Signing Your Life Away

You know how when you think of Australia the first thing you think of is deadly animals? Crocs, snakes, spiders, jellyfish... hell, even the large flightless birds have a gigantic claw on their foot that could disembowel a liger.

Well, rest assured that the tourism bureau of Australia is aware of that reputation and desperately hoping to change it. At some point it must have occurred to them that people don't want to go places where they might die and now they're on a mission to downplay the risks associated with the local fauna. For example:

Why don't we look at that again:

What? Crocodile attacks may cause injury? What the hell else would they cause, a hickey? In case you've been living under a rock, this is what a saltwater croc looks like:

You know what actually might happen if you ignore the sign and get attacked while swimming in croc-infested waters? You might get to think "I've made a terrible mistake" in the half-second before you're dragged under. By the way, they're all over the place in Northern Australia and Queensland and one of those places is named Darwin. I don't think that's an accident.

By the way, any of you wondering how effective that sign was?

I kid you not, this photo was taken directly on the other side of that sign. Wow. What's going through these people's heads besides sharp teeth? Maybe they don't understand English? From what I've heard it's always German tourists who get eaten and – putting aside the fact that practically every German speaks English – the Australian government has taken rigorous steps to prevent more German chompings:

Look, I'm all for preventing croc attacks on German tourists, but doesn't this sign need to be WAY more forceful? Come on guys, you need something that screams WENN SIE HIER SCHWIMMEN EIN KROKODIL ESSEN SIE! Something like this:

See, I think that gets the point across with authority! Well, if you're German anyway.

At this point I should mention it's not just the risks of crocodiles that are getting downplayed. Check out this gem (which was an actual sign at the beach):

Ok, I get it. Jellyfish, oh no! But what does that really mean?

That's a lot of text and I want to go swimming. Just tell me if they're dangerous or not.

Oh. Well that does sound bad. I don't like excruciating pain, and death is super inconvenient. Surely there are steps I can take if I should happen to be stung?

Uh, "Treatment involves liberal drenching with vinegar and cardio-pulmonary resuscitation." What? You can't give someone medical care advice that leaps directly from "vigorously rub fish and chips into the wound" all the way to "get yourself hooked up to an artificial lung ASAP!" Shouldn't there be some intermediate steps along the way? Maybe slap them around a little, give 'em a shot of whiskey? That kind of thing. I mean... sweet merciful crap. Shouldn't you be a bit more forceful than "Avoid a painful encounter" when you've got news like this to share?

That said, the dangerous animals of Australia are a national treasure. If you get killed by a crocodile or a box jellyfish there's a pretty good chance it was your fault. And while Cassowaries are dangerous, it's usually the ones who've been fed by humans that end up attacking people. So maybe it wasn't your fault, but it was a person who screwed the animal up all the same.

In fact, people are a bigger threat to Cassowaries than they are to us. The bird is critically endangered and they lose dozens to roadkill incidents every year. That's why you see signs like this around:

Actually that's, um... that's kind of a crappy sign. The top part is fine, but the one on the bottom is a bit budget, isn't it? It looks like Homer Simpson passed out after a costume party. Come to think of it, it reminds me of something else too...

What could it possible be...

Oh come on guys. Really? You have this crazily endangered awesome bird and you try to save a few bucks by repainting speedbump signs to portray a dead Cassowary? Are you joking?

You know what? That's it, I give up. Why are you even bothering? Forget the caution signs, forget the treatment options, forget the warnings about what tourists should or should not do and where they should or should not do it. You've got dangerous crap all over the place, I suggest you hang this in the airport and call it a day:

COMPLETE TANGENT:
I was ranting up a nice stream of righteous indignation about Australians chopping down their rainforest to put up fields of sugarcane and cattle farms when I realized I was eating a cheeseburger and drinking a coke at the time. So I may have been premature in my critique.

Paul Goes Scuba Diving!

I learned how to scuba dive last week! By the way, this is a special Mother's Day episode of Complete Tangent (even though I'm putting it up on the Monday). Mum, my gift to you was not telling you I went scuba diving last week. I hope you enjoyed your worry-free days.

Yes, my mum would have worried, and so would I. In fact, I did. To be honest, I have never been all that comfortable with the idea of scuba diving. As you all know, I'm quite macho. I've wrestled a few grizzlies in my day, fought a crocodile or two; but hey, who hasn't? Despite that, the idea of going under water away from the sweet breath of life was never something I felt comfortable with.

I do realize that you have a bunch of equipment when you go down, and it's all explicitly designed to keep you alive. There's a lot of it too, as you can see from this diagram:

Still, it's one thing to tell someone this gear will help, it's another to actually make them believe it. I mean, when I look at that picture I don't see a bunch of stuff that will keep me alive, I see this:

It's safe to say I wasn't entirely bought-in. That said, I pride myself on being someone who can suck it up and look at the numbers, and the numbers say scuba diving is actually quite safe. Add to that the fact that a) Erika is a highly-certified diver and b) We're in one of the best spots in the world to go diving; well it would be a shame not to give it a shot. On top of that I got a deal on the course so it was only around $150 bucks and my cheapness overrode my fear.

That said, it's a 2-day course. When Erika got her PADI Open Water cert it was something like 3-weeks of training. Which is to say that I still had some nerves about the whole thing.

After Day One though, I was... really not thrilled. My chest hurt, I felt nauseated, and didn't really get the impression it was all that interesting to begin with. And I still thought I was going to die the next day. So big win for Day 1! I did admit to myself that I held my breath a bit though, which might explain why I had some chest pain. Oh by the way, they say that the most important thing to remember in diving is that

IF YOU HOLD YOUR BREATH UNDERWATER YOUR LUNGS WILL EXPLODE AND YOU WILL DIE!!!

I'm paraphrasing a little but that's the gist of it. So I'm going to take a bit of the credit for not feeling so hot that night. You'd think I'd have gotten that message.

Fortunately one of the things it says in the PADI manual is not to let a bad day scare you off diving. Sometimes the conditions just aren't right. So I sucked it up (and remembered to exhale) and went to Day 2. I must say that Day 2 was much better. It was a lot easier to chill out in the water, I barely used any of my air, and we actually saw some stuff. This specific stuff actually:

That's Bluey, a Grouper that hangs out at Bare Island in Sydney. It's tough to get a scale of reference so let's just assume he's roughly the size of a Clydesdale horse. Actually he's closer to the size of my leg but wouldn't it be cool if he was the size of a horse? The thing is, there are things the size of a horse, or that are just interesting to look at, or that will eat other animals while you watch. I'm particularly interested in that last one, animals eating animals is just fun. Bluey jammed a sea urchin down his urchin-hole while we watched which was enough to hook me on diving.

I don't know how often we'll go but I'm pumped to go again. I doubt I'll ever shake that 1% feeling that I'm about to die, but logically I do know that I'm more likely to die on the way to the dive site than in the water itself. So I can rely on that logic. Hell, I also feel like I'm going to break my neck every time I go skiing but I still do that too (Side note: How the hell did I ever do judo? People were deliberately trying to hurt me, up to and including cutting my air off to the point that I would pass out. I never batted an eye at that, why would diving bother me?).

So yeah, I'm in on diving now. Next stop, the Great Barrier Reef. AKA, the place where Paul gets eaten by a shark...


COMPLETE TANGENT:
This is legitimately the worst boxed wine on the planet:

Look, I'm not going to stand up and shout that I was robbed. It's not like there weren't warning signs right there on the box. For instance, "Fresh" shouldn't be a marketing point for wine. Also, I love how they do the math for you on how many bottles of wine are in 4 litres, as though they understand that math isn't a strong suit for their audience. As for their claim of being the "2010 Winery of the Year"? Well, you'll notice that accolade doesn't factor in this box of liquefied rabbit turd. It's the winery that's good, not the swill contained therein. But hey, let's not rule out this ogre piss as being a key factor to the winery's success. Maybe they just extracted all the liquid hate from the rest of the wine and jammed it into these boxes.

Ugh, we barely drank the whole thing.

Follow up to Portugal foods!

I just discovered this is what a Monkfish looks like. Seriously? The most tasty new animal I was exposed to in Portugal is some sort of Tim Burton nightmare creature?

Although to be honest, I do feel a sense of pride in eating something that looks like it could have bitten my arm off. Even if I did just eat its tail. With butter. And never having seen it.

Hear me roar.

Trip Recap with Pictures!

I have been remiss in my posts!

Erika and I just returned from Portugal on Tuesday, a 21 hour slog via Philly that culminated in the joy of having Erika’s bag not make it onto our connecting flight, despite a 4.5 hour layover. I can only assume the TSA agent assigned to her bag had extremely small hands. In going through the photos on my phone though, I realized that I have a bunch of miscellaneous thoughts that started which I haven’t shared, so here’s some of my miscellaneous holiday thoughts:

GLASGOW:

Safety
This was the “window” in our hotel room:

If you walked up, you could literally just step out onto the roof (see below). A recurring theme when you go to Europe is “Your safety, Your problem”. I am a fan of this. If you fall off a ledge because there wasn’t a rail, well, you decided to walk out there in the first place right?

Food
I was actually quite impressed with the packaged food in the Glasgow airport. It had these convenient “traffic light” labels, which is coincidentally a design tool I use. No need to make things overly complex right?:

Here’s a description of what the labels meant:

I think this is a really effective way of getting across the relative healthiness of things in a simple manner. It certainly affected my choice. And the package opened really simply as well, just peeling aside so that it was almost all a recyclable cardboard instead of being predominantly plastic:

I know you’re all thinking “Well how did it taste?” Um… it tasted like a low-fat sandwich packaged in cardboard. So there’s that.

PORTUGAL:

Sagres
I already mentioned this, but we biked out to Sagres and were surprised how close we were able to bike to the cliff’s edge:

Food
I like food in pots:

Especially when they look like this on your plate (monkfish, potato, and shrimp):

The end
All good things coming to an end, as this is our last night in Lisbon:

THE TRIP HOME:

Two final images. For some reason our plane was billowing clouds of something, which is, um… weird



And finally, it’s so good to get home. Or as close as US Airways will let you:

Sketchville

Erika and I are on the bus leaving the Algarve right now (the picture is from Sagres, we rented bikes and rode to where we took that photo. Directly behind me is a 400 foot drop straight into the ocean, great spot for a picnic!), but I thought I'd share a story from Glasgow given that I couldn't post it before due to lack of available Internet.

Erika and I had decided that we would walk to one of the parks in Glasgow (they're quite nice), then find somewhere nearby to have dinner. We wandered in the general direction of one, and at first things were fine. Shopping, touristy kinds of things going on. But then it started to get progressively more sketchy. Erika didn't seem to notice, and may have thought I was overreacting. I said as much, but she rolled her eyes in that way that says "oh come on, nobody is going to stab you in broad daylight in a major city 3 blocks from a Marks and Spencer". We soldiered on.

See of you can guess which event over the following 20 minutes led us to decide "we should get out of here before someone stabs us in broad daylight in a major city 3 blocks from a Marks and Spencer":
1. Seeing people spill out of a pub blind stinking drunk and swearing at each other, and it's 5pm
2. Stepping into that same pub and having a guy stare at me for the entire duration of our time there
3. In the pub washroom: LADY: "What brings you to Gallow's Gate?" ERIKA: "Oh, just grabbing a pint" LADY: "SURE luv... HAH!"
4. Discovering the area of town we were in was referred to as "Gallow's Gate"
5. Seeing a pigeon that I'm pretty sure had AIDS
6. Watching a drunk old man stumble and fall off the curb
7. See a different old man stumble into a bus stop ad-board, cut his head on the glass... then relieve himself on the sign

Good times!

Mmm... meaty

Through a combination of the weather (see above), crappy Internet availability, and not wanting to ignore Erika; I have not been posting much. I do have a nice list of topics to post about now though, and since I got up early today here's one:

It always surprises me how much meat there is on an animal. This though occured to me when looking at the shrimp we had for dinner last night. Those suckers are little more than one big hunk of meat with a head. But when you think about it, why not? Realistically what else would an animal be made out of if not guts and meat and connective tissue like bones 'n things? (name trademarked in case I ever divert into voodoo and want to open a shop)

Naturally this got me thinking about insects. Shouldn't eating a bug be much the same experience as eating a shrimp? I think it all boils down to the ratio of guts to meat. When I think of a shrimp I think of a big hunk of meat, whereas when I think of a bug like a beetle or a spider or a cricket I think of a little bag of goop. Everyone who was a kid stomped on a bug or two in their youth; it's tough to get that imagery out of your head. Shrimp are made of meat and bugs are made of guts. End of story, thanks for coming.

Or is it? After all, if I dropped a Smart Car onto a pig it's not like ham and bacon would go shooting all over the place. No, it would be the guts, just like all the bugs I stomped on as a kid. I guarantee you that if my first experiences with pig guts as a child had been in the form of Smart Car stompings instead of hot dogs I'd feel a lot differently about eating anything that came from a pig today.

So maybe there's a lot more meat on a bug than I've been willing to consider? Seems likely. Not that I'm about to do an anteater impression in my back yard with a chunk of garden hose and a fur coat, but in the right circumstance I woul now be willing to at least try an insect. With a good sauce. Like when I first tried shrimp (those suckers looked like bugs... gross).

Fashioning a Post

For some reason I've been thinking a lot about fashion on this trip. If you know me at all you'll understand how weird this is. I'm not what you'd call a "fashionable guy", or a "snappy dresser", or even a "person who doesn't buy the same shoes three times in a row."*

The funny thing is, I'm actually able to break down the mechanics of fashion pretty well at a rudimentary level. Erika will say something like "Should I wear a necklace with this dress?" and I can muster a response along the lines of "I don't think so because the shape of your collar is meant to draw attention to your neck and shoulders, so the triangle of the necklace would go in the other direction and ruin the effect." Then I'll put on my black pants and brown shoes and leave the house.**

See, the problem is that I have no ability to look at the whole picture when it comes to fashion. I can get into the core principles but I can't look at a closet and pick out an outfit that doesn't look like something a drunken lumberjack would wear into town to get groceries. It's basically the opposite of food. I can tell you in a heartbeat if something is damn tasty, but if I have to tell you why the flavours work together I'm at a complete loss.***

Which is why me thinking about fashion is a bit odd. But I've been in London for a few days and have thus been exposed to some cutting-edge fashion as it were. It's tough not to notice the differences to the rest of the world after you've been here for a while, and above all else the thing that stands out is just how many different styles there are. I'm used to living in a place where that variety just doesn't exist. Every girl in Vancouver or Seattle seems to decide at once what's fashionable this year and then either go with it or put on some gore-tex because it's raining again (I worked in a bar so I've at least got a decent sample-size to work with. I'm also a guy, so looking at girls isn't exactly an unrefined skill of mine). In London however, women are way more likely to dress in a style appropriate for their body type and shape. Makes sense though right? They've got a bunch of options to pick from! Sadly, this means that looking fashionable in a place like Vancouver requires you to either
   a) Be lucky and have the body type that's in style this year
   b) Move, or
   c) Look bad

Here's an example: I have seen a number of very fashionable women here sporting a haircut that can only be called "The Lisbeth Salander". If you've read The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo or seen the movie you'll know what I mean, but here's a photo from the movie (the version around here is more sexy, less harsh though):

The haircut itself is basically very rockerish, with short sides and a fair bit of the 80's in there. On the right girl it can look smoking hot (minus the nose-ring, I'm not a fan), and I say "on the right girl" because on 99.98% of the population it would make you look like Ronald McDonald with an undercut. But what's a girl to do if this becomes the style that leaks out into the general population this year? My sister went through this in high school: To this day she can't look at photos of herself with that haircut and not tear up (at gunpoint I would not include a picture of it in this blog. We'd probably never speak again and we have a good relationship).

I'm not sure if I have a thesis that I'm getting at here. It's more just an expunging of thoughts. But if I did have one, it would be that our perception of the average woman in a city like London as being more fashionable than elsewhere is wrong. They're just exposed to more options.****

*I wish I was joking about this but I'm not. I went shopping with Erika once and she helped me pick shoes. The next two times she let me go on my own under the mistaken belief that I now had the fundamental skills required to pick shoes for myself. Instead I just bought identical new ones under the belief that I could wear the same style of shoes for 5 years and nobody would notice. After the third pair I was informed that this is not the case. Who knew?

**Actually no, I wouldn't do that. Erika told me not to.

***Game design is a different beast, if you don't understand what's going on at both a macro and a micro level you're DOA. At my core I would say that I'm a pretty mechanistic thinker when it comes to design, but if you can't experience the final product in your brain and say whether it's fun or not well, you're going to make some pretty crappy games in your career.

****Yes, a woman could be as fashionable anywhere on the planet. The difference? In Vancouver you have to read magazines and then order clothes from Milan. In London you see it on your daily commute and then try it on in the store. A bit less of a hurdle.

NOTE 1: I recognize that you can replace Milan, Paris, New York, Tokyo, etc. in this post wherever I've said "London". Please do so as you wish.

NOTE 2: I realize I don't spend any time talking about men's fashion here so let me summarize the differences I did notice:
  a) some guys wore cufflinks

Tweets I would have sent while drinking on Canada Day if I had a data plan in England:

There are 12 different ways to qualify as "fashionable" in London. In Seattle? 1

There are an ass-ton of people dressed in red in Trafalgar Square. Some of them are even Canadian.

I think the rest of the planet sees Canada as the folksy uncle who makes pun jokes when he comes over.

When did Blue Rodeo get appointed Canada's global musical representatives? I'm assuming this was by acclimation?

Walk up to someone and say "I loved Duck Hunt" really fast. Now you know why we're all giggling.

"I'd like a round of tequila and a round of sambuca." How could this possibly end poorly?

An hour later and they haven't arrived. I guess my question has been answered?

Mmm... red bull. (insert sloppy make-out sounds here)

I think when I decided to only bring two pairs of shorts on this two week trip I grossly underestimated the amount of beer I would spill on them over the first 3 days.

I need one hundred thousand cc's of cheeseburger STAT!

Hm. My taxi driver has an English accent. That was unexpected.

In Absentia

My family has some problems with absent-mindedness. It strikes to different degrees with each person, but rarely does it skip someone entirely. In my instance, I am one of the rarer victims, but I think I get disproportionately angry when it does happen.

Take today for instance. Erika and I are heading out on vacation, which is awesome. Given that I still can't drive, Erika was behind the wheel while I was navigating our way to the long-term parking. Due to its cheap and long-term nature it isn't exactly directly adjacent to the airport.

We brum down the highway.

ERIKA: Which way do we go now?

ME: Just move over a lane and go straight through.

ERIKA: Really?

ME: Yep!

ERIKA: Ok.

We continue sailing down the highway.

ME: Take the next exit here.

ERIKA: It's the same exit as the airport? That doesn't sound right.

ME: ...

ME: ...

ME: FUUUUUUUUUCCCCCCCKKKKKK!!!!!!!!

There's always a moment that everyone goes through when they've done something stupid where their brain searches desperately for some way to partition blame. "I can't be that dumb," their brain reasons "someone else MUST have had a hand in this!" And so you can see why I was so choked that not only had I managed to take us a half hour out of our way by directing Erika to the airport instead of the parking lot, but I had somehow managed to do it all on my own. Don't get me wrong though, it's not like my brain didn't try to share the credit:
"She really should have been reminding me that we were going to the parking lot"
"How was I supposed to know that the shuttle service was for people and not cars?"
"If it turned out they were having free parking week at the airport I wouldn't seem so dumb now, would I?"
Alas, but in the end it turned out to be my fault alone.

At this point things were still ok though: We weren't that far (according to the map on my phone), and we had buffer left to burn through because, much to our chagrin, we seem to be that couple who doesn't estimate time very well. Heck, according to our map we were only one U-turn and a 4 mile drive down International Boulevard away from getting parked, checked in, and on our way!

Now folks, let me tell you what I learned about International Boulevard today. This god-forsaken stretch of pseudo-highway is the most painful hunk of red light misery a human being can be subjected to. I don't know which Cro-Magdon urban planner got drunk and decided that there should be a 5 minute light every 200 feet, but they should absolutely be sentenced to drive this broken stretch of pain and misery until they are capable of little more than shaking, crying, and begging for mercy from the people who use it every day. Not that they're likely to get it.

And another thing... you know those lights you get to where you're thinking "Why can't I drive right now? NOBODY IS COMING THE OTHER WAY!" Every light was like that, and 5 minutes long to boot. I swear to god that a family of ducks crossed the intersection while we were waiting, and that was just during the left-turn signal. Aaaargh!

In conclusion, we did get there, I am on a plane, and the only way I ever drive down International Boulevard again is in a back-hoe. Unless I absent-mindedly drive down it again. Dang.