A Cool Web of Language

2007-12-05T04:29:00.000-06:00

Holidays are tough:

I remember my mother telling me how she quit smoking. Basically she drew up a schedule and allowed herself cigarettes at certain times and no more. Then she could bargain with her body that she could have a cigarette in an hour, but not right then.

I'm sort of doing that with crying now. I can cry at certain times of the day. When I get home I can cry for 15 minutes and again for a few minutes before bed.

The rest of the time, I have to push away how terrified I am about going home for the first time since we buried my sister and having this visit be over Christmas. I can't think about two stockings instead of three on the mantel, I can't imagine what it will be like passing around the presents under the tree without her sitting there. Sometimes I think about my Christmas shopping and wonder for a minute what I will get Jenny. And then I remember that there are only four in my family now.

2007-11-23T04:55:00.000-06:00

Validation:

Whenever I am annoyed by my job, I throw on an episode of the Office and remind myself exactly how much worse it could be. That validates my decision not to quit. That and the shitloads of money involved in moving myself back.

2007-09-10T06:00:00.000-05:00

Alarum:

As I walked into the supermarket tonight, the alarms starting going off. After a couple of minutes where people continued shopping (the alarms had been going off earlier as well), everyone started going out. I wanted to just go home, but I had no food and I was pretty starving. So I hung out outside for about 10 minutes.

The sirens continued to go off, but eventually everyone started going back in, so I followed. Inside the noise was headache-inducing, definitely. I saw one woman walking along opening a pack of ibuprofen. I guess that's one way to sell some medications...

2007-09-01T06:00:00.000-05:00

Dinner and diving:

Not at the same time. That might be uncomfortable. I just got back from a potluck dinner to say goodbye to C-- who is heading back to the US and leaving the Navy. Good on her, and it seems like absolutely the right decision for her, though I will miss her very much. I made my trademark strawberry pie. While I didn't get to try any, I think the guy sitting there eating the strawberries off the crust out of the pan for the last slice probably means it was good. I also made a banana cream pie, which turned out about as expected. People thought it was pumpkin and then it was kind of a letdown though, and it was definitely not as big a winner as the strawberry pie. I enjoyed it, but bananas just are a bit too bland, I think.

I left early because I am going diving tomorrow. I have to be about 3 hours from Canberra by 0730. I'm planning on getting up about half past three and having it so I just have to brush my teeth and put contacts in, throw on clothes, and grab my bag (all the heavy stuff is in the car already). Hopefully the drive won't be too bad. These are my last dives before the reef (I leave three weeks from tomorrow!!)

2007-08-30T05:33:00.000-05:00

So it looks like R-- and B-- might both be coming out for the same conference and are looking to do some traveling while they are here. I sort of offered to go with both of them. It was accidental. They aren't really friends, though they have met each other. This is going to be interesting.

Also, I just heard that they are going to start issuing fines for swearing on the street in Canberra. I think I might be in trouble. I have toned down the drunken angry sailor swearing in the last few years, but it still isn't good.

2007-08-20T04:32:00.000-05:00

So:

It's starting to turn towards spring now here. It's not so cold in the mornings, and tonight I caught the last bus home and it wasn't totally dark while I was waiting. The dark gets to me in the winter much more than the cold. I don't think it used to be that way.

I remember those days in Chicago when it would be dark by about 4pm, but I also remember the big chunks of ice on the Lake shore, walking down after study break about 10:00 and seeing the way the light bounced off the ice. Winter never seemed that bad then, and I loved the night.

It's much darker here. The sky is black at night, and walking just a little way away can bring you a night sky filled with stars. But I kind of miss the orange sky in Chicago. Dark there was relative, not absolute.

It's been a rough couple of years. Sometimes I just want to forget everything, to start running and not stop until the past is hazy and gone and I don't have to talk to anyone who remembers the way I was. But I remember how happy I was, sitting on Dylan's car in the thick Atlanta night when the power went out, saying goodbye to the city that was home. The walk down 55th street leaning hard against the freezing wind to make it to the Point to feel the wind whipping around you, at least until the cops came and made you move along. The Christmas lights across Oxford Street in London, running on the beach at St. Simons as the sun went down, sitting on a balcony drinking sangria as the crickets chirped in June in Chicago, when I should have been studying, Fell's Point Halloween night, dressed as 1.5 blind mice, a summer night after the rain in Ireland. I wouldn't give up those memories.

Here's hoping I start feeling better with the longer days.

2007-08-11T08:29:00.000-05:00

There was an accident on Friday, at the roundabout near where I work. I went through it before the accident, so I only heard it described from a couple of coworkers. A 4 Wheel Drive flipped over and landed on its roof. Everyone was OK, the driver was standing out having a chat to some other guys shortly after the crash.

I can't hear something like that and not think about how unfair it is, that those accidents happen all the time and everyone is fine. And my sister was in one and died. Why does it have to be that way? Why can't Jenny still be here?

2007-08-03T05:24:00.000-05:00

I think what I miss most about college is the nights where you just hang out, drink wine or tea or fancy drinks, put on some music, and sit around and talk. Now everyone lives a lot further away than a block or two, so an evening is something a bit more involved. What I'm really in the mood for tonight is to have Will and Sudeep and Amanda and Maggie over and sit around and drink Tom Collinses or gin and tonics or margaritas and talk about whatever.

Instead I have to decide between going out hardcore or staying in alone. Tonight is an in alone night, since I'm beat and still not entirely healthy. But it would be great to have people over. Not like a party, with the really late night and obscene cleanup entailed in that description. Just sitting around and talking. If the Hiking Club ever were to get their row of cheap houses in Anacostia, I guess that would be what we could do.

In other news, I think I don't have malaria, which makes me happy. I had incredible chills on Tuesday night, which I know from Little House on the Prarie is totally a malaria symptom. I didn't feel feverish, though I didn't have a thermometer to check.

2007-07-21T05:48:00.000-05:00

I just read this article in the Washington Post. On first glance, I found it surprising that so many civilians don't know anyone in the military. I can think of E, the Air Force captain who likes to express herself with shoes. There's M, too, a Navy enlisted woman who has to make a tough decision about reenlisting next year. Or R, a young Air National Guardswoman who couldn't decide if she'd done the right thing by joining rather than going to college (she's been deployed to Iraq). Or K, the Marine who was sent overseas for months with while his wife and baby leave the place they've been living to go stay with family for a while. Or probably a dozen more who I've been friends with for a while, before they or I move on.

But despite a reasonably large amount of experience with the military, I was pretty surprised to learn that a pair of brothers I grew up with, in a nice middle class Atlanta neighborhood, are serving in Iraq. That isn't a choice that many people I grew up with made, but I have a ton of respect for them for making it.

I agree with the article, it's a bad thing that our leaders think of the soldiers, sailors, airmen, or marines as being part of the other. They really aren't. But it's a symptom of a society where for most people of my class and age, joining the military isn't something that even crosses their mind. It's so foreign to their experience.

2007-07-13T23:47:00.000-05:00

Well:

I thought I had a choice about this extension. Friday morning, though, I got an email with a subject line of "approval of extension." The email was a forwarded chain of emails to my boss in Washington, the guy who actually holds the billet I am on, and my American bosses out here to get approval for me to stay. All of the approvals came through before I even got copied on the email. Well, except for my Australian boss, who luckily is perfectly happy to have me stay longer.

I was a little annoyed that I didn't get a choice in the matter, but I know that our HR person (who started this whole chain of events) was just trying to be helpful and thought if I said I would talk about staying with my boss, I meant that I wanted to stay so long as my boss was OK with it.

I think I've been backed into a corner here. I don't really mind staying, I just wish it had been handled differently.

I suspect the main reason that the HR person wants me to stay till my replacement comes is so they can keep my apartment, which is fair enough. The rental market here sucks, and I do have a pretty great place.

2007-07-11T06:27:00.001-05:00

Cooking:

So I did make the tortilla chips and they turned out pretty well. It was kind of hard to always tell when they were done, so a few turned out chewy and gross, but most were really tasty. I made guac too, and I've been eating guac and chips for dinner for the last couple of nights. And last night it was just guac with a fork...I have bizarre eating habits.

Also, I've taken up swimming again, so that maybe I won't totally suck at water polo. It feels pretty good. I've even worked partially out why my stroke is so slow. I'm up to about 1200m of nice slow swimming. I miss my free pool in Maryland, though.

I've also been told that I can probably stay a few more months out here if I want. Now I'm facing my ambivalence about it all. I have to make a decision before I talk to my two bosses who don't know (yes, I have three direct bosses...don't ask). I don't know what I'm going to decide. It's kind of funny that I jumped at the chance for the six month extension and am really hesitating over the 3-4 months more.

2007-06-21T05:07:00.000-05:00

Back in Canberra:

Being back in Baltimore was weird. Being at work, but not having a desk or an office or working email or, you know, anything to do other than the conference and distracting everyone else from their work, is a different experience. I guess in a way it's like I just started again, except that I actually know a lot of people.

Driving was not as good as I expected either. The roads were nice and wide, but once you've gotten used to 105 km/hr on narrow windy Australian roads, it's hard to keep to a lower speed on 295. And my rental car, while an automatic with power steering, was a boat and I had a hell of a time parking it.

However, it was great to not get any grief for pronouncing my r's or referring to chicken sandwiches rather than chicken burgers (though I had some support from another Aussie for my view on this one).

Canberra's been my home for the last 10 months and will be my home for the next nine months, and sometimes it's weird to be around people who don't recognise this. The US isn't home just because I was born there, and at the end of this time, I will have lived in Canberra almost as long as I lived in Laurel.

All griping aside (though I'll probably bitch more about the flights later), I really enjoyed my trip back. It was fantastic to see everyone that I did and I really do miss all my friends. And Mexican food, Dairy Queen, diners, bagels... I even managed to legally import some corn tortillas so I'm going to try to make chips. Mmm, fresh tortilla chips.

2007-06-07T06:47:00.000-05:00

Back home:

I leave Saturday for my week in the US. I suspect it will be weird, home and not home at the same time. Will I be able to drive on the right? Will I have some sort of sensory overload from having more than four channels of TV? This will be different from the last return, because I've been here longer and spent less time with Americans while I'm here. Should be interesting anyway.

I've been thinking about what I want to do when I return for real. Finish my training program, obviously. But do I go back and get the engineering degree I've been contemplating? Or do I continue just doing the same job as an engineer for slightly less pay and without always understanding why I'm doing what I'm doing? I think if I go the hardware route, I need some formal training (not necessarily the whole degree, but some RF classes), but if I stick to mostly software I've picked up enough on my own.

And if I don't go to school, do I look at the position in Germany I've had my eye on? Am I willing to become a permanent expat? Not so sure about that one...

2007-06-04T04:32:00.000-05:00

Ordinary Day:

In this beautiful life, there's always some sorrow.
And it's a double-edged knife, but there's always tomorrow.
It's up to you now if you sink or swim,
Just keep the faith that your ship will come in,
It's not so bad.

2007-06-03T06:30:00.000-05:00

Losing weight:

I think I was pretty depressed a couple of weeks ago, and I lost another five pounds, which I've actually been able to keep off. I hate that the numbers on the scale are so important to me, more than the fact that I can run 4K easily now and am planning on upping to 6K, but so it goes.

The problem is that I'm not actually eating any healthier, just less. So I can still very happily eat a bag of jelly beans, it just will be all that I eat in a day, rather than adding in reasonably healthy food to that bag of jelly beans, like I did when I was heavier. I need to rewire my eating habits badly. I'm planning on eating piles of crap while I'm in DC (Mexican food, bagels, Twizzlers, Cheez-its!!), but once I get back here it'll be time to work on it.

2007-06-03T06:21:00.000-05:00

Water polo:

I'm working on picking up random sports right now. So I played water polo this afternoon. It was killer, especially since we had no subs so it was 32 minutes of treading water, combined with short spurts of intense swimming. There was no blood in the water, though this one girl was definitely pretty aggressive and a couple of my teammates responded in kind (the ref can't really see that much anyway).

It was pretty fun, and a girl I met was interested in doing some training, at least swimming, so I think we'll start that once I get back from the US. I definitely don't have the eggbeater kick thing down, and swimming with my head out of the water is hard.

Oh yeah and we won, shockingly to me. The other team not only had subs and actual uniforms, but they were from ADFA, so not only were they very young, they were also fit, what with the fitness requirement and all.

The game was at the ADFA pool and I think the girl at the counter just assumed I went there. Not only did I show no ID or anything, but she directed me towards the ADFA team. Damnit, I am older than 18, even the guy in the liquor store agreed on that one (after he carded me).

2007-05-29T06:03:00.000-05:00

Inspector Rex:

It might be the worst television show ever made, but apparently it's controversial.

2007-05-29T03:51:00.000-05:00

To murmur name upon name:

A common thing, to repeat the names of the dead with no other commentary. It has been part of the grieving ritual in Ireland for thousands of years. More recently it is the basis for the Vietnam Wall, for tributes to September 11 victims, for anti-war protests. Names have power.

So on this Memorial Day, say the names of a few of the 3728 coalition soldiers, marines, airmen, and sailors who have died fighting in Iraq. Whether or not you believe in what they are fighting for, their deaths are a tragedy. I will say the names of the Atlantans myself: Jamaal Addison, Tyler Brown, George Draughn, Jesus Fonseca, Carl Fuller, Stephen Johnson, Kun Kim, Victor Langarica, Lonnie Parson, Richard Quill, Diego Rincon, Paul Saylor, Jonathan Shields, Jonathan Smith, Bennie Washington, Donovan Watts.

2007-05-28T04:03:00.000-05:00

A diving weekend:

I celebrated this Memorial Day weekend by going back down to the coast to do my advanced open water dive course. It was a good weekend, though exhausting.

The diving Saturday was pretty ordinary, my ears were playing up on the first dive (Underwater Navigation, actually using a compass accurately under water is really hard), the second, a Search and Recovery dive, was a comedy of errors (ten divers + a rope + a "missing" spanner that was picked up by one of the DMs after about two minutes = comedy gold), and the visibility on the night dive was pretty shit, though we did see some pretty neat fish at the end of the dive and I really liked diving in the dark.

But Sunday more than made up for that. We dived the two tugs out of Eden, the Tasman Hauler and the Henry Bolte. Both were sunk about 20 years ago, but the Tasman Hauler has stayed more or less intact over the years. It's just added a layer of barnacles and lots of fish life. The Henry Bolte has mostly pancaked in aft of the superstructure, so it's kind of like the Tasman Hauler has been dissected. They are both deeper than I'd ever been before, which a bit surprisingly made things like maintaining buoyancy easier. I didn't really feel narked, unfortunately, though my buddy did give me a hug (I think she was just cold). Saw a giant blue groper and lots of fish I couldn't identify and just looking at the wrecks was really cool.

I'm working on planning my next few dives. I'm hoping to go to Eden again the week after I get back from the States and then to Perth in July if everyone OKs my leave. Dive Rotto and hopefully Albany, though a lot of the dive operators seem to shut down in the winter. Then maybe a seal dive out of Montague in mid July... So many plans.

2007-05-23T02:09:00.000-05:00

Football + smoke detector randomness:

It's time for the State of Origin series of rugby games, played between Queensland and NSW. I'm going to go watch it with some Queenslanders, so apparently I am not to wear blue. I think I personally prefer AFL to rugby, mostly because the guys are hotter and actually have necks (what? I never claimed not to be shallow). But this should be entertaining. Must go buy beer though.

Also, a couple of guys from the Embassy came out Monday to install more smoke detectors in my apartment. Now I have five for my three bedroom apartment. Monday afternoon when I came home, one of the new ones was going off. After a bit of a struggle, I gave up and took the battery out. I figured that four smoke detectors was sufficient. Only Tuesday at work I got a call from my contact at the Embassy about the beeping in my apartment. So the guy ended up coming back out and giving me another one.

My question is, how did they know? Maybe these aren't really smoke detectors at all... Just a theory.

2007-05-22T04:42:00.000-05:00

Directed assignments:

I can't be bothered to drag out the link here, but I read that the State Department is considering using directed assignments for hazardous duty locations. While I don't think this is necessarily a bad idea, I think that the fact that directed assignments are required is a symptom of what's wrong with the US Foreign Service.

I've read somewhere that the US has fewer foreign service officers than Australia, despite having more than ten times the population (and probably more than that in international influence...I kid because I love!). The American Foreign Service is insanely competitive largely as a result of the small number of positions. The State Department tends to weight experience very highly in this process, and it indirectly seems to favor people who've been with other government agencies.

Nothing wrong with this, I guess, except that it brings in people who are risk-averse, who are precisely the sort of people who won't choose that posting as a consular officer in Baghdad. Add this to a much older population of FSOs than the equivalent in most other countries (in the UK and Aus, it's pretty much a job that most people start fresh out of uni, whereas in the US, the average age of a new FSO is upwards of 30), and you get a problem filling the dangerous positions.

I personally know many people who have volunteered for hazardous duty locations, for time periods from two weeks to two years. All of these people have something in common: they don't have any kids. A guy I know told me he would have been willing to go to Iraq up until the moment that his wife got pregnant with their daughter. And this is a totally reasonable position in my opinion. Beyond the obvious of "what would my family do if I got killed?" there's also the fact that families, for obvious reasons, do not accompany the employee to a hazardous duty post. That's an awful lot of time away from your child.

I learned a few weeks ago that technically I serve anywhere in the world at the direction of my way up the chain boss. That means that legally they can direct me to go anywhere, and, after I take my home leave, I can't even quit to avoid the assignment (without paying the government a large sum of money). However, my job hasn't had to invoke this yet because there have been enough volunteers for the positions.

If I were Secretary of State, I'd start by begging Congress for money to expand the Foreign Service. If that failed, I would change the hiring to weight more highly people who've lived overseas (and not just people who studied in Europe). I would do less recruiting from government agencies and more from NGOs. I'd make it worthwhile, both during the post and afterwards, for people to choose to take the postings. I'd make it very difficult to get promoted unless you had taken a hazardous duty posting and I'd make damn sure anyone sent out on them was appropriately trained in the language and culture of the country. And, if necessary, I would use directed assignments to bring experienced people to hardship posts.

I'd also work on changing the culture that makes it much easier to get promoted if one is in Washington than in the field, so that my bright new risk-takers that I am bringing in won't get disillusioned TOO fast, but that's another post.

The State Department is changing their hiring and assignment processes now, though I have little hope that it will change the fundamental culture, and that's too bad.

*Note-- I am not a foreign service officer, but I have worked as a US government employee at two embassies. For a junior FSOs perspective, see this old, but in my opinion not outdated at all, article.
** Here's a link about directed assignments. I do not think what they are currently doing is the right way to go about the problem either and I sort of resent the thing about the money. People do these things for a variety of reasons, but the money can help compensate you for losing a year with your family, for sharing a room with 4 other people who are on different shifts from you, for all sorts of things that it's reasonable to expect compensation for.

2007-05-19T08:20:00.000-05:00

Hazing:

We are getting a new employee next week. One of my coworkers is planning the hazing...er, introduction to the team. We have a memorial wall (of nameplates of people who have left the team), and I'm going to pick up some fake flowers to add to the ambiance. I think we're going to claim that they never found the body of one of them, and that our boss threw the other out the window.

Breach has also inspired us to suggest Mass as a team-building activity. I think we need to find the early morning Latin Mass that's sure to exist in Canberra.

2007-05-14T04:49:00.000-05:00

Security clearance decisions:

I find this website absolutely fascinating. It's a list of decisions made about whether to grant DoD security clearances to contractors who raised some red flags during the initial process. The number of people who applied for a security clearance while not having filed their taxes is mind-blowing. I'm not sure whether anybody is prosecuted for this (or for lying on the form, which is a felony).

It seems that finances are the most likely disqualifying factor, with foreign influence or personal conduct (usually lying on the form) in second, and things like drug use or criminal conduct a distant third.

Maybe it's just the way that they are written, but they usually seem to get the decision right, also, which is nice to see.

2007-05-11T03:29:00.000-05:00

Being an expat:

So one thing about being an expat is that you have a built-in group of people who will hang out with you because you have the virtue of having a passport in common. And mostly I like expats. These are people who share something else in common with me: a willingness to move halfway around the world and to agree to move somewhere else in a few year's time. Most expats are wanderers at heart, as I seem to be, people who get impatient at being in one place for very long.

In a place like Australia, obviously, the expat support network is not really necessary. I work with Australians and mostly hang out with Australians.

In the past week, Americans have caught me referring to a car park, arvos, and the lift, and, horror of horrors, I asked someone how they were going the other day.

I think I need to start spending a little more time with Americans.

2007-05-09T06:07:00.000-05:00

Back in the US:

Most of you know this already, but I will be back in the US for a week mid June (I'll be there June 9 - 16). I'll only make it to the Baltimore Washington area, but I'd love to see everyone who can make it. Otherwise, at least send me your current number and I will call when I'm in a more reasonable time zone. My extension has been approved, so I will be here through probably the end of March 2008.

In other news, I'm thinking of joining the water polo team and should be going hiking this weekend. Why I start all this stuff at the beginning of winter is a little unclear.

2007-05-05T07:48:00.000-05:00

Some days are harder than others:

I started to write a Mother's Day card for my mother today, it being that time of the year and all that. I wrote that I wished I could be there to take her out to brunch. And then I started to cry.

Jenny would always have done that before. I've been living away from home for quite a few Mother's Days now, so I would call and Jenny would take her out for brunch or lunch. I feel so guilty that I can't be there now, though my brother will hopefully be able to spend Mother's Day with my mom.

And that's how it goes. Most of the time you're OK, you can go through weeks without it being a big deal, and then something seemingly unrelated hits you, and it's like it just happened yesterday. Like I just got off the phone with my mother that morning, and this is the first wave of pain rather than the hundredth of the thousandth or whatever it is.

2007-04-30T06:21:00.000-05:00

Eastern market:

I was really sad to hear about the fire. I love Eastern Market, and hope it will be possible to restore it to the way it was. :-(

2007-04-27T19:45:00.000-05:00

This sounds like an urban legend, but I guess it's not.

2007-04-20T04:13:00.000-05:00

No spitting:

I see Beijing is trying to clean up its image for the Olympics. While I did enjoy some of the hilarious English translations (though my personal favorite is still the bar that was open "7pm till drunk" in Vientiane), the spitting is really disgusting and unsanitary. It was quite a relief to get to Vietnam and no longer hear the "Hooorrrrrrrk....pteh" on the streets again.

I find the lack of queuing in China really surprising, too. One would think that a place that is so crowded would have developed elaborate public manners to deal with crowds. But it is not the case at all. No one waits for others to exit the metro, getting off of planes is a free-for-all (and tiny stinky lady behind me going to Vietnam, when one has to catch a bus from the plane to the terminal it does you exactly no good to shove me down to try to get past since we are all just going to sit on the bus. And my elbow slipped, I swear), and queuing doesn't happen. People will walk by you as you're obviously queuing for something, turn around and look at you, and still push their way in front. I don't understand, really.

2007-03-27T04:05:00.000-05:00

Hiya:

Back from NZ, which was great. I'm hoping to get pictures up on my Travelpod before I leave for the big trip, but I was internet-less for a week (thanks Telstra), so it may not happen.

Also, I started on Lariam on Friday and I'm definitely feeling it. I keep waking up between 1 and 3 in the morning, and I can't stop moving my legs. Hopefully it will get better soon, but if it continues I will just use lots of bug spray and stop the pills. Frankly, it's not worth it.

2007-03-07T16:46:00.000-06:00

Too old:

I would just like to point out that I am, in fact, too old to be still living at home if I were the daughter of an Embassy employee. Too old by 5 years at least. So I don't really appreciate being told by someone "I thought you were someone's daughter when I first met you. Then I saw your badge." I know she wasn't trying to be rude, but it kind of is.

Also, I just talked to two different people at American Airlines, and both of them, on hearing my address, thanked me for my service to my country. I don't know if there was a memo about that or if it was just a coincidence, but that's the first time in all my calling back to the US for things that I have gotten that. The first time I didn't really say anything, didn't know what to say, but by the second time I laughed it off saying how Australia isn't exactly a hardship post...

I did sort of appreciate it though. While I love it here and have been very happy, living overseas isn't always the easiest thing ever. The time difference, the difficulty in doing any sort of administrative things, plus the general difficulty in moving to a new place add up to some frustration some times. Occasionally an acknowledgment of that is nice. I would prefer this acknowledgment from for example the Maryland MVA who are total jerks about people serving overseas (I think I may have to actually call my state representative when it's time for emissions to come due), but I'll take it where I can get it.

2007-03-01T04:50:00.000-06:00

Crazy:

I would like to remind everyone that February in the southern hemisphere is the equivalent of August in the northern hemisphere. And Canberra is not known for its cold winters, except by Australian standards.

http://canberra.yourguide.com.au/viewimage.asp?id=145495

2007-02-26T04:18:00.000-06:00

A boring update:

Things are moving along here, I guess. I became a certified scuba diver two weekends ago, which was pretty exciting. My parents will be here in a week and half and I leave for NZ two weeks from tomorrow and for SE Asia March 31.

Currently I'm watching the Oscars, a few hours behind. My DVD player still isn't back, apparently for reasons that pass understanding, DSE elected to fix my $60 DVD player (with two blown circuit boards) rather than replace it. Supposedly it's been sent back to the store, so I will get it soon. I hope so, I'm sick of watching DVDs on my PC. It sucks.

See, boring, just as promised.

2007-02-04T04:17:00.000-06:00

Government contractors:

This article is worth a read. I think that federal contracting is a real problem, and I'm not just saying that because I think they are going to make my job redundant:-) I've worked with several contractors who have been extremely competent and honest. However, there are some serious problems with the government's use of contractors.

1. Generally, because contracts are written to be very specific, contractors can only do what is in their contract. In some jobs this may not be a problem, but in others, the duties change day to day, and cannot be predicted. Most places I have worked would prefer to have a government employee filling a billet than even a very competent contractor because they need flexibility.

2. Contractors are expensive. This is a common complaint, but it's absolutely true. If I quit my government job and went to work for a contractor, I could work in the same office doing nearly the same job and make twice as much, maybe more (if you're interested, I mostly don't because I love the flexibility of my job. I make enough money, so it's more important to me that I enjoy and don't get bored with what I do than that I make more money). Plus the government would also be paying the company providing contractor me. I know the government saves on benefits, but it definitely doesn't make up the difference.

3. Contractors have divided loyalties, particularly those who own stock in the company they work for. A contractor's first loyalty is to the company he works for, not to the government. I'm not doubting the honesty of contractors, but the fact is that a contractor isn't trying to save the government money and time; that's not his job, and in fact, that hurts his employer.

I believe that contractors should NOT be supervising government employees (and this is not supposed to happen, but it does sometimes, at least de facto). I also believe that certain very sensitive things (things like taxes) should be handled by government employees, though this is a gut feeling and I can't really justify it. Contracts should come up as often as reasonable. And all contracts should be re-evaluated reasonably often to make sure that contracting the job out is the most efficient way of handling it.

Contracts are a valuable tool for short term work, for things that we currently lack the expertise in the federal government to handle, and to bridge gaps while civil service employees cannot be hired. They should not be used because the agency cannot find a federal employee to do the job, and they should not be used for indefinite (read permanent) periods.

2007-02-04T04:02:00.000-06:00

Pretzels:

Sudeep will be so proud of me. I made my first yeast bread today, soft pretzels. They're pretty easy, actually. the dough is just flour, salt, sugar, yeast, and water. Knead about 8 minutes, then dip the pieces in a mix of water and egg, salt, let rise for 20 minutes or so, then bake for 20 minutes.

I did have some trouble though, mostly due to kitchen problems. My oven takes absolutely forever to heat up. These had to be baked at 425 (I think this is about 215 Celsius), and after 15 minutes of preheating, the oven was still at about 150 C. I had already let them rise too much waiting for the oven to be hot, so I gave up and put them in. Also, I have one smallish cookie sheet so I kind of ended up with one giant pretzel. However, I had one and it was pretty tasty, if a little too light for a true soft pretzel. Hopefully they'll still taste OK tomorrow when they aren't straight out of the oven.

And the shapes are Greek letters, because I am a giant dork. Well, the beta is kind of two giant lines and delta was too hard, but the alpha, gamma, and omega are recognisable.

2007-01-28T21:49:00.000-06:00

Good news:

This IS good news. It's actually much better than the New York Times is reporting it as. Something often forgotten in the last 30 years of the Troubles is that British soldiers came into the north of Ireland in the 60s because the Protestant police force (and the local government) was mistreating Catholics so badly.

It's not just that Catholics see the police as aligned with the British (though they do), it's that to many Catholics, the police are worse than the British soldiers. After Bloody Sunday, Britain lost a lot of credibility in that regard, but at least in the small towns (ie not Belfast or Derry), the police are still less trusted than the paratroopers and sometimes even than the SAS (who, in my experience, really are giant assholes until you pull out an American passport. Then they are only giant assholes to your Irish friends).

2007-01-25T23:06:00.000-06:00

Sigh:

I took my DVD player into the store today. This was a $60 DVD player, that, when the guy opened it up to take my DVD out, had multiple blown capacitors on both circuit boards. Two had actually blown off the board, and there were other melted ones. They still have to send it away to "have it repaired." Yeah, they are really going to replace two circuit boards on a $60 DVD player rather than just giving me a new one. I believe that.

This means that I get to watch DVDs for the next at least week and a half on either my 14 inch laptop or my 17 inch desktop monitor. This is going to be fun.

2007-01-22T02:46:00.000-06:00

Well:

So I'm watching a DVD today when suddenly the sound goes out. I hit mute a couple of times, but no joy. Then the whole thing dies and there's a pop. There are two more pops and the player starts smoking before I can get it unplugged. I guess to a certain extent you get what you pay for on a $50 AU player (it's less than 4 months old), but the smoking thing is a bit concerning.

The place I bought it from is not open and the company doesn't have a 24 hour number so I can't call and see if there is some sort of warranty, though I suspect not. Perhaps the smoke gives me a bit of leeway. Also, the DVD, which is part of a set and cannot easily be replaced, is stuck in there. Sigh.

In happier news, I passed my dive physical, with a fantastic FEV/FVC of 92%. How did I almost fail that test last June? It makes no sense. The doctor was an ex-military guy who was convinced I was service (and Canadian) and was so sure that I was fit to dive that I couldn't have failed, I think.

So hopefully I'll finally get certified (for diving...Jesus!) in February on the south coast. Exciting.

2007-01-17T03:18:00.000-06:00

American morning tea:

I'm putting together an "American-themed" morning tea for my office, and I'm trying to get my order into the commissary in Japan (the closest commissary, would you believe it?).

Here's the current menu (all of these things are not readily available in Australia):
Pop-tarts (multiple flavors)
Cheez-its (Hannah mentioned buying them in Singapore, and now I'm craving)
PB cups
York peppermint patties
fresh chips and salsa (yes, I'm ordering the corn tortillas from Japan, they are totally unavailable in Oz)
Cinnamon candy
Oreos

I realise that the list is a little disjointed, but it's actually reasonably hard to come up with a list of American breakfast foods that are non-perishable, a necessity for ordering from the APO. Anyway, other teas have involved foods that are not strictly speaking breakfast foods.

Suggestions?

2007-01-15T00:08:00.000-06:00

Daily Show!:

I just discovered that you can buy 16 episodes of the Daily Show for $9.99 from iTunes. I'd been having Jon Stewart withdrawal, since it's only on here on free TV one night a week. No more!

2007-01-06T06:15:00.000-06:00

Stupid laptop:

My shiny, 6-month-old laptop has had some sort of catastrophic failure relating to the video card. Currently, I can sometimes boot into Fedora (sometimes it's unreadable) and never into Windows. I have a feeling that one of the things that they told me to do to try to diagnose the video card problem might have screwed up something else in the system. I got to spend my afternoon on the phone with Dell. Because I'm not located in the US it's even better, let me tell you.

I basically refused to get off the phone with Australian tech support after they told me that I didn't have 24/7 phone coverage (which is false) until they told me that they would have a service tech call me Monday. International tech support in the US will not be open until 8 am Monday CST (which is 1 am Tuesday here), so there is no way of getting the next day service that I paid $400 for. I cannot switch my warranty over to Australia , apparently, though I may try that again and see if I have any luck.

All the people I've dealt with have been polite (and not totally clueless about computers), but ultimately very unhelpful. They seem to want to mail me a video card (though they cannot apparently submit the order until Monday, and I have to call back to do it...um 15 hour time difference and I cannot place international calls from work), but I'm not too happy about replacing something on a laptop motherboard myself. I thought that was the point of the warranty.

I've dragged my 3.5 year old Inspiron that beeps about 25 times at POST every time I turn it on out. Hopefully it will keep working for the week or so that it will take to fix my actual expensive laptop. At least I won't lose any data even if I have to wipe the hard drive. That 40G external hard drive was a good investment!

2006-12-31T11:35:00.000-06:00

In Bangkok:

Nowhere near the bombs. Only heard about them from the taxi driver as we tried to make it to Siam Square. The roads seemed really empty...

Lots of soldiers out here, but lots of police too. They were pretty willing to tell us what they knew (not necessarily up to date). They were amazingly efficient cleaning out Siam Square. It was packed at 8:30 when we went by and empty by 11:30.

Plenty more from here later.

2006-12-20T18:59:00.000-06:00

I head off for Singapore in about 15 minutes. In case I don't have a chance to post, have a great Christmas!

I'm looking forward to this trip. I bought little padlocks for my checked bag, but I defy anyone to slip 4 kilos of marijuana in there anyway. Still, Singapore does have the death penalty for drug smuggling...

Also, I get to test whether travelling on multiple passports is difficult or not. I'll let you know.

2006-12-19T03:08:00.000-06:00

DVD player:

So my DVD player was very cheap and can pay all DVD regions, so I shouldn't complain too much, but it defaults to Spanish subtitles every time I turn it on. It's a little odd.

2006-12-16T02:16:00.000-06:00

Cricket:

I've been watching the cricket recently, and I've actually basically figured out what's going on. I think cricket is not a game that can be watched without beer. It's looking pretty good for Australia right now (and it turns out that even if Australia goes up 3-nil, they play the last two games in Sydney and Melbourne which must be a lot of fun for England...). I would like to inform the English side that sunscreen actually still works if you rub it in, rather than having a centimeter thick coating on your nose.

Also, Bill Bryson had a great cricket- and Australia-related quote. "I am quite certain that if the rest of the world vanished over night and the development of cricket was left in Australian hands, within a generation the players would be wearing shorts and using the bats to hit each other." Which sounds about right. I did see some AFL and rugby union when I first arrived.

2006-12-12T03:47:00.000-06:00

Bushfires:

They're burning about 35km west of Canberra right now. Yesterday, it was windy and really hot, and it was smoky here. I could smell it from my desk. They're nothing like the fires in Victoria this weekend, of course.

It's so early for this. It was 45 degrees in Melbourne this weekend. That's insane.

2006-12-12T01:07:00.000-06:00

OK, I guess that's no Christmas then:

Well, I just got my Christmas box from my mother. Apparently it fell in the ocean on the way over here or something. It was totally drenched. The guy gave it to me in a plastic bag because just touching the cardboard made it disintegrate.

Here it is in its swaddled in plastic glory.

Can't you tell how much that smells?

Basically instead of nice Christmas presents, I get to keep stinky wet cardboard in my apartment for three months or however long it takes the post office to sort out the insurance claim. Thanks, USPS/USAF!

2006-12-10T05:10:00.000-06:00

To the people of Canberra:

"Frosty the Snowman" is not appropriate music when it is 95 degrees Fahrenheit outside.

2006-12-07T05:47:00.000-06:00

This is so hard:

I can't do this. Not by myself. I can't get through the season when everyone's supposed to be happy when there's a giant hole where my sister used to be. I have to go to parties and smile and be a good little liaison and inside I can't understand why I'm here and she's not.

I make it through the days well enough, sort of one hour at a time, but the nights are another story. I try to sleep, can't. Cry for a while in bed. Get up, pace around, take some nyquil, watch TV or read, try again. This time with the help of the nyquil I can sleep, but I have weird dreams, that should be nightmares but aren't quite. I think I dread those dreams, dread what they should become.

Then I get up in the morning a little more tired and start over.

2006-12-03T03:22:00.000-06:00

Car, redux:

My car lacks fuel injection. I didn't even know what that meant until I bought it. Basically it means that there's no way, when the car is off, to get gasoline into the engine. Well, there is a way; you have to pump the gas pedal a time or two. If you pump it too much, you flood the engine. Not sure what that means, but it sounds like something to be avoided.

Two and a half weeks until Malaysia! I know I just had a holiday, but I'm beyond ready for another (longer) one.

2006-12-01T22:18:00.000-06:00

It's been a long and annoying week:

The kind people of the road transport authority decided that it was a good idea to schedule road work (of the tearing up asphalt kind) from 6 pm - 6 am in a residential area. Said area is about as close as possible to "right under my bedroom window." The lack of sleep made me sick, etc, etc. Two more days till they are done.

Also, I played golf on Thursday. Considering my previous golf experience was limited to "Introduction to the Golf Swing" my third year of college, I think I did all right.

2006-11-27T22:25:00.000-06:00

Day 2 of my Victorian adventure:

Phillip Island is definitely different from French Island. It's not so much on the undeveloped side. It's beautiful for all of that, though. I was staying in Cowes, which in November reminded me of a Florida beach town off season. Empty beaches, waters too cold to swim in, little shops that closed up early. I imagine it's a nightmare during the school holidays, but it was actually charming now. And the fish and chips were delicious!

For my day on Phillip Island, I did the bird-watching walk near Rhyll, despite my hatred of birds. I didn't look for or see any birds, but walking through the mangrove trees was nice, and I saw swamp wallabies. Lunched in Rhyll, which I was unimpressed by. Supposedly a little fishing village, actually a very small tourist town. I didn't see any commercial fishing boats.

Then I walked back along the mangroves to the only bit of bush left on Phillip Island, a nature reserve running down the center of the island. The path through there led to the Koala Conservation Centre, which I was very keen to see. The reserve was nice, totally empty (and admittedly the weather wasn't great), and I saw more wallabies and kookaburas. They really do sound like they are laughing. My only complaint was that the path markings were haphazard. One turning would have a very good sign with distance remaining, the next turning would have nothing. I'm at about the 22 k mark for the day after making it through the reserve (nearly 30 k by the time I made it home), so I am concerned about not making a wrong turning.

The koalas are crazy cute. They have a great life. Sleep 20 hours a day, eat 3 hours, groom another hour... I'll take it. The only problem is the rampant chlamydia, which would place a damper in the sex part of it.

In the evening, I caught a ride with two very nice Swiss girls and an English girl to the Penguin Parade. Again, the penguins are super-cute. I saw one waddling down a hill. Halfway down the hill he fell and kind of slid the rest of the way down. Then he picked himself up like no one was watching and kept waddling. There were eggs, but no chicks yet. Still early.

2006-11-27T03:05:00.000-06:00

Flying:

Flying out of Canberra is a joy. On Thursday, I called for a cab at about 5 minutes past 9 in the morning (the automated cab booking system is not a joy, but that's a subject for another post). Cab was there by 9:15. I was at the airport by 9:30, and at my gate by 9:35 for my 10:20 flight, after using a machine to pick up my ticket from Qantas and going though security with my shoes on. And carrying liquid on the flight. Not that I'm bitter, TSA.

If I get too used to this, I'm going to miss a lot of flights in the US.

2006-11-26T01:11:00.000-06:00

Planes, trains, and automobiles:

My trip to Phillip/French Islands went well. The journey there involved a taxi to the airport, a plane to Melbourne, a bus to the train station in Melbourne, two trains (one diesel!) to a place called Stony Point, and a Ferry across the Western Port to Cowes. I got in around 6 pm.

The first night there I walked a few miles down the beach, which was long and empty and wide at low tide, if not particularly beautiful, ate some of the best fish and chips I have ever had, went to the hostel pub and had a VB or two while watching Family Guy, and turned in pretty early, since I had a long day ahead of me.

The next morning I woke up in time for the morning ferry to French Island. About a dozen people got on the boat, but most of them are going to the mainland. I got off at the Tankerton jetty with one other person, a middle-aged long-haired man carrying the world's third cutest dog (I have loyalties here).

We talked a little as we walked down the jetty. He told me that the general store about 2 km up the road would rent me a bike, and offered me a lift. I declined, since I was on the island to walk. He also told me that he'd send out the search parties if I didn't make the afternoon ferry off the island, which was good to hear.

See, the thing about French Island is that it has no modern infrastructure. There are no electricity lines (all power must be generated at the building, so every structure has a solar panel or a wind tower or both), no running water, no gas station, nothing like public transport. The sum total of the public services is a locked toilet, barrel of untreated rainwater, and phone box at the jetty, another phone box at the general store, a single gravel road and a handful of sand tracks, and, this being Australia, a cricket oval and tennis courts. Fewer than a hundred people live on the island.

I walked inland up the gravel road from the jetty. My friend from the ferry, after filling up his car from the petrol can he brought with him from Phillip Island, drove past me up the road, and I am alone. I had no map of the island, just a memory of a map once seen, but there aren't enough roads for this to be too worrying. I looked at my watch. 2km should take me about 25 minutes. After thirty minutes, I thought I was getting somewhere, only to see the cricket oval and tennis courts on my left (with a couple of koalas in the trees). Another k to go! It was hot, even though there is some shade on this part of the island, and I was already tired. Luckily, a woman drove by and gave me a ride to the general store. On the way, we passed an echidna hanging out by the side of the road and stopped for a peek.

A Spanish couple was waiting at the store for bikes also; it turned out that the store's proprietor is also the post man and he was out delivering mail. They'd been waiting for 45 minutes. We waited about thirty more until the man returned and hooked us up with ungeared mountain bikes with foot brakes and a supplemental handbrake, maps, and helmets, none of which were even close to fitting my head. At least there are only a handful of cars on the island.

I decided to ride down the coast road, because hey, coasts are pretty. I cycled back almost to the jetty, and turned to the right. The first 300 meters were gravel, though the bush. It quickly turned to a layer of sand over a harder level. The sand's depth ranged from non-existent to more than 6 inches. Have you tried cycling in those conditions? It sucks. You get a nice ride up and then you hit a deep patch of sand, slow down rapidly, and the front wheel usually turns to one side. Then you hit the edge of the track (I forgot to mention but this track is actually two tracks, the two tracks left by a four wheel drive. So about a foot wide). Your wheel spins back, you slow down even more, put your feet on the ground and recover. Then rinse and repeat. I made it over 5 k on this road, God knows why, since the views weren't even particularly good. Coast road means 500 meters inland in this case.

Finally I gave up and turned around, thinking that I would go to the campground and see if anyone was around and fill up my water, since I was pretty low. The campground was empty and the water marked on my map was actually an tank of untreated rainwater, so I decided to pass on drinking that. I cycled back to the jetty, but the water there was also untreated rainwater and the toilets were closed too. OK. Back to the general store where I bought some water and Gatorade and got some advice. Take Clump Road inland to the track to the Pinnacles, an observation tower. You can cut through on that track back to the coast road. He told me most of the tracks were good, so I figured what the heck. I made it to the tower (track was dirt mostly, narrow but if you rode on the center raised bit, mostly rideable), and I still had two hours before the ferry and I couldn't face the coast road again, so I took another track, marked but unnamed on my map towards the bog. Unfortunately, after only 100 meters or so it was marked as closed except to walkers, so I went back to Clump Road. I made it to the bog track (which intersected Clump Road), but it was too late to risk riding there, so I turned around and went back to the jetty.

My friend with the dog and the Spanish couple were there also, along with about a dozen people, mostly locals taking produce into market. Olives and wines and wool seemed to be the main attractions. Saw more dolphins on the ferry.

Tomorrow my second day on Phillip Island.

2006-11-22T15:12:00.000-06:00

Happy Thanksgiving!:

I know it's a day early back in the States, but I am about to head out of town till Sunday. So I hope everyone has a happy Thanksgiving, and eats some pumpkin pie for me.

2006-11-21T00:08:00.000-06:00

APO:

One of the nifty things about my position here is that I get an APO address. This means that I can receive mail sent from the US with only US postage. For example, Christmas cards (hint, hint).

It's pretty cool because certain things are unavailable or very expensive here. Today I got a box from CVS.com with razor blades and the right contact lens solution. Interestingly, someone from CVS.com had gone to the post office, filled out the customs declaration (by hand) and mailed the box to me, the same way that my mother does. I found that surprising. I would have expected a big company like CVS to have some sort of agreement with USPS.

The form was filled out in a way that would have gotten me in trouble. The box was listed as containing "OTC pharmacy items," not itemized as the APO here insists that you do. But AQIS hadn't bothered opening it. They seem to only open things labelled as "boots" or "food."

2006-11-19T01:23:00.000-06:00

Broadband internet in Australia:

I'm pretty jealous of Verizon's new fiber internet. For less than I'm paying for 256K DSL from Telstra, I could have 5Mbps from Verizon! Hell, for only a couple of dollars more, I could have 10Mbps. I don't actually download very much, but it would be nice to be able to watch Top Chef episodes from iTunes so that my opinion on all the contestants wasn't entirely based on TWoP.

I spent today replanting reeds on a creek in Belconnen. Even though there's something about walking along the side of the road wearing a fluorescent yellow vest and carrying a shovel that screams court-mandated community service, I had a good time. Pretty tired now for the beginning of the week, though. Maybe they should do these things on Saturday instead of Sunday.

2006-11-14T03:46:00.000-06:00

Cab rides:

Here, generally when you are riding in a cab by yourself, you sit in the front seat. I like that. It seems more friendly somehow. And I've had some great conversations, from the guy who told me that I couldn't pay with credit card because he'd been on shift longer than twelve hours, so the machine would lock him out to the guy who told me all about his trip to Hawaii after I told him I was too drunk to talk (it was a Wednesday night) to the guy who's son was driving the cab sitting at the traffic light next to us (Canberra is a small town, really).

2006-11-13T02:09:00.000-06:00

Toilet map:

Seriously, if this is what the Australians pay all their taxes for, I say it's worth it.

2006-11-12T22:01:00.000-06:00

Yellow Pages:

One thing that's surprisingly difficult to do in a foreign country, even when you speak the language fluently, is look up something in the Yellow Pages. I mean "Tyres" for "tires" was easy enough, but "Motor Car Accessories" for "Auto Parts"? Really? And "Motor Engineers and Repairers" for "Auto Body Repair"?

The Yellow Pages are hard enough in America, that's my opinion.

The car didn't pass the inspection. It needs two tires, a light bulb, and one headlight to be adjusted. I'm going to ask him to knock $200 off the price of the car. That's about what it should cost to get everything fixed. Seems fair to me.

2006-11-10T16:26:00.000-06:00

Remembrance Day:

Here November 11 is not Veterans' Day, it is Remembrance Day, a day to remember all Australians who have died fighting her wars.

They went with songs to the battle, they were young.
Straight of limb, true of eyes, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning
We will remember them.

2006-11-10T03:43:00.000-06:00

And when the high wind blows everything:

The new Carbon Leaf album is fantastic. I've been listening to it pretty much nonstop for the last week.

Also, I've pretty much decided that for Thanksgiving, I'm going to go to French Island and Phillip Island in southeast Victoria. French Island has no municipal services (to include electricity...most places have solar power) and Phillip Island has fairy penguins. And really a couple of days on an island sounds pretty great right now actually.

2006-11-06T04:08:00.000-06:00

Dreams:

Last night I dreamt that there existed a travel guidebook featuring Screech from Saved By the Bell: the Middle School Years and that my friend Joe owned it. I woke up a little jealous. I want one of those.

2006-11-06T03:18:00.000-06:00

Busy:

This is the first time in months I've gone into the second week of the pay period ahead on hours! Only an hour and a half, but still. And today and tomorrow at least are busy too. And Friday is a holiday.

Also, I'm getting organised for my Christmas trip (and I finally got the word that it will be approved. Thank God). Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia.

Now I need something to do for Thanksgiving. I was thinking Tassie, but maybe not now. There's a environmental project up in Moss Vale which sounds pretty cool. I have to find out if I can do it for two days since it goes on all week (and I should really not take the week off).

2006-10-26T23:07:00.000-05:00

Car!!:

I bought a car. It's a 1996 Suzuki Cino, 2 door (well 3, it's a hatch), kind of blue-purple. It doesn't have power steering (who knew such things were still made?) or airbags but it does have AC. The really important point here is that it's a manual transmission which I am still pretty bad at driving. Driving it home was mostly OK, by the time I got to Woden I could start it at after stopping without stalling. Except for the one light. I could have sworn that I downshifted, but apparently not. It's very hard to start a car in second gear... Sorry, people behind me.

Now I can think about going riding and deciding whether I want to learn to row. Both of those things require cars.

2006-10-21T05:45:00.000-05:00

Buses:

1) Some of the older buses in Canberra have a little placard on the side. "Children are not permitted to sit while adults are standing." Strikes me as weird. I feel that I am better equipped to stand on a bus than a child is.

2) Riding a bus this afternoon, one of the outside panels (it looked like the door to a luggage compartment on a coach, if that makes sense) flew up. While driving 80 km/hr, the driver reached out the window and shoved the thing back into place. I was happy to be getting off at the next stop.

2006-10-18T04:13:00.001-05:00

Uniforms:

The Australian Navy summer uniform includes:
1) white shorts, well above the knee.
2) either navy blue knee socks and shoes or white knee socks and (white) shoes.

Just...no. Grown men + white shorts + knee socks? Seriously, who thought that was a good idea?

I'm told that the US Navy has a similar uniform but that it is only approved in very hot places and US sailors never choose to wear it. Not true of the Australians. Not true at all.

2006-10-15T03:31:00.000-05:00

From Wikipedia:

Umm, really? "Pizza Hut Pakistan also offers "All you can eat and drink" deal in holy month of Ramadan."

That doesn't seem calculated to win any fans.

2006-10-14T04:42:00.000-05:00

Australian to American English Part I -- Food:

Biscuit (or bickie) -- sometimes a cookie, sometimes a cracker
Capsicum -- red/green/yellow/orange pepper
Chips - both fries and potato chips. Sometimes you hear "fries" but I've never heard "crisps"
Coriander -- cilantro and coriander
Devon - baloney
Flat White -- more or less a latte
Lemonade -- Sprite
Lolly -- candy, not just a lollipop
Long black -- my coffee drink of choice, espresso diluted with water
Maccas - McDonalds
Short black -- shot of espresso
slab -- a case of beer
Sultanas -- Raisins, more or less
Tim Tam -- a delicious cookie

2006-10-13T05:27:00.000-05:00

Cycling:

Canberra's great for cycling. Things are generally pretty close together, it never rains, and the cycle paths are amazing. And I've realised how much I like to cycle.

When I cycle the 14 km into work, I start out on a suburban path along a drainage ditch. You cycle under buildings and low bridges. In the morning, there aren't many people on the path, but in the afternoon, it's full of walkers carrying packages from the shopping centre home and a few other cyclists on their way home from work.

After about 3 k, I switch to a path near the shoulder of a busy road. This is my least favourite part of the journey. Not only are you close to the road, but there is a killer hill and twice you have to cross over the road riding on sidewalk. It's always a relief to make it to Yarralumla.

In Yarralumla, the path leaves Adelaide Avenue and cuts up through an older suburb towards the lake. You ride past houses, tennis courts, and soccer fields. There are a couple of road crossings, but the streets aren't very busy. The other traffic tends to be kids in the afternoons and people walking dogs in the mornings. This is my favorite part of the ride.

You join up with the lake path after passing through Yarralumla. About 6km more to go, but this is where the professional cyclists are riding, whizzing past me on my poor overloaded hybrid huffing and puffing as I ride up the hill. This is also where I had the worst accident I've ever had on a bicycle. I got whiplash, bruised up one knee pretty badly, and have bruises all over the rest of my body in really weird places (why would I have a bruise along my shin? It makes no sense). Oh yeah, and damaged the front brake lines on my cycle. Go me! It can be windy here in the afternoons, but there are some beautiful parrots and cockatoos that live along here and the lake views are amazing.

A quick ride on the Commonwealth Ave Bridge (fine in the mornings, full of pedestrians in the afternoons), then a steep descent leads to another 1km or so on the lake path. Then you have to ride on the road, but just for 1 more km or so. There isn't a lot of traffic, just a couple of not very fun right turns. And you're there, feeling like you've really accomplished something before 8:30 am.

2006-10-09T05:37:00.000-05:00

Melbourne, or never buy your tickets from Expedia:

Melbourne was pretty fantastic. We got in Saturday about noon, went to St. Kilda beach first thing since the weather was amazing. We found a sort of Mexican restaurant (they had margaritas, but it was definitely high-concept, walked along the water, and slept on the grass for awhile since we didn't have a towel to sleep on the beach. For dinner, we walked down to Southbank and had tapas-y things (well, I just had gazpacho since I had a LOT of lunch).

Sunday, we went to the Victoria market, which is truly amazing. Huge, and the stuff is generally pretty nice and reasonably priced. I got some stuff to decorate my bland apartment and a suitcase to replace the $10 Target one that I've been lugging around with me. Then we went on a cruise on the Yarra (not all that cool, I wish we'd done the ferry to Williamstown on the bay instead... especially since we could only understand about every other word that the captain said) and saw a surprisingly good performance of The Plague (yes the Camus novel. I don't know) in our hotel (also a pub. Still weird). And ate Italian food, insanely fresh fish and squash... And I forget what I had for breakfast and lunch, but I'm sure it was delicious and fattening.

M. had to leave Monday morning, so I went to the University district to walk around, go to the used book stores and generally be a bum until my flight at 4:00. At about 10:15, I get a call from my friend and they can't find her booking. After some back and forth, we figure out that, when she changed the booking on the phone with Expedia, they changed mine instead. Uh-oh. So I'm supposed to be on a plane in 45 minutes and she can't get back to work Monday afternoon. Umm. I call Qantas, and they say that since we booked through Expedia they can't help us. I call Expedia, and the supervisor there says that someone at the airport should help us. Umm. Then my mobile phone dies. Battery is dead. So basically I'm tethered to one pay phone, at which 50 cents seems to buy me approximately 22 seconds of phone time. Finally, I give up and go to the airport. By the time I get there, M. has managed to get it straightened out, she's on a 1545 flight and I'm on the 1615 that I'd wanted to begin with. Expedia is even refunding some of the money. Of course, it ruined my morning in Melbourne, and I definitely took advantage of the free alcohol on domestic Qantas flights on the way back.

Pictures:
Me on the beach in St. Kilda. Did I mention that it was about 85 degrees? Yeah, didn't think so.

2006-10-04T03:32:00.000-05:00

Sydney:

Sydney was last weekend, for Australian Labour Day, and it was pretty fantastic. I did the BridgeClimb thing, which was pretty cool if probably not worth the money. No pictures from that though, since you're not allowed to bring cameras up on the climb. It was quite an assembly line process, though. Go in, sign a release, change, put on a belt, put on the rest of the gear, practice climbing, walk out. All very carefully timed to not interfere with the groups 10 minutes ahead of and behind you. The other surprising thing, possibly a function of the holiday weekend, was that of the 11 other people in my climbing group, 10 were Aussies (most living in Sydney) and the 11th was a Namibian who'd been living in Australia for years.

Anyway, Saturday I took the ferry out to Manly beach. The ocean beach is absolutely gorgeous, lined with a row of Norfolk Island Pines. I walked out to North Head and sat in the sun and got a tan and enjoyed aerosol sunscreen and the best fish and chips I've ever eaten. The Manly Jazz festival was happening also, so I got to sit right by the ocean and listen to good music and watch the surfers and eat fresh strawberries. Did I mention the weather was amazing?

Monday I went to the Hyde Park Barracks Museum, and learned about the convicts and some f the later immigrants. And walked across the bridge and ate delicious food and walked around the Rocks. The weather? Still gorgeous. So yeah, it was a good weekend.

Pictures below:

The Harbour Bridge. The tiny red and white flag you may not be able to see is for the Sydney Swans, who unfortunately lost the Grand Final (footy... That's Aussie Rules Football) on Saturday night. The part that I climbed on is the top of the arch.

The Opera House, naturally. Couldn't not include a picture of that.

Manly Beach. Too cold for me to swim, but there were people in the water.

And...it's magpie mating season. Let's see if I get knocked off my cycle tomorrow morning.

2006-10-03T08:10:00.000-05:00

Do-overs:

It's unrealistic of me to expect that I get a do-over for this past summer just because I'm getting two summers in a row. It may be spring again, but that doesn't erase the terrible things that happened over the summer. I can't pretend that all of that never happened.

I keep trying to convince myself that I'll wake up one day and all of this won't have happened. After all, it's springtime when it should be autumn, so that summer must have all been a bad dream. I can tell her not to get into that car, because it hasn't happened yet, in alterna-verse where it's still spring.

And what do you say when strangers ask you if you have any siblings? It's a standard intro question and one that I can't deal with. I usually just say I have a brother, but I feel like somehow I'm slighting her. I have a sister too, after all.

2006-09-23T18:03:00.000-05:00

El Fin del Mundo:

Hey, I've been there. Well, not around Cape Horn; I took a 12 hour bus ride between Ushuaia and Punta Arenas. I'd love to go back to Patagonia, though not so much to Ushuaia. Who's up for it?

2006-09-23T08:26:00.000-05:00

Flowers and settling in:

I went to Floriade today, which is supposedly the biggest flower festival in the southern hemisphere. It is really pretty, mostly tulips and pansies, but some other stuff also. I also ate Italian food and tried on clothes.

I also bought some stuff for my bike: a water bottle/cage, a small air pump and a big one with a pressure gauge, bike shorts and a bright yellow vest. I still need lights in case I get stuck out a little late, a rear rack and panniers, a decent patch kit and one of those multipurpose tools. I'm going to the better bike store tomorrow.

I'm off to Sydney next weekend, then to Melbourne the weekend after. This week is actually really busy: a driving lesson on Monday, a concert (Michael Franti) on Tuesday, pub day with my office on Wednesday, and trivia on Friday. I'll only be able to bike into work on Monday and Thursday.

About half the time it's really great here. The cycling is great, I suddenly have more money than I've ever had, the work is good, and there is fun stuff to do here. The other half of the time? It's lonely, I have about 2 friends here, one of whom is about to be gone for 2 months, and the time difference makes it hard for me to even talk to my friends back home. Oh well. I think things are getting better, which is promising. Once I get a car, I'll be able to go horseback riding again, which I really miss. And be able to get out into the mountains and the desert. Hopefully soon...

2006-09-13T02:30:00.000-05:00

Sweet:

I just learned that one can buy codeine in Australia with no prescription, provided it is mixed with another medication. I am never coming back.

In other news, my sinuses no longer feel like they are about to explode. Thank God.

2006-09-12T01:35:00.000-05:00

In Canberra:

I am here. I have an apartment, a mobile phone, a driver license, a bank account, and a phone line. Hopefully I will have internet in two weeks (currently I am "borrowing" unsecured wireless). Cable seems to be a distant dream since the building wasn't wired properly for cable and they are trying to get the money to get the wiring done. That's all right. I can deal with 4 channels with crappy reception so long as I can get internet. *Fingers crossed on that.* I should find out tomorrow whether it for sure will work.

No pics yet though. Got to wait until I have an actual internet connection.

2006-08-10T17:44:00.000-05:00

10 flights:

I have scheduled in the next three weeks 4 trips, two of them one way and two through the two busiest airports in the country. I'll be on a total of ten planes.

Am I afraid? Not really. Mostly I'm preparing to be annoyed and to spend lots of exciting time in airports.

But what do you do? I have to go to this places and I sure as hell can't drive. So I'll get on 10 planes in the next three weeks and I'll play the odds and I'll somehow develop more patience to hang out in airports.

It's still not as bad as the 44 hours in transit, right?

2006-08-06T22:00:00.000-05:00

Do the ends justify the means?:

We started on an interesting conversation that never really happened tonight. Do the ends never justify the means? This is something spouted at you a lot, but I think it's a surprisingly tricky question and it took me a while to come up with a satisfactory answer. But I think I have one.

First you have to define the greatest good. If we believe that saving human life is the most important thing and that saving more lives is better than saving fewer, than it seems clear that the ends could justify the means. One can easily imagine a situation where killing one person could save many people.

But I believe that there's something worse than death, and that saving a life isn't the most important thing. Then things become a bit more interesting.

Let's consider a currently topical case. Let's assume that torturing a terrorist could produce reliable information. Should we then torture a terrorist to save innocent lives, to prevent another 9/11?

I would argue no. Our way of life is worth fighting for because we don't do things like that. We don't torture prisoners, we don't try to kill innocents even in wartime, and we punish people found guilty of doing that. Once we aren't different than (better than) the terrorists, I don't see why I should continue to fight for us.

That's sort of a long-winded way of saying that one could come up with a hypothetical in which the ends would justify the means, but in the real world, our actions have good and bad consequences. One cannot divorce the negative results of an action from its positive results. So when I torture a terrorist, I may save hundreds of lives, but I have done something fundamentally immoral, and there are consequences to that also. I pay for it by losing the moral high ground, by blurring the lines between right and wrong, between good and evil, and one day I may find myself on the wrong side of the line.

The world is a very grey place. I would hesitate to say that the ends never justify the means. But I would say, in the real world, that I can't come up with a case where I believe one should compromise one's morality to achieve a good result.

2006-08-05T21:21:00.000-05:00

J.M.M.

"The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially."

Some days are not so hard and other days are. Yesterday was a really good day and I didn't have to hold myself together along the giant faultlines running through my soul. And today I found an Easter card from my sister that had been in some trash I hadn't bothered to take out months ago and for once I was so happy about my laziness. I couldn't bring myself to read it though, I don't know why. I opened it and saw her handwriting and put it away in the section of my accordion file labelled "Jenny."

There aren't a lot of times to cry when you are sharing a two-bedroom apartment with a shiftworker and a student. I cry in the shower sometimes, maybe about once a week by now.

Jenny was such a good person. She always wanted to make everyone happy, and she always did what she thought was right. Sometimes the worst of it is the unfairness; she was on her way to a vacation she'd been looking forward to for weeks and she worked so hard and couldn't she have just gotten to enjoy the vacation?

But there's no point in thinking like that really. We wouldn't be any less sad if she'd been on her way back, and if there's any God at all, she's in heaven now and that's better than any vacation.

Now we're left to put glue on the cracks somehow, to try to remember that scar tissue is stronger than regular tissue, to keep on living. It doesn't hurt as much now as it did last month, and next month it will hurt less, and one day I'll be able to remember the happy things without thinking about the pain.

2006-03-22T07:00:00.000-06:00

Moving:

Short of some sort of catastrophe, I will be moving to Canberra, Australia for a year. I should be leaving here in June or July. Right in the middle of winter down there. Sigh.

I should have a pretty sweet apartment, so, you know, if you want to come visit, it's only a couple of hours from Sydney.

2006-03-21T15:25:00.000-06:00

Back home:

I went to London and Ljubljana last week and got back Monday. It was a very good trip. I'm lazy and my keyboard sucks, but here are some brief points:

Highlights:
1. The Daily Show is on CNN in Slovenia. I asked a German guy and a Kiwi how much of it they could understand and the answer was about half. Jokes about Mormons and with punchline Jiffylubistan were no good even to the native English speaker.
2. Old Town, Ljubljana, which was as beautiful as advertised.
3. The Skopfja Loka town museum, in the old castle. Considering how small the town is, the museum was really good. Lots of great local interest and some stuff from farther afield.
4. St Nicholas' Cathedral in Ljubljana. Beautiful pictures that remind you how many Slovenians used to make their living from the sea and how dangerous it was.
5. The outdoor market in Ljubljana. 4 delicious giant (Tarocco) blood oranges for about $0.50 US.
6. Cvicek (pronounced tswee-check-- the second c has a hat over it)- a kind of very inexpensive and very drinkable Slovene wine. Food wine only.

Lowlights:
1. Still no good Hungarian bread. Seriously, anyone who's been to a Budapest grocery store knows what I'm talking about. It's these chewy rolls that melt in your mouth and turn into some sort of goo and are easily the best bread in the world. However, it appears to be totally unavailable outside of Hungary. I've tried Vienna, Romania, Prague, Bratislava, and now Slovenia as well as more conventional places to no avail.
2. The fast food restaurant that served a dish called "Horseburger." And the little sign on the store with a picture of a horse on it. When I got closer I learned that the store was a butcher shop.
3. The fact that no one believed that I was a native English speaker. Seriously, more than once people would assume that I spoke only rudimentary traveller's English. I mean, it's good not to look American overseas, but do I really look that confused all the time?
4. Not getting to do much of the hike in Skopfja Loka because of the ice.

2006-03-12T13:39:00.000-06:00

Yet another trip:

I am going to Ljubljana, Slovenia next week for a couple of days, with London enroute (both going and coming). This is an amazing time to go to the former Eastern bloc countries, I think. Not quite as amazing as it would have been 10-15 years ago, maybe, but you still feel a real sense of change in the air.

I was in Budapest and Prague a few months before they joined the EU (and Budapest again after), Slovakia and Romania about 18 months before they are to join, and now will be in Slovenia less than a year before they are to join. The feeling of hope you get from so many of the people there, the belief that joining the west will lead to a better life for them and their children, makes travelling there a really fun experience.

What we did to central Europe after World War II was, while understandable, also a terrible thing. Abandoning the Czechs and Poles with their short-lived independence to another 50 years of being under someone else's government after what the Germans did to them (especially the Czechs, about whom the world didn't even seem to care) was morally wrong, though it probably was necessary. There was a story about an American air base in Romania a while back and a man the journalist interviewed had been there after the war. He talked about the whole village was looking to the west, waiting for the Americans to come, so that they almost didn't notice the Soviet tanks coming from the east. He said that they had been waiting for the Americans for 60 years now.

Sometimes it's nice to be reminded that even in the middle of a war that seems unwinnable but that we must fight (and I don't mean Iraq here), there are things that are better than they were a generation ago and people who are living better lives. Hope is sometimes the hardest resource to come by.

2006-03-11T09:32:00.000-06:00

Tom Fox is dead:

They found the body of American hostage Tom Fox in Iraq today. It's not much of a surprise since the video of the three others that were captured with him was released. I don't know how long he had been dead.

Still nothing on Jill Carroll.

2006-02-05T11:24:00.000-06:00

No news is no news:

I haven't posted in a while because there isn't much going on in my life.

In terms of work, I'm prepping for a trip for work in about a month and trying to decide about whether to go for a year-long job in Australia or switch to a new office when I get back from my trip. But there's nothing else I'm going to say about those here.

I've still managed not to kill myself on Ari, though I did learn why you should wear hard-soled shoes when riding. Riding in track shoes killed the soles of my feet. Still playing mah jongg. Cooking less than before. Semi-seeing a boy. Trying to decide about moving. Sleeping as much as I have time for. Finished with my Thursday night class!! That was exciting.

I'm in a rut, and until I figure out where I'm going next, there's no point in getting out of it.

2006-01-09T18:55:00.000-06:00

Do people not read?:

I was jus watching Jeopardy! and not only was there shocking geographical ignorance displayed (no one got the Final Jeopardy, with answer the Arabian Sea after a good description of its location) but nobody knew anything about European authors.

I mean, I'm not very literary, but I knew that Kundera was Czech, Raskolnikov was the main character in Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, and Gunther Grass wrote the Tin Drum. These aren't hard, but they all went dead (some guessed Tolstoy on Raskolnikov and Hesse on Tin Drum, but no one even guessed on Kundera).

Maybe I should go on Jeopardy!

2006-01-07T19:19:00.000-06:00

Plastic surgery shows:

Thanks to my current roommate, I've developed an addiction to the plastic surgery shows on Discovery Health Channel.

It turns out I feel pretty strongly about this. The 18 year old girl who just had a nose job and is now having a breast augmentation, the woman who's had about 15 procedures in her life, the overweight (and probably already at least a C cup) woman who's getting a breast augmentation, it all just makes me so sad.

There are plenty of people on these shows who really need plastic surgery. There will be someone who lost a lot of weight and has a lot of excess skin, or someone with a big birthmark on their face or a small young woman with DD breasts who needs a breast reduction or something.

But most of them, well, they don't really need a brow lift, or a breast augmentation and afterwards it looks fake, because, well it is. They can't really fight time, and the more they try, the worse it looks and the older they look.

Maybe it's easy to say this when the flight attendant still asks me if I'm at least 15, though. Maybe I'll be just as afraid of looking old when I hit 50.

2006-01-02T20:52:00.000-06:00

No more UChicago email:

NSIT figured out that I graduated, so I no longer will have UofC email. I spent some time dealing with that, so no pictures are up yet. Sorry. I did put them on my parents' computer and some of them came out really well, so hopefully soon I'll have time.

Got sick on NYE and didn't go out at all. Oh well, there's always next year.

2005-12-23T21:49:00.000-06:00

Merry Christmas, etc:

So I haven't done Christmas cards yet because I am lazy and they don't sell them at either the drugstore at work or the Safeway. God forbid that I walk the extra 30 feet to the Hallmark store that my friend works at and could give me a discount.

My last month:
Portland for Paul and Kristy's wedding!
Chile and Argentina (on which much more later)!
Sleep!
Christmas shopping!
Cute puppy!
In Atlanta for Christmas!

So yeah, I'm there. I'm hoping to do something about my South America pictures at some point this weekend, if I'm not too busy. Also hopefully a bit more of an update, since I don't have to sit at a computer all day. I might be more interested in the typing thing.

A couple of people know this already, but there might be some big news in the next two-ish weeks. Fingers crossed for me please.

2005-10-28T07:05:00.000-05:00

Old friends:

My friends from high school D-- and T-- are in town this weekend. I'm hoping to have some time to do some stuff with them, though I have to work on Saturday. Stupid work.

2005-10-24T19:05:00.000-05:00

My first jumper show:

I rode in my first jumper show on Saturday. Other than the fact that riding hungover is not fun, it went pretty well. Fly and I won our first class, a timed first jumpoff thing. It was really too fast, though. 35 seconds in the jumpoff, but we were miraculously clean. He ran my knee into a jump standard right after the jumpoff though, and I have a nice bruise. The second class was a lot more in control, but we had a rail down. Ah well, it was a good round still.

2005-10-18T20:32:00.000-05:00

Fin del Mundo:

So I'm using the excuse that the left shift key(my preferred shift key) on my laptop is broken for why I haven't updated in a while.

Anyway, I just spent an insane amount of money booking tickets to the fin del mundo, the end of the world, southern Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego. I guess it costs so much to get there because it is really the end of the world, the furthest south inhabited point is Puerto Williams on the Beagle Channel in Tierra del Fuego.

And I'm going there. In only a little over a month. Glaciers and penguins and me. I'm getting excited.

2005-09-17T23:53:00.000-05:00

Class and all that:

I'm now taking a class on Thursday nights. It is one of the worst classes I've ever taken. Maybe this is karmic payback for all the good classes that I blew off, that when I was ready to take a class again, it is a giant waste of time. I really think I was willing to pay attention, to attend the class, to not spend my time in class reading the Onion. And I get a class where I would probably get more out of reading the Onion.

The class is insanely easy, one. I think we've covered less in two weeks than we did in one week of my undergrad class and the homework is definitely way easier. No one else seems to give a damn either. Last week, the professor started to do something totally wrong (like the kind of wrong where I might have given one of my kids no credit for) and no one else comments. I think they're all just zoning. Finally I said something even though I hate correcting the professor, usually, because it was just THAT wrong. And I've never been good at the three hour at night classes (cf Byzantine History 330-610 and 610-1025, held in the Reg and featuring too much lecture for me ever, but particularly at night). So it's kind of a three strikes thing.

But-- I got my hair cut. It is very short. I won't know if I like it till I wash it and dry it myself. And today I learned much about railroads and ate much fudge and an Eggel and it was a good day. And tomorrow I am kayaking. There is no presumption of kayaking skill, so hopefully it will be fun.

2005-09-12T07:34:00.000-05:00

Hee:

Peeps go to the library...

2005-09-11T20:18:00.000-05:00

This weekend:

So I had a really good weekend, all in all. Friday night, I went to see 500 Clown Frankenstein in Baltimore (good, though I don't know the original well enough to appreciate it) and then played games.

Saturday, I went to the Laurel racetrack. It was a spur of the moment thing, since they'd just opened for the season. I got there in time for the sixth race, watched the horses get saddled for that one, and found a nice spot on the rail. There I met Jimmy, an older guy very much into racing who's thinking of buying a horse. Jimmy really likes to talk, so in the two hours I was there, I learned a lot about him. I also met Tony, Jimmy's possible future trainer, who really likes to gamble. I did see one stakes race with a half-brother to Afleet Alex, but the rest of the horses were nothing special. It was a VERY good time.

Sunday, I went to see a movie with A--. Movie was good, and somehow in the combination of the movie (The Constant Gardener) and talking to her I figured something out. I made the wrong choice back there a way. I knew I had to give something up, and I thought in London I'd figured out that math was what I couldn't give up. But I was wrong. Math is something I like doing, and something that I will miss when I am no longer doing it, but it is not something that is a part of me. Math is not who I am. Travelling is. Not just travelling on my vacation but living abroad, and not just in English-speaking countries.

I'm restless, I think. I love going into a new city, a place where I haven't made any mistakes yet, a place that's not full of regrets. Once it gets too full of my memories, it's time for me to move on. I thought that I could give this up and maybe it would even be better for me, but I can't. I don't feel right here.

So what does this mean for me? Well, for right now, not a lot. It means that right now I'm in the last math class that I will take, at least for the foreseeable future. It means I'm going to try to get into an office where I can do some travelling in the winter. It means that I am going to take the Foreign Service exam next spring. But I'm not just going to up and quit my job or anything like that. I am going to remember though. Remember how going into London felt, remember Prague and Ireland and Costa Rica. Remember what it meant to be happy, rather than just to be not unhappy.

2005-09-01T17:16:00.000-05:00

Velma the Volvo:

So last night I had real car problems. Right after I dropped A-- off at the Metro, I tried to make a left turn, and the power steering had died. Like, I was using all the swimming muscles that I had to make the car turn. I drove up until I could get to a good place and pulled off. Talked to my mom and my dad, and my dad said I probably wouldn't mess up the car driving it any more so I decided to try to make it home.

I took the Beltway (apparently manual steering is better at higher speeds), and as I got to Georgia Ave, I noticed that the engine temp gauge was really high. I pulled off again, and this time call edAAA. Of course it's going to be two hours, but I'm priority since I was sitting on the Beltway. I called D-- and my mother. Some nice couple stops, but they can't really help me (did I mention it's about 11 pm by now, so it's dark. I did pop the hood and could see a broken belt dangling below the engine). My awesome roommate D-- called back and told me I couldn't sit out there by myself, so she came out to sit with me. Another car has broken down on the left shoulder about 100 yards back and two state troopers moved him to the right, put some flares behind him, and didn't bother to stop and ask if I'm OK. D-- got there about midnight, not long after AAA called to tell me 10-15 minutes.

About 25 minuts later, the tow truck driver showed up, hooked up the car and took it to the Savco in Laurel. He was awesome, he told me he could tow the car to Alaska if I wanted and told us not to drive slow on his account (we were leading in D--'s car). He also admired D--'s toes. We got the 15 miles to Laurel for free since she had a plus member card. I should find out how much more that is, it might be worth it. Got home about 1:15.

This morning I discovered that three belts failed, including the power steering belt, because the crank pulley was broken. The crank pulley is a dealer part, so it cost about $250. The whole thing was $450, but they did give me a free oil change, which was very nice. It is fixed now, and this *might* fix the AC (one of the broken belts was the AC belt).

I'm also suffering from the cold of death (maybe it's even the flu, since I think I have a fever, but it didn't come on like the flu and it's early in the year) so I skipped work without feeling guilty at all. Sleeping a lot tonight!!

2005-08-29T19:53:00.000-05:00

If it weren't probably illegal in Alabama, I would marry Trader Joe's. Even though the ones in Maryland can't sell alcohol, they still rock. For those of us who don't like to cook, the rice bowls are cheap, reasonably healthy, and delicious and microwave in 4 minutes. They're Weight Watchers as it should have been. And I got delicious baby peppers, and cheap good cheese, and a Greek pizza that was very good....

Also, I've decided that I'm going to attempt to go through the Czech beers at the Brickskeller. One down, thirteen to go.

I like Czech beer because I can associate it with a very good memory. My second to last night in Prague, E--, C--, C-- and I went to an empty bar and had a bunch of very cheap Pilsners. Then, drunk, we went to the Charles Bridge to see it at night. It was amazingly creepy, since you were never sure that everything you saw was a gargoyle and not someone hanging out in the shadows. Once we managed to scare the hell out of each other, we walked back to the Mala Strana, to our awesome flat.

2005-08-15T20:06:00.000-05:00

Romania, III:

We spent the evening and the next day walking around Cluj, a university town known for its cosmopolitan attitude and mix of cultures. The Uniate Church was founded here. Unusual in this part of the world, the university is secular and the students are a mix of Hungarian and Romanian. The university is the only place where Romanian and Hungarian mix, though. The city was run by a mayor who insisted on putting the Romanian flag everywhere as a reaction to Hungarian chauvinism. The main square is the site of the Hungarian cathedral, but there is another beautiful square a couple of blocks away on which sits the Romanian Orthodox cathedral and the Romanian national theatre. The city is beautiful, with parks and squares, a cemetery on one hill and a giant cross on the other.

We climbed up the hill with the giant cross and sat on a rock wall. As we're sitting there talking about nothing, a boy leaned in between us, directing his friend in Romanian, "take my picture." He threw his arms around us both and the friend took the picture. He then continued to climb. We got up a few minutes later and went to the plinth of the cross. There was a larger group of boys, probably in their late teens up there, including our friends from before. "Please stop. You wait here," one said in English. He gave his digital camera to a friend and came up between us, throwing an arm around my shoulder. Another boy came up behind us too and attempted to get between the first boy and T, but he spoke harshly and the boy backed away. We decided he wanted to look like a pimp with two American chicks.

2005-08-14T10:48:00.000-05:00

Old friends:

My good friend from high school was up in DC yesterday (for one day only) to interview for a job. She really liked the job, so fingers crossed that she gets it. It would be great to have her here!

We ate, wandered aimlessly around between Dupont and the Mall, and then I took her to the airport. Where as it turned out, her flight was ridiculously delayed. But National is a very attractive airport, if lacking in food options outside security. Not that there are none, but there aren't many, and there wasn't anywhere we could just get something to drink and sit for awhile.

It's funny to talk to someone you've known for that long. So many of our stories are the same, the last time she was in DC, we were together, on our ninth grade class trip. I remember New York much better from that trip. The Empire State Building with Tim. Eating in the nine story mall. Buying pizza near Times Square (but not too near. This was 1997 and we were in high school). The woman who got on our bus and told us that her son invented buses.

I remember the Air and Space Museum, and the Holocaust Museum, after which even our ninth grade selves were silent. I remember finding my uncle's name on the Vietnam Wall. I remember not going to the White House. I think we went to the Capitol, but Congress was not in session. But otherwise, that trip to DC is sort of a blur. I'd been there before, with my parents, when I couldn't have been much more than 5. From that time, I remember the house where Lincoln died. The blood-stained mattress he died on scared me as a kid, in a way that meant I couldn't stop looking. I remember my aunt's dog, Blarney, who knocked me over with kisses when we first met. I remember taking my first taxicab ride, to the church that my aunt went to that was downtown somewhere.

2005-08-14T09:59:00.000-05:00

A scandalous history:

I just finished reading A Scandalous History of the Roman Emperors, and I wasn't really scandalised at all. I mean, Tiberius liked little boys, Augustus was sort of a hypocrite, Caligula didn't actually name his horse consul... Maybe it would have been more scandalising if I hadn't already heard it before.

The book did have an interesting section on Roman daily life. It included a discussion of cooking and specifically baked goods, which was had been talking about at mah jongg about a week before. Apparently, the Romans baked bread before discovering yeast, so was it just a flat bread? It's actually called maza, is that related to matzah? How were cakes baked before the use of baking soda? I know that the Romans made filo dough-type pastries, but did they make other cakes?

I don't know why I find the history of baked goods so fascinating, but if anyone knows any of this (or any other interesting tidbits about ancient baking), I'd love to hear it.