The Concrete Bloc

On Your Left

2006-10-17T12:17:00.000-07:00

I bought a small throat mic for my Olympus DS-2 voice recorder. I want to be able to talk to it while riding my bike without having to stop and rummage around my messenger bag looking for the recorder. I set the recorder up to be voice activated, put the mic on my t-shirt collar, place the recorder in my pocket and head on out. I am not certain whether I look more suspicious talking into a recorder or just talking to myself.

So I am now listening to the results of my first experiment. I recorded a ride to Microsoft. I didn’t talk much until the end of the ride, where I had a couple of cool thoughts to record. We’ll hear them at the end of the recording.

The recording is 24 minutes long. I know I only spoke (to myself) for about two. I am wondering what the rest of the time is filled with.

0:00 - The unmistakeable sound of me clomping in bike shoes on a softwood floor. I am moving my bike and locking the door. I can hear myself leave the house then go back in to get my helmet. Putting on the helmet makes lots of noise. There’s lots of heavy breathing as I carry my bike down the 45 stairs to the street. I hear myself click into the cleats. This should be over now and on to the good stuff.

4:39 – I get on the road. The sound of the freewheel is loud – it is a Chris King hub that “rolls good with angry bee sound”. As I approach Nickerson I can hear the sounds of the heavy traffic. I push the button for the pedestrian signal. I hear the traffic noise change as I ride across the Fremont Bridge. It isn’t supposed to be recording all this traffic. I must have it set too sensitive.

9:23 – I say “On your right,” as I pass someone.
10:53 “On your left.”
10:59 “On your left.” Ok, I am going to abbreviate this to OYL.
14:08 – OYL
14:30 – I say “On your…” and then it tails off. I think this is because I said it too late and I was past them before I got to the left part. Oh well, it is the thought that counts.
15:06 – OYL
15:34 – OYL
15:53 – OYL
16:35 – OYL
16:55 – OYL OYL OYL OYL OYL OYL.. I am realizing that for most of my ride all I am going to say is On Your Left.

21:45 – The crossing near the old Albertsons goes “ding” to help the people from the nearby old folks home cross the road. This is only a quarter of the way through the ride yet I am near the end of the recording.

24:54 – Recording ends. Aarrgh!

Lesson of the day - most of the time I pass people on their left.

Steve and Brent Ride to Subway

2006-10-16T13:40:00.000-07:00

Steve and I are on the phone, talking about a bike ride. “Don’t bring the fixie,” he says. This means he’s going to go fast. We meet up at Gasworks Park and ride along the Burke-Gilman Trail. I’ve ridden the B-G a lot but I still ride there because it is pretty and I’m less likely to get squashed by a car.

The ride has to destination. We just ride. I don’t have any water bottle cages on my bikes so I stop at every water fountain to drink. I know where they are. Steve always offers me his water but I refuse. If I’m going to be dumb enough to not carry water then it is my responsibility to fill up along the way. Water stop number one is just past Ti Cycles, famed for their Titanium bikes, although part of me feels that a Titanium bike is like having unidirectional speaker cables. Get over it.

This ride Steve needs to pay a visit to the bathroom. There’s a park halfway to the top of the lake so we turn into it. I’ve never been here before. This park is on the lake, there’s an area for kids to paddle in the water. There’s plenty of space and not many people. There’s also a water fountain. Another one to add to the list – water stop number two.

I count the gulps as I drink. Twenty gulps. On a hot day I drink thirty. I used to just drink a lot of gulps then break for air. If I’m already breathing hard this doesn’t work so I figured out a system where I gulp, breathe in, gulp, breathe out, repeat. I think I’m odd for doing this, but it works for me.

At the top of the Lake we keep on going. At this point I know I am eating into the afternoon. The ride to the top of the lake and back is about two hours and I haven’t turned around yet. Water stop number three is here, but it is closed for a few months as they renovate the little park it inhabits.

As we keep riding we pass onto the ‘Sammamish River Trail’. This confused me at first. The B-G used to go all the way to Marymoor Park but they renamed it at some point recently and forgot to tell me. So when I passed the sign for the SRT I figured I must have taken a wrong turn and it took me fifteen minutes to unfigure it.

The SRT has much nicer pavement than the B-G. Maybe this is intended to highlight the spiritual differences between the Eastside and Westside, like changes in road surface as you pass from England to Scotland. Although I have driven from England to Scotland, expecting the road to get rough and potholed and inhabited by wild Haggis but instead the road quality improved. The Scots were making McAdam proud.

Water stop number four is a crescent shaped structure with a map of the B-G and SRT inlaid on the concrete outside the toilet block. Two Titanium Serottas are parked there. The Eastside has nice bicycles. Continuing on we pass a salmon watching area. Yes, people are watching salmon swim up the Sammamish River. Good for them. We race by.

Water stops number five and six are by sports fields and close enough together that there’s little need to stop there. We overtake a couple. He’s riding a Davidson, made in Seattle and a nice shade of red. I say “Nice bike,” and ride on. He smiles.

As we get to Marymoor Park we have been gone about two hours, maybe more. I might know where all the water stops are but I don’t bring food either and I have no idea where the food stops are on the SRT. Marymoor Park is near Redmond Town Center and there’s plenty of food there. I didn’t bring a bike lock so one of us will have to guard the bikes while the other gets food.

Despite my hunger we must first find water. Marymoor Park must have water stop number seven, so we ride around and look. We ride into a cluster of baseball/softball pitches and there see something unexpected yet welcome. A Subway. There’s a franchise of Subway in the middle of Marymoor Park. I join the line while Steve guards the bikes from the hordes of thirteen year old soccer girls. One twelve inch meatball sandwich later and I’m fueled enough to head back.

But not fueled enough. At water stop number five is a concession stand that is open. Hundreds of school-age kids and parents are milling around watching various soccer games. I buy chocolate. There are bags of chips sitting out in the open on stands. It remind me of something Kevin’s sister said when visiting us in Seattle and seeing all the bunches of flowers outside Metropolitan Market – if this was Australia they’d all be stolen.

Back on the Seattle side of the lake a pedestrian motions us to slow down. We look ahead and someone is sitting in the middle of the path. A protest? As we pass it becomes clear that a cyclist has knocked down a pedestrian. As we dawdle past he scene two policemen arrive and ask some dude standing there, “Are you the cyclist?” I hear him say yes. We leave the sad scene.

The next few miles are up a gentle slope and we don’t talk much. We maintain our pace up the hill. I can feel it working my legs hard, the effect magnified after four hours of riding, and making me thirsty. In this state I don’t look around at the view or admire the trees or feel the wonder of cycling, I just want a drink. At the top of the hill I smile – water stop number one is close. This is my favourite part of the ride. I’m thirsty, the wind is at my back, I am going downhill towards the water fountain and the track is wide with few pedestrians. Life is good.

Alain de Botton Highlights the Fear of Wasting my Life

2006-10-16T12:27:00.000-07:00

Saturday afternoon and I’m on the Gunnar. The Gunnar is my commuter bike, a cyclocross frame set up to be a pothole-diving, car-dodging fast city bike. The frame is in high-visibility black with a couple of dark green bits for hubs, headset and skewers. It looks it came out of some factory in military industrial complex. I ride the Gunnar if it is going to be wet or I have to ride a long way. On Saturday the clouds were thick and the forecast said “Seattle in October”.

I am riding to the Seattle Public Library. If I ride my ddn8r fixie down Dexter I have to spin but on the Gunnar I can change gears to something nice and tall and put the hammer down. As usual, I envision car doors opening into my path as I fly down the hill. Maybe it adds to the thrill.

Downtown I am riding up Fifth Avenue. Seattle is hilly and Fifth is no exception. I get to the front at each stoplight. There’s always an open lane on one side or other and I sneak into it. As the light goes green I sprint off, and I can beat most vehicles. A lot of this sprinting is uphill. I am breathing heavily. I park under the Library by the security station, figuring that should be safer, although having seen ‘Bike Thief’ I have my doubts.

I am twenty minutes early in the lecture room. I figure I should read a book. I have a pannier full of Alain de Botton books and one I haven’t finished yet. But since I am sitting waiting for a lecture by Alain himself, I’m feeling self conscious. If I read “The Architecture of Happiness” waiting for a lecture on the Architecture of Happiness while a giant screen in front of us reads “The Architecture of Happiness” I feel like a sucky teachers pet. I decide that valour is the better part of discretion and pull the book out. I needn’t have bothered, I’m still so wired from sprinting through downtown that I can’t focus on the words. I put the book back and try to relax instead. My efforts are interrupted by a stream of people wanting the seats either side of me. “I have friends coming” I say. I hope they arrive.

Five minutes before the scheduled start I see Alain wandering around. He looks the same as he does on video. Youthful face, always the potential for a bright eyed look. He’s also tall, taller than me. I wonder how someone so tall can come across so soft. Maybe he’s gentle on the TV but a rugby-playing brute offscreen..

The lecture is brilliant. He goes through the content of the book, enlivening it and adding emphasis where he feels it is needed. His timing is spot on – he leaves a photo of a Holiday Inn hotel room on the screen for a while before commenting on it. He describes how it made him feel. Worthless. We signal agreement with our laughter.

Most of these events have one magic element. One thing that sticks in your mind and alters how you see the world. When I saw Curtis White talk he listed his goals in writing as to create something beautiful, to misbehave and to win. I recall his words when I think about what music I want to write or what stories I should tell.

With Alain de Botton the magic moment came when he was describing the walls at Versailles. He showed pictures of their elegant, gold-decorated features. The designs were detailed to a tiny level. The artistry was fine. It was clearly expensive. In my house we choose a paint to colour our walls. On Seattle’s Eastside they don’t even choose a colour, they just pick Bellevue Beige. At Versailles they hire artists and craftsmen to create gorgeous masterpieces on their walls.

Alain’s theory is that the French Kings put up such extravagant walls to help them overcome their fears. And what is the greatest fear of a French King? To be poor! So the walls remind them of their wealth, easing their fear. This was magic for me since I have been trying to understand people’s actions in terms of what they are trying to achieve. There may be times when I’ll learn more trying to figure out what they are scared of.

The lecture ends and I line up to get my books signed. I brought four of them, three of which are second hand library copies that cost me a couple of dollars each. I don’t tell this to Mr de Botton. If he examines the covers he’ll think I nicked them from libraries around America and moved to Seattle to avoid prosecution. Alain signs my books and we exchange small talk about Australia. Kent gets a book signed (How Proust can Change Your Life). Kevin didn’t bring any books, although he may have more of de Botton’s books than Kent or me.

We head to the Lighthouse coffee shop in Fremont. Riding up Fremont Avenue on a geared bike is easier than on the ddn8r but that ease means I work out less and feel less achievement when I get to the top. Do I ride everywhere on a fixie just to make it more or a challenge and more of a reward? If so, why don’t I leave the bike home and run everywhere? In heavy boots. To resolve this I am going to choose a transportation method based on what feels right. If the journey fits the Gunnar, I’ll take it and be happy despite lowering my technical difficulties.

At the Lighthouse a lot of conversation is on how people act to help cope with fear. We all wonder what the fears are that drive our actions. I haven’t got far yet. I think there’s a fear of wasting my life that is in heavy conflict with a fear of being bored. The conflict arises when my boredom makes me want to fill my life with small pleasures. These eat away at my time and I don’t achieve anything big. I’ll be pondering this for a while yet.

Some Kind of Band Meeting - watching Metallica on DVD

2006-10-16T11:27:00.000-07:00

We are proud owners of a new Netflix subscription. My first order was for the ‘special features’ version of V for Vendetta which was full of special features but no actual movie. After that misfire things got better. Last night we finished “Some Kind of Monster”, the documentary on Metallica making a new album, getting over the loss of a bass player and dealing with the niceties of band meetings.

When Jean and I watch movies the dvd remote is always in hand. We can’t help but pause the movie and comment on it. For Some Kind of Monster the paused conversation added an hour or more to the length of the movie. When we go to the cinema it gets frustrating since you can’t pause “Last King of Scotland” to replay Forest Whitaker’s charming ways.

Those boys in Metallica don’t know how to communicate without anger. At the end of the movie they are saying how calm and reasoned the process has become but they still can’t say what they want or be open about the decision making process. They poke at the other person to point out their errors.

For nearly two years they had a psychologist working with them. He was nicely paid at $480k a year. In a band meeting without the shrink present James Hetfield stated how we was worried that the psychologist felt he was in the band, and that they didn’t need him beyond the first week of the upcoming tour. The rest of the band were not protesting at this, and in Metallica that seems the way agreement is stated. I thought that was a good open statement of how he felt.

When they next met the psychologist James didn’t say that to his face. There was a painful discussion where the psych was saying that things were going great but the band still had a long way to go and he had personal plans for all of them. The band members, especially James, had pained looks on their face, clearly not agreeing but without the words to communicate that. James poked at the psych’s manipulative ways, calling out that he had a conflict of interest. The psych defended himself. Then after a few minutes you could see the light in his eyes change. The full realization of what was happening hit him. He figured out he was getting dumped. I loved the irony – they can’t communicate “You’re Fired” to their psychologist.

It was hilarious to watch the band try to get touchy feely. They made their previous albums with atrocious communication, why bother to change? Still, they get major respect for being open about the process and letting some documentary filmmakers expose their inner workings.

The magic parts of the movie were when the band got it all together and played. Bands are either about music or fashion and Metallica aren’t sashaying down any catwalks. They start playing something and their expressions change and it all makes sense. It doesn’t matter how they produce their records, so long as they make them good.

Elevator Number Four

2006-10-05T12:15:00.000-07:00

I’m at a work dinner at a fancy restaurant in San Francisco. There are two tables of people in our party. I am at one table and my wife is at the other. There are about twenty of us in the party and most of us drink wine. We go through bottles fast. Since they know I like wine each time a new bottle arrives at the table the table tries to ensure I get a glass to sample.

Although I like wine I don’t drink very much of it at a time, two glasses at most. Three glasses puts me in the “Oh fuck, why did I drink so much” state next morning. I’m being very careful with my wine consumption – I make sure people only pour a small amount and I drink it very slowly. If I can keep this up all night I might still feel good in the morning.

Jean walks over from her table and leans next to me. She puts her wine glass down next to mine. Her glass is full, mine only has a splash in it. She talks to me a little. She picks up my glass and walks off back to her table. I stare at the full wine glass, looking my hangover in the eye.

Jean is pregnant. She’s still working. It is early enough that you can’t tell by looking at her. This is our second baby and Jean knows from experience that when you are pregnant at work people treat you differently. They don’t treat you seriously. They think you are a short-timer. They touch your stomach. Jean hates this. So she acts as though she’s not pregnant.

Jean likes wine too. If she didn’t drink even a glass of wine at a work dinner colleagues would notice – they are smart, perceptive and suspicious. So Jean tries air-sipping the wine, which leaves her with the problem of disposing of the evidence.

At the next table I have a full glass of wine. I have to be careful here. I take my time drinking her wine.

“Hey Brent, try some of this Brunello – you like Brunellos, right?” says a coworker. They are drunk enough to start buying expensive wine. “Finish that Rhone and try some of this Tuscan stuff!”

My glass is now refilled with the strong and potent red wine. I am beginning to observe my own behaviour. This is a dangerous sign that my control is diminishing. The Brunello tastes good.

Jean is next to me again. “Hurry up, will you? I need the empty glass.” I knock off the last of the Brunello and Jean walks away with the empty, leaving me contemplating another full glass. This is going to hurt. I console myself with the thought that with her pregnancy nausea she feels awful most of the time. I’m just going to feel awful for a few hours.

At this point of the evening I have drunk about twice my usual. My boss is on the next table and he is brandishing one of those bottles with a plain, old school label. This means fancy wine and judging by the shape of the bottle, a Bordeaux. Here it comes again.

“Brent needs to try this,” he says in his commanding voice. “He’ll appreciate it.”

I finish Jean’s second wine glass and watch as the Bordeaux is poured in. Most of the fore part of my mind is not caring about the consequences, but there is a feeling of panic pushing in from behind. Desert arrives – Bananas Foster covered in Brandy, but they set fire to it so the alcohol burns off. I am thankful for that.

Next morning the family is at at breakfast. I have trouble articulating words. I stare at my food. This is a nice hotel, expensive and modern. What is normally divine, fresh food is trash talking me. The orange juice is telling me how useful it is for lubricating my stomach contents. The eggs are just tempting me to try to swallow them. The bacon is the lone voice telling me it will make me feel better. I try a bite. I wash it down with orange juice.

That one mouthful has transformed me. Now I am doing all I can to stop puking. I calm my mind. I sit still. I look in to the distance. I take a deep breath. I put the orange juice down and sip some water. This is not good. I stand up and figure out my exit. I don’t know where the bathroom is. It is not a good feeling know you are going to puke but not knowing where the nearest toilet is. Rather than trying to hold a conversation with a waiter while trying not to puke on them I race out of the restaurant. My plan is to catch the elevator up to our room and use the bathroom there.

I am focusing on putting one foot in front of the other. At the elevator lobby I push the up button. I wait. There are four elevators here. One is coming, I can see the numbers counting down as it heads towards the lobby. It stops on the way down, picking up passengers. Fuck. I know the firefighters have some override sequence they can use inside an elevator to make it go to a specific floor without stopping but I don’t know the special code to summon an elevator in case of emergency or imminent hurling.

The bell rings. The doors open. Out dawdle an elderly couple with lots of bags, checking out. I fight my way in through the bags before the door closes and push the 11th floor button. The elevator starts and lurches up. I can’t deal with lurch right now. I can hold back no longer.

As I’m evacuating my stomach I notice that this isn’t my regular spew, but more like what people call projectile vomiting. Well now I know what that’s all about. The entire elevator floor is a mess. The focus I feel when vomiting is intense. I need to empty my stomach while also making sure I can breathe enough to live. Some part of my mind knows the post-vomit peace is approaching. I can’t stop my stomach retching even though there’s nothing left. I want this to end. I want that peace.

At the 11th floor I rush to the room past a maid. I tell her that I’ve puked in the elevator and it needs to be cleaned up. She acts as though I didn’t talk – it is someone else’s problem. In our room I wash and change t-shirts.

A different elevator arrives to take me to the lobby where I go to the front desk to confess my sin.

“Uh yeah, you’ll need to send someone to clean up Elevator Number Four. I vomited in it.” The desk lady looks at me like I’d just puked on the floor. Now I know what that look is. “I’m serious, it’s a mess.” She stays silent and shocked. I don’t think she wants to deal with a hungover vomiting guest. I wander off back to the restaurant to rejoin the family.

At breakfast I feel a lot better. I eat some toast. About half an hour later we head back to our room. The yellow Warning cones are out around Elevator Number Four. “That’s the one.” I say, pointing to its doors. “Don’t use that one.”

I drive a Minivan. I am Invisible.

2006-10-03T12:07:00.000-07:00

We have two kids with one more on the way. I ride bicycles and sometimes need a ride home - broken down, lazy and drunk are fine excuses. There’s a pile of old furniture out in the yard that needs to go to the dump. We can’t go on road tips because our kid won’t sleep in the car seats. I’m nearly forty. My wife has an impractical car. We’ve been resisting for years but finally it is time to succumb. I bought a minivan.

It is the start of a new model year and I want the outgoing model. There’s virtually no change between years and I should be able to save more money than I will lose in resale.

I mail several dealers asking for their internet price on various Honda Odyssey vans. Each dealer has an “Internet Manager” that will likely also deal in Fleet sales and Costco sales. I’m not an expert on current sales value for new vehicles so I rely on market forces by opening up conversations with multiple dealers. I am open about this – I tell each dealer that they are one of several options.

Two dealers – Small Honda and Large Honda – mail me back with a good cheap Internet price. There are few old year models but I get quotes for the new year model. The Odyssey is a popular van and the prices are well below MSRP, around a grand above ‘invoice’. Not bad for a first quote.

One dealer, Hardsell Honda, call me up rather than use email as I requested. They tell me what a great deal I can get, with a great trade in and a price somewhere below MSRP. This is not what I expect; this is the usual car sales talk and not an Internet sale.

Behind The Times Honda wouldn’t give me prices in email. Why not? Everyone else did. I told them so. I relegated them to backup in case I couldn’t get something with the first two. Their loss.

Slothful Honda didn’t reply until a week later, when I had already bought a van. I sent them a happy email. Perhaps they’ll be quicker with the next customer.

Hardsell Honda calls me again. This time a different salesman is calling. He’s way better than the first one and promises to come back with competitive prices in a short amount of time. About two minutes later the first Hardsell Honda salesman calls me, dismissing the previous salesman as filling in for him while he was late. He goes back to the sales patter. He’s a little rude, he talks over me and interrupts. They go to the bottom of my list.

I arrive at Small Honda. I find the Internet Manager, which is easy since he’s the first salesman I see. He’s a gentle sounding guy who doesn’t act like the typical salesman. I like him. He takes me for a test drive, I drive up the freeway and round some city streets. Yes, it drives just as I expect a minivan to feel. This is no SUV - I sit high and look down on cars but I don’t get that feeling of domination that SUV drivers crave. It is easy to weave my way through Seattle’s streets. Years of refinement of minivans have worked – this car is a good tradeoff for its purpose. It is way easier to drive than a real van (one with chassis rails), it has way more utility than a car and it costs a fraction of a Mercedes G-wagen.

The Internet Manager does not know his Odyssey feature set well. He doesn’t know the differences between model lines or between a 2006 or a 2007 model. I spend time going through the car brochure to figure this out for myself.

I need to test stereo quality differences between models. I only brought one cd with me, and it isn’t a good test cd. It is ‘Lipstick Traces’ by the Manic Street Preachers and, although it is a wonderful collection of music, it is a collection of b-sides and live music so there are no suitable reference test songs. I try the cover of ‘Take the Skinheads Bowling’. It fails, as does their cover of Wham’s ‘Last Christmas’. I settle on the b-side track ‘Just a Kid’ as it has some quieter bits.

I’m sitting in the Touring edition with the upscale stereo when I get caught out. Zach is staring at me through the window. Zach rides bicycles and drives a Honda Element, which was in getting a service. He is laughing at me sitting in a minivan in a showroom playing with stereo controls. He gets sucked in to the test quick enough but dismisses the stereo for having no separate control of the subwoofer. Bugger.

So we get to the negotiation part of the day. The Internet Manager seems a little uncomfortable here. It could be a reaction to my manner since I get very focused at these times. I am waiting for him to make an offer on my trade-in. He is asking me for the price I am looking for. I tell him I want his best offer so I can compare it with the other dealers. He doesn’t like this and we waste time. So I pack my bag and head out, telling him we can negotiate over email and I need to visit Large Honda before the day is over.

I get the ‘bring in the Sales Manager’ technique. I enjoy this because it gives me the option of ignoring the salesman. In this case the Sales Manager is a vast improvement over the salesman. It gives the discussions a kick in the butt and we get to what I believe is their final offer. I tell them that I will take that offer and consider it over the weekend and if they improve it by a certain amount I’ll buy it now. It is the end of the month and they are pushing to hit sales targets so they are keen for the sale but they don’t go for the offer. I head out, happy to get a break. I am enjoying this.

At Large Honda the Internet Manager looks like a more typical salesman – larger, stronger, louder, big handshake. I tell him I have a good offer from Small Honda and I want him to see my trade in so I can get a competing offer and then choose. He doesn’t mess around – he shows me his Costco price list, the one they also use for Internet sales and it compares favourably with the collection of prices I have from the other dealers. They inspect my Corolla and we talk price and the overall deal is better than Small Honda with less fuss and pain.

Late in the process I change my mind. I notice that they have a 2006 model on the showroom floor in the model I like and a colour I like. Despite my research and logic, I think I picked it because it had the best colour scheme. We negotiate a deal on that van. I drive it home.

I’m driving home down one of the main cruising streets in Seattle, listening to my one cd of the Manic Street Prechers. I am stopped at a red light. I look at the cars around me, checking out the vehicles and their drivers. It is Friday night and a lot of hot cars are out. After a couple of miles I notice that nobody has looked my way. I drive a minivan. I am invisible.

Next morning Hardsell Honda calls back. The conversation went something like this:

HH: “So when are you going to be in today to check out our Odysseys? I know we can make a deal!”
BC: “I’ve already bought a van.”
HH: “It must have been a Toyota Sienna then.”
BC: “No, it was an Odyssey.”
HH: “Well you got second best then.”
BC: [losing it a little] “I don’t appreciate how you are trying to make me feel bad…”
HH: [trying to interrupt] “Well you made a big mistake…”
BC: [talking over the salesman] “I do not like how you talk over me, I do not like how you interrupt and I do not like your manner. That is why I did not go to your dealership. I will not be recommending people to Hardsell Honda.”

Hardsell Honda hangs up.

That was enjoyable. It isn’t often I say the right things in the heat of the argument.

Dress like a Starving Student

2006-09-26T10:03:00.000-07:00

I drop the bike from my shoulder to the ground. I hop on and clip in my right shoe. I wonder why they call these pedals ‘clipless’ when they ‘clip’. Then there’s a trick to get my foot in the right position for the start. I lock the front brake and push forward on the bars. This lifts the rear wheel and I rotate the crank until my right foot is high at the front.

Taking off on a fixie is about being quick and efficient. I push off and hop on the seat and get my left foot on its pedal for its push. It is easy until you take too long and miss the left foot push and the bike slows down and you have to pull up with the right to keep going.

Today I’m riding to the Ballard Locks. Each time I go there I tell myself to go there more often. It combines many things I like. The water looks wonderful. There is a park with plenty of grass to sit on and trees to lean against with views across the locks and canal. Geese will visit. There are big salmon swimming in the fish ladders. Sometimes you see a Sea Lion feasting on the fresh fish. This is accompanied by the sounds of locals whining about the loss of salmon and wondering if someone has a rifle so they can shoot the mammal.

I see boats go by and watch them futz with ropes. There is a diversity of boats – a single guy on his little cruiser or a 747-load of tourists in an Argosy Cruise boat with accompanying commentary. “Hands up if you think these locks use pumps! No, they use gravity!”

I love the way the locks are designed. They were built by the military back in the twenties and have a style that says, “You ain’t nothing! You ain’t nothing! Heavy artillery? Bring it on!” The structures are blunt and brutal. Any boat that hits them will come out broken. They show of the might of the US engineers of that time. When the Soviets attack and Seattle is the first city to go those locks will be all that is left.

The ride back goes through Ballard and pas the Salmon Bay café there’s no bike lane so I share the road with the faster traffic. I’m confident on the streets, although I take care to be aware of what’s behind me. Your ears are excellent help with this, unless someone is driving one of those Priuses when they can sneak up in silence. Everyone gives me lots of room. I think there are a number of factors involved in this.

I ride so it is hard to share my lane. If cars see that they could squeeze past in the same lane, they will. So I ride so that they can’t share and since they have to cross the centerline of the road to get past me they take more care and give me more room. Crazy but it works (and it isn’t my idea – I read it in Urban Cycling Tips and Tricks).
My bike is tall and I sit high, giving me more presence on the road.
I’m unshaven and I dress like starving student. I look like I’ve had a heavy night at the pub. People avoid the unpleasant.

I am tempting fate by writing this, but if I can control fate then like, wow.

Poorest Table in the House - with Dale Barlow and Bu Baca

2006-09-19T16:21:00.000-07:00

Maurice Diop lived in the little terrace house across the street from me. On Ada Place there were some larger terraces, but Maurice’s and mine were tiny. About ten feet across. But we were renters, Ultimo was cheap and only a ten minute walk from Town Hall Station. The local school had bilingual signs in English/Chinese. It was a damn cool place to live in 1990.

Maurice was Senegalese. He was so tall you couldn’t judge his height. He was way taller than me. I’d guess his height at six foot nine. We used to say hello, as neighbours do. I’m a chatty type so we’d end up in longer conversations. He was learning English fast but was clearly smart and persistent and keen to learn more.

We were friendly on Ada Place. Next to me lived a record-collecting guitar-playing geek. His house had an outside bathroom and you had to walk out the back door and on to the patio to get there. If I was upstairs in the morning I could see him wander out in his bathrobe to take his morning shower.

Next to Maurice lived a New Zealand bikie couple. Their house was directly across from mine. I remember waking up too early one morning, about 5am. The day was just beginning to get light. I was still dreamy and dozy. It was January in Sydney, and very hot. My bedroom window was open to let air in. At the house across the bedroom window was open too. I looked in to see the two of sleeping on their bed. As I was looking the girl sat up. She looked at me staring at her. She was naked.

There was a footbridge over Darling Harbour that ended at Ada Place so we’d often pass each other on the footbridge. I did not know where to look. I had got an illicit view of my neighbour and was caught out. I think she enjoyed my discomfort.

Then the day came when they moved out. I saw several of their friends arrive and start moving furniture so I offered to help. There were four Maori guys helping them move, and me. At the end of the work they gave us gifts as a thank you. The others each received a Marijuana plant in a pot and since I didn’t smoke pot I got a box of doughnuts.

We were all walking out the door when someone figured out they’d look suspicious walking down the street with a marijuana plant in their arms. So they put the pots in plastic shopping bags. Off they walked down the street, each holding a plastic bag with two feet of plant sticking out the top.

Maurice invited me to watch him play. He was a percussionist in Dale Barlow’s jazz band. They were playing at some fancy club at Circular Quay. He’d put me on the door. So I went down there with my girlfriend. I had no money and we were going to fancy club. At least I didn’t drink.

There’s always a little thrill when the doorman checks his list and lets you in. We walk in to the club. All the tables are in use. People are standing around the walls. This isn’t a beer drinking crowd. They drank their vodka in a martini rather than from a bottle. I walk in to the tables to make sure there’s no space and while I am looking a couple decides to get up and leave. A table opens up right at the center of the stage. It is the best table in the house.

I’d seen Dale Barlow before and I was eager to see him again. He would blaze on the saxophone. He could play hot solos and tone it down and play it cool. Jazz reviewers write flowery prose. One quote I read about Dale went something like “He plays like a steel nugget with a lava core.” He’d played with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers on a couple of albums. This was as much cred as Australian Jazz gets. We do better at whiny pop singers or Country.

I sip my lemonade. Dale Barlow is on fire. At his right is Maurice, using his Senegalese name of Bu-Baca. I always thought a percussionist was one of those dorky mustachioed guys who tap bongo drums in Seventies videos. Maurice is different. He is way taller than everyone else in the band. His instrument set dominates one side of the stage. And the instruments are an array of African drums and metal bells and objects I’ve never seen before. Maurice dances and moves with the music. My six foot nine neighbour was the star of the band. His solos get louder cheers than everyone else, except for Dale’s.

The first set ends. The crowd applauds. In the midst of the cheers Maurice jumps off the front of the stage. He walks across the floor with everyone watching. He gets to our table and sits down for his break. We might have been poorest table in the house that night but we were certainly the coolest.

My Record for Loud

2006-09-19T13:58:00.000-07:00

I just listened to The Church singing "Unguarded Moment". It reminded me of seeing them live at the Hordern Pavilion in Sydney when I was a teen. They were supporting Dire Straits. (No idea why I was there, you have to be a baby boomer to see Dire Straits.) But Unguarded Moment was the best song of the set.

For Dire Straits I was right up the front wedged by a speaker. My memory of every single concert is similar - It was loud. Did everyone have their amps up to 11 in the 80s or was my hearing more sensitive?

I saw the Jimmy Barnes band in Dee Why (non-Australians - yes, the suburb is called Dee Why and is occasionally shortened to DY). Jimmy Barnes is an old school Oz Rocker, I had his Cold Chisel records and his Working Class Man song is my vote for the music to the Australian National Anthem.

So there I am at the Dee Why Hotel. I get in free. There's extra fun when you don't pay and you are under age and you know someone in the band. Bruce Howe is the bass player and he is a good friend of my Father. There's a ton of material from my childhood that might crop up from time to time but everything with Bruce in it is good.

I'm standing in the audience near the front. The pub wasn't big, you couldn't get far away from the stage. Nonetheless I push my way close to the front to get a better view. A theme song comes on. Bands choose a theme song to play before they go on stage to get the audience in the mood. Often this is a bizarre piece of music and definitely something designed to show off the weird taste of the band. They wouldn’t play Abba as a warm up. You know it is a theme song because it is a low quality recording from a tape player played over the PA by the sound guy who is deaf from being a sound guy for months. You hear a low-fi weird song and you know the band is coming.

The theme song is playing. We all know the band is coming. The cheers get louder – Jimmy Barnes is popular. There’s movement at the side of the stage. The cheering has turned to yelling. There’s no music yet and it’s loud.

The band gets to their positions. Jimmy runs straight to the mic. He talks to it. I hear something like, “wellvermetchmsmnnntt fuckin vssit.”

Words burst at the microphone again. All I can make out are ‘Fuck’ and ‘Fuckin’ dotting his sentences. Let’s get to the singing. Jimmy turns to the band and yells. The audience is screaming with hysteria. The song starts with the drummer. The rest of the band kicks in. I hear the sound volume shoot up, just bursting with its intensity. Then I look around. Something is not right. I see the musicians playing their instruments. I see people yelling. But I don’t hear anything. The music has become so loud that there’s no distinguishable noise. My ears no longer register anything. I am temporarily deaf.

Now the intro has finished and Jimmy is about to sing. He sucks the microphone. He starts yelling in to it. I can’t hear him and I start laughing. Jimmy is moving his mouth and there's no sound. I look around at the people around me. They are all watching Jimmy, singing along to the words that I know he is singing but that I can’t hear. Is this a practical joke? I’ve come out to see the Jimmy Barnes Band and all I can do is look at them.

The song ends. My hearing returns. I turn to the person standing next to me, my friend Damian.

“Can you hear them? I can’t hear a thing?”
“You what?”

Jimmy talks to the audience. I manage to understand a ‘fuck’ or two. The next song starts. The music goes loud again and I reenter my quiet space. This continues for the whole night.

After the show I talk to Bruce the bass player.

“You know the band was so loud I couldn’t hear the music? Jimmy started to sing it made no difference. It was all noise. My ears are half deaf now.”
“How do you think I feel? I’m on the bloody stage. I stand by the bass amp.” Bruce takes earplugs out of his ears. Smart.

Next morning my ears were still ringing. But that had happened many times before. Monday morning my ears were still ringing. That’s my record for loud. A two morning eardrum buzz.

You are what you do

2006-09-19T13:57:00.000-07:00

In America you are your job. When people ask “What do you do?” they want to know what you do to make money. I don’t make any money right now. So I’m waffling with my answers, picking from the following:

Unemployed (accurate, but I’m not looking for a job)
On leave (accurate, but it implies I’m going back after the leave is up - I’m not)
I read and write (sounds like I’m in Kindergarten)
Starting something up (true of anybody really)
A gentleman (old school answer)
Not working in Corporate America (too insulting)

I need something better.

Sometimes I feel like I am nothing. A lazy bastard, a slacker, wasting my life. Some of the time I feel like I’m engaged, driven and doing what’s important to me. I think my life is good. I am getting a lot of time with my family and more time with Jean than ever before.

There’s some decompression happening as I start to lose all the corporate reflexes and explore what I want to do. I get more excited each day. I want to spend each hour wisely and get annoyed at myself when I don’t.

At work I’d be happy when the week was over, except I’d be left with the feeling that another week of my life had passed without me doing anything I considered worthwhile.

How do you spell KMFDM?

2006-09-19T13:47:00.000-07:00

I walk into Lucy’s daycare class to pick her up. One of the kids asks me what my t-shirt is. I say “It is a KMFDM t-shirt. You can read the letters: K-M-F-D-M. See?”
Later I figure out that the kid wasn’t pointing to the letters but to the picture on my t-shirt. It’s the Hau Ruck album cover with a stabbed, bleeding dude and a woman holding a bloody knife. Oh.

Pigeon walks across street

2006-09-19T12:25:00.000-07:00

I’m standing with Jean outside her work. In my hand is a little voice recorder. I talk into it, leaving the note, “Why I like my black bike and take photos of it dirty.”
Jean laughs. She’s not just laughter because the scene is funny, but more because she is embarrassed to be seen with someone who talks into a voice recorder. We walk down towards Fremont for lunch. A bird walks across our path. Jean talks into her hand in her secret agent voice: “Pigeon walks across street.” Smartarse.

I got a voice recorder from Amazon (an Olympus DS-2). I use it to make notes of stuff I want to write about. Otherwise I’d forget. Since I can’t rely on my memory I am forced to write down all the details in my mind. This helps me manage projects. When accosted by some random request I tell people “send it to me in email” or “if it isn’t written down I will forget it” and I mean it.

Yesterday morning was grey and damp. I rode up to Kenmore and changed the routine a bit by crossing the main street there and going into the little mall at Lake Forest Park. I found Third Place books. I’d heard of it, written up in a book about the ‘Third Place’, the place that isn’t work or home but where you can have social interactions with peers. The British use the pub for this. Other places use cafes. I’m not sure what Americans use. Pubs like Cheers are the exception.

Someone decided to build a bookstore that serves the purpose. Inside it is a little tattier than a hospital-clean Barnes and Noble but there is a food court and a lot of seating, both at tables and on sofas. Any bookstore with a food court has got my vote. And there was a quieter area where you could sit and read for ages. I don’t normally go for bookstores as a place to read but there’s no Bubba’s BBQ in the library.

I went to the bakery and they had no milkshakes. So I went to the BBQ place and stood there for a few minutes while the guy was making some baked potato dish. I got bored and wandered out. I guess service isn’t going to be top notch when you are a smelly and unshaven cyclist with a funny accent.

I’m riding back to Seattle and the road is still damp. I’m riding my black Gunnar because it has mudguards. The riding position is comfortable even though it has drops. The long fork tube is long and the stem raises the bars a little more. I could ride that bike all day, if I only had somewhere to ride to that was a day away.

I’m zooming under the trees and riding through the puddles and flying through stop signs when I ask myself - why do I disobey all these traffic signs? I have stopped at a stop sign twice. Both times I could see an officer nearby, watching. I do pause and look around, which is no defence in court but does make life safer. I ignore all sorts of signs. I go the wrong way down one way streets, go through no entry signs (at least 4 on a day’s commute). I enjoy going down the concrete ramp in the work car park that says “No Cyclists”.

I’m not alone in this rule breaking. There’s a hundred meters on the bike track at Elliot Bay that tells cyclists to dismount and walk. I’ve seen about three cyclists do that in the last year. And several hundred ride through. Still I’m one of the more conservative cyclists – I stop at red lights. Most of the time. It would feel off to obey all the signs. I’d get thrown out of the bikers union.

I think cyclist habituate with all these stop signs on the burke-gilman trail. There are a pile of them and rarely do you see a moving car. If you put too many of these stop signs in then cyclists learn to pay them less attention.

At one point in yesterday’s ride the path emerged from the trees just as the sky brightened and my mood lifted. It felt magic to be in the open on a bike, with the air all humid and warm and the sun trying to break through. I looked over Lake Washington at mist on the far bank. My voice recorded has the line “It looks like a cloud embedded in the trees.”

I pass the Skansonia. It is an old small Seattle car ferry that is now used as a function space. Jean and I were married there. Each time I ride by I am reminded how we picked the only sunny day in January. A good omen. It was our second wedding, the formal white one with all the family. The first wedding was the legal one and it was a few months earlier on October 31st. We crossed dressed for the Hallowedding. I’m the only guy I know who walked down the aisle in a little black dress, fishnets and high heels to Michael Jackson singing “She’s Out of My Life”. I can’t believe we did that but this is what happens when you marry a performer.

When we get to the pub I make Jean record her pigeon comment on the recorder. This is what she says: “Is this thing on? A pigeon walks across the street. Reminds me of an essay I should write. Hundred words.”

Pedal like a Motherfucker

2006-09-15T15:02:00.000-07:00

I get on my bike, clip in and head out downtown. The quickest way to get to downtown from my house is via Dexter Avenue. From my house I go across the hill then ride down a little gravel road, through a cheap plastic gate on a strong spring and into the old folks home. I have to be careful or the gate swings back into the bike. I go around the old folks’ home and on to Dexter, halfway up the hill. I don’t know if this is faster or easier than just riding down to the Fremont Bridge then up Dexter but it feels fun to use the short cut. I’m misbehaving in a little way. I’m so pathetic.

Dexter is main bike commuter road. It has bike lanes, although they aren’t the best. I see a rider ahead of me cycling in the lane such that if someone in a parked car opened their door they’d take him out. In that situation he would be rather hurt. As I ride I can’t help but think about how it would feel to be taken out by a car door.

I ride on the white line at the edge of the lane, balancing the threat of moving car and parked car. I look over my shoulder as I hear a car approaching so the driver knows I am here, I see them and I am human. I wear a helmet to make my wife happy, although I am not sure that is a good thing (Wearing a helmet might make a collision more likely. Great.)

I crest the hill on Dexter and see downtown sitting ahead. Now I am getting comfortable on this bike I try to descend with more speed. Since the bike has a fixed gear, the faster I descend the more my feet spin. At first it feels like a loosening massage, as gravity makes the bike go faster and forces my feet around but as my speed increases I start to panic. I bounce in the saddle. I feel like I am shuffling my toes back and forth across a floor rather than tracing circles.

I ride back on my old commuter route, along the waterfront and the railway line. I get to the pathway between the railway depot and the school bus parking lot and stop to take notes on my voice recorder. These include:

It takes about fifteen minutes of cycling to get all the junk out of my head. For the first fifteen minutes my mind is all over the place. After that time I start thinking. It is worth cycling just to get that clear head.
I am spinning so fast when I go downhill. Would my friend Johnny say “pedal like a motherfucker” or “spin like a motherfucker”?
I’m fast. I don’t know why I feel so strong. This bike is so much fun to ride. Then I note that I have a tailwind. Ah.

The Hills are Alive with the sound of Fixies

2006-09-13T11:46:00.000-07:00

As you ride over the Fremont bridge there are these steel plates on the ground. I’m lifting the front wheel as I go over them, as you would if you were mountain biking or climbing a kerb. The plates are only about an inch thick so there’s no real need for this, but I need the practice. When you lift the front on a regular bike you can freewheel with the crank horizontal and just lift when the time is right. On a fixie you have to lift whatever position the crank happens to be in. At first this is strange, you try to freewheel and bike tries to throw you off. Then you start rewiring your brain so that it can lift the bars in any crank position. My brain is still rewiring.

Challenging myself with this weird bike is causing a lot of rewiring. I think it is a good thing. It is a little like learning to ride a bike in the first place. Or when you first play hours of Quake or Halo and you find yourself wanting to throw grenades before you walk around a corner.

Fremont bring is a traffic hotspot. Forget the cars, it is the bikes and pedestrians that have the challenges. The bridge is a commuter route so at the peak times there are a lot of bikes piloted by people impatient to get to their destination. They often speed through a narrow gap and buzz pedestrians. No “On your left!”

There are big signs saying bicycles must give way to pedestrians, and bikes have to give way on every sidewalk in Seattle. Still, most pedestrians are nice enough to move to one side to let the bikes go past. I go slow overtaking pedestrians. I piss off the cyclists behind me.

The next fixie challenge is riding off a high kerb. (Yes, that’s how I spell “curb” when it applies to roads.) This is another situation where I usually freewheel and have to learn a new method.

I ate lunch at Dad Watson’s. Lunch was good – a nice chicken salad. Dad’s has good food for a pub, maybe the best among Fremont’s 10+ pubs. I drank a nitro stout. I don’t drink at lunchtime, it seems unprofessional to me. But it was a sunny day and I felt like it. Here I am, 39 years old, drinking a beer at lunch and feeling guilty about it. I grew up in a place where people would regularly drink at lunch. Perhaps this is still the case, just not in high tech Seattle.

When I was 19 I was a roof tiler. I couldn’t actually do any real tiling so I was more like the roof tiler’s assistant. Today you’d call me his be-atch. Twenty years ago we’d go to the pub for lunch and drink a beer with out food. The weather was usually hot (we were in Sydney) so the beer was welcome. It felt like the heat burned the beer out of us. Its effects didn’t last long.
We wore these khaki shorts called “King Gee” (see “Cotton Drill Utility Short” on the King Gee site). They had little straps on the side so you could tighten the waistband. You would slip your work hammer in there while doing other things. My hammer was a well used Estwing. Before it was mine it belonged to the boss. When he replaced it with a new model gave me his old one. I liked it a lot. It had a stack leather strips for handles. The strips were separating with all the use and had become soft. The boss’s new Estwing had a hard lacquered shine (like the one in this photo).

One day we were in the pub for lunch when the boss pointed out that Chinese Brent had brought his hammer with him. He laughed and teased me that I was looking for trouble. Bringing your hammer to lunch was a major roofie faux pas. It explained the dirty looks I was getting from the other bar patrons.

A day or two later we were working on a house that was constructed ‘double brick’. This is when there are two layers of brick wall with an air gap between them, the space and extra masonry making a better insulated, quieter and more solid house. Most good old houses were built this way. I was amazed when I moved to Seattle to find all these wooden houses, but I think wood is much cheaper to build with when there’s plenty of it around. Also brick doesn’t work too well in earthquake country.

I was on the roof, we had stripped off some of the old tiles. Most Sydney roofs have red clay tiles, which is why the city looks red when you fly in. Nowadays houses are built with concrete tiles, which come in a range of modern colours so you can get blues and greens and tiles that fake their patina. They’re also much heavier and the cause of the scarring to my carrying shoulder. There’s none of this composite roof material that is the vernacular in Seattle.

I was working at the edge of the roof. I was hammering in battens, the thin strips of wood you hang the tiles off. I put my hammer down and it fell in the gap between the two brick walls. Those walls are good for insulation and good for losing your hammer. The boss yelled at me – I had only had that hammer a few days. I had to use a tatty and stained vinyl-handled hammer for the rest of the day. My status was lower.

Next morning the boss hands me my old hammer. He’d got some fishing line and a hook and had retrieved it from the wall. A replacement hammer was expensive – he wasn’t going to let that one go. That was twenty years ago. The boss still talks about me and my hammer whenever I see him. Nothing changes.

I left the pub and headed north, up Fremont Avenue. As I ride up I figure it is a bit like climbing Dexter but longer, and not as steep as climbing Queen Anne. On the whole it is relatively easy, I don’t get too worked up climbing. My picture of cycling in Seattle is a map of the hills I have to navigate. I’ll go on a sixty mile ride on the fixie and I’m more worried about the climb halfway up a hill to get to my house than cycling the 60 miles on a hard track frame. The more I ride the more I complete my mental picture of the hills of Seattle.

I wandered through the back streets of Fremont, zigzagging up and down wherever a street looked good to ride on. Fremont has a lot of cyclists. The traffic and bridgework make a bike the fastest way to get in and out of the neighbourhood. There are a fleet of them parked outside the library. When I used to work at Amazon the bike cage would be full of road bikes and lots of racing bikes, some with their racing numbers attached. Outside the Fremont Library there are a number of hybrids, commuter bikes that are way more practical for riding around town than a skinny-tyred racer. I park my skinny-tyred racer fixie and go in.

The library was again fun, I read a bit of Ellen Langer’s “Mindfulness” which is looking fascinating. She starts by talking about experiments she ran at old folks’ homes where she gives one set of old dudes a plant each to look after and a choice of daily meals and the choice over how to structure their day, while the a ‘control group’ just runs as normal. After some time, not only are the group who have power over their day healthier, there are significantly more of them alive. Those poor people in the 'control' group. They had no control over their day. They sacrificed their lives so that we could get smarter about aging. Maybe this is another reason I don’t want to work in corporations. I want to live longer.

In Fremont we Scissor Truss

2006-09-11T19:51:00.000-07:00

My computer is called 'The Escalade' because it is huge. It is fat and heavy and has a big power supply. Right now I took the 'sclade upstairs so I could type this while hanging out with Lucy as she watches The Red Shoes with Jean. Is this going to make Lucy want to be a dancer?

The trouble with taking the 'sclade anywhere is although it is a laptop it chews through power and the battery doesn't last long. So I have to get my point down fast. Please excuse typos and grammatical errors.

Today I took my bike out for a ride. I didn't know where I was going to go, but I had a bike lock, my ipod, notepad, pen and a couple of books to read. I carried the fixie down the stairs and thought West looked appealing so I headed that way. I climbed a few blocks up Queen Anne Hill. It is a muscle workout climbing Queen Anne. My bike has one gear. But there's something that is addictive about it. The bike has no derailleurs and no freewheel so your legs become part of the bike. There is a direct connection between me and the road. I read on http://sheldonbrown.com/fixed/index.html that this makes fixies good for riding in the snow. There's little chance of me riding in the snow.

So I push up the hill and feel larger than normal. Just pushing that tall gear up a hill like Queen Anne is an accomplishment for me. The Tour de France guys can push up hills like that for ten miles at a time but I take it easy between blocks. If you work at it you can slow right down and get a breather as the road flattens out for the cross street.

As I get to the top of the hill I change my mind. I want to go to the Fremont Library. I haven't been in there for years. Wikipedia tells me Ray Bradbury wrote Fahrenheit 451 in the basement of UCLA library so I figure libraries must have something going for them when it comes to books.

I turn the bike around. Low speed manouevers work well on a fixie. I have good control since there's no freewheel. I slow my pedalling to slow the bike down. I can't stand motionless like those unshaven bike couriers at Seattle city lights. My friend Zach practiced standing stationary on his bike on the carpet at his work until he could do it. I don't want to practice in my lounge room. Perhaps I could practice in the park. It would feel a bit silly, like a politician practicing a smile.

I head down the hill. The bike wants to spin faster. My legs want to maintain a steady pace. I am not comfortable enough to go flying down the hill so I 'proceed with caution'. Crossing the Fremont Bridge is a joy as the road work keeps traffic moving at walking pace and I fly by the drivers. There a bike rack outside the library (thank you Seattle) and I park next to a touring bike. The bike is well used. It has both a front and a rear rack. To carry even more it has a baby trailer. This outfit could cross america. It looks like it comes from a more practical world than my sparse fixie.

The library is busy. All the regular desks have people at them, although there are spare chairs here and there between the people. Thre are a lot of laptop users here. There are several library computers here and they are fully used. Some other people are wandering around the shelves looking at DVDs and books. There are two rows of armchairs facing each other. They are empty. I seem the be the only person who is going to read in the library.

The armchair has cushions that are stff and straight. It doesn't match well to the slouching posture I use to read. The arms are wooden, giving the chair a look like it was designed a hundred years ago. I look around the library. It was funded by Carnegie (Andrew, the oil overlord rather than Dale, the person you read when you want to win friends). It has a mediterranean style, with white walls and a tiled roof. The best thing about it are the trusses. I think they are scissor trusses but I'm no architect. They are built with large wooden beams, the kind that makes me think of a ship's mast. This was built when there was plenty of old growth forest to cut down.

And so I read 'If You Want to Write' by Brenda Ueland. It was written in 1938 so you can find old copies for a cent on Amazon (plus $3.50 shipping). I read this old book in this old library for an hour or more. While reading I made myself three notes - stories I need to write up, whether they are a chapter or a sentence. Here they are:

Swedish Cultural Training - I need to tell the story of how my American company acquired a mch smaller Swedish company from the point of view of how the cultures differed. This includes the 'Swedish Cultural Training' we did to learn the differences in behaviour. (Short version of the training, without charge - Swedes hate to stand out and Americans love to.)

Chinese Brent - I spent several months working 'on the roof' as a roof tiler. Everyone on the roof had a nickname. Mine was "Chinese Brent". To the boss my eyes looked Chinese. I have scars on my right shoulder from the damage caused by carrying stacks of tiles up a ladder. This is proof that I have done manual labour and proof that my body is too delicate for such work.

Bedroom over Long Reef - When I used to live by Long Reef Beach in Sydney my bedroom had huge windows. I would watch the ships line up outside Sydney Heads waiting for their turn to unload their cargo. I could see the lightning when storms were out at sea. I sat on my bed and watched the rain.

The Escalade is about to run out of power. Later.

The Boss of Motorhead

2006-09-05T15:42:00.000-07:00

I was sitting in my house watching an interview with Lemmy Kilmister on a 25th anniversary Motorhead concert DVD. Lemmy is the singer, bass player and head honcho of Motorhead. Most of the interview was what you expect when Lemmy was touched by genius.

It went something like this:

Interviewer: You've been in other successful bands like Hawkwind but it only lasted a year or so. What it is that made Motorhead last 25 years?

Lemmy: Well I kept getting fired from other bands. So I thought I'd start my own. They can't fire me then.

I sat a changed man. I have only been fired twice in my career, about a 20% firing rate. I wasn't fired from Amazon. But listening to Lemmy I decided it was better to be boss of Motorhead than bass player of Hawkwind.

Am I scared by this? A little. Am I excited? Totally. Enough people have hassled me to blog my struggles so for now I will write the meta thoughts here on blogspot.

Nora Ephron goes to the Movies

2006-04-08T10:43:00.001-07:00

And doesn't have a good time.

Nora Ephron goes to the Movies

2006-04-08T10:43:00.000-07:00

And doesn't have a good time.

How to be an Indie-cool rock band

2006-03-26T11:05:00.000-08:00

Be like Franz Ferdinand.

The Perils of Linking without Permission

2006-03-21T19:55:00.000-08:00

http://www.ftrain.com/gooooooglebase.html

Stoat Riot!

Mike Foster's Subdivision Name Generator

2006-03-15T22:46:00.000-08:00

Name That Subdivision.

I could rename Fulton St to "Acorn Shire Marina".

Capitalism versus Family Size

2006-03-15T18:26:00.000-08:00

I've been thinking about how difficult it is to have two parents working and more than two kids. So here's an article from Foreign Policy on how societies tend to patriarchies since they produce more kids.

Blame Herman Miller for Cubes

2006-03-15T06:33:00.000-08:00

Since they invented them. Also check out the How I Work sidebar.

Sabado Gigante

2006-03-15T06:32:00.000-08:00

No other television show is like it.

Is there a Cultural Difference?

2006-03-15T05:38:00.000-08:00

I feel there's a trend where I read property articles in The Seattle Times and they talk about finding a home to live is, and I read property The Sydney Morning Herald and they talk about where the boom is so you can make money off of housing.

Is this all from the different tax structures? In the US an owner-occupied home is tax deductible, in Australia the investment home is tax deductible.

This is not exciting

2006-03-09T16:51:00.000-08:00

In an article in the Seattle Times we read about how a schoolkid at Ranier Beach High fired a shot from a handgun at school.

My favourite line:

"It's not nearly as exciting as it was reported," said Seattle police spokesman Sean Whitcomb. "The kid showed up, waved a gun and fired a shot in the air."

Oh, that's ok then.

Just as I gave up Caffeine

2006-03-08T06:57:00.000-08:00

There's a study which says that for half of the population, 2-3 cups of coffee increase your risk of heart attack.

Is the housing market fundamentally different from 1650?

2006-03-05T18:24:00.000-08:00

NYT reporting on a study of the price of a specific house in Amsterdam over a number of centuries.

Then two things happened almost simultaneously: tulip mania and the plague.

Crossroads is my favourite Mall

2006-03-04T06:50:00.000-08:00

It has geeks playing on a giant chess set. And more geeks playing games on lines of tables. The shops are feebe, but that's because the mall revolves aroung the large and varied food court.

Then there are the performers you see on the stage - often unusual, usually talented. Among my favourites were the trombone group (all playing trombone) and the soloist playing the chapman stick who must have spent a lot of lonely evenings alone.

It turns out the mall is owned by the Third Place Books guy.

Missile Command - it's an investment!

2006-03-01T18:41:00.000-08:00

An Australian article on how old arcade games are climbing in value. Just like old Volkswagen Beetles in 1992, before people realised what a dumb idea that was.

The Belgian Chocolate theory of the Dollar

2006-03-01T07:48:00.000-08:00

Selling chocolates at the Brussels food fair to explain dollar movements.

From Paul de Grauwe in the Financial Times.

The first day the price was set at €9 for each box. Sales went well. The next day the price was raised to €15 per box. Steeped in economic theory, you might think that demand now declined. Wrong. Demand doubled. On the third day the price was lowered to €2 for each box. Demand for chocolates collapsed. What went wrong with the law of demand?

Jean on the 18-Hour Bra

2006-02-21T23:13:00.000-08:00

Jean pondering why 18-hour bras exist:

I've never said to my girlfriends, "Meet you at the club? OoooOoooooo, bummer … I'd love to, but my bra, you see I had an early start so I only have like another hour, by the time I get there, get parking … I just can't."

TV's Aryan Sisterhood

2006-02-21T23:07:00.000-08:00

A little slide show from Slate on the blondeness of TV newsreaders. There's even a slide on 'Fox lips'! Next they'll be telling us that TV people are better looking than the rest of us.

Those Neutral Swiss

2006-02-21T09:03:00.000-08:00

Even when they live in Berlin they cause disruption. Zone-Interdite, a site that shows you the restricted areas of the world's maps and also has cute 3D walkthroughs of a couple of such sites. Found on Der Spiegel.

Interesting income model

2006-02-21T08:50:00.000-08:00

Dick Cheney shoots a person. Some smart individuals rewrite a popular song and make an animation to fit. Put it on the web and behold, an instant hit site. And you can buy the t-shirt.

Commuting Denial

2006-02-21T03:43:00.000-08:00

Reading Will Wilkinson's post on commuting made me think about my old commute.

When I swapped the Microsoft commute (30-60 minutes) for the Amazon commute (10-25 minutes) I felt much happier. I knew the Microsoft commute was stressful and time consuming, but I probably kept it up for 8 years partly through denial.

Between National Public Radio and books on tape you can think of the commute as a learning experience. The perception is also that a good job is worth commuting to and that commuting is just part of the lifestyle.

When I started working in Seattle itself, I felt so much better. It wasn't the time gain so much as the lowering of stress when the freeway commute was removed. Stop-start traffic on a freeway gives you no time to relax, whereas traffic lights let you lower the awareness level at red lights. Another factor was the freedom to leave at any time and not have to a heavy rush hour cost.

Hayley Westenra is Coming to Town

2006-02-20T13:43:00.000-08:00

She's big in New Zealand and she's coming to Seattle to support some smouldering band of cheekbones.

Sydney Yuppies find it Tough?

2006-02-17T07:17:00.000-08:00

A bizarre opinion piece from the Sydney Morning Herald. The thesis: Australia has to fix its cities because it doesn't have good latte towns. Is this irony?

They ask themselves if it is worth living in the buzz of the city, with its all its amenities, and cafes, when disgruntlement is their prevailing mood.

Just what I need in my Inbox on a dark winter Thursday night

2006-02-16T19:18:00.000-08:00

...the Friday afternoon surf report for Piha Beach, west of Auckland in NZ. Where it is summer, of course.

Turning the Tables

2006-02-14T20:50:00.000-08:00

From a friend of mine, a former developer on WinForms:

It's a funny thing; working on the WinForms team, inside WinForms every day, is very different to working *with* WinForms

My Inner Introvert

2006-02-14T08:41:00.000-08:00

Jonathan Rauch on Introversion.

extroverts tend to think by talking, which is why their meetings never last less than six hours

People who know me would howl in laughter at the suggestion I was an introvert. I test as an extrovert according to that Briggs-Meyers thingo. Put me among Jean's family and I am the guy who is hidden in a bedroom, away from everyone, reading a book I found on a shelf somewhere in the house.

I time out on social situations, love to stay home and wish I had more time alone. My happiest moments come while reading or writing or playing music or listening to music. These are solo activities. However I also have my worst moments alone too.

I think being extrovert smooths out the ups and downs of introversion.

This is silly

2006-02-14T06:52:00.000-08:00

[Although I am a curmudgeon.]

Gen Y meets the workforce.

The Code for Seattle

2006-02-13T06:30:00.000-08:00

Nalgene bottle as fashion statement.

"If I were making a Seattle time capsule," says UW junior Mary Wang, "it would have an iPod, a North Face Denali jacket and a Nalgene bottle."

Market Forces and the Spanish Holiday Home

2006-02-12T11:16:00.000-08:00

With the opening up of international commerce in Europe over the last few decades, people from the richer European countries (such as the UK, Ireland, Germany) are buying up holiday property in the poorer European areas (such as Spain, rural France, Croatia and anywhere those super cheap airlines fly).

So instead of letting the property attain its true value, the European Central Bank wants to raise interest rates to stop the price rise. Canute stopping the tide?

So many Bell Curves, so little Time

2006-02-12T11:02:00.000-08:00

Bart Kosko from USC has a dangerous idea - that we're all over-simplifying by using the classical central limit theorem.

"Rare events are not so rare if the bell curve has thicker tails than the normal bell curve has. Telephone interrupts are more frequent. Lightning flashes are more frequent and more energetic. Stock market fluctuations or crashes are more frequent. How much more frequent they are depends on how thick the tail is — and that is always an empirical question of fact."

The evil of cellphones

2006-02-09T07:45:00.000-08:00

The cellphone as the source of all evil, by Bryan Curtis of Slate.

"If I had to pick two things that have changed the world of genre writing, one would be the fall of the Berlin Wall, which eliminated a whole genre of fiction. And the other would be cell phones. The question everybody asks about crime stories is, 'Why don't they just call they police?' And now, with cell phones, you have to come up with a pretty good explanation."

My Corolla enables someone else to drive a Landcruiser

2006-02-08T18:31:00.000-08:00

NYT article on how the gas guzzler rules have an unintended consequence - that every hybrid (or any other fuel efficient vehicle) allows a manufacturer to sell a less fuel-efficient vehicle. The mandated average fuel economy for trucks is 21.6 mpg. So each time you sell a truck that does better than that, you can sell a truck that does worse. So buy a hybrid and allow someone else to buy a Hummer.

"...every Ford Escape — the hybrid S.U.V. that Kermit the Frog hawked during the Super Bowl — makes room for a Lincoln Navigator, which gets all of 12 miles a gallon. Instead of simply saving gas when you buy a hybrid, you're giving somebody else the right to use it."

The Europeans have huge gas taxes. Their cars are tiny.

Kick a Ball around a Park

2006-02-08T06:45:00.000-08:00

A Professor from University College London, Roger Mackett, talking about child recreation at the University of Otago.

"In industrialised countries there was a move away from unstructured play, prompted by parents, towards organised sport. But that often involved being driven to and from a venue, time spent getting changed and listening to a coach."

Is this really saying success at sports in the eyes of the community is more important than health and fitness of your child? It is a decision we're going to have to examine as our kids grow into the 'drive to the gymnastics tournament' stage.

Moral Distancing and Project Management

2006-02-08T06:26:00.000-08:00

Benedict Carey of the NYT writes on how people cope with doing morally questionable tasks (e.g. performing capital punishment) by 'morally disengaging'.

Things I learned here:
1) That whatever the reason for performing the dubious action, your mind copes by turning down or adjusting your morality temporarily. I'm guessing this also leads to guilt, depression and sucide.

2) There's a concept called 'diffusion of responsibility' where the task of killing is shared around several people - one person straps the left leg, another the right (and so on), another brings the lethal injection, another administers the lethal injection.

"Firing squads draw on this same idea. Everyone in the squad fires but no one can be sure whose shot was deadly. "

3) Cheating students use moral evasion techniques like:

"I think it's hard for people not to look at the answer manual if it's available," said one student. "Maybe you should have taken the problem off so people wouldn't be tempted."

I see language like this in the workplace all the time. People performing in a workplace where multiple competing goals are set seem to morally disengage. Missed dates and broken promises cause moral distancing.

Corporations use the moral system to get their work done - missing a date isn't 'insufficient planning' or 'random events' but a 'broken promise' and therefore a morally poor event that will cause pain to do and so motivates the employees to work extra hard to avoid.

I'll be thinking about this all day.

What Rich Boomers buy when they don't know about Art

2006-02-07T08:42:00.000-08:00

"As baby boomers approach 60, some have decided it is time to have the cars they craved when they were 16. The boys who wanted to burn rubber in high school do not covet red cars from Italy or green ones from Britain, but Plymouth 'Cudas from Detroit wearing Plum Crazy paint. By now, the thirst for big-engine GTO's and Road Runners is so strongly rooted in the collector world that it may no longer be appropriate to call it a muscle car craze."

From the NYT.

So when I turn 60 I am going to buy the bike I craved when I was a teenager - a BMW R100GS. Oh pooh, I already have one.

That's an 'interesting' answer

2006-02-06T20:37:00.000-08:00

Why I say "wrong" and "not good enough" when I could say "interesting" and "fun alternative": a coroner in Wellington points the finger at our over-protective society.

When I grow up I want to be a Patent Troll

2006-02-06T20:14:00.000-08:00

I hate patent law. I hate copyright law. Maybe this guy suing RIM will make me happy by bringing about reform.

Market forces in action

2006-01-30T09:47:00.000-08:00

My hometown rag has an article explaining how half of the car spots with parking meters get filled with cars with disabled parking stickers.

When the benefits from the stickers are so high (free parking all day in a metered spot downtown) no wonder people are tempted to misuse them.

Duck Confit is great kid food

2006-01-18T08:24:00.000-08:00

The NYT has an article on cooking for kids that confirms something we already knew - kids like duck confit:

The fact that chefs' kids eat better than yours or mine isn't surprising. They often bring the little ones to work, where they eat tiny plates of duck confit ("They lap it up," said Matheson of his nearly 3-year-old twins)

This reminds me that one of Lucy's first phrases was "more duck".

Otto enables Paul Theroux

2006-01-01T20:18:00.000-08:00

I couldn't find my copy of Paul Theroux's Kingdom by the Sea to reread so I bought a second hand copy from Amazon marketplace. I get a 1st edition hardback for less than the cost of a new paperback. It looked like it hadn't been read but I found a bookmark on page 33 so I guess it is partially read. The bookmark had a lot of handscribbled greek words on it with English definitions. The book also had the original 1983 receipt tucked in the front.

It is just more fun to settle back in one's chair and read a heavy hardback than a bendy paperback. And now Otto is sleeping in I might get to read it.

Own tap shoes an advantage

2006-01-01T19:19:00.000-08:00

Boy seeks Girl in the London Review of Books and it's Singles Night.

LRB itself is here. Their personals section is here. From the current issue:

This ad may not be the best lonely heart in the world, nor its author the best-smelling. That’s all I have to say.

The Lord of the Rings: Just drop it in the Volcano

2006-01-01T19:13:00.000-08:00

The end of year summary of the best letters written by readers of the Magazine. My favourite:

Re The old new, which pointed out the similarities between the 1954 transistor radio and the iPod Mini. The chap sitting in front of me on the bus last night was listening to a Walkman. He even took the tape out and turned it over to listen to the other side. I was transfixed.
Steve Mac,
Edinburgh (22 Sept)

Puffy American Croissants

2006-01-01T19:09:00.000-08:00

Michael Idov writes about his failed experience opening a Viennese-style coffee shop in New York (note the little biscuit with the coffee). It is well written and describes the fundamental cash flow problem. I learned a lot with a little reading.

And he mentions the puffy American bread masquerading as a croissant.

Totally Awful Videos from the 80s. Totally.

2005-12-05T22:00:00.000-08:00

As musical accompaniment while working at home we played a DVD of 80s videos. Now we both have musical iron stomachs and can put up with some awful music, like Starship's 'Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now' and Culture Club's 'Karma Chameleon'. However three videos were simply too much to take and got skipped within the first minute. This terrible trio are worthy of mention:

Mel and Kim - Showing Out (Get Fresh at the Weekend)
T'Pau - China in your Hand
Cutting Crew - (I just) Died in Your Arms Tonight

We're not at the end of the DVD yet. I think I can stand Katrina and the Waves singing 'Walking on Sunshine' since the song is so upbeat but it is going to take an effort greater than saving the Seattle Monorail to watch UB40 and Chrissie Hynde singing "I Got You Babe'.

Postscript: Jean is having big trouble watching Cliff Richard's 'Wired for Sound'. I, on the other hand, think it would make a great cover for Sturgeon General, played instrumental with a dub beat.

Suburban control in Sydney

2005-12-04T09:18:00.000-08:00

A lot of people want to live in green neighourhood on a lot with a single house and a garden of some sort. I like that idea too.

However the new state government in New South Wales wants to stop housing growth in these areas to maintain their village life. This is a great piece of spin since there's little comparison between the village of popular notion - think thatched roof cottages in an 800 year old village in country England - and the 70s-80s housing development that spawned a lot of Sydney suburbs.

This isn't maintaining village life, this is stopping more people enjoying the lovely suburns of Sydney. 'Conserve' the state of the suburb for the current homeowners and thereby also raise their house prices.

Here in Seattle I see the same behaviour. I live in Queen Anne, a nice city neighbourhood full of houses from the early part of the 20th century. Some areas are zoned for multiple houses (apartments, condos) and I hear many Queen Anners complaining that we should let these sorts of developments happen in our neighbourhood.

The essence of the argument is 'now that I own my house here we should stop new people coming in'.

So what does the NSW government offer to compensate for stopping growth in 80% of suburbs? A plan to put 1.1 million more people into the railway suburbs in apartments and high-rise towers.

The mistake that this government seems to be making is thinking that 1.1 million more people actually want to live in an apartment block rather than a house in a suburb on a block of land. By limiting suburb growth they force suburban house prices up which prices out the bottom end of the market. By having Australian tax laws favour investment property they fund the apartment development.

So you get a big underclass that can't afford to live in the suburbs because limited supply has pushed prices up, forcing them into the rental market. This investment property just happens to be the high-rise apartments in the railway suburbs. So the strategy is to force less wealthy Sydneysiders to give up their housing dream and rent by the railway line. Great move, Labor governement.

NZ is light on corruption

2005-10-18T21:19:00.000-07:00

NZ comes in equal second in a global survey of corruption perceptions. Iceland is the least corrupt. Australia is a little more corrupt than NZ (which doesn't surprise me).

Super-secret MI-6 now has a web site

2005-10-13T08:11:00.000-07:00

http://www.mi6.gov.uk

Although they're really known as the 'SIS'. Their web site looks very bureaucratic - all about ministers and budgets and committees. I want to see the secret weapons and the hot foreign agents and the fancy rolex watches that can cut their way through steel doors.

Wage vs House in NZ

2005-10-08T07:58:00.000-07:00

The NZ 'Centre for Housing Research' has published a report on home ownership in NZ. Included is this statistic:

On a 25-year mortgage at BNZ's two-year fixed rate of 7.75 per cent, that amounts to a whopping $2190.45 in monthly repayments. That is $547.61 per week - consuming nearly all of the average weekly wage of $586 before tax.

That's before tax. I remember the heuristic that the mortgage payment should be a third of your wage. But not 93%. Even at the cheap end of the housing market it is a huge chunk of your income.

Be smart and don't get sucked in to this quiz

2005-10-02T09:05:00.000-07:00

270 pictures of bands. Name them.

I am not sure why the Observer Blog shut down

2005-10-02T08:57:00.000-07:00

But close down it did.

As part of a wider redesign we are thinking about how best to develop and sustain the dialogue we started on this blog with our readers.

Uh, perhaps you should look at keeping the blog going? It is the main thing that brings me back to The Observer.

Tom Stoppard in the Land of the Last Dictator

2005-10-02T08:40:00.000-07:00

Tom Stoppard, author of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead and the dude who figured out the Buttle/Tuttle gimmick in Brazil, visits Belarus and writes about theatre in the last totalitarian dictatorship in Europe. That's Belarus.

There is no litter. None. One morning, waiting to be collected, I stood outside my hotel smoking a cigarette and watching the street cleaners with the kind of fascination a tourist would normally bestow on the leaning tower of Pisa. There were four of them within a hundred yards. They wore bright orange overalls. Each had a Cinderella broom and a long-handled dustpan. They patrolled their patch, eagle-eyed for - what? There didn't seem to be a toffee-paper the length and breadth of Independence Prospect. To all intents, they were dusting.

Bloke Tunnel Fascination

2005-10-01T08:52:00.000-07:00

Today's geek site is Metro Bits, covering some elements of metro stations around the world.

I respect Mike Rohde (the site's creator) for his choice of content, including a list of what the announcer says as you arrive/leave various metro stations and a list of Metro logos, mostly variations on the letter M (I like the Cairo logo).

Similarly, see the subway systems of the world presented at the same scale.

Berlin Beard Championships

2005-10-01T08:45:00.000-07:00

Many Berliners are getting excited as they get ready for the World Championship of Beards and Moustaches. The Berlin Beard Club itself has a wonderful chance of producing the champion.

The Moony Shot

2005-09-27T18:09:00.000-07:00

Lovely photos of the moons of Saturn. Taken from the spacecraft Cassini (which I thought was an Italian furniture manufacturer). Fun things you find on Der Spiegel.

Neal Pollack Apologises for Over-reacting to Rita

2005-09-26T23:39:00.000-07:00

From his blog.

If anyone is stalled on I-35 somewhere between MLK Blvd and 51st Street, we have a lot of water here that we hoarded in a panic a few days ago.

Eight posts tonight. Can you tell I'm catching up a week's worth of reading?

My Nightmare is Reborn

2005-09-26T23:09:00.000-07:00

Simply Red is rerecording their back entire catalogue.

Hucknall has no wish to exploit his fans.

Nauseate. Bore. Cure insomnia. But no exploitation. So bad it inspired Manic Street Preachers to write Motown Junk.

Status in the British Library Reading Rooms

2005-09-26T22:53:00.000-07:00

From the Guardian, The Hidden Tribes of the British Library, covering the status associated with various reading rooms.

...a seething hotbed of elitism and hierarchy.

This reminds me of a travel review I once read about the famous Cafe de Flore in Paris. The lovely sidewalk tables were tourist territory, and thus low status. Inside the cafe in the beautiful wood-panelled interior the status was better but still not as high as in the upstairs room, which was more modern and uglier and therefore used by high status types like Simone de Beauvoir.

I recycle because it lets me dump more rubbish

2005-09-26T22:43:00.000-07:00

From the Ludwig von Mises Institute (thanks Tim), an article on recycling. I've read similar material elsewhere. The bit that is a little disturbing to me is the religion-like education of everyone that recycling is good.

Drive a Castle

2005-09-26T22:17:00.000-07:00

Forget those wussy H2s and H3s, the new H1 is out.

The H1 has a new engine, a 300-horsepower 6.6-liter Duramax turbodiesel V-8, which improves the estimated average mileage all the way into double digits.

Woohoo!

The huge gap between the front seats makes H1 the perfect dating vehicle for young people who have taken a pledge of abstinence.

Maybe Hummer owners won't breed.

Oprah gets ideas off The Concrete Bloc

2005-09-26T21:37:00.000-07:00

Going through my book stack rank, Oprah found A Million Little Pieces and made it her latest book club selection. Good job Oprah, although she's a little behind the times. It was Amazon best book of 2003 and the sequel, My Friend Leonard, is already out.

Leaving Guantanamo Bay, thanks to cricket

2005-09-26T19:32:00.000-07:00

Australian David Hicks, in Guantanamo Bay for fighting with the Taleban against the Americans, is trying to claim British citizenship. His lawyer was talking to him about the cricket when it came out that he didn't support the Australians because his Mother was British. This is significant because the British governent has been successful at getting Brits out of Guantanamo Bay while the Australian governement supports the US military justice system and so has left Hicks to face trial there.

Read it on the BBC.

I married a Californian

2005-09-20T14:46:00.000-07:00

I married a Californian. That's why I get email like this:

That is SO rad!

I think that behaviour is not a conscious decision. It is how the Californian DNA expresses itself.

Fifty-Seven Thousand New Zealanders

2005-09-20T06:37:00.000-07:00

The BBC built an amazing presentation of Britain's immigration distribution, by British region and country of birth. Here's the page for New Zealand-born people (like me). As you might guess, the place they seem to cluster in is London. Now those 57,000 people is over 1% of the New Zealand total population, which is like three million Americans living in Auckland (I can make infoporn too).

Browsing around the rest of the map you can find the places with the most overseas-born people - number one is Wembley in London at 51.93%. New Zealand also has the highest percentage of high-income earners among its settled population, although the USA tops the charts for new immigrant economic performance.

Australia's All-time Most Watched TV Programs

2005-09-20T06:32:00.000-07:00

My hometown rag, the Sydney Morning Herald, has merged togther data from different eras of TV viewer recording to produce a most-watched list. It gives a little insight into the Australian mind, although mostly it shows how limited the choices were back in the old days.

My favourite entry is number 6, "The Sound of Music first TV showing". That's ahead of the Moon landing, Star Wars and 2004's Australian Idol final.

in sufficient aggregate, they are deadly

2005-09-18T07:48:00.000-07:00

Lionel Shriver writes about being childless, interviews two of her childless friends and look at how their individual life gains combine to produce an 'economic, cultural and moral disaster'.

As we age - oh, so reluctantly! - we are apt to look back on our pasts and ask not 'Did I serve family, God and country?' but 'Did I ever get to Cuba, or run a marathon? Did I take up landscape painting? Was I fat?'

She's also the author of We Need To Talk About Kevin, a book about a mother who has a horrible kid and figures out it is OK to hate your child. As you can guess, she's got a lot of negative attention for this.

Books are like Packets of Cereal at the End of a Supermarket Aisle

2005-09-18T07:11:00.000-07:00

The Observer's book critic Tim Adams writes on Scott Pack, the head buyer of Waterstone's, a British book chain.

...where once you could trust that the books in the window or on the tables were the ones that the manager thought were the best or most interesting in his or her shop, now they are generally the ones which make the least risky bestsellers and for which publishers are prepared to support most with marketing spend.

My first response to this article was 'duh, I already know about market forces' but then I realised that there is a strong belief that 'good' bookshops improve life quality by sharing good books. The article only makes sense in terms of its violation of that. Waterstone's pushing of books where the publisher pays for the promotion is shocking only if you believe bookstores exist for the public good. Of course, this is just like cereal manufacturers paying to put their brand at the end of supermarket aisles.

The punchline in the last paragraph is worth the read.

Edvard Munch was a little miserable

2005-09-18T06:52:00.000-07:00

Robert Hughes writes how Munch's paintings of neurosis and suffering are paintings of himself exaggerated.

The Scream, 1893 - which is to neurosis what the Mona Lisa is to smiles - was, by his own testimony, a self-portrait.

I just like the cool paint jobs

2005-09-16T05:52:00.000-07:00

The Curator of Transport Engineering Technologies at London's Science Museum comments on Pimp my Ride. From n+1 magazine.

The MTV crowd has tried to recover the pleasure of mass by crowning the 7,000-pound Cadillac Escalade king of the road. Yet to ride in one of these modern monstrosities is about as much fun as airline travel, albeit in business class.

2005 Books Stack Rank is Here

2005-09-14T22:21:00.000-07:00

I wrote my books stack rank. This is, in order of what I would keep in the lifeboat drill, the list of books I have completed this year. Likely some books have been forgotten. I might even fiddle with the ordering. I will certainly update the stack rank as I finish more books.

Part of the reason I wrote the stack rank was an exercise I once went through where I ranked the day's events in order of what I expected their pleasure to be, and then ranked them again at the end of the day in order of how much fun I actually had. Scoring much higher then expected were things like Shopping at the Supermarket and Walking to Work.

I am keeping it real

2005-09-14T21:27:00.000-07:00

So Mike Foster's blog, ikeepitreal has inspired me to comment on one of the books I am reading. Among the Foucault and the de Botton is:

The Naked Soldier - A True Story of the French Foreign Legion.

Yes, I am reading a trashy autobiography about a dude who joins the French Foreign Legion. By letting my blokey desires manifest like this I am keeping it real. I will add that I do not want to keep it real enough to actually join the legion.

Observer Infoporn Nitpick

2005-09-13T19:11:00.000-07:00

I like reading the Observer Blog but last week it had a piece of infoporn on schooling and costs.

They report 50p is spent on a primary school meal and 60p on a secondary school meal. They also add that 500 million pounds are spent on pupil snacks eaten while travelling between school and home per year. I think we are supposed to be shocked at the contrast in size of amounts even though the units are so ridiculously different - one single child meal versus all snacks of all students for all ages.

If we do some maths on these numbers we get, roughly, the following:
Students are at school for 12 years. I am not going to look up the population age distribution tables but we can have a conservative guess that the school system, which has most of Britan's five to seventeen year old people, has over five million of the population of sixty million.

5,000,000 people eat school meals say 200 days a year.
That's 1,000,000,000 meals a year, or about 500,000,000 pounds.
Funnily enough this is the same number as is spent on snacks.
So people spend the same amount eating snacks on the journeys both to and from school as they do on a single school meal.
This doesn't seem worthy of attention.

Travel or Tourism?

2005-09-12T07:08:00.000-07:00

I'm not sure where I picked it up from, but I've always wanted to participate a little in the life of places I visit. I don't like visiting the sights of a destination as much as I like getting some idea of the habits of the people who live there. This caused tension for me when I was a child. For example, I visited Rome with a school class and although I can remember going to many ancient places, the parts of Rome that are most vivid in my mind are the trams, the pasta and the soft drink.

When I am visiting somewhere I tend to focus on small items - breakfast comes with goats milk, bread is really hard (or dark if you are in Germany), builders labourers all wear the same blue trousers (in Provence at least), and so on. Summing up all these items gives me a feeling for a place and something I can take with me to expand the possibilities of how I live.

One of the four books I am currently reading is The Art of Travel by Alain de Botton. This is shaking up my view of travel to some degree, but I find that where I differed from my fellow tourists as a child, I have more in common with the content of this book. Although maybe I have turned into a travel snob.

Alain de Botton's writing is entertaining. For example, talking about good weather days at the start of Winter:
They were like false signes of recovery in a patient upon whom death has already passed its sentence.

I don't think this will stack rank higher than de Botton's Status Anxiety, but it has so far been a wonderful way to spend a couple of hours.

Ageism Survey in the UK

2005-09-07T06:38:00.000-07:00

The Guardian reports on a survey on attitudes towards age.

Back in the 39 Steps series of books, Richard Hannay was a young man at 39. So when is middle age? When I was a kid it was 40-60. But I wouldn't call Jamie Moyer middle aged.

"If you are a 24-year-old man, you believe that old age begins about 55, which is surprising because if you are a 62-year-old woman, you think youth doesn't end until 57"

Childhood Paradise in 2016

2005-09-07T06:30:00.000-07:00

I grew up in London and I loved the Underground. As the decades pass, it covers more area and gets more complex. This is good. Here's a map of proposed line extensions for 2016. Maybe I should retire to London with a train pass, an iPod and a collection of good books.

I'm not sure what I think of this

2005-09-07T06:16:00.000-07:00

NYT Op-Ed on river access battles in Montana.

The money quote of this article is:

...there's something wrong when a billionaire buys a ranch, gets a tax break for an easement and then chases the locals off the river in the name of conservation.

In the UK there are public rights of way across a huge amount of farmland - you walk along public paths that go through fields of cows and across stiles. It is part of the culture there. In Australia I don't ever remember anyone going down the gorgeous Shoalhaven River that went through the farm I worked on (Jinglemoney in the Southern Tablelands). People used national parks for their recreation. And they certainly never walked across the paddocks to get there. The Devon bulls would have got them.

I'm not sure where I stand on the issues in the article, but I know I don't like the manipulative way the arguments are presented. For example,

Consider the people who are fighting for access to the river: retired miners and schoolteachers and other working folk.

How could we possibly deny those retired miners their river access.

Berlin Doesn't Revolt

2005-09-06T20:43:00.000-07:00

The Pet Shop Boys do a new score to Battleship Potemkin.

... slowly my own revolutionary ire began to dim. My train had arrived on time, and my döner kebab tasted good.

I will also point out that doner kebabs eaten outside of Germany do not have umlauts.

Spell with flickr

2005-09-03T10:06:00.000-07:00

Another great use of the internet is 'spell with flickr'. These things entertain me, but I don't know why.

Brent Herring Unthinkable Bulgarian

2005-09-03T09:44:00.000-07:00

Brent is the 13581st most common word according to wordcount.org, which bases its ranking on the British National Corpus, a 100 million word collection. It is immediately followed in the list by Herring.

At a meta level is their 'query count' feature which tracks what people are searching for on wordcount. The first two names on the list are Jesus and John, although Sex and Love appear before anyone is named.

How to be a Philosopher

2005-08-31T22:13:00.000-07:00

Brook Sadler shows us some of the secrets of the trade of philosophy.

Technique 6
Respond to an article or book that you have not read. Be relentless.

The "be relentless" advice could apply to many fields, including distributed system project management.

What I read on the bus yesterday

2005-08-31T07:29:00.000-07:00

I'm currently reading Tibor Fischer's first novel, Under the Frog. I'm only about a third through it, but I am loving it so far. He's followng the actions of a group of young men through post-war Hungary as they live a slightly better life playing on a basketball team. It isn't as far out with language as his later work (more on that in the future) but still shows off his talent. I know I will never be able to write like that, but as I tell my daughter when she gets upset at things, "That's OK".

Here's a sample. The hero Gyuri has seen a girl jump from a bridge while riding the bus to work:

She looked like a country girl, seeking a populous conurbation for taking the exitless exit and not really attractive enough to encourage diving in after her but then if she had been attractive enough to have hordes of men diving in after her, she wouldn't have had to jump in the first place.

Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster

2005-08-30T22:51:00.000-07:00

I was touched by his noodly appendage. And the NYT review.

Emergency. Find first friend.

2005-08-30T20:34:00.000-07:00

As much as the Washington Post makes fun of it, I really like the analysis features of Amazon.com. And it is going to get better.

Here's a poem made from the Concordance of Dave Ramsey's "Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness": Emergency. Find first friend. Give kids life. Live myth.
Yes, you heard right: This site is under deconstruction.

Link found on Blog of a Bookslut.

40 Popular Culture Events That Changed Australia

2005-08-30T08:01:00.000-07:00

David Dale from the Sydney Morning Herald wrote this list of 40 Aussie media moments in response to an Uncut article listing the top 100 mass media moments that changed the world.

David Dale also wrote An Australian in America, a book about America from the point of view of a visiting Australian. It added to my desire to live in such a strange place.

Push the Edge of the mp3 Envelope

2005-08-29T21:39:00.000-07:00

Get the piiPod and avoid the long term side effects of mp3 player usage while maintaining the familiar bulge in your pocket:

...it will be made entirely of wood, and is specially designed to be unable to play music and sound files.

Well I entered the competition.

Question of the Day

2005-08-26T08:32:00.000-07:00

How come Australia and NZ are in the position of having the most expensive housing, when calculated based on median household income?

Here is the original report with city rankings organised by country and some commentary:

"Over the past 30 to 40 years, in both Australia and New Zealand, land use regulators have increasingly strangled the land supply, creating artificial scarcities and driving land prices in to the stratosphere."