Evolution of Gypsies (the Pick-Pocketing Kind)

Back when I visited Italy in 2003, I encountered gypsies for the first time. It was in Taormina, Sicily, early in the morning as we were descending from the active volcano of Mount Etna. I distinctly remember a bedraggled gypsy in a tie-dyed shirt, orange hair, and seemingly pregnant, although whether her belly was full of alcohol or a blossoming child, I couldn't tell. She was begging. I even wrote a poem about her. My mother once said that seeing a beggar first thing in the morning denoted bad luck. Coincidental or not, I woke up early to watch the sun rise on my last night in Sicily, got completely carsick on the bus ride to Sorrento, and ended up missing the boat tour to Capri.

The next time I spotted gypsies was in Rome, filthy little children crowding around my friend and attempting to open up her fanny pack. Luckily, she was a feisty sixty something-year-old (Italian in origin as well), and she slapped their hands back, scolding them in a way only grandmothers could. It's funny how reprimands are universal, and Gloria, grey haired and pug nosed, was every bit as intimidating as their native women folk could be.

Fast forward 11 years to Berlin in 2014, when I made my third reconnaissance with gypsies when they were, no joke, posing as market researchers, carrying clipboards and asking people questions. However, being a market research professional for many years, here are the signs.

1) They move in groups: Market researchers typically work alone to cover as much ground as humanly possible. It is counterproductive (and more expensive) to gather survey responses in a group, so if there is more than one surveyor congregating together, chances are, it is a subterfuge.

2)Papers on their clipboard are old: Typically, responses to market research questions are recorded on fresh printouts, since questions change until the very last second. There is usually a substantial width, and the information recorded on these pages are more valuable than the paper itself. However, the papers carried by the gypsies are never used since it is only a façade. So, they get old and yellowed, and becomes very clear they are unused.

3)Their attire is the slightest bit unkempt: Market research is a profession, and researchers dress for the job in serious looking clothing. If you look at the gypsies, while their appearance is hugely improved from their beggar days, they are wearing brightly colored and clean t-shorts, or coats, but they don't aim for professionalism. Also, their hair still tends to look uncombed.

So what's the lesson? Gypsies are evolving, changing with the times. The better they get at disguising, the harder it will be to identify them. So they steal from us. They ruin vacations. They create logistical nightmares to sort out your paperwork. Sometimes I wish they would disappear. Other times I don't blame them. After all, they are just trying to make a living. What allowed me to be educated and enabled me to find a job where I can travel? What kept them from education and the finer things in life? One could argue manifest destiny, the fruits of our hard work, our parents, ancestors etc. We like to give ourselves more credit than we deserve. But at the end of the day, it is just plain dumb luck. A lottery draw that separates those with access to education and those who continue to exist on the fringes of society.

NY Times Bestseller, Here I Come!

Okay, not quite.

Not quite NY Times. Amazon Kindle

Not quite for weeks on end. Two Days. May 16 and May 19. (Only smart enough to screenshot May 19)

Not quite Bestseller among All Categories. Two Categories

Top FIVE in Historical Romance!!!

Top TEN in Christian Literature!!!

Hey, you have start somewhere.

For a dream, I am making some headway.

This is when a dream makes that transformation into a goal.

A determination.

A destiny.

An identity.

For today, I am a BEST-SELLING AUTHOR.

(I have 48 minutes left until midnight)

Back with a Book!

Since I last posted, I have published my debut novel The Fisherman's Bride!

Why did it take 4 years to get back to blogging?

The answer is life. I got a new job back in 2013, one that stretched my professional abilities (not to mention I was doing the work of 3 people without any additional compensation.) Oh well, such is the plight of the kind, compliant, and capable Asian woman. Otherwise known as the curse of the competent. Was I ever promoted? Of course not. But I still am employed.

I was also traveling nonstop around the world for work, and it always sounds inordinately much more glamorous than the reality.

Then I was dumped by my agent, and needed to find a way to self-publish my novel. A lot of crying, praying, self-doubting, and perhaps not an insignificant amount of commiserating with friends and family. The beloved of artists know all too well how much support, reassurance, and time we need, to bring the creative visions inside our heads to the world. And it can be a painful and exhilarating process, like heaven & hell at the same time. But once you do it, it is a badge of courage.

So now I am back, and shamelessly promoting my book.

Why, you ask? Because I made it happen. Because it's my dream.

Call me naïve, but I am still a chaser of dreams.

Chatting with Channing

It had begun ordinarily enough. Back in 2007, I was flying home from a wedding in St. Petersburg/Tampa, Florida, home of the famed Salvator Dali museum and retirement mecca for Americans aged 65+. Weddings had become routine to me, particularly since I was not acquainted with either bride or groom, and I was attending purely out of the social obligation of being a plus one. Nonetheless, I enjoyed dolling up and looking pretty and dancing on the arm of a less than perfect man. Particularly in a ballroom flooded with light high atop a famed hotel, sunshine accompanying every movement of everyone in that narrow circle of sunset.

I sat in an exit seat, besides a fellow who was so tall his legs extended to the next row and so he looked awkwardly cramped, even with extra leg room. He seemed good-natured (and kind of cute), so we began talking. Apparently, he was also flying back from a buddy's wedding to the New York area. "But I live in LA," he added.

"So, are you some kind of consultant?" I wanted to know.

"Actually, I'm an actor."

"Really? What's your name?" I did a double-take. He had chiseled good looks, sort of statuesque, like a Greek god, but seemed too approachable to be an actor.

"Chan. Channing Tatum." What an odd name.

"Never heard of you. What have you been in?"

"Have you ever seen She's the Man with Amanda Bynes?" I hadn't.

So he began to explain the premise of the movie, working with Amanda Bynes ("she's a sweetheart") as well as details of life as an actor, like how they get health insurance (through an actor's union), and then we discussed fame, Tom Cruise, celebrities, "Anonimity is like air. You don't realize you've got it until you've lost it." The he began talking about how he broke into the industry. He used to play sports and after an injury, he was rather lost. Then he got into modeling, one thing led to another, and a path opened to the silver screen. Acting was just the beginning, though, as he told me of his plans to write and direct. In fact, he was already working a screenplay. Then I discussed my analagous plans of writing, the children's fantasy novel I was working on, my dream of being a writer. He believed in dreams, and told me I could succeed if I continued writing. We all could.

The flight attendant began the safety preamble, and we promptly turned off our cell phones. His was pink and glittering; I recall the rhinestones flickering as he sheepishly put it away. "It's my girlfriend's," he admitted. His face glowed as he spoke about meeting Jennie on a movie set, how they couldn't keep their eyes and hands off each other, how they couldn't help being together, the chemistry that was so intense when you knew you were meant to be with someone.

When inquired about my relationship, I replied it was serious and I was actually considering marrying the man. Channing looked at me quizzically for a moment.

"You don't seem to be that excited about it."

"Well, you know, it's a big committment, a lot of change, and I just wasn't sure exactly how everything was going to pan out. Where we would live; how we would make it work. So many details to be ironed out." I felt myself blushing.

"You just don't seem to be in love with him."

My perplexity must have showed in my face. Channing laughed. "When you are in love with someone, the whole world knows. You can't stop thinking about the other person. You can't stop talking about the other person. When you are in love, your eyes light up at the simple thought of them. Like me and Jennie."

He was right. Six years later, he and Jenna are probably one of Hollywood's happiest young couples.

Whenever I think of Channing Tatum, I don't think of one of the World's Sexiest Men, or critically acclaimed actor, or celebrity on the rise. I remember a kind fellow who told me the unadulterated truth about myself.

One I am still figuring out six years later.

Post Script: Rules of Machu Picchu

After the smoke clears in Peru, what is left? I distinctly remember Machu Picchu as a place where all things break; rules, relationships, restlessness. Back in 2008, there was a sign that stipulated the following: 1) no food and drink allowed (I carried a bottle of water with me, maybe two) 2) no shouting (I sang atop Huayna Picchu) 3)no urinating. Although rule # 3 was improvised by me, I am quite sure there was an unspoken law against this, and probably broken by many (like my companion)as the restroom at the entrance was so far from the rest of the site it was inevitable someone couldn't control himself.

In times of crisis, we discover ourselves. Our true, authentic self is bared in all its glory and all its ugliness. I came back from Peru knowing I needed to change my life. And I was resistant until change happened to me. Career, love, health, everything came crashing down like debris from a burning skyscraper, and in vain I searched amid the rubble for who I am. I learned that I write, thoughts flowing into stories, a river of consciousness that became real under my pen or my word processor. I was the channel. I write because I have a need to be understood, to share, to materialize a fantastical vision awakened somewhere between dreams and reality. I write because it is my connection to the universe; I write because I am compelled to write, and it is as natural to me as eating or sleeping or talking, except that sometimes I forget myself, my true self and the writing itself becomes dormant.

I also realized that I am confused about love. If the passion was intense and you truly believed you were in love, shouldn't you feel something after a love affair ends? I found that I felt nothing, complete indifference and nonchalance. Nothing residual, nothing nostalgic, none of the lingering desire or regret that always seems to accompany a love story with an unhappy ending. Was it romanticism that was conveyed in literature and Wong Kar Wai films, but simply doesn't exist in this all-too practical life? Did I only imagine I was love, but was actually in love with love itself? Or was it that negative things outweighed the good, and I was too exhausted with trying that there was nothing left to remember?

Confounding.

L'eau Vivre in Lima

Lima was an engaging city. The saffron colored San Franciso Cathedral, emblem of the capital, could have been just as easily named after Pizzaro as much as the saint from Asissi. I remember the vibrant yellows of the historic city center, Spanish Neoclassical and baroque architecture, and the sunniness of the Peruvian disposition. And above all, a French restaurant.

L'eau Vivre, Living Water, was an elegant, high end joint boasting the best French cuisine in the city, run by French Carmelite nuns. Housed in a exquisite pale pink palace, the walls were reminiscent of salmon and delectable strawberry macaroons. Rumors of a serenade of Ave Maria accompanied dinner, but we went for the far less expensive lunch menu. L'agneau and vin du rose. For the dessert, les crepes au Cointreau en flambe. The match lit the alcohol, and I saw my partner on the other side of the dancing flame, his features somehow blurred by the proximate heat. I blinked and continued to eat, the flavor of intoxication burning my tongue. Suddenly, I realized he was not what I wanted, the very fundamental fiber of his being was so different from mine. I swallowed as he continued to talk, to charm the nuns with his fluent French. I nodded, catching a word here and there about adventures and promises and oh so many wondrous things. When they wished us a lovely future together, I began to feel sick inside.

Then we were promptly ushered out, as the lunch hours were 11am-1pm and we had apparently overstayed our welcome. The guests dissipated and I took an inordinately long time in the rest room, as ladies sometimes do. The restaurant was sealed shut, and we sat on the bench across the street, deciding where to go next. The nuns scurried to the side of the building, where a queue was already beginning to form. The men and women who gathered were dirty, unkempt, and their stench was unmistakable, drifting across the thoroughfare. They carried stained bags and tattered parcels, and we knew they were homeless. Then the nuns began distributing soup, a piece of bread, and a potato to all who waited. The line magnified and stretched as we watched, and they ate ravenously, perhaps it was their first meal in a while. Yet they all had the same hungry look in their eyes, even after their appetites were satiated.

I had seen that look before, in ubiquitous places and on the faces of strangers as well as friends. Then I thought about hunger, my own hunger for the wonders of this world, and intangible things that my partner could never understand, as he hungered for things equally alien to me. I thought about all things that one would risk to fulfill that hunger, an amorphous spirit that always seems to plague us, all the things that we want. Want. Desire. Desperation. Perhaps we are all hungry.

On the Precipice: Peru

I stood on the precipice overlooking Machu Picchu. It had been a sweaty climb to the top of the Temple of the Sun, but well worth it. It was breathtaking. The fog had finally dispersed over the Andes Mountains and views of the Lost City of the Incas were riveting, magical, and surreal. Here, we could see the symmetry of their walls, stone upon stone and edge upon edge slanting in the same direction, the building of an awesome civilization. Sacred geography. Water gushed along the crevices, an ancient watering system that still fed into the hot springs of Aguas Calientes for common folk at the foot of the mountain. The sun warmed my cheeks and I was an eagle, yearning to fly.

At the same time, I am afraid of heights. Beside me stood the man I loved. Little did I know we would part before the year ended. The path downward was infinitely more difficult than climbing up. The steps were jagged and broken, too narrow to contain a whole foot and people wound up tiptoeing sideways while balancing the gravitational pull to the center of the earth. I stopped and stared. I thought I was going to die. Gingerly, I stepped down and then tripped, hanging onto a branch for dear life. I trudged forward again and slipped, clinging to rocks for survival. Then I decided to descend on my reliable behind, muddying the seat of my jeans beyond recognition. I was never able to wear them again.

I often wondered what would have happened had I continued to climb up instead of down. There was another summit, a more beautiful and loftier peak Huayna Picchu, rumored to have been the resting place of a moon goddess. I wanted to keep going , but my companion warned me of the time and the litany of activities he planned afterwards. Plus, he needed to go to the bathroom. So I went down, on my butt.

Perhaps we must fall before we can fly. My life crumbled shortly afterwards and I remembered the image of rain beating down on stone, submitting it into the shape that it willed. I had succumbed to fear, to expectations, to the will of others. I had lost myself and I did not even notice until I saw myself in the mirror one day and did not recognize the person who was going about her daily business. Life may do this to you. Work may do this to you. Society may do this to you. The intentions of others, no matter how well-meaning and kind, may lead you astray if you are not true to your own heart.

Where was my heart? I embarked on a journey to find out. I am still on that journey. Many things are still uncertain. I still have dark, unholy nights filled with self-doubt. Yet there are flashes of truth and inspiration, spurring the genesis of my novel and birth of my blog. I know I am enough. When you find an inkling of yourself, your authentic self, you need very little else.