333 followers! 1 like = 1 peculiar story about my ancestors or me

1/ I can trace my ancestry back to:

-India under English rule
-the Kingdom of Siam
-Basque country
-Spanish colonies in LatAm
-a tiny Norwegian fishing village

2/ I only discovered I had Indian ancestry after a historian discovered my great-great-great-grandma had lied about her upbringing in her autobiography, and in family stories passed down for generations

23andMe proved that I do in fact have a tiny bit of Indian DNA

3/ One great-great-grandfather, about to go fight in WWI, took a copy of the house key saying to his family, “I’ll need this when I get back”

He kept it in his breast pocket, and the key eventually stopped a bullet from entering his heart

That key literally saved his life

4/ One great-great-grandfather was an arms dealer and illegal timber smuggler in Southeast Asia... not a great role mode but still wild

5/ One great-grandfather smuggled briefcases full of cash into LatAm for groups fighting the communists. He had diplomatic status, so they wouldn’t check his briefcase at the airport (a better role model than above post)

6/ In the Pacific Theater of WWII, more soldiers were dying of malaria than bullets, so US pharma cos approached farmers in tropical allied countries to grow quinine trees (used in anti-malaria meds). And that’s how my great-grandpa ended up growing quinine

7/ My grandmother’s brother was a doctor and said that neon colors are bad for your health. I disagree

8/ My maternal grandmother had a pet monkey as a child, and many years later, my mother got her second name from that monkey

9/ There’s lots of stories about my maternal great-grandma and grandma (mother/daughter) being telepathic

My grandma would sometimes answer questions her mother had not yet said out loud

10/ This great-grandma had a recurring dream that a monster attacked her & her brother, and she always died

But once, her brother jumped in front of the monster to protect her, and *he* died

She woke up knowing he had died IRL, and she was correct. That very same night

11/ My mom dreamt that my dad’s deceased grandpa was trying to tell her something but she was afraid. Dream ended w/ million bits of metal flying at her face

Next day mom & dad get in a car collision, car hits dad’s side & window shatters into million pieces flying at his face

12/ I wonder if I also inherited these premonitions... In an ayahuasca vision I was holding my mother as a very old lady, and I hope it means she‘ll reach that age

13/ My most cherished dream is this:

I’m in a beautiful pine forest, and there’s a Buddhist temple engulfed in slow-motion flames

That’s it. That’s the dream. And I’ve never felt such a deep sense of peace and that “everything is ok”

14/ As a kid I had a recurring nightmare:

I‘m in a black void, moving pebbles from one side to another, for eternity

(I’d wake up screaming at the top of my lungs)

I think it was an experience of infinite space and time, and as a kid, that was terrifying

15/ In my 20s, I sought to experience the vastness of space and time once again:

For 6.5 days, I rode the Transiberian Railway from Vladivostok to Moscow, non-stop

I spent hours every day just looking out the window, never bothering to check the time. It was a magic ride

16/ When I was 23 I moved to Vietnam to teach English. The night before my first class, I puked because I was so nervous

17/ As a teacher, I often dreamt that I was standing at the front of the class, in underwear

This dream is actually quite common among teachers

18/ Living in Vietnam I tried glass cupping just to write about it on my travel blog. What I never expected was getting my back lit on fire

That was my most popular blog post

19/ In Vietnam I slept-walked into my neighbors apartment. Poor family woke up to find a foreigner on their living room sofa

20/ When I was 23 I watched a Chinese film about the 1976 Tangshan earthquake. I had the entire cinema to myself and I bawled the entire film

It was the first time I had cried in years. Super healing

21/ I knew I was getting really proficient at speaking Vietnamese when I started dreaming in it

It was always the same dream — I was at a pizza shop, complaining (in Vietnamese) that I asked for NO onions

22/ One time, in Burma, I pretended to be a medical student to give ibuprofen to a soldier with two bullet
wounds in his leg

23/ In high school biology we dissected pig fetuses and the smell of formaldehyde haunted me... I dreamt about that smell for weeks

I didn’t know you could have smells in your dreams

24/ As a kid I passed out while playing a video game with strobing lights. Parents freaked out and I ended up getting an electroencephalograph and taking epilepsy meds for a year, but probably didn’t need them

Glad it was only that one time because I love raves

25/ When I learned that Santa wasn’t real, I wrote a letter to “Santa” that explained where he could buy each toy. It worked, but it only worked once

26/ I missed the total solar eclipse of 1991 because as it started getting dark, my older cousins convinced me it was time to go to bed (I was 5)

27/ I had this dream I was in an empty dungeon, but the entire ceiling was mirror and in the reflection I could see myself in the dungeon surrounded by giant lizards. I understood they were in an overlapping dimension I could only see thru the mirror. Weird

28/ I hated PE in elementary school. I once slept without the covers hoping to be cold, get sick, not have to go to school, and avoid PE. It didn’t work

29/ I once fasted for three days while hiking in the mountains. All I thought about for those three days was food

30/ I did a temple stay in Korea. I thought it was like a boutique hotel experience. It was actually more like Buddhist boot camp:

hour long meditations, chanting at 4am, yard work, silent meals

The head monk spoke no English but he communicated everything through smiley eyes

31/ Last year I started having lots of dreams and visions with snakes. It all made sense once I had my first ayahuasca ceremony

32/ I love trail running, and when I’m alone in the mountains I like to imagine I’m part of the Fellowship trying to deliver the ring to Mordor

33/ I was once hiking on a dried lava field, but as the sun began to set, and darkness fell, we could see something glowing thru the cracks below us

We were walking in a fried crust, but there lava was still flowing beneath us

Oh, my shoe soles also melted

34/ I’ve also roasted marshmallows over lava to make s’mores. And I burnt my eyebrows and hairs on my hand because I got too close

35/ When I was 25 I moved apartments and forgot to pack my razor. I never got a new one, and unintentionally grew my first beard

I’ve had a beard since

36/ But I also look fantastic with a mustache, so sometimes I’ll trim the beard real close but never all the way

37/ Whenever I have a big trail race, I’ll do something with my facial hair

One time it was a mustache to look like one of my favorite runners

Another time it was a more Viking ish beard to look like my great-grandfather

38/ Once during finals week, I had a panic attack, got in my car, and just started driving

Several hours later I finally calmed down, stopped for pancakes at an IHOP at 3am, checked into a motel for a few hrs of sleep, and drove back to campus the next day

39/ In Vietnam I did a motorbike trip with a friend... every time we arrived at an intersection, we took turns randomly choosing left or right

We magically ended up on the most scenic route up over the mountains, and down to the coast on the other side

40/ I rode a bright yellow motorbike when I lived in Vietnam and I miss it so much

41/ Once in Tokyo I stayed up all night clubbing and then boarded a train to the airport. I passed out on the train and woke up in Yokohama

I’ve also passed out on the Tokyo line that goes in a circle. No idea how many loops I did

42/ A man taught me to drive a tractor in Japanese. I didn’t speak Japanese.

But we figured it out, and I discovered that plowing rice fields is incredibly meditative

43/ I got pulled into an anti-nukes protest in Tokyo and then got pulled into a rap music video shoot happening in the middle of the protest

I tried my best to act like a rapper. And definitely failed hard

44/ I once gave my sister a haircut. I was 4, she was 2. The haircut sucked, and everyone blamed me for it. But she asked for it!

45/ When I was 16 I spent a month hiking in the mountains and learning outdoor survival skills, completely disconnected from civilization

It was the most fun I had ever had, and I cried when it was time to go home

46/ I have a big mole on my left hand that I used to distinguish “left” and “right”. The habit of looking at my left hand persisted into teenage years

47/ I also have a crescent shaped mole on one of my toes

Most people think it’s something dirty stuck between my toes when they first see it

48/ I have a number of scars I’m fond of:

-right elbow, from leaning on hot engine of a go-kart
-right hip, from taking a fall while long-boarding drunk (very stupid)
-chin, from running on a path of printer paper, and slipping on one of the sheets (I was young)

49/ While at sea, I watched the sun set over the coast of North Korea

50/ I’ve had mystical experiences with octopuses

Once, on a night dive, I approached the octopus slowly and it eventually felt comfortable with me and crawled onto my hand and changed from a deep red to white with tiny red dots

Their intelligence is palpable

51/ I love dancing so much that I’ll start cardio training a few weeks before festival season begins... gotta improve that endurance to dance all night!

52/ For me, trail running is as much about aesthetics as sport. I’ve spent HOURS looking at terrain in Google Maps, tracing beautiful lines along ridges, valleys, and up and down peaks

Even if I don’t run them all, the exercise of finding these lines is deeply satisfying

53/ I almost rode my motorbike into China by mistake

I was touring Northern Vietnam and there’s a few roads without checkpoints. Luckily a Vietnamese soldier chased me down, yelled at me, and sent me back

54/ I got robbed once

Man jumps out from behind a bush, immediate thought is, this man is so funny, jumping out of a bush like a troll, but a microsecond later I registered the machete and yelling

Yo. Don’t ever try to be a hero. Just give them what they want and walk away

55/ I’ve only ever been in one fist fight, and I walked away with a black eye

You win some, you lose some

56/ I learned both English and Spanish as my first languages, and my proficiency in each has varied wildly over the years, depending on where I’ve lived

57/ One of my favorite peak experiences is trail running for 4+ hrs, feeling like shit but pushing thru,
and coming out on the other side with mind/body aligned in survival mode, tapping into energy you didn’t know was in you. It’s fucking wild

58/ One of my existential crises was largely driven by thinking about the Sun burning out one day, and coming to terms with what that means for humanity, and me

59/ I remember buying Alannis Morisette’s “Jagged Little Pill” on cassette during a family roadtrip in Maine. I still love that album

60/ I missed a domestic flight within Vietnam and I was so pissed and didn’t want to wait another day for the next one, so I just asked them to put me on the next northbound flight to anywhere. That was the start of a great trip

61/ My parents explained sex to me with a computer program about the human body

Hilarious/unfortunate way to reduce sex to biology and overlook it’s social, interpersonal dimensions

62/ Since a young age I’ve loved canons/mythologies with extended casts of characters with unique superpowers

Earliest examples is Care Bears

I especially like it when deep cut characters come onto the show, like Care Bear cousins who are different animals

63/ My cousin and I made a silly website on Geocities when we were probably not even teenagers, but got in trouble because we linked to Rotten dot com (website of disturbing images, no longer active)

64/ My early days on the Internet was a lot of chatting on ICQ (I remember two friends’ handles were shovel and ducky), watching funny videos on Ebaum’s World (I still watch Blundercats parody now and then), and playing games there too (I loved Snowball fight game)

65/ I made a bit extra cash in high school selling burned copies of music CDs. Not 100% kosher, but it’s a ton of fun to run a business out of your locker, especially when it’s prohibited by school

66/ I loved watching Jackass with Johny Knoxville, and probably got a few bad ideas from the show

I once swallowed a guppy in biology class and got sent to the principal’s office, but she couldn’t find a specific rule I had broken, and sent me off without consequences

67/ I was always a top percentile student, but in 11th grade I failed Calculus after installing Tetris on my TI-83

I’d play Tetris in class, on the bus, everywhere

68/ I was a bit of a pyro and a vandal when I was young

In middle school I set the bathroom hand dryer on fire and got one week detention once school was out and vacation had technically started

69/ In middle school I also liked installing keyboard loggers on teacher computers. I ended up getting a bunch of their passwords

70/ I still remember the floppy disk I had in middle school, loaded with sketchy .exes like keyboard loggers, brute force password crackers, etc

On the label I had drawn concentric circles in rainbow colors. It looked really cute

71/ Getting my first CD-RW was incredibly exciting. My friends and I would swap illlegaly downloaded movies. I remember I had Invisible Man with Kevin Bacon

72/ I courted my first girlfriend in high school while she was still with another guy. When she eventually dumped him for me, I lived in constant fear he’d kick my ass. He was big, I was small

73/ I once shaved my head and a group of older kids in high school said I looked like the “there is no spoon” kid in The Matrix, and would often come over to my locker and ask me to say “there is no spoon” and crack up. I didn’t particularly mind it

74/ What I miss most about living in Korea is having four seasons, and learning to love each thru trail running

runs under cherry blossoms, runs drenched in salty sweat, runs in crisp autumn air, runs on crunchy snow

I miss them all

75/ I’ve wanted a tattoo for YEARS, but I’m so indecisive I never pull the trigger. I really want 2020 to be the year tho

76/ I knew I was fully acclimatized to living in LatAm when I caught myself voluntarily listening to reggaeton and enjoying it

77/ I got stung by a jellyfish once and the beach lifeguard told me he was gonna have to pee on me to remove the sting. He let me experience the shock for a second before starting to laugh his ass off and take out a spray bottle with ammonia to remove the sting

78/ I remember being really young (4? 5?) and watching Winnie the Pooh and feeling SO SAD for Eeyore. It was his bday and all his presents arrive broken (popped balloon, an empty pot of honey bc it was cracked). That episode fucked me up a bit