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Oh, Berlin, I was so looking forward to meeting you. I have so many friends who told me how cool you were, and how much we'd get along. But I feel like we may have gotten off on the wrong foot. Yes, it's true, I wasn't feeling well before I arrived. You can blame Scotland for the cold/flu/whatever horrid thing it was that I woke up with on ( Read more... )

It is difficult to say how old the Old Course at St. Andrews is. It's been known that gentlemen have wandered the cliffs overlooking the shore, whacking balls around with wooden sticks since the 1400s. There is still a public tradition within the course, where qualified visiting golfers can sign up for a daily lottery and any time slots that are ( Read more... )

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The idea for travelling in Scotland, to spend a week playing golf, was my father's. He proposed it four years ago, and for the last three, I had resisted. My reservations were various, but the reasons why I changed my mind over those years were also diverse and different. Still, one of the conditions that I wanted my father to meet was to let me ( Read more... )

I saw him in the corridor, reaching for his messenger bag, fumbling for keys, making the motions of leaving. It was 3am on the tail end of a party. The musicians in the front hall were still jamming with their guitars, bongos, and wordless humming, but the fire spinners had put out their flames, and the conversations on black feminist queer ( Read more... )

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The World War II thing started when I was growing up in Manila, and we'd visit the ruins of Bataan and Correigdor on school field trips. My father kept various Time-Life book in our library that had illustrated maps of the major battles, as well as field guides for all of the tanks and airplanes. There's a phase that seems to hit a lot of young ( Read more... )