Venice

Sitting in the quiet of a shared rental apartment, drinking coffee (not cappuccino) and eating chocolate-filled croissants. This is the first time I've been here in about six years, according to the blog and to my notebook. Certainly I haven't been since G and U stopped going because of their kids, which is five years ago.

Venice sounds like Sunday, no traffic and hardly any voices. The apartment is only about fifty metres away from the main traffic stream between the Stazione and San Marco, yet we hear nothing but occasional voices (in Italian) of residents and the workmen restoring the house at the head of the alleyway. The quiet is very refreshing, almost meditative. It feels a bit like the places we used for our retreats.

Mind you, the busy buzzing world is still out there, only 50m away. There's a supermarket just the other side of the bridge, where we bought groceries last night. (I'm here with members of the meditation group, though we won't be meditating as such. One is here now, two more arrive on Friday.)

I don't see much change in Venice, though of course shops come and go. Perhaps looking for change here is as conceptually wrong as looking for it on the artificial Main Street of Disneyland. It's all about continuity, repetition and predictability. That may be the reason for the phenomenon of tourists travelling huge distances to shop in the same chain stores that are known to them from their home countries. Or perhaps the tourists who do shop there don't have those stores, perhaps they only know them from advertising and fulfill a long-held aspiration by visiting. I've never been in such a chain to see who actually shops there.

Today's forecast is for cloud and storms towards evening, so it'll probably be just a day of local wandering. Biennale tomorrow and Thursday, forecast to be dry and mostly sunny.

Making coffee in the pretty but minimally-equipped rental apartment: ripped-open packet of coffee, spilled grounds in the sink, boiling water in a saucepan, using towel as a potholder. It reminds me of Winnie the Pooh bumping down the stairs on the back of his head, thinking that he might possibly be able to think of a better way to do it, if only he weren't being bumped on the back of his head all the time.

Yes, I did just quote Winnie the Pooh. It's not all Tolstoy all the time.

"Mystifyingly equipped" might be a better description. Dishwasher and washing machine, two fully-equipped bathrooms, wifi and computer and widescreen TV — but no potholders or sharp knives, and only one bar of soap between the two bathrooms. And remind me to tell you about the process of locking and unlocking the door.

I came here by train, overnight via Munich. I slept surprisingly well, the bed was long enough and comfortable. One learns quickly enough to suppress the initial reaction of startled fear when the train tilts into a curve and your head goes down.

My cellmate was a youngish DJ, on his way to a music studio in Treviso to record a new song. It seems a busy and very hard life, he'd been home for one day in the last three weeks before heading off on this trip. I didn't ask for his name or any particular questions about his music (in fairness, we only spoke during the dozen minutes between waking and his disembarking). He probably thought of me as a harmlessly pleasant old guy.

For the first time ever I find myself thinking in terms of what I can and cannot afford. I've truly never thought that before, up to now my income has always been sufficient for what I wanted to do (and its corollary: my wants were always simply and cheaply fulfilled). That has changed during the last few years, and not because of inflationary wanting. I can't really afford to be here now, I have to watch my expenses if I am to get through the week on the handful of cash I brought.

The reason is that my income hasn't kept step with inflation. If I remember rightly, I am earning the same hourly rate now that I was in 2002 when the currency changed. I certainly cannot remember negotiating or being given a raise. Yet costs have doubled, the beer that used to cost four Deutschmarks now costs four Euros.

I'm experiencing a really strong urge to delete this, to censor myself. Fuck that. This will be the truth, or as much of it as I can bear to make public.

Noon. Time to go outside and do stuff.

Christmas

Hello blogosphere, it's been a long time since we met. I've missed writing, and I deeply regret the loss of the community that had developed here and in the blogs I read. I'm not going to promise to write every N days in 2012, as that would just be another stick to beat myself with when I missed a date; but I will start writing again.

I'm in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan with cousins and other assorted family, eating and drinking and watching Jeopardy (don't ask). The concept of experiencing "together time" by sitting in front of a TV with the sound turned up too high for conversation is difficult for me to grasp, but we all have our foibles and mine would strike them as equally ludicrous. The weather here is odd, very little snow and unseasonably warm at only -7°C.

This is my second week in Canada, actually. I started in Calgary with Favourite Cousin, we spent a day drinking capuccino and stoking each other up for an active and growthy* 2012. She suggested the term "accountability partner", somebody to whom you report regulary and who calls you on your lazy-ass weak-excuse-finding bullshit; we'll be AP-ing each other next year as she gets her keynote-speaking business in gear and I try to level up after what felt like a year of stasis.

I've been working like the proverbial dog this year, building the competition project we won in the summer of 2008. Three and a half years, dear friends; I suspect that many outsiders have no idea how slow archtitecture is. It was a success: the public and the local press liked it, the staff find it convenient to work in. We were only around 6% over budget, which is pretty good; unfortunately it was months late and although it's been in use since the formal opening on October 8, there are still workmen onsite. When I left a week ago, the architectural snagging list was ten small-print single-spaced pages long. Just architecture, mind you, the electrical and services engineers have their own lists too. If you want to have a look at this, mail me (address is above left) and I'll send you a link.

It's funny that 2011 now feels like a static, almost wasted, year, because I did in fact do quite a bit of stretching socially and at work. I went onsite as supervising architect for the first time, all three of us were there six days a week for the last two weeks before the opening. That was a real growth experience, I can tell you. I thought I was just walking around talking to people all day, and at first felt vaguely guilty that I "wasn't really doing anything." It took me a while to realize that this is exactly what the job is, at least during the last few panicy days.

Funny how it worked out: G and Offsite Guy believe in supervising by shouting abuse, which is really not my style at all. I played good cop to their bad cops: encouraging the contractors, building up their confidence and courage, smoothing over tension between trades in favour of give-and-take cooperation. Another difference is that I always greeted everyone I met, every day, even if it was only to catch their eye and nod across a crowded room; G and OG seemed not to see people that they weren't engaged in shouting at. I think my results were at least as good as theirs. Certainly at the opening celebrations, people came up to thank me for my involvement. Even people I don't remember speaking to, like the wellness franchise women, knew my name and felt that I had helped them.

Other than that, I've been playing World of Warcraft and hanging out in Second Life, attending a meditation retreat in Halifax in July and an informal meetup of the same group in Berlin in early December. I think that SL, Facebook (spits) and Twitter between them are responsible for the decline in my blogging: not only the incredible amount of time that they consume (particularly SL) but that they came to fulfill my need to communicate. Second Life in particular has become a great part of my social life, I use it not for gameplay (it's not a game, as I have said many times) but to meet friends. It's my equivalent to going to the pub to chat with the guys, but without beer or second-hand smoke.

* Yes of course "growthy" is a word.

On the inconstancy of time

So here I am sitting in Starbucks waiting for the 11am (SL time, 8pm my time) Fracture dance and conversazione salon to begin, and realizing that it seems a very short time since I was here.

This week has been about ten hours long, subjectively. I'm aware that there are seven days between Saturday and Saturday, and I know that I wasn't comatose for a week (G would have surely said something), so clearly I slept and woke and ate and brushed my teeth etc etc etc. But for all the record it left in my memory I could have spent this week dead.

It's somehow vaguely worrying.

In happier news we seem to be heading for a proper Altweibersommer, the Southern German equivalent of what North Americans call[ed] an Indian Summer. Is that term still socially acceptable, I wonder? In any case: blue skies, sunny and warm, gentle breeze smelling vaguely of Autumn. Lovely. I have a burning desire to go to Venice for a long weekend.

In much happier news I'm going to Japan at the end of November! Two weeks in the land of the Rising Sun — and Sony and sushi and various things that begin with "s." I'm so looking forward to this! I'll have a week in Kyoto to start off, booked into bed-and-breakfast place 20 minutes on foot from the Katsura Palace. I have been in love with [a particular image of] Japan since I was a child, based on the wonderful black-and-white photography of Takeshi Nishikawa. Forty years on, I can still feel the texture of the paper and smell the ink of those enormous, beautiful books.

I know that it's an illusion, that loving Japan because of 1970's photographs of the architecture of the 16th and 17th century is as doomed to disappointment as, say, loving England because of the novels of Alan Sillitoe would be. Nonetheless, these books were my introduction to the place and the culture, and they remain a major block of influence in my mental picture of the world*. Nishikawa had an eye for shadow and for the gradations of darkness that was unequalled. Before seeing his photos, I'd thought of shadows as failures, as errors in an image. His images of highlighted leaves against a dark wall brought home the essence of chiaroscuro better than any art teacher could.


* Rather like Alan Sillitoe's novels, in fact. I must write sometime about his books, in particular the William Posters trilogy (an old British grafitti-joke: it was and perhaps still is traditional to scribble "Bill Posters is innocent!" on signs stating "Bill posters will be prosecuted").

Finished, said Sisyphus

After two weeks of more than full-time work, we posted the competition drawings last night with twelve minutes to spare. G will be out of the office for two days of on-site meetings, Thursday is a public holiday (Christi Himmelfahrt aka Ascension Day) and I'm taking Friday off (as one does). it's going to be a good week.

So, hey, I have a four-day weekend coming up. What to do? Several options are open:

1) Train to Paris, or for that matter to Nice. Haven't been there in a decade. (Weather online says "rainy and as cold as Germany." Ah well.)

2) Last-minute flight to Tel Aviv. (Just looked at prices, the cheapest flight on an airline that I would actually trust to convey my body and worldly goods costs 788€. Ah well.)

3) Train to Hamburg. I really liked the city, and it would be nice to see AY and Ingrid again. (Assuming they would be there and available/interested.)

4) Stay home and not answer the phone, spend the time in Second Life and/or playing Dragon Age: Origins and/or installing Ubuntu on my PC.

Number four is the clear favourite for many reasons geekish and practical. I could cook for myself instead of eating fast food or going to restaurants, after two weeks of competitioning this has a strong appeal. I could go to the Staatsgalerie for the first time in 2010. I could walk up to Vaihingen on the Blauer Weg, or down to the river, both for the first time in 2010. I could sleep in every day.

[Updated] I read this again and had to smile at myself. What a homebody geek I am, that I would choose staying in and cooking over going to Paris!

Not California

Sometime ago, several weeks back now, I arranged to go to San Francisco for a RL meeting of Susan's SL meditation group (following on from the meeting in Malta in January). It was to be my first time in California, something I'd been looking forward to for many decades. For weeks I went around annoying people by singing "Spend my days with a woman unkind…" and various Beach Boys tunes. I found myself writing page-long lists of things to see and do (Berkeley! Salk Institute! Apple Store!) and had to keep reminding myself (a) that I'd only be there for a week, and (b) that I was supposed to be going there to meditate and relax and become more mindful.

I should have flown there via London tomorrow morning at the crack of dawn.

Unfortunately, events in Iceland have conspired against that. I cancelled my flights this morning, and will be remaining ground-bound in Europa. G and I have decided I will be on short time next week: not exactly a holiday but I will certainly be less often in the office than usual. Perhaps I'll take the train to Paris for the weekend or something like that.

Ah well. Shit happens.

[Updated, much later] Well, I didn't even get to Paris. Stayed in the office and worked all week.

Merry Christmas

Ho ho ho, and welcome to the season of indulgence. And various other things too, of course, but from where I half-recline right now, full to bursting of good food and very good wine (if I say so myself, having chosen and imported it double-bubblepack-wrapped quadruple-plastic-bagged and wadded up tightly in my clothes) the indulgence seems most evident.

I wish all my readers a pleasant holiday, in the mode and style of their choice.

What, that's not enough? OK, a weather report: it's +4°C and raining like hell. Bah.

Reading lots, finished Coupland's "jPod" (a work of meretricious beauty, less than the sum of its parts) and now reading Atwood's "The handmaid's tale" (darker, deeper, altogether more interesting, though I strongly suspect that it will not even remotely end with happily ever after).

Tel Aviv: first attempt at a summary

Trainblogging again, on the way to Munich to meet a client. Things always go crazy just before Christmas, as people realize that they haven't yet spent their year's budget. It's amazing that even in these hard times of belt-tightening etc, some corporations still apparently think that saving money is a bad thing. If you give me a budget of X and I spend X minus ten thousand, then surely you should thank me for reducing the corporation's costs, not punish me. Because that is what many corps still do: If you do not spend all your budget, then not only does it not carry over to next year, but you might find that your future budget gets cut by the amount you saved! The corporation forces its employees to waste money. How absurd is that? Bah.

Anyway, that's not my problem, except insofar as it causes a rush of urgent business in December.

Here I sit in an EC (older, slower, no electricity or canned radio) on a cool and sunny Wednesday. There's been a lot of rain recently, the rivers are all running fast and high, and the lowlying fields are wet. Hasn't yet been a frost except in the uppermost highlands, but that may change this weekend.

I haven't finished with Israel yet, though it is six weeks behind me now and all but forgotten in the mudslide of mundaneity. I have not yet sorted and posted my photos (nearly said "slides", how quaint) on Flickr, and probably won't have time for that before January.

But I do remember, with pleasure, walking the sunny streets and sitting by that perfect sandy beach. After the first Soup Salon, on my second day in Israel, Savtadotty and Miriam and I walked down Rothschild (pronounced in the European way, meaning "red shield," rather than the American "child of Roth") to a wine bar and sat outside (at 9pm, in late October) for an hour. I looked across the broad street, with its double row of plane trees and central stripe of garden, at a house on the opposite side, where a group of six thirtysomethings were having dinner by candlelight on their large balcony. I watched for a while, then pointed them out to the others and said "This is just perfect, you live in paradise." They agreed; then Savtadotty said with a wry smile "Even paradise is sometimes just another place after you've lived in it for twenty years."

Paradise indeed; had I been twenty years younger, I might well have stayed. (That marks the first time I have said such a thing about myself. Getting old.)

I met one of Susan's Second Life meditation buddies (whom I had previously met in Princeton last summer) and his wife (whom I hadn't met before) at the Manta Ray, an excellent fish restaurant at the beach. The food was marvellous, the wine was good, the conversation excellent; considering the quality of experience the bill was quite moderate. We talked much of expatriatism, as they had both lived abroad (separately and together) for several years. She had just finished two years as a Fellow at the IAS in Princeton, working on theoretical computation (I think she was teaching data-mining systems to act intuitively, but don't ask for details), which is how her husband met Susan in SL.

Perhaps I was lucky in my choice of restaurants, but I found the food in Tel Aviv unexpectedly good, the standard is universally very high. Fresh food, well cooked, well presented. It's not cheap, one can eat for less in other cities; but a meal of the standard that we had at the Manta Ray would have cost more in Germany.

Given my love of symmetry and repetition, it was appropriate that the week ended with a second Soup Salon, which went on until well after 10pm. It was such fun that we decided to meet the next morning for brunch, before my flight, at Idelsohn on Ditzengoff. Memo to anyone having dealings with Israelis: take appointments and timekeeping with a generous pinch of salt, and be prepared to wait. I got there at the agreed time and had the staff put together a long table for the eight of us, at which I sat alone for twenty minutes until Lisa and Savtadotty arrived. Anyway, it's just a local habit that one gets used to, the mirror image of the equally irritating Swiss über-punctuality. It was a very good brunch, in great company; and then I took a taxi to the airport. (No trains or buses run in Israel on Saturdays, travellers be warned.)

The airport. Israel is perhaps the only country in the world that is harder to get out of than into. Immigration on the way in was a bagatelle: the border guard looked at my passport, asked whether I was there on business, then waved me through. Getting out was an adventure.

It starts with a very long lineup, as usual, but slower-moving than most. The line is patrolled by young women (I'd guess that at least 80% of security and border-control staff in Israel are women) who pick people out of the line and draw them forward into a small open area. I was one such person. She took my passport and boarding card, then started asking questions about who I was and where I had been. "Who did you meet? Where does she live? Do you speak Hebrew? Do you have family here? Where does she live again? Did you pack your own suitcase, and has anyone else been able to get to it since? Who did you meet? You seem nervous, why are you nervous? Who did you meet again?" After about ten minutes of this, she decided that I was a hard case and went to get her superior (a slightly older young woman), who repeated the process with more emphasis on my supposed nervousness. Superior decided after five minutes that I was a harmless idiot, and sent me to the first baggage examination, literally pushing me in at the head of a long line of waiting people. My bags passed through the x-ray, and I was sent to the second baggage examination, this time by hand: swiping my laptop with the magic wand and feeling around in the depths of the suitcase while a colleague watched my facial expression closely.

That too passed, and I moved on to passport control, by contrast a mere formality. Off to the gates, passing through a third and final baggage examination on the way, this time the now-traditional x-ray scan and sensor gateway setup.

The reason for all this caution is obvious, and I am not complaining at all. I am not going to be lured into a trollfest of competing polemics, least of all by myself.

OK, I've been trying to avoid saying this, but the words are forcing their way out. The principle joy of being in Israel, even more than the weather, even more than the universally marvellous food, was being surrounded by Jews. Imagine an entire city populated by the offspring of George Steiner and Susan Sontag: that's what Tel Aviv is like. People of the book indeed. I have a fixed belief that the Jews as a group are the cleverest people in the world, and meeting the Israelis confirmed that. It's the result of millenia of knowing what's in the gene pool and minding that you stay at the deep end of it (in my favourite cousin's wonderful phrase).

Or perhaps it's just the fallacy of self-selecting groups in action: I like people who are like me, and they like people who are like themselves, so it's very highly likely that I will like their friends too. Tiny but utterly representative example: on the way down Rothschild to the wine bar on that first Friday, Jane walked with us as far as the bus-stop, saying as we arrived "I hope I won't have to wait for ages"; turned around and there was the bus pulling up. "Mirabile dictu!" she cried, and with a wave stepped on board.

Tel Aviv felt like home.

(On the train back to Stuttgart, after an embarrassing and short meeting. There is an internet connection available in the train (of course, just as each ICE train is a travelling cellphone node) but they want €30 for sixty consecutive days. Ain't paying that.)

Jewishness intrigued me as a child, because I could never figure out what it meant. I heard people said that other people were Jews, often vaguely implying that this was somehow a bad thing, but I could never figure out how they knew — nor why they cared so much about something that seemed so petty (in the sense that I couldn't see it and didn't care when I did). The amusing thing is that the people whom I eventually learned to spot as Jews were clearly superior to the rest of us. They were the best students: the musicians, the comedians, the ones whose assignments when read out loud in class had us roaring in laughter or nodding our heads thoughtfully. Theirs were the bylines that I learned to look for in the New Yorker and the Times Literary Supplement; the names I spotted in film credits and at Massey Hall.

I was three years old when Eichmann was captured and tried, so it is unlikely that I have any direct memories of the event; but I do remember something about him appearing in the papers in the mid-sixties (probably in connection with Stanley Milgram). I remember at that time asking my mother why the Holocaust happened, because I just couldn't understand why Jewishness was so important, so utterly other as to make genocide seem a reasonable response. I don't remember my mother's answer, but I do remember that it didn't satisfy me, didn't explain how or why this could happen. The search for that answer has been a lifelong occupation.

I remember a few years after that, aged 15 or so, spending the summer in an intensive music course (a string chamber orchestra run by my violin teacher); hearing two of the violinists (far better players than I) playing a strange and lovely song in duet. I asked what it was, and they replied in surprise that it was the Kol Nidre, hadn't I recognized it? I felt quite flattered after I looked it up at home that evening.

Down to the wire, again

Ask me why I am in the office still, 10 hours before I have to leave home for the airport, with my suitcase unpacked and my clothes unwashed and my kitchen uncleaned? On second thoughts, don't.

I found a hotel-type place for €10 a night less than the local hostel (Google knows everything); even got a bulk discount: book four nights, pay for three. It'll either be an undiscovered gem or a disaster. Wait and see.

This time tomorrow, I'll be having dinner in Israel. Wow.

Dear Israeli readers, my e-mail address is at the left and I will be checking it as often as circumstances allow. I would love to meet you all.

Booked

I booked flights to (and indeed from) Tel Aviv today, for a long week in three weeks' time. Tooth be damned. I'm feeling very brave and adventurous, and also tired as hell having just got home from work at 00:48.

Counting the days

I arrived safely back in Stuttgart nearly a week ago, on Thursday morning, after a suitably boring flight (no upgrade this time, alas). The plan was for me to help move the office to G and U's new, not yet completely renovated, house, and you can guess from the subclause what happened to that plan. (The original plan was for us to move at the end of June. It is to laugh.) I took Friday off, spent it unpacking and washing clothes and hanging about in Second Life, then back to the office Saturday morning for the first half of the process: moving the library, model workshop and inactive-project files to the new house (which needs a name, I'll think of something).

Naturally things were taken that should not have been (empty file folders, milk for coffee, the kettle for making tea, the system CDs for repairing the hard disk that of course started throwing out error messages today. (shrugs)

I am really going to miss Rose Street. I have come to love it here, being at ground level in the midst of a dense city neighbourhood, and with a bakery on the corner and three supermarkets and two dozen restauraunts and cafes in walking distance. And I'll miss the people walking past, all the little kids looking in and grinning.

The new place will have absolutely none of that. It is at the dead end of a residential street, 14 minutes on foot and 52 metres uphill from the nearest tram stop, or 5 minutes and 8 metres downhill from the nearest bus stop. It's a storey up from the untravelled road, behind a forecourt full of cars. There is a kindergarten four houses along the street, but that's it. No bakery, no butcher, no cafe, no restaurant: just No. The nearest place to obtain food is at Farmers' Market near that tram stop. It was suggested that we might use the kitchen in the "house" part of the building, but I confidently predict that U will quickly tire of that — if we ever start.

I am missing the hell out of the wedding party, that was such a wonderful time and such a lovely bunch of people. I'm working on a few posts about it and matters arising, but not really getting very far with any of them. I talked to Noctis (the groom) about this, and he kindly agreed to have a look at them in raw form. His reply: words to the effect of "You started well, grasshopper, but there is much that you have not understood." And it is certainly true, his further comments opened my eyes to many things I had overlooked or misunderstood at the time.

I'm considering sending Susan to the next DanceClubConference meeting (there will be more meetings, we were determined that the joy must continue). I think she would possibly have more and different fun than Udge did.

[Updated: I've just remembered something. This post points to the event that started the process that lead to the weddingdanceconference.]

Summer has peaked, and we are starting the slow downhill slide towards autumn. It is pitch-dark at 9:30pm as I write (waiting for the disk-repair utility to finish work). Ah well, it's been a good summer mostly. The weather in North America was pretty well perfect: sunny, warm but not hot, always a pleasant breeze.

Which reminds me that there was a whole 'nother week after the wedding that I have not yet talked about. I managed to meet about a quarter of my SL friends this summer! After Toronto, I went to North Carolina to meet two others (great fun), then took the train up to New Jersey to meet four more. The connection to these six was the meditation group that Susan belongs to. Ha, I hadn't thought of that before: the two halves of the holiday corresponding to my two identities.

Trainblogging, American edition

En route from Durham NC to Trenton NJ, driving up the eastern seaboard (though at present far inland) in overcast and light rain; it's 10:45 a.m. and the carriage is close to full. The train is small by European standards, for such a distance: two locomotives, baggage car (how quaint), cafe car, six coaches. There are no tables on Amtrak, all seats are in airline-like pairs, all facing the same direction. The fold-out tables are oddly high, about four inches too far above my lap for comfortable typing.

There are no over- or underpasses on train routes in the US (outside of major urban areas), every road we've passed so far has been a level crossing with barriers and flashing lights, which means that the train has been whistling pretty well nonstop. I like listening to the strange moaning roar of a train whistle, when I hear them at night or in the city, but this constant noise is going to get old pretty fast.

Raleigh NC.

On the other hand, given that there is only one train per day and direction on this section of the route, it would be absurdly expensive to build and maintain overpasses at every road. (Oh, that's right, Americans don't maintain infrastructure; but even so…) This stretch is single-track only, there is no provision for more than one train at a time to travel here. This means that the stations all have only one platform, which I find really odd: in Europe even hundred-person pissawful villages on the far periphery of civilization have two platforms.

I'm listening via iTunes and headphones to music that I acquired (cough piracy cough) in Milwaukee at the wedding. The song of the moment is "Willie the Pimp" by the late, sorely missed Frank Zappa. This song may need to go onto repeat for a while.

Well, that was interesting. In addition to the working train staff who punch tickets, there is a Volunteer Train Host on board, who seems to be here to walk about and chat semi-idly with passengers — no, sorry, I meant customers. I'm not sure why we are not "passengers" but it is clear that we are not, that word has not yet been used today. Presumably there is some dire legalistic-horseshit implication in the difference. Bah.

Wilson NC. Wow, quite a crowd waiting to board. I shall probably lose the empty seat where my backpack rests. On the edge of town, a huge and largely empty cemetery. No European cemetery would have so much empty space between stones, nor paths between the rows that were large enough to drive a golf cart down. [Later: having seen several cemeteries, I think that the difference is not the spacing but the typical size of the average memorial, which in Europe would be much larger.]

Outside Wilson, there is a double-tracked section. We waited ten minutes for a southbound freight train to pass by, then continued north on the single track.

Rocky Mountain NC. Boxy building by the roadside proclaims itself the home of the Improved Order of Redmen. Yeah, whatever.

Petersburg VA. Had lunch (hawt chickn sammitch) and a coffee from the cafe car. It was adequate, reminded me of British Rail food (which is not a recommendation).

Just saw my first kudzu infestation, a whole creekbed covered in the stuff. I can't figure out why people aren't worried about it. But then, there is much that I can't figure out, for instance why nobody seems interested in the sudden increase of food allergies during the last two decades. There was no such thing as being allergic to food when I was a kid, people would have thought it was a joke. Today, every second child is allergic to nuts. Why does this not strike anyone at all as being unusual and potentially significant? Is it that worrying might interfere with the food industry's dividends? Bah.

Richmond VA, and the smokers are stepping out to get a fix. Amtrak doesn't post the names of the stations, presumably they are so few and so far apart that there could be no possible uncertainty (hollow laughter). For a country founded by immigrants and whose national mythos is of the Drifter, it is surprising that America cuts absolutely no slack for people who lack local knowledge. Signage in public spaces (parking lots, streets, airports) is minimal by European standards, and worse it is sometimes false. It took my parents and I twenty minutes to get out of an underground garage in Toronto last week, because the way to the exit was not signposted. "Everyone knows that!" seems to be the attitude. Bah.

Fredericksburg VA. A pair of buzzards circle low over Main Street.

Quantico VA, home of the FBI and the Marines. Steward tells a pregnant woman waiting to disembark "You know we don' actually stop here, right? We jus' open the doors an' you jump an' roll." Hilarity ensues.

Alexandria VA. A real city, with suburbs and double-decker local commuter trains.

Washington DC, where half the passengers customers disembark. I'm surprised what an enormous city Washington is. Coming into the city from the south, past the Lincoln Memorial and the Needle, I find myself thinking of Lincoln, King, Kennedy and yes of Obama, and choking up.

Remind me to look up "Acela," that looks like a long-distance high-speed train in the European sense, which this sure ain't. We have been travelling at 60 mph or below for most of the day.

Population density is increasing rapidly as we get further north. Maryland is at least one order of magnitude more densely settled than NC.

Baltimore MD. Good god, this is a bleak city, entire districts seem to be boarded up.

Several long causeways across water; are these estuaries? Google will know.

(At this point I had to pack up and prepare to disembark. The post is (a) missing the last three or four stations, but (b) already quite long enough. It remains only to say that despite dire predictions of Amerian friends, the train arrived in Trenton nearly 10 minutes early.)

July already

Odd to think that I will be somewhere in North American airspace at this time in a week. Booked several flights, about two years' worth of flying by my usual measures.

The itinerary is unnecessarily complicated, due to North America's inability to offer sensible and convenient train travel. Case in point: Milwaukee (destination two) and Regina (destination three) both have train stations, but one is Amtrack and the other is VIArail. Their networks connect at precisely three points, none of which is in the Midwest. So I will fly from one city which has a train station to Toronto and there take a connecting flight to another city which has a train station. Absurd. This hub & spoke arrangement might make economic sense for the airlines but it is hell on us passengers.

In case you are curious, the list of places I will voluntarily visit is: Chicago, Milwaukee, Regina, Durham NC, and New Jersey. I will pass with gritted teeth and not-only-subvocal expressions of dismay through: Toronto, either Calgary or Edmonton or Denver, and possibly Raleigh NC.

I have started reading Infinite Jest by the late DFW, responding to the challenge/invitation issued by the crew at Infinite summer: to read the whole damned thing, all 981 pages (in this edition) and 388 endnotes, some of which have footnotes of their own. I'm up to page 212 and endnote 74* and am loving it.

I can't for the life of me think how IJ stayed below my radar for these thirteen years***, because it is very much the kind of book that I love: Excursive, discursive, voluble, laconic, fond of words as things in their own right, curious about and amused by the whole world. Probably I was put off it (or DFW, as I hadn't read anything longer than a magazine article by him) by the enormous hype. In this case, surprisingly enough, it was justified. IJ is quite marvellous, it's sure to be one that I keep and re-read.

Other than that life has been going on much as it usually does. Lots of panic this week, with an average of 10.5 hours a day on the first four days. Tomorrow will be easier, Fridays are always only half-days for me (because Susan hosts a meditation session in the mornings) — but architects' half-days are often six hours long anyway.


* I think I've had that one already. It's hard to be sure because I tend to keep reading beyond the end of the note that I flipped** back to read.

** Well, I say "flipped" but in fact I have a second bookmark set in the notes.

*** Actually this should be no surprise at all that I didn't read IJ when it was new and highly praised, as that is my usual response. I assume that the reviewers are in fact praising the item's fashionability and up-to-date-ness, and further assume that it will be seen as nearly worthless once the fashion changes and the calendar has shed a few leaves. This spares me having to read a buttload of dross, but means that I occasionally miss out on significant delights. Ah well, better late than never.

Dull, summer edition

The rain stopped, mostly. During the last fortnight we have had sometimes as many as three days in a row without precipitation. On the bright side, the rain and cloud keeps the temperatures low. We haven't had any days above 30°C yet, which is fine by me.

My summer holiday plans are gelling nicely. I booked flights to and from the US (almost exactly half the price of flying to Canada, bah) for mid to late July, and am now trying to get committed dates from the friends I want to meet. (Note: if I haven't contacted you, that does not mean that I don't want to meet you! Time and money are short, and I already have firm dates a total of 4850 km apart, so a fair amount of my time and budget will be spent travelling. Trips to the southwest, northwest and southeast will have to wait for another occasion. Sorry.)

Work is going well at the moment, I'm getting an amazing amount of stuff accomplished. This is in part due to G being often out of the office, so there are fewer interruptions and much less stress. It's odd (but pleasant) that the phone doesn't ring when he isn't there.

Oh yes, my nose. I knew there was something else to say. I had a series of spontaneous nosebleeds over the weekend, sometimes quite intense, so I went to the doctor first thing Monday morning. He looked and prodded, said that it was probably just a minor thing, and sent me to an ENT specialist. He looked and prodded, said that a minor vein had burst, and cauterized it.

Merry Christmas

Settling in well to the routine of life in a pet-filled vegetarian household at -23°C. Finished wrapping presents, only one of which broke in transit, now blogging before dinner. Went for a walk just after sunset along the Wascana Creek, dog surprised a jackrabbit which escaped into somebody's fenced garden.

Flights were blissfully dull. 23 hours door-to-door, of which just under 12 hours were actually spent in the air.

Merry Christmas, my dears. I wish you all peace, health and happiness.

[Just noticed the dateline, which is wrong. This was actually posted at 7:30 pm on Christmas Eve.]

On saving money, and matters arising

I phoned Lufthansa tonight to book my flights for my father's 80th birthday celebrations, and had to wait and wait and wait and wait (as one does). While waiting I idly surfed over to Lufthansa's website and started researching flights and prices there. The sales rep came on the phone as I was about halfway through the online process, so I carried on with that while talking to her. She and the computer both ended up with the same flights on the same days — but a 300 Euro price difference! Booking online was only 2/3 of the price she quoted me. So I explained the situation, thanked her politely for her efforts, and booked online. I can think of much better ways of spending the money than by giving it to Lufthansa. For instance, it's almost exactly the price of a 16Gb iPhone.

But anyway. That's the state of play. I am now booked for Toronto for early May. According to my mother, it'll be the first time that Sis and I have been in the house together with them since 1988.

I phoned my parents to let them know, and we talked of family and friends (as one does). Mom asked whether I had heard from Physically Distant Cousin's daughter lately? No, should I have done? Apparently yes: there are plans* in the brewing. As Mom tells the tale, PDC'sD's grandparents asked her at Christmas what she was planning to do after graduating from high school this coming summer, whether she had thought about university? "No way," she replied, "I'm going to go and live with Udge in Europe for a year, learn German and maybe French."

Ah. Okaaay.

Mom expected me to be contrite and apologetic at having lead her astray**, and also to be concerned about looking after this poor delicate flower (snorts) for a year, but I'm afraid I laughed delightedly. I think it's a marvellous idea and I support her fully. No idea how it'll work out, or even where I'll be living come September, but it will work out somehow. Good on yez, PDC'sD, more power to your elbow.

* Or at least: ideas and big talk.
** Educationally speaking, I hasten to clarify.

Busy doing nothing

At least, nothing that I can or will write about presently, for a complex nexus of reasons arising from bad planning and worse decision-making on my part. So be it.

The topinambour recipe will appear in 2007 2008, I promise—but I have to find it first. The "Zeit" article that I linked to doesn't list the ingredients of the soup (though it does list the other four dishes' ingredients) so I will have to track down the pages that we worked from.

Walking, reading, eating relatively little but more healthily, drinking no alcohol at all.

Except that I ate and drank far too much on Friday at a birthday party, as one does; home at 3:30 and was awake until 5, then slept only five hours. Saturday was correspondingly rocky.

This week's much-delayed Friday Favourite will also be the last, at least for the foreseeable future: a newly-passed law requires German ISP's (and telephone and cellphone companies) to track and record every connection made through their services, and to make this available for six months in searchable form to any government agency that happens to ask. The matter will fail miserably, of course: the data to be collected amounts to several terabytes per day*, there is no provision in the law for payment for the hardware necessary to store all this nor for the electricity to run the hardware nor for a charge for accessing it; there is no definition of what "searchable" actually means; and not even Google has any idea how to dice and slice that amount of disparate data arriving that quickly.

That being said, the law is the law and therefore the system must be implemented at great cost (economic and political) so that it can be seen to fail miserably before the law can be revoked. Now, tracking down persons who infringe on commercial rights is not the purpose of the law, which like many other bad laws around the world has been enacted under the guise of "fighting terrorism;" but the observable fact is that government exists to better enable corporations to pick the pockets of its citizens, so it will not be long at all until this data is being used to sue children who exchange ringtones on the playground or download songs from the Internet. Until the bill is revoked, posting these Favourites is just too dangerous: in Germany, the penalty is not restricted to fines (absurdly high though those can be) but may encompass actual time in jail.

Yes, you're right: it is an egregious pile of crap offensive to any thinking person. But it is also the law, for now, and for the time being we must live with it.

Oh yes, with all the ranting I nearly forgot: here's the song, from this album. Enjoy loudly; singing along is encouraged.

Moving rapidly along as I do think we should, here's a thought to prime the pumps of your New Year's listmakings. To set the scene: George, Harris and the narrator J are preparing to spend a week in a small boat on the River Thames, rowing up to Oxford, and are deciding what to pack.

The first list we made out had to be discarded. It was clear that the upper reaches of the Thames would not allow of the navigation of a boat sufficiently large to take the things we had set down as indispensable; so we tore the list up, and looked at one another.

George said:

"You know we are on a wrong track altogether. We must not think of the things we could do with, but only of the things that we can't do without."

George comes out really quite sensible at times. You'd be surprised. I call that downright wisdom, not merely as regards the present case, but with reference to our trip up the river of life, generally. How many people, on that voyage, load up the boat till it is ever in danger of swamping with a store of foolish things which they think essential to the pleasure and comfort of the trip, but which are really only useless lumber.

How they pile the poor little craft mast-high with fine clothes and big houses; with useless servants, and a host of swell friends that do not care twopence for them, and that they do not care three ha'pence for; with expensive entertainments that nobody enjoys, with formalities and fashions, with pretence and ostentation, and with — oh, heaviest, maddest lumber of all! — the dread of what will my neighbour think, with luxuries that only cloy, with pleasures that bore, with empty show that, like the criminal's iron crown of yore, makes to bleed and swoon the aching head that wears it!

It is lumber, man — all lumber! Throw it overboard. It makes the boat so heavy to pull, you nearly faint at the oars. It makes it so cumbersome and dangerous to manage, you never know a moment's freedom from anxiety and care, never gain a moment's rest for dreamy laziness — no time to watch the windy shadows skimming lightly o'er the shallows, or the glittering sunbeams flitting in and out among the ripples, or the great trees by the margin looking down at their own image, or the woods all green and golden, or the lilies white and yellow, or the sombre-waving rushes, or the sedges, or the orchis, or the blue forget-me-nots.

Throw the lumber over, man! Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need — a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends, worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.

Jerome K. Jerome, "Three men in a boat (to say nothing of the dog)"

I can think of nothing finer than that last paragraph to wish you for the coming year, dear readers.


* Assume for the sake of argument that "several" actually means "1.0003" A terabyte per day is 12 megabytes every second. That brand-new and expensive 320 gigabyte hard-disk you just bought? You'd need twenty-three of those per week.

Ho ho ho

Blogging briefly while waiting for G and U (and Ralph) to pick me up, to go to the Black Forest for two days.

It has not (yet) snowed as such, but the combination of frozen earth and moist air has left a film of hoar-frost over the city. It's about -5°C at present, sunny but with a humidity haze in the air. Walking home at 3 a.m. under a full moon, alone in the city with my feet crunching in the snow, I felt peaceful and very happy.

G, U, Famous Photographer and I cooked a four-course meal last night: topinambour soup, carp bleu, duck legs in a sweetish ginger and lemon sauce, and a bread pudding. Delicious; though I must say that having once eaten carp, I see no particular need to eat it again. It has a very, shall we say, unusual texture which I found quite unpleasant. The topinambour soup was the highlight of the evening, I've translated the recipe here.

Merry Christmas, my dears. I hope that you are all happy, healthy and with your loved ones today.

It was the Saturday before Christmas

… and the mice were stirring as though their little lives depended on it. One would think that people had been saving up all year for this season, for the chance to spend a buttload of money in a very short time. The city is full to bursting, dozens if not hundreds of buses have brought tourists and shoppers from all over southern Germany, Switzerland and even Austria to see our famous Weihnachtsmarkt (two more days! plenty of bargains left!!)

I am going to a gospel concert with Slim this evening, then a dinner party on Monday, then to the Black Forest for a few days with G's family, so any posting or e-mailing that I don't do tomorrow will not be done until the 27th.

Dear readers, I hope that you will enjoy a peaceful and happy holiday, in the place and style that most appeals. May the deity of your choice bless you in the manner of your choice.

qa0ßßß0

Monday, work day, alone in the house but for cat and dog. Parents and friends are en route (separately) to Toronto; cousins have dispersed in every compass direction but south; Sis, BIL and Nephew are at work, Niece is back at the university lazing about studying.

Twenty-two of us met yesterday for a formal brunch in the Hotel Sask, very pleasant. Afterwards, Physically Distant Cousin and I went on a pilgrimage to Rouleau, better known as Dog River. There wasn't much to see, alas, as filming was finished for the year and the gas station/café was (literally) boarded up tight and all possible stealables locked away. A lovely day out nonetheless, photos will be posted later in the week.

PDC's daughter is about to graduate from high school, and is wondering what to do with her life (she's not yet eighteen). I suggested that she might take a year or two off to see a bit of the world and consider what if anything to study. There is a certain amount of parental pressure influence to continue straight on into university; I countered that taking a generic BA course for its own sake is a poor investment of time if she doesn't know what she wishes to study. Better to spend a little time exploring herself and narrowing down the possibilities.

Conan has just walked across the keyboard, renaming this piece. I'm inclined to let his contribution stand.

I walked to the local Chapters store at the edge of town this morning, where I spent a pleasant 90 minutes snuffling and nosing about. It's odd that I can spend hours (literally) in a bookshop, but am seldom longer than twenty minutes in the library. Managed to restrict myself to six books, but only because four others that I was specifically searching for weren't available. Megastores like this are an odd combination of delight and frustration: they have so many (presumably) wonderful books, yet they almost never have the one particular book that you wanted.

I'd forgotten during my years in Germany, how much of English so-called humour is based on cruelty, on harsh mockery and abusive, bitter put-downs. I found speaking to my father's cousin quite distasteful; on the other hand, I have to award him points for being the only representative of my father's family who could be bothered to attend. [Updated: in fairness, those that didn't have school-age children or are themselves teachers, so it would have been pretty difficult to get away—just to have lunch together.]

This may be the last post for a while, as tomorrow will be spent travelling and Wednesday will be spent sleeping. Take care, be good to yourselves and each other.

Son of tired

Posting quickly while dinner races towards the table. Spent the day preparing for (a) our parents' arrival tomorrow, and (b) the anniversary party on Saturday. Walked around town, noting change and constancy and clear blue skies.

Suffering from vague headache, which I think is due to forced-air heating and tightly-sealed houses. I've jammed the window in the guest room open, and will see whether that helps.

Suffering also from cat-hair allergy, which didn't happen either in Lisbon with the Lioness and her pets or with my sister's late cat. Ah well; 'tis an imperfect life of joy and sorrow commingled, as the poet said.

I was reminded of a trivial event in Frankfurt airport on my way here. I wanted to get some Canadian dollars, so headed towards the foreign exchange office, then noticed just before reaching the counter that there was a Post Office bank cash machine next door. So I went there and got a handful of cash, with which I returned to the counter. I handed the bundle of notes to the cashier and said "300 Euros' worth of Canadian dollars, please;" he set the bundle aside and counted out a slightly larger handful of Canadian notes and handed them to me. As I took the bundle, I said to the cashier "You're very trusting, giving me this money without counting what I'd given you." He replied, "I've been in this job for twelve years. I can tell that you're honest." He's right, but still it was a slightly odd encounter.

One might call this "the trust economy:" the feel-good factor of dealing quickly and pleasantly with me outweighs the possibility that I might have stiffed him for—well, what's the downside? that I gave him 250 instead of 300? When my pre-paid cellphone card ran out in Hamburg recently, the service sent me a text message offering an advance on my next prepayment: for forty cents of my remaining balance, they'd advance me five Euros so that I could continue using the phone.

By the way there's only one Internet connection here (cable-modem with a literal single cable) and five people wanting to use it, so my time online is limited. Please don't be offended or surprised if I don't get around to reading/commenting on your blog during the next week.