Too much fun...

I am currently exhausted. It's my day off and I am tired. Yuck.

This has been the longest most random week ever it seems and I hope that this coming week will be way better.

We had a ton of parties which meant late nights and sluggish mornings. It was our 3 year anniverary party on Sunday and last night we had a zombie vs superhero party at my house. I'll put up some photos once I have a moment to transfer them onto this machine.

All of my roommates went to sleep last night and I was left kicking people out of the house at about 5 this morning. I woke up with a wicked hangover.... and I use the word wicked so rarely. I locked myself in my room this morning and wouldn't come out until I felt better. I emerged at about 4 and now I am fine.

Sorry for not writing anything lately. I will update this tomorrow with photos. Fingers crossed for a better week.


xoxo

K.

Now all your love is wasted, then who the hell was I?

My local pub is closing. Sad face!

Tonight I was there and after playing a bunch of uplifting music they put on Bon Iver's 'For Emma Forever Ago'. Not because it was one of their last nights and they wanted to be depressing, just because they liked it. I couldn't stop being nostalgic and thinking about that album.

It is the epitome of heartbreak. The story, for anyone who is unaware, is this: boy meets girl. Boy falls in love with girl. Girl loves boy. Girl dumps boy. Boy is heartbroken and moves into a cabin in the woods and pours all of his heart into an album. For Emma Forever Ago is that album. I think it is heartwrenchingly beautiful and as I fall asleep tonight it will be playing quietly. It makes me a bit sappy and think all of those mushy ' better to have loved and lost ' type things. But in the end... his voice is awesome and that record is raw and just amazing. I love rediscovering things.

Goodnight kids.

xoxo

K.

Last day off!

I have had a nice three days off. It wasn't the time that I thought it was going to be due to my unexpected return to Macau, but I still had a good time. Yesterday was a fun adventure day. Roger and I went and got Sushi for lunch, then we got frozen yogurt! Yum! Actually to be more specific: blueberry = yum, mango = yum, durian= YUCK! So disgusting. We got it just to taste it knowing it would probably be bad. But I had no idea that a fruit could taste like death. Anthony Bourdain once described eating durian as, "Its taste can only be described as...indescribable, something you will either love or despise. ...Your breath will smell as if you'd been French-kissing your dead grandmother."

Yeah freeze that and put it with yogurt. **Shudder**

After that we went to this amazing pool that we found, then went to Toy's R Us to look for playstation games for my roomie and potential toys for us. Finished up the evening with Mexican food, margaritas, and then darts at one of our local dive bars.

Today I enjoyed having the house to myself and made blueberry muffins and dinner for the roomies.

I've been pretty introspective lately and thinking about what I am doing and about the future. I have been in Macau and with Cirque du Soleil now for almost two years, which is about when most people thing about leaving. macau is a very transient place and up until 6 months ago I very much wanted to leave. Now... I am happy here but may be presented with an opportunity to leave anyway. And despite list making and pros and cons I am not sure how I feel about it.

This isn't helped by the fact that Cirque is notoriously slow to make decisions and get back to people regarding employment so when they say that they can let you know in two weeks they might actually mean a month. I should have heard from them on Monday, and I have not heard anything yet. So I'm sitting and waiting for them to make a decision so that I can in turn make a decision.

The job is a touring job, which would mean leaving here immediately and heading out on the road. The tour goes to San Francisco and London as basically the two first stops I would make with it which is awesome. But as much as people complain about life here, I don't hate it. My schedule has just drastically improved, and I would like to travel more around SE Asia.

They told my boss here that they would be making an offer but who knows. I haven't heard anything yet.

Trying to just take things one step at a time one day at a time. I find that hard sometimes because at any moment I feel like the next step could be a big one! We shall see!

Don't Spit on me!!

Well... THAT was a bit of a failure of a day!

Here was the plan: Head over to HK in the earlyish morning putter around for a bit then head to Cheung Chau island for a few days. Cheung Chau is one of the outlying islands around Hong Kong and is a bit more Local than many of the other ones. Lamma Island is cool as well but is predominately dominated by Western people it's a bit of an alternate lifestyle kind of place. I like it there but I wanted to try something new. Anyway, the plan was to hang out on the beach for a few days and get away from everyone and have a bit of alone time.

Here is what happened instead:

I got up this morning and my brain would not function... I tried and tried and despite coffee and breakfast I COULD NOT get moving before noon. So once I eventually got up and got my stuff together I made my way to the ferry terminal and was on my way! Problem one: my kindle battery died on the ferry. Now the whole issue of e-readers pros and cons is a subject that I would love to chat about later but for now, just go with it. No problem, I thought, there is a bookstore very near the ferry terminal I will pick up a book and take it with me.

The ferry to HK takes about an hour, hour and a half to get through immigration etc. So once I was through I picked up a book and was on my way... I did have a few errands to run before heading over to Cheung Chau namely a camera issue to resolve which I will tell you about later. But (problem or bad omen number two) before I could do that as I was leaving the ferry hall a man spat on me! YUCK! One thing that is a bit of a surprise here is the hawking and spitting. It seems to be mostly carried out - entirely unapologetically - by the old folk, and takes a bit of getting used to. There is a government drive to stop this habit, and there are posters up everywhere with threats of fines for those caught in the act, but it still happens. A lot.

Anyway so I was walking and an old man spat on my arm. Very gross.... But I got over it eventually and continued on my mission. After the camera part was done. (see below) I made my way over and got the ferry to Cheung Chau. Arriving there it was stating to grow a bit dark so I thought I should probably check into the hotel first thing. It was a bit of walk but I made it only to find out that they lost my reservation! They were--mildly--apologetic and said that they could give me a hand finding somewhere else to stay. Awesome!! Whereupon they called every B&B and hostel on the island and everything was completely booked! Sad face! So I had no choice but to get BACK on the ferry and head back to central HK again. ANNOYING.

I called a few of the regular places we stay when we head into town to find that they too were all booked out. I don't know what was going on today. It was a Tuesday. I shall do some research tonight and figure it out maybe. Sooo I found one place but I didn't want to pay $200 US for a night, when I could pay $6 and come back to my own bed. In the end that's what I did... except when I got to the ferry terminal at 8:45 there was no 9 or 9:30 ferry so I had to wait til the 10. Yuck yuck double yuck!

In the end it's now midnight and I just got home after a very unproductive day. I still have two more days off but I think I will just hang around Macau. Maybe go to the pool tomorrow and make some blueberry muffins or something equally awesome to restore the awesome quota for the week.

Ah the camera story: Basically I had some awesome help today and ended up with a brand new camera! Not what I had intended to do but it's kind of amazing. I heart Canon so much sometimes. Now I have something to play with for quite a while to attempt to master it. I won't go into details but nice helpful people are amazing. Thank you!!!

Mmmmmm... Blueberry muffins.


xoxo

K.

Who I am and what I do...

So I have been asked to start a blog. I am sure in the long term my reasons why will become clear but at the moment I am trying to do what I am told.

What shall I explain first... the Coco LeFleur part or the circus part? Let's go in order shall we?

I did my undergraduate degree at the University of Texas at Austin. (Hook'em Horns) My last year there I lived in a big-ole house just off campus. It was a co-op. Yes, I may or may not have been a dirty hippy at some point of life, give me a break. Anyway.... I has just moved back to the states after studying abroad and moved directly into this house. I wasn't told much about my room or roommate only that her name was Danielle and that she was a graduate student type person. Well I showed up just after New Years to an abandoned house to learn that Danielle was actually Dan, as in Daniel. I then learned that Dan had known about my coming but when asked by my other housemates about me he couldn't quite remember my name and thus Coco LeFleur was born. Aparently Coco is a French foreign exchange student.

When I moved from Austin to London somehow the name followed for a bit and now it's always a backup funny pen name etc that reminds me of sitting on front porch swings late at night playing guitar and drinking micro brews.

As for the circus.... 2 years ago I ran away and joined the circus. Real Time. I work for Cirque du Soleil in Macau now in the props department and all its fun and glory!

Briefly what I did today: airbrushed things neon UV green all day. If I were on CSI they would arrest me for sure! To give you an idea... This photo was taken after about 20 minutes.
I worked in the spray booth today for 7 hours. Literally my entire body glows with a cartoon neon radioactive green tint.

And my interesting fact/question for the day? On the subject of radioactivity... why is it always pictured as glowing green? It irks me a bit if I am honest. Why you ask?

Well... because generally radioactive things don't fluoresce green at all. One of the first things that was noticed by Marie Curie after producing a test-tube of concentrated radium was its "fairy like glow." It did not glow green, however. It was said to be a bright blue color. Reportedly she even kept a vial of it next to her bed as a kind of night light. So why don't we have radioactive blue? huh huh huh???

OK kids, bedtime for me. Tomorrow I am off to Hong Kong for three whole days off! I plan to find an island and sit my butt down in the sun for a bit and hopefully find some non polluted water to swim in.



xoxo

K.

Round Two...

Hello Blog. It’s me again.

What has changed since the last blog I kept:

• I now live in Macau (small SAR outside of Hong Kong)
• I no longer have plans to get married and move to the UK
• I work for the Circus and that consumes most of my time
• My next big adventure is Ecuador

Things that haven’t changed:

• I’m still reading reading reading and I am sure will have to talk about some of those books here
• Still traveling as often as possible though this time throughout SE asia instead of Europe
• Still trying to see the positive in places I go and people I meet and keep my head afloat.
• Still nerdy.

I am not sure what this will be besides a place to dump some photos/thoughts. But we will see.

I have four minutes with which I can tell you about my day so far today:
I woke up this morning at 8 which is early for me. When I was in HK last Wednesday I bought some awesome coffee which my roomie Em and I made and enjoyed. Yum!! Coffee is one of my favorite things. And ICED coffee is one of my favorites of my favorite things. What I miss is New Orleans Iced coffee though. Proper cold drip coffee and chicory, mmmm!! If I could find a cold drip maker here I would be pretty happy! Anyway….

I walked to work this morning via the village which was spiffing. There is a market on Sundays and I perused a bit, it’s generally tourist junk. There was a funny gilded stall on the end where everything was gold and gold glitter. Very bizarre.

And now I am at work getting ready to do two shows.

More about work tomorrow.
Xoxo
K.