Category Archives: Friends / Family

Today is my eighth consecutive Thanksgiving that I spend without my parents. As a matter of fact, until 2000, I had never missed a single Thanksgiving (during my lifetime) with my parents, whereas my parents’ other two children have missed the event on numerous occassions. In the past few years, I have had the occassional Thanksgiving with friends, but we’ve never actually celebrated it on Thanksgiving Thursday — it’s always been on the weekend. Plus it’s just not the same having turkey away from home.

Today for lunch, I subsconsciously celebrated Turkey Day by ordering a Turkey sandwich. Turkey or not, I am actually much more excited about mañana than I am a sad for missing Thanksgiving. That’s right, tomorrow I get to begin my nausciously and painfully annoying assault on humanity’s collective ear drum with loads and loads of Christmas music and Christmas Specials!

A couple of pictures of Binisegarra, the house I stayed in while on Martin’s farm in Menorca earlier this month. Thanks to William and Yasmine for the photos. Continue reading →

This morning I was taking a shower and noticed a bug flying around in the shower with me. I filled my mouth with water and sprayed the little creature. But, he was insistent and came back again. So I filled my mouth a second time with water and repeated the process. He flew away but was back a minute later. I thought, hey, maybe the little fly is lonely and just wants someone to be around. I felt compassion for him. This reminded me of when I was little. Continue reading →

A few weeks ago, I was waiting to board a flight when I looked up to see my neighborhood Chinese convenient store owner’s wife and eldest son. They were off to China for the summer to see her parents. The experience reminded me, strangely enough, of my maternal grandmother and her sister and got me thinking. Here is what and why: Continue reading →

Menorca has some of the most beautiful beaches and calas (typical Mediterranean coves) that I have seen anywhere. Traditionally, it has been a very hippie island with some Catalan tourists, while most mass tourism was directed towards Mallorca, Ibiza or other Mediterranean destinations. Also most of its beaches are protected biospheres, have no hotels and are accessible only after a 10-40 minute walk from distant parking lots.

So when I arrived in Menorca (my third trip there), I was expecting some kids on the larger beaches and many hippie nudists in the more remote calas. I have always hated a couple of things at the beach, all of which include audio and visual distractions, such as people playing paddle, listening to music, or putting up big tents and umbrellas. You usually don’t have these problems in Menorca, at least that was what I thought. Continue reading →