back from the UK

Here's the short version, in case you're pressed for time and don't want to read the rest of this post:

     1. Miss H and I went on our trip to the British Isles and Ireland. It was Fun, with a capital "F." 

     2. A couple of days ago I queried Ethan Ellenberg with a 50-page excerpt of New Model Earth, which is the new title I've chosen for Revival, my sci-fi magnum opus.

     3. Miss H and I are moving. We're staying in Henderson, but we're switching apartments.

I told myself I'd write a post for each leg of the trip Miss H and I took to Europe, with oodles of delicious pictures for you to drool over. This is a travel blog, after all. But to be honest, I can't be bothered. There's too much going on right now. We're moving, as I mentioned. And I'm still trying to do three things every day: write, read, and exercise. So far I've been failing miserably, but not for lack of trying. Well, okay, maybe for lack of trying. But not for lack of wanting. So I'll just give you the picks of the litter: 

Black Linn waterfall, near Ossian's Seat in the Scottish Highlands.

I shouldn't have to tell you what this is.

The obligatory Big Ben selfie.

Tower Bridge ain't falling down...

The Titanic's original slipway in Belfast, Northern Ireland. 

Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge, County Antrim, Northern Ireland.

Trinity College Library, Dublin. 

The view from Dundrum Castle, County Down, Northern Ireland. 

The Giant's Causeway, County Antrim, Northern Ireland.

All done drooling? Great. The trip was luscious. Heather and I had a long layover in Miami on July 3, and spent a sultry afternoon in South Beach lying on golden sand and swimming in bathwater-warm seas and stuffing our faces with Cuban food and ducking self-professed heroin addicts on Collins Avenue. The bachelor party ("stag do") in Edinburgh was a blast; the boys and I pub-crawled across town, buying cheese from a bona fide cheesemonger and whisky from a bona fide whisky monger and mowing down while we roamed the streets. I ate haggis pizza and got to try a beer that was 44% alcohol. Jeff and Jenn's wedding ceremony was beautiful. They had a double-decker bus with their names on it, and got married in a friggin' castle, and the reception dinner was just amazeballs (game terrine, beef Wellington, and apple and berry cobbler), and a fun time was had by all. Then Miss H and I walked from one end of London to the other, and then flew into Dublin and did a private pub crawl of our own, and then had an 18-hour layover in Boston that left a fine taste in our mouths (as did the fondue and pisco sours at Stoddard's). And that was the trip. 

It was, however, ludicrously expensive. 

So expensive, in fact, that Miss H and I have been living paycheck-to-paycheck since we got home. 

Our lease is up, and Ventana Canyon Apartment Homes will be increasing our rent. They claimed it was because there was "development" going in next door to our apartment complex and that's upping the property value. The "development" they speak of is the construction of another apartment complex. I was no great shakes at economics in school, but doesn't an increase in supply and a corresponding decrease in demand mean a drop in price...?

Anyway, we selected a one-bedroom apartment at a complex just a mile and a half away, around the corner on Gibson. It'll mean a downgrade in living space, but much cheaper rent. Frankly, the complex is much nicer: a five-foot-deep heated pool, an indoor racquetball court, and a host of other amenities Ventana can't offer. I won't tell you the name of our new complex, however, because I expect to become a world-famous author soon and I'm keen on privacy.

Yes, I said "world-famous author." I haven't been bone-idle since I got back from the UK. I busted my hump, and with the help of a few erudite beta readers, I whipped the manuscript for Mugunghwa into shape. I'm publishing it for the Kindle...well, hell. Maybe tonight. Depends on how convoluted the KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) process is. I've already formatted my novel the way they want it and saved it HTML, and now all I have to do is pick a cover design and set a price, as far as I'm aware. Then it'll pop up on Amazon 24-48 hours from when I click the "publish" button. Fame and fortune will follow.

...but just in case it doesn't, I also prepped my manuscript for New Model Earth (which I shall hereafter refer to as NME) and sent a query letter, a synopsis, and an excerpt off to the folks at Ethan Ellenberg Literary Agency. These are the same folks who picked up John Scalzi and published his works, so I have high hopes. 

Before 2015 is out I intend to start writing freelance opinion articles for the Pacific Standard, The Awl, and any other online periodical that likes my pitches. Might as well start working as a freelance writer, especially while I'm waiting to hear how my novel ambitions pan out. 

I've also taken proactive steps to get my flying career in order. Rather than lament my persistent lack of funds, I set up a GoFundMe campaign (click here or see the badge at the top right of this page). I need $25,000. That's to get current, get my high-performance rating, rack up 100 hours PIC and 50 hours cross-country flight, do my commercial checkride prep, take my exam, and then become a commercially-licensed pilot. And hopefully get snapped up by Grand Canyon Airlines shortly thereafter. 

I'm taking this campaign seriously. I've shotgunned it out over Twitter, Facebook, and Gmail, and I've even printed out flyers—actual, physical pieces of paper—to post up at the small airports around Las Vegas (North Las Vegas, Henderson, and Boulder City). I'm doing that this weekend, if there's any time after the move. 

If you really love me, you'll save this and send it to everyone you know. Even that hated coworker you have to stand next to in the elevator each day on your way to work. 

farewell to Korea...again

It's 7:15 a.m. 

The sky is still pitch-black. I'm beginning to wonder if I'm in Bellona, the nightmarish, eternally overcast city from Samuel R. Delany's novel Dhalgren. 

In one hour, I shall be boarding a China Eastern flight to Shanghai (Pudong). After a five-hour layover, I'll jump another jet plane for San Francisco, where my parents will pick me up and take me back to their new place near Sacramento. After a few days with them, I'll drive down to Las Vegas on the 13th of January to reunite with Miss H after four long months...and have a job interview with a tech start-up the very next day.

And so, ladies and gentlemen, I depart Korea for the second time, this latest stint having lasted three years. Was it time wasted? I think not. I made another bucketload of disreputable friends, proposed to the girl of my dreams (in Tokyo, but hey), wrote two-and-a-half novels, began to take my writing career seriously, kicked off the quest to get a book published, and (completely by accident) fulfilled my childhood dream of becoming a professor in a foreign land. 

Now it's time to move on to a new set of dreams: marriage, family, a writing career, a commercial pilot's license (and a floatplane rating)...and after that? A steady writing job in Las Vegas, seasonal work with Grand Canyon tour companies, a published novel, a dozen syndicated short stories, two or three troublemaking kids, and a big mongrel dog. Wish me luck.

So long and farewell, Korea. You were awfully good to me and mine. I'll see you again someday. Let's do gimbap. 

Hanoi's Old Quarter

Before I begin, here are the rules which governed—or initially governed—my trip through Southeast Asia. 

1. No food selfies
2. No foreign food (meaning Western or American)
3. No getting suckered—bargain for everything
4. Wherever possible, travel by train

As a result, I didn't take photos of any of the foods I ate in Hanoi, more's the pity. I'll just have to make do with other people's, I guess. Thank Gawd for the Internet. 

I had a lovely, full sleep the night of July 13th, after catching barely ninety minutes in 36 hours. I awoke at mid-morning, "had a good gap and a stretch," and peered out the window:

Anvil clouds were already piling up in every quarter of the bright blue sky. I made a mental note to buy an umbrella. The Hanoi Asia Star provided a free breakfast, so I sat in the tiny two-table dining room and had an omelet with a buff, broad-shouldered Singaporean fellow named Dylan. He and his sister were visiting Hanoi for a day before haring off to Ha Long Bay. As soon as I budged outside the air-conditioned oasis of my room I'd begun to sweat, but Dylan was dry as a bone. Upon hearing of my own travel plans, he cautioned me that Singapore would likely be even hotter and wetter than Hanoi, to which I reacted with some dismay. 

I went back up to my room, e-mailed my parents to let me know I'd arrived safely, updated my journals, and slathered on sunscreen. For some inexplicable reason, I decided not to pocket my rain poncho—figuring, perhaps, that it would be easy to find and buy a cheap bumbershoot at a convenience store somewhere.

I stopped in at the first store I saw to buy 1.5 liters of water. It cost 12,000 VND—about 75 cents at the time. No umbrellas though.

Next stop was Hoan Kiem Lake:

  

I wasn't hurrying. I was strolling. Even so, I was drenched. Great wet spots appeared on my linen shirt, the bandanna I'd stuck under my hat was already soaked through, and my thighs were as wet and squeaky as trained dolphins. My sweaty fingers smudged the postcards I bought and addressed and sent at the moldy, water-stained French colonial post office.

My luck ran out during the long walk from the post office to the Maison Centrale—better known as the "Hanoi Hilton." The skies broke. The clouds weltered up and burst. There was nothing gradual about this kind of rain: full in the grip of monsoon season, the Vietnamese skies vomited all their contents upon me with wanton abandon. One minute it was dry; the next minute the air was filled with drops of water that would have done that godawful third Matrix movie proud. I thought I'd been sopping with sweat earlier. Now I was truly soaked. Unwilling to appear unprepared or chagrined, I stood defiantly out in the open for a few moments; then I slunk under the eaves of a nearby government building with a few other feckless souls. We stood there for some 20 minutes, trying to wait the damn storm out. It was too wet to light up a smoke. None of us would meet each others' eyes. All of us felt the caustic shame of being caught without an umbrella or poncho during monsoon season. 

Presently, there was the wet slapping sound of flip-flops on rainy pavement. A pack of dripping young English and Irish women, their tank tops and shorts plastered enticingly to their bodies by the fruits of the monsoon, sprinted up to our hiding-place. They inquired of everyone present whether the Hanoi Hilton was nearby. Your humble correspondent, having faithfully memorized the route before leaving his hotel room, pointed these women in the right direction. Together we strode soggily around the corner to the Maison Centrale.

The original door—the one John McCain probably walked through, the putz.

 

This place was yet another letdown. Ninety-five percent of it was devoted to the cruel oppression of the French during the colonial era, and the bitter tortures and deprivations the noble Vietnamese resistance fighters endured at their captors' hands. One small room was devoted to the American fighter pilots who were incarcerated here during the Vietnam War, and even that was decorated with propaganda: staged photographs showing American P.O.W.s raising chickens, decorating Christmas trees, attending church services, and holding chess tournaments. The entire upper level of one building was devoted to giant, tacky brass plaques memorializing the glorious names of the Vietnamese heroes held by the French (second-to-last picture above). I was put off by the whole thing, frankly. I couldn't wait to get back outside into the sunny, drying streets and make my way to the Temple of Literature. 

Now, here's the funny part: remember way back in 2013 when I went to Japan, and I saw the famous Zōjō-ji temple in Tokyo? And I got the prayer etiquette all wrong? And all during my train trip through Japan I kept getting it wrong such that, if any Shinto deities actually heard my prayers, they'd have either laughed them off or put an eternal curse on me?

I kept up my streak at the Temple of Literature, a Confucian school to which the Lý dynasty sent their best and brightest youths. I forgot to take off my hat while donating a few dong and saying a brief prayer. May I be damned to ignorance forevermore.  

Does your washroom look this cool?

These four pillars carried an inscription in Chinese admonishing horsemen to dismount already, gosh dang it to heck. 

I caught a cab back to the hotel, hung up my wet things, and walked back to a likely neighborhood I'd seen north of Hoan Kiem Lake, which was packed with eateries. I found a tiny shop the precise size and shape of a scooter garage that sold bun cha, fried pork slices in broth with vermicelli, with as much minced garlic and sliced pepper as you'd care to add (and the omnipresent complimentary mint salad).

from Wikimedia Commons

I bolted the lot down, walked another block and stopped in at a foreigner's bar for some nem (Vietnamese sausage wrapped in rice paper) and two more 450-ml bottles of Bia Ha Noi. 

from Wikimedia Commons

Okay, I'm stopping there. I'll tell you about the rest of this evening, and boarding the express train to Saigon, in the next entry. 

revamping the vlog

As you (should) already know, I'm a blogger. What some of you may not know is that I attempted, for a embarrassingly short while, to keep a vlog as well. I've linked to it a couple of times, but I try to avoid saying too much about it, because it's incomplete and poorly-kept, with overlong and badly-edited videos. It's as underdone as chicken tenders at Chili's. 

Well. 

I'd like to change that. 

I need a decent microphone and some updated video-editing skills. But once I master those, I'm going to revamp that blog of mine. 

How?

Well, since I already cover everything related to travel, cocktails, flying, and writing on this here blog, I'm going to take a different route with my YouTube channel. Oh, of course I'll put up interesting travel videos (should be plenty of those coming from Southeast Asia). Once I move back to the USA, I'll also set up a camera in the kitchen and start making video cocktail reviews instead of just text. (Perhaps once I reach Cocktail Review No. 85 or 90 or 100, whenever that may be.) And when I get back stateside I'll resume my flying career, too: specifically my quest for a single-engine commercial pilot ticket with instrument, floatplane, taildragger, and high-performance ratings. I'm sure that'll make for some interesting video fodder too. I may even need to get a GoPro...

But all that's in the future. For now, while I'm here in Korea, I can definitely do better with the vlog. 

I've been watching a lot of vlogs on YouTube lately (specifically the QiRanger, KWOW, and HowTheWorldWorks), and I love 'em to death. Here are some things that they all do well:

• they supplement their speech with text, music, and hi-def images, artfully edited into the video as a whole
• they talk about pertinent, up-to-date, and interesting subjects
• their bedside manner is engaging and fun, and their speech is practiced, fluent, and clear

I can do all that stuff, easy. Might be a little rough once I first start out, but I'll get into the swing of it. 

So what kind of topics will I talk about, then?

Something that people keep telling me I'm great at discussing in an interesting, meaningful way: history and wordplay. 

Once per week, I'm thinking, I'll do an installment called 5-Minute History, where I'll talk about some obscure and little-known topic that nonetheless had far-reaching consequences on our civilization and society. As the title suggests, these videos will be about five minutes in length. 

On certain days of the week, I'll have shorter and supplementary columns: Slang Saturdays (wherein I discuss the origin of an idiom or colloquialism) and Word Wednesdays (wherein I discuss the etymology, cultural significance, and historical context of English words). In short, I am going to create a whole new world for me and others to play around in online. And maybe learn something along the way. 

Sound boring? It won't be, trust me. 

I'm not sure when all of this will get started. My first order of business is to create a neat channel trailer for this vlog and inform everyone of its revitalization. I need to get familiar with video editing and figure out how to insert music, voice-overs, images, video clips, and so on. But you guys here on the Sententious Vaunter will be the first to know when the new-and-improved Vaunter-vlog starts up. And who knows? This might be a nice segue into the world of radio, something I do on the side that could get me hired one day. 

Stay tuned, vlogsphere. Ex Post Facto is going to get a whole lot sexier. 

Nope, even sexier than that.