling the questionable maneuver of going there in April, which, needless to say. Hopefully it's not already too late to get decent, cheap rooms. Meantime, I continue to apply my nonexistent aptitude for languages to study of Italian. It's a pretty language, and so much like Spanish (kind of like Spanish skewed to the side, with all 'i' sounds instead of 'e' sounds) that I have a shot at getting some down. I recently bought an additional six hours of tapes (in addition to the Fodor's Italian for Travelers edition, which series I heartily recommend), and which I mainly listen to during my morning and evening bicycle commutes. All reports of a maniacal cyclist, oblivous to car horns and everything else, zipping around Santa Clara and muttering phrases like "Siamos vegitariani. Vorrei vegetale, per fervore" should be . . . discounted. The other bad news is my ambition to learn at least little slivers of the six different languages to which I'm going to be exposed on this trip. Sister Sara reports that, in Prague, she was able to master precisely one word of Czech: "Proseem" (please). She worked on "thank you," but just couldn't get it. So, everything was "please." I've already got those consulate numbers, as well as local Earthlink dialup numbers. I've loaded up the work laptop (with which I plan to abscond—"I need it to, uh, check e-mail . . . so you can reach me while I'm gone! Yeah!"—) with Photoshop and my digital camera capture software. I've already got the only power adapter I'll need for every country; still need to pick up a couple of phone adapters. And I've got my plane ticket over (though, excitingly, no ticket back yet). So, now it seems mainly to be a matter of somehow finding the nerve to announce my forthcoming sabbatical, and then slogging through ten more weeks of cubicle farming here in the fecund Valley. Look for me to mostly leave ya'll alone until departure—an attempt to build up some "good will." Until then: hope everyone is well, and, erm, enjoying what they do for a living more than I do. (Ah, but of course, life could certainly be a hell of a lot worse.) Dreaming of escape, |
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