Things I like about Buenos Aires:

Coffee comes in small cups. Very small.
A t-bone steak costs about a dollar. And it’s better than any 30-dollar-steak in Minnesota.
My grandma’s homemade gnocchis. From scratch.
The way the subway rocks and sways and wants you to sleep.
It’s normal to have dinner after 10. The restaurants are full at midnight and [...]

A lesson in trusting computers: don’t trust them. As I learned the hard way yesterday, if you’re not willing to do a small amount of human thinking, you’re at the mercy of a machine, and the machine is not always as smart as you think.
Case in point: I had a meeting with my sister last [...]

Credit: Bill Bamberger (interview)

Bus #663
The driver is compassionate. He waits at the stop for a balding Chinese man who is running at the bus like it was home plate. He wears glasses and a blue checked shirt. He sits on a bench seat across from the wheelchair lift.
A big wide-spaced-teeth smile flashes on the face [...]

“Moon…river…wider than a mile…”
She was singing to me in slow, warm breaths. I could feel her lips brushing my ear, but I wanted her closer, so I pulled at her hips.
“I’m crossing you in style…someday…”
It was night, and we were dancing. The moon shone a thin, half-full light on the smooth cobblestone rocks of [...]

Well, I was going to keep this a secret as long as possible, knowing the huge public outcry it would cause, but I finally decided you had a right to know: I’m going to quit writing.
Yep. That’s right. Hear those loud booms? Those are the pillars of humanity crumbling. Well, I hope insurance covers [...]

From my dorm room in Berkeley you could see the Golden Gate Bridge. Actually, from where I slept, eight stories above a football-field-sized parking lot, you could see all kinds of things; Oakland, The Bay Bridge, Alcatraz, that Triangle Skyscraper (the Transamerica Pyramid), and Coit Tower.

Photo: California Coastal Records Project (if you\’ve never seen [...]

I find it very difficult to believe the federal government of the United States passed a law stating that all passengers on a bus must be behind the white line before the bus can move.
And yet, that\’s what the driver on the bus yesterday morning told us, as we waited at a particularly popular stop [...]

Buenos Aires is a nervous city. It’s the opposite of the palm-tree paradise people imagine when they think of anyplace Latin.
There are some palms, yes, and it’s hot. But that’s it. The rest is like blood pulsing through the veins of a hyperventilating aerobics student.
At the airport, waiting for my grandmother to bring the car [...]

I am 0% on a cruise right now.
Not so for my mom and brother. They called me from the deck of the Paradise to inform me about its ten decks and free drinks.
Ten decks? That\’s like a floating parking garage. Or a floating any-other-kind-of-building.
Free drinks? My brother is eleven; what does he [...]