New things make me angry

One constant in my bourgeois, progressive middle class life has been the imperative to travel. Throughout my childhood and adult life, family, friends and society at large have all been absolutely clear that my life will be shallow and meaningless unless I obtain a number and variety of stamps in my passport. The mechanism by which travel is supposed to enrich and fulfil me is unclear, as are the exact prescriptions about what kind of travel and what sorts of destinations are desirable for whatever travel is supposed to acheive.

I have always been deeply sceptical about this insistence on going overseas. It may be awesome, but is it really culturally or personally enriching to trek in Nepal? I would argue that it's equally foreign and novel for eastern-seaboard dwelling middle class Australian to trek in central Australia. Given that everyone else you know has already gone dancing in Latin America, does a quick twirl on the dancefloors of Chile really make you different, or just another member of the crowd? And as for the people who rave about the museums and historical sites of Europe - have you been to the cultural institutions in your own country? There's nothing inherently authentic about trying to cram a lifetime's worth of capital A Art into the stops on your Kontiki tour if you're just going to ignore that stuff for the rest of your life. I would argue that the really enriching journeys are the ones we take within ourselves - where we take an emotional or psychological risk, where we challenge ourselves and learn and strive and succeed and fail. Perhaps these journeys can happen on the other side of a plane trip, but for lots of people they don't. And these experiences are readily accessible in our own lives and landscapes if we're willing to take them on.

In my case, overseas travel (which I haven't done much of) has a fairly predictable pattern. My reaction to a new environment has four distinct phases, and my impression of a place once I have left is not related to how deeply the plight of its noble peasant people has touched my sensitive soul. Rather, it is determined by what stage I am in when I leave the new environment for somewhere else. It is at once helpful and slightly frustrating that I recognise these phases as I pass through them, but I seem to be somewhat powerless to alter their progression. The first phase is:

Bewilderment:

At first I am confused. This can extend from simple mistakes with public transport systems, or difficulty finding the part of town where food is sold in large quantities at low prices, all the way through to complete geographical and temporal discombobulation. In Vancouver, I walked the wrong way down the street every time I left my hostel for three days. No matter how much I consulted the map, after a few blocks I had to turn around and head back the way I'd come.

Fortunately, this phase is usually over quickly. It's a pretty debilitating - there's a temptation to stay inside and hide until the world makes sense again, but it actually helps to go outside and get lost a few times, and at least I know that in advance. And within a couple of days I've moved to phase two.

False Familiarity:

Eventually the fog of bewilderment lifts, and the whole world is illuminated in the crisp sharp light of understanding. The weight of uncertainty is lifted from my brow and a sense of confidence and certainty is restored in the world. I know where the grocery store is. I know how the public transport system works. I may not have actually been there, but I know the names of the important nightlife venues and can readily recommend them to newcomers. Indeed, I am a competent and well functioning member of the local community. People start asking "Do you work here?"

Of course, all this confidence and clarity is complete bollocks. In fact I'm just some Johnny-come-lately and all the "local knowledge" I've got is readily available from a tourist brochure. It's only a matter of time until my status as a complete tourist is exposed. Which brings us to stage three:

Inchoate Rage:

Eventually, the facade of false familiarity has to break down, and when it does I am left disillusioned, confused, and most of all angry. It becomes immediately obvious that the place I'm in is a worthless hole, vastly inferior to everywhere else I've been, and the people who live in and love this place are ignorant or arrogant dupes. I can find nothing worthwhile in my new home, I consider leaving, I rage and rail against the injustice of being stuck in such a terrible, I swear at my ski boots, I bitch about Czech people. The list goes on.

Of course, this anger is both temporary and absurd. I will later be deeply embarrased about this phase and the petulant and childish things I have said and thought. In the depths of this phase in Chamonix I swore I would never return to that valley. Now, in the midst of this phase in Rossland, I yearn to be in Chamonix which is in fact one of the greatest places in the known universe. Now that I am accustomed to this pattern I find the rage less overwhelming. I think about slowly tortuting a small cute animal to death, but I don't actually start looking for an appropriately fluffy bunny. Unfortunately, being aware that this is just the third phase of being in a new place doesn't allow me to bypass it altogether, but with luck it will make it less intense and shorter lived.

One day, however, the rage will pass. I will ski, or hike, or eat something delicious, or generally roll around in my own filth and suddenly my new home will be wonderful place. Thus begins the fourth and final stage.

Acceptance:

Acceptance goes both ways. I accept my location and it accepts me. Not only do I know where the grocery store is, but I no longer assume that its staff hate me. I continue to tell terrible jokes, but people actually recognise that they're jokes rather than completely inappropriate comments that I mean sincerely. They don't necessarily laugh, but provided they understand that I'm being facetious that's good enough. This is the stage you want to be in. Life is good, you're more than just a bumbling tourist and people no longer want to drown you in the nearest river.

So for now I'm waiting for my ski boots to stop hurting, the snow to fill in the gaps between the rocks and logs at the ski field, and the visibility to be good enough for long enough that I can actually work out where I'm skiing. Roll on phase four.

An exception

Normally, I don't like to mention the existence of other blogs on the internet for fear that my tiny audience will like the other blog better than mine and stop reading. We've recently moved from five to six followers everyone, and believe it or not that's pretty close to exponential growth.

However, on special occaisions our rules need to be broken, even when they are intimately tied up with our own selfishness. This is one such occaision. This is at once one of the most beautiful and hilarious things I have ever seen. It may (and perhaps should) suprise you to know that I genuinely believe that this website illuminates something fascinating about the nature of human existence and the orientation of human life within the world.

Please enjoy Kim Jong-Il Looking at Things.

Bringing light to the darkness

I'm not sure how best to describe this, but I often struggle to communicate effectively with Canadians. For a start, they don't laugh at any of my jokes. It's quite probable that most of my jokes aren't funny, but under the sheer weight of trash that I say you'd expect something to be funny at some stage. The probabilities are such that even if I'm very unfunny, someone should have laughed at something by now, if only just out of politeness. But the people of Canada don't even laugh in an awkward way at the things I say. Not even while backing away and deciding whether or not to report what I've said to child protection officers. No, they greet everthing I say with a kind of earnest, well-meaning bafflement.

One reason for this that is not related to my own significant limitations is the substantial cultural gap between Canadians and everyone else I've ever met. As an example, not one Canadian I've spoken to has heard of the "Beached As" whale cartoons. Given that 200 years from now, people will be looking at these cartoons as the early 21st century's equivalent of Rembrandt, I think this is a pretty serious thing to be missing from your life.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. The pop cultural chasm between Canadians and everyone else I've ever met is unfathomably deep. It is beyond the hope of any single person to bring the light of youtube to this dark and barbaric place, let alone an Australian. And yet, I feel like I can't stay here in good conscience without bringing one candle to light the intellectual and aesthetic cave that is the West Kootenays. And hopefully, with that candle the people here can start a blazing fire that brings civilisation and a better life to this whole land.

Perhaps here, in Rossland, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single chup.

Reverse stealing

You know that mythical time that old people talk about where no one locked their doors? When the streets were safe for your kids to walk to school? When the bodies of the people who tried to sell methamphetamine in your town were found floating down the river?

Well, by virtue of some kind of eddy in the space-time continuum, Rossland has remained in that time. There are several virtues to this unusual temporal location. First off, old people can't say "Back in my day ..." about Rossland, because we already are back in their day. A few weeks ago I watched a semi trailer containing thousands of litres of sulfuric acid slow to crawling speed behind a parade of small children wearing reindeer antlers as they performed the annual "Reindeer Prance" down the main street of town. That street happens to be a highway and a fairly significant trucking route for the chemical wastes generated from the lead smelter in a nearby town called Trail. In much of the "modern" world, small children and large vehicles filled with corrosive liquids would be considered an unusual and problematic combination. In Rossland, they are considered a typical part of the celebration of Christmas.

Another neat thing is that no one seems to lock anything. The other day I opened the door to my car (which had been sitting unlocked in a public car park all day), started the engine, left the car running while I went to the bank, returned to the car (which was now warm and demisted) and drove off, all without having to worry about it being stolen.

In fact, things are so topsy turvy here that today I indulged in a bit of reverse stealing. I went to someone's house, knowing that they wouldn't be there, entered the building, slipped a large sum of cash into someone's backpack and went on my merry way. Ahh the past. It really was a better time.

Resolved: The Jenny Baillie Coincidence

On Monday I finally met Jenny Baillie, resident of Rossland, artist, and (in 1996) primary school teacher.

But she's not the Jenny Baillie I knew. She taught somewhere in New Zealand in 96, rather than Canberra.

I must admit that I'm not exactly disappointed that this wasn't the same Jenny Baillie. Ever since I heard she might be in town I've been trying to think of ways that the Jenny Baillie I knew might end up as an artist in Rossland. Admittedly, I was a 12 year old when I was in her class, so I doubt I had a very accurate picture of her as a person, but she just didn't seem like the kind of person who would end up as an artist in a town of 3,000 people in a reasonably obscure part of Canada. For a start, she didn't ski or mountain bike, and there aren't really that many other reasons to live here. I was a bit worried that there might have been some kind of family tragedy that might have driven Jenny Baillie of Canberra to the Kootenay mountains, and finding out that this wasn't the case is something of a relief.

On the other hand, Jenny Baillie of Rossland had apparently heard from a few people that there was a possible former student in town, and she was a bit disappointed to discover that I wasn't one of her charges from her prior career. It occurred to me that this might be another reason for me to be relieved that this wasn't my former teacher. Jenny Baillie of Canberra might be a bit suprised to find that the model student of her year 6 class is now a skiing vagrant rather than something slightly more worthwhile.

As an indication of just how much my trajectory in life has changed, in year 6 (the final year of my primary school education) I was voted:

• Most likely to become rich. Well, I'm sure my classmates meant well. I'm not sure what went wrong here. At some point in life I discovered that being dirty and having fun was more interesting than whatever it is people do to become rich. Of all the predictions made, this is the least likely to come true in the remainder of my lifetime.
  
• Most likely to become famous. This is certainly not the case right now, and given the current course of my life it doesn't look at all probable. However, I can't completely rule out this possibility. After all, my classmates never said what I'd be famous for. Perhaps they thought I'd go on to commit a number of grisly and well publicised murders, or become a wildly successful internet blogger. Unfortunately, their reasons were never clearly stated.
• Smartest. This is a little bit complicated. Clearly, given the first two predictions were well off the mark, the veracity of my classmates is not to be trusted. However, it is possible that they made the previous mistakes because they were a bunch of muppets. If that was the case, then maybe I was the smartest class member amongst a grade of dullards. Unfortunately, I can't remember whether I also voted for myself in those categories, which would neatly counter this argument. It would be nice to believe that I didn't vote for myself in any of the categories, but unfortunately that's not a guarantee that I can make about myself in grade 6.
  

Don't get the wrong idea about my classmates. We did manage to successfully identify the tallest members of our grade by popular vote. Democracy works.

So perhaps not meeting Jenny Baillie here is for the best. It's nice to think there are a few people around who still think I'm a productive and contributing member of society.

Milestone!

Hi everyone,

I'm not really into posting about the actual blog, but I thought that this milestone is one I should share with you all. I recently noticed that this blog now has more followers than the other blog that shows up when I log into Blogger, the Canberra Ultimate Blog. They have 4, and this blog has 5. So thanks to all the wonderful people who made that a reality.

I always dreamed of having a wildly successful blog that provided me with financial independence sufficient to pursue my dreams across the globe, and although I haven't reached that yet, I feel like breaking through the 4 follower ceiling is just another sign that glory and riches are just around the corner.

Thanks to you all.

John

Primary School Redux

Ever since I arrived in Rossland, something has been bugging me. There's a poster at the hostel that features a painting of Rossland by an artist named Jenny Baillie. When I saw it I thought "Baillie, that's quite a distinctive spelling."

Then I thought:

"I used to have a year 6 teacher named Jenny Baillie, with that same distinctive spelling."

Then I thought:

"As I recall, she was really into art."

Then I thought:

"You know, the way the artist has signed this painting kindof looks like her handwriting."

But of course, it has been a long time since year 6, so maybe I was wrong about the handwriting, or even the spelling. I mentioned this to Brad, my coworker at the hostel, who also happens to be an artist living and working in Rossland. I get along very well with Brad, he's one of the few people I've met in Canada who are comfortable with the jokes I make, and better yet, can give as good as they get. However, I must admit that at times communicating with Brad can be a little difficult. For example, he once in conversation said I was a bus station. I'm not really taking that out of context. We were just talking about something and then he said I was a bus station. It was all a little unclear.

Anyway, Brad said that Jenny Baillie was from Australia, or maybe New Zealand, or maybe even England, that she might have been a teacher, and that she'd come to Rossland maybe 40 years ago, or 30, or 15. Or something.

It appears that Ms Baillie recently bumped into Brad, and it sounds like he may have narrowed down this range to "Down Under", that she used to be a teacher, and that she arrived more like 15 years ago than 40. This is all looking promising.

So, the latest entry on my list of things to do is to meet the Jenny Baillie of Rossland and see if she's also the Jenny Baillie of Hughes Primary School. If so, it would be a crazy coincidence indeed.

And in other primary school related news, it turns out my best friend from Hughes Primary, Parri, is a few hours drive away at Fernie. It's like I'm prepubescent all over again.

What makes a house feel like a home?

Yesterday I moved out of the hostel where I’ve been living for a month (it was free – I’m not one of those sad people that lives in youth hostels. At least not any more...) and into a house right in the beating heart of Rossland. One of the doors in the house opens into the pizza shop, and I’m right across the road from the main pub. It would actually take longer to have a pizza delivered (since they’d have to walk around to the front door) than it would to just go and pick it up, which is not something that most people can say that about their house.

One of the many odd features of this house is the number of empty picture frames hanging on the walls. They give the house a slightly derelict air and of course we’d like to fill them during our stay here. Now I was going to give you the long and detailed explanation of what I want to put into the picture frames and why, but it occurs to me that this idea is so excellent that it should simply by allowed to stand on its own. It ought to be judged on its merits as an independent concept, rather than the product of some kind of mere historical process.

A tasteful nude.

Yes people, a tasteful nude. Ideally it should be of a man, it should be black and white, it shouldn’t show any really rude bits, although perhaps a bit of butt-cheek would be OK, and it should be unclear whether the photo has been taken by a profession or simply a dedicated amateur. But we don’t want something smutty or crass. This is all about taste and class.

At the moment I’m a little unsure about what approach to take to make my dream a reality. There are several obstacles. First off, I’d need to OK this with my housemates. I have considered the possibility of simply taking said tasteful nude, placing it in one of the picture frames and insisting that it has been on the wall all along, and that no-one has noticed. The risk with this approach is that it might be difficult to get the image I’m after (see below) without making it somewhat obvious that the picture hasn’t been on the wall all along, and if I got caught doing this I’d be seen as something of a weirdo. So, assuming I want to get the housemates on board with this plan, I need to explain to them how the whole thing will work, and I need them to share the joy that I would experience from having such a picture in a public place in the house. There is a risk in this, because if I explain it to them, and they don’t share my enthusiasm, then I’ll look like a weirdo. To further complicate matters, there is a language barrier. Two of my three housemates haven’t arrived yet, and the one that’s here now has good English, but perhaps not good enough English to pick up the subtleties of this particular plan. Again, there’s a strong risk of looking like a weirdo.

But, let’s say that I manage to get the housemates to buy in to this project. There are also some genuine difficulties in getting the right image. What we’re aiming for here is something that will make any guests who see it uncertain as to whether this is a status item that suggests pedigree and culture, or whether it’s a rather creepy and slightly homoerotic photo of one of the housemates. I’m sure the internet is teeming with photos of naked men, but once you narrow it down to the tasteful ones it’s going to be a much smaller pool. And then within that pool, you don’t want something that’s too arty or slick. If it’s a genuine tasteful nude that some beret wearing New York photographer has taken it won’t be any fun at all. Finding something that’s just the right balance of legitimate and creepy is key here, and the internet is a difficult place to find that kind of thing. Also, to find such an image, I’d need to spend days looking at naked pictures of men on the internet. No thanks. So then, we’d need to actually take the photo. This is ideal in a sense, because it guarantees the kind of creepiness we’re after. Plus it means that the photo will be of someone in Rossland, and if possible, we might be able to make it just obscure enough that people think they recognise the subject without being sure. In any case, this is a difficult balance to get right.

Finally, we must print the photo. This is also a bit delicate, because getting caught printing a large-format nude photo that you’ve clearly taken yourself in some kind of commercial printing place is another obvious foray into weirdo territory. That said, I’m sure there’d be a way, and if not, I could always do it in a nearby town that I’d never go back to again.

In all honesty, the biggest hurdle is getting it OK’ed by the housemates. If I can get that done, I’ll be well on the way to creating something special. Wish me luck people – I’ll keep you posted.

All U Can Eat Spaghetti Night, part 2:

So, I promised in the last post to talk about the culture that drives people to eat a lot. I’m not talking about those challenges they have in the biggest loser. I’m talking about those people we all know who seem to eat way more than the people around them without getting fat. Instead, as they eat they become stronger, faster, more resistant to radiation etc. In the technical literature this is referred to as “voluntary massive eating”. Some people manage this through monumental feats of exercise (Myall), others by storing this energy to sustain them through long periods of hibernation (Mica), and others still wear baggy clothing so that if they do get fat you can’t tell (me). But have you ever wondered whether they still eat the same amounts when you’re not looking? Could it be that the big eaters of the world can perform their culinary deeds because they’ve been starving themselves while no-one is around? If a tree made of butter falls in a forest, and no one else is around, will Myall still eat it?

The first point to note is that if the big eater in question is seriously hungry then nothing will stop them from visiting their wrath upon the edible products within range, but this would be an “involuntary massive eating event”. The case we are interested in is where the eater in question isn’t monumentally hungry – if they’re just a normal level of hungry, or not even hungry at all – will they force themselves to eat big, or will they let sleeping dogs made of chocolate lie?

There are a number of factors that place pressure on people to eat big. The first is the cost of food. The appetisingness of a foodstuff item X is proportional to its price according to the following relationship:

Appetisingness of X α average cost of X under normal conditions / cost of X

If the item you’re considering eating costs more than normal, it is not very appetising. As the price decreases to normal levels, appetisingness is not strongly influenced by price. Once the price drops below what you’d normally expect to pay, appetisingness starts increasing pretty quickly, approaching infinity as the cost gets closer to zero. In the spirit of XKCD I’ve drawn you a graph, but I don’t have paint on this PC, so you’ll have to settle for this:

Yes, people, I do have a maths degree.

This relationship explains why there’s such a strong compulsion to eat free food, and why the words “Reduced to Clear” cause my heart rate to rise by a good 40 beats per minute. It also explains why an unfavourable exchange rate can make everything in Europe tastes like ashes.

The second significant factor in voluntary massive eating is peer pressure. The critical feature that underlies this behaviour is reputation. Most big eaters are known within their communities to be capable of great feats of consumption. And for many, the hunger that leads to involuntary massive eating is uncomfortable and deeply distressing. Thus, most big eaters have a strong interest in maintaining access to large volumes of food, in case genuine hunger should occur. This means that big eaters need to impress the people around them with their feats of eating regularly to maintain their reputation and improve the chances that others will give them leftovers or overestimate the necessary quantities during food preparation and so on. The pressure to maintain their reputation often induces those prone to involuntary massive eating to eat a lot even when they’re not ravenously hungry.

This pressure is magnified when several large eaters eat together. When big eaters dine with regular folk, a system of territorial dominance develops over other people’s left-over food. By eating more than the people around them a diner gains control over the best territories and the right to any leftovers contained therein. It should be noted that this usually operates at a subconscious level. This is the “Is he having more? Maybe I’ll have some more,” effect.

And finally, big eaters provide a collegiate atmosphere in which to chow down. You might feel a bit awkward at All U Can Eat Spaghetti Night if your fellow diners have just had a bowl or two of pasta and you’re eyeing off your 14^th serving. After all, watching other people eat is kind of creepy. However, if there’s a whole pack of you, there’s a collective spirit that encourages all of you to just keep asking for more.

So, to answer the question about the tree made of butter, Myall would eat if he was hungry, or if it was free, but he probably wouldn’t just eat it just for fun. But if Myall and Mica were both there when the tree fell down, they would eat that tree, and probably also another regular tree made of wood, just to make sure that neither one felt like they’d got the upper hand.