Ok, I got something to share. As I sat here, late on a Friday evening, partied out from the night before, listening to Herbie Hancock, looking through some geeky pictures from a trip for work, I felt compelled to write my feelings. I recently traveled to Houston, TX for work and I must say that it was a very humbling experience.

Earthrise: A picture of the Earth taken by astronaut William Anders in 1968 during the Apollo 8 mission, right after going around the Moon.

All of us have lived vicariously through the imaginations in our head from dreams we’ve had. I’m not talking about the dreams you get in your sleep, but the greater ones that don’t need sleep. We’ve ALL aspired to do something, or be someone at some point in our life. But I must admit, as time goes by, MOST of us get lost through the hustle and bustle in the game of life, and we slowly let go of those grand thoughts that kept us alive inside, thoughts that have given us sudden bursts of energy, a natural high, an urge to make things happen… just the act of remembering that we had those thoughts long ago gives us some warmth inside, even if it’s very brief.

So what does this have to do with my trip to Houston? I traveled to support the repairs of the Hubble Space Telescope. Every day I watched the astronauts get out of the space shuttle airlock and get to work using all types of tools to get the job done, surrounded by the dark gaping mouth of space, with the only signature of life coming from a huge, beautiful, round blue ball, directly below them. During my spare time, I visited the Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory where the astronauts trained, inside a huge pool, for every single task that they will face during the repair job in space. I visited Rocket Park, where I saw the Saturn V, the biggest, most powerful rocket ever put into operational use, which launched several missions to the Moon and actually gave us a chance to place our feet in a world outside of ours.

Right there, in the midst of all those experiences, I felt it yet again. Many of us know this is simple and true, but few of us dare to live it. A space telescope, a space shuttle, a rocket that can send people to the Moon. All these things were dreams at some point in our history. Today they are a reality, ONLY because someone, somewhere, at some point in time, decided to draw a line and say “NO! I refuse to give up my dreams! Because I believe they are possible! …and I really don’t care what you think!” Someone dared to not only say that, but to actually live it.

I write this as a way of pushing my own self to live my dreams. I am at a critical point in life, after working hard in school for a dream, and after being thrown into the “real world” for five years, and counting. I am at a point where I feel like there’s a war going on, and my mind and heart are caught right in the middle of it. My hands are pulling hard, but not hard enough. My fingers are clinging on, but I feel the finger tips slowly giving away valuable millimeters of space. I can’t let this happen. I must fight harder… and so should you. Let’s keep the spirit alive.

In addition to the uber-cool coffee maker that we got my mom (see previous post), we decided to cook her dinner, a three-course meal to be exact. I was dying for some ceviche the past couple of days, so I figured why not make something Peruvian? The whole execution side from deciding what to cook, to actually procuring ingredients was kinda late in the day, around 5pm to be exact, so my younger brother and I had to move fast in order to eat dinner while it was still Mother’s Day. The following took place after the ingredients were obtained:

Step 1: Lock mom out of the house by comfortably placing her on the porch w/a good book, a drink, and a blanket.

Step 2: grab trustworthy assistant (bottle of pilsner) and start cooking. My younger bro was the assistant chef, and he does rank much higher than the pilsner in case you were wondering…

Step 3: Add some controlled chaos, give it some time, and serve (3 hours later, around 10pm):

Appetizer: Simple Peruvian ceviche, made with Tilapia, marinated in limes, lemons, garlic, habanero peppers, and onions. Served over a bed of baby greens, with chunks of avocado and mashed sweet potatoes on the side.

Main Course: Peruvian Arroz “Verde” con Pollo… (hard to beat the appetizer before it if you ask me, but it came out really well). Basically some yellow rice with corn, green and red peppers, garlic, chicken, Guiness Stout (ooo yeaah), and a lonely, impractical green leaf for the look… which was the only thing that made it verde, lol we couldn’t find the right ingredients to make the dish look green.

Dessert: And the Peruvian theme stops here…there is absolutely NOTHING Latin American about this… we just gave up on finding something simple and Peruvian, so we made some Blackberry Cobbler and served it w/vanilla ice cream.

So how was it you ask? My mom has an issue with things not being fried/boiled/grilled/smoked, so she put her best actor face and acted out how much she loved the ceviche (which we saw right through, by the way)… even after we begged her to say she didn’t like the ceviche, she still wouldn’t come clean. Aside from that the rest of the stuff was delicious. Holy crap I am soooooo hungry after writing this post. Enough.

Why am I up this late when I should be resting and getting better? There’s only one reason, and it’s simple: caffeine. For mother’s day we decided to give my mom a Keurig coffee maker, which arrived a day early, and I must say that this thing is amazing! The package came with an assortment of single-cup “k-cups” of tea and coffee. The brand selection is pretty decent, and I would only imagine that it will continue to grow. I first tried a cup of Gloria Jean’s hazelnut coffee and a couple hours later decided to have some Celestial Seasonings mandarin orange herbal tea. And here I am. Thank you Keurig, and most of all thank you Andreas!

This is a composition of the thoughts and feelings that went through my head on Nov. 4th and Nov. 5th 2008. I was too excited to login on here and write about all this, but it had to occur at some point, so here it is:

Going to sleep on the eve of November 4th was kind of hard, I felt really anxious, uneasy, even if I cannot participate in the elections, the importance of the upcoming day gloomed upon me hard. The start of the new day was really quiet, until I passed an elementary school with a huge voting line, on my way to work. The whole day at work was relatively quiet, nobody mentioned anything about either candidate, or the election in general. Some people were faithfully sporting the “I voted” stickers, but that’s about it.

I rushed home after work and sat there in front of my TV, waiting for every poll to close. We’ve been through surprises in this country’s elections before, so there was no way in hell that I was gonna believe all the projected polls, early of the final results… all of a sudden they say Pennsylvania is for Obama, and people start talking about how McCain is done… still I sat there w/my Pilsner in my hand, saying to myself what if someone asks for a recount in Pennsylvania? people haven’t really started talking about the notorious voting machine errors that occur during every election, etc… I was just sitting there saying I’m not jumping w/joy until I see the proof right in front of me… and sure enough, there it was, about an hour later, a golden background image appears on CNN, with Obama’s big smile photo on it, and the words “Barack Obama – 44th President of the United States of America.”

My mom was crying w/joy, I was sitting there mesmerized, every sound around me became very subtle… people blowin up my phone, nothing caught my attention, I just sat there basking in the moment. I can honestly tell you that as a 1st generation immigrant, if there ever was a moment in my life where I felt so happy, so ecstatic, so proud about being in the United States of America, that moment was it. That moment even surpassed the feelings I had the day we first set foot on this land. I was sitting there with joy, asking myself why the hell am I here at home? why am I not out there running to the White House, to celebrate with the rest of the people. I was so close to emailing my boss and letting him know that I was not going to come to work the next day.

Again, going to sleep that night was hard, but nature takes its course, and when I woke up in the morning I immediately felt the power of this new day, this new era of socio-economic change. Amazingly, everyone at my job was extremely quiet that day, almost as if these people where showing their true colors. Nobody seemed to be happy in my building… I was sitting in my office with a huge smile on my face, I felt like I was the only one.. I was literally jumping with joy in my office when I looked through the slideshows of people celebrating all over the world… but people at my job were still quiet, it just didn’t seem right, I couldn’t wait to leave that place, and surround myself with people that are as happy and excited as I was.

Reflecting on the future, Mr. Obama has sold several dreams to millions of people. These people (including me) have to leave room for errors and disappointments over the course of his presidency. We cannot expect Barak to move into the White House and start walking on water at the Reflecting Pool nearby. After all, he is human, he will have many obstacles ahead of him, and we should expect these obstacles to disappoint us as well, because he cannot be expected to solve every issue.

I’d like to thank everyone that participated in getting that man into the White House. I truly wish I was blessed enough to take part in such a monumental blip of history’s tapestry. We have a tough road ahead of us, let’s just stick to the script, and work towards making each day a little better than the one before it.