The bigger of the two had just left to take a piss. I didn't like him and smelled trouble . I didn't like his friend, either, but he at least seemed more harmless.

I told my girlfriend at the time, "Let's go home. I'm tired of these guys already." It was about 2:15 in the morning, and we'd been out drinking with a girlfriend of hers.

"Yeah, I don't like them either."

"Does your friend want them here?"

"No, she doesn't want them here."

Finally, a clear fucking answer from one of the two of them. I went up to her friend, whose home we were at, and whispered in her ear, "Do you want them here?"

We'd met the two guys at one of the bars, and they essentially invited themselves along with us. When my girlfriend's friend let them in her apartment, she'd been the model host. Suddenly, she looked at me with alarm in her eyes.

"No," she whispered back.

Trying not to think too much about it, I went up to the guy that was still in the living room. Politely, I explained that we were tired and wanted to be alone, but I also made it clear: "The two of you should go." I was suddenly very aware that my heart was pumping blood at a mile a minute, and my system was flooding with adrenaline.

He was apologetic and suddenly aware that he had trespassed some invisible boundary. He excused himself and started to get ready to leave. I turned around. His friend had come in from the bathroom, and either he had overheard or our host had explained to him the situation. He was sneering at me, sizing me up. But he backed down. He was a smartass about leaving, but the two of them left without incident.

I locked the door behind them.

How in the hell did two guys we didn't like wind up hanging out in one of our homes with us?

-------

My girlfriend, who I am no longer seeing, had just finished her exams for the semester.

She is from Toulouse, France, and was in the first year of her Master's program. I'd been living with her for two and a half months. After studying for a month straight for her exams, extremely stressed, she was looking forward to a night out having fun with her friend from her program.

We went to her friend's place, whose boyfriend was out at a work event, and drank. My girlfriend and I were already tipsy from the three or so glasses of wine we'd had at dinner. At her friends place, we polished off a round of beers, a bottle of wine, and a sizeable amount of vodka during a drinking game. Trying to save money, I didn't particularly want to go out, and we were having a hell of a good time anyway. They did want to go out, however, so we went to a nearby bar. We hadn't even finished one round before my girlfriend shouted into my ear over the loud music, "We're going somewhere else!" Not particularly caring, I nodded along and started putting on my coat. The two girls walked out the front door without me.

When I joined them outside, they were talking to three men. To put it politely, they were scruffy and rowdy. It seems the friend of my girlfriend wanted to go sing karaoke. I liked karaoke, so that was fine by me. I did not, however, understand why we continued to engage in a conversation with these men we didn't know. I'm all for being friendly, don't get me wrong, and I'll strike up a conversation with most anyone. But these three gave me a bad feeling from the beginning.

I don't know whether the friend invited them along to karaoke, or if they invited themselves, but when we left one of the three was tagging along with us. He was friendly if a bit weird. I made small talk with him for a while as the two girls led the way to the karaoke bar, but eventually grew bored and hoped he would go away. He kept looking back and lingering, waiting for his two friends to catch up. I hoped he would join them and we wouldn't see any of the three again. Call me churlish, but I wasn't in the mood to make new friends, at least not with him and his crew.

The karaoke place was shit. The DJ told me they weren't taking new song signups. What's the point of a karaoke place where you can't sing? I asked my girlfriend and her friend if they wanted to stay. They were noncommittal. I waited outside for them.

They eventually came outside with the guy still hanging on like a bad case of lice. All the bars were closing, my friends said, closing time being 2am. The guy invited us back to his place. My girlfriend asked me what I wanted to do. I did not want to go to this guy's home. Instead, I said, we're still near her friend's place, why don't we go back there and have a drink before heading home. The guy seemed to invite himself, or assume he was invited by default. I didn't want him to come. I thought he was weird, and I had that nagging bad feeling about him that is all too easy to ignore. I didn't say anything because I hadn't had a chance to talk with my girlfriend and her friend about him, and her friend seemed to enjoy talking with him. Looking back, I wonder if I should have spoken up at this point. Probably. I didn't, though.

While walking back to the friend's place, I talked with my girlfriend about the situation and expressed my concerns that he was tagging along, saying I didn't like him and didn't want him to come back with us. My girlfriend was apathetic and resigned. "That is the way things are in France," she said, "You meet people and they come partying with you."

I was flabbergasted. That happened anywhere, but not if you didn't like the people you met. She claimed she hadn't had a chance to talk with them enough to have a sense for whether she liked him and his friends or not. Despite her being there and talking to them before I even showed up outside the first bar, I took her at her word. It was the easiest thing to do.

The guy went off to find his friends, coordinating with my girlfriend's friend to meet us at her place. I was wary, and as soon as he left I expressed my doubts.
"He was a bit weird, and frankly I don't feel like meeting up with him or his friends."

My girlfriend and her friend were again noncommittal, and my girlfriend once again reiterated that that was simply how things were in France. "Bullshit", I thought, but I bit my tongue. Secretly I was hoping they wouldn't show up.

On the way back to her place, just the three of us, the friend was nearly hit by a drunk driver who slammed on his brakes right as I was reaching to pull her out of the way. I mention this because if I wasn't already worked up from the thought of these guys joining us, then that certainly did it. I cussed and yelled at the car as it sped off.

We got back to the friend's place, and sat singing Karaoke songs somewhat halfheartedly for fifteen minutes until the friend's phone rang. She answered it without thinking, apparently believing it was her boyfriend on his way back from his event. It was the guy we'd met, and he'd brought a friend. Panicking, my girlfriend's friend invited them up, not knowing how to say no. At this point, her body language was pretty clear that she did not want the two of them there. She seemed surprised and dismayed that they'd actually shown up.

As the friend went to open the door for them, I looked at my girlfriend with a look of disbelief. She said something to the effect of, "I don't know why she's letting them up. She thought it was her boyfriend calling her." She seemed apprehensive but not overwhelmingly so.

They came up. The friend of the guy who had tagged along with us was tall, big, and frankly, a douchebag. Admittedly, I was rather dismissive towards them. I didn't want them there, and still had adrenaline running from the drunk driver incident. I made no effort to be friendly.

My girlfriend's friend found a Michael Jackson karaoke song and put it on. Halfheartedly sung lyrics came out from the group. The big guy asked why I wasn't singing along.

To be honest, I hadn't ever really listened to Michael Jackson and didn't care for his music. I shrugged and dismissed him. Any respectful, decent person would have left me alone. He insisted, and I shrugged him off again.

Then he asked me where the toilet in the apartment was. I told him. He pointed in the opposite direction and asked if it was there. I asked what was wrong with him. This went back and forth like this for a full minute or so, the guy trying to bait a response from me. I simply refused to play ball, ignored his games, and treated him like the idiot he was. "I just told you where the bathroom was. Why don't you go?"

It was clear to me: this guy was trying to fuck with me. He was trying to intimidate me in some way to take control of the situation. Intuitively, on an energetic level, I felt how aggressive he was and how little he cared about other people to come into someone else's home and fuck with the people there.

It felt like a high stakes game of poker, seeing who would fold first. It wasn't about the bathroom at all. It felt positively medieval. 

That's when I had asked my girlfriend if she wanted to leave.

Amazingly, my girlfriend didn't even notice that a power play had occurred between me and the big guy, despite being seated right next to me- and in between me and him- the entire time. I thought maybe I was crazy for acting the way I did. Then I remembered the objective facts: both women had told me they were uncomfortable with the two strangers and did not want them there.

At the same time, there seemed to be some sort of willful ignorance from my girlfriend and her friend, and not just about this, but about who those guys were, what they wanted, and them even coming along with us in the first place- until they were already in the apartment.

Singing karaoke for a few songs, just the three of us, distracted me from what was going on inside me. I felt like Dr. Frankenstein had just replaced all the blood in my veins with pure electricity. Distractedly, I downed Coke mixed with a splash of vodka. But we had to leave to catch the last metro back to our place, so we said goodbye. The friend thanked me for helping her. My girlfriend and I walked in silence to the metro.

"Are you mad?" My girlfriend asked. I couldn't believe she could even be asking me that.

"I'm not mad, certainly not at you, but I am worked up as hell. It will take me a while to calm down. Are you not upset at what happened?"

All she could say was, Good thing you were there, over and over again. But from the nonchalant, flippant tone of her voice, I could tell it was simply words with no feeling behind it. She was saying it to appease me.

Jesus Christ. Again with the willful ignorance.

We walked from the last metro station to our apartment. I didn't press the issue as I was too busy feeling the electricity flowing through my veins, marveling at the fact that nothing around me seemed to escape my awareness. Every fiber of my body felt awake, energized, ready to leap into action. Rather than being in my head, daydreaming or being self-absorbed, I found myself attuned to everything around me, and everyone who passed. I had the sense that I could read their intentions in some way. For example, things were energetically dead among the passengers on the metro, but on the way home, my awareness spiked as two specific young men went walking past. It only happened with them, and no one else on the way home. Maybe it was my own nerves after what had just happened, or maybe it was me picking up on some vague, barely expressed impulse on their part. Maybe both.

Without thinking, I tugged my girlfriend gently by the jacket back onto the curb as she almost stepped out in front of a car that had the right of way. It had happened automatically, my instincts far ahead of my conscious mind.

We advanced towards the apartment. She continued to say, "you're still mad."

I reflected as we marched up the long hill towards home, still scanning 360 degrees automatically, as if this behavior had been programmed into my genes all along, waiting to be expressed. It sure as hell felt that way.

I'd been in a melancholic slump for the past several weeks, unproductive at work and barely able or willing to leave the apartment. I burned through books until I got so bored I couldn't bear reading anymore. I'd spent most of that day before going out watching stupid YouTube videos.

But goddamn, I felt so fucking alive and purposeful and honest right then. I felt I was right where I was supposed to be, doing what I was supposed to be doing. Don't get me wrong. I don't think that what I did was heroic and special. In the end, all I did was tell (politely) two unwanted guests to leave. People do that all the time with no fanfare.

I'd done something similar a few months before, before joining my girlfriend in Toulouse. I was visiting a friend from my childhood in Columbus, Georgia. He invited me out with his friends. We were having a nice time, and had struck up a conversation with a guy who claimed to be an Army soldier stationed at Fort Benning. I'd had the sense he was a weird guy, but a bit lonely. I chatted with him for a bit, then went and talked with some others in the group.

I didn't see it happen, but a girl from the group came up to me and my friend and complained that the soldier had smacked her ass. She was clearly not comfortable being around him and was seeking safety with the larger group. Stunned, I looked over. The guy was still chatting with some in the group, clearly oblivious to this woman's distress. 

I thought about it for a second, then marched over. I explained to him, quite politely, that we were friends trying to catch up, he'd made us uncomfortable, and that he should leave. He apologized, but claimed he had done nothing wrong. I was insistent that he leave. He tried explaining himself, and I walked away from him. He got the hint and left.

I had my fifteen minutes of fame in the little group. The brother of the offended woman admitted he wished he'd have had the guts to go up and do what I did. I didn't say what I was thinking: that I had spent all of my life up till that moment wishing the same thing, loathing myself for my own perceived cowardice.

My conscience is complicated by the fact that I've done stupid, insensitive things to women myself. Hell, I'd smacked a girl on the ass myself, earlier that year. Me and my friends were drunk, one especially brazen friend suggested I do it, and without thinking I found myself swinging.

And I've been smacked on the ass myself, numerous times, by both men and women. The one time it happened to me truly maliciously, from another man, I felt humiliated. I still feel my blood boil when I think about it. I still wish I'd have turned right around and socked him.

I still wish I thought about how that experience made me feel before I smacked that women on her ass in that bar in Budapest.

"You're still mad." 

I thought about my girlfriend's words. "Yes, I'm still mad. I think maybe it's hard for you to understand, but there's still adrenaline coursing through my veins. I don't think it's sunk in for you what happened back there. Two guys invited themselves into your friend's apartment. No one wanted them there. And yet they were still with us in your friends apartment. So, yes, I'm still mad. I'm not mad at you, or at your friend. But this event has profoundly shaken me."

And it had. How did it come to that? And yes, what if I had not been there? What might have happened? 

We see each day a new story of women who didn't feel capable saying no to men who were in a position of power over them. And we need women to feel capable saying no. 

At the same time, the willful ignorance displayed by my girlfriend and her friend distressed me. How could they not see what was going on? There's only one reason a guy goes back to a girl's place at 2:30 in the morning. It is to have sex. Women know this too. And yet, this willful ignorance still persists. I say this, hard as it is to believe, without excusing any behavior from the men. You can see the same willful ignorance in the moment in many of the high profile abuse and harassment cases that came out over the past couple of years.

These two women- my girlfriend and her friend- did not feel comfortable saying no, and more distressingly, did not even feel the need to say no until the men were already in an apartment with them, when it was  precisely the hardest for them to say no.

What might have happened, indeed, had I not been there? My girlfriend and her friend clearly had no intention of drawing boundaries with those men- else they would have never made it into the apartment. Once you allow someone to cross your boundaries once, it gets progressively harder to stop them the next time.

Most guys have good hearts and want to treat women respectfully. And despite the story I've told, I have no way of knowing for sure what the two guys would have done, what their intentions were, and whether or not they would respect a "no" or even be attuned enough to the women to know whether or not to even try anything. But the point here is that the continued silence of the two women made it a moot point. All they had to do was continue to be willfully ignorant and pretend that what was happening around them was not happening.

And, I admit it, there was a part of me that wondered if my girlfriend (and her friend) actually wanted something to happen with them. That would be one explanation for their behavior.

"But I can tell you're mad at me."

I thought about it some more. I typically would have assured her I was not mad to avoid an argument. We'd been arguing too much recently. But as on fire as I was feeling, I literally felt no desire or capacity for deceit, no matter how insignificant it might seem. I felt truly myself. And it started with speaking up in a difficult situation.

"Yes, I am mad at you to a certain extent. I am angry that you do not seem to realize what a difficult situation that was. I am angry that you did not pick up on what was going on, heed my warnings about these guys, and take what was going on seriously until they were already in your friend's flat. They were in her flat. You two had already shown you weren't willing to say no up to that point. When were you going to start saying no?"

Walking up the steep, abandoned street at 3am, my girlfriend protested. "But I had told you she didn't want them there!"
"Yes, after they were already up!"
"No, I told you when they called!"

At that point, all the bottled-up anger came spilling out of me. Icily, calculatingly, I seethed:
"Bullshit. Bullshit. I blame myself for not taking action sooner, but do not lie to me and tell me you said something you did not. That is a fucking cowardly thing to do. Yes, I am venting some of my anger at the situation and at these two guys at you, and I am sorry for that. But do not lie to me about what you said. I told you over and over again I did not like these guys and was not comfortable with them, and you said nothing until they were already in your friend's place."

"But I couldn't have known they were weird! I didn't talk with them!"

Ah, this excuse again. "You were there and you went through the same interactions with them as I did. You cannot pretend you did not pick up on anything. And if you didn't, then that is even more fucking worrisome."

We got home. I checked the door behind us and locked both locks. I took off my jacket, powered into the bathroom, and sat down to have a moment to myself. I wanted to smash something and I wanted to cry. Compared with tonight, everything up to this point felt like a frivolous game. This was the first time I was standing up for someone I really knew and loved, where the stakes seemed real. I felt anger and raw energy building up in me in a way I hadn't felt consistently since I was a child, when I was taught that feeling this way was wrong. That I shouldn't feel this. 

That feeling it made me a bad man.

I walked out onto the balcony of the apartment, still trying to make sense of what happened, still trying to understand the events of the night and the reaction of my girlfriend. I felt deeply troubled by what had happened that night. But the overwhelming sense I couldn't escape was just how goddamned alive and purposeful I felt. And it only came from speaking up, in the moment, in a situation that would have been easiest to run from. It's a lesson I won't forget. By not speaking up, I am complicit in what is unfolding around me. When I speak up, I have at least discharged the responsibility I have in the moment. I have imbibed an antidote to future remorse. I do not want to babysit other people's experience, I have a hard enough time with my own. Perhaps next time I'll speak up sooner. Perhaps it will be easier with practice. But if it were easy, it wouldn't be a meaningful thing to do.  

For whatever reason, my friends that night did not want to speak up.

I couldn't sleep, and only felt the desire to do something, to create, to testify, to mark time. And so I find myself writing this, trying to make sense of what happened, trying to understand my reaction to it. 

I didn't write a single article for my blog for nearly 6 months this year. As it turned out, I spent 3 months traveling around Europe in a fun but in many ways ill-fated voyage. And after that, I was busy writing a book about that very trip.

I have few illusions about my writing ability- I am a decent writer, probably better than most, but certainly no Shakespeare or even a Stephen King. And the idea of writing a book always seemed so... presumptuous. As in, if you're going to write a book, it had better be a damn good book, about something important. 

During the trip in Europe a friend mentioned offhandedly that I should write a book about it because it was such a great story. That was thanks mainly to a sequence of crazy, absurd events that transpired. But her comment must have planted a seed in my mind- I don't remember thinking about turning the trip into a book before that. But by the end of the adventure I was determined to write the book. I didn't really ever make a conscious decision to do so, I more just had a raw, overpowering feeling that I had to write it. For myself more so than for anyone else.

That begs the question, why try and publish it if it is just for myself? And, why did I feel so compelled to write it in the first place?

There are a few interrelated answers. First, if I'd never intended to share it with the wider world, there would have been no reason or desire to edit it, shape it, and improve it. Writing requires clarity of thought, but as I've found with the book I wrote, that clarity of thought sometimes only comes through after the fifth revision, after struggling and cajoling and fighting with a passage or paragraph for hours, knowing that others will be reading it and it can't be sloppy like a private journal entry might. Indeed, the book's been revised and edited a half-dozen times, and at this point I am just waiting on friends and family to read through it and give me feedback on what can be improved, what is good as-is, and most nerve-wrackingly of all, if it is a good book, interesting and nice to read.

Second, being presumptuous or not, I think it is an amusing story that others might enjoy, even if no one other than my friends and family decide to read it (though considering how hard it is to find someone willing to read through the drafts to give me feedback, I wonder even about that!). And I tried to make it the kind of book I'd like to read. What I mean by that is, if I wrote it well enough, it's more than just a travel memoir, but also a bit of an essay on travel, identity, and inspiration.

Third, and importantly for me, is that this is the first big self-initiated and self-directed creative project I've ever set out on and seen through to its end. The realization shocked me when I had it earlier this week, but it is true. Every other major creative endeavor I've undertaken has been at the behest or initiative of others: parents, teachers, professors, employers. 

I take pride in having spent a great many years, and much effort, turning myself into as much of a self-starter as possible. Whether by nature or nurture, I was not born that way. So the very act of writing a complete, 300 page-long book, editing it, revising it, and (hopefully) self-publishing it, is a huge milestone for me. I needed to write the book. I decided to write the book, and I did so. It took a month's worth of long days filled with frenzied writing, and many more months of protracted and painful editing, and there are probably more months of editing ahead. But I don't, and didn't, have anyone looking over my shoulder, dangling a carrot or shaking a stick, to make sure I wrote the book. And the more time I spent hammering away at the rapidly blooming pages, the more it seemed like what I was really hammering away on was myself. 

In some weird way, writing and finishing my book felt like a rite of initiation into something that I'm not quite sure what to call. For lack of anything better, let's say that I feel initiated as a self-starter and self-driver. It is a pleasant feeling.

Fourth, and finally, writing this book has helped me not only feel comfortable with writing, and with my writing, but also realize that writing is one of the few things I truly and deeply enjoy. While I always knew I wanted to write, a deep-seated writer's block prevented me from ever taking that idea seriously or even getting around to writing something beyond personal journal entries, let alone something others might read one day. Writing this book has opened the floodgates, as it were: I have several more ideas for what I think would make interesting books, and have already started on a second project. In fact, the research I was doing for the second book was precisely what sparked the idea for this piece, the realization that the first book was my first self-directed and self-initiated creative project.

So that is why I am writing a book. It has been a humbling, exciting, anxiety-inducing experience, and one I wouldn't trade for anything in the world.

Dillon Dakota Carroll
Dhaka, Bangladesh

​I came back about two weeks ago after spending a week and half in Japan with my family. One of my sisters lives in Chiba, and she got married on the 4th! It was a beautiful ceremony.

We spent a week before the wedding touring around some of Japan's most famous sights. Because there were 22 of us (a lot of the bride and grooms friends came from the US for the wedding, too!) we rented a charter bus to take us around for the week before the wedding. My sister and her fiancée planned the trip to a tee, so the whole thing went incredibly smoothly. And even though I'd been to visit my sister in Japan for Christmas 2012, it seemed like most of what we saw was completely new.

All in all, it was an awesome trip that we all had a blast on. So thanks to my sister and her new husband, and I wish them the best on their new life together! And in honor of the excellent trip they organized, here are my top five memories from the whole thing.

 A 600-year-old Shinto shrine a short drive away from Fuji-san itself. Of all the temples and shrines we visited on the trip, this was definitely my favorite. It's not crowded like the Meiji temple (located in the heart of Tokyo) or Toshogu (a world heritage site), so I could enjoy the tranquility of the space more. And is it tranquil! To get to it, you pass under the first Shinto gateway and onto a long, unpaved footpath through a forest of Japanese cedars, flanked by mossy stone lanterns. The walk there seems to quiet the mind and prepare the spirit for the shrine itself. At the end of the footpath, a bridge takes you gently over a brook that flows so smoothly that it whispers rather than babbles. It is the perfect transition into the shrine complex itself, which seems so much at ease and in rapport with the forest and the stream that it would be hard to imagine one without the other. By the time you reach it, you're now attuned to the spirituality and majesty designed into the shrine. I'd say it is hard to visit the shrine and not feel spiritually cleansed afterwards. Traditional Japanese architecture and landscaping was truly genius in this respect.

​About halfway through the trip we stayed for a night at an inn on the Kinugawa, or Angry Ogre, river. The place was both a traditional Japanese inn and a hot springs bath. It was an incredibly pleasant experience because, besides being relaxing, the whole thing was very immersive. The rooms don't have any Western-style furniture. Instead, guests sit on the floor on low tables and sleep on futons. They brought us Japanese-style robes to wear while we were at the inn . My sister told me what they were called, but I forgot to write down the names. Anyway, once we got checked in, we headed down to the hot springs baths. This being a Japanese hot springs, that meant segregated baths for men and women, as they can only be used while naked. Once you get used to it, it's pretty awesome- especially the views over the Angry Ogre river. When we arrived, it had just started to sprinkle, so we chose the outdoor bath over the indoor one. The softly cascading rain made a comfortable contrast to the hot springs.
After drying off and changing back into our robes, it was time for dinner, again in a very traditionally Japanese fashion. That meant again sitting on the floor as they brought out tray after tray of food: all kinds of raw fish, fermented vegetables, soups, and rice. Many in the group were turned off by how "weird" (to us) most of the food was, but this was easily my favorite meal because of the whole experience that went into it. All said, I could have easily spent a week at that place!

​This was the closest thing the groom got to a bachelor's party. Basically, all the guys went one night to sing Karaoke at an all-you-can-drink karaoke place. Unlike in the US, in Japan you rent a private room by the hour or half-hour for your party and they bring whatever snacks and drinks you order directly to you. And since it was all-you-can-drink, we kept the drinks coming. I lost count of how many rounds we ordered, but even without them we would have had a great time. The groom's friends visiting from the US, five guys in all, were old friends and had no problem letting go and just having a good time- one of the good things about having a private room! That set the mood for the whole night, and soon we were all dancing, crooning out lyrics, and laughing hysterically.
Afterwards we went back to the hotel around midnight, but somehow me and one of my brother-in-laws wound up at a late night Ramen restaurant just around the corner, where we had a surprisingly deep conversation about the meaning of life. I say that given how much we drank, to anyone who understood English at the restaurant we must have been pretty funny. He and I laughed about it the next morning (me with a horrendous hangover). But you know what? Our Ramen Shop Philosophizing was a great way to end the night.

Nikko Edo is a theme park made to look like a 17th century Japanese village. Though the park was aimed at kids, we still had a good time here! We went the day after the Inn & Hot Springs, and the weather was perfect: sunny, warm and breezy.
I liked it because of how interactive it was. We learned the basics of katana fighting, archery, shuriken-throwing, and even dueled with "samurai" in the streets. A couple of the girls in our party dressed up in Kimonos, and a few of us guys went on a ninja-training obstacle course that we failed miserably at.
It was also fun for me because I was finishing up Shogun, the book by James Clavell set in early 17th Century Japan. So I could actually walk through a "17th Century village"- in theme park form, granted, but fun and enjoyable nonetheless.
Since I mentioned Shogun- I started reading on the airplane to Japan and I'd say it made the whole trip more enjoyable. Besides being an excellent book in its own right, it also gave a lot of insight into the history of Japan and where modern Japanese culture evolved from. Highly recommended read, especially if you're planning on visiting Japan!

I'm running out of sisters to watch get married off. Plus, there's something about seeing a sister (or any loved one, for that matter) walking down the aisle that just makes the tears flow.
It was a Western-style wedding, which apparently are very popular in Japan, held at a place called Camelot Hills in Omiya. The place tries to be a replica of an old manor-house, which a decently large chapel inside for the actual wedding ceremony. I'm not sure how faithful of a replica it is, but it was a beautiful venue.
The wedding process, based on what my sister described, is very straightforward in Japan: you pay a lot of money to a place like Camelot Hills, and they basically take care of everything for you. For example, Camelot Hills took care of the catering, DJ and MC, photography and videography, the minister, set-up and clean-up, and more. They helped my sister find translators to interpret during the reception and after-party (the ceremony itself was only in English). It was the job of one staff member to follow my sister around the whole night and constantly fix her makeup, redo her hair, and adjust her dress for photos. They had shuttle buses going to-and-from Omiya, right near our hotel, to make it easy to get there.
All in all, I was impressed with how smooth the venue made the whole thing- Except for having a shuttle bus drive off at the end of the night with all my things on board! But to their credit, the venue was great about arranging to have the bus drop them back off to me.
One last thing worth mentioning that was fantastic about my sister's wedding- the desert bar they had at the afterparty. Besides having a station where guests could make smores (the bride and groom met at a bonfire in Oklahoma), they had a mouthwatering array of sweets that made me feel like Charlie in the Chocolate Factory- on top of the wedding cake, by the way.
My favorite? A chocolate mousse topped with strawberry sauce, covered in gold flakes (yes, real gold) with a stick of chocolate stuck in the top. The thought that I was eating real gold made the dish taste even more decadent.

Thanks again to my sister and her new husband for the amazing time we all had!

Dillon Dakota Carroll
Dhaka, Bangladesh

From my apartment, I descend onto the side street I live on. It is a dirt road, often filled with puddles from yesterday's rainstorm. The guard salutes me. So many guards, because there are so many people, and they need some way to earn their living. There are so many, there seem to be guards for the guards. But this one, unlike most, actually has a uniform. Crisp and blue, police-like. Always smiling and kind.

Five story buildings loom overhead, in various states of dilapidation. One can actually hear birds chirping, and with the soft wet dirt underneath, it all lends itself to a florestral sensation, despite the lack of greenery. But this street is deceiving in its peacefulness- it is a dead-end road, so only residents come down it, many of whom pass the day in the street, just sitting and watching, as birds on a telephone line.

100 yards to go, and I'm on the main street, one of the principle arteries connecting Gulshan, the embassies, and Banani. I wish I didn't have to use it. Because as soon as the road changes from dirt to pot-holed concrete, the obstacle course begins.

Hundreds of people- street urchins, businessmen, old beggars, students, shopkeepers, street vendors, guards, police- crowd the sidewalk, the sidewalk that ends and begins abruptly and that, if I'm not careful, could easily lead me to step (or fall) into the open stormwater channels that stink of rot and feces. Some walk, some stop, some haggle for a handout, some crouch down to relieve themselves in the stormwater drains, adding to the trash and muck already filling them. As I weave around the people, sometimes passing into the road, I duck to avoid the tangle of telecom cables that droop over the sides of the street. Hundreds of them, one for each person on the street, it seems. Swarms of rickshaw drivers and beggars buzz around, each hoping for a bit of money.

Trees sprout miraculously out of the sidewalk, the paving having been done meticulously around them, the bricks laid right up against the tree trunk. The trees here must feel strangled, but the green is welcome in a city of neutered colors: grays and browns and tans.

I walk past a tea walla. A small crowd is gathered around the rusty cart, drinking tea and smoking, as the walla deftly and expertly mixes his elixir of sugar, condensed milk, and tea, all for ten cents. Plastic bags packed with cheap pastries hang from the roof of the stall or sit in plastic bins on the counter space, and crushed cigarettes and plastic wrappers litter the ground around the tea walla like a Persian carpet, attesting to his success.

I cross a road, immersing myself in the impossibly loud traffic, each vehicle honking in unison, rickshaws adding to the cacophony with their bicycle bells, motorcycles growling past menacingly. The cars, jockeying for position, ignore my presence until the last millisecond. It is a harrowing game of chicken that often leaves me leaping out of the way of an impatient driver.

Safely crossed to the other side, I continue down the side of the street, which feels more alive than dead. Indeed, when entering Dhaka, one has the impression of entering the belly of the whale. Nowhere else will you find every square foot of the street so efficiently used, and not just to get around. There are all the street vendors: the tea wallas, of course, and food stalls (or even bowls of food set on a stool): puffed rice, boiled eggs, fujka, spicy diced vegetables with egg, pastries of all sorts, and even cooks making biryani rice in the street; there are the cigarette stalls and the stands where you can recharge your phone, there are shoe shiners and garment sellers, the ubiquitous beggars, the people-watchers, the smokers, the under-employed (those whose job consists of sitting around all day long), the drivers waiting for their employer, the rickshaw drivers on break, the snappily-dressed office workers returning from lunch. It is an electron cloud, cracking with energy and moving too quickly and chaotically to pinpoint with any accuracy. 

Slightly out of breath with it all, I hurry to my destination, one more cell in the organism that is the street of Dhaka.

After my previous article on the ten craziest things that have happened to me so far in Bangladesh, I wanted to write a follow-on top ten list of the good things about Dhaka. I did have to think outside the box quite a bit to come up with ten, but here they are:

1. The street food in all its varieties. Costing anywhere from ten to fifty cents, it's both tasty and affordable. As long as you're not too squeamish about hygiene, that is. A big favorite here, especially among Bangladeshi girls, is a treat called Fujka. It's hard to describe it, but imagine a sweet and spicy filling inside a fried, tortilla chip like crust. I personally really like to get a snack (I don't know what it's called) made of an egg mashed up with onions, garlic, chilis, and other vegetables. They wrap it in an old flyer and give you a business card cut in half to use as a spoon. And while there are Western-style cafes where you can buy coffee for $3 a pop, the original Bangladeshi "cafes" are small roadside tea stalls. The tea costs six taka (about ten cents). There you can see Bangladeshis congregating, milling about, chatting, and relaxing.
2. Most people here are very kind. I've almost never had a problem stopping people to ask for help or for directions, and many times bystanders have helped me out spontaneously by translating when I was struggling to communicate with someone who didn't speak much English. People here can be so nice that I've literally been spoonfed by a complete stranger! And of course, there are the small acts of kindness, like when a restaurant worker gave me a free bottle of water when I was dehydrated after a workout, or when the tea stall workers take out a stool for you to sit on.
3. People here tend to be very optimistic, which I think is a good thing. They know their country has many problems, but they also recognize that those problems afford many opportunities, as well. Many times in conversation Bangladeshis have affirmed that now is the time to be in Bangladesh, when it is really starting to grow and take off. And they are always thinking about ways to take advantage of that opportunity to improve their situation! A staple conversation piece, at least with middle-class Bangladeshis, is about their plans to launch some kind of business or venture and made oodles of money. So far I've had Bangladeshis pitch me ideas like a paintball field, fish exporting, a garments industry middleman business, and a visa arranging service for Bangladeshis wanting to travel in the Americas.
4. Necessities are very inexpensive. At a street restaurants you can get a big lunch for anywhere from $1 to $3, and bottled water costs maybe 25 cents. Clothing is dirt cheap as well, mainly because Bangladesh makes so much of the world's garments. The factories routinely produce overruns or stock that doesn't quite meet the quality control standards of their clients. Usually, they are obligated by contract to destroy these, but most find their way into stalls on the street where you can buy them on the cheap. Good shirts can be had for less than $5, and pants rarely cost more than $10. Oh, and if you're a cell phone addict, the rates here are very affordable. I loaded my phone with $2.5 of credit about 3 weeks ago and I still have almost a dollar in credit left.
5. Dhaka pushes the expatriates together. I've met a few really cool people here from all over the world: New Zealand, Italy, Morocco, Hong Kong, etc. And perhaps because it can be so hard to meet new people in a small expat community in a place like Dhaka, you wind up getting to know your friends much better than you probably would at home. As an aside, one New Zealand woman I met works in one of the expat clubs as a hair stylist. She offered to cut my hair for free because she hated my haircut so much. She said it was worth it just so she wouldn't have to see it all the time!  This was right after I'd had my hair cut for $2 by a Bangladeshi barber who didn't understand my instructions very well, so I blame it on him. Teasing aside though, she did it free of charge because we'd become friends. I doubt I could have struck up a friendship with someone like her anywhere else but in Dhaka!
6. Western environmentalists could learn a thing or two about recycling from Bangladeshis. While Dhaka in particular has a major pollution problem, Bangladeshis are kings of recycling. Nothing here gets thrown away, but is rather passed around until it is falling apart. Then it is fixed until and used again and fixed until it is beyond repair, when it is dismembered and the pieces get reused to repair other second hand (or third, or fourth, or fifth) hand items. For example, I was chided by a colleague for throwing away an old hair trimmer that had stopped working. I had bought it for maybe $15 in Europe, and to me it was a cheap enough device that when it stopped working, I threw it away. My colleague rescued it and promptly tried selling it second-hand. This applies for anything: cars, fridges, air conditioners. Heck, the buses here get so much life squeezed out of them that they seem to be more rust than metal.
7. You can get away with a lot. In the US, we say death and taxes are the only two certainties in life. Unless you're in Bangladesh- then the only certainty is death. Seriously, it seems like there's very little that can't be accomplished with a bit of money to grease the grooves of the machine. Don't want to wait in line, or want to get an application fast-tracked? Cough up a little bit of money and the wait disappears. This corruption in general isn't a good thing, and I debated about including it in this list, but the option is there if you're willing to take advantage of it. Foreigners in particular seem to get a bit of a free pass. Again, not a good thing in general, but the discrimination definitely exists, and in this case, it can work in your favor. For example, when I flew into Dhaka I was the only foreigner on the flight. While everyone had to stand in line to get their bags checked, I was waved through security without so much as passing my bags through an x-ray machine.
8. While Dhaka is a huge city of many millions in a country of 160 million, it is easy to meet "important" people and move up the social ladder quickly. In the short time I've been here, I've been introduced (albeit briefly) to top level government ministers and some pretty successful business people in the country. Ultimately I think it's because the upper class and upper-middle class are such a small group, you've got to rub elbows with important people at some point just because everybody knows everyone else. This rule extends to other fields, too. For example, a musician I met here mentioned that because of how small and nascent the music scene is in Dhaka, it's easy to get gigs even as a mediocre musician.
9. The idea of exploring Bangladesh outside of Dhaka! In general, Dhaka is a difficult city to live in as a foreigner: it's noisy, polluted, hard to get around, and decently expensive. But I've routinely heard Bangladeshis say that Dhaka is the worst part of Bangladesh. That makes me eager and hopeful to explore the countryside, something I haven't yet been able to do because of the nature of my work here. But in the next month I'll have the opportunity to verify the veracity of this claim. Until then, it's comforting to think that Dhaka is not representative of Bangladesh as a whole.
10. If you can carve out a good life in Dhaka, then you can live a good life anywhere! Like #9, this one is a bit of a cop-out, because in a way I'm more making a statement about how Dhaka is such a difficult place to live in as a foreigner. Indeed, there's no sense pretending like it is a great city. But that doesn't mean I'm not enjoying my time here, or learning a lot. And that's exactly what I mean with this point. Yes, Dhaka is a difficult place to live in. But in spite of that, a good, enjoyable life can be made here. The city and its people have a lot to teach. At least, I am learning a lot about myself and the world. To me, these are empowering thoughts. If I can carve out a niche for myself and lead a fulfilling life in Dhaka, then I can probably do the same and make the most of my life anywhere else in the world. I suppose what I'm saying is that a good life (however you want to define that!) is location-agnostic.

Shesh- finished!

After a half-year long hiatus from posting on this blog, I'm back at it! Though, to be fair, I have been writing- and editing- a lot, just on a new project. Hopefully I will be able to share it soon.

Since I last wrote a blog post, a lot's happened. Chiefly, I moved to Bangladesh for a 2-year long position with an economic development company. The job didn't work out, but it did give me quite a few memorable experiences. Here are ten of the crazier things that have happened so far!

If the list seems slanted towards the bad things, it's only because I wanted to share the crazy anecdotes and hard-to-believe occurrences that come with living in a new place and culture, before everything becomes normal and mundane. 

1. Getting my smartphone stolen on my third day in Bangladesh. I was at a posh event at a swanky convention center, and I left my bag at our table with my colleagues for about five minutes. Unfortunately the lady sitting next to me (opposite my new colleagues) turned out to be a famous thief. We saw a post on Facebook a few days after she stole my phone. The post claimed she'd been doing this for years and had stolen quite a bit. I suppose I was lucky I didn't lose my wallet, too! The worst thing about losing my phone is that it was what I used to take pictures. So apologies if this post is lacking in imagery- now you know why!
2. Eating in street restaurants. And by street restaurants, I mean makeshift eateries set up in a muddy patch of land 10 feet from the dust and grime of a busy road, with a tarp for a roof and plastic tables and chairs covered in swarming flies. Giant vats of dahl, curry, biryani, and more simmer on gas stoves right in front of you. Once you sit down, the cloud of flies parts momentarily and the servers bring you plates of rice, curry, fish, eggs, vegetables, and more. You wash your hands right at your chair, with a jug of water they provide, and you'd better wash your hands, because you'll be eating with your right hand like an authentic Bangladeshi. You mix up your curry and rice into little balls with your fingers and then use your thumb like a lever to shovel it into your mouth.
   It's fun once you get the hang of it- it makes me feel like a little kid again.
3. Sharing food with Bangladeshis. One night, when I went to the street restaurant I almost always went to for dinner, I was invited to sit down at the same table as a stony-faced youth. As soon as I sat down, he offered me some of his chicken and rice. Being vegetarian, I declined. He insisted, so I gingerly picked up some of the rice with my right hand and ate it. "Please, have some more." I declined, as I had my own food on the way. I began chowing down on my dahl as soon as it arrived, and was promptly chided by my new friend for eating too fast.
4. That was nothing, though, compared to the very friendly guy on the street who spoon fed me puffed rice. In most places on the street there are tiny stalls where you can buy different treats for anywhere from 10 to 30 Taka (10 to 40 cents, more or less). Sometimes the sellers don't even have a stall, they just carry around the ingredients in a big bowl they carry on their head. Anyway, I stopped in front of a guy selling puffed rice mixed with lime, chili, and veggies. He would mix it all together, then put it into a little cup made of an old flyer stapled into a cone shape. To top it off, he stuck a business card, cut in half, into the top of it. That's your spoon.
   Anyway, someone who had just bought the puffed rice treat saw me eying the food. He offered me his paper cup full of food for me to try. Not wanting to offend, I scooped a bit off with the included business card spoon and handed it back. "Tasty!" I said. "Thanks!" "No, no. You didn't get enough!" And before I could even think about it, he'd scooped up some more. My jaw dropped- is he really going to spoon feed me? He deftly deposited the business card full of puffed rice into my newly opened mouth. All that was missing was the airplane sound effect.
5. Narrowly dodging motorcycle-riding thieves. One night I was going to the gym in a rickshaw. It's night out, and though we're on one of the main roads connecting Gulshan 2 to Gulshan 1, there isn't much traffic. I'm already in a bad mood from a bad day at work, so I have my head buried in my kindle to distract myself before my workout.
   I hear a motorcycle hit the accelerator beside me and as I look up, I see bike with passenger come veering at my rickshaw from my right side. I'm staring right into the greedy eyes of the passenger, rapidly approaching, with his arms spread wide to grab my kindle. Instinctively, I pull my body back, and I feel his fingers barely touch my e-reader before slipping off.
   The motorcycle speeds away like a coon chased by hounds, and all I can think to do is stand up in the rickshaw, triumphant, and shout obscenities at the would be thieves.
   Right after that, my rickshaw got hit by a car. Lovely night. (That was actually the second time a rickshaw I'd been riding in had been hit by a car).
6. Public Nudity. One day me and a colleague were coming back from Dhanmondi to our office in Gulshan 2. Now, without traffic, it's perhaps a thirty minute drive. Traffic was bad that day, so it was more like an hour and a half. To make matters worse, I was riding on the back of my colleagues motorcycle as a passenger. We were stopped in traffic for what seemed like ages, sweating terribly. An old man wandered by wearing nothing but a lunghi, or man-skirt. He stopped right next to me and my friend on our motorcycle, a blank expression on his face and his eyes vacant. Without warning, he dropped his man-skirt and stoodnaked in front of rush hour traffic. After about five minutes of airing out his private bits, he refastened his man-skirt and continued on his way.
7. Speaking of motorcycles, I've ridden three to a motorcycle now several times. That can be rather harrowing, especially given how small Bangladeshi motorcycles are! No big choppers here, only tiny 150cc bikes.
8. Having first hand experience with corruption. I had to come to Bangladesh on a thirty day arrival visa. Since I would be working in the country for potentially up to two years, I needed to get it extended. Part of that process involves a police interview to make sure that you are actually here to do what you say you're here to do- in my case, to do business. My colleagues, who were working with me through every step of this process, filled me in on how it works.
   The cop will come for the interview at your home, they told me. You'll offer him some tea, but he'll decline. "I'm hungry, I'm not thirsty. I'm hungry, bhai (brother)". You then take out half your bribe (500 Taka or about $6 in our case) and stick it in his shirt pocket, patting his shoulder and saying "here you go". He'll then say, "no, I'm still hungry." At which point you'd take out the other 500 Taka and hope he still wasn't hungry after that.
   Ultimately, we wound up having to go to the police station for the interview. The cop was initially very hostile and kept asking me the same question, "what are you doing here?" We kept giving the same answer- I'm here to explore partnership options with local startups- but it was obvious he wanted to cause problems. Until my colleague took him aside and stuck a couple 500 Taka notes in his shirt pocket. Then he was all smiles.
9. Being asked to falsify data for a report to a major NGO. I don't want to get into too many details on this one. I will say it was in a professional setting, and I was very taken aback. I replied that I wasn't going to falsify data of any kind. The person who proposed this then corrected himself- he would falsify the data for me, I would just have to put it in the report. Um, no thanks.
10. The many money-making schemes of my friends here. One thing about many Bangladeshis is that they're always dreaming about how to make more money. For example, my current roommate has ten different schemes he wants me to get involved in. The one that seemed the most promising?
    Writing invitation letters for Bangladeshis seeking American visas. Apparently you can charge 3,000 USD, if not more to help someone get an American visa. And Latin American visas are quite popular too.

I hope you enjoyed the list! I am having quite an interesting time here in Bangladesh- there are things both good and bad. More coming soon!

Happy new year, everyone! 2015 is officially here. What a year it'll be.

Here's some of my personal highlights from the year:

Big Milestones and Successes:

• Launched the Agile Product Design program at CCEW, and led the first team of interns (Levate was the product we invented, in case you're curious).
• Planned and organized the 2014 Social Entrepreneurship Symposium at OU, and hosted Paul Polak, a personal hero of mine
• Finished the OKC Marathon, as well the the July 4th OKC GoRuck Challenge 
• Graduated from the OU Summer Accelerator with Levate
• Quit my job to work full time on Levate
• Became a certified Black Belt in Extreme Manufacturing in a workshop with Joe Justice in Seattle. Met Steve Pavlina (another personal hero of mine) at his Lifestyle Design workshop in Las Vegas.
• One sister got married and another got engaged
• Did a 5 day hike on Inca Trails to Machu Picchu with the family. Special shout-out to my Dad for organizing the trip!
• Ran two workshops abroad, in Lima, Peru, and thus made my first income as an entrepreneur.

Biggest failures:

• Levate still has no funding. We did not anticipate it would take this long, and the frustrating part for us is that a lot of what we're doing right now is waiting on other people.
• The Levate Kickstarter was unsuccessful.
• Injured myself in the Marathon. Will probably have to have a minor surgery on my knee to fix part of the damage.
• My friend Eric Morrow and I tried, and nearly succeeded, to get a pilot language immersion dorm up and running at OU. We got shut down for not getting permission first.
• I tried to design my first "muse" (low input income generating business that frees you up to focus on non-income generating activities) and failed. Looking forward to trying a new idea though!

Favorite Moments:

• Spending both Solstices around bonfires with the family in Prague, Oklahoma
• Hanging out with my sister, her fiancee, and my Dad in the Lima airport before they headed home
• Reconnecting with old friends and making new ones
• Right after we made our first successful funding pitch. Ethan and I were in Tulsa, and were stunned and excited. It was like a jolt of electricity in our nerves. While Ethan drove us home from Tulsa, I sat in the passenger seat and typed out the letter of intent we would send to our investor, reading out loud to get feedback from Ethan.
• 1 Million Cups presentation with Ethan in Tulsa. We work well together, and presentations are no exception. The people at 1MC are wonderful and very helpful and we had a great time giving the talk.
• Getting up at 4am on a clear, crisp night to watch a lunar eclipse
• Camping in Turner Falls and getting righteously drunk around a campfire with my friend Michael
• Seeing the awesome response from students to our the immersion dorm Eric and I tried to set up.
• Starting this blog. My favorite article? This one.
• Exploring Las Vegas with new friends at the Lifestyle Design Workshop
• Dancing with the family and DJ'ing at my sister's wedding
• Auditing the class on Italian Literature. In particular, the class on Dante's Inferno was spectacular. Restored my faith in Universities.
• Friday morning breakfasts every other week with the accelerator crew.
• When the Cadre of my Goruck challenge gave us our patches for finishing.
• Spending 2 days camping in the woods by myself from December 29th-31st. It was a great way to reflect and prepare for the new year!

Favorite Books from 2014:

• A Pattern Language and A Timeless Way of Building. Changed the way I thought, and about much more than architecture and design.
• The Alabaster Girl. I will forever divide my life into before, and after reading this book.
• Four Hour Work Week and Four Hour Chef. In the words of my friend Eric, "it's a game-changer". Read it. Let it change your life.
• Microadventures and Access all Areas. Life on your own terms.
• The Art of Possibility: Very inspiring. Parts of it made me cry. Shout-out to Helene Hipp, who gifted it to me!
• Little Bets. I debated on putting this on the list versus Nail it Then Scale it. In the end, I went with Little Bets because it shows how to take the agile entrepreneurial mind-set and apply it across fields as diverse as architecture, comedy, animated films, and of course business.
• Secrets of Power Negotiators. This book tells you why to negotiate, and how to do it well. So do yourself a favor and learn how to ask for what you want in life!
• Log From the Sea of Cortes. Renewed my desire to visit Baja California, and Steinbeck's portrait of Ed Ricketts is moving.

Favorite Movies I saw in 2014 (not necessarily released in 2014... I'm waaay behind on most things popular culture)

• Interstellar
• The Secret life of Walter Mitty
• The Grand Budapest hotel
• Amelie
• Cloud Atlas
• Django Unchained
• The Watchmen

Here's to an awesome 2015!

This is a follow up to the article I wrote titled, The Art of Being a Guest. The idea is to use this guide to understand your host better from the beginning so you can be the best possible guest. Feel free to adapt it to your own needs if you like.

Hi! I'm really happy to be staying with you. Thanks so much for letting me!
I really try my best to be an awesome guest. For that reason, I want to ask a few quick questions that will help set expectations for me from house orderliness to what you like. And please, give me feedback! If I do something that you don't like, let me know. Most likely I don't even know I'm doing it. I've been accused of being clueless before- consider yourself warned ;)

Just a note about what expectations you can have of me- unless you tell me otherwise, I won't invite myself to meals, or use your food or supplies, for example, if I'm cooking. In the latter case, I'll ask first.

• What are the main rules of the house?
  
• When do you normally go to bed and get up in the morning? When do you leave for work or school? How late would you want me returning? Is it OK to quietly let myself in?
  
• What is your biggest pet peeve about house cleanliness and orderliness? What have previous guests done that has really annoyed you?
  
• On the other hand, describe your favorite guests to me and what they did that made them so awesome.
  
• What do you like to drink, if you drink? What's your favorite cuisine or meal? What's a good day for you to go out to eat, my treat?
  
• Do you want to join me on any sightseeing or adventures, and if so, when? This is just so that we can both be on the same page- any answer is fine! I'd love to do things with you, but I also understand that you have your normal routine going on!
  
• What is your favorite thing in the whole world?