Noise

We've been disturbed by our new neighbours' music for a few weeks now. They must have fantastic subwoofers because we can feel the bass through the floor. Sometimes it continues after midnight when we're just going to bed so I've been meaning to have a talk to the landlord, ask what they think is a reasonable hour.

Then last night we were awoken at 2.30 am by bass coming through the floor. It was enough to wake us both up but I really didn't feel like getting out of bed, so I rolled over and eventually managed to get back to sleep. But then it happened again at 3.30! That was enough to get me up. At first I had trouble believing that anyone would have the audacity to try that in an apartment building so I looked out the windows to see if it was coming from one of the party houses, but the bass was clearly coming through the floor of the bedroom. So I put on some clothes and went downstairs.

I rang the doorbell and heard conversation inside, "Hey, did you hear the doorbell?"
"No, there couldn't be anyone calling." I rang again repeatedly. After more discussion a young guy opens the door and asks, "Is the music loud?"
"No, I'm selling magazine subscriptions!" is what I should have said but I was too tired for sarcasm. I explained to him that I didn't want to call the police because I know that they don't give warnings, just fines, and asked him politely to look at the time in future.

I wonder how long the contrition will last.

Unfair Privileges

Remember when school mothers' and fathers' day stalls sold books of vouchers for kids to give their parents? There would be vouchers for "one free car wash" and "one free massage". I think there might have also been things like "one day of no arguing with siblings".

I recently signed up for a rewards program at our favourite restaurant, TGI Friday's. As a welcome gift they sent me a few vouchers. There were normal ones like "free dessert with purchase" but there was one that struck me as a bit strange -- "One time jump the line pass". (Incidentally, although American computers send documents to be printed to a queue on a server, they never use the word "queue" for people, it's always "line".)

It's true that there is often a wait to get a table there on Friday or Saturday nights, so I understand what motivates this. But there's still something about this offer that strikes me as wrong. It's like saying, "one free evening of inconsiderateness." We won't be using that one; I wouldn't want everyone else staring daggers at me while I eat.

Censorship in America

There's something a little strange about America being a bastion of free speech and simultaneously a nation of prudes. Before getting pay TV here I never realised that this irony plays out in the fact that their movies are full of swearing but TV is censored. (I also see a big problem with the fact that depictions of violence are fine any time but swearing and sex are not. But that's not just America, that's the West in general.)

The thing is, you don't notice how much swearing there is in a movie until you watch it on TV and find that half a sentence is hushed out and you can't follow the plot. (Yes, swear words are sometime key-words in action movies.) Unlike Australia, it has nothing to do with the time it's shown, swearing is hushed even after midnight! I looked into this and what I found was even more surprising: 1. Profanity laws only apply before 9 p.m. and 2. They don't apply at all for pay-TV. So why do (almost) all networks stop swearing all the time? Because apparently the advertisers demand it. (I think the only exception is HBO. Maybe some other premium channels.)

Here comes the funny bit - there are certain words that are ok by themselves but not in longer forms; "damn" is ok but "god-damn" has to be censored, "ass" is ok but "asshole" has to be censored. Guess what they do! They don't bleep or hush the whole word, they make it "***damn" and "ass****"! One word they don't bleep but over-dub comes out as "mother-lover"!

And they blur out raised middle fingers. I kid you not.

13th September
Apparently they even cut out foreign swearing. We're watching Matrix Reloaded and they cut out the best bit. Here it is:

I have sampled every language, French is my favourite - fantastic language, especially to curse with. Nom de Dieu de putain de bordel de merde de saloperies de connards d'enculés de ta mère. You see, it's like wiping your arse with silk, I love it.

The Rhythm of Life

The days are getting shorter and everyone in Bloomington is gearing up for a new academic year.

About a week ago people started moving back into town. The streets were filled with moving trucks and the dumpsters overflowed with empty boxes and junk. Yesterday there was something called a "freshman induction" ceremony. (I dunno, I guess it's the opposite of a graduation? I'm not sure why they need it when those students just had a high-school "graduation" with full academic regalia.) The town was so full of parents that the police put out a notice saying that we should treat it like snowy weather and only leave the house if absolutely necessary!

I was a bit worried when I saw someone moving into the apartment below us with a pair of guitars and an amp. I think he set up the bass in the room below our study because my desk trembles when he plays.

Allergies

After four years living in Bloomington, my allergies have finally caught up with me.

When I lived in Sydney I used to get debilitating allergies a few times a year. So bad that most antihistamines would barely make a dent in the sneezing, weeping and runny nose. I think it was some sort of pollen allergy because it was worse in the suburbs than in the city and it was seasonal.

Coming to a town called "Bloomington" worried me a little. There are a lot of blossoming trees here but somehow they never bothered me. Not until this year. A few months ago I had a couple of days of sneezing but was able to chase it away with an antihistamine. But today is worse, two antihistamines and I'm still excreting copious amounts of mucus.

I'm not too sure how allergies work but I suppose I've become sensitised to something here that wasn't around in Australia. What I have to wonder is whether I'm still allergic to whatever it was in Australia or if by not being exposed I've been desensitised. I'd be great if I were now only allergic to North American flora and could just go somewhere my new allergies can't find me. But if my old allergies were still waiting for me where ever I had been, I would soon run out of places to run.

Sometimes abuse does get you places

It seems that someone at Pepperidge Farms read my abusive letter, or at least added my email address to a list. I just received an email telling me that they'll be back as soon as October (but for some reason they'll remain seasonal, available Oct-March every year). I guess this means we'll be able to eat the stash we brought back from Australia.

But we'll have to continue rationing the fancy-schmanzy varieties. This year they're going to introduce a dark chocolate variety to the US (as well as the plain and caramel) but I have to assume that Black Forest and honeycomb flavours will remain scarce for a few years yet.

Humidity

It was hot and muggy when I woke up this morning so the "air conditioning" has being going all day.

I'm just about to step outside so I checked the weather. It's currently 29°C - a bit hot - but the "real feel" is 40! That's how it feels when the humidity is 79%. It's going to get up to 32°, at which point it will feel like 42.

There'll surely be a big thunderstorm this arvo, hopefully not when I'm trying to walk home.

(Still, this doesn't mean that I'm looking forward to winter!)

Satellite TV

We now have over 150 channels. (Most of them are rubbish, but there's about 10 good ones. Much more than I had before!)

Since moving to this apartment we haven't had any TV reception because the little indoor area couldn't pick up anything. But then when we renewed our lease the landlord explained that the rent increase would include cable TV. Being economical uni students we asked if we could just opt out of the TV and save a few bucks. She replied that we don't have to use the TV connection if we don't want it but the price is the same. Well, if I'm paying for it!

So we now have a very fancy digital decoder that gives us hundreds of channels. They wouldn't give me a second box for the bedroom but this one has both RCA and coax outlets so I've set it up so I can watch the little TV in the kitchen while I cook.

I was all excited to be getting BBC America; I had seen it advertised in the intro to various DVDs I'd seen here. But now that I have it I see that, apart from BBC World News, there's just hours and hours of Gordon Ramsay. I did enjoy his shows for a while, it made me reminisce about when I worked in a restaurant, but there's only so much you can watch a chef yelling and swearing at people before it gets boring.

Indianapolis

Cindy wanted to see Harry Potter again in 3D, so yesterday we took a drive up to Indianapolis to see it at the IMAX.

Having gone all that way we had to do a few other things while we were there. There was our usual trip to IHOP:

It was a tropical theme this month. We had a choice between pineapple upside-down, banana macadamia or strawberry passionfruit pancakes.

But we also went to a couple of interesting grocery shops. We had been to Trader Joe's before. They have really good quality food for much cheaper than from a normal supermarket.

This was the first time we had been to Cost Plus World Market. They stock a range of foods from other countries including Australia and the UK. There's still plenty of TimTams left from our recent trip to Australia so we only bought one packet. I was looking forward to getting some Bundaberg Ginger Beer but they had run out (apparently it's quite popular and they run out often). I was pleasantly surprised to see that they had Robertson's Golden Shred marmalade - the same sort that was confiscated from me at Glasgow airport! They also had 250g blocks of Cadbury's but were charging $6 each - not worth it.

Car Troubles

The switch for Fenry's brake lights has broken. Instead of the lights not working, they're on all the time. I guess on is safer than off, but it also discharges the battery.

We got a jump start from AAA at about 6 pm last night but when I thought about getting it fixed today I realised that the battery would just go flat again overnight. So I had to drive the car to charge it, turn it off, then unhook the cable from the terminal. It's not very convenient having to carry a spanner everywhere but it makes a decent kill-switch.

But it seems I got off lightly. Only $40 for the repair and I used one of my $10 oil-change vouchers at the same time.

La vie française

One of the ways I've been spending my summer is continuing my French.

I've been getting together with some other students from HPS and Philosophy to read some philosophical texts in the original French. (We had done something similar last summer but it's a bigger group this year and we're sticking to the task at hand much more this time.) Most of the others are beginners who are just learning to read (not write or speak) French. It's good for me to be forced to go through the text properly, where I might have just skimmed it and misunderstood the tricky bits if I were reading it on my own.

Also, the guy who organised our French table has moved overseas and left me the job of sending out the weekly announcements. (Cindy had done it before in his absence but when he critiqued her verbose messages she told him to give the job to someone else - me.) Last summer there were a few weeks when very few people turned up (maybe only one apart from me and Cindy). So this year I've started advertising through the university's online classifieds. It's been pretty successful, there's be a few new people come as well as enough of the regulars to keep things going.

Potter Madness

Yesterday Cindy and I bought our tickets to Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. We had heard that there would be a midnight session Tuesday so that we could watch it the day of its release (Wednesday) but when we went to buy our tickets there were none left for the 12.01 am, we had to get tickets for 12.13 am. In fact, that one has since sold out and now we see that the first six sessions are already full and they're selling tickets to a seventh midnight showing.

By the way, don't tell Cindy what happens in the movie, she hasn't read the book yet.

Update 1 - 7 pm, Monday night
The seventh screening is now sold out. They haven't added any more; I suppose they don't have any more prints to show.

Update 2 - Wednesday
The movie earnt $22.2 million in midnight sessions alone! That's a new record for midnight screenings, The Dark Knight only took $18.5M.

American Names

No, I don't mean names like Randy, Larry, Grover or all those misspelt Stevens. I mean "How do names work in America?" It seems a silly question as their names would seem to work the same way as ours - they don't have patronymics or surnames first - but by talking to Americans I've come to realise that they think about names differently.

The most common custom, which most people would have noticed:

• Rather than Hillary Clinton née Rodham, Americans prefer Hillary Rodham Clinton

I had assumed that this was a double-barrel surname without a hyphen. But I recently discovered that this is not always the way. Apparently many married women move their maiden name into the middle name field on forms. That's good to know. If that's the case, I guess that means I should put books by Mary Boas Hall next to her husband Rupert Hall in my bibliography. (But where does that leave things she wrote before she was married?) Still, I'm not certain that that's always the case.

Hearing that a friend of mine had two friends have done just that with her name, I started wondering how they can just shift a surname into a given name field. Apparently the distinction is less clear here. I think it might stem from the fact that use of the mother's maiden name as a middle name is more common here. But here's the strange thing, they both gave up their existing middle names in order to make room for her maiden name in the middle name box. I asked why she didn't just keep both but she didn't really understand because:

• Americans don't have given names, they have first name and middle name (and ne'er the twain shall meet)

When I mentioned the given names box on forms, they said they had never seen that. I think most of them have heard of multiple given names but don't really understand it. (Not that I love the idea either; it strikes me as a bit of an affectation but the concept is not foreign to me.)

I think that this is partly the cause of another phenomenon that I noticed early on:

• Americans are rarely interested in the whole middle name but they do want to know your middle initial

It seems a little strange that they don't care about the letters that come after. But this leads to another phenomenon peculiarly American:

• Some Americans have no middle name, just a middle initial

The most famous example being Harry S. Truman; Herman B Wells is another. (This leads to all sorts of debates about whether to use a full stop, as there's nothing to abbreviate. Truman usually added one so the punctuation is considered part of his name.)

Oh, oh and I must say something about ordinals. It's not just Jr and Sr! We've all heard of these Americans with "comma Jr" because they're named after their father. (I don't think I've ever met an Australian who used "Junior" in such a formal way, just one who used it as a nickname. It always seemed to me that most Australians named after their fathers use their middle name, which some Americans do too.) But here's the real difference:

• Junior and Senior can be part of your legal name (will appear on government-issued ID)
• They also use Roman numerals. You can be John Thomas Smith IV in America.

That last one always makes me laugh. "Where are you king of? Or are you a pope?" I'm not sure why they feel the need to give the exact same name or keep a track of how many there have been but forms allow for it so Americans take advantage of the opportunity. (H.L. Mencken already remarked on this but apparently the practice was just starting when he was writing in the '20s.)

Happy 5th of July!

Our plans for an Independence Day BBQ got rained out so we did it today instead.

I've mentioned before that fireworks manufacturers in America try to stir up patriotism for 4th of July celebrations. This results in some of the most ridiculous fireworks, like a tank that rolls (a short distance) and an "Exploding Bin Laden Noggin". Naturally I had to buy these two. My American friends don't buy into the jingoism but seeing me get excited about this made them want to enjoy them ironically. So we used the tank to set off Bin Laden. I didn't capture the moment but here's a video of someone else who bought the exact same sort:

Exploding Bin Laden Noggin Firework - The funniest movie is here. Find it

Minnesota

I spent the last week at a workshop/conference at the University of Minnesota (a Big 10 rival of IU).

All US airlines are charging to check luggage on domestic flights so I travelled light, only taking a cabin bag. That meant I didn't take a camera but here are some photos that I would have taken:
Minneapolis is on the Mississippi River. This is one of the nicer bridges, just for pedestrians and bikes now.

The river was strong enough for mills to be built here. One of the flour companies is still going strong, Pillsbury. This building on campus is named for them:

Folwell Hall is where our sessions were.

Bob Dylan started his musical career in "Dinkytown", the student quarter of Minneapolis before moving to NYC. He lived in this building when the ground floor was a pharmacy and upstairs was flats:

Grand Marnier

Today we went to the Grand Marnier factory. (They don't normally let small groups take the tour but they put the four of us with a bigger group of oldies. So it was enough, and it was free.)

First we heard about their products and the basics of the production process before taking a tour of the factory. We saw the bitter orange rinds they use for the flavour, the machines for processing them and the vats for maceration. They showed us the stills for extracting the orange flavour (and cherry, for their other liqueur) and had us smell the different fractions of the distillation. Apparently the good fraction is 90-92˙C (cooler than that is the orange oil they sell off as cleaning product).

We got to see all the huge oak barrels for first ageing the cognac, then ageing the mixed liqueur. That cellar smelt really good!

And finally they gave us free taste tests! We got to try their Cherry Marnier and vanilla Navarn liqueurs; they were ok but not worth the price. Then they gave us some of the Louis-Alexandre Grand Marnier; it tasted not much different from the standard Cordon Rouge, so not worth the extra money (30€64 /700mL vs 19€21 for Cordon Rouge). But lastly they even let us try the super-expensive Centenaire Grand Marnier (41€41); I could taste the difference with that one but I'm not prepared to pay twice as much for it, I think I'd rather have twice as much of the Cordon Rouge!

The only one we didn't get to try was the hyper-expensive Cent-Cinquantenaire (84€06). Cindy wants to go back next time we're here so maybe they'll offer us one then.

Belgium

We arrived in Brussels Tuesday night where we stayed with Cindy’s aunt.

The next day her cousin took us on a tour of the city. We went first to see the Mannekin Piss, a fountain of a little boy urinating. I had heard about it before but didn’t realise that he’s usually dressed for some occasion. When we saw him he was wearing the uniform of the Barcelona soccer team because of an upcoming match. They must have just dressed him because there was a crowd standing in front, holding a banner, singing something. After lunch Cindy’s other cousin took us to see the lesser-known counterpart to the Mannekin Piss, the Jeannkin Piss -- a more recent fountain of a little girl squatting. Freud would have a field day with Brussels!

We went to the building of the European Parliament but you can’t go into the chamber. There was an info office providing literature on the EU in all its languages so Cindy took a copy of the EU charter of rights in each language.

Cindy insisted on having lunch at Quick, a European version of Maccas, mainly because it’s so famous in France for being Belgian. It was slightly less greasy than Maccas and the burgers came on whole grain buns but it was still fast food. That evening Cindy’s cousin’s boyfriend asked me (in French that sounded like Dutch) if I had tried real Belgian pommes frites yet. He was horrified when I said, “Not really, unless you count Quick,” and proceeded to tell me about his friends who own a friterie and do it all by hand. I asked him about the mayonnaise thing and he replied that you can have ketchup or any number of other sauces and rattled off a list of creamy sauces, “Tartare, andalouse...”

He seemed to know what he was talking about so when he suggested we have dinner in Leuven we let him lead us there. Leuven is a very beautiful city, reminiscent of Florence with its restaurant-filled piazzas connected by cobbled streets.

Polyglot Families

After leaving Germany we went to stay with Cindy’s cousins in Holland, on the Meuse, near Nijmegen. In fact their house is on a flood plain surrounded by dykes. They have a big gate in the middle of the front dyke so they can drive up to the house so, when they hear that a big flood is coming, they install in that gap huge bars of aluminium with rubber in between, which apparently keeps the water out.

Cindy’s cousin is French but married a Dutchman so the whole family is bilingual. And because both of them work jobs that require some English and the kids also learn English at school, so they’re almost trilingual. Then the eldest daughter (20ish) explained -- in perfect English -- that she’d picked up German by having a German room-mate and spending time with her friends. Then I really started to feel that my language skills pale in comparison to people who grow up in northern Europe.

I found it a bit strange to be in this environment with so many choices of language. It was perfectly normal to hear the kids switching between French and English to talk to me (as this is what happens at French table all the time) but I also had an experience that I had heard bilingual people talk about. At one point Cindy’s cousin came up to me and asked, “Did you succeed in getting your computer onto the network?” I couldn’t quite put my finger on what was wrong with this question. It was obvious what she meant because it was not long before we had been talking about it but then I realised that she’d asked me the question in English whereas I had only ever heard her speak French up to that point!

Aix-la-Chapelle

After leaving Luxembourg we crossed (through a little bit of Belgium) into Germany where we stayed in the town that the Krauts call Aachen and the Frogs call Aix-la-Chapelle. I don't know what to call it but it was a nice town.

I thought we were going to see Charlemagne's grave but it turned out to be his relics. They had a stone sarcophagus where he was originally buried but it was empty. Apparently he was canonised a couple of hundred years after he died (news to me) and so they opened up his tomb and pulled his body to bits. That's reverence for you! His arm and his leg were in special boxes with crystal sides so you could see them. Apparently his skull was inside the big gold bust. And it wasn’t just bits of Charlemagne and his personal effects, they had quite a collection of reliquaries. They had a piece of Jesus’ sweat-rag, Mary’s belt and rib bones from famous saints (Peter, Paul, Stephen). I found the whole thing a bit macabre but that's mediaeval Catholicism.

I was a bit worried about travelling in a country where I didn’t speak a word of the language (except what I’ve learnt from Hogan’s Heroes). Cindy took German in high school for a couple of years (but has forgotten almost all of it) so I had her teach me the numbers at least. She was able to read the days of the week on a few signs but apart from that we were without any knowledge of the language. We found that, even though we were very close to the French border, the Germans of Aachen were not very good at French, most of them preferred to speak English.

After an abortive attempt to get an authentic German meal at a pub with a frazzled barmaid, we found a restaurant that had lots of flags in the window. There we were even able to ask questions about the dishes as the waiter knew the words for most things in English if he didn’t know the French word. I had the Nuremburg sausages with saurkraut and it was pretty good (there were caraway seeds in the saurkraut). I’ve realised that cabbage can be edible if it’s cooked in beer or wine or something nice.

Luxembourg

On the 15th we left Paris and drove to Metz (pronounced "mess") in Lorraine, on the Moselle. We had a walk through the park there and saw their canals.

We then moved on to Luxembourg, where we spent the night. There we saw the grand-ducal palace and some old caves where people would hide in war time. I started off thinking that it would be some tiny micro-state because I had only ever heard of it in conjunction with the BeNeLux confederacy and had heard something about there still being a Grand Duke. (It’s anachronistic enough to still have a king or queen but dukes-regnant are far more exotic!) Yet I found that it’s a bit bigger than it sounds: there are actually a few separate cities there with some space in between and it takes a few hours to drive across the whole country (that’s normal; it is Europe, after all!).

We ate a couple of meals at a fête that seemed semi-permanent; it seems they eat quite a lot of sausages and the Luxembourg speciality is potato pancakes with apple sauce, just like those Ashkenazi ones that I forget the name of.