Let me tell you a little story...

When I tried to kill myself, a couple days before the beginning of my freshmen year of high school, I very nearly succeeded. I landed myself in the cardiac intensive care unit for 3 days, prior to a week + in the psychiatric unit. Before I went into the psych ward, I called my best friend, Erica. She was so angry at me - she railed on about how selfish I was, how dare I do something so stupid that hurt so many people around me.

Erica and I had been so close - close enough that we could regularly complete each other's thoughts, often answer questions that were not yet given voice. She was so angry - so hurt because of my actions. She stopped talking to me entirely for several months, completely unable to bear being around me, because it hurt so much to see or talk to me after my incredibly stupid action. I tried to kill myself in August - Erica and I did not actually start talking again, as friends, until December.

I had been in intensive therapy constantly from the time I was in the hospital, and I was slowly healing. It wasn't until I evidenced that I was in fact healing and was no longer so depressed that Erica was able to heal enough from the pain I inflicted upon her that she could be around me again.

It took a long time for the wounds I inflicted upon her to heal. The thing is, I needed that time apart, as well. I couldn't heal the way I needed while I had the reminders around me of how I had been when I was still so sick. Only after I had healed a great deal could I handle having her around, any more than she could bear being around me. Yet, she and I are still good friends to this day.

I remember the months following my suicide attempt as very lonely ones. So many friends seemingly abandoned me - but it was what I needed. I could not have healed properly or completely if my friends had stayed close and told me everything was alright. Had they done so, I would have simply ignored the therapy and hid in my little "I'm alright - I'm not sick, I don't need help" bubble. I look back on it now, and realize they did not abandon me as I had thought - they simply told me what I did not want - yet desperately needed to hear - that I was sick and I needed help.

Thank you. Chris, Erica, Damien, Amanda, Tim, Dana - thank you for helping me, even when I did not want it. I will always be grateful.

I've lately been on this... loneliness thing. Some part of my mind, I don't know which, has been withdrawing from my conscious thought processes, working on something it would like to keep hidden from me for the time being. Apparently, it's decided that I need some private space to do whatever it is that needs to be done.

My social calendar has become barren. People ask me out and I typically conjure up some reason or excuse not to go. Work is scheduled and I end up feeling sick (legitimately, not playing hooky). Friends call and I somehow manage to cut the conversation short or meet up with them really late despite having plenty of time to prepare. I don't know what's going on, but I'm withdrawing into myself- more so than usual.

Could it be depression? Perhaps it is, but I don't think so. I'm still creatively functioning (though I haven't been writing as much as I would like), and when I'm depressed my creativity levels drop to nothing flat. I can still smile and appreciate a good joke. No, I'm not depressed.

I think that quiet corner of my mind which is locked off from the rest of me is trying to tell me something, trying to move me somewhere. It's not a subconscious thing; it's an UNconscious thing. Home is where I must be.

My landlord's middle son, Chris, is a real head-case. He dances between reality, the one that we all share, and his own reality which makes the Marvel Universe seem quirky. He was hospitalized last year for basic looniness. These last few months he got checked in twice. He's been given to strange bouts of private rage- kicking or punching holes in his mother's house's walls, throwing furniture, screaming and whatnot. Typical behavior for someone who isn't happy with their perspective on reality. He's been on medication, the poor kid, and it hasn't really been much better for him.

When I was 9 I had my IQ rated at 190 (it's since dropped to 182- vestiges of growing up, I guess). Being that young with that sharp a mind, I was prone to looking at the world in very odd ways from everyone else. Complex things came naturally to me, easy to understand and discuss intricately. Simple things, though, like common social skills, basic math, doing homework, being on time, matching my clothes, shit that nearly everyone doesn't think twice about- those things took a lot of focus and attention for me, usually resulting in frustration or resentment at whoever happened to be close by. As a result of this problem, I was placed in a federally operated "home" for troubled kids. Not teens, mind you, but kids- preteens. I spent a year there and those experiences are best left forgotten to me, many of them are still buried underneath the personality I've constructed around myself and have dubbed "Jay." Some still haunt me, though. A year of, basically, being taught how to live with other human beings and relate to them. How to avoid fights. How to say thank you. How to ask questions. How to ask for help. How to participate in the comings and goings of humanity at large. In short, I was taught how to be like most other people- from all outward appearances.

They didn't tell me that my perception of reality was wrong, per se. What they told me, in effect, was that my perception of reality was unique from everyone else's and since it was so different I would likely not be treated well by the rest of society. I would be treated with hatred, emnity, fear, abuse, insults and everything else counterproductive to developing into a well-rounded individual. They taught me that the world and the people in it see things very differently, and in a very specific way. There are all kinds of rules and guidelines that people follow, most of them taken for granted, which I had to learn. And learn them I did.

I also learned that I didn't have to lose my perceptions in the bargain. Interesting point of note is that I now live about 3 blocks from the same facility I stayed at. It's long-since changed names and function, but the buildings still stand. I drive by there every once in a while to remind myself of what/who I once was- to help keep it all in perspective.

Upon meeting Chris, my landlord's son, I immediately recognized his problem. He's quite bright and even edging on poetically brilliant. But he's got this problem with reality, you see: it doesn't agree with him, so he sets himself apart from it. He's 19, to make matters worse. I honestly think he's beyond real help at this point- at least, beyond the kind of help I got when I was a kid.

Today he came to my cabin and and we discussed the shape of the world and where it's headed. We talked about fears and facing them. About being productive instead of running from them. By the end of it, he told me that he needed to live in my cabin more than I did. I asked him if he was going to see about having me move out. He said no, but that he just felt my home was more secure.

That really bothered me. My home is MY home. It might seem more secure, but only because I feel secure in it- I can't speak for anyone else's security when they're in my home. I went to sleep with troubled thoughts on my mind.

I woke up later, called out of work because my stomach was killing me and then I got dressed. I went into the main house and found Chris in his bedroom. I told him to get his shoes on and join me for a ride, there was something I wanted to show him. Begrudgingly, he agreed. I took him to that place I'd spent a year at some 20 years ago. We got out of my car, in the drizzling rain, and I pointed to a building. It had sharp angles and red bricks.

"I spent a year in that place," I told him. I went on to tell him the reasons why. I also told him about a particularly small room I spent a considerable amount of time in, the isolation room. I have a severe contempt for that room. "I don't ever want to see you in a place like this, Chris," I went on to say. "You've been institutionalized for what, a grand total of a month? Maybe two? They gave you some happy pills and sent you on your way. Chris, I had no pills. I had a YEAR- in that place. And it sucked in ways you can't imagine." I eyed him carefully. "You think no one knows what you're going through, but I've got news for you, bud. I do. I went through hell and back just to learn a few simple things and, for a while, it almost broke me. You're a smart kid, Chris. Do ya get it?"

He was quiet for a long while and said that he did. Then he asked me to buy him a pack of smokes. I sighed and agreed, since I was out myself. We bought them, came back to the house and I tried to get some more sleep. I noded some online today (S.F.W. and The House of the Venerable and Inscrutable Colonel). I napped again and woke up sometime after dark. While I was checking my e-mail, there came a loud pounding on my door- the pissed-off kind.

It was Chris's mother. She bitched me out for buying him smokes. I had no idea that she was trying to ween him off of them. She didn't seem to care if I knew or not. She was not rational, not respectful- just wrathful. She told me to call her if I ever went anywhere with Chris again. Period. I agreed, making sure to keep my temper ('cus, BOY was I pissed!). I kept my voice calm and sure.

I have been doing my best not to get wrapped up in other people's drama, to stay out of other peoples' way. Today I almost got kicked out of my home for ignoring what my little voice has been telling me lately. I don't think I'm going to ignore it for a long while to come. There's too much at stake to take another risk- and risk is for those who can afford it.

Drunken people can be surprisingly stupid and predictable.

I was running fartlek today and I finished one of my fastest spurts just in front of the students' apartment. There were four guys on a balcony sipping beer and having only towels around their waists. Obviously they were cooling out from sauna. It was -2 degrees Celsius outside.

They were having fun, I guess, and one of them tried to made fun of me:
- You should go and eat some oatmeal cuz ya can't run no more.
I didn't mind them because I'm quite used to people trying to crack jokes about running. However, I slipped back:
- I wouldn't pay a penny for your thoughts, you drunken idiots.
From now on they were playing a different tone in their whistle. Cheerful intoxication changed into aggressive drunkenness.
- Wov, the guy starts to pick our noses, eh!
Technically, I had already passed the building.
- Come here if ya think ya have something to say!
Usually I just ignore these kind of stupid statements but this time I turned back.
- Very well, come down here and lessee who's who.
I never intended to fight. I've never fought. I challenged them only because if they were stupid enough to come out I would just simply go away leaving them standing naked in the snow. The second possibility would be an exchange of insults.

The balcony was in the first floor. And guess what, of course one of them made a cunt of himself jumping down in order to kick the shit out of me. The others were either throwing lousy insults or cheering up their mate. I picked a handful of snow from the street. The guy - drunk and starting to feel the cold in his soles - approached me looking for a fight. There was about 5 meters between us. I was almost choking for laughter:
- Look at you! You're really fuckin stupid! I threw a snowball hitting his chest. - Hope you don't catch the cold, moron!
- Bye bye
, I said turning away escorted by drunken gibberish that I think was the last set of insults.

the music becomes a little like a perpetual diary

i've been looking at this a lot recently. i've been trying to find in her again what made me feel like that in the first place.

i've been trying, do you know how hard? to connect the past with now.

i've been grasping to remember what it was that made me love her. because now, everything she does seems to annoy me on one level or another. things are a mess, it's taking it's toll on both of us.

all the things about you that would drive me wild still drive me wild, but now in a different way

i want to love her again, i try to, because i still care for her, because she still loves me, because i don't want to break up with her. because it would hurt her deeply. the way that she hurt me.

yes her. over two years and i still can't bring myself to say your name.

do you hear me RACHEL!



there, i said it, as if that somehow means you no longer have any power over me.

don't get me wrong. i don't love her anymore. i don't miss her, i don't want her back. but i want to be able to have again what i had with you. i want to be able to love that completely, to be able to give myself to another, heart and soul and everything. but i can't.

broken. did you here me? i feel broken.

and leaving this town makes so much sense...

The sky this morning is that light diffused grey your car's windows might have when you've just gotten in and not been able to defrost them to clear up the haze of the previous night. It is December and yet I've been keeping all the windows open to let in the cool air. This is the first time I've even kicked on the heat in several days.

Bryan is now living with me until he finds a job and gets his own place. For the time being, I really like having him around. It's nice to have someone in the apartment with me, someone to talk to and watch their comings and goings. It makes me miss having a roommate, but I'm sure when he's moved on I will slide back into my solo living with little struggle. There have been times that I'm online or writing and he'll be watching a movie (which he didn't get to do because he and Suzy didn't have a TV/VCR) or typing on his laptop, and it's just nice. I am happy to be able to help someone else out at a time I can barely help myself. Takes my mind off my own wants. Plus, it helps me cope with not being able to see Ted, who I think about every day.

The last few weeks have been actually quite pleasant. I have gotten to meet two local noders, Lia and strange fruit, after many failed attempts. Lia is a 30 year old dread-locked guy who works as the sole computer fix-it-all guy for a bead company (as in Mardi Gras beads). We went to Schiro's and had catfish almondine. He is very easy to talk to and to listen to. Like me, he's been here for about 6 years, living in the same kind of neighborhood as me and having had some similar experiences and run ins. This Friday, I met strange fruit at the Trolley Stop Cafe and talked with her for a while. She is very cool, and I hope to see her again, college classes willing. I don't know why it is, but I always feel an impetus to meet noders who live in town. It is, perhaps, the warped way I tell myself that I am still able to get out there and meet new people, that I am not just penning myself in and shutting out all of the world.

I don't know why this is, but I can never seen to drink all of any one cup of coffee. It always gets cold too fast, and instead of pouring it out, I just fill the cup halfway with hot coffee, but after that it never tastes the way I want. Perhaps it's because I'm writing or talking when I'm usually having coffee and it distracts me.

Yesterday, I got to work my random weekend job doing books for the Quilt Shop guy. Good thing too, because I spent my last dollar for lunch. Last night, Bryan and I were drinking and watching movies that he owned. He watched French Kiss and we both finished Rocky Horror Picture Show where I had left of with it the day before. Bryan was just getting into Turk 182 when we found out that Ken's roommate was having a party to celebrate the near end of her final exams at Tulane. I was drunk in the #e and Ken was on as well and invited us over. I was not going to go at first, being that I'd had almost finished my 6 pack of Dixie (which is more than enough to do me in) and was content to stay in for the night. Since I was nearly out of cigarettes, I asked Ken to pick me up a pack on his way to pick us up (since I could not, obviously, drive). Just as Bryan predicted, Ken would not give me the smokes until I got in the car to go to the party. It was a nice affair. All college kids. We hung out on the porch so we could smoke and made conversation with some of the porch folk, watching people file in with their contributions of cheap beer and shoeboxes with Jello shots. Ken had contributed The Replacements and Uncle Tupelo to the music mix. After a few more beers, I found myself at Ken's computer, which had #e still running. I checked my email and got a really sweet one from Ted, so I msgd him on E2 and talked with him in the #e for a while before he had to crash. I got Ken to take me and Bryan home and they took off for the Quarter, leaving Ken's car here. When I woke this morning, Bryan had not returned home and Ken's car was gone. They likely stayed out drinking and then went to breakfast. That is the traditional thing to do here because you can do it. 24 hour bars and 24 hour breakfast joints. New Orleans provides so many means to meet all kinds of people that you sometimes wonder how you end up with the gang you do at the end of it all.

Also last night, I read Carson's last daylog about him going off for a year tour. I am not sure if this is what he wanted, and despite all the drama, it made me think about him the way I did when he was in Egypt for a month. Back then, all I did was worry and miss him, but now it is more a concern for his general well-being. I can only imagine what's going through his mind right now. I mean, he still has to come get all his furniture from his old apartment here, and all these seeming loose ends to tie up in a rather rushed manner before he goes. I do wish him well and hope he makes it through this safely. He had always been quite a good friend.

These are the last days until Ted comes here to visit, and while I do have things I need to do, it is not enough to occupy my time, as I cannot talk to him as regularly because he is gearing up for finals. It is the feeling of reinforcing how much you like someone with communication, but at the same time it's only teasing you more, because you can't act on it in an impulsive way. You just have to wait. Still it is good to have something to look forward to, something you know will be just as pleasant and enjoyable as your thoughts of it make it out to be, since it has always been like that with Ted. It is a different type of ache, and ache you know will soon burst forth and press a few new stars into the sky.

Ok,

"Put on your yarmulke
Here comes Chanukah
So much funukah
To celebrate Chanukah
Chanukah is the festival of lights
Instead of one day of presents, we have eight crazy nights"

Adam Sandler -What The Hell Happened To Me?


Today is the first candle of Hanukkah, Hanukah, or however you want to spell it!

Jelly Donuts or Jelly Doughnuts errr well nevermind that.

Candles and FIRE and dreidels!! and guild and oh oh oh,.. so much fun

Wait a sec, I just remembered, we don't get any time off for this Holiday,

hmmmmm nevermind

Today is Sunday...

The story starts on Saturday night, at Kerry & Michael?s dinner party. The food that they served was simply amazing. Kerry is a wine drinker, and admits to half a bottle per day, plenty of good wine was on tap. I don't drink that much, but I do tend to drink up what's put in front of me, with predictable results. I knew I would be up early, so I finally begged of when I realised how late it was. I got home and to sleep around 2am.

I awoke round 5am. My head was in a vice, and I there was an iron bar that I needed to pee out. Sideways. My sure-fire hangover cure (visit the bathroom, down a can of superjuice, go back to bed) worked to an extent, and I felt somewhat better when the alarm went off at 7am. After debating a while to turn it off and lie in, I eventually got up and put on my outdoor clothes. A light breakfast, five glasses of water and three aspirins later, I was off. It was about 7:50am. It was a nice day, sun already high in the sky, a few were clouds about, but the summer heat is finally upon us and they wouldn't trouble us much.

The directions were simple: Take the N7 (for me this means first navigating across town to it), 6km past the Atlantis turnoff, take a left marked Rondeberg and follow the signs. The farmland has turned dry, gold and brown as it tends to at this time of year. Still it's not as blistering as last year, and so there should be few serious fires.

I arrived at the party venue by 8:30. Timecode, a new outfit made up of the usual suspects from dogstar records were putting on a smallish outdoor trance event on a farm. On the way I had been debating to myself if I should pay the full price of R40 (pro: It's not much, I can afford it and I know that the organisers are poor hippies) or ask for a half-price entry (pro: the party is more than half over).

But when I left the tar, and followed the cardboard flouro signs onto the dirt road, I found that the gate had been abandoned. Entry cost for me: R0. I decided to drive in as far as I could, and find a parking spot that someone else had vacated. After nearly getting the car stuck in the soft sand next to the road, I pulled up just as I had hoped in a neatly vacant spot. After more juice and another asprin, I headed to the dancefloor.

The dance floor was shaded by trees and clouds so I didn?t bother with sunblock or a hat (But somehow my face and scalp are lightly red anyway). A DJ called Shift was on, playing extrovert, wild trance music. On the whole the music at this party was excellent, much better than the previous week's Vortex.

This venue was dry and dusty though. It was one of those parties that gives me dancefloor-up-the-nose syndrome. I'll be blowing black for days, I can tell.

There must have been about 200-300 people there, camping in little dome tents, dancing, drinking and sitting.

Pretty soon I met up with the people I can come to see - Shane and Vana, both just down from London. Vana and his oriental girlfriend were bonding seriously with a chillum.

Shane was the next DJ up. Writing about music is like dancing about architecture, but anyway, his set started off smooth and harmoniously mixed, which the quite young crowd didn't really find ideal, but as is his habit, the musical style changed slowly, eventually building into some wild and grinding tracks that were much enjoyed.

I will miss this. Even now that it's predictable, routine and sometimes boring, I'll miss it. Even thought most of the people here are now ten years younger than me, I'll miss it. I vacillate between dread and hope on my idea to emigrate. But now I can articulate the two main reasons:

1) Cape Town is too safe. It is the old Newtonian rut of remaining in uniform motion when not acted on by outside forces. I need more stimulus than that. I need the challenge. It may not be the challenge that I wanted, but I'll settle for it

2) Cape Town is not safe enough. Try as I might, I am not very optimistic for it's long-term prospects. Whilst I realise that every skilled person that leaves with their 1st class education, their skills, hastens that day, I also must take care of myself. I've given this place a lot. I've given Africa more than I ever wanted to give. Now I'll look after myself, and do it by making it hard for myself in the short term. I'm twisted like that.

I left after Shane's set finished, just before twelve. Maybe I'll go large next weekend, but I've only just recovered from last week's Vortex party. When I got home I slept some more, and awoke about 5pm. I'm reading American Gods. It's easy going, on territory that Niel Gaiman has covered before, but still very good.

About 5:30 I got up and tried out the new weed-eater. The old one died three weeks ago, in the line of duty. The grass needed mowing then, and since that the lawns had become an almost impenetrable jungle. The new machine has twin cutting lines, and rotates at a fearsome speed. Thus I kitted up with boots and eye-protection, precautions that were not needed on the old machine. This new one is really quite something, a twin-corded circle of ravening destruction, annihilating any vegetable matter that comes within range. I soon found out it's drawback: it is much heavier. My arms are quite tired now, and I have a tiny blister on my trigger finger, but I did manage to tame the jungle by the time that it started to get dark around 7pm.

Then supper and internet.

I just took a shower, it is 4:18 pm. I've been up since 11, but I have not gotten out of bed. For some reason, my hung over mind decided that staying in bed and reading Sex and the City for the 80th time would be a much better plan than homework.

This is why I hate Sunday. I almost alway save up all my papers, projects and readings for the weekend, thinking I'll finally be able to get ahead. So, on Friday I do a little work, knowing I have the rest of the weekend to do it. Saturday, is the same, a little work, a little relaxing. Then Saturday night hits. And I drink. This ruins Sunday and I have so much homework to do, that I just stay in bed and cry a little tear for my pathetic self.

I hate these situations where you really wish you could blame someone else, but it all comes down to you. Its all my fault. And I have no one else to feel bad for me.

And now that I am finally out of bed, I am not working. I'm here. So, I think I'll go back to Carrie and Mr. Bigg and hope for dinner to come quickly.

A junkie coughs on first street, sticks a needle in his arm
you know he never meant to do anyone no harm
but he's buried six feet deep, that's just the way it's supposed to be
and I can't help but wonder, don't you know it coulda been me.
-Mike Ness, Social Distortion, 'it coulda been me'

Today I found out a friend from long ago died last week of a heroin overdose. I am reminded at this time of a song by Social Distortion, 'It coulda been me'. Levi Jackson was a friend from a time in my life when I was more interested in being wasted than what was going on around me. The two of us were inseparable; we were like Beavis and Butthead. At some point, around the time that I turned 16 Levi and I started to drift apart, until then we were on the same course. We took a lot of codeine and morphine together, we took all of the hallucinogens that we could get our hands on, we drank, we smoked pot, we fucked around. We used to go on runs to steal cigarettes from the local Woolworth, we robbed from cars, we smashed their windows just for the fuck of it. We walked a very destructive path together. I still don't know why I drifted apart from Levi, why I grew up and he didn't. I don't know why I wasn't with him last wednesday sticking a needle in my own arm. I look at the situation and I can't see anything that separates me from him, anything to sway my course from my own self-destruction. But here I am with a future and a life while Levi is in a box in the ground.

I hadn't seen Levi in a while. I had gotten myself to thinking that I was better than him. The last time I saw him he was telling me about how he had gotten himself off the hook for stealing two cars and driving drunk and unlicensed. I walked away from it thinking about how it was exactly the kind of shenanigans that we had pulled when I was younger, but the stakes were higher now. He was stealing cars and endangering other people's lives. It was easy to write him off as just another loser but today when I heard the news I shed tears for Levi Jackson. He was a human being and he had been my friend, it sounds so clichéd but now he is another statistic.

QXZ's London Invasion, Part Ten
back to part nine

I'm looking through you, you're not the same
and
I'm afraid of Americans.

Woke up to a bright and sunny day. Decided to make the Abbey Road pilgrimage and rediscovered my information as to where it is.

I figure I need to be back at the hostel no later than 4:00 to repack my stuff and be out of there by 5:00, so I can't bum around too much today. Maybe if I'm quick I can get lunch at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese.

I walked up Grove End Road stupidly singing Get Back to myself, and actually got a bit giddy when I saw the zebra crossing up ahead. The first street sign I came to for Abbey Road was covered in graffiti and eminently photo-worthy. Just around the corner is the studio itself. The fence out front is stuffed with memorials to George; flowers, pictures, written notes, apples, coins, candles. The low white wall under the fence, visible on the album cover, is entirely graffitoed. Most of it's messages to George and John, but the largest one of all, running the length in spraypaint, simply says "Happy Birthday Anna". I'm told this wall is repainted white every other week or so. Names of people from as far away as Brazil and Japan.

Someone, for some reason, has tied a pomegranite with a button featuring the face of Elvis stuck into it to the fence. Three people have written goodbye notes on rolling papers.

I left a note of my own, speaking on behalf of my Mom and Dad as well. Time to go.

I left, crossing at the crosswalk, of course. I photographed my feet.

Transferred to the Circle Line at the Baker Street station. This platform (# 5) is part of the first-ever subway; it was one of the seven stations on the Metropolitan Railway which opened in 1863. They restored it, back in 1983, to look as it did then.

Stopped in at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, which was easier to find than I expected. The entrance is actually tucked back in Wine Office Court, but there's a lamp out on Fleet Street showing you where to go. Sadly, they'd stopped serving food for the day. I must have just missed it, as people were most definitely eating.

Back to the hostel, packed, out of there. No lengthy goodbyes, but Ivan and Pedro told me to "take care". I left my address for Aisa, since he claims he wants to write to me.

Tubed it to Heathrow, checked in and was eating a crappy pre-flight meal by 6:20. A little less than two hours until my flight leaves. I requested an aisle seat, of course. They're just comfier. I gotta wash my damn hands.

Security line was very long and very slow, and nearly everyone ahead of me set off the metal detector. Folks, it's not that hard: put all of your metallic shit in your bag or your coat, and send that through the x-ray machine. I was on the plane by 7:40.

Oh, good! I think the seat next to me will be empty. Oh cool! Here Comes Your Man is on the PA music. And Devil's Haircut! Nice. Virgin rules. Ah, I've gained a seatmate (who's a dead ringer for the one I had going the other way) and they've brought me a goodie bag. This, and the complimentary George Harrison issue of Hello! I'm keeping. Island in the Sun has come on, and it's hard not to be overcome by the ROCK.

We were in the air by 8:45 (GMT) and on the ground by 10:30 (EDT). Passport control (where they didn't stamp my passport, they stamped my immigration form, the bastards!), baggage claim, customs, and then the monorail to the train station. Train to subway to walking to front door, and I'm in bed by 1:45 AM. Whoo.

The End


Excerpted from QXZ's travel diary, 12/9/01.
QXZ endorses nothing.

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