best and brightest

Oh, Silicon Valley, you have an endless supply of interesting (read: weird) people. 

Today, I was driving home from work, and even though it was almost 7 p.m., it was still almost 90 degrees outside. I looked over and saw a guy in the bike lane, also going home from work. He was carrying the laptop backpack that every person at my company has, so I knew that he was One of Us. Kudos to anyone who is willing to bike to and from work in this heat, but super kudos to this guy, who was doing it on a unicycle. 

esl

One of my favorite things about having international friends (other than the interesting perspectives and cultural exchange, etc., etc., etc.) is the hilarious little quirks of language that emerge in conversation. I will be the first to admit that their English is far better than any foreign language that I speak, and that I have been known to make my own embarrassing comments in both English and other languages.

OK, disclaimers aside, one of the funniest moments from our trip to Zurich happened when we went out to dinner with a group of people, and at the end, a few of them were trying to open little individual bottles of kirsch. The bottles proved to be very difficult to open, and the guys were pulling and pulling at the corks, trying to get them out.

Our German friend finally suggested, "Just wank it! Wank it off!"

(Mostly unrelated note: there is a town in Switzerland called Wankdorf. "Dorf" in Switzerland is the equivalent of "town" in English.)

hair hat

Not to be confused with "hat hair" or "hat head," this styled wig, which I've dubbed a "hair hat," is inexplicably featured in an exhibit at the Ballenberg Swiss open air museum, which is supposedly dedicated to traditional Swiss culture (something like Williamsburg in the States). For context, most of the other exhibits were about things like water wheels, yodeling, and farm animals. The card notes that this amazing hairstyle is from circa 2003.

losing my religion

I've never been a religious person, and so the only holidays I can really keep track of are those that fall on the same day every year, like Christmas. Easter is a vague concept that floats around somewhere in the spring time and can only be pinpointed with a Google search. I had a better grasp of it when I was in high school, but that's because my high school was Catholic, and when I was living in Switzerland, but that's because I got time off for Easter (most of the official Swiss holidays are Christian ones: Easter, the Ascension, and Whit Monday being three examples of Swiss holidays that fall sometime in the first half of the year). Because they impacted my vacation schedule, I kept very close track of them, and because I knew they were national holidays, I also expected and accepted that everything would be closed on those days.

Coming back to the States, where we skew towards non-religious holidays, like Martin Luther King Day or Presidents' Day or the Fourth of July, Easter again became an amorphous floating holiday with no relevance to my schedule, especially since I no longer bother going to stores, for the most part, because online shopping is so much better for people like me (read: lazy people who don't want to put on pants to go buy things).

For some reason, however, today I decided to go to the brick-and-mortar stores at the Stanford Mall to browse around. Malls are modern altars to capitalism and consumerism and all the other -isms that we take so seriously in the New World. People congregate in malls the way they once did in churches. Imagine my surprise, then when I arrived at the mall, and it was closed. Everything was closed. Even Neiman Marcus, the ultimate shrine to secular consumption, was closed. For Easter.

This is the worst of both worlds -- a religious holiday that doesn't give me any extra days off, but which nonetheless closes down all of the stores. Pick a side, America -- if you're going to close down shop for religious holidays, then give me extra time off. If you're not going to observe religious holidays, then make everything else run on a normal schedule.

(On a side note, Jesus, why don't you want me to go shopping? It's good for the economy, helps keep unemployment in check, which helps the poor -- I doubt Jesus would be opposed to a little bit of retail therapy for the greater good.)

meeting chicks

We were up in San Francisco last weekend at a coffee shop in Noe Valley, and one of the customers had a small chicken perched on her arm.

A chicken.

I asked her about the chicken, and she said it was the class pet for a kindergarten class. When I was little, our class pet was a guinea pig.

Only in California would a chicken be a class pet and spend weekends at a coffee shop.

travel style

It's interesting how my goals and style of travel have changed over the years, partly from changes in perspective and interests, and partly from changes in income and free time.

Student days (lots of time and no money): budget travel, fitting in as many "traditional" sights as possible per trip while minimizing transit, food, and hotel costs.

Expat days (some time and some money in a location convenient for travel): frequent travel, fitting in as many trips as possible while minimizing transit and hotel costs, seeing some traditional sights and some quirky sights, and splurging on specific interests, like food and diving.

These days (insufficient time and sufficient funds in a location inconvenient for travel): infrequent travel to far-flung destinations, splurging on hotels, food, airfare, and diving, and spending more time being lazy than seeing sights (unless they have quirky appeal).

quote

"The world is a book, and those who do not travel, read only a page." -- St. Augustine.

random question

Does the Bay Area have a disproportionately large (or stupid) skunk population? I smell them on a fairly regular basis when driving around, which leads me to one of two conclusions: either (1) California has more than its fair share of skunks, or (2) California's skunks are slower/dumber/more prone to suicide than skunks who live elsewhere. I am pretty sure I've smelled more skunks here in two years than I had in the previous 30 years.

california hitchcock

One of the great things about living in the suburbs of California is that I can have an entire house with lots of windows, where every room is directly under the roof, with lots of skylights to let in the Californian sun or to let me hear the winter rains.

The downside is that something about this roof seems to attract a flock of birds, whose main traits are that they are loud, unintelligent, and enjoy early mornings.

They gather on the roof of my house at 7 or 8 in the morning, sometimes two or three at a time, but sometimes (like this morning) in a flock of ten or twenty. They thud onto the roof, hop around, squawk loudly at each other, and then proceed to peck viciously at anything and nothing. In this picture, you can see three of them pecking at a rather nondescript piece of wood. Others were frantically tapping on shingles or panes of glass. On another occasion, two of them squabbled loudly over a Bic lighter that they had found and somehow managed to drop onto the roof.

Waving at them in a threatening manner does nothing. Tapping back at them with a pole does nothing. Holding my dog up so that they can see him through the glass (in case he's more frightening than I am) does nothing. They continue scrabbling, jumping, cawing, and tapping until, on some unknown cue about ten or fifteen minutes later, they all take off and go elsewhere.

It's like the Hitchcock flick, except that the birds just try to annoy you to death. I've never seen such dumb birds before, and I don't know if it's because I haven't met many birds, or if it's because Californian birds are just like that.

jet blues

We flew out to New York for a wedding last weekend, and because it was a short trip with a lot of travel time, we decided to fly JetBlue (which was already more expensive than the other airlines), since they have an option to pay extra for roomier seats, which we thought would help us deal with the red eye on the way there, and the early morning flight to get right back to work on the way back. More money = more space = more sleep, right? I wasn't completely convinced, but my boyfriend was quite firm that it would be worth an extra $200 per person.

It may have been worth it for my boyfriend, but on our flight from JFK back to SFO (which is an hour longer than the flight from SFO to JFK, if I may just point that out), I was seated next to a supremely obese man who took up four inches of my expensive seat, and I spent every minute of those six hours fuming about those four inches and that extra $200.

Mr. Too-Big-to-Fit-in-Seat-5E on the Monday morning JetBlue flight from JFK to SFO, you owe me $200 and six hours of sleep. Also, you owe me a mind wipe to get the feeling of you squishing and rubbing on me for six hours out of my head.