Comfortable Cockroaches

I hope everybody is enjoying their summer. It is winter here in Sydney, which means I’ve finally stopped sweating (at least at night)! After the unbearably hot summer, this temperate winter actually feels a bit too cold for me. I’m becoming such a wimp!

One particularly cold day I decided to make soup and do laundry. In our house the vent for our dryer does not bring the air outside. It vents the warm air into our kitchen! In the summer this is not such a good thing, but on a cold dry winter day this was wonderful! In one room I had a dryer pumping hot air in my face, the fire of the gas stove, and my boiling soup! It took very little time for the room to get toasty warm and humid! I loved it!

Everything was great until my landlord saw the windows steaming up and decided to walk over. He opened our large glass sliding doors and commented that the kitchen was nice and warm. I happily agreed. Then he very politely told me that if the house ever got warm and humid in the winter that I had to open up the doors and let all of the heat out right away. I much less politely refused. He then went on to explain that it was because of the cockroaches (which we had not seen since we cleaned up all of the messes he left in the house).

He explained, and I am not exaggerating or making this up, that cockroaches enjoy warm humid temperatures, much like humans do (this part is actually true). Because of this, the only way to keep cockroaches out of a house is to leave all of the doors WIDE OPEN. This way the house will get really cold and the cockroaches will get uncomfortable. Once they are uncomfortable they will have no trouble finding the open doors and walking out.

At this point my head started doing summersaults. He was being 100% serious. How does somebody respond to something so profoundly stupid?? My brain started screaming at him, but my mouth wasn’t listening to my brain and only managed to silently open and close a few times.

He seemed satisfied in explaining his point, reminded me again that I should always open the doors as soon as the house got comfortable, asked me to explain this to the other housemates, then walked back to his house leaving our door completely open.

I stood there gazing blankly at my soup and started questioning the meaning of my existence as the cold winter air brushed against my face. In my life, every time I get comfortable will somebody make me open the door and let the cold air rush in? Maybe the soup symbolized my life, producing heat in a futile attempt at comfort, sustainability, and prosperity? Was I the dryer, spinning confused in circles trying to combat the evils of the world? Maybe I was the self-destructive wind, sweeping in to destroying myself every time I became comfortable.

How was it possible for a person to say something so stupid? If I recorded the conversation and played it back for him would he realize the very large and obvious flaws in his logic? Maybe his point makes perfect sense and I am the one that is too stupid to understand it. Am I missing something? Am I wrong? Is my entire perspective on life also wrong? Maybe everything I’ve ever believed is just an illusion. Do I even exist?

I stood in front of my soup contemplating everything there was to contemplate until I came to a conclusion that I rather liked. I was not the soup, the wind, or the dryer. I was John, a stubborn American student that was now cold. My soup was my dinner, the dryer was just a dryer, and my landlord was an idiot.

I shut and locked the doors, flashed a one finger sauté over to his house, and ate my soup while the warm air from the dryer kept me and the cockroaches comfortable.

Seriously.

Ok, this is probably the most serious I've ever been on this website.  I absolutely NEED to find somebody to make me this bacon scarf.  

http://monstercrochet.com/Patterns.html

If you know anybody that can knit or crochet, I will pay for the design, the material, shipping, and a whatever you think is fair for labor.  I must have this!

ok, need to get back to work.  I promise I'll post something soon.  

*pinky swears*

Skinnys

This week I’ve spent a good bit of time and money clothing shopping.  It is getting cold and I have almost no warm clothing to wear!  I decided that if I’m going to buy clothing, I might as well get something fashionable and in style. To make sure my outfit selections were up to date with the latest trends, since I am still stuck in the 90’s (I’m from the days of BUM equipment or hypercolor shirts and umbro shorts), I brought along a few women who were kind and patient enough to go shopping with me.  Unfortunately the latest fashion for men’s pants is for them to be very very tight.  I believe these pants are called “skinny” jeans.  It soon became clear that I would inevitably have to try on a pair of “skinnys”.

For those of you that have not noticed, the proportions on my body are a bit off.  My torso arms and face are all thin, but from the waste down I am much beefier.  I have a larger than expected waste and long thick legs.  This has never been a problem for me.  Not many people are disgusted by slightly disproportionate calves.

I reluctantly wandered off to the dressing room with a standard light blue pair of skinny jeans (not purple, red, or green).  Quality seemed ok.  The stitching was nice, the denim was soft, and they were priced well.  Since less fabric is used to make these I suppose they are also more environmentally friendly than standard jeans.  I stepped into the stall and started trying to put them on. 

Key word here: trying

Everything was going smoothly until they were about 6” away from my waste.  The legging must have been slightly thinner where the knee is supposed to be, because they suddenly got stuck on my calves! I decided to take it one leg at a time.  I grabbed the right leg a few inches above my knee and just started pulling has hard as I could.  They slowly slipped across my leg, and popped into the correct position.  At this point if I had flexed my right calf these jeans would have ripped in half.  I could hear the seams starting to give, but I moved to my left leg anyway.  I grabbed and pulled, but this leg wasn’t cooperating!  No matter how hard I tried I could not get the left leg completely on so I decided that it would be best to give up.  After all, there was no way in hell I was going to be able to walk in these! 

Defeated, I pulled out my left leg then went to pull the right leg off.  It wouldn’t budge.  I lifted the leg in the air and started pulling down on the pants, but nothing happened!  I started to panic!  What if they were going to have to cut them off of me?  Would I have to pay for them???  I started hopping around the dressing room pulling madly at these jeans, bouncing off the walls and probably frightening everybody else in the changing rooms.  NOTHING!  I eventually fell backwards, caught my breath and started to think.  Where have I had a similar situation?  Chinese finger traps!!!  I relaxed my leg, closed my eyes, and tried to imagine the jeans slipping off my leg.  I then slowly started pulling.  Still nothing!!!   AAAAHHH!!!  At this point keeping the pants in one piece was no longer of any concern to me, so I grabbed the end, planted my left foot on the ground with the toes against the wall, pushed my back hard against the other wall and started pulling out and down with all of my might.  I started hearing ripping sounds, but I did not care!!  I just kept pulling and pulling!  Slowly the pants started to move!!  I could all but taste my freedom!  Inch by inch they slowly scraped across my legs screaming out a symphony of popping thread and fabric until they flew off with a force that almost knocked me on the ground!  I was free!!!

To hell with fashion!  I bought a pair of normal straight legged jeans and got the hell out of there.

Believe it or not, I'm still alive.

Sorry I’ve been so quiet.  Classes are super hard here and I’ve been really really busy.  I just wanted to let everybody know that I am still alive and well.  Spinny has finally been turned off and placed in the closet.  It will remain there until the warm weather comes back in September/October.  Right now I am shopping for a space heater which I will lovingly name Toasty, Roasty, FurnaceFace, or if it has a fan Warmy McSpinnagin.  Not sure on the name yet.  I need to buy and use it first.  I’m sure I’ll talk about it here when I get one

One interesting thing that was pointed out to me was that while I tend to name almost everything I own or encounter such as my fan (Spinny), my water boiler (茶), and the possum that keeps eating the plants on my balcony (Barak Obama.  Thanks to Lorraine for the name!), I have not named my iphone or ipod.  What is worse is that no matter how hard I try I cannot come up with appropriate names.  The only name I could think of was Jane, which is a stupid reference to one of the books in the Enders series.  Jane is an awful name for a phone!  It just doesn’t feel right.  For some reason this has really been bothering me.  Does anybody have any suggestions?

I’m rambling, which isn’t all that uncommon in the world of blogging, but I’ve tried to keep mine at least somewhat entertaining.  I should probably get back to work.  I just wanted to say hi *waves to you* and let you know that things are fine.  No injuries, no more sunburn, no abnormal body hair, and no giant spiders or wild animal attacks.

Actually the animal thing was close with the possum, and my housemate was bit by a pigeon which I ended up kicking lightly.  Not even really kicked.  It was more like shoving it with my foot.

Uuuuugh… homework…  Hopefully I’ll post something more interesting later!

a long post about my feet

It is thundering outside and I am in my macroeconomics class, which runs until 9pm  (as opposed to the bus I need to take home which stop running at about 8:35).  This wouldn’t worry me so much if it weren’t for the fact that I left my umbrella at home!  I happen to have my computer (obviously), my iphone, my new ipod nano, and over $200 in text books that I finally got the money to buy today.  The only thing worse than walking a few km in the rain is walking with about 3k worth of products that can be destroyed by water.  This brings up two topics about Sydney which I would like to have a brief discussion about (not really a discussion, more like a one sided rant, unless you decide to comment).  Bus schedules and weather.

My feet stink.  Yes, this is relevant.  There are 3 main contributing factors.  The first is, I can’t afford new shoes right now so I wear my 5 year old flip flops everywhere.   They aren’t particularly nice, just surprisingly durable.  Eventually my heal will pop through the bottom, and on that day I will either find some new shoes or epoxy something to the bottom of them.   The second reason ties somewhat into the first.  Over these last few years I’ve probably put more miles on these flip flops than most have put on their cars.  I walk EVERYWHERE (and have the blisters and tan lines to prove it).  I would estimate that I walk roughly an average of 14km (9ish miles) per day.  The third is that I haven’t washed them.  I usually rely on rain to clean them, but I haven’t seen much of that recently.

To summarize, due to monetary restrictions I have very old footwear.  I walk constantly which makes them dirty.  I haven’t had a chance to wash them or walk around in the rain, so they are getting a bit funky.  To summarize the summary, I have (1) Old flip-flops that are (2) worn all the time and (3) never washed.  To summarize the summary of the summary, my feet stink.

Enough about my feet.  I don’t particularly enjoy walking this much, but I live far from school and the only other way for me to get there is by bus.  Lets explore the possibility of bus travel. 

The busses in Sydney are very nice!  They are almost always clean and many even have air conditioning.  The drivers are usually friendly and will help you get to where you are going.  I’ve found that I am rather fond of travelling via bus. 

Here are the problems that exist with Sydney busses.  Fare is decided by how many “zones” you travel while on the bus.  Zones are decided by the distance you travel, not the number of stops or the final destination.  These zones are needlessly confusing and make figuring out how much your trip will cost damn near impossible without asking the driver.  For me this is not a problem because I would be travelling the same route every day, but it is annoying enough that I thought I should mention it.

The other problem (the one keeping me from riding the bus) is that they have detailed schedules posted at every stop.  These show when the bus will get there and on what day.  The problem is that this schedule is generally disregarded and the busses seem to travel at their own free will.  It is very common for a bus to not show up, then two of the same busses to show up at some random time a bit later. 

What this means is that I have to get to the bus stop unacceptably early in order to ensure that I will arrive in time for my class.  For a real life example, I’ve taken the same bus at the same time on the same day leaving from the same stop and have arrived at class anywhere between 30 minute early to 15 minutes late (note: this bus was scheduled to run on a 20 minute intervals). 

This is especially annoying when trying to get to my transportation management classes (about a 3.5km walk). 

As a result, unless I can actually see the bus approaching the stop while walking to it I generally will not trust it to show up and will walk to where I am going instead.  This is good for my budget and makes me feel nice and green inside, but bad for my feet.

The only time I decisively take the bus is when the weather is crappy, but it is almost impossible to predict the weather in Sydney.  In the US we get hour by hour weather predictions which are sometimes off, but surprisingly accurate.  Here is a typical weather forecast for Sydney:

Friday        Fine.

City:          Min:   18  Max:   23

West:        Min:   13  Max:   27

What do they mean by Friday - Fine?  Fine, you can figure out the weather yourself?  The weather will be small in regards to thickness?    Friday will be characterized by elegance, refinement and accomplishment?  Friday will be a penalty or punishment for something we’ve done?  Will the day be smooth to the touch?  I find this vagueness absolutely hilarious, but most people just think I’m crazy when I see or hear the forecast in public and start laughing hysterically.

I believe the reason for this odd weather forecast is because nobody can actually predict the weather.  The way it works here, it could be absolutely beautiful one minute, then storming like crazy the next, then sunny the next, then sunny and raining a minute later, then cloudy with lightning, then raining and sunny, then cloudy and storming, then back to absolutely beautiful.  My iphone said it would be a nice night tonight, and all I hear is thunder!

So far I’ve found only one sure-fire way to predict rain:

If I bring my umbrella, it will not rain.  Even if the forecast calls for severe storms all day.  If I do not bring my umbrella, nature is open to display it’s own interpretation of what it thinks the climate should be like at that particular moment.  

I suppose it is a bit arrogant to think that I singlehandedly control the rainfall for an entire city, but so far I’ve found this infinitely more accurate than anything any meteorologists can predicted.  Take that, science!

I ate fish brains... and I liked it!

It has been way too long since I’ve posted here.  Way too many things have happened and there is now I can fit them all into one post.  For now I’ll share what has kept me from posting.  CLASS!

Class is hard.  Very very hard.  I have tons of work, and way too many things to distract me from finishing this work.  Even thinking about how much more enjoyable life would if be if I were outside soaking up the fantastic late summer weather instead of sitting in front of my laptop reading boring case studies is enough to distract me from writing a paper for several hours, maybe even days. 

Last Thursday I was awake until past 4am trying to study for a quiz the next morning (a class I had to wake up at 7am to get to), but all I could think about was the many delicious candy bars Cadbury sells in Australia, but not in the US!!  I knew I had candy downstairs, but refused to eat it because it was so late and it was supposed to be my reward for finishing completing the quiz.   The next day after getting back from class I was anxious to finally enjoy my candy bar, but was so exhausted that I ended up falling asleep on the couch with it in my hand.  When I woke up I couldn’t find it. 

If you see my candy bar, please call me.

Talking about passing out and not remembering things, I went on a wine tour in Hunter Valley a few weeks ago with some friends.  It was a fun time!  We found a dog that we borrowed for the evening, spooked some cows, took pictures of a wombat (unfortunately it was in the middle of the road and a bit flatter than normal), and of course sampled some tasty wines cheeses and chocolates!  Unlike my last few wine tasting experiences, I decided it would be wise to spit the wine out after tasting (those of you that were with me for the NY wine tasting trip, you will no doubt agree that this was a good idea).   I stayed dreadfully sober but also learned a few things about wine, most notably that I prefer beer. 

------Pictures: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2075798&id=48501303&l=e9ced56497

I’ve also discovered that I love Indian food!  On my way back from class I pass several small take-away Indian restaurants, so I am trying every dish I don’t recognize.  So far my favorite is mango chicken!  I’ve also been enjoying a lot of new Chinese food.  On the weekends people like to go out for dim sum, which give me a chance to try all sorts of interesting, new, confusing, mysterious, and often frightening foods.  This weekend I ate whole fish (brains, bones, and everything), chicken feet, and a peanut sitting in the bottom of a bowl that was originally filled with cow stomach.  Believe it or not, it was mostly good (but the chicken feet didn’t have enough meat to make them worth the price in my opinion)! 

I’m sorry I haven’t been keeping up with this as well as I should!  Hopefully I will get used to school soon and start working more efficiently.  For now, I need to get back to work!  I have an online forum debate on the competitive advantage of Dell between the mid 90’s to early 2000’s, a report on the boundaries to converting to compressed natural gas, bio diesel or other alternative fuels for passenger cars in the states, and I have to pick a semester paper topic for my environmental economics class!  That and it's already past 1am!  AAaaahhh!!!!   Busy busy busy!!!!

Filler

I'm sorry I haven't been posting here much.  Classes (and day trips to vineyards) have been keeping me busy!  I have a lot to say, but I need to get my homework done first!  For now I will leave you with this:

I bought a can of tuna fish at Coles today that had a warning on the label informing me that the product contains fish.