But I Digress

The stupidity of the 905 area code

2011-08-31T10:10:00.000-04:00

Once upon a time, I had a high school physics teacher (let's call him Mr. Fox, because that was his name) that preferred to discuss things related to physics instead of the course curriculum. We all thought this was a waste of time. Then I went to engineering school, relearned everything that I needed to know, and all that I was left with were the excellent conversations that we used to have with our disgruntled and soon-to-be-retired physics teacher. Here are some things that I learned in that class:

why a golf ball is dimpled (answer: to induce turbulent flow and therefore reduce drag),
that you can cook a turkey in a microwave (but the skin is gross),
how a Thermos is such a good insulator,
lots of stuff about neutrinos that never got covered in engineering, presumably because they don't affect people in the real world, just like books and theatre, which we also didn't learn about,
why Bell Canada is incompetent.

Allow me to elaborate. A golf ball goes extremely far considering how small and light it is, and aerodynamics thusly factors in to a huge degree. And now allow me to elaborate on why Bell Canada is retarded. Here it is.

Why do I need to dial a (1) before a call half the 905 numbers in the book?

Answer: there is no good answer. Here are some facts. FACT. The phone numbers aren't repeated, regardless of region. FACT. We are not charged long distance when dialing from Brampton to Oakville, even though we need to insert an irritating (1). FACT. There is no easy way to tell when I need a (1) and when I don't. FACT. I absolutely effing hate it when my dialing gets interrupted by that insolent voice that informs me that I need to dial a (1). FACT. (1) means long distance (in North America). Therefore, it should apply when dialing long distance.

Why the eff to I need to dial a (1) sometimes?

iPhone figured it out already. Even if I call Montreal using a saved number in my phone book, it will automatically add the (1). Rogers will too. In fact, you would have to be addicted to prescription medication if you were a programmer that couldn't figure out this code. And yet, Bell Canada fails us. Why there isn't a community activist group dedicated this cause I'll never know (although if I had just quickly googled that I might have discovered one. But now it's in the past).

More annoyingly, if you are looking for a distraction from work and try to find the answer on the internet, you will discover 8 billion websites that are tagged (905) and offer nothing of value to anybody. My guess is that recruitment consultants, in their ample spare time, maintain the hobby of posting websites dedicated to giving area code information but containing no actual information per se. Just a guess.

Down with Bell.

In other news:

Eric has written a blomment, which is a blog inside of a comment of a blog. I just made that word up (called it!). Read it if you are going to Tobermory and need some insightful advice from a man that just spent a week there with his in-laws.

Recruiters don't give up easily

2011-08-25T10:37:00.000-04:00

I was recently inspired by this blog, written by an Australian that is passionate about both graphic design and screwing with people. So when I received another unsolicited, unwanted, vague, time-wasting email from a recruiter via LinkedIn, I took the time to respond to him in a way that would afford me a break from the monotony of engineering.

I would love to discuss further, but the recruiter is urgently awaiting my immediate reply for a job that has been posted for the last four months. Urgently posted.

On 08/24/11 2:19 AM, Marny P. wrote:
--------------------
Hi Michael,

Urgent Requirement

I have been engaged on a search for a Sr. Geotechnical Eng. (CANADA).
Let me know your thoughts. I would be happy to chat and relay more information if it would be helpful

Thanks
Marny

On 08/24/11 4:50 AM, Michael Diez d'Aux wrote:
--------------------
CANADA, eh? I also live in CANADA. What luck! I'm in SCARBOROUGH. How long would the commute be?

What I'm thinking is: hm, I'd like to know more about the search for a Sr. Geotechnical Eng. For example, how many yrs. of exp. will the pos. require? I am not a Sr., but my hip does hurt when it rains sometimes. I also like to jg. though, so it might hurt from that too. I am an Eng. though, which is good. I also speak Eng., and when I play snooker I like to give the ball a little of the ol' Eng.

You may not be aware, but Geotechnical can be shortened to Geotech. I understand that recruit. consult. don't have time for the leisurely activity of composing emails completely based on the rules of Eng., so perhaps you can use that teq. in the future.

Kindest regards,
Michael

On 08/24/11 5:02 AM, Marny P. wrote:
--------------------
Hi Michael,

Thanks for your reply.

Here is the high level details for Senior Geotechnical Engineer in Saskatchewan, CANADA

This talented professional must have ...

- Masters degree in Engineering/P.Eng status or eligible for P.Eng. in Western Canada
- 5-15 years experience in geotechnical investigations and in the design of foundations, slope stability solutions, retaining structures, roads, sub-divisions, etc.
- Must be an excellent report writer and have strong, proven written and verbal communication skills
- Experience leading and dealing directly with design teams, clients and approval agencies
- Experience with construction and contract administration
- Experience with AutoCAD, Land Desktop, Civil 3D, MS Office

Let me know your thoughts. I would be happy to chat and relay more information if it would be helpful

Also send me your most recent update resume.

Best regards,

Marny
Senior Research Specialist

On 08/24/11 6:05 AM, Michael Diez d'Aux wrote:
--------------------
Hi Marny,

Thanks for the quick response.

It says here that we've done business together at Enlightenment99 (FKA SHSCPL), but I don't recall that. Will my insensitivity and forgetfulness in matters of business affect my chances of landing this job in Saskatchewan CANADA?

I don't currently have an updated resume, but I can tell you that I am very handy with engineering.

It also says that I should have between 5-15 years of experience. I have 4.5 years. Will that be enough to compete with people of 15 years experience? I like to think that it will.

Kind regards,
Michael

__________________
Hi Michael,

Please send me your best time and number to reach you as this will help me to discuss the role in detail.

Looking for your immediately reply.

Cheers!

- Marny

I forgot the 7am moment!

2011-08-23T08:02:00.000-04:00

In fact, we did have an exciting and unexpected 7am port-a-potty moment at the triathlon. Although it wasn't the massive no-wipe poo that I was forecasting in my prologue piece.

No. Instead, what happened was that Rita had to use la toilette. I informed her that, based on my past experience, the potties get massive line-ups half an hour before the race, which is when everyone decides that they need to evacuate before the triathlon makes them do it publicly and unwillingly.

But Rita was all like "no".

But I was all like "yes, do it before you regret it!".

So she went over to the row of port-a-potties, took a deep breath, and stepped in. Her keen sense of pregnant smelling told her that someone had just been in, and that she was in a port-a-potty. So she did what she has consistently done while pregnant in this situation. She went to over to a tree (any tree, in this case the tree in the middle of the field that everyone was getting ready in) and vomited. Heartily. And I don't mind telling you that mango smoothie, regurgitated, is really disgusting.

It nearly made me sick.

Luckily, immediately afterwards she discovered some flushing toilets in the large brick building immediately beside the swim-bike transition area that I had somehow not seen despite their being located right beside my own personal transition area. All's well that ends well. And she still got some great pictures of what appear to be me, wearing a skin-coloured wet suit stuffed with a baby seal, trying to run a triathlon while mugging for the camera. And maybe a few of Craig too, making me look bad with his after-school regimen of Tai Bo. I've got to dig out some Tai Bo VHS...

Triathlon: How it actually went down

2011-08-22T13:45:00.000-04:00

Triathlons are a great thing for me. I have a tendency towards training in an erratic, dysfunctional way that allows me to do 20 things at once while simultaneously not achieving very much in any of them! Okay, that's not entirely true. But I'd rather do a bunch of stuff and be good than do one thing all the time and be just good enough to know that I need at least 20 more hours a week to be as good as I'd like to be, for the all effort that I've been expending just doing this one thing.

But I digress.

Triathlon: done. Feelin' fine. I want to do at least one a year, mainly because I'm not in karate anymore and need something besides a $500 ranking to get me into the gym on a regular basis. I think it's attainable. Plus I'd like to see some improvement on what was a good, but not outstanding, outcome. Here's the breakdown.

4:30 - Arise. Play with dogs.

5:00 - Leave house on time. Thank Rita for making me get ready the night before. Say bye to dogs. Muse that my bike tire is not flat, although it was yesterday before I pumped it up. Should be fine.

6:45 - Arrive on time. Feelin' fine. Unload bike, and note that my tire is still solid.

7:00 - Register, warm up. They gave us shots of Red Bull in our registration packs. I note all the empty discarded Red Bull cans on the ground. Nasty.

7:30 - Pedantically set up transition area. Catch people beside me listening to me raving like a lunatic. Decide that my breakfast smoothie and power spheres had just the right amount of sugar. Continue to chat with bicycle, which is still a-okay.

7:55 - Step into the nice warm water. Get splashed right in the crotch by Craig . Craig now has the mental edge on me.

7:59 - Back to the beach for the beach start. Find myself at the front of the Men 25-29 heat. Notice that everyone around me has a crazed look in their eyes and decide that the smart thing to do would be not to jump in at the front of this heat. Scrap that idea. Let's do this.

8:00 - Go! Receiving and throwing punches and kicks while trying to swim. Awesome. I'm winning!

8:01 - Battered and out of breath. Better swimmers passing me. Still have 95% of the swim left. Curse my own foolish desire to "do this".

8:16 - Leave the water. Happy with swim. Suck in abdominal muscles for camera.

8:18 - Transition complete. Get berated by official for not securing helmet before deracking my bike. Curses. Run across asphalt for ~600m in cycling cleats. Get on bicycle.

8:19 - Note that my front tire feels a little mushy. Oh god.

8:25 - Begin to weigh the pros and cons of changing my front tire in the middle of this triathlon. Decide that its not too bad yet, and hopefully this whole ordeal with blow over or smooth itself out.

8:40 - Grinding rim on pavement. Too tired to muster manual dexterity to complete a tire change now. Decide to finish ride on flat tire.

8:55 - Pray that there are no more turns, because my front tire is really not getting much traction any more. Get passed by athlete riding hybrid bike. Get passed by awkward teenager in loose cotton t-shirt and enormous flowery board shorts. Feel like n00b. Damn my wheel.

9:23 - Finish the cycling portion. Unnaturally happy to be starting a 7km run after already 1.5 hours of exercise. Rita takes picture of me finishing the ride. Captures flat tire perfectly.

9:25 - Happiness evaporates. Running effing sucks. Feel like I've just started running for the first time after gaining 100 lbs. Note to myself: Let's do this. But without as much conviction as before.

9:40 - Start to think about the time Allen's fiance finished a 10km race and then nearly died at the finish line after her heart failed. Decide that I will go straight to the hospital after race is over.

9:41 - Second wind. I am unstoppable. I pass everyone.

9:43 - Second wind is over. I am in agony, and covered in Gatorade that I am trying to spit out but is kind of just dribbling down my shirt.

10:04 - See finish line. Feel as happy as the day I got married, but more physically relieved.

10:05 - Finish triathlon. Pleasantly, we stay and eat sausages, instead of going to the hospital. Feel pleased with myself.

Here are my official times, for comparison purposes and assessment of athleticism. I finished 292nd, which is solidly in the middle of the pack. All my times were also solidly in the middle of the pack. That's dandy.

To summarize the experience, I felt good about pulling the ride off with only one inflated tire for 10km, and I was proud that I didn't walk during the run portion. The swim was excellent in spite of my overeager stupidity, and also because of it.

I also need to lose 15 pounds before the next one. That will help a lot. And maybe some hill training on the bike. But really, losing 15 pounds would be phenomenal.

My Athletic Goal: Prelude

2011-08-18T21:45:00.000-04:00

With my imminent Triathlon Victory only days away, I am already starting to imagine what it will be like to win the triathlon. It's important that this is the thing that I do (I am trying not to end sentences with a preposition, but I admit, I don't know what a preposition is).

Remember that Canadian hurdler that was top in the world but who tripped coming out of the gate? She was thinking: "This is what it will be like to trip coming off the foot measuring device. I shouldn't have that be the thing that I do." Rita uses a similar method of visualization: "This was what it was like to be morning sick. God I hope that doesn't happen today." And then, boom: barf.

My strategy is positive visualization. I imagine that my triathlon will go as follows:

6:30am - arrive with plenty of time to register. Note that only three people are registered in my heat.

7am - take a massive no wipe poo, in a delicately scented port-a-potty with a flushing toilet and soft jazz.

7:30am - have my transition station set out for seamless costume changes. Did not leave anything in the car. Have not scattered my belongings in a 3m arc to either side of my station, out of sheer excitement.

7:55am - have my wife slap my ass as I dash into a warm calm lake that has an E. Coli count under 6ppm.

8am - begin the swim by punching someone right in the face. Get ahead by kicking people.

8:07am - Think about my finances, that girl in 2001 that almost went on a date with me, or some photography gear that I might like to ask for for Christmas. Do not think "Hey, I've been swimming a long time and don't know the am of which I am where."

8:08am - Note that my shaded goggles are doing a wonderful job of preventing my retinas from being fried out of my face by the rising sun that is skipping radiation across the calm lake and into my face as if it were skipping stones. Also note that I can see the next buoy, which is backlit by that same sun.

8:10am - Emerge from the lake in a time that not even Michael Phelps could set.

8:11am - Dry off, put on socks while standing with wet feet, put on shirt, grease up nipples to prevent the wearing of the dreaded number 11 jersey, don't step on sunglasses, and effortlessly glide across the terrain wearing bike shoes.

8:11am - Jump on bike. Have a light snack. Muse at how nice it was to have an early morning swim in the lake.

8:30am - Discover that I am a much better cyclist than I originally thought. Pass everyone.

8:40am - finish the bike ride averaging 50km/h. Amaze the fans. Sign triathlon contract on the way back to the transition area for the run.

8:41am - get changed again. Note that my nipples are doing well. Start running.

8:56am - discover how wonderful it is to transition off a bike that allows you to go quickly, with wind in the face, relatively easily, to the run, which is the opposite of all that. Note that I must do that more often.

9:10am - Thank myself for not forgetting to apply sunscreen.

9:15am - Have a refreshing drink of Gatorade. Consider my morning at the office the following day.

9:20am - End triathlon in first place. Set off fireworks.

10:00am - Have enormous breakfast, while reassuring friends that they also did a really good job, really. Get showered with praise by Wife, who is now having the best pregnancy ever!

And so that is the go with which it is. I mean, that is the way it goes. Stay tuned for: My Reality Check.

And now I'm stupid busy

2011-08-15T18:50:00.000-04:00

It's like it was only yesterday that I was bored at work, getting stuff done in an orderly fashion, and blogging like all the freaking time. But alas, that was not yesterday. That was last week.

Now I'm back to my regular job, which entails working while at the same time being paid. That is certainly tough medicine to swallow, and I will resist it bitterly, but my office has the bad habit of having people "rely" on me and so I need to get my stuff done.

I had to quit my gig as Lead Guitar of a Rock Band too. No proposed time. I have time now, sure, but all of the sudden everything that I do is in preparation for 3 months from now (for some reason). I thought "Hey, I'll have time to jam for a night a week!" but then there were also gigs. And practice. And rock climbing. And gardening. And parenting. And photography.

And hopefully indoor cycling! I'm saving my pocket change so that I can buy an indoor trainer at the CNE Fall Bike Show. Or 'Autumnal' Bike Show, to all my readers that come from places where things do not fall from trees before winter (i.e. no one).

I had such a good time last month blogging like it was 2009. Hoping to keep it going!

Upcoming posts:
- How I sweated through a guitar audition
- My Big Athletic Goal prelude to this weekend of triathloning
- Gardeners Corner: Growing lettuce sucks.

I like gardening

2011-08-08T10:38:00.002-04:00

DSC_3045, a photo by Michael Diez d'Aux on Flickr.

The best place to seek God is in a garden. You can dig for him there.
~George Bernard Shaw

So, the other day I found God in my tomatoes. They were delicious, they did not taste like grocery store tomatoes, and they gave me both the satisfaction of not having killed something and the all-powerful feeling of making my own food. Hence, God.

Okay that's stretching a bit. But more and more, I do like gardening. At first I hated it, because I didn't know what to do, and because there was so much mysterious stuff to do. Knowing that you have a lot to do, and that at the same time you aren't familiar with any of it, is daunting. But I was undaunted. I gardened.

Things didn't really start coming together until my mother, sister, and uncle came over to clean up my garden. But that's beside the point.

Things that I hate about gardening including mowing the lawn. My lawn is slanted, it has trees and bushes right in the middle, and it goes all skinny in some areas. If engineers designed lawns, they would all be be perfect circles so that you could mow them in a spiral for maximum efficiency.

Plus, my lawn mower is both electric and slightly confused. If my lawn mower were a person, she would be Sarah Palin. Firstly, she does not turn. Why a lawn mower would be designed not to turn is completely beyond me. Second, she is electric. But not with a battery, the way God the Gardener would have intended. She is powered by a perpetually loose extension cord that threatens my life every time I have to go in reverse and is always in the way. I don't know how it manages to be always in the way. That must disobey the Law of Entropy. Or....obey? (discussion is open).

I like weeding the way that I like popping blackheads. It's very satisfying, and I like to save my withdrawals and admire them in a pile. Except, I have never had 1,000 blackheads with prickly spikes on them that I could only pick in the sun, and which were guaranteed to come back at twice the intensity. So, I hate weeding.

So, in short, I hate gardening. But our tomatoes are lovely.

Swimming with dogs

2011-08-02T10:26:00.000-04:00

Why I'll make a good father, at the expense of my children.

A few days ago, Rita and I went on a date. We went to Cherry Beach to take pictures in preparation for an upcoming wedding that Rita was going to shoot (although she didn't actually get to the wedding, more on that in the daily digression). So we took some pictures until my camera accidentally ran out of batteries that I had neglected to check. Thus left to her own creative devices, Rita gravitated towards the dog park at Cherry Beach, where she started taking pictures of dogs coming out of the water. Dogs are great subjects because you don't have to ask them to sign a model release waiver.

While she was taking pictures of dogs, my dead camera and I started talking to dog owners about getting dogs to swim. As it turns out, many dogs need to be coaxed into the water the first few times. People like Cherry Beach for this because they (the dogs) can see the bottom, which apparently makes it easier somehow. I call bullshit, because dogs swim with their heads out of the water in such a way that they are never looking down. But maybe it's easier for getting them in. Anyway, the dogs were all having lots of fun and the water was clean, refreshing, and filled with old eroded bricks that constitute the fill material that Toronto is generally composed of from Lakeshore Avenue south. I had lots of fun looking at the old bricks. But I digress.

So we got it in our heads to take our dogs swimming. Swimming is good for dogs in the summer because dogs don't sweat, and they overheat very quickly during the day. As such, the water is great for keeping the dogs nice and cool (this turned out to be absolutely true). It's also a zero-impact workout, which is good for our older dog, Jax, who takes glucosamine-chondroitin pills for his achy joints. He takes them in peanut butter. Dogs will eat anything with peanut butter on it. Anything. Even glucosamine-chondroitin pills.

Plus, who doesn't like a happy swimming doggy? And by teaching our dogs to swim, I will save our family hundreds of dollars that Rita has allocated for little doggy personal flotation devices. Why does she so badly want to equip our dogs with PFDs? I'll never know.

So we took them. Rita preferred the method of hovering close to the water in hopes that the dogs would just go in and start doing laps. I was more savvy. I picked up Jovi, carried her 15m out, and dropped her in the water. AND GUESS WHAT? She swam back to shore! She also vowed never to trust me ever again for the next two minutes, at which point she forgets what just happened and we repeat the process.

You might be asking yourself, "how did you teach her so quickly??" Answer: Jovi already knew how to swim. I just equipped her with what she needed (i.e. the prospect of drowning) to do it. Children also know how to swim instinctively. Everyone who owned a copy of that Nirvana album with Smells Like Teen Spirit on it knows what I'm talking about. I will have to similarly equip my child for swimming, and thus avoid years of arguing about the necessity of going to swim lessons (if my child is anything like his father). I failed "maroon" like five times, and I do not wish that kind of mediocre athletic record on any of my kids.

My cousin, the doctor, also dropped his newborn baby in a lake to see if she would swim. She did. Case closed. Doing it too.

Daily Digression:
Rita couldn't shoot the wedding because the paid-photographer said she was bringing two assistants, and that there wouldn't be any room. Cough. What about the other 300 guests with iPhones that will be taking pictures? How will she deal with them? "HEY EVERYONE! SIT THE FUCK DOWN AND JUST ENJOY THIS! I GOT IT!".

If a wedding photographer needs to have just one skill, that skill should be flexibility. Because weddings sometimes don't go according to plan. If you can't work at a wedding while other people are taking pictures, you are going to have one seriously hard time working. That's like an engineer that can't work around computers. Or a cowboy that can't work around mooing.

Cloth Diaper Research

2011-07-27T13:45:00.000-04:00

While researching cloth diapers, I came across this exceptionally handy illustration of types of things that a diaper may need to handle. Enjoy!

Thank you Til Debt Do Us Part

2011-07-27T13:24:00.000-04:00

It appears that life is not as bountiful as we once thought.

Rita has had a cold for the past three weeks. When you're pregnant, colds are infinitely worse because you can't take any medication at all. In a way, this helps us to appreciate the actual benefits of over-the-counter medication, because when you don't have that helping hand and your nose is in free flow mode, you kind of just want to end it all. It is also true that Rita, in her child-carrying state, is also exceptionally prone to nose bleeds, which means that she can't really be sure that if she blows her nose she won't bleed all over her favourite sweater. And on top of this, she is pregnant. It's like juggling chainsaws that are also on fire, in my opinion.

But she's been hanging on, largely thanks to her job and its flexible hours. This has enabled her to sit in bed, feel sorry for herself, and watch reality TV. Usually I'm against the Slice Network in general, but then I discovered their show on debt, Til Debt Do Us Part. This show has real mass appeal. You don't need to be the typical sort of daytime TV watcher (prisoner, mental patient, housewife/husband, Price is Right lunatic, etc.) to enjoy it. It's all about couples that have spent way WAY too much money, and are now so out-of-control that they are willing to go on TV and tell everything for the opportunity to get help and $5000. I've seen two episodes, and one of them featured a couple with a combined income of $80k who owned purebred rottweilers and ATVs. The other one featured a new mom on maternity leave that decided to redecorate (which she should also blame on Slice, in my opinion).

Thankfully, Rita is now at least a galaxy away from renovating while she's home on mat leave.

She's now been put on High Alert. Apparently there was an entire afternoon marathon of TDDUP earlier this week, many episodes of which featured couple with new children (cue: personally relevant theme). The basic theme is that people have a child, do not look at their finances, fail to see that their income is way down and their spending has gone up (by at least a long weekend in Niagara per month ($400)), and then they buy some designer dogs/boat/home theatre/time share vacation/purse. The result of all this is: a new budget!

So we did a weekly budget, because we are in a high risk category for livin' large, and because apparently my yearly budget scheme of yesteryear was difficult to manage (Hey, I have $2000 left in the entertainment budget! Let's go, casino.). Okay, in all seriousness we had a monthly budget, but that was not so much a measuring stick of costs as it was a page of stats. I'd look at it and go "hmm, we overspent on food this month by $200!" and then do nothing about it. The weekly system makes us a bit more accountable.

And, obviously, I rigged a new spreadsheet for it. It's a Google Doc, so Rita and I can share it and view it anywhere, and I added an "envelope" column that carries over the previous week's plus/minus (with conditional formatting to automatically put us "in the red", HAHAHAHAHA!), so that we can save for things. Example: I want a pair of authentic Nike retro kicks, signed by some obscure graffiti artist. My "envelope" column tells me when I have enough in the Shoe category (ie. after 10 months) to make that idiotic purchase! Pretty cool huh?

I know it's not cool. But don't point that out to me. It is very rare that I get to do some ol' fashioned spreadsheet braggin'.

Updated post!

2011-07-26T11:45:00.001-04:00

Hey everyone! I recently took a look at Google Analytics and found out that my post here on "whether to buy or to rent a home, 'tis nobler?" is very very visible to the internet. So I revamped it in the hopes that it will one day bring me fame, fortune, and a blook.

Enjoy.

Should we try cloth diapers?

2011-07-26T10:59:00.001-04:00

We may just decide to deal with the poop.

Here are some things that don't seem to be concerning me as a soon-to-be-parent: my sleeping schedule, my former glorious carefree somewhat-nonexistent social life, and certainly not parenting. Egotistical? Just very very competent? Maybe. But here is one big thing that is starting to concern me: the environment. And, maybe, changing a newborn's diaper ten times a day for the next 3 months. I've never changed a diaper before. I thought there would be at least a warm-up period.

Rita and I are not looking forward to sending thousands of plastic diapers to landfill. Consider how gross most people think a diaper is. Far grosser than, say, an empty Styrofoam takeout container. I would suggest that it is hypocritical for us to show up at Starbucks with our reusable coffee mugs, and then wrap our babies in bleached plastic. You may not be surprised to know that (source: Environment Canada):

Over 4,000,000 toxic (my definition) disposable diapers are discarded per day in Canada, right into the fishing streams and hunting grounds of our rural folk (slight editorial there),
In the first two years, the average baby will require between 5000 to 7000 diaper changes,
Disposable diapers represent approximately 3 percent of the total quantity of residential waste for disposal in Canada.

That last point isn't too groundbreaking unless you factor in the very very small percentage of Canadians that are actually producing diapers each year. And that some of those diapers will come from 3 year-olds with strange parents that want their children to be literate and eloquent and, yet, still crap themselves. We want to make a difference, at least to offset those Canadians that wear diapers in casinos (you know who you are, consummate gambler). It will be a small contribution, and it will allow us to judge everybody that plays slots. Righteously.

Secretly though (keep this to yourself!), this decision would not be entirely selfless. It will also save us lots of money. Disposable diapers are very expensive and, from what we've seen, cloth diapers are about half as expensive. That's pretty compelling stuff.

Now that the internet has made me an expert on this, here's how a cloth diaper service works. The service picks up your little one's soiled undergarments bag each week from your doorstep (no need to be home, no one is going to steal those from your doorstep unless you really live in a bad neighborhood) and delivers a brand new bag of sterilized cloth diapers. When you put them on Baby, you place the cloth inside an outer reusable impermeable membrane, probably with little prints of giraffes on it. That way, your baby is wearing a diaper and not a dish towel. When the child hath soiled himself, you place the now-pungent undergarment in a Special Deodorized Waste Bin with a charcoal filter on it, also probably imprinted with giraffes. Then they are all picked up and the cycle continues.

I will do this next part in my engineer-speak. Newborns have "byproduct" that is not really solid or cohesive - if you try rolling it in your hands, for example, you'll find that the material is beyond its liquid limit - so the cloth diaper just goes straight in the smell-free bin, no handling or scraping required. Older babies defecate in tangible, cohesive, discrete elements, called "poops". Those "poops" are to be flung in the toilet before the diaper is binned, which is reassuring because UofT taught me how good Toronto is at cleaning the things we flush down the toilet from the drinking water and then using that distilled substance to, say, provide a habit for fluffy baby foxes. That's pretty easy huh? Whereas nothing happens to poop when it goes to landfill, except that it is wrapped in an impermeable non-biodegradable membrane that will prevent it from ever returning to the Earth from whence it (doth) came.

See, I think we need to compare apples to apples. I am still going to have to keep a bin of dirty diapers in my house, regardless of whether they are cloth or bleached plastic (unless I construct a vacuum tube to propel them straight into the garbage shed, which is costly). I am still going to have to deal with my baby's feces regardless of which decision we make. There is really very little difference other than small conveniences. You don't have to know how to fold Pampers before changing your baby, for example. And you don't have to empty them into the toilet either. Those are not very large impositions if you ask me.

Now here is the kicker: children do not prefer cloth diapers to going pee-pee in the potty. Cloth diapers are not subjected to an R&D department filled with graduates of Materials Science Engineering and massive budgets who work tirelessly to contain beakers of Strange Blue Fluid in porous diaper media that will render it warm and fuzzy for the rest of the day. Cloth diapers just sort of cradle the filth (not to be confused with Cradle of Filth) until your child is ready to shrug off the shackles of dependence and fling himself right into the Big Boy Bathroom.

This is such a well-known phenomenon that some cloth diaper services will provide free service to babies over 2.5 years. Free. Because they will have stopped using diapers well before then. Whereas Pamper commercials teach us parents that it is socially acceptable for 6 year-olds to be wearing diapers at school, birthday parties, and to court when they are older. Why wouldn't they? That, in the lingo, is called "seeking blue oceans". Maybe "brown oceans" is more appropriate.

So there are lots of reasons for cloth diapers. Here's the big question: how will I feel about it once my son is actually born? I guess we'll find out.

Why using recruiters disobeys the laws of economics

2011-07-24T13:09:00.002-04:00

You know what really grinds my gears? People that blog about "job success". That's ironic because when these posts come from people that post this fluff exclusively (a quick back of the envelope estimate shows that the odds are around 100%), they must clearly have no job of their own.

So far, my blogging career has spanned three years and nearly 200 posts. I have the most interesting blog that I am aware of, with the exception of Things My Girlfriend and Argue About, which is the only other blog that I am aware of. (Corollary: my blog is the least interesting blog that I know). However, I have not yet figured out how to turn my blog into money.

And yet I am now aware of an entire demographic of professionals (as defined by "wears shirt with buttons at Starbucks") that spend all day writing blogs with names like "Six key things to include on your CV" or "Mistakes that you can avoid in the job interview".

In my mind, that's like taking modesty advice from someone wearing a cowboy hat.

How, pray tell, can a person that trolls the internet all day searching for people be considered an expert in job finding? I always think of my friend (who will hopefully read this and comment) who submitted an application for an engineering job with a recruiting company. The recruiting company had no engineering jobs, but DID have a recruiter position available for him! That's like a car dealership with an empty showroom hiring salesmen.

Except there's one obvious difference: building cars costs money. The automobile industry has enormous overhead associated with manufacturing and selling their products. Whereas recruiters just troll the internet and look at funny pictures of cats (I imagine) until luck and cold calling reveals just one person that might be willing to switch companies. That one placement must bring in $10 bazillion for a recruitment firm, if basic economics can be trusted.

Digression: I once had the folly to trust a recruiter in finding me a job that he called me for. He kept me hanging for ohh three months, promising the world, putting stars in my eyes before he told me that his client wasn't interested. But then he said "ok, just send me a list of 5 companies that you'd like to work for, and I'll arrange a meeting". So I thought "Sorry, what do you get paid to do?".

Because really, what he was asking me to do is to find a company that would pay him a (HUGE) recruiting fee to hire me. Stunning. And what's more interesting is that he's the vice president of a firm that has somewhat prestigious downtown offices.

Companies of Toronto! Stop paying these people such ridiculous amounts of money to do work that you are more capable of doing anyway. It cannot possibly be in your best interest to hire someone that has the incentive to inflate his recruit's salary as high as possible. Someone has already proved it beyond a shadown of (your ability to) doubt. It is very much like the market for used cars, which is well-known to be the most impossibly one-sided market, economically speaking. That idea won a freaking Nobel Prize. You should know about it, and how hiring a recruiter to fill your office full of lemons will negatively affect your bottom line.

It's like hiring a used car salesman to build you a large fleet of delivery vehicles, with his commission tied to the price of the vehicles and the price of the vehicles being determined by him, the salesman. And you will be a junkyard of recruiter debris. You will just trade employees with other recruiter-oriented companies. And if you do any real work, that work will not get done very well. Unless you are a recruitment company. Then you will somehow be rich.

If that's not irony I don't know what is (and it's not 10,000 spoons when all I need is a knife).

A lack of engineering

2011-07-22T12:00:00.002-04:00

A lack of engineering (IMG_4428)
Originally uploaded by klepl

I don't usually share other people's photos on my blog, but when I do, it's because they're about engineering. Or travelling to places I've been. Or because they're my friends.

Ok, it now appears that I do usually share other people's photos on my blog.

I will add that there are some pictures that capture the location, and there are some that zap you there via an electric rainbow and all of the sudden you've forgotten that you have to finish something at work by the end of the day.

I just remembered something....

My son will play for Arsenal

2011-07-22T11:08:00.001-04:00

Reason 1: he'll still have to do his homework.

I've been doing some Hard Thinking today, and I think that I know what I'm going to manipulate my son into becoming when he grows up. Things that I have considered include doctor, mechanical F1 engineer, drummer, and whatever the opposite of lawyer is. And I think I've reached a conclusion:

Professional soccer player. Or footballer, as he'll be called in the region in which he'll play until he retires, as which point he will become a soccer player again when he retires to the MLS.

Now, why soccer player? For one, he'll have excellent hair, as determined by both parent's genetics. Excellent. And to be an international footballer, you need excellent hair. He'll also be athletic, because I need someone to play with after school and he'll likely be my go-to guy. The dogs are too small to come running with me for very long.

Another reason is that Canada is a great place to learn soccer. Four times as many kids play soccer as hockey, for example (source: CBC somewhere. Metro Morning I think). There's all kinds of soccer in Toronto, and we won't need to take out a mortgage to fund a ball and shoes for him (ideal). When he gets really good, we'll move to Australia or Spain or somewhere where they take training Very Seriously. That will also be good for his parents. Cricket is another option that would steer us in this direction, but I'm not very good at cricket, whereas I've played many (2) full seasons of soccer internationally (I played in a rec league in Perth last year) and I think I've mastered the strategy.

Yet another reason is that he won't grow up with a sense of self-entitlement. If you will allow me to make a sweeping but still somewhat accurate generalization, kids that play hockey are assholes in high school. They get to skip class all the time. If their teachers are connected to the team: no homework, easy grades. If God forbid the team wins, same deal for all teachers. I happen to be related to a certain Speric Flindros's high school English teacher. He answered his 1st gen cell phone in class. Playing hockey in Toronto means that my rush hour just got extended by an hour every time I have to drive to a practice on the opposite end of the city. Toronto also sucks for cheap and accessible ice time. Plus I don't want my child to know that I am paying $40,000 per year for him/her to play hockey, and sending them to public school. That seems wrong somehow.

Also, I like the idea of summering on a yacht in Monaco. For that reason, F1 driver is still not off the table, although I have to start researching how a Canadian kid can get into F1 driving. I believe that it starts with letting him/her drive you to work when they are six. Details to come.

What people expect me to be like as a father

2011-07-20T15:24:00.002-04:00

Cyanide & Happiness @ Explosm.net

Why Toronto could be a great city for cycling

2011-07-20T14:06:00.002-04:00

And it has nothing to do with traffic.

What if I told you, soon-to-be-inspired reader, that there exists a city that in many ways is similar to Toronto, at least when it comes to cycling? What if I also told you that cycling is awesome in this other city?

Consider all the things that makes cycling undesirable for Torontonians. I'll sort these into some broad categories. There are things that can make it dangerous: traffic, bad roads, lack of bike lanes, construction. There are things that prevent it from being fun: pollution, weather, lack of showers in offices, asshole drivers that get angry when you exercise your rights as a citizen. There are things that make it lame: bikes from Canadian Tire that weigh more than the car they replace, bikes getting stolen, bikes getting broken.

All those things also exist in New York City. I was inspired to write about this post because we could so easily have the same culture that they have, but in Toronto. So what's the difference?

I cycled in Manhattan once, and it was amazing. Here was the key difference: you can actually get places on a bicycle in NYC. Even with traffic, theft, tricky roads and dangerous grates, pollution, and text-absorbed pedestrians, people cycle because you can actually get from one end to other faster than by most other means. In a day, I cycled around Central Park, down to Wall Street, around the south end of Manhattan (I'm not even going to pretend that I remember what all the neighbourhoods are called) to the Brooklyn Bridge, over to a famous pizzeria, back across another Huge Frickin Bridge, through SoHo, through Tribeca, and it goes on like this.

Toronto's problem is sprawl. Maybe that's not too revolutionary, but in my opinion this point gets muted by all the angst over bike lanes that don't connect to anything. We have a sprawl problem, not a problem with anything else. Motorists don't hate cyclists everywhere in the world: that's a cultural thing. In other places, cyclists contend with a lot more than the cracks we have in our pavements. I just can't see urban professionals organizing themselves around biking to work here. But we have most of the same pre-existing conditions that New York City has.

With the exception of sprawl. We think that it has to do with weather and bike lanes, but it really doesn't. In a way, riding to work is kind of like letting your young child cross the street on her own for the first time, in that you don't want to, but you have to, but it'll probably be ok once it happens. The only difference is that we don't have to cycle anywhere. Toronto is almost purely designed for the car. And please don't tell me that the TTC is a viable option for the future. Our fares are among the highest, our system among the most unsustainable, and we won't even adopt a smartcard to replace tokens. The TTC has to be the only transit organization in the world that actually mints its own currency. It's already a laughing stock now with its anti-progressive ways, its downward spiral in value, and a blundering municipal government behind it that is at best confused.

And so ends another post that started off with an actual point and degraded into a statement that Toronto is backwards. All I'm saying is, none of the things that we like to think prevent this city from having a good cycling culture actually do so. It's just sprawl. And no one talks about that.

Guide to Installing a Dimmer

2011-07-18T10:24:00.001-04:00

All of this talk about renting versus buying has given me reason to reflect on all of the things I have convinced my landlords to do for me in the past. Because, this weekend, I managed to install a new light dimmer all by myself (with Rita's help). And I only became so enraged that I started yelling at the wall once. Once!

A little background. I have a gift for massaging my landlords into doing really extravagant things for me, in the name of "investing in their rental property". In the past I have successfully negotiated a garbage disposal (to replace the one we broke by mincing an entire head of celery (just to see if we could)), a washing machine and very nearly a dryer (it was the lack of a modern fuse box that scuttled the dryer), the removal of two walls, and most famously the air conditioning in Perth. I like to think that that's famous, anyways. My success stems from my not being an ass-bag to my landlord and to my neighbors. Also from my offers of boughatsa.

But now that I am a Mortgage Owner, things have changed. I must install these things myself using nothing but my tools, my engineering degree, the internet, a cache of swear words, my wife, and her ever-guiding patience for things I have no patience for. This weekend we decided to install a dimmer in the kitchen, because I find the light fixture there offensively bright on a deeply personal level. I feel like I'm standing in a film negative when I try to cook with the light on. Everything that shouldn't be bright is too bright, and everything that I want to see is pitch black because I can't slice chicken sitting cross-legged in the middle of the floor Rita. I can't, and I won't.

So you can see, this dimmer will play a crucially important role in my life. Here is my Guide to Installing a Dimmer.

Step 1: Scrutinize every single dimmer at Lowe's.
This is my least favorite part of doing anything for the home because it requires you to have a level of expertise far greater than anyone can have (period). I feel like I could waste hours of my life comparing garden trowels. Dimmers are even harder. You have to know what sort of bulb you are going to dim (answer: not what you think you have), the power "wattage", the configuration of faceplates, the type of white you have selected and whether it matches the faceplate, if your wife will also like it, the area code in Singapore, if you are going to break the one you have chosen because it's going in the kitchen, and if it is susceptible to raw chicken contamination. I always play with the light switch when I have raw meat on my hands. Helpful advice: don't bring your partner, because then two people will shave hours off their weekend instead of one. But you will also inevitably make a return trip because of this decision. The deciding formula is a function of "partner decisiveness" and "proximity to store".

Step 2: Figure out the wires.
Take your new dimmer and go home. Assume that you can remove the faceplate, replace the existing switch with the dimmer, and replace the faceplate with the one you have chosen. Upon removing the existing switch you will realize that (if you are lucky) there are two wires, and that you don't know which wire is which. While I started reading my Home Encyclopedias, Rita went on the internet and found an abundance of Generic Useless Diagrams for figuring out the wiring. Try to find a diagram that is convincing enough that you think you know which wire is which, and go with that. Ignore the grounding wire, because those are invariably non-existent in your house. Helpful advice: do not presume that you can install a 3-way switch. That is pure folly.

Step 3: Start cussin'.
Here is where it got hairy for us: stuffing the dimmer back into the wall. As it turns out, the dimmer is far larger than the original 1960's light switch. It is far larger than my iPhone, and yet it cannot store 8 million songs and help me navigate through traffic. Nevermind. It goes in the wall now. Grab your needle-nose plyers, a nail, a small screwdriver, a metal file, and whatever else should absolutely never be poked into a power outlet, and try to manipulate the wiring behind the new dimmer. I'll wait. Now, it won't fit because there are little screws poking out of the wiring box for no reason, and those are getting in the way of the Massive Dimmer Housing. Ask your partner to use her smaller fingers to sort of twist those screws until they no longer extend into the way of your new dimmer. Swear. Use the screwdriver to sort of crowbar the dimmer into the wall. If you crack the tiling, swear freely. Acknowledge that the mounting bracket on the dimmer is larger than the existing wiring box, and understand that you will now have a sloping non-flush faceplate. Move on. It's in the past. Loosen the adjacent power outlet so that it pokes out of the wall enough to at least be flush with your distending faceplate. Search your whole house for an hour for two nuts that can serve as spacers. Only find one. Swear profoundly.

Step 4: Admire your work.
You suck.

Why you should rent and not buy a home (Spoiler: you shouldn't)

2011-07-15T11:44:00.002-04:00

Be careful who you take advice from...I mean, from whom you take advice.

Here is how my wife and I are saving for retirement: we are saving 10% of our income. In 5 years, we'll be able to put a down payment on a house that we can then rent out as two units. When we retire, other people will have paid off our mortgage and we'll have that rental income as pure income. Canadians will strike for months for that kind of pension cash-muuuuhney. We'll just commit our savings for five years.

Yet sometimes people make me wonder. Here's an article that was written by a man with a tiny head on renting vs. buying a home. Apparently it was some finalist in a Moneyville blogging competition. I became aware of it from someone (let's call her "Sheena") who is getting first-homebuyer's anxiety and needed someone to critically analyze this article on whether it is better to buy or to rent.

Luckily her husband is a Critical Analyst, and I am a Loud Mouth, and together we were happy to provide the following insightful debate. Disclaimer: we are both ~~home~~ mortgage owners, and we both don't wear American Eagle.

It breaks down like this. Guy with massive upper body and tiny head purchases his dream bachelor home: a 3-bedroom townhouse in Milton. Eight months later, he hates his new lifestyle and puts the house back on the market in favor of renting something for $800. He just barely breaks even with the housing transactions (no losses, lucky for him), but his lifestyle is now back to normal and he's investing in RRSPs again.

Here's my analysis.

One: I did a quick search for bachelor stuff in Milton and came up with the following: (sound of crickets). Two: Then I took a quick scan of rental properties that go for $800 and I came up with the following: my basement in Scarborough. I'm sure that you can also rent a balcony in downtown Toronto for $800 (luxurious summer getaway!). Three: Then I thought to myself, what kind of guy goes from a 3-bedroom "bachelor pad" to an $800 rental? Is he rooming with 6 Brazilian girls now? Maybe he overestimated the number of rooms that he'd need to store his Creatine powder? Or did he decide that a bachelor pad is a place that you can hang your suit when you want to go out drinking, and not a family residence in a family town with nice family-oriented parks and recreation?

That would be like someone moving to Northern Ontario, for the ladies.

He concludes that one can use a basic rule of thumb to determine whether to buy or to rent, by dividing the price of the house by the annual expected rent. If it's over 20, rent! If it's under 15, buy! Seems a bit arbitrary, considering that our parents bought their houses at 20% interest 30 years ago and are now all thankful for it, if not at least thankful for the ability to Teach Us Something Based On Their Hardships (young man).

But here is what I don't understand about that: Take a hypothetical case of a $500,000 house. If you rent that house, at the end of 30 years you have nothing. If you mortgage that house with a minimum downpayment, at the end of 30 years you have a house. And it's worth $1 million.

I hear what you are saying, "Sheena". "Don't look at it so long term!", you say. Ok, same scenario after 10 years: you own enough of that house to take out a line of credit against it, buy another house and get someone else to pay off your mortgage, reiterate every 10 years, and one day you can sell it, retire to Greece, and buy a dive shop. Or possibly Bali.

Or let's look at it from a 1-year perspective. If you've bought a house, after one year you have a lot of yard work on your hands and some renovation bills. If you've rented, you are the proud owner of new pink shirts, gym memberships, and Plenty-of-Fish contacts.

So here's the bottom line: don't take financial advice from a mid-20's bachelor. Take hair advice instead. Unless he/she has an unusually small head, in which case, take etc. "Etc." is what I use when I can't think of anything else to add to a list.

Photo of rescue dog

2011-07-14T22:13:00.002-04:00

Lexie
Originally uploaded by Michael Diez d'Aux

As promised, here is Lexie moments after we almost hit her with the car. She was happy to see us after a long and uneventful afternoon of herding cars on Highway 6.

Seriously though, border collies will try to herd anything they can. Children and other pets got the treatment in a sheep-averse environment. We often see a border collie owner at the park while walking Jax and Jovi, and he actually took his dog to herding school for the mental stimulation (these dogs need a lot of that). His is the dog that crouches 50m away from all the other dogs and stares at them intensely.

Such a cool dog.

In Tobermory, B&B is short for Bunk beds & Big german dogs (at Molinari's)

2011-07-14T14:04:00.001-04:00

And Tripadvisor is patsy to their incompetence.

While rescuing the dog was certainly a highlight of what will undoubtedly be my only vacation of 2011 (son, if you are reading this, feel sorry for your parents), the feature topic of our trip was our Bed and Breakfast, Molinari's (I am going to name it because Tripadvisor has not yet posted my well thought out and entirely profanity free review).

To its credit, Molinari's is clearly a new establishment, and the owners try very hard. And their dogs are well-trained and friendly. And we like dogs. The food is both Italian and delicious. And people learn from their mistakes. The owners are very friendly too. And, yet, it was craptacular.

Firstly, they assigned us two rooms: one well-appointed adult bedroom, and one sparse room with a bunk bed and no bedside table or reading lamp. They informed us that we shouldn't worry, the bunk bed room was only $100 per night ($25 discount!). Considering that the motel down the street was the same price and also came with two double beds, air conditioning, and private bathroom, we were understandably irate. I don't know if you've had the pleasure of experiencing a pregnant woman in need of a/c, but as I have now scored that achievement, let me tell you: avoid it. Rita and I took the bunk bed room because, what with her pre-existing condition and all, we had no need for romance-accommodating rooms.

The room was a bit surprising, but gradually we began to understand what was going on. On the first night, we cracked some beers and sat around in the "common area" watching Titanic and getting drunk (on emotions). At around midnight, we hear some arguing (in French) followed by the sound of a door slamming. Luckily, Rita and Sheena were not as intoxicated as me and Eric (they had no palate for our ice wine martinis) and were able to relay this to us. So we all went to bed. The next morning, our women were overwhelmed by "the vibes of a woman being very angry at people but acting nicely".

Thusly, we put two and two together: The bunk bed room must have been their son's room, in their personal section of the house which was divide from the rest of the rooms by a door with a lock (kept open during our stay). They clearly overbooked for that weekend, and chose to give us his room (who knows where the son slept...), camouflage their living space, and pretend like everything was normal. They did a good job of that, and so we got plastered in their personal living room and they got pissed because they didn't know what to do about this. My advice: suck it up because you are charging $100/night for a bunk bed.

On the second night, we were greeted (again in their section of the building) by two massive barking German Shepherds. That was alarming, because the dogs already knew us, and when dogs are familiar usually they don't go into Alert Mode. We then started to deconstruct the dog thing. How many people would be comfortable with huge dogs in their domicile? What about huge dogs in the kitchen? We had no problem with this, but dogs in the kitchen is probably not appropriate for a restaurant/B&B.

So we paid a large amount of money for a terrible room and some bad vibes about enjoying ourselves. OK. Rita and Sheena "dug deeper" and found an awesome Tripadvisor review here called "Molinari's Motorlodge". These people had an even more eventful experience then we did by far. Of note:

they were served 5 different types of cereal for breakfast and wunderbread. On the second morning they asked for something more substantial than that, and received a reply that eggs would be $7 per plate (on top of the $115/night/room). Full disclosure: our breakfast was delicious, although we were never offered any espresso-based coffee. A bit awkward when the people beside us were offered the option of lattes.
in their Italian restaurant, the reviewer was charged $1.99 when he asked for parmesan cheese on his pasta. At an Italian restaurant. Ummmmm WTF.
the lace privacy curtain on their door window was not private enough to prevent a 5'8" person from looking into their room.
they were asked to pay up front, in case they tried to leave without paying. Apparently another couple had done that.

What I'm wondering is: where is the review from the couple that escaped without paying? Why didn't we think of that?

Also, we rescued a dog

2011-07-13T10:00:00.001-04:00

It kind of seems like we did two things this weekend. Firstly, we slept in bunk beds in Tobermory (more on that in a bit). On the way to our bunk beds, Team Dog Love rescued a dog that was running on the side of the highway and told off a drunk guy. On the way home, we picked her our new adopted doggy from the babysitters and drove her to her new home.

I love this dog. She's a Border Collie mixed with what the previous owner says is Shar Pei but what the dog food store girl said was Chow. We don't know who has more credibility, the previous owner or someone that knows dogs and has only seen this one for 10 minutes. We're obviously going with Chow, although a quick Google search reveals that she more probably has the eyes of a Shar Pei. She's a working dog and enjoys herding things and being hyperactive in general. We found her trying to heard cars on Highway 6. She doesn't run as much as she gallops. She's probably 60 lbs and she has big paws, and her name is (rhymes with Sexy, starts with an L, and I don't want this post to show up in some lonely guy's Googling so I'm not going to spell it out). Short for Lexington, in my opinion. Andre adopted her and might give her a new name, but "Lexington" kinda grows on you once you start associating it with the dog and not a stripper on the back of a Harley. Sometimes I wonder if I use this site to solicit hate mail....nah. People would have to read this in order to get angry with it.

Anyway, we were driving to Tobermory when we saw a dog running at the side of the highway. The women went into Dog Care Defcon 7, and we slowed down to call for it. That's when we learned our first lesson about this dog: she is very friendly. She tried to immediately cross the highway to give us a lick and nearly got run over by some cars going the other way. But she didn't, and then she crossed the street. Major Vacation Downer #1: having your wife watch a large dog get run over on the highway. Disaster averted.

Then we went around looking for the owner. Rita and Sheena stayed behind at the camp ground (which is where we picked her up in front of) with the dog, while we went driving around in a Heroic Attempt to Save a Doggy Life. We found the owner.

Long story short: the owner was perhaps slightly intoxicated and didn't appreciate the lecture that he received from the elderly camp ground owner for letting his dog run all over the highway (good job, elderly camp ground owner). He told us the dog was the most difficult type to train, and that he couldn't do it, and we should look it up on the internet. Rita said every dog is trainable, and then told him she would do it if he couldn't stop her running out in front of cars. So he gave her the leash and left, end of story. Voila. Dog.

The camp ground lady praised us for this because the dog had been out on the highway many times before. So she took care of Dog while we went to town for the weekend, somewhat relaxed by the complete confidence this guy had in just handing his dog over to a stranger and taking off. And then she was still there when we got back, which was encouraging.

So Andre's happy with his new puppy (yes she is a puppy! Not yet 2 by all estimates) and we're happy with his new puppy because she'll probably be a good frisbee dog. And I don't want to brag, but I reckon I can throw a frisbee as far as anyone in this here town. Maybe e'en farther. And she likes the car, which means we can get her a pack and taking her hiking and load her up with provisions. A quick internet search reveals that Border Collies are working dogs. Maybe we can train her to weed my yard.

UPDATE: Andre has found a massive fenced-in doggy park close by, where the dog can simulate the herding of sheep. I'm looking into inflatable sheep for her, but so far everything that I've found is inappropriate.

Investigative Blogging

2011-07-12T22:26:00.002-04:00

Flowerpot Rock Close-up
Originally uploaded by Michael Diez d'Aux

It was all supposed to be a stupid joke, but has since exploded into the most stunning piece of investigative journalism ever presented on this blog. Note to self: start new category entitled "stunning investigative journalism".

I was taking a picture of Flowerpot Rock, which in Tobermory is equivalent to the CN Tower. It is the pinnacle of tourism. The essence. The #1 thing to do in Tobermory, according to our bunkbed hostess, is to see Flowerpot Rock. So we took lots of pictures of it.

At one point, I was very close to it but I had a wide angle lens. However, to Eric and Sheena I appeared to be taking a close-up of the rock. So I obliged and took this picture.

Now if you look closely, you'll see...what is that there?...is that....GROUT??? Yes. The Government of Canada has artificially grouted this rock to keep it standing up. Let the mayhem ensue.

OK, that may not be so crazy, because we also grout the CN Tower to prevent it from falling down (true story). However, the difference is that I happen to know for a fact that one of the Twelve Apostles, close to Melbourne, just fell down. It's like Flowerpot Rock only 1 bazillion times bigger. That grouting project would have become enshrined as sacred in the Australian Economy (the jobs! the JOBS!) and would have allowed their federal government to spend $800 million dollars that might otherwise have gone to preventing its citizens from seeing any nipples on the internet, which is a passion in Canberra. You are now apparently asked if you possess any pornography when entering Australia.

But I digress.

Hey, I think I just came up with a new title for this blog!

This is our backyard on Photoshop

2011-07-12T18:41:00.001-04:00

Our backyard...
Originally uploaded by Michael Diez d'Aux

You know, taking acid was the best habit I ever got myself into. EVERYTHING looks like this!

Ok that's not true. But I was curious to know what our backyard would look like if I were as high as a kite. Voila. Now you don't have to do drugs in our backyard.

In other news, photos from Tobermory are surfacing as soon as I can figure out whether the weekend was about Rescue Dog, or about Tobermory. Stay tuned.

Tobermory has nature

2011-07-11T11:07:00.002-04:00

It was a weekend of exhilarating beer-induced highs, terrifying sugar-induced lows, and occasional napping. We went to Tobermory with Eric and Sheena.

Why would anyone want to go to Tobermory, you may ask? You may not be aware that Tobermory is the next hottest thing. For one, there is the diving, which we did not do because Rita is pregnant and Sheena is just getting out of her "afraid of dying an icy silent death" phase. Mainly because of Rita's pre-existing condition. But there are 22 wrecks (it could possibly be 12, but 22 sounds better) waiting for us next time.

Tobermory also has nature. Lots of it. You can do nature-y things there, which are generally relaxing. I also noted that nature tends to quell pregnancy issues. Rita's back started to hurt after the 3 hour kayak trip, for example. I was pleased by this. She did a lot of paddling as a result. I did my part by drinking lots of beer, thus reducing my energy to a level that is compatible with a pregnant wife. For example, we went for a hike on Flowerpot Island (which is all the rage), and we were both exhausted at the end. For very different reasons. But we ended in the same place. I just try to do my part, that's all. No need for words like "hero".

Another thing that happened on Flowerpot Island is that we were swarmed by Asians (there's a picture of this that I will try to post soon). Rita and I were sitting on a federal bench in a national park in the sun after our hike. There was a stone BBQ in front of the bench, which in Northern Ontario is reason enough to warrant a federal bench. And then out of nowhere, a family of 9 Asian people emerge from the woods (literally) and start taking pictures of each other sitting on the BBQ, which could also look like a stone chair if not for the large "no fire" sign on it. There were small cameras, large cameras, telephoto lenses, tripods, and very nearly some umbrella-type flash diffusers. Asian people, bless their hearts, do not worry about disturbing you if you are sitting on a bench. They kind of work around you instead, which is fine because watching Asian people interact with cameras is more interesting than starring at the sweeping Georgian Bay vista that was previously in front of us.

But I'm not bitter. Because we have a picture of it. Which I guess could make me a hypocrite, except that I will reject all of your supporting arguments.

Which seamlessly leads me into my next observation, that Tobermory has a rapidly-changing tourist demographic. Once, it was for people that fish. Now, Tobermory also has lots of impressive yachts that belong to other people that live on the Great Lakes. People with yachts are rich, and so Tobermory has the influx of tourist dollars that it needs to attract wealthy people with yachts. It's like an Escher drawing. Which are also for sale in the gift shops. We also saw native hand carvings of walrii (that's the plural of walrus) for $2000. Certainly, I would view Tobermory as the ideal place to drop the equivalent of two Caribbean vacations on a carving of walrus. Sometimes, you have to treat yourself.

Stay tuned for: Tobermory Bed and Breakfast Tip Sheet.

Ways that having a child may change my life

2011-07-07T09:37:00.001-04:00

I'm no ordinary person (for example, right now I'm slightly overweight). And I don't think I have any ordinary expectations for what having a child may do to my life. But I have been thinking about it, mainly because I finished all my World War 2 books and I don't have anything to read over breakfast now. I don't want to get cereal milk all over The Hunger Games, whereas the patina of milk staining is more becoming on a historical book. Cookbooks also benefit visually from my oral shrapnel.

But I digress.

Firstly, I'm excited that Rita will be cooking again. That's right! Usually people are afraid of losing sleep or having screaming children, but I couldn't care less. This morning I woke up with a dog under my arm. If a dog can get UNDER my arm without waking me up, I'm sure I can sleep through Cranky Time, Hungry Time, and Burpee Time. However, things that I cannot sleep through include dinner. And having a newly-denauseated wife will really help in that department.

I'm also thinking that travelling will be different. It may possibly cease to exist, but I'm going to have to experience at least one terrible horrible no good very bad flight to come to terms with that. I feel that if I've been able to deal with Indonesian customs officials, I can definitely deal with a crying baby during landing. That's why God created His noise-cancelling earphones. They don't completely cancel the noise, but they'll really take the edge off. And diaper-changing in an airplane bathroom? Pfft. I'm a boy scout of resourcefulness. Plus I have no issue with balancing my son on a toilet seat. What I'm thinking is that having a child will prevent us from choosing new exciting destinations every two days. Maybe not. Maybe it will afford us the opportunity to nap more frequently. Yes, that's it.

I also want to put a drum kit in the basement. Having a child in the house will certainly affect that. I'll have to go for an electronic drum kit now.

Another way that having a child will not affect my life at all is that we have dogs. We play with the dogs, we feed the dogs. We put the dogs to bed at night (because otherwise, they'll sleep in the Cave of Warmth that is the valley between me and my wife). It'll be like having one more dog. Economies of scale are wonderful things.

I've also been looking for ways to incorporate more vegetables into my diet. Having a child will just put more pressure on me to do that, because I do not want to have a "me". And by that, I mean a child that will not eat anything that grows from the ground. Unless it is pureed, made into a tomato sauce, and covered with melted cheese. I'm on a veggie mission with this upcoming child.

So, to summarize, having a child probably will have no adverse effect on my life.

Stay tuned for my Stark Realization.

Mall segregation

2011-07-04T14:36:00.001-04:00

Some things were meant to be separated.

I found this one lying at the bottom of a rubble-heap in my former travel blog. It was just waiting to be posted with absolutely no editting. Here it is! (Don't hit me Rita. I didn't have time to edit it. I was eating a sandwich.)

Over the course of this trip, we have endeavoured to become fuller more worldly people by visiting the places that define Asian civilization and culture. As such we have visited a large number of shopping malls.

Even writing that makes me slightly disappointed in myself, and yet I know that a) it is nearly a fact of life that you will wander malls in many of these cities, and b) if I see another local market with smelly raw meat rotting on a table in the sun, I am going to yak all over the yak-meat. We've seen it, hell I've even photographed it in detail, but now I'm over it. Malls rarely sell meat, and if they do it is stewed and encased in a tasty bun.

Everyone is against me. Even the tour book suggests which malls to visit. In Hong Kong, recommended malls are not located in the "Shopping" section as they normally would be. Instead, they are located in "Sights". Malls compete with each other over guidebook supremacy. Perhaps most importantly, malls do not charge you to use their toilets, and the toilets are typically adorned with toilet paper and a toilet, instead of a hole in the floor and nothing. That becomes very important after a breakfast of abalone in borscht with fried egg and boiled hot dog. Breakfast in Hong Kong is both different and, after an hour, unsettling.

(Digression: Rita made an excellent observation yesterday. She was in the toilets atop Victoria Peak and noted that many of the stalls had holes in the floor for squattin', but some of them actually featured toilets that one may sit on! Given the very touristy setting and the overall quality of the area (there are plenty of expensive restaurants on Victoria Peak) she concluded that people must actually want the holes in the floor. Intriguing.)

The obvious thing about the ultra-malls are that they have luxury brand stores everywhere. There is a Gucci department store in Times Square mall. Siam Paragon in Bangkok has a sports car floor (the 3rd floor, oddly enough) with Lamborghini, Maserati, BMW, and even Lotus dealerships. Lotus had a full F1 display too. The KLCC under the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur is just six floors of hundreds of stores (or "boutiques") that I can only hope to one day shop in. Picture an endless string of Rolex-Versace-Zegna-Prada-Montblanc-Rolex-Omega-Bose-Porsche and you get the drift.

Less obviously, the malls are actually organized into shopping areas. How easy our lives have become! When Rita saw a sign that floors six through eight were all electronics and AV, she nearly peed. There are entire malls dedicated to only one specific type of shopping. We've seen malls dedicated solely to indy fashion, cameras, food, tailors, and luxury brands. Even the outdoor shopping districts are organized. In Hanoi, we were staying in Shoe District, which was just down the street from North Face Alley. On the next block, all the shops sell knock-off team jerseys. Further down, it's all purses.

I would love to continue, but we're packing up to go to Macau right now (Gambling Quarter). After warming up with our trip to the Happy Valley Racecourse last night, there could be some wagering in order.

Stirring the poop on LinkedIn

2011-07-04T07:03:00.001-04:00

I'm really annoyed with the UofT alumni group on LinkedIn. It's full of cheesy recruiters/spammers/journalist-wannabes. So I published this "discussion" to that board instead of just leaving it. I always try to be as constructive as possible. Here it is:

5 Reasons why you are being spammed by Top 5 lists

Are you wondering why people keep posting Top 5 lists to this group?

A carefully research article in this months Journal of Things I Just Thought Of came up with the following 5 Reasons why Top 5 Lists keep appearing each and every day!

In no particular order, here were the findings of this momentous and pivotal research project:

1) Fake Importance. Numbering stuff gives people the impression that the stuff in question somehow reflects a ranking, survey, or some other quantifiable method of the presentation of real data. If one reads The 6 Reasons, surely those must be the Top Six, and not just a variety of things that a professional search engine troller thought of and then abitrarily numbered.

2) Poignancy. We constantly hear about the need for brevity! The need to be concise. The need for clear and unambiguous summaries. People that read numbered articles are clear thinkers. They are busy important folk. When reading a post on a social networking bulletin board, we should be able to do this quickly and efficiently, glean the most important information only, and then go back to performing abdominal surgery/criminal defense/triple axles/whatever people that troll this forum do. Because this forum is not just for people that stay home all day. Right? (silence)

3) The Best Content. It is easy to make things up on the fly. Just google "how to install a bathroom fan" and you'll see dozens of articles written by people that have never, per se, actually seen a bathroom fan. When creating some content, it is important to give the reader the impression that you left out all the unessential bits and that you are really only giving them the most important information as determined by the writer, who is...I don't know.

4) Social Media is Cool! Studies have shown that people who are interested in "social media" really want to understand how they can make money by being on Facebook/Twitter all day. Studies show that most people would love to have a career surfing the net. It's better than doin' stuff.

5) I can't think of a 5th thing.

Feel free to add your ideas below. We'll carefully look at incorporating them into the next

Griping about Toronto

2011-04-10T18:21:00.000-04:00

I've tried to keep my feelings on Toronto reserved here, because I wanted this to be sort of a funny blog and not a blog full of hatred. Okay that's overstating it, but honestly as a lifetime resident of Toronto I sometimes feel like I want to pull my hair out, move to Vancouver, and maybe release a small payload of human feces on this city as I leave.

I get really frustrated. But that's because I know that I'm likely going to live here for at least the next 30 years.

Why all of this, all of the sudden? We were over for dinner at my mother's tonight and she asked me if Rita and I were planning on moving again. I said something to the tune of "oh, well, I'd like to check out Vancouver" because it consistently appears in the top three cities to live in in the world (not just The Economist's list, several others too) and because it seems to have less traffic and a better outdoor life. As in, out the door of your own house. I won't know until we've visited and had a good chance to formulate thoughts. This year it was number one!

So then my mother asked me why. And it started.

It started slowly. I hate the traffic in this city, and it is certainly not going to do anything except get worse. Rob Ford was right that the city's immigration goals are totally out of line with reality. If the emergency rooms wait times are 3 hours as it is, how can we increase the size of this city by even 20% in the next 10 years? Let alone 50%. Where would the hospitals, schools, roads, and Tim Hortons come from? How the hell can the 401 get any more gridlocked?

Then I talked about the insular and naive view that Toronto has about public infrastructure. Here's what I want: a chin-up bar in my local park. Wherever that park might be. And it should also have an inclined sit-up plank, something for dips and bench steps, and a few other "stations" that might actually allow me to work out in the park for free. I saw these in Australia, beside the salt water ocean (which digests everything, I might add). I've seen these in China, being used in the middle of winter. I've seen them in Bangkok, being used in the sweaty heat and smog of the summer. They are anywhere they want to be. Why can't Toronto have them?

We have winter.

I might kill myself if I hear one more person say this. How can we let our children play on the current playground equipment, if the Boogeyman Winter destroys it in one or two years??? How did the city waste money on digital parking payment computers with wireless modems and solar panels? Winter must also destroy those! No? Hmm that's weird OH YAH I FORGOT ALL THOSE THINGS ARE FINE!

Dammit Toronto. We need to improve, and all you want to is regurgitate ideas that are 30 years old! I'm pretty sure that the TTC doesn't need to mint it's own currency anymore. Maybe an electronic swipe card? No? Too difficult? You suck, Toronto. Even Perth (Australia) has an electronic touchcard system, and maybe 2% of their population even knows what transit is. And it's in Western Australia, which is full of lunatics.

I'm starting a column on what I really don't like about this city. It will be a labour of love. I wonder if, just maybe, one day, someone important will read it and start to change things. Or offer me a job as mayor (sound of knuckles cracking).

In the meantime, I am going to take my Aunty's advice and bother my city councillor. My argument was: I have no faith in these useless boobs. Her argument was: have you tried it? No I haven't. So I will. I am going to ask Santa for some exercise infrastructure for our beautiful massive local park, and for a community centre to replace the empty parking lots at the corner of Pharmacy and Eglinton. There are lots of kids in the area that could use affordable after-school programs.

And one big kid that could use some lane-swimming. And a ball hockey league.

(Aside: this is an excellent pretext for starting a new category...I love those.)

An algorithm : where to live

2011-04-06T10:14:00.000-04:00

Welcome to my future content site. In the future, by simply click on "content for future content site" you'll have access to literally several articles filled with handy tips on how to do things that I have never done before. Our research team is working night and day to fill you in on such important topics as How to break your iPhone so that Apple gives you a new one, and How to seek mental help if you are considering long-term storage for your clutter (because those ads really bother us).

But because of a torrent of fan mail, today we'll follow on the previous highly-full-of-content How to buy a house with this article on Where to live. Deciding on a place to live can be both fun and challenging, depending on whether or not you have a significant other that is or is not slightly crazy. This easy to follow algorithm can help:

Brainstorm all the things that are important. Remember that, when brainstorming, you have to write down everything that you think of, regardless of whether its a good idea. Your significant other will then either rule those ideas out completely and absolutely (if they are female), or negotiate them to the bottom of the list diplomatically (if they are "other"). Try making this fun by giving yourself a one-minute time limit, a buzzer, and a silly hat and flasses. This is usually the method that your correspondent uses when making Important Decisions.

Sort through and organize your new super-fun brainstormed list of priorities. You might be surprised to see what made the list and what didn't! Don't be tempted to add the things you forgot, like "Grandma". It's in the past. Decide on whether you are more particular towards "doof doof clubs" or "quilting club access".

Stop hitting your partner. If you are alone, stop hitting yourself.

Give up and rent.

First of all, it's likely that you're primary criterion will be "distance to work", as that will have the greatest net effect on your life. If you work in Brampton or Markham, you may choose to demote this item in favour of a neighbourhood less painful than dental surgery. You may disagree with this, but consider the following Helpful Points of Debate: Brampton is just Markham with lots of trucks.

Do you want to be within walking distance of things like transit, the shops (or "shoppes" if you live in Oakville), and schools? Check out realtor.ca for helpful nuggets of wisdom from real estate agents! Most ads feature such helpful advice as "Steps From Transit" (remember that Real Estate Agents Capitalize Everything). That means 10,000 steps from a bus that runs once every two hours. Caution! Much more helpful would be "Literally Exactly On Top Of A Functional Subway Station". Also be cautious of "A Handyman's Dream", unless of course you are enough of a handyperson to tear down and rebuild a home completely on your own (if it were economically possible to do this with help, a developer would have already bought your dream home and converted it into ten stacked townhouses. Idiot.).

What about prime public transit locations in the Greater Toronto Area, you might be wondering. Consider Vancouver! Toronto was recently demoted 4 places in some international standings of Which Cities are The Best To Live In (as conveyed to me by my wife, who didn't remember the study, source, where she heard it, or what she had for lunch).

Other things that might actually factor in to your decision are: proximity to dog park, quality of roads for cycling, elderliness of your future neighbours in the event that you hold a yard sale after the Big Move, and quality of public sewage system (get into the sanitary sewer and measure the diameter three times, and divide by 3 to take the average. This can save you dozens of dollars a year on home insurance).

Things that won't matter include: proximity to bars (you are a homeowner now, and as an adult your social life will be over), clubs (only renters go to clubs), and parents (they end up coming to you).

Good luck! Please post your success stories below. Unless you did not follow this helpful content site algorithm, in which case no one cares.

Surf Beach Panorama

2011-04-03T17:24:00.000-04:00

Surf Beach Panorama on Flickr.

I got around to posting some pictures from Hawaii over the weekend. While this collection is missing a montage of “getting drunk at a swim-up bar”, it does feature an exposee on “getting attacked by a delicious octopus”.

Enjoy! (We hope.)

ps This reminded me of something. Of all the Everything that this Blog is Supposed to Be About, I have nothing on photography up yet. Possibly because no one cares about how I feel a wide-angle lens should be used. I’ll keep it to myself.

Need goals, will take donations

2011-03-31T09:42:00.000-04:00

I need an athletic goal for this year.

Why? I'm goal-oriented. Running? Super lame. Running because I have to GET somewhere?? Way cool. Like for example, running to get to the marathon finish line. That's somewhere, in my opinion.

I'll have to surmount some tough obstacles in order to attain my athletic goal.

First, I need an actual goal, with deliverables. It's not enough anymore for me to just say "I'll have an athletic goal this year". That never goes anywhere. I'll actually need to "define" what it is that I'll be "doing". See, this is what we in the business of "communications" and "management" call being "goal oriented". You need to have an actual goal. Possibly, you can even do a quick test: write it down on a piece of paper. If you can do that, chances are that it is well-defined enough. Also, you can't have a "goal". If it has inverted commas around it, it's too vague.

Aside: I should have been in communications consulting. Or in project management communicating. Or in communications management. I'm starting all those groups on LinkedIn.

Secondly, after I have figured out my goal, I will need to sort out the next challenge: wife. If it involves running, she may be against it because apparently being a kinesiologist means that you see lots of people with knee replacements hating the world for making them run so much. If my goal involves more than 20 minutes of running per day, I will face an uphill battle. To avoid that, my goal could involve golf in some way. That involves a cart. And money. More uphill battling.

I need a set of criteria. My athletic goal needs to meet the following requirements:

I must not endanger my knees.

I must not piss off my wife.

I must spend time with my wife while achieving my goal.

I must not spend too much money. Preferably, none. We need a new roof.

I can't spend too much time in the pool. That usually causes me to shave my head, which brings us back to Challenge #2.

I can't do anything that can break my fingers. Like a knuckle-pushup-style goal. I need to play guitar at a wedding this year.

It must not involve the deep end. I'm afraid of the deep end. Though I'm cool with open bodies of water. I have no answers.

That's enough criteria. Even God only has 10.

I'll keep you posted as events warrant.

This just in: Eric wants it to be "corporate golf". I'm looking into it.

I don't want to join Twitter, but I have to

2011-03-23T12:41:00.000-04:00

Podcasts are eroding my typical everyday sensibility. When I am being sensible, I'm usually thinking "better go grocery shopping tonight", or "I should wait until I get to work before I go to the bathroom, that way it'll be readier", or "I don't want to waste my time on Twitter". But now I'm confused about my feelings for Twitter. Living example: I just typed and then erased "I hate Twitter", because I don't think I actually hate it. I just hate boring people and brainless time-wasting (who doesn't?). So I'd probably end up following Lindsay Lohan.

Side note: I get really star struck, really easily. I once served Fred Durst a waffle with frozen yogurt at Pickle Barrel, right when Limp Bizkit went down the drain and Wes Borland left and they released The Hotdog Flavoured Water or whatever the album that made me despise them was called. Nevertheless I was utterly struck. I was so happy. It made my week.

Side side note: Wes Borland has a twitter account.

But getting back to it, a podcast has changed my way of thinking, especially when it comes to my upcoming proposed blook deal (proposed by me). I listen to Freakonomics Radio, which did a podcast about the economics of Twitter. Turns out that the most-followed people do not follow anyone else at all. People that have made millions from publicizing "sh*t my dad says" which then gets followed by 1,000,000 people and, next thing you know it, that guy has a blook, they don't follow anyone. They are just available on Twitter. And that guy now has a TV show too. Granted, he has a more focused concept than I do, but I could refine this blog any day. Wait for it.

Twitter has some upsides. For example, I don't have to follow anyone at all for them to follow me. It's not like Facebook (or Lose-It) where I genuinely know the person before we connect. But then how the hell are people going to find me and read this blog and hopefully beg to me to publish a blook on nothing at all? The other upside to Twitter is that I can become instantly connected to the lunatic raving of hotshot rap stars. Man, I want to be in their world. Like, beside it. Not actually in it.

Twitter also has a massive downside: I will waste some time reading about what Kanye had for breakfast (answer: chrome toast). And my wife will mock and ridicule me.

So....should I do it? Should I sign up? Who would listen? Does it matter? I'll just offer the world something for free and see what happens. According to Freakonomics Radio, they'll be thanking me. Because it's free. Plus, now I really want to follow Wes Borland.

How to buy a house

2011-03-21T09:39:00.000-04:00

I've been coerced into entering the "content site" market, because apparently content sites are very lucrative (see my last post) but also highly profitable. I hope. And in the interest of becoming an internet sensation in as little time as possible, I have decided to generate some content-site-style pages and gauge the response. If you click on this lots of times it will make me feel good and I'll do more of these handy informative posts. Vote with your browser!

So without further ado, here is my lengthy, complete, somewhat biographical and totally unresearched article on....

HOW TO BUY A HOUSE

Buying a house can be challenging at the best of times. Often the biggest problem is: do I have enough money? Sit down with your mom or spouse and decide whether or not you have money with which to put a down payment on a house (do not do this standing up). Once this has been dealt with, it's time to hit the market!

1. Get pre-approved for a mortgage. By doing this, you will informally know how much money the banks might be able to lend you based on no real factual information and only the barest possible data and the most current interest rate (disclaimer: the preceding sentence is meant to be only representative estimate of the expected value of your mortgage and in no way influences the final outcome. Do not rely on this figure when purchasing a house).

2. Decide on what your housing needs are. For many people, this is the fun part! Unless you are married, in which case it is recommended that you seek relationship counselling upon completion of this phase (do not try to decide what your housing needs are while simultaneously riding a tandem bicycle. This creates a physically-improbable Black Hole in the relationship. See future content site article for further detail.). Here is a typical list of requirements for your First Starter Home:

3-bedroom house or condo or townhome (maybe), backing onto ravine with burglar fence and ultra laser security system, in downtown Toronto or East Gwillimbury, totally finished with just one room that is completely unfinished (a handyman's dream!), with sissy garage for 1 car and macho driveway for 1 car, forced air heating, hard wood or carpet, windows or not, $200,000.

You'll need to decide whether or not to rent out your basement (answer: no), and whether or not you like picking up rotting crab-apples every day of the autumn. If you do, get an apple tree in the backyard. Be sure to specify "Japanese Maple" as required flora, as those trees are very stylish right now and will get noticed by your Aunt.

3. Find a real estate agent. Now that you know how much house you can buy, it's time to find someone to help you do it. Some people like to just go find a house on their own and then navigate the paperwork. While this is not recommended, it is possible (see below for more detail). If you decide to go the easy route, simply find a real estate agent by Googling "real estate agent" and doing a proximity search from your current residence or place of business ("POB") in Google Maps. That's what we did. Seriously.

4. Procure your agent. Your real estate agent will be baffled that he or she did not have to claw their way into your life tooth and nail, and may be astounded that you have called them (ours was). This gives you what We in the Industry describe as Leverage. Simply put, you may now put several agents head to head in a grueling battle to the death of who will get to sell you a house. How? You can make the following reasonable demands. Ask them to drive you around and pick you up at your door. Require that at any and every given moment you can be shown three houses, all of which match your requirements exactly and completely. Request that a box of Timbits be made available to easy the burden of looking at homes. Require the agent to provide you with enough Ecstasy for you to admire the misery that you will soon call "Home".

5. Decide on a suitable region. This can be tricky, depending on what your commuting requirements are. There is a particular hierarchy of criteria that you will ultimately follow, so consider which of the following is important to you: commute to work, travel to babysitter, proximity to quaint coffee shops and bars, local culture and food, parks and recreation, dog-friendliness, price, Tim Horton Density Index, known film stars that reside in the area, legal restrictions pertaining to the use of human feces as lawn fertilizer, and distance from in-laws. These guidelines will ultimately point to Brampton, which is terrible, so consider Scarborough instead.

6. See some houses. My, how far we've come! This is surely enough content to be recognized by Google already, but nevertheless we will forge on. This is the step in which you view houses. Find one that you like, matches all your requirements, is within your pre-approved mortgage budget, and satisfies your wife.

(silence)

7. Putting in an offer. Let's assume that you find this magical house, for the sake of discussion. You'll need to put in an offer with the home owner's agent, who will require that you submit your Final Bid because there will only be one chance. The agent will then sell you out completely by getting the other agents to raise their offers and completely defecate all over their ethical obligations. This is normal, and will work in your favour in ten years when you become a seller. Except that you will simultaneously be buying another house, which will burn you once again. The only way to escape the cycle is to sell your house and then die. Look forward to that.

8. Doing the paperwork. If you have retained an agent, this part is all kinds of fun because you get to watch someone else do something thoroughly unenjoyable. However, if you've decided to "go it alone", then follow these handy content-site-style informative steps:

Review the contract to make sure there is nothing wrong. Hire an agent and/or lawyer if unsure.

Sign the contract in the appropriate areas, being sure to initial where you have made any changes.

Submit the contract to the seller. Smile a little, as this is considered a good moment.

Give the seller $20,000 as a down payment, or whatever you said that you'd give them when you made the offer.

9. You're not done yet! Don't break out the champagne, because there is one more step. Go back to the bank with your accepted offer in hand, and apply for your pre-approved mortgage. Your banker will open his desk drawer and roll a dice. If the numbers 3 or 4 result from the random dice toss (the dice is weighted), return to Step 1 and seek another mortgage.

Happy house hunting!

Being handy is hard in The Age of Content Sites

2011-03-20T18:52:00.000-04:00

Before I get into this, let me define "content site". A content site (like ehow.com or about.com) exists for the sole purpose of showing up at the top of Google searches and then hoping - praying - that you'll click on an ad. In order for them to get to the top of a Google search, they need to have pertinent content. So they hire professional writers - professional: n. a person that gets paid to do something, and pay: n. any amount greater than zero dollars - to copy and paste pertinent but completely useless content into an article that will rank at the top of a Google search, by virtue of the fact that someone searched for "wiring exhaust fan" and their article repeats those words the maximum number of times.

I hate these websites. Note that I have categorized this post under "Reactions to things that I hate", which is now my number 1 category!

I want to install a bathroom exhaust fan in my (spoiler alert!! big surprise coming!!) bathroom. Currently after a shower is taken, all the paint melts a little bit and sorts of leaches onto the tiles. Rita tells me that this is not from shower-related steam but from my paint-peeling....lactose problem. A small argument ensues. In order to reduce the number of bathroom-related arguments in my marriage, I want to install a bathroom exhaust fan.

This is easier said than done. In order to learn how to do this major bit of home renovation, I have to consult the internet. Stupid internet. No matter how I google it, asking the internet to tell me how to install a bathroom exhaust vent will yield pages of content sites. And keep in mind that, in this case, a content site is any site that wants you to click through and buy something. So now Rona is a content site, as well as Home Depot. That's really annoying; what am I supposed to do for real advise if I can't even go to the Rona site?

I won't tell you what kind of crap advice these sites generally give except for the two best ones. When it comes to electrically wiring your new exhaust fan, everyone generally agrees that you should either a) consult an experienced electrician (whatever, I can install a light fixture, I can do this too), or b) just attach the wiring from your existing fan to your new fan. What if you don't have an existing fan? Eff you.

But the best most satisfying, thing that I saw was the comment section of the last site I visited (here, but don't click on it unless you plan to leave a little pile of poop in their comment section). Apparently, someone else got similarly frustrated and posted this little gem (below), which was the top comment as rated by you, the reader. My favourite part is "if its raining - wait", because that's exactly the kind of common sense bullsh*t pseudo-advice that these sites deliver. It...seems like profound thinking, but....wait a minute...that's everyday common sense. Aha.

Greg writes - how to build a house

1. get a foundation. a basement or slab will do.
2. buy lumber and nails, maybe some sheet rock and wires too.
3. assemble the lumber into a pleasing configuration. use a hammer to put the nails in.
4. paint the inside and outside of the house. if its raining - wait.
5. crimp the electrical connections and turn on the lights.

People live in my basement

2011-03-17T18:19:00.000-04:00

When Rita and I decided to buy a house, we went for something with a finished basement because we thought we'd rent it out. And when we got what we asked for, we had to spend the better part of the last six months cleaning out all said basement, which was full of all our worldly possessions. I don't know why we have wetsuits anymore. Once upon a time that was a good idea.

Then, when we realized that although our basement is quite handsome as far as basements go it was less than suitable to live out of, we spent our Christmas break fixing it up. Example: the previous basement tenant left decals of Disney characters on the light switches. No water came out of the shower. And the fridge was covered in black fungus.

Finally, we filled the basement with beautiful Ikea furniture that we would never put in our own living space, but that we always wanted to purchase anyway (example: Enormous Ikea Photography, or "Blouurng"). And then we took some really stellar pictures of it and posted it online.

Initially, I was asking for probably ohhhhh $800 too much. That was why I only got one call, and it was from a guy with an enormous dog who kept calling to make sure we allow dogs. So I got angry and called that guy out as a criminal and a liar for his constant calling. And then Rita told me that Viewit accidentally set our ad to say that we allow pets. Whoops. So we corrected the price and had several people come to view it. There was an older single guy that was a business owner (he owned his own van - pervert), and then there were these people. They seemed nice.

But here's the thing about our tenants: I hate them now.

Well, hate is a strong word. What is the word for when every single thing that somebody says or does irritates the sh*t out of you? It's been two weeks since I last received any money from them and I'm beginning to lose perspective.

Here are a few of the things that I resent about the people that pay me to live in my basement:

They eat kraft dinner.

They keep their green bin bucket on the floor. I found it open once.

They make spaghetti right when I'm going to bed and I can smell it.

They slam the cabinet doors and make the dogs bark.

They make more than 1dB of noise when they are here, which also causes the dogs to bark.

I am worried that one day they'll go in the shower when I am in the shower, forcing me to have a cold shower.

They park the wrong way on the street in front of our house. No doubt the neighbours think that we have heroin addicts in our backyard.

When I told them that they park facing the wrong direction, they didn't understand what I was talking about. But they did know that they had received a parking ticket for it.

Occasionally, they play annoying music at a moderate volume. Mariah Carey music.

They live in my house.

So it's not the picnic that I had initially planned for. I think that I'll vent our upstairs bathroom directly into their kitchen one day, and that I'll prepare by drinking lots of milk and eating lots of yogurt and beer and chicken wings (together). Then we'll see who's laughing.

Hopefully there isn't anything in the tenant's act about that.

Gym malaise

2011-03-16T08:28:00.000-04:00

Now that Rita and I are beginning to shed our winter/wedding/honeymoon/lazy fat, we've been going to the gym a lot more. I have a strong preference for any kind of exercise that is not the gym, so it really says something that I'm willing to go now. I think it's because I'm afraid that our floor is going to fail if I do any more P90x. Plus, our gym is full of doofii (which I believe is the plural of doofus), which makes things even more desperate.

Take the pulldown machine. Can a brother do some pulldowns? No. Because there is an I-would-be-a-frat-boy-but-I-never-graduated-grade-ten kind of guy, wearing an Ed Hardy shirt, a freaking TOQUE, and designer sneakers that are not even done up, sitting there watching the girls on the treadmill. I'm pretty sure that if I wore a toque while working out, it would disintegrate from being so nasty that it's molecular bonds would break apart in shame. Option 2: I wouldn't really work out, to give my toque a chance. Maybe I'd add a pompom.

But can a brother get on a treadmill? Maybe. That depends on if I want the broken one, the one next to the stairs where everyone stares at me while they check in to the gym, or the one in the middle of two very uninspiringly lazy people that are kind of moseying/limping, as if they had the hips of elderly Labrador Retrievers. I thought I was supposed to be inspired by the gym.

Maybe I'll go do some of those machines that involve spreading my legs really wide (it has been called The Slutmaster before). Today, it was occupied for half an hour by a middle aged stripper that was practicing a move where she kind of squats and thrusts her ass out. I'm not kidding. She was doing hundreds of low-resistance reps of stand, squat and thrust ass, then return seductively to standing. Except there was nothing seductive about it. Believe me.

Maybe I'll go lift some free weights. Maybe I'll also quit my job, sell my house to buy supplements, end my marriage to free up some more time, and bulk up enough so that those asshole roid freaks stop staring at me as if I'm trying to deadlift my own arm. I thought this was a Scarborough gym, and while these guys definitely have a lot of "I have no job" time, I'm pretty sure that the welfare diet is low in protein.

Fine, I'll be judged right out of the free weights. Let me just go over to the mats and do some pushups and situps. Can a brother use one of those huge inflatable exercise balls? Nope, they are sort of flat. I CAN use the mats, which is where I end my workout. Always end on a good note.

Can I go to the gym after work? Yes. Can I use any of the equipment? Nope, they're all taken by Ed Hardy-wearing people that look very relaxed and not at all like they want to have a workout. The gym should serve coffee at the machines.

And can I watch TV while I run on the treadmill? Nope, I've already fallen off twice trying to watch multiple TVs at once.

I can't wait for some nice outside running weather.

What's hot and what's not

2011-03-14T06:36:00.000-04:00

Here at This Blog Is About Everything, we try to keep you up to date on fashion, current events, what’s trending, and the absolutely mandatory “what’s hot and what’s not”. This year (read: morning), our editors have assiduously, industriously, and a little flatulently observed the following cyber-trending (keep in mind that “trending” must always be in the present progressive, because otherwise it would not be a trend):

OUT – Facebook

IN – Lose-it app for iPhone.

Daring? No. So so so much better for our culture, health, and collective weight? Yes. Consider the following helpfully numbered arguments:

Facebook does not improve your life. It improves your cyber-façade, or what you’d like your image to be, but it doesn’t actually change anything about you. In fact, you only become “more so”, and that probably means more of all those things you’d like to change about yourself. I’m thinking of the Most Annoying Person I’ve Even Met (who has such a unique name that I can’t put it here but let’s call him “Baloo”, because that sounds similar and also conjures an image of an enormous blue bear that walks around with Mowgli), who spent hours and hours grooming his Facebook portfolio but also shed social points like dandruff.

Lose-it does improve your life. Because you lose weight. You don’t edit it out with Photoshop like you do on Facebook (I know what you do). I can’t help you with breast/chin size though.

Your Mom will never figure out Lose-it. Why? It’s an app, and people of the older generation have no use for doing things on a really small screen unless they are texting, using a GPS, or taking a blood sugar measurement. Lose-it can theoretically work on a computer too, but you can’t quickly and easily input your meals. And then you lie and cheat, give up, and continue to gain weight. Game Over. So it will only be successful as an app, which isn’t something that my Mom is going to use to look at your vacation photos.

McDonalds will not use Lose-it to market things to you. Has no one figured out yet that Facebook is spiraling towards certain death now that people are “fanning” Burger King? This isn’t cool. “People who flip their pillow over to the cool side” was cool, but those heady days of Facebook are now yesterday. There are so many reasons that McDonalds will not use Lose-it, but the most obvious is that you can’t heckle McDonalds for lying about how many calories he burned playing hockey last night.

Fat people are interesting. I think that Slice has conclusively driven this point home for us. Rita watches people lose weight over her breakfast corn flakes.

Teenage girls are boring. So boring. And they are 75% of Facebook in terms of users, user-hours, loser-hours, wall posts, ad-clicks (and that is a crucial made-up statistic, I hope you realize) and terrible cellphone-in-the-mirror profile pics. Slice doesn’t have any shows about teenage girls. MTV does. ‘Nuff said.

You can add your own exercises to Lose-it. This morning I went to add my apple cinnamon oatmeal breakfast to my log, when I discovered an alert that stated “Eric spent 5 minutes and burned 20 calories doing Taking A Dump”. I laughed until I left for work.

So get on the winning bandwagon, so that I can monitor your exercise regime and caloric intake. And heckle your lying.

What I want to be when I grow up

2011-03-12T08:46:00.000-05:00

One way of accurately describing me is to say that I want to do a lot of things. That applies across a spectrum of time-frames. Today, for example, I want to go for a run (check.), do the housework, go rock climbing, make a meal with quinoa, develop photos from Hawaii, install a kitchen vent in the basement apartment, and put a funny picture in this really big shiny silvery photo frame that we got as a wedding present. I'm thinking that it will be a portrait of one of the dogs. I also want to take the dogs for a walk, play some tavli, and get a quote on replacing the roof. I think I can do all of this today, even though I am now using that time to write this blog, which I admit is bad time management.

I also want to do lots of stuff when I grow up (which should have happened by now...). A few years ago I was at Heathrow waiting for a plane and drinking a beer, when the Most Enviable Man In The World started talking to me. He graduated as a geological engineer, but also had a penchant for rock climbing, which I also like, and photography, which I also like. So he combined all of those things, and his job description was that he would go rock climbing in various places of economic interest and take photos of potential oil-bearing formations for some huge oil company. Wow. Who gets to have the kind of job?

This guy did a great job of completely distracting me from focusing on my career. After watching the first seasons of Grey's Anatomy for example, I seriously considered writing the MCATs. I dropped that idea in Season 5, when all the characters became obnoxious overnight and Izzy tried to save a horse. I don't care for veterinary medicine very much.

Then Rita and I started watching Mad Men, and I wanted to be an advertising executive with expense account and wet bar. I still want to do this, especially after subscribing to The Age of Persuasion podcast. The only thing that stands in my way is that I can't figure out how to quickly and effortlessly switch careers at zero risk. Even Chandler lost his job doing the WENIS before he was able to kick himself into advertising. If you are reading this and you are in advertising, give me a shout. But only if your agency does witty or groundbreaking advertising. Otherwise, I'm not interested.

And then I started watching Californication. Voila. Here is a blog! Have I managed to attain the rank of Bad Boy blogger? Probably not. But I'll get there, just as soon as I can figure out how to create a fictitious and totally insane sex bender and then post it without getting a beating from my wife. There is still hope for me though; Hank Moody is also a writer and I, in turn, am trying to effortlessly and seamlessly write a blook. I'm probably just as clever as he is, and I also like to wear non-descript t-shirts all the time, so maybe that will work out. And then I can punch out some important people in public, just like Hank Moody.

Why am I writing this? I was cleaning out my bookshelf when I tripped over a book that I borrowed (and never gave back, ha!) called Tunnel Vision, which is the story of the author's attempts to effortlessly and seamlessly become a professional surfer, just by joining some international surfing events. I had also considered doing this after I had attained my (highly prestigious) Beginner's Degree in Surfing from Trigg Beach U. The book has all the important elements of a mid-life crisis. The author goes all over the place on loans, tries to train at surfing but ends up drinking a lot and wastes time being hung over (as I have also been known to do occasionally), meets some really dirty and limited individuals that he is very impressed by, actually surfs in some pro events, sucks at it, starts crying when his backpack is stolen, and ultimately becomes a stand-up comedian. This could be my life.

The only problem is: I can't practice surfing in Toronto. I can only do that stupid longboard version with the paddle, and I doubt that there are any really impressive pros that do that. It would be like calling a pro bowler impressive. And whatever I decide to do has to be very impressive. Very. So until we move to a place with a) nice surfing waves, and b) no other surfers around to distract or intimidate me, I'll have to focus on my blook. And maybe some human anatomy. Annnnnddddd a review of modernist art for my proposed ad executive career. And did I mention that I want to be a pro photographer?

It's a good movie, and I hated it

2011-03-11T08:41:00.000-05:00

I like the idea that a movie can be good but that I hated it. Or similarly, that a movie can be bad but that I liked it.

Lately there have been some good movies that people hate. I know two people that said that Black Swan was a fantastic movie, but that they hated it. Same with The Fighter. That's reasonable because there is nothing that is inherently great or appealing about Black Swan. You have to wean yourself on to movies like that. It's kind of like cigarettes.

I don't know any children, for example, that would be enthralled by a ballet/horror movie featuring light lesbian sex. Both ballet films and horror films really put me on edge. I don't mind lesbian sex. I was kind of distracted by how much weight Natalie Portman lost, and it was therefore not completely effective lesbian sex. And wasted lesbian sex might be worse than none at all. So was it a good movie? I think so. But maybe it's ok not to like it regardless. Or maybe I'll say that it was bad, but I liked it.

This new system of discussing movies would eliminate all the boring man vs. woman movie debates over which movies are good and which movies are not. For example, I like Bloodsport. I would never say that that is a good movie, because it has certain elements (an annoying stereotypical 80's blonde, Jean Claude in his tightie-maroonies, and not one but THREE flashbacks) that guarantee that it is not a good movie. So it's a bad movie, and I like it. However, JCVD is a very GOOD movie, starring Jean Claude playing himself, and I liked it. Go rent that.

Rita would benefit from this system, although it should be noted that we agree on movies in general and that she also likes Steven Segal, who runs like a girl. But anytime she enjoys a movie with Queen Latifah in it, or a movie about Jennifer Anniston not being able to find true love (I feel so bad for her...), or anything that goes direct to video, she could just write it off as a bad movie that she likes. But no. She's not into it. That would be admitting defeat.

And I'd probably just use it against her anyways. Back to square one.

Follow me on Lose-it! It's kinda like twitter for fat people.

2011-03-09T16:20:00.000-05:00

Many people are unaware of my battle against obesity. That is because I do not appear to be obese, according to your non-medically-trained unaware sense of ignorant perception. Luckily, I don't get my advice from you. I obtain medical advice for these things.

The last time I was at my current weight, I was getting my travel shots and physical before going to Perth. Those were heady times, always going out for dinner with friends, constantly drinking and designating Rita as driver (wine is high in calories hun!). And then my doctor ruined the party. He told me that I was obese, according to my BMI chart. That's right. At 6' and 190lbs, I am a big fat BMI fatty.

And I asked him, "Doctor! What can I do?!" and he suggested that I take up walking. My doctor doesn't know me very well. And then he gave me my tetanus shot while appearing to have a very small epileptic seizure. My doctor is also a little elderly. But he did tell me that I was fat, which makes him an impersonal but honest dinosaur. But I'm not bitter.

So then Rita and I went to Australia and got even fatter because we were homesick and needed ice cream to make us feel colder, like we felt in Canada. And bacon, to keep us warm from all the ice cream. And when THAT didn't work, and by this point I was really running out of ideas, Rita got a personal trainer (no one joins a gym in Australia, they all work out in parks and then ride their kangaroos home), a free pass to the gym at her clinic, and put us on a very strict diet of less than 1500 calories a day. That worked.

And now I have yo-yo'd back into obesity. There are several factors at play this time:

I hated my former job for the last 6 months and had been emotionally eating pudding snacks.

I have not been exercising because it is cold and the gym is too far and P90x doesn't stimulate me anymore and my floor creaks so I don't like to do those workouts anyways and plus we have someone living in the basement now so really it's out of the question, plus I'm tired and hockey is at all the wrong times.

I make french toast with a stick of butter, plus half a stick stuffed inside the toast. It's called Stuffed French Toast. Delicious.

Now, thanks to a very skinny friend of mine, I finally have a tool for combatting my fatness. It's an iPhone app! Bet you didn't see that coming. That app is called "Lose-it" and essentially it is a very nice calorie counter. You enter how much weight you want to lose (60 lbs) and how quickly you'd like to lose it (before bikini season would be nice for me) and bango. You've lost it.

Well, not before you do all sorts of "app-y" things. You have to enter all your meals and track your intake for the day/week/month, and you can add Friends and follow THEIR struggle with self-esteem. I am now following my very skinny friend, who is apparently -960 calories this week and is one day going to become anti-matter. I can even earn Badges, which is very important for me as I am a Goal Oriented Person (that's why I took karate instead of just learning how to fight). I've already earned Finally Manned Up, Good For You For Sticking With a Diet for Two Days, and Hey You Might Actually Do It This Time.

And because I have all these (fat) Friends, everyone can see my Badges. That makes me feel Highly Accomplished. I'll keep you posted as events warrant.

Update: I have not eaten anything since proof-reading this post.

Update: I had a pudding just after proof-reading this post.

Urge to kill fading

2011-03-07T07:32:00.000-05:00

I've been thinking about starting a new blog for a while. The only sticking point was the blog's name, which sort of defines the whole thing. So my real problem was that I didn't know what my blog was going to be about.

I had a few ideas. My best one was a blog called "I hate my job", which would be all about how much I despised going to work every day and why. I thought that this would definitely have to invoke Murphy's Law and that as soon as I published that blog, I would have a new job (hooray!). That worked a little bit too quickly, and now I have a new job, which I love. So I'm not going to write that blog anymore, or at least I might have periodic flashbacks if I remember something really truly awful. <cue flashback music> Like the time an engineer in my old office deflected her (professional) responsibility directly onto a (young) summer intern (who was already back at school). Yup. She's helping to build your transportation systems too.

In the meantime, I really like my new job. Here are some things that I like about it:

Unlike at my last office, we have engineers that fit in between "40 years experience" and "one year experience".

The new company gives its more senior people profit-sharing incentive. This means that I can ask a question like "how is our drafting done?" and not get the answer "just put something together in Word with some arrows, and we'll sort it out later or just forget and deliver it to the client as is". Or my favourite, "just get the 19 year old to put a drawing together. He can figure out what to do as he goes".

I can relate to my immediate supervisor, who is only 6 years older than I am. Not 50. Just 6. He is also good at managing his time, which means that I am also usually busy. I felt bipolar at my last job with the constant fluctuation of "so unbelievably bored" to "running around chaotically for no reason".

Our work is under budget and profitable, which makes me feel swell, and

I've already done more engineering work in my first two weeks than I have done in the last year for my prior office. And it's interesting, which is more than I could possibly have hoped for.

People here are starting to thinking I'm weird, because when they tell me that I have to do a numerical analysis and replicate consolidation parameters, I go all starry eyed and stop listening as I reflect on how nice it is to be doing that sort of thing. I need to stop doing that. In fact, there are a lot of things I need to stop doing. I've already broken most of my old bad habits.

The only one left to break is: blogging at work.

By request...

2011-03-04T05:51:00.000-05:00

...here is my never-before-seen blog about farting at work.

I got the position as Official Blogger for that ~~H&M marketing~~ men's website (dailyxy.com) by sending in the following letter, which I was proud to have spent a whole morning of company time on:

Hi Peter,

My name is Mike Diez, and I'm a big fan of DailyXY.com. Each morning, your website prevents me from having to undergo forced-socialization with my dreadful coworkers (I work in an engineering firm, you see) by allowing me to enjoy my coffee at my desk. That's a gift, and I'd like to repay you by coming to work for you as a staff writer.

As mentioned, I am currently an engineer, which is not at all interesting. I'll spare you by not sending my professional CV. However, I do have plenty of good writing experience:

I've vigorously maintained a humour blog, called No Hockey in the Outback. Here are some of my favourite entries: how to ask your landlord for something, iShoe, and the necessity of owning a manly pair of flasses,

I've taught engineering students how to present and write professionally, chiefly by eliminating emails that contain purposefully misspelled words (e.g. "cuz"),

I've placed third in a provincial debating competition by arguing that robots have a constitutional right to matrimony.

That being said, please consider me. For one, I am a man, which gives me tremendous insight into the world of man. I am also getting married soon, and I have all kinds of hilarious insights and anecdotes. I am well traveled, and would be delighted to share my knowledge of wats and nasi goreng in an environment that doesn't automatically make me a travel snob. How I yearn.

And finally, I will write passionately and amusingly for you, and I will help you continue to build your website into a tour de force.

(obligatory call me sentence here.)

Sincerely,
Me

That landed me the job. Then I wrote this for them, which was promptly rejected because it did not refer to enough times to Banana Republic. And, by the way, I even felt dirty writing this. You can tell that I'm trying to imitate an ultra-edited trash rag. They insisted that everything be numbered. Also, it was too long. They wanted something that was tweet length. There was no room for me there.

Bathroom Etiquette

Your office. For each man there is a different definition of “the office”, which could involve a desk, the cockpit of a Boeing 777, a 100 lb. jackleg drill and a backpack full of mining explosive, or a cash register at Lululemon. It really depends on how cool you are. But there is one thing that equalizes all office men: bathroom politics.

There is a certain etiquette that Office Man has to follow if he doesn’t want to be blacklisted as an anti-social bomb-dropper (and take our word for it, that can happen anywhere. Your correspondent has disgusted underground miners, a tower crane operator, and a panel of architects). Here are our top three ways to avoid offending your co-workers:

1) A really loud fart is not interpreted as harmless. This is an upsetting reality, as there is nothing more satisfying than cracking out that loud dry-clapping fart that your wife, girlfriend, or cat has grown accustomed to in the morning. It can be alienating when you’re caught in a supposedly-empty hallway while letting one rip. Turn it down nice and slowly, or just stick it in a supply cabinet where it can be muffled by the paper supplies.

2) People sniff around when entering the office loo. It is an inexplicable phenomenon (our vote goes to evolutionary biology), but your co-workers will take long hearty lungs of air in to determine if you have been anti-social and not employed the top-of-tank Febreeze (we prefer Axe, because of its bouquet of testosterone). Do the smart thing and give the toilet an Italian shower prior to your departure.

3) In the office, people will listen even harder when they know you are...going. No stall is your sanctuary. In your home, your children keep on watching TV. But your officemates will actually stop a conversation if they know that it is you, making that noise. Expect your audibility to be passive-aggressively brought against you at your next performance review. Mask it with a pre-flush (which is also pleasantly refreshing), or by reading the financial market news if you want that big promotion.

I did it. I named it.

2011-03-02T20:46:00.006-05:00

This was the post that started my new Wordpress blog. I came back to Blogger because wordpress was sneaking in all kinds of advertising that made me look like a lame opportunist. For me, it's always been about the blogging. Always.

But this post does mark my return to blogging, and my departure from the insanity of buying a house, planning a wedding, hating a job, and planning some parties that followed our return from Australia and defined most of 2010 for us.

The very hardest part about starting this new blog was naming it.

I once wrote another blog, here. That blog was easy to name, because it was supposed to be a corny travel blog that only my mother would read. The name meant nothing, the content was going to be all about travelling in Australia, and it would link to snazzy pictures.

Instead, I decided that I liked writing about everything. Sometimes at the expense of my wife (thank you Darling). I'd also muse about my landlords. There was an embarrassing post about my friend not correctly identifying a strawberry. There was an article about some junk mail I had received. Sometimes I wrote about what I want to be when I grow up. (Actually, that remains a hot topic, and it is for that reason that I am not using my full name on this website. Just in case my boss finds it while trying to google some bikini pictures of me.)

Now that I've named it, which I maintain was the hard part, I have to have some content. Here is what I am worried about now:

1) I will have nothing to write about. The last blog I wrote was really fuelled by Australia. Here is a good example of that. There will be no really interesting observations in Toronto, because I drive to work and listen to podcasts and shovel snow and I am definitely not in the land of luxury anymore. Plus, I worry that people found my writing of yesteryear interesting because it was about an interesting place, and also because it featured people that they knew (true statement: I was never aware of a regular reader of my blog that I didn't also know. That is absolutely true.)

2) I will try to make stupid things interesting, and fail. I know what you're saying. "Mike, that is what blogging is all about! That's why we read this trash!". I hope so because I don't actually, personally, like blogs at all. I like reading interesting bloggy stuff sometimes. I spent some time on Tucker Max. I like the Freakonomics podcasts. Ken Rockwell is all totally in your face with his (awful) photography and (excellent) advice. Those are really just glorified blogs.

3) I will build a monument to my own glory. My wife accuses me of this all the time (and, speaking of that, I really like Things My Girlfriend and I Have Argued About. I very nearly ripped it off several times. I think I actually did, once.). I used to strut around our apartment after writing something that I really liked. I also used to strut around when I made dinner, did any of the clean-up, or ironed my own shirts. There's already a lot of strutting going on, and I don't know if my floors can handle any more. And obviously, the whole idea is to get a blook deal. "Blook" has been my favourite word for a while now; I like it so much that I want to author one. And tell people that I have written a blook.

4) I will be like other bloggers, which I hate. That is pretty self-explanatory. I once very briefly held the position of Official Blogger for some stupid men's website. They liked the Australia-ish blog and wanted me to do some stuff for them, so I wrote a short article about farting at work. They wanted me to change it into an advice column and have really deep Cosmo-y insights (e.g. "When you need to pass some gas, do it in the bathroom! No need to take off the pants though, as gas will just pass right through them! Exclamation!") So I quit the shit out of that without posting anything.

5) You will not like it. When I was a bad-boy travel blogger, I didn't care what you thought, as long as I had included accurate descriptions of beaches. Now, I have metamorphosed into a (bad-boy) need-to-express-creativity-but-can't-play-guitar-live blogger, and I do care about you think. I really do.

I named this blog "This blog is about Everything" because I have every intention of changing the name as soon as I come up with something better. The important thing is: I have a blog now.

Fist bump.

Pictures have begun

2010-04-10T18:30:00.001-04:00

Trekkin' guide
Originally uploaded by Michael Diez d'Aux

I don't know if anyone is still following this blog (or if anyone did in the first place), but I've started sorting and posting pictures from our trip through Southeast Asia.

It's not easy going. We have 1,600 such pictures, which I have so far managed to cull down to 1,300. This must indicate that I feel that my own photography is getting so amazing that I can't even scrap my own pictures anymore. I used to be able to chop them in half without batting an eyelash.

On another note, I'm thinking of starting a new blog that is not title-specific to Australia. Stay tuned to see if I can actually muster it up.

We were on a boat

2010-03-14T08:10:00.005-04:00

Heed this advice, internet.

When we arrived in Hanoi, we had a few very specific goals to accomplish. We wanted to buy propaganda posters from the American war (as they call it, at least). We wanted to buy a huge gourmet meal for under $20. We saw the War Museum, which is situated in the former POW camp known by the Americans that resided there (John McCain included) as the "Hanoi Hilton". We also visited, and attempted to sneak into the gym of, the real Hanoi Hilton. Sadly, they were not selling humorous postcards.

The big goal was to get to Halong Bay for a cruise on one of the old junk style boats. Halong Bay was the finish line for the Top Gear Vietnam Special, and Top Gear made it look like the holiest of holy (geological) paradises. It's a bay full of beautiful towering limestone cliff islands. The cruises generally involve going slowly through the towering limestone spires, visiting caves, and weeping softly about how beautiful it is.

However, our plans hit a speedbump when we heard about the experiences of a few of the other guests in our hotel. Three other small groups like us booked spots on the junk boat that we were eyeing, but after the three hour drive to Halong they found out that the cruise had been canceled for that night because the captain had forgotten to pay bribes (that's the Hanoi Opera Cruise, Google).

The single lady decided to come back to the hotel, and hired a cab with a few other (irritated) people to take them to the bus terminal. They haggled a price, and then the driver took them to the middle of nowhere and exploited them for three times that price before bringing them to the bus terminal.

The family of parents and screaming crying spoiled children decided to find another boat that had all of its bribes paid up. They found one that charged them slightly less for the cruise, and took that one. That boat then brought them to an island, let them off, and told them that the price they had paid was "one way only". So they had to pay double to get back on the boat. They were also asked to board a small boat with a few sketchy-looking men in business suits, but they declined.

The French guys found yet another cruise that would take them. However, the French guys made the mistake of forgetting their passports at the hotel, which is a boo-boo in Halong Bay. When cruising Halong Bay, you must show passports to show that you are a foreign visitor on a licensed tour, because the Bay is a UNESCO site and they want to protect it. So they beat you up for not having one. The police came on their junk in the middle of the night and beat them up for not having passports. There are also stories of the police (or whatever you'd call them) throwing people overboard.

Luckily, none of this happened to us and we had a delightful cruise. It wasn't sunny, but at least we didn't get beat up in the middle of the night. No one even asked us for ID. The food was excellent. We did tai chi at dawn. Very nice.

On the way back to the hotel, our van passed a fresh motorcycle accident on the highway. That was horrifying. The man appeared to be dead. I only mention it because people in cars were throwing money out their windows as they passed the accident, apparently for the victim or his family. The ground was littered with money. That was awesome, in the literal sense of the word.

Pierro gets culinary

2010-03-10T08:59:00.002-05:00

Occasionally, I like to have a go at Pierro. As the Australians say, I sometimes like to take the piss. I have the perfect opportunity to do that right now, because Pierro is taking a shower and I am in the hotel lobby with dollops of internet.

We just had dinner at a very fancy French restaurant in Hanoi called Green Tangerine. Expensive dining in Hanoi is lots of fun because a dinner including some alcohol, appetizers, meat, dessert, and coffee costs about 600,000 Dong per person (40 bucks). Reasonable, I think. We figure that our meal would have cost us at least $100 per person in Toronto.

Pierro got right into it. To his credit, the meal was awesome and very French, which implies rich flavours in small portions. He was analyzing flavours, deducing cooking methods, commenting on food combinations, and raving in general. He was expounding upon his respect for the proprietor (who brought us our desserts) and how this man clearly knows his kitchen.

When the garcon came at the end to deliver our bill, Pierro asked what the delicious red fruit was that had the sweet almost tarty taste. His hands were really working at this point, attempting to materialize the mysterious red fruit so that the garcon could inspect it.

The guy looked at him a bit sideways and replied "strawberries".

Can't wait until Pierro reads this!

Vietnam bureaucracy stories

2010-03-09T07:59:00.006-05:00

We are in Hanoi, and it wasn't easy getting here. In the first place, Rita and I both ate the same faux-mexican cuisine at a Bangkok food court last night, and we both had cataclysmically painful and violent gastrointestinal revolt. Plus, we had to run around until midnight looking for late-night passport photos for our Vietnam entrance visas, failing miserably. Plus plus, Rita woke up in the middle of the night to find that some mysterious Thai insect or cobra had struck her in the ring finger, which had swelled to twice its normal size. After a 3am icepack search expedition and some rudimentary first aid (a la Eric, I offered to pee on her finger but she didn't find that helpful at all) we had a quick power nap and woke up for 4am to catch a taxi to the airport. Then I crankily and unhelpfully picked approximately ten fights with Pierro, the security gate guard, and the Sunscreen Lotion Confiscation Officer 1st Class.

So that sucked.

I took a pissed-off power nap on the plane and suddenly we were in Hanoi. Hooray! I had waited for that moment ever since watching the Top Gear special. Not so fast. We deplaned the plane (what an awesome travel verb too, I might add) and went to Hanoi visa services, where we were promptly reminded that Vietnam is a communist country. We were asked to fill out lengthy forms in triplicate by epaulette-sporting officials. We were told to stand in two separate lines, which actually turned out to be "passenger clustering areas" with no regard whatsoever for priority.

Occasionally, Official Man would pace back and forth in front of us holding passports. Some people owned those, and they were escorted to the desk to fill out extra forms. How Official Man got those passports was beyond us, until we realized that we had to walk past his desk to another desk to hand in our passports for scrutinization and stamping (so much stamping).

They were able to help us with our lack of photos, thankfully. They just took our picture on a circa 2000 digital camera, and just kind of kept it in the camera (probably because that's just easier). Our papers went into the same enormous pile as everyone else's, never to be seen again. What makes me think that? The pile was about two feet high and spilling over the desk.

We had to pay in American dollars, because not even Vietnam customs accepts Vietnamese Dong (a penny is 200 Dong I believe). Thank God that Pierro had American money. There were other passengers pacing back and forth asking others if they could borrow American cash until they were past visa services.

And, after two hours and three trips to the toilet (the Mexican seige on my bowels had not yet ended) we left the airport.

Video clips

2010-03-07T22:18:00.001-05:00

Muay Thai at Lumpini
Originally uploaded by Michael Diez d'Aux

Rita and I have started to take some travel video. Well, initially it was all Rita, and I would stand beside her and complain about how stupid it is to take video. I stand firm on that belief. However, I now support the medium of the "video clip", which is superior to "video".

Most importantly, you can take video clips with a regular point-and-shoot camera. We've been to a lot of airports over the past month, and we've been to a lot of touristy places, and the video-camera is making a huge comeback. I don't want one of those, because then I will become a white trash tourist. Don't get me wrong, we don't exactly feel like we fit in with the locals, but I would still rather see things with my eyes rather than through a 2.5" handycam screen.

The video clip is good because it takes up exactly one minute of time, and it captures all kinds of things that take a lot of time and effort to get with a regular camera. Like Muay Thai, for example. The flying knees in this video clip (courtesy of Rita) look fast and painful. That's the way I prefer to enjoy my flying knees. And the last move is awesome.

Rita snaps a winner

2010-03-04T07:57:00.001-05:00

Thai child in alley
Originally uploaded by Michael Diez d'Aux

Today, we went on a self-guided walking tour through one of the older parts of Bangkok, Banglamphu. It's kind of like the Annex in Toronto, in terms of it's proximity to the financial centre and it's historical significance. But on a Bangkok scale.

First, we had to take a ferry from the city centre to Banglamphu. Bangkok has a very old network of hand-dug canals called khlong which used to act as roads through the city. Most of them are now filled and paved over, but some of the more important ones still exist. The ferries are only about 2m high, but they have roofs that can be lowered even further for low bridges. The roof is canvas on a metal frame pinned to the boat, and when they are about to pass under a low bridge (quickly, I might add) they just push the whole frame and it kind of tilts backward like a giant parallelogram. And it hits Pierro in the face, because he was standing in a bad spot. He thought he broke the roof.

Moving on. We got off the ferry and I immediately had an exploding diarrhea emergency caused by our lunch. Luckily, the King's Museum was close by. I gave a 20 Baht donation for the trouble but I would gladly have paid 2000. Then we went for our walk.

Rita and Pierro were taking pictures while I guided us with the help of our trusty book. We found a lot of very interesting "off the beaten path" types of places, which we duly took one jillion pictures of, but the Monk's Bowl Village was maybe the most memorable. It is essentially an alleyway containing maybe eight families that make alms bowls for the monks by hand. It wasn't exactly the most luxuriously appointed destination that we have been to, however, it was the most interesting.

Rita got this shot of a child climbing into his crib on the side of the alley. I think it sums up the moment excellently.

Most of the Bangkok that we've seen is nothing like this, but maybe that's why this image is so good.

An evening of noodles and street fighting

2010-03-03T08:39:00.003-05:00

I am not a religious person, but thank God for Ying's aeroplan points. We had a fantastic final two days basking in luxury at the Marriott Mai Khao Resort in Phuket. Of note, we got drunk on port and brandy sours at a swim-up bar in a pool with palm tree planters in the middle. And we went swimming a lot. The air conditioning was top notch. Look for the video as soon as our digital camera has dried out (it found its way into the pool too, but is expected to make a full recovery).

But now we have moved on to a city called (and this is for real) Krung Thep Mahanakhon Amon Rattanakosin Mahinthara Yuthaya Mahadilok Phop Noppharat Ratchathani Burirom Udomratchaniwet Mahasathan Amon Phiman Awatan Sathit Sakkathattiya Witsanukam Prasit. In English, that translates to: "The city of angels, the great city, the eternal jewel city, the impregnable city of God Indra, the grand capital of the world endowed with nine precious gems, the happy city, abounding in an enormous Royal Palace that resembles the heavenly abode where reigns the reincarnated god, a city given by Indra and built by Vishnukarm".

The short form is Krung Thep Mahanakhon ("Metropolis of the Deity") or, more commonly, Bangkok.

Pierro has a pretty set-in-stone itinerary for Bangkok. He wants to ride or play with an elephant, and he wants to see live muay thai. That's full contact Thai kick boxing, Mom. In standard Pierro style, he has visited lots of websites and made accurate notes about the names and importance of a number of world-famous muay thai schools. He has visited the culture minisity's website. He has done his homework.

And then we saw a ring set up in the street across the road from our hostel. The sign read "Muay Thai Fighting, Wednesdays, free ticket". And today was Wednesday.

Pleased with our luck in hostel choosing (we are located in Siam Square for anyone that has an abundance of Google time at work), we went for noodles. They were fantastic. Then we settled down to ring-side seats for a full six fights, including one pro demo match.

It turned out that we were viewing the amateur circuit, which was fine because that has no implication whatsoever to the intensity. In fact, nothing does. The two 110lb high school students went ballistic on each other (that fight was won by KO). The worst fight of the night was two Thai women, which spent the first round feeling each other out before going insane with head kicks (that was a KO too).

And the final fight featured an enormous Swede demolishing a Thai in the first round with liver punches.

We love Bangkok.

Pierro posts a blog

2010-03-02T20:41:00.002-05:00

Here's a link to Pierro's new blog:

rexgrammaticus.wordpress.com

As Pierro is an aspiring writer, I am confident that his posts will be fantastically interesting, filled with challenging yet unobtrusive vocabulary, and somewhat witty. However, they may be somewhat infrequent until he can tear himself away from his mixed martial arts gossip rags.

I swear, it's like watching a teenage girl with Bop! magazine.

Thailand is tricky

2010-03-02T01:29:00.005-05:00

At first, we really didn't like Thailand. Our Lonely Planet book "Southeast Asia on a Shoestring" is filled with warnings about Thais trying to scam you. They will try to sell you some polished glass under the pretext that it is a rare and valuable stone that is grossly undervalued in Thailand, and can be yours for only $200. Local Thais may tell you that the temples are closed and then direct you to some gift shops instead. We were filled with a heightened sense of awareness when entering Thailand.

Leaving the Phuket airport, we bought a taxi ticket from the Official Counter of Taxis to get us to our hotel in the port town. The cab driver was dressed in a uniform and had an official cab. He then brought us to a travel agency and told us that he didn't know the way to our hotel, but his friend could help us. Help us? Yes, we could find a new hotel (at ten times the price).

Thankfully, Rita had the address of the hotel written down, as well as a map. Rita actually had to show the travel agent con artist where we had to go so that he could communicate to the cab driver, who had suffered from temporary brain injury and had forgotten how to speak English, which is what he spoke when we left the airport.

Then we wanted to go to Ko Phi Phi, or Pee Pee Island as it is called in the tourism industry. Pee Pee Island was where the Bond movie The Man with the Golden Gun was filmed, and it is among the very best places in the world for scuba diving. It is also the British Caribbean, and all of the guys in my office knew it well. It was not a difficult decision to go to Pee Pee. The difficult part was getting there.

Firstly, all the dive shops are on the island itself, so you need to go to Pee Pee first and then organize your diving. Touts will try to sell you boat tickets at two or three times the price. We found a cab driver that knew a woman at the port that knew a dive shop owner on Pee Pee. So we bought boat tickets and prepared to go.

The boat was nearly a catastrophe. We showed up half an hour early with our "luxury" tickets and were rewarded for our tardiness with seats in the bottom of the boat (the puke zone which also smelled of fish) or spots on the roof of the boat, where we would almost immediately be fried to a crisp for lack of any shade. It became obvious that all 700 passengers were "luxury" class. Seething with anger, I elbowed a few tourists and cleared some room on one of the side walkways, which is where we spent the next two hours. Luckily it was on the shady side of the boat.

The diving was unbelievable. Our dive shop arranged some cheap air conditioned rooms for us. All the divemasters were incredibly fit, very professional and knowledgeable, and covered with tattoos. Everyone spoke four languages. Our experience with that shop did nothing to persuade us that we shouldn't move to Pee Pee Island and become professional divemasters. I'd love to get a whole collection of super cool Thai tattoos.

We did three dives, the last of which was a special night dive training course. Rita and I got lost on the underwater navigation segment of this course. Getting lost underwater in the night is a freaky freaky thing. I was startled by an enormous fish with blue and green stripes (much like the t-shirt that Pierro has opted to wear for 95% of this trip). Then we were surprised by a massive rock wall that sort of appeared two metres from our heads. Rita was totally spazzing, but I held it together and remained cool. We surfaced and found our divemaster, who was an impossible 50m away from us. Night diving is weird.

Conclusions? We haven't gotten to Bangkok yet. So far it's been exhilarating ups and maddening downs. I feel as though that will be the story for the rest of our Thailand trip too.

The Malaysian outback

2010-02-25T04:31:00.008-05:00

Nope, no hockey there either...

Kuala Lumpur was excellent. For one, they did coffee properly, which is a loaded statement coming from people like us that have just lived in Australia. Their coffee involves ice, a bit of milk, and sugar, but mostly coffee. No cream or ice cream, no sundae spoon, and it costs 50 Canadian cents. We were always in high spirits after breakfast because of the coffee, as well as the fellow-traveler love.

Alas, it was not all smiles and sunshine for me. I got greedy. After getting a photo of Pierro giving the "shocker" sign in front of the Petronas Towers, I scheduled us to move on. We went to Pulau Tioman, which is a tropical island off the east coast of Malaysia. My thinking went something like this: hey, it's close to Singapore, so we'll just stop there on the way! It looked very reasonable on the map. And thusly, we spent 20 of the allocated 48 hours doing nothing but traveling.

Ok, enough with the negative. The island was exacly what I was looking for: rural. Every toilet was a hole in the floor. Toilet paper was not a forgone conclusion. Even the toast was spicy. Rita has a very plausible theory about this, which I am inclined to support. It goes like this: in a country that can't even serve a can of Coke Lite without chillies, why would they want to use anything other than soothing cold water for...you know. Fascinating, isn't it?

There was only one "road" through our village on Tioman, and it consisted of a 2m-wide pavement that tourists share with motorbikes, some of which have sidecars and are used as taxis. To get between villages (collections of huts and chalets surrounding beaches) you have to go by boat. Our chalet was made out of clapboard. And the whole island was covered in jungle.

Being completely surrounded by jungle, I thought it necessary to trek through it. So we hired a local guide and gave it a go. Rita was not enthralled. Pierro was progressively more and more excited about the trek until he lost his footing and fell onto a pile of ratan. Ratan is very nice when in the form of a basket or a chair, but in the jungle it is covered with thousands of long sharp black spines that stick in you and give you a very sore bum. He's still picking them out of his hand.

For laughing at him, I caught a sharp hook from one of the other vines and nearly had my ear pierced as a result. The jungle is tough but fair. Rita escaped unscathed, and never laughs at anyone other than me. Lesson: learned.

I've gone and eaten too much rice again

2010-02-21T19:08:00.002-05:00

I have a soft spot for spicy fried rice. It began in Bali with nasi goreng, which is rice with chicken and a fried egg (sunny side up and runny) on top. They call it the "Good Morning Rice" because most hotels serve it as traditional Balinese breakfast. It can be seasoned with peanuts, chillies, lime, all kinds of excellent oils and spices, and a fried egg of course. I love it.

Malaysia has a similar dish called nasi lemak which is served with a hard boiled egg and dried anchovies. I love nasi goreng so much that I did not hesitate to inhale my nasi lemak on our recent teeny tiny flight. An abundance of dried anchovies in the morning is not something that I wish to experience again.

But I digest. I'd been reading about the culinary mecca that is Kuala Lumpur for a while before arriving. After racial riots sometime in the late 60's, the country has been fiercely multiracial with an ethnic mix of Malay, Chinese, Indian, and Indigenous peoples. They are very proud about it. I'm very happy too because the restaurant beside our guesthouse serves curry bowls, noodles, roti and daal, paneer dishes, all kinds of nasi goreng, fried chicken, and coconut drinks (to name a few).

In fact, our restaurant has an entire nasi goreng menu! I can have it with prawns, omelette, beef (no pork typically, as this is a Muslim country) and all kinds of other things. I've tried the Chinese version of nasi goreng too. Different, but delicious.

And now I am constipated.

Exodus from Perth

2010-02-20T02:18:00.006-05:00

We've been a hurricane of activity for the past three weeks, but I am pleased to announce that we are finally out of Australia. It's been slightly bittersweet this past week, but we are out. We're carrying around most of the clutter from our apartment that we couldn't throw away, but we're out. I have three empty bicycle water bottles in my pack, but we are out.

We had an excellent last day in Perth. The guys from my office organized a small after-work soccer match as a kind of send-off, or more likely just any reason to play soccer. Naturally there were injuries, and today I am sporting a massive swollen purple toe which was promptly abused by excited Chinese people on the flight this morning. We went for beers after the game, we went to bed at 1am, and we woke up at 3am for our flight to Kuala Lumpur.

To contrast the sweetness of spending time with friends on our last day, we cruelly suffered at the hands of bitterness as, once again, we had to ride in a Perth taxi (company motto: We have twice the number of drivers we need, but we still won't guarantee pickup times for the airport) to the airport. If this blog is the #1 Google result for "awful terrible Perth drivers" then I will emerge triumphant. The cab driver tapped the gas pedal as though he were playing the bass drum in a metal band. Rita nearly lost it all over his cab. If anyone out there in Internet Land can substantiate my theory that pumping the gas is required in Perth driving exams, I will buy that person a Coke.

But I digress. Arriving at the airport at 4am, we paused for a moment to battle nausea and then checked in for our ultra-cheap Air Asia flight. I was pumped to travel with Air Asia because the flight was as expensive as a ham sandwich and it even came with breakfast (nasi lemak with dried anchovies!). Readers, let me tell you from first hand experience that the sensation of eating spicy rice and anchovies on a flight as tightly packed as a Tokyo subway car, after only one hour sleep, is distressing. I was thankful that the airplane bathrooms were luxuriously large (I was able to sit down without smacking my face on the sink faucet).

Pierro did not fare so well. All of the jokes about the potentially humourous dimensions of a budget Asian airline are founded in reality. Pierro's knees were jacked into the armrests of the seat in front of him, and he couldn't recline because the seats actually slide forward when you try to max out on Air Asia. He mainly tried to sleep by sticking his face to the seat in front of him. Halfway through the flight, I felt pangs of guilt and charity and raised the armrest between us. And now I know what it is like to be in a package of hot dogs.

I'm not going to try to do the Pan Asian Trip justice by actually writing about things that we actually did (surprise!). I just can't motivate myself to snuggle up with thesaurus.com and attempt to describe the Petronas Towers (current attempt: majestic and audacious). So instead, I am going to just recount the funny things that happen to us as we go through Southeast Asia.

I just hope that 18 stories about Pierro running for the toilets in seven countries will serve as a useful archive for future reference. Hopefully, he'll try to run for office one day, and this blog will be there to keep him honest. I won't try that with Rita though. I already get slapped around enough.

Can(t)yoning

2010-02-10T01:38:00.002-05:00

We were supposed to go canyoning in the Blue Mountains, close to Sydney. It was a bit rainy on the train-ride into the mountains, and by the time we were doing our abseiling (rappelling) orientation it was intermittently pouring. I wasn't fussed, everything would be fine.

On the drive from the rappelling course to the canyon, the downpour was constant and violent. I remained optimistic that we would still be taking the canyon plunge.

On the not-insignificant hike into the canyon, other canyon guides were coming out and giving us the thumbs-down. Poppycock, I say.

At the bottom of the canyon, I was nearly at the point of bribing our guides. The river looked very fast (which is obviously desirable, in my opinion) and the volume was excellent (read: high). Our guides called it a day for the third time in 15 years. I was very upset.

The next day, a landslide triggered by heavy rain caused one of the commuter trains in the mountains to derail. I was still sad that we didn't get to go. After all, the landslide would have been after we had gone canyoning, not during.

And thusly, we went "can't"yoning.

Andre gets a parrot to the FACE

2010-02-09T10:01:00.002-05:00

Australia Day

2010-01-28T07:16:00.006-05:00

I dedicate this one to Sheena.

I apologize for being temporarily absent. Rita and I have been packing our life into little boxes, and throwing most of it away. I nearly wept when I had to decide which hair wax to bring and which to leave in Australia. I nearly wept because Rita back-handed me in the head and reminded me that I no longer have hair to wax. Such is life. But what she doesn't know is that I've snuck all three waxes into her backpack. Ha!

Tuesday was Australia Day, which brought a lot of hype this year because last year over 400 people were arrested in drunken riots and fights. As I am told, what happened was that people got to the river foreshore at 10am to get the best spots and brought "eskies" full of beer with them. Then they drank in the sun until 8pm, when the fireworks were scheduled to begin. But they got bored halfway, and decided to have a massive fight and damage property. The epicentre of the riot was one block from our apartment!

Needless to say, we were really hoping to be in the centre of the action this year. All was for nought. Perth learned its lesson from last year, when they only banned open bottles in public. What this meant was that the infinitely adaptable Australians (who, let's not forget, did manage to settle Australia without even developing tans) were walking around chugging beers and then throwing away the empties. The key to avoiding that crackdown turned out to be minimizing the amount of time that you had an open bottle in your hand.

Perth declared this Australia Day to be a bone-dry one, and Perth actually enforced it. The police were going to fine anyone caught with any alcohol in public, open or closed. There were posses of ten cops, all bedecked in faintly homosexual fluorescent vests, walking every 100m or so. That's a lot of cops. Rita and I went for a walk along the foreshore - it was 40C, so we walked quickly - and didn't see one bottle. That is, until we came across the weeping teenage girls sitting in their miniskirts in the bushes surrounded by champagne bottles. But I don't think you can avoid those at a family event here. I'm sure that the cops caught them and sent them to a huge gay fluorescent concentration camp.

All of this sobriety led up to the $400,000 half-hour fireworks display. It was absolutely unbelievable. There were 8 or 9 boats shooting fireworks. The entire thing was choreographed to music (some of which was Australian) on the main radio station. They had the song names being projected on the tallest building in the CBD so that it was like a giant bulletin board that you could read from across the river. The whole thing was kicked off with a helicopter flying the most massive flag that I have ever seen below it, with another helicopter shining a spotlight on it. Now that's production value.

While the helicopters were flying the 900 sq. metre flag, the national anthem played on the radio. I noticed that no Australians stood for or sang the national anthem, and I asked about this at my office. The reason is very interesting: the national anthem has only existed for 20 or 30 years, and middle-aged people never learned it at school. So no one knows it, and the kids sure aren't going to start singing it. They show their patriotism in other ways, like wearing the Australian flag as a sombrero, a cape, a lower back slut-tattoo, and a micro-bikini.

Instead, what they do sing is the unofficial Australian national anthem, which I thought was absolute gold. It's a 50's folk song called (something) Australia Fair, about how drinking with Duncan is fun, because Duncan's me mate. I can't do it justice, so just wait for it to be played at Duncan's next birthday party.

Frickin' love

2010-01-22T05:30:00.003-05:00

We are very excited at Outpost South. In exactly one week, I will be finished work and we will go to Sydney to meet Pierro, Andre, Sheena, Eric, Tom, Ying, and Areti, who just bought her ticket TODAY. I frickin' love group travelling. We can't wait.

On top of that, I just read Eric and Sheena's blog from the east coast. They look like they are having an amazing time. There is a picture of Sheena holding an enormous fish that perfectly epitomizes travelling, for me at least. Things that I would never be able to do anywhere in the world except the Great Barrier Reef include holding a tame yet wild Napoleon fish named Wally. I frickin' love Napoleon fish now.

On top of that, Rita has been busy booking and organizing the Pan-Asian. I came home today to find that we were booked to do a 2-day cruise through Halong Bay, Vietnam (of Top Gear fame) on a wooden junk that features kayaking through the caves. Plus, she made a curry. I frickin' love Rita.

And on top of THAT, Entourage has gotten really good! Rita tells me that I have better legs than Vince, the main character and big star actor. I am now contemplating a future as a Hollywood actor. However, I also really like the job of the agent, Ari. He's got a law degree and he's not afraid to kick some ass. I could be a Hollywood agent. I can certainly wear those suits. As a career, 'agent' fits me better than 'surgeon', which is what I wanted to be after watching the first two seasons of Grey's Anatomy. It also seems more appropriate than 'advertising executive', which is what I wanted to be after watching Mad Men. However, it does not fit me as well as 'bad-boy writer slash blogger', like Hank Moody in Californication. I think that I'm clever enough to do that. I frickin' love Hank Moody.

And if that's not enough (and by now I realize that it probably is), we've got the Australia Day holiday coming up next week. Last year, South Perth erupted into a 400-person drunken brawl. The main intersection by our apartment was the epicentre of the riot. They were vandalizing cars (not a problem for us anymore), smashing bottles, and beating the crap out of each other. So we are told. This year, Australia Day is being dubbed a dry one by the city, in an effort to avoid the rampant drunken violence created by rich white people arriving at the park at 10am and chugging beer in the afternoon sun. The foreshore parks are now a maze of temporary fences and gates. I frickin' love Australian drunken lunacy.

Best travel information for Perth on the Internet

2010-01-16T02:35:00.008-05:00

Now that we've been living in Perth for a year and have friends coming to visit, Rita and I have been thinking long and hard (tee hee) about the best way to optimize a one-week Tour de Perth. A quick Internet search reveals that the contemporary deep thinkers on this topic betray varying levels of mental retardation. Word to the wise, deep thinkers: no one comes to Perth for the shopping except bogans from Manjimup.

Internet, for your consideration, here is the best possible way to spend a week in Perth.

Day One has a special importance to me because I am a believer in the oh-so-critical first impression. As we fly in at noon, we'll get settled and then go straight to Cottesloe Beach, because it will be extremely hot and everyone will want to see the Indian Ocean for the first time. We'll go to Leederville for dinner and drinks, exposing the night life and culture sides of Perth. I may decide to blindfold our travel buddies on the way from the airport, so that they don't see Welshpool. Dégoûtant.

Day Two can be all about South Perth and photography, allowing for more coffee and food time by subtracting the "extremely hot car" component completely. We'll start with a swim at the Wesley College pool, or a run on the foreshore, followed by brunch on Angelo Street at the Secret Garden Cafe. We'll then proceed on foot to the Perth Zoo before heading to Ciao Italia for dinner. I like this restaurant because it captures the fundamental aspects of true Perth dining: one, it is BYO; two, there are no reservations and you have to wait outside, drinking; and three, the food is really amazing. Even if the space is small. At sunset, we'll go to Como and photograph the Preston Street Jetty before proceeding to Mends Street for coffee and pictures of the CBD at night from the Mends Street Jetty.

Day Three will be a Fremantle day, because Fremantle is infinitely interesting for people that like to walk and have cameras. We'll take the train and go to Fremantle Prison for a guided tour. I was torn about suggesting this as a Day Three item because the prison is historically very important for Perth, and should be one of the first stops. The prison is architecturally impressive, the tours are amongst the best that I've been on, cameras are encouraged and the price is good (especially because we have the Perth coupon book). Fremantle is easily a whole day as we'll see the Shipwreck Museum, go to the pier for photography and seafood, have a walk through the old areas and the promenades, learn some didgeridoo, and hit up the cappuccino strip for Mexican food followed by churros and chocolate for dessert. My perfect Fremantle evening involves sitting at Mad Monk, drinking hand-made beer, and watching Perth girls try to walk to the clubs while wearing their boobs, micro-skirts, and teetering on clear stilettos. This is an important part of digesting Perth culture, and is even observed in the comment section of my last post.

Day Four is a special day, because we are going sailing on the Swan courtesy of a senior engineer in my office. It is generally agreed that if you have the opportunity to sail on the Swan, you take it. We'll start the day with the all-important surfing lesson at Scarborough Beach before heading to King's Park for amazing views of the city. This will also serve as a good point for beginning a walk through the CBD, which is a necessary item on any Perth itinerary (although I disagree with most of the previous deep-thinkers on this subject; it is not the primary item). We'll then head to the Royal Perth Yacht Club for a social evening of sailing and drinking on the Swan. The club also does a very nice barbecue on Thursday nights, which we'll partake in. NB - For readers that do not have this privilege, you can rent sailboats on the south foreshore for $40 or so, which is definitely worth it.

Day Five is possibly the beginning of the "rental minivan portion". We'll pick up our wheels and head north to Cervantes, to see the Pinnacles. This is a fundamental part of seeing Perth because it is a drive through the outback, which everyone needs to do in my humble opinion. It is also good for Andre, as he needs to put in a minimum amount of driving for any trip to truly be considered a vacation. Doing it on our own (as opposed to on a tourist bus), we'll leave at lunch (possibly after a nice swim and some morning Spanish), and check into the most impressive hostel that I've seen. We'll jam on over to the Pinnacles for sunset photos, and then have a relaxed evening of dinner at the bowling alley, which has a great seafood platter I'm told. In the morning, we'll explore a bit more and then split.

Day Six begins with the return drive to Perth, and possibly another surf lesson, at Trigg Beach this time. We'll rent bicycles from somewhere (Bikeforce has them, but I don't like that place very much) and do a ride that circumnavigates the Swan, starting in Burswood at the casino and crossing over into East Perth for pictures and beers in that super-posh neighbourhood. You know which one I'm talking about. We'll ride along Riverside Drive, up to Leederville for some dinner, and then over to Nedlands, ending our day with an outdoor movie at Camelot or the UWA theatre, whichever is playing a non-Australian movie. I've seen Beautiful Kate, and I'll never see another one.

Day Seven is a Rottnest day. As Rottnest indisputably has the very best beaches in the area, we must finish on this high note. We'll take the early ferry from Fremantle and hire tandem bicycles very quickly (admin time is extensive on Rotto). We'll then proceed to circumnavigate the island on bicycle, hitting up all the nicest and most secluded beaches, maybe play a little Ricky Ponting Beach Cricket, and take some pictures. If I have any energy for anything at all after that, call me a hero.

The remainder of the trip will see Pierro obtaining his PADI certification, and Tom and Ying chillin' for only a few more days. And then it's goodbye Perth!

The Perth Lists

2010-01-16T01:50:00.005-05:00

We're getting pretty excited around here at Outpost South. There is so much excitement in the air that Rita had to take a nap. Probably a little too much excitement for her. We're excited, of course, because the Big Canadian Tour of Australia is going to start in two weeks (gasp!). Andre, Pierro, Eric, Sheena, Tom, and Ying are meeting us in Sydney for three weeks of Australian awesomeness, and then we start the Pan-Asian leg of the trip home. Friends. Travel. Home. Three excellent reasons to get excited.

In the spirit of all this hullabaloo, I've decided to compile a list of things that we will miss about Perth. In the spirit of balance, I will also present a list of things that we will NOT miss about Perth.

Things about Perth that we will miss:

Nice dry heat and the Indian Ocean
All-year tennis and outdoor swimming 50m from our apartment
Abundant bicycle lanes, paths, and mini-freeways
The cafes and foreshore of South Perth
Sailing on the Swan River
Morning training in the park with my office
Outdoor movies
Rottnest Island
The word "bogan", which is way better than "white-trash"
$2 pre-dinner oysters followed by Roo burger in Leederville
BYO restaurants, parks, and sidewalks
Fremantle market, and Fremantle prison
No tipping, and prices with tax included
The very modern Transperth public transit and ferry
Automatic cold water on your table at a restaurant (shouldn't this be legislated?)
Our friends in Perth

And, in contrast, good riddance to:

Insane scalp-frying unfiltered carcinoma-inducing sunshine
Awful awful drivers, cyclists, and oblivious pedestrians
Fluorescent safety clothing, tape, reflectors, markings, rails, and yellow signs that say "Caution: door may open"
Caterpillars eating my basil
People correcting me when I say oREGano (as opposed to oregANo)
"Roo bars", which are more accurately "parallel parking bars" for these drivers
Rain-induced traffic jams
V8 utes with 18 year-old bogans doing fishtails
Drunk driving (drink driving, to Australians)
$200 oil changes
Telstra, their incompetence, and their 12GB monthly internet service (only $80!)
Wilted lettuce
$15 cafe sandwiches

iRack, with iShoe

2010-01-11T04:08:00.005-05:00

My iPod spin-off concept

Today we sold all of our worldly Perth possessions. Rita made me a list of things that we ought to sell, I spruced it up and made it funny, and it was posted on the health and safety board at my office (the place of choice for amusing and pertinent Dilbert strips). Then I went to the toilet, which is how Australians politely refer to the water closet.

When I got back from the loo, I had a buyer. She bought everything on the list. It took exactly three seconds of strenuous negotiation, but I closed the deal (with a Fresh Prince fist bump, pchshhhhh). Then my friend Hannah came over and asked if the shoe rack was still for sale.

I lied and told her that it was. She asked what sort it was, and I replied that it was an iRack, which is compatible with the iShoe. She asked me what that meant, having never heard of such a thing (and rightly so). I told her that it was a Bluetooth shoe rack that comes with free software which the rack can wirelessly connect to. The software is a shoe inventory management system which tells you which iShoes are on the rack, which occasions they are suitable for, and how many times you have worn them. It also allows you to rate each shoe, and it has a special "Genius" module which can link you to new shoes that you may want to purchase, based on the shoes you already own. Importantly, it will also tell you how much room you have left for more shoes.

How good an idea is that? If I could buy this for Rita for Christmas, I'd be the coolest fiancé in the world. Don't discount it as foolish either. Who among us first heard of SMS and thought "My God! Finally!". My point exactly. Much like Photoshop or Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, this is a totally unnecessary item that I expect would keep Rita occupied for days. Maybe even weeks, if the iRack has a tuner for the car.

But then, much like iTunes, Rita's shoe playlist would show a power curve, telling me that she owns 87 pairs of shoes, and only really wears two. She would counter by saying that she used to wear all of them until iRack came along and that it's not a representative count. In turn, I would rebut that she maintains an enormous and elaborate inventory of shoes that she has no intention of ever wearing again. She would counter that, now that she has them, it makes no sense to delete them.

So the question is really: which do I understand better? Women, or iTunes? My answer is both, equally.

Thoughts on the weather

2010-01-08T23:34:00.005-05:00

Is the weather in Australia better than Canada?

It's really hot outside today. It's so hot that we may venture out into the world for a coffee or a movie, but only with the intention of looking forward to getting back into our nice cool apartment. Really, frickin', hot.

Take today, for example. Waking up at 8 in the morning, I felt like having a run to start my day. I got ready and started my run, and by the time I was halfway through, it was way too hot to be running. People were looking at me from shady cafe tables and air conditioned cars and were probably wondering what kind of masochistic gym-crazy asshole wants to go running outside. I was wondering if I was still sweating or if I was suffering sun stroke. That was 9am. My point is, essentially, that you can't go outside in January no matter where you are.

The problem is that currently it's also January in Canada, and if you are reading this from Canada you are probably thinking "what in God's name is wrong with you? Enjoy it!". But I don't agree with that, at least not completely. Maybe the grass is greener on the other side for all of us, but I'm getting somewhat tired of worrying about skin cancer every time I decide to go for a walk without my cowboy hat. Maybe I need a sombrero, or something else that is similarly wide-brimmed. A parasol?

FACT: 400,000 people in Australia are diagnosed with skin cancer each year. It is Australia's national cancer. This was brought to my attention during a fairly invasive pre-movie ad which featured lots of pictures of tumours being surgically removed. The ad was followed by post-ad ad, for which the house lights turn back on, the screen blacks out, and a voice confronts the audience in a very frank "Joe the Plumber" kind of way to actually use sunscreen and cover up because, come on, we're being serious. It was as if the government were holding an intervention for me, right there in the cinema.

It's true. There is no ozone here. My head is shaved, and it only takes me three minutes to remember that when I'm outside. I can't go for a walk around my office block without wishing for a hat. It's fairly normal to take a tent to the beach. The only streets that people walk on in the middle of the day are the ones that offer shade, and that is true of practically everywhere in Perth, no matter what the population density is. What is so amazing about that? Is that how paradise is defined?

In much the same way that Australians eat both of their national animals, they also brag about the very thing that causes their national cancer. Should Australians advertise their summer? I can understand a Jamaican wishing that he or she was back home in January, because a) Jamaicans are not as white as fresh snow and have some built-in protection, and b) Jamaica is on the equator, which has a nice thick creamy dollop of ozone. This would make sense. But how can a nation of pasty-white people believe that the extreme heat and sun of Australia is a desirable condition? That seems like a paradox to me.

Now contrast this with Canadian weather. In summer, we look forward to winter (or at least aspects of it, like warm cocoa and Christmas), and vice versa. On a rainy 20C summer day in Toronto, you can still play soccer or go running. You can still go downtown and do some shopping, and you can do all of that in relative comfort and for longer than 15 minutes. Sure it would be nice to have a reliable amount of sunshine every day, but there's always tomorrow. There is no greater season than the North American autumn. And it is always possible to dress for comfort and warmth in winter. This is completely impossible on a summer day in Perth.

I hear you, Toronto, wondering if I have forgotten about winter driving. I have not. On the one hand, Australia does not have to worry about snowy highways and warming their cars in the morning. On the other hand, you (Toronto) have never seen traffic grind to such an unbelievable halt as it does during the winter in Perth. You have never seen the chaos. The violent collisions. The debris. Why? Winter rain. These are the worst drivers in the world. Perth winter has very little sunshine, possibly even less than Toronto. The temperature is comfortable but it rains continuously, which is good because Perth does not have the same drought problem that much of Australia does. In short, they have an English summer for a winter, and no one appreciates English weather.

Let's do a quick numerical analysis. How many months of the year do we dread in Toronto? Three? I would say that January to March are the nasty ones. Likewise, how many months do we dread in Perth? No one will admit it, but everyone in my office was talking about how brutally uncomfortably hot Christmas was. Everyone in Perth goes down south for the Christmas holidays to escape the weather. If we use that as a measuring stick, December to March are undesired. But then everyone dreads the overcast dreariness of June to August, too. That's seven. Perth wins, 7-3. Even by a more conservative count the score is still 5-4 with Perth ahead. There are more dreadful months in Perth.

Combine that with the national cancer epidemic of Australia versus the carefree summer feeling in Canada. Add a cup of white Christmas, which even the Australians fantasize about and feature in their decorations and cards. Two dashes of North American autumn, and you have your conclusion. I think that Canadian weather is better.

The Slap

2010-01-05T02:25:00.003-05:00

I've been reading The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas, which Rita gave me for my birthday. It's based in Melbourne and is about a Greek man that slaps the shittiest little Australian child in the world at a BBQ. Sounds good right? Right. However, what I took away was a better sense of how expats and immigrants view Australia. It galvanized my views on a few Australian strangenesses. There was also a lot of extremely feminine inner-monologue soul searching, unfortunately. I'm not willing to let the book off the hook for that.

In my view, a prominent Australian quirk is their ability to drink heavily and smash stuff. Lamp poles, potted plants, people, you name it. Perth is nearly a third the size of Toronto, with twice as many police officers assigned to the club district (Northbridge) on weekends. The Slap comments on this too. Tsiolkas writes about how Australian drinking is confined to the pub, not the dinner table, and that is why they find it acceptable to get pissed, wreck stuff, and drive drunk. Rita was right for correcting me when I called it "village behaviour". Village people (or "simple folk") don't typically act like that at all. They drink with their families, do some dancing, fall in some dirt, and go home. End of story.

Thankfully, there are also plenty of references to what Tsiolkas calls the "nanny state". Too much reflective tape. Too much public health education, not enough math. One character, Harry, is exasperated that "[his] children have trouble with their times tables but know that smoking will give you lung cancer and that unprotected sex will give you venereal disease". At one point, a Greek grandmother is arguing with her Australeza daughter about the benefits of smacking her children. The yiayia says "and you pay thousands of dollars today to tell you why children don't read, why they don't write. You should give me the money. I'll sort it out for you."

There are also references to Perth trailer trash (bogans, as they call them), to aboriginals, to muslims, and to girls dressing like whores. This was mainly boring and obvious, except for the last point. It's true. I have never seen such inappropriately short skirts in my life. When girls go out to the bar here, they put on dresses from their high-school semis. Rita and Sheena are more aware of it than any guy I know in Perth. It must be hard to be a woman here, and expect to accidentally flash your bare ass every time you go to the movies or to the office. Tsiolkas' characters commiserate that it would be impossible to raise a girl with a proper sense of style in that environment. Which also crossed my own mind. And what fun would dating be? What would a first date with one of these Australian girls be like? I think it would ruin all the fun. Might as well go to Sexbook.com.

While the slap and the ensuing justice are infinitely satisfying, the book does go on a bit. The swearing is gratuitous, unnecessary, and it makes me feel that Tsiolkas is trying to compensate for something. The sex scenes are numerous, ugly, and equally transparent. But I'll remember it as a book about Australian culture. I'm glad that other people see it the way that I do.

Elephant Rocks

2010-01-04T19:34:00.001-05:00

Elephant Rocks
Originally uploaded by Michael Diez d'Aux

I've just posted the pictures from our Christmas break camping trip, and all I have to say is: I love my polarizer. Well, I would also like to say great trip, and that by some measures I beat Eric at Ricky Ponting Beach Cricket. But at the end of the trip, it was the polarizer that saved me hours of Picasa-time. All of my pictures came out of the camera ready for posting!

In particular, I'll never take pictures on a beach without my polarizer again. The filter does a great job of reducing the huge amount of sunlight from the sky and reflecting off the sand, the water, and my forehead, into manageable packets of light for the camera. Result: better, less blown-out colours in the middle of the Australian day. I could gush about it all day.

I included a few pictures of the Pinnacles in Cervantes here too although I was brief, because we'll take another trip there when everybody comes to visit next month. The town is a relatively new pearling and fishing town, and everything in it is named after people and places from Don Quixote. We're really super excited to bring everyone there, because Andre has read Don Quixote five times in school (different translations!), and The Pinnacles is one big photography wet dream. Now that Pierro has his new Rebel, we'll have 4 digital SLRs in the minivan for that trip. With possibly ten lenses.

On that note, Rita and I have composed a draft itinerary for the big Canadian meet-up in Perth (I have to come up with a less gay name. Still working on it.). Our thoughts are that Perth, much like Toronto, is much more readily enjoyed when you know people that know what's going on. For some reason, the guidebooks don't do a superb job on Perth, possibly because none of the authors actually make it all the way to WA and just wing it. That's my theory, at least. We're thinking that the Internet might pick that one up. We'll see.

Happy New Year!

On the second day of Christmas

2010-01-02T05:44:00.004-05:00

As I was saying...

Boxing Day was no less strange than Christmas Day. We went to the aptly-named Ocean Beach and played with my new Ricky Ponting Beach Cricket Set. I fell asleep in the sand for two hours. We had campfire spaghetti with meat sauce for dinner, instead of the cabbage rolls that I've had on nearly every other Boxing Day. Strange, but so good that we did beach days for the next three days.

I am not really a "beach guy". You can interpret that in a few different ways, but what I mean is that I am not an Australian beach guy, which means that I don't live in my van or feel the need to scatter broken Heineken bottles everywhere. I don't have dreds or a platinum blond girlfriend with a bikini for a bra and holes in her thongs (flip-flops to you, Canada). I wear shoes and I don't have Ecstasy abs. And yet, I still liked the beaches of the southwest enough to visit them for three days straight.

Our favourite beach was probably Green's Pool, which is fully protected by outcrops of Antarctic rock that shelter it completely from the violence of the Southern Ocean. You can put your towel down on fine white sand or on the flat shelves of basalt, which we preferred because we were all about to go mental from having sand in our underpants. The water is turquoise and salty and totally calm, protected from the waves that were smashing 100m away from us. People were snorkeling, kayaking, and jumping from the boulders in the middle of the pool.

Every time we attended a beach we would go through the same procedure. Pre-arrival, Rita and Sheena would remark on how hot it was, and on how they couldn't wait to get to the nice refreshing beach. We would then de-car (I've adapted that verb from the aviation industry's favourite new verb, to "de-plane") and set up camp. Setting up for Eric and me meant that we would dump our backpacks, take off all our clothes, and run into the water. We would then suffer a five-second period of testicular shock, because the Southern Ocean is very "refreshing". And then we would luxuriate in the water, with our heads at 40C and our bodies at 18C. Occasionally, we would also play Ricky Ponting beach cricket.

Setting up camp for Rita and Sheena meant that they would first organize all the backpacks, then install and smooth their towels with laser levels, and finally they would read for two hours. They would then have a quick conversation about how they probably should go in the water, seeing as how they we sitting on a beach in bikinis. This would be followed by the customary debate on whether or not they really wanted to go in the water, and this in turn would inevitably be followed by an uncomfortable and resentful migration towards the water. Upon reaching the water, the girls would stand in it and make a face that I remember making in my youth, when people tried to feed my cauliflower. This phase (the "resentful" phase) lasted approximately half an hour on average whereupon, depending on the day and also possibly upon a random number generator, they would either go swimming or not go swimming. It was impossible to tell. Following their bathing the ladies would emerge and announce that they had now been swimming, thank god, and that they could finally relax and get some napping done.

To the males, this really defeats the purpose of going to the beach in the first place. On the final day, we did manage to convince our partners that the superior way to swim was by jumping in the water and then swimming. It was like herding cats, but we managed. And do you know what happened? We all swam together! We even jumped off a few rocks! Eric and I were thoroughly slathered in scathing looks for the first couple of minutes but then we all had fun, at least until we got out and Rita realized that she had jumped off a barnacle-laden boulder and had cut three of her toes in the process, not realizing that she was bleeding because her toes were numbed by the "refreshingness" of the water. Luckily, the pool was fully shielded by the surrounding shark-infested ocean by a nice basalt barrier. Excellent.

On the penultimate day, we took our chances and left Walpole earlier in search of a camping spot in Albany. It was not our lucky day. The campsites looked like refugee camps, full of huddling Australians eyeing our car with territorial anxiety. In short, there was nothing, but luckily this was also kind of true for Albany. We saw the Whaling Museum (which I had been looking forward to for months) and The Gap (the cliff, not the retail outlet), and drove back to Perth.

Stay tuned! Tomorrow, we drive to Cervantes to see the Pinnacles! Or maybe I'll just post some pictures. In any event, this post is now not only too long, but also uninteresting. I look forward to getting back to my normal regime of observation and criticism shortly.

Phew.

Don't leave Perth on Christmas without a billy can

2009-12-31T05:57:00.003-05:00

Finally, something travel-related to write about.

Travellers beware: absolutely everything closes in Western Australia for the holidays. Our favourite cafe has been closed since Christmas eve. The Italian restaurant by our apartment, the one that always has a line of thirty people out the door and is almost certainly bribing the police regarding their maximum capacity limits, has been closed since December 15th. And sure enough, when we nearly ran out of gas on Christmas Day in Walpole WA the gas stations were closed too. That's how we chose Walpole as our base camp. We couldn't drive to Albany as we had originally intended.

The south coast of WA (Albany, Denmark, Walpole, and also Esperance which is very very far) receives approximately twice as many people as it can handle each year at Christmas. It's cooler than Perth to begin with, and in order to fully appreciate this statement you'll also to have to appreciate that Perth is averaging in the mid-40's right now, and a/c is rarer than it is in Toronto. The south coast is also relatively open, whereas everything in Perth appears to be closed, probably because all the employees need to travel down south and find restaurants that are open. Apparently no one in Perth has read Catch 22.

Intrepid travellers that we are, we had a solid strategy in place for dealing with the yearly migration out of Perth. We decided to leave on Christmas Day, which would surely give us a head start and a decent camp site (you cannot make reservations at national park campsites in WA). It turns out that we were correct, but what we did not factor in was that it is impossible to drive from the last, south-est, open gas station in WA to Albany, which is where we wanted to go. When the gas light came on in Walpole, we decided to hang out for the night. Our campsite, Crystal Springs, was not bad either although it did not have a shower. When we arrived there were only a few camps set up. We proceeded to settle in and unpack the Christmas wine, while Rita set up her iPod speakers. We spent Christmas dinner in our shorts, eating tikka masala in front of a campfire while listening to Jewel sing Christmas carols. Strangest Christmas dinner we've ever had.

The next morning we awoke and went to Mandalay Beach for a swim in the Southern Ocean (what Canadians might call the Antarctic Ocean). This proved to be impossible. Mandalay Beach did a good job of portraying the Southern Ocean exactly as I imagined it: tempestuous, and cold. There were metre-high waves crashing five wavelengths deep off the beach, and they were coming in at several different angles. The rip was, in a word, distressing. I have never felt like I was going to be murdered by the ocean before, and I am an ambitious beginner surfer to boot. But Mandalay Beach was scary. Eric and I only managed to wade in to our knees, remark on how likely it was that we'd be carried out to sea in three seconds, and then get back out. Rita and Sheena were taunting us, but in the affectionate good-for-you-for-not-being-stupid-and-going-swimming way. If we had wanted to, we could have concluded that this beach was not for swimming simply by looking around us. The beach is 500m long, with pristine clean medium-grained grey-white sand, and not a single person was in sight. We did see some people fishing when we came back at dusk a few nights later.

Having been thoroughly distressed by Mandalay Beach, we thought we'd try our luck on the tree top walk. Bill Bryson wrote about it in In a Sunburnt Country and, in fact, it's one of the only things he actually wrote about in WA! It was fun, in a safe kind of way. Not like free climbing the 61-foot Gloucester Tree, but fun in a contained walkway sort of way. You definitely get a sense that the trees are very very tall. When we returned to our camp site that night, we joined 800 other people that had set up at Crystal Springs. The south coast had officially become swarmed, and it was only Boxing Day.

More to come!

Christmas vacation, Perth style

2009-12-23T07:18:00.003-05:00

Dedicating this Christmas vacation to Chevy Chase.

Although it does not feel like Christmas in Australia, my office is telling me that it is so and that I must leave work for a few weeks. Many offices in Australia are closed until January 11th, but ours is closed only until the 7th because we are engineers and everyone is worried that they might not have any calculations to do at home. So Rita, the Scotts, and I have decided to go camping.

We chose camping because I was able to borrow every single item of gear (or "kit") from people in my office. Australians take camping very seriously. When people here decide that they need to outfit themselves for the outback, it usually starts with buying a Land Rover. We're talking serious. They need to be, because that is all that anyone does over Christmas vacation. Going to Bali goes from being the cheapest alternative to absolutely the most expensive, and the south coast promises night-time temperatures of 12-14 degrees C. It's a no-brainer.

We're hoping to surf the tsunami of migrating Perthies to Esperance, which is an eight hour drive southeast. While it is very far away, Esperance also has some of the nicest beaches in Australia, not to mention some very nice rocks (I've heard rumours of a dolerite dyke that is simply to die for). It also has Cyclops, a 5m-high wave that is as thick as it is tall and is only for pro surfers or "kamikazes". It breaks so violently that seeing it is enough for most people, myself included. But I do really want to see it.

I've thought of Chevy Chase because we'll be fitting four people into our smallish sedan, and then packing camping gear around them. As it is, our space budget calls for our luggage to carry us for three days only, and it needs to fit between our legs in the car. We have a cooler that is going to ride bitch in the back seat. We even have a camera budget: one DSLR only (oh the trials and tribulations of the modern middle class!). I envisage a car so tightly packed that if we were to driving into a swimming pool, not a drop of water would be able to enter the car.

There are other potentially humorous elements in the trip plan. We have decided as a group that it would be really funny if we only listened to language tapes for the entire time we are driving. By the end of this 2000km trip, we'll know a new language! Predictably, Rita and Sheena both wanted to learn Italian, presumably so that they can find more romantic husbands after the trip. Eric and I have decided to download Russian, because hey, when are we going to get the chance to learn Russian? The girls don't like that at all, but boy will they be surprised that we have been saying Russian all this time to throw them off the scent of the real language: Mandarin. Rita immediately vetoed that when we nominated it, but we think we can sneak it on board, and then scream at each other all week in Mandarin.

I'm excited. And in two weeks, I will tell you that I am excited in Mandarin.

Carols by the Swan

2009-12-20T08:22:00.002-05:00

Or more accurately, "Sermons by the Swan".

In Toronto, it's easy to get in to Christmas. You start shopping for gifts when winter is getting cold. By the time it snows, you're thinking about Christmas holidays. The Santa Claus Parade challenges thousands of parents to try and find parking close to the parade route, so that their children will only be outside in the cold for four hours, not six. There are all sorts of little cues that you'll be getting presents soon.

There are no such cues here, or at least I'm not culturally familiar with them. Maybe Perthites know that it's Christmas because they have to start running the a/c full time, or because the beach has gotten busy. There is no parade, because children are highly susceptible to skin cancer here. The stores still close promptly at 5pm, preventing anyone with a regular job from experiencing the mayhem of Christmas shopping, and parking is plentiful when there's no snow.

Luckily for Papa Christmas, there was going to be a Christmas concert in the park on the south foreshore. We'd be able to walk from home, allowing it to become an occasion for alcohol. So Rita and I packed the folding chairs and a six-pack, and went to the park to enjoy some carols.

I can now appreciate what an evangelical Christmas concert in Florida must be like. There was a huge outdoor stage, complete with drums, bass, and two electric guitars. There were carollers dressed in business casual, singing jazzy versions of the carols. There was a radio DJ with his t-shirt tucked into his jeans (and of course he completed his outfit with a black shiny belt) acting as MC. And to complete the ensemble, there were dozens of local pastors and chaplains from what they called the "South Perth Christian Network".

First, the DJ told us that we would be finishing nice and early tonight because, thankfully, there is no more daylight savings. Then he introduced the pastors and chaplains from the local churches and basement outfits. They were dressed like library volunteers and informed us that they would be leading the spiritual aspect of the evening. I opened another beer.

The choir was cheesy. I am not a NASCAR watching, country music listening, tobacco chewing idiot, and I do not need to hear an electric guitar in overdrive wailing behind Silent Night. I don't require screens to be set up on either side of the stage, panning the musicians and showing the guitarist's contorted face as he shredded through the bridge of Come All Ye Faithful. Then the pre-teen Christmas Dancers came on, aided by some teen heartthrob pop band CD that was not unlike Blink 182 singing carols. But I was prepared to enjoy it in the name of Christmas. I would just need Rita to pass me another beer.

There was lots of Jesus paraphernalia. There were multiple gimmicky little animations in between choir songs that ended with "I love Jesus!". More beer.

In the middle of the concert, one of the pastors got up and actually delivered a 30 minute sermon on Christmas. He read a version of the Christmas story that used all sorts of informal Australian language ("so the shepherds gather 'round and talked it up, and decided to go to Bethlehem"). And then he exhorted us to love Jesus as hard as possible, and to think of him as the one true God, and I had enough. We made conversation amongst ourselves about how ridiculous white people are sometimes.

You never get that crap at a Hanukkah celebration. You'll get a lot of the songs, and the same stories, and everyone wishes that they were getting as many presents as the Christians. You never get that crap in an Greek Orthodox ceremony; instead, you can expect to hear some ancient Greek singing for an hour prior to the mass, also largely in ancient Greek. No marketing campaigns and no pamphlets with the names, phone numbers, email addresses, and Twitter profiles of every preacher within a 5km radius.

Then the DJ came back on stage and informed us that we could get in touch with any of the religious element of South Perth if we had any questions ("Who's that Jesus guy? What's this one God thing all about?"). And, we left.

Can't wait for Christmas 2010!

A small adjustment

2009-12-17T10:09:00.003-05:00

A few days ago I posted an inspirational story about a friend of mine that screws with people's personal lives when they email him by accident. This generated mixed feelings amongst our readers (and by that I mean that I liked it, but Rita thought it was mean), but it also inspired others to commit acts of vigilante emailing. Consider the following erroneous email that my friend Duncan received:

**********************
Dear Duncan Sploe,
Your next appointment with Dr. Steven J. Read is Thursday, December 17, 2009 4:45PM. Please take note of our new location effective Nov. 7th, 2009

200-277 Mountain Hwy
North Vancouver
604-990-0029
See you then.
Denise
**********************

Obviously this wasn't meant for Duncan, but that doesn't mean that some fun can't be had with a person that is careless with frictionless communication. So Duncan, with some help from Kreg, thought long and hard about what sort of chiropractic services he would be requiring. He came up with the following (linked added by me):

**********************
Denise,

I look forward to my Internal Coccyx Adjustment tomorrow. I have not eaten for 4 days as per WebMD's recommendations. Feeling a bit weak. Please be gentle.

J Duncan Sploe
**********************

HAHA! I don't care if it's immature. These kinds of opportunities do not happen to someone like me, what with my very complex last name and all. For me, it's just like wearing glasses. You people with names that other people also have don't know how lucky you are to have these opportunities.

In other news, we're getting ready for camping. It occurred to me that I have not yet heard a single Christmas carol all year! My alarm clock doesn't have a radio, I don't drive to work, and I don't go shopping. Voila! No carols. Jealous? You're jealous.

Rottnest Island

2009-12-15T05:41:00.002-05:00

"We offer couple's therapy sessions with every rental of a tandem bicycle." - Rental lady

Over the weekend Rita and I, in partnership with Eric and Sheena, completed the most important of all tourist itineraries in Perth. We visited Rottnest Island, located about 2okm off the coast of Fremantle and accessible by a very fast ferry. We rented bikes, drank beer publicly, and visited over ten beautiful beaches, most of which were unscathed by loud techno music emanating from loud Australian yachts.

The island has had a very typical history, in the Australian style. Soon after it was discovered, it was turned into an Aboriginal men's prison (why not?) for about a hundred years. Then it was a regular prison, then a naval gun outpost, and finally an ultra-exclusive luxury destination. That sounds like Australia to me! Peculiarly, the indigenous Quokka still thrives on Rotto. I found this odd because the animal is the perfect size for dinner, target practice, and whale bait. Incredibly, as the Australians were able to somehow leave the Quokka unmolested, Rotto is now an A-class nature reserve. Then Sheena and Rita disembarked and effed that all up.

We packed only the bare essentials, because we knew that we'd be biking all day (there are roads all over Rotto, and no cars are allowed, making it a cycling paradise). Arriving on the island early Sunday morning, we jumped off the boat and walked quickly towards the settlement area to partake in that most important of all western activities, administration. We spent a mere hour getting all our gear straightened out before heading off, whereupon Rita immediately decided that our bike was crap and that we needed a new one. I admit that she was right, but I would have been happy to ride with our misaligned flat tire and grinding gears if it had meant that we'd shave precious minutes off of Administration Time.

We rented tandem bikes because we are strong couples, and the bonds of our promises to each other would never be ruined by a bicycle. That is now a laughable concept. By the end of the day Eric had accused his partner "Lance" of taking pictures instead of pedalling, and Sheena had rebutted with the hilarious but totally untrue accusation that Eric is too fat to go quickly. Rita was ready to silently kill me for over-enthusiastic gear changing on a bicycle that had been thoroughly pre-abused by fat tourists.

Learning how to ride a tandem bike is not easy. First you (read: I) have to convince the person on the back (read: Rita) not to steer. This should be easy when you are appealing to your wife to trust you, but Rita would only accept reality when she noted that her handlebars were bolted to my seat post, and that her steering merely succeeded in re-orienting my pelvis in the direction that she wished to go. Hilarity ensued. Obviously, I forgave her for cacking me. We are a team, after all.

We did eventually succeed in cycling to a beach, which was alarmingly awesome. Rotto is essentially a limestone pinnacle covered by sand dunes, and the limestone turns the water crystal clear. I was alarmed that beaches of this calibre had existed right under my nose for nearly nine months, and that I had only discovered them now. Naturally, I took out my trusty Geology of Southwest Australia and went straight to work in dating the outcrops (the answer was Pleistocene). Everyone else went swimming.

We ended up cycling around the entire island, which was a 26km circuit, and visiting some of the most amazing beaches. We'd bike for a bit, stop at a beach, search the landscape for million-dollar yachts pulsating with hip-hop music and the screeching of drunk women, and finding none we'd set up shop. A few of the beaches were completely empty. Those are the holy grail of WA tourism: perfect beaches in every way, completely empty. Well, they weren't completely perfect. Could've used an additional dollop of ozone. But Rotto is also ten degrees cooler than Perth, so I guess that compensates for it. I guess.

We did ultimately become good at tandem cycling. We climbed a very steep hill to reach the lighthouse, and I managed to not betray the fact that I thought Rita was reading the newspaper instead of peddling. We also found some very nice snorkeling beaches, including an underwater marine life exhibit with plaques that you had to find. We also found a Subway for dinner. Rotto is still Australia, after all, and there is no hope in finding a kangaroo steak for under $75. We did, however, cheat The Man by buying a six pack of cider and drinking on the beach. The alternative was akin to signing over your anal virginity at the hotel bar.

We left very happy, and tired. Eric and Sheena also did a post on their travel blog about the experience, complete with a video featuring Rita and Sheena breaking the laws of an A-class nature reserve by feeding the wildlife and actually petting the animals. I ought to know those laws. I drilled on an A-class nature reserve. We'll get some pictures up at some point in the future, but not until the Gestapo-idolizing internet providers allow us more than 12G a month. More and more, we are looking forward to coming home.

An email that continually brightens my day

2009-12-08T04:51:00.007-05:00

I have a friend, we'll call him "Kreg" (not his real name, which is giarC backwards). Kreg has a thing about modern communication. Essentially, he hates it. He doesn't own a cell phone or use Skype. He prefers a good old premeditated conversation with someone, usually in person. If he can't have that, he'll resort to messaging through an online multiplayer game of Civ 4. This is how he interacts with his girlfriend, mainly. They are so good at this that she can even tell what sort of day he's had, based on whether or not he is focusing on improving his Culture score.

He also has a pretty popular last name, which means that he occasionally receives emails that were meant for some other kburkit (not his real user name). Recently, he received one such accidental email from a person that clearly has no business being allowed near frictionless communication. As he said, "I reply back as though I was the person (often changing my name to their name temporarily, although I forgot this time) and say something that might cause a little friction in their relationship down the line". The idea is that, if these people were to resort to a more personal method of communication, they would be able to sort this all out quickly and have a good chuckle over it.

Not this time. This time, I was the one that did all the laughing. Here is the full thread (name spelled backwards, just read from the top down):

On Mon, Nov 23, 2009 at 10:46 AM, Neerg, Diane <DNeerg@agophfc.com> wrote:
Hey Poopsie-
Sitting here thinking about you and wondering how you are. Your Buddy Gene started here in Batesburg today- he's in the office between Rick and Tammy. I still don't know how I feel about it but guess it doesn't matter does it? He will be corporate analyst for upper part of State.

Went to a Team Meeting last Wednesday and it was gloom and doom. Raises cant top 2.6% I think they said and everyone will not get one. Everyone will not qualify for incentive this year either- got a lot going into nonaccrual and earnings are down from last year. Your Buddy Howard whined as usual about him not getting paid enough and the incentive doesn't figure into retirement. As of the Team Meeting- it was his birthday and he had met the rule of 85. He complained the entire time. Don't you love him? Wish he would move on.

Dave Spittle had his retirement party- didn't go but heard it was nice. Think he is leaving month end.

So- such is life.

What you doing for Turkey Day? Guess this one will be different for you. I am thinking we might just go out for dinner and see a movie or something. Holidays are kind of nothing around our house anymore. Chelsie said if we cook- she wants to grill hamburgers. HA! Supposed to be cold this week- guess it is time.

Take care- have a good holiday no matter what you do.

Love ya!

Di

From: Kreg B [mailto:kburkit@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, November 26, 2009 10:52 AM
To: Neerg, Diane
Subject: Re: Hey

You know, I'm getting tired of these emails. All you ever do is talk
about work. Don't you have anything else going on in life? I'm sorry,
but I've wanted to say this for a long time, and just now got the
courage. Please don't be mad at me.

KB

From: "Neerg, Diane"
To: "Kreg B" <kburkit@gmail.com>
Date: Mon, 30 Nov 2009 08:59:08 -0500
Subject: RE: Hey
Excuse Me- guess I am kind of like you were when you worked here and all you did was complain about work and how you couldn't wait to leave this place. We listened to it everyday and don't recall telling you how tired we were of hearing it.
I was mainly asking you about your holiday plans- Wont bother you again.

****
(sound of me dying with laughter)

This was a success for a very important reason. Someone, somewhere, has just had their office friendship (or affair?) completely destroyed, and they will never know it. Why? Because a Woman that capitalizes the Strangest things got an email address wrong, and didn't check her address book, and didn't even notice that Poopsie's name is now Kreg (if it actually was, that would be an amazing coincidence), got pissed off and decided to end their relationship via email. Via email.

And, on a closing note, since when do people use a dash to replace a period/semicolon/comma? Is this the new super awesome all-purpose punctuation mark? I never know- Wish someone had told me-

Goin' campin'

2009-12-05T03:38:00.003-05:00

It's almost Christmas in Perth, which means almost nothing to Rita and me. In the first place, it does not feel like Christmas. It feels like summer vacation because not only is it very hot, but everyone in my office is planning holidays. Even we are gearing up for our massive trip home. Planning trips is a very summery thing in Toronto.

More importantly though, Rita and I are not going to be consumed by the now twice-as-massive family celebrations this year. That's not a bad thing either, because absence makes the heart grow fonder. It also makes the waist slendererer and the appetite more economical, but that is beside the point. Disappointingly, I may not get to sing in church this year. I only use my contralto during the festive season.

We could possibly still go to church. I will go because, like every good boy, it will make my Italian mother happy. But we could also go to Greek church, so that Rita can spend the entire ceremony telling me how strange the Australian-Hellenic accent is. Rita tries to keep it real, and talking through church is a very traditional Greek pastime.

After church, we will turn tradition on its head and go camping with Eric and Sheena. Camping is popular with the people of Perth that have no use for things like airports and have no idea why it is Christmas-y to go to the local outdoor rink and play some pickup hockey. So we'll drive south to Albany and Walpole, possibly even to Esperance if all of the closer spots are taken, and set up our tents on the beach. Then I'll try to do a turkey over a camp fire. We'll also be looking to sleep under the stars, which is very nice to do in WA at this time of year, as long as you have a big net to keep off the very persistent flies.

I'm proud of the economizing that we have managed in planning for this trip. Everything except our sleeping bags will be on loan from friends, and we'll be using free camp sites. Because we found good free tents, we won't need a camper van, which means that our only daily costs are food and gas. Plus, we'll be cooking most of our own food (I say most because if I see a sign advertising fresh oysters, I'm eating out). We're looking to kick some major budgetary butt on this one.

The free campsite thing looks like it may be a bit of an issue. They are filled almost immediately by migratory Perthites. Even in WA they run out of room, probably because camping is so totally awesome. I hope. The other potential issue is that we'll be waking up as soon as the sun hits the tents (4:30am), which may be induce some jet-lag. And the third issue is that we'll be sleeping outside in rural Australia, which is known to be somewhat poisonous.

I'm joking, of course. There will be no issue with the creatures of the wild. We'll be carrying plenty of hairspray and lighters. And mustard gas for the hippopotami. There are venomous hippopotami in Australia, aren't there?

We own matching jerseys

2009-12-04T05:46:00.004-05:00

The Great Bike Ride
Originally uploaded by Michael Diez d'Aux

Cycling is the perfect sport for Rita. In the first place, it allows her to fully accessorize and get kitted out, which is one of her passions. It also allows her to dress in lots of bright colours that one would not normally wear, which makes it a "bedazzling" sport. We all know how much Rita likes to bedazzle.

Cycling is also super fun, which is why we signed up for the 50km Great Bike Ride. There was a 100km option that I was pretty hyped about, but Rita looked at the finishing times from last year and decided that it would be no fun to do it with people that averaged 40km/h. She was right, and fun is the name of the game anyways.

The 50km option was a single loop around the river (the 100km option was just two loops, which would not add to the scenery). Perth did a very good job of closing off most roads and a few sections of freeway. We did it in under two hours, which means that we kicked some butt. Rita specifically kicked a lot of butt, because this was the farthest she has ever cycled without stopping for a break.

Cycling around the Swan was the full package of fantastic views, expensive houses (the Italian homes resplendent in their coatings of chrome), parks, cafe strips, steep climbs and very fast descents. We hope to do it with our visitors in February, but possibly involving more stops for coffee, doughnuts, pizza, burgers, and isotonic beverages. That's the great thing about cycling: it's good for you.

The other great thing about Rita and cycling is that I can now come home and occasionally find new matching cycling gear for me that was sneakily purchased by my wife-elect. I always put on disapproving face, but getting sneaky presents is fun.

Mike's Birthday Feast

2009-12-02T20:06:00.008-05:00

Now that a couple of days have passed, I am free to say
HAPPY BIRTHDAY MIKE
and not risk him getting annoyed for announcing his birthday and having his office mates find out.

Everyone who knows Mike, knows he has a refined palette and a deep appreciation for fine cuisine so we (Mike, Eric, Sheena and I) celebrated his birthday at one of the most posh neighbourhoods in Perth for the best Mexican to be found. We ate from a wide variety of enchiladas, guacamoles, chimichangas and paellas and we ate until we were sweating chili out of every pore. This was also aided by the chili beer that Mike and Eric ordered that actually had a chili sitting on the bottom of the bottle and gave you a punch with every sip...as well as an ulcer.

After rolling out of the Mexican restaurant, we returned home for an injection of sugar because apparently there is always room for something sweet. We devoured Mike's birthday cupcakes (made by me) and a special surprise made by Sheena. A bit of background: a few nights earlier, while having dinner together, we discussed what a kid would find as an awesome dessert and that it would probably include several types of junk food floating around in gelatin. Sheena and Eric thought that this would be appropriate for Mike and so we got to find out exactly how a dessert like this would turn out and what you get, is in my opinion, the first step to becoming a diabetic.

I think I can speak for everyone when I say this was the most awesome birthday in Perth.

The hypocritical holidays are coming

2009-11-30T21:33:00.001-05:00

Christmas was discovered in the northern hemisphere. You know how I know? Because people from Perth seem to find it acceptable, with a pinch of irony, that all of their Christmas stuff features snow. Cards, decorations, pictures, all of it.

For example, there are new decorations hanging in the Hay Street and Murray Street malls. What to my wandering eyes should appear? Snowy firs, sleighs and reindeer. Snowballs and snowflakes. Not a single kangaroo in a Santa hat.

I'm not necessarily against this, because it's making the festive season a little less unwholesome than I was expecting it to be, with the thermometer at 45C. I did however feel the need to ask some Australians about it, just to hear their responses. I may have also been looking for a bit of hypocrisy, considering that most of my cultural questions are answered with "That's how we do things in Australia."

The answer may surprise you. It didn't surprise me, because I no longer expect anything to make sense in this country. Australians will smile a bit, but otherwise they consider this unrealistic decorating to be completely normal. Hypocrisy, thy name is Christmas! Why can't they react in such a cute introspective way when I ask them why I must wait no less than 15 minutes for a traffic light to cycle through it's eight different phases before it will allow me to walk across an empty street? Why must they beat their chests and tell me that that is the only way it can work in Australia? Oh sure, the traffic light is a beacon of national unity, but Christmas is allowed to be a bit strange.

I was hoping to see wallabies towing a sled with a fat kangaroo in a Santa hat in it. I was maybe hoping to see a palm (or "psalm" for you church-goers out there, I believe) with some lights on it. Nope. Not yet, anyways. And I wouldn't expect to see a Santa Claus parade here either. It's definitely a bad sun exposure problem for the children, and I'm not joking either.

Some people have told me that Christmas is white in Perth because the Poms feel homesick. I point out that England rarely has snow during Christmas and that rain would be a bit more realistic. Australians then rebut with "well that's just the way it is then because that's what we do". That is also the reason why daylight savings was rejected, I bet.

It's fine by us anyway. We're going to go to the beach and relaxing this year, because Christmas isn't the same without the family. We aren't faking it. We'll have a few beers and go swimming, eat some prawns, and look forward to next year.

I bought flasses!

2009-11-29T08:45:00.001-05:00

Flasses!
Originally uploaded by Michael Diez d'Aux

I've been keeping a secret from you, readership. I didn't want to reveal it until we got the last of the Bali pictures up, but now they are up and here it is: I own flasses!

They are a very modern pair of orange and baby blue Ray Flans. Rita picked them out for me, never thinking that I would actually buy them. I paid $3 after some stiff negotiations. We then proceeded to drink enthusiastically and pose for pictures while wearing the flasses, which I have duly posted.

As you know, The Man (read: Rita) has been trying to hold me down (read: prevent me from buying flasses). Well, this time Mr. Establishment didn't win, and I have achieved an unheard of level of coolness, both professionally and socially.

The flasses have gone down well at work. I wear them to meetings and thoughtfully suck on them while pondering. I have also worn them on several dates. Rita has noted a distinct and observable increase in both suaveness and sophistication when I am wearing my flasses.

Ironically, my dream may already be coming to an end. When I had my eyes tested during the dive medical, my right eye thought that an "F" on the bottom line of the eye chart was really an "E". I have made the necessary inquires, and my flasses can be fitted with $100 prescription lenses in the event that I need super awesome glasses for real.

Also, there's something about a monkey adopting a kitten somewhere in the photo upload. Rita thought I should mention that.

Enjoy!

Fate once again intervenes

2009-11-27T03:27:00.004-05:00

This month, there have been a few issues in my life that have taken precedence. One is the Christmas vacation camping trip that we are trying to plan. It's tough to plan a camping trip in Australia when you don't have any kangaroo repellent or other exotic gear. I've been told that we must plan to wake up as soon as the sun hits the tent, which will be 4 in the morning come Christmas-time. Also, we'll need a chilly bin ("beer cooler").

The financially important issue this month has been Rita's precarious employment situation. First, she was planning on returning to the world of old people lifting weights (PUSH DAMMIT! I SAID PUSH!!). But, like the muscles of her old people, when that option withered and died she had to find an alternative source of income. So she started working at Java Juice, which is fun for her because it allows her to observe masses of Australians while drinking free smoothies. Fun, right? Whatever.

At one point, she was going to come and work in my office as a temp girl (I'm sorry, contrived feminism, but no one calls them "temp women"), but that fell through when our admin manager looked at Rita's CV and told me that she "has nothing that we can use". It was a good response because it inspired mirth and also because it allowed her to not be bitter about being rejected by obviously strange people. What sort of things should one add to their CV to get a filing job? An intermediate knowledge of putting a deck of cards in order?

It was a blessing in disguise. A friend of mine in the office had his girlfriend (successfully) gain employment here as a Temp Person. I just overheard a hilarious conversation that proves it was a blessing in disguise:

Dave: "Pete, your girlfriend certainly is cranky."
Pete: "Oh yes (smiling). What did you ask her to do?"
Dave: "Nothing. I just asked her to do her job." (general laughter from everyone in earshot)

So as you can see, I have been spared.

In other news, the other personal trainer at Rita's physio gym thing just quit, making her now Personal Trainer Number One! She now wakes up every day at 5:30 to get into the gym for a couple of hours, before starting her shift at Java Juice. Then after her shift at the Juice, she comes home, has a quick shower, and goes back to the gym to run the circuit classes. Her clients are loving her, especially the women. The ex-trainer had the women doing 2 hours of upper body every week. Rita tweaked that a bit.

Reading Lolita in Port Hedland

2009-11-23T09:07:00.003-05:00

Two important things happened to me today. I finished reading Lolita, and I went to Port Hedland for two hours to approve some dirt.

Finishing Lolita was a momentous event because I've been hacking away at it slowly for over two months now, which is not extraordinary for me. I am a methodical (read: slow) reader, and I was reading an annotated version of the book. It's hard enough to finish a book when you only read for ten minutes before you fall asleep in it; it's extra hard when you also have to flip to the back of the book to find out about references to Arthur Conan Doyle and subtle marks of involution (did you know that Vivian Darkbloom is an anagram of Vladimir Nabokov??).

So you see how this can be boring. That's the point.

I finished Lolita on a plane to one of the great mining towns in Australia, Port Hedland. It's relatively new, and it is a nightmare of a town. It is hot, windy, and very dusty. There is little foliage to contain and prevent its red sand from staining everything rusty orange. Everyone wears the Australian workmen's hi-vis yellow and orange shirts, and absolutely no one actually wants to be in Port Hedland. They're mainly waiting for the Freedom Bird to take them back to Perth.

It's a hot town with no warmth. The sidewalks are epidemically empty, and the verge is garnished not with trees but with construction equipment. An excavator in front of the Chinese Restaurant, a grader in front of the McDonald's. Awful. Yet amazingly, because this is still Australia, you can still only buy espresso in Port Hedland. None of that proletariat filter coffee for the truck drivers!

Bottom line is, I only spoke to construction guys and cab drivers all day. When you combine this with my having four interrupted hours to finally finish and digest Lolita, you get the following kinds of dialogue:

Excavator Guy - So is the ground good?
Me - I can't determine why I should find this site unacceptable. It's highly improbable that the previous inspector was experienced in subgrade assessments.
Guy - Is that good?

And so on. I felt like the most almighty bourgeois condescending prick. At lunch I didn't talk, but I didn't need to because the site guys were amusing themselves by spinning the lazy Susan. We went for Chinese you see.

On the way back from the airport I was paired with a cab driver that cursed my name because I was a $25 fare and not a $100 fare. Pleasantly, we had a conversation about her views on immigration. Her thoughts were that it just ain't right. I withheld my views because she was driving a cab, and a lot of my argument in support of immigration involves new immigrants doing the grunt work, like driving cabs. I asked her if she knew Sarah Palin, but alas she did not. I crashed and burned yet again as a bourgeois prick.

And after my 15 hour day of eating really unhealthy food in the heat, I found that Rita had made me a nice salad for my return home. As icing for the cake, I made a bad joke about the portmanteau word "impredictable", which she rolled her eyes at. I love coming home.

Updates from the week behind

2009-11-21T01:20:00.004-05:00

All kinds of hyperactivity has transpired this week, which explains the relatively few posts. I expected this, as summer is now officially here and we are no longer inside. Until I get some sort of easily transportable computer that I can take with me to cafes - a computer so small that it could theoretically even fit on my lap - the dream of blogging while not being in the apartment will remain a fantasy.

(That computer would also have to explain to Rita why she should be with a man that would take her out for the evening and then studiously ignore her. It was not meant for this age.)

I am sitting in my living room ("parlour") and looking at two huge Kelvinator boxes. That's right friends, our bid for an air conditioner was successful! It's also a heater, which would have been nice four months ago, but no one here is complaining. I am so absolutely excited to go to sleep with the duvet on when it's forty outside that I can't even begin to describe it. It makes one feel rich.

To compensate our landlords, who live here half the year, we will do the following:
- bougatsas,
- Tom to provide professional photography of the apartment and also of the a/c unit to entice future prospective tenants,
- we'll try to find someone to take over the apartment after we're gone, to help our landlords out.

In other news, Rita now works at Java Juice. She ran out of old people to bench-press (I think that's what she does, anyways) and needed to make up the hours, so she took a page from Eric's book and is now making smoothies. The job is pretty good for what it is: free smoothies all day, and she chooses her own hours. Obviously the pay isn't bad either; Juicers must be highly competent. Eric amazes his bosses on a shiftly basis with his aptitude for juicing and also for prepping his station ahead of rushes. He takes no credit for it though; he's trying to finesse his way into Java Juice Barista College where he can earn his Degree in Coffee Making and then be allowed to also make the coffees. Smugness does not get you into Barista College. Anyways, Rita has just finished her training shifts, and she is now in possession of her own JJ bandanna and apron. Ask her for a Banana Republic at our next barbecue.

And turning to the world of sports, I played my first game of cricket! The Coffey Geotechnics Perth Office Second Annual Colonials vs Imperials Invitational One Day International Match (or CGPOCIODI for short) was played last night, and I am very pleased to say that we, the Colonials, smashed 'em 116 to 89. Everyone had four overs batting and two overs bowling, so it was fair. I also got to be wicket keeper for 8 overs, which was fun. While my batting was ok (I had a positive score with 9 runs batted including a boundary (!) and only one out for a total score of 4 (indoor cricket rules)), I did manage to bowl three wickets! That was enormous. It is very rare to bowl a wicket, especially when you have never bowled before. Look for the pictures on flickr, coming soon.

And turning to the world of herbs, I planted some basil, rosemary, thyme, and chili, which I must now tend to. Instead of having dogs, we now have herbs. We miss the dogs.

Getting into Bali the hard way

2009-11-16T03:38:00.005-05:00

Have you ever wondered what could happen if you travel with a passport that has less than six months to expiry?

Funny you should wonder that. An interesting thing happened to me and Rita while trying to enter Bali last month.

Arriving at the Denpasar Airport, we went through the fee gate. This is an arbitrary Balinese gate where you pay a $10 fee for entering their country. The fee is in cash, and they give you a stamp on your customs declaration in return. Then the official just pockets the money. No computers, no checklist. It is a very prestigious position. I'm sure that all of the guards at this gate are directly related to the President.

Then, we went to the customs gate. This is where you find the Balinese border guards in awesome military outfits teeming with pins, awards, flags, patches, epaulets, and dangling yellow ropes. They check your passport to make sure that you have one, and that you filled out your little arbitrary declaration form ("No, I did not bring any more than 100,000,000,000,000 rupiah with me"). Then they check to make sure that you have more than six months left before your passport expires.

Alas I did not, our little Suharto informed me. I only had 5 months and two weeks left.

I ventured that certainly such a respectable man in such an overladen uniform would surely be able to do something about this unfortunate situation. He gave us sort of a regretful smile and led us to a back room. I put on my negotiating face.

We were handed over to a younger guy with an iPhone, who in turn led us away from his meal of KFC with rice and into another room. This room had no windows, and an empty desk with a computer monitor on it. I casually noted that the monitor was not plugged into an actual computer. We were invited to sit in front of this desk, impotent monitor cables in full view.

"iPhone" then somberly told us that he was sending us back to Australia. He showed us the restriction on the back of the customs declaration (received on the plane) stating that you must have more than six months left on your passport to enter Indonesia.

This is it, I thought. Bribe time.

I said to iPhone that I would be willing to compensate him for any trouble we'd cause him in pushing through the necessary paperwork (in triplicate, I'm sure). He asked me what I meant. I offered him the $200 dollareedoos that I had in my wallet.

iPhone looked at me thoughtfully, and said that it was impossible, there were too many people to pay off, and that we'd be going back that night. I asked him how much it would take. Very officially, he informed me that he would only negotiate in American dollars. He would need $500 of those most prestigious dollars in order to do anything about our regrettable situation. Rita dutifully role-played a panicky wife that had already extended every last cent to her name. This gave us leverage. I bargained him down to $400 while Rita agonized and wailed that this would be the end of us. Good girl.

Having reached an accord with iPhone, I was led to a bank machine that only dispense rupiah. What, I asked, was I to do with this when I had been told that I would withdraw American money at the airport? My personal attache told me that rupiah would be just fine. Ah. American dollars are only used to intimidate and frighten people. I wasn't surprised.

We paid it, left the airport, found a very unfortunate taxi driver and roundly abused him as a representative of his country for the serious injustice that we had just suffered. Short on patience, I then made him drive us to the hotel for the most dirt-cheap rate in the world, walking away from him twice in the bargaining process. I saved myself a whole dollar, but it didn't matter. It was at least a small victory.

We got to the hotel, ordered some spicy food with beer, and agreed that we wouldn't mention it until after we left. And then we proceeded to have an awesome vacation anyways. Take that, iPhone.

Looking back on it, we were lucky to even get there. I was talking to a Canadian High Commission rep about getting a new passport while abroad, and she was shocked that Virgin Blue had even allowed me on the plane! Had I failed to bribe everyone in the airport, the airline would have been fined for making that mistake. Had things gone according to plan, I would never have had the opportunity to get screwed in the first place.

Bottom line: your passport expires six months before the expiry date. Live with it.

How to ask your landlord for something

2009-11-13T11:07:00.007-05:00

I am not making this email up. I wrote it from work one day while I was preoccupied with how to maximize the awesomeness of the mass-Canadian visit to Perth in February (Andre got his ticket!). Here's what I came up with. Partial credit to "How to Make Friends and Influence People", and partial credit to all the Dave Barry books I read as a child.

Hi John and Marj,

First off, thanks very very much for the new vacuum cleaner. It sucks wonderfully, and the no-bag feature is nice.

I would live to forward a modest proposal for your consideration. Rita and I would like to humbly request a small wall-mounted air conditioner for the living room, like this one. There are a few reasons:
- an air con unit would increase the value of the apartment for you, and
- it would increase our enjoyment of life.

Specifically, we have two small but ever-present problems. One is that we can't have the window open or the fan on in the bedroom without being constantly "applauded" by the dangly blinds. The other is that we have leather furniture, which will happily stick to us regardless of the fan. Being a Canadian and still fairly new to Australian summers, I can only go on what I am told. My more experienced office-mates happily tell me that I am screwed. We'll also be entertaining a few Canadian visitors through January, and we'll be at a fan deficit. An air conditioner will reflect excellently on the grace and hospitality of Australia.

In exchange for the honour of having an air conditioner, we would be glad to offer you whatever services we can. I am available for heavy lifting or geotechnical engineering any time you need it, and Rita would be glad to walk your dogs (if you have any). Rita also makes an excellent homemade greek pastry, and will gladly provide you with bougatsa for your next home gathering or tea party. You will be the talk of the town.

Thanks for your consideration,
Michael and Rita

Update - John and Marj are considering our proposal, and Rita has upped her offer to two bougatsas and a lasagna. And she'll groom the potential dogs with my electric clippers.

Perth, the un-green city

2009-11-12T22:48:00.002-05:00

I just finished a thought-provoking email exchange with Duncan. He asked me about a green building in Melbourne. Well, he forgot everything about his question except for what was just mentioned, but he did get me thinking.

I responded by saying that if there were in fact any green buildings in Australia, they'd probably have to be in Melbourne (although I have nothing against Sydney). Perth is almost the polar opposite of any "green city".

Take solar water heaters for example. In Athens, you seem them on every single rooftop, even in spite of the overcast winters. It just makes sense to derive as much of hot water as you can for free in a hot sunny country. In Perth, no one has rooftop water heater. Why? Oh, I'm sure that people would mention that winter is overcast and it just makes for an unfortunately impossible situation.

In my opinion, the dichotomy is easily explainable: Europeans pay a lot for their fuel, and will conserve as much of it as possible because they are tight-fisted. They're not holier than thou, they're just frugal people trying to manage a very expensive habit. That's why you risk your life if you leave the hose on all afternoon at Pierro's house in Antiparos, Greece. It's not because they can hear the trees crying. Water is actually expensive.

Different story in Perth. Fuel and energy are as cheap as they are in Toronto, despite a total lack of hydroelectricity and nuclear power. Filling up your car is not a concern here. Water is cheap, despite the fact that it is pumped from the ground. Think about that: Toronto is beside the largest fresh water resource in the world, and Torontonians pay as much for water as Perthites with drought concerns do.

And of course, both Antiparos and Perth are surrounded by salt water. Perthites would not see the similarity, I can assure you.

Unintelligently cheap resources (for a city that voted out daylight savings time) makes for excellent wastage. Why use solar energy to heat our water, when we have nice reliable cheap electricity? Why turn off the lights when we have all this nice coal and gas? Why be concerned about the rest of the world when it is so very far away from Perth? It's much too far away to be of concern.

Perth even has a much much (that's two orders of "much") better transit system than Toronto. But, unlike Toronto, no one uses it. So what's worse? Recycling is a bonus in only a few areas of Perth. It's nowhere to be found in my office, which used to be the Enviro office. There's no green bin for organic waste anywhere.

And I may be harping on hot water, but the water in my office is heated with good ol' fashioned electricity. This means that we run out of hot water in the summer time, when everyone has to shower after the morning training session. The sun can melt a Buick, and we are running out of hot water. At least they don't spray a "cooling" fresh water mist all over their restaurant patios like they do in Phoenix, which is where Duncan is, coincidentally.

Vol. 2: Non-diving Bali pictures are up!

2009-11-10T05:19:00.001-05:00

Do we need more drinks?
Originally uploaded by Michael Diez d'Aux

We've been posting prolifically. Here are the first group of non-diving pictures from Bali. This group mainly identifies itself with such existential questions as "What happens when you combine a swim-up bar and a waterproof camera?" and "Can you drive a motorbike one-handed while clutching an infant?" You'll have to check out the photos for insight into these and other important questions.

I admit that this post is a bit scant on landscapes and temples. These pictures are for the people-people. I don't apologize for it either. There is a time and a place for 100 pictures of stone carvings, and neither of them has anything to do with my flickr page. And anyways, those will get cleaned up and posted soon enough.

I do want to emphasize that none of our processing time has anything to do with Photoshop. Well, that's not entirely true; the very long panoramas are assembled in Photoshop. We use Picasa to do everything else, which is usually very minor. 9/10ths of the work is accomplished with the buttons "I feel lucky" and "crop". And Rita will occasionally clean up my stray eyebrow hairs too. And underwater pictures need a white-balance adjustment. Picasa is the way to go.

The majority of the processing time is spent deleting and commenting. Regarding deleting, I like to take a few shots of each landscape, but I don't actually keep them all. Just because it's digital doesn't mean that it deserves to exist "just in case". Just in case what? Just in case I become Prime Minister some day, and a writer needs a blown-out picture of a Bintang bottle for my memoirs? Please.

And then there is commenting. For some reason I am unable to post anything to flickr without including an anecdote about it. Or an observation. Or a fart joke. Just as long as there's something. That usually takes the longest.

Enjoy!

Completed 1st Triathlon by Rita

2009-11-08T21:43:00.001-05:00

So much pink
Originally uploaded by Michael Diez d'Aux

In May, Mike wrote a blog entry about how I was thinking of joining a triathlon and that it was a perfect amalgamation of the all the activities we are doing in Perth. He was right. Unfortunately, just heading into the winter season, there were no triathlons scheduled for the near future. In mid-August, however, the first triathlons for spring started to appear (spring in Australia is September 1 to November 30) and I signed up for the earliest event I could manage, giving myself about two and half months to prepare.

I began training diligently in cycling and running as well as cross-training with some local trainers who run killer training classes. I also engaged in some swimming but I was a bit lax in this area. The result: I finished my first triathlon with grace.

On Sunday morning, over 1000 women met at Challenge Stadium in Perth to compete (in a very friendly way) in the the Pink Triathlon for breast cancer, and I was amongst them.

It was a beautiful morning for swimming, cycling and running and there was a positive energy all around. There were also some fantastic pink wigs and pink tutus. Mike took some excellent pictures, around 300, but I think we cut it down to 12 on flickr. As you can see from the picture, there was an enormous swimming pool and a mass of pink swim caps waiting to begin. I was a bit nervous about the swim portion but once I got through it, I was flying high. The cycling and the running portion felt like a breeze after that.

In summary, this goal turned out to be a wonderful experience and has made me want to continue training towards longer distance triathlons. I also have to thank Mike for being my number one supporter.

Worst part of triathlon: Waiting to start
Best part of triathlon: The finish...such a good feeling!

Perth is ridiculous: Melbourne Cup edition

2009-11-06T20:53:00.005-05:00

For the past week, Rita has been a homemaker. We came back from vacation and her clinic informed her that there are very few elderly people left for her to stimulate with exercise. Or, in other words, her clinic has run out of work with two months in the year still to go.

I am baffled that a business can run this way, but it seems to be more or less normal here in Perth for business to hemorrhage money. Eric's office is an excellent example. On Melbourne Cup day (the infamous Australian day of celebration where everyone puts on their best, sluttiest dresses and watches a horse race on TV) Eric's office emptied at 11am. They went to a very nice restaurant which had been rented out to watch the race and lubricate clients. However, according to Eric, few people were talking to the clients. Instead, they got hammered all day, then went to the bar next door where the company credit card was already on file and the taps were once again open. This went on into the wee hours.

My office, which is full of Englishmen that couldn't give a "toss" about a horse race much less put on suits for it, watched it over lunch and then went back to work. If there hadn't been a TV set up for it, they wouldn't have watched it.

Sheena's office had an applause-o-meter (as noted in her comment somewhere). Everyone would applaud when they saw a very fancy hat, called a fascinator (Australia is not known for subtleties). And they got hammered too.

How can a business function like this? Sheena has had 5 minutes of work each day in an office that believes she is swamped. Rita's office has run out of clients for the last 1/6th of the year. Eric has had to pick up a supplementary job at Java Juice because he is a recruiter working partially on commission without a hope in hell of placing anyone. Not because he can't, but just because they are dead right now.

I'm pushing Rita to join Eric and work at Java Juice. It's not the worst gig in the world. I'll have an inexhaustible supply of wheat grass. Every boy's dream.

Digression: Rita and I went for a walk the night of The Cup, which is so popular in Melbourne that it has been dubbed a bank holiday. We walked past the Windsor Hotel, which was packed with Australians that were clearly unable to cope with the consequences of drinking all day and all night. Some girls were sitting on the curb in their unbelievably short dresses (in Perth, you aren't being risque unless you are hanging a bit of cheek). One girl was doing some good drunk crying, which is like crying except it's really confused that they look up in bewilderment occasionally. The guys had their untucked shirt tails sitting in pools of spilled beer, wearing their ties on their heads, and were trying to pick up these girls.

Thoughts from vacation

2009-11-05T03:09:00.003-05:00

I have decided to scrap my big fat plan to relive Bali day by day as if Rita and I had been there overseeing elections. It's not that we didn't do enough stuff to warrant it; it's just that I don't want to be annoying. If I were sitting on the onset of a Canadian winter and someone in Australia took the time to detail every single pineapple in Bali, I'd probably become touchy.

I will however say this: I will forever have a problem with expensive vacation destinations. As it is, Rita and I are having a very tough time reasoning a four day trip to the south coast over Christmas. Feeling like a wealthy man for a week is a fantastic way to spend a vacation.

As we traveled through Bali I was constantly thinking: why didn't I arrange to backpack through Indonesia and Thailand as a teenager? Living on $15/day at the beach, traveling for $5 a ticket, eating spicy food and drinking cheap beer. That might have ruined me for life.

Some of the (German) divers that we met in Bali had owned dive shops in Thailand and Papua New Guinea. They were looking into opening the second dive shop in Burma, and they were buying property in Tulamben as a vacation home. My god. These people live and work in paradise doing something that I have to pay money for, and they make enough money to build a house in Bali? where is the justice in that?

To be fair, I guess that they'd be relatively unconcerned with moving away from family and friends. And they'd have to be ok with the occasional natural disaster or military coupe. One of the Thai dive shop owners was away from Aceh during the tsunamis, but he knew of a group that was diving while it came in. They were totally fine under the water. They went down: all good. They came up: everything destroyed and people dead.

It doesn't matter. You are apparently statistically safer in much of southeast Asia than you are in Europe. While that might seem a touch unbelievable (source unknown, too), going to Europe is not a guarantee that you won't get robbed or beat up on vacation. And European people have no problems with crapping on tourists and tourism.

Whereas. I can speak for the Balinese on this one: they know and appreciate that their economy is heavily based on tourism. As long as you are polite and friendly, they appreciate you coming to Bali and they want to make you happy. No ignoring you in cafes. No sneering at backpacks. And they'll always give you a fantastic price. It's also true of Thai people: no one in Australia had problems traveling in Thailand during the coupe, because tourism remained largely unaffected. They didn't want us tourists to not have a good time, after all.

It's really made me reevaluate my future traveling plans. Would I advise my children to backpack around Europe during university? I'd tell them to head straight to Bangkok and go from there. As for us, we'd both like to see more of the world. But I can't imagine that we'll stay away from Indonesia for too long.

The diving is too good.

I'm fed up

2009-11-04T07:39:00.001-05:00

Coral collage
Originally uploaded by Michael Diez d'Aux

I've been having a hell of a time with the computer. We've been editing pictures for days. I had a flickr batch ready to go, fat with all manner of tag, caption and title, when flickr uploader crashed on me. I wasn't myself for hours.

On top of that, I've been doing a computer programming course for the past three days. Sitting in a dark room staring at a computer from 9 to 5 does not put me in an agreeable frame of mind for doing the same at home. And yet here I am, addicted to punishment.

And THEN, we are trying to create a photobook online, and we spend an hour on that, and it crashes too. I was immediately rushed to the ice cream parlour. I just barely made it.

Here are the (initial) fruits of our labour: pictures from diving. If you don't enjoy the sh*t out of them, I am going to be seriously pissed.

In other Perth news, the Melbourne Cup was yesterday. This is a very important Victoria holiday, where people get dressed up, watch a horse race, and drink all day and all night. What's even more interesting, they hold this drinking tradition on a Tuesday. What's more, Australians really can't hold their liquor. More on this when I am not so mad at the computer.

Something to assuage your thirst for images

2009-11-02T08:09:00.005-05:00

We're moving quickly to filter our pictures from 1,000 down to a palatable 24. In the meantime, enjoy a diving video of Rita at 20m under the sea, at Kubu coral gardens in Tulamben. This production really opened my eyes; I am considering a move to film. Too much?

In other news, I am sorely regretting the fact that I didn't discover our camera's underwater setting until after we dove the wreck. I'm mildly soothed by the fact that the underwater visibility was 15m, which is amazing by most standards but not so hot for trying to shoot a 120m long ship.

Day 1: Under the sea in Tulamben

2009-11-01T03:25:00.002-05:00

We're back from six wonderful days in Bali, and all five loads of laundry are finished. Our hands are full this time with over 1200 pictures from two cameras to ~~delete~~ filter through, and I have twice as many days with twice as many traveling companions to blog about. In order to simplify things - but also to allow me to remember things more ~~creatively~~ accurately - I'll have to write about Bali as a series. As I am not Quentin Tarantino, we'll begin at the beginning.

Having recently received our scuba diving degrees (the prestigious B.SD), Rita and I spent the first two days scuba diving in northern Bali. Southern Bali is the tourism centre and has the world-famous surfing, club districts, shopping, eating, and fancy hotels, as well as a few chilled-out areas. Northern Bali is for diving, volcano trekking, and surrounding yourself with Balinese people (as opposed to Australians and Russians). The next time we're in Bali, we'll probably spend most of our time in the north. I don't want an omlette and oj for breakfast; I want nasi goreng and a pint of Balinese coffee swimming with grinds.

We went with a dive shop in Tulamben called Ocean Sun which is run by Ricardo, the most relaxed German in the world. He took us on a thrilling drive over volcanoes with hair-pin switchbacks, through jungles, past rice paddies, and around clouds of motorcycles dappled with impossibly large trucks on the little 1.5 lane roads.

Ricardo is all about diving on a budget; he offers his own spartan rooms for $10/night, equipped with cold water and a fan. For an extra ten he booked us at the place across the road, where we lavishly refreshed ourselves with hot showers and slept luxuriously with a/c. Sometimes you have to go all out. And my hair goes all frizzy with no a/c.

Ocean Sun had also been the reason for my own personal early-life crisis earlier this month; they offer a full two month beginner-to-divemaster scuba course for $2300, which includes everything except lunch and dinner, which is $1 per meal anyway. At the end of the course you can apply for PADI divemaster certification, which allows you to write your own holiday ticket, permanently. Rita and I only narrowly decided that we couldn't afford it, and that decision took a week. It was an exciting week.

On the first day we dived the Liberty wreck, which is a 120m long coral reef née transport ship. This is Bali's primary diving attraction, and it has spurned an entire economy of scuba gear porters. Under the water we saw a garden of sand eels, a school of huge jackfish, a reef shark, a blue-spotted ray, and way too many other things to mention. On the beach, we saw tiny Balinese women carrying two to three scuba tanks on their heads. The tanks each weigh 18kg; to quote Rita, we had to see it to believe it. They charge pennies, but the income is very important to the local economy. We hung out with the goats and chickens while our gear was being loaded up.

The pictures will be up soon; we'll also post them in batches and we'll try to keep it concise. If anyone out there needs to have their arm twisted a bit to move to Bali and become a professional diver, I am your man.

Hasta la vista, baby

2009-10-25T02:49:00.003-04:00

We're leaving for Bali in five hours! Rarely will I place a non-sarcastic exclamation mark (the grammatical equivalent of a poodle's bouncy ball), but I think it'll be ok here.

We have one week to conquer an entire island. The following itinerary has been proposed:

Sunday - Arrive at 11pm, have celebratory drinks. We'll squeeze in some Indonesian television, which will show a repeat of the Chinese teenager battle of the bands. I will keep an eye out for the commercial featuring the beans in a can.

Monday - Wake up early and enjoy a free hotel breakfast. This will hopefully be fried rice with a fried egg on top. The other tasty variation is the noodles with fried egg on top. Then we meet our ride to Tulamben, which is where we'll be diving for the next two days. It's a three hour drive, and I hope to capture a few shots of tiny scooters laden with outrageous cargo, or a preponderance of very small children.

Upon arriving in Tulamben, we'll dive the USAT Liberty wreck. This was a WW2 cargo ship, until it hit a mine and was beached. Then it was a beached cargo ship, until the volcano erupted and power-slammed it into the ocean. Then it was a sunk cargo ship, until coral took a liking to it. Now it is a boat-shaped reef.

Tuesday - Finish diving the Liberty and surrounding reefs, and check out a few of the supremely photogenic northern fishing villages. We will hopefully drive back through Sideman and Candidasa, which is apparently the most beautiful road in Bali. Candidasa used to have an excellent coral reef, but it was blown up by developers to make cement. Stunning, isn't it.

Eric and Sheena arrive tonight. We meet them at the hotel in Nusa Dua and party until we poop.

Wednesday - A generally laid back day. We'll get a surf lesson in the morning from the local guys, and we'll walk the beach promenade of Nusa Dua. Rita will teach Sheena how to haggle like a Greek. We'll then return to the hotel, where Rita will show Sheena how to bake bougatsa. Eric and I will retire to a game of backgammon and mango juice. After Eric has been thoroughly defeated, we'll try to find a restaurant that will serve us salt and lime seafood that was living until just after we ordered it. If the sand under the table is not cleanly raked, I will withhold my $1 tip.

Thursday - Island tour. We will forgo the traditional Balinese dance show, because 27 dissonant metal xylophones at 7:30am gets me a bit cranky. We will go to the monkey rainforest, where I will covertly put a banana in Rita's pocket and watch mayhem ensue. No pictures can be taken, because these monkeys are fierce kleptomaniacs (Tom, is this how you derive your last name?) and will steal the camera. Lunch overlooking the volcano will be a highlight, as will the natural sulfur hot springs of Lovina. I expect to be cleansed, dammit.

Friday - Sheena and Rita will have the last of their 18 massages. We'll check out the world-famous surf spots on southern Bali and take pictures. Seminyak is also on the list, home to the very poshest restaurants and shops in Bali. I'm keen to see what that looks like, from afar. We'll find an all-night drinking spot and live it up big on our last night. Eric doesn't want to even go to bed, as our flight is early the next morning. I may turn passive aggressive and just fall asleep in the bar, but I'll try my hardest not to.

Saturday - Return home, go straight to beach. Everyone in my office teases me that I'm just on vacation for the whole year, so I might as well live up to expectations.

Existential thoughts

2009-10-23T04:23:00.005-04:00

I'd like to take some time out today from my usual depictions of hairy Australian spiders to put down thoughts on a topic dear to my heart: myself. Occasionally, when chatting with folks in Toronto, I will hear "yah, sorry, I haven't been keeping up with the blog". What gives?

Or, more accurately, why, on this auspicious week of 100 posts, would anyone think that I was doing this for any other reason than myself?

What I have come to realize is that my blog is not a diary. It was supposed to be one. It was supposed to be a nice collection of travel writing. What it has become is, well, not exactly that. More like a collection of editorials. With some leaf hating thrown in. And an existential metamorphosis.

I used to decry writing/blogging/crying as self-indulgent and a bit feminine. Now, I realize that there is nothing I'd rather be doing in my spare time than being self-indulgent (I can't say the same thing about being feminine). So I post blogs about funny things that happened or, occasionally, on why the Leafs are at their core the worst hockey team ever. And occasionally, when no one is around and I have the house to myself, I will lock the door and just have a really, good, cry. I'm an artiste.

I will admit: I do get a pang of pleasure after I write a new post. It's a little feeling of accomplishment pang, and that's why I post this blog. I don't post everything that I write, and it always has to pass the "Rita filter" for nonsense (she'll usually strike any analogy that involves pedophiles or puppies).

But this blog has had an unfortunate side effect. Sometimes when I speak to people on the phone, they are apologetic for not following the blog and thus not knowing what's going on. And so I reiterate: What gives?

I have considered not writing about traveling in favour of writing about funny things I see on the way to work (dolphins, this morning), but that would be dishonest. This trip is just giving me way too much material right now to censor out. Tomorrow, I am sailing for a team in the state championships. How am I not going to write about that? Especially if I have to pee off the boat half-way through the race.

So, to the point, if you don't read this blog, don't worry about it. I don't care.

But more to the point, if you are a trendy magazine editor looking for an edgy writer with a love of Mexican food, and you are not reading this blog, you really should be.

I also do weddings.

Why we came to Perth in the first place

2009-10-17T22:52:00.004-04:00

It was the best of times, if only someone had told me. - Hank, Californication (pending results of RHCP lawsuit)

I've been thinking about this quotation a lot. It's really clever for starters. I'd love to be able to write like this. It's also a fantastic tongue-in-cheek parody of a line that everyone knows because Mr. Burns read it to a chimp. This is the modern way to remember quotations from classic literature: if it was used in an episode of the Simpsons. Edgar Allan Poe would never have seen that one coming.

But I digress. It's particularly applicable to our lives right now, because we just had another typical summer weekend. It may sound like we are spoiled, but the truth is that you aren't living in Australia unless it is over 30 degrees C. Last Saturday was the second hottest October day ever, at 37 deg.

We went to the beach. Well, not quite. First, I made breakfast in my underwear and we ate in the beautiful dry heat of the morning, with the sun exploding through the blinds. Rita and I then parted company, I for my swim group and she for a physio appointment. Rita's back has been bothering her (too much weight on the deadlift is my guess), and her employer offered to fix her up for free so that she could have a relaxing week. Good guy.

My "lucky" quarks were spinning overtime (refer to Pierro's lucky particle theory, which I urge him to post in the comments). My group did a huge morning swim in the outdoor 50m pool, with the sun still just at bay. The pool was so calm and the light was so good that I was able to correct my own stroke by watching my crystal clear shadow on the bottom of the pool. When I got out, I was air dried in minutes.

Because my lucky particles cause a field of reverse spin, Rita was subjected to painful manipulations and electrocution in the dark physiotherapy office. But she was feeling much better afterwards, which was the important thing. And so we picked up the Scotts and went to the beach.

Lucky particles still spinning wildly out of control, I immediately found a free parking space in a shaded garage at our beach of choice, Scarborough Beach. My burst of luck caused Rita to stub her toe quite badly as we left the parking garage. I believe that the sacrifice was both necessary and warranted, because our car would have been a lump of molten metal if we had left it in the sun.

The water was cold and crushingly refreshing. I do mean crushingly: the waves were double overhead (approx. 3m). Naturally, Eric and I went straight in to play in the waves and avoid spinal injuries, while our women lay in the sand and gossiped.

Having survived a quick swim, Eric and I headed back to shore, which was difficult because the ocean was doing all kinds of things to prevent this. Sometimes we had to swim across sand troughs, sometimes we had to battle cross currents, and occasionally we would have to dive under a reverse wave. At Scarborough, you'll get waves reflecting off the beach and coming back out at you.

We were spent, and retired to the souvlaki place for a snack. My salad was a lot of shredded green pepper with a splash of watered down vinegar, and two cubes of "feta". This beach may be nice, but we won't be replacing Greece anytime soon. Don't even get me started on the total absence of frappe.

It was a spectacular weekend, and we're nothing but grateful for being able to live in Perth. We didn't even have to avoid a car accident on the way home.

Going back to Bali

2009-10-17T05:54:00.004-04:00

The pull of fresh mango juice is strong. We are going back to Bali for a full week starting next Saturday.

Not that I need to defend double Bali trips, but this trip had a bit more thought put into it than the previous trip. When we went to Bali last time, I bought the tickets in secret while I was still up north on site. It was a surprise for Rita, and it could have remained a surprise all the way until we had to board our flight. Alas, she ruined everything by sinking into a depression, thinking that we were going to drive to Geraldton. My plan worked too well, and I had to tell her the truth.

This time, Eric and Sheena were interested in doing a weekend trip to Margaret River. Being the careful, diligently scrutinous, greedy couple that we are, Rita and I naturally priced it out against a trip to Bali. Guess which one was cheaper? This hint is: not the place where a burger costs $25.

It got better. Going to Bali for three days was cheaper than going to The Rivvie for three days, but so was going to Bali for seven days. The price is all in the flight, as it turns out. And Eric and Sheena wanted to go. And we had already been, which means that we won't even be catching a cab from the airport without some heavy bargaining going down.

Plus, this time we'll be diving in Bali for a few days. There is a WW2 era shipwreck (the USAT Liberty) off the black sand northern coast. The ship was beached until the volcano erupted and blew it out into open water, where it was immediately consumed by vigorous tropical coral. Now it's a sort of man-made reef. It's considered a very good wreck to dive.

We're as excited as a 300lb Alabaman woman in Vegas at a $2 all-you-can-eat buffet with electric scooter access. We're going to hit up all the beaches, and we'll visit the kleptomaniac monkey rainforest. Obviously, we'll gorge ourselves on fish and fresh pineapple piña coladas. We'll try to hike the volcano, and we'll hire 18 Balinese porters to carry Eric and Sheena's telephoto lens. They'll only get tips if they climb the whole volcano in their bare feet. Lucky for them, they'll do that anyways.

We stayed in Sanur last time, which is laid back and relaxed. We'll be in Nusa Dua this time, which is a beach paradise. And we have Katut's card. He drove us around last time, and we'd like to give him repeat business. He was very helpful when I left my visa card in the bank machine. In Bali. On vacation. Much to Rita's credit, she has never used that against me. She's probably saving that one for something really important.

Like when she wants to buy a dive knife. Or a dive computer. Or a motor boat for diving. Why did we get into scuba diving?

Dive pictures and more

2009-10-14T08:46:00.001-04:00

Happy diving couple
Originally uploaded by Michael Diez d'Aux

We've posted a few pictures from diving, and from the past two months in general. No photography competition this time. We had so much fun on the last one that we have had photographer's block ever since.

All of that is about to change. We received our underwater camera housing in the mail today. This housing will allow us to take a very expensive camera deep underwater and worry about it the entire time. To prevent worrying, I am going to take a slice of toast on a dive in the housing first. If the toast comes back dry, all systems go.

I'm excited about the underwater housing. I will be able to focus all of my energy on taking pictures of Rita playing the air guitar from a neutrally buoyant position. Thankfully, this will free up a lot of time that was previously being spent on checking my air supply. If I am lucky, I may also be able to "capture" a fish.

We've been considering night diving, now that we have an underwater camera. Why would any sane person wish to do that, you may ask? Many reasons. First, we can go prawning at night, and we can hand-catch prawns that are at least 8 inches long. Second, we can see crazy nighttime fish. There are enormous fish that will cuddle right into the belly of a diver. Why? Because when said diver illuminates a school of fish with his or her torch, those fish lunge out and eat them! I need to get video of that.

Thirdly, there is a type of night fish around Perth that form a tight cloud when swimming in a school. You can punch into the cloud and the fish absorb your fist and contract around it, investigating. Then you pull your fist out and the fish-bulb re-expands in sort of a sigh of relief. The pictures we just posted will look like poop next to a huge picture of me punching a cloud of fish.

Enjoy! COMMENT. Thank you. Tom knows what I'm talking 'bout.

Blue Ocean Strategies and Me

2009-10-13T03:44:00.003-04:00

I've been enjoying a delightful New York Times article this week on the history of management consulting. In the past I have flirted with the idea of becoming a business consultant or an MBA student, but I never became fully proactive in achieving the deliverables required to harness such synergies, largely because I have no clue what the hell I just said.

The article essentially says that the emperor has no clothes, and never did. It's all about the old days, when consultants would time Hungarians shovelling coal, and then tell them to work twice as fast, based on the two handed regression. That's when the consultant would look at a cloud of data and then use their hands to "filter" it into a nice straight line.

Amazingly, this kind of consulting is where we find the roots of business school. In those days teaching business was deemed impossible, as it was an art form that required a specific type of person to exercise. With the advent of management consultants at the brickyards and docks this all changed, and the Harvard Business School was born.

Why am I writing this? My beloved company has become swept up in all of it. We now receive weekly email reminders of what our corporate culture is, which specific definitions of integrity we are to follow, and why a three year corporate management expansion will ultimately benefit the company. There was an email for "everyone" about the need to cut back non-chargable flights, in the wake of the GFC (yup, global financial crisis!). In a communique to the global offices a few months ago, our CEO went as far as blatantly plagarizing a very popular business book, Blue Ocean Strategies. The entire presentation essentially discussed the need to find Blue Oceans, with not a reference or footnote in sight. Many in our office missed it, because they were out drilling.

All of this irritates me. I am irritated that our Most Gracious Leaders are telling us that we are still a specialist engineering firm, and then we (a geotechnical company) go and buy a rail company and a sports facility design firm. They are just using whatever "language" they want to create any "reality" that they please. How can a specialist company run a stadium design consultancy and a mining engineering consultancy? That's about as multidisciplinary as it comes. Let's have A just be A.

The aspiring managers sit back and take it all in, and no one says anything like "bollocks" or "cock" (this is good Australian language) about it. Yet clearly our company is experiencing a midlife crisis, and would desperately like to be a business consultancy instead. And they'd like to include the language and the enormous shiny watches as well.

Of course, as a result of corporate management almost doubling in size during this phase of restructuring (and the GFC, which, every time I hear that acronym, makes me want to puke a little in my mouth), no engineers should expect a raise this year. Aha. What is the only thing that we make money on? Engineering reports. Yes of course.

Our day of diving

2009-10-10T09:53:00.008-04:00

Mike's version.

As part of a PADI diver certification course, you have to do four open water dives. If you do this in Perth, you get to take a huge dive boat out to Rottnest Island and dive the coral reefs there. They have more species than the Great Barrier Reef, and Rotto has its own pub! Australians love to tell you that the Great Barrier Reef is crap for diving. But I digress.

Best trip ever! That's all I have to say. The boat was enormous, and was equipped with a barbecue and a little coffee bar. I nearly went into a diabetic coma from eating 2lbs of jujubes. The water was nice and clear, and a pleasant undercurrent swayed us gently while we dove through caves and looked at manta rays. I am sad to report that there were no blue whales, but we were only in 16m of water. I was disappointed, nonetheless.

On the way home, I noticed that Rita was unusually silent and fixated on the horizon. She was also hobbling when she got off the boat. Strange. But I think she had fun.

Rita's version.

It was supposed to be a fantastic day of diving. Mike and I were both very excited for this trip and well prepared, or so I thought. It was slightly cooler and windier than I had expected and the sun was hiding somewhere but it didn't matter because we were so hyped up about diving.

As the boat took off, one of the instructors started talking us through where we were going, the depths, and general things we needed to know about our location. I noticed that the boat was getting a bit bumpy once we were out of the marina due to the slight swell in the ocean so I decided to go sit out on the back of the boat and stare out at the horizon in order to prevent getting nauseous. This does actually work.

As the time passed, however, I realized I needed to put on my swimsuit which was too wet to put on that morning. I made my way to the washroom which was quite a difficult task in itself as the boat was swaying quite a bit at that point. I pulled the heavy door open and as I stepped into the washroom the boat suddenly jumped and that heavy door slammed shut against my ankle. Ouch (to say the least). A good sized piece of flesh was stolen from my foot and as I tried to deal with the pain I also had to deal with the fact that the room felt very warm, everything seemed to be moving all around me and I couldn't focus on one unmoving object. I sat on the toilet, took some deep breaths and completed the task of putting on my swimsuit. At this point, my head was spinning and I could feel my morning weetbix coming up in my throat.

As I stepped out into the cold air I felt some relief and soon enough the boat stopped and everyone started putting on all their gear. This proved to be a difficult task for me at this point because 1) my foot was bleeding and I had to put on a wetsuit and boots and 2) every time I bent over, I instantly felt extreme nausea. Was I about to miss my Rottnest diving trip? No way. I sucked it up, got dressed and had Mike help me put on my 40lbs of gear.

The water was cold but instantly helped the suffocating feeling that my wetsuit was giving me. As we descended to a depth of 16m, there was no remnant of nausea, everything felt still and peaceful and for the next 40 minutes, I was happy.

What I didn't realize as I surfaced to the top, was that the waves had gotten slightly bigger and that bobbing up and down like a float on the water was even worse for sea-sickness. I swam to the boat underwater, trying to re-capture my previous tranquility but it was too late. I pulled myself out of the water and stumbled around the boat trying to get everything off me as quickly as possible, especially my damned wetsuit that was strangling me and cutting off the circulation to my head.

It took a while but eventually I started feeling better. I felt good enough to sit up on the second level where everyone began gathering for lunch. There was a barbecue on board where hamburgers, sausages, onions and veggie patties were being cooked. The faint smell bothered me and although I couldn't eat, I decided to sit there regardless and socialize with everyone. Of course Mike sat next to me and ate one of everything. It was a true test of mind over matter. Especially as Mike offered me a sausage by putting it right in front of my face and a bit of bile came up my throat. I turned away, breathed some fresh air, and said 'no thank you.'

Thanks to the nice long break, I felt well enough to put all my gear on and go for dive two but not before my instructor talked me through how to vomit underwater. As I jumped in, the cold water once again provided some much needed relief and as I descended to the depths the nausea once again faded. As I ascended, however, the waves had once again grown larger and this time the bobbing on the water simulated a roller coaster ride. The current was so strong everyone had to hold on to a rope to pull themselves toward the boat, and I as I approached the boat the waves seemed to tease me by pushing me towards the boat and suddenly pulling me away. I made it on the boat and once again threw my gear off as fast as I could manage.

All that was left was the ride home, this time with much rougher water. It was cold and windy and I was wet. I sat on the top level by myself staring out at the horizon while gripping the bench that I was sitting on and stayed that way for the next 45 minutes.

In a world with no daylight savings

2009-10-09T05:50:00.004-04:00

An annoyingly bright city to wake up to.

At some point during the winter, Western Australia rejected daylight savings time in a referendum. Being Canadian, I assumed that referendums were supposed to be important business. But then again, I have never lived in a state populated mainly by miners and farmers, who represent the very pinnacle of modern, elevated, informed thinking.

Maybe I sound bitter. The days are getting nice and long now and, without daylight savings, all the nice longness is taking place from 5 to 6am. Every morning at 5am I am woken up by the sun, which is insanely bright in this land of no ozone. I am kept awake by the shrill squawking of birds until it is time to get out of bed two hours later. And we still have approximately the same amount of tennis time after work.

Coming to Australia and having this problem is a bit ironic. I think that people should be warned about this before moving to WA. The government should warn that you can either go to Melbourne and have sunlight until 9pm for most of the year, or you can go to Perth (motto: Just try to avoid our drivers!) and watch the entire world shut down at 6pm.

You may think that I am overstating this point. However, what you don't know is that allowable open times for businesses is going to be an issue in the next state election here. Nearly everything closes at 6pm here in Perth, and the government wants to loosen that up a bit (the fools!). The opposition, naturally, does not feel that The People want or need this.

You would certainly get that impression by listening to talk radio here. Every rural farmer and off-duty miner will call in and voice their strong disregard for modernization. I'm always reminded of religious people calling in to the CBC to spew venom all over The Da Vinci Code. Do the atheists ever call in? No. They sit at home rubbing their temples and wondering how so many people have been afflicted by stupidity.

That is why WA is backwards. It is the failure of their democracy. Not everyone needs to have a say about everything. I need to write an article about the people of Onslow to fully illustrate this, but there are many very rich Australians out in the middle of absolute nowhere that would sooner die then do one single little thing to change their lives in any way.

Maybe I sound cranky, but I got up very early this morning.

Antiparos flood picture

2009-10-07T01:33:00.001-04:00

antiparos floods
Originally uploaded by Teye

I am a member of the Antiparos group on Flickr and, occasionally, something really eye-catching comes my way.

Those of you at were at Andre and Helene's wedding on Antiparos may recognize this photo, although I wouldn't be surprised if you don't, because every street in the Cyclades looks like this. I'm just sayin' what everyone is thinkin'. Anyways, this is our breakfast spot, Yanni's Place, after an awesome September storm. Pretty cool huh?

The photographer wrote me an email and informed me that Pierro's father, Kosmas, continued to play tavli on the patio and remained cool. I'm sure he was just waiting for the water to go down so that he could get home without wetting his cigarettes.