Angel es de Laos

I just returned from Los Angeles, where I had a very good time. But let me tell you, the University of Virginia webmail service shares an anti-LA bias with much of the east coast. On one of my e-mails the spell check corrected my Los with 'Laos' and my Angeles with 'Angel es'. With the help of the spell checker, I was able to construct the sentence that is the subject heading of this post.

I brought with me two of the classic LA urban studies/planning films: Blade Runner and Chinatown. I didn't have the time to see Chinatown (that's, that's Chinatown) but it was fun to watch Blade Runner in the place where it was supposed to be located. However, the surroundings of Los Angeles are almost completely opposite that of Blade Runner, which to this day looks a lot like modern Tokyo.

What to make of LA? Well, UCLA has one of the coolest things to share my name since the Maryland Area Railroad Commuter. May I present the Mindful Awareness Research Center.


The best part has to be the website address: marc.ucla.edu. But I am highly supportive of mindfulness, awareness, and research so this place has to be quality. In the About MARC section of the website is the following quote by Henry David Thoreau: 'Direct your eyesight inward, and you'll find a thousand regions in your mind undiscovered. Travel them, and be expert in home-cosmography.' Home-cosmography? What on earth is that?

The only other thing I have to say about LA is that on Monday it was 80 degrees and sunny there and back in DC it was in the 30s; yes, that's a 50 degree difference. !Angel es de Laos pero el suena de Los Angeles!