Bottled for Kenya Airways

It is currently about ten to midnight, and I'm sitting (well slouching) drinking Hennessy cognac that was bottled for Kenya Airways. It is all a little surreal. Well actually the cognac is quite nice, but other than that it is a little surreal.

Let me tell you a story... Once upon a time there was a little boy who was teething, to take away the pain his grandmother used to rub brandy (well it might have been whisky or gin, but you get the point) on his gums. Now fast forward 31 years and that little boy is a fully grown (some would say overgrown) man and is sitting at his computer drinking cognac. The cognac was recently given to him by his grandmother and tonight he is drinking it to remember and celebrate her. He'll probably never find out how he came to possess a bottle of Hennessy cognac that was bottled for Kenya Airways.

Missing you...

The (Long Awaited?) First London Post

So it happened. As with all things, my American days have come to an end.

I am no longer an Englishman adrift in the sea that is mid-western America. No longer do I have the excuse (and conversational tool) of being foreign. No more can I shrug my shoulders and say that it isn't my country. For now, for better or worse, I'm home.

I always thought it would happen (my returning to England that is), but it is still quite surprising to find myself actually back in London. America was very, umm. comfortable, I can see why people get stuck there. For a while it was home, but it was never Home (if one is allowed to make such capitalistic statements).

Home is London. Home was always London. Which is odd when you consider the fact that I only lived here for 7 years, the first 3 of which it is cheating to count as they were my first 3.

So, anyway I sit here in my, vastly overpriced, rented flat looking out over the London skyline at the dome of St. Paul's (which I'm sure is part of the reason the flat is over priced) and marvel at how things have changed. Three months ago I was living in a house, with 2-3 others, in Columbus paying around 10 percent of my salary in rent. Now I live in a flat in London, with 1-2 other(s), and pay over 50% of my salary in rent. I suppose that's progress for you. It's remarkable how mercenary I have found myself becoming, and how often my thoughts turn to matters fiscal, now that I don't have any money.

The beard and groom issue

So here we are, as promised photos of a beard and a groom's party. I sadly don't have any photos of the bride and groom together, as I didn't take very many photos throughout the night (instead opting for the getting drunk strategy).

Quick updatey sort of post

So where have I been? And why have I been so bad at blogging over the last few months? To start with the latter, I'd like to plead busy-ness and tiredness and dead laptop-ness, but I probably have to put most of it down to laziness.

For the former, last I mentioned I was in Antarctica waiting for nice weather to launch our balloon. Well, the nice weather came on December 15th and our balloon was launched. For the following five weeks the balloon floated around Antarctica, at an altitude of around 37,000 metres, before finally being cut down a few hundred kilometres from the South Pole.

Due to the small matter of my brother's (Barry's) wedding in New Zealand, I actually left Antarctica on the 28th December and spent some time cooling my heels in New Zealand's alleged summer (the only two days when the sun shone were the day before and the day of the wedding, which was quite convenient). Following the celebration of Barry and Emma's nuptials I came back to lovely Columbus to wait for the data before making the big move back to London at the start of March.

When I get round to it I'll try and post a couple more photos from Antarctica and New Zealand. Including one of me with a silly beard, and one of the groom's party in all our finery before the wedding.

So in summary still alive, still more or less exhausted, and still moving to London (in less than four weeks now). On the subject of moving to London, we shall be having a leaving/assorted birthdays party at my house on the 24th February. If any friends are in town and want to come I can provide address, time, etc. closer to the date.

My Favourite Antarctic Photo

Here is my favourite photo from Antarctica, and yes that is a smoking volcano in the background.

It had to be a Michigan treasurer...

... who fell for a Nigeria email scam. Silly boy.

Launch Day Take 5

So ANITA has been fully assembled for a while now, we declared flight ready almost 10 days ago and since then we've been waiting for the weather. It's not all that much fun to wait for the weather. It's particularly not fun on the days where the weather is almost good enough and we get out of bed early to catch the bus to Williams Field (it started with the bus leaving at 6:30am for the first launch attempt, then we went to 5:30 and then a couple of tries at 4:30, and now tomorrow's attempt will start with the bus leaving at 3:00am) only for the launch to be scrubbed 6 or 10 hours later. But you have to be the ready and get the payload out to the launch pad, just in case the weather (wind in particular) calms down enough for a launch. With luck tomorrow will be the day we get the thing in the air, but I thought that we were going to launch yesterday before the winds picked up, so who knows.

Still at least the food out at the LDB (Long Duration Balloon) galley is good. Matt the chef's cooking is generally the highlight of each day.

3am, I'm not looking forward to it.

Unless we launch.

End of a hectic month, start of a hectic day

So, it's been pretty busy down here on the Ice. In the last month ANITA has gone from a collection of of wooden crates recently off-loaded from a cargo ship, to a fully constructed balloon payload ready for it's hang test tomorrow (for those who aren't balloonatics — Jim's word, not mine — the hang test is the test we do before flight to ensure that our instrument plays nice with the NASA equipment that controls the balloon and through which all our communication during flight goes. If we pass the test then we can declare flight ready and it should just be a matter of waiting for the wind pattern to settle around the South Pole so that we can launch the balloon.

Hopefully what this means is that most of my work should now be more or less done, and I'll get a chance to relax (some more). So far the only day off I've had so far was for the Ohio State - Michigan football game (which Ohio State won), for which we had to start drinking at 9 am so that we could get into the spirit of the game.

Election 2006

It's kind of amusing that at home I don't really have a political affiliation any more (growing up I was told that Labour was evil, the Lib Dems was a wasted vote and the Conservatives were the least bad option, but nowadays I'm not sure that any of them are better or worse than any others), but in America I discover I'm a Democrat — or to be more technically true, I discover I'm definitely not a Republican. So, Hurrah for the house and who knows maybe miracles will happen with the Senate.

The sun never sets...

Yeah, I know it's a cliche but it's still strange to walk out of the bar at 9:30 in the evening (we get up at 6, so we try and keep it early) and it is still dazzling bright outside. In fact, it is always dazzling bright here in Antarctica and the wearing of sunglasses is apparently mandatory — not that I think there are penalties, beyond snow-blindness, for those who don't wear them.

Working here has been pretty fun so far, we work out at one of the airfields — Williams, or Willy, field — and it is out on the Ross Ice Shelf, where on clear days there are breathtaking views of the smoking Mt. Erebus (I'll post a picture when I get round to downloading one from the camera). The 30-45 minute bus ride each way is a little annoying, particularly as the airfield is only 6 miles outside of McMurdo (the town), but I imagine I'll have a similar commute when I'm back in London next year, and it probably won't be as pretty.

So far the weather has held up, and we haven't had much in the way of snow. I'm assured that this is guaranteed to change before the end of the month, and I hope so — it would seem a terrible shame to come to Antarctica and not have at least one decent storm. Having said that I'm sure after one I'd be really bored of them, but still...

The seagull and the sausage, and other tall tales

Like all good stories this one starts with a football match. Unlike most football matches this one started at 8am on a Sunday. Unlike most football matches that I've played in, our team actually won. I know it sounds unbelievable, but it is true. (For reference: The Clawless Marauders, our outdoor seven aside team, managed to concede 70 goals in 6 games — one of which the opposing team didn't turn up for.)

Well okay, so I just lied a little. No it wasn't about winning the football match, it was about the start. The first sentence should have read, "Like all good stories this one starts with a drinking and backgammon gambling session that went until 4am (or 5, if you consider the fact that we put the clocks back an hour at 10:50 when we were feeling sleepy). Of course, if I'd started my first post in months with that it would merely add to my Mother's conviction that I am an alcoholic, gambling addict — and yes, that would be a bad thing. (For the record I ended the backgammon session up a stunning $7)

All things considered I can't think of a better way to start the day you head of towards Antarctica (well New Zealand, really) than an 8am football match after you've had three hours of sleep. Particularly when you win the game; at this point I should probably state that I only played about seven minutes of the game and probably contributed minimally to the result, but this isn't Roy of the Rovers.

Following the football, I had just enough time to have a shower before it was time to head off to work to finishing packing the boxes of scientific stuff that I'm taking down to the ice. Then it was off to the airport, where I'd hoped to be delayed long enough to watch the Atlanta Falcons beat the Cincinnati Bengals (in fact my flight was delayed but only long enough for we to watch Cincy lead the Falcons 17-13 at halftime). In the future I must remember to look up which sporting events are happening on my proposed travel dates, for now I'll just have to be satisfied that the Falcons won (I'm sure that, deep down, they did it for me).

The flight to New Zealand was not as unpleasant as I was expecting, largely due to the fact that I was absolutely knackered and managed to sleep for a while. The leg from Chicago to L.A. was enlivened by the man next to me telling how much he hated all the hypocritical homosexuals in the Republican party, and how China were going to take out Kim Jong-Il before the Olympics in Beijing (remember, you heard it here first if it happens). The only downside of the flight to Auckland is that my personal luggage wasn't on it, in fact it went to Brisbane, collecting all these pretty tags on it's way.



One of the first things I saw when I was a walking down the street in Christchurch, was a seagull swoop down from the rooftops and take a battered sausage out of the hands of a guy as he was eating it. It was very impressive, in fact I had to take a photo of said sausage to immortalise the moment. And just for good measure here is a shot of the strange vase thing next to the cathedral (can you tell I just bought a new camera?)

The day Ryan accidentally purchased clothing

Due to popular demand...

Now I should probably describe my situation and mindset at the time of the shirt buying incident. That morning, it was a Saturday, I'd woken up on a bed that was a little too small for me in Las Vegas. That evening I had a flight to catch from LA to London so that I could be around for UCL's Rolling Grant review. Now I had no real idea what a Rolling Grant review consisted — and to be honest I'm still not much the wiser — and I had no idea if I was supposed to present anything, or dress up, or anything. Suffice to say I was I was in a state of some uncertainty.

The one thing that I was certain of was that I probably shouldn't turn up at the UCL wearing the same jeans that I had slept in on the flight over from LA. This was the reason I decided to go shopping. Now for those of you who know me, and for those who don't but have seen the photo on my work web site, it is probably evident that I am not a dedicated follow of fashion. I make this point to provide an explanation for why I thought it would be a good idea to go to the shops with Kim and her friend Mali, as between the two of the I might have been able to garner some semi useful advice on the clothing front. It turns out that this was my great mistake.

In retrospect, at the point in the shopping trip where we had been to two stores and had yet to find a pair of trousers that fit me I should have just given up. Further, when Kim resorted to calling her sister to proffer advice I should of stopped listening to her (her sister's advice was wear a tie and a green shirt, in case you were curious). I did neither of these. Instead we drove across LA and went to the Macy Men's store in the Beverly Center or Hollywood Mall or some other similarly named awful place. Again, this can probably be viewed as a mistake.

Still I persevered on my quest to obtain a clean pair of trousers (although by now I was weary and hated the world for making my a clothing pariah) to wear in London. I searched the store high and low (well just low really as it was all on the ground floor), but couldn't find any trousers that fit me (Bastards!), so instead I decided to turn my attention to getting a shirt instead, figuring I would just buy some clean trousers when I got to London. After two more laps of the store we (well Kim really) managed to locate a couple of shirts that were not too hideous. So, sensing at least a partial victory, I went up to the counter and handed the man the shirts and my credit card. He handed me back a little slip of paper asking me for my signature, as I signed I vaguely noticed that the total for my two shirts was $300. It took a little while to sink in. I think I was back in the car and driving to the airport that I realised I'd just bought a $200 shirt.

I still feel somewhat cheated, although when I was wearing the shirt I received more compliments about my clothing than at any other time I remember (being as I remember exactly zero beforehand, well zero that weren't about my offensive t-shirts).

Not dead, just feel like it

Yeah, I know long time no post. I bet you thought I'd gone crazy from too many night shifts and killed all my colleagues with a some fishing line, or something. I didn't though. Honest. They are all as alive and well as they ever are.

So, I'm back in Columbus after what seems like nine and half weeks — largely because it was nine and half weeks — and it is good to be back. Who'd think you could miss Central Ohio (miss as in long, not miss as in omit, that is)? Well apparently you can, but I'm sure I'll get over it.

Anyhow is my quick nine and half week recap of myself and Kim's cross-country (and cross-continents in my case) trip in shortened form.

Day 1: leave Columbus... yawn... drive through Indiana... yawn... drive through Illinois... more yawn... spend the night in Iowa... yawn, Zzzz.
Day 2: try to find something interesting in Iowa — see Amana colonies, covered bridges, Des Moines and generally fail — dine in Lincoln, Nebraska (think Nebraska much better than Iowa as drive at night to Grand Island).
Day 3: hate Nebraska, drive fast to make up for lost time, have plane to catch on Saturday in LA, still hate Nebraska, stop in Ogallala — it's very scary — eat lunch in Sterling, Colorado, the restaurant is called T J Bummers, no that really is the name, see (notice the heart as an apostrophe), drive through Colorado, the mountain part is very pretty, drive into Utah, stop at Green River, the restaurant has no alcohol, but the hotel did have wireless.
Day 4, national parks day, drive through Capitol Reef National Park, across Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument, visit Bryce Canyon National Park, try to see waterfalls in Zion National Park (see some water falling but not really a waterfall), drive to Las Vegas thinking Utah's very, very pretty.
Day 5, drive to Los Angeles, buy a $200 shirt by accident, drive to airport, discover I've been offered a Royal Society University Research Fellowship, fly to London.
Day 6, arrive in London, go to Grandmothers (no wolves), read mail, go to sleep, finally.
Day 7, go in to UCL, eat a tuna sandwich, send email to friends about beer, get drunk, get more drunk, sleep in Finsbury Park (in a flat near Finsbury Park that is)
Day 8, go in to UCL, walk to Paddington, fly to Los Angeles, drive to Tustin, eat at Outback, sleep in our three bedroom town house in Tustin (it's very nice but somewhat lacking in furniture).
Weeks 2-5: go to work at UCI, eat food, drink alcohol, go to bed.
In between Day 1: drive to LA have Thai food, see Josh Ritter concert go to sleep around 1:30am.
In between Day 2: wake up at 5am, watch England beat Paraguay in Hollywood Billiards, the English fans are almost as annoying as the American commentators they are complaining about, drive up the PCH to San Luis Obispo, drive inland to Sequoia National Park, see the worlds largest tree (peh, it's a tree), see a bear (wahoo, it's a bear!), drive to Fresno, Fresno is shit.
In between Day 3: drive across nowhere California to Monterrey, go to Cannery Row and Aquarium, drive to Stanford Linear Accelerator, sleep, sleep, sleep.
Weeks 6-7: Work all day getting ready for beam
Week 8: Work all night on the bloody grave shift.
Week 9: Work all day on hang test and then packing.
Homeward Day 1: Get up early watch England lose to Portugal, on penalties, again. Drive to touristy trashy part of San Francisco, visit Muir Woods with the rest of the world, drive up PCH some more, 'tis very pretty, spend the night in Utica.
Homeward Day 2: Get up late, don't drive through the drive through tree, drive to Oregon, sleep.
Homeward Day 3: Get up early for phone conference, go to Crater Lake (pretty), go to Bend (hippy town), almost run out of gas in high Oregon desert (had to turn off the air conditioning, drive less than 80, and put 13.2 gallons into a 12 gallon tank), drive to Idaho, bit falls off car, unimportant bit, so we drive to Boise.
Homeward Day 4 (Fourth of July): Get up late, still tired, drive to Jackson Hole, some prettiness in Idaho, watch fireworks, stay in scary touristy town.
Homeward Day 5: Go to Grand Teton National Park, finally see a proper waterfall (Hidden Falls), go to Yellowstone National Park, see Old Faithful and other bubbling hot pits, see enormous herd of Buffalo, drive East out of park, don't realise there is a mountain between Cody and Sheridan, know I do.
Homeward Day 6: Drive past Devils Tower, visit Deadwood (the town that the best show on television is set in), pay $20 unintentional to see Crazy Horse monument, also drive by Mount Rushmore, stop at Wall Drug (well you have to, don't you), visit The Badlands National Park, spend the night in South Dakota.
Homeward Day 7: Drive east, through South Dakota, Minnesota, Wisconsin, stop for dinner in Chicago, get stuck in Chicago traffic, who's stupid idea was this, oh that's right it was mine, drive in to Indiana, give up and stop for the night. We'd have made it all the way home if it wasn't for that stupid dinner idea.
Homeward Day 8: Drive to Columbus, watch Germany beat Portugal, go camping (cause I'm stupid), sleep, sleep, sleep.

It was fun a couple all in all, but I'm still pretty tired. I think the only excitement I've had since getting back were the two messages from a TV producer and what the hygienist said at the dentists. They went something like this:
Hello Dr Ryan, I'm so-and-so and I read about you in Golf Digest, I'm starting a golf TV reality show and wanted to know if you'd be interested in taking part, please call me on ***-***-****.
Hello, it's so-and-so again, I had the wrong doctor, please disregard my last message, sorry about that.
(mid way through the cleaning the hygienist picked up a dental tool and said)
I have no idea what this tool is for.

Five o'clock in the morning

So tonight marks the fourth (I think) night for which I've been in charge of the night shift here at SLAC — where the ANITA payload is currently dangling from a crane and recording pulse after pulse of Askaryan radio Cherenkov radiation emanating from a ten ton block of ice in the beam line. For some reason, even though I am getting something close to my normal (recent) quantity of sleep, when I'm working nights I find it much harder to maintain a coherent thought. Probably because must of the time all I can think about is curling up in a ball and going to sleep. Ah, sleep how much I miss you.

Despite the early kickoffs here in California, I have at least managed to watch two of the three England games so far this World Cup, having missed the Trinidad and Tobago game due to East coast West coast confusion. They don't look terribly impressive, do they. But having said that they did win their group, and you have to fancy them against Ecuador on Monday.

Only two and half more hours to go until the shift ends. Two and a half achingly long hours. Did I mention how much I hate the night shift? More than a little.

In which the author misses a wedding in Bismarck, a bachelor party in Vegas and much sleep

Yes, it's that time of year again... it's ANITA integration time! Wherein a large number of physicists, engineers and technicians group together in a large room and try to figure out how we put all our toys together and make them work. What fun!

So, here I am at nine O'Clock on Tuesday evening bravely battling against the evil forces of malignant disks and misanthropic IDE buses (trust me you don't want to know).

This weekend I had two invitations that I ended up being unable to attend due to work commitments. I could have been celebrating the nuptials of Andy and Amy in Bismarck, North Dakota, or commiserating the emasculation of Jason in Las Vegas. I could have been, but I wasn't, instead I was stuck in tooth and nail fight between firmware and software. And neither was fighting particularly clean. Still, at least I got to eat genuine Puerto Rican at Jason's (from Hawaii) leaving party after work on Saturday.

Anyhow between the work and drinking and the driving across America and the flying to London for a tuna sandwich and the work, I have not been getting my usual allotment of beauty sleep recently. Which as you can probably imagine is devastating. Still who knows maybe Rooney's foot will miraculously heal and all will be well with the world. Maybe.

Oh, in other news I found out I had a job at the LA airport (I was at the airport when I found out I had the job, not that the job is at the airport) and I found out we're definitely going to Antarctica this year (assuming that everything starts working sometime soon). So it's not all doom and gloom and insomnia.

Tales from Utah

Yeah, that's right I'm in Utah. I know it's hard to believe but it's the truth. Of all the States I thought I'd be spending a night in, Utah wasn't very high on the list. Can you believe I even suffered the indignity of eating a steak dinner without alcohol at the restaurant this evening.

Actually, to be honest with the exception of the no alcohol thing Utah isn't all that bad. For a start there is the 75 MPH speed limit which is a whole lot nicer than Ohio's measly 65, then there is the gorgeous vistas, again way better than Ohio. Tomorrow should even bring two national parks and hopefully a lot more prettiness. With luck I'll be able to avoid the crazy religious aspects of the state and escape to the relative normality of Las Vegas unscathed and unconverted.

On the way to Utah we've been through Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska and Colorado. Obviously, Colorado is clearly the prettiest of those states, what with the great big mountains and cliffs and rivers and everything. But, I am surprised to say that my second favourite state on the list would probably have to be Iowa. Now don't get me wrong I'm not going to move there, but it wasn't as awful as I thought it was going to be. I even bought a bottle of rhubarb wine (it seemed like a good idea at the time) and walked across one of the bridges of Madison county (ditto). But Iowa had lots of pretty rolling hills whereas all the other states were pretty much flat as the proverbial pancake. On the downside Des Moines is just about the last place on Earth I'd ever want to live, even Lincoln Nebraska was a whole lot better.

Only Las Vegas tomorrow, Los Angeles on Saturday and London on Sunday to go. Should be fun.

Featuring a chest of drawers and a pineapple

On Saturday night I went to a leaving party, to be exact I went to Matthias and Sabine's leaving party. They are leaving lovely Columbus, Ohio, and returning to Germany. All of which means that my office is busier than ever, my arms have hurt all week and I have a pineapple. None of which I were expecting.

The office came as particularly surprising as I was expecting things to become quieter after Matthias, my former office-mate, went back to the mother country. However, I somewhat underestimated the enthusiasm for other members of the group to be in the office. Not that it is a bad thing necessarily, just a little surprising. My best guess is that when there were two of us working in here people assumed that one of us might be working hard and tried not to come by too often. Now that it is just poor, little old me I guess the assume I'm never working and come by at will.

The arms and the pineapple were the result of a raffle, some stupidity (mine, of course) and a hilarious hour and half's struggle in the rain. In the raffle, which was a raffling of the departing couples remaining possessions (all for charity, of course), I won a chest of drawers. Because by the time I left their house a fair bit of alcohol had been consumed, it seemed like a good idea for myself and Brit to attempt to carry the chest of drawers home. Now just to make it more of a challenge we loaded the drawers with a case of beer, a bottle of whiskey, a pair of prescription sunglasses, a bag of tortilla chips, an old IBM laptop and the aforementioned pineapple. A mile is actually a fairly long way to carry a chest of drawers in the rain. It takes a lot longer when every hundred yards you (meaning me) start laughing and almost drop the chest of drawers — on one occasion almost became actually and the IBM laptop met its maker, along with the back left foot of the drawers. Still eventually despite the wind and the rain and the laughter, we made it home. And now I have a chest of drawers, so it all turned out nice again.

Work, work, work and travel and a bit of house hunting and some other stuff

Regular readers (both of you) will probably have noticed the scarcity of posts in the recent couple of weeks. As you may be able to guess, this is largely due to the fact that for ANITA (the experiment I work on) it is getting perilously to the time when the brown smelly stuff gets up close and personal with rotary air mover. But I guess that's why the pay me the small, to medium sized, bucks.

At the moment the focus of our efforts is about to shift from Columbus (home, sweet home) and Hawaii (home to flesh eating diseases) to California. In particular to UC Irvine and the to Stanford (the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, SLAC, to be precise). Now being as we have to be out in California for an ill determined length of time, of order 6-8 weeks, myself and Kim decided it would be best to drive out there, in her car. That way we have access to a car when we are out in California and I get to see a bit more of the countryside (hopefully avoiding Kansas, this time — which reminds me I never got round to telling that story did I?). To be honest the drive to California is one of things I'm most looking forward to at the moment, as it will be a few days of relative peace and quiet.

One of things that I'm less looking forward to is the fact that the first thing I'm going to do when I arrive the Los Angeles, and in fact the reason we'll be arriving in LA and not Irvine, will be to jump on a plane and fly to London. Yep that's right I'm going to drive two thousand odd miles west on to fly five thousand odd miles east. I'm sure it will be fantastic. What's even better is that a mere 48 hours after I arrive in London, I'm going to be getting on a plane at Heathrow and flying back out to LA. I think I may have taken leave of my senses (or possibly that should be sense in the singular, as the others have probably already departed). Still I'll get a chance to pick up my birthday, and maybe Christmas, presents from Mumsie so I'm sure it's all worth it.

Too much of today was spent trying to figure out exactly where we, Kim and I, are going to stay when we are out in California. The base option is to spend five weeks in the Travelodge. Now it's not that I have anything against the Travelodge, it's just that I think spending five weeks there would destroy what little soul I have left. To try and find something better, maybe even something with a cooker, we've been looking at Craig's List and it's Google powered associate Housing Maps. The site is very nice showing you where all the housing adds are located, it's just a shame that most places want you to stay longer or be female or pay ridiculous amounts of money.

On the subject of ridiculous amounts of money, I've just noticed that Housing Maps, or should that be Craig's List, has a London. Amusingly the number breakdown on the price filter doesn't change, only the currency sign changes. What makes this more amusing is that in London all the rental prices are per week instead of per month. And by amusing I do mean terrifying. It's also somewhat amusing that on the London site instead of actual addresses places are listed as Mayfair or Kennington Station or, best of all, London.

The back in Ohio post

So, I'm back. And the Ohio bar owners association is rejoicing once more. Within a mere few hours of my arrival back in Columbus I was in a licensed premise and doing my bit for the oft beleagured alcohol industry. In fact I was in a bar filled with girls in costumes on roller skates, which I have to confess was not where I thought I would be as I sat looking out of the window of the plane a few hours earlier. The reason for the roller skating girls was, of course, beacuse it was the team debut of the Ohio Roller Girls. I am kind of tempted to attend the opening match on St. Georges day. But I think most of them could probably beat me up, so I'm a little hesitant.

The roller girls were just the starter though, the main course was a healthy helping of Tree of Snakes at St. James Tavern. And ever since Saturday night the chorus of Serious Knife Fight has been bouncing around my head. Well I should probably say every since Monday, as most of Sunday I was lying in bed with my brain bouncing around my head. And they said jetlag and excessive drinking don't mix, the fools.

I know I'm deep in long time no post land, but I'm afraid that's it for this post.

Why I need a wife and other musings from an island paradise

Well to be honest I don't really need wife, what I need is someone to save me from myself and I'm just not sure who would be willing to other than a wife. Now if I had bucket loads of cash, I could probably hire a personal assistant to do the job, but I don't have bucket loads of cash — although I do have a poster roll (you know one of those cardboard tubes that poster's come in) that is almost full of pennies, nickels and dimes — so I'm left with the wife theory. I say theory because I imagine what I think a wife does and what a wife actually does are probably very different, and I wasn't even thinking sexually.

I'm in Hawaii at the moment, and I realise I won't get any sympathy from you when I say it is not nearly as much fun as it sounds. And when I say that I'm not talking about the fact that they've just had 40-odd straight days of rain, or the fact that a pipe burst and several million tonnes (or maybe tons, what difference does it make when we're talking about millions of them) of raw sewage was dumped in the ocean near Waikiki beach. No, instead I'm talking about the fact that I'm here for work, case in point it is seven o'clock on Sunday evening and I'm in the lab — admittedly I'm in the lab typing this and not actually working at the moment, but I was ten minutes ago. I feel it is going to be something of a long week.

Although work isn't all bad, and I don't want to give the impression that it is. For instance, yesterday I got to see a truly great comedy moment. One of my colleagues plugged a cable between our battery box (can you guess what's inside) and one of our other boxes. When he did this great plumes of smoke were emitted from each connection. It was very impressive! It's not very often that you get to see great plumes of unintentional smoke in the physics lab. The truly funny thing about the story is if you had asked around the collaboration who would be the guy most likely to cause plumes from our experiment, most people would have picked the gentleman involved yesterday. The even funnier thing is though who would have been the popular choice, yesterday's smoke was not entirely his fault. It made me laugh anyway, it might lose something in translation.

Okay, so I appear to have got distracted away from my initial point, which is basically that I shouldn't really be left in charge of myself. I think this trip illustrates the point very well.

Exhibit A: my plane tickets. Now I spent a long time trying to decide which days to fly and which airlines and all that. In the end I flew out last Wednesday on American West (now US Airways), there was nothing particularly unpleasant (beyond the usual 10 hours on a plane amount of unpleasantness) about the flights themselves it was more the timing of them. You see, I picked the cheapest ticket I could find, a ticket which had me arriving at half past midnight. What I didn't realise when I booked the ticket was that arriving so late the car rental places would be shut and I'd have to spend the money I saved on a cheaper ticket on an expensive airport hotel room. Not very well thought through, although I did at least realise I would have a problem before I flew and wasn't taken by surprise upon landing.

Exhibit B: my hotels. Now I say hotels because last night I stayed in my third different hotel this trip. All the more impressive as I've only been here four nights. The first change was somewhat understandable as it was the change from the airport hotel to one nearer the UH campus. The second change was somewhat less understandable as it was to save $7 a night for the remaining 6 nights of my stay here. It is particularly un-understanable as it's not even my money and $42 dollars extra on trip that's costing over $1000 is probably not worth the struggle. Which brings me to...

Exhibit C: car parking. On Thursday night it rained. Now I don't just mean a-little-bit-of-moisture-was-falling-from-the-sky rain. No, I mean the-world-was-ending-and-God-was-punishing-until-the-last-second rain. In this weather I had to check in to hotel number two. A sensible man would have pulled up in front of the hotel, checked in and then paid to use the hotels parking, thus never having to venture out in the inclement weather, after all parking is only about $10 a night and at the end of the day it isn't his money. I chose a slight course of action. I drove around Waikiki looking for on-street parking. This didn't go to well, in part because I could barely see the street and in part because there just wasn't any parking. So I ventured a little further afield, got lost parked in a spot near a big building (on the grounds that I thought I might be back near Waikiki) and then wandered around in the rain for ten or fifteen minutes trying to work out where in the blazes I was. Eventually I did manage to find some on-street parking that was only seven or eight, rain soaked, blocks from my hotel.

Exhibit D: the morning after. On Friday morning I woke up at around 6:30 in the morning. Feeling a little bit tired, and a little bit hungover. It was then that I began to realise I had parked by a parking meter that would become active (I now have an image of a parking meter running up and down the side of the street, but maybe that's just in my head) at 7:00. Did I: a) say fuck it go back to sleep; b) get up and go check whether there was a meter and either move the car or put money in it; or c) lie in bed wondering what to do until ten past seven then get up have a hasty shower, before hurrying to move the car and go to work, only to discover that there wasn't a bloody parking meter (or maybe it was running up and down the street).

Exhibit E: last night's dinner. Last night it was getting late and I was a little hungry. I wasn't very hungry as I'd had both breakfast and lunch, so I just wanted something light. I decided to go and have some sushi. Apparently (in my head) the cute little I Love Sushi restaurant two blocks from my hotel wasn't up to scratch so I walked a few more blocks to a 'antique Japanese' restaurant I'd been to before. When I sat down at the bar area, there were only a couple of other customers in the restaurant. For some reason this put me off ordering sushi, I think my logic was they might have put it away or it might be going 'stale' or I have no fucking idea it was late and I was stupid. Anyhow, I ended up ordering something could neither pronounce or spell and was basically a big greasy Japanese omelet with pork and cabbage and cheese topped with mayonnaise. So not entirely the light sushi meal I was aiming for. At least they had beer.

Now my theory is if I was with someone, and I just mean if somebody was physically present with me, I wouldn't have quite so many of these strange ideas that result in me wandering around lost in the rain or eating mayonnaise covered omelets. Of course, I'm probably wrong on that count.