The following is the second part of a three-part transcript of my journal that I kept during my trip to La Marmorata Village in Santa Teresa di Gallura, Sardinia, during July-August 2004.

August 9th

The days begin to slip by as fast as the water moss that cling on the oceanside rocks, and its going to pass even faster, no doubt. I've begun to partake in the various Club Ado activities, including percussion (drumming oil cans and garbage bins) and dance (Matrix music, Matrix style) although I have little intention of performing them on Thursday night (add: at the nightly spectacle at the outdoor amphitheatre). I dunno. Its stressing to have to think about what your parents might think. I'd be undoubtedly relieved if I was given the right to stay with the 'club' from midmorning to midnight, without repercussions whatsoever. The days I have to enjoy these moments are few-- and while I do have to worry about school and homework and what university I want to go to, one has to realise that you came here to get away from the whole of it. Tomorrow's the 'balade' or promenade up the hills. I doubt I'll go (again for the previously mentioned reasons) although I do want to go for ulterior reasons I'm not exactly sure I want to admit. For those who know me, you'll know what I mean. But then again, she leaves Friday (add: or so I thought). There's not much you can do in a week, or so you may say. You'd be surprised at how wrong you may be. I hate players. What? No, not basketball players. Neither am I talking about any other sport, but rather, more colloquially, 'playas', if you catch the gist of what I'm sayin'. What anguishes me most about players (or if you prefer, playas) is not the act of 'playing' or cheating, but rather the thought that the one who is cheated upon knows nothing about what's happening. What's worse is that any one of us who actually have girlfriends or boyfriends can be seen as the same sort of 'victim'. What's even worse is the fact that love can be treated so lightly. My respect for a person plummets the moment I realise that all that person looks for in another person is some brief heart-beater type of moment enlapsed in a kiss and a hug (add: if not more). Am I too much of a romantic? Perhaps (Oh no. Remembers incident in 5th grade of how a love letter sent (by me) was rejected and torn apart by a girl I liked). But then again, isn't that what it's supposed to be? Or am I some Neolithic Neanderthal living in a bygone age, wondering what happened to tie-dyed tee-shirts? (Please don't answer that, thank you) Hey, whatever did happen to tie-dyed tee shirts, anyways?

Its a sad sad thing
To hear the bluebird sing
For it reminds me of you
Of the good times we've been through
That I won't see again

I hear you I feel you
But I don't see the thing that matters most...

(add: unfinished)

Aug 10th

Argh. I told you things could happen very fast. As a direct (I think) result of my not going to the promenade today, I've lost her. Argh argh. *slams head against wall* (add: Come to think of it its quite embarrassing to write up such things now, but then again at the moment everything seemed all right...)

Aug 11th

I can hardly write. My fingers are raw from the windsurf rope I had desperately tried to raise every time I fell. Not to mention the fact that I was stranded a good mile from the shore, if not more. I had set out on the windsurf (the second time I had done so, admittedly) but somehow or another got blown further and further away from the beach. I tried swimming the board towards the beach, but the wind didn't exactly help and I realised, after a few moments, that he big rocks to my left were no further from me than five minutes ago. So I gave up. Obviously being a mile from shore on a surf board and its sails in the water doesn't exactly make you conspicuous, especially when the very rocks you've tried to get away from suddenly loom in front of you, obscuring any chance of being seen. Luckily a fella in a sailboard (who also had borrowed the skipper from the hotel) came by and I asked if I could perhaps hang onto the boat and head back home. (add: Later I would find out he was the father of one of the kids in the Club Ado) I miss the first time he passes, so he tries turning around for another try when he (and the boat) topples over (add: I felt really guilty then). Since it's lightweight he manages somehow to bring it upright. Only when he passes by for a third time that he tells me that, over the sound of the waves, what do you know, he too can't get back to shore. Luckily a rubber dinghy operated by the guys at the beach came to 'save' me. (It had taken a good ten-fifteen minutes for them to arrive). To think that I might not have been noticed were it not for the sails of the lost man in his boat scares me. I guess I shouldn't have freaked out that much, considering that at some moment one of the fellas at the beach would scratch his head and say, wait a minute, aren't we missing one windsurf? At least, that's what I'm hoping they'd do if every something like this happens to someone else. For me, anymore windsurfing is most likely out of the question. Not that I'd be able to practice, by any account.

Aug 12th

Seems like I don't have a lot of luck in many things... (not that I believe in luck or anything, but you know what I mean). Talk about going and not being able to come back, i.e. yesterday and the windsurf. Today I went with my parents to Santa Teresa di Gallura, a nearby town (where I was able to use an Internet cafe to email my dearest of friends), and I was also able to buy some stuff at the weekly market. My parents left before midday, and I planned to hang around till perhaps two-thirty of three o'clock and then head back to the hotel. Two thirty come, two thirty go. Three o'clock come, three o'clock go. Finally the van that looks like the one I came with arrives, and I ask the driver (add: whose face I already knew) if he's heading back to the hotel.

"This isn't a shuttle anymore, but a taxi", the driver replies. Fine, I think, taxi, shuttle, or camel caravan, I don't care, just get me home. I hop into the van and he says,
"No, you don't understand, this is now a taxi." Right. And...?
"It'll cost you €12.00 to get back."
Now here's a bit of background information. Firstly, it cost €2.00 to get to the city. Moreover, the words 2 and 12 in French are somewhat difficult to decipher, especially spoken with an Italian accent. Rewinding,
"It'll cost you €12.00 to get back."
"12!?!"
*nods head*
*freaks out*
I'd carry a person on my back and walk back to the hotel for €12.00. Hence I had to wait another two hours and half for the shuttle to arrive (add: the driver, in the meantime, most probably had his siesta or was watching TV. Loser). It was the driver's loss really. I can't think of any company who would make gasoline so expensive that it would cost more than €2.00 to travel 7 kilometres. So that's my second "gone and can't come back" experience in two days.

Now for the other deja-vus. Playing soccer on Monday, I had grazed my left knee against the Astro-turf and I had put a bandage on. Just a day later, when it seemed on the verge of beginning the process of healing, I fell into the sand by the beach, reopening the wound. Yesterday's windsurf experience didn't exactly help it to heal, either. Today on the way to the port at Sta. Teresa I bashed the very same knee against the boat railings, opening another wound to the right of the original (nothing big, I assure you) After I got out of the shuttle which had finally arrived, I bumped the same knee against a terra-cotta flowerpot sitting aimlessly by the entrance. It took all my mind from shouting an expletive. Poor knee. It's never going to heal. lol. I bet something similar's going to happen to the rope burns on my hand. Well, actually, I don't.

The following is the first part of a three-part transcript of my journal that I kept during my trip to La Marmorata Village in Santa Teresa di Gallura, Sardinia, during July-August 2004. The establishment I was in was owned by Aeroviaggi Club, a sort of Club-Med all-amenities-and-food-included village. Thus most people arrived as part of a vacation promotion, and spoke French. I was there for a month (four weeks), since the package worked on week-based prices. Notes that I have added later are marked in parentheses with the words 'add:'

Alone on a swaying deck
Facing the calm and quiet sea
I care not who it is with me
As I sit there silent as one can be
I look upon the shining star
Long beyond and distant far
Forperhaps across the frontiers high
Its light might shine on another eye

July 29th

If there were such a thing as emerald blue, then you'd realise what I'm talking about is both beyond reality and awesome to see. I had earlier considered some repose besides the pool, but one step out of the ocean-view front village residence and such plans disappeared as quick as a bee on a harried task. (Quick as lightening is cliche and rather unsuited for my present situation). Beyond the rows of poinsettias (I think thats what they are) and hedge bushes, and the giant rocks strewn like the forgotten toys of a childish giant, beyond these one can see the emerald blue that pains the ocean, the glitters of white sails that dot its surface, and the sullen blown clump of mountains that form the edge of the islands of Maddalena. The very blueness I refer to is no doubt the product of the paler blue that washes the sunny sky. Not a cloud can be seen for miles around, as though they could hardly stand to see themselves tarnish such a beautiful sky (and ocean). To the left is located some brown terra-cotta type buildings/adobes whose residents, no doubt, enjoy this view before them no more than I do the Eiffel Tower. Obviously it is a splendid sight to see, and the undoubtedly appreciate it as they do their own house, but something tells me they don't consider it much everyday. Such is the sadness of travel: people in once place prefer to take a trip to another place, whose residents, in turn, prefer to visit the place of the former. People, if I can go so far as to make such a generalisation, prefer difference, and I think it is an innate and unchangeable desire. Something out of the ordinary, unique or never before seen/hear of, that's what people desire, and this applies not only to a summer's vacation voyage. I have a tendency to desire the sameness in things (collections, same size bound books, same opinions), just as one might enjoy the moment of discovery when a newly-found friend enjoys the same brand of deodorant (I meant spaghetti: slip of my finger). We rarely experience the same excitement when discovering differences. Why should that be? Why can't finding out that your friend likes the very same songs as you do be as interesting as finding out you don't? Now this is a problem, for earlier I had iterated that people prefer differences, and I've just given an example of the very contradiction.

Winter minds make unkept deeds
Summer souls make sifting heeds
Spring showers bring winter seeds
and come fall come autumn reeds

The realities of Life are all unheard
Like the sound of a muted bird
Its voice a-vanished into the clear clear night
The distant stars and moon that give me sight
And yet I walk through life all blind
My hands outstretched for a thing to find
I stumble I fall but I get upright
It's about getting there without the light
The realities of Life I've yet to see
Won't someone be kind to come with me...

Aug 6th

Yesterday night was undoubtedly the fright of a lifetime. Lightening flashed mere kilometres from the door (add: I was to learn later that a lightening had struck the hotel pool), lighting up the sky like Christmas lights gone haywire. It's the type of lightening that for a moment makes you think you're a celebrity under the flashes of the sky-borne paparazzi. Today isn't exactly a great day, to say the least. Of the 20 kids in what's been haphazardly called the 'Club Ado' (adolescents), only about 3 remain, for the rest have gone home, back to Paris, back to Limoges, Strasbourg, Tolouse, all over France. The saddest truth is that the fondest memories I've ever kept since the one year I've been in Paris have been left in this past one week. Strange, you may say. Even awkward, to know that you miss the people you've spent what may be the least time of your life. What I say to that is that fast friends sometimes stay long. I guess coming to know one another outside the school framework, the rigid and time-lacking atmosphere of l'ecole, is what makes such friends last. Over the one week I've done more stuff (hiking, swimming, eating, joking around, playing cards) than I ever have with any of my classmates. Its sad that my parents won't allow me to stay out any later than 10:30pm, a curfew I know has ridiculous measures even a 12-year old would protests, especially at a village club like the one I'm in. I'm not one to contest, however, and after I turn 18 I can't allow myself to be dismayed by my parents' apparent look of disappointment and disapproval if and when I let them down on account of what they might claim as 'irresponsible behaviour'. Its a pity you (or I in particular) don't realise what you've missed until you miss it, but then again I can't really dwell on that either. The sad thing is that the weeks to come (three, to be exact) seem really bleak in comparison to what I've experienced this past week. (add: how wrong I was) I dunno. I realise that the best friends I have are those who are expressly normal, not trying to act cool and tough. Like, I know you have Armani glasses and top-notch jeans, but is there anything besides? Those who really don't care much about that, just want to have fun together, enjoy communicating, (however hard it may be from Italian to English to French), all of them have (sadly) left. The hike on Tuesday was quite spectacular. We left as a group of 19 at around 10 towards a group of hills at the left of the club, travelling over roads and pebbled paths that is, quite frankly speaking, remote. There were two peaks (with monolithic stone obelisks) that we tried to visit, but the highest one was blocked like a cavelike stairwell that was too dark to even contemplate climbing (although I was rather insistent on going). The scary part of the cave was that when we took pictures with a digital camera and flash, we saw stone 'shelves' that eerily resembled catacombs of the type Edgar Allan Poe referred to in Venice. What catacombic (no bodies of the sort) shelves serve in a stairwell to a peak of a hill is what escaped and still escapes me.Discouraged and despondent, we had lunch on a bunch of rocks further below the peak, and later headed toward the second peak, one that had been first visited the previous week. Arriving there at around two-thirty, we relaxed, sunbathed, and swam among the gigantic rocks characteristic of the Sardinian countryside. The smoothness of the weather/water-beaten rocks reminds one of the African deserts. Such was our hike, relatively simple as it was but enjoyable nonetheless. Its such simple pleasures that I enjoy the most-something that involves the nature and hiking and the like. Its not quite fun when you're with people who aren't your age, if you can understand what I mean.

I miss her terribly. I just came back from Sardinia yesterday night and I already feel like I've left there a year ago. Its really sad to part from friends, especially those you've come to know so well. I don't really have the time to publish my diary that I kept there during the one month I was in Sardinia, but I'll give a quick wrap up of how things were like. I left on the 30th of July to Sardinia from Roissy Charles de Gaulle airport, from a terminal designed for low-cost no frills airlines. I jumped onto an airplane that had a green frog's face at the tail, and nothing more, so I guess it was truly low cost. Anyhow, I arrived within 2 hours on the island of Sardinia, just south of Corsica in the Mediterranean. The hotel was a Club-Med turned into a Aeroviaggi Club hotel, and had tons of amenities ranging from tennis to archery. The Friday I arrived I did little, but on Saturday I went for a swim and came across a group of kids who invited me to join the 'Club Ado'. Once united with all the rest of the kids we formed a group of about 20, and for the rest of the week we played soccer, volleyball, ping-pong, and canoed together, and had lunch and dinner. There were about 3 Italians in the group too, and I talked little with them at first. But as the week went on I began to socialise more, and even though I had to get back to my ocean-view room at 10 o clock, I had a lot of fun talking with them. I was even able to talk a bit with the Italians, which was really cool too. On the Tuesday after I arrived we also went on a small hike past the hills that sheltered the Club, and we had fun swimming and jumping off rocks into the ocean. Most of the kids left on Friday, since the hotel operated on a Friday-come, Friday-leave basis, especially since most people arrived as part of a vacation package. It was terrible to see them all go, but those who remained assured me that more kids would arrive and it would be useless to dote on the past.

And so the weeks melted by, although the second and the third weeks were rather uneventful. The kids I came to know were cool and nice, but being me I couldn't help but notice they drank and smoked a lot. (Except for a few, including Line, a Syrian girl who lives not even ten minutes from my home, who also spoke really good English, and who was all to nice, even with her sad eyes.) The fourth week was by far the best, because I came to know a girl named Séverine, who was formerly a close friend of a guy who had left the Friday before. Naturally I was disinclined to make any sort of move, so I came to consider her as a just a good friend. I guess I was mistaken, for I have never met anyone quite as friendly and wonderful. I hadn't met her too much the week before, mainly because she preferred to stay with the guy who had left, but on Monday (this past Monday), after a bout of ping-pong, she came to the Club and we talked a bit, and suddenly she asks if I'd like to go canoeing or windsurfing the next day. I was more than happy to oblige, and we do exactly that the next morning at the beach. We talk a bit more, and I find out she's really sportive too (and plays Magic the Gathering). (She swims at a club and plays just about any sport really well, kudos to her father, who is a sports teacher) We have lunch together (just the two of us.. =) get a bit more friendlier, and participate in an archery competition in the afternoon. (She wins, naturally). We decide the next day we ought to do more stuff together. On Wednesday morning we participate in a canoe race and we promptly win. In the afternoon we do a bit of petanque, a French game, as well as a bit of tennis (I'm so terrible I'd give Kournikova a heart attack and bring Hingis to tears), and have dinner together. Obviously there were other things, but I guess I better leave those details to be filled in once my Sardinia Chronicles gets published (soon enough). I also wrote a short story while I was there, which I'll leave ya'll to look forward to (as if there is anyone who does, eh?)Anyways, such is the reason why I'm a bit despondent lately. She doesn't live in Paris, so there's little chance I can meet her, but we'll still keep in touch through MSN. Luckily for that, really. She's exactly the type of person I'd do anything to marry, but I won't dare mention that anywhere else than here. I'll never know what she thought of me, but then again its hard to imagine anyone would do all that just to be kind unless there was some other motive. But saying that all I'll remember of Sardinia would be her would do injustice to the countless other friends I made during the month I stayed there. Obviously there were many I didn't get along well with, as well as some I never talked to, and others I just thought were plain annoying, but it was all memorable nontheless. Its just a pity I couldn't go to the disco at night. A lot of socialising goes on at night, but then again with my style it might have hardly made a difference if I went or not.