adrian is rad

Notes on my new room[1]:

1. My room is color coordinated. I mean, not ridiculously so, but things generally match. When did I start caring?[2]
2. Who doesn’t want a man cave? Unfortunately my room is closer to just a cave.

[1] I moved last week.

[2] Probably when I moved to SA and bought all my room things at the same time.

My pony is trotting off into a field of bulls. He is not supposed to. He is supposed to be going down the steep hill. Vincent is yelling instructions.

His name is Power; I like to think of him as POWER. We’ve been walking along a flat dirt path now for a few miles. It’s been easy; surprisingly easy if you consider this is the first time I can remember riding a horse. I’m starting to think I’m good at this. Perhaps I’m preternaturally gifted at riding horses.

But I’m not. It’s just been easy. Vincent, our Besotho guide, arrives at the top of a steep hill, with a path covered with smooth, round rocks, and starts heading down without a hitch. POWER does not head down as easily. “Pull hard to the right! Hiy! Hiy!” I do what Vincent says. After walking through the bulls we’re back at the top of the hill. This time POWER starts the descent.

It’s very steep and POWER loses his footing on the loose rocks but finds it again quickly; this happens many times. I’m jarred. I’m jarred again. My heart’s racing and my knuckles are white on the reins. I’m starting to think we’ve made a big mistake. Is it too late to turn back?

We don’t turn back. My momentarily terror lessens to the point where even the steep parts seem quite normal. It’s beautiful out here. The roof of Africa, they call it; the lush green mountains with red dirt strips are gorgeous. It’s very sparse out here, very rural.

I think a lot about my gradfather’s journey through these parts seventy four years before. I can’t imagine him doing this alone, with even fewer resources and even less development. He must have been an strong man.

I don’t remember much of him; he died while I was still young and half a world away. He helped me make a tiny table and chair out of wood once with the kid’s tool set that I’d just gotten. He must have been patient as well as strong.

POWER’s stumbles-and-refooting become common place. I wonder if Grandpa’s horse stumbled, too.

Still no updates on my trip(s), but I did post a lot about the road trip on my photo blog. You can start from the end and check it out if you’d like.

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I’m not very good with uncertainty. I know, this is a surprising admission. But if an obsessively clean person can be cured by touching lots of pay phones and door knobs and toilet handles, then maybe I can be cured by having as many things as possible be uncertain. I’m moving this weekend (for which I don’t have movers yet) and I’ll have new flatmates and a new area of town. I started lecturing last week and it’s too early to tell how that’s going to turn out. I don’t really have a way to cover the rest of my living expenses. I’m not sure how long I’m going to stay in South Africa or what I’ll do with myself here or when I get back to the States. This has been the longest period of the most unknowns in my life.

So for just about everything in my life, I have to say, “we’ll see!” But life seems to turn out okay.

I’m back ‘home’ after over a month of travels–DC, North Carolina, New Orleans, and a road trip around South Africa and Lesotho. That’s a lot of miles and I’m glad to be in one place for a little while at least.

I saw friends and family. I saw traditional Besotho villages; I learned ‘hello’ and ‘goodbye’ in Sesotho. I rode a pony for the first (and second and third and…) time. I saw a New Orleans brass band play till the small hours of the morning. I felt like an extra in a movie about the antebellum South at a New Year’s party in New Orleans. I danced; I know, shocking. I walked through 20 inches of snow; I felt the African sun beating down on me. I crawled through a cave under the Karoo. I saw where the Atlantic and Indian Oceans meet. I changed a tired in a parking lot in Bloemfontein. I skinny dipped in the frigid pool under a remote waterfall. I bowled while listening to a live Zydeco band. I got chills looking at the founding documents of the US America. I saw a herd of over a hundred elephants. I finally spotted the rock monitor after staring in the bush for three minutes. I rode a heritage street car. I hugged and smiled and laughed.

More later, but for now you can see some of my photos on my photo blog.

And how are you? What have you been up to?

ingwavuma from ipickmynose on Vimeo.

I finally put together some of the clips I took on my Flip Mino HD in Ingwavuma into a video. It’s a bit shakey and I was a bit hurried on the editing but overall I feel like it gives an idea of what life in the town is like.

The clips in order are (in Ingwavuma unless noted):
sunrise self portrait
clothes on a clothesline
kids on zipline
store entrance in Bhambanana
roadside between Ndumo and Bhambanana
returning from the pump with washing
Fana and co at Okhayeni school
kids playing soccer
people in town
minibus taxi ride to Okhayeni
cows resting
Bridgie and her daughter Zaza
the road in Bhambanana
Swifty looking over Swaziland
petro station store in Bhambanana
soccer
overlooking the valley
driving through Jozini
Andrew and Fana in Bhambanana

I left South Africa on Thursday and traveled for about 26 hours until I landed in DC on Friday morning. Everything has gone pretty smoothly so far. The flight and travel felt shorter than I expected; I got in before the big snow fall here; I’ve had a great time hanging out with friends; and the Steelers stopped their losing streak yesterday in a ridiculous game.

I was hoping for some cold weather and snow when I got here but I didn’t expect the biggest December snowfall in DC’s history. We mostly just huddled inside, had some beer and pizza. In the evening, we went for a nice walk on still-unplowed streets in picturesque neighborhoods. It reminded me a bit of Norman Rockwell.

It’s been a bit disorienting being back. Besides going from the hot summer to snow and winter, there have been some cultural shocks as well. People speak differently and think differently, things work differently, some things are easier, some are harder.

In Johannesburg, it’s apparently Outsurance, one of the bigger South African insurance (vehicle, home) companies. There apparently weren’t enough police/ traffic services to do the job so this company has started sending their own teams.

It’s brilliant. Good PR, good opportunity for advertising—the traffic directors wear Outsurance shirts—and it saves them money—fewer accidents means fewer payouts.

It’s hard to believe it’s been over four months in South Africa already. Like life tends to be, the time seems to have passed both slower and faster than that.

In general it’s gone by very fast. I’ve done a lot but it doesn’t seem long ago that I was getting on a plane here. It doesn’t seem long ago that I was looking for an apartment and trying to decide whether to go to Ingwavuma. It doesn’t seem long ago that I was spending my birthday with people I hardly knew, but having a fine time anyway.

In a number of ways, things have gone slowly. Making friends takes time, though I feel like I’m starting to get there. I still haven’t gotten a number of things that I thought would be nearly immediate: a bike and a guitar among them.

Culture shock has come slowly and subtly. For how South African I viewed myself and all the things I was already accustomed to—most language, food, braais, mannerisms, etc—it was a bit of a surprise that there was any culture shock, but it was that little things that I found surprising, distressing, or disorienting.

When it comes to culture, it’s difficult deciding what I’m going to be stubborn about. One may think that it’d be best to be fluid and adopting of another culture, and that may help socially, but there are some thing I want to be stubborn about. One easy example is that I’d like to guard against the (sometimes intense) paranoia that some South Africans display. I feel like there’s little reason to live life paranoid and if I do get to that stage, it’s time to move back to the States.

I don’t have much of a concrete plan about what the future will hold, but I am coming back in January to see. It should be an exciting few months: a roadtrip with a friend, a visit from my parents (planned before I decided to move here), and the World Cup. And I’m sure other things will turn up in there as well.

But for now, I’m preparing to return to the US America. I’m pretty excited for the trip, to see friends and family, to see my breath, eat some comfort food and drink good beer.

Movies are <$4 is my local art house cinema (about a 5 minute walk) so I go see films sometimes. It reminds me of when I went to movies in Germany lots on Tuesdays because it was 4 Euro movie night.

Last week I saw Whatever Works, the latest Woody Allen film. It stars Larry David as a man who despises everyone and sees life in a very negative light. I laughed aloud a few times. Decent entertainment but not a great movie.

Today I saw Zombieland, a buddy road trip/ zombie comedy. I’m not a fan of zombie movies (despite the Pittsburgh tie) but this is really funny. I liked it a lot.

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I’m following along the Steelers game online. I hope they stop their recent slide here.

I watched last week’s game yesterday. They lost but I was pretty happy how our 3rd string QB played in his first start (and his first throw of the game was only his second NFL throw ever).

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There was a big party on Long St, about 10 minutes walk from my place, for the 2010 World Cup Draw which happened on Friday. It was packed but it was a good time.

In the draw, USA got England, Slovenia and Algeria. Not an amazingly tough group but there’ll be a couple competitive games in there.

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I head back to the States in a week and a half. I’m excited to see friends and family. I’m excited for some hat-and-gloves-and-seeing-your-breath weather.

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I have a bunch of things to do before I head back, probably the biggest of which is trying to find a car. I’m renting a car right now and I’m returning it right before I leave.

On Friday I saw the cricket one-day South Africa vs England. SA gave the red coats a thorough romping so that was good but the whole event was fun. I went with a family friend and spending time with him was great. The weather was gorgeous. The stadium sits in the shadow of Table Mountain. And the people in front of us were nutso and entertaining, a spectacle all on their own.

Yesterday I went to Paternoster, a fishing village (and tourist favorite) a hundred kilometers up the coast or so. I had some really delicious and very fresh fried crayfish and we walked around the beach looking at the fishing boats. It was a nice time away from the city.

One thing I appreciate about Cape Town is that in about half an hour you can get solidly out onto the open road. Nothing-in-sight-but-the-road open road.

Today was pretty relaxed, hitting up the Turkish Baths at Long Street and going for a long walk, ending up at Disa Park where I took some photos.

Just a couple weeks left now till I head back to the States. It seems weird that it’s so soon. At the same time, I recently passed the mark making this the longest time I’ve been out of the country continuously.

I’m thankful for my family, who is supportive even when I have funny ideas about what I should do with my life. I’m thankful for friends who repeatedly include me in things regardless if I’m 5, 3000 or 12000 miles away. I’m thankful for the opportunities I’ve had. I’m thankful for the Pick N Pay that stocks good pecan pie when an expat is feeling a bit nostalgic. I’m thankful for music. I’m thankful for people who are nice or go out of their way to help even when they are hardly know me. I’m thankful for all the ways I can keep in touch with and keep up with friends from thousands of miles away.

I walked out my door at 6:40 this morning for a walk. Out my door is a gorgeous view of Table Mountain and stunning blue skies all around. I finished my walk, showered and opened the door again at 7:30 and the mountain and most of the city were completely gone. Fog/ a low cloud had moved in really fast. It was ridiculous.

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It’s really astounding how much construction there is. Roads, buildings, bus rapid transit lanes, stadia. I’m surprised the city can sustain this for so long. Driving anywhere, any road, is bound to have construction somewhere along the way. I suppose know that most, if not all, of it will be in 198 days or less probably helps.

As I mentioned before, each road construction site has one, if not more, people employed to wave a red (or sometimes orange) flag continuously. There are various styles of flag waving, I’ve noticed. There’s the unexpected lane closure/ merge flag waving, which is very directed purposeful. On the other end of the spectrum, there’s the well-there’s-a-construction-site-here-but-you-probably-know-that flag waving, which is just sort of a little wave side to side.

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On Friday I’m going to see a cricket one day against England. It should be fun. The one-days are pretty exciting, though Twenty20s are really a home run derby, to mix metaphors.

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I’ve been surprised a few times when people mentioned the holiday or traveling this week. I keep forgetting it’s Thanksgiving there. I do like Thanksgiving a lot. I thought of trying to make a pumpkin pie, but I haven’t gotten my act together yet (and I’ve had a hard time locating some components) so we’ll see if that happens.

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There’s a lot of real crap on TV here. Just horrible horrible TV, between soaps, bad American shows and possibly more professional than they even show in the States. So when I heard that Big Bang Theory was starting here, I was pretty excited. It’s on Tuesdays and I was looking forward to it all day. I’ve seen it before, but I was still unreasonably excited about it.

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In other TV news, Al Jazeera news is pretty good. It definitely has more of an international focus that most of the SABC new programs. They show the feed of it on Cape Town’s community station for half an hour each evening.

I’m going to tell you a story every day for the week.

JW is a solid dude. He’s the sort of guy who, if you asked him to take time off work to show around a Malawian guy you barely know around New York, would probably say yes. He’s also the sort of guy who could be the first person to inform me of my receding hairline and I wouldn’t take it as an insult or an effort to embarrass me; he would simply be informing me of a fact.

JW is also the sort of guy that might have traveled to Bermuda on the spur of the moment a few years back and returned with some Bermudan black rum. And though I was of legal age, I may have never have been even remotely tipsy.

And so it may have happened that we may have mixed that rum with ginger beer to make dark and stormies. And I may have gotten drunk for the first time as we sat in the hallway outside JW’s room and laughed and chatted, stumbling down the hall to the bathroom at necessary intervals and marveling at slushy feeling I was getting in my head.

Maybe.

I’m going to tell you a story every day for the week.

Near the end of my time living in Taiwan, I decided to go to Kinmen (formerly transliterated as Quemoy), a Republic of China (Taiwan) island 2km off of mainland China for a weekend. It’s a fascinating place that’s had a lot go on in the last century: isolationist Fujianese culture followed by briefly adopting British-Asian colonial styles and then sustaining shelling by both the Japanese and Maoist Chinese.

It leads to some shocking scenes: traditional Fujianese villages with miles of bomb shelter tunnels underneath. Or sorghum fields, waiting to be harvested for traditional brews, with rusty anti-parachute spikes every 10m. Such images are endless.

The English proficiency was very low and I had mastered only a few dozen words and phrases of Chinese including such useful phrases as “This is a pair of chopsticks” and “This is my business card” so communication, or lack thereof, was a major issue. I didn’t hear any English on my flight. I was picked up at the airport by someone that couldn’t speak English; I was taken to a scooter shop where I rented a scooter from people who didn’t speak English. Only when I got to the guest house did I hear any English and then it was quite broken.

I was in over my head. I was an island.

At one point I tried going to the local-style noodle shop. Well, I succeeded at getting there. And I succeeded at standing awkwardly in the entrance for a while. I even succeeded at pointing at a bowl of noodles with pork and indicating I wanted that dish.

When the proprietor said something as she carried a bowl past me, I thought she meant it was mine so I followed her to the table where a young man and an older woman were already sitting–it’s not entirely unusual to sit with people you don’t know–and started to sit down. Then the young man’s friend returned to the table and sat in that chair and started eating the dish I thought was meant for me.

Seeing my confusion, the young man got up and grabbed me a chair. “Xie xie” (Thank you). A dish of various meats and tofu arrived. “We,” he said motioning in a circle, “together.” “Oh. Xie xie” and I tried a few pieces. My noodles arrived and I started eating them. (They were delicious, incidentally). He pushed some sauce toward me. “Spicy.”

Finished with their meals, the young man and his friend got up and paid the proprietor, who gave me a funny look. He came back over to the table. “You no pay.” The spicy sauce must have started to get to me because my eyes welled up a bit. “Xie xie.”

No man is an island, it turns out.

I’m going to tell you a story every day for the week.

During the summer of 2002, I had an internship in Stuttgart with Behr GmbH. It was part of the MIT-Germany program. My time there had many classic fish-out-of-water times; this is not one of those.

I stayed in a hotel for the summer, in an Apartment Zimmer. Basically it was a normal, non-suite hotel room except when you opened one of the cupboards there was a tiny kitchen inside. Kitchens in third world rondavels are more equipped than this. Needless to say it didn’t have laundry facilities and the hotel’s were far too expensive for a student budget.

One Friday I rushed off to a laundromat (ein Wäscherei) to get some laundry in while I had the use of the Opel Astra from work for the weekend. I didn’t have much time, though, another person from the program was arriving by train at 7:30 for a weekend adventure, and you know those German trains are on time.

I walked in. “I möchte meine Kleidung waschen.” Ja ja said the old German couple who ran the place. I sat and waited for my clothes to be washed. As the wash cycle continued I got more and more agitated; it was getting closer and closer to 7:30pm and I didn’t want to be late. I announced that I didn’t need them to be dried after all, I’d take them wet. I paid and as soon as they finished in the washer, I gathered the still wet clothes and practically ran out to my car.

From behind me I heard “Hallo! Hallo!” (Hello! Excuse me!) It was the old man who ran the place. He was run-waddling down the street waving a pair of my wet briefs wildly in the air. Red-faced I thanked him and rushed off.

An email at work yesterday announced that there might be power cuts today between 9-10am and 3-4pm. Sure enough, around 9:30am and 3:50pm, each for about 10 minutes, there were power cuts. There are major power supply problems, the reasons for which go back years and depend on who you ask. I don’t think they’d ever do rolling power cuts in the States and if they did I don’t think they would have effected my job; the office was on the same grid as SF’s financial district and we never once has a single blip in our power.

I’ve started going for walks in the mornings. I’ve come across this guy a couple times. He’s a large, black, hairy, ugly boar, complete with tusks. There’s a small farm sort of thing a few blocks away and he seems to have wandered out and down the road on two days. One of those days I also saw two donkeys in the road. It’s a bit weird to be walking around the urban-ish/ suburban context and see these sort of animals just out and about.

“You must be getting pretty settled by now.” For various reasons that I’m going to be appropriately vague about, while I am getting used to stuff and settling in a couple aspects, I’m feeling pretty unsettled in other ways.

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I’ve apparently gotten used to SA beer prices at bars. A cheap beer with cost you R12 (~$1.80) and a pricier one (or a 500ml beer) will cost up to R20 (~$2.90). Today at a bar, I asked how much a 500ml particularly good micro-brewed dark lager was and when they said R32 (~$4.50) I quickly chose something else, despite the fact that I’ve paid $4.50 for mediocre beer many a time.

I’ve been on some photo adventures lately, first to Green Point Stadium and most recently to Cape Town’s container port. Both were fun and interesting and I think I got some decent shots.

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Today marked, I believe, my first subconscious use of SA slang–isit, meaning “really?” or “is that so?”. What’s funny about my saying it is that it still sounds odd to hear other people say it. “I’m going to the container port” “Oh, isit?” “Uh…is what?”

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I think it’s time to start learning some Afrikaans, even if it’s just greetings and how-are-yous and I’m-sorry-I-don’t-speak-Afrikaans. Most people at work speak it, some as a first language and its also my flatmate’s first language. I’ll just have to fit it in my head with English, German and touches of Spanish, Chinese, and Zulu. But that’s it! No more languages after that!

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I like this fun theory business. The idea is that the best way to get people to change their behavior is to make it fun. Here’s one example.

(It’s a marketing campaign for VW, by the way. Not sure of the tie in…)

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This is a pretty tremendous photo series covering 27 months in the life of a US soldier from graduating high school to returning from a tour in Iraq.

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I enjoyed this piece in Wired:

According to archival footage, Brown was standing on his toilet seat on the evening of Nov. 5, 1955, attempting to hang a clock in his bathroom, when he slipped and slammed his head on the side of the sink. Upon regaining consciousness Brown reported having “a revelation, a picture, a picture in my head.” A picture which he crudely scrawled down on a piece of paper and subsequently spent 30 years of his life and family fortune to build.

That picture, of course, was the flux capacitor. And as every high school physics student knows, it’s the device that makes time travel possible.

…

The incidents leading up to the time machine demise also served as the basis for the award-winning documentary, Back to the Future.

1. A Friday in an empty apartment. Megan, P. David and I sitting on the floor having beer, talking about Pittsburgh, stories, friends, music and mostly avoiding where I was moving to in three days. I don’t know how long we sat there or what all ways said. For a couple hours there I forgot the echo.
2. A Sunday in a furnished apartment. The Reekies, Christine and I at a simple table with a simple meal and nice bottle of wine, talking about Taipei, cricket, football, and the state of the nation. We didn’t sit for too long but time hung with the laughter and chatter. For a couple hours there I forgot the echo.

Long Street Baths, the pool I use, is open 7am-7pm, which doesn’t leave a lot of time to swim outside of work hours. During work hours it’s gloriously empty, but whenever I’ve tried going before or after, it’s crowded.

Tonight it was packed. Actually, it was so packed that it was interesting. There were enough swimmers that if everyone stopped at the same end of the pool, there wouldn’t be enough space for everyone to stand at the wall. The system depended on at least some people moving. Similarly if everyone was swimming at the same time, there’d be collisions.

I’m sure there are systems or parts of systems like this in real life. Bus garages, perhaps, that don’t have enough spots for all the buses to be parked at once. Or delivery systems (UPS, trucking, etc). Can you think of any others?

Anyway, just something that made me think.

One funny phrase here is boerewors curtain. It’s a play off of boerewors (SAan sausage) and Iron/ Bamboo Curtain-type boundaries. Afrikaaners live beyond the boerewors curtain.

I started working last week. I won’t really say much more about that.

My route to work goes past the containerized shipping port of Cape Town. I love working ports–they have great, huge machinery moving all these building blocks filled with stuff around. Some day I’ll have to plan some extra time to explore the area around the port. The other thing I find interesting about containerized shipping is that it’s such a sign of the modern times–fast, efficient, standardized–but at the same time, they’re just steel containers that could easily have been made a hundred years ago.

One thing I find frustrating is that despite a lot of roads having numeric names, (it seems) locals give directions almost exclusively by street names. But sometimes street change names often and in such cases the numeric name seems particularly appropriate. For instance, in about 1km, De Waal Dr becomes Mill St becomes Anandale St becomes Orange St becomes Buitensingel St.; all the while it’s simply called M3. Yet people will still tell me to take ‘De Waal Drive’ and if I happen to get on the street where it’s called, say, Orange, I’m simply out of luck for sign posting.

Update: Did you know that LA is the busiest US container port but it’s only 13th worldwide? And did you know Savannah is a busier port than Oakland?

As I mentioned last week I had a few days of traveling coming up. My weekend in Hermanus was pretty great. My cousin invited me out to his cottage out there. I met him and his wife at a restaurant in the cliffside by the water’s edge. While we ate some delicious seafood, whales swam past, one even breached a few times. Otherwise there were good times hanging out, watching some rugby (both Currie Cup semi-finals were Saturday–my cousin’s team won but “my” team lost), and generally relaxing.

sunset near Hermanus

On my cousin’s recommendation, I took the scenic route on the way home. The R44 through the Overberg region runs along the coast for a dozen or two kilometers and is a spectacular drive, with the ocean on one side and mountains on the other. I don’t think I’ve been on such a beautiful drive since I went along the Chingshui Cliffs in Taiwan.

the R44 along the coast in the Overberg region

On Thursday I met my uncle in Stellenbosch for some breakfast and we had a nice time. Afterwards I spent a couple hours wandering around the quaint and historic town. It has a lot of lovely buildings in the Cape Dutch style. The drive there and back was also nice, winding through the old vineyards of the region.

a Cape Dutch-style church in Stellenbosch

on my street earlier in the week

I watched part of a debate in Parliament today. It was pretty interesting. Members of Parliament were asking ministers questions. The Ministers of Justice, Police, Correctional Services, Home Affairs and International Relations were all there and answered questions while I was there. There were some light-hearted moments, but there were also some contentious ones as well, particularly ones between the Minister of Justice and members of the DA, during which the above quote was said.

I should note that I had to go through four metal detectors to get to the public gallery of the assembly, but my belt buckle made at least two of them go off; they waved me through all four.

in Salt River

This week has been a bit all-over-the-place. Yesterday I went to the SA National Gallery. It was pretty good and it cost $2 to get in. What’s the last time you’ve been to a museum for $2? Even the Pez Museum in Burlingame is $3! My one complaint about the museum is that there’s too much British stuff–lots of old portraits of generals and things from the 18th and 19th century. Why have portraits of an army someone whooped? (Also, there’s plenty better art from that and other time periods.)

On Sunday I went to the Long Street Baths (where I’ve been swimming) and went to their Turkish baths. I spent two hours in the sauna, steam room, cold plunge pool, etc. Wow that’s so ridiculously relaxing.

in Observatory

Some family is in town, or at least in the area. I’m heading to Stellenbosch tomorrow to see my uncle from the UK and over the weekend I’m heading to Hermanus, where my cousin will be. He and his wife have a cottage there that they’ll be at briefly. I haven’t been to Stellenbosch or Hermanus since 2004, I believe, so it’ll be a nice time.

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I saw Welcome to the Sticks the other day. It’s one of those fascicle French films, with some really funny moments. Basically the main character attempts to land a transfer to the Riviera by pretending to be disabled. Instead he’s found out and is transfer to the dreaded North instead. Thinking she won’t be able to handle the depressing North, his wife stays behind. The main guy ends up enjoying it, but when he tries to tell his wife this, she doesn’t believe him, so he lies and says its horrible. This seems to make her happy. Everything’s fine, until she decides to visit. Apparently it’s the most successful French film of all time? It’s a bit strange to me that that’s the case.

Yesterday marked two months since I arrived here. Someone asked the best and worst parts so far and both of those are pretty easy. Best: my time in Ingwavuma. Worst: there have been some lonely times.

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I took some short videos in Ingwavuma and I was going through them today and what strikes me about them is that they’re so quiet. I commented on the stillness at the time, but I’m struck by how quiet the area is.

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I found a German deli here. I’m pretty happy about that. I had a bauernbratwurst with kraut for lunch for pretty cheap. I also grabbed some spaetzle*, kielbasi (”colbassa”) and Bavarian sweet mustard to take home. Some meal later this week is going to be great.

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Clifton beach, #4

The weather has been quite inconsistent. One day may be almost summer-like, the next rainy and cool. I guess that’s autumn spring for you.

Today is one of the cool and rainy days, but Saturday was the first full on summer day. Everyone flocked to the beaches and I chose Clifton Beach #4, which is nestled between some boulders on the Atlantic coast side. I’d been to some around there before but never to that one and it’s quite a well known one. It was gorgeous and I spent a couple hours reading and people watching.

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I found out today that the pool I’ve been swimming in is closed to men on Tuesdays from 10a to 2p. It didn’t take long for it to occur to me why: there’s a significant Muslim population in the area and customs dictate women shouldn’t show skin to strange men.

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I got to watch my first Steelers game of the season yesterday, on tape delay from Sunday night. It was a good game (they won) but it was a bit too exciting with a close-to-comeback by the wrong team. But it was good to see a game again–I’ve been reading recaps and looking at stats after each game, but something like Mendenhall 165 yards on 29 carries, 2 TDs is a lot different from seeing how he cuts and how the line is playing and all that.

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I’ve been devouring books since I got here. I think I’ve finished four: Long Walk to Freedom, Prayer for Owen Meany, Plains of Camdeboo, and Playing the Enemy and now I’m a chunk into One Flew over the Cuckoos Nest.

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*Yay for Schwabens.

rented Beetle on Boyes Dr.

I rented a 1977 Beetle through December. It’s pretty fun. It’s quite a different driving experience, even compared to my no-nonsense VW Golf that I had before I came. Nothing is power (steering, locks, windows, etc.). It doesn’t have AC or a radio. It takes a minute to warm up enough until it’s willing to be put into gear. There isn’t an intermittent setting on the wipers and the turn signal doesn’t turn off by itself.

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When there’s road construction, there’s a person employed whose sole purpose is to wave an orange flag all day warning of the start of the construction area.

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The TV at my apartment broke on Thursday and my flatmate said she’d get it fixed. I don’t know if I’ve ever known someone to get a TV fixed[1]. In the US, the cost of getting electronics fixed is rather high whereas the price for new or used consumer electronics is relatively low, so people just tend to get a new one. Here the opposite is the case. Besides washing machines and sewing machines and laptops, I’m having a hard time remembering any piece of consumer electronics that I’ve known someone to get fixed. TVs, cell phones, digital cameras, etc–just get a new (or used) one. I told my flatmate about this and she, rightfully so, thought Americans are quite wasteful.

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A couple people have asked which way the water spirals as the toilet flushes here. Toilets flush straight down here, but the sink in my apartment drains clockwise. However, this is, apparently, due to how the vessel is construction or the water enters rather than anything to do with the Coriolis effect.

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flowers at the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden

I spent the afternoon at the Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden. I walked around for a while looking at all the things, especially the proteas, fynbos and silver trees, but I chose to sit and read by the prehistoric cycads. They’re funny looking plants and they date back hundreds of millions of years.

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A cautionary sign on Boyes Dr.

I love this sign. I read it ¡Baboons! and it makes me laugh to myself every time I see it.

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[1] I did know someone who fixed’s tEp’s TV while he was living there, though.

It’s Heritage Day here. I started off wearing red white and blue and ended up in the green and yellow, so how’s that for heritage?

It’s also known widely, but unofficially, as National Braai day and I attended one in Fish Hoek, where my aunt and uncle are staying while they’re in town from Jozi. The boerewors was good as was the SA cricket win against New Zealand.

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sunset on the St. Lucia Estuary

It’s been a little while since I updated about what’s been going on, quite a while in fact. After Ingwavuma, I went to St. Lucia Estuary and Hluhluwe Game Reserve for a couple days.

a beach in St. Lucia. hippos were a few hundred meters away

St. Lucia is a tourist town, but getting a good meal was nice. In the estuary park, I went for a cruise on the estuary itself and saw hippos and crocs very close plus a lot of birds and some buffalo and waterbuck. I also walked along the expansive beach between the Indian Ocean and the estuary where fishers cast their lines into one or the other and hippos lounge.

a zebra in Hluhluwe

I went on a game drive in Hluhluwe*. It started at the crack of dawn (5:30am). I’d seen zebra and rhino before we even got in the gate. It was a pretty good morning, staring out over the beautiful hills and velds and seeing all sorts of animals both close and far away.

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Table Mountain as seen from one part of Tamboerskloof

I arrived back back in Cape Town about a week ago. It’s been pretty hectic since, trying to get set up and whatnot.

I moved into an apartment in Tamboerskloof. The TBK as I (and only I) call it is at the top of the city itself, towards both Table Mountain and Signal Hill. I picked the location because it’s quite walkable. Within a ten minute walk are a number of restaurants and bars, a couple grocery stores, a swimming pool and the start of Long St, which has lots more restaurants, bars and shops. So far I’m enjoying living here, though there certainly is some adjustment having been in either suburbs or very rural areas for the last month and a half.

But I’ve spent a lot of time the last week buying things for my room (bed, sheets, curtains, etc) and basic food stuffs. I’ve unpacked. I have rented a car through the middle of December and I’ve met with a couple places about potential jobs. So it’s been a busy time.

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I’ve been posting plenty of photos over at my photoblog.

*the hl sound in Zulu is sort of like ’shl’ except the sh sound is formed by trying to make the l sound with your tongue but instead pushing around your teeth into your cheeks.

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Addendum: All South Africans think that Americans only bbq hamburgers or maybe hot dogs. I guess this comes from movies. Perhaps I’m not the average bbqer, but I’ve grilled or seen a much wider variety of things being grilled than what’s grilled at the braais I’ve seen here (which is usually wors, chicken, chops and/ or steaks).

I learned today that from 1859-1950 the foot in the Cape (aka the Cape foot) was 12.396 English inches. Apparently this still shows up on some old architectural drawings.

I had my bed delivered yesterday and I tried to put on my double-size (aka full-size in the US) sheet and it was really a stretch to get it on. I was a bit perturbed but I thought it might be that the mattress is quite tall and that could take up all the slack plus some. The mystery was solved today, though, when the bed shop called to say that they’d made a mistake and delivered a queen bed instead of a double.

the water spigot at Okhayeni Primary School–the school doesn’t have running water

On Tuesday, I took my first hot, running water shower in two weeks. It was glorious and I wanted it to last forever, though I kept it to a reasonable length.

Immediately afterwards, though, I thought to myself: I bet that’s a week’s worth of water that I just used. I decided to do some calculations to see if I was right.

US federal regulations now mandate low-flow shower heads, which allow 2.5 gallons/ minute at 80psi or 2.2 gallons/ minute at 60 psi. Let’s assume the latter and a short, 5 minute shower. That’s 11 gallons of water or 41.6 liters of water. A pre-1992 shower head might let 5.5 gallons/ minute flow through it. Total water usage for an older, high-flow shower head for the same shower would be 110 liters.

By comparison, by the end of my visit to Ingwavuma, I was using about 25L of water every 2.5 days (plus 5L of bottled drinking water.) That works out to 84 liters of water a week. So about two showers with a low-flow shower head or less than one with a high-flow shower head is about a week’s worth of water. And let’s not even talk about washing dishes or doing a load of laundry.

This is just about facts; I’m not pointing fingers or trying to guilt-trip anyone.

I want to go to bed, but here’s a quick post.

Zulus have a habit of doubling words in English. “Yes, we must go quickly quickly.” Or one of my favorites is what what. “Over there, you’ll find another tuck shop with what what.” (For another reference, you may remember Mbecki’s “softly softly” policy on Zimbabwe, though I believe Mbecki is Xhosa.)

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On Saturday, when we went to watch the rugby match, we got to the lodge’s bar (where they have TVs) and walked in and turned the lights and TV on; then we sat down to watch the game by ourselves. A few minutes later, a woman walked in and asked if we wanted drinks. She sent in a guy to act as a barman when we said we would. He sat in the backroom most of the game, saying to just shout if we needed anything. But near the end of the match, he came out and asked me to help him on his computer, to make a CD with some songs on it. So in addition to my tip, I helped him with burning a CD; I feel like he did alright on the day.

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I leave Ingwavuma tomorrow morning. It’s been a weird two weeks; perhaps the weirdest is that it’s felt like much longer. I feel quite settled here. I’ve been cooking for myself; I have a routine; I’ve made friends. It’s also so far removed from an American life or really any city life that I’ve experienced that it feels like I’m living another life–perhaps someone else’s life–entirely.

What better way to end a weird two weeks than a weird day: I changed a tire, set up two computers, and had lunch at a hidden cafe where the waitress ran (jogged is perhaps a more appropriate term) from the table to the kitchen, despite the fact that we were the only two people there and that we were in no hurry whatsoever.

Tonight was a going away bbq–a braai as it’s called in SA English. My family friend, her fiance, my coworkers and a few of the people I’ve met here all turned out. We ate well, chatted and had a grand time.

On the way back, one pick up served as the ride home for eight or nine people. I stood in the back holding onto the rollbar with two Zulus and a Malawian as we made our way down a bumpy dirty road. People may decry being careless about safety in foreign countries when one wouldn’t be at home, but this time it didn’t produce any injuries, just a giant smile on my face as we bumped through black night with cold air rushing past our bodies.

Every morning, a sea of thirty pre-school voices greet me as I go past the playground. I never knew what they were saying, so I’d smile or give a little wave and half-ignore them, not knowing what they were saying. I learned yesterday that malume means uncle but is often used as a term of respect. So, oops.

By my coworker’s count, 29 people are employed at Zesize. Yesterday (and many days) there were four cars. And Ingwavuma, by many accounts, has gotten a lot more wealthy over the past few years. So that gives you a bit of an idea what gainfully employed individuals in a rural town such as this, even one that’s getting wealthier, can afford.

During yesterday’s school meeting with the radio project kids, they were asked to come up with themes for next week’s broadcast, which occurs shortly before the Heritage Day holiday and will be somewhat related to the idea of heritage. One kid suggested the theme of “Thank God I’m a black man”. After a beat, everyone looked at me to see if I was offended. I wasn’t but I enjoyed the awkwardness of the situation.

Tonight I had my first full conversation in Zulu; granted, it was merely the simplest of exchanges, but I was quite proud of knowing what to say.

I learned today that all the land around here is owned by the king of the Zulus and people have a ‘Permit to Occupy’ (PTO, as they’re known) at best. This, apparently, has its upsides (prices are low and even the poor can afford land) and downsides (can’t be used as collateral at a bank; impedes business development).

Today was quite nice. I went to watch the SA rugby test match at a local lodge with the family friend’s fiance. It was a good time. And it was my first beer in two weeks. After we had a simple lunch on his stoep and dozed for a little bit before hiking out to the edge of the mountains, where they drop down into Swaziland. On one side one can see Mozambique as well and the Ingwavuma river winds through some small hills. On the other, it faces the west and the plains of Swaziland on a shear drop of 600m or 700m. We watched a beautiful sunset from there.

It’s been nice living this little slice of African life; for me it has been a simple and calming time. But I’m not worrying about money, food, clothing, shelter or really much at all right now. I don’t want to misrepresent this area, though. For all the of the romantic ideals of African life, life here is difficult for the average person. For its increased wealth, Ingwavuma still has issues of high unemployment. HIV/ AIDs effects nearly every family and the taboo of the subject hurts the situation even more. Carrying water from the pumps, which run intermittently, a job often left to children, is time-consuming and takes up time when they could be studying or playing. There are water-borne illnesses. Mosquitoes carry malaria. I could continue on, but I think you get the idea.

Just a couple more days here. I’ll be sad to go.

So there are three click sounds in Zulu and I’ve been practicing them quite hard. Today while trying to master two words, Abaqophi (the shortened name [1] of the radio project, I believe this is “recorders”) and uxolo, meaning “excuse me”. A Zulu guy was trying to explain the q click sound: “It’s the sound you make when you call a chicken.” “Uh…I’ve never called a chicken.” I’ve previously heard the x sound described as the sound one makes to call a horse. I feel like the average American may have problems relating to these descriptions.

Well, I’ll try to describe them a little more clearly. C is the sound you may make if you’re tsk tsk tsking someone. Back of the tongue is anchored on the molars and the front pulls down fairly softly right behind the front teeth. It’s fairly high pitched and has a bit of a ‘wet’ sound. Q is the sound you make if you place your tongue flat against the roof of your mouth behind your teeth and then pull down quite strongly, but don’t smack your tongue against the bottom of your mouth. It’s quite a strong, low and open. X is perhaps the trickiest for me. Anchor the front (on the palate behind the teeth) and back (on the molars) of the tongue and pull down with one side. It’s not a clean ‘click’ but it’s cleaner than the c sound. It’s medium pitch, a fairly percussive beginning and a ‘wet’ middle.

One final note: these sounds can have a n sound to them (nx nc nq), but in their purest form have no n sound to them. This is the trickiest part of their pronunciation to me. Alright? Got it?

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A few days ago Colin pointed out that there would be a race between a carrier pigeon and the ADSL of Telekom, SA’s (formerly?) national telecom company. The task would be to transfer 4GB of data between computers 50 miles apart. I told Colin that I’d be betting on the pigeon. Well, I would have done well if I’d bet money:

[The] 11-month-old pigeon, Winston, took one hour and eight minutes to fly the 80 km (50 miles) from Unlimited IT’s offices near Pietermaritzburg to the coastal city of Durban with a data card was strapped to his leg.

Including downloading, the transfer took two hours, six minutes and 57 seconds — the time it took for only four percent of the data to be transferred using a Telkom line.

Wow–that’s pathetic.

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The line between hitchhiking and public transportation here is quite blurred. Public transportation, as I’ve mentioned consists of ‘minibus taxis’ which you flag down when you want to get on and get off where you want, paying a fair for the distance in between. Except in Ingwavuma, these aren’t just minibuses[2]. They’re pick-ups with benches in the back, SUVs and, this evening, a sedan. So basically the only difference between this evening and hitchhiking is that I paid the guy about a dollar.

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Above are the aforementioned potpits in the road between Bhambanana and Ingwavuma. Shown are somewhat benign examples. For a sense of scale, the one in front is about 2.5 feet across.

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The day after last Thursday’s soccer game, I felt fine. First thing into Monday’s game, I pulled—maybe tore—my quad. It’s fine when walking around but the first steps of running, it hurts like crazy. I’d better be careful about it.

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The power went out this morning so I couldn’t heat water for my bucket shower. I ended up taking a cold half-shower and with yesterday’s temperature dip, I was shivering the whole time. And yet, still, there is something about life here that draws you in. I’ve met a number of people here who came here for a year and are still here three years later. I wondered how that could happen, but yesterday and today I’ve been wondering to myself if I couldn’t postpone my return to Cape Town a few more days, a week, maybe.

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[1] Abaqophi basOkhayeni Abaqinile is the full name–the Strong Recorders of Ohkayeni; Ohkayeni is the primary school where the program is based.

[2] In Cape Town they are strictly minibuses and run quite regular routes and do generally work more like buses. The locals both here and in Cape Town just call them ‘taxis’ or ‘public transportation’.

Story time 1: So I went to the store on Tuesday and bought a freshly baked loaf of sandwich bread—it was still hot even. It wasn’t cut though, but when I was checking out I saw this bread cutting machine over to one side, so after I paid, I went over to it to get my bread cut. I put my bread in the ‘in’ side and turn it on and wait for my bread. Nothing comes. At this point I realize there’s this teenage Zulu girl next to me and she’s looking at me like I’m a complete moron. She shows me how it works; you have to open up the back and put your bread into the pusher part for it to work. This whole time she still has that look of contempt on her face.

Story time 2: This afternoon/ evening, the temperature dropped to about 60 degrees. I’m still wearing my long pants and t-shirt from the day and I feel fine. All the locals—all of them—are wearing jackets and knit hats. Apparently this passes for cold here. They did not believe me when I told them this wasn’t cold.

No day is exactly like this, but this is sort of how things have been going:

6:30a wake up

6:35-6:45a heat water for bucket shower

6:45-7a shower

7-7:30a eat breakfast, read email/ internets

7:30-7:45a wash dishes

7:45-8a get ready, walk to center

8a-1p radio project work

1-2p lunch at my rondavel

2-4p radio project work [1]

4:15-6:30p read, play soccer [2] or go for a walk; carry up water or boil water for drinking as necessary.

6:30-7:30p make and eat dinner

7:30-9:45p read, blog, listen to music; sort photos or videos etc.

9:45p-10p brush teeth, get ready for bed

10p go to bed

[1] on Wednesdays and Fridays, for the radio project, we go to a school that is farther away from about 12:30-4:30pm, so I eat lunch earlier on these days.

[2] soccer is Mondays and Thursdays

A friend’s mentioning his overtime for working today reminded me that it’s a holiday in the States. I’d totally forgotten. Enjoy your day off. My next holiday is Sept 24, Heritage Day.

I’ve made some friends here, or acquaintances at least. There’s a group of young people working at NGOs, the hospital, schools and churches. They’re mostly from South Africa but there are some Germans and things in there too. These are some of the same people I played soccer with on Thursday. On Friday I went to a residence on the hospital grounds to play a board game and hang out with some of them. That’s what passes for night life here in Ingwavuma but it was a fun time.

On Saturday I took public transportation alone for the first time here. Public transit here (which is quite similar to Cape Town’s public transport) are ‘taxis’. These are minibuses, SUVs and the like, which people flag down to get in and then get off where they need to, paying a set fee for the distance to the driver. It’s sort of like a hybrid between a taxi and a bus in American terms. Fare from here to town is R7, a little less than $1.

I’d taken them with some people from Ziseze before, but Saturday’s trip into town was my first alone. Great victory! Except I got there at 1:10pm and the shops close at 1pm. What kind of town has shops that close at 1pm? But I walked around for a while and got a coke at a take-away place that was still open.

a sheep in the road in ‘town’ in Ingwavuma

The “town” of Ingwavuma consists of a small shopping plaza with less than a dozen establishments, only a few of those are bigger than the couple hole in the wall take-away places. There is a supermarket, a building supply place, a gas station, a furniture store, an electronics store and a barber shop. Across the street are maybe a dozen stalls where people sell (probably home-grown) vegetables and things. Goats may be wandering in the street; cattle aren’t far away.

the water spigot at Okhayeni Primary School–the school doesn’t have running water

One of the places I’d got to via taxi was one of the schools the radio project works in, Okhayeni Primary School. The radio project group has called themselves what translates to the Okhayeni Strong Recorders. I think this is a pretty rad name.

Sunday I went to a local church which is mostly made up of Zulus. The preacher spoke in English but a member of the congregation translated on the spot–I was really impressed with this guy, incidentally. The service itself wasn’t particularly noteworthy besides it lasting 3 hours, but as I sat waiting for the service to start, some of the gathered, mostly women, sang some hymns in Zulu rather spontaneously. One started a hymn without any prompting or communication with others but many others soon joined in, filling out the harmonies. Some of them were particularly gorgeous and gave me chills.

a somewhat typical homestead around here with some older mud-and-stick buildings and some more modern buildings

In the afternoon I went for a long walk down the hill along the main road, turning back only when I was hot and sweaty and miles away. The road was surprisingly quiet and besides the occasional homestead, it was mostly just grass and trees and hills and valleys around me.

Homestead does tend to be a more appropriate term than home here: most places people live have multiple smaller buildings bunched together. Often they’re separated out by function–one may be the kitchen; one may be the sleeping quarters.

One Zulu exchange that I’ve enjoyed particularly is as follows, and it definitely loses something in writing, in the rhythm and cadence:
One: Sanibona (hello, to a group)
Group, in unison: Yebo! (yes, or general acknowledgment)
One: Ninjani (how are you, to a group)
Group, in unison: Siyaphila (we are fine)

I arrived in South Africa a month ago today. Seems like not all that long, right?

Baba (”Father”) Wyene is the night watchman here at Zesize. He’s very careful, always locking the gate and making sure to only let permitted people in during his watch. He’s also a carver. He brought by a knobkierrie–a traditional weapon–that he’d carved along with some spoons. His workmanship is really good and his prices low; he gave me one spoon and I bought another.

Yesterday was a good day, as I mentioned. A local school group was going to a local game reserve, Ndumo. I wasn’t really a chaperon; I mostly just tagged along as a friend of a friend of the people who run the school that was going on the trip. Good enough for me… We didn’t see much–some nyala, red duiker, wildebeest, impala, vervet monkeys, crocodile, and lots of birds–but it was nice going along those dirt roads at 20kph, arm resting on the window sill, through relatively unspoiled wilderness. We even went to Red Cliffs, which overlooks the river that divides South Africa from Mozambique. Hello, other country! It joins Zambia as a country I’ve seen across a river but haven’t been in.

After I got back, I relaxed for a bit before getting a ride to the grocery store–it’s 6km up the hill and I don’t have a car. Then I played some soccer, which you already know all about. The family friend whose organization I’m working for here then made me some dinner and let me take a real bath–complete with running and hot water! Amazing!

Today I went to a tuck shop–a convenience store–with Fana, the previously mentioned guy who I’m working with. There, a bunch of people were getting an early start to the weekend and many seemed to be a few drinks in already. This mostly manifested itself in the lively chatter and group dancing and singing along to the music absolutely blasting out of the jukebox. It just made me smile.

The road between the T-junction town of Bhambanana and Ingwavuma–the ‘tar road’ as they call it, being the only paved road between the two–has a lot of potholes. Well, both ‘a lot’ and ‘pot holes’ are understatements. Perhaps a ton of potpits would be more appropriate. These aren’t the sorts of things that would merely take out a bike tire; these are often four feet across and up to six inches deep. (I say this without fear of exaggeration.) People drive along at road speeds only to slow down to a crawl to drive around these things. People know that driving through them is a quick way to turn your car into a skorokoro, a junky car. Even the ones that have been patched recently are still deep enough to be avoided!

One thing that carrying your own water up from a pump does is that it puts water conservation into very concrete terms. My first 24 hours here, I used 25L of water in addition to drinking almost 5L of bottled drinking water. This was water that was already at the rondavel. The next 25L water, which I’d had to carry myself, lasted 48 hours and that included water that I boiled for drinking water.

There’s plenty of references to “Africa time” here. Things certainly aren’t run with a German sense of timing. Often one can leave at the time when something “starts” and probably still get there at an appropriate time.

I’ll play. Sure, I’ll play. I haven’t played since I was thirteen, I laugh. I won’t be very good.

Look at me! I’m fast! Look, I just got the ball away from that good player. Look, I’m on a breakaway! Amazing! Oh, I missed the shot. I’ll get it next time.

I do not get it next time. I’m old. I slow down quickly. Soon I’m hunched over, hands on my knees, breathing deeply with a bit of wheeze in my throat. They play on. I hold up my hand to wave off any concern. They are not concerned.

But, in the end, it’s good times. I run and sweat. I sprint and wheeze. My sides hurt; I tell an opposing player to stop being so fast. He is very fast: like lightning. It’s competitive—and I want to play well—but no one keeps score.

Just one part of a really nice day.

The boys are playing soccer today. On the gravelly red clay it’s a different game than the grass game, just like blacktop basketball is different from the hard court variety. I haven’t see a slide tackle; I don’t think anyone will take a dive to draw a penalty. I’m not sure if there are even penalties in this game.

Zesize: soccer field front. The center itself to the left. The yellow rondavel left of center, is where I’m staying

The idea of Lebolla–the bride price–is apparently still very much followed in rural South African culture. Fana, a guy who I’m working with here, suggested 12 cattle or upwards of R50,000 is required these days. Of course there are some who can afford it, but it seems some who are otherwise ready to get married are not solely because of the onus of the lebolla.

One of my favorite SA traditions is not really that old nor is it that impressive. On the country roads, there are often slow vehicles–heavy trucks, half-working bakkies, cautious drivers–while other wish to go highway speeds. The slower vehicles will often slide over onto the shoulder to make it easier for the faster driver. The faster driver will then turn on his hazards for a couple seconds—”thanks”—and then the slower will flash his headlights—”pleasure[1]“. I love that little back and forth.

I don’t know much, but I know that 25L of water weighs a fair amount. And if I carry that up a hill from the spigot to my place every day, I’ll have strong shoulders and back by the end of these couple weeks.

The colors here are instantly memorable–the dark red of the clay, the greens of the plants, the off-whites and browns of the thatched roof houses.

It’s hot during the day. It’s winter, remember. In Cape Town, it felt like winter. Houses don’t have heat and I was wearing a sweatshirt or an outer layer almost constantly. But here, it seems to be summer already. I may be wearing pants, but that’s more because it seems that’s proper at the center than the heat. It’s a dry dry heat. It’s not unbearable, but it’s warmer than one would expect for winter.

[1] often said as in “my pleasure”, the equivalent of “you’re welcome.”

In the waning evening light, teenage boys are doing calisthenics on the soccer field. I know it’s a soccer practice—they’re on the field and there’s a ball in the center—but right now it looks more like some sort of synchronized dance.

The field is of the red dirt, clay really, that’s common in this part of the world and the the goals are each three thin logs nailed together, two sides and the top. I can see a woman walking along a dirt path with a water bucket balanced on her head. There’s something very Out of Africa about this. Except I’m not falling in love with someone that’s not my husband. Am I thinking of the right movie?

And aside from the fact that this is quite rural, I’m not blazing any trails. Others have come before me. I don’t have a rifle at my side to fend off wild beasts; I have to worry more about my laptop being stolen than a lion charging me.

It’s so still. Besides an occasional car on the one paved road to Ingwavuma, there’s just crickets, rustling leaves and voices of people in houses and huts down the hill and across the valley.

Of course I’ll get antsy—I get antsy in big cities too—but I think this will be good for me: the stillness, the simplicity.

It gets dark early here. The boys must not be playing any soccer today; it’s nearly dark and they’re doing sit-ups in a circle; someone’s counting them off in Zulu it sounds like.

The day’s come and gone and I haven’t made any mention of my annual charitable giving. I’m not donating money this year, at least not yet. I will be returning to Ingwavuma, in rural Zululand for a couple weeks this time.

A family friend works there for an NGO and I’ll be helping out with the Children’s Radio Project through that organization. As you may have guessed, I was tapped for this because I am/ was a radio star.

I’ll be returning to Cape Town on September 18 via either St. Lucia or Hluhluwe plus Durban.

I have my malaria pills, bug spray, sun block, and a charged camera with an empty memory card. Bucket showers, here I come.

I’ll probably have intermittent internet up there, so I might not be posting a lot. Feel free to email me in the meantime to get the scoop.

As interesting as the South African accent is to me, what’s more peculiar is the differences in cadence and intonation. At the ends of sentences when Americans–non-Valley Girl-influenced Americans, that is–drop their tone quite a bit, South Africans will often dip a little and then level off again. I spoke with an American who’s been here for a few years the other day and I didn’t realize for a few minutes that she was American because she’s taken on these intonation and cadence traits, though her accent is straight American.

Apparently, I have a thick accent. There are people who don’t always have an easy time understanding me here. That seems strange to me. I feel I speak rather plainly, though I do mumble sometimes.

They call traffic lights “robots” here, officially even; there are times when you’re approaching a light and the road is painted ‘ROBOT’.

The people I’m staying with have six cats. They also fill three bird feeders and spread more birdseed on the driveway daily. And somehow they’re dismayed when one of the cats goes after a bird.

The Gatsby, the Cape Town sandwich, has fries on it. See here for an example. Pittsburghers will know why I’m mentioning this.

The fruits and juices here are great, as are the chocolates and candies. The selection and quality of beer is lacking, but the hard cider is the best I’ve had.

People here refer to the “city bowl suburbs”. Those places are right in the city to me. It’s approximately equivalent to calling the Mission a suburb in SF or the Back Bay a suburb in Boston or Chelsea a suburb in NYC.

When you’re not working, any weekend can be a three day weekend[1]. I decided this would be in–Saturday through Monday. It was a good one. Really good.

three girls in Khayelitsha

Saturday

Saturday I did not expect. A friend of a friend asked me to help with a podcast that she helps with at a school in Khayelitsha. (She wanted my help because of all my experience in radio.) I helped with it; that was pretty good but rather straight forward. Then, it turns out, one students’ mom was performing a sangoma ceremony so we went as unannounced (but invited) guests. I’d been to a sangoma ceremony before on a township tour, but that this was genuine–that it was not done for tourists was special. Twenty, thirty people packed into a tiny house watching, singing, clapping, dancing during the ceremony.

After that, a kid of my parents’ friends was having a birthday party and I went. I met some cool people, chatted, had a couple drinks and some good food. I may have someone to watch some NFL with and some other people to play pub trivia with now, so that’s good.

Cape Town CBD plus Green Point (stadium, in construction, at left)

Sunday

Sunday was clear–crystal clear blue skies–and warm for the first time in a while, so that meant going up Table Mountain by foot. After parking mid-morning, it was a beautiful but strenuous hike up. It’s just about straight up for 3km straight. There are more stairs (made of rocks) than switchbacks and it’s step after step, one foot in front of the others. At the top it was gorgeous, as always, but I think some of the best parts are on the hike up. I meant to take the cable way down, but the high winds forced its closure for the day, so hiking back down was the option and that’s what I did. I still ache…

the Atlantic plus wildflowers

Monday

Monday I went to the Postberg peninsula in the West Coast National Park[2] to see the wild flowers. The trip up there was wonderful: the R27–the West Coast Road as they call it–goes from city to nothing very quickly. It’s a dead straight shot with no buildings and nothing but plains and a glimpse of the ocean for most of it.

The national park itself is fairly plain, but it has nice unspoiled beaches and lagoons. The peninsula was filled abundantly with wildflowers of yellows, whites, oranges and purples. It was really beautiful and worth the day trip.

I didn’t really plan for a three day weekend or really any of this, but that’s how it turned out. Pretty nice, I have to say.

[1] It could be argued that it’s always the weekend in such cases, but I feel like that would require always doing weekend activities.

[2] Can you believe I got a card that will get me into every national park for a year for ~$30?? Ridiculous!

August 19, 1999. People celebrate anniversaries of graduations, but that date changed my life far more than the graduation three months before. It was the day I left for college.

My mom had taken me to the airport and my friend Mike met me at the gate—remember when you could still go to the gate to see someone off? I’m still not sure why but in those days Mike loved going to the airport so I told him when my flight was thinking he might come. He did. (Thanks, Mike.) As the gate attendant took my boarding pass for that US Air Pittsburgh-Boston and I looked back at Mom and Mike, I didn’t cry; my eyes didn’t well up. I didn’t know how to cry in those days. It was another six months before I learned again.

But I was frightened. I knew I wouldn’t be a big fish in a small pond anymore. I had no idea what size body of water was coming or anything else.

It wasn’t the ten years I imagined it’d be, but it’s been good. I’ve lived all over the place. I’ve had great opportunities. I’ve met lots of great people and made great friends. I’ve worked on interesting projects. I gained and lost confidence so many times I can’t remember. I’ve gone through phases and hobbies and crushes and and and…

There was a weekend. It was secret. Well, it was not really meant to be secret, but it turned out to be. It was between moving out of my apartment in San Francisco and before boarding a plane for London and then on to Cape Town. I’d planned everything—two, three social engagements a day in addition to packing and shipping—for before I moved out so after was a quiet weekend. A secret.

A trip to the post office. I’d forgotten to mail two things the previous day. The bus #22 took me there and returned with me. Even when jam-packed, there’s something peaceful about the bus.

A lunch and beer with my roommate at a favorite set of places. Well, I guess we weren’t roommates anymore by that point, but we’d been roommates so long–longer than you’d rightfully guess—I’ll probably always refer to him as my roommate, not as some cute familiar term, but because that’s what he is: of course he’s my roommate.

Blog. Writing the last two posts for my music blog. They were hard words to write; I wanted them to be all right.

A long walk—with a portable toilet in the street!—and ice cream for dinner. It was only a couple miles, I’m sure, but it felt like we were walking for a long time. As dusk settled on the city, we walked in zig-zags across the Mission, freshly my former neighborhood, toward a ice cream place I’d meant to try, but hadn’t had a chance. Walking down 22nd St. there was something odd as we crossed Shotwell. It was a portable toilet right in the middle of the street. Drivers executing their three point turns were obviously as confused as I was as to why it was there. And shortly afterward: “What time does it close?” “9. We’d better hurry!” We did. Fudgcicle ice cream was the reward. So smooth and creamy.

Wine and a bad movie. Zoolander is either one of the dumbest funny movies or funniest dumb moves outside of Super Troopers. Splitting a bottle of South African wine, left over from my just moved out-of apartment, during it was nice, too, but nothing better than good company.

Italian mob movie with doves, robes and lots of blood. Not really. Not at all, in fact. But the stones and echoes and space and ceremonious nature of St. Ignatius always makes me think the dove/ gunfight scene of a Mafia movie is nearly upon me.

Saigon and New Orleans and California. Possibly the best $3 sandwich in San Francisco or even the US has carrots and cilantro and other delicious spices and it is from a hole in the wall Vietnamese sandwich shop in the Tenderloin. Even on a Sunday afternoon the line is out the door. Then was the issue of streetcars. I’d never ridden three of the best and there are two I still haven’t ridden: boat tram and the Zurich, but in almost a whole afternoon of riding, I did get to ride on < a href="http://www.streetcar.org/mim/streetcars/fleet/historic/952/">a streetcar named desire, which was fantastic. And if you ride all the way to Fishermen’s Wharf—let’s say this better—if you ride all the way to Fishermen’s Wharf on your last day in America, why not go to In N Out and get something. A milkshake and fries will do…

As they say, only in San Francisco. That is to say, Indian pizza. Better than I would have expected the first time and as good each additional time, my last proper meal in San Francisco was also at the place I’ve probably been more than any other, besides possibly, the taqueria.

And why do I remember just about every detail of this secret weekend? Well, for the above, and because it was the last weekend but also for some reasons I’ll keep for myself. After all, it is a secret weekend.

The keys to the car I’ve been driving don’t make a lot of sense but I think I’ve figured them out:

key #1, aka “ignition key” works in:

• ignition
• front passenger door
• trunk
• gas cap

key #2, aka “other key” works in:

• driver door which operates the power locks for all doors except the front passenger door

Perfectly intuitive, right?

I’ve been up to everything and nothing over the past few days.

With opening a bank account last week, logistical issues haven’t been as much of a constant concern. There’s still plenty up in the air, to be sure.

Colorful houses in Bo Kaap

I’ve been trying to decide where in the city to live. I’ve taken to walking around all the different neighborhoods I was thinking of living in: Gardens, Tamboerskloof, Bo Kaap, De Waterkant, Green Point, Sea Point, Woodstock, Observatory. I’m mostly concentrating on Gardens, Tamboerskloof and Sea Point now, but I’ve been meaning to take another look at Woodstock. Here’s a map that shows the different areas of town, if you’re curious.

the Sea Point pool and Atlantic Ocean

Driving around has been a bit of a challenge. The left-hand driving isn’t hard, but the roads are narrow and winding and one-way streets abound. In perhaps the most extreme case of it since Pittsburgh, I think Cape Town is really a city you need to drive around a lot before you know how to get around. I know the arteries and areas so I can get close to where I want to go, but once I get close, wrong turns seem to have some odd attraction to me. The sign posting also leaves a lot to be desired.

Boats in Kalk Bay, False Bay

I spent a little bit of Friday and most of Saturday down on the False Bay side of things. The towns there have a lot of charm to them. Little fishing harbors, that despite expectations of being tourist traps are still genuine fishing harbors, and towns nestled between the mountains and the sea. Kalk Bay has quite of bit of charm to it and has at least a couple great restaurants. Saturday, I spent with a family friend down in Simon’s Town. Drinking rooibos on the porch overlooking the naval base and bay while the sunset was nice. So peaceful.

The naval shipyard in Simon’s Town

While down there, the friend also drove me around that end of the Cape Peninsula. We stopped at a place called Imhoff, which probably started as a trading post/ farm shop, but has since added camel rides, a nursery, a snake zoo, and recycling center. We went to the snake zoo–wow there were a lot of snakes there and plenty of them were highly venomous. Pretty cool, but every time you came across a cage without a snake, you sort of checked around your feet to make sure it hadn’t escaped. Imhoff reminded me of the places you find in the West of the US on secondary highways–tourist stops that keep added unrelated attractions and businesses to try to get people to stop.

I figured out how to turn on the radio in the old beast of a car I’ve been driving and I kind of like radio here. I’ll just turn the knob till I find something interesting. A couple days ago I listened to about fifteen minutes of Islamic sing-chanting, which is something I was introduced to in a world music class and have only really heard one other time, in Jakarta. I have a bit of a soft spot for the heavily Muslim Cape Malays, who were probably the target audience for this broadcast. Yesterday I listened to some Indian ragas on the radio. They were pretty traditional and wonderful and even included some shehnai or the South Indian equivalent.

Some people answer phones here funny, giving the phone number first. “Eight two four eight one six two, hello!” I haven’t noticed this widely but at least a few families do it. I suppose it helps let the caller know if they’ve dialed the wrong number immediately.

Mellie on top of the fridge

The people I’m staying with have six cats: Timmy, Jack, Fudge, Mellie, Amber and Robbie (the robber). And they spoil them like you wouldn’t believe. Each, naturally, has its own personality, food preferences and spots around the houses they like to sit.

The other day I had lunch at a nice pub/restaurant in Old Wynberg. A family friend had taken me there after our long wait at the Dept of Home Affairs. One of the specials was Thai chicken lasagna. It sounded interesting so I ordered it [1].

Me: This reminds of this Thai chicken pizza a friend made a few weeks ago. She made a peanut sauce instead of a tomato sauce and put cilantro and stuff on top. It was really good.

Family friend: Your mom mentioned you met a girl before you left.

Me, mostly to myself: Was it that obvious?

[1] It was both quite interesting and quite good. Who woulda thought?

At the DMV, you usually just take a number and sit till it’s called. Easy (and lazy). Or if you’re smart you make an appointment beforehand.

Apparently it’s not the way it’s done here. Needing to submit some forms at the Department of Home Affairs, I entered[1] with a family friend and looked at the rows of chairs nearest the counter I needed to go to.

“How’s the order work?”

“You just sit at the end of the line and move over one seat every time someone is called up to the counter.”

“Really? Really?! Wow.”

So we sat and moved one or two seats at a time, as per the diagram above, through the thirty-seven seats before us until I got to the first seat and then got called up to the counter. Those thirty-seven seats took about two hours.

But then we were up at the counter! Almost finished! Light at the end of the tunnel! Sweet taste of victory nearing the tip of our tongues!

Not quite. It was another hour before I left. Everything seemed to take too long: they copied my phone number wrong from my form and I told them immediately. There’s fifteen minutes while the worker went off to figure out how to change it. I needed to pay the fees associated with the forms but the cashier decided to go off on a break so there’s ten minutes. They ran out of paper to print my document, so there’s fifteen minutes. Et cetera.

Now I’m not going to say that America is without bureaucracy–in fact, it’s rife with it–but this was quite pronounced in how it tried one’s patience. I do have to say that lunch outside in the sun, sipping Savannas did feel nicer than I thought it would.

[1] Incidentally, the “entrance” had a metal detector and the exit was on the other side, close to where I was getting passport-sized photos taken. Seeing other people do the same, I just walked into the exit (sans metal detector). The security guard made no move to stop anyone.

Three unrelated topics that are on my mind.

On race: I forgot how blunt people[1] can be about race in South Africa. Having lived in places where mentioning race is equated with racism, it’s a bit shocking. I wouldn’t say these people are racist just for being aware of race–it’s simply a nation that’s very conscious of race as it was a very prominent difference for many years. There’s still racism, of course, it’s just not always the same as the blunt language.

On baseball: I watched a baseball game this afternoon. ESPN World replayed last night’s BoSox vs. Tampa Bay game. I didn’t realize they aired baseball in this market–though I do remember them airing pennant-hunt and playoff games in Asia when I was there in the fall a couple years ago, but those markets are much more interested in baseball than this one. I also saw an ad for Sports Center, though it’s the world edition so we’ll see how it is. Maybe the top 10 plays will still be good.

On coincidental encounters: Yesterday at a small shopping center, I passed two American girls (judging by accents), one of whom was wearing a University of San Francisco sweatshirt. Not only is that that town I just came from, I was on the USF campus the day before I left. Not in South Africa, but there was nevertheless an odd coincidence on Tuesday. We ran into a friend of my aunt’s while out on a walk with her dog in a small town outside London and it turns out she’s about to go to San Francisco to visit her brother. Her brother lives in Noe Valley on 26th St., which is probably within five blocks of where I just lived in SF (also on 26th St.). And I’ve undoubtedly walked by his house as I used to walk up 26th when I needed some peace and quiet.

[1] By “people” I mostly mean people of my parents’ generation. I have had few lengthy conversations with people my age in South Africa and their attitudes are possibly/ probably different.

1. Why is United giving us sporks? Sporks are not good for eating yogurt nor spreading jam on a croissant. I hold up the spork to show to the person in the next seat. “I know”, she says, but it comes out as an acknowledging “I knooooooww” in that drawn out British way. She’s Brazilian-born but grew up in London and speaks like a proper Brit. She’s just been visiting her brother in the Mission and her sister in Palo Alto. We commiserate about the weather.

2. A pub called the Jolly Cricketers in a quaint English town outside London. My uncle takes me out to traditional English pub for lunch but we both order thoroughly untraditional lamb and feta burgers which are delicious. We’re joined by my uncle’s old friend Tom; he does not order a lamb burger. I also down two pints of hand-pumped and only moderately below room temperature ale. They’re good, especially one called Rebellion. Looking back one could ascribe some significance to this trip according to the name of that beer, but really I had just tried Tom’s and liked it.

3. Row fifty two on an Air Bus 340-200 at about four in the morning. The lights are out. I’ve woken up for some reason. My shoulders shudder and my eyes stream messily into my eye cover. Part of it is doubts about coming to SA and part of it is doubts about leaving what I had. But the small hours are not a time when one can tell which are unfounded and which are not.

4. Passport control. The passport agent says “good morning” and that’s about it. Stamp! stamp!, in that nice rhythm that they do–and I’m through. If she’d been thinking about the book I would write about my experience, perhaps she could have said something with greater significance like “Welcome home” as she handed me back my passport. But she didn’t. It’s yet to be seen whether her omission is prescient or not.

So I wanted to get new underwear before I left. I like Hanes. Shouldn’t be a problem to find some, except that when San Francisco basically lacks big box stores (your Targets and whatnot), I don’t know where to look for just regular underwear.

So I checked Hanes’ website and it says that Walgreens carries their products. Between leaving work and selling someone my bookshelf, I had a couple minutes and I decided to try to fit in a quick trip to Walgreens to check if they had underwear.

So I rushed in and was looking around. I couldn’t find underwear and I was starting to get worried I’d be late to sell my bookshelf. I’ll just ask one of the employees where to find them, I thought. Then I reconsidered: they might get the wrong idea if I was rushing around, looking anxious and worried and asked “Do you have underwear?”

I plan on continuing working in mechanical engineering when I get to South Africa. But due to space constraints, I’m not bringing anything but the essential engineering tools with me:

• Roark’s Formulas for Stress and Strain[1]
• Machinery’s Handbook[1]
• TI-85 calculator[2]
• dial calipers[3]
• Wiha precision screwdrivers[4]

[1] I got both of these at used book sales. They’re old editions, but the formulas are still applicable. Total cost: around $6.

[2] You wouldn’t think such a clunky piece of electronics would be necessary when every phone has a calculator function and you can use google as a calculator. But I immediately regretted not bringing this to Taiwan when I worked there.

[3] I really wish I was taking these fantastic calipers but the ones I’ve been using are owned by work, so they need to stay. Can you say ‘Christmas list’, though?

[4] previously raved about

When time’s short it forces you to focus your energies and do what you’ve only said you’ve wanted to do. I leave for South Africa in a bit over a week; time’s short.

Friday I had a going away party which included a secret house concert. This is a guy I’m big fans of* and have seen play in the Great American and other big venues, playing a few feet from me in my living room surrounded by 30 friends. Just acoustic guitar, upright bass and two voices and no amplification, it was nothing short of amazing.

And, after, there was beer, there were friends and there were cookies shaped like Africa and carrot cake cupcakes.

Less than twelve hours later, I was zipping across the Golden Gate Bridge–my first time across it in any form, I tell to incredulous people every time it comes up–on a rented Vespa LX 150 with a lady sitting behind, holding on.

It feels like these are just two vignettes in among many. Time is doing funny things, going fast, but with slow motion episodes.

* Though you may be able to guess his identity, I’ll leave that off this blog. He has a commitment to a music festival to not play shows in this time period.

PCC #1711 in Allentown climbing Arlington Ave. Hill, 1967 by Edward A Wickson

I’ve been interested in PCCs recently. They’re a type of streetcar that was designed by the Presidents’ Conference Committee in the 1930s and were primarily used during through the 1960s. San Francisco’s F Market line runs a lot of these along with some mostly wooden antique and Milan cars.

I found recently that Pittsburgh had one of the largest PCC fleets in its heyday. There are a number of great photo galleries of old Pittsburgh PCCs in action.

Interestingly enough, Pittsburgh actually ran PCCs in a limited context until 1999 on the 47D Drake Loop line. Here’s a great page about that loop and here’s a photo gallery of the last days of that line. I believe some of the last PCCs were running along this line, though I’m not sure where I read that now. Apparently ridership dwindled to 50 passengers a day at the end.

Market Street Railway, the non-profit that restores PCCs for the F Market, bought two of the last three cars, though they need to converted to appropriate wheel gauge before they’re usable. I really hope they keep the 90s white-black-and-gold paint job you see below.

In one last PCC oddity, the Ashmont Mattapan line in Boston is the last non-historic use of PCCs in the US. The line also runs through a cemetery. I should ride it next time I’m in Boston.

At Fort Couch, inbound car 4004 emerges from the tunnel under Fort Couch Road, a busy four-lane highway by Jon Bell

I sold my car recently and my two bikes (road, fixed gear) over the last few weeks.

Selling my car is a bit strange, but I haven’t actually used it much for most of the time I’ve had it. Not having a bike, though, is weird. Since I left for college[1] there hasn’t been a period for more than about two weeks that I haven’t had a bike. First thing I did when I moved to California was buy a bike (a funny old Lemans Centurion road bike-> commuter conversion). I’ve had two or three bikes for much of the time I’ve lived here. Even when I went to Germany and Taiwan, I bought bikes pretty quickly. But here I am without a bike and without plans to buy one soon[2]. It’s strange indeed.

[1] and before college I owned a bike, too, but I never rode it.

[2] this has to do with a number of factors, nagging knee injury among them.

(But if you do want to see someone getting a bike, check out Scott’s drool-worthy new frame.)

So, holy cow, I’m moving to South Africa, Cape Town to be exact. If we’ve talked recently I’ve probably already mentioned this to you, but I haven’t made it public on the internets till now because I wanted to make sure that things like work heard it from me before reading about it on the internet.

I will answer some of the questions that a lot of people ask.

I’m doing this because I want to. My parents are South African and every time we visit (8 times now) I’ve always wanted to live there, particularly in Cape Town. It’s something I’ve been seriously considering since September 2004 and now I’m doing it.

I don’t know how long I will stay. It might be as little as four months. It might be 1-2 years. I don’t think it’ll be five years.

We do still have family in SA. My aunt and uncle live in in Johannesburg. We also have a lot of family friends in Cape Town. I’ll be staying with one of my mom’s best friends while I get set up.

I don’t have a job lined up. I’ll be looking to work in engineering there. I will be going on an extended leave of absence from my current company.

No, I don’t speak Afrikaans and nor do the majority of South Africans, though there is a significant demographic group in Cape Town that does speak it. South Africa has 11 official languages now; most of daily transactions fall into English.

Yes, you can visit, though check plane fairs before you get set on the idea of going. It’s not cheap to get there (though it’s fairly cheap to stay there).

Yes, I’ll write about it here. I’ve also started a photo blog, in part to encourage myself to take photos regularly while I’m there.

I guess it’s almost a month ago that I went to Yosemite for the first time. I went with my friend Dave and his girlfriend Sarah, who’d just gotten off the plane from the UK.

Dave has gone multiple times a year for many years, so I just let him say what we should do. We went hiking from Glaciar Point down to the valley floor. We ate and drank. We lay in a field and tried to pick out climbers on the face of El Capitan. We found a grove of Giant Sequoias. We did a midnight hike up to Mirror Pond and saw it again in the day time.

Photographically, I brought my D80 and my ’60s-era Yashica A TLR. (I ran Velvia 50 through the Yashica.)

More photos after the jump

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Dave before the wedding

I just got back from 10 or 11 days on the east coast (depending whether you count from the time I left or landed, etc). The original reason for the trip was to go to Dave’s wedding, which was over Memorial Day weekend so I just extended it. I flew in and out of Charlotte, where my parents live now, and drove to Southwestern Virginia where the wedding was. (Though, couldn’t it have been in East Virginia so the song would have been applicable?)

The trip felt like four distinct parts parts and I’ll cover some of the highlights:

Pre-wedding:

painting the fauxtobooth

There was plenty of work left to be done when I arrive for the wedding, so most of the wedding party spent the days leading up to the wedding helping out in any number of ways.

We also needed to get the fauxtobooth v2.0–a DIY digital photobooth–up and running. Andy and Randy wrote code, I debugged a circuit and soldered some to fix it, Dave built the photobooth box. We all (plus Crystal!) painted.

no photos at the court house, but I surreptitiously took one of the application for marriage license

There was a lot of delirious laughing about things, about the situation. Dave was going so strong he forgot to eat on Friday and the rest of us didn’t demand food so we ended up eating our first proper meal at 10pm. A fierce-looking spider crawled up my shorts in the car the day before the wedding. My understanding was that I said some funny things in my panic—I was not focused on what I said.

Wedding:

goofy Jeff at the wedding
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Twelve year old brother of the groom and fellow groomsman at a friend’s wedding: I’m going to steal your hat and go into the [walk in] fridge.

Me: You’re going to go into the fridge?

12 y.o.: I already went in there. I farted in it.

—

Best conversation of the weekend so far.

I’m against taxis on principle. They’re usually really expensive and I should just walk or take a bus if it’s available. But occasionally the other options aren’t good/ available.

• 3/22/09 2am, Austin, TX (getting back to my friend’s house after a show at SxSW after he’d left earlier)
• 3/20/09 1:30am, Austin, TX (getting back to my friend’s house after a show at SxSW after he’d left earlier)
• 3/12/09 1:30am, San Francisco (getting home with Dave and Tina after a show because their flight was early the next day)
• 2/17/09 10pm San Francisco (splitting a taxi back from the airport with coworkers)
• 2/16/09 6:05pm Lahaina, HI (with two others, getting back to the hotel after a 20 mile hike and 2 bus rides because the last bus/ shuttle stopped 6-7pm for the driver’s dinner)
• 12/17/07 5pm Taipei, TW (from work with two coworkers at their insistence)
• 12/09/07 1am Taipei, TW (post-subway hours trip back to my hotel)
• 12/3/07 8:30am Taipei, TW (to work after a bus came that was too full to fit on)

That’s right, I don’t think I took a cab in 2008.

Also, I have no idea why I thought I should make this list.

Two Sheds @ Beauty Bar

A few weeks ago I went to SxSW and saw 46 bands and 23 shows in 4 days. I recaped it at my music blog but I got a number of questions about what the highlights were, so here’s some of that.

Top five shows:

1. the Rural Alberta Advantage @ Central Presbyterian Church
2. the Wooden Birds @ Okay Mountain
3. the Avett Brothers, the Wrens @ Radio Room
4. Fanfarlo @ Central Presbyterian
5. Tallest Man on Earth @ Red 7

Band that most changed my opinion about them: Mumford & Sons (I went from being blah to liking them)

Local band that I liked most: Two Sheds

Any questions?

I saw a door on the plane. It was marked:

Flight Deck
Authorized Personal Only

Why aren’t all doors on planes marked like this? Here’s one:

Airplane Toilet
Everyone May Enter

Or doors everywhere for that matter?

My old friend* Christine has a new blog about quitting her job (in Mexico), driving back to Pittsburgh, then taking a one way ticket to Sweden.

It’s one of the best written blogs that I’ve read recently. Flowing prose and narrative arcs guide one through each long and detailed entry. I also love her footnote flashbacks that she sticks at the end of each entry.

Here’s a quick quote from the most recent entry:

Before we go anywhere, however, I have an appointment with Al Garcia. He’s the body shop manager at Varsity Ford on Highway 6, and he’s promised to jerry-rig the driver side door of my car – the one that’d been broken into just a few days before in Austin. If done properly, the job should take four to five business days, but I’ve got a plane to catch in Pittsburgh, so there’s no time for a proper repair.

Al tells us that it will be a few minutes while he and his crew perform this makeshift surgery. As we wait in the lobby entrance, I hear the body shop employees singing along with an all too familiar voice. It’s Chente, my 69-year-old Mexican Sinatra. Two workers simultaneously let out a melodious cry into the morning warmth. It’s a sad cry, like a Johnny Cash caw only more guttural. Mexicans remedy this call with a cold gulp of tequila chased by one long swallow of an icy beer. I know this music very well. It penetrates me, and once more I reach toward something familiar, toward the past four years, until Al Garcia pulls me back.

“Ms. Waller?” he leans his head and shoulders around the corner from inside the workroom. “Your car is ready.”

*She’s actually fairly young, but we’ve been friends for a while.

Originally it was just going to be a hiking to a cabin to sleep for the night and hiking back out. Not too hard, right? Then the details started to reveal themselves: it was 10 miles each way of hiking…at altitude (between 6.5K and 10K ft.)…on sand (partially). That’s starting to get a little harder.

The hike into Haleakala Crater last weekend did end up being pretty hard, but it was well worth it.

After a day of sitting on the beach, snorkeling, eating and going to a luau, we woke up bright and early and headed to the eastern side of Maui, up a windy and increasingly colder road up up the gradual slope of Haleakala. We stopped at the ranger station; our 8 minute don’t-destroy-the-crater video out of the way and back-country permits hanging from our bags, we headed to the summit.

From the parking lot there, I could see the lava rock and the clouds below us. This is not bad, I thought…When I went to the other side of the parking lot, to the visitor’s center and I could see the full extent of the crater below. It was massive. There was some vegetation, but it seemed nevertheless like I was looking down into a lunar crater, with a mostly black rock landscape and a number of cinder cones sticking up.

The next few hours were down, down, down on sliding sands–in more ways that ones as that’s also the name of the trail there. The landscape was deep browns, reds and blacks and the ever-growing walls of the crater. The vegetation was sparse grasses and some silverswords–only found in Haleakala. It was quite mildly otherworldly compared to what we’d see later but at the time it was quite amazing.

We broke at lunch time at the first cabin–there were three cabins and we were staying at the farthest one in (of course). The woman who was staying there already had some water boiled for sanitization, so we filled up. Right around there, we started noticing the changing scenery. There was some brown grasses and small shrubs. We could see where we were going–to a small field under a set of craggy and lush cliffs.

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I think I have a conditioned response to taking off when I’m on a plane: falling asleep. I’m not being facetious here. I’m being honest. I was trying to read the other day before take off. After take off, I had to put the book down because I was quite drowsy.

I find this pretty funny.

Some people took sausage and wrapped it in bacon and slathered it in bbq sauce. Does anyone really need to ask why this has gotten some attention?

I found this article about transitioning White House style interesting.

It has fun quotes, like:

In the West Wing, Mr. Obama is a bit of a wanderer. When Mr. Bush wanted to see a member of his staff, the aide was summoned to the Oval Office. But Mr. Obama tends to roam the halls; one day last week, he turned up in the office of his press secretary, Robert Gibbs, who was in the unfortunate position of having his feet up on the desk when the boss walked in.

I’m once again heading to SxSW, which happens in a month and change. The preliminary list of bands is dizzying. I’m looking forward to it, though.

It’s Motown’s 50th anniversary this month. Popmatters put together a good list of their 25 top singles. It includes a streaming music player. On my other blog, I put together my favorite Motown songs from 1959, their first year.

I spent 48ish hours in Pittsburgh a little after Christmas. It was my first trip there in two years. I’ve already posted a couple from the trip, but here’s a bit more.

I love Pittsburgh. I’ve lived in something like nine places at this point, but the longest tenure and most formative years were spent in Western Pennsylvania. I didn’t really didn’t think much of it while I lived there, but in summers of college and afterward on visits, I realized how much I liked it. Let’s say that everyone I know who didn’t grow up there thinks I talk too much about Pittsburgh for their liking.

When Pittsburghers say “Pittsburgh” to non-natives, they often mean Western Pennsylvania. Culturally, linguistically and in landscape it is a region that is pretty unique region. And driving to Pittsburgh from Southeastern Virginia, I could tell when Western PA was getting near–Cumberland, MD seemed very familiar. A shrinking town in a hill with similar architecture. And maybe it’s selective memory mixed with nostalgia talking, but I think if you lean your head against a car window and look out, through the trees and at the sky, you can tell just from that when you hit Western Pennsylvania.

Pittsburgh surprises me every time I go back, both by changing and by staying the same. I didn’t expect there to be cyclists on the road or to have the same experience at a number of places that I had 8 or 10 years ago. Coming from a place where bars and restaurants and people turn over every few years, it’s odd to be in a place where something is still pretty new if it was built five years ago and many people have spent their whole lives in the region.

One of my favorite traditions is late night pizza at Mineo’s. It’s cheap and good and the company is unbeatable.

A newish place to me is Pamela’s Diner. They have great food at reasonable prices, compared to what I’m used to. I’d been introduced to the original (in the Strip) a few years ago by a friend from out this way who’d moved to Pittsburgh. It’s still good.

I’d been to Jerry’s and to Paul’s CD but I’d never been to Dave’s Music Mine. I don’t know how that hadn’t happened before, but it’s a pretty cool place. It’s got a good used selection and their soul records are pretty good.

I had a couple pinball aficionado friends that lived in Pittsburgh for a bit. One introduced me to pinball at the Beehive. I liked the Spiderman one. It had plenty of action but it was still pretty straight forward.

I love walking around the South Side. There are such great buildings. Also, there’s a sweet Salvation Army Thrift Store. I bought a suit for New Year’s Eve for $6.50.

I went back to the Church Brewworks for the first time since 2000ish. It was still good and, hey, possibly even better now that I can/ like to drink beer.

I went to Gooski’s for the first time. We didn’t spend a lot of time there, but I can imagine spending a lot of time at a place that’s halfway between its hard scrabble Polish neighborhood and the hip and alternative side of the clientele. Next time I’ll have to have the pierogies.

Primantis is as good as I remember it, but I’m glad I have Giordano Brothers the rest of the year for my Pittsburgh-style sandwich cravings.

I rode the incline, had cheap draft beer at a dive bar, and watched a football game.

Oh and did I mention I got to have buckeyes for the first time in a while? They’re a Christmas tradition for me and the region for whatever reason.

Pittsburgh always seems to tease me when I’m leaving, as if to say, look, Pittsburgh can have enticing weather sometimes.

Finally, all my friends now seem to have GPSs in their car. These are pretty funny in Pittsburgh, with its convoluted roads, one way streets and difficult geography because the driver inevitably says/ yells: “Why does it want me to go that way?? No, no, no, this other way is much faster.”

I’d forgotten I came down with a cold last time I went to South Africa.

Also, the cough syrup is in a glass bottle. Who puts medicine in a glass bottle these days?

I left Taiwan and came back to the States a year ago today.

You can see my initial reactions to being back and my stewed thoughts.

Mostly it just seems strange that that was already a year ago. Time passing–you can’t really avoid it, it seems.

I went to my 7th wedding of the year on Saturday.

Dates: May 25, June 14, July 5, August 2, August 10, August 31, November 29

Relations: high school friend, college friend (tEp), high school friend, college friend (tEp), college friend (tEp), cousin, college friend

Flights taken (total round trips) for weddings: 16 (5)

States and districts visited for weddings: 8 (PA, DE, CA, MA, MD, DC, VA, NY)

Number of weddings that were in San Francisco: 1

Number of weddings not in San Francisco where I met a singer of a San Francisco band: 1

Number of weddings with photobooths or faux-photobooths: 2

Number of weddings with the ceremonies in a church: 0

Number of weddings with significant religious components: 2 (Christian, Hindu)

Number of weddings with the weddings and reception at the same place: 4

Shortest ceremony: 15 or 20 minutes

Longest ceremony: 50ish minutes

Number of hilarious grandparents loudly asking questions during the ceremony (”How old is she?” “Where’s Danny?”): 1

Number of rented cars: 1

Number of nights in hotel rooms: 5

Percentage of Bischoffs I saw: ~82%

Percentage of friends I saw: I dunno. Lots.

Number of weddings during which I “danced”: 4

Number of weddings in which I wore a tux: 2

Number of weddings in which I wore a suit: 4

Number of weddings in tuxes at which I “danced”: 2

Number of weddings in suits at which I “danced”: 2

Number of speeches I made: 2

Best wedding music: dhol drum to accompany the groom’s procession (Indian wedding)

Holidays weekends (as determined by my company) during the time frame of the wedding dates: 4 (Memorial Day, July 4, Labor Day, Thanksgiving)

Holiday weekends that had weddings on them: 4

Projected date of next wedding I’ll attend: May 23, 2009

Some weddings get rough

I’ve been in the three most populous states in three days. It’s a bit tiring.

Also, here’s something: flights in/ out of LaGuardia are limited to 1500 miles except for Denver (any day) and Saturdays. Dallas Fort Worth to LaGuardia is 1389 miles.

Hope your time with family/ friends is good.

I got a visa to Zimbabwe (albeit a few years ago). Being famous doesn’t get you everything, does it?

I’ll give you a guess as to what was one of the things I missed most when I was in Taiwan last year.

It’s pumpkin pie. When I realized that spending Thanksgiving there meant no pumpkin pie, I was practically distraught. I tried to have some around Christmas when I was back in American but the circumstances didn’t work out. And pumpkin pie just doesn’t work outside of the time frame of October-December.

So when I was at Mission Pie, one of the overpriced but very good places in the area, the other day with a friend and they had pumpkin pie, I was pretty happy. The two-years-in-coming slice was delicious.

I spent lunch time walking around Chinatown yesterday. It was really reminiscent of a Taipei in some ways, hills and many white tourists notwithstanding.

Signs in Chinese and badly mangled English. Going into stores with foods only labeled in Chinese. Not knowing quite how much language you share with someone working in a store. Extremely slow old people on the sidewalks…

It’s strange what what one misses about a place.

One year ago last Friday I moved for Taiwan. Right after I returned in December, I gave you a debrief/ by the numbers sort of post so if you want to see a lot of specifics of the trip.

When Dave, my friend and coworker who was there for the first week I was, and I arrived in Taipei, it was hot and humid. Sweltering, muggy, suffocating–whatever you want to call it. We were tired and it was hot and we didn’t understand the language. We attempted a day of work and made it most of the way through, though, to be honest, I don’t think either of us were productive in the least. Dave’s luggage didn’t arrive (except, of course, his tux for a wedding he was going straight to after Taiwan) so that 6′6″ guy and I went to the store to get some clothes to tide him over. He found a shirt that fit and some socks but the largest underwear in the store, as Dave hilariously recounts, wouldn’t make it past his knees when he tried them on later.

We went to get some shabu shabu for dinner that night. The menu was entirely in Chinese and the people working there didn’t speak English at all so we ordered by pointing randomly to a line on the menu. The beef, which–as it turns out–we had ordered was pretty good. A thus I started my almost four months in the country.

It’s so hard to sum up four months in a place with so many varied experiences. Theer was the time in Jianmen, the Taiwan (Republic of China) island 2km off of mainland (People’s Republic of) China that I went to because it had a very interesting history of isolation followed by English colonial-by-way-of-Singapore influence followed by heavy military presence and bombing. It was a fascinating place. The people there also spoke very little English and even though I was near the end of my time in Taiwan and I’d had a one-on-one Chinese tutor, my language skills were not enough to get me by. I was in way over my head. At a noodle restaurant that was drying its fresh noodle on racks outside, I pointed and gestured that I wanted a bowl of whatever everyone else was having and that I was just one person to be seated.

After 15 minutes of mulling around near the entrance, I took the proprietress’ pointing at a bowl to mean that it was mine and I should follow. It was not my food and when I sat at the tableful of strangers, it was obvious I had sat in someone else’s seat. One guy, who was at the table with his friend–the other person at the table, an old woman, seemed unrelated–got me a chair. Later he offered me some of the chicken he and his friend were sharing. Pointing at the chicken and then the three of us: “together.” He also gave me tips about the hot sauce: “good”, pushing over one bottle. Later when the proprietress gave me a funny look while he was paying I didn’t make much of it–after all, as far as I could tell, I was the only white guy on that island, so I got plenty of funny looks. He came back over to the table “you no pay.” I felt ridiculous for nearly crying in the middle of the restaurant but I couldn’t help it.

There were the hoards of guys in Bangkok that tried to sell me fake tours or “massages”. There was the cab driver in Taipei that short-changed me.

I obviously stuck out, perhaps not as much as my 6′6″ tall friend when he was there, but I did. Sometimes it was fine, or even good. I’d make a faux pas or get myself in a jam and people would give me some leeway or help me out. Other times it just felt more like I was a complete outsider. In four months of taking the bus every single day, both ways, and often again in the evenings, I saw another westerner on the bus exactly once. I’m sure the women on the bus thought I was a bit odd.

It’s hard to explain what living there was like because there were so many different experiences. On an average day, my activities were mostly the same: wake up, shower, eat, work, eat, work, maybe run errands, make dinner, and go out or watch TV or write or read or play guitar or whatever. It was just what I was eating was different and the surroundings and people were completely different; the language and writing were (for the most part) not understandable.

I’ll try to give you a better taste through some photos. I’ve picked out some of my favorites because they give a feel for the place, because I like them artistically or because I think they’re quirky or funny. Feel free to ask more about any of the photos if the caption isn’t sufficient and I’ll give you more info if I remember.

You can also read some of my posts from when I was in Taiwan or otherwise traveling.

Taipei, early September

Shabu Shabu restaurant on XingAn Rd.

taxi at an intersection

Danshui Night Market, at dusk

Longdong Park along the northern coast

Scooters near Keelung

seafood market along Fuji harbor

sales/ net girl at seafood market along Fuji harbor

a mock-up (machine) shop

(many more below the break)

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A second pair of glasses is at the bottom of a large body of water. This time I thought I was taking out a notice jet skier, but he turned out to be an experienced jet skier with a penchant for speed and sharp turns.

Seriously, every wedding should have the following party favors: gatorade and advil. Maybe just lined up by the door so people can take them as they leave.

I’ll be posting a lot of my trip photos–and some older photos too–up on the collective photo blog over the next week or two. Check in there for new photos. Here are a couple so far:

You Go Girl, Brooklyn

Monk outside Snake Alley, Taipei

I don’t know how to do this at all in one post. I spent the last 12 days in Boston, NYC and DC.

The best part was seeing people I don’t get to see very much. Everything else places after that.

Tourism and whatnot:

• New York Transportation Museum is awesome. It’s in a 1930s subway station. On the tracks are 20 or so vintage subway cars from across the history of the New York subway. It’s pretty great.
• Brooklyn Museum is pretty good. A decent collection but definitely a second tier museum
• Coney Island is a lot of fun. The Cyclone’s first drop is heart-stopping and the sliding cars on the Wonder Wheel are pretty amazing.
• Baltimore Orioles vs. Texas Rangers. We had good tickets (3rd row of the bleachers). It was a good game and Camden Yards is a pretty great ballpark.

Music and Film:

• My friend played backup as part of My Brother the Welder’s first show ever. It was a good time. Good tunes and impressively precise for a first show ever.
• Lars and the Real Girl is an amazing movie. Touching and hilarious and awkward all at once. I really liked it.
• American Teen is a documentary following 5 people (and a handful of their friends) over a year at a midwestern high school. I found this very compelling and I was totally engrossed in each person’s stories. It also serves as a lesson in parenting–many of the parents in the movie just say horrible things.
• Shaun of the Dead. I managed to see this as part of an afternoon of TV. It was good, but I think I liked Hot Fuzz better.
• At my friend’s mostly-traditional Indian wedding, there was a really good dhol drummer providing a beat for dancing and the procession. It makes me want to learn yet another Indian double barrel drum.
• Other Music is a good small record store. I liked their selection and the people working there seemed pretty knowledgeable.

Food:
I ate so much food. Where to start:

• Hallo Berlin is still really good for sausage and fine beer.
• Patsy’s Pizza might have drugs in the slices they’re so good.
• Horace and Dickie’s is a fish and chips/ chicken shack that serves ridiculous portions for next to nothing around the corner from the Red and the Black (see below). I liked my crab cake sandwich ($4.80!) and their sweet potato pie was delicious.
• Three brunches in two days: because vacation is for overeating.

Pure ridiculousness:

• At a sports bar in DC on Sunday night, two guys were watching the PGA Chamionship. They were more into the sport than anyone I’ve ever seen. Our dinner was oft-interrupted by cheers or jeers. One of my favorite moments was near the end of the event: “FUCK! FUCK YOU, SERGIO!”
• On the 6 line in NYC, a 30-something black woman got on at one stop and proceeded to preach Jesus (in a pretty compelling and rousing style) for one stop. Then she sat down and read a book.
• While my friend and his girlfriend were disagreeing about something, I asked them if they were fighting. They responded that if they were fighting they would be yelling into each other’s mouths. They then proceeded to demonstrate: they opened their mouths wide, locked them together and proceeded to scream. I fell off my chair laughing.

Okay. That was the trip. Or some of it, at least.

[I posted this on my music blog a while ago and was just wondering why I didn't also post it here. It is, after all, pretty personal.

It's not uncommon for Americans to go over to Europe and ride the rails all over but most haven't ridden this nation's rails extensively.

From September 7 to 10, 2003, for three and a half days I rode trains from Boston to Emeryville, changing trains once, in Chicago. I moved to California on those trains. I had known Boston as home for four years and Pittsburgh before that. Three thousand miles away, the Bay Area was almost a complete unknown. It was to be a time of new friends, new living arrangements, new streets, a new school, new supermarkets, and a new barber. I left half a day after a friend's wedding and leaving that wedding was sort of like my farewell moment for most of the people I counted as friends there. I got on board with an ipod with only a few hours of battery life, my laptop with even less, two suitcases, a guitar and a backpack.

I didn't have a cell phone and the train rarely stopped for long enough to have meaningful contact with people outside the train. I was very isolated for those few days.

I wrote down some thoughts at the time, when I was on the train. A few distinctive names and details have been changed to protect the innocent and I edited some small sections to make it easier to read. The rest appears as typed at the time.

--

Vernon L Sutphin - Lost Train Blues (mp3)

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9.7.03

Deer Tick – These Old Shoes (mp3)

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the Impressions – People Get Ready (mp3)

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Disregarding living in a foreign country but otherwise in a stable place, I was traveling all or part of 97 different days last year. Basically I was a tourist for over a quarter of the year.

One of the odd abilities I picked up along the way was this sense I get of where the most likely place will be to have a publicly accessible restroom.

For instance, in touristy areas, your best bets are medium-sized mid range-to-upscale hotels. There’s almost always a bathroom off the lobby.

Today while out in the Inner Sunset (right near this beautiful structure actually), I had the urge and only a bunch of liquor stores, dry cleaners and a tutoring center close by. Then I saw an Albertson’s. Supermarkets, in America, for whatever reason, almost always have a restroom.

Relieved, I was able to take the long route home with a nice walk in there.

My rental car this weekend seems[1] to have a feature where the radio gets louder when you go faster (and the engine/ car noise goes up). It works pretty well, but not perfectly.

But, really, how hard would it be to put a beat detector on the radio and sync the turn signals up with it? I’m pretty sure the turn signals are already run off of a microprocessor (through probably a FET) in modern cars, so it’d just be another sensor and a bit more code.

[1] I can’t find anything about the Chevy Cobalt doing this online but I’m pretty sure it does?

(Shipping Up to Boston makes me feel very nostalgic for the city even though it was recorded years after I left the town.)

That’s my celebration of the 4th, I guess.

I’m back in San Diego, this time I’m here to attend a friend’s wedding.

A main problem of traveling on holidays is that nothing is open. Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade circa 1988. Couldn’t find a place open to use the bathroom for what seemed like hours.

This evening, I went to find dinner. The place I intended to go was closed, of course, so I went across the strip mall to look for something else. This is perhaps the longest strip mall ever made. I walked across perhaps half a mile of parking lot. This place was big enough to have a TGI Fridays, a Boston Market, a Marshall’s, a Mervins, a Shoe Pavillion, a Payless Shoes, a Barnes and Nobles, an In N Out, and probably 50 more establishments….I got brisket at Joey’s BBQ.

Then I saw Wall E. It was really good. Pretty interesting concept for a film–and impressive that they made a compelling film about robots virtually without dialog.

1. challenging each other to eat cake after a large meal. mid-afternoon at a local diner, surrounded by regular patrons and served by a pleasant waitress. after finishing a meal that was larger than any of us thought it would be, looking at a dessert menu and practically demanding that friends get a slice. then: devouring despite the already-present stomach pain.

2. sitting on shaded grass, eating fast food frozen dairy desserts quickly. after the rehearsal, realizing none of us had eaten for many hours, deciding to sneak off before the rehearsal dinner to a close-by fast food restaurant. surreptitiously eating the chocolate shake-ice-creams while taking a minute to relax in the shade by the parking lot before sneaking one to the groom.

3. hugging pillows. with some having gone off to run errands and pick up supplies, watching mediocre TV filler and making inane jokes that wouldn’t make sense to anyone else (and often didn’t make sense to us) about hugging pillows (while hugging pillows)

4. frantic typing and nervous suggestions. mid-afternoon in a hotel room, people hurrying about and dressing. half tuxed, ten minutes left till we were to leave for the ceremony, groom and friend debugging and typing out a last-minute script to make the big project work. (it worked.)

5. radiant smile and glowing cheeks. early evening by a pond and many flowers, under the shade of trees. above a magnificent and flowing white dress, a radiant smile and glowing cheeks and eyes staring into her partner’s.

1. Coronado, a beach near the Hotel Del. Mid-afternoon. Walking across that area of sand that’s firm because water has run over it recently and dipping my fingers into the chilly Pacific and pondering aloud if the military planes roaring overhead on their way to the base were Harriers. I don’t think they are.

2. A bar in South Park. Night time. Between local bands giving it their all on a small stage in the dark club and packed in among the local young hipster population, discussing merits of a variety of many recent bands on the scene with a new friend.

3. Balboa Park, near the Moreton Bay Fig. Late afternoon. Lying on my back on the slightly damp grass, staring up at the deeply saturated sky, talking about finances and how it’s strange to be an adult with an old friend.

I’ve done awfully awkward “you too”s before. The guy ripping my ticket at a movie: “Enjoy the movie” “You too…if you happen to see a movie sometime soon…”

Well today, I was flying back to San Francisco. I slept the whole flight. I was drowsy when getting off.

As I was exiting the plane:

Flight attendant: Thanks for flying.

Me: Bye. Have a good flight.

I think I might have meant “night”. Otherwise I really have no excuse.

Some days now I don’t even think about having lived in Taiwan. For weeks, something would remind me, some element of reverse culture shock or talking to someone about what I’ve been up to. But these days, America seems quite a bit more normal and when someone asks what I’ve been up to, I generally talk about the more recent happenings since coming back from Taiwan.

The overwhelming Taiwan-related thought/ feeling these days is that I’ve been itinerant for a long time. I haven’t lived somewhere even semi-permanent since August (and even through June-August I knew my time there was limited) and it’s started to wear on me. In a couple weeks I’ll move into somewhere for at least a year and I’m looking forward to that feeling of permanence.

number of pens that burst in the pocket of my pants on Thursday: 1

number of pants I brought to SxSW: 1

I just got back from “South by” as some (silly) people call it.

I saw around 38 bands in 5 days. It was pretty crazy. Some amazing stuff (like J Tillman (listen in, Tarky!), Two Sheds, and Fanfarlo) and some not so great stuff, but overall I was pretty thrilled with the stuff I saw.

But it got me thinking about music. I mean, even moreso than normal. After all, I had five days to basically only think about music. Here are some thoughts:

• label: seeing so many great bands that are unsigned or not signed in America got me thinking that maybe I should start a label. I don’t know the second thing about starting a label, though–I know the first thing, the first thing is that it’s a time and money sink–so I’ll need to talk to some people and get a better idea of what’s involved if I’m serious about it.
• self: I want to start recording and playing more music. I was even thinking about trying to get enough tracks together for a demo and maybe try to play a show sometimes. I don’t know what instrument I’d use. Maybe Wurly or banjo? I’m not sure. I need to get better at instruments as well.
• self, pt 2: I think I ought to get decent at trumpet again and ply my trade to the bands of SF to play for them.
• blog: I spend a whole lot of time on that thing. Is it worth it?
• presents: I should present more shows, I think. I was even thinking it’d be cool to be involved in a party/ showcase at SxSW next year. I’ll need to talk to some people about how to go about this.

In Mexico I had a Pepsi Retro.

It has “natural ingredients” and “no artificial flavors or colors” (that’s what the Spanish says, I think). As we know, I like my sodas sans corn syrup.

It has an old timey taste. Jesse tried it as well and said the same thing. I liked it. Generally I like Coke a lot better than Pepsi but if Pepsi Retro was available in Estados Unidos (apparently it’s Mx only), I might even buy it over regular coke (though probably not over Mexican Coke (w/ sugar rather than corn syrup) in a glass bottle, which is available in some stores around me.

I’ll be in Ixtapa/ Zihuatanejo for a few days. Be back early next week.

Last night, I ended up walking from the Sunset to my place via Tank Hill (that is, a steep hill to walk up and then down again; also it has a pretty sweet view of a large chunk of the city).

Boston you could walk across in a few hours and it was pretty flat so no knee problems or anything. I remember being exhausted after walking a lot one day and figuring out that I’d walked 11 miles that day. I was pretty pooped after yesterday’s 5ish (the above walk + some miscellaneous stuff) miles.

But I’m really liking being able to walk places. That’s fun.

Decisions: do I bike the Wiggle or take one of ‘em Muni buses?

Oh learning new things in a new city!

Drinking is one of the most common responses to the stress of being an expat — most expats don’t recognize how stressed they are.

Yes, that makes sense.

[Yes, I'm consciously stealing the title.]

Lucerne (Safeway’s house brand) now has a green tea light yogurt. It’s really good. I’ve been enjoying it frequently. The mango green tea is also good, but I’d give the peach green tea flavor a skip.

Fight Quest is a pretty fascinating show. I caught a couple episodes of it today. Two guys travel to different regions of the globe to learn regional martial arts styles. They have 5 days of intense training and then they have to fight a skilled fighter of the style. I’m not quite sure why it’s fascinating; maybe it’s seeing these guys push themselves to the limit.

[I feel a bit odd about this post. I'd just like to note that I'm just try to tell things the way they are here and despite the way that this may come across I don't mean to be a braggart.]

I’m among the shyest and least adventurous people I know.

I’ve done more adventurous things than many of the people I’ve know, like living in Taiwan and Germany or visiting an island with practically no English speakers. I really like to travel and experience other cultures but that’s not really the whole story.

I know my limitations, at least in some ways. I know if I just did nothing, I’d probably just sit around (and I know I’d live to regret that), so I do things. That doesn’t make those things easy. Among my most flustered, awkward and socially difficult moments in recent memories were due to going places, to being “adventurous”. I compensate for my limitation.

The other way in which my shyness manifests itself in my “adventurousness” is this: I don’t find social situations easy normally, so other situations, which people may say are more difficult, possibly much more difficult, are only marginally more difficult to me.

What I mean is this: going to a party and making small talk for hours is really tough so moving to Taiwan seems doable; that is, it’s only marginally more difficult. (This statement seems difficult as I read it, and while I acknowledge that it is, I don’t think it’s far off the truth.) Similarly, once I was in Taipei and I was having trouble communicating and with social situations nearly all the time, going to a slightly more out-there place like Kinmen seemed doable.

(Here’s another post from my Taiwan backlog.)

I found the bathrooms in Taiwan pretty interesting. I sort of wanted to take photos of them except that it would make me a bit creepy[1], so I didn’t.

In America, many, if not most, urinals are of the short and blocky variety, like this American Standard one, but in Taiwan and other parts of Asia, they were of all sorts, short, tall, down to the floor, curved, blocky, narrow, deep and so on. Many of them were made by Toto (”I bless the raaaaiins down in Aaaaaaaafrica!” is what I’d sing in my head each time I saw one of those.)

There were also numerous funny signs. Two of my favorite are below.

In the MRT stations in Taipei:

Come Closer Please
automatic flushing when you draw near

This one I’d always imagine the “come closer please” said low and breathy, like a movie monster or serial killer. Because, I mean, when else do you hear “come closer please”?

In the train station in Hualien:

Stand Closer
to be discrete and clean

There was also a theme in many bathrooms of things that said something like “Let’s learn English!” with an English idiom and its Chinese meaning. Some of these idioms were not very common or possibly not idioms at all. I’d love it for a Chinese person to come to America and then say one of those and when people looked at him questioning, he would have to explain that he learned it in a bathroom so it must be right!

There were also a lot of proverbs and old sayings on walls. These were also translated into English. Most of them were not very funny.

I did take one photo of a sign in a bathroom in Thailand:

I hadn’t really considered washing my feet in the sink but now that they mention it, it does sound like a good idea!

Outside of a bathroom, but still related:

[1] Is this post creepy anyway?

Number of days: 112

Number of days or parts thereof spent traveling: 47 (3 to/ from, 7 intra-Taiwan (3 Kaohsiung, 2 Taroko, 2 Kinmen), 37 intra-Asia (7 Indonesia, 5 Thailand; 15 Hong Kong, Macau, China; 10 Japan)

Number of countries visited (since moving): 6 (Taiwan, Indonesia, Thailand, China, Japan, U.S.) + 2 special administrative regions with separate border controls (Hong Kong, Macau)

Number of countries visited (year to date): 8 (above + South Africa, Swaziland) + 2 S.A.R.s

Number of flights (since moving): 14 (SFO-> TPE-> CKG-> DPS-> CKG-> TPE-> BKK-> TPE-> HKG-> TPE-> NRT-> TPE, TSA-> KNH-> TSA, TPE-> SFO)

Number of flights (2007): 31 (SFO-> CVG-> IAD-> JNB, DUR-> CPT-> JNB-> JFK, BOS-> JFK-> SFO-> BOS-> DFW-> SFO-> HNL-> LIH-> HNL-> SFO + above + SFO-> CLT-> DCA)

Miles flown (since moving): 27,406 miles (44,106 km)

Miles flown (2007): 63,569 miles (102,304 km)

Number of high speed train journeys: 4 (Taipei->Kaohsiung->Taipei, Tokyo->Kyoto->Tokyo)

Number of train journeys: 6 (above + Taipei->Hualien->Taipei)

Approximate number of km ridden on scooters: 225

Best hotel (overall): Kamandalu Resort, Ubud, Bali. A connection to the cousin of the owner opened the door for staying in this swanky place. Gorgeous surroundings and really nice rooms. Private verandas looking over rice paddies. The service was also excellent. We went out riding bikes around the rice paddies one day and came back sweating. Pretty soon after we entered the lobby we had cool moist towels to wipe our faces with. Perhaps the only nicer place I’ve stayed is the ridiculous Schlosshotel Veir Jahrezeiten (Four Seasons Palace Hotel) in Berlin. (They had a Ferrari convention while we were there and it didn’t seem out of place.)

Best hotel (value): Hirano Guesthouse, Kyoto. 3500 yen a night in Kyoto is very cheap and besides a nice place to stay, the owner was very friendly, helpful and accommodating, making us tea when we came home for a break in the afternoons. She also made us breakfast every morning, let us use her bicycles and computer/ internet. Oh and there was a candy bowl and after we ate an unreasonable amount of it, she didn’t complain, she just refilled it.

Number of American chain stores patronized (not counting convenience stores, exact): 3 (2 Subways-Taipei, 1 Denny’s-Kyoto)

Number of American chain stores patronized (counting convenience stores[1], approximate): 22.2 (the above + Circle K’s in Taiwan, Bali, Thailand, ampm’s in Japan, plus 0.2 for a Mister Donut in Japan[2])

Oddest food obsession: Harbo’s Happy Cola gummy candies

Most common food eaten: rice (~ >1.5 servings a day)

Most common food product eaten: Kinder Chocolate (~ 0.6 a day)

Most “exotic” foods eaten: crickets, silk worms, frog

Number of Dr. Peppers consumed: 2 (one in Japan, one in Thailand)

Foods most missed: good bread, good cheese, Dr. Pepper, good beef, shelled shrimp, deboned fish.

Number of Hello Kitty products seen: in the thousands

Number of Hello Kitty products purchased: 1 (alarm clock, convenience store, Japan)

America: so quiet, so dark, so many English speakers, so many whites/ latinos/as, blacks. big supermarkets. low population density.

Least useful piece of clothing: dress shirt (the greenish one, never worn, given away at the end)

Most useful piece of clothing: shoes (the brown Adidas, nearly daily)

Most useful piece of clothing out of its original purpose (and new use): board shorts-style swimsuit (exercise shorts)

Piece of clothing I most immediately realized I’d forgotten: navy blue cotton boxers (that I use as warm weather pajama bottoms)

Number of books read: 5.75 (2nd 0.5 of Slow Man by Coeztee, Love is a Mixtape by Sheffield, Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: a Story of the Hip Hop Generation by Chang, Sex Drugs and Cocoa Puffs by Klosterman, Born on a Blue Day By Tammet, You Don’t Love Me Yet by Lethem, first 0.25 of About a Boy by Hornsby)

Number of concerts attended: 3 (Emily the Band @ Underworld, Apples in Stereo @ the Wall, Sugar Plum Ferry @ the Wall)

Number of CDs purchased: 19 (5 in Hong Kong (Monitor), 5 @ WWR (1st trip), 5 @ WWR (2nd trip), 2 @ IMPO, 1 @ FINAC, 1 @ Roses(?))

Number of pieces of mail received: 6 (3 packages of promo CD(s); 1 each from Ian, Lauren, Gumbeaux)

[1] This is tricky because things are confusing. 7-11 is Japanese for instance.

[2] Mr. Donut is an American brand but the Asian stores are run by Duskin Co out of Japan under a licensing agreement.

dark, quiet, sparsely populated, wasteful, English-speaking, diverse, casual, expensive

filled with…
people who drive everywhere, giant cars, giant portions of food, giant supermarkets, giant stores, giant napkins, whites, blacks, latinos/as, smiling people

People said a lot of things before I came.

“With how long you’re there, you’ll be pretty good at the language by the time you come back.”
After quite a bit of effort, I have mastered a couple dozen words.

“There are a lot of scooters.”
Yes. They are everywhere.

“It’s really polluted there.”
Some days I think so and others it’s quite nice. It’s certainly much better than Zhuhai, Bangkok or Jakarta. There are some smoggy days and then there are some days I’m pretty sure are just overcast. (And others with a blue sky.) Overcast isn’t usually in a Californian’s vocabulary so there could have been some confusion with that.

“The people there are really nice.”
People are pretty-to-very friendly overall. I did find some things that I saw pretty frequently inconsiderate, like some of the driving maneuvers, or walking patterns on sidewalks.

“You’ll be great.”
I’d rate my performance as “fair” or “good” at best.

“The girls will love you there.”
I have found no evidence of this.

“You’ll meet a girl.”/ “You’ll come back with a girlfriend.”
See above.

“You’ll be tall there.”
I may be a bit above average but not any amount that I notice constantly.

“You’ll love it there.”
It took a while but I grew to like it. I don’t love it, certainly.

“Everything is cheap there.”
Sometimes. Food is cheap. Brand name electronics isn’t (generic stuff is). Clothing is cheap. Housing isn’t.

various preconceptions about it being unsafe/ corrupt
It’s really safe. Very safe–most parts of Taipei that I was in felt safer than San Francisco. It’s also pretty law-abiding and not (obviously, at least) corrupt.

I’m back in the ol US of A. The flight was surprisingly smooth and went by relatively quickly. It’s yet to be seen how I’m doing with jet lag but early signs are promising.

More later!

These blazing white sheets will see me on them for only 8 hours more.

Surprise of the day: I may be missing things–this is entirely possible–but it appears that my two to-be-checked bags are in the following states: 1) slightly below weight, at capacity. 2) well below weight and approximately as much space left as I have things left to put in. Tomorrow night I’ll finish packing it (save my alarm clock, tooth brush, deodorant) and make sure, but this might be okay.

I spent last weekend in Jinmen (historical and common English names: Kinmen or Quemoy).

The history here is important: it was historically fairly isolated but also had some rich residents that had traveled to SE Asia. Basically this produced some of the best examples of classical Fujianese architecture and South-east Asian Colonial architecture, patterned after British colonial houses in Singapore and Malaysia but with Chinese influence as well.

On the other hand, it was the front line, literally, for the war between Chinese capitalists (the Nationalists, the Republic of China) and communists (the People’s Republic of China), for many years, with it situated 2km from Mainland. It was bombed, invaded, shelled with propaganda fliers for over two decades.

So it ends up being a really interesting place–old buildings, old buildings in a semi-Western style, bombed out buildings, fields of sorghum with spike-topped anti-parachute landing spikes, beautiful beaches with anti-amphibious landing spikes, military bases, fishing vessels, and quaint villages.

I found it very interesting and photogenic. I took a lot of photos but they’re all on film, so I’ll scan them when I back in the U.S.

It was easily the hardest place I’ve been this trip or this year–possibly even ever–in terms of getting around and not knowing the language. (Scratch that–Tanzania in 2004 would have been harder but I had a friend that spoke KiSwahili.) It started out fine–all the announcements at the airports and on the flight were also in English, despite the fact that I appeared to be the only westerner at either the airport or on the plane. But then I was picked up at the airport by someone who didn’t speak English (identifying each other by the other person with the cell phone up to their ear looking very confused), and brought to a scooter rental shop that didn’t speak any English. It wasn’t until I got to my guesthouse that someone spoke some English. For dinner at a seafood restaurant, I ordered “fish” because that was all that was mutually understood. It ended up being steamed and in a sauce and marginally undercooked. I ate it; I didn’t have the ability to complain. In the end, I saw things I wanted to see; I ate food; I was able to get there and return; I didn’t die. I consider it a success.

Perhaps seeing that I was in a little over my head, a couple people did some really nice things for me (not to get into the overly sappy I-love-everyone blogosphere realm). I went to a restaurant the first day for lunch that served Kinmen’s signature handmade noodles. All the tables were taken so I was just hovering near the entrance. I indicated to the woman working the food area that I wanted one of what she was making, so when she pointed to one bowl on a tray and brought it to a table, I followed her. Turns out I had just invited myself to sit at someone else’s table. (That’s fine in Asia from what I’ve found–in fact this table already had two groups–two guys and an older woman at it.) When I got my food, one of the two guys pushed over the spicey sauce: “good.” I added some. When they got some fried chicken, squid and tofu, he added while making a circling motion with his hand “together.” So I had a few pieces. When they paid, the proprietress gave me an odd look. Turns out the guy paid for my lunch.

The next day, I wasn’t sure how to get back to the scooter rental shop, so the other guest at the guest house let me follow them there. They hadn’t been planning to go out; they got in their car solely to show me how to get to the shop and then they headed back to the guest house.

I was in a store the other day and ended up talking to a guy from Bradford North England (which, he said, is know for three things, two of which are Indian food and riots). Accents from Bradford, are apparently quite heavy–I could understand him but not without a bit of effort on my part.

It turns out this guy has been teaching English in Taiwan for 7.5 years. Anyone else see a problem with teaching an accent that’s not very well understood by many English speakers?

This is how much that will help filter out exhaust or really anything at all: 0.

The R3 has a bus stop name called

Keelung River Second Term Housing Project I

There are also Keelung River Second Term Housing Project II and Keelung River Second Term Housing Project III.

So I have one week left here. It doesn’t seem that soon and though intellectually I know I’m excited to go back, I don’t particularly feel that way right now. Does that make sense?

This week has turned a bit hectic as my number of days is numbered and the number of things-I-meant-to-do-but-haven’t is still rather substantial. Last night I went to a night market and then shopping for some souvenir sort of things for friends. One great thing about living somewhere with a funny script–everything looks cool, so I could probably give friends a piece of paper with some chinese characters on it and they’d think it was cool. Or at least that’s what I’m hoping because that’s what they’re getting…

It’s rather suddenly gotten warm again, starting around Sunday. The last few weeks it has solidly been jacket weather, with highs in the low-to-mid 60s. It was raining a lot a couple weeks ago (another typhoon) but it was pretty nice last week. Both Monday and yesterday I was walking around outside at night in a rather average way–not quickly or uphill or strenuously at all–with a hoodie or jacket (respectively) on and I had to take them off because I was sweating. At night! In December! I didn’t even wear/ bring my jacket to work today.

In other weather news, it’s supposed to rain every day until I leave. Looks like I’ll be holding onto my crappy umbrella.

I sold my speakers on Monday. The rice cooker and bicycle are not going as fast. I’ve probably gotten ~$22 of use out of each of them (what I paid) over the last few months so if I have to just give them away, I won’t be too distressed. But it’s still better for them to be used by someone else.

With my no-earbuds-on-transportation rule and my battery appearing to be kaput on my laptop and a good likelihood that I’ll finish my fast-reading book before the flight only to start one that doesn’t look as exciting, I’m not sure how painful the flight home will be. Oh and I’m going to try to stay awake the whole time because to stay in the right time zone the whole flight home, that’s what I should do. For some people, trying to sleep on a plane is the problem. That is not my problem.

than half ignorance.

The cab driver last night took me on a pretty circuitous route (though, I think it was because he was a bad–rather than a malice–cab driver) and then short-changed me when I paid him. What did I do? Get out the cab and go to my apartment because that’s all I could do. Because I don’t speak Chinese.

It would have been easier if I just thought he was giving me a fair deal. Oh well.

So people hand out leaflets and fliers for stores on the street here. Normally they see me and don’t shove it quite as far under my nose as most people. Today I had a new experience: the guy actually pulled it away from the path I was walking. Yeah, you may not want to take this, but it doesn’t matter because I won’t let you even if you did. Thanks, buddy.

Glasses in Taiwan are cheap, cheap enough that even though my company just introduced a vision plan, decent frames here might well still be cheaper taking in consideration the co-pay and price limit on the vision plan glasses.

So I went out last night and walked through a few spectacle stores.

But, like I said before so many glasses just suck. Oh well.

I remember discussing differences in traffic density with with Colin a few years ago. Apparently not a lot of difference in number of cars can make a big difference in traffic and congestion. Basically, it’s a pretty non-linear scale, Colin was saying.

It seems that people-density on buses wouldn’t be this–on a bus with a 100 person limit, 20 less people would be quite a bit less crowded.

This week on #902 was very odd, however. Monday I literally couldn’t get on the bus it was so crowded. Tuesday I was scrunching in every time the doors opened to not be hit by them. Yesterday was quite comfortable and today I got a seat from the beginning–something that has literally never happened in over three months of riding this bus. What can make such a difference? For your reference, there aren’t any holidays right now, nor coming up; the weather was approximately similar all days this week and I got on the bus close to the same time every day. It seems odd that the bus can have a 50+ person swing based on, apparently, nothing.

the Faroe Islands, which is a region of Denmark but is almost 200 miles from the nearest inhabited islands, which are Shetland (and are quite a bit farther from Denmark). There’s a ferry there from Iceland, so maybe I’ll have to add this on to my future Iceland trip.

I forgot to post last week’s weird autonomous region of the week the Yanbian Korean Autonomous Prefecture of China.

my newest joke: “I came back into town after being away for a while and I had to get my affairs back in order. But it was hard, let me tell you. Those women did not like organization.”

also.

I’m just going to say it: the lady at the 7-11 in my work’s building freaks me out. She’s a short Taiwanese woman who says “welcome!” (in Chinese) like the rest of the employees do when someone enters, but she looks at me with these crazy eyes. I don’t like those crazy eyes.

I have two weekends left and I’ll be heading to Kinmen for the first of them. It seems like a pretty unique place.

Also, I’ll be able to walk to the airport (I live dead-center in that link. You can see the Songshan domestic airport near the top right).

I spent the weekend in Taroko (pronounced “Ta-loo-ga”) Gorge.

Basically, on the east side of the island, there’s a mountain range made up of marble and limestone. Into it are a number of steep gorges cut by many rivers. So what you have is very steep lush green and marble and limestone walls and gorgeous, often-crystalline rivers at the bottom, often with large marble boulders in them. It’s really magnificent. I’d recommend a visit.

I left early Saturday and took the train down. It goes up north and east till it hits the coast and then south along the east coast. Often it is just about the only thing between a range of mountains and the ocean. The ride itself is pretty amazing.

I got to Hualien and sort of wandering around a little bit until I found the scooter rental shops. I could confidently answer their first question, about whether I’d ridden a scooter in Taipei before [1], but the first few still didn’t want to rent me a scooter without a local drivers license. (To their credit, this may or may not be what the law specifies–I’m really not sure.) The third place rented me a scooter without much problem: a Kymco 125cc.

So I set off out of town and onto the highway toward Taroko…or at least I thought so. I realized it was getting more built up instead of less. I asked someone at the next light: “Taroko??” He did not point the direction we were going.

So now going in the right direction, I discovered the joys of trucks passing me and kicking up stuff in my face and fun like that. After an hour or so I hit the park gates, stopped to get some maps at the visitor center, I headed off to Tiansiang, some 18km from the park entrance and the one small town with a couple hotels, a hostel and a couple restaurants. Up the mountain passes I went on my scooter, gradually growing more comfortable at every turn.

Once in Tiansiang, I went around for a while trying to find my hostel, and eventually found it, the Catholic Hostel, where I had a reservation[2]. No one was around and the desk bell wasn’t bringing anyone rushing. Eventually, someone came around the reception area and I paid and got my key and whatnot.

The first place I tried to go was the Baiyang Waterfall Trail, but it was closed, so I made my way to the Lotus Pond trail. Lotus Pond’s a mountain pond hidden up in the mountains of Taroko. 3km or so each way–should have been easy to do in the 3 hours I had. After a nice easy walk for half an hour, I crossed a single person suspension bridge. It was the first of many of these that I cross in the park–they were sort of like the ones you seen in Indiana Jones, but just a little less rickety.

Then the trail got hard–steep steps for nearly 2.1km. Or I presume so. After a while I realized I wasn’t going to make it up and back before dark and I was alone, without a flashlight, on steep stairs and without cell phone reception. Not exactly worth the risk. I made it almost to the top of the hill when I turned around and the views from there left me wondering how places like that exist. Pretty magnificent. I first heard, then saw, wild monkeys in a tree across a small ravine from the hiking trail as I neared the top.

Soaked in sweat, even though it was about 60 degrees out, I headed back to the hostel to cool down and relax a bit. I read a bit of my book, Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet [3], the only book I’d brought on the trip and after reading for a while, I realized I was about to finish it. With my no music on transportation rule, I would be left without a book and without music for the train ride home. Great…

It was dark when I put the book down and I decided to get some food and then have an early night so I could see everything I wanted to see the next morning. My dinner wasn’t very good and was only notable because at one point I felt something crawling on my hand and looked down to see the single biggest wasp/ hornet I’d ever seen crawling on my jacket–easily 3 inches long and uniform brown. I can’t find any pictures online or a description of what it was exactly but it seemed to be injured–it wouldn’t fly away, so I brushed it onto the floor and kept an eye on it.

I woke up at 6am and showered in the shared and open-to-the-outdoors showers at the hostel. It was chilly, even with hot water. I wanted to go to the Wenshan Hot Springs. The route is described like this: down steep stairs to a suspension bridge, walk across it, along a cliff and then you’re at these hot springs are carved out of marble and sit within the river (though I imagine the water is piped down from whereever the hot spring actually is). I thought it be great to go and sit in the early on this Sunday morning, but the trail was closed. Disaster. I headed back to the hostel, packed up my stuff and dropped my key before heading to probably the most famous trail in the park, the Tunnel of Nine Turns. It was only 7:30am so I had it all to myself. Pretty amazing views of the gorge and river from this short trail.

Just outside of the park are the Chingshui Cliffs–a section of highway north of Taroko (Hualien is south) that is cut into these marble and lush green mountains as they hit the ocean. I decided to ride up and down these before the road got too heavy with traffic and then hit up the last couple hiking trails before heading to catch my train. They ended up being stunning. Like the PCH but more sheer and more beautiful. There were even a couple points where you could walk down to the black sand beaches via a series of steps.

Back in the park, I walked the Shakadang trail, along a ridiculously clear greenish-blue river, and then the Eternal Spring shrine/ monastery trail. Both had something new to see.

Then it was back to Hualien on the scooter, back to Taipei on the train, back to my room on the MRT. The only part of the return journey that had a hitch at all was when my seat was either double booked or my reservation only went through the next station. I’m not sure, but eventually the conductor showed the girl who also had car 9, seat 31 on her ticket to a different seat.

[1] Thanks to my coworker, I had actually had a little experience with a scooter in Taiwan. I’d asked him to teach me how to ride a scooter prior to this trip. His lesson was sort of like this: “Here’s how you turn it on. Here’s how you open the seat compartment. Okay, have fun; I’m going back inside.”

[2] I called the Catholic hostel once a month or so back, trying to reserve a room for a previous weekend. A man answered. After a few words from each of us in different languages it was obvious that he didn’t speak English. After an apology (which he probably didn’t understand, I now realize), I hung up. This time, I was determined so I got a coworker to call and make a reservation for me. After the call she explained how it had gone: she had called and talked to the person working there and made a reservation, saying it was for her American coworker and one bed and the night of the 2nd, etc. The worker seemed to be ending the call so she asked, “Do you want me to spell out his name so you can write it down?” The response: “No, I got it: one bed, foreigner.”

[3] Separate post about this book later.

I missed one bus while stuck waiting to cross the street yesterday. The second came much after it should have (the normal spacing is about 15 minutes apart, this was 25) and I literally couldn’t fit inside, so I took a taxi to work. It was 13 times as much (wasteful!) and the taxi driver even laughed at me for not speaking Chinese. (Note: I didn’t try to speak English to him–I had the address written out in Chinese.) Good start to the day.

You are asked this in a Chinese-speaking area.

Are you alone? then “yes”. Otherwise, “no”.

Despite it being near typhoon-like conditions outside now, it’s apparently going to be nice near Taroko this weekend and with only three weekends left, that’s good enough for me. I got a coworker to reserve a bed in the hostel (they don’t speak English–as I discovered last time I tried to call) and she’ll write out some things in Chinese for me. I’ve checked out the trains and route–for the more visually oriented I’ll take the train NE from Taipei to the coast and the down the coast to Hualien; the park is back up north a little bit around Tienhsiang–and will book tickets this evening. I’m planning on playing it by ear as far as local transport goes–either rent a scooter or take the bus + walk a lot. Apparently I’m fine to rent a scooter with an international driver’s permit (and if not, apparently the places there will rent scooters to just about anyone). It’s going to be chilly up in the gorge–I’m going to bring my yet-to-be-used hat and gloves.

Maybe this will go smoothly; I’m not expecting that though.

(note 1: I have a backlog of photo essays that I wanted to post. Here’s the oldest. )

(note 2: The lighting and social situation at the stadium were troublesome: the ring was brightly lit while the stands were dark. Taking photos of people didn’t seem to sit well with them and with the darkness, my camera used a secondary light to help focusing, so I had to switch to manual focusing and focus blind (by guessing the distance) much of the time while taking hip shots. Basically these aren’t all the best photos…)

(note 3: click to see bigger versions.)

Muay Thai is Thai Boxing. It involves punching, kicking, elbowing, kneeing and pretty much any other way to try to injure your opponent. It’s pretty violent. I saw a thing on TV on the science behind martial arts in movies with a panel of the top martial artists in various disciplines and found that a Thai Boxer could inflict the blow with the most force of any of them. His knee blow to your chest could pretty much instantly stop your heart. These are wiry and strong individuals.

When I was in Bangkok, I went to an event. Each night has a few rounds–mine had 9, with the welterweights being the heaviest of the day and in the 7th match. It’s well known that the boxing is a rip off; foreigners are charged somewhere between 3 and 10 times as much as locals to get in. They’re also highly encouraged to sit ring side, which isn’t all that much more expensive than the caged in 3rd tier. However, culturally, the most interesting thing going on is in that 3rd tier.

I made my way up to the third tier which smelled heavily of menthol eucalyptus, sweat, fruit and various drinks being sold and spilled all around.

When I got there, I found a spot and sat down. Fairly soon, a local began telling me that I didn’t want to sit there because everyone would be standing, shouting and betting during the matches. I told him I did want to sit there and that I’d stand when I had to. He told me I couldn’t sit there. I ignored this suggestion.

The prefight routines were highly ritualized: bowing to each other, bowing to their corners, circle punching slowly while walking in circles; high, sweeping knee lifts while walking around in circles and other similar activities.

(more…)

And today is November 26, 96 to be exact.

(The oddest part is that lunar calendar has been dropped in favor of the Western calendar, officially at least, but the Western years haven’t.)

I learned on Friday about the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival. Pretty much immediately after I found that some of the movies I most wanted to see (”Darjeeling Limited”, I’m Not There, Persepolis) were either sold out or at times that I couldn’t go to. Doh!

Another one that I was psyched to see (Ki-Duk Kim made the amazing “Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter…and Spring”) is only showing in Korean with Chinese subtitles.

However! Not all is lost. I did go to see Steve Buscemi’s Interview last night and I bought a ticket for the Sigur Ros movie. I’m still undecided about whether to see This is England or not.

I wasn’t actually expecting a ton from Interview, as it seemed like a pretentious indie two-person character piece, but it turned out to be alright. It was pretty engaging and well-written and the ending wasn’t quite what I expected.

I also found out that Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead is showing in at least one regular theater here (not as part of the film festival, that is) so maybe I’ll go see that in the next few weeks.

That’s what this old gentleman’s pink jacket said under a stitched Hello Kitty outline.

Japan is weird, a list:

1. Most restaurants have displays of their food made up of entirely plastic food
2. There is a neighborhood in Asakusa, Tokyo that is entirely restaurant supply places
3. The restaurant supply places are the suppliers for most of your fake foods
4. Within these fake food restaurant supply stores, you may purchase other oddities made to look like food, such as keyrings (I have an eel sushi key ring)
5. Among the oddities are fake food USB devices. Who needs a small, inexpensive USB flash drive when you can have a relatively expensive fake hamburger one

USB fake sushi:

USB fake hamburger:

I will talk about things that are Japan-related and things that are not Japan related. I had dreams of more well organized posts with photos and everything, but I’ll post now with possibly expanding on some of these topics later.

My ear is feeling (ie hearing) a bit better. I’ve started listening to ear buds again in limited (very quiet) contexts. First song back: “King of Pain”.

The rest of the Japan trip was pretty good.

I mean, it was great. It’s a crazy place. One coworker said something like it’s a very odd combination of a repressed/ conservative culture and a wild/ unashamed culture. Very strange.

Some of the stranger places included the hot bath that had a mildly electrified pool, the sushi place that required you to eat at least 7 dishes (of 2 pieces a piece) of mostly sushimi in less than 20 minutes, the Diago-ji temple that had a painting that I thought was a garden; either that, or it had a garden that was completely unreal in how beautiful and archetypal it was. They were also chanting in the part of the temple that’s at the top of the hill when we got there and I could hear it from maybe half a mile off. A strange beacon.

I’m not missing Thanksgiving. I mean, I’m not attending Thanksgiving and thus am missing it but Thanksgiving is such a non-event here that the only time I even think about it is when I talk to people in America. Also, I knew from May that I wouldn’t be doing Thanksgiving this year. I love Thanksgiving, but I’m prepared.

(Did you miss the Moon Festival this year? I didn’t; I participated.)

On the other hand, the prevalence of Christmas decorations, music and colder weather in Japan made it feel like mid-December, much close to when I would be leaving for the U.S. That caused many more pangs of homesickness.

During bouts of longing for America, it seems that any culture representing that will do, possibly with even the less sophisticated being better. No, I’m not talking about fast food; I’m talking about movies. Last night, I watched Must Love Dogs without shame; tonight may be 40 Days and 40 Nights. In Germany, I remember watching (possibly multiple) Freddie Prinze Jr movies. It’s crap.

I finished Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: a Story of the Hip Hop Generation last week. I’m not sure, but I think it’s racist. The book draws some distinction in various situations between pro-black and anti-white, but I think this book was possibly anti-white. For instance, the nomenclature was: Black, Latino, Asian, Korean (etc etc) and white.

Now I’m on to Chuck Klosterman’s Sex Drugs and Cocoa Puffs, which is a book of Klosterman’s ridiculous pronouncements about culture, on everything from internet pornography to NBA basketball to Billy Joel. It’s entertaining, but I think I prefer his travel narrative, Killing Yourself to Live.

Sufjan’s having a contest in which you can win rights to one if his songs if you write the best original christmas song (which he then gets the rights to). I am thinking of something along the lines of a response song to a classic 1963 Christmas song. We’ll see if I can churn something out–I need to figure out how to do the instrumentation on this–maybe FruityLoops or something. My guitar through a built-in mic isn’t going to cut it.

The Steelers loss today was almost funny. It’s almost expected, the way the Steelers manage to botch the “easy” games. None of their three losses is even marginally excusable and if some columnist says otherwise, question his ability to analyze their games. On the other hand, they’ve been great in pretty much the rest of their games.

There is a baby crying down the hall. I hope this doesn’t continue. I don’t like crying babies.

On strange candies and confectionaries. Good: the two different Chocolate Pocky’s and Men’s Pocky, those weird mushroom-shaped chocolates that are sort of like Pocky, some Mentos (Fuji Apple, particularly and the Berry Blast and Sour mixes), mint Kit Kats, all Kinder chocolates. Interesting, but not great: Green Tea Meltykiss, those white + green tea chocolates, that incompressible Mentos that might have been cherry and also the strawberry and green apple ones, the mini-hamburger chocolates. Bad: apple Kit Kats.

Tokyo, in some ways, was everything I thought it’d be. Weird plastic food replicas and other products that don’t need to exist, bright lights, I mean seriously bright lights, tons of people, signs not quite in english.

We walked around the red-light district. Red was actually pretty poorly represented; there was a lot of yellow, actually. There were hotels with posted rates for ‘rest’ and ’stay’. Posters of half naked women on the street and posted rates for who knows what…. Pretty crazy, but I think I expected perhaps even crazier?

There were also parts that I didn’t expect at all. We’re staying in Taito City (I think that’s what it’s called). It’s quiet and quaint and more or less serene. There are small streets and it’s not super crowded. We walked to the zoo[1] which is a park that’s filled with green stuff.

[1] I can see the appeal of zoos and I think there are good ones and there are bad ones, but, is it that hard to put animals in reasonable sized areas rather than tiny cages that look like prisons? Even so, I was excited to see the okapis and pigmy hippopotomae.

Fall colors are out. It’s beautiful. The temples are green with moss. Archetypal japanese. Today we finally had some blue skies.

First Sanrio-brand purchase: pop up alarm clock.

Pocky is good. Hello Panda is good.

Tomorrow: Tokyo.

I’m leaving this afternoon for a week (or 9 days) in Japan with my friends Jesse and andyl. After I get back, I’ll have exactly one more month in Taiwan.

A couple weeks ago I went swimming. The next day my left ear felt a bit weird and my hearing felt muffled. I thought there was some water still in it. After a few days it still felt weird so I had assumed it had developed into a minor ear infection, “swimmer’s ear”.

After two weeks, I decided I should have it checked out. I’m going to be place next week where it’ll be even harder to go to a doctor, so with the help of some coworkers I went to a doctor this evening and he checked me out.

There’s no water, ear wax or ear infection in there. The doctor things it’s noise trauma. Basically (hopefully) short term partial hearing loss. (Ironically, I’d light-heartedly talked about thinking I was going deaf in my left ear because my ear buds were breaking about 3 weeks ago.) His instructions: no ear buds/ headphones and try to limit limit noise for a few days.

The short term is unpleasant: no ear buds at work (at night I can play music softly on speakers that I have) means no music and I don’t like being without music. It makes me antsy. I’m going to be on planes and trains for most of Friday, alone and that would be a particularly nice time to listen to some tunes. More than it being nice, at times I almost find it necessary. After a bad or long day, after a frustrating decision, when I need to drown out this foreign world or mitigate loneliness, music is often my first resort. It may not be the best thing to turn to but it’s certainly better than turning to the bottle. This is a bit distressing.

The longer term, the prospects, the possibilities, at least, are traumatizing. That there’s even a possibility of longer term hearing loss is scary. Music is a big part of my life and between being a college radio DJ and having a music blog it’s more like a vocation. That that might be endangered or altered permanently is not a prospect I look forward to.

Just to note, I’ve always been very careful about the volume of my music on earphones and other people who try my headphones often think I listen to music too softly. I wear ear plugs at concerts, even advocating them publicly. If there’s one probable culprit here it’s listening to music on the bus and/ or while walking along streets here. Both are quite noisy and can encourage a louder-than-healthy volume on ear buds.

I was going to go to the “Chinese Taipei” vs Italy game in the Baseball World Cup today with a coworker but heavy rains all day forced the delay until November 12, which is when I’ll be in Japan. Doh!

I was looking forward to it because my coworkers had been telling be some stories about how baseball games in Taiwan are. Oh well.

The weekend in Kaohsiung was good.

Friday

High Speed Rail from Taipei to Zouying (outside Kaohsiung). It’s fast and smooth. I’m a fan. There was a mix up with the hotel about the shuttle and I ended up waiting at the station for 45 minutes and then taking a taxi. The hotel paid for it (their mix up).

Saturday

Breakfast. I’m not sure if I’d ever get used to traditional chinese breakfast. I had some toast. Then I walked to the ferry pier to Chijin island. The walk isn’t far but it crosses a bridge that doesn’t have a sidewalk. It wasn’t too busy and I’m alive.

Chijin’s a small community in a big city. Small houses, lots of bikes[1]. I like it. The temple near the ferry terminal is small but one of the nicest I’ve seen. Built in 1666 or something. Lots of nice detail. I sat outside and read for a while.

I walked up to the fort and lighthouse on the hill. Nice views obscured a bit by smog. On the main drag there are seafood stalls with the stuff still alive or freshly caught and on ice. I had soem fantastic mussels and shrimp. The mussels were among the best I’ve had–done in a similar style to 3 cup chicken [2].

I took the ferry back to the main island (Taiwan Island, that is) and walked back over the scary bridge to the hotel and took a break. After that I walked to the Tuntex Skytower and went to the observation deck. It’s an interesting building that’s like a stick figure person with no arms or head; there’s a gap at the bottom, basically. Between the Skytower and Taipei 101, I’m thinking that the Taiwanese do skyscrapers pretty well–they’re attractive.

From there I took a taxi across town to the Liouho Street Night Market. It’s bustling and big and fun. I got some weird and great food and did some people watching. I’ll post a separate photo essay on this.

The taxis from Skytower to Liouho and from Liouho back to the hotel were about $4 each. Why had I been walking so much?

Sunday

Struggled through breakfast again.

I went to mass at the Holy Rosary Cathedral, one of the oldest churches in Taiwan. Really beautiful. Mass is given in English by an Italian priest. I was wondering if the place would be half full. Catholics and English speakers aren’t exactly numerous around here, but it was packed. The answer: Filipinos, who often come to work as domestic workers, are very Catholic and often, I would guess, speak English better than Chinese.

Another thing that’s nicer about mass rather than just a walk around in beautiful old churches is the time to sit and absorb it. Holy Rosary is really nice. I went to mass in the Koelner Dom back in 2002. It was nice to sit there.

From there, I walked around, getting some papaya milk at the Kaohsiung Milk King and then sitting by Love River and reading for a bit.

A quick tour of Yancheng’s temples, lunch at the City of Steamed Glutinous Rice, and then I went back the hotel. They took me back to the train station.

I had dreams of the most efficient tourism route ever for this trip. I was doing pretty well. Lotus Lake, in Zouying is close to nothing…except the high speed rail station, so I’ll just go early, drop my bag in a locker and then walk around the lake, I thought. Brilliant plan, except for the fact that the HRS station doesn’t have lockers. The two things a train station should have–take note if you’re planning on building one–are trains and luggage lockers. So I ended up walking around the lake for a few hours with my fairly heavy bag. My knees are not happy.

The trip back was as smooth as the way there and the MRT connections once I got back to Taipei were fast, so I was back in my room ~22 minutes after I got off the train.

[1] There were a whole lot of bikes–I might have seen dozens–set up with bullhorn barns and a single gear. I’m a big fan of this style and I was happy to see so many of them in Kaohsiung.

[2] The best chicken you’ll ever taste, as made by Joy Restaurant in San Mateo. I’m now determined to make my own 3 cup chicken/ mussels.

They are showing two people playing go on TV. The lighting is dramatic, as is the intro music. It is…not exciting.

There are bars here in Kaohsiung that are all you can drink for a fixed price on weekends. I have not tried this.

The new least safest thing: a guy riding on a scooter. He’s using two hand and one foot. With the other foot he’s…pushing his girlfriend’s bicycle using the back peg. They’re both going about 30 mph. She’s not wearing a helmet.

— google.com ping statistics —
3371 packets transmitted, 1963 packets received, +36 duplicates, 41% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 220.423/3869.926/29006.648/4186.343 ms

Most of the time, my pings were in the 1 to 10 second range. 41% packet loss! Ridiculous!

Today was pretty good. I’m glad I came to Kaohsiung. More on that later.

It’s very popular here. I’m jumping on the bandwagon this weekend, going to Kaohsiung in southern Taiwan by high speed train (208 miles in 90 minutes with two stops!) and staying at the Huahou Hotel.

I’ll report back on how it is.

I just made a sufficiently embarrassing phone call.

“Hello, [Hotel/ Apartment]”

“Yes, this is Adrian in room [x]. I managed to lock myself in my kitchen. Could you send someone up to let me out?”

Good things:
a) I have a cell phone.
b) I carry an address card for the hotel with me all the time. It has the phone number.

And, yes, for whatever reason, the kitchen door has a lock.

To go to a country, approach people and speak to them in a foreign language and expect them to answer is a very egotistical thing to do. In a purchasing situation, it can almost be justified: exchange of money for product and foreign language skills. But otherwise, it’s something akin to saying your language and culture is more important than theirs [1].

This is not a justification of my actions, this is a fact.

[1] In the case with travel to Chinese-speaking areas it is especially absurd as there is no space for an argument about speaking the dominant language in terms of number of speakers, cultural weight, economic significance or really anything else.

Wulai. (”ooh-lai”) I spent yesterday in Wulai, which is known for their hot springs and one of the highest water falls in Taiwan. The hot springs were excruciatingly hot. If I hadn’t seen other people in there, I would have doubted that a human could sit in there. I got in and it was nice. But the advice of a fellow bather provied useful: “don’t move”. I think it worked similar to the recommended advice for falling into cold water: if you don’t move the water directly around the body get closer to the temperature of the body and acts as a protective barrier.

I walked to the waterfalls, about 1.5km. There’s a miniature railroad along this route. The cars are about 10 feet long and the tracks are maybe 2 feet apart. It’s really cute and I wanted to ride it but I decided that I’d do so on the way back, only to find I’m misread the hours and I’d missed it! Disaster. I really like riding odd rail and cable transportation[1], especially funiculars (being a son of Pittsburgh [2]) but others as well.

The falls were nice. Nothing like Victoria Falls or Niagara, but something nice to look at for a few minutes. From there I started walking toward Doll Valley, which the guidebook listed as about an hour away. As I walked away from Wulai, the scenery became lusher in the valley I was walking in and the cars and whatnot became sparser. Eventually I turned onto a foot path and saw a few people and a number of smaller waterfalls. I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to get back by sunset if I went to Doll Valley which I deemed a Bad Thing (TM) so I turned back but the hike was nice.

Sometimes it’s good for the head as well as the body, you know?

Wedding. Today I went to a wedding. Correction, I didn’t go to the wedding, which was held in the family’s home and wasn’t attended by many; I went to the wedding “party” (as they called it) or “reception” (as the Americans might call it). It was pretty interesting. For instance, the couple entered along with lasers and fog machines. The bride changed dresses twice (three dresses total) and the couple would reenter to much fanfare each time. As I understand is the case with many Asian cultures, the wedding presents were actually envelopes of cash. The food was largely really good: about 20 dishes (in 7 or so courses). It was way too much food, but I gave it my best effort.

This is a wedding, not a night club?

No one was drinking the bottle of scotch set aside for my table so I was given it to take home. Now it’s just time to see if I still don’t like scotch and if so see if I can change that.

Lugo’s catch (available here). Perfect. Perfectly timed in both execution and in shutting down a rally by the Rockies.

The Red Sox are highly paid but I’d like to note that they’re getting a lot out of players that aren’t very highly paid at all: Papelbon, Pedroia, Ellsbury, and Youkilis are all low paid players.

It made me really happy that Dice-K that got a two run single.

Couch. After two months, I may have found the only marginally comfortable position on my couch. That is a remarkably uncomfortable couch for sitting, lounging or anything else. Despite being aware of the recommendations I am using my bed to sit and lounge with my laptop or book when I get tired of the chair.

Arnold. They seriously show my governor’s movies all the time here. All…the…time. By the way, TV programmers: they’re mostly not very good, those movies.

[1] The best yet is Wuppertal’s Schwebebahn. If you’re anywhere near Wuppertal, it’s worth a trip just to ride that.

[2] at one point I dated a daugther of the American Revolution. she was really into that.

I didn’t get any photos of these things. Sorry!

• yummy season: A sign for Subway had these words along with a lot of chinese characters. It is yummy season
• ninja cupid: a shirt I saw on the subway said this along with a few chinese characters and a depiction of what is apparently a ninja cupid. I am definitely buying one of these if I see it.
• boring pie: a cookie/ biscuit-like product with this name and the slogan something along the lines of “get out of boring time.”

Note: I carry my camera around a lot, but I can’t always get a photo of everything.

The security guard at my work building’s big head nod greeting and “Zao” (meaning “‘morning”, short for “zao an” meaning “good morning”) every morning.

Kinder Chocolates (and other Kinder products like Kinder Bueno and Kinder Ueberaschung!) are widely available and reasonably priced. Delicious!

Riding on a scooter down Ruiguang Rd., a man wears a jacket with embroidered letters (as may be for a sports team):

POOH

Still not my favorite but it’s close and the simplicity of this one does win some points.

I slept late, later than I’ve slept in months probably. I was quite proud of myself.

Breakfast was cereal with “drinking yogurt”. That stuff is weird. I like cereal with milk or with yogurt. This was…okay..

Blue skies came out, albeit, not Palo Alto style–there were still a few clouds.

I left to seek out a few things I’d only read out online: taipei’s indie record stores and a store selling traditional chinese instruments.

(I’m abandoning capitalization except for I, because I am important. Okay, maybe I’ll still capitalize some.)

IMPO records is a small place on the 8th floor in the Ximen district. You couldn’t find this place unless you knew exactly where to look. Between that and their 2-6pm hours (closed Wednesdays and Sundays) and their out-of-the-way location, I’m not sure how they make money. They don’t have the newest stuff either and their prices are closer to the import prices in America for the most part, with a few deals. I liked the store and the owner, though. I got the Morr Music Japan Tour 2005 EP and an album by the Lodger out of the UK. We’ll see how they are.

I then went in search of a Chinese musical instrument store. The people on forumosa mentioned 3 locations that happen to be in a three block radius around the Chiang Kai-shek Memorial.. None turned out to be right. Literally right after I gave up on finding it, I found one at 9-2 Xinyi Rd., 1F, across from the CKS Memorial. I immediately saw the erhus and asked, in Chinese, how much they were. The proprietor proceed to presumably explain, in Chinese, how they were priced different based on material and quality of material. My blank stares led him to explain this in English. What I was more interested in were the double reed suonas, which I asked about. They had one and while it wasn’t expensive, it wasn’t cheap enough for me to buy it on the spot. Those things are possibly louder and shriller than their double reed cousins from Scotland. I want one.

I was walking back to the MRT and heard some sounds from Renai Rd. I went over there to discover a parade of sorts. I should note that this parade was going through the ZhongShen round-about, a very big intersection, but they hadn’t closed it to traffic. The parade would proceed whenever they had the green light and then stop when they had the red.

Anyway, this wasn’t any traditional parade or anything, more like a multicultural parade. Everyone had handmade costumes, everything from kids on stilts to storm troopers and jedis to flowers or angels to an African drummer and dancer (she was really good) to people simply walking with their flag and face paint of their country of nationality. It was very odd.

Looking down Renai Rd, lined in palm trees, I could see the blue sky and Taipei 101, which, I’ve mentioned, is not only the current tallest building, but a very attractive design, and all these weirdly costumed individuals.

Life is very weird. It makes me happy.

I continued on. White Wabbit Records was my next stop. It’s primarily a record label, but they also have a record store with records from other indie labels. As soon as I got there I knew I was somewhere I wanted to be. They had a indie good selection even by American standards, which compared to everything else I’d seen in my travels was an amazing selection. There were two taiwanese hipsters girls working behind the country. (I may have a crush on one or both now). Most of their prices were decent. They also exclusively license some foreign releases from other labels/ directly from the artists. Things like Giardini di Miro, Mum, Mice Parade and Explosions in the Sky are now produced for WWR in Taiwan. On these discs and on records by bands singed to WWR, their prices were great–a little under $12 new. They even had signed records from Saxon Shore and American Analog Set on the wall. I’m definitely going back there.

While I was there I was able to buy a ticket for the Apples in stereo, who inexplicably are playing in Taipei a week from Monday at the Wall (in the same building as WWR). Should be good. I saw the Apples for the first time over 7 years ago, as a freshman in college, and who I haven’t seen in probably five years.

It is/ was World Toy Camera Day, so while I was out and about, I shot a roll of Velvia 100 with my Lomo Fisheye camera, which, while it isn’t traditionally a toy camera (it’s not a holga or diana, basically), it’s not much above that. I think I got some decent shots. I miss shooting with film. I think I’m going to start carrying my N70/ 20mm f2.8 / Tri-x 400 around instead of my D80 sometimes.

There’s a place on Ruiguang Rd with that name.

I didn’t see it as (Home Run) Dental Clinic at first, but rather Home-Run Dental Clinic. Well, I’d much rather have my teeth checked out in a more official sort of place, one run out of an office or something!

The two little TVs on the bus show Bee TV. It has ads for movies and various other things, including an occasional English lesson.

One lesson was about “I’ll make a call”. It had little cartoon kids demonstrating how to apparently use this phrase. “I want a hamburger. I’ll make a call.” Or “Where’s my mommy? I’ll make a call.”

While that usage isn’t really wrong, my reaction if someone said that would be something like “um, yeah, you do that.”

My daily bus, bus #902, has a high female-to-male ratio, maybe about 10-to-1 or 15-to-1.

For a couple weeks I thought about how all the ladies must be completely in love with me.

But then I began thinking about why there might be such a ratio. My best guess is something along these lines: in Taiwan it’s more common for a couple or family to have one (or no) cars than two. Because of the norms, the husband would be seen as the one that “needs” the car so the wife is left to take the bus.

Some families, I’m sure, have a car and a scooter–there are scooters everywhere here–but a lot of the companies along the bus route tend toward white-collar and I’m not sure how much people ride scooters in business dress, so I think the bus is perhaps a preferable option.

Either that or the bus has a sign that says “females only” and I just can’t read it because it’s in Chinese.

Their first lost of the post-season was the first game of the post-season I was able to watch in its entirety. They lost in 11 innings. It was a good game for most of it. Hopefully they’ll pick it up next game.

I left my Boston Red Sox “authentic” cap in Hong Kong somewhere. I looked but couldn’t find it. I bought that when the Sox were 4 outs from being out of the post-season in 2004. I’m a little sad because:
a) they don’t make those hats like that any more:
i) they’re not wool (I believe)
ii) they have a black, rather than grey, underbill.
b) BoSox hats in particular are really hard to break in. It’s very obvious who has a new hat and whose has been worn for a while by how bright the blue is.

If anyone has a line on the last year’s version of the fitted cap in 7 1/4 or 7 3/8 (probably the former, that’s what this hat was, though it was tight till I broke it in), I’m good for it. Remember: wool, grey underbill, “authentic”.

It’s ridiculous to be sad about losing a hat. I acknowledge that.

I didn’t get photos of either of these so descriptions will have to do.

1. In a market in Hong Kong where haggling is pretty common, a sign for hats.

$20
No bargain.

2. On a big ad for computers on the side of a building in Taipei:

Performance up to 20%

How a few letters can make all the difference.

More Hong Kong action.

I’m blogging a lot.

I haven’t been talking very much.

I was in the United States today, for a little under an hour. (If I wanted to do that annoying blogger outlandish-statement-now-I’ll-explain-the-situation thing, I’d say “You see…” Actually, I am sort of doing that thing to an extent but not that much and at least I’m conscious of it, right?) I went to the U.S. consulate today to get some extra pages put in my passport. (Read here if you’re still confused.) Originally I was going to do it in January when I’m back in the States, send it off to the authorities and get it back a couple weeks later. Then it was going to be Tokyo in November, then I realized it should be Hong Kong so it because my one and only to-do item for my time here in Hong Kong. It took a little under an hour. I’ve never had to get pages added before but I’ve been crossing borders at an unprecedented rate.

They’re running public service announcements here encouraging parents to give their kids space and not to smother them. There’s also one about bird flu.

I went back to Stanley Market today. On the way there, I passed the building with the giant hole in it (for the dragon to get through on his way from the mountain to the sea) in Repulse Bay and took the same photo I took of it in 1997. At the Stanley Market, I very nearly bought a name chop at the very same stall I bought one at in 1997, but I decided that I hadn’t used that only once (save one letter to my friend Sam) and I really didn’t need two name chops I wasn’t using. Practicality beats out sentimentality…this time at least.

Speaking of stuff, I’ve bought a couple small things in every place I’ve been and now I’m realizing it may be a problem when it’s time to leave. I might have to throw out some stuff.

Michael Clayton was pretty good. I mean, it was dramatic and suspenseful and everything it was supposed to be. I’m not sure if it was long-lasting good, though. Good for those two hours, though.

Cheung Chau is a small, carless island off of the Hong Kong mainland. I spent most of today there. It was pretty cool. Maintenance people had little golf cart things and there were bikes everywhere along with boats in the harbor and whatnot, so there was still some noise, but it was pretty peaceful relatively.

I think at one point Hong Kong was considered cheap for something. It may be cheaper than the U.S. for eyeglasses and tailoring (and knock-off products) but not much else these days. This is an expensive city, on par with San Francisco in a lot of respects. Zhuhai (China) is about a factor of 5-10 cheaper than here, depending on what is being purchased.

I went back to the Spaghetti House last night. It’s one of two places I remember eating way back in 1997 (Jumbo Floating Restaurant being the other). I remember it being good and cheap. I was totally amazed then. Now, it’s neither. Mediocre and $20 for the meal. Every night it seems like “this will be my one splurge meal” and then the next night it seems like the same deal. Oh well. At least tonight’s meal was really good, really fresh fish in a strange-but-good black bean (but not the Mexican black bean) sauce.

What country do I live in these days? I feel like I’ve been traveling forever.

I went to the Hong Kong History Museum yesterday; Wednesday is free-museums day in Hong Kong. A recently built museum, it was pretty interesting, the way China and Hong Kong protray HK to the world. It wasn’t a hand over from the British, it was a “reunification.” And–in the view of this museum, at least–while the British were bad, the Japanese were just plain evil.

There was a section of the museum protraying life in HK in the early part of the last century, 1920s or so. An old record was playing along with a kitchen or living room scene from that era. There was this old guy, propped up on his cane, singing along to every word, even anticipating the song a little bit. At one point he looked back at me. I had a huge grin on my face. He smiled back.

Speaking of super-cute, there was this construction worker on Cheung Chau that as I walked past, lifted a tiny baby kitten out of his hard hat by the neck skin. If I’d gotten a photo, I could be rich off of that one.

People talk on their cell phones all the time here. They’re out to lunch with someone else and spend the entire time talking to someone else on their cell phone. And, pal, when you’re out to dinner with your girlfriend, take that stupid bluetooth earpiece out of your ear.

A haircut in China is like a carwash in South Africa (Jwerberg knows what I’m talking about): in America it takes 15 minutes and costs $15. The haircut and the carwash cost about 1/5th as much and take two hours. Shampooing, a head massage, rinsing, conditioner, rinsing, neck and shoulder massage, head massage, hair cut, washing your hair again. By the way, it’s short, the hair. It was time.

I’m back in Hong Kong. I was here for a day a week ago and a week 10 years ago. I’ve seen a lot of the “sights”, so you’ll forgive me if I don’t rush around and try to see them all again. The thing is, I’m pretty tired. Physically, because I haven’t quite been sleeping enough and because I’m a bit under the whether, but also socially and mentally. The work I was doing in China was a lot of hours and mentally and socially draining. So I may not do all the sights here. I think I’ll walk around a carless island off the west side of the main island. I may spend half a day at a beach. I may even go to a movie or Hong Kong Disneyland.

I spent half a day rushing around Macau today. Wikipedia will tell you more about it, I’m sure, but it’s somewhat accurate to describe it as a Portugese (rather than British) Hong Kong + the Las Vegas of South East Asia. I went to, I believe, the world’s largest casino (the Venetian Macau). I walked around and saw a bunch of cathedrals and churches and ruins and whatnot. Along the way, I saw a lot of beautiful mediteranean-style architecture.

It’s a pretty cool city. Very charming. I have a thing for Catholic cities, though (Boston, Pittsburgh). The signs were great. Things like Supermercado de Hong Koi and then a bunch of Chinese characters.

The place I’m staying in Hong Kong is very sparse. The room is small and the bathroom is just silly. Imagine a small toilet-only bathroom. Then somehow add in a sink and a shower. I’m not sure how that’s going to work. But it does have a private shower and A/C and sheets and towels. And by Hong Kong standards, it’s cheap–let’s just say that for five nights it’ll be about the price one could easily pay for one night many places in HK.

The Steelers are doing well. That makes me happy. I’m a little confused, though. Cowher was a good coach. We didn’t pick up many players in the off season and yet we seemed pretty horrible last year and good this year. Maybe it’s the energy from the new coach or maybe Roethlisberg’s just feeling more confident.

The Red Sox swept the Angels. That was cool. I was hoping for a sweep in all 4 division series, but the Yankees foiled that, but only put it off a game. The Red Sox-Indians series should be interesting.

Pork chop and rice for dinner tonight at this diner. I figured it’d probably be good because it was packed with locals and there wasn’t anyone out front shilling for customers (as is fairly common here). Initially it was so full they sat me at a small 2 person table with an old woman who continued to talk on her cell phone. That was pretty awkward for me. The pork and rice seemed very familiar to me, something I saw as a revelation. It was nice and hopefully it’ll sit well with my stomach/ body.

None of us have booked tickets but it looks like a group of 2-4 teps, including myself, are going to japan the second week of November. I’m very excited. Should be legendary.

Okay, that’s enough for now. I’ll blog more if I can find a wireless network–currently I’m in the reception area and they’re staring at me.

So yesterday I spent a lot of the day staying near the bathroom. My body must have been purging something (perhaps salad washed in unfiltered water). Anyway, there was some hilarity to the day.

I need something to take care the of the situation, some Immodium AD. I didn’t have any and they don’t carry Immodium AD at the nearby pharmacies. I went to the pharmacy and they’re like “can I help you” turns out they don’t speak any more English than that I managed to indicate that ti’s a stomach problem so they start showing me medicines and pointing to the “English” on the packaging and looking at me expectantly. Well the “English” was stuff like “Zheng Way Pian”. I thought for a moment I might have suffered some sort of brain damage that makes normal English look like nonsensical words.

Turns out the medicine manufacturers simply don’t know English either.

I told the pharmacy girls, “yeah, that’s not English” and left. Eventually I got someone from the hotel to go down to the pharmacy with me (there are some benefits to staying in a schmancy hotel) and get me what I needed.

In other news, Hot Fuzz (which you can’t mention without saying it’s made by the Shaun of the Dead people) is really good. It’s a send-up of buddy cop movies, but it’s also a perfect buddy cop movie itself. And it’s really really funny. Highly recommended.

In the particular building I’m in China, people have name tags up with their name, often their English name but some just go by Chinese names as well.

Here are the top seven English names I’ve seen:

• Twinkie
• Swift
• Cutie [ed. note: actually fairly cute]
• Gypsy
• Snowmen
• Journey
• Tiny [note: a man was named this]

I might have to name one of my kids Swift. That’s an excellent name.

[Update:] I think Twinkie might actually be “Twinkle”. I did meet a “Blue” today, though.

For andyl, my roomie, here’s his new favorite restaurant:

It’s in Hong Kong.

ring pull tab coke cans! I can’t believe it!

Also, wikipedia pages are blocked but google caches of those pages appear to get through.

I like sandwiches. I pack a sandwich four days a week for lunch back in the US. I make up recipes for sandwiches. I like places that make good sandwiches.

I haven’t had a sandwich in over a month—it’s been a month and a day since I left the states—and I really wanted one for lunch today. I don’t know of many places that have sandwiches here, so I just had to go to Subway, which is the first American food (or maybe any sort of American) chain that I’ve patronized since I’ve got here.

I had such a stupid self-conscious-that-I’m-a-corporate-whore-(sometimes)-and-don’t-really-mind grin on my face when I was ordering my foot long turkey breast sub.

[Also, I've misspelled sandwich sandwhich a shameful number of times on this blog.]

While my Chinese skillz are coming along slowly, my gestures and other non-verbal communication skillz are advancing rapidly.

Yesterday, I went to the post office to get some stamps, a relatively simple task if you know the language. I had one letter to mail to the U.S. and wanted to get five more stamps because I’ll have a few more things to send over the next few months. Getting the letter I was sending stamped was no problem, but the other five proved a little more difficult. But as I said, I’m getting good at the gestures and the problem was soon resolved.

I also bought a bike yesterday from a man who didn’t speak any English.

Yeah, you’re going to want me on your charades team.

Brace yourself, lest its sweetness blind you.

Sure it’s rusted, the kickstand won’t stay up when I’m riding, the seat doesn’t go high enough and the seat actually leaves part of itself on my pants when I get off of it, but it’s a pretty smooth ride and cost me a total of about $22.

Alright, don’t have much time here, so I’ll just mention a couple things.

All Watted out I’ve seen about 15 temples (Wats) in the last two days. I’ll all Wat-ted out. There were some very impressive ones.

How fucked up is this? A lot of the temples were in Ayuthaya. It’s the old capital about 60km north of Bangkok. I was taking the train to get there (I should note: 15 Baht, about 50 cents). (Also, the seats were wooden. And no A/C.) Not very far out of Bangkok the train stops. And stays stopped for about an hour. I thought it was an engine problem.

Eventually I got out and looked. The train had run over someone. Curiosity really did kill the cat this time as I didn’t feel very good after seeing the body under the train (and again after they’d cleared it to the side and we went past).

He got all Thai-ed up in the ropes I went to see some Thai boxing (Muay Thai). It was pretty cool. They punch, kick, knee, headlock and all sorts of stuff. Possibly more interesting was the very intricate and complicated set of hand signals people used up in the peanut gallery to denote how much and who they wanted to bet on. I saw a lot of money change hands. In a place where you can stay a night for 200 Baht (about $6.65) and eat lunch for 40 Baht (about $1.35), people were placing 1000 to 8K or 9K on single fights and there were 9 in the night. Pretty absurd.

You may or may not know that high school joke, but the answer is Bangkok, which is where I am for the (long) weekend. It’s kind of crazy.

I just had some outrageous chicken masaman and chicken metaba and rotti. Outrageous. It made my day better.

I’m staying in a place for under 7 dollars a night. It has a clean sheet and pillow case and I have a private room. And the people who run the place are super helpful. Like draw you maps of exactly where you need to go helpful. I like them. It doesn’t have a ton else going for it, but it’s good enough.

I went to a market today that quite possibly had 1000 stalls. It was very extensive. I got lost a few times. Good thing I had a map of the market.

Tomorrow I’m hitting some serious ruins (Ayuthaya–I would wikipedia link it for you but it’s too slow here) tomorrow. I’m not sure how I’m getting there and back yet. Maybe bus. Or train. I’m hoping the front desk/ guest house-running people will be super helpful again on that one.

This isn’t a giant city, but it has a lot of traffic. That limits what’s reasonable to do. I’m not going to be a particularly good recommender of things to do here, I think, because I’ll have seen relatively little.

Also, my foot hurts, ranging from a little to a lot. I might get a foot massage. It probably won’t help, but my other foot will probably feel relaxed afterwards.

So your Elsafe hotel safe doesn’t want to lock. It keeps saying that it’s “open” when it’s closed? The batteries probably need to be replaced.

Here is the instruction manual if you want to read more. Replacing the batteries is pretty simple.

Update: I am not associated with Elsafe. Please direct questions to them or read the instruction manual linked above.

In the foreground is obviously a 7-11. If you click and enlarge you’ll see more orange and green in the distance. This is yet another 7-11 across the street and less than a block away. That’s how many 7-11s there are here.

Jakarta Airport (CGK Soekarno-Hatta Jakarta International Airport). On the far right is a green “Nothing to Declare” customs line. Here people are lining up and having all their luggage x-rayed by customs. On the far left is a green “Nothing to Declare” customs line. Here people are walking freely through with no customs officials. There is nothing to determine if there is a difference or if people should or can use one or the other. I used the line without officials.

Snow cancelled plenty of days when I was young (though 2 hour delays were the best because you didn’t have to make those yo) but natural conditions haven’t canceled much more feel in the last 8 years. MIT just wouldn’t cancel classes…except for that one record-breaking snow fall. Otherwise, you’re already in hell, what’s walking a mile in 8 inches of freezing slush?

Well that’s all changing for me because tomorrow’s TYPHOON DAY. No school, no work across the region.

Last week I got to see the Legong of Mahabrata @ the Ubud Palace, Ubud, Bali, Indonesia. The group performing was Sekaa Gong Jaya Swara Ubud. It was balinese dance accompanied by gamelan. Gamelan is an Indonesian (Balinese and Javanese) music with tuned percussion instruments, instruments like (but not exactly) xylophones (metallophones), tuned gongs, cymbals, barrel drums (kendhang). Sometimes, like in the gamelan I saw, they also have fipple flutes and a two-stringed spike fiddle called a rebab. (It should be noted: gamelan is a set of instruments, not the players/ history. The Berlin Philharmonic is the people, not the particular instruments they play.)

The venue, the Ubud Palace, is a courtyard of a 16th century palace. Not to be flippant, but it’s sort of like making the Great American Music Hall a lot more historic and even more beautiful.

The group came in, some dancers and the gamelan players shaking these tuned bamboo rattles called anklung in addition to the barrel drums mentioned above. The players went to their seats and there was a pause before the music began.

Gamelan itself means hammer. That’s because most of the main instruments are struck with hammers of various sorts. The music often starts fairly simple and slow. One line on the metallophones and one on the cradled gongs. More lines come in. People with hammers are hitting the instruments with one hand and selectively damping them with the other. All this while amazing and tremendously precise dance was going on in in the middle of the U made by the instruments.

I was completely enthralled from beginning to end. I have to say, I’ve been to some great shows this year, some that I might even call “better” but quite possibly none that kept my attention as singularly as this one.

Gamelan “Gender” Wayang – Krepetan (mp3)

(I searched for a while I’m really not sure where you can get this CD other than in Bali. Amazon has other Balinese gamelan CDs, though.)

Gamelan Gong Kebjar – Hudjan mas (mp3) (buy)

My other music experience while on Bali was marching ensembles in a Balinese death parade and ceremony (amazing for many reasons, but I’ll just stick to the one here.)

They played similar instruments to the gamelan: tuned gongs, hanging gones, cymbals and barrel drums, but they also used whistles and their voices, even breaking into the ketjak rhythm for a moment. Here I was able to get right up up next to them and be almost surrounded by the sound. The tuned gongs were doing a slower rhythm while the cymbals were being hit together at a very fast pace, only to suddenly stop and all by thrust into the air. It was great.

Why didn’t anyone tell me that a young Red Sox pitcher pitched a no-hitter in his second major league game. Pretty cool.

The Time 100 (influential people list) is pretty interesting. I spent a lot more time with the Alt Time 100, a list compiled by a panel of “Xzibit, rapper and host of MTV’s Pimp My Ride; Bridget Marquardt, 1/3 of Hugh Hefner’s girlfriend and star of E!’s Girls Next Door; Eddie Sanchez, UFC fighter; Tommy the Clown, krump dancer; Dr. Boogie, hairstylist and contestant on Bravo’s Shear Genius; Jimmy Jimmy Coco, spray tanner; Glenda Borden, party planner”. Here are some excerpts:

10. Hugh Hefner, editor
Everyone thought Hef should make the list. Then I explained that Bridget was one-third going out with him which made the panel very excited. If Bridget was two-thirds going out with Hef, I don’t think the panel could have taken it.

27. Mike Lazrdis, Blackberry founder
Tommy The Clown called him “a real life saver.” You can’t afford to be out of touch for a moment when you’re a krump dancer. That stuff breaks out anywhere, anytime.

45. Bono, singer
All that Africa stuff.

54. Monique, comedian
More good body image stuff. While not at all fat, the panel loves fat people. Though not enough to date them.

56. George Clooney, actor
The panel felt strongly about Darfur. The panel also felt strongly that the most important player in the Darfur crisis is George Clooney. The panel does not equate feeling strongly about something with reading about that something.

60. Magic Johnson, businessman
Xzibit thought that Magic has some secret cure for AIDS he wasn’t sharing and should be left off the list until he divulges his secret. Xzibit has strange thoughts about both medicine and the power of this list.

79. Howie Mandel, TV host
Without him, you’d just be looking at models holding suitcases. You need the Howie visuals to make you long for the suitcase models. It’s the yin-yang concept.

I’m a tree! Bischofia javanica. We’ll forgive the namer for forgetting an ‘f’. From now on you can call me Bishop Wood or Autumn Maple.

The Weekly World News is done and some respectable publications are doing favorable obits.

Just today I went to a place that I swore was Chinatown!

On the bus, seen on a young woman presumably going to work:

WHAT DOES “FUCK” MEAN?
F = FOREVER I LOVE YOU
U = UNHAPPY WITHOUT YOU
C = CARE ABOUT YOU
K = KISS YOU WITH A HUG
I GIVE YOU BIGGEST F.U.C.K.

Oh, Taipei, how you amuse me.

I could easily spend 3 months being amused by the signs here. Here are just a few I’ve seen.

[Some of the signs are hard to read in this size. Click for larger versions.]

Taiwan

There are signs everywhere, many of them lighted. They can easily fill your view.

Beef and beer, how can you go wrong?

Lobster and beer, is the only improvement, I guess.

On some signs, the iconography is unusual:

On some signs the language is–how should I say this–awkward. (Note, the screen they’re referring to has never been on that I’ve noticed).

Yes, they go fast, I get it! 39 m/ min fast!

Announced Tuesday along with the iPod Touch and the other things is the best designed cake in the world. It can hold 8 billion songs. 8…billion…songs…

Is the skin eating food or is the skin the food? I’m confused.

There is something about chicken restaurants. Thumbs up! You’re about to eat me!

“The best saporous fried chicken in Taiwan”. Where’s my dictionary? Is that a word?

“Super chicken” is the newest superhero…you can eat.

I know where I’ll go next time I need some mockery.

Hello! Damper Baby!

“Deep flied pork cutlet”. I’m not putting words in anyone’s mouth.

Some bring out the giggly high schooler in me.

Summer BEER Rock Festival

Beer
SUMMER
Rock
Festival
ACTIVE
->Activity Girl With Dream
Active girl has inside herself to be confident, fulfilled, happy and healthy. Active girl Power! is the power to speak your mind, to stand up for yourself, and to know what’s right for you. We want every girl to know: you are unique, you are valuable, and with your Girl Power! you can succeed. The future is yours.

Indonesia

No “tipping” <wink><wink> Ah yes, I see.

The only I saw can be disturbed aviation safety was me taking the photo of the sign.

Car maintenance shop, but in Indonesian!

Sort of like a Walmart but in Indonesia.

From street vendors you can get a thing where it’s a rice sausage (rice in sausage casing) cut open with a regular (meat) sausage placed inside, cut open and spices and things put inside. It is cheap and good.

Hey Song Sarsparilla soda is pretty good. Sort of like root beer but a bit more tea-like.

They have strange flavors of chips.

They also had Short Rib Doritos, initiating a test like those done for previous weird Doritos flavors. Full experiment after the jump (at the bottom of the post)

In Fugi and I think other fishing villages you can pick live seafood from buckets and they’ll cook it 10 feet away and serve it to you. We picked out some mantis shrimp, a fish, some mussels, oysters and some small fish. It ended up being way too much food, of course, but it was great. The mussels were among the best I’ve had.

Doritos “Short Ribs” flavor experiment after the jump.

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First photo album is online.

Yesterday I went to (what is officially still but not really) the world’s tallest building, Taipei 101. I like the architecture; it’s nicer than many of the very tall buildings. Cooler yet is that it has the fastest elevator at 16.83 m/s. It goes up to the top in 37 seconds. Awesome. Also it has the world’s largest tuned mass damper. They call it “damper baby”. It weighs 650 tons and can swing 1.5m in really bad winds or an earthquake. Good job, damper baby!

In other geek news, I saw a sign at the MRT that said something like “Beware. This escalator runs fast, as 37 m/ minute.” Yeah, they stated the actual speed (even though the unit is silly.)

Speaking of MRT, I “figured it out” last night and today. It’s a fast and efficient system, from the looks of it. Quiet, cheap. It’s also packed but given the other qualities, I’ll take it. Oh, and the tokens you get have RFID or some sort of other RF tags. You just swipe them to enter. It’s pretty cool.

There are 7-11s everywhere. I have been places where I am standing at one and could walk to two others each in a minute. It’s tremendous. It’s like Dunkin Donuts in Boston or Starbucks in Seattle. There are both of those here too, but not as prevalent. Mister Donut has a one-up on Dunkin Donut here it seems.

The National Palace Museum’s collection is amazing. Pieces from just about every era of China. I was amazed by some of the craftsmanship. Elsewhere I was amazed by the detail on some of the 3000+ year old pieces.

Went to Danshui for the evening and had my first night market food. Just cheap food from street vendors. You get small amounts from a few and that’s dinner. Little taiwanese tacitos, squid grilled before my eyes on a stick and “stinky tofu”. It tasted pretty good and I’m not vomiting yet.

This city is very bright and busy. I’m not sure if that’ll get old.

A common sink/ toilet maker here is Toto. Every time I see one of their products I can’t help but think: “I bless the rains down in Africa”.

(bottle reads “BIO Technology Fiber Drink”)

(I’m not the one enforcing stereotypes.)

The toilet in my hotel apartment is crazy. Not as-seen-on-TV-japanese-super-crazy but much crazier than American toilets. It has buttons. Toilets shouldn’t have electronics…

I took the bus to work today. #902. That was an adventure, but it was dirty cheap (50 cents) and was probably as fast as a taxi given that traffic was the limiting factor. Next time I’ll be able to cut out the half an hour of trying to find the right stop/ bus route beforehand.

The buses have signs on them clearly instructing you that no birds are allowed.

ESPN is in Chinese here but there was still a good amount of coverage of the baseball. That’s comforting.

The glasses in the apartment are small. That’s probably good as I’m used to drinking coke out of super quick slurp-sized glasses rather than 8 oz tumblers. Might be good for my figure.

Days of lifting heavy things while moving has left my back in a sore/rry state. Ibuprofen to the rescue.

I’m in Taipei. I live here now. Yeah, that’s weird.

Handy converter for you east coast people: flip the time am/pm and you’ll get my time (later the same day or the next day). West coast is a trickier conversion.

Shoegaze/ slowcore musics are not the ones to listen to while trying to stay awake. gah.

I sort of wanted to go to a taiwanese baseball game but one of my coworkers is telling me no one watches it anymore because of some gambling issues. they watch the yankees now because there’s some taiwanese pitcher on the team. frickin yankees.

went out to lunch with some coworkers today, to the mall food court. such a crazy amount of food there and each place had a display of what each prepared dish would look like. I could have spent two hours at least just taking photos of these dishes.

going to the ATM to get foreign currency out is pretty funny when you don’t know what the exchange rate is. “Hmm, how much is a lot of money? 100? 10,000?” Luckily I guessed about right.

I’m still awake, but barely.

I’m feeling some excitement for the first time since May when the anxiety started.

There aren’t many bar bars around here. Many tea bars. “Taiwan Beer” (the market leader) is okay. I look forward to many more.

Shabu Shabu is an experience. And in the version we got, a lot of food. “What kind of restaurant makes you cook your own food?”

There is this awesome Jackie Chan/ Yow Ming visa commerical on right now. Jackie tries all these sports but gets disqualified in each for his crazy stunts.

a) I dislike change. It ends up my floor because my pockets get too heavy. I had $41.68 on my floor as of this morning.

[Also, the Page Mill branch of the Stanford Federal Credit Union has a coin machine like those at Safeway but no commission! You get a receipt from it to exchange it for cash or deposit it.]

b) I have a lot more stuff than when I moved to California just under 4 years ago. It’s still manageable but barely. I can also be brutal when it’s time to pack up in terms of what I throw out and what I keep. Like today I threw out my coke can birdman costume (after it had sit on Craiglist->free a few days, I should note) even though it took me a ridiculous amount of time and energy to make but I knew I wasn’t going to use it again.

also:
c) I’m moving to Taiwan, well, now.

What Plug is good for finding what plugs are in use/ what adapters/ converters/ etc you will need when traveling to foreign countries. For instance if you are going from the US to Indonesia, this is what you’ll need to know.

This site is also pretty good.

Make sure it’s dry and that it doesn’t have any leaves or cracks. Just put the address right on it and put enough postage on it.

This is what my parents got as a “postcard” from hawaii.

[I'm not looking for reassurance. In fact that's the last thing I'm looking for.]

People ask if I’m excited to leave for Taiwan. I say I’m anxious. They say “oh, you’ll be fine.” Or “you’ll have a great time!”

They, who haven’t lived abroad or lived abroad with a group of Americans or in an English speaking country. And who aren’t shy.

I’ve done this before. I’ve done this before being much much better prepared culturally and language-wise. I lived in Germany for this amount of time. I learned a lot, saw a lot and in many ways had a great time and I have years of stories now.

But, it was incredibly hard. I didn’t make any friends and though I was nearly fluent in German, the language barrier was still difficult. At times it was intensely lonely. Like burst into tears randomly while walking down the street lonely.

Yes, it’ll be a good experience. Yes, I’ll see cool things and have interesting experiences. But I’ve very realistic in my anxiety.

Before buying things (like an alarm clock) specifically that have dual (or can accept a wide range of) voltage/ frequency capability, I might have wanted to check what voltage/ frequency Taiwan uses.

The answer? You guessed it: exactly the same as America.

So I’m back from Kauai. I’m usually not one for sit-on-the-beach vacations. I travel largely to learn about the world and to gain a wider experience with varied cultures, so a vacation divorced from those things seems almost silly.

But I have to say, this trip was amazingly relaxing. I saw some really beautiful things, hung out with some great friends and new people and generally had a blast. I even changed my opinion about snorkeling (from “meh” to “that’s kind of cool”) and hiking (I’ve been burnt out on hiking, camping etc since high school when I had ~150 nights of camping under my belt by the time I was 16 due to Boy Scouts, but I found it mentally very relaxing.)

I think the highlights had to have been:

• The wedding on the beach. Picturesque and touching. A rainbow even came out right after the ceremony.
• Hiking to the Hanakapi Falls. A fairly long and strenuous hike during the hottest part of the day under a deadline (to get to the airport) but still 100% worth it.
• Snorkeling. I saw a lot of different types of fish that usually only exist in fish tanks and we even followed a sea turtle (at a safe distance!) for a bit.
• Hanging out with friends, especially on the beach. Beers on a beach with friends is an important and awesome thing to do (if you choose to drink alcohol).

Stay tuned for photos.

I’m in Hawaii. It’s kind of pretty.

Google SMS is awesome. You simply text what you want to GOOGLE (466453) and it texts you back almost instantly with what you need.

Traveling in Boston last week, I used this a lot. (It should be noted that I have unlimited text messages.) Don’t know where that bar was? Text “the littlest 02116″. Is my flight on time? Text “AA 631″. What time is that movie showing? “Eagle vs. Shark 02139″. What’s that froyo place’s phone number? “Ankara Cafe Boston”. What’s the weather going to be the next day? “Weather 02139″.

All of these things got me the exact information I wanted quickly. I’m impressed!

I’ve been a bit slow on the updates here. I’m catching up!

Libs and I managed to wait possibly four hours between the two of us on the day the tickets were released (back in February), but we managed to get six tickets for the Red Sox while I was in Boston last week. The final groups was Jesse, Colin, Heather, Lauren (no blog!), Libs and I. Good group.

The game was hilariously lopsided (another recap here). By the end of the 3rd inning the Devil Rays were down 13-2, they were on their 3rd pitcher and the Red Sox had hit a grand slam (Coco Crisp) and a 3 run HR (Lowell).

We could have left at that point, but that would have been no fun. Plus we would have missed Sweet Caroline (you should have heard me singing!).

Afterwards, in what’s becoming a bit of a tradition, we hit up Ankara (”For the Gen X-ers”) for froyo. Brownie and reese’s pieces could possibly be the best combination of add-ins ever.

Yesterday, I went to the Taiwan Cultural Office of San Francisco (in Sunnyvale) yesterday. They serve some consular functions and I was investigating visa stuff for the fall.

I got there and there are people sitting around, forms, papers and signs everywhere, but no one is speaking, reading, writing in English. It ended up taking me 15 minutes to find where to get the forms I needed.

I’m sure I showed a little of a deer-in-headlights look in my eyes, but my mental dialog went something more like “oh my gosh what am I doing?! how am I going to do four months of this when I’m having a hard time with fifteen minutes?!”

It was pretty sweet. I’m sure it’ll work out.

It’s about as official as it can get without having tickets: I’ll be going to live/ work in Taiwan for the fall (early-mid September to mid-late December).

Menlo Park is dead at 10pm on a Sunday.

[personal thoughts, ramblings after the jump]

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In my line of business, it’s not unusual to get a couple packages from Asian (mostly Taiwan, China) a week. Sometimes the packing material is pretty cool. Some parts were packaged in this box last week.

I like the font (the ‘E’ in erasing and red-dotted ‘i’ in particular) and general graphic design. Also, having all that Chinese script just makes it that much cooler. It’s like someone’s bringing the traveling to me.

I lived in Germany during the summer of 2002 and I traveled nearly every weekend. I arrived in Germany May 28 and left August 23. Sometimes I use this blog to put things down that are at the edge of my reach memory-wise, so I can make a record of them. I actually have all of this written down in a notebook, but I can’t find it.

• May 31- June2: Bremen, to visit Colin[1]
• June 7-9: Düsseldorf to visit my Oma[2], Frankfurt to visit Sam Breuning[3]
• June 14-16: nothing
• June 21-23: Solingen, Köln to visit the cousins Füser[4]
• June 28-30: München[5, 7], Bayrischer Alpen[6] for MIT-Germany/ MIT Club of Germany meet up
• July 5-7: Vienne, Strasbourg France for the Vienne Jazz Festival[8]
• July 12-14: Berlin, for LoveParade 2002 and visit with Justus[9]
• July 20-22: Hamburg[10], Lübeck[11] w/ Christian
• July 26-28: Karlsruhe for the “Savage Seven” ultimate frisbee tournament as a part of die Sieben Schwaben[12]
• August 2-4: Romantic/ Clock Road, Rottweil; Stein am Rhein, Switzerland; Rottenburg ob der Tauber w/ Meredith Gerber[13]
• August 9-12: Pittsburgh, USA for Colin and Heather’s wedding. Surprise![14]
• August 16-18: Köln (to see Bugge Wesseltof) and Frankfurt, w/ Sam Breuning[15]

Footnotes:

1. Bremen smells like hops when the wind is the right direction because of Becks. The Schnoor area was neat, with its small and odd houses.
2. My Oma didn’t realize I was related to her for the first hour of my visit; the Alzheimers had started to take its toll. This ended up being the last time I saw her. I regret not having stayed with her for the whole weekend, but at that point I thought I was going to visit again that summer.
3. Sam was a cool British kid also with a German father; he’d been on the Cambridge-MIT exchange. We ended up hanging out a number of weekends that summer. I’ve since lost touch with him.
4. My dad’s cousin (my “Tante”/ “aunt”), her husband and kids (my “cousins”) were all gathered at their palatial family estate in Solingen for a sculpture showing of a local artist set up in their gardens. At one point we all, including the artist, were sitting under some trees eating a snack and they asked me if I liked one of the statues near us. I said, in stilted German, that I did (it was actually one of the few I did). It came out wrong and they made fun. I said “echt!” in vain. At another point this weekend, another cousin-by-marriage of my dad’s who was also visiting announced, after having talked to me for five minutes that I spoke “perfekt Deutsch.” Right…
5. We all met at a Biergarten, all the current students and the MIT Club of Germany members. I was stuck at the Club table for most of the night, which was extremely awkward. At some point I excused myself and snuck over the student table. Seeings as it was social interaction with people I didn’t know well, it was still awkward, but not nearly as much.
6. We went hiking in the Alps and stayed in a rustic ski cabin that one MIT Club member had access to. Sam and I got a ride down with a guy who spoke with a typical German accent except, because he’d spent multiple years as a ski bum in the US, mixed it with ski bum slang and inflection all the time. At the cabin, I learned I was ace at splitting logs with an ax, usually splitting decent sized logs in one swing. During one of our day hikes we stopped at an inn, where a 10 year old kid was drinking a 1 litre “maß” glass of beer.
7. It was the day of the final when we got back to Munich and I had the surreal experience of watching Germany play (and lose) in a World Cup final with 10,000 Germans in a public square where they’d set up screens. Turkey won the consolation match so there was some celebrating. (Note: Turkish is the largest minority in Germany by a factor of 4, at least at the time.)
8. Vienne has a Roman amphitheatre with gorgeous acoustics. Sam knew the mayor of Vienne so we got VIP passes into the events, including into a VIP area the first night where we passed the London Times jazz critic. Vienne was about 450 miles from Stuttgart, a good 7 hours, which we drove non-stop on Friday afternoon, on half a tank of diesel in a pretty amazing VW Passat TDI. We still missed most of the first act. Also, French radio sucks. I bought a CD-tape adapter after this road trip.
9. The LoveParade is a parade along a mile-long route on which 40 heavy duty trucks with world-class DJs and sound systems drive for an entire afternoon. Estimates for my year were 500,000 in attendance. Oh and there were a lot of topless girls there.
10. My (second) cousin Christian lived in Hamburg at the time. He’d stayed with us in America in the early 90s and he was out to repay the favor by showing me a good time. We went out with some friends. On the way there, he’d talked to them and said he was bringing his cousin (”eine Cousine from mir”) with him. We got there and the friend said “this is your hair dresser (Friseur)??” See, they might sound alike on the phone; yes that doesn’t work in English and I don’t care. This was the first night that I drank more than one beer in a night, in fact, probably quadrupling my total beer consumption ever in just that night. The goal was to stay up all night and go to the Fischmarkt when it opened at 6am, but it ended with me falling asleep in a bar at 4:30am, having had multiple beers (mostly Heinikens while watching a crappy, but, let’s be honest, fun American cover band) and a good quantity of vodka. Incidentally, trying to explain complicated concepts in German wasn’t easy, let alone to a group of strangers in a loud bar while intoxicated. And, Malta, I can’t say your name correctly sober either; but you can’t say “squirrel” to save your life, so there.
11. The bells of the main church had fallen and melted from the bombings in WWII. They’d be left as a beautiful and poignant reminder. Lübeck in general is a wonderful small town.
12. “Savage seven” means no subs (the seven you have to start is all you have). Having gotten roped into this at the last minute, I played seven games of no-subs ultimate frisbee in two days. I can still remember the intense pain, mostly in my calves that I felt for the rest of the week. Walking on flat ground and up stairs, my right calf hurt intensely; my left calf hurt similarly walking down stairs. I couldn’t, and didn’t, win. Of course there were 6 flights of stairs between my office and the cafeteria/ train level at work.
13. This was a fun little road trip with another MIT-Germany person; Meredith was in Munich for the summer. We went to some classic historic German places. I also made my only trip to a Switzerland, to the town of Stein am Rhein, which was noted by the “strict” border crossing. “Passports? No, we don’t need to see those. In fact, you don’t even have to come to a full stop. Just roll on through!”
14. After the rehearsal dinner, I had some friends over, got tipsy on Mike’s Hard Lemonades and had to search for the right words to use in English. That I was thinking partly in German was a big step for me and I noted my progress.
15. Bugge Wesseltof had impressed Sam and I with his electro jazz stylings in Vienne. Plus we liked his awesome name, so we drove like maniacs (once again) to get to Köln by show time, only to be disappointed by his collaborative work with a female jazz singer.

I was listening again to NPR’s story about Brinkley, AR and the Ivory Billed Woodpecker (and the associated “Lord God Bird” song by Sufjan, I’ve posted about it before) tonight. It got me thinking (and I’ve thought before…

The SF Peninsula isn’t changing. I mean, it is, but it isn’t really. What am I doing here? There are places like Brinkley, serious small town America, that are changing irreparably and getting closer to extinction. Maybe I should plan a week next year (or in the fall) to drive around small town America, staying in small inn’s and talking to locals. Hopefully even catching some local music. It wouldn’t be exciting or crazy like vising NYC is, but it’d be pretty cool. It’s not like I Cache River National Wildlife Refuge and the Big Woods has been called America’s Amazon.

I’m serious about this. Let me know (here or offline) if you’re interested.

I scanned and uploaded a bunch of black and white photos to my picasa thing.

Galleries include Pittsburgh over Christmas, my first try at fisheye, the Oakland A’s last game of their sweep of the Twins in the playoffs, Jose Gonzalez @ Stanford, and John Vanderslice @ Stanford.

I meant to post this the one day I was back between South Africa and Mexico, February 14, but I got held up. I had a brilliant theme, given that it was St. Valentine’s Day: Love Songs: the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Well, it almost worked out but I feel like it won’t have the same relavence or weight posting it today. Oh well.

You can download the zip file with the following:
1. mp3s of the songs
2. liner notes
3. playlist files (iTunes txt file and an m3u file—I think the m3u file might actually be right this time)

(for the iTunes file, simply import all the songs to your library and then go to file->import and then select the song list. you should now have the 2007feb playlist in your iTunes with all the songs in the correct order).

If you want to read the liner notes before downloading the whole thing, they’re here. There are a bunch of great songs on here, from 60s girl groups, to Pedro the Lion (he sure is good at the Bad and the Ugly), to Jose Gonzalez. I also took this one apt opportunity to throw in a couple ‘emo’ songs.

Adrian’s February 2007 mix tape [zip file]

This’ll be up for a limited time (~1 week) before being moved to a password protected folder.

If you like the artists or songs, I suggest supporting them by buying their music, going to a show, buying merchandise from them or at least telling other people about them.

Anyway, I hope you like this one even if it’s a bit past its due. I have a bunch of great songs in my mind for the next one, so hopefully I can get back on track for that one.

The last week (Tuesday-Monday):

• time in the air: 28 hours
• other time on airplanes: 5 hours
• time standing in lines at airports: 9.5 hours
• other time waiting at airports: 4 hours
• number of airports visited or passed through: 7
• approximate distance in miles sprinted in JFK: 0.25
• number flights missed, skipped, or unable to make: 8
• number of tickets sold to me without tickets being issued: 2
• time waiting for luggage at baggage claim: 2.5 hours
• time in the car: 8 hours
• number of meals with friends: 9
• number of delicious, home cooked meals for which I will be eternally grateful: 1
• number of giant, greasy meals at favorite Boston establishments: 2
• number of absolutely awesome froyos at places claiming to be “for the Gen-Xers” (flavor):1 (reese’s pieces and reese’s cups)

Not all bad.

I walked around all weekend in a Boston covered in inches of ice. I walked carefully and I did not slip and fall. I got back to sunny California and one of the first things I did was slip after getting out of the shower. My hip and elbow hurt.

I really like traveling and I’m usually not ready to go home, but I’ll tell you, when I got back yesterday, it was nice to sit on my couch, sit on my chair, sleep in my bed, eat out of my cupboard.

madiba is my homeboy. I got a shirt that says this today.

I’m totally a south african hipster now.

it’s awesome having fast internet again. my mind has a problem slowing down to dialup speeds.

After a mostly crazy and ambitious itinerary for the first ten days of my trip, I’ve arrived in Cape Town, where I’ll stay for the rest of my trip.

Dug said yesterday that I looked energized and asked why. I like this city. I like it a lot. It’s definitely in my top five cities ever (though I don’t have time, or really care to make a full list right now).

This city is also familiar to me. I know people here; I know places here. The Cash Converters (thrift store) is still down the street in Sea Point and it’s still a great place to pick up an extra suit case on the cheap in case you bought too much stuff to fit in the luggage you brought with you. The Vondi’s Holistic Pet Nutrition store that I like to make fun of is still here too. I know where to get a good bite to eat and where to do laundry. We’re even staying in the same place
(where my parents have a time share). Perhaps the only other foreign city I have this familiarity with is Stuttgart, where I lived for a summer.

Traveling in a foreign country is largely about learning and experiencing new things, so you may wonder why I enjoy this familiarity. Well, it’s hard being out on the road and rushing around in a very different culture for ten days and coming here has the feeling of coming home and that’s always nice. It’s very encouraging for my thoughts of moving to this city in a couple years.

The water off of Camp’s Bay (Atlantic side) is freezing, but even that was nice somehow. Sundowners on Camp’s Bay is still one of the best things.

The cycling shop that I liked in Sea Point has been torn down though. I don’t know if they relocated or what.

Just a handful more days here. I’ll try to make the most of it, but I also don’t need to wear myself out any more on vacation.

[Oh, Ali's daughter is on TV. She's fighting here in South Africa. The other day I heard her on the radio say that she puts Mandela on the same level as her father. Um...Ali's good and all, but Nelson Mandela's slightly more important.]

I guess this is my first real update about my South African trip with Jon, Helene and Dug.

My goodness, it’s been quite a trip so far.

I started in Jo’burg for a few days, mostly running errands and spending time with my aunt and uncle. I did go to the Apartheid Museum in Soweto, though, and it’s really good, a very well done museum.

Once everyone arrived we headed out to Graskop (hint–not pronounced with a ‘g’ sound at all). That was our home base for exploring the Blyde River Canyon. The views from God’s Window and at the Three Rondavals were amazing, both in the foggy evening and the clear next morning. We also saw some beautiful waterfalls and swam in some of the natural forming pools.

We had our first braai of the trip too (though I’d had one with my aunt and uncle already). mmmm lamb boerewors and steak. delicious…

It was a fairly long decent drive from there to Kruger Park, Satara Camp the next day. We found an elephant before we’d even gotten into the park–it’d trampled the fence at a neighboring private reserve, it appeared. We didn’t even stop for that long and, as you might expect if you expect irony, that was the only elephant we saw. The night drive was a bit of a disappointment, but the drive right as the gates opened the next day was amazing, with fairly close encounters with lions, rhinos, buffalo (not bison), zebra and giraffe. We just kept on driving south from Satara, out of the camp, through that little stretch of Mpumalanga and into Swaziland. It was a long drive that day, with a stretch of KwaZulu Natal after Swaziland to get to Ingwavuma.

Ingwavuma is a rural town up in the Lebombo Mountains on the border with Swaziland. It, like much of the rural towns in that area and much of southern Africa, has a massive problem with AIDS and unemployment. A family friend is working up there with an NGO called Zisize, who are doing some great work with the children of the village. We also visited a couple income-generating groups for the local women: Fancy Stitch and Ingwavuma Women’s Center. We bought some of their beautifully made, locally produced goods.

Bridgie, the family friend, and everyone else we met there was really great to us.

Yesterday was our last big drive of our trip was yesterday, from the dry heat of Ingwavuma to the hot humidity of Durban. We’re still figuring out what we will be doing these next two days before our short flight to Cape Town, where I’ll meet up with my family.

Since my South Africa/ Tanzania trip of 2004, I’ve thought a lot about how lucky I am, but I’ve been reminded once again. If you’re reading this, you are probably quite lucky, too: you are reading the internet. You are probably sitting comfortably in a home or apartment. You can probably open the tap and get fresh, clean drinking water. You have electricity. You probably are able to purchase food for dinner and earn a reasonable wage for your work. This isn’t the norm of the world, not at all. I don’t mean to preach.

I’ve arrived. The two days on planes wasn’t all that horrible, actually.

I’m pretty sure I’m going to rock this jetlag thing. I am multitalented, after all.

Incidentally, The Queen is good. The Guardian is not.

Alright, I’m heading off to the airport in a few hours here.

Have a good few weeks and remember: life is not about fear; life is about love.

I’m a pack rat. I keep everything, though at time (when I’m moving, particularly) I get ruthless and throw everything out.

I am also disorganized. Most people looking at my desk or closet would wonder how I could find anything.

I also have good spatial skills and spatial memory.

Somehow these all work well together. My last trip to South Africa was a bit over two years ago. This morning I reached onto my desk and found 2 R20 notes and one R10 note without searching around at all. They were just in a middle of a pile. I also found about R10 in coins in my everyday shoulder bag which I was repacking it as my carry on.

I’m totally going to be able to buy myself a coke at the airport.

I’m leaving for South Africa (and possibly Swaziland) on Wednesday for a few weeks. I then get back and go to Mexico for five days. I’ll be back in the States ‘full time’ the third week in February. I won’t be blogging much during that period, though I’ll try to write some periodic updates (and also update my lifestats).

It’s a duel-activity trip. Road trip with friends (Jon, Helene and Dug) and family stuff in Cape Town. I’m flying into Jo’burg and spending a couple days there before the rest arrive. From there we go to Blyde River Canyon (including God’s Window). We may stop in the Kruger Park before driving through Swaziland to Ingwavuma. From there we drive to Durban for a couple days before flying to Cape Town. I’ll be in Cape town a little bit less than a week this time. (I was in Cape Town two weeks last time.)

After being home for less than a day, I’ll be heading to Playa del Carmen for a long weekend.

If you need to contact me, email will probably be best, just the same email address as always. If it’s urgent, my parents will have my full itinerary.

For my upcoming South Africa trip:

• 3 X 2GB SD cards (in addition to the 2 I already have)
• 6 X Velvia 100 color slide film, 6 X Tri-X 400 black and white negative film

Just because:

• One Kiss Can Lead To Another: Girl Group Sounds Lost & Found
• one CD not to be named due to its embarassing nature (I’ll chalk it up to comfort music) [update: oh fine, it might be this]

[another update:] I also bought a few tickets to this year’s Noise Pop:

• Feb 28: Sebadoh (orignal line up) at the Great American Music Hall
• March 2: Ted Leo and the Pharmacists at the GAMH

I took a number of photos in Pittsburgh (including this one) and put them online.

I’m getting ready to leave the Phoenix airport and, appropriately, I’m listening to “Goodbye Sky Harbor“.

why don’t they just make everyone get naked to go through security at the airports. I’m already taking off my belt and shoes here!

I wanted to make a list of my overseas/ abroad trips. We always traveled a lot because my parents are from South Africa and Germany and we have relatives in five or six countries (more now) so we were always visiting and whatnot. With my dad’s help, here it is:

• 1982 March-April: South Africa, Holland and Germany, Düsseldorf for my Opa’s 70th
• 1984-85 Dec/Jan: England, Gloucestershire, South Africa (the never-ending Christmas presents in 3 countries)
• 1985 July: South Africa, surprise trip for my Grandpa’s 75 birthday (the last time I saw him)
• 1987 April: Germany, my Opa’s 75th; Holland, Düsseldorf, Köln, Nürnberg, Regensburg (Bischoffshof), München (except Frauenkirche inside*)
• 1988 August: Germany, my Oma and Opa’s 50th wedding anniversary, Black Forest, Düsseldorf, London
• 1991 March-April: South Africa, Johannesburg, Kruger Park
• 1992 April: Germany, Aachen, Holland, Belgium, Düsseldorf for my Opa’s 80th
• 1993-94 Dec-Jan: South Africa, Hermanus, Pilanesburg
• 1994 July-August: England and Netherlands with Alex, first trip without my parents
• 1995 July & August: Germany, Solingen, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Austria briefly
• 1995 October: Germany, my Oma’s 80th in Berlin
• 1997 March: Hong Kong and China with my Mom
• 1998-99 Dec-Jan: South Africa, Vic Falls (Zimbabwe, Zambia), Kruger, Cape Town
• 2000 May: Italy, Alex’s graduation
• 2001 January: England, with Andy Chadwick
• 2001 March: South Africa, my Granny’s 90th
• 2002 Summer: living in Germany, Stuttgart, Behr Group, side trips to France and Switzerland (and America for the weekend)
• 2003 May: Greece, my graduation
• 2004 Sept-Oct: South Africa and Tanzania, my dad’s 60th
• 2005 February: Mexico, Cabo San Lucas
• 2005 April: England, London for my cousin’s wedding
• 2006 February: Mexico, Playa del Carmen
• 2007 Jan-Feb: South Africa, Swaziland, my mom’s “40th”
• 2007 Aug-Dec: living in Taipei, Taiwan
• 2007 September: Indonesia; Thailand
• 2007 October: Hong Kong, China, Macau; Kaohsiung (TW)
• 2007 November: Japan (Kyoto, Tokyo)
• 2007 December: Taroko, Kinmen (TW)
• 2008 February: Zihuatanejo, Mexcio
• 2009 August-December: South Africa (Cape Town, Ingwavuma)
• 2010 Jan-?: South Africa, Lesotho, road trip

The counts are, I think.
Germany: 7
South Africa: 7 (8th in January) 8 11
England: 5
Netherlands: 4
Mexico: 3
Hong Kong, China: 2
1 each: Hong Kong, China, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Italy, Greece, France, Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, Tanzania, Indonesia, Thailand, Macau, Lesotho

Averages (per year of my life):
Countries: 1.38
New countries: 0.62 (or one every 1.6 years)
South Africa: 0.27 (or once every 3.7 years) (this will lower to once every 3.3 years in January)
Germany: 0.27 (or once every 3.7 years)
England: 0.19 (or once every 5.2 years)

*The Frauenkirche Incident as I call it. We’d toured Germany and went to famous churches in every town. By Munich, I’d had enough so I said “I’ve had enough! No more churches!” and sat down outside the Frauenkirche. Much to my surprise my parents said “Fine.” and they cycled in with my brother. I still have not been inside the Frauenkirche. It is on my to-do list.

Note: updated 13 Oct 2007.

Note: Updated 22 Jan 2008

Note: updated 1 Jul 2009.

Note: updated 26 Jan 2010

Last weekend whilst in Seattle, I went to Bumbershoot (Day 2) with Paul.

Here’s who we saw:

Spoon Spoon’s one of those stalward indie bands that’s been around for a chunk of years and they have their fan base, but they’ll probably not break into the mainstream. I was curious to see them live. They put on a pleasant set but it wasn’t incredible. Good enough.

Jeremy Enigk Jeremy Enigk (ee-nik) was the front man of the proto-emo-pop band Sunny Day Real Estate. Here he was doing a set under his own name and I was a bit curious to see what his current music sounds like. He put on a nice set of songs mostly on acoustic guitar, some accompanied by a band. His vocals have this sort of strange high-pitched strain to them. It was a nice set.

[Paul lent me his digicam for the day.]

Mates of State The Mates of State are so great live. This is at least my 8th time I’ve seen them and they always put on a very entertaining show live. Paul (unlike all the rest of the shows) did not seem to be completely bored. I can honestly recommend their live show without quals. Even if they’re not amazing, they’re still really good. They did a fun medly of “Like U Crazy” with Gnarles Barkley’s “Crazy.” They did a mix of new songs and older songs—in fact I was pretty pleased with the number of their “classics” they did.

Jose Gonzalez The hands-down worst scheduling of the day was having the Mates of State overlap with Jose Gonzalez. I thought I’d still be able to make some of his set after the Mates of State, but a 32 minute set (likely because he needed to go play with Zero 7 as well) meant I only saw one song by him. I’ll have to go see him at Enchanted Broccoli Forest.

Kanye West (with Lupe ) Kanye was day 2’s headliner. I’ve liked his music recently and his two albums are the two hip hop albums I own. He had a full string section and a harpist on stage with him. He put on a pretty good set—well he did the songs I like and then there was the normal hip hop fair of misogyny and marijuana—but the sound was pretty bad (vocals too low, percussion too high). The chunks of the set I liked, I liked and the parts I didn’t, I was sort of bored.

[space needle]

I was in Sealth (or Seattle, as you may call it) for the labor day weekend. It was a good time. I saw some of them old tEppers (including ppham) and saw some of the sites and some music.

Paul made us take this picture:

Recap:

• Tour of UW.
• Good dinner in Ballard
• Boeing wide-body plant tour: this turned out to be really cool. The building is the largest, by volume, in the world. It’s pretty incredible. I bought a model 747-400, the sexiest plane ever made.
• Drinks (and more drinks) with Squid
• Easy Street Records. The haul included: the new Jason Molina, the new Eric Bachmann, the new Mono, Elliott Smith’s Roman Candles, the KEXP live comp, Unwed Sailor’s Circles, an oldies comp, a soul comp and a 2-CD doo wop comp. I liked Easy Street a lot: cheap, great selection and a helpful staff.
• Bumbershoot (Day 2) [separate post later]
• Seattle Underground Tour: entertaining and informative. If you have any tolerance for puns, I think you’d enjoy it. I’d recommend it.

(I also ate a mufaletta.)

That was the weekend in short. The biggest lose of the weekend was that the Boeing Surplus Store wasn’t open on Monday. I was really hoping to go; it looks like a mech e geek’s dream.

As has been mentioned, I saw Jens Lekman in a pizza parlor in Brooklyn before he played at Sound Fix. And there’s photographic evidence.

I also scanned some more pictures tonight of NYC (color, b&w) and Pgh.

I was entertained in NYC.

Rye Playland. I went to one of two parks listed in the National Registry of Historic Places on Tuesday. It’s a great old park. It has a few newer rides including one of those vomit-inducing spin-you-around-while-already-spinning you-around-in-a-different-axis rides (I believe my quote to my ride companion liz was “it’ll be a bonding moment when we puke on each other”—yeah, I’m gross), but most of the rides are classic older ones, including the Whip, the Swing, the (Mind) Scrambler, the Derby Racer (wow! 25mph on a carousel-like ride) and a great old carousel. It’s pretty similar to Kennywood in a lot of ways, but smaller. It’s an extremely photogenic park, with a main promenade and a common color scheme throughout. I hope some of my photos from the park turn out. I recommend this park if you’re into classic amusement parks.

Conan O’Brien taping. Despite waiting in lines for approximately the same amount of time that the show filmed, I enjoyed this quite a bit. I laughed a bunch (a chunk of which was during the audience warm up by Brian McCann). The theater is a lot smaller than I thought it’d be. As has been observed by others, seeing a taping does ruin a little bit of magic, though for years I’ve realized that the interview portion of the show had prompted questions and Conan doesn’t do a great job of hiding it. It was still funny and fun to watch.

Jens Lekman at Soundfix Records. We headed off to hipster-central, Williamsburg, Brooklyn to see Jens Lekman play an in-store at Soundfix Records. We had some pizza at a place down the street from Soundfix which was mostly not noteworthy except for Jens Lekman sitting in the catty-corner booth. I wished him a good show as he was leaving. The show space was in a separate room from the actual store part of Soundfix and when we got there it was packed and really hot. This was during the heat wave so the outside temperature was probably still in the 90s and the temperature in the room was probably between 115 and 125. It was like a (swedish) sauna. I wasn’t surprised that it was packed—it was a hipster band in a hipster locale; only later I realized that the last NYC Sleater Kinney show (and the fourth-to-last S-K show ever) was the same night; that’s why brooklynvegan, hipster extraordinaire didn’t fill us in with pictures from Jens, I guess. After we realized that one could stand outside, in the relatively cool air, and still hear the show fine, it was a pretty enjoyable, but rather short, show. I like Jens a lot. Afterwards I bought a couple CDs at Sounfix (the Wrens, Kelley Stoltz, Masters of the Autoharp) and we headed back.

I ate some food in NYC.

Grimaldi’s Pizza on Old Fulton* in Brooklyn. This is some seriously good pizza. Not-too-greasy and thin crusted, it tastes like it was made with care. Recommended.

Hallo Berlin on 10 Ave. Great German restaurant. Good food (brats, other sausage, potato pancakes) and good German beers (Kostritzer!). The only damper was they were out of Spätzle (which, I’d like to remind everyone, is from Schwaben). Highly recommended.

Katz’s deli on Houston**. The giant pastrami sandwhich is giant and delicious (if a bit overpriced). It’s the best pastrami sandwhich I’ve had. So succulent and juicy.

Nathan’s and funnel cake at Rye Playland. Nathans? I’m unimpressed. Funnel cake, on the other hand, is just about the best food ever invented. My hat off to the Pennsylvania Germans.

*Funny story: I went to Grimaldi’s on Old Fulton and then walked back to the subway station with Paul, my coworker. Right outside the subway station, a girl approaches us and asks me if I know where Old Fulton Rd. is. Well, there are about 1 million streets in NYC and I get asked about the only one I know! I felt pretty great! I told her “down here and then take a left at the bottom.”

**It was Sam Hyuston, wasn’t it? Then why is it Howston St.? New Yorkers, you need to get this straight.

Monday:

1. Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island
2. walking the Brooklyn Bridge (west to east)
3. Grimaldi’s Pizza and Brooklyn Ice Cream Factory with Paul Koh of earbud clip fame
4. wandering around [and purchasing foam headwear in] Chinatown and Soho
5. aforementioned PowerDinner(TM) at Hallo Berlin with mim, liz, jdawg, perlick and qwdgbo

Tuesday:

1. Empire State Building
2. pastrami and dr. brown’s at katz’s deli
3. rye playland! with liz and later jonwerberg and helene [who, I'd like to make clear, despite earlier implications is no way a freak and whose school is only sort of a freak fest]

Wednesday [are you ready for it?]:

1. B&H
2. the Met, the Guggenheim, the Cooper-Hewitt, and the Moma
3. watched a taping of Conan with jweberg and liz
4. pizza in Williamsburg [/Greenpoint?], Brooklyn with Jens Lekman in the catty-corner booth with the above plus mim
5. Jens show at Soundfix Records with the above
6. drinks at d.b.a. with the above
7. a savanna dry cider with jdawg back in the bronx

Man, who invented open cell polyurethane foam? All the best souvenirs are made of it.

For instance: I got a foam Statue of Liberty crown after I went there on Monday:

And I got a sweet foam finger at the Pirates game the other day:

These are all the souvenirs I got for a three city east coast tour:

I apparently flew across the country to sit in the same heat wave that I hated in California a week and a half ago.

This city that I’m in, it is crazy. It is tall unlike any other city I’ve spent reasonable amounts of time in. Even London, another massive city, is unlike this in shear tallness.

But there are some cool parts. I’m trying not to judge this based on previous experiences and this one day, but I feel sort of like it’s a city that has cool stuff that I’ll never love.

Maybe. It’s hard to tell.

I had a pretty fantastic dinner at Hallo Berlin with jwerberg, perlick, liz, mim, and qwdigbo. It was a great time and the restaurant was a good choice (thanks to jdawg on that one).

I don’t have a lot of time now and I don’t know if I’ll post a full write-up later. I have a hectic week coming up.

AND! I don’t know if I’ll write a full blog entry about the Chadwick-Amrhein wedding, but it was, well, incredible. If my wedding is half as much fun, I’ll be a big winner.

I think the Coudal Partners’ Field Tested Books Series is pretty interesting so I thought I’d try one of my own.

Roald Dahl’s Omnibus field tested by yours truly at Schloss Emlau, outside of Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Bavaria, Germany. Early August 1995.

I was in Germany with my second cousins and their parents (my dad’s cousin, her husband and children), the Fuesers. I’d just finished 8th grade and was going to be starting high school in about a month. The Fuesers lived in Solingen near Koeln and Duesseldorf and the like. It was my first trip far away from my immediate family (I’d gone to London and Amsterdam with my brother the previous year) and my German was spotty from three years of slow and substandard German education. Part of the reason to go, I think, was to improve my German. I was nervous and shy about my German skills. I’d think for ten minutes about how to ask someone to pass the chocolates only to have them offer before I asked. Eventually I gave up trying and that turned into a refusal as the trip went along. The Fuesers all spoke English fairly well—they spoke English better than I spoke German certaintly—but it was obvious my refusal to speak German was a strain on them.

After about two weeks in Solingen, we left for the south of Germany, for Schloss Emlau, more of a nice hotel than a castle (Schloss = castle, palace). It was perhaps sometime during the car trip, or perhaps only after I arrived at the Schloss Elmau that I started Omnibus. Most people know Roald Dahl for his children’s stories, but the Omnibus included many of his short stories, including those that he contributed to Playboy. I was no longer a kid and I was reading “adult” stories.

There was a dance in the grand ballroom at Schloss Elmau. I didn’t want to dance. (I wasn’t much of a rebelious teenager, but I say that this German trip landed smack dab in the middle of my three months of rebelion.) Instead, I would go up to the balcony overlooking the ballroom, dressed up in my flannel greys and shirt and tie (because, my aunt decided doggoneit, even if I wasn’t going to dance, I had to be dressed in case I changed my mind) and read the story about a family feeding their weak baby royal jelly only to see it start turning into a bee. Roald Dahl has a way with characters and stories. They’re not subtle or overly complex, but they’re good.

I’d also read at night. My bed was across the room from the son’s, Justus’, and I’d read with the light on while he was asleep. My innocent fourteen year mind absolutely exploded a story about two buddies trading wifes (without their knowledge) for a night. This story is quite possibly less graphic than what ones sees on prime time TV and definitely less graphic than what one sees in any R-rated movie, but my young mind was sent reeling and I had to contend with a funny feeling in my pajama pants.

I read it quite quickly. It was good and I was lonely. All my communications were strained so I withdrew.

On the last day at Schloss Elmau, I made a concession: I went to a class to learn the Schloss Elmau dance with the daughter, Olga, and we danced it at the dance that night in the ballroom. I’d learned all the steps well but it went into a freeform waltz portion at the end, during which I repeatedly stepped on Olga’s feet. We decided to sit down instead of dance that part.

I scanned some photos tonight and put them in my gallery. Particularly, I scanned some older photos from Boston, some baseball shots, my last trip to Mexico, and local ghost town.

I’ve also started to post some photos on godhatesmath again.

So, I’ve talked a few times about doing the Tahoe Century and now I’m done, so here it is.

On Saturday morning, my friend Dave (not Franusich) and piled our bikes and our gear into the back of my car (gotta love hatchbacks) and we headed up to the Lake Tahoe area, just outside of Stateline*. The other people in our group included my coworker Dan and a former coworker of his, Scott. Scott had gotten us this pretty nice house for the weekend about six miles from Stateline, just off of the route.

Saturday afternoon we registered for the race; ate some no-guilt burgers, steaks and pasta (when you’re riding 100 miles the next day, there’s no guilt in pounding some serious calories); and going to bed fairly early.

Sunday started early with the alarm going off at about 5:30am. The bed gravity seemed awfully strong. We all had some breakfast, got in our embarrassingly tight-fitting clothes, did some last minute tune-ups to our bikes and headed out at about 6:30am. Because we were staying along the bike route, about 6 miles from the beginning, we just started on the route and after we hit the finish line, we’d have 6 miles more to go at the end.

It was pretty cool to start with, probably around 40 degrees. Once we started going, I wasn’t too cold, though I actually kept my arm and knee warmers on until lunch. The first of the two major climbs is pretty early in the ride—even earlier for us because we were starting 6 miles in—and all of us just seemed to gun up the hill. I think it was mostly adrenaline.

At the top of the hill, there was the first of the rest stops. They were spaced out about every 13-23 miles along the route and had water, fruit and protein bars and the like (and bathrooms). They were definitely nice places to refuel, rehydrate and just take a couple minutes off of the bike.

After that there was a nice fast descent with some sweeping curves where I got to about 45mph before we hit the flats and some rolling hills. Up until about mile 40 I was keeping up a pretty fast pace. Once we got to Truckee, CA, I realized I should probably hold back a bit so as to not blow my legs out. Truckee isn’t on the loop around Lake Tahoe, but they add a loop out and back from Truckee in order to make it 100 miles in total. Coming back from Truckee there was a pretty good head-wind and a slight ascent that required some work (though drafting off of the stronger riders in our group certainly helped). After that was just a few miles and a couple minor hills to the lunch stop.

It was around this point why I realized they call this “America’s Most Beautiful Ride.” Lake Tahoe is really gorgeous and I hadn’t been up there before.

After lunch we had about 20 miles to the next rest stop at Spooner Junction, the second half of which was up the longest, and biggest of the climbs of the day. It’s actually a pretty gentle grade for most of it and probably wouldn’t have been a big deal at all, but after 75 miles, it was something. I just put the bike in the lowest gear and kept my legs moving fast and got up to the top.

After that it was just 12 miles to the finish. The first part was a descent that should have been a lot of fun, but there was a strong head/ cross-wind (but it was still pretty good) and then some rolling hills to the end. We hit the finish and then the 6 bonus miles (from the finish back our place) were rough, mostly because of a head-wind.

Overall, I think I prepared pretty well and besides the climbs, I didn’t hurt too much; I definitely hurt more during some of my rides to get prepared for the century than during the century. Today my muscles were tired but they didn’t hurt. Timing-wise, I think the overall time was about 8.5 hours with 6-6.25 hours of actual ride time.

*My friend Andy wrote this great song with the first line “crossing the state line/ the bridge across the bay.” Because of the start line of the race being in Stateline, NV, I had this song in my head for most of the race. Unfortunately, I only remembered little bits of the lyrics. After the race the group talked about it and it seems that all of us had songs that were in our heads for large portions of the race.

I found this a bit interesting.

I’m going to Philly then NYC and then Pittsburgh late July, early August. I booked a ticket into PHL and a ticket out of PIT (separately, on two different airlines).

Originally I was going to rent a car on Sunday night or Monday morning, drive to NYC (google says 2hr 19 min) and then drive to Pittsburgh on Thursday (google says 7hr 47 min). Then I investigated options:

1. Renting a car for the four days: $264, travel time close to 10 hours.
2. Train to NYC: $42, travel time 1.5 hours; rent a car on Thursday to drive to Pittsburgh: $105, travel time 7.75 hr.
3. Train to NYC: $42, travel time 1.5 hours; fly to Pittsburgh: $84, travel and wait time at the airport: 3.5 hours-ish.

Option 3 is half as long and $138 less than option 1. Neat!

I’ve been pretty slow on the posts recently, large because I’ve been busy doing stuff that is sort of not-interesting-in-the-blog-way.

So I decided I’d turn all this stuff into a post.

One time things and whatnot:

• Nedelle’s pretty rad. She’s going to be playing on my radio show this Wednesday at about 10:15pm PDT. I’m pretty excited. I’ll see if I can get a copy of the show up for you east coast people to listen to.
• I’m getting ready for the Tahoe Century ride in about a month. I’ve been trying to ride a lot in preparation. I rode today and yesterday, but I’ve also been having problems with getting an inordinate number of flats, so I need to resolve that. But my goal over the next three weeks is 3 rides/ week: 2 x 30 miles and 1 x 15 miles, including at least one trip up Old La Honda or King’s Mountain per week. At this point, I alternatingly feel I’m screwed and that I’m doing fine.
• I’m going to be in Philadelphia/ DC, NYC and Pittsburgh for about 10 days total in late July for a couple weddings. It’s pretty exciting. I’m thinking about Rye Playland and Kennywood among so many other things. I might also try to catch a taping of Conan, try to catch a Buc’s game and, of course, see some fantastic friends and take lots of pictures with too many cameras.
• I just now found a weird and kind of interesting acoustic cover of Sigur Ros. I never considered that someone could cover Sigur Ros. They’re no Sigur Ros, but it’s cool.
• I’m going to South Africa again next February. February 2007, that is for my mom’s birthday. I’m going to spend a week in Cape Town, but I’m also going to try to spend 1-2 weeks on the road driving around South Africa. I’m looking forward to going back to South Africa.
• It looks like my laptop (Proud Owner of Brand New Canada) is near its end. Unless something changes about the situation, I’ll probably be getting a new one in the next few weeks/ couple of months.

Everyday stuff:

• I’m still taking spanish at the Palo Alto Adult School. It’s about 2 hours a week and the pace is slow, but I’m learning stuff so, yeah, it’s good.
• Lots of KZSU stuff. I’m doing my indie show. I’m not longer hosting the the Lunch Special but I’m still acting as the producer. Lots of interesting guests bringing their music. A schedule is on that page I linked up there. I’m also the Promotions Director, so I try to organize tickets for concerts for on-air giveaways. As the promotions guy, I’m also writing a custom PHP web app. This stuff is not obvious and not easy, at least not for me, the mech e. I’m getting the hang of it, but I’m also pretty much sick of writing this app.
• I’ve been challenged by lawn bowling and recently applied for membership at the place I’ve been bowling, the Palo Alto Lawn Bowling Club. The green is closed until the end of May, though, so no bowling for now.
• The BoSox are tied for lead in their division. The Pirates are a couple steps away from the bottom of the league. The Steelers got what look like a couple good WRs in the draft.

I lost my glasses to the Caribbean a couple weeks back and I’ve been looking for new ones. (Meantime I’m wearing some backups.) One thing I’ve noticed in looking is that so many glasses just suck. There are bland ones that are bland. There are also fancy-looking ones that are just dumb. Can’t anyone just make a simple, stylish frame?

So I’m looking around. Maybe something like these. Or something like what I have but modernized. Converse All Star, surprisingly, have some decent frames.

These people have a good selection. I’m probably going to end up buying in a store, but that’s a good place to look around.

Any suggestions?

I’m planning to go to south africa for probably about 3 weeks in just under a year (maybe Januardy 21-Feb 11, 2007 give or take a week or two). I’m psyched to drive around the country. I’ve been thinking about where I want to go, so I made a page about stuff I want to do.

If you have suggestions or thoughts, let me know. If you are thinking about joining me, that’d be cool (I’m looking at you jon!) Driving around a lot would be a lot better with someone else.

I just got back from my company’s trip to near Playa del Carmen, Mexico. I got to hang out with Mr. Jon “j-dawg” Werberg.

Recap:

• highlights: Chichen Itza, cenotes, a bar with swings instead of stools, hanging out with coworkers, and hanging out with Jon
• donations: giant backgammon board, to jon; glasses, to the Caribbean, initiating the longest (non-sleeping) period without vision correction since probabaly 1993. This reminded me of a thing Caglar used to say while walking around without his glasses on: why see reality clearly when reality is blurred? I thought it was crap at the time. Maybe it’s not. It was an interesting twelve hours, through airports and customs and whatnot. Once I reached our office, I had to use my perscription swim goggles to drive home, leading to a situation frighteningly similar to Hugh Grant in Notting Hill:
  
• new items: steelers super bowl champions glass mug, old steelers tape with fight song, steelers key blank, “4 D” triceritops puzzle, all from jon
• my spanish: it still sucks, but I understand more
• injuries: cut on my knee, from a questionably useful wind surfing training tool; nicks on my knuckles, from sharp rocks in a cenote
• read: How We are Hungry by Dave Eggers. A pretty fantastic book of short stories, many of them about, seemingly appropriately, traveling to 3rd world countries.
• first world countries: can I learn anything from being a tourist in first world countries?
• weight: no better way to gain five pounds than a few days in an all-inclusive resort

I’m not going to post for a couple days because I’ll be in Mexico, leaving tonight. Be back on Monday.

Enjoy your Washington’s Birthday weekend.

Perhaps someday you will be flying a crap airline and they will strand you in Las Vegas when you’re trying to get home for Christmas. Perhaps they will put you up in a hotel (or perhaps they won’t). Perhaps it will already be one in the morning and you don’t want to wait an hour to get your checked luggage. Perhaps that will leave you with only the clothes you have on. Perhaps you will wish to wash your socks and underwear so you don’t have to wear them for many hours on end.

If so, you are in luck. I will tell you what to do.

1. Take off your socks and underwear.
2. Wash them in the sink. I use fairly warm water and shampoo (from the hotel bathroom). You can also use dish detergent, liquid soap or bar soap. If you’re washing many things, I’d recommend filling the sink with warm soapy water, washing all of the items, draining the sink and then rinsing all of them. On the other hand, if you’re just washing socks and underwear, you can just rub the shampoo into the articles directly. Either way, when you’re washing, rub material against itself. This acts much like a washing machine when it aggitates.
3. Rinse the articles.
4. Ring the articles out over the sink.
5. Use a towel to aid in drying. Take out a (preferably extra) towel and put it on a flat surface. Put your articles on one half. Fold the other half of the towel over it. Roll up the towel with your articles inside. Twist the two ends so your ring the water out of your articles and into the towel.
6. Hang your socks and underwear to dry overnight. Door knobs and towel racks work well.
7. In the morning, they should be dry. When clothing, especially cotton clothing, hangs out to dry, it becomes stiff and “crunchy.” Shaking the article vigorously usually makes it feel soft again.
8. If your clothing is not dry in the morning or if you need it to be dry sooner, just use a hair dryer or hand dryer, if one is available. If there’s radiator or heating vent, those also help dry things out faster.

I was trying to find examples of South Africans talking to play for a coworker and I discovered the International Dialects of English Archive, which has an Accents of South Africa page.

This “heavy accent” sounds like a lot of Afrikaaner women I’ve met or talked to, including the proprieter of The African Hut.

This one is probably my favorite. It’s by an older man who pops his r’s, which I like a lot. I think my granny did that. (The woman in this one practically rolls her r’s. That’s so fun!)

My parents have a fairly weak accent, closest to this one probably, among all of the ones listed.

There are, of course, many recordings from other parts of the world, including many in America. Disappointingly, there aren’t any good recordings of a solid Pittsburgh accent!

You can hear Germans and Irish and English and many other accents (in English) if you click around. It’s pretty interesting stuff.

Of all the phrases that I heard over the weekend, one that I heard a couple times and stuck with me: “You have nice friends.”

There are many adjectives to describe this group of people, but that one is a good one.

I’m just outside of DC in Silver Spring, MD. My best friend Andy and I both have birthdays right around this Labor Day weekend and it’s a bigish birthday so I decided to make a big deal of it and fly here and invite people. Andy, Dave, Randy, Ian “the Mayour” Collier and respective significant others, along with my parents and brother came out for this Birthday Extravaganza.

I arrived Friday morning and I’m flying back tomorrow evening.

We did lots of fun stuff and some great hanging out.

Highlights include:

• the big birthday dinner on Saturday night with some sort of humorous but also tragic confusion between wasabi and avacado
• DC-9, beers with the friends
• the Washington Nationals game with special appearance of Dale
• cuban dinner with the fam and Ian and Ai-ris.
• delicious and relaxing BBQ at the parl
• Broken Flowers

ok. that’s all for now. have a nice day everybody.

Oh, and Katie, you didn’t scare me. I just don’t “talk” to “girls” “good.”

It was nice to meet all the new people I met this weekend!

I’m sitting in the W20 (the student center) at MIT, burning about an hour before I leave for the airport. I got in Saturday morning early and I’ve been going just about non-stop since then. I hope I sleep some on the airplane because I need to get some rest before I go back to work tomorrow morning. My goodness.

The itinerary, in somewhat chronilogical order:

• Brookline Lunch with Jesse. Cheap good diner food.
• hangin out at Jesse’s place. Watched The Breakfast Club
• Newbury Comics. Bought something for Logan Sandmeyer of duckmeup.com
• Pour House for half priced hamburger night with Elmo, Snellla, Sam, Jesse and Mim. I got the double Wisconsin, of course.
• Beers on the roof of tEp
• My Summer of Love at Kendall Square Cinema with mim and Jesse
• lunch at Thorton’s Fenway Grill with Abe and Amrys, followed by a game at Fenway with the same plus Colin.
• FroYo at Ankara with Abe and Colin
• Bukowski’s in Inman with Wally, Mim, Indy, Farhad, Wumph, Mim and Jesse.
• Get the new Night Rally and Clickers split 12″ from Farhad at April Fog.
• Breznev’s with Wally, Agi, Morton, Sarah, Blake, Paladin, Kraken, Mim, Andyl, Jesse, and Qwgbo. 2 Peking Ducks is a whole lot of fat!
• Newbury Comics (this time picking up the new Stars CD, a 2 CD Neil Diamond Set, and the old Time Are a Changin’ CD by Dylan) and a Frappe at JP Licks with mim.
• the 4th of July Part at tEp. The fireworks, despite other reports, were fantastic and very well done. The music selection in parts could be overlooked.
• Lunch with Amrys, stop by to see Georgeji (Prof. Ruckert), errands at my Boston bank, buying an MIT ringer T at the Coop, drink a dr. pepper while blogging this.
• get a sandwhich for the plane, hop on the T

I finally got back and scanned some of my photos from my company’s trip to Cabo San Lucas in February. Here’s where you can find them.

I also scanned in some pictures of Pittsburgh mostly of friends, but some are of Pittsburgh and the AFC championship game.

Andy was tracing through our roadtrip route in Google Maps (which, incidentally, has a neat satellite photo option in the upper right corner if you haven’t noticed) so I decided to put my two road trip travel logs up on the web again.

Road Trip USA was July 13 – July 20, 2003. Andy Chadwick, Dave Franusich, Randy Oswald and myself covered 5600 miles from Pittsburgh to Santa Monica and back in a nutso crazy tour of our fine country. (If you haven’t read the Grand Canyon entry on this one yet, do so. It’s in the Wednesday entry.)

RoadTrip2 was June 13 – June 21, 2004, with andyl covering 4500 miles from Boston to Menlo Park through the American South.

I’m really glad I did these. I like reading through them again.

I’m back from London. Did you miss me?

The reason for visit was my cousin’s wedding, but I got to hang out a couple days in the city as well.

London sites:

• Tate Modern Second time I’ve been there. Still a great collection of modern art. There’s quite a lot I like and quite a lot I don’t and quite a lot that I just don’t get.
• British Museum Greek columns? blah. Roman statues, blah. Easter Island statue, pretty cool. History of clocks with running clocks througout? sweet.
• Design Museum I liked this place a lot. I didn’t quite know what to expect because design covers everything from graphic design to product design to industrial design. It ended up being a lot of graphic design and some of the other stuff. An entire exhibit on various ways people get across lots of information in a compact and understandable way.
• London Eye An engineering marvel and a pretty interesting view of London. Go up on a clear day and you’ll see for miles.
• Natural History Museum—Wildlife Photographer of the Year Exhibit Some really spectacular photographs here. I bought the book with all the photos in it, so I can show you some time. The photos also had all the technical info and descriptions by the photographers as well. The descriptions ranged from “this was my fourth day waiting for this photograph” to “I just turned and there it was.”

Shows:

• National Anthems Three American actors (Kevin Spacey, Steven Webber (I remember him from the show “Wings”) and Mary Stuart Masterson) in an American play about a tremendously American topic on the London stage. I’m not surprised that it wasn’t a full house there. It’s a story about a recently fired firefighter (Spacey) meeting and spending the evening with the new neighbors on the block (Webber and Masterson), who are materialistic keeping-up-with-the-Jones’ sort of people. It all takes place in a suburb of Detroit but there are also many references to Pittsburgh, where Spacey’s character grew up, including Iron City and “yunz.” The acting was amazing. Just spectacular. There was just so much to it and it built up while drawing one in and not overdoing it or breaking the spell (Naomi Watts should take lessons from these people). This was acting as it is supposed to be done. The play itself is quite good and other productions of it might be good.
• the Producers Funny, clever, well-acted (by Lee Evens as Bloom and Brad Oscar as Max, in this version, and supporting roles, especially the swedish bombshell part). Classic Mel Brookes in many ways, reusing some of the same jokes from his movies and things. Deserves the praise and worth seeing.

Movies seen en-route:

• Alfie meh.
• that new Bridget Jones one meh.
• Unforgiven a 1992 effort from, in this case, director, producer, star Clint Eastwood about an old west outlaw that comes back for one last job. I’m not a fan of westerns or the idea of westerns, really… This one has some complex characters and Clint’s great directing and acting. Morgan Freeman is superb as usual. Not a top 10 movie of all time, but certainly quite good.
• Spanglish another Adam Sandler movie that’s not really an Adam Sandler movie (others being the Wedding Singer and Punch Drunk Love). I thought this movie was entertaining and made some interesting points about other cultures in America, especially Latin cultures in America, but in the end, I was put off by the final moral and the heavy-handedness of how it was presented. Definitely not a bad movie to see on a plane though.

I’m in the Charlotte airport on the way to london. I have a few hours here. I’m going to a cousin’s wedding. I won’t be bloggong a lot. (hopefully).

I saw low and pedro the lion last night at great american music hall. good show. low was interesting. lots more distortion and stuff, keeping with their new album.

I got 2 hours of sleep last night. I didn’t remeber to bring the british money my dad gave me and I don’t have cuff links for my french cuff tux shirt.

Yesterday, while out running errands, Andyl and I were at BevMo just across from El Mercadito Latino in Redwood City. I decided to go in to see if they stock Coke in glass bottles made with sugar (instead of corn syrup). They do. I bought 6 @$1.19. I now have 3 left.

It’s so good. I like the glass bottle. I like the way it feels in my hand— the cold glass with condensation. I like the way it feels on my lips. I like the way it tastes; it’s crisper and less syrupy. I like how it reminds me of cokes I had in bottles in South Africa (and, to a lesser extent, Germany and Tanzania among other places).

An article about Mexican Coke vs. American Coke.

Other things that I like in glass bottles or with sugar instead of corn syrup:

• Straus Family Creamery Milk (for my cereal at work)
• heinz organic ketchup (from Pittsburgh, no less!)
• Dublin Dr. Pepper. The holy grail of sugar sodas. I bought a bunch at the Dr. Pepper Museum in Waco, Texas on my last road trip across the country.

yes, to answer your questions, I am apparently a total hippie.

I spent the weekend in Death Valley with Dylan, Andyl, and Dale. We’d heard that there was the best wildflower bloom in many years, some saying 50. When Andy originally suggested Death Valley, I thought it was about four hours away. Turns out that it’s about ten, maybe nine if you don’t stop for any breaks. California is quite large and there aren’t any direct routes there.

How do you fit twenty hours of driving and wildflower viewing and sleeping in a weekend? Well the last thing gets knocked a bit. We ended up leaving at 4:45am on Saturday; I’d gone to see Paddy Keenan on Friday night (to be blogged about later) and had ended up going to bed at about 1:30 and waking up at about 3:45 in the am.

We got to the park after stopping for breakfast and at the jerky guy previously mentioned on this here website at about 2pm or there abouts. We stopped in Stovepipe Wells, trying to figure out if we should camp there or go on–we didn’t get an answer from the rangers whether Sunset was already full so we decided to go on. We ended up finding a spot in the Sunset overflow tent campsite, which is basically a gravel parking lot. A flat parking lot with a nice view, but if you’re going, bring a mattress pad. Andy and Dale regretted they didn’t.

After registering for and claiming our tent site and setting up the tent, we headed off to some dunes that we’d driven by on the way from Stovepipe Wells to Sunset. Dylan has a bunch of photos online of our adventures climbing the dunes. We ended up making it to the top of a maybe 100 foot dune. It was quite a nice view over many dunes and into the mountains. We saw a muted sunset from up there and then made our way back to the car.

My big plan as soon as I saw the hills behind the Sunset campground was to get some PBR and go up into the hills a bit after dinner. Turns out the general store at Stovepipe Wells didn’t have any PBR, so we got giant cans of Foster’s.

Who could predict what would happen when we got into the hills and started in on the beers? I can. I will tell you what happened.

We invented a new sport. Competative rock stacking. The rules will be goverened by the IFRS (International Federation of Rock Stacking). The short of it: you must stack reasonably sized rocks as many high (serially, no parallel stacking) as you can. Dale won a tight contested match against Dylan 12 to 11 with a questionable rock 1.

We ended up going to sleep pretty early and waking up around 6:30. After breaking camp, we did a quick hike at Natural Bridge and a stop at Badwater Basin (lowest point in the US!) we hit the motherload. There are a couple areas between Badwater Basin and Salsbury Pass that are just spectacular, especially near the mill ruins and one right near Salsbury Pass. Fields entirely yellow, like velvet from afar.

I’ll develop my films in the next couple weeks and get them online.

just before the 190 on 395, there is a man named gus who advertises really good beef jerky for 75 miles before.

his claims stand up.

the apparently best wild flower bloom in 50 years in death valley is on now and I’m about 50 miles from it. I’ll be back in the bay area sunday night

Non-German speaker Paul Pham, currently in Austria, in a recent email:

p.s. the guys around my lab speak English so I won’t feel left out. This includes cursing. Whenever anyone yells “Schei�!” they have to remember to yell “Shit!” afterwards for my benefit. It is pretty awesome.

I just spent the past four days in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico (at the end of the Baja California) with my company. My guest was Dave Franusich.

It was sort of like a Corona commercial. Blue skies, palm trees, Corona (or some Mexican beer), sand, warm weather. It was all inclusive so I ate and drank a bunch. I chatted to coworkers a bunch. I relaxed a whole lot. Definitely needed.

The resort and parts of the town of Cabo are sickeningly American. This definitely wasn’t a Mexican experience.

I got some good photos, I think. I’ll try to get some scanned when I get them developed.

I saw a Afri Cola bottle while shopping at Bev Mo the other day:

[picture taken with the crappy camera on my sidekick]

and it reminded me of my time in Stuttgart. They had afri cola at the commisary at my company which was open daily from 8:30-10am and 10:30-11am. I’d quite often get a bottle for the afternoon.

I bought the bottle at Bev Mo and drank it. It’s actually not incredible soda, but I don’t care.

I was always struck by the incredible graphic design they had. The white palm tree and “afri cola” on black. So simple, but so catchy. I have a shirt that has that design on it. And that bottle!

I was also reminded about this sweet commercial they had of a bunch of people in a line in a train station or something dancing away the time. I was please to find that afri cola has a bunch of their commericials online, including the the one I remember. It’s still fun to watch.

For the non-german speakers Kein Vergnuegen ohne Gefahr (on the bottle) roughly means “no pleasure without danger” and und alles wird afri roughly means “and everything becomes afri.”

Jon Werberg put it nicely on Sunday. Some teams just stick with you. The BoSox, the Steelers. It’s the history, it’s what the team represents and it’s to a large extent, the fans. What the team means to the fans. It became national news this fall what the Red Sox means to Boston and the Red Sox Nation.

Pittsburgh is more insular though. The flux of people in Boston, adding to the Red Sox Nation, is not common place in Pittsburgh. But that doesn’t stop every home game to be sold out. That doesn’t stop the largest crowd to ever watch a Steelers home game from showing up in sub-10 degree weather to see their dream team fall.

I haven’t been to Green Bay or Chicago (and I was in Boston when the Patriots won their first Super Bowl), but it’s hard to imagine a city more devoted to its team. Or a city more crushed by their team’s loss. Pittsburgh doesn’t get a lot of good news. The city is bankrupt; the county will be too soon. People and jobs move away. My team—my boys as I call them sometimes—lost and I’m sad. But almost moreso I’m sad for my home town. I don’t think anyone that isn’t a Pittsburgher can understand how much joy this team gave them; the bouyancy that Pittsburghers had during the seasons; and the hopes that were rested on the team.

In the words of fans of the losers that always get so close “next year will be our year.” And I think it may be. Plaxico is leaving but it seems most of the rest of the team will stick around. Roethlisberger may come back from his only loss in the NFL and be better for it; he may have a sophomore slump. Time will tell.

Was I glad I went? definitely. I’d probably even do it again knowing everything I know now.

Mean time, I think it’s about time to put my name on the season ticket waiting list. In 10 or 15 years I may actually be back in Pittsburgh by the time I get them.

My life is a movie. A perfectly scripted movie. I have come to an obstacle and fallen, only to persevere and be rewarded in the end.

Pittsburgh-Las Vegas-San Francisco. Easy enough. I can do that. Easy. Nothing to it. The first flight was at 8:45am. I arrived at the airport at seven am. I waited outside in the cold, the twelve degree cold. You do not make up a temperature like twelve degrees; you make up a temperature like nine or sixteen. I saw the line inside. It was long, too long. The line outside was shorter, but still long. Maybe a third the inside. I�ll wait outside. It�ll take forty minutes. Maybe forty-five. An hour tops. You must check in half an hour ahead of time. Relieved! It was eight twelve when I handed my driver�s license to the skycap. SFO via Las Vegas, thanks. Woo. That was close. Twenty minutes and I�ll be through security. It�ll be tight, but I did it.

Expletives! Expletives under my breath! Expletives muttered aloud! They thought it was past eight fifteen! It�s not! Can you not see my watch! Do you see a five or a six or a seven in that time! No, you see a three at the end so it is clearly not quarter past! You are clearly mistaken. My computer has shut that flight down; I can�t do anything about it. First one locked out of the flight.

Seconds! Missed it by mere seconds. Perhaps many seconds, perhaps one hundred or two hundred, but not five hundred. Not one thousand.

Another line. My feet are warming up at least. My feet are freezing. Blocks of ice! Another forty-five minutes in line. I was on the Las Vegas flight, eventually to SFO. Oh, you won�t be able to get there till tomorrow. Tomorrow? I work tomorrow I�m being picked up today! I am being picked up at half past two today! Don�t you see?

I�ll see what I can do.

Minutes past. Where is she? I think she�s eating breakfast. Surely she cannot be working on my flights still. She cannot be still seeing what she can do. I look around for commiserating glances from people in line, people at neighboring check-in counters. I only get blank stares ahead. Everyone is tired, exhausted.

My supervisor wants to put you on the ten fifteen Charlotte and the evening flight to SFO. You�ll get there at eight fifty-one. Tonight. I can do tonight. Maybe Dave can still pick me up, maybe not, but I�ll get there tonight.

Standby.

Still on standby. Bischoff, there�s one seat on the flight if you want it, unless you want to give up your ticket for a voucher and another ticket. No no, I�ll go now. I�ll go now. Thanks.

I�m that guy. I�m the last guy on the plane. I�m the guy that everyone stares at. Where were you? they burn at me with their eyes. Sorry. I�m sorry. I wanted to be here earlier. They wouldn�t let me on. I was standing out there ready but they were not ready for me. I have a guilty look on my face, but I can�t help it; it�s not actually my fault.

But do you see? But do you see where I am now? (This is where the rewarding for perseverance comes in.) I have been rewarded. I am four hundred miles from San Francisco and seven miles off the ground and I have leg room. I can put my ankle of one leg on the knee of the other right in front of me. Do you want to see me do it? Did you see that?! It was great. I�m done doing it now though because I am typing and that is not comfortable for typing. I did it just to show you I could. I just ate my third snack�cashews, chocolate-covered wafers, pretzels�and I�m on my fourth drink�heiniken, coke, water, coke. Do you know what the people had for dinner in coach? Nothing. I had stuffed chicken with and excellent salad and an impressive, but not untoppable, pecan pie.

You cannot make up a story like this�you can actually and people did and then people stopped because they thought it was too far fetched, too clich�. This is it though. It happens. Persevere. Persevere and be rewarded.