Snow Day!

Last night we didn't go to the Runcible Spoon (as we do most Tuesdays) because there had been snow and there was a lot of slush on the roads.

This morning I received this email:

Indiana University's Bloomington campus is closed until noon today (Jan. 28) because of icy roads creating hazardous travel conditions. A decision on whether to reopen after 12:00 p.m. will be made late in the morning based on updated road conditions.

Here's why:That's the view from our bedroom window.


That's the carpark of our building.

And this is Fess Ave facing north, the way I walk to get to campus.

A new record - the most snow I've ever seen in one place.

Addendum - Noon
Classes have been cancelled for the whole day. I just received an automated phone call explaining that the only people expected to turn up are those whose jobs involve moving snow or cooking in the residence halls. Even then, it's only if they're able to make it.

Even more surprising, Monroe county has declared a snow emergency! Only essential emergency and public safety travel is permitted. Luckily we have enough food for a few days.

Bitching about the weather again

A week or so ago we had a record cold snap - the record broken was "the coldest it's been in Bloomington since I moved here": And it's not just that it hits a low overnight, that -21˙ above was after 9 a.m., the lowest temperature recorded that day was -23˙C!

And it wasn't much warmer in the middle of the day, when the wind-chill took it down to -28!

And now I'm having students ask if I'm going to cancel class because there's a winter storm forecast. They're predicting a lot of snow!It's the ice I really hate; you can walk on snow ok but when the asphalt get icy you just slip straight over.

Happy Birthday Rabbie Burns!

Robert Burns was born 250 years ago today,

Last night Cindy and I went to a Burns supper where we ate haggis, drank scotch and heard some poetry. I was asked to give a speech "long-winded enough to remind the guests that this isn't the office Christmas party, yet not so long as to induce cramping, dry-mouth, or ringing in the ears". This gave me a good excuse to wear the Henderson tartan tie I bought in Edinburgh last summer.

It was a good night. The haggis was surprisingly edible; there was enough oatmeal and the meat was cut finely enough that it didn't feel too offally.

Back

We arrived back in Bloomington without incident. We made all our flights, the only delay was the flight from Chicago to Indy. I had phone the friend who was picking us up to tell him we were running on time, then United promptly made a liar out of me, forcing him to wait for us for an hour.

A Literary Meme

I've been tagged by Lara.

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read.
3) Underline (or mark in a different color) the books you LOVE
4) Reprint this list in your blog. The premise of this exercise is that the (American) National Endowment for the Arts apparently believes that the average American has only read 6 books from the list below.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling.
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte.
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman.
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens.
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy.
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare. Well, quite a few during and since high school. No one needs to read them all!
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell.
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams. The first one was hilarious, the second quite amusing, but the third just got too silly.
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens..
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis. Wait, wasn't #33 the whole Narnia series?
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan.
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 The Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt.
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare. But #14 asked us if we'd read his complete works!
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

I'm not going to tag anyone. Most people I know are too lazy with their blogs. But if you want to do it, knock yourself out.

The Travel Saga

So, our trip to Sydney did not go quite according to the original itinerary. Flying in late December is not good in the northern hemisphere, not only is everyone else doing it too, but there's also a lot of snow around. They really should move Xmas to July here!

Well we started out ok, we got to the airport nice and early. We were so proud of ourselves for checking in our bags on time when all the people queueing with us were running late. Our flight was a bit slow taking off but we landed at Chicago with enough time to make our connection. Or so we thought - the real delay was getting off that plane and onto the next. It had been snowing at Chicago (the tarmac was covered and planes were guided by lights) and the plane at the gate needed to be de-iced before it would get out of our way. By the time we got into the terminal and found the right gate we'd missed out flight by about five minutes!

Just getting an answer was hell, there was no-one staffing the info desk so we had to go out of security and get a new flight from the ticketing counter. We were hoping to get the next flight to LA to make our connection but the woman there informed us in no uncertain terms, "You won't be flying out of Chicago tonight." She put us on a plane for the next afternoon (via San Francisco AND Auckland!) but refused to pay for a hotel for the night. They blamed air traffic control.

They offered us a voucher but we found another motel cheaply enough and waited for their airport shuttle to pick us up. It was freezing cold and snowing heavily but we had to keep going outside to check if it had arrived. When we got to the motel we saw that the only food was a Maccas. It was only next door but we had to walk over snowdrifts to get there and we were only wearing summer clothes!

The next day we went back to O'Hare airport well before our departure time only to find that they were already predicting delays for our flight to San Francisco. We saw that we would miss our connection so we went to the help desk to ask whether we should even bother getting on that plane and to hopefully get a third itinerary. That's when I realised just how many people are travelling that time of year. The queue stretched about 100m and it took over an hour to get to the front. Behind us were a middle aged Kiwi couple who heard that we were going to Auckland and told us they would be missing the same flight. But that wait actually paid off, after much checking and fiddling, the woman at the desk managed to get us on a flight leaving San Fran later that night and going straight to Sydney. (Cindy was disappointed that she wouldn't get to see Hobbits but I was glad that it would be a shorter flight.) I wondered why we hadn't been put on that flight the night before and then I realised that we were only confirmed for that flight, not checked in yet. I wondered what that meant and we got a bit worried.

When we arrived at San Fran, we had to check in with all the others who had just rocked up at the airport. The queue wasn't long but it moved very slowly with just one person serving. When we were being checked in I enquired about my suitcase, as I had realised that the first woman at Chicago had stolen my claim check, which was stuck to an itinerary I handed her. When she looked it up in San Fran, she saw that our bags had actually made the connection from Chicago to LA on the first day. She explained that they couldn't fly with us and would only come after I had filled in the form explaining that they were missing. I said, "Well give me the form now and they can start moving them while we're on our way there." She replied that that was impossible, I had to request them from the final destination. So for 14 hours while we were in the air, our bags were at LAX with no one doing anything about it.

The stress didn't end there, even. For some reason we couldn't get a seat allocation at check-in so we had to go through with just boarding passes and get seats at the gate. Right up to the last minute we thought something else was going to happen to keep us off that flight but luckily they had seats for us. I can only assume that someone else must not have made the connection and we benefited from their misfortune!

And that's about it. We requested our bags upon arrival in Sydney and they only took a day and a half to deliver them to Penrith. In the mean time we had to go shopping for summer clothes and underwear but you can never have too many of those!

World Tour of Australia, 2008

Here are our tour dates:

20th December - Depart Indianapolis 5.32 pm
Miss plane in Chicago, stay in Chicago until 21st
Miss second plane
Lose suitcases
23rd December - Arrive Sydney, 8 am; pm go shopping for clothes
25th December - Xmas dinner chez Best
27th December - EtOH sampling with UNSW chemists
28th December - Picnic at Euroka Clearing
30th December - pm Visit Lisa
31st December - 4pm-Midnight, Fireworks on Sydney Harbour
1st January - Canberra
2nd-4th January - Mollymook
6th January - City
7th January - Bushwalk at Wentworth Falls; dinner at Aunty Kath's
10th January - Depart Sydney 3.15 pm (via LA and Chicago); Arrive Indianapolis 11.36 pm

I'll keep updating this post, so leave a message to book an appearance at your venue.

Thanksgiving 2008

This year, was my 4th Thanksgiving and the 3rd that I cooked myself. And this Thanksgiving had a "when in Rome..." theme.

That is to say I relented. Not only did I make the stuffing in a casserole dish, I also made that abominable mashed sweet-potato and marshmallow casserole. Actually, it wasn't all that bad. The nutmeg goes as well with sweet potato as it does with pumpkin. It just doesn't belong with the main course. After some umming and erring I decided to serve it with the turkey, à l'americain, but I wished I'd saved it for dessert. But I think the pumpkin pie my Canadian friend brought was better.

Apart from my own Thanksgiving Dinner at lunchtime, I was invited for a pot-luck Thanksgiving Dinner that night with various students from the HPS dept. When I saw that there was no time overlap I was sorely tempted to try to make both but then I remembered how it worked out for the Vicar of Dibley and I thought better of it. (This is a whole episode, don't click if you have download limits to worry about.)

Thanksgiving Traditions

I know I've mentioned some American Thanksgiving traditions before but I keep learning more.

I did describe in some detail the combination of sweet potatoes and marshmallows. It's common enough here in Indiana that the supermarkets put out marshmallows and brown sugar in the vege section next to the sweet potatoes for everyone's convenience. A friend of mine who's lived in LA and Boston assures me that this in not just a Mid-West novelty dish, it can be found all over the states. I'm considering making that recipe this year, just to see what it's like. We'll have people over so if it's disgusting, Cindy and I won't have to eat it all ourselves.

I've also mentioned turduckens. Looking back to my first Thanksgiving, what's more interesting is Cameron's comment:

I want to try some turducken! If and when I come over to Indiana, I have to try it out. It's like baconated grapefruit or some other 'antichrist' of vegetarians. I can see them crossing themselves right now.

I might just hold him to that! (Cameron, the rule is that vegans are allowed to eat meat if they're in a different area code.)

But I don't think I've ever mentioned just how Americans cook their turkeys. This photo was taken at our local K-Mart but turkey deep-friers can also be bought in supermarkets along with 4 US gallon (15 L) bottles of oil. They put them out a few weeks before, next to the turkeys.

Now the New York Times is reporting that this might not be such a good idea. If the fat doesn't kill you through a heart-attack, it might just burn you to death:

The turkey fryers — which combine gallons of boiling oil, open propane gas fires and often unstable frames — can easily become flame throwers, fire safety experts say.

Because of the number of fires and burns, national fire safety groups essentially urge people not to fry turkeys. The city’s Fire Department has issued a warning about turkey fryers. And Underwriters Laboratories, a nonprofit group that gives safety certifications for everything from hair dryers to space heaters, has refused to put its UL safety mark on any turkey deep fryer.

I think I'll stick to the oven when I cook mine this Thursday.

And my anecdote for this week isn't picking on United Statesians (for a change) but a different breed of North American. I was discussing Thanksgiving with a pair of Canadians. They have an earlier date for their Thanksgiving up there, because the climate is colder so the harvest comes earlier but everything else is the same. So one of them asked me, 'What do you do for Thanksgiving in Australia?'
'We cook an emu,' I replied, straight-faced. And they believed me!

But when I mentioned this to Cindy, she asked, 'Well, why don't you?' In France they always eat exotic birds at Xmas (pheasant, goose, capon etc.) and everyone knows about emu farming, so it just seemed logical to her that we should at least eat emus at Xmas. I prefer the light meat of the turkey so I think I'd rather stick to tradition than eat patriotically.

Addendum
Tonight at French table I asked a couple of Americans what their favourite Thanksgiving dishes were.
One (West Virginia) replied that she loves stuffing, particularly with lots of dried fruit. So I checked and she confirmed that her stuffing never actually goes in the bird. (It's not sheer laziness, apparently they're all terrified of salmonella poisoning.) In fact, I think I'm yet to meet an American who does stuff their stuffing; in another generation no one will know why it's called "stuffing"!

The other (Michigan) said it was sweet potatoes. So I asked her about the marshmallow abomination. She said she didn't like them with marshmallows herself because she doesn't have much of a sweet tooth. Instead, she likes them sprinkled with brown sugar and cinnamon! No, that's not a sweet tooth at all! On the other hand, this same girl told us that her grandmother's recipe for apple pie called for a cheddar crust. At first I thought I had misheard but, no, in that family at least they really put cheese in the crusts of their apple pies.

Snow

It's definitely cold here now. On Monday I put on my big coat before leaving for class and when I got outside I realised it was snowing. Just a few grains, which melted as soon as they hit the ground. But it was definitely snow. I phoned Cindy to tell her to look out the window, so she'd think to take a beanie, as I hadn't. That wasn't really necessary as she puts on mittens and a warm hat at the drop of one.

I'm about to leave for class now. I see that it's snowing again today. Lighter feathery flakes today. I guess they'll be prettier to walk through but I doubt they'll be any less cold.

Labyrinthitis

Monday I woke up feeling strange. The night before I felt a bit dizzy before going to bed. I assumed it was over-tiredness but I woke up still dizzy. Assuming it was a middle ear infection I went to the doctor. He couldn't see anything and my eustation tubes were clear so apparently it was a mild case of labyrinthitis. (He also tested to see if I'd had a stroke, which I hadn't, and the nurse said I had excellent blood pressure.)

It went away completely later that afternoon so I wasn't too worried. But then it came back again for a few hours today. It's not serious (nothing like what Erin had) but I'm hoping that it's not going to keep recurring because it's difficult to teach when every turn of the head makes you feel like you're on a rollercoaster.

Pushing the Envelope

Not as many interesting interesting misunderstandings from the Americans in my French class this week. We were translating a play from English into French. First they read through it in awful English accents while our English lecturer grinned and bore the mockery. When we got to translating the word "bloody" the American presenting said, "And I know from talking to English people that that's a very strong swear-word."
I contradicted him, "Not really. It is a swear word - unlike "damn" - but it's not a strong one."
The lecturer half backed me up, "Well my brother once got his mouth washed out with soap for saying 'bloody' but it's not the worst of words."
I can't wait to tell them about how Australians use the word "bugger"!

Then later in the class I noticed that the lecturer was disagreeing with all the students' ideas on how to translate "quite". Seeing the problem I gently explained to her why she wasn't getting through to them, "In American, 'quite' is always as an intensifier, even if in normal English we use it to tone down a claim."
People started muttering and the teacher chuckled at my choice of words. I just said, "Sorry, Standard English."
To which she cautioned, "We need to be a little careful here."
I don't think any Americans heard me ask, "What, I'm not supposed to call it patois americain?"

The only other thing of note was the use of a French word - chiant. I was a little proud of being able to incorporate some slang that I had learnt in passing, without having to look it up. But when it came time to discuss the translation in class, the teacher said, "You definitely couldn't use chiant there. It's far too vulgar."
I felt like exclaiming, "Then why does my girlfriend always say it to me?"

Itinerary

Cindy and I bought our tickets for Australia a few months ago. We wanted to get in early before prices shot up too much further (we've been stung a couple of times in the past, buying our tickets too late). We managed to find some for a not too horrendous price (from STA) and we stopped thinking about it.

Then we received emails from the travel agent telling us that there had been schedule changes for our flights, could we please phone to confirm. But when we looked at the new itinerary, we saw that one of the changes had us getting to Chicago at 12.04 am and leaving for Indianapolis at 9.30 pm the day before! It took about a week for them to sort it out with the airline (United). We now have a temporally possible itinerary; we're just hoping they won't change it again!

Here 'tis:

20th December: Depart Indianapolis 5.32 pm (via Chicago and LA)
22nd December: Arrive Sydney

10th January: Depart Sydney 3.15 pm (via LA and Chicago)
Arrive Indianapolis 11.36 pm

So start marking your calendars!

Knowing one's own language

For the first week of my French class the teacher gave us a number of sentences to translate from English into French. One of them struck us all as a little strange and poetic: "The house smelt of size and new paint." When we were all suggesting French words like grandeur for "size", she asked us, 'Who looked up "size" in an English dictionary?' Of course none of us had, but apparently we should have because here it referred to sizing glue.

Despite having learnt my lesson, I still felt a bit sorry for the two American girls presenting their translations in French class this week. They made a big dialectical mistake with the word "semi".

The phrase was, "The houses were much larger than Wilt's semi." The first thing that came to their American minds was a semi-trailer. I must admit, that thought occurred to me too, but I dismissed it when I realised that it had to be a type of house and inferred that "semi" must be slang for semi-detached. (Thanks, Richard Thompson!) Not these two. They had the word "trailer" stuck in their heads and - because Americans call caravans "trailers" - they inferred that the character in question lived in a caravan park.

I must admit, "semi-detached" is not a term I would use, I'd probably use "duplex" in the broader (apparently American) sense. But seeing their embarrassing mistake has reminded me to keep looking beyond my own natural vocabulary.

Translating Foodstuffs

Today the Americans in my French class learnt another thing that I was surprised they couldn't work out for themselves. The text we were translating from English mentioned "bread and butter pudding". All the Americans were asking, 'What's that? Is it like bread pudding?'
So I asked, 'Does bread pudding have butter in it?'
'Yes'
'Voilà!'

The Frenchies in the class got to speculating on how one might translate the word pudding by itself. 'Crème,' one suggested.
So I had to explain that this was not one of those American puddings, those pseudo-mousses. That it was was starchy etc. 'C'est un gâteau, en fait,' the teacher interjected.
'Oh,' one of the Americans suddenly realised, 'Like a Christmas pudding?' Yes, bravo, it's a very enlightened American who knows what a Christmas pudding is.

Then we continued translating and got to "cheese and chutney sandwich". So an American girl had to ask, 'What's chutney?' These people have been living in caves!!

Cosmopolitanism

I've probably complained about the little things in the past but I need to explain to people about Americans' insularity. They're not ignorant in the way they are stereotyped but they are insular. This comes out not as a lack of knowledge but more in their attitudes to foreign things.

The most blatant example was when the secretary in my dept was organising a restaurant dinner for a guest speaker that I was to attend and she asked, "Do you like ethnic food?" Implying: (a) that there are two classes of food - American and ethnic; and (b) that it's perfectly reasonable to reply, "No, I don't like any ethnic food."

The next most confusing attitude is the opposite one. I had a classmate who had spent a year at Oxford. She was quite proud of the fact that she occasionally spelt words the proper way. Not because she saw that American spellings are merely common childish mistakes that no one bothered to correct. No, she felt that there was something romantic about that sort of thing. Likewise the occasional use of "British" words: again, not because it's good to have a broad and varied vocabulary but more because those particular words carry an exotic cachet. I've since met other Anglophiles but I still can't quite work out how you can be in love with English culture. I mean, it's just normal, the default. It's Continental, Asian and African cultures that are foreign!

And that's the thing. For these people who find England exotic, anything more foreign will always be foreign. The foreign foods section of the supermarket (which I've mentioned before) is the best example. Certainly various styles of cooking belong together but the thing I noticed more recently is that it's not just ingredients for certain dishes - the one Italian brand of coffee that they carry is in the Italian food section! All the other brands of everything are American brands.

The reason why I'm writing about this now is because this semester I'm taking a course in the French dept on translating. The teacher made it clear from the start that we needed to produce translations that are readily understood and, if that means translating aspects of culture, so be it. A number of students objected when she said that the correct translation for "15 miles from here" was "à 25 km d'ici". They started to say that there might be a situation where miles would be understood. Where? Louisiana? They must have no idea that the only other countries that don't use metric are Liberia and Burma. (Although, for some reason the UK still uses miles on the roads, but you pay for litres of petrol.)

And to compound the issue, the lecturer for this class is English. I was a bit surprised to hear the other students muttering when we read a passage full of correct spellings like "learnt" and "burnt". I don't know what their problem is; you'd think that in academia you'd have been exposed to enough different styles that it all seems normal. There's no reason at all for the lecturer to refrain from assigning that. But then again, when she uses British slang in class (e.g. "on his uppers") I think that she just might be trying to stir them up.

Still, I was surprised at how difficult they found the cultural context. I wasn't sure what to think when I heard a student comment on the passage we were translating, "He must be really angry to use the word 'damnit'. We'll need to find a strong curse in French." Realising where I was, I gently reminded him, "England is not a religious country." No one understood what I was getting at, so I said more clearly, "'Damn' is the least offensive word. Children are allowed to say it." Well that set the whole class chattering but the teacher confirmed that it's common enough and they eventually believed us.

I'll probably learn a fair bit of French and a little about French culture (as I always am) but my American classmates will be learning a lot more, it seems.

An Eventful Evening

Yesterday Cindy went to Oregon to collect samples so I'm home alone at the moment. She had to get up at 3.30 am, meet her colleagues at the geology building then head up to Indianapolis for a 6 am flight.

Last night I had to pick up a friend from the airport to return the favour for her having taken Cindy and me to the airport in May. All day I was reminding myself to keep an eye on the clock knowing I had no one to remind me when it was time to leave. I knew I'd have to leave a little after 9 pm so at about 9.05 I got ready to make the trip (collected my iPod and its car tape adaptor) and went downstairs to the carpark... But I couldn't find my car!

Then I remembered that I had told Cindy to take my car. Not all the way to the airport, but I did insist that it would be much better for her to drive to the geology building than walking across campus at 4 am. I did say that it would be no trouble for me to stroll up there later to collect the car, which I had forgotten to do. So it was entirely my fault that I had to run from our place on 2nd St up to 11th before getting in the car to drive to the airport. Luckily traffic was good and I still got to the airport before my friend arrived. Best of all she brought me 500g of Cadbury chocolate from Canada!

But the excitement didn't end there. When I got back, as I was letting myself in, I heard a voice behind me call, "Hey, neighbour!" Seems the newly moved-in residents of the basement apartment were having some trouble with their lock (they had the key but the lock was broken, it just kept turning and turning). The emergency number was posted in the hall but, having just arrived in town, they didn't have a phone.

So I lent them mine (local calls are free in America). The landlord wasn't all that prompt to respond, it being almost midnight. After some waiting I suggested that they call a 24-hour locksmith themselves but the handyman eventually arrived. He found that they had left a window unlocked (very dangerous on their level), cut the screen, jumped through and opened the door from the inside. I hate to how difficult it would have been had they locked up properly; the handyman reckons he would have taken a hammer to the door (a locksmith he wasn't)!

Fraud!

I just checked my account balances and got the fright of my life when I found myself overdrawn by more than $200. At first I thought that I hadn't left enough money for the rent check cheque but then I saw several transactions that I never made. Over the last two days someone stole $642.92 from me! Most of it was at service stations where you can pay without a pin or a signature. There was another at a supermarket where they usually ask for a signature.

I've already called the hotline to cancel the card. Tomorrow I'll have to go to the credit union to get my money back. (This shouldn't be too hard, Visa has a "zero liability" guarantee on their debit cards.) I might even have to file a fraud report with the police as well. They'll need to investigate who it was and maybe how they got my number. The only time the card has been far from me recently was at a restaurant when the waitress took quite a while to bring it back. But that seems unlikely. And I can't imagine skimming devices on Bloomington ATMs.

Luckily I keep most of my money at another bank so it couldn't be swept into my checking chequing account, so I'll still have something to live off while they do the paperwork.

Update
So I went to the credit union and they sent me to the police to file a report and get a case number. The police said that there had been a spate of card-number stealing a few months ago but that this was the first in a while. After I took them the case number the people at the credit union assured me that I'd get my money back in a few days; but I'll have to wait about a week until they send me a new card. (Luckily the grocery money is on a store card.)

13th August - I got the money back today.

16th August - And now another fraudulent transaction! Another $87.98 backdated to the 9th, again at Louisville.
So I went back to the credit union to sign another form and let the police know.

20th August - Finally I've got a new credit card and PIN. The last of the money has been returned and life is back to normal.

BBQs

Last night I learnt another little American thing that I never noticed myself. For once it was an American who pointed it out to me!

The party last night was both for Cindy's birthday and also because our friend Katie is leaving town. So Katie brought a couple of her other friends whom we've met but don't know well. One started trying to ingratiate himself by asking Cindy, "Which part of Australia are you from?" It's quite amusing for me to watch this sort of exchange in which Cindy has to pause to wonder whether she's understood the question correctly and then try to find a polite way of responding to a question that doesn't really have a correct answer. (Last time one of my classmates, upon hearing that we were going there asked Cindy, "Have you ever been to France before?")

After the Australia questions were redirected to myself, this guy started commenting on how we prefer to barbecue on hot plates, rather than grills. My first reaction was to think to myself, "Well, it's a lot easier when the meat's not falling into the fire. We only use the grill side of the gas barbie if there's so much meat that it won't fit on the plate or you want pretty lines on your steak." And then I realised that all those times I've been to barbecues here, I'd never seen a plain barbecue plate. We've been forced to use a metal grill (and have the burger patties break and fall in the fire) not because the Bloomington parks are too cheap to install decent barbecues, it's because the plate style just doesn't exist here. Our guest then proceeded to tell us about an Australian friend of his who had actually built a brick barbecue for his family so that they could cook more easily on a plate.

Cindy Hates Hugging

Apparently the French never learn to hug Platonically. The whole cheek kissing business makes it completely unnecessary.
(As an aside, there's a very complicated system of cheek-kissing in France. The number varies from region to region, e.g. it's two on each cheek for Parisians but less in most other places. This leads to one French person wanting to continue kissing the other and having to explain, "C'est quatre chez moi.")

Yesterday was Cindy's birthday so last night we had a few friends over for a little get together (featuring a Toblerone cheesecake, a punch bowl full of sangria and many empty bottles). The other reason for the party was that a friend was leaving town. So at the end of the night there were a few goodbye hugs. That's when Cindy remembered that she didn't know how to hug. One friend, as she was preparing to leave, went and hugged Cindy goodbye/happy birthday and in response Cindy placed her hands on the friend's bum! (I did see this and wondered a little but, you know, girls will be girls!)

Coming to her senses and realising that she might be sending the wrong message, she had to observe others hugging and note how the arms are held (above the waist).

Now it's causing her a bit of concern but she can't go around refusing people's affections or she'll offend people (like some Jews and Muslims do when they won't shake hand with the opposite sex). So I have advised her to just avoid the hugs altogether and surprise the Americans by greeting them with kisses on the cheek. I'm looking forward to seeing how that goes over.