Travel log - Europe - Day 28

Day 28

The following day was another strange day. I had never imagined I would have the impression Paris was also a city of strangeness, not only a city of sophistication. I could not help feeling there was a kind of energy on the streets, something like a tickling on my skin, a soft whisper, telling me I was in a very special place. I tried being more observant and tried to imagine people running, wars happening there, I was trying to walk forward but into the past. I saw the stonemasons laying bricks at the churches, paving the streets. I was looking for their blood, their sweat there, but they seemed to have evaporated by then. But there was something, unexplainable, that was affecting my senses somehow.
Before having breakfast I was willing to try the shower. I was really in need of one. Jeremy went there and I told him the showers only had cold water. Some minutes after he came back, perfumed and wet and I wondered how brave he had been of taking a cold shower. I went to the bathroom and it was damp and warm. So he had managed to get hot water. I went back there and tried again. Cold and cold. I felt stupid. Then something clicked inside me and I pushed the lever while I was turning it and voilà, hot water. So we had it all along and I was just stupid enough not to realize I had to give it a (really) hard push and turn.
So, I had breakfast early and went straight to the Cité des Science et de l’Industrie. I imagined it would not be very far from my hostel, which was called Cité des Sciences. It was not next to it, but only some subway stations away.

As I arrived there, it was quite a surprise. The place was huge and there were many parts I could visit with my ticket. There were exhibitions about natural phenomena, one about technology, one about pregnancy and I finally got to the floor where the science fiction one was.
I wrote my impressions of the visit for a friend’s science fiction column in Portuguese. But to summarize, any geek would feel in heaven there. I am not that geek, I just study sci-fi as a social expression of contemporary society and never collected toys or went to conventions. I am not a hardcore fan, but I had to take my hat off to the exhibition: they had material in French, English and Spanish. The girls at the counter even let me keep the booklet I was supposed to return after the exhibition. It was quite complete, with mannequins of robots and characters from many movies and books. The sections covered a wide range of images of the genre: one room about trips to the moon, Mars

space travel

my favorite TV series ever, Star Trek

time travels and even to a book world (it resembled so much the feeling I had when I was organizing the piles back home)

and even robots and cyberspace (how would you feel being inside the Matrix?)

After that, I still went to the Géode, one huge silver shining ball which happens to be a movie theater, those you almost lie down and all the ceiling is the screen. There was a movie about the Hubble Telescope, so more about space. It was so real, I left there willing to go to the Moon.
It was very fun and for one afternoon I forgot all the hardships of the trip so far and enjoyed being on my own. I didn’t know if it was possible to take pictures, there was no sign I couldn’t and no one approached me asking to stop taking them. I went to the food court because I was already getting hungry. I bought a sandwich and some soft drink. I just loved two things there: the mustard, Dijon, I guess. So delicious. And the desert was a kind of yoghurt. It did not surpass the Czech apple pie, but it was close to it.
When I was leaving the building, I saw that, across the street, there was a very large toy store. I thought, well, my luck is coming back. They must have the game I am so eager to find.
Of course. No hive there either.
So, I got back to the hostel and it was about time I made dinner. I stopped by the supermarket and got some more cheese and made a sandwich and used the rest of the ingredients I had bought for the salad to make another salad, not as big as the one I had prepared the day before.
**
I went to the room and Jeremy was not there. I guess he was avoiding me. Anyway, I heard a noise and went downstairs with my computer to talk to Brazil and feel less lonely. I had tried to call Martin, one of the French guys I had met in Vienna, but he was busy and couldn’t come and meet me the following day. He was a nice guy but I thought we would not meet anyway. I was without a cellphone there and he had no way to tell me what time or when he could meet me.
I got down and again it was so calm until this calm was broken by an excursion arriving, but of a very different nature of the one I seen the day before. It was about 50 kids and their instructors and although it was really late, they were making so much noise they must have awakened all the people in the hostel. I called them the infantry - both because they were children and because they seemed to be setting up an army camp. (And I would be sure they were as devastating when I entered the restroom the following morning. I felt I had seen the effects of a hurricane!)
I decided I should not stay there that night in all that confusion. I changed and went for a bar. I had no idea where to go or how, so I took the subway and started looking for a bar where I would feel comfortable. I headed to the Place de la Republique, and from there I started walking. It was almost midninght and I had no idea if the subway would close and I would have to walk back to the hostel or get a taxi. I felt free, wandering the streets of Paris, but I could not know for sure how safe it was to do that. Would I be mugged? Maybe murdered? Why did I have to feel so much like I was in São Paulo, so insecure?
I found a bar. Some people in. I entered, some people momentarily noticed me, most of them ignored my presence. I felt like an invisible man. I asked a drink similar to what the other man was drinking. I wanted monaco, as I had learned, but the attendant told me there wasn’t. I tried to sip and observe. One guy started taking interest in me, or so I thought. He would cast curious glances at me and keep talking to his friends. In the end, the group just left and no one approached me. I felt foreign, but I get this feeling every time I go to a bar, even in Brazil. I imagine this happens due to my lack of practice.
I paid, left the bar and walked back to the subway station. A lot of strange people were walking by. Back to the hostel, my roommate had already arrived and was sleeping. Again I had no chance of talking to him and saying everything was OK

Cameleon

"At the end of the day all we have is who we are"

Hide all the mirrors,

they serve me to nothing

All pieces of souls

Scattered in a stained glass structure.

I try to see what part of myself is there

And there is only

What I am not.

I change colors again

I am afraid so I try new rues

I try to become the world around me.

It makes me dizzy.

Yet I am not myself anymore.

I am sure I am not sure.

And you see I am

I was and am not.

No longer, then I am green again.

Will I be it again?

So my colors change and adapt (to what?)

Inside, it seems black and white.

A rainbow, in shades of grey.

Travel log - Europe - Day 27

Day 27 - Paris, je t’aime

The next day I would finally have breakfast at the hotel. I was curious to do that because of what had happened the other time I had been there. If you don’t read Portuguese, to summarize, I was staying at HI Hostel Jules Ferry and there was a lady serving us during breakfast. However, she was not there only to serve. If you wanted to get another slice of bread, fine. One more? You can’t. You could take only one of everything, but if you didn’t like milk and wanted two glasses of juice, so sorry, you couldn’t. And she was so fierce-looking, barking-like talking. Here, at Cité des Sciences, there was no one to control what you wanted. There was just a lady to clean what you dirtied. After eating nicely in Finland, and even staying at hostels like the ones in Amsterdam (the other trip) and Berlin, the breakfast here could be considered weak. One type of cheese, butter and no ham or other things to make a nice sandwich. No cereal. I had to go to the supermarket and buy some other types of cheese to complement the breakfast. But knowing I could get some more of everything made it better than the other. Even though there are the other two HI hostels in Paris, I came to imagine it is a tradition not to have good breakfasts in those hostels.
So, I had few plans for Paris. In fact, I had almost none. Paris was Carol’s dream. I would have déja-vus and miss the summer which was not there. Well, I was there, sad, but it was Paris so I had to do something to enjoy those few days I had left there, in the city of light.
I had some missions and although they were small tasks, I would put all my efforts into trying to find what people had asked me. My friend Sinead wanted some books. My friend Manoel some cosmetic products. Also, I had to buy the game I hadn’t found in Salzburg to take to my mother. So, I understood I was going to spend at least one day walking around visiting many types of stores and taking advantage of whatever I could find on the way.
My number one activity was to walk along the Seine and find a Fnac store. There, I would be able to find the imported books Sinead had asked and also buy the tickets to a museum where, as I had seen in an ad, they were having a science fiction exhibition.

As I was walking there, I decided to look for other bookstores. I ended up getting to the Louvre. I wanted to see the pyramids and the fountains again so I entered the arches. I was curious because my last memories of them were a beautiful sunny place where we (Edgard and I) were able to get some rest after hours of walking and even put our feet in the water. But what I found in that cold and grey day was a deserted fountain.

People were not even sitting on its edges. When I was getting there, there were some Black men approaching people and asking for something. One of them came to talk to me and told me they were raising funds to help some people in Angola. I told them I was Brazilian and he called the others and told them I was a Brazilian brother. I should sign the petition they were holding. I thought, well, only signing a petition? Why not? So I signed and he told me if I signed I should contribute with 10 euros. Was it a scam? I had no way of telling. He was being nice but a little pushy. So I got a 5-euro bill and told him it was all I got, or if they took credit card.
After this I went to one of my favorite spots in the universe: the gardens of Louvre. It was funny to notice how the green I had known there was not that green anymore. People were all in coats walking, few families and almost no one having picnics. This made me feel much more nostalgic toward being in Europe in the summer and not in the winter. Every detail would ensure me I was a person of the sun.
I was getting hungry and I decided to have lunch in the park. I sat on a bench and got my lunch: cheese, dried nuts and juice. Very healthy (sarcastic mode ON). I would look at the people walking and I tried to cheer up, after all, it was Paris. However, from time to time I could not help feeling a bit like this guy who was there with me on the gardens:

Anyway, I resumed my journey to find all the things I wanted to find. I walked in several small bookstores and there was no one I could ask about the books. So I had to look for them myself and I wanted to buy several books I saw, but I thought I would have no time to read them, so why bother? This kind of feeling is always present when I have too many books to read at home and the perspective of increasing the pile is so gloomy that it discourages me of buying any book.
What I got from these bookstores was that in some I activated the alarm on the door. I was not shoplifting, so I had no idea why that was happening.
I saw a supermarket and I decided to enter to get something to eat at dinner time. No restaurant was appealing, I would therefore buy some ingredients and cook myself some dish at the hostel. At that supermarket I saw something quite different from any other supermarket I had been in Europe. The vegetable section was organized according to what I was used to, but in every stall there was the name of the fruit or vegetable, plus the price and the country of origin. It was so funny because almost nothing was from France and showing the origin was so against the logic of the commodity which tries to naturalize itself while erasing its origin. (I know I sound like Vanessa Redgrave in the wonderful movie The Fever)
When I got to the FNAC store, I still couldn’t find someone to help with the books and the moment I did, no way, they didn’t have the books. So I gave up and tried buying the ticket to the museum and getting some information about it. When I was leaving the store, the door alarms went off and a security guy came to me and asked to see my things. He tried my bag, but it didn’t set off the alarm, asked me to go again and the alarms. He asked me to open my jacket and there was nothing there but he saw there was a label and he squeezed the label with his fingers. It was a sensor. They had not taken it in Brazil when Carol bought it (and God knows how she didn’t make the alarm go off there). I would not be Mr Beep Beep anymore.
***
Then, my next destination would be a drugstore in Paris which was recommended by my friend Manoel. He had asked me to buy some products for him there and it was easy because he had given me the address. I took the subway to go to a part of Paris which I hadn’t been to before. The streets were narrow and the houses seemed very fancy. As I got to the corner of the street, looking for the address, I was shocked. It was almost impossible to enter the drugstore, it was crowded. A lot of women and some men, baskets in hand getting everything for very attractive prices indeed. I started trying to move there but the aisles were so narrow and it was very difficult to get by. I started looking for the products and spent a long time looking for one which I thought was a soap bar, but was a liquid one. I figured it out only when I was almost leaving the place without getting it half an hour later. But I thought I would hate not being able to get what I had gone there for. Leaving that place was a relief, people pushing, saying Excusez-moi, all that.
It was getting dark but I still had more things to find. Do you remember the game I had played in Salzburg? The one with insects and all? I wanted to take one as a gift to my mother. I should have looked for it in Finland, but I was sure Paris would have dozens of toy stores and in one of them I would find that. Well, I discovered there was kind of gallery in Paris only with toy stores, a kind of paradise to kids. How could I not find what I was looking for at that place? They even had a Hello Kitty Store.

Well, there I went, asked for, in one, two, five stores and nothing. I had no idea how to say Hive in French, no one knew what Hive was and even the names of the animals. I just remembered butterfly but there was no butterfly in the game. I learned how to say bee, ants and all, but they never had the game. I tried other stores, outside the gallery, but no luck there either. So, the score of the day had been the products on the drugstore and that was that. Nothing else. So I should go back to the hostel and prepare a salad. I had bought all the ingredients and I was sure it would be a great dinner.
**
I was tired from walking all day long so the first thing I wanted to do was to take a shower. I got all my stuff and went to the bathroom. There were two stalls with showers and none of them were in use. I tried the first, only cold water. Well, wait a minute and it will warm up. Nothing. Try turning the lever to the other side. Nothing. Cold and even colder. There must be a secret. I put one the clothes again and ask downstairs. Well, they said, the guy was here to fix and everything is fine, you should try the other stall. I went back, tried the second stall and the same, no way. I thought I deserved better, talked to the woman on the reception, she said they would call the guy again but he would only come in the morning. No problem, let’s pretend I took a shower and be happy.
**
I went downstairs to try some contact with people in Brazil and to prepare dinner. I prepared a salad which, by the quantity, three people could eat. I was alone. No one else was having dinner and I offered the nice lady who worked there some, but she politely said she had already had dinner. Then, I got to the common room, some tables away from the kitchen, and while I was there an excursion of people, around 30, all speaking Spanish and in their early middle-age arrived. It was an alavanche of laughter, people babbling, shouting orders to each other. Nothing resembling the peace and quiet I had been immersed in 20 minutes before, during dinner.
One of the ladies in the party came to talk to me because there were no plugs available and she wanted to charge her camera in my USB door. We started talking in Spanish, and I was also talking to my sister in Portuguese and there was some background music in French. I stopped talking to my sister because I was already mixing up every language. The woman was a French teacher and she said my Spanish was good. We became friends, though I gave her my facebook contact but she never added me. They were from Costa Rica, and she even invited me to visit the country and stay at her house, but as we never developed this friendship of ours, I guess I will depend on Couchsurfing if I ever go there.
**
So, after such a frustrating day, I imagined nothing worse could happen. I went to the room and my “roommate” was there. I was in my friendly mood and tried establishing a conversation. he told me he had to do a work for the next day so he could not give me a lot of attention. He was sleeping down on the bunker so was I, but soon after I arrived he went to the upper one next to the one I was (there were two bunkers in the room). Our linguistic barriers were not as serious as they had been on the first night, I guess my French was improving after some time and he was more open to talking in English as well. I let him be but I heard he was not typing anything. In fact, I was only listening to the mouse clicks. As I looked at him because the light was on his left, projecting his shadow on the wall, I realized he was not really doing his journalist job for the next day but was in fact in the middle of a hand job. I started paying attention to the noises and I was sure he was. I didn’t know what to do. I asked him if he was okay. I guess then he realized. So I just turned to the side, trying to pretend nothing was going on and slept.

Travel log - Europe - Day 26

Day 26 - Finland and Paris again

I forgot to tell you that I had the problem of clothes. I had some in my hand luggage, and the boys lent me a few as well. I wanted to call the hostel in order to check if the airline had delivered my suitcase there but at the same time I was afraid they would answer, no, nothing had been delivered there. And if it had been, what could I do? The best would be to wait and see when I arrived back there. I managed to do it till the last night in Finland.On Sunday night I called the hostel via skype and they informed me the bag was there. What a relief!
**
Jarkko came to Sheela’s house for breakfast and to pick me up. The other time I had been to Finland, I had spent more time with him than with Sheela. The reason for that was simple: although I had known her for over a decade, she hadn’t been very present while I was preparing the trip. He always answered my emails, giving ideas and helping plan. I guess she could not really believe I was going there, and she would only really believe it when I was there. Skeptic girl, I thought. Well, that’s what I assumed. When I got there, she was eager to make plans, but the plans had already been made. We would go to Estonia, we would visit Jarkko’s parents in East Finland. She surely felt disappointed. But how could I know? Anyway, this time she told me I would have to spend more time with her and that’s what happened. After almost three nights and two days together, I had the afternoon with Jarkko.
We had no plans. It was winter, I was not really thinking about going to any museums, most of the sights in the capital I had already seen in the summer. We headed to his house and stayed there, talking and playing. We watched a movie, in fact we tried to watch, because he went to the kitchen to prepare lunch and I dozed off several times. I insisted I should help him cook, but he did not let me. By the way, the movie was Robert Altman’s Prarie Home Companion. After lunch, we took a picture, the only one of us together and we went downtown as I had some gifts to buy.

I had a magnet I had bought the other time and a very special friend wanted one, so I would take the chance of being in Finland again and buy. I also needed some hood or cap and some clothes to go back. It would not be nice to borrow clothes and take them with me to Paris.
***
Lunch was delicious, I just don’t remember what it was, why I didn’t take a picture, as I normally did with food. I guess I was still sleepy.
***
The funny thing about the part of the trip I was in Finland is that my notes, my pictures and my memories of what happened there were somewhat fragmentary. I guess I was trying to take a break of the big trip and feel at home again. Also, by thinking I was not in a tourist trip, I felt more comforted. I guess this is what they call a selective memory.
Anyway, in the afternoon Jake and I went to a supermarket in order to meet Sheela and her friend Jufelius for some coffee. It was funny because he was one of her best friends there and she had already talked a bunch about him on our letters and he had already heard a lot about me. At least that’s what she told me and then he wanted to meet me. It was a nice talk over coffee although Sheela was not so happy with him because he had been a bit misbehaved the day before. She told him off a little bit, but she did it as a friend, one who is willing to see the best from the others, not their worst.
So, we went to Sheela’s house, I said goodbye to Jarkko, unable to guess where we would meet again and when but sure we would. He didn’t want to or couldn’t go to the airport with us. I just wrote in my notes that before I went to the airport I gave someone a feet massage, but I don’t remember who had it, so if they can help me with this, it would be nice...
Sheela and Sampo drove me to the airport and said goodbye. I had been so happy those days and now I would be on the road again. I went straight to Paris and had no time or desire to make any new friend.
***
As soon as I landed in Paris I went to the station to get the train. If I remember well, it was almost midnight and I had no idea what time the trains stopped. The thing was, there was no train and the station was dark. A taxi to the center would probably cost a fortune, so another night at the airport? No. They were announcing the trains were being repaired so if one wanted to go to the center, we should go to another terminal and take a bus. I went there, got the bus, without paying, I was a bit confused and trying to get back to French. The bus would take us half the way and we had to take the train and go to Gare du Nord anyway, so that I could take the subway and get to the hostel. Lucky me I knew the way, since I would feel a bit uncomfortable with the idea of getting lost in Paris at 1 am. However, I also reminded myself that the neighborhood I was going to was full of immigrants, what could make the violence increase, but I tried to cast aside any xenophobic or racist prejudice I might have carried. So, I got to the hostel and they informed me I was in a new room. When I got there there were fewer beds, 4, and there was a guy reading. I introduced myself, his name was Jeremy. He was from a city called Toulousse, in the South of France. He was a journalist and was attending a course in Paris. We tried establishing a conversation, we tried English, his English was shitty, it took some time for him to build a sentence, then we shifted to French, but I guess he thought my French was just as shitty. Then we tried some Spanish, but I guess I was tired. It didn’t work. The following day, after some time getting back to a mind pattern in French, we would be more successful in establishing a conversation.

No olho do furacão

Hoje, tinha um furacão.

O profeta do hoje e o raio de sol

Acabaram comigo.

Mas do outro lado do mundo,

Veio o contraponto.

O furacão não passou todo, nuvens negras no céu.

Me equilibro precariamente.

Logo vem a bonança.

Travel log - Europe - Day 25

Day 25 - Finland

Another day started and no big plans ahead. I was feeling I had been taken back to Brazil, since I didn’t have to worry about anything like airports and which restaurant I should have my meals. The weather was surprisingly not cold. OK, -1oC is not that hot, but I was expecting -25oC, -30oC and I couldn’t believe the forecast was telling us we would even have positive temperatures in the next days. It had been colder in Prague! Anyway, we had some things to do that day. First we would visit Sheela’s parents. They were traveling the other time I was there and this time I would have the opportunity of meeting them. Next, we would visit some kids she was looking after.
**
We drove for about 40 minutes to get to where her parents were living. The first person we met was her mother and we started talking right away. She was a very nice lady and we had no problems breaking the ice. I gave her one of the gifts I had taken from Brazil.

Her father was walking the dog and we had to wait for him to come home. The lunch was very tasty and I remember we had lemon pie as dessert and it was delicious. One of my top desserts.

We talked about Brazil and Finland and many other things. We left as the day was getting darker, which was about 3pm. I still couldn’t believe we had so much of the day ahead and it was already dark.
We drove some more and went to a house where we would visit some kids Sheela had a connection with. Let me try to explain what I understood of it: Sheela works as a school counselor or something like that, she is responsible for following a group of students’ academic performance and she has meetings with them to talk about school and family and everything else. One of her protégés (in lack of a better term to define it), in fact two kids, a boy and his sister, had gone through a bad time at home. They were taken from their home to a shelter and Sheela was trying to take them to her house so that they wouldn’t suffer so much in a strange place and all. She was doing whatever she could but paperwork was getting on the way. She told me all the case and I felt a bit disappointed because I somehow expected Finland to be less buroucratic and more humane than Brazil, since it has the best education level of the world. However, paperwork and abuse seem to be something universal, and why should we make things easier if we can complicate them? These stories put me in contact with sorrow and hopelessness, something I had never associated with Finland. Naivité of mine? Maybe. But I had hoped people would be happier there than here, since they would have more means to emotionally cope with the problems (despite the fact they are one of the top 10 countries with more suicides in the world). I opened my eyes and understood a little bit that being educated and having intelligence don’t mean people are emotionally prepared to deal with the contradictions and craziness of our modern existence. And I remembered what I had read in Herbert Marcuse when he said that: “the revolutionizing of the instinctual structure is a prerequisite for a change in the systems of needs” (in his The Aesthetic Dimension). Plainly speaking, we have to change the way we feel to be able to live in a different society where suffering would be minimized and we would work for the common good and in the development of a just society.
So, we visited the kids and I talked to the boy. We went for a walk in a half-lit road, you could see the lights of a house or two in the distance. He was a bit suspicious of my presence but Sheela’s warmth succeeded in breaking any barrier he might be putting up. We ended up playing together, trying to hit a snowball on Sampo’s head with other snowballs.
After that, we headed home and while Sampo stayed there, Sheela and I visited a house of two very strange people who had bought some of the products Sheela was selling and she needed to collect. Finally, we arrived home but before we bought some pizzas in a pizzaria near the apartment. The pizza was very different from the ones we have here, but I took no picture of it.
Again, Jussi came and the boys went to the football while Sheela and I went to her bedroom to talk and she showed me the cosmetic products she was representing. She gave me a facial treatment. I bought some products, to bring as a gift. We spent hours talking about the kids, about how unfair life could be and how people were sad, wherever they lived.
I hoped then I didn’t have any dreams for fear of imagining a world so bare, so illogical, so cruel, and so much as ours. In a certain way, I was sad by that but I was also happy. Hadn’t I had the chance of traveling, of being foreign, totally stranger? However, I was supported in every way by people who loved me and made everything to make my short stay a comforting experience. With these mixed feelings of gratitude and sorrow (for those whose lives seemed to be falling apart) I closed my eyes and dove into the darkness.

Travel log - Europe - Day 24

Day 24 - or the shortest post I have written about the trip

The funny thing about waking up in Finland was that it was so unlikely I would be in Finland at that moment. It seemed I was still dreaming, it was not a real waking up. It was not part of the plan. I had already seen everything I wanted during my first time there. So, why I was not in another Scadinavian country, doing some sightseeing, why I was there? Well, I had pushed myself into going there, besides the logic idea that I could visit some people I really loved, my dear distant friends, I would feel more or less at home. I was a bit tired of having to decide about everything with nobody for me to ask anything like “where should we eat?” “Where should we go and what to do there?” Finland would be a chance to avoid all such questions, as I would put myself, very conveniently for me, in their hands. I would again go with the flow, without having to row.
The morning was easy, breakfast ready, delicious and a visitor was coming. As I was at Sheela’s, Jarkko came to visit us and have breakfast together. He was so different, yet he was just the same. It seemed time had done little to change him, but his eyes, they were more responsible, more mature.
After breakfast we visited a park which was just across the street from her apartment. The four of us had fun playing with the snow, spoiling nordic ski tracks, having fun. Sampo even built a snowman and Jarkko a snow-woman, or so we assumed by her “hairstyle”.

Then we had lunch together, again the four of us and Jarkko left. We decided I would spend one day with him, which would be my last day there. Then we did something in the afternoon I can’t remember what as there are no notes or pictures of it, and at night we received a visitor, Jussi, Sampo’s cousin and Sheela’s ex-boyfriend. Because we had been friends so many years, I had followed all the story from the time she started going out with Jussi (in her early teens) and they engaged in a relationship which at a certain point started going wrong. They broke up. Later, she would meet Sampo who would become her husband.

So, another character from that epistolary novel revealed himself. It was nice, he was friendly and all, but we didn’t talk much. The boys started watching American football in the living room and the “girls” (Sheela and I) went to the bedroom to gossip, talk about life, and talk like two people who had only that night to do all the talking they had left in their lives. =)
(Yawn) Good night.