Lost in Transportation

On the Road Again.

2006-11-18T03:08:00.000-07:00

Well, I haven't written anything in a while, mainly because I suck. Well that and I've just been hanging out at home, looking for a job, taking stock, all that stuff.

I eventually got a good job offer so I am off to the Isle of Man tomorrow (in almost exactly 24 hours in fact). It's finally dawning on me that this is real and I'm going to be away from New Zealand for another couple of years. If I'm not careful it'll stop being my home soon. Even now, everything here still looks and sounds vaguely familiar, and yet not exactly.

I probably shouldn't admit it in public but I turned down a job in Costa Rica to go to the Isle of Man. I'm still not sure that was the right decision, but hey, it's been made, and the vacancy in Costa Rica has been filled now anyway, so the bridge is burned now.

I'll have to update the tagline for this blog too. I most definitely have a haircut and a real job.

Farewell to the Island

2006-08-26T23:04:00.000-06:00

Well, what was supposed to be a quick Open Water Diver course as a bit of an interlude on my travels round Thailand became a two week stay and a bit of an obsession. I'm now a qualified Rescue Diver (which is Padi's way of saying I know a bit of first aid and how to look for dead / drowning people underwater) with 21 dives in my shiny little logbook.

More importantly, I've found something I love doing. I'l still be going back to New Zealand on 1st September as planned. I was seriously considering changing the date of my flight and staying here for a couple of months, living in a small somewhat grotty bungalow, diving almost every day, and working towards instructor certification, but if / when I do that I want it to be something I go into as a conscious decision and not just something that randomly happened.

Plus I do want to see my family and those friends who are still around, stock up on vegemite, go snowboarding, pick up my laptop, apply for PhD scholarships, think about applying for a real job, and organise my backpack a bit better (the things one needs for two or three or more stationary months are different from those needed for a few weeks travelling around.

It's funny, I came on this trip to Thailand trying to work out which door of the ones I already knew about I wanted to go through. I didn't plan to build a new one. I'm not certain it's what I want (another reason that I will be getting on the 1430 ferry this afternoon, so I can make my decision somewhere that I can't see the bright blue ocean out of my bedroom window and am not surrounded by other people who also have the diving bug.

Well, that said (not that I really said much) I think it's time to go sit on the beach and read a book for an hour or two. It's a hard life, as they say. :)

Plan from here is get the ferry, then backpacker bus overnight to Bangkok, then train or bus to Kanchanburi (of Bridge over the River Kwai fame) for two or three days, then back to Bangkok for a day or two before flying back to New Zealand and the real world (or as close as I can come to the real world before going in to some sort of allergic shock).

No, I'm not dead.

2006-08-20T02:34:00.000-06:00

Believe it or not, I have survived 5 days without going on the internet. I also survived a bunch of scuba dives (14 currently and I'm plotting to get on one tonight). Like many things, I am currently completely addicted (I did three dives before visiting Myanmar for a few minutes to get a new visa for Thailand, then returning to Thailand and Ko Tao to take an emergency first aid course and get a rescue diver certification (this may seem a little worrying but about a week after my first scuba dive I am seriously considering going somewhere nice and spending a couple months to get some professional qualifications.

Yes, I love diving that much. Blame my parents for using the pool at ASK as a babysitting device when I was a child, blame my addictive personality, blame the fact that diving is just so awesome, whatever the cause, I think I have found the answer to the "what to do next?" question that was one of the objectives of this trip.

We will see how I feel once I finally escape Ko Tao and am not diving every day.

By the way, I'm staying in an awesome hillside bungalow with 270 degree views over trees and houses in the valley, the beach / bay and rocks on the other side and then the open sea. It's awesome, and 300 baht a night.

If I wasn't worried about my mother disowning me, I'd be sorely tempted to change the date on my flight and just stay here. Plus I am out of vegemite.Gettin out of here is also necessary to clear my head (yes, I need to clear my head after a "clear my head" trip *blush*)

Meh, it's a nice problem to have.

I do wonder what the change fees on my flight would be though...

Blub Blub Blub

2006-08-17T07:29:00.000-06:00

No, I'm not crying (although I came close during the thai massage today when the woman had me arched backwards over her knees and my eyes did get a bit watery when I took my mask off today).

Today was final exam for my open water diver course and then a couple little dives in the afternoon. I saw a bunch more fish and some pretty corals. We didn't get any rays or sharks unfortunately but maybe tomorrow as we're going out early in the morning (all the boats scare them off).

Note for mum - just medium size harmless sharks, this isn't great white country.

I really enjoy diving, so most likely I am going to do the Advanced Open water straight afterwards (allows diving to 30 meters and includes more fun dives - like wreck or cave or something cool).

Anyway, I was going to write a bunch about diving today, but I'm hungry. Suffice to say it was awesome. Plus if I start gushing about today then I'll run out of good adjectives for tomorrow (given we're going deeper and longer I think they'll be necessary).

Richard

I breathes through my mouth.

2006-08-15T04:59:00.000-06:00

Well, only when underwater. *

Today was the first day of my PADI Open Water Diver certificate. A classroom session and then a pool dive. The classroom session was good fun - the instructor was a jovial Northern Irish guy who made the basic information he had to impart enjoyable.

* = Mostly, except when I have a cold or am tired or frustrated.

After lunch (I had pad thai with chicken and a lemon milkshake) we got in the pool to do funky stuff like pretending we were out of air and having to ask our buddy to use his octopus (spare breathing thingee). Even though we were just kneeling on the bottom of the pool, mostly waiting for other people to carry out the little drills, it was pretty cool.

I've always enjoyed being in and around water, so it's probably no surprise that being able to just chill out on the bottom of the pool was pretty awesome for me. I'm considering progressing straight to the advanced open water course (which would allow me to dive up to 30 meters deep.

Well, that's about it, I need to go out for dinner (last night I had stir-fry vegetables and prawns with rice, tonight we're going somewhere else that our semi-local contact says is even better).

Food here is awesome and pretty cheap even at rip off hotel restaurants, most of the people (travellers and locals) are really nice - except for the Germans, they're mostly kinda standoffish and boring. Apologies for any German readers I have. I'm sure you're all lovely people, it's those other Germans I am talking about - you know who I mean.

Anyway, I have to go now. Take care everyone.

Scuba time

2006-08-14T05:33:00.000-06:00

Well, after a somewhat long and boring trip (livened up by me falling asleep in a meditation class in Bangkok - full story to come later I suspect since I'm going out for mexican food with some scottish guys in about ten minutes) I'm safely ensconsed at the buddha view dive resort on "sunny" Ko Tao. The quote marks reflect that it's rainy season and therefore the sun has most definitely not got his hat on.

So yeah, I'm here, I'm alive, I don't have the dreaded lurgy (one of approximately ten thousand medical problems you can't or at least shouldn't dive with) so tomorrow I begin learning how to become an uinderwater breathing type person.

Still no photos to share because the memory card is nowhere near full (I do probably have about 100-200 photos, but the weather and my natural disinclination to take photos have combined to make these photos a bit of an effort.

So yeah, after a few days in the wilderness, I am definitely back on the traveller trail again. Which is fine, ordering food using the point and hope method was getting a little old. Plus I have something to do (and a 400 page manual means my shortage of books just got a little less severe - bring on an ebook delivery system that is as eye-friendly as dead trees.

OK, dinner time, so you're not going to find out how my personal path to enlightenment wound up taking a detour into the land of Nod.

Bangkok 5am Blues

2006-08-12T16:27:00.000-06:00

Well, the bus arrived early. Normally that's a good thing, but not when it means you arrive in a city whose only function today is as a lengthy, and entirely unwanted, layover between bus rides. It's not that I don't like bangkok - although it is loud, noisy, and packed with people whose goal is to help you (at least insofar as that involves you giving them money).

OK, so maybe it is that I don't like Bangkok. Even Chiang Mai seemed big and noisy and smelly after a few days in the small towns. Kho San road, even at 5am is getting there. Hopefully my "NO I don't want a taxi / guesthouse / massage" grimace will become more obvious as the day dawns and thus spare me the need to inflict physical injury on someone.

Yes, I'm a little cranky. I've been on a bus for most of the last 12 hours, during which I was subjected to several of the world's crueller tortures, to wit 1) Being seated behind two chatty girls with annoying voices and uninteresting topics of conversation 2) being seated beneath a hissing and too loud speaker that is busy garbling the soundtrack of some movie I don't want to watch on a screen that I can't quite see 3) a bus driver who thinks he is a racecar driver while driving 4) a bus whose rear suspension seems to be connected to the brake pedal, causing plenty of lurching.

Somehow I managed to get enough sleep that I'm not sleepy right now. Which leaves me with another problem - a 15 kilogram 100 litre backpack. So I'm killing time on the internet, then I'll go eat something (or possibly someONE, a lot of the taxi drivers are very little), then dunno.

The smart play might have been to try and arrange a room for 12 hours and just try to sleep, but I can't be bothered trying to negotiate this, and don't want to sleep right now as I still have to kill time on the trip down to Ko Tao and my book habit is getting expensive and I want to stay on a somewhat normal sleep schedule.

The plan for today is wander round following Lonely planet's Bangkok in a day route, although that does involve a lot of temples and markets which I am kind of ambivalent about right now so maybe inspiration will strike and I'll do something cool. We'll see what happens I guess.

Don't Tell Mum

2006-08-11T04:41:00.000-06:00

Yes, I am aware of 1) The reverse psychology effect of this title, and 2) the futility of expecting my mother not to read something (everything?) I write on this blog. But she has been warned. There are two things in this post that she would probably rather remain in ignorance of.

But anyway, I wound up spending two days in Mae Hong Son (a semi-traveller-ified town in Northwest Thailand) after my rafting. The first day was spent wandering around town being nosy and doing errands (bank, laundry, etc) and climbing to the temple on the hill overlooking the town. It's a nice little temple, nothing too flashy, I got to see a monk using his cellphone during lunch, another one doing the holy laundry (orange, while a very enlightened colour, really does show the dirt), and another one checking his email on the computer under the temple), that and some really nice views out over the surrounding valleys.

Thing number one:

The next day I rented a motorbike (just a small automatic one, I wore my helmet all the time, even during lunch, and the rental lady showed us how to use everything and gave us lots of dire warnings "if you change gear with handle like this [throttle open] - acident", "if you go too fast - accident", "if you go down steep hill - accident" - I'm pleased to report there were no accidents, even when a stray dog ran out in front of me on a wet road.

Unfortunately for my mother I really enjoyed it - we went to see longneck village and KMT (Chinese village). These were interesting enough, but it was riding between the various sites that was the real highlight. The wind in my face (and for a couple of hours the torrential rain too), the views of the countryside, the feeling of control. It's like riding a bike - only a bit faster and with less balance and effort required.

We now reutn you to our Safe for mothers programming:

Today I just got the bus to Mae Sariang, where I will probably try to arrange a trek, might try and arrange a short stay on a gibbon sanctuary, and try to work out a vague plan for the next 20 days.

I know I have a diving course to do (4 days, plus two days of travel and recovery before hand, and probably a few days on the islands afterwards). I'd also like to see the bridge over the River Kwai and Lopburi (or another city with monkey-type creatures roaming free). So really I'm only working with a few blank days and there's lots of stuff I could do.

At the moment, the pencil itinirary is back to Chiang Mai foranother cooking course, a couple days of massage school maybe another short trek although my trusty old boots died on the last one, then down to the islands for diving and maybe rock climbing then back to bangkok, finally seeing the tourist sights there (I will probably do the bangkok in a day that Lonely Planet reccomends and a one day sidetrip because I think I have dog-eared something nearby that sounded pretty sweet).

Your suggestions are very welcome. I've had just about enough of temples and other old buildings though.

Then it's back to Auckland and - Thing number 2 - a brief familial interlude before I jet off somewhere else (or just possibly settle down and go back to university or get a real job - but don't hold your breath, my list of foreign possibilities for next year is pretty long and tempting).

So there you have it folks. I'm glad I'm X thousand miles and 20 days away from seeing my mother again - plus I've been away two years, which is long enough to attain prodigal son status, so I expect the full fattened calf treatment when I get back (although I would prefer lamb I'm not going to stand in the way of tradition, especially when it comes to getting feasted).

Germans, Monkeys, and on being amphibian.

2006-08-08T03:37:00.000-06:00

Ok, I forget just where I was up to with the last update.

Right now I am in Friend Guesthouse in Mae Hong Son. It is a very nice place - I have a double bed in my own large very clean teak room overlooking a lake and a temple for the princely sum of 100B a night ($5 New Zealand).

I've just finished a two day whitewater rafting trip with Pai Adventures, before that I did a cooking course in Chiang Mai, and before that was the trekking, which ya'll have heard about already.

The cooking course was fun. There are no real secret techniques or anything that I am now the master of, but I got to eat a bunch of good food and picked up a couple of little thai tricks.

We (Mark and Gabby, Andrew and Becky, and I) then met up later that evening to go to the Third Annual Chiang Mai Yorkshire Pudding Eating Contest. This fine athletic challenge was held in The Pub (imagine an English local magically lifted, locals and all, and dropped into the heart of Thailand's second largest city, and you'll have a fairly good idea of the look and feel of the place). I didn't plan on participating, but the publican convinced me it was a good idea, and even handicapped by the three cooking course meals I ate earlier that day, I managed 11 yorkshire puddings. It was a little strange, going from chicken and cashew nuts or red curry to yorkshire pudding and gravy but they were good yorkshire puds though, and I haven't had one in a while. Plus, it's such an absurd thing to do, it's pretty much mandatory once you're aware of it.

The road from Chiang Mai to Pai is horrible, very windy and hilly (built by the Japanese in WW2 apparantly). But I made it without throwing up (probably because I hadn't had breakfast) and decided to reward myself by renting a mountain bike and slogging round some of the concrete roads around Pai.

The next morning it was rafting, which was just awesome. Loads of kingfishers, one group of monkeys - they look a little like large otters from a distance but have skinny tails. Plenty of rapids with just enough oomph to keep me happy without causing a full scale German tantrum. I swam a lot - I'd rather spend the flat bits - and some of the rapids - in the water than on a raft.

So now I'm in Mae Hong Son. Tomorrow I will probably wander round town, maybe do a tour, then get the bus the next morning to Mae Sariang (the next town round) where I might do another trek before returning to Chiang Mai and getting the bus to bangkok and then the islands for diving.

It's a hard life, as they say (although they are partially right, I'm a little sore from all the paddling so might have to go get a massage and thai massage is a little, hmm, vigourous)

Enjoy yourselves.

Richard

Rain and caterpillars and elephants - Oh My!

2006-08-04T05:13:00.000-06:00

I'm going to try to be organised and remember to email everyone every time, but I think I will just start posting these things to my blog as well (after a year of almost hiatus it's probably worth starting again as I have stuff to say now)

The rain in spain might fall mainly on the plain, but in Thailand it falls mainly on everything, especially the jungle.

After my nice little Bangkok / resort stay, I jumped straight into a three day jungle trek up in Chiang Mai (north thailand).

Short version = it was awesome.
Short version +10% = it was awesome and rained a lot.

Long Version.

Got off the VIP bus (a raher nice aircon coach) got the shuttle to the hostel and sat around waiting for the trek guy to pick me up. Got in to a songthaew (pickup truck with an semi enclosed back with seats in it) with two americans asnd a canadian, We went to a local market where I sampled the wares at the insect stall (all were cooked)

Grasshopers = squishy, and fairly disgusting because the legs and everything are still on. A little like eating slughtly old prawns whole.
beetle = a bit soggy and tasted like mud, not reccomended
caterpillars = tasted and felt like stale cheez puffs - 30 baht a bag, a high protien trail food but not likely to catch on in the west until they come in chocolate flavour and stop being dead bugs.

We ate lunch in a small village at the end of the road (there are little restaurant shops everywhere in thailand, even on raods in the iddle of nowhere. Then while eating our slightly old (it was picked about four hours ago) pineapple for dessert the rain started. Thailand takes rain very seriously, and I was soaked through within about ten minutes because I refuse to wear a raincoat when it's thrity four degrees (being wet from water is better than being the same amount of wet from sweat).

Young bamboo is a perfect material for walking sticks, lightweght and very strong (it also makes five storey plus scaffolding if you're in the bulding trade). Me and my walking stick made it accross several flooded streams, along with the rest of the group (about thirteen of us in all, mostly a dutch family).

Switched groups after the first night because one of ur guides got sick so the two of us on the three day version no longer had a guide. he new group were a bunch of awesome people - some of whom might get this email depending on how my address book works.

It's tough to explain why walking up a steep, wet, muddy hill makes me smile, but it does. The views were pretty nice. A lot of the group said this was the most beautiful place they have ever been, but I'm from New Zealand, and did spend some time in the rockies... It's definitely in my top ten though. Reminds me a lot of some of the ranges in NZ - steep river valleys, lots of vegetation, views of more hills and rivers. But maybe I'm just homesick a little and not doing the Thai jungle justice - it really is quite a nice place, and thanks to the english bug magnet girls and liberal applications of tropical strength deet I didn't get bitten more than once or twice the entire time.

Wildlife sightings were limited to spiders and a very small snake (more of a worm with attitude really), everyting else was staying away from us - we made more noise than the elephants we rode on the third day - especally when one of the arachnophobic girls was in panic mode (yes more than one of the group had fully fledged screaming attacks whenever anything insect like was near them).

Elephant riding is a bit like riding a horse, only less comforable and more scary. I am glad I have done it, but won't do it again. They're big, patient, stubborn creatures with skin that looks and feels like hairy concrete. Oh, and can fart for about a minute and a half without stopping.

If anyone is in chiang mai - NamKohn and Lanna house both have very good guides working for them (there are about a thousand companies seling treks from at least twenty suppliers) - Chang and Louie were very informative, cheerful, and pretty awesome at cooking for thirteen people (including quite a few vegetarians) over a fire in the dark.

Tomorrow is a cooking course and a fitting for my three silk shirts and a pair of cashmere trousers. Yes, the guy who lives in cheap t-shirts and shorts is splashing out on on fancy tailormade stuff, it's cheap, and I might need to look good for job interviews in the near future. I got a little manipulated into choosing the lace I did - I was aware of the manipulation - a friendly tour guide took me round the temples, I happened to bump in to another friendly thai man in one of the temples who brought up tailoring being cheap here and gave me the recommendation, but once there, the place looked nice, was mentioned in lonely planet and actually by a traveller I spoke to on the bus, and then the very polite Indian-thai man eventually offered me a deal I am happy with (it includes a free tie, which will look nice in my cupboard if nothing else, and shiping home). Thailand is great practise for negotiating skills, and it's instructive to watch undercover salesmen at work. Maybe I'm rationalising, but whatever, as long as the shirts check out tmorrow (I got a crash course in what to look for when discusing tailoring on the trek the day before.

OK It's stopped raining, and I've got some dried durien to eat (I figure it's safer than buying one of those large smelly fruit directly) then I'm going to go have a massage, and then probably a nice Thai dinner and a bit of sight seeing at the Night Market (I need to buy another pair of trousers since I destroyed a pair along with my nearly decade old hiking boots on the trek), plus I'm sure I'l end up with another t-shirt or two, and maybe some souveniers.

It's all over

2006-03-14T13:12:00.000-07:00

I'm going to London tomorrow, and I have to wear a suit. Auugh!

Seriously, this causes me almost physical distaste. I don't wear suits. Never have (on ocassion in the distant past I scraped together a trousers and tie combination but I haven't even worn that in five years).

I was just about to say "never will", but that's not true, tomorrow I have to go suit shopping and friday I have to wear it.

BAH!

This is further proof my life as a nomad is over.

I'm getting a suit, can't fit everything I own in two large bags anymore, and am even considering buying a house. I may as well just admit that I'm old and boring.

This really sucks. I was getting used to wearing trousers and logn sleeve shirts, but this is too much too fast. I better get a big pay rise to make up for this.

I guess it takes a disaster to make me blog these days, so let's hope I don't write again for a little while.

A stupid lousy no good suit. Wonder if I can call in sick for the conference?

Velcommen ar Sweden

2006-02-22T09:46:00.000-07:00

Or whatever it is they say here, I must admit to a distressing lack of competence with spoken Swedish (not that my reading comprehension is great either but it's easier to guess when I can see what words look like. I can pick words out of conversations when I know what is going on, but hurdy gurdy bork potato glemmestraan?

It's so frustrating being basically monolingual (and knowing that if you look blankly at people they will give up and speak nearly perfect English). No Maltese person in their right mind would assume I am a local so the problem doesn't arise so I don't feel guilty, but more people here speak swedish than speak Maltese in Malta, and a lot more tall people with blue eyes speak Swedish than speak Maltese.

Everyone's obsessed with it being cold, and I didn't mind wearing trousers, and shoes this morning... too much. The office has a great view over the old town and the harbour and stuff - central Stockholm is quite a pretty city. It's also just nice to be out of Malta (it's a nice enough place to live but feels so small and backwards sometime) and out of the office down there - the one up here is physically nicer, and I'm not involved in any of the politics and stuff and people seem less angry / stressed).

I am not sure whether tonight will be spent at the hotel (I have a couple hours laptop battery and can probably arrange internet if I care enough), or if a friend will be available for dinner (if not I might have to eat alone, which I dislike at sit down places - maybe I should wander the streets in the dark looking for a kebab shop - the Swedes in Malta rate the kebabs here, but a lot of that is probably just Swedish arrogance.

I've got a nice long shopping list for people too, so that will eat my saturday I suspect - it's good in a way, will give me a mini-taste of living here rather than just tourist / business stuff.

Anyway, the office is boring me, so it's "home" time. Haven't done anything touristy yet, might not do much, even this weekend, we'll see how I feel.

Pretty sure I'm trying to set some sort of record.

2006-02-18T02:31:00.000-07:00

Normal life just does not lend itself to blogging. I mean stuff happens, I just don't feel like writing about it. A lot of that is because work is just constantly busy but some of it is just because I'm an everyday average guy now.

I still don't have a haircut, but it's now a matter of when, and how much, not if.

I only feel tall on rainy days. Normally, the short people I see in the street seem like an everyday abberation, little old ladies and little old men are so common that the adjectives go with the nouns like olives and pizza (or indeed almost any foodstuff here). Anyway, on rainy days I realise that it's not just little old ladies and little old men. Most Maltese people carry umbrellas (because when it rains here, it really rains, there's none of that subtle stuff that places further from the equator have. It might start as a gentle drizzle, but pretty soon it's going to be a full on drenching.

When everyone else is carrying an umbrella you notice how short they are. I don't carry one because just as I refuse to conceed to the "cold" and not wear shorts, I refuse to conceed to the rain, plus I'm too lazy and forgetful so it would always be at the wrong location because I couldn't be bothered carrying it back the time before I needed it. Every rainy day, I have to choose between the temporary blindness of wearing wet glasses, or the risk of permanent blindness because of eye-level spikes.

Going to Sweden on Monday for a business trip (see how grown up I am now?). So that should be a lot of fun (even if in one of life's little ironies, one of the people I was supposed to meet with is coming to Malta because of an emergency down here).

Rugby and Ninjas.

2006-01-07T12:53:00.000-07:00

One of the advantages of having a mother who interviews for Medical School admissions (I hope that this isn't classified information, but I'm pretty sure she leaves her Darth Vader mask at home before the interviews so she's not anonymous there) is that she gets to gossip with the All Blacks' doctor.

She asked him whether I should be playing rugby after the knee surgery I had back in 98.

His words (not an exact quote but close enough were "His knee will be buggered by the time he's 40, he may as well have fun."

It's not the best news I've heard, but hopefully artificial cartillage is on the market before July 17 2020 (when my life begins according to Grey Power propaganda).

I played rugby today (something I plan on doing more often now I'm 9 to 5).

It was a great game, one of those games that is evenly matched, and players are fired up without it ever quite boiling over into more than a bit of shoving. Yes, I was well behaved too, when the game is in the balance, I'm less inclined to come up swinging, even when some big fat South African tries to punch me in the head (I might have been interfering with his scrum half trying to clear the ball from the ruck a little, but otherwise it was unprovoked).

I played fairly well although I am really unfit from three months of sitting around eating kebabs (when I work) and drinking beer (on my days off). Actually kebabs are pretty healthy, it's mostly the sitting around.

I made ninja pie last night - it's like cottage pie only you put soy (teryaki or oyster) sauce and oriental spices (OXO do a killer oriental cube) when frying the mince up. Also, boil the potatoes in water flavoured with a beef stock cube, then mash them with butter, more beef stock (minimal amount of hot water to dissolve the cube) and parmesan cheese.

That's today's food tip.

9 to 5 (well 6) ing it.

2006-01-06T15:08:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow is my last day of shift work! As of Monday, I'm on the office hours schedule like other important people.* It's a weird feeling, I'm really growing up a lot these last few months. Working weird hours a part of immature nomadic Richard that is falling by the wayside.

I now have a real job, working in an office, supervising people and all that adult stuff. I even wore trousers and shoes to work on Monday! I still have long hair (see photo) but even the last true statement on my blog title is endangered since having long hair annoys me sometimes - it falls out all over the place, and gets in my eyes and nose sometimes. I might keep it till I go back to New Zealand so I can try and sneak past my mother at the airport again. The last time I returned from overseas my hair was three inches longer than my mother was used to (ie four inches long) and had been dyed blondish. This plan is now danger because she has been warned about it, but whatever, I like a challenge, and all the studying she's been doing has probably made her eyesight even worse.

I'm also getting a company laptop and phone in the near future, so that's pretty cool. I'm mostly psyched about the laptop, although a Bluetooth phone is actually pretty sweet too. My house will have an internet connection within a week or two so although I'll be on call 24/7 I won't have to walk round to the office if it's just simple stuff.

Man, I'm 25.5 years old and I'm in real danger of becoming a corporobot.

That said, there are many worse places to do it (there are better ones, at least until Malta gets a ski resort) and many worse companies / industries to do it in (almost any one that makes its employees wear trousers, and especially any that impose ties).

My long term plan is actually to do this job for a year or two and then either move up a level (probably in another company in another country so it will be a bit of an adventure but we'll see) or abandon this whole working lark and either go teach English in Japan (Matt is steadily convincing me that I really like Japanese culture and stuff, even though he's kind of a banana) or back to university and get a PhD (my mother AND father will both have one by that time so I don't want to feel left out).

Anyway, 20 minutes to go on my penultimate shift and I have a rugby game tomorrow so I want to get out of here on time.

* = Offer not valid when any of my team are sick, on holiday, or if things go seriously wrong.

Feliz Navidad!

2005-12-26T00:44:00.000-07:00

I was going to wish Gode Yule, but I'm not exactly sure how it's spelt (rule of thumb for Swedish, when in doubt, take an english or german word that means roughly what you want and pronounce it like the Swedish Chef.

Seriously, he might be a muppet (literally, not just in the sense I use it to mean slightly stupid person) but that man has done wonders for my pronounciation. It's definately not right, but it's better than saying it English-style, at least I'm trying.

Maybe this is why I didn't get promoted, advising people that "hurdy hurdy børk! børk! børk!" is a good way to practise Swedish probably isn't part of the Anglo-Swedish edition "How to win friends and influence people".

And to think I wanted to be a diplomat. Regular readers of this blog (so that would be Mum and Dad since no one else has the patience to wait for me to feel like writing) will remember previous incidents of my cultural sensitivity.

On that note, Australians really are special. We (a multi-cultural group of guys from work) met one at a party on Friday - the host had pointed her at me because I was from New Zealand.

"Oi beet oi ceen giss weere youse is from" (that's enough dialectising from me, for any readers unfamiliar with Straylan, you'll just have to imagine a female version of the crocodile hunter, only a lot more nasal.

She "guessed" where I was from. This is not a great achievement at the best of times, but when people have been calling me Kiwi (since I'm one of perhaps three New Zealanders on the island) from the minute I walked in, it's a gimmie.

Sinder - an Indian-British guy who sounds straight Birmingham and looks straight New Dehli (or whatever the sub-continent's equivalent of Birmingham is). According to miss Geography, he's definately French (to be fair, he does have a gallic nose).

Karl - was probably born within a stone's throw (at least by catapult) of the house we were in is definately Polish.

Cyrus - he's portugese-spanish but apparantly looks hungarian. After a strong hint she guessed portugal. He hinted "and the country next to it" "ummm, Italy". Now, I know that Australian high schools haven't been the same since Susan Kennedy had her accident (neighbours joke).

Anyway, you get the idea.

While I'm busy offending people, recently I have learned that you can describe 90% of Maltese women with the following adjectives - short, black hair, loves shopping, hot-tempered, loves shopping, lots of cousins, probably has a name from the bible (unless their family ran out).

The families here make my mother's network of relatives seem very Protestant. One guy in the office literally had 50 something first cousins (he thinks), another is well into three figures if you include second cousins.

Actually, if you replace one or two of the "loves shopping" with "loves cars" you have a pretty good description of 90% of maltese men as well although the name thing is less accurate since a lot seem to be called Mario (or at least the ones called Mario are always shouting at people).

Well, that's my daily dose of political incorrectness out the way.

Hope ya'll had a good Christmas (if you're in my family, presents are on their way, I promise - although my sister and one brother have already recieved, so I'm running at 33% on time delivery, which isn't bad by my standards).

Long overdue Richard update - mostly random pontificating actually

2005-12-17T02:49:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been almost a month since I last wrote anything, and from memory, I didn't write very much then. In my defence, I have worked about 320 hours in the last month (that's an average of 80 hours a week, don't get me started).

People sometimes ask me what it's like living in Malta (or they would if I had any human contact with people outside work). To be honest I don't really live in Malta. I live in little Anglo-Swedish internet company colony that happens to be in Malta.

The short answer is to visit www.visitmalta.com (the tourist board website). A more accurate answer is www.onlyinmalta.com

Since I'm me, I'm going to give a much longer answer which won't have much to do with the question (I really am much better suited for the academic world than the business one I think). But more on that later.

The comparison with colonisation is a deliberate one - we come from overseas to exploit Malta's resources (a very low tax rate for Internet companies and a cheap source of English speaking labour). We have Maltese people working for us but they are mostly on the bottom of the ladder (although the intelligent ones are getting ahead nicely with experience). By us I mean that the company has Maltese employees - it's the law and they can't find enough foriegners to bring in and Maltese people are cheaper because there are no relocation costs and they compare the salary to Malta (very good) not London or Stockholm (poverty line). I also mean that most of the employees here have employees of their own.

I believe that Matt and I are the only foreign people in the company who do not have a cleaner. This might be because we are both happy with a moderate level of dirt and mess. It might also be guilt from having family servants as a child (his parents work for a big Japanese company and they spent time in Thailand where I assume they had locals working for them) or maybe that's just me. It is weird to me that a flat full of guys in their 20s have a cleaner (it's also weird that their flat is probably in the top 10% or 25% of dwellings in Malta). Mind you, most of my fellow employees need a cleaner since they make me look domesticated, which I guess I am actually -I cook (when I have time), I clean (when I can be bothered), I know how to do laundry (one of my friends here actually had to be shown how to work a washing machine!).

Sure, I haven't actually finished unpacking yet, but I never do. No matter where I live, I never get around to using drawers and cupboards / wardrobes whatever they are called. Seriously, the only places I have ever fully unpacked (with the possible exception of family homes although I usually just stored my clothes on the floor there too, much to the dismay of my mother) are the Army (where it was a direct order, and I tended to obey those, most of the time) and Mt Ruapehu (where I was living in a six foot by six foot room - yes it's possible for a six foot two guy to live there, you sleep slightly diagonally).

This might be because shorts and t-shirts are more conveniently stored on a chair or spare bed, it might be nomadic angst, it might just be because I am lazy - take your pick. Maybe I fear that the natives will wake up one morning and throw us out.

Maybe I'm seeing colonial issues everywhere since I did that sort of thing for my honours year in history and am feeling the academic bug something fierce right now (that or it's bird flu).

A native uprising is not likely, in fact their burocracy (yes I know I've spelt it wrong) rules over us, the last two months I have probably paid for the kebab shop guy's kids' Christmas presents.

Yes, I am a regular at the kebab shop near the office. I even have my usual - lamb doner on coleslaw, rice and veges, onion, and chips or mashed potato if they have it - fusion cusine baby, well that and my Belfast heritage, and it's very good mashed potato. I don't know why a Turkish immigrant to Malta makes such good mash but it's almost as good as Dad used to make! In my family that's a higher compliment than like Mum used to make - I may disparage her cooking from time to time, but she is actually a pretty good cook, it's just that Dad is much more cheffy in his approach to food).

So yeah, I hinted earlier that I was thinking about going back to university. It wouldn't be immediate, I'll probably be here for another few months / couple of years - we'll see how my application for a promotion goes and if my job gets better than it is now. If it's a few months I will probably do one more immature job (at a ski resort in Europe I think) before probably heading back to NZ. I suspect I will do something about NZ history, although if it is military history I'd be better off trying to get into a British university since almost all of New Zealand's wars have been over here. There are a couple of people at the Department in Auckland who I really respect as people and as historians, so I might well end up going back to good old Auckland University.

But this is all speculation on my part. Right now I'm going to stop writing, and go for lunch in Valetta (the capital, where many of the famous and touristy old buildings are) with a friend of mine. It's a bit wet and grey (stupid Mediteranean weather doesn't co-operate) but for a first day off after about nine straight I'll take what I can get!

Anyway, I hope you all have merry Christmasses and Happy New Years (although I will hopefully contact you again before then I wouldn't bet on it based on past performance).

Hooray for overtime

2005-11-23T18:51:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm stealing a few minutes from work (the servers are down temporarily). Basicaly things have gone horribly wrong this week. The only good thing about it is that 1) I get lots of overtime and 2) I prove how useful I am. This is good because there is apparantly a pay review in december, even if they didn't plan it, they are giving me one and I'm getting a BIG raise because quite frankly they are significantly underpaying me right now, even with overtime fattening my check.

Life for the last few days has pretty much been wake up come to work, work a long time go home sleep. I had a couple hours this morning to put away groceries (bought off the internet) and play a little playstation (Tenchu - a pretty good ninja game).

Servers are back, time for me to get back to work. This post made no sense, good job I'm doing numbers and pulldown menus right now :D

Rugby Time (The Director's Cut)

2005-11-16T15:00:00.000-07:00

As some of my more observant (stalker?) family members noticed, I edited my last blog post to remove references to a fight. Contrary to popular belief, this wasn't censorahip or anything exciting, I just wasn't particularly happy with my writing.

Yes, someone started a fight with me during my first rugby game in Malta. I tackled him, he punched me in the head, I retaliated by grabbing his jersey and punching him several times. Like most fights on a sports field, it didn't last long and nobody inflicted much damage. The referee didn't notice because he was busy watching the other team score their first try (of many). Our team was bigger and tougher, but they were faster and more technically polished (many of their players are in "Malta A" and so trained all summer. Most of our players are big and like running into people.

Without good backline defence or top rate forwards (if you're going to win ground a few meters at a time you have to be very good at keeping the ball), mobility is usually going to win over size.

But getting back to the fight (which was probably the most interesting thing about the game (although it was a pleasant experience to be one of the better players on the field). Yes, my parents brought me up to think that fighting was wrong (I'm not sure how well they succeeded, since I joined the army after leaving high school, but anyway, it's not their fault). I don't usually endorse violence (unless it's ninja-style, I'm cultivating a humourous obsession with ninjas at the moment).

I'm not particularly short tempered, but there are a few things I just don't tolerate, and as one of the other team's forwards found out, one of them is cheap shots - if you're going to attack someone (not that you should), at least do it fairly.

The rules of the game are there to protect players, if you deliberately break them, you should be sanctioned. In a perfect world the referee would instantly see and punish all wrong doing, but the world isn't perfect, and a little bit of rule bending (although not to hurt other people) is kind of part of the game.

OK, this is much less well thought out than I had hoped, I got distracted a few times. I'm going home now.

Rugby time

2005-11-12T14:25:00.000-07:00

Well, today I played my first game of rugby in quite a few years. I'm now a proud and valued member of the Aligators RFC (one of the 5 clubs in Malta). After losing 13 of last season's starting lineup they were pretty happy to hear they'd be getting a crack NZ import flanker. Then they discovered it was me ;) Actually, I am in the unfamiliar position of feeling fairly secure in my place in the starting lineup. I'm not a superstar by any means, but I'm handy.

It was so good to get back on a rugby field.

I made some decent clearouts at rucks and a few solid tackles. Did a bit of running with the ball too, but the bigger guys on the team are more effective at that.

We lost, thanks to their backs being a lot faster and fitter than ours. But it was great fun. The All Blacks crushed Ireland, but England looked worryingly good in their victory over Australia. The match in a couple weeks will be very interesting (as will the next time we play these guys since we are the second best team in the country right now and improving fast).

Busy Busy Meltdown Busy

2005-11-03T11:11:00.000-07:00

Well I blatantly stole the title, but you're lucky I'm even posting.

Work has had a bit of a crisis recently, which has been kind of fun. One of my dirty little secrets is that deep down inside, I like stress. Yeah, mister "I'm so laid back it's a wonder I don't topple over", has a dark side which gets a buzz from the twisted feeling you get in your stomach when everything feels like it's going wrong.

Hehe, but let's blog about food instead, since I seem to be around work constantly (most of the people I know in Malta at the moment work with me) and so have no urge to write about it here.

I've been making a lot of pasta recently, fairly simple stuff. Obviously, pasta is simple, although boiling it up with a chicken stock cube in the water and a pinch of oregano is a big improvement. But even the sauces aren't rocket science. A little care and flair (when the world recognises my unique genius and I get my internatinal TV show, that's going to be a catch phrase I think) can produce a pretty tasty dish.

I'm proof that any idiot can cook.

Pasta for dummies.

Equipment:
Big Fryingpan
Wooden Spoon
Saucepan
Chef Knife
Chopping Board
Stove top

Ingredients:
Cooking oil (I like using olive oil, but whatever works)
1 Chicken breast
2-4 rashers bacon
1 Yellow Pepper (Capsicum in Kiwispeak)
1 onion
Garlic (I use 4 cloves, 2 would be plenty)
Frozen sweetcorn
Bottle / can basic pasta sauce.
Pasta
Mixed Herbs
Chicken stock cube
Cheese

Break a couple of cloves of garlic off the head. Crush them using the flat of the knife (turn it sideways and use the palm of your hand on the side of the blade). Peel them then slice into little bits.

Peel the onions and slive them into little bits. The easiest way to do this is to chop the top and bottom bits off, then cut about half way through the onion and then peel off the outside layer of onion.

Chop the pepper. Again, slice the top and bottom bits off to start. It can get a bit tricky here, but if you slip the knife down inside and carefully work it round, you should be able to slice away most of the seedy rubbish. Once you've stripped off most of the white gunk, slice the pepper into little bits.

Slice the chicken breast and the bacon into little pieces.

Half or two thirds fill the saucepan with water, place it on the stove. Add a splash (one quick tip of most bottles, about 15-30ml) of oil and the chicken stock cube (break it up first). Leave this until the water starts boil.

Add the garlic, a bit of oil, and some mixed herbs to the frying pan over a medium heat. Add in the chicken and bacon. Stir frequently.

Once the chicken bits are white all over, add the pepper and onions, and continue to stir.

When the water starts to steam, add the pasta to the saucepan.

Continue to stir the frying pan until the chicken starts to go dark brown, making sure nothing sticks to the bottom of the pan. Then turn the heat down and add your pasta sauce. Add a bit of water to the emtpy bottle / can, slosh it about and then tip the tomatoey water into the frying pan too. Continue to stir the sauce gently, adding another pinch or two of herbs.

When the pasta starts to feel just a little too chewy, tip the corn into the saucepan.

When the pasta to done to your taste, turn the stove off and drain the pasta.

Put the pasta on plate(s) or containers, whatever you plan on doing with it.

Turn the fryingpan off, and spoon or pour the sauce on top of the pasta, put some cheese on top.

Eat (and feel rather pleased with yourself.

Next time, gourmet baked beans on toast.

Be careful what you wish for.

2005-10-25T13:18:00.000-06:00

As the saying goes, you just mught get it. I wanted a transfer to more interesting and important work, and I got it. Now I'm sitting here, kinda smelly because I've been at work for over 13 hours with no end in sight (well actually the end for me today should be an hour or so after tech get the servers up).

At least I get overtime, although it's less appealing the day after payday when I have plenty of cash (literally cash - bank accounts in malta are a little difficult to obtain) and won't be reaping the fruits of my labours for another 31 days.

Malta (the little bits I've seen of it) is a pretty sweet place. I'm too tired today to really feel like trying to be clever or informative. I like my house (except for the slight gas leak we have for our stovetop), my flatmates (except when they wake me up early), my job (as much as I complain about it sometimes), etc.

I'm still alive, just kinda busy. Working for a living isn't all it's cracked up to be (or more accurately it is all it's cracked down to be, and then some - right now I'm staring at a photo of Mt Ruapehu on a perfect winter's day and wondering what possessed me to take this job over the Chalet "girl" position in a Swiss ski resort whose name I have forgotten because that's how effective work is at scrubbing nomadic impulses out of your soul.

That's very negative, at least work is usually much more fun (even if it's fun in the way that banging your head against the wall a hundred times is - it feels so good when you stop) than cleaning rooms, although I wish we were based somewhere with good ski hills.

I'll try and be more reliable about blogging in future, but we'll see.

Promotion

2005-10-07T09:45:00.000-06:00

Well, it didn;t take long, I've arranged the transfer I was kind of angling for from day one. Basically I've been moved from Support to Marketing.

The first question everyone asks is did you get a pay rise?

The answer to that is no, not yet. That said, the other guy in the department that works in Marketing our office (my friend Dave) is strongly pushing for it based on the fact we're supposed to be in the office or on call 24/7 between 2 of us at the moment. Even if that doesn't work out, it puts me in a MUCH stronger position to campaign for a bigger raise in 5 months when my probabtionary period ends. I'll have been doing more work, more valuable work, and have many more tangible things to point at during the evaluation meeting.

Believe it or not (it will depend on how well you know me, and how cynical you are about me) I didn't want this for the money. It is actually because the work is more interesting. I do not like being bored. One of the main complaints I had about Malta was always that work was not particularly interesting. This has been resolved. Sure, I'm going to be much busier, especially in the forseeable future, but I'm going to enjoy a lot more of it.

The other thing, which might seem to go directly against my "it's not about the money" claim, but really doesn't, is that the experience I get in this position will be more valuable and transferable in the future and help me get more interesting (and incidentally better paid ;) ) jobs.

It really hasn't taken long for me to start playing the corporate game. Like I've said before, whatever I play, I play to win.

Anyway, home time, we still don't have internet at the apartment, and things are going to be stupid busy and long hours in the near future so I have more excuses to be slack.

The company is springing for a nice dinner tonight too, which is pretty sweet.

Life is Good.

I'm Lazy

2005-10-04T01:53:00.000-06:00

Well today it rained. Actually, it's 10am and it stopped. But it rained enough between 7am and 9am to count as raining the whole day. Seriously, this was a downpour of tropical proportions. Thunder, lightening, three inches of water all over the pavement, the whole nine yards. They also don't seem to believe in stormwater drains in malta so streets just turn into rivers.

Our apartment (both the building and the people) is cool.

Doing some super boring testing at work today, so between that and the weather, I have no real desire to write anything. Oh, and the fact we're constantly up till midnight playing playstation and hanging out with people.

New House

2005-09-29T09:19:00.000-06:00

We have a new apartment. It is sweet. That's the short version of the last week and a half. We is as follows:

Me - Your long haired narrator who likes mountains, winter, and wide open spaces. Currently wondering what he is doing in a real job in Europe's flattest, warmest, and most crowded country.

Cyrus - World famous in Finland. A half-Spanish half-Portugese former rockstar with the tatoos, piercings, and liver problems to prove it.

Aaron - A Gibraltarian (field) hockey star who is alleged to work in our Finance Department (he showed up a couple days ago but hasn't done much yet).

The apartment is a spacious first floor 3.5 bedroom on the seafront. It has great water pressure and views. But I'm done with work. Stockholm have just produced a their crowning piece of idiocy for the day and I'm refusing to deal with them until they decide which one of them is getting to use their communal braincell. It's fifteen minutes before the end of the shift, but I'm logging out before I give them both barrels (possibly literally, since some people from the office are going to Sweden on Friday, and I might buy a shotgun and join them - Stockholm have been that bad today).

Sleep is for the weak

2005-09-21T02:27:00.000-06:00

For some reason, I'm really tired today. Hehe, I love the way that sentence implies it's not my fault. To be honest, I know exactly what the reason is - I've been staying up far too late far too often. I wish I could blame work for this, but basically it's my own fault. Well, since I'm trying to shift blame, it's because many of my coworkers are cool people, so we hang out a lot.

I'm likely to complain and make fun of a lot of things when talking about Malta. That's just the way I work. I'm at my most creative when making fun of things (especially things I like). I'd like to say up front that Maltese people are great. They're friendly and have a good attitude to life.

Malta is a country where almost nobody can drive half as well as they think they do, where holidays and festivals are very important, even if many people don't actually know which one it is, and where the crime rate is the lowest in Europe but the law is held in low regard.

The company flat I am staying in at the moment is on the 4th floor of a seafront block of apartments. The road beneath us is a fairly major one - both for traffic and for passagiata (which is best translated as "wandering around to see and be seen"). It provides us with numerous people watching opportunities.

Now, I don't drive, but I'm fairly sure that overtaking on a busy two lane street, then jumping on the brakes to make a left turn (they drive on the left here, so left is easy) is not particularly talented. Nor is not jumping on the brakes before trying to take a tight corner. Actually, maybe the Maltese are good drivers - I haven't actually SEEN an accident yet (just heard a lot of screeching and sirens). They can't park to save their lives though. The British introduced the concept of parallel parking, but like many British things here, it's just slapped on top of an older layer. The execution is determinedly Mediteranean in most cases. Drive up to somewhere near the space, then reverse in a bit (usually in a straight line), then swing the steering wheel round and drive forward.

Malta has lots of important festivals and holidays, even if the guy in the DVD shop can't remember why exactly he has a day off tomorrow, he knows he's got one. I'm just going to leave everything else I brought up for another day, since I totally lost track of where I was going with this.

Stuff about Malta

2005-09-12T12:57:00.000-06:00

Well, by the time I finish "work" tonight (we're ridiculously slow at
the moment) I'll have been living here for pretty much exactly a week.
Time to write some more stuff.

Living in Malta is pretty good. I'm slowly adapting to the climate,
the water (tap water is rather foul and water pressure is somewhat
variable), and the fact that one Lira is actually enough money to buy
two cans of drink (one can of banana juice and a can of coke) and a
chocolate bar.

The pace of life in Malta is a little slower than I'm used to. When I
was a teenager, I knew a small block of precooked noodles and stock
powder as "two minute noodles". During the ski season in Fernie I knew
it as "breakfast, lunch, and dinner". Here in Malta, they are "three
minute noodles".

Maybe it's just because they care more about food here and want to
infuse the noodles with more flavouring or something. Even the local
workman's cafe offers dishes like smoked salmon penne and the icecream
is divine (which is a little strange, since I doubt there's enough
grass on Malta to support even one cow). I still haven't tried rabbit
yet, so that's another thing to look forward to.

I have discovered why Mediterranian people tend to promenade - a much
slower and more deliberate action than just walking. If you try
walking in the Anglophone way then you get a sweaty back, almost no
matter how short the walk is. The Anglophone way is walking like
you're in a hurry to get where you are going, even if you aren't going
anywhere. That said, the concept of walking without having anywhere to
go is also fairly foriegn to us Saxons.

--
www.kiwinomad.blogspot.com

Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they
have to say something. - Plato

"I'd just like to say..." - Me

More details

2005-09-10T10:06:00.000-06:00

Well, I left granny at 9am and got the train up to London and the tube
to Brian and Chitra's. The train journey was fine - Southern England
is ocassionally scenic, but only in a rather pastoral way (which I am
not a fan of). Mostly I read a book and wondered why exactly I am
getting a real job.

I lugged my 50 kilos of luggage down to the tube and onto the transfer
bus from hatton cross to T4 since the tube doesn't go that far
anymore. My excess baggage was about twice the price of my flight
(thankfully the company will reimburse me\.

Uneventful flight - except for the announcements in Maltese. While it
sounds more like a language than it looks, I despair of being able to
learn more than "uhhhhh I speak English don't"

Arriving at 1am is not particularly good for anything, but I made it
through customs and immigration without any problems. Malta
international airport is pretty small (given that the whole country
has less land area than LAX* that is not surprising).

Met my boss and another new guy - Cyrus. We seem to get on pretty well
so we'll likely be looking for a house together (probably with a
couple other people) this month.

Malta is stinking hot a lot of the time and this email is taking days
to write so I'm just going to send it.

* = not verified by our fact checkers

--
www.kiwinomad.blogspot.com

Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they
have to say something. - Plato

"I'd just like to say..." - Me

Tick tock tick tock

2005-08-27T11:04:00.000-06:00

No, I'm not planning on sending a letter bomb to my comments spammer (although it would be in keeping with my policy of massive and disproportionate retaliation). Instead, that's the count down clock to my departure.

I got my plane ticket back from Air New Zealand, booked my Calgary - Vancouver flight, found places to stay to in England (it was a little worrying at first, but I forgot that normal people don't check their email every 5 minutes (or even every day).

Thanks to the wonders of the internyet I also now have an OK idea of all the various travel times between key locations in Southern England. England is very small. I had forgotten just how small it was until looking at a map and then travel times. Seriously, 5 hours from Calgary get you just past Edmonton. From London, it gets you to most other English cities (unless it's rush hour, in which case you might make it to the next exit on the M25).

Things About Me.

2005-08-22T23:47:00.000-06:00

Since it seems to be fashionable for bloggers to make narcissistic lists of facts about themselves, I thought I'd try to make one.

1) I check my email 12 times or more a day and can't understand why normal people don't do it at least once. Seriously, people, check your email, you're ruining the information superhighway. You are better off emailling me than phoning me if you want my attention - I can ignore the phone, I almost never ignore an email.

2) I simply can not just buy a loaf of bread when I go to the supermarket. I will ALWAYS end up with about 10X the amount of stuff. Doesn't matter if my cupboards are empty or if I just spent $200 two days before. I will load up my shopping basket. Food is one of the few things I enjoy shopping for.

3) Raw tomatoes make me nauseous, boil em up and make pasta sauce or ketchup and I love em. I also don't like haut-cuisine (even just cuisine is suspect, unless we're talking French - which I can do, lentement). I like food that is cooked, not created. My top three foods are potatoes (especially roast, fried, or mashed up with plenty of dairy products - it's my Irish heritage), sweetcorn (especially on the cob, but I go through a lot of frozen corn too), and beef (either rare, or stewed for so long it's falling to pieces). My favourite condiment is sweet chili sauce and my father has made several of my top ten meals ever.

4) I drink ridiculous amounts of water. We're talking about 4 litres a day. I strongly prefer it iced (I keep three half full plastic drink bottles in the freezer, so I can have cold water all day).

5) I enjoy watching professional wrestling. Yes, I know it's fake, and I know that ironic-faux-belief is so Gen X (I think I'm offically Gen Y, but whatever, even if I'm late X, I despise people who try to be cool, so I ain't doing that). I just enjoy it because it's like a soap opera with plenty of explosions and people "punching" each other. I also enjoy trying to work out where the storylines are going (and when I'm right, proving I'm smarter then the average bear - which is my real favourite hobby).

Five items will do because I got a little tangential on some of them (what a surpruse, huh?)

Vigilante Justice.

2005-08-21T09:46:00.000-06:00

Well, I got my first comment spam, so I turned on image verification for comments. Sorry bout this, but I figured it was better than forcing people to have a blogger account to comment.

The following is an open letter to the owner of www.catfurniturediscounters.com and anyone else who thinks it might be a good idea to spam this blog:

Dear Spammer,

You just made a huge mistake.

I complained to your domain registrar and your web host. Hopefully you'll need to find a new host and domain name and start all over again.

I've also bookmarked your site so if it does go live you'll be recieving some special attention from me. You want to spam my blog? You're going to pay the price.

I have always disliked spammers, and now that I'm trying to make an honest living on the internet I actively hate them.

By the way, the honest living argument is probably going to be your defence for spamming me. Using automated tools to exploit other people's work without adding any value of your own is not an honest living in my eyes.

I don't care that it's possible to get automated tools to create forum posts and blog comments to increase your link popularity. It's possible for me to just tip my garbage off my balcony rather than take it to the garbage chute too, but I don't even though it would save me a 30 meter walk.

What you are trying to do is steal Page Rank. I don't like stealers. Yes, stealers is not a real word but to call you a thief is an insult to thieves - at least thieves have to make some sort of effort, you just bought your spammy software off some sleazy get rich quick website and set it to work.

As you will discover, I have a rather vindictive streak. You spammed the wrong blog, and I'm going to make you pay. Simple as that. In fact, I'm going to try and destroy you. Forget an eye for an eye. This is going to be massively disproportional payback. If I can bring your business to its knees, I will, and I will be glad about it.

I might be rather liberal on many things, but crime and punishment is one thing I'm pretty conservative on - especially punishment :D - There's no Eighth Amendment on the Internet. In case you don't understand (you are a stupid spammer after all) the Eighth Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. Which is exactly what you are going to get.

Hurry up and launch your site so I can start getting medieval on you.

That is all.

Richard

I suck at blogging.

2005-08-16T22:10:00.000-06:00

I mean really, let's go over the checklist of a good blog.

1) Updated Regularly. Well, except when I'm busy, bored, uninspired or tired. I'm not appointment reading, because nobody, except the phone company, makes appointments for a 72 hour window.

2) Short posts. BWAAAAHAHAHA! When given free reign, I can and will be rather verbose. Sure, each individual sentence will be well crafted and fairly efficient. There will just be lots of them on a variety of topics.

3) Plenty of links to other blogs and interesting content. Nope. I'm selfish and want to keep all my visitors to myself. Plus I just never remember to link to anything cool, because I'm starting to become forgetful in my old age.

4) Interesting content. Sure, I sometimes manage to find something interesting to write about, but usually I'm just scrambling to put a veneer of humour on a rather unexceptional daily life. Sure, the meta-narrative (oh yeah, random intellectual showing off like that isn't good blogging either) of my life is interesting, but there's been precious few interesting events recently.

That all said, I did go for a hike on Sunday with a couple of friends from my U of C days and couple of their friends. It was good to get in back touch, however briefly, which people I like, and meet new ones (even if I am going to resort to my old trick of leaving the country).

We wandered up Mt Yamanuska (or something like that). It was good fun, the views were very nice - mostly back down a valley out to the plains. All round a good Sunday afternoon, capped off with a very pleasant dinner of nachos, fajitas, and chocolate cake.

While I'm thinking about desserts, one more thing I will miss about Canada is maple flavoured stuff. It's everywhere from on top of pancakes (of course), in brownies (an obvious place for it), to chocolate bars (less logicial I would have thought, but Canadians love maple syrup) to baked beans (I kid you not) and even such culinary delights as "Maple chicken".

As Asterix might say, "these Canadians are crazy" (except he'd also have to add "Ces Canadiens sont fous" or the language police would get him. By the way I conjugated and spelt that correctly BEFORE checking www.freetranslation.com which is more than I can do with English some days recently. Not that French is going to be much use in Malta, since Maltese really is some sort of bizarre cross of Arabic, Italian, and Klingon.

I really do have a thing about insulting small countries don't I? First there was a series of posts making fun of Irish people and their ridiculous sports, now I'm starting to pick on a country that's about the size of a postage stamp (actually, if we take the Vatican as the official postage-stamp sized country, then Malta is postcard-sized). I'm pretty sure the city of Auckland is larger.

While trying to check this, I found the following discrepancy:

The NZ treasury website tells visitors that NZ's areas is 103,000 square miles.
Lonely Planet claim it's 103,737 square miles.
Wikipedia and the CIA might think it's 111,984 square miles (although I can't be sure I converted 268,680 square KM into square miles correctly - I divided by 1.6 and then by 1.6 again)

Anyway, I'm going to play some Super Nintendo (I'm just one boss away from getting all of Donkey Kong's bananas back!) and then go to bed.

Malta

2005-08-11T23:34:00.000-06:00

Well, I'm off to Malta at the end of the month. Assuming the job goes well, I'll more or less stop being a nomad. OK, fine, I'll become a settled person. That scares me more than moving half way round the world. That's kind of like meh, whatever, wake me up when we get there. But a real job, with an actual salary (and a pretty decent one, at least by Maltese standards)? That's the worrying thing.

Malta Fact #1 - Population density 1300 / km2, Netherlands population density 700 / km2.

Malta Fact #2 - Rabbit is the unofficial national dish.

Seriously, I'm not too fussed that they speak a language that's somewhere between Arabic, Italian and Klingon (well English is an official language too, so I'll survive) or any of that culture shock stuff.

But I'm getting a real job and will have to be responsible and stuff. It'll be fun - using my newfound innurnet knowledge and so forth, rather than just qualifying for a job by being a breathing biped.

You want me to do WHAT with my coins?

2005-08-09T18:46:00.000-06:00

I've collected about $60 worth of change (coins less than a dollar) over the last few months. I take it down to the bank (open 10:30 - 3:30 - wow what service). It's all nicely separated into envelopes so they can just weigh it and put electronic money in my account.

Except they can't. Apparantly I have to roll my coins. No, this doesn't mean I should see how they perform when dropped on their sides. In Canada's "High-Tech" banking world, they don't have coin weighing machines (which we had in 95 at the Kentucky Fried Chicken I worked at in NZ). So I got given a bunch of paper sheaths which I had to try squeezeing coins into.

Not fun.

So I am leaving Canada in protest.

Well that and I was offered a pretty sweet job in Malta. Details to come - haven't recieved the contract yet, but I was offered the job.

Most of my readers (mum and dad) already know the details. The rest of you will find out when I feel life sharing.

Dan (my flatmate) and I will be going to the CFL game on Friday - $20 for ticket, bus ride to the stadium, a beer and some garlic bread - ticket alone directly is $27 or more. If you're looking to see a Stampeder's game, sportsbars all over the city have this sort of deal.

It's been a long week.

2005-08-07T17:34:00.000-06:00

Let's not talk about it. Business is pretty good, I have more ideas than time, and most importantly, I'm enjoying myself... usually - there are frequent moments of frustration (caused mainly by client's this week, the laptop has been mostly behaving itself) but generally things are good.

I've started a little sideproject - People Buy That, a blog about all the Funny Weird Stuff out there. Two minutes a day (or less) out of my life, but hopefully it makes my visitors' days a little better.

In terms of real work, I'm also moving out of just being a content monkey and into a more general ecommerce role. This is fine by me.

Precious little going on really, this last week has been another one involving a lot of time in front of the computer. Just updating to reassure my faithful reader - I don't even deserve to use the plural any more - that I am still alive.

More Random Irish Bashing.

2005-08-01T14:18:00.000-06:00

The title suggests that this post is going to make derogatory comments about Irish people (or at least Irish-Canadians). Well, that's true (when have I ever passed up an opportunity to insult anyone? It's also going to be about actual Irish bashing.

There was a Gaelic football tournament up in Edmonton this week, and although you're not allowed to tackle people (silly rule), you are allowed to shoulder charge them, and slap at the ball while they carry it. So, my natural defender skills (a polite way of saying that I'm large and good at getting in the way) were put to some good use.

As I've said before, it's a funny old game. It's not just that the rules seem designed to give someone familiar with proper English sports (like Rugby and Soccer-football) a headache. Gaelic football sometimes seems less of an athletic contest (although the good players are pretty skillful indeed) than an excuse for Irish people to indulge in two of their favourite pasttimes - disrespecting authority figures, and arguing with each other.

To make a broad generalisation, Irish people have a finely honed sense of injustice and melodrama. You can see this by the way that a missed call by the referee is treated as if it was the single worst thing to happen in any sporting event ever. It was hillarious, almost every free kick brought a storm of protest and counter-protest from anyone within voice-shot.

On the animated conversation scale, it was about an 8.3. For reference purposes, that's slightly above two french men talking about the weather (7.8 usually, perhaps a 8.0 if they are farmers) but a little less histrionic than a mexican soap opera (at least an 8.5, more if there's an evil twin involved). I would say it's roughly on a par with a Zairian peddler who has just been given a lowball offer for his wares (from what I remember of the few who were brave enough to face my mother).

The dinner at the Irish social club on Saturday night was a grand affair - boiled Brussels sprouts, boiled baby carrots, mashed potatos, roast potatos, french fries, roast beef and gravy, and some salad (easily the least popular item, and dripping with creamy dressing). There was also dessert (mostly very sticky and or creamy cakes and fruit pies crusted with sugar).

I am honestly NOT kidding about the menu. I swear.

It was good solid food, tasty and plentiful. They met my two main criteria for a good meal. The roast potatos were not quite the best I have ever tasted (my father would disown me if I disrespected his crispy roast potatos) but they were easily the best mass-produced spuds I have had.

After dinner entertainment consisted of three guys singing traditional Irish songs about British evilness (and not so traditional ones about (n)One Tree Hill). Because I am a polite guest, I resisted the temptation to point out after the second rendition of "Rifles of the IRA" that we won and the IRA soon won't have rifles any more (assuming they are telling the truth).

I am now convinced chronic lateness is a feature of any country colonised by the British. I think it's revenge. Just look - New Zealand, Australia, Ireland, India, Jamaica, etc, are all famous for being rather lacadaisical in their attitude to starting times. Canada isn't as bad, but only because they have been culturally colonised by the Americans who have a strong German influence (just look at what they find funny, and their penchant for uniforms).

We lost the final. I hate losing. Let's not talk about it.

There's a little bit of truth in the saying that as long as you can walk off the field knowing you did everything you could, then you can feel happy. As long as happy is defined as "not completely wretched", then it's true. It's still not fun though.

Anyway, I got stuff to catch up on.

Me Hamster

2005-07-29T12:14:00.000-06:00

It might be that I'm not sleeping as well as I used to in my younger days, it might be that I am working too hard (don't laugh, it is possible).

Whatever the reason, there's a part of me that feels like a hamster. I'm inside my little wheel and I'm running as fast as my stumpy little legs (OK, that part of the metaphor isn't particularly apt) can carry me.

Realistically I'm making progress, if only in padding my anaemic bank account. But there's a part of me that wants a change of scenery.

I seriously doubt the literacy standards of some parts of the world (that would be the good old USA for those of you who can't guess). Although before anyone invades my appartment and forces me to hold elections, I'm sure there are plenty of idiots elsewhere in the world, they just haven't been emailing me recently, thankfully. The last few days people have been asking questions that are answered in the first sentence of the email they are quoting to reply to me.

Seriously people, ARE YOU ON DRUGS? I might be a fairly verbose individual (it's what I'm paid for after all) but not even reading the first sentence?? What do you expect me to do? Make an instructional video for you and send it by Fedex? Hire an ilegal immigrant to come round to your house and explain things with a handy flowchart?

It's not rocket science.

I'm starting to truly understand the truth of the old saying that "Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the general public."

By the way "the customer is always right" is roughly equivalent to "the emperor has new clothes". It's something we all pretend to to believe because it protects us from the wrath of morons.

To contiunue today's aphorism laden post, never under estimate the power of stupid people in large numbers.

I have suggested in the past that good people should get more votes (an idea inspired by the Texan pilot in Catch 22). Seriously. Democracy is nice and all that, but the idea that my vote is worth the same as some random mouth breather appalls me.

We're talking the kind of person who calls into talk radio to complain about Asian immigrants. In case you wanted to know, Asians are all bad drivers and they spit in the street and they are all good at math and their eyes are too close together and they don't speak English (although a large proportion of the Western world's "Anglophone" population don't seem to be able to speak English beyond a remedial reading level any more) and they eat dogs and are part of Triad gangs and they are taking our jobs and putting up signs in "Asian" [I'm afraid I've usually tuned out long before this point of the rant].

Actually, I just checked google, and it appears that everyone's favourite racist has moved on to abusing Muslims now.

I'm not trying to say that I'm a model citizen, I'm definately not top flight (I probably only deserve two or three votes, not six or seven), but I like to think that my opinion is more considered, informed, and logical than some peoples.

Anyway, that little rant was a nice, somewhat unexpected break in my daily routine. On a related note - I hope my mother has remembered to deal with my voter registration. New Zealand has an election coming up, and I may as well use my vote for what little it is worth.

For the record, I'll probably vote for the Greens, because they seem the least dishonest, and I think trees are nice, which seems to be a cornerstone of their policies. They're a bit too touchy feely and PC for me, especially on Treaty issues, but most of the other parties disgust me.

OK, that's my monthly politics post out of the way, next time we'll go back to discussing grocery shopping and people who suck at the internet.

People Buy That

2005-07-27T14:08:00.000-06:00

Announcing my new mini blog - People Buy That?

It's inspired by the book in the post below (and my general love of weird stuff). Just getting off the ground now, but yeah, I think it has the potential to be pretty funny.

Random Amazon Item #1

2005-07-26T09:37:00.000-06:00

I'm starting a new series entitled, Random Amazon Items:

Link

It's a good question.

Fire alarms, Pedometers, and Canoeing

2005-07-22T22:54:00.000-06:00

Let's start at the beginning.

Yesterday afternoon, I'm sitting at the computer (quelle surprise), and the fire alarm starts going off. So I finish my email (what? It's almost certainly a false alarm / drill, and I'm involved in some intricate negotiations (in a game of online Diplomacy) so I don't want to lose my train of thought on that. Plus I'm hoping it will stop soon.

It doesn't stop so I figure "well, I may as well go get some groceries while I'm out of the house - the bottom of the stairs is seriously about 25% of the way to the grocery store, and more than 50% of the psychological distance.

So I grab my wallet, throw on the sandals, and open the door. I imagine I smell smoke (yes, olifactory hallucinations are possible, even if I can't spell them) and start to plod down the stairs.

The fire engines (two of em!) arrive at about the same time I leave the building. I feel safe. I'm not being sarcastic, this was like a three minute at absolute most response time. Sure, we might lose the appartment that the fire started in (my vote is for the one that the annoying guy who insists on holding the elevator for a couple minutes while we wait for his girlfriend to finish locking the door). But the rest of us are safe.

Grocery shopping is fun. Like working out, I can't always motivate myself to go, but once I start doing it, I usually enjoy myself, and it's good for me (since I am boycotting the local pizza place - I'll explain some other time, I'm too lazy to go back and add pizza to the title of this post, and we all know how good I am at staying on topic ;)

As always, I end up with a basket full of stuff. The box of miniwheats I bought (shh - I got the sugar frosted ones, don't tell my mother) included a pedometer as its toy (I got the Toucan Sam one, but I really wanted Tony the Tiger, it's a Kelloggs conspiracy).

Cereal box toys have really come up in the world from the time when my brother(s) and I used to fight over who got the cheap plastic monster (or whatever). Mind you, I think the winning the squabble was the best part of the cereal-box toy. But then winning is very important in my family, or at least to my grandparents, my mother, both of my brothers, and my sister (and possibly even my father, although he denys it whenever I claim that he is competitive and won't let me win the discussion, so there's a bit of a paradox there).

Anyway, I have a cheap kiddie's pedometer in the pocket of my shorts, and it has registered an embarrassing 611 steps today (in my defence, it's not very accurate - apparantly it's 6 steps to the bathroom from the lounge, but only 14 to the elevator (10 times further). Still, it's pretty cool.

I didn't take it canoeing though (left it in my friend's car, so there's another 200 plus steps, several of them carrying a large aluminum canoes). For those of you unsure of the difference, kayaks are enclosed, canoes are open, and Canada claims to have invented at least one of them.

It was great fun. The resevoir was a little cold when I splashed myself, and the water was a little choppy (we wobbled a bit too much for comfort a few times). We paddled around in the classic S (or sometimes O) shapes that fairly inexperienced canoeists make (it's very different from a kayak, which I have paddled a few times, or a white water raft, which I have sat in a few times while the river threw us around.

I've now added another semi-goal to my list of things I want to do - a long canoe trip, maybe from Whitehorse to Dawson City, or even all the way to Alaska. This list is starting to spiral out of control, but whatever, it's better to have goals like "walk the length of Chile with a llama" than "make partner at the law firm by the time I'm 38.7 years old".

If you disagree, then just leave. Your type isn't welcome here :P

Well, I'm done for the day. Hope ya'll enjoyed reading it.

PS - Happy 30th wedding anniversary Mum and Dad.

Well I'm 25

2005-07-17T00:37:00.000-06:00

I'm technically 25 I guess, since I stayed up past midnight tonight.

I can't say it feels particularly different (especially since I'm kind of done with celebrations after the last few days / nights).

But yeah, happy birthday to me. Hip hip Hooray!

Um, I got a cowboy hat now. It was kind of a practical purchase (I have to do something to stop the hair blowing and sun shining in my eyes on the rare ocassions I am outside) and kind of an impulse purchase (I was feeling way too conspicuous at the Stampede without one). I guess it was kind of a present to myself too (since my habit of mostly ignoring birthdays means I have no right to expect presents from anyone I don't share over 25% of my genetic material with).

Apart from that life goes on much the same as ever. I can now legally feel complimented when asked for ID (since it's if you look under 25 that they are supposed to ID you at pubs here).

I will be in Calgary until at least the end of August, and depending on money, and jobs, and stuff, I might just stick around here for September too, and then see if I can afford a week or two of touristing before flying to Europe.

I'm going to sleep now to wake up for my real birthday.

Yes, I am still alive

2005-07-13T19:41:00.000-06:00

Believe it or not, I survived a whole week with very limited internet access.

Hopefully my laptop's meltdown has now ceased (although I am getting low virtual memory problems again).

Stampede is happening, lots of cowboy hats in town. I plan on doing the stampede grounds on friday with a few friends. Went hiking in Yoho National Park over the weekend - great views, but I was the largest hairest animal we encountered, so that was kind of a let down - I still need to cross "see a bear in the wild" off my list of things.

Correction, apart from the horses we had to walk through in the dark to get to the teepee we slept in on Friday night, I was the biggest animal we saw.

Got a lot of stuff to do backed up, but will try and get back into the swing of things with this blog over the next few days.

Tim Hortons

2005-06-29T15:56:00.000-06:00

To answer some questions:

Tim Horton was a hockey player who died in a crash and opened a chain of donut stores (possibly not in that order). Tim Hortons is a fairly ubiquitous feature of Canadian life.

As I have mentioned before, we live right above a Tim Hortons, and it, like almost every other Timmy's in Canada, seems to be permanently busy until about 6pm.

So, strictly in the interests of research, and not because I quite like donuts, I went to Tim Hortons last night.

I can't comment on their coffee (although several Canadians I know are addicited to it), but the donuts were pretty good. I had a strawberry filled vanilla iced (with sprinkles). Pretty good. Definately on a par with most bakeries at home.

Talking about bakeries, I did find a decent pie in Canada. Shame it was at the rugby club in Vancouver really. Ahh well, after all the pies I ate when working for Mt Ruapehu, it's probably a good thing that pies aren't part of my diet here.

Back to the 1950s.

2005-06-25T00:57:00.000-06:00

Well, it's after midnight, and I am huddled (if one can huddle by one's self) around the high-tech box that brings voices from afar into my living room so I can listen to the All Blacks play against the evil British Lions.

If a 1950s kid in New Zealand had a blog, he might well write something like that. But let's not get into time travel. It's 2005, the high tech box is a laptop, the voices from afar is the Newstalk ZB webcast, and I'm in Canada.

My mother isn't around to tell me to go to bed so I'm going to be naughty. Besides, I don't have to be awake until 1pm tomorrow, and really want to listen to the match. When the Lions came to New Zealand, I was a 12, nearly 13, year old English immigrant who wasn't assimilating anywhere near as quickly as his siblings. Now I'm a 24, nearly 25 (gulp), year old who is pretty sure he's a proper New Zealander now.

There's a neat symmetry to all of this.

Last time, we'd been in New Zealand just over six months. This time I've been out of New Zealand a bit over six months.

Last time I'd spent 12.5 years of my life being English (albeit mostly overseas). This time I've spent 12.5 years of my life being a New Zealander (well, technically I became a Kiwi in 1996, but shush, I'm allowed to stretch things however I want).

So yeah, I could try and make this some sort of defining moment in my life, but really, I'm just a guy, on the other side of the world who misses quality rugby (the club games I've seen here are barely high-school first XV - which is better than NZ hockey stacks up by Canadian standards).

Kick Off is in just a few minutes - the teams are running out onto the field now.

They're singing some horrible song called the "Power of Four", it's worse than any of the individual anthems.

Now they're singing some horrible song called "God Defend New Zealand".

Seriously, after being in Canada, and watching US sport on TV, I've realised 1) We just don't perform our national anthem anywhere near as much as they do and 2) There's two good reasons for that - the song sucks and many of the performers chosen for sporting events are worse.

Now the haka, that's a great way of starting a sporting event (or indeed any event). We should get rid of the funeral dirge and just replace it with a haka. So whenever NZ wins one of its rare Olympic medals, instead of a funeral march, we should hear a bunch of guys yelling.

The All Blacks are playing from left to right on the radio coverage. Anyone else see the irony?

I'm not going to do a play by play, because that's kinda lame. This is great though - I'm going to have to eat some vegemite on toast too, just to complete the NZ nostalgia feeling of tonight. That and I am hungry.

What to write about?

2005-06-23T23:10:00.000-06:00

Well, I'm kinda stuck for things to write about.

I thought about the Canadian obsession with Tim Hortons (during the trip to Vancouver, the one genuine Canadian in our car was pretty much constantly looking for Timmies). But I seem to cover Tim Hortons every month, and while it's probably good for a couple hits from desperate Canadians googling "Tim Hortons home delivery" or "free Tim Hortons", it probably gets old for the rest of you.

Having no life plays havoc with my blogging. I should go out and get a life immediately, just so I have something to write about.

It's also getting close to a time where I have to make some sort of tentative plan for the next six month period. Originally, I was going to work in a ski resort.

It's still a good option, although other places than France are looking appealing now too particularly Switzerland, and Scandinavia - apparantly Finland has a massive shortage of teachers right now. Then there's always the option of trying to find a real job (yes I said I wouldn't sell out, but 1) it doesn't count in a foreign country like the UK - even though I have a passport, I'm only technically British, I still want the All Blacks to crush the Lions and 2) the lure of sweet sweet pounds.

Bleh, who knows.

Lazy update

2005-06-20T16:47:00.000-06:00

Well, it's been a while since I posted. I have an excuse, and it's a little bit better than the fact that I am spectacularly lazy (I did my laundry today and that felt like a major achievement).

This weekend was the annual BC Cup (Aussie Rules - Vancouver, Burnaby, Seattle, Victoria, and Alberta). The Alberta team was pretty much a Calgary affair, although five Red Deer guys did come along.

So anyway, Thursday and Friday were lost to the drive out (a lot of fun, if slightly cramped), Saturday was game day, and Sunday was doing touristy stuff, including riding in a convertible around Stanley Park, and taking a quick ferry ride from Granville Island to downtown.

We spent Thursday night in Kelowna, and I caught up with one of my many friends named Dan. We've exchanged group emails and instant message conversations over the last few years, but it's not quite the same as sitting down and talking. He'll be in town for Stampede, and I'll probably try and get to Kelowna for a weekend at some point this "summer"

We won the tournament thanks to point countback, since both Seattle and the mighty Roos went 3-0. This brought the coveted BC cup (an old boot on top of a wooden box) to back its rightful home at the Flying Emu. Overall, I did my usual small bit for the team, without embarassing myself too much. Being out-sprinted to the ball by a 15 year old (twice) was a little bit frustrating, but he probably weighed about half what I do. Which, by the way, thanks to a friendly Westjet check in lady, I now know is 204 pounds (just over 92kg I think).

So I'm back in Calgary, and it's good to be back. I like it more than Vancouver (which is a little backwards, since Vancouver is supposed to be one of the greatest cities in the world, and Calgary is a cowboy-hat wearing provincial town grown large - but that's just the way I am really).

It's sunny today for a change - the recent rain caused flooding in parts of Calgary, which is not particularly normal for a semi-arid / desert city.

I'm going to go have a nap.

Life goes on

2005-06-14T14:04:00.000-06:00

Well, I haven't written in a while. There are many reasons for this.

1) I'm lazy. Nuff said.

2) Not a lot has been happening. Seriously. My life is amazingly boring at the moment. I'm like a crazy hermit, except without any of the interesting moment when God starts talking to me through the microwave (actually I'm pretty sure God would manifest Himself in our George Foreman grill, as the Heavyweight champion of the world is, according to Norman Mailer "like being the little toe of God").

Anyway, a typical day for me is wake up, turn on computer, eat breakfast, work / play on the internet, eat lunch, work / play on the internet, eat dinner, work / play on the internet, possibly go to the building hot-tub downstairs, go to bed.

Munday is laundry and groceries day (got to get all the big tasks out the way while I still have energy), Weddys I go to Aussie Rules training, on Frododay I go and watch Aussie Rules on the TV at our sponsor pub, some Satadays I go play Aussie Rules (this weekend, just for a change, I played Gaelic instead). That pretty much sums up the last week or three.

If this is what real life feels like, I'm off to become a soldier of fortune in South America.

3) I have had tech problems for the last, well for someone like me whose umbellical cord had a USB connection, it's forever. It used to be that my internet connection was fine, and Dan's kept cutting out. Then both the internet connections cut out occasionally. Now it's pretty much just mine, and pretty much constantly. It's a cunning gremlin though, it's learned not to show me that I'm disconnected until I go to make a blog post, or send an email, or whatever. Even then, sometimes the computer claims to be connected until a ridiculous amount of time has passed, then when I rescan for the network, it suddenly acknoweldges that is it not, in fact, online. It's like my computer and the router have both been possessed by six year old gremlins who sometimes have fights with each other and aren't friends for the next ten minutes. Give me back the adult gremlins.

I blame Bill Gates. I have no idea why or how, but I do.

We're all a little bit crazy aren't we?

2005-06-04T19:29:00.000-06:00

I'm a little bit obsessive compulsive. Obviously it's not when it comes to keeping things clean and tidy. But if I'm going somewhere, I have to check that I've got things like three or four times. Today it was my keys. I used them to lock the front door this morning, I know put them in my bag, I remember doing it, but I still checked before leaving the building, and once I got to the place I was meeting my ride I still checked again, even knowing all of this.

It's a little worrying.

In sports news, the Calgary Kangaroos thumped the very under-strength Red Deer Magpies today. The score was in the region of 127 - 25. The game felt closer than that, but some of the Calgary players just insisted on kicking goals whenever they got their hands on the ball.

I wasn't one of them, kicking the ball straight into my marker the one mark I took and skidding the ball across the face the only time I got the ball in the clear. Thankfully, I discovered what I am good at (since it obviously isn't kicking for goal). Now I've reminded myself what playing a contact sport is like, I'm quite happy throwing myself at the ball, and opposing players. Plus, when there's no goal posts to distract me, I can actually kick fairly well. So I moved to the backline (defence) and feel like today was easily the most useful I've been to the team.

Sure, I'm never going to be competing for any award more prestigious than a certificate of participation (if they still give those out to people over the age of 18). But at least I feel like I'm doing more than just filling a jersey and getting in the way.

Anyone in the Calgary region, keep Saturday 25th June free.

The Kangaroos are organising an "Amazing Race" (teams of 4 drive round Calgary chasing clues and doing a number of cool activities). I've been sworn to secrecy about the activities, but lets just say I wish I didn't have to help out, so I could compete. $100 per team gets you a day of fun, and there's an after-party which will have barbeque, beer, and all that good stuff.

It's a bargain, plus you'll be helping Western Canada's greatest Aussie rules team to defend their title against Vancouver, Victoria, and Seattle (which is pretty part of Canada).

What exactly is a Lilac?

2005-05-30T17:19:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was the 4th Street Lilac Festival. I didn't know what a lilac was, probably some sort of flower, probably lilac in colour (or color, depending on my target audience). But anyway, one of the guys from the footy team was having a barbeque and I had nothing better to do - working for myself means that I can designate almost whatever time of the week I want as "nothing better to do", as long as I don't do it too often. So Sunday afternoon was blocked out for Lilac festival.

A few of us had a small group run before that, which I plodded through, and even that's putting it favourably. Lilac Festival seems to mainly consist of a big crowded street market (with a few performances), and a bunch of beer gardens (all selling over-priced warm beer), and very few lilacs (whatever they are).

So in other words, Lilac Festival is like any other big commercial street party type event. It's widely viewed as the first "summer" event in Calgary. Actually, those were totally gratuitous quotation marks because it was hot and sunny, and I got a little bit "burned". Those weren't gratuitous, because Canada has an ozone layer, and it's possible to spend the day in the sun with only one application of SPF30 and not wake up the next day feeling like someone has applied acid to your face.

"I liked your blog"

2005-05-26T11:11:00.000-06:00

It is always a weird feeling (for me at least) to have someone in real life compliment something I have done on the internet. Now, I'm not good at accepting compliments, but that's not the point right now.I used to have a very very compartmentalised attitude to life, I'm getting better, but I still prefer the parts of my life to be seperate, which is semi-normal, but I can and do carry it to ridiculous extremes.

Anyway, last night, one of the Kangaroos said that he read my most recent blog entry and it was funny. This was a surprise - both him reading it, and saying that he found it funny. It shouldn't have been, my URL is in the signature of all my emails, and office workers have a lot of spare time. Now, I'm not good at accepting compliments, even ones I can be almost certain are truthful (he brought it up, he seems to be an honest guy, I'm fairly sure I am capable of being funny) but that's not the point right now.

Tuesday's post was a slightly vitriolic, although apparantly pretty funny, rant. It's a good job I'm funny, otherwise I would be a very unpleasant person to be around (not that I'm not unpleasant to be around some of the time, I'd just move up a grade to being very unpleasant most of the time).

Yes, it looks like Thursday is officially navel gazing day. I blame it on the Calgary Kangaroos mostly being older and more settled than me. It's not that I'm naturally prone to introspection or anything ;)

Anyway, it's instructive to hang around people who you like who have a significantly different life from you. It's not like looking into the future, or a what might have been mirror, or anything dramatic like that, it's just thought provoking, and my thoughts don't need much / any excuse to be provoked.

It's also interesting to discover how old people are. It turns out had two player's ages pretty much switched in my head - we're talking about a 5 year age gap here, which is still significant, even as people close in on 30 (and after my next birthday, I'm kind of closing in on thirty, as scary as that sounds).

The only thing I really want that people with settled lives have is pets. I love cats and am rapidly coming to appreciate the advantages of having a dog. I also want a parrot, probably an African grey (we had one briefly when I was a child, and it was so cool).

Unfortunately, this post probably hasn't been particularly interesting. Sorry. I guess you get what you pay for (actually, my proffessional writings are even more staid).

I wish it was possible to slap people through the internet.

2005-05-24T12:25:00.000-06:00

OK, I am dealing with some fairly big and very profitable (from what I hear and can work out myself) companies. I can't be bothered going into details, but let's just say today does not rate highly on the job-satisfaction scale.

Times I have banged my fist on the desk - 22 (approx)
Times I have yelled "are you stupid?" - 3
Times I have yelled "are you trying to make my life difficult?" - 8
Times I have given up and checked my email - 4
Times I have walked around the lounge huffing and pulling my hair - 2
Times I have contemplated going and getting a job at Subway - 1

I might still like my job, I'm sure I did once, but the petty, frustrating, and just downright pointless rubbish I'm having to deal with today is making it that difficult to remember what that felt like.

Being an employee was never this bad, even at Riverside Mountain FUBAR.

Being an employee you get paid for working and for putting up with petty idiocy and frustration.

Being a contractor means you get paid for working and then petty idiocy is smething you put up with for free.

To top it all off, you have to work through the petty idiocy before you get paid, unlike being an employee where you can just throw your hands up and say "at least I still get paid this Thursday".

That probably didn't make much sense to you. I don't care.

Let's just leave it at - Richard is in a bad mood and wishes he could just grab some of these people and shake them until their tiny little brains rattled out of their ear.

To lighter, but yet still pointless things:

Which is worse, to be the kind of couple that has to go grocery shopping together to discuss their purchases:

He picks up a loaf of 60% whole wheat bread
She - "why don't you get the white bread pookie"
He - "oh no ookums, I know you like 60% whole wheat bread"
She - "but pookie, you like enriched white bread"
Richard (thinks) "let me through, I'm hungry"
He - "I just want to make you happy"
Richard gives up on getting bread and decides he can quite happily eat toasted rolls for breakfast for the next week.

OR to be the kind of couple that can have just one member go grocery shopping... as long as they are on their cellphone to the other member at all times.

She "OK, I'm at the cereal aisle now pookie. What kind of cereal did you want me to get?"
[pause]
She "I know you like oatmeal, but what kind, we have..." here, She starts to list EVERY kind of oatmeal in the store, brand, name, and flavour.

Obviously I'm not privy to any more details about these couple's relationships, but really

1) You're discussing groceries. Groceries are not usually worthy of much discussion - "do you like X?" "Yes" (and really, if you're grocery shopping together, you should know this stuff already - I'm 90% sure I can buy acceptable groceries for my family and I have only ever called them pookie or oookums in a demeaning fashion. I'm also pretty sure I could buy acceptable groceries for my best friend, who I have never lived with and have defintely never called pookie or ookums, EVER, mainly because he looks like a Neanderthal (and I'm safe saying that because he admitted he doesn't read my blog much).

After confirming the other person's like or dislike of the food (by the way mum, I do like beetroot) you may then say "Good, what's the cheapest X?" This is the most important part of grocery shopping but does not require much discussion. By the age of 14, children should have learned all the key factors necessary to make a good grocery decision. [see appendix]

That's it. This is the limit of socially acceptable grocery discussion. You might be allowed an interesting anecdote about the company who makes X, or your friend who swears they can tell the difference between X and Y, but can't really. But even that is pushing it.

2) The word pookie, and all baby talk of that ilk, is not suitable for use to another adult, at least not in public - it just makes you sound like an idiot. End of discussion.

3) Grocery shopping is a chore that is necessary to get food into your house for the next week. It is not a chance to prove to the world at large how much you love each other (especially if the world at large are hungry and just want to pick up the kind of bread they've already decided on).

4) Yes, I'm bitter and anti-romantic, and generally not a nice person. I don't care.

Much better. Nothing like being nasty about people to clear my mind a little.

[Appendix]

Key factors in grocery shopping.

1) How much do you, and any other people you are buying for, like the product?
2) How much of it do you eat (compared to storage space, and how quickly it spoils)
3) What is the unit price (own brands are usually very competitive with brand names).
4) Is it on sale?

Everyone's going to New Zealand...

2005-05-21T11:36:00.000-06:00

Well, OK, not everyone, I'm not, and most of the Australian members of the Calgary Kangaroos (best Aussie Rules team in Western Canada, if not the world, actually, definately not the world, but a good bunch of guys) aren't.

But a frightening proportion of Canadians between 20-29 will be travelling to New Zealand. In the last two weeks, I've met five (of the ten I've talked to for any length of time) who are definately going, and most of the rest want to.

Now, this is definately not a statistically valid survey because

1) I keep getting introduced to people's friends who are definately going to NZ - one of my greatest social attributes in this country is being able to answer "stupid" questions about New Zealand.

2) Obviously if you're talking to a New Zealander, you're going to pretend you want to want to go to New Zealand. I mean everyone kinda wants to go everywhere (within reason - only crazy people like me want to go to unpleasant dangerous places like Afganistan or Australia). So, you play up your plans to be polite. And if there's one thing Canadians are good at (all together now) it's being polite. I've done it myself more than once. As an example, although Italy isn't high on my travel plans, when talking to Italians, I've expressed more interest than I normally would.

But anyway, lock the doors and put up the tourist fences. Otherwise there might not be room for me to come home (a little known fact about NZ is that we have a strict rota system to keep 10% of the population overseas at all times, it gives the rest of us some breathing room). By the way, my triumphant return is looking like April 06, since my best friend seems to be planning on finally getting married then. I can't guarantee how long I'll be there. I started to make a list of the places I haven't been, but it got kind of involved.

Let's just say that one of my life goals - yes I have some, no they don't include getting a real job (it's an unpleasant necessity) - is to live for a year in every continent (defined loosely) in the world.

So far I've achieved:

Britain, Africa (both as a child, so it's kind of cheating)
North America (Canada, twice, I guess I went a little overboard)
New Zealand (not a continent, but it pads the list)

That means, at a minimum, I need to spend a year in Japan, Argentina, Israel, and somewhere in Europe. I'm running out of working holiday eligibility too (I spent far too long at university), so I'd better get my act together.

Oh, and Antartica, which will be kind of tricky. If anyone has any advice on how I can finagle that, I'd greatly appreciate it (no, pretending to be a Penguin when I get deported from Canada will not work, New Zealand has penguins too, so they'll just send me home).

I'd also kind of like to get a PhD, because well, it's kind of the ultimate certificate of smartness (except for a Nobel Prize, and I doubt writing about how I don't want to grow up, and Canadians are very polite will get me one of those). There's also a bit of competitiveness there too. [Pop psych alert] Eldest sons need to be prove that they are better than their fathers, and although I did get a better honours degree than my father, he's still got the "undergraduate work doesn't matter" argument (I've got the "your masters doesn't count because it came free with your BA" argument, but his PhD kinda trumps that).

See? I mentioned earlier that our family has a strong competitive streak, the above might look like a joke, but there's enough reality behind it to make it funny. It's one of my genetic curses, along with having to wear glasses, and shedding my hair everywhere like some sort of big mousey-brown lapdog.

Plus I just want to go back to the university lifestyle, where I can sit around reading books all day, and not have to constantly try to sell webpages. I've been doing a ridiculous amount of research about internet marketing recently - some of it is to improve my own commercial writing (basically do the opposite of what I do in and for this blog and you'll be doing well) and some of it is actually to try and sell traffic to webmasters. I now see nothing wrong with using CPC, CTR, CPM, and maybe SEO as well, all in the same sentence.

Richard

PS - Nics, or anyone else, feel free to correct me, I might be contrary, and difficult, and determined to make fun of everything, but as I've started to mature (it's a journey of a thousand miles and I've only taken the proverbial single step) I've learned that it's better people tell you when you make a mistake than that they tell everyone else.

PPS - Thanks for reading. Somewhere along the line, this stopped being a blog, and started being more of a sort of opinion / humour column for me (by the way, newspaper or magazine columnist does not count as a real job, so if anyone out there knows of a job, especially in one of the countries / continents on my to do list...)

Red Deer - More fun than a box of hammers!

2005-05-16T18:17:00.000-06:00

I spent the weekend in Red Deer with the Calgary Kangaroos. Calgary were looking to keep their undefeated record intact, Red Deer were looking to avenge last week's crushing defeat, a few random Irishmen were busy being shuffled between the two teams to make up numbers as players appeared.

The coaches finally settled which teams Connor, Ryan, and Tim (although I'm sure the names are probably spelt Quonair, Rian, and Tim - since even the Irish can't make Tim a confusing name). But anyway, the game started, and Red Deer came out and took an early lead against a Calgary side who were half (or more) asleep.

They took this lead into the first break, and none of the Calgary players were particularly surprised. Calgary picked things up a little during the second, but Red Deer did go to half time ahead, thanks in part to the efforts of Adrian Laggan. Adrian is a former top-flight Gaelic Footballer. He's only a little man, but has an uncanny ability to attract the attention of pretty much every player on the other team, no matter who he is playing for. We all want to hammer him, but he's slippery and wirey. I tackled him once, but he got a good kick away as I was doing it.

Calgary got a reality check at half time thanks to speeches from three wise Australians (yes, I know that the lack of Wise Men was why Jesus wasn't born in Australia, but these guys have been in Canada a while). Increased desire, and marginally more accurate goal kicking (although your correspondant officially "kicked like a mongrel", missing both his free kicks at goal - scoring just one behind) gave Calgary a 5 point lead.

Calgary finally woke up, and superior experience and fitness began to take its toll, leaping out to a comfortable cushion early in the fourth. They kept the pressure on to run out 40 point winners.

Red Deer nearly got their revenge when the bouncer at Wild Bill's (the pub that sponsors the Magpie) told the Calgary team that it wasn't kareoke night and threatened to throw them out if they sang the victory song again.

Still, my Red Deer experience was more fun than a box of hammers. Not quite up there with a barrel of monkeys, but definately a lot better than poking oneself in the eye with a blunt stick, probably about as good as a seeing a rabbit eat a cheese sandwich.

Wow, this just gets weirder and weirder, doesn't it? I have no excuses, for once.

On the upside, I might have a job interview at a stock trading firm, we shall see. Don't get too excited (mum).

We got a couch

2005-05-11T22:17:00.000-06:00

Our deck has been sadly lacking in pimp-quotient, until recently. But, Dan's ninja skills spotted a couch in the alleyway behind our place, abandoned by a dumpster. We headed down and claimed it.

After the futon incident (we couldn't get the frame for my futon into the far bedroom, so using our university skills, we decided it would be easier to switch bedrooms than dismantle the frame), we have getting stuff into our appartment pretty much down now.

So yeah, we have a couch. I jammed my fingers back at footy training, so typing is a bit awkward (my left hand is slowly forming into a claw, no matter how much I clench and unclench it). Yes, I've iced it, no it isn't broken, or dislocated (I hope) although it did hurt really badly when it happened.

Kiwi Nomad - First in AFL Alberta news!

2005-05-07T19:17:00.000-06:00

The opening game of the 2005 season kicked off shortly after 3pm at the Calgary Rugby Fields. The Kangaroos (that's us) comfortably beat the Magpies (Red Deer) 17.21.123 to 8.8.56 (the first number is the number of goals - 6 pointers - scored, the second is the number of behinds - 1 pointers, the third is the total (but Aussies don't need it). Calgary made some key player aquisitions in the off season while Red Deer was fielding an under strength team thanks to injuries to key players.

Most notable of the new players for Calgary was Richard. Ok, that's an out and out lie, "Crazy" Jordan (a Canadian recruit) had a stunner, and could well be competing with some of the Aussies for player of the season points. Matt and Todd also played very well. The Australians showed why it's called Aussie rules, with Judgie, Chriso, and Boozer putting on a great show for the crowd of two dozen. Irish ringer Adrian (although I'm sure that's not how the Irish spell it :P) was in fine form, and attracted a bit of hostile attention from frustrated Magpies players.

Me, I managed to not completely embarass myself. I think I kicked two behinds, I know I got one when my shot from the one mark I took all game hit the post, so that was a little frustrating. I made a couple of nice disposals to team mates that resulted in goals for the team, and didn't get in the way too much (except of the other team a couple times, but that's a good thing). All up, I'm pretty happy with my first game. Fitness needs quite a bit of work, my game-sense is almost non-existant, and I've got to get back into the swing of trying to hit people (unlike ultimate frisbee, where it is a bad thing). But, it was my first game and I'm not a natural sportsman.

However, it is a long season, and Calgary can not afford to get too confident. With their twice a week training schedule and innovative recruitment techniques (rumour has it that the 'Pies grabbed some guy off the street in Red Deer and showed him the football on the drive down), it's looking to be a very interesting season - and that's before you through the Cheiftains into the mix with their funny shaped ball, tricky rules, and secret Irish voodoo.

Kiwi Nomad - First with the Alberta AFL news (mainly because I'm an internet geek and wanted to check my email before going to the Flying Emu for more team celebrations).

Offical report will probably appear on www.calgarykangaroos.com at some point soon. But I was first! nyah nyah nyah!

Bill Gates owes me 6 hours of my life.

2005-05-07T12:09:00.000-06:00

I was looking for a new driver on microsoft dot com (not linking in a futile attmept to avoid bolstering their google page rank), and windows update tells me "you have critical updates to download".

I make the mistake of downloading a couple of these things.

After I installed them and rebooted, the fun started.

1) Windows kindly turned my screen back into a 256 colour 640x480 (from 1024 X 780 high colour). That's an easy fix.

2) Firefox has disappeared. No toolbar shortcut, no desktop shortcut, file not found when I search for it.

3) Point two doesn't really matter because I can't connect to the Internet. According to hardware troubleshooter, wireless card is working fine, network adapter is working fine, I just have no LAN connection. I uninstall it and its controller. Reinstall - no luck.

Long story short, after 6 hours of trying all sorts of things, I went to bed (and was taunted with dreams of the icon that shows I have a LAN connection - sad but true). I undertake a "last chance before I reinstall windows" effort. Thankfully it works.

I am NEVER downloading windows updates again. Even if they say that they've kidnapped my family's cat and will pick her up and carry her around (which she hates) if I don't. Sorry Quizzie, you'll just have to deal with it.

But I have firefox back now (even the three minutes of IE to get to www.getfirefox.com and download it were bad enough) and hereby resolve to never buy any microsoft product ever again (except possibly windows, as much as that bugs me, I'm not sure if I'm geeky enough for linux).

On the upside, if I imagine that the Red Deer Magpies work for Microsoft, I should be able to psyche myself up to make a few big tackles. It's the opening game of the Alberta AFL / Gaelic Football season in a couple hours and I have been selected for the Calgary Kangaroos squad (mind you, so has anyone at training who said they didn't have weddings, funerals, or work today).

Responses to comments

2005-05-04T15:24:00.000-06:00

Yes, I could have just commented in response to the comments, but this is easier for me, and also I get to show off that I actually HAVE comments. I love comments.

Dan wrote "BTW are you related to that Mark guy who came second in the French Semaine Olympique recently?".

I'm going to assume this is No-Nickname Dan (there were too many Dans during my year at U of Calgary, and he somehow avoided getting a nickname). And if it isn't, well I was overdue to link to NN Dan's page (he's in Canada right now, and he has photos, and doesn't subject you to haiku).

But yes, Mark is my identical cousin (that's what it's called when your cousin looks much more like you than your brother does) and he is a world class sailor type guy.

It's easy to tell us apart (not that we've been in the same place for a couple years now). But in case you need to:

Mark - very good at making boats go faster than other people's boats (he's particularly good with Tornado class catamarans).
Richard - usually remembers that the pointy end of the boat is the front.

"Nics" - I'm afraid I have no idea who she is, although since she's probably from Northern Ireland (my expert deduction skills say that someone from Ireland wouldn't have mentioned Northern Ireland), but anyway, if she's from Northern Ireland there's a good chance she's related to me - my mother has so many aunties and uncles, that perhaps as much as 33% of Northern Ireland's population are related to me) wrote:

"Gaelic football? hurling? try being a girl and playing camogie, the feminine version of hurley for girls, it's not pretty. and 'shamus' is actually 'seamus'!! sorry for being pedantic, but here's a site for you, www.gaa.ieor alternatively come to ireland or northern ireland for an intensive course!

I've corrected the spelling mistake - thanks for pointing it out. Although I do think that deciding "Shamus" is actually spelt "Seamus" is another good example of a confusing Irish trick.

I'm going to leave aside "try being a girl", because, well, I don't need any more groups of people mad at me.

Anyway, I'm sure I'll get my head around Gaelic football by the end of my time in Calgary - the Kangaroos play enough games against the Cheiftains (guess which team plays which sport) with one half under each set of rules that an understanding will be whistled into me.

Hurling on the other hand (and camogie, which is women's hurling) still seems like a crazy sport. I've read the offical rules now, and it seems no less crazy than when I saw it on TV. If you're still not quite sure why this sport is for the sanity-challenged - or did I cover that by saying it was the Irish who invented it? :P, I'll try and explain again:

1) There are lots of people swinging large sticks near each other - In England this is either a gang fight or a Morris dancer's convention.

2) These people are allowed to run into each other. I'm a fan of sports that involve people running into each other. I've even played a few. I fact, I quite enjoy running into people when it is appropriate. I just don't think running into a guy who is carrying a big whacking stick is a good idea.

3) There is no padding. Sure, rugby players don't wear padding. Rugby players also don't carry great big sticks and the ball is softer (although still quite able to make your nose bleed if you try catching it with your face).

4) The ball goes quite quickly, and players are expected to leap in front of it. Even cricket players know that avoiding the ball is a bad thing, and their games take five days to end in a draw.

OK. I admit it, I'm a great big wuss who doesn't understand the finer points of Gaelic culture and am perpetrating my Anglocentric prejudices.

Disclaimer (in the hopes of not getting "an intensive [care]" explanation of why hurling is great).

Most of what I write in any post is a joke.

Specifically, I'd like to state that hurling is a perfectly valid sport that is exciting to watch and takes a lot of skill and fitness to play.

It's still for crazy people.

Damn it, I was so close. Now I have to watch out for upset Irish-sports-people as well as pigeon fanciers, Australians, crickets, and any other group I've insulted in this surprisingly widely read blog in last week.

It's a good job I've got two million dollars of medical coverage.

Free writing from a professional author.

2005-05-04T10:03:00.000-06:00

The big news, as the title suggests, is that I am kind of a professional writer.

Don't get too excited. I'm providing keyword heavy "articles" to portal sites. It's definately not as lucrative as writing Discworld novels, but that gig is already taken. It's not particularly challenging, except to crank out the articles, but it's usually more enjoyable than having to work for a living. My pay should cover living expenses, and as long as people are interested in "refinancing home loans" or "Asia travel tips" and other such thrilling topics, I should be able to keep doing it... until my head explodes from conforming to requirements like "3% keyword density" and "CTR maximising structure" and I start submitting haikus about lemons or pigeons.

On that note, there don't seem to be many pigeons in Calgary. A few magpies and smaller birds (uh they're kind of brownish and go tweet), but my beloved sky-rats are nowhere to be seen.

Pigeons gone.
Who will eat the crumbs?
the sky weeps.

After that little poetry interlude, I should complete the update. I'm in Calgary, mostly installed into a fairly-spacious fairly-downtown apartment. We still don't have a couch, let alone a couch for the deck. Dan (who I met at U of C last time I was here) - and I have a running joke about "pimp my deck" (for those of you who haven't seen it, it's reference to the MTV show "pimp my ride" in which old junky cars are given a $20,000 facelift. This usually involves DVD players and other electronics, a fancy paint job, new upholstery, all that stuff. Our deck is sadly very un-pimped right now - we sit on cushions on the lip of the french doors and look longingly at the barbeque and camp chairs that Nascar-flag-guy has across the alley from us.

We're almost right above a Tim Hortons (although it's a 6 story walk down to get there - at least until we install the absail rope). Timmy's is a canadian cultural icon - Tim was a hockey player who opened a chain of donut and coffee stores, and while they are not as ubiquitous as Starbucks. After going through LA airport, I sometimes wonder if we're headed for a Starbucks event where eventually the entire planet will be covered with Starbucks, everyone will be employed be Starbucks and society will collapse.

Yes, that is a reference to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the galaxy shoe-store catastrophe.

No, I haven't seen the movie yet.

Yes, I really want to.

No, I haven't made any plans to see it, I'm really not a big-screen kind of person (I blame being a New Zealander, I like my screens small and understated)

Yes, that doesn't make much sense (it's been out for a week or two now).

On an unrelated note, but something I thought of when I noticed I had footy training tonight - it's funny that my siblings and I are as keen on sports as we are. Mum is, and I have to be careful here because I risk losing half my readership, somewhat fond of sports (but still less than averagely keen, at least for New Zealand), even if she needs to be reminded about the rules quite frequently. On the other hand, our father is definately not a sports fan. In fact, he's probably best described as "anti-sport". To his credit, he trooped along to several years of schoolboy rugby matches and did his best to fit in with the other parents and not tease us too much about playing a "stupid game". He's even managed to learn to "quite like" netball (possibly because he was never forced to play it at school in the 1890s).

At a guess, it's because one of the things my entire family, perhaps the whole clan, has in common is that we are willful and contrary. My paternal grandfather was very keen on sport (or at least English sports like football, rugby, and cricket). So his eldest son dislikes sports, and his eldest son's eldest son likes sports (and one day, I'll inherit the kingdom, bwhahaha!)

Gaelic Football, Furniture, the weather

2005-04-28T23:02:00.000-06:00

These all have something in common.

Give up?

They are all things that confuse and frustrate me.

1) Gaelic Football. I am convinced that this game was invented by an ardent Republican, as a foolproof method of finding English spies.

Dublin, some time in the 19th Century.
"I know Patrick, let's make a game that's like football, except you get to carry the ball in your hands."
"That's a grand idea and will confuse those English to be sure."
"AND,let's make it that you're only sometimes allowed to use your hands."
"Another grand idea Seamus."
"AND lets make it so that when your run with the ball you have to either bounce it every three steps, or kick it to yourself, and you can't put two bounces in a row."
"You're a terrible devious man Seamus, so you are."
"And let's make it so you can score points by kicking the ball either under or over the crossbar."

It's a great game (and much less insane than hurling, which pretty much has to be seen to be believed). But it's frustratingly difficult to learn the "simple skills" (like running along and kicking the ball up into your hands).

2) Furniture. Two days late, but we got our table and Dan's desk. That's the frustrating part. The confusing part was trying to fasten bracket A into tube B with bolt Z and Allen key Q (especially since we didn't have a proper screwdriver.

3) The weather - I just get used to 16 degrees (weather in which nobody can complain about me wearing shorts and t-shirt) and then it starts to snow again. Couldn't we have had this cold snap, um, during the terrible warm spell in winter?

Back in Calgary

2005-04-24T12:22:00.000-06:00

Well, I'm back in Calgary again - the trip from Fernie was pretty uneventful. I got my photos back from the developer (Ruapehu and december-january in Fernie) so that was pretty cool. A lot of fairly average photos of mountains and stuff, but there were some nice ones of mountains and stuff too. I think two out of fifty photos included people, and one of those was accidental.

If I can be bothered I'll scan some of the better ones - some of the sunset photos I took from the lodge on ruapehu are pretty impressive.

So yeah, I'm in Calgary, and staying in an apartment pretty much downtown. It's pretty sweet actually. We're only on the sixth floor, so the view isn't great, but there's plenty going on at street level to watch.

I'll be in Calgary for a while, so we'll see what happens.

Fin.

2005-04-18T16:46:00.000-06:00

Well, it's over. The modem has been picked up by the cable company, all my stuff is packed (and I have fretted about how much I have but more on that later), I have had several meals of leftovers and tidied the house up after the huge party we had (or not - but one of these times I'll convince Kara that I did and her head will explode).

Anyway, in about 24 hours I will be arriving at Calgary International Bus Station, and Fernie will be done. I will be carrying a large backpack *and* a hockey bag that is bigger than my room was this season. Well, almost.

I own too much stuff - the funny thing is that I haven't used half of it. It's not just summer stuff either, there are trousers and shoes I haven't worn (but then, I do dislike trousers and shoes as a matter of policy, so we shouldn't be too surprised).

For a self-proclaimed nomad, I travel pretty heavy, I guess I'm one of those nomads who has a camel train, or at least a camel metro, with him. In theory, I could live out of my backpack, and I probably should. But, just like my mother, I have a natural instinct towards hoarding stuff because it might be useful. Even if I have no possible use for an object (for example a Dodge branded tie-clippy thing), and even if the Salvation Army (a convenient receptacle for the junk that I can bring myself to shed) would turn up their nose at it, throwing something out just seems wrong somehow.

To show how much of a hoader I am, it was a struggle to throw out the remnants of my gloves (well, Tim's old gloves that I appropriated at the start of the season). They were barely even glove shaped any more and had more holes in them than Uday and Qusay (love that belated topical humour - come back in 2007 for references to the Papal elections). Sure, the duct tape was sticking to my skin in places, and my right hand kept coming out of the outer layer, but they were still worth keeping. Seriously, these gloves were a disaster area, any normal person would have tossed em without a second thought. It took me about two and a half thoughts (I was distracted by a chimpanzee riding a bicycle on TV during one of the thoughts).

Wow, there really is nothing happening, is there? And I've still got an hour and a half of internet time. The timecode for a local internet cafe was kindly donated by my ex-flatmate Edouard, currently somewhere in America in a beat up old Chevy van trying not to arouse the suspicions of the Department of Homeland Security (no really officer, all this propane is for personal consumption).

So, I'm off to Calgary tomorrow, and it's about time. My feet itch, and it's not just because I'm wearing shoes after foolishly packing my jandals (although that is one of the reasons).

I've got to keep moving in case the CIA find me - they've got a new brain reading thingee that can see through tinfoil.

Yes I've had lots of spare time over the last couple days, especially since the Fernie library is now closed on Sundays - on the upside, my Italian is a lot better (what you do is flick between CNN and TLN (Tele Latino Network, aka the Italian Chanel, and "how many pandas did that lady kill to harvest their mascara" and by about the third time around through the story cycle, you can start to nod sagely when you hear "il convocationa di papa es multo importanto"). My French is marginally less rusty from watching the various french channels - aka "why are they all clapping and singing?" - for the record, Daveed BeckHAM faitunbutcontreBarcelonadansla coupe U Ey Fa.

But enough about me, how are you?

Really?

Mmm huh.

I've managed to forget my brother's birthday, but it's OK, because I'm fairly sure that even if he has shot up recently, I'm still bigger than him. The younger siblings in my family tend towards beanpoleism, except Thomas, who as everybody knows was actually swapped shortly after birth with another, shorter, baby. Which is amazing because the Kimpese hospital only had one European baby in stock at the time.

OK, it's chucking out time. I will go home and watch several hours of Seinfeld, Friends and the Simpsons (cable TV is great). You can also watch four different home makeover programs at once.

All's well that ends.

2005-04-12T15:14:00.000-06:00

It might not have ended particularly well (conditions today were icy, overcast, and generally very fin de saison (I'm not trying to show off - this French keyboard has a life of its own) but it has ended.

Barring a dump overnight (lifts are open for staff skiing tomorrow, so if it dumps,I'll be impersonating Tim), the three or four runs I had today were the end of my Fernie season. I'll be hanging around town for a few days at least (I've got to clean up after the huge party we had last night).

Actually, I'm kidding about the party, but since Tim said he'd still be checking my blog I can't tell the truth about living with him and Kara, so I may as well have what fun I can at their expense (for the record, they were fine flatmates and good people).

I will be hanging around for a little while though. I've got library books to return, I really should do some work on the book I vaguely dreamed of writing about this season, and the cable company won't be collecting the modem until at least the 17th (although it appears that my XYZ port (or whatever it is that I plug into) isn't working so it's not much use to me after edouard leaves on his summer roadtrip.

OK, this French keyboard is bugging me - a, z, q, w, m, ;, qre all in the wrong place, and even though I am little ,ore than a two finger pecker; I knoz ahere the English keys qre.

I'll write more later.

Today's episode is brought to you by the letter "s"

2005-04-09T13:24:00.000-06:00

S is a great letter to use for Sesame Street style sillyness. So, let's set this show on the street. The S sound starts a startling number words, some of which seem suitable to show you how snowboarding was today.

Sunny - Today was a brilliantly sunny day - it was bright and there was hardly a crowd in the sky. It was a nice day to be outside (especially for a hermit like me).

Slushy - This was no surprise, since it's been warm for about two weeks. The snow was very wet and slushy.

Sticky - the snow was ridiculously sticky, I kept feeling like I was going to stop.

Splash - there were actual puddles on the track out of the lower mountain.

Bah. This was much better in my head.

I'm a snow snob.

2005-04-05T07:16:00.000-06:00

It's not the kind of thing that I should be admitting, especially since I took a stubborn pride at Whakapapa in going up every day that any of the lifts were open. Yes, I went up even if only Happy Valley was open and it was raining. It was what I did.

Here, I'm one of those people that almost only appears after a snowfall. I'm a bit more committed than that, but not much. It depends what mood I'm in.

In many ways, I'm kinda done with winter. Snowboarding is still better than being poked in the eye with a blunt stick. But it's no longer something I just have to get out there and do all the time. This is kind of sad, and I could blame the bad parts of the season for sucking my motivation (I'm not quite sure how, but I could), but really, it's my fault.

But anyway, there's still a few days left in the season, althought I'm sure I'll make it up for at least one more day snowboarding. It will probably closing day and only out of a feeling of duty, but it'll be a day up the hill anyway.

Yes, I should have been forcing myself to go up the hill, and riding all day every day. My snowboarding would be much better now. But hey, what's done is done. I'm sure that in a month or three I'll be eagerly awaiting the next winter (for which I will probably be in Europe) but for now, it feels like time to move on.

"This is the highlight of my life"

2005-03-30T15:26:00.000-07:00

The quote is not me, but some kid (probably early teens) at the bottom of the first pitch of Currie bowl today. I think he was overstating things a little, but not much.

Yes, they finally opened Currie. With about a meter of fresh snow, it would have been worth waiting at least half an hour. As it turned out, I had to wait about two minutes, and still had a position at the front of the pack.

When the patroller gave the starting signal, it was as much of a madhouse as last time. Once again, I made it into the first run ahead of the crowds. This time was even better - there was no icy base, the snow was fresher, lighter, and deeper than pretty much anything this season, definately the deepest set of four or five turns I've had all season.

It was stupifyingly good - the kind of experience that leaves you grinning like an idiot (which is an easy expression for me).

Actually Thomas, my snowboarding "routes" aren't NZ at all. They are Lake Louise and Fernie (in a good year).

I was going to write how his mistake with homophones was appropriate, given how much moving around I've done, but I can't be bothered, and as anyone knows, I'm the brother who's good with words and other brainy stuff, and he's the brother that's good at fixing things (any excuse to use your fancy tool set, right bro?), doing things, and dealing with people.

Man, today was great. It was very tiring, especially when I fell over and was left wallowing in the powder, but in a good way.

The first run through Currie Bowl today was quite possibly my run of the season. It was that good. I once again understand why people spend large amounts of money on cat or heli skiing. If only...

If this is wrong, baby, I don't want to be right.

2005-03-29T23:04:00.000-07:00

Well, let's see if I can write about half the things I thought I wanted to write about today before I go to sleep.

Yesterday sucked, as I think I mentioned.

Today on the other hand, I was woken up by the sweet sweet sound of Tim's voice (that sounds a little weird, but I have a standing request in with him for a wakeup visit whenever there is more than 10cm of new snow, so when I work out that my dreams haven't been invaded by disembodied Australian voices and realise that I should wake up because there's fresh snow, I am happy.

Anyway, I get on about the seventh chair, and after a few stops and starts we make it to the top. Everyone dismounts, stoked that we've got some very light snow on top of the heavier stuff we had earlier this week. I sit down and buckle in.

Or at least I try to. Somewhere between finishing riding on Sunday and trying to strap in on Tuesday, the ratchet / buckle for the ankle strap on my back binding broke / fell off.

Auugh.

I felt like Charlie Brown right after Lucy yanks the football away. I thought I was going to get something good, and then BAM! It was ripped from my grasp when I was so close I could smell it.

I strap my toes in, and proceed to ride down the cat track (the shamefully signposted "easiest way down"). This is very frustrating, but I get down and head into the crowded rentals / repairs shop.

The repair guy puts a replacement ratchet on for me, and it costs $8. Tragedy! I don't have any money (I kinda used my jacket semi-emergency $20 for necessities like noodles, frozen corn, and cereal with marshmallow bits in it). I'm getting out my season pass, to use as an IOU, when the lady behind me in the line offers to pay for it.

I owe some serious KITS (KIndness To Strangers) to the world. Sure, $8 isn't much - an hours work for me at the salt mine (which has changed its mind again about my employment status - seriously, my job situation is as variable as a variable thing in an indecisive mood). Less for most middle aged people with real jobs. It's even less for a Calgreedian (rich people from, well, that's pretty obvious, who buy up vast tracts of ski towns for weekend homes). But that's not the point, it was a totally uncalled for and gratuitous act of niceness.

It made my day a lot better. Not just because I got to ride, but because it gave a boost to my opinion of human nature.

So I'd like to offer a big Thank You to the repair-shop-line-lady, and I guess I owe someone, somewhere, somewhen.

The rest of the day was mostly beautiful soft snow. As always, tracked out fast, but if you're willing to hike, and head into the trees, there were always a few fresh turns to be had. The high traffic areas on the lower mountain (cat tracks out from the good stuff) were kinda yucky, and getting worse as the day went on,

Work on the other hand started off yucky and got worse. The hotel is too warm, the work is all the bad parts of housekeeping and none of the good parts, etc, etc. I dislike my job, and really hope I get replaced / released again (since I'm only getting 2 hours a night, it's not a huge loss to my back pocket).
And now it's bed time since the word is that they will open the bowls tomorrow, and even if they don't, it's snowing a little, so it will still be fun.

It's the end of the year as we know it - Part II

2005-03-28T12:13:00.001-07:00

Once again, it's the end of the year as we know it.

Yesterday's "powder day" quickly turned into wet sticky rubbish (although I did have some very nice runs before it was ruined).

Edouard rang the house from the mountain and said it's not worth coming up.

I should find something clever to say. But I'm kinda tired (my room is pretty much a furnace).

It's the end of the year as we know it - Part II

2005-03-28T12:13:00.000-07:00

extremecarving (dot com) and extreme precipitation.

2005-03-26T18:47:00.000-07:00

We had house guests during the week, one of whom was Patrice from www.extremecarving.com so he showed us some of his videos.

Wow. These crazy Swiss guys (how's that for breaking national stereotypes?) have snowboards that they can get up at such an angle that their heads are pretty much on the snow. It's truly impressive stuff.

Inspired by the extreme carvers, and finally (mostly) over my head-cold, I went up the mountain yesterday. I got nowhere near the kind of angles the Swiss guys do, but it was a fun half-day of trying to carve. It's nowhere near as much fun as powder, but since the one out-of bounds place I went had a thick layer of windcrust on top, it was all about high speed.

We've also got the first "intense precipitation" warning from ski patrol for the season. I'm hoping this means an epic day tommorow.

Taking a Sickie

2005-03-22T16:20:00.000-07:00

Today is a sick day. Not that I have a job to be sick from, but whatever. I woke up this morning to discover that a horde of gremlins had taken up residence in my body.

This press release from Gremlin Prime Minister Grack should explain.

"Due to growing unemployment in the Gremlin population (the rapid growth of Mozilla Firefox put many Microsoft specialist gremlins out of work) we decided to embark on work creation projects. As such, we are pleased to announce that formerly unemployed gremlins are now working in Richard's body on such vital projects as sanderpapering his throat, building a damn in his sinuses, and squeezing his brain."

Urrgh, basically folks, I'm sick, and I don't like it. It's not a very familiar feeling for me, and as a measure of how much it's affected me, I went to the library today and didn't get any books out! Not even a paperback thriller. Yes, walking to town took that much out of me. Yuck.

In unrelated news:

The French Parliament votes to make it possible to extend the working week past 35 hours. Nationwide strikes break out. You gotta love those wacky French people, non?

Another Powder Day.

2005-03-20T17:01:00.000-07:00

We recieved 9cms of snow overnight (according to the relatively reliable, if slightly optimistic, www.skifernie.com/snowreport/index.asp).

Not enough to trigger my 10cm rule (the dry season version of the 30cm rule), but on top of the snow we've received over the last few days, more than enough to ensure a fun day.

There were a few icy patches in exposed spots and in high-traffic areas. I fell over and slid on my stomach (the famous superman bail) for several meters on the way out from one of the bowls.

But the top of the mountain was awesome.

Yeah, I'm running out of things to say. I rode until my legs hurt too much, then came home. It's how more days should have been this season.

Leftovers

2005-03-19T10:01:00.000-07:00

We picked up another 8cm or so over the night of the 17th/18th.

The hordes were not there, and they missed out. Yesterday's tracked powder was covered with a nice layer of new snow. If riding powder is like playing in the clouds, riding covered leftovers is like playing in the clouds during a "mild patch of turbulence" - ever notice how you never hit severe turbulence? The plane can be bouncing up and down like a cat on a trampoline, and "murgle and gentlemurgh, captain murgle speaking, mild turbulence".

But when you're in control (well, mostly), riding bumpy powder is a lot of fun. It's a lot of work, especially if you pulled a calf muscle yesterday. But hey, a second good day in as many weeks? It's like Christmas... actually, it's better than Christmas, we only got one good day then.

Ahhhh.

2005-03-17T20:20:00.000-07:00

Well that was a great day.

37cms of fresh powder.

We arrived at the hill to see a bigger lineup than pretty much any day since opening day. Pretty much anyone in town who wasn't working, or dead, was up the hill today. They opened the hill in stages, so things got tracked pretty quick, on the upside, there was plenty of opportunity to pick up fresh lines.

Highlights of the day:

After a couple of nice runs in the quickly tracked-out timber bowl, I join the small crowd waiting for Currie bowl to open. I'd heard the rumour that it was going to open soon, so I joined the slowly growing crowd. I was early enough to find a spot in the second row. For the next ten minutes, everyone talked to their neighbours and heckled the patroller.

Actually, that was mostly me. You see, according to one of those internet personality tests, I'm a "firecracker" - the classic heckler / troublemaker who can't stand authority who uses his ready wit for a variety of purposes.

I think I made the waiting more pleasant for people, there were plenty of laughs, and the patroller didn't mind too much. After I suggested rushing past the ropes (for the second time), I got into a conversation with some guy about how much people actually respect the patrollers.

And we do.

Big shouts to ski patrollers everywhere. We love you guys. Sure, we may bitch and moan about how you get all the best fresh lines, and are too slow to open up terrain for us, and you get to play with explosives, and cut the lift lines, and ski around all day.

Actually, we're jealous, and if you didn't stop us from getting ourselves killed, we'd have to dislike patrollers as much as we do ski-school instructors. Yes, I know that I'm qualified to be an instructor, but I'm not. So I'm doubley free to make jokes.

Anyway, I think the rope was about to come down.

A hundred and fifty powder-starved skiers and boarders are standing on the western edge of Currie bowl. We are waiting as patiently as we can. Some jiggle their legs to stay loose, others tighten thier bindings or adust the grip they have on thier poles. We discuss for the last time which fresh line we want, and how messy the traverse will be (most of us will be trying to squeeze onto a cat-track about ten feet wide).

A few at the downhill end jump the gun and drop into the bowl. There are cheers and jeers, and then the patroller gives the word, and we leap forward.

I duck under the rope and join the world's largest boardercross. For a few hectic meters, I avoid fallen and slow people, and try not to get in the way of those faster than me. It's more chaotic than rush hour in Rome.

Then I look to my right, and see that the first run is steep, deep, and far less crowded. I drop in and sink waist deep into light fresh untracked powder. It's beautiful, I'm floating down the hill. By the time I make it to the bottom of the first pitch, I have been overtaken by a few more aggressive riders. There's a slight uphill, but I've straightlined it from about halfway up. I will still have to walk a little, the deep snow is slowing everyone down.

Nobody is complaining though, in fact, there's more whooping and hollering than in a John Wayne film. I come to a stop and flick the board round so I don't slide backwards. I unclip one binding and jump step up the last few meters. I'm breathing hard already, it's the adrenaline rush, and the hard work of riding powder, and the sheer joy of it all.

I sit down, clip in again, and ride through more powder, and more powder.

Basically, today was a great day.

Happy St Patrick's Day.

2005-03-17T08:06:00.000-07:00

St Patrick is a snowboarder!

How else would you explain 31cms of fresh snow overnight?

Well, there is apparantly an Irish myth that on the 17th of 18th, St Patrick's wife cleans up after the party they had in heaven, and brushes a last little bit of snow onto earth.

Well, I think that all the Norse Gods gatecrashed 17 Saint Street (Paddy's house) and jumped up and down on the floorboards or something.

POWDER DAY!

St Patrick > The Griz

More later - got to shovel down my noodles and curry (breakfast of champions) and get ready to snowboard for the first time in a couple weeks.

This ain't Hollywood...

2005-03-14T20:55:00.000-07:00

Reasons why Fernie ain't Hollywood:

1) Southern California has more snow than we do now.
2) In Hollywood, an awful disaster of a season would be turned around in a miracle dump of epic proportions. In Fernie, we get a couple of hours of wet slushy flakes, and then anotherwarm day.
3) There are no letters on the hill. There's no snow either.

Oh yeah, I just got laid off, again. This time it's permanent, unless I get called in this weekend. This is worse than Brad and Jen (nothing like delayed pop-culture references).

Where did winter go?

2005-03-10T18:22:00.000-07:00

It's not the end, yet. It's definately the beginning of the end or perhaps the end of the middle, or even the middle of the end, narrative structure is something that is imposed retrospectively on events.

Sure, it's also imposed pro-spectively (or whatever the opposite of retro is when you're speaking spectively), but there most people know the structure is imaginary (and the events might also not occur - an argument it is difficult to make about things that happened.

Wow, that was pretty intellectual. I guess I'm doing my bit to fight the image of snowboarders as "knuckle-dragging morons in baggy pants". That or I just miss university, where I was free to be clever whenever I felt like it.

I bet that offhand comment got my mother all excited. I had hoped that working on her own doctorate (due at the end of 2006 I think) would stop her from ~~nagging~~ ;) encouraging me to try and get one myself.

But anyway, I've posted a couple of times about how the season is dying. We got another sign of the apocalypse (at least in terms of the ski season) today - the first fishermen came out of hibernation and waded bravely into the river.

He's just like everyone else - puts his trousers on one leg at a time.

2005-03-05T18:25:00.000-07:00

It's true, I am just like everyone else, I put my trousers on one leg at a time (well usually, sometimes I put them on both legs at once just to feel special).

Today, I put my trousers on one leg at a time.

No, this isn't a metaphor for me being an average man in an average life. I am building up to something.

Today, I put my trousers on one leg at a time. Unfortunately, I put them on backwards. Yep, you read that correctly.

Not my best effort.

In my defence, my work trousers are pretty much just polyester trackpants, and the differences between front and back are pretty minimal:

1) There is a small label at the back.
2) The hip pockets are much easier to access when trousers are pointing forward.

It was point two that finally (after an hour or so of checking email, watching TV, and having breakfast) alerted me to my error.

When I didn't know there was anything "wrong", the trousers were as comfortable as ever. As soon as I dropped my keys on the floor because my pockets had disappeared, all I could think about was that my trousers were on backwards, and it was horribly uncomfortable.

I'm sure there's a metaphor in there, if you are feeling cheated of a parable, but it's nearly time for "Trivial Pursuit" (some sort of of trivia competition as part of "Griz Days".

No, I'm not sure what's with all the "s, but whatever.

Griz Days are, ironically, a celebration of the mythical Griz (a human baby, raised by bears, who lives in the mountains and fires a giant musket into the sky to bring snow). Assuming that the legend is true, gun control has a lot to answer for.

Anyway, it's almost time for Tim and I to go and prove our trivial superiority. Usually we are rivals, it will be a nice change (for him) to benefit from my status as "trivia superhero", instead of being brutally punished by it.

Don't try and deny it Tim. The world knows who is trivia king, and who is a thirtycoughmumble-year-old pretender to the throne.

2005-03-04T12:44:00.000-07:00

Slowly and surely, the mountain is dying. Every day, things get a little worse. It's not officially a terminal illness yet, but the doctors are not optimistic.

Ironically, as I write this, Queen are singing "every night and every day, another piece of you is washed away". Edouard found my Queen CD in early december, and it has been in the (3 CD) stereo ever since.

It's stil rideable up there, but there are big bare patches appearing everywhere. Thankfully, most of the main runs are still rideable, but Fernie's "Legendary Powder" is a legend only in the sense that it happened a long time ago and is rather implausible.

Well, I wasn't missing much

2005-03-01T16:27:00.000-07:00

I went up the hill for the first time in a couple of weeks. I went up a little late (I'm still readjusting to going to sleep before 2am). By a stroke of luck, I got to the car park at almost exactly the same time as some of the people I work with.

I am a big fan of riding by myself. Especially on powder days (the few that this depressing dry winter has provided), it's great to go at your own pace, do what you want, and not have to worry about being cool, or anybody else. Riding alone is snowboarding in its purest form - a guy, a board, and a steep (or not) patch of snow.

But, on days like today, it's easier to ride with a group.

Today was slushy, choppy (you can see the moguls from town which is 5km away), and coverage is fading fast. It's fun for a while, but it's better to suffer through it in a group.

I discovered today that I am a big fraidy-cat. Actually, it's something I've known for a long time. Today just confirmed it. I actually hit a rail so slowly that I stalled at the top of the on-ramp. Sure, the snow was very sticky, but really, it's kind of sad that I checked my speed that much on the run in.

I also decided not to hit a 30 foot booter (a booter is basically just a ramp, I think)... twice! Yep, I even hiked up so I could chicken out again. I'm chicken of the year.

I just wasn't riding very well today. I wasn't riding badly (I nailed one smooooth nose-roll off a small bump and rode out switch - usually I slam the board down hard, jam my ankles, and pretty much stop), but I wasn't riding well. I was just kind of there.

Still, it was a nice change to get out of the house. It's ironic - the east of Canada, large parts of eastern USA, the California resorts, and Japan are all having epic snowfalls while our part of the world has had the dryest winter in 50 years (well, except for all that RAIN).

Ahh well, it's nearly summer anyway.

Murphy's Law / La Loi de Murphy

2005-02-27T11:46:00.000-07:00

The Canadian version of Murphy's Law is that whenever you get a packet of food out, you will always look at the French instructions first. Fortunately, "plonger les pates dans 6 tasses d'eau bouillante" is pretty easy to interpet, and instant noodles transcend the bounds of language.

Well, after tonight I am done with janitorial shifts. It will be very nice to get back to normal hours, and get rid of the stress. I may not have mentioned it, but my boss keeps complaining about the quality of my work. Unfortunately, she wasn't usually complaining to me.

Riverside (I think that's the first time I mentioned the name of this gulag) is not a good place to work. Most of the employees are great and the location could not be more confenient. Unfortunately, the owner and his management staff are straight out of a workplace tragi-comedy. It's kind of like working in "The Office" - the corporate culture is a combination of "cover your ass", "the customer is an inconvenience", "play petty power games", and "rearrange the deckchairs on the Titanic".

I was talking to one of my co-workers recently and she said "it's sad because there are good people here, but I don't just want to make friends based on hating this place."

Thankfully, I will be eligible for parole soon. The season ends in about six weeks, and Bill Ing lays people off as soon as he can before that. Obviously the parole metaphor isn't 100% right, because prison jobs pay a little bit less than I get here (not much though). Also, people in Fernie like locals who stuck it out at Riverside for a decent length of time because "if you can put up with that place, you'll be a good employee anywhere else". I say locals, because a lot of Fernie businesses still have an us against them mentality when it comes to hiring outsiders.

But anyway. I'm back to working four days a week and when I say days, I mean days, not nights. I think this will ironically mean I snowboard more, since I won't be waking up at 11:30am and knowing I have be at work by 4:00.

In many ways I am looking forward to the end of the season (although some more snow would be nice between now and then). It's not that I don't like snowboarding, it's just that my feet are getting itchy (it's probably a rash picked up from the unsafe usage of cleaning chemicals - another reason to ?love? my job).

One last shift, although since my boss is cutting me from janitorial because I'm not up to standard, it will be difficult not to live up to her expectations by doing a bad job.

At last, a post

2005-02-24T19:31:00.000-07:00

Well, I haven't posted in a week. Partly it's because I have been working a lot recently. But mostly it's because I haven't felt like writing anything. The sudden jump from 0 hours a week to 60 left me quite drained (and work has been lousy recently, but we're not going to talk about that). But what about snowboarding?

Well, I haven't done much - I've been tired, and the hill hasn't been that special. It's funny, the more opportunities I have to go snowboarding, the less important it seems to me. I'm sure that if I was working in Saskatchewan, I'd be riding 9-4 every day and eating lunch on the chairlifts. But I'm not, so I don't have to.

I also don't have to blog every day, which is good, because I haven't been. I'm still alive, still broke (although with nearly 70 hours already in this pay period and four (probably 9 hour) days to go, I might actually have some money this time. Although, that's what I thought last time, and I got laid off, and just managed to keep my head above water.

Nose meet grindstone, grindstone, meet nose.

2005-02-19T15:07:00.000-07:00

The snow has returned to the Elk Valley, and the guests have come back to the hotels. This means that I've got my job back. After a couple of half days snowshovelling, my boss got me back for a couple of days of housekeeping, and now I am back to janitorialising. Boy am I back - seven nights a week, in theory at least, I suspect this is a cunning ploy so that they can work me like a dog when they need it, and then cancel shifts at random when they don't, but we shall see.

For now though, it's a good feeling - I've just managed to cover next month's rent (and house expenses). If I'm lucky I'll make enough over the rest of the month to pay for the food I ate during the dry spell, and this month.

This season has been a financial disaster for me. I'm obviously not in this for the money (one discussion with my flatmate Tim will quickly disabuse anyone of the idea that ski-bumming is a path to a life of riches), but it is a little frustrating.

More worrying is that there is only about 6 weeks officially left in the season. On the 12th of April, the lifts go quiet for the last time. Time has flown by.

Random Quotage

2005-02-15T19:12:00.000-07:00

"The Wise are guided by their belly rather than their eyes."

It was the random daily quote from Lao Tzu (an ancient Chinese guy who wrote the Tao Te Ching) that I found when I was googling to explain that the Tao of Pooh wasn't anti science).

The explaination sas that this aphorism refers to fulfilling your physical needs
rather than chasing interesting things you can see, but don't need. It's what I've been doing recently, if only because I don't have any money to spand.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled weather

2005-02-13T21:26:00.000-07:00

Fernie is looking more and more like the place I remember from 2001-2. It snowed last night, most of today, and will hopefully keep snowing tonight. There was officially about 10cm of fresh powder this morning, but it felt like more up top.

My first couple of runs were through the usual soft choppy goodness that is a "groomed" run on a powder day (especially when over half the mountain is waiting for a visit from the dynamite fairy to make it safe for us mere mortals).

Eventually, patrol gave the all clear, and opened up Currie bowl. I ended up getting the first line through Currie glades. It was amazing. You just can't help but ride well in powder. Well, unless you're one of the "middle aged American women" who apparantly bring their passes back for a refund because "there is too much snow". I hope this story is apocryphal (which is a fancy word for made up), but I suspect it isn't.

So anyway, I had one of those classic runs that makes everything seem right with the world. For those of you that haven't tried snowboarding through trees (which is pretty much anyone who has only snowboarded in NZ, not to mention my non-boarding audience), it's great. Kinda scary, but great. If you've seen Star Wars (the good movies, not George Lucas' weak cashin prequls), then it's a little like that scene where Luke Skywalker and some stormtroopers are riding jet bikes through the forest. Trees rush by on either side of you and the ground seems distance. You're trying to plan ahead, working out where and when you have to turn, but at the same time, your attention is being dragged back to the present because you have to do things right.

There's even Ewoks - at least I think they are Ewoks, they might just be 12 year olds. Riding in trees is an exercise in overcoming fear. The faster you are going the more it feels like you might hit a tree and break your arm. But really, not only is it easier to get through trees with momentum (turning is physically easier when the board is going fast and you are more accurate), it's also less scary than stopping. When you stop in trees, unless you pick your spot, they all creep together and the truck sized gap you had lined up now seems smaller than your front door.

The rest of the day was pretty good too, but that one run would have made my day.

I also managed to do about 4 hours of snow shovelling after coming back down from the hill. That was hard work, but $30 is $30. Hopefully, the tourists are coming back (as much as it pains me to share the snow, the town, especially me, needs their money).

Earn Your Turns

2005-02-08T08:40:00.000-07:00

Well, yesterday was day three of the new and improved Fernie Alpine Resort. They finally opened the top half of Lizard and Cedar bowls (rumour has it that patrol's dynamite gun broke on Sunday, so they couldn't clear the avalaches on the old side of the mountain). So?

So there was a limited amount of totally fresh powder to be had. I picked up a couple of lines in Cedar bowl from the top of the Bear chair (Fernie trail map for those who need it).

After that though, it was time to earn some turns. The Facelift wasn't running, but the terrain it accesses was open. Time to hike. Roughly 900 steps to the top. It was hard work, especially the first climb where my fingers were burning from the cold.

But getting to the top was worth it. It would have been worth it even without the fresh snow beneath me. Today was one of those blue-bird sunnny days where just being in the mountains is enough to make me happy, and as odd as it sounds, the excellent snowboarding was just the best excuse to be out there.

But anyway, I boarded along the cat track (that's cat as in snow-cat, the large machines used for grooming the mountain, and not some sort of Alpine feline) until I saw a relatively untouched powder field. It had a couple of lines through it, but there was definately room for me.

I popped off the edge of the track, and promptly sank to about mid thigh level. You go deceptively fast in powder, especially when you're just pointing the board downhill. It's a strange feeling, but one that is easy to love. There's no noise, no vibrations, and precious little indication that you're even moving (although you can definately tell the difference, because getting stuck is very frustrating).

I started my first sweeping turn and watched the spray shoot out from under my board. Then I noticed a scattering of small perfectly round bumps in the snow in front of me. Little baby trees covered in powder - excellent. I raced past the baby trees, over another cat track, and through one last small patch of fresh snow before reaching the top of a choppy lift-accessible run.

My powder run was over, and I wanted more.

I climbed the face lift three times before Patrol decided they wanted to blow up some stuff on the mountain peak above us. It was a welcome break, and we managed to squeeze one last run in when they had problems with the gun again and just let us go down.

I'm not sure if the turns felt better because I earned them, although they might have, but once the free turns are mostly gone, addicts like me have to put a little effort in. I'm now trying to work out how many pints of blood I have to sell to afford a day of cat skiing. Heli skiing is totally out of my price range, unless anyone needs a kidney?

Anyway, I was pretty tired after that earned run , and making silly little mistakes on relatively easy terrain, so I called it a day. I went downtown and bumped into a co-worker (or former co-worker, whatever). She had a huge amount of meat that she wasn't going to eat, so I've now got a venison roast and maybe a pound of elk burger meat.

So Chateaux Richard will be having roast at some point this week - it will make a change to have a communal meal that is not fondue or sushi (we eat communally about once a week, in theory. Since Kara is the least lazy of us when it comes to cooking, actually, she is the least lazy when it comes to anything domestic, she usually gets stuck with most of the preparation duties. But I'll have to step up for this one, since it's my fault we have the meat.

Mmmm mmmm venison.

Super Bowls Sunday

2005-02-06T19:10:00.000-07:00

Today is SuperBowl Sunday (it's like the World Cup final of American Football).

More importantly, it was Super BOWLS Sunday. Another day of fresh snow at Fernie Alpine Resort. Not quite as much as yesterday, but there were some beautiful patches.

I only rode for about five hours, but they were five great hours. Riding powder is a lot of work. You have to keep your weight back, so you keep your speed up, but this is more effort than riding normally. It's so rewarding though, especially when you get to lay down a big slashing turn through an untouched patch.

The mountain wasn't quite as consistently nice today - there were more bare patches. But, it was nicer in places where the snow had accumulated.

The mountain is finally looking like it should - snow everywhere, plenty of happy people (perhaps the most common chairlift word today was "finally" - as in "the snow has finally arrived), and a lot of lines (when the snow is soft you can see tracks where people have ridden, when it's hard these are much less obvious).

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

2005-02-05T16:47:00.000-07:00

It isn't always a train.

The thunderstorm last night sounded like it could have been the death-knell of the Fernie season. The rain was coming down, and it could have killed the season.

Thankfully, it snowed up at the hill.

Just saying it snowed is a bit of an understatement. It dumped. We got somewhere above 30 centimeters of beautiful fat snowflakes.

The season is saved, and I am happy again.

Today was amazing - there were fresh turns to be had almost all day (you just have to know where, and how, to look).

The fresh line is the holy grail of a powder day. To make a series of turns in snow that nobody has touched before you, well it gives you a tingly feeling deep inside (for a change, the tingly feeling that Fernie is producing isn't frostbite). It's kind of like being an explorer, or a viking (you get to pillage and destroy the lovely fluffy drifts of snow), or something.

I'm not revealing my secret spots, well, because they're secret, sort of. But trust me, today was great.

Do I even like Snowboarding?

2005-02-03T01:11:00.000-07:00

Well, after Edouard came home yesterday saying how great the mountain was, I decided it was time to end the two week drought. OK, it was possibly the world's wettest "drought, but anyway. I went up the hill bright and early this morning.

Overheard outside the repair shop - "It's like a ghost town out here" - couldn't have said it better myself.

At some point between shelling out the $45 I owed for my board repair and getting on the first chairlift, this was a depressingly long time because my binding had jammed shut so I couldn't get my foot in to it. Anyway, while on the first chair. I noticed a nagging pain in my wrist.

I decided to ride anyway, and it wasn't too bad. The top quarter of the mountain was fairly nice and the bottom half of the top chair was slushy and chopped up. But I just couldn't get into it - I kept noticing that my wrist ached (and falling onto the side of my wrist didn't help).

I love snowboarding, or at least I thought I did. Why couldn't I actually snowboard a whole day after not doing any for two weeks. Surely I'd be yearning to breathe free?

Well, you'd think so, but today was another one of those days where I couldn't really be bothered. I like snowboarding, really I do. At Whakapapa, I would be riding every chance I had - days off, lunch breaks, staff ski time, night skis, heading-down-to-pick-up-some-milk-from-the-main-cafe times, any time. Today would have been a nice day in Whakapapa, yet I couldn't manage more than four runs before I just went home to watch TV and grimace whenever I moved my wrist sideways.

So yeah, I have an excuse, but that's all it is really, an excuse.

Meh. Maybe I was just spoiled by the good days we have had here.

Desmond the Kangaroo!

2005-01-31T15:07:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine from Calgary (well, actually he's from Newcastle Australia, but I met him in Calgary) is in Canada at the moment. Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you - Desmond the Kangaroo (and his associated human - Dan)

http://www.danscapers.com/gallery/Desmond/

For the record, it's raining again in Fernie, and we hates that, yess we do, nasty fat stupid raindropssses. Gollum, gollum.

Money Money Money!

2005-01-29T13:39:00.000-07:00

I just got selected for the m100 at www.marketocracy.com

Basically this means that my investment prowess over the last year or two has been profitable enough for my imaginary fund that this company is willing to use my selections to help manage their real investment fund.

It's the second time I've made it into the top 100 (I made it in for a couple of months in Quarter Three last year). I also have three other funds that are beating the major indicies over the last three years (so I'm doing better than most real life mutual funds).

So, yeah, I'm pretty happy about that (they'll even send me a little check at the end of this quarter, so in some ways, I am a professional investment advisor). On the off chance that someone who works in the investment industry is reading this, I'm available to start immediately.

Actually, if anyone who is reading this can offer me any sort of job, I'd be quite happy.

Freshies! We got freshies!

2005-01-29T09:32:00.000-07:00

The first snow in two weeks fell overnight! Hooray! Mind you, since we got perhaps as much as 5 millimetres overnight, it will take the rest of 2005, and much of 2006 to restore the mountain to its early January state.

Still, it's a sign the temperature is moving in the right direction. Or at least it would have been, if the weather network (aka the prophets of doom) are correct, we're in for ANOTHER spell of warm weather.

*Sigh*

Remember how I said I while ago that the Armed Front for the Renaming of Saskatchewan had sent mooses (or unemployed Newfies, I can't remember) up to the Artic with giant fans? Well, this time I'm blaming the Americans.

No, not for refusing to sign the Kyoto protocol (although it is another reason that Dubya sucks), but for pointing the exhaust fans of their air conditioners North.

It's a conspiracy to steal all the ski business from BC and take it for California.

GRRRR.

Tinme for Canada to invade (again) and burn down the White House (again). That'll teach them.

Rain stopped work

2005-01-24T14:04:00.000-07:00

Well, I was just writing an email to my brother in which I said that next paycheck I should be on an even keel financially. Literally just after I finished typing that sentence, I got a phone call from my boss.

I just got laid off.

Yeah, that's great news. NOT.

Because Fernie has been getting rained on for the last week, tourists have been cancelling. The owner of the hotel I work at sent a fax from Calgary saying "lay everyone off and maybe rehire them in a couple of weeks if things improve" - Thanks Bill.

It's not as if I can just walk into another job either. The entire town is economically slow right now (I've been keeping an eye on the job postings, and there have been very few recently, and pretty much none that I'm qualified for). It's November all over again. For those of you who weren't reading my emails back then (in the long dark days pre-blog) there were hordes of unemployed people rioting in the streets. Well, OK, we were more of a disorganised throng than a horde (hordes are far too impolite to be allowed in Canada) and we were wandering around aimlessly rather than rioting, but the principle is the same.

You know, this is the first time I've ever been fired. I know being laid off in a slowdown is not quite the same as actually being fired, but it's not a good feeling. It's also not a good feeling to know that I'm pretty much broke.

I can survive for a while, but this definately throws a big spanner in the works. I need snow now more than ever.

What ever happened to Richard?

2005-01-23T01:33:00.000-07:00

Well, I haven't written for a while.

No, I haven't had my typing fingers (all two of them) amputated. Nor has it started dumping snow (quite the reverse in fact). Nor have I suddenly developed a social life (having no money, working till midnight, and generally being quite anti-social tend to work against me going bar hopping).

Basically, there just hasn't been much to write about ( and or I just haven't felt like writing). The rain keeps falling, and the snow conditions get worse and worse. I keep going to work, and it gets more and more routine.

Like I said earlier, or maybe I didn't, I'm just on my little hamster wheel, same as all the normal people, mine's just in a nicer place.

Great Expectations

2005-01-18T16:42:00.000-07:00

Well, so much for the powder day that the entire town of Fernie was looking forward to. Sure, we had 20+ cm before I finished eating my burritos. Obviously, we didn't have Chinese last night - Chinese people who own restaurants in Fernie don't work Mondays. I told Kara (the token Canadian and token woman flatmate) that it was because Monday was the Confucian holy day. I'm not sure if she believed me or not. I'm pretty good at straight-facing statements like that but she has been living with Tim and I for a while.

Anyway, I woke up at 3am today. No, I wasn't making sure I got up to the hill early, my friend Dan was arriving from Calgary and I had to be awake to let him in (or at least dozing on the couch, rather than comatose downstairs). Or rather, Dan was supposed to be arriving from Calgary. Instead, the highway was closed between Elkford (the next town east of here) and Fernie, and he phoned at about 4:30am to let me know this.

That surely boded well for an epic powder day today, didn't it?

Well, no.

By the time Dan arrived at the Fernie "bus station", and the inhabitants of Chateaux Richard began to wake up, the nasty horrible evil rain had come and ruined all the snow.

It was like the Grinch stole Christmas, and didn't have a change of heart.

Today didn't totally suck, but it was definately not the best. The snow was super-heavy, and very sticky. Untouched snow was generally very slow indeed (at one point I stalled while my board was pointing straight down the hill). To make things more "interesting", the parts of the run without good snow coverage were relatively fast.

Still, I landed some 180s today - I've got frontside ones off small hits kind of dialed now. That's snowboarder talk meaning that I can go over a small bump and spin around in the air - bringing my back (right) leg forward so I spin half way round anti-clockwise and land with my right leg as the new front leg.

Meh, it sounds so much cooler to call it a frontside one.

So yeah, today didn't suck, it was even fun at times.

What did suck was dropping my board in at the repair shop. I took a core shot (that's when a rock or tree stump or something simmilar leaps out and takes a big chunk out out of the base of your board / skis and you can actually see the wooden "core" - hence the name) at Castle on Saturday. This has the potential to do serious damage to the board (moisture gets in and your board becomes an expensive gooey mess) as well as making for a rougher ride.

So anyway, the guy there convinces me to get a full base tune (it wasn't hard, since the base of my board looks like it went a couple rounds with a bad tempered cat armed with a knife). $45 later (sorry, $40 plus tax - stupid Canamerican system) and my battered board is accepted into the secret chamber of repair.

I don't think I've made any tax jokes on this blog, so I'll fire out a couple of my favourites.

One for flatmate Tim - "I'm not 30, I'm 29 plus tax"
One for Santa Claus - "I'm only 195 pounds... plus tax"

By the way, did anyone else see Bill Gates on Jeopardy tonight? It might have been a repeat, but I could swear that "Brandon" (or whatever his name was) owned a large chunk of Microsoft - he made it three wins in a row, so he's pretty smart. In Jeopardy, the contestants get a clue and have to provide the question - for example The clue is "The opening lines of this play are "Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer by this son of York"" the question/answer is "What is Richard III?"

So why do I say smart, rather than just knowledgeable? Well, after a certain base level of knowledge (admittedly quite high), it is more beneficial to be able to puzzle things out rather than know more random facts. I regularly puzzle out five or six answers (nearly 10% of the clues) that I have no real idea about.

Anyway, Jeopardy has something of a cult following in our house - basically I brutally crush Tim almost every time. Yes Tim, I do. Kara tolerates it, and uses the opportunity to tease Tim about losing to me (we're both trivia geeks) and Edouard feeds his virtual pig

Why can't we be friends?

2005-01-17T14:36:00.000-07:00

It's a line from a song that got stuck in my head today, and was oddly appropriate when an idiot skier (excuse the tautology - ooh cheapshot) started tootling merrily across the slope at precisely the most inconvenient time for me.

It all happened just below a roller on the new side of Fernie. A roller is where the run suddenly gets steeper, creating a nice jump that you can either pop off for some decent size air, or just absorb with your legs for one of those stomach dropping sensations (like going over a humpback bridge, or something). The new side is where Resorts of the Canadian Rockies slapped in a couple of chairlifts when they took over a few years ago. The runs tend to flow less easily than on the old side, but have their own attractions. The run looked empty, so I was booting it and had taken a little air even though I tried to keep it on the ground - you go faster when your board is on the snow.

Anyway, I was just getting my heel edge back into the snow (so I was heading pretty much straight down the hill) when the skier stood up. She'd obviously been having a picnic, or something, in the middle of the run *and* where she couldn't be seen from above. She started tootling merrily across the run without looking up the hill to see if anyone was coming - this is somewhat akin to just randomly pulling out of your driveway.

Because the new side is less logical than the old side, which has been smoothed over numerous summers, we were both kind of heading downhill (although she was heading sort of downhill towards the trees, and I was heading downhill down the run).

Anyway, I yell loudly and try to go from warp-speed to something surviveable. Unfortunately, there isn't much space to do this in. I slam the board round until it is at 90 degrees to the hill and lean back and bend my legs to dig as much edge in as possible.

My "hockey stop" has the desired effect, I deccelerate very rapidly. Rapid changes of velocity are rather unpleasant (blah blah G force) in almost any situation, this is no exception. Basically, my board bounces into the snow a few times - jarring my ankles, my bottom bounces into the snow a few times, and I get a faceful of ice crystals.

What does the skier do during all of this? Well, as best as I could tell, she keeps coming straight towards me.

Anyway, long story short, I nearly crashed into an idiot skier today, and it got me thinking. Just why is there so much (or any) animosity between skiers and snowboarders?

Let's look at some of the ideas that have come up in my chairlift symposiums on this topic. In no particular order.

1) Snowboarders wear their pants too baggy and too low.
- Not true, I wear mine above the hips and cinch the belt up tight - it keeps snow out. Plus, our pants need to be baggy for all the flexion and extension that we do. Anyway, other people's fashion decisions / disasters

2A) Skiers create moguls.
- Possibly, I haven't seen them doing it. But so what? Moguls are just another feature of the ski hill. Some people like em, some people hate em, some people just ride somewhere else.

2B) Snowboarders create / destroy moguls
- Well it's probably not both, but either way, I haven't seem them doing it.

Well, I was going to go on, but it's snowing hard, and we're going out to the Chinese restaurant for all the slightly suspicious sweet and sour "pork" (and other dishes) we can shove into our (soon to be) distended bellies.

Roadtrip!

2005-01-15T16:44:00.000-07:00

Well, it was minus thirty something again in Fernie this morning. For those of you who don't live in a deep-freeze (actually, most commercial freezers aren't usually that cold) that's so cold that your nostrils feel like they are being glued together.

Top secret documents obtained by the Lost in Transportation staff reveal the reason behind this recent cold spell. Although Prime Minister Jean Poutine ;) claims that it is because the provinces have not been paying their heating bills, it is in fact the work of the Armed Front the Renaming of Saskatchewan. This dastardly organisation has attached military-grade fans to thousands of Moose and released them into the Artic.

Yep, that's the truth behind the recent cold spell. More details as they emerge.

Um, anyway, when Tim got sent home from the ski hill becase they had just one ski lesson for the whole resort, we decided to go to Castle Mountain. It's just over an hour away in Alberta. Castle is old-school - only two chairs (a triple and a double), minimal grooming, no snowguns, just a lot of steep terrain and good snow (well mostly). We got about five runs in and apart from the patches where I struck dirt or tree stumps, the snow was fluffy pretty much everywhere and untracked in places.

D'oh, spilt oatmeal all over the floor - clean it up and it's time to go to work.

A new word

2005-01-13T10:04:00.000-07:00

Brrrarrrg - the frustration I experience when it's minus 30, but I really want to go snowboarding. Unfortunately, I started to feel the first stingings of frostbite before I even got to the hill. In the 15 minutes that I braved the side of the road waiting for a ride, my ears got cold, even under a fleece balaclava and a fairly warm helmet.

You could call me a wuss, and you might be right- it does look like a lovely sunny day. But I'm really quite attached to my ears (duh) and it didn't snow any more overnight, so I'm not missing out on an epic day, just a good one.

Still, I might leave the house later on today for either a quick ride (with plenty of time in the warming hut) or a trip into town to print up a CV for the snow school here (since I've finally passed my instructor course).

Or I might not leave the house until it's time to go to work - I do not approve of this cold. You hear that Mister Artic Outflow - Richard does not approve. So please quit it.

What makes a powder day even better?

2005-01-12T16:53:00.000-07:00

Passing your Level One Instructors course.

Yep, I passed my riding retest, and am now officially allowed to teach snowboarding in Canada.

It's a relief, I had been paranoid I was going to just fail second time around.

But I didn't!

So yeah!

Richard is very happy right now.

Hmmmm

2005-01-11T19:20:00.000-07:00

I'm bored so I'm going to get all political again.

The "Christian Right" (now that's an oxymoron in my book) or at least the part of it that stands firmly behind George Bush (no matter what country they are in) must be reading a different bible from me.

"Thou shalt not kill" (I like old school language for the ten commandments it sounds kind of official). I haven't seen the translation that reads "thou shalt not kill, unless you're pretty sure about weapons of mass destruction, or something"

But let's just say that the Old Testament (I'm sure my father will jump on this one and say it should be called something else, but anyway) version of God did really appear in a burning Bush (my vote is for burning the whole clan, but anyway) and demand that America smite the Iraqis. Israel had to kick a bit of ass back when it was God's chosen nation, so it probably makes sense that God's new (self-)chosen nation gets the call to war.

But I've set this argument up as something of a straw man You see, it only works if we forget about some guy called Jesus. Now, my amateur opinion is that he kind of updated the rules about acceptable behaviour by making rules about turning the other cheek.

This guy seems to believe that Jesus would own a 9mm (although most of his argument is based on the Old Testament). It's a decent read and has some plauaible parts.

Anyway, I always thought Christ was the most important teacher in Christianity (you know, like Bhudda is the man when it comes to Bhuddist stuff, Confucious kind of founded Confucianism, and so on) but I guess not. When Jesus doesn't pander to an extreme right wing agenda, he is conveniently forgotten by his "followers".

I had a lot of nice half-liners about "I-can't-believe-it's-not-Christianity", and "Jehovans vs Christians", but couldn't quite work them in, even on the edit. It is a shame we can't vote the lunatic fringe off the Church Island though - especially people who commit murder (even the gun-lover linked to above admits that the sixth comandment can't be translated much more permissively than "thou shalt not murder") to promote a "pro-life" agenda - the irony is beautiful.

But anyway, I'm not one of those political bloggers, not yet, anyway, and have no great desire to be. Politics, especially on the internet, is pretty much one giant screaming match - and the funniest thing is that both sides are screaming at people who already agree with them. The wonder of the internet is that nobody has to read anything they disagree with.

Well, nobody except our Anonymous friend in the comments. I strongly suspect he came in through blogexplosion (one of those traffic exchange programs - it's taken me to some rather good blogs actually). So during the 30 second minimum they impose, he read a couple of sentences and got riled up enough to leave a poorly thought out and anonymous comment.

Choosing not to get a "real" job (or didn't you read that bit?) makes me an idiot? OK, whatever, I work pretty hard for my $8 an hour, and far prefer the lifestyle it allows me. So I won't be buying a new SUV this year, I don't care.

Or is it my refusal to get a haircut that decreases my intelligence? The eminently sensible North Korean dictatorship seems to think so.

Anyway, Richard's lesson for the day - just because someone disagrees with you they are not automatically an idiot (although in this case, it's highly likely that Anonymous is an idiot - someone who wasn't an idiot would probably have had the courage / courtesy / desire for debate to leave a name, if not his own URL). A non idiot would have also recognised that anonymous comments are generally shunned in the blogging world and would have wanted the extra plausibility that a name gives.

But whatever, like the man said, there's no point arguing with an idiot. On the other hand, there is a lot of fun to be had in ridiculing an idiot. It might not achieve much, but as I found out while editing my response into this post, it's fun.

One final thought, I promise.

Jesus was a hippy.

Yes he was - long hair, sandals, preaching about love, didn't have many possessions, didn't have a real job during the important years of his life, and so on.

Stay in school, or not

2005-01-11T16:33:00.000-07:00

Right now, I'm watching Doctor Phil. For those of you not familiar with American daytime TV, Doctor Phil was the tough love family counsellor (or something) on Oprah. For those of you who haven't heard of Oprah, I hope you get out of that cave in Afghanistan soon.

Anyway, Doctor Phil is doing a show on teenage boys who are failing at school because they are convinced that they are going all the way to the pros at their favourite sports. It's a tie in with the new Samuel L Jackson movie about a high school basketball coach who locked the gym because his players were failing.

So, anyway, the message being hammered at these kids is "study hard, go to college, and then maybe you'll get a shot at the pros". But going to university is continually presented as the secret to being a successful adult.

Doctor Phil even said "otherwise, he's going to turn around when he's 25 and working in some minimum wage job with no future and say why didn't you make me study when I was younger?"

Well, I'm 24 and a half, working in some minimum wage job, and I went to unversity. I was good at it too (anyone who has met my mother in the last year will know that I got first class honours so I don't feel as bad about bragging).

These kids are failing 8th Grade (13 or 14 year old) Social Studies. If you ask me (and nobody did, but that's the beauty of blogging) their problem isn't that they dream of football stardom, their problem is that they are plain DUMB.

But anyway, the point of this rant was that university is not the secret to having a succesful life. If you're in high school and want to get rich then become a builder's apprentice. By the time you're 30, you can be self-employed, and earning more than all but the very top lawyers.

Basically, university is just a white-collar version of the NFL dreams that these kids had. That sounds harsh, but it's true, especially for those of us who study less useful subjects (and or just spend all day hanging round the Quad). Someone should tell the Baby Boomers that a university degree isn't a ticket to the gravy train any more. Or we can just tell our children not to listen to their grandparents.

I'm not saying university is a bad thing - I spent ten semesters at university and got two bachelors degrees and half a masters. I loved it, almost all the time, and will probably go back to get a PhD (or a D.Phil, if I can persuade someone to pay for me to go to Oxford). University is like disneyland for smart people.

But you have to want to be at university for its own sake. Not for the parties, not for the promise of a lucrative career in 4 years time, not because mum and dad want you to, but because you want to think and stuff.

OK, hands up who amongst you has seen the big glaring flaw in my argument?

That's right, I have a future, in theory at least.

Well, those of you who spotted that probably went to university, so congratulations, have a gold star.

I won't go into details about how university should be free, limited to the top 25% of people after first year, and restricted to people 20 and older (did I mention that I also support compulsory community service for a year or two out of high-school?) so that's about all.

Kids, as long as you have a real plan (and going to the NFL is not a real plan), then university is not necessary. Unfortunately, university is kind of used as a holding pen for all the kids without real plans (and I'll admit to doing that).

OK, something I clearly didn't learn at university is how to structure a short opinion piece (or even write something short). Well, I did, but it didn't override my natural talent for lengthy, poorly structured rants (maybe I should write speeches for politicians).