Entry 29: Another Quick Post

We are back. It was fun.

That is all. I promise to write much more and post some pictures some time this week. For now, I have to unpack and catch up on work and experience the general downer that is returning from a vacation.

Entry 28: Pre-Vanuatu

This will be a shorty of an entry as S and I are headed to Vanuatu (a small island nation in the South Pacific) for a long weekend very early tomorrow morning, and I still need to do a few things before we go. S has been told by a bunch of people that Vanuatu is very beautiful, so since we are so close now, we figured, why not?

I’m really hoping it doesn’t rain. Actually, I wouldn’t mind a little bit. A passing thunder storm might be cool, but I definitely want some time of lazing on the beach and enjoying the sun.

I’m also really hoping that I’m able to post this entry tonight. Our Internet is running extremely slowly, because we went over our monthly transmission allotment of 50GB, and when that happens apparently things just run really slowly. We actually hit 62GB in 20 days, so we are going to have to up our package to 200GB/mo. for $20 extra. That should be enough to satisfy our rapacious Internet appetites.

By the way, the monetary unit of Vanuatu is the vatu, which I know from playing Scrabble, but never knew the definition of until today. It seems like the vast majority of words I don’t know the definition of, but know from Scrabble (which is many), end up being one of four things: an animal, a plant, a foreign monetary unit, or a letter from a foreign alphabet.

Entry 27: Absentmindedness and nostalgia

I don’t really like the stereotype of the absentminded academic, but I must admit, sometimes it fits me. A few days ago there was a perfect example of this. S has a French class that she goes to on Wednesday nights on campus, so on those days I will stay late, go to the gym on campus, and then we will ride the bus home together after her class. Well, I just completely forgot about it last Wednesday. I got on the bus at the usual time, went to the gym near our apartment at the usual time, worked out, and then came home at the usual time. When I arrived at our apartment S wasn’t home (she went to class), which I thought was weird, so I got out my phone to call her and noticed I had a missed a call from her, and she had sent me the following text, “Babe where r u? Am at ur office”. That’s when I finally remembered. Oops. My bad.

S, thankfully, wasn’t too annoyed. She wasn’t relying on me for anything other than company on the bus ride home, so it’s not like I completely messed up her schedule, but still. I felt bad about it, so in addition to giving her a heartfelt apology, I bought a bottle of wine and a piece of chocolate peanut butter pie (good thing we live right by a bottle shop and about ten cafes). That mostly smoothed things over. I guess gifts are a good way to avoid the doghouse, at least for minor infractions. I doubt wine and pie would work if I tried to go Tiger Woods on her.

It’s a miserable day today weather-wise. Late last night it started dumping rain and just didn’t let up. It’s supposed to continue tomorrow as well, which is unfortunate since my route to work involves a decent amount of walking, and I don’t like getting wet. I did shell out some dough for a nice umbrella though. After my $5 one was completely destroyed by a mild breeze, I realized it makes sense to get something decent.

Luckily, yesterday before the rainstorm came through S and I were able to get a nice walk to the beach. The weather was a bit overcast and windy, but warm enough. Overcast, windy days at the beach make me quite nostalgic. They remind me of trips to Long Beach, WA where I would go with my family and family friends to vacation sometimes throughout my childhood, and Cannon Beach, OR where I would go with my friend J and his parents (they were divorced and would take us for a week a piece) during junior high. I have very vivid memories of listening to a specific mixed tape on a boom box with a beach fire going and haystack rock in the skyline. The tape included Helmet, Alice In Chains, The Sugar Cubes, and The Lemonheads (early 90s classics).

[Long Beach, Washington. Great place, but I find the sign's claim dubious.]

[Haystack Rock, Cannon Beach, Oregon. You might recognize it from "The Goonies".]

Speaking of being in junior high, there were some kids at the beach of about that age that were goofing around and doing back flips off the pathway ledge onto the sand a few feet below. It was pretty impressive. I could relate. Not that my friends or I could do anything as cool as back flips, but I remember being that age, too old to “play”, too young to drive, where you’d say, “I’m bored, let’s go to [public place within walking distance] and do [pointless activity]”. Chris Rock does a funny bit about this, where in response to everybody clamoring about the need for teens to have activities, like midnight basketball, to keep them out of trouble, Rock says something to the effective of, “Whatever happened to just being bored?” It’s funny because it’s true.

In other news, I have noticed a somewhat popular men’s hairstyle here is the mohawk-mullet. It comes in chic,

[Sexy Spanish soccer star Cristiano Renaldo.]

white trash,

[Joe Schmo.]

and my personal favorite Bosworth. (Even though probably nobody here has ever heard of Brian Bosworth*.)

[NFL bust and Stone Cold star Brian Bosworth.]

I took a great picture of some dude at a restaurant with a sweet mohawk-mullet, but I can’t figure out how to send a pic from my phone to an email address. If I ever do, I will post it. The funniest part is that the dude’s son had the exact same hairstyle. He was too wily for me to discreetly get a photo though.

*Brian Bosworth is best known for a single play in which he was overpowered by Bo Jackson on a touchdown run. Although, in watching the video it’s a wonder why. Jackson definitely gets the better of "The Boz", but it’s really nothing special. You see that type of play in every NFL game.

Entry 26: Dinner and a Movie

Last night it was dinner and a movie for S and me. We went to a Thai restaurant on our street. With Thai cuisine, I’m always torn between curry and noodles. I went with the curry which was a good choice, as it was quite tasty. The food was good enough to overcome the so-so décor. I have noticed décor is suddenly an important factor for me when evaluating a restaurant. (I must be getting older or gayer.) I figure if I’m shelling out a bunch of money on a meal I want to be comfortable and enjoy the entire experience. Things like layout, lighting, chair type, and background music matter to me much more now than they used to. Background music can be a big one, especially at Asian restaurants, as they often play this god-awful brand of easy listening music that is like taking a cheese grater to the eardrum. It was cranked up in full effect when we walked in, and we were seated right under a speaker, so I was worried, but the place quickly filled up and the music was drowned out by background conversations, which was good.

The restaurant was obvious family owned*, and they had a girl of about ten (literally) working the register and as a quasi-busgirl. At one point they forgot our drinks, so I was looking to catch somebody’s attention, and the little girl noticed me and came over to see what I wanted. After the exchange S said, “I can’t believe you got a 10-year old girl to get our drinks!” “She works here!” I replied, “What am I supposed to do?” I don’t think S noticed here working. She thought I just asked some little Asian girl who was hanging around to get our drinks.

We saw the movie “Special Relationship.” It chronicles the relationship between Tony Blair (Michael Sheen) and Bill Clinton (Dennis Quaid), particularly concerning the Monica Lewinsky scandal and the Kosovo quagmire.** It wasn’t terrible, but I wouldn’t say it was great. Quaid mostly failed as Clinton. He had the voice down, but he turned him into a caricature, which really detracted from the movie.

Dennis Quaid as President Clinton. It was a solidly mediocre performance by Quaid.

It was a mostly forgettable movie. The most notable thing about going to see it is that, literally, we were the only people in the theater. It’s was sorta weird. You can talk during the movie and be as loud as you like which is nice, but at the same time, you can't help but think, “what’s the point in paying $30 to come here when we could watch a movie alone for free at home?” I guess the answer is that it’s nice to feel like you are having a night out sometimes even if you just end up watching a movie alone.

Well, time to go. We have to go grocery shopping and then we are going to another BBQ at H’s – two weeks in a row.

* From where we were sitting we could see one of the employees taking a break and eating. She was wearing a pink sweatshirt that said “Playboy” on the back, and she pulled an iPad out of a Hello Kitty sleeve. I’m not trying to stereotype, but if I gave you one guess at her ethnicity, what would it be? Jewish?

** When we got home, S and I googled Slobodan Milosevic and were reminded that he died of heart failure during his war crimes trial. Is that not the best case scenario? You've got this evil despot accused of almost unspeakable atrocities, you are trying to prosecute him, it's a touchy political situation, everybody's got opinions, you're not sure how to proceed, and then the guy dies... well, problem solved.

Entry 25: Olio

Everyday my bus drives by a giant anti-smoking billboard with a picture of a clogged artery. It looks like a cannoli made of swollen, infected flesh instead of dough. It’s disgusting. It’s not the only one I’ve seen in the city either. Honestly, I would rather live with a little more secondhand smoke in the air than start my day by looking at giant images of a plaque-clogged arteries. By the way, isn’t the message “smoking is bad”, already out enough? I think we get it. We seem to do this thing a lot in the States (and perhaps Down Under too) where we identify that something is becoming a problem, which is good, but then we way overstate it and overreact, so that the solution is almost as bad as the problem.*

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Our stove/oven is perhaps the most annoying appliance I’ve ever had to use. On the oven dial, all the settings are in icons not words, so if I want to cook something on broil, I have to reference the manual to find out which icon represents broil. It’s not like the pictures are intuitive, either (oh, two wavy lines represent bake, of course). If one needs a manual to figure out the basic functions of your oven, you’ve failed as a manufacturer.

The stove is one of those completely flat electric stoves (no coils). First off, I prefer gas many times over, because it’s much easier to set the temperature correctly when you can see the flame, but that’s not my biggest gripe with our stove. My biggest gripe is that the on/off “button” (which is just a circle) is slightly temperamental so sometimes you have to press a few times to get it to go. I find myself sliding my thumb all around it, applying different amounts of pressure on different points, before it goes. Why design it this way? Why can’t you have a prominent on/off button or switch?

I feel the same way about my iPod, by the way. Why on earth is the on/off button the same as the play/pause button? I have to press down on it with just the right amount of pressure to get it to turn off. It’s an amazing piece of technology, and yet for some reason the simplest function is extremely annoying to utilize. It makes no sense.

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The other day at H’s, I was looking through his musical selection for something to play, and I put on The Backstreet Boys as a joke. Everybody booed and demanded I change it and started busting my chops, including H. I thought that was funny since I pulled it from his collection. How can you make fun of somebody for playing your music?

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I gave up on Catch-22 after about 100 pages. I just didn’t like it. Now, I’m bookless, but S put John Krakauker’s Pat Tillman book on order at the library at for me, so I’m waiting for that.

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A first-person account by a former NFL agent (weird, the first hit on Google was a link to my old home town paper, the Bellingham Herald) admitting he paid college players has piqued an ongoing sports-fan debate about whether or not college athletic stars are adequately compensated. I’m strongly of the opinion that they are not. On the contrary, I think they are often unjustly exploited to a very large degree. It’s a bit absurd to me that as a graduate student who did a relatively small amount of teaching, I was paid a stipend of about $20,000 a year, but the members of the basketball team who filled a 20,000 seat arena 15 times a year were not allowed a cent.

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*I tried to find this clip from The Simpsons on youtube, but couldn’t. It’s quite funny though. The scene is that Homer just took a driving test at the DMV, but his sisters in-law, who work at the DMV (and who are constantly feuding with Homer) failed him.

Marge: [walking up] So, Homer, how'd you do?
Homer: [glum] Well, I...
Super: Ladies, please don't tell me you're smoking in a government building. Because that is precisely the kind of infraction that can cost a couple of sisters their promotion.
[they gasp, and stammer]
Homer: [chuckles to himself] [sees Marge looking unhappy]
[sighs] I'll never forgive myself for this.
[grabs both cigarettes, drags]
Super: Wait a minute! Those are yours, sir?
Homer: [monotone] Yes. [coughs] I am in flavor country.
Super: [skeptical] Both of them?
Homer: [hacks] It's a big country.
Super: Ladies, I apologize. And you, sir, are worse than Hitler. [she slaps him]

Entry 24: Concerts, Festivals, and Enduros

This turned out to be an action-packed weekend. On Saturday evening, S and I went to see the Robertson Brothers with a few others. If you don’t know who the Robertson Brothers are then you are probably not alone, so I’ll fill you in. They’re an Australian, 70s-style rock group. They do a lot of covers of bands like America, CCR, and The Doobie Brothers. They aren’t bad. The lead singer has a cool, twangy, nasally voice, that works for him, and the other musicians are good, as well. I wasn’t super into the show, however, because they played a lot of slow, sad songs, and didn’t really let it fly. They also have a guy in the band who does nothing but sing backup vocals. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before. No instrument, no dancing, no nothing. (He must be the Daniel Baldwin of the Robertson Brothers.) He just sits in the back on a stool looking like Corey from Pawn Stars and every now and again he’ll chime in with some harmony. Oh, he also points to the other members of the band when they’re doing their solos.

Sunday morning we are attempting to sleep in after a relatively late night, and at about 7am I start hearing what sounds like metal poles clanking together. It keeps me up for a while, but eventually I fall back asleep, only to be reawakened about an hour and a half later to somebody doing what sounds like a mike check (one-two, one-two, one-two-three, one-two-three). At this point, despite my sleepy daze, I do the math (metal poles = tents, tents + mike check = street festival = loud noises). I know what’s going on, but I pretend like I don’t and try to go back to sleep. All I’m asking for is another hour and a half, but it is not to be. I lie in bed for a while, but my hyper-vigilance has kicked in, so I can’t sleep. Eventually, I get out of bed and take a peek outside. Yep, it’s a street fair alright.

[Scene from our balcony Sunday morning.]

It looked sorta fun, but it ended up being more of a nuisance than anything else. The sidewalks of our street are hard enough to navigate already. With this bigass festival going on, they became almost unusable. The street itself, which was shutdown to cars, was even slower-moving. I wouldn’t have cared, but we had places to go and things to do. And by places I mean H’s house. And by things I mean eating and drinking and watching cars go around in circles.

[Dancers getting down to Gloria Estefan.]

H hosted a BBQ at his place for the Island Enduro. An enduro is a very long motorsports race, and for as big as a sports fan as I am, I have to say car racing is bor-ing. This particular race started at 10:30am and ended at 5:30pm – 7 hours! Then, after it was over, H put on a Formula 1 race (slightly different looking cars going around in circles). Despite the racing, it was a great time – lots of good company and good eating and drinking. And I made sure to only overeat by a normal ridiculous amount. I didn’t overeat by a ridiculously ridiculous amount, so this time I didn’t have to spend a large portion of the night in a potato-bug position on the bathroom floor.

Entry 23: Vetoed

[If my entry were a ghost, S would be Ray Stanz.]

My midweek blog entry got vetoed by S this week. I read almost every entry to her after I finish, and occasionally she asks me to omit something small, but this is the fist time an entire entry got nixed. It wasn't anything bad, but apparently not something I am supposed to post on the Internet. I tried to change it to be about my new fictional American friend T who just happens to have many of the same characteristics as S, but it was getting too ridiculous, so I just scrapped it altogether. C'est la vie.

(By the way, is the Ghostbuster sign not one of the greatest movie icons of all time?)

Entry 22: Labor Day Weekend

It’s Labor Day weekend here in Australia. I like Labor Day. It seems weird to me to have an entire holiday based on the process of giving birth, but whatever, I appreciate the day off regardless. S is going to spend tomorrow evening in Sydney and then go on some sort of day trip with a newfound friend of hers who lives there on Monday. I thought about going, but I’m not so interested in the day trip, and if I just go for Sunday and then come back on Monday I’m giving up a large part of the long weekend, which I can’t really afford to do, because I have to start put my resume together and looking for jobs. It seems like I shouldn’t have to do this, being that I just started my current job a few months ago, but if we stay in Oz only through my current contract, which seems likely at this moment, then I’ll need a job next year, and this is when a lot of academic jobs start accepting applications. It’s such an arduous, unfun process, but so be it.

In other news, the Collingwood Magpies won the AFL premiership final rematch by 56 points. I know all my readers were dying to know the result. Speaking of sports I’m on the verge of winning my fantasy baseball league. I’m not bragging, but I’m a damn good fantasy baseball manager. Barring an epic collapse in the next few days I will have won the championship in one league, and finished with the best overall record in another (although I lost my first playoff game in that league). Moneyball, baby. I’m good at finding value (or lack thereof) in players when it’s not obvious to the common fan. It’s impossible to win all the time in fantasy baseball, there is way too much randomness, but I’m usually able to tilt the scales in my favor.

Anyway, daylight savings time starts here this week and ends in the States next week. That means that in two weeks we will go from being 14 hours ahead of the east coast US (17 west coast) to being 16 hours ahead of the east coast US (19 west coast). This hopefully will not have any effect on them showing live NFL games.

S hasn’t had much to do lately which is not good. She gets bored and antsy when she doesn’t have “things” to do during her day. I’m the opposite. I love doing nothing (which isn’t actually nothing, but just the things that I want to do), especially if I know it’s temporary. For me, it’s great to be on a downtime at work, or to have a job waiting for you that you haven’t yet started, because you can goof off and you don’t have the pressure of needing to find a job weighing on you. In fact, if I could live in a perpetual state of being about to start a job, I probably would do so. S wouldn’t though, so hopefully she finds more to do soon. She certainly wouldn’t make a good retiree. I think I’m going to make a great retiree. I mean, I actually have to have a career to retire from first, but after that.