Here's looking at you, lid

“The true voyage of discovery lies not in seeing new things, but in seeing the world with new eyes.” -- Proust







I used this quote in my blog once before as a commentary on the philosophy of flaneur. Both of its clauses are viciously ironic now. Flaneur entails new experiences, some of which must be better than others. An eye infection helps establish the low end of the spectrum. Actually, both eyes are infected, and both have both conjunctivitis (when the evil little bacteria only inhabit the conjunctiva, or outer layer of the cornea), and keratitis, the more serious condition when they penetrate inner layers of the cornea.

My eyes had been bugging me for a few weeks. The symptoms were quite easy for me to diagnose, since I had them dozens of times: dirty or scratched contact lenses. So I went to a local optometrist and ordered new lenses, and figured I would tough it out until then. I went through 3 bottles of eyedrops while my eyes patiently screamed at me that something was really wrong. Yes, I hear you, I told them, and I am working on it. The new lenses should be here soon. Quit yer bitching. I thought 25 years of contact lens wearing would leave my eyelids quite well calloused. This is nothing new. I’m a doctor. Shut up and let me work. So my eyes were stye-mied by my less insightful brain.

I finally worked out that something else was wrong Monday night, when my eyes decided to up the ante by itching and hurting enough that I couldn’t sleep a wink. OK, I said. We’ll see the doctor tomorrow morning, Lemme sleep! But no, they kept on whining loudly all night, perhaps justifiably convinced that I earned it. I left my apartment without any vision correction, since I figured out that contact lenses would be unweyes. I have no glasses. I can’t wear them because they bend light so much they give me a headache.

On opening the door from my apartment complex, I quickly learned another symptom of eye infections: photosensitivity. Outside hit me like a nuke. I literally fell over backward, lay cursing the powers that be for a good 2 minutes, then made it up the stairs (very slowly) to get 2 pair of sunglasses. This is a good thing about being Californian; necessary or not, you always have shades nearby. I went back outside, looking straight down with my hand shielding my eyes in a bizarre salute to the sidewalk, and only then realized it was a cloudy day.

I didn’t know quite how to get to my optometrist without incident. My vision is -8 myopia and 4.5 astigmatism, which is medical speak for fucking blind. If you don’t know your prescription, trust me, mine is worse. I am, in fact, legally blind in the US without correction. And so it seemed wandering around Graz. I came to an intersection and fortunately remembered there was a curb there, cuz I would otherwise have pitched forward into oncoming traffic. So I stood there, wondering how I could tell it was safe to cross. I couldn’t see a red blur that might turn in to a green blur. I could simply wait a minute and make a break for it. I could get a taxi, except that requires a working visual system. I figured I would wait and ask a pedestrian as soon as one came close enough to be identifiable as such. Then I suddenly heard the familiar beep boop from across the street that we normally ignore. Hey, that’s really thoughtful, I thought.

My optometrist took one look at me and said, “Oh my God.” Good way to set the tone. He told me I must immediately go to a medical doctor, which he was not. Well, I said, you know how blind I am right now, and my German is as bad as it was when I was here 2 weeks ago. Do you know anyone who can see me without an appointment? He called around and recommended someone nearby. By now, I had become a minor celebrity, with all the staff checking out my eyes like they were museum pieces, or shone as brightly as Juliet’s in the oh so evocative balcony scene:

Her eye discourses; I will answer it.
I am too bold; 'tis not to me she speaks.
Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven
Having some business, do entreat her eyes
To twinkle in their spheres till they return.
What if her eyes were there, they in her head?
The brightness of her cheek would shame those stars
As daylight doth a lamp; her eyes in heaven
Would through the airy region stream so bright
That birds would sing and think it were not night.

If Shakespeare were female, she would be the sexiest woman in history. Probably best that he isn’t. He is too old for me. I’d settle for Candace Bushnell. Wish I could write like that. And fuck like that. Tell you what, just give me the latter, and we'll call it even.

I used to memorize Shakespeare passages, partly to improve my English, partly to avoid being outshone by other intellectual snobs, and partly because I figured it would be useful to bust out on some modern genius Juliet sometime. The Bard disappointed me on the last one, which is why I now know Shylock’s less loving passages much better. Try replacing the word “Jew” with “nerd” in his famous “shall we not revenge” speech. It works eerily well. I did spontaneously drop the tale of Luna and the grasshopper on an unsuspecting and very sexy Italian scientist, and when a woman of that nationality calls an American romantic, you must have done something right. That will hopefully be a topic for a happier blog entry. I have been in better moods.

My optometrist told me where to go. I jokingly asked him for a dog or something. He kindly said he would get his assistant to guide me. Thanks, I said. While he got her, I tried to entertain the staff, who remained quite intrigued with me. Look at this, I asked for a dog, and I get a human. Now that’s service! I bet she speaks better German than me. Or even a dog! I think they smiled, or maybe they scowled, or their faces turned into Austrian pumpkins. Absolutely no idea. The assistant showed up and I followed her gratefully, wondering the whole time whether she was cute, young, old, had a wedding ring, etc. She actually led me to the wrong place, but it’s the thought that counts. I eventually made it to the eye doctor, who said it was quite serious. He asked why I did not seek treatment earlier, and I explained that I thought it was a bad contact lens. He shook his head. I think. Or maybe he was eating, or having a seizure, or nodding, or rocking to some music. He gave me a prescription for eyedrops and eye salve, which I got from the nearby pharmacy with surprisingly little trouble. These have been helping a lot. But then the real fun began. For the last 3 days, I have been limited to my natural vision. It is odd that these “new eyes” are in fact the ones I had all along, but never used without correction. I am on sick leave from work, which is torture for an ambitious workaholic megalomaniac. Especially right after the successful Brussels negotiation, and scheming brilliant new studies with Clemens that we want to launch ASAP. But, not much I can do. I cannot read, and cannot really type that well – this will not be my finest blog entry. I will proofread it as much as I can, given that reading requires putting my face within a few inches of a monitor, close enough to produce double vision, so I have to close one eye. I am typing from motor memory, augmented by the wondrous spelling correction feature in Word.

It is a whole new world. Curbs and cobblestones streets and potholes have sprained ankle written all over them. Well, not literally, but if they did, I wouldn’t know. Walking is a series of controlled falls, as I learned in judo class. Then, the goal was to teach you when to foot sweep people (go for their forward foot just before it hits the ground, since they are off balance and falling). But it also comes in handy when you cannot see the ground. So I have been walking around quite ridiculously sometimes, but this is the liberating part – you have no idea who is staring at you, so you don’t care. Ignorance is bliss. Like the famous experiment with the executive monkey and passive monkey, stress is greatly reduced when you can't do anything about its causes.

I recalled an exchange about 12 years ago on that very topic. I was eating dinner with some people from my dojo, as we often did after throwing each other around for 2 hours. I asked my sensei if he walked like that all the time, and was thus immune to foot sweeps or any kind of tripping. No, he answered. We all know a guy who walks like that all the time. Everyone says he walks like a monkey. Yes, but you learned something, right? Some knowledge transferred to your everyday life? No, he said. Aw, come on, sensei! You mean I could foot sweep you right now? No, he said. See, I replied. Why not? You must be doing something different. No, he replied. We’re sitting down.

So, for 3 days now, I have been monkey walking along around Graz. Except it probably looks better when monkeys do it. Plus, every time I see an apparent color change in the ground, I stop and feel it out with my foot, which saved me from pitching off a few curbs, but also leaves me spending a lot of time feeling out sewer covers, discarded papers, and filled-in potholes. It rained today, adding puddles to the list of slightly darker things on the ground. I discovered a few the fun way, and look forward to going home and wearing dry socks. I remember where buses and streetcars stop, but the schedules may as well be random. Some of the stops have digital displays with the number of minutes remaining, and they are only a few feet from my eyes, but that is still too much. Twice, friendly passersby offered to help. The squinting at a nearby display might be one cue that I cannot see so well, and the double sunglasses another. One pair of obstreperous teens mocked me, which I suppose I should expect. Not much I can do about it unless one makes contact with me, in which case they might learn that, while reading displays or chasing them both require good vision, arm bars and hip throws and chokeholds do not.

By far the scariest part of it all is not curbs, traffic, or taunting punks, but dogs. Dogs are everywhere in Austria, like Germany. Normally, you can see dogs from far away, and easily read their affect. Not anymore. Dogs are great blurs that might be snarling or crouched in preparation for a pounce. Whenever a dog barks, I naturally foveate, like anyone, but to no avail. I stare right at them, since I can still localize sound with my unimpaired coincidence detectors in my medial superior olive, but have no idea why they are barking or even where they’re looking. I still have a scar on my left leg from the last and only time I trusted an unidentified barking dog. That was 25 years ago. Now, I am returned to the world of blind faith.

But, the end is in sight. Figuratively, at least. I have another appointment to see (or at least hear) the eye doctor early tomorrow morning. I’ll have to take the early streetcar, aka the red eye. The doctor foresaw that I should be able to wear contacts again within a week if my eyes improve, and it looks like they have. The eyedrops are indeed c-lensing away the nasty little bacteria. I only wish they would all die in the blink of an eye, instead of dilater. I really should be crucifeyed on two rods for lashing my few loyal blog pupils with such coney puns. I envision a lot of even cornea puns if I don’t put a lid on it.

Fitting Inn

I have returned to the hated rigamarole of daily gymgoing. Oh, how I hate it, but the only way to be free of it is to keep doing it, so I do. Part of what prevented me before was that I wanted to go to Schwarzenegger’s gym, hoping that I would get stronger via a contact high from the Ahnold-steroid-sweat that he left on the dumbbells 40 years ago. Alas, that gym is gone. There is the Giants gym, where the Graz football team practices, but they have no cardio machine, lousy hours, and the risk of catching whatever loathsome social diseases that Gerv had when he was there. I was also put off by the lack of any gym near my office or apartment. So, after returning from the states, I had to lower my standards and go for somewhere that is not close, but at least easily accessible by public transport. Some clever Austrian built a gym called Fit Inn right on top of Hauptbanhof. I learned that this word means "Main train station" the dumb way. I noticed that both Bremen and Hamburg had a main train station called Hauptbanhof. Then I saw the same in Hannover. Wow, I thought, Mr. Hauptbanhof must have been a major contributor to the German train industry. Nice of them to name all the main train stations “Hauptbanhof” in his honor.

Fit Inn is an odd mix of high and low tech. After I started there on August 7, they added a drink bar. You pay €1,90 per week for unlimited drinks. The complete menu is: water, mineral water, and four fruit drinks (lime, apple-orange, peach, and black cassis). This may not sound impressive to readers who are very likely resting at the moment, but trust me, they seem much better after an hour abusing yourself. How do they tell if you paid for the drink bar? They have a fingerprint ID device next to the drink bar. It even works. The fingerprint device uses red laser scanners and then presents your fingerprint on a monitor, with an impressive-looking array of dots and lines much like something out of a crime drama, then presents your picture. This is actually neither expensive nor hi tech, but it seems cool to me. Fit Inn also has several TVs, like many modern gyms, but no fitness machines with their own video screens, like many modern and more expensive gyms. This leaves me spending literally an hour per day with 3 viewing options: something to read (hard to keep it steady while I’m vibrating a treadmill or elliptical); the blank machine or person in front of me (usually fat, sweaty, and male); and TV. I can’t hear the TV, which doesn’t really bug me, since I couldn’t understand it anyway. They play lots of things, including sports, talk shows, news, and music videos. Sports are best, since you don’t really need to hear it, and the more violent ones are inspiring when you’re trying to stay there for a full hour. There are exceptions; bantamweight boxing is demoralizing, since you have to watch two people with half your weight and a third your muscle mass who could both kick your ass. I swear they had a man wrestling a woman on WWF, and wonder if they actually have an inter-gender wrestling championship. They should call it the Andy Kaufman belt.

I got to see a lot of tennis, which I normally ignore, but is lulling and rhythmic when you have no other choice except jogging uphill in undistracted agony. Once, the channel changed from grown-up tennis to table tennis. Never do this, as it greatly erodes the majesty of the latter. The stadiums have fewer people, and they’re as glamorous as poker or Nascar fans. They have no ball-boys to run and pick up the ping pong balls and run out of the way as quickly and obsequiously as possible. They instead have to bend over and get them themselves. The players also periodically wipe off the table with their bare hands, a task that could also be delegated to ball-persons, and might even fool some viewers in to thinking it is necessary. (Why? The middle of the table gets sweaty? Dust accumulated over the last 10 minutes? Contamination from ping pong ball paint?) Players don’t even try to jump the net to shake hands, which would really add some good theater. The judge sits in a little chair, not an imperious throne where she can look down on an abusive McEnroe or Williams. I think Serena’s tirade would not have been so intimidating anyway. Threatening to cram a tennis ball down your throat is scary. A ping pong ball might cause moderate indigestion at worst. Or you could try to recover it via the Heimlich maneuver, and I think you should get double points if you can ace your opponent that way.

For such a formal and polite people, the Austrians have a bizarre take on locker room privacy. Your entry to the locker room is greeted with the famous “video überwaschung” sign that seems increasingly ubiquitous. The privacy people warned that accepting them in public squares meant they would migrate elsewhere. They were right. Video cameras in locker rooms! Worse, there is a cleaning woman there in the mornings. I learned this the hard way, changing at 6:30 AM, then looking up to see a maid clearly looking at me. At first, I thought, dagnab it, I dropped my trousers in the wrong place. Now I’ll get busted and humiliated and have to head home in ignominy. If I’m gonna suffer such a fate on an act of public indecency, I’d like to plan it out much better. But there was another guy changing not far away, so I realized this is evidently normal around here. At least the maid should learn not to gawk. I wonder if it’s a dream job to her, if she pays them for the privilege. And it is blatantly sexist; reverse the genders and you’d have a lawsuit.

For such a courteous, organized, and obedient people, Austrians are abysmal at reracking their weights. It is not a difference in expectations, since there are signs all over that tell you to do so. But they don’t. You want to find a pair of 12.5k kilo weights, you look on the ground, not on the racks. And they are typically separated, so you see a lot of people holding one weight in one hand while looking for its mate. Last night, the gym attendant saw me doing this, got up from his desk, and walked toward me. Good, I thought, he’s gonna do his job and rerack the weights. Instead, he asked me if I was done with the weights I was using. I said no. He asked if he could use them. I said, sure. He did a set of tricep kickbacks, put the weights on the bench, thanked me, and went back to his desk to attend to a customer who had been waiting for him.


Weights scattered on the floor at Fit Inn over Graz Hauptbanhof. Notice the gap on the right side of the weight rack, partly hidden by the incline bench and flat bench that are surrounded by unracked weights.

Speaking of racks, Fit Inn, like most public gyms, is 90% male. This is not because women don’t go to gyms. Rather, they go to gyms for women only to avoid men like me. Fitness For Her of La Jolla = Curves of Graz. There were some cuties there today, and they should get free membership or something because it does make men more likely to go and more happy about going. (Not unlike free ladies’ night at a bar.) This morning, I was starting my uphill trudge, trying not to think about the fact that I would be doing so for the next hour, when some local ladies mounted the treadmill in front of me and started a workout they really didn’t need. Now, where else should I look? It’s a choice between the really boring LED display on my elliptical machine, a TV that happened to be showing an infomercial for gambling (which are quite common out here), a sweaty copy of the IHT with maddening typos, the wall, or them. And the irony was, they had no idea I was paying any attention to them, yet they kept trying to run away, but didn’t go anywhere. I don’t know why you say goodbye; I say hello. (And, yes, you do too understand English.)

In related news, I hate losing weight in kilos. You feel like such an underachiever! And, thanks to more than a year of abstinence from gyms but not beer and schnitzel, it’ll probably be the end of this year before I can fit inn to those damn size 34 Levi’s 505s hanging in my closet in la Mesa, which were quite comfortable in Feb 2007. It’s tough staying motivated. I wonder how much makeup and bribery would be needed to get me in to Curves.

Brussels Pouts II

I survived another visit to Brussels, this time to negotiate not one but two grants. The work part of the trip went quite well, and I think I pulled off an unprecedented feat of coming out of there with more money than we requested when we arrived. Brussels itself remains unimpressive. Eurosnobs who complain about the American capital should look at Der Spiegel, and I don’t mean the German periodical. Brussels does not deserve to be the capital of Europe, which has so many cities that are far more glorious, beautiful, and tourist friendly. Their grand plaza is feeble by European standards. The monuments in DC are more open, accessible, and impressive. DC is not my favorite city for various reasons, but I vastly prefer it over Brussels. Indeed, one of my gripes about DC, the unbridled bidirectional racism, was gone when I was there last year for the Neuroscience conference. It was a totally different experience talking to black people there, who were stunned and oddly grateful that we elected a black president. Two taxi drivers actually thanked me, and said they felt like it was all one country now. Of course, bro, I told them. Sorry it came as such a shock. It should have happened decades ago.

Brussels has much of the snobbery of Paris without the history to back it up. That requires a very selective interpretation of French history, but we can go with it; just ask any Parisian. Food in Brussels is good, but quite overpriced; for the same amount of money, you can get two equally tasty and unique meals in neighboring countries, or six of them in some Eastern European countries. Their mass transit system is so bad that it gave me flashbacks to living in Atlanta. The air circulation is terrible, and hence the underground metro is hot, smoggy, and dusty. The ticket vending machines do not accept coins or bills. To be fair, this is true of many other ticket vending machines. For example, both Schipol and Amsterdam Centraal Station have only a few machines that take coins, and you always see tourists milling around, confused and sometimes frenetic, before they work this out. Paint them red, or put flashing lights on them, or something. But the ones in Brussels’ Centraal Station are worse; they also do not accept credit cards, or even my European funky Maestro card, or yet another European card that I never use and keep in my backpack for just such an occasion. I think the only acceptable form of payment is telepathy, and then only in Flemish, Dutch, or French. Rush hour is as bad as anywhere I have seen. Taxis are pointless. The trains and metro lines are late. Worse, they do not adapt accordingly.

And so it was that I was on platform 6 at Bruxelles Centraal Station with a ticket I purchased from a human after a very long line. That human, and monitors displaying departures, directed me to platform 6 to catch a 17:02 to the airport. At platform 6, there was another monitor that said the train at 17:02 went to the airport. One would think that boarding the train at that platform at 17:02 is a good idea, especially if you can see no other trains on that platform or anywhere near it. I was nonetheless suspicious, being no longer a virgin Eurotraveller, and tried to find a conductor or train employee to confirm. Although the train and the platform were packed beyond any reasonable limit, I found no such person. So I boarded the train, which left at 17:02. So far, we seem to have many cues I did the right thing. But, sure enough, by the time the train got to Braine-Le-Comte, I realized it was the wrong one. I got off and explained my situation to the very polite Belgian train attendant, who gave me a free ticket and a printout of how to get back. Sure enough, the train that returned to Brussels Midi was late, yet the train leaving there to the airport was not. I eventually made it, and ran pathetically to the Lufthansa desk. Expert’s tip: if at all possible, when sweaty and pitiable and late, go to the desk with the oldest person you can see. Go for the most senior person possible. I did this and told the man (whose nametag said supervisor) there was a flight leaving at 19:55. I knew this because my boss was on it. It was 19:20. I was doubly stunned that he gave me a ticket, and did not charge me for it. I made it just in time. The only fun part of this was the look of surprise on my boss’ face. She asked what happened. I was sorely tempted to tell her that I changed it just so I could talk with her about work, but I told her the truth and the rest of the trip was straightforward.

I went to Brussels by flying Lufthansa to Munich, then Belgian Airlines to Brussels. Lufthansa gave me a free sandwich, candy bar, and drink (they even had the option of free wine or beer), even though the flight from Graz was only an hour. The flight from Munich to Brussels was 30 minutes longer, but we got nothing except a menu trying to sell food that looked worse.

Munich airport has an appropriately secluded entryway in their mens’ bathroom, like most airports. No casual passerby can see inside. You have to go in, turn left, turn right, and then you’re in the sink area, and another turn to the urinals. There you find further proof the Germans really do have a sense of humor (they just hide it well, much like their chancellor). All urinals have a little fly painted right at the appropriate aiming point. It’s really fun. You really feel a sense of accomplishment, even though nothing happens when you win. How much more would it cost to rig a fly that blinks or buzzes or melts or something when hit? Or maybe you win tickets like in skee ball, or a siren goes off, or something? So many good ideas on this blog, and only four readers.

This could also be handy for potty training. Indeed, though there are more bloggers than flies, I am probably the only one who can honestly say that he directly inspired a toilet training book. The Toddlers’ Potty Book was written for me, because of me, and was a modest source of income over the years for my mother. And I can still use the potty today, even though the book mentioned neither urinals nor flies. The book was republished many times, which might lead smartass readers to wonder why I needed a potty book when I was in college. Hey, we all learn at different speeds, alright?



München fly
(not to be confused with Munching fly)

The Lufthansa sections of Munich and Frankfurt airport are excellent. They are well maintained, with clean padded seats and nice lounge areas. They have machines with free coffee and tea, and free newspapers, including several German ones and some English ones, namely the International Herald Tribune and USA Today. I first discovered this after transferring from Chicago, then buying coffee and an IHT. This annoyed me, of course, but the whole situation is probably far more annoying to the vendors there, who likely lose a lot of loot to Lufthansa’s largesse. The IHT used to be one of my favorites. A few months ago, they announced a new look (and price). Apparently, they decided to further jack their profits by firing much of their proofreading staff. I now catch an average of 2 typos per paper, when I formerly saw about none. Look, you greedy bastards, when you’re marketing toward intellectual snobs, avoid trivial mistakes. This blog has fewer typos than your paper, and I don’t get paid a dime for this. Get some copy editors in honor of William Safire, whose love for language leapt off every page and danced through my cortex many times. I don't know how many existing and new words I learned from him, as well as engaging verbifcations of existing words. Don't let future IHTs devolve in to a four letter word that he could surely have anagrammed.



My cellphone pic of a Bruxelles metro stop - not during rush hour, not a major stop, not even a transfer point.

Eurodining VIII

I returned from the US last month with only three bottles. Breakage prevention, about which I so gloated last time, was a minor issue. This time it was more mundane: weight management. I checked in a suitcase weighing 55 pounds and a box weighing 45 pounds. Perspicacious readers may note that 55 pounds is over the weight limit; I avoided paying by showily moving things from my suitcase to a carry-on bag until I sweated profusely enough to garner pity from the United check-in agent. My carry-ons totalled 45 pounds, for a total haul of 145 pounds.

What does this have to do with eurodining? Much of the haul was more Mexican food: enchilada sauce, beans, jack and other cheeses you can't find out here. Some of the bulk was 2 pinatas, which are also quite exotic. And lots of junk food to become gifts for various labmates and their kids. (They got some great kids' books too, thanks to my mother's grandmastery of both children's literature and hoarding.) I made a pan of enchiladas for the lab the following week, then a pan for the staff at Molly Malone's a few days later. That's right, I cooked food for an Irish Pub and restaurant, then brought it unannounced. My labbies also thought this quite odd. See my last Eurodining post; they just don't understand the tipping system out here. I got a free murder burger, chicken wings, and enough free Guinnesses that I lost count.

A few weeks ago, most of our lab went hiking at Zirbitzkogel, followed by a big meal. Yes, Austrians like to go hiking, then have a feast, often at a restaurant at the peak. Sounds American, much like the joy with which Austrians greet each meal (Americans have no analog to "Mahlzeit"), but I never once encountered any American restaurants full of tired and grimy hikers. Every hiking-restaurant I have seen is hardcore Austrian food, as opposed to ethnic food, fast food, or some franchised slop. So I was delighted to see all these unfamiliar dishes. I was even happier to be able to translate one of them: Fleishnudelsuppe, or meat noodle soup. Great! I ordered it. I caught our secretary looking away a half second too late. Great. I kept looking at her quizzically. "Do you know what you just ordered?" Great....

I said no. She graciously offered to tell me, or change the order. No, I said with poorly hid resignation, I'll indulge in the universal cultural initiation involving mystery meat. I guessed intestines. My Romanian mystery meat was intestine soup. I ate Chinese intestines many times. (I mean, I ate cow intestines served at Dim Sum.) The soup was good. I looked up, steeled for the punch line. Cow lung soup. I don't think anyone saw me gag, which temporarily brought some cow lung in contact with its human equivalent. This wasn't so bad; certainly better than puking on the table. We'll see if my labbies can avoid that when I introduce them to Rocky Mountain Oysters.

We then hiked some more, in little groups, and labbies Jing and Petar asked me to teach them American songs. I said no. We don't sing nearly as much as Germanspeakers, and I can't sing, I told them. Petar was insistent, so I began the American classic:

99 bottles of beer on the wall
99 bottles of beer!
You take one down
pass it around
98 bottles of beer on the wall.

I figured someone would tell me to shut up around 96 or so, and I'd be gracefully acquitted. Petar instead offered to buy me Guinness if I could finish the song. So I did, until suddenly realizing I didn't know the end. There isn't one. The song, like 99 bottles, isn't really meant to be finished. So I ad libbed the following:

No more bottles of beer on the wall
No more bottles of beer!
You fall down
Passed out around
99 bottles of beer on the ground.

I now have 4 bottles of Guinness hidden in my wall. Petar is an honorable man.

The following week, I met my old buddy Bernhard and we went to a Buschenshank. This is a restaurant with wine that is typically located in some pastoral area with nice views. You are also not allowed to serve anything that is not locally produced. Why not open a regular restaurant? Because Austrians pay lower taxes for buschenschanks. It's a great idea, one that would never fly in America. Oh, it could start. It would gain traction amongst my many countrmen who are sick of franchised prepackaged homogeneity. But within a few years, Coke would find some way to wrangle an exception, and soon there would be a McDonald's buschenshank in the middle of downtown Atlanta. Indeed, I have seen some erosion here. One of them serves bottled beer. I got mixed explanations for this, but evidently there are gradations of buschenschankdom. I blame globalization.

I also joined my labbies one Friday for "leberkäse Freitag," which greatly excites my normally equanimous labbie Teo. They ride bikes to a store that sells leberkäse, which I eschewed because it translates as liver cheese. I explained this to labbie Clemens. No, he said, it has neither liver nor cheese. We just say that to confuse Americans. Well, way to botch an otherwise totally successful plan, I replied. In fact, it is basically ground pork, and not bad on a roll with mustard. One of those sandwiches is filling but not fattening, which always helps with a mundane problem: weight management.

The next week, a couple American friends visited me in Graz. My first visitors here! I really wanted to get them cow lung soup, but Eli is just too trusting, so I would have felt guilty. I instead got him schnitzel mit kürbiskernmantel, aka fried pork breaded in pumpkinseeds. He was so happy that he returned on his last night, although he was only here 3 nights. He loved the salad with pumpkinseed oil too. I say again: it is an embarrassment to California's legendary fecundity, and its ostensible multiculturalism, and especially its govenator, that nobody figured out to grow pumpkin seeds out there. Do it. Import the Samen König. Get rich.

Here is our govenator on The Dating Game, asking a narcissistic question and badly parrying her subtly scathing response. For added amusement, the announcer mispronounced both his name and Graz. Also, I have never met any Austrian with an accent like Ahnold's.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCH3w_LnmHE

Sinos and seals

Last weekend, my brother Steve and his girlfriend Marika visited San Diego. They just arrived from Shanghai, and were admirably alert and spirited after one very solid night of sleep. We even made it to see Brüno, which I was eager to see so I could learn more about the Austrian people, just as Borat was a valuable cultural exchange tool that taught us the true spirit of Kazakhstan. I was intrigued by the challenge of a more realistic portrayal of the Austrians than The Sound Of Music. And who could more effectively judge the authenticity of Austrian movies than our group? One American who lives in Austria, and had three whole months to soak up culture while averaging 80 hours per week and speaking introductory German. And two other people who live in China, namely another American and French Canadian. In SoCal, watching an Englishman playing a gay Austrian visiting SoCal.

Fortunately, I can happily say it is as well researched as Borat. Like Borat, almost the whole movie was in the US, and hence it mocked Americans more than anyone else. (It’s nice to see this is still hip even after our new president.) Also like Borat, they passed up blatant opportunities for humor that would in fact have been educational. Americans would be amused by eating horses and drinking horse milk, both common in Kazakhstan, yet neither of these were mentioned in Borat. Bruno was a movie with all sorts of odd gay themes, yet no exploitation of lederhosen, pumpkinseed oil, locking people in cellars for 25 years (yes, any Austrian will wince at this), weird violent anti-Nazis, or grunting, sweaty weightlifters. They did not bother to get a dialect coach for a proper Austrian accent, which greatly amuses (at least) northern Germans. You could dub Lawrence of Arabia with someone speaking in a southern German or any Austrian accent, and a typical Bremener would laugh all the way through the movie. The reason they did not make any such effort is that it would have been lost on Americans. Like Andy Kaufman, and to a lesser extent Framk Zappa, the man can make a successful show out of insulting his audience. And I see no reason why he will stop. The same formula keeps working. Time for the Ali G movie, or a new region to come from that Americans find exotic and intriguing. Iceland. Paraguay. The Ozarks. Detroit. Berkeley.

The experience did have the unexpected effect about making me yearn more for my return to Austria. I was a bit insecure about the relatively banal nature of my destination. I got parents that went to 76 countries, a brother in China, and I live in a major western country where everyone looks like me and speaks English. And globalization continues to erode heterogeneity all around the world; now is a fading opportunity to see the kaleidescope of humanity. And to hike the eastern Alps, since the hiking boots that served me so well in Colorado are now in my suitcase, and will be on Austrian mountains next month.

The next day we mostly hung out with our old friends the Hoopes brothers, and on Sunday, we made it to the beach. It was heartbreakingly wonderful. This alone would have made the whole trip worth it. We went to the legendary Pine Street beach, which is not too close, but always delivers. Always parking, always a spot on the beach, always at least mediocre waves, always close to Fidel’s Norte. It was indeed only a mediocre wave day, and made me remember that they’re still good. Winston Churchill was not a beachgoer, and if he was, he would have added the beach to his quote below.

„Democracy is like sex. When it’s good, it’s really, really good. When it’s bad, it’s still pretty good.“
Attributed to Winston Churchill (I did not verify it)

A similar theme is captured by a bumper sticker seen in America sometimes: „The worst day fishing is better than the best day working.“ I can think of exceptions, and don’t really agree with the theme, but you see the point. Even with the hassle of parking, traffic, crowds, sun hazards, weather risks (unless in San Diego, of course), etc, beachgoing is still more than worth it.

There’s nothing like southern California sun. I tried laying out around the EU, and enjoyed it. Sure, they have sun there too. But it’s a different experience when you combine the freakishly dry air, the smell of the Pacific, the lack of concern for a single cloud - even the local sand seems caressing somehow. But the star of the show is, of course, the sun. Nothing like the feeling of sunlight oozing through your skin, pouring warmth and love over every pore, triggering melanin and endorphin and dopamine systems that flood the brain with antistress. I still hope I can someday work somewhere that lets me hike and go to the beach. Doesn’t seem like so much to ask, especially if I produce better work than the next guy. Relaxation is highly competitive.

And the waves. Slowly swelling as they roll toward the shore, undulating with reflected sunlight. You can see maybe five of them at any time, in different stages of their final push. Way out you can see just the beginnings of a swell. Look up to the next wave and it’s growing, threatening, and then it reaches too high and wavers and crashes and lumbers on, pushing a few lucky surfers and rolling over less interested or talented ones. The crash of each wave seems all the more intense given how long it took to get there. Like some salmon, insects, scientists, and other creatures, waves have quite a lifespan that most people never see or think about. They didn’t just start popping up there a quarter mile out for you. Waves hitting the Pacific have been all over that sea, seen countless changes in water temperature and weather, hosted a myriad of little sea beasties going through their brief and typically ignored lives too.

Some of the waves slap against the „Childrens‘ Pool“ in La Jolla Cove. The city of La Jolla has hosted a longstanding fight between seals and children. (Think about that for a minute. It doesn’t get any cuter. It is cuter than baby pandas vs. kittens.) A beach area in La Jolla is famous for seals that sun themselves on the rocks there. This seems very reasonable to me. I can relate to seals. Tourists love to come and take pictures of the cute seals. However, others allege that the donors of the pool area intended that it be used as a wading area for kids. This has gone on and on, spurring eloquent editorials, emotional appeals, and a even a few underattended public meetings. I got back to San Diego and learned that there was just a major development: the city shall drive off the seals. Method: loudspeakers playing the sound of barking dogs. I wonder if this is actually a proven method for antagonizing the seals, or is just a cruel stunt by the seal-hating proponents, some of whom may live close enough to hear the seals barking every night. After the seal egress, the beach will be dredged to make a wading area for kids. I was intrigued by this story, partly because the bar for engaging journalism was so low after celebrity death trivialities, but mainly because I was always surprised the seals were winning all these years. They don’t have lawyers. I looked it up. At least in California, no seal ever passed the bar. Now, although I did not look it up, I do not think any kids passed the bar either. So, it was a question of which side could inspire more lawyers to work pro bono. I figured the kids, since in La Jolla, a lot of kids will have lawyer parents, whereas seals‘ parents poop on rocks.
The merits of the case never entered into it. Who cares about California law, the will of the donors, city council dicta, the seals, kids, beach, etc? This is California. Whoever has more legal resources wins. And so I was all the more shocked a few days ago when a judge called off the dogs by ordering the whole plan paused, because someone alleged that dredging the beach would cause an environmental catastrophe. Oooooooh. Good move. That’ll freeze everything for years. The current occupants of La Jolla Cova shall bark, slap, bask, and wallow in happy oblivion. Kids – well, they don’t really understand anyway, but think the seals are cute. The next escalation in California style weaponry of mass distraction would be to allege psychological damage that the seals cause the children. Or toxic effects of seal feces on native plant species. Now you have the risk of even bigger lawsuits. But that will take years; this case and the Cove will not be unsealed for years.






Some cute La Jolla seals.
The caption reads: „A group of Pacific harbor seals swim in the Childrens Pool in La Jolla. La Jolla, California, USA Species: Phoca vitulina richardsi“
Source: http://www.oceanlight.com/log/la-jolla-seals-controversy.html

Bear Scare

I spent most of June in and around Ouray, Colorado. I was there in 2008, also for almost a month, and thought it was far too short. This time, I had to devote a fair amount of time to work, and so the sense that I left Colorado too soon is even stronger now. How I’d love just one more day to hike, or see one more cousin I didn’t get to see, or ride the gondola in Telluride, or soak in the local hot springs, or just veg in a pristine mountain paradise for another day.

Or see some bears-a great experience, now that it's over. Last time, I showed a picture of the Taylor job bear. This bold black bear showed up a tone of my dad’s jobs. You can see pictures of him in my October 2008 entry. The bear caused many construction workers severe psychological trauma, preventing them from working for the rest of the day. Apparently, the trauma was such that they required immediate and proactive destressing, which is one possible explanation for why Dad found them a few hours later in the town pub.

It’s a cute story. I could sour it with the ending. Just like the backstory to the writing of Clapton’s „Wonderful Tonight“ ruins the song, so too would the above story be ruined by two facts. First, that bear already had 2 eartags, meaning he was a „bad bear.“ This is indeed the official technical term for a bear who unlearned fear of humans, and poked around someone’s house or otherwise scared a human enough to call the appropriate authorities. The first time, they stun the bear, put a tag on his ear, then move him somewhere else. Same thing the second time. As long as he does not already have 2 eartags, he gets another chance. Otherwise, like 99% of disagreements between bears and men, the lack of lawyers within the bear community leads to a resolution most bears would find biased.

Of course, that bear was in human territory. It could be a different encounter entirely. If, for example, your neck is in their neck of the woods. So it was as I was hiking up Hayden Trail on a sunny morning, armed only with Wally the Walking stick, alone. I knew to look for bears and mountain lions, and usually did, although all I ever saw before were signs left by their paws and anuses. Unfortunately, I was at just that moment dreaming happily about a brilliant and beautiful woman at UCSD who I thought (quite mistakenly) was keen on me. It would have been a magnificently ironic time to get mauled by a bear, and fittingly enough, there was suddenly one about 40 feet away. Adult black bear. So this snapped me out of the clouds right quick, and I started backing up slowly, trying to avoid eye contact, which is difficult because IT IS A REAL FUCKING LIVE BEAR and the dew on the adjacent aspen was somewhat less absorbing than it was a minute ago. I briefly reviewed my combat options and most likely outcomes. It was a very different experience when tussling with, say, a duck or badger.

Bare hands: Perhaps throw cell phone for distraction. Try to gouge eye. Offending arm bitten off, then swatted with nearest paw, breaking my other arm that I tried to use as a shield. Try to ignore pain from bloody stumps and develop new options for unarmed combat until swipe from other paw splinters rib cage through internal organs.

With walking stick, Baseball bat style swat: Swing stick in wide arc to my right side, aiming for head. Miss because bear is lunging forward to position teeth to stomach. As bear's momentum is greater, fall backward, jiggling the section of my torso in his mouth.

With walking stick, impaling thrust: Try for direct thrust to eye. Maybe also try to impale paw or neck. (Bonus feature: holding the stick makes it much harder for him to bite my arm off.) Move in for the thrust. Offending arm badly raked, causing stick droppage. Subsequent rake from bear’s other paw hits ear and greatly expands Sylvan fissure.

Improvise new weapon: No rocks; sticks inferior to my walking stick; trees too big. While trying to uproot tree anyway, bear tackles from behind and bites through head before hitting the ground.

Climb tree: If unlucky, fail to climb high enough to escape jaws. Feel jaws biting through nearest leg and pulling me down for face eating. If lucky, get high enough that paws are needed to pull me down for the same outcome.

Flee: Would bear's first swipe tear off leg completely below the knee, or leave some tissue attached through knee skin? This might slightly affect my height when jaws avulse medulla.

Call in support: Remove cellphone from pocket. Open it. Dial the 9 of 911 before bear bites through offending hand and cellphone. Wave bloody stump in the air and yell, and/or try to spell „help“ in blood on the ground. While jumping, bear disembowels with mighty swipe. Land in own intestines.

Blogmock: Warn bear of damage done to ducks, badgers, monkeys, and other (smaller) beasts by mockery in previous blog entries. Promise a great story if he simply runs away. Bear charges, tackles, then goes for the throat. Die musing about bear eating my neck in his neck of the woods. Wit left unwritten. Bear unsympathetic.

Drop to knees and pray to Jesus: I am proud to say, quite honestly, I never seriously considered this one. Ironically, since one response to a bear is to play dead, this might be a good tactic. Other men might have had their lives changed, thanking Him forever for His mercy.

So there was my brief burst of high speed cognition, a phenomenon that continues to fascinate me more and more. It sure does seem that you think more quickly, decisively, thoroughly, and memorably in crisis. And this is hard to study, since you cannot really deliberately inflict real stress on research subjects. But there it was, a lot of thinking in well under a second. It was not enough time to really react emotionally to possibly imminent death, just enough to try to avoid it through that particular mechanism. I had said many times, before hiking, that getting mauled by a bear would be a great way to go. I since became a renewed fan of dying asleep in a bed.

And that outcome may happen, cause the bear had a different encounter strategy. He saw me, looked at me for a very long fraction of a second, and ran away loudly. I wondered what the flight or flight surge was like for him. Judging by the outcome, he had it all wrong. Why run from me? I’m not the same as the guy that blew away his brother. I had no real weapon, no protective SUV, no possibility of help, not even an attack chopper. Now don’t get me wrong, I thought that very quietly at the time. I’ll go with a bluff even if I didn’t plan it. I scared away a black bear. Don’t fuck with me.

After that, I stood there and pondered my next move. Unfortunately, the bear ran ahead. So, if I continued on the trail, I might run in to him. I eventually figured, he seemed really eager to avoid me before, and it’s too early in the hike to turn around. So I plugged on. There I had another experience in cognition. I walked up the path for a while, felt tired, and stopped. Went again, and stopped way too early. It genuinely confused me. I knew what kind of hiking shape I was in and how much I would take. Then I realized, my heartbeat was throwing off my own evaluation of fatigue. My heart wasn’t beating cuz I needed a rest. Ignore it. Three hours later, I was well above the treeline being hailed on, and thought that I should have turned around. And then, a couple hours after that, I got the following picture of Red Mountain reflected in Crystal Lake.




I put my other hiking pictures on my Facebook page, but this one is not only pretty, but has a story to go with it.

Only a week later, I was hiking the Weehauken trail with my parents. I was in front, and spotted a bear about 80 feet away. While genetically a black bear, this one was brown. And the same thing as before; I spotted him before he saw me, and once he saw me, he ran away. Dad saw him too. Mom did not, and asked if the three of us could have beaten him. No, we said. But we have sticks, she said. No, we said.

A bottle in front of me

Been a busy few weeks. 2 weeks ago, I was hiking the eastern Alps. We hiked the mountain that separates the main part of Graz from the village where our governator was born. As I mentioned, Ahnold was hugely popular in Graz after he became California governor. They renamed the local stadium Scwarzenegger stadium and got a stamp with him on it. Then, he did not commute the death penalty in Cali, so his mug graces so stamps, and the stadium is now called UPC Arena. I mentioned this fact to my buddies in San Diego, and the fact that Grazers seem to think that Californians also care about that. No. Grazers can rest assured that their homeboy is unpopular among my homies, with approval ratings in the 30s. But it's primarily because of the budget. "All politics is local."

While seeing my friends in SD was exciting, the most suspenseful part was opening my suitcase to see how many bottles made it. All of them! So pumpkinseed oil, schnapps, and other bottled goods made it in to the gift baskets that I gave David and Adrienne at their wedding, which was a highly successful event.







The only real problem with the wedding is that the ol' gang was only together for a few days. Would have been great to see them more, and we probably won't get together again until the next wedding. As you can see in two of the above photos, we tried to get Eli drunk so maybe he would hit on Carl (this is legal in some states, though not California). Instead, he got all silly with the groom. I shoulda got Carl drunk too, and somehow got them in the same room. Maybe some soft music.

A few days later, I was preparing to fly back to Austria for June. I tried, hard, many times, to get permission to stay in the states between the wedding and my summer class, but no luck. And this is not unreasonable of my bosses; if employed by TU Graz, it's fair enough to expect me to actually be in Graz. I was ready to go back. I had a plane ticket and apartment ready in Graz. Then, unexpectedly, one of my bosses said I could stay in the US. Very nice of her, and will not be forgotten.

And so it is quite a surprise that I am now here in Ouray, Colorado, in the western slope of the Rockies, looking out the window at Twin Peaks, a towering 10,800 foot team that I hiked last time I was here and soon will again, along with other good hiking trails:

http://ouraytrails.org/

I still have a lot of work to do too, but that can be done in evenings. I finished a paper on Monday and am working on a few more, which will keep my busy, but nothing over my head. I also hit the Ouray Hot Springs, which is as relaxing as always, and saw most of the family at Panny's Pizza yesterday. Good trip so far. Next week, George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic play with Rusted Root in Telluride, which I will see. I saw Rusted Root in San Diego once; worth it. The Telluride Bluegrass Festival will be the weekend of June 18, which should be fun. Sure was a hoot last time.

Sam the cat seems delighted to have a new human to pet him and periodically give him cream. I still owe Sam for his assist last time he was here, since I think he played a critical role in my adventure hand-feeding a buck, so his last few days have been rich with cream and ground beef and facials. I TA'd a massage class at UCSD for 2 years; cats and dogs like pretty much the same moves. However, Sam is training me a bit too well. I do not mind being outsmarted by pussy, this is de rigeur for the heterosexual male. But Sam has me on such a simple routine: rub against me, meow, and then move expectantly toward the fridge. He fails to grasp a humorous side effect, which is that this operant conditioning has ultimately confused him with a classical conditioning side effect. Now, whenever I open the fridge, he expects cream just like a salivating dog. So when I went there for yogurt, then closed the door, he looked betrayed. I told him that I was not teasing him, but he doesn't speak the same language. I realized a parallel to another situation I am currently in. You would think this could be easily resolved, since we both speak English, but of course this leads to the dangerous illusion that men and women speak the same language. There was thus no way to convey to Sam that he was misinterpreting cues, aside from what psychologists call extinction, meaning if he gets denied long enough, he'll move on. The parallel fails in that Sam has no other source of cream, but he has reasonable alternatives, since he thinks that mice and small birds taste good. This is also different from me, and indeed most non-French humans.

"The British and Americans are a people separated by a common language."
-- paraphrasing GB Shaw, paraphrasing Wilde, who himself was loosely paraphrasing Shakespeare. The quote was used in identical or similar form by Dylan Thomas, Winston Churchill, and George S. Patton

"Men and women are a people separated by a common language."
--Me, paraphrasing the above. (translation for other species and genders not available)