Overt FriendlinessThe first real American experience was on the plane. The captain constantly gave updates on the progress of the flight which was good because we started out delayed but caught up. The flight attendant had a stand up routine which was reasonably funny, but I imagine would have become really old really quickly for his workmates and indeed himself. AngerAs I popped out of the underground (BART) station, some baller was angsting down the street in dark clothes, ripping posters and public notices off bus stops. WeedIt smells like weed everywhere here. It can be legally sold for medicinal purposes here, which results in reasonably widespread use. HomelessnessI've seen people living in tents before. In Montpellier there was an area on the ride to work by the canal where a bunch of tents and campervans housed maybe 100 people, before spontaneously evaporating within half a day. In London, you see people who sleep on the streets. I mean, it's in every reasonably sized city. But nothing like this. It's illegal in most of the state, but happens to be legal in SF, so many a hobo makes the journey to the most expensive city in the country. CraziesIt's normal to talk to yourself every now and then. I probably do it every day. I do it reasonably often when I'm drunk and trying to make a decision where there is a nice, easy option and a right option. When I make my way to the bathroom, I take a look at myself in the mirror and do the devil in my head and the angel aloud. I think this is very different from walking the street having full conversations all day with yourself, talking about people as they walk past. A very mild but interesting example of this occurred while I was canvassing. I was speaking to a woman on her stoop (lean Hilary, By Mail) and a guy asked if the speakers on the side walk belonged to anyone. We clearly didn't know, the woman went back inside and he started talking to me about where was I from and all that. Some of the questions got a bit weird like “where are you staying” progressed to “are you looking for somewhere to stay”. He was clearly living rough. I think the reason I find this example interesting is because I think he was kind of on the brink of becoming most of the people on the street. He wasn't crazy, but he was definitely lonely. I talk to myself far more while travelling, peaking when I was cycling and often wouldn't have a conversation for days. Like it or not, most humans need to interact with other humans. It's really sad when you know something as small as a simple conversation, which might bore you because you've had it ten times that day already and prevent you from doing something you should be doing, can have a decent sized impact on someone life, if they got that interaction regularly. By all accounts, the crazy rate in SF is much higher than in other parts of the state and country. Inward FocusI don't want to sound like I'm contrasting inwardly focussed people with myself. That doesn't make any sense. I can only contrast them with other people I've met, so that's what I'm trying to do. The best way I can think to explain this is to use a first person role playing game (RPG) as an example. More people here than other places seem to act as though they are the protagonist in their very own simple RPG and everyone else is a non-player character (NPC). When you play a new game and you either don't read the instructions or background very well and just go for it, you need to spend a bit of time figuring out how it works. For instance in Fallout 3, you play the game for a couple of hours and you realise that you can't just go round treating people like dirt, because it affects your future choices in the game. In Morrowind, you need to crawl and have a high level in sneak if you want to get past someone without them noticing. You level in speechcraft affects your ability to convince someone of something. In the original Pokemon games on the other hand, you only need to learn that walking in someone's line of sight will start a battle. In real life, the rules are far more complex. Most of the people I interacted with in Australia were way more in touch with the rules of real life than people here. I think it's because for those people, the feedback loops were tighter. Feedback loops are tighter generally when you are better friends with someone, because they will call you out on strange behaviour, not in a nasty way necessarily. Then there are people that will call out that stuff even if they don't know you very well. My housemate in Melbourne is an example of such a person. Even after only brief encounters, we would be getting deep in to trivial issues. It goes with my general ideal that if you can't justify something you do, then you shouldn't do it. Sure you don't need to justify it to me, but if you want to consider yourself a good person, you should at least be able to justify it to yourself. Anyway, back to the people here, I think here there are more people who don't spend a lot of time with people they grew up with and are good friends with, so they don't get quality feedback on their actions. If someone I don't know racks up $900 in parking tickets before they realise that they should park on the other side of the street where it's free, it's easier to say “damn, that sucks” than “wot”. The people I've met here seem to have a higher threshold of friendship to reach the next level of honesty. I would say generally Australians are fairly straight up, so I guess it makes sense that people here might be less so. That said, my sample size here is small (though I would say quiet varied because I've been door knocking and meeting people with different backgrounds) and my sample at home is generally my group of friends and people attached to that which is reasonably specific. Incidentally and to nationally stereotype, I think the people I've met who are the most straight up about this stuff generally are Israelis. I've found two types of Israelis in my travels. There are some who travel alone, are atheist and try to avoid other Israelis. They are super cool and have no qualms questioning you about anything which is really refreshing. They are the reason Tel-Aviv is seen as an “innovation hub”. Then there is the type of Israeli which travels in a group for one year after military service, plays loud obnoxious music and has loud obnoxious conversation in really inappropriate settings like 3am in a hostel dorm room or midnight in a Patagonian campsite. Anyway, the first type are amazing. Everyone should read Sapiens. I realise I skipped a step. If I saw my life as a simple RPG, I would just test how things reacted when I interact with them and go forward operating based on what I learnt (probably finding some sick weapon early on and absolutely pwning because I researched how to do the Daedric Quests before I even started the game). Always as you go through life you get a better understanding of the rules of interaction, especially if you travel a lot and need to learn new rules for new places. But some people here who don't travel and live in their bubble seem to have decided that their rules won't change. If someone is set on their rules, it's really difficult to get them to change. I wish I could give decent examples. VocabularyThis is largely irrelevant in the context of this post, but I've observed that I use generally more complex language than most people I've interacted with here. I'm reasonably often asked “what does that mean” or told “that's a great word to use”. The words indicated in those instance are generally words I've used for over twenty years, because my parents used them while I was young. Rigmarole is one example. Epitome is another. The point of this is that when you become a parent (maybe you already are), you should use as many words as possible as regularly as possible in front of your kid, from day one. I've listened to a lot of Freakonomics podcasts lately about education, especially early education. There is a thing called The Thirty Million Words Initiative: “A world-famous study by researchers Betty Hart and Todd Risley (1995) found that some children heard thirty million fewer words by their 4th birthdays than others. The children who heard more words were better prepared when they entered school. These same kids, when followed into third grade, had bigger vocabularies, were stronger readers, and got higher test scores. The bottom line: the kids who started out ahead, stayed ahead; the kids who started out behind, stayed behind. This disparity in learning is referred to as the achievement gap.” It's the same as someone learning a second language while they are young with more brain plasticity, they find it easier to learn than someone who is older. I find learning new words now reasonably difficult. To have a decent initial lexicon is something I'm grateful for. Don't improve for you, do it for your kids. I don't really know what research mentions about this next bit, but I would say from a non-scientific, observational viewpoint, people who smoke more weed seem to have more trouble remembering relatively simple words. I suspect this is more due to the fact that people who have trouble remembering words are more likely to smoke the reefer than people who have a good memory for words. Young People in Sports CarsOne thing I've noticed while walking around canvassing is that there are a whole lot of young people in expensive cars. Tech for the win. Also, Lamborghini's are really common here. In Australia you very rarely see them. My Godfrey's GuitarI don't mean the guitar of my Godfrey. I mean my “Godfrey's guitar”. My friend Godfrey (aka Gobby, aka Ziekfrey, aka Dees, aka Andrew) loves guitars. It's normal to like things. I like pasta. But I recognise that some pasta is rubbish and I do not like that pasta, but I like pasta generally. Godfrey is not like this with guitars. He will pick up any guitar, play it a bit, maybe tell you it needs tuning or some new strings, then tell you it's a good guitar. Even if it's rubbish. He just gets off on guitars. I've know my Godfrey's guitar now. It's bikes. There are many bikes in San Francisco. It's the US version of Melbourne in many ways. Every time I see a bike I get really excited and want to ride it. Actually, that's not quite true. Anything more mountainy than a hybrid is off the table. But everyone here is riding commuters and single speeds so it's great. I really can't wait to get back home and have my own bike. Once I find a job of course First ContactI heard a rumour that Bernie would be at a rally starting at the Ferry Building (thanks Greg). The people I'm staying with and I headed down there to check it out. We put on some Local 2 paraphernalia and started marching around. As Le Meridien Hotel we heard a few speakers then lo and behold the big guy himself pops up to say a few words. He's an inspiration. I wish a little that I'd aimed for the front a big more, maybe to get a touch on, but still, seeing him was great Produce RangeI would love a supermarket which had not just the country of origin on the price sign for fruit and vegetables, but also the distance it has travelled since it was harvested. Including the method of transport would also be good and the shop would have a sign displaying the emissions per tonne kilometre of transport by that method. Actually, having thought about it and received some stimulating feedback, it would be better to just put the transport emissions on there. TeslasI've only seen three.
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FirstlyThis is just a brief update, nothing super interesting, just letting you know what I've done recently LondonAfter my adventures with the Kazakh, I flew to London for Sanj's wedding. Curry on Thursday, beers on Friday (including Sanj who hadn't written his speech and was coming for maximum two beers which turned in to six), a glorious wedding on Saturday, Super Cider Sunday Funday, beer > theatre > beer on Monday then a flight which I barely got to on Tuesday. Hectic. All of it was good. The opportunity cost for this trip was probably two weeks on Galapagos and I'm infinitely happy that I made the decision that I did. CancunI returned to Bogota then immediately flew to Cancun. So American. I Couchsurfed with Viki and Angel who were super chilled out. I tried some mescal which is the Mexican version of whiskey kind of. Not at all really, but it had the same sip and warmth and deliciousness. Infinitely better than tequila. There were a few variations which were also delicious. One day we went to the beach which was fun. That night we went to a hostel with some of Viki's friends and played games which was also fun. The night before we also went to the hostel, then out to the party zone of Cancun which I absolutely hated. So much so that I wrote in my little book some ideas about it, but I can't be bothered with it now. TulumMy sister arrived and we headed south to get away from the party tourists of Cancun, and apparently arrived in the laps of hostel style tourists in Tulum. We went to a cenote and Katherine went diving in some too. They are great fun. We Couchsurfed with a guy who slept in a hammock which was attached to the door handle of the room we slept in, essentially locking it from the outside. No bottles were required. CozumelWe then spent a few days on the island of Cozumel, a diving mecca 18km from mainland Mexico. There we found the potentially the world's best burrito. I had 5 in the 3 days we were there, plus one from a competitor's shop (wasn't as good, too much lettuce). One day Katherine dived and one day we decided to cycle around the island (65km). The hired bikes were disastrous and it was a literal pain in the bum to get back to town before the burrito shop closed. BanosWe had different flights to Ecuador, but eventually got to Quito and met up with Sarah, a friend we met in Scotland two and a half years ago. We immediately set off to Banos, a small town south of Quito. The first day we spent walking to the “end of the world” place which is really just a normal sized swing on a steep hill (not even a cliff) where you can make it seem like you're in an awesome place but really it's just pretty good. The walk was fun though as was the asking around for directions. Highlight was Katherine falling a minute behind then us waiting fifteen minutes for her. She was waiting for a life which she got through a 100m section of road because there were a couple of chooks vaguely near the road. The next day we hired bikes (infinitely better this time, but by no means good) and rode down to Pailon del Diablo which is a waterfall. It was fun, waterfalls are cool. AmazonNext stop was the Amazon via an eight hour bus which was impossible to sleep on. We arrived at 6am, found a place with WiFI for breakfast and downloaded GoT (it was a Monday). The bus from there to the rainforest was partially spent watching it, instead of socialising, but I'm comfortable with that decision. The next four days were spent in the rainforest going on boat rides to see animals, night walks to see insects, day walks to see “tribe people” which were just normal people except one shaman. We saw a bunch of animals, but nothing too unexpected. My favourite was a prehistoric bird, the babies of which have claws on their wings so that when they are attacked, they fall into the water and can use the claws to climb back up the tree. I haven't put up too many animal photos. If you want to see good Amazon photos, just do a Google search. CaliforniaAfter four flights yesterday, I'm now in San Francisco. My plan is to volunteer for the Bernie Sanders campaign until the primary. It's proving harder than I thought to get involved, but I am getting there. Americans are very diverse. I should start a list of all the weird stuff I see here, but I know I won't keep it up. It's a little odd to be in an English speaking country again.
Update: I have since had a few days here and I've walked the streets knocking on doors and registering people to vote. I think I will actually try to do a post on some of the stuff that goes on here that I haven't generally seen in other places I've been. |
Chris JonesJust a guy going for a bit of a documented ride. Archives
May 2018
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