Body Smelting

This story is about simple genius. 

I am not a morning person.  Have I said that before?  It’s an important fact of my life.  11am is really too early. I prefer to sleep until noon or 1 because I don’t usually go to bed until 4am but these days I’m usually up at 11. I like being awake at night; it is quiet and no one bothers me which means I can get a lot of work done.  And this schedule works for me—normally.  My classes don’t start till 2pm.  But sometimes I have to do things with the rest of the world and then it’s a problem.  Last Saturday I had to attend an all-day leadership training at my church that began at 9am.  First of all, scheduling anything at 9am on a Saturday is flat out rude.  Honestly.  Second, scheduling something all day on a Saturday is also rude.  Saturday is everyone’s I-don’t-have-to-do-shit-today day and that is sacred and should not be tampered with.  But I digress.

Since I don’t have a car and am dependent on the T and my own two feet for transportation, getting to my church takes over an hour.  Which means if I need to be there by 9, I need to leave at 7:45, which means I have to get up at 7:30. (Yes. Fifteen minutes is enough time for me to put clothes on and brush my teeth. It’s not rocket science.) But as I might have mentioned before, any hour before 9am is really more like a hypothesis than a fact and I have serious trouble recognizing it as a legitimate reality.  So when Saturday came around and my phone started playing a lively Romanian pop song at 7:30am, as I myself had programmed it to do, I was extremely upset and confused.  I don’t understand why this is happening.  What day is it? What time is it? I rolled over and clumsily checked the time on my phone.  JESUS! It’s 7:30?! What’s happening today?! Am I getting married? Knighted? Did I win a fracking Nobel Prize? Why in god’s name would I get up this early?  Oh . . . leadership training. God, who wants to be a leader? Snooze. Snore. Knowing myself as well as I do, I had actually set three alarms.  Unfortunately, I outsmarted my attempts to outsmart myself by simply turning off the other alarms.

Listen.  I cannot be held responsible for anything I do under the influence of sleep deprivation.  The farther away from 11am it gets the less rational and the more delirious I will be.  7:30 is no man or woman’s land—it’s an equal opportunity wilderness.  7:30 is Cinco-de-Mayo-drunk-can’t-remember-my-name-or-how-many-shots-this-is land.  7:30 is accidently-took-those-doses-of-codine-too-close-together-slipping-into-a-coma land.  Okay?  Luckily, I’m extremely self-aware so I outsmarted my outsmarting my outsmarting myself by asking my roommate to call me and wake me up before she left for her breakfast date.  She actually called me twice, God bless her. She called at 8:30 and I told her in a sleep-drunken slur that I was going late and hung up.  She called me again at 9:15.  At that point, I was at least cognizant enough to know I really needed to get up and get going.  So I got up and stumbled around the apartment for a few minutes . . . got dressed . . . I think I ate a donut but I really can’t remember.  I decided to call a taxi because that would only take twenty minutes as opposed to an hour and a half and I was already late.  So around 9:40 I stumbled down the steps of my apartment and drearily crawled into a cab and muttered—“270 Bridge Avenue.”  I had to repeat it three times before he understood me.  God! It takes so much energy to talk in the morning.

I sat in the back staring into space and clearing the lingering morning phlegm out of my throat.  Several minutes passed before I realized the driver was talking to me.

“Huh?” I inquired, rubbing sleep out of my eyes. He was in the middle of a sentence.

“. . . every day. You don’t need no doctor.” 

“What?”  He repeated himself and said something about a doctor and cold water but I was having trouble focusing and I missed it again. “Sorry . . . what’s that?”

“I hear you cough.  I tell you—you take cold shower everyday, you say adios to doctor.  You never get sick.” It might have been the suggestion that cold showers could ward off illness indefinitely or the sound of “adios” being pronounced with a thick Russian accent but something told me I needed to be fully awake for this.  I snap to pretty quick when I sense something weird or funny is about to happen.  So my middle-aged Russian taxi driver with bizarre medical advice was way better than a pot of coffee. 

“So you take a cold shower every day?”

“Yes.  Cold shower every day.  I never get sick.” 

“That’s crazy maybe I should try it.” I suppressed a grin.

He went on to explain to me how he came to know about this preemptive home remedy.  When he was a boy in Russia he overheard a man asking his friend’s father why he never got sick.  The friend's father told the man that he took a cold shower every day and that was why he never got sick.  So this man went home and took a cold shower. “Next day,” my driver paused for dramatic effect, “he go to hospital.” What?! Uh . . . you’re losin’ me Sasha.

“He went to the hospital?”

“Yes.  Because he don’t go gradual.” Obviously. “You got to go gradual or you get sick. First day: hot.  Next day: less warm.  Then next day: little less warm.  Then: cool. Then, you go cold. You don’t need no doctor.  But you got to go gradual.” 

“Ah. I see. Makes sense.”  About that time there was a young man in a light jacket and scarf walking near the cab and Sasha decided to make an example of him. 

“You see that man?” I nodded. “He need more clothes.  I don’t need.  I have just this jacket all winter,” he pointed to the thin jacket he was wearing. “I don’t get cold you know you take cold shower every day it don’t matter you go outside with no shirt you okay.  You don’t get sick.” 

“That’s pretty amazing.” I had stopped trying to hide my grin just as Sasha spotted another young man with no shirt jogging near our cab.  He was probably twenty-something and as buff as an Abercrombie model. 

“You see that guy?”

“Yeah.” Oh, I’m trakin’ Sasha.

“I run like that guy.  No. I run better than that guy. I run like horse. I forty-five. You know my doctor say I have body of twenty-five year old. I run like horse.”

“Oh, really?” THIS IS AWESOME!

“Yeah. You take cold shower.  You take hot shower.  Then: three to five minutes in the cold water. Every day. You don’t get sick.” 

“Oh, so you take a hot shower first and then switch?”

“Yes. But you got to go gradual . . .”

“Right.”

“ . . . or you go to hospital.” 

“Got it.” The best thing about my cabbie comrade was that I didn’t even have to egg him on.  Completely unbidden he proceeded to layout some pretty complex arguments in defense of the daily cold shower. 

“You know people get sick when the weather change and the temperature change because the pressure and they body get sick.  You change temperature every day you don’t get bothered.” I thought that was convincing enough but he wasn’t done. “You know it’s like the metal.  It’s like the sword.  In the ancient times, when they make the sword, it go in the really hot and then in the really cold and it make the metal you know you can’t break it.” Smelting? “Your body is a sword.” I should smelt myself? “You take cold shower every day you body get strong.”  Yes, he’s saying I should smelt my body. Okay. I’ll take that under advisement.

“I see. That’s true.” He was already making his next point.

“You know in the world of your body the bacteria they get comfortable.  They happy.  They grow.  And you in hot shower all the time they happy in the world of your body.  But you change temperature.  You go cold.  They don’t like they got to go.  You take cold shower they can’t live in the world of your body. They got to go. They don’t like it.”  Damn your impeccable logic, Sasha!

“Huh. I never thought of that.”

“You know—genius thing so simple.” I almost died.  He pointed out the window, “You see the wheels on the car.  You know before they don’t have wheel.  They try to push square thing. It don’t go.  It don’t move easy.  Then. They push round thing. It go easy.  They got the wheel.  Genius thing so simple.” That’s probably exactly how it happened.

Sadly by that time our ride was coming to an end.  I paid him and promised to try taking a cold shower every day to keep myself healthy through the winter.

“You got to go gradual.”

“Right. Gradual. Thanks!”

I laughed so hard later with my friends when I told them about my educational taxi ride—complete with a pretty convincing Russian accent. A few days later my roommate was chopping onions in the kitchen and complaining because they made her cry. 

“Here!” I said. “You have to put the onion root on your head.  If you do that you won’t cry.”  She looked at me like I was insane.  “No, it’s true. I used to cry all the time when I cut onions but I learned this trick from an old Mexican woman. It works I swear to God. I do it all the time and I never cry anymore.  And! It works for everyone I know who’s tried it.” This is all actually true by the way.  You should try it. I know. I was a skeptic too.  So is everyone until they do it.  It will change your whole relationship with onions. I swear.  Anyway, my roommate looks at me and says in her best Russian accent—

“Yeah. You take cold shower every day you don't need no doctor.”

I couldn’t convince her to try the onion-root-on-head-defense against tears.  But I know it works. I have no idea why.  And don’t say it’s a mental thing because I thought it was stupid when I tried it the first time. So you know what? Maybe genius things really are that simple. Maybe there’s something to Sasha’s cold shower theory. Maybe I should try it.  Don’t worry.  I’ll make sure to go gradual. 

Treacherous Vegetables

This story is about unadulterated misery. 

I love miniature things.  Miniature anything.  I love babies because they are mini people.  I love baby animals for the same reason.  I love mini flowers.  I love mini office supplies.  I really love mini food.  It’s just so adorable! OMG! It makes me so happy. I kind of freak out any time I see something adorable—especially mini food.  So a while back I was in the grocery store with a friend standing in front of a giant display of different colored bell peppers when I noticed a little basket of tiny orange bell peppers.  Yes!! I freaked out. They were so cute and I’ve never seen mini bell peppers before. I was so excited. 

Then my friend turns to me and says, “I think those are habanera peppers.”  I deflated like a punctured tire. I stuck out my lip in a pout.

“Are you sure?”

“I’m pretty sure.” 

“Okay I’ll taste one.”  My friend thought this was a bad idea. I ignored him. I picked up the questionable vegetable and pinched off a corner and ate it. 

“Nothing.” I shrugged, “Tastes like a bell pepper.”

“Huh. I guess it’s a bell pepper.”  I got eight. 

I should’ve known something was up when I couldn’t find their picture or price at the self-check out.  I rang them up as normal bell peppers so it came out to like $.24 for the whole lot. That I was stealing from Stop and Shop occurred to neither of us.  Oops.

So I took my little peppers home and admired them for several days before I decided to use them in an omelet.  I got out my mushrooms, onions, cheese and tiny bell peppers and started chopping away.  I saved my little peppers for last to prolong the amount of time I could grin about how adorable they were.  Then finally I had to chop them up and I did—with no gloves of course.  Who needs gloves to chop bell peppers?  I chopped and seeded all eight peppers, diligently scrapping the seeds out with my thumbnails. Yes.  That happened. 

Anyway, as I neared the end of my chopping session a small paper cut on the top of one of my fingers started to burn. Humph. Weird, bell peppers don’t usually . . . I barely touch my tongue to a slice of pepper. Oh shit.

Cut to: I have just vigorously washed my hands eight times when I feel a twitch near my eye and instinctively tug at it with the side of my pinky finger.  Chaos ensues.  I almost drown myself rinsing my eyes because it’s not like I can use my PEPPER SOAKED HANDS to wash them out! I believe that I actually went blind and that God miraculously healed me at some point during the commotion.  And this just proves that God is gracious because yelling “GODDAMNIT!” isn’t exactly the same as praying, “Merciful Savior, heal me please.”  Anyway, that’s most likely what happened.  I can’t actually remember; that’s just my best guess. 

As soon as I was able to see again I googled how to get habanera out of your skin.  Listen.  I took every piece of advice I could find.  It took half a bottle of dish soap, a bowl of lemon juice, a bowl of oatmeal, three bowls of milk, half a can of coffee grounds and twenty-four hours before my hands finally quit burning.  I thought I would really have to take my poor thumbs to the hospital. I scraped. the seeds. out of eight. habanera peppers. with. my. THUMBNAILS! And after hours of washing my hands in ever more desperately inventive ways, I gave up and sat in my bed with my thumbs resting in two little bowls of milk and cried as I tried to think of a time in my life that was even a little bit more pathetic than that moment.  I came up with nothing.  I have never felt so betrayed by a vegetable. 

I can only praise Jesus, God and Allah that I found out those little sacks of hell-fire were not bell peppers before I bit into an omelet full of them.  I don’t think my insurance covers tracheal replacement surgery. 

Since I was having guests the next day, I decided to use the peppers in a pot of Courtbullion but I didn’t cut back on the cayenne either. Luckily, my guests were all Southern or Korean and perfectly happy about the level of spiciness.  That Courtbullion would’ve blown a Bostonian’s head off.

All that to say, I think there is an important lesson here to be learned—LABLE YOUR FRACKING PRODUCE STOP AND SHOP!!

Do Not Fear the Breaking

This story is about the biggest idol of all time. 

Not Billy. God.  I’m talking about God. God is the biggest idol of all time and I don’t mean “celebrity.” It’s ironic really.  C.S. Lewis called God “the great iconoclast.”  For those of you who are not seminarians or Church historians or word nerds, iconoclast means “image breaking.”  Icon—“image.”  Clast—“break.”  There have been many iconoclastic movements throughout Church history usually focused on breaking/removing religious icons/images from worship and the spiritual life of the Church.  Protestants are especially sympathetic to these movements—the Reformation being perhaps the most sweeping iconoclastic movement of all. What Lewis means by calling God the great iconoclast, is that God constantly breaks all of our images of God. Lewis explains: “My idea of God is not a divine idea. It has to be shattered time after time. He shatters it himself. He is the great iconoclast. Could we not almost say that this shattering is one of the marks of his presence?” The irony is that Lewis never understood fully the truth of what he was saying. For there was one image, one idea of God, that for Lewis could never be broken—the image of “He.”  For the iconoclasts of Church history, an image that we refuse to break is no less than an idol because we have ceased to worship God and have begun to worship an image of God.  And yet we have, by and large, as a religion maintained an idolatrous adherence to the image of God as a man.  And that makes God, ironically, the biggest idol of all time. 

I have been an idolater.  I still am and probably will be when I die.  Isn’t the point of spiritual growth to be constantly casting down our idols?  Unless we can really reach perfection in this life, that is a job that will never be done.  And it becomes quite difficult when your most cherished idol is God.  A long time passed before I understood that I saw God poorly. I only knew the Father, Abba, the divine husband-lover. That's who God was to me, end of story.  And I thought he was God, that silly idol.  I thought he was God. But God is so much more and so much less than that piece of shit.  Ezekiel’s words not mine.  That’s what the infamous prophet likes to call idols.  People never translate it into English that way.  They translate the phrase only as ‘idol.’  But there is a Hebrew word for idol and Ezekiel doesn’t use it.  He calls them pieces of shit—“dung pellets” for the less profane.  But Ezekiel had guts.  I think he’d say SHIT and say it loud.  He had no patience with idols—at least the ones he recognized.  So I learned that from him at least: have no patience with idols.  There will always be idols that elude us but when we see one—tear the damn thing down! 

The Father idol has not been an easy one to break--personally.  As a faith community it has been near impossible.  We love it so much.  We fear it or we fear losing it.  Images and symbol systems form us in our bones; they lead us into a way of being not just knowing.  The Father idol isn’t just an abstract idea; it is something we know and believe down to our toes.  And rooting it out and breaking it up takes a long time and a lot of effort.  But God helps us if we let Her.

For one thing, She speaks. Sometimes I wish I heard an audible voice, speaking clearly and directly, answering me in speeches or simple yeses and noes.  But God does not speak that way. You know the story about Moses on the mountaintop looking for God in the fire and the earthquake and the whirlwind?  And God is nowhere to be found, but after the whirlwind, there comes a still, small voice.  And that still, small voice was God. Hearing God is hearing a voice that cuts through the whirlwind in your spirit with its profound stillness. Sometimes there are no words but there is a voice nonetheless. Sometimes there are images, feelings, and movements even, which speak profound meaning without really speaking.  God isn’t flashy like a fire. God isn’t violent like an earthquake.  God is so much more deeply present than that.  God is as close as our skin. So, She communicates in the intimacy of a whisper. Shouting would be absurd.

One day I told God to fuck off.  She stuck around anyway.  Typical.  She just acted like I wasn’t speaking to Her but to someone else.  When I looked into Her face She seemed so proud of me and I realized She was right—I was speaking to someone else.  I was speaking to Piece-of-Shit God. And there was a moment of breaking.  This is how God helps us chip away at our idols—by being Present.

Several years ago I was reading one of the Twilight books and thinking how horrible the dialogue was when God said to me—“I love you kind of like that.” 

God, this dialogue is absurd so if you’re trying to insult me—kudos. I felt God smile.

“You know what I mean.” I did. She meant—“My heart aches that way sometimes because I love you so much.” I groaned.

Edward Cullen is a control freak! Are you gonna put me under house arrest if I start hanging out with someone you don’t like?

“No, no.” She replied, “I said “kind of.” I will never try to control you. As if I could.” She smiled and winked. “My power is not a controlling kind of power.  It’s a freeing power.”

Ah. That’s the part I can’t believe.

“I know.” 

Here was another part of the idol that needed chipping away.  Edward Cullen is not exactly an original character—aside from the sparkling vampire thing.  You can find traces of him everywhere—even the Hebrew Bible.  He’s not so dissimilar from the way the prophets often describe God.  The divine husband so passionately in love with his “bride” that her “infidelity” drives him, reasonably, say the prophets, into fits of madness.  God was very clearly telling me--I do love you passionately but I’m not the least bit interested in controlling you. I am not a jealous God. I’m just not.

I believe that now.  There have been many of these moments, too many for one blog; I imagine there will be many more.  I have learned that I am truly created in the image of God.  She knows my body the way a woman would.  She walks in my shoes, she knows my burdens.  I have learned that God is a different kind of angry.  I have learned that God is in and around not just out and about.  Often when this topic is raised people get defensive and freak out.  I understand.  I remember feeling that way.  God can still be our Father but only after the Father idol has been shattered. into. bits.  The Father idol needs to be broken so that God can speak to us prophetically about fatherhood rather than having fatherhood speak restrictively about God. An image that is broken can be remade and can, like a humble friend, offer us new life, new love, new beauty.  An image that is never broken becomes a tyrant.  It will offer us slavery in the guise of freedom, guilt in the guise of grace and control in the guise of love.  We have a deep-seated attachment to our Father idol. But God is indeed the great iconoclast, whose presence is marked by shattering.  Do not fear the breaking.  The breaking and remaking, not the image, is where we find God most truly.  

Death Cruise

This story is about vomit.

Four years ago, during my BU orientation, I received a pamphlet of 101 things to do while in Boston. I love that list. Whenever people come to visit me I try to check a few more things off.  Of the 101 things I have done thirty-nine so far.  So I’m moving through the list at a speedy one new activity every five months. There are three things I just crossed off the list because I will not do them under any circumstance.  I do not, nor does anyone I know, care about seeing the Season Six MTV Real World house.  Also, I cannot imagine why the Big Dig Visitors’ Center even exists—if it still does.  How someone could turn a giant, annoying, slow as molasses, city construction project into a tourist attraction is beyond me. And I don’t need to take a tour of the BU Experience, a guide to life as a BU student, because I am a BU student and that would be redundant. In all, I have fifty-nine things left to do.  If I continue at my current rate it will take me a little less than six more years to complete the list.  I realize that’s ambitious but I’ve always been a dreamer. 

Anyway, this summer my mother and grandmother came to visit me in Boston and I once again had the opportunity to whittle down my list.  You would think, of the fifty-nine things left on the list, we could find a lot of things we’d all enjoy doing. However, eliminating things from the list that were out of season, cost too much, or have anything to do with alcohol or sports takes a big chunk out of our fifty-nine options. I like alcohol and sports. But Mom and Mimi are teetotalers who couldn’t care less about any team besides LSU or the Saints. They’ve been here a few times before so our mutually acceptable tourist activities list is getting shorter and shorter. So this trip we repeated some list items and did a few things off the official grid. But we did manage to check one new thing off the list:

Number 37: Cruise Boston Harbor.

Sounds so innocent doesn’t it?  We should’ve known something was up when we learned it was a “three hour tour.”  I seem to remember a long running television show all about that not going so well.  Sadly we ignored this omen. 

Of the many tours available, we chose the whale-watching cruise, which goes further out to sea than your run-of-the-mill historic tour. And because I wanted to go to my friends’ graduation on Sunday afternoon, we chose to go on Sunday morning even though it meant missing church—a fact that later lead my grandmother to shout over the ensuing chaos, “This is what we get for missing church!” 

On Sunday morning we got up at what I consider to be an ungodly hour.  As far as I’m concerned 7am is a mythical concept. But we were down to the docks by 8:15.  We looked in vain for a free spot to park until 8:35 when we gave up and decided to just use the parking garage that had a big sign advertising $15 parking. As we pulled in and the small print came into view we realized that deal was only good until 8:30am. We paid $35 for the most expensive five minutes ever. We were an hour early so we sat around in the cold, watched the seals at the aquarium and then made our way over to the appointed dock. On the way over we learned that New England Aquariums, which also offers whale-watching cruises, had cancelled their trip for the day because of rough seas.  Our company, Boston Harbor Cruises, (Oh, yes, I’m naming names.) did not cancel our trip. 

That would be omen number two, which we also ignored.  By 10am we were settled in on the upper deck of a small cruise ship enjoying a brisk sea breeze and I was thinking to myself—You know this would make a good date.  Since it was quite chilly once the boat began to move we decided to go down and make the trip in the closed room on the second deck.  It was crowded but we found a few open seats between a Chinese family and a group of middle-aged Pakistani men.  Within half an hour it became apparent that what we had taken to be an idyllic boat trip into peaceful whale country was in fact a death cruise through the seventh circle of hell.  I’m not sure I can accurately describe what it is like to be on a ship with a hundred and seventy-five vomiting people.  When the trip was over, all of the toilets and sinks on the boat were completely stopped up with vomit.  There were a few people who somehow managed not to throw up.  Ironically, one of them was my grandmother who normally gets seasick wading across a mud puddle.  She barely got nauseous.  Jerk.

At any rate, somewhere in the ten seconds between my mother projectile vomiting all over her shoes and losing my own Cheerios breakfast into a barf bag, I came to the conclusion that this would in fact be the worst date ever.  I’m still not sure if it was actually the waves or the sound and smell of fifty people vomiting in an enclosed space that finally got to me but either way I was grateful that I’d eaten a light breakfast. 

The Chinese family to our left was constantly dabbing some kind of oil on their faces and huddling quietly together.  They even vomited quietly which I thought was impressive.  The Pakistanis to our right were freaking. out.  I have never seen a group of grown men in such a panic over such a non-crisis.  Miserable as I was at least I knew I wasn’t going to die.  This truth seemed to escape the Pakistanis.  They spent the entire trip out to sea harassing the boat staff to bring them a doctor and sneaking into the bridge to harass the Captain into turning the ship around.  Occasionally, one of them would take a break from the loudest vomiting ever to shout things like, “These people are sick, can’t you see that?!” “Tell him to turn the boat around! We need a doctor!” and “SOMEONE IS GOING TO DIE!” One of these men was running around like the sky was falling when he suddenly face-planted. The Chinese woman on the other side of the room buried her head in her arms to hide the fact that she was laughing so hard, which was also funny.  I felt no such compunction.  I laughed out loud and then I threw up.  Maybe you’ve never thought about it but laughing is not something you should do when you are nauseous.  Now you know. You’re welcome. It was shortly after this that my grandmother loudly declared our misery to be divine punishment for missing church.  Luckily, she chose not to take the Jonah route and throw one of us over board to calm the sea.  

The sad thing, I realized, as I observed the stoic efficiency of the boat staff, is that this kind of insanity must occur with some measure of regularity.  Surrounded by misery and puke these men and women went about distributing vomit bags, collecting old bags that were full and cleaning the carpet and walls, as if this was all in a days work and couldn’t be more normal. How in god’s name do these people stay in business?!  The Pakistani man sitting next to my grandmother stopped one woman to implore her once again to turn the boat around before someone died.  She replied calmly, “Sir, we’re fifteen minutes away from where the whales are.”  And he replied in a desperation bordering on terror, “WE DON’T CARE ABOUT THE WHALES!  WE JUST WANT TO SAVE OUR LIVES!”

I laughed so hard I threw up twice.  The woman simply walked away without responding.  But that’s only because she was passive aggressive.  A few minutes later the same woman got on the loud speaker and said, “If everyone could please calm down the seas really aren’t that bad today.”  Oh, okay. Thanks for clearing that up I guess I was just vomiting because I was misinformed. She might as well have said, “Suck it up, pansies.”  I imagined myself throwing up on her and apologizing, “Oh, my god I’m so sorry. I don’t know why I’m so sick, the seas really aren’t that bad.”  This thought made me laugh . . . which made me throw up.  Again. 

Finally, we got to where the “whales” were. Unless whales are small white birds that occasionally dive into the ocean for fish, we saw no whales.  Mimi and I went outside to get some fresh air.  Then it started to rain and we were forced back into the barf box.  Thankfully, the trip back was less vomit inducing since we were not moving against the waves.  Since we didn’t see any whales, we were all given new tickets as we stumbled, white-faced, back onto the dock.  Of course we were all excited about the prospect of taking this trip again.  My mom wrote them later and complained so they sent her a full refund.  But I still have three tickets for whale watching stuck in a book somewhere in my room just incase I ever decide I need to throw up half my body weight again. Someday I’ll be ready to risk it again for the chance to see the whales; I doubt the same could be said for the poor Pakistanis.