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| I've been doing an surprisingly awful job of updating this site. I can't believe the last thing I wrote was back in Cambodia. Since then I've gone through Thailand, gone back to Japan, come back to the US, bounced around the Bay for awhile and finally started at Stanford Law. That's a lot of xaga blogging that just won't happen :(
Suffice to say that Thailand was great. Scuba diving Phuket with lionfish, Moray eels, turtles, 3 ft. long cuttlefish and a million other wonders of the sea rocked. Same thing with going around above shore and seeing the islands. Ko Phi Phi, where they filmed the Beach back in the days, is gorgeous, even though yo can see the areas where the tsunami tore it up. Phuket is a mix of gorgeous beaches and plush hotel accomdations and tourist hell. In Saipan I loved going around the island, but I wasn't even tempted to walk one step inland at Phuket.
Bangkok is fun (more fun without Reiko, but that's neither here nor there :P I guess if you get in deep it would be enjoyable, but I guess I never really felt the appeal. note: people in Bangkok are as styling as those in Tokyo and way more so than HK, imho.
I ran around Japan for a week and enjoyed some going away parties and generally good times bofre coming to the states and feeling surprisingly out of place. Since my folks have moved in their own ways, I guess not having a house to call home here may be part of that. But, I definitely suffered froma sense of dislocation when I got back and, while it has disappeared a bit, sense that I'd probably be back in Japan in a few years. I didn't expect that exactly and I've enjoyed hanging in the city a ton. Still, it's a little weird being back...
...especially because I both drink and party way more here at Stanford than I did Dartmouth. This drinking wed-sat thing is just a little new to me. I mean, if I'm not in class or the library I seem to be out drinking. I don't know if I'll keep it up, but it's been a good run so far :P
The people here are a blast and law school really is a lot of fun (besides the law part ;) Actually, learning the law is a lot of fun too. I've got a pretty solid group of teachers who are insanely intelligent, fairly funny and only occassionally mean. I'm a little jealous of some the "lighter" sections, but I do feel like I'll learn a lot.
Anyways, I need to get on with some studying. But, in the meantime, one quick pic from last night.
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| I just finished my first real day of scuba training. It's pretty
impressive actually. For my $200, I've been able to enjoy 1 on 1
lessons and I'll be finishing my open water in 3 days or so. Plus,
depending on how I how handle things I might be able to do advanced for
free ;) So,you know those pools with people falling awkwardly and
looking like idiots wearing full scuba gear when everyone else is
wearing regular suits? Didn't do that. Instead, we went out
for 45 minutes on a stormy sea, tied up off an island called Elvis and
then navigated through the coral to get to sandy beach. A
gorgeous beach with tons of live coral and one fisherman boat.
Sweet jees, so nice. Then,being solo, I covered a ton of
techniques quickly and we did 2 dives before a major front hit the
area. Absolutely awesome. So many of big freaky sea urchins
with their little orange eyes...
I guess the conditions weren't actually that good (between the storms,
only 27 degree water (I don't use Fahrenheit much :/), 2m vis etc.),
but it kicked the crap out of the pool, I saw a bunch of cool
fish/corals and had some solid experience. Staring up from 6m and
realizing that you're pretty far down is pretty freaky. And
tomorrow, weather permitting, we're going down 18m.
Otherwise, I went and hit up one of the local bars last night.
Met some UK girls and hung out with the owner and her family (pretty
cool bunch really).
At some point I will get pictures online. Since I'm storing all
my stuff on a Mac formatted iPod it's a little difficult to read stuff
on PCs. Sigh...
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| I've recently made it to the south coast of Cambodia. I spent the
first few days in Siem Reap, then 1 night Phnom Penh, and then I got
down here earlier today. This country is an utter and complete
trip. Well, Angkor Wat and the rest of the country are completely
different for starters. Paying the internet kinda sucks, so this
won't be an amazing entry. Rather you get an email I sent Reiko
earlier ;)
Stuff is still going pretty smoothly down here. I went out and around
town last night. Some of the bars are pretty kicking and the only thing
that sucked was loosing at connect 4 to some underage age girl at some
bar ;) I had to stop playing when she said, "ok, next time you lose you
break up with your girlfriend." At that point the stakes were too high.
I wonder what I would have lost next...
It's kinda weird, it's
pretty easy to see what's happening here. We met this guy and he''s been trying to get his brother out
of the country. He made a good point, "you can get anything and you
think there aren't any consequences. But that's not the case." meth and
vietnamese girls never do the body good :/
it's weird, the guy I was
hanging out with is actually pretty scummy. I've never seen such a
Janus faced guy. There was a kid who was begging outside the open
window of our and the driver (his older friend) jokes that you could
spit in his face if he annoyed. Pause. Then driver starts to do it and
I say no. End of story. Nope, Chicago Law says he's 100% for it and the
guy turns around again. I guess I stopped them(more the wrong energy
than anything I said) but I worry about these guys being here for a
week. Trashy...
So, I saw lots. On a side note, PP is absolutely
gorgeous city. French architecture, temples, the river etc. Those last
two paragraphs sound bad, but it's a pretty awesome place. It's
justeasy to see what's wrong with it.
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| Tomorrow I'm off to Thailand and Cambodia. I'll try and update along the way. Peace...
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| Hahah, I was joking about Reiko about this the other day. She had an interview about her companies products the other day and I said she'd get her name in the New York Times. Well, she did ;) I have to say, that seems like some sort of standard for success in life. When you're in NYTimes even though you live and work in Tokyo you're doing pretty well. ;)
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