dear good people at kellogg's of battle creek,

about a year ago, my taste buds and i were walking, gingerly, among the good people of france, my original countrymen, when our shared bipedal locomotion system unexpectedly took us to a carrefour city market on avenue de la motte-picquet which seemed, at the time, no more or less enticing a mix of design, shopping experience and well-packaged foods aplenty than any other parisian suppliers of the time. ...
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i guess i could easily inflict upon you this morning a cool 5000 words attempting to explain to joy of having been in another place for the last month with theaptFAMILY, about how i went through just about every stated goal, about how the view from barcelona rooftops changes more than idle ...
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we are prisoners.

not of any penal institution in particular but of self-perception. stuck there by what i would begrudgingly admit to resembling obvious, lazy, predictable comfort. lucky or unlucky to have been dropped off by the holy vagina in a land that we grow to alternatively love or hate, a lot of us seem to willingly glue our own feet to the ground in the name of patriotism, xenophobia or transportation angst and, in so doing, forego what is, in my opinion, a tremendous opportunity to unveil and understand the connections between the microcosmic world of our little lives and the macrocosmic world of everything else: foreign-soiled experiences. mere traveling, in comparison, pales to the aforementioned for it pre-supposes a journey unstoppable, bursting with tours along the way, photos in front of leaning towers and guide-recommended cafés. but i believe that our current set of circumstances, chiefly technological and financial, affords us the luxury, unheralded for the most part, to care more for the globe and less about the trotting.

nothing helps us predictable species to step out of ourselves to make considered choices better than stepping out of the over-valued, over-flattered and over-sung country in which we were born. escaping our familiar contexts seems to me one of the better and most tangible reset buttons that life, in its wise wisdom, has seen fit to make us believe was our idea. better than movies, better than meth, better than the internet. it was instrumental in my, and probably every immigrant’s, path to take the opportunity to restart, to re-consider not only mere causes and consequences of a self unborn or gone astray but notions of citizenry and how they might affect identity. such migrations do not necessarily have to mean visa-stamping and language-learning, they can start within the hallowed boundaries of a single ...
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because my children were conscientiously kidnapped last saturday by their benevolent grandparents, gina and i found ourselves alone, spread over the 500-counts of our sleeping platform, confused and disoriented for lack of orders to give lifeforms smaller than us, and ended up flipping through the channels of the idiot box, large and looming above us, finally settling on the windy world's episode of natgeo's how the earth changed history series. sure, you might think, what a missed opportunity to give way to our loudest sexual fetishes given that the house lays empty and far from the nearest sugar-borrowing neighbor. and you'd be right albeit for the complete and utter lack of desire my beautiful wife feels for the slowly yet inevitably melting stack of butter my body resembles. regardless, there we were, watching handsome-ish professor iain stewart take us from the far reaches of the sahara desert to the great wall of china by way columbus' discoveries, explaining to us lowlives the impact of mere wind on the evolution of human civilizations. and it got me thinking, don't you know...

neither of any grand realization about the importance of pushed air nor about macrocosmic appreciation of nature over our over-inflated egos mind you, but about the fact that i've been nowhere! sure, i've been a tourist aplenty but, really, i've been nowhere... i've come to a point in my life where nature documentaries are starting to get on my nerves because they keep showing off places on earth that i have not seen for myself and all i can think about is how the sought-out comfort of my past 40 years seems to have replaced the taste for adventure that got me here in the first place. so i turned to gina, my equally sated life-companion, and asked, naively: would we ever be the kind of family that takes a year off with the kids to travel the world, say, pick a country a month as ...
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drawn back into the long asian arms of the chosun peninsula, divad q. nead solos a saturday into submission, visiting tokujin yoshioka's spectrum show at the museum beyond museum in the heart of chungdam, seoul's haute interior design district.

straight from the likes of krypton come korea, i arrived at the theban entrance of the museum, itself a faux-esque limestone maw, nestled on a short corner in high/tight southeast seoul just an hour shy of spring rainfall. having already primed myself for the showing on a stroll through the interior design halles of gangnam and apgujeong, i steadied myself on the porch of an adjacent eatery, sipping cold local beer, mulling david lehman's examination of the new york avant-garde, followed by udong noodles, pickled sorts. the femme behind the ticket booth glass, as many girls do when confined to tight spaces in this heralded land of tech, passed me my ticket through a slot whilst she nodded politely and returned to her tv on a mobile phone, 2.5 inch diameter screens are the metaphorical johnson, replacing the schvantz as the demi-attenton-getter for girls under 30.



the exterior of seoul's museum beyond museum stood out of place amongst modest-modish urban structures seemingly updated in a fierce whipping of style to ...
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what can i say, i had to document his first rise up the tower of eiffel. as much of a milestone for him in terms of excitement, it was an apt metaphor for me as i witness, apparently wit and powerless, his growth as a member of our human race. and i feel quite pleased. not that i have anything to do with it, believe my wife, but the boy is so far turning out like someone i'd like to know. which is probably already much more than my father can say about me. here it ...
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zoel and i had a great time in the french capital last week. this is some the fun we had...

there's no clever way to say it... i am leaving. for paris, this sunday and will not be back until the next monday. control yourselves. this probably means that, save the always topical theaptCOVER, there will be few to no posts next week as i will be busy stuffing as much bread in my mouth as physics will allow. also, i take for granted that, since i will be elbow-to-elbow with natives, i will ...
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not the first but certainly one of the best plane-turned-posh-suite to roam the flatlands of the wooden-footed. something airlines may be wise to consider as they take delivery of larger aluminum cans. oh snap, well done new zealand!

for some strange reason, a danish tourist organization, produced this amazing video to attract foreigners to come... impregnate its women?