Entry 41: Christmas Break

Merry Christmas everybody.

In about an hour I'm going to meet my parents who are in Australia for the holidays. I probably will not get a chance to post an entry for a week or so. Just be patient loyal readers. I will be back.

Entry 40: Hardscrabbled

I recorded my highest ever Scrabble score a few days ago in an online game. I put up 640 points besting my previous high mark of 633. A big difference, however, is that the previous game was a regular game, whereas the recent game was a speed game. I only had 3 minutes total on my clock (plus one additional minute at a ten point penalty). I made 16 plays in 3 minutes and 34 seconds, so my average time per play was 13.4 seconds, and I averaged 49.2 points a play. That, my friends, is pretty damn good.

To prove it, I took a snapshot of the board.

[This board represents my finest achievement, Scrabble or otherwise, to date.]

You’ll notice in the upper right corner that I’ve labeled my user handle for the site and my score. It says shortymcsh, that’s me, 640 points. (My handle is short for Shorty McShortGame. I ran out of characters.) You’ll also notice in the upper left corner that my opponent scored 367 points. Poor twopine1! He/she never had a chance. The tiles I played are shown in red, the tiles twopine1 played are shown in blue.

The big plays came early. My opponent hit the bingo HANGERS (a bingo is when all seven tiles in your rack are played in one turn -- it’s a 50-point bonus) putting an H in the top row. I then counter-bingoed with REDHEADS, covering two triple word scores in the process, so not only did I get the 50-point bonus, but my point total was multiplied by nine (triple-triple) giving me a 158-point play.

On my very next play, I hit another bingo LIMNERS (a word you would only know from Scrabble) to give me 237 points after three plays. A couple plays later I put down another bingo AVERTING (76 points), then parlayed the X into a big score AX (47 points), and then found myself with DELIVER in my rack. The only place I could see to play it would have required me to make the words LOWED and SIZER in the process. I knew the latter was a valid play, but I wasn’t 100% confident about the former. It was too good to pass up though, so I made the play. In fact, LOWED is valid. It’s the past tense of low, which as a verb means, “to utter the sound characteristic of cattle”.

In retrospect, I now see that instead of DELIVER, I could have played either RELIVED or REVILED making LOWER and SIZED in the process, both of which are obviously valid, so I didn’t even need to take a risk. That’s the type of thing I almost certainly would’ve seen in a regular game, but didn’t have time to look for in a short game.

I also see now that I could have had an even higher score had I tried to play my last two tiles -- D and I -- optimally. I played DIT for 4 points just to end the game, put I could have first played QI for 11 points, and then after my opponent played (he/she had A and U so he/she couldn’t have ended the game) I could have played the D to make BED/DEF (spot L6) for 13 points. This sequence would have netted me 18 points, so I could’ve had 658 points (668 total since I had a 10-point clock penalty). Man, I should have done that. Oh well, I’ll remember it for the next time this exact same sequence of words is played.

Entry 39: Bah Humbug!

Christmas is almost here!

To which I say, “meh”.

[What's so nibby merry about it!]

The other day my sister told me in an email that I’m more Scrooge than Cratchit. Sadly, my wife agrees. “You are like Scrooge… sometimes,” she said. (And I think the “sometimes” was just added as a softener.) They might be right. The older I get the more I think this Scrooge guy was on to something. Who wants to be bothered with all this yuletide nonsense? Let’s take a quick look at the pros and cons of Christmas.

CONS

The tree: First off, you have to go out and get it somehow. Cutting one down yourself usually means manual labor, being out in the cold, and missing football games (three things I generally try to avoid). Even if you just buy one from a lot, you still have to rope it to your car, and lug it in to your home. You get pitch and pine needles all over the place. Then, after Christmas, it dies and you have this giant rotting thing that you don’t know what to do with. It’s a lot of trouble just to see some plastic orbs dangling from some branches, if you ask me.

The decorations: Similar to the tree. Very low reward to effort ratio. They are fine if somebody else puts them up. I have a friend whose mom has a massive Dickens Village collection. I mean massive. It can fill up multiple rooms. It's so over-the-top that it's sorta cool, but I still can't imagine ever thinking, "You know what I'm gonna do? Spend a bunch of money on a bunch of porcelain figurines and buildings, so that once a year I can spend a day setting them up, so that two weeks later I can spend a day putting them away again."

The baking: Since my sister couldn’t send us food internationally, she sent us a family recipe for these delicious turtle cookies. I am planning on making them, but I’m not happy I have to do it myself. Just getting the ingredients and the pan is probably going to require a dedicated trip to the supermarket. For somebody who hates shopping as much as I do, that’s a big deal.

The shopping: See above. And is there a worst place to be than a mall around Christmas time? Everything I hate about malls is intensified tenfold during the holiday season.

The gift giving: I’ve already covered my feelings on gift giving in a previous entry, so I won’t go into it again.

[One of the stranger collaborations I've seen, David Bowie and Bing Crosby singing noels. Here's a link to a clip of them doing Little Drummer Boy a capella. A funny thing about the clip is the forced-acting, porn-movie-style intro: just get to the music already!]

The music: I actually like a lot of Christmas songs. I just hate hearing them over and over and over (especially if being played poorly on a pocket trumpet two feet from my front door). Also, there are all these weird versions, like you’ll hear a Muzak version of White Christmas that completely ruins the song. And I absolutely cannot stand any songs by the Chipmunks or the one where the kid sings about wanting his two front teeth for Christmas. The latter is probably the worst song I’ve ever heard, yuletide or otherwise.

[When I finally get around to siring some offspring, I can only hope that they don't like this annoying, unfunny trio.]

The movies: A Christmas Story is excellent, but that’s about it (and I’ve seen it somewhere between ten and fifty times). My mom loves It’s a Wonderful Life, but I could never get into it. It’s a lot of Jimmy Stewart prattling on in an old-timey manner. Also, there is a mentally challenged angel involved somehow, and scenes of stars in space talking to each other.

PROS

The eggnog: It’s a delicious drink.

That’s it, those are my lists.

OK, I also love the family and friends and the parties. In fact, we had our department holiday party a few days ago. Here Christmas parties are quite different, because they’re in the summer. Instead of campy sweaters, turkey dinners, and sitting by the fire, it’s shorts, picnics, and cricket.

We literally played cricket (see my Facebook page for a pic of me in the field). I wasn’t bad either. I wanted to swing the cricket bat like a baseball bat, and I still don’t have a complete grasp of the rules (I’m getting there though), but for a friendly game I could play without embarrassing myself (which is more than I can say for a few of the other participants). I got a couple of good wallops in with the bat, I made a few nice catches in the field, and I made a few nice bowls. The great thing about cricket is that it’s such a slow-paced game and the playing field is so large (there is no foul ground like in baseball) that even if you don’t like playing sports, as long as you like lazing, you can still participate. Just grab a beer, stand in the shade, and hope the ball doesn’t come your way.

I’ll leave you with two cricket clips. The first is Yuvraj Singh belting six sixes in an over (I’m learning the lingo). The second is a fantastic catch by Justin Kemp set to Carl Orff’s O Fortuna.

Ps – I listened to Adam Carolla’s latest podcast yesterday, and guess what he was complaining about. The funny pages, and how they are not funny. It's strange how he talks about that one day after I post a similar discussion on my blog. I'm not accusing anybody of stealing my material... I'm just saying...

Entry 38: Mosquitoes, God, and Adam Carolla

Apparently mosquitoes do not prefer my blood, which is a good thing for me. My university was built on swampland and it is infested with mosquitoes. Thankfully, though, they tend to leave me alone. My coworkers frequently complain about being bitten (as does S on the occasions she’s on campus). They burn incense in their offices and spray deet all over their bodies, but not me. I might find the odd bite once in a while, but it’s extremely disproportionate for how often I see a mosquito buzzing around my office. I’d say I swat down about five a day, and I encounter another two or three that get away.

[Incidental fact, Gary Larson went to the same high school I did (long before me, obviously).]

Every time I’m about to squash one, I’m reminded of a Family Circus cartoon in which Jeffy is sitting in church obviously being annoyed by a bug of some sort and the caption reads, “Do you think God would mind if I killed this ‘skeeto?” I never really liked Family Circus. Then again I never really liked most of the comic strips that I used to read in the daily newspaper as a kid. Calvin and Hobbes and The Far Side were excellent, but that’s about it. I definitely didn’t like the older comics (Family Circus, Dennis the Menace, Blondie, Peanuts, etc.). I think the reason The Far Side was so popular is because it revolutionized comics. It was the first one to actually be funny.

[I couldn't find the one I reference, but this one is even more hilarious.]

Anyway, the relationship between mosquitoes and God is an interesting one to me. The existence of the former doesn’t exactly bode well for the existence of the latter, in my opinion. When I kill a mosquito I find it extremely hard to believe that anything profound happens. It either falls to the floor and I ground it into the carpet with my shoe, or, in the more unfortunate case for me, it splatters on the palm of my hand and I have to clean its remains off with a napkin. I don’t think it has a soul or that there was a divine purpose for its existence. It was just one of the unthinkably many indistinguishable, meaningless mosquitoes that have ever lived. So, my train of thought goes, if that’s the case, then why is my existence any different? I never have a satisfactory answer. Mentally, I’m obviously the superior creature, and I’m aware of my own purposelessness, but does that (somewhat paradoxically) give my life purpose? I don't think so.

[One of the many The Far Side cartoons featuring God.]

If I were a man of faith I’m sure I could pretty easily reconcile this, and it wouldn’t bother me, but I’m not. I never have been. My parents raised me and my siblings in a very irreligious manner. It’s something that I’ve always appreciated. Not being religious doesn’t get nearly enough credit. You get to spend your Sundays doing things that are actually enjoyable, you aren’t racked with guilt every time you wake up with morning wood, and you don’t have to worry about “God’s plan” or living up to some unrealistic holy standard or obeying some arcane, cryptic holy text. It’s quite nice to not be religious, but it doesn’t get enough love. Star athletes and musicians are always on about God this and God that, and they often wear religious accessories (because as a friend of mine once said, nothing exemplifies humility like a $10,000 jewel-encrusted crucifix necklace). If I were a star professional athlete, every time I gave an interview I’d say, “I owe all my success to my lack of faith. I knew it was all on me, so I trained hard and it paid off.” Either that or instead of pointing to the sky in an exalted manner after making a good play, I’d wag my finger at the sky in an angry manner, after making a bad play. If you can thank the Lord when you win, can’t you blame the Lord when you lose? “Unfortunately, the good Lord just didn’t give me the ability to get the ball in the end zone. What could I do?”

[Do you think there will ever be a Satan-worshiping slugger who points to the ground in exaltation every time he hits a home run?]

So yeah, I’m not religious. I’m nothing – not spiritual, not agnostic, nothing. I don’t even say I’m atheist, because then you run into the “it takes just as much faith to be an atheist” argument, which I find extremely tiring, so I sidestep it. I’m just nothing. Whatever the default setting is, I’m on it. Don’t get me wrong, if there is some sort of divine master plan, I’m all for it. If, when I die something cool happens, like the mystery of the universe is explained to me, or my soul lives for eternity, that would be awesome. I’m just not holding out hope. That’s all.

On a very tangentially related note I recently bought the audio version of Adam Carolla’s book, In Fifty Years We’ll All Be Chicks. (Adam is outspoken about his atheism, which gives me a bit of a segue.) It’s OK, not bad, not great. I’m a big Adam Carolla fan, but his thing is free-flow conversation. On the radio, with guests, when he’s completely off-the-cuff he’s hysterical. With scripted material he’s mediocre. I never really liked his shows on Comedy Central (The Man Show and Crank Yankers), but I love his podcasts. In fact, the main reason I bought the book is because I felt compelled since I listen to his free podcasts so often, and I’m a big of that type of pay-if-you-listen, quasi-honor-system business model for things like podcasts.

On that note, I leave you with a link to a clip of Adam Carolla with Ann Coulter. It's pretty funny and very short.

Entry 37: Inconsideration and Annoyance

[The pocket trumpet. My new least-favorite instrument.]

The other day I was going to see a woman in our department to get some reimbursements squared with my trip to New Zealand. She’s at the end of the hall outsider her office, so I ask her if she has a minute, and she says does and to come with her. Just as we’re walking into her office, a guy from the department, who’ve I’ve seen, but don’t know very well, grabs her attention. They exchange a few words, and it turns out that he basically needs the same thing done that I need done. Gradually their conversation progresses, so that instead of just a quick question or two, she’s actually helping him with his stuff, instead of helping me with my stuff, even though I was there first. She sorta realizes this and says, “Oh sorry D, did you have something really important to take care of.”

“Well,” I say, “I wanted to do the same thing as he’s doing.”

“A bit maddening isn’t it?” he asks, and then goes right back to it like he’s not even cognizant of the fact that he completely aced me out.

I just awkwardly stand there for a few moments while they press on, before piping up, “Is this going to take a while? Should I come back?”

“Oh, this type of thing could take all day,” the guy says in a jokey, faux-exasperated way.

“But, I thought we were coming in here to work on my stuff. What happened?” I say to the woman.

“Yes what did happen,” she says to the guy with half a laugh, “You really just pushed your way in, didn’t you? Poor D, he thought he was going to get this done with and be on with his day.”

“I know, I know,” he says also with half a laugh, “Terrible form on my part, terrible form,” and then he goes right back to it without missing a beat.

Luckily, he had to leave a minute later to photocopy something, so I was able to get my stuff squared away without much additional delay (he actually started to come back in the office at one point, but I saw him coming and shifted my weight toward the door to box him out, so that he would have had to physically push me over to get in). Seriously, how inconsiderate is that? He was perfectly willing to cut in front of me and get his stuff taken care of before mine, while I just stood there and watched. And we wanted to do the same thing. It’s not like he just needed something taken care of quickly, while I would be there for hours. (I was actually much faster than him, because I was better organized with my receipts.)

I’m not sure if this guy is an outright asshole or just obliviously, self-centered. I’m leaning toward the latter because it didn’t seem to ever sink in that he was being extremely rude even when it was completely obvious.

He actually reminded me of this woman who was in my office several years ago as a grad student. She wasn’t mean, in fact most of the time she was nice, but she was incredibly inconsiderate. She’d listen to music loudly while others were obviously trying to work, she’d put her stuff all over the office and take up space, things like that. Nobody outright disliked her, but eventually she got under everybody’s skin and nobody could figure out what her deal was. (Interesting side note, she was pretty cute. I say that’s interesting, because we were in an office in a math department.) She would also tell us really inappropriate things about her personal life, things that normal people reserve for their closest confidants or their shrink (or their blog).

Anyway, one day this chick up and disappears. Nobody in the office hears anything from her for about six months until one night she walks in, I happen to be there alone, and she says, “Hello D. How are you? I’ve been diagnosed with a mild case of autism.”

And just like that everything made sense. It was crystal clear. Autism! Of course. Maybe that’s what’s going on with the guy who cut in front of me. Next time I’ll see him I’ll drop a box of toothpicks and see how quickly he counts them.

*****************************************************************************

On a note more of annoyance than of inconsideration, for the two Fridays prior to today there has been a guy standing outside our apartment playing extremely poor renditions of Christmas songs on a pocket trumpet. He literally stands two feet from our front door (it doesn’t look like there is an apartment unit there, which is probably part of the reason he chose that spot in the first place). We have a small unit, so if somebody is making noise outside our door, by, say, blowing a goddamn horn, then there is no escaping it. Imagine we’re in a Winnebago and he’s leaning against the grille. That’s how loudly we hear it. It sucks.

The first week he plays we just let it go and eventually he stops. The next week only I am home (S is out of town on a job for a few weeks), and I let him play for a few hours before eventually asking him (politely) to stop around 10pm. He was nice about it and probably figured I wanted to sleep, but actually I wasn’t tired, I just wanted him to shut the hell up. I was tired of listening to him massacre God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman. To give you an idea of his skill level, he’s about as good as a seventh grader playing lower-middle chair. He’s better than the kids who never practice and lie to the teacher saying they forgot their instruments at home because they’d rather goof off than participate in class (I was one of those kids), but he’s a little worse than your average middle schooler, and he couldn’t touch the top chairs. And I knew I was in for it when I heard him repeating songs. That’s when you know he has no definitive stopping point. That should be a rule for all crappy street musicians, once you run out of songs, that’s it. You’re done. Consider yourself lucky that the public is even allowing you that much.

Anyway, he was back again tonight when I got home from the gym at about 8, and I knew I had to nip this thing in the bud. I can’t let this guy think my doorway is going to become his usual Friday night spot. It would drive me absolutely insane. I had to lay down the law.

“Hey,” I said, “I couldn’t get you to move to a new spot, could I? I live right there and it just comes through, so loudly.”

“I wasn’t planning on playing late tonight.”

“I know, but it’s just that you’re so close to my apartment. Even if it’s not late, you know, I’m trying to watch TV or something and it’s just blaring right through. I mean can’t you go over there [pointing across the street] or over there [pointing down the street], just so you aren’t right next to my door? It seems like you're here each week now..."

"I've been here the last two weeks?"

"Yeah, and look, I know this is a public street and all, so I’m asking you as a favor for me, can you move please?”

“I’ll play for ten more minutes and then move on.”

True to his word, he only played for ten more minutes and much more quietly than before (hopefully I scared him). I could tell that he didn’t really want to stop or move, but it’s hard to say no in that instance. Plus, he’s kind of a meek guy, so when I noticed this I turned on a tiny bit of alpha male. Not enough so that I was a dick, but enough so that his biological instinct would be to not defy me.

It’ll be interesting to see if he’s back next week. I started thinking about what I would do if he just flat out refused to stop playing, and the best I could come up with is to stand out there right next to him and scream the lyrics to all his songs at the top of my lungs in his ear (“O STAR OF WONDER! STAR OF LIGHT! STAR OF ROYAL BEAUTY BRIGHT…”), but hopefully it won’t come to that.

Entry 36: New Zealand Part II

[Note: I thought this entry was a continuation of my trip to New Zealand, but in rereading it, I see that it's actually more of a series of rants. Oh well, I'm posting it either way.]

The only downside of the trip was the flight home. It was delayed for over an hour due to [fill in annoying reason here], and they only served dinner to passengers who prepaid for it upon booking. Apparently, the travel agent that all university employees are forced to book through (which doesn’t make any sense, but that's a story I've saved for below*) didn’t book me a dinner, which was unfortunate as due to the delay it ended up being the only time I would have had to eat a proper meal. As it turned out, my dinner was a chocolate bar from a train station vending machine and a handful of peanuts from a half-eaten bag squished at the bottom of my backpack.

Interestingly, the idea of dinner not being included with a standard ticket is very relevant to a talk I heard at the conference about “demand smoothing”, which as I understand it, basically just means varying prices to reflect short-term fluctuations in demand. One of the points of the talk is that it can sometimes be beneficial, even if it is unpopular. An example the speaker gave was a soda machine that would automatically raise prices on hotter days. This apparently was actually implemented somewhere, but the public reaction was so negative that Coke (or whoever was the operator) quickly scrapped it. The result was that the machine would sell out almost instantly on hot days, and it wasn't worth it for the operator to make a special trip to refill it. If, however, the price was higher, then it would be worth it to make more soda available and more people could be serviced. Those people who wanted a cold Coke on a hot day badly enough could have one.

Tying this back in with airlines, I don’t always mind when airlines require the customer to pay “extra” for certain services (although, it does suck to be super hungry and watching the two people next to you eating a hot meal, even if it is airline food), because it probably means a lower base ticket price, and then only the people who want the additional services have to pay for them.

Take the Bags Fly Free campaign of Southwest Airlines. Do you think Southwest is actually foregoing anything financially to let “bags fly free”? Is this some sort of goodwill gesture on their part to help cash-strapped travelers, or are they simply redistributing the costs to all their customers whether they bring a bag or not? To somebody like myself who goes out of his way to travel as light as possible, bags fly free probably means I get to pay a little more, because somebody else wants to pack their hair dryer.

And not to sound like a dick, but how dumb are people if this type of advertising actually works? Bags fly free, sure they do. In no way are luggage costs considered when setting ticket prices. In fact, all the people at the check-in counter, and all the people driving those little baggage shuttles loading and unloading suitcases, they are actually volunteers. They work for nothing so that your bags can fly free. I’m just waiting for a competing airline to announce, “not only do bags fly free, but we give you a discount if you don’t bring a bag!” That’d learn Southwest good.

And another thing, can’t we get a separate check-in line based on how much luggage one has? There is nothing worse than having a backpack and a laptop, and being stuck in the middle of a serpentine queue, while a family of seven breaks down their strollers, unloads a cart with approximately 50 suit cases in it, and scrambles to find their passports. A man in line behind me hit the nail on the head, when he turned to his wife and said, “They should have two queues, one for efficient people and one for inefficient people.” Exactly. If only such a system were possible.

I was thinking of this as T and I were trying to hurry through customs so as to catch our train from Sydney to Newcastle (we just made it). A rather robust woman in front of us had to empty some things from her suitcase and she put them right in the walkway and was taking her time to gather them. I stepped around her and in doing so gently brushed her possessions. When she gave me a dirty look I said, “Sorry, we’re in a hurry.” To which she replied snottily, “Yes, we all are.” To which I replied, “You're in a hurry? You sure ain’t moving like it. I've seen unaus move faster than you, and they are two-toed South American sloths.” Actually, I didn’t say that. I didn’t say anything. I just nodded and took off running. Really, she kind of had a point. Nobody wants to be stuck at the airport, and I normally wouldn’t act as if my time was more valuable than anybody else’s. It’s just that I really didn’t want to spend the night at the Sydney train station. That's all.

Anyway, the flight back wasn’t all bad, because I watched Goodfellas (I paid extra for it, by the way). Goodfellas was one of those, “What you’ve never seen [classic movie title] before? You have got to see it,” movies for me. I feel like I’m often let down by these movies, but not Goodfellas. It really is great. I mean, you gotta love movie from the which The Sopranos apparently got about two-thirds of their cast.

*So, my rant about travel agents. As somebody who doesn’t particularly like planning, I understand the purpose of travel agents. My parents are using one for a trip here and the agent has managed the logistics of almost all the traveling and event scheduling. That’s a worthwhile service.

What I can’t understand is why travel agents apparently can’t use this newfangled tool called the Internet. One set of airline tickets that were part of the trip with my parents looked to be priced really high to me (like $600/ticket too high), so we told the agent and she got back to us with tickets that were better, but still high (now like $250/ticket too high) saying that that was the best she could do. Not wanting to way overpay, we told her to cancel the tickets altogether. I then went online, and within, literally, twenty minutes I had purchased reasonably priced tickets. And it’s not like I used any tricks or exotic search engines, I think I used Travelocity -- a very well-known travel site that probably pops up immediately in any sort of Google search on airline ticket prices. That’s it. That's all I did.

And the same thing happened to me when I was booking a ticket to the New Zealand conference. For university-related travel, we have to book through an agent, even though it’s completely unnecessary, because academia is full of political bullshit and unnecessary middlemen. When the agent first booked my ticket, it was incredibly overpriced, which is bad, because I have a limit on my travel funds. I literally had to go online find the ticket I wanted, email it to the travel coordinator in our office, so that she could email it to the travel agency, so that they could book it for me. How idiotic is that?

Now, why couldn’t the agents simply save everybody some time and effort, and get me decent ticket prices in the first place? The obvious answer – it’s not their money. When it’s not your money you don’t really care. When it is your money, suddenly two extra clicks on a mouse to save a few hundred dollars, seems worth it. And that's why capitalism works. Now excuse me while I go read The Fountainhead.

Entry 35: New Zealand Part I

I’m back and I’m ringing the bell,
A-rockin’ on the mike while the fly girls yell.
Vanilla Ice, “Play that Funky Music”, To the Extreme

I’m back from New Zealand. Actually, I’ve been back for a few days, but this is the first chance I’ve had to sit down and crank out an entry. I have so much to write that that I'm breaking this up into two entries, lest my readers get intimidated by the uninterrupt sequence of prose, and decide not to read the entry altogether.

My trip was great. The conference was good, the people were nice, and Auckland is a cool city. My initial impression of Auckland was better than my initial impression of Sydney, but who can say? I really like both cities, and I haven’t spent nearly enough time in either of them to make a definitive decision.

My traveling companion for most of the trip was a tacit German coworker T. Saying T is a man of few words is like saying Toni Basil is an artist of few hits. T is primarily a man of one word, “yep”. He uses it in almost any context and always with the same matter-of-fact inflection. You could explain to him the meaning of life, and he would just nod his head and say “yep” as if he knew it all along. T is a great guy and despite (or perhaps because of) his terseness he’s good company. He also loves math and drinking beer, which helps.

[Auckland as seen from the summit of Rangitoto.]

Our first night in Auckland, we wandered down to a pub near the harbor where they had a celebration to end Movember. T and I were the only men in the bar who didn’t have mustaches, and we were the only people not in costumes (I’m not sure what the connection is between costumes and Movember, but everybody had them on). Two people were dressed as insane asylum inmates and had on actual straightjackets. Despite having to drink beer through straws they both seemed quite intoxicated, which leads me to wonder, how did they pee? If you’re pounding beers all night, you’re usually making what, four, five stops to the restroom throughout the night? They either did a lot of unlacing and re-lacing or they have some very helpful mates. I mean, I used to have trouble getting my friends to rub sunscreen on my back – this is a whole new level.

[A distant shot of the volcanic island Rangitoto near Auckland, NZ. It is only 600 years old.]

The next day we took a trip to the volcano island Rangitoto. It’s a beautiful place and has gorgeous views of Auckland. I’ve posted some pics from the Internet. For some reason, I didn’t bring my camera on my trip. I thought of it before I left, and then thought, “Nah, I’m already packed. I probably won’t need it anyway,” which is stupid because I had plenty of room in my bag, and it would have taken me, literally, fifteen seconds to pack it, and because of course I’ll need it. When is a more appropriate time to bring a camera than on a trip to a country you’ve never been to before? I do this sometimes and I don't know why. Like, I'll leave behind my umbrella even though I know the forecast is bad, and then when I'm walking home in the rain, I'm thinking to myself, "Wait, why didn't I bring my umbrella?" I never have a good answer.

[A tree-filled crater on Rangitoto. It doesn't translate great to photograph form, but this was one of the most bizarrely impressive landscapes I've ever scene.]

We spent about five hours walking throughout the island, and I couldn’t imagine a better way to spend the day. The weather was beautiful and scenery was better. Oddly enough, the way the landscape was chiseled, the way the islands jutted out from the water, reminded me a lot of certain views from my hometown Tacoma, WA (the colors were different though, Auckland’s environs are a brighter green, Tacoma’s a darker green). It made me think that Tacoma is largely underrated in terms of cities with beautiful views. (Although, maybe this is because such views are too often obscured by grayness.)

The hiking was great, but we were sort of underequipped. There is nothing on Rangitoto except plants, rocks, a few birds, and other tourists. There are no shops nor cafes nor vending machines. We had some water, but nary a crumb of food, so we were extremely hungry by the end of our hike. We also were on the pink side. I brought a small container of sunblock, but it was only SPF 15. (Does that even count as sunblock? It's more like sun-slight-impedement.) It kept us from getting utterly fried, but fell short of complete protection. I also got a really bad blister on my toe that could have been easily subdued with a band-aid, if only we would have been smart enough to bring some.

The last hour of the hike was a bit on the montonuous side. There were no more great views, just miles of dry, hot rock. Still, it was a good ending, because it made you feel like you accomplished something. When we finally sat down and had a snack on the ferry back to Auckland, it felt to me like we had earned it. I got a bag of cashews and a bottle of water. T got a king-size Snickers and a Heineken. I remember thinking to myself, "Damn, I should have got what he got."