eric... lyon... antibiotics

my brother eric was born in Lyon, France, when i was 2 years old. from the very beginning he was the most american of the 3 brothers, maybe it was the freckles... i put together this slideshow opening with a picture of eric in france. the other pix eric took earlier this month upon returning to Lyon, the city where we both learned how to ride bikes... the city where it all began:

Lyon is the 2nd largest french city after Paris. it might not be the fashion capital & is a lot less flashy, but just as cosmopolitan, much sunnier & known as the capital of french gastronomy. many top chefs in Paris & around the world hail from Lyon. the city has some of the best restaurants in the world.
the Rhône streams across the city before providing the backdrop to the famous wine country known as Côte du Rhône that reaches the French Riviera a 3 hour drive down south. a 2 hour drive east takes you up the French Alpes. i remember in the winter we'd escape the rain for the snow, at the chalet that belonged to the Guerlains (the family who own the Guerlain perfumes). my mom had somehow become their friend & we'd go up there and spend the winter days building snowball towers. we'd make candle holders out of the snowballs assembled in pyramid towers, and light up the candles at night for eric & me, my mom, and her friends to enjoy while having evening picnics in the snow, or simply from the warmth of the chalet. i miss the snow...
i don't ever remember dads or men being around. i remember maya, my mom's finnish friend whose french husband had died. she was a young gorgeous widow who lived on our street & was figuring out how to take care of her family alone. there was françoise, the aristocratic wife of a big shot lawyer & her daughter jennifer who was my best friend back then. we were practically sisters haha. i remember when françoise had a car accident, and one of her sons flew through the windshield & died. jennifer was in the hospital for a long time & i would go visit her often. we were only 4 or 5 i think. we went to the same school together, our mothers holding our hands every morning & afternoon, on our way & back from school on rue de créqui. we lived close by each other in les Brotteaux, the "upper east side" of Lyon, and would play for hours in the "parc de la tête d'or." this park had dears in it -we called them bambis- and other animals, almost like a zoo. years later, soon after jonathan's birth (my youngest brother), we moved up to brussels. saying goodbye to jennifer was the first time i think i experienced overwhelming sadness, anxiety, and fear of loss. we wrote each other many letters & would be reunited over the summers in provence where they owned a countryside farm type thing we would go to once in a while. or on the french riviera. my mom, bothers & i would stay in a fancy gated community where my mom's best friend from brussels (and from the congo where they grew up together) owned a villa overlooking the mediterranean. jennifer's villa was right on the beach, but not a sandy one; it was all cobbles or whatever u call it. i always found it so bizarre, a beach with no sand. it would hurt sometimes but it was exciting, and there were no big waves, so it was nice for swimming. and there was emanuela, the wife of the italian consul; her daughters were older though. i can't remember their names. their birthday parties were girlie & fancy in a very old money kinda way. they intimidated me a bit, all i remember is that there was always tons of treats at the italians... as for my dad, he was somewhere in africa, business as usual...
so in my previous post i mention how eric is off to afghanistan. it seems so surreal... well here's his email announcement about it today:
I have been sentenced yesterday (Monday) to 365 days of forced labor in Afghanistan, courtesy of the US Navy. My sentence starts November 19th, I'll be flying out to San Diego (or what'll be left of it) for
in-processing, spend my time from November until February in Kansas for some GI Joe training (with some time off for good behavior during the holiday period) then go to Kuwait around 28 February to be sent to everybody's dream destination, Afghanistan. I won't be eligible for parole before I have spent 200 days in-country, that'll give me plenty of time to take some pictures, and you'll just have to wait a little to see them, probably no earlier than Nov 2008.
A submariner in a land-locked country, makes about as much sense as having a texan in the White House!
urgh, i still can't believe my own over educated super smart brother is going to be in afghanistan with a bunch of morons. i know i know, even morons don't deserve to go to war, but fuck, it seems so absurd they would resort to sending folks like my brother as well...
back to me, i have some sorta sinus & throat infection, and some skin rashes on my fucking face. of all places! i feel like a 12yo with acne & low self-esteem, which was never me... at least not in appearance. i faked it good. maybe it's karma, for ignoring the pizza faces back in the day. i don't remember ever making fun of them though... anyhew, i'm taking the antibiotics, cleaning my rashes & applying the cremes, and i'm praying to the greek gods that everything clears up before i land in washington d.c. on thursday. if i can find someone to keep chicho for longer, since i don't want my neighbor to have to take care of her for more than i asked, then i'll stay longer than scheduled on the east coast to spend more time with eric, maybe go to nyc, who knows...

rrromantical headbangers

i'm partied out before the party is over... friday night was the best. 1st, wanna was in town for a day, to deal with some LA business she had to resolve. so i drove through rush hour traffic to go see her at amy's house. i made a salad of endives & red beats with roquefort cheese, a little balsamic & oil, salt & pepper, a pinch of cinnamon & a few drops of lemon. we got to the beach around sunset & caught up in front of the pacific while chicho was running around freely. how so rrromanticallll!!! later on we got some dessert on abbot kinney in venice before taking wanna back to LAX. i fucking luv wanna so much. it was great to see her since she's moved back east to do her art stuff & all that...

then an tipped me on the justice "secret" party in a loft downtown LA. rita came with me & she pulled her credentials to skip the line & walk right in. i never take my camera with me anywhere, but somehow that night i had it. here are my pix:

big black bouncer:


hot kiss in the crowd:


big mouth:


hipster stripes:


sneaker love:


blonde kiss in the crowd:


poser heels:


i'm with jesus:


hands up:


crack ass:


paaarty:


vcr alert:


handshake & a smile:


kettle cock:


floored:

my favorite pic is the on of the absolute worse that could happen... to have dark skin with coke falling out of your nose. years ago at some industry xmas party, i had a coke induced nose bleed, even though i hadn't even done any yet that night. well i had the night before, and maybe even the night before that, i can't remember. it certainly had been a white xmas here in el lay! but i don't recall ever walking around in public with coke pouring out of my nostrils...

the nose bleed was awful though. i was just standing there at the bar. what i thought was a runny nose turned out to be a blood bath. i left all the drinks i was getting for friends on the bar and ran to jason, the man i was dating back then. or were we still dating? can't remember either. we were partying together, which is pretty much what we always did together. i hid behind him as the napkin i was holding to my face was being drenched in blood. my hands were covered in blood. i had to hide in the bathroom for a good 20 minutes. my fucking nose wouldn't stop bleeding. that was my most embarrassing coke induced situation ever. u know all the cokeheads at the party where just going about their shit thinking "sucks to be you dumb ass" and all i could think was how unfair it was to have that happen to me, and i hadn't even done any that night!

anyhew, back to the picture. i don't know this guy, but rita was talking to him & i asked to take their picture. i just told them to look up so i'd have a better angle of the vcr... good ol' VCR (i.e. visual coke residue)!

saturday i was going to go see sinden at the echoplex but i got too cozy at home. tuesday will see justice again, then wednesday jose gonzalez woohoo. i might bring my camera again... jose's show was also sold out but andreas nilsson, my favorite music video director at the moment, got me on the list today. yay!

pix + style notes

here are some pix of the neighborhood festival downtown LA last week-end... it was kinda like a mini mini coachella, and felt like going to a rave kinda. the vibe was very 90s to me, but the fashions & sounds are still very much 80s infused... ok, maybe the early 90s are on the edge of coming back already. it's already happening. we'll see...

chromeo stud & kid sister sandwich...

mia struttin it...

marrrio rrrules...

clean romance...

pictures by azalea - www.place8.com

music aside, it's still all about the skinny skinny jeans, nike high tops, converse, vans, haircuts most commonly seen in the silver lake & echo park areas of los angeles (comparable to manhattan's east village & lower east side, or brooklyn's williamsburg & fort green)... oh, and middle eastern scarves are still everywhere as soon as the evening temperature drops to 75 degrees or lower. wasn't that sooo last winter? or the one before? i lose track... hip is so hip it's just not so hip sometimes, you know. still it's entertaining i guess. at least i didn't see anyone wearing those hideous rubber gardening cloggy croc monstrosities; they're commonly found on the feet of the 30/40-something yuppies & their offsprings.

these croc people go hand in hand with station wagon saabs, volvos, subarus & hybrids. the 30-somethings-plus that night had a mature & comfortable sense of style. more of an audi, vw, mercedes & bmw crowd i'd say, very USC parking lot. or simply the unpretentious & practical toyota or honda kinda people. as for the eccentrics, their sense of ease was attractive if nothing else. they should be driving deloreans. there were of course the obvious kind who drive range rovers cuz these days u gotta be able to afford being an eccentric with a touch of hippie. or they drive their rich friends' spare range rovers. they're a dime a dozen in LA! shit, i'll drive your range rover anytime! and then there's me, with my 4-door 1973 bmw bavaria. capricious but unique. i've only seen 3 other ones on the streets of LA. stick-shift & manual windows. manual everything. runs great now that i've poured more money into it i should ever have. i just luv it. it was jackie o's favorite car!

the music was great & the backstage crowd was boozed up & fun. the main crowd was interesting in small doses. it's good to catch up with the whole american apparel crowd on bad drugs & the cool college kids coming to their own. shit i used to be one (but my drugs were better at the look of it), and i have to say the skinny jeans are much cooler than the super baggy jinco pants i once sported when at USC in the 90s. if i found an old picture of myself in'em i'd have to destroy it... i didn't see a single boot cut pair of jeans either. skinny uniformity! boot cut is sooo turn-of-the-millennium anyway. remember when 2000 sounded so futuristic-ish? remember when vintage was 60s or 70s? at this rate 90s will be the new vintage before we know it. ok, back to the basics: if u can't go skinny, then just go straight. u just can't go gay & fat. that would be totally gay, in a bad way. so follow these rules & you should fit right in... then again, we're not the ones who need to fit in. we're in! or is it "in" to be out? one thing's for sure, being out is totally in, "in" actually being "in." am i losing you? are you out??? that's sooo in! ok, well, just say NO!

overall, the kids --yeah i call them "the kids" now, urgh-- were cute, some cute & sexy, some completely obliterated, some having chemically induced fights or amaaazing moments they won't remember, some rolling around on the floor, and most dancing the night away. anyhew, it was a little much. so i stuck to the vip/backstage area a lot, where i bumped into friends & met willie from the bronx. willie introduced me to his drunk friend from ny who hates el lay but moved to rancho fucking cucamonga 2 years ago. duh! she thought silver lake was on the west side or something; she's never been. poor thing. then again, where the hell is rancho cucaracha? do u know? does it even matter? so willie flew back to nyc the morning after. i'll probably never see them again but we shared some good laughs. it's the little things...

all these pix were taken backstage except for the one of the adorable straight couple making out on the sparse grass patches. rolling around on a bed of dust is sooo the best. i remember when... oh no, wait, i don't remember. whatever, rock on!

for my friends in new york

bullets & sexual sportswear

this is my new favorite song, download it here:
TUNNG - BULLETS (MP3 LINK)
tunng ends their usa tour here in LA, at the echo on 6.XI.07.
this is tunng's myspace page
on a different note, sebastien tellier is back with:
SEXUAL SPORTSWEAR
here's one of the most beautiful songs about love, also by sebastien tellier; click on link below to download full version of this masterpiece:
LA RITOURNELLE
Oh nothing’s gonna change my love for you
I wanna spend my life with you
So we make love on the grass under the moon
No one can tell, damned if I do
Forever journeys on golden avenues
I drift in your eyes since I love you
I got that beat in my veins for only rule
Love is to share, mine is for you...

enjoy & share the wealth!

overpowered

this is how the MTV VMAs should have opened. then again, train wreck britney makes for better ratings! róisín murphy recently performed in london at a small venue where she entertained the crowd with 6 new songs, and had viktor & rolf costume changes between each one. now that is a true pop star who has the kind of attitude & sense of style i respect in a performer!

björk forever

saturday night went to a birthday party at the echoplex, for julie, the wife of the club's owner. open bar and for me that meant way too many sprites & bitters. i had to pee all night. flosstradamus were at the decks & i had my portrait taken...

somewhere else over the week-end, Björk was sporting these shades:

I WANT THESE SHADES!!!

old flames & fashion

the martin margiela store is gorgeous. the lobby has a tower of champagne glasses with shoes & accessories displayed all around...

the main floor is made of a linoleum print out of the whitened hardwood floors in the paris boutique. the wallpaper is made of photographic print outs of the walls of the same paris store... the shop attendants all wear long slick white lab coats from neck to toe...

outside, films of the latest collection were projected on a massive screen made out of white sequence, and everything, including a truck, was covered in white fabric. mini ice cream cones were served but with scoops of white cheese cake mousse; gelato would have been nice but it's not as practical. unexpectedly, i bumped into 3 old flames, which is always nice. and a few friends from The Directors Bureau whom i used to work with... here are 2 pix we took on azalea's iphone:

AZALEA & MOI in a fitting room:

MARRRiO, AZALEA & MOI sitting outside:


on a lighter note, unicorns are the new chuck norris:

silver lake & neutra

i luuuv where i live. here are several pix i snapped...



how mid 90s of me to dig the Neutra houses in da hood...

a belgian classic

jacques brel is one of my outstanding heroes. the song he wrote & sang like only he could -Ne Me Quittes Pas- is the most poignant love song i've ever heard in my life. talk about exposing your vulnerability like only a real man ever could! what an inspiration!!! what a fucking genius... jacques brel makes me incredibly proud to be belgian...

goddaaayumn, this song brings me to my knees every time. i love it!

...click HERE to see it again with english subtitles.

solitary lovers

i just couldn't resist, here's LIO's "Amoureux Solitaires"

she was like 17 back then! anyhew, here are the lyrics:

Eh toi dis-moi que tu m'aimes
hey you tell me that you love me
Même si c'est un mensonge et qu'on n'a pas une chance
even if it's a lie & we don't stand a chance
La vie est si triste, dis-moi que tu m'aimes
life is so sad, tell me that you love me
Tous les jours sont les mêmes, j'ai besoin de romance
everyday's the same, i need some romance

Un peu de beauté plastique pour effacer nos cernes
a bit of plastic beauty to erase the circles under my eyes
De plaisir chimique pour nos cerveaux trop ternes
chemical pleasures for our wilted brains
Que nos vies aient l'air d'un film parfait
so that our lives can resemble the perfect movie

Eh toi dis-moi que tu m'aimes
hey you tell me that you love me
Même si c'est un mensonge puisque je sais que tu mens
even if it's a lie since i know you're lying
La vie est si triste, dis-moi que tu m'aimes
life is so sad, tell me that you love me
Oublions tout nous-mêmes, ce que nous sommes vraiment
lets forget it all, even who we really are

Amoureux solitaires dans une ville morte
solitary lovers in a dead city
Amoureux imaginaires après tout qu'importe!
imaginary lovers what else matters
Que nos vies aient l'air d'un film parfait...
let our lives become the perfect movie...

La la la la la

belgique électronique

"belgique électronique" is pronounced "belle-zjeek elle-ehk-troh-neek"

meaning electronic belgium, the birthplace of technotronic haha!
OK, belgium also does the pop thing pretty well. here again, i give you LIO, belgian popstar since 1979 when her hit "banana split" took over the world, well mine at least... here's one of her biggest follow-up "sage comme une image" (pronounced "sah-zje cum un ee-mazje" meaning wise like an image). she was still a minor & sings about how she touches no one & no one touches her; she's just like a pic u look at, and that's where it end, cuz, u know, she's wise (or "untouched" & "uncorrupted" like an image on frozen paper haha). this is LIO's attempt to reassure us all that she's too young to be touched, and if you think she looks old enough it's just an affair of "maquillage" (mah-kee-ah-zje) i.e. make-up. uh-huh...

mickey-pooh & meggy-pooh

megan was in from new york city last week... awww!

i luv npr - to do list

check out A List Of To-Dos Before You Die
bonne nuit, m:)

keepon robot

I'M IN LOVE WITH A ROBOT:

ThanQ! pix 4 youie you

i really appreciate all the comments i've received via my blog or via my direct email. to indulge you in posting a pic of myself, here's one i don't mind posting for now. this was taken earlier in 07, with my 'addict' christian dior t-shirt my sista sara (my mother theresa) found for me:

kinda appropriate dontcha think???
since i found another one of caracas taken from the avila national park just above my former caracas residence, why not share it as well:

back in the 90s, caracas was surnamed 'irenelandia' aka the land of irene... irene saez was miss venezuela in 1980 then became miss universe 1981 before coming back to caracas. she took over the reigns as mayor of chacao , the district of caracas federal capital i lived in. imagine your mayor being a tall tan blonde supermodel looking creature who cleaned up the city, cleaned up the corruption within the police & military forces of the area & turned chacao into the safest & richest area in venezuela... now, fucking chavez and his elite of 'socialists' took over. as far as i'm concerned, chavez can suck castro's farts! for more on caracas, go back to a previous posting:
yoga \ chocolate / bridges

musique... only you!

france gall was the shit. i remember wanting to be her, how gay is that? the dancers who join in later in the video are the best!


here's the best video ever made by a drag queen, the incomparable Jer Ber Jones who was graciously introduced to me by philthy chorizo:

in love with klaus

in december of 1982, KLAUS NOMI performed Cold Song from Purcell's opera in Munich, the Bavarian capital. the audience was unaware that Klaus was suffering from AIDS. although frustrated with shortness of breath & fatigue, Klaus was determined to perform for his home crowd. this would be his last big performance. 6 months later, Klaus Nomi died in NYC. he was 39 years old. here you go:

earlier today i was listening to an old cd in the car, and Falling In Love Again was on it. i thought about how amazing he was, and how far our medical advances have gone since Klaus' untimely death. anyhew, here's the hysterical video to Falling In Love Again:

QUITO

conquistadores on pbs took me back to quito, ecuador, where i lived for 3 years. it made me so nostalgic. i loved it there. quito is the ancient capital of the northern realm of the inca empire, and today the capital of ecuador. i used to live in the area called "el quito tenis," as it was on the hillside at the foot of the active pichincha volcano around el buena vista tennis club where i spent more time poolside than on the courts! rather exclusive for local standards, the club was only 300 feet or so down the street from my house. it had the same view over the whole city than the one we had from the modern concrete block of a house i moved in. from the street side our new home looked like a massive brown bunker. i wasn't impressed... fortunately on the other side it was a 3 story high wall of glass offering a plunging view of the city below & the cotopaxi in the background. i loved it!!! only a 90 minute drive away from the city, the cotopaxi is often referred to as the highest active volcano in the world. our neighbors to one side were the uruguayan ambassador & his family; to the other side the cisneros family, the wealthiest mobsters in town. oh wait no, the cisneros were the biggest mobster family in caracas... i can't remember the family name of my quiteño neighbors anymore. i just remember how annoying it was when their younger kids drove their noisy as hell miniature ferraris up & down the street, and the scary german shepherds pacing & barking by the gates of their house... as my folks called it, here's the "golden cage" we lived in for 3 happy years:

here's a pic of quito and the pichincha volcano in the background:

and here's the view from my house with the cotopaxi volcano:

check out these closer angles of the inca's "throne of the moon:"


my mom & stepdad had settled in quito by june 1990 while my brothers & i spent a few more weeks on our own in brussels, then a month in oregon with my father & stepmother who had rented a place there on the beach. i can't remember much. but i remember flying back from oregon to belgium in late july for about 10 days. 10 days i spent with friends i realized i was leaving behind. 10 days where walking through the streets of brussels on my own, taking the metro or bus or tram on my own, became so intense. i saw things for the first time i had never seen before, because i was looking at everything more closely than i ever had. i appreciated it more --sometimes even for the first time-- now that i wasn't going to have all of it in my everyday life anymore. i was taking it all in one last time as the place i called my home for the previous 10 years of my life. i found myself choked up more than once. it hit me the hardest once the plane took off. i'll never forget that feeling of rupture when i felt the wheels of the plane suddenly hanging in the air instead of rolling on the ground. i was looking out the window to the belgian land as i had many times before, but only then understanding it no longer was the place i would call home, or where i had one to come back to. i remember whispering goodbye, and thinking of my grand-papa & my granny, hoping they'd still be around when i'd come back to visit. so i kept my face glued to the window to make sure my brothers, and no one else could tell that i was crying.
the plane took my brothers & i to germany, where we got on a 747 lufthansa to caracas, then bogota, then finally quito. the whole trip took about 20 hours. i remember being so impressed with the airport of bogota. it was grand, modern, filled with marble, military security guards with scary machine guns & dangerous looking german shepherds. that's when --drum roll please!-- i heard for the very first time mc hammer's Can't Touch This. woaaaaaaah!!! mtv usa was playing on all the monitors in the airport, and i remember locking eyes on one of the monitors & zoning out on mc hammer, his moves, his crazy pants in the middle of a jetlag, surrounded by shiny marble, machine guns & guard dogs. SURREAL! it was nothing like the colombian airport i saw kathleen turner in Romancing The Stone with michael douglas. that would be more like the retro chaotic airport in smaller remote quito, capital of ecuador.
we finally landed in quito a few hours later. no one had told me that the airport is the middle of the freaking city, and no one told me that quito even had modern buildings. all i found on quito in encyclopedias & books (it was before the internet), were pictures of colonial buildings and native americans, the descendents of the incas. i was a little worried i was going to live in some sort of backwards village with quaint plazas, lamas on the streets & crazy chicken running around everywhere. not to mention i knew very little spanish & it was a little unselttling to go somwhere to live (not vacation at) with another language i'd have to pick up...
when i saw all the tall modern buildings through the window, first i was surprised & more than that relieved. yay, there's an actual city down there. phew! then suddenly the buildings got closer & closer & my heart sunk, i thought we were slowly crashing into the city. and just when it seemed like the plane was only 50 feet above the tallest buildings (with red flashing lights on their roofs for planes to not hit them or guide them to landing strip who knows), the plane dropped. before i knew it, this massive 747 hit the landing strip nestled between mountains covered with houses. my parents later told me it was one of the most dangerous airports to land a plane. the planes can't make a progressive descent. they have to fly over the skyscrapers (if you can call 10 to 15 story high buildings skyscrapers) & get as low as possible then only have a few hundred feet clear of buildings before the landing strip, so they drop as much as they can when the buildings turn into houses, and regains some sort of control to not hit the land too hard. every now & then, jumbo jets still miss the mark & have to make a 2nd attempt at landing. some smaller ones have actually crashed into buildings!!! authorities used to put a cap on it & it barely made the news...

we got off the plane & walked on the tarmac towards the building, taking in the cold dry evening air of the andes for the 1st time. my stepdad greeted us & took us to my mother who was so excited to see us after 2 1/2 months apart she had tears of joy. no matter how long our separations would ever be, my mom always cried when we left her & always cried when we'd reunite; she still does! sometimes it gets so bad that my brothers & i will look at each other & try not to laugh. it's best we actually don't look at each other at such times or my mom will feel like we're being insensitive. she has a heart of gold, but it gets a bit dramatic sometimes...

it was late evening which at that point meant nothing to me. since we had diplomatic immunity, we sailed through customs, got in the car, and got to our new home in less than 20 minutes after landing. i was so confused as to how could we live so close to the airport but the city wasn't that big. as my brothers & i walked into the house for the 1st time, we decided with my mom's suggestions which bedrooms would become our new sanctuaries of sleep (and study urgh!), we explored the rest of the house, the gym & aerobics room (it had an entire wall about 30 feet long that was mirrored from floor to ceiling & one end to the other!). it became our playroom in which we had many parties for the following 3 years...
we weren't in our new house for more than 30 minutes, when i was standing by the floor to ceiling windows of the living room, looking at the amazing view of the city that was now my new home, when the windows started vibrating & making a low bass-y sound kinda like you hear when you inhale too much nitrus, which i never did by the way, but i can imagine... i thought i was hallucinating, like when you've had some mushroom tea, which i never had either for the record... next thing i knew everything was shaking. i think i could see the reflection of myself turning white in the tinted windows. first i dismissed the whole thing, telling myself there must be some metro line under the house or something, and how annoying that was. then realized i wasn't in brussels anymore & there's no way that could be possible anyway. i remember noticing people running out of their houses into the streets far away in the distance. then my brother jonathan who was only 9 went a little hysterical & was begging everyone to go back to the plane & leave cuz he didn't want to die. my mom tried to calm him down & then my stepdad & her told us that we now lived in a highly volcanic & seismic area & it was nothing else but an earthquake, and there was nothing to worry about because our house was built to withstand earthquakes. greaaaaaaat. this is what happens when the pichincha not only shakes things up but exhales a little:

my mom grew up in the mountains of central africa (in bukavu, by the shores of the lake kivu, boarded by zaire/congo, rwanda & burundi) where she had experienced earthquakes, and my stepdad had lived through a massive earthquake in santiago (chile) back in the 70s, where all the windows of his pad exploded. so to them, it was just a part of life. a fucking part of life??? ok, sure, why not! i guess i'll just have to get used to it. c'est la vie! jonathan had to sleep in my room for the 1st week, and each time there was an after shock he'd jump, and finally at one point that 1st night he fell asleep & was so exhausted he slept through several after shocks. my very 1st earthquake was around 5 on the richter scale if i remember well, and that's no small tremor. it brutally changed my take on life. nothing had ever made me feel so small & powerless before. never had i felt so strongly that i was part of something way greater & bigger than me: planet earth, the universe, nature, the freaking volcanoes... i had always been aware of all these things, and was educated about it all. those damn european international schools i attended stuffed my brain with so much data & info, but not a lot of experience. somehow the world evolved around me, and i had learned how to control my immediate environment, or at the very least spin things in a way that made me feel safe. from that day on, my 1st night in ecuador, i accepted --reluctantly sometimes-- that i evolve around things too, that i am part of something i can't always control, and that everything could just one day crumble under me... holy fuuuuuuuck!!! rude awakenings rule!