A Week of Festivities

Living a multi-cultural life means a lot of different festivals to celebrate.

Saturday was the French festival Chandeleur. Originally a Catholic festival, it's now about eating crêpes. So I cooked Crêpes Suzette and some savoury buckwheat crêpes that the French call galettes. Apparently the best way is with ham, Swiss cheese and a fried egg; but blue vein cheese and walnuts is also a popular choice.

Sunday was the Superbowl, which in American culture is as important a moveable feast as Easter. We went and watched it at a friend's place. I know more of the rules now but I still don't understand the appeal of gridiron. Still, a meal with friends is always fun. One instructor was complaining beforehand that he knew that Superbowl meant all his students would do badly on Monday's exam. I overheard another American explaining to some international students, "If your team is in the Superbowl, it's perfectly acceptable to be drunk at 10 am." (Kick-off is not until 6.30 pm.) You probably don't remember that last year's winner was the Indianapolis Colts. Well, apparently in the last 12 months the #1 male baby name has been "Peyton", after the Colts' quarterback. (They then tried to tell me that the top girl's name was "Neveah"; I immediately told them about this terrific idea.)

Today (Tuesday) is Shrove Tuesday. I made pikelets. But here no-one knows what Shrove Tuesday is; Americans don't shrive. (That's right, "shrove" is the past tense of "shrive" but I can't remember what it means.)
Instead, because of the Louisiana celebrations, Americans have Mardi Gras. (I even heard one girl use an English translation, "Fat Toosday"!) With the Louisiana Mardi Gras they eat what they call a King cake, based on the French Galette des Rois (which the Frogs eat on 6th January, the Epiphany). It's the same in that they bake a surprise inside (always a baby Jesus in Louisiana, random trinkets in France) but Cindy assures me that the cakes themselves are very different - almond in France, cinnamon in Louisiana. They're in all the supermarkets so I bought one to try, it was ok.

And this Thursday is Chinese New Year. That lasts a few days so Sunday we're going to a festival on campus with a Chinese friend.

More little quirks

I noticed a while ago that Americans eat a lot of apple sauce. For example, it's in those snack boxes that you can buy on domestic flights (which I never buy). I dunno what they do with it, eat it with a spoon like baby food, I guess. I do know that Jews put apple sauce on potato pancakes (which they call latkes) but when I asked someone why they couldn't tell me. But here's the strange thing: when I commented, 'The only thing I associate apple sauce with is pork chops.', they were shocked. None of the Americans in the room had heard of putting apple sauce on pork! One said, 'I've heard of mint sauce on lamb.' but they don't even eat lamb! How can they, with so much apple sauce around, not have discovered the combination of pork and apple sauce?

Oh, and I got a new number plate for my car in the mail today. Strange, they allow me to renew my rego online -- convenient -- but insist on giving me a new plate, even though the other is less than two years old. Sounds like a waste of aluminium, having just insisted on giving me a new plate when I bought the car. Whatever, I never learnt the old number anyway!
The old one looked like this:

A nice field of corn, with a barn in the background, which is what the state actually looks like. The new one is uglier:

But, better still, there's a new style coming out next year that you can request at no extra cost, which will last until 2013:

I'll probably get it if it's free. But I don't see how it's Lincoln's bicentenary, if he was born in 1816 but the plate can only be retained until 2013. The other question is, "Will the Illinoisans resent it?" because they claim Lincoln too. I think he's on all their plates.

Back in the USA

The time is about the same in either direction but coming from Sydney to Indiana is worse. That long leg across the Pacific leaves you feeling completely buggered just when you're trying to stay away to get on and off planes.

I think it might have been a little longer door-to-door because we had to get to the airport so early. We weren't able to check in online so we got there 3 hours before the scheduled departure. Then when we checked our bags they told us we'd only get seats allocated at the gate because they had overbooked -- they were offering people $800 to come back the next day. So when we got to the gate half an hour earlier than the boarding time, the woman told us to go away and come back at boarding. Worried about getting seats, we kept coming back and asking, which I'm sure annoyed her, but we were worried about overbooked flights.

Oh, and when we were going through security something in Cindy's bag attracted their attention. It was the mini leatherman knife (geologists need these things) she had got for Xmas, she'd forgotten to take it out. We apologised but they weren't worried, they kept the knife and that was all. (I have to wonder what would have happened had we tried that at an American airport.)

So eventually we got into Indianapolis at 11pm, where a friend was waiting to drive us back to Bloomington. That was Monday night so we missed the first day of classes but it was worth it.

More Adventures in Australia

Our holiday went basically as per the schedule below. I think we did quite well to combine my need to see friends with Cindy's need to do touristy things.

Tuesday we went to Muru Mittigar for boomerang lessons etc. We took a little tour of the centre and learnt about uses of various plants. When we spoke to the guy making didgeridoos, he explained that he still uses the traditional method of letting termites hollow out the branches. I figured that he must have grown up in a rather traditional community because he spoke with that stereotypical aboriginal accent. Cindy commented that that the way he spoke English sounded just like the rustic accent from central France!

Wednesday went to Featherdale with Lisa and Jezebel, as planned. So Cindy and the little girl both got to pat all the animals. Cindy was eager to see wild kangaroos too, so we went up to Euroka clearing for those.

The BBQ lunch at Steffan's was great. As well as seeing old friends we ate kangaroo. Cindy said she prefers it to beef (but it's not quite as good as horse!).

Saturday we went to the Opera House to see a carols performance. It was an interesting mixture of traditional, formal carols sung by professional opera singers and some more modern numbers. Erin got all excited about the sleigh-ride song.

Then Xmas day was a big deal. We had all my mother's family and some of my father's over at our place for lunch (17 people in all).

Boxing Day we drove up to Wooli. Traffic was ok, got there at a decent time. But the weather was not great. At first it was just a little rain, but after that cyclone came down the Queensland coast the storms became quite violent. We still managed to swim between showers. We'd go in the water, it would start raining so we'd just stay in until the rain stopped!

Back Home

We're now in Australia.

We left Bloomington, Indiana at 11.30 am local time, drove to Indianapolis, flew to Chicago (waited there a few hours), flew to San Francisco, changed planes and then flew to Sydney. My parents picked us up at the airport then drove us out to Penrith. About 30 hours door-to-door.

After dumping our bags and taking a much needed shower we all headed off to my father's family Xmas party at Bobbin Head (another hour in the car!). It was a BBQ picnic, it was a good spread. Got to see lots of family that we haven't seen in a long time. Everyone seemed pleased to got to meet Cindy and I had to explain some connections that she's surely forgotten.

Then today we did some shopping in Penrith. A lot of little things have changed but nothing major. The main thing I noticed is that I now hear accents on everyone (not just the bogans). I feel like the kid from The Sixth Sense, hearing something no one else hears.

And I'm surprised at just how much of a reflex it has become to drive on the right hand side of the road.

Apart from that, it's been pretty easy to settle back in.

It was snowing as I walked to campus today

Just a little, but it was definitely snow.

Follow the Sun

Those storms on the east coast of North America are not dumping snow here in the Mid-West, but it's almost cold enough. This morning it was -2 ˙C but the wind-chill made it -11! And it's only just starting.

I'll be glad for a few weeks of summer!

13 more sleeps

until we leave for Oz.

Another Thanksgiving

Last Thursday was Thanksgiving here. All our American friends left town so we invited a Canadian friend around to share a Turkey dinner with us. She brought pumpkin pie. It was good.

We went to check out the sales on Friday. Apparently you have to get there at 5am to get the really good bargains. We didn't. We bought some bits and pieces that were cheap, but nothing too interesting.

Not much else to report except that I now realise that I forgot to listen to "Alice's Restaurant". Next year.

Tour Dates

We've just bought our plane tickets for the trip home this December. We'll be leaving on the afternoon of Friday 14th but, because the trip takes so long and because we cross the date line, we don't arrive until the morning of Sunday 16th.

That means I won't be able to make it to Cam's BBBQ. No biggie, I don't like gaspacho anyway.

It'll be a busy time of year and I'll only be in Sydney until Boxing Day so, if you want to see me, you'd better make an appointment, otherwise you'll have to take a number and join the queue. So that you don't request an appointment on a day I already have plans, I've posted a rough schedule.

Nick and Cindy will be appearing at the following venues on the dates listed below:

Sunday 16th December - 7.50am arrive Sydney Airport; lunchtime, Xmas party with my father's family.

Monday 17th - shopping for Australian food; visit grandparents; ad hoc shit with Joel

Tuesday 18th - Muru Mittigar?

Wednesday 19th - morning, Penriff markets; afternoon, Featherdale with Lisa and Jezebel

Thursday 20th - morning, city; afternoon, UNSW

Friday 21st - BBQ at Steffan's; Katoomba

Saturday 22nd - day, touristy stuff in town; evening, Opera House

Sunday 23rd - ad hoc shit with Cameron

Monday 24th - my grandmother's birthday

Xmas - lunch at my parents'

Boxing Day - to Wooli

6th January - back to Sydney

Monday 7th - depart Sydney airport 4.15pm; 10.57pm arrive Indianapolis (no, the flight is not that short, we cross the date line)

(I hope posting this information on the internet doesn't make me too easy to assassinate.)

Mazal Tov

So Saturday morning Cindy and I got up early to drive to Pittsburgh with some friends who were also invited to a wedding there.

We checked into our hotels Saturday afternoon and then went for a dinner cruise on the rivers of Pittsburgh. The Allegheny and Monongahela rivers join to form the Ohio river at Pittsburgh, so they count that as three rivers. (The bride grew up there and seems proud of their having three rivers.) It was nice to get a look at the city that we wouldn't have otherwise, on such a whirlwind tour.

I had never been to a Jewish wedding before so I can add this to my list of American experiences. (I had seen my friend Matt break a glass under his foot in order to spite his Christian father-in-law but that doesn't really count.)

As a groomsman, I had to get there a couple of hours early to practise. All that seemed very normal; groom waiting at the altar (ok, not an altar but a tent; but Christian churches don't have real altars either, so why do we say it like that?), groomsmen escorting bridesmaids in, bride brought in by her father (and mother!). But once the ceremony started the differences became bigger. The first thing they did was sign the marriage contract, which the groom assented to despite the fact that it was written in Aramaic. The rabbi read a little of that out (not too much phlegm at that stage, he only read a few sentences.)

Then he gave a sermon/roast of the bride (everyone was laughing) before saying, I think it was seven, blessings in Hebrew. (That's when it started to get a bit phlegmatic.) And the bride and her mother and (I think) the groom's mother, all held hands and did seven laps around the groom. That can take quite a while in a wedding dress!

The bride and groom had to drink from both the glass of joy and the cup of sorrow (more Hebrew blessings on the wine). I don't know why they didn't just skip the cup of sorrow, that might have saved them some worries later. Then a glass was broken underfoot and there was much yelling of "Mazal tov!"

And after the meal they all started dancing the hora. The bride and groom were hoisted up on chairs and danced about; then the bride's parents; and then the groom's gentile parents, who probably weren't expecting that.

Food and drinks were good and I got a souvenir kippah, inscribed inside with the date of the wedding. Oh, and instead of bonbonnieri our gifts were classic novels; I already had a copy of Ivanhoe, so I swapped it with Cindy for Walden.


I should also mention how hard it is to wear a kippah. I've realised that I tilt my head back when I laugh, because every time I laughed that day, even the slightest chuckle, my kippah fell off. Still, I couldn't bring myself to use the bobby-pins provided.

After the reception we hit the road straight away and got home to Bloomington just before midnight.

Dylan Plays Bloomington

We just got home from seeing Bob Dylan in concert for the second time in just a couple of months. This time, instead of having to drive up to Indy, he came to us for IU's Homecoming Concert.

He played a similar set but with more newer songs than last time. Again, it's interesting hearing his older stuff played in his new style. "It Ain't Me, Babe" fares very well (I think he played that both times), "My Back Pages" does ok, but there's something strange about hearing "Blowin' in the Wind" sung to a halting bluesy beat.

Opening for him was Elvis Costello, whose music I don't really know. Still, I was impressed. He played very enthusiastically and engaged the audience quite a lot with the sort of political comments that go down well in a college town. (Bloomington is a pool of Blue in an ocean of Red.)

Tomorrow morning Cindy and I leave for Pittsburgh for a wedding. It's going to be a big weekend.

I'm jinxed

If I haven't posted anything in a long time, if you haven't seen me on your favourite chat network in a while, it's because I'm bad luck with computers.

I've already mentioned that few weeks ago, just before we left for that conference at Toronto, my computer suffered massive hard disk failure. When the new semester started Cindy bought a new MacBook with the money her dept had given her for academic expenses. I quite enjoyed getting that set up for her and was using it a bit myself. Then last week her brand spanking new computer also died!

Which is why I haven't been online much. I check my email regularly with her PC but I'm not very comfortable with these French keyboards so I'm rarely in the mood for new blog posts.

Life in a University Town

Apparently the first weekend of the semester is party weekend. Cindy and I went to a party on Friday night, held by a couple of the older grad students in my department. It was just a few blocks away but as we walked there we must have passed a dozen other house parties. Now, most of the parties are late night events, starting after 9pm. But Bloomington, despite being a college town, has a "quiet nights" policy that is sometimes policed. So, soon after midnight, when the party was just getting started, a couple of cops came by to chase up on a noise complaint. We were all a bit surprised, being grad students we just assumed that the police would be more busy chasing under-age drinking at the undergrad parties. (Don't forget, this is America, you can't drink until 21 so most undergrads are under-age.) They fined each of the house's residents $50, which is not that high but seems strange that the fine is per occupant. The strange thing was that they then threatened to arrest them if the noise continued! Cindy enjoyed that part of the night, we thought the music was a little too loud anyway, and she'd never been to a party where the cops had come. So she was able to chalk that one up on her list of American experiences!

But I did notice that, after 2 years living in Bloomington, I'm starting to know a lot more people at these parties. I had to chase one guy down there in order to pass on a "hi" that I'd been charged with at the Toronto conference. That's the nice side of living in a college town, you often see people you know; whether it be classmates or professors, at a big party or just at the supermarket.

Back in Bloomington, Back to Work

So we made it back to Bloomington at a reasonable hour on Saturday night. We left London, Ontario Saturday morning and drove along the Ontario Peninsula across into Michigan at Sarnia/Port Huron and then south to Indiana. Before leaving Canada I made sure to stop at a supermarket to buy some HP sauce and look for Cadbury Chocolate, which can't be found in the USA. I only found little chocolate bars but I got 1L of sauce for only about C$5.50, much cheaper than buying it from the British section here. Best of all, I noticed a little green tin in the chocolate milk section. Yes, it was Milo! I haven't tried it yet, so I'm not sure whether it's the real thing but it appears not to be that Singaporean stuff that tastes like Ovaltine.

I've been slow in posting because my computer is still dead. Today Cindy bought a new Macbook, something she'd been planning to do for months. So I'll be sharing this one for a while.

Niagara Falls

On our way to Toroto we had two choices of route, through Michigan or through Ohio and New York. We decided to do both and make it a round trip. So first we drove east through Ohio, stopping for lunch at Springfield. That night we stayed at Erie, Pennsylvania, on Lake Erie.

The next morning it was raining buckets but we made it through New York state and across the border into Canada in just a couple of hours. Once across we made a short detour to Niagara Falls. Once we found a park and started walking around, the weather cleared up dramatically and the light became much better for photos.

Conference

A little while ago I submitted an abstract of a paper for a conference. It was accepted, so I'll be speaking at this conference in Toronto. One of my prefoessor's has been advising me and a couple of weeks ago arranged for me to give a practice talk to a few dept members who were still around in the dead of summer. There were some helpful suggestions that I'm just finishing incorporating now.

The conference is on Friday but I've decided to drive up to Toronto, which means leaving tomorrow. Cindy's coming too, so we can share the driving. Still, it's 2 000 km round trip, which with will drive in 4 days. We'll be hiring a car, because Fenry has no air-conditioning (and might not make such a long trip).

Everything was all planned out. But then, this afternoon my computer died. Not a little hard-disk failure like last time but a complete and utter disaster. Luckily I learnt from last time and I've been backing up my documents far more regularly, on both my external hard drive and my iPod. I am now bringing my files up to date so I can print everything out and give my presentation off hard copies.

Something to Contemplate

A comment by Baden on Cameron's blog recently has reminded me of something I've been meaning to write down before I forget. Baden mentioned that he liked asking people how they described animal noises in different languages. This reminded me of my mother's ongoing quest to learn how to say "belly-button" in as many languages as possible. I must admit that I've been known to help out at times.

So far we have:

English: navel
French: nombril (or, more formally, ombilic)
German: Bauchnabel
Greek: ὀμϕαλός (omphalos)
Hindi: sundi
Indonesian: pusar
Italian: ombelico
Javanese: udel
Latin: umbilicus
Malayalam: pokkil

I guess a straightforward word like that would be easy to look up in dictionaries, unlike Baden's onomatopoeia, but that would be cheating.

Unpacking

The unpacking isn't too much of a chore, because of the air-conditioning. But moving the last of my stuff out of the old place hard and cleaning it will be worse. Just a few minutes in the humidity is enough for me to be soaked in sweat.

I think I underestimated the bits and pieces I'd left there yesterday. I brought a full car load by myself today and I think there'll be another half a load for me to get tomorrow when I go to clean the place.

Living in Sin

Cindy and I moved into the new apartment today.

We had spent the evening packing stuff into boxes and plastic shopping bags. Then this morning we got up early (well, 8 is early for us) to collect the keys and start moving stuff to the new place. We did two car loads of small things ourselves in the morning. Then Cindy went and borrowed a van from her department, and a few friends turned up to help us with the big things. My desk was the biggest and heaviest so we did that first. Everything was much easier after that.

Americans don't move fridges. They belong to the house or apartment so there's always one there when you arrive. You don't get as much choice but there's certainly a lot less work this way. Because Bloomington is a college town, everyone is moving right now - you see a U-Haul truck every couple of blocks. In fact, people are leaving in so much of a hurry that they often don't have time to try to sell off their old furniture and you can find perfectly good stuff just sitting out on the street. A few weeks ago I got an old sturdy book-case and today we were lucky enough to find a very clean-looking sofa in front of my building, right when we have the van to move it. So now there's a bit more furniture to help fill this much bigger apartment.

We stopped at around 2 pm after we got all the big things and the heavy things like books. That's almost everything now; I have just a few bits and pieces to collect when I go back to clean up.

The new apartment is not just bigger than the old one, it's much nicer. There's a lot more windows, tons more cupboard space in the kitchen. The best part is that there is a dishwasher and central heating and cooling (that the landlord pays for)!

If I haven't already emailed you my new address and you need it, let me know.