A Day I Never Thought I'd Experience

Today I went with the dear wife to the health center to...well, you know what we went to do.  It was a sad day for me in a way, but I must say that I feel closer to my wife now than I did before.  She's so strong.  I remember feeling this way after watching her go through labor.  I understand that as far as difficult labors go, hers was pretty average.  But it's still amazing to me!  I don't think I could do it.  Today when we came home, I helped her settle down on the couch to watch "So I Married an Axe Murderer" so we could lighten the mood a bit.  Then I cooked some garlic-rich gulash (or however you spell that word).  We ate and now we have about 25 candles burning in the dark house.  It's all very Christmasy.  There is a windy rain storm raging outside right now.  It sounds like tiny marbles are being flung at my window while the wind is trying its best to rip the sheet metal off the roof.  Whenever it's cloudy at this time of year the darkness is complete.  The meager illumination from the streetlights seems to be sucked out of the air before it gets to the ground.  But inside our little house we are cozy and happy.  Our candles fill the air in here with a comforting waxy fragrance and we think of how lucky we are, dispite the recent turn of events.  We are all healthy.  We all have enough to eat and warm clothes.  We all have each other.  It turns out that a fetus never developed and that only the amnionic sac and the beginnings of a placenta were in there.  So the life that I had thought ended had never actually started in the first place.  That's strangely comforting. 
This whole experience gave us yet another chance to support one another and demonstrate our solidarity.  At times like this I wonder how chauvinists can enjoy life.  I feel that my life is so rich and that it would be pretty empty if not for my family.  So, how can it be that there are people out there who do not see the importance and power of a loving family that is run on a sense of equality?  I just don't get it. 
I just wanted to write in with a few thoughts on this day that I thought I'd never experience.

Real Dissapointment

For the second time in my life I know real disappointment. Yesterday Inga went to the doctor and was told that the fetus has no heartbeat. Yup, my baby's dead. I figure that since it was only about 2 months along, it probably looked pretty much like a little fish or a tadpole. I hadn't thought of a good name yet. I hadn't held it in my arms or looked into its non-focusing eyes. I hadn't heard it cry or listened to its breathing while it slept. Things could have been worse. As I was trudging to the bus station to go home yesterday after hearing the news I suddenly realized that today would be Thanksgiving. So I gave thanks. I've got a great wife and two wonderful kids. I didn't lose a baby that I had grown terribly attached to. I still have the option of trying again. Nothing else in my life is going wrong. So, I figure that today I can say that I am thankful. I've got friends and family and I'll just think of them today.

So, I guess, happy Thanksgiving to all of my readers.

New Laughs

My little buddy Hlynur pointed out a great comic strip to me. There's a link to it now under "Come Surf with Me". It's called Wulffmorgenthaler. As far as I can gather, it's from Denmark but is written in English. It gets at least a chuckle out of me everytime I look at it. It's a bit twisted and aimed more at adults than chilrdren (some swear words-Oh no! and-possibly worse-sexual references-Guð minn Almáttugur!). But anyway, if you laugh when you see a skewed view of the world, this may be the site for you!

Half Done

I finished the paper I was writing yesterday. It was a very in depth look at interspecies competition. Finishing it reminded me what a great feeling that is. If you've never been to university or you've never published a book/article you won't know the full joy of finishing a large, in depth research paper. It's so nice to be done all of a sudden. One minute you feel like you have so much to do and the next you are free to do what you like. It's so nice.

But I'm only half done. I have another big paper to write for a class called production and food chains in the ocean. This is a very interesting class, in my opinion. We studied from plankton on up. We learned about the processes that drive the systematic flow of energy from the sun all the through to the top. And we did this by going out to sea and collecting samples and then spending the rest of the semester analyzing the samples. Our instructors are three men for the Marine Research Institute and they all have a lot of interest and knowledge. I give the class 8 out of 10.

This morning I went out to the car and sat down. I was tired, it being way too early to be waking up, and was just having a moment of solitary silence before driving to school. Then I made the mistake of turning my head. You see, on the window to my left was a blotch of magic marker or lip stick or paint or something. Someone thought it would be a good idea to go into my car (I never lock it because I live in such a small town with no crime and keep nothing of value in the car anyway) and color in a patch of the window that is at exactly the same height as my eyes when I'm sitting in the car. Surprisingly, I only got a little bit angry. I say surprisingly because I have a tendency to lose my head at some very small offenses. But my question is, why do people do that sort of thing? I've never understood vandalism. What does the vandal get from breaking something or marking something with an ugly paint or marker scribble? Even as a teenager (and teenage boys are most often the accused in the event of vandalism) I thought it was completely pointless. I had a couple of friends who thought it was funny. I'm not saying that I was a perfect child. But this is just something I don't get. No, I can understand it better if there is some personal reason behind the damage. you know, you get angry with the principal who sentenced you to stay after school as punishment for something and you got to his house with a paper bag filled with dog poo and light it on fire on the porch before ringing the door bell or something. But reasonless damage is something I don't get. On the other hand, it could be that our car was singled out because my wife is teaching the problem kids in town. Maybe they got angry with her yesterday and decided to take their adolescent frustrations out on the car.
So, am I angry? Not really. I'll just go home tonight and calmly ask my family if they know anything about it-because my son did once use a rock to inscribe his initial in the paint on the door of my car-and then break out the acetone to clean it up. I think it's magic marker and thus fiarly easy to clean off glass. I'm more worried about where this sort of behavior will turn as these kids grow up and become less innocent.

Airfare and Homework

Yesterday I saw an ad from Icelandair offering cheap airfare to "all destinations in the States except Orlando". Naturally, my first thought was a song, "California, here I come, right back where I..." But Icelandair's idea of a great deal is similar to China's idea of human rights: there's always a catch. As far as I can tell, they don't fly to San Francisco in the "winter" (in Iceland that means from October through mid-May). I wish that some other airline would start offering flights from Iceland to my home country. Right now the only other choice we have is a flight that's at least twice as long through London and then on to the States. That is often cheaper than a direct 5 hour flight on Icelandair. How can that be?! I'll tell you how that can be. Icelandair has a monopoly on the market here and they can do anything they damn well please. They are an unscrupulous company that rapes the Icelandic people while entising foreigners with incredibly low airfare (though admittedly, those deals are only when they are flying through to Europe or coming during the winter-not including holidays like Christmas and New Years-when nobody wants to come here because they think the weather is different in the winter than in the summer). As soon as there is another option I will stop flying Icelandair completely.

Is Our Hero finished writing the two papers he has to turn in this month? Oh, no! He's been reading article after article to try to solidify his ideas into a coherent flow. As one can see by reading certain entries on this site, Our Hero has trouble at times keeping his mind focused on one idea. Often the idea he starts out with mutates into an entirely different animal by the end. He has, in fact, started the papers at least twice and then had to go back and erase everything when he figured out that he was going in the wrong direction. But I think the ecology of mammals paper is reading for the press. it's pretty organized and will be a great paper once it's written if the shear number of citations has anything to say about it.

So, with finals approaching and two papers to write the blog may suffer a gaunt phase. I'll be back en force later in the year.

Last Post

Boy that last post got some good responses. Now that I've read them, I've realized that I've been using Hindi words all my life without really thinking about it. Language is fascinating. It illustrates so well how we are all connected through our history despite the differences between individuals or cultures. It really does seem to be true that we all started in the same general area and spread out from there.
So if this is true, why can't we live together? I've just been listening to breaking news about the suicide bombing in Iraq and the bombings last night in Aman. What are those people thinking? I cannot believe that any god would condone such actions. Then there is the issue of the riots in France. There again, many of the rioters are from northern African countries or the Middle East. I know that their cultures are different from those in the West, but why does violence so often start? Never having been to France I cannot say that I've seen the conditions in which these people live. But when I imagine what it would take for me to get angry enough to join a riot against police with water cannons and tear gas (and some cases, apparently, live ammunition) I can only see appalling living conditions and a completely apathetic government. Prejudice is a scary thing.
So, over to Israel. I've never been there either. That's another tangled mess whose cause I cannot understand. As far as understand it, Israel was created to give Jews a place to call home after thousands of years of persecution. Then, sometime after the country was created, some of them decided to take over neighboring strips of land where there were already other people (namely Palestinians). The Jews put up big fences and controlled movement and water flow between Israel-a fairly wealthy country-and Palestine-a fairly poor country (though one not officially recognized world wide). After anger and bickering, bombings started. I don't know if the first bomb was an Israeli bomb or a Palestinian bomb. But someone killed someone else. Now, decades later, at least one person is killed by someone they don't know (by bullet, rocket or bomb) everyday on one side of he border or the other. I wish that someone could make me understand why this is going on and I really wish I had a suggestion to stop it so that neither side loses. But one thing I'm sure of is that neither side should have the full support of any other nation. They are both committing crimes from my point of view. (of course, Bush cannot argue with Israel because he's committing simliar crimes in the Middle East).
There seems, however, to be a rising feeling of willingness to work together among civilians of both nations. There is a movement in the Israeli army of soldiers (they're required to serve at a certain age) refusing to stand post at border crossings. They are thrown in jail for their conscience. Also, I heard about a Palestinian man who's 12 year old son was shot by Israeli "security forces" and upon hearing that his son would die he asked if there was anyone waiting for organs. He was told that three Israeli children were on a waiting list for various spare parts and he gladly donated parts of his own son to give those other children a chance to live. Shortly thereafter, an Israeli man who had lost a 19 year old son of his own went to visit this generous open-minded Palestinian and thank him and show support of such a display of goodwill.

I lead a fairly simple life. I've never even heard a gun shot that was intended to kill a person. So I cannot claim to understand what people are thinking in these situations. But I'm willing to listen. I want to understand because I know that my vote may be able to make a difference.

Listening

One of the joys of my day is driving to school. But the reason I enjoy it is not that I like to drive. In fact, I hate to drive-especially on Reykjanesbraut where almost everyone around me HAS to drive as fast as their car can go. No, I enjoy the drive because I get to listen to the BBC. For those of you in the U.S. who don't have the option of listening to the World Service all day, let me tell you, you're really missing out on a good thing. The programming, though repetitive (if you do, in fact, listen all day) is always thought provoking and interesting. Starting next Wednesday they're going to be examining the theme of domestic violence-an important topic for us to think about and try to solve.
But today, the most interesting part of the drive was listening to "Off the Shelf", a program where a book is chosen and read-somewhat dramatically-over the course of a week or so. The book this week is called A Suitable Boy. It's being read by an Indian actor because it's about an Indian family trying to marry off their youngest daughter. The little nugget that I took out of the story this morning is just a word whose origin I never thought about before today. I wonder if you, the reader, could guess what word it is. There is a word that all Americans and probably all people who speak English well will know that was originally part of the Hindu (Hindi?) language. It starts with the letter 'p' and is used by parents everyday.
Speaking English as a native language as I do, I'm very interested in finding the origin or etymology of words. English may be the most bastardized language there is considering how many words are taken directly out of other languages. Some lose their proper pronounciation (as do most Spanish words: Los Angeles, El Paso) and others (many French words: camouflage, reservoire, but not Montpelier or New Orleans). Then there are words in America that were taken from England that underwent a spelling change (programme, realise). English is a fun language full of lumps and juicy bits that could entertain me for life.

So, anyway, what's the Hindi word I heard this morning that is also a common English word?

Let's Focus on Me

Recently I've gotten a couple of questions just about me from readers who don't know me and have only stopped by my site because they had nothing better to do or whatever. I want to take this opportunity to introduce myself again for anyone who doesn't know me personally.

Hi, my name is Eric dos Santos. I'm a 33 year old American-born man whose father was born in Argentina and whose mother was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts. I lived in the U.S. until I was 27 and then moved to Iceland after coming here for two months to install two pipe organs built by the Noack Organ Company (for whom I had spent a year working). I love Iceland and will most likely die here. The language is extremely nonsensical (to me, though I know Icelanders will disagree) and difficult to get right, but I think it's fun trying and most everyone is very accepting of my imperfections in speaking it. The landscape is wonderfully open and clean and raw. It's interesting and awesome (both in the literal sense and in the slang sense of that word).

But the people here are the real reason I'm still here. My wife is Icelandic. She makes me as happy as I can be and we have two and a half kids (there's another one on the way). I'm studying biology with a concentration on marine biology and I hope to work in classification upon graduation in May. Then I will have a BA in speech communications from Bridgewater State College in Massachusetts and a BS in biology from the University of Iceland.

My interests are animals, music and movies. I like comedy as well, but as there are terribly few Icelandic comedians, I have somewhat lost touch with that aspect of entertainment. I'm generally more left wing than right wing politically.

I support women's rights but I don't think that homosexuals should be allowed to adopt children. Many of my opinions have to be kept locked away in my head so as not to offend or outrage people. I have a vast army of pet peeves lined up in my head and they're more often than not the cause for my annoyance.

Photography is something that I enjoy without complete understanding of how it works. As a result, my photos may be quite amateurish.

I'm willing to give anyone a chance to be a friend. But I am more likely to actively approach people who look like they are different from the norm of the society in which they live. Also, I am very harsh with people who prove to be dishonest. The most important thing I learned from my father is how painful dishonesty can be.

I believe that this world would be a better place if people were more connected-and I don't mean connection through computer screens and cell phones. I'm talking about good old fashioned dinner parties, picnics, and participation in activities of common interest. I think of everyone I see as a very long and interesting story waiting for me to read it.

Well, that's some of my story. I write this blog as something fun for me to do with my spare time. But the comments allow readers to send me messages or questions. Feel free to do so.