Just booked. Whee!

(Image from National Geographic Traveler)

I was 24 years old, and I was in Java, sitting on a bus crowded with people (oh, and hens). I had been in Indonesia for eight weeks. I was loving the experience of being constantly surrounded with new vistas, new tastes, new fauna, new people, of having everything be completely different from what I had known before. But recently, the fact that there was never anything familiar had been getting to me. I was starting to have occasional dreams that I got to go home, just for a weekend, or that I went into a store looking for aspirin and knew exactly what the bottle would look like, or that I spoke my own language and was understood. That day, the little differences were really getting to me.

One of the things that were particularly irking me that day was how everyone always stared at me, I guess because I was a white Westerner. How they followed me around, always solliciting, asking, touching, pulling. I was usually pretty good at being philosophical and telling myself that this was their country, that I should respect their way of being, but that day… well, I was just plain out of philosophy.

Next to me sat an ancient lady, topless and toothless, with a wise, weathered face. In front of me sat Dean, an Australian tourist I’d met a few days before. Dean read my exasperation and tried to make me laugh. He started telling me what the old lady was probably thinking. Eventually he said “Gee, I wish this white girl next to me would sing me a song”.

And that’s when it happened. I thought, “All right, you people wanna stare, well, I’m gonna you a reason to stare!” And I started serenading the old lady with the song California Dreamin’ by The Mamas and the Papas. As I went on, my song grew louder and eventually I was singing to the whole bus, as its local occupants laughed and stared.

Then I sat down, and everything felt okay.

Here’s a real long shot. Does anyone out there know where I could find the notational convention for “intersection”? I’m not talking about intersections in the Venn diagram sense, but in the civil engineering sense (like the intersection between two streets). I’m looking for the standard notation for that, and it should be an international standard.

Free coffee, beer or potable of your choice to whomever happens to know this.

The rss feed (left sidebar) is working.

Steph: So what’s T doing right now?
Me: 3D animation for a video game.
Steph: Cool!
Me: Well… this weekend we walked by some pigeons and he ran through the bunch to scare them off. I asked him what his problem was. He explained that in the game, you have to be careful not to scare the birds lest they fly off and alarm the guards. He wanted to know exactly what they looked like when they flew off scared. Then he asked that I scare the birds so he could see them fly off, and so I spent a little while running after birds over and over while he watched. Eventually people were really looking at me with contempt.
Steph: Ha ha! You should have blogged that!
Me: Yeah, maybe I will.

Soon, I can buy cosmopolitans with Pippin money!

She: Isn’t it great to leave the city at the crack of dawn?
He: Yeah! Sometimes I wonder if all the walking I do in the city is actually detrimental to my health. You know, all that gray air…

(two hours later)
He: Now I realize how rarely we see so many trees.
She: And no ski slopes carved into the mountainsides.
He: Personally, it’s the clear little rivers I like.
She: The gleam of the sunlight bouncing off the wet rocks.
He: I think the people around here have it right. How can we stand living in the city?
She: I know. I really should stop talking about telecommuting and do it. From here.

(minutes later)
She: The first few miles of the hike are flat. Let’s try to get them done as quickly as possible, so we can spend more time on the summit.

(two and a half hours later)
He: Is this another bogus summit?
She: No, this is it. Break out the sandwiches.
He: It’s been getting quite challenging at the end there, eh?
She: That last mile and a half was tough.

(one hour later)
He: My goddamn feet are covered in blisters! How much longer do we have to go?
She: Don’t complain about your feet and I won’t bitch about my knee. Ah, there’s the lake. Five miles and we’re done.
He: Five miles?!
She: Don’t remind me.
He: We should have brought bug juice.
(wet glorpy sound)
She: Crap! Knee-deep mud again!
He: Ow. Ow. Ow.

(three miles later)
He: Ow. Ow. Ow.
She: The last two are the easiest, but I’m totally wrecked.
He: I dream of seeing the parking lot.
She: The gleam of sunlight bouncing off the shiny cars.
He: Taking off these boots will be rapture.
She: Parking lot! Am I dreaming?

(one hour later)
She: Keep me talking until I can buy coffee at a dep somewhere.
He: There are no stores for miles! How can these people stand it?
She: I can’t wait to be in my bath.
He: Being clean. Watching cable.

(one hour later)
She: Home at last.
He: Isn’t the city gorgeous?

My friend Ced and I sometimes argue about what constitutes a “good” movie. Don’t get me wrong, we don’t argue about photography versus acting, script versus pace. Ced just disagrees when I say things like “that was a really bad movie, but I liked it”. To Ced, if I liked it, then I should consider it a good movie. To me, if the movie was made with love, integrity and attention to quality, it’s usually a “good” movie. But that doesn’t necessarily mean I liked it. Think of it as a wonderful painting by Goya, whose genius you recognize, but whose paintings you’d never want to hang in your living room.

Thus, there are some movies that I think are good, but that I have to guiltily admit I didn’t like (Punch-Drunk Love, Easy Rider, Once Upon a Time in the West, The Usual Suspects). Conversely, I have to admit, often with shame, that I liked certain movies I considered “bad”.

Case in point: Soldier, with Kurt Russell. I’m on a business trip in New Jersey. Due to white out conditions, the client cancels the training I am to give today. I am stuck in an Econo Lodge on a deserted snowy highway, all day. I have a tv with something like two channels, and a physics textbook. No internet. Soldier is on. I think I would rather shave my head with a cheese grater, but as I don’t have a cheese grater, I start watching it. It turns out to be quite entertaining, especially in light of my expectations.

Thus, Soldier is one of my “bad movies”, as is The Cutting Edge, a sappy 80s flick in which an injured hockey player becomes a successful figure skater.

I believe everyone has their “bad movie”. What’s yours?

Sometimes when I’m forced to walk down a dark street, I get annoyed if a man walks really close behind me. I briefly think to myself that even if he’s a law-abiding citizen, he should know better, he should know that it can freak chicks out. But then I remind myself that I really shouldn’t be annoyed with him, he’s not really doing anything wrong. How is my paranoia supposed to be his problem?

But then the other day I’m jogging in Parc Lafontaine, and some dodgy-looking guy on a bike startles me and then follows me around trying to pick me up. I wanted to say “Look, moron, there’s a rapist on the loose, so don’t be coming up behind women in parks. Someday you’ll get a kickboxer instead of a jogger”. But I just picked up the pace and headed for where there were people.

I get on the elevator this morning, by myself, and push the button to go up to my floor. As the doors close, a man dressed in plain clothes hurries in. He goes to the control panel, inserts a key and says authoritatively, “we’ll take a detour down to the parking garage”. Of course, in my pre-caffeine mind, there’s no difference between parking garage and, say, boiler room. I tense up and tighten my grip on my coffee, ready to throw the hot liquid in his face. But he hurries out into the parking garage without incident. I’m left wondering which one of us was being stupid.

I don’t want to be a misanthropist nor absolutely naïve. How do you know if you’re being overly mistrustful of the world, or just looking after yourself? Is the difference only in the outcome?

The Internet Movie Database is running a poll today about what songs would we like to see in the Lord of the Rings musical. Among the choices (warning, these are baaad):

“Nazgul, You Fool!”
“Frodo Mojo”
“Force of Hobbit”
“Uruk-Hai, Uruk-Ho!”
“It’s All Elvish to Me”
“Strider Beside Her”
“Call Him Gollum”