Okay, cause my life is getting little outta control with all
the time zone jumps and my memory is fucking horrible, let me throw in the second
chapter of this semester. I had a fucking long Thursday last week.
Here’s the list of things that I
managed to do within one day: after some beers getting back home from Papa’s and getting some sleep, going to gym in the morning, grabbing a lunch,
packing my shit, going to the airport, flying to Dallas, transferring, flying
to Oklahoma City, waiting 2 hours for luggage that those motherfuckers lost, and
catching a Lyft to Norman. Since I flew against the time, the day lasted forever. All days should be this long.
Spending around 12 hours on an American flight to Dallas
was pretty okay since I had three seats by the window all for myself, and since
one of the elderly American stewardesses slipped me some small bottles of
scotch that are normally charged. Pretty decent vegan food on board, enough
sleep, all the fun with all the procedures required to step on the American
soil, around 2 hours waiting, and hooray on a flight to Oklahoma. Now, when I
mentioned I’m going to Oklahoma to my U.S.
friends, I got usually hit back with either “Never
been there”, “Why?”, or “You know there’s nothing there, right?”. So
there I was... On my way to the most exciting state in the U.S.A.
Shortly after touchdown, I found out that the good people of
the American Airlines lost my baggage in Dallas (there’s a first time for everything), but luckily, they put it on
another flight landing in two hours, so I just waited, watching a
podcast and talking to the lady working at the baggage spot. She told me that
Brad Pitt is actually from Oklahoma. She didn’t say
why the fuck he left though.
Now, you gotta understand something about Oklahoma. There’s pretty much no public
transportation here. As an experienced backpacker and a real European
motherfucker, I initially searched for bus connections between the airport and
my destination town of Norman, only to find out there’s none. So it was either taxi or those taxi alternatives
which are like 2 times cheaper. No brainer. I got picked up by this Mexican
stoner and we had really weird conversation for about half an hour. The area around here is fucking crazy. There’s
almost no resemblance to anything you know from Europe. Almost no tall
buildings, some shopping malls, car retailers and different businesses by the
highway, and other than that just these small households with lawns, flags,
porches and all of that stereotypical small town American shit you know from
movies. He dropped me off in front of one of these houses where I was greeted
by my Airbnb host. This nice lady had a dog and an extra room which I got for
two nights. Hotels in Norman are totally overpriced (plus I don’t really like hotels). This turned
out to be really good. Almost like couchsurfing. We talked a bit, I made
friends with the dog... Pretty cool.
The next morning, I got on my way to the Gaylord College of Oklahoma University,
where the conference I came for took place. No, Gaylord College isn’t a funny name. At all. At fucking
all. No way. It was around 3 kilometers and since I had time, I decided to take
a walk. And boy, was that fun. In America, they don’t even count with the possibility of pedestrians occurring.
Many streets and roads have no sidewalks, and for the most part, I didn’t see anyone else walking. I was
kinda afraid someone might call the cops. Well, I guess nobody did so I
arrived, registered, got a name tag and a bag with some materials, ate breakfast and spent the whole day hitting different classrooms (there were
several panels and presentations were happening simultaneously in different
lecture halls and classrooms), listening to contributions delivered by
students and academics from all over the States. I was the only guy coming from a
non-American university and one of very few non-native speakers. Overall, quality
of the contributions didn’t
exactly boost my ego. Lot of that shit was top notch while my shit was really
kinda basic and full of issues I was already aware of. After the dinner at the campus, I walked back
to my spot and slept on it. I gotta shout out the organization tho...
Everything was smooth, there was lotta coffee, fruits and (probably as a result
of my request) always at least one meal in the buffet (usually mushrooms), clearly labeled as
vegan.
Before I move to the next day, let me tell you... There are
lots of morbidly obese Americans in Oklahoma. And I’m not talking “boy, he’s fat” kinda
obese. I’m talking people having their
own orbits around them. Like fucking triple belly. I’m not sure why do they do that to themselves but I guess
no walking, driving their fat asses in those ridiculously huge cars, and diet
consisting of burgers and chicken wings don’t
exactly help much. Plus Norman is one of the most boring places I have ever seen. There's literally nothing over there, except of the campus.
Well, Saturday was the day. I didn’t sleep very well and I got little anxious. This whole
shit felt like a dream a little bit. I mean... Like 4 days before I was riding
a scooter around Bali, eating gado gado and drinking coconuts... I took all of
my things, called Lyft and went back to Gaylord. Yeah, Gaylord. Not funny. I
checked some presentations in the morning and finally did mine after the lunch.
And all of my fears just vanished. Both moderator of my panel and my discussant
were extremely friendly, gave me props for an interesting topic and provided me
with super constructive feedback and suggestions on how to improve that thing.
That was a huge relief... Honestly...
I checked some of the last presentations, called myself
another Lyft and moved my ass to Oklahoma City for my second Airbnb spot. This time, I
got picked by a former soldier, gun enthusiast and a Trump supporter. What was
pretty cool though, when we got into politics, we really listened to each other.
And he even agreed with lots of my leftist bullshit. I mean, we really found
some common grounds and he was totally open to accept some of my points. Some serious kumbaya
shit. People should listen way more often... Talking is heavily
overrated, silence is underrated as hell....
My current Airbnb place is dope too. It's close to downtown and I
got this couch in the living room. My host seems aight as well. In the evening, I took a walk around
the city. There’s one skyscraper, couple of
office buildings in the center, wide roads with no people on them... If it wasn’t for couple of people in the park by
the skyscraper, this place would be a total ghost town. It’s really ridiculous. I walked for a bit, and on the way back ran into this food court with some beer stands. My
first attempt to get a lager failed, cause the lad wanted to see my ID. I hated
him and loved him at the same time. I succeeded at the next beer stand... The guy
wanted to see ID too but eventually rolled the dice and gave me
a can of some Boston Ale for 5 bucks. I sat on a bench and drank my victory
drink surrounded by Americans stuffing themselves with fried shit and meat,
watching sports on TVs and playing some retarded game... Pretty much throwing a bag full
of shit into a hole in a piece of wood. Looked like the least fun game I’ve ever seen. But just chilling and
drinking the cold one felt really good.
Highlights
- Gaylord College.
- My Chinese uni finally approved this trip. So it looks like I’m getting reimbursed after all. Thank god.
- Young Scooter – Triple Cross. Just because.
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