I Heart Tech Support

Tonight, after a lovely evening of drinks and a Cambodian meal, my good friend Gene, the person in my life that I run to when I have REAL tech questions, about REAL tech matters, like programming language issues, not just end-user "Why is my iPod doing THAT???" whines, took me back to his office with him and fixed some formatting issues on my blog to make everything look better. He also explained to me some things about html so that in the future, I can fix these little things on my own. I always think it's better if he teaches me to fish, so that I can feed myself. Though, I tell him that since he works only about 5 blocks from me, he could just bring me fish for lunch every day if I never learn to. But, this is not the spirit of growth, I'm told.

Gene answering any sort of tech question of mine is common practice. Just like Marin serving as my own personal iTunes support person. And, Shrey taking my calls at any hour of the day or night to field urgent ProTools questions. I just got it like that. It's great. I am the question ninja, popping out of a darkened corner in my shinobi shozoko and without any introductions, asking my tech question, getting the answer, and fading back into the shadows.

Though, I'm sure that these people in my life, so victimized because they know stuff and can explain it really effectively, must take a lot of abuse from those of us less knowledgeable all the time. They have to explain things over and over again. They can't speak in shorthand because the people they're addressing would never understand them. They don't get paid for these consulting services they're providing for family and friends. Yet they still take my phone calls. I'm so impressed by their generosity. I'm so thankful they took the time to learn all this stuff that I didn't. And, really, I'm so glad I've got them on retainer -- friend retainer. I love my tech support!

Proud to be an Athletic Supporter

It's easy to love the A's. It's easy, and I do it. Even when they lose. Even when there are only 10,000 fans in the stands with me. Even when it's cold and raining, and there's no ride home from BART after I reach 19th Street and I have to walk the 20 minutes uphill at 11:00pm, on a weeknight. Even when my boss, a FORMER A's fan, hassles me at work the day after they lose a game. Even when the team threatens to leave Oakland and move to the suburbs of my behated Southbay. Even when a lot of things.

The reason it's so easy is not just because I always love the home team, or even that this home team exemplifies me really well with their scrappy sort of attitude. It's because they're fun. Win or lose, they have a good time, and keep it light, and show their spirit, and maintain their camaraderie. With heroic star players or with no-name newly-acquireds, they give me someone to love and cheer for every single time. Take Big Joe Blanton, or not-born-in-Japan Kurt Suzuki, or the new Nick Swisher Andrew Brown -- that's the spirit of the A's club that you'll never find in a contending team like the Yankees. (Plus, the A's have Stomper, who's new Make Some Noise video featuring the Stomper Trumpet Puppet is the funniest thing I've seen at a ballpark EVER. After several viewings, I'm STILL laughing.) So, that's why I love this team. And, it's EASY.

My beloved doesn't write that often. (Maybe that's why, when he does, he commits so many little grammatical errors that the OCD in me flags.) But, when he does write, it's good stuff. It's insightful, it's poetry, and it makes me laugh. And by far, the best thing he's ever written, in my opinion, is this, a blog entry from the past winter break, when the A's front office traded away the fans' most beloved player, Nick Swisher.

I'm not going to complain about anything that happens this season. I'm just going to attend all the home games I can wearing my old Jason Kendall tee-shirt, and being thankful to be back in Oakland, where I can root for my A's in person or over the radio, and I never have to contend with a 9-hour time difference, or the inefficiencies of mlb.com's hissing audio stream.

Let's go, Oakland! Clap-clap, clap-clap-clap!

My Pre-Radio Life

This morning, my sister emailed me this picture of a cute baby wearing headphones and called it "Young Martina". I guess it was the headphones that made her think it was me. But I was never that cute, or pale, a baby.

I had to respond and tell her that no, it wasn't me. Despite how obsessed I am with all things radio now in my adulthood, I wasn't so into it as an infant that there ever would have been gigantic, professional grade headphones on my head at any point while I was in my crib. And certainly, I was not the type at that time to listen to anything with such a blissed-out, bemused, eye-closed look on my face. She's so silly, that sister of mine!

Looking back, I'm sure I wasn't very aware even of all my radio listening options let alone how to actually make radio when I was a child. Growing up in SoCal in the 80's, we had one very old, used tuner that was probably donated to the fam by some local church and it was always tuned to the Mighty 690, an AM station that played a lot of Top 40, only 10 songs on their playlist at a time. But, those were my favorite 10 songs of that particular month, easily. That's also where I always got my Sunday hit of Casey Kasem whom I thought was a genius. I remember my sisters and I always freaking out when someone tuned the stereo away from that spot on the dial. I was convinced I'd never find it again on the crowded AM spectrum out of L.A. and San Diego.

Unless you count me recording the Silver Spoons intro theme onto a portable cassette player by holding it up to the TV so I could have it on a mix tape, I also never had aspirations of becoming a radio producer. When you listen back to those tapes now, you can actually hear 9-year-old me off-mic shushing people in the room. God, I was a control freak even then! Or, when I used to read books out loud into the same tape recorder and play it back to myself at night as I went to bed because no one ever had the time to read me to sleep. That's more audiobook than radio broadcast. Sigh.

I must've been cute in those days, but not cute like that kid in the picture. My cute was one of patheticness. That's a totally different kind of cute.

Back at It

After what I comfort myself by saying is an understandable 6-month hiatus from this blog so that I could return home to the San Francisco Bay Area, find a place to live, get a job, and resettle into a life of familiarity and comfort among all my favorite things, a confluence of events has started me back on this path of chronicling my meandering and multi-claused thoughts. I'm financially comfortable now after an impoverished re-entry into my lavish American lifestyle so no longer have to hustle up money and thus have more time on my hands. I recently reconnected with someone I've known for a few years whose writing I've always enjoyed, and he encouraged me to get back to blogging despite my new life of uninteresting bliss back in my element. And, I'm getting tired of only presenting any little witticisms I have in quickies on Facebook. It's too small an audience. It's too scattered across all of my friends' Facebook pages. So, I'm back. Here.

I realized that I used my travels in Europe last year as an excuse to blog, because it was the thing that made me interesting and gave me something to talk about without exposing too much of my more personal musings. It shames me that I didn't think my personal musings were worth posting online when any number of illiterate asses with a broadband connection will create their own websites dedicated to some lame obsession of theirs and post all over the web with their bad grammar and poor punctuation and overuse of little initials (NOT acronyms, dammit!) like LOL and IMHO. It shames me that I needed a gimmick to open myself up in this public forum when I'm always verbally pounding away at my family and friends about the importance of being honest about your thoughts and emotions and sharing more. There's nothing wrong with talking about the pubradio job I got 2 months ago that I love, the cute apartment with wood floors and great natural light I now live in on the north side of Lake Merritt, or how I enjoy going to all my favorite places around the Bay with all my favorite peeps. Bliss can be interesting too.

Okay, fine. The money is now where the mouth is. For every blog entry I write from today onwards, I'm putting a dollar into a piggy bank and then doing something REALLY GOOD with that money when I've amassed a bunch of dollars after another year of blogging. I'm paying MYSELF for posting to my own blog! HA!

So, on this warm and glorious weekend in the Bay, what things, great and small, have I honed my senses to in the world around me so that I might take an interest? The vertical blinds waving and clapping against each other in the breeze coming through my bedroom window keep reminding me that I need to get outside and move around. One cannot enjoy the weekend by laptop alone. I'm putting on a skirt and enjoying the sunshine now.

Recap & Homeward Bound

So, this is it. My last night in the Hippo Hostel, in Budva, in Montenegro, in the Balkans. I am heading off to known and unknown elements back at home in the San Francisco Bay Area again in less than 5 hours. Sigh.

Before I get too much into thanking all those people who played any role in my many mind-boggling memories of this place from the past 6+ months, and then rehashing some of those memories in quick-witted fashion, I should say that I'm going back to the Bay, and hopefully finding a nice, new apartment in Oakland again, near the lake (anyone know of any good vacancies?) because I didn't manage to find an impressive new job in public radio anywhere else in the country that would necessitate my relocating out of the Bay Area so that I can practice the occupation that I have loved for almost 10 years now. So, sigh, again. I'm going back to my favorite city in the world, where the largest concentration of loved ones in my life reside, where all my favorite places and things are, and where my beloved is waiting for me to not have a long-distance relationship with him anymore. I'm not that bummed about going back, thus.

But, it's been quite an odyssey here these past several months. It's hard to be leaving this place that since April 5th, I've been calling Home, this beautiful, lively, hectic, scatter-brained, infuriating, wonderful place -- and that would be both the hostel AND the city of Budva. As far as life-changing, eye-opening, furiously intense, and adventurous chapters of a person's life, this ranks up there just under my 4 and a half years in college as the period of my "youth" that I'll think back to for the rest of my cognizant years on earth as a time when I met a world of wonderful people and things, and experienced the most in life. And, it all fit into a neat little window of half a year.

I'll remember a lot from this window: the places, the people, the sights, the conversations, the laughs, the torment, the mishaps, the food, the fun, the folly, the things I wrote about in this blog, the things I *didn't* write about, and everything in between. I think in Italian, the phrase mille locos, or something spelled similarly, translates to "a thousand crazies". Every last crazy of my mille locos these past 6+ months was worthwhile. From my early days here transitioning into this world, to my laid-up months with the back injury, to life in the trenches during the height of the heat, humidity, and water shortage of Budva, to the past month and a half when I've been able to double my number of red dots on the wall map I own of cities I've been to -- it was all worth it. All of it. That's right, I wouldn't have skipped this for anything in the world. Though, no, I also wouldn't do it again. Because I believe that the most life-affirming experiences we have, the ones that shape us with sledge hammers and not chisels, we can only have once, and must then move on to the next one. It's true, my therapist told me.

So, to recap: Martina is leaving the building. In just a few short hours. I'm traveling to London, New York, and Orange County for the next 2 weeks. I'll be back "home" the night of Thursday, October 25th. Everyone residing in the San Francisco Bay Area, I'll be expecting a massive ticker tape parade down Market Street that weekend. Thanks. And, I'll see you all soon, wherever you are.

Greece is the Word

I think the song lyrics go something like this, if I can remember my John Travolta musicals right:

Greece is the word (is the word that they heard)
It's got groove, it's got meaning
Greece is the time, is the place, is the motion
Now Greece is the way we are feeling.

Or, maybe not. But, since I just got back from there 2 days ago, I guess I should tell you a little bit about it.

This was my last "holiday" before I leave Budva for good, and it was 11 days of rest, relaxation, and a number of frivolous things that girls do when they've got lots of quality time together and nothing specific required of them. Nicole and I arrived separately in Athens, greeted each other with surprise and excitement, as if we hadn't planned on being at an airport in Greece at the same time on the same day, and then we hit the town. Actually, the town and two islands. That's specifically what we hit. Suffice to say lots of good times were had. In the interest of brevity, let me just give you some of the highlights (and maybe a lowlight or two, though I won't dwell on those much because I'm not feeling like a downer today) of what we saw and did in each of those 3 places that were thus hit...

ATHENS (4 nights): The capital city of Greece, Athens has been continuously inhabited for at least 3,000 years. They like to brag about it being the leading city of all Ancient Greece, enjoying a host of cultural achievements during the 5th century BC that laid the foundations for western civilization, blahdy, blahdy, blah.

• The poshy hotel that Nic got us was short on friendliness but long on clear views of the Acropolis from their rooftop jacuzzi deck. It was centrally-located too, within meandering distance to 3 major Metro stops.
  
• We went to a ridiculously entertaining dinner at a tiny place called Edodi, situated inside an old house in a neighborhood that hardly let on about the charming, intimate setting that the restaurant enjoyed inside. The entertaining part comes from the incredibly personal attention you get from all the staff who bring every single dish on their menu to your table and describe them one by one to help you decide what to order. First, you choose apps that way, then the staff bring out beautifully arranged plates of raw ingredients for each main dish and explain how the dishes are prepared. Then, the desserts come out on a multi-tier cart. And finally, the toothpick dispenser is delivered to your table in a music box with a dancing puppet inside it. You open the drawer to get a toothpick out and the music starts so that the little puppet inside the window of the box dances around. It takes a guy named Romeo to bring that kind of charm to the act of getting a toothpick out to, well, pick your teeth.
• If you want to see live music in Athens, the way to go is rembitika, which they call "Greek Blues". (Though, being a fan of blues music personally, I didn't notice just 12 bars being played.) There are rooftop tavernas in the Plaka district of Athens that have great views of the Acropolis all lit up at night, where you can see local musicians playing rembitika, trying to inspire the Greek restaurant patrons to get up and dance. My favorite part of watching local people do traditional Greek dance? -- Anyone who's willing to get up always has a couple of friends who will come with and crouch on the edge of the dance floor, clapping along to the music and serving as The Active Admiring Audience that the dancing person is dancing for. Being a performing seal myself, I find that tradition very motivational. We went to drink and watch 2 nights in a row.

Cut to: a 9-hour ferry ride south to our first island destination.

SANTORINI (3 nights): The southernmost member of the Cyclades islands in Greece, Santorini, also known as Thera, is a small, circular archipelago of volcanic islands in the Aegean Sea, about 200 km southeast of the mainland. The largest island in the group has little towns built on the top of cliffs facing the caldera, a volcanic feature formed by the collapse of land following an eruption. Santorini's caldera was formed in the Minoan eruption around 1600 BC. (Yes, I looked all of this up to impress you.)

• This place was inhabited by the cruise ship set, which I personally feel is a population of travelers that can suck the charm out of even a port like Heaven. I saw a woman freaking out and yelling at a local man over some donkeys walking "too close" past her on their way down the mountainside to the docks that she was heading toward too so that she could "catch a boat out of this place".
• About those donkeys: I wanted to ride one up the mountainside as soon as I read about them in the guidebook, but then changed my mind when I saw how bored and depressed they looked waiting around with their wranglers for some overweight American fares to come along. I decided not to burden a donkey just for the novelty of the experience, and opted to ride up the mountainside in a cable car that dangled from overhead, much like the Sky Ride at Disneyland back home. That was fun too, actually.
• All Nic and I did on this island was sit around eating, drinking, and talking, and strolling the tiny passageways and dangerously cobbled stone alleys shopping for all manner of lovely trinkets and attire for mostly ourselves but also a few loved ones. I bought more on Santorini than I have done in the past 6 months of travel and living abroad total. I need new, bigger luggage.
• It's a toss-up which is my favorite of the 2 restaurants that we ate at more than one time each on the island. One contender was Naoussa. The cool thing about that place was that the gregarious, affable staff there who greet you upon arrival with a freshly-poured glass of locally-made white wine remembered our names the 2nd time we came by for dinner, even though it was 2 nights after the first time we were there. I felt like a total local, despite the fact that there are no locals on Santorini, just tourists and seasonal hospitality industry workers. The other restaurant that I might call my fave was Elia, run by Yanni, the island's resident Sean Penn look-alike and man-about-town. He knew EVERYONE in the restaurant industry on Santorini, and had a million things to say about everyone and everything. This is the type of guy who goes out all night to local bars after he's closed his restaurant and pays 20 Euros to the nearby baker just so that he can show his friends the baker's pet parrot who talks and whistles at pretty ladies. Yanni told great stories!
  

Then, it was a 4-hour ferry ride north again to our only other island destination.

NAXOS (3 nights): The largest of the Cyclades islands at 428 square km, Naxos was the center of archaic Cycladic culture, meaning that it now sells a lot of bronze or stone replicas of ancient idols, helmets, and other found archaeological garbage in the souvenir shops around Hora, the main town on the island. Not that that bothers the archaeologist in me at all.

• This was definitely my favorite place that we visited in Greece, which makes it nice that we ended the trip with it. I loved how Naxos actually had locals and families living on the island year-round, and now that the high season was coming to a close, the people you see on the main stretch of road in the center of town on a Friday or Saturday night are Greeks who live there and are out with their kids, or on dates, or enjoying the quarterfinals of the Rugby World Cup on the flat-screen T.V.'s at the bars. (Go, Argentina!)
• The hotel where we stayed was about 10 paces from the beautiful and largely unpopulated Agios Georgios Beach. I laid out on lounge chairs under umbrellas for hours at a time and went wading into the shallow waters that ran for meters out to sea for 2 straight days. Everyone in Santorini kept warning us that Naxos would be quiet when we got there, but actually, when I'm looking to spend some time on the beach, what I *want* is quiet. It was perfect!
• Nic and I stumbled onto the Domus Festival (a music and dance performance festival) in the Kastro (the old castle which was the center of things for the small Catholic population in the area) on our last night in town. We saw an overly-emotive jazz vocalist do pieces from Ella's songbook, and while she had a really nice voice, her grandstanding unfortunately made us have to avert our eyes so that we wouldn't laugh. The performance aside, it was incredibly cool to see live jazz performed in the cellar of an old stone church-turned-museum, surrounded by religious and household artifacts recovered from as far back as the 4th Crusades. That might've been the coolest venue in which I've seen live jazz performed to date.

Another ferry back to Athens then for a final, brief night there before Nic and I parted company in the Athens airport on Monday. She, heading back to the Bay, and me, going to Budva for my last stand. All in all, the Greece leg of my travels was a wild success of the luxurious relaxation variety. Thanks in large part to my dearest friend Nicole and her substantial appetite for idle conversation.

Seasons Change

So, John got to town on Tuesday night. It was a harrowing day full of tired and weary (I worked the day shift on my own), and then joy and bliss (John arrived and we kissed). It was a nice reunion.

And so far, it's been a good visit. We haven't done a whole lot of sight-seeing thusfar. I blame John's jetlag and my sense of not wanting to sight-see that much in a place that I'd been calling home for the past 5 months. I wanted us to go to the first annual Petrovac Jazz Festival, but the weather (hot and rainy) and my health (tired and pukey) held us back. But, we did take 12 hostel guests and 3 peddle boats out to Sveti Nikola Island yesterday and spent 4 sun-soaked hours on the only completely deserted beach in Budva. No one believed me that the beach was going to be devoid of tourists, but I was dead right. Everyone had a blast, despite one lost t-shirt (by George), one lost pair of prescription glasses (by my beloved), and one lost lunch (by me, my first time seasick!).

It's strange how these past 3 days or so, this town has really emptied out a whole lot. I knew it would happen after August was over and the high season ended, but I wasn't really prepared for it happening 2 days before September, and also at such a dramatic rate! Where normally there would be bathing-suit clad couples and families coming back from the beaches at 5:00pm heading to their vacation rentals, or where I would see teeming hordes of humanity marching along the promenade at 7:00pm at night, checking out the carnival rides, the beach bars, and each other, there just AREN'T ANYMORE! It's sort of sad to see the end of the era of madness. I always hated crowds and never enjoyed this scene as it carried on all around me here in Budva these past couple of months. But, now that we're in September officially, and John is here, so I'm finally on vacation, it's just sad to see the season end.

This is the beginning of another change in my world here in Budva. This next month and a half will be about friends visiting, and taking lots of vacation trips around the region. So welcome, new era. Good-bye, old one. I will miss thee teeming masses and thou crazy hordes.

Tonight, John and I set off on a ferry across the sea. Italy, here we come!!!