Living on Borrowed Time

Since I jumped on the grenade for the company and am staying in London for another 2 weeks, I’ve been trying to make the most of the time when I'm not working by exploring the city and seeing the sites like St. Paul’s Cathedral and taking walking tours along the Thames. Note bad ass scarf in above photo. Looks like I fit in, right? Below photo, I'm trying to look up Saint Peter's robe to see if he lives up to his name.

London is such a beautiful city with such a wealth of history. It amazes me to walk around and see so many places that I’ve heard about my whole life and all of the history that has happened here. I’ve been reading “Great Expectations” by Dickens to get into the English mindset. Below, Fiona's snow covered house where I've been staying.

Why does the bad weather seem to follow me? Last year setting up the New York office I was there during the single snowiest day they have ever had. Now in London I gone through these awful wind storms and now it is freezing and snowing. Yikes, good thing I bought a wool jacket.

And I recently went to see Patrick Stewart in Antony and Cleopatra. He is in the Royal Shakespeare Company and has been getting phenomenal reviews for this play. Check out the photos. I’ve never seen Shakespeare performed live but figured it wouldn't get any better than this. I have to say that I don't think it's my thing but I'm willing to give it another shot if something comes up that sounds interesting (like this performance in a few weeks). It was so well done, great sets, well acted… but in the end, I just had to see Picard! Make it so!

Change of Plans

Slight change in plans. I'll be in London for another 2 weeks. The ISP screwed up the UK to SF network connection so rather than me going back to SF and then flying out here again next week to finish things up, I'll be in London for a bit longer and will try to make it over to Paris or Amsterdam if time permits.

I went to see another show in the West End Saturday night, Icons in London It was an entertaining show but this is the second Elvis impersonator I've seen in a week and that kind of creeps me out. The show itself was a VERY loose story about how the lead, Greg London, found his true calling, singing, even though he was just impersonating others. We watched as Elvis, Johnny Cash, David Bowie... spoke to him and he sang their songs. Then they shoe horned in Arnold Schwarzenegger, Austin Powers, Kermit the Frog. Very Vegas and entertaining.

The weird part that I’m still trying to wrap my head around is that I’m watching someone from the US play to a UK audience (for the most part) and do characterizations of US Pop stars in a cheesy Vegas over produced style. Snippets of US pop music (top 40 pop hits) are being sung by someone who is imitating real pop stars in a slick manufactured show. It’s 3 levels of fake-ness. This is representing, in a way, the worst parts of the entertainment industry of the US; being packaged and exported for international consumption. It reminds me of the time I was in a hostel in Edinburgh and there was a large international group piled into the rec. room watching and cheering for WWF wrestling. What kind of crap are we unleashing on the world?

Leaving London

It has been a whirlwind week or so but Monday I'm headed back to the States. Sorry no pics since the last post but between all the long work days I did manage to get out a couple of nights while I was here.


On Tuesday, I went out with a co-worker and a group of his friends to catch a local Elvis impersonator, Lou Jordon.

There is something really weird about being in a smoke filled London basement bar and watching some guy pretend to be Elvis Presley. The audience was shouting for all his famous songs which everyone sang and danced too. I always forget how much influence the US has over Pop Culture until I see something like this. BTW, he had a newer jumpsuit than in the photo. It was white still but covered with sequins in the shape of flames.



Then on Thursday I saw Don Johnson in Guys and Dolls at the Piccadilly Theater in the West End. Fiona had gotten a deal on these tickets and I've always been told that when in London, go see a Broadway show so... I really wasn't expecting too much but was surprised how much I enjoyed the production. The dancing was excellent and the singing good. Don, not so much but it was fun to watch him out there trying to hoof it. The weird part was that they had the actors trying to these awful New York / Brooklyn accents that made the dialog very un-natural. Don kept coming in and out of his accent which was hilarious. It was as if English was a second language to them (which is another discussion altogether) but all in all it was fine.

First Few Days in London

The jet lag is finally wearing off and I’m sleeping the whole night, if you call waking up at 6 AM a whole night. I arrived uneventfully into Heathrow around 11 AM Wednesday the 10^th. Fiona picked me up at the airport and we headed back to her flat in her VW Polo (why don’t they bring these cool little cars to the US?). Having not slept on the flight, I powered through the following few days drinking 4 Red Bulls and some caffeine gum per day. Basically, forcing myself to stay awake as long as I could stand it and then collapsing into a fleshy imperialistic lump.

The job seems to be coming together slowly. I found my way to the main office eventually and started setting up my gear. They move at a different pace here and I found myself trying to be patient as the power and internet circuits were turned up. It also didn’t help that I was so hopped up on caffeine that I could see through time but when in London…

I took the weekend off to take a short trip to Brighton with Fiona and her 11 year old son Josh. He competed in a regional swim meet there and then we spent the rest of the drizzly cloudy afternoon enjoying the beach, town and some wonderful Haddock and Cod fish and chips.

Sunday we slept in a bit (finally) and enjoyed the clear blue skies and crisp morning air. We visited the Columbia Road Flower market and eventually hooked up with my co-worker who is here helping setup also.

We all met up at Spitafields Open Air Market, had a nice lunch, did some shopping and then walked back through town to see the Tower of London, Tower Bridge, Tate Modern, House of Parliament and Big Ben.

Foggy London Town

So I'm headed to London, England for 2 weeks to build out the newest Current TV facilities. Current signed a deal with BSkyB to broadcast a localized version of our stuff. My boss and I are going over there to build the same amount of IT infrastructure that we currently have in San Francisco (that we’ve spent the last two years building). We’ll be bringing 3 locations on line, each with a set of firewalls, switches, SAN servers, VMWare servers, mail servers… My guess is that I won’t be sleeping too much.

It will be great to see my old friend Fiona that lives in London. I haven’t seen her in a few years, since I was there in 2000(?) and she had a sweet little flat in Pimlico. She has since bought a 3 bedroom place south of the city center with a friend of hers. I’ll post when I can but not sure when that will be.

Stay tuned…

Rostro de Vos

In re-reading my last post I wasn't sure what to do here next, so I thought about it for a few weeks. I had some photos of my Christmas and recent LA visit but that didn't seem to fit. Then I came across this poem who's themes seemed appropriate. I had been digging through my old letters and things from my time in South America and I came across this poem that I've always loved by Mario Benedetti. I've tried to translate it as best I could. I asked a few people what they thought of the translation and, not liking their suggestions, did what I wanted anyway. I had a particular problem with the fifth paragraph because it is an expression and just doesn't translate well.

I think this poem represents the best of what I love in his writing. It is so moving and uses such simple language and short lines to convey such powerful emotions.

Here is a link to the poem in Spanish.

Rostro de Vos by Mario Benedetti

I have a loneliness
so crowded
so full of nostalgia
and images of you
of long ago good-byes
and kisses welcomed
of the beginnings of change
and the last car of the train leaving

I have a loneliness so crowded
that I can organize it
like a parade
by color
size
and promise
by period
by touch
and by flavor

Without a tremor too many,
I embrace your absence
and it helps me
with my image of you

I am full of shadows
of nights and desires
of laughter and some
vague curse

my guests assemble
conspire like dreams
with their newfound spite
lacking innocence
I bar the door
because I want to be alone
with my image of you

But your image
gazes elsewhere
with it's loving eyes
that no longer love

Like food
looking for its hunger
they look and they look
till morning turns to night
and my day is extinguished

The walls depart
the night remains
the nostalgia departs
and nothing remains

Already your image
has closed it's eyes
and it's a loneliness
so desolate.

Maria Fernanda Genovart

If, in your short life, you are fortunate or maybe lucky, you possibly could meet someone that you so profoundly connect with that you can’t help but be fundamentally changed.

I was lucky and fortunate to have met someone like that. Her name was Fernanda and we met when I was living in Mendoza, Argentina a dozen years ago.


It was the night of October 2nd 1993. I had met another expatriate in town, Donald, and he invited me to dinner and dancing with him and some friends. My take on it was that no one is supposed to be single in these Latin Am. countries and much effort is put into making sure that that situation is quickly remedied. Excited at the prospect of a fix up, I happily agreed.

We met for dinner at a little place in town near calle Emilo Civit and Belgrano. There ended up being 6 of us total; myself, Donald, Silvia (Donald’s girlfriend), Lucila (the fix up), Fernanda and Georgio (Donald’s roommate). I don’t recall dinner but I do remember that we all piled into Georgio’s TINY Fiat 1600 afterwards with me getting the enviable backseat between Fernanda and Lucila. They were taking turns asking me questions about my family, what I liked about Argentina… the attention of 2 beautiful women in the tiny backseat of a Fiat might technically not be heaven but it is as close as I have ever been. It was probably past midnight at this point and we headed off to the local dance club, Runner. We danced nonstop to booming techno until the place closed around 4 or 5. We ended up at a café getting a late night / early morning snack, and were sitting in an outdoor patio. The tree above us was losing its spring flowers (October = spring in the southern hemisphere) so as the sun rose and the morning breezes warmed us, it would rain fantastic small purple flowers on us. The whole night felt like a dream.

I had read about South America’s "magical realism" and it was as if I was living it and had literally stepped into another world that night and was changed forever. There are these short moments that the day to day living stops and there is no being reasonable, no thinking about what you are doing: just no being. You transcend feeling beauty or joy and just are those things. It wasn't the dinner or the Fiat or the people specifically but all of those things. I’m not sure I can really describe what that night was for me except that it was an epiphany of how life could be that I had never experienced before.

Fernanda and I saw each other several more times before I left around Christmas. I met her grandmother and brother and heard stories about her parents and how they died when she was younger. We kept in touch by writing each other thick letters every few weeks. I would open one and try to be patient and slowly read each page. I would hear about her adventures in Russia, Cuba, the US, etc… I got to know how selfless and generous she was. How thoughtful and strong she was. What life was like for her in a small Latin American town (pueblo chico, infierno grande = small town, big hell as she put it). How she spoiled me by writing in English. As I read each one, I couldn’t believe that I had met someone that I could share so much with and that even through the language and societal barriers, that we could communicate on such a profound level.

When I went back to South Am. in 1995, I visited her while she was living above a bakery. One night she made me a fantastic dinner and we watched the summer's terrific heat lightning and could smell them baking downstairs, getting ready for the next day’s business. As we sat there, she cried, she said that the beauty was overwhelming. (If you’ve read this far or have even come to this page, chances are that you know me pretty well and know that I’m going out on a limb here but this is no ordinary post) That night I quickly jotted down these short few lines that I never intended to share with anyone:

“She lives above a bakery.
At night, while I wait in her living room,
I’m filled with warm delightful smells;
fresh bread and tortillas.
we lit a candle,
and in the darkness
searching for her deep brown eyes,
in the heated explosions of light,
I could see the long curls of her hair,
I could see the flashing reflection in the wetness of her tears
because the truth was so profound”


As email replaced our letters about 5 years ago, they became notes and random thoughts and less frequent. We threatened to visit each other but never did. Then about a year ago, Fernanda had called me. She told me that she had been diagnosed with ovarian cancer and was being treated and that things looked good. We traded more emails saying how sorry each other was about the lack of response and the distance, how we have changed and what it would be like to meet each other again. Would we recognize each other? Would we be the same people or even see that same person in each other? I had hoped to visit her this year possibly with my cousin to celebrate his birthday and we had made some excited plans.

But I had not heard anything from her for a few months and was getting concerned. Wednesday morning I saw an email from her in my inbox and, relieved, quickly opened it. It was sent from Fernanda's computer by her friend and business partner, Silvina. Apparently, the cancer returned in August. By the time they operated, they found that it had metastasized and quickly spread through her body and there was nothing they could do. Fernanda was not so fortunate or lucky this time and passed away on Dec. 7th.

As I was walking to work that Wednesday morning, rain falling on my face, the colorful fall leaves on the ground, I was thinking that I’ll never be able to tell her again about how much beauty there is in the world. About how much I’ll miss her laugh and her sweet smile. About how kind and beautiful she is. I am so glad that I met her and am a better person because of it. I cannot describe how much we have all lost with her passing. She made my world, our world, a better one and it is a colder and darker place without her. I will miss her so very much.