A Day in the Life of Chaos

My son is a freshman in high school this year.  Oh my God, I can't believe I could even be saying something like that.  Children growing older is a part of the whirlwind of life.  For those of us who have children it is likely hard to conceive any other connection to approximately 20 years of our lives.  They stand like book ends supporting two decades.  When I look back I can't possibly think of how I got here so fast and when I look forward, I shrink in terror as I realize college is only three more short years away. My son is not athletic.  Okay, truth be told he is far more athletic than I ever was.  He can out skate board anyone in the neighborhood and played soccer.  He has however, never faced the ultimate gym humiliation that I did.  After three unsuccessful attempts at a layup in junior high school the coach placed me on the girls team.  If that had been now, I could have likely sued for enough money to support the next four generations of my family.  M

There is a demon in the mist.  It rears it's terrifying jagged body with razor sharp edges as it emerges from the dark like a flame from the deepest bowels of Hell.  It burns and it tortures, it makes its presence known through the agonizing moans that seem to take over our voices like a body possessed and in need of exorcism.  It's body scrapes and tears us like the claws of a rabid animal dragging against the soft flesh of the belly.  Only some of us know this pain.  It is not universal, it seems to be more congenital.  For some reason some have a propensity for it yet no one really knows why.  Women have generously claimed it is the closest pain a man will ever know to child birth yet as one friend reminded me, at least child birth has an eventual positive outcome.  At least a woman can relinquish her pain to an epidural.  I am now in the midst of my second major bout with kidney stones.  The term seems rather innocuous, it conjures images of a smooth pebble resting peac

Trinoma Mall I have traveled around the planet but I have found no place on earth that hosts more massive shopping malls then Manila, Philippines.  Even the names speak of enormity.  Mega Mall, Mall of Asia, Power Plant, Shangri-la, the list goes on and on.  It seems like no matter where you are, there is an enormous mall near by.  They seem to sprout like mushrooms in a lawn sometimes seemingly quite out of place.  Around them areas of extreme poverty cower in their shadows.  Massive parking garages often abut the main buildings typically bursting at the seams with cars.   The garages themselves are virtual palaces with parking floors coated in shiny epoxy and lights over the head of every space turning green when vacant, red when full.  Women dressed in bellhop type uniforms with white gloves spend their days in the elevators pushing the button for you. Everywhere you look in Manila condominiums are rising and the malls all owned by the same development corporations, have isl

If you were to ask someone what the most wonderful invention of the 21st Century is or actually more likely what the most wonderful invention of the 20th Century was, a debate would certainly ensue.  Some would say the cell phone, personally I think they should be locked away in a sound proof room with nothing but custom ring tones buzzing in their ears.  Others might say the computer still others the DVD.  For my money, there is only one answer and it is likely the farthest one from your mind.  No, its not frozen yogurt, it's the electronic bidet.  "The electronic what?" Bidet is one of those words most Americans probably can't even say correctly.  "Bid-ET.  What the hell is a Bid-ET?"  My son certainly didn't know when on our first trip to Italy he promptly went to the bathroom and took a dump in one.  He was then surprised when he couldn't find the flush handle.  No for those inside America a bidet is a simple little basin often accompanying toi

At forty-four years of age I can say I have had haircuts all over the world.  While lately in the declining years of my hair follicles this has become more and more of a challenge, it is still a necessity of life.  I never want to be accused of  being the sad pathetic man trying to desperately cling to his last few three feet long strands. On of the most terrifying haircuts I ever had was in a tiny barbershop in a small town in Egypt.  The barber executed his craft utilizing only a single straight edge razor blade.  During the process at any moment I could have become a flaccid ball of flesh, my life blood oozing out into a pool at on the floor. Another inauguration into the world of the third world haircut came in the Philippines during my first visit.  The... I shouldn't call him a barber, perhaps stylist, was so gay I wondered if he would break into a rendition of a Barbara Streisand song as his scissors snipped and snapped.  I have never had a problem getting a haircut from

Every generation says this:  "People today just have no idea about the way it was."  Life experience and the world around us contributes so much to what we are and what we will be.  Every generation had it's flash point and it is usually a violent one.  For my grandparents it was World War II.  For my parents it was Vietnam.  For those born after 1980 it was and will be, the World Trade Center, Iraq and Afghanistan.  For myself it was the Cold War and a little group of countries a third of the way around the world that most people have never heard of. When I was growing up international politics and perspective was divided into two camps, us versus them.  Everything was defined as Western Democracy facing off against Russian and Chinese Communism.  Today if you ask most people what Communism means it tends to be defined in the abstract.  It gets lumped together with skewed ideas of socialism and is simply presented as a fear word without true definition. Yet for m

The world is abuzz with high speed train travel.  Honestly it has been that way for the last 25 years but only recently with the rapid growth in China have some Americans begun to feel we are being left behind. Honestly it shouldn't just be a feeling, we are being left behind.  While the politicians bicker our aging infrastructure falls apart.  Our bridges fall down, our roads become bumpy.  Our sewer systems leak and our power generation becomes more and more 20th century. We always hear about China this and China that but the only contact that most American's have with China is shopping at Walmart.  We can't really conceive how different things could be.  When I visited my friend in China in 2011 I had a taste of things first hand.  Everywhere you look infrastructure is new.  While this is certainly not representative of all of China, industrial China is linking itself increasingly with modern road, rail and telecommunication networks.  South Korea has some of the great

Something happens starting in your forties and moving on.  Up to this point we live our lives independently.  We spend years separating ourselves from our parents and learning how to function on our own.  Sure, parents are always there to help out with advice or to fix something but we are mostly focused on establishing our own lives and families. We have our own children now and they have so many needs.  We have jobs and mortgages to pay.  When something breaks we have to fix it, when its time to eat, we have to make it.  While all this is going on at some point in life our parents start to need us more.  It can happen very slowly and often we don't even perceive the change yet it happens. As I look around at my friends who share my age I can see it happening.  These days I see it quite brilliantly in the life of my father who is now in his 60's and has a mother in her 90's.   I see it in the life of my dear friend Peggy whose father in law spent his final days with them

Every culture must look odd to every other.  We all have our own ways of doing things and our own unique perspectives.  While at times odd, it is something that distinguishes one culture from another and makes the world seem a little less like Walmart. Some of the biggest contrast comes between the East and West.  Each civilization developed their own way of doing things and consequently can look quite bizarre to the other.  Of course I arrogantly speak these words from a Western perspective and the way I do things is obviously far superior putting me in a perfect position to judge. One well known example of cultural oddity is the Harajuku girl of Japan.  Immortalized by Gwen Steffani as the perfect combination of style and cuteness.  Or there is another variety that harbors an odd proclivity to walk around in public dressed as an animal.  I have even asked my Japanese friend Shinichi about them expecting to gain insight into some kind of ancient and profound ritual only to be tol

Something about traveling changes a person.  This is especially true when the traveling reaches beyond the boundaries of our own lands.  I think if one were to get mathematical about the whole thing the formula might read something like: Familiarity = Comfort Comfort = Complacency Complacency = Ignorance When we journey out of our comfort zone the results can be unpredictable at best.  Sometimes we reach a feeling of enlightenment, sometimes we become depressed.  Sometimes when we return to our normal state we find that what was once normal has changed. Many of the feelings confronted depend on how far from our comfort zone we journey.  Feelings about ourselves and our lives might vary little if we went abroad to Canada yet traveling to South East Asia, Africa or China can result in an enormous re-evaluation of who we are and where we fit into the world around us. A few days ago I returned from a trip to the Far East.  It was largely a family trip to the Philippines punctuate