Category: Musings

Nu toyz

Today was a fun day of not doing much of anything, after lots of fun days of doing stuff out in Sonoma with Mark and Alicia. Well, I say not doing anything but most people would class a day when you’ve re-booted your machine more than ten times during installations a busy day. All this restart action was due to some new toys turning up for my computer, as I take advantage of America’s relative cheapness for those sort of things. Mr Dell popped by to fix my keyboard, still under guarantee for another 26 days. Mr Amazon delivered a new 160 gig Maxtor drive and a USB 2/Firewire card, and I wandered over to the other Mr Dell’s house to pick up a new CD burner/DVD player (big thanks to uncle Tim there as well). Everything seems to working quite well now, apart from the USB 2 on the card but I’m sure that will come together at some point. It’s certainly nice to have plenty of space to store my photos and music on now though, yay!

On a more sociable note – big thanks out to Alicia and Mark (and Riley the dog) for fun days out in Sonoma. Yesterday was the finale, starting at 10 with a wine tasting at Reynolds Family winery with one of their off road tasting tours. Alicia had very kindly sorted out this as a freebie with Derek for the radio station where she works, so I got to tag along. Much drunkeness and good wine, food and champagne followed. The Reynolds wines are very nice indeed. It’s probably worth noting here that knowing your wines is pretty much a major obsession in this part of the world – everyone I know here will get into a deep comparison of the merits of different vineyards and vintages at the drop of a hat. The biggest repeated hint seems to be the $2 bottles of Charles Shaw merlot, which are actually very drinkable, but not one to serve your potential in-laws.

Brownian motion

You may recall last year that lil’ ol’ American fiasco that was the Enron situation. In summary, the insider dealing in electricity futures led to an energy crisis on the west coast, with many places suffering from planned ‘brown outs’ where they lost their electricity due to a lack of supply. People at the time blamed mis-management, greed and the impact of a new dealer based market but I believe I have found the real culprit…. leaf blowers.

There is something in the American psyche that loves to use hand held giant hairdryers to push dry leaves ineffectually from one part of their drive to another. It’s probably the same gene that likes hunting and guns, or the one that likes super-sizing. Leaf blowers have got to be the most wasteful, stupid and downright evil creations. How hard is it really to get a brush, sweep the leaves into a pile and then put them in a bag? Not only is it better for your health and the environment, it also cuts down your electric bill and means that the leaves are actually picked up rather than just blown onto your neighbour’s drive where he, in turn, will blow them back onto yours.

In next week’s rant: Why Eminem should be the next president.

Jitterbug perfume – tom robbins. Another surrealist philosophical romp from the writer of ‘even cowgirls get the blues’. The theme of this one crosses from perfume to immortality, through spirituality and beetroots, all blended together with the usual spice from mr robbins. A great read, and doesn’t go meandering off as much as cowgirls does towards the end.

SF Ho’

Over in San Francisco now – staying courtesy of the loverly Mr Hoare near the Mission. My flight here was relatively un-eventful apart from some major turbulence. It’s always a bit unnerving when the captain keeps asking the stewardesses to strap themselves in during the flight. Luckily though I had three seats to myself, although somehow still managed to fail to fall asleep which after the amount of sleep I hadn’t had in New York you’d think would be easy. Ah well.

Been catching up with lots of ex-Quidnunc folk out here. Everyone has pretty much managed to get themselves re-jobbed, even in the current less than favourable tech climate which is wonderful. In fact driving into SF from the airport you’d be forgiven for thinking that the dot com boom was still in full effect, as every billboard on the way screams about some new product or other in the tech sphere. SF is pretty much the only place you’ll see motorway adverts for obscure J2EE connectivity tools I believe.

State of the nation

Strictly speaking I ain’t gonna talk about the ‘nation’ of the US of A, but just about New York City. I love this town in so may ways. I’ve just had a great evening down Max Fish catching up with folk and it’s been lovely. Before that I had a wonderful, busy day seeing other friends who I don’t get the chance to see often enough. So what’s the beef?

Well it’s this… A lot of people are thinking of leaving New York at the moment. It’s been a while since 9/11 and the economy has at least stopped it’s tumultuous plummet towards nul points, even if it’s not exactly booming any more. The truth is that many people seem to have lost the belief that New York is an avatar of success and generator of wealth, at least in the circles I move in. People are feeling pressured to live, rather than enjoying the hey day of hard work with good rewards. Now, hard work is stated up front as a minimum requirement to get a job to just survive. And you know what? That’s arse. Pure and simple. People need enjoyment to live their lives. If their jobs don’t provide satisfaction to some level then they look elsewhere and the job becomes an impediment rather than part of a well rounded life. Consequently unhappiness sets in.

This is a bad thing.

Creativity and societal growth can happen anywhere, and maybe it’s simply that the time is not now New York’s, but to my mind NYC is a symbol of all that is good and creative in the US. Yes, money plays a huge part in what happens here, but the truth is that amazing things are made here and people burst with ideas that get proper support to grow. If that doesn’t happen any more then something wonderful has been lost. A symbol that helps not only the US, but a lot of the western world flourish becomes tarnished and less powerful.

Not only is general creativity in flux, but human aspects of relationships seem also to be stiffled. In the same way that people aren’t investing their financial holdings in the stock market, emotional holdings are being held back for ‘safer’ engagements. Physical interactions happen, but more for the physical comfort fuck aspects than deeper emotional aspects. The art shows here are rife with sexual imagery, with little of the deeper ‘love’ type emotional ties visible in their offerings. Even if the choices of art galleries is not indicative of the current emotional tides then the behaviour in bars is much more obvious – there is a predatory aspect in place that is palpable. People want some form of contact and physical will do, spiritual and emotional can wait for the moment for better times.

Most likely this is all part of life’s long term cycles of creation and hibernation/recovery. Over time New York will again regain it’s glamour, and not just on a superficial level. For now though, dealing with the emotional fall out of earlier events, and probably the ‘business first’ focus of a new mayor will continue to take its toll. I’m glad that I got to see New York at its best over the years that I lived here, and know that it will be great again when the time is right. Just a shame that it’s struggling a bit at the moment.

Do I know you?

After the wonderful sunny start to the week New York has decided to go back to being extremely wet and grey. Luckily I’ve packed some pretty full on waterproofs since I’m heading down to Melbourne and the weather down there is quite grey during winter, so staying relatively dry. Also bought myself a new rubberised bag from Brooklyn Industries (where else would I shop?) which is doing just lovely thank you very much missus.

Feeling sad though because tomorrow is my last day here before I head off to SF. I’ve managed to catch up with lots of people (some planned, some more synchronicity based) and that’s all been smashing. Last night hung out with Carter and Kristin and their friends Jon and Francine down at Moto, a cool little bar/restaurant right next to the JMZ line. Moto is an amazing little place with a great faux french style, wonderful food and to top it all off this amazing band started playing just after we finished dinner. A great evening all round.

On a camera type note (and with a big thanks to Carter for his positive praise on my photos) it’s amazing how much the price of Compact Flash cards has come down since I bought my camera last August. Back then a 192 meg card was setting me back $120, now the same type of card costs $150 for 512 meg. That’s a lot of photos and I need to watch that my poor little computer doesn’t get overloaded holding them all. Might be time to invest in an external 120 meg drive just like Andy with his plans to back up his entire CD collection. Tim was saying that the reason for this is there’s a new type of really fast compact flash about to come out, so the older (16x) speed ones that I’m using are getting a bit defunct. Professional photographers tend to use microdrives because they write much more quickly, although they are more susceptible to bumps.

Hot in the city

Well having been warned that New York was wet and grey I’ve been pleasently surprised by today’s hot sunniness! Much like the atypical weather I left behind in London. Bright sunshine is always the best way to enjoy wandering around New York streets, especially when you’re a bit jet lagged. Managed to fight off the jet lag long enough to buy a new bag and sort out a new phone number – +1 (347) 678.6295 which will work while I’m in the US thanks to the lovely Mr Virgin.

Also, as a slight follow-up to the last post, you may have noticed that I didn’t die on my last flight. Phew. And not only that the flight was pretty much empty so I had three seats to myself to enjoy a lovely selection of movies – my favourite of which was Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, the ‘fake’ biopic of the guy who presented and invented the Gong Show and who may have been a secret assassin for the CIA in his spare time. Very strange but a great movie.

Be your own life coach – fiona harold. Where many life coaching books tend to come off as very patronising, obvious and, most of all, American, this book is none of the above. Fiona Harold has spotted a hole in the market and fashioned herself into Britain’s most successful life coach, which means she’s about two foot shorter than Tony Robbins but has more hair (well, real hair anyway). This book pretty much sums up how you yourself can define who you are and what you want to be. No filler, just effective exercises for you to work through and see how you really think. There is some pseudo-psychotherapy going on in there but it’s not extreme and the main flaw I would suggest is that sometimes it’s easier for someone else to see your weaknesses and strengths than you find it yourself – so just using the book isn’t always the answer. That said it’s a great book and I highly recommend it to everyone to help understand who you are and what you want to do.

Women – charles bukowski. Another psuedo biographical story about Henry Chinaski, once street living post office worker now semi-successful writer and womanizer. This book is a sequence of exploits in Chinaski’s later life as a published writer and poet. Through his writing Chinaski is now able to fulfil his ideal lifestyle of drinking, shagging many different women and generally floating through life. Each chapter is incredibly short giving a real sense of the longevity of Chinaski’s plans for life. Although the main themes carry on through the book there is no real story as such, just slices of life being lived in a suicidal style. You find yourself wondering if this was really how Bukowski was living or whether it was the fuck fantasies of an old man. Guess I’ll have to read a biography to find out. If you like Bukowski this is a great read.

The wind-up bird chronicle – haruki murakami. It seems like only a short time ago that I read my first ever Marakami epic, Norweigan Wood. Back then I’m pretty sure that was the only book of his that you could find. Now every other book I read is one of his, something that hasn’t really happened for me since Terry Pratchett. Not that these two authors are in any way alike, it was more a comment on how my reading has changed over the years!

But back to the book itself… The chronicle, as I shall call it for brevity, is not a thin book. Weighing in just over 600 pages it at first seems a little daunting. Luckily it was worth the effort. The story is based around Toru Okada who loses his job, cat and then wife in quick succession. All of this seems quite straight forward and sane until about a third into the book when an increasing number of psychic characters start to emerge. At this point the story changes completely, from a simple tale of modern life to an allegorical stew of meaning and stories within stories. Characters come in and drop out with surprising regularity with Toru being the main link through all of them. Sounds confusing? It is, but somehow even though it doesn’t really make any sense you find yourself hanging on every twist and turn, fascinated to see what happens and how. Dry cleaners, mediterranean islands, birds, a female ‘fitter’ and her mute son are some of the characters you come across, with situations ranging from a normal suburban street, through the Japan-Russia conflict of the early 1900s to an all-pervading well. Oh, and of course we get to find out that Toru likes cooking spaghetti as his main meal as he tries to recover his lost wife.

Then, as strangely as it starts, the story stops. Everything sort of makes sense and you feel like you’ve climbed a mountain and are looking out on amazing views below. Phew. A happy ending as only Murakami could construct from another great book.