Family Reunion

Today Mum, Dad and Erin arrived. Their hotel, the Outrigger on the Beach, is just on the other side of the market from us, only a few hundred metres away. We went there just a little before they arrived so that we could greet them with leis. They were tired but Erin was surprisingly perky, thanks to her travelling drugs, and insisted that we eat lunch at The Cheesecake Factory. I had a Hawaiian pizza and we all struggled to share a piece of Kahlúa cheesecake. (I didn't really need dessert but you can't go to The Cheesecake Factory and not order cheesecake!)

Cindy and I spent the afternoon showing them around the market and getting them oriented. Then we went out to dinner at The Hard Rock Café. Erin and Cindy ordered drinks that came with free hurricane glasses (they actually give you clean ones) and we had vouchers for a free gift, which just turned out to be a lanyard and pin but we received two.

Waikiki Beach

Today we shopped. We explored the market in front of our hotel and got some cheap souvenirs then caught a "trolley" (shaped like an old wooden tram but with bus wheels) over to the Ala Moana shopping centre. That was like most other American malls but have a couple of interesting shops like Hilo Hattie and As Seen on TV!
This evening we went down to the beach bar at the Hilton for a drink with my friend Matt who was coïncidentally in Waikiki for a chemistry conference and his wife. After a nice Hurricane we went to a tropical hamburger restaurant where all the waitresses were dressed in grass skirts.

Hawaii

Yesterday I went in to uni and marked a big stack of my students' final essays along with the professor and the other assistant instructors. I got home a little after lunch time and Cindy and I went to get the hire car that we planned to take to the airport the next morning. I had made the reservation a few weeks before and the car was ready for us (the guy started telling us aboutthe seat warmers) but when it came time to pay we discovered that Hertz does a full credit check on anyone paying with a debit card. After we ran around and got our social security numbers, it turned out that they would not let us hire the car at all. Our flight would leave too early for the Bloomington-Airport shuttle so we had to ask our friend Charly to take us. He's an early riser but it was still very kind of him to come pick us up at 3.30 am and drive an hour each way. The crazy part was that in the queue for security Cindy saw someone from her lab who had driven himself up - if only we had known!

We flew with US Airways because their flights to Hawaii go through Phoenix, Arizona and we didn't want a repeat of the Xmas before last when we spent a night in Chicago and our bags were lost. Because both legs of the trip were domestic, we didn't get any food, we had to buy it at the airport. That's not good for a 6-7 h flight to Hawaii because the food gets cold. US Airways was even worse than United in some ways, like trying to charge us $5 for headphones to watch the movie. But the trip itself was pretty uneventfull.

We got to the hotel around dinner time and went straight out for a cheap meal in a Chinese-Hawaiian takeaway.
I was feeling dizzy from exhaustion by that time because it was well after midnight in Indiana and I had had only a couple of hours sleep the night before and a couple more on the plane. But Cindy insisted that we couldn't go to sleep at 7 pm localtime so we wandered around a little touristy market for a bit before retiring for the night.

The hotel is quite nice, even the cheapest of Waikiki is pretty luxurious for us - I think it's the nicest hotel I've ever paid for.

Christmas Fare

I know I've mentioned pumpkin pie ice-cream before but an update is required: I've discovered that a luxury ice-cream brand here is making pumpkin ice-cream with cheesecake chunks in it!

I was going to take a photo of the fridge full of different egg-nogs, including Jack Daniels and pumpkin, but the shelves were a bit bare. Still, you'll be relieved to know that there's not one, but two varieties of egg-nog ice-cream (the slow-churned one is low fat):

That sounds like it could be good for Xmas in Hawaii!

Thanksgiving 2010

Today's Thanksgiving. This year I'm not cooking a turkey (Cindy's out of town) and didn't get invited anywhere. But my friend Larry heard that Bloomington's best pizzeria was hosting a free Thanksgiving lunch, so we went.

Believe it or not, they were serving turkey pizza: mashed potato, turkey slices and stuffing, with gravy and cranberry sauce on the side! We thought we were arriving early but the place was already packed, so we had to sit in the waiting area and eat off our laps but I was grateful for a free meal.

The Turducken of Cakes

So you all remember what a turducken is? Well this, my friends, is the cake equivalent.

You take a pumpkin pie, place it in a cake tin, pour chocolate cake batter on top and bake it into a cake. Then you bake an apple pie into a vanilla cake. The two layers are stuck together and iced all over with American-style butter-cream frosting. Voilà:


Apparently they're actually selling this in Philadelphia, from a café in Reading Terminal Market. I left town too soon!

Concert

Tonight Cindy and I drove up to Indianapolis to see a show. The headline act was Billy Bragg. He's getting a bit long in the tooth but still knows how to play a mean guitar. It was a great performance, he changed a couple of lyrics just to make the better-known songs more interesting.

When I was buying the tickets I was surprised to see that the warm-up act was Australian Darren Hanlon. He's completely unknown here, which might explain the supporting role.
I've liked his music for a while so it was nice that I actually got to have a chat with him and bought a CD, which he signed.

Oh, what's that? Yes, we went to IHOP on the way.

Automotive Decoration

This car is parked outside my building. I wonder what the occasion is.

Ice Cream Flavors

The latest in our ongoing series of crazy American food:

Fancy Frozen Fruity Flavours

Last night on my way home I stopped at a gelateria that's apparently very famous around Philly. Knowing it was expensive I chose the two most obscure flavours on offer -- blueberry and thyme, and rockmelon and absinthe. Both combinations were surprisingly good. The blueberry and thyme got a bit gritty by the end of the scoop, what with the berry seeds and dried thyme leaves, so I might not order it again. But I'd think about infusing a little next time I make blueberry crêpes. I think the other combination might be more easy to accomplish. All it would take is a blender, chunks of rockmelon, crushed ice or sorbet and a dash of pastis (which I already have a bottle of).

Update - 31st July
The champagne and mango is not bad. There's plenty of real mango in it but I think they were not completely ripe when they made the batch I got.
It's not a weird flavour but their hazelnut is fantastic, the best I've had in many years.

West Philly

Philadelphia has a bad reputation in America; the crime in some parts of town is seen as a symptom of the city's age, it's a city past its prime. That does seem to be true of the part of town where I'm staying, too far west to benefit from the gentrification happening around the universities.

Still, vestiges of earlier investment in the area remain. The main high school is in a very nice crenellated castle, there's a big domed insurance building on the other side of the tracks and down the road there's a nice old sandstone church.

Coffee

Apparently I haven't discussed American attitudes to coffee before. You probably already know that Americans in general drink a lot more coffee than tea (except at the CHF, where I was surprised to find a lot of tea drinkers). The problem is, drinking more of it doesn't mean they're any better at making coffee. For one thing, they over-roast it; so if you try to brew it strong it's too bitter and the only way to make it less bitter is for it to come out watery.

They're so obsessed with drip filter coffee that they're yet to embrace espresso. I don't mean in homes, I mean restaurants and even cafés serve filter coffee and only fancier places also have espresso coffee, which they charge more for. They've even started combining frothed milk with drip coffee, which is what you get if you ask for a café au lait (only by using the Italian name, caffè latte, do you get espresso and steamed milk). So strange that two foreign terms would get you the same thing in different parts of Europe but get you different things here.

Here's the weirdest thing: the rarity of espresso coffee makes some Americans think that it's not a type of coffee. A couple of times before I've heard them say things like, "espresso or coffee" and when I call them out on it they always say, "Oh, I meant normal coffee!" which doesn't change the fact that espresso is clearly a type of coffee.
Today Cindy told me that when she went to Dunkin' Donuts there was a poster that had two options that looked identical: iced coffee or iced latte. When she asked what the difference was, she was told, 'The iced coffee is made with coffee; the iced latte is made with espresso and milk, so there is no coffee in the iced latte'! Her response being, 'Instead of my daily dose of caffeine from the Coffea arabica coffee beans I'm going to get my daily dose of espresseine from espresso beans, growing on the espresso tree, Espressoa arabica (someone needs to tell Wikipedia to create a new page for this new species!)'

Bastille Day

Yesterday I went to the Philadelphia French conversation club, like most Saturdays, but this time we heard that there would be Bastille Day celebrations at an historic prison, so we headed over there afterwards.

The star was Marie-Antoinette, who was up on the ramparts yelling abuse at the sans culottes below. The scripted exchange was extremely hammy, consisting mainly of topical banter but when Marie-Antoinette said her famous line, they all started throwing free cakes into the crowd (a brand I had not seen before, which is apparently only available in the Philadelphia area). They had an impressively large guillotine set up in the street, which made short work of a watermelon.


It's a bit ironic that this sort of thing doesn't happen in France. They don't even call it Bastille Day, it's La Fête Nationale or simply le quatorze juillet. They don't do anything historical, instead they have military parades through Paris including tanks and fly-overs. It's funny that the 4th July parade we saw in Washington last weekend had only one or two military bands with only about a dozen armed soldiers. I guess the American armed forces are a bit too busy overseas whereas the French have nothing better to do.

Sandwiches

Americans have a reputation for preferring to eat with their hands, whether it be hamburgers or pizza etc. This is quite true but people in other countries probably don't realise just how far this goes. 

Americans consider hamburgers a type of sandwich (where I would reserve that word for something between slices of bread, 'Do you want a sandwich or a roll?') and it's sandwiches more generally that they worship. They prefer to eat with they're hands so they put all manner of nice things on rolls and pretend it's haute cuisine. It took a few years of living here to realise just how pervasive this phenomenon is - it's not just cheap lunch shops that sell fancy sandwiches, it's family restaurants (like Applebees and, my favourite, TGI Friday's) and even semi-fancy restaurants with nice décor. The other night when we were at an Italian restaurant Cindy was disappointed to see a kid at the next table eating his pizza with his hands, she thought it was too nice a place for that sort of behaviour. Then I pointed out that she had ordered a hamburger and I a fancy sandwich.

I don't know if it has more to do with the tough economic times of the last couple of years or just a willingness to consider sandwiches civilised but there's also a neglect of real food. I read an article a little while ago about a group of people who go around New York reviewing the hamburgers (this might be it). The thing is, if you're going to appoint yourself a connoisseur of beef, at least compare steaks!

Having spent some time in Philly, I've come to see their famous cheesesteak as a decent compromise. It's made with shaved or finely sliced steak (and they don't have döner kebabs here) and I've found that if you go somewhere decent (without a long queue of tourists), then a provolone cheesesteak with "sweet peppers" can be very nice.

Washington

For the Independence Day long weekend Cindy and I met up in Washington. I caught a dirt-cheap coach ($17.50 return) and Cindy flew. We stayed in a motel at the end of the metro line in Huntington, just south of Alexandria, Virginia.

Saturday we walked until our feet were sore, seeing all the monuments, memorials and museums. I got to see a couple that I hadn't seen the first time, like the Jefferson and FDR memorials. It was stinking hot but there were plenty of bubblers for us to refill our bottles with tepid water. I have a new appreciation for the Smithsonian Institution now; all their museums are free and air-conditioned, they provide a great place to cool down and sit, where there happens to be some art to look at while you're relaxing.

Sunday we watched the big parade. Before it started a couple of cyclists rode down the cleared street dressed in bright pink and waving signs saying "Peace is patriotic", declaring that they were part of the parade; the police soon moved them along. There were a few military groups marching but mainly brass bands. It was a bit strange to hear them playing God Save the Queen and The British Grenadiers but this wasn't an inappropriate gesture, those tunes have been given American lyrics, which everyone else was humming.
The assortment of random characters was a bit second rate (Paddington Bear, Madeline, Strawberry Shortcake all as balloons), a real Lone Ranger made it a little more American. What made it all worthwhile was that I got to see a real DeLorean!
We tried to stay out of the heat that afternoon while we waited for the fireworks. There were a lot of people but there was plenty of space on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial so we got a decent view without being too crowded.


Monday we spent the day looking around the old quarter of Alexandria, Virginia. It's a nice old port town on the Potomac with lots of little shops, a few good restaurants and two ice-creameries.

Chemical Heritage Foundation

This week I started my fellowship at the Chemical Heritage Foundation. They've given me an office near the library with the other fellows. They all back onto a big atrium and we get natural light through large windows. Occasionally someone will stop by and talk to someone else through the window opening but generally we don't feel too much like monkeys at the zoo.

Everyone has a computer in the office with a personalised account on a central server but it's all Windows. After a couple of days of fiddling around, hitting the wrong keys and not having my files with me, I decided to just bring my own laptop and only use their computer to print. I've managed to get the PC's keyboard and mouse working with it (and, although the CHF email won't work with the Mac for some reason, it does work with my iPod Touch).

There is a kitchenette and this leads to a lot of social activities. Every day around 10.30 people stand around there drinking tea and coffee (the folks here drink a lot more tea than your average American) and on Tuesday afternoons at 3 there's biscuits or cake in the atrium (which they call a "public square"). And today I noticed a lot of people walking around with rolled up rubber mats -- apparently it's yoga day.

Delaware

My current fellowship is for visiting institutions in the Philadelphia area, apparently that extends down to Wilmington, Delaware. Today I went there for the first time, that's another state off my list!

I went to the Hagley library to look at some of their Lavoisier stuff. I was lucky enough to get a ride down with one of the CHF fellows so we didn't stop for souvenirs but I did save the money it would have cost to hire a car or catch a train and taxi.

The library and archives are spread across a couple of buildings on a few acres, which used to be the DuPont gunpowder factory. Now it's a nice park with an industrial museum.

Memorial Day at the Museum

Today I went to the Philadelphia Museum of Art. It's an impressive looking building that you've probably seen before - those are the steps Rocky ran up. I didn't run up them because I was wearing things but I did have to walk up. Apparently the building's famous for the movie even among the locals so they put up a statue.

It's an enormous museum with quite a few famous paintings (Monets, Renoirs, a couple of van Goghs) but it was laid out a bit strangely with paintings, statues and antique furniture all together in a room without anything tying them together.

Olde Philadelphia

Today I went to the American Philosophical Society to use their library. It was a bit stricter than archives I had used before. After I introduced myself as a PACHS fellow they asked for two forms of ID and had me create a username and password for a library user account then gave me a magnetic card to hang around my neck for the day, so I could beep open the doors. Once in the reading room, books had to be requested electronically. But one librarian was very nice and, when I told him that my research intersected with Ben Franklin's stay in France he relished the opportunity to wax lyrical about Franklin's dalliances with aristocratic French ladies. It must be true, I saw for myself in his correspondence that they all addressed him as "Papa". He's very well thought of in Philadelphia too. That statue on the building is Franklin as a Roman and there's a life-sized statue of him seated on a bench at UPenn as well as busts everywhere.

I also went to the mint (because it is closed weekends). I don't have any photos of that to post because taking photos is banned, they even threaten to prosecute any caught trying! Actually, this didn't surprise me so much because a couple of days ago I heard someone discussing how it's illegal to have images of US currency. She was complaining that she tried to scan a dollar bill to use on a poster or something but Photoshop refused to abet her! The mint wasn't that interesting and you couldn't see much happening in the machines but it was free.

Another thing you see in that part of town is horse-drawn carriages. Unlike New York, there's no Central Park so I figure they must be doing historical tours of the buildings etc. (that would explain why some of the female drivers are dressed up like Betsy Ross). Last time I was there I noticed someone holding a sign in protest against the carriage rides, it said something about it being an archaic and cruel practice to make animals pull vehicles. But there was someone else holding another sign explaining that these horses had been rescued from slaughter (it didn't explain why they were destined for slaughter in the first place). I wished I had Cindy with me so she could tell them that sending horses to an abattoir is not a waste if they end up on her plate!

Fringe Benefits

Tonight the CHF took all the fellows out to dinner. Actually, I'm not a CHF fellow yet but they were generous enough to shout the PACHS fellows too. (The other PACHS fellow compared this to treating step-children well, which raises interesting questions about her childhood.)

We went to a nice Italian restaurant in the old part of town, Penn's Landing. The set menu had four courses and one of the choices for the main was saltimbocca, so it wasn't hard for me to choose. But I overheard some of the others muttering about the veal option; for some reason many Americans think that it's less humane to eat animals when they're young. Actually, when I gave it a little thought, I realised that it's probably been a few years since I've eaten veal because I never see it in the supermarket or on menus (we don't really go to Italian restaurants and pubs here don't sell schnitzels). I guess that makes it rarer than lamb even!

The other good thing about the dinner was that wine was included. In America it's pretty common for diners to offer bottomless cups of coffee and fast food places to have free refills on fountain soft-drinks but this was the first time I'd heard of a restaurant offering bottomless glasses of wine! Just like at a diner, the waitresses came around topping up our glasses whenever the level dropped.

South Philly

Today I caught the bus (for the first time; it takes the same tokens as the subway, so it was easy) to the "Italian Market" district of South Philly. I've started going to a French table here to keep up my speaking skills and this week they met in a little café run by an eccentric Frenchman. This café reminded me a little of the Runcible Spoon, it's decorated very eccelectically with French and international posters and the toilet has photos all over the walls. Worse, it's under the stairs, which means you run the risk of hitting your head if you get too close.

While I was in that part of town I managed to cross something off my Philly to-do list - a Philly cheesesteak from Pat's Steaks. The queue went right around the block but it only took about 20 mins or so. The sandwich itself was ok but not great; it was a bit like a roast beef roll from an Australian carvery but without any real gravy. I got it with provolone cheese and "peppers" but it didn't add all that much to the taste, I think they're meant to be just bland and meaty. Apparently there's an ongoing rivalry between Pat's and Geno's across the street so when I got to the French group I asked some locals their opinion. Instead of telling me to go to one or the other, three of them rattled off a list of a dozen other places all over Philadelphia where you can get better cheesesteaks.

And, being in the Italian quarter, I was lucky enough to find an Italian grocer that stocked chinotto, one of the things I miss living in Bloomington.

Philanthropy

American Universities rely on philanthropy more than Australian ones. In Australia there's plenty of named scholarships and prizes as well as a few named chairs. At IU there's tons of named professorships and a number of "schools" (more like faculties) that are named after generous donors, e.g. the Kelley School of Business, the Maurer School of Law, and John Cougar Mellencamp donated enough money for a pavilion.

For some reason many of the donations come from "the class of..." At IU there's a few stone gateways and the like with years written on them but here at the University of Pennsylvania (an Ivy League university) the alumni can afford to buy nicer things. In the library there's a very plush reading room with slate-topped desks, reading lamps, a grandfather clock, sofas, armchairs and ottomans; all donated by the class of 1937 on their 50th reunion. And the class of 1920 donated a "commons", which seems to be a building with a food court and open spaces.

But it's funny the little things that get donated. Today when I was taking a leak I looked up and, instead of an ad, a little silver plaque saying:

The relief you are now experiencing is made possible by a gift from Michael Zinman.

I didn't have a camera on me but apparently someone else did:

The City of Brotherly Love

Yesterday I left Bloomington and came to Philadelphia. I'll be here for 3 months this summer on fellowships from the Philadelphia Area Centre for the History of Science and the Chemical Heritage Foundation.

It was planes, trains and automobiles yesterday: car to Indianapolis, plane to Philadelphia, a train downtown, then a metro. We were a bit rushed getting from IHOP to the airport. I rushed to check my bags, there was a bit of a delay getting to security and after I passed the metal detector I was randomly selected for an extra scan. Then they had to search my bag because a stack of papers in there was thick enough to stop the x-rays, while in there the guy got suspicious of my tin of teabags and decided to swab it to test for explosives. But, naturally, the plane didn't board on time so I had 10 min to spare.

I'm staying in a share-house on the west side of town, near the University of Pennsylvania. It's very close to metro, which will be convenient when I need to go into the city for the CHF. It must be a very multi-cultural neighbourhood because even the normal mainstream supermarket stocks lots more exotic food than in Bloomington, especially West Indian and Middle-Eastern food.

Today I took a walk around the UPenn campus. It's like a cross between Sydney Uni and UTS, it has busy roads running through, lots of private shops etc. But there is some parkland interspersed. In one park I saw a guy had brought his own hammock and strung it between two trees so he could lie back and read his Kindle. And there's another university, Drexel, just across the road. No wonder they call it university city.

The Dunny

I accidentally said "toilet" to some Americans on Thursday. I was explaining to the secretaries that my students were having a break in the middle of our two hour class. One of them repeated, "Oh, you give your students a potty-break?"
And on Tuesday I tried to convince an American planning a trip that she should say les toilettes when in France because it's so much easier to remember than les vé cé or les wat-air. She wasn't sure that she could bring herself to say toilettes (and yet pé cu didn't faze her)!

You see, in America the word "toilet" always refers specifically to the porcelain throne. That means they need other euphemisms (not that "toilet" itself isn't a euphemism, it was originally). Here's a discussion from a professional linguist, based on personal experience:

I heard the following exchange a couple of years ago in the National Gallery (London) between a couple of American tourists and a cruel (and probably bored) security guard:

Tourist: Could you tell us where the restroom is?
Guard: Do you need a rest?
Tourist: Oh no--I mean the bathroom.
Guard: Why? Do you want to have a bath?
Tourists: *gasping for another word*
Guard: I can direct you to the ladies' toilets?

This difference seems to be driven by the fact that America houses have long had toilets in the bathroom, a trend which is far more recent in Australia. So they're not used to the smallest room in the house being called "the toilet" and think of water closets as a continental convention.

I must have been off my guard linguistically this week because when I first got here I was always carefully to say "bathroom" and I think I still do when talking to strangers. I refuse to say "restroom" as that word makes no sense (see joke above). Canadians say "washroom", which is kinda what it is but I can't just start using Canadian words. At least when we're at The Runcible Spoon there's nothing inaccurate about calling it a bathroom.

And, while we're on the subject, one of the things I explain to the American student teachers headed for Australia is dual-flush toilets, and the fact that it's usually a button. This is because the flush is always some sort of lever here and dual-flush toilets are almost non-existent. I say almost because they've just built a new energy-efficient building on campus. Cindy works there and has discovered that they have dual flush toilets there. She particularly likes the fact that it's labelled "number 1" and "number 2"!

Cornbread

Cornbread is an American dish that's not completely crazy but still ain't quite right. It tastes very good; it has a sweet flavour and a texture like a friand (because it's made from corn meal rather than flour. If you made it into a muffin it would go great with afternoon tea.

The problem is that they serve it as a side to the main meal, especially barbecued things. I just can't imagine using anything so sweet to mop up gravy or BBQ sauce. And it's too crumbly for that anyway.

Chez ze Locksmiss

Our car is now slightly less dodgy than before. We took it back to the locksmith and left it with them long enough for a more senior employee to take a look at it. The younger guy had tried twice to no avail but the expert took only a few minutes. We were happy to discover that the door key now also starts the ignition.

Comical Transport Day

Today on my way to class I saw two interesting things:

An asian guy with a longish blond mohawk (but black sides) wearing a pinstripe navy suit, riding a skateboard.

A girl on a Segway wearing a fully enclosed motorcycle helmet.

And there I was on foot!

Preparing Americans for Australia

Today I gave my Australia talk again to a new batch of American student teachers. I told them about Australian schools, wildlife, culture, cuisine and that if they were staying with host families, they should try to learn to use their knives and forks correctly.

None of the questions were particularly stupid this time. Taking me for Emily Post, one girl asked me whether she would have to eat whatever her host family served; I said she should just talk about her likes and dislikes at the start. One mother asked a good question about what sort of meat we eat. I told her to imagine the American diet but replace 1/3 of the beef with lamb. That elicited some mutters from Americans not used to the taste of lamb!

I recommended that they watch Kenny and Summer Heights High to get to understand the Australian sense of humour. I warned that these might be a little harder for Americans as they don't have laugh tracks etc. but that this was good practice for when they'd be subtly mocked by their hosts. It turns out that the organiser who asked me for suggestions actually labelled Kenny as "highly recommended by an Australian national". It's available at Blockbuster Video and one girl said that she watched it for class but thought that it was some sort of low-brow stupidity. Obviously she was taking it the wrong way so I told her to watch it again when she gets back from Australia.

I showed them a promo for Summer Heights High that maybe I shouldn't have. I immediately remembered that there's almost no swearing on American TV and some of the shocking parts reminded me of the "don't ask, don't tell" style of political correctness you often get here. One of the students said that she had asked specifically for an outback school so over lunch I told her to find out a little about teaching aboriginal students and explained some of the things that my grandfather had discovered teaching his aboriginal student teachers.

Sumer is icumen in

When I was walking to campus yesterday I realised that I shouldn't have worn jeans. It got up to 28˙. I changed into shorts as soon as I got home. After dinner last night I put on some thongs and Cindy and I took a walk and bought some "small" (12 oz) ice creams.

Today it's going to get up to 28˙ again, they predict. And there's a bushfire warning, which they call a "red flag".

Easter Cooking

I saw some hot cross buns at the supermarket today; the scabby little American ones with the icing cross. No, I wasn't even tempted to buy some. I'm making the chocolate sort again this year. I'm using the same recipe as last year except this time I added some orange zest.

They're not all that pretty as I just scored the tops and drizzled a cornflour mix over them. (It was only after I'd done this that I remembered that I actually had a piping bag and could have done it neatly! Oh, well; next batch.)

American Illness

I'm just getting over a cold so I thought I'd give some more info on what Americans call things:

American	English
acetaminophen	paracetamol
Tylenol	Panadol (i.e. the most popular brand of paracetamol)
Advil	Nurofen (i.e. most popular brand of ibuprofen)
analgesics (even in the supermarket they use the technical term)	pain killers
allergies	hayfever
mono(nucleosis)	glandular fever
sinus infection	sinusitus
pink eye	conjunctivitis?
strep throat	tonsillitis?

I think I mentioned before that they have nothing here as good as butter menthols. Luckily I had some on the days I had to teach.

My cold's almost gone now. Just a bit of a cough so I'm taking expectorant tablets to try to clear that up before the end of the week.

Sink the Bismark

Tonight Cindy and I had a free dinner at one of Bloomington's most famous pubs, Nick's English Hut. (No, there's nothing English about it.) It was free because Chevron has sent recruiters to the geology department and they're trying to soften up the students. I don't mind eating and drinking their dirty money!

While we were there we noticed that many of the other tables were drinking their beer in a very strange way. They had small galvanised buckets in the middle of their tables and were pouring beer from their cups into the centre. The buckets were almost full of beer (about 1.5L) with a small glass floating in it. When they'd poured enough beer into this floating glass, whoever had sunk it had to drink it. Ah, American College students!

It turns out this game is called "Sink the Bismark" and it's quite a tradition at Nick's, you can even buy sets so that you can play the game at home.

What annoys an oyster more

Cindy and I were awoken at about 3.30 am Saturday by our favourite neighbours and their subwoofers. Then, while still half asleep I heard someone yell, "Hey, turn it down!" and the reply, "Fuck you!" There was a bit more shouting that I couldn't make out but the music didn't stop. After a couple more minutes I decided to phone in a noise complaint but the number they give is for an office that isn't open at 3.30 am. I didn't really want to call 911 so we just went back to sleep.

The next morning we were still annoyed so we printed a copy of the city's noise laws and highlighted the bits that said "Night time limits for non-stationary noise are from 11:00 p.m. - 6:00 a.m." and "A simple rule of thumb is that a noise is excessive if it can be heard in the public right of way or in another resident's home." I could have just slipped in under their door but I felt more like sticking it to their door with a dagger. I found that there was already a nail there so I compromised by just sticking the note on that. The only problem is, 24 hours later the note is still there. I don't think they've left their apartment in that time!

It's Slushing!

Yesterday afternoon a secretary from the philosophy dept sent out an email warning of an oncoming blizzard and warning that, because they live outside of the centre of town, the office might not be staffed today. Last night on the tele there was a little warning in the corner of the screen, warning the counties of south-central Indiana to be on the alert.

When we woke up this morning there was no snow. Another email was sent out saying that they were there but couldn't promise to stay the whole day. There was a mix of rain and snow when I walked to campus for a 10 am lecture but coming back at 11.30 it was snowing properly but turning to slush on contact. Which makes things a bit slippery; you have to waddle to keep your balance.

And I'm going to have to go back out today to get the car from the mechanic's. Luckily it will have two new tyres that will help me drive back through the slippery slush.

Adieu, Fenry!

A week after buying a new car, I managed to sell the old one. Eventually someone responded to the ad who was actually serious enough to come look at the car (rather than ask me to drive it to Indianapolis) and he came back to buy it the next day. I asked for $700, he offered $500, we settled at $600. I'm happy and I think he will be too (because there's no other cars for sale in that price range!).

In the 3 years since I bought it, I put about 4,615 miles on it but no extra dings. The switch back to automatic hasn't been too hard; only a few times have I reached down to change gears. I think Cindy will miss the sound of metal scraping on metal every time she opens or closes the passenger door and the way the glove box comes off in your hands if you open it...

The Annual Robert Burns Party

We went to a Robert Burns Supper last night, hosted by the same friend who threw one last year. This year there was about 30 people! The piper from last year came and deafened us once again. Again, there was an ode to the haggis. But Cindy found it not offal-ly enough (she prefers her liver as pure pâté).

Dodgy Bros

When we bought the new car we were only given one pair of keys. A long one for the door and a short, stumpy one for the ignition. So, worried that we might get locked out, we decided to get another set cut straight away.* The first problem we had was finding a key cutter. There had been one in the mall but he'd been replaced by a shop selling musical instruments and knives.** I put a question on Facebook and it turns out that Americans get their keys cut in hardware stores.

The second problem we had was extreme cold. The last couple of days it's been around -10 ° and apparently this doesn't agree with door locks. Central locking was struggling and after Cindy opened her door, it wouldn't latch closed again until we'd locked and unlocked it several times.

So off to the hardware store we went for new keys and some silicone grease.*** When we got there the guy said that he might not have a blank to match the stumpy ignition key. Then he looked more closely and explained that the ignition key was identical to the door key but broken off half way. Turns out there's a fragment of key stuck in the ignition which allows us to start the car with any old key or screwdriver. (Cindy's not too happy about having paid good money for such a vehicle.)

The folks at the hardware store suggested pulling the fragment out with a magnet. But the rest of the key is brass, so I doubt there'd be enough nickel plating left for that to work. And even if we can get it out with a pair of tweezers, there's always the risk that the door key really is a different cut and we won't be able to start the car to drive to a locksmith. We're going to have to think over our options.


* Yes, we have AAA but it's easier not to have to wait. I've only ever called them for flat batteries before; I've never locked my keys in the car in America.
** Including a shiv disguised as a Zippo lighter. The last time I was there for a new watch battery he didn't put the seal back properly. Water got in but when I went back to complain, the shop had disappeared.
*** I read online that WD40 is only good for releasing joints that are rusted solid. Silicone, white lithium or teflon grease is best to keep joints moving.

Two Car Family

A little while ago I took Fenry in for some minor repairs and asked them to have a look at the brakes while they were at it. Turned out that new drums, shoes, cylinders, pyramids and tetrahedra were needed for both the rear wheels, which was going to cost $380. Given that I paid $400 for the car, I had to think this over a little... Knowing that rego time was coming up soon was an added incentive to make the decision quickly.

Today Cindy and I went and bought a new car, a '98 Hyundai Sonata GLS. It's an automatic so she'll be happier about driving it more often and we'll both be less worried about it breaking down. The 3L V6 means that we'll be able to get to Indianapolis quicker but it might also be more expensive to run. Luckily insurance is not much more.

The guy selling it had posted two ads, the second explained that he'd already dropped the asking price from $1700 to $1400 and insisted on "no low-ballers". So I wasn't sure whether I should haggle but when I offered him $1300 to take it then and there he jumped at it. (Maybe I should have started lower.)

Now I'm just trying to sell off Fenry to re-coup some money. I've put up a few ads on online classifieds and have already had a bit of interest so I'm confident that it won't take too long to sell. Actually, I've learnt a bit about Craig's List* in the process. I had heard that it was full of weirdos so I wasn't too surprised when the Nigerian scammer asked me to send him my details so he could pay me in advance. One told me that my car was underpriced because he wanted me to use a certain trade-in site; another told me that he'd previously bought a newer mint-condition Civic for less than I was asking and offered me about half the asking price, if he can get cars that cheap, good luck to him. The strangest was one who told me that he had $500 cash and could come around if I'd accept that much; it sounded like something a dealer would say, to put the pressure on but he also told a story about it being for his son. But there's been a couple of more normal sounding inquiries so I'm confident.


* Most Americans pronounce the name Craig as "creg" but not all do. I haven't yet worked out which ones.

Sane American Products

Here's something you won't see in Australia - not because it's crazy, because it's sane. Pepsi is tapping into a demand for boutique soft drinks by making versions of Pepsi and Mountain Dew with real sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup. Such a thing would be unnecessary in Australia because cane sugar is so cheap! I doubt that they'll win over those people who believe that New Coke was a big conspiracy but it's always good to see people rejecting HFCS.

We saw these bottles with their retro labels in the supermarket yesterday so I bought a bottle of Mountain Dew (I hate Pepsi so I doubt that real sugar would make me like it). Yeah, and apparently in the 60s Mountain Dew was sold with a bumpkin as their mascot. I now discover that the bottle I bought was not the original recipe, which I missed by a few months. Well I've never had the original recipe anyway so I'm not too bothered.

This may sound silly but if you've never lived in America you won't realise how, because of huge subsidies to corn farmers, high fructose corn syrup is the basis of all sweet things and is even added to things that shouldn't be sweet (like bread). Actually, there are also differences when you buy bags of plain old sugar. All the no frills brands are beet sugar and the expensive ones advertise that they're cane sugar. Because beet sugar doesn't go through the same refining process, you can't find big cheap bags of raw sugar, you have to buy demarara or turbinado or some other fancy name.

iPod Touch

Apart from the free upgrades, I've also been redeeming my frequent flyer points for toys - a 32 GB iPod Touch!

For those who don't know, it's much more than a normal iPod - it doesn't just play music and movies, it's also a mini computer for web browsing and games. It has pseudo-GPS by knowing the location of the Wi-Fi network you're connected to (not very accurate but I think it might improve once SkyHook has gathered enough info). I've been filling it with other useful applications like dictionaries, a toilet locator, a unit converter, an ebook reader, movie times and a fart machine.

It's not a phone but it has Skype so, with the new headset that includes a mic, I can use it as a phone wherever there's wi-fi. And in Bloomington there's free wi-fi everywhere - campus, cafés, restaurants and everyone's apartments.

I'm very happy with it so far. The only disappointment is that it doesn't work with my old Firewire iPod charger so I'll have to by a cheap compact USB charger from eBay. (Which is easier said than done. It's great to see the chargers getting so much smaller but the first batch of Apple chargers were recalled. These old ones and new fakes are being sold on eBay and apparently most of the fakes are not compatible with my model of iPod. But I didn't even get a chance to try to the first one I bought, that seller's gone out of business, luckily before I could pay him. Now I've bought a pair of cheap $1.37 chargers that don't try to mimic Apple's style but say explicitly that they work with the 3rd generation iPod Touch.)

I am really looking forward to taking it to campus on days when I don't feel like carrying the laptop and bringing it out at French table when we need to look something up.

Flying

I was a bit worried when I heard about the attempted bombing in Detroit and the new security measures. This wasn't actually a problem for us. On the way to Morocco I bought a small bottle of calvados (because it was cheap and I wasn't sure if I could get it later) with the intention of bringing it back to France. Then I remembered that we weren't planning to check any bags (cheap airline) and a 200mL bottle wouldn't be allowed on board; I decided to try anyway. I needn't have worried, the security leaving Marrakech didn't put any limit on the amount of liquids... but they did segregate men and women into separate queues for the screening!

Things were a bit more serious leaving Paris. The Spanish Inquisition started before we even checked our suitcases. After my cabin bag was x-rayed a guard asked me to open it. I asked him, "Did you see something inside?" but he replied, "No, just checking." They were in a very curious mood that day, he wanted to know what was inside every box and what everything was. He even asked about the TimTams, whether there was liquid inside, "No, they might be a little wet in the middle but it's not liquid." But the thing is, it wasn't just him, everyone was curious about what we'd been up to. Less than 100m further along, we were stopped again, asked more questions about our bags and what we'd done since we checked them, "Well, I had a cup of coffee..." and most passengers had their hand luggage opened and checked manually a second time.

Naturally we hoped to get upgraded to Business again but that didn't happen. As we sat in Economy Plus we reminisced about our time in Business, looked at the high prices of alcohol and calculated that between us we'd had about $50 worth of alcohol last time. The plane was late taking off because there were not enough de-icing machines to go around, so we got in to Washington a couple of hours late. Our trip through Customs was made a bit quicker by a blasé officer who let us take our 15L of cider through without paying duty. Then we saw that the next plane was delayed by two and a half hours so we had plenty of time.

Now Cindy, having flown more United miles than me, had been given some credits for domestic upgrades. Last time she wasn't able to use it because First Class was full but this time she was upgraded to First at check in. I wasn't all that jealous about a one hour flight but she was talking about sharing the seat, having half an hour each in First. Then, as we were waiting at the gate, my name was called over the PA and I received a First class boarding pass too! The seats were no better than Business but the stewardess took drink orders before take off and brought us snack boxes with chips, salami, Oreos and jelly beans. Not as much fun as 8 hours of Business but it was a nice treat.

The World's Classiest Strip Club

A while ago we were watching a doco on the Crazy Horse Cabaret of Paris; it followed some new dancers through their training. I was a little surprised when they interviewed some of the parents who described how proud they were. Then I remembered that the thing about French people being more open about nudity is not just a stereotype, e.g. topless bathing is more common than in English-speaking countries (but they do, in fact, shave their armpits; the French claim that it's German women who don't).

Then it went one step further - Cindy's mum thought that it would be good for us to have a cultural experience and decided to shout us tickets to see the show. It was excellent, very artistic:

Apart from the erotic dancers, there was a pair of male tap dancers to prove that it was a real cabaret and not just a strip club. They had quite a funny routine and were obviously talented. It must be hard competing with all those boobs.

Ouarzazate

From Morocco

After yesterday's trip to Casablanca we decided to take a bus trip to Ouarzazate.

We travelled over the Atlas Mountains, taking the highest pass in Morocco, 2,200 m. It was quite cold up there and the air was quite thin (water bottles opened in the mountains were flattened on the other side). We made plenty of stops to photograph the picturesque views.

From Morocco

On the other side we saw rocky desert with little towns built around casbahs. We had lunch at a nice little place in Ouarzazate overlooking the casbah. We only had time for a quick tour of the medina (the old city) before heading back over those windy mountain passes to Marrakech.

Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world...

From Morocco

Yesterday we saw so much in Marrakech that we decided to go up to Casablanca for the day.

The train ride takes more than 3 hours so we only had the afternoon. Casablanca is a big commercial city with less touristy stuff. We managed to find Rick's Café but it was closed and we didn't have time to come back.

The other attraction was the biggest mosque in the country and one of the few that non-Muslims are allowed to enter. However, we arrived too late for the tour and only saw the outside.

From Morocco

Riding on the Marrakech Express

From Morocco

Cindy and I decided to get away from the winter weather with a short side-trip down to Morocco.

We flew down Sunday night and checked into our hotel just outside the medina, the old city. We ventured in looking for dinner and found it a bit overwhelming. It smelt of burning charcoal and two-stroke and scooters were constantly trying to run us down but we managed to find a decent dinner and some bottled water.

The next day we found the touristy part of town and spent the whole day in the souks, the traditional markets. There is an amazing range of things for sale: spices, clothes, ceramics, woodwork, metal crafts and leather goods. It had been a while since I'd been in a market where haggling is a must so at first I didn't understand that there were no prices. They all wanted you to make an offer and some sellers would even refuse to put a figure on an item until you chose a couple of other things to buy at the same time. This was a bit frustrating when we wanted just one thing from that stall.

I noticed a couple of things about business in the souks. No one has change, they're always wanting you to pay with a smaller note; in fact, this is true even in bigger shops. The traders can get anything for you, even if it's not in their stall.

From Morocco