1 month

I've thought about it and I have decided that Time and God have a couple of things in common. Both work in strange and mysterious ways and it's not easy to measure the existence of both.

As a child, time was luxurious and gentle. The news on TV would come on at 8pm and that would be the only marker of time I had in a day. Things changed as I got older. When I worked in radio, I used to measure time by the quarter. Every 15 minutes = (more or less) 3 songs. The ads came in at the 40th minute, and then again at the 50th minute. I applied this to my daily life for 5 long years.

There were also the times I experimented with mushrooms and to keep track of time (and my mind), I tweeted. When I reread the tweets later, I realized that the trip didn't last all that long but at that moment, the mental hemorrhage I experienced gave me a different sense of time.

It's been a month since I first got here and I still can't quite decide how to measure the new time. I mean, it seems like it's been ages since I found the half dead Mimosa but really it's only been 2 weeks. She tricked me by growing so fast so she's pretty useless as a measure of time.

Then I thought I hit the jackpot when figured I could measure time by the amount of toilet paper I use. But that didn't work out because I share it with my other housemates in the common toilet downstairs. Friends also don't make good measures, just to let you know. In this past month I've gotten really close with Mary and Melissa and it just hit me the other day that Mary's leaving in 2 weeks and come June, Melissa will be gone. How does the F in BFF work now? That muddled my humble brain a bit.

Neither does it help to go away for the weekend because you just come back feeling a little confused and almost convinced that time might have actually slowed down while you were gone. Like last week on Easter when we 3 went up north to Pacasmayo, another beach town just 2 hours away from ours.

We stayed at a pretty house owned by a lovely old couple who rent the rooms out since their kids left the nest (S25 for each of us in a 3 bed room). This is also where we found a special late night movie playing on a cable channel about a girl who's researching for her bisexual psychology thesis with the help of her stripper friend. At one point, Melissa comments, "This open relationship is not going to work out.." We were watching it for the storyline obviously.

I'll figure out a way to get around Huanchaco time. Give it another month. As for the God thing, let me know if you do.

More pictures on www.facebook.com/julestang