More of the usual

Emotional torture
Today I spent a whopping 5 1/2 hours doing daughter-ly duties. That's two hours shopping at the market (including one hour of my mother telling me what was wrong with me), one hour at the cemetary and another half hour at the supermarket. I settled down after I got home and went for a long walk up the hill and back, but it's days like these which make me consider telling the boy to get a job in Seattle.

Yeh-yeh's garden
My brother and my nephew came along to the cemetary to do the ancestor-worship thing; my nephew calls it "going to Yeh-yeh's garden" (or "going to grandfather's garden"). I think it's a cute euphemism, since it's essentially what we're doing. We go to the grave, we replace the dried up flowers from last time with a fresh bunch, and we kow-tow.

Angel revisited
We bought Season One of Angel yesterday, and watched the first half of it last night. I'm enjoying it the second time around heaps more than when I first watched it.

The curse of the culinarily inattentive traveller

Reading through the old travel diary I wrote when I was in India (many years ago), it strikes me that I’d spent quite a bit of writing effort in describing what I ate, how much it cost and how delicious it was. You know, I’m one of the few people I know who actually gained weight in India. Not so lucky was Sarah P, who was in my tour group; she got sick after her first dinner in Bombay, and over the remainder of the three week trip she never got to ingest anything more than chai and moderate amounts of plain, white rice.

It’s not as though I have an iron digestive system though, because I’ve succumbed to variations of Delhi Belly/Bali Belly/Montezuma’s Revenge/[enter your euphemism here] all over the world:

1. Right after I graduated from university, I went to China with my brother and my mother. It was only for nine days; I got sick right after a particularly delicious vegetarian lunch and for the next week I couldn’t go anywhere near food without going a nice Kermit-green.

2. I went to Paris with my brother and stayed in at a mate’s place. Our thank-you to the friend was a pot of homemade won tons in soup, created from ingredients at a local Asian supermarket. Not used to central heating (it was mid-winter), I didn’t realise that it would be extremely foolhardy to reheat and eat the leftovers which had been sitting on the stove for three days. This was on the last day of my stay before returning to Edinburgh; I was so sick and miserable that when my male flatmate got home I rushed out to meet him and garner some sympathy, in my underwear. Also, I missed Hogmanay, which I have always regretted.

3. Before I went on the Inca Trail, I was told that water boils at a lower temperature at altitude. Boiling water therefore isn’t sufficient to kill all the germs that make a person hug her toilet bowl. I ignored this piece of information because I didn’t get around to buying purification tablets. While I didn’t get really sick this time, I did have a queasy four days.

4. Back at home, I’m embarrassed to say that I’ve made myself sick with inadequately thawed beef and four-day old milk-and-sugar sweets which I bought from an Indian stall in a fit of nostalgia (yes, that was only this last week).

Meanwhile, Rough Guide has been a little harsh about various bits of New Zealand. I think the author's view is fair though, and I'm inclined to agree with him/her about Auckland and Wellington.

Habits, body fat, angry people and books (not at the same time)

It's got to mean something when just for one evening I can't seem to access my favourite blogs, nor post to my own blog, and I get all antsy and anxious in that tight-around-the-shoulders kind of way. What a relief when I tried again tonight and it was all a-ok.

After almost a whole year since my last fitness test down at the gym, I relented and said would get another one done. I haven't been particularly keen because, even though I've tried to go three times a week, I know that my exercise levels are lower than they were. What hasn't helped is that the boy, who is in charge of the cooking in this household, has been feeling a bit tired in the evenings and resorting to home-delivered fast food or supermarket pizza. My reluctance to have the results of the last ten months of gym attendance quanitifed was completely justified though - although I am much fitter than I was last time, I am also heavier and wider. I was not pleased.

I've been a bit unlucky with getting "difficult" customers in the last couple of days:

a woman who complained bitterly how bad she thought the library was (when pressed, all she could come up with was that it's not big enough and not open for enough hours on Saturdays);

a woman who somehow had two library accounts but only one library card (and so did her daughter. I didn't say so, but we blame her);

a woman who wanted to print off a file on a disk, and didn't realise that her Microsoft Works file would not open on the library computer because it only has Word etc., and doesn't have the Works-Word translator software loaded. She then spent the next hour re-creating a lengthy document on Excel, only to find that we couldn't get the file to print out properly (it's a long story, don't send me any fixes!). Red-faced and pissed off, she left in a huff.

I've only just realised that all those customers were women - I'm sure it's just a coincidence. Anyway, it was really draining.

I'm really enjoying Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex, and Paul Linde's Of Spirits and Madness - the former is about a Greek family starting from the moment a brother and sister realise they're in love with each other, told from the point of view of their transgender grandchild Cal. It's really easy to read considering it's a literature award winner. The latter is a really interesting and well-written account of an American psychiatrist's time in Zimbabwe, trying to meld his own rationalist education and culture with the spiritualist one of the locals.

It's only a couple more weeks before I have to abandon the leisure-reading for the text books...

a little day out, a bigger day in

Despite my suggestions for a big long walk today, the boy once again turned our "big walk" into a stroll around the zoo. The zoo covers quite a large area, so there's a big of walking to do - but the Inca Trail it is not. Perhaps I was still feeling the grumpy after-affects of accidentally spilling my cup of hot water all over myself at McDonalds (why on earth do they put a tight-fitting lid on the cup of hot water and milk, but leave the teabag out?). The cutest things were the tamarin monkeys, little kitten-sized creatures with cream- or gold- manes, and the new red panda.

Afterwards I started to go into exercise-withdrawal, so I went for a walk to the video shop (in my defense, it does take about twenty minutes each way) to return the DVDs we got out last night. The Dawn of the Dead remake was okay, but I got bored.

The Station Agent was superb - it was a funny/sad film, not at all in the Hollywood tradition, with interesting, appealing characters: Fin is the trainspotting dwarf who moves to a tiny town, initially just wanting to keep to himself; Joe is a socially-starved Manhattenite (if that's the right word) who has moved to look after his sick father and temporarily take over his father's snack caravan; Olivia is the ditzy artist who accidentally runs Fin off the road. Twice.

Today I decided to make a start on doing something creative with my travel photos. I removed the best of the photos in the two albums which have that sticky back thing, then decided to leave them to flatten under a couple of acid-free pages of a sketchbook. In the meantime, I excavated a box full of my old travel souvenirs. Amidst the bags of shoes, a broken umbrella, an ancient Walkman and a small collection of never-used sex toys (they were a present, okay?), were the shopping bags full of old street maps and brochures around Europe and the travel journals from several overseas trips. I've decided to create some sort of illustrated travel diary, which will be a combination of stuff out of the original travel journals and the photos I've taken from that time. I doubt that, once it's finished, anyone will look at it except me. But the thing is to do it, so that I can remember what I did, what I saw, who I met, blah blah blah. This is important now that I don't get to travel any more.

Anyway, after typing out a selection from two weeks' worth of jottings in India, I discovered that - although last week's wrist injury doesn't affect my bus driving it sure as hell affects my typing.

on the news today

Play School was one of those kiddies' shows I remember pooh-poohing when I was a kid, just old enough to know it wasn't "cool" to watch it. Apparently a Play School reunion is planned, although Big Ted and Gemima haven't been answering their respective phones.

Horror of horrors, the British Navy has allowed a Satanist sailor to practice his religious beliefs at sea.

Aaargh! The first Hooters restaurant has opened in China, encouraging young Chinese women everywhere to ask for breast implants as well as the ever-popular leg-lengthening operation at the plastic surgeon's office.

happy Diwali

All day today I'm been feeling unmotivated, un-energetic and listless - the perfect candidate for one of those multivitamin sales talks, I think. I'm sure it's the hayfever having it's effect on me, since I've been sneezing a bit too. A big mug of coffee mid-afternoon helped though, and we were able to go into town to have a look at the Diwali celebrations.

Despite my fears, it wasn't just full of non-Hindu tourists; there were Indian faces all over the place, including the guy who runs the corner dairy where the boy buys his cigarillos). There was a series of traditional dances on at one of the venues and we managed to catch the end of a men's performance, before the children took over. Those Hindi men sure know how to shake their booty.

Unfortunately, not only did we miss out on tickets to the Bollywood dance competition finals, but we missed all the heats too. I suppose that's what happens when you don't get hold of a programme early on.

Indian and Sri Lankan food stalls surrounded the competition venue. I took a chance on a roti and dhal combination which reaffirmed my belief that Sri Lankan cuisine is inferior to Indian cuisine (regardless of which part of the sub-continent the chef is from). I took home a box of Indian sweets, only on the way home I found out they are made by a local group of Hare Krishnas. I can only wonder whether the boy's Ganesh statuette was made in China...

Let down by the weather

Today is the first day of the first long weekend since Queen's Birthday back in June. This is obviously the reason for the lacklustre weather today, compared with the gloriously sunny and summer-like day we had two days ago.

That chill moisture in the air has meant that the family's latest attempt to visit my dad's grave for a spot of biannual ancestor worship has come to nothing. Nothing that is, except grumpiness; grumpiness on my mum's part because she gets all wired up when it's to that time of year but the weather isn't playing along; grumpiness on my brother's part because I know he'd rather be doing something else; grumpiness on my part because the two of them will arrange some time to call each other and decide whether it's windless enough to make the trip, but leave me completely out of the loop so that I'm sitting by the phone thinking "What the f*?".

Finally, just after midday I got the phone call to confirm that it's all off until the next forecast sunny Saturday. So - and this is getting to be a foolish habit - the boy and I went out shopping. I found some "sensible shoes" (see my previous post) in a red leather with straps and rounded toes; the boy went one better and bought two pairs of bloke's shoes. Then we went to an upmarket department store (the kind most frequented by people who think they have "old money" or a lineage that goes back further than us common folk), where he bought a designer wool sweater. Which he has promised to handwash himself and never never put into the laundry basket (because after that it transforms into a garment which will fit only me).

The extended Return of the King will be out on sale soon, but - hey, as though we don't have enough stuff to spend our money on...

Shoes, buses and television

My recent flirtation with high heels may soon be over, to be resurrected only for nights out with the boy. It's ironic really, because mostly I've been wearing heels because he seemed to approve of them so much. After the umpteenth foot rub and re-location of dislocated toes (apparently, though they didn't hurt that much), he advised me to start wearing "sensible shoes". I already have some flat-soled combat boots that I wear on bus-driving days, as well as some unfashionable but perfectly comfy boat shoes for summer bus-driving - I may now need to shop for some library-style flat-heeled shoes. It’s just a pity that I don’t see the styles around like the ones Sensible Shoes proudly shows off.

I had my bus-driving assessment today. I was on my best bus-driving behaviour of course, but I’m sure he expected that. Apart from the fact that I don’t seem to check the side roads enough when driving, he said that I passed with flying colours. He even seemed impressed with my hill-starts on narrow curvy driveways, my ability to pull over to the kerb leaving only an inch of space between it and the tires, and the way I handled the tight roundabouts. I also noticed that my hurt wrist has not affected my driving, so my bus-driving days are far from over. From now on I promised to be much more shifty-eyed while driving…

After the last few Tru Calling episodes, I’m going to have to take back my earlier rave. The first episode was creepy, because of the dead people in the morgue who open their eyes and talk. It was weird, because of the Groundhog Day effect. But as I’d predicted, these aspects have long worn off on me. It’s still interesting to watch, but for a different reason – trying to figure out how the dead person really got to be that way, and what Tru has to do to save him.

job hazard

Yesterday I hurt my wrist badly enough that today I've been feeling pain whenever I move it. Would you like to know how it happened?

It didn't occur during an altercation with a teenage computer geek overstepping the bounds of what's allowed at the library computers.

It wasn't caused by major haste to get outside of the olfactory zone of a particularly odorous patron.

I wasn't hit by a free-flying Shorter Oxford Dictionary.

I didn’t stumble and fall on the edge of the Information Desk during an alcoholic staff dinner.

It didn’t happen in ‘Nam.

I strained my wrist trying to push a teeny-tiny lever which is located underneath the driver’s seat of the library bus; a lever which is not only a long way to reach for me but which is also annoyingly stiff. All I was trying to do was push this lever so that I could swivel the driver’s seat around to face the back of the bus, so that I could sit down and face the patrons at the same time.

There will be an Occupational Health and Safety form to complete and send to the appropriate people, a doctor’s visit to make and possibly several subsidised trips to a conveniently placed physiotherapy clinic too.

I’m sure that in time it’ll heal almost completely, although on days preceding especially wet weather it will ache as though to warn me to pack my raincoat in the morning. But if I’m lucky I will get a week or two’s break from being a bus driver, allowing me to spend more time on other stuff (I’ll think of something).

"Home" again

We were watching the X-Files Season Four extras the other night, when I found out that the episode "Home" (the one with the chronically incestuous Peacock famil) had been banned in the States. So...did the Americans have to watch it on cable or what?

It is a personal favourite episode, though Small Potatoes is another favourite; that's the one where a less-than studly janitor is able to shape-change into any other person, including Fox Mulder, and nearly seduces Scully in the process.

And there are other favourites too, like the one at a freak show with a tattooed man called Enigma.

Make Tea Not War.: A business opportunity?

Make Tea Not War.: A business opportunity?

Now I know how law librarians are made...

last-minute friends

One of my co-workers is leaving the library, and town, to work in an Auckland library. Although, like me, she's into computers and science fiction (and the original Star Trek, no less), we've never become friends. In fact, I remember once bumping into her at a geek shop (Dick Smith Electronics, to be exact) in the weekend, and feeling a little slighted when she ignored me after an initial 'hello'.

Someone told her last week that I have a blog; perhaps because she's relatively new to blogging, she was keen to talk about blogging with me. This morning she even complimented my blog, then eagerly described a funny story to me (about a recorded episode of Rainbow, a children's show, which apparently sounds hilariously suggestive to adult ears).

While I don't feel like we've become great mates suddenly, I now feel slightly sorry that I'll be missing out on a potential friendship. This isn't the first time it's happened. I can recall several people who I never got to know at all until just before their leaving parties, when I suddenly started having interesting conversations with them and liking them.

What the hell is it with that?

Dreams

I bet I'm not the only one who has dreamed of her teeth crumbling in her mouth. Here's an interpretation.

Drinking seawater

I think I have the answer to whether and how drinking seawater can cause madness. Funnily enough, a similar question was already answered in The Straight Dope - "What would happen if I drank seawater?"; I managed to put in the wrong search words or something when I tried to find it.

That madness ensues is only implied though, in a quote from Bill Bryson which effectively says that the severe dehydration causes your brain cells (among other things) to break down.

Which leads me to think that the saying really ought to go "drinking seawater makes you really really sick and maybe die".

What're those books?

When I was chatting to Make Tea not War, she told me about her current favourite author who writes about a person who can enter books and change the course of the plots. I cannot for the life of me remember the name of the author; I want to add it to my list of books/authors to read next time I have a chance to read for pleasure (that is, after I've finished Middlesex, The Da Vinci Code and The Simpsons and Philosophy).

Does anyone know the author or one of the books? Otherwise I'm gonna have to ask her directly.

Spare time

Last night I didn't sleep a wink. Well, maybe just a couple. But in the end I was sitting in the lounge at 4.30am because I'd gotten bored with tossing and turning in bed. I watched Six Feet Under which I'd taped from last Tuesday, had some toast and a hot drink, and eventually returned to bed when my feet got too cold.

So I was dead to the world when my alarm went off this morning. The boy was really concerned that I should stay in bed, so he rang my boss to say I wouldn't be in. But after I woke up again mid-morning I realised that if I let myself sleep right through I'd be hopeless tonight when it's time to go to sleep again. So I got up.

I do love web-surfing; it's like an easier way to browse countless magazines. I revisited The Straight Dope, and posted a question that bugged me over the weekend -

Does drinking seawater really make you insane, and how exactly does this happen?

While awaiting an answer, I offer you the reply to the question of how much wood can a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood..., apparently a classic from the man's collection.

This is one of Vince's many demo displays. Note the lack of actual library books (those would go on a separate podium or table though). He's used the irrigation hose for hoops, and attached posters to them. Apparently you can stick brochures and things on the hoops in addition to the posters. 

This is what my library displays have tended to look like. Granted, it isn't easy to find exciting pictures of computer equipment, and no-one was willing to bring in their hardware. But basically it was up in an hour or so...  

This is what my first "real" library display looked like. I had heaps of time to get stuff ready, and was encouraged to spend money to buy decorations. I was quite proud of it... 

a sigh of relief

I have my assignment almost ready for handing in tommorow, and then I'm academia-free for about four weeks. I'll be able to get stuck into Middlesex, which was one of my birthday presents (I also got The Da Vinci Code which means I'm going to have to read it after all).

It was an eclectic collection of prezzies, including CDs by Ray Charles and the Newmatics, a girl beach bag, an assortment of stationery and a belly-dancing kit. When the latter was unwrapped, there was a fair bit of encouragement on the part of the guests to make use of the equipment inside (a long, thin veil, four finger-cymbals, some forehead jewellery and a CD of appropriate music - and a set of instructions), but it's been too long and I don't think my hips would thank me for it.

It was a surprisingly sober event, though holding it in the afternoon may have had something to do with it. And one of the few people who did drink was horribly sick in the bathroom sink (you know who you are and it's okay).

But I have found a fellow-blogger in one of our visitors, and she's pretty cool so that'll be addition to my sidebar in the near-future. It's Make Tea Not War.