MeMag - Me Magazine

Today I got up at 6am and started panic-cramming Spanish in order not to make a complete ass of myself in my first Spanish class. It is obviously better to show off than to actually learn anything new. Called out a cheerful chauuuu to E15 as she was leaving for school and receieved a muffled response. Then I rushed out, heading for the corner to flag down the 417 bus. Knowing that it would take me about 25 minutes to get there, I made sure to leave 50 minutes before my class started. Just to be sure.

But the bus didn’t feel like stopping today and I was quickly becoming very late. Another bus came along after a while, picked me up and I sat impatiently listening to today’s sales-pitch, which was for electric toothbrushes. When I eventually arrived at the downtown area, I couldn’t recognize any buildings and finally just jumped off the bus, finding myself completely lost. As usual. I ended up arriving about 25 minutes late after all.

The teacher turned out not to be the the horribly eccentric woman from yesterday, but rather her charmingly eccentric daughter. And she wants me. I could tell right away. Naturally I flirted shamelessly with her in order to get better verbs. At one point she crossed her arms on the desk and lay her head down on top of them, looking up at me with a tilted head and fluttering eyelashes. It was like a scene from Lady And The Tramp. Except that instead of meatballs, I was feeding her badly pronounced conjugations in my sexy deep morning-voice. I knew my future as a fluent latino was secured. Well… she may have my money and my personal pronouns, but she will never have my body. never I say!

M wants me to go to an arts and crafts market with her and a friend. Again I am letting her down. I don’t want to do anything. It’s such a chore being me sometimes. I find that life is more than exhausting enough without trying to come up with additional things to do all the time. And who the hell cares about arts and crafts anyway? So far I have weaseled my way out of most things she have suggested. I keep making promises to be less difficult, but whenever the day of a planned event actually arrives, it seems to big for me to handle.

M stresses that she doesn’t want to pressure me and that it’s no big deal for her. But I know that I am a bore to have around. Eager to make her difficult guest happy, she constantly messages me addresses for camera stores and guitar shops. But I cannot find anything I like well enough to buy. The one Godin guitar I liked was sold when I went back a few days later and now that I have seen that one, nothing else will do. My fingernails constantly break and I keep repairing them with superglue. I really feel like I will let an important part of me go if I cut them.

Wandered around window-shopping for the usual five hours after Spanish class today. I’m getting tired of downtown life already. One rare high point is whenever I come across one of the strange specialized shopping centers they have here. Where every shop is within two or three categories. Books and hair-dressers. That’s one. Every shop in the entire mall is one or the other. Heavy-/black metal paraphernalia, tattoos and photo development is another. Have your body-parts disfigured while your photos are being developed.

The longer I walk, the more I want to go back to the house and the less I feel ready to be a sardine on the bus ride home to my obnoxious teenager. So I walk some more instead. And become more tired. I am a commuter. Going off to work on the same bus every morning. My job is to kill time until the day is over. I feel old and tired. My sunglasses keep falling off. My head must be getting smaller.

In the evening I felt very trapped so I took my camera for a walk around the suburbs. Plenty of things to see, but nothing to photograph since I cannot very well walk into people’s yards and start shooting their garden gnomes. Actually they don’t have gnomes here, they have people. -Black people. Lifesize smiling minstrel singers. Very bizarre. I tried to ask M a question about political correctness, and it seems that the term doesn’t exist here. Feeling less like a dead sardine after my nice quiet walk, I finished the day with a few probably mutant strawberries, the size of billiard balls.

Edit: photo added:

Political correctness doesn’t exist in South America. here the ad campaign for Hellmann’s Mayonnese

In our house there is a strange system at work, which I have dubbed the towel game. The rules are still hazy to me, but the purpose of the game seems to be to hide towels so that they are not there when you step out of the shower. Every morning, the towels mysteriously vanish from the bathroom and re-materialize at various stations around the house. The final goal seems to be the clothes-line on the terrace, but towel game players are just as likely to leave the towels on the upstairs bannister or the sofa downstairs.

Whenever you come across a towel somewhere around the apartment, you never know if it is on it’s way to or from the bathroom. Am I supposed to pick it up and put it somewhere? I have flashes of paranoia during the early mornings when I swear that I can hear the towels moving themselves. Whenever I have used a towel, I am uncertain what to do with it. Do I hang it somewhere? Do I hang everyone else’s towels as well, so that they cannot find them? Are there any extra points scored for hanging a perfectly dry towel on the clothes-line just to confuse the other players? I do not know.

Today I called my new Spanish tutor in order to arrange my classes. She sounded like a very strict old lady and I immediately became insecure. During our conversation I was trying to discover if the woman spoke very little English, or if she was simply testing me to discover just what level of ignorance I was on. I think I impressed her in that department. She gave me her address and I said that I was fairly certain I would find it without any problem. She immediately sensed the slight insecurity in my voice and squeeked “Si or no?!” Then she told me to be at her office at 4:30 and asked if that was ok with me. “That’s fine”, I said. “Si or no?!”, the scary voice said.

3 1/2 hours later I arrived at the teacher’s office after having walked up and down various streets to kill the waiting time. She wasn’t there. I called her and she sounded surprised that I was there at the office. A few minutes later she arrived all smiles, -an eccentric little woman, somewhat younger than I had imagined after hearing the voice on the phone. She kind of reminded me of Dr. Ruth. After some introductory banter, it started to dawn on me that she does indeed speak very little English. She asked me to sit down and handed me a paper with various drawings for children on them and said “read”. I said things like gato (cat) and perro (dog). These I knew. I felt like a genius. I have after all taken 2 1/2 Spanish course earlier.

“oops, oops, oops”, she said shaking her head. “Ya you are beginner”. Then we started to arrange a schedule using her incomprehendable calendar with three different pages running at once, instead of just one for each month. At irregular intervals, she suddenly jumped up saying “oops, oops, oops” and ran out to check her answering machine or her cell phone. She then gave me the book which I have to pay for. It’s a spiral-spine bound stack of xerox copies form an original book, as thick as any phone book. This is fine except that some of the crucial writing, such as the left and bottom collumns/rows of verbs have their description outside of the badly copied page.

“Do you know colors?” she inquired, as part of the initial assessment of my knowledge level. “Some”, I said, having by then realised that if I answered in sentences and not words, she wouldn’t understand what I was saying. She grabbed my book and flipped it open on a page with a color chart on it. Suddenly I had a hard time figuring out which color went with each name. I felt nervous. I should know this. Only hours later, when I was back home did it dawn on me that since the book is a xerox copy, all the colors on the chart are shades of gray.

I only booked four days, using a possible vacation trip to Valparaíso as an excuse. The truth of course, is that I have a feeling that four days with her will be the end of me. M and E15 are probably going on a trip, but at this point I think that I will most likely stay behind. As I was about to leave, she said “watch your bag”. “Why is that?” I said with tried patience. “You look like gringo”, she said. “Somebody maybe…” She made a stabbing motion with her hand. “Try to take you something”. Oops, I thought. I clutched my bag firmly all the way home.

In the evening, after a day of being coldly ignored by E15 and being in a generally foul mood, M took me with her to her Tai Chi practice in the park along with various other black belt housewives who can kill you with two or three fingers. Since I feared that I would burst out in involuntary laughter at the sight of Tai Chi, I walked around the park by myself instead. I was hoping that someone would call me gringo and try to steal my bag so that I would have a chance to insert a large camera tripod in them and vent some of my aggression, but nothing happened. There is always tomorrow.

Sunday. Chileans do most of their shopping on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon. The nice lady from the embassy came to the house and collected me, and we took a bus to the Jumbo supermarket, -a place where they have everything. The Chilean consumer works during the week, often until 8 in the evening every day, so when the weekend finally comes, he/she needs to buy everything needed for the following week.

So today I was schooled in what kind of chicken to buy and not to buy. Things like that. They put so much hormones into the food here, that you could just go by size and stay away from the giant chickens. I was told that some Chilean girls get their period as early as when they are seven because of all the hormones. In terms of looks, most people seem to go straight from their teens to middle-age. In general, age is a lot harder to determine here. You don’t see a lot of people who look like they are in their 20s.

Had an interesting and pleasant lunch, -or rather, I thought I was going to have lunch. M said she was cooking fish and “smashing potatoes” for me, but it turned out that she had only prepared a meal for E15 because she needed to run of to study for a test at a friends house. M was attempting to extract information from her, but it was difficult. “What kind of a test is it?” “I don’t know”. “Then how do you know what to study?”. “I don’t know, whatever”. E15 was reluctant to sit down at the table with me, but ended up doing so after her mother had sat down first. I asked if it was difficult for her to eat while two hungry people were staring at her food, and she mumbled “to some degree, yes”.

I have asked M to start translating things that I say around the house so that the little one will get an idea of what my personality is like. At one point M left the table to fetch something and after a few seconds, E15 called to her to come. “What is it?” “Nothing.” M sat down again and we both felt safer. They talked. Whenever M translated something to me, I commented on it and M translated it back. E15 ended up laughing very hard allthough she was trying to keep her cool.

I then asked E15 to fix my cell-phone. I know the young are good at stuff like that. I have been trying for three days to turn off the automatic spelling. She cured it in about seven seconds. Probably good for her to feel that she is smarter than me in some ways. Which in this case, she clearly is. I said thank you, and she shrugged her shoulders like she couldn’t care less. I think she was very proud of herself.

It turns out that the people who have been making all the racket outside during the night are some of E15s classmates. M has started to wage a small war against them by hiding on the veranda and throwing lemons at them. And a bottle, which they threw back and hit the neighbors window with. It didn’t break. E15 and I are equaly embarrassed. I said that there probably isn’t a law that prohibits people from sitting on a bench and talk/laugh all night, but that throwing bottles at people might not be all that legal or ethical. She disagrees. “No no”, she said… “People have a right to sleep at night!” I asked her if they didn’t also have the right to sit on a bench without getting a bottle in the back of their head, but she didn’t see what I meant.

M and I went for a walk in the evening on her way to pick up E15 after her studying. She had asked E15 if it was ok if I came too, but she didn’t want that. After the cinema episode when the poor girl had panicked when I showed up, it seemed wise to ask first this time. So we walked around looking at nice-looking old suburbian houses in Bauhaus style until we had to part ways so as to avoid any conflicts.

I went to a Plaza nearby and shot a few photos of some of the many kissing couples that are all over Santiago. And my daily dog-photo. Walking home after dark, a different way, I naturally ran into the girls. There are only six million people in this burg after all. E15 stood motionless and stared blankly ahead. She wouldn’t speak or look at me. She looked terrified. M asked if I was going home with them on the bus, but I said that I wanted to walk. When I arrived home, E15 was singing to herself and goofing off. Strange girl.

I’ve been out a few times more with my camera. Quick trips just as the sun is going down. Carrying the Hasselblad around, I’m attracting a lot more attension in this neighborhood than in Oslo. But when I get a response from people, it is exactly the same as at home. Mostly drunk youngsters who want me to take their picture. They do the exact same stupid poses here. They also like to show off their knowledge of English by saying things like “shit motherfucker” to me. Two drunk teenagers I photographed yesterday waved in a friendly manner when I left and said “goodbye, bastard!”

For some reason, I’m a bit less nervous about shooting photos of people here than at home. I probably shouldn’t be standing in some of the streets around here with a camera, alone after dark. But I haven’t been worried so far. I shot some photos of a dog yesterday and everybody came out of their shops and bars and stood watching my every move. People don’t attempt to hide their stares here. I wish I could talk to them. Would be great to photograph inside some of these places.

E15 and I apparently have a lot of the same quirks, allthought I’m not sure yet what they are. Supposedly, we complain about things in exactly the same way. And we worry about perfectly harmless things in the same way. M says that now she has two impossible blondes on her hands. Each locked away in his/her separate room in front of a computer. It seems that a lot more of people’s behavioral traits are genetic than I originally thought.

Since E15 is forced to carry my poor genetic material around, she also have to live with looking very different from everyone else here, being called things like Barbie, and not standing the strong sunlight too well. She has problems with her back and neck which is my fault. She also has bad knees, but that is M’s fault and not mine. “That’s your bad DNA”, I say. “-So don’t blame me for the knees”. “We don’t have DNA”, M says. “In Spanish we have ADN”. No wonder we are so fundamentally different.

For once I didn’t sleep well. The usual gang on the benches outside were partying hard all night. And it was too hot. I woke up in the middle of the night and really wanted something to drink, a cigarette and a trip to the bathroom, but I didn’t want to wake everybody up by walking down the creaky stairs or opening the schreeching window. Everything seem to make more noise here. If you flush the toilet, they can hear it in Argentina. I applied a little self-control and got through the rest of the night without leaving my room. Most likely I could make as much noise as I wanted. Being used to living in this neighborhood, these women could probably sleep through world war 3.

M took me downtown, hoping to show me great architecture and historical sights. I think she is a bit disappointed at how little interest I show. I try to appear interested as she tells me the exact year this-and-that happened. But my concentration drifts. And I show a great deal more enthusiasm when I see how the orange evening light falls on a garbage dumpster or a sleeping dog.

Downtown Santiago is very different from anything I have experienced before. It looks like a modern European city… Madrid maybe. And still you have these little things that are completely out of place, like deformed people making a living as freaks outside the department stores. Before we arrived at the core of the city, we were walking through some small, almost deserted back streets. Old stone buildings. A church. It was very quiet and resembled a small Mediterranian village. I found the perfect emergency backup hotel. Then we turned two corners, and I found myself on the busiest modern city street I have ever experienced.

Another thing that is different here is how the sunlight is warm and the shadows cold. It doesn’t get really hot until several hours into the afternoon. By then one side of the street will have shade and the other sunlight. The sunny side will be blazing hot and the shady side nice and cool. You really just have to take one step to the side once in a while and stand under a cool tree. Heat on/heat off. I haven’t noticed any of the pollution and bad smell I was told about before coming. The air seems fine to me. But you do get a lot of dirt under your fingernails.

We ended up doing only things that I find interesting; we went to have lunch at one of the many ’40s and ’50s style diners/soda fountains in this city. The place was a time capsule. Even some of the waiters seemed likely to have worked there when they first opened. At the table behind M’s back, a woman was cutting up her son’s fries and feeding him. The boy, who seemed perfectly normal, must have been ten or eleven. Very odd. The food and drink there was amazing. But most of all, the place was the perfect movie location.

After that M showed me the fish market, which she claims was designed by Eiffel. Constructed by decorated metal beams, It does look very Eiffelish. But I haven’t been able to confirm that he designed it. M wanted me to see some more important sights, such as where Salador Allende was killed. But I wanted to have ice cream instead. They have an impressive selection of flavors and brands here. You can get pretty much any taste you want. Melon… Papaya… various things I cannot identify. And you get to taste everything before you buy.

M made me buy E15 a Pearl Jam t-shirt, even though I already have a great big stack of undelivered gifts. She insisted that today was the perfect time. I resisted, but ended up buying it. She then pressured me into giving it quickly when I came home. “Now, while she is in a good mood”. I sounded just like E15 does when her mother tries to push her into saying something nice to me. “I don’t want to”, I said. “Don’t make me talk to the mean girl who hates me”. But there was no escape. I handed the t-shirt over, expecting to be strangled with it. But there was a big smile instead. And even a hug. Things may be turning for the better.

Today I felt like keeping a very low profile. So low in fact, that I wouldn’t be seen. E15 was pretending to be asleep when I left (and later complained to her mother that I had gone without saying goodbye to her). I hopped on my usual bus and spent the entire day walking around in various horrible shopping centers downtown. Unfortunately I have such excellent taste that the things I like always cost more than anything else in the same department. Things here here are too expensive anyway. All the digital cameras cost 20% more than in Norway. I’m too cheap to buy one at that price so I go around all day seeing incredible things that I cannot photograph.

These bus-rides downtown and back are very enjoyable. The Micros (cheap buses) run everywhere in this city. The name Micro most likely refers to the ammount of free space inside one of them during rush hours. Until recently the buses didn’t have numbers, only names. Now they are numbered, but there are no charts saying where they go. People just know. And there are no timetables. Instead there is a never-ending stream of Micros up and down the streets. They don’t necessarily stop at designated stops. If there is traffic, people will see the bus approaching and run to meet it.

The Micros are also a moving marketplace. Salesmen and women will jump on and off, apparently for free, and peddle their goods. You can sit (if you are lucky) on a Micro and be served ice cream, buy new nylon stockings and enjoy a good song. There is also some drops of comedy in the form of signs in front of the bus saying things like maximum allowed speed, 50km/h. A Micro slowing down picking up passengers probably drives faster than that. Today the driver’s big plastic gearknob, with a silver bird inside, broke in his hand and cut him. He produced a huge monkey wrench and took the top of the gear stick apart. He did this while driving unbelievably fast, trying to patch up his hand, selling tickets and doing the usual unprovoked honking at the same time.

I complained to M about the soggy spunge she uses to do the dishes. I had originally bought a dish-brush along with some other western kitchen gadgets, but I ended up leaving it behind because my suitcase had a weight problem, and because I didn’t want to show up here with a ton of housewife-gifts. When I was a kid, I always gave my mother kitchen things for christmas, because that is where she always was. I thought it was her greatest joy to do the dishes.

This day did start off a bit unsatisfactory when I found an abandoned sowing-needle in my bed cover. Or rather, the needle found me. I haven’t yet reached the level of paranoia where I believe it was placed there on purpose. Allthought I am fast approaching it. As usual I didn’t see E15 until she left for school. I had parked myself at the living room table downstairs, next to the front door in order to ambush her with some kind of friendly greeting/goodbye. I was planning on asking her if I could borrow her guitar while she was away, both since I am going crazy without any strings to pick and because I could in a small way show some interest in something of hers. I had been flipping through my phrasebook in order to construct some sort of comprehendable sentence to this regard in Spanish.

But when she decended the stairs, she didn’t say goodbye like the previous days. She looked at me very coldly and only waved her hand slightly. The chill of that look froze me completely and was unable to say a word. So I only waved back. I’m such an idiot. This instantly landed me in a deep depression and I sat around the house for a while just thinking gloomy thoughts. Finally I went out and took the only bus I know anything about downtown. I walked around doing absolutely nothing before I decided to try my luck at the subway system. I managed to find the second hand guitar store that I had the address to.

The guy who wrote it down for me had actually given me the wrong address, but I never did find the street he had said it was on anyway, and instead happened upon the store accidentally in another street. Not that I’m going to buy a guitar or anything. I know that I cannot buy another gift at this point, and that I cannot buy myself a new toy and wave it in front of E15, but I wanted to do stuff that I’m interested in today so that I could possibly end up in a better mood.

I also found the store that M thinks may be able to develop my black & white film without ruining it. After visiting the place, I have to say that I’m not optimistic. Tried to have lunch in one of the greasier local places, but the guy just wouldn’t serve me, even though I was standing in the line like a normal person. When it was my turn, he looked past me and served the woman behind me. Then the man behind her again. I left. Seems like my fears of turning invisible are coming true. I had lunch in a more expensive touristy place instead. It was ok. I then tried to find the tourist information office, failed, and attempted to call my parents from a call center instead. And failed again.

The cleaning woman who only comes in once a week, was here again today for the fourth time in the past five days. E15 wouldn’t come home from school at all, since her mother wasn’t home. I don’t think she can handle the thought of staying in the house with me alone. Somehow things have worsened drastically during the last 24 hours. She went to the new Harry Potter film at the cinema this evening. Being a Chilean childrens matinee, the film didn’t end until 1:30am. Earlier during the day, E15 had called and said that she had arranged to have the father of one of her friends pick her up. M said that WE would pick her up!

And we did. Sort of. She basically tried to escape into a car with her friend’s family. When that didn’t work, she started walking very fast with M and her short legs running after. I held back. If it has come to the point where I have to chase her down dark streets like a monster, it is just silly. It’s an extraordinary feeling to have someone you don’t even know hate you so much that they can’t even bare to look at you.

Had a long talk with M last night about the entire situation. I told her that I believed the reasons why I had felt I had to come at this point in my life were probably largely selfish. So that my concience would feel better. She said that when E15 had heard that I was to suddenly appear, she had said the same exact thing. “He is only doing it for himself. He wants forgiveness”. Smart girl. She figured it out from the beginning. M handles honesty unusually well. She also delivers it well. “I was wrong earlier”, she said. “This girl really truly hates you”.

She confessed that she hadn’t asked E15 first, if she was fine with the idea of me coming here, because she didn’t want to see our possibly last chance to work things out shot down at the starting line. She also said that E15 had said that she would run away from home if I came, exactly as I had anticipated that she would want to. But M hadn’t expected the cold front to go on like this. She says that E15 is punishing me. M has asked her to please slap me or scream at me or something. But she won’t. She apparently wants me to suffer. And perhaps I shouldn’t deny her that right by trying to be overly nice towards her.

M says that she too is selfish in that she fears how my presence here would affect E15s feelings towards her. We had our first real talk about the possibility of me moving out. I said I wasn’t quite ready to give up yet, but if this goes on and my presence here just ruins everybody’s lives, I might as well leave. So there it is. From E15’s point of view, it is better to not have a father at all than to have one once every so-and-so many years. Who needs all that grief inbetween? M doesn’t want to see E15 turn completely against her as well. And me… I’m not willing to give up my life in Norway and move here permanently. M and I already feel guilt about how this has all turned out. And E15 is bound to feel guilty later in life if she completely rejects me now. So far, my coming here has done anyone little good.

I will stay a little longer, but frankly I have no way of approaching E15 at this point without driving her away further. So if things don’t suddenly blow over by themselves soon, I’m going. I won’t try any other schemes in order to get to her attention at this point. She couldn’t handle it. Quite frankly she is too immature to see things from any other angle than the one that I have ruined her life. There is nothing for me to work with. I don’t even have a spoken language here. I am disappointed at how this is turning out and it is affecting my mood. Today I suddenly couldn’t see the charm in this city at all and everyone around me just seemed noisy, rude and unpleasant.

Today I discovered how early I actually wake up: Before 6am. Each day I make myself breakfast and eat quickly, standing by the kitchen counter. This family is not all that sentimental about sharing meals. After five days, we’ve only had two lunches together. I’m not sentimental about sharing meals either, but it would be fun to see E15 once in a while. From my room I can see her back across the hall, typing away at her keyboard. She is a very fast typer. It sounds impressive on those old fashioned noisy keys. I’m a bit envious of people who can do that. I use my index fingers. And sadly, I only have two of them.

Today we were planning on going to the great winter end-of-school party at E15’s school. But apparently there was a small revolution there yesterday so the party is cancelled. All the students had gathered around the principle and shouted his nickname, “fucking smurf”. I was later told a different version of the story, which included the oldest students showing up drunk and “running around pissing on each other”. I sincerely hope there was a fault in that translation. The principle responded by cancelling the party and expelling all the senior students in the entire school, even though they graduated last week and already have their diplomas. So… no party today. E15 didn’t want any of us there in any case. Me for not having any business being at her party, and M for being a “freaky old lady” who doesn’t belong at a party either.

On a related revolutionary note, E15 announced to her mother that she was planning to cut a few classes today to see what it feels like. She has never done so before. Cutting classes is another thing that will get you expelled from school here, so the stakes are high. Sounds like an interesting experiment. Best of luck to her with that. Last week it was saving lunch money to buy alcohol. She had casually mentioned this to her mother. M told her that she herself would have to decide if she thought the potential consequences were worth it. She thought about it and decided that they were not.

M took me to meet her friend at the Norwegian embassy today. There they welcomed me like a long lost son, which sort of took me by surprise. I wasn’t expecting hugs and people making plans to take me out grocery shopping in their spare time in order to coach me on which brands of foods that would be most likely to please my nordic pallette. Everyone commented on how much E15 and I look like each other. I had been expecting a boring staff of impersonal officials. Not hugs. But it was nice. They can set me up with a personal Spanish tutor if I want. I don’t know if I do.

Afterwards we ended up in a small café run by a woman with some ties to Scandinavia. It seems that my casual comment on the bad coffee here has set great wheels in motion. Offers have been made to have coffee flown in from Europe. And to find me kettles and perculators or whatnot. Frankly I would rather have bad coffee in an exotic new way than to have great coffee exactly like at home, but it’s too late to take the coffee comment back now. At the café they offered to brew me something that would be exactly like at home. I politely said that I would much rather try the regular coffee they themselves drink and serve. Surprised looks.

The café owner asked me if I understood her Swedish. I said that I did and asked if she understood my Norwegian. She replied that she had heard a lot of Norwegian through her dealings with Kongsberg. “You know… the armament dealer”. “Ahh yes”, I said. “those guys… sure”. She was referring to a company who supplies arms to various parts of the world. They have been under some criticism for supplying ammo to various ventures that the majority of Norwegian citizens aren’t all that supportive of. To which they have replied something like “we didn’t sell them the guns, only the ammo. And that never killed anybody”.

Before I left, since the conversation was of a personal nature, I innocently asked what the connection with this company and this small café was. I was dying of curiosity. Maybe she meant that she had worked at the factory line before coming here or something. The answer was that it was part of some business she did on the side. She mentioned another defense contractor as well. Then she seemed to want to talk about something else. I smiled and gave her my best Oh well, I’m just a naive idiot who don’t understand things like that anyway-look. Inside I was bursting with potential material for jokes. “I’ll have the gunpowder tea, please”. “Would you like an assault rifle with that, Sir?”

M took me to various shopping centers around the downtown area and explained to me several times what kind of taxis I could and couldn’t take. She bought me a cell phone, wrote down the number of the bus we had arrived on, and gave me a guidebook and a map on which she marked out our present location as well as home. Then she parked me in a wireless network hotspot and set off for work. It was very much like the process of releasing a pet back into the wild. She was clearly reluctant to leave me there, but in the end she left, looking very worried and being hopelessly late for work. Five minutes later I was completely lost.

I tried to retrace our steps from earlier, but even though I found a few of the same stores, they didn’t seem to be in the correct order anymore. I passed the McDonalds severalt times from various directions. Then after a while I realized that they were in fact two or more different outlets. This is a big city. While walking through some underground passages where the metro was, I suddenly felt very ill. My throat was itching and I was coughing. My eyes were running. It was like a mild teargas reaction. I quickly got out of there and sat down on a bench until it passed. In front of me was the café from earlier. I did not go in and ask for directions. Instead I unfolded M’s map and did it her way. A huge blow for my male ego, but clearly my only chance to get back home. Home… there’s that word again. Second time I use it. I don’t know if it applies really.

This was another day that started with some worry. When I woke up this morning and stretched out my arm to fondle my laptop, I noticed that it was sort off vibrating. I pulled the plug out and the tingling stopped. Being of a somewhat worried nature, I immediately told M about this phenomena. She said it was normal. Nothing to worry about. So you’re an electrician now? I thought. She explained that her old tv had been doing the same thing all the time. “You mean the one that broke?” I said. I was not convinced.

Patiently, M took me to a store that sell electrical things so that I could do what I wanted to satisfy my worries, even though they were not grounded, to use a very clever pun. The guy at the store said that he had nothing to fix that. It was a condition related to the wall plug. I didn’t understand the rest. I could try a different socket if it worried me. Later, as I was walking around trying to figure out where the hell I was, I happened upon another store that sold all kinds of power surge protective equipment and such. I went in and laid out the entire scenario in my best sign language.

They sold me a great big thing; a Crompton Automatic Voltage Regulator, model AR-350. It was a bit more expensive than I would have preferred, but the sheer size of it seemed to make it a bargain. It has an impressive voltage meter, an interchangable fuse and a glowing power button. And they wrapped it for me in an unreasonably elaborate macrame of knotted string. I couldn’t have been more proud if I had hatched the thing myself.

Since I was lost, I hauled the device around for the longest time before I eventually found my bus. -A bus I then only took halfway home. Hours of walking later, I plugged it in, feeling very proud. I was really going to show M this time. Damn know-it-all. And the result: No difference whatsoever. The laptop still shivers like a wet dog. I am so embarrassed. I’m wondering if I should throw the thing away before M comes home and sees it.

I feel unhappy about being a cell phone owner. I don’t like them much. At least everyone here makes so much noise that even if I do end up shouting deeply personal things into it on the bus, no one will notice. Already I have dropped it on the floor once. I’m hoping to put it out of it’s misery in a few more falls.

Today I really didn’t want to exit my bedroom at all until everyone else had left. I’m having a bit of difficulty knowing how to handle E15’s lack of enthusiasm over my visit. I know that as the responsible adult, it is my job to reach out to her, in small steps, and show that I’m not here to ruin or completely change her life. But I don’t really feel like a responsible adult. I really just want to barricade myself in my room, like she initially did in hers.

Her first deep resentment towards me coming here, really seems to have passed. Now she is just indifferent. I didn’t count on that. I figured she would be scared and angry for a while and that we would then find some sort of friendship. But so far I have been unable to approach her to even try and talk to her. I don’t know what to say.

I asked M if E15 had been asking things about me, but she said no. The girl just isn’t intersted, I guess. And why should she be? They have always gotten on fine without me. Now I see her about twice a day as she goes to, and comes home from school. She says politely hello. I mumble hello back. I really have nothing more to say. I have been afraid of teenagers ever since I was one myself. She isn’t pouting in her room anymore. She is still in there all day, but has the door open and sings and talks to herself as if she was home alone. So in a way she has come a lot further than I have. I’m becoming one of those closet monsters that go away if you ignore them. She just has to endure me around the house for a while and I’ll be out of her life on a Lufthansa flight.

Flashbacks are coming to me of the many unmailed letters, birthday cards and e-mails I have tried to compose over the years. Always feeling that I’m just making a fool of myself and embarrasing her. Somehow I thought that I would be a different person here. But I’m not. Still so shy that when I talk people often cannot even hear what I’m saying. I am unable to think of a conversation-starter. It’s happening again. I am fading into invisibility.

Christmas is approaching in all it’s commercial glory. Like everywhere else in the world, the stores are starting to put up christmas decorations. One shopping center has an especially impressive selection of grotesque robotic santa clauses and illuminated raindeer. Christmas music blasting from the speaker system. Why didn’t I buy that digital camera before I left? Musac is really a lot better in this country than in Norway. They don’t bother with the royalty-free cover versions here and go with the original versions instead. And they play it loud. People could go to one of these supermarkets and dance if they wanted.

I managed to have a copy of M’s keys made today from a very inquisitive and friendly keymaker. No is fuss with papers proving that they are indeed your keys here. M, who is sensing my difficulties and feeling very protective, had done all the neccessary research so that I knew exactly how much money it would cost. She even left me the correct bills before she went to work. And clean underwear. I had a long conversation with the keymaker, explaining that I would probably stay here for three months. On my way home, my phrasebook told me that what I had really said was that I would stay in Chile for three tables. Fine. I suppose keymakers need a good laugh from time to time as much as anyone else.

I then went to another shop and bought a keyring with a big friendly Hello Kitty face on it. I need all the good voodoo I can get. I stood in the shop with a naked key in my outstreched hand while pointing at the keyring in front of the salesman and smiling and nodding enthusiastically. He said “we don’t sell keys here, Sir”. People here are obviously not used to foreigners. They seem to lack the imagination you need to decode what idiots like me are trying to say. A lot of young people are eager to show off their English, but just as I discovered when I got here that my Spanish phrases didn’t work at all, they quickly discover the same about their English. They always end up looking disappointed.

I have fixed the window. Almost fixed it anyway. This was achieved using the only material I had available; paper. I have padded various parts of the window frame with small folded bits of notepaper. I feel like MacGyver. Very proud. But now I don’t have anything to write on. I suppose I could write on the window.

I’m not usually good at fixing things, but now I find myself looking for broken things around the house that I can fix. The girls are not used to having a man around the house. Maybe I can contribute by doing masculine things like home repair. Somehow I should try to turn my male intrusion into their safe feminine world less negative. The only problem is that I don’t really know how to do anything. I could fix their PC to boot a little faster and things like that, but with all the Spanish onscreen messages and latin logic behind the setup, I would probably just end up killing it.

I’m trying to avoid doing things that could make my presence in their domain too distinct. I keep all my stuff in my room and I make sure to put everything I use back in its proper place. I wait until they are finished in the bathroom in the morning before having a shower, so that they don’t have to wait or slide around on a wet floor. I haven’t even put my toothbrush in the cup by the sink where theirs are. I’m keeping a low profile.

My feelings of panic and insecurity worsened throughout the day and I finally had to take my new keys and escape. I don’t want to sit around the house and give off negative vibrations, so instead I walked around for a long time, -always in straight lines so as not to get lost. Ok, so I’m not Dr. Livingston. Went hungry for a few hours because I was too insecure to try to negotiate a meal with any waiter. Just like yesterday. I haven’t had a hot meal so far this week. The guy at my new regular café just didn’t give me back any change today. I wanted to say something, but no sounds came out. So I appologized and left in a hurry.

Finally found a place that sold something called a “sandwich vegetario”, which, if anyone ever wants to order one, is a sandwich with ham and cheese. People are strange creatures indeed. But it was without a doubt the best ham and cheese sandwich I’ve ever had. So knowing myself, I will probably have the same tomorrow and the next day and the next.

At least some things are under control. I now manage to turn on and off the ominous-looking gas heater in the bathroom. I haven’t dared try the stove yet. I gallantly declared that I wanted to buy a fire extinguisher for the apartment, but M protested. Fire extinguishers are dangerous, she says. “They explode”. I didn’t know that. Maybe they do here. She is annoyingly right about most things she says.

The girls are not at home this evening. They are at a Pearl Jam concert. I feel very relieved to be alone. And relieved that I don’t have to endure one of those huge latin stadium spectacles with 200.000 people. I have been sneaking into E15s room to use the phone plug there for the internet. I’m not trying to spy, but I see that there is a newspaper clipping for a sale on Converse shoes lying on her desk. But I already have too many undelivered gifts.

Edit: photo added:

Christmas decoration at the LIDER supermarket. In front; the paramilitary guard who chased me off. LIDER are the ones who have guards in bulletproof vests. Lots of them. They hire ex soldiers to keep their premises safe from people like me. And since the owners are Opus Dei members, they have strange rules, such as the employees not being allowed to wear earrings

Today I attempted to take care of myself. Armed with a guide-book with a small phrase section (that so far has failed to include a single word I have needed), I set out walking in one of the two directions I have been before. I am not yet ready to just walk around freely. Not until I figure out how payphones work and what taxis look like. I do not want to get lost in this city. It is enormous. I had a look at it on Google Earth before I came here, and the satellite image looked like a photo of the Death Star.

When I reached the café I had decided on for my morning/noon coffee, I realized that I had arrived at least an hour before they opened. I don’t own a watch and rely mostly on my built-in clock which is usually very accurate. Here I have no idea what time it is. I think I probably got up absurdly early today. It’s those damn roosters. Also, the time difference has made me into a dynamic morning-person. My body think it’s noon and that it is time to get up. But in reality it’s very early. I have gone from being a no-good layabout to being a no-good efficient early riser. Thank you jet-lag!

I ended up sitting on a bench until the café opened. Everywhere around me were the stray dogs that seem to account for at least ten percent of this city’s population. They mostly just lie flat out on the pavement. Then on occasion, the get up to chase a car. I thought only dogs in comic books chased cars. Dogs here do. They also chase each other. Into the street, between the speeding cars. I have to look away. They aren’t mangy mutts. Most of them are very beautiful. And they appear more quick-witted and healthy than all those thoroughbred perritos that people yank around on a leash.

Coffee here is absurdly bad. It is really bordering on undrinkable. This surprises me. I thought a great deal of the coffee produced in this world came from this continent. M says that “people here don’t like coffee much”. That’s a shocker. They don’t like this? Seems that all the good beans are exported and the latins themselves are left with the bottom of the barrel. That is a shame. To have nothing left like that. That would be like Norwegians having to make do with indoor skiing. There are so many things they don’t have here, allthough the resources should theoretically be available. They have tomatoes and more kinds of ketchup than I knew existed. But they don’t have sundried tomatoes. How can a country survive without sundried tomatoes?

So far not a single person has understood a word of my attempts in Spanish. I know a lot of words but I have no idea how to string them together. Nobody speaks much English either, yet everyone is eager to help. I haven’t asked anyone for help with anything so far, but whenever I stand somewhere and look lost, which I tend to do a lot, people come over and ask if they can help me with anything. In the end they can’t because I cannot make anyone understand what I am looking for. Every simple transaction ends up stalled because even if I know the price of the item and have the right ammount of money, they always come up with a ton of extra questions. I can only imagine what they are. “Do you have any cupons you wish to deduct from the sales price”? Something like that.

I have tried a few internet cafés, but none of them seem to let you use your own laptop. Posting these entries is made possible through my USB memory pen, through which I can transfer text documents onto the incomprehendable Spanish-speaking home computer here. That is fine, but I cannot include any images at this point. Which is a shame. There are lots of things to see. The streets here are covered with the slick, grinning faces of various politicians with really banale slogans. Lily Perez, one of the conservative candidates is standing in a Lenin-like pose. On her chest is superimposed a bright red heart and the caption Corazon Valiente, which means something like Valient Heart, or Braveheart, you could say. Very funny stuff. Lily is also quoted as saying “No soy preciosa… soy deseable” ( “I am not precious… I am desirable”)

It is Monday. The maid is here now, scrubbing away vigorously. She has Like A Virgin as ringtone on her cell phone. Quite loud. She is pretty and has a squeeky voice. I think M has hired her just to keep her off the streets. Everywhere there are workers sweeping and polishing things. They work really hard too. In Norway, whenever you see anyone who does physical labor for a living, they just stand around and talk and smoke. Here they work frantically.

All the small supermarkets here seem to have at least four times as many employees as customers. One place had three boys at one cash register, putting groceries into plastic bags. There weren’t even that many customers. But the service is excellent. Ask someone where the pickled cucumbers are, and within nanoseconds there are walkie-talkie calls being made. People in various uniforms scuttle about. And you feel obliged to buy at least five jars afterwards. They put everything in plastic bags here too. Which is nice. Every little item gets it’s own plastic bag. Being used to having to pay for bags at home, the many free bag makes everything seem like a bargain.

On my way back from the supermarket I saw a big guy leaning onto the side of a truck in a very macho pose. He had those mirror pilot-sunglasses that everyone wore in the ’80s and a matching mustache. He looked exactly like a mafia hit-man in a movie, scouting around from side to side. Inside the truck, which had the side door open, was what appeared to be a dead body. He could have just been asleep, but I sure wouldn’t want to have a nap flat out, face down on the hard meal floor like that. It really didn’t disturb or frighten me in any way. To be honest I was a little thrilled to have something to write about. Maybe I’m just not a very good person. That notion actually disturbs me more. Is everything just about me me me? In any case, I should probably reconsider my plan to have M ask everyone I think look interesting if it’s ok for me to take their picture.

I have only seen three police officers on the street so far. Two of them I have seen twice in different neighborhoods. Allthough I have seen a couple of police cars about, these beat cops use the bus instead. Probably a good idea. The Micros here run fast and often and gets people everywhere. If I figure out where they all go, it will open up a lot of possibilities. Getting off one of them is a bit like parachuting. The doors just open and out you go. The bus stops and you think it will stay still as long as there are people getting on or off. But ohhh no, when the driver gets bored, he will step on the gas and drive a few meters more. And then stop again. You need quick reflexes and a good landing technique.

M said that the maid, who has a North American name, just like all the checkout-girls at the supermarket, will offer to make me lunch. I immediately panicked and went out. I can’t have some poor underpriviliged girl serve me food. I would feel too awkward. I would probably be a bit turned on by it too. So I went out to buy myself something instead. That turned out to be too difficult, so I reverted to doing what M and I had done a couple of days ago. I bought bread and cheese. And now I am starving to death. The food is in the kitchen, but I’m sure I won’t be able to get to it without having that woman insist on serving me.

Maybe I should go out again and try getting food once more. But I can feel that I have already gotten sunburned today. Me, who proudly declared that real men don’t use suntan lotion. I will be ever so embarrassed if I get really burnt now. Better stay indoors. Besides I would have to pass that truck again and I clearly know too much. M is working late and E15 has disappeared. Probably seeking refuge at some friends house so that she won’t have to be here with me alone. I can understand that. I’m seriously considering the same strategy.

Edit: photo added:

Five workers to fix a sign. Labor costs very little in Chile

I woke up early feeling very relaxed. Unbelievably I am cold here as well. Unless I am standing in direct sunlight, I need to wear a sweater. I was so tired last night that even the window in my bedroom, which in the winter wind rattles away in it’s metal frame, failed to keep me awake. It couldn’t have made more noise if you had banged on the frame with a hammer.

One of the neighbors in the closest apartment block here, keeps 2 roosters on his veranda. In this neighborhood everyone wakes up at the crack of dawn and then start the day by loudly cursing the man with the roosters. Also there is a siren somewhere running every few minutes. I have no idea what it means. And there are a large numbers of barking dogs running around here. And a constant concert of car horns and car alarms. Right now, the kids playing outside are immitating the siren and car horn sounds.

I’m really confused about the seasons here. On the southern hemisphere, the seasons are naturally reversed. But they still use the term winter about the warmes part of the year. Or at least they do part of the time. In some contexts it comes out as summer. Such as a summer-house. Which is a small vacation home where you go during the winter.

I have made two trips outside today; the first to an enormous fruit market which was interesting. Food in Norway has no aroma. Here it does. Even fruits send out odor signals telling you where to go in order to find it. It makes sense really. In nature, this is how fruit trees reproduce. Animals wouldn’t eat the fruits and then spread their seeds if they didn’t know where to find them. I didn’t think I liked fruit very much, but here I do. And there are lots of varieties I cannot yet identify. Today I tried Chirimoya, which is a strange sweet thing with a mushy center like a ripened Avocado (which by the way is known as Palta here). Chirimoyas are in season now and very popular. They taste a little bit like pears and a little bit like bananas, only different.

E15 reluctantly came out of her room for a short silent meal. Lunch in this house is a hot dinner-size meal they eat some time in the late afternoon. I’m not exactly sure how it differs from dinner since so far I have been too full from lunch to have dinner. I’m trying to eat most things put in front of me rather than just try and find the same foods I prefer at home. So far I don’t miss any of my old culinary rituals.

In the evening M and I went for a walk. After a while I realized that I should have brought my camera so M suggested that we take the bus back and get it while there was still light. I casually mentioned that it was a shame that I was too shy to walk up to different people and ask them if I could take their picture. She looked surprised and said that she could do it, no problem. So we tried it with an old man and a dog and he seemed very pleased about it. I have a feeling that a new world may be opening up here. I took some shots around a playground and no one screamed or called the police.

Afterwards we found a cafŽ and I had Papaya juice and a sorbet of Coconut and Pica Lemon, which apparently are tiny seedless lemons from the north. Again something new. And wonderful. I just wish they would stop putting so damn much sugar in everything.

With a little coaching and pressure from M, I managed to find the courage to knock quietly on E15’s door and give her just one of the CDs I have bought for her. She lit up with joy. A smile at last. I’m not used to seeing anyone so happy over a trivial gift like a Rammstein CD. That is life in the third world, I suppose. I don’t want to give her a lot of things right away that make her feel obliged to behave in a very grateful happy manner towards me before she is ready to come out of her shell. After the surprising reaction from the CD handover, I now realize two things:

1. I have enough gifts to buy anyone’s affection. I could just bribe her into liking me.
2. I have brought way too many gifts. Here I am trying to explain that not everyone in Norway is a millionair, and I bring a suitcase full of things that are way out of these people’s price range.

When I grew up, I blamed my father for showering me with expensive toys and then not seeming to care anything about me. So what do I do? The same thing. I knew it would possibly be a mistake even as I was buying gifts. But I didn’t know what else to do to show that I care. I was even aware that she had told M a couple of years ago, while opening a nice christmas or birthday gift I had sent, that “he only sends me nice gifts but doesn’t really care”. Still I do it all over again. I have to start reading signals from people.

Yesterday I landed in Santiago de Chile, tired, bewildered and covered in hair from a shedding Lufthansa blanket. I wandered aimlessly around the airport arrival area for a while, looking like a tall bewildered yeti. By the time I reached the immigration point, I had visited 4 different bathrooms and had a short conversation with a suspiciously friendly Canadian salesman in a loud yellow jacket in one of them. Going in and out of these bathrooms, the local officials were starting to take notice of me. By that I had long since started hallucinating because of the lack of sleep. Various doors suddenly weren’t there when I looked more closely at them. I probably had a fairly psychotic look in my eyes. I eventually settled into a long queue where I stood trying to look as calm and non drug-smugglerish as possible.

The Chileans don’t seem to share our belief in that airports should have clearly written signs in several languages. You spend a long time looking for the right queue for the right purpose only to learn that there is only one line for everyone no matter what flight they came in on or if they are citizens or tourists. Once you have figured that out, things are blissfully easy. You just stand there until it is your turn. Around you are people with great loads of imported goods. Even animals. They officials pick out the weird-looking ones, like me, and put their stuff through an x-ray machine. And they place a big impressive stamp in your passport without really looking at it. All the time giving you an air of contempt. If you avoid provoking them by talking to them or smiling, everything goes smoothly.

My dear ex, M, was there waithing for me on the outside. She booked and prepaid a minicab which then drove around the city for a while, dropping off people at various shabby-looking hotels. I was in a great mood. Everywhere I looked were exotic-looking buildings, people and vegitation. And the mountains. Santiago is located right at the foot of the Andes, and when you look out over the city, these absolutely huge mountains are looming over it. Because of the smog and the mountains’ improbable size, they have an unreal look, like a background matte-painting in an old movie. It just looks fake somehow.

Then the difficult part; arriving at the apartment and facing E15, my teenage daughter. Much like I had expected, she had barricaded herself in her room and had no intention of coming out. Feeling that I was probably going to just drop into a deep sleep soon, I tried to figure out as much as possible about my surroundings in case I would wake up hours before everyone else and not know how to operate a light switch or open a window. Or flush a toilet.

But before sleep there was lunch. M ordered E15 to come down and meet me. There were some sounds of protest and muffled arguments. She was allowed a bit of time to get ready, which was good, I think. I want to pressure her as little as possible about this. And I think that if I had been a teenage girl forced to meet her father for the first time, as far as she can remember, I would probably want some time to try and look my best.

And she did. A while later a gorgeous young woman decended the stairs. I was very impressed. I always suspected that my genes would work better in a woman. They do. She is tall, slim with long really blonde hair and completely black eyebrows. When I last saw her she was tiny.

She had the same blank yet intensely concentrated stare that you see in soldiers with post-traumatic stress symptoms. And I probably did too. We politely did the both cheeks kissing they do here. Then M ordered her to give me a hug. Poor girl. She was clearly completely lost. As was I.

We had lunch. Very quietly. I discovered that I was physically unable to swallow my food. The mechanism just wouldn’t work. It was a short lunch and E15 never once looked straight at me. She then went back to her room where she has now been for the past 24 hours. So far I think she only know what my shoes look like. Good thing I gave them a shine before I left home.

I had so many new things on my mind that I went with M to the local supermarket instead of going to sleep like I had planned. It was a small modern one, looking like every other modern supermarket except for the absurdly high number of uniformed guards in bulletproof vests. Many of the products here look familiar, but when you take a closer look, they are copies of the brands we know. Or maybe the brands just use different names here. Same design, different name. Here they try to put as many food-additives into everything here as possible. The more additives, the more impressive the product seems. You pick up a carton with 100% natural orange juice in large letters in the front, only to read about artificial orange flavor and sweeteners on the back. At least the information is there. You just have to search for it.

M puts every item she picks up and looks at back in the wrong place. Not just a little bit wrong, but in completely different sections. With all the guards around, this sort of thing makes me nervous. Apparently she does it on purpose to help provide employment to the kids hired by the supermarket to tidy up the shelves. This is a very different world. Some things, like using a cell-phone, costs more here than in Norway. But labor is so cheap that even people with very small incomes can afford to have maid come in once a week.

Since I have no local currency yet, I made M buy me a nice big piece of cheese. It was less than one tenth of the price I’m used to. I offered M some of the dollar bills I had with me in case she needed some more money right away. But she said that she cannot exchange dollars because she doesn’t have a dollar account. What does that mean? She was the one who told me to bring USD in the first place. M then wanted to know how to use the cheese. Did I just put it on bread? Yes, that is how cheese is operated. She seemed worried that it would contaminate everything in the refrigerator and ended up placing the cheese in an air-tight plastic container at the end of the kitchen counter.

There is a strange logic at work everywhere in this society. You cannot call abroad from your home telephone unless you have applied to do so and offered some reference to a steady income. But you can apparently buy a phone card for a public phone and then use that from your own home. The same thing goes for an internet connection. There is one at the house, but it is in somebody elses name. A friend with his papers in order. I have a lot to learn. In fact, I have to relearn everything. At this point I’m having difficulties even opening and closing doors and windows. The warm water for showers is heated by a gas device which burns away quietly with it’s blue flame and then occasionally goes into large burn-outs like a jet plane. The shower is fixed to the wall, but it is placed so low that I have to stand on my knees if I want to get some water into my hair. I’m enjoying all of it. Every little thing becomes an adventure here. I feel very happy right now.

Let’s get ready to ruuuuumbleeeeee! In the red corner: FEAR. Weighing in at 3 billion tons, - a tag team of personal insecurity, low self-esteem, cowardliness, anxiety and general forms of neurosis. He has been known to hit below the belt and on occasion, to devour his opponents, gloves and all.

In the blue corner: A featherweight neurotic in his late 30s who has lost most earlier fights to Fear. The match will go an unlimited number of rounds as the neurotic attempts to break out of his cycle of personal failure and face up to all the obstacles that have held him back.

After weeks of preparation, I find myself at Oslo International Airport ready to board a plane to South America. I have wanted to do this for years, but have until now been hopelessly unsuccessful. In Chile is the daughter I have largely neglected. Now 15 1/2, I haven’t seen her in 8 1/2 years. The reason? There are many answers to that, most of which I am searching for myself. Money is a good one, a convenient excuse to use. I have been mostly unemployed for years and my income for an avrage year wouldn’t even cover the travel expenses. Still… I have friends… and parents. And one of those ski-masks that look so good on bank surveilence footage, wouldn’t cost much either.

It would be more fair to say that I just haven’t been able to face it. Every mention from anyone of Chile… Any casual inquiry from friends about how my daughter is doing, generally lands me in a deep depression. The last few years I have been evasive, trying to discourage people from asking. And when I meet new people and the conversation lands on family matters, I have refrained from bringing her up. I have never gone as far as to lie and deny her existens tho, if asked directly if I have any children. I probably would have if it hadn’t been for my paranoia, leading me to fear that somehow, at some point in the future, it would get back to her. The final betrayal.

In some ways it has probably benefited her not to grow up under the fatherly wings of a manic-depressive. I wouldn’t have offered her anything but doom and gloom for most of my missing years. When I grew up and told my parents that I wanted to do this and that, I was usually told that it would be a failure. That it was too difficult for me or that there was no point even trying. And now, whenever opportunity knocks, my first thought is always that I will fail. Until recently, I have responded in a similar manner whenever friends tell me of an idea they have about doing something. I’m always quick to point out the many reasons why they may not succeed.

So here now is this young girl who sort of looks like me, yet she is able to do things like expressing emotions or even singing at a school concert. Something I would never have been able to do myself. I am sure I would have held her back, introduced the thought that life is completely pointless and passed on the family eating disorder. She woul probably not agree with any of this, but I really think that not having a father is better than having a really bad one.

Lately my bad concience about all of this has stared to eat away at me. It has gotten to the point where I have long imaginary conversations with E15, my daughter, every day. We have long talks where I am always brilliant and full of near phrophet-like fatherly wisdom. And she loves me and doesn’t think that it matters that I was never there. And then I catch myself in the state of daydreaming and remember that life isn’t quite as easy as that. There are many parallel truths in this world. From her point of view it is a truth that I have deserted them.

I wasn’t able to make the decision to go until my concience had deteriorated to the point where I thought that even if I knew for sure that I wouldn’t survive the trip, it would be better than not trying. A bit melodramatic perhaps, but I have always believed that going to Chile is an undertaking so great that the chances of survival are slim. But this time I’m ready anyway. I have adopted the old japanese warrior code, where the warrior accepts himself as already dead before going into the battle. It is probably a symptom of how badly I exaggerate my own importance in this, compared to that of my daughter. I cannot simply go and visit her. I have to sacrifice my own life in order to try and do the right thing towards her.

I have been thinking a bit about selfless acts lately, and I have to say that I believe that most things we humans do in life, we do for selfish reasons. Do I feel that I need to go to Chile because I want my daughter to have a father and feel better? Or do I need to go because it will make me feel better? I honestly believe that subconciously, it is the latter of the two reasons. Doing the right thing towards others make us perceive ourselves as better people. Obviously it benefits others as well, but what really motivates us to do good deeds in the first place, is probably selfishness more than anything else.

Getting onto an airplane has become a lot easier since I last did it. There is no ticket. Just a lot of touch-screen computers where you press next until you are checked in. What they really do, of course, is to make the passengers do all the work themselves. This simple new system confuses the hell out of someone like me, who is standing there being too nervous to understand a single word appearing on the screen. But I get by eventually, by being there very early and copying other people’s movements. A guy standing close to me is telling someone that he has just had his bag stolen with camera equipment for nearly $1000 inside. He is taking it well. I clutch my bag with all my expensive stuff in it. I am sure that eventually I will be killed for walking down the wrong South American alley carrying it, but I would love to have a chance to at least get there first.

I go through a security check that beep angrily at me. They let me go through anyway without checking my pocket to learn what was beeping; an USB memory pen. What if I had forced my way into the cockpit and tried to hook that thing up with some important USB interface in there? I also get away with carrying a nice sharp ballpoint pen. What if I had forced my way into the cockpit and started scribbling on the pilot?

The plane takes off and I am surprised to find that I’m not afraid to fly anymore. It’s just gone. Finally a break. A short uneventful flight to Frankfurt where I am pleased to find small smoking stations here and there. You stand in front of them and all your smoke is sucked into the system. I stand there looking guilty. Smoking inside! The concept is so far gone now most places, that you expect to suddenly feel some security guard’s hand on your shoulder even though the sign states clearly that you are allowed to smoke there.

Some twisted German airport-designer has decided to build a tunnel of fear between the different terminals. In order to get from one to the other, you walk through a really long tunnel while all the lights around you are flashing, blinking and changing colors. And there are weird background sound-effects. I think so anyway. Maybe I was imagining those. It is a convenient way to sort out epileptics and people who are really panicky about flying before they get onto the actual plane. Those undesirables will just break down in tears somewhere in the middle of the tunnel and the potential trouble such people can cause in mid-air, is avoided. I do the mistake of going through the check-in too early and have to spend the next hour sitting in a room where there is nothing to do. I can see the shops and cafŽs I just walked by on the outside. But I can no longer get to them.

The next flight is the long one. Lufthansa has skillfully managed to remove all leg-room between the seats. My back was hurting before I even got off the connecting flight and still there are something like 18 hours to go. Looking around me, everyone seems to be able to just drop off to sleep whenever they wish. Not me. Since I didn’t get much sleep the night before, I quickly become too tired to do anything. There are movies playing, but I can’t follow the plot. I can’t use my laptop. Too tired. But I am already dead after all, so I don’t mind. I sit quietly and listen to the earphone music while the plane is shaking wildly with turbulence and the Ziegfried and Roy-clone German pursers keep the passengers boozed up. I won’t drink myself. Don’t want to arrive the next day smelling like an old drunk.

Lufthansa planes have an impressive system that lets you follow the plane’s movements across the world map on various small hard-to-see screens. These monitors are placed so that if you look one way you can see parts of one, and if you look the other way, you can see parts of another. After a few hours you are able to quickly scan them all and have your brain piece together a complete picture. The plane is going downward on the map, leaving a red trail behind it. What it really looks like is an illustration of a plane going down in flames. Next to the screen on the wall in front, is a donut-shaped flower decoration which look exactly like those they put on people’s graves. It is a long flight. But it gets me where I am going.

I am busy. Busy busy busy. No time for photography or for writing long unreasonable rants. My life currently consists of php, -something which my brain completely refuses to grasp even the most basic aspects of. Nevertheless, I am locked into doing all this work. I have commitments. I am stuck. Since I have to learn everything from the beginning, four times as slow as normally intelligent people, each $ I make requires about a week of work. But like I said… I am committed to finishing this. So for the time being… my life is on hold.

Since I cannot make a living doing any of the things I actually know how to do, I have to scrape by, working on things I don’t even begin to understand. I keep expecting to be exposed as a fraud any minute. But I have never claimed to know any of the things I don’t. In fact… I always make it a point to tell people… clients… that I don’t know anything. They laugh. They think it’s a joke. It is. A joke on me. Here I sit, with my disfunctional brain and my huge stack of work I’m unqualified to do.

Soon… very soon: My migration to South America. Which will probably be the end of me. Me travel? Me?!! I’m afraid of flying, afraid of people, afraid of unknown neighborhoods and strange foods. I hate adventure. I have no wish to explore anything. Yet I am going. My nerves are killing me. I don’t sleep. And to top everything off I have to go to the dentist tomorrow. Fear. Misery. Despair. Panic. Doom and gloom.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, a leftover photo from a previous session was posted: