Despite centuries of knowledge to the contrary, I’ve considered that Aristotle was wrong.
Or that Sir Isaac Newton didn’t know what he was talking about.
And maybe Eucledian geometry had a major flaw.
None of these amazing scientists or their eye-popping equations accounted for one significant variable: life in the 21st century.
We are living in an age of mankind which could not have been predicted, even by the most sophisticated understanding of the world in centuries past.
I can send a real-time message to a friend in India with imperceptible hesitation between communication devices.
I can watch video of the sun rising upon the Australian shore.
I can order a tool, have it manufactured in Germany, and delivered to my doorstep within a week.
I can view the image of an assassination in Turkey and almost instantaneously share my shock and awe with a colleague located only minutes from the dead body.
I can step foot in each of these countries with the push of a button.
When I left my home in Wichita, KS over 20 years ago, I couldn’t have imagined where my life would take me. At that moment, I was headed East, to Lexington, KY, to start anew after the divorce of my parents.
In the subsequent years, I developed a heightened awareness and independence I doubt few expected. Eventually, those traits carried me even further East to Boston when I was 24; an effort to figure out what I would make of my life immediately ensued.
I took my first step on foreign soil in 2005; I had not yet read Thomas Friedman’s 21st Century Economic Bible, “The World is Flat”, but in a cosmic moment of clarity, I inherently knew my life had been forever changed.
At my brother’s behest, I began reading Friedman’s account of how modern life and technologic advances had defied the laws of physics set forth by nature and confirmed by some of the greatest scientists to ever walk the Earth.
Ten years have passed since I finished Friedman’s manifesto. And my thirst for global excursions has yet to be satiated. Each time I have traveled abroad for pleasure was akin to another sliver of my brain being turned on for the first time.
When I lived abroad for two years during medical school, on a small, moderately inhabited island in the Caribbean, I had the opportunity to see how the world could still be flat, in ways Friedman never expounded upon.
The simplicity, beauty, and innocence of Dominica were unmistakeable at times. But in the next instant, I’d be immersed in the medical knowledge accumulated over the course of millions of hours of scientific discovery. The juxtaposition was remarkable.
I readily acknowledge: I have lived a charmed life; one full of opportunities I have been thankful for; as well as those I’ve created for myself.
Each success has been no small feat. Many were met with significant resistance. Some with initial failure.
But I have been persistent. Persistent in my desire to prove Friedman correct. Persistent in my desire to meld the scientific truths of Aristotle, Newton, and Euclid with the economic realities of modern life.
I only know one way of doing this. To travel. To find the experiences that allow us to come as close to surreal as possible. I crave them.
As I approached the coffee shop, a man dressed in military camos pulled open the door for me, an AK-47 cradled in his right arm, his index finger comforting the trigger. I had been in Dumaguete for less than a day, but I was already certain my life had been forever changed.
“Hi Joe!”, blurted the young man working behind the counter as I stepped inside the coffee shop. I made eye contact with the AK-47 wielding security guard, as a means of thanking him, and of course, to make sure I was not about to have the butt of an AK-47 come crashing against my skull. These are the thoughts which enter a man’s mind when he’s in a foreign country and greeted by a firearm.
“Joe” was a term used to acknowledge the presence of a white guy in this city, and likely, throughout the entire country of The Philippines. A quick glance at the rest of the patrons assured myself that he was speaking to me. I was the only “Joe” in the joint, as well as the only one I had seen in the past day. [Or that I would see in the next week.]
“Jane” was the term of endearment used to greet a white woman, as Samantha had relayed to me when I landed; we would be “Joe” and “Jane” the entire week.
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So not only was I on the complete opposite side of the world from I had started this journey, but I was being allowed, basically encouraged, to assume a new identity. It seemed like something out of a Jason Bourne movie. Tropical island, new identity, beautiful woman at my side.
Of course, I was not a brain-washed assassin, but I was on vacation, so why not pretend.
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I made my order at the coffee shop quickly, as there were only a few choices, and the young man working behind the counter repeated it in perfect English. Samantha had arrived in Dumaguete three weeks earlier for this reason in particular: the locals were well versed in our native language. The other reason was their cheap labor, but it was English that started the ball rolling.
When the coffee was ready, he handed me the styrofoam cup, chimed “Have a great day, Joe!” and I turned to see my friend at the door. He was still in camos and carrying an AK-47. I had not imagined it. He smiled and opened the door for me.
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He would be the first of innumerable well-armed Philippino men I would encounter in the upcoming week. Apparently every store in Dumaguete felt the need to intimidate potential bandits with a dose of lead poisoning.
During my journey from Boston to Dumaguete, a trip paid for by my girlfriend’s employer, I hadn’t really considered what I would encounter in The Philippines. I simply felt lucky to get the experience to travel for free to a new country.
My overnight lay-over had been in Hong Kong, so I had gone from a major US city to a major global city to a relatively small University town in Southeast Asia. When I strolled through the streets of Hong Kong, I was reminded of nYc, except I could not read any of the street signs.
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When I strolled through the streets of Dumaguete, I was not reminded of anything. I had no similar experience from which to draw.
Home to Silliman University, Dumaguete had well-educated and English-speaking men and women who were looking to start a new career. My girlfriend’s employer desired access to this exact population, but also individuals who were able to work during the “US night hours” for a US-based company… for significantly lower pay than would be required in a city like Boston.
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Dumaguete fit the bill.
However, the well-educated and English-speaking population was surrounded by the polar opposite, a significant number of destitute, non-educated, non-English speaking Philippinos who had limited access to anything I would consider basic necessities.
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I had experienced poverty first-hand in my adult life prior to my arrival in Dumaguete, but this poverty was nothing like what we have in the US.
While Samantha slept during the daytime hours [she was working US hours to stay in constant contact with her home office in Boston], I would meander around Dumaguete, hailed as “Joe” by every small child, grown adult, elderly woman, and AK-47 wielding Philippino I met.
One morning I strayed over a mile from the city center where we were lodged in an upscale hotel and found myself in abject poverty.
There was no running water, simply a spigot where little boys and girls would carry a bucket and then pump on the handle so they could rinse themselves back in their shack. Chickens flapped their way down the dirt-strewn pathways.
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I walked in between the shanties and each time a child would see me, he or she would shout, “Hi JOE!!!”
When I pulled out my camera a couple of times to take a picture of the ocean, one would invariably get louder than the others, until I would turn, see them smiling as bright as the sun beaming down on the Pacific ocean, and snap a picture of them. Then they would scatter, only to reassemble a few moments later.
It seemed like something out of a UNICEF commercial; and I was walking through it, completely phased by what I was experiencing.
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The more I wandered the borders of Dumaguete and Silliman university, the more I saw and the more I thanked my lucky stars for being born in Wichita, KS, rather than one of the bazillion locations on planet Earth where a day-to-day struggle to stay healthy and alive is real; even in the 21st century.
Semblances of American existence had permeated their life, like Coca-Cola and crappy rubber basketballs, but even these were found only in the city center.
Obviously the island nation of The Philippines is not a homogenous poverty-stricken death trap, but when you compare the resource availability of the poorest of the poor there to our socially secure structure here, it is night and day.
Numerous other experiences had already made me appreciative of my life prior to that week in The Philippines, but by the time I landed back at Logan, I was irrevocably changed.
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Not in a “I’m gonna donate money to help poor orphans in The Philippines” type of way. But in a “I’m one lucky son of a bitch who shouldn’t take for granted any opportunity or allow anyone else tell me how my life should turn out.” Being born in a mid-sized Midwest city had given me that chance.
If I had been born in a shanty in Dumaguete, Philippines, I would be lucky to be opening doors to a coffee shop for “Joe” while wearing my military camos and cradling my AK-47.
Two weeks ago I made the 45 minute trip to Logan Airport after work. I don’t usually make a habit of heading over to Logan on a Thursday, but on this night I was picking up my new roommate.
While I waited for his plane to land, I hung out at the baggage claim with the security guards and watched inane YouTube videos on my cell phone. When the baggage started rumbling out onto the conveyor belt, I knew it would be only a few moments before my new roommate would stumble out into the unsecured baggage area. Upon seeing him, I was immediately second guessing my willingness to bring him into my home.
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Clad in black cowboy boots, a pair of Wrangler jeans, a crisp white t-shirt, and a Penrose drain collecting pus in a bag attached to his right hip, I shrugged my shoulders at his appearance. If I didn’t share a significant part of my DNA with this walking contradiction, I would have slowly backed my way out of the baggage area, hailed a cab, and hoped that he had forgotten the address to my house.
[Note: He’s been to my house for dinner and to do laundry on occasion, so the likelihood that he wouldn’t have been able to find the place is somewhere between slim and none.]
Instead of turning around and looking for the nearest exit, I jumped from my seat, and proceeded to meet him at the baggage conveyor. I quickly made a smart-ass comment about the bag of pus protruding from underneath his white t-shirt, to which he mumbled something about punching me in the gut. Ah, brotherly love.
In case you haven’t figured it out, my new roommate is my younger brother, Will.
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Dumb people think he’s older than me because he’s taller, but that actually flies in the face of our modern understanding of genetics and human evolution. Obviously, most people didn’t bother to pay attention to those subtle points in high school biology.
After returning from schooling in the Far East and some recuperation in Kansas from a fistulated colon, my brother decided to fill the vacancy in my rented two-bedroom duplex. So rather than playing house with a beautiful woman, I was staring at my younger brother’s Penrose drain and wondering what sort of “bromance” I’d gotten myself in to.
My brother and I collected his two bags, weighing over 100 pounds combined, and headed out of Logan to catch the shuttle back to the T. Carrying a bag weighing over 50 pounds was unexpectedly more strenuous than I had imagined, so I suggested grabbing a cab instead. Will flashed a wad of crisp bills and agreed to pay for the cab fare back to Cambridge.
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After dropping off his bags at the house, we walked over to the nearby pub and grabbed some dinner. Once seated, we were serenaded by some horrific karaoke and proffered alcohol by some scantily clad drink girls. When offered a free shot, my brother replied, “My parole officer says I shouldn’t drink.” With a look of intense fear, she turned her head in my direction. I offered to take his and mine both. She quickly placed them on the table and back peddled towards the bar. His comment made me begin to re-think my mindset about this bromance.
When we returned home, we were met with the box spring mattress I’d left in the living room, a donation from some friends’ recent move. So Will and I’s task was to reunite it with the mattress upstairs, despite my previous attempts having determined that to be an impossibility.
Unfortunately, we could not manage to cajole it through the already existing crevice in the narrow stairway, so my brother had to settle that evening for the jumbo-size, double-thick, air mattress that I had inflated in his room.
[Note: The air mattress is his; he left it with me when he traveled to Beijing, so he was really sleeping on his own bed.]
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Being that school didn’t begin for my brother until the following Monday, I returned home from work on Friday evening to find him hanging out in front of the TV. In my seat. Having lived by myself for the previous 2.5 months, I found this intrusion into my space alarming.
[Note: The TV is his; so he was probably just having flash backs to his old apartment.]
I promptly seated myself to his left and laid down the law: when the captain is home, he sits in the captain’s chair. My brother raised an eyebrow, my charming analogy completely going over his head. Or being completely ignored. I decided not to push him out of my seat, as he would have likely landed on his drain and I didn’t want to be responsible for performing emergency surgery. Or possibly surgically removing his fist from my face.
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My brother and I last lived together seven years ago, the summer before my senior year of college. He had just finished his freshman year at Miami University and didn’t want to go home for the summer. The stories of debauchery I had shared from my previous summer in Oxford had obviously seduced him. And the prospect of heading back to Lexington, KY or Wichita, KS paled in comparison. In an act of what can only be described as self-sacrifice, I offered to forgo my personal space for the summer.
I lofted my bed so that he could use my futon as his bed. I cleared a corner of my room so that he could set up a desk for his computer. And then, he took full advantage.
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While I was working two jobs that summer, he worked 20 hours a week. When I left in the morning, he was there sleeping. When I came home from my first job in the middle of the afternoon, he was there computing. When I came home from my second job in the late evening, he was there eating/sleeping/computing or some combination thereof. My personal space was eliminated, my sanity challenged, and brotherly love was transformed into pure hatred.
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With Will sitting in “my chair” that Friday night, I began to consider the possibility that I had made the same mistake all over again. Only this time, I imagined I would wake up in the morning wanting to take a shower, but he’d have already used all the hot water. Or I’d come home from work and he’d be half-way through the movie I wanted to watch that night. Or I would be awoken early on a Saturday morning because he was vacuuming the stairs. I wasn’t excited by any of these scenarios, but I decided I could avoid them… by not pushing him out of the chair and instead pointing out to him that the “co-pilot” seat had just as good of a view of the TV.
With disaster narrowly averted in the first 24 hours of our bromance, the past two weeks have been relatively positive. Despite my flashbacks to that summer in Oxford we have managed to co-exist in a near stress-free environment. Of course, I’ve had to take on the big brother role a few times by letting him learn from his own mistakes rather than pointing them out beforehand. I thought it was the least I could do.
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The best example was our first trip to the grocery store. [Note: the grocery store is 2 miles on foot, so without a car for the last 2.5 months, I have gone through my own trial and error efforts in successfully transporting one week’s worth of food back to my house (2 hands = 2 fully loaded bags).]
I figured he should go through his own trial and error period, so when he offered to bring his fashionable grocery cart that is all the rage in the big city, I let him know I wouldn’t need it. He took that to mean he wouldn’t need it either. So he decided to buy two gallons of milk along with the rest of his groceries, brought one big bag rather than two, and therefore had to stop every 100 feet to readjust his grocery-carrying pose on the trip home. I only stopped at the intersections to make sure I wasn’t flattened by oblivious drivers. Lesson learned? We’ll see.
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On the whole though, it’s been a fairly fulfilling experience, and not just because he’s gone to Target twice to buy things I hadn’t bothered to replace when my ex moved out (toaster, dish-drying rack, silverware, paper towels, baking sheets, etc). It hadn’t taken him long to notice that the only room that was fully furnished in the house was my bedroom. So he offered up this gem: “Besides your room, it looks like someone is squatting in a vacant apartment.”
While our bromance might be a little unconventional, our genetic propensity to laugh at the same stupid people and lame jokes, our interest in cooking as a means of sustenance, and general approval of women dancing in night clubs, I think this could turn out to be the best roommate situation I’ve ever had…
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Unless you consider living with guys named Juice, Rusty, and Wacky Matt to be better than living as an adult with your own brother. Despite two years of college hi-jinks as a solid comparison, the current living situation is beginning to grow on me. However, that could change depending on the number of cold showers I take in the upcoming months, the number of times we go shopping together, or the first time he decides to do his laundry the night when I have run out of underwear and have somewhere to be.
Elbrecht's Corpuscle 