The Silent Crossing and the Countdown to Death

One of the most infuriating things we discovered when exploring America (or at least San Jose) on foot, is that the pedestrian crossings really do not try to help you in this endeavour.

Firstly, although this is likely just a different convention, the buttons to cross the street are not positioned on the side of the pole facing you as you look across the street, but 90 degrees around the corner. Needless to say we initially spent a considerable amount of time waiting for the little white (not green) man to appear, only to realise that we had pressed the wrong button.

Of course normally you would realise your mistake quite quickly when the wrong crossing signal went off, but here roughly 75% of the pedestrian crossings are completely silent. So not only is there no feedback when you have pressed the wrong button, there's also no feedback that you have pressed the right one as the little red "stop" hand is there permanently. This results in many, many cases of looking up from your ipod/cellphone/conversation, only to realise that you have already missed the crossing and you must now press the button and wait again. If you do manage to catch the crossing before it finishes, it helpfully displays a large red "countdown" to let you know how much longer you have before the SUVs are allowed to mow you down.

I truly pity for deaf pedestrians in America. Not only do they get no clues as to when it's safe to cross the street, the Californian Drivers Handbook (the road code) has to explicitly tell prospective drivers not to honk at blind people. Then again, the handbook also begins with a message from Arnold Schwarzenegger... that's got to count for something.

Vacuum cleaner salesmen and Miss Philippines....

Today there was a knock at the door. An earnest young guy stood there, offering me a free carpet-clean. Naturally I was highly suspicious at first (as most 'free' things in America suddenly sprout hidden costs or are selling you something). But I eventually decided that since I was about to vacuum anyway, and there were many small black dots scattered around the carpet from our invite-making, it would be worth it for the laziness factor. He promised to come back at 4.

So at 4, there was another knock at the door. The same earnest-looking guy stood there, with another guy and lots of boxes. Once inside, they proceeded to tell me all about the magic 'Kirby' vacuum cleaner which did so many amazing things, and dragged out much more dust than the average vacuum cleaner. Then the second guy disappeared, leaving his colleague to vacuum the room, showing me all the little circles full of dust and dirt that it had picked up on our supposedly clean floor. I asked him about college degrees in America, and every so often, when I said something he found surprising, his eyes would grow big and round and a quick little smile would come. I got the feeling he had a highly sheltered background, living with his grandparents.
He also did the mattress and the cushions - luckily we only bought our furniture a few weeks ago, so it wasn't particularly dirty (for the shock sales value). And didn't contain hordes of dust mites to give us non-existent asthma, as much as he insisted it would. And we don't have pets. So the mighty power of the $1800 vacuum cleaner was somewhat wasted on me, and my mostly-clean house.

However, the second guy was quite interesting. He was a lot more personable, was from Malaysia, had met lots of Kiwis and Aussies before when he worked in the UK, and we discussed computer games. He said he used to be friends with the girl who lived here before us, Michelle de Leon, and helped her move her copious amounts of stuff out of the apartment. He also showed me the carpet square they replaced when she had a hookah party, and someone spilled ash on the floor. We assumed it was new carpet, but obviously not!

Michelle's a well-known model, and has been in China competing in the Top Model of the World competition as Miss Philippines for the last few months. She won the first runner-up prize, missing out as the winner by .2 points. Here's another picture of her. So a top model used to live in our house! Quite exciting, really.

So, what's there to kill in New Zealand?

A few days ago I had lunch (purely by an accident of musical chairs) with a guy whose primary interests were hunting and football. Actually, "primary interests" is probably too weak a phrase. I think for all intents and purposes these were his only interests and he had honed them to gleaming precision by siphoning away the mental energies most people spend on things such as work, relationships and maintaining a BMI lower that that of a walrus.

Here's a summary of our conversation:

• After asking what part of England I was from, he told me (with a considerable degree of pride) that unlike most Americans, he knew exactly where New Zealand was. To his credit, he didn't think it was in Europe and was aware that New Zealand and Australia were different countries, however some of the finer details eluded him, such as the fact that there is an expanse of ocean between the two, and that NZ isn't "right alongside Australia, and up a 'lil bit".*
  
• He then took the time to explain the culture and tradition around sporting events (apparentely the Superbowl is coming up). I was surprised to find that none of this was at all new because we've all seen American TV. Essentially there is a mass migration to the house of "he who owns the largest TV", and everyone who does not own the TV brings beer and chips. I asked him (jokingly) why they call it the "World Series" when the rest of the world isn't invited. If he saw the joke he didn't indicate it, but did seem mildly agitated that I had introduced a second sport to the conversation (for those who aren't aware, the World Series is baseball).
  
• He did seem genuinely interested in the New Zealand terrain (and was surprised to know it's not very tropical looking at all). I started to explain that it was becoming popular for movies because of the variation, but it turned out he just wanted to know if it would make for interesting hunting.
  
• He also wanted to know what there was to hunt in New Zealand, and if it was difficult to get permits. He was very surprised that koalas and kangaroos had never migrated into New Zealand, despite my insistence that the amount of ocean between the two really is quite large. He was also disappointed that despite looking "pretty much like a chicken", it was not common to eat "Kiwi Birds". Apparently my lack of knowledge about the NZ hunting scene didn't go down well as the next five or so minutes were spent on a very well rehearsed lecture on the right to hunt and the benefits thereof.
  

All and all, a very entertaining lunch break :)

* I'm not actually conceited enough to insist that everyone should know where New Zealand is (my best guess as to the location of, say, Kyrgyzstan would be "somewhere between Russia and India"). It was his confidence in his vague and inaccurate answer that I found entertaining.

Our philosophy... blah blah blah

On his recent tour of NZ, the travel writer Bill Bryson was asked how he got away with mocking so many places and so many 'challenged' people in his books. His answer?

"You make these observations," he said, "then go away to a safe distance and write it." (Quote courtesy of the Christchurch Press, 23/02/07.)

So in that tradition, our blog has also sought to discover little 'quirks' about America and the other places we travel to. Except in this case, we rely on being able to write relatively anonymously rather than being in a 'safe' place to write it!

I can't help feeling it's slightly ironic that one of our favourite writers is in NZ right now, while we are here...

You know you're a Westie when...

In the grand tradition of American Rednecks and of Valentines Day, we bring you:

American Redneck Jokes. (They did come with peanut butter cups, but we ate those.) This is apparently the perfect present to buy your partner for Valentine's Day here - it comes in a heart-shaped tin. Ah, Redneck love...

However, these cliches also apply equally to West Aucklanders, or "Westies". So, you know you're a Westie when....

... your truck won't fit through the bank drive-thru... or MacDonald's
... you start a fight in a bar and your wife finishes it
... you have to mow your grass around a refrigerator
... most of your in-laws are outlaws
... your mailbox is made out of old auto parts
... your kids trip over the Christmas lights while hunting Easter eggs
... your dog and your wallet are both on a chain

San Jose nightclubs

An article in the San Jose Mercury News about how they're trying to make San Jose nightclubs more safe. I think its cos there are generally not that many white people there... ah how much I hate how race comes into things here in America!

When I asked the other interns about the clubs here, they said they don't go that often, and the ones they went to were "dirty" - as in Shooters dirty.

I want to go dancing sometime though- maybe Onita will know. She likes dancing too. Of course, the San Francisco ones are supposed to be much, much better...

Today we went to Costco (kinda like Moore Wilsons) and back to Ikea to pick up our chairs. Yay! We have actual chairs for our table now!

And Alex, the last intern, has come over now. He's pretty cool. He used to work with our friend Matt, though we hadn't met him before. It's funny, everyone here kinda knows each other or knows people who know each other. Wellington is so small.

Computer: RIP(ieces)

Well, as of last night I can confirm my computer is officially dead. The data has been irrecoverably lost from all four hard drives (although my music collection is safely backed up on my iPod), and the drives still in working order have been formatted. I felt it was very important to format them once I realized there was truly no hope, otherwise I would spend the next month trying to think up increasingly creative ways to get the data back.

For the technically minded, here's how it went. I have (had) four hard drives set up in a pair of RAID 0 arrays, two 120GB disks, two 250GB disks. A RAID 0 array allows disks to work together to improve speed, but if you lose one of the drives in the pair, you lose the data from the other. Given that all four disks had come loose from their brackets and flown around the case during transit (I would scream obscenities about Qantas, but it's too early in the morning), this was already a recipe for disaster, but there was another factor I hadn't considered before. RAID controllers are not standardized. You can't just take a RAID array from one computer and put it into another computer which also supports RAID. The two computers would need to have the exact same RAID controller chip, right down to the version number in most cases, otherwise the array won't be recognized. Sometimes not even then. To even get into my data, I needed my old motherboard.

Unfortunately my old motherboard is screwed. I managed to get it working very briefly, and for one glorious moment I even booted into Windows and saw Geoff looking miserably at me from a police car (see Another Geoff Adventure). Then one of the disks died, with a very disheartening noise that made it quite clear it wasn't going to be coming back for one last epic battle with the protagonist. So that was one pair of disks down, but it mostly contained program files and a few movies, so I wasn't too concerned. However, as I tried to get the other pair of drives working, the motherboard continued to get increasingly unstable until eventually it refused to turn on at all. It was only then that I realized the entire quarter of the board containing the CPU and all the plugs and sockets was so hot I could barely touch it. Even the power supply cord going into the area was dangerously warm. I let it cool down but it still hasn't booted since, and without that board the other RAID array is unfortunately useless. Before you ask, that particular board isn't on the market anymore and a quick search on eBay/trademe revealed nothing.

So let us recount that which has been lost:

• 1 case, crippled and deformed in a brave attempt to save the rest of the computer.
  
• 1 Motherboard which, after a valiant struggle, finally succumbed to its wounds (i.e. hard disks being repeatedly thrown into it).
• 1 hard disk (possibly more)
• 2 RAID arrays, 500GB of data.
• Many gigabytes of pictures, most of which Tina luckily had copies of
• Every essay and assignment I prepared during four years of university and my last two years of high school. Luckily, many of these (such as my Honours project) survive in other places, such as in my email and in hard copy.
• Ridiculous numbers of movies and applications (which were of course not pirated).
• My music collection, thank god it's all on my iPod.
• Countless other bits and pieces which I don't remember now but will go looking for one day only to find they aren't there. "Ohh bugger, that was on the old hard drive..." will be a common refrain for the next few months.

There are a couple of components I'm not sure about:

• 1 CPU. I have no way of testing it because it will not fit in either of our computers.
• 1 Soundcard. Haven't got around to testing it yet, but it certainly doesn't look too healthy.
  

And of course, the brave survivors:

• 3 out of 4 hard drives (so far as I know... this may change later), which is astonishing considering the beating they received.
  
• 1 video card, which I didn't hold out much hope for. It had accompanied the hard drives in their in-case flying lessons. Well see how it holds up under stress.
  
• 2 DVD drives.
• 1 GB of RAM, which is now in Tinas computer (taking her from 512MB to 1.5 GB).

So all and all I've had to replace about 75% of my computer. I choose to look on the bright side and see this as a "forced upgrade". At least now I'll be able to play Supreme Commander at a decent frame-rate. And this time when I set up the computer, I will still be using a RAID array, but it will be RAID 1, which creates an exact backup copy of everything on a drive.