Don't Forget to Lock the Door When You are in the Can

April has been a really busy month with many surprises. It has been a time for entertaining and feeding people here at home. I've prepared a few international dishes and desserts such as Arroz a la Cubana, sashimi, iced jasmine tea with new sago pearls and Halo-halo. The weekends have been filled with different adventures with the usual group, but I have also met a few new people.

Last Thursday, I was out with my buddy Brandon and we met a crew of wild and crazy girls. I think it has been a while since they all went out and let their hair down. Brandon was plastered that night and we all had a blast. We saw a few other friends out as well. Thankfully, Selena was staying over that night and meeting me at home or I would have stayed out too late. I was presenting at a staff meeting at 7:AM the next morning. (Shelly, you and the bunch are way cool! Eric, it was really good meeting you. I look forward to hanging out with you guys soon.)

For the second weekend in a row we went to the Barcar. Almost everyone in the group has VIP passes to the place and Kaz gave passes to those that didn't. We had a grand time! This past Saturday, it was not at all full. But we had a big group there and the whole event was very entertaining. I was very happy. It was a real celebration of life with all kinds of people. The crowd was very diverse/eclectic. Caleb was a riot on the dance floor. Everyone wanted to dance with him. Yayoy, got the crowd going with her energetic dancing. And who will ever forget the 3 booty shaking sisters, who ground on every single piece of meat (young and old) until all there was, was a hamburger patty. Needless to say, the night did not end at the Barcar. We went to a couple more bars/clubs before calling it a night.

Well, the craziest thing that happened to me this month actually happened at work. Last Wednesday, at the end of the workday, I was getting ready to leave work. I went to use the restroom before hitting the rush hour traffic. I opened the door and was a bit surprised to find one of the nurses sitting on the can. I was a little shocked and amused (I think I had a big grin on my face). The worst part was, I was kinda frozen. I didn't immediately shut the door. She had to get up and close it. I have not seen that nurse since then. Thankfully, she does not report to me. It is funny how this is really not a big deal, but it is the first real surprise I have had in a while.

One Year of Blogging

It’s been about a year since I started blogging. Doug and I came back from our trip to Vietnam and the Philippines and I wanted to find a way to share all the pictures and the wonderful experience with my friends and family. A blog proved to be the best solution. Since then, I have kept up with the process. This has been a very good way to communicate with everyone. As many of you know, I am not very good at phone calls (sorry Mom), email (Emily, I am sorry I have not answered the last email you sent. I love you and will respond soon. I am glad you are having a blast in Mexico), text messaging, instant messaging and letters (Connie, I am so sorry I have not answered the last two letters you sent. I love you too. BTW, you are one of the only people I know who still uses snail mail). For the most part I would rather spend time live with the people I love. Having loved ones all over the planet this is obviously impossible. So this is a way that I can share my life with you and take some time to reflect on the various events in my life.


Emily in Mexico.

The added benefit to keeping a blog is that I am able to take a snapshot of my life at different points and look back at all these experiences. My memory is not quite as good as it was and I find that when I make the effort to document what goes on it helps big time. Looking back at the first year of blogging it is amazing to see how rich and blessed my life has been. I have so many good and interesting people around me and I have been lucky enough to do things that many people only dream of doing.

So how much of my life is actually documented on here? Well to be honest, as crazy as some of the postings are, this is the Diet Coke or Disneyland version. Very often I don’t have the time to post what is going on, so I only post what I can. More than half of the pictures I want to post don’t make it to the blog; posting multiple pictures with the Blogger engine takes time. For obvious reasons, I also don’t include the more intimate details of my life. Yes, it would be so much more interesting if I did, but I do have younger family members reading this from time to time and those thing are better left committed to memory or sometimes forgotten. I also keep most details about my professional life off the blog. It goes without saying that the pictures are censored and in this case I don’t think an explanation is needed, use your imagination.

Unique Visits to Sonicocean.com

What is amazing to me is how many people are visiting the site. This I really can't understand. Last month, there were 1,698 unique visits to the main page or an average of about 55 people per day. I know lots of people, but not that many. So to those of you who I don't know, a big HELLO! I would like to point out that there are 3 main pages on this blog: this homepage, my Nashville photoblog and my Sufi page. There are also other pages reachable from my Blogger Profile. I have many friends who read the blog and many times when talking to them, I realize most only have one of the 3 main pages bookmarked without realizing that there are other pages out there.

I would like to thank you all for taking an interest and visiting my home on the net. The journey of life is such a blessing and I am thankful for the opportunity to share my little corner of existence with the many souls I am so close too and yet (for the most part) so far away from. Love you all!

Besa Mi Culo

Jessica and Carey just left my home. We watched “The Upside of Anger.” It was a really well done film. If you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it. Earlier in the evening, we had dinner at P.M. Café and I had the pleasure of watching the sky on my way home. It is storming here in Nashville tonight and there was a beautiful display of lightning on the horizon.

The weekend has been very good and I am not yet ready to part with it. But it has slowly crept away leaving behind a cascade of past events. Friday night, there was the crazy party we crashed on Belmont Boulevard. It was a fairly large keg party. For the first time, I saw Carey with a date almost twice the age (ok not quite) of the girls he normally goes out with. She was a very sweet (almost 40 - but didn’t look like it) young lady. We invited a few other friends to join us. Irene and Sandra (from Peru and Columbia respectively) met us there. We have not partied together in months, so it was definitely awesome!

Carey and I brought a hookah to the party with some peach flavored Turkish tobacco. The hookah was quite popular. It got more action than most, but not all, of the people there. At one point, it even got manhandled a bit too aggressively by some drunken kid. Since it was a virgin hookah on its maiden voyage, I though it would be appropriate to give it a name. While we were thinking of names, I realized there was already one inscribed on it, Nour, which in Arabic means light. This incidentally is also Carey’s Sufi name.

The music at the party was good. We danced, we sang Spanish songs, talked the night away and had a blast. At around 2 a.m. the cops came to bring peace to the rest of the neighborhood. They were quite nice, but they did ask everyone to go. We headed to the French house, a couple of miles away and hung out for a little bit and then called it a night.

The rest of the weekend was relatively tame. We watched Ice Age 2 Saturday night, walked at Shelby Park, went shopping for furniture, and had a short workout at the gym. The weekend was also a gastronomic feast of Asian food. We had Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai and Philippine food. Selene, who spent the last 2 days with me, had a craving for tapioca, South East Asian style. So we went on a quest for ingredients at Global Market (which was not easy to find). I prepared an exotic dessert with tapioca, sugar nut palms, coconut jelly, caramelized coconut milk and a few other ingredients. I miss this stuff so much and have not taken the time to prepare it lately. I am happy that everyone enjoyed it.