I'd ask Kate for directions, for sure

I found myself driving all over town today. Got to go downtown, through the university belt, Chinatown, the docks and even visited my old neighborhood. Nice, huh? If only I had driven through all those on purpose, though.

You see, I was supposed to go to the docks this morning. So I woke up, thought up my route, and got there with time to spare. Breezed through my business, then I was a free man. Which presented me with a dilemma, since I forgot to plan for the rest of the day.

Of course, my first impulse was to go to the office. (Yeah, really) So my brain engaged into auto-pilot mode and headed south. But then, I thought: 'Hey, it's lunchtime, maybe I'll make a short detour for a sandwich or something.' So I began thinking of what to eat, where to eat, how much time to I have to eat, where will I park, does the restaurant have parking, should I text for company, do my shoes match with my belt, etcetera. Before I knew it, my brain short-circuited, and my internal compass got shot to hell. Where the heck am I going?

There I was, clueless and floating amidst the tide of compact sedans, motorcycles, container trucks and delivery vehicles. I had little idea of where I'm supposed to be headed, and wherever I was going wasn't it. Here, I made a little map of how it went:



I started from the pentagon on the east side of the map, the black line indicates how I got to my destination, marked by the other pentagon on the western extreme. Then the red line marks my return path. Obviously, it was the scenic route, through downtown before sensibly getting back on track.

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Let me make this clear, I did not get lost. I knew where I was at all times, just that I didn't really intend to be there. I had a plan, keep driving until I get to someplace familiar to me where I could easily make my way to where I was headed. It was a good plan, a sound and rational plan, sure maybe a tad stupid and egotistical, but there was at no point any real need to ask for directions from some stranger who thinks he knows better than I would how to get back home.

Of course, there was also never a need to go the scenic route in the first place. But hey, you don't always have to know where you're going and how you're getting there, right? That would be boring. Frankly, you can't always wait for surprises to come your way, sometimes you've got to just make your own surprises, like hitting that stray dog just this morning.

(Kidding, there wasn't any dog. Just a bunch of rags which I thought was a dog, or a puppy, which I had accidentally rolled over of. If it really was a dog, I probably wouldn't be putting it in this blog for fear of my life. If it was a penguin or a kangaroo or some other exotic animal roaming the city streets in a bid for global domination, however, I'd likely have my picture taken beside the roadkill.)

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Bought myself some second hand books this afternoon. Figured I would need something to read during my personal time at the coffee shop while waiting for the rush hour traffic to subside. So I got "A Thousand Splendid Suns", "Love in the Time of Cholera" and some light reading, the title of which escapes me at the moment. Actually, I wanted to get the Archie Double Digest, but for a second hand comic book, found it ridiculously expensive.

I'm particularly interested in the Garcia-Marquez book. It's an important element of the movie "Serendipity", which I've probably watched over a dozen times with the ex. (And a few other times just on my own. Gay, I know, but Kate Beckinsale's just too hot, specially with that accent.)

I've read his other book, Ten Thousand Years of Solitude. Yes, wrong title, but that's exactly how I found reading that book... a century feels like a minute compared to how that story dragged on and on for me. (But then again, I don't read the articles in Playboy, nor Penthouse Forum. Yes I'll admit that much.) So I guess that's how hot I think Kate Beckinsale is. I'd actually buy a book whose author I don't particularly find interesting just because of a movie she was in where she had a copy.

So allow me to say, that I think schools and books would be immensely appreciated by students if they were associated or endorsed by supermodels and sexy actresses. If Kate Beckinsale approached me in a tiny bikini and asked me to read my Thermodynamics textbook back in college, I would probably have already invented a perpetual-motion machine, and received multiple Nobel prizes by now. Then you'd all be kissing my backside, won't you? Instead of ridiculing my disdain for asking directions.