Ecuador, Part 1 (Sept. 8th-15th)

Daniela and I took a 6 week vacation back in August and September. The plan was to attend three weddings back in Boston and Philadelphia but we also managed a two-week trip down to Ecuador. Daniela's brother Max started dating an Ecuadorian girl named Emilia while studying abroad in Quito in 2005. They have been doing the long-distance thing since, with Max in Las Vegas and Emilia in Manta. Emilia's family owns the Hotel Balandra in Manta, and since Max had been planning a trip to see her, we thought we could tag along during our vacation and maybe stay at her family's hotel. Joni gave us green passes on Southwest Airlines so we were able to book one-way tickets from the Boston area to Ft. Lauderdale and tickets from Ft. Lauderdale to Las Vegas. Then we bought our own flights to the Boston area from Las Vegas and super cheap tickets to Quito from Miami on Copa Airlines. I think we spent about $600 each on all the flights, but that was thanks to the green passes from Joni.

Our friend Jeff got married on the 7th of September in Sharon, MA and the next day Daniela and I packed up everything we own and took a bus down to Providence. A direct flight from Boston to Miami would have been awesome, but Southwest rarely flies out of the major hubs. We took the Tri-Rail from Ft. Lauderdale to Miami, where Daniela had booked us a hotel room through Priceline.com. Our flight left Miami at 8:30am on the 9th, giving us just enough time to wake up, shower, get to the airport, and take out some cash at the ATM. Ecuador has used US Dollars as its official currency since 2000, replacing the cumbersome alpaca. Alpacas are still used as money in the rural areas, but you hardly ever see them in Quito anymore.

We landed in Quito at 1:40pm and Daniela's family met us at the airport. Max, David, her parents, and her cousin Matt arrived the day before and had already found two rooms at the Hotel Akros (a $5 cab ride from the airport). We took two cabs to Emilia's aunt's house for lunch and to meet some of her family. So D and I had our first taste of Ecuadorian food about 20 minutes off the plane. The only things that I distinctly remember were the 5 different kinds of sherbets. From Emilia's aunt's house we could see clear across the valley to the Pichincha volcano. Quito lies in a valley about 25 miles long and 3 miles wide, bordered on the west by a massive volcano that last erupted in 1999. Quito has expanded right up its slope and there are going to be a lot of surprised people when it erupts again (or when another massive earthquake sucks Quito into the ground). After freshening up at the hotel, we met Max's former host mother for dinner. First we stopped at the Megamaxi, an Ecuadorian supermarket chain, to pick up some fruit, tea, and cake to bring. Max's host mother, Susana, reminisced with Max for awhile as Daniela's dad and I tried to keep up with the conversation. Daniela's dad doesn't speak any Spanish so her mom had to translate for him. Yvonne speaks it quite well and even lived in Mexico City when she was younger. Everyone else in our group, beside me, speaks it quite well. After dinner we met up with Emilia's family again to walk through the old city. We followed La Ronda for a while, stopping in the little shops and cafes along the way. We caught glimpses of the giant Virgen de Quito up the narrow alleyways of the old city. Some of us split a churro, and then we all stopped in this little bar run by indigenous women and got a local drink of juice and liquor, warmed up. I told everyone how awesome it was while I tried to suppress my gag reflex. Yvonne and some of Emilia's family danced in the bar and we got home around midnight.

Matt was the only one who had serious problems with the altitude. Matt was also the only person who got sick from the food every single day he was there. The next day we all had breakfast in the lobby of our hotel and it was slammin'. Typical fare at a hotel buffet, but the fruit was really juicy and the eggs had something in them. After breakfast we took a taxi to a large marketplace for some shopping. Someone wanted to buy something very specific but now I can't remember what the hell it was. There were some kids begging in typical third-world fashion but I was more concerned about pick-pocketing. Max and Emilia warned us it's a serious problem and if we ever found ourselves on a bus, it would be best to just hold your wallet and keep your bags in your lap. We took a two hour flight to Manta that afternoon. Manta is a city on the coast and an up-and-coming tourist destination. It already gets quite a bit of business from tourism but the money being sunk into development there is massive. The airport is being expanded to receive some international traffic and it's the main airport serving the Galapagos. So we were picked up in Manta by Emilia's parents and we had a nice drive along the coast to their hotel. Manta also has a large fishing industry (especially in tuna) and we saw the open air markets and ships coming in to port. We had lunch with Emilia's parents and Daniela's parents met them for the first time. Emilia's mom had several of the rooms at the hotel prepared for us, which was awesome. It was the slow season and they weren't even close to full capacity, so we all felt a little better about our accommodations. That night we had a few drinks with Emilia's family and gave them the presents that we brought. Yvonne and Marty gave Emilia's parents a digital camera and a Wii, and they gave Emilia's brother a watch (among other things). Daniela and I brought a bottle of 15-year-old Scotch but we weren't sure if it was good enough or if they would even like it. The focus of that night was for the parents to get to know each other and it seemed to go very well. Apparently Emilia's mom didn't know that Emilia and Max had kept dating even after he left Ecuador and she was just coming to terms with it. Max and Daniela's parents were also slightly apprehensive about the relationship and I think everyone felt better to know they all were having similar feelings. That's all I'll say about that.

The next day Emilia's parents arranged for us to take a tour of the nearby Isla de la Plata. A poor man's alternative to the Galapagos, the Isla de la Plata has many of the same species of wildlife as the Galapagos but can be reached by a short boat ride and for much less money. Daniela, Max, David, and I went on the trip, leaving Marty and Yvonne behind at the last minute because D's dad was having some stomach problems. We did some whale watching on the boat since the whales were returning from the Antarctic then. We got to the island and took a three-hour hike. The Nazca, Blue-Footed, and Red-Footed Boobies and Sea Lions were interesting but quickly bored us. Our guide was OK, but David is a marine biology student and studied on the Galapagos for a semester so he was more interesting than she was. Plus, he speaks English which was a plus for me. At the end of our hike we had a quick lunch on the boat and had the option of going snorkeling around the island. I didn't want to get covered in salt water and then wind up itchy for the rest of the day, so instead I fed some of our snacks to the fish at the surface and saw everything from my comfy seat.

Dinner was at the hotel that night and Emilia recommended a dish called 'Corvino Diablo.' Corvino is a white fish, similar to halibut but tastier, and it was the best thing I had in Ecuador. It was in a spicy sauce that had a lot of oil in it, and there was a ton of other seafood included in the dish. I also had the pleasure of meeting the Hotel Balandra's bartender, Anibel. He's a competitive bartender in Ecuador and wins competitions. He made a few drinks for the table that I got to try, but I stuck to Ecuador's beers: Club Verde, Brahma, and Pilsener.

The only other event from the first week that I want to mention is the party that Emilia's uncle threw for us at his house just outside of town. We met much of Emilia's extended family from her mother's side and had a ton of food. They hired a live band to play so we could all dance and Daniela's parents broke it down. Max was shanghaied by Emilia into getting a pedicure. I met Jose, her cousin who studied in Japan and can speak some Japanese. Daniela and I snuck away to the hammocks tied up just under the patio with our beers and watched the ocean for a bit. Emilia's family had a Wii set up on a projector so the screen was at least 5 feet wide. Matt, David, and Max raced on the beach and it turns out Max is actually really fast. We got back to the hotel stuffed, drunk, and tired. As G-d intended it.

McCain's Relief Plan

I watched the second debate last night between presidential contenders John McCain and Barack Obama. McCain adumbrated his relief package for homeowners and I don't think I like it. Unless I'm mistaken, he advocated buying outstanding home loans and issuing new ones based on the current, depressed home values. So the government is going to step in, buy up the $350,000 loan that I can't afford payments on, and give me a new one based on the reappraised value of, say, $200,000? Wouldn't everyone in America want to sign up for that? Haven't home values been falling in every market across the country? Is the federal government going to buy up every single outstanding loan and issue new lower ones for everyone? Is the federal government going to be the only lender in the nation? Or are they (prudently) going to extend this offer only to certain people? Who gets the relief? The idiots who signed up for these loans, knowing that they couldn't afford them? Fuck those guys. The only people who should be able to qualify are those in extenuating circumstances and I don't know how the government is going to decide what those are. And in 5 years when home values rise again, all these people can sell their homes for a huge profit. Why should people who borrowed money at rates they couldn't afford get that kind of a bonus? Unless the government can recuperate some of that money when home values go back up. But I don't know how that would work.

Pretenders to the Throne

Disney Lab Unveils Its Latest Line Of Genetically Engineered Child Stars

Are the two blond kids at 1:41 "Bryan & Benn?" What the fuck!? I am the original Ben with two N's. I INVENTED doing that. Disney (or The Onion) better watch its shit if it doesn't want a lawsuit on its hands.

試験に合格した!

From the State Department:

July 2008
BENJAMIN M. EGAN
XXXXX XXXXXX DRIVE
HENDERSON, NV XXXXX

Dear BENJAMIN M. EGAN,

Congratulations! The scores you achieved on your Foreign Service Officer Test (FSOT) qualify you for the next step of the Foreign Service Officer selection process – the Qualifications Evaluation Panel (QEP) review.

As you know, the Foreign Service selection process is a series of evaluations that can lead to an offer of employment as an entry-level Foreign Service Officer... Now that you received a passing score on the FSOT, your candidacy continues to the QEP review stage ... Once the QEP has completed its review, you will be notified by email whether your overall score entitles you to proceed to the next evaluation step of the selection process, the Oral Assessment...

Sincerely,

The Board of Examiners

So I passed the FSOT, but I don't have an interview yet. They're going to review my application from February (I already emailed the State Department to ask if I can update it -- shockingly they said 'no') and score, and let me know by mid-November if I should be planning a trip to Washington, D.C. I have less confidence in my application than I did in my test score. I'm sure the essays I wrote were crap, I listed Daniela as my reference on a number of jobs I had, and I didn't even bother to include all of the internships I had during college in the 'work experience' section. I'm going to get some books and study for the GRE. If I get the interview, I'll just be surprised.

This is however, proof that I'm a super genius. I knew it all along, but now I can quantify it.

Dave & Kelly Shutoff, August 16th, 2008

David Apples Shutoff and Kelly Maniac Reed got married on August 16th, this past Saturday. Dave and Kelly have been our close friends since Freshman year at Brandeis. Dave, Conor, Jeff, Mark, Kevin, Santosh, and I lived together on the same floor of Scheffres during that first year. Jeff and I lived in 108, Conor and Kevin lived next door in 107, Dave and Santosh lived a little farther down in 105, and Mark lived in 110. Daniela lived on the third floor of the same building and Kelly lived in an adjacent building, not a 3 minute walk away. It was magical to see such close friends of ours get married to each other and we're all thankful for an excuse to get together and get drunk.

The wedding was held at Habitat, a nature preserve run by the Massachusetts Audubon Society in Belmont, MA. Dave's family flew in from Seattle and Kelly's came down from Maine. With the exception of Daniela and I, almost all of the groomsmen and bride's maids live in either New York or Boston, so it was fairly easy for everyone to make it. It was a Jewish wedding, so there were a few things that I wasn't familiar with. Before the ceremony outside, Dave and Kelly signed a marriage contract, or ketubah. Daniela and Kevin acted as witnesses to the contract and also signed it, along with Dave's rabbi. A ketubah traditionally lays out the obligations of the husband and rights of the wife in the 'transaction' of marriage. In this day and age they are much more equitable in their language, and Kelly's sister (and bride's maid) Stephanie did a beautiful job painting around the calligraphy. Jews are also married under a chuppah, which in this case was a quilt sewn by Kelly's mom and to which everyone at the wedding submitted a decorated square of fabric. Dave's sister Sookyung, his cousin, Conor, and I had the honor of holding up the chuppah through the ceremony. I think being a witness to the ketubah is the bigger honor, but alas, I was disqualified for not being Jewish.

The pictures turned out great, the food was awesome (I had the salmon), the cake (うまい!) was beautiful, and we got some dancing in. Unfortunately Dave and Kelly only had the facilities until 4ish, so the dancing part of the afternoon had to be cut short. This was disappointing for me because I helped Dave come up with the playlist. And even more so because D and I love to dance and we were loose after drinking free booze for hours.

The untrained eye might see a screaming match in the picture to the right, but we are actually dancing. Daniela asked me not to post this one on the blog. Request denied.

By the numbers

I heard some disturbing statistics about the state of Nevada the other day on NPR. I decided to do some further research and then compare the quality of life in Massachusetts to that in Nevada. My conclusion: eat it raw Nevada.

Trust for America's Health Report ranked Massachusetts #1 in the nation for its quality of life. That might have something to do with Massachusetts' stupid new health care law (the state fines you several hundred dollars for not having health care), but what works, works. Massachusetts (represented here --> by Patriots' cheerleaders) has the 5th lowest infant mortality rate in the nation, the divorce rate is the second lowest, the number of live births to mothers under 20 is the lowest in the nation, it has the highest literacy rate in the US (according to the Daily Show), it's 48th in the nation in per capita poverty (also according to the Daily Show), it's 3rd in the nation in per capita income ($43,702 average), and 29th most dangerous. I don't know why Massachusetts is so dangerous given the other positive numbers. I guess we just like to occasionally stab people. But then again, who doesn't?

Now let's take a look at Nevada. According to the May 19, 2001 issue of the New York Times:

"Pick almost any index of social well-being, and Nevada ranks at or near the very bottom of the 50 states, though it ranks near the top in personal wealth. Besides having the highest suicide rate (almost twice the national average), Nevada has the highest adult smoking rate and the highest death rate from smoking, the highest percentage of teenagers who are high-school dropouts, the highest teenage pregnancy rate and the highest rate of firearm deaths."

Wow! Holy shit! Really? Really. Or how about these numbers: Men's Fitness magazine ranked Las Vegas as the fattest city in the nation for the second consecutive year (the magazine's criteria includes sports participation rates, time spent working out, number of parks, average commute time, television viewing rates and legislative health initiatives). The CQ Press ranks Nevada the most dangerous state in the union (the numbers are based on violent crime statistics) and the 47th healthiest state (on the same criteria that it ranked Massachusetts #1). All this despite having a lower unemployment rate than Massachusetts (4.1% to 4.8%), and relative to the rest of the nation, a high level of personal wealth (average income is $35,780). That $35,780 number is actually higher than it looks because the cost of living in Nevada (represented here <-- by some drunk idiot who probably caught hepatitis from a prostitute) is so much lower than Massachusetts. Using CNN Money's cost-of-living calculator, you would need to make $48,000 in Massachusetts to have the same standard of living as in Nevada with $40,000. So, things are 20% more expensive in Massachusetts, but average incomes are 25% higher.

So, how can we explain these numbers? Las Vegas being the fattest city in America makes sense to me. It's too hot here to sit outside, let alone run. The Strip is the only place in the city you can walk around and food here is much cheaper than in Massachusetts. All that adds up to large asses and saggy man boobs. Although for the heat excuse to make sense, we would have to look at obesity rates for Arizona, which is just as hot. I know that 6 of the 10 fattest cities in America, according to Men's Fitness, are in Texas. So the it's-too-hot-to-do-anything-but-eat-Doritos excuse might be valid. However, I also thought that maybe Las Vegas was so dangerous because so much of it is urban. After all, isn't the state of Nevada just Las Vegas and a giant desert? After looking into that, I found that 68% of the state of Nevada lives in the Las Vegas metro area, which is the exact same percent of Massachusetts that lives in the Boston metro area. So, no help to Las Vegas there. Lastly, Boston, according to this article on the Boston Globe's website, is the highest city in America. The state with the best quality of life is also the nation's pot-smoking capital. I'm not claiming that pot-smoking is causing the high quality of life, but clearly it's not hurting it either. Neither is gay marriage. Just for the record.

I kind of got off topic at the end there, but I think I made my point.

終! ついに!

I took the Foreign Service Officer's Exam today at the College of Southern Nevada. I scheduled my test for 9:30am and the email that I received from the State Department was adamant about getting there on time and having all of the proper things: a valid ID, a print-out of its email, and no programmable electronic devices. The woman who proctored the exam was really laid back and told me she had no idea why I printed out the email. I got there at 9:05am and she let me sign in and take it right away.

The test was alright. There were four sections and it took me about 3 hours to finish. I was allotted 40 minutes for the 50 Job Knowledge questions, 50 minutes for the 65 English Expression questions, 50 minutes for the 77 personality questions, and 30 minutes to complete one essay. I had used the Arco Study Guide to prepare for this test, and it was beyond shit. It didn't resemble the test at all. The Arco guide's practice tests gave me different numbers of questions to be answered in different amounts of time from the actual test. The Arco guide also divided the English Expression questions into four sections, only one of which was on the actual exam. Maybe the FSOE has been changed since Arco published its guide. If it hasn't, Arco has no excuse for how awful and unhelpful its guide is.

The English questions were much easier than I had anticipated but I'm sure I still got a bunch wrong. The Job Knowledge questions were either easy to answer because I knew the information, or impossible because I didn't. There were questions about the nations that border Afghanistan, areas of national policy where the US and Canada depart the most, and which president opened up relations with China.

If I could study for it all over again, I would have read a book on organizational behavior because it seemed like there were a lot of "which is the most important reason for a loss in productivity" type of questions. I think my score could go either way because I was so unsure of the majority of my answers. I don't think they were terrible answers, I'm just not that confident.

The essay had to do with intelligent use of natural resources and forming public policy. I said rainbows are magical and I wish I was playing Grand Theft Auto IV.

I can't believe I learned the capitals of all the Pacific island nations. New Caledonia? Noumea. Kiribati? South Tarawa.

Bitch.

Brucie requested it...

I just finished former prime minister Benazir Bhutto's book Reconciliation. It was a project she began while living in exile in Dubai and finished shortly after her return to Pakistan on October 18th, 2007. Mrs. Bhutto had many enemies in Pakistan and on the very day of her arrival there was an assassination attempt along her parade route in Karachi. Mrs. Bhutto survived the attack, but not the one that followed on December 27th in Rawalpindi. She was the head of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP), the largest pro-democracy political party in her country (and according to Mrs. Bhutto, the only one with nation-wide support).

The book is divided into several sections including a personal account of the events of the 18th, her own moderate interpretation of Islam (in which she quotes from the Quran to support her views on democracy, women's rights, and peace), a history of democracy in the Muslim world (and how the West has undermined democratic movements), a political history of Pakistan, and her recommendations for the future.

As Fareed Zakaria said in his review for the New York Times:

Washington should arrange to have the portions of the book about Islam republished as a separate volume and translated into several languages. It would do more to win the battle of ideas within Islam than anything an American president could ever say.

I found myself wondering why Muslim countries haven't had democracy since the days of the Prophet if her interpretation of the Quran is accurate. If Islam encourages Muslims to think, read, and interpret (ijtihad) the Quran for themselves; tolerate the religious views of others; treat women as equals (the Prophet's wife, Islam's first convert, worked outside of the home) then how did the Muslim world get into its current state of repressive governments, radical Islamist movements, and religious intolerance? The West has played a role by undermining democratic movements (especially during the Cold War), but an equally destructive force comes from the war that Muslims wage against each other. Mrs. Bhutto sees this as the more dangerous trend because Muslims do not often acknowledge it.

Benazir remarks that the US has given much more money to the dictatorships of Pakistan than it has to its civilian governments. This is because dictatorships like Zia's and Musharraf's have convinced the US that they stand between the US and an Islamist Pakistan. Only by supporting them can the US hope to keep terrorist elements down in Pakistan. Mrs. Bhutto doesn't agree with this assessment and states that Pakistan's dictators have always exaggerated the threat from the FATA and Northwest Frontier tribal areas. What these men are actually after is power, and with American support they can suppress opposition parties and strengthen the military (which is also legitimizing since Pakistan fears India first and foremost). Since Benazir Bhutto's death, the PPP has formed a coalition government in Pakistan and, like usual, the US is making more mistakes in its aid decisions (the US has given $5.4 billion to Pakistan since 2001 and only millions have gone to strengthening civil society).

I think Reconciliation is better than the sort of book you would expect a politician running for office to write. Sure, she sort of ignores all the corruption charges against her and her husband, and that the Bhutto family treats the PPP like their personal property, but she does criticize current Muslim governments in her book, and I imagine this was more substantive than say, Hillary Clinton's "autobiography." However, I never assumed this book was unbiased and maybe after I finish the FSOE, I'll read Musharraf's book to get a more complete picture.

Oh yeah, I have a blog!

I'm registered for the Foreign Service Officers' Exam on July 16th. I'm taking it at a school in Henderson, NV, which is only 15 minutes from our house. I borrowed the Arco study guide from the public library and retook the practice tests. I didn't save my old scores though, so I don't know if I improved. I've read the Constitution a few times, played around with Sheppard Software, and read all the latest best sellers on international relations (from the back of Foreign Affairs).

Here's a fun fact for anyone who hasn't spent an extensive period of time delivering wedding cakes in Las Vegas: the loading docks of every hotel and restaurant stink. The restaurants and hotels here still just pile their trash up for days before its picked up, but unlike, say, Boston, it's constantly 110 degrees here. Which makes that trash REEK in just a short period of time. And if you're really interested, the loading docks under the Venetian and Palazzo are the nastiest smelling places in all of Las Vegas. I actually dry-heaved a few days ago, quite unexpectedly, while I was delivering cakes to some suites there.

Last weekend we went to Salt Lake City for Daniela's great uncle's funeral. I'll post a few pictures when I get them from Daniela's mom and aunt, but the ceremony was nice, I was a pallbearer because there were so few men who were able to make it, and it turns out Salt Lake City is beautiful. Before having gone there, I would have made fun of anyone who wanted to move there. What could Salt Lake City possibly have to offer? It turns out it's breathtakingly beautiful. High snow-capped mountains surround it, the weather is fantastic, the neighborhoods are cute and everyone takes care of their lawns. It's probably the nicest place in America to raise kids. The only downsides are the giant cloud of poison that hovers over it, and the marauding Mormons who regularly gun down tourists and non-believers. Oh yeah, and Jesus lives there. I saw his house but was too afraid to knock on the door to meet him.

Currently reading 'Reconciliation' by Benazir Bhutto.

Happy Birthday Daniela!

I got up early today to take care of a few things for Daniela's birthday. I had made her a plate at one of those kiln places here in Vegas. Then I finished up a chocolate cake for her (I baked it myself despite having access to the awesome ones at the bakery --- I think the gift is in the baking, not the cake itself), and made pancakes. She got up at 7:30 and we had breakfast together. Then I showed her the cake and she opened up her present, and then we dragged our feet upstairs to go get ready for work.

Then Joni called me as we were headed out the door to let us know we didn't need to come in today. Instead she got us a hotel room at the Hard Rock for tonight and offered us a cabana (we turned it down because we didn't think we'd really use it) by the pool. So we're headed out to the Hard Rock to check-in now (normally you can't check-in until later but since everyone knows the bakery and Joni has friends there, we're fine and even going through VIP services when we arrive). I'm not sure how to get Daniela's cake out there for tonight (we'll probably have to drive back here to get it) and I guess I'll post again tomorrow with some pictures and a follow up to how we spent her birthday.

From A to Zion

We have installed new software at Tropicana that will allow us to track a number of things through the register. We've had this software at the Richmar store for a while, and it really helps with any analysis we want to attempt. So, we normally have Mondays and Wednesdays off, but Daniela needed to go in on Monday to train the counter staff how to use this new program. So we worked on Monday and took Tuesday and Wednesday off instead. It was the first time we've had consecutive days off in a while, so we decided not to squander them and went camping at Zion National Park.

Zion is only a 3 hour drive from Las Vegas, despite going through Nevada, Arizona, and Utah to get there.

We borrowed a tent, folding chairs, electric lantern, water-proof blankets and a few other things from Jayme, a woman we work with at Richmar. The only thing we asked for was the tent, but it turns out having a lantern was a good thing. It actually reminded me of climbing Mt. Fuji with Amy, because she didn't bring a flashlight or anything for the trip, despite the fact that we were climbing a mountain all night.

We got to Zion and used our America the Beautiful pass to get in, but registering a campsite still cost $16. Setting up the tent was the only part of the weekend where I almost lost my temper and started screaming. Not at Daniela, but she was the only person around so it might have looked like I was screaming at her to any passers by.

Our friend Jayme actually gave us a tent so huge it was almost impractical. We never thought to check it before leaving Las Vegas, but it was a 12'x17' tent with three separate doors and a nice entryway for the front. It was massive. It was larger than some of the RVs parked at the other end of the campground. Maybe it was because we were close to the river, but there were also strong winds that day. The park ranger who came over to register our site warned us that they might get up to 40mph that night. It might be unnecessary to add that setting up a tent so large in strong winds is frustrating. We got the tent poles in it fine but then it was a perfect parachute and it was hard to hold it down. I got a few of the stakes into the ground but some wind would come and tear them right out again. The conversation between D and me went something like this:

(Gust of wind comes out of nowhere)
Benn: "..."
Daniela: "Hahaha ha haha"
Benn: "Seriously, I'm getting really angry and you need to stop laughing because its making it worse."
Daniela: "OK. Do you want to just say 'fuck it' and get a hotel room?"
Benn: "(SIGH) No, let's give this one more shot."

We eventually got it up by opening up all the windows and doors so that the wind could pass through the tent without taking it away. Then I got all the tent stakes down and piled some rocks on top of them. We reduced the size of the tent by not extending the entryways. Then we lashed our tent to a picnic table nearby so that it wouldn't wind up in the river while we were out hiking. Things went really well after that. We used the park ranger's RV to blow up our inflatable mattress (it only needs to be plugged in) and then we were in business.

We took a 3 hour hike that day (Tuesday) to the Emerald Pools and then got an awesome dinner in town at Oscar's Cafe. We had lunch at Blondie's and, if you ever go to Zion and eat in Springdale, UT, were pretty sure that they served us the previous customer's diarrhea. Oscar's Cafe rocks though. I got a 'Murder Burger' -- 1/2 pound garlic burger, chopped bacon, onions, cheese, lettuce, tomato, and fry sauce -- with sweet potato fries, covered in mayonnaise. Anything covered in mayo is going to rock, but it would have been good without it.

Daniela asked our waiter to explain Utah's liquor laws because she overheard a conversation in the restaurant about it and our waiter seemed pretty knowledgeable. So he told us that there was a three-tiered liquor licensing system, where you can get approval to serve beer under 3.2% under the first tier, wine and beer over 3.2% under the second, and liquor under the third tier. He then said that all the liquor stores in Utah were government-owned and no beer sold in these stores is cold because the state wants to discourage people from buying beer and drinking it on the way home. This 'no cold beer' law got us interested, and since we were bound for the liquor store, we were excited to see it in practice. But when we got to the only liquor store in Springdale, Utah, we found plenty of cold beer. WTF, mate? Daniela got a single bottle of Sam Adam's and I bought two cans of Icehouse.

We sat around for a while, drinking and looking at the stars, which were brilliant.

The next day we took the shuttle further into the park and hiked the Hidden Canyon trail. We got lunch on the road and made it back to Las Vegas by 4pm.

Working sucks.

$100!?

Max has tickets and backstage passes to Stomp tomorrow night. I can't wait to strike up conversation with that undoubtedly interesting crowd of garbage can lid smashers. I hope there's free booze.

How many people who read this blog have holes in their socks? Daniela and I couldn't decide if everyone else has holes in their socks too. We can't decide if we've somehow gotten really lazy about our appearances, if we were raised in penurious households, or if most people just wear socks with holes in them. I maintain that we're lazy. She thinks everyone has holey socks. I think most people replace their socks when they get holes in them. At least, 26 year-olds do. I think its a sign of my own immaturity that I have and wear socks with holes in them.

Apparently we're losing the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Or, Neo-Taliban rather. So says 'Koran, Kalashnikov, and Laptop' author Antonio Giustozzi.

Earth Hour 03.29.2008

Last night, 10781 Ackers Drive did its part to save the planet. Mark it.

Earth Hour is, according to Wikipedia, "an international event that asks households and businesses to turn off their lights and non-essential electrical appliances for one hour on the evening of 29 March at 8 pm local time until 9 pm to promote electricity conservation and thus lower carbon emissions." I only became aware of Earth Hour yesterday thanks to Google's efforts to promote the event.

Earth Hour was started in Australia, and it is promoted there by some environmentalist group and the Sydney Morning Herald. It was first held in 2007 and reduced the electricity consumption of Sydney by up to 10% for that hour. This year, over 300,000 people pledged support online and a number of cities agreed to partner up with the campaign. Partners in the US include Atlanta, Chicago, San Francisco, Phoenix, and Studio City, California, but a number of other cities agreed to support the effort. Looking at the list on Wikipedia, I can see more cities in North America than anywhere else got behind the effort, but Canada really carried the team because all 13 Canadian provinces and territories pledged support. I wonder what the provincial governments actually did though? What do they have the power to do? Do they call the mayors in the major cities and ask for support or can they turn the lights off themselves?

If Canada loves Mother Earth so much, maybe it should just marry her.

So, like I said, I only found out about Earth Hour yesterday while at work. I mentioned to Max and Daniela at lunch that we should save the Earth. There was some hostility right off the bat. We agreed to take a vote, as we never do in these situations, and the Earth squeaked out a victory, 2-1. The arguments were compelling on both sides, but in the end democracy lead us to the responsible decision.

It turns out that actually turning the lights out was hard. Max bought this house less than a year ago and he wasn't sure how to turn off the lights on the front of the building. There is a little piece of plastic out front, with the number of the house on it (otherwise you would never be able to tell these houses apart) and it contains a light bulb that comes on automatically at night. There are also two lamps that keep the driveway lit up. We had no idea how to turn any of these things off. There aren't any light switches. Max had an idea and it required something to stand on and a screwdriver. Inside the garage there is a metal plate with two wires that make up a circuit to SOMETHING in the house. Max took it apart and we lost one of the three external lights along with the doorbell.

The two lamps that keep the driveway bright proved too difficult to turn off. I guess that would make Earth Hour a failure for us, but we're ignoring that for now. The two lamps probably run on sensors (we didn't see them) and to turn them off we needed to unscrew them and take the bulbs out. It looked hard and we were already 3 minutes away from Earth Hour so we gave up and went back inside.

So with almost all the lights off, we played Clue by candlelight. Keeping the lights off is easy when you have boardgames and plenty of beer. Max brought out a candle he had that said "Africa" on one side of it. We all thought it was appropriate. It put out a powerful smell though and because Max was sitting next to it all night, he kept complaining that the house smelled like Africa.

I thought that maybe I could take some pictures of us with the candles and then send them into Google. Just to let Google know that it made a difference because they were the reason we were sitting in the dark in the first place. Then, this morning, when I checked online to see if Earth Hour was a success, I saw that San Francisco turned off the lights on the Golden Gate Bridge, Chicago turned off the lights inside of the Sears Tower, and Sydney turned off the juice to the Opera House and the Harbor Bridge. I doubt that we can compete with that for Google's attention. But since I already had the photos, I figured I could just blog about it. Viola.

Pot-lucks Rock

After a busy Saturday at the bakery, we had two consecutive days off: Easter Sunday and Monday. Saturday night we had visitors from Ashland, Oregon, and then hosted a pot-luck dinner on Easter Sunday.

Daniela's parents are currently renting a room to Gilberto, a student from Mexico. He's taking graduate school classes at Southern Oregon University in Ashland and Daniela and I met him back in February. He drove down with 4 friends from SOU: Tomoko from Japan, Vicky from Korea, David from Poland, and Loren from France. We were very international this weekend. They were adorable, showing up with a bottle of pear wine and a tort. Actually, they were the perfect guests, in that they didn't rob us or burn the house down.

On Easter Sunday Max invited over a bunch of his friends and we had a pot-luck dinner. I was going to make my world-famous quiche, but Max bought a bunch of marinated flank steak from a Mexican grocery store and we made tacos instead. It was a fairly muted affair: music in the background, plenty of food, booze, and conversation around the dining room table. Excluding our visitors from Ashland, there were 14 people here.

At one point someone broke out Catch Phrase and that provided some hilarity. One girl gave us the following clues: "It's... something travelers use..." and "the station guy uses it when he transports your luggage" for the clue, "Aircraft Carrier." That was awesome.

Pot-lucks rock because you get to meet your neighbors and they leave you all this awesome food for leftovers. I could see my friends in college taking their leftovers back with them, but 4 years later no one does that. To take your food home with you makes you look like a cheap ass. So we cleaned up. We hella cleaned up.

World War IV by Norman Podhoretz

As anyone who reads this blog knows, I'm currently studying for the Foreign Service Exam. I tried to register for it on February 27th (the final day of the registration period) and at this point, I'm pretty sure I was shut out of the March testing window. I haven't heard back from the State Department and I haven't emailed or called them to find out what happened to my application. Oh well. All the essays are written so I guess I'll just resubmit my application in June.

Part of my studying has been reading Foreign Affairs. It's an international relations journal that comes out 6 times a year and it's brilliant. The articles are great but I can also keep abreast of what's currently being published. According to the January/February issue, the current top-selling hardcover books on American foreign policy are The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism by Naomi Klein, World War IV: The Struggle Against Islamofascism by Norman Podhoretz, and The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt. "World War IV" caught my attention, so I drove out to the UNLV libraries and picked up a copy. As has been the case recently, I was the first person to check it out.

I hadn't heard of Norman Podhoretz before, but he was editor-in-chief of Commentary magazine from 1960 to 1995, a "leftist commentator" in the 60's, and more recently associated with the Neo-Conservative movement. He was also Rudy Giuliani's senior foreign policy advisor during his presidential bid. He supports the war in Iraq and thinks attacking Iran is a good idea. Here is the lovable scamp in a recent photo:


He's not Ron Paul adorable, but he does look snappy in a blazer.

So, welcome to World War IV. It's been going on for quite some time but only after 9/11 did we figure it out. If you're kicking yourself because you missed World War III, it's just the Cold War by another name. It was a 42-year-long world war and it wasn't without its battlefields. The Bay of Pigs, Vietnam, and Korea were all just battles in a much larger war. Which, I think, is a fair assessment (at least in trying to understand the US' motivation).

World War IV is being fought against Islamo-fascism. The governments of the Muslim world are the true heirs to Nazi Germany and Stalin's Soviet Union. In fact, Mr. Podhoretz draws a line connecting Nazi Germany, the USSR, and Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist government in Iraq. The Nazis defeated France in World War II. The French Vichy government cooperated with the Nazis, and through that cooperation the Nazis had a hand in the French colonial governments of the Middle East. They taught those colonial governments fascism, and after World War II, the USSR picked up where the Nazis left off, thanks to their close relations with the region. The Nazis are sort of to blame for what we're seeing in the Middle East today. NAZIs! That's easy to understand, right? Everyone hates those guys. So that's who we're fighting today. Nazis. And Communists. And Muslims.

Podhoretz feels that we have only emboldened the terrorists by not confronting them directly. You can blame George Bush Sr., Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, Gerald Ford, Nixon, and especially Jimmy Carter for that. They kept passing the buck and thanks to that the terrorists have only become stronger. For example, when George Bush Sr. invaded Iraq in 1990, he pulled out before reaching Baghdad and so only defended the status quo. In the large number of terrorist attacks on American bases and embassies abroad in the past 20 years, we have failed to adequately respond and this has further emboldened the terrorists. And by the way, thank G-d George Bush was elected when he was because he has the courage and gusto to fight this war and call it what it is (ahem).

World War IV isn't going to end anytime soon and if you think of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as two small battlefields in a much larger war against fascist governments in the Muslim world then the decision to invade Iraq makes more sense. Podhoretz (like George W. Bush?) thinks invading Iran is a good idea and while we may not be invading Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, or Pakistan any time soon, they are all important to the larger war against Islamofascism. The Cold War had many important regions too, but they didn't all turn into shooting wars.

What I found most interesting in reading Mr. Podhoretz's book was that he feels the nature of the world war has changed. There may not be another world war that resembles World War I. In the way that World War II didn't look like the static trench warfare and gas attacks of World War I, World War III didn't resemble World War II either. And it's changed again in the current situation. If you think World War IV is a bad title, then you don't understand how the nature of world wars has changed, because another world war is exactly what this is.

I guess where I disagree with Mr. Podhoretz is where he tries to lump so many different countries and situations into one large struggle. I don't think you can necessarily call the Vietnam War one part of the war against the USSR. I mean, maybe that's how the US viewed it at the time, but was that a correct assessment? We lost that battle but not the war, right? What did the Communists do when they won? Didn't Ho Chi Minh and the Communists of the north view the war against the US as a struggle for independence and less as an ideological struggle against Capitalism? Did we need to fight that war and what really turned out to be at stake? Didn't it just hurt the US in the long run because it generated so many bad feelings at home and abroad against all the things that the US claims it stands for? What have we won by fighting the war in Iraq? Even if we eliminate all the Islamofascist governments in the world, who's to say we can eliminate terrorism directed against the US? Wasn't Timothy McVeigh living in a free and democratic country when he blew up the federal building in Oklahoma City? Wasn't his reason for doing so that the government killed all those people at Waco and Ruby Ridge? Aren't we creating the situation we're in by having 600 military bases all over the world and putting our noses in the affairs of others? Wasn't Osama bin Laden's main grievance against the US not our support for Israel but our bases in Saudi Arabia? What are we trying to accomplish: making ourselves free from terrorist attacks or trying to convert the entire world to free-market democracies? Is the latter the best way to avoid the former?

Lastly, I love that when I searched for "World War IV" in Google, this picture came up.

Technorati tags: Norman Podhoretz, World War IV, Foreign Service, Islamofascism

Robbed! For reals!

Last night someone broke into the bakery and stole the plasma screen TVs. There were two at the bakery on Richmar and S. Eastern, and they were installed because Joni and Curt wanted to create a loop of all of the bakery's appearances on the Food Network. Anyway, they never got around to it, and now they never will because someone took the TVs. Max and I were the first ones to the bakery this morning and I was the first person to see what had happened. When I came into the showcase area, the first thing I noticed was that this black metal rack had been knocked over and bread was scattered on the floor. I thought that it must have taken a pretty irresponsible person the night before to knock that over and NOT pick it back up. Then I saw that there was broken glass on the far side of the room and that one of the windows had been boarded up with plywood. My brain still wasn't making the connection at that point. I noticed next that the register drawer was open and the flat screen monitor that sits over it was missing. I started to panic a little bit. Neurons in my brain were firing and I was making the connection. I looked around at the glass cases and everything seemed to be there, but when I remembered what the most valuable things in the room were, I was not surprised to see them gone. Both TVs had been torn off the wall with their electrical cords spewing out of the walls like shiny metal intestines.

Max and I put the pieces together but we couldn't figure out why the window had already been boarded up. Did the guys who steal the TVs do that? We thought maybe Joni already knew about it and there was some sort of clean-up effort made the night before after we had left and went home. Max called Joni first to tell her what had happened. The next call was to the police so we could file a report. After the police had been called Max walked around to the front of the store and found a little white piece of paper that explained the window. It was left by the police the night before. They had arrived on the scene, found the window smashed, and tried to call the owner (we still don't know who they called and how they failed to get a hold of Joni). When they were unable to talk to Joni, they boarded the window up and left.

It's a shitty situation but it happens I guess. Joni's husband Curt is pretty pissed off. Joni seemed to take it well and I saw her laughing at something only a few hours after she had found out. Needless to say that the TVs won't be replaced.

We heard from a neighbor (someone was working the graveyard shift at Carl's Jr.) that 2 cars had pulled up to the building late the night before. There were at least 5 people involved. Two of them went out back by the dumpsters to watch the alley behind the store. Then three other people smashed the window in and took the TVs. The alarm must have gone off, and the guys must have been rushing because they neglected to take a laptop that was out on a counter right next to one of the TVs. They went into the register but only found some change. The bills are always removed the night before, obviously. The only things that seemed to be missing were the TVs.

Two things that we thought about later were the following: once the guys broke into the store through the window, they didn't open the doors up to get the TVs out. They took the TVs and then climbed through the same window they came in through. That wasn't very smart. The doors could have been easily opened up from the inside and they wouldn't have had to step over the metal bar that separated the window into two parts. Also, we assumed that they didn't fuck with any of the pastries. We would probably know by now if someone got sick, but it would have been pretty easy to put something in the food. That seems unlikely though. They didn't maliciously break anything else in the store. They just grabbed the TVs, checked the register, and knocked over a few things in the process.

Anywho, that made today an exciting day. And the bakery closes at 4pm on Sunday! That's like a half-day as far as I'm concerned!

The person working the graveyard shift at Carl's Jr. has been very helpful, and thanks to his/her information, the police are now looking for these two guys, believed to be working with the thieves:

Registered

Last night, within 20 minutes of the deadline, I registered to take the Foreign Service Exam. The deadline for the March test date was February 27th, 11pm Central Time. I was finishing up my essays around 8pm, Pacific Coast Time, when I realized I was about to miss the deadline. There were a bunch of additional questions that I either skipped or answered very poorly. I didn't realize before submitting my essays that I needed to provide contact info for someone who could very each one of my essays. I put Daniela as my contact for more than half of them, which I wouldn't have done if I had more time. I'm sure they will only call and verify my story if it's too unbelievable, which none of my stories were.

The State Department should email me back in the next few days and let me know if and when I can take the test. It's free to take, but canceling your test within 48 hours of its scheduled time carries a $45 penalty.

Vanessa's Visit

It's been a productive week with Tiffanie around, and a great weekend with Vanessa around.

The bakery's website designer, Tiffanie, is currently in Vegas. The last time she was here was when Joni and Curt got married -- about 5 years ago. It's amazing how much more professional websites look now than even just 5 years ago. Max, Daniela and I all agreed that the website had to change and Tiffanie's visit is allowing that to happen. Tiffanie came to the Richmar location on Friday and we were able to work together and agree on a new design for the site. A lot of the content has to change as well, but that will be an ongoing process. Tiffanie leaves on Tuesday so the new site will go live at some point before then. If you want to take a look at what we're throwing away, go to the site before tomorrow evening.

Daniela and I are currently writing the press releases/RSS feeds. You might wonder what a bakery in Las Vegas could possibly put into a press release, but you'd be surprised. We're working on short write-ups about 7.7.07, Ludacris' 30th birthday party (for which the bakery made cakes), Nelly's Apple Bottoms clothing company (for which the bakery made cakes), and a slew of other cakes for celebrities. We made a cake for Chuck Norris but it was probably ordered and provided through his hotel. I doubt Chuck Norris was even aware we made it. Too bad though. He seems to be trendy right now and that would probably get people to visit the site. Oh yeah, and Joni once got trapped in Mike Tyson's refrigerator but we're not turning that into anything right now.

Vanessa is also out here visiting for the weekend. She had business in Phoenix and decided to visit us before heading back to Boston. Yesterday Daniela and V went to the bakery and picked up like 15 different desserts so we could all do a taste testing together. 24 hours later all the cake is gone. Vanessa and I ranked all 10 slices of cake and came up with identical lists. We agreed that the Napoleon and the white cake with Bavarian filling were the best of the bunch. Daniela's list was the complete opposite of our lists with the two slices of chocolate cake at the top. We didn't rank the eclair, Tiramisu, or Snickers Cheesecake very highly, but the Cheesecake grew on me at the end. The Cheesecake was really good and fluffy but not very Snickers-ish. Max said that all the fillings sink to the bottom during cooking and he's not that happy with it either. Oh well. On the whole, everything from Freed's is great and Vanessa agreed. Completely unbiased.

We were going to go to the buffet at the Bellagio or Wynn, but postponed it until V visits again in about 2 weeks. Instead V and Daniela headed out to Red Rock to go hiking (I stayed behind to read about the IMF and finish my essays for the Foreign Service exam registration). We'll cook together tonight (V likes to cook and her blog, here, is dedicated to her culinary adventures) and play Cranium again. We played two games last night but I think I ruined it for everyone with my crappy attitude. Daniela's brother Max and I lost the first game and there are certain things that I just don't handle well. Losing at board games is one of them. I promised V and D that I would do my best to play with a better attitude tonight. We'll see.

My second accident

We don't have any snacks in the house. If Kevin were here, he would tell me that was a 'rookie mistake.' He'd be right to say so.

It's Monday and that means I'm not working. Normally, Daniela and I have Mondays and Tuesdays off, but she had to go in today since someone unexpectedly quit. That means that I'm home alone with no snacks, no car, and nothing to do. Thank G-d Daniela drove me out to the Lied Library at UNLV last night. Without books and my blog I might do something crazy like clean up the house.

My second week in Las Vegas was pretty good. My hands are all cut up and bruised which I didn't see coming. I had no idea working in a bakery would be so dangerous. I scraped my shin on the tailgate of a delivery truck, I have quite a few paper cuts on my hands from folding boxes, my knuckles are all dry and raw (I can't remember why), and I keep smashing my fingers between these tall metal racks when I'm loading and unloading the trucks.

I also managed to crash the bakery's biggest truck into the metal roof over the parking lot behind the Richmar store. The roof is supported by pillars and protects a single line of parked cars. It is 10 to 12 feet off the ground and not much more than sheet metal nailed together. I was pulling away from the curb, fully loaded with pastries and cakes, when I smashed into the thing in three separate places. I still don't understand how I did so much damage since I stopped the car as soon as I heard it hit. Anyway, Joni and Max didn't seem too upset about the damage so I think the whole thing has already been forgotten about. I freaked out when I heard the noise because I thought all of the racks inside of my truck had just fallen over. When I saw the roof I actually felt relieved. This picture isn't very good, but you can see how the edge of the roof has crumpled up. Eh. It happens.

Last weekend Daniela and I drove out to Red Rock. It's a federal park just outside of Las Vegas to the west. It cost us $5 to get in with our car and we spent a few hours hiking. While Las Vegas may be in the middle of the desert, there are a lot of beautiful parks close by. We've been to the Grand Canyon and Zion before, but I think additional visits would be a good idea. At the Red Rock visitor's center we saw a flier for the different passes you can buy from the Forestry Service. Unless I'm mistaken, there's some pass we can buy for $80 which gives us access to most of the parks in the US for a year. If I understood that flier correctly, we'll probably buy one soon and then spend some time camping this Spring.

I think Vanessa is coming out to visit this weekend. I'm not sure what Daniela has planned, but I expect it to be a crazy. See: wine and Scrabble.

200 Point Genius

Daniela and I spent 3 days in Ashland visiting her parents and stealing their furniture. The plan was to tow the furniture back to Vegas, and we even came close to getting a trailer hitch installed on the Hyundai. What derailed our plans was checking the Hyundai owner's manual and finding out that the car was incapable of towing that much weight (the U-Haul trailer was 850 pounds, but U-Haul required a car capable of pulling 2,000 pounds to ensure safe operation. Our car could pull 1,000 pounds and only when everyone in the car was behind it, pushing). So we packed up as much furniture as we could fit into the car and decided to buy the rest in Las Vegas.

The ride down was long. When I say "we were in the car for 14 hours," that doesn't really convey to you how long 14 hours in a car is. It's long. Really long. We left Ashland at 10:30am and got to Vegas by 12:30am the next day.

Here's a video of us before our asses fell asleep and we wanted to die:

Gas was surprisingly cheap. We left Ashland with a full tank of gas and only had to fill it back up twice. Once for $37 and again for $21. Had we rented a U-Haul truck (which gets 10 miles to the gallon) it would have cost us the GNP of Malta.

We had some car problems but powered through them. Maybe it was because we had the tires on the car changed before we left Ashland, but the car wouldn't stop shaking. I told Daniela not to worry about it when we were still close to Ashland (I thought the roads were just bad) but by the time we were at Sacramento it was clear something was wrong with the car. Much more worrisome was that the car kept losing engine power or something. I can't describe it well. At random intervals, it seemed like Daniela took her foot off the gas pedal when she hadn't, and the car would begin to slow down. Then, after about a second, it would power back on and the car would surge forward. This may have happened every 45 minutes or so. The only time it was a problem was when we were stopped at an intersection or traffic light. If we were stopped, the car would just die. Daniela was convinced that the car would die while we were going 80mph and that she would lose control of the car and kill us. Didn't happen.

Other than our car problems the trip was uneventful. We got in to Vegas around midnight and just crashed. OH! We stopped at a diner in Westley, California and there were those peg games on every table. I'm referring to that game where you have 15 holes and 14 pegs and you're supposed to leave one peg remaining by jumping over other pegs. The highest score you can get at that game is by leaving 8 pegs on the board without any further jumps possible. So I worked backwards to figure it out but solved it by the time I finished my biscuits and gravy. 200 Point Genius. Mark it, Dude.

Wild Turkeys!

So, like I said yesterday, Daniela and I left Las Vegas on the 31st for Oregon. We flew Allegiant which charges for all checked luggage and beverages. Not even water is free. The flight was 2 hours and we hit some turbulence coming into Medford, Oregon.

I've included a fabulous video of the two of us driving to the airport. I'll try to include videos in my postings so all of you back home don't forget what we look like.

Anywho, Daniela and I are in Ashland now and it's been snowing on and off all day long. We arrived last night at 6pm and Daniela's mom, Yvonne, picked us up. We met Daniela's dad at a Japanese restaurant in Ashland and got some Udon noodles before meeting her parents' new dog. I asked Daniela's mom who she plans on voting for and that evolved into a debate about politics. She likes Hillary, I like Obama, and the guy who was sitting behind us likes Mitt Romney. I thought it was hip that some random guy sitting behind us joined the conversation, but his timing was poor. His wife and he were finished eating, but we weren't. He stood up, came around to our table and began preaching about how capitalism made America what it is and how Mitt Romney is going to run the government like a business. While he was speaking, he spit a piece of whatever he had just had for dinner into my face, which was special. He was actually a very nice guy and had I not been eating, would have argued with him for the rest of the night. Spit in my face though. Couldn't forgive that. Also: Mitt Romney? Terrible.

Today D and I ran errands. Her parents own something like 6 cars and the one they're giving us for Las Vegas doesn't have a trailer hitch. Daniela reserved a U-Haul trailer for Sunday so we're still figuring out how much it's gonna cost to install a hitch and whether the car can even pull a trailer. They have a nice 2005 Jetta Wagon that Daniela and I want to borrow, but obviously her parents don't want to give us their awesome new car. We brought the hitch-less Hyundai to Medford for an inspection and went to the U-Haul rental place in town to ask questions about getting an installation. The guy there told us that a hitch is going to run about $280. Crap. If that's the case I think we should just buy furniture in Las Vegas, but Daniela really likes her old couch.

I guess that's about it. I'm here reading Yvonne's copy of 'Rich Dad, Poor Dad' and Daniela is out with her mom on another errand. Daniela's parents' new Border Collie, Marnie, is here with me, but I think it's still scared of me.

Las Vegas!

Daniela and I arrived in Las Vegas yesterday. Daniela's aunt Joni picked us up at McCarran Airport in one of the bakery's refrigerated trucks. We met her brother Max at Kaizen Sushi for dinner. The food was good. Asian fusion menu. As we were leaving I thought I'd throw some Japanese at the sushi chef so I said "ご馳走様でした" which is (I think) 'that was a big meal!' The sushi chef sort of panicked and looked down at the next order he was preparing. I thought that was weird but chocked it up to my terrible pronunciation. I told Max later in the car ride home that I think I scared the chef with my horrendous Japanese. He then informed me that the chefs are in fact Korean. Ah. But what makes that annoying, is that the waitress welcomed us in Japanese and kept saying "Hai!" whenever she presented us with a dish or replied to the chefs. If she was Korean too, that's annoying.

We got to Max's place around 9 and moved our bags in. There is plenty of space here and the kitchen is ultra-modern but I thought our rooms were a little small. They're fine but I remember them being bigger. The water in Las Vegas has a taste to it. I described it as 'salty' to Daniela but that's not accurate. It eludes description.

We went to the bakery's new location this morning and it looks fantastic.

Daniela and I are about to leave for the airport because we're headed to Ashland next. We're picking up a car that her parents aren't currently using and some furniture as well. I'll update again in the immediate future.

Big day for Obama

"I'm gonna tie you to that bed in the Lincoln bedroom and then I'm gonna... (mumble)... ... ...around your ankles, and then I'm gonna..."

The endorsements keep rolling in for Senator Obama. If getting Oprah Winfrey and John Kerry's support wasn't enough, today Ted Kennedy and Toni Morrison endorsed him for President. If you follow the more tradish media, then you probably knew that already and good for you. However, most people probably missed a much more important endorsement today. In fact, only this blog (as far as I know) is reporting on it. Ready for it? Want to know to whom I'm referring? Who could be bigger than Ted Kennedy? This is called suspense... Today I went down to the town hall in Greenfield and cast my ballot for Obama in the Massachusetts primary.

I've never voted in a primary before so I'm predicting a record turnout in Massachusetts this year. Anything less is proof that there are terrorist cells undermining our democratic process. It's about time someone said it.

I've read articles online that say it's way too easy to vote in some states. I would like to include Massachusetts on that list. Not that I think it should be difficult, but I didn't even have to show ID today. I gave them my name and address and was casting my ballot. I forget how it works in a presidential election but I thought they at least asked for ID.

Everything else that I've been up to revolves around moving to Las Vegas. I'm picking Daniela up tomorrow and we're flying out of Bradley on Wednesday. Lord have mercy on our souls.

getting closer...

I fixed the header but I lost my rounded corners...

Las Vegas is on fire.

According to Facebook

Daniela sent me an email comparing the Network Statistics of the Facebook user groups "Boston, MA" and "Las Vegas, NV." Facebook asks its users to fill in fields for their favorite books, music, things to do, etc; Network Statistics lets you look at the most popular answers given to any of these fields. So, there are 345,297 people in the "Boston, MA" user group and 54,821 in "Las Vegas, NV." Daniela pointed out that what we're really comparing are the interests of only the 20-somethings in each place, and we should remember that before we assume everyone in both places are complete idiots. Only the 20-somethings in both places are complete idiots. It's an important distinction. So, according to Facebook, here are Las Vegans' favorite books (in order):

1 Harry Potter
2 The Bible
3 Da Vinci Code
4 Angels And Demons
5 The Great Gatsby
6 1984
7 Stephen King




I have a few problems with this list. I mean, I'm going to make fun of Las Vegas regardless of its taste in books, but this IS a pretty weak list. The largest number of people listed Harry Potter as their favorite book? Really? Really? REALLY? Because it's a hip thing to read, or because people in Las Vegas love fantasy novels? Or children's books maybe? I don't understand the popularity of Harry Potter, but I've never read any of them either. I have better things to do with my time... like criticizing books I've never read on my blog and drinking six cups of tea a day.

The Bible is a good book to have on your list, but only if it's number 1. To say that you enjoy the word of God, but not as much as Harry Potter only makes you look silly. Either its on the list at number 1, or you don't list it because it's in a category of its own and you can't compare it to the modest efforts of human beings.

After finishing up their top 7 with Angels and Demons, The Da Vinci Code, and Stephen King, the Harry Potter answer seems to make more sense. Las Vegans like what's popular. Like any major city's populace I imagine. Maybe we should only really look at the last two books as its serious entries. The Great Gatsby and 1984 are popular but they're not currently on any best-seller list. Actually, I'll include the Bible in the REAL list for Las Vegas because that's a book you might not find in every city's top 10. So, the final list for Las Vegas is: The Bible (at number 2), The Great Gatsby and 1984. Let's compare this list to Boston's:

1 Harry Potter
2 Catcher In The Rye
3 Angels And Demons
4 To Kill A Mockingbird
5 The Great Gatsby
6 The Davinci Code
7 The Bible
8 1984
9 Memoirs Of A Geisha




Oooooh! SNAP YO! So, for the same reasons I stated above, let's knock Harry Potter, Angels and Demons, and The Da Vinci Code off the list (although, I would like to note that the Da Vinci Code lost out to The Catcher in the Rye, To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Great Gatsby). We see the Bible on this list as well but at a disappointing 7.

OK. Now what can we deduce? Not much. Las Vegans like the Bible more than Bostonians do, but Bostonians really liked The Catcher in the Rye and To Kill a Mockingbird (neither made Las Vegas' list). Las Vegas is God country and Bostonians like great American novels better. I noticed that on Boston's list The Da Vinci Code is entered as "The Davinci Code." Does that mean that Facebook counted entries like "The Da Vinci Code," "Da Vinci Code," and "Davinci Code" as separate entries? Probably. So maybe that book is actually higher on the list. Which also means that more Bostonians misspelled that book's title than got it right. Popular novels made it into both cities' favorite books. Because people tend to say their favorite books are the ones they just finished reading? Or because today's bestsellers are just fantastic? Or because they appeal to the lowest common denominator among us? Lastly, both lists seem pretty negative, no? A dystopian novel where even love can be conquered by violence and fear, a book about the roaring '20s and the tragic life of a liquor smuggler, a novel about segregation and racial violence, a book about being misunderstood and the jaded feelings of youth, and a book about a Japanese whore (only not really: Geisha aren't whores).

This whole thing was very scientific.

Technorati tags: Facebook, Books, Boston, Las Vegas

Rhonda from way down yonda'

I'm back in Greenfield again. That was the shortest trip to Boston in the past two months but Daniela and I are leaving for Las Vegas next Wednesday (the 31st) and we're busy with packing and tying up loose ends.

I have to pay Luke back, try to sell any furniture that remains in my dad's barn, see my friends and family in Greenfield one last time, and pack. I think I can knock all of that out in a week.

This most recent trip to Boston was great. Daniela and I threw ourselves a going away party last Saturday night. We had 50 people over to her apartment in Cambridge. All of her friends from NETC and Dana Farber came, along with most of our friends from college. It was really nice to see everyone together one last time before we leave. Kevin invited me to come down to New York for the Idiotarod, but now I don't know if I'm going to make it. If anyone is looking for something to do in New York this weekend, try to keep up. I've wanted to join Kevin's team since I first saw his photos in 2005. Apparently the cops are aware of the race now and are making it more difficult to run.

While Daniela was cleaning out her apartment last week she found a Bob Dylan CD I had borrowed from the Greenfield Public Library and claimed as lost. I borrowed a dozen different Dylan CDs within a month, and I thought I had returned them all. The library sent me an email on the 5th requesting the return of the CD that was at Daniela's apartment under a pile of books. So, of course, I denied having it and told them I had already returned it and even said I had a witness, Daniela. They let it go since I over-reacted and today I had the enviable job of telling them I'm an idiot and returning the CD.

Japan is still on the table

I sent an email to Interac last night telling them that I formally withdraw my application for a job teaching in Japan. As anyone who reads this blog knows, I've decided to move to Las Vegas with Daniela and take the Foreign Service Officer's Exam instead. I told Interac that I'm tight for cash and simply can't afford to move back to Japan right now. This is true but only one of the reasons that has motivated this decision. Well, Interac replied that it's still interested in hiring me, so I should just let them know when I'm good and ready to return. This is great. I'm going to pursue this job with the State Department and if it doesn't work, I can always return to Japan.

This calls for a celebration. I think I'm going to go drink tea and read.

Reliving the past

My friends Mark, Bruce, and Pat are planning a trip through Southeast Asia for this March. Mark currently works for Citibank in New York, Bruce is teaching in Korea (his blog can be found here), and Pat... probably has sex for money. I've been emailing back and forth with Mark and Bruce and they want to see Angkor Wat in Cambodia. Since I've been there and I have something to share, I thought I'd put it out there for everyone.

The town that you'll stay in while seeing the temples at Angkor Wat is Siam Reap. It's a 5 or 6 hour bus ride from Phnom Penh because the roads in Cambodia (and especially between Siam Reap and the Thai border) are terrible. To call roads in Cambodia 'terrible' is as generous as I can be.

Downtown Siam Reap is only 6km from the main temple of Angkor Wat. Hotels there are more expensive than elsewhere in Cambodia, but still very reasonable compared to hotels in Europe or the US. We were able to find a place with a pool and a room with three beds for maybe $8 each. If my journal is correct, that was the Ancient Angkor Guesthouse but I DO NOT recommend going there (I'll elaborate later). That was the only hotel I stayed in while traveling that had a pool so I felt like a billionaire at the time. That was actually the first hotel we stayed at in Siam Reap. The second hotel we stayed at was $6 a night, but lacked the pool and accommodations.

When we arrived from Phnom Penh we had to take a taxi from the bus station into downtown Siem Reap. Our driver may have scammed us, but we can't be sure. We asked him to take us to a hotel that was recommended in our Lonely Planet guide, but when we got there he told us it was full and we had to try somewhere else. He recommended a different place and they had rooms available. As the taxi drivers get paid by certain hotels to turn up with tourists, it's in the drivers interest to get you to "his" or "her" hotel. So we found our first hotel because the driver recommended it. As I said, it was about $8 a night (I'm 40% sure of that).

Starr set the alarm on her phone for 5:15am the next morning. The plan was to rent bikes ($1 a day at our hotel) and ride out to Angkor Wat for sunrise. I would highly recommend doing this. You can take one of the many buses going into the temple area but then you'll need to stay on your tour (tours suck), hire a moto taxi for the day, or be prepared to walk for miles. And even in March, Cambodia gets hot. Having the bikes was key. Sunblock too.


We got to the temple area by sunrise and the entrance fee for a single day at Angkor Wat was $20. It gets cheaper per day if you buy a larger package (for example three or seven days) but I don't think most people would need more than one day there. Starr and Raquel went back to our hotel around noon to go swimming in the pool but I stayed until 4pm if I remember correctly. I'll leave it up to everyone headed there to pick your own path around the temple area.

The last thing worth mentioning ruined this part of the trip for Starr. Now, to everyone headed to Siam Reap: avoid the ANCIENT ANGKOR GUESTHOUSE. A number of things COULD have happened and we're still not entirely sure about the chain of events, but Starr was definitely robbed. When Raquel and Starr got back to the hotel, they changed in the room (where Starr left her camera) and went to the pool. The guy at the front desk kept watching them in the pool and it creeped them out a little bit. Not in a 'hey that creep is leering at us' kind of way, but a 'something is up' kind of way. When they got out of the pool and got back to the room, Starr's $500 camera was gone. As is usual, you're required to keep your key at the front desk when you're not in the room, so the only person who had access to our room then was the guy at the front desk. We think he had someone go up to our room, steal her camera and maybe rifle through a few of our things while the guy at the front desk kept watch. When it came down to it, there was nothing we could do about it. Starr got upset and we bolted without paying the bill, but they called the cops and they found us at the next hotel. We paid the bill and they left us alone. Starr was still out here camera though, and every video and picture she had taken since Japan.

WTF mate?

What happened to Obama's 10 point lead in New Hampshire? CNN ran this story two days ago, based on a poll taken by idiots at UNH. The CNN/WMUR poll claims a margin of error of 5% but I guess the margin of error on their margin of error is also about 5%.

For some theories, try Daily Kos.

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