Music reviews by my parents

Instead of an end-of-the-year top ten albums list, here are some of my parents' thoughts on various bands I've introduced to them:

On The Drums: "These guys sound very South African." -my dad

On Oasis' "All Around The World": "Who is that song by? Razorlight? Oh, Oasis. I get them confused... I listened to it twice on the way home." -my mom

Jagged Little Pill, Alanis Morissette: "I love me some Alanis. Wow, someone did her wrong in that song ["You Oughta Know"]. Bitter much? Hahaha... Can we turn this off now, there's only so much of her I can take." -mom

Bloc Party, Silent Alarm: "It sounds like noise." -dad

Maximo Park, "The Coast Is Always Changing": "I love this song. It was playing in Pegasus [a local bookstore] when I went in, and I told the guy behind the counter I liked it. I think I confused him." -mom

On Billy Bragg: "There's only so much of this guy I can take." -mom

Cat Power's "Diamond Eyes": "This song makes me want to fall asleep. It's pretty though." -dad

Klaxons, Myths of the Near Future: "I don't get it." -mom

The Wombats: "They remind me of Buddy Holly and The Crickets. Is that a good thing? Are these guys from the 50s?" -dad

"Modern Girl" by Sleater-Kinney: "This song is so stupid." -mom

And the one quote that started it all: "Yeah, I like Depeche Mode. What? Why are you looking at me like that?" -mom

(Maybe I should start a twitter feed of these to rival Shit My Dad Says.)

Thants

I made this some time ago...

Enjoy.

2010 Census Data

This is exciting! Some of the 2010 Census data is already out and handily displayed for you: 2010 Census. So far just information on population change, population density, and apportionment are displayed in the cool widget, but hopefully more will follow. It's kind of neat knowing I contributed a very very very very very very very very very small fraction of the data, from my weeks of running around Berkeley, sneaking into apartment buildings, and knocking on strange doors. I'm looking forward to more of the data when it's released.

I can't say it was the most fun at work I've ever had... let's just say it was an experience. If you're interested in the kinds of questions I was asking people (and why they're asked by The Census), click on "Explore the 2010 Census Form".

Another day, another rejection letter

This time it comes from a job for which I am perfectly qualified. In fact, I spent the summer working as an unpaid intern doing exactly what the job description detailed. So now I feel like the world is telling me that even unpaid experience isn't enough. I... I don't even know what to do.

Three new bands I'm really enjoying right now

It's kind of a crazy mish-mash of things, but what else is my music taste about? I'll let the songs speak for themselves, mostly, but I do recommend picking up all three albums.

The Limousines

These guys are a local band (San Jose-based) and do the whole electro-pop thing really well.

Moneybrother

This guy from Sweden manages to remind me of Joe Strummer (voice) and Barry Hyde (appearances) at the same time. Crazy. I saw him recently at Slim's and he put on a very good show.

The Drums

I can't quite explain why I like The Drums... they're not the sort of music I usually listen to, being a Brooklyn-based twee, minimalist-souding indie band. But I like them, and I think they do simplicity well where a lot of bands fail.

Interesting conversations that just seem to happen with my mom

[While watching an old movie...]

Mom: That's a DC-3... or a DC-7. Yeah, a DC-7.
Me: Ok.
Mom: Yeah, it's a DC-7, that's the plane I flew.
Me: What?!
Mom: Yeah, that's the plane I flew.
Me: WHAT?!
Mom: Yeah, I flew it. On Ariana. Ariana Afghan Airlines.
Me: When?!
Mom: When I was in Afghanistan.
Me: Well, yeah, I guessed that.
Mom: I was on a flight to Tehran for medical leave.
Me: So how did this happen?
Mom: I knew the pilot.
Me: What?!
Mom: I knew the pilot.
Me: ...What?!
Mom: Well, my roommate dated one of the pilots.
Me: I'm sorry?
Mom: We got to know some of the other pilots too. Afghanistan is a small country.
Me: It is?
Mom: Well, sometimes it can be.
Me: But... you flew a plane?
Mom: Yeah, just steered it back and forth a little bit.
Me: Wait, I'm sorry. You flew a plane?
Mom: I told you, I knew the pilot.
Me: And what, they just invited you up?
Mom: Yeah. They asked if I wanted to come up to the cockpit. I knew all the stewards too.
Me: How did you know all these people?
Mom: It was a small airline.

Things I'm reading (and therefore thinking about):

Not good news: GOP to investigate ‘scientific fraud’ of global warming: report

BUT:

A good place to start for rebutting climate change skeptics: How my YouTube channel is converting climate change sceptics

Then you should listen to this: Billy Bragg - Waiting for the Great Leap Forward

... while looking at these pictures: Where the Workers Who Made Your iPhone Sleep at Night

And to top it all off, you can't trust Wikipedia anymore (well, not any more than you already should): Vote On the Most Shameful Wikipedia Spin Jobs (Wired Magazine) (Click on "Top-rated")

This makes things better, though:


Also, I had a job interview yesterday.

Whale News

This awesome headline on the BBC caught my eye today: Humpback whale swims a quarter of the world

The most exciting part, for me, is the methods involved:

The female whale was spotted and photographed twice - once at its regular breeding ground in Brazil, then later off the coast of Madagascar. The shortest distance between these two locations is 9,800km.

The internship I did this summer contributes to these types of studies, so it's exciting to see how data like the ones I collected is used and has an impact.

This explains it quite well:

The team is involved in a long-term study, collecting and examining the pictures of the whale flukes in an effort to develop a "big picture" of humpback behaviour and their migration patterns.

What?

Job Hunt Rant/Best (Worst) of Craigslist

"This is a non paying job, but this is prefect for someone studying jounalism or has a deep passion for sports."

No, this is the perfect job for someone who does not like money. Do you like sports? Do you dislike paying your rent? If you answered "yes!", we have an oportunity for you!

It only makes me appreciate sarcasm like this more:

"Need a Brain Surgery Intern ASAP! I have just been diagnosed with a brain tumor and the doctor says that I only have 3 months to live unless I have brain surgery. This is an unpaid operation, but you will receive credit and snacks while you are operating. This is a good way to build up your resume by networking with others who need free surgery. If you do a good job, and I live, this may lead to future PAID surgeries! If you have your own surgery tools and anesthesia, that is a plus and you move to the front of the line.

Please respond with a link to all of the operations that you have performed, transcripts from the universities that you attended, and a copy of your MCAT scores. Please only respond if you are SERIOUS. You must be a team player and have your own car."

Hanoi Wrap Up

I'm back at home in NorCal, sitting in the comfort of my old room with a healthy dose of jetlag keeping me up. I promise I'm actually going through all my 1,300+ pictures (curse you, 2GB memory card), editing them and working them down into a reasonable number for an online album. It will go up soon, or eventually. In the meantime, you can enjoy stories of our last 3 days in Vietnam.

Haisun and I only really had one full day in Hanoi, and we packed in as much sightseeing as we could. In fact, we saw so much the only reason I have now to go back to Hanoi is to eat. (That is no insignificant reason, you must know.) We saw: the Temple of Literature, a Confucian temple that was the first National University of Vietnam; The Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum (from the outside, since "Uncle Ho" is in Moscow for maintenance); The Ho Chi Minh Museum which is quite propagandistic and rather abstract at times and would have made a lot more sense if I knew more about Vietnam's revolutionary history; the One Pillar Pagoda, which was much smaller than we thought it would be; Hoa Lo Prison Museum, a.k.a the infamous Hanoi Hilton (more on that later); Ngoc Son Temple, which is on a wee island in the middle of a lake; and, finally, after dinner, a water puppetry show. If I ever felt we were taking it easy with the sightseeing in the rest of our trip we certainly made up for it that day.

Most of the sights were just visually interesting, but Hoa Lo is an interesting testament to what my dad calls "writing your own history." The site was originally a ceramics-producing village, taken over by the French and turned into a prison during colonial times. A majority of the museum focuses on the cruelty of French colonial rule, poor prison conditions at the time, and Vietnam's revolutionary leaders and thinkers who were imprisoned and/or killed by the French. These parts of the museum and spookily lit, with unfinished walls, original cells intact, and a dramatically lit guillotine. Then there's a couple clean, nicely lit rooms that mention, oh yes, I do believe we had some Americans come visit this one time. Well, they weren't visitors, they were CRIMINALS, shot down and arrested by 'the army and people of Vietnam'. But we treated them really well, in fact everything was up to Geneva Convention standards, see they even got to celebrate Christmas! And even if we couldn't treat them as well as they should have been we had a poor economy at the time because we were BEING BOMBED and we didn't sign the Geneva Convention anyway. Without the buttons to push to drop their bombs, the imperialists no longer had a purpose in life, so we taught them how to do things -- simple things any Vietnamese child knows how to do. (I kid you not, that last sentence is pretty much verbatim from a video at the museum.)

Walking out of the museum, I couldn't help but think, "Huh. I don't think that's quite how it happened..." Wikipedia sums it up pretty well, and I'll spare the nasty details here. Basically, the American POWs were tortured in order to force them to produce statements saying they were being treated really well. Oh, irony.

Anyway, our next two days were spent on a cheap-as-chips tour of Halong Bay. We opted for "Standard" instead of "Deluxe" or "Premier", but really it was substandard. Don't get me wrong, Halong Bay is gorgeous, I had fun when we went kayaking, and I find cruises kind of boring anyway, but the trip itself was pretty craptastic. All of us tourists on the boat bonded over the misery, and became fast friends. When we got back to Hanoi we swapped tales of our steerage class -- sorry, standard class -- tours with other travellers. Them: "Oh my god, and breakfast! That was just unbelievable -- the one egg and the giant pile of stale bread with just jam and butter!" Us: "You got JAM?!" (We got margarine.) It rained a lot, drinks on the boat were expensive, there was one light bulb on the deck, two of the girls couldn't sleep in their room because it was full of giant cockroaches, we were hungry a lot, and the crew ate a better breakfast than us (fried rice > stale bread and an egg). And then I left my nice rain jacked on the bus coming back. Grr.

It kind of sucked that the worst two days of our trip happened right at the end, but it probably made it easier to climb onto that plane in Hanoi on the 15th. The trip as a whole was amazing and I wish I'd had twice as long to spend in the area. Now back to real life...

Hanoi is an anagram of Hoi An

We have just a few more days in Vietnam before I go home: Today in Hanoi, and then the next two in Halong Bay. But let me catch you up on our trip in Vietnam so far.

We spent a couple of days in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia, seeing the few sights around there. It's a crazy, intense, dirty, underdeveloped city. I tried to imagine it was once great and stately, but it's in such disrepair it's hard to picture. We saw some of the memorials/museums dedicated to the genocide, which were educational but horribly depressing. The Killing Fields of Choeung Ek were an execution site out of town, and the Tuol Sleng Museum was an old torture and interrogation prison. I'll talk more about those in a later post.

After Phnom Penh it was onto Vietnam. We trucked straight through the border and Saigon, heading straight to the lovely beach town of Mui Ne for a bit of chill out time. It was great to have just a couple days to relax at the beach right in the middle of our trip (and after crazy Cambodia). The beach was gorgeous, and we also ended up renting a scooter to see some of the nearby sand dunes, of which there were both red and white. Renting a scooter/motorbike in Vietnam is only for the experienced or the foolhardy. You can guess which one we were. Still, it was fun, and we didn't crash!

From Mui Ne we traveled 17 hours by bus up to Hoi An, on the central coast. Hoi An is an old trading port that was active until the French colonialists came in and moved the port to Danang, which is about an hour north by car. The old town of Hoi An is cute and sweet, and clearly a big tourist draw. It's very nice, but there's not a lot of sights to see, so we spent a lot of our time wandering the little lanes and alleys and eating a lot, which was great because Hoi An is known for its food as well. We skipped out on seeing the Cham ruins at My Son because it was so hot while we were there, and sitting in the sun on the back of a motorbike for an hour just didn't sound like fun. Plus we're sort of ruins-ed out after Angkor Wat and we need SOMETHING to see when we come back.

And now we're in Hanoi. We caught a flight up here yesterday rather than endure another looooong and overnight bus journey again -- we would've arrived just a few hours ago this morning instead of having yesterday afternoon and evening to explore. I like Hanoi already, and so does Haisun. It feels like we're finally in real Vietnam, after the beach paradise of Mui Ne and tourist-focused Hoi An. We spent yesterday evening walking around the Old Quarter, eating food from stalls and drinking bia hoi -- basically a cup of cheap beer from a keg -- on little plastic stools on the sidewalk. Think like really cheap beer garden.

Anyway, time to get started on our adventures for today!

Pictures!

Ayuthaya: Wat Phra Si Sanphet

Koh Chang: Lonely Beach

Siem Reap: Angkor Wat

Phnom Penh: Royal Palace

3 Days at Angkor Wat

Haisun and I are leaving early tomorrow morning for the capital of Cambodia, Phnom Penh, after 3 days and 4 nights in Siem Reap. I have to confess I really like Cambodia so far, so we'll see how things hold up during our next two days in the country. On the 5th we go to Vietnam, to hit up Mui Ne, Hoi An, Hanoi, and Halong Bay.

For the last three days we have been traveling by bike or tuk tuk to various temples and ruins of Angkor. Our first day was Angkor Wat itself, most of Angkor Thom, Ta Keo, and Ta Phrom. Ta Phrom, which looks like it's straight out of Tomb Raider or Indiana Jones, was probably my favorite of all. The rainforest has started to dramatically reclaim the temple, with trees growing through the structures and moss covered ruins everywhere. For day two we took a tuk tuk to the further out Kbal Spean with the River of a Thousand Lingas (a beautiful carved riverbed, 2km into the jungle) and the pinkish sandstone temple Banteay Srei. Banteay Srei and The Bayon in Angkor Thom tie for second, as both are really beautiful, with Banteay Srei's intricate carvings and The Bayon's impressive 216 faces of the king. Today (day 3) we headed out on bikes again to Preah Khan, one of the largest complexes and somewhat similar to Ta Phrom in jungley-ness, and saw the Terrace of the Elephants and Terrace of the Leper King at Angkor Thom. Whew.

That's enough ruins and temples for us for now. We're planning on going the educational route in Phnom Penh and visiting some museums on the Khmer Rouge and Cambodian history and art. I've really enjoyed our stay in Siem Reap, though, and very glad we rented bikes two of the days to get around. The countryside here is really beautiful, and it's great to see it a little bit slower than speeding by on a tuk tuk. We've witnessed some gorgeous sunsets and a thousand other amazing sights. (You'll see when I post the pictures...)

I am in Cambodia Now

I am sitting downstairs at our guesthouse in Siem Riep, after a long
day of traveling from Koh Chang in Thailand. Siem Riep is the gateway
to Angkor Wat, which we'll visit tomorrow or the day after. Our first
few days in Thailand were fun -- seeing Haisun's old haunts in
Bangkok, then a day trip to Ayuthaya, and then a traveling and a day
in Koh Chang.
Ayuthaya was gorgeous. It's only an hour outside of Bangkok (so easy
day trip), and is a little island (surrounded by rivers) with several
sets of temple ruins on them. Haisun wasn't feeling well, and had
already visited the wats (temples), so she hung out in internet cafes
all afternoon while I rented a bicycle and toured the temple ruins. It
was great, and I felt way too confident navigating crazy Thai traffic
on two wheels. Highlights included riding the bicycle between
elephants and pickup trucks on the roads, eating roti sai mai (thin
crepe-like pancakes wrapped around sugar floss), and seeing Wat Phra
Sisanpet at sunset.
The day after Ayuthaya we took a ride down to Koh Chang, a sweet
little tropical island off the south coast of Thailand. Six hour bus
ride to Trat, taxi to the pier, ferry to the island, and songthaew
(literally "two benches", basically a pickup with a covered bed and
two benches) to the guesthouse. We arrived in the late afternoon, hit
the beach, and had an awesome time. I'm sure someone will quibble
about better islands and better beaches in Thailand, but I don't care.
It was a perfect little slice of paradise, despite the fact that it
poured our entire second day there.
Enough of rainy islands, it was time to set off for Cambodia. We got
up at 6:30am today, and got into Siem Reap around 7ish. Songthaew to
the pier, ferry to the mainland, taxi to the bus station. Bus to
Chanthaburi, 1 hour. Bus to Aranya Prathet, 4 hours. Border crossing,
a little hairy. We had to take a tuk tuk from the bus station in
Aranya to the border, and said tuk tuk decided to drop us off with
some friends who wanted to scam us. Long story short, we just insisted
on being taken to the border, and fortunately that worked. After
wandering around the border netherlands for a bit (not many signs in
English) we found our way into the "Visa on Arrival" office to get our
visas. After hearing that overcharging is rampant at the border,
especially among officials, I was relatively happy to only have paid
an extra 200 baht than I should have. Tourist visas are $20US, and
several border guards kindly offered to process them for only 1,000
Baht (about $28US). Much better than the scam place which was trying
to make us pay $30.
Cambodia is interesting so far, what little I've seen. Most of our
"bus" ride (really a shared van) from the border at Poipet to Siem
Reap went through lovely, flat green countryside at sunset, which was
gorgeous. And so far the Cambodians I've met, aside from corrupt
border guards, have been extremely friendly and helpful, almost
frighteningly so. There's a lot of foreigners in Siem Reap,
predictably, but it's a pretty little town, at least at night. And
you should see how people light up when you even just say "thank you"
in Khmer ("aw gohn") -- I thought Lonely Planet said the Thais make you
feel like rockstars....

Sitting in Bangkok

Hello from an internet cafe in Bangkok! I just landed late last night, so I haven't had much time to do stuff here. Haisun met me at the airport and we just hung out on Khao San Road (the touristy strip) and got some food and caught up a little. Today we got up, ate, went to her old apartment, ate some more, did some window shopping, ate... and now we're sipping tea and using the internet before we go eat dinner. You can see where this all is heading. Basically my plan is to eat enough so that buying a new wardrobe is actually necessary. This is important, because there are a ton of cute clothes in Bangkok that I can't really justify buying... Really, I don't want to carry a ton of stuff around for the rest of my trip, but we'll see how my resolve stands up at the markets tonight and in the future.

It's nice being in Bangkok, and of course nice that it's a familiar in facade and food. The few Thai phrases I learned when I was last here are slowly coming back to me, and although I can remember all the numbers from one to ten I can't remember them in the right order. Oops. Jet lag hasn't reared its ugly head yet, but... as I typed that, I yawned.

Haisun and I are going to sit down tonight and make up a travel plan, although we've already talked about it a bit. So far we're thinking a few days here in Thailand (maybe Ayutthaya and Koh Chang), over to Cambodia to see Angkor Wat and Phnom Penh, maybe down south to Sihanoukville for some diving, and then to Vietnam to Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Hoi An/Hue, Halong Bay, and ultimately Hanoi. Fun!

Travel, SCUBA, Disco

I'm taking off today for three weeks in Southeast Asia - Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam, to be exact. I'll try to keep you updated here, or on my friend's blog. My cousin Kathy's  wedding was this weekend. It was a gorgeous ceremony at the beach in Malibu, and it was great to see a lot of the east coast family. I arranged whale watching tickets for the visiting fam for Friday and Saturday, which was a big hit and not to mention some of the best whale watching I've seen all summer. Pictures later, because they're on my laptop and that's already been packed away to home. (All I'm taking is my iPod, so please excuse the typos - especially now, I'm on the bus to the airport.)

A number of people have encouraged me, upon hearing of my trip, to read Eat, Pray, Love. Sorry, but I already brought Lester Bangs' Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung for travel reading. And while I'm sure I'll do enough eating, I'm going to do more adventurous things on this trip. Hopefully a little diving! And a lot of fun with my travel buddy, Haisun.

It's time for Adventure Julia!

SCUBA/Whale Watching Roundup

Just some pictures from class, taken by our instructor:


More updates in a bit!

Fish from the kelp forest

Here is what a giant sea bass looks like:

For scale, my hand is about the size of it's mouth, and it's body is bigger than my torso. The one we saw was probably a different species, but was just as huge. Ironically, the guy in our group who got closest to it didn't even see it. We were all kneeling on the bottom in a semi-circle around our instructor, and she directed one of the guys to move to a spot on the edge of the circle. He swam over there, and that's when we all turned to see the giant sea bass swimming by. Ridiculous.

There were lots of other fish, including Garibaldi, the California state fish, and plenty of invertebrates. I can't wait till next weekend when we get to explore more on our dives and spend less time working on skills. 

 The Garibaldi, Hypsypops rubicundus

 Juvenile Kelp Rockfish

 Señorita, top L, and with other fish, Oxyjulis californica

Sheephead, Semicossyphus pulcher

 Turbot, a flat fish

SCUBA Day 2

While I feel like I've been knocked down and smushed with a giant rolling pin and I'm so tired I'm about to fall out of my chair, today was awesome. Kelp forests are my new favorite thing and I wish I had paid more attention in ichthyology class. More later, but we saw a giant sea bass that was at least 5 feet long. Massive!

Beginning of the Weekend: Whales and SCUBA

I'm a little jealous I'm not out whale watching this weekend, since we seem to have hit the peak of the season and it's going to be fantastic. Yesterday I went out on both trips and we saw a ton of whales. Most days we see one whale, on lucky days we see two or three, maybe four. Yesterday we saw 11 on the first trip and 13 on the second. Or at least we thought we saw that many, it was hard to keep track. There were whales surfacing all around us, you could see blows in almost any direction you looked. Most were blue whales, but there were at least a few fin whales, and a blue-fin hybrid, which is very rare indeed. One of the fins engaged in some lunge feeding on the surface, and I got a great picture of it (to be uploaded later). It was a fantastic day for whale watching. And to top it off, the dolphins were gettin' it on in the harbor! Not a trip for the kids.

I'm not on the aquarium boats this weekend, though, because I'm doing a SCUBA certification class. We had our first classroom and pool session today and it's already incredible. I've had very vivid dreams where I can breathe underwater and this is exactly what it's like. Effortless breathing underwater. The swimming feels a little strange so far, though, just because I'm so used to being in a pool in a swimsuit, not a 7mm wetsuit and with 50lbs of gear strapped on my back. The skills aren't too hard, but there are a lot of things to remember. Our instructor is great -- she's nice, very clear, and teaches things well. There's only six of us in the class and everyone's been pretty chill so far.

Tomorrow we're going to Catalina to dive at some kelp forests, which I am really looking forward to. I'm going to Southeast Asia in a few weeks and I thought about getting certified while there, but I really wanted to see kelp forests and not waste time on my trip taking a class. Two birds, one stone. And now I'm thinking about far more seriously about taking time to go diving on my trip.

However, I need to leave at 5:30am tomorrow to be in San Pedro by 6:15am to get geared up and on the boat at 7am. Uuuuuugh.

Happy Shark Week!

A lesson for you:

Those are the essentials!

Whales and more whales

Today we saw a blue and two fin whales, yesterday we saw a blue, Friday we saw a blue, and the weekend before that I helped break our unlucky whale-less week. Captain Greg called me his lucky charm for helping them break the streak... little did he know I caused it a week earlier.

And... we've seen plenty of dolphins! Here are some pictures of dolphins I took today. I will put up more and more pictures as I bring them home from the aquarium. I have some awesome pictures of blue whale flukes from yesterday, and plenty of other cool ones.

Whee!

And here's a few stories:
There were a couple of boys asking me difficult questions on the cruise last weekend: "How do boats float if they're so heavy?" While, technically, I know the answer (displacement), it's something I've never fully understood myself. "How come sailboats don't tip over even though they lean over so far?" Ok, I know that one for sure, but come ON boys! This isn't a Physics Watching Tour! Ask me some questions about whales!

The woman who walked up to me at the beginning of one cruise and just said, "I don't like people." Then she walked away.

The whale watching expert who, after describing almost every whale watching tour she's been on in the last 30 years ("since 1978!"), decided to ask us typical tourist questions (with a sarcastic smile, so it's ok!): "How do you know it's a girl?" (In response to us pointing whales out by saying "There she blows!"), "How do you find the whales? Do you call them?", etc.

Here's a whale I never saw, but it's a great photo, courtesy of National Geographic:

A dwarf minke whale. (Full size here.)

My future?

The Graduate was right. Plastics are the future. In fact, they're the basis of the PhD program for which I am applying.

Ocean-related news

Not good: Hundreds of dead penguins washed up in Brazil

Interesting: Whale of a tale for couple yachting off Cape Town

For everyone who asks what I think is going to happen with the oil spill: Searching for the Gulf oil leak's victims

Whales this weekend?

No, sadly, no baleen whales this weekend. We did see a bunch of dolphins on Sunday, including a superpod of common dolphins. A superpod is a congregation of pods, which can contain 1,000+ dolphins. Think like this:


Also, some people on the cruises have no concept of geography whatsoever. The first was a six-year-old girl -- who can be forgiven because of her age -- who asked, "Is that Hawaii?" when she saw the oil islands in Long Beach Harbor. That was pretty cute, I have to admit. What was not cute, was the middle aged couple who pointed to the shore we'd left an hour earlier and asked, "Is that an island?!" No, um, that's where we started.

In more exciting news, Look Around You is tomorrow night! I'm hoping if I stand in line early enough I can get in, since I missed the online sign up for free reservations. Sigh.


Maths!

As promised: My whale watching experience

These aren't the best shots I've ever taken, just the most recent:

Whales!

This weekend was an exciting one for whales. Saturday we saw a mother and calf Blue whale pair, twice in a row in almost exactly the same place. The calf was very small, around 20 ft. and probably less than six months old, and the mother was so skinny you could see her spine when she dove. Still, exciting to see and interesting that they were at the same coordinates all day.

Sunday we saw FOUR Blue whales, an elephant seal (a bit unusual in the area), plus some California Sea Lions and Harbor seals. Two of those four whales were (I think) the same mother and calf pair from Saturday. One of the blues we followed fluked twice, which basically means this:

Not every whale does that on every dive, it's pretty special to see.

So now I have a week to kill before going whale watching again this weekend... Sigh.

Blue Whale:


Elephant Seal:


California Sea Lions:


Harbor Seal:


As soon as I can I will post some of my own pictures up here, not just ones I took from google image search.

Signs I'm Getting Old(er): #1-4

1. I no longer regard the Lonely Planet Guides as infallible.

2. I don't really care about staying in on Friday/Saturday night.

3. I have a career path in mind.

4. I'm starting to desire matching, well designed dishes.

But I'm not old yet!

Monday Monday

Monday was an interesting night. It was a roommate's 21st birthday so we went out for dinner and drinks, and then to a club. The night was Blue Mondays, an 80s darkwave night over in Hollywood. Come to think of it, the last and only other time I was there it was for another friend's 21st.

Straight off the bat one of the girls in the group gets approached by a guy who claims to be a TV scout. He asks if she'd be interested in stunt work, as she has great shoulders. (Which she does, it's true.) Next up, a girl in rave gear hits on me. A really, really tall girl. Tall enough that everyone thought she was actually a man. With a name like Scarlet Snow, one has to wonder. Anyway, she told me I was cute and I told her I was straight. Graceless, I know. We kept bumping into each other later that night, which was a little awkward.

We continued to drink and dance and drink and dance and request songs of the DJ. He had NO Cindi Lauper (outrageous!), but agreed to play some Madonna for us on account that I didn't think requesting The Wedding Present or XTC would win me any favors with my friends. For mentioning those two bands I got a high five and a "You're cool!" from the DJ, whose name I sadly cannot remember. Blame the $20 credit card minimum at the bar.

Now, all that dancing made me notice a shy, somewhat morose young man standing by the edge of the dancefloor. (Not a terribly uncommon sight at the kind of club that will play The Smiths.) When I tried to encourage him to dance with us he just said, "No English. Russian." What ensued was probably the most challenging, interesting discussion I've ever had. It was more like pictionary, really. Drunk, and with a thousand bar napkins, I attempted to explain that I study the ocean. For some reason I was convinced that he studied math or physics, and that is why he was here. I tried to communicate this by writing down physics equations... well, I could only remember one, really, that wound up being a hodge podge of f=ma and e=mc^2. I was scribbling f=mc^2 all over napkins when my friend, who took Russian for years in college but apparently didn't remember enough to translate for us, waltzes over to remind me that they use a different alphabet. Of course. I ask her if they have birthday cakes in Russia, and she says they do, so I scribble a cake with four candles and one with 5, printing "21" next to the second cake and point at our friend who is now of legal drinking age. I think he got it. Eventually it was concluded (I think) that he was from Odessa, Ukraine, was 29, and had come over here to just work. None of this may actually be true, as my drunk drawing skills are poor and may have lead to a string of miscommunication.

The next day, I get an e-mail from a TV scout from the Style Network, and I vaguely remember her complimenting me on my legwarmers the night before. I look at the e-mail... and it's for a makeover show. They want horrible dressers who are in extreme fashion ruts. Great. I call her back and tell her I don't normally dress in a sequin top, bike shorts, leg warmers, and sparkly blue shoes. Surprisingly, she is disappointed.

Anyway, that was Monday.

Today was not so fun at the job

We only saw a few bottlenose dolphins and some sea lions. June gloom is in full swing, and it was really really cold out on the boat. We spent 3 hours searching and covered about 45mi. No big whales. Sigh.

This makes me feel better though:

The dog is just so happy!

You can always find something useful at CVS

Next time you're bored and/or need a cheap pick-me-up, head to your nearest drug store and explore. Really, they have everything these days: from mascara and cheeze-its to office supplies and band-aids. You are bound to find something you need, or at least nearly need.

There's nothing like new moisturizer, some postcards, resse's pieces, and a little travel-sized toothpaste to cheer you up.

I have the best job* in the world

And not just because at the end of the day the captain says, "So now we go to the Mai Tai bar." I got to go out on two whale watching tours today, saw sea lions, sunfish, common and bottlenose dolphins, and a blue whale. Not only that, but I was even trusted to use an expensive and fun camera to take pictures of said animals! As soon as I can get some of my files off the computer I will try and pop them up here. They're exciting. I got a couple good ones of the dolphins jumping today.

*Ok, it's only an unpaid internship, but still.

Ohmygod, Shoes.

"World's Oldest Leather Shoe Found—Stunningly Preserved" says this National Geographic article I found while reading up on Jacques Cousteau's 100th Birthday (more on that later). The piece alternates between obvious and insightful.

"It is astonishing," [Manolo] Blahnik said via email, "how much this shoe resembles a modern shoe!"

Um... isn't that what makes it a shoe?

[T]he 5,500-year-old moccasin-like shoe was found exceptionally well preserved—thanks to a surfeit of sheep dung

Wow, okay, go sheep!

[T]he shoe was likely tailor-made for the right foot of its owner, who could have been a man or a woman — not enough is known about Armenian feet of the era to say for sure.

Uhhh...

"The hide had been cut into two layers and tanned, which was probably quite a new technology," explained Ron Pinhasi, co-director of the dig, from University College Cork in Ireland.

But see, that's interesting!

"It immediately struck me as very similar to a traditional form of Balkan footwear known as the opanke, which is still worn as a part of regional dress at festivals today," said Elizabeth Semmelhack, a curator at the Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto, Canada.

And so is that!

Protecting the foot was probably one of the main reasons people started wearing shoes

Facepalm.

[S]hoes like this would have enabled people to cope with extremes of temperature in the region—up to 113°F (45°C) in summer and below freezing in winter — and to travel farther. "These people were walking long distances. We have found obsidian in the cave, which came from at least 75 miles [120 kilometers] away," [study co-author Gregory Areshian] said.

Again: interesting!

Blahnik, the shoe designer, speculates that even this simple design was worn for style as well as substance.

Sigh.

I am in no doubt that a certain appearance of a shoe meant belonging to a particular tribe," said Blahnik

Ok, good way to spin it...

The wearing of shoes, though, is almost certainly older than the oldest known shoes. For example, a weakening of small toe bones found in 40,000-year-old human fossils has been cited as evidence of the advent of shoes.

Go Science!

Rebecca Shawcross, a shoe historian at the Northampton Museums & Art Gallery in the U.K. ...

I want that job. But I'll probably have to fight Kelly to the death for it.

Thinking about the days when men wore hats

Those days are long gone, and trying to recreate them just seems forced. If you walk into a bar now and see men in a waistcoats and hats, with ironic moustaches... all I can think is this place takes itself too seriously. On the other hand, if it's the bartender he (or she) gets a pass, for purposes of the style-and-tips relationship.


Gone are the past decades and traditions... let's not try to bring them back, hipsters. Have a healthy relationship with history, please. Look at pictures of them, go get drunk, and move on. In the course of time things have changed, and we have become Men Without Hats. (If you missed the band pun, they are best known for their song Safety Dance.)


Inspired by this awesome photo retrospective of old bars in Seattle and The Hotsy Totsy in Albany (I recommend the Mexican Velvet).

Toxic O.J.

Today I found in my car a bottle of orange juice that had been there, er, awhile. It fizzed like soda when I opened it, and as I poured it out in the sink it appeared to be smoking. Now I'm certain I'm going to die of exposure to toxic fumes. Hm, not really the way I envisioned myself going.

A Study of Squares: "Dilly Dally in Pussy Park"

Apart from being a great bit of Latvian Soviet-era animation, I had a great time thinking about the geometry in this clip.



What do the squares mean? Squares mean death, they mean the end. They cannot move! Circles are life.

(More animations here.)

This blog is for...

All the silly little things I think about. The random stuff I do. And all the strange I stumble across (real or virtual).